Weekly Torah Portion – 05.05.11
Posted on May 5th, 2011
Question: Why is it that my mind understands that the Creator is worthy of being justified for what He is doing to me right now, but I am feeling bad nonetheless? Why can’t I affect my inner state with external actions such as a prayer?
Answer: What your desire is feeling at the moment is, in fact, you. In spirituality, you can’t pretend and say something you don’t feel. You have to come to the correction of your heart. And before anything else, we still have to figure out what exactly is in our hearts.
If you are crying, what is crying in you: your eyes or your heart? That’s the difference! The problem is that everything we do is on the outside, while the science of Kabbalah is the internal wisdom, the inner part of the Torah. You must dig into the heart of hearts, study, and test it.
Then you’ll understand that external actions only stand in your way and cover the authentic image up; they deceive and confuse you. You need to bare your heart and work with it without any outer theatrics, laments, and tears!
If you take a sedative and stop raging, will it really turn a sinner in you into a righteous one? No, everything is evaluated by the inner feeling in the heart. And we know what it is like. We think that all we have to do is to become embittered and make ourselves cry. Kabbalah doesn’t cancel external actions, but it wants them to reflect the internal state since without it being true, our work is pointless, and we won’t fulfill our designation.
Therefore, don’t fear that you’ll have to become a “sinner” at one point and “righteous” at another. They are two stages of the same spiritual degree, as it is said: “One cannot carry out a Mitzva (commandment) unless one breaks it first.” This means that one first undergoes the burdening of the heart (an additional load of egoism), and he is regarded as a “sinner” who broke the “Mitzva” and feels to what extent he is unable to do it.
And then, he gets stronger with the help of the environment, demands the Light that Reforms, corrects his desire, and becomes “righteous,” only to fall again. After all, he receives another dose of egoistic desire and turns into a “sinner” once more, in order to keep correcting himself in order to become “righteous.” It is said: “A thousand times the righteous will fall and rise again.”
Every spiritual degree starts with a new load of egoism, and you start it as “a sinner.” Afterward, you finish correcting it and reach adhesion with the Creator at this degree, and then you are regarded as the righteous.
[41999]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/2/2011, Shamati No. 16
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Question: I feel that when I started studying Kabbalah, I could hear the Creator’s voice more clearly. And now, I feel my receptivity has decreased.
Answer: That is because the Creator wants to tune you to Himself even better and demonstrates to you that you are not attuned to Him well enough. And you should search so that the most exalted feeling that you have experienced so far would constantly be alive in you. You must, regardless of the obstacles, constantly tune to that previous feeling, while it will be new nonetheless.
In the beginning of creation, in our first state of existence (1), we felt only the Light of “Nefesh,” the smallest Light. And then, we descended into our world, into the broken state (2), and are now ascending from our world back to the third state (3).
The third state is the same as the first one, although we feel the Light of “Yechida” in it, which is 620 times greater than the initial one that we used to have in the first state. It is the Light of NRNHY (Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama, Haya, Yechida).
Why is it so? It is due to the fact that we have attuned ourselves in spite of the obstacles! On the way from the first state to the third one, we were given numerous obstacles of all sorts, but regardless of them, we have attuned ourselves to the same Light of “Nefesh” that was in the beginning. The Light doesn’t change.
I have raised my receptivity and become a vibrating string instead of a thick metal pipe that I used to be at the start. I have become more subtle, sensitive, sensuous, and receptive.
As a result, in the first state that I used to exist in, I experience, not the Light of “Nefesh” that used to fill me at the still level when I didn’t feel anything, but rather I discover myself as equal to the Creator, that is, I reveal the great Light of “Yechida.” Why is it so? Just because I tuned myself to it. This is the process we undergo.
[41981]
From the Virtual Lesson in Russian, Fundamentals of Kabbalah 4/21/2011
Shamati #56 “Torah Is Called Indication”
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The Book of Zohar – Selected, Chapter, “Mishpatim, ‘The Grandfather,’” Item 248
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Vol. 1, Part 1, Chapter 2, Item 5, Lesson 8
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Modern Physics and the Wisdom of Kabbalah
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The upper Light is in a place called “Shechina,” which is the unification between the souls. With our efforts we have to attain unity among us. Then we will reveal the Light that builds, creates, corrects, and fulfills all of creation.
This Light is always present in the Shechina, in the assembly of souls that aspire to the Creator (Knesset Israel), in the unification among us.
The Zohar is the same source of Light, but on the condition that we imagine ourselves (and it doesn’t matter how many millions of us there are) as being the group of Rabbi Shimon, which had ten people who sat, connected together, and received this Light called “Zohar”—“the upper illumination.” This is the Light that influences us, corrects us, and elevates us.
[42174]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/4/11, The Zohar
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Kabbalah is a science about reality. Man is a creature that strives to understand why and for what purpose he exists and how he can come to the truth. He yearns to uncover the meaning of such notions as “truth,” “facts,” “purpose,” or “reaching the goal.” He is made to demand this kind of fulfillment.
Man’s greatest need is to know who he is, as it is said: “From my flesh shall I see the Creator.” Indeed, to learn who I am, I need to know who the Creator is. This necessity mandates me to search.
The entire wisdom of Kabbalah is dedicated to the study of man since besides him, nothing exists. All of reality is within man, and everything occurs solely in him. I don’t see anything in this world except myself. All that is happening around me is me, images within me. I don’t have the slightest idea what is going on outside of me.
This means that Kabbalah is the study of the self, self-attainment, self-awareness. All other books describe some kind of illusions, as if there is an external reality around us. Therefore, everything but these sacred books is a total lie made up by man; they are the fruit of his imagination.
