Question: How do I know that my request to the Creator comes from the right place? Am I really there, where it is permitted to ask?

Answer: My request is valid if I feel that it is against my desire, if I can rise above it and ask from the very depth of my heart, and if I can enjoy the action which is against my initial desire.

Coupling by striking (Zivug de Hakaa) occurs in the state when internally, I feel that I want to please myself, but above it I sense that my action opposes this desire. I enjoy my ability to resist it. Then, this pleasure isn’t for me, as if I refused to steal. What matters here is to what degree I associate myself with the friends and through them, together, with the Creator.

If I am willing to arrange such an internal action, then I am close to the act of bestowal, and this is what brings me satisfaction which, of course, isn’t directed at me.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/4/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Question: What do I need in order to implement the knowledge of Kabbalah in my daily life? I find a big discrepancy between what I learn and what I feel.

Answer: There is only one solution: accelerate your development. To accomplish this, it will take more study and greater connection with your friends. It doesn’t require wealth, honor, power, or some other effort, only the thought to never forget about it.

The key is our interconnection. Despite one’s unwillingness, a person wants to exert effort and maintain connection with the friends in order to have continual awareness of the importance of the goal. And when he has reached it, he “passes it on,” that is, spreads it to the others.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/4/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Question: How should I react to sensations that appear as a result of the Creator’s actions?

Answer: They are the outcome of contact with the Upper Light, with the Creator. But again, one should remember that the Creator is unchangeable and only I change, as a result of the Reshimot (informational genes) unfolding in me one after the other.

Therefore, I can only exert effort in having the Reshimot change. By doing so, I expedite their development and see it as desirable. I am not against my development; I am all for it, although I realize that it isn’t easy and requires effort, as in any development. I am willing to do it.

How do I develop then? I do it by engaging in the group. With the help of the group, I start realizing the importance of my development; they give me strength to bear it. This is what we call awareness of the goal. After all, if the goal is great in my eyes, I am ready for it despite my body’s resistance. The importance gives me strength.

If I really incorporate myself into my friends’ desire, then I have no problem accelerating my development. I don’t advance by way of suffering, when because of my disparity with the awakened Reshimo it causes me pain.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/4/2011, Writings of Rabash

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In our world, all created beings can be divided into three types:

1. Some still remain indifferent; they neither understand, nor feel, nor think about whether they are receiving something from Above.

2. Others, unlike those at the animate level, believe that they receive everything from the Creator. But they, too, don’t know what to do with it. They haven’t grown up enough to realize that they are receiving the evil inclination that has to be transformed into good. Having experienced evil, a person believes that he or she received it from Above and starts crying, appealing, and praying for the Creator to send him or her abundance.

This is how religious folks act, those who assume that the Creator sends them pain either to remind them that He exists or to reward them for it in this or the future world. One way or another, a person believes that his or her prayer will change the Creator and He will have a change of heart.

3. And the rest have evolved even more and realize that the Creator doesn’t change. He is always good, always full of love, and always complete. As a person passes through a chain of internal states, he or she discovers that in the light of the perfect, unchanging, and infinite Creator, they are mutable and opposite. A person defines it as evil and arrives at the need to plea, in accordance with which his or her state is transformed into good.

As a result, a person sees that the Creator is an endless and constant Upper Light, the Infinity, and he or she is the only one who changes. The Reshimot (informational genes) unfold in a person, starting with the broken one that he becomes aware of by exerting effort in the group and studies. He discerns this Reshimo and prays for it, meaning judges it and asks to correct it, wishing for it to get reformed.

Thereby, a person receives a new desire by participating in the life of the group correctly. Then, the immutable Light transforms this corrupted, broken Reshimo into a corrected one. A Zivug (uniting, coupling) of the reformed Reshimo with the Light occurs, and a Partzuf of the soul is formed.

We divide people into the following three basic types:

1. Those who are not fit for correction yet;
2. Those who are religious and pray for the Creator to change;
3.  the Kabbalists who understand that it is they who must change.

