A person should pay attention to this and believe that the Creator is tending to him and guides him on the track that leads to the King’s palace. It follows that he should be happy that the Creator is watching over him and gives him the descents, as well. That is, a person should believe, as much as he can understand, that the Creator is giving him the ascents, since certainly, a person cannot say that he himself receives the ascents, but that the Creator wants to bring him closer; this is why He gives him the ascents.

Also, a person should believe that the Creator gives him the descents, as well, because He wants to bring him closer. Therefore, every single thing that he can do, he must do as though he is in a state of ascent. Therefore, when he overcomes a little during the descent, it is called an “awakening from below.” Each act that he does, he believes that it is the Creator’s will, and by this itself he is rewarded with greater nearing, meaning that the person himself begins to feel that the Creator has brought him closer (Rabash, Article 6, “When Should One Use Pride in the Work?“)

The most important thing is our reaction to any negative or positive action, meaning that we should constantly evaluate whether they elicit an equal response in us.

It should not matter how my beast feels, good or bad. The main focus is on perceiving the Creator’s communication with me. My response depends on how I react without words. If I receive something negative, I respond to Him with love; if I receive something positive, I also respond to Him with love.

When is my response more pronounced: is it to positive experiences or negative ones? Certainly, it is more evident with negative experiences. This demonstrates that I truly aspire toward Him, rather than merely seeking to experience something pleasant from the Creator.

We must learn to interpret the signs of the Creator’s closeness to us. We can be very near to Him and yet feel what comes from Him as something negative. However, instead of provoking a negative reaction in us, this closeness inspires gratitude. It allows us to demonstrate a positive attitude toward Him above the negative feelings.

This process builds the screen (Masach): restriction (Tzimtzum), screen (Masach), and reflected light (Or Hozer).
[338351]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/3/19, Writings of Baal HaSulam “There Is None Else Besides Him”

Related Material:
The Most Important Is Spiritual Development
Study the Movements of the Creator
You Will See The Creator In Faith Above Reason

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

The revelation of the Creator represents two mutually opposite actions for us. On the one hand, the revelation should awaken even greater egoism in us, our difference from the Creator; on the other hand, we should give this egoism the correct form in which we would become like the Creator.

These two opposite forms should be in us simultaneously and go in parallel: left – right, left – right.
The left line is the difference from the Creator. Moreover, this difference can be qualitative or quantitative according to different parameters.

At each of the 125 degrees, there are three more degrees: conception (Ibur), the small state (Yenika), the large state (Mochin). The 125 degrees are an ascent through the five worlds to complete similarity to the Creator.

At these degrees we always go through two states: the difference from the Creator and the similarity to Him. Each step is determined by these two opposite actions, sensations, adhesion, and revelations.

Therefore there is a left line, a right line, and a middle line. In the left line, our egoism is awakened; it is our difference from the Creator. In the right line, we make  egoism into His likeness, as if we give this egoism the form of the Creator, and then we are called “Adam” (man).

In the middle line, a person connects with the Creator, that is, the right and left lines connect and form adhesion with the Creator that is called “Dvekut.”

This is our work in three lines. Everyone who advances further, his egoism in the left line increases, but he can correct it with the help of the group and with the help of prayer to the Creator.

Thus the left line is egoism, the right line is its correction, and the middle line is the connection with the Creator based on what a person has acquired in the left and right lines. This is how a person approaches the Creator.
[338748]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/5/19, Preparation for convention in Moldova “Turning to the Creator”

Related Material:
Between Two Lines
The Middle Line Is The Creator’s Patent
Don’t Nullify Your Ego

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

Disconnection from thoughts, knowledge, and the feeling that everything comes from the Creator is carried out for our benefit.

This is the darkness when I disconnect from the Creator, not the darkness of our world where it seems to me that bad is darkness and good is light. I am not even talking about physical light and darkness.

