Baal HaSulam “The Peace”: Since Providence extends from the Creator, who undoubtedly has a purpose in His actions, since there is no act without a purpose, we find that anyone who breaks a law from the laws of nature that He has imprinted in us, corrupts the purposeful aim.

We exist in a global, integral world. There is no choice; we must implement all its laws. Once we kept them to a smaller extent since we had less desires, less contact with nature and the world. Today we are more involved with it, and that imposes greater obligations upon us.

When we don’t carry out all the laws of nature, we are incomplete and flawed. Thus our problems and sufferings will increase until they force us to obey them.

After all, we exist within nature. And from this comes the absolute need to execute its laws.

It is interesting that at the levels of still, vegetative, and animate all the laws of nature are executed naturally. There are no mistakes made. If there were a mistake, then it would be a sign that something was unwell. I once told a friend of mine, a veterinarian, about a cat who jumped unsuccessfully before my eyes, and got badly injured. He said that the cat was, without a doubt, ill. An animal doesn’t make mistakes since it obeys its instincts and its calculations are always correct because the laws of nature are at work and nothing more.

Man, on the contrary, can make mistakes in order to complete himself in awareness and recognition, until becoming similar to nature. And this also includes the small volume of our world’s nature, so that we will be able to advance forward and understand that it is not only this inner sphere that we need, but also we need completion until the level of the external sphere, the upper world where the laws of providence and management are.

We must carry them out and through them manage the whole of reality. When we include them within us, “we will pass to the side of the Creator,” and then we will manage the world with the attribute of bestowal.

“To know” these laws, is not simply to know of their existence without actively executing them. “Knowledge” in this case means adhesion, involving both the internal sense and reason, when you invert to be one with these laws and they operate in you exactly like in the animal world of the animate. This is called adhesion.

Thus, we need to unite with the entire world according to the law of love for others. The concept “others” includes the still, vegetative, and animate in nature, the levels that are found under man. After that, one needs to love the Creator. This means to merge into one with all of these laws, with all of these attributes. And then, there is no doubt there will be no error.

When you realize them as they are, in heart and soul, you reach Gmar Tikkun ( end of correction).

Thus, only for humans is there the ability to make mistakes and correct mistakes. Only in this way they develop. Through this, they complete their beastly existence via nature, or in other words, via the Creator, and acquire equivalence to Him.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/23/11, “The Peace”

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There are different materials, for example dough, clay or marble, and there is what we make of it. In “Safra Detzniuta” there is an example of a farmer who comes to town and is surprised to see in the market rolls, pretzels, cookies, and other baked goods made from the same flour he produces.

According to evolution, the contact with the upper Light brings about many different forms, but the material that takes on these forms stays the same, and that is the desire to receive. So there are never any restrictions on the desire itself. We don’t do anything at all with it; our actions are only with regard to the forms.

Now our desire has an egotistic form that is aimed against the goal of creation. So we have to restrict this form, but not the desire. Only in this way will it receive a new correct form and we will be able to use it as we please.

Another problem is that we have to agree with the fact that we receive bad and corrupt forms. It is written, “a man’s heart is evil from his youth.” The Creator on his part, created the evil inclination, and we have to demand to advance to goodness.

Thus we have to show great restraint, to be tolerant toward all the forms through which the correction is performed. Some forms are even worse than the previous ones, but that doesn’t mean anything.

Impatience, outbursts, negative feelings, hate—can reveal things we’ve never encountered before on our way to the goal. Baal HaSulam brings the example of a fruit, which as it ripens goes through stages that are opposite from its final form. It becomes more sour, more bitter, less attractive, and only in the last stage does it begin to take its final form. A month before it ripens it can be poisonous. This is just as the darkness becomes thicker before dawn.

So we have to be very patient with the intermediate forms; they serve the development, although they may seem awful. We appreciate a person for his efforts, whether he does as much as he can do or not. The main point is that he shouldn’t be harmful and critical and as for the rest we can wait.

All our studying, all our advancement, all the understanding and the feeling do not appear in the material, but in its forms. This is what we study all the time. The desire is irrelevant. I look at the forms and at the differences between them.

