Question: What is “awe of heaven”?

Answer: Awe of heaven is the fear that I will not fill His Kli (vessel). What is “His Kli“?

To the extent that I understand who the Creator is and how important He is to me, then in accordance with His importance, I build Hisaron (a lack), the need to fill His Kli, to bestow to Him. I am afraid that this Kli will remain empty; I have a fear of not filling it. This is called trepidation before heaven.

Everything is inside the Kli, in the desire to receive, only in different forms and in different attitudes toward fulfillment. Both receiving and bestowing, the past, the present, the future, the feeling of time, and all kinds of pleasures: money, honor, knowledge, spiritual or material, no matter what, everything refers to the Kli, to the feeling within it.

As a result, all that remains is the feeling of how full or empty it is. And we call our attitude to this state fear, awe, trepidation, or, on the contrary, pleasure and other feelings. Everything depends only on the degree of the filling of the Kli.

Maybe the Kli itself does not even exist. For example, fish are not afraid of what will happen to them tomorrow, whereas you think about it. Fish do not have a Kli in which there can be a sensation of the future. In fact, we do not have a sense of tomorrow either, but we are now, in the present, feeling fear of a possible tomorrow.

Let us say that tomorrow you will not be able to pay for your apartment, and you will be evicted. You are already afraid; you are already worried about it today. Fish do not have such a concern.

Animals have no worries about this at all. Their Kli is not developed in this form, they do not feel the past and the future. But even when you feel the past and the future, you feel it in the present.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/27/26, Rabash, “What Is the Work of Man, in the Work that Is Attributed to the Creator?”

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Question: How should I conduct myself with people I have known for many years?

Answer: Does the fact that I have known them for many years oblige me to sacrifice my life for them? In my life, there is nothing more important to me than what I attain in it. Being together with these people, I am as if serving them: I justify them, I must value this game. What for? If this is important to you, then by all means. And if not, then do not. You have to decide. This is your life, not mine.

Therefore, the question “What is the meaning of our life” should constantly awaken in a person, with every inner definition (Havhana) that he grasps in his life.

By this, he asks: “How do I relate to this factor? Does it bring me closer to the goal? Is this important to me, or is there something else more important?” And in this way, each time, a person advances. If you want to settle for this kind of society, please, do. Free choice is in your hands.

When I visited abroad, I would find myself at formal dinner parties. It was like a puppet show. So what? Could I really participate in that? Out of necessity I might sit through one or two evenings and make conversation, but that’s it. I do not understand: am I supposed to serve such societies? Am I supposed to bend to their ideal?

Question: I do not feel that I am bending.

Answer: If you do not even feel that you are bending your opinion to theirs, that is bad. Does it not seem to you that they are small children? They are undeveloped. So, if you want to be like them, stay with them.

This is some kind of indecisiveness: “I would still like to remain in kindergarten.” About such a person we say: “A fool.” If he should be studying at school but still wants to remain in kindergarten, then he is a fool. Every child, if he is healthy, wants to grow up. Do you remember how, as a child, you wanted to grow up? And now you want to be small, as it is said: “What should be done with children who have grown old?”
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/18/26, Rabash, “What Are “Blessing” and “Curse” in the Work?”

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Question: What is the revelation of the vessel? If we build a Kli (vessel), is it not the light within it that is revealed rather than the Kli itself?

Answer: In relation to whom is the Kli revealed? It is in relation to me. The revelation of the Kelim, their correction, and all actions performed with them are carried out by the lights.

We learn that the upper light exists in a state of absolute rest;  and that nothing within it changes. So is it possible for the light to undergo changes? And if the light does not change, then the Kli cannot change either. After all, the Kli itself is ultimately a function of the light.

How is it possible for a creation, created and sustained by the light, to change if the light does not change?

When we say that the light is in absolute rest, this means that it always wants to delight the Kli one hundred percent. In this regard, it is absolutely unchanging. This is what “rest” means for it. But in every other respect, it constantly changes, indeed, across an infinite range in relation to the vessel, in order to influence it and do everything possible for it.

For example, I watch my neighbor and see how much he loves his son: he kisses and hugs him, takes him for walks, and genuinely cares for him. One day, I see the neighbor slap him, and the child cries. Then I see him hug and kiss the child again. What is going on? Does he love him or hate him?

He loves him even when he slaps him. This means that he has never changed in his attitude toward his son, except outwardly. In this sense, he remains in absolute rest and does not change. The upper light is the same in relation to us. Yet, in His actions toward us, in order to bring us to the goal, He is constantly changing.

It is difficult for us to return from this example to reality. Why? What is the problem? The problem is that here it is difficult: I must constantly justify the Creator, agreeing that He always acts as He should.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson on the night of Hoshana Rabbah, 10/2/26

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There comes before us a second saying, even more conspicuous, about a convert who came to Hillel (Shabbat 31a) and told him, “Teach me the whole of the Torah while I am standing on one leg.”And he replied, “Anything that you hate, do not do to your friend” (the translation of “love your friend as yourself”), “and the rest is its commentary; go study” (Baal HaSulam, Matan Torah [The Giving of the Torah]).