When transitioning to spiritual perceptions and striving to approach a correct understanding that the Creator determines all good and bad feelings within me, I must learn to perceive darkness and light not as feelings within my egoistic desires or understanding in my egoistic mind, but as degrees of connection with the Creator, independent of whether it feels pleasant or unpleasant, clear or unclear.

This is where a person’s disconnection from the Creator occurs, which can be described as a “descent.” These descents, however, are for our benefit. They allow us to examine whether we are truly following the spiritual path.

If I am on the spiritual path, I will begin to perceive descents where I am entirely thrown out of feeling spirituality and will recognize that I am disconnected from the understanding that the Creator forms my entire perception of the world and of myself. When I realize this, it is considered “day,” when I do not, it is “night,” or darkness.

Therefore it is said that a descent a person experiences is for his benefit. We must move away from egoistic perceptions where good is seen as an ascent and bad as a descent. Instead we should begin to evaluate descents and ascents based on their alignment with the purpose of our development: what brings us closer to the goal is an ascent and what distances us from the goal is a descent.
[338553]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/4/19, Preparation for convention in Moldova “The Work in Concealment”

Related Material:
Descent is the Material of the Ascent
Falling For The Sake Of Rising
What Is A Descent In Spirituality?

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

In essence, mutual inclusion (hitkalelut in Hebrew – interpenetration) is the most important action, and there is nothing that can compare with it in importance. This stems from the plan of creation.

The Creator, the upper light, creates a desire to receive pleasure, which is aimed only at filling itself with everything that carries the light. It is literally enslaved by light and feels it as pleasure, as life.

In this form, this desire cannot even be called a creation because it lacks any independence; it is entirely dependent on light. Therefore, as a creation it does not yet exist, like a shadow that cannot exist independently from a person or any object that casts it.

But the Creator wants this creation to become independent like Himself. For this the creation needs to undergo a very long path that is much longer than the one that a drop of semen undergoes in transforming into a living organism.

After all, the creation was created as a shadow of light, as its imprint, as its opposite. But gradually, under the influence of light, it begins to develop.

And all its further development through the process of the expansion of the four phases of direct light, the emergence of the worlds AK (Adam Kadmon), Atzilut, Beria, Yetzira, and Assiya, of this world, the descent of souls into our world and their ascent back occurs due to the interconnection of desire and light.

At the same time, the creation absorbs all the qualities of the Creator and becomes like Him. And moreover, since at the same time it acquires a more complex internal structure, it gains the ability to comprehend all the details of creation in all its depth.

In this way creation reveals what the Creator has done in it. By understanding itself as a derivative of the upper light, creation comes to know the Creator. It is called, “From Your actions I know You.”

And all of this is made possible by what is called mutual inclusion.
[25346]
From KabTV’s “Kabbalah for Beginners” 10/27/10

Related Material:
Absolute Interconnection
Interconnection against the Evil Inclination
The Method of Universal Interconnection from Adam to Moses

Filed under: Spiritual Work, The Creator | Add Comment / Ask Question →

I must attune myself to the sensation of the Creator so that my feelings perceive the entire world, everything He creates within me from the crude image of this world, which we imagine through our five senses, to inner spiritual states, to the Creator’s attitude toward this, and to my attitude toward Him through the veil of this world.

I must imagine all this as the Creator’s immense attention and care for me that is aimed at my development to a state where I begin to feel Him. He does not hide; it is my consciousness that conceals Him from me.

If I thought that in my previous state I had a glimpse of perfection or some understanding and awareness, the next state, in contrast, reveals that I understand nothing, feel lost, and do not know how to deal with this tangled perception of the world.

Here I must realize what I am striving for. Naturally, according to my egoism, I want everything to be clear to my mind and revealed to my feelings so that I can fill myself with sensations and perceptions of some image and, through it, see the Creator of this image, the Creator of the world.