These forms come to us from the Creator, from the Light, but they can appear in us as positive or negative. We are between the two contrasting forms: the angel of life and the angel of death. These two angels are the first nine Sefirot, and the material of our desire is Malchut. We receive the positive forms from them in our desire and the negative ones out of necessity and so we advance.

One cannot exist without the other. Every form should include the two forces that operate on the neutral matter of the desire to receive, meaning the two opposite changes that influence the data.

The desire was created as “something from nothing,” and we study everything that is in it, everything it goes through by the principle of formal education, of knowing the forms that come from the Creator, from the Light. We never study and explore the Light itself, but the forms of the Light on the material, on the desire; just as we don’t feel electricity by itself, but what it brings about, which can be measured and studied.

Eventually, we never attain the phenomenon itself, and we don’t know what the desire to receive is in itself. We only attain its reactions to the Light, and thus learn about the influence of the Light on the desire, when we deduce one from the other.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/29/11, “The Freedom”

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Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”: You need to determine further that we distinguish two forces in that force called the “will to receive”: 1. The attracting force. 2. The rejecting force.

These two forces are always combined in us and never act independently. What’s more, the whole essence, all the attributes in all the creatures, on every level of the spiritual and the corporeal worlds, eventually depend on the combination and adaptability of the rejecting force and the attracting force.

In our world we see that cooperation between the particles of the atom determines the state of matter and the type of matter: gases, liquids, metals, rocks, minerals, etc. Mutual relations between people are also assessed by the combination of these two forces: of hate and rejection and love and connection. It is the same with regards to our mutual connections with the Creator.

We reach perfection when we discover our full force of rejection and above it the full attracting force. In other words, when we work by the middle line, we use these two forces, until we achieve the ideal unity between them. All the other factors serve and assist us in the intermediate phases.

So a person becomes a man when he can use these two opposing forces, the drawing and the rejecting, like one whole thing. He combines them by the middle line.

In our world this is impossible. What is more, here they both act on the egotistic side. In the spiritual world, however, they are indeed opposites, one is for connection and the other is against it.

The wisdom of Kabbalah speaks about the spiritual unity of these two forces: how to use both of them efficiently and to reach positive results, while no one neutralizes the other or “pulls the blanket” over to its side, as it happens in our world.

For example, friction and the weight of matter inhibit the rotation of the wheels of a car, and so energy is required to move it forward. If the attracting force is stronger than the stopping force, the car moves forward, and if not, it stands still. So the result always depends on the calculation: how much stronger is one force than the other.

In spirituality they actually connect: the hardness of the Masach (screen) and the coarseness of the desire operate as one. They create Zivug deHaka’a between them, which means that first the action of Haka’a takes place and then the connection. The vessel reaches its spiritual realization according to the level of the connection and acquires the spiritual form. Only so is it possible to reach the right result. It depends on the internal matter of the desire, that rejects, and on its external form, which attracts us forward.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/1/12, “The Freedom”

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Question: Is it possible to give the notion of religion a modern definition? After all, soccer and basketball today captivate people the same way.

Answer: No, that is not really religion after all. “Religion” is something that answers my questions about the meaning of life, about reward and punishment.

Suppose I live a regular life of seventy years from birth until death. Besides that, I ask questions about the cause and the outcome of my life, about my destiny. In other words, I wish to attain that what exists above me, something that cannot be revealed through regular sensations.

Soccer does not answer these questions. It only allows me to fill my seventy-year existence with something, along with other pleasures from food, sex, family, money, respect, and knowledge. However, I wish to rise above these things.

I understand that they are summoned to confuse and “deafen” me. I do not wish to go any deeper into this mire than my life’s necessities require. No matter what, I only use food, sex, family, money, respect, knowledge, envy, and passions in order to reveal the essence.

This is the kind of attitude that I must develop toward life. What should be important to me are cause, destiny, and consequence, not what lies beneath them.

Naturally, today we fulfill ourselves with corporeal pleasures in that segment between birth and death. This is why mass media shapes social opinion, even though who are they, in essence? What do they understand? We see the results of their actions with our own eyes. However, the public does not care who shapes their opinions. Let soccer do it.

