We forget that we do not have to do anything, but only to ask the Creator to do it! We think about how I can make my heart open, how I can connect with another, and how he can connect with me. We should not think about this at all! We imagine connection in our egoistic mind, but it is nothing like what we imagine! This is the level of the upper world; a new reality is revealed to us! We must only ask, nothing else!

We learn that everything happens through a request. We raise a prayer, MAN, and in response, the surrounding light, MAD, comes and corrects everything, while we merely witness the correction. Everything comes from above; all that is required of us is a demand, a request, an aspiration.

The problem lies at this point. Are we turning to the Creator or are we trying to do everything ourselves? This is precisely where we make a mistake and remain stuck for many years, unable to change our direction even slightly and understand that there is nothing but turning to Him, demanding, and asking!

We must make an effort to reach this request, but only for that purpose. If we try to build the correct common system ourselves, based on love and friendship, it will be a long path that will lead us to understand that we are moving away from the goal, that we are insincere, that we hate one another and are not approaching unity.

Kabbalah must lead us to a very precise scrutiny. Do not try to connect with another person; you are incapable of doing so. You are an egoist and so is he. Only the upper light can do this. It must come and bind us together, only it!

Therefore, do not seek connection with one another, for it is said: “Husband and wife, the Shechina between them.” That is, between me and a friend stands the Creator. “He who makes peace in His heights will make peace upon us.”

Any approach we make to one another without the force that connects us is a false approach. When we embrace, we either do not truly want to embrace or we do so only on the level of our world.

Do we demand love, connection, or friendship from one another? Only on the level of this world. Who among us can serve as a guarantor for another person or even for himself? Where would we get the strength? We can aspire toward one another only through the upper one, who fills all the space between us.

If we demand that He fill the emptiness, connect us with one another, and remain constantly present between us, this will happen, and with ease. The wisdom of Kabbalah is meant to bring us to this correct attitude, but we, in our egoistic nature, constantly run away from it.

Let us not forget that “There is none else besides Him”! The Creator performs the action, but for this to happen, we must precede His action with our desire. This is called “making a covenant.” We make an agreement with the Creator; we demand, and He fulfills.

Just as little children walk along and pull adults after them, we draw the upper force toward us so that it will correct the nature it created, and then we will become equal to the Creator.

We cannot attain mutual guarantee or even truly desire it. As soon as we begin speaking about unity, we must remember the condition: “Israel, the light, and the Creator are one.” I, my friend, and the Creator between us, only the three of us together can attain true reconciliation and perfection.

It is precisely the aspiration for connection within the group that quickly brings us to the realization that we must turn to the Creator for every kind of help!
[26547]
From the International Kabbalah Congress 11/11/10, Lesson 8

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Question: Can a person turn to the Creator before fully examining and understanding their state?

Answer: It does not matter. As soon as you have an opportunity to turn to the Creator, do so! Do not wait for your suffering to increase and for your cry to the Creator to become more genuine.

Your cry will never be more genuine than when with every desire and in every state, you are connected to Him, because the light awakens the Kli.

Otherwise, you will only torment yourself, constantly eating away at yourself from within. So do not hold yourself back from continually seeking a connection with the Creator, with the light. The degree of the light determines the degree of the Kli, how deeply you examine your Kli, your recognition of evil, your turning to the Creator, and your awareness of His greatness.

Thus, if you do not turn to the Creator, you will remain trapped in your own desire, feeling only what that desire wants, without gaining anything from it. No action will come out of this. A true action must result from the influence of the light. Therefore, do not hold back from turning to the Creator. Under no circumstances! It is written in many places that we must always pray.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/23/26, Rabash, “What Is the Meaning of Failure in the Work?”

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If we strive to justify the Creator in everything that happens to us throughout the day, then this will be what is called “entering” into a connection with the Creator and “exiting” from it. Only after a person constantly strives to reveal the Creator as good and begins to direct oneself toward Him as the source of pleasure, the source of governance to such an extent that the yearning for Him “does not let me sleep,” then one “fills one’s measure” by constantly, in every situation, connecting his state with the Creator, because it is only the Creator who arranges his inner world in his mind and in the heart, in his sensations and in thoughts.

