A question I received: Perfection always emanates from the Upper One; the role of the lower one is to figure out his attitude towards perfection. The Zohar says: “Everything that occurs Above is perfect. Everything, whether it is a miracle or a judgment, is one whole and occurs in one place. It’s not split into two, where one half is a miracle, and the other, a judgment.” Why is that so?

My Answer: When we play with a child, we use various images so that he can discern within himself various states and relationships, react correspondingly, and thus grow.

We undergo changes all the time. Our advancement is built upon our perception of Upper properties that are not always enjoyable. Particularly by triggering within us unpleasant feelings, the Upper One compels us to grow. As Baal HaSulam writes in his story about a servant, the Creator assumes the form of a rebel, robber, or murderer.

What is the purpose of the system of the worlds? It serves as our permanent educator. It is a system of filters that hides the infinite, benevolent, and perfect Light from us. By passing through the worlds (filters), the Light educates us.

We constantly face (oppose) this system, yet each time it has an impact on us in the best possible way. It gives us exactly what we need at each given moment. Our job is to find within ourselves the correct reaction to it. If our reaction is right, the system encourages us: “Good for you! Now, you’ll be getting the next impact!” If our next reaction is adequate, the system encourages us once again: “Wonderful! Now you’ll get the next one!” This is how we advance.

To us it seems that the Creator constantly changes His attitude as if he wants us to see Him from different angles: sometimes He turns to us with his benevolent side and sometimes we see His “evil” side. It is similar to the theatrical masks that consists of a laughing and crying face.

This is how the Upper One constantly relates to the lower one in order to raise him; this is how the system of worlds treats us.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/7/10, The Zohar

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In the News (From Lenta.ru): “The Chamber of Accounts of the Russian Federation informs that the Federal Post Office included mailings of ‘dubious entertainment quality,’ “Kabbalah Today” among them, into the list of state sponsored mailings. The Chamber of Accounts deems such actions of the Federal Post Office an ineffective way of spending state funds.”

My Comment: I don’t know how it happened, since our organization bears no relation to it. Yet if somebody wished to disseminate Kabbalah at the state’s expense, he or she did their homeland a big favor. Such action attracts the Upper Light that brings good. There is no better way of spending taxpayers’ money. I can only advise to follow this example throughout the world.

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A question I received: Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. Can spiritual revelation through the science of Kabbalah prevent another catastrophe from happening?

My Answer: The world is facing enormous problems. We feel this, even though we still have good lives. It’s like the joke about a person who’s falling off a ten-story building, but in the meantime, while he’s still flying through the air, he thinks that everything is ok.

All the experts are speaking about the perilous state of the world, even when it comes to the economy, which seems to be blooming. We are cooking up a powerful bomb for ourselves in all areas of life, although its action is delayed for now. The science of Kabbalah is being revealed as the general solution to all of the world’s problems. However, this is not happening in order to rid the world of these problems. These problems are given to us precisely in order to turn the world to a new direction.

The science of Kabbalah is not a remedy against misfortunes, so that instead of the misfortunes you would feel good. Rather, it is intended to elevate man to a different dimension.

Therefore, as long as people don’t feel that they shouldn’t merely get rid of their troubles, but also have to attain a different life, one that’s eternal and perfect, it will remain difficult for us to disseminate the science of Kabbalah. It does not provide a temporary or partial solution, but talks about your entire life, this entire reality which you now feel. It tells you that this reality is incorrect, transient, and imaginary, urging you to ascend as fast as possible from this reality to the true, eternal reality. Your current existence takes place in obscured senses, in a state of unconsciousness, like a patient in a critical state. You have to save yourself by ascending.

Humanity does not feel this yet, but gradually, step by step, by virtue of the dissemination of the science of Kabbalah, the public opinion must be brought to the realization that our world is but a corridor leading to the Upper World, and we have to ascend from this world to spirituality. Then we will attain it.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/12/10, "Exile and Redemption"

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Kabbalah uses words that we are all familiar with, but they can either be interpreted in the material sense or the spiritual one. When one is just starting to study the science of Kabbalah, one imagines everything it talks about through images of this world. Later one starts to think that Kabbalah does talk about spirituality, but in whatever form one imagines it to have. In reality, what he imagines is not yet spirituality, but just his own fantasies about it. Thus, one imagines various charts and images.

