Question: What is the middle third of Sefira Tifferet and why is it called free?

Answer: It’s as if it doesn’t exist by itself. As Baal HaSulam says, it exists only as the place over which Klipa and holiness fight.

This is the place where a person experiences himself and his independence. It is where he has his inner struggle and doubts: what to identify himself with, the upper or the lower? This is called the middle third of Tifferet, the place of free choice.

Question: What is this part made of? And how does freedom of choice become revealed there if this part is influenced by the upper one or the lower one, depending on whom it identifies itself with? Then where is the independence?

Answer: That is how the place of freedom is arranged for a person from Above. This is not confusion or lack of clarity the way freedom in our world refers to the absence of precise knowledge of what to identify yourself with. Rather, in the middle third of Tifferet it is absolutely clear to me what the quality of bestowal is above and what the quality of reception is below. I am in the middle, and this middle is all of me. That is to say, all of my reality is the middle part of Tifferet.

Wherever I am under the influence of the upper one or the lower one, I feel their influence, meaning I feel them and do not relate this to myself. But in the middle third of Tifferet I reveal the full HaVaYaH, myself. This part contains the full ten Sefirot, the discernments of the entire Partzuf.

If I want to attain the upper one, then I ascend to the upper part, and if I want to attain the lower one, then I descend to the lower part. But who am I? This is the middle part of Tifferet, like a thin layer between the upper and the lower. Yet, in reality it is not thin.

The middle third of Tifferet comes from the fact that in the four phases of the expansion of direct Light, Bina decided that it desires not to receive, but to become similar to the upper one, and to do that it has to attain bestowal. However, it cannot attain bestowal because its matter, the will to enjoy, does not change. In order to make it seemingly bestowing, it has to receive for the sake of bestowal. That is, it uses the Giver’s force of love.

Without the force of the Giver’s love for me, I cannot transform my reception to bestowal to Him. But if I know that He loves me and I plan to receive from Him only for that reason, then I use the force of His love. At first I have to reveal His love, and inside of it to reveal my reception, and then to receive from Him only in order to show Him my love.

From the same field where the second phase (of the four phases of the expansion of direct Light) makes the decision, that is where our notion of the middle third of Tifferet is born, in which creation feels free to make decisions.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/2/11, The Zohar

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What in our development is up to us? We inherited certain attributes; we have been influenced by the environment since childhood. How can we decide what our development should be like from here on? What do we need to do for it?

On His part, the Creator has done what was in His hands: He laid our path through internal and external Kelim (vessels), our own nature and the environment. And now, finally, the upper force is offering us free will. Naturally, this is a very narrow area. After all, our internal development has already brought about numerous details of perception, and moreover, we exist in a specific environment.

As it is written in the article “The Freedom” and in “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot,” the Creator brings a person to a certain state, a certain group, an environment, and says: “This is for you; take it.” And a person has to strengthen himself in what he takes. And what he takes is a bond with the environment.

So it follows that if a person strengthens this bond, then with its help, he or she receives “supernatural” values. This is the only way a person can adopt principles that on his own he would never choose to respect. The environment has the power to affect him and alter the scale of his priorities to such a degree that he totally replaces his values and is willing to do things that are against his nature.

This is why, while talking about lesson preparation, we primarily speak about the environment. A person prepares himself in the right environment and, by participating in its life, discerns the true values: bestowal, love of others, adherence with the Creator, and altruistic intention Lishma (for Her Name). On the whole, in the eyes of a person, the Creator’s nature must become incomparably more exalted and profound than the nature of the created being.

A person receives awareness of this importance from the group: “It is desirable to make it so.” The group cannot provide more than that; it only elevates the importance of the goal in our eyes. How profound the goal is depends on the level of the group and to what extent a person is willing to lower himself before it.

However, it isn’t realization just yet. A person merely arranges values for himself: “If the Creator is my goal, I go for this goal, which means that I change to fit it.” But who transforms a person? Who performs these changes in him? After all, by nature, from birth, he is immersed in the desire to receive pleasure. Desire itself will always remain as is. Who will reform its intention from wanting to receive to wanting to bestow?

That is what the method of Kabbalah is intended for.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/24/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Question: How can I keep trying to unify the world if I see an enormous amount of weapons and preparation for war in it?

Answer: We need to do what is up to us. The world has reached a threatening state and is rapidly moving toward undesirable events, but regardless, it still remains divided into groups, and no one is willing to yield their interests, even in the face of an imminent threat of explosion.

