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The Staff In Moses’ Hand

284.03Moses is a force that wants to pull out all a person’s desires. I decide to become good, to yearn for spirituality and bestowal, to connect with my friends, to love everyone, and to rise above the dirt of this world. I decided! But the next moment I forget about my good intentions and everything goes on as before. This happens to everyone. And what do I do?

The force that decides to go forward and pull along all the other desires of men is called Moses. And Moses sees that he cannot pull the others out with him. Then he complains to the Creator: “But, they will not believe me!”

You convince your body that you need to get out of bed to study, to strengthen the connection with your friends, and to work together on your connection. I try to persuade my heart, but it does not want to listen. It is not impressed by my appeals, that is, it does not believe that this should be done.

Then the Creator ordered Moses to throw the staff on the ground, the staff turned into a serpent, and Moses got very afraid and ran away. The fact is that there are only two states: egoism or sanctity, and there is no middle ground. The same staff turns into a snake if you throw it on the ground.

If I value spirituality no more than the values of this world, then my staff turns into a snake, and I will of course run away from the spiritual path. Therefore, even if I do not see the value of spirituality, I must increase it, grab the serpent by the tail, lift it up, and it will turn into a staff.

Whether it is a staff or a serpent is determined only by the person himself. That is, I decide how to move forward, either to spirituality, to connection and bestowal, or to corporeality, to separation, isolation from my friends and from bestowal, and this is called the staff or the serpent. And it all depends on what I value more and what I value less, that is, I need to work on my scale of priorities.

This work is mainly carried out in the ten when I am impressed by how much my friends value spirituality. Everyone is obliged to show his friends that spirituality is much more important to him than corporeality, and so: “They helped everyone his friend.” This is the most important thing.

The serpent represents all the intentions for my sake and I must grab them by the head in order to be on top of them.

The Creator teaches Moses by giving him the staff with which to advance and go forward. This means that corporeality will always be lower in importance than spirituality, and this will pave the way. But if you do not keep the importance of spirituality high and you throw the staff on the ground and decide that spirituality is not particularly important, that heaven is not more important than the earth, then the staff will immediately turn into a serpent. In this way, the Creator shows that spiritual elevation must be preserved.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/25/21, “Pesach (Passover)”

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Egoism Poisons Our Lives

115.06We all have to go through two stages of our path, and the first is the exile from spirituality. This stage is very long because first the inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature develop.

Then a human appears who also has to go through four levels of development: inanimate, vegetative, animate, and speaking inside human, until he begins to realize that he is under control of the will to receive for his own sake. Egoism keeps us in slavery, preventing us from being free. Therefore, a human himself defines his state as an exile from the force of bestowal, the force of love and connection.

Throughout history, only a few people have come to this conclusion, but in our time we have entered the period of what is called the “last generation,” when nature pushes all of humanity to reveal that we are in exile from the will to bestow, from mutual love.

Egoism holds us in this terrible slavery. When we realize this, we will understand that there is only one way out: to shout, to ask, to demand with all our might, the upper force, which has placed us in this exile, to bring us to freedom. The difference between exile and redemption is only one letter “Aleph – א,” which symbolizes the revelation of the upper force, the Creator, in our world.

If the Creator is revealed in our lives, we will feel that we are coming out of exile, out of the control of our egoism, which no longer locks us in the dark corner of the entire vast reality. Therefore, the most important thing to begin with is to realize that we are slaves of our egoism, our Pharaoh, that we work for him with devotion and love and obediently fulfill all his whims. We do not detach ourselves from him, so much so that we are in solidarity with him. It is only when we begin to receive blows for associating ourselves with egoism that we recognize that it is concerned with its own good, and not with our benefit.

This revelation comes only through a special illumination from above, from the Creator, who awakens in us the feeling that there is another governance in the world, not only of this terrible egoism. There is another governance in the world of the forces of connection and love.

