In Spirituality, Every Moment Is Unique

Faith Above Reason Is Bestowal Above Reception In spirituality, decisions are made as if the present moment is the only moment there is. When I make a decision on my spiritual path to resolve a situation I face, I have to make it as if it were the last moment of my life. This is because resolving problems quickly and correctly leads to the next step in my spiritual path.

In the material realm, we are connected to this world and our egoism stretches out events and situations, thus creating the sense of time. In spirituality, however, each moment exists on its own and is unique.

That is why the screen of a Partzuf, as a result of the collision of the Inner and Outer Lights, weakens the Light and decides to reject it. When the screen rejects the Light, the Partzuf doesn’t know what will happen to it and which new condition it is approaching. The only thing the Partzuf knows is that it cannot remain in this situation for more than one moment, because it has lost its bond with the Creator. The Partzuf cannot remain in this new situation and it stops thinking of what will happen in the next moment. This makes its decisions and state in the spiritual world genuine.

Once in a while we see a video of September 11th and we are reminded of how people jumped off the hundredth floor of a burning skyscraper. How can a person do that if he knows that he will inevitably fall to his death? The moment he jumps, he’s thinking only about escaping the fire. The next moment that he will spend in the air will be better than being burned in the fire, so he jumps! What will happen to him a moment later is not important for him.

The same applies to a Partzuf that realizes that it has lost its connection with the Creator. There can be nothing worse that this! It can make do without Light, but it cannot live without a link to the Creator! And thus, it rejects the Light.

When We Reveal Spirituality, We Reveal Ourselves

revealus Everything exists inside of my desire. It is where the entire Light of the World of Infinity is revealed, as well as all the other worlds. I perceive everything that exists inside my desire. All the images of reality exist inside of me.

By discovering new layers of desire, I start sensing new worlds that were previously hidden from me. The easiest and most reliable way to uncover new desires is by means of the group, through our joint aspirations, within the connection between us, and by gathering all the desires together in order to reveal our hidden internal layers and worlds.

We exist in the World of Infinity and we have to try to unveil it within ourselves, as it is written: “I revealed and was filled by something that has existed since the dawn of time!”

The Revelation Of The Book Of Zohar Depends On Our Efforts To Feel It

A Reshimo Is One's Complete Future State When I read The Book of Zohar, I want it to change me in some way: to take me through ascents, descents, impressions, and feelings. I don’t want to just hear the words, but I want to feel sensuous changes within me.

This does not happen right away. It is like a baby who does not hear or see anything during the first few days of his life, and then he begins to hear and see, but still doesn’t understand anything yet. After that he begins to actively learn about the world – and then there is no stopping him. He grabs hold of everything, climbs everywhere, he needs to touch everything and learn about everything. That is what we should do – learn from a baby’s example.

After all, this is how we are gradually born into the spiritual world. We need to learn from the example of a baby – to endlessly aspire to feel the spiritual world.

The spiritual world is the unification of all the individual aspirations to the Creator into one whole desire. It is within this desire that we will feel the Creator. When reading The Book of Zohar, we have to search for the sensations it describes inside us: “What is Atik, Arich Anpin, what does it mean to ascend, to descend, how do I join the AHP of the Upper Level, how does it raise me?” By doing so, you will be like a baby that grows and develops!

This is why it is written: “I labored and found.” It is up to us to make the effort and to desire the revelation. We have to aspire to attain the force of bestowal and unification, and then we will find it.

Some people find it difficult to feel, while others find it easy. However, when we are studying The Zohar in a group, everything averages out. If we all wish to achieve this, if each person strives for it according to his capabilities, then this will happen. It’ll simply happen to everyone sitting in the classroom or watching the lesson through the Internet or on TV.

We must only make a constant effort toward seeking out these sensations in us. Then we will gradually feel them inside us and will respond to every word in the book. What matters is not whether you understand what is written in the right or the wrong way, but the effort you make to awaken inner feelings and reactions to the words in The Book of Zohar.

A Practical Method To Reveal The Hidden Part Of The World

hiddenpart We are able to exist in the world thanks to having scientific knowledge about it and its nature. We feel our world inside the quality of reception. To the extent it develops in us, we feel and examine the world more, revealing it more and more inside this growing quality in us.

There are things that are temporarily concealed from me and everyone else. This is what people aren’t aware of yet, but will discover with time. There are also other things that are concealed, but that are revealed to others, such as experts, doctors, and scientists, on whom we can rely.

