The work we do is called the work of the Creator because the Light is the only thing that ever does anything: It originates, changes, corrects and fulfills desires. The Light does everything: It is the only creative force.

Beside Light, there is desire. Desire wishes for something, but when the Light doesn’t fulfill it, it starts to sense affliction. Next, the Light begins to play with desire: It fills it a little bit, then leaves it unsatisfied; then again fills it up and again vacates and leaves it empty; it allows the desire to go through various stages of fulfillment and deficiency.

Because of such elaborate work of the Light, desire gets smarter. It begins to detect what kind of fulfillment it lacked previously and which one it has currently; it also begins to recognize various forms of the Light. This is how desire develops an intellect, which is arranged very simply and wants to know only one thing: how to get maximal fulfillment.

In other words, instead of letting desire simply wish for something, the intellect begins to work with it. It directs desire and teaches it to rise above its transient demand. Intellect prompts desire to suffer a little at this time in order to get much more later on. This applies to a worker who gets paid at the end of the day, to a businessman who invests millions in the stock market intending to gain more in the future, and to a patient who is ready to undergo surgery for the sake of the future recovery, etc.

Plain desire is not capable of such things! However, intellect that grows next to desire is able to contribute to it, thus bringing the future form of fulfillment closer and making desire ready to suffer.

This is how the Light acts: by developing desire and growing intellect next to each other. This “pair,” desire and intellect, unite and start working against the Light. By complementing each other, both of them become more sensitive and smart and work jointly in relation to the Creator.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/6/12, The Zohar

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According to your attitude to your body, your desires, you can evaluate your progress. Only relative to this work can you measure your ascent to the spiritual degrees. But we know that the body can’t make the slightest movement if it doesn’t bring pleasure, which would offset the expended energy, justify the costs, and provide fuel. How is it possible to force the body without it? The mind wouldn’t even begin to think in that direction and calculate. No inner motion emerges in the desires of the heart.

The human body itself can’t move because everything is determined by the desire that must see fulfillment ahead. How can we make the movements that do not bring fulfillment to our egoism which are called “giving” (Lishma)? It’s impossible!

How can we get at least closer to this? It’s impossible to get closer except by cheating! To do this, we can use the influence of the environment or other external influence, which stirs in us “envy, lust, and honor which take a person out of the material world” and brings an egoistic fulfillment to the body. Thus, it has no choice, but to move.

However, any change is possible only through the surrounding Light. This Light comes to us even when we act for egoistic motives. It’s clear that we can’t move otherwise. But if nonetheless, I want to act supposedly for the sake of my pleasure, then the surrounding Light comes and brings me closer to that.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/18/12, Shamati #108

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You shouldn’t torture yourself because of your qualities or the bad things that you did or do. After all, it is the Creator who “trips you up” and arranges all the different states for you. This is how He brings you to the recognition of evil and actually does all the work. And you, instead of revealing the truth, reprimand yourself for your actions.

Question: But if you don’t pay attention to these things, isn’t it like running away from the struggle?

Answer: It isn’t a struggle at all. You are like a donkey in front of which an obstacle has been placed: He doesn’t understand how it can be bypassed, and tries to break through it. There is no point in that.

We have to rise above all the actions and feelings, above all the imaginary calculations, and through the group, connect with the Creator. It is the only way to reach the right decision. All the rest is a game, the show of life. It costs us great pain and suffering, but this is our evolution: It is impossible to avoid the mistakes here before we discover the opportunity to rise. One day it will happen.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/17/12, “The Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: When we speak about evil, what exactly do we mean by the term “evil?”

Answer: I discover the Creator as the source of evil and at the same time I understand that I see Him that way because of my bad qualities. So, I understand that it all depends precisely on my attributes.

There are three things before me: the Creator, my evil, and desire. Can I think about the Creator as the good and the benevolent? After all, I feel bad and see troubles and darkness. Still I determine that the good is Above and the evil is inside me. The reason is that in the middle there is something that turns the good into evil.

