Question: When I receive for the sake of bestowal, the abundance flows through me. May I enjoy it?

Answer: You do not enjoy the abundance that goes through you. It is a completely different kind of abundance, not like the egoistic fulfillment. You, like a guest, want to try a delicious cake in order to do the owner, who prepared it, a favor. It would seem that the cake should have the same taste, but it is not so.

Question: But, when I love someone wholeheartedly, forgetting about myself, this feeling emerges in me nevertheless. Love is directed towards another, but I am the one who feels it.

Answer: Yes, the feeling emerges inside of you; however, it consists of several parameters. After all, you receive the pleasure of wanting to bestow to the loved one.

Imagine this. There is the receiving desire of the Creator and the receiving desire of the creation, which is what you are. You must feel His receiving the desire, feel how He wants to bestow to you, to assimilate this receiving desire inside of yourself and to please Him.

Mainly, you are experiencing pleasure in the “head”, meaning in the desire you received from Him. So it turns out that there, inside of His desire, you make the calculation, “How can I fulfill him?—at least to the extent of how much you will involve your receiving the desire.” In other words, in your desire you feel the extent, to which you are fulfilling Him, and this is already the garment of the Light of Hassadim.

As a result, we are talking about pleasure of a very different kind.

Question: So how does separation emerge if everything is inside of me?

Answer: The intention lays out the difference between the one and the other. When the urge towards bestowing to the Creator reigns in your “head”, accordingly, pleasures become different as well.

Question: May we compare this with the love towards our own child? Do I give him a cake without even having tasted it?

Answer: No, pleasure passes through you, but now everything is defined by his desire, not yours.

Question: How do I carry out this differentiation inside between me and him?

Answer: In the first stage, we rise above our own desire and only at the second stage are we able to perceive something foreign, making it ours.

In order to please the Host, I must feel His pleasures, feel how much He enjoys the bestowal to me and what pleasure I must receive from Him. I must feel that this pleasure has arrived from Him and is gifted out of love, and not reason.

By the means of this love, He conveys to me the feeling of shame, which now helps me cope with the situation and to understand it in order to build a different relationship. I take His pleasures, I receive them for Him, but I do not make the calculation for the “cake”, but specifically for this bestowal. The “cake” is the lowest level, Nefesh de-Nefesh, and the pleasure, which I give to Him, it is the whole of the NRNHY.

Here is where one should beware not to consider oneself: “Since I am giving pleasure to the Creator, Himself! Just look at how He enjoys me!” It is here, where the main calculation is located, and not in the “cake” itself, which was given to you simply as a means, allowing you to build the connection with all of the worlds. The calculation in the head of Partzuf is directed at the relationships with the Creator.

And that is why you need to know who is the Creator, how He acts, and how to please Him, since His vessels, desires, are infinite. So how to protect oneself in such a situation? Compared to it, the direct pleasures are no more than a spark, which has created the desire, while everything else is conditioned by the greatness of the Giver.
[81523]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/27/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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Preparation to the Lesson

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“The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpts “Beresheet Bet (Genesis 2),” Lesson 130

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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 2, “Histaklut Pnimit,” Item 62, Lesson 20

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Questions About the Congress of Consolidation in North of Israel

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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 14: Thus you necessarily find that on the whole, there are three states to the soul:

The First State is their presence in Ein Sof, in the Thought of Creation, where they already have the future form of the End of Correction.

The Second State is their presence in the six thousand years, which were divided by the above two systems into a body and a soul. They were given the work in Torah and Mitzvot in order to invert their will to receive and turn it into a will to bestow contentment upon their Maker, and not at all to themselves.

The Third State is the end of correction of the souls, after the revival of the dead. At that time, the complete correction will come to the bodies, too, for then they will turn reception for themselves, which is the form of the body, to take on the form of pure bestowal. And they will become worthy of receiving for themselves all the delight and pleasure and pleasantness in the Thought of Creation. And with all that, they will attain strong adhesion by the force of their equivalence of form with their Maker.

We are going through the phase of preparation now. Then comes the phase of fear, Bina, Hafetz Hesed, to bestow in order to bestow. Then comes the level of love, to receive in order to bestow.

