Preparation for the Lesson
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Lesson on the Topic: “From Obstructions to Ascents,” (Prep For World Convention 2018)
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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 56
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The main difficulty is that we cannot know what spiritual work is. It is neither in our sensation, nor in our intellect.
From the outset, we are people who belong to this world. We work with, understand, and discuss what we have in this world. It’s our life. The definitions in this world create a work space in us. Our world is full of definitions of receiving or giving in order to receive, within which we have greater or lesser sensation.
Our definitions accord to what pleases and pains us. This is because we are matter that desires to enjoy. Therefore, I can hear sounds, smell scents, and see things, their width and size, even though they seemingly don’t interest me. It doesn’t matter what it is, maybe it is mechanical phenomena: I always translate things into emotions. Then, in terms of whether or not I feel good, I process, feel, and live in those emotions, because whatever doesn’t enter my sensation doesn’t exist to me. I don’t see it, and really, it doesn’t exist because the world only exists in the field of my sensation: the desire to receive, to enjoy.
Therefore, we are programmed and created as sensing creatures, and what we enjoy and don’t enjoy is clear to us from our experience. As such, we form a picture of the world.
How does this relate to the wisdom of Kabbalah?
I started feeling bad in our world. Many people feel bad. You could even go as far as to say that most people feel bad. Also, it’s not just people, but the still, vegetative, and animate. However, other than feeling bad, i.e., I started feeling something unpleasant. Together with that, I start feeling an attraction to a different state. This is considered as the point in the heart waking up in my heart. Then, I start searching with this point: where is it pulling me? What does it want from me?
I arrived at the wisdom of Kabbalah. I started hearing all kinds of things, but I don’t know what is being taught. I could be studying for years, but I don’t exactly know what I’m studying. I turn up like a child who was sent to school. He doesn’t know why he’s there, but he’s there because all the other kids are there. Or maybe I feel comfortable here with my point in the heart. I feel somewhat at peace, secure, and that a good future awaits me.
But what is Kabbalah? I don’t understand it.
If you’d ask me, I could explain it using words that I read. But it’s not mine. Why? It’s because, again, the world that the wisdom of Kabbalah speaks about is not my world. It is something that I have neither in my understanding nor in my sensation.
I remember that when I was with Rabash, I used to sit at all kinds of meals, at the Kiddush he conducted during the Sabbath where he used to give all kinds of explanations on various articles and whatnot, and he would always talk about faith above reason, that everything is attained in faith above reason.
I understand what faith means. Faith means “I believe.” What does it mean “to believe”? It means that “I believe a certain thing exists.”
Why? Do you have proof?
No. If there were proof, then it would be knowledge. If there is no proof, then it is faith.
What, then, do you believe?
“I believe in God. It is what’s written.”
You believe in “Him”? That’s even more ambiguous.
What, then, is faith?
Kabbalists in the past, who started discovering the spiritual world—the quality of bestowal, love of others, “love your friend as yourself,” “love will cover all crimes,” where they started attaining that quality in their connection—named it “faith,” because it is the degree of Bina. There was never any other definition of the word “faith.”
However, afterward, when they started falling from the degree of faith, from the degree of bestowal and love—there is faith as “bestowal in order to bestow,” and complete faith as “reception in order to bestow”—and when they started falling from that degree, they held onto the understanding that it is correct, that they felt it in the past, and they were connected to many Kabbalists surrounding them in that same period, which was over 2,000 years ago, and they called their feeling “faith.” Then, the term “faith” started becoming tainted. It started becoming interpreted as “knowing as fact”: “knowing” not in terms of knowledge, but just accepting that it is how it is.
Therefore, until today, the concept of faith is very vague. We live in a way where everyone believes in what he thinks he needs to believe in.
Also, “faith above reason” is an incredibly difficult concept. We need to explain it to ourselves, beginners, and whoever studies with us. Faith above reason is the construction of the spiritual vessel, where we build the vessel of bestowal upon the vessel of reception, and as such, make spiritual progress.
