Preparation to the Lesson
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Zohar for All “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” “The Fourteenth Commandment,” Item 247
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Selected Highlights
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I am trying to insert my stone into a stone wall, and all the stones around this opening are my friends who determine the shape that I should eventually take.
Let’s say I am the Sefira of Hod of the spiritual Kli in ten Sefirot. I do not know what the Sefira Hod should be in the spiritual Kli: Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet, Netzach, and Hod. But if I adapt myself to the previous Sefira Netzach and to the next Sefira Yesod, then I understand what it takes to fill the space between them.
And when we build the ten Sefirot Kli in this way, we get the main building block of the entire creation in which we reveal the inner life, the Creator. And then we expand this building by connecting new blocks, and begin to see the perfect reality unfolding before us in all its forms, above time and space.
We need to become wise and persistent participants in this construction together, and then it will be easy and joyful. And if it is hard, it means that we are working incorrectly.
Theoretically, if I could get rid of all my egoism, I would turn into soft clay, which enters like butter between all the stones and concrete blocks in the wall. This is an ideal form when there is no desire to receive in me, but only a desire to bestow, a desire to suit everyone.
This happens when a person enters a group that is new for him and he wants to establish relations with everyone so that he is accepted. However, when we work with our desire to receive, we reveal our egoism, and we feel pressure from everyone until we relent. But if I adjust myself to the ten, then I can be sure that I have found the right place and am moving forward correctly: from love for the creations to love for the Creator.
The main thing is the willingness to connect. The basic principle is to be together as one wall, one building. And if no one wants to change for the sake of connecting with others, then this is not spiritual. Spirituality is when I adapt myself to everyone, and so I find my true place in the structure of Adam HaRishon, in the common soul.
It is very important to understand that I am annulling myself not just in front of a friend, but in front of our mutual connection, before the form of our common border that divides us. It turns out that due to such work, I annul myself before the Creator.
We just need to know how to correct ourselves in the most external form and adapt ourselves to our friends so as not to interfere with them, and by combining our forces, we can take a step forward together. Taking this step forward, we feel that we are acting for the sake of one goal, for the sake of a common connection, and one Creator will be able to clothe in us. And then we take another step and another, and so we build a temple.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/21/23, “Preparation for Opening the Heart at the Congress”
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Preparation to the Lesson
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Zohar for All “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” “The Thirteenth Commandment”
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Zohar for All “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” “The Fourteenth Commandment”
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Lesson on the Topic “Summary of the Convention”
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Preparation to the Lesson
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Lesson on the Topic” “Connecting Into One Ten”
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Selected Highlights
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What is the rubbing of hearts—a feeling of closeness to another? After all, I am in an egoistic desire and even perceive closeness from the point of view of my own benefit. I cannot do it any other way—I do not have another nature yet.
So, what can we do? How can we try by force to bring our heart closer to the heart of a friend to such an extent that we feel the heat between our hearts, the resistance?
We want to connect, we realize that it is necessary. And at the same time we understand that we are not able to do it, that it is impossible to come to one heart. And as we try to connect again and again and each time we are pushed away from each other, we begin to feel the friction of our hearts. And the stronger this friction and inability to penetrate into the heart of another, it just means that the heart is already ready for a genuine connection.
We know from the experience of spiritual life that if you try to get closer to someone to whom you do not feel inner rejection, it is quite easy to do. It is nice to be together, but such people usually do not get very far.
Those who advance are those who have a hard heart, are very stubborn and selfish, and do not feel or understanding others.Therefore, we are given the mind to realize this spiritual principle and understand that we are obligated, by overcoming, to grasp the end of the thread connecting us.
And since we do not allow ourselves and the other to lose this connection, and out of hopelessness we remain connected in order to feel and recreate the system of Adam HaRishon, we continue until drop by drop everything is added to the large score, and the mind begins little by little to connect to the feeling. Then we see that they can really go together and unite according to desire and feeling. This is how we achieve the rubbing of hearts.
The more space I free up in my heart for the heart of a friend, the stronger we can connect.
Rabash writes in Letter No. 40: Through the friction of the hearts, that is, when each one prepares his heart for the connection with others, even of the strongest ones, each will bring out warmth from the walls of his heart, and the warmth will ignite the sparks of love until a clothing of love will form. Then, both of them will be covered under one blanket, that is, nothing separates them anymore and vice versa, that which separated them now becomes their common blanket, one shell, meaning a single love will surround and envelop the two of them, as it is known that Dvekut [adhesion] unites two into one. And then they seem to have one heart because they are covered with one blanket that holds them together, turning them into one body.
In every human body there are billions of different, alien cells that perform different functions each with its own purpose. But all are connected into one body, surrounded by one skin, and therefore are considered one organism, one structure.
We and the entire universe are built according to this principle within which we come to the concept of a structure called the Creator beside whom there is nothing.
[309445]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/21/23, “Preparation for Opening the Heart at the Congress”
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What does it mean that everyone has to prepare their heart for connection? In the old days, houses were built not from smooth bricks but from stones of arbitrary shape. They were only trimmed a little so that they could be put together, and this is how the walls of the house were laid.
This is how we rub our hearts to polish them and make them suitable for reaching one goal: connection and advancement on the spiritual path. Everyone adjusts himself to the friend in order to build a common house, a common spiritual vessel.
Therefore, we need to trim our hearts. Everyone checks how much he is able to connect himself with the others: what stands in his way, what is superfluous, and what is missing. Through this personal work on ourselves, we can reach rubbing even between the stony hearts themselves. Everyone warms up their hearts.