If I already fulfill the rule “love your neighbor as yourself,” do I need to add anything else to it? Perhaps some kind of springboard, an intermediate degree between my corrections and my relationship with the Creator?

“No,” I am told. “You do not have to do anything regarding the Creator. On the contrary, leave Him alone, completely leave Him alone; do not begin correcting your relationship with Him. You want to become closer to Him, to become better? This will not help you. You cannot do anything with regard to Him.

But you have your neighbor, and if in relation to him you carry out all the corrections and reach such a degree of love that it no longer matters to you whether it is you or your neighbor, then by this you will completely correct your relationship with the Creator and rise to His degree.”

Thus, it is not only that the commandment “love your neighbor as yourself” is the general law of all reality according to which the Creator relates to the created beings.

We say about Him: the Creator is good and does good to the bad and the good. This is how He relates to the created beings.

Therefore, for me to become similar to His love for the created beings is contained within this statement, within this law of “love your neighbor as yourself.” In other words, they are one and the same.

It is the same motto, the same law, so much so that once I fulfill this correction, I no longer need any additions in order to attain equivalence with the Creator. In this, I completely correspond to Him, am equal to Him, and become similar to Him.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson for the holiday of Sukkot 10/3/26

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Question: If a person is in a place where they cannot work with Baal HaSulam’s books, does it mean he will not be able to advance?

Answer: If people around the world have a yearning for spirituality, but they do not have Baal HaSulam’s books and they do not know about this system, it means there are reasons for that. I was searching for many years before I came to Rabash. So what?

If they have the books and they have everything but not a society, then in some way or another, they will end up having some society. If a person yearns for it and acts according to the desire that is being shown from above, then it is impossible that the Creator would not set up the rest of the conditions.

I was not thinking about coming to Israel; I was thinking about becoming a scientist. Suddenly, it changed. I do not need science; I need to get to Israel. I got to Israel, and then what next? Now how could I realize that sensation that I have no purpose in life? I started searching. I searched everywhere. Everyone can say that he himself does not know how he came to it, but nevertheless he came. It happens that way; a person is brought to it.

So I do not have a question about the people outside. Today we have many groups. This year I hope Kabbalah will blossom around the world, in many countries.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/12/26, Rabash, “One Should Always Sell Everything He Has and Marry a Wise Disciple’s Daughter”

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 258

What Is Fear of the Next World?

Fear of the next world is fear of the Creator. Fear is always present in us and stems from the emptiness of our vessels. We are afraid that we will be unable to fill our empty vessels, or we are concerned that we will be unable to fill the Creator with our vessels. If we have acquired a screen that enables us not to think about ourselves even when we are empty and to be delighting in mercy (Hafetz Hesed) despite our emptiness, to feel wholeness even when we are empty and delighting in mercy, we can think about how to fill the Creator. Before we have acquired a screen, we cannot think about this at all.

From this we can understand that correction must be gradual. At first, we think only about ourselves. Afterward, we examine the extent to which we think about ourselves and wonder whether this distances us from spirituality. Even within thinking about ourselves there are several discernments that include the question of what do we want to fill ourselves with in this world, whether we want to fill ourselves with small or great pleasures, whether we think only about ourselves and do not care about others to such an extent that we could kill them or extort something from them, or whether we already know how to take them into consideration, and so on. There are all kinds of states and degrees.

Afterward, we begin to think: “It is not worthwhile to enjoy this world. There is a next world. We want to enjoy spirituality.” When do we think that way? It is when there is something of spirituality in us, when we have a point in the heart. When the point in the heart begins to emerge, instead of this world’s pleasures, we want to receive the pleasures of the next world. Then the time of preparation begins, during which we begin, as it were, to receive spiritual pleasures. We want them. The surrounding light illuminates for us that there are pleasures in spirituality, and we also grasp something of the Creator’s bestowing nature.

When light shines, it also always gives something of its bestowing nature. Therefore, within Lo Lishma (“Lo Lishma” is when we want pleasures for ourselves from the Creator, from spirituality) we grasp something of the illumination of the surrounding light, something of Lishma. The light, whether inner or surrounding, always shines together with the pleasure and gives a sensation of its nature.

From the nature of the light that we grasp, from the grace of Kedusha, we already begin to feel that there is something else and that it would be good if we could remain in this point of the grace of Kedusha without all the other pleasures of this world. Why would that be good? It is because the light gives us the sensation that it is the best thing and that we are detached from myriad problems and troubles. In the meantime, everything is still in Lo Lishma, but there is already the grace of Kedusha. At this stage there also are many states, and afterward comes the state of Lishma.

Related Material:
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 257
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 256
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 255

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