It is thus very important for us to make a dictionary of correct definitions of the wisdom of Kabbalah by which we can show everyone how it speaks about a different reality, and how words that appear to be familiar to a person in this world immediately get defined differently in the wisdom of Kabbalah, by people in spiritual attainment.
That is also one of the difficulties we have in coming to revelation from the disturbances, where disturbances support revelation. Disturbances become supportive when we know how to accurately define them. That’s the difficulty. We will need to build that dictionary within us of accurate spiritual definitions to replace corporeal definitions so that we will clarify what is happening from now onward, where there is nothing in reality but the desire and the light that acts on it, and the desire needs to be defined properly, with real definitions, i.e., according to the extent in which the light acts on, divides, and hierarchizes it. That’s how we need to approach the wisdom of Kabbalah.
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/18
Related Material:
Kabbalah, The Most Realistic Science
This World Is A Dictionary Of Spiritual Terms
Who Invented The Language Of Branches
Preparation for the Lesson
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Lesson on the Topic: “From Obstructions to Ascents,” (Prep For World Convention 2018)
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 10, “Table of Answers for Topics,” Item 145
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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 50
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Preparation for the Lesson
| [media 1] | [media 2] |
Lesson on the Topic: “From Obstructions to Ascents,” (Prep For World Convention 2018)
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 10, “Table of Answers for Topics,” Item 135
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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 46
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Preparation for the Lesson
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Lesson on the Topic: “From Obstructions to Ascents,” (Prep For World Convention 2018)
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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 44
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Preparation for the Lesson
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Lesson on the Topic: “From Obstructions to Ascents,” (Prep For World Convention 2018)
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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 31
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Preparation for the Lesson
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Lesson on the Topic: “From Obstructions to Ascents,” (Prep For World Convention 2018)
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 10, “Table of Answers for Items,” Item 128
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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 26
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Preparation for the Lesson
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Lesson on the Topic: “There’s None Else Besides Him,” (Prep For World Convention 2018)
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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 25
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Preparation for the Lesson
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Lesson on the Topic: “A Prayer of Many,” (Prep For World Convention 2018)
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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 20
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Outcome of the congress: the conclusion that “There is none else besides the Creator.” We have to decide this every moment of our lives, being certain that He is good that does good, meaning, we justify Him in all His actions.
This is the very first condition with which the science of Kabbalah begins, with the article “There Is None Else Besides Him,” and all that is required of us on the path is to establish only this. The only things that change are the conditions, our inner and outer states. (In reality there is only one state, but we perceive its division into inner and outer states.)
In order to start living within the principle “There is none else besides Him, the good that does good,” one must work in a group of ten people. And this state starts from the stage of an “embryo” (Ubur) in which I annul myself in everything to the principle “There is none else besides Him, the good that does good”.
It means that I adhere to the upper one in any circumstance that He puts in front of me, completely annulling myself. In this way I become a spiritual embryo.
This is the state that we are trying to achieve, and this is why we spoke only about this during the congress: how to realize this state, what our relationships should be in the group, what each one owes the others, etc. It was all about how to reach the state “There is none else besides Him, the good that does good” on the level of an embryo.
Why did we take such a long time speaking about something that could be articulated in half a minute? The thing is that this state is realized not in a single person, but in the connections between many of us. While inside this connection, problems begin, because this is where we reveal our breakage.
All the work in establishing the principle “There is none else beside Him, the good that does good” is in tying the broken desires into it, so that it would be realized between us. It is between us, not in each one of us.
It is not enough to say that I adhered to the Creator, that I woke up in the morning with the thought of Him and accepted everything that happens as coming from Him. It is sufficient for now, but it is an abstract idea, not a practical action. However, if I want to actually realize this principle in its correct state, I have to fulfill it in the group. This is what the entire work is about.
Therefore it is necessary for us to have a congress for the mutual work. It is not enough to read the articles alone or even learn it by heart because the main thing is in realizing it between us. Together we begin to extract more and more information from the articles, and each time we perceive them anew: more and more deeply.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/7/18, Lesson on Topic: “The Work in Wholeness, at the Entrance of Ibur (Conception)”
Related Material:
How The Spiritual Embryo Grows
The Essence of The Spiritual Work
Through The Screen Of Our World
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