Every country defends itself and conducts a policy of protectionism, trying to separate from all the others. This tendency leads to war. After all, no one wants to unify with the others and take their interests into account. It is similar to children’s games where little proud egoists come into conflict, except that each of them holds a deadly weapon in their hands.

We need to accept this as conditions placed on the collective soul that needs to be reformed and try to instill the correction of all these phenomena. We ought to perceive everything we see in the world as a testament to our lack of effort.

All other people are deprived of free will and the ability to comprehend what is going on. How, then, can they correct anything? They are managed from Above. We need to make it so that on the scale of the world, the cup of mercy may outweigh the cup of guilt. This choice is in no one’s hands but ours.

All other people are blameless, and the states they are going through are merely the consequences of our actions. Their distancing from each other shows us how rapidly the flaws instilled in nature unfold in comparison to how quickly we make corrections on our part. We are lagging so far behind!

Those who are given free will and are shown to what degree the world keeps shifting toward the cup of guilt must be aware of what they are doing. It is written, “One should always consider oneself half sinful and half righteous,” and “if one performs a good dead, he sentences himself and the whole world to a scale of merit.”

So, where are they, our “good deeds”? It looks like we are able to do much more than we do. If you see that the world is experiencing greater problems, it points directly at you, all of us, telling us that we haven’t achieved that unification, dissemination, oneness, self-annulment, and guarantee that we were supposed to achieve. Let’s hope that we will wake up, as well as all our friends around the world.

We must think it over really well since the condition of the world is very threatening, and everything depends on us. I appeal to all who are listening and join us around the world. It is only we, our thought of oneness, who are capable of correcting the world and not letting this dangerous state grow to such an extent that it may enter confrontation and collapse.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/27/2011, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot”

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We are born in special, unique conditions: in the egoistic will to receive which is our nature. It permeates our mind and heart, meaning our thoughts and desires, and sprouts from the Reshimot (informational genes) that we received at birth. They manifest in the corporeal attributes we inherit from our parents and are instilled in us as the rudiments of spiritual properties.

This process contains various details which we will comprehend only when we have sufficiently evolved and realized what a soul is, how it circulates, and what transformations it undergoes from one degree to the next.

Thus, at birth, we receive a “package” of inner and outer attributes. There is no point in arguing with it. Likewise, we don’t choose the environment that we are born and will grow up in until reaching adulthood either. Thereby, we supplement our inherited properties with what we receive from the outside.

It corresponds with the development of the soul, which we study in The Study of the Ten Sefirot. At the stage of conception, a soul undergoes a period of “nine months” but doesn’t reach adulthood yet. It receives everything else from the outside only later when it is born from the upper Partzuf and resides next to it.

Having been born from the lower third part of Tifferet that is regarded as the “womb,” a soul rises to the upper third part of Tifferet regarded as the “chest” (Hazeh). And further on, all the Lights that it didn’t receive in the mother’s womb during the “nine month” period, the soul receives over the course of “two years” of nurturing.

We can say that being nurtured is the same as being conceived, but now it continues in the external conditions. And then, there comes a new stage of the outside development, the years of upbringing, the small state (Katnut), until maturity is reached, which is completed at the “age of 20.”

During all these stages, a soul discerns the Lights and Kelim (vessels) while evolving against its will, by virtue of the environment that obligates it to grow without its exercising freedom of choice. And choice, in its direct meaning, begins with the transformation of the soul as it reaches “20 years of age” and up.

This is how Kabbalists describe our spiritual evolution, the counterpart of which we observe even in our corporeal world.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/24/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Ninety-nine point nine percent of all changes in us occur while we don’t see and are unaware of them although we do influence and expedite these acts by striving to be corrected. But they take place just like the physical processes in our bodies that we also don’t need to think about.

I am not the one to pump blood through my arteries and it’s not my job to make sure my lymphatic and nervous system, as well as all my organs, work well. If anything, I can “unplug” altogether and fall into a sleeping mode, worrying about nothing, and my body will continue to live and even grow.

In spiritual development it occurs in the same manner. There are many processes that we don’t need to be conscious of and determine their form and order. There is one very narrow interval where we make our own decisions and input our participation. And it is sufficient, it’s all we need to achieve everything!

