Filed under: Free Will, Group Work, My Similarity to the Creator - No Comments →

Question: In the post “I Do Not Want To Be A Mountain Climber” you write: “When the system becomes completely revealed, we will see that it is global, integral, and all its parts are completely binding, like an enormous live organism. Its individual parts do not have any freedom of will to do whatever they wish to do because this does not exist in nature. Everything abides by the law of determinism.”

I don’t agree with what you say about determinism. There are certain things out of our control, but still there is some choice too. For examples, cells can become cancerous….

Answer: Freedom of will is specifically in being either a healthy/giving or cancerous/receiving cell.

Question: How do we stop cursing emptiness in our heart and embrace it with gladness as part of the path? Or should we always expect some part of us to disagree with bestowal?

Answer: Don’t curse emptiness, but fill it with any of our fulfillments, although you will feel it from time to time.
[61350]

Related Material:
Freedom Is Born From Love
True And False Freedom
A Student’s Obligation Is To Be Happy!

Filed under: Free Will, Q&A, Spirituality - No Comments →

Question: Why do we need the desires of the animate level if we don’t correct them? What’s their use?

Answer: We need these desires to exist outside of the spiritual world. They give us the opportunity to ascend without being dependent on the spiritual world, without being bribed by it.

This allows us to live without “spiritual favors.” We continuously decide whether or not we should unite with our neighbors, the group. Sometimes we want to drop everything and leave, and we really do have that opportunity.

On the other hand, if we only had desires related to the group, we would be similar to, say, ants. Without having anything else, we would live the life of society involuntarily, and would again be on the animate, bodily level.

However, I live in my body and can aspire to spirituality or not aspire to it. This allows me to be a spiritual person because I reach the form of bestowal on my own, in spite of my natural, initial desire. The Creator made the evil inclination in me so that by overcoming it, I would become a free person. And I decide whether I want this or not by my own free choice.

Otherwise I would live in the spiritual world, but on the animate level. I would be an “angel”—a “spiritual animal” that instinctively loves everyone.
[61539]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/23/11, “Mutual Guarantee”

Related Material:
A Yearning For Love Instead Of Suffering And Hatred
Why Is The Creator Concealed?
Egoism Is The King Without The Crown

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Free Will, Group Work, Q&A, Spirituality - No Comments →

Desire is the creature’s substance, the place where we feel alive and reveal the reality within and around us. The Light works with desire and develops it according to its program. At first, the Light develops desire directly in order to shape it. Then, inside the created desire, the fourth phase of the world of Infinity, the Light begins to create the conditions for its correction.

After all, this desire is still raw material. It does not feel, understand, or have freedom of will. It only operates according to the orders of the Light, which control it. This way the Light creates different forms of desire called worlds or concealments. The Light reveals and conceals itself a little, and the desire goes through changes, until it absorbs all qualities of the Light.

The further the Light distances the desire from itself, the more I begin to feel who and what I am, even though the desire does not yet have any freedom or independent development. Everything happens because of the Light. The desire, being an innate substance, acts according to set laws, and it does not have any choice in its reactions. A desire, a natural material that acts in accordance with established laws, has no choice but to respond.

In this way, development reaches a special structure called “man” who receives the choice either to act within his reason or above it. “Within reason” is an action that corresponds with the Light’s action—the matter’s natural reaction. But it is possible to achieve a reaction above your desire, which does not conform to the natural laws of nature—it is possible to create an ability to react in a way that is opposite to the reaction to the Light’s orders.

This opposite reaction is called “man” namely because it is similar to the Light. After all, when he follows the Light’s orders inside his desire, he is called a created being. However, when he doesn’t follow the Light’s orders but wishes to rise above the level of matter, to rise to the degree of the Light and become like it, then he must have an opposite reaction. In accordance with this reaction, he is called “man” or Adam, which means “similar” (Domeh) to the Light.

Thus, matter receives the name of “man” and its new development begins there. It has a variety of forms imprinted on it by the Light during the period of natural growth. However, now, this desire begins to work on its own. It strives to become like the Light. In other words, it constantly strives to have a different reaction to what the Light awakens within it.

