After such a remarkable achievement when you managed to unite so much during my absence, you need to look at how to use these results, this connection. And here we must make a “sacrifice.”

Indeed, the obstacle may arise from two sides. Either we fall, despair, lose hope for the future, and feel the darkness in our desire to enjoy, or vice versa, we are glad of our strength, success, and attribute everything to ourselves. And this leads to more separation because it captivates us and veils our eyes so that people cannot see anything.

This is worse than despair. But in both situations, we need to learn how to use these extreme, polar states for advancement. A person must use two lines: the left and the right to come to the middle line.

This is a wonderful state, allowing us to feel everything “in the raw.” Self-love and pride live in everyone. And if we feel that we have achieved a new success, we must now attribute all that to the Creator. Not we, but He did this! He gave, and not we have achieved. He brought us to this feeling, and not we ourselves came to it.

The Creator acted in everything, as it is said: “I am the first, and I am the last!” If we analyze the results correctly, then we will come to greater adhesion, not disconnection. In our state today, this clarification is the most important thing.

It is good that we see and can go through this together and get valuable experience. I am glad that there was a situation that I had to leave, and you have succeeded in my absence due to the help from Above. Now, I can help you with advice from the side about how to use your inner state and to learn from it. The Creator’s help and mercy were manifested here. This is a great training and advancement.

However, we all need to beware of pride so that everything begins and ends with the Creator.
[84026]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/26/12, Shamati #219

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Question: What does it mean that I have to address all my questions to the Creator?

Answer: We’re not used to remembering and thinking about the upper force. It isn’t because we’re not religious; religious people don’t think about the Creator in the sense I am referring to. No one thinks about Him.

To think about Him means to realize that only He does everything. We can speak about it using high words and read about it a lot in books, but nothing helps.

We, meaning all of humanity, all the souls, all the desires, the general network, the system, Malchut, the Shechina (Divinity), exist within one force called the Creator. We have to discover that we are within Him. This is the only problem we have to solve: the revelation of the Creator to the created beings, and this is what the wisdom of Kabbalah deals with.

The revelation of the Creator to the created beings can either be through the path of suffering and great troubles when out of the great sorrow and hopelessness, the ego shrinks and restricts itself so as not to feel the suffering. It gives up its desire to enjoy and is ready for everything but only not to suffer.

But imagine what terrible troubles and suffering one has to go through in order to give up his desire to receive. It isn’t about suicide, but about an action that is a billion times greater than our life. Yet under the pressure of the great sorrow the ego can shrink to such an extreme that it can restrict itself until it doesn’t want to exist.

We’re not talking about the tiny desire we are in at the moment, but about a desire that constantly grows and suffers so much that it restricts itself. Then the desire grows even more, the suffering becomes even greater, and the desire restricts itself again.

This is called the path of suffering. If we follow this path, then “death is better than life,” and it will be impossible to die.

But it’s possible to advance, to restrict the desire to receive and to correct it so that it will bestow by discovering the Creator that is in it by an external force called the Light that Reforms. That is, with the help of the same Creator, it’s possible to turn to Him in a special way.

This method can’t be revealed independently. We see that even when people hear the explanations, they still don’t understand what the Light that Reforms is. The uniqueness of this method is in the fact that instead of suffering as a result of the influence of the Creator who makes me feel bad as He approaches me, I ask Him to correct me.

I want to be like Him; I want to be good. I take preventive measures and the Creator helps me! But I have to ask, I have to be ready for this bestowal. After all, if I just cry from my desire to receive, nothing will help. How can the Creator influence me by the Light that Reforms if I don’t ask to be reformed and my desire to receive restricted?

I have to turn to the Creator so that He will help me restrict my desire to receive and turn it into bestowal that is like Him. It shouldn’t be at the cost of suffering but by His action.

Thus we were given the opportunity to turn to Him through the connection between us. If we arrange the connection among us, the form of this connection will be the form of bestowal we want. We build this connection like children who by playing seem to be doing something. We all know that we are egoists, that our connection is egoistic, and that everyone wants to succeed and to profit from it. But still, we are all asking the Creator together so that He will do it and change us.

This request is egoistic since it’s impossible to cry it out differently from the dark, from exile. But eventually it’s fulfilled because the upper Light, the Creator, takes the state you are calling Him from into account. He understands that you can’t turn to Him with a more spiritual, altruistic request since you are in your ego and only want to receive.

It is like a baby who cries and doesn’t understand what he wants, but the mother must understand and take care of him. We too have to cry: First we should try to do everything that we can and then cry. This is the Kabbalistic method. Don’t wait to be pitied from Above for no reason. The Creator knows no mercy since mercy is bestowal.
[83984]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/25/12, Shamati #72

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Our desire was created as existence from absence, which means that it exists only because of the force of existence in it. The force that stems from the Creator gives the desire life and builds the opposite form in it.

