Preparation to the Lesson
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Rav Yehuda Ashlag “Messiah’s Shofar”
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Workshop: What Do We Bring to the 99% in the Round Tables?
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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” item 4: Hence, those who claim that because of our lowliness and nothingness it is not fitting for Him to watch over us, and therefore, He has left us, do nothing but display their ignorance. Try to imagine, if you were to meet some man who would create creatures, precisely so they would suffer and agonize their whole lives as we do, and not only that, but cast them behind his back, not wanting even to look after them, to help them a little. How contemptible and low you would regard him! Can such a thing be thought of Him?
We are very limited in our feelings and cognitive abilities, in our self-perception, and in perceiving what is above us such as the laws of time and place. So of course we cannot accurately understand and establish the right attitude to life and to the Creator.
It isn’t by chance that it says: “Don’t show a fool a job that is half done.” Seeing only a small part of reality, can we determine the general picture? Even in our lives there are different states. Most cannot even imagine in advance that one state will pass and will turn into the opposite state. So if we speak about what is concealed from us, is it possible to come to any conclusions?
I believe, however that it doesn’t stop us. Kabbalists want to save us hard labor, blows, and the prolonging of time, so they tell us from the beginning that the Creator is good and benevolent and that He is in a state of absolute rest. After all perfection is not subject to change; on the contrary, all the changes take place in us. They will occur one way or the other, but we can determine the form they will take.
You can assess the changes egoistically by measuring how much pleasure they bring you and you can also assess them differently, according to how close they bring you to the One who bestows—to what extent you’ve managed to resemble Him. If you assess the changes according to how much you receive, you will suffer until you learn to assess the states you are in and life itself by other values, according to your closeness to the Creator and your similarity to Him. According to this calculation, the degrees of your ascent as a man (Adam) that resembles (Domeh) the Creator will be built. This in fact is the whole point.
So there is a beginning, the process itself, and an end. The events occur and you have no say, and you don’t determine how you will change either. You only have to determine your feeling: How do you accept the inevitable changes? This is the only thing that depends on you.
People who accept their development as desirable are called “righteous.” Those who resist this development and don’t want it are called “wicked.” Accordingly, we feel good or bad: The feeling of life, our development, reality, everything depends on how you aim or “calibrate” yourself to perceive what is happening. Of course, whatever has to happen will happen, but depending on your internal calibration called correction, you can feel the full range of emotions from minus Ein Sof (Infinity) to plus Ein Sof. Everything depends on the degree of your agreement with what is happening.
It is by that, that the wisdom of Kabbalah helps us. If a person agrees with the changes and the corrections, if he wants to be corrected and to accept all the new steps as desirable, if he even wants to hasten these states so that they will pass as fast as possible and is ready to accept whatever the future brings “above reason”, above all the calculations, since he is already in a state of faith and bestowal, then it doesn’t matter what actually happens at the moment. In this case a person hastens the development, feels it as special, sublime, and wonderful, and this is desirable in the eyes of the Creator.
Everyone should reach this form of development, and until then, we won’t advance since we cannot advance in a bad way. A person can simply stand still, receiving new troubles and sufferings each time on the present level, until he agrees to change himself and to establish the right attitude towards his development. So on every level a person either prepares oneself in advance to the changes or accepts every change as a blow, which cause him to change under the pressure of different forces. In any case, the changes are necessary, and so consciously or under a shower of blows, a person will be compelled to accept the development as a wonderful and desirable thing.
[80713]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/17/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”
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You can find many allegorical examples that illustrate the process of the spiritual closeness. For example, a clock with a pendulum that moves from side to side reflects that a person does half the work and the Creator does the other half.
A person is only required to prepare a deficiency—this is his free will—to prepare a deficiency with the help of the environment. The Creator is revealed according to the environment since the Light is constant and doesn’t change. If a person prepares a deficiency in the size of the first ten Sefirot in which he can reveal the upper Light in the new level, the Light is revealed.
So a person is always preparing a new deficiency and then the new level of the upper Light is revealed.
