Question: The exertion is the same vessel in which the Creator is revealed, but what does my exertion have to do with the exertion of the friends? Is my exertion enough for the Creator to be revealed in them, or does it have to be the sum of our collective exertions?

Answer: It is impossible to answer this unequivocally. I see the friends as my eyes show me, in my perception. If I see them today as I saw them yesterday, it means that I haven’t changed at all. If I see that, today, they are greater, deeper, cleverer, and more successful, it means that I have changed.

However, we cannot connect all these states yet. They advance, or I advance, seeing their advancement. The truth is that they are all at the end of correction already, at an infinite height, and it is just me looking at them from my level.

The growth and the advancement of the friends impresses me, but isn’t it they who grow? I have changed, and therefore, I see that they have grown.

We cannot explain this by using our earthly language, which is totally egoistic. It is just as it is impossible to explain the new economy by using old terms since a healthy economy is the right integral connection. For the same reason, it is impossible to explain the relationships among the friends.

We have no choice if in the meantime we operate in our egoistic desires. We must look at things like in mathematics, one parameter after another. If there are several variables, and I depend on them all, I must fix one parameter and check how the change affects the second parameter.

Then, I fix the second parameter and check its dependence on the first parameter. Only then do I connect them to one system of equations in order to solve them together.

There can only be one element in every equation that I can find. If there are two elements, we need another equation. When we have two equations with two elements, we can already solve the problem.

However, in the meantime, we cannot combine two equations in our analysis. We can see what happens with one parameter and with another parameter separately, but we cannot connect them into one system.

Our brain cannot perceive these two opposite parameters as one. So, by explaining this, I am like a woman in labor who cannot give birth yet. It cannot be explained in words. Everyone will discover this according to his vessels.

In Kabbalistic explanations, we must pass the information from the world in which everything is united, to our world in which everything is totally separated.

This means that these are different software, different formula, and different approaches.

We try to understand the explanation by using earthly language and to grasp in our earthly minds what happens in the upper world. Even physicists already understand that it is simply impossible. They come across phenomena that are on the borderline where matter disappears, and, thus, the scientific language ends.

Modern physics will advance in a way that in each of the following stages, in every experiment, there will be more and more hidden parameters. It will become a hidden science. We will see that we have managed to advance to a certain point after which everything we had before disappears. Science can reveal only how each of the parameters disappears, but not more than that.

Our job is to continue with our exertion in the group, and eventually everything will be clear.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/25/12, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Preparation to the Lesson

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“Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 117, Lesson 30

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The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpt, Parashat “Naso,” Item 318, Lesson 14

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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Vol. 3, Part 9, Item 9, Lesson 8

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 “Body and Soul“

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Baal HaSulam, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”: The above is much like a fable that our sages tell: Asmodeus (the devil) drove King Solomon four hundred parsas (a distance measurement) from Jerusalem and left Him with no money and means of sustenance. Then he sat in King Solomon’s throne while the king was begging at the doors. Every place he went, he said: “I am Ecclesiastes!” but none believed him. And so he went from town to town declaring, “I am Solomon!” … As King Solomon could not display his wisdom to the scholars at the place of his exile and had to come to Jerusalem, the place of the Sanhedrin, who studied and knew King Solomon, and testified to the depth of his wisdom

So it is with the wisdom of Kabbalah: it requires great sages who examine their hearts to study it for twenty or thirty years. Only then will they be able to testify to it.

Today everything is totally different. First, we now have Baal HaSulam’s books that are suitable for our generation. This greatly hastens the process. Baal HaSulam prepared the scientific part for us, the part of the wisdom, and Rabash prepared the practical part, and so our steps along the spiritual road have become much faster. It still takes years but not decades.

Besides, today man’s general state also plays an important role. In the past, Kabbalists did not depend on the external pace of development; they did their work and laid a “pipe” so that the wisdom of Kabbalah would flow in a parallel channel. They didn’t have to reveal it to their generation. On the other hand, we are living in the age of fulfillment, which means that we need to fulfill the general ascent and therefore depend on the whole world. To the extent that it develops, we are also given something to hold on to and new revelations and advancement.

This means that we have to prepare ourselves to serve the world. I know it about myself: I have to “chew” these things, to repeat them, to delve into them, although I don’t need them for my advancement. Imagine that a person who has to become a scientist is also taught how to be a kindergarten teacher and an elementary school teacher.

This is actually what today’s generation is demanding and no one person is taken into account other than his place in the general system. There is no point in raising any one separately; even the great Kabbalists were raised only to do the work they had to do at a certain point in the general process, so that the results would serve others.