Now we feel ourselves between these two forces fighting with each other, and we want to belong to the force of love, the force of good. The evil force that controls us is egoistic, and therefore, it is not related to the upper force. It turns out that instead of enjoying our egoism, we begin to perceive it as evil and ask the Creator to take us out of the control of the evil force.

This is how we gradually become free from the enslavement of our egoism, we come out of Egypt, out of the control of the Pharaoh, the evil inclination, and come under the control of the good force of bestowal and love. We are always under control of one of these two forces, it is impossible otherwise: either one or the other. If one of them rises, the other one falls, and vice versa.

Therefore, looking at the historical process that humanity has gone through, we can say that it is all called the Egyptian exile, starting from the first days of the creation of the world. There was not even a human being yet, but the will to receive was already dominating the world. Only there was no one to identify it and to want to change this dominion.

When a person discovers the control of egoism over him, he tries to come out of it, and then he enters the next stage already outside of Egypt, in the land of Israel.

There is nothing more than these two states: either Egypt or the land of Israel, and now we stand right on the border between them, between these two desires. Let us hope that we will quickly discover the control of the evil inclination over us and that we will not want to remain under it, will define egoism as evil, and we will move to the control of the good desire.

Therefore, there are only two states in history: Egypt and Israel. Until today, all of humanity has existed in Egypt with the exception of  selected individuals, the Kabbalists, who have already emerged from it and are illuminating our path. All the rest of nature is under the control of egoism, but in our time we are already able to reach bestowal.

The sooner we discover that we are under the hated control of Pharaoh and want to escape from this slavery, the closer we will come to the exodus from Egypt. This discovery will be made by all of humanity, with the realization of the evil of egoism that poisons our lives, and then we will all exit to freedom.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/23/21, “Pesach (Passover)”

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Bestowal Radar

935Whether our prayer reaches the Creator depends not even on its strength, but on its quality, on our desire to unite together in order to be like the Creator. If we unite like one man, just like the Creator is one, then we can receive an answer from Him, feel how He reigns in us.

As if we want to catch His wave, turn the knob of the radio receiver and tune in to it so that it starts playing within us. In this way we adjust ourselves more and more until we become at least in some way similar to the Creator, and then we grasp His quality within us. First, it will be the weakest light of Nefesh, then Ruach, Neshama, Haya, and Yechida de Nefesh de Nefesh, etc., until we reach the end of correction when the Creator completely clothes Himself within our connection. Accordingly, we will begin to reveal our connection with the other tens and with the whole world.

Our likeness to the Creator, thanks to which His wave can sound within us, depends on how much we establish connections between us, as if between the parts of a radio receiver that must connect and tune in to an external wave. Then this wave will begin to sound within us. This is called the revelation of the Creator to creation.

Depending on how much we want to complement each other, to unite, we accordingly build a receiver capable of capturing the Creator. Connection with the Creator is possible only through the connection between us, as it is said: “And from love of friends one can reach love of the Creator.” Love is the highest level of connection.

And when we communicate with each other by connecting all the details of our radio receiver, we begin to reveal the voice of the Creator within us. The same principle applies to spiritual work as to technology. The only difference is that we ourselves serve as parts of this receiver that must unite and tune to the Creator’s wave, that is, to bestowal.

If we want to be in mutual bestowal and from it in bestowal to the Creator, then the Creator makes a correction by attuning us so that we can correctly unite with each other and allow Him to be revealed within our union. Then we can catch Him like a radar.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/22/21, “Pesach (Passover)”

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“What It Takes To Make A Passover For All Of Humanity” (Linkedin)

My new article on Linkedin “What It Takes to Make a Passover for All of Humanity

This coming weekend, Passover begins. This holiday, which seems to be such a Jewish occasion, actually holds within it a message and a prediction for all of humanity. It is no coincidence that the story of Moses, Pharaoh, and the exodus from Egypt has inspired several epic films; the universal message of liberation from enslavement touches a soft spot in every person: the aspiration for freedom.