On the whole, we go through these three levels. Along the way, our desire to receive is increasingly revealed to us, and accordingly is corrected, first by “restriction,” and then by the attribute of Bina, then by the attribute of Hochma, until it reaches the level of Keter.

Now we are about to start the second phase Baal HaSulam speaks about, the system of the worlds of ABYA in order to eventually reach the third phase and to return to Ein Sof (Infinity).

In the meantime, however, we are in “our world,” which means on the lowest level of perception of the shattered desire that was created after the descent from the world of Ein Sof. We can say that this reality is imaginary; we can say that we are living in a dream, but one way or the other, it is from this reality that we begin to wake up.

When we wake up, we don’t discover anything new, but only what is inside us. By working correctly on our desire to receive, we discover deeper and more internal layers time after time, and thus we grow. These layers are divided into the levels of the worlds of BYA, Atzilut, etc. all the way to the level of Ein Sof. They are all revealed in our desire to receive. Now our desire to receive is small, like a baby’s, but then it begins to grow, is dyed in different colors, and takes on different attributes regarding the inner force called the Creator that revives us.

I don’t know who He is or what He is, but I want to attain Him. After all He is inside me, He is the source of all my powers and I want to attain this root inside me. In order to do that, I have to resemble Him. Since I don’t really attain the Creator himself, since it is impossible, but rather attain His attributes, His attitude, the actions He performs on me. If I perform the actions that He performs, I will understand Him, according to the principle of “from Your actions we shall know You.”

This is the attainment. I cannot enter the Creator, but I can perform actions that are identical to His and by them I understand who He is, how He thinks, and what He wants.
[81618]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/28/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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In the creation there is only a Light and a vessel for it. The vessel for the Light is not the desire to receive that the Creator created, but the yearning for the upper one that stems from the created being itself.

The Creator evokes the created being by a spark of the Light so that the created being will be able to develop this yearning inside. The created being has to use this spark correctly by turning to the environment, which means to an external force since inside it only has an initial desire and a spark.

The desire is on the Creator’s account and it cannot become a vessel for the Light; it is just a general desire to receive. The spark directs this desire to an external force, to an external factor. If by this external factor the created being develops and the additional factor inside, this desire that is created by the created being itself will become a vessel for the Light.

This additional desire can only be bestowal, because the desire to receive is in the created being’s nature, something that is different from this desire can only be a desire to bestow.

It seems as if the Light of Hochma is the Light of the mind that fills all the desires with understanding. But it isn’t so. The Light of Hochma is the Light of life. It is the Light that created the desire to receive opposite to it. Thus it fills this desire and gives it vitality.

The vessel for the Light of Hochma is the measure of Hassadim, the measure of bestowal that the created being can develop in him. Therefore it says; “He gives wisdom (Hochma) to the wise,” which means that the Light of Hochma enters a vessel that is especially for Hochma, the desire to receive that yearns to bestow, which means to resemble the Giver. Then the Light of Hochma is dressed in such a vessel.

The more the created being exerts himself in order to attain a deficiency for the Light of life (life symbolizes bestowal), the more the Light of life, the Light of Hochma, is dressed in it and revealed in it. The Light doesn’t come from a distance, it is revealed within the created being since it has always been in it and only now is revealed.

So we only have to try not to be foolish and not to hope to receive the Light in order to receive, but to understand that the spark we have received was given to us so that we will develop the attribute of bestowal inside us with the help of an external force, meaning with the help of the environment. This external force will convey the yearning for bestowal to us, which symbolizes “life” and the “Light of life.”
[81596]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/28/12, Shamati #145

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Question: In the “Introduction to the Book of Zohar,” Baal HaSualm says that the souls “become worthy of receiving all His goodness, the delight and the pleasure that is in the thought of creation, and along with that will be given strong adhesion.” Why do we do we need the goodness and delight if adhesion with the Creator is much more qualitative and sublime?

Answer: I have vessels, meaning desires in the heart. In these vessels, I receive in order to bestow and by that perform an action of bestowal. Just as the Creator bestows upon me, I bestow upon Him.

But why do I perform the action of to receive in order to bestow? Because I felt shame, a gap between Him and me. This evoked me to bestow in order to bestow, and then also to receive in order to bestow, in order to resemble Him. By acting in order to resemble Him, I fill my vessels with the pleasure of bestowing upon Him and at the same time fulfill the shame, the gap between us, and thus attain adhesion.

