Shamati #187: In order to make the right choice, one must choose that which obligates him to increase his efforts.

Plants, animals, and other organisms that do not develop by their own efforts see a picture that is set in advance. We, on the other hand, must rely on the help of books and a teacher in order to build our future state on our own and to imagine it in the group. What is it like? What should the relationships between us be like?

Then each one of us will aspire to become more similar to these relationships and we will constantly build the Creator out of ourselves, inside ourselves, and outside ourselves. We will do it ourselves. We have to create Him on our own, imagine him ourselves, choose Him, and design this future form among us. That is why we are considered similar to the Creator. Just as He created us, so we create Him. It says in The Book of Zohar that we “make” the Creator.

A person’s work amounts to this search for the perfect model. And it is built in the group. That is why the Creator broke creation into many parts so we would have the opportunity to build Him. After all, our ideal state is Him. We have the opportunity to work, making efforts and continuously building ourselves in a more ideal form, in bestowal, through consolidation in spite of our egoism. That is how we form the new state. We simultaneously form Him and ourselves by adding our current state to the desirable next state.

This is our spiritual work to reveal the Creator. We ourselves “draw,” reveal, and research Him: What is that ideal state called “the Creator”? By conducting the search we arrive precisely at this ideal, where the quality of bestowal and the quality of reception become fully revealed. They mutually complement one another, never becoming annulled and never losing anything. That is how the ideal picture called “the world of Infinity” is created, being the unlimited state of the whole creation.

As Baal HaSulam says, the choice of progress forward always lies in greater effort. As clearly as possible, we must discern two opposite qualities which make up all of nature: the quality of reception and the quality of bestowal, and we should try to combine them together. This mutual combination, their maximal participation will give us the following picture, the next level. They come together in the middle line by means of the screen.

Every subsequent level that we build is called “the presence of the Creator.” Once we build it, we discover new flaws and new lack of similarity. Once again there is overbalance to the left side, the left line of egoistic desires which disturb unity, harmony, and the integral picture. Then we must once again build the surrounding environment that will help us establish balance between the right and left lines, making the middle line from them that combines these two forces of nature.

The choice always lies in maximally using them—in greater effort.
From the lesson on 1/17/11, Shamati

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Question: It is written that creation has to attain the Creator independently, but what does that mean?

Answer: What is my independence and where can I find it?

I have to find out what my dependence is, who or what do I depend on, and what depends or does not depend on me. It’s possible that I am independent or not, and I have to or don’t have to agree or disagree with it. After making all the analyses of my state, I discover that I am outside of the Creator.

This is possible because the Creator is expressed as the influence of two forces upon me: positive and negative, right and left. That is why there is a state between us where they neutralize each other like the field between two magnets.

I am in the neutral zone. The right line is the force of bestowal, while the left line is the force of reception, and I am between them. I am influenced by two forces, yet at the same time I am not influenced by anything. Their neutralization is inside of me. That is to say, on one hand the Creator exists and these two forces influence me, but they influence me in such a way that I do not feel their influence on me because they neutralize each other inside of me.

So on one hand, “There is none else besides Him,” but on the other hand, “If I don’t do it for myself, who will do it for me?” This neutral state is called the middle part of Sefira Tifferet. If I find this state, then it is the basic point from which I personally determine what I prefer: the right, bestowing, or the left, receiving, direction for my development.
[33099]
From the lesson in Moscow on 1/14/11

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Question: What is the purpose of our studying all that incredibly complex system of the worlds of Atzilut and Nekudim described in The Study of the Ten Sefirot?

Answer: We need to learn how to correct the breaking and which spiritual objects (Partzufim) and their parts will help. The world of Nekudim is the broken world, and the world of Atzilut corrects the breaking. We need to know which attribute corrects the corresponding attribute and who is responsible for each act of correction.

Each correction requires accurate knowledge as to what has been damaged, where the flaw is, and how, by what means, it can be corrected. All of it is clarified down to the tiniest detail, and only then is the correction made.

