The book, Shem MeShmuel, Parshat “Ha’azinu”: “Adam HaRishon said to all of the creatures, ‘Come, let’s bow down and kneel before the Creator’; but due to the error the concept had become corrupted until even the good of that generation didn’t have the possibility of uniting together to serve the Creator. Rather they were isolated individuals. And the correction of this began in the generation of the dispersion which made a division in the human species. This means that the correction began with the gathering and association of people for service to the Creator, beginning from Abraham, peace be upon him.”

The desire to receive must reach correction and resemblance to the characteristic of bestowal, meaning the Creator, whose desire is to benefit the creatures.

The desire to receive will be like the Creator through intention. It cannot change itself and remains a desire for pleasure. But as a result of the process, all of its pleasure is in bestowal. It advances in this direction.

The correction begins from the developed state, from the advanced stage of the extension of the four phases of the Ohr Yashar (Direct Light), when the desire already feels itself, its reception. It is aware of who is receiving, understands that it is the opposite of the giver, and the feeling of this difference awakens shame in it.

And so the correction doesn’t begin immediately. Adam, the first Kabbalist, was the one in whom it awakened. Like us, he asked questions about the meaning of life: “What is all this for? Why? How?”, and he reached discovery of the Upper Light.

The desires were weak and small then, what is called refined. And the corrections were also different than our corrections. Indeed, the desire to receive didn’t just grow, but also divided into many parts. It was not just that the population of Babylon was not large. The number of humans in the world tells us how much the desire for pleasure has grown and requires division so that everyone will have the power to correct his part.

There were ten generations between Adam and Noah, and between Noah and Abraham who led the correction differently, and he wanted to add to this process all of the people in the world who were still concentrated in one area.

As we know, Abraham gathered around him all of the people who wanted to join with him and took them out of Babylon.

For the most part, there are no meaningful differences from ancient days until our day: not in essence, and not in the stages of the process. Of course, each one feels his unique way through his individual Reshimo. But by and large, all of these corrections are called the “service of the Creator,” or work “for the sake of the Creator,” which is incumbent upon us.

And so in the time of Abraham, part of the Babylonians began to separate from the others and called themselves, Yashar-El (straight to the Creator), Israel, according to their inclination, their goal. When they united, they passed through various states of connection on more or less strong levels, stages of analysis, the levels of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

After that they found themselves in the low state of the Egyptian exile, and felt how their ego had again grown and dominated them, just about as it had been in Babylon. But they already related to its dominance differently. They wanted to leave its dominance, and at that time they had almost disappeared, melting into it so much had it swallowed them into itself.

This was a real danger, the “49 Gates of Impurity,” a state almost without a solution. And in spite of it all, from their last energy, with the help of the force among them called “Moses,” they succeeded in darkness, under a succession of blows, to awaken both “in good” and “in bad,” and flee from the dominance of the ego, rising above it.

This was called the “exodus from Egypt”—they rose above the ego and were drawn towards development. However, the ego didn’t disappear, but they controlled it themselves.

This control of the ego and even the ability to use it correctly for the sake of bestowal is called “Torah.” The Egyptian exile, the descent into the abyss of narcissism that was discovered, ultimately provided them with this ability.

And after this, the period of the wilderness began, where they adjusted the ego and corrected it with bestowal for the sake of bestowal, filling it with Hafetz Hesed (delighting in mercy). Even though they didn’t have anything, since they were in a wasteland, they passed from desire to desire and each time discovered the evil and corrected it.

The Torah tells us about this period and explains to us how it is necessary to correct the ego, to rise above it, and to control it. But this is control only on the first level: bestowal for the sake of bestowal.

And so, with the ascent of Malchut to Bina, after “forty years in the wilderness,” we were finally ready to correct Malchut. This was already the level called the “entrance into the land of Israel.” We continued on with corrections and wars, conquering the land, until the people of Israel dominated the land of Israel.

But with this the correction wasn’t finished. Only its first stage was finished, which had continued from Abraham until the building of the First Temple (Beit HaMikdash). This was the correction of only those people who had gone out from Babylon, a small part of humanity. But the general correction that Adam HaRishon had begun had not been realized.

