Shamati #1 “There’s None Else Besides Him”
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Lesson on the Topic: Preparation for the Congress
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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 61
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Writings of Rabash “Shlavei HaSulam,” Article 15
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The Book of Zohar — Selected Excerpts “Introduction,” “The Eighth Commandment,” Item 229
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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Peace”
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Rabash, writes in the Torah, there are three modes. On the one hand, the Torah is called a resource that helps specifically as a resource for the strength of the person, and after that comes the Light that Reforms that corrects a person, and the Light that fills his corrected Kelim. That is how he completes the level.
However, until the completion of correction, this struggle continues. Written in the words of the prophets is the terrible war of Gog and Magog that happens in the last stage of correction, and this doesn’t just affect the physical world, but the same thing happens in spiritual work. Physical wars become a projection of spiritual processes and observations.
To the degree that one advances, the closer one comes to the Creator; a person is thrown into a burning fire of states as if he is approaching the sun. So, he is thrown much more strongly from ascents to descents. In this way, he exhausts his strength.
He must understand that all of this is done to help him leave the depths of his ego, from sinking deeper and deeper and more strongly into it, in order to move on to “for the sake of bestowal,” to the sacred, to spirituality, to greater and greater bestowal and love.
The gap between these two poles, between the descents and the ascents, grows more and more. Until a person hasn’t completely drowned in the sea of his evil forces, he cannot scream and ask for his correction.
So, the Torah exhausts a person’s power. If he is not illuminated by Light, but is under the control of egoistic forces, Klipot, his desire to receive, then he cannot do anything. Our mind only serves our feelings and is not prepared to help us.
So, a person must prepare himself for states like these from the start to the degree possible, as far as he is capable. However, in any case, he will fall and get up again, fall and get up.
The group must supply him with the right environment so that through it, he immediately will begin to ascend in that he draws energy like from batteries. Throughout the entire time of ascent, he charges the battery so that when needed he can use it.
That is how it is necessary to relate to an environment. For this purpose, the Shevirat HaKelim (shattering of the vessels) was made for we apparently cannot get along without an external battery like this. We invest our energy in it, accumulate our investment, the effort, and after that, it is possible to use it. It is impossible to advance without a battery of energy like this.
This is the guarantee of our mutual love “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Guarantee is not something that someone else needs. Rather, we need it ourselves. This is because we cannot get out of the descents if we don’t rise all the time in levels of mutual participation and connection.
So, these descents are necessary to teach us how to behave correctly so that we won’t flee and shatter into fragments. I understand that there are descents where it is impossible to get out of bed, where you feel physically dead. Everyone goes through states like these and stays alive. There is nothing to be concerned about or to fear.
However, ultimately it is necessary to understand, organize together, and struggle with them. We are standing before a mountain of thoughts, Mount Sinai (hatred) that you cannot ascend without mutual guarantee.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/22/14, Writing of Rabash
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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Peace,” “The Wheel of Transformation of the Form”
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Rabash, the article, “Purpose of Society (1984, 1.2)”: Since man is created with a Kli called “self-love,” where one does not see that an act will yield self-benefit, one has no motivation to make even a tiny movement. And without annulling self-love, it is impossible to achieve Dvekut (adhesion) with the Creator, meaning equivalence of form.
So they give us a society, for if its influence on me is stronger than the personal demands of my ego, I am ready to change under the influence of my environment. Suppose I want to rest, to travel, to have a good time; yet on the other hand I am in a society that pressures me and compels me to be involved with something else. Under its pressure I will certainly carry out what it requires from me, but unwillingly.
Can the society influence me so that I will want to carry out its requirements, and further that this will be from my own pressure and with great internal readiness? Suppose that it shows me that if I work according to its instructions, it will respect and elevate me, show respect and the like.
In this case I begin to leave my desire for fun, for rest, for sleep, and I run to work just to earn the right attitude of the society towards me. This means that the society can play with a person.
In human nature is inherently such a condition that society can bring a person to suicide or can elevate him to the pinnacle of glory. Everything depends upon the environment. A person has no weight himself. The attitude of the environment towards him is his sole and only determinant.
So we can take advantage of the possibility that an individual can be influenced by society and we can gather a group that will influence us so that we will carry out every action for the benefit of others. And with its help, we can bring ourselves to a state in which an external force, the Light that Reforms, will also influence us. Yet it works only through the environment. Since the right society can awaken us to the right actions, it is possible to awaken Ohr Makif (Surrounding Light) on ourselves through that society.
I adhere naturally to a society with the right desires for bestowal, love of others, etc. My ego says: “Do you want them to respect you? You must yearn for this.” I begin to yearn, and simultaneously through this I also attract some kind of natural force found in the society called Ohr Makif. Under its influence I begin to be changed. So everything depends upon how I situate myself regarding my environment.