We should remember that the Light is in a state of absolute rest; it is eternal and unchanging. The Creator on His part always maintains the covenant with a person and doesn’t change its terms. A person must constantly renew the covenant.
Each time he shifts with his pendulum and makes a step forward and by that is rewarded with the revelation of the Creator, closer proximity to Him. By every such attempt, he should come out with the right impression so that all his work, on the level he now finds himself, between two ascents or two descents, will be for the benefit of the King. This means that his work should be in one direction “above reason” with one intention of valuing the attribute of bestowal above the attribute of receiving. Thus a person gets closer to the Creator.
Regarding this it says: “on all your sacrifices you shall sacrifice salt.” A sacrifice symbolizes closeness to the King, and by constantly keeping the covenant between you and renewing it, you are rewarded with a revelation.
[80710]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/17/12, Shamati #76
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If the Creator is revealed or at least comes a bit closer to a person according to the equivalence of form one has attained, a person mustn’t allow himself to be lightheaded and to enjoy this pleasant feeling during the ascent. On the contrary, the time of the ascent is the most suitable place for working when we are required to add maximum exertion in order to more tightly hold on to the study, the group, the books, and dissemination.
We should try to maximize this time and understand that no one guarantees that all this won’t stop the next minute. Therefore, you must now, using all the means you have, tie yourself to the state of ascent, so that even if the pleasant state changes into the exact opposite state and becomes dark and unpleasant—a state of fogginess, confusion, helplessness, and powerlessness—then even in such states which are full of despair, you will want to remain adhered to the Creator.
This closeness will not sustain the pleasant states, but although you feel bad now in your desire to receive, you wish to remain loyal and to adhere to the King. So neither the ascents nor the descents will affect you if you feel or don’t feel a filling in your vessels of receiving. On the contrary, it is when there is no filling that you can be sure that you are operating without any self-reward, in order to bestow.
In order to do that you need a “covenant.” If you yearn for bestowal, you discover that you can form such a covenant with the King, and that the Creator will keep this covenant. Thus you can be sure that when the descents come and you feel that you are totally empty and cannot hold on to bestowal, thanks to your earlier work, you will be able to remain adhered even in the “dark.”
Our whole work is actually done at “night,” where bestowal and faith are. As it says: “Say your grace in the morning and your faith at nights,” since it is at “night” that faith and bestowal are revealed.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/17/12, Shamati #76
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It is written, “There is no coercion in spirituality,” which means that progress happens only through our free choice. And we have a choice only in this regard and in nothing else. Therefore, we shouldn’t relate things to free choice that we are completely not free in.
Freedom was given to us only in uniting with the group or humanity, with the whole world, with parts of my own soul, which only in my imagination appear external and alien, hateful, and distant spiritually and physically. And actions through which I try to bring them closer to myself is where I have been given freedom of choice. That’s because essentially, this is the only thing I have to do. There is nothing besides correcting the vessel of my own soul, whose parts I must all bring closer so as to perceive them as my own.
I have to feel the whole world, everything that seems to be on the outside, as my closest parts, even closer than my own body. After all, the body is merely an animal that lives and dies. But the parts that I now feel outside of me are the still, vegetative, animate and human degrees of my soul.
The entire world surrounding me now are four levels of the vessel of my soul, and therefore I see them outside for now. My body is a product of my imagination. It only seems to me that I exist in it. Therefore, while I am in this imaginary body, I have to try to bring all parts of my soul on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th degrees closer to me. I have to relate to them lovingly since this is all I have, my entire treasure.
As for this body, it is an illusion; it lives and dies in my imagination. It does not belong to the spiritual world. Everyone I now see around me – they are my spirituality. If I bring them closer to myself, then these corrected desires and my corrected attitude to them turns into my spiritual body. In them I reveal the Creator.
That is why it is written, “The Creator is concealed in the world.”
[80763]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/17/12, Shamati
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Question: What should be the optimal result of our mass dissemination?