So in order to continue the process, the group of Abraham that had become the people of Israel, had to be broken up and enter into contact, into connection, with all of the rest of these desires, these parts of humanity, which are called the “seventy nations of the world.” Meanwhile, they had been scattered to all places on Earth; in other words, from being controlled by the ego, they passed to all kinds of control, they created religions and faiths, and awakened various forces that acted upon them.

And so the nation of Israel not only had to fall from its level, but also had to be scattered among all the peoples, among all the forces, the controls and the methods, to be integrated with them and integrated in them.

The destruction of the Second Temple symbolizes the final fall of the people of Israel into unfounded hatred that was worse than among all the nations of the world, because they just about lost the connection between them, the characteristic of the people of Israel and belonging to the land of Israel. Indeed, only their general orientation, only their need to make the correction for the sake of the future, is what held them together in some form.

After that, the integration with the world was finished, and now the awakening again began. First of all, the people of Israel entered the land of Israel. After this they corrected themselves from being a small group to all of the people dwelling in Zion, after that to the people of Israel scattered throughout the Diaspora, and after that gradually the whole world.

Everything happens gradually, according to the refinement of the vessels, desires, and with the integration of the Reshimot that remained from the time of the shattering. In fact, there is nobody who is greater and nobody who is less here. We see this within the material only according to the intensity of the desire to receive and the Reshimot that are awakened within it.

They are under the influence of the Light that awakens them accordingly. And all of the corrections are sustained from the lightest correction to the heaviest correction. That is how development happens.
[138921]
From the 5^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/4/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: What is the absolute definition of good and evil?

Answer: Good is balance, harmony, and wholeness among all parts of nature. Evil is the opposite, a lack of balance, a lack of wholeness, eruptions of one of the forces, leading to wars and disasters.

In other words, good without evil is also not a good situation. It seems apparent that a bright sunny day is better than a rainy day, but if this increases to an extreme level, this heat will burn everything.

And so everything good is concealed within balance. This means that I must keep balance on the three levels of my existence: the corporeal (beastly), the human, and the spiritual. The corporeal level is health, home economics, healthy nutrition, healthy sex, and healthy relationships in the family. We must teach people all this because they, unlike animals, don’t inherit traits like these instinctively.

The human level is my relationships with society, with the environment. The spiritual level is my spiritual aspiration: my goal in life, my perception of reality, how I imagine what is higher. These three levels together require balance.

Question: How can one describe balance on the human level, in relationships with the environment?

Answer: We don’t feel a division between us, we belong to a unified community, to one human body; we are connected into one system. And among us we want to arrange for balanced relationships of mutual cooperation.

Ultimately nothing separates us, we are a single whole. We depend upon one another and don’t even feel this dependence, for the answers to all of my requests come at that moment, immediately supplying me with what is missing, and I gladly give to others what they lack.

This is called balance in human society, this is a reciprocal interaction based upon two opposing forces that there are in everyone. One is for all and all are for one. We must reach this.

Question: So what is the way that we are going to do this? How will we maintain the right direction towards the goal?

Answer: First of all, we must study it. If I try to organize my life in the family and in other frameworks like this, I will begin to feel balance, harmony, between us and the environment. And in this immediate vicinity some kind of shared power is revealed, the good and benevolent.

On one hand, we create it, yet on the other hand, it is latent in nature, it is above us. From this it follows that we don’t create the power itself, but the conditions for its discovery. And then we connect to it: It fills us and we build and create it, more and more, until there is complete harmony between us and this force. This is the goal, and it is called, “the perfect good.”

Question: This means that my “compass” is the good force that is discovered in every connection and interaction between me and the environment?

Answer: It is precisely between us. We are equal and seemingly disappear, leaving only one desire, and this is to maintain the balance of all of the harmony and unity.

And according to this general integral state among us, I now define the concept of good and evil. I call balance “good” and the lack of balance “evil.”

I repeat, the main thing is to reach balance with the immediate environment, in the connection of mutual cooperation. Here “plus” and “minus” meet, giving and receiving, like the exchange of materials, here there is an exchange of feelings and relationships that are being carried out. It is the same thing as on the level of the still, vegetative, and animate, yet already on a mental and spiritual level.

