Question: Why do we view our spiritual path to be “masochistic”? Why can’t we avoid the emptiness and suffering?

Answer: On this path, we suffer from love. We regret that we are deprived of similarity with the Creator.

Do you really think that the Creator deprives you of food, water, shelter, and health? No, we are talking about the suffering of those who want to be like Him.

Suddenly, our egoistic desires and pleasure get bigger; the desires and pleasures are in fact the same and we cannot cope with them any longer. In this case, we suffer, and the Creator disappears from our sight. Previously, He exposed Himself to us. But later on, predicaments show up and we cannot handle His revelation any more. So, He conceals Himself from us.

There is no comparison with the suffering of a regular person who instead of earning ten thousand yesterday, earns only a hundred today. We have to understand the language of Kabbalists who talk about spiritual things rather than on the material plane. On the spiritual path, “punishment” means the Creator’s concealment and our inability to bestow.
[66942]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/19/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Baal HaSualm, “Introduction to the Study of The Ten Sefirot“: Since His Guidance is not revealed, it is impossible to see Him but only in concealment of the face, from behind, as one who sees one’s friend from behind and might doubt and think he is another. In this manner, one is always left with the choice to either keep His will or break it.”

Because the Creator is concealed, He allows us to have doubts, and hence, the opportunity to perform actions. If the Creator were revealed, we would all be His slaves, “robots” that would perform His desire unconditionally. His revelation would oblige us to do that automatically. After all, there would be no “break” between us and the Light, which is what enables us to resemble the Creator independently.

But the Creator brings us the feeling of concealment: He doesn’t just hide, but lets us feel that He doesn’t exist. In this case, we can carry out His desire as if He exists, and we act in His place. Thus He allows us to complete His actions. For us it is an opportunity, a place to work and take pride in the fact that we can fill our doubts with His Guidance.

But where can I find the power to perform this work, if He is concealed from me? I have to understand that the concealment is a kind of “black light” that builds a special form in my desires and thoughts: the hidden contours of the Creator, which I want to complete.

If this form were revealed to me, I would carry out His desire submissively. So how can I create the Creator’s form inside me, so that it will oblige me to act while He is concealed? I have to build His image inside me and only then can I carry out His plan.

And so gradually, a person builds inside him the Creator’s image. And the Creator shows him more and more how deeply and in what manner He is concealed. Thus we advance until we build everything the Creator wants. Then we will resemble Him according to the equivalence of form.

So the point is not to actually carry out the Creator’s desire. Our desire to receive and all the different ways to receive are a means. The point is in building the Creator’s image inside us.
[67375]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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We are in a state of concealment, and we must understand that we are in concealment. A person is born and lives in this world in a state of total detachment from the true reality. He doesn’t know where he is and whether there is anything besides that. If there is, can it be seen?

When we feel the presence of something, it could be that it is hidden or revealed. So, the concealment is part of the revelation because I already know about the existence of something that is hidden. This means that people who are in a state of concealment are already on the way to the truth, although it is concealed from them at the moment.

This is already an advanced state because ordinary people don’t feel that something is concealed from them.

We go through four phases: double concealment, single concealment, Providence of reward and punishment, and eternal Providence.

As far as the two concealments are concerned, it isn’t detachment any more; neither a state of unconsciousness. In double concealment, I know that I am detached from reality and that I don’t see that the Creator determines everything that happens to me. In single concealment I feel that my life depends on my being in front of the Creator. But something that brought me to concealment instead of revelation depends on me.

So in a double concealment, I determine that I am detached from the Creator, and in single concealment there is contact, but I don’t perform His desire.

In the next phase, the phase of revelation, I receive reward and punishment according to the degree that I perform His desire. The punishment is eventually also a reward, because thanks to it, I advance. It shows me where I still have to correct myself, that is, where I am “behind” the present level, because a person is not demanded to do something that is beyond his power.

Eventually, I move on to eternal Providence after having corrected all my attributes, and I reach total mutual understanding with the Creator.

All these states were meant to make us understand the Creator’s Providence. This understanding is the sign, the means, the basis for all our success and wellbeing. If I know that I receive blows for some reason, it isn’t meaningless sufferings anymore, but a punishment that will do me good, or the good itself. Everything here depends on the level I am on and on my attitude towards the punishments.

It could be that as a result of the blows on my egoism, I will feel so happy that I will rise above these feelings and enter a state of Hafetz Chesed. So I have nothing, but I don’t suffer. Apparently this is impossible? Where is the envy, the lust, the honor? Everything remains below, but a lot of work is required in order to reach that.

So we gradually go through the phases of concealment and revelation, and go up the levels of the spiritual worlds. It is about individual discernments, about a person’s internal states, but it is clear that they are realized only if I try as hard as I can to be incorporated in the right environment. Otherwise I won’t be able to rise.

