In the News (from Business Insider): “Americans weren’t always addicted to buying things. … People used to save money for things they actually needed.

“But in the age of plenty that followed World War I, corporations countered the threat of overproduction with a manipulative psychological strategy.

“We must shift America from a needs, to a desires culture,” wrote Paul Mazur of Lehman Brothers. “People must be trained to desire, to want new things even before the old had been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality in America. Man’s desires must overshadow his needs.”

“This conspiracy, enabled by new sophistication in advertising and supported by the government, was shockingly effective….

“A new kind of advertising was key to this possible, and the pioneer in this field was Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, who showed corporations how to make people want things they didn’t need by linking mass-produced goods to unconscious desires….

“Bernays shattered the taboo against women smoking by persuading a group of debutantes to light up at a parade — an event he leaked to the media ahead of time with the phrase ‘Torches Of Freedom’ — thereby linking smoking with challenging male authority.

“In 1927 an American journalist wrote: ‘A change has come over our democracy, it is called consumptionism. The American citizens first importance to his country is now no longer that of citizen, but that of consumer.’

“Elected in 1928, President Herbert Hoover was the first politician to embrace the central role of consumerism.”

My Comment: But time develops a desire in people, and they are no longer satisfied with shopping. There is a desire, but there is no fulfillment because desires became virtual, aimed at the meaning of life, the feeling of happiness. In addition, an understanding has come that fulfillment of the material desires kills the desire itself, and thus the feeling of enjoyment and happiness disappears because pleasure is felt only when the desire and fulfillment meet, and fulfillment reduces the feeling of happiness.

It turns out that happiness is unattainable if we fulfill the desire, and how is it possible to satisfy it so it is not satisfied, to always have desire and not receive?

There is a science of receiving—the science of Kabbalah (to receive in Hebrew), which teaches us how to achieve eternal and infinite happiness! It is possible if we break the link between desire and fulfillment, if I love someone by fulfilling him, I enjoy. That is why love (not for the body, but for a human being) is a means of achieving happiness. (See the Talk on the Economics of Happiness, 3/1/13)
[103124]

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Question: In one of the weekly Torah portions, it speaks mainly about Mount Sinai and the commandments, but it is called by the name of the hero “Yitro – Jethro.” Why? It speaks about him only in the beginning and this is not the main thing in it.

Answer: This only seems that way. We don’t know what is important in the Torah and what is not. It reveals everything in a contingent form like this so that only a person who is occupied with the work in order to enter into the spiritual world begins to understand what is actually being said in this instruction book. Therefore, there are four levels of understanding of the Torah: simple, literary, allegorical, and truth.

Jethro is a great system of the spiritual world that essentially connects the characteristic of bestowal and the characteristic of reception, and, specifically owing to that, a person can begin to work with his egoistical desires in the right form.

The characteristic Israel is the characteristic of bestowal abstracted from our world and not connected to the ego. Therefore, they speak about the Jews almost as if they were aliens: They have something unique that makes them stand out from the general masses. There exists such a suspicious look at them from the side of the rest of the nations—and this is truly so.

We see this regarding the relationship of the Jews to the world in regard to life and not in regard to the superficial egoistical relationship that is found on the surface, but rather if we dig deeper into them. In spite of all this, there is some kind of different relationship, different knowledge, different characteristics, different behavior, and caution, not from fear, but rather from an understanding that the world is not so simple, which is to say, from a characteristic of a unique relationship seen in them in regard to the world, in regard to fate, in regard to history, and in regard to some kind of external system.

In our world, this is emanated into all kinds of ordinary characteristics, However, derived from this, in these people from the beginning, there was rooted a spiritual source, a spark that is called the point in the heart, and, therefore, they are dual, and not just egoistical, for, within their ego, the point in the heart is also found.

This point can become prominent and can drag the ego after it, and it also can be the opposite when the ego drags the point in the heart after it. People of the first type embodied that Israel, that nation, which existed 2000 years ago from the days of Babylon until the destruction of the Second Temple. They lived, then, specifically with this point in the heart; it led them forward. They corrected their ego according to the instruction of the Torah.

