Audio Version Of The Blog – 11/27/24
Posted on November 27th, 2024
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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 9
When Will a Person Feel the Content of the Words of Prayer?
A “word” is a special state that includes a specific number of components. All these components are vessels and lights that together create a sensation of Godliness in a person.
Only through the study of Kabbalah and only after many years of study does the heart begin to function from the “point in the heart” in alignment with what is written in the books, and only then do we understand the written content. Until then, everything we read in the Siddur is understood according to the physical vessels we possess. For instance, according to the physical vessels, we understand “merciful” as compassionate, “gracious” as forgiving, and so on. We interpret according to what we feel in our physical body.
After we reach spiritual sensations and the upper mind, the words begin to take on new content. With each word, we feel the Creator according to that word; we feel the word’s essence and meaning. Each word then becomes a genuine vessel and light, which appear together in our sensation.
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Question: How can we practically feel the Shechina between us? Should we feel it simultaneously or at different times, each one inside oneself?
Answer: Everyone in the group should feel it, but not necessarily at the same time. Some may feel it now, some in a week, others in a month, etc. But everyone should come to feel it.
Question: How long will our trials last before we attain the Creator?
Answer: For as long as you are engaged with your egoism. As soon as you rise above it, all trials will end.
Question: Rabash’s article “Purpose of Society – 1,” says: And although we have not yet achieved this goal, we have the desire to achieve it. And this, too, should be appreciated by us, for even though we are at the beginning of the way, we do hope to achieve the exalted goal.
Is “we hope” because we cannot vouch for others?
Answer: No, this is because we hope for the help of the Creator, who will elevate us and give us correct, good thoughts and actions.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/3/24, for Graduates of MAK—the International Academy of Kabbalah in Russian, “We have gathered here”
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Question: Why does it seem too heavy and make me want to stay in the darkness when I feel the Creator’s love ?
Answer: Such difficulties, troubles, and obstacles are given to us deliberately to develop a true desire for the Creator within us.
Question: How can we, as a ten, reach the boundary of “above our strength”?
Answer: Together. When we understand that not a single one of us can fulfill even the easiest, smallest commandment of the Creator unless we help each other.
Question: If each person, to the extent of their contribution, can feel the Creator within the ten, how can we achieve a unified sense of the center of the group and the Creator? After all, everyone contributes according to their own capabilities.
Answer: It doesn’t matter; the direction remains the same.
Question: How can we develop the desire to delight the Creator to bring him contentment?
Answer: For this, we must think about Him. The thought must come in this particular form: I will do something specifically to bring Him contentment.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/12/24, Writings of Rabash “Overcoming”
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Question: Baal HaSulam and Rabash left us a treasure in the form of the Shamati articles. How can we learn to work more deeply with these articles to strengthen our connection and feel each other more?
Answer: First, read an article, and then make an effort to dissolve into the group. Then, read another article, and once again dissolve into the group. Alternate in this way, and each time you will see completely different states, whether in the same article or in different ones. It all depends on you and it will be perceived as new each time, critically new.
My teacher Rabash always opened the notebook with the Shamati articles recorded in it before sleep, read a few lines, and then fell asleep. This notebook was always beside him.
Imagine the degree of Kabbalist he was, and what he saw in these articles that we read now—those of us who do not even understand what the spiritual world means. He had already ascended and descended through all the degrees, played his scales like on a piano, moving up and down through the entire space of the spiritual world, reading the same articles we are now reading.
Therefore everything depends on how connected we are with each other, in order to express from ourselves the attribute of bestowal in caring for the ten. And in this measure, we will feel Shamati.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/28/19, “Questions and Answers”
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Question: What is a friend in the ten?
Answer: A friend is called “haver.” “Haver” comes from the word “hibur,” connection. Connection implies that we are different in our natural desires and at the same time united together in one goal.
Let us say there is one Kli and a second Kli, and they cannot connect with each other, but they can work to achieve one goal in which they unite, meaning, we unite only in the Creator and in no other way.
Egoists who are ready to annul their own egoism in order to unite in the Creator, to be incorporated in Him, are called friends. It is either women or men, but of the same gender. Only the Creator can connect us, and we can only ask Him about it. Even if this is not a real prayer, we can still ask.
If a person chooses the goal of attaining the Creator, then it can only be achieved by uniting different desires into one goal. Therefore it is said that the smallest group is two people.
But in order to create a whole group, it is desirable to be ten. Rabash writes about this in one of his first articles, not nine people and not eleven, but precisely ten. Why is this so? We study this from the unfolding of the four stages of direct light, from the structure of the ten Sefirot.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/28/19, “Questions and Answers”
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Question: How can one reach the correct, true prayer at a convention?
Answer: All those attending the convention must understand why they are coming and what they will ask of the Creator. I come to the convention to be in such a connection with others that would give us a common force capable of breaking through the wall between us and the Creator.
Therefore, I come to the convention to unite with others, to be influenced by them, and to be inspired by how well they can do this, how they are managing, and the strength and opportunities they bring. I see friends who have traveled from far away, who are eager, who understand that there is a chance to break out of the shell in which we are trapped.
Baal HaSulam gives the example of a worm that lives in a radish, feeding on its bitterness, it thinks the whole world is like that. But when it pokes its head out, it sees sunshine, light, and hears birds singing: “Ah, what a beautiful world! Where was I before?”
This is what we need: to break through the shell of the radish we are in because beyond it, we see nothing. We come to the convention to absorb each other’s impressions and inspiration and together turn to the Creator.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/28/19, “Questions and Answers”
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Question: What is connection and my care for friends, for the group, for the ten?
Answer: This comes gradually when you make many efforts and realize that they do not give you anything. Then in complete detachment, you finally begin to understand that you have to follow the path indicated by the Kabbalists.
Therefore, you need to turn to the center of the group, and within the connection between you ask not for yourself, but for the others. By asking for them, you are actually asking for your spiritual self. And when you ask only for yourself, you ask for the physical self. And all of this a person begins to reveal only from his defeat when he sees that he is at a dead end.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/28/19, “Questions and Answers”
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We have a very complex relationship with the Creator. On one hand He is a friend; on the other, a master, and from yet another perspective, a correcting, fulfilling force.
The Creator is everything. He cannot be defined as a single entity. Everything I feel at any moment, everything I relate to, receive from, or connect with is all the Creator.
Then the group fades away in my perception. It becomes my Kli, that is, the feeling through which I sense the Creator.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/28/19, “Questions and Answers”
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Question: If my husband and I want to “kill” each other, is this a sign that we are progressing, or on the contrary, descending?
Answer: In any case, you need to rise above it, both on the animate and spiritual levels. What good is there in wanting to “kill” each other?
Show your husband out of spite that you can rise above yourself; let him be envious. When two people study Kabbalah, they can make significant progress, but it requires double work, both in the group and with the wife. The wife is like another group.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/28/19, “Questions and Answers”
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