Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 28: …that in the beginning the same body is revived, which is the excessive will to receive, without any restraints, just as it grew under the nourishment of the impure worlds…

And then we embark on a new kind of labor—to bring all that exaggerated will to receive to the form of bestowal. Then it is healed because now it obtained equivalence of form.

An unique illumination vitalizes the desire to receive for the sake of reception as well as the “stony heart,” and all of the desire to receive exists as matter only because the Light holds it. Yesh mi Yesh (existence from existence) holds and vitalizes the Yesh mi Ayin (existence from absence). We cannot manage without this “intravenous device.” After all, if I had closed it, I would have lost the desire and would not have been able to correct it. And this in turn would have prevented me from adhering to the Creator fully.

Question: So, how do we correct the desire?

Answer: For this, we don’t need any actions with the material itself, and there can’t be any. We are unable to kill or to revive it, even though we use these terms to describe what is taking place. The desire, as it was and remains, is found in the hands of the Creator who gives life to everything: the evil and the good.

Throughout the entire process, we don’t take any real actions in creation. Rather, only in regard to myself, I sort the parts that are revealed before me. We don’t enter into the creation itself. It is impossible to stop the influence of the Light on the desire, just as it is impossible to stop the Earth. These data “descend” to me from a higher level, and on my level I need to accept them, to learn from them, to sort them and to examine my relationship in regard to them. Specifically by means of this, I build myself. We don’t need more than this.

There is a choice and a wide variety of possibilities before me, all kinds of different desires in order to receive and in order to bestow, which are not new. However, they are discovered and developed more and more, and all this is so that I will determine my relationship in regard to all that is developed in the right way. With this, I understand and feel more, and that is how I build the Adam from myself.

The Creator doesn’t change the original action, and we also don’t act on anything. Everything is revealed only in regard to the person who perceives. The creation is unchanged. There is Infinity, and all the time a little of the curtain is opened and closed for us on the way toward it. However, through this we reach the level of the Creator. This “game” is enough for us in order to grow to the height of the Upper, to be aware and to understand Him, and really to be like Him.

The question arises: Is there something else besides what I am viewing and the inner changes? This is unknown to us.

Without changing anything in creation, we grow, improving our tools of perception, exercising, and correcting ourselves and only ourselves. Until now, we were allowed to think that we were changing the world. However, this approach doesn’t work anymore. From this stage onward, only one thing works: our similarity to what is discovered. And this is a new method.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/15/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Preparation to the Lesson

Workshop 

“Introduction to The Book of Zohar“

Talmud Eser Sefirot

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As Baal HaSulam writes in “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” we must “die and rot” so that almost nothing will remain of us, and after that we are “born again” with new characteristics.

Of course, we shouldn’t imagine this process as it is depicted in Hollywood movies. Indeed, in the books of the Kabbalists, there is not a single word written about our world; they books are only about spiritual phenomena and concepts.

This is speaking only about the desire to receive which is the only object that exists at all, and the wisdom of Kabbalah involves this. This desire is permanent. Indeed, it is from nothing, but it exists.

There exist two possibilities to capture, realize, and arrange it: for the purpose of reception or for the purpose of bestowal.

From the start, a desire to receive for the purpose of reception was given to us, as it is written, “I created the evil inclination.” Thus, the egoistic desire to receive locks itself on the level of the beast and doesn’t allow us to rise to the level of Adam. This is locked within us, and we can rise to it only on condition that we rise above the desire to receive that is discovered here. That is how we enter into the upper world, to the higher dimension.

So, after the desire to bestow changes us, we are developed along two lines: the “right line” and the “left line.” The left line is the egoistic desire that is awakened in us more and more, and, in the right line, we correct it, time after time, through the Light that Reforms and transform it into the desire to bestow. That is how the process takes place in parallel, this in contrast to that, until the entire desire to receive “will rot” in the end, to the state called “death.”

However, this is not enough because we still have not transformed that into a real desire to bestow. We only work above it in all kinds of forms. I make something of it, but some parts aren’t suitable and all the while seemingly slip below my ability. Then, the time arrives for a unique activity: the “revival of the dead.”

We see a few stages of development here in that the person uses his desire in different ways. In the first stage, he exits this world to the spiritual world and prefers to rise above everything that he has here and to live in bestowal instead of reception. After that, he passes through the Machsom and develops his altruistic intentions above the constantly growing desire and uses it to bestow for the purpose of bestowal. After that, he passes to an intention to receive for the purpose of bestowal, to “and you shall love your friend.”

