The Purpose of Creation | Healing through Jewish Wisdom

The conversation

You react with an intensity that doesn't really fit the situation, and afterward you ask yourself where that even came from. According to Gili Man Wolner, the answer goes far back, to the first seven years of life, when the subconscious was built like a recording that keeps playing on a loop. Anyone who is ruled by that recording, the way she sees it, is a slave. Not to a boss, not to a partner, but to their own thoughts and feelings. The question she suggests asking is not how to change your circumstances from the outside, but how to connect to the part of you that doesn't depend on them at all.

The truth

The Creator wants only to give, and so a will to receive had to be created in the soul, the complete opposite of the Creator's own will, and that gap is where everything begins.

Until the age of seven the brain records everything with no filter: what the parents said, what the neighbors shouted, what was on the news. From seven on, it only plays back what was recorded.

Some of those conclusions are useful, like don't touch fire, but plenty of others were stamped in at three or four years old with nothing behind them at all, and they dictate reactions you can't explain.

A slave is someone the subconscious rules: a slave to their own thoughts, their habits, their past.

Redemption is a return to the source: identifying with the soul instead of with the body or with the animal soul, which is the subconscious and the inner child.

Real freedom doesn't depend on a boss, a partner or a neighbor. It depends only on the choice to take responsibility for your own life.

Questions and answers

What is redemption?

To bring one thing out of another, meaning to return it to its source. For us, it happens when we identify with the soul, with the divine part inside us.

What's the difference between a slave and a free person?

A slave is someone who has no choice, someone the subconscious rules, along with the past and old habits. A free person is someone who chooses, who takes responsibility for their own life and doesn't hang their happiness on somebody else.

Why did a will to receive have to be created in us?

Because the Creator wants only to give, and without someone who wants to receive there is nobody to give to. So the soul was created with a will that is the complete opposite of the Creator's own, and that gap is exactly where everything begins.

What is real freedom?

Real freedom is the kind that doesn't depend on anything outside you, not on a boss, a partner or a neighbor. It depends only on the person and on their choice to take responsibility for their life and to connect to their soul, as opposed to the victim role, where someone else decides how you feel.

Why did the Holy Ari say that he was granted divine inspiration?

According to the story told in the episode, the Holy Ari answered his students that he was granted it because he lived in great, deep joy all the time, and that the source of that joy was his humility: the consciousness that nothing at all is owed to him, so that everything that happens makes him glad.

Gili's original episode description

Doesn't it ever happen to you that you don't even understand why you reacted the way you did? Or that you found yourself reacting like your mother? Or your father? Or both of them? We're copy-paste! That's living reactively. There's an event and you react, and another event and you react, putting out fires. That's what happens when the subconscious rules us. Until we wake up. To wake up is to understand that there's one movement in life: to follow the trail of the Creator's love. That's the task of every created being. That's it. That's redemption. What is redemption? Redemption is bringing one thing out of another, meaning returning it to its source, redeeming it. In our case it will happen when we identify with our soul, with the part of us that is godly from above. It sounds arrogant, but in all modesty, it's written! There's a soul in us that is a part of the Creator.

A person is born free. Free choice is the whole point, and still they're a slave. On the face of it, we're all free to do what we want. But it isn't really like that. Think about it in the most basic terms. In everyday language, being free means I do what I feel like: I feel like eating chocolate, I feel like hearing a song, I'm into him or I'm into her. We think of that as a free person acting on whatever they feel like. Actually, it's the opposite. The more enslaved a person is to their own cravings, the more of a slave they are.

What is a slave? When a person doesn't choose, they have no freedom, and in the absence of freedom they're a slave. As long as the subconscious rules a person, they're a slave. A slave to their thoughts, to their feelings, to their past, to their urges. We are not free people.

A slave is a state of consciousness. A slave has no trust in themselves and doesn't rely on themselves. Other people decide for them, the responsibility sits elsewhere, and they hand their freedom of choice over to somebody else.

Real freedom doesn't depend on anyone. It depends on me. That is real freedom.