Therefore, spiritual work is for the Kabbalists; praying without receiving an answer is for the religious believers; and life without any connection with the Creator is for the rest.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/4/2011, Writings of Rabash

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With the appearance of the screen (Masach), the order of desires, actions, thoughts, and intentions completely changes. The Direct Light and the Reflected Light, everything becomes completely different; everything follows another design, another purpose, another scale of priorities.

Now, I am no longer concerned with my own “stomach” that I used to fill by consuming everything around me. I value something else: how to bestow, how much to give, and to whom I bestow. Previously, I felt fulfillment in me, and now I do so in the other. And that is what governs my actions.

Let’s take an example: I am preparing a feast for a friend who is flying from overseas. For myself, I would make something totally different, but suppose my guest is Chinese or American. So, I cook what he or she likes although it doesn’t match my tastes at all. All my desires and abilities, all that I am, I focus on my guest, with love and from the bottom of my heart.

Imagine to what extent I have to sacrifice what I like and am accustomed to so as to do it all for my friend, to please him, “insert” myself in him, and settle there. Instead of each of my taste buds, I have to acquire those of my guest’s, and instead of my habits I have to assume his. I need to transform myself into him or her.

Try to sense what a Reshimo (informational gene) which used to be my own and with which I now must work for the sake of another is. It isn’t easy at all: I need to get to know a person, study him, and come to love him so that by faith above reason, without liking his tastes, I still do it. I rise above my desire and enter his. I live in him, in his throat and stomach, everywhere where my cooking will echo in him. That’s where I settle in and verify the result of my action.

So, a Reshimo is an extremely important thing. The previous state left in me a Reshimo which is deprived of image, contours, and isn’t clothed in any particular form. And this is precisely why I can add a new direction to it, a new form that derives from me. Before, I enjoyed to please myself whereas now, in the new form, new connection and new direction, I wish to please the other person.

Everything is aligned with him, in his direction; everything is experienced within him. And the previous Reshimo is a mere basis to get to understand how I used to please myself and now I wish to please him.

This will require much multifaceted work before it can be accomplished.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/4/2011, Explanation of the Article “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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Question: This is what worries me: Can it be so that ascending in spirituality higher and higher, we will feel such a strong hatred toward each other that we will fall into the state of exile once more, as occurred when the Temple fell? It seems we don’t learn from mistakes of the past, do we?

Answer: Since we keep entering greater egoism, we cannot learn from the past. Always keep this in mind. Baal HaSulam writes that there is a possibility for the third and fourth world wars to occur.

Question cont.: But how can we prevent it?

Answer: Only by spreading the wisdom of Kabbalah so that everybody learns it as necessary. Only then can one stop making tragic mistakes.

Question cont.: Why can’t we learn from the past mistakes? After all, we already fell into exile before.

Answer: Humanity doesn’t learn from the past since time after time, greater desire to enjoy unfolds in it. We can’t learn from the events that used to take place in a lesser desire, just like a grown up can’t learn from a child.

If at a new degree, you have a greater will to receive, greater egoism, you are unable to take a lesser ego into account, the one you used to have yesterday or the day before. It can’t serve you as a model that would oblige you to treat life accordingly. It simply can’t! It’s because the current, much greater ego is telling you: “Tear this world into pieces! Do whatever you please!”
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/4/2011, “The Study of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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Rabash, Shlavei HaSulam (Steps of the Ladder), Article “There Is No Blessing Upon That Which Is Counted in the Work”: For example, a person brings a jacket to the laundry to have the spots removed from it. He says to the laundry owner: “I have counted for you how many corrections you have to perform so that I know how much to pay you.”

We exist in a perfect state, and we have to reveal it. All the stages that we undergo are the stages of the revelation of the existing state, if only not for us. It is disclosed to us step by step.

It all depends on the receiver: to what extent a person prepares and rushes himself. How much the environment is willing to help and support him is also completely up to him. The Creator brings a person to the right environment and says: “This is for you, take it!” Now it is solely up to the person whether he will accept what is offered and in what way.