And on this level, we develop within us a “sense” of evil, the ability to recognize evil on the basis of a universal measuring stick: balance between people, mutual love, connection—all this is good. And the departure from the unity, distance from it, is evil.

This is what must become the basis of the education of the modern human. This is because essentially he doesn’t need anything more than this. This will bring him success in life.
[139000]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” 4/10/14

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Question: On one hand, Israel has an external problem, constant air strikes, and on the other hand, within the people, there is a split into many factions and directions. Everyone pulls to his side and hates others. How does this internal separation affect our external security?

Answer: The reason is the same: there is no connection between us. Then of course, there is a split between us, and we do not agree with each other.

Only a tiny part of the population has knowledge of the need for unity, of the method of unity. All the rest don’t know it yet, and they are not very interested in hearing about it.

Therefore, it is not surprising that there is such disunity and division within the nation. Everyone cares about how to get personal benefit from this situation. There is only one reason: lack of connection.

So, we should stop blaming those external enemies surrounding us on all the borders, as well as the internal enemies, that is, our egoism that separates us and makes us hate each other for no reason. You just have to start working against it. There is no other means of correction.
 [139188]
From KabTV’s “The Mission of the People of Israel,” 7/8/14

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Question: Why do we naturally want to receive the Torah as a kind of good, which we are “supposed” to receive?

Answer: And who said that the Torah, the method of correction, is perceived as good?

It is said: “I created the evil inclination, and I made the Torah as its spice.” The Creator created, on the one hand, evil, and on the other hand, a “spice,” against it, the force of correction. But what good is in it? What is good if I have a damaged car that needs to be fixed?

Look at the world. Who envies the Jewish people because they received the Torah? Except the people who are attracted to the purpose of creation, to correction, others can bring a variety of definitions of the Torah, and no one would name the Light that Reforms. No one will say that the essence of the Torah is the correction of evil in oneself and that we need to immerse ourselves in this process.

Our definition of the Torah as the Light that Reforms does not seem to bode well. We are talking about the force of correction which confronts all the evil that should be revealed in us. Revelation of evil is always very unpleasant, uncomfortable, and not gentle. This is something terrible: a grave illness and a cure for it.

It is no coincidence that children live through some diseases that will ensure their continued immunity. We need to experience every state on the path, discovering evil in each, suffering from it, and then correcting it.

So, who needs this? In the correct definition of this word, the term “Israel” promises sweet life to no one. If you look at the history of the Jewish people, then there is nothing to envy. Only a handful of people in the world are attached to Israel to share its fate. Perhaps they may have inherited their attraction from the Reshimot (reminiscences) of the lost tribes.

It is difficult to expect a mass influx there where we are working against egoism.
[139172]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/9/14, “Unity of the People”

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If a person gets tired and loses interest in his work, if he feels powerless and thinks that this path isn’t for him, it means that he hasn’t learned how to bring his separated parts, currently scattered around the world, closer to him. He doesn’t know how to grasp the empty vessels in which he can receive a filling.

After all, he is like a spider in the center of his web that catches desires,  which become part of his soul. from others in this network..

It is very important to understand that since we should constantly feel and yearn to be incorporated with the friends and absorb all their desires, I am like an egoist who constantly looks around with big greedy eyes for what else I can receive from the friends, which is an awakening, the importance of the goal, and connection!

I constantly envy them. I don’t disrespect them, but actually think that they conceal something from me. I am sure that each of them has something valuable for me, and that otherwise they would have no right to exist and I wouldn’t even see them. If I identify that someone exists, it means that he is a deficiency that I need in order to complete my soul.

This is how everyone should regard his friend. Therefore it says that everyone is meant to serve me, and by that I serve my Maker.
[138488]
From the preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson /22/14

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Opinion (Karlheinz Ruckriegel, happiness researcher at the Georg-Simon-Ohm Hochschule, University of Applied Arts in Nuremberg): “There, where people go through the daily struggle to survive, they are unlikely to be fully satisfied with their lives. They have a direct relationship between income and satisfaction. They say that happiness is not money, but in its quantity.

“However, starting from the GDP per capita of 10 thousand dollars a year, this dependence weakens and after 20,000 is lost completely. Previously, workers simply worked hard from start to finish, got paid and did not require anything else.

