Question: How can I present a gift to my friends if we are connected virtually?

Answer: Do we give material gifts to friends when we meet them in person? A true gift is in the heart. If we really have gifts for our friends then they will feel it. One who gives a gift is called upper and one who receives it is called lower. And they are called friends when the receiver feels the giver of the gift and accepts it with love and joy because he understands that this is an expression of the friend’s love towards him, and by receiving the gift he reciprocates with love.

A gift is but a ploy, and that’s why it’s unimportant who gives and who receives; both are equals. If we can build this kind of relationship between us then we will feel one another like a mother that feels her child from afar. After all, love is more powerful than distance.
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/29/12, Writings of Rabash
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If from the beginning you do not want to go from Lo Lishma (not for Her name) to Lishma (for Her name), to bestowal, then it is preferable not to do anything at all. At least don’t ask the Creator for the sake of the ego. After all, you agree on a partnership with Him, just to get more from Him.

How should we act in order not to turn into leeches that demand “Give me both this world and the next world!” but instead of this, learn from the Creator about His attribute of bestowal without, “building” on His riches?

Thus, the state of Lo Lishma is very delicate, serious, dramatic, and life changing. After all, from this point, I can go in two completely different directions and I need to make a choice.

The search for the meaning of life, its source and goal, brings me to this point, to the teacher, the group, the books, the system, and I begin to clarify it. From it, I can go back in all kinds of directions, and I can move forward.

But how can I discover where “forward” and “backward” are? After all, I don’t see the direction. I can be told about this a thousand times, but still I don’t see it. I need to clarify it myself.

Backward is death and forward is life, but to me it can be perceived completely differently. How can I check it in order to constantly direct myself?

I have partners concerning this point: the group, the teacher and of course, the Creator. Now I need to organize all these components in order to advance in the good direction.

But what is good: Is it what is good for me, for my ego, or about someone else’s goals? There are numerous questions here and I need to clarify. It seems that I am within a sphere with 360 degrees of choices of direction, and I can choose whatever direction I wish! Where should I go? That is the huge question that a person faces.

It takes a long time until he clarifies this question, and this clarification ends only at Gmar Tikkun (end of correction). In this way we attain the answer to the same question about the meaning of life that we arrived with. Although it seemed to you that you began to feel and understand it beforehand, we actually attain it only at the end. Indeed within this question are included all of your thoughts and desires, and all of them need to be corrected and fulfilled, and then it means that you reached the answer.

We stand before this point, and we need to connect ourselves together: the group, the teacher, the Creator, and another component, the Torah.

The Creator is the source. I, the group, and the teacher are the means. The Torah is the force of correction that I activate. Thus it is said, “Israel, the Light and the Holy One, Blessed be He, are One.” And if I connect all of these into one place, the correct path opens before me.

This path doesn’t exist by itself, it is created before me like a direction that was opened, like a straight arrow, like a vector, on the condition that I choose all the items of data correctly. I need each time to organize correctly all the attributes, my thoughts and desires, to clarify the direction, and advance forward again and again. In this way, we correct ourselves.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/11/12, “Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: What can I discover in the Arava convention?

Answer: You will discover what you want; you will discover what you prepare yourself for. Perhaps you are preparing yourself to find out the meat and rice is delicious?

In our connection we want to reach a true deficiency, and we have to go to the convention with the right yearning. It has to be so clear that we feel it in our bones.

Question: Should we set conditions that must be kept before the convention? Will this help us discover the right deficiency?

Answer: Yes, of course. How is it possible without preliminary conditions? We can’t jump the gun. If someone doesn’t prepare himself, there is no point in his going. By that he is tripping up himself and the friends, and he will get a spiritual punishment for that, like the fool who drills a hole in the collective boat. Everyone should be responsible for what is happening with him. There is time for everyone to correct himself according to the conditions you decide on.

You should present these conditions to anyone you think is ready for the attack. So think, whom are you taking with you and whom not? Make a list of names. The criterion here is not how much a person knows, not the number of years he has studied, but the level of his desire: How much does he want to and is he capable of helping.

Everyone should carry out his job on the boat, from the captain to the youngest apprentice. The only question is: How focused is everyone on the goal?

Question: What is that spiritual punishment?

Answer: If I fail the friends by my wrong participation, then I will certainly be punished for that. The harm I cause will come back to me like a boomerang.

In the same way, I can also receive the reward through the friends when I advance with them and receive from them powers, directions, and assistance; I only add a bit from myself. In our world it is just like working in a certain field and being able to exchange my salary for numerous goods and services that others offer me. When I connect to them, I provide myself with everything that I need in order to live a good life. It is the same in spirituality: I work in my place on the boat and do my job faithfully—and together with everyone else I reach our destination. Could I cross the ocean by myself?

