Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 9/10/19
Posted on September 10th, 2019
Lesson Preparation
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Lesson on the Topic “There is None Else Besides Him”
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Lesson Preparation
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Lesson on the Topic “There is None Else Besides Him”
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The thought of creation includes everything, even me, but I myself aspire to attain it. The Creator has given me this opportunity, as if He had created a white spot in me called “the deficiency for the Creator.” I develop this deficiency and direct it to the upper one.
I confirm that indeed there is none else beside the Creator, and I myself am included in this concept. On my part, I do not want to change anything in the entire reality; I only want to attain the Creator, to connect with the thought of creation. This means adhesion with the Creator.
The more efforts we put into this, the more we develop, change forms, advance along the axis of time. All kinds of changes will take place in us, and we will feel that we are beginning to take His form. This is like in our world: by getting closer to a person, we gradually adopt his habits and tastes. This is how we begin to take the form of the Creator, to adopt His thought, and it becomes ours. This is how we reach adhesion with Him.
The Creator created the thought and we are part of it, included in it. Besides, He gave us the opportunity to reformat ourselves in likeness to this thought and thus be included in the Creator. This thought enters us as if a program is loaded into the computer but according to our own desire and request.
Then it reformats and organizes us so that in everything there is in us, in all the 620 elements and desires, we begin to feel the upper force that is operating within us. Gradually, this force fills us as if a progress bar is running on the computer indicating the percentage of the download and reaches one hundred percent. Similarly, the thought of creation operates on us according to our efforts, and then it enters us. It means that we are getting filled with the Creator and adhere to Him.1
Are the efforts to adhere to the Creator personal work or work in the ten? The fact is that all personal work consists of integrating in the ten. Although, it might take an entire lifetime or sometimes more than one lifetime. Look at how much humanity has been wandering until it finally understood that there is no choice and that it is necessary to work on connection. Indeed, otherwise we are incompatible with the nature of the Earth and it will erase us from the planet. How much time, suffering, and work did it take to realize this?
All the work before integrating into the group is just preparation for the real work. When I begin to integrate into it, the progress bar as if begins to move, which indicates the percentage of the program uploaded. To the extent that I integrate in the group, I make space for the thought of creation to enter and fill me.
To the extent that I free space from myself and integrate in the ten, the thought of creation can fill my connection with the group, that is, the corrected Kli. This is how I get filled and come to similarity and adhesion with the Creator. This adhesion becomes increasingly stronger all the time.
The work on adhesion with the Creator is possible only in the ten. In the past, that is, in the past degrees of humanity’s development, this was not the case, and there were other ways to reach adhesion with the Creator. However, in our time, it is the only way.2
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/22/19, “There is None Else Besides Him”
1 Minute8:45
2 Minute 13:15
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2,000 years ago, the Temple was destroyed and the people of Israel began their wanderings around the world. We got used to living in exile among other nations and often even succeeded in doing so. Sometimes, on the contrary, the nations of the world settled scores with us. Hatred of the Jews steadily grew, one wave rose after another, and recently a tsunami of anti-Semitism has been rising.
The problem is that we are not correcting the shattering. Anti-Semitism is the result of our neglect of the possibility of achieving correction. The exile ended, but only in potential, not in practice. Many would dream of leaving the land of Israel and returning to exile. After all, holiness is only in the unity that we can build between us. Without unity, there is no holiness, and we are still in destruction.1
In fact, the destruction was a correction. You cannot call it corruption because there was still nothing corrected that could be corrupted. It was the shattering of the boundary between the receiving and bestowing desires, the boundary between the Creator and the created being, between the properties of the Creator and the created being. Therefore, it was only for the sake of correction.
The desire to enjoy existed before the shattering, only it was hidden. After it was revealed, the created being could already begin to work on it and rise to the Creator. Each time the creature reveals its disparity with the Creator, which gives him the opportunity to correct this discrepancy and get closer to the Creator.
This disparity already existed before, but now it has been revealed. That is, there is a revelation with respect to the created being, as if we put on glasses and begin to see the malfunction that we did not notice before.2
The destruction of the Temple represents the merging of Bina with Malchut. Therefore, there were two destructions, according to the two levels in the spiritual Partzufim: Dalet-Gimel (4/3) and Gimel-Bet (3/2). The first Temple was destroyed at the level of Mochin de Haya, and the Second—at the level of Mochin de Neshama. Therefore, the destruction of the First Temple was much more powerful and significant. But the destruction of the Second Temple was more significant in that it meant a complete exit from spirituality.
