How Can We Refine Our Thoughts?

565.01Question from Facebook: How can we refine our thoughts and their effect on us?

Answer: It depends on the nature of the thoughts. If these thoughts are purely your own individual ones, then they will remain confined to your egoistic self, focused solely on how to provide it with maximum comfort.

If, however, thoughts arise from connecting with others, then you begin to exit yourself and sense an influence from the outside, and in this way to develop and ascend.

Therefore, refining one’s thoughts primarily means exiting oneself into connection with others. Connection with others is not the ordinary connection as we understand it in our world.

This is work in the group, which must be studied. By working in the group, you develop and perfect your thought so that you begin to feel the source of your state: the Creator.
[249839]
From KabTV’s “Answers to Questions from Facebook”

Bestowal—A Means to Pleasure

608.02Question: At this stage, am I not allowed to imagine adhesion with the Creator as pleasure? Am I not even allowed to think about it, since this would break the intention?

Answer: No, adhesion with the Creator is pleasure. You think this way, and indeed it is so. The only thing is that it is not the pleasure you currently imagine, but pleasure on a completely different level and in a completely different sense.

However, unfortunately, at present we cannot imagine that such pleasures exist, because we are speaking about pleasures of a different nature. There are no words with which to describe the pleasure of bestowal. We are speaking not even about pleasure from bestowal, bestowal itself becomes the means for the pleasure of being similar to the Creator.
[360455]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/16/26, Rabash, “What Is, ‘Return, O Israel, Unto the Lord Your God,’ in the Work?”

The Goal Is Adhesion with the Creator

938.07Question: Are ten souls the ten Sefirot?

Answer: Souls are not Sefirot. The people who are called souls are the people who are around me, who need the same thing I do, and who can help me in the work. Therefore, I need the group. But I can turn to the group only on the condition that I know the goal: to come to adhesion with the Creator. Then my appeal will be correct.

Otherwise, it will be harmful to me. I will start building some kind of kibbutz or collective farm that would eventually collapse because it is all egoistic. “The end of the action is in the initial thought.” First, I have to think through where I need to arrive, and only then, based on the goal, do I begin to work to unite with the other souls.

If I simply want to unite with people, for example, with one because he is strong, with another because he is intelligent, a third because he knows how to get ahead and will help me do the same, a fourth because he is wealthy, a fifth because he is calm and will calm me down, and another because he is cheerful and can amuse me, if I pursue this kind of path in uniting with people, I will not end up in the right group, the group that will help me push the heavy burden toward the goal.

Perhaps I will reach another goal, but not a spiritual one. Therefore, according to this, I should choose like-minded people who are moving in the same direction as I am.
[360147]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/30/26, Rabash, “What Does It Mean that Oil Is Called ‘Good Deeds’ in the Work?”

What Is the Purpose of Kabbalah?

254.02Question: What is the ultimate purpose of Kabbalah?

Answer: Kabbalah itself does not have a purpose; it realizes the purpose of creation. Creation has a purpose. It has a beginning and an end, and Kabbalah helps us realize this purpose in the swiftest and most benevolent way.

The purpose of creation is the revelation of and state of complete equivalence and connection with the one and only upper force.

The entire universe, everything we can possibly imagine, is governed by one upper force. The goal of creation is for each of us to reveal this upper force to each of us, understand it correctly, draw closer to it, and use it as we wish.

Question: What is the upper force?

Answer: It is the quality of bestowal and love. Like a mother, like parents, it is something very great and benevolent.
[228697]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman,” 6/2/25

Look at Corporeality Through Spirituality

424.01People who study Kabbalah have two vessels: the heart and the point in the heart, and also two lights: the spark of this world (Ner Dakik) and the surrounding light of the upper world. Consequently we find ourselves in a rather complex inner state: the heart is constantly “expanding,” but only to the extent necessary for the development of the point in the heart.

Therefore, sometimes we feel that we have absolutely no interest in this world, that we want nothing from it. This is not because the heart is vanishing, but because the point in the heart is striving toward its own goal and suppresses all the desires of the heart. At other times, the opposite happens: the point in the heart seems to fade, while the heart reveals an intense, almost maddening craving for the pleasures of this world.

Furthermore, there are stages of development that do not depend on us, but on the structure of each person’s soul and on the overall structure of souls, which is determined by their proximity to the Machsom [barrier].

A person must go through a state known as recognition of evil. Are the desires in my heart good or bad? If they are bad, why? I feel pleasure in them, so why are they bad? They are bad because they are opposite to the desire of the point in the heart, and I strive toward it because there, perhaps, I will feel that I can experience greater pleasure.

We go through different states, rising, falling, and so on. Therefore, on the one hand, it seems to us that we should advance toward greater attainment of the Creator, toward the Machsom. On the other hand, we enter even greater darkness.

We should strive more earnestly toward spirituality, but at the same time we have many periods when we are drawn only toward corporeality. A person goes through these states over a long period of time until one eventually reaches the point where spirituality becomes the most important thing for them, and they see everything corporeal through spirituality.

This means that a person acts in this world only in order to attain spirituality. One lives, works, and does everything that is necessary, but only for this purpose. This goal draws them so strongly that it transforms their entire existence, but it does not annul their ordinary life.

Rav Baruch Ashlag (Rabash) writes that if a person uses everything that comes to him in order to connect with spirituality, with everything that comes to him through the actions of this world—then, eventually, this brings him to a state in which he strives toward spirituality with all his strength.

And since this world has already served him to build a strong desire for spirituality, he no longer needs it. Then he is granted entry into the spiritual world. At the same time, he remains in our world, but that fact no longer matters.
[359673]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/17/26, Rabash, “Who Needs to Know that a Person Withstood the Test?”

Related Material:
Spirituality is the Unity of Three Factors
The Separation Between Body and Soul
Observe the Point in the Heart

Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 227

Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 227

How Can We Be Connected with the Friends and Engage in the Dissemination of the Wisdom of Kabbalah If We Are “Locked” on the Creator All the Time?

One necessitates the existence of the other. We discover that, as we were created, we will not succeed on our own in renewing our connection with the Creator or increasing it in any way. If we sit at home, we will very quickly discover how empty we have become of thoughts. If we come to the group, despite thoughts such as, “Why did I come to a place where there are another hundred people around me? It would have been better to stay at home,” we begin to work. We enter a whirlpool of thoughts, whether foreign or good, and jump into it. This is of utmost benefit.

For example, at times one experiences a good Sabbath. The work is good, many things are discussed in the group, and a special connection is formed. The result of such a Sabbath is a feeling of heaviness. Why? This is due to new desires arriving with no corresponding forces as of yet, but the coarseness increases and the left line begins to rise. It is not yet truly the left line, but nevertheless the appearance of a new desire. Then we feel heaviness, pressure, and the sense of upliftment disappears. After a day or two, if we nevertheless return to the society despite the feeling of heaviness, and we remain constantly within some kind of process, we begin to attain something more mature. That same desire which we felt after the Sabbath as heaviness, making it difficult for us to move forward, becomes connected through study to some illumination, and a kind of new mind and heart begin to form within us.

After several days of study, we feel that precisely in those secondary desires and discernments, which we previously experienced as heaviness and flavorlessness, there emerge new discernments, knowledge, and the acquisition of a certain experience. Eventually we come to a feeling of enjoyment after having experienced both a descent and an ascent. This is called “a new day has passed.” That day could last a week or a month, it does not matter.