Question: I don’t understand how a spiritual Partzuf can calculate to what extent it can receive in order to bestow if each time it discovers a new state in which it has never been before.

Answer: The spiritual Partzuf goes through new phases all the time. As it says: “They will be as new to you.” But it can perform different actions based on what was before. Thanks to what? Thanks to his asking the upper one to perform this action!

In our world, all the actions are also performed by the upper one, but you don’t think about it and you think that you are doing everything by yourself. But everything is done by the upper Light, and you are making a double mistake called double concealment.

In fact, you are not doing anything by yourself. Everything is done thanks to the mercy of the Creator, and we are not in charge of our actions, our decisions, and our calculations. You may feel doubtful and unsure as to how you will act in the spiritual world since you are used to feeling that you are in charge in this world and that everything depends on you. But here too, you never do anything or decide by yourself.

It only seems that you do; everything that you feel, decide, and carry out is fictional. Inside you there is a hand, like in a puppet, that constantly turns you, so relax.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/13/12, The Study of the Ten Sefirot

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Questions About the Convention
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Vilnius Convention, Lesson 5
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Vilnius Convention Workshop 4
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From a lesson of Rabash: In the corporeal world we see that the embryo is first in the mother’s womb and then he comes out into another place—into the world. But in the spiritual world there is no place. So what is the meaning of “birth?”

The rule is: What in spirituality is called “near by” or “far away” is a matter of equivalence of form. If there are two different forms, it is two places. Every form is called “a place.”

While the embryo was inside the mother he had no name. We don’t say that he is pregnant but that the mother is pregnant, carrying the child, because he doesn’t have a name yet. An embryo is called “the thickness of the root level.” He doesn’t have a desire to receive of his own yet. He only annuls himself before the upper one in every way, and so he is considered an inseparable part of his mother and he eats whatever his mother eats.

But when the phase of pregnancy is over and he already has the whole Light of Nefesh (NRNHY of Nefesh), the upper one gives him thickness that is called “thickness of phase one.” Although it is small, his desire to receive already has its own entity, which means that there is already a difference in form. They are not the same anymore, and so he doesn’t annul himself before the upper one. This is called being in two different places, or “birth.”

The most important spiritual principle is equivalence of form, and it is the only thing we should worry about. All the other rules we discover in different sciences, in culture, in education, in psychology—all the rules of reality are only different results of this one major principle: equivalence or lack of equivalence of form with the Creator.

All the movements with regard to Him symbolize a greater or lesser adaptation to Him. All the changes are in the created being. The Creator is always good and benevolent, absolute bestowal and love. We, however, move all the time changing in relation to His attribute, and everything that we feel is only our changes with regard to this discernment, although we are not aware of it.

Until we feel so bad that we begin to look for the answer: Why?! And then we discover this law and begin to work on ourselves, in order to reach equivalence of form.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/17/12, Preface to The Zohar

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As a result of the shattering, the one, general soul was divided into a huge number of souls. Each piece of the general soul is called Adam (man, human) and feels that it is separated from the other pieces. These parts feel that they want to receive since at present, their nature is the desire to receive.

Their desires to receive constitutes the same HaVaYaH (Yod-Hey-Vav-Hey) only now it is broken, shattered to fragments. Thus in this HaVaYaH there are 4 parts: the levels of inanimate, vegetative, animate, and speaking. These parts feel that they exist harmoniously. This is the form of the desire that has influence on them after the shattering. This is how they feel themselves.

If the desire would rise above, then the feeling of existence for each of the inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels would disappear. The inanimate world would disappear and it would feel itself as part of the desire, of the force, which has the intention of how to use this desire. This is the real form of existence, not the previous existence of the inanimate level.

When these parts of the general soul of Adam reach the lowest, shattered point, then each part of it feels that it just exists, without any intention. Everything disappears, is lost. There is no Masach (screen), no Tzimtzum (restriction). There is nothing that will be above the desire. Everything exists within it. And when perception is within the desire, then the desire feels itself as we feel this reality before us.

