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The Book of Zohar, Weekly Torah Portion, “HaShavuah” Selected Excerpts
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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 101: Thus, as long as one has not attained Providence of the revelation of the face, the abundance of Torah and Mitzvot he has performed makes his concealment of the face much heavier. This is the meaning of, “the Creator hides Himself in the Torah.”
Indeed, all that heaviness he feels through the Torah is only proclamations by which the Holy Torah itself calls him, awakening him to hurry and give the required measure of labor, to promptly endow him with the revelation of the face, as God wills it.
The closer a person gets, the more distant he feels that he is. But he also understands that this distance is given to him on purpose so that he will hurry to complete the necessary sum of his exertion. But a person who doesn’t have the right connection, who doesn’t advance correctly, simply feels the “hardening of the heart” increase, which eventually throws him off track.
We should understand this difference clearly. Both feel the “hardening of the heart,” the one who advances correctly and the one who does not advance correctly. But they interpret it differently and feel their state differently. The one who is advancing correctly is connected to the teacher, to the group, to the Creator, to the study, and doesn’t miss a chance; he is constantly looking for ways to tighten the connection, the mutual guarantee. He understands that only by adhesion to the environment will he be able to discover the Creator inside it.
Thus he feels support. The more he discovers the evil in his attitude towards others, the more it pushes him to connect with them and obligates him to demand from himself and from others to tighten this connection. He envies the success of others who advance and is frustrated when he compares himself to them, but it pushes him to connection and correction.
However, a person who does not advance correctly, which means that he doesn’t look for bestowal and connection with the environment in order to discover the goal of creation in it, but rather aspires for personal success, he cannot receive support from the environment since he hasn’t established this support. Then he feels that this path is not for him. It seems to him that others don’t understand anything, that they are dealing with nonsense, and it is impossible to reach this goal. Eventually he leaves the group.
So we should pay close attention to whether or not we are building the right connection with the environment that must constantly support us. When a person falls, the environment helps him rise, and when he is full of strength, then he has to invest it in the environment, building up “stock” there, thanks to which he will later receive help.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/23/12, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”
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Question: Who is to blame for the fact that a person stalls and advances slowly?
Answer: The main reason for that is laziness. He doesn’t make sure that the friends awaken him and obligate him. After several unsuccessful attempts, the society stops paying attention to him; it’s not obligated to deal with him forever.
It has to call on him twice, like in the example from the Talmud of the donkey that falls and that is helped to rise twice. If this doesn’t help then that’s it. He can’t ask the group to constantly pull him forward, since they have their own work among them.
They tried to revive him once, but he didn’t wake up, and they tried a second time, and again it didn’t work, so there is no third try. If he wants to leave, let him. We have to write our protocol and determine the attitude to the friends according to these conditions.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/23/12, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”
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Question: What should I do if I don’t envy the friends?
Answer: If you don’t envy the friends it means that you feel that you are better and higher than them or that you don’t pay any attention to them, as if they didn’t exist and you don’t measure yourself in comparison to them. You have your own Creator, your own way, and you come to the group as a free listener who comes to hear a lecture.
It turns out that you have the wrong approach, since you don’t understand that the spiritual world can be revealed only through the connection with the friends. The spiritual world is absolute bestowal, and it’s revealed only in bestowal. The Creator is the force of bestowal, and He can be revealed only according to the equivalence of form with the force of bestowal that a person develops internally towards the environment. But if you don’t work with the environment, there is no way you can advance.
The more you work with the environment, the more you feel that your friends are greater than you. It simply can’t be any other way, since you begin to see the group as one whole. You feel that through the friends, you receive Light, and you see that they are already corrected, that they have transcended the Machsom (barrier), and that you are left all alone here below.
But if you don’t feel that the friends have advanced much further than you, then it isn’t the right approach to correction. If you don’t envy everyone around you, seeing that they understand and feel more than you, it’s a sign that you are not on the right track.
This envy is intended to stimulate and to push a person as a result of his right attitude towards the group. God forbid that he should ever want to see them as inferior to him. When he sees that they are higher than him, he wants to adhere to them, to be in contact with them. His ego pushes him to connect with them, like a child who is impressed by adults asking them: “Take me with you! Help me be like you!”