To make the most of the story, we need to understand what or who enslaves us, and how we can be freed. The name of the holiday, “Passover,” is no coincidence. It represents passing over from enslavement to freedom. And Pharaoh, the great oppressor, is none other than our ego.

Moses, whose name comes from the Hebrew word “moshech” [pulling], is the force that pulls us out of Pharaoh’s grip and delivers us, making us masters of our own fates. The story of Egypt is truly universal because the liberation from the ego pertains to each and every person. At some point, each of us will feel that the ego has become a ruthless master and will want to run away from it. This is when one exits Egypt by following Moses, and becomes a free person—liberated from one’s own tormenting Pharaoh—the ego.

These days, the days of Covid-19, are tough times for everyone. Although Covid has not made us feel enslaved, it certainly made us feel restrained. The mounting pressure on people’s psyche, the economic toll of lockdowns, the growing pain and grief are spoiling the party that we’d had until the arrival of the virus. Until its arrival, we were in love with Pharaoh. He, namely our ego, has given us civilization, progress, prosperity, and everything that we have achieved.

But Pharaoh does not remain the same. Like everything else in life, he changes over time. Our ego is growing and evolving, and in the process it becomes increasingly demanding. What was great yesterday becomes completely insufficient today. Gradually, we begin to feel increasingly dissatisfied. Shouldn’t it have been the opposite, that the more we have, the happier we are? Not if we consider who demands that we satisfy his wishes: our ego.

Our ego is insatiable; the more you feed it, the hungrier it grows. And the hungrier it grows, the more demanding it becomes. In the end, you find yourself locked in pursuit of satisfactions that seem rewarding only until you have them. Once you have what you want, your boss whispers “Bring me more‼! Bring me better‼!” Then, when you say “Enough!” you realize that you cannot get away; you are enslaved to your ego and the more you resist, the more it afflicts you. This is when you realize that Pharaoh was exploiting you, that he was good to you only as long as you served him. But the minute you want to quit, you uncover his true face. This is when the enslavement in Egypt begins.

We are not there yet, but we are nearing it. We are already feeling bad, but we have yet to realize that Pharaoh, our ego, is the cause of our bad feeling, and not a virus or any other disaster. When we grasp this, it will mark the beginning of our exodus from Egypt, from enslavement to the ego.

For now, it is enough to examine everything that we don’t like about our lives and ask ourselves who is really suffering from them. If we start creating some space between ourselves and our egos, we might be able to see who is demanding the work, who is reaping the reward, and who is paying the price.
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“Home Sweet (Virtual) Home” (Linkedin)

My new article on Linkedin “Home Sweet (Virtual) Home

“A new form of digital currency is apparently moving into the world of real estate,” reported Fox Business on March 21. “The result,” continued the story, “is that a homebuyer just bought a piece of property that they can never actually live in.” The virtual house, created with a new form of block-chain technology called Non-Fungible Token (NFT), cost more than 500,000 very real US dollars.

Even more uncanny is the Reuters story that “A digital artwork by humanoid robot Sophia was sold at auction … for $688,888 in … the latest sign of a frenzy in the NFT art world.” Indeed, virtual reality is taking over.

But if you think about it, everything is virtual. When you look at how people lived fifty or sixty years ago, was their entertainment not largely virtual? They would come home from work and relax on the couch with a book or watch TV. The world they drifted to was virtual, invented by the author or the scriptwriter.

If they went to the theater, the movie presented a virtual world that existed only as long as the movie played on, and even then it was real only to the extent that the people in the theater “bought” the story. Yet, the money people paid to go to the movies or buy a book was real money. So in fact, nothing has changed but the means; the illusion is the same.

