The Light created the point of desire, the only creature, “out of absence.” And around this point, it was necessary to build a system in which this point could reach the level of the Light that begot it: to come to it in full understanding and conscious sensation.

All this had to be provided to the point except for one thing: freedom of choice in its development. However, all other means, qualities, and preconditions had to be granted.

It follows that there has to be a bridge between the Light and the point of darkness. The bridge has to become a system by which the Light makes a path to diminishing itself down to the level of the black point that emerged out of nothing.

The dark point in itself is opposite to the Light. It needs to absorb all forms that exist on the bridge between it and the Light. When it will include all existing forms into itself in the shape of internal preparations called “informational genes” (Reshimot), it will find itself on the opposite end of the system of the worlds. Then, under the influence of its own awakenings that arise from within, it will be able to begin to climb the degrees of these worlds and will come to know the Light by itself.

All means come to it from Above: the informational genes, the Light, forces, desires, and states. All of them, but one: The creature always retains the freedom of choice and decides by itself whether to use them for the sake of ascent or not. And this is the key!

Just as with the example of the Host and the guest: The guest is not at fault that he is hungry and has a good appetite. He is not at fault that he is poor! Nor is he at fault that there is a generous and powerful Host who knows precisely what appetite, desires, and taste the guest has, and who has prepared for him a suitable fulfillment, both in terns of quality and quantity.

Nothing hurts the guest’s dignity here if he knows how to behave with self-respect and not to rush to eat. If he knows how to conduct himself well, his shortcomings turn into merits, his weaknesses transform into courage, and his worries and complaints become a blessing of sanctity.
[56692]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/6/2011, “Pticha”

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After Baal HaSulam made his great discernments: what is the Creator’s desire, the goal of creation, and the ways to attain it, he descended to us and explained it, and all that remains for us is to tune into his method. We have to try to understand it with our mind and feel it with our heart so the Light would pass through us and fill us, allowing us to understand the inner essence of his words.

Let every word he wrote start to come alive in us like an inner mechanism, a means, a vessel that will start working in us in a way that we won’t have to think. We don’t have to plan anything. This teaching will just start to live in us and carry out actions through us, by virtue of us annulling ourselves. This is the work of Galgalta ve Eynaim, which annul themselves for the sake of AHP, absorb its desires, and on the other hand, they unite with the Light and it begins to act through us.

We are not aware of what we are doing and we do not know what we have to do. But the Light aims us and carries out everything. It is written, “I am the first and I am the last” and “There is none else beside Him.”

The whole world annuls itself in this way. But if we annul ourselves relative the Light’s actions with our own efforts instead of simply being governed by the hand that drives us from the inside, like a puppet into which a puppeteer’s hand is dressed, then this is a very big difference. By annulling ourselves out of our own free choice, we come to feel this hand, which controls the whole world through us. From this hand we learn all of its customs, the whole game, the whole program. We begin to recognize Him, the one who governs, the upper force.

The whole world annuls itself, having no other choice. But we have to annul ourselves by our own desire, and if we do so, we will be able to become similar to Baal HaSulam, who did the same, and to other Kabbalists. By virtue of that, he went from being a simple slave of the Creator to a loyal servant through whom the entire wisdom flows, allowing him to attain Malchut of the world of infinity and become included in it in order to feel the entire universe and the entire Light filling it.

We have to be grateful to the Creator for sending us such a great soul. Baal HaSulam writes that he could not stand to watch people’s suffering any longer. But this does not mean the small egoistic suffering. After all, we are not looking for a better fulfillment for our body, like a greener meadow for our cow, but we want to know the one who governs us and makes everything move.

We want to understand, meet, and reveal Him so His mind and feelings would dress in us, to unite with Him so our heart and mind would merge with Him. Then all of creation, its goal, all the worlds that the Kabbalists tell us about, and even what is even higher than them and what we don’t even have a name for—all of this will become our real sensation and fulfillment. This is the state that this person prepared for us.

