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Writings of Baal HaSulam “Letter 1,” Lesson 2
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpt, Parashat “Shlah Leha,” Item 132, Lesson 13
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 9, Question 132, Lesson 25
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Theme of the Lesson: Emergency
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Question: If we don’t understand what bestowal is, then how can we work on our faith in the Creator and His greatness?
Answer: We work like children who play with faith as with a toy, and with bestowal as a game. This is called the time of preparation when we deal with the imitation and not with real bestowal; it’s as if we bestow. When through the study we reach such a state, we are already given some serious work.
We are given the powers for that from Above when it’s clear that we will not use them to harm others. Only then are we allowed to bestow. The force of receiving is not dangerous, and I don’t go out of my way because of it. But if I use the force of bestowal incorrectly I can cause great harm.
[98730]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/24/13, Writings of Rabash
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Question: How can we turn a person’s intention into the intention of many, into the “prayer of many“?
Answer: There is a big difference. If I think about society, trying to connect with them in order to convey the Light that they expect, it’s called a “prayer of many,” a “public prayer.”
If every individual in the group acts this way, we form the area of the collective general deficiency where everyone, by being included in everyone, already forms a spiritual progression. I think about everyone, you think about everyone, and so does the whole group. Then each one multiplies his intensity by the number of the people for whom he wants to ask for a filling. It turns out that this prayer already becomes a spiritual vessel. The spiritual vessel is a result of the connection. If I pray for you and you pray for me, then each of us includes the other inside him. Then our desires that include one another connect and create a spiritual vessel among them.
This means that the parts of our desires in which I pray for you and you pray for me connect. Their connection becomes a spiritual vessel. The parts in which each one is for oneself remain below.
It turns out that you influence the Light only by your mutual inclusion with each other, where you include him inside you and he includes you inside him. So one person doesn’t operate in spirituality, there have to be at least two, as it says: “The minimum of many is two.” As well, “Either together or death,” which means that either you have a friend with whom you perform a spiritual action or you are dead, and have no chance to draw the Light that Reforms.
[98663]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/24/13, The Zohar
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Rabash, “The Entrance into the Work”: The beginning of the work must be in Lo Lishma (not for its sake), which means that by believing in the Creator one will have a life of pleasure. This means that if he does this, which is called faith, then he feels elation and has higher mental powers than he has when he doesn’t perform this action.
It turns out that this is a unique quality by which he can taste greater tastes in quantity and in quality than he tastes when he performs other special actions that bring him pleasure… pleasures and unique qualities bring him limited pleasures in quantity and in quality. However, the unique quality of faith brings him greater pleasure in quantity and in quality. And all this is called Lo Lishma since his entire intention was only in order to attain a greater pleasure.
Only after he attains the level that is called Lo Lishma, is he rewarded with other phenomena and comes to a higher state. This means that he has no self-interest, but all his interests and thoughts are true. This means that his entire intention is only to annul himself in the true reality, feeling that he only has to serve the King since he feels the King’s supremacy and His importance.
Then he forgets, which means that he has no need to worry about himself in any way, since he annuls himself like a candle before a torch because he feels the Creator’s presence. Then he is in the state of Lishma (for Her sake), to bring contentment to the Creator, and all his worries and desires are as to how he can bring the Creator pleasure. And his own reality, which means the desire to receive, does not exist at all. Then he is considered one who bestows in order to bestow.
I think that you have already felt these two states at the convention. The first is when a person yearns to receive the spiritual pleasure for himself, whether he admits it or not, and does it only for self-benefit. By that he hopes to attain a good life in this world and in the next world, to gain more and change his fate for the better. In all his accounts there is only: “I, I, I,” and he cannot take himself out of the picture.
This happens unconsciously. Even if a person tries not to take himself into account, the moment he doesn’t succeed, he gradually returns to himself each time. Then he finds out that self-benefit, personal interest, was always in the spiritual picture he yearned for. So his participation in the group, the inclination to the Creator, the work, and the efforts depend only on his feeling that all this would pay off.