The Light awakens reactions within him that are opposite to the Light’s behavior, but man must accept this game and, above it, become like the Light. This is referred to as work by “faith above reason.”

This work can have different forms. The Light sometimes reveals or conceals itself. Sometimes, it awakens bigger or smaller desires in man. Through these influences, it keeps awakening new reactions in matter. This way, matter learns through its reactions. It studies itself and the Light, which is an example for it. Gradually, it becomes closer to the Light in its qualities, until it completely merges with it.

It is clear that on this path, the desire collects understanding and sensations of itself and the Light. It learns the Light’s program and learns the Creator’s attitude toward the creature by the way the Light treats it. And to the contrary, it learns to overcome its own nature and become like the Light. In this way, desire’s substance gradually attains the degree of the Creator.
[61005]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/17/2011, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
Personal Participation Required
A System With One Degree Of Freedom
Be Ready For Changes

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Free Will, Inner Work - No Comments →

It is an adult’s obligation to teach a child and to give him all of the necessary preparation for adult life during childhood. And the same thing happens in the spiritual world: The upper level gives the lower level all of the “keys,” all of the means for continuing to build itself.

The lower level just has to figure all of this out and make a free choice to keep going. There is nothing else to do but this. All the forces are already at our disposal.

Therefore, the small state (Katnut) is considered fundamental, while the great state (Gadlut) is an addition that sometimes appears and sometimes disappears, depending on the efforts of the lower one. But he always keeps the small state, which serves as a good, healthy foundation for creating the next great state, which is new every time.

Therefore, the small degree, called Hafetz Hesed (one who desires mercy), fear of the Creator, the level of Bina, “artistry,” or faith, is what has to be transmitted to the next state, from the fathers to the sons, from the upper level of the spiritual ladder to the lower level.
[60142]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/08/11, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
Upbringing In The Spiritual World
Outer Distance And Inner Closeness
A Choice Without Hints

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Education, Free Will, Spirituality - 2 Comments →

There is a desire to receive and there is a desire to bestow. The whole creation is nothing but an opposition of one to the other. The desire to bestow manages the desire to receive in order to bring it to the identification of itself and to make it equivalent to the desire to receive.  That is the initial program of the desire to bestow.

The nature of the good, according to the science of Kabbalah, is benevolence (doing good). As the Creator is perfect, to that extent he has a program of improving the creation. And there exists just one path toward perfection: The creation has to feel the Creator’s state. He created the creation as opposite to Himself, separated from Himself, and He guides the creation through a sequence of states through which the creation attains the wisdom of the Creator and feels what there is in the Creator.

But it is not enough just to understand and feel, the creation attains the Creator’s nature by itself including everything that is in the creation and its management. So, the force of giving is called “Light” and the force of reception “a vessel”. Similarity in their qualities is called “an intention of bestowal” or “a screen“. Due to the altruistic intention and by the nature of its action, the desire to receive becomes the one of bestowal. If it receives to please somebody, it, in fact, commits an act of bestowal using reception as a means: It doesn’t have any other way to establish contact and give anything to anybody.

How can we participate in the process? How do we gain more understanding? How do we reach the degree of the Creator? How do we feel His actions? In short, how do we become like Him? After all, this is the goal—to become like Him.

We still don’t understand what it means “to bring pleasure to the Creator,” but “equivalence to the Creator” is closer to our current egoistic understanding. To be like Him means to bestow, to understand bestowal, to take upon oneself, to govern the creation… Everything is in that.

But in fact, to be like Him is to understand the whole program and the complete course of actions assumed by it from the beginning to the very end in the first place. Such an understanding requires the whole to be disassembled and then put back together. In this way, we reveal the gap between the Creator and the creation together with the connection that brings them into equivalence. In that, Light and darkness, plus and minus, positive and negative connect on every level.

In the process of our development, under constant influence of the Light, a vessel acquires various shapes until it reaches the “final stop”—complete equivalence of qualities with the Creator. But the vessel has to go through these states of sequential changes with understanding, in agreement, by desiring them, and even acting independently.

