Question: When we speak about evil, what exactly do we mean by the term “evil?”

Answer: I discover the Creator as the source of evil and at the same time I understand that I see Him that way because of my bad qualities. So, I understand that it all depends precisely on my attributes.

There are three things before me: the Creator, my evil, and desire. Can I think about the Creator as the good and the benevolent? After all, I feel bad and see troubles and darkness. Still I determine that the good is Above and the evil is inside me. The reason is that in the middle there is something that turns the good into evil.

I feel it in my bones that this is what happens. I am made of these three discernments, and they are in my feeling and my understanding. Such a state is called “double concealment.” In the spiritual space it is the furthest level from the Creator, and everything before it belongs to the beastly level.

It is important to remember that these things already exist in me: I feel the Creator as good and benevolent, I feel my own evil and I can’t get rid of this feeling, and I also understand the fact that I myself corrupt the Creator’s good attitude when I feel it as bad. If we annul this mechanism of turning the good to evil, if we correct it, I will certainly feel the goodness.

Then there is a question. What is the goal: to feel good or to not curse the Creator? From here on the clarification begins: Why was I given the bad feeling? What should I do with it? If I annul it, I will deny myself the option to be corrected. It is by being opposite from the Creator’s goodness that I can reach His good attitude in order not to curse Him.

This means that I use the evil on the way to goodness. Does that mean that now, when I feel bad, it is actually in my favor, and that it is actually what is good for me? So what am I correcting? [Read more →]

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According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, a “righteous” person is a person who justifies the Creator, understands the reasons and the essence of his state, and can clearly cut his state into slices of cause and effect.

At the same time he can be in a state of double concealment from the Creator. How is that possible? The whole point is that the concealment and the revelation are determined only by one’s attitude towards the Creator as being “good and benevolent.” It doesn’t matter if I feel good or bad; what’s important is how the Creator is revealed to me. It is important for me to reveal Him as good and benevolent, and not to enjoy His goodness egoistically, because they are two totally different things.

Suppose I have diabetes and you give me a candy. As far as my natural love for sweets goes, it is good. But according to your attitude, it is bad. So it all depends on an internal criterion with which I assess it. What is sweet for the egoism may be bitter if we look at your attitude.

Therefore, to discover the double concealment is to feel all these discernments: I rise above my desire to receive and look at it from the side. Then I see that there is an egoistic intention in it that feels good, while in the desire to bestow, in the intention of in order to bestow, I feel bad. This is the double concealment of the Creator.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/17/12, “The Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Shamati #59 “About the Rod and the Serpent”
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Chapter “Beresheet (Genesis),” “Three Lights,” (line: “As it is,” start with: “This is a light that illuminates”), Item 142, Lesson 40
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 6, “The Eser Sefirot of ha Olam Nekudim,” (Start with: “Upper AVI mate for Zon and Yeshsut are contained in them”), Item 6, Lesson 5
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“Introduction to the Study of Ten Sefirot,” Item 49, Lesson 25
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Pure desire without intellect represents an original form that is derived from the root. If desire strives only to maintain itself without any other desires, it is called “inanimate.” It doesn’t change, but rather always wants by all means to preserve its existence one hundred percent as it is and continually resists any changes whatsoever. That’s why it’s called “dead.”

On one hand, it’s the most powerful force that keeps inanimate matter in its form and because it is inanimate, it is stronger than anything else. On the other hand, it has a deficit because it doesn’t develop at all, nor does it create any advanced form!

A plant doesn’t possess as much force for self-preservation as inanimate matter; it is weaker. But it does have an addition; it is able to change! It develops, alters, and grows. On the other hand, it still cannot remain eternal; that’s why it “acquires” life and death.

There is no choice, there is a price for the opportunity to continue developing. If you don’t possess stony steadfastness, but rather allow yourself to change, you go from edge to edge, from life to death; there is no other option. In other words, our development happens at the expense of immortality.

For a lifeless stone, life and death are the same. For a plant, life and death are different since plants can sense life. This is the root of any sensation, pleasure and affliction, one against the other.

Animals are much farther from inanimate nature; they undergo dramatic changes and experience tremendous growth. They acquire a higher intellect that accompanies their desires; so, during the process of development, animals acquire diverse forms. Naturally, animals are subject to an array of external and internal influences. Compared to inanimate and even vegetative levels, animals have a much more complex organization. Of course, animals sense their mortality very strongly as the difference between life and death.

The added ability to use intellect for analysis constitutes a distinction between human beings and animals. As opposed to an animal, a person has developed to the extent that he recognizes “time” in his brain: past, present and future. People can bring time closer by including it in desire. All of a sudden, we start envying someone who lived a thousand years ago or someone who will be born two hundred years from now.

