Question: Is there any connection between the network of our relationships with one another and the network of connection between the great Kabbalists whose works we study?

Answer: We have to become similar to the network of connection that ties together these great Kabbalists. A small one grows by wanting to become like a big one.

A “big one” is the network of connection that Kabbalists created between themselves. A “small one” is us, those who desire to connect with, be in, and become similar to it.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/17/2011, The Zohar

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Question: How do you prepare yourself for giving explanations during the lessons or delivering lectures at conventions?

Answer: To tell you the truth, I would rather come to the stage and stay silent for an hour and a half, and that’s it. Meanwhile, you could work on building the intention to unite into a single aspiration, to reveal between yourselves the property of bestowal and love, the Creator. The moment you will unite, you will merit revelation, the Light that Reforms, and the general disclosure.

Why do I have to “babble” for an hour and a half? Perhaps I thereby distract you from building the correct intention toward the Light? Speech is needed only to bind you together more and more, to add a few more words of awakening.

The key is unification, in which you receive everything else. If it is revealed, you don’t need the lessons. The souls then work in a different kind of connection.…
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Question: What should I demand from the Light that Reforms?

Answer: Everything! Correction—until the final corrected state (Gmar Tikkun). This Light does not just bring us back to spirituality from our degree. Always, in every degree, wherever we are, we have the Inner Light and the Surrounding Light. The latter shines from the next degree that for now surrounds me but cannot clothe inward because of the absence of the screen. Thus, I always yearn for the Light so it corrects and then clothes into me.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/16/2011, The Zohar

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Question: How do I connect everything written in The Book of Zohar with myself and the environment? How can I relate to this text through the environment?

Answer: Everything I read in The Zohar has to be revealed in the connection between us. There is nothing in the entire reality except the state called “one soul.” This soul is filled with the property of bestowal, the upper Light, the Light of love.

We exist in a confused, foggy, unclear condition, behind all the concealments (worlds) and must reveal a single, perfect state. All the other states appear only in our unconscious state, where we are unaware of spirituality. It’s as though I was stunned by a blow on the head, lost consciousness, and now gradually come back to my senses by my own effort.

Kabbalists teach me what efforts can help me return to spiritual awareness. The entire wisdom of Kabbalah is the revelation of the only state there is. The Zohar tells us about the states on our spiritual path, which are corrected more than those we exist in. It tells me about the degree where perfection will be revealed. The authors of The Zohar went through all 125 degrees, from our world to the world of Infinity, and from the height of these degrees they wrote this composition, in which they revealed the unity between us.

We are reading, and the Light shines upon us to the extent of our aspiration for this exalted state. This is how we become corrected, by approaching the Light. Therefore, while reading The Book of Zohar, one needs only to yearn for this higher state and value it.

Thus, if together we aspire to reveal the spiritual state The Zohar is telling us about, although we don’t understand it because we have no connection with spirituality, but since we desire to reveal it, we awaken the Surrounding Lights which correct and move us closer to revelation.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/16/2011, The Zohar

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The Book of Zohar, Chapter “Mishpatim [Ordinances],” Item 511: The Creator said, “And you shall be holy men unto Me.” This is why Israel were rewarded with being named “brothers of the Creator,” as it is written, “For the sake of My brothers and friends.”

Reading The Zohar, we try to interpret everything as happening inside a person who strives to connect with the environment and find the property of bestowal in his connection with it. Only on the condition that through the environment he wishes to reveal the property of bestowal, directed from him toward others, will this take place and be called the image of the Creator, which a person reveals.

Then, that person is called “Israel,” and the revealed property of bestowal emanating from him to others is called the “Creator,” the image built between him and a fellow human being (the “Creator,” Bo-Reh, means “come and see”).
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/16/2011, The Zohar

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Dear friends!
We are all different, but we are all parts of the whole. By complementing each other, we achieve perfection.

Registration for the Kabbalah convention in Moscow is now open. Visit the convention website and become involved in the preparation!

