Audio Version Of The Blog – 8/20/25
Posted on August 20th, 2025
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Question: How can we gather our small Hisarons (deficiencies) into one common Hisaron?
Answer: Be closer to your friends, understand others as much as possible,
unite with one another.
Then we can form a more or less common Hisaron. Of course, not in everything, but in such a way that we can already rise toward the Creator and demand fulfillment from Him.
Question: As I advance, I suddenly discover that my Hisaron was not entirely correct because as a result of the advancement I learn something new. How can I preserve the concept of the correct Hisaron if over time I become disappointed in it?
Answer: The fact that you become disappointed is good. It means you need to replace your Hisaron with another, a higher one.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/12/2025, “First Demand and Ask”
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Bina is the quality of faith in its abstract form, but this faith is realized in Malchut, for faith can only be practically applied where there is the quality of reception. The will to receive first appears in the stage of Hochma, yet it is not realized from the side of the created being.
The will to bestow appears in Bina, but still without practical realization. From the combination of both emerges the fourth stage (Dalet), where there must be faith, and according to the measure of faith, there is reception. The will to receive in Malchut results from Bina’s desire to bestow and Hochma’s desire to receive, which Zeir Anpin fully unites together.
The 15th of Av (Tu B’Av) is considered one of the most auspicious days for Israel. A good day is one when one can give the most to the Creator. Tu B’Av symbolizes reception in order to bestow, but as a pledge for the future, when Malchut will have already been corrected. At present, though there is an ascent of the worlds, it is due to an awakening from above and not from the work of the lower one.
The end of correction takes place on Purim. Tu B’Av represents the joining of Malchut’s receiving desires under all the proper conditions, and emerges from the four phases, represented as four groups of maidens seeking grooms: Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin, and Malchut.
“What would the beauties among them say? Turn your eyes to beauty, for a woman is only for beauty.”
“What would the wellborn among them say? Cast your eyes on family, for a woman is only for sons.” In The Eye of Jacob he adds, “The wealthy among them say, ‘Cast your eyes on the wealthy.’ What would the unsightly ones among them say? ‘Take what you take for the Creator, as long as you crown us with gold coins’” (Rabash, “The Fifthteenth of Av“).
Thus, all the stages would pass—Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin—until it was Malchut’s turn, and it was revealed that the Kingdom of Heaven (Malchut Shamayim) must be poor and destitute, not rich, beautiful, or noble. Only through our work do we become able to remain loyal to her.
This festival embodies our search, our disillusionment with our own strength, our readiness by any means to separate from the will to receive and remain loyal to bestowal, to demand nothing for ourselves. I ask the Creator to give me protection from my will to receive, my greatest enemy. I must come to hate my egoism so deeply that I will not succumb to any temptation.
Let my ego simply die—it will receive nothing! Let me myself disappear—it does not matter, for I must pass through the point of total restriction and be born on the other side of the barrier, which means the death of my will to receive for my own sake. This is life and light for me, for life exists only beyond this barrier (Machsom).
To do this, one must come to the fourth phase, Malchut, the unattractive, poor, and humble bride called “faith.” If, despite her poverty and lowliness, I can remain loyal to her, it means that I have attained faith. This is the condition for attaining Malchut: agreeing to cleave only to her, regardless of all other alluring forms.
Faith is accepted without any conditions; otherwise, it is not faith, but a calculation or transaction. Faith cannot have a self-serving foundation, I want to rid myself of egoistic calculation. Without this, I cannot enter the spiritual world. This is the entrance condition: cleansing oneself of egoistic desires and remaining only in bestowal. The quality of bestowal is the absence of any calculation for self-benefit.
If I strive to attain faith, I pass through all these stages, one after another, and meet the “brides” that precede Malchut—the beautiful, the wealthy, and the noble. In the end I come to the point where I want nothing but to be freed from all this “nobility.” I want there to be only the Creator, and for me not to exist. Only then does spiritual life begin.