The problem of humanity is that we want to correct the world while lacking the faintest notion of what it really is. The world of Atzilut serves as the correct example for us. Until I know the cause of the breaking, which parts were broken, and how they functioned before, I can’t perform a correction.

The entire correction is based on the knowledge of the flaws. Only then can you build a system of correction. Humanity has no chance of reaching a good life and correcting something if we don’t understand what’s happening to us. Without this knowledge, how can we reach correction?

Therefore, our freedom of will is exercised solely in performing a correction. We study the system of correction which spreads from Above downward and contains the knowledge of the whole process from the beginning until the end.

When we rise from below upward, we cannot define either the beginning, or the process itself, or its end in advance in order to build the system of correction. Thus, we are using an existing system that evolved during the descent of the system from Above downward. However, we can use it only on condition that we are able to enter inside it and activate the entire system.

Therefore, we stand no chance to succeed by feeling our way forward, blindly, the way all of humanity is still does. Only the wisdom of Kabbalah will serve us as the instruction for correction.
[32523]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/11/2011, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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Question: Where is a person’s free choice if everything comes from the Creator? It seems like I can’t do anything myself.

Answer: If I am creation, then everything I have inside came to me from the Upper One. I am beneath Him, being a lower level.

You can say that you have been stuck on this level for too long and you are not advancing in the slightest. But this also comes from the Upper One! Only a part of His actions is expressed clearly, while a part is expressed unclearly. Therefore, even the simplest logic tells us that there can be nothing in the lower one that is absent in the Upper One. Then where is my freedom?

The Upper One put you in a specific state. He made you in a specific way, creating you and the environment so that through the relationships between you, you would be able to generate a new quality.

If you aspire to mutual bestowal with your environment, then a force comes to you from the Upper One that connects you, the environment, and the Upper One.
This is where your freedom of will is expressed. That is how you earn the opportunity to become equal to the Upper One.

Question cont’d: But Kabbalists say that everything that happens afterwards also comes from Him!

Answer: Of course everything comes from the Creator! But we are talking only about what relates to our level. I don’t know what will be revealed to me after the end of correction.

Imagine a child who is allowed to do anything he wants in his room. At that moment he thinks that everyone has forgotten about him. But when he becomes an adult, he understands that this was done deliberately and in fact, he was always under supervision. Someone was watching him so he wouldn’t harm himself, while he felt that he was free.
From the lesson on 12/31/11

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Question: Since a person has to realize his freedom of will, could we be taking it away from the children by teaching them Kabbalah from an early age?

Answer: We are specifically teaching them how to use their freedom of will! States keep changing, egoism grows, the surrounding society changes. Every moment a child needs to make a new decision about who he wants to be with, how to treat and perceive things, and what he needs to do. If they keep relating to the changing environment correctly, they will develop very well.

Everyone knows about the teenage crisis, when everyone revolts. We need to use this wonderful quality and never repress it. It will help children make an easy leap from corporeality into spirituality. We only need to properly prepare the children prior to this age so that the coming-of-age years (12-15) would become their years of spiritual ascent and entrance into the spiritual world.

For this reason, children need to be educated ahead of time in a way that would help them realize what they have learned in practice later. Nature intentionally lays this period of inner explosions in our genes: on the levels of hormones, egoism, and the desire for power.

This is the age for working with a person in order to raise him or her into spirituality. They start “growing old” afterward. Beginning with the age of 20, people start moving in the direction of the cemetery. They “enter life,” end up in an ordinary society, and become concerned only with providing for themselves in the corporeal world.

A child needs to be educated from the age of six or seven so he would acquire an opportunity to act in a correct manner, grow up, and become “big” in the spiritual sense before he enters adolescence and grows up. We must not miss the childhood years; otherwise, it will be too late!

It would be the same as beginning to teach grammar at twenty. Imagine all the opportunities this person would miss in his life. But in our case we are referring to the fundamentals of nature, which need to be instilled in a child. We teach him to properly organize all his desires and qualities.