And, after that, came the exile, a state in which the point in the heart was found within the ego and obeyed it, and, so, the ego dragged it. However, thanks to this point in the heart, the ego profited. Therefore we see that the Jews in our world are more egoistic, more successful, more agile, and so forth, which is to say, they are immersed in the ego more than all the rest of the nations.

Those characteristics that were given to them for the needs of ascent were used in them to go deeper into the ego. They understood how it was possible to use the ego in order to fulfill it, but this was a necessary mixture of the characteristics of reception and bestowal, and Jethro is the system that helps to direct the ego in the right way for gradual work on itself with the help of the point in the heart.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/11/13

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Question: As much as a person is in more adhesion with the Rav, the group, and study, then his desire to receive grows more?

Answer: Of course, otherwise how would you grow? That’s why it is said: “The one that is greater than his friend, his inclination is greater than his.”

Question: So how do we restrict our desire?

Answer: I do not restrict the desire itself, but rather the use of the desire. I don’t want my desire to become smaller or to completely disappear. No, I relate to it with all the respect that it deserves, with love not hate, because it is help against it. I deliberately work on myself in this manner of recognition and try to guard the limits of my desire in all my discernments. They become a real treasure for me, and I give them high regard.

Then all my life becomes something very important, precious. In front of me, as if in a game, parts of this very complex mechanism are passing and I do not neutralize them, do not restrict them; I want to rise above them. This is the ascent, the rising in the spiritual ladder. The restriction itself is made by the Light and I do not do the work of the Light. That would be like asceticism and there is nothing good about that. We need to receive the things as they come, rise above them, and then use them in the correct form.

Question: How does it happen? It is very easy to drown inside a desire.

Answer: I ask all the time to be in faith above reason, in the middle line. My desire that I rise above is the left line; the bestowal that I achieve is the right line. And the order of the mutual relations between bestowal and receiving is called the middle line. This mechanism rises higher and higher as if by a jack.
[102765]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/10/13, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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Then came Amalek, and fought with Israel in Rephidim. And Moses said unto Joshua: “Choose us out men, and go out, fight with Amalek; tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God in my hand” (The Torah, Exodus, “BeShalach,” 17:8 – 17:9).

Amalek is our innermost and most egoistic desire and the ideological enemy on the way to spirituality. The war spoken about in the Torah is the inner war, which is in order to unite more strongly, to discover within us more egoistic desires, including Amalek, to rise above them, and to win. In order to compete against it, we need “the elders.” This means the most corrected attributes in a person. Described here are many attributes and through their help, we go out to battle against egoism. It really appears to us as the enemy, as we see it as additional “against us,” both internally and externally.

Until a person detaches himself from his inner ego, he doesn’t feel this resistance, this hostility, this hatred towards his nature. He doesn’t feel that this nature also comes from the Creator, that the Creator purposely reveals these attributes within him (after all, “there is none else besides Him”) in order to help him to again and again ask the upper force to correct him, to transcend and help him to use all his previous egotistic desires correctly in bestowal and love.

This is because a person has no attribute of “bestowal.” The attribute of bestowal is the Creator, and the person has only the attribute of “reception.” Thus, “to receive for the sake of bestowal” (the use of the ego for bestowal) is a very difficult war with Amalek.

If all the other previous wars for correction were created in order to rise above our ego to escape from Egypt, to exit different kinds of problems, to rise above them, then now, there is no need to rise, but to fight with the ego face to face.

We are not fighting Pharaoh but simply running away from him as it’s impossible to do anything with him. Amalek is the same Pharaoh, just in another, more inner form, from which it is impossible to escape. We must face it in this way, meaning in order to tilt it towards our benefit and win so that we commit it to work for the sake of bestowal.

The main thing is that it’s impossible to beat Amalek. So it’s said that the war with Amalek continues until the last moment of correction, and no one is able to beat him alone. The Creator leaves Amalek for “dessert,” for the very last breakthrough when man finally beats it with the help of the upper force. And then all the egoism of a person changes to “for the sake of bestowal.”
[102650]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 2/4/13

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Question: What is the difference between spiritual shame and the shame that we feel in our daily life?

