In the current reality, I feel myself, my relatives, my group, the other groups, the state and the world, which correlate to the five levels of Aviut (the coarseness of the desire), from the root phase to phase four. On the whole, this reality is the soul or, in other words, the desire to receive, but in its corrected form. Now, it is shattered to pieces but by the correction of the connection between the pieces, I reconstruct it into one structure, one desire, Malchut of Ein Sof (Infinity ∞). Then, the Light of Ein Sof, or the Creator (NRNHY), fills this soul.

There is nothing but that and this is the only thing the wisdom of Kabbalah speaks about: about the correction of the desires that seem detached from me to different extents. This is how the fictitious external picture was formed for me, a group of friends, and I must bring each of them closer to me. This is our work.

It is about my soul, about my eternal spiritual vessel in which I exist. Do I want to keep on feeling only my corporeal existence in which I am now, in this “self?” If I want to come out and begin the correction of my soul, to attach to it, to connect to it, to live in it, I must gather these parts into one. These parts are in each of us. So, I work by overcoming my ego in order to connect with the friends, with the parts of my soul.

If I ignore their external form, it means that I don’t see their faces but only the parts of the soul. Every external form is neutralized when I work on love, instead of hate.
[113625]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/25/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Related Material:
Collecting The Splinters Of Perception
The Mosaic Of Malchut Under My Responsibility
Divided Unity

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

The right advancement of a group is when it is not given any motivation from above. The Creator doesn’t give us any reason to justify the spiritual path. We don’t see any positive outcomes in our study, in dissemination, in other activities, but actually, it is the opposite as we discover total lack of success. Then, by consolidating the connections between us, we demand that the Creator be revealed among us, and this becomes our fuel. Otherwise, we are egoists who are unable to discover our vessel, to reveal the Creator and ascend.

We mustn’t descend to the levels of enjoying our success, the egoistic pride for having worked to disseminate, and measure our advancement by the outcome and the number of people we have brought closer to spirituality. We don’t want to return to the level of childish bragging. We respect and value the state in which we have no hope and no hold on the ego, of the desire to receive in which there is no filling, no feeling of success, no joy, nothing. We don’t enjoy this since otherwise, it already will be a reward. There are those who enjoy suffering since it fills them with adrenalin.

The Creator should give us only the fuel called bestowal in our actions of dissemination and not proof of our success. If we succeed without Him, we will not need Him. We must feel darkness in our vessels of receiving in order to demand the Creator’s help. Egoists don’t need the Creator since they want to use Him and receive an even greater egoistic filling.

We don’t need a filling but we need the Creator’s help in our actions. We ask for the fuel that allows us to work and don’t need anything but that. We keep away from the reward. The Creator offers us pleasures, His revelation, while we must put different Masachim (screens) on ourselves and restrict our desire. We are in a very difficult position. We have a problem since our car moves forward by itself without any fuel, and we must only hit the brakes instead of pressing the gas pedal.

There is no gas pedal in spirituality and you constantly press the brakes, thus keeping different temptations and pleasures from entering your desire to receive. Otherwise, I will commit an offense and will fail.

Our job now is not to be impressed by our lack of success, but to be impressed by the fact that we are given a chance to bring people closer to connection according to the real laws. If we have such an opportunity, we don’t need anything else. This is called “God’s servant.” We only want a chance to work, nothing more than the “eye of a needle” so that we can put the thread of our work through it, and that is enough.

If a person is satisfied with that and the result of the work doesn’t matter at all, if he grows stronger by the group and begins to demand the Creator’s help, he doesn’t need anything else. The vessels of receiving are totally empty, and there is only the group that powerlessly, humbly, is ready to pull itself together somehow with the little power it has left and turn to the Creator. This is the very last state from which there is the great breakthrough to the next level, to a higher state.

This is how we should continue the St. Petersburg convention, in order not to feel any success in our vessels of receiving, but, rather, to change our vessels to vessels of bestowal. Let’s hope that we will be able to do this work until the next convention in February in Israel. This will be a very meaningful advancement.
[113638]
From the Lesson Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/1/13

Related Material:
Noah’s Ark For The Whole Group
How To Work Irrespective Of The Result
Bestowal Without Reward

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Dissemination, Group Work, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

The only reason for our being in this world is to reveal the Creator during the time of our existence. This is the definition of the wisdom of Kabbalah, the method of revealing the Creator in this world by the created being, and the world will exist until all the created beings reveal the Creator. Everyone feels this reality until he reveals the Creator in all his desires. This is why the world exists.