The realization that he operates only for himself is already a revelation. In the meantime he performs actions without the right intention, which means with his natural egoistic intention, and not in order to bestow by not detaching the action from self-benefit.
But thanks to such actions of Lo Lishma, he goes through four phases of development: 1. to receive in order to receive, 2. to bestow in order to receive, 3. to bestow in order to bestow, 4. to receive in order to bestow, and all this is in the state of Lo Lishma.
Thus he clarifies what is “allowed” and what is “forbidden” in Lo Lishma since these four states are the ones that determine the combination of his actions and his intention. But due to the fact that a person performs all these “malicious acts” because of his innate ego since he has no choice, the evil inclination created by the Creator, the upper Light constantly operates on him, and gradually bit by bit, takes him out of the slavery to the ego, cleaning him from the intention of in order to receive for himself.
He attains the level in which he begins to think about self-annulment, he feels a great measure of grace and attraction, he begins to value devotion and self-annulment, not under the pressure of sufferings, but because he values the attribute of bestowal itself more and more to such an extent that he eventually annuls himself.
If a person delves into this and works on this persistently, then after a short while he receives the attribute of bestowal from the Light: Then he forgets, which means that he feels no need to care about himself in any way since he annuls himself as a candle before a torch because he feels the presence of the Creator.
But he annuls himself not for self-benefit, but by raising the actual state of self-annulment. “Then he is in a state of Lishma, to bring contentment to the Creator, and all his worries and desires are as to how he can bring the Creator pleasure, and his own reality, which means the desire to receive, does not exist at all. Then he is in a state of one who bestows in order to bestow.
We began the clarifications of self-annulment in the Arava convention. We felt it in the general mass of the participants as one. Now we have to continue by focusing more on this point so that all the distances and the interruptions that come up in the time between the conventions will help us. They will provide us with the thickness that we need to annul in order to annul ourselves.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/24/13
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We can compare the ascents and descents to a pump in which a piston goes up and down. When the piston goes down, air is expelled from the opening in the wall of the pump. But then this valve closes and the piston begins to rise and creates a vacuum, thus pulling out part of the material from the cylinder, and it goes into your vessel. And you have to build a Masach (screen) on top of it.
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Question: Sometimes by revealing the ego inside me, I feel that I can’t get rid of it; that I can’t attain the goal.
Answer: That’s true. But this is already the next level. For example, I brought a friend a present yesterday and I thought that I really loved him and that I was so devoted to him. And today I discover what I did not understand yesterday: It turns out that I did this since I calculated things for my own benefit. Yesterday I couldn’t see my thought to the end; I couldn’t discern my desire; only my love toward the friend was revealed to me. And now it turns out that I was pursing my self-interest in this love.
Thus, what was concealed from me yesterday is revealed today, so what should I do now?
First, I don’t regret what happened yesterday. I did what I did according to my powers, and it’s thanks to my action that I reveal the next level today, a thicker desire, which is much deeper with an intention of in order to receive for myself. So what? Now I approach the correction.
This happens time after time, and so it says, “What is waste for the upper is food for the lower.” Now I try to make efforts to adapt myself to the upper, and he presents me with an example, “Look, this is Me, you can be like Me, which means not using the vessels of receiving, restricting them, and adhering to Me, doing your best to act like Me.”
This means that I restrict my AHP, and adhere to His AHP with my GE, and thus rise. First, I must isolate my GE from my AHP. I annul it and perform the first restriction (Tzimtzum Aleph – ZA) on it and use only the vessels of bestowal toward the AHP of the upper.
If we become equal, my GE and His AHP becomes ten Sefirot. By that I adhere to the upper and “enter” Him, and am now called an “embryo (Ubar),” and the upper AHP becomes a womb for me. Thus I constantly rise to Him by increasingly annulling myself time after time.
Question: But it is precisely in that moment that I usually want to escape from the group. How can I stay in it? How can I continue the work despite everything?