Still, at least this is the lesser of the evils. Mass media lulls the masses and feeds them substitute goods. For example, the Internet is a real sedative with plenty of benefits. People would lose their minds without it, not being able to apply themselves. A person pounds the keyboard, chatting with virtual friends, and searches for nonsense on the net while the clock is ticking, and death comes nearer. Just imagine what we would do today without the Internet.

However, when a person rises to the level of questions about the meaning of life, he begins to research what this life is for. He wants to know why he started researching, why he is living, why he was given an opportunity for an analysis, who set this up, and what will the result be like. The person is not just curious; he is searching for purpose. All of this falls under the notion of “religion.”

This does not refer to philosophy or fantasies, but to the highest evaluation of our lives, an evaluation that takes place in vessels above our body. It is these vessels that we must develop, new vessels where it is really possible to study cause, destiny, and consequence.

All of this is programmed in me from the beginning. I am only given a small spark that I blow up to open myself up. How do I do that? I do it through a united environment, the group, which will drag me up from this world with its influence.

When I am among my friends, I gradually grow new vessels inside that are different from anything that I experience in our world. They do not stand against it; the world stays as it was. My animal body with its five senses does not change.

At the same time, I develop in a spiritual environment and manifest five new senses together with my friends. They are called KHB-ZON in the language of Kabbalah. I discover “religion” in them: the upper force as the origin, its program, and the purpose of this program.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/24/2011, “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose”

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Kabbalah answers the question about the meaning of life. In reality, this question is very important. It is because in my search for an answer to this question, I primarily examine myself. Do I have the right attitude toward life in everything that I do?

I have the desire for pleasure that obligates me to create a family, have children, and care for them, my work, my future, my parents, my close environment, my city, my country, and maybe even the entire world. All this is only so that I suffer less.

In this way, in the end, I am only driven by different degrees of suffering. In the best case scenario, I am driven by how I can benefit from it. However, what if I should rise above all this? What if I stopped depending on suffering or pleasure and became objective, like Man with capital “M”? Perhaps I would then become free of all these bonds. After all, nothing but animal instincts impel me to start a family, and social instincts make me follow social laws. What would I do if I were not driven by suffering and pleasure?

Today, I resemble an animal that is being directed every step of the way, spurred and forced to slow down with the two reins of pain and sweetness. I am like a doll, a puppet, a fragile mechanism that lacks any opportunity to do anything on its own, even a tiny fragment of its way.

So, can I take over these reins? If not, can I at least analyze the situation, understand why it is happening and for what purpose? On the other hand, should I even strive upward? Perhaps it would be best to close my eyes and submerge myself in religious and other practices. Maybe it would give me peace for the rest of my life if I disconnected from the essence.

This is where a person who does not give up and reject what matters most manifests himself. Regardless of the pleasure, suffering, shame, pride, and other methods that drive and control him in life, he still searches for independence. “Whatever happens, will happen, but I must find the essence. This is where I feel like a person. There is no other way.” Abraham searched for people like this in ancient Babylon, and he found several thousand.

This is the criterion for humanity that helps determine the level its animal element reaches and the level to which it is ready to become Man.

Are we able to accelerate human development through dissemination and education so that he would come more quickly to these fundamental questions? Essentially, in our days, this is what “social” work is.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/24/2011, “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose”

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Question: What is “fate in reward and punishment?”

Answer: At every moment in our life we face reward and punishment. At every moment I must demand correction. If I demand it properly, I get a reward, and if I don’t demand it properly, I get correction.

The reward is getting stronger desires with which I can direct myself more accurately to the goal. I become more sensitive and tune myself more accurately, calibrate myself, and imagine more accurately what the “Creator” is.

I understand this by building myself by myself over again according to Him, and learning about the way I am built. Thus I become more similar to Him and this is my reward—to bestow more. The punishment is in seeing that I missed.

But this also becomes part of the correction, and then the punishment becomes my reward. After all, it makes no difference whether I receive a positive or a negative reaction. The main thing is that it allows me to find out my deviation and to correct it.

I accept all these deviations as good and beneficial, no matter whether they are positive or negative, whether they are repulsive or attractive. I don’t know which additional desires I have to reveal now. All the evils that I have to discover are hidden in me, and when they are revealed, I perceive it as reward. Although I feel bad, I rise above my feeling.