Sometimes it is hard to tie all the internal work with the work in the group. But actually, it isn’t a problem, I should only check and connect these two components more carefully. All the work is in the group; all the feeling is inside me.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: A week ago I was driving on a foggy, rainy night. Visibility was only about 2 meters, ahead. I held on the yellow line and could only notice the oncoming trucks at the last second. I thought to myself that along our path there must also be a line you should stay on. But I couldn’t decide what that line is: Is it the group or the teacher?

Answer: The group, of course. The teacher only guides you, teaches you, and you should carry out his instructions exactly as he tells you.

Question: But the group seems to me like many lines, while the teacher is one.

Answer: We are connected like cogwheels: Everyone is connected to me and I am connected to everyone. I give the friends something from me and receive bestowal from them. Thus we form a collective “sphere.”

Question: But the cogwheels have an engine that turns them.

Answer: No, they turn by themselves. Eventually the upper Light turns them when it is revealed in the good mutual relations among them. This energy is hidden among them, in their mutual bestowal. So it turns out that they are like an eternal engine that operates on love.

It says that it is impossible to destroy “a city of outcasts.” Even if its inhabitants are criminals, if there is love among them, it is impossible to beat them.

Question: So what is the work of a cogwheel?

Answer: To adhere to others, to receive deficiencies from them and to fill them. This is what everyone should do. Eventually, you see before you the greatest of the generation who are completely corrected, except for the part that you have to fill in them. One doesn’t contradict the other: You can treat the group as Malchut of Ein Sof.

Question: So, I have to receive the power from the friends in order to give them powers? So are they strong or weak?

Answer: It works both ways. There is no other way: They are the greatest and they are the smallest. On one hand, I receive my strength from them and in them I reveal the Creator, and on the other hand, they lack what I have to give them, and without me they won’t feel it.

Question: And the Creator is revealed above that?

Answer: No, He is revealed inside, in the mutual connection between us. If it is a connection of bestowal, then in this aspiration we discover the upper Light. It isn’t above us; we are the ones who create and ignite it.
[67372]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: First there was the thought of the Creator, and then it was implemented into the plan of creation by building all the worlds from top to bottom. What is the distance that the creature needs to overcome in order to ascend back to the initial thought of creation?

Answer: There is a huge separation between the Creator’s thought of creation and us. First we rise from the worlds of Beria, Yetzira, and Assiya (BYA) to the world of Atzilut when we obtain the substance and the form clothed in substance. Afterwards we reach the abstract form and then to the essence. Despite that we don’t grasp or understand these categories now, it seems that we will obtain them one day.

By performing the actions, we obtain the Creator. It is clear that we are building them with the help of the reforming Light since we ourselves have no power to do this. We are only the “bricks.” But in order to build some kind of structure from us, we need the means that will connect us together, the cement that glues all the parts together. And we need to know how it all connects together.

And when He connects all our bricks together, we begin to understand how the Creator created everything and why He broke it—so that we would build anew that structure and discover His thought, His mind.

Baal HaSulam explains to us in his article, “The Acting Mind,” that when I look at a certain creation, I obtain the desire of the craftsman who created it. In other words, the more that I penetrate into the creation through my feelings, then the more I feel the nature of its Creator, His relation to creation. I can obtain Him through my understanding of his relationship with His creation!

In our world too, it is possible to do this and understand the artist because it derives from its upper roots. The Creator created the creature within a special system, broke it, and then leads us to need to reassemble this puzzle. When we assemble this mosaic, we obtain Him because He immersed Himself in it.

The Creator doesn’t hide in this system, just the opposite. He implants within each part of it, His mind, attitude, and sense of Himself. And when we assemble this puzzle, we don’t just simply receive a corrected picture and begin to exist in this wonderful world. We obtain the general law that operates within this system, the law of love and unity!

And we also obtain that same One that is operating in this system,” the inclusive,” the upper force that built the entire system. And in the power of One, we discover His attitude toward us which is called AHP (Awzen, Hotem, Peh – the lower part) of Keter (crown).

Despite that I still can not study it with certainty, but it is certainly possible that we can also obtain the upper part of Keter, that is disconnected from us, in as much as we have that desire.

It is impossible in the meantime to say it with certainty because these states exist after Gmar Tikkun (the end of correction), which is beyond the tasks that are imposed on us today.

However, thanks to this process, ultimately we obtain the operating upper mind and not only His plan, but the thought of creation itself, the upper thought, and all that is included in it. And this is our goal: to reach the thought of creation, to rise there and be included in the Creator, to reach adhesion with Him.
[67155]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/12, Shamati #174

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Question: The upper Partzufim dress one on top of the other like the rungs of a ladder where there is always an upper and a lower. Does the same structure exist in the group, or is everyone equal there?