So, what should we do? All in all, we need to again attach these pieces to each other and to change their intention. We don’t know where each piece belongs, with whom it needs to connect, in what way, or how all the parts need to be connected since for each one of them there is an infinite number of possibilities to connect with others, and all of these possible connections must be realized and carried out. In addition, each piece is connected to the rest of the pieces like a holographic picture since there is no part, even the smallest, that isn’t composed from HaVaYaH and won’t be connected via his HaVaYaH with the rest of the HaVaYaH’s. It is really so.

Thus, we don’t need anything except to bring all the parts of creation closer and connect between them. The Kabbalists say that you don’t have to worry about the joining of the wolf with the sheep, or the stone with the flower. You only need to worry about the unity at a higher level, at the level of speaking, since it consists of all the other levels that are below it, like a pyramid.

You can cause a correction if you change your intention with the help of the Light that Reforms. You are on the upper level, since it is only there that you can execute a correction. A correction is carried out when there is a change of intention. The rest of the levels lost the intention that they had before the shattering. And before the shattering, they were connected with the level of Adam, but afterwards they were severed from it.

Adam in its true and corrected form included in it all the levels of inanimate, vegetative, and animate, that “fell” as a result of the shattering. If man would correct himself, of course, the other levels would also join him since this is the structure. Also in the present, shattered state, a connection exists between everyone, but this connection is not good.

You bring the Light that Reforms to the upper level, and it already joins to it all the lower levels that connect to it. Thus, it is only man who needs to be corrected, and the rest of the levels will be corrected by themselves.

How is it possible to correct man? Only in his yearning for unity. And the connection is realized at the level of man. But what about all the other levels? Man lives among all the rest of nature’s levels and he needs to relate to them in a correct and balanced way as the Torah commands. He should use the world to the extent necessary for life, for the sake of upholding and correcting all of creation. This would be the correct attitude.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/20/12, The Zohar

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Opinion (A. Gilyarov, professor Moscow State University): “Environmentalists say that the pace and extent of the decline of biological diversity are comparable to those that accompanied the major mass extinctions of the past geologic ages. There are five known extinctions: The first one was over 443 million years ago; the last one took place already in the Cretaceous period about 65 million years ago, when 40% of all animal families and 70% of the species were wiped out within 2.5 million years. All five previous mass extinctions were caused by natural disasters. But the calamities ended, and new generations of organisms began to populate territories. They had room to settle, live, and evolve.

“The current situation is fundamentally different. The causes of this extinction are associated with the extraordinary evolutionary success of only one species – Homo sapiens. Their number does not correspond to their size and the characteristics of their life cycle (late achievement of sexual maturity, low fertility, and so on). However, due to his extraordinary competitiveness, owning to the development of the brain, the human being has surpassed not only all primates, but also all mammals.

“The cause of the crisis of biodiversity is the human destruction of natural habitats of plants and animals in order to cultivate their desired monoculture in the liberated territories. But even if measures to protect the remaining species are taken, they have nowhere to settle!”

My Comment: There is no rational solution; however, if we reach balance with nature in an integral relationship with each other, we will stop being a cancerous tumor, devouring everything around it, and nature will be restored on all the lower levels.
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Opinion (Andrew Roberts, PhD, British historian and journalist): “Nothing is inevitable. It was the first truth I was taught as a Cambridge undergraduate in the 1980s, and it has been italicized and underlined for me by everything I have learnt since. …The whole of human history is testament to the fact that vast sections of mankind can seem to be progressing towards what looks like an established goal, only to get sidetracked into cul-de-sacs, sometimes for decades, occasionally for centuries. So why do we still assume that an eventual return to any significant economic growth in the European Union is inevitable?

“…the leading thinkers of the Whig and Marxist historical determinist school who infected mankind with the concept that we were ‘progressing’ somewhere, moving towards a fixed, positive future point. In economics, that idea is encapsulated in the assumption of economic growth as a kind of manifest destiny, almost the birthright of the species.