I feel it in my bones that this is what happens. I am made of these three discernments, and they are in my feeling and my understanding. Such a state is called “double concealment.” In the spiritual space it is the furthest level from the Creator, and everything before it belongs to the beastly level.

It is important to remember that these things already exist in me: I feel the Creator as good and benevolent, I feel my own evil and I can’t get rid of this feeling, and I also understand the fact that I myself corrupt the Creator’s good attitude when I feel it as bad. If we annul this mechanism of turning the good to evil, if we correct it, I will certainly feel the goodness.

Then there is a question. What is the goal: to feel good or to not curse the Creator? From here on the clarification begins: Why was I given the bad feeling? What should I do with it? If I annul it, I will deny myself the option to be corrected. It is by being opposite from the Creator’s goodness that I can reach His good attitude in order not to curse Him.

This means that I use the evil on the way to goodness. Does that mean that now, when I feel bad, it is actually in my favor, and that it is actually what is good for me? So what am I correcting? [Read more →]

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The spiritual vessels, the desires, can be “straight” and “round.” There is a similar division in our world too. The desire of the group is “straight,” because we work with it, assess and weigh it trying to reach equivalence with the upper Light.

All the other desires in the world, which are represented by other people, are “round” because they are not related to the “line,” (the limitation by the Masach, screen, and the work that is directed by the Light), and they simply want fulfillment.

Now a growing emptiness will be revealed in them. If we do our best to connect to one line, and on the other hand, we join the world as a circle, then people will feel how they receive a filling from the “pipe” that is formed by us. Then they will be drawn to us, will adhere to us like leeches, because they will feel that here is the source of life.

But in order to avoid a situation in which we would have the fulfillment that they couldn’t have which would result in their being filled with hate, the system of integral education must be opened to them immediately in order to explain to a person how to attain the fulfillment.

The Light cannot pass from us to others just like that. We must build a network of the right connections, and an education system is necessary for that. There won’t be any contact between us any other way.

It only seems as if the integral education is meant to simply connect people to one another. On the inside, however, it is the connection of the “pipe” that passes the Light into the “circle.”

In our group we are all equal, there are no differences between us, and we make up the same vessel into which the upper Light comes. But our vessel is in the form of a pipe; we work with the Masach and the Reforming Light. We try to adapt ourselves to the Light, to resemble the Light, and the desire and the intention to bestow is a kind of channel for the Light, a kind of a pipe, we become when we connect with the friends.

The external world is a “circle.” In order to create a connection among us through which the external world will begin to receive the inner fulfillment from us, there must be a certain degree of equivalence and we need an adaptor, a connector between us and them, so that we can connect.

This is possible only by education that we will provide the world with so that people will know how to connect the “circle” to the “straight line” in this world. Then, through this pipe, the method of the fulfillment will begin to seep, and the world will begin to organize itself to receive this fulfillment.
[66214]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/8/12, Shamati #36

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In the “Introduction to the Book of Zohar” Baal HaSualm explains that the part of our brain responsible for our perception of reality is built like a photographic machine through which I see the world divided. I feel myself as a kind of body and see everything else that exists as outside of me. So all of reality is divided into two parts.

This, of course, is a lie and there is no such division. But the point is that there is a Creator and a created being, and the created being should attain the Creator as a result of his development. Attaining the Creator is possible only by observing Him from the outside, and so the created being has to feel that he exists separately from the Creator, standing opposite to Him.

Then by comparing the two opposites, the created being checks and understands the inverse attributes, realizes that he is opposite to the Creator, realizes that he is evil and that he needs correction to become similar to the Creator and to reach adhesion with Him. Thus he raises the level of “human” in him.

In order to allow a person to assess all these attributes, understand, get to know, clarify, and correct his perception—reality is divided into two so that it seems to a person that he and the external world exist separately.

This, of course, isn’t even close to the truth. The assumption that a person exists and the Creator is outside Him, outside the world of Ein Sof, is also not true. But such a feeling is necessary so that we will add our exertion to building our vessel and attaining the understanding and revelation. Then it will be a “human” who built all this out of his free will.