Today we all depend on the world’s advancement, and so we can, for example, stay on a certain level until it takes the next step. Changes for the good will only come according to the pace of the general global changes. But this doesn’t mean that we can sit and wait now: “We have done enough, and now we can wait for them.” No, our work is mutual; our corrections “are poured” into all the other nations and it’s their advancement that helps us.

Let’s hope the year 2013 will be good for us. We have to make both internal and external efforts in order to reach the most distant places, including countries that are in serious crisis and their existence in danger, like Greece or Spain. We have to find and use all possible means in order to disseminate the wisdom of Kabbalah everywhere. This will greatly hasten the external development and will allow us to develop internally.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/27/12, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”

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Question: When we read The Book of Zohar there are parts that I understand and there are parts that I simply cannot put together; how should we work with that? Should we try to understand or should we totally ignore the mind?

Answer: It’s true that there are parts in The Book of Zohar that we can understand and there are parts that we can’t. We have to look for the feeling; it’s a vessel of perception. If the mind can bring you such an emotional impression, then it works as it should. But if it only works as a cold mind, then it’s the wrong direction. It’s not because we don’t respect science or the rational approach, but because the mind is revealed in the vessels of feeling. The vessels come first; they are the basis. The mind can only control what is in them.

So I first have to make sure that I feel, and then from the feeling I should understand what I feel. This is called “the heart understands.” First comes the heart, the vessel. In the vessel we feel and not understand. Afterward, there is a desire; it discovers the Light. But what does it discover, what does it calculate? It calculates what corrections it has performed in order to discover the current feeling.

The corrections I have performed, my actions in order to reveal the current feeling, are called my mind, what I have attained is my feeling. It turns out that the heart understands. The corrections that I have performed in the heart are in the mind since I went through them, have performed them, and I compare, compile, connect, and subtract them like math. I do all that in the heart, in my vessels of feeling.

But now I delve into these corrections with the mind in order to discover a greater depth of the feeling. Thus I multiply my vessels of feeling by 620 times by the mind, by understanding now what corrections I have been through in order to discover the current state.

This means that the feeling without the mind remains on the level of the still nature, and by incorporating the mind in the feeling, I raise the feeling up the levels from Nefesh, to Ruach, to Neshama, to Haya, and to Yechida. There are no changes in the Light itself; it is only by delving into it with my new vessels of perception that I discover NRNHY in it. The Light itself is Nefesh.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/26/12, The Zohar

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Baal HaSulam, Shamati, Article 38, “The Fear of God is His Treasure”: Our sages said, “Everything is in the hands of God except the fear of God,” because He can give everything except fear. This is because what the Creator gives is more love not fear.

Our goal is to reach adhesion with the Creator. Adhesion is attained by equivalence of form. Equivalence of form is attained by reaching the love of God, to the same extent the Creator does.

This means that we must attain love. The Creator constantly adds to this love on His part and as a result we feel that we are advancing by the path of suffering because we don’t add anything on our part.

In order to reach love a person has to build his spiritual vessel called “fear“, fear that he may not feel love towards the Creator.

In order to attain this fear, a person needs the Torah, the Light that Reforms, Mitzvot (commandments), and the right intention to fulfill them. Otherwise he will remain on the level of the still nature. He needs the environment to remind him of the right intention during the study of the Torah and Mitzvot, so that others will hold him in the right intention and won’t let him forget the Creator’s good. So the Torah and Mitzvot were not given to an individual but to many, and everywhere it says “You” in the plural sense and not in the singular meaning.

It’s impossible to advance without the intention to attain the Creator, the love for Him. This must be the reason with which everything begins and which obligates all the actions.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/27/12

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We are at the bottom of the spiritual ladder, where every level has its special Light that grows as we climb in quantity and quality. Its influence on us changes our attributes in which we begin to know the reality that we live in. The only reality is the Creator.

It turns out that the levels of concealment become levels of revelation. Every level is made of two wholes. The first whole is a person’s yearning to reach the right deficiency by subduing himself each time to the environment, ready to accept its influence, and to be impressed by the upper Light, ready to rise above reason. He constantly prepares himself for the influence of the Light, which is called working at night, in the dark, in raising MAN, in prayer.

He operates according to his powers and doesn’t know what he yearns for. This means that Malchut rises to Bina, to Hafetz Hesed, to faith, and the main thing for a person is that his action will bring the Creator contentment. As a result of this correct and fulfilling action, the Light influences him and changes him.

