MAN is a prayer, an act, that comes from desire not from the mind. It is born by the desire of Bina and Malchut acting together. We need to raise this prayer, that is, decide that this is the most important for us. This is called “raising.”

After all, the entire scale of measurement is inside me. Plenty of various demands—desires, which I somehow sort by priorities, considering some more important and some less important—live within me. However, above all, there should the force of unity within which I want to reveal the Creator to bring Him joy.

If I arrange all my actions, desires, and impulses so that this unity has become the most important, this means that I raise MAN. That is, I put the need for unity, correction, and revelation of the Creator (for His pleasure) as the most important, above all. This is called an “ascent.”

I do not send this requirement by mail or via SMS to a distant star. All the worlds are inside a person. There, everything starts, is realized, and ends in his consciousness. That is why I need to organize myself so as to arrange all my desires along one line, according to the clear scale of priorities, strictly material: food, sex, family, wealth, honor, and knowledge, and those that are slightly disconnected from this world. At the very top of this ladder of priorities, there must be my desire to bring pleasure to the Creator through our connection by giving Him the opportunity to be revealed in us now.

MAN is “Mei Nukvin” (female waters). Water is Bina and the woman, Nukva is Malchut. Thus, I join Bina and Malchut in a prayer; in other words, I glue the desires together, parts of Malchut, with the water, mercy (Hesed), the property of Bina. I want it to exist in this form together. I raise this request and want to become connected with others through the property of mercy, Bina, the property of bestowal.

That is why my request is called female waters, MAN. I raise it. That is, I consider it above all in importance, and, if I try to keep this desire in my heart by all means to awaken it in its very depth, then it is called a prayer, raising MAN.

To the extent of my efforts to accomplish this, the Light that Reforms affects me and awakens various states in me: thoughts and feelings in favor of connection and against it, in favor of bestowal and against it. In this way, they try to shake me and navigate me through various states so that I understand, feel more, gain experience. Thus, I gradually become aware what the true prayer, MAN, is.

On this path, I must go through frustration, impatience, fear of not succeeding, and failure to understand what kind of success I am waiting for: for myself or to please the Creator. Here it helps to imagine, the entire universe—all of still, vegetative, and animal nature, and people—as my own desires that broke away from me due to the shattering and have fallen from my consciousness.

Now, they appear in front of me and I must attach them to myself through my own efforts although it seems to me as if they are outside. I must try to relate to them as if they exist within me. Then, my efforts also will be called the prayer, MAN.

Thus, working on my correct perception of reality and connecting all its parts together by means of the property of mercy, I increasingly return the common vessel to its original form, in other words, to the corrected state as a whole.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/15/13, The Zohar

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