Answer: Corporeal shame is egoistic shame since I don’t want my pride hurt. Spiritual shame occurs after the restriction, when I don’t worry about myself and am not ashamed of my natural attributes anymore. I worry about something that is totally different.

I must feel shame! I actually look for it in my spiritual growth since it gives me great powers. If you were ashamed now, just imagine how enthusiastic you would become, and what powers it would give to move. You would not sit so calmly and doze in your seat like you do now. You would start moving until this shame subsides. You would continue worrying about this shame for a week before you finally calmed down.

You would be ready to do anything just to neutralize the reason for the shame and would not calm down until everything got back to the way it was before. If a certain person shames you, you would do anything to get revenge. Some people are more hot-tempered and some less, but everyone experiences the same emotions more or less.

The question is whether I will be able to attain a state that will not affect me personally, but one in which I will feel shame because I don’t contribute to the society, don’t participate in it, and don’t add what I have to add or even more. This is the only thing of which I am ashamed.

If we say to someone, “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” it’s as if we showed him that he is inconsiderate of others. This is the point where I begin my correction.

So my personal attributes are totally irrelevant because they are part of my animal character. Have you even seen an animal that is ashamed of anything? Have you ever met a cat that blushed because it stole some cream and got caught?

An animal has nothing to be ashamed of. But the human being in us that we begin to build feels shame. The shame is related to him, to the person who worries whether he gives to others, adds for the benefit of others, and fulfills his duty in the general system.
[103039]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/18/13, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”

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In our world, the egoistic nature immediately extinguishes the feeling of shame. It usually finds justification for our actions: we use others, steal, and attribute different things to ourselves. We usually don’t even pay attention to the fact that we calculate everything egoistically and treat others egoistically, looking at everything and evaluating everything from the perspective of personal interest.

We don’t feel any shame because of that. If we could be more sensitive with regard to the attribute of receiving and bestowal, and if we could check where we really receive and where we bestow and according to which principle we look at the world, then we would simply burn because of terrible shame.

If the attribute of bestowal were revealed to me in all its supremacy, I could see myself in my true form, like a tiny black insect that only worries about food aspiring to grab as much as possible and swallow everything it sees. Then the shame would burn me because of the feeling of my nothingness compared to the real attribute of bestowal.

A person may even find it scary to think that this can suddenly be revealed to everyone, to all of humanity. We may say, well what can we do? After all he is just a human being, a created being that acts according to his nature over which he has no control. But still he would be terribly ashamed. He would rather die than feel such shame.

There are no greater sufferings than shame since it is at the basis of the whole desire to receive. The first restriction was a result of shame, since shame erases the concept of Adam (a human being). Phase four annuls itself if it feels shame, since phase four is the feeling of an independent person who is ready to carry out his decisions. Shame, however, is actually the totally opposite feeling and so it annuls a person’s personality.

However, we speak about our current state in the meantime, when there is no Adam yet, but only a tiny animal that isn’t even responsible for its actions. It received all these attributes from the upper, from the Creator, and so “go to the craftsman who made me,” go to the one who has created this created being. But if we begin to discover the attribute of bestowal that resides in this world, the Creator, and value ourselves according to Him, then such a great disparity will be revealed between us, in every sense, that we previously couldn’t even imagine.

Shame is so powerful that only thanks to it do we have chance to stand against our ego and correct it, just as in the world of Ein Sof (Infinity), Malchut gave up everything because of the shame. It wasn’t a feeling of shame because it received and was opposite from the Creator and was ashamed of its attributes, but it was ashamed because it couldn’t bestow like He does. This is a totally different shame, shame on the level of the end of correction compared to us.

We, on the other hand, discover our ego gradually. First, I am ashamed that I was taught to steal, that my lie has been revealed, that I want to use everyone, and to harm others. The revelation of shame helps me place myself in the right position so that I won’t hide like I do now, like a frightened animal that is afraid of being shamed. On the contrary, I will be ready to reveal all my evil and to shame myself in order to get out of this force of resistance, to overcome and defeat the ego and to build a Masach (screen) against the ego.