Hence, “counting the corrections” is also completely in our hands. Everything is determined by the attitude: We must comply with the stages that make our path, each of which is necessary.

From Above, from the world of Infinity, there comes abundance of vessels and Lights by way of the descending of the worlds, Partzufim, and Sefirot. As the means of preparation, the breakings and other various processes occur as well. And as soon as this preparation is complete, we must ascend in the same way, only now from below upward, passing through the same stages, living through the same Reshimot (informational genes), yet moving ahead of them with our desire. That is the only difference.

The Creator broke the integral picture into parts, and now, among these parts, we have to seek out desires, aspirations, and goals, to make preferences and establish values. It is as if we are assembling a construction kit, parts of which have different form, properties, are painted in different colors, and get locked in a different manner.

And all of this is preceded by our desire that we can arrange solely with the help of the group. In the meantime, we don’t really feel our dependence on it that much since, basically, we don’t feel how we advance and can’t calculate the speed, count spiritual degrees, or measure the pace of advancement. Hence, we are not really in a hurry to find the ways to expedite our development.

In each state, we are passive: “If I am already here, I will wait for it to pass.” And it does pass thanks to various actions, even if they are not exactly aimed at our development. But the process is slow and requires many supplementary moves.

When we do reach the correct analysis, however, we discover that every state is mandatory, and no state can be ignored. Everything is for the best; everything clarifies the truth, but the energy, the desire, or impulse is up to us.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/25/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Question: Can we say that now, after the convention in Berlin, we are united?

Answer: We have reached a new state in our unity. I am happy about what took place in Berlin and after that in Paris. We have reached unity, cohesion. For the first time we discovered many friends in Europe who already understand the path and feel the development. I was really pleasantly surprised by some events.

Ahead of us we have an April convention in New Jersey. Let’s hope that we will come to a new degree of unity in the United States as well. Thus, by uniting during the conventions we will accumulate the necessary force for the revelation of the Creator to the creature.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/4/2011, “When the Creator Loves Man”

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Question: What is the significance of the group in forming the desire that can reveal the Tabernacle?

Answer: A person does not have any desires aimed at the Creator! I cannot independently aspire to the Creator. This cannot be! The Creator is among the particular souls, among the particular desires of society. “I dwell among My people.” These are not just pretty words. The Creator is the net of connection between us and that is where I have to look for Him.

If I look for a desire that I have to correct, then I have to aspire toward you, see how much I hate and repel you, how much I don’t care about you, and then I reveal the evil, the evil desire—how much I don’t accept you. I see the breaking: the souls between which the connection is destroyed.

If I reveal this with the help of the teacher, books, and environment, if I regret the fact that I am not connected with others “as one man with one heart,” in mutual guarantee and total unity, then this regret is called MAN: a prayer or request. I ask for “Mey Nukvin”: the female waters, the force of Bina, bestowal, unification. Then the MAN ascends into Malchut, from Malchut through Zeir Anpin into Bina, and into the world of Infinity.

It’s impossible for me to correct something and to sacrifice something of my own unless it is aimed toward the neighbor, toward the environment in which I exist. That is where realization takes place. That is where the place of our work is. That is why the place for the Tabernacle and the Temple, the Menorah, and the table, the way they are placed in relation to one another, in what form, at what height and width, are all indications of our common Kli that is called the soul. Besides this Kli there is nothing! The soul is the combination of our desires, and the right depiction of these desires, particular souls, is called the courtyard, the Tabernacle, the Tent. All of this is common to all of us and exists among us or inside of us.

Question: Do the forms of the Tabernacle change depending on the level that the soul is on? Will different people in the group see different forms of it?

Answer: They will see it more or less clearly, with a different degree of resolution and clarity, like viewing with glasses or without. Every person will see it slightly differently, according to his level, his form, and the special qualities of the soul, but at the same time everyone will see the same thing and will be able to talk about the same thing.
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From the lesson on the weekly Torah portion on 2/4/11

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