It is precisely after this that a person gradually comes to the state described by Baal HaSulam: strengthening one’s faith, even while the Creator remains hidden, that the Creator governs the entire world. This leads one to the study of spiritual books through which one receives illumination (the correcting light) and an understanding of how to strengthen oneself in faith in the governance of the Creator.

Then a person undoubtedly reaches the state that the Creator gives them faith. Faith is the sensation of the Creator Himself, a state in which He reveals Himself to a person, and then a person becomes connected to the root defined as “Good and doing good.”

This does not mean that a person receives goodness from the Creator. One may receive what appears to be evil, but the person always tries to justify the Creator, not because he wants to feel good, but because he begins to feel that he does not want to speak in a negative way about the Creator, that he wants to love Him, but a negative sensation prevents him from doing so.

There are many ways to describe the relationship between a person and the Creator. The main thing is that this will come to him at a time when he works and strives toward the Creator. Then the Creator reveals Himself, and a person is already in revelation. What does it mean? He receives the sensation of the Creator as the source of good, and from that point on, he will never be able to feel evil.
[362786]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/11/26, Baal HaSulam “Concealment and Disclosure of the Face of the Creator – 1”

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Question: If there is no meaning in performing external actions, then what does the description of revelation mean when it says that when a person increases good deeds, their success increases, and when they decrease good deeds, their success decreases? What, essentially, are good deeds?

Answer: Which deeds are considered good and which are considered bad? Is this determined by the physical actions a person performs or by what they do with their intention?

If we have agreed that we evaluate all our actions according to the goal, then good deeds are those through which I want to attain similarity of qualities with the Creator. Bad deeds are all those that are unrelated to this goal.
[362983]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/18/26, Rabash, “The Reason for Straightening the Legs and Covering the Head During the Prayer”

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In the “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Baal HaSulam describes how a person passes through all the degrees of the worlds. He also explains how double concealment, single concealment, and revelation of the upper governance are connected. This revelation is called “reward and punishment,” followed by “eternal love.” He explains how the four levels of revelation of the governance correspond to the four worlds: Assiya, Yetzira, Beria, and Atzilut.

Then questions about what the worlds and degrees are, what we do, and where we ascend become very simple and clear. Ultimately, we correct increasingly deeper layers within our Kli, penetrating further and further into it each time. To the extent that we correct our Kli and penetrate its depths, our reflected light grows, and correspondingly, the revelation of the Creator and His actions toward us increase.

This is called, “From Your actions, I shall know You.” All this revelation is felt within the corrected Kelim of each individual person. All the stages of correction in which the Creator’s attitude toward me is revealed, and in which I see and feel the Creator, are called the degrees of the worlds.

Each of these degrees consists of two parts. One part is called the world (Olam) from the side of concealment. By correcting my Kli with the help of a screen, I reach the other side—revelation. These are two sides of the same Kli at each degree: before correction and after correction.

We see that the wisdom of Kabbalah speaks about a person’s inner world and their relationship with what lies outside them. Accordingly, we must direct our attention inward, toward ourselves.
[362980]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/18/26, Rabash, “The Reason for Straightening the Legs and Covering the Head During the Prayer”

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 279

Chapter 24. Against Nature

This is a very special article that explains why, when we finally arrive at Kabbalah in order to solve the problems of our nature, draw closer to the Creator, enter spirituality, and acquire the most important thing in this entire world and in all of reality, it is precisely then that we feel bad, difficulty, and weakness. However, this is a good sign, because when we advance on the right path, we are allowed to feel bad to the extent that we are ready to correct that evil and turn it into good, and then we feel hope and elation.

We have all become accustomed to this world and what is in it, to the way humanity organizes various educational systems and systems of life in society, mostly through suppression and coercion. We have already seen how useless this is. For instance, a criminal leaves prison as a more accomplished criminal, a child subjected to excessive pressure ends up with no success and fails, and one day the pressure erupts and brings severe consequences. Anything that grows under pressure will never yield good fruit.

