In the corporeal world, our perception of beauty constantly changes, and we are forced to follow the opinion of the majority. After all, we live in a human society and respect its values whether we like it or not. This is our nature. At the end, every person will esteem the things that the majority in his environment respects.

We do not even realize how unreasonable these values are. So frequently fashions change in education, culture, the industrial sector, creativity, and even food. We see them come and go, without any actual value. Everything beyond the limits of our animate existence that the body requires (simple shelter, family, and food) has value in our eyes only because the society appreciates it.

But spirituality is different because nobody is dragging us there. We need to build our own society and awaken it ourselves so it would pull us after it and through it, to spirituality. In other words, we are given free will in the spiritual development, and no one will force us there!

Of course, the Creator stimulates us: He arranges a hard life for us in this world and deprives us of fulfillment. But on the other hand, life is no longer as difficult as it was in the past, and we are not starving. Yet, we feel an inner emptiness that pushes us to develop. And when we discover this emptiness and start thinking about the purpose, the meaning, and the secret of life, but are unable to answer these questions, we realize that no one can tell or explain it to us, nobody pulls us after them.

We look around and fail to see any examples. We receive examples in everything else in life: the choice of a profession, the style of our home, the kind of things to buy, what to do, who to be like. The human society gives us examples of everything. And only spirituality remains without examples, as if you existed in an empty vacuum, and every day, even every moment you are faced with the questions: what to do, where to go, where to get examples of spiritual values and purpose?

This is a big problem. But on the other hand, this is a consequence of the freedom given to us! This is because when a person enters spirituality, he builds his own soul. Nobody teaches him. There are many advices and books, but all of them are merely general explanations around this topic, which only support us a little.

Ultimately, everything depends on the person himself. He needs to build his own environment which would provide him with the spiritual values and direction and be just as sound as the environment in our world with all its examples. Without this, he naturally would not know how to advance.

This is the main difference between the spiritual and the corporeal advancement.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/4/2011, Writings of Rabash

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In this world I constantly tailor myself to the standards that the society imposes upon me by convincing me to buy or do something, while in the spiritual world I need to draw an example from the Creator. However, the problem is that if He were to reveal Himself, we would fall completely under His influence and would become a million times more dependent on Him than we depend upon the environment today.

We would become absolute slaves, like the still, vegetative, and animate forms of life, which do what nature commands them to do and fully follow their instincts. And then we would not even feel like we live an independent life.

But the Creator, this general force of nature of creation, wants us to be independent and equal to Him, instead of following His orders like a robot. There would be no point in creating the creature which automatically follows its nature’s orders, and where the entire outcome is clear from the beginning.

The Creator’s plan was to create man free so that man himself would choose to rise to the level of the Creator, to learn about his Creator, and want to become just like Him! Just like any person in this world wants to be loved for who he is, the Creator also wants us to become acquainted with Him, attain Him, and see that His state, quality, and force is the ultimate perfection.

Thus, He cannot reveal Himself to us so that we will not become His slaves and automatically follow His orders. He plants in us the desire to develop and strive towards Him, but He conceals Himself. So how can we become like Him in this case?

He comes up with a simple solution. He creates the creature called Adam (man), a spiritual force, a quality similar to His, and breaks this creature into a billion pieces! And now the created being itself, and not the Creator, must put together an environment for itself like from pieces of interconnecting blocks. This environment has to mirror the creature’s image of the Creator, its knowledge of Him.

Man advances and builds his own environment to influence him in the opposite direction and develop him. It follows that we build our own Creator, and this is why He is called “Boreh,” meaning “come and see.” We build our environment and in this way we build ourselves.

I am not able to create myself or influence myself. I am a finished product of my environment. But by constantly building my environment, a shell to influence me, I indirectly influence myself. It turns out that I build a system for my own education.

Then I am somewhat separate from the Creator, and I freely build myself by creating my own environment in accordance with the values that I want to instill in myself. I am not able to change myself, but I can artificially build a society to convince me of the values with which I now disagree. This society will convince me that I need to strive towards bestowal.

And since I have built this society myself, it is as if I had built myself. In other words, I constantly build the Creator’s image within me, and thus I advance to the point when these three forms: I, the environment, and the Creator draw so close that we become as one whole.

This really is free development because I do everything myself, I constantly think and decide on the ways to advance. I examine the world that now becomes revealed before me, and I test myself for ways to properly advance.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/4/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Someone is constantly working with our consciousness in the corporeal world: all mass media, films, television, and newspapers. We receive examples of life in school, at home, from our environment, friends, and the entire world. We are constantly under this influence without even realizing how much we depend on it and follow these instilled values.

It turns out that in our corporeal world I only carry out someone else’s desires. But in the spiritual world I am left with an absolutely unfilled emptiness, and I don’t know what to do with it: Where to go, or what’s going on? And this is very difficult.

But on the other hand, we need to understand that in our world we don’t perform any independent actions and never realize our own desires; we never choose how to dress, what to eat, what to think, our profession, or partner in life. I receive all the tastes from the environment and work according to this program. When fashion changes in the surrounding world, I immediately change my direction and start chasing it.

We have already gotten accustomed to living like this, and this is why we feel confused when we are suddenly given freedom: We no longer know what to do with it. This is exactly what happens with our spiritual development. We are given complete freedom in it. What do we do with it, and where to get the examples?

But if you were given examples, you wouldn’t develop yourself as a free person who possesses freedom of choice. You wouldn’t find or reveal your soul. A person stands puzzled without knowing how to continue.

This is why Kabbalists advise us to learn from nature, from the environment. Nature, its general, upper force, is the Creator. We need to learn from Him, and we need to reveal Him. He needs to become our environment, and we need to draw examples from Him.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/4/2011, Writings of Rabash

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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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