I perceive everything I receive from the reforming Light, no matter how it is felt, as a great reward. This is my direction. But in order to do that, I need the support of the environment, so that I will constantly see myself as part of this system. Only there will I be able to change in order to join it.

Suppose, for example, I have to become a part of the friends in a space that is cone shaped. As I try to fit into the shape, I constantly receive further clarification about what I am lacking and how to do it more accurately, so that I can fit in this special form.

So although every new revelation can be felt as negative, the troubles and confusion become a blessing for me. It says that the wisdom of the Torah is opposite from the wisdom of landlords, because you are happy with these revelations.

This is a “very narrow bridge” that we have to cross. A person who advances by spirituality, finds a reward both in positive and in negative feelings. The main thing is to correct one’s tuning.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/1/12, “Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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We have a desire and a thought. If we only had a desire, we would perform everything blindly with no self-control, just like inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature in which the only thought is how to fulfill the desire.

A person who has developed to the inanimate, vegetative, and the animate levels thinks only about how to attain what he wants. There are different types of people: smart, energetic, violent, shy, brave, etc.—but each one wants to fulfill his desires, from a tiny baby to an elderly person who hides his desires. In each one there is the thought of how to fulfill his desire in every possible way.

This is how we develop in feeling and in mind, like a beast, until the point in the heart is revealed in us and begins to ask: What is all this for? Why? From that moment on, real science begins; when I begin to ask about the essence of my desire: What do I need it for?

This isn’t simple. People come to study, they become a group, but years may pass until they begin to ask this question, that is, that they want to know the desires they feel: where they come from? They begin to look for the reason, the root, the source.

Then they understand that the thought was given to them in order to reach the Creator by studying their desires. If I, through thought, correctly perceive the desires, I can reach the source from which they come, will understand who is sending them and why, what he wants from me, and how I should regard Him.

Through the group and even directly, I begin to demand from Him to change my desire: “You gave me such a desire, but I am asking for another desire!” then I will really be able to change it. The thought is given to us so that thanks to it we will be able to know our desires and demand new desires.

The thought exists so that I can check and prove to myself that I can’t do anything with my desires! Even when I seem to overcome, it isn’t that but simply changing one desire for another, which is also egotistic: for respect, for control, and pride. I simply find another desire that beats the first one and change values.

As a result of my thoughts, or under the influence of the environment, I begin to imagine that another desire is more important than the one I just had. And so I decide to change it to another. It is the game of egoism. This way I can change any desire I have.

But I can truly change the desire only with the influence of the environment that will give me other values. Then, as a result of its influence, I will demand from the Creator to change my desires. These desires can already be super-natural for me, meaning against my ego.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/30/11, Writings of Rabash

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Question: If the correction has to be an internal one, why do we take all these external actions hoping to achieve internal changes through them?

Answer: This is exactly where the difference lay; we want to use external actions (those recommended by the Kabbalists) in order to achieve the decisive point where we start demanding the Light of correction because we will understand that nothing will help us if not for the Creator. And we have to achieve this point as quickly as possible.

And the most effective thing to become sure of one’s inability to do anything on their own and their lack of desire is to try and include themselves in a group. Then you will quickly reveal that you’re not worth a penny, you can’t overcome yourself, you push your friends away from you and are proud of this, hiding the truth from yourself. Try to look at yourself from the outside and you’ll see all the ways in which you avoid internal connection with the group.

But, at the same time, if you’re attached to your friends, you’ll understand that you can’t go on like this! You must be together with them, at least in order to reveal the spiritual world with egoistic intentions. And you can’t get closer to them, so what is there to do? And then you start shouting so that the society and the Light would influence you, the more the better! You demand this egoistically, one hundred percent for yourself, Lo Lishma.

The Light keeps working and working on you, sometimes more, sometimes less, altering your states, and you start valuing closeness with the group, connection, and development. You start noticing a correlation between the states of enthusiasm and the connection with the friends.

You watch parts of the convention and you’re full of feelings. Because you already have this readiness, this is already close to you, you put a lot into it and you understand what attracts all these people. You feel their hearts. Maybe each person’s individual desire is small, but together we achieve huge power that impresses everyone.