Besides that, there are also things that are absolutely concealed and unknowable. This realm cannot be known by people at all unless they acquire another way to feel and attain the world – inside the quality of bestowal. Then we will feel a world that is completely hidden from our qualities of reception.

There are theories about the hidden world (God) and the obligations that it places on us. They are called beliefs and religions. There are many of them, and they often contradict one another, for the reason that they are surmising about the concealed part of the world. Their adherents do not talk about the possibility of revealing Him (God), but about the possibility and benefit of using Him during this lifetime or in the “world to come.” However, they talk about things that they cannot attain.

Although they may be smart and practical, they still do not study how to penetrate into the hidden reality. If they existed in it, they would strive to reveal it to everyone, since this is the purpose of creation. Instead, they just try to convince us of what others have convinced them in the past. They are great speakers and are very knowledgeable, they can find their way around many texts, but they do not give specific, practical advice about how one can achieve the revelation of the hidden world. This attitude to the concealed world is called religion or belief.

Finally, there are people who have acquired the quality of bestowal; inside this quality, they attain the world that is completely hidden to the quality of reception. They invite all those who desire to reveal it to do as they did. They don’t tell you to change your life and carry out any specific actions, since there is no connection between physical actions and the quality of bestowal. They only explain how both worlds are arranged and how to reveal them completely – not by believing in God, but by revealing the Creator.

Expanding The Limits Of Reality

expanding The world is divided into a revealed part and a concealed part for every person. The revealed part is what we perceive through our senses and the mind that is behind them. We can research it and rely on our conclusions.

Studying the world through science helps me expand the limits of the revealed part of the world; gradually, parts of the concealed world become revealed to me. I don’t just reveal the world directly, but I can also rely on people who have studied this world, such as doctors and scientists. I can use their knowledge as my own. After all, I cannot discover the whole world on my own during my short life.

Even if I were to attain everything that I could, the world would still be divided relative to me into the concealed and revealed parts. That is because there is a part of the world that will never be revealed to me inside my sensations. It will never be revealed by any science, even far in the future. That’s because it is impossible for us to perceive that part of the world in any way, and if we don’t perceive something, then we can’t imagine or study it.

This part of reality that is concealed from my direct attainment becomes revealed with the help of the science of Kabbalah. By carrying out the advice of the people who have already revealed it, I also reveal it and expand my attainment to encompass all the existing realty, which is called the Creator.

5 Minutes Of Light From The Daily Lesson: Two Levels In Our Relationship

Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 11.29.09

Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson
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Writings of Rabash, Shlavey HaSulam, “The Importance of the Friends”
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“Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 13, Lesson 20
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Article “Body and Soul,” Lesson 5
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Great, Small And Equal To A Friend And The Creator

greatandsmall A question I received: Can I look at my friend in different ways: sometimes as a student, sometimes as a teacher, and sometimes as an equal?

My Answer: You can find all three relationships in any state.

  1. If I want to unite with my friend, then I have to see him as a very important person, because only then will I have a desire to unite with him. That is why I have to see him as one of the greatest and most important people in the world, who will enable me to connect to the Creator. He has to be as important to me as the Creator. If the group gives me the strength and opportunity to attain the Upper Goal, then I will view its members as great people, on whom my fate depends. I would be willing to pay anything for them to accept me. I will be ready to lower myself in order to connect to them.
  2. However, when I think about making the group stronger, then I look at them from above and think about how I can help them and inspire them. Then I see them as smaller than me. I want to influence them and give them more energy.
  3. If we are talking about unity in the group, then everyone is equal. After I valued them as being higher than me, and after I was higher than them, we become equal and unite with each other. This is why we are called friends.

These are also the same relationships that I have with the Creator: He is greater than me, smaller than me, and equal to me.

  1. He is great because He gives me the strength and determines all my thoughts and desires.
  2. He is smaller than me because He depends on me. I can give to Him, I can make Him feel good, and in this regard He depends on me. So it turns out that He is smaller than me. This dependence is similar to how parents depend on their child.
  3. He is equal to me because only equals can attain adhesion – unite with each other I order to receive from each other and bestow to each other.

Therefore, the states don’t change in one’s attitude to the group and to the Creator. The only thing that changes is the way one sees them: one can be big, small or equal, both with regard to a friend and with regard to the Creator. A person must always check how he can supplement each of these three attitudes, in order to advance even more – towards greater unity with friends and the Creator.

