It is important to clarify exactly how we can change our desire to receive under the influence of the Light so that we will not waste our powers in vain. All we can do is to hasten the pace of our development by using the environment as a magnifying glass that brings the influence of the Light closer to us. This is actually the only thing we can do and the only thing we need.

By starting to work in a group, we learn to focus this telescope: We bring together all the rays of the Light that Reforms so that they will go exactly through the center of the group and will be focused exactly on our desire to receive. Then the desire to receive will be changed by the Light that Reforms.

We want to learn how this is done: how this ray of Light that goes through the magnifying glass grows, concentrates and is intensified, and then falls on the desire to receive and puts it through four phases. Then we will see how changes begin to take place in the desire to receive and how it becomes the opposite of what it was initially. A person begins to live not inside himself, but to rise above his desire, above the restriction and the Masach (screen) towards the Returning Light, towards bestowal, instead of receiving, and thus reaches correction.

This work in hastening the development of our desire by the Light that Reforms actually provides us with the power to understand and to attain the whole system. Although it is only the hastening of a process, it is in it that we discover all the means and all the details of creation and the process of its development. It is because in every stage that we go through, we have to orient the group differently.

So the focus through this magnifying glass constantly changes and becomes the opposite of what it was before, depending on the new external and internal conditions. We are constantly changing the influence of the group on us, and we change it with regard to the Light, with regard to the Creator. Eventually we build a new system inside us, above our desire to receive. The group becomes my world. Instead of a tiny point of desire, I receive a whole world, the enormous system of the world of Ein Sof (Infinity).

It is thanks to the desire we have that we begin to attain this system called the “group,” an infinite system in its finite form, and thus receive the means that raises us above our desire to receive.

The whole level of bestowal is called “self-sacrifice.” It means that a person has totally detached himself from his desire to receive, which means that he “sacrifices himself.” Of course, the whole correction is done by the Light, and we only have to adjust and to focus its influence on us through the environment, to connect these three components like a gun sight, so that they are all arranged in one straight line.

Then we will have no more doubts that we have to get close to the Light’s nature and so we imagine the society this way and want the Light to influence us through it. Eventually all these components become one whole.

The level of love is revealed after the level of self-sacrifice. Then a person understands what the goal of creation called “to do good to His created beings” means.

We gradually rise by keeping a certain condition and thanks to this we discover a little more understanding as to the Creator’s intention regarding the creation. Thus we advance: First there is the correction of the vessels by the Light that Reforms and then we attain the thought of creation.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/26/12, Shamati #219

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Question: How is the unity of the vessel of the general soul expressed?

Answer: The vessel itself is the unity. A vessel isn’t seven billion parts, but the connection between them. The connection between me and all the others is my spiritual vessel.

By establishing a relationship with you I restrict my ego and begin to treat you in bestowal and love and discover the Creator in our relationship and thus bring Him contentment. I know that I bring Him contentment by treating you well. It says, “from the love of the created beings to the love of the Creator.”

So I had to choose you and to start loving you although I didn’t want to. I thought that you had nothing to do with me, but I do it only for the goal, which you raise so high that it gives me enough power to begin to fix my relations with you.

When I begin to restrict my ego and to treat you with love, when I do it in order to bring contentment to the Creator, the Creator, the upper force, is revealed in our relationship. But in the meantime He is revealed on the level of the still nature, Nefesh. I begin to feel His presence, which is passive for now. After all, the extent to which I discover Him is up to me.

Then I develop my attitude towards you in order to bring even greater contentment to the Creator and discover in our relationship the Light on the next level, on the vegetative level, Ruach. I begin to feel that I, you, and the Creator are changing and advancing in our relationship. There is a kind of vitality in it, support and mutuality that fills me with life.

There is someone I can mutually cooperate with; I am not facing a wall. Then I continue to develop my relationship with you in order to bring contentment to the Creator on the level of Ruach, to learn this like a flower that lives and dies, that responds to the sunlight, to day and night. I discover that I can revive this love and to feel what weakens or deteriorates it.

Thus I develop my sensitivity and rise to the next level, to the level of the animate. This means that I am already independent to some extent. I don’t just respond to different conditions, I can also move from place to place and give birth to new life. I begin to feel more and more deeply the desire to receive that I have discovered before, and I see I can continue working with it, to change it and to generate new actions and to be independent as the animate level should be. I begin to feel the Creator as the Light of life.

