Preparation to the Lesson
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Lesson on the Topic of “Love Covers All Transgressions”
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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Study of the Ten Sefirot,” ‘Histaklut Pnimit,” Vol. 1, Part 4, Chapter 1, Item 6
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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”
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Preparation to the Lesson
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Lesson on the Topic of “The Breaking of the Heart”
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Selected Highlights
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Preparation to the Lesson
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Lesson on the Topic of “Breaking the Barriers to Spirituality”
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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Study of the Ten Sefirot,” ‘Histaklut Pnimit,” Vol. 1, Part 4, Chapter 1, Item 6
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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”
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Selected Highlights
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We do not have our own forces: neither positive nor negative, neither the right line nor the left. We receive everything from above, and we must therefore constantly keep in touch with the upper force. Everything that I have comes from it, and I must keep to the middle line, that is, keep my devotion to it.
This means that I attribute everything to the upper force, I receive both forces of the left and the right from it, as well as all the knowledge and advice that allow me to combine these two forces so that they intertwine in me and begin to form a person, Adam, out of me.
We receive the egoistic forces and the intention to bestow from the Creator as well as a technique that allows us to dress one on top of the other and build out of us the likeness of the Creator called man, Adam.
The main thing for this is to nullify ourselves in order to receive forces and intentions from the higher source, from the Creator, and by combining the material (the desire to enjoy) with the form of the material (the intention to bestow), shape from this power of reception and power of bestowal the middle line, reception for the sake of bestowal, man, Adam.
We will have the force of reception within us, which the Creator created us with and gradually adds more and more. And we need to give this material the form of bestowal, which we also receive from the Creator.
The correct work is to ask the Creator for both forces, the force of reception and the force of bestowal, and to accelerate time, which is called sanctifying it. And then we will advance in the middle line, correcting ourselves and turning to the Creator even before He turns to us.
By correctly combining the two opposite forces, the forces of bestowal and reception, not allowing one to outweigh the other, but creating their optimal combination in the middle line, we mold ourselves in the form of bestowal. And according to this accepted image, we get closer and closer to the Creator with our inner properties, we identify ourselves with Him and are included in Him, we come to embrace and unity, boundless merging.
And all this is due to the devotion of the soul because we do not feel that we have even a bit of ourselves, nothing, free from the authority of the Creator. We want to be in His complete power because this is the truth. But it is hidden from us, and we strive to reveal it.
At each level that we attain, we discover that the Creator rules over us. As a result of our own efforts, it is revealed that the Creator fills us without leaving any degree of freedom. All this is the result of the devotion of the soul to the extent I am called human.
In order to establish the correct relationship with the Creator, which is called the devotion of the soul, we must first do the same exercises in the ten toward the friends.
The Creator created this laboratory for us so that we can practically feel it and realize it, through receiving support and critical assessment from others as to how we are progressing in achieving the devotion of the soul. Seeing what I lack to be devoted to the upper ten, I can understand what I lack to be devoted to the Creator.
There are different stages of devotion, which will become the rungs of the spiritual ladder. The understanding of the Creator occurs in the measure of the devotion of the soul that we manage to achieve in relation to Him.
If we strive for the devotion of the soul, then it correctly attunes us to the Creator and sets the exact direction like the North Star or a compass needle always pointing to the north where we should always move and check ourselves against.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/18/21, “Devotion”
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“Love will cover all crimes” is not just a beautiful phrase, but a means to achieve love for the Creator. We received a broken soul, and this breakage is revealed until the very end of correction throughout the entire spiritual ascent. Each time we must strive for unity, for devoted connection, right up to love.
Therefore, we will constantly reveal the left and right lines against each other, and climb the steps of hatred and love. The Creator broke the vessel precisely in order to give us the opportunity to ascend the steps of unity higher and higher.
The group must comply with the condition: “Love will cover all crimes,” that is, to reveal sins, hatred, to correct all kinds of gaps between us, and to heal them with love. Love is such an interconnection in which no one feels himself, but only everyone together.
In this way we build the stages of ever more powerful connection, until in them, as a result of our efforts, the quality of oneness, which is called the Creator, begins to unfold. There is no other way to approach the Creator.
We work in the ten, try to connect and reveal the unwillingness, hatred, and rejection, we quarrel, but rise above the strife to embrace each other again. And in this way we hasten the path.
This law applies not only in the ten, but also in everyday life between people, countries, between children and adults, in family relations. If we want to come to connection, we must also identify gaps, separation, and contradictions.
But in everything you need to see the future goal, that is, to understand why we do it. For any tiny change in our lives, we must always move from darkness to light, from night to day, and the same happens in our relationship with the Creator.
Participation in the ten is necessary in order to reveal the connections between us: hatred and love, ever stronger and deeper, and in the contrast of darkness and light to reveal the Creator as the advantage of light from darkness.