Don’t Let Your Greatest Desire Go Unfulfilled

greatest A question I received: In one of the Shamati articles it says that when a person truly screams from the bottom of his heart, the Creator hears his prayer. What does this mean?

My Answer: The Creator created only one thing: desire. All of matter, including rocks, trees, animals, people, and stars, is all the different levels of the desire to exist.

  • The inanimate level preserves its structure or qualities;
  • The vegetative level, besides self-preservation, desires to develop, absorb beneficial substances, and excrete the harmful ones
  • On the animate level, the desire demands to be satisfied, to advance, and to give birth to offspring;
  • A human being starts out his development like an animal (and in fact, every level of desire starts developing from the first level – everything comes from the “dust” and returns to it). However, after developing as an animal, a human being starts to feel cramped in the animate state, within the bounds of this world. Then a new desire emerges that summons him to come out of its boundaries.

This new desire becomes the central point, the main desire among the others. Our task is to reveal this desire further and magnify it using the right environment. We have to find out how to fulfill this desire, pinpoint that it is precious – a point in the heart, and then aim it toward the right prayer.

To “pray” means to make this desire most important of all. Then it will influence the Upper System, the Creator, and will receive a response. All the problems of our spiritual growth come from the fact that this growth occurs only under the influence of our desire. Therefore, one has to perform an analysis of what his heart really wants, and direct the most important desire in one’s heart toward the Creator, Bina, the system of one’s spiritual growth.

However, a reaction or response comes only if my desire corresponds to the system’s desire, based on the principle, “Make your desire like His desire in order to make yourself like Him.”

True prayer comes from the bottom of one’s heart, from the most important desire. Each of us has thousands of desires, and this is our problem. We disperse and scatter our efforts on many different goals, and as a result, we do not achieve the most important thing in life. Therefore, our life goes by, but the most important element in it is missing.

We have to focus all our desires on realizing one, most important desire. Let everything else serve it, bring it into focus, and strengthen it. This will in fact be the prayer – the real desire of the heart.

Our Spiritual Birth Is Up To Us

uptous We came into this world thanks to our parents. But many of our qualities were determined and instilled in us even before we were born. We inherited them from our former states or reincarnations, which we lived through in this world.

As we develop, we accept everything that happens as self-evident. First a person simply perceives himself and the world in which he exists; then come words, cognition, and understanding. Everything unfolds slowly and naturally, and we do not realize how peculiar and unnatural this process really is.

But we deem the entrance into the Upper World as unnatural, even though we reveal it in the same exact manner as we have revealed this world for ourselves! First we receive a desire to be born in the Upper World – “the seed of spiritual semen” (the point in the heart – the embryo of the soul). Then we are led to a place where we can develop our point; this place is called the womb in our world, or a group in the spiritual world.

We are not speaking about people that we encounter and who are our companions, but rather, we are talking about other aspirations to the Creator, similar to my own. By correctly building my attitude to them, I provide myself with the right environment for spiritual growth.

When a person is born into our world, his development occurs forcefully. No one asks for our consent and we are filled with knowledge, impressions, examples of behavior, and definitions of “what is good” and “what is bad” without any freedom of will whatsoever. However, in our spiritual development, the spiritual force that develops us, called “Father and Mother” (Aba ve Ima of the World of Atzilut), requires us to make an independent decision to develop spiritually. We have to decide how to do this, what future state we desire, and what goal we want to reach.

We are required to use our freedom of will, to understand and realize what we are doing and where we are heading. The stages of spiritual growth and formation are similar to physical development, but they are activated by our desire. This is the difference.

Therefore, in our world we are slaves (like animals), whereas in the spiritual world we are free creatures (people, Adam, meaning similar to the Creator). I create the “motherly womb” around me on my own. This is the group in which I become absorbed like a drop of semen. I receive from it everything I need in order to develop, including nourishment, strength, understanding, and examples.

When the desires of the group become my own and I am ready to outgrow them, then I am born into the Light. Thus, I advance from Aviut 0 to Aviut 1 and become a spiritual embryo. From now on, I can use the force of the Creator to form myself. I proceed to apply my own effort on the path, and gradually I begin to understand how the Creator raises me. With time, I become grown-up and wise like Him, based on the principle, “I will know You from Your actions (by becoming like You).” This is how a person becomes equivalent to the Creator.