Question: Where does faith above reason come from to us?

Answer: Everything comes from above, and the only thing that depends on a person is how much he can rise above his sensations in order to achieve understanding, clarity, unification and connection.

This awakening can take place through suffering, which is called “in due time” (Beito). But if a person receives this awakening from the group, it is called “acceleration of time” (Ahishena).

If a person awakens through blows, then he goes through all of these states again from the very beginning. But if the awakening comes from the group, it already includes the screen and Reflected Light. That’s because by becoming included in the group, he already carried out his work, made efforts, and attracted the Reflected Light to himself.

There are four phases of HaVaYaH which a person carries out himself, and therefore the path of Light and the path of suffering are two completely opposite paths, like Direct and Reflected Light.

“Acceleration of time” is when we become included in the group, which instantly begins building the right instruments or desires in us for understanding the Creator. Whereas the natural path, “in due time” merely lays the preliminary conditions in us to begin this process. There is a huge difference between the two.

After all, by receiving suffering, I have to repeat everything over and over again in order to understand where the suffering is coming from and why. This is an extremely drawn out process. I only run from one place to another as I receive the blows, but I do not advance as this does not give me understanding. And only after many blows and suffering like this do I finally begin to see their purposefulness and causality. Then I already begin to understand that apparently, they are coming to me in order to teach me.

People often come to me asking, “Why was I the one to receive this punishment from above?” This is called the path of suffering.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/12/12, Shamati #121

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Question: What do I need to do in order for the Light to hear me: scream, cry?

Answer: It doesn’t matter how your request will be expressed outwardly, whether you’ll be dancing or crying, screaming or being silent. The main thing is for the request to penetrate as deep as possible into the heart. There’s only one way to check: Is your desire directed in a more and more precise way towards connection since only through connection can you come closer to the Light?

If the Light doesn’t respond to your request, it means that you don’t yet have the desire. Desire in the heart; this is a request toward the Light. If you develop the desire within you, then the Light will begin to influence and fulfill it.

It is said that every person is constantly praying; the Light affects every desire that arises in our heart. After all, the Light is at absolute rest, it is a force that fills all of creation, the informational force field in which we’re all submerged like in an ocean of water. And the moment some desire appears in me, it affects the Light.

But the fact is that there are desires that don’t go in the same direction with Him. And the Light still works on them because it affects everything—it is an immutable law, like in physics. But because these desires don’t correspond to the Light, the Light develops them in a negative form until a person discovers that he or she feels bad. Then he begins to look for a cause and finds out that he was moving in the wrong direction and he needs to change his desires. This is called the path of suffering.

Alternatively, I can proactively use the method, which explains what one must ask in order to correspond to the Light from the very beginning. To do this I join a group, which encourages me, fueling my desire. None of us wants to unite, but when we all talk about the importance of connection, then eventually everyone will want it. After all, it is a law of nature; we are impressed by our environment.

So I choose such an environment that infuses me with the right thoughts and desires, that constantly talks about the benefits of unification and the great achievements that are possible through it. And then I see that I simply cannot do without connection to others, and I begin to desire it.

If everyone works in this correct manner relative to the others and we desire to unite together at least in some way, then the Light begins to affect us and brings us closer to connection. And when it brings us to the very first, smallest connection of our desires, then it becomes revealed in them as the Light of Nefesh. This means that we have begun to live—we were born in the spiritual world. That is, we united together even if for the time being it’s through the weakest initial connection.

Then we continue on from this achieved connection already having some sensation of our state and the ongoing process. Again we begin to ask, now for an even greater connection. The Light affects us more strongly and raises us to the level of Ruach, from the still degree to a vegetative. This means that we can move on our own, we feel some movement in our connections with each other, an ability to do something ourselves. The degree of Ruach means that we weren’t simply born in the spiritual world, but we’re acting and living within it! Ruach (wind) is a vegetative degree and it means the ability to move.

And then we advance even further and reach the animate degree, Neshama (soul). At this point a person ends his cycles of reincarnation. There’s an even higher degree at the end of correction (Gmar Tikkun) when everyone will be corrected and unite together. But for now we need to ascend along the preceding degrees, and this entire advancement only happens in a group, in unity, in order to reveal the Light that will fill the correct bond between us.

In other words, if we achieve the right connection between us, then the feeling of our unity is called a sensation of Light.