Question: How can these two forces stay together?

Answer: The one Force sustains the two of them so that the created being could exist, so that there will be something besides the Creator. He constantly sustains our being since without it, we simply wouldn’t exist.

Just think of how the term “existence from absence” sounds: Existence is being sustained above nonexistence, above nothing.

Question: How is this expressed in the group among individuals who are starting to unite?

Answer: They only have to take the connection between them into account. Nothing else is relevant to their force and their abilities; nothing can be changed except a prayer for the connection.

When they feel that everything depends on their mutual connection, it is already a good clarification. Then, as a result, they sign a treaty of mutual guarantee.

Question: But the ego doesn’t disappear and isn’t annulled, is it?

Answer: Yes, it grows. How can these tow forces exist without one another? How can one be measured without the other?

We think that love and hate can exist independently and that love by itself is enough. But it isn’t so;  even when you love someone very much, you suddenly discover that some “spice,” some roughness is missing so that you will have a true contact and a real connection. The feeling of connection is always composed of the negative and the positive that covers it. Otherwise there is no connection. A connection can only be between two distant opposites and and it lies namely in between them.
[83987]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/26/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar” 

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The “matter” of our desire is “dust,” and it doesn’t change. The only thing that changes is the level of connection between the particles of this “dust.” So first of all we have to perceive ourselves not just as the desire to receive. It is because this desire takes on 613 different special forms, and in each of them we want to enjoy only for ourselves.

This is quite clear: Everyone wants to enjoy something and this way separates and breaks apart the grain of their desire into 613 particles of self-enjoyment. Of course, no one can count this number and we use it as a figure of speech.

Then the work on our connection with other people begins. These “crumbs” actually remain lifeless, as it says: “From dust you came and to dust you shall return.” What counts is the special connection among the particles, which gives them life.

Scientists cannot understand them and cannot turn the still nature into life. They try to use electric discharge and other means, but a person cannot do such a thing. It isn’t alchemy; it is much more complex since the upper force has to be revealed in an actual form of life. A person can do it only if he summons the action of the Light that Reforms. In order to turn the still nature into the vegetative level, the vegetative level into the animate level, and so on, there should be a portion of the Light that Reforms each time.

Therefore, by the connection among us our murky particles discover life in this connection. They remain in the desire to receive of the still nature, but the mutual connection they create among them, the mutual guarantee, the mutual bestowal, the network they want to build with the help of the Light, turns into the vegetative level and in it flow the forces of life that stem from the source of life, from the Creator. Then from the vegetative level they change to more complex forms of the animate and the speaking levels of nature.

We should understand the basic structure, the essence of this system: The particles remain the same desires that were created as existence from absence, and the connection among them is existence from existence.
[83990]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/26/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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Preparation to the Lesson

Shamati #2 “Divinity  in Exile”

The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpts “Beresheet Bet (Genesis 2),” Lesson 143

Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 7,” Item 1

Writings of Rabash, “What Is, ‘Anyone Who Mourns for Jerusalem Is Rewarded with Seeing Its Joy’ in the Work”

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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 46: Malchut is the coarsest cover, hiding the Light of Ein Sof. The Light it passes from Him to the receivers is only a small portion, related to the purification of the still body of man.

The Light is filtered, and it weakens on its way to the desire, and the level, the intensity, and the strength of the connection that it carries, depends on it. When it goes through Malchut, it can purify the desire only on the level of the still nature.

A person who receives the Light from Malchut totally annuls himself. He cannot perform independent actions and totally annuls himself, thus enabling the Light to operate on him. If the Light comes through Zeir Anpin, it purifies it on the level of the vegetative, and, in addition to annulling himself, it enables him to move for the first time.

Later, the Light that comes through Bina raises the desire to the animate level. Now, it can operate by itself, give birth to new levels, and resemble the Creator. Finally, when a person receives the Light of Hochma, there is no limit to what he can do with his desire and with his nature, with his inner potential.

So, it all depends on the level from which the Light that Reforms comes. We must be under that level and to resemble it somehow.

Question: In what way is the vegetative level different from the animate level?

Answer: First, measure the growth from the beginning or in other words, compare it to the level of the still nature. Inanimate nature cannot move on its own. It is totally annulled by the Light and is in absolute rest.

On the other hand, on the vegetative level, the desire that has grown can take on more advanced forms and to change, but this still has to be attained, and so the level of inanimate nature develops as it resists changes.

