Question: What does it mean to not work on awareness of the Creator’s greatness during an ascent”?

Answer: Rabash writes that an action by which a person causes a break in contact with the Creator is called a transgression. Even if it concerns the smallest state, the smallest degree of the contact with the Creator, if this state disappears, we say that it disappears because of a transgression.

On the other hand, this is necessary, because without a descent there can be no new ascent to a higher degree. There are no ascents without descents. Just as we say that Adam HaRishon committed a sin and caused a transgression, so it is here.

The reason for a descent is always that during an ascent, at some point a person ceases to enjoy adhesion with the Creator and begins to enjoy what he receives as a result of that adhesion: a feeling of perfection, eternity, and belonging to spirituality.

In other words, the person is already enjoying what is felt in the Kelim rather than the sensation of the Creator caused by adhesion with Him. The moment he ceases to experience this state in his connection with the Creator and turns it toward himself is called a transgression.

Although he enjoys spirituality, the feeling of belonging to eternity and bestowal to the Creator, these pleasures should be for the sake of the Creator and not for his own sake. Therefore, this leads to the loss of the degree; the light departs, as though the person has once again returned to his desire to receive. The light, sensing a desire to receive in front of it, withdraws as a result of the restriction that has existed since the first restriction (Tzimtzum Aleph).

Therefore a state of forgetfulness is induced in such a way that not the entire degree is lost, but only the light on that degree. The degree itself remains, and only the light of Mochin disappears. The person becomes dull and continues to drift unconsciously, as though his head has descended to the level of the body, like an animal.

He may continue to observe the Torah, study, and participate in the activities of the group, but without any goal, like an animal. Therefore, we term the aimless life of people whose heads are not higher than their bodies the animate level; their minds serve only the body. This means that the force responsible for governing forgetfulness is not acting with the person in its intended way. After all, the Creator wants a person to complete a degree in such a state that his descent is immediately connected to the feeling of a new Hisaron and to a new ascent.

Can it be done differently? In truth, no. We speak of Adam HaRishon as having committed a transgression, a sinner who sinned. Yet just as this was beyond his control, it also beyond ours. At the final stage of realizing a Reshimo (spiritual record), at its highest point, we pause for a single moment to think of ourselves; it is a mandatory state. Then we fall, and that too is a mandatory state.

However, the real question is not about the person himself and not about the fact that he stopped thinking about the Creator and began to think about himself and thereby loses awareness of the Creator’s greatness. The issue is that he lacks a crucial preparatory foundation: the foundation of the environment.

If a person has the proper environment, one immediately senses that they cannot continue to relate to the group in an ordinary way, as one relates to their family, the world at large, or as a religious person might. If a person has prepared the right environment (a group working for the Creator), they instantly perceive that their descent represents a shift from the direction toward the Creator to the direction of the self. This, in essence, is what is called sin.

Thus, the sin lies not in a person falls, but in failing to prepare oneself and being unable to rise immediately after descending.

As Baal HaSulam writes, the Creator puts a person’s hand on a good fate: He brings him to a group, to the correct state, and says: “Take this for yourself.”

“Take” means: “Now choose a stronger group,” so that you will be surrounded by an environment that will obligate you to constantly develop an intention for bestowal and to strive for adhesion with the Creator.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/22/26, Rabash, Letter 59

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