It’s not easy for a person to shift to the spiritual perception since it can only be felt through qualities that have no time, motion, or space. A person is unable to immediately imagine it in this form, and therefore he depicts various pictures and images. This is how he shifts from one screen to another, as if in a computer, until he finally corrects his perception.

Yet, the vocabulary and terminology remains the same throughout. I have thousands of changing screens, like in “Windows,” which are described by the same words. However, the picture is always changing. At first you imagine every term in the material sense, but gradually you start to imagine it more and more spiritually. Instead of imagining arms, legs, an embrace from the left, an embrace from the right, Rosh (head), and Toch (torso), you start to imagine qualities that don’t have any material form.

Even in the material world, quantum physics has revealed that there are no “solid” particles such as electrons, protons, and myons. Everything is smudged, like some sort of disappearing electron clouds that are actually closer to the notion of qualities. Nevertheless, the names remain the same because we don’t have any other place to take names besides our world.

But why do we have to be so pedantic and never change a single word? It’s because a word is the material branch that points to its elevated spiritual root. If we change the words, then we will confuse the connections between the roots and branches. Then it won’t be a science any longer. Imagine that we are chemists who randomly change the names of substances, and then start mixing them according to a formula to produce a chemical reaction. We will come up with a completely different substance.

This is why we always keep the same language, but constantly try to improve our perception of it, moving toward a more advanced, truer spiritual form.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/12/10, “Exile and Redemption”

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Preparation to the Lesson, Shamati #164 “There Is A Difference Between Corporeality and Spirituality”
A person builds the perception of the Creator to the extent of his corrected qualities.
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The Book of Zohar – Selections, Chapter “Shemot (Exodus),” Item 36
In the spiritual nothing disappears; simply we find the correct correlation of the original parameters and create a qualitatively new perception. 
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Beit Shaar HaKavanot, Item 70, Lesson 23
The purpose of Kabbalistic books is not to tell us about the spiritual world, but to guide us into it. 
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Article, “Exile and Redemption,” Lesson 4
According to Kabbalah there’s only one religion: The religion of love and bestowal toward your fellow man. After all, only by means of love and bestowal can a person attain similarity to the Creator.
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The more the Creator awakens us, the bigger His expectations. The Creator woke several million people who at this time study The Zohar and He waits for their correct, conscious, and voluntary reaction that would manifest their readiness to “wake up.” “Awakening from below” (Itaruta de-Letata) has to become equal with the “awakening from Above” (Itaruta de-Leila). When these two processes coincide, the Light of the Creator fills us.

First, the Creator sends us an impulse from Above to inspire us; we open the book and begin to read and to study. Later on it becomes too difficult for us. But why, what is the reason? It’s because this sensation also originates from the Creator. He stops inspiring us and gives us a chance to “awaken from below.”

The Creator imposes a burden that is equal to our initial inspiration. He seemingly says: “Wait! I don’t need you. I didn’t call for you. Forget it, it’s not for you. Calm down!” He plays this game on purpose after He already “woke us up.” It is as if He made a mistake and then changed His mind: “No! Stay asleep, don’t wake up.”

By slowing us down, He wants us to replace His awakening by our own voluntary effort to wake up. Otherwise everything happens “at His expense” rather than through our own effort. What good does that do? This way, our spiritual vessel doesn’t get ready for the Light.

That’s why we feel like we reject spirituality. However, was our previous desire really ours or were we just granted the chance to go through such circumstances from Above? Now that you’re convinced that you don’t want spirituality – that is the real you, your desire to receive pleasure to which you can add the same sense of awakening that you first experienced.

The Creator woke us up, we turned His awakening into “our own”; we acknowledged and made it available to other people. Then together with others we make attempts to attract the Upper Light. We use this situation as an amplifier: Our request grows in direct proportion to the number of people to whom we managed to transfer this knowledge by working against our own egoism. We receive “620 times” more in return; this is how many times stronger our own advancement toward the next degree becomes.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/8/10, The Zohar

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A question I received: During The Zohar lessons I always find myself at war with myself. What can I do to maintain the right intention?

My Answer: That is a natural state for beginners. Try to use the time at the lesson to realize the purpose of your suffering. Who is it in you that suffers? It is your body, your egoistic desire that resists. You have a body, the ego, and the point in the heart which aspires to the Creator. Are you examining your state from within the ego or the point in the heart? If you are one with the point in the heart, then The Zohar shines to you, but this Light is opposite to your ego. It feels adverse to you, like a person that speaks out against you.