The desire to receive changes, but a person keeps himself, his structure, and attributes. Thus, he acquires a basis that is created of all the four phases on which he stands by not annulling his desire, but rather by leaving it under the Masach (screen) and the restriction.

Then, from his level of the still nature, a person can build the next three levels: the vegetative, the animate, and the speaking. Everything stems from the level of the still nature. Therefore, on the level of the still nature, a person goes through all the phases only in the form of the still nature. Then, on every level, there are the particular levels of the still nature, and they are all be the result of the Keter of the still nature that is stabilized from the start.

As for the level of the vegetative, it can generate independent movements under the influence of the Light. In other words, if at first I could only admire different delicacies, covering my mouth with my hand, which means covering the desire with a Masach, now I already can taste a bit in order to bestow.

Then, there is the level of the animate that already can give birth to new forms. It can move and extract waste materials and organize in groups, but only according to its nature. It doesn’t take an example from the Creator yet and acts like a baby in which the level of the animate is expressed for the time being.

This is the difference: The level of the vegetative cannot move independently, it doesn’t give birth to anything new, and only responds to the influence of the upper Light. At this point, a person gradually begins to work with his desire to receive, which means that he doesn’t just restrict it, but uses it to bestow in order to bestow. On the other hand, the animate level is ready to receive in order to bestow.

The level of the speaking already takes an example from the Creator, and this is different from all the rest. The whole point is to resemble the Creator.
[83932]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/25/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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We attain the Creator, which means that we reach the attribute of bestowal, the revelation of the spiritual world, only if we acquire two discernments:

• A great desire that is aimed at that, which is clarified enough and which is one degree lower than the level of attainment. A person imagines what the revelation of the Shechina (Divinity), the Creator’s face is, what the Light and the attribute of bestowal are.
• A person must feel great pain since he doesn’t have the attribute of bestowal. A person suffers and he knows that the attribute of bestowal symbolizes the rising above his ego and a complete detachment from his previous life and from all his personal accounts.

It’s very hard to reach that, since we act against our nature. Therefore a person advances on two legs, step by step, between two lines: left right, left right…from his part a person should try to start from the right line and fall to the left. But from Above, he is always given the left line, darkness first. On every level, by the darkness and the Light the “letters of the work” are registered in a person, the relations that are drawn between the types of darkness and the Light, the attributes of receiving and bestowal in different manners.

The letters are different on every level. Each time the darkness and the Light are depicted to him in different attributes according to different criteria. Accordingly the letters also take on different forms. This is why each time a person has a new Torah, a new Creator, a new world, everything is new and he is also new.

Thus a person grows by his consistency that indicates how much patience he has, and thereby he advances and comes closer to the right forms of the great deficiency that are aimed at true bestowal. Here we see the principle of “I have labored and I found,” meaning a person is looking for the Creator’s face, the greatness of the attribute of bestowal. Connecting to the attribute of bestowal, the force of bestowal summons in him the feeling of belonging, warmth, up to the actual feeling of love. Since to love the Creator is to love bestowal, to love the attribute of love itself, it begins to fill a person and enables him to dwell in it.

We have to go through great changes in our nature by detaching ourselves from our old values, from the previous understanding of what exertion means and what the goal is, who the Creator is and what the Torah is. Each time we re-evaluate the great desire that is required of us and the suffering that we experience. The values naturally change in the transition from one state to another, and a person constantly changes and becomes another, a new person.

Therefore it says in the Torah, “Abraham is an old man.” “An old man” is someone who has acquired knowledge, who has been through and “plowed” the whole path. A person acquires the attribute of bestowal gradually, the mind and the understanding of how to work with it, the feeling, the loyalty, the self-sacrifice, and how to identify with the Creator. Thus he attains the level of “an old man” which means his point of adhesion with the Creator. Then the attribute of bestowal fills him, and he feels love and appreciation towards it.
[83846]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/13/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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As it is written, “Confidence is the clothing for the Light.” The desire to receive is the basis for everything, but the desire itself is worthless if the Light doesn’t operate on it.

The greatest righteous one who attains many spiritual levels falls if the Light stops illuminating him, and he returns to his animal state. He even becomes worse than everyone else, although this is a good state since this is a great state but with a minus and the opposite from Holiness.

As long as the Light illuminates, there is confidence, and, if the Light stops shining, there is no confidence. Everything depends only on the Light that illuminates a person. To this extent he has the power to rise and to say something.

When the Light disappears, a person loses even his memory as happened to the Baal Shem Tov who couldn’t remember the letters of the alphabet. A person cannot understand in which world he is and whether there is an upper world or a Creator.

This means that everything depends on the intensity of the Light that comes to us and illuminates our matter, our desire. Therefore, as it is written, “There is none wiser than he who is experienced,” and “I labored and found.”