Answer: In the group we dress one on top of the other in a certain order, and eventually we all form a circle. We don’t need to think about it. It’s a predetermined structure that cannot change. Only the connections between us change: in what intensity does each one connect with the others. But we can’t change the order of who connects to whom or the whole network that is formed with the fall of the souls after the shattering. Its structure is determined from Malchut of Ein Sof.

We don’t change anything in reality! We only open or close the flow of the abundance of the Light, because after the first restriction, it depends on our intentions. But the structure of the system never changes. Even when we say that that certain spiritual Partzufim rise or descend, connect to one another and then separate, we are only referring to the passing of the abundance of the Light and not to the way that they are arranged in relation to one another in the general structure.

It’s like an iron structure in which certain connections can be broken, but it’s impossible to change the structure itself because it’s all built according to the ladder of the spiritual levels that spread from the top down. Even during the shattering the accurate order, which determines how the sparks (the Lights and the vessels) were divided, was kept. Just as before the shattering, the height was determined by the intention of bestowal, so after the shattering it’s determined by the intention for my self, according to an accurate egoistic order. This means that not only is everyone important, but he is absolutely essential!

In the group there are “upper” and “lower”: each one is both upper and lower compared to others, and together they all form a circle. Everyone is connected to one bundle by the intention of bestowal, although no one is equal to another. Perhaps by this you will be able to understand how different each one is from the others, and if there is something inside him that doesn’t exist in anyone else, and in this he is the head for everyone, it’s impossible to replace or to destroy a single attribute, because then there would be no wholeness.
[67365]
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/12, “The Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: How do we prepare for the convention in the desert as it says, by “cancelling ourselves completely.”

Answer: First, you have to figure out what it means, “to eliminate oneself.” Does it mean to stop existing? What will happen afterwards?

“I”: This is my reason, emotions, mind, and heart. If I am deprived of them, only my corporeal body would remain. So, what’s next? My intellect and emotions do not depend on me either. This is the way I was born and brought up; I was carved into some form: Is this me? Is this what I really am? What can I eliminate here? Where is the “I” that I am rejecting?

If you don’t sense that you have anything to cancel, but if you are working through the group to cling to the Creator (as it is written: “from love of creatures to love of the Creator”), and if you discover rejection and hatred, then you know what to eliminate. This is what we call “I,” the revealing of its true essence, resistance, and unwillingness to connect with others.

It is the force of shattering that hides in me, the same Reshimo, the information that descended to me after the shattering occurred. Formerly, I used to be connected with others; now I detect my former connection and make sure that it still exists. Depending on whether I feel connection with others or not and whether I still possess a desire to connect or not, I start to elucidate my broken Reshimot (informational genes).

My discovery that I am in opposition to others is the first revelation of the Pharaoh. However, if I don’t apply effort I’ll never discern it. Maybe I haven’t come to Egypt yet, or I am already there but my “seven years of abundance” are not over yet? So, I still enjoy common meals, assemblies of friends, pleasant surroundings, and spending time with my loving friends.

When the seven years of abundance are over, problems, troubles, arguments, and disagreements emerge, but a person realizes that this is given to him on purpose and he doesn’t try to run away from them. He tries hard to overcome his detachment, hatred, and contempt towards his surroundings.

At this point (if the person doesn’t abandon the path,) he starts realizing the importance of such conditions and understands that there is no choice and it is the way it should be.

Now, he finds himself directly across from Pharaoh. It is all about internal work that cannot normally be traced from outside. It’s a whole period of effort and realization of the fact that there is nothing he can do about it because it is the Creator who reveals the force of shattering to him; as it is said: “Let’s approach Pharaoh, since I hardened his heart.”

The Creator shows a person how weak he is and his to love his neighbor.  At this time, a person is ready to do anything to achieve brotherly love. He is ready to go through all “ten Egyptian plagues”, to cross the Red Sea (Yam Sof – Final Sea), and to accept mutual connection and responsibility in order to bring closer the power of the reforming Light called Torah for the sake of self-correction and attainment of love of the created beings, because by doing so he will eventually attain the love of the Creator.

Can you imagine, how much support and care one has to get from his environment and from Above so he doesn’t run way with his egoism that is getting stronger and always pursues him? He has to understand that “the Creator made one against the other”: There is either “a stick or a serpent” (bestowal or egoism) and there is nothing in between—one or the other.
[66932]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/19/12, Shamati #59

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We have to go through a long process of clarification. From the beginning of creation to its completion, all we do is clarify how we can be pleased relative to the giving force, the source, the Creator.

