Question: When I ask for the desires of others as my own, do I need to intend to give contentment to the Creator and not just to do good to people?

Answer: You ask for the possibility of giving them contentment, despite the fact that these desires are like your own, because with this you are giving contentment to the Creator. You cannot give contentment to the Creator directly, for He has no deficiency for anything. So you give contentment to the whole world, and the Creator receives pleasure from this.

There is a territory that is the entire world except for your point. There is a large circle which is the entire soul, and you are outside of the circle with your point and are asking for them. By bringing the Creator to this circle, He is happy that He can bestow to them all. It follows that you are bringing the Creator to bestowal and with this, you give Him contentment.

You pray that things will go well for people, and with this you intend to give contentment to the Creator. This is because the Creator is perfect and has no deficiency besides bestowal, and you make it possible for Him to do this. But the Kli is not found in Him; rather it is within His creature, within all of humanity.
[132049]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/06/14, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
The Creator In Every Object In Our World
The World Is An Infant In Our Hands
To Whom Are We Giving Pleasure?

Filed under: Adam-The Common Soul, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

It is not difficult for the Creator to completely control the creatures. This is the power of the Elyon, about which it is said, (Isaiah 44:6) “I am the first, and I am the last,”  the only one who activates and manages everything. The problem is only how to bring the creatures to free choice, to independence. It’s up to the creatures to take it for themselves since freedom and independence cannot be given from Above.

How is this done? We don’t know what freedom and independence are. If we hide from some unpleasant sensation, we suppose that we are free of it, and when we cease being under pressure or domination by someone, we think that we have become independent. But this is not true.

If we have this desire, first of all we require a desire and a need for independence and freedom. And this is a problem. How can there be something free in a creature that is the product of the particular forces which produced it?

If there is no independence, then there is no creature. There is only a protein substance that exists according to clear and defined laws and is under the influence of various forces that develop and support it, bringing life and death. However within all of this, it has no independence in anything.

If you look at the lives of all people, then it seems obvious that they don’t decide anything by themselves. Where might they have an opportunity for independent desire?

This is the problem, if this is possible to say,  of the Creator when creating creation. For a creature is someone who acquires the power of independence. He separates from the Creator. But how is this possible? And if he will not separate, how will he reach independence?

Therefore it’s important for us to pass through a sensation of exile, not once, but an exile that comes and goes several times on a more and more internal level all the time. The first exile, if it can be called exile, was the Babylonian exile. The second exile is the exile of Egypt, the third is the exile of Persia, and the fourth and last is our exile.

We attain these exiles through our inner work when we reach recognition of our dependence, and then we know how to become independent. Indeed our partnership, our adherence with the Creator, rests upon our independence. Otherwise I cannot be a partner.

Also, when it’s said that I am the servant of the Creator, this is not the same slavery I had been in at the beginning. I make myself a servant of the Creator from a completely independent state and level. The level of servant rests upon maintaining a state opposed to Him, meaning absolute freedom.
[132115]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/07/14, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
Freedom Is Born From Love
Everything Starts From The Exodus From Egypt
Egypt Is Between Us

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Free Will, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

Question: What does it mean to feel that nobody in the world is able to help you?

Answer: We need to discover that we are nothing by ourselves, zeroes that are managed by the Light one hundred percent. The Light influences the desire, the desire awakens and is attracted to the Light. This is what happens in us egoistically.

But we need to change the direction so that the Light will not influence the desire so that the desire will not ignite and will not pursue the Light. I want to build a barrier (Machsom) between them, to make a restriction on my desire so that it will not be exposed to the direct influence of the Light so that it will not obligate me to run after the Light like a beast.

I don’t want to be a corrupt servant. I don’t agree to be in submission, enslaved by the Light without my own examination and decision, doing everything that it would command me. It’s as if I look at my desire and the Light from the side and see how they communicate. And I don’t do anything at all, I have no right to speak and decide.

Before the Light influences the desire, I am not ready to do or to see anything. This is called psychology because I learn how my body and desires are aroused by the influence of pleasure, which is the Light.

