Preparation to the Lesson
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Rabash – The Social Writings “The Agenda of the Assembly 2”
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpt, Parashat “Kdoshim,” Item 34, Lesson 3
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Shamati #3 “The Matter of Spiritual Attainment” (Starting with: “The Upper Light is made of two discernments”)
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Question: You always say that The Book of Zohar can sometimes be a cure and sometimes poison, what does that mean?
Answer: Kabbalists describe this dilemma by using the allegory of choosing between the elixir of life and the potion of death, or by bringing the example of the rooster and the bat. Everything depends on a person’s intention: Is it the urge for the goal that drives him? This doesn’t mean that by opening a Kabbalah book he necessarily has to focus himself on the true goal because otherwise he will receive the potion of death. It is impossible to demand such things. So the Creator gives a person the right intentions, just like a baby who is under the full supervision of a grown up.
Even if a person comes to study without any basic knowledge and thinks about anything he feels like, it isn’t actually he who thinks and who is operating. From Above he is provided with constant supervision and care. If you could see this from the side, you would see that a person is like a newborn baby, that he has nothing of his own. It is simply a system, a “body” that functions according to a plan. He is equipped with everything that he needs, absorbing and emitting what he has to and thus grows. At this point a person has no freewill and no discernments.
Gradually, however, he grows and begins to move independently. At first he doesn’t feel responsible for what is going on, but later he begins to consciously perceive something and to shout intentionally at something, etc. Gradually he begins to understand what is good and what is bad and under which circumstances he feels good or bad. Accordingly he is played with and shown what he does correctly and what he doesn’t.
There are those who hear better and there are those who hear less, it depends on your innate attributes and on your upbringing. Generally speaking, it is about a huge system called Shechina that takes care of every one and brings everyone to the end of correction.
So, I cannot tell you when a Kabbalah book gives life and when it brings death. First a person is taught all this and after several years he understands that only in a group can he fulfill himself and move on from a corporeal connection with the friends to an internal, spiritual connection.
And then it his choice to reach for the opening of the spiritual network between the friends. It may be concealed from them, but he wants to reveal it. This means that he is attracted to life since this network is totally filled with bestowal.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/23/12, The Zohar
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Question: What should I do when I try to hold on to the intention and then the opposite happens and something draws me to the side?
Answer: This is wonderful. The moment you try to hold on to an intention, it evades you or is extinguished by something so that you will hold on to it more strongly. Then by different interruptions, you will be able to differentiate the corrections that you make by carrying on. The Creator shows them to you.
Today it is as if everything is blurred by different problems, but in fact it isn’t so, it is always a kind of help, and it guides you more accurately towards the goal. You aim at it, and suddenly it seems blurry, so that you will “aim” more sensitively and more accurately. And that’s how it is all the time.
Eventually you will be able to recognize the state of the next level from your current state. By the revelation of the ten Sefirot you see reality from end to end and then you are allowed to ascend higher.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/23/12, The Zohar
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Sometimes a person is in such a state that he doesn’t want anything. Nothing attracts him: not unity with the friends, not understanding the Kabbalistic texts, no feeling, and no connection to someone important. He doesn’t think about the inner goals that should be fulfilled during the day in the group and at work. It is as if he is “dead.” It isn’t that he feels that he is “dead,” but that he doesn’t feel himself at all, he is asleep.
What can a person ask for in such a case? He can ask for two things:
If he has no clear demand that comes from his deficiencies or his impressions, he needs these two factors: One of them operates from the side of the vessel and the other is operated from the side of the Light.
First I want to belong to the friends so that everything that flows through them will flow through me. The main thing here is to be involved in “spiritual matters.” I come, sit down, and listen to what is going on; I just listen on the spiritual level, by opening all my spiritual “openings” to the currents that flow in the group.
Second, I allow the Light to operate on me, to go through me by filling me and by bringing me back to life
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/23/12, The Zohar
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Everything is arranged such that the upper force, the good and the benevolent, is Above in the hands of the Creator. In order to reach this force and to identify with it, a person has to be adapted to it, to adhere to it, and to just discover a desire for that. His corrections and his ascent totally depend on the upper force.