All our advancement is by our being reborn over and over again. It is said: “Every day should be new to you,” which means that it’s impossible to compare today to yesterday. It is because every day a new vessel is born and it has a new basis, new Reshimot (spiritual genes), new values, and by that it is completely different from the previous state. A person already understands that his actions yesterday were mistakes, malicious actions, or Mitzvot (commandments), and he attributes everything to the Creator which eventually brings him to adhesion.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/26/12, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: How do we build a student’s readiness to perceive the wisdom of Kabbalah in the group?

Answer: Through the connection. A person cannot be ready to perceive if he is not connected to the friends. They have to unite by raising the teacher’s greatness in their eyes, thus building the right connection. Someone small can only receive from someone great, from the group, from the teacher, from the Creator, if he lowers his head before them. This is the path up the spiritual ladder.

When the students connect, they create the necessary condition, and become one whole. It is a sign that each one has annulled himself before the others, and considers himself the smallest in the group, ready to bestow upon others. Being connected means to keep all the society’s conditions.

We begin to connect, and after many years go through the hardening of the heart, which is also called “the ten plagues of Egypt.” First we may think, why don’t the plagues begin immediately when they arrive in Egypt? But it isn’t so; first it is nice and pleasant to connect, just like it was nice and pleasant for the children of Israel when they settled in Egypt and received all their nourishment through Joseph who connected everyone to Yesod.

Joseph is Yesod that connects the five phases or the five senses: Hesed, Gevurah, Tifferet, Netzach, and Hod. Rabash used to give the example of a salad that is made of five ingredients: tomatoes, cucumbers, pepper, onion, and parsley. If you cut them all up and mix them, they will create something new, which is the result of the connection between them. It is the same with Yesod; it has nothing of its own, but it is the outcome of the connection, of their attributes. Through it, the children of Israel acquire thickness in Egypt and an increasingly greater desire, but in the meantime, during the “seven years of satiety,” this thickness operates in favor of the connection between them.

It was at the beginning of the exile in Egypt that the sons of Jacob together with Joseph sang “How good and pleasant it is when brothers sit together.” They felt that it is worthwhile to connect since together they succeed; together they are strong. Thus Egypt enslaves us by an egoistic connection.

This is the process until such a great thickness is revealed that it is impossible to do anything with it. Then Moses escapes from Egypt to the desert. He simply couldn’t be together with his ego. During the “seven years of hunger,” we discover that this enslavement, the adhesion to the corporeal values, is not in our favor, but the opposite, it detaches us from the goal. Suddenly I begin to understand where I am and what is happening to me. I look at my “animal” desire that has grown into a giant heavy body, and I see that this “animal” is no longer mine, that I am under its control, under it.

This is called “a new king rose in Egypt who didn’t know Joseph.” It is a good thing, since he shows us the truth, our true state compared to the Creator, and thus he brings us closer to our Father in Heaven.

Then, at the end, there are the ten plagues: We hold on to our unity and these plagues hit us in order to break us apart; they are all aimed against the connection.

If I am ready to rise above the ego, to beat the king of Egypt, I rise above these plagues in order to remain connected and united. It is more important for me than Pharaoh’s afflictions. On the background of the plagues, I ask the Creator to keep us connected since without this connection, we will not be able to leave Egypt; this is all our work.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/26/12, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”

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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot“, Item 107: Hence, after one attains the illumination of the face in such a measure that each sin he had committed, even the deliberate ones, is turned and becomes a Mitzva for him, one rejoices with all the torment and affliction he had ever suffered since the time he was placed in the two discernments of concealment of the face.

…has now become a cause and preparation for keeping a Mitzva and the reception of eternal and wondrous reward for it.

From this we learn that the more I have suffered, the more I am rewarded now. So does that mean that it is worthwhile to suffer in order to receive a greater reward later? That’s what it sounds like in our language, in our egoistic perception. The past is not erased; the correction is in turning it from sorrow to delight. Instead of a vessel that has suffered from darkness, from lack and emptiness, from wars, from diseases, from pains, which mean from lack of filling, we now feel a filling and in it we feel a reward and love.

Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 108: This is similar to a well-known tale about a Jew who was a house trustee for a certain landlord. The landlord loved him dearly. Once, the landlord went away, and left his business in the hands of his substitute, who was an anti-Semite.

What did he do? He took the Jew and struck him five times in front of everyone, to thoroughly humiliate him.

This is about the ego and about the point in the heart in a person, about how the ego dominates a person now and beats the “point in the heart” called “Jew” (Yehudi), which stems from the Hebrew root “unity” (Yehud). This point wants to unite with the Creator and suffers because it cannot do so. This means that it receives blows from its ego.

