Question: What is a spiritual necessity?

Answer: A spiritual necessity is the feeling inside of me that I lack the aspiration toward the neighbor, toward the Creator. It is the sensation of how much I am still unconnected to the inner system that I imagine as our common desire, the united heart “as one man with one heart.”

I am tormented by how far away I still am from this state and from the revelation of the Creator inside of this common heart. This is exactly what all of my suffering has to be about. And I must always try to check and see how much do I aspire to this and how much do I desire to attain this quicker.

Clearly, the environment has to help me do this. It must be imbued by the atmosphere of a common spiritual search where we are all simply killing ourselves over this goal. And this does not bear any relation to what happens to us in our regular lives in our world. This is a very deep inner aspiration and an inner way to check a person and the group.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/28/11, Writings of Rabash

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Question: What does it mean to ask from the Creator and how can we ask something from Him? Should we just say inside of us: Correct my qualities?

Answer: When a person first starts out doing this, he turns to the Creator as if He were an individual, an external authority, an external force that is outside of him as if he were praying to an “idol” or to some imaginary image. But you can’t do anything about that. This is how we imagine the Creator in the beginning.

However, later on we begin to reveal that this force exists only inside of us, according to the prohibition, “You shall not make other gods for yourself,” meaning ones that are outside of you.

We delve deeper and deeper inside, where we discover that the Creator is located precisely at our deepest point. It’s like your mother, who gave birth to you and is therefore perceived by you as the innermost force that created you, being the point of your origin, your source. That is how a person senses the Creator.

The Creator begins to be felt inside of you as the innermost source of energy, feeling, and reason.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/28/11, Writings of Rabash

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Only a person who, in sync with the root of his or her soul, desires to find one, unified, upper force that governs reality, is “helped” from Above and sent obstacles. The Creator keeps revealing new desires in him or her, which lure them in various directions. So, one forgets that there is none else besides the Creator and gets entangled again and is unable to assemble the image of the unique upper force within to which one should be turning.

All these difficulties are the help from Above sent in the form of obstacles to someone who possesses an aspiration toward finding the Creator. And a person thinks that the others succeed in keeping this one picture, one sensation that there is none else but the Creator. But for him, this image constantly fades away and gets lost.

It is easy for the world to say it, but he is the only one for whom it’s hard, and he constantly struggles through it as if in a fog and doesn’t understand who acts: himself, the Creator, or both of them together, and what relationship should be formed with Him. Nothing is clear.

It seems unfair that he gets only hardships from the Creator instead of help. Is that how a loving and kind Creator would act? Why then does He use such cunning devices and set man up for such problems in life and from which we don’t know how to escape?

A person thinks that even the most ruthless person wouldn’t do this. After all, where does all the cruelty in the world come from if not from the very same upper force? All of the most brutal and horrible things come from only one force, and moreover, we have to decide that this force is good, endlessly loving, and working solely for the good, is that it?

If we take a look at the world, it’s impossible to acknowledge this. We only get convinced of how easy it is to confuse us and it  makes us doubt the uniqueness of the upper force, when we see the world before us, filled with pain, problems, violence, terror, and hate.

Is it not the same upper force that causes it? Surely so, since there is none else but Him, and we don’t do anything ourselves. I see with my own eyes that the world is ruled by the force of evil not the force of good. And try as I may to hold myself to the thought that there is none else besides the good Creator, I balance as if on the point of  needle and am about to fall. After all, from every direction I receive proof of the very opposite, and it seems quite real to me.

I can’t even close my eyes to what is happening and lie to myself. I see that I simply must get to know the Creator! And then, a true need emerges in me. I am not willing to view Him as an evil force! But for me to experience Him as the good force, I require His help.
[41542]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/26/2011, Shamati No.1

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Egyptian bondage starts with Joseph’s desire to unite with his brothers, but instead hatred unfolds among them. That is the point when they enter Egypt and sell him to it.

Joseph (the righteous man, the foundation of the world) is what is called the ground, Sefira, which connects all Sefirot preceding it, or “Jacob’s sons.” He wanted to unify them all, but they didn’t comply; each of them wished to be alone. And Joseph says: “You have to unify in me” since Sefira Yesod binds within itself all the other Sefirot; it has nothing of its own.

However, all the other properties in man opposed it, and that is why they started to experience the Egyptian exile. In other words, our entire work pertains solely to unification for which you have the world group as well as the local one. And each of us has opportunities to advance both in the physical and in the virtual groups. Additionally, everyone has already done some preparation for unity, but we haven’t been able to make a final decision yet.

And it could be that we will have to make a final decision every instant that nothing will help us unless we unify, above everyone’s personal egoism. There, in the point of our oneness, spirituality lies. This miniscule dark point suddenly unfolds and we find the entrance to the spiritual world in it. It is such a narrow and tight passage that it would have been hard to believe something could actually open there.

It is similar to giving birth. First, the exit is closed, the embryo remains inside the womb regarded as “Mem Stuma” (letter “Mem” is the property of Bina, closed on every side). And only later on, when the enormous desire to be born is present, this letter “Mem” splits into two doors (the letters “Dalet,” from the word “door” or “Delet”) on two hinges (“Tzirim” or “hinges,” the word that also means natal contractions), and that’s how a baby is born.

But the moment before, a newborn has no chance to know, predict, or sense that the state it is in can open up. Therefore, a strong environment is necessary. It will constantly pressure every one of us and ensure us with a guarantee: the power of support, the force of awakening that will always bring me back to the intention for unity.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/21/2011, Beit Shaar HaKavanot

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Question: What can I do if I have a great desire to unify with the friends, but no matter how hard I am trying to do so, I am unable to stay in it for more than five minutes and get carried away by all kinds of irrelevant thoughts?