In all of our history there is no one who is dearer and more significant for us. Obviously, we are unable to measure the true height of every Kabbalist. They are all holy for us. But Baal HaSulam did for us what no person has done throughout all of history. And therefore we are proud of having a spiritual father of this stature who cares about us. We have to feel how with each passing day, as we advance further, he follows us and rejoices at every step we take, one step after another.
[56998]
From a talk at the meal devoted to Baal HaSulam’s memorial day, 10/8/11

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Question: It seems that suffering is inevitable and that we won’t be able to manage without it.…

Answer: However, you can replace it with the suffering of love. If those around you start “brainwashing you,” you will begin to appreciate bestowal: “Why don’t I bestow?” You will be walking around with this question from morning to night: “Why do I lack it? Where can I find it? Perhaps here? Perhaps there?” You will look for it everywhere as if hypnotized.

Then there will be no need for the blows—the internal blows will replace them. But they will come in the form of a yearning for bestowal, for the purpose of creation, and you will be connected to it directly. It all depends on those around you. They have to constantly “transmit” to you how important bestowal is, and then you will strive for it.

But here is a question: Don’t you remain at the animate level by acting according to the dictate of the environment? That’s correct. This is why people with the point in the heart are told: “You have to build the correct environment yourselves, as well as do it for those who don’t have free will in this. Their freedom is more modest; it is in joining you.”

If you fulfill your free will and build your environment, you will be able to build it for others too. The problem is in the fact that you don’t have the right environment. You haven’t built it, and so you are not influenced by it. Thus, you don’t pass it on to others. You can’t be the environment for them yet.

Don’t complain that you cannot bestow upon others. Instead, think about how you can bestow upon yourselves. There are no tricks here, only practical work. If we don’t do it, we can forget about correcting the world. Who will correct it? We as we at the moment?

We have to create such a strong environment so that we can become a system that bestows upon the whole world. It shouldn’t be only by the media, not only by TV, radio, and the Internet. This is necessary only to some extent. The main thing is that we will influence the world because we will already be in the system of souls, in the system of mutual connection between us, where everyone’s thoughts and desires flow constantly.

Now we are in this system as well, but we don’t control it because we haven’t acquired the power of bestowal. If we are equipped with the power of bestowal, we will control the general system and will convey the importance of bestowal to everyone. This is true bestowal upon the environment.

Let’s hope that we will be able to make this year a good year for the whole world.
[56542]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/2011, “Peace in the World”

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Question: Why would I suddenly want to be part of some new system?

Answer: You have no choice. We operate as slaves to our desire.

I may either have a desire to enter this system, which beckons me secretly and stirs up questions in me: “What am I living for? Why? What’s the point in my life?” Or I may ask: “What’s the point in my life?” because I don’t have enough to make ends meet. Or I may be green with envy because the neighbor’s grass is always greener.

The kind of suffering makes no difference, and whatever it is, it helps us advance. This is how we are made. If we didn’t feel these deficiencies, we wouldn’t move at all. Our free will is not to choose the desires themselves, but rather how to use them. And when we are under the rule of two forces, the force of reception and the force of bestowal, we can choose how to use them. But I don’t choose the desire itself.

Before a certain desire begins to operate in us, we are like dull robots that can’t move. Without a desire I am like a lifeless doll without a battery.
[56540]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/2011, Shamati #42

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Contrary to animals, we develop with the help of science. However, this isn’t free will yet. Science only advances us a bit forward. Animals are driven by blows and their instincts, but since we hardly have any instincts, we develop by blows and science.

Scientific advances allow us to see and resolve problems in advance. For example, x-rays enable us to identify a disease and to start treating it without waiting for it to actually appear. Without x-rays, only the pain could tell us that there is a problem.

Thus science helps us suffer less, and we pay dearly for scientific knowledge. However, it is still the same beastly tendency: the desire to be free of troubles. Science doesn’t raise us to the human degree since it is part of the animate level. By using it, we compensate for our lack of instincts, that’s all.

Animals manage very well without doctors. They know how to eat right, how to give birth, and how to build their shelter. Animals do everything by instinct, while we replace instincts with science. This is actually the role of science—to serve our egoism so that we will suffer less.

So we also examine our development on the animate level. Even when people become aware of the necessity to unite and connect, they don’t know how to attain it.
[56425]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/2011, “Peace in the World”

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Baal HaSulam, “Peace in the World“: Four properties are provided for that purpose: mercy, truth, justice, and peace. Those attributes have been used by all world reformers thus far. It is more correct to say that it is with those four attributes that human development has advanced thus far…

It is only by these four attributes that we manage ourselves in order to bring ourselves to the end of correction. So how do we discern them? Many can speak about mercy, truth, justice, and peace for hours, but can we agree on what these attributes are?

