Question: What intention, what demand should we have when we enter Passover?

Answer: There is no other intention or thought besides thinking about unity. In our unity we want to reveal the Creator, while the Creator is the property of bestowal and love, the fundamental force of the Universe, which we want to reveal between us.

This is not love we “perform”; this force acts above our egoism. It is said: “Love will cover all sins.” It lies above hate, and together they create the sensation of the Creator for me.

At the same time only one force of these two can govern within me, but not both of them simultaneously. The greater the gap (difference) between love and hate, the greater will be the Creator in my eyes.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/18/2011, “This Is for Judah”

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Question: Should I force myself to unite with the friends if I don’t feel the desire for it?

Answer: Of course, you need to force yourself. How else will we reveal Pharaoh if we don’t express our desire to free ourselves of him?

If I don’t pressure myself to unite with others, I don’t show my desire to exit egoism. It follows that I’m doing just fine in Egypt, meaning that I advance via the path of suffering (Beito) instead of “hastening time,” the path of Light (Achishena).

To “hasten time” means to exert efforts above desire, that is, against desire. I have absolutely no desire to unite with others, no desire to annul myself, no need for the Creator. All I want is a good life for myself and to discover the spiritual world, the way I envision it to be. That, too, is quite tempting, to rise above this world and soar alongside angels.

However, quite obviously, I don’t yet realize that the spiritual world means self-annulment and unification with others. If I remain in my regular “human” desire where I come to study and work in dissemination, but don’t pressure myself to unite with others and to annul myself with respect to the friends, then I’m not involved in the spiritual work. That is not advancement by way of “hastening time.” I can do a thousand things in the group, come to the lesson every day, disseminate, and speak beautifully, but none of that means that I advance spiritually, study Kabbalah, and follow the path of Light (Achishena).

Only if I pressure myself against my desire, forcing myself to connect to the group, in at least some form unite with everyone in one heart, even artificially, to be together with everyone in some measure of thought and desire, these efforts of mine are called Achishena or group work. Everything else is not.

That is why we have people who have studied in the group for years, but are yet to take even a single step forward. But if a person begins to take these steps forward, exerting inner efforts to unite with others in their inner desires, he achieves the exodus from Egypt very quickly. The key here is to grab on to this point and to influence it.

A few solid blows in this point, and we will make it.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/14/2011, Shamati No. 90

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The Book of Zohar, Chapter “Bo (Come Unto Pharaoh),” Item 169: And there is no question about how on Passover, the Mochin de Gadlut [the Light of Hochma] already shines, although Israel [those who aspire to reveal the Creator] had not done Priah [correction of the egoistic desire] yet, since this is done through an awakening from below [from man], while on Passover night was the illumination of Mochin [the Light of Hochma] only by awakening from above [from the Creator].

Until the exodus from Egypt you must exert all your efforts as much as possible. However, you have no chance of reaching and realizing the exit itself because it is a higher degree. Here, the Light of Hochma (Wisdom) has to come and execute this passing for you, realize this leap (in Hebrew, the word “Pesach” comes from the word “Pasach,” to pass over, to skip over). This is why it occurs only by virtue of the awakening from Above.

Preparation is entrusted to you, realization to the Creator. The same happens with the spiritual state called “Saturday” since it does not come by a calendar. From one side, it is evoked by the awakening from Above, but from the other, it is said: “One who did not toil on the eve of Shabbat (Saturday), what will he eat on Shabbat?” That is, if you were not performing corrections during the six week days, you cannot reach the seventh day, Shabbat (Saturday).

This happens at all times. You have to carry out everything that depends on you and is laid upon you on your degree, and then the Light comes from Above and completes your ascent do the next degree.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/18/2011, The Book of Zohar

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Question: What is the nature of the work of a man and a woman in terms of the annulment of the desire to receive pleasure in the spiritual world?

Answer: There is no difference whatsoever in the work of a man and a woman because they both are desires to receive pleasure; they both are egoists. Each of them has to elevate the importance of the goal, meaning the revelation of the upper force and its connection with all people, in order to reveal the spiritual world.

Feeling the importance of the goal, I annul my ego and reject various things that appear as obstacles to reaching it. I do not stop to receive pleasure from food or from life, I do not reject anything in this world, but I work only on the importance of the goal.

We say that our world is important for us and is full of big pleasures, but the spiritual world is even more important and more attractive for me. It turns out that according to the degree of this importance, I seemingly do not notice all that prevents me from reaching spirituality. This is the way I advance.
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From the Introductory Lecture Series 3/8/2011, “Reaching a Balance”

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Question: Why does a woman always have disagreements with her mother-in-law?

Answer: Both of these women have a big desire to have power over the same man. It is known from the Torah that in the past everything was the opposite way. Before his marriage, a man would bring his bride-to-be to his parent’s house, to his mother, where she would “simmer” in his familiar environment. This way, the woman understood the personality of her future husband and received all the information about him from his mother in order to connect to him correctly.

A man does exist between two women, his mother and his wife (the upper, Bina, and the lower, Malchut). This is why a man naturally tends to treat his wife as a mother to some extent, and often times he sees his mother in his wife.