As a result of using these means, a person is left with a desire that he still cannot use in bestowal. This is a very great desire called the “stony heart.”

It is necessary to indicate that when we enter into spirituality we can realize only a “thin line” in it. Even through the work that we do, we only slightly expand this line that descends to us from above to below. After all, the stony heart is the essence of the creation and the essential density that is left to us for the final correction. In fact, the stony heart is not the desire that the Creator created. This is a desire to receive that we discover and format ourselves. However, we don’t create it like the Creator did with His activity, but, nevertheless, we create something new.

The source of destruction is revealed in the “Tree of Knowledge.” After we have continued with this “thread,” we discover the gap between us and the Creator, the stony heart that is discovered on every level. It arrives from above as a data point, and with our work for the purpose of bestowal, we discover how much we are truly different, distant, and completely the opposite of Him.

The stony heart is revealed to us from below to above until it reaches gigantic dimensions, but only to the degree that we can erase it, burn it, and annihilate it. And in the end, we finally kill it and after it rots, it reaches its correction. In other words, after this desire passes through all the stages, it really goes back to the dust. It was on the level of the speaking, and after that, the animate, and after that, the vegetative, until it is completely rotted and reaches the level of dust, as it is written, “For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” That is how we finish the correction.

Then, an action is performed that we are certainly unprepared to do, but we want it very much: the “revival of the dead.” The stony heart, which was the opposite to the Creator, separates us from Him, and it is discovered thanks to the efforts that we made as if they were all designed for this. When I wanted to advance toward the Creator with all my power and might, with all efforts, according to this, I discovered my oppositeness to the Creator. It is as if I discovered it in the depths of the creation that were hidden from me, and therefore, with its correction, the general correction is completed.

Returning to “decomposition” and the “revival of the dead”: certainly all of this happens in the ascent of the spiritual ladder and there is no connection to this with our “beastly” bodies that live and die in this world, like all the other bodies. All of the wisdom of Kabbalah speaks only about the inner idea that is called the Adam in us, and it is not about our biology and zoology that belong to the physical reality only.

In the article, “The Freedom,” Baal HaSulam writes that, “the wisdom of Kabbalah mentions nothing of our corporeal world,” and in The Book of Zohar, Parshat “VaYetze,” 139, it is written, “The Zohar doesn’t speak about physical events at all, but about higher worlds.”

Also, in Talmud Eser Sefirot, Baal HaSulam writes in Volume 1, “We must remember that all of the wisdom of Kabbalah is founded upon spiritual concepts that don’t occupy space or time. All the difficulty for beginners is that they comprehend these things with physical expressions with the limitations of time and space, replacement and permutation, which the authors use merely as symbols of their higher roots only.”

Also, Rav Kook writes in “Letters, 1,”: “I was appalled to see that a corporeal form was depicted for the concept of Adam Kadmon of the Kabbalah, which is only a metaphysical concept, a Godly concept. God forbid that we should allow ourselves to materialize these sacred concepts, even as a way of studying.”
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/15/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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The Book of Zohar, “Two Points”, Item 120: At the end of all the gates, He made a gate with several locks. That gate is called Malchut de Malchut, the final point of all the upper gates. This last gate is the first gate for the upper Hochma [wisdom]. That is, it is possible to be rewarded with the upper Hochma only after the attainment of this last gate specifically, as for attainment of the upper Hochma, it is the first gate. This is why it is written, “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” since “Fear of the Lord” is called the last gate, which is the first for the wisdom of the Lord.

Question: It is as if the gates are arranged one after the other so that we can enter them, but they seem to block the entrance, so it turns out that there is a blocking when one wants to enter.

Answer: Of course. To enter means that one finds himself in a certain state. How do you advance from one state to another? By opening another part of the desire to receive and by correcting it with the intention of in order to bestow, and thus going through all the gates.

So every gate is the increase of the desire and its correction. Gates, locks, and openings are all meant for a person to ascend from one level to the next, but without gates, there would be no change of states. A gate isn’t just a closed entrance that has been blocked. You will not feel anything if you don’t go through the gate, if you don’t acquire Aviut (thickness) and its correction, and adapt to that state which is called a gate.

There is nothing after the gate in spirituality. There is only the next gate. Every step is the next gate. There is no gate that opens widely and behind which there is a big city, and then the next gate behind which there is a field, and then another gate and another. There are only gates that come one after the other.

Question: So where do they lead to if there is nothing behind them?

