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.

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