We reveal “oneness.” And by way of this oneness, the adhesion to which we aspire, we acquire the knowledge of all the other elements of the system that we didn’t know. I am given free will so that I will work on achieving adhesion with the Creator. I am told that if I switch my intention to an altruistic one, I will get to understand the Creator. And if I understand the Creator, then this whole system opens for me and I comprehend everything!

Therefore, I don’t need to work on the entire system and examine it all in order to learn, explore, and understand all of its incredible diversity and vast multitude of phenomena. Since I acquire the desire to bestow, I understand everything that takes place within it.

We work within a tiny field while the whole big world is revealed to us. It is written: “Make an opening for me, the size of a needle’s eye, and I will open the gates of the upper world for you.” Otherwise, it would be impossible to learn about this boundless system of infinite complexity that has a countless number of parts connected by constantly changing, infinitely possible ties and everyone by his or her free choice defines the changes for all the others.

In mathematics, we know how to define one unknown factor by the other in an equation. If we have two unknown factors, then we need two equations. But in this case, we are dealing with an infinite number of unknown components, so we need an infinite number of equations connected into one system. Thus, it is a matrix with a countless number of conditions, each of which changes according to its own law.

We can’t solve such a problem since our corporeal mind is unable to accomplish it. We don’t possess mathematical instruments to approach it in the first place. But we can accomplish this in the spiritual world because we grow the Kelim of bestowal (acquire desires to bestow) and receive the power over everything therein.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/24/2011, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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Our spiritual work is called “the Creator’s work.” But why is that if we are the ones who have to carry it out? This work is difficult, confusing, and demands great efforts. We devote so much time and effort to it, in fact giving away our entire lives…. Yet it is called “the Creator’s work” because in doing our work we take Him or Nature as an example.

Everything moves forward and returns to its root, including the still, vegetative, and animate levels. However, these levels develop by the program inherent in them. It is impossible to change that program, nor is it necessary. Besides, there is no one who could change it because these levels do not have freedom of choice. They are devoid of understanding and the perception of what happens to them and who governs them.

But onwards, beyond these levels, the human being develops. This is not just a creature on two legs, but a being that is able to take the law of development into his own hands and realize it independently. This is the “human” degree (Adam). In order to fulfill his purpose, he must take the Creator as an example, and not wait for the Creator to develop him like is done with the still, vegetative, and animate levels. A human is someone who wants to develop on his own, at an accelerated rate.

That is why he observes the Creator’s work: What does He do to creation? Where is He leading it? What does he want to make out of us? We want to develop on our own, faster.

Baal HaSulam illustrates this with the following example: A person does not wait for a chick to develop from an egg that’s warmed by a chicken, but establishes the mass production of eggs in the necessary quality and quantity in order to satisfy his needs. He does not ask the chicken about what it is able or unable to do, but builds incubators that provide him with chicks according to the rate of development he has taken into his own hands.

The same thing is true for the spiritual path. If a person does not want to sit and wait for the “developmental press” to push him toward the goal, then he discerns the goal and the means of attaining it in order to take those means into his own hands. He also builds an “incubator” or “greenhouse” inside of which he can place himself in order to be under the influence of laws that accelerate his development.

By searching for similarity to the Creator, a person learns how the Creator works on him, and accordingly builds an environment for himself, a “greenhouse,” in order to accelerate the process of his development so the same forces of development would operate in his hands. This is already “the path of Torah,” the path of Light, which is the developmental force. Accordingly, a person then needs Light that is more powerful than the one he receives during the natural course of development.

On the spiritual path we are called “the Creator’s workers” because we take Him as an example and realize this example on ourselves. We build a special environment, a “greenhouse” that enables us to absorb a greater force of development and tolerate its influence in order to develop ourselves.
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/27/11, Writings of Rabash

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The study of Kabbalah holds a special quality. The Light, meaning the force of correction contained in Kabbalistic books, brings a person back to the source.

The Light is the inner essence of the method, and that is why the science of Kabbalah is called the inner part of the Torah. When we study it, we awaken the inner Light concealed in the study, in the group, and in our interconnection. This force really builds the connection between us, bringing desirable changes to every person. As a result, the intention of bestowal comes to replace the egoistic intention above all of one’s desires.

Together with the group, a person constantly thinks about the state he is in during the preparation to the study, and during the study itself he demands changes by means of the Light that Reforms. This is all he needs. Only this kind of preparation touches on his free choice, the only free action in his life in this world and on the entire ladder of the spiritual degrees.

