Audio Version Of The Blog – 7/30/25
Posted on July 30th, 2025
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Question: Why is the authority of the Creator experienced as some heavy burden that must be accepted with effort, as a yoke?
Answer: Because the authority of bestowal is directed against our will, against our ego. That is why we perceive it as a heavy load, as a burden.
First and foremost, I need to organize a routine for myself, one that becomes a framework, a burden so that I work “like an ox to the burden and a donkey to the load.” I must understand that this work is unpleasant to my “donkey” (desire—Homer, donkey—Hamor). I treat my nature like a donkey, over which I, as the master, want to place a burden, a yoke that restrains it and forces this force—the “ox” or “donkey” to work.
I cover its eyes with blinders, give it food, I create both restrictions and fulfillments in order to compel it to perform the actions I need. In this way, I am not killing or punishing it, but working with my natural inclination in a deliberate, goal-oriented manner.
I am not the one who makes the corrections, the light does. I only carry out all the preparations so that my “donkey” will do its job exactly as needed, so that the light can influence it. That is why I bring in my control: reins, a yoke, a bridle. Most importantly, I blind its eyes so that it will not be distracted by anything irrelevant to the straight path, and so it sees only the road ahead.
This is what it means to place a load on the donkey. But I do all this for its own benefit! Because afterward, as it is said: “The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s trough.” It is in these desires, corrected with the right intention, that we eventually receive fulfillment.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/10/11, Writings of Baal HaSulam “Matan Torah [The Giving of the Torah]”
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Question: What is Kabbalah’s position regarding non-believers and religious people? I see that you seem to constantly navigate between them!
Answer: You are right.
Religion views the Creator similar to a human being, i.e. changing and depending on the person’s actions. Each religion presents both the Creator and His messengers as it likes. They are forced either to coexist or to try to destroy each other because their view is based on faith, meaning it is unprovable. Whoever is stronger is “right.” Or they act as if the others do not exist, each in its own flock.
But they all share one thing: they see God as treating a person based on how the person treats God and others. That is, God changes, is sometimes angry, sometimes compassionate. This is how a person interprets it from their life and fate.
So God can be bribed, you can “pay” for paradise, or appease Him so that He will treat you well. You can atone for sins or buy off punishment. You can give charity to ward off a blow of fate. It is all built on the idea that a person’s external behavior changes God’s attitude toward them.
Atheists treat God like nature, unchangeable and mechanical, and it does not have its own mind and plan, it does not depend on our attitude toward it, but only on our “mechanical” actions.
Kabbalah sees nature and the Creator as one and the same. But He has intelligence, a plan, a purpose. He has feelings. So in the process of development (evolution), He created the human being exactly as we are: with feeling and mind, with two opposing systems, like an egoist who wants to enjoy every moment of existence. He created us this way so that by using the method of Kabbalah and the forces of nature (the surrounding light), a person would change themselves and become similar to the Creator.
Through this a person gains true independence (otherwise they are completely driven by nature and egoism, and are not free), perfection, eternity, and adhesion with the Creator (the status of the Creator).
The Creator in Kabbalah is unchanging because He is absolute, absolutely good, and therefore cannot change; only something less-than-perfect can become better or worse, but not the absolute.
Therefore turning to the Creator is really turning to yourself and convincing yourself of the need to correct yourself to become like the Creator, the model of goodness.
So atheists try to remake the world, and the religious beg the Creator, while Kabbalists correct themselves and thereby correct the world.
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Comment: Psychologists conducted a very interesting study that showed that volunteer workers engaged in charitable activities experience burnout more than anyone else. Emotional, physical, and mental burnout is caused by stress. They often suffer from what is called “compassion fatigue.”
My Response: This happens because of the complete powerlessness to do something above one’s own egoism. A person egoistically wants his altruistic actions to succeed, but in the end, they do not. As a result, he begins to hate it all.
He sees a wall in front of him, and he sees how much the demands of altruism are opposite to his egoism, to his nature. And there is nothing he can do about it.
Question: So what is real charity that would not lead to burnout?
Answer: Real charity is when a person works for the world in order to bring the world to perfection, fully understanding what that perfection is.
Question: And what is this perfection?
