All our work in terms of free will is conducted in the concealment of the Upper Governance. This period is described in the Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot, Item 53: …"The reward is according to the pain.” Since His Guidance is not revealed, it is impossible to see Him but only in concealment of the face, from behind…and might doubt…In this manner, one is always left with a choice to either keep His will or break it. This is because troubles and the pains he suffers make him doubt the reality of His Guidance over His creations….

Imagine that you see through the prism of your egoistic desire a person standing in front of you. There are the Creator and me, and in between us stands my egoistic nature. It is as if a kind, good person is approaching me, as if he is a doctor holding a syringe in his hand to give me an injection, and I am a little child. I am looking at his kind smile and the syringe that he is hiding in his hand, and I freeze in horror. Yet, he is coming closer and closer, it seems, to hurt me.

Get the picture? That’s the state we are in. We need to get acquainted with Him, understand Him, and sense His intentions, even if He may want to give us an injection. We have no other choice if we are ill and need to be healed (corrected).

Why did He arrange everything in this way? He did so precisely in order for us to know Him; otherwise, it would be impossible. The benefit of the Light can be known only from the darkness.

Then, you understand that all these imaginary terrible pictures – the injection, this entire world with its suffering and evil – are merely the pictures drawn in your egoistic substance. Reaching the degree of faith means rising above this substance and not feeling it any longer. You will realize that all of that was a childish fantasy which in reality never existed. The Light, the kind attitude of the Creator, seemed to your egoism as a painful injection. Like children who are scared of syringes, so were we afraid of Him.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/10/10, Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot

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A question I received: Why did the Creator create the world the way it is? Why does He conceal Himself from our mind and senses? Why did He create us to be opposite to Him and to the ultimate goal?

My Answer: He did this because He wanted to give us freedom. He wanted us to have a desire to reveal Him through our own free choice. He wanted us to want to become givers like Him. If we felt the Creator as He is right from the start, we wouldn’t object to it or want to do anything differently.

In the same manner, none of us wants to resist the egoism that rules over us. We automatically perform our egoistic program. Similarly, if the program of bestowal was instilled in us, we would automatically realize it as well, and then we would be called angels, “automatic” forces of nature. However, there is no freedom in either of these forms.

Freedom is only in the middle. It is between impurity and sanctity. This state is called Klipat Noga. It is the middle third of the quality of Tifferet.

The Creator must place us at the point of instability so that we won’t know how to balance, which way to sway. We don’t know what is good or what is evil, what to prefer or what to aspire to. This is where the point of our free choice is situated.

We form a line out of such points of free choice and progress from this moment up to the end of correction. Our only task is to understand the extent of the concealment and its forms and to realize the reasons and need for it. In this way, we build ourselves into an independent being.

The Creator has no other goal except our independence. After all, He needs an independent creature to delight. How can He delight a machine that He created and that He fully controls? However, to the extent that a creature becomes independent, the Creator receives pleasure by delighting it. Now there is someone that He can delight; there is someone who really exists.

That is why He did not create us to be good right away and did not give us the World of Infinity in the beginning. He was forced to create us to be opposite to Him and place us between two worlds. After all, precisely here in the middle, between these two worlds, where neither the Creator’s nor the creature’s rule is at work, in this neutral point that does not pertain to either the Creator or the creature, only there do we have freedom.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/8/10, Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot

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The Zohar, Chapter “VaYigash (Then Judah Approached),” Item 129:  When the firmaments and the animals, meaning the Nukva, are corrected so that everything is one Merkava for this man, ZA, it is written, “And Joseph prepared his Merkava [chariot/structure], and went up to meet Israel, his father, to Goshen.” This is a Tzadik [righteous], Yesod de ZA, called “the righteous Joseph,” who tied and united his Merkava, the Nukva, with the firmaments and the animals.

Here The Zohar speaks about the desire created by the Creator, which begins to resemble Him, His actions. The Creator is the source that shows the desire to enjoy (that He created) His actions upon it. The Creator influences the desire to enjoy in a variety of ways, and, by perceiving these forms, the desire starts developing from them.

The desire perceives the Creator’s actions in six different directions (four directions of the world and up-down) as well as through a variety of colors, tastes, smells, temperatures, and so on. In essence, the Light emanating from the Creator affects the desire to enjoy and it receives certain impressions.

