A question I received: The “Preface to the Sulam Commentary” describes a system that is external in relation to man. So how am I supposed to envision that this system is related to me and is inside me?

My Answer: There is no soul inside my animate body. My body does not contain the ten Sefirot of the soul. I only have an initial point, and I have to build the ten Sefirot from it. This point originated from inside my egoistic desires. When I make a connection with the other points in the heart using my egoism, then my ego gives me the material, the desires, and the connection to other people, and this will create the structure of the ten Sefirot inside me.

I will then become the point of Malchut, the tenth Sefira, and my first nine Sefirot will be comprised of my attitude to other people. All the other souls, everything I see in front of me, the entire world, and everything around me are my nine Sefirot (Tet Rishonot). When I connect them to myself with love, with the understanding that we are all one whole, then I rise above my egoism, and if I am able to rise above my Malchut in order to bestow, then I will connect these external qualities of bestowal to myself.

That is when my soul, the complete Partzuf made of ten Sefirot will appear within me. And that is exactly where I will reveal the Creator: inside the desires that I have acquired through bestowal to others.

Everything around me is the structure of my own soul. But after the soul’s breaking and fall into egoism, I started desiring to use these other parts of me egoistically, to receive everything they have. Now I have to go back to bestowing to them. I have to reconnect them to myself through love, and that is how I will reveal the Light of my soul—inside them.

I can never reveal the Light inside myself, in Malchut, because the First Restriction (Tzimtzum Aleph) cannot be revoked. This is why everything depends on me coming out of myself and connecting to the other souls, by feeling their desires as my own. Inside this common desire, I will reveal the Creator.
(From Part 3 of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson, on the “Preface to the Sulam Commentary”)

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People don’t understand what The Book of Zohar actually is. When I just started studying Kabbalah, I was told that The Zohar is Musar (ethics) according to Kabbalah. Musar is a system of moral values, telling people what they should be doing and what they are forbidden from doing because they will be punished for it. These people believe that The Book of Zohar is a book of morals on a higher level, like a decree from Above.

Baal HaSulam writes that many horrible things took place in the world because The Book of Zohar was revealed before the time was right. The Zohar was only supposed to be revealed during the time of the Ari. Why is that? When a person who hasn’t been properly prepared for reading The Zohar reads it, he will not understand it correctly. He will not arrive at the same thoughts and intentions that Rabbi Shimon had when he wrote this text.

This is why Baal HaSulam added his own commentary, titled “Sulam” (Ladder), which includes a “technical” supplement to the text of The Book of Zohar. There he provides a Kabbalistic definition of every word of the Torah and explains where each word or quality is located in the structure of the soul.

This enables the person reading the text to connect both definitions, and thus to experience an inner response to what he is reading. Both worlds become revealed to him – this world and the Upper World, and he senses the Creator’s governance inside the text and inside himself.
(From Part 2 of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson, on the “Preface to the Sulam Commentary”)

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A question I received: We know that egoistic desires motivate us to battle laziness. So, if a person corrects his egoism, what will act as a stimulus for him? Every system has elements that help control it. So who or what will carry out this function in a non-egoistic society? How will we choose the managers?

We know that many people work in fields where they produce things a person can do without. What will happen to these people? By correcting their egoism, won’t an altruistic society become helpless against the egoistic society?

My Answer: Everything in the world is controlled by the forces of nature, so the more we correspond to them, the better off we will be, and our society will be better as well. If we only produce the things that are necessary, then everyone will have time left over for spiritual work, for studying Nature (the Creator). Then we will reveal abundance, according to the law of balance with Nature.

We don’t have to worry about what is not up to us – leave that to the Creator. The purpose of our lives is to change ourselves in order to become similar to Nature (the Creator). This will give us prosperity.

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When egoism flared up in Ancient Babylon and we stopped understanding each other on the level of our internality, this caused the appearance of different spoken languages, because people stopped understanding each other. The different languages came from Ancient Babylon, where every person started to hate the others. You talk, but I don’t want to understand you! Why should I care about you?

This is why you started speaking one language, and I – a different one. Inside, we don’t want to understand each other, and this is the source of the different languages. As soon as we will desire to understand each other, we will suddenly discover that a single language will form: “the language of bestowal.” And then, this will become expressed externally as well, and the whole world will start to speak one language…
(From Part 3 of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson)

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In the News (from Bloomberg): “France Seeking Ban on Guaranteed Bonuses for Bankers” France wants the Group of 20 to go further in clamping down on banker pay, including a ban on guaranteed bonuses … Governments in France, Britain and the U.S. are struggling to implement promises made this year to restrict awards to bankers. In the U.S., the Treasury is reviewing compensation of top executives at seven companies that got aid from the government… Citigroup Inc., among U.S. companies being scrutinized, may seek to persuade energy trader Andrew Hall to accept stock [instead of cash] next year after paying him $100 million for 2008.

My Comment: What other course of action would you propose to the people who hold access to society’s funds? Their innate egoism does not allow them to part with this money unless there is a huge personal reward. If there is no such reward, they will simply keep it all for themselves.

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It is necessary to understand that the same system in which we now exist, gradually moves us toward the spiritual system, and then to the Creator. The system of all the worlds is one. Granted, our world is cut off from the spiritual world, but it has the same parts: “world-year-soul.” Through this world, I enter the spiritual world. And once I do, then through the words that I read in the books of Kabbalah, I begin to reveal a greater depth in the system.

