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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A question I received: From studying Kabbalah, I have come to understand that the external problems are there to pressure me and compel me to shift from analyzing things externally to internally, because all the original causes, roots and “orders” come from there. I have to find out what happens inside me in order to know why I am suffering. But is it the question: “What is the meaning of my life?” that compels me to look inside myself and find out what is hidden there?
My Answer: Yes, and this is exactly what is happening today to people all over the world. Gradually, the focus, concentration, attention, and views of the whole world are starting to shift in this direction. Meanwhile, people are not even aware of this. Over the recent decades, we have gradually turned away from this world and begun looking inside ourselves instead. This is the trend in our generation. It is also the reason why more and more people are becoming interested in Kabbalah, because only it enables one to reveal the inner roots and causes of everything in a scientific and methodical way.
To do this, we must make a realistic analysis of the situation and attain new qualities, inside of which we will be able to reveal a new reality. We have to change our view from external to internal, and then we will see and understand that a person contains all the roots and original causes of everything within. Only by having this scientific and practical approach will we gain the ability to control everything that happens to us.
We will then be able to change our situation and even the entire world, because by changing our qualities, we acquire a new perception and a new reality. It’s as if we transfer ourselves from one world to another.
If, however, we study the external world that surrounds us, we will only be able to make minor changes on the still, vegetative and animate levels of nature. But we will always find that these changes end up harming us. And this, too, happens with the purpose of directing us inward. When we begin to change ourselves internally, we will cause real, qualitative changes in our life.
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Recently, while in Madrid, I had a meeting with a reporter, and he asked me, “Can you tell me, where is my soul now?” I felt uncomfortable letting him down, but I had to tell him, “What soul? What are you talking about?” He didn’t get it: how can there be a person without a soul? Yet it doesn’t surprise him that a cow has no soul. But why should he have one? Right now he may be eating a steak that was made from that cow, but he doesn’t ask what happened to its soul. So how does the cow’s body differ from his own?
The soul is one’s connection with the Creator, with the Upper Light, and it only appears to the degree one is similar to Him. A soul appears in a person once he is above the Machsom, but prior to the Machsom, a person does not have a soul. All our other desires do not constitute a soul – at least not yet, while they’re not corrected.
When a person receives a point in the heart and develops it, then a soul appears within him, which is called “human.” But our animate bodies are not called human. Their only purpose is for us to raise a soul within the body, which will be called our “I.”
(From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson)
Sometimes people ask me: why not something else, why Kabbalah of all things? But ask yourself: what is the matter of creation, what influences it, who is the giver and who is the receiver? And then show me any other method that is effective.
What else can there be? Can you create another physics in our world? No! Well, it’s the same with Kabbalah. This isn’t some theory that someone has invented. Kabbalists have learned the laws by which the desire to enjoy operates, and the force that influences it, the plus and the minus, one thing versus the other, and based on their observations, they created the wisdom of Kabbalah.
Granted that the only thing comprising creation is the Light and the desire, Kabbalah explains how the Lights and the desires interconnect with each other in every possible situation. This is why Kabbalah is a science.
(From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson)
Why did we have to go through billions of years of evolution in order to start ascending back where we came from, from below upwards? We have a huge desire that is concealed from us. It is connected to all the worlds. I have to perfect myself, and the changes that will happen inside me will influence this entire infinite desire – all of creation. And the changes taking place in it will, in turn, influence me as well, making tiny changes inside me, because I can only bear such small portions at a time.
We are incorporating ourselves into an enormous job, which is concealed from us. We are like a baby who advances and develops tremendously from one day to the next. Later on, he will never go through this kind of development for the rest of his life. The changes taking place inside him every month of the first year of his development are simply astounding, compared to the changes he will go through in one month later on, say at the age of five, ten, or twenty.
This is how swiftly we are changing, even though it is concealed from us. That is why this time is called “the period of concealment,” because the enormous work we are doing is concealed from us. It’s concealed from us just like from a baby, who makes efforts while not understanding what he does. That’s how we don’t understand what we are doing. But meanwhile, there are tremendous transformations taking place within us.