It isn’t simple, but Baal HaSulam, knowing the spiritual nature, wrote that this is what we have to clarify in order to manage ourselves and the world. We don’t know what a corrected world is. We are all corrupt and so it seems to us that any egoistic improvement is already correction. However, for Baal HaSulam, the corrected world is a world in which all the possible deficiencies are totally filled. How is that possible? We will have to find that out.

First, we have to understand that we will never be able to fill ourselves egotistically, but only in bestowal because while there is no restriction on bestowal, there is on reception. So how can we desire to receive in such a way that receiving itself will make us understand that it is worthwhile to bestow?

We can develop in this direction by blows: Every time that I want to receive something, I receive more and more blows, until I finally come to the conclusion that it is better not to want to receive egoistically. Then I begin to hate my desire to receive, and I don’t know what to do with it anymore. “So, perhaps I will enjoy bestowal?”

And so different flaws bring me to a point where I ask for the desire to bestow, for the power to bestow, the power to connect to others. This is the road of suffering and asceticism about which it says: “Eat bread with water sparingly and sleep on the ground.” In the past people used accept this and thus advance to bestowal.

It is the same today, if people don’t accept the wisdom of Kabbalah and the explanation about the development of the world, they too will advance in the same way. They will want more and more, but will get less and less, and as a result of suffering, people will begin to feel that it is worthwhile to be together, to bestow upon each other, to connect, to restrict our ego, and even to totally erase it.

We see that in wartime, when the troubles descend upon everyone, people begin to connect. Even animals are not afraid of one another when there is a fire in a forest or an earthquake, and they all escape the danger together. The common problem unites them because the fear of death is greater than the fear of hunger. Clearly, they don’t become “righteous,” but the desire to satisfy their hunger is pushed aside by a greater desire to survive.

We are the same. Of course, we can advance towards correction by suffering. It will compel us to aspire to bestow and to destroy our ego, the source of all the evil in our world. But this is a long and painful way.

This is why we were given an alternative—the way of the Torah. Why? Why do we need this other way? It is because we don’t reach free will by suffering. We only run away from it, like animals. Out of despair, we are even ready to bestow, but it is only because we feel bad when we receive. We don’t choose bestowal by our own free will, but as a result of our suffering as we have no choice. This is the degree of a beast, not man.

In order to bring us to the human level, we need two forces: the force of bestowal and the force of reception, with free will lying between the two. This is the path of people who have the point in the heart.

People who don’t have the point in the heart will also have free will: They can choose to follow those who can lead them forward.
[56427]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/2011, “Peace in the World”

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Today we are entering a system that shows that we must act on bestowal, on the connection between us, on the connection with the group, and on some new transformations. We are in crisis: Not us personally, those who study Kabbalah, but the world feels this way. Where does it come from? What is a crisis in general? It is the feeling of world egoism relative to the system that begins to be manifested in us, like a picture on photographic paper in the developing tray. Gradually, like from the fog, a new picture appears, and this picture does not match us.

Suddenly, the properties of the Light, bestowal, and the connection between us, emerge in us, while the egoistic, individual properties (rejection, the use of each other) exist in humanity. The juxtaposition of these two systems and their impact on each other form an immense, multifaceted, new construction: on one side, the egoistic system, and on the other side, the altruistic one.

We never had this before. We have always had only an egoistic system, and we worked within it. Desires emerged in us, and we realized them. We thought that it was all us: We want to evolve, we want to act, we want to work, and we want to do everything.

Why? It’s because we identified the egoism that arose in us, our desires, with ourselves. We had no questions about their origin because we felt them as ours: I want this now, and then that and that. I didn’t have a question as to why I suddenly want. I want. I don’t feel as if someone gives me these questions, “inserts” them into me, and I start to work. No! I totally merge with these desires; I feel as one integral whole with them. These are my desires that arise in me: I want.

How does this suddenly happen? I am an average animal with natural, instinctive, petty desires, necessary for my existence. And all of a sudden, we have new egoistic desires that are related to the development of technology, society, family, education, upbringing, culture, science, banking, financial and economic connections between us, trade and exchange, discoveries of new lands, development, and communication. From where did this develop in humans as compared with the animal world that does not evolve in this way?

