Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 118

Is Prayer a Request for the Strength to Work?

Prayer means that we ask only when we have no other choice. We turn to the Creator only when we have no alternative. Gradually, we begin to recall the Creator’s existence, and even this remembrance is something the Creator does. He makes it seem as if we remember Him on our own. In truth, we would never think about the Creator by ourselves.

The will to receive is structured such that it is entirely closed within itself. It is a closed system. The Creator introduces a tiny, imperceptible ray of light, and suddenly we think: “Oh, the Creator exists!” We feel as though we remembered Him on our own, without any help.

But in reality, it was the Creator who reminded us of His existence and let us turn to Him. This process happens repeatedly, and its entire purpose is to strengthen the connection with Him. Through this process, we build our inner spiritual system. It is how we acquire the Creator’s qualities and become similar to Him.

However, before this can happen, before we can recognize what is opposite to the Creator, before we can understand our “self,” the Creator needs to place us in unpleasant situations that are the exact opposite of the state we are about to attain.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 116
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Preparation to the Lesson

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1st part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Matan Torah (Giving of the Torah),” Items 10-12, (12.8-9.2003)

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2nd part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, Shamati 22, “Torah Lishma“

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Selected Highlights

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Question: If the matter of creation is the receiving desire, what does it mean to bestow in order to bestow? Where is the work with desire?

Answer: The truth of the matter is that the receiving desire itself works for the sake of bestowal. It supports a fellow human being, helps him, and performs various actions in relation to him.

In general, to understand bestowal for the sake of bestowal, it is necessary to understand what reception for the sake of bestowal is. It means that I work with my receiving desires so as to use them to raise a fellow human being and perform the actions of bestowal upon him, similar to how Bina works in its AHP.

I include the receiving desires of the other into my own and fill him with everything he requires. And what he requires is infinity. Then with my help his desires reach an infinite magnitude, while the Lights coming to him through me grow to the infinite size of NRNHY. This is how I work receiving in order to bestow: I make sure to give the other everything necessary, utilizing all of my abilities for this purpose and totally ignoring my own benefit.

However, for this I need the upper force that is not in my nature. My inborn nature lets me perform only actions that promise me personal benefit, whereas the actions of bestowal are totally selfless and do not benefit my receiving desires in any way. This is why I can’t perform them unless I receive the strength from the upper dimension, that of bestowal.

Hence, I incorporate the needs of the other into my desires and then through my desires I fulfill him. In general, we are talking about the desires that relate to our interconnection since the spiritual work is performed at the level of the unity of souls where we fill ourselves with the upper lights.

There is another option: not to engage my receiving desires, but only to transfer all the good from myself to the other, to participate in his fulfillment, but not with my own desires. This is pure bestowal. As a rule, these actions precede mutual bestowal. They correct our unification. Thanks to them we annul our egoism in order to rise above it to unity. And unity itself is activated by the direct use of our receiving desires.

In this way, bestowal for the sake of bestowal is an intermediate, small, weak, “poor” state. But we have no choice: We need to undergo it since we thereby clean our desires and rise above our egoistic qualities. Without it, it is impossible to start working with them. First of all, we have to “cleanse them,” meaning to fill them with the Light of Hassadim (Mercy).
[R38899]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/23/2011 on The Principles of Global Education
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Question: People tend to be impressed by examples. Let’s say a person doesn’t believe that he depends on society and thinks that he can solve everything on his own.

Let’s imagine this situation: a baby is born, placed in a round room where the light constantly on, there is food, but the baby has no other interaction with people or animals. What will happen to him?

Answer: He will not become human. He will just consume food naturally, like an animal, and grow up the same way.

Question: But will he have his own thoughts and fantasies?

Answer: Nothing will happen. Absolutely nothing. All this appears only under the influence of the environment. Whatever environment you place him in, this is what will come out.

Comment: But then he is, in fact, not a man or even an animal.

My Response: Right. Therefore nothing will work outside of the environment. That is, you will get an animal organism that will grow up in this form. If you show him his mother later, he will be scared of her because he will not understand what it is that suddenly appeared alive and even moving. After all, he does not know what it means to be alive and what it means to move.