“Today, what is important is self-realization, to be engaged in interesting matters. In work, people seek success, friendship, recognition, projects with future and opportunities to reveal their talents. In general, gross domestic product is not an indicator of public satisfaction.

“The greater the social inequality, the less happy its citizens are. This is particularly evident when already at birth, people have unequal chances, and throughout their lifetime, they cannot change this situation. This affects both objective indicators, such as life expectancy and health.

“The level of well-being is effected by social contacts, active participation in public life, work that brings satisfaction, benevolence, health and inner freedom.

“The theses of the science of happiness are no longer controversial, but scientifically proven.”

My Comment: Our egoism is growing and requiring greater qualitative fulfillment. So today more than ever, people are very seriously studying the sources of happiness.
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Question: Why are diseases and physical sufferings needed?

Answer: These are the results of the general uncorrected ego. As long as it exists in the souls, even the corrected soul, that are in complete connection with the uncorrected souls, will feel suffering.

Question: It is possible to understand why suffering is required for Kabbalists so they can learn to rise above the level of the beast, but what about ordinary people?

Answer: We are all in collective dependence as a single entity, the soul, a desire to receive. If it is “for its own sake,” then we suffer, if it is “for the sake of the Creator,” meaning similar to the Light, then we enjoy.

Question: Isn’t this cruel to fill poor creatures with suffering?

Answer: The Creator takes our final state into account; His conduct is derived from the need to bring us to the complete end of correction and perfection.
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In the News (from Vzglyad (Look)): “The Internet as a tool and the environment creates a special type of modern person and affects his attitude. The Internet as a medium has an inherent matrix of values. People do not know this, but getting into this matrix, they automatically begin to act accordingly to its principles.

“The engine of change is the information sphere, media and various forms of social connections. Some of them are linked to transnational supervising institutions that use the network as professional players. A mass of ordinary participants is involved in the process altruistically and proactively.

“The ruling classes and population, who are involved in the maelstrom of the globalization change, have not yet realized that this world paradigm is bringing disasters to the world. Cyber operations and information-psychological aggression are only elements of the ideological confrontation, in which the targets are not only countries but also civilizations.

“The dominance of the ‘only true’ formula creates an effect of the ‘critical mass of lies in space’ that weakens the ability to distinguish ‘yours’ from ‘someone else’s.’

“In addition, the ‘universal dogma’ is only partially recognized as an invasion in one’s own world (for example, the idea of gay marriage in Orthodox and Muslim countries), while other elements of the same dogma are met with a positive response because they match the values (freedom of expression, equality, health, comfort).

“The most important thing is that internetization and networks change not only consumer stereotypes, but also the very course of formation and development of people.

“Network structures should replace large national states that unite people by great meaning – people should be divided into the maximum number of small groups according to a variety of criteria.

“It is necessary that people define themselves not as part of a larger whole, but as a resident of his district – he is given a sense of a small community. At the same time, he may feel some belonging to something planetary, be it ecology or the struggle for human rights. But this scheme has no place for self-determination in the national state.

“It is difficult to find self-determination in the empire; it requires large, not ‘universal,’ but one’s own civilizational meanings. A small group can unite on the basis of at least short-term interests.”

My Comment: As in all human actions, networks operate to the detriment of the human being, but by that they reveal our egoism, our nature as absolute evil, from which it is necessary to rid ourselves. Therefore, Kabbalah welcomes everything that accelerates the process of recognition of evil and brings us to the correction of evil into good. This action can be performed only by using the science of Kabbalah.
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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot“, Item 119: This is also why the great privilege, when one is awarded sentencing himself to a scale of merit, is still not enough for one to attain whole love, meaning the fourth discernment. This is so because now he does not attain His merit as being good who does good to the good and to the bad, but only His Providence over him.

Yet, he still does not know of His Providence in this sublime and wonderful manner with the rest of the people in the world. Thus, we learned above that as long as one does not know the dealings of the loved one with others, until none of them is missing, the love is still not eternal. Hence, one must also sentence the entire world to a scale of merit, and only then does the eternal love appear to him.