While our pastime has always relied on illusion, it yielded something very real: feelings. We may never know whether what we perceive is truly as we perceive it or perhaps it is some sort of an illusion, but we can always tell what we feel, and this is really all we care about (even if we don’t admit it). Feelings govern us; they decide what we do, and we spend our lives looking for ways to feel good. If we feel good, life is good; if we feel bad, so is life.

When something makes us feel good, we don’t care if it is physical or virtual; as long as we enjoy it, we want it. If I have half a million dollars to spend on feeling good, and a virtual home will give me that good feeling, there is no reason whatsoever not to spend it.

Therefore, we shouldn’t patronize people who spend a fortune on virtual art, or spend hours in virtual games. After all, we, too, are governed by our feelings. This is the real lesson we should learn from people’s willingness to purchase a house where they will never set foot.

“Malignant Relationships” (Linkedin)

My new article on Linkedin “Malignant Relationships

Cancer has plagued humanity for millennia. Some reports of cancer date back to the seventh century BC, and ancient scrolls in Egypt talk about cancer of the chest. Over the eons, countless cures have been concocted, yet cancer is only spreading. Some scientists believe that we should tackle cancer on a case by case basis since each case and each person is unique. In my view, there is only one cause to all forms of cancer; eliminate the cause and you have eliminated cancer.

Cancer is a disruption in the intercellular relationships, where some cells begin to behave selfishly, destroy their environment, and eventually the entire organism, causing its demise. But the cells in our body aren’t inherently selfish; they are programmed to cooperate and even sacrifice themselves for the sake of the body if need be. They begin to behave contrary to their innate program when something mars their structure, as though a malware has been installed in them, making them abusive toward their neighbors.

Cancer is a disruption in the intercellular relationships, where some cells begin to behave selfishly, destroy their environment, and eventually the entire organism, causing its demise. But the cells in our body aren’t inherently selfish; they are programmed to cooperate and even sacrifice themselves for the sake of the body if need be. They begin to behave contrary to their innate program when something mars their structure, as though a malware has been installed in them, making them abusive toward their neighbors. That malware is we, humans, whose bodies the cancer afflicts. When we turn against each other, we spread malice through all other levels of nature including our own cells. As a result, they, too, turn against each other until they die, and we die along with them. In other words, if our spirit is stricken with abusiveness, so it will be with our cells.

When we are abusive toward each other, it is not necessarily the bullies who suffer. In fact, it is usually not the bullies who suffer, though in the end, everyone suffers. No one wins from abusive conduct even if the punishment to the offenders isn’t always evident. The same goes for cancer: It is not always the selfish cells that become sick; often, another organ is struck first. However, in the end, everyone suffers equally as the entire body perishes.

If justice were poetic, cancer would afflict only the selfish. But things don’t work this way. Just as all cells are connected and a weakness somewhere may set off a sickness elsewhere, a selfish person may set off sickness in another person. That other person may not be selfish whatsoever, but because we are all connected, the entire system suffers and somewhere along the human chain, a link will break. In the end, the entire chain suffers, as with the body, but if we wait for the end, there will be no one to see that justice was done.

Therefore, the solution to cancer is not a case by case remedy, but the same remedy for all: the correction of our relations to those that naturally exist among the cells in our body. Instead of sickening our own cells through our ill-will toward each other, we should learn from them how to function like a healthy body. When we fend for each other instead of offend one another, we will be healthy in body, mind, and spirit.

“And The Children Of Israel Sighed From The Elections” (Linkedin)

My new article on Linkedin “And the Children of Israel Sighed from the Elections

Since the first lockdown, I hardly ever go outside. In the rare occasions that I do venture outside, I see the mounting hatred in people’s eyes growing from one election campaign to the next. In today’s election system, the half whose view is not represented in the government remains bitter and vindictive. And because people cannot accept the situation, their hatred becomes more spiteful and malicious with each disappointment.