Answer: It is only in unification among people. In accumulating and developing the feeling, the quality of unification, in individuals and in nations. We have hardly seen any large-scale attempts of this kind.
Comment: People constantly unite against someone. But you are saying they should unite in order to unify the world.
My Response: Yes, that has never happened, and that is true charity.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman,” 1/13/20
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A good environment consists of the Rav and the friends. If a student does not adhere to the teacher like the lower’s GE (Galgalta ve Eynaim) to the upper’s AHP, if one does not annul oneself in one’s most refined point, which one has discovered within oneself, the point in the heart, and does not attach this point to the teacher, meaning to the teacher’s views and spirit, then one has no place from which to receive the spirit of life. The person will lack the force that develops the Reshimo, the spiritual gene.
This matter is very straightforward: either there is such a connection or there isn’t. And much of it depends on help from above and spiritual luck. It is determined, not by external circumstances, but by the internal efforts made by a person, along with various factors related to the root of one’s soul and the judgment that this soul is going through.
If there is no connection with the teacher, then, as it is written in Shamati 25, “Things that Come from the Heart,” As long as he has no power to sentence the world to the side of merit, they subdue him, he mingles with their desires, and he is led like sheep to the slaughter. He has no choice; he is compelled to think, want, crave, and demand everything that the majority demands.
There is nothing a person can do against this. Even if he is physically close to the teacher, who is like the end of a spiritual conduit for him that descends from the world of infinity through the chain of Kabbalists, if he doesn’t connect to this pipeline, he receives no spiritual nourishment and therefore he does not develop.
In the past there were cases where a teacher would raise a single student. But in general, the teacher tends to his students through the group, connecting to its center.
The group, for the teacher, is the lower spiritual entity. The student who can connect to the center of the group, after having fulfilled two essential conditions of annulment in relation to the group and connection with the friends, will be able to connect to the teacher through that center.
The teacher is called Rav (great) because he is the upper Partzuf, the upper degree, in relation to the students. To the extent that a student annuls himself toward the group’s center, he receives, via the connection with the others, a vessel into which he can absorb the teacher’s thought and spiritual attainment.
But this annulment must be total from the depth of the heart and soul in everything that pertains to the spiritual path and authority over one’s egoism.
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From Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/10/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam “Things that Come from the Heart”
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Question: Are we capable of performing a clarification between holiness and Klipa? Or is our work to attract the Creator into this clarification?
Answer: We must always involve the Creator; otherwise, we will not be able to feel correctly where we are, what direction we are heading, or what is influencing us.
That is, without the Creator’s force in the midst of our forces, showing us what is better and what is worse, and how to separate one set of Kelim from another, we will not be able to clarify who we are, what we are made of, or what we truly want to attain.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/15/2025, “The Ruin as an Opportunity for Correction”
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If a person wants the Creator to help him come to spiritual revelation, then great persistence is required of him: faith in the sages and faith in the Creator. This is a kind of adhesion in which a person cancels his opinion and joins the opinion of the teacher and follows the teacher’s advice.
The teacher is all the Kabbalists who for thousands of years wrote books for us and explained. The student must rely on them in his progress, like a small child who does not know where he is and does not understand what to do, but obeys adults.
This is called simple faith, without which no development is possible. Little puppies look at their mother and run after her; this is always how they begin.
Everything begins with such simple, mechanical actions that the student performs even because he has no other choice, and he also following the example of others. And with these actions we attract the light that reforms.
The Creator arranges all sorts of situations for applying efforts for us, and so we advance, starting this path. There is no other way to move forward. It is not for nothing that it is said: “Like an ox to the burden and a donkey to the load.” Therefore, one must learn not to pay attention to one’s feelings. On the one hand, I am full of pleasant and unpleasant experiences, become more and more sensitive, and at the same time, I continue to move forward despite any of my states. This is very important.
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From Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/18/18, Writings of Rabash “Come unto Pharaoh – 1”
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Preparation to the Lesson
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1st part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, Shamati #70 “With a Mighty Hand and with Fury Poured Out” (11.24.2021)
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2nd part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 72, 66 (7.12.2006)
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3rd part of the Lesson — Writings of Rabash, Article 4 “Each One Shall Help His Friend” (1984)
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4th part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Introduction of The Book of Zohar,” “The Donkey Driver”
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