Audio Version Of The Blog – 5/13/25
Posted on May 13th, 2025
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Question: What kind of preparation is needed so that a person, together with everyone else, demands correction? Is it Arvut (mutual guarantee)?
Answer: What kind of preparation is needed for a person to want to fulfill a law? The same as with anything in life!
Let’s say I do not want to follow the law that says you should cross the street only at a crosswalk like everyone else does. I just do not want to!
The first time, someone yells at me, and I shrug it off. The second time, I get a ticket. Now I start watching when it is allowed to cross and when it is not. But if no one is around, I still cross like before. The third time, God forbid, I get hit by a car, and then I finally…
That is when I start to get a sense that maybe I should follow the law. This is called: “The Creator places a person’s hand upon a good fate and says: take it.” And the person must now strengthen himself in this because we cannot just desire spirituality on our own. But when that thought arises in us, we begin to consider: “Maybe it is worth fulfilling this law. I do not want to, but still, it might be worth it.”
This is where a person’s work begins.
We start looking for support, guidance, and the necessity of keeping this law despite our laziness, our evil inclination, our refusal to comply, and eventually we come to truly want it.
Now, the possibility of choice appears within a person. One becomes split in two ever since one was given the point in the heart. A person’s heart is entirely egoistic. It wants nothing but to fill itself and destroy anything that stands in the way of its desires. But in contrast to this, one was given a point in the heart.
We do not even know what this is or where it came from, but suddenly we begin to hear something that is opposite to our nature. This is called “a part of the Creator from above.” We can see this in people who are willing to get up at three in the morning to listen to a lesson. They begin to feel this inner split.
Now the person faces a choice: seek out advice and with its help gain the strength to resist one’s nature, which, truthfully, is not even one’s own. The Creator created the evil, meaning, the desire to receive and placed it in him. And apart from this desire, there is only the light, which is the Creator.
He created this evil in me, and now I must find some kind of support in order to rid myself of it or correct it to ensure that it no longer rules over me so that I might truly desire to fulfill the law of Arvut.
To strengthen oneself in this choice means that I am searching for a way to be free from evil, not that I am capable of doing it on my own. We cannot reach the state by ourselves of connecting our hearts, uniting into one Kli, and becoming worthy of the presence of the light in it. We must seek advice and truly want it, that is, to come to what is called a state of necessity.
Our readiness is called: “We shall do, and we shall hear.” I do not know what awaits me, I understand nothing about the state ahead of me because I am rising from a lower degree to a higher one. By definition, I do not understand that higher degree.
If I were already wise enough to grasp and feel it, I would already be on it! But if I am only about to leap to that degree, I do not yet know it. All I have is a sense of its necessity. This is called “We shall do, and we shall hear.” “We are ready. Just do something already!”
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/6/2025, Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”
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Live in Others
In the book Shamati, there are many articles that speak of hatred toward egoism (the Sitra Achra), how it surrounds a person, how one must hate it, rise above it, and outplay it. But all work with egoism must take place on the background of the understanding that “It all comes from the Creator,” that “There is none else besides Him.” Otherwise, we remain trapped within that same egoism (we work in Avoda Zarah).
Therefore, from the very beginning, a person must tune himself to the idea that “There is none else besides Him.” Only then can he begin to understand that it is the Creator Himself who deliberately places before him a quality opposite to His own so that the person will come to hate that quality, which is the opposite of the Creator. (“You who love the Creator, hate evil.”)
Only when there is genuine hatred toward one’s egoism because it separates him from the Creator, because it hides the Creator from him, can one truly separate from egoism through hatred. (“He who saves from the hands of the wicked.”)
Therefore all inner work must begin with the awareness that one’s entire state is from the Creator: “There is none else besides Him.” With the understanding that the Creator is playing with him from all sides (“From the rear and the front You encompassed me,” Psalms 139:5), the person himself must align with this game, and enter into it, the game with the Creator.
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Comment: Most often, a person wants to feel good. Let us say that if he is sick or has some problems, he subconsciously says, “Yes, I want to receive support from the upper force in order to overcome this obstacle,” although deep inside, within his soul, he thinks about how to make himself feel better.
My Response: Only at first, it means that it is still an unformed desire.
Then gradually, from the depths of suffering he begins to realize their depth and their causality, that they are not meant for him to suffer, and their satisfaction is not an end in itself. After all, then what is the point of this life? To suffer and to relieve suffering? Is that really the meaning of existence?!
The meaning of existence is to rise above this life and use it as a means to reach a higher level.
Otherwise what? I am being beaten, I run away. I am beaten, I am getting treatment. And that is what life is all about?! This is a completely wrong way of looking at the world.
That is why Kabbalah says that we must reveal the source of our sufferings and why He sends them to us so that we can connect to Him. Otherwise, we will not be awakened to this connection with Him. And later we will be grateful for this.