Thus, we need to realize our oppositeness to the Creator, want to change and become like Him, understand the program that will change us, enact it by our own desire, and carry out the whole chain of sequential actions ourselves, upon ourselves and at the same time upon all the levels of the creation under us: inanimate, vegetative, and animate.

This ascent from the breaking to the correction, we must realize with our full personal participation. According to the changes required at the moment, we have to gain mind and feeling, become included into the common program, and make the actions to invoke and guide the necessary forces.

Only in this way will we reach equivalence of form with the Creator and become like Him in force, understanding, and everything else. That is the highest degree of our development.
[60065]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/7/11,  “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”

Related Material:
The Third Force
Evolution Of Consciousness
Valuing The Means As Highly As The Goal

Filed under: Body and Soul, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Free Will, Inner Work, My Similarity to the Creator - 1 Comment →

We will have a hard time until we acquire one more force besides nature, meaning the Creator, who influences our receiving desire and drives it forward like a train moving down a set track. Without an additional force, this process is entirely predetermined. Everything in it is set, including the deadlines and the final point. Sometimes I even notice that life rolls along of its own accord and does not depend on me at all.

But the science of Kabbalah enables me to evoke a third force that helps me control my own development. The force of the Light still drives my express-train forward, and nothing can be done about it. But I can use an additional force to advance consciously and sensitively, understanding the process and knowing what kind of train this is, where and why it is rushing, what drives it, and so on. By figuring all of that out, I see what auxiliary force I need and what I can change with its help.

Thus, we don’t have any chances of changing anything until we understand what our nature, our egoism is and until we realize its evil, until we reach the force of nature that pushes us forward without asking our opinion or our agreement. First of all, we must learn the real state of affairs.

That is why Kabbalists call the science of Kabbalah the root of all sciences. It’s because it researches the essence of matter, as well as the forces that influence it, control it, and develop it. Besides, Kabbalah allows us to independently attract the third force, which will make our path easier.

By means of the science of Kabbalah, I establish a connection with that force. After all, it is not present in me initially. This is not the Light under whose influence the desire evolves towards the goal. This is another force, “the Light that reforms,” which is something completely different. It comes only when I evoke it. Otherwise I am still driven by the opposition between the Light and the vessel.

“The Light that reforms” is a special, additional force that first and foremost, provides the human level for me. It does not do anything on its own. I control it and activate it to the extent I have figured out the process and learned the mechanism. And even if I don’t know exactly how it is activated, I still want it in spite of my desire, in spite of the standard development, in spite of the train that moves along without my participation.

Precisely the science of Kabbalah gives me a connection with this third, alternative force, with the Light that reforms. And then I really am able to move forward as a person who is similar to the Creator, controlling the process and looking at it from above. From a bird’s eye view, I look at the matter of my desire, at the force that pushes it down the pathways, at the program that is guaranteed to bring it to the final point in due time by combining the forces of the Light and the vessel. Similar to the Creator, I look down from above upon the two forces through which He controls creation.

But at the same time, I desire for the third, additional force to rule inside of me, the middle line, the screen. This is the human being whom I build inside of myself. And I want to advance only with its help. It contains my decisions, my actions, and their results. Everything is present there, in the middle line. We move in two lines like animals that are drawn to goodness and run away from evil; but the third force is the true mind by virtue of which I first make a restriction on everything and check or analyze the situation. I realize evil and good, and then I reach a decision. Next, I already “press on the pedals,” knowing how much and in what way I will advance in this third line.

I set the necessary restrictions myself, and they all come down to activating the general program of the joint evolution in my own way. I halt it, I control it, and precisely this control over the evolution makes me human. But first I have to understand what it turns me into.

That means that the giving of the Torah, meaning the method of correction, is intended to enable us to ascend above the natural process of development and rise to the human level. Today this is happening to all of humanity, which is discovering that it is completely subdued by the program of governance. Everything we have ever done in the world was actually not done by us. The systems we formed are essentially fruits of our egoistic nature. It was nature pushing us forward, forcing us to build our society and all of its subservient mechanisms in a very certain way.