In accordance with the sensations experienced, the desire ascribes different names to these impressions and defines them by various forms. These phenomena do not exist outside of the desire to enjoy since we are unable to perceive anything outside of our desire. For example, we can say that there is simple Surrounding Light; however, we can only talk about certain phenomena when they’re already within the desire, when the desire already senses them in one way or another.

The Zohar explains the structure of the systems, that is, it clarifies how the desire to enjoy is impressed by the Light and how this determines the desire’s structure. Each time the desire receives an impression from the Light, it acquires a specific shape, which is how the Light leaves various imprints on it. The desire to enjoy is like a living sculpture with a myriad of internal and external forms and systems.

That is why the creature represents an extremely complex system that originates from the influence of the Light upon it. The direct influence of the Creator on the creature means that the creature goes through all His actions and acquires forms in accordance with the system “from Above to below,” that is, directly from the Creator.

There is also an opposite action when the creature says: “Stop! From here on I will operate the system on my own. I want to be similar to You. It’s enough. I’ve already received all the impressions and Reshimot, and now I want to work independently. I want to operate the system that You imprinted in me, in the way You do it. I want to become as giving as You are. I want to bestow to You!”  This is called “work from below to Above.”

From the Evening Zohar Lesson 6/9/10

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A question I received: What is “faith” before crossing the Machsom (barrier to the spiritual world)?

My Answer: Before a person crosses the Machsom and enters spirituality, he has no faith. The concept of faith in Kabbalah is totally different from what is customarily referred to in ordinary life. In Kabbalah, all of these concepts are defined at a completely different level.

Faith is sensing the Creator. If I sense the Creator, I believe in Him. Note how different it is from what I thought before. In our regular lives faith is something that we don’t see or know, but believe in as though it actually exists in reality.

Kabbalah says that this is not faith, but merely a fantasy. Kabbalah relies exclusively on realistic, true inner sensations: To the extent I feel the Creator, I receive the strength to work against my ego. One force against the other; positive against negative. This is what we call “faith above reason,” that is, faith above egoism and the sensations within it. I rise above all this because I am able to use the Upper reason and sensations. Yet if I don’t have them, how can I work? Based on stories told by someone else?

This is not what we call faith. It’s a game people play in this world because they don’t know of a better way to reassure themselves. To attain faith, we have to reach revelation. The wisdom of Kabbalah is the revelation of the Creator to the creatures, and this is called “faith.”
[15514]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/11/10, Shamati #50

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A question I received: What is unity? Is it an internal sensation or the revelation of some force?

My Answer: Unity is a new reality that we have no idea about. It is a new matter that we haven’t sensed before and that has the properties of the spiritual world: the properties of bestowal. When we become included in this matter and live in it, we start revealing a different, new dimension as if finding ourselves on a different planet. We reveal this dimension within the properties of this matter: in bestowal.

Thus, unity doesn’t simply mean mutual connection, good relations, or confidence. It is revelation of the new property which doesn’t exist in our world. When we obtain this property and become similar to the Creator, we reveal everything in our mind and feelings, in unity with Him.

There is nothing else for us to do except to reach unity. It is within our power to do so. With regard to this it is written, “We shall do and we shall hear.” This means that we can perform various actions, put forth our effort, and do everything in our power. We can study together and unite as the Kabbalists recommend and as RABASH writes in his articles.

However, we won’t succeed in this. We have to reach the state described as “And they screamed from this work.” It’s an internal scream that we have to unite but are incapable of doing so. Only with this state of this internal scream will it happen. It must be a true prayer, a true cry.

We have already built the entire foundation. Now we only have to reach the property of unity. The new matter which will become revealed as the connection with others is the spiritual matter. It is already to some extent a spiritual vessel which existed before the breaking. At the instant that we reveal it, that we reveal the spiritual existence, the Creator will be revealed.

Therefore, throughout the day, each of us and all of us together have to try, as much as possible, to care only about this.
[15553]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/13/10, The Zohar

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Rabash, Shlavei HaSulam, Article “Make Yourself a Rav and Buy Yourself a Friend- 2,” Lesson 3
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The Book of Zohar – Selections, Weekly Parsha, “Chukat” 
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A question I received: In addition to thinking about studying together and wanting to correct ourselves, what should our connection be with the text while reading The Zohar?

