We rise to the world of Infinity from our world. This path divides into two stages: the first is called “trepidation,” and the second, “love.”

During the first stage we correct our egoistic desire in the zero, first, and second degrees of Aviut, and during the second stage we correct it in the third and fourth degrees of Aviut. The lower part is Galgalta ve Eynaim (GE), the upper part is AHP. And together it is the vessel of a soul.

Trepidation means that there is one main worry behind thousands of concerns: Whether I will be able to not receive? As a guest, I worry about managing not wanting to receive the host’s treats. He tries to persuade me, but I refuse over and over again. In other words, time after time, I acquire the screen to an increasing Aviut of desire until I rise above my entire Aviut (which is called Mount Sinai) and acquire the quality of trepidation. Now I rise over all the receiving desires and become ensured against receiving egoistic pleasure.

Then I begin to become mutually included with another: “What does he want?” I see what he wants as well as the degree of my ability to do something for him. I acquire his desires, his Kelim, and I provide for him in my Kelim. Now I act the other way around: I reverse my Kli in order to receive for my neighbor.

A mother takes care of her children in the same way: She does everything to fulfill them. This is how her love manifests. Hence, love is about me never taking anything from others, never stealing, or hurting others. This pertains to the previous stage, trepidation, the first stage of the correction of Kelim.

Hillel, the sage, said the following to a “stranger,” meaning an egoistic desire, with regards to this: “Do you want to come closer to bestowal? Go ahead. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Rise above your receiving Kelim, and then you will never hurt anyone.”

And then comes love’s turn which Rabbi Akiva referred to as the general rule of the Torah: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” This means that you take the desires of others and unite with them in order to fulfill them.

This way, love, in its true spiritual sense, cannot be reached without a considerable preparation.
[37085]

From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/4/11 on Love

Related Material:
A Well With Living Water
Knocking On The Creator’s Door
Fear Is The First Step Toward Love

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Inner Work - 2 Comments →

When I say: “There is none else besides Him,” it means that I accept upon myself a certain function in the world and not just go with the flow, living one moment after the other, telling myself to “let it be.” On the contrary, each instant I focus my desires and thoughts on how to correct my connection with the world and strive to find in it a single governing force. This effort of mine is regarded as “If I am not for myself, who is for me?”

Suppose I get sick and am going to see a doctor, but while doing so, I don’t just tend to my animate body; rather, I think about how I add everything to this one force. After all, the physician, the medicine, and I are all parts of the integral system. The doctor is managed by the Creator, and the medicine was discovered because of Him. In other words, I must connect everything that seems to me as existing separately from each: the doctor, the medicine, my sickness, and myself to a singular source.

And later on when I recover, I must say that all of it from the start was unified. The Creator simply turned the circumstances so that I would unify them within myself and see His oneness.
[37073]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/18/2011, Baal HaSulam, Letter 16, 1925

Related Material:
A Dog Following A Person
The Formula Of Infinity
When The Upper Force Wears You Down

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Inner Work, Spirituality - 1 Comment →

In this world I constantly tailor myself to the standards that the society imposes upon me by convincing me to buy or do something, while in the spiritual world I need to draw an example from the Creator. However, the problem is that if He were to reveal Himself, we would fall completely under His influence and would become a million times more dependent on Him than we depend upon the environment today.

We would become absolute slaves, like the still, vegetative, and animate forms of life, which do what nature commands them to do and fully follow their instincts. And then we would not even feel like we live an independent life.

But the Creator, this general force of nature of creation, wants us to be independent and equal to Him, instead of following His orders like a robot. There would be no point in creating the creature which automatically follows its nature’s orders, and where the entire outcome is clear from the beginning.

The Creator’s plan was to create man free so that man himself would choose to rise to the level of the Creator, to learn about his Creator, and want to become just like Him! Just like any person in this world wants to be loved for who he is, the Creator also wants us to become acquainted with Him, attain Him, and see that His state, quality, and force is the ultimate perfection.

Thus, He cannot reveal Himself to us so that we will not become His slaves and automatically follow His orders. He plants in us the desire to develop and strive towards Him, but He conceals Himself. So how can we become like Him in this case?

He comes up with a simple solution. He creates the creature called Adam (man), a spiritual force, a quality similar to His, and breaks this creature into a billion pieces! And now the created being itself, and not the Creator, must put together an environment for itself like from pieces of interconnecting blocks. This environment has to mirror the creature’s image of the Creator, its knowledge of Him.