If I don’t want to be in a state like this, it means that I feel the slavery. I acquire a kind of independent point of examination, the position of a judge, an investigator, and I see that I don’t exist in this picture at all. The Creator gave me a point in the heart, and from this, I can follow my heart, my desires, my characteristics; I can see how much I am managed from above. The Light can influence me in whatever way it wants, and I will do it all.

There is a period of recognition of evil where I see, understand, and would like to resist this influence, to become a barrier to the Light, a mechanism that reflects and sends the Light back and doesn’t let it pass to the desire. I don’t want my desire to be ignited by the Light all the time. I want to be the master of the right to speak, the independence that my point in the heart demands. Yet I see that I am not ready to do it.

These are the stages of the recognition of evil, 400 years of exile. Exile means being enslaved by our ego, which is called Pharaoh, Haman.

If I reach a state where I don’t agree with the Light influencing my desire, then I give birth to a prayer. The prayer must be in the right direction and have enough intensity. It must be according to such a form, conditions, and degree that results only from my connection with the environment.

I see from my point in the heart that I am not able to be the adapter between the Light and desire and to decide anything. So I go to a group because I want to strengthen the point in the heart.

I am united with the group, wishing to increase the point in the heart, to get more forces to allow it to stand as a screen between the Light and the desire for pleasure. But I see that I am not able to do this in a group and I don’t want to connect with them.

From this it follows that I don’t have the ability to protect my desire from the influence of the Light and I am given over to the absolute dominion of the Light and pleasure like an animal that is under the control of the egoistic desire. From the side of the desire to bestow, I want to enter into a group, but I am not able to; there are two such lines.

The feeling of exile is built with two components. On the one hand, the Egyptians have control over me, meaning that I completely depend on the influence of the Light on the desire. And on the other hand, I am not able to connect with my people, to be integrated in a group. It all comes to this; the children of Israel are separated in Egypt and cannot unite as one. The Egyptians, who are the general desire for pleasure, have control over them. Ultimately this desire becomes unbearable without a glimmer of hope. Only a miracle can save us!
[131868]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/6/14, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
The Ability To Manage My Future
What Is the Upper Light?
The Light That Reforms

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

If a goal is unattainable, I forget about it. It is said, “A person doesn’t covet the daughter of the king,” only a prince can marry her. And if I am not a prince and I have no chance, why should I be sorry all my life about something that is unattainable? My desire to receive, which is a desire for pleasure, will not let me suffer. So there are many things in the world that I don’t see at all, they are not within my field of vision. Subconsciously I think that they are unattainable, so they don’t even come up in my mind. There are people for whom the desire to marry the king’s daughter burns because they have a chance to attain this with the help of all kinds of tricks. And if I have no chance, I am calm.

So the more we rise, the more suffering and problems we feel because we are made more worthy of attainments, greater rewards, and fulfillments. So a person is always in a dilemma: either he improves, changes, advances (and this is a long path), and pays dearly for this, or he stops being sorry about it and this disappears from his field of vision as if it didn’t exist. The choice is in his hands!

So there are people who say, “There is no choice” and they continue on the spiritual path, and there are those who say, “There is no choice” and they go back to the materialistic existence. Both of these say, “There is no choice,” but the question is to what it refers?

Question: But we have no concept of what the bestowal is! Is there some kind of indication from which we can begin?

Answer: Certainly there is, this is clarification among the friends. The Creator is not revealed in any lofty matters. He creates problems for you in your daily life so that you will learn from them, first, that you are not able to change them. You have no control over the situation. There are a thousand different factors, and they also don’t determine anything, they only serve one power that arranges the whole mess for you. This power is the opposite of connection, the opposite of love, and this is what you must clarify. And so it follows that it’s up to you to locate the connection and the love only to clarify upon what they depend. They depend on a power that exists outside of you.

You reach connection with others and you see that this is unsuccessful, and so you summon the power that can influence the connection and correct it. This is a very simple and practical method; nothing exists outside of this.

We think that it’s necessary to work and to study a lot, to build cities, to organize the world, but nothing is needed! We must only begin by organizing the relationships between us and rise.