So, in the end, we come to the work of the Creator, that is, to His revelation. The revelation of the Creator is the revelation of the property of love and bestowal, opposite to our nature, that we see around ourselves and discover inside ourselves.

The revelation of the nature of the Creator is possible only at our own request, need, and desire. Therefore, as a person studies the science of Kabbalah, he begins feeling that he lacks the revelation of the Creator, the force of bestowal and love. Will it happen that I suddenly will want to love the other, to give to him?

Is it possible I expect as a result of my work and all of my efforts that I will be able to love everyone: the still, vegetative, animate nature, and people? Can I reach such a desire to love everyone selflessly without any regard for myself and without receiving my own enjoyment? What situation, what conditions, should the Creator organize for me so that I want this?

It is impossible to imagine that this could happen. After all, I can only love that which brings me pleasure: fish or candy, food, sex, family, money, power, and knowledge. However, it is impossible to imagine that I could love something that does not bring me pleasure.

I feel my desire completely empty, without getting any pleasure from it and not even feeling the suffering of emptiness, nothingness, and disappointment. My ego has suffered. I feel exhausted. All my plans that stem from my old egoistic nature collapsed. I feel that I have no future in my desire to enjoy. This state is worse than death, the collapse of all hopes, just some kind of inhuman suffering like the suffering of Job.

I begin to understand that I will not be able to get any pleasure from this situation. However, in spite of this, on top of everything, if I still aspire for bestowal and love, to act for the good of the other, these actions really will be in order to bestow! In that case, I can be sure that my egoistic desire will get nothing from this because I do not count on the future reward, but only think about the actions themselves that end up with someone else and are realized there.

My vanity should not be nourished by the fact that I behaved like a hero who is proud that he sacrifices himself. This is also a reward and not a small one. That is, no one knows what I did, and I, myself, do not even know this. My egoism is deprived of the tiniest opportunity to get some compensation. This is what is called bestowal, and we have to come to this state.

This happens gradually due to the changes that occur in us. Now, this final state appears to us as abstract and impossible, but, actually, it is very inspiring. As a person advances and discovers the conditions necessary for spiritual action, he finds an opportunity in them to be like the Creator, to be in this state, in this thought and desire. It is the force with which He controls and embraces the entire creation.

If a person performs this inner psychological change inside him and prefers the pleasure of bestowal, then he reveals this state, and all the rest we will learn there. In any case, all this life and this whole world make sense already.
[113753]
From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/2/13

Related Material:
The Purpose Of Life Is The Revelation Of The Creator
Do I Want The Revelation Of The Creator?
Go For Love

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

Opinion (Richard N. Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, USA): “Whenever something bad happens – Iran moving closer to acquiring nuclear weapons, … some official or observer will call upon the international community to act. There is only one problem: there is no ‘international community.’

“The United Nations General Assembly comes closest, but little can be expected from an organization that equates the United States or China with, say, Fiji or Guinea-Bissau. …

“No amount of UN reform could make things fundamentally different. Today’s major powers do not agree on the rules that ought to govern the world, much less on the penalties for breaking them. Even where there is accord in principle, there is little agreement in practice. The result is a world that is messier and more dangerous than it should be.”

My Comment: The whole advancement to perfection comes from the “recognition of evil”‑the revelation of the imperfection of our egoistic nature. Only when the human being, people, and the world are finally convinced of the total corruption of this nature, the self, and the world, will they be happy to give it up. Then, the upper force of nature will be revealed in their sensations. People ask it to change them, and it corrects them. Everything that happens to us is only to bring us to this event.
[113645]

Filed under: Crisis, Economy, Globalization, News - No Comments →

We must make efforts only to unite everything to one point, where the Creator and the created being, “something from something” and “something from nothing,” are adhered. All the concealments, the distortions, the contradictions, and the events seem to exist only because we don’t feel and don’t perceive the unity. There is no time or place. There is only the state of lack of unity and this is what we experience and live in.

Everything that I feel now around me and inside me is the lack of unity in every possible way. The moment I can unite everything the world becomes the world of Ein Sof (Infinity).

Question: How can we connect all this to working in a group of ten?

Answer: The group of ten is a support tool in a “sight” through which I view the world. It helps me focus on it and attain unity. Suppose there is a small circle in the center of the lens with an “X” in the middle that helps me focus on the target.