The fact is that our egoism develops all the time and urges us to realize our new desires more and more. I don’t feel that the desires that emerge in me from somewhere come from outside. I feel that they arise from within me, and that is why I rush to realize these so-called “my” desires.

In reality, they are not my desires. I just don’t feel that they are not mine. And thus, I run forward and act. I don’t feel that I am like a small, wind-up toy bunny, which is wound with a key and it jumps. I don’t feel this until the right time, until our time now.
[56098]
From the Sunday Virtual Lesson Series 9/25/2011

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Question: What will integral education give people? What will it build in them?

Answer: Through integral education, I build a correct attitude toward my own qualities and I’m able to use them for the well-being of others. It doesn’t matter what my desires are. I become free and find expression for everything that there is within me. If my intention is directed towards benefiting others, I don’t need to analyze and categorize my qualities as good and bad. I simply use all of them for the sake of good.

This is when I’m truly free. I’m not afraid of my environment, I’m not afraid of myself or the Creator. I can bestow with my qualities and I’m capable of anything. Everything is revealed before me, and the Light of Infinity flows through me.
[55912]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/27/2011, “The Nation”

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The still level of nature has existed for billions of years, the vegetative level of nature for hundreds of millions of years, the animate world has been developing for millions of years, and then finally, only 200 to 300 thousand years ago, humans appeared. For a long period of time, humans have been developing the same way as animals. Man was driven by the force of nature that created him and left him no choice. As if involuntary, we went through the still, vegetative, and animate forms of the human level, until we reached the level of human within human.

What is it that separates a human from the preceding level? The difference between a human and an animal is that a human doesn’t act only instinctively, blindly obeying nature. The life of an animal is entirely governed by instincts, which are passed on from generation to generation. Only days after being born, an animal stands up and is ready for an independent existence.

However, a human needs an environment for his growth. If a person is left in the woods, he’ll grow up like a real animal and will only vaguely resemble a human. He won’t speak or walk upright. That is, a person is fully dependent on his environment. The kind of environment he develops in will determine what he will be because his development isn’t programmed definitively in nature, but requires a social implementation.

A person doesn’t possess the instincts necessary to survive. He can’t discern a medicinal plant like a dog can or how to avoid what’s harmful. Unlike an animal, a person can’t act according to inner instinctive programming that would ensure his well-being.

We all know what would happen if we granted freedom to a newborn. An animal is much smarter than a baby; it makes no mistakes, whereas humans make mistakes all the time. That is, an animal is endowed with all necessary instincts, while a person only has the minimum.

On the other hand, an animal can’t learn a lot of things. It only can be trained or tamed. Even after living for hundreds of thousands of years alongside humans, a dog still remains a dog because it acts according to its instincts.

A person doesn’t possess these instincts. He has to acquire a form of behavior from his environment, and precisely as a result of this, he develops. This is why people have achieved such great development in comparison to the animals that have lived alongside them and practically remained unchanged.

In essence, a person used to be an animal as well, but something very important was instilled in him: the ability to develop by means of his environment. If he uses his environment for his development, he can achieve great success.

This is why the still, vegetative, and animate levels have no freedom of choice. A person, on the other hand, can induce additional development through a specific environment, and this constitutes his free will. After all, a person can change his environment and thereby change himself.

For this reason, judgment and higher calculation exist only in regard to a person: Who he is and how he used the opportunities given to him by nature and whether he realized the freedom of will that determines his entire development.
[55517]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/23/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Question: Do the masses have freedom of choice to join bestowal?

Answer: Neither AHP nor Galgalta ve Eynaim have freedom of choice. They find free choice in the middle third of Tifferet only by uniting with one another.

Of course, the choice of AHP is not the same as that of Galgalta ve Eynaim. The choice of the masses is expressed by realizing that they have to complete work on unification as fast as possible—not by the path of suffering, but by means of conscious and voluntary connection to the spiritual leaders.

We shouldn’t look down on AHP for the fact that it is being led by a shepherd. Galgalta ve Eynaim is also following the Creator, the force of bestowal, the program of creation, like a flock. This is not what makes us special. We are special because we accelerate the time by looking for an opportunity to bow down our heads on our own. This is our freedom of choice.

However, AHP is no less significant than Galgalta ve Eynaim. Rather, it is more significant.
[55654]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/25/11, “The Nation”

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