Upon the landlord’s return, the Jew went to him and told him all that had happened to him. His anger was kindled, and he called the substitute and commanded him to promptly give the Jew a thousand coins for every time he had struck him.

The Jew took them and went home. His wife found him crying. She asked him anxiously, “What happened to you with the landlord?” He told her. She asked, “Then why are you crying?” He answered, “I am crying because he only beat me five times. I wish he had beaten me at least ten times, since now I would have had ten thousand coins.”

In the earthy representation of this story, this seems coarse and egoistic, but we understand that the Torah tells us about a person’s internal world. Whoever understands this interprets it correctly.

“A person is a small world,” in which there are two opposite sides: a point in the heart and the heart itself. The heart hates the point in the heart that yearns for unity with the Creator.

The greater the desire to receive that is revealed in us, called the cruel egoistic heart, the more strongly it seizes the point in the heart and doesn’t let it advance. The point in the heart makes different attempts to escape it and to advance, and so it suffers from its domination and from its own slavery, from the tormenting exile. The tension and the struggle between them constantly grow and the point in the heart feels more and more pain since it cannot unite with the Creator.

This creates a vessel and so the filling arrives, which is called “upon the Landlord’s return.” The reward is felt in the same sufferings, in the same empty places that were created during the exile. This means that it isn’t the desire to receive itself that becomes in order to bestow, but the struggle against it
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/25/12, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: It says that the Light of The Zohar is the strongest Light. But we keep saying that we have to draw the Light that Reforms. So what do we do during The Zohar lesson, add the Light that Reforms to the Light of The Zohar?

Answer: They are one and the same. The Light is one. There is no multiplicity of Lights; there is a simple Light, which means that it includes everything in it. It is simple because it has one attribute, one inclination, one goal, only to do good.

Because the created being exists in many different forms, it seems that there are many different actions on the part of the Light and that the Light has many sources, thousands of Lights.

I go through many states, and so it seems to me that there are many Lights that influence me and that every Light comes from its own source: This one is good and that one isn’t so good; one is more merciful, and the other is more severe, and so in thousands of shades. Therefore, the world seems so varied to me, as if I am influenced by endless external factors. I simply don’t discover that there is one source behind them, as if there is a multiplicity of Gods, or at least two, a good one and a bad one. Only when we reach the highest level do we see that it is all one unique force.

This is the difference between the wisdom of Kabbalah and all other beliefs, religions, and different doctrines that bow to different false sources. They too see one source that is split into several sources, as Baal HaSulam explains in the article “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy” and “The Peace.” But all this stems from the fact that people don’t discover the real, ultimate, uppermost cause, but rather discover different intermediate forms on the way that are intentionally aimed at stabilizing us. This is why different Lights come to us in different states and we are confused, as if there are many reasons, but behind them we can identify one source. If you advance correctly by the wisdom of Kabbalah, then the moment you start, you begin to identify that there is none else besides Him, and you just discover Him more and more.

This is why Kabbalists say from the start that “the Lord is our God, the Lord is one,” and this should be our way.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/26/12, The Zohar

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The desire to receive, which we are in now, is bad. It is very good if we want to enjoy life, and it helps us as much as it can. But it becomes bad and cruel if a desire to bestow is evoked in us, and it doesn’t let us adhere to the Creator, to the upper level. The desire to receive places a Machsom (barrier) between the upper and us, which does not allow us to pass.

The point, the spark of bestowal, strongly yearns to adhere to the Creator. The more the desire to receive dominates it, the more it yearns for the Creator. The more the domination of the ego is revealed, the more strongly this point has to struggle with it. And so its intention for the Creator grows and at the same time the sorrow and the pain also grow from the inability to adhere to the Creator. Its feeling of exile becomes greater and more bitter.

The tension, pressure, and yearning grow, and thus the vessels are formed. The vessels for attaining this upper level are not formed by the desire to receive that has turned into a desire to bestow, but are derivative of it. It is a result of the efforts and the sufferings, of the struggle between the spark of bestowal in a person and his desire to receive.

The spark struggles in order to adhere to the Creator, but it cannot do so since the desire to receive holds it by its feet and doesn’t let it break free. Then its exertion (for which the desire to receive is responsible since it held the “point in the heart” in its hands) becomes the vessel in which the unity of the next level is revealed.

This means that the desire to receive itself doesn’t become this vessel, it always remains restricted, but we work above it, by building our vessel above it, from the bricks of our exertion.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/25/12, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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