Question: While reading The Zohar, is there a time when we must apply our own effort and a time when The Zohar gives us a push by itself?

Answer: First and foremost you must understand what you are facing. If you watch a film that’s 30 or 40 years old, you’ll notice how naive people were, how they acted and put the film together. But it was their reality, and they thought they were portraying their lives in all seriousness. The actors were great. It’s just that the people were different. If you looked at people 200 to 300 years ago, you would think of them as even more simple and primitive.

What would you discover looking at all the nations, at the world 2000 years ago? People practically lived in the “trees,” like true barbarians, even in Europe in the Middle Ages.

But what if you took a look at the people who wrote books like The Zohar 2000 years ago? This is a science, a philosophy about the perception of reality. If such a person sat among us today, you would feel insignificant next to him. The concept of time doesn’t apply here. You are being given the opportunity to come into contact with something that exists beyond our world, with a system that governs all of reality.

This governing system, these forces, and the souls that wrote these books should be the ones you direct your plea to and scream out like a small child, wishing to grow with their help, in their arms! It doesn’t matter how much you understand and what state you’re in because you’re not the one in control of it. However, from your given state try to understand where you are, whose arms you are in and ask for help.

Question: What should be the plea?

Answer: I don’t know. You have to sense the need. “I don’t lack anything. Please take me into your arms, I’m sleepy.” This is also a plea: to be held in their arms like a child who feels warm and secure in his mother’s arms. He senses her, smells her breast milk, and sleeps peacefully. Wouldn’t you want to feel like that? So go ahead and reveal at least this.

Or perhaps based on that sensation of being held in their arms, you already desire something more scrutinized and are capable of utilizing their help. After all, an adult retains all of his previous connection with his mother. The infant-mother connection doesn’t vanish, but only grows, becoming more conscious.

The greatness of the upper one determines my ability to utilize His help and to exalt Him in my eyes, thereby obligating Him to ascend higher. Thus I make the path of the upper one equal to Infinity and am able to receive from Him as if from Infinity. However, if I disregard the upper one, what can I possibly receive from Him?

Hence everything lies within my attitude towards my current degree. If I elevate the upper one above myself, I’m able to receive and attain from Him. The higher I elevate the upper one, to the highest possible degree I can only imagine, the more I can attain Him. If I put myself above the upper one, then what can I possibly receive from someone who’s lower than me?
[61634]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/23/2011, The Zohar

Related Material:
Resting In The Hands Of The Great Kabbalists
I Want To Be A Grown-Up!
How To Enter The Book Of Zohar

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Inner Work, Zohar | Add Comment →