But instead of this, we get off the train too early at some remote way station where there is nothing but stinking garbage and bandits who are roaming around. And suddenly you are left at this station forever and this is where you are buried.  This is our life instead of doing everything rapidly and rising! The main thing is to begin to do everything together and constantly connect more and more and not relax.
[131860]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/4/14, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
Attaining The Creator’s Profession
Making A “Heavenly Firmament” Above Us
The Purpose Of Life Is The Revelation Of The Creator

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

Question: What does the connection between us mean?

Answer: Imagine that once we were connected like one family and then we drew apart. A certain force dispersed all the members of the family in different directions. Father went in one direction and mother in another, the kids were put in a home where no one cares about them, and the grandparents were sent to a retirement home. Once there was a family and now there isn’t one anymore: Everyone quarreled and dispersed so they only feel hatred and repulsion towards each other and refuse to acknowledge one another. No one is concerned about past memories of love and no one wants to get together again.

Still, there comes a chance to meet and to feel the warmth and the security of a family, but it doesn’t appeal to them, so what can we do? The father doesn’t want to come back to the mother, and the mother doesn’t want to come back to him; the kids are grown and are estranged from the parents after all these years, and the grandparents are very old.

It seems that there is a big family but everyone is detached from everyone else. They remember that once they were a united family, but it was a long time ago. What can they do? How is it possible to connect them in order to see them all as one happy united family where one can sit together and enjoy a good warm atmosphere? How can they be connected?

Question: Can they be gathered into one place so they will begin to communicate?

Answer: But they don’t want to meet! And even if they sit together, they don’t look at one another. They don’t realize that all the problems they have separately result from the lack of connection between them. And you cannot convince them.

If there were an obvious material gain, for example, suppose everyone has to pay taxes and if they unite they would benefit a lot and would only have to pay for one family, then it would obviously be worthwhile. But if there is no actual benefit that can be immediately reflected in their pocket or in their health, it’s a problem.

It’s hard to connect people even egoistically. We convince them that we prevent wars, achieve peace, and social success, but people still don’t listen to us and don’t want to connect. Apparently their agreement depends on receiving blows or from our dissemination, it’s one of the two. There are only two options: blows or dissemination.

Everyone is an egoist and everything depends on your ability to convince him that it’s worthwhile to connect. Everyone lacks something and if he doesn’t agree with you, it means that you failed to reach his deficiency and to convince him that he actually yearns for connection. We should know exactly what the people want and begin to talk to them by this immediate deficiency, like good salespeople.

Question: But what should I do if I don’t know how to convince people?

Answer: You shouldn’t worry. If you have a strong connection with the friends, then the moment you arrive and open your mouth everyone will immediately understand that you are right even before you begin to speak. You will be the supplier of the power of connection.

If there is no such connection, you have to go out to disseminate, to see your lack of success and then come back to the friends and try to connect with them, so that the upper force will be revealed between you. The upper force is conveyed to the public through your connection with the friends. This means that the Creator will fight for you and it isn’t you that fights. You only have to raise your hands like Moses and see how easily you beat Amalek. It isn’t a problem; you only have to convey the upper force through you. It isn’t by my force and might that the war is won,  it is the Creator, the Light does it.

Can you do something with the vessels (the desires), especially when you are in them? You are not the upper force, the force that is external to them. Only the Light can do that and you only have to draw the Light that Reforms and to focus it on the place where you feel the lack of correction.

Question: What does it mean to focus the Light when we are in the lesson, separated from one another?

Answer: Pray for all of us, so that the Creator will influence the connection between us and will connect us. This is all we need. The closer we become, this closeness is called the worlds: Assiya, Yetzira, Beria, Atzilut, until we merge into what is called the world of Infinity. Then all the barriers disappear.
[131855]
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/4/14, The Zohar

Related Material:
The Mighty Power Of Unity
Working With The World As A Guarantee Of Spiritual Advancement
The Channel That Conveys The Light

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

Question: Last year I did not attend the lessons, but I have been studying for 11 years and want to know where is the revelation of the Creator? I have already given up, my life is going by, and I have not attained revelation. Where is the Creator? I must find Him during this lifetime.