My Answer: The connection with the text of The Zohar will come later; you will start feeling how it excites you. The Zohar touches one’s innermost layer of the heart as if it were a very personal, intimate, life-changing letter, a letter from someone very dear to you.

You may go through various states, plunge into some thoughts and actions; however, when you come back to The Zohar, you feel that it enlivens you. It fills, calms, caresses, embraces, and envelops you. This text expresses the state of the soul that is in absolute adhesion with the Creator.

After a person receives a very first sensation of spirituality, he already knows what it means. He can’t live without it anymore. For him, it’s like a very personal, inner message from Above, like “cold water for a weary soul.”

The first feeling is followed by more complex and richer sensations that burst out into a full drama. Yet first we need an initial contact that requires a few years of serious work. If we do it together and really desire it by helping and obligating each other, it will take less time.

We need to establish a contact with spirituality. It may not even be the initial adhesion, but a certain anticipation and sensation that transcend the boundaries of our ordinary reality. Everything seemingly remains the same, yet above everything there is a state starting from which a person unites with The Zohar.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/14/10, The Zohar

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A Kabbalistic group is the AHP of the Upper One, Malchut that incorporates many other souls in it. I’m the lower one, and my task is to connect my point in the heart to those other souls even though they are foreign to me. If I annul my point in the heart relative to the Upper One, it turns into my GE (Galgalta ve-Eynaim) and, thanks to the Upper One, acquires a form. The Upper One gives it everything that it needs for growth, providing it with the structure, meaning with all the souls, the entire World of Infinity, the whole vessel of the common soul.

If you want to become a spiritual object (Partzuf), adhere to the Upper One, and its AHP will become your newly revealed world. To the measure that you cling to the AHP of the Upper One, your point in the heart expands, thanks to the AHP’s parts.

To adhere means to accept its rule over me, as Baal HaSulam writes in the article “The Freedom.” The AHP of the Upper One is my environment. By clinging to it, I receive from it everything I need much like an embryo receives blood, oxygen, and nutrients from its mother. I do so in order for my point in the heart to grow into a spiritual organism.

This organism will resemble whatever I received from the AHP of the Upper One, the group. Yet, it will be its manifestation in my point in the heart, my spiritual gene. In other words, it will be shared by them both, the group and my own point in the heart. This is similar to how a child looks a little like his mother and his father, yet receives his essence from the Creator.

I pass myself into the “hands” of the Upper One; I introduce my desire into it, my demand to become the part in which the right and the left lines unite and realize the act of bestowal. To the extent that I accomplish it, that is, to the extent to which the semen annuls itself before the mother and obliges her to develop it, the mother starts taking care of it in return.

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/14/10, “Preface to the Sulam Commentary”

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A question I received: How do I combine the following dual attitude: On one hand, I have to view every one of the friends as greater than me, as the greatest of the generation. But on the other, I need to see them as smaller than me, as though in need of my constant care?

My Answer: I can easily relate this way as I do to my child: He is more important than I am since his desires determine my actions. If he needs anything, I drop everything and do as he asks. Yet, when I tend to him, I relate to him as someone who is smaller than me and cannot do without me. It follows that we can have this dual attitude simultaneously.

It is understood that the common desire is more important than my own. It is the miniature model of the common soul and already contains everything like a holograph.

If I relate to this small group with the law of mutual guarantee (let’s say the group is ten members large), those ten members are the same as ten billion. There is no difference here. Indeed, I need to exit my egoism, so it doesn’t matter whether I do it relative to ten or ten billion people. If in them, I reveal the spiritual world, then who is more important: me or them?

By myself I cannot reveal anything besides this earthly, corporeal life. Whereas in the right connection with the others, I reveal spirituality. Naturally, with respect to the goal, the group becomes more important to me than myself.

I must accept their desire as my own most sacred wish, as a law! This is what allows us to unite. On the other hand, I need to perceive them as smaller than me so as to feel that they need my help and give to them all that I have.

Whenever we’re talking about love and unity, I can regard another both as a small individual and as a great one. There is no contradiction here. It’s much like a baby with respect to an adult, where the baby becomes more important than everybody else. A small child is like the head of the family since the whole family revolves around him.

From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/10/10, Article, “Purpose of Society”

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