Demand it in any way you can, again and again, and each time you’ll receive an impression, clarify Reshimot, and eventually it will happen. The most important thing is to continue. You need to study, participate in the entire life of the group, try to get close to everyone, and then it will come. According to what is written: “I labored and found.”

And if it hasn’t happened yet, it means that for now there’s still an insufficiency, though not of time and actions, but of your inner desire that still has to develop and become perfected. New, more advanced Reshimot still need to appear, which you will realize thanks to your work, and then it will happen.

You can scream and cry, but it won’t help. Only one thing helps: meticulously and persistently, patiently and stubbornly continuing your path.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/8/2012, Writings Of Rabash

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The whole of reality is divided into three parts: me, the spiritual spark inside of me, not letting me be at peace and wanting to discover another reality, and the world surrounding me.

The world around me is divided into people who are close to or distant from me, inanimate nature, vegetation, and animals. Behind all of that, there stands yet another, higher force. For now, I perceive the whole of the reality as foreign, not related to me. Yet, all of this are parts of me that I do not perceive due to the separation that occurred in my consciousness and feeling.

It is as if I had been given an injection of painkiller into my arm and as a result it completely lost feeling and I don’t feel that it is mine. It could be cut off and I would not even notice, so powerful is the anesthetic.

This is how I perceive the whole of the world as if it doesn’t belong to me. And the work is to fight against this anesthetic, against this feeling.

This is intentional because if I think that this world does not belong to me, as if it has been anesthetized, I can turn from my egoism and relate to it altruistically, bestowing, as if to someone else. I can learn to love it.

I do not need to develop love towards myself; I love myself egoistically anyway. However, now I can learn to love others who are separated from me by the means of this anesthetic, this illusion of separation. After all, love is a quality of the Creator, not the quality of creation.

By the means of this separation, the Creator gives us the opportunity to receive a quality, which is not characteristic to us by nature and does not belong to us. We don’t understand what love is at all. But when I try to learn to love those who are outside of me as I do myself, meaning, to relate to my neighbor the way I do to myself, this is called love.

I am working on it against my egoism. This is a special force inside of me that constantly resists it. Thus, there is an opposition of two forces acting in two different directions. Desire attracts pleasure towards itself, but above it is a screen (the force of my resistance), which pushes this pleasure away and is ready to give it upwards.

And then, from the interaction between these two forces, I can understand what it is to truly love someone else rather than my own child, my own little dog, or my own body.

And as I develop more, my hatred towards my neighbors constantly grows, but I develop the force of love above it. It is called love only if it rises above the hatred. As it is said: “Love covers all transgressions.” Due to the collision of the two opposite qualities, the creation is able to obtain the quality of the Creator. Otherwise, it would be impossible and we would remain inside of the nature with which we were created.

However, if we want to be creations (Nivraim), meaning, independent personalities outside (Bar) of the Creator, and at the same time, to reach His qualities and the high state, then we are obliged to build such a resisting mechanism inside of us. There will always be two opposing forces functioning inside of it: the force of the desire to enjoy and the desire to bestow that we build above our egoism by ourselves, love above hatred.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/1/12, Writings of Rabash

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Baal HaSulam, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”: Thus, because of the above necessity, the Torah was given specifically to the Israeli nation, solely to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, for it was inconceivable that any stranger would take part in it. Because of that, the Israeli nation had been constructed as a sort of gateway by which the sparks of purity would shine upon the whole of the human race the world over.

It isn’t just about one of the nations that was suddenly given the Torah. The “Israeli nation” is a collection of people who left ancient Babylon. They connected under the leadership of Abraham who taught them to connect through ties of love above hatred. Of course, they didn’t want that, just like all the other Babylonians, but they accepted Abraham’s method. Thanks to the “spark” that is concealed in them, they understood that it is actually a method of correction and that the egoistic nature, the hatred, was given so that we will unite above it and build a group in which there will be these two discernments, one opposite the other: hatred below and love above. Thus they arrived at “Mt. Sinai,” at the state in which we reveal the upper force.

When they connected, they began to work through the connection according to Abraham’s method and then Isaac’s, and then Jacob’s, which means in “three lines.” In this process they received a growing “hardening of the heart” and in their work they went through the phases of HBD, HGT, NHY, including the exile in Egypt. This means that they felt the difficult internal states and overcame them by rising above their ego and reaching the necessity for adhesion. The ego separated them extremely, and they still tried to hold on, as much as they could, by at least keeping their inclination for connection.