The world is the image I perceive. The Creator is the one who stands behind it.
[338463]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/4/19, Preparation for convention in Moldova “The Work in Concealment”

Related Material:
The World Is a Picture Created by the Creator
Perceive the Creator through the Picture of the World
The World Where “There Is None Else Besides Him”

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

The most correct way to turn to the Creator is when He is close to you. Close is when you feel you can be in contact with Him. But if you are in contact with Him, what is left to ask? After all, you have nothing more to ask than to merge with Him. Here, we have an internal contradiction, and as always we advance on two lines: the right and the left.

On one hand, I feel the Creator is close to me; otherwise, how could I turn to Him? He should be directed at me in some way, and I should be directed at Him. On the other hand, I have to feel like I am distant from Him.

Overall, there is no problem here. We always perceive the Creator in two ways: One, He is close to us, and we must accept and feel Him as our ruler, and two, we should feel Him far from us because we are not yet similar to His properties.

It is like a child and a mother. A child may feel very close to its mother. On the other hand, if he were smart, he would understand the difference between them is vast because his mother has everything in her hands, and he has nothing. Through understanding his mother (her capabilities versus his own), he can firmly demand everything from her; these are the states, only more corrected, of course, not on the animal level, but on the human level, that we must build with the Creator.

This is the only force in the world that will do everything we ask if our requests are aimed at our development, at becoming more like it, because the Creator intends to make man a man, Adam, similar to Himself.
[338794]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/5/19, Preparation for convention in Moldova “Turning to the Creator”

Related Material:
Between Two Lines
Don’t Nullify Your Ego
Under The Protection Of Wings

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

The descent a person receives is intended for his own benefit. He is taken care of from above in a special way that lowers him from the previous state in which, it would seem, he has a little perfection, as evidenced by his willingness to remain in this state all the days of his life.

If we begin to catch ourselves in what states we are in, then as a rule we agree for them to remain like they are. We are not trying to get out of them. We realize that they come from the Creator precisely so we can feel what state can be spiritually higher, but not according to our sensation of when it is pleasant and more understandable in the heart and mind—no.

So what state should I strive for? Toward greater definition that everything in me is from the Creator.

I do not want to change the state, but rather to single out the Creator as its source. This is the most important thing to me. Let them give me any states: good or bad, confusing or clear; I will not even criticize or define them; it does not matter to me.

I immediately rush inward to their source, the Creator. It is important to me how I want to imagine Him as the source of what is currently being depicted in my feelings and my mind, that is, not the state itself, but the definition, with maximum clarity, that it comes from the Creator.

Moreover, I do not necessarily determine only this. I need to determine the most important thing in this: His quality. After all, if we are talking about the Creator, that “He is good that does good,” then I must feel this in my states.
[338622]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/4/19, Preparation for convention in Moldova “The Work in Concealment”

Related Material:
The Purpose We Must Attain
The Need For The Creator
When Darkness And Light Become One

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

Preparation to the Lesson

Video: Play Now | Download

Audio: Play Now | Download

1st part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah),” Item 1

Video: Play Now | Download

Audio: Play Now | Download

2nd part of the Lesson — Writings of Rabash, Article 23, “Behold, I Am Setting Before You”

Video: Play Now | Download

Audio: Play Now | Download

Selected Highlights

Video: Play Now | Download

Audio: Play Now | Download

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

Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download:MP3Audio

Filed under: Audio Version of the Blog | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 38

What Is Supervision with Reason?

There is “mind” (Mocha) and “heart” (Liba). Mind involves constant, purposeful supervision aimed at a specific goal, and assessing our states and experiences. It is like a critical mechanism that lets us observe ourselves from the outside. For instance, we might be immobilized, unable to act or think, yet still be aware of our state. Alternatively, we might be confused, unable to think clearly, yet still observe and recognize our confusion. Such an ability to view ourselves from the outside helps us learn who and what we are. If we adopt the Creator’s qualities, we begin to see ourselves from the Creator’s perspective. Gradually, we start identifying with the traits we acquired from the Creator, and view our own uncorrected traits as “Pharaoh,” an external force within us.

Related Material:
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 37
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 36
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 35

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