It turns out that there is a negative force below and a positive force above, and a person is in between so that he will be able to determine by himself whether he wants to join the force of receiving or the force of bestowal.
When he sets himself apart from these two forces and begins to determine his state, it means that he is connected to the “human” point in him. All our work is to clarify what the states we constantly fall into mean. The upper force determines all these feelings within our ego, our desires, and our attributes so that we will see how opposite we are from the upper nature that we want to resemble and attain.
Accordingly, we will be able to determine what to ask for. In fact, nothing is required of us but the request, and it is the sum of all our exertion.
Therefore it says: “I have labored and found!” I exert myself in order to check and to clarify my current attributes, which I received as a preparation from Above as a result of the shattering. I have to compare these attributes to the Creator’s attributes, but how do I know who the Creator is?
I have to yearn for bestowal in the group and constantly feel the greatness of the goal. When an opposite force is revealed in me, I will be able to compare the two forces. I don’t compare myself with others, but constantly raise the right line and then the left line is evoked in me. Between these two lines I clarify my deficiency by yearning to resemble the right line together with my left line.
Thus I perform the “holy work” in my correction and do everything in my power to finally discover how opposite I am from holiness and purity. This brings me to a prayer.
Everything is first attained only by the power of prayer, which is the end result of all our efforts. If I discover the right deficiency inside me, I am rewarded with bestowal by the Light, with correction and then with a filling, which means with adhesion to the Creator.
A person attains the implementation of the work in this very special way: From the absolute opposite from the Creator, he adheres to the Creator. We should understand that there is no higher state in our work than the feeling of deficiency, a prayer, if this deficiency is real. This is how the sum, the conclusion, of all our exertion is revealed.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/23/12
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Preparation to the Lesson
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Writings of Rabash “Dargot HaSulam” Article 71
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpt, Parashat “Kdoshim,” Item 12, Lesson 2
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Volume 3, Part 8, “Ohr Pnimi,” Item 42, Lesson 23
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Writings of Rabash
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Baal HaSulam, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah),” Items 3-4: Since we were commanded: “Love thy friend as thyself.” The word ‘thyself’ tells us, love your friend to the same extent you love yourself, not one bit less.
In other words, you must constantly and vigilantly satisfy the needs of every person in the Israeli nation, no less than you are always vigilant to satisfy your own needs. … And now go and see if this Mitzvah is in any way feasible.
We are required to study extensively in order to acquire two discernments:
We have gotten used to nice words; we teach our children to be kind; that’s true. If I want to be respected, that people will endorse me, I have to speak accordingly. Everyone agrees that the “love of others” is right, but no one seriously intends to fulfill it. Besides, no one has checked whether it is actually possible.
So we have to try to actually fulfill this. Then we will see the truth, we will reach the deepest point of clarification: It turns out that our nature is opposite from this demand. The two types of nature, in order to receive and in order to bestow, are placed one opposite the other and we are in between. On the one hand, we can’t do anything, and on the other hand, by looking for the way to reach this recognition, we draw the Light that Reforms. We really want bestowal, but we can’t bestow, as it says in the Torah, “and the Children of Israel sighed from the labor.” If internally we face these two discernments, we will find ourselves on the verge of the exodus from Egypt.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/22/12, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”
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Question: What should happen so that I will finally be able to understand something in The Study of the Ten Sefirot?
Answer: In order to understand what The Study of the Ten Sefirot is about, I have to feel these phenomena inside me. They don’t take place somewhere on the moon or in outer space. It isn’t about some external systems. All of reality is inside us, in me, and in me I have to feel all of reality. If I imagine it to myself, I think about how to perceive it and about how I can change it, about how the upper force comes to me and changes me. Thus I divide all of reality into myself and to the source that created me, that designed me, and that influences me, which means the Creator.
In me there is a desire to receive, and in Him there is a desire to bestow. His desire bestows upon my desire, and my desire can evoke His desire in response. Thus we begin to work together like partners.