I need a Masach, not in order to extinguish my shame, but in order to change my attributes from receiving to bestowal. Unless this happens, I can stand the shame since it only opens my heart and spills out all the truth.

So adhesion is inseparable from shame and correction. We shouldn’t be afraid of shame; instead we have to feel it and understand that the main thing is to rise above what we have in order to work with this attribute that can bring us to correction.
[103035]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/18/13, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”

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Baal HaSulam, “The Sages’ Fruit about the Torah,” “It Isn’t Time to Collect the Herd”: When the seventy souls of Jacob spread to 600,000 souls, things went back to the way they were before, that the herd have to be collected, and the stone should be rolled from the well, and when the strength is lacking from one part it causes the exhaustion of the full measure. And this is the secret, that the individual and the general are equal and everything that was included in the general and became an exception doesn’t come to teach us about the exception but rather about the general… and this is what the fable in The Zohar means when it tells about two who came to a boat and one was drilling a hole underneath him and his friend reprimanded him saying, why are you drilling a hole, and the fool answered him: “What do you care, I am drilling underneath myself,” since indeed the individual ruins the beauty of the whole figure.

… and this is the meaning of a prayer for the public, that the individual mustn’t be an exception and ask for himself, even if it is to bring contentment to his Maker, except for the general as a whole… since he who is an exception and who asks for himself, doesn’t build but rather brings about destruction upon himself, since there cannot be an exception without the dress of pride, and alas for the one who brings destruction upon his soul… and every person should be included with all his might in the general Israel, in every appeal to the Creator, in praying and in the work…since this is the nature of the Light of the general that resides on the individual that annuls his individuality so that he doesn’t feel himself.”

We must constantly remember that all our thoughts come as ‘help against” and it is thanks to them that we can get stronger and develop. We have to rise above every interruption and connect as much as we can to the feeling of the general family, “as one man in one heart.”

We mustn’t leave these thoughts, the feeling that we are all part of one family. The general feeling of “one family” is the feeling of the Creator that resides among us, in us, when we constantly yearn for the feeling of connection among us despite all the interruptions.

This is our work. We have to remind each other about this and it is even better to try to do it with our thoughts: to keep this thought and to try to influence all the friends and the whole world by our thoughts and to pass on the emphasis on internal actions. This is our goal at the moment; we have to reach adhesion and to succeed.

This is the meaning of the “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are one”—all those who yearn for the revelation of the Creator (Yashar – El) in the connection between them following all the advice of the Kabbalists in order to reach connection in which the Creator will be revealed.

So even the purest prayer with the best intention doesn’t help if it isn’t a prayer for many, for the general as one whole, but is rather a prayer of a person who separates himself from others. Not only isn’t it helpful, but it is actually harmful! We should regard separation and division, especially if it is intentional, as unacceptable conduct. It is the most serious obstacle and we should try to root it out.
[103028]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/17/13

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Question: How can a person feel that he is not only part of his local group, but also part of the whole global group? What concentrated attention, efforts, and thoughts are needed for that?

Answer: Our egoistic nature doesn’t let us think about real values or to feel true reality. It doesn’t let us worry or think about those that we don’t feel naturally. Some distant group that I don’t quite even know the location of, I can’t feel it close to me and it can’t be the focus of my concerns. I don’t have the same deficiencies and needs that they have, so what can I do?

We have to work on this artificially according to the advice of Kabbalists about the work with the environment. We don’t feel any attraction to the environment either, and it’s only later that we begin to feel that we depend on it. If you don’t drown in the friends and don’t throw yourself into their arms, you will not be able to advance. All your spiritual development depends on them, and it’s only from them that you can receive spiritual bestowal. This understanding comes as a result of years of careful work with the environment.

We mustn’t wait for the feelings of all the groups to reach us on their own; we have to work on it artificially. This is why we were given this Mitzva (commandment): Go and start working, “Go and make a living from one another,” start connecting!