However, all this work, the exertion and the overcoming, all are aimed only at one action: to hasten the influence of the Light upon us. After all, it all depends on it while we are trying to prepare so that the Light will not disappear. Even if it should disappear, eventually all the difficult states will be in our favor, but we must do everything in our power to be close to it, to adhere to it, and to resemble it.

The way already has been paved in advance, and it is in our power to hasten the development and advancement along this way. The hastening depends on how much we all want to fulfill the new form, the next level, so that it will be fulfilled in us. This is actually where all the exertion is focused.

Confidence is an illumination from Above, and, if it stops, we have no confidence, no feeling, and no understanding. As it is written in the Book of Psalms by King David, “But when you hid your face, I was struck with terror.” We must achieve such a connection among us, which will oblige the Light to constantly be among us.

Together, by our collective efforts and with the help of the Light, we can create such an attribute of bestowal, of love and connection, among us that the Light will never cease to illuminate us. This is called confidence, mutual guarantee.

Thus, we attain the state in which the upper constantly illuminates us. Although each of us will rise and descend, and sway in different directions because of the multiplicity of mutual actions that take place in each one and in everyone together, we attain stability. Not only do we not fall, but on the contrary, we only keep on rising upward.

Our descents also become ascents since we are all connected in one collective fund. Thus, we achieve confidence, and there is no other way to achieve it.
[83928]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/25/12, Shamati #72

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Question: While you were away last week, the world group had some active interactions. For the first time, we truly felt that we depend on one another. How can we hold onto that moment now and not fall back into passivity?

Answer: We must not recall the situation we experienced. The past is burnt. We must not look back like Lot’s wife. What belongs to the past is gone, and we don’t go through what we went through, not in our feelings and not in our thoughts.

Even if you think that you are leaving something special behind, it makes no difference. You must keep away from the best state just as from the worst state.

Under no circumstances should you try to recall it in your thoughts, desires, or your words, and do not try to reconstruct anything. Empty yourself completely of everything that was. Even if you felt good, now, you will feel even better. We must start every day anew and turn over a new leaf.

No one is disturbing you, not me and not the friends, no matter what they feel. The state of things in the outer world also has nothing to do with it. You must enter a new state, a new phase of connection without any burdens, as if you don’t know anything, as it is written, “Each day they shall seem new to you.” We must not compare the current state with what was before. Start everything anew, and only thus will you reach a new structure.

Even if you have succeeded, now it is as if nothing happened. Don’t be afraid to lose it. By being afraid to lose something, you are expressing a contemptible form of receiving. Everything that you have attained and everything that you have felt, doesn’t exist now, and it shouldn’t exist. Otherwise, you care only about your feelings.

The main thing is to detach yourself from the past. Without it, you will not advance forward. You are advancing toward bestowal, and this means burning all the bridges.
[83926]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/25/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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The Writings of Rabash, Volume II, Letter 8: And once I have acquired this above-mentioned clothing, sparks of love promptly begin to shine within me. The heart begins to long to unite with my friends, and it seems to me that my eyes see my friends, my ears hear their voices, my mouth speaks to them, the hands embrace, the feet dance in a circle, in love and joy together with them, and I transcend my corporeal boundaries. I forget the vast distance between my friends and me, and the outstretched land for many miles will not stand between us.

It is as though my friends are standing right within my heart and see all that is happening there, and I become ashamed of my petty acts against my friends. Then, I simply exit the corporeal vessels, and it seems to me that there is no reality in the world except my friends and I. After that, even the “I” is cancelled and is immersed, mingled in my friends, until I stand and declare that there is no reality in the world—only the friends.

Of course, it is impossible to achieve such a state by my own simple efforts. Only the upper Light can bring us to this state as it operates on us for a long time until it evokes in us the collective desire. Then, we all are incorporated in one network, and then each one feels the society.

Each one will see that this is the center of his life, and this is where he receives the force of vitality and its impression. In this mutual connection, he gradually discovers the Creator’s form since by mutual bestowal, the friends stabilize a field from which, like in matter that develops and discovers, the Creator’s from is depicted and revealed.

Thus, when we attain a collective desire, the corporeal conditions cease to exist. The desire is the only matter from which, by mutual bestowal, we begin to stabilize and to sculpt the Creator’s image by revealing it to everyone. A person sees that outside this general network there is nothing but the friends.

This is why we are in this state in such a world, and through the actions and through the corporeal states, we can attain the spiritual world. Otherwise, we couldn’t do anything.

It can only be this way, through corporeal actions and the Surrounding Light that raises us to spiritual actions, but the impression comes from the general connection between everyone. I believe that it is already among us to some extent.
[83923]
From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/25/12

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