“By contrast the EU is giving off the strong historical whiff of an empire plateauing out into long years of relative stagnation… Birth rates, defense expenditures, bond prices, welfare spending versus wealth creation; everything that historians look to in order to gauge the health of empires suggests that Europe’s fire has gone out.”

My Comment: Following the EU, the crisis will spread around the world. All countries will go through their stages of stagnation. What lies ahead is the realization of the need for a different development, not material, which is limited by our planetary possibilities and tiredness from material achievements. The only solution is to develop on a new, non-material dimension: the revelation of the hidden forces of nature, the discovery of the purpose of our existence and its attainment. Humanity simply has no other incentive to exist.
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Most religions consider altruistic behavior the main value of humanity. It is believed that altruism is the basis of virtue. According to Boris Krieger, altruism is selfishness at the level of family, community, kin, and humanity. Our altruistic behavior is dictated by conscience, religious beliefs, habits, and fear of punishment by fate or God. A truly unselfish act that has no moral, religious, or instinctive reason is impossible.

Altruism plays a special role in a group of people. They get the feeling of a “superorganism” (The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt, The Superorganism by Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson) when everyone is ready to sacrifice himself for the rest of the group. People are willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of the entire group to prevent a threat from another group. Team altruism is the basis for military training where people are taught to view the life of the country as more important than their own lives.

We can find evidence for this theory in Darwin’s principle of natural selection, under the assumption that “natural selection could act on groups as well as individuals, an idea known as group selection” (James Schwartz, “Death of an Altruist“), where altruism is considered a group’s egoism. Forming a functional unit in which everyone is ready to sacrifice himself for the benefit of the entire group in order to overcome difficulties or threats, usually coming from another superorganism, is the most noble and terrible human ability.

This is the secret of successful organizations working on the principle of a beehive or hierarchy. It is the purpose of basic military training. This is the reward for which people are willing to join militias, rock bands, and fan clubs. This is the dream of fascism. This may explain our love for adherence (temporarily, conditionally, or permanently) to something larger than ourselves.

However, the altruism offered by Kabbalah is born in a person under the influence of the upper Light (Ohr Makif), producing the desire to bestow to and love the friends in the group, the like-minded people, because only with them he can achieve the goal: adhesion to the Creator. It is a completely different method of “faith above reason,” not for the sake of fulfillment, but for the sake of bestowal. Try it and find the difference.
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We have justified claims: We are repeating the same thing over and over again when trying to unite. “When will this be over? When will we get what we want?” The answer is simple: When we won’t want it.

Rabash, “Shlavei HaSulam (Steps of the Ladder)” 1989, Article 12, “A Blessing and a Curse”: A person should know that every beginning of the work is called “day,” and a person’s prayer that the Creator brings him closer to the work is called “day.”

Thanks to our prayers and requests, thanks to the mutual relations we build between the Creator and us, we clarify and refine our right request, until it enables us to feel the spiritual world. “A prayer” is the work of the heart: polishing, purification, preparation. If we ask, demand, and scream, our prayer turns into a connection with the Creator, which has gone through the group and become a “prayer of the many.” This is the only way to reach Him.

When we arrange everything correctly, we constantly polish, clarify, and prepare our vessels of perception in order to feel spirituality in them. On the way we demand: “Give me!”, but gradually we begin to fine-tune our desires and demands, directing them towards bestowal, towards unification with the friends, towards distinguishing the form of general bestowal, the Creator, in this unity, who is revealed according to the principle of “come and see.”

And so gradually the mind and the feelings in our vessels reach the right parameters and enable us to feel the spiritual world. It exists here and now, and we are in it, but we don’t feel it.

Therefore, a prayer is a process in which we prepare our vessels for the spiritual perception.
[72037] 
From the Arava Convention 2/25/12, Lesson 7 

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