Then I build the relationship until the level of the speaking and attain self-management from the Creator. It’s just like in our world when a child grows up and becomes old enough not to be under his parents’ supervision. In the same way, the more I do that, the more I resemble the Creator and merge with Him. It’s because I begin to perform His part and by that become totally independent. The Creator doesn’t control me; I perform this function by myself.

It all depends on how much we work with our desire to receive. Only in it do we discover all of reality, by penetrating deeper into it and discerning more and more details there. Thus you will suddenly discover the spiritual world in this world. It was here all along, but you simply lacked the sensitivity to see it. Your detector didn’t have enough determination; it didn’t have the desired frequency range to perceive the spiritual world.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/9/12, The Study of the Ten Sefirot 

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Question: The nations in the East, the Chinese for example, claim that they already know the truth, but actually it isn’t the truth. What can we do about it?

Answer: It says: “Wisdom among the nations—believe.” The point is that all the cultures and religions speak about our egoistic world, trying to insert into it a method that would help us avoid pain in our life, our ego, and that would provide an answer to the current problems and even some hope for the next life, although this part isn’t expressed so strongly in Chinese culture. But the religions and other cultures have developed whole methods by taking the idea from the wisdom of Kabbalah.

One way or another, it is about an egoistic method, about how we exist in it, hoping for a better life in this world and in the next world. All this has nothing to do with changing human nature. There is no method that calls for and sets its goal as loving others as thyself. By this, the wisdom of Kabbalah differs from all the other methods, and it is the only method that speaks about changing man by the use of the upper force and it explains how to do it. All the other means are closed within our ego and using them is like pulling yourself by the hair out of the swamp.

Besides, every method is suitable for the people it was created for. I suppose that it is impossible to understand Confucius if you are not Chinese. His teachings are very deep, but other nations see it as superficial because it is not suited for their nature and character.

It isn’t by chance that there are seventy roots for seventy nations. Every nation has a spiritual root of its own which in our world gives birth to its replica. This is where all the differences stem from, including cultural differences. Suppose opera is for the Italians and you cannot think of the Spanish without thinking of bullfights. This is especially true when it comes to philosophy. It is impossible to understand Dante detached from his culture and his times.

We only pretend that we understand masterpieces from the past. Can I really learn Japanese philosophy if I am not Japanese? I will simply not be able to feel it and to penetrate it. I can only study the material and perceive the dry letters, but not the spirit.

I will not understand Confucius because internally I am not built like him. I will also not be able to understand the Native American Indians. You can visit them and imitate the externality, but I won’t be able to connect their studies with my soul.

At best, I can feel another nation, but not be part of its root. Therefore our world is full of rubbish: We have castrated ourselves and have deprived ourselves of the inner filling from rich cultures and deep philosophical perceptions by leaving only the externality.

The seventy roots are kept until Gmar Tikkun (the end of correction) and only then do they disappear in the general Keter. And so there cannot be any mutual penetration except for dry doctorates. There isn’t an ounce of truth in them.

What is more, the modern Chinese look at Confucius from a distance, and they also don’t understand him in depth. But they can still join him and somehow connect to their root, while no one else can do that.

We have to connect in mutual love above all our roots, without confusing them. The source of the seventy roots is Zeir Anpin, but even there they don’t mix, but rather connect by the Masach (screen). On the whole, in spirituality all the differences are kept and even grow as they ascend, since our attributes become more powerful. At first we are close and hardly differ from one another, but later, the spiritual levels split up like a cone, since “whoever is greater than his friend, his desire is greater.” We connect mutually above it, above all the details we perceive.

You are asking “how?” When I place your desire above mine and you place my desire above yours, I begin to penetrate the teachings of Confucius, and you the teachings of Moses. But in order to do that, we need a Masach and at first we have to work together.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/16/12, The Study of the Ten Sefirot

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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” p. 39: Now we have shown that the Creator’s desired goal for the Creation He had created is to bestow upon His creatures, so they would know His truthfulness and greatness, and receive all the delight and pleasure He had prepared for them, in the measure described in the verse: “Ephraim my darling son, is he joy of his parents?” (Jeremiah 31, 19). Thus, you clearly find that this purpose does not apply to the still and the great spheres, such as the earth, the moon, or the sun, however luminous they may be, and not to the vegetative or the animate, for they lack the sensation of others, even from among their own species. Therefore, how can the sensation of the Godly and His bestowal apply to them?