Man advances and builds his own environment to influence him in the opposite direction and develop him. It follows that we build our own Creator, and this is why He is called “Boreh,” meaning “come and see.” We build our environment and in this way we build ourselves.

I am not able to create myself or influence myself. I am a finished product of my environment. But by constantly building my environment, a shell to influence me, I indirectly influence myself. It turns out that I build a system for my own education.

Then I am somewhat separate from the Creator, and I freely build myself by creating my own environment in accordance with the values that I want to instill in myself. I am not able to change myself, but I can artificially build a society to convince me of the values with which I now disagree. This society will convince me that I need to strive towards bestowal.

And since I have built this society myself, it is as if I had built myself. In other words, I constantly build the Creator’s image within me, and thus I advance to the point when these three forms: I, the environment, and the Creator draw so close that we become as one whole.

This really is free development because I do everything myself, I constantly think and decide on the ways to advance. I examine the world that now becomes revealed before me, and I test myself for ways to properly advance.
[37015]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/4/2011, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
How To Use Your Freedom
The Accelerating Human
When The Soul Resonates With The Word

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Free Will, Group Work, Inner Work - No Comments →

Someone is constantly working with our consciousness in the corporeal world: all mass media, films, television, and newspapers. We receive examples of life in school, at home, from our environment, friends, and the entire world. We are constantly under this influence without even realizing how much we depend on it and follow these instilled values.

It turns out that in our corporeal world I only carry out someone else’s desires. But in the spiritual world I am left with an absolutely unfilled emptiness, and I don’t know what to do with it: Where to go, or what’s going on? And this is very difficult.

But on the other hand, we need to understand that in our world we don’t perform any independent actions and never realize our own desires; we never choose how to dress, what to eat, what to think, our profession, or partner in life. I receive all the tastes from the environment and work according to this program. When fashion changes in the surrounding world, I immediately change my direction and start chasing it.

We have already gotten accustomed to living like this, and this is why we feel confused when we are suddenly given freedom: We no longer know what to do with it. This is exactly what happens with our spiritual development. We are given complete freedom in it. What do we do with it, and where to get the examples?

But if you were given examples, you wouldn’t develop yourself as a free person who possesses freedom of choice. You wouldn’t find or reveal your soul. A person stands puzzled without knowing how to continue.

This is why Kabbalists advise us to learn from nature, from the environment. Nature, its general, upper force, is the Creator. We need to learn from Him, and we need to reveal Him. He needs to become our environment, and we need to draw examples from Him.
[37018]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/4/2011, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
How I Educate Myself
The Focal Point Of Freedom
When The Soul Resonates With The Word

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Free Will, Group Work, Inner Work - No Comments →

The society is the only place where I can realize the act of bestowal. My attitude toward spirituality, toward the Creator, is tested by my attitude toward the society. This is the only way I can evaluate my state with regard to spirituality: Do I want to serve the others or to use them for my own benefit?

The Creator cares about the society since it is precisely the place where He can reveal Himself. It is Malchut of the world of Infinity, Shechina, His favorite child, and this is where He dwells and hides. Everything depends only on the well-being of the environment! The environment, the connection between everybody where each is aspiring to reveal the Creator, is the ultimate goal, the place where the Creator can be revealed to the created beings.

You give the Creator an opportunity to become revealed! This place and the Light that becomes revealed in it, meaning the Creator, have the same value and are inseparable from each other. Hence, as one advances, he realizes that the society in its internal essence is actually the Creator who dwells there (Boreh means "come and see"). We do not reveal anything but the corrected society which is, in fact, called the Creator.

Now we separate the two, but in the final, perfect state it’s impossible to divide anything. The Light and desire merge into one, and it’s impossible to say which is the first and which is the last. For us, all of creation starts from the fact that there is One, a point immersed in the Light. Relative to us, nothing exists before this state.

Kabbalists state that this adhesion, the Light, the force of bestowal, is nevertheless primary relative to the creature, the force of reception. But we are not able to perceive it since we act in terms of "time," meaning cause and result.

However, until we reveal a constant and eternal state, both cause and consequence exist only relative to the changes within us. But in a perfect state, there is no cause or consequence; there are no changes.