Tell the World Kli how your groups and centers are preparing for the event. Send us your reports!
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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

Workers of the Creator Who Make the Torah Arid

There is an oath that the Light of bestowal and love will not awaken in the world before Israel’s deeds in Kabbalah study will have the intention to bestow contentment. …Thus, the length of the exile and affliction that we suffer depends on us and waits for us to merit the practice of the intention to bestow.
– Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 36

A person, born with the will to receive and wishing to correct it to in order to bestow, which is known to be against nature, has only one counsel: the Light of the Torah. … Hence, such people who engage in Torah, not necessarily to know the laws and the customs and to fulfill the commandment, but…in order to correct the heart, these are called, “wise at heart.”
– Rabash, The Rungs of the Ladder, “What Is Torah and Work on the Path of the Creator”

Those who engage solely in the dresses of the Torah are gravely mistaken. …they consider the wisdom of the Torah with its purpose as mere addition of some quip to the laws—which, though truly sacred and precious—they will not illuminate our souls.
– Rav Kook, Igrot (Letters), Vol. 2, 153
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Question: During the reading of The Zohar, is it enough to aspire only toward unity?

Answer: No, it isn’t. Baal HaSulam writes in “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 155, that a person who wants to reveal is eager to attain what he is studying and draws the Light that surrounds his soul onto himself. The Light comes to the degree of his aspiration.

“To strive to attain” means that I try to perform the actions described in the Torah within myself. The Torah is a manual, an instruction (“Torah” derives from Horaa, instruction, and Ohr, Light) for how I should correct myself by drawing the Light that affects me while I study this manual.

While reading this instruction, I try to discern within myself the states that it describes. This text is written in an unusual way, corporeal language talking about the spiritual world, so that under all these concealments, I would find and see what it is trying to tell me, what all my inner properties and desires are about.

I must uncover and learn what they are. I want to apply them in practice. I want the Light, the upper force, to elevate me above my will to receive pleasure so that I may start working with this matter instead of being chained in it, without even feeling and identifying myself with it.

I want to separate myself from it and study it from aside. Then, I can attempt to build one or another form from it, like a child who is making a tower from building blocks. I will be able to watch and examine what is going on with me. At that point, I will have a force that will allow me to work with my still matter. Then, I will acquire forces to work on my vegetative form of the will to receive, followed by the animate, and so on, until I recreate myself as human. To accomplish this task, I have to ascend to the degree of the upper Light.

Yet, this is the way we advance, yearning and desiring to know how to work. This aspiration to know how to find within myself these inner properties and how to work with them is vital. Where it is up to me, I want to be the master of my actions. It is as if I collate my desires and then tell the Creator: “Now, connect, correct them!”

However, I have to bring them to correction, to seemingly connect them, and when the Light comes and corrects them, it does occur. This means that I ask, and the Creator fulfills; I demand, and the Creator carries it out. He and I are partners.

Therefore, it is our duty to try to understand the Torah, The Zohar. However, after the Light has affected me, I also come to a state where I am able to see, feel, and understand all that is being described.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/15/2011, The Zohar

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Question: During the past few weeks of reading The Book of Zohar, I’ve been very focused on the internal, spiritual work. Suddenly, I can’t stay with it even for ten seconds. What can I do when something like this occurs?

Answer: Try to stay with it for fifteen seconds. I don’t have any other advice. There are times, especially when someone is just beginning to study the wisdom of Kabbalah, when a person is unable to work on himself yet. He hasn’t accumulated sufficient experience and doesn’t know how to deceive his ego.

Try to draw something next to a passage from The Zohar, highlight and underline, meaning work with the text, albeit mechanically at times, if you can’t do anything else. Sometimes, a person may be completely disconnected from spirituality. During such states, he can connect to it only by working with the text, processing it purely mechanically, by moving the commas around, breaking it into sub-headings, messing the text up, or organizing it.

No matter what a person is going to do with it, even if it’s just reading the letters, the key is to keep reading it. He should know that he is confusing himself thereby in order to keep reading, and that’s work.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/15/2011, The Zohar

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