Dissemination helps us clarify the goal that we don’t see at the moment and cannot focus on since it is beyond the horizon. Dissemination creates the conditions, the data that we must put into the formula in order to calculate the right direction to the goal. There are a thousand parameters we must take into account in order to shoot, such as heat, cold, weather conditions, the wind, different diversions, constant and changing states.

All this must be included in one formula in order to ensure that we hit the target. This formula is this entire world, everything that we see in our 613 senses.
[113629]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/24/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Related Material:
Infinity: The Summit Of Attainment
Glasses To Correct Spiritual Vision
Unifying The Two Forces Of Nature Within

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Dissemination, Group Work, Spiritual Work, The Tens - No Comments →

Nature never changes, rather our perception of nature changes the extent of its disclosure. Man is changing, becoming more intelligent, more powerful, and therefore he investigates nature more and more deeply. Nature itself is not changed, rather the person is the one who is changed and discovers in it new phenomena, new laws, characteristics, and connections.

Nothing is changed in reality; all the changes take place only in relation to us. The person doesn’t do anything by himself at all. Either they manage him in an absolute manner from above, without any participation from his side, or they manage him with his participation. But through this participation he can only hasten development.

And in that I hasten my personal development, with this I influence the whole world since I become an integral part of a large integral system. Therefore all its other parts also are changed together with me.

Suppose that now I advanced within a month what I  needed to advance over the course of a hundred years (with a speed like this we move forward), but can the rest of the world remain in place together with this? We draw the entire world after us and hasten its development. Likewise the picture is changed: our way of life, the way of advancement. We move rapidly, well, easily, softly instead of shaking with hard bumps in a cart filled with blows, bruises, problems, and sufferings like those that followed us throughout the entire exile.

It all depends on us! And this says that Israel (“Yashar-El” directly to the Creator) hastens the times. The state of the completion of correction is rigidly determined, it is a law. But all the rest of the states, although they come according to that same law of development, the person himself determines their speed, manner, and how he feels them. We need to believe that this is how it is at every point on the way, along with the fact that everything is determined by the Creator and that “There is none else besides Him”.
[112761]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/16/13, The Book of Zohar – Introduction

Related Material:
Do We Hasten Time?
The Purpose Of Creation, In Brief
Make Every Instant More Exalted

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Free Will, Group Work, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

Question: What does it mean to be the Creator’s partner?

Answer: It says that the Creator begins creation and the righteous end it. Our job is to take everything that He has prepared for us, these Lego blocks, this whole puzzle, and reconstruct the initial picture that He created. Thus we become the Creator’s partners.

We gather His creation but in the opposite form. By collecting and putting together all the parts of creation we discover where each part was created, why it was created that way, how it is connected to the other parts, and what should be done in order to connect it with the others.

It’s as if we have a pile of parts of a machine that was taken apart and are all mixed together in total disarray. We don’t know where to start and how to connect these parts, but this pile contains everything that we need and there is nothing missing except for the craftsmanship of knowing why it was created this way, for what purpose, and what should be done so that this mechanism will start working.

What kind of work should this machine do? How am I connected to it as I become an integral part of this machine? This machine has the elements of the still, vegetative, and animate nature with which it is easier to manage and which I find easier to organize. But there is the speaking part that I don’t know what to do with, I don’t understand and it cannot be connected. It’s only possible with the Creator’s help.

It’s only by putting this machine together, this puzzle, that we attain the essence of the Creator’s attitude towards us. We never attain the Eminent Himself, but only His attitude towards us, our vessels, His plan, the thought of creation, as it says: “From Your actions we will know You.” Thus we learn how the Light of Hassadim fills the vessels and then the Light of Hochma, and then we attain Keter by Bina and Hochma, which means the thought of creation.

But this is the thought of creation with regard to us, and not Him. We have no vessels to actually attain Him. At least this is what Kabbalists say. We don’t know what happens afterwards on the upper levels after the end of correction.
[112374]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/25/13, Shamati #54 “The Purpose of the Work”

Related Material:
Cleave To The Creator More Strongly
Completing The Construction Of An Incomplete World
Constructing The Lego Of The Soul’s Shard

Filed under: Adam-The Common Soul, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Spiritual Work - 1 Comment →

Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download: MP3 Audio
[audio:http://files.kabbalahmedia.info/audio/eng_o_rav_2013-08-04_declamation_blog-rav_full.mp3 title=’4.8.13′]

Filed under: Audio Version of the Blog - No Comments →

Question: You say that it is time to remove all the limitations for new students and if a person wants to come to the lesson we shouldn’t forbid that. Until now we used to allow a person to gradually join the group, the method.

