The Creator created a desire to receive that is in the world of Ein Sof (Infinity). It is the only creation, “something from nothing,” and it is adhered to the Creator. That’s the way it is from the Creator’s perspective.

Then, by special actions, the Creator separated and distanced that creation from Him by force, and a partition was created between them that separated these two attributes of receiving and bestowal. Now, there is a gap of 125 degrees between them, and the created being is like an organ that has been cut off the body and has lost its feeling.

We don’t feel the connection with the Creator since we are cut off from Him like an organ that is cut off from the body. If a person hadn’t received an awakening from Above, he would never think about it, but would live like all the other animals.

A human being is the awakening to the upper that is evoked in us: a desire to become like the Creator, connected to Him. Without this awakening, we would remain on the still, vegetative, and animate levels of development. The level of “speaking” is determined by our attraction to the Creator. So, this level can be called human because Adam (man) means similar (Domeh) to the Creator.

This awakening is called a point in the heart, and it allows us to be called Israel, a person who yearns Yashar El (straight to the Creator). Such a person has the task of returning to the Creator through his own efforts and various exercises called Torah and Mitzvot (the commandments). The Torah is the Light that Reforms that operates on the desire and turns it into in order to bestow.

Such actions are called Mitzvot and are created by a special force called the Light that Reforms. This Light is made of 620 Lights that operate on 613 desires, thus correcting them and annulling the partition between the created being and the Creator.

The force of separation becomes the force of adhesion. It amplifies the initial adhesion by 620 times, according to our division in the world of Ein Sof.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/13/12, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”

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If a person’s point in the heart was not evoked, he would never wake up and would remain on the levels of the still, vegetative, and animate nature. Thus, we see how important it is for those in whom the “point in the heart” was evoked to fulfill this yearning in every possible way and not to hide from it behind any other dealings.

We must help all those who were awakened because they are really the special, chosen ones in this world. It is possible to annul the partition that separates humanity from the Creator only with their help. All the others will join them and help them to the extent that their readiness to do so is revealed in them. This is also a holy work. To the extent that we annul the partition, its force will change from the force of resistance to a force that assists connection.

Just as in an electronic schema where every component has a resistance, and if this schema were to be connected to a power generator, the particle would begin to operate according to its resistance, which means that it would become a beneficial part. The more it resists, it performs greater work and brings more benefit.

The same thing happens with the evil inclination. It is thanks to it that we ascend the 125 degrees when it turns into the good inclination. We connect 620 times more strongly than before.

First, in the world of Ein Sof (Infinity) we had no idea whether we were separated or connected. We existed like an embryo in its mother’s womb that was created that way, and knows nothing else.

However, after the shattering and the separation, we discover all the depth of love and connection by revealing the partition on the left side, each time, annulling it and correcting it on the right side, and then use the “middle line” in order to connect. Thus, all the evil changes to good, and the “angel of death” turns into a “holy angel.”

We must regard the ego as a real angel, that is, as a special force that raises us to the human level. This whole separation was needed only so that we would discover the depth of connection, understand it, and feel it to its full depth.

We will not exist in it passively, like an embryo in his mother’s womb that knows nothing and understands nothing. Instead, we will cooperate in it like the “two great Lights,” like equals, like two lovers, mutually connected into one whole. It is only then that we can really make each other happy.

So, the reconnection of the organ that was cut off the body is not just a reconnection. It allows them to become one whole, according to the attraction and the inclination between them. Therefore, it then is called “adhesion.”
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/13/12, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”

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Preparation to the Lesson

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Writings of Rabash “Igrot,” Letter 23

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The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpt “Aharei-Mot,” Lesson 9

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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Volume 3, Part 8, Item 6, Lesson 3

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“Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot,” Items 4, 5 

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After a person is awakened to spirituality, the rest of his ascent depends on the deficiency. This is the only thing he is required to do—to have a deficiency called prayer, MAN.

This is possible only when a person is grateful that he has received such a yearning. Then he increases the importance of the goal by himself; the importance of the next level. In addition, it is possible if above all this he also develops another deficiency in him, to ascend not for his own sake but in order to bring the Creator contentment. It is like the famous example of the guest who wants to please the host.