Is it possible without it? No, it is impossible.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. How to Ask the Creator Correctly” 8/27/10
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Comment: I have always viewed the world through reason and logic. But today, during the gathering of friends, I began to feel many things through emotions, and I thought I was going crazy. On the one hand I want to hold on to this feeling that I experienced at the convention, but on the other hand, I am afraid of what might happen next.
My Response: While listening to you, I was reminded of myself. I also used to perceive the world only through laws. I am still like that, that is how I was made. I need to see the system, its laws, how it is laid out clearly, where the input is, where the output is, the formula by which it operates, the interferences, their regulation, etc. That is my nature.
When I began studying Kabbalah I was also focused only on the system. Before coming to RABASH, I had been studying Kabbalah for four years already, studying the structure of creation: worlds, Partzufim, Sefirot, clear laws!
Anything that had to do with feelings, I pushed aside. I could not even open those books. They seemed to me like fiction, sentimental outpourings, some kind of sugary fluff. I could not take it! I could not compare them, even though it was written that this is a science. I could not understand how one related to the other.
I remember having deep internal struggles. But I simply set them aside as if they did not exist. Like we usually say, “I do not believe it.” That is it, I will deal only with what I can grasp.
But when I started studying with RABASH, I saw how it all came together in him. We seriously studied the system: I would ask, and he would answer everything clearly, mathematically, with iron logic, because we were studying the physics of two forces.
Basically, what is there? There are two forces that interact with each other according to exact laws. As it is said, it is a system of forces that descends from above downward, according to precise laws, with the goal of revealing the Creator to a person in this world. In other words, it is a system. That is all.
There is some kind of skeleton, mechanics, and forces acting through this mechanism on a person so that through this system he can understand the force that operates within it. This was very clear to me and aligned with my natural inner structure. My profession matched this as well. I deliberately chose it because I was drawn to a systematic view of the world.
But after studying with RABASH when I suddenly felt that he was speaking about feelings, I could not understand what they had to do with anything. Revelation is in reason! And he says: “Revelation is in feelings.” I looked at him devotedly, like a dog at its master, but I did not understand what he wanted from me. He spoke, and I nodded. He would ask, “Do you understand?” And I would say, “Yes.”
This went on for a long time. I did not understand what was being asked of me! What feelings?! Charts, diagrams, schematics… I would ask, and he would answer. But what do feelings have to do with this?! I did not have any.
Only later, after two or even three years, when it began to dawn on me that matter is desire, came the realization that it goes through feelings. That, I could not grasp. What does it mean, “matter is desire”? Matter? Yes. Does it work? Yes. Desire? That is plus and minus. But where is it in me? I could not connect what was written with myself, with my own feelings.
Then I started to understand that, indeed, it cannot be connected with my feelings because I am an animal. But what is being spoken about here are other kinds of feelings, on a higher level. It was about the feelings of bestowal and reception, which do not exist within me or for me, but are isolated from me by the first restriction (Tzimtzum Aleph) and operate outside of me. There, bestowal and reception are not within me, but in the other.
Meaning, I have to isolate myself and start to constantly think about the other, in him is reception, in him is bestowal, and about how my system interacts with his system. Suddenly it started to come together for me like a normal part of the system because I detached from the perception that the world is within me. Now, “the world in me” means the feeling of myself outside myself, in others.
Then it became easier for me, because these were not the same corporeal emotions I constantly got confused in. This is an entirely different method, a different system of relationships. It is detached from me. I place a barrier and start building it outside myself, under the control of reason, under the control of feeling. These feelings do not come from my heart, but from the intention to exit myself and feel myself in another.
When this picture came together for me, I began to understand what Kabbalah is talking about. I remember how difficult it was for me because I think I was more insensitive than you. But on the other hand it was such a joy, such a powerful revelation. It is amazing that such a coarse, lowly, and egoistic person like me was constantly being pushed toward this work.
That is why the most important thing is to understand that Kabbalah speaks of “outside of me,” “outside of my skin.” I used to imagine it all differently, like taking an apple and peeling off the skin. In the same way, I thought I had to peel my own skin, and then I would feel the world.
But it turns out it is not like that. You have to exit and feel everything outside yourself, only in others; that is where you exist. Your body remains an animal; it exists as an animal. You only deal with living in others, that is where your feelings, your mind, your Kli (vessel) are.
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From Lesson 1, Convention in St. Petersburg, 7/12/2013
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Preparation to the Lesson
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1st part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee),” Items 28-29 (11.17-18.2003)
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2nd part of the Lesson — Lesson on the Topic “Preparation for the Convention,” Lesson 2: “Believing that the Creator Is Good and Does Good”
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Selected Highlights
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