Relinquishing our desire for autocracy will allow us to create a space between us where connection governs, to make room for collaboration and partnership. This is the ideal that forged the Jewish people—the ideal of love of others. In our remote past, we practiced this ideology, and that was our heyday in history. Even today, it is the only solution that can lift us from the gutter of hatred where we wallow.

In a paper titled The Nation, the great 20th century kabbalist Baal HaSulam wrote in this regard, “The difficulty of the matter is that men cannot relinquish their ideals at all, since one can make concessions when it comes to one’s material life, to the extent that it is necessary for one’s physical existence, but it is not so with ideals. By nature, idealists will give all that they have for the triumph of their idea. And if they must relinquish their ideals even a little, it is not an honest concession. Rather, they stay alert and wait for a time when they can reclaim what [they believe] is theirs. Therefore, such compromises cannot be trusted.”

Indeed, reality proves that we keep failing on our way to the ballot booths. My real hope is that our failures remain merely ideological and not deteriorate into worse scenarios. If they remain this way, it will help us arrive more quickly at the realization that we are on a dead-end road. Since we cannot compromise and keep trying to win, we are certain to soon give up on the current election system.

The election system reflects a worldview, a perception of reality. It is an interpretation of our way of life and our thinking. The current system reflects a destructive approach that builds one side on the ruin of the other. For this reason, emerging from the current deadlock can happen only if we mutually give up on our aspiration for absolute control. Again, we need not concede our ideals, our “truth,” but only the desire to be the sole ruler.

Relinquishing our desire for autocracy will allow us to create a space between us where connection governs, to make room for collaboration and partnership. This is the ideal that forged the Jewish people—the ideal of love of others. In our remote past, we practiced this ideology, and that was our heyday in history. Even today, it is the only solution that can lift us from the gutter of hatred where we wallow.

To achieve this, we must engage in open discourse in order to find how we can come closer to each other despite, and above our differences. We needn’t understand each other’s views, and certainly not accept them. Nature has made us opposite, so there is nothing we can do to sway each other’s views.

Nevertheless, if we give connection preference over winning, we will find that our differing views create a stronger bond among the rivals than if we agreed, precisely because of the effort we made to establish it. Just as couples strengthen the bond between them as they overcome crises in their relationships, a nation solidifies itself as its members do not succumb to hatred and divorce from one another, but rise above it and forge bonds that are stronger than the hate. King Solomon coined the essence of this approach with his words, “Hate stirs strife, and love will cover all crimes” (Proverbs 10:12).

Today, we need this approach no less than we did in our nation’s infancy. It will keep us unique, maintain our individuality, and at the same time forge a bond among us that will be a role model that the entire world will seek to emulate.
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Why Do We Not Feel Spiritual Processes In Ourselves?

525Question: Why does a person not understand that while reading The Book of Zohar, he is engaging with the greatest thing that exists in reality?

Answer: If a person was shown what was happening to him, he would not be able to relate to it correctly.

For example, if a child could understand why he is developing like this: running from corner to corner, touching, trying, breaking, crying, he would already be above the level he is on.

The fact is that spiritual development does not happen in the same way as in our world where we go to university and fill our voids with knowledge while studying. Here is the development of feelings and desires that we do not possess.

Under the influence of light, we develop completely new properties in ourselves, which we initially do not have. When we reach their definite development, these properties are born in us, and we begin to feel the upper world in them.

But until they have developed, we cannot see them, feel them, or understand them because there must be some threshold to which we must grow and acquire a minimum level of sensitivity.
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From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #8

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To Feel Sorrow Or Compassion?

547.05Question: Why are we given such a property like sorrow? Apparently, the Creator does not have it but people do. How can sorrow be used beneficially for spiritual development?

Answer: Sorrow in our world arises because of lack of consciousness and lack of understanding the wholeness of the picture of creation

I would not call the emotion that you are talking about sorrow. I would rather call it compassion. It is when a person regrets that there are people who do not understand the greatness of creation and what a bliss it is to attain this greatness.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 1/20/19

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