I am ready to abandon all calculations and cling to the Creator without any deliberation. Thus, I become a spiritual embryo. I want the Creator’s program to govern me, to determine all my behavior, thoughts, and desires. Let another engine operate within me.
Now my egoistic engine turns and seeks how to gain more, succeed more, and delight myself. But I want a new engine, one that constantly turns me toward the Creator and seeks nothing for itself, for a new program of bestowal to act within me. This means that the upper light is revealed within me, and grants me a new vision of life, and with these new eyes, I see the upper world.
Out of all the “brides,” out of all desires, after long discernments, we choose the one that demands nothing but adhesion, to base all its reception solely on faith. This bride seems ugly to the will to receive; it lacks nobility, wealth, and beauty. Yet precisely when I receive nothing for my egoism can I be wholly loyal to the Creator. I am ready to die as long as I can remain loyal to Him. This is the condition for crossing the Machsom.
Tu B’Av is the choice of the Kingdom of Heaven (Malchut Shamayim). After the 9th of Av, nothing remains for myself. Everything has collapsed, the First Temple and the Second. And then comes the 15th of Av, when I can base my relationship to the Creator solely on the quality of bestowal. This is why the 15th of Av is considered the greatest holiday.
Thanks to the revelation of the ruin on the 9th of Av, on the 15th of Av I gain the ability to hold onto the Kingdom of Heaven, to choose the true bride, Malchut.
The four brides that we choose from are our attitudes toward the group; we expect to receive from it wealth, knowledge, and nobility. But in the end, I see that I will receive nothing except one thing: through loyalty to them, I will attain loyalty to the Creator. And this is my greatest treasure.
All this appears ugly to my will to receive. I see nothing good in this group and would gladly reject them—yet it is precisely through this form that I can come to the Creator if I accept it. The whole world shows how it hates me for engaging in bestowal and how it would support me if I were as egoistic as everyone else.
The world becomes very sharp in this respect. No one accuses me for egoistic reception, but everyone attacks me for striving for bestowal. And if I change, I am immediately promised a good life and the return of the three advantageous brides—the stages Aleph, Bet, and Gimel.
Here one must be very direct and not enter into any compromise. The Creator will confuse me in every way, but the condition for crossing the Machsom is to say: “Better death than such a life.” Then I will see how all these illusions dissolve and vanish.
The true bride is the one who will remain with me on the condition that I am ready to accept her as she is, even the ugliest in the world. She has neither beauty, nor wealth, nor nobility, nothing attractive. Why, then, do I love her and be drawn to her? Because only in this form can she bring me to the Creator.
I see that it is the Creator who plays with me through all these illusions. He tempts me with wealth, intelligence, knowledge, and nobility, and bribes my vanity. But in the end I understand that the greatness of the Creator is in modesty. Therefore I must lower my pride and demands, and seek not beauty or nobility, wisdom, or wealth, but only the desire to cleave with all my heart, and then I can “marry.”
The period of the 9th of Av is a time of death and destruction. But from the 15th of Av onward, from the joyous day of Tu B’Av, when we choose the true Malchut Shamayim, we begin the preparation for the congress, for connection between us and adhesion with the Creator, now with the correct desire.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/16/19, Writings of Rabash The Fifteenth of Av
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We are in a state called “this world.” The reason for us being in this world is to rise, through our own efforts, to the level of similarity to the Creator, to reach His level, as it is said: “You will see your world during your lifetime.”
The science of Kabbalah is a method of revealing the Creator to creation in this world. How do we reveal Him? By becoming similar to Him. Only if I acquire a desire like the light, my spiritual vessel, will I be able to reveal the light, the Creator, in it.
How can I make myself into a vessel for revealing the light so it would fill me? We have been given two tools for this. The first is the material, the desire I acquire to the extent of absorbing outside desires, desires of other people.
There is only a point in me, which wants to move toward spirituality, although I do not know what it is. I just feel that something is missing. It is only a point of desire. I have no volume at this point, no top, bottom, right or left sides.
