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Workshop
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The Book of Zohar — Selected Excerpts
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Lesson on the Topic: “Preparation for the Congress”
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Question: If a person is used to seeing us only on television or a computer screen, what would make him switch to an active phase and make him come to the February congress? After all, he feels good being at home, even if he agrees with what he is hearing.
Answer: Undoubtedly, it is more comfortable being at home.
In this case, everything depends on your free choice. First, do you have an opportunity to come to the congress? If everything was arranged from Above so that the answer is yes—if money, time, health, and other conditions that do not depend on you are granting you this possibility—then you are obliged to come.
It is a different matter if you were denied the ability to, let’s say, buy a ticket. Our friends are gathering from all over the world, including the most remote corners. For example, traveling from South America or Australia is very expensive. For some it is almost a prohibitive amount, yet they are coming.
This is where the freedom of choice comes in: If you were given an opportunity and you did not come, then you are simply rejecting the chance given to you by the Creator to come closer to Him, to arrive at a meeting with Him. After all, as it is written, “I the Lord dwell in the midst of the people of Israel.”
If you are not granted this possibility, if insurmountable obstacles, which truly do not depend on you, are placed in front of you, then you will be given the same direct connection while being on the other side of the screen, but only on the condition that, for given reasons, it must be exactly this way.
One way or another, the analysis is entrusted to you. I already have received dozens of letters with similar questions and I almost never answer because this is a person’s free choice. He or she needs to make this decision on their own. Sometimes, there are unsolvable problems usually related to health. In that case, I take the responsibility upon myself and send a reply.
Essentially, we need to understand that this is where freedom of will lies. If you can come, then you must, and, if you are not able to—well, the Creator has arranged it this way so that, by staying at home, you will receive even more than from physical participation. Perhaps the external impression from what you would have seen in person would have been so negative that it would have flung you to the side. Perhaps it would have entered into an irreconcilable contradiction with your tastes, habits, and so on.
In any case, however, a person needs to make this decision on his own. He only needs to seize this opportunity because it is now that he can make a true breakthrough on the path.
[125899]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/19/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam
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To become integrated into others and breaking the huge resistance at the entrance is possible only due to self-nullification. Then I can sneak into the system like a virus, and it will not feel me. It is so hard to defend against viruses because they know how to become invisible to the bodily defense systems.
To the extent that each of us will feel and represent the group as a complete zero, the more he will be able to be included in it. You should nullify yourself to the maximum and thus you attain greater integration than others. It is in this that we should compete with each other: Who can nullify himself more. Everyone should strive to this and awaken others.
The group will become more connected as each friend will increasingly nullify himself before the others. When this mutual inclusion reaches the minimal degree, we will turn into one whole and immediately feel our first connection with the Creator. Since we have cancelled our own egoistic form and are ready to become clay in the hands of the Master, the form of the Creator will be manifested in us.
Then more egoism is added and we again have to cancel ourselves in order to be included into each other. Thus, we work until we merge into one whole that has no form and are ready for anything, that is, agree to become clay in the hands of the Master. Then we again obtain the form of the Creator: more accurately and specifically and will know Him even more.
The Creator will begin to dominate us and fill us with His multifaceted properties, clothing into all our thoughts and desires and giving them His form. Thus, for the first time we reach such a state that only the form of the Upper will be present in our material.
However, on the path to this state, some parts are able to agree to it, while others may not agree, and that is why they are contracted and separated from others. In this way, our progress occurs: The main thing is mutual inclusion, and it happens only due to self-nullification relative to those with whom you want to be included.
[126063]
From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/21/14
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Question: What does a Kabbalist feel when he sees people suffering?
Answer: He feels that they are about to receive a wonderful reward. On the whole they are already receiving it, but they cannot feel it at the moment because they haven’t corrected their vessels, their desires yet.
Suppose I give my little son a thousand dollar bill. He only knows that it is money, but he has no idea what this “paper” is worth and so he holds it for a while and then throws it on the floor. If he could understand what I gave him, he would use the money and buy a lot of ice cream, candy, and toys, but he doesn’t know how to turn this note into pleasure yet.