Indeed, if there is cause and effect, it means that inner corrections in the creature are still under way, that it hasn’t yet revealed the true state. In the true state, there are no changes already, and it means that there is no difference between the Creator and Creation.
[36930]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/3/2011, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
How I Educate Myself
What Can I Give To The Creator?
To Depend On The Environment Is To Be Free From Your Ego

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work, Spirituality - No Comments →

Question: Why do energetic women copy the male forceful approach? Where does this come from?

Answer: Out of having no other way to go, women are forced to solve the problems of life in order to provide themselves with what men do not give them. That is why they are forced to go through the education system and work hard while at the same time taking care of the home and raising children without a husband. As a result, today they are rising higher and higher on the career ladder, occupying newer and newer positions.

All of it is happening because men are running away from responsibility, from the part they have to take upon themselves. Women are accepting modernity’s challenge, but men are not.

Overall, the modern environment conditions us to be free, telling us, “Live however you want, no one can say anything to you.” People do not feel responsibility toward society, their country, their people, or the world. Do anything that comes into your head as long as you don’t kill, steal, or other such things.

However, this is opposite to what Baal HaSulam explains to us: According to the spiritual root, each of us is indebted to society. The calculation is not only with what a person takes, but also how much he fails to give. Each person has to work and contribute his share to society. Each person has to take on the burden of a family, raise children, and so on.

However, in our society it is not considered a transgression if a person does not contribute his share. A transgression is if he took more than what is accepted. In this situation we will continue to suffer until humanity finds itself “at the brink of death,” so to say. And maybe that will help.
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/7/11 on Women

Related Material:
Equality Lies In Maximal Bestowal
Female Strength And Male Weakness
Today’s Families Need A Common Spiritual Foundation

Filed under: Crisis, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Family, Q&A, Society, Women, World - 1 Comment →

At first we evolve by absorbing desires of all the others, by envying their aspiration, effort, and work. But gradually, under the influence of the collective work, our desires change, and we start feeling that unity, caring for others, and absorbing their desires is a very special state.

It is the Light that evokes these changes in us since on our own, we cannot change. We think that we keep doing the same thing, pass through the same states, and nothing really changes day by day. But desires evolve in four stages, and being influenced by the Light, they begin to change.

The final destination, the state which already exists in the plan of creation, is “inscribed” in the Light. Therefore, the Light, which expands from the very first, root stage and affects our desire from there, instills in it all the changes that are already placed in the desire created by this Light. Hence, don’t despair! Just remember it.

Afterward, having gained experience, everyone starts to feel that he or she is in the field of constant influence. Even when it seems that nothing is changing, this field still evokes processes and transformations in our desires in four stages of HaVaYaH.

Thus, we first come to a Kabbalistic group as consumers, wishing to employ it for our egoistic goals: make decisions, rule, and satisfy our ambitions. And this stage of development should be utilized to give people an opportunity to advance to a certain point, as long as it doesn’t harm the society. After all, we start with egoism, and from egoism (Lo Lishma, not for Her name) we come to bestowal (Lishma, for Her name).

And then, a person undergoes the next stage and starts to understand that unification itself has a unique value and is much more exalted than simply using the others. In truth, if he thinks about the well-being of all others, it will advance him much closer to the Creator. Thus the Light works on us, causing such transformations in us.

As a result, a person starts working with the society solely in order to delight the Creator. After all, it is the only opportunity we possess to perform any act of bestowal. We have nothing to give to the Creator, but we can take advantage of His love to the created beings and bestow to them, thereby actualizing His love.

If a person asks for grace, meaning bestowal, and desires to be able to bestow to the others, in doing so, he or she gives the Creator a chance to bestow to them.
[36934]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/3/2011, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
Truth Is Unchanging
Only The Light Elevates Me
From Love Of Created Beings To Love Of The Creator

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work - No Comments →

Question: Does the modern-day equality of the sexes harm the relationships between men and women?

Answer: The “equality” that we establish according to our egoistic reasoning is not really equality, but a distortion of the laws of nature. In nature, the male and female inclinations are not identical, but on the contrary, they are different, opposite, and distant from one another by all possible inner and outer qualities of personality, life activity, physiology, and everything else. By drawing an equal sign between them, we crush nature and create a giant fissure that will not benefit anyone in the end.