Answer: I would allow people to join different events freely. It is because we have to think about how to attract people. It you allow people to attend different events they will later join the group and participate in all the activities together with everyone else.

Maaser (tithing) is very serious business. When a person pays this each month, there is an inner struggle inside him and he has to decide whether or not to do it.

Baal HaSulam used to charge money for every lesson. We know that it isn’t a problem to pay for something once: “Tell me how much I should pay for a whole year and I will pay, and I don’t want to hear about it anymore.” But this isn’t what we should do. Each of us should pay once a month when he gets his paycheck since he has to “tear” himself from himself. It is very hard and complicated.

So you should understand these friends. I would allow them to join the group and to feel it very closely. I wouldn’t hide anything from them. I believe that we should be completely open, and only when we see that these friends want to study seriously will they have to take a certain course if they haven’t done so already. Perhaps they have just finished such a course and have grown a bit weaker now.

I would let them join all the lessons and all the conventions without any preconditions since now, we—the major, central mass—have reached a point that should have been achieved at the convention. Now we can allow those who we can attract by the integral education to be around us, even those who don’t belong to it.
[113578]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/21/13, Shamati #59 “About the Rod and the Serpent”

Related Material:
Newcomers And Veterans
Day Will Follow Night
Filter All That Is Redundant

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

Baal HaSulam, Shamati # 127: “The Difference between Kernel, Essence, and Added Abundance”: …Malchut has no more than a point, a black point that has no whiteness in it.

And if one accepts that point as the core and not as something superfluous that one wishes to be rid of, but moreover, accepts it as adornment, it is called “a handsome abode in one’s heart.” This is because he does not condemn this servitude, but makes it essential to him. This is called “raising Divinity from the dust.” And when one sustains the basis as essential, one can never fall from one’s degree, since there is no departure in the essence.

And when one takes upon himself to work as a black point, where even in the greatest darkness in the world, the Holy Divinity says, “there is no place to hide from you.” Hence, “I am tied to Him in one knot,” “and it will never be detached.” Because of that, one has no cessation of Dvekut (adhesion).

If a black point, which is called the point in the heart, is revealed in a person, then nothing else is revealed to him. The rest is based on his self-nullification relative to this black point. A small Light begins to shine to the person, playing with him around this point, which is felt like the thirst for adhering to the upper.

The Light comes intermittently, causing ups and downs in a person, working on him, forming various qualities in him from the right and the left side. After some time, he feels that this point is very important, that it is necessary to hold on to it, and that it means self-nullification.

After all, all the spiritual advancement is based on the fact that the person rejects the entire world that the Light is drawing for him now, from that space in his desire to enjoy which is revealed to him as pictures of this world where he seemingly lives. It is like a dream, but it appears like life because of the pictures that appear in his mind.

Then, he begins to understand that the process that he needs to go through is in faith above reason, that is, in bestowal above reception, reason, understanding, when adhesion is valued above everything else. Then, he begins to work methodically, step-by-step, constructing in himself, on the basis of this point, his spiritual world above all the conditions that the Creator sets for him.

This world is built from the same space where, prior to that, he or others were the masters, and now he reveals that only one upper force, with which he is in mutual communication reigns in that area. The Creator is working on him all the time, sending various problems, troubles, but the person begins to understand that only by attributing this to the Creator, besides Whom there is none else, and Who sends all these problems on purpose to make the person to pay attention to Him. Only in this way can he turn all the bad events into good ones, darkness into light.

However, it is under the condition that the person understands and is grateful for everything that happens. Even he, himself, is waiting for the pre-dawn darkness in order to turn it into Light, attributing it to the Creator, Who arranged this on purpose to give the person the opportunity to rise above his feelings and justify the Creator, thanking Him for all the exercises. Only then can they become partners, and the person will adhere to the Creator.

Then, the black point becomes the center of the universe. The universe, the first nine Sefirot in relation to the point of Malchut, is the very space that the person gave to the Creator on his own accord, by virtue of his love. Thus, he built the center of the infinite universe from the point in the heart that was revealed in him at the beginning of his path.
[113555]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/31/13

Related Material:
Who Is Projecting The Movie Of Our Life?
The Creator In The Eyes Of The Created Being
Free The Space For The Light In Yourself

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Spiritual Work - No Comments →