The First Temple is a spiritual union in which all desires are combined together with the intention of bestowing to the Creator at the level of Mochin de Haya. There was a huge struggle between people and each one within himself for the sake of maintaining this unity and not falling. But egoism was steadily growing and in the end, the shattering did occur. The people of Israel went into exile; that is, there was a gap between the levels—the spiritual Partzuf exhausted itself. After the exile, the people were returning to spirituality, building a new Temple. (The First Temple is like Malchey DHGT [Daat, Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet] and the Second Temple is Malchey TNHYM [Tifferet, Netzah, Hod, Yesod, Malchut] in the world of Nekudim, which were broken).
The destruction of the Second Temple was already the final exit from spirituality—all went into intention for their own sake. Since then, the whole nation except for some special people, Kabbalists, entered the process of the continuous descent of generations.
It is impossible to compare the generations that lived immediately after the destruction of the First or the Second Temple with our contemporaries. They felt a much greater connection with each other. Holiness still illuminated them from afar and the sparks from the destruction of the previous Temple fell and made an impact. Therefore, there were still great people in those generations even after the destruction of the Second Temple. We see what great books they left for us: Mishna and Talmud.
Many were still in spiritual attainment. The fall did not happen instantly. The light was exiting the Partzuf gradually, until we were almost in total darkness by the time of the Ari.
From the time of the Baal Shem Tov and onward, the awakening from below began. Baal Shem Tov did a great job reviving spirituality, and he was followed by Baal HaSulam. There were other Kabbalists who lived in the time between them. The last great Kabbalist of our time was Rabash who left us the whole method of correction that we use today.3
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/21/19, “Ninth of Av”
1 Minute 9:50
2 Minute 12:50
3 Minute 18:58
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“And Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord.” This describes the state of a person who has worked for many years on his correction, performing all the necessary actions in order to eventually discover that he was doing it all for the sake of his egoism and that he has no possibility to act differently. This realization comes to him after he has accumulated a measure of suffering and disappointments and he continues despite everything. As the saying goes: “Anything but leave.”
He then begins to feel that such a thing as bestowal really exists, which is outside of him, outside of his will to receive. If he works with this new desire for bestowal, revealed within him, he feels that unlimited possibilities are hiding in it.
Before that, it is impossible to understand what bestowal is, why it is needed, and why it gives unlimited possibilities in comparison to egoistic reception, which is limited, meager, and narrow. It is impossible to receive for my own sake anything more than a faint illumination, “a tiny candle.” But by developing the desire to bestow through the work on the greatness of the Creator, we reveal this ability up to the size of the Creator. We can then be in unlimited bestowal, and the Creator connects with this desire and reveals Himself in it.
For many years a person works and acts, but it turns out that all this is inside egoism. One’s frustration and confusion accumulate until a person suddenly reveals in subsequent blows what it means to exit oneself and become a bestower. One feels that there is nothing but constant annulment and subjugation. You just have to bow your head, accept whatever happens, and nothing else is required.
This cannot be done in advance. But when an illumination comes in response to a person’s efforts, one reaches the degree of Hezekiah: finally, he turns his face to the wall, knowing how to pray, ask, annul himself before the Shechina. He sees that the group, the society, the wall, and the Shechina are all the same.
This is a transition from the will to receive in which we exist by nature, to the recognition that subjugation and annulment are what’s most important. “To turn to the wall” means to leave no partition between the Shechina and one’s heart, no shell around the heart.
To pray, turning to the wall, is to open one’s heart to the Shechina, the force of bestowal. Both a person and the Creator act with the force of bestowal, and they both want to remove all the partitions between them.
By peeling the shell from the heart, that is, removing the egoistic intention from all desires, we reveal the desire to bestow. Everything already exists: both the Creator and the person’s heart, and one only needs to remove the armor, the shell from around it. This is what we need to pray for.1
The transition is that initially I was entirely in egoism, but did not realize it. I then discovered that I acted only for my own pleasure, but I wanted to be in bestowal, to remove the egoistic armor. It is like a boiled egg from which the shell is already easily peeled. If a person has matured, he begins to peel off his shell and feels more and more that he needs help.
Help comes in response to prayer, and the prayer cannot be for myself, but only for the ten, for the whole world. The Shechina is in the dust and we pray to raise it from the dust, to raise its importance in our eyes. Otherwise, we will not have the opportunity to bestow to it because we do only what we consider as important.
So we ask that the Shechina, that is, the force of bestowal, be important to us, and then we will be able to bestow. If bestowal is important to me, I will engage with it, and if it is unimportant, I will forget about it. Therefore, we ask the upper one to give us the feeling of the importance of bestowal so that we can do the work. Without such importance, nothing will happen, we will be unable to do anything.