Imagine sitting in front of your wife as she criticizes you, saying that something is wrong with you, and you listen and agree with her criticism, realizing that you do need to correct yourself. Your uncorrected ego resists and doesn’t want to listen, but you tell yourself: "It’s not me who doesn’t want to listen, but the ego that the Creator deliberately created within me. I, however, want to listen and to love her, because she is pointing out my real shortcomings that need correcting."

Picture this scene to yourself in the smallest detail until you realize that you really do need to sit and try to cling to every word of The Zohar. You don’t like what you hear? That’s wonderful! You’re not interested in revealing this? Absolutely! The Zohar is opening your eyes to the whole truth, thereby infuriating you and that’s great. That is precisely what it’s supposed to do. That is how the Light influences you, by showing you how uncorrected you are. Precisely then should you rejoice and desire to cling to it.

Now you have two points: the uncorrected Malchut and the spark which you have to connect to the Light. Go with the Light against your uncorrected Malchut, and then The Zohar will cease to irritate you. You will begin to work on yourself with what it awakens within you.

Practice this at home with your wife for a bit, and then the work with The Zohar won’t seem so hard.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/9/10, The Zohar

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The Croatian group, in collaboration with a major bookstore in Zagreb, presented the new book in Croatian (the translation of Kabbalah Revealed) and held a lecture on Kabbalah to the representatives of mass media. Thanks to our friends in Croatia!

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A person wanders in darkness not knowing what to do and desiring to ascend spiritually, to move from reception to bestowal. Until the moment of the first revelation – crossing the Machsom and encountering the Light – he has no example of how it happens. After it occurs, his own experience allows him to sense a new reality rather than trust someone else’s words. Yet until a person reveals the right spiritual desire (Kli) within himself and contacts the Light directly, it is impossible to prove anything to him.

The wisdom from Kabbalists won’t affect a person that does not possess spiritual experience on his own. He starts from scratch. He deals with something that is above his nature and exists beyond the boundaries of death.

While we are still alive, we have to elevate to a level of existence that is above death, called “the world to come.”  Nothing can replace this attainment or prove this to us. To reach this revelation, we need to correct our desires and obtain spiritual “sight,” the Light of Hochma which clothes itself in our desire to receive. This is the only proof we can get. Right now, the only “justification” for learning Kabbalah is the belief that the Surrounding Light corrects us.

We hope that we have found a remedy that is able to disclose the Light and change us. It works like a miraculous force (Segula) that is concentrated in authentic Kabbalah books. These books serve as a means to reach an exalted state that we are unable to approach on our own, and attract the influence of Light upon ourselves from there.

It is written: “I created the evil inclination and the Torah to correct it, because the Light in it Reforms.” Our entire learning process is about the realization of this sentence. We strive to change ourselves and start sensing a new life, a new dimension within our corrected desires.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/6/10, “Inheritance of the Land”

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A question I received: I have already participated in virtual Kabbalah Congresses and felt the unity. Why should I leave the comfort of my home and my living room couch, and why should I make efforts to personally attend the World Zohar Convention that will be held in New York at the beginning of May?

My Answer: It’s impossible to unite with others without “getting up from the couch.” We don’t live in the virtual world, but the material world. Therefore, a person who attends our physical meetings understands how necessary it is in order to advance. A person who has never left his computer screen is unable to imagine what it means to unite with other people.

There is a rule in the science of Kabbalah: a spiritual root has to touch its material branch. Therefore, we have to implement the connection among us, both in the virtual form and the material form. This is required by our world. Therefore, if a person never attends one of the Congresses, he is not really participating. It only seems to him that he is together with everyone while he is sitting by his computer screen, but in reality, this is a delusion.

Once a week we hold a virtual assembly of friends, and once every half a year we hold a “live” assembly where we meet together with people at one of the continents. People definitely have to participate in these Conventions.

A person cannot advance without participating in a Congress and without receiving an impression (Reshimo) from it. The Convention is the place where his unity with others transpires, and this connection remains. It’s as if he plugs into the electrical outlet and stays plugged in.

We did not make this up ourselves. Our great teachers practiced this for centuries, and if we want to attain the same thing they did, we have to follow their example.

From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/11/10, “Exile and Redemption”

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