Question: How can I check whether I am ready for the convention?

Answer: Ask your friends all over the world what they think the preparation is. You should write about it yourselves, so that everyone will be able to check himself whether he is coming physically or whether he is going to participate virtually. Women and men should write separately, and then discuss the matter and closely stick to the decisions that are reached.

The main thing is the deficiency; we don’t need more than that. So it is about the clarification of the deficiency, or the clarification of the obstacles on the way to reach it, which interruptions should I take with me in order to sharpen things and bring about correction?

Question: For whom should I ask for the deficiency during the lesson: myself or the others?

Answer: It is written, “He who prays for his friend is answered first.” But if you are asking for the friends just so that you can be first, your prayer won’t be answered. That is not a prayer for the friend.

Question: The last time before we went out to the desert, we were given the chance to overcome many obstacles. Now, however, we have to ignite this desire by ourselves. Is this the minimum with which we have to come to the desert?

Answer: Today much more is demanded from you. At that time you expected some revelation, but we didn’t say what exactly should be revealed. Now we say: We have to reveal the desire, the deficiency. I don’t need anything but this desire.

What exactly is it aimed at? At the revelation of the Creator? No. It is aimed at bestowal. None of us has the desire for bestowal, and we want it to be revealed in all of us. After all, the desire to bestow that fills me is actually the Light. I am happy because I want to bestow, and I don’t need anything but that. Even if the Creator doesn’t let me bestow—the desire itself fills me with and brings me pleasure.

Then we begin to understand the details, and to climb the mountain to the King’s palace.

There is nothing to add here. We have the opportunity to reach the right deficiency, which will be filled. We don’t need anything else.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/29/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: What does the Creator want through The Book of Zohar?

Answer: The Creator does not want anything. He wants what you want. He is constantly in the law of absolute bestowal. And Reshimot (informational genes) are awakened in you all the time and reveal to you how much you are opposite to this total property of bestowal that is ruling over the world.

The stronger the Reshimot will open in you, the more you will feel opposed to this law, this force, in various forms. From day to day, your world will appear to you much worse from any side.

Do you want to stay in it? Stay. Do you want to move out of your misery? Advance! Do you want to do something with yourself? Do. Use this power for good. How? If you strive for it, then you will discover its greater impact on you. If you do not strive, you will not discover.

The Creator is unchangeable. By your aspiration, you will be able to draw more help, more power from Him. And if you do not long for Him, if you turn your back to Him, you will reveal something different.

The Creator does not want anything. We just say: “His desire is to bring pleasure to the creatures” because we think that His desire is the same as ours, that it operates and performs. It does operate and perform, but in an unchanged form. And that is why, in contrast to our world, it is a static state, when everything depends on you. All changes depend on you.

Reshimot are revealed only to you so you feel changes; it is not He who is changing every moment. The Creator does not change; the Light is in absolute rest. The creature wanted to perform the first restriction (Tzimtzum Aleph) and has done it; the second restriction, please do! The Creator agrees, but nothing more. The creature does everything. We just relate in our earthly language that the Creator acts in everything.

Thus, if you want to change something, you should not forget that it is we who change,.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/29/12, The Zohar

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Question: It is difficult for us to wake each other up by means of external actions, but the internal ones are slipping away from us. What should we do?

Answer: The point is that each one of you falls asleep and despairs. This is natural, and this will continue until you feel that each one depends on the others and must care about the others. I must understand that my desire depends on you, and yours depends on me. Only then will we arrive at the real desire.

Today, you are searching for this desire personally, individually, but not together. Each one thinks about how to increase his own desire, but this is incorrect. You will not be able to do that. On the contrary, you fall asleep, counting on indulgences from above. Nothing else can possibly happen, while a person makes the calculation only for himself. Alone, nobody is capable of establishing even the smallest contact with spirituality since it is absolutely opposite to him. We still cannot imagine the depth of this divide.

However, we have the opportunity to make this leap across the distance separating us from the spiritual world. This depends on the group, on how we play within it, how we play such a game from which we simply have nowhere to escape. In this “play” of the group, I must constantly demonstrate this environment, its continued staging: all of us on stage together in every act, in every scene. No other means will help without this.

It is said: “A hero will not save himself by his own strength.” The power of the Creator is needed for this, but it can only be summoned through the group. We must think in this direction and play, like in the theatre. We need to build this play, where everyone will participate without exception. In our play, we give the mutual guarantee to each other; we display our participation, attention, and the need of each one for everyone and everyone for each one. We will not come out from Egypt otherwise.

If you are working on this and encounter obstacles along the way, then we can go out to the Arava desert, since we will have something to go with, we will have the suffering of the whole Kli that is not able to unite. It is said about this: “And the sons of Israel cried out from the work!” For their egoism, they have built the wonderful cities of Ramses and Pithom, while they have found themselves to be in poor cities, threatening not to let them out from the exile.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/26/12, “Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: Where should each of us start to create our own environment?