Answer: You need to transfer yourself from one thought to the other, over and over again. What can you do if our work is done in small steps, like children who grow little by little, day by day. But a child does work, all day long, in order to advance. It constantly tests the environment and itself: How well it can fit into and employ it, how to develop in order to take the most advantage of the environment.

But we don’t do the same. Each second we don’t examine how we should use our environment, what the best way is to connect to it. We don’t wish to unify and test ourselves: Do we bestow to the environment? Can you really do it each moment like a child does? And that’s where our problem lies; it is the reason why our progress is so slow.

Nothing is halting us. We received all the instruments; everything is written down for us; everything is explained; and all we need to do is jump on it altogether and just do it! And then anyone, even if he is in the farthest corner of the Earth, will also feel he can’t do otherwise.

Only the common inner effort of the entire world group will awaken every heart. No one has any other chances to keep on the path, to immediately wake up and keep moving forth. This is regarded as the mutual guarantee, when all guarantee to everyone that he will quickly wake up and reach the good state.

Egypt isn’t that necessary if we are passing through it together. The Creator arranges everything so that we can bear this turmoil which is regarded as the “pain of love” when I dream about meeting with someone I love, and yearn for Him, for this anticipated encounter that lies ahead.

And I naturally suffer since I haven’t yet come to that meeting and we haven’t reunited, but I already live looking forward to it, in the illuminated anticipation of the future. The only difficulty on this path is lack of unity between us. Beyond it, there is nothing else.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/21/2011, Beit Shaar HaKavanot

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I think that the days of unification during Passover went really well for us. Essentially, we have revealed a very important moment in man’s spiritual development, which marks the beginning of his spiritual birth, the beginning of the exit out of the spiritual exile: The “place” of the unity of the group, the friends, was discovered in each one of us.

This sensation of the single spiritual place needs to expand. This is the new reality. When a person does not abandon the concern for this “place,” he quickly advances towards its realization. At the end, it will become the place of the revelation of the Creator and will further develop to a point of complete adhesion of the created being with the Creator: the world of Infinity.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/24/2011, “Disclosing A Portion, Covering Two”

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It is necessary to understand that we are before the Creator, the force that is good and does good, and that there is none else besides Him. What will you ask of Him? He treats you 100% well and doesn’t change. What will you ask, that He should treat you 101% well?

Our plea to the Creator is regarded as the development of our sensory organs. Then, by arranging our desire, constantly molding it into a more correct form, we reach a state where we must know the Creator in all His totality, His authentic form. And this is regarded as a prayer, after which we get to know the Creator.

We don’t order any actions of the Creator. After all, He is “one, unique, and unified” and “there is none else besides Him.” It can be said that He acts constantly or not at all, while we reside in Him and that’s it; He does not change. It all depends on how we view the Creator.

Thus, to pray, in Hebrew, means to “judge oneself.” We judge ourselves or change, and due to our internal transformations, feel a new, other reality. Hence, we always speak on behalf of desires (Kelim), whereas the Light, or the Creator, is at absolute rest.

Therefore, a plea to the Creator reflects solely to what extent I have corrected myself and acquired new organs of perception, in which I reach the revelation of “There is none besides Him, the good who does good.” And no action ever derives from the Creator as such.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/26/2011, Shamati No.1

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When reading a Kabbalistic article, a person needs to attune himself or herself correctly to its perception. Not a single word in the wisdom of Kabbalah speaks of our world, ever. We do not exist in this world. It is an imaginary world; it is not taken into account at all and does not fit in with the entire system of the worlds. It simply does not exist!

Therefore, Kabbalah does not talk about this world, man’s physical body, or certain geographical places: the land of Israel, the Sinai desert, Egypt, or Babylon. It only concerns itself with the internal states a person undergoes in his aspiration to reach correction, the purpose of creation.

If a person has the point in the heart and aims himself or herself at the purpose of creation, on the path toward this goal, he begins to experience various states. The wisdom of Kabbalah and all the Kabbalistic books—the Torah, Talmud, The Study of the Ten Sefirot, Mishna, and so on—describe these states, these degrees in particular. All spiritual, “sacred” books talk exclusively about “sanctity,” meaning about reaching the property of bestowal referred to as sanctity.

Hence, while reading these articles, we need to completely sever ourselves from all familiar material pictures and images and imagine only spiritual degrees, meaning the degrees of coming closer to or further away from the property of bestowal. They talk only about it. These books describe desire created by the Creator, its state in each of us, and our experience on the path when, from our current state, we start aspiring to the property of bestowal, to love of another, which is called “sanctity.”
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/24/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Question: An example of mutual guarantee at the cellular level is very convincing. One can easily imagine how the cells act for the sake of the body, leaving for themselves only life’s necessities. But why is it so hard to imagine mutual guarantee at our human degree?

Answer: It is because we do not see this system with our own eyes. If we saw it now, we would have no freedom of will and would be forced to comply with its laws. If the necessity to bestow is suffocating me, if I have two options: to die or to give myself away for the benefit of others, then I surely agree; “Take everything I have.”

I as though feel a gun against my temple:
“Give everything you have!”
“Take it, I can’t help it.”
Death is not an option—they would take everything anyway. This is the absence of choice.

This is why our interconnection is hidden from our sight, and we are unable to comply with it. What can be done? With the help of the environment, I have to come to a state when I will put a gun against my own temple.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/24/2011, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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