Humankind alone, having been prepared with the sensation of others of the same species, who are similar to them, after delving in Torah and Mitzvot, when they invert their will to receive to a will to bestow, and come to equivalence of form with their Maker, they receive all the degrees that have been prepared for them in the Upper Worlds, called NRNHY. By that they become qualified to receive the purpose of the Thought of Creation. After all, the purpose of the creation of all the worlds was for man alone.

Question: The sensation of others is inherent in us, by which, through love for created beings, we can obtain love for the Creator. It turns out that the attitude towards the other is the means that we just use?

Answer: In our world a “means” is what we use along the way and throw away when we reach the goal. If I found a more effective means, I give up the previous one because the main thing for me is the goal.

In spirituality, things are different: Here, the goal is revealed in the means itself, and the means becomes the goal because it is not the I who reaches to the Creator, it is the system that I reveal and put up together by my own effort, by identifying with it like one whole. If I had stayed the way I am, I would have used the means only on the way to the goal. However, the process is different; being included in the means, I obtain the willingness to adhere to the goal.

Thus, the means is sacred for me because I reach the goal not with its help, but within it. I become it. My soul is this, the entire collective system.

It turns out that who I am now is not the real me. The real me does not exist yet because my current “I” came from the Creator, it is His part from above, that does not exist on its own. It represents the force of breaking and is intended to feel itself “cut off,” separated.

This helps me to adhere to the group, and in it, one step higher, I find myself. And here, in this one whole, I find fulfillment: the Creator.

Thus, I cannot reach the Creator by bypassing the means, the group. And besides, I do not throw away the means when I reach the goal. On the contrary, by being cut off from it, I build in it the system in which I discover the life, called the Creator, the reviving inner Force, the “elixir of life.”
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/12/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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Question: Can we advance in happiness?

Answer: If a person is immersed in his ego, in his desire to receive, then he certainly cannot be happy because it will only bring him pain. But if he rises above his ego so as not to worry about what goes on inside him, but to live on a higher level and to identify with the attribute of bestowal, with the world, with everything that surrounds him, he can be happy constantly.

It can be to such an extent that he won’t feel what is happening with his body at all. The body can die, but a person will not feel that he belongs to his body any more.

Now we totally identify ourselves with our body. But if we can develop so that we will gradually draw further from it, we will eventually stop feeling that we are tied to it at all. It is as if I float above this body, and it is indeed so, because I identify with the attribute of bestowal and I live in it, and this is the key to advancing in happiness.

I can attain this if I am incorporated in the environment and together with others form one general group force that is not egoistic, but that is formed from all our spiritual sparks that are connected above our ego. Our ego loses its value and we raise the sparks and see them as the top priority. As a result we begin to live in these sparks that are connected and create one harmonious group force.

Besides, by developing the force of mutual bestowal, which means that we can demand this force of bestowal from the upper force field, from the Creator, we will constantly feel happy. It all depends on how a person aims himself regarding the group, and how the group aims itself regarding the Creator, regarding the field of bestowal and love.

This is the only factor that determines everything. I have to detach myself from my “self” and to rise to the level of “we”; everything will be accepted happily! It isn’t simple, and there are ascents and descents, but this is how we advance. Each time we receive an additional ego, an additional desire to enjoy, so that we will grow stronger and connect more tightly to the field of bestowal. This is the only way to advance.

If a person identifies with the goal, he accepts everything that happens on the way happily because he understands that it is a means for reaching the goal.

But if a person thinks only about his stomach—absorbed in himself, unable to rise above himself, then he will certainly walk around with a sour face, will suffer in life, and will always have complaints about the environment, about the group, the friends, the Creator and the teacher—it all depends on how a person aims himself.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/21/12, Shamati #30

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Question: Does the world have a chance to reach correction in the 228 years we have left until the end of the 6,000 years we were given for that, and how will we feel it?

Answer: No one can say how much time we have left until Gmar Tikkun (the end of correction). This was spoken of much by the prophets who spoke about it in hidden allusions. This means that they also didn’t know when it would happen because it relates to our free will. Baal HaSulam thought that Gmar Tikkun would come tomorrow if not today since everything is ready for it from Above!

We also think that it will happen soon. We can base our belief on what is happening in the world today, although no one knows anything for sure. It says that the correction will take 6,000 years, which means that there are 228 years left. But is it really during this length of time that we have to reach Gmar Tikkun, in a good way or in a bad way?