Two deficiencies are part of this process:

1. The Creator created deficiency in me to receive and enjoy. I fill it so that He will receive and enjoy.
2. The second deficiency is a result of the shame. I restrict myself and fill my desire with the attainment of the essence of the Creator Himself. I become equal to Him and attain adhesion.

The Creator is depicted to me as a spiritual Partzuf that is made of a “body” and a “head.” Below we become equal to Him in the “bodies,” in His desire to bring goodness to the created beings and my desire to receive pleasure. Above we become equal in the “heads,” which means in the intentions. So the adhesion is actually formed above.
[81612]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/28/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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Everything Kabbalists describe is inside us, in our roots. My desire to receive begins to discover new horizons, showing me the present, the future, and the past according to its level of development. The time axis doesn’t exist by itself, it is a component of our perception, part of the picture that is depicted within the desire. Therefore the chronological process that we study is actually a chain of states. Since we have no choice, we speak in terms of time, since it is an algorithm of the feeling of our world.

The past, the present, and the future are states in which I can move back and forth if necessary, if I manage the desire and the Masach (screen). Thus, there is no time and no distance. It is merely feelings within my desire: One type of attributes stands for the concept of time and the other for the concept of distance.

The way we feel time now is an illusion. I am actually in a certain desire on the level of “the inanimate of the inanimate,” and this desire depicts pictures of my existence in this world, pictures of life and death. Although the “pictures” change before my eyes, the desire itself doesn’t change. It is a replica of higher desires, and so it depicts phases within my feeling that are similar to the spiritual levels. I feel that I am alive, but in fact it is only a reflection of spiritual levels and the changes in the “matter” of the egoistic desire that is considered “dead.”

Of course, there is no intermediate state regarding the Creator. The upper Light is in a state of absolute rest, and it created only one state to begin with, which we have to perceive. I cannot perceive it today, because I am not prepared for it. Therefore it was restricted by 125 degrees and each time I discover the next higher level. This allows me to advance along the ascent to perfection.

But one way or the other, everything is inside me, in my desire to receive. Now I see time as an external factor: The earth turns around the sun, the minutes and the seconds go by…but in spirituality there is nothing external; there we approach the desire to receive and perform all the actions in it.

This chain of actions is what determines time. Even if it takes ten years to reach the next step, in the spiritual dimension only a second goes by. There the feeling of time is not external, but only depends on my actions. What is more, there are no gaps between the actions since each one summons the next. So when I rise to the spiritual dimension, my actions are performed sequentially and time disappears.
[81615]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/28/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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Question: How can I create a daily schedule to reach the property of bestowal sooner?

Answer: Along with all our groups, together with all the friends around the world, whether they are now watching the lesson, working, or sleeping, let’s agree to support each other so that no one forgets that we will reveal the Creator only in unity. All the time, I will be thinking only about how to reveal Him in unity and nothing else.

Our unity will become a means, the desired result of the breaking. Then, in this unity we’ll reveal the Force of bestowal and love, fulfillment and eternal life. Day and night, let me be consumed with the concern that no friend, no person with the point in the heart forgets about the main thing: that only in unity we create the vessel for revealing the Creator. We’re not required to do anything impossible: If together we will by all means think and worry about this, then He will be revealed. It’s in our hands. Agreed?
[81606]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/28/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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Our conventions are becoming more and more qualitative. It might be that they are not as presentable as in the past, but they are deeper. Of course, in them, we are talking about the realistic connection and unity, but now this unity, in addition to the external discoveries, is penetrating to the boundary of inner experiences and feelings.

We know that “advantage of the Light is from the darkness.”

The Light is revealed only in the vessel, and therefore, we have to prepare the vessels, the desires, to feel the exile from the spiritual world in order to reach redemption. And this is to say, that all of us must work on the necessity that is directed to this convention. We need to define the character of the convention to know what one wants, to what one wants to reach, and what should happen in our meeting. We need to build this convention by ourselves.

This is not about the technical or organizational component. I speak here about this, that we need to build from beginning to end the whole process that we need to go through in creating the connection between us, until the step in which we will reach qualitative unity and we will enable the Light to illuminate inside us. And for that, we need to work, to invest efforts, and to do preparation without any connection to the place where the person will be during the time of the convention.