And now we are discovering that this process is not enough for us. A situation has come about where it is necessary for us to rise above this process, to understand that until now, it was realized by nature, but now we must learn to control it ourselves. The egoistic methods no longer work because the time has come for us to learn the program and upgrade it ourselves.

Each of us received a personal awakening, but humanity will receive an awakening on a global scale. We were driven by qualitative blows and disappointments on the level of the inner search, while humanity will receive the necessary reasons on the material level, from problems with security, food, ecological catastrophes, the climate, and so on. And all of this is intended to bring people to the search for the alternative force that will enable humanity to control itself. The crisis is growing worse, the disasters are gaining might, and there is nowhere for us to run until we find this force.

This will be the general ascent. Therefore, all people will need the science of Kabbalah. After all, they won’t find the third force anywhere in the world. It is not present in their sciences or methods.

In the meantime, we have to help them. Even if they can’t find the solution yet, we must nevertheless go towards them.
[60054]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/7/11, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”

Related Material:
Personal Participation Required
Evolution Of Consciousness
The Need For Unity Is Drawing To A Head

Filed under: Crisis, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Egoism, Free Will, Torah - 1 Comment →

Kabbalists put a lot of emphasis on the group, and the entire question of spiritual attainment is related to this notion. This is because the group is a method, an instrument, for the attainment of the Light. It is the well, the source, of Light in our world.

The Light is the only thing that works. It does everything, awakening all the desires. Hence, if we wish to change reality, we need the Light that shines in its usual direction, but we can add our own efforts to it and accelerate our development, as well as make it desirable and good.

If we wish to be masters in the spiritual art, the Light must become the method, the instrument in our hands, and make these changes. We can only attract the Light that Reforms in the group. This is why the purpose of the group, the environment, is to reveal the Light contained in it and to let it act upon yourselves and the entire world. And the Light is revealed in our world through the group.

The direction of the Light’s influence depends on us. We cannot change its influence at all; we can only accelerate our development, make the Light shine more strongly than it naturally does. In other words, we can only increase the velocity.

However, changing the velocity means to agree with its actions and change our sensation from development. Then, development will stop being forced and undesirable; it will no longer happen under the steamroller of evolution. Instead, we will develop according to our desire and aspiration to advance.

This way, group work becomes the main work that the revelation of the Light, the Creator, and the speed of development depends on. It does not matter that we, of course, do not understand in which direction we are developing and what we need to demand. After all, once the Light becomes manifested, it will explain and illuminate everything to us, clarify our thoughts and desires, and turn us in the right direction.

We completely depend on the Light. This is why we depend on building an environment, a group. In reality, this is the only thing that we have the power to do.

In regular life, we develop the obligated way, and no one asks us where, how, and why they should turn us. We simply turn as we should, without even realizing it. The Light either turns us in a concealed way in our world or openly in the spiritual world. The only difference is whether we understand this.

In the spiritual world, we act because we agree to act, and we want the Light to operate and do all the work with us. Let it do whatever it wants with us. We are ready for it, and we cancel ourselves before its actions.

In our world, every person cancels themselves before the actions of the Light, even though they neither understand nor realize it, like a small child who plays and thinks that he is given all the freedom in this world.

I do not have freedom in the spiritual world, but I already know that I am not free, and I agree with it. However, we are given freedom of choice in the middle, between that world and this world, in the so called “middle third of Tifferet,” for us to consciously choose to want to be under the influence of the Light.

In other words, here, I always remain independent, although we do not think that this is the condition of our independence— making the decision to put ourselves under the influence of the Light that Reforms. We do not understand what the point of our freedom is—to the extent we do not feel and do not understand what it is to be free. We exist in absolute darkness and are controlled from Above.

In the spiritual world, we also exist in the Light that controls us, but here, in Klipat Noga, in the middle between the forces of sanctity and impurity, we build our path from all these states, the points of freedom that, one after the other, add up to make a line. We follow it to absolute independence and at the same time to absolute adhesion and similarity to the Creator, something that is hard for us to understand now.

