Question: How can we check what our intention is while reading The Zohar?

Answer: The Book of Zohar is the source of Light that comes to us if we want to use it correctly. Thus, while studying Kabbalistic books, I always summon some illumination upon me, but it comes according to the intensity of my efforts and my readiness. If I study in order to gain something corporeal or to gain the next world as a personal privilege, then the Light, by its influence, creates in me even greater darkness. I grow further away from the understanding of what this system was given to me for, what I have to do with myself, and how I should treat others. Even when I read wonderful words about love and connection, I don’t feel a sense of belonging anymore, I don’t see the connection and I don’t know how to perceive the text: Whether to let it enter my heart or not, this means that I study like a bat that is nourished by the night and doesn’t expect the dawn.

But if I try to connect with others and this is the reason I learn the method, by keeping and observing the condition for accepting it at Mt. Sinai, yearning together with everyone else to be “as one man in one heart,” to enter mutual guarantee, to attain brotherly love and through it the love of the Creator, then the Light begins to advance me. This isn’t the ordinary path that is overcome in stages anymore, but I gradually begin to discover the bad shattered state in it.

The egoistic study conceals my ego from me, and I see myself as righteous. On the other hand, by the right study, I discover that I am immersed in evil. The first thing that the Light reveals to me is my evil attributes, and I have to work accordingly. By discovering the evil, I feel even worse feelings than before. So what can I do? After all, according to my nature I want to escape when I feel bad.

Perhaps I should stop studying and withdraw from the group? Perhaps I should feel despair? Or perhaps I should be happy that I was allowed to discover the recognition of evil? It should be a law for me, an invitation: If I can rise above this unpleasant feeling, I will yearn for bestowal above receiving.

I prefer to receive a blow, since the sufferings that are revealed in my ego show me that I don’t work for it. Although I experience unpleasant feelings, I overcome them and aim at unity. I don’t escape in order to sweeten the bitterness; I don’t close myself, I don’t descend, and I don’t stop studying. On the contrary, I accept all the troubles that come from every direction on the way to unite with the friends, as being sent by the Creator and that there is nothing besides Him.

I accept every state as beneficial for my advancement. I don’t want to annul them and I continue to study in order to neutralize the bad feeling. I actually want it; I want it to stay since it focuses me exactly on how to rise above it, to be above reason. I gladly accept all the problems and interruptions, the pressure of the circumstances, the external mockery, the different sufferings, since they all help me focus on the goal correctly, creating such limitations, such frameworks, that by working within them I undoubtedly advance forward.

Thus build inside me the vessels of bestowal above the vessels of receiving. They continue to grow and to suffer, while I, being one level above them, want to hold on to the connection with the Creator until I attain full faith, the attribute of Bina, and begin using my vessels of receiving in order to bestow.

But then too I don’t intend to calm myself, since I have risen to such a degree that there should be no thought of complacency. On the contrary, I yearn more and more upwards and am even ready to receive pleasure, but not in order to fill myself, but in order to fulfill the Creator’s desire.

This is all our work. Along this path I need a real source, an egoistic desire that provides me with the force of bestowal thanks to my overcoming the problems and the sufferings that are revealed in it, and it’s clear to me that it all comes from the Creator.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/16/12, The Book of Zohar

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Question: Have there ever been people who listened to Kabbalists and followed their advice?

Answer: In ancient times, it was not about one Kabbalist or another, but about a whole period of development: the era of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and Joshua…Those are periods, rather than people as such. The spirit of the person was active in that time and made what it did. For example, Moses built the nation and contributed the methodology of correction to the desires that were unveiling at that time. As a result, he brought the nation to the Land of Israel, that is, to the revelation of the Creator.

Everything is carried out by the Kabbalists, although we cannot see it during the exile. Kabbalists are the ones by whom the world is being “charged,” which allows it to exist. Without a sparkle of Light, this world would never have appeared in the first place and matter could not have existed. There always are the Kabbalists who, according to their Kelim, belong to the generality of humanity as well as to a spiritual degree.

It is said that “the tail of the lion,” the nine lower Sefirot of the world of Atzilut, together with the Light of Hochma descend to the worlds of BYA and become “the head of the fox” (shualim), in other words, those who ask questions (shoalim). After all, that’s where the broken vessels are located, and so, the question arises: How do we correct them?