It is written, “Love thy friend as thyself,” a commandment. Is it possible to force someone to love? On the contrary, if you love, then it’s impossible to detach from this. Here, however, you are pushed and told, “Love!” How can that be?

It means that there are certain actions that we have to perform in order to attain the love of others. This commandment has nothing to do with your emotions; you are not obligated to love, but to perform an action by which you will attain this love. This action has to be performed against your will. If they were compatible with your will it wouldn’t be necessary to command a person to love.

Suppose, I serve you gefilte fish, which is a traditional Ashkenazi food, and I tell you “love it!” However, you are used to Sephardic food and you are disgusted by the cold tasteless fish. But if there is a commandment, then you have to start getting used to this against your will so that a habit will become second nature.

So you force yourself to eat this fish, although you feel like throwing up. But you try again and again together with a prayer. You curse the fish but you eat; you start from totally mechanical actions. In your emotions, you curse me for having given you the fish. Clearly you have no control over your heart, but you curse me and eat the gefilte fish again and again because you are obligated to love it.

The commandment of “love thy friend,” is worse than any disgusting fish. This commandment includes all the strange and hated dishes, but after you exert yourself enough, the Light that Reforms influences you and the unbelievable happens! You suddenly begin to get used to that fish. It seems that it has a different flavor and that it’s not as disgusting as it used to be. You are not repulsed by it as you were before and you begin to accept it.

This is thanks to the performance of physical actions above reason, against your will, by following the advice of Kabbalists. By having fulfilled their orders and in general the orders of the Creator that were passed on to you by Kabbalists, you receive the Light that Reforms through them. Thus, you receive new attributes and begin to love gefilte fish, the friends, others, and the Creator.

The commandment “to love” has nothing to do with emotion but with actions. Now we have a chance to perform such actions in the form of an attack! There is always an option for such actions, but especially now, when the European convention and Passover are approaching; it’s a special time that we can attack. In the next two weeks, starting today, we all rush to this attack.
[102954]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/15/13, Shamati #38

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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 19: …And all this agony is felt only by the Klipa of our body, created only to be perished and buried. This teaches us that the will to receive for oneself was created only to be eradicated, to be abolished from the world and to be turned into a will to bestow. And the pains we suffer are but discoveries of its nothingness and the harm in it.

We are confined to a “cage” called this world that is all affliction. On the other hand, all 125 spiritual steps on which we continually obtain an altruistic intention (Lishma) by working in three lines reveal “the Good who doeth Good” to us. Consequently, our current state and this world are “non-existent” in the spiritual sense of the word, since genuine “existence” means similarity with the Creator, the intention to bestow. When we annul the boundaries of this world and rise above it, we enter the realm where there is “the Good who doeth Good.”

It goes without saying that this work contains multiple “surprises” that are of a very unpleasant nature. Each time, we suddenly find wicked things in ourselves. It so happens because it gives us a chance to correct the evil inside us. Our path is all about the correction of broken vessels.

However, in this world we don’t correct anything; rather it is a preparation period. Only after it’s over do we approach a real correction and find answers to our questions: “Why,” “what for,” and “how” should we implement this knowledge? However, we won’t understand the answers with our current intellect, since at the spiritual plane, all clarifications are done in a reverse order…
[102523]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/12/13, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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A person cannot exit his ego by himself. Only the group can help him by throwing a lifeline to whoever wants to join it. The group is external to a person, so when he wants to exit himself, he cries out to them, “Save me, I have fallen into a deep well! Throw me a rope so that I can tie it around me and then pull me out of here!”

Only the group can offer such help to a person who needs help, by wanting to be with everyone. The rope is an invitation to connect with the friends, with their love. If a person tries to hold on to this invitation and tries to be in equivalence of form with them, then the friends will begin to pull him up. He has to overcome his ego more and more, on his part, which means that he rises from the well towards the friends.

Each time more problems and new interruptions that hold him back will build up on that rope, but he will overcome them and hold on more tightly to the rope, climbing it until he comes out of the well.
[102816]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/13/13, Shamati #36 

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