Eventually, the necessary tension among them was created—on one hand, the ego that erupted in the form of the “ten plagues of Egypt” and the inaccessible “Pharaoh” on the inside, and on the other hand, the recognition of the necessity of the connection, which they built above them. They were even ready to go to the desert without any reward, just to have a chance to serve the Creator. This is what they demanded from Pharaoh when Moses gave him the Creator’s message: “Let my people go, so that they shall serve me.”

Then they reached the state in which they could receive the Torah, which means the Light that Reforms. There was enough tension between the ego that was revealed and the pressure aimed at connection. They were given the condition—to become “one man with one heart,” to “love thy friend as thyself,” and they accepted it by saying: “We shall do and we shall hear.” Then the revelation of Light that Reforms began, which means that they received the Torah.

Thus they became a nation. Now they had a collective infrastructure that united them: the Light united them. Without the Light, there is no connection among them, which means that there is no nation. Therefore, Baal HaSulam says that Israel in exile is not a nation but “a bag of nuts.”
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/10/12, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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Question: My exertion belongs to corporeal life and not to spiritual life. How can I ask the Light to change that?

Answer: Our desires change if we yearn for connection; we reach bestowal, and through bestowal, we reach the revelation of the Creator in order to bring Him contentment since it is He who wants to be revealed to us and not that we want to reveal Him by ourselves out of curiosity. It’s only possible to change something in us when the Light changes us. All the work is done through the Light; all the changes in us are performed from Above according to our request. But in order to reach the Light, to come in contact with it, to pass on our request and our deficiency to it so that it will be accepted, we have to operate through the group. In order to do that, our deficiency must be dressed in the intention to bestow.

We shouldn’t try to change or limit our desires forcefully; nothing will help except a prayer, a demand for the Light that Reforms. We have to put all our heart into this prayer. You won’t be more spiritual if you stop eating, breathing, or enjoying life; you won’t change your attributes by that.

The point is not to change mechanical actions that are performed by the arms or legs and not to use high language, but to change our inner attributes, which only the Light that created them can do. Therefore, we only have to know how to demand these changes! This is possible only if we get together and build a collective desire in the group through which we can turn to the Light with a demand.

The demand that is formed within this collective desire is the one that will be accepted. After all, the Light is in absolute rest, and to the extent that we reach an equivalence of form with It, we summon its action. It depends on the intensity by which we demand it in the group.

This force is abundant, but everything depends on us, the users. The user must include many foreign and strange desires of the friends in the group, which until now weren’t connected by anything. However, they are ready to connect in order to attain the upper one and so their attempts to connect are perceived as a demand from the upper one to connect them.

It turns out that our only request is in connection, and thanks to the connection all our attributes will be corrected. You can’t decide to be a little more generous or more of a saver. You don’t understand which attributes you need. Ask for one thing only—to connect with the friends into one collective desire so that all your attributes will be corrected in this connection. This is the only thing you can ask for and this is the only request that is answered and for which there is a correction.
[80166]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/08/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: What is a reincarnation?

Answer: I am in the desire to receive and discover the shattered Reshimot (reminiscences), which means I feel that my connection with the environment and the Creator are shattered. So I make efforts to connect with the environment in order to become a suitable vessel for the Creator, for the Light.

Suppose by working above my shattered desire, I asked and attained the influence of the Light that corrected my connection with the shattered vessels that are near me, and we connected and attained a greater compatibility to the Light. Now the vessel that has been corrected by me is filled with the Light of Nefesh. Thus I have fulfilled the shattered desire that was revealed to me. This means that I have lived one lifetime and have performed a correction.

Now the next level is revealed to me. The previous desire dies, I don’t need it anymore. The Light that comes out of the previous spiritual Partzuf and is revealed in the next Reshimo is greater and more advanced. This means that it’s even more shattered! But with the experience I have from the previous life, I already know how to correct it. Therefore, I continue to advance and to correct myself.

I have to connect the shattered vessels that are even more opposite from one another and I have to ask the Light to connect us. Thus one life passes after another until I reach my complete correction. At that time, the shattered Reshimot cease to be evoked and revealed since I have corrected the whole shattering, meaning that I have been through all my lives. These lives have nothing to do with our corporeal body that lives like an animal. It’s only similar to an animal since our life symbolizes the advancement of the desire to receive.