I cannot feel anything there, except an unquenchable desire–I want something, but I do not know exactly what. I can try to imagine spirituality, but no matter what I come up with, it is all fantasy from the realm of this world, not true reality.
How can I add volume to this point? I have to connect with a special, whole, perfect organism, with a great desire created by the Creator: Malchut of infinity. For me, it is a group, but in fact, it is the whole of humanity. But since I do not know what the whole of humanity is, a group is enough for me. This is the first component.
If I try to connect with a group and am able to connect with some part of it, as if cutting off a certain area from it, it becomes mine. It turns out that I am already gaining volume, and this volume is my desire. If I already have such a big desire, and not a point, I can start to feel something in it. What am I missing then? I am lacking this desire to be like the light. That is, the first stage is the acquisition of desire, the second is the correction of desire, and the third is the fulfillment of desire. That is it!
To obtain the desire, I have to annul myself before the group, before their unity, be connected to them like a drop of semen stuck to the wall of the uterus. This is the first stage.
The second stage is being with my friends, I must try to make my entry into the group, my connection with them, for the sake of giving so the desire I am now gaining is similar to the light.
I achieve this by using surrounding light (O”M), the light that returns to the source, what is called the “Light of Torah.”
After that, the desire becomes filled with the light of Hochma.
Therefore, when reading a source such as The Book of Zohar, which has great power, we must: feel ourselves in a common desire and want for our common desire to be corrected, to become as giving as the light.
In order to bring about such a correction, we must expect it while reading The Book of Zohar so that our desires, our union, would be for the sake of bestowal, so we would feel like a single whole and truly become a Shechina, a “place” where the upper light, the Creator, is revealed. If we correct this “place” for the sake of giving at least to some extent, to this extent the Creator will be revealed in it.
That is, I connect with the group as one whole, in mutual giving, mutual guarantee, unity, with the help of light that returns to the source, giving us all a sense of a common integral connection. Then, to the extent of unity between us, we reveal the quality of bestowal, the light of the Creator reigning in us.
Therefore, let us try not to forget about this task and realize that constantly remaining in these efforts to build such a picture for myself is my inner work, which I am now going to do as we read The Book of Zohar. After all, during the reading of The Zohar, a great light comes. Are we preparing the right desire for it so that it corrects and fills it?
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From Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/13/11, The Book of The Zohar “Mishpatim”
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Question: How can humanity create the balance that exists instinctively in nature but is absent in human beings?
Answer: A human being does not have an instinct for balance with nature. That is why he is given the opportunity to build human society on his own and through his efforts to attain the force of connection and the mind that enables him to reach balance.
Therefore fighting environmental pollution is useless because the main source of pollution is the human being who has entered a new era. If he does not take care of his own correction, then even a minimal disturbance, just a gram of improper inclusion into nature, throws the entire system of nature out of balance. And this is what we are only beginning to see now.
Humanity will not disappear, but until the very last moment any kind of catastrophe is possible: nature will drown us in the sea, freeze us, roast us with extreme heat, and burn us in wildfires.
Question: For many years, the United States conducted nuclear weapons testing on two atolls in the Pacific Ocean, after which they naturally became unfit for human habitation. But nature blossomed there extraordinarily like nowhere else. As a result, scientists concluded that the harm caused by human presence is worse than that from nuclear radiation. How can that be?
Answer: Nature knows how to heal the damage caused to it on lower levels, but of course even that has its limit. If the damage is too great, the changes will become irreversible.
Question: What kind of harm does a human being cause on the “human level”?
Answer: Man caused no harm at all until the last hundred years. All his harm lies in the fact that he is not in balance with nature, which is his obligation as its central element.
The main reason is not the mechanical harm done to nature, not that man burns it or dries it up, but the fact that we should have begun to bring ourselves into balance with nature from the time of the ARI, from the 15th century, or at least from the time of Baal HaSulam, who defined that period as the “last generation.” Our inconsistency with the integral system of nature—this imbalance—is what causes all the disasters.
Of course, this does not mean that upon reaching balance with nature we would be allowed to pollute it, but we simply would not even think of harming nature, we would instinctively act correctly.