All of these really descend to our world from the spiritual world. Therefore, women should forgive their husbands for this.
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From the Introductory Lecture Series 3/8/2011, "Reaching a Balance"

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It isn’t easy to answer a question of where is the point from which a person can determine whether he’s going to receive pleasure from egoism or from bestowal? Does a person want to be a slave to Pharaoh or to the Creator?

Our main task is to reach a point where we ask to change our ruler so that the force of bestowal would rule over us instead of reception. We study Kabbalah and carry out all the recommendations of Kabbalists in order to be able to make this choice.

We can come to this choice either by the path of suffering, through the natural progression of time (Beito), or by the path of Light (Achishena). On the path of natural development, only blows await us. This is when the Creator takes away all possible pleasures from Pharaoh, our egoism, or the desire to receive for oneself, and therefore we experience suffering. That’s why we are ready to exit from Pharaoh’s rule and to distance ourselves from him. After all, nature itself is forcing us to avoid that which causes us to suffer.

And then there’s the path of Light, “hastening of time” (Achishena). This is when our egoistic desire is still allowing us to receive pleasure, but we carry out various actions in order to build a new attitude toward the desire to bestow. And even though I receive egoistic pleasure and I’m under Pharaoh’s rule, I don’t feel that this is something negative: I’m enjoying life. However, I begin to look for a way to rise above him and to no longer depend on him, to start to value the quality of bestowal.

This means that I try to walk the path of Light so that the quality of bestowal would effect me and give me the understanding that Pharaoh is an evil ruler. His evil isn’t in the pleasures that he gives but in my receiving these pleasures for my own sake. This entirely new criterion is based not on pleasures, but on their direction, on who receives: I or the others (or the Creator along with others).

And then instead of judging the path through sensations, according to pleasure or suffering, I switch to a logical calculation of what’s good and evil, of true versus false. I come to realize that truth is bestowal, the upper force, the Creator, and I want this truth! And even if I feel good under Pharaoh’s rule, I still want to adhere to bestowal.

If a person comes to such a realization, he rises above the natural or the animal evaluation (Beito) and makes decisions on the level of “Achishena,” thereby pushing himself toward exiting from Pharaoh’s rule. And then he doesn’t need to go through physical suffering and receive blows to the desire to receive through various crises we feel in the world today and which will only increase in the future if we continue to progress by the natural flow of events (Beito).

His suffering becomes the suffering on the path of “Achishena,” the suffering of love. After all, he’s aspiring toward bestowal, something opposite to love of self. He asks the Creator, or the upper Light, to change his pleasure from egoistic to from bestowal. This is how a person advances.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/15/2011, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
Entering A New Land
A Great Egoism That Leads To Bestowal
Egyptian Slavery Means You Have No Right To Bestow

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Attempts to be in faith above reason constitute preparation for the Machsom. We must desire this state, even though we are not yet ready to achieve it. Sometimes we are given a chance to feel “faith above reason,” but as we approach the Machsom (the barrier separating us from spirituality) we now want to remain in faith above reason, to have at least some contact with it, and not fall into only one point: hatred (ego) or love (bestowal).

We must live with this fear at all times. Indeed, if I regard reality from only one viewpoint, I am nothing but a beast. If I want to be a human, “sitting atop my donkey” (my egoistic desire), I must include these two opposite points within myself.

The first point is my criticism and disagreement with others. And the second point is my “I” which disagrees with my criticism of others. (To be clear, we’re not talking about dissemination work, but inner work within the group toward unity, when I criticize a “friend,” his qualities which are unrelated to the work.) And although I understand that my criticism is true, I still wish to reveal the Creator between us. It is He who plays the role of Pharaoh, turning my love into hatred, unity and connection into resistance, criticism, and discord.

He plays this role so that I would want to connect with the friend above Pharaoh, in spite of my heart rejecting and hating him, and being unwilling to unite with him. I have heaps of complaints against him, but with all of this we’re still building a relationship of love, harmony, and total unity. Within my friend, I wish to see the Creator.

I don’t run away into the exalted point where everything is fine; rather, I maintain these two opposite points within me at all times and keep advancing in between them. At that point I already have the beginning of a spiritual vessel, Malchut and Keter, two opposite points. And I am in the middle, maintaining the condition of restriction between them.

And then the distance between them continues to grow, until it forms a certain spiritual object. All this work is carried out practically in the group, and only in relation to the friends.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/13/2011, Shamati No. 59

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Question: Do we, your non-Jewish students of Kabbalah, have to celebrate Passover and other holidays? Many of us are saying that we should hurry up to buy Matza and do the Passover Seder.

Answer: My dear students, I will try to explain it one more time, simply and once and for all, since I answered this question many times already.

You must study all Jewish original sources because they are written by Kabbalists. We study them in their authentic Kabbalistic interpretation, and not as the Jewish people have been studying them starting from 1st century CE, in the earthly manner, as if these books talk about our world.

It obviously includes the study of “Haggadah shel Pesach” (Passover Haggadah) about the exodus from Egypt because it does not talk about the exit from the land of Egypt, but of our ascent above egoism. You can observe the tradition together with us, you can sit by a festive table, you can virtually, together with us, eat Matza and fish patties or bread with pork, whatever you like.

Baal HaSulam writes in The Writings of the Last Generation that even at the final correction, each nation, if it wishes so, will preserve its religion and customs. Only relationships between people change from hatred to love, which is the exodus from Egypt. I wish all of you such a holiday!
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