We don’t realize how unique these books are; besides, as far as the truth is concerned, we have nothing to hold on to. Without these books, we would exist in this world as some little insects that live only for as long as the time allotted to them permits. Only with the help of these books can we gradually develop ourselves and start examining, measuring, and learning “who and what we are.”
Thus we find out that we contain the whole worlds, Partzufim, Sefirot, and numerous parts that seem alien to us, which in the end turn out to be the parts of your own soul. This is your very desire split into the still, vegetative, animate nature, and humans as well. And at the last, fourth degree, we must collect all these parts together in order to come to the intention “to bestow,” which is mandatory for this final, fourth, stage of creation.
When I gain this intention to bestow for all parts of creation, I will finally find out who I am; I will know myself. And there is nothing else to study in reality.
[42014]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/2/2011, Talmud Eser Sefirot
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There are only two forces in the world: the force of bestowal and that of reception. By interacting with one another, they must come to equilibrium, adhesion, and oneness.
The will to receive starts forming inside the desire to bestow, the Light. The Light constantly influences the desire to receive by developing it, while the latter responds to the Light. Thereby, they begin to interact. As a result, the desire to receive pleasure evolves to an ability to act on its own, to experience, think, and react to the desire to bestow.
Thus, these two desires gradually decrease, descending lower and lower. In the end, this allows us to analyze very fine details that combined, allow us to construct the complete system. It is as if from a global analysis we move on to a very fine research (as if we are using tweezers), which enables us to get information unavailable in a general approach. And the latter provides what is missing in the particulars.
As a result, we need to come to a state when the general and the particular will be fully analyzed and completely corrected. This is why there was the descent of the spiritual worlds up to this world, followed by development in this world. In the process of its development, our world undergoes the same four stages and arrives at the creation of the desire to bestow: from below upward, in order to return to the world of Infinity.
Kabbalists take great care to explain this process to us. First of all, they are scientists, and this is the physics of the two forces acting in creation, which explains how these forces come down to us in order for us to connect and start working with them. After all, they become realized only in our desires, intentions, and discernments.
In nature, these two forces are balanced. But we are supposed to get in between them and assemble ourselves, completely incorporating both of them within. As nature, the Creator, consists of both of these forces, His own force of bestowal and the force of reception through which He influences us, so must we construct ourselves from these two forces. That is what the entire program of creation and evolution entails.
[42017]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/2/2011, Talmud Eser Sefirot
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Baal HaSulam, The Writings of the Last Generation: This is what happened to the Germans who had been thought to have been one of the most civilized nations and who, overnight, became a nation of savages, the most horrible of the primitive societies that ever existed in the world. Moreover, Hitler was chosen by the majority.
We are dealing with the question about human society: How do we progress? It seems that from generation to generation, we become more advanced. But in what sense are we more developed? Is it science and technology or social structure? Or, perhaps, we evolve in our human values? The latter is specifically incorrect.
Egoism increases over the course of all of history; however, we don’t reform it, and as it accumulates, we are getting worse. Instead of the true correction, we coat and cover our egoism so that it wouldn’t get out of hand and bother us while we live. Otherwise, we would simply eat one another up. Essentially, from generation to generation, we become increasingly skilled at concealing our ego, while hatred still keeps growing.
We have an opportunity to “scamper around,” hide behind the telephones, computers, and all other kinds of screens, and it helps. Everybody has a room or even an apartment; everyone drives their own car, not picking anybody up; people don’t get married and break their blood ties. In short, we erect a shield, a curtain, between the outbreaks of human egoism and, thereby, continue to live as if everything is alright.
It escapes us, but the services that we develop in the modern society are destined to free the space for everybody to live in order to prevent a confrontation with others. State and medical insurance, retirement plans, vacations are all the examples of our attempts to give a person more and more opportunity to feel independent from the society and isolate himself from another’s ego. We strive to allow and teach everybody to stay inside himself and not come out for the rest of his life.
As a result, our nature doesn’t get corrected, and this is why it has become a lot more ruthless than it used to be in the previous millennia. We simply learned to keep it tucked away, and hence, we are caught in the illusion that our civilization is still progressing.
In reality, however, it isn’t so difficult to awaken our egoism, to show our evil in the most vivid way. After all, it is raging within, and all one needs to do is open the valve—it will pour out like a flood.
Moreover, it will pour out to such an extent that man will be ready to do anything, without any empathy, since he doesn’t feel the others under his ego’s shell. He will kill, slaughter children and adults, families, and entire nations. He will sort people out for himself: He is a black, she is a white; he is a Jew, she is a gypsy, and so on. One can invent thousands of criteria or reasons to kill: the elderly have already lived their lives, those infants are born defective, and so forth.
In other words, without any regret or remorse, but rather proudly and in cold blood, man will do to others whatever he wants because he does not feel that they are humans as well, who have the right to exist like he does. We are not talking about Germans, but about all of us, while we remain uncorrected. If our egoistic desire awakens in the open, we will all become like this. It happened to Germans precisely because they were the most advanced, while today it can be any other nation.
Many nations have already sufficiently evolved for Nazism to manifest through them naturally and easily. They will feel no shame doing anything at all and will act according to the same calculations that the Germans had used to extinguish the Jews and other peoples. Today, the majority of the world is prepared for it. If we don’t reform our egoism, the tiniest excuse, a smallest spark, is going to be enough, and people will actualize their ego by the book: mercilessly, methodically, and accurately. They will come and destroy.
[42042]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/2/2011 on Holocaust Memorial Day
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