Answer: There is everything in the gate, both the feeling and the attainment. Everything begins and ends in the gate. What do you need something other than the gates for if you are advancing towards identifying with the Creator? What else is missing but the gates? After all, each gate leads you to what you have to be. In fact, the whole HaVaYaH is one gate after another, ten Sefirot. Then there are ten more Sefirot, and another ten, etc.

Sometimes we say that only an entrance is called a gate and then one develops from it, but this development also belongs to the gates.

Question: What do you feel when you reach a gate?

Answer: You feel a blocked road.

Question: And how do you open the gate?

Answer: You open the gate by first accepting this blocking, by accepting the fact that the road is blocked. You accept this self annulment and the fear of the Creator, and thus on every next level until this gate becomes an entrance. Otherwise, it will not become an entrance. The gate itself should open, and when you go through the gate, it means that you accept all the Aviut correctly, and in this new Aviut, you see a new world.

Question: What does it mean that you accept that the road is concealed?

Answer: Accepting that it is all for our benefit. It is also a process to accept and be thankful for it.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/13/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 24: The essence of the body is but a desire to receive for itself, and all its manifestations and possessions are fulfillments of that corrupted will to receive, which had initially been created only to be eradicated from the world, in order to achieve the complete third state at the end of correction. For this reason, it is mortal, transitory, and contemptible, along with all its possessions, like a fleeting shadow that leaves nothing in its wake.

Nothing ever happens to the desire. It only increasingly divulges itself while going through a 125 steps, whereas egoistic intentions arise together with desires. However, those are two different things: a desire to receive and an intention for the sake of receiving.

We should never cancel the desire. We are not planning to turn into hermits; rather, we strive to change our intention from egoistic to altruistic. It is the intention for the sake of receiving that has to be “eradicated from the world.”

We perceive the picture of the world through our intentions, through ourselves and our surroundings. This picture will disappear if we re-direct our intentions from the will to receive to the will to bestow. Everything we see today, the entire world with all its particularities and phenomena, with life and death, everything unfolds inside our will to receive that has an egoistic intention. If we change intentions, we start seeing an “inverted” world that is called the upper world, the first spiritual level. Then, we start observing something quite different.

While sensing the material, we have a chance to convert it with the help of the upper force, a group, and by using other means. We are the ones who start the “revolution,” because the first  time anything is revealed we see it as corrupt, as if it reflects in a “distorted mirror” of our egoistic intention.

So far, our selfish intentions “saddle” tiny desires of this world; this is what makes this realm look the way it is to us. Then, let’s say at the thirtieth step, there appears a desire that is a billion times bigger, yet it still originates from the will to receive. It would be dreadful as if we were among “dinosaurs,” in a monstrous jungle of immensely, powerful egoistic desires.

People would look as hellish “fiends” to us; they would seem like criminals, crooks, liars, villains, a wickedness that we currently cannot even imagine. In essence, we would see the evil forces that belong to this particular step. We would consider the lessons to be outrageous stupidity, utter nonsense. Even the group would appear in such a terrible shape that we wouldn’t tolerate our friends’ company, nor would we be able to breathe the same air with them.

However, if we find the strength to overcome this situation and change, then we would figure out that everything is just wonderful. In fact, nothing will change, but somehow all of a sudden we will see the world around us permeated with Light, where everybody receives benevolence from the Creator, nobody ever suffers, no one dies of hunger, or kills others. Our friends look as if they are the greatest people on the face of the Earth, and there is nobody higher than them. Baal HaSulam writes about this state in his article “Concealment and Disclosure of the Face of the Creator.”

We all go through these states, the pendulum swings stronger each time, and everything depends on changing our intention, turning it into the opposite, from egoism to altruism. The desires remain intact, only the intentions change.

One way or the other, the Creator never brings us to bestowal; otherwise, He would have stolen the chance for us to know Him. He leads us only through disasters in our will to receive so that we acknowledge the need to bestow.

At first, we try to escape troubles that force us to blame and curse Him. Then, with the help of a group, lessons, and dissemination, by lowering our heads in front of our friends and the teacher, we turn to the Creator, and plead with Him to help us.

Question: Isn’t it a pretty long path of suffering?

Answer: The trick is how we accept the suffering. Without the sufferings, it is impossible to wake up. Any state starts with sorrows: “And there was evening and there was morning, one day.”

Our path is long not because of the troubles we go through but because we don’t react to them in a correct way.