Answer: Start from the need to evoke inspiration and to impress everyone by your desire to create the environment. Try to spur them without words that we should all yearn to create an environment that will oblige us, change us, and bring us closer so that we will connect. This is a must. Without such a society, without the right connections among us, there is nowhere that spirituality can be revealed. Spirituality is revealed only in the connection among us.

The form of the connection among us is the form of the spiritual world, the form of the level a person is on. The moment it influences me and I want to discover it, the level of the connection will depend on me. In the same group there are those who see it on level 50 and there are those who see it on level 5 and others can see it as absolutely perfect, in Gmar Tikkun (Final Correction).

Spiritual reality doesn’t have a predetermined form; it all depends on a person. This is why I need the environment so much, so that it will oblige me to treat it correctly. That’s all we need.

Actually, when I see that it is corrected, I see that it has always been that way, and I only lacked the desire to discover this, I lacked the sensitivity. Now too we are in a group and in an environment that is in Gmar Tikkun, in the world of Infinity. But it doesn’t spur me to discover that. By evoking the friends, I create an effect that helps me discover that they are absolutely corrected.

As a result of this cycle, which comes back to me, I correct myself. This is called to pray, to judge myself, how do I return to the right attitude through the environment. We have to give it a lot of thought because it all begins and ends here.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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All our work is building the environment. After all you can’t create yourself by yourself. This is what we have to create for humanity these days. If I have to correct myself, how can I do that? I simply need to create around me such an environment, the media and an education system, so that I will be the product of this environment.

But by creating it, I correct myself. It’s because through the process of creation I already begin to feel how it should be built and how I should exist, and accordingly what kind of an environment it should be so that it will affect me. I feel how I should build it now so that it will take on such a form that will influence me.

In the building process itself, we join the operating mind and understand what the Creator wanted to do by the shattering, why He prepared such building blocks, wood and building materials for us, and why we should build this house. Thanks to this we begin to discover Him. It looks as if I am building the environment so that it will correct me, and so that the corrected me will be incorporated in it and then…but it isn’t so. By building the environment I get to know the Creator.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/12, The Zohar

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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Study of The Ten Sefirot“: One concealment means that he believes in the Providence of reward and punishment. Yet, because of the accumulation of the suffering, he sometimes comes to thoughts of transgression.

The egoistic desire pressures a person and the slight revelation of the Creator’s posterior isn’t enough for him. But he still restrains himself as much as he can.

This is because even though he believes that the suffering came to him as a punishment, he is still like one who sees his friend from behind, and might doubt and mistake him for another. And these sins are only mistakes, since, as a whole, he does believe in Providence of reward and punishment.

So what are these states? Suppose a person’s egoistic desire weighs 100 kg and the Light gives him only 50 kg of power of resistance. If we subtract the 100 kg of evil from the 50 kg of the power of the Light, the result will be minus 50 kg. These 50 kg of the ego operate inside a person and lower him to the level of mistakes. If all the 100kg of the ego were set loose in us, a person could find himself on the level of sins.

If I am totally under the control of my egoistic desire, it is the level of sins. Here all my vessels, the ones that receive and ones that bestow, operate with the intention of in order to receive. But if some of my vessels can restrain themselves fearlessly, then I am on the level of mistakes. It all depends on the revelation of the Creator, on the way He appears to me.

This mechanism doesn’t work in our world. Here only the threat of a blow to the ego restrains us: whether it is the feeling of shame, or whether our pride may be hurt, or even physical harm. On the other hand, in the spiritual world the punishment is the inability to bestow. The threat of the inability to bestow restrains a person.

On the whole, it all depends on how much the Light influences me, in how many of my vessels I want It to bestow. Accordingly I am on the level of a “righteous” or an “evil person.”

Do I have free will here? It depends on whether I can demand that the Light will influence me as much as possible.

For example, I have a “cruel” egoistic desire that weighs 100 kg and I am ready to correct it only by 10 kg because I simply cannot ask for a greater correction; I can’t resist all the pleasures and put them under the intention of bestowal. Even when I am incorporated in the group, I am not ready to get rid of all my egoism. At the most, I am ready to “cut the edges,” to get rid of the “excess fat,” and not more than that; that’s all I can ask for. So what’s next? Will my request be accepted in such an egoistic manner?

Everyone should try and answer this question by himself.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/25/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: When is our state called self-sacrifice?

Answer: At the moment, we should simply try to do whatever is in our power according to our understanding of what self-sacrifice means. Try to find your point of the shattering, which is the opposite from the point that was created during the shattering from top down, and correct the place of the shattering in the ascent from the bottom up. This is what we call to clarify what you can give up, in order to hold on to bestowal.