This is how I acquire a connection with the Creator, who is inside these actions. From these actions I attain His mind and His intentions toward me. This is how I gradually study myself, the Creator and the entire system.

All of this becomes revealed to me as a science. In addition, I suddenly discover how much my actions influence the whole system, because it is integral. I discover that I can incorporate myself into the whole system; I can be simultaneously present in all its parts and feel all the changes happening in it. This is the meaning of acquiring a spiritual Kli.

After that, one’s development only takes place inwards. It’s similar to how we gradually get to know a person.

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If a person studies books of Kabbalah, then even without understanding any of what’s written in them, he goes through inner changes and gradually begins to feel what is written in these books. This is called that he studies the science of Kabbalah. He begins to see the relationships between the fulfillment and the soul’s desire (the Lights and the Kelim), “world-year-soul” and “a ready-made reality.”

If he begins to study these books and to see them with his inner vision, then he studies the wisdom of Kabbalah – the science about how to fulfill one’s soul, how to reveal the spiritual world and the Creator, by likening one’s qualities to Him. But if a person reads these books, although he may really try and make efforts, but he is nevertheless unable to feel the Creator’s actions inside him, it means that he isn’t studying the science of Kabbalah yet. He is only preparing for it.

But if he has no intention whatsoever to achieve the spiritual sensation, then he has no connection to spirituality, or to the Torah. He is only connected to knowledge, because he does not strive for the Torah. The Torah is the Light that returns one to the Source, and it influences a person when he desires for the Light to come and correct him, because he feels that he requires correction.

So, if a person simply reads Kabbalah books, this doesn’t necessarily mean that he studies Kabbalah. He may just be studying the wisdom. Therefore, everything is discussed relative to the person studying. If I pick up a book whose cover says “Torah” or “Kabbalah,” this doesn’t necessarily mean that I study them. Everything depends on me and what I desire from these books.
(From Part 3 of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson, on “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot”)

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Yesterday I had a conversation with the youth group. A young woman of about twenty years old stood up to ask a question, and you could see by looking at her that she is in a state of despair and feels heavy-hearted. She asked, “What do I do with all of this? Can it really be that every person who advances along this path feels this way?” I replied, “Yes, and even worse…”

A person has to go through the state of total despair in order to realize his inability to advance by means of his own egoism, as he had advanced through life until now. After all, to attain spirituality, a person has to reject his desire to enjoy using the past desires and pleasures. He must decide that the egoistic desire will never let him attain the spiritual fulfillment, contrary to what he thought before.

When his point in the heart first awakened, it was but a continuation of the previous material desires: it wanted to receive pleasure from spirituality in the same was as from corporeality. The person thought, “Wow, now I have a new desire! Who cares if I can’t fulfill it with the earthly things? I’ll soar up to the heavens and find my fulfillment there!” He continued to behave on the path of Kabbalah using the old means. He expected to attain everything on his own, using his own power and pride, using his own “I.”

But as time goes by, he sees that nothing is going right. And because of this, he sinks into despair, just like any person whose plans aren’t being accomplished. Every person has to go through this on the spiritual path. A person has to discern his objectives, intentions, sensations, and most important, his life values. It all depends on the efforts a person puts forth toward advancement: how quickly will he exhaust this list of discernments?

As he goes through all the sensations in the list of his new “I,” he begins to understand that he is not his own Boss, and he won’t win this war with his own strength. Only the Creator can do this, because the person is in the Creator’s hands, in the hands of the Upper Force. It is this Force that does everything, makes him move, places all the obstacles along his path and gives him the strength to overcome them. The Upper Force swings him up and down, over and over again, in order to bring him to a true prayer: to create a true desire within him, without which he can never feel the spiritual world.

I depend on the Creator and work together with Him. I ask, and the Creator does. As soon as we find the common movements among us, we will attain mutual happiness, where my plea and His desire will unite into one whole and we will attain unity.

The Creator throws the end of the rope to a person, and a person has to catch it in order to start advancing.
(From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson)

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Preparation
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Part 1, on Baal HaSulam’s Letter 24
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Part 2, on Preface to the Sulam Commentary
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Part 3, on “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot,” Item 146
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A question I received: What is prayer (MAN)? Is it our desires that we raise to the Upper Level? How do our desires develop until they become ripe for the Upper Level to hear them?

My Answer: We develop our sensitivity and internal recognition of our desires. The spiritual world is not quantitative, but strictly qualitative. It only seems to us that in order to rise from one level to the next, we have to become stronger, but in reality, what has to become stronger is our scrutiny and sensitivity.

We have to become more perceptive and work on ourselves with “fine tweezers.” Real strength lies in being able to go ever deeper inside yourself in order to distinguish and classify more and more qualities within. This is how you grow: by developing your sensations and your analysis of them.

In our world, a baby grows in size according the number of pounds he gains. However, we do not evaluate his intellect according to the number of pounds he weighs, but according to the skills and qualities he has acquired. We evaluate how smart he is by what he is able to understand and do.

The spiritual world is built inside us by the Light. The Light descends upon us during the study of the Upper World and builds new qualities inside us. In the place where you felt nothing before, you now begin to perceive various new qualities and phenomena. When we read descriptions of the spiritual world, we don’t understand anything, similar to a cat that hears classical music and perceives it as mere noise. At times, we listen to the lesson while hardly being able to keep our eyes open.

But it is precisely in such semi-conscious states that the Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif) influences us.

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