This is absolutely essential, and this is why we are so concerned with creating an educational system according to the method of Kabbalah.
[32000]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/6/2011, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”

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When we are “pulled by the sleeve” to get acquainted with our egoism, we should rejoice since thereby we acquire spiritual degrees. When a person loses faith in this world and is burdened with questions about the meaning of life, these questions derive from the point in the heart. Then, one is given an opportunity to construct spiritual degrees, the levels of the Creator’s revelation, until the entire Light of NRNHY (Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama, Haya, Yechida) is revealed.

Moreover, even the smallest degree gives him a sensation of eternity, of the life beyond the body, detached from the flesh. This is described as: “You will see your world in this life.” At these degrees, a person feels that he resides not in the receiving Kli (desire), but rather above it. Thus, he experiences his life as connected to the Creator; he feels that he has entered eternity.

This is why the Torah is regarded as the means of ascent to freedom from the “angel of death.” We abandon the desire to enjoy for self-gratification, which, in essence, is the “angel of death,” thereby arriving at authentic, endless life.
[32096]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/7/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Question: When I watch how humanity lives, I don’t see any kind of free will. Someone established the initial and final conditions for us, and we just keep running from this starting point to the finish line. Where is our freedom then?

Answer: You are absolutely correct. We can choose neither the states of creation: one-two-three (start-change-finish) nor the stages of our advancement from state one to state three. Everything is predetermined already.

I was born with pre-set characteristics and must actualize the program installed in me; I am corrupted and must come to final correction (Gmar Tikkun). It is clear to what extent I am corrupted and what I will be like once repaired. Furthermore, my entire path to correction has been written out, step by step.

If I become aware of this path, I begin to understand how strictly connected everything is, as if in an engine where each part moves after the other in a certain sequence. The “Torah” derives from the Hebrew word for “manual” (Oraa) which means that you are given precise instructions that don’t leave room for any degree of free will except one! Do you wish to achieve it through your free will, through your personal choice, or do you prefer to be forced into it? Now choose whether you will do it by exercising your free will or by getting beaten until you do it willingly.

And this choice doesn’t imply avoiding suffering. When you choose to evolve with your own will, you walk the path of attainment, development, and you experience the greatness of spirituality, feeling it as something infinitely exalted.

The point you have within that wishes to know the spiritual world, having risen above your material, egoistic desire, is called your “Self.” You can’t avoid this state but it is up to you how you will enter it.
[32117]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/7/2011, “The Freedom”

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Question: In the past Kabbalah was passed on through the chain of Kabbalists, from one to the next, between selected individuals, special souls. Today, however, the conditions have changed and Kabbalah must spread around the world. How do we accomplish this?

Answer: As we become more distant from the first “man,” Adam HaRishon, who was the first to unveil the spiritual world 5771 years ago, it becomes necessary to simplify this wisdom even more and reduce it to the level of understanding for the masses. We are witnessing the so-called “descent of the generations,” which become much more “material,” meaning that their egoistic desire is getting bigger. We see how egoism grows from generation to generation.

Because of this, today’s souls have greater potential than the previous souls, which allows them to receive, understand, and attain more. On the other hand, it has been more difficult to reach them, that is, have them finally accept and understand it.

In truth, we contain such enormous ego that it clothes us in a bullet-proof armor of egoism of horrific coarseness (Aviut). Hence, we are constantly trying to simplify Kabbalah for the masses even more. In the degree of the ego’s growth, we should lower Kabbalah as well so that we can pass it on to a person at his level. Either way, it remains a mystery to him. By simplifying Kabbalah, we don’t deprive him of his free will; he will still have to exert effort.

After all, if one person is burdened with desire for pleasure valued at “100 pounds” while another at “500 pounds,” then each of them needs to receive this wisdom at the same caliber. He will have to exert an effort in the matching degree in order to break through such a powerful concealment. We won’t steal his free will.