Answer: We are speaking about a process: The general population has to realize that they are in crisis, and that the essence of this crisis does not lie in the economy, the financial industry, the family, education, religion, science, or other problems. The crisis is developing within a person and is intended to bring him into balance with a new system that is now revealed in the world. The gap is between me, the egoist who looks at everything from a personal, individual position, and the world, the parts enclosed in greater interconnections. I don’t match the world, nature, and that is why today I am a foreign force inside it. The crisis is the revelation of this incompatibility.
Accordingly, the correction is to become compatible, in other words, to become equivalent to the properties of nature. How can I do this? Nature will not change, the bad phenomena manifested in all the spheres of life will not disappear; on the contrary, they will become stronger, more destructive, and painful.
That is the problem that people must recognize. And then, they will ask themselves: “How can I change myself? What kind of people should we become? Who can give us a method of correction?”
In the end, we bring them to the fact that no changes are possible in the world without an integral upbringing. Only when a person gradually starts to correct himself, will he then change the existing systems. He will transform the financial, economic, cultural, educational, and commercial systems, all this according to the changes within himself.
After all, a person has formed these systems himself on the basis of his egoistic attitude towards the world, and now slowly rising to globalism and interaction by becoming one integrated whole, he will change all that he has built accordingly.
At this point, he doesn’t understand how to realize these changes yet because he has not changed himself; he is not different from the old systems. However, they are already failing and no longer yield the same results as before. Here, we need to explain and prove to people that they cannot climb out of the crisis without internal changes. And then, they will take a course in integral upbringing.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/10/12, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”
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It is known that “everything comes from above” and that “there is none else besides Him.” But it gives a person the opportunity to work. In spite of being able to attain and receive everything without any efforts, he, in any case, makes the efforts. This is in spite of the Creator not needing anything at all from him, not favors, not bestowal, not efforts and not suffering. A person, nevertheless, is ready to work through all of this since only then is he able to feel that it is real. On his part, he wants with all his heart and soul to be adhered to the Creator in general providence and also in individual providence.
When the reality of the spiritual levels is revealed to a person, then he sees that “there is none else besides Him,” and the creatures don’t achieve anything by their own power from within this perfection that is filled with everything and controlled completely. However, even though he sees that the Creator doesn’t need any action from his side, he clearly feels that he needs to act only because with all his might he wants to adhere to the Creator. And then the truth and faith connect inside him into one complete whole.
According to this, he begins to see the picture of the correct reality, since when he approaches adhesion and connection with humanity, with people, through them he reaches love for the Creator. As it says in the Torah: “From the love of the created beings to the love of the Creator.” All that happens during different times and with different people unite into one for him because all reality is above time, movement, and space and is gathered in one place, one deficiency, in which all of its parts are similar to each other.
Thus, even though it seems to us that in this world there are people who make great efforts and others who harvest their rewards through the others’ efforts, in the end we see that all of this takes place in one Kli, in one desire. There is no disorganization or injustice here, since all of the disclosures connect together in one place and can belong to the Direct Light or the Reflected Light, to general providence or individual providence in the same process.
In the corporeal world, people think that the reward for their commandments await them in the next world, as it is written, “Today you do the work, and tomorrow you receive the reward.” But the next world is the next level that the person discovers here and now. The correct point of view is that the person’s reward is that he connects with others and then there is no difference as to where to make efforts, and the reward may be received in a completely different place. Since for him, all of this connects to one place, becomes one desire. And through the corrections everything comes to equivalence.
But during the preparation period, the concealment operates as long as a person hasn’t attained the same desire. The concealment is necessary in order to give him the opportunity to make efforts. After all, in the meantime, he doesn’t work for the sake of bestowal. As long as he hasn’t attained it, he discovers malfunctions in order to awaken him so he will make efforts in Lo Lishma (Not for Her Sake). But when he arrives at Lishma (For Her Sake), he begins to appreciate the efforts themselves as reward, and despite the fact that he sees perfection, he finds a place to make efforts.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/14/12, Shamati #43
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In order to reach a goal we need the means, and our means is our exertion. The more we exert ourselves and the more focused, clarified, and goal oriented our exertion is, the more strongly we draw the Light that Reforms that advances us.