We are the same and even worse, instead of enjoying we feel pain and we suffer. I invest my exertion, and in return I receive a descent, a fall, a bad feeling. What kind of a reward is this? The point is that we really make great efforts, but we haven’t completed our correction yet so that we can receive the reward, the payment correctly. So we receive the payment, but we don’t understand that it is the payment and we don’t pay attention to it.
Imagine a donkey that is served cream cakes, but he doesn’t need cakes; he needs grain and water. He doesn’t like anything but that since for him grain and water are the greatest pleasure.
This is also what I understand. We have been served a large wonderful “cake,” but first we have to correct ourselves in order to be adaptable to this pleasure. I have received the pleasure, but at the moment it’s felt as suffering. It’s because we are hungry and we are looking for our “grain” and don’t understand at all what this business with the cream cake is.
I wonder and resent this. “What do I need this for?” and in reply I hear: “Advance to the human level, and you will enjoy it.
[125986]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam
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The Book of Zohar, “Two Points,” Item 121: …as it is written, “This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous will enter through it.”
However, prior to being rewarded with inverting the desire to receive in us through Torah and Mitzvot, into reception in order to bestow, there are strong locks on those gates to the Creator, for then they have the opposite role: to drive us away from the Creator.
This is their role, like flirting, to tease the desire, to increase it and to ignite it more and more so that it will want more and more. The deficiency is increased by the rejection, and thus we reach a strong enough desire in order to break through the gate.
This is why the forces of separation are called “locks,” since they block the gates of approaching and drive us away from the Creator.
But if we overcome them so they do not affect us, cooling His love from our hearts, the locks become doors, the darkness becomes light, and the bitter becomes sweet. Over all the locks, we receive a special degree in His Providence, and they become openings, degrees of attainment of the Creator. And those degrees that we receive on the openings become halls of wisdom.
With the help of these movements—rejection and coming closer to the gate, and again repulsion approaching again—we pump ourselves up so we will have the strength to break through. And then the locks that become the openings.
Of course, the first opening is the most difficult to break through.
[125944]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/13/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam
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The Book of Zohar, “Two Points,” Item 121: …Thus, the locks, the doors, and the halls are three forms that come upon our substance, the desire to receive in us. Before we turn it into reception in order to bestow upon our Maker, that substance turns the light to darkness and the sweet to bitter, according to our taste… .
It is actually our intention of in order to receive that turns the sweetness into bitterness and we feel bitterness. When we correct the intention, the bitterness becomes sweet. This means that everything depends on the equivalence of form between us and what comes from Above. To the extent that we have an intention of in order to bestow, everything can be felt as sweet and above this intention everything is felt as bitter since I have nothing to sweeten it with.
It is the intention that makes everything bitter or sweet. There is nothing but the intention, and we don’t need to work with anything but the intention. Leave your desires and your attributes alone, they don’t matter. We already know from our experience that a person remains with what he is born with. Nothing changes in him except for one thing. Therefore, we only worry about the intention, about our attitude towards the Creator.
[126043]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/13/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the The Book of Zohar“
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Baal HaSulam, Shamati #19 “What Is the Creator Hates the Bodies, in the Work”: One must especially try to have a strong desire to obtain the will to bestow and overcome the will to receive. The meaning of a strong desire is that a strong desire is measured by the proliferation of the in-between rests and the arrests, meaning the cessations between each overcoming.
Sometimes one receives a cessation in the middle, meaning a descent. This descent can be a cessation of a minute, an hour, a day, or a month. Afterwards, one resumes the work of overcoming the will to receive, and the attempts to achieve the will to bestow. A strong desire means that the cessation does not take him a long time and he is immediately reawakened to the work.
It is like a person who wants to break a big rock. He takes a big hammer and hammers many times all day long, but they are weak. In other words, he does not hammer the rock in one swing but brings the big hammer down slowly. After that he complains that this work of breaking the rock is not for him, that it must take a hero to have the ability to break this big rock. He says that he was not born with such great powers to have the ability to break the rock.
However, one who lifts this big hammer and strikes the rock in a big swing, not slowly but with great effort, the rock immediately surrenders to him and breaks down. This is the meaning of, “like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces.”
This is how we test and evaluate our advancement: by watching whether the cessations (interruptions) and breaks between the states, the rises and falls that we go through, shorten, by seeing the pressure and power we are applying towards our advancement becoming stronger. We see if we really jump from one state to another with increasing energy, desire, persistency, and this is a necessity.