Answer: I can only say one thing: Your urge to escape from the group indicates that the Creator, the Light, shows you several additional desires by which you can now enter the upper. However, without these interruptions you couldn’t penetrate Him. So now you develop the right attitude toward Him.
The escape is also necessary since otherwise you wouldn’t feel the additional desire. You have to feel the additional desire, to regret it, to come back to the group again, and to start working in order to receive the Light that corrects the desire. When you correct the additional desire, you are incorporated in the upper again. Such a circle should be drawn.
Suppose you adhere to the upper, but you haven’t entered the upper yet. Now comes a certain interruption: (Boom!), and from the blow that you receive on the head you forget everything. This happens so that you will make the whole circle, connect to the group again, return to the starting point again, and continue.
Eventually you return, having acquired a greater power that enables you to overcome the interruption, you enter the upper, like an embryo, and adhere to the “wall of the womb.”
So after the theoretical explanations, only a strong united group can help you, only in it can you advance. Accordingly, a person who lives far away from the friends should worry about that even more.
It’s not good if a person has to be in contact with friends over great distances; it’s even worse if he can’t listen to lessons live, and what’s even worse is if he is not part of a group. One should constantly make sure that the interruptions in the connection between us should be beneficial and not harmful.
[98724]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/13, Shamati #9
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In a person’s attitude to the Creator, we first must develop the importance of the upper inside us, which is called “make yourself a Rav,” so that the Creator becomes great in our eyes. Now He is concealed and we don’t feel that He is important. And to the extent that we gain faith in the Creator, although we don’t see Him, but we develop the feeling of His importance with the help of the group, the Creator seems great to us. Then we are ready to do all manner of actions in order to connect to Him. This is all our work with the Creator.
I come to the group, begin to study, listen, and get a chance to discover the upper reality. In the meantime it is concealed from me and I don’t feel it, don’t understand, don’t see anything, but I already have an urge for it, which is not quite clear yet, and I want to fulfill it.
It is hard for me to live without fulfilling this urge; I feel that life is empty and meaningless. Everything that I have has lost its meaning and has become tasteless. I am told that I don’t feel the Creator since my attributes are opposite from His, as I have certain attributes in my current reality that I have not chosen.
According to these attributes I perceive the reality according to the law of equivalence of form. We know that it is possible to perceive a certain wavelength only by the right detector. I see colors and hear sounds only according to my senses that can perceive and discover them because they have the same attributes as the observed phenomenon. Everything is according to equivalence of form.
So according to my attributes, I perceive only a tiny fragment of the world that is before me. This fragment is the world that I feel and see. There can be millions of other phenomena around me that I don’t perceive, since I haven’t developed the feeling and senses for them.
This entire reality is called the “Creator.” He created this whole reality, but He shows me only a small fragment of it in which I can live and develop independently in order to discover and to feel Him.
I develop my senses by myself, and so I understand what I do and what I feel. Thus it becomes my system because I develop my own system by myself by developing and improving myself. By this, I build the Creator’s image inside me, until I feel all of reality completely. This will mean that I have recreated the image of the whole external reality, the image of the Creator, inside me. Therefore I am called Adam, a whole human, that resembles (Domeh) the Creator.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/13, Writings of Rabash
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It is never revealed to us in advance what we have to do and how to do it. The Creator is concealed, His system is concealed, and I am given several means with which I can try to recreate the system inside me. I am only given a certain part of the Creator’s system as an example and asked to create it by myself. Then I discover that I have the exact opposite attributes with respect to the properties that I have to create. But this is also help, since I am shown the exact oppositeness! I have to find this oppositeness, to understand and feel it, and from the opposite property to guess the right attribute.
This means that I learn why I am corrupted this way and why I must agree to the opposite despite my reluctance. In order to do this, I have to annul myself, lower my importance and to increase the importance of the Creator. I am in a struggle and don’t agree to trample on myself.
For example, there are people whom I hate the most, who have caused me so many problems, that I don’t want to see and who ignite anger in me when I see them. Now I have to develop a different attitude toward them, the opposite attitude. I begin to discover that my intentions are opposite from the intentions that are presented to me as desirable.