Why is this so? It is because the person should not be the one doing the correcting, and every attempt at pressure or suppression runs against nature. Society pressures people, restricts them, and represses the evil within them, which is the creation in them and their uniqueness. After all, we are born in order to bring this evil to the surface and correct it, whereas society compels us, through pressure, to conceal this evil and repress it within, not to see it or touch it, and forces us to wear artificial external garments and behave as they dictate to us. Society’s pressure on a person indeed causes great harm.

Here, RABASH explains that proper education, which we become acquainted with when we begin studying the books of Kabbalah, contains no restriction whatsoever, but only the reforming light, which is the only force of correction in existence. In Kabbalah, we learn that only the light can bring about change, that just as it created the vessel, so can it also correct it. The Creator created nothing other than evil, and the good is the light in Him, which comes to us to the extent that we desire it.

Therefore, education does not come through coercion. The process of self-education in the study of Kabbalah needs to emerge solely from desire. It is impossible to change without an inner desire and decision to change. According to the measure of our desire to change, we see the evil within us, and we also correct it according to that measure of desire. It cannot be otherwise. This is why Kabbalah is called “the hidden wisdom,” because the phenomena it describes are invisible. Everything depends on our inner desire, and the corrections also emerge according to the desire, even though we ourselves do not see them.

Only when we advance toward the barrier (and certainly once we cross the barrier) do we gradually begin to see how wonderfully such phenomena are arranged, with good and evil appearing as a single unit and actually supporting one another, as RABASH says, “like fire and a wick.”

Therefore, in everything concerning our inner work, we must not be forced to make corrections. Corrections made from compulsion would not be corrections, but corruptions. We are not speaking here about an obligation to behave in a certain social manner, because if we want to live in society, we need to adopt external behaviors according to its limitations. However, when it comes to inner corrections, they must be left to our own desire and choice.

Similarly, it is impossible to artificially point out the evil within a person and tell them, “see how evil you are.” This will not help because we ourselves do not see the evil. We are not yet ready to see it. We will be able to see the evil within us according to the extent to which we study and according to the intensity of the surrounding light that shines upon us. Only according to this surrounding light will we discover that we are evil and want to correct it. Any other means is invalid, because it will not bring about correction.

Therefore, society must understand and accept, as RABASH writes, that regardless of whether it is good or bad, every state should be judged only according to the extent of our connection with the Creator through it. The Creator generally reminds us of His existence through the unpleasant states, because in the good states we are in wholeness, need nothing, and feel nothing. Our senses are not prepared to feel anything additional or foreign.

Therefore, we receive descents, blows, and unpleasant things through which we seemingly discover the Creator. Certainly, it is not we who discover Him. Instead, we have an inner demand to find justification for our state, and then we feel this surrounding light. From the unpleasant state, we need to understand that the connection with the Creator is of utmost importance, and we must develop a connection while disregarding how we feel. This should be done as much as possible, because we are always in a state and its opposite.

RABASH says about this, that accepting the burden of the Kingdom of Heaven means that we accept the states that “fall” upon us without relating to the feeling we experience in the meantime, whether good or bad. Our vessels of sensation are not corrected, and they feel according to what they are at present, but we want to evaluate our states according to how close or distant they are from the purpose of creation, and thus we must relate only to that.

If we relate to each and every state with the awareness that it brings us closer to the purpose of creation, and we do not care that we feel unpleasantly within it, this is called entering the Kingdom of Heaven, under the governance of the upper one. We want the upper one to govern us regardless of how we feel. If we annul ourselves accordingly before the upper one, our vessels begin to change, become corrected, and soon we will feel better.

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Preparation to the Lesson

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1st part of the Lesson — Writings of Rabash, Article 4 “Concerning Hesed [Mercy]” (1986) (1.14.2002)

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2nd part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 14 (5.15.2006)

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Selected Highlights

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Question: How can we raise the impact of a blow from the animal level to the spiritual level?

Answer: You can raise the impact from the animal level to the spiritual level only if you start to understand exactly what the benefits of “love of friends” are. As I start to suffer from not having this love, I already begin to transfer the blows from the animal level to the spiritual level. At least from one area to another.

The compression of time depends only on the transition from quantity to quality. Each new blow should be as purposeful and high-quality as possible. The more precisely I figure out for myself what spirituality is, how much its definition does not describe me, how much it runs contrary to me, and how much I do not belong to it and experience it as a blow, the more time I save and the more I avoid mere animalistic blows.