It is like giving a child challenging games and puzzles so that he will work and thanks to that grow, understand, see, try, make efforts, and build himself. The same happens to us with the dual perception that makes us sense ourselves and outside of us, the world.

All our work is to make efforts to connect the two parts into one whole picture called “there is none else besides Him” and “Israel, the Torah and the Creator are one.” This means to sense myself and the external world as one, and to understand that first I have to care about the external world and only then care about myself. After all, I will have to provide only what is necessary for the existence of my beastly body, and I have to try and see all the rest, all the external world, as most precious, my soul.

Then I will reveal that the external world is also me. It is because I treated it as something opposite to me that I hated, rejected and tried to stay away from it, that enabled me to learn about myself, about my nature, and about the “evil inclination.” I had a chance to fight all its fine attributes, the unperceivable, the coarse, and cruel attributes and by that to attain the Creator.

After all, in every incidence of hate towards the external world, there is a need for the Creator’s help in some way. So my rejection of the external world and my decision to connect to it, the power I receive for that from the Creator, and the unity I attain, all bring me to adhesion with the Creator.

So it turns out that there are actions of connection with the external world and there is the acceptance of this world, the feeling of unity or the Creator. By the creation of this division of me and the external world and the “neutral zone” (“Klipat Noga“) between us, I get help from the Creator—a state that is already partially prepared to attain the connection with Him because of this false perception.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/8/12, Shamati #36

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Question: We are talking about the need for balance. How exactly should we reach balance?

Answer: What in me are not just thoughts, desires, and deviations? Can I cut off all this from myself? No. Can I suppress them all? It isn’t a good idea; it would take great efforts and a lot of time, and eventually I would see that my innate attributes wouldn’t disappear even after fifty years.

So what kind of education are we talking about? What does it mean to “be human?” how can I transcend myself?

We have to take all our attributes and just balance them. I don’t need to regret something bad in me; I just need to balance it with something good.

I don’t need to erase anything; this already calms me: After all, I don’t have to feel guilty because I am that way. If I erase anything in me, what will I be left with? All that will be left is to put an end to my life. This is what pushes people to commit suicide: They discover that there is nothing good in them. There can be various external reasons, but the conclusion is the same.

But we approach the issue in a totally different manner. A person should preserve everything that is in him, and advance by his properties adding positive discernments, good attributes, to the negative attributes. Balance, don’t destroy. By destroying, you become a “reformer of the world,” in fact it is doubly bad because one becomes a damager of the world.

We have to balance every phenomenon about ourselves, but not erase it. Otherwise we disturb the general balance. Similarly, we try to balance blood pressure and other physiological problems, as well as problems in society and the family.

We mustn’t oppress anything. After all, it isn’t by chance that the desire to receive was created in this form. It stems from inside and is revealed in our Reshimot (informational genes), which we cannot erase. Their chain continues to evolve, and the only thing we can do is to balance them, to correct the phenomenon by using them correctly and revealing their positive side.
[66294]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/13/12, “The Peace”

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Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”: The yielding due to satiation causes no grief. Relinquishment out of despair is full of pain and sorrow, and can therefore be called, “partial death.”

If we rise to a new desire, to a new level of awakening, we feel a growing despair and eventually die. We don’t die in the physical sense which is expected in any case, but the point is that our spirit is extinguished.

On the beastly level the spirit dies together with the body, but while the body lives, we can find a source that will allow us to rise anew each time, a new awakening. In it we feel life, livelihood, to such an extent that we become detached from the physical existence and its dependence on the body and begin to live in an awakening that is detached from corporeality. These become two different things for us, as it says “you shall see your world in your life.”

Thus a person acquires new vessels, desires, to feel life. This begins from the descents: When a person doesn’t feel life in the vessels of bestowal, he considers himself dead. Then he changes the reason, the vessel of awakening, from receiving to bestowal, and thus gets rid of the spiritual and the physical “angel of death.”