Thus he prepares himself to receive help from Above which will make his desire the right one. Even if a person doesn’t understand to what extent our account is actually egoistic, it makes no difference and for the time being this is also enough. Later he will see that his account isn’t clean. This is why the time of preparation is called Lo Lishma (Not for Her Sake).

It is a natural egoistic account and it is impossible to skip above our ego all at once. It opens up gradually to the extent we can make an effort and work against it—against things we find pleasant, against our habits, and to the extent that we are ready to step on our pride in order to connect with others.

All this isn’t simple, but if a person constantly pays attention to it, he advances. Our problem is that everyone is trying to escape and to hide in his corner, to hide behind the studying, behind the desire to know what is written, which has nothing to do with spiritual advancement and the inner correction. A person fills his mind with dry facts and neglects the work in the heart.

The work in the heart is working against the heart, in order to turn the “stony heart” into the “heart of flesh.” But we forget where our main exertion should be. Everyone finds some comfortable spot and thinks that he has found the way. Thus he descends even from Lo Lishma, since Lo Lishma is when despite being in my ego I still make some efforts to rise above it.

Where is the daily work to connect with others, to concede, to step on myself, to annul my “self,” to accept the importance of the group’s opinion, to become a slave to the mission? Can I examine myself and see the state I am in? This is called Lo Lishma.

All of Moses’ work in Egypt is an example of working in Lo Lishma. He wants to escape the enslavement, but he is afraid because he understands that he is under the domination of Pharaoh, of his ego, and he doesn’t know how to talk to him. It reaches a state that the Creator Himself takes him and brings him to Pharaoh and helps him in everything that he does.

The Creator Himself fights the Pharaoh. He says: “Come to the Pharaoh!” But in the meantime a person is afraid. He knows that the ego totally controls him and how weak he is when he confronts him. He is in a constant dilemma: On the one hand, he is ready, and the other hand he isn’t. If he could at least ask the Creator to go before him, just to hide behind Him and thus stand before the Pharaoh; but he actually doesn’t want to go and he doesn’t have the guts to turn not only to his ego but also to his own attributes, called “the nation of Israel.”

But by being in a system that connects him with Pharaoh, the Creator, and the nation he has to clarify all these connections. He cannot hide behind some theory or some work that is only a means. It is very important to clarify what Lo Lishma means.

When a person enters the state of Lishma (For Her Sake), things become clearer and more decisive. We cannot say that it gets easier, but one profits from experience. In the meantime, however, during the time of preparation, a person escapes to some corner ready to sit there until his last day. It is a great problem if the group doesn’t spur him and guide him. He has to feel that he is lower than them in order to hear what they say.

The feeling of helplessness on the one hand and the necessity to advance on the other is a state called Yomim Norai’im (the Days of Awe). A person is in a state of anxiety since he has no fear of not being able to fulfill the Creator’s desire, of not being able to allow Him to be revealed to all the created beings, of not being able to sacrifice himself for the convergence of the Creator to the created beings.

All this evokes fear in him. He really wants to fulfill this stage in practice, so that it will be called the beginning of a new year for him.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/14/12

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The force of Love of the Creator that from the beginning isn’t found in the created being is transferred to him in an inverted way. This is called the evil inclination. According to the measure of love with which the Creator relates to us, it enters us in a reversed way and breeds in us the force of hatred, a degree of separation. If we would invert it now, then it would turn to love.

The Creator creates the desire to receive and transfers to it all of His force of love. The desire itself is just a small point, but now it is in an environment of this force of love that it feels as a world of hate.

We must transform this hate back into love. That’s all! This is called the “mountain of hatred” transforms into the “mountain of holiness.”

We work only on our intention. We don’t consider the desire since it was given to us by nature. Everything depends only on where our thoughts are directed. Thus, it doesn’t matter what a person’s desires are. They don’t depend on him. From the beginning there are Taryag (613) desires, and all of them are for the sake of reception. Man wants to take advantage of the Creator and thus it is called Pharaoh. And all of our work is in transforming this Pharaoh into a holy angel.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/13/12, The Zohar

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Different than our corporeal world, there is no time, place, and motion in the spiritual world, but only ascents and descents in the attributes of receiving or bestowal. This is the scale we move along all the time. Our states are measured only with regard to the spiritual “worlds,” the Partzufim and the Sefirot that continue from the top down through 125 degrees.

