Don’t Lose Hope In His Mercy

Fulfillment Can Only Be Spritual If you have built your desires of bestowal (the right line) and they are ready for work, then you no longer try to erase the problems coming to you from the left line because you realize that they come to you for a reason. You know that you have to rise above them in order to climb the mountain to the King’s palace (as in the example from Item 139 of “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot”).

You are glad that you are having these problems because you know they are given to you to help you ascend. Usually, these problems are very diverse, coming from different sources and happening in different areas. The most important thing is not to lose sight of their common source, the Creator, as it is written, “Even if a sharp sword were placed by your throat, don’t lose hope in His Mercy.”

In response to that sword, feel His unity; feel that there is none else besides Him, and that He is good and does good. The guillotine will keep coming down, but it will stop at the last moment!

It will break, and be followed by mercy, because according to the law, when the guillotine breaks, the convicted is pardoned.

Let The Zohar Come To Life Inside You

good The Zohar: When the Temple was ruined and Divinity was exiled among strange lands… Everyone was weeping over it and connected weeping with lamenting. And all this was because Divinity had been exiled from her place.

And as she was changed in exile from the way she was, her husband, ZA, does not shine his light, as well, for then he has no one upon whom to shine. Thus, he has changed from how he was, as it is written, “The sun will be dark when it rises.”

“So His appearance was marred more than any man,” than that servant, Matatron, who changed his shape and colors during the exile, and unlike what they were, they are green, white, and red.

As we read The Zohar, we have to expect it to influence us. It’s not important what words we are reading, since we don’t understand what’s behind them anyway. We don’t understand the meaning of these words, such as what it means to be “green,” “red,” “slave,” “Matatron,” or “Malchut.” It’s all the same to us. We just want this revealed inside us, and that’s it.

If it seemed that we understood something, then we would leave the lesson satisfied, as if we acquired something. But this is false! We didn’t acquire anything unless we made efforts with every word that we didn’t understand.

We shouldn’t desire to understand the text with our earthy mind on our current level. What we want is revelation! This is the state we want, our next degree. We want to really feel what this book is talking about. We want it to come to life inside us.

The World In The Book Of Zohar

future.jpg When we are reading The Zohar, I don’t want to give theoretical explanations and confuse people, giving them the false impression that they’ve understood something. All these qualities must be sought within yourself. Just as a small child doesn’t understand the difference between one thing and another, so you don’t understand the difference between anything in the world of The Zohar. Understanding comes later, naturally.

In this context, understanding means attainment. You must feel everything in order to say: “Ah, now I see, feel, and taste, and I have to live with it!” You must only aspire to enter inside this picture, and then you’ll understand.

The Zohar should not be studied theoretically. Actually, there’s nothing to study. You must simply enter it and discover it for yourself, just as a child attains this world.

Does a child know how he needs to develop? No, he merely absorbs all that he can from the world, and that’s how he grows. That is how you should develop, with the same thoughts and intentions during the study.

The only difference is that a child has his room, his mother’s care, and all kinds of games; all these things already make up his world. But the world you must develop is concealed in The Book of Zohar. You must behave like a child that has to discover this world for himself.

A child doesn’t ask what he should think about; he opens his mouth and eyes wide, and greedily absorbs information with all his senses. That is called attainment – first you sense something, and only afterward you begin to understand what it is. Within the sensation, you already begin to understand how things are connected, how they affect you, and what happens when you interact with them. It’s similar to how a child learns how everything works from playing with his toys.

That is how you should feel The Zohar – as the only method to enter the spiritual world. The brain cannot add anything because then you’d need to use your corporeal reason in this world and its material examples. And that is no way to build a spiritual understanding.
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Freedom Or Illusion?

illusion It makes no difference whether a person is the very best or the worst, whether religious or secular, smart or unintelligent, a criminal or saint. No one in this world has freedom in anything at all if he doesn’t have a point in the heart – no matter who this person may be.