We all need to see what necessity and deficiency we need to reach by our internal and external efforts, in study, in intention, and organization at the place.

I am waiting for your opinions and reactions, and according to them, we will hold our convention.

I will prepare myself according to what you will write. Then, truly there will be collaboration between us and we will progress forward maximally.

Otherwise, if I will do something people are not prepared for, it results in a one-man show. We don’t need a show here, rather unity, a mutual, common action.
[75214]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/12/12, Shamati #190

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Preparation to the Lesson

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“Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah),” Items 13, 14, 15

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The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpts “Beresheet Bet (Genesis 2),” Lesson 129

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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 2, “Histaklut Pnimit,” Item 56, Lesson 19

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“Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 15, Lesson 6

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[media 10]

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Baal HaSulam, Shamati, Article 30, “The Most Important Is to Want Only to Bestow”: The most important is to want only to bestow because of His greatness, because any reception is flawed. It is impossible to exit reception, but only to take the other extreme, meaning bestowal.

We are present in a single state: in the field of information belonging to the property of bestowal. There is only this force field, and its force is the force of bestowal. This is how it is revealed to us.

Within this force lie its foundations, which we do not attain: abstract form and essence. What we attain, as the Kabbalists tell us, is the force field whose force is characterized by bestowal.

In order to exist independently within this field, we were created from the opposite force, the force of reception. If a person simply experiences whatever was determined by his or her nature and does not change himself, then within that unified field he feels the reality called “this world.” Each one can personally absorb this picture in oneself and live through it. This world is called imaginary because we don’t feel what really exists outside us and it is as if we are existing in an unconscious state and seeing a dream inspired by the vibes of imaginary perception.

Within this dream we are developing more and more towards awakening and awareness. Our entire evolution, our whole history fit into this process.

How can we feel the external, true reality in which we actually exist? How do we probe for this field of upper force that created us, sustains us, influences us, and constantly develops us in order to attach ourselves to it?

There are two paths:

1.      The first is called “the path of suffering”: Whether we want to or not under the influence of the field of bestowal, we will keep developing and still come to want to know the One who governs us, influences us, develops, and guides us. Suffering will compel us to get to the root of its cause and we will discover that we suffer because of Him, because this is how He affects us.

Then we will have to come to know Him, to draw closer to Him in attempts to change His governance. And, like the first Kabbalists, through suffering, we’ll discover that this field, this Force acting on us, wants us to become similar to it by uniting with each other. This is called the law of equivalence of properties.

Why is this necessary? The fact is that through this, we will be the same as Him: eternal, whole, and perfect, and at the same time will remain independent. After all, if we were within Him, under His complete governance, then it’s as if we don’t even exist. However, our development contains a polarity: Inside us, a force grows which is opposite to the field of bestowal, and at the same time, we need to work on ourselves in order to become similar to Him.

2.      If we do not want to go through the path of suffering but by the path of Light, through the good influence of the field of bestowal, then we reveal a simple law: In order to remain independent, we need to demand from this Light all the changes that accompany our growth. If I demand and the field executes it, then there is no problem with remaining independent while at the same time being similar to Him. After all, I myself, against my own desire, ask for it to change me.

In this way, during the course of development I include two forces in myself:

• The force opposed to this field: the field is wholly aimed at bestowal, while I’m wholly aimed at reception;
• The form of bestowal, which I clothe on my force of reception

Inside of me is a force of reception, the cruel egoistic desire yearning only for personal gain, while on top of it I clothe the opposite form, the force of bestowal and love. But how can I know how to ask for the force of bestowal? After all, I don’t know what that even is. Whatever I may be imagining, all of my speculations are based on the force of reception and won’t allow me to truly demand changes in myself. Anything that I ask based on my own nature will always be directed at reception, sometimes concealed or camouflaged, but reception nonetheless.

How can I ask this field to give me a true force of bestowal so that it would start to be revealed in me like the force of reception, so that I would have two forces opposite to each other?

For that we were given a special existence: We see ourselves as living in the world filled with people just like us. And if I want to obtain a desire aimed at bestowal, a request for bestowal, then I can unite with others, with at least one other person. After all, the minimum plurality is two. But Kabbalists say that it is better if there will be at least ten of us, since this is a whole quantity. I need to start uniting with them in order to reach the desire for bestowal.