There is nothing else but that. So it turns out that the friends are inside me. These are the attributes that are closest to me, to the part of the desire that I feel as myself. They make up that part of the desire in me, together with me, from which I can turn to the Creator and manage my fate. I also have to correct all my other desires and add them to this part until I am totally incorporated in the mutual work with the Creator.
This will happen when I receive the right desire for it and want for all of us to constantly feel this. I won’t separate myself from the world externally anymore, thinking that the world is somewhere outside myself, in the form of different countries, nations, and friends; I have to constantly imagine that everything is inside me according to the right perception of reality. Then I will begin to gradually approach that perception.
At the beginning, the world will remain in duality for me and I will see it outside of me, but imagine inside. However, gradually, thanks to the Returning Light, I will start to connect these two approaches into one picture. It won’t be the kind of split like schizophrenia. I will begin to feel the goodness and the indivisible unity of the picture. A person reaches his perception gradually due to obtaining the middle line.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/22/12, The Study of the Ten Sefirot
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Question: What does it mean to draw the Light that Reforms?
Answer: When I read The Zohar, I want to see changes inside me, as if a stream of energy enters my internal system, a light, powers, new discernments, new attributes. Something influences me, and I want to feel what it is that influences me and performs changes in me. I want to know this and to feel the flavors and see how these changes take place in me and where inside me I can imagine everything that I read about in The Zohar so that it will not just be imagination, but that I will really feel it in my attributes. This is what I expect, the changes in my desire to receive.
We have to make collective efforts, in mutual help, and then the Light that Reforms will be much stronger than when it influences a single person. Then it is much easier to achieve something. But this is only if a person works with others, in connection with them. By that, he approaches the Light since his desires for the Light are not egoistic any more, but are similar to it in some way.
Of course it is still for himself, but a person tries to resemble the Light in some way and to seemingly become equal to it. This is called a “game.” Of course, I am asking for myself, but to some extent it is like the real and correct attribute of bestowal.
In what way is it similar? Several thousand egoists come together, all of them want to bestow, although deep in their soul everyone wants for himself and disrespects everyone else, but they make collective efforts, as if connecting, as if yearning, as if for the Creator, for bestowal—this “as if” is called a “game.” They “brainwash” each other’s minds as if it is really something great and important. In fact there is nothing real here, but this is what should be done in order to attain the upper level. This is because there is an abyss between the levels, and you cannot be in an upper level before you ascend to it, and in order to ascend you play it.
So we have to connect more strongly and to want to feel that that Light changes us. In the meantime it just changes us, but later our intention will be more accurate, so that it will change us in our connection, in unity, but this will come later. Now at least we have to aim at the influence of the Light.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/22/12, The Zohar
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While reading The Zohar, we first of all aim at the Light that Reforms. I think only about it as if I go through some healing process connected to an IV infusion with the upper force constantly flowing through me.
If I think about it, I can already advance. It says that the Torah is the essence of the holy names, which means the acts of bestowal, the Creator, the Light that Reforms, which brings me good thoughts and desires to bestow.
So I try to locate them inside me now while reading The Book of Zohar: “Perhaps something is happening in me?” I want to adhere to the same actions that the Light performs. I want it to perform them in me; I am ready to become Nukva, to receive everything. Let it come and dress in me and do whatever it wants with me.
This is called to “discover the holy names,” “to want to know what one studies, “to study the Torah,” to study the actions of the Light upon my desire to receive—how the Light reforms.
I don’t feel that the Light influences me, but I want to feel it! Being connected to an ordinary infusion a person can lie either unconsciously or consciously just looking at the drops dripping.
But we want to feel how the drops of the Light heal us and what each drop adds. I want to feel it because I want to learn about it, about how to act, how each drop changes my desire to receive; a drop here and a drop there, with relation to one thing or another. By that I learn how I can use every slight change in my recognition, in my understanding, when I get up after this healing process.
The main thing is that I expect to see the actions of the Creator in order to learn from them, in order to know what they are, who I am and how I can resemble the Light that influences me now. I have to perform actions that are identical to the Light’s, to learn from them, as it says: “From Your actions we shall know You.”
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/22/12, The Zohar
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