We need this connection as well as a permanent opportunity to transition between the levels. In this world, it is ensured by the Kabbalists. On one hand, they are dressed the same as others so that they can teach us. On the other hand, they are a part of a higher degree. There is no other way to achieve this because we are a part of the general system that lives in accordance with rigid laws.

Returning to the question:. After a long exile, Jewish people listened to the advice of the great Kabbalists during the time of Baal Shem Tov and his disciples. They led the nation, guided it forward, and gave birth to generations who lived in accordance with spiritual attainment—to people who connected “the ground” of this world with the height of Ein Sof (Infinity). It was a period of great Kabbalists who were operating in both worlds at the same time.

As to the severe detachment (interruption) of the spiritual connection that was created within the last one hundred years, it is probably something that was supposed to happen. The situation is really critical at this time. And yet, it is said: “I have not forsaken Israel.” Even today, there are Kabbalists who convey illumination from the spiritual world to ours.

Our world is a tiny dark spot in the center of spiritual universe. It is essential to bring the Light into it, otherwise it won’t be able to endure. Throughout all the worlds, the Light descends directly to this plane, to our corrupt desires, and Kabbalists are the ones who safeguard this ray of Light.

You call them “people,” although it has nothing to do with a body, but rather it is about certain desires or states (Kelim). They act deliberately, so that they can descend even lower and be closer to us. For example, Baal HaSulam asked to be lowered in order to be able to write and help those living below.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/12/12, “The Nation” 

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Question: What should we expect from dissemination?

Answer: Dissemination makes new points in the heart (•) awaken below, who come and join us since they pertain the category of Israel, like all our friends around the world.

This is the upper Partzuf. Below is the part that pertains to Israel from birth. In other words, it already has experienced spiritual ascent and breaking, and lower is the part of the “nations of the world,” souls deprived of Reshimot, the “genetic” spiritual memory, and they lack the point in the heart. They are awakened by the Surrounding Light.

Let us examine this through the simple design of two Partzufim—Israel and the nations of the world—where each one divides in two: an internal part (A) and an external part (B). Israel has a point in the heart, and must maintain a connection with the upper Light, attracting it and introducing it into the inner part of the nations of the world.

We, like the nations, also have problems, only we regard them as the means for advancement. However, if we were to advance at the right speed, we would not experience problems. We would only reveal the need for adhesion in its pure form. Problems, which do not seem to be related to spirituality, are caused by our delay in development.

Regarding the nations of the world, they must pressure us with the so-called MAN (appeal for the Light), and we must pass this pressure above, also as a request, but of a different quality.

However, our state is not yet corrected the way it potentially can be corrected, and this is why, instead of feeling a spiritual appeal from the nations, we feel physical pressure to the point of hatred, murder, and threats of complete destruction. Instead of spiritual means, the system influences us with rough, physical methods because there are no appeals or answers to these appeals going through it, and there is a bad negative connection between its parts.

Question: What should spiritual pressure be like? How is it different from physical pressure?

Answer: Spiritual pressure also manifests physically, but in accordance with our degree. The upper governance never changes. It is the same “Good Who does good.” He only appears to be very bad when we fall behind.

A child who has failed to graduate the third grade when he should be in fifth grade, regards his parents the same way. Their demands seem to be extreme, harsh, and very difficult, but it is only because he is not yet ready. If he wanted to correspond to his level and advance, he would regard his parents’ demands as helpful, and then they would direct him toward the next degree. Instead of hard pressure, he would feel as if he were being taken by his hand and guided in the right direction.

To help a child solve a problem at hand, he is asked leading questions that help him advance, become wiser, and grow. He is given building blocks, puzzles, and other games, to help him develop, and he understands it. However, what can you do when it is time for him to learn to play chess, and he still walks around with a pacifier and plays with rattles?

So, when we are on an adequate level of development, we then experience the upper One as “Good Who does good.” We feel while in the opposite way that: He wants to pull us to the next level and this is why He has demands; however, we read these demands incorrectly.