Suppose I am ready to give to someone, to help him, to think about him under certain conditions, but beyond that—no. Can I do anything else above that “no?” A single step or half a step? What will I feel then?

These are very high concepts, which cannot be conveyed in words. People think that it is simple: We often say that a person sacrifices himself for his work, for his family, etc., but true self-sacrifice is not in the hands of the created being at all. We can’t do it as long as we operate within our egoistic nature. There must be the influence of the Light, which raises me above my egoistic desire, and then I can work in self-sacrifice.

To sacrifice my soul means to give myself to a higher level. But if I am within my egoism now, how can I reach the level of bestowal? And if I am on a certain level of bestowal, how do I rise to a higher level? I have to give my soul to the higher level, to enter the upper, like a fetus.

In order to become a fetus in the upper, I have to annul my feelings, my mind, my clarifications, and all my healthy logic and common sense. But I feel that I am a grown up, that I am clever, and not some insane fool. So how can I give myself to the upper?

And what does it mean to give myself: simply not to do anything and to wait until He does something with me? No, it won’t work this way. To give myself the upper means to do whatever I feel as His desire by myself, above my reason. If you can’t do that, you cry out!

In the article: “The Matter of the Association of the Quality of Mercy with Judgment,” it says that it is in the darkest state that a person tries to reach self-sacrifice. It is in the darkness that a person is given this opportunity.

It is very hard to do this alone. If a person makes great efforts, for a long time by oneself and sees that it leads nowhere, he can reach the conclusion that he needs the group’s support. I won’t be able to do it alone, and neither will all the others if they operate alone. So let’s help one another, as it says: “they shall help one another” and then we will have a reason to go out to the desert!

A desert is a place where we despair of our own powers and cry out. Therefore, we need to prepare the vessels for this.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/26/12, Shamati #219

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All our work is climbing up the levels, where every level is totally cut off from the previous one. Such a ladder is created during the cascading from top down, when Malchut of the upper becomes the Keter of the lower. And this is how the transition from one state to another takes place, even if it isn’t an ascent up the spiritual degrees yet.

It is a real transformation, and the change our matter goes through is so thorough and complete that we cease to understand ourselves during the transition from one state to another. This is because all these states are made of the change in the amount of the Light that evokes our desire to receive, and both, the Light and the desire, give birth to a new level, a new state.

When we are on the new level, we have nothing left of the previous state except for the Reshimot (informational genes) that brought about this new state. It is also concealed. This means that there is nothing from the previous state in the new spiritual state.

We feel that it happens this way even before entering the spiritual world; we have to agree with all the states we go through, and learn from them what the spiritual transition really is as we move from one world to another. Every level is actually a world in itself.

The problem is that there are two elements in every level: the desire to receive and the desire to bestow, which are two opposites that contradict one another—the right and left lines, each with its own shell. We have to become the middle line that connects the two in it, that controls them and that is above them.

The cascading from top down takes place in the following way: Hochma (on the right), Bina (on the left), and then Da’at (wisdom) (below, in the middle). And thus a triangle is formed with a vertex facing downwards. During the ascent from the bottom up there is Hochma (on the right) and Bina (on the left) and then Keter (on the top, in the middle), because we only want to rise. Each time it is the result of Hochma and Bina, Hassadim and Gevurot, fear and love, and always above them.

And so there is always a problem of how to combine these two components that contradict one another, until the third arrives and decides. The third component comes from Above in the form of the revelation of the Creator, after a person sees that he absolutely cannot reconcile the two.

Therefore, self-sacrifice is required both in fear and in love. In fear it is harder to attain than in love, because love also absorbs the soul and they both act in the same way. If I love someone, I am totally devoted to him and desire to connect to him. This is how it seems to us in this world, because we love what our desire to receive likes.

But in the spiritual world I love what is hated by my egoism, as it says: “love will cover all the sins.” This means that self-sacrifice is also difficult in love, but in hate it is totally impossible.

To hate and to give my soul is called to use my vessels to receive in order to bestow. So how can I unite my most hated enemies who also hate me, and to bestow upon everyone the good that I can only do to the people I love most and that are closest to me?

This can only be done for some additional goal that justifies everything else. But if the goal is the action itself, it is simply impossible. This means that a very difficult ascent is expected here, above personal accounts.

We approach it gradually, perhaps not by the Light, which is the shortest and nicest path, but on a much longer path that includes sufferings and that is called “Derech Ererz,” (the path of the earth). Eventually, however, we reach the goal, because the upper Light operates on every action that we perform and decides between the two rival sides.

Therefore, although I have to give my soul both in fear and in love, they arrive alternately, until we rise and are able to connect everything. Then you can be in a state of self-sacrifice in fear too, just like in love.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/26/12, Shamati #219

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