Answer: Where is the Creator? The Creator (Bore) is called “come and see” (Bo–Re). “Come” (Bo) means to prepare a place with characteristics that make it possible for the Creator to become revealed. The form of your vessel must be in the equivalence of form with the Creator.

If you want Him to be revealed, you have to prepare the appropriate form. Suppose you came to a store and bought a fishnet but instead of using it to catch fish, you want to pour a hundred pounds of sugar into it. Will this work? No, because you need a sack for the sugar.

You come to a store and buy a sack, but this time you don’t need to buy sugar, but water or juice. Is a sack suitable for water? It isn’t suitable.

Every time you advance in this way, reaching the next state and clarifying that meantime, your vessel is not a vessel. Ultimately you need to bring your deficiency, your vessel, to precise correspondence to the first minimal amount of Light.

This correspondence is essential, and this is what is called “come” (Bo). Therefore it is said, “Come unto Pharaoh,” “come (Bo) and see” (the Creator). Pharaoh is a part of the Creator, His preparatory level, the Achoraim (posterior).

There is nothing you can do about it, it is a prerequisite. You don’t agree with the entire creation, and I understand you. Thousands of people pass my way, but whoever remained, remained. I am even happy about those who have left, for in spite of it all, something is left within them. Some day they will come back and continue, if not in this generation, then in the next generation.

Through your complaints you will not change the laws of nature according to your desire. We have no choice: only bow our heads and work. The main problem is that we forget that all of the work is not done within the person, but between people. Instead of a vessel, a mug, we come with a fishnet and wonder: “Indeed I want to get it, so why doesn’t the Creator give it to me, why isn’t He revealed?”

But what do you want to get, and where do you want to get it? If you want to acquire the power of bestowal, it becomes revealed in a place in which there is a need for it. And the need for bestowal is found between you and someone else. Prepare a place like this and you will see that bestowal is revealed. It is no simpler than that.

It is not very simple to do this with our egoistic nature. But the solution is really in our hands: The Creator is between you and a friend. Please, go ahead and reveal Him!
[132512]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/11/14, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
Come, See, Reveal…
Environment In Place Of The Creator
I – We – One

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work - No Comments →

Writings of Rabash “Shlavei HaSulam,” “Come Unto Pharaoh-2”

Workshop

Writings of Rabash  “Article 23”

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Workshops - No Comments →

Question: What is the inner meaning of “and they shall build cities of storage”?

Answer: The desire to receive builds these cities and thus advances towards the goal that seems good and worthwhile to the ego. I have this world, but in it and in this life, I also intend to attain the next world. I expect to rise above this life and to see the two worlds, to get rid of all my problems and of the question of life and death.

Death is the worst problem for man. A person has everything today and the world is abundant. If we gave people who lived 100 years ago what an average modern man has today, we would not be able to describe the great joy they would experience.

Imagine that you had to do the washing in the river, eat only bread and onions, drink filthy water and live without facilities such as water and electricity, and also live only one-half or even one-third of the life expectancy we have today. Today we have everything, and see the despair and loss of interest in life that people everywhere feel. How can that be?

A person today doesn’t ask about life itself and how to manage in it. In the past, his major concern was providing food for himself and for his family, and he didn’t think about the fact that he might die someday.

But today he does think about it and asks, “What am I living for if eventually I will die?” In this case, life itself isn’t worth much and so there is a growing demand for antidepressants and drugs. This is a crucial question for a person since if we lived forever, we would have no worries at all.

Thus, people who wish to discover the secret of life are attracted to mysticism. The secret of life isn’t part of life itself—there is no secret in life. The secret is in the point of death, in which we disappear when the spirit of life leaves us. This is from where the question of “what is the meaning of my life?” stems. It asks, “What was my life for if it has now come to an end?”

A person wants to find an answer to this question, and if he cannot do so, he is ready to destroy the whole world. So when people come to study the wisdom of Kabbalah, they are very happy, thinking that now they will understand what life and death are about and that they will see the next world while still alive. They rush to acquire new attainments and acquisitions.