We go through some of our clarifications unconsciously, without our sensations and understanding, as a preparation to the states that will follow and will require our understanding and feelings. This is in the same way a small child grows or any other development happens. You have to go through several steps and all kinds of calculations and remain in them for quite some time until you start sensing that there is a new level of sensitivity, comprehension, and clarification, and you ascend to a next level.

Later, the novelty of a new step as if is erased and slips from our memory: We get used to it, and as we know a habit dulls the flavor. Over and over again, unconsciously we try to break through and move ahead as much as we can until new sensations arise and we arrive at new conclusions.

The major discernment is who will rule over us: the Creator or Pharaoh, the staff or the serpent? Obviously, on the surface each of us is ready to rise to the level of the other bestowing nature. But how do we get there?

That’s where the struggle between the Pharaoh and Moses or Aaron within a human being takes place. It happens within a person. The dispute is over for whom do I strive? When I am told that no matter how hard a person tries, it won’t help, why should I bother trying?

On the other hand, it is said “No one can help me except myself” and “I have labored and found!”  The problem is that a person is unable to realize that changes have to be of an internal nature and have to occur from within. Only due to inner changes does a person enable himself to make a new round of calculations.

Any change totally depends on the mercy from Above: it will either happen or not. But we still have to continue working, and our job is to find mercy in the Creator’s eyes that gave us this support.

In fact, it really proves the phrase: “I labored and found!” That is, our request is not a request per se, but rather a test of the intensity of our work that is split half and half.  One half is completed by us, which makes the Light, the other half, comes from Above and makes the correction.

The staff must not be dropped to the ground because it will turn into serpent, which means that we shouldn’t give up on our knowledge; on the contrary, we have to hold it up high. “Faith above reason” stands for the work that we perform with our intellect to the best of our capacity letting the Light manifest and correct us.
[66935]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/19/12, Shamati #59

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Question: How is it possible to use that same point of unity that we obtained at the convention in December during The Zohar lessons in ?

Answer: That point of unity that we obtained has already disappeared, hidden itself, and was erased from our feeling. And we shouldn’t be sorry about that. We shouldn’t try to hold on to it by force. We only need to bring the warmth and enthusiasm of that spiritual uplifting since after all, we need to feel a secure basis. We can’t hang in the air.

The time has come to worry about a new point of unity. To connect does not mean hugging and holding hands. Unity is determined by the measure that I am able to detach from myself. In the connection with others, there is no need for anything from me; otherwise, there won’t be even a trace of real connection in it. I can’t connect with others. In the connection only the ” anti-me” needs to participate, when I convert myself as opposed to getting rid of everything I have in mind and feeling, from everything that I know.

Thus, first and foremost, I need to annul my “I,” and then the Light that reforms works on me, and with what is left, I attach to the states formed by my friends. Hence, together we discover the unity between us if we find our points within the hearts, within the ego, with the help of the Light that reforms that inverts them from the posterior of sanctity to the face of sanctity; if we connect with each other, then this connection is already worthy of adherence with the righteous, with the high souls.

We discover our connection with them and are ready to entrust ourselves to them so that they will take care of us. Since now we come in contact with them. Before that there was no contact. They simply spoke to us from afar. And then we will see how the writers of The Zohar, Rabash, and Baal HaSulam care for us and raise us.
[66795]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/17/12, The Zohar

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The Zohar tells of how the upper Light operates and bestows on us and builds from all of our attributes something that is similar to the Creator: not of our flesh, but from our inner essence that is called, “mind” and “heart,” from all of our thoughts and desires that constitute the person’s “I.”

I don’t know what He needs to do with them. In the meantime, all my desires and thoughts are involved with what I see before me in order to benefit myself. This is the way the ego, which stands behind them, operates.

And the Light that arrives during the reading of The Book of Zohar doesn’t leave me anything from the previous thoughts and desires, but begins gradually to give me other values, yet at the level of the state that I am in. And then later, it begins to detach me from the present reality, as each time He performs some changes in me. On occasions, I rise above this reality and then on other occasions, I again sink within it even more.

Thus, through all kinds of exercises and changes, He helps me stop being dependent on this reality, until eventually it isn’t important to me if I am in it or completely separated from it. And I can use all these forms just for the sake of one goal. Even if I were given all the King’s treasures, and even if I am a poor person living in the forest without even a shirt, it isn’t important because I am dependent only on the intention, something more exalted than my state. I agree with it and want it, above everything that can appear in my vessel (Kli) of reception, both in thoughts and desires.

If I arrived at such a state, thanks to the exercises, that is the work of God on me, and from this moment onward, I begin to see what the The Book of Zohar speaks about.

We hope that with each day and with each moment, we will enter such a state where the Light reaches us, the upper force, which will begin to change us and to raise us above all the desires and thoughts so that we will begin to be dependent on the Giver that bestows upon us.
[66681]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/17/12, The Zohar

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