However, if we have not reached the level adjacent with the upper One, then we perceive His influence as concealment. This is because this influence does not go through its opposite side, like that which we want to become, but it goes through its “wrong side,” and this is a problem: We are not able to perceive the upper One as “Good Who does good.” We do not see his care. We do not know about His existence or program. This is called “concealment within concealment.”

Today, we are in the middle between this state and regular concealment where it already is possible to justify the upper One and understand that He conceals Himself in order to raise us and take care of us. This is similar to the way a child receives a set of building blocks and not the actual construction, not the prepared result, and if the child is bright, he understand that this is done for his own good, for his development.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/6/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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From the “Light and Sun” by Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Halevi (one of Noam Elimelech’s students): And what is more when Israel are unified and dealing with the Torah for its sake, they distinguish the names of the Holy Divinity by their speech and thus subdue all those that rise against them, and everything that they say, the Creator fulfills their desire.

We know that there is an additional power in unity, in addition to the usual sum of the individual forces, both evil and good. If we connect and unite in order to evoke and to attain the upper Light that should be revealed, in order to receive the force of bestowal, the attribute of bestowal, the upper force begins to operate among us and gives us the power of the spiritual level.

So if people who haven’t attained spirituality yet connect in order to attain it, by wanting the Holiness and the pure bestowal to dwell among them, they draw this attribute closer to them, obliging it to be spurred and to dwell among them. Thus they grow, by annulling all the evil decree, moving from the path of suffering to the path of the Light.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/15/12

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Question: Kabbalists say that, as it is written, “Since the world is judged by its majority, and the individual is judged by the majority, if he performs one Mitzva, happy is he, for he has sentenced himself and the whole world to a scale of merit.” How is that possible?

Answer: In a whole system, the individual and the general are equal. We don’t understand that because we always are operated by quantitative data, but in the whole analog integral system, however, even the smallest part is crucial.

If it breaks down, the whole system breaks down. It cannot operate on half its power or on 99% of it. As long as there is even one defect, the whole system is disabled.

These are the laws of the mutual connection among the souls, which together make one desire. The condition for the connection stems from this: “As one man in one heart” when everyone transcends above the ego, “above reason.”

Of course, we advance toward this gradually by going through 125 levels on the way to full connection, but, even in the process, the principle of equality of the individual and the general affects things so that when one gram of me is added to the circular general system, it enables it to rise to the right level. We must use this principle, which means to see even the smallest action performed by each individual as important.

Question: Does that mean that my corruptions also are transferred to the system?

Answer: Yes, and Baal HaSulam writes about that, but the point is that our system is already almost totally corrupt. We begin the ascent from the bottom, from the worst state, and first correct the purest, lightest vessels, desires.

Question: Does this integral law operate on everyone or only on those who are aware of it?

Answer: First, as the group is revealed, a person enters this system and participates in its work. Besides, on the outside, there is the system of all of Israel and then of the all of the nations of the world. Each part belongs to the system according to its weight.

The unity itself is concealed, and what is revealed to us at the moment is only its crust, which is the easiest part to correct. It is here that the mechanism that enables each of us to judge the world to a scale of merit operates.

This is because, for the time being, this is our world, the part that is revealed today and is given to us so that we can work in it. We have not entered Malchut of Ein Sof in its full intensity yet. We discover a thin layer of it each time so that we can work with it.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/16/12, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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Question: What does it mean to talk to the Creator through the group?
Answer: It is like you’re talking to yourself and making clarifications. However, it can’t simply be an inner dialog with yourself. It has to be a dialog with the Creator. This can happen on condition that you conduct this dialog through the general vessel, Shechina, where the Creator dwells.

For example, if you wanted to speak with an important person, you would have to pass a letter through his secretary and follow certain requirements. You have to do the same with the Creator and conduct your dialog with Him through the group, that is, through your attitude toward the fellow friends, through bestowal, to the extent that you can imagine it.

Otherwise, this appeal will not be directed toward the Creator. The group and the entire reality is a place where the Creator dwells. If you can connect to his reception room, then you can connect with Him. He gradually will reveal Himself to the extent of your readiness to connect properly to this place where you and He are supposed to meet. This place is like His chamber.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/12/12, Shamati #35

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We can attain everything we need to attain, as Baal HaSulam says, with the help of The Book of Zohar. A person who understands the power of The Book of Zohar doesn’t leave it for a single moment all his life. This is because The Zohar is such a great and powerful source that is unlimited in its intensity and in its influence on every one, and it is about this book that it says: “thanks to The Book of Zohar the children of Israel came out of exile,” and not by any other means.