If a person doesn’t work on spiritual development, then he lacks any freedom of will and leads an ordinary animalistic life. Freedom of choice exists only between two points or two opportunities which consist of choosing between the spiritual and the material.

If a person doesn’t have these two possibilities, then that individual is left one-on-one with his egoism, along with all the values which are imposed on him by society. Therefore, is there any freedom of will if a person is told what to do and want in life?

A person has the illusion of freedom only due to a lack of knowledge. It is similar to a child running back and forth in a room full of toys, not even noticing that he’s restricted to this one room, while his mother supervises the entire time.

Only when we have two opportunities for development, toward the material or toward the spiritual, can we obtain freedom of choice and start controlling ourselves with two reins. We cannot do anything with one rein except to stimulate ourselves to do as society dictates, which itself doesn’t understand where it’s heading because it is governed from Above. What is there to choose if we don’t know what will happen to us in the next moment?

Uniting All Our Desires Into One

profit Within each of us there is a desire which broke. Therefore we perceive part of our desire as our self, which in Kabbalah is described as “the root, the soul, and the body,” and the other part of our desire as being outside of us. That which is closer to us is referred to as “clothing” and farther away from us is called “castle,” or the outside space. However, in reality it all belongs to us and exists in our feelings; we merely imagine that something exists outside of our desire.

There is great difference between the inner and the outer desire. The barrier that separates them is called the Parsa, the force of the breaking. It is as though we receive anesthesia on one part of the desire and stop feeling that it is ours. Imagine you’ve just been injected with anesthesia and your leg is being removed. At the same time you are talking to people, laughing, and don’t feel a thing; you continue to live your life!

castle

However, our situation regarding our “external desire” is even more extreme. Besides feeling that this desire is not ours, we were also instilled with the sensation that it is opposite and even hostile to us. We feel it is less important than us and can only think about how to use and exploit it.

Moreover, this is the only reason we notice it at all. Billions of other manifestations of the same desire exist in the world, but if we don’t find a way to use them for our own benefit, then we won’t notice them at all.

The force of the breaking makes us feel pleasure from killing, burning, exploiting, and enslaving this desire of ours. It fools us so completely that we cause harm to ourselves and don’t even understand we are doing it!

Harming others in all possible ways eventually reveals the harm we cause ourselves. Just imagine the disappointment and pain we have yet to feel.

So how do we cure this deceptive blindness in ourselves? This is why we read The Book of Zohar and want it to help us. We want its force to affect us and give us back the part that we’ve lost in order to correct it.

We want to see that this foreign desire (other people) is actually ours, by correcting the force of the breaking and uniting all five parts of our desire. Then nothing will remain outside forcing us to think that it is not part of us.

When we cure our blindness so that our eyes open, we feel that it’s all us – the vessel of our soul. Everything exists inside us, including the Upper Light and the Creator.

By eliminating this gap and division, we unite the Light and the Kli into one.

Desire Is Our Only Work

egoistic We know from the science of Kabbalah that everything is accomplished from below as well as from Above, with each side doing its half of the work. In our spiritual work this is called “half a Shekel.” We prepare our desire, which is our vessel (Kli), and present it to the Upper One. This is our half of the work, while the second half is realized from Above; this is how we reach partnership.

The same process occurs when we read The Book of Zohar. Although we lose some of the inspiration we first had when we came to the science of Kabbalah and started studying this book (since all this was due to the Creator’s “fuel”), we need to see that we are building our vessels of perception (Kelim), our desires. Through our repeated work, we add the desires of the friends and the environment, each time raising the importance of spiritual advancement.

It is precisely while experiencing the burdening of the heart, when we no longer aspire toward spirituality very much, that we understand that we are being given an opportunity to add something of our own. Moreover, if we don’t have this understanding, we are provided with an opportunity to demand it. Therefore if we don’t feel it, we should aspire and desire spiritual advancement to come from Above rather than arise from us. After all, what can exist in us?

