We should not be concerned with the right way to express our request—if it arises inside the heart, it will be heard. No extra actions are needed to transfer it and send it somewhere. The correct request in the heart already turns into a common prayer, and is an action on its own.

The correct desire, the vessel, is the main thing. It is the actual prayer. To pray means to “judge yourself, evaluate whether your desire is correct. And the correct desire includes all the components: the depth of the vessel, its covering for the sake of bestowal, and the prayer. Man on his own begins to feel what he is lacking for it to become a common prayer—otherwise, it will not be a desire to bestow.

A desire must contain the feeling of the greatness of the goal, the greatness of the Creator, one’s own nothingness, and the greatness of the group. When all the necessary elements connect together, it is called the full measure (Seah)—the cup, where we receive fulfillment.

The deeper man goes into his desire—the better he sees the elements he is lacking. And all this he finds in the group.

There is no other fulfillment but desire, and the fulfillment always corresponds to the desire, and it depends on whether this desire is organized the right way. This is because the desire is the form of fulfillment, and fulfillment does not have a form when outside the vessel.

As soon as our aspiration to bestow reaches the minimal measure—we immediately ascend to the first spiritual degