Audio Version Of The Blog – 02.02.12
Posted on February 2nd, 2012
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Question: When we start talking about current global problems during the lesson, many of our friends take it negatively feeling that we are “missing” part of the lesson. I feel that this attitude should be changed. Without current affairs we have no right to exist. If we are not relevant people won’t hear us out.
Answer: This is also true. Baal HaSulam wrote about the Jerusalem Kabbalists who studied Kabbalah like mathematics and didn’t realize that it’s about the connection among us, about how to correct the broken vessel. Today we discover the shattering of the common soul of Adam HaRishon (First Man), and so the wisdom of Kabbalah is revealed to us in order to correct the shattering.
If we don’t examine the current events from this perspective, then why should we study the wisdom of Kabbalah? Clearly we study only for this reason. Missing the lesson means that I come out of the lesson and throughout the whole day I have nothing to hang on to so that my life won’t go by aimlessly. If my wisdom isn’t connected to real “substance,” it disappears. Even if I feel important, that I have acquired something, and that I understand something, it’s only an egoistic filling, nothing more.
Therefore, if someone thinks that we are talking about current problems just to pass the time, then he shouldn’t come here. After all, he is here thanks to the relevance of these current affairs. Only because of this was each of us brought here so that he would contribute to the correction of the world. But if a person sets himself another goal, he can leave. We don’t need him.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/1/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”
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Question: Suppose the program to educate the unemployed is accepted. How long will it take until we begin to see changes in our country?
Answer: A couple of weeks. Of course, it depends upon the number of people who will study, but the changes will be rapid. Imagine how many hours a day a person will take part in the integral education course. This in itself will evoke great changes in him. At the same time he will be under the strong influence of the environment: millions of people who study daily from their homes, in community centers, in schools in the afternoon…this will be their main occupation, apart from the necessary part time job.
It would be enough if this lasts for several days in order for a great force to be revealed. If you hold such a day all over the country, you will immediately see the changes, and you will see how the people cut themselves off from the old life style and connect to the new one.
The changes will take place at once and in every area of our life: in crime, drugs, litter in the streets, etc. Think of how much can be saved just on municipal services alone. Even the number of sick people will diminish. We will undoubtedly feel this in everything.
Moreover, the entire economy will change too. Will we, the people, keep on buying goods in such monstrous quantities? Will we continue to subsidize the producers and the middlemen that inflate the prices? Will we pay five dollars for cottage cheese that hardly costs one dollar? We will sift out all the redundant things and leave only the necessary ones.
So you may ask: “And what about the taxes? Where will we get the money for social security and for defense?” You will see that there are the means for that. It’s wrong to build an economy on an endless cycle of enormous sums of money, from which the government takes a percentage of for itself. Just look at this ridiculous structure that produces not only goods but papers too.
The economy will be different. You need to provide security? Please, take the people and act. Everyone gets exactly as much as they need to lead a normal life. And all the rest goes to supply the needs of different systems, not financially but rather in the framework of sensible necessities.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/1/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”
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How can I determine whether I advance towards the Creator with the intention of in order to bestow or for some other self-benefit? There are many people who are ready to “die as martyrs,” but how can you tell whether it is the greatest egoism or whether it is truly bestowal and self-sacrifice?
How can I check myself, daily, every moment, whether I am desiring to bestow upon the friends, life, myself, and the Creator or in order to somehow profit from them?
How can I test this? After all, without such examination, I don’t know where I am. It could be that I have been going along for twenty years but I actually went in the opposite direction from the goal: instead of bestowal to receiving. And I could complain that I haven’t reached revelation yet and that I am now powerless. But it could be that I went backward, as it is written, “It is better to sit and do nothing,” than to go in the wrong direction.
The examination is very sharp and simple: I have to yearn for what I hate: It is very simple. If I hate someone and want to feel bestowal towards him, then I have to love him without annulling my hate.
But if I don’t feel hate towards someone, I cannot check in what kind of a relationship we are: whether it is in order to receive or in order to bestow. If I build a relationship with someone, and I begin to think less of him than before, it is a good sign. It is a sign that I discover my ego. And I decide that I continue to reinforce our connection and turn the one I hate in to a loved friend, above my power, against my will, when I oblige myself to love him.
If I don’t succeed in that, I ask for it during the lesson and do all kinds of tricks in order to love him. This is because it is clear to me that the love must ride on top of the previous hate and that these two feelings have to coexist, as the right and left lines. I connect them and build the middle line without annulling either of them: not the right one and not the left one, as it written: “Love covers all sins.”
This means that the sins are necessary, so that above them there will be love. Then I look at our relationship differently. Hate is revealed? Never mind! It is a sign that now love will be revealed!
So I try to feel it and see that it doesn’t work out. I go through ascents and descents and different problems, and it is all in order to need help from Above. Then I cry out to the Creator: “Help!” The Creator is the middle line, Keter, from which the two lines come to me: the right line and the left line. If I am below, in the middle line (in the Sefira of Da’at), I ask and receive help from Him.
This means that these two opposing forces: the bestowal and the receiving, which come from Him, are needed only in order to stabilize me in accordance with Him and to focus me on Him. Thanks to them I feel and understand what Keter is. Actually they are what stabilize my reality.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/31/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”
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Question: If I like to hear The Zohar read in Hebrew, should I do that or should I listen to the translation?
Answer: Yes, and no. If it helps a person understand Hebrew better, then it is worthwhile. However, if you stay on the same level, then no, because eventually, while reading The Zohar we advance through the PARDES in the reverse order. I go through the different stories from the secret (Sod) to the allegoric literature (Drush) then to the hint (Remez) and to the literal meaning (Pshat).
At first I really don’t understand what it is about. Then in Drush, I begin to understand that it is about certain attributes in the general vessel, which is broken and which must be revealed in this way. The style that is used to tell this is Drush and Remez, and in the meantime I don’t distinguish between them. Afterward I begin to advance and then instead of Drush and Remez, I begin to see the network of connections among us more clearly.
In the article “The Four Worlds,” Baal HaSulam writes what the four worlds are: Assiya, Yetzira, Beria, and Atzilut: the revelation of matter, the revelation of the action, and the revelation of the operator.
We advance in reading The Book of Zohar until we begin to see that it is only about the connection among us: to what extent it reaches correction thanks to the revelation of the Creator in it, where the deficiency that comes from us is, where the correction is, and how they operate together like oncoming waves that come and go. And so time after time, the network among us is gradually revealed, in all its different manners.
All this refers only about the mutual connection between us, which is built, expanded, and revealed thanks to the revelation of the power of bestowal, the Creator. It fills the void between us and thus, He is revealed. Our bestowal and His revelation appear as one whole.
Therefore, before I come to look at this picture, I feel the difficulties in discovering it that start from the Sod, which is the beginning of the PARDES.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/31/12, The Zohar
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The purpose of creation is to reach adhesion with the Creator. We discover adhesion with the Creator with the help of the attribute of love. This is because the Creator reveals to the created being the attribute and the attitude called love, which are expressed in the form of the good and the benevolent.
It is the same in our world, when we love someone, we want to do good to them. It is an external sign of love. But if a person lacks the desire to do good, it means that he doesn’t love, but rather he calculates what is more advantageous for him: He gives in order to receive.
Love is above all the calculations. First there is love and then, as a result, comes the giving. Love in itself is what obliges a person to give because one is fulfilled from that. When I love and I cannot give, I suffer. This is because love lives by our feeling good when we give to the people we love.
So why is there a Mitzva that we reach the love of the Creator? This is unclear for two reasons. On one hand, how should I want this? On the other hand, why is this an obligation? Can someone be obliged to love? Why does this idea take on the form of a commandment, of the most important Mitzva? Even in our life we see that in this world you can oblige a person to do anything except to love. If I am obliged, it isn’t love anymore.
This brings up many questions, which we shall leave for philosophers and instead will talk about it looking at the system. The system of creation was created by the upper Light, which comes to us from the source of love, from the Creator’s love to the created being. This love is inherently absolute. In order to fulfill it, the upper Light spreads from the source in the form of the good and the benevolent and stabilizes the created being so that all the processes will be able to fully take place in him. This is done only from the love of the Creator to the created being.
First we have to understand that everything that happens to us, the worst and most terrible things, from which humanity has suffered throughout its corporeal history, and also on the levels of the spiritual worlds—all stemmed from the Creator’s absolute love for us. We have to reach the same attitude on our part.
This is possible because the Light that develops us comes from exactly the same source. It descends through the Masachim (screens), the filters, and begins to influence our smallest desire to receive, the tiny grain of egoism, the low, the murky, and the dead. Gradually the Light influences our matter on higher levels of the ladder of development and evokes this grain to start growing. The desire goes through the phases of the inanimate, vegetative, and animate, to the level of speaking in which the same cycle takes place, and so on.
All this comes from love. Then, at the end of the process, whether we like it or not, love will reside among us. But it works in two lines: the deficiency and the filling. This is how we advance.
First the Creator has to gradually create deficiencies in us, desires, from top down, together with the fulfillments on every level and in every state. The difference between these levels is qualitative: We grow wiser, acquire greater understanding and feeling, and turn from single cells in a body into human beings. Then with the point in the heart, we exit into the spiritual levels.
All this stems from the Creator’s love and so there is no doubt that we will return to it. So why are we commanded to do that? Why should there be a demand for a predetermined result? The commandment is that we shouldn’t stop on the way, and should constantly move forward. If we push ourselves forward willingly we will undoubtedly reach love.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/31/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”
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We must constantly ask ourselves whether each day we better understand: what the need for redemption is, the preparation for it, and the spiritual vessel we have to prepare in order to go out to the desert. Do we have a deficiency for that?
The deficiency should be made of two parts: Malchut and Keter. Malchut is the deficiency, it is what I lack, and Keter is the respect I have for this deficiency, it is my assessment of this desire having the greatest importance..
We need a Masach and the returning Light, in other words, the ability to bestow. After all, the Masach itself isn’t bestowal yet, and neither is the returning Light; they are only the conditions. But we need them, because other than that, nothing is required of the spiritual vessel. The filling will come according to the Masach and the returning Light,
It is called a filling because the Creator, the Light of Hochma, is dressed in the filling afterward; it will be the direct result of the correction of the vessel.
The Masach and the returning Light are built on the desires and cannot exist without its depth and strength (Aviut). Therefore, love cannot exist without hate, without a strong, deep desire it is impossible to overcome it. This is how it should be built: one inside the other.
Therefore, when we are about attack, we have to see whether we’ve actually revealed our egoism, which we should attack now. Who are we attacking? There is nothing but the desire to receive and the desire to bestow, and we have to clarify this before we attack.
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From the preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/1/12
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Question: What is the upper root of the black letters? From where does their force derive?
Answer: From the tip of the Yod (the 10th letter in the Hebrew alphabet). The Ari wrote in a poem:
Behold that before the emanations were emanated and the creatures were created,
The Upper Simple Light had filled the whole existence.
And there was no vacancy, such as an empty air, a hollow,
But all was filled with that Simple, Boundless Light.
And there was no such part as head, or end,
But everything was One, Simple Light, balanced evenly and equally,
And it was called “the Light of Ein Sof (Infinity).”
And when upon His simple will, came the desire to create the worlds and emanate the emanations….
And then the desire to receive was revealed, something that was opposed to the Light.
The Light is bestowal and love. And suddenly, within bestowal and love something black begins to appear to differentiate from bestowal and love. Actually, it is a small drop, something that isn’t similar to Light, something distinct from it, that was created in it, and it precisely is called “creature.” Everything else developed from it. All the rest was consequently determined by this tiny difference from the Light, which began to develop due to the Light, and it began to feel itself and become familiar with its oppositeness to the Light.
And then we speak about the fourth level in the phases of Direct Light, about Ein Sof (infinity), the restrictions and the continuation of the development of the creature. But actually nothing changes: There remains that same small difference from the Light. The only thing that grows in it is the feeling to what extent it is opposite the Light. But by itself, it is just slightly different from the Light.
Therefore, the Creator only created the tip of the Yod, and all the rest developed from this point. This is the root of the letters.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/1/12, The Zohar
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In the News: “European Union (EU) leaders have finalized a new fiscal treaty for tighter budgetary discipline and pledged to boost economic growth and youth employment in the eurozone’s latest efforts to combat debt crisis.” (Source: English.xinhuanet.com)
“Without economic growth, the problem of 23 million unemployed in the EU cannot be solved. Therefore, European leaders propose to rely on job creation, especially in the advanced science-intensive industries, energy, digital technology, and e-commerce.” (Source: rosbalt.ru)
My Comment: It is impossible to create more jobs, develop the market, and establish artificial workplaces where they will have to be reduced even more. The new EU program is designed to delay the time.
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The Book of Zohar, Chapter “Beresheet (Genesis),” Item 183: Darkness is the black in the Torah, the ink in her letters. Light is the white in the Torah, the parchments on which the letters are written. When the light clothes in darkness, it is written about the Torah, “I am black and beautiful.” When the light—the white in the Torah—departs there, the Torah says, “Do not see me that I am swarthy.”
By the form of the book, black letters on a white background, we see that it is the black color that conveys all the information to us. Although we may say the opposite: If we enter the attribute of bestowal into the white Light of the background of the book, we study the white part in contrast to the black—not black on a white background, but white in which there are small black voids.
Therefore, two things were said about the Torah: “Don’t see me that I am dark” and “I am black and beautiful.” On one hand, there is the Light, the attribute of bestowal and on the other hand, there is the desire, the vessel, the attribute of receiving. Therefore we are in a state of ups and downs when we feel and study the white in contrast to the black and vice versa.
This is a study in which one completes the other, and thus enables us to see not in our desire, not in the attribute of receiving, but rather from the perception of the upper, from the attribute of bestowal. When we are in our own desire, we act from our letters, from the darkness on the white Light’s background. But if we are incorporated in the upper, like Galgalta ve Eynaim and AHP, we learn from the Light of Ein Sof because then we are incorporated in it, and learn the white Light that is in the books and not the black.
Thus we learn one attribute in contrast to another, until they complete one another and the letters complete the white background and the white completes the black part of the letters. The letters don’t disappear, but the whole Torah turns fully into Light, as it says: “the night will glow like daytime.”
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/1/12, The Zohar
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