The same question arises all the time in students: What should I do? With the question about the meaning of my life, I find the teacher and the group, and I begin to study. One needs to correctly organize all of this together so that with the instruction of the teacher and the help of the studies, one will reveal this spiritual form inside of this group.

It is as if I found a whole pile of blocks: This is the group. And now, I am sitting like a little child together with his father and an instruction book with a drawing of how to assemble the blocks into a house.

I look into this book, but this is not enough since I am still small and ignorant. I need an adult to help me. My father is helping me (from the blocks that make up the group) to build a house. This is what we have going on.

Due to the fact that I am building a house, I am gaining wisdom, I understand and feel ever more. And when I finish building this house, I begin to reveal life in it! Suddenly, some kind of small lights begin to illuminate, something begins to move inside of it, some sounds begin to emerge, and scents; it is starting to become alive as if in a wondrous fairytale.

At that moment, when I correctly assemble all of the blocks, everything suddenly lights up and begins to move.

Question: But the father first shows the child how to build the house, and then builds it together with him. Why doesn’t He help us build it?

Answer: Just start building and demanding His help for this. Maybe, you haven’t even started any building in the group, and you are already asking, where is dad? But what do you need Him for, if you haven’t even started?

When you begin to build and you see that you are not able to do it, then you will want Him to be with you. You will go and bring Him in by the hand so that He will help you in this game. But for now, it still seems to you that you will build everything by yourself and you do not need a father.
[65048]
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/1/12, “The Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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There are many ways we can check our desire in which all the clarifications take place: “What for? Why? Where does it come from and where is it leading to? By what means can I advance? How can I check whether my goal is the right one? What are my true intentions? Could it be that it is simply my egoistic desire and personal interests that naturally attract me, and that everything that is against them repels me?”

A very close and thorough examination is needed here. At the same time we should be careful not to be too absorbed in these clarifications because it is part of my work, only half of the “half a Shekel” that is my part. The other half should be expressed in action. The action is studying together with the group, feeling the friends, and the examination during the study: Is it in the same line of thought with everyone else, in contact with the teacher and the group?

The second half of the “half a Shekel” ends when a person receives the change from Above. All our efforts should end in attaining an open deficiency that waits for salvation from Above, like Nukva, the female desire that opens herself to receive the correction.

This is how we should prepare ourselves for the lesson. Here a lot depends on the greatness of the source from which we receive this bestowal, from the immense height of The Book of Zohar and its authors. The mechanism that operates in The Book of Zohar is the world of Ein Sof because it passes the upper Light from the head of Zeir Anpin, the Light of Ein Sof.

If a person works on all the levels: in his feelings, his connection with the group, with the teacher, with the state of the world, with the systems of the worlds, with the upper force, and connects it all to the one mechanism that he operates now, then there is hope that his awakening and his action will evoke an awakening from Above. And his prayer (MAN) will draw the response (MAD) from Above.

The prayer (MAN) (Mei Nukvin – female waters) is the desire, the deficiency. The response that comes from Above is MAD (Mei Dhurin – male waters), the power to overcome. We have to feel that we turn the weak, meaningless, painful, and defective state into bestowal, power, and correction, and feel inside us how our MAN turns into MAD
[66049]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/11/12, The Zohar

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Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”: However, when he achieves the aim of Creation and the Creator receives pleasure from him, since His will is done, man’s essence, which clothes in His contentment, is granted complete eternity, like Him. Thus, he has been rewarded with freedom from the angel of death.

Baal HaSulam explains freedom in the context of the perception of reality. We live in a world of forces. There is no matter; it is only depicted to us under the influence of different forces that stabilize this feeling for us.

I perceive the inanimate nature in all its forms and manners and also the vegetative, animate and human levels of nature. These four categories that fill my field of feeling are forces that are depicted in my desire and that draw, like on a screen, the picture of the three-dimensional, varied world.

This happens because my desire to receive divides the general bestowal, called Light, into many types and degrees of internal reactions. On the whole, it makes up the picture of the world in which I feel and see of all these actions.

So from the start, I was given a feeling for which I don’t have to prepare myself. I already have the desire to receive and in it, I feel the world. Besides that I see large-scale processes in inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature and also in between these levels. Actually it is about our internal world, but we take the names of the objects and the phenomena in it from the lowest level according to the principle of a branch and a root.