If my environment is capable of awakening me correctly and acts subtly regarding my ego, it can really play with me. I am ready for this, I want it! This is because my ego is my enemy and I want to do something about it.
The society starts to play with my ego and awakens great desires for altruistic actions in me. And simultaneously it lowers the Ohr Makif onto me through them. That is how my mutual connection with the right group solves all of the problems of my correction through “equivalence of form” with the higher power.
So that the right attitudes will be created between me and society, it is necessary to stand under defined conditions that have been determined by the Kabbalists, like maintaining attitudes of equality between friends, integration with one another, greater preference for the desires of a friend over my personal desires, etc.
If I act according to these conditions, I gradually enter into its system of connection and am found in it like a small node within its network, and all the rest of the right nodes around me are my society. That is how we help each other and complement everyone’s problems, learning to cooperate correctly with the general system until we begin to feel like a whole group.
The group suddenly begins to feel that it is found in a general system of connection that is acting on it. The discovery of the power of the general system is the discovery of the Creator within us, within the group. A person is not capable of feeling this alone. He lacks the appropriate senses for this.
When I find myself like a small spider in a large web, then through connection with others, I feel the space that surrounds me, I feel the Creator. This is only on condition that I have the right connection with the friends.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/8/2014, Writings of Rabash
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Question: Millions of people read and study the Torah, but what are they looking for if the Creator can only be found in the connection between people?
Answer: Their study is not in vain. Any study of the Torah helps a person advance and enables him to clarify things. Millions of people both religious and nonreligious have studied the Torah in many ways: the Bible, the New Testament, Islam and Christianity. Any form of studying that is somehow connected to the Torah, whether directly or indirectly, helps people advance and prepares humanity for the right connection, for correction, for the revelation of the Creator to all the created beings.
Everything that happens leads to certain outcomes. All the religious struggles and wars in the past and those that are going on today were meant to clarify the right spiritual vessel. It isn’t clear why our desire to receive has to suffer, but it is a fact that the afflictions a person undergoes develop him.
How many people die each day and what terrible diseases are revealed! New viruses will appear in the world to which modern medicine will have no answers and it is all in order to clarify the right desire.
After all, it is impossible to advance towards revealing the right desire unless you are totally disappointed of the previous desires. You are disappointed not because you cannot fulfill these desires but because you want something more meaningful.
If I suffer now, the pain doesn’t enable me to sin because I have no desire, no power, no time left, or the opportunity to do so. The afflictions force me to feel disappointed of the state I am in and to start clarifying the taste of life and of my existence.
I cannot reach the question of “what is the point of my life?” without sufferings. All the extremist streams that existed in Christianity in the past and which are rising in Islam now are meant only for this purpose: to clarify the taste of life. By demanding that the whole world accept their religion and putting their flag in every continent they are fighting for the purpose of human existence.
It is all the subconscious clarification of the thought of creation. At the moment they are clarifying it this way, but we who study Kabbalah must allow them to advance by the Light that Reforms.
This Light is revealed in our desires. If we draw the Light and begin to reveal it sufficiently, it will begin to flow from us to the rest of humanity since all the souls are connected, like connected vessels. Then they will begin to clarify these questions on a totally different level.
Then the extremist Muslims will not have to fight the corporeal bodies and will try to understand more deeply the meaning of life. In the meantime they are looking for the answer to this question by killing one another, but we can raise them to another level of clarification, to the next level.
Then they will understand that the issue isn’t bodies but desires. This clarification will be by the connection to the source of life, to a state that the Light comes from, that we all have to attain. We have to illuminate this way for them and show them that it exists, that it is open for everyone, and that the clarification is actually by the connection between different people, actually between those who are most distant and different.
Thanks to their connection above all the differences and covering all the sins by love, they will discover the upper force, which means that they will attain a deeper meaning of life.
It all depends on us. We only have to teach humanity how to connect in order to discover the Creator in the connection among us. This is the goal we are fulfilling when we organize conversation circles for the public all over the country. Thus we will be able to express the power of unity rather easily since the Israeli nation has been in this state in the past. Later this force will spread from us to the other nations.
Then we will suddenly discover that the moment we manage to connect the nation to the wisdom of truth, which means to connect thanks to the Light that Reforms, the world will suddenly calm down: the wars in Iraq, the Ukraine, and in other places will stop and so will phenomena like the Ebola virus, etc.
Our whole life will work out since we will bring people to a state in which the Upper Light will begin to clarify their desires and they will not need to clarify them by killing each other. Those who can draw the Light are only those who study the wisdom of Kabbalah.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/17/14, Writing of Rabash
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The Book of Zohar — Selected Excerpts “Introduction,” “The Seventh Commandment,” Item 223
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Vol. 6, Part 16, Item 49
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Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Peace,” “The Wheel of Transformation of the Form”
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It is customary to read the Selichot (atonement) in the Siddur before Rosh HaShana and to ask for forgiveness for all the mistakes and sins that we committed in the previous year. A person usually asks for forgiveness if he has done something wrong to someone, not in order to correct evil. But the Selichot are the revelation of the recognition of evil that was caused intentionally or unintentionally by us.