We need to focus on merging our “I,” the actions, process, and the Creator. This action contains everything. The only thing left is to reveal who the Creator is. Is it someone who bestows gifts? Or is this property the pure force of bestowal that allows me to disconnect completely from my own self, from the desire to receive, and from what will happen to me as a result? This scrutiny takes me from quantity to quality.

Otherwise, there is no way to shorten the time. Years will pass, but everything will seem to be repeating itself.

The Creator sends blows to a person according to how much he can withstand. That is, to the extent a person is oriented toward the truth, to the extent he has prepared himself with the help of a group, family, and inner preparation to see the truth, to this extent it is revealed to him and he is shown how far he is from this state, but only enough to keep him from escaping. This is called the willingness to suffer.

If a person does not yet feel his evil revealed, he is not ready to withstand it. Then the Creator treats him like a baby for now, waiting for him to prepare himself to truly draw closer to the truth.

Therefore, we must understand that in any case, our path does not lead to what we desire within our original animal desire to receive, but directly to the opposite. And nothing in this feels good or pleasant within the desire to receive.

But we are gradually discovering this. Even when I talk about it now, it still seems to us that this is not so. It seems to us that we may have lost a little bit by having to get up at night and come here, but we will win somewhere else. We have some kind of loophole for our desire to receive, a way to calm it down. This is not yet called a blow. A blow is when you cannot justify what is happening in any way, nor explain it to your ego.
[361011]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/17/26, Rabash, “What Are Commandments that a Person Tramples with His Feet”

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Question: Is it possible to discover spirituality when working with friends in a professional setting?

Answer: At work, there are no friends, whereas in the group, everyone is a friend. I don’t understand where the difficulty lies. If you are honest with yourself and with your friend, you will not experience any difficulties. Remove all the external coverings from yourself and from your friend, and imagine that everything is completely pure and that nothing exists except the goal.

So what is the problem? There are working relationships, and there are relationships between friends. For example, I may shout several times a day, to the point where I am ready to kill someone over work-related matters. But does that affect my attitude toward that person as a student in any way? The more someone does, the more criticism he receives; that is clear. What connection is there between the two? Naturally, when people work together, there are more opportunities for friction at work, but it is precisely on this foundation that the other relationships are built.

People do not understand that the revelation of deficiencies, Hisaronot, is the best thing that can happen, because without them, there is nothing through which to advance! If you have no Hisaron (deficiency), you have no possibility of taking even a single step forward. In the process of correction, if a deficiency has not been revealed, if the wound has not been exposed, and you have not discovered how bad you are, how can you become good? After all, we do not create anything new within ourselves in this world; we only correct ourselves.

All our work, as a whole, is called correction. Therefore, we must first reveal the evil and correct it, then reveal more evil and correct it again. If nothing has been revealed, there is nothing to do! After all, correction and advancement are possible only to the extent that something has been revealed. Therefore, the more evil that is revealed, the better!

It does not bother me when someone shouts, as long as he is not shouting against our common direction of advancement. And if he also criticizes along the way, that is welcome. Such criticism, if it is truly genuine, profound, and examines matters from every angle, can never be destructive. After all, it is an analysis through which we begin to clarify who is right, who is wrong, why things are the way they are, and how we should act.

If everything is connected to the goal, only good can come from it, and there is nothing to fear. On the contrary, dig deeper. Just do not remain in this state all the time and begin to derive pleasure from suffering. That happens too. But the revelation itself is a very good thing.

It is known from medicine and psychology that pain and pleasure are essentially the same; that is, suffering and joy are experienced by the body in the same way, and one cannot exist without the other.

There is a reason for the popular saying that if you never quarrel with your wife, you do not, so to speak, renew the love between you. These are not merely words; there is truth in them. Everything can be understood only through its opposite. If there were no criticism of the work, it would continue in the same manner. But after criticism, you realize that you need to work through the issues and approach the work more professionally.
[360825]
From Daily the Kabbalah Lesson 8/24/26, Rabash, “Who Testifies to a Person”

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