Of course, any fool can work for the sake of something important. However, it is necessary to be very wise in order to do such a stupid thing and to ask for the importance of the quality of bestowal. This is what we are fighting for: to make bestowal important in order to be able to bestow. It is impossible to explain to the will to receive why this is necessary—only the point in the heart can understand this.2
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/10/19, “And Hezekiah Turned His Face to the Wall”
1 Minute 21:11
2 Minute 1:01:30
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There is nothing but one thought—the thought of creation, which includes everything. Only we, the created beings, still do not understand and feel it. But we exist within this thought and are governed by it. All our work takes place inside of it. This thought is the whole creation, its plan, and there is nothing other than it.
Everything is resolved in thought, and everything is created by thought. There is no matter; all of reality is included in the thought. It is interesting that modern scientists, being absolute materialists, say that the universe is a thought. Researchers of the human brain claim that all our thoughts, desires, and decisions are outside of a person and that the brain is only a device that captures this thought and transfers it to us.
Thus, science is gradually approaching this fact that Kabbalists discovered a long time ago: There is nothing in the universe except for the thought of creation and we exist inside of it. Although we divide reality into forces, matter, feelings, and reason, in essence, only the Creator’s thought, within which we exist, operates.
We need to attain this thought of the Creator in relation to the created being and then we will attain Him—not Him Himself, but His attitude toward the created being. It is only this very thought that exists. All the various opposite properties that we feel are meant to reveal the depth and the uniqueness of this thought.
There is none else besides Him, but we attain this fact from the opposite, from the numerous actions and manifestations of the Creator in relation to us, which are very diverse and contradictory. It is precisely all these paradoxes and discrepancies, which are preventing us from realizing what is happening and from agreeing with it, that push us to such a development that by combining all the contradictions above reason, we attain the Creator. It is impossible to attain Him other than from the two opposites that combine together and complete each other.1
From the Creator’s side, the potential action, called the thought, is enough. For the Creator, the end of the action is in the initial thought, that is, the uncorrected and corrected state of the created being exist together, creating a black dot called the created being. The rest is the development of this dot and its self-awareness, and from its self-awareness to the awareness of the Creator in order to understand where it came from, who created it, and who is developing it.
It is like a movie rolling inside this dot. All of us, the whole universe, all the worlds are in it. The attitude of the Creator, the upper light, is called “the thought of creation.”
Therefore, there is only one thought from which the entire universe emerged—the thought of creation. It already defines all our rewards, our efforts, and everything we experienced on the way.
From the side of the Creator, there is nothing bigger than this thought. But we, the created beings, are able to attain it only when we separate from Him and begin to act independently. Inside this thought, other additional thoughts appear: the four Behinot (phases), the Partzufim, the worlds. We study what in practice comes out of the black dot, which potentially includes the entire thought of the Creator, the entire process that was initially invested there.2
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/20/19, “There is None Else Besides Him”
1 Minute 3:39
2 Minute 12:40
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There Is None Else Besides Him
The topic of “There is none else besides Him” is the most important in the wisdom of Kabbalah and each time it is perceived in anew. It seems to us that we repeat the same words, but it is never a repetition because we ourselves constantly change. Therefore, we perceive this concept in a new way every time. If a person does not feel changes, he should be concerned about it.
The concept “There is none else besides Him” always changes because we are talking about the Creator Himself, about His uniqueness, about the upper governance that operates on us.1
The Creator, the Emanator, the upper force, is a constant concept. All of reality was created by one thought. However, the question arises: did it ever happen or has it always existed? It is us, the created beings, who live in the framework of time, and it seems to us that reality is changing. In fact, we are in a constant reality where everything, both upper and lower, exists in the completely corrected state. We need to reveal all this reality.
Reality in itself is already perfect, there is no development in it, and nothing new arises. Changes occur only with respect to a person. We need to discover this reality by figuring out who we are. Are there really so many of us or is it just one person who has so many different thoughts, desires, and actions?
On the Creator’s behalf, reality is constant—the way He created it. But a person has an opportunity to participate in the revelation of this reality, determining the speed and the nature of its revelation. The most important thing is: who do we make efforts for, trying to discover this.
Initially, there was a single thought—the thought of creation. “That single thought performs and is the essence of all the operations, the purpose and the essence of the labor. It is by itself the entire perfection and the sought-after reward.” That is, this thought includes everything in itself; we just need to try and connect to it, to want to be included in it. All our work and efforts are directed at this.
The Creator revealed to us the purpose of creation, that is, His attitude toward us. On His part, everything is completed. However, if we aspire to identify ourselves with the thought of creation, then we attain the Creator. By trying to reveal the thought of the Creator, we get to know Him, feel Him, become included in Him, and connect with Him.