The higher I rise, the closer I get to the Light through the layers of my desire. In the lowest place I see the picture of this world. Then I rise to the next level, to the desires that are closer to the Light, and these forces are before me in the form of Partzufim, worlds, and Sefirot. Then I see the connection between the branch and the root in everything, and accordingly I call the forms that I feel as desires and the relations between the forces by parallel names from our world. Thus the language of the branches is formed. [Read more →]

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Hastening time, meaning hastening our actions regarding the “past,” “present” and “future,” gives us the feeling of life, the force of vitality. The more we stop and do not exert ourselves in the work on the part of the created being, there is more pressure put on us by the Creator’s work. This is similar to the way a hybrid car is built: if the battery is empty, the engine runs on fuel.

So we have to organize an environment for ourselves that will spur us to advance by our powers and not to wallow in time, which passes leaving no traces, as we lie to ourselves that everything is fine. If a person is not under pressure put on him by the environment and teacher, if he doesn’t feel that he lacks spiritual life, he cannot advance.

This pressure can be felt as good or bad. But we must clarify it for ourselves; we need to gladly accept any pressure that leads to clarification, connection, and more efficient work, and not be managed by pleasant or unpleasant feelings in our egoism.

If we want to advance, be a little more mature, and not remain tiny babies, we need to wake up. The awakening toward the goal isn’t perceived as pleasant, and we should accept this in faith above reason.

Unfortunately we are not kids who have a natural desire to grow, who passionately work building things with blocks, and who do not give up when everything falls down and is destroyed. We have to receive the same force that pushes a child to develop: We obtain it from the environment and studying.

If I feel that I lack this power, I have to come to the lesson with the desire, with the negative charge, with the feeling of everything I didn’t manage to do, and to ask for strength. If you don’t feel enough pressure on you to connect and to advance or to make the demand for this to the teacher and the group, you have a reason to come to the lesson. You have to come with the right demand, with a full list of everything you didn’t manage to do yesterday, and now you come with a broken heart demanding the powers for correction.
[66177]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/12/12, Shamati #35

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If there is no desire in a person’s heart, he falls asleep and is considered dead in spirituality. After all, spirituality begins when the desire awakens it. The desire never comes by itself.

Even if a person is awakened from Above, and suddenly feels a longing in his heart, a strange desire—it is all on account of the Upper. Nothing but that will come to us from Above. Although it may seem to a person that he advances with the one desire that he was given as a present from Above, he cannot advance by himself. It will go away the same way it appeared, leaving almost no traces.

We have to try and accurately clarify where our desire comes from. It can come from the group, from a friend, from an impression, from a certain event, or from a certain memory. A person attributes all this to himself because he doesn’t know and cannot feel that it comes from the outside. But he must calculate and check whether he was searching for it a moment before that, in tension, did he try to attain that desire? If there is nothing that ties the previous moment to the appearance of the desire, it means that it isn’t his, but that it simply passed through him and wasn’t registered on his account.

This desire doesn’t bring him correction, but is rather like an exercise given to a child so that he will learn. But it is not considered part of one’s personal advancement. While an example together with his participation is enough for a child, for us it is not enough. All our advancement is only thanks to our own desire.

This means that I have to exert myself with regard to my environment and the books in situations where I cannot do that and do not have any previous desire. It is from such situations that I have to try and somehow wake up.

Here the habit of working according to a clear schedule is very important so that I know what I have to do now. Then I will remember and oblige myself to do it. This can also be thanks to the mutual guarantee in the group, which always reminds me of my obligation to myself and to others.

I can get additional support if I build a system around me that constantly reminds me how important spirituality is and makes me search again.

But even if I am reminded from Above in a way that I don’t understand, by “the direct and indirect influence of the Creator,” in the hidden ways as the Creator operates—I still have to continue by myself afterwards until I discover my own desire.
[66052]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/11/12, The Zohar

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Question: For quite some time now during The Zohar lesson I feel as if I am trying to find the right wave of a radio station, but I only hear noises. We constantly speak about the fact that while reading The Book of Zohar we should tune ourselves to one goal or another, and I can’t do that at all…am I missing something by that or should I just keep on going and it will come eventually?

Answer: The thing is that if we are talking about receiving a wave and not about the Reforming Light, then among all the noises I should find the exact frequency in which I will hear the silence; the silence is what I need to hear. This is the exact frequency of the station. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah this accurate direction indicates that I am getting ready to receive the Inner Light.

Here, however, we are talking about the Surrounding Light, about the Reforming Light, which you don’t recognize when it comes to you. You aren’t working here in order to receive some wisdom, to receive some “station” and to hear something new.

You are here in order to activate the maximum desire, and in it you will receive the power to overcome, not knowledge. After all, you are not looking for knowledge here, but for the desire to bestow, to annul yourself before the Upper, to adhere to Him, to His attribute of bestow, to the power of bestowal, to reach self sacrifice, and the ability to actually incorporate in the group in order to receive from it the power to find this upper spiritual mechanism there.