In contrast to inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature, we are special animals in which the desire to receive constantly changes and eventually reaches a dead end, which we feel today. We suddenly realize that it isn’t a life and that we don’t understand where we are headed. The sufferings oblige us to start asking about the meaning of life, about its purpose and root. In the desire that develops on the inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels, there is already a beginning of a new yearning that obliges us to ask about what there is on the level above me.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/08/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: How can I establish an attitude to the negative aspects  of life, despite the natural feelings that they evoke?

Answer:  If you were incorporated in a group you would approach everything correctly, in every state, on every level. You have to subdue yourself towards the group, to see the friends as the greatest in our generation and to connect with them in order to create the collective force of mutual guarantee. By this collective force, and not on your own, you should begin to clarify things. This is already the power of bestowal, the power that is similar to the Light in its attribute. This should be the starting point. If I start the way by myself, in what direction do I head? Back to my garbage? No, I need to turn to the Light by being next to it.

Question: But why can’t we finish the work in one go?

Answer: If everything were so simple, what would you do in life? The prophets say: “On that day the transgression of Jacob was wanted and it was gone.” This means that we will look for transgressions and won’t find them since when there is nothing to correct, it is also a great problem. Love cannot exist without some friction. It is always that way.

Eventually, if I connect with the friends correctly, everything ends here, since by that I feel and perceive correctly everything that is going on and relate correctly to my state, to the Light, and to the correction. The main thing for me is to stabilize myself within the group. This approach is right for everyone, both veteran and new students.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/06/12,“The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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Question: Why does Baal HaSulam speak only about the need to adhere to books and writers in his articles without mentioning the importance of adhering to the group?

Answer: The importance of adhering to the group isn’t mentioned because it’s a clear and obvious condition. The unity, the connection with others, is the vessel without which it’s practically impossible to start working. Thanks to it you rise above your ego and reach a minimal desire to bestow, from which you continue.

But if you don’t have an environment, which helps you rise out of this hole, from your ego, then there is no one to talk to. It’s about a person, about a discernment in us that rises above the ego, and this is possible only by adhering to the friends. Unless you perform these actions, it’s as if you weren’t born yet, and there’s no one to talk to yet. We aren’t talking about what a person has to do as long as he is a drop of semen and has not yet been born.

It’s about a person who already exists, which means about the discernment within a person that is evoked and that rises above his ego. This is possible only with the help of the environment. To the extent that a person is adhered to the environment, he can exit his ego and rise above it. There is no other force that can pull him out.

Later we can already speak about his other spiritual actions for which the force of the environment is also needed since he himself has no powers. A person is a desire to receive, and there’s nothing we can say about it. It’s only about the part that rose above the ego and is therefore called a friend, a person.
[79897]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/05/12, Shamati #25

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Question: It is obvious that in order to prepare for a seminar, one needs to apply internal effort. Exactly, what kind of effort is required? What should we be doing specifically?

Answer: The first 20 articles by Rabash clearly, specifically, and concisely explain this issue. They illustrate what particularly we should talk about while preparing for the seminar: the importance of the group and friends, the importance of revealing the Creator within the group, the role of nullifying oneself before the group, the need for complete inclusion in the group, and the necessity to regard everyone as “one whole” in order to disclose the upper force according to the law of similarity of properties.

All of these conditions create a joint aspiration that we should imagine as one single picture. We should constantly work with this picture, permanently keep it in mind, and try to elucidate all questions through it since this is the place in which we all are united and where our aggregate desire and mind are. If we manage to achieve it, everything else will happen smoothly.

The only problem is how to start thinking in this direction and how to prepare to achieve this state. Maybe, we should write down everything that helps us “tune” ourselves, like tuning a musical instrument. Have you seen how they tune an instrument? First, he takes care of one part of the instrument, then he turns his attention to another. One octave at a time, he plays the note “do” in various octaves, then he tries “mi” He plays and listens to the sounds of the chords. In other words, it is a system to which we have to “tune” ourselves internally.

We have to constantly keep in mind that the system of ten Sefirot, which we are made of, far more complex than any musical instrument. This is a huge, multi-dimensional, multi-leveled system, which includes innumerable sensations that are arranged into one joint structure.

We are not talking about some separate “planes”; all of them ultimately join together. In due course, our efforts will end up creating a spherical picture of the upper world.

Just as today you imagine yourself in the sphere of this world, imagine yourself in the upper world even though it is far more complicated than ours, since it has n-dimensional “space” if “space” can be even used in the context.