It is our duty to bring Kabbalah closer to a person, or he will keep walking away from it even more. Our ego removes us farther away from the notion of what spirituality and bestowal are. In the past, it was very easy for people to comprehend since it was obvious to them that this was the truth based upon the design of their soul. Today, however, it is completely alien to man with his egoism; he is unable to process even a drop of bestowal even intellectually, not to mention emotionally.

Therefore, our work lies in the field of adapting Kabbalah to serve the people. Unveiling the wisdom of Kabbalah means simplifying it to such degree and forms that would make it enter a person freely and easily, and become as close to his heart as possible. After all, our ego today has grown out of proportion, so much so that people have become totally deaf to perceiving spirituality.

It doesn’t matter that in the past, only a chosen few could study, avoiding all others, while today, there are millions. Increased egoism equalizes all conditions. Today, one can buy Kabbalah books in any store, learn about it from newspapers and television, but people still fail to hear.
[32123]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/7/2011, “The Freedom”

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Where is our free will, after all? It wasn’t my will to come into this world, nor did I pick my life setting: family, country, and ethnicity. I am made of my parent’s genes which define absolutely all my qualities. I was raised by the environment where I found myself: my home, the kindergarten, and school, none of which was up to me. Nothing in me is my own!

By the time I grow up, I am completely formed, a finished product, like a pie from the oven. But this isn’t all! In fact, as the wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us, we are all interconnected cogwheels; we are parts of one integral soul that was broken into pieces. It is as if we became a “puzzle” printed as one whole image to later be cut into small fragments.

So, each of us is assigned a very specific place in which we fit with all our properties and attributes, 613 desires, that make us depend on one person, the second and third, in order to link with them. Everyone depends on all for this puzzle to be complete. And it isn’t just a one dimensional puzzle since we don’t connect by mere contours: Each of us has “613” facets by which one is adjacent to all. Imagine such a 613 dimensional space.

Then what is the freedom that we are talking about if I am merely a tiny piece in the puzzle forced to totally match all the others in my properties? Hence, when free will is being discussed, it doesn’t pertain to a person per se and his personal, independent choice. This is one freedom shared by all; it is determined by all of us together!

Even if a person can make some move, it has to correspond with all the other parts, all the other souls and their properties. If I move in some direction, the movement must occur in the entire system. Now we need to find out: What constitutes my free will after all?
[32126]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/7/2011, “The Freedom”

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Question: You said that in order to build ourselves we have to use two forces: reception and bestowal. What if instead of two forces, I have only one, the force of reception?

Answer: You have both of these forces except that you don’t wish to use the second one! We start ascending from below, from “zero” of bestowal, until we have covered 125 spiritual degrees and acquire absolute bestowal. But “zero” of bestowal doesn’t mean you don’t have it; you simply don’t employ this force you possess.

We can’t say that something doesn’t exist in the universe; this force doesn’t register only in you, in your perception. And the confirmation of the fact that it does exist is that it can unfold in you in the next instant, only to disappear yet again. This is regarded as a “zero.” In reality, however, it doesn’t exist; it can be so solely in man’s perception.

You have free will to evoke the force of bestowal from this zero. In order to do so you are given an environment comprised of the teacher, group, and the books. Start utilizing it to work on your zero of bestowal and it will be a zero no more.

After all, you can evoke the force of bestowal only when you relate to someone else who also desires to experience it. So start building such relations; don’t get locked in your own self! What other way is there to unveil bestowal?

The force of reception is concentrated within one person, but it takes two to keep the force of bestowal so that it can work in between the two. Therein lies the major difference between the egoistic and altruistic choices: In your ego, you are alone, but to bestow, you need the right environment. Otherwise, where will you actualize it? Where will you find this force and confirm that you indeed possess it?

Therefore, as soon a spiritual spark awakens in a person and calls for development of the soul, he or she is immediately brought to a group and instructed: “Choose it!” This is where the real free will is exercised: in choosing the correct environment.
[32008]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/6/2011, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”

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