With that, he turns to the Creator, since he discovers that the Creator is there within the friends, more than in him. It’s a very concrete and qualitative revelation, as it says: “I have learned from all my students.” You see that only if you incorporate in the group and annul yourself, it is there that you will find your spiritual state. If you don’t feel that, it’s a bad sign in the work.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/23/12, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”
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In the News (from Komsomolskaya Pravda): “The crisis affects everybody. We are all paying the price for rampant consumption in recent years. … Experts compare the global economy with a huge pyramid. Some borrow from others; those borrow from a third. Sooner or later, one of the links in this chain will break, and the whole system will collapse. …
“The economic crisis is spreading. The last large-scale crisis the Great Depression led to the Second World War. At that time, the crisis began with a sudden fall in stock prices. That day went down in the history of the world economy as “Black Tuesday.” What awaits us this time? Is not this an option of the apocalypse?
My Comment: It will be the general restructuring of the attitude towards ourselves, the world, and life and its purpose. The crises are the labor pains of a new stage of our development towards unity and the revelation of the upper world that rules us.
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Research (Cleve Backster, American expert on lie detectors): “Cleve Backster was an American expert on lie detectors. In 1966, using a lie detector, he accidentally discovered that plants have high-level emotional activities that were similar to those of human beings. He then conducted a series of studies that amazed the world.
“One day, Backster connected a lie detector to the leaves of a dracaena, commonly known as a “dragon tree.” He wanted to see how long it would take for the leaves to react when he poured water on the plant’s roots. In theory, a plant will increase its conductivity and decrease its resistance after it absorbs water, and the curve recorded on graph paper should have gone upward. But in actuality, the line that was drawn curved downward. When a lie detector is connected to a human body, the pen records different curves according to the changes in the person’s mood. The reaction of the dragon tree was just like the undulation of human mood swings. It seemed that it was happy when it drank water.
“Backster wanted to see if the plant would have any other reactions. According to past experience, Backster knew that a good way to elicit a strong reaction from a person is to threaten that person. So Backster dunked the leaves of the plant into hot coffee. No reaction. Then he thought of something more terrifying: burn the leaves that were connected to the lie detector. With this thought, even before he went to get a match, a bullish curve rapidly appeared on the graph paper. When he came back with a match, he saw that another peak appeared on the curve. It was likely that when the plant saw he was determined to start burning, it got frightened again. If he showed hesitation or reluctance to burn the plant, the reactions recorded by the lie detector were not so acute. And when he merely pretended to take action to burn the leaves, the plant had almost no reactions. The plant was even able to distinguish true intentions from false ones. Backster nearly rushed out into the street to shout, “Plants can think! Plants can think!” With this astonishing discovery, his life was changed forever.
“Later, when Backster and his colleagues did experiments around the country with different instruments and different plants, they observed similar results. They discovered that even if leaves were picked off from a plant and cut into pieces, the same reactions were recorded when these pieces were placed near the lie detector electrodes. When a dog or an unfriendly person suddenly came in, the plant reacted too.”
My Comment: According to Kabbalah, everything—still, vegetative, and animate—consists of the desire to receive pleasure, which causes an object to live and strive for pleasure, to maintain its structure and the laws of its nature in the still nature, to sustain itself and reproduce in vegetative and animate nature.
There is no doubt that for the existence of any object, even stones and metals, they have to feel the attitude of the environment towards them, that is, the intentions of others. After all, the intention, a form of desire to enjoy, which is the matter of the universe, determines what happens.
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Question: What is a “union” (Brit) in spiritual work? What should it be, in the direction of what efforts?
Answer: Forging a union is connection and agreement between us, that we will constantly maintain the unity we have achieved and apply joint efforts so as not to disrupt the union.
From where can we take the strength to support it? Only from above, not from anywhere or from anyone else.
You can listen to Kabbalistic songs and read Kabbalah books; it will not help. The Creator, nonetheless, will burden your heart to such an extent that the lessons, meetings, and gatherings will help; nothing will help other than addressing the Creator through all of this.