In order to acquire something new, something higher, we are given the chance to come to a true prayer by feeling a lack of taste, sensation, and understanding. It is only this way that we come to desire and feel the need for it. And as soon as we have the need and desire, the fulfillment will come from Above.

Therefore, our work is not about achieving fulfillment, like in our world. Rather, our work lies in desiring, which brings the fulfillment from Above.

In our world we work in order to receive a payment, which is only for pleasure by finding something that fills us. In spirituality, we don’t need to work on this, since “the Upper Light is in absolute rest,” and “more than the calf wants to suckle, the cow wants to feed.”

We only need to desire to receive this fulfillment, as if desiring to eat and drink; it is to feel the whole abundance which is prepared for us from Above and “is in absolute rest,” meaning it exists around us without any limitations.

Our entire work is only to desire this.

An Upside-Down World

A Question Is the Sensation of an Empty Desire Our perception of reality is divided into inner Kelim and outer Kelim. The inner Kelim are called “root,” “soul,” and “body.” We perceive them as our “self” and take care of them. The external Kelim are called “garments” and “castles” and are sensed as belonging to someone else, and therefore opposite to our inner Kelim.

The more we love our inner Kelim, the more we hate the outer Kelim. We always separate the two and evaluate one against the other.

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There is a border or a breakage between the inner and outer Kelim; we look outward from behind that border with the perspective of: How can I use everything for my own benefit? Therefore, we always look at others egoistically and with hatred. The worse others are doing, the better we feel.

The power of the breaking creates this separation, and as a result, we enjoy our own fulfillment as well as others’ lack of it. We always evaluate our condition according to the border that lies between us and the rest of the world – the worse the world is doing, the better off we are (as long as it doesn’t threaten our personal security).

We are built in such a way that we are frightened only if we hear about tragedies that can affect us personally. If they can’t affect us directly, then we’re glad to hear about them. We always evaluate ourselves against others, meaning, against the external Kelim (“garments and castles”) that seem foreign to us.

An “outsider” is not just someone I don’t care about, but more so – someone who hurts me by being successful and well off. If I earn ten thousand a month while others around me earn only five thousand, then I feel great! But if someone else earns twenty thousand, it causes me disappointment. I am not calmed by having everything I need; it’s also important that others have less. This gives me additional fulfillment, since I am fulfilled when they don’t have something that I do.

People like to hear about tragedies that happen in the world because it makes their own condition seem better, and they hate to hear that someone else won or earned something. In other words, we are not indifferent to the external Kelim, and they still belong to us. However, in our current perception, they belong to us in an “upside down,” opposite form. The more we have a “plus” inside, the more others possess a minus.

This is the result of the power of the breaking, the splitting of the Kelim. There once was a screen above the Kelim that connected them together, but when it broke, a reverse, upside down, world emerged. In it, the bigger people’s egoism, the larger the separation into “me versus the world,” and the greater the distance between people.

When people experience suffering, it forces them to sense their egoism less in order to suffer less. That is why suffering brings people together. When people experience similar kinds of suffering, they join together to reduce their personal misery. In these cases the desires of others are sensed more closely because they’re similar to our own and we know that the same misfortunes might befall us.

Choose Advancement

anyone We don’t have any freedom in our corporeal life. However, when it comes to our spiritual development, we can choose our surroundings, the desire that creates our surroundings, and our attitude towards society.

Even though we still act within the limitations that the system imposes on us, we can choose the path of our advancement between the two points on our spiritual road – the start and end points. We are unable to change the points themselves, since the end point lies in the root of our souls. This is where we once descended from and where we now have to return. It is obvious that we cannot take any other path.