Except for our ascents and descents, there is also the motion of the degrees themselves that can move together with us. If I am in a certain world, for example, in a certain perception of reality and it’s suddenly “upgraded”: I feel that it becomes clearer, that it is more illuminating; I receive greater powers, understandings, and discernments. All this is not regarded as my doing, but it’s a kind of “exercise” I am put through in order to show me something.

It’s like a small child who is being picked up and suddenly feels that he is big: New horizons open up before him; he can reach things that he couldn’t reach before. Then he begins to direct the one who carries him where he wants to be carried to and which doors to open. Similar behaviors come from Above and are revealed in our world. Therefore there are different ascents:

• We either ascend the ladder by our efforts
• Or the ladder itself moves up and down.

These movements are depicted to us as special times or special states. On the whole each state is special and never repeats itself; there isn’t a moment that is similar to the next. We should say that it isn’t by chance that people divided time the way it is. Clearly the days and the nights correspond to the sundial and the month is determined by the lunar calendar. But how did people decide on the division of the day into 12 daytime hours and 12 nighttime hours? The wisdom of Kabbalah explains this cycle of 24 hours divided into minutes and seconds as the result of the mutual relations between Zeir Anpin and Malchut.

On the whole, it’s about a multiplicity of different influences upon the created being, which means on Malchut, from Above. This is where the ideas of a fallow year and Yovel (Jubilee, the 50th year) come from. As well there are special states called “times” or “holidays.” They are not connected to phenomena on the still level, but are controlled by a special program. The point is that there are special roots that have to be revealed and fulfilled specifically in us and not just in the world or by some customs. These states “illuminate” for us by preparing us so that in the future we will actually receive and fulfill them.

Today we receive faint illuminations from them, but in fact these are the degrees. In the spiritual world a person ascends the degrees of “Sunday,” “Monday,” “Tuesday,” “Wednesday,” “Thursday,” “Friday,” and “the Sabbath.” He must feel these states sequentially, one after another. A spiritual day can last a couple of seconds or it may linger for several weeks. It makes no difference since the corporeal time has nothing to do with the spiritual time.

Thus the “holidays” are states, “examples,” levels to which a person rises. As a whole they are in the ascent and are fulfilled by an awakening from Above by a certain illumination that adds something to a person who has a spiritual perception. Such additions are called “Rosh Hashanah,” (the new year), “Yom Kippur,” etc.

For every such ascent that is received from Above, a special kind of work is required below, by the created being of course. It’s because he wants to use this ascent in order to correct himself and fulfill the additional affluence that has reached him, on a new level. It’s the same on the Sabbath when an awakening from Above requires special work from us. It isn’t a time of rest, but rather quite a busy day in which there are more prayers and other customs. When the Upper invites the created being to ascend to an upper level, the work during the ascent obligates the lower to perform many actions.

The first holiday is Rosh Hashanah, which symbolizes a new beginning. I want to be a human being, Adam, to resemble the Creator. This is the reason for the spiritual process that I want to go through. Thus, Rosh Hashanah is called the day of the Creation of man; this is the day on which man was created.

In corporeality it’s also reflected in a special way: 5773 years ago there lived a guy called Adam and on that day he discovered spirituality; he discovered the Creator. For the first time in history one of the two-legged creatures discovered that there is a spiritual world and the upper force. He was the first to resemble the Creator and we call him the “First Man.”

In the article “The Teaching of Kabbalah and Its Essence,” Baal HaSulam says, Adam HaRishon was the first to receive a sequence of sufficient knowledge by which to understand and to successfully maximize everything he saw and attained with his eyes. And this understanding is called the “wisdom of truth.”

Since that day, when man first identified with the Creator and fulfilled his name, which was given to him “by chance” by his parents, we count our years. This means that even our calendar is initially based on the revelation of the Creator to the created being.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/14/12, Customs of Rosh Hashanah

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Question: What can I do if not only don’t I have the desire to ask for the connection with the friends, but the opposite is true?

Answer: It is a sign that you haven’t prepared yourself. First, you must lower your pride, to subdue yourself to the environment, and to begin feeling that the friends are great people moving forward. While you are somewhere far behind, all alone, like a sleeping baby who was forgotten in his carriage.

Everyone has already moved forward a long way, and you, because of your pride, think that you are so special that you advanced forward by yourself. However, it isn’t so. It is they who moved forward, and you were left behind. First, you must acknowledge this. The detachment from the connection with the environment is the first reason for all the failures.