If we understand that we are obliged to do this according to the purpose of creation, then everyone is trimming his own stone in order to adapt it to others. He no longer looks only at himself but evaluates himself in terms of readiness to connect. Where and how much I need to trim myself is checked only with respect to connecting with others in order to make contact with them.
Therefore, there is no need to try to make everyone completely rectangular. We just need to match each other. Let each one have a curved shape, but if the other has the suitable curvature, then we match each other.
That is why we can start working together from the first second. The main thing is not to check how straight a friend is (like a standard brick), but how much he matches me and I him. If we can adjust ourselves to each other, then we have the opportunity to build together a system inside us for the revelation of the Creator, a temple, a house of holiness, for the revelation of the quality of bestowal between us.
I do not know in advance what my qualities should be. I am not able to choose my qualities and form; rather, it is the environment that determines what form I must take in order to become integrated with the friends.
It is like in ancient masonry where you need to fit one stone under another to lay down a wall, this is how we need to work on our hearts. Not a single heart wants to be trimmed to a flat rectangular shape, removing everything that does not match the other.
In order to make standard blocks that are used in construction today, it is necessary to completely crush the natural material in order to mold the desired shape from these crumbs. But in spirituality, it is impossible. We would like to do this to others according to our egoism, but it does not work.
In true spiritual development, it is necessary to let everyone develop in his own way, and then he will develop into his optimal form. The other will remain in a way that is suitable for him. It is only necessary to eliminate the force of resistance between us, and then we will reveal the form of connection that the Creator wished to have between us. It is the form of connection revealed between us that is called the Creator.
Otherwise, we will not reveal anything except fabrications of our mind with which it is impossible to build any building. This is why we see that everything built by people is being destroyed: both the structure of the family and the spiritual society.
Therefore, we just need to know how to connect hearts.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/21/23, “Preparation for Opening the Heart at the Congress”
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The main thing at the congress is to open our hearts. After all, the congress is a gathering of hearts in order to correct the broken heart of Adam HaRishon, the common world soul we all are a part of. Therefore we need to try to feel how far we are from each other in our hearts.
The heart is everything that is in a person—all his desires and thoughts. Exactly these desires for fulfillment are what we must connect with each other, and try to feel the other, which will mean that we are connected.
To the extent that we love others as ourselves, we will begin to feel the force that disappeared from us during the shattering of the soul, the sin of Adam HaRishon. We will connect our hearts above our egoistic desires to correct this system and begin to feel the Creator again. In our common heart will reign one single and special upper force—the Creator, besides which there is nothing.
This is the purpose of our life and existence, the purpose of creating all worlds and all nature. The progress in this direction, feelings and thoughts related to the process of revealing the system of the Creator and the Creator Himself inside it altogether is called the opening of the heart.
When the heart opens, we begin to feel how spiritual organs are born and grow within us, as in any developing living body: brain, heart, liver, arms, legs, and so on. We will feel how we act with all parts of the heart to the extent that we want to connect them into one system. As from a drop of semen developing in the mother’s womb, so from our tiny inner desire for unity, connection, and mutuality, a special being will begin to develop within the upper force of the Creator.
To the extent that we can unite with each other and connect with the Creator, we will feel ourselves existing in one body, in one Creator, as parts of this common body, which are called friends. We will grow like cells of a living body, and feel our connection with each other and interdependence. As far as one can bestow to another, and the other to the third one, spreading further and further, we will build our one common body.
Imagine billions of tiny desires, each of which develops not by itself but due to connection with other desires, and so it grows, feeling its purpose and purpose of development.
By building ourselves in this way, we build the attainment of the Creator; we begin to understand who He is, how He dresses in us, and how to come closer to Him. From here it becomes clear how important each friend is, which enhances our power of resolve in attaining the Creator. Each friend brings me closer to the Creator, adds more and more attainment as if increasing the zoom and adding another hundred, a thousand, tens of thousands of new details that combine into one picture.
Then I clearly see the picture of the upper world and my attitude toward everyone. I see all the movements of everyone, their thoughts and intentions and all the changes taking place in them. I recognize in them one force, one upper root, which by awakening everyone in this way, speaks to me.
Thus, from the love for the created beings, we attain love for the Creator and begin to get acquainted with one single reality. It all starts with the connection of hearts.
[309440]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/21/23, Lesson on the Topic “Preparation for Opening the Heart at the Congress”
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The second commandment… it is love—that one should love one’s Master with whole love…even though you do not know if I will come after you to support you… [and] although I am not giving you anything, your love will still be whole, to adhere to Me with all your heart and soul (Zohar for All, Introduction of The Book of Zohar, The Second Commandment, Item 198).
Ultimately, we are talking about desires. If the other’s desire and my desire are arranged in such a way that I want to use his desire to fulfill my own, this is called “self-love.”
If we are in an equal state: “I give to him, and he gives to me,” each of us perceives his desire and the desire of the other as one.
For example, as in a combat team or as “one man with one heart,” this is the condition “do not do to the other what is hateful to you.” Then you will be connected to each other, but on condition that you are connected together by one desire. This is not love, but the connection of friends.
Whereas love means that I take my desire and put it below the desire of a friend (the level of love depends on how much lower) in order to use my desire only to fulfill the desire of a friend. His desire determines everything for me, and I live inside his desire, like a mother inside a baby. She feels everything he feels and what he needs, and only exists for this. This is called love.
Therefore, “to adhere with all your heart and soul” means to perceive the desire of the other as your own and take care only to serve his desire day and night. When is this possible? When everyone connects together under the influence of the upper force.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/10/11, The Book of Zohar — Introduction: “The Second Commandment”
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