So if we feel that we are in exile, (we will have to feel that, and it isn’t simple at all), we have to turn all the unpleasant feelings in our desire to receive, so that they will serve as an example for unpleasant feeling in the desire to bestow, which we haven’t attained yet and which we yearn to attain.

We can do that if we connect all our desires to receive in the group, and by that begin to switch all the yearnings, the anxieties, and the hopes from the desire to receive to the desire to bestow. This is how it happens if we focus them on the group, on the connection between us.

So we have to first clarify where I am, in what state, what is important for me, what I lack, and what my attitude is towards the group and the Creator. I have to bring all the internal states of my vessels, my passions, my goal, anxieties, and hopes into the group. I enter the group with all that, and then they all take on a different tone; it is as if you enter an elite military unit where everything you had before takes a totally new direction. By the incorporation in the group, all your deficiencies and desires turn into a power pool where you accumulate forces; you receive them from the environment and you can act. This is the switch from darkness to Light, as it says: “and the darkness shall illuminate like Light.”

So when we perform such an internal makeover, by connecting among us and being incorporated in each other, we can thus receive the Light that Reforms instead of the Light that previously just opened our vessels, illuminated from a distance, and as a result we felt different negative feelings. Now, however, we rise above the unpleasant feelings to the connection among us. We don’t want to erase the feelings, we don’t close our eyes and ignore them, but we see the way to advance forward. It is good when there are unpleasant feelings, since they spur me to connect with the group. I come to the group with them and want its help not to dismiss them, but to turn them into a power that moves me forward, that brings me closer to “There is none else besides Him” from where all the unpleasant feelings are sent. Then I will be able to be together with everyone in an act of connection and revelation. Thus we will reach the feeling that we are bringing contentment to the Creator.

We have to try to imagine the state that we are bringing Him contentment in our corporeal life, how unlimited this feeling is, how it raises us above the animal level to the human level, to the level of the one who bestows; what unlimited pleasure there is in the act of bestowal compared to receiving. This is because by that a person is in equivalence of form with the Creator, connecting with the source of unlimited energy. So by bestowing upon someone, a person feels that he has transcended matter.

So let’s read The Book of Zohar with the intention that the Light that comes from it can bring us correction instead of the darkness that it makes us feel first.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/14/12, The Book of Zohar

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Shamati, Article 138, “About Fear that Sometimes Comes upon a Person”: …And if one sees that fear overcomes him, he should say that there is no such thing as chance, but God has given him an opportunity from Above, and he must contemplate and study the end to which one has been sent this fear. It appears that it is so that he will prevail and say, “There is none else besides Him.
But if after all that, the fear has not departed from him, one should take it as an example and say that one’s servitude of the Creator should be in the same measure of the fear, meaning that the fear of God, which is a merit, should be in the same manner of fear that he now has. That is, that the body is impressed by this superficial fear, and exactly in the same way that the body is impressed, the fear of God should be.

When fear comes upon a person, he should understand that it is sent from the Creator so that we will change the animal fear that is felt in our ego to the fear of God. In the fear we should look not at our desire to receive but at our desire to bestow.

A person’s role is to take this example from Above, although he cannot fulfill it by himself and it is later fulfilled by the Light that Reforms. He has to at least to cope with these clarifications. This is why he has to prepare the environment and himself, in order to be ready to receive the problems and the fears that will come.

It all begins from fear, since the desire to receive feels only pleasure or sufferings. The greatest sufferings for it are the fears: from the smallest fears to the greatest threat.

If the desire is opposite from the Light, the Light summons a feeling of darkness in it. Here we should understand that in answer to this egoistic anxiety that we feel now, we have to draw the upper force with the support of the environment, the society, and prayer. We have to summon the Light that Reforms so that it will turn our vessel of receiving into a vessel of bestowal.