The problem is that you don’t have a deficiency, that there is no pressure. It is because you are not clarifying what is important. You constantly must make such efforts. If I constantly think about something, it becomes the most important thing for me and I don’t forget it during the study.

Besides, all the groups should work on this in order to awaken in everyone the importance of the spiritual goal. This is called the “mutual guarantee“—when we inspire one another to feel that there is nothing more important than bestowal. However, if everyone is under a kind of general anesthesia, a person cannot go against the power of the whole group, so he, too, falls asleep.

The problem is that you are used to advancing on someone else’s fuel, instead of each spurring others and then receiving from them much more that you have invested. The group should work as an amplifier of the individual passion of every individual desire.

However, I see that everyone is waiting for me to obligate this boat to move by my shouts and pressure. Without it, it is rocking on the waves, waiting to be pushed forward. The moment I stop pressuring, everyone immediately looks at me to see why I left. It is impossible to advance this way.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/11/12, The Zohar

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Baal HaSulam, “Peace in the World”: Because indeed, we have already come to such a degree that the whole world is considered one collective and one society. Meaning, because each person in the world draws his life’s marrow and his livelihood from all the people in the world, he is coerced to serve and care for the well-being of the whole world.

What was clear to Baal HaSulam almost a century ago still is unclear to people today. We have reached such a state in our evolution that we all are dependent on one another in a tight way, directly.

Question: Why is it still unclear?

Answer: See for yourself: Everyone “pulls the blanket” to his side and doesn’t understand that eventually, he is causing himself even greater harm than in any other way.

The entire point is that if I invest in the well-being of the public, I don’t see any self-benefit in it. If I take something from the public, I see a real benefit from it.

However, Baal HaSulam says the opposite: The system is already “closed.” It is “tied up” in a perfect, whole way inside itself. So, if you work for the public, you get a return that is ten times greater, and if you take from the public, your loss is ten times greater. However, we just keep on going, not understanding what is going on.

Question: What conceals the truth from me?

Answer: It is my ego. There is an integral system that is being revealed today. Actually, the system of Ein Sof (Infinity) is being revealed to us, of the Shechina, the vessel of the general soul in which we are all connected.

Up until now,  let’s say until 1995, everyone grew in his private desires for ages, in the root phase and phases one, two, three, and four. Now, a person discovers that having no choice, he is connected to everyone, and everyone is connected to him.

The strings of mutual connection make a great, complicated integral system, and there is even a certain scientific field that studies this. Before, each part was not connected so tightly to the others. It developed individually, and that was the general trend. However, since the 1950’s, we have begun to feel the global trend, and today, everyone has reached his personal limit and only needs to develop in mutual connection with others. There is nothing left but that. This is the trend until the end of correction.

We are still locked within our egoistic desire and want to fill it like before, but this system is not active any more. Before, I used to fill myself as my ego grew, and it took me from one level to another, from the root phase to phase four.

Today, I continue to operate like in the past, but I cannot because I cannot fill myself—my desires don’t develop in the previous direction anymore. From now on, they can develop only in the direction of togetherness (∑), of unity.

This means that even the egoistic benefits, at first sight, are possible only by connection, only by using connection. This is what is being revealed to us these days.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/11/12, “Peace in the World”

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Baal HaSulam, “Peace in the World”: Thus, peace of the world and peace of the state are interdependent. Hence, we necessarily find that even that part of the state which is currently satisfied with its life, which are the nimble and the clever, still have a lot to be concerned about for the safety of their lives, due to the tensions with those who strive to overthrow them. And if they understood the value of peace, they would be happy to adopt the conduct of living of the last generation, for “all that a man has will he give for his life.”

There is a simple condition for the good life of the last generation, and that is to know that all over the earth, in all of humanity everything is connected integrally and globally and no one is free of this general account. Everyone is connected to everyone in full connections that we know of and that we don’t know of, the revealed and the concealed. There are millions of strings stretched among us through my thoughts and my desires and through all of me. If I haven’t revealed them yet, it doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. Of course they exist and they are more clearly revealed each day.

The only thing I can do is to understand that that’s the way it is, but the understanding isn’t enough—I need to come to the feeling that I was able to correctly use the situation. Let it limit me when I do something wrong and push me forward in the right initiatives, according to the general system in which we are all connected to one another.