It’s like a small voice that we can’t hear. We are still in a sea of sounds, but we do not distinguish them. We need to reach such sensitivity to begin to hear them, to recognize that the Creator is between us, sometimes hiding, sometimes revealing, in different forms. And this is only possible if we build connections between the friends in the ten, to show all the nuances of the contrast between the shattering and the connection.
Moreover, this does not require external manifestations, an explosion of hatred and emotions. All this should be inside, expressed in the subtlety of sensations. We must become more and more sensitive because we want to reveal the Creator hidden between us.
The Creator is hiding because we do not have enough precise and subtle tools capable of capturing Him. The deeper we penetrate into all the subtleties of the transition from shattering to connection, feel all the difference between them, on these edges we will begin to feel the Creator.
A master of his craft is one who is sensitive to the smallest details, who has sharpened his sensitivity. Nothing is noticeable to the outside eye, but for the specialist, every little detail becomes essential and shows him what is happening.
We lack precisely such sensitivity. The Creator is still between us, but we don’t have the right feelings. Our desire to enjoy is very rough and is at the lowest degree of the sensations of this world. We also need to learn to subtly feel everything that happens in a friend. Having set myself up for such a relationship with my friends, I begin to reveal my relationship with the Creator in them.
Our relations with each other are like strings that sound in tune, now in a minor key, now in a major, that is, in distance and connection, in all sorts of states. This is how the Creator speaks to us because it is He who has shattered and separated us, and He also helps us to connect.
So, we feel Him playing on our strings, on the connecting threads that run between us, playing on our relationships. This is how we reveal Him and find out what He wants to say to us, and we also play our own melody to Him, a hymn of unity, love, and desire. And so we are more and more attuned to the revelation of the Creator in creation.
From our approach and distances, from all possible states, three lines and connections, as spiritual Sefirot, we learn the language of the Creator better and better, understand what He says to us, and how to respond to Him. All our connection with the Creator is through our connection with each other. Therefore, one who is not in a ten does not have the opportunity to reveal the Creator; this is the condition of the last generation.
In our time, the general Kli is being corrected, and therefore we are called the last generation. We need to correct ten by ten and start putting them together. But first of all, you need to tune each string like a violin or guitar so that they are in tune with each other and all together in tune with the Creator.
This is already spiritual work in the ten to connect with the Creator, to give Him a place to open up between us and play on us. And we could play Him a song of gratitude, a hymn of His glory.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson, 1/16/21
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Spiritual conception is a feeling of how desires, qualities, intentions, understanding, and definitions are changing in me. The entire inner world turns upside down.
For the first time in my life, I feel that I am able to disengage from my own interest and act for the sake of others, that is, to separate from my “I” and do what the Creator wants and what is needed for humanity.
Such readiness in a person is the beginning of spiritual conception. I move from the power of egoistic desire that paints this world for me, to the altruistic desire, and feel myself in the world of the Creator, in the power of the group. And this is not forced enslavement, but my desire to hand myself over in order to free myself from the shackles of my egoism.
I am not yet able to perform an action of bestowal upon my neighbor, but I already feel that such a possibility really exists. That is, I am getting out from under the power of egoism to the power of the Creator.
I move under the power of bestowal, as if from one room to another. The first room was governed by egoism, which the Creator had appointed to control me. I was a slave of egoism, obligated to fulfill all its demands.
And now, I move into another room where the desire of bestowal reigns, and I feel this transition. And this is called a spiritual conception. Gradually, in place of egoism, the desire of bestowal enters me and changes my thoughts, desires, intentions, and actions.
Sometimes this desire for bestowal disappears and then comes back. And I want to pull it by force toward me for it not to leave me. And sometimes I start playing with it, weighing which will outweigh, the desire to enjoy or the desire to bestow, and study this transition from one power to another.
Thus, I begin to enter more and more deeply into the state of the spiritual embryo. This continues for nine months of pregnancy until a person is born into the spiritual world.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/11/21, “Ibur (Conception) and Preparation to Birth”
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The distance between the desired and the actual states contains our entire life. This is true to say about both corporeal and spiritual life. For any situation there is an actual state and the state we would like to be in. And the difference between these two states is called our life.
Therefore, if we want to achieve the true states described by the Kabbalists, we must imagine ourselves in a state of perfection, that is, under the full control of the Creator.
This perfection is the only state that exists, but we need to discover it. And on the way to this perfection, we will have to discover many different states: those that we feel at the moment as well as those that we want to reach.
When we approach the desired state, all the states that we have experienced before will seem like a dream. All this was not real but only seemed to us in our egoism, created by the Creator. We looked at everything through our egoism: at ourselves, at the world, and therefore, we perceived our state as flawed.