To be in balance with nature means to attain good, integral relationships between people—in thoughts, desires, and intentions—not to harm human society and the whole of general nature, as well as the higher system.
To be integral in thoughts means to perceive the entire system of nature as one organism. And in accordance with the proper connections between people, all the other levels—still, vegetative, and animate—rise up, become included in the general system, and are corrected together with the human being. Then there will be no catastrophes, and balance will be established in everything.
A very strict condition operates: “The individual and the collective are equal.” This means that one person can cause as much harm as all of humanity.
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From the Conversation 9/6/17, “Climate Cataclysms”
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Preparation to the Lesson
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1st part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, Shamati #47 “In the Place Where You Find His Greatness,” (11.4.21)
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2nd part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 91 (8.10.06)
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3rd part of the Lesson — Writings of Rabash, Article 5, “What Does the Rule ‘Love Thy Friend as Thyself’ Give Us?” (1984)”
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4th part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Introduction of The Book of Zohar,” “On the Night of the Bride”
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Question: It is said that first we attain the quality of bestowal and only then do we receive goodness and delight. But what can we bestow if we have not yet received anything?
Answer: It does not matter what we can or cannot bestow. We are speaking about the possibility of acquiring the quality of bestowal.
Then, based on the forces I draw and wish to combine so that they alone will exist within me, I come closer to the qualities of bestowal, until they influence me to the point where I am in complete alignment with them. In this way, I will begin to act in the quality of bestowal.
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From Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/9/25, “Subjugating the Heart”
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Question: I enter into the desires of the people with whom I try to unite, and I feel that I envy their Kelim. How should I work in this situation: Should I simply connect everything to the Creator? Is that the correction or is there some other way to work with envy?
Answer: The work is only in relation to your circle, your friends with whom you are going through this entire path. If you annul yourself more and more in relation to them, then you advance forward and receive more from the Creator.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/9/25, “Subjugating the Heart”
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This is so because it is a natural law for any being that anything outside one’s own body is regarded as unreal and empty.
And any movement that a person makes to love another is performed with a reflected light and some reward that will eventually return to him and serve him for his own benefit. Thus, such an act cannot be considered “love of others” because it is judged by its end. It is like rent that pays off only in the end.
However, the act of renting is not considered love of another.
But making any movement only as a result of love for others, without any spark of reflected light or hope for any kind of reward in return is completely impossible by nature (Baal HaSulam, Matan Torah [The Giving of the Torah]).
This means that one should not try to perform supposed “good deeds” toward one another. If we do this without drawing the light that returns to the source, it is still the same egoism and does not bring us any closer to correction.
First of all, we must take care to draw the light, and only then, precisely with its help and power, to act. If I act without the light, then I am guided by my egoism and only entangle myself further, and I veer off the straight path that leads toward correction.
Question: If I want to do something for the benefit of another, what is the difference whether there is light in it or not?
Answer: If you act simply from yourself, it is the result of your egoism. Even though such an action may appear from the outside to be very good and kind (you may be helping everyone and handing out gifts), you must still put in effort and invest energy. This means that you must receive compensation; otherwise, you will not be able to do anything.
By the law of conservation of energy, you must replenish what you have spent. This replenishment of energy is called the reward that you receive for doing good to others.
For example, you gave out candies and in return you received honor from them. Honor is more valuable to you than the candies, which is why you do good deeds, and you receive a nice bonus for which it is worth working. Such is the calculation made within one’s desire to enjoy.
But if you perform a good deed through the power of the Torah, the light, then you do not consider yourself at all, but only how much it contributes to the correction of the world, for this is the Creator’s desire. Therefore you do everything in order to correct the world.
Then you may be allowed to see the benefit from your actions, that is, the pleasure they have brought to the Creator. You will be permitted to see this on the condition that you do not derive any egoistic enjoyment from it, but rather place a screen over this knowledge and hold the intention for the sake of bestowal.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/25/15, Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Matan Torah” [The Giving of the Torah]
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