In a good way we can reach correction tomorrow, or even today. There are no limits here. If we want to be corrected, our desire will immediately summon upon us the influence of the upper field. No special arrangement on the Creator’s part is necessary. Our desire is enough in order to evoke it. We are the masters of the states we find ourselves in.

We cannot know when it will happen, but as we near Gmar Tikkun, after the revelation of the upper world, which is called a spiritual birth, we still feel this world in all the 125 degrees of the spiritual ascent. The moment we reach the general correction and everyone is corrected, there is a connection of all the vessels, of all the individual spiritual desires, then our world disappears, since there is one general vessel for all the desires to receive.

When its last particle moves on to bestowal, there isn’t one desire left that is not corrected and in order to bestow. Therefore, the feeling of this world that exists only within the egoistic desire without a Masach (screen) disappears! And only the upper world remains!

Since all the desires are connected, all the worlds unite and become one general upper world, in the level of Ein Sof (Infinity). So by attaining Gmar Tikkun together with the whole world, you cease to feel this world. You will not need it! And besides, you will have no vessels to perceive it, since you have corrected your last egoistic desire. Then this reality will disappear from your feeling.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/21/12, Shamati #30

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Question: What kind of exertion is the means for spiritual advancement, and can I help a friend exert himself or do I steal his work from him by that?

Answer: Exertion is whatever is above my human abilities. I cannot help another and complete his work, but I can set an example for him so that it will be easier for him to exert himself.

So I don’t steal his work, but rather help him. The more we help one another by setting an example so that it will be easier for a friend to exert himself even more, the more efficiently we will advance.

With this, we exchange the corporeal exertion with a spiritual exertion! Then the corporeal work seems very difficult and the spiritual work seems very easy because you add the force of the group to it. The result is that you have to move a load of a hundred tons and you move it, but you have the aid of a million people pushing the load with you.

You don’t have to feel the weight of the load that is 100 tons. These 100 tons are necessary only so that through them you will attain connection with a million people.

Therefore, there is no need for senseless sufferings; all we have to do is to understand why we suffer.

If you feel difficulty, pain, rejection, and sorrow in a certain place, it means that it isn’t the right exertion. As it says: “Thou hast not called upon Me, O Jacob.” If with great effort and sweat you carry the load that was given to you by the Creator, it means that you are not exerting yourself correctly, and this burden belongs to someone else and not the Creator.

The pleasure from work is knowing for Whom we are exerting ourselves.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/15/12, Shamati #117

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All the vessels can be filled only by each other and by bestowing upon one another. To the extent that you bestow on upon others, you bestow upon the Creator. The more you can connect with others, the more you connect with the Creator. This is called: “I dwell within my people” because if you connect with others, you find the Creator there.

Therefore, “Love thy friend as thyself is the great rule of the Torah” since by bestowing upon your friend, you bestow upon the Creator. It is the only thing you should do, and there is nothing more than that. To bestow upon the Creator refers to the general vessel and the general Light that fills it. With regard to others, we perform individual correction that cannot be fulfilled through them if you don’t intend to bring contentment to the Creator, meaning the general vessel.

We cannot perceive the Creator in any other way but through the general force of bestowal that is revealed in the general vessel, in the general desire. If we want to avoid the bestowal upon others within the general network, it prevents us from doing the right thing and it cuts us off from reality since all of reality is based only on the connection among us. There, the general bestowal called the upper Light, the general law called “the Creator,” is revealed.

Therefore it says “Love thy friend as thyself is the great rule of the Torah.”
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/07/12, The Study of the Ten Sefirot

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Baal HaSulam, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”: These are the words of Rabbi Elazar, son of Rabbi Shimon, who said that the world is judged by its majority. He was referring to the role of the Israeli nation to qualify the world for a certain measure of purity, until they are worthy of taking upon themselves His work, no less than Israel were worthy at the time they received the Torah.”

It’s wrong to imagine the “world” as a desire to receive that cannot perform any actions on its own. It isn’t so. The part of Israel in the world is simply similar to the head of the Partzuf, to the first three Sefirot (GAR), and it must act as the “adaptor” between the Light and the desire to receive.

The Partzuf is divided into five parts: Keter, Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin, and Malchut. The Light resides in the vessels of Keter, Hochma, and Bina, and they are adapted to it. By being the same desire to receive, they contain the Light and perform Zivug de Haka’a (coupling by beating) with it and pass it on to the receiving vessels, to Zeir Anpin and Malchut (ZON).