Therefore, it is best to focus on this as much as possible, talk about this with yourself as much as possible, and thus discern all of the details so they become clearer and more heartfelt. That is how they will finally enable us to detach from words and shift to feelings and inner understanding. Then all of this will live inside of us as an extremely important foundation of being, the only thing we should care for. Everything else will come along of its own accord.

Then I will see that my entire life and the entire life of the world revolve around this axis in order to bring everyone to this decisive moment—each person in conformity with the root of his soul, more or less powerfully. The Creator’s goal is to bring every person to this point.

No matter what I received at birth or what I have attained thus far, this was given to me from Above. However, now, being in the group, I have to elevate the importance of the goal—bestowal and unity with the Creator. This is done by means of studying in the right environment where I demand the Light, the “miraculous quality.” If a person does not stop thinking about this, then he realizes his life as efficiently as possible.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/24/11, Writings of Rabash

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Not only do we have an opportunity to gain free will, but we simply must. No one will be able to avoid it since all the forces of nature are pushing and pulling us toward it. You and all the others, any person in the world, everybody, will have to realize their free will in some way.

Two paths lay before us: the path of the Light (the path of Kabbalah) and the path of suffering. The choice needs to be made every instant. Don’t assume that once you found yourself at a crossroad and chose to turn right or left, you will keep following that road.

I moved one meter ahead on some road, and now, I am facing a choice again, standing at the crossroad once more. I made my pick, took a step on this road, and I find myself at yet another intersection where I have to choose again. At each step, I am given the freedom to make a choice, and the same two paths open before me.

I must keep choosing between them every moment, from state to state, at each new point along which I advance by building from them a line, a path to my final correction, Gmar Tikkun.

At each new point, I have to decide in what direction I will move, and since a point is a circle, I chose from all 360 degrees. However, essentially, all these directions unify in two possible options: the path of Light or the path of pain.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/18/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Question: What force lifts the worlds on Saturday after Adam HaRishon is born and before he falls into sin?

Answer: There is a force regarded as an “awakening from Above” (Itaruta de-Leila). It could simply be seen as the upper Light expanding from the world of Infinity while we don’t know how and why. But in truth, there is no “awakening from Above” without an “awakening from below” (Itaruta de-Letata), from the creature itself.

There is a chain of informational genes (Reshimot) that must unfold and become clarified one by one, which descend from the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking degrees. Reshimot of the still, vegetative, and animate degrees unfold naturally, subconsciously, on their own, because there is no free will at these degrees.

They unfold one by one and gradually arrive at the state when there is a leap to a new degree. Where it comes from, we don’t know. But it occurs due to the fact that the preparation at the still, vegetative, and animate degrees has been completed, and you suddenly start to feel how your state has changed. You start thinking, seeing things, and feeling everything differently.

The reason is that the Reshimot which are below your awareness, understanding, preparation, free will and which get naturally discerned have been actualized. The Creator prepares all the conditions for you to use your free will, and you must perform on your own now.

It is similar to how you don’t control the processes in your corporeal body. You don’t need to think about how all the atoms and molecules are moving in it, how metabolism and various internal systems work. Imagine how complex these processes with an infinite number of conditions are, and all of it works automatically.

Spiritual development is the same: The upper force brings us to the point where our free will begins. And this expands to the entire system, the entire desire created by the Creator, the entire still, vegetative, and animate nature, its enormous systems. But it isn’t our job and is automatic, thanks to the interaction of the Light and desires.

The Light affects desires; desires respond to the Light; and this is how the whole world, the entire universe, everything strives to achieve equilibrium. The only exception is man!

So it is today in our world: All of nature exists in balance, but the problem is in man who has to exercise free will and establish this balance. As it is in the spiritual world, all events that were taking place before Adam’s fall into sin, including the fall itself, were occurring under control of the force from Above (Itaruta de-Leila), through the chain of Reshimot, until we reach the place of free will. And there, everything freezes and waits until man will make a decision.

That is what is actually happening in our world today: Nature is waiting for us to make our choice. It will pressure us since while it is waiting, the Reshimot of the still, vegetative, and animate degrees get accumulated and bring us numerous problems on all planes of the external world, until we finally decide, at our speaking degree, that we must go forth for the correction.

The still, vegetative, and animate nature pressures us so we may continue on the path of correction at our human degree.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/17/2011, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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