He wants us to discover this thought. If from our place below we rise to its height, to the root of the thought of creation, to this point in which this thought was formed in the Creator, then in this way, we get closer to Him (not to the thought but to the Creator Himself) and reveal Him.2
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/22/19, “There Is None Else Besides Him”
1 Minute 0:30
2 Minute 3:07
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If somebody interferes with me, then I should accept this as “help from the opposite,” which shows me where I have not yet cleaved to the Creator. Due to this interference, I get closer to the Creator, and therefore, I wish this person all the best, blessing for the bad as for the good. After all, it is due to these interferences that I have the opportunity to rise to the Creator each time. Without them, I would be unable to advance.
Therefore, on one hand, in corporeal life I must defend myself and fight against such interferences. But in essence, in my internal work, I fully accept them and thank for everything bad as good. It is such interferences that bring us correction, although they cost us a lot of effort, money, and time. The main thing is to relate to them correctly, that is, to launch a war against them in order to ask for adhesion with the Creator above them.
I understand that the Creator sent me these obstacles and I want to cleave to Him along with them. After all, my devotion to the Creator is verified by the force with which I cleave to Him. Let’s say, there is a load weighing 5 kg that I want to attach to the ceiling. To do this, I need glue that holds at least 5 kg and a little more, to be on the safe side. Therefore, I evaluate the strength of the glue by the weight of the load. If I stick the load and it falls, then the glue is weaker than the weight of the load; that is, my devotion to the Creator is less than the interference that He sent.
But if I ask the Creator to help me cleave to Him with a force greater than the interference and I cling to the ceiling with this whole problem, then I gain faith above reason, the force of adhesion, which is stronger than the interference felt within reason.
The glue I receive from the Creator is the light that comes to me at my request, the power of bestowal, Bina, with which I cling to the Creator in bestowal to Him. I want to cling to Him above this interference that pushes me away from Him so that all crimes will be covered by the love for the Creator.
But there is no righteous person who did not previously sin. We always fall, locking ourselves on the obstacle itself, on a person who is causing us problems or on the situations. We are never ready for an obstacle because each time it is new, a new Reshimo from the shattering is revealed. We are forced to fall and succumb to deception as if the problem did not come from the Creator. But already in the next moment, we need to return to the correct perception. This is called the “pinch of the devil”—a light pinch is enough to recover.
First, I cry out: “Ouch!” feeling the interference, and the second “Ouch!” already comes from the realization that this is not interference but the Creator who draws me to Himself. It all takes place in one go. The only answer to every obstacle is to cling to the Creator even more.1
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/24/19, “There is None Else Besides Him”
1 Minute 27:10
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The wisdom of Kabbalah differs from simple popular blind faith in that it speaks of working during descents, distancing and rejections from the Creator through all kinds of events in our life. We seem to be ready to say that “There is none else besides Him.” After all, it is right and good that there is just one force that creates everything and controls everything. However, we forget about this as soon as we feel rejection from this force, when we receive all kinds of problems that are supposedly unfair.
In addition, it turns out that they were planned by the Creator for each of us in advance, even from the beginning of creation, because everything is predetermined until the end of correction. Therefore, our life is a film that we need to add 620 times more to through our efforts and precisely during the time of distancing.
The main work is during the descent. The Creator burdens our path by sending all sorts of troubles, problems, and concealments, placing barriers before us. But we know how to overcome all this, and not for the sake of winning like heroes jumping over all the obstacles. Overcoming means relating all the disturbances and burdening of the heart to the Creator and not asking to cancel them. Disturbances are those degrees that we must climb.
Every time a desire to receive grows, a problem appears as an invitation from the Creator to ascend and determine His uniqueness on the higher degree. Therefore, we live from problem to problem, from disappointment to disappointment, from fear to awe. But it is in this that we must see the benevolence of the Creator, who does not leave us, moving us forward.
This happens to all the people of Israel in general and to every single person advancing to one’s completely corrected state. It is during the descents that we have the opportunity to ask the Creator for help. It turns out that descents are states when the Creator invites a person to come closer precisely through overcoming confusions and disturbances intended to separate us from the Creator. If despite all the disturbances we declare that they come from the Creator in order for us to ask Him for help to rise above the disturbances toward even greater adhesion, then the disturbances turn into means for connection, into this glue with which we adhere to the Creator.
It turns out that disturbances were help, leading to a request in response to which a person received from the Creator the force of bestowal, faith above reason, above disturbances. Thus, one advanced. Therefore, our work consists of being joyful for the disturbances as an opportunity to ask the Creator to bring us closer to Him.1
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/24/19, “There is None Else Besides Him”
1 Minute 2:10
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