I am brought to the group and told to connect with them and to love them. If I begin to love them, I will correct my perception and my senses and will calibrate myself to the feeling and the revelation of the Creator. I can feel Him in my friends, in this corrected relationship that I create. Instead of the friends, I will feel the Creator. There are no friends; there is only the Creator.
All this is thanks to the fact that I have broken my ego and inverted it, twisted it inside out, by having changed my attitude towards my enemies from hate to love, from rejection to connection. But I do all that in order to build a system of compatibility to the upper force. By developing and increasing the Creator’s importance in order to bring Him contentment without any connection to myself, I bring Him contentment in a way that He doesn’t even see me, just as I don’t see Him now. He doesn’t feel that it comes from me, just as I don’t feel that everything comes from Him. It is as if He, as if, ignores me, just as I neglect Him now because of the concealment and by that He lets me feel that I really conceal myself. I am ready for Him to ignore me and that He wouldn’t know anything about me, since then my bestowal, my attitude toward Him will be just like His attitude toward me, according to the way it seems to me now.
By all this we learn the right attitude toward the Creator above our corrupt desire. This means that we correct our desire and our attitude and by that attain bestowal. This means that we develop the feeling of the importance of the Creator in order to connect to Him.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/13, Writings of Rabash
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Baal HaSualm, Shamati, article 9, “What are Three Things that Broaden a Man’s Mind in the Work.” The Holy Zohar interprets what our sages had written: “Three things broaden one’s mind. These are, a handsome woman, a handsome abode, and handsome Kelim (Vessels).” It says, “A handsome woman, this is the Holy Shechina (Divinity). A handsome abode, this is one’s heart; and handsome Kelim, these are one’s organs.
We must explain that the Holy Shechina cannot appear in its true form, which is a state of grace and beauty, except when one has handsome Kelim, which are the organs, elicited from the heart.
This is about our vessels, which are desires that must be transformed since we currently don’t use them correctly; we use them for our own benefit. A “woman” that is handsome to the desire to receive is ugly for the desire to bestow and must be transformed not to be graceful or beautiful, but modest, which means that she is totally in Hassadim. A “handsome abode” is the whole human heart and “handsome vessels” are the external desires.
This is how the five levels of our vessels are termed. The vessels are corrected by envy, lust, and honor, the attributes that take a person out of the egoistic world by evoking him to rise to new values.
Today, it is not in our power to perceive and to identify any aspect of spiritual life. We cannot attain such values, discernments, levels of attainment, feelings, and understandings. However, we can “expand our mind,” which means to start bringing the attributes of bestowal into the desire to receive.
How can we fulfill this? The point is that bestowal is essentially an intention and not a desire. Therefore, it is possible if I first stop working with the desire to receive and restrict it. As of today, it isn’t the place in which I receive pleasure or sufferings. I “close” it, and this attribute isn’t in me anymore.
Then, I develop the option to receive something on the side: “I will use you now as I see fit.” When different pleasures come along that I previously used to receive in this desire, I reject them now one by one, from the smallest pleasure to the biggest one.
What do I need this for? Is it because I am simply “on a diet?” No, I reject the pleasures because I want to resemble the Creator. This means that I must recognize the importance of the Creator and not receive anything. I receive this recognition of importance from the group, and I begin to value the Creator, the attribute of bestowal. Then, I really don’t use my desire to receive. Let the pleasures come, above my desire. I want to develop and to build the desire to bestow above it.
Thus, I already stabilize the human image inside me, the image of Adam that resembles (Domeh) the Creator. I use my desire to receive, the pleasure, the group, and the force of the Light that comes and fulfills all this as means to bestow upon Him.
Bestowal upon the Creator is the means that allows us to bring Him contentment. Is that the goal? No, that is also a means. The goal is to attain adhesion with Him since it is that which He really enjoys.
This turns into the means to attain a higher goal along our way, and it is so until we reach the end.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/13, Shamati #9
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