Question: You said that the first action of correction is to discern all of my desires in order to understand which of them are subject to correction. Can you give an example of these desires? How do I make the clarification inside me? How do I know what is subject to correction?

Answer: You have to discern this in the group. Start to tune into the group with all your qualities, desires, inclinations, and inner sensations. Then take a look and see: Which of them is for and which is against? What helps you in this work more and what helps you less?

Don’t pay attention to the “taste” you feel in the process, if it is “bitter or sweet,” even though that might help you. Rather, first and foremost pay attention to the “truth and falsehood”: What can you use to connect with friends, and what can’t you use?

Then you will discern it. You will start to reveal qualities and desires inside you that you did not notice previously and did not even suspect existed. These are the desires from the breaking. We do not work with the broken desires or Kelim in our regular lives because we do not aim to unite with others.

Desires from the breaking are only those that helped us be “as one man with one heart” in our root, which then broke and are now present in us. Start uniting with the friends and you will start to reveal that these desires are present inside you. If you don’t feel them, it means you haven’t started uniting with the group yet. That’s why you still don’t feel how many desires you have inside you that oppose unity, or in other words, are in a broken state.

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/14/10, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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Question: Ever since I started studying Kabbalah I feel so small, as if I’m a tiny embryo, and I feel less and less confident as time goes by. Where will I suddenly get real confidence in this single force that controls the entire universe, sets up all the problems for me, and is my only source of support?

Answer: Usually a person finds confidence in religion when he believes that there is a Creator who is good, who will take care of him, and whom he can trust. This worldview sets in deep inside a person and supports him, which is why Kabbalists do not speak out against religion.

However, there comes a time when a new desire awakens in a person and he can no longer be calmed by the blind faith of the past. He develops and outgrows it. Traditional actions are no longer enough for him; he wants to know the Creator!

Ideally, we should have ascended from religion (Dat) to knowledge (Daat) and realized what is written, “Know the Creator.” However, in actuality this is not happening.

In actuality it is only possible to achieve this by connecting with a Kabbalistic group. There is no other means. The group must be the place where you can attain the Creator, the quality of bestowal.

The sensation of insecurity comes only from a lack of the quality of bestowal. As soon as you are ready to bestow, you will feel total confidence and will acquire freedom from yourself! That’s because bestowal is Bina.

Then you will live without any fear and your only worry will be, “When will I attain the deeds of the forefathers through my deeds? When will I be able to bestow to the Creator?” Or in other words, when will I ascend even higher than Bina?
[29641]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/13/10, “A Handmaid that is Heir to Her Mistress”

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The Book of Zohar — Introduction: “The Letters by Rabbi Amnon Saba,” Item 27, Lesson 3
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Talmud Eser Sefirot 3, Part 8, Item 3, Lesson 11
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Baal HaSulam, “Beit Shaar HaKavanot,” Item 79
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Rav Yehuda Ashlag “A Handmaid that is Heir to Her Mistress,” Lesson 6
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I always have to look for the most comfortable means that will help me feel inspired as fast as possible by the importance of the goal. This will enable me to aspire to the “place” or the “drop of unity” where I eventually hope to reveal the Creator. In this regard, everything depends on my current state. Various Reshimot are constantly surfacing in me. As a rule, I start to build the intention from an unconscious, vague, and “dry” state, without a drop of feeling and reason.

Thus, I have to awaken from this “stupor” so I burn up with such a strong desire that if I don’t reveal at this very moment what the Kabbalistic book is telling me about that “death is better” than this life without upper attainment.

We have to look for and use everything that can excite and touch us. Sometimes the group helps, reminding me about unity, mutual guarantee, and responsibility. Sometimes I am inspired by thoughts about the Creator as a wonderful, exalted goal. Sometimes I am excited by the action itself and the work to unite with friends in spite of the disturbances. It is necessary to look for means that will make me have an inextricable spiritual demand while reading the Kabbalistic texts at the lesson.

The approach to these texts has to be balanced. In principle I have reason to complain. On one hand, if I don’t understand anything at all, then I don’t have anything to latch on to. On the other hand, when I start to pay attention to the content, I feed the mind and lose the intention.

That’s why Baal HaSulam writes the following in “Letter 17”: “It’s best for you to hold on to the goal and aspire to the directions of the Host. After all, one who does not know the ways of the Host and the directions of Host, meaning the secrets of the Torah, how will he serve Him? This is the surest guarantee of the middle line out of the three.”

We aspire to understand what we have to to do, asking, “Give us the mind, give us the forces, direct us, explain it to us, show it through example so we would act correctly.” You can demand all of this from the Creator the way a child demands it from an adult. From the child’s end only a desire is necessary, while the adults provide him with all that is necessary. I collect this desire in the group, from my friends. Therein lies my free choice.

From Above I receive everything I need on the spiritual path, besides the demand, which I have to develop on my own. It will come only when I get inspired from the environment by the greatness of the goal. Then the inspiration will break out of the heart and I will aspire to the directions of the Host with all of my strength in order to learn to serve Him.
[29620]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/13/10, The Zohar

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Question: Why didn’t the Creator arrange it so we would already now feel everyone as organs of our own body?

Answer: It’s because you have to reveal the form of bestowal from its opposite. From hatred, reception, and exploitation of your neighbor, you have to attain love and unity.