This is the criteria that should be used for checking: How much time during a day have we wasted in empty thoughts and actions not directly connected with the goal of creation, which we made without linking them to the Creator.
It should never happen, because everything is controlled by and comes from a single source and returns back to Him. We are only an intermediary in the middle, which either connects or disconnects the link between the two points: the onset of the action emanating from the Creator and the result of the action that returns us back to Him.
It’s essential to realize that we are positioned in the middle, thus we should always serve as a connection channel through all of creation, which is realized in us. Only we have this special area that is free of the Creator. If we try fulfilling ourselves with His presence, to the extent that He becomes the reason and the final destination for us, it will mean that we return everything there is to the world of Infinity, to the endless Light that fills the entire reality.
We are the reality since everything “happens” inside us. That’s why one can calculate one’s advancement by evaluating how much you try to reduce the gaps between the states and increase the pressure and the strength of one’s exertions.
[125434]
From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/14/14
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In the process of its development, the creation goes through three basic states.
The first step is the world of Infinity. The Upper Force, the Creator, made the creation perfect. Perfection cannot be divided into phases; it’s unified. It derives from the initial thought of creation according to which the creation and the Creator are at the same level.
However, the perfection associated with the initial state transforms into the third, final developmental phase only after it goes through the second phase. During this process, the creation descends from the world of Infinity through five worlds; it goes down 125 steps that separate the creation from the Creator. Gradually, the creation “distances itself” even more and thus develops a sensation of its “independence.” Finally, it ends up in this world: the worst, most distant condition from the Creator. It is through this separation that the creation can feel it exists independently.
And then the process of correction begins, an ascent from this world through the spiritual worlds back to Infinity. So man (Adam) begins developing in us; it’s not the body but the soul when we gradually acquire similarity with the Creator, the power of bestowal and love of neighbors.
And “neighbor” is one who is outside of our will to receive; he is the one we cultivate love towards. This sensation is above knowledge, beyond our emotions and intellect, above us, and above our perception of reality. Loving our neighbors is really feeling them, sensing that they are included in us. This brings us closer with them until it reaches love for them.
Thus, love for our neighbors moves us back to Infinity, rises us up and brings us to a state the final correction.
The whole world is entering this process; people discover it within. Why?—because nobody is in control of this tendency.
For thousands of years we never thought about our internal advancement; we simply went ahead, driven by our own desires. Until now, there was no contradiction between the vector of general development and our internal natural impulses. Our advancement matched and complemented our selfish aspirations.
As a result, we came to capitalism and within a short period of time made an egoistic “leap” in science and technologies, and in recent decades began to sink in crisis.
Our egoistic development is coming to an end. Our nature “rounds out”, integrates, and unveils new laws to us. Previously, we used our abilities to take advantage of others to earn money and succeed; now, this approach is winding down. Environmental conditions have changed; we can continue our path only if are consistent with them and adapt to them.
So in our perception and sensations, in our decision-making processes, we have to comply with nature: “round,” integral, and comprehensive. Without this, we won’t understand what’s going on and won’t find correct approaches. If we don’t comply, we will always make wrong decisions that won’t benefit us.
This is the situation we are in now and why Kabbalah is revealed to us. After all, we are in the beginning of the conscious state of the second developmental phase. Our descent from Infinity to this world is completed; the preparation period in this world is completed, and now we begin the correction, the realization of evil and ascent to Infinity.
[125438]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/14/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam
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Workshop
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The Book of Zohar — Selected Excerpts
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Vol. 1, Part 3, Chapter 5, Item 6
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Lesson on the Topic: “Preparation for the Congress”
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You should try to imagine and feel that you disappear into the general integration inside the others. That is, we are all united in this notion of one; one means that there is not one of us us personally. One is not our sum total; this is not “we,” but a single whole that cannot be divided into separate parts. It follows that on one hand, I seemingly disappear there. My “I” disappears, but instead of this, I feel all. So I discover two opposite extremes.
Once I felt myself existing separately, a limited personality, but with its sphere of ownership. But now, having nullified my egoistic authority, on the one hand, I have cancelled my individuality and lost my “I.” But on the other hand, with this I acquired everything!
[125962]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/14, Workshop
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