This means that the ego, Pharaoh, swallows the yearning for the Creator called Yashar-El and uses it for himself. He allows a person to advance in studying the wisdom of Kabbalah: to study more and be active. Most important is that he reaches the goal, discovers the next world, and brings it to Pharaoh. This is what Pharaoh, or the ego, says. And don’t all of you study for this goal?

Sometimes we yearn more for spirituality and then Pharaoh pulls everything to himself. We then fall and rise again. The contractions and expansions alternate, like the lungs or the heart, like a pump or phases of alternating current. Every dynamic process and every movement has to have two polar states.
[132208]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/08/14 Shamati #86

Related Material:
The World Is Weary From Working For The Greedy Pharaoh
Cut Pharaoh Off
Remember That You Were A Slave In Egypt

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Inner Work - No Comments →

Question: Why are physical problems added to us if we are trying to connect with each other?

Answer: Physical problems are added to us to help us connect more and more. So how else is it be possible to help you and which problems should be added? Spiritual problems? You don’t even pay attention to them. Do spiritual problems concern you?

If a disaster were to happen in some distant city, and you were to regret this as if this happened to you, then you wouldn’t need to have troubles brought to you. But you don’t regret the troubles of others and therefore, problems are brought closer to you.

If you were to regret what happens far from you, as if these were really your problems, then you wouldn’t need anything more. You would suffer and feel pain from what happens in another city as if this was happening to you, without any difference. To the degree of your spiritual advancement, you will feel the troubles of the whole world as if they were yours.

It means that you connect with them. Then you will be ready to ask for their sake, and it won’t be called that you are asking for yourself. There is something and its opposite here. On one hand, you feel others’ deficiencies as yours, and on the other, you can ask on their behalf.

It won’t be considered that you are egoistically asking for yourself because you acquired these deficiencies of others through your efforts. You connected with all of them and you felt their deficiencies as yours. Since you paid for these deficiencies with your effort, you are allowed to ask for their sake.
[132052]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/06/14 Writings of Rabash 

Related Material:
All The Troubles Of The World
Divide The Collective Burden Between Everyone
Society’s Suffering Through The Eyes Of A Righteous

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work - No Comments →

Question: Which parts of our appeal to the Creator should we clarify in order to make it right and accurate?

Answer: It’s like speaking to me on waves which I don’t perceive, such as radio waves or TV waves, and every sort of radiation wave that I don’t perceive. I don’t even notice that you are saying something to me.

The appeal has to be strong enough, from a whole heart, and it also has to be in the right frequency that I can perceive. When I perceive the appeal in the right intensity, I also have to decode it. There are several filters in my mind which it has to go through until it reaches my heart and penetrates it.

So I have to know something about the issue of which you speak. The Creator has only one issue: to bestow upon the created beings, since He is good and benevolent. If you speak about bestowal and about doing good to the created beings, He is willing to hear you. This is how He is arranged!

The upper Partzuf , which in regards to us is called the Creator, is arranged that way. If you speak about an opportunity to bestow upon the created beings, He immediately hears you, and later He will hear you more and more, depending on the level you are on, an upper or a lower level. This is how He hears.

To hear means to take your prayer, the deficiency that you raise upwards and to raise it even higher. The Book of Zohar says that a special angel, a special force, does this. The Light from Above dresses in your deficiency and this whole package, the deficiency with the Light that fills it, is conveyed downwards to the created beings.

Question:  Do I have to clarify exactly to whom I appeal?

Answer: You also have to clarify to whom you appeal. First you should prepare yourself and express your gratitude, bless and praise Him, since otherwise you are not focused on the upper one. All these prayers are necessary only in order to arrange and to help you focus, and to prepare you for contact with the Creator. Therefore, you should sing to Him, and praise Him, and this will give you the right direction to Him. Otherwise you won’t know which way to go.
[132031]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/07/14, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
“Just” Turn To Him
The Reason To Turn To The Creator
If There Are No Requests, There Are No Changes

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Inner Work, Prayer and Intention - No Comments →