How do we unite? The Kabbalists who discovered the method explain this also: I need to sit together with them, eat and drink, study among them, and most importantly, maintain the intention: What do I want to achieve through all these actions? It’s important not to forget that my intention is to obtain a desire to bestow. This is what Baal HaSulam writes about: “The most important is to want only to bestow.”

It turns out that I work with people who desire the same thing, we are together in one group, and someone teaches us. How all this came to be, we don’t know, as if by accident. But in reality, that very same field drives us in the same way that an electromagnetic field places iron filings along the lines of equilibrium. In the “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Baal HaSulam writes that the Creator brings a person to a group and says: “This is for you, take it. Here is your free choice.” And the choice is only to be strengthened together with the friends on the path to the desire to bestow. We cannot achieve the desire itself, because that desire is the Creator. However, we are obliged to want this desire among ourselves, and then, feeling the need for it, I will feel in my heart that I am lacking bestowal and that I want to be a giver.

Why? I don’t even know. It happens on its own after a long time, five, maybe ten years. This is why we were given this life. Little by little, in the heart of a person, a desire and need for the property of bestowal appear.

Everything here is subject to simple “physics of forces”: The more acutely my heart experiences the need to come to bestowal, the more powerfully the field of bestowal affects me. This is how we come closer: I according to my need for it, and it according to the force of bestowal directed at me. As a result, we begin to feel each other, and I obtain internal changes: In addition to the natural force of reception, a force of bestowal appears in me.

This is how a correct form is developed: A receiving desire inside and a giving desire on the outside – a form of man (Adam), similar (domeh) to the Creator. His receiving desire, the “material” of creation, remains, while on the outside it’s covered with a garment, a “wrapper,” a desire to bestow.

So first and foremost, I need to want to bestow, and when this desire reaches a certain degree of tension in the heart, the field influences me by induction, introducing into me the force of bestowal.

Finally, it clothes in me and I become a sort of a sentient “probe” or “sensor” for this field. Suppose I received inside me ten grams of desire to bestow. First of all, through this, I was born; in other words, I begin to sense the field that surrounds me, I feel that I exist within it, I feel its properties, its attitude toward me, and my attitude toward it. In addition to the current material level, I enter into a connection with this field on a new level that is called the spiritual world, and this, in essence, is how we attain the Creator.

This field contains all the information about the past, present, and future, about everything that happens to me and to the whole world. A person who maintains connection to this field begins to understand how to make contact with it correctly, what to ask of it. Through this, we find ourselves in an enormous flow of information that fills all of reality. Here we learn who the Creator is, what this field is, how to establish contact with it, and how to operate the entire system. Thus man ascends higher and higher, more and more is included in the spiritual world. And all this only from the desire to bestow that he received in himself from this field.

Returning to the desire to bestow: A condition is embedded in it—one needs to want to become a giver. And who would want that? Special people with a point in the heart, that is, with a small charge that directs them for the field of bestowal of which they are a part.

And what of others? Others cannot strive for that. Like the first Kabbalists, they can reveal this field through the path of suffering and misfortunes, anguishing, not understanding the reason for what’s happening and in general, what they live for.

To the measure that this state is becoming formed, we are arriving to the present, singular point in history. The path of suffering of the world has more or less been revealed today. Many people, even if not all seven billion, are already asking the questions: “What do we live for? What is the meaning of life? What are we suffering for?” This question, coming from them, cannot receive an answer. Moreover, they don’t know where and how to direct their suffering. After all, they don’t understand and don’t feel anything except for this world.

Here comes the turn of the people with a point in the heart: We are obliged to become for others what the Creator is for creation. After all, it is we who are able to connect them to the field of bestowal, and this is our purpose, what Baal HaSulam describes in the article “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee).” This is why we awaken en masse toward the upper force, while others receive this awakening from us. This is our work.

Thus, “the most important is to want only to bestow.” We are able to desire it with consciousness and awareness, because we were given a particle, a spark of its field, and with its help we can aim our course, and aspire towards this field in order to reveal it. By uniting our sparks, we will be able to demand from it the force of bestowal. While the others aren’t capable of this, they need our guidance.
[81119]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/21/12, Shamati #30

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