I don’t have to explain what going against the laws of nature means. Instead of learning from nature and giving each gender the form appropriate to it, we are trying to do whatever comes into our heads at such a high level that this will bring us many more troubles. In the end, no one will be happy about this “equality.”

By nature I have to be a man with specific qualities and carry out a specific function. I have a niche that I have to take. That is the place of my appeasement, correction, fulfillment, and perfection. Therefore, I cannot indulge the egoism that rules over me and act however it wants me to by the orders of egoistic forces. There’s no doubt that all of this seriously harms things.

Let us hope that we will somehow go through the corruption to correction. However, there are many troubles waiting for us on this path.
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/7/11 on Women

Related Material:
Equality Lies In Maximal Bestowal
Learning From Nature
On Equality And Precedence

Filed under: Crisis, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Egoism, Q&A, Society, Women, World - No Comments →

Question: Why do you often refuse to answer questions on the actual text of The Zohar?

Answer: What’s the point of answering? A person who attains it receives the answer on his own. But a person who does not attain it has to work on attaining it.

An answer to a question that is perceived by our earthy mind leaves us on the level of this material world, calming us down with false understanding. But this is not a real answer and does not help us. After all, in that case a person does not try to acquire a connection with the Torah, with the Light that corrects him, but wishes to attain wisdom, and that is opposite to our path.

Of course, we have to know the material a little bit in order to be slightly connected to it at least externally, like small children who come in touch with something in our world without understanding it yet. However, we shouldn’t receive answers that extinguish our desire to attain. After all, we are reading the text for the sake of attainment. When we attain it, then we will receive the answer. And that will be the true answer.

Therefore, there’s practically nothing to ask about the actual text of The Zohar, about the names, titles, forces, and angels. What’s the point of it? Who understands it? Who will give you an answer as long as you haven’t revealed it inside you?

Therefore, our entire study is only for the sake of revealing Kelim, vessels, or desires in which everything we study will be revealed.
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/7/11, The Zohar

Related Material:
A Miraculous Transformation Of The Zohar
Understanding Comes Only After Attainment
Reveal The Zohar Within Yourself

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Kabbalah Study, Q&A, Zohar - No Comments →

The Creator is playing a game with us by hiding and revealing Himself, and hiding again—all in order to awaken us. At first, it is just material sensations when we feel either good or bad, until all these changes help us grow up.

In the meantime, our desire to receive pleasure grows not only quantitatively but also qualitatively, and undergoes four levels of development: the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking. In the end, it becomes aware of itself and understands the reasons why it feels good or bad, where these changes come from and why.

At this point we learn to discern not only good and bad states but also truth and lie, the reason and purpose of the occurring changes, Who sends them, and how to connect this all together, meaning to actualize it in a perfect form. So we advance in our development.

Kabbalah helps us understand the causes and reasons of the states we are being made to experience, and then we start arranging a different picture for ourselves. It isn’t the Creator who changes, hides, and shows up to play with us, but rather these transformations occur in us, in our desire to enjoy, against the eternal invariability of the upper Light, the Creator, who remains at absolute rest and informs: “I did not change my HaVaYaH.”

All modifications occur in the created being, in the one who receives. It is the created being that undergoes various internal states, good and bad, and that’s why it thinks that the Beloved abandons it and keeps revealing or concealing Himself.

At that point, we start seeing everything in a more authentic light and begin to understand that we stand against the constant, eternal, and perfect upper force. All the changes occur solely in us, and they are what we should be asking mercy for so we may use them correctly. First of all, we must learn not to depend on these changes and then to use them to bestow, as the upper force does.

Thus, we arrive at the state described as: “I am for my Beloved, and my Beloved is for me” when the Creator’s concealment is viewed as a blessing, as coming close to and merging with Him. It all depends only on us, on our perception of reality.

We no longer rely on luck, but rather start seeing cause and effect, the logic behind changes. First, we learn that all these transformations occur in us, and everything depends on our getting corrected. Later on, we realize that these corrections are needed not just to feel good, but to come to the truth.

And it all concludes with the state when the created being stands against the eternal and perfect, immutable Creator and evokes a greater sensibility in itself, in order to approach the Creator’s eternal and complete form of bestowal.
[36937]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/3/2011, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
Widen Your Desire
Just Wish For It
Why Does The Creator Keep Being Concealed From You?

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Inner Work, Perception, Spirituality - No Comments →