This explains why we need preparation and a correct attitude. There is no doubt that our states will change soon, and we will feel emptiness; moreover, we can start hating our friends as Rabbi Shimon’s disciples did. And yet we continue advancing because everything that happens to us is for a purpose, to lead us forward.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/13/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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A person goes through several phases before he reaches his first spiritual correction, the equivalence of form with the Creator. The word “place” is often used in reference to the Creator. Why is the Creator called “place”?

A place is a desire. A place that has received the attribute of bestowal is actually the Creator’s image. So, all the intentions, all of a person’s work, should be aimed at the same place: in order to correct his desires so that they should be in order to bestow. The image of the Creator that is revealed in the corrected place, which means in the corrected vessels, is already the result of the influence of the two lines.

The first phase of a person’s correction is when he stops thinking about himself and already begins to understand and to feel that the correction is fulfilled only though connection. A person already understands that he must be in a group that is considered one with regard to the Creator. Gradually, he understands the concept of connection and doesn’t see himself as a separate part from the group, as being cut off from the general. As it is written: “…for I the Lord dwell in the midst of the children of Israel.”

Thanks to his work in the group in order to attain mutual guarantee, the friends’ thoughts, and the influence of the Light that is drawn by our collective efforts, a person reaches this state when he begins to look at everything from the center of the group. Then, he feels a new hardening of the heart, and he must reach the right “place” over and over again. After a while, he understands that he has undergone a change that didn’t seem important before. The public opinion, the state of the group, becomes very dear to him.

The people in the group become important and dear to him, and he begins to worry about them more than about his own children. It is because he feels the family on the corporeal, physical level, while he feels the friends on the spiritual level. He understands that he has an obligation to his family, but he begins to fully enter the hearts of the friends, wants to live there, and to guarantee them all the best. Eventually, the state of the friends determines and dictates all his thoughts and actions, and determines what he worries about, like a mother who only worries about her baby, and everything that she does is for him. This is how a person begins to treat his group.

Gradually, the concept of the Creator is cleared in the group according to a person’s efforts to arrange and to picture the general vessel, the corrected place, the one general heart and mind, and the pain that he feels at the moment since he cannot reach such unity, and according to such efforts, the Creator’s image starts to become clear to him in this one unified group.

The Surrounding Light influences him through his yearning for the center of the group, for the desire to see that everyone is corrected and delighting the Creator who is revealed according to a person’s efforts in the group. Thus, a person gets closer to the Creator through the group.

At the moment, we don’t understand how a person can lose himself in the group and at the same time, feel that he exists, that he acts and operates. From the perspective of his ego, his self totally disappears, but, from the perspective of bestowal, it actually grows until a person rises to the level of the Creator that is revealed in the group. Baal HaSulam says, “It is natural that, when the Light of the general illuminates, the individual is nullified with regard to his own self and he doesn’t feel himself,” but he does feel the general and the Creator in it!
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/12/14

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Preparation to the Lesson

Workshop 

“Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” “You Are Partners with Me,” Item 61

Talmud Eser Sefirot, Vol. 1, Part 3, Chapter 5, Item 4

Writings of Baal HaSulam “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 37 

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Baal HaSulam says in Letter 5 that he is happy about the evil that are revealed. It is the forces that are designed to help, although they are submitted in such a form because they are not corrected yet. It is about desires that cannot be revealed any other way.

The Lights and the vessels are revealed in accordance to each other. The desires, revealed as good or evil, are the components of the new vessel. It doesn’t matter how I see them, as long as they are revealed. Now I have to work with them.

We mustn’t ignore, negate, or annul them. I cannot close my eyes like a child and pretend that they don’t exist. I cannot detach myself from them, get rid of them, fall asleep, get drunk, or take some drugs. No, I have to confront them, and for this I have all the necessary means to do so: the group, the study, etc.

I don’t ignore any obstacle. I mustn’t think that it would be better if there were no interferences because they build a new vessel, another brick in its structure. If there were no flaws in me, then I wouldn’t discover anything. If something is revealed, it means that it’s time to correct that part of my vessel and put it in the right place.

This is why I am glad. I draw away from the problems a little, look at them from the side, objectively, and then I see the height that I have reached! It turns out that I can correct this too!

It’s hard to understand, but on the corporeal, physical levels what comes to the world is only what is sent to us from the upper Providence, and it’s meant to bring the creature to perfection. On the other hand, it’s all because we cannot advance towards correction.

So why do the righteous suffer? It’s because the world is round and united. They also depend on it and cannot draw it after them, although they feel the problems on the corporeal level. This is part of the general correction.