You are not tuning yourself to the “station” of wisdom. You don’t wait to be shown something like on a TV screen. This isn’t the channel through which the Reforming Light comes. It comes to the place in which you yearn for bestowal most and are ready to annul yourself and develop your connection with others. This is the result of the Reforming Light, which we should expect.

I don’t aspire to understand and to feel the material we study at all. I yearn to understand and feel the actions of bestowal themselves. After all, “to know the material studied,” as Baal HaSulam says in part 155, of the “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” means to know the Upper, and not to acquire knowledge. Knowledge in spirituality is the knowledge of bestowal, and it is in the Light that I study how the spiritual tool works. I won’t see it if I don’t have this approach.

After all, what does the Reforming Light bring us? It allows us to relate to the hidden world in which we dwell through the attribute of bestowal. When I begin to relate to the world using the attribute of bestowal, the world becomes transparent and through it I see the networks of connection. It is about these networks that I study, the networks in which I am incorporated, in which I begin to feel like a spider in a web.

When I feel the whole system of connection, I begin to correct it, to pull the strings that are drawn from me and to see upon what I bestow. Eventually, this is our whole study: about how I move the whole system and how with its help I correct my actions and work for this system, and how this whole system moves until the Creator, the general force, is revealed.

This is why I don’t look for the “station” that should be revealed by The Book of Zohar. But the “static” will gradually bring you to search for another “station,” and you will find it.
[66044]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/11/12, The Zohar

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We have try to imagine more and more correctly what we see and instead of the externality to see the internality. My teacher Rabash and I used to have discussions about the forces that we saw behind this world’s picture.

Once I saw a horse on the street eating from a garbage can, and suddenly Rabash said to me: “Look, this is an angel!” I was surprised because I didn’t see anything but the horse eating the scraps from our meal. The following day I asked him for more information about what he had said, trying to learn how to see the internal forces behind this world.

If I see a picture that is focused in my retina or the backside of the brain, then this is how the forces are depicted to me, like on a computer screen, together making up one form. But that form doesn’t exist in itself. I only need it so that I can hold on to something. In fact, it is an expression of an attitude of the one who gives me, who bestows upon me by means of some object.

There are three components: the one who bestows, his bestowal upon me, and its impact on me that creates some form. Through that form, I need to return to the one who bestows in order to understand what he wants from me by showing me this form. If I see a horse, what does the Creator want to tell me by showing it to me: what is the combination of forces, what is His attitude to me, what sort of reaction does He expect of me? How do I have to treat this horse and, through it, the one who bestows, the one who is showing me this movie? We have to learn all this.

Now we see the world in its external form and not the inner content. This is very helpful and isn’t meant to confuse us on purpose as we usually think. In fact it helps us attain spiritual perception! This is because we have to exert ourselves in order to switch from the external form to the internal form.

I promise you that if you begin to “penetrate” into the friends and see the “points in the heart” that are tied together, you will begin to notice that the whole world is arranged in the same way. You will understand that people are not external images, but desires, “packages” of energy. They are all in some kind of a relationship and you can influence them and they can influence you. You will see forces and not bodies!

Even today we already treat a person as some kind of force and speak about his essence, but you need to penetrate more deeply. The fact that we don’t see the world in its spiritual form but in its external form, and the gap between the two, always shows us that we haven’t reached adhesion with the environment.

The moment we adhere to the environment, and attain the first contact, all this confusion immediately disappears. You see people, but you relate to their essence and not to the external figures. Just like a good psychologist who when looking at people immediately sees their essence, their desires, thoughts, tendencies, and deviations.
[65512]
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/3/12, “Study of the Ten Sefirot

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Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”: The general will to receive, which is the very essence of man, appears and exists only through dressing in the shapes of objects that are likely to be received. We call that action, “life,” meaning man’s livelihood. As we have explained in the act we call, “desire.”

Accordingly, with the disappearance of the desire comes death. We always live in anticipation of  the desired future and not in the present. If there is nothing to hope for in the future, we reach despair, until the body stops functioning and a person dies.

So we have to create for ourselves more advanced forms of development. This can be done only by the influence of the right environment. Otherwise, a bad environment, which fills me with bad forms, takes its place, and then I become incorporated in them and want them.

For example, I can’t manage without the media. The growing egoism obliged me to get used to them. A thousand years ago everything was different: With the desires of the animate level in me I lived peacefully and without the media. Today I can’t live without television, without the flow of information that floods me. I constantly need to see the future forms that give me the power of life and the feeling of life.