People do not realize how much, in principle, they are not prepared for seminars. All they know is that today something will be going on. It has nothing to do with real preparation!

Preparation is when several hours before a seminar; you are “tuning” yourself, searching for a precise way to unite. It is a process of enhancing internal sensations and making a detailed analysis. It’s also about ridding oneself of all interferences and considerations until something “clicks” from within, a sensation of connectedness that we by all means have to preserve and augment.

Question: Is this individual work or does it have a group nature?

Answer: It is individual work. Later on, in the group, at the very beginning of each seminar, everybody should spend a couple of minutes to grasp the idea. However, when one connects with the group, there is a good chance that he will lose the result of his preparatory work. Yet, one should still do one’s work, and only after the work is complete can he become engaged in something else, although it shouldn’t take you as long as 50 minutes (or even longer), as it happened at the last seminar.

Essentially, people were discussing the topics of the seminar mechanically, rather than implementing them internally. They were confused even in words! Strangely enough, even those people who have lots of prior experience and usually are pretty eloquent couldn’t find normal words to scrutinize their internal states through the sensation of unity.
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From a “Talk About Workshops” 5/25/12

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Baal HaSulam, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”: These are the words of Rabbi Elazar, son of Rabbi Shimon, who said that the world is judged by its majority. He was referring to the role of the Israeli nation to qualify the world for a certain measure of purity, until they are worthy of taking upon themselves His work, no less than Israel were worthy at the time they received the Torah.”

It’s wrong to imagine the “world” as a desire to receive that cannot perform any actions on its own. It isn’t so. The part of Israel in the world is simply similar to the head of the Partzuf, to the first three Sefirot (GAR), and it must act as the “adaptor” between the Light and the desire to receive.

The Partzuf is divided into five parts: Keter, Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin, and Malchut. The Light resides in the vessels of Keter, Hochma, and Bina, and they are adapted to it. By being the same desire to receive, they contain the Light and perform Zivug de Haka’a (coupling by beating) with it and pass it on to the receiving vessels, to Zeir Anpin and Malchut (ZON).

So it’s impossible to manage without the vessels of Keter, Hochma, and Bina. They are the link and they are very important since without them the connection would be lost. On the other hand, the goal of the process is that the vessels of ZON, whose work is to raise the request for correction (MAN) to the vessels of bestowal (GAR), to be incorporated in them and to join them.

The two parts help each other mutually. ZON helps the vessels of GAR to fulfill their role as the link, and GAR evoke the vessels of ZON and bring them the method of correction needed for the receiving vessels in order to connect and to be incorporated in the vessels of GAR. Thus the “nations of the world,” those that don’t have a spark of bestowal, perform important work when they connect to the vessels of the first three Sefirot.

The same thing happens to us: How could we draw the Light if we weren’t connected to Rabbi Shimon, to Baal HaSulam, to Rabash, and to the other great Kabbalists, or in other words to the Partzufim, the Sefirot, the spiritual levels? We connect to them in order to receive power from them, so that they will operate on us and unite us. When I read a Kabbalistic text, I try to connect to its author. After all, he is the upper one for me and through him my connection to the Light flows. It isn’t about a certain person that once lived; I want to connect with the source of the Light, and I am drawn to the link, to the spiritual mechanism through which that connection continues.

When I develop my spiritual vessels together with the Masach (screen), when I can connect with the spiritual world, I will see the Kabbalist in his spiritual form, as a Partzuf. Now he is the author of the article or the author of the book for me. This is the uniqueness of our world: Here we can use texts, which we don’t actually understand yet, and can connect with spirituality through such external devices. The Kabbalist invites me, cares for me, and I try to hold on to him, and thus we are in a relationship of mutual guarantee.

As for the “nations of the world,” they will not receive the correction all at once either. Their role is to join, to help, to be incorporated in the vessels of GAR. This is very serious work thanks to which Hochma is revealed in them. It is by them that all the Light is revealed.

Although according to the opposite value between the Lights and the vessels, it’s first revealed only in the vessels of GAR and only for the time being, on the way to the end of correction. Later everything is filled with one simple Light, as it says “and they shall all know Me from the smallest to the greatest.” And there won’t be even one grain of desire that will not receive complete fulfillment. Since all the grains are included in each other, each of them, every individual soul attains Ein Sof (Infinity).
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/06/12,“The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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