Therefore, every moment in life is given to us in order to search for and to clarify what is the most effective thing that I should do that will help me draw the Light that Reforms, as it says: “I have created the evil inclination, I have created the Torah as a spice for it, since the Light in it reforms,” which means that you correct the evil inclination and turn it into a good inclination. In this good inclination, like in a good vessel, you receive the feeling of spiritual life.
This is the formula of correction. So our exertion is to try to discover the most effective means at any given moment.
A person usually floats along the current of life thinking that he advances this way. But the passive floating allows him to advance on the “inanimate” level. Suppose he is in a group, studying and taking part in different events and all this becomes routine for him. He is under the influence of the general force field that advances in one general current all those who want to reach the goal, but this is called “Holy still,” and there is no personal advancement here yet. The personal advancement depends on a person’s daily exertion in order to spur himself and add flavor and acridity to this dish by himself: salt and pepper and other spices.
He must understand that he has no choice, and it is only possible to be spurred by these sharp situations into which he is thrown mercilessly, by being shown how opposite and how distant from spirituality he is. If he isn’t afraid of building up an appetite by these not-so-pleasant spices, he is spurred and can already perform some independent actions and not just float in the general current of his society. So we constantly have to exert ourselves, as it says: “You have labored and you found—believe,” which means that then it happens, and the Creator is revealed to a person. But this is only if a person exerts himself above the daily routine. This is a problem for us, since it is very hard to kick a habit. We are used to our daily schedule, the same hours and to the same filling that we receive according to a regular timetable, to the same amount of exertion; “a habit becomes a second nature.”
I have been exerting myself for many years and it seems that I am constantly on track. So I feel less satisfied and begin to complain: What is happening with me, why is there no result?” I don’t notice that I have been floating with the general current. Regarding the spiritual level, it is an inanimate body, a dead body that doesn’t move. This is because I haven’t exerted myself. Spirituality is revealed to a person according to his personal exertion, to the preparation of his own vessel, his desire. Of course, I am still moving and advancing a little, since I am part of some activities, but the important thing is that above the daily routine and the general current there should be my private clarification, by which a person constantly internally evokes his appetite, by hot spices and unpleasant questions.
He should constantly check and pressure himself by trying to hasten time, and he must really exert himself in order to fulfill the saying: “You have labored and you found, believe!”
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/15/12, Shamati #117
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There is one created being and it is the desire to receive. This desire to receive receives different impressions from the Light that created it as “something from nothing.” This means that different phenomena are imprinted in the desire, which divide it into five parts” the root, the first part, the second, the third, and the fourth. The desire feels only what happens within these parts and the relations between them, and nothing more than that.
All the changes can take place only within this desire to receive, according to the way it feels its parts: to what extent they are connected, how great or how wide they are, etc. Accordingly, the reality perceived by the desire is stabilized and is made of what goes on inside the desire.
The desire can exist but not even feel itself, as if only the subconscious is active in it. It could be that it already feels itself as feeling reality. It could be that it feels itself as feeling reality and others too.
In addition, the desire can feel itself and others and they also feel themselves and others. Thus, it attributes to them some self-feeling and perception. Small children and undeveloped people cannot speak about this.
But one way or the other, everything takes place inside the desire to receive, and this desire has several levels of feeling.
On the level of “this world,” it feels its own existence and also his closeness to others or his distance from them. The image is depicted in it by the five senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. If we cut off these five senses, the desire will not feel anything.
Here we should emphasize the sense of touch—it isn’t just about touching something, but about a physical feeling of the self that is made of certain parts that come in contact with the air, etc. So if we cut off these five senses, the created being disappears. From the side, it seems that the desire exists, but it doesn’t feel anything, which means it has no feeling, no attainment, and actually no existence.
So all our work is actually within the desire. We cannot attain anything more than its five parts, but we can improve them. The main thing is to understand—what we feel is our feeling ourselves and the phenomena that go through us.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/15/12, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”
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