The Creator arranged this illusion for us, but He explains through the Kabbalists that our state is in fact perfect and has never been different because it is under the full control of the Creator. We are simply in a dream, in an illusion, in concealment. There is something that conceals the perfect state from us and causes this split into desired and actual.
On one hand, you need to be aware of your actual state. After all, this is what I feel now, as they say: “A judge has only what his eyes see.” But on the other hand, we need to build a desirable state over this reality—the way we imagine the world under the control of the upper perfect force, that is, what the world should actually be.
By the difference between these two states, we can estimate where we are relative to the truth, at what state relative to the final one. This way we will constantly move toward the Creator, toward the state of the unchanging upper light that fills the entire universe.
The closer we get to the Creator, the greater the distance between the actual state and the desired state may seem because we have a better idea of what perfection should be in relation to our current state.
Our state seems to us more and more egoistic, harmful, evil, and flawed, and the desired state more and more perfect. The difference between the desired and the actual increases until it grows from zero to plus infinity and minus infinity.
In order to imagine a perfect state of connection with the Creator, we need to annul our egoism. And we need to ask Him for this state, because the Creator created this difference on purpose so that when we despair from our egoism, we begin to turn to Him and look for connection with Him. Without His help, we cannot get out of this state.
You need to dream about this desirable state because man is where his thoughts are. Therefore, it is worth thinking more about perfection, about good, realizing that the state we are experiencing now is a deception deliberately prepared by the Creator so that we would want to get out of this world of lies, darkness, and concealment.
All the work is to make an effort to get out of concealment and get closer to the light. It may seem that such exercises are self-deception because I feel the world as it is now. This is my reality, my life. Why do I need any fantasies?
But we always make plans for the future, and without such plans, nothing can be achieved. And if each time we build the desired state over the actual one, it means that we are guided by faith in the sages: we try to imagine the states they have achieved and achieve them too.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/21, “The Work Between the Desirable and the Existing State”
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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Study of the Ten Sefirot,” ‘Histaklut Pnimit,” Vol. 1, Part 3, Chapter 14, Item 5
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Why is there a condition to cover all transgressions with love? It is because the vessel of the common soul created by the Creator was shattered and the egoistic desire entered between all its pieces. Each piece is wrapped in egoism that does not allow us to feel the connection between each other.
Therefore, our progress is determined by how much we recognize our natural rejection, inability, and unwillingness to feel the others. To the same extent that we are distanced from each other, we are distanced from the Creator because my attitude toward the Creator cannot be better than the attitude toward the ten.
Therefore, all work relating to the Creator is done only in the ten, and the connection with the Creator is the connection between the ten friends. This is the only way to evaluate our true state. To the extent that I am devoted to my friends, I am devoted to the Creator, that is, I am ready to nullify myself and exist within my friends and within the Creator.
The main thing is to show each other in every possible way how we yearn to get closer to each other in the ten so that our devotion is visible to everyone. By playing and showing the right example to each other, we will eventually truly achieve devotion. We live in a world of lies, and therefore, the game is a serious matter that leads us to the truth.
We play being in a good relationship and attract the surrounding light with our actions. Our love is not real, but the light is also not real, it is surrounding light. It shines upon us from afar, and everything seems to be not real but only a game. However, through this game, we awaken the Creator to play with us.
In fact, we are egoists, but we play-out devotion, love, and bestowal. And since everything from our side is kind of pretending, the Creator can be cunning with us, hiding His true state and influencing us with the surrounding light. This is how we can reach some similarity to each other.
It may be not a real connection yet neither on our nor His side, but it helps us get closer and reduce the distance between us. In this way, we receive more and more influence from the Creator and gradually change our force of reception to bestowal. Instead of feeling the Creator as a general force of nature, we begin to feel the influence of His force of life and strengthen the connection with Him: “I am for my beloved and my beloved is for me.”
It is like I’ve received a photo that someone has torn into many pieces and I want to put them back together to see who is in it. In order to complete this puzzle, I need to correctly imagine what I want to see from the very beginning. I do not know what this force really looks like, but I know that it brings good, fulfillment, puts everything in order, and stands behind everything.
I see this force behind everything that happens in the world, behind each of my friends. It is necessary to connect together all the types of shattering that exist in our world, put them together in one picture to see the manifestation of a single force behind everything. By connecting with our friends above all our shattered states and covering all transgressions with love, we create an image of the Creator within our connection.
The soul devotion is the devotion to this work, to the friends, to helping everyone, and feeling like a representative of the Creator ready to contribute all my strength, desires, and abilities to reinstate the true picture, to collect all the pieces into one whole. This is the mission of the last generation living in our time, obliged to reveal the one unique and unified force standing behind this picture, behind all actions.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/17/21, “Love Covers All Trangressions”
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