We observe that at a human level, intellect enhances desire. The work of intellect upon the desire is directly related to the Light; actually, it’s the only work we ever do. The more we work on clarification and expansion of our desires, the more advanced we consider ourselves to be compared to our past, undeveloped states: inanimate, vegetative, animate and speaking levels within the human stage.

Naturally, humans sense life and death, the Light and the darkness, even more strongly. We become more dependent, delicate, sensitive and constrained. But this is the payment for our development.

At the time when our development at simple levels (inanimate, vegetative, animate and speaking) is complete, we approach the Creator’s level at which we gain new senses, a different kind of intellect and an alternative developmental force, all three components together, which we didn’t have before.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/6/12, The Zohar

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The Creator doesn’t hide from us; rather, it is our ego that hides Him. Our opposite nature is what separates us from Him. So how can we take on the Creator’s form? How can we reach Him according to the law of equivalence of form? How can we discover Him and find out that He is in us?

In order to do that, we have to perform certain actions. Who performs these actions, us or Him? There is probably a need for cooperation here. We can’t advance without the upper Light. By “rocking” us, It demands our cooperation, which is called “free will.” This cooperation is all of our work. There are no restrictions here. It is open to everyone and is implemented by the correct studying of Kabbalistic books.

These sources can be the “elixir of life” or the “potion of death.” It all depends on our approach.

• If I intend to discover my evil inclination and to correct it, I can succeed, and the wisdom of Kabbalah will be the “elixir of life” for me. I will discover “death,” my ego, inside me and will want to correct it in order to come to life.
• But if I study to attain egoistic achievements, if I am looking for knowledge, power, respect, control, etc., then the studying only reinforces the egoism in me and my success is opposite to bestowal and I am not even aware of it. Such a study becomes the “potion of death.”

Thus we go through the stages of the Creator’s concealment. The concealment is divided into single and double concealment; the revelation first reveals to us the governance as reward and punishment and then the revelation of His eternal Providence.

Actually it all depends on my desires, on my vessels. With regard to the Creator, there are no restrictions. He doesn’t hide and is not concealed. It is my desires, my vessels, that hide Him, and if I work with them properly, they are gradually corrected, and according to their correction, I discover the Creator. One way or another, I am the one who hides Him from myself. [Read more →]

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Kabbalists were always against memorizing, against learning by heart and against writing while studying, and so were the first scientists and scholars. After recording, you are limited by it. You put on paper or a computer what you should have put into yourself and used in order to change internally.

If you want to perceive the Kabbalistic, philosophical or even a scientific message, you have to change. You have to change so that the idea will live in you, not in the mind but in your emotions.

The mind should only help the emotions. It needs to clarify all the data, both the internal and the external ones, and to process them and evoke the desire to change so that the data will become our Reshimot (informational genes) in the desire and not in some memory box.

Therefore, we have to make an effort that the material we study will enter our nature and not stay only in the mind. It is possible that we read too much, hear too much, and download too much material from the Internet with all the encyclopedias that are there.

My teacher Rabash was against writing during the lesson, even if it helped us remember the text that we read; then too we had to make an effort so that it would penetrate more deeply so that through the network of memory cells it would drip and penetrate the heart. It does go through my internal filters, but, one way or another, eventually it should make me change. The information I receive and the clarification I make should change me, not intellectually, but internally.

If only the mind could be emptied and I could be new each day, start from a blank page without any additions from the previous day. I could study the same material I studied yesterday as if I see it for the first time. Why? Because I have changed in my desires and with the new desires I see something completely new in the “familiar” text. [Read more →]

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A person goes a long way until he finds out exactly what his work is. He reaches the study by looking for a meaning in life, in the search for an egoistic fulfillment. He stays with the same initial intention for quite a while until finally he begins to hear that it is absolutely forbidden, meaning “impossible,” to fill these egoistic desires. So what can he do?

They say that it is only possible to enjoy when in equivalence of form with the Creator. Do you want to enjoy? Learn from Him how to enjoy bestowal, but not bestowal as you see it, not bestowal from personal egoistic satisfaction. True bestowal gives pleasure to the Creator; this is the only thing you can enjoy.

This means that there is double incongruence: We have to change both our desires and our intentions—the place where the pleasure is felt. When a person moves on to these new desires, which he doesn’t understand at all, he is told: Here you are, now enjoy. This is totally different from what he imagines today in his present egoistic state. He must change his perception several times.

Going through this, he can only hold onto the group, the environment. After all, every time he advances a little, he feels that he is even more a like a child, even more confused and that he loses more of his power. This is so different from the ordinary, familiar way we advance— getting more, understanding more, and feeling more—that a person cannot bear such “progress” which seems to be headed in the opposite direction.

He doesn’t understand how it is possible to work and to feel a growing emptiness and lack of understanding, simply a state of death, of total helplessness when there is no light at the end of the tunnel—pitch darkness, the Red Sea (Final Sea – Yam Sof in Hebrew). Is all that called advancement?

