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Question: How can we learn to correctly absorb our friends’ yearning for spirituality?

Answer: Try to unite with them so that their questions become your own and their desires and aspirations become yours. It is like a mother who absorbs her child’s desires until they become the central focus of her life, she lives for him.

Question: In principle, this kind of absorption happens even on a corporeal level when we get together for our meetings. When someone shares something with others, it is as if he is answering himself. Does it work on the level of thought where a person processes his ideas through someone else?

Answer: Of course, absolutely. That happens when a person starts to explain things to others or even just writes them down for himself without integrating with someone else.

Question: Is this why you claim that we need to internalize all the articles of your teacher Rabash?

Answer: That is something completely different. When you internalize the articles of Rabash, you connect with the author, that is, with a level that is far above your own.

Question: What happens when people read and discuss these articles together?

Answer: By studying the articles together, people also invest in each other. This creates a tremendous opportunity, a broad shared vessel in which they can grasp what Rabash was actually saying. After all, their small individual minds combine and are amplified many times over.
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From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. Rabash’s articles” 8/17/10

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Comment: When there are completely different kinds of people in a group, some may repeat slogans, which is unacceptable to others.

My Response: We must forgive people. What can you do? We all started our lives by soiling diapers. It is the same here. People come; what do they understand, what do they know? Everyone is puffing up, wanting to express something of their own, and put themselves in a certain position. These are natural impulses of a small person. I too had them, and so did each of us.

I remember so well how totally hollow I used to be, all the bragging: why, how, for what? After all, I was not young anymore, over thirty, and not stupid, I was a scientist. And still. I remember how the egoism rocked me, I went through stages of self-aggrandizement, bragging, domineering, jealousy, whatever. Every person goes through all this.

Comment: I think it is great to be aware of it, not to stay in this, but to go through everything.

My Response: You are talking about realizing this, being able to correct it, and supposedly staying above it. That is, how good it is to realize that you are now putting pressure on egoism, how good you are, how strong you are, etc…! But this is an even higher form of egoism.

Question: What is above that?

Answer: There is more above it.

Comment: But still it is better than living in it.

My Response: Yes, undoubtedly, all this is much better, more purposeful, closer to the Creator, despite all the tricks egoism plays on us. Of course, this is better, because a person sees the work of the Creator on oneself. What did the Creator create? What evil, with what sophistication in me, such qualities!

Comment: The worst thing is when you want to change something and cannot do anything.

My Response: This is not terrible; it is wonderful when you are unable to do anything and feel completely empty, discouraged, powerless, and misunderstood—just out of it.

This is when you begin to think the Creator did this on purpose so you would turn to Him. But you do not have this need until you reach this point of despair. Only then will it arise in you: you need to turn everything only to Him; this is the only option, the only salvation.

Then you turn to Him. If your appeal comes from a totally disillusioned, desolate state, without a future, without anything, then the Creator helps you because you already have a complete request, a ripened desire.
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From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. When There is no Desire” 8/12/10

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“One who eats that which is not his is afraid to look at his face.” This means that anyone who feeds on the labor of others is afraid (ashamed) to look at his own form, for his form is inhuman (Baal HaSulam, “The Love of God and the Love of Man”).

Within us lies the attribute of shame; it is profound and piercing. We are desperately afraid to expose it because shame nullifies our self, turns us into nothing.

If I experience shame rising to its full height, I annul myself as a result. This stems from the highest root: from my opposition to the Creator, from the desire to receive that stands in contrast to the light.
When feeling how opposite it is to the light in qualities and height, the desire experiences this gap as shame.

Then it is ready to annul itself, to cease to exist, just to no longer feel this chasm. This is what compels it to perform a restriction, i.e., to nullify itself. To get rid of the shame, I am willing to return to non-existence, to the nothingness from which I came.

Sometimes a tiny speck of this spiritual feeling awakens within us.

So why is shame necessary? It helps us attain adhesion, complete resemblance to the Creator. Shame arises from the oppositeness revealed between us and Him and helps bridge that gap.

This means that if I want to progress, I must constantly intensify the feeling of shame, that is, the gap between me and the Creator, so that I can move forward without error.

Let’s say that today I am ashamed as if I stole one dollar from Him. Tomorrow, it will be two dollars, the day after, three. By isolating and emphasizing my opposition, I correct it and advance.

Thus, shame is the sharpest sensation that literally “short-circuits” me to the Creator. If I truly correct the shame through bestowal and constantly rise above it, I reach adhesion. That is why our final state is defined precisely as adhesion.

Shame is a separate creation. Two desires alone—receiving and bestowing—are not enough because then direct fulfillment would suffice: one gives, the other receives, no problem.

But the Creator desires that the created being resemble Him. Therefore, He embedded within it this unique feeling called shame, which constantly prods and agitates us.

When you throw a bone to a dog, it happily gnaws at it with no shame. But a human being, unless reduced to a bestial state, is constantly driven by shame.

What makes you live in that particular house, wear those clothes, go to work, start a family, enjoy “cultured entertainment,” and so on? Shame. Otherwise, what will people say?

There is shame that hinders my advancement: “What will others think?”

And there is another kind, shame before the Creator.

If I strengthen it, the embarrassment before others fades into the background: “Let them talk, let them think what they want.”

I am ready to feel childish awkwardness before others if only it helps me feel true shame before the Creator and aim in the right direction.

Shame is the point of my I, its indicator.

In relationships with others, my ego can be harmed. But in relation to the Creator, it is about the deep, primordial opposition of attributes.

Shame is created separately. It does not exist in the inanimate, vegetative, or animate levels. It belongs solely to the human species and differentiates within it according to levels of desire.

Shame is the reason for the first restriction, the cause of all development. In the world of infinity, Malchut was filled with light and in adhesion with the Creator. But it lacked just one thing—to rid itself of the opposition to Him.

That is the point of shame.

You would think, what does it matter? Before you is a table filled with royal delicacies, and the Host gives you His entire palace, all His treasures: “All that I have is yours. What more do you need? Don’t you want to be a guest in My house? Fine, I am no longer the host.”

Yet, the guest remains unsatisfied: “It was not I who prepared all this, it was You. I came to everything ready-made.”

“So you want to become like Me—existence from existence itself?”

Here we touch upon a very subtle point, so lofty that it is unclear where it leads, somewhere beyond the tenth millennium, after the final correction.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/31/11, Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Love of God and the Love of Man”

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Question: You say that if a person has the strength for something, then it is a Klipa, meaning something impure?

Answer: If a person has a desire to do something before reaching spirituality, then that desire is egoistic.

Question: But how can one act without a desire? Let’s say, something needs to be done.

Answer: You cannot do anything without a desire, no one can. For that, you must be in a group that gives you inspiration and ask for strength from above. You personally do not have anti-egoistic or altruistic desires. Therefore, all your desires can only be egoistic. That is, if you have the energy to do something, it means your egoism is giving it to you.

Question: When I do something related to my profession, I cannot perform it without a desire, right?

Answer: Of course not. But know that your desire is egoistic. You want to assert yourself, gain recognition, prove to yourself what you are capable of, and so on.

Question: But still, there is some inner impulse that makes you do certain things?

Answer: Of course. It is the desire for power, fame, need for self-assertion: “I am capable, I can, I will prove it to everyone, and to myself as well.”

Question: I mean, one can find other directions too. Why is there such a need to pass on specifically Kabbalistic knowledge? For example, if I have discovered for myself that the world is built this way, why do I want to tell everyone about it?

Answer: Because it is important to you, and you want it to be important to others. Simple human egoism is the desire to impose something on another.
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From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. Creativity in Kabbalah” 8/18/10

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