(From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson)
The society supplies a person with artificial behavioral models, playing off his ego. And it never asks the person whether he wants to live by these models or not. He is born in a certain location on earth, and this determines the general cultural values he will receive from childhood. This determines his upbringing and the kind of person he has to become. Whether he wants to or not, he absorbs these values and then continues to follow them for the rest of his life. In addition to this, society supplies him with promises of reward in the world to come, but this is done in order to use the person even more. In this regard, a person has no freedom of choice, no freedom.
But one day, a person’s “point in the heart” awakens and he starts feeling disillusioned with all of his previous life. It’s as if he begins life from a fresh, clean page. All of his previous values come tumbling down and disappear from the horizon, losing all their importance. His previous behavioral models become canceled because they no longer hold any reward or punishment for the person. The only things that remain are those necessary for one’s survival, the things without he cannot exist.
If a person is religious, then he also starts to have doubts about the world to come. Thus, the circumstances bring him to the group and the Kabbalah books, and then he has to make a choice: how much does he want to become part of this society and this path? He is not free to choose the path, but he is free to choose the speed at which he will advance, how much energy he will put into it, and how quickly he will absorb the right examples from this environment, in order to adopt the new behavioral models and the new values.
So, one’s only choice is in how much to become a part of the common process: to advance quicker or slower. In this regard, a person does have free choice: the choice to quickly absorb the new examples and models that are provided for him by the new society.
And even though he is only free to choose the speed with which he adopts these new examples, this is nevertheless true freedom. That’s because it is above his egoistic desire to enjoy. And in this way, he already begins to build a “human being” within.
(From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson)
The Creator’s concealment exists only relative to me. To the degree I advance spiritually, I myself start to desire His concealment, similar to playing a game. For the Creator, however, there is no game: He knows everything since everything is Him. But as for me, I don’t want to know anything ahead of time; I desire concealment, because it gives me a place to express myself independently of His control.
Today the whole world is unwillingly starting to become part of one integral system, and people see that they are increasingly being governed by some sort of forces, yet they aren’t able to resist them. People are experiencing a crisis in all areas and are discovering that there is something concealed from them, yet they are unable to do anything.
We, humans, cannot control anything; we are subjugated to blind fate and we are unable to handle it. All this is making us reveal that the system of connections between us is flawed, and at the same time, that the forces governing us are concealed. We are discovering this out of our own inability to do anything ourselves.
But there’s an even greater crisis of government institutions still awaiting us. That’s because these institutions feel obliged to prove to us that they are supposedly in control of things and have power over something. People are yet to reveal that “the hearts of the kings and ministers are in the hands of the Creator,” and that none of the governments are actually able to do anything. This fact will become revealed to everyone.
If that weren’t enough, we are yet to face another powerful blow from nature, which will come in order to make us see that we are small and insignificant compared to its phenomena.
All of this will bring us to the realization that we really are part of one integral system and are unable to do anything. And then, out of this realization, we will reveal that even our thoughts and desires are not our own, but come to us from nature. Nature controls us from within and from without in every regard. We will then feel that we are bound in chains, and will start looking for a salvation.
This may happen under the influence of suffering, or through the wisdom of Kabbalah, which enables us to forestall the suffering. Either way, we will have to reveal the system of forces in which we exist, as well as what it is doing to us and what its purpose is.
So let’s already start by imagining that we are the experiment of the Upper Force, which is now revealing Its plan to us. Humanity will have to reveal this fact, either out of despair, because it is influenced by painful blows, or as a result of disseminating the wisdom of Kabbalah. Clearly, the latter is a much better path.
The revelation of the entire system of relationships, the entire matrix of connections between us and the Upper, Governing Force of Nature – the Creator, is what constitutes the wisdom of Kabbalah. The entire wisdom of Kabbalah talks only about this.
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