What kind of life? We already know…and so we need to build the right environment by ourselves that will assume the role of the media. In this case, I create my future forms by myself, and no one dictates them to me and imposes them on me. This is where my free will is: I choose a better environment that shows me the right forms and directs my desire to the goal, so that it will be balanced with nature, in line with the Creator.

Thanks to this I live in the forms in which the Reforming Light is hidden and which later becomes the filling. This gives me the feeling of life until I reach the eternal existence. Gradually my forms draw away from the corporeal discoveries, which can exist only in the corporeal world and I can soar towards the forms of spiritual development.

Then I am no longer tied to the corporeal forms that appear before me in any way. I don’t feel anything in them except for the basic needs of the animate level in me. But I don’t worry about that either because I am already on the “other side.”

And so gradually, a person moves from building the potential force to attaining the force to execute and begin the spiritual self. Always this is realized by increasing the quality of the desire: I create my future form, my more advanced form, and I am drawn to it, until I reach it and attain it.
[65951]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/10/12, “The Freedom”

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Question: This weekend we will hold a “quiet Saturday.” What should this silence be?

Answer: This custom of being silent came into the world from none other than Kabbalists. It is used as an exercise in various practices which don’t relate to our path, and generally, in the field of psychology.

When a person wants to understand something new, to focus on something new, he needs solitude. He can run away from everyone to someplace, which would be physical solitude. Or he can find solitude within, where I find a certain space inside and hide there from others’ eyes, although physically I am surrounded by many people. This relates to all levels of a person.

So, we want to carry out a similar exercise, a “silent pledge” where we refrain from speaking. There are special periods when people study the Torah more, delve deeper into the material, observe various fasts. These methods pull a person out of the usual order, the routine, and help him look at the world and himself slightly differently. They allow him to concentrate or focus inside.

“A quiet Saturday” does not mean that no one opens their mouths. But when we do talk, we talk only about the study and what it contains. And we only talk inasmuch as it is necessary. If there is no need, then we think about the same questions instead of talking about them. After all, words lay bare a person’s soul, revealing the innermost secrets of his heart. And therefore, one shouldn’t talk unless it is for the sake of correction.

That is how we will hold this Saturday. All lessons and meals will take place by the regular schedule, and every person will limit himself as much as he can, trying not to speak but only to think.

Concentration in thought, inner focus has a much greater effect in the world than words. After all, thought is a much higher force than speech. This is the highest force in a person, and therefore it is the most effective in the general system of reality. It is precisely the beginning of the chain, “thought, speech, action”.

Therefore, we hope that by cutting conversations down to the minimum, we will rise to a higher level of bestowal.
[66033]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/11/12, “The Freedom”

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If we want to understand what is written in The Zohar, then we have to reach the similarity of desires, the similarity of properties, between us and the authors of the book. To understand means to grasp, to comprehend, as it said: “And Adam knew Eve, his wife”; that is, knowledge is fusion (Zivug), connection. That’s why, we should be in the same thoughts and desires as the authors of The Zohar; otherwise, we will not understand what is going on.

Even in our world, if I want to understand what a person is talking about, I should rise above myself as much as possible and identify with him. This is called to understand the other person. We have to dress into him.

We need to learn a little about the people who wrote this book: what their desires and intentions were, what they wrote about, what they wanted to convey to us, why they described in that particular style. After all, they live within the text.

Baal HaSulam writes in his article “The Acting Mind,” that looking at the table, I see the carpenter’s skills in it and grasp his mind. Indeed, he used his mind in his work, and studying the table, I connect with the mind of the craftsman who created it. Thus, through a material object, the table, we connect mind to mind. So, we are already connected with each other through the idea that emerged in his mind and mine.

The same thing occurs with The Book of Zohar. Only here, I don’t know about the images and properties they wrote about. But if I want to merge my mind with the authors of The Zohar, cancel myself before them, and understand why and for what they wrote like this, if I treat The Book of Zohar in this way, then I gradually awaken forces in it to the extent of my desire to grasp the mind of those who wrote it. And then, I become connected to them, get closer to them, begin to feel their intention, where they were, what they thought about, why they wrote in that way, and what they saw and felt.

Therefore, reading this book is work: how to connect with its author through his story. And thus, to the extent of my understanding, the story begins to open to me, it becomes clear and not otherwise. That is why when reading The Zohar, we must think about its authors, what their inner states and intentions were when they were writing the book, what they saw and felt, thereby conveying their attainment to us in this form, and how I can reach their mind in order to understand them.
[65833]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/9/12, The Zohar

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