Question: When we work with the ego, we constantly deceive it. Is this actually what the Torah says?

Answer: I wouldn’t say that the work with the ego is deception, but it is actually the right way to use it. In itself it is powerless, like a child who gets mad but cannot do anything about it. This is why we were given the Torah so that we can change it. This is the whole idea.

The main thing is to hold on to it. It takes years and sometimes decades. Some of my students who have been studying for 15 years are just starting to grasp it.

My teacher, Rabash, told me how his father Baal HaSulam, who was torn by inner questions, once randomly took a book from his teacher’s bookshelf and opened it. But we know that nothing happens by chance, and it was the book Eitz Hachaim (The Tree of Life) written by the ARI. Although his teacher the Rabbi of Porsov had forbidden him to touch it, he understood that this was exactly what he needed. He had found his book but didn’t know that it would take him 20 years to even begin to understand what it says.

This story left a very strong impression on me, which was almost depressing: “if I am 30 now, it means that I will understand things only when I am 50!”

But on the other hand, it is impossible to stop our evolution and it continues and can even be hastened, but despite our will it takes time since our evolution takes place in this world, in flesh, bones and nerves. The inertia of the corporeal matter pulls us backwards and doesn’t allow us to make the spiritual leap.

All the Kabbalists, no matter who they were, went through theses states. So you have to plant the spiritual seeds inside you.

If evil is revealed somewhere, it is only so that you can purify and change yourself so that you will be able to be “planted in the ground and grow.” At the same time you shouldn’t identify with the negative attributes. You have to exit them and to follow them from the outside. Then you will be able to place yourself under the shower and be cleaned, receive help to be planted in the ground, and ask for more.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 2/18/14

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