On the way to complete adhesion and attaining the goal of creation, we attain all our deficiencies and all of the Creator’s actions on us during the whole process we have been through when the upper Providence was concealed. Then a person sees how in all the stages, in everything he has been through, the Creator was good and benevolent to him in absolute love.

As a result, a person feels that he loves the Creator back. But this isn’t enough, since he also has to work on the future, so that he will keep the same attitude. This means that he has to develop vessels inside himself that are called faith and confidence, so that in every stage in the future he will not lose faith in the Creator’s love for him.

Even this is not enough in order to determine that the Creator is good and benevolent, since it is all true only with regard to a person himself, and now he has to determine the same thing in regard to everyone else.

This means that at the end of correction, he attains everyone’s end of correction, and from this point he sees the whole human history and the entire path all the souls have gone through in the process of their correction.

These separate souls discover the connections between them above the sea of hatred in which they are immersed that separates them and keeps them apart. Through these connections of love, they feel how the sea of the ego separates them, and thus discover that the Creator constantly takes care of them in the best possible way, and that all the sufferings, the blows, and the problems that they have been through during all of human history and the ascent of the souls through all the worlds until the world of Ein Sof (infinity) were all out of the Creator’s great love.

When a person ascends the spiritual ladder, he becomes detached from his ego as he ascends, and then he sees that it was only in the ego that he felt the afflictions. If it weren’t for the ego and the desire to receive for himself at the expense of others, he would always feel only the love and great care of the Creator for him.

This means that he sees and understands that all the negative feelings don’t come from the Creator, but rather stem from his connection to his egoistic desires. Thus he determines that he is in contact, in a covenant with the good and the benevolent, and that this connection, this covenant, is full of love.
[138195]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/18/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: What is “Judgment and Mercy” in spirituality? What does it have in common with regular morality?

Answer: Baal HaSulam writes that many people think that the Torah speaks about morality, but in fact it is a huge and unfortunate misinterpretation.

Morality is based on life experience. A person accumulates essential knowledge from various life situations. But the science of Kabbalah is not associated with our bodily life experiences. We follow the advice of Kabbalists who pull us “by the ear” into the upper reality, where ear refers to the level of Bina (bestowal). In other words, I don’t learn from my ordinary life; on the contrary, I rise above its experience!

In this world, all I deal with is my egoism. I give advice that is based on my ego and serves to benefit it. We warn a child not to get close to an angry dog or he’ll bite. All I am capable of is differentiating things that are good or bad for me; and that’s all that morality does.

But the wisdom of Kabbalah doesn’t operate out of fright and punishment. It teaches us to change our desires and expose them to the Light.

In other words, it teaches us how to internally correct ourselves, rather than reprimanding or scaring us.It doesn’t threaten us with an “angry dog” or an “abusive” Creator.

Kabbalah doesn’t intimidate us, nor does it guarantee any reward in the future worlds. It doesn’t manipulate our egoism; rather it corrects it with the Light that Reforms.

The combination of judgment and mercy in spirituality is a mix of Bina (bestowal) and Malchut (reception), a degree of inclusion of Bina into Malchut and vice versa, as well as their ability to support each other.

Malchut enters Bina and a drop of judgment penetrates mercy and lessens it. In other words, Malchut’s inability to match Bina triggers a contraction of the latter, but at the same time it discloses Bina to a degree of Malchut’s adequacy to it.

Hence, inclusion of Bina into Malchut occurs and Bina brings a portion of mercy into Malchut. At this point, Malchut enters Bina and contributes a portion of judgment into the latter thus defining how much Bina allows Malchut to bestow and receive and identifies the degree of their connection.

It means that when a measure of mercy connects with a portion of judgment, they start working together from both ends. The upper part contracts and utilizes a portion of judgment, although it would prefer to reveal itself through exposing mercy.

The lower part strives to attain a measure of mercy, which is why it contributes a property of judgment to the upper part and pronounces: “Don’t bestow to me! I will shut you down!”

Or it says: “You can reveal yourself completely! I won’t receive anything from you anyway. I will use my screen and will receive from you only to the extent of my similarity to you!”

This has nothing to do with threats or morality. On the contrary, it is about absolute liberty of exploration and the only freedom of will there is.
[24429]
From the lesson on “Beit Shaar a Kavanot” 10/21/10

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