So it’s impossible to manage without the vessels of Keter, Hochma, and Bina. They are the link and they are very important since without them the connection would be lost. On the other hand, the goal of the process is that the vessels of ZON, whose work is to raise the request for correction (MAN) to the vessels of bestowal (GAR), to be incorporated in them and to join them.

The two parts help each other mutually. ZON helps the vessels of GAR to fulfill their role as the link, and GAR evoke the vessels of ZON and bring them the method of correction needed for the receiving vessels in order to connect and to be incorporated in the vessels of GAR. Thus the “nations of the world,” those that don’t have a spark of bestowal, perform important work when they connect to the vessels of the first three Sefirot.

The same thing happens to us: How could we draw the Light if we weren’t connected to Rabbi Shimon, to Baal HaSulam, to Rabash, and to the other great Kabbalists, or in other words to the Partzufim, the Sefirot, the spiritual levels? We connect to them in order to receive power from them, so that they will operate on us and unite us. When I read a Kabbalistic text, I try to connect to its author. After all, he is the upper one for me and through him my connection to the Light flows. It isn’t about a certain person that once lived; I want to connect with the source of the Light, and I am drawn to the link, to the spiritual mechanism through which that connection continues.

When I develop my spiritual vessels together with the Masach (screen), when I can connect with the spiritual world, I will see the Kabbalist in his spiritual form, as a Partzuf. Now he is the author of the article or the author of the book for me. This is the uniqueness of our world: Here we can use texts, which we don’t actually understand yet, and can connect with spirituality through such external devices. The Kabbalist invites me, cares for me, and I try to hold on to him, and thus we are in a relationship of mutual guarantee.

As for the “nations of the world,” they will not receive the correction all at once either. Their role is to join, to help, to be incorporated in the vessels of GAR. This is very serious work thanks to which Hochma is revealed in them. It is by them that all the Light is revealed.

Although according to the opposite value between the Lights and the vessels, it’s first revealed only in the vessels of GAR and only for the time being, on the way to the end of correction. Later everything is filled with one simple Light, as it says “and they shall all know Me from the smallest to the greatest.” And there won’t be even one grain of desire that will not receive complete fulfillment. Since all the grains are included in each other, each of them, every individual soul attains Ein Sof (Infinity).
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/06/12,“The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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All our correction is in order to reach the connection of all the shattered vessels. Then we will correct the general vessel. This connection should be perfect, special, and diversified. We aren’t just putting together a puzzle, a two dimensional picture.

After all, we understand from the shattering that the vessels were incorporated in each other, and there isn’t one shattered part that doesn’t include all the other vessels. Therefore, every part is separated from the whole since it has lost the natural ability to be with others. This is the broken part in it. Now with the help of the upper Light, it should acquire this ability by itself.

In the past I knew I was connected to several parts around me, just like in an ordinary puzzle. I had to get along only with those who were next to me, and this promised everything that is good to our “area.”

But now everything is different, now I am included in everyone. This means that I have to take part in the connection among everyone, in the connection between every two different parts. Just think what a mechanism we are talking about: All its parts are integrally connected among them, in all their diversity, in all the sections, in every direction. We cannot imagine yet how such a thing is possible.

In order to be able to start this assembly which includes measurements, an emotional perception, and mutual participation in hundreds of billions of options; this idea is presented to us in the form of the law of mutual guarantee, which we have to keep even on the lowest level. In fact; for a start, I don’t have to keep in touch with all the other parts, which are not really seven billion but an infinite amount, since everyone is included in everyone and since every connection to someone else immediately turns into the world of Ein Sof (Infinity).

The law of mutual guarantee, the format in which Kabbalists bring us the method of connection, is a simple method that can be easily fulfilled, and which enables us to carry out simple gradual actions on our way to correction without being confused. Today we cannot deal with our internal “mechanism,” which we will reach later on, according to the principle of “from Your actions we shall know You.” Instead we are dealing with accessible, external things that can be identified in order to advance.

This is mutual guarantee: not entering internal things, which could prevent me from correcting myself and the world. I only need to be responsible for what is happening among us. We should regard the method of mutual guarantee as a wonderful opportunity. Kabbalists intentionally brought us the method of correction in such a simple form.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/06/12,“The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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