He has no sense of time, no sense of the surrounding space. Feed him through a tube, and give him nothing else. And then what?

Comment: So he will grow, say, until the age of twenty.

My Response: What difference does it make up to what age? He will remain at the same level—only absorbing food, releasing waste, and nothing else.

Question: Will he have self-awareness? Will he feel like he is living?

Answer: Only at the level he exists at.

Comment: A man is built on desires; desire is lack, desire is deficiency.

My Response: He will have no desires, no inner urges, because there is no surrounding society with which he can realize himself.

Question: So he was born a zero and will die a zero?

Answer: Yes. Absolutely.

Comment: But nature does not treat humans like that.

My Response: Nature, of course, does not do this; but sometimes, if it does, there is a special purpose and reason for this.

Without an environment, no Reshimot will arise in a person, no internal data for implementation, because he will not be able to implement it. One determines the other.
[343060]
From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. Scandalous Experiment” 8/6/10

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Comment: Let’s suppose that a modern person ends up without a computer and all the things they are used to; they would get scared, but at the same time they would realize how strongly dependent they are on all of it.

My Response: No, that is still not most terrifying existence. We once talked about how I wanted to go to the Altai Mountains. So what about a computer? Maybe with a computer if I am going to sit there and write a book. Really what else do you need? A little boat, a fishing rod, rubber boots, and a bucket to go pick mushrooms. For a month? Wonderful!

You cannot even imagine! Alone with yourself, no one else. Nothing. It is pure bliss! You are alone with your thoughts, there is no one around, nothing affects you, and you can dedicate your thoughts to the most cherished, most beautiful, and purest, disconnected from the entire surrounding world. That is great!

I saw my teacher like that when he would disconnect. He would specifically go to Tiberias to be alone. And when I would go there to visit him, I saw a man who looked at me and did not understand who had come, why they had come, or what they wanted from him.

In other words, he could not feel what world he was returned to. He looked at you as if he were disconnected, and slowly, very slowly, he would come back to himself.

Question: But still a Kabbalist cannot exist completely alone?

Response: Sometimes it is necessary.
[343104]
From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. Scandalous Experiment” 8/6/10

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 117

How Can We Gain Strength for the Work from a State of Helplessness?

How can we who realize that we lack true knowledge, who feel powerless and incapable of acquiring anything from what we read, who see that the door to spirituality is closed before us, how can we find strength to move forward if this work is placed upon us alone and not upon someone else? Where can we draw the strength for the work?

There are two completely different states that we tend to connect as one. The first is a state in which we are completely insignificant and beastly, with no spiritual strength at all. We do not understand anything about the spiritual world nor even about this world. We have no idea what will happen to us or to the world in the next moment. We have no concept of how everything is structured and operates. The more we open our eyes, the more we feel like a small child playing with pebbles on the shore of a vast ocean, just as Newton described his scientific work.

And this is a correct feeling. To some extent, this is what it means to sense the immense forces of nature. This is our reality. We cannot grasp this concept through our own strength.

This state described above is actually a springboard to an active state. Active in what way? In that we can demand strength and we can ask for corrections to be made within us. The previous state is meant to show us that, at our current level, this is truly our reality.

How can we ascend from this? We forget that we truly lack these forces. Why did the Creator make it so that at every step we get stuck and realize that we are nothing? It is so that from this helplessness, we will remember that the Creator exists. We then turn to the Creator, and He arranges everything for us in a way that lets us move forward, to understand, to act, and so on.

Why did the Creator make it this way? It is because this entire process is a means for us to connect to the Creator. It is intended so that we will surrender, so that we will feel a need for the Creator, and through this need, we will acquire the Creator’s attributes.

Ultimately the Creator wants us to become eternal and perfect like Him.

Each time, the Creator shows us weakness, helplessness, despair, ignorance, and a lack of grasp on reality—the exact opposite of His state—so that we will desire to turn to Him and receive the opposite of what we feel. “The opposite of what we feel” means receiving something from the Creator, His qualities and level.