However, we can choose how we will advance; it is within our power to look for different paths and possibilities of development. By doing this, we attain the Creator’s mind and become similar to Him, and thus, we acquire a certain amount of freedom of will relative to our current and future states.

advance

Today we already possess a portion of our future state, called AHP of the Upper Level. The next step for each of us, “myself+1,” already exists in the spiritual world, and its lower part (AHP) is present inside us.  We can reveal it and start yearning the next state. In other words, We are free to make the decision of whether to move forward or not. Therefore,we have the choice of being in “today” or advancing to “tomorrow.”

If we live only within the realm of this world, then we don’t know anything about tomorrow, meaning, about the next moment. Therefore, it is impossible for us to choose anything, since our only choice is to choose the future.

Our Whole Work Is To Develop The Desire

Connecting Through the Worlds In the corporeal world we work on fulfillment, while in the spiritual world we work on desire. This confuses us as we are not used to it. Therefore, without feeling the desire, we leave the spiritual work, thinking, “If I don’t want it, why go ahead with it?”

We don’t understand that the only thing we need to attain is the prayer that precedes the prayer, the desire to acquire the desire. This is the most important thing. We should never be concerned with fulfillment. The fulfillments are our future degrees and they always exist. They are already there, waiting for us to desire them and to become ready to attain them.

We reveal The Book of Zohar by understanding that we only need the desire. As soon as we acquire the desire through our studies, it will be fulfilled immediately.

Approaching a Kabbalah book, study, and any spiritual action without a desire is normal; this is how everyone starts. The awakening a person receives at the very beginning is given to him in order to bring him to the right place so he has the opportunity to clarify everything for himself. However, after this he is left alone and is no longer awakened from Above, because our whole work is only to develop the desire, the vessel (Kli).

Signs Of Spiritual Advancement

bestowal.jpg.jpgWhen a person reads, hears, and participates in reading The Book of Zohar correctly, then he has to check the degree of his progress. Of course, we are unable to assess our progress precisely because we don’t understand the initial conditions we are in, what our qualities are, and what we have to attain. The beginning and the end of the path are not revealed to us.

But in any case, based on our sensations we are able to correctly define the phases of advancement and the difference between different states. It should become increasingly easier and more natural to imagine everything described in The Book of Zohar; a person should be able to see that it all takes place inside him, in his qualities. When starting to read The Book of Zohar, it has to become more and more natural for him to immediately start searching within himself for the definition of every word. He has to feel that the book evokes responses inside him to every word, every symbol, and every action.

He then starts to identify the inner system of the souls in which he exists. He starts to see that the body, which he imagines himself to exist in, as well all the space around him – the entire world, the environment, and the whole universe that now appears before him, are all part of his inner sensation. And to this partial sensation he is now adding one more new sensation that The Book of Zohar explains and reveals to him.

These two forms of perception awaken in a person and somehow interact with one another. By means of reading The Book of Zohar, the new form of perception of reality becomes more dominant and powerful than his previous perception of reality.

This is one way to check and assess how much you are advancing at every step of the way. The second way to check is to understand that the point in the heart that was initially given to you only seems to be a point now due to a lack of inspiration, impression, revelation and perception. In actuality, this point includes all the souls, all the worlds, and the entire reality that was created by the Creator.

This point expanded from above downwards in the beginning of creation, when it was created as “existence from absence”; it thus expanded through the four phases of Direct Light, the World of Infinity, and through all the worlds, down to our world. In the same way, we must now expand and broaden this point with our own strength from below upwards. Of course, we don’t have the forces to do this inherently. But when we try to expand this point on our own and when we turn to all its constituent parts – our friends, desiring to receive inspiration from them, then to the degree we are inspired, instead of seeing one point, we start to see many different points that are connected together by a net called the system of souls, or the system of worlds. The system of souls is more internal, while the system of worlds is more external.

That is how we reveal all of reality within the point in the heart that we received from Above. This point expands and we begin to reveal the entire universe in it. A person begins to see that his point in the heart includes all the friends, and later, all the people who are more distant, until it expands to include all of reality. If a person is gaining this vision, perception, and approach, it is a good sign that he is advancing as a result of reading The Book of Zohar correctly.