A person feels totally lost, but if he continues despite everything, he begins to discover that without going thorough these states, it is impossible to reach the real desires: to receive in order to bestow. There is nothing left of the previous state, not the feeling, not the understanding, not the previous approach, not the intention or purpose of ordinary advancement. Everything seems totally new and so different from his previous experience that it is simply impossible to see it from afar.

The only thing that can help him here is to organize support around him and become incorporated in activities, studies, group work, and dissemination, so that he will develop gradually, like a child who plays and at the same time grows. Thus, step-by-step, he will gradually advance towards the state in which he can bear the spiritual idea.

He begins to understand that there are many spiritual and mystical methods in the world, but here he comes across a method that will bring him to a new reality by changing his perception. And only then will he understand what was happening to him.

Therefore, it is impossible to explain this to everyone. This is why it says: “A thousand enter the room and one comes out to teach.” After all, if a person’s soul is ready to attain the truth at any cost, it keeps him on track.

If he is really ready for that, then the environment can help him go through these phases quickly, and while still in this life to attain the world of truth!
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/16/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: What does it mean” half of the half” with regards to the work we have to do?

Answer: A person has to prepare his “half” and the Creator completes the other half. But how can you do that, after all, even in preparing my desire I cannot manage without Him?

To prepare my half means to try and find the deficiency and the right aspiration. But I don’t have that at all. I have to look for the right deficiency instead of the black false bubble I am in where I imagine this false life that doesn’t exist at all that will later seem like a dream.

How can I want and try to wake up from this deep sleep and to feel willingness for it by myself, because this is the only thing I need! But without this willingness, I will not be able to receive the upper world that is revealed at the end of this dream because I have to develop a deficiency for it.

People with a great coarse egoism come to study Kabbalah in order to attain the upper world . It isn’t enlightened “spiritual” people for whom meditations are enough who come here . The people who come here want to receive and to gain big time, to discover the spiritual world. Here it depends on whether a person can hear what he is told and bear all the conditions.

Two natural spiritual laws operate here, which you cannot change in favor of your egoism. We are told that we have to do “half of the half,” but this doesn’t mean that there is some concession here. A person must perform his half, and then he will receive the other half from Above. The other half will change him and will turn him into something that is totally different.

When he is 100 percent ready to change, it means that he has done his half of the work. Then 100 percent of this change is performed from Above; this is the half that the Creator is responsible for.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/16/12, Writings of Rabash

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Shamati #108 “If You Leave Me One Day, I Will Leave You Two”
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Chapter “Beresheet (Genesis),” “Three Lights,” Item 140, Lesson 39
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 6, ”The Eser Sefirot of ha Olam Nekudim,” Item 5, Lesson 4
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“Introduction to the Study of Ten Sefirot,” Item 47, Lesson 24
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The spiritual vessels, the desires, can be “straight” and “round.” There is a similar division in our world too. The desire of the group is “straight,” because we work with it, assess and weigh it trying to reach equivalence with the upper Light.

All the other desires in the world, which are represented by other people, are “round” because they are not related to the “line,” (the limitation by the Masach, screen, and the work that is directed by the Light), and they simply want fulfillment.

Now a growing emptiness will be revealed in them. If we do our best to connect to one line, and on the other hand, we join the world as a circle, then people will feel how they receive a filling from the “pipe” that is formed by us. Then they will be drawn to us, will adhere to us like leeches, because they will feel that here is the source of life.

But in order to avoid a situation in which we would have the fulfillment that they couldn’t have which would result in their being filled with hate, the system of integral education must be opened to them immediately in order to explain to a person how to attain the fulfillment.

The Light cannot pass from us to others just like that. We must build a network of the right connections, and an education system is necessary for that. There won’t be any contact between us any other way.

It only seems as if the integral education is meant to simply connect people to one another. On the inside, however, it is the connection of the “pipe” that passes the Light into the “circle.”

In our group we are all equal, there are no differences between us, and we make up the same vessel into which the upper Light comes. But our vessel is in the form of a pipe; we work with the Masach and the Reforming Light. We try to adapt ourselves to the Light, to resemble the Light, and the desire and the intention to bestow is a kind of channel for the Light, a kind of a pipe, we become when we connect with the friends.

The external world is a “circle.” In order to create a connection among us through which the external world will begin to receive the inner fulfillment from us, there must be a certain degree of equivalence and we need an adaptor, a connector between us and them, so that we can connect.

This is possible only by education that we will provide the world with so that people will know how to connect the “circle” to the “straight line” in this world. Then, through this pipe, the method of the fulfillment will begin to seep, and the world will begin to organize itself to receive this fulfillment.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/8/12, Shamati #36

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