So what should I do when evil is revealed? If I can draw away from it and see the cause of what is happening, then I ascend above the body and above what it feels. I look at everything that happens to it from the side and I am glad that I am going through these great corrections. What is more, I don’t take the body into account but the soul. I already see a different picture.

On the whole, the solution is simply to make any effort in order to get used to the intention of in order to bestow upon the group by ascending above my body, above this life. On the corporeal level I continue to do everything that is necessary: I worry about the family, go to the doctor when necessary, etc. But at the same time I am above and detached from this level. Everything that I do is in order to ascend.

Thus I identify with the Creator who sends me the obstacles. I understand that His “packages” were meant to help me establish the right perspective to all the states, both the evil and the good, and to keep in touch with Him. I now view this whole life from this perspective.

The Book of Zohar describes how Rabbi Chiya saw himself sitting in the upper assembly as everyone listens to him. He was allowed to see this state, and I too look at myself from above from another state while adhered to the Creator. No, it isn’t a split personality but a realistic view of things.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/16/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: How can a person who has decided to participate in the convention for the first time overcome all the hardships and see the importance of the convention above all?

Answer: He should simply be with us, keep in touch through our TV channel or the Internet. Then in the time we have left things will get better.

There are no obstacles along the way to the convention that cannot be overcome. It’s when a person comes, when he is incorporated with us, that he will see how helpful it is in every aspect of life. By exerting himself in faith above reason, he will be able to solve many personal problems and will overcome many troubles.

I am not afraid to say this because it’s exactly what Kabbalists promise us in their writings. It isn’t what I know, but what they say.

A person who has only seen us on the screen for two years can dedicate two and a half days for the convention because he may have to wait for another year at best for the next convention; how can he not come? How can you miss something like this? What else has he got in life? How does he intend to fulfill his life?

It is said that the soul of a person who passes away is asked two questions: “Did you engage in the Torah?” “Did you expect salvation?” A soul is the vessel that receives the filling, which means the feeling of the Creator. “Did you engage in the Torah?” means did you want to draw the Light that Reforms? Were you drawn to where there should be love?

The Torah is the spice for the evil inclination, the means in which there is the Light that Reforms. This is exactly what the convention is meant for, so that together, everyone will draw the Light for the revelation of the Creator in the connection between us.

This is what a person’s soul is asked: “Did you draw the Light in order to resemble the Creator; in order to reveal Him?” This is called “Did you expect salvation?” This is the principle of “I have exerted and I have found.” The “finding” is the spiritual salvation.

When a person is behind the TV screen can he engage in this? How should he know how to do it? This is why he is invited to a special event in which everything is prepared for his arrival and the opportunity of engaging in the most important thing in his life is served to him on a platter. Then he would certainly have an answer to such a crucial question.

The angel inquiring the soul at the spiritual gate is a metaphor which explains to us how important it is not to waste our life in vain. Especially when you have such an opportunity, as it says: “There is a person who attains his world in one hour.” And you still have different calculations? If he had another opportunity now, he would have no calculations. So we should understand that it is here that the principle of the resistance of the forces of impurity is revealed.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/16/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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“The Light and the Sun,” VeYechi: The main point regarding the assembly is that we should all be united and that everyone should ask for one thing only, to find the Creator, since the Shechina resides among a group of ten. Of course, if there are more than ten, then the Shechina will certainly be revealed. And each one can join his friend and listen to how he should worship the Creator and to find the Creator.

And he should annul himself before his friend and so should his friend before him and so should everyone. And so if this is the intention of the assembly, then more than the calf wants to suckle, the cow wants to feed him, and thus the Creator comes closer to them and is with them and all the salvations and the blessings and the good bestowal from the source of mercy, and the great mercy and the benevolence are revealed upon the assembly of Israel.

Everything depends on the connection, on the correction of the shattering, on the correction of the sin of the “Tree of Knowledge.” This is all our work by which we become Adam, which means the one figure that resembles (Domeh) the Creator, one soul, one vessel. With the help of the friends, we overcome the resistance of our ego, draw the Light that Reforms, and thus advance.

We see that our advancement is only due to the connection and is fulfilled in the connection, in the point where we feel the crisis and where the repulsion, the hatred, the cooling down, the mutual disgust is revealed. It is always a problem to locate this point because we avoid it, forget it, and are in a state of numbness.

It’s in that central point where we really have to be connected that all our feelings disappear! All our sensors and our senses cease to work there. It’s as if we discover and enter a void where there isn’t even hate, but where all the feelings simply disappear. Thus we gradually discover the spiritual space that we have to fill by our connection.
[125629]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/16/14

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