Spiritually he moves on to the vessels of bestowal that do not belong to our world. There is no death in them when the biological body dies; it ceases to feel the livelihood connected to it when the time comes for it to disintegrate and to return to the basic materials it’s made of, as always happens. But at the same time, a person acquires an awakening in the vessels of bestowal in which he feels life and the force of livelihood.  After all, he can always add something to these vessels.

As a whole, the feeling of life isn’t measured by a person’s present desire, but rather by the addition to the desire, by an acceleration coefficient. So a person should always be like a “bent old man” who seems to be looking for something he lost. I should constantly worry about losing the yearning for the goal. If a person performs this work, then he is young in soul. Otherwise we become “children who have grown old,” who retire without maturing.
[66040]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/11/12, “The Freedom”

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Question: I understand how an infant develops. But who knows what genes exist in human society? No one has ever seen how it develops, nor was anyone able to collect data and assert how it will develop going forward. Humanity is our only child, and this is how it grows.

Answer: We can analyze and examine the past, study the developments in philosophy, sociology, and psychology, and this allows us to detect a consistent process and its driving causes. We don’t see future prospects very clearly, but judging by our present state we can still deduce where it will lead us. As with all things, we’re always extrapolating the past into the future.

Nature demands that we observe its laws. Nature is the general organism, which encompasses the still, vegetative, animate and human degrees of development. Everybody goes through this development. First it was the Earth, followed by the plant kingdom, followed by the animals, and finally humans.

This development began with the Big Bang and has been continuing via increasingly greater unification. In every instance, the unification of various parts leads to the creation of increasingly complex and unique organisms, both in terms of quantity and quality.

At first there was only inanimate matter, but then its parts suddenly began to grow acquiring a kind of life, their own individual development. The development then reached the animate degree at which animals develop even more individually. The animate degree was followed by man. These are the results of Nature’s development.

Obviously, this development has its own laws, which we can see by looking at the past. The question is whether we understand them? It appears that we don’t, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.

As a scientist, I study nature and the way it develops, developing me as its component thereby. Indeed, even with all our scientific achievements, man can never be above Nature.

We exist in a certain closed sphere that we call “the Universe,” we study where we are and the kind of laws that act here within this sphere. This sphere is infinite, boundless, and filled with unlimited wisdom. And all we’re doing is scraping up paltry crumbs from this wisdom: This is what our entire science is based on.

We don’t study anything other than nature, and within this sphere we also learn something about ourselves. We see that we cannot take control of our lives, and for this, clearly we must study the laws of nature. It’s good that unpleasant problems push us toward attaining Nature; at least, the motivation is to improve our lives.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” Episode 1, 12/17/11

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Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”: However, when he achieves the aim of Creation and the Creator receives pleasure from him, since His will is done, man’s essence, which clothes in His contentment, is granted complete eternity, like Him. Thus, he has been rewarded with freedom from the angel of death.

Baal HaSulam explains freedom in the context of the perception of reality. We live in a world of forces. There is no matter; it is only depicted to us under the influence of different forces that stabilize this feeling for us.

I perceive the inanimate nature in all its forms and manners and also the vegetative, animate and human levels of nature. These four categories that fill my field of feeling are forces that are depicted in my desire and that draw, like on a screen, the picture of the three-dimensional, varied world.

This happens because my desire to receive divides the general bestowal, called Light, into many types and degrees of internal reactions. On the whole, it makes up the picture of the world in which I feel and see of all these actions.

So from the start, I was given a feeling for which I don’t have to prepare myself. I already have the desire to receive and in it, I feel the world. Besides that I see large-scale processes in inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature and also in between these levels. Actually it is about our internal world, but we take the names of the objects and the phenomena in it from the lowest level according to the principle of a branch and a root.

The higher I rise, the closer I get to the Light through the layers of my desire. In the lowest place I see the picture of this world. Then I rise to the next level, to the desires that are closer to the Light, and these forces are before me in the form of Partzufim, worlds, and Sefirot. Then I see the connection between the branch and the root in everything, and accordingly I call the forms that I feel as desires and the relations between the forces by parallel names from our world. Thus the language of the branches is formed. [Read more →]

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