Question 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”

Related Material:
Ascending Above My Nature
What Do Good Thoughts Depend On?
Why Do Unpleasant Thoughts Appear?

Filed under: Q&A, Spiritual Work | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Question: 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?”

Related Material:
Enjoyment from the Spiritual Path
Incredible Pleasure
Enjoying Bestowal

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Spiritual Work | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Question: 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?”

Related Material:
How Can I Know What I Am Meant to Become?
No Thought of Yourself
We Lack Intention

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Spiritual Work | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Question: 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

Related Material:
The Wisdom of Kabbalah: What Is It About? Who Is It For? And For What?
The Mission Of The Wisdom Of Kabbalah
The Wisdom Of Kabbalah And Religion

Filed under: Kabbalah Study, Q&A | Add Comment / Ask Question →

People 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

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Spiritual Work | Add Comment / Ask Question →

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.

Related Material:
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 226
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 225
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 224

Filed under: Talks about the Steps of the Ladder | Add Comment / Ask Question →

1st part of the Lesson — Writings of Rabash, Article 20 “What Is Half a Shekel in the Work? – 2” (1990) (5.21.2002)

Video: Play Now | Download

Audio: Play Now | Download

2nd part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Vol. 1, Part 2, Chapter 1

Video: Play Now | Download

Audio: Play Now | Download

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Question: Is a state when a person receives something while in a state of descent called “punishment”? It is a state in which nothing changes. How is this to be understood?

Answer: You are asking about a state where a person does not experience an alternation between states of ascents and falls for a long time.

That fact that he does not receive descents is the punishment. “Does not sin” means that he does not receive additional parts of Adam HaRishon after the transgression.

In other words, he is not brought to a point where he can correct something. This is punishment, for he is not given bad states.

Punishment is not that he is brought into bad states, but that he is not given bad states.
[360975]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/25/26, Rabash, “When a Person Knows What Is Fear of the Creator”

Related Material:
Punishment
Spiritual Punishment
If You Leave Me For A Day…

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Spiritual Work | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Comment: Everything we read every day sounds like the same text.

My Response: It is written, “Israel’s prayers have been exhausted,” “David’s prayers have come to an end.” There is no more strength! This stems either from great despair or from a desire for greater adhesion.

Comment: To one degree or another, it all seems the same. We talk about the same thing all the time.

My Response: You see, I have been listening to this for 25 years. I have been talking about it for 20 years, and every time I find something new. You are also being renewed. Nothing changes from the outside. You change; you discern something new. That is what we are talking about.

Otherwise, what else can we talk about when everything can be summed up in one line: “Taste and see that the Creator is good.” There is nothing more to add!
[359771]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/30/26, Rabash, “What Does It Mean that Oil Is Called ‘Good Deeds’ in the Work?”

Related Material:
Renewal In The Work
I Never Repeat Myself!
The Renewal Of Feelings

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Kabbalah Study, Spiritual Work | Add Comment / Ask Question →

What are the categories of above knowledge, within knowledge, and below knowledge? We are implanted with the desire to receive, into which we receive for ourselves. In accordance with this, as it is said, “a judge has nothing but what his eyes see.” I act according to my nature, my reason, and my knowledge.

This is called acting in accordance with knowledge. Knowledge and reason are the light of Hochma (wisdom) or some of its illumination, which spreads in the Kelim (vessels) of reception. As the light spreads into these Kelim, I receive knowledge about my state.

Moreover, from this I derive the pleasure itself and the awareness of this enjoyment. This is what is called “in the mind and in the heart.” Simple reception within the mind and in the heart is known as a person’s knowledge (Daat).

Why do they say “his knowledge”? Because this is the highest form of reception. This is man’s awareness, “the person within the person,”  where I operate according to my own Kelim and what I receive is what I have. I feel it, see it, understand it, and rely on it. This is the nature of the “stony heart,” the nature of our matter, the desire to receive.

I can be in connection with the Creator and rise above my “I,” only if I acquire the Kelim of Binah. As we study, the worlds of BYA (Beria, Yetzira, and Assiya) are parts of GE(Galgalta and Enaim) that fell into AHP (Awzen, Hotem, Peh) after the transgression. Within these broken parts of GE that fell into AHP, light can spread, but not in AHP itself, inside which they are located.

Imagine dough containing chocolate chips. Suppose the chocolate chips are the parts of GE inside the dough itself, which is called AHP. Light can spread only inside these fragments of GE, and if they are correctly organized among themselves, they collectively form the system of the worlds of BYA is built.

The worlds of BYA are GE  situated inside the mass of AHP. But these GE are connected among themselves, and not connected to the mass of AHP itself. They have protection from AHP so that it does not hinder them.

Adam HaRishon, according to his nature, is AHP; unless he receives GE within himself, he has no connection with the Creator. The Creator is perceived and light spreads only in GE. Light cannot spread in the vessels of reception.

Therefore, a person who works not that “lump of dough” known as AHP, but rather within the GE embedded within it as a result of the transgression of Adam HaRishon, is said to be working in faith above knowledge (above his own knowledge, understanding, and desire). This is because his knowledge, reason, and desires are the “dough” and not the chocolate chips within it.

Why “in faith”? Because these are parts of Binah, GE, vessels of bestowal. “Above knowledge” means that he suppresses and steps over AHP, makes a restriction upon it, and effectively transfers himself, his sensation and heart, into these GE, where he dwells. This is what is meant by working in faith above knowledge.

What can help a person in such work? Love and awe. They help him hold on to the vessels of bestowal rather than succumbing to the vessels of reception, for AHP exerts a powerful pull on him.
[360970]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/25/26, Rabash, “When a Person Knows What Is Fear of the Creator”

Related Material:
Feeling The Creator Is Called Faith
Feel The Creator
Faith Above Reason Is a Spiritual Kli

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Spiritual Work | Add Comment / Ask Question →