Thus, through contrast, we arrive at a more complete state each time. The deeper we sink into feeling what is bad, the greater the good we can attain in contrast.
This is how all the spiritual levels are built.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 116
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 115
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 114

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Preparation to the Lesson

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1st part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Matan Torah (Giving of the Torah),” Item 7-9, (12.8.2003)

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2nd part of the Lesson — The Right Way to Study the Wisdom of Kabbalah

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3rd part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, Shamati 18, “My Soul Shall Weep in Secret – 1”

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Selected Highlights

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Thou shalt have no other gods before Me. Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor any manner of likeness, of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow down unto them, nor serve them; for I the LORD thy God Am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me; and showing mercy unto the thousandth generation of them that love Me and keep My commandments (The Torah, Exodus 20:3 – 20:5).

Commandments are considered the basis of the entire human code of human existence. They are acknowledged by all religions, by all societies, and serve as a basis for all social life. However, in Kabbalah, they have a totally different meaning.

In other words, “I am the Only! I am incorporeal! I cannot be depicted, imagined, or understood! I don’t give you any hints of Who I am! I cannot be put in your pocket, placed in the corner, or hung on a wall. It is impossible to make an amulet of Me, nor can I be shaped as some kind of a sign! Nothing like that is possible!”

Humans are quite different. A child grabs a toy and doesn’t toss it away for a month or two. It calms him down.

A person goes to a temple, prays, confesses, and cools down. Everything will be all right! For everyone, it is a medicine, a remedy, to settle their worries, a prevention of various social, family, and other problems.

We don’t have anything tangible here. If it is impossible to imagine Him, meaning that there is no one to appeal to, this is a big problem. Does it translate into the fact that there is no God for a regular person who lives in this world? We are unable to visualize Him or sense Him. He is some abstract property of bestowal, something shapeless that fills everything and, at the same time, nothing. What sensors will allow us to reveal Him? We must begin feeling Him one way or another. However, there is nothing around us.

We simply cannot imagine the Lord, the upper force, as described in the Torah, nor can we establish contact with this force. In order to stay in touch with Him we must grab onto something, appeal to somebody, and portray Him somehow.

Question: Why are these “threads” cut off of us? It is as if we are floating in the air. Why is that so?

Answer: It is because we must find Him at a completely different level. We should rise to His degree. Then we will sense something that we have not sensed before and will define things that we previously were unable to comprehend. It will become possible because we will acquire a new set of sensors that are called the five Sefirot.

Before we achieve this, there is no such thing as “God” for us. There isn’t anything at all! Of course, there is nature that twists us, pulls us ahead, and plays with us, and forces us to continue living and to give birth; it controls our behavior in our surroundings and society, and then buries us in the ground. That is it.

I am exaggerating everything by showing that people have no connection with the Creator or with the Torah whatsoever. That is why it is said that the Torah is spotless since no one has ever touched it, not even once.

The Torah is a teaching; it is a spiritual mechanism that is totally disconnected from humans. The fact that we picked it as the source of our beautiful rules and legal laws is very reassuring. Without it, we would just be barbarians.

Nevertheless, I want to emphasize that these rules and laws do not have anything in common with the authentic Torah. We must understand that the Torah’s power, its veracity, and the very core of it are not about the rules or laws. It does not matter what we are doing in this world. Rather, what matters is if we happen to rise to the next level where the Creator reveals to us. For that, we do not need Him to be observable or appear as an image or a phenomenon. Our awareness rises to such a level that we don’t need any images any more since we manage to get out of ourselves.

This explains why the commandment “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me” comes first, why it is considered a major commandment, and why it precedes all the others. Each subsequent commandment (their order is not random; they are organized in a certain way) delineates the execution of this particular main commandment.

If one cannot observe this commandment, all other commandments are worth nothing. They do not lead us to the goal. We should constantly keep in mind this primary commandment. For it we should fulfill all other commandments.
[R109450]
From KabTV’s, “Mysteries of the Eternal Book” 2/25/13

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