How can a student know that he or she is following the teacher correctly? After all, the student has no such compass or instrument. A teacher is a human who puts before me new values, new goals and requires them to be accepted and fulfilled. I must check myself daily that I observe them and do not depart from the principles the teacher teaches me and others.
Only in this way can you come closer to the teacher. It makes no sense to imitate his material habits and tastes because they are unrelated to the spiritual and will remain unchanged even when you become a great Kabbalist. The animal body remains as it was created.
You can check the correctness of your path with respect to others: annul yourself and compare with your friends whether I understand the teacher correctly or am mistaken. After all, I am in a group where everyone learns the same thing. Do my friends understand me and do I understand them? Here one must lower one’s pride and subjugate oneself. If I do not carry out my attitude to the teacher and the Creator through subjugation to the environment that is studying with me, then I will certainly be mistaken.
Egoism will prove to me that I am right in understanding and feeling more than others, and this will be a mistake because pride humiliates a person. But in fact, it is impossible to avoid mistakes. It is said: “The paths of the Creator are straight,” and some make more mistakes, others less, but “there is no righteous person in the land who does good and hasn’t sinned.” The place of the soul in the system of Adam HaRishon already determines how much and in what everyone will be mistaken. With this, too, you must come to terms and accept it as is.
Ultimately, I must be directed through the teacher and the group to the Creator: to fight less with myself, with my egoism and confusion, and to cling to the teacher and the group more. This is most effective. By fighting with myself, I fight with imaginary things. By sticking to the teacher and the group, I dispel all these illusions, as if I need to correct something in myself. There is no need to fix anything; everything will be corrected through connection.1
It is impossible to advance unless you fall and rise. You advance a step and fall to repent again and get up again. Movement only happens in this way. After a good deed, a fall always occurs as a result. Therefore, after a large, strong congress, now friction, confusion, and disputes occur, and this is a natural healing process.2
Why is this whole world, family, work, and daily responsibilities needed if all that can help us in spiritual attainment is self-annulment toward the teacher and friends? We do not know this, but it is how we feel inside our desire: that we exist in this world among billions of people and also surrounded by a group of friends, accompanied by a teacher. The Creator paints this picture in front of me, and I am obliged to use this picture correctly: to place everything in its place and balance it in order to act inside it.
If I work correctly, then in the end I will understand why I felt as if I was in the material body and in the material world, among other people and with the teacher. When everything becomes clear, I will find myself in a completely different state, and then I will understand why this high spiritual state first appeared to me in such a material form where there were a lot of supposedly unnecessary things.
This is what the Creator gives me today, and therefore, I must take everything that I receive seriously. In fact, now I see the spiritual system, but it is depicted in my material desire, in my egoistic perception. I do not criticize what is happening, my feelings and understanding, but simply try to direct myself to the Creator as accurately as possible.
It is best not to scatter on finding out why everything around us exists and for what, but at maximum speed to advance to the goal, to merge with the Creator. After I reach adhesion with this power of bestowal, unity and love, I can gradually add the whole world to this integration.3
Black Hole
The center of the ten is the place where the Creator hides from us. If we focus on it to reveal this center, a black hole, we will reveal the Creator there. We will then find that, in fact, we are there, in this black hole, where the true reality exists. Outside it is only an illusory world.
The black hole in the center of the ten is the entrance to the upper world. This is the place where we are actually located, not in our world as it seems in our egoistic imagination. We will then discover that our world is also inside this black hole, the whole globe, the whole universe. We exist there inside as “Israel, the Torah and the Creator are one,” that is, they are all connected at the point of perfect integration.
But in order to get closer to this true state, we need to discover our connection in the ten. Inside it, we will go through 125 degrees until we reach complete unity.
It is a black hole toward us, as our egoism does not see anything good in it, only darkness. After all, it requires going above reason and accepting the opinion of the teacher, the opinion of the Creator, the opinion of the group. Do I agree with this in my egoism? Of course not. It seems like total darkness to me. It doesn’t make me happy at all. I understand with my mind that if it goes against my egoistic desire, it means it is the truth, but the heart does not feel that way yet.4
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/21/19, “Faith in the Rav”
1 Minute 20:54
2 Minute 1:30:50
3 Minute 57:40
4 Minute 1:32:57, 1:57:47
Related Material:
Following The Teacher
Following The Teacher Step By Step
Teacher And Student—Upper And Lower
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Everyone needs to see how they can awaken from an opposite state: to find strength, evidence, inner preparation, so that from the most distant state they can awaken themselves and get closer to spirituality until they begin to feel awakening and inner strength, a new life. What is important is the difference between the fall, from which we begin to awaken the desire for the Creator in ourselves, and the rise, that is, the beginning of the work and its completion, the ability to transfer ourselves from one pole to another.