All of this is analyzed and realized in the group, in society.
[59196]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/30/2011, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
Asking The Light For Acceleration
We Start From A Distance
Unity Is Our Salvation

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Free Will, Group Work, Inner Work - No Comments →

The preparation has already been made from Above, on the part of nature, the Creator, for every person according to the root of his soul so that he will be able to connect with other souls, to correct the shattering, and to reach his individual correction. This is how each of us fulfills all the preparations made for him or her, included in the root of his or her soul.

According to this preliminary preparation, people find themselves in different situations: Some awaken to spirituality more, some less, and there are those who don’t awaken at all.

It makes no difference whether in the meantime a person worries only about his corporeal desires, or whether he is lost in imaginary ideas about spirituality, which take him off the road of truth; whether he is closer to spiritual work, or whether he is already on the right track and has started rising on the spiritual ladder. We were each given the same conditions that were initially prepared from Above. They were created as a result of the descent of the worlds, the shattering of the desires, and their incorporation in each other. Thus, every person, at every given moment, has free will.

The system of the upper worlds spreads from the world of Infinity, and through the world of Adam Kadmon and the shattering of the vessels reaches the world of Atzilut, creating the worlds of BYA. Then Adam Ha Rishon (the First Man), the one general soul, the internal part of the worlds of BYA, the internal desire of all of creation, is born in them.

Then Adam Ha Rishon is also shattered, and all his parts get intermixed: The desires to receive and the desires to bestow, Galgalta ve Eynaim and AHP, are incorporated in each other and fall. All this happens to allow the best conditions for work.

When the process of mutual incorporation of the souls is completed (which the Ari told us about in his time), the correction of the world begins. Thus, we should understand that all the events in the world are only the result of our lack of correction, our failure to exercise free will on time, and our refusal to use the conditions that had been prepared for us in advance.
[58649]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/25/2011, Writings Of Rabash

Related Material:
The Work Of Our Forefathers And Our Work
How One Can Inherit “The Fathers’ Merit”
Absolute Justice In The Life Of A Soul

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Free Will, Inner Work - No Comments →

Question: Why is the law of mutual guarantee concealed from us? Why can’t scientists discover it?

Answer: You would like to place a person before irrefutable facts: Think badly of your neighbor, and a boulder falls on you from the sky; cause harm to someone, and you receive a threatening notice from the bank. You want to have an immediate response to your every action: reward or punishment. It would be a law of nature, an indisputable fact for you.

However, a person must be given freedom of choice. If we acted instinctively, there would be no problem. Nature would pressure us into becoming one whole. It is very simple: If you show me that I lose by disconnection with others, I will smile and be nice to everyone. I will build friendly relationships, take care of others, and make sure no one is treated unfairly. If we were programmed with mutual responsibility from Above, we’d gladly implement this program.

But the truth of the matter is that we must arrive at mutual guarantee by our free choice; we have to build within the human degree on our own. That is why the message of unity is hidden in the fog and we are lost in it, deprived of a sense of direction. The moment we begin to realize and feel it, it vanishes. Otherwise, we won’t be able to develop the human within ourselves.

The fog is not important. It doesn’t matter if we are slow or clever, clumsy or graceful. We must do only one thing: build an environment. Like a child building a house out of blocks, we should construct an artificial environment as an example of who we would like to be if we desired it.

If a person sits idle, Nature will oblige him indirectly, through blows and sufferings. But blows, too, will never force man to surrender his own nature because by this a person descends to the “animate” degree and builds the environment instinctively in order to survive. It would be a Soviet model of socialism with the Creator instead of the KGB behind your back. And you would become an animal living in unity with other animals in the herd. What kind of created being is that? Can we reach the level of the Creator like that?
[57435]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/12/2011, “Peace in the World”

Related Material:
A Gun Against Your Temple
Before A Trip To Hell Gets Scheduled…
Are We Free People Or Just Cogs In A Machine?

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Free Will, Group Work, Inner Work, Mutual Guarantee, Mutual Guarantee Movement, Q&A - No Comments →