We all know that even in court asking for forgiveness or an apology from one side to the other is taken into account. Sometimes the court decides that the offender should apologize to the offended and if he forgives the offender the sentence is mitigated.
This means that asking for forgiveness is already a correction since a person admits that he has caused harm. Although he has not corrected it yet, he already commits himself to correcting it. Asking for forgiveness is the first step of the correction, so we have to value it and to take it into account.
We say Selichot at the end of the year, at the end of a cycle, at the end of a spiritual level. We complete the spiritual level in a good state since the Torah always speaks about an ascent but at the same time we reach destruction. At the end of the year there is the Ninth of Av together with all the troubles associated with it: the destruction of the First and the Second Temples and more. Then there is the time of the Selichot in which we discover the outcomes of the shattering and realize how shattered, lowly, and loathsome we are, and then we ask for forgiveness.
Interestingly, the month in which we cry and ask for forgiveness brokenheartedly because of the recognition of evil is called “Elul,” which is the Hebrew acronym for “I am my beloved and my beloved is mine.”
But if I realize that I am evil, it is the Creator’s fault because He created my evil inclination. So why should I ask His forgiveness for that.
It turns out that the desired outcome of our work, of the new level we have acquired, is the revelation of the evil inclination in us. We discover the evil in us and attribute it to ourselves, realizing that it is inside us and we want to get rid of it. Otherwise, it isn’t called the recognition of evil.
If a person feels the evil in his ego (his desire to receive) he immediately wants to get rid of it. If I regret my actions I thus commit myself to getting rid of the attributes in me, but, in the meantime, I don’t know how to do that. In the meantime, I cannot do it since I lack the power and the understanding to do so. But I realize that it is bad, which means that I determine my state.
It is about the connection between us because the whole correction begins with that. This means that all the evil is revealed in contrast to the unity, which we don’t want, reject, and try to escape in every way we can. This is the whole evil; this is our evil inclination.
Of course, the evil inclination was given to us from Above by the Creator. We don’t cry over the fact that it is part of us but over the fact that we don’t want to get rid of it! We cry because we identify with the ego and are ready to stay in it forever! We don’t regret the evil but the fact that we agree to live in it.
We should direct all our complaints to the Creator, “go to the craftsman who made me.” And what is my own sin? Is it my fault that I haven’t worked enough with the means that He gave me in order to be free of this sin? This is what I cry about, about my helplessness and about my reluctance to be free of my ego.
We cry about our inability to get out of our ego and ask the Creator to help us, realizing our weakness with regard to the evil inclination that is revealed.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9.7.14, The Zohar
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Question: In small groups, tens often include beginners and veterans. They speak different languages, have different levels of understanding. How can they unite in such a diverse ten? What should be used as a foundation?
Answer: I do not see any problem. Look to the root, since inside a group, a newcomer and a veteran are absolutely the same.
It is like in the example with Rabbi Yossi Ben Kisma who saw in his students an ideal group even though they were clueless beginners, understanding nothing. The difference between them was as between heaven and earth. But he saw their inner essence, how much they are connected with each other in the spiritual world.
If we would look at our friends like this, then there is no difference if one came to the group a few months ago, and another was in it for five years. We need to distance ourselves a little from external characteristics.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/8/14, Writings of Rabash
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Question: When in a large group, a group of ten helps the friends care for one another and support each other in their studies and dissemination, but on the other hand, it somewhat replaces one’s attitude towards the group and creates a certain egoistic formation within the group. There is even competition between the tens. How can we solve this dualism in a large group?
Answer: This is a very good state but we have not yet fully experienced it, so it is hard to answer this question. Maybe we need to organize ourselves in a whole new way and create a different kind of connection between us.
It is easier to interact in a small group. But what can we do in a large group where, presumably, one hundred people divide into ten groups? There needs to be a connection between them as well.
When it comes to a common system, being in one common net, “One’s as good as none.” Only the ten is a Minyan.
Minyan translates as “count” from Hebrew (from the word Mune). In other words, the count begins with a ten.
In the spiritual system, a ten is a unit, one knot that contains ten people. But they are not a knot but a Minyan until they unite as one man with one heart. Minyan is a single unit, ten together as one.
Tens must connect with one another as a hierarchy: initially, ten people connect as one and on the next level ten groups connect as a single group, etc.
This has never before existed in the world. And so we must advance little by little as we learn by experience. And we will be given an example from above.
And so the question remains. I want everyone to feel that this is an open question and that we do not know what to do, because this makes it a sort of a request for a solution.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/8/14, Writing of Rabash
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