By these actions we arrive at two conclusions. First, I really want to reveal the spiritual world: Give it to me! I want it egoistically, who wouldn’t want to exchange this hell for heavenly paradise? Second, I understand that I cannot do this without a connection with the friends, inside which I can reveal the thing I want so much.

That unattainable place I hate so much is where the treasure is hidden. So what do I do? I have to enter the dungeon; there is a lion at its entrance and at the bottom of it there is a treasure chest. I cannot avoid this lion!

But this treasure is everything to me! How do I beat the lion? I get closer and it’s about to attack and eat me. He can’t break free from his chains; otherwise, he would have already swallowed me.

But when I approach him, he suddenly gets up and takes me straight to the treasure chest….
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/25/11, “The Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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All our work can be summed up as clarifications and thought by which we come to the Creator and try to demand from Him new desires that are totally unsuitable for our ego, our nature.

So I check how I am managed from Above, and I can feel to some extent this operating force. From the side, I analyze the actions of the Creator in me that motivate me. Thus, I begin to see the source, His actions—that is, me, and the power that controls me—and understanding how it works.

These three components: an appeal to the Creator, the source, His action inside me, and its result—are all called the Creator’s work, because it is the Creator who does it. My participation is only in asking Him to perform this work. In this way, we become partners.

As a result, from a small beast that performs actions blindly, who doesn’t even understand that it is being managed and thinks that it lives freely, whichever way it feels like—I become an active assistant manager, and so I reach adhesion with Him. I understand my desirable development and its final form and try to promote this plan even before it is fulfilled by the Creator.

I order my development, and this is called “hastening time,” instead of the natural flow (in its time). This is how I attain it, by the power of thought, and I begin to walk hand in hand with the Creator in every step, and try to learn and to accelerate my development.

As Baal Hasulam says in his article “Thou Hast Hemmed Me In Behind and Before“: the movement of the horse becomes one with the movement of the rider and this is their adhesion. The Creator waits for me to ask Him and helps me by evoking me and shows me by sufferings or by other clues the places where I have to pay attention to His leadership. And so we advance until full adhesion.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/30/11, Writings of Rabash

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All the changes that happen in the universe, following the origin of the plan of creation, only pertain to the creatures. But the Creator is constant, as it is written: “I did not change the manifestation of my HaVaYaH.” Nothing else happens in relation to Him: He wished to make a creature to please it—and He did it.

All the actions take place inside the creature—in its consciousness, understanding, perception, and development. This way the creature develops from one point, which essentially separates it from the Creator. It is a special point, created by the Creator, which is the reason the created is called a creature, a desire.

Everything beside this point must absolutely be like the Creator. And in order to bring them to this similarity and create a connection between the creation and the Creator, the creature separates into an enormous number of parts.

These parts are separated and are pushed away from each other by their egoism, the desire to enjoy, the evil inclination, a selfish intention. This is the way the creature feels: divided and diverse, separated into many different systems, which are hostile to one another. But all this only exists within the creature in its sensations.

This sensation is called “concealment” (Alama)—an entire system of worlds (Olam), which exists so the creature would finally understand that the concealment separates it from the Creator. There is absolute perfection, unanimity in the Creator. He is one, and there are no differences within Him. But inside the creature there are an infinite number of different parts, which contradict one another.

In the end, the creature discovers that this exact division does not let it connect with the Creator and creates inequality between them. This evokes a special feeling, called shame—the feeling of their difference, which makes the creature begin to act, striving to become like the Creator. And here it sees that for this it needs to unite with everyone it now hates, pushes away, neglects, and does not take into consideration.

The creature is ready to make this transition, these actions of correction, for the sake of attaining equality with the Creator—anything to achieve adhesion. Complete equality of actions and qualities is called adhesion.

This is a gradual, step-by-step process where we realize the program of creation. We must feel ourselves in all the other states on the way towards unity or when already attaining it—in other words, on all the rungs of the ladder, while increasingly developing our unity.

At the end, we will see ourselves to be absolutely different creatures, and the group will appear different, not just a union of friends in a team, but a new spiritual formation with common thoughts and desires in a different reality. But any new state is directed towards the attainment of a greater connection, which is referred to as a union of friends both in our and the spiritual world.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/30/11, Writings of Rabash

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