The burdening of the heart happens due to the addition of egoism, and now you must bring the Light into it. Then, it will become your next degree.
The Light is neither in you nor in those who surround you. You will be able to draw it to yourself only through the environment and, thus, rise. The burdening of the heart is given for this. This is a condition of ascent.
From this moment on, you need to accept this as a law: The left line is a constant weight that affects the feelings, heart, emotions, memory, and various external circumstances, which begin to flash before your eyes, breaking into you.
You need to control yourself all the time because this is the Creator who presents everything to you so that you will ask Him to give you the force to rise above His tricks, as it is written, “Come unto Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart.” If we have a problem, this is Pharaoh (our mutual egoism), and to fight him, we need the Creator.
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From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/9/12, Lesson 6
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Question: How is the ego that is revealed between friends in the integral group different from the usual, beastly ego?
Answer: It is the ego of a completely different level. It appears to the extent that a person longs for integrality (for integration), and it appears only in those people. It’s like a new body that you intend to create now. By the way, specifically you create it and no one else. By attaching small egoistic cells to the new body, you begin to feel how those parts are in opposition to one another, in conflict, in contradiction, and this is really so in our body.
If we take an atom, then aren’t the plus and minus opposite and opposed to each other? However, without an alliance between them, there wouldn’t be a component from which all the material would be created. From within conflict and connection of opposites, we begin to obtain everything.
We ourselves, through our efforts and through the positive and negative attributes that appear in us equally, create, form this image, this integral system which is called “Adam” (man/human). We positively long for a connection between us, and instead of that, we receive negative influence, separation. And again with this separation, we yearn for connection at the next level, and again we repel each other with the new ego. And thus each time we rise to a new integration.
And who is the man here? “Adam” is what connects together the two opposing forces of nature. These two forces are not ours. We view them from afar: Now I hate others, yearn to love them, connect to them, and am repelled by them. Within me operate two forces of nature. I, myself, am a neutral component, but by using them like two reins or two opposing forces, plus and minus, I build a human spiritual body. This is the body that exists, like a dipole, egoistim and altruism, by which they mutually support each other.
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From KabTV’s “An Integral World,” 11/26/12
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Question: How can a whole Partzuf of ten Sefirot be created from one Sefira? Where is the power needed for that?
Answer: How do the ascents and descents take place, the birth of one Partzuf and of another Partzuf? How are new Sefirot added to it, and how does a “zoom in” or “zoom out” take place? How can a whole body develop from one point, from one sperm cell?
The body is already in it. We only need to add the material, which means to discover the desire that is concealed in phase one. In phase two, we already must discover it by our own efforts. It turns out that all the reality that is revealed is a reflection of our efforts.
So, the whole World of Atzilut is built only of the ten Sefirot that were in the world of Nekudim.
The world of Nekudim is only called a “world,” but in fact, it was one Partzuf. Now, a whole world stems from it, and what a world; it is so complex! It is thanks to the fact that the mutual participation of the upper and the lower are added here.
This cannot be explained mechanically. The Creator describes to us some concrete attribute, an event, a phenomenon, but in order to attain this phenomenon, we must build “ten whole Sefirot” with regard to it.
The Creator shows me this phenomenon as one point of Keter from Him. I must establish a desire for Him and discover different actions with regard to this desire, my reaction to this phenomenon, to know how I will attain it by myself so that I shall know Him. Thus, I will attain the Creator and understand what He wants to achieve in His attitude to me, when He draws this phenomenon for me. I must respond in the full “ten Sefirot.”
The world of Atzilut sets the first example of what the created being should look like. The created being cannot attain anything if he hasn’t been through the four phases, if he hasn’t built all the “ten Sefirot,” if he hasn’t attained the root of the phenomenon, knowing the Creator who has arranged all this. So, we must build ten Sefirot, a whole Partzuf, from every point the Creator describes to us.
This is the reason that we need to work so much for so long. After all, we must attain ourselves through the root of the whole phenomenon, to connect Malchut with Keter.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/19/12, “The Study of the Ten Sefirot”
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