Imagine that you suddenly found out that your greatest enemy, whom you desired to crush and obliterate using every possible execution technique, is actually your own son who you did not know anything about, just like in a movie.

You don’t understand this now, but try to enter the group and imagine that you are tuning into the common desire. Don’t look at the faces, but look at the desire that everyone shares and delve inside it. Then through that desire, you will feel that you are surrounded by special souls and only you are looking at them from aside. Try to enter inside them and to cancel yourself completely.

Through this self-nullification you will begin to live! Stay in this thought at all times so it won’t leave your mind. Make the decision that from now on this is how you want to look at the world.

Try to stay in this sensation until tomorrow, constantly renewing it and bringing this picture back. Then at the next lesson you will be ready to bring it to life! You will imagine what takes place inside these desires, which are connected with each other: How Partzufim AB and SAG operate and what Rabbi Shimon is telling his friends. It all speaks only about this desire and the connection among its parts.

Desires that are pure or impure, corrected or not yet corrected; everything is inside one system that you are now revealing. You want to reveal life, the vital force in this system and yourself inside of it, as well as to understand how everything works. This is exactly what all the Kabbalistic books talk about and you want this to become revealed.

When the connection between all parts of the desire and the harmony in which they operate becomes revealed, this practical revelation of the correct, operating connection is called the revelation of the Creator. After that the Creator or this connection will continue being revealed more and more, which signifies ascent along the degrees of the worlds toward ever greater revelation of the Creator.

The Creator is called Bo-Reh, meaning "come and see" how the system works in mutual bestowal, how the Light operates inside the desires or Kelim.
[29653]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/13/10, “A Handmaid that is Heir to Her Mistress"

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Question: Where do my desires come from?

Answer: All desires come from the upper Partzuf that clothes in and awakens you. Your desire is the Light that expanded from the Upper One, a meek illumination that triggers a desire. After all, you are a mere desire, similar to a chunk of metal. When the Light descends to you, it starts “heating” you up, doing something with you.

Where do you get a feeling that you want something? The Light that is already present in you attracts you, if only with its reverse side so far. As to the desire the Light doesn’t fill, we simply don’t experience it at all.

We are living in Malchut of Infinity as we speak. So what? What do we experience? Only this corporeal world and nothing more. Why is it so? Except for this tiny place, all the other desires in me are not illuminated, and that’s why I don’t feel them. I am not even slightly attracted to them.
[29481]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/10/10, “Introduction from The Book of Zohar,” Article “Who Created These”

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“Introduction from The Book of Zohar,” Article “Who Created These,” Item 8: And there is another one, below, called MA. What is the connection between one and the other? The first one, called MI, is hidden. There is a question in him. Since man questioned and researched, to look and to know from degree to degree through the end of all the degrees, the Malchut, once he has arrived there, he is MA [which means “what” in Hebrew], meaning “What did you know?” “What did you observe?” “What did you research?” After all, everything is as concealed as before.

This is an example of how the upper one arouses the questions in the lower one by clothing in it. Where there arise no questions, you are not clothed onto the upper one, and hence you have no questions. It is GAR de Bina where everything is Hafetz Hesed (one who wishes nothing for himself). Hafetz Hesed has no question; he is loyal and that’s it.

Below that level, in ZAT de Bina, the questions arise: Why? What for? What is worthwhile, and what is not? These are all questions that could awaken in the lower one in order to be answered. That is why it is called “the end of the sky”: One can ascend there, reveal it. This is YESHSUT, our upper home.
[29517]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/10/10, “Introduction from The Book of Zohar,” Article “Who Created These”

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It is particularly the lowest, most external souls, the “wicked” that possess the strongest desire. Once they awaken and aspire to goodness, the entire pyramid will turn from the bottom up.

They can perform some simple, supportive actions, but if these acts are performed selflessly and wholeheartedly, they will no longer be mechanical acts. Such a person may not understand what needs to be done, but he is willing to cleave to you. The minute he does, he begins to receive everything that you have and grows! Suddenly, inside of this small desire the immense spiritual desires, the soul, become revealed.

In the spiritual world, each tiny cell, by connecting to the body, receives everything that the body has; it acquires all of its desires and is aware of everything that happens there.
[29538]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/12/10, “A Handmaid that is Heir to Her Mistress”

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Question: How does a person with the desire “Israel” fulfill the desires of others in practice?

Answer: Everything happens within the desire. As a person gets corrected, he begins to sense the desires of other people, to connect the entire desire of the collective soul to himself. Then he fills it. Clearly, he does not wander among the people and ask what they want to be filled with.

Similarly, to enter the group means to feel the desire of the group in the connection between us, which exists inside the group, even if we do not perceive it. However, I want to participate in this connection consciously, sensing it fully, openly!

I see that we are separated, but Kabbalists write that there is a connection between us. And I want to reveal it clearly, to connect to it with all my mind and heart.

When I connect to the group, when I start working this way and this layer [of reality] becomes revealed to me, I suddenly discover that the entire world functions in the same manner. All of a sudden I realize that all people are the Creator’s workers, and I dwell in Shechina. I only have to help the others realize it themselves. After all, the Creator wishes for this to be revealed to everybody!
[29545]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/12/10, “A Handmaid that is Heir to Her Mistress”

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