If I don’t feel, I will miss this opportunity: I will start saying one thing and doing another thing, which is what is actually happening today.

Well, first I have to understand it myself and explain to those around me. But eventually, this system has to be revealed to us so that we will really see it in our eyes and in our insight, so that we will feel its signals coming from heart to heart, from mind to mind.

No one will be able to think and contemplate by himself. Everyone will have to connect to the whole world in his thoughts. In other words, we need one heart and one mind for everyone.

Life itself demands the unity. We are moving in this direction and will reach it anyway if not now, then later. So how can we execute this? Will some global government or some global police help us? What can we do?

We need a special means that will show us the connection among everyone in an emotional and cognitive manner, so that we will not just look at in from the side, but will actually find ourselves in it.

Then I will automatically worry about others: If I think, I think about everyone; if I make a decision, I take everyone into account. I will be strongly and tightly connected to the general. Without this there is no chance we will succeed.

Question: You have described the final state, but not how to get there.

Answer: That’s right. Even now I can use my common sense and my right mind in order to depict for myself how things should be. If I already see the general system, how does it obligate me at the moment? Then other conditions will be revealed, even tougher and stranger ones.

Still I have to think objectively regarding the present: There are certain components that are connected in a certain way.

How do I connect them so that everyone feels all the others and everyone can take everyone else into account?

Everyone knows the other’s nature thoroughly and is unlimitedly connected to everyone in a variety of connections and has such a large mind that he can take everyone into account, to immediately plan projects on everyone’s behalf and carry out actual operations, assured that these operations are optimal and that in the current circumstances are the best possible.

Otherwise, if everyone continues carrying on his personal accounts under the conditions of the growing mutual connection, everything will fall apart like a car whose parts go in every direction when an accident occurs.

So we have to see the picture of our unity as compulsory: Everyone has the mind of everyone and everyone has the feelings of everyone else. How is that possible? That’s a question in itself. But even now we already see that nature is presenting us with this problem.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/13/12, “Peace in the World”

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Question: Kabbalists attribute envy to the qualities that help a person exit this world and enter the spiritual world. Indeed, why should I envy others? After all, everyone is special and everyone is following his own path. Why should the uniqueness of another make me jealous and empower me on my way?

Answer: I evoke the envy, lust, and desire for respect in me on purpose. It isn’t about just any ordinary person who envies the success of others or who is after respect. In this world we envy all kinds of nonsense and really want frivolous things. I, on the contrary, take only what is necessary for living and disregard all the rest. When I have all the basic necessities, I build myself for the spiritual work and in this framework I use tools like envy.

Otherwise, I will have nothing with which to advance. Envy, lust, and respect are the three egoistic approaches, and what can I work on without them inside of me? It’s these three qualities that take me out of this world; it’s like exiting the worlds of BYA into the world of Atzilut.

So if I want to work spiritually, I look at the work of others and annul myself before them. Then I see them as the greatest in our generation: They have advanced far ahead, they have attained the end of correction, and I envy them. If I don’t envy, I am powerless and can’t move. I receive all the powers to advance from my ego. The right advancement with the right intention, which means the form that is dressed in matter is brought to me by the Light while the matter itself by which I ascend is my own ego.

Question: But how can I guard the right intention from the envy?

Answer: It’s according to the envy, the lust, and the desire for respect that the intention is built. You turn the envy to envy for the Creator, the desire for respect to respect for the Creator, the lust for an urge to adhere to Him. Otherwise, what do you correct? What do you build, an airy castle in the clouds?

Question: But still, when I envy, its fire consumes me.

Answer: No, you allow yourself to evoke the envy, the lust, and the desire for respect only after the restriction, when it isn’t for you anymore, but in order to understand, to determine the “work space.” Everything must be under control; otherwise, you mustn’t even start.

In short, try it. Don’t be afraid to fall into envy. Start working on it. You’re lucky if you envy the friends; it’s good. After all, we have no other force to advance. If I lived alone without an environment, I would be like an animal. On the other hand, if the society spurs me and stimulates me by constantly showing me that the friends have what I lack, it helps me advance in life. I just need a special environment that provides me with good examples, which I envy.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/12/12, “Peace in the World”

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