Then we will still feel fear, but it will be fear from not knowing when we can bestow, connect, and resemble the Creator when we can adhere to Him, to give Him a chance to reveal Himself to the created beings. Thus we will turn the darkness into Light and the night into day.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/14/12

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Preparation to the Lesson

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“The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee),” Items 21, 22, 23

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The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpts “Beresheet Bet (Genesis 2),” Lesson 156

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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Volume 1, Part 3, Chapter 9, Item 1, Lesson 21

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Humankind develops from small to large egoism. Sometime ago, a person naturally discovered that he needs a family; moreover, the bigger the family, the more secure he is. This way, he instinctively started to unite with others, as he came out of a barbarian state.

Families would grow and become tribes, and they expanded so much that people who used to be distant, became close. Villages and cities appeared, family ties gave way to more extended formations, a nation, living in their own country and connected by their belonging to their common destiny, a common mentality.

However, family ties also kept their power, remaining necessary for existence until recently. Only during the last decades, we have destroyed these boundaries, providing people with services, which allow him to no longer feel the need for a family. This led to the crisis in the family institution because marriage no longer promises the same benefits. At the same time, the feeling of belonging to a nation is very important for a person.

However, we continue to develop, and today, like it or not, a new feeling is growing inside us, which now encompasses the entire globe. This is because modern technologies and communications have made the world small and accessible. Today, it is charged with great interdependence, distances become smaller, systems become unified, and we are approaching the state of a single whole.

This way, if before the notion of a “family,” though weakened, still extended all the way to the borders of the country and was as wide as the nation itself, now it encompasses all of mankind. Migration is increasing, nations are mixing, borders are being erased; today, everything is moving in this direction.

What can we say about the people of Israel in this connection? Its foundation was laid by a group of Kabbalists, created by Abraham. These people were not connected in any way, except for a single thing: At a certain stage of their inner development, they felt that unity was the way to attain the Creator.

The other residents of Ancient Babylon also strived towards the Creator, but in another way, they were building the Tower of Babel egoistically, wishing to become like Him. These ambitions kept growing over the course of all of history: “We will control our own lives, we will play with trade and production, we will conquer the cosmos, we, we, we…”

However, even back then, certain Babylonians already wanted to attain the essence of life, and not just to keep pleasing themselves in every possible way. After all, the purpose of life is the attaining of its essence. And this is why, when the crisis arose and the Tower of Babel was destroyed, these people heard Abraham and understood that there is a method that allows penetrating the essence and revealing the upper force.

And today we are in a similar situation. Individuals, among the modern “Babylonians” of the world, gather into the group of Bnei Baruch in order to reveal the Creator. They are called the “people of Israel.”

In addition, there are the “corporeal” people of Israel, the descendants of those who once came out of Babylon with Abraham in the first global crisis. The Reshimot, the “footprints” of the path they have traveled, remained in them, and we must take care of them. This is because every one of them has “marks” from the previous ascent and the breaking that followed.

This is the reason people hate them: On one hand, by breaking, they have passed sparks of bestowal to the entire world, and on the other hand, everyone feels that they are unique and that a certain darkness comes from them—unique as a consequence of the sparks, and darkness as a consequence of the current situation.

We will still reveal a lot along the way, but one way or another, today the time has come to turn to the nation, the descendants of the students of Abraham, the descendants of the Ancient Babylon. As Baal HaSulam writes in his newspaper The Nation, they themselves must awaken a national connection in their environment. And this connection can only be based on a single thing: the principle of loving one’s neighbor as themselves. The Jewish people were initially founded this way, and could they structure themselves any other way today? All the attempts only demonstrate that without their foundation, this nation is like a sack of nuts, ready to fall apart and spread around the world at the first opportunity.

And this is why Baal haSulam writes: “This is why I stated that we need to arrange for ourselves a special education through widespread circulation, instill in each of us a sense of national love, both from one person to another, and from the individuals to the whole, and rediscover the national love that was instilled within us since the time we were on our land, a nation among the nations.”

If the nation fails to acquire their foundation, it will not manage to stay within the borders of the country and lay its roots there. This is why the entire world does not agree with the return of the Jews to their land; it does not yet feel like they have the consciousness of a nation, which must live in the land of Israel. Jews are able to live anywhere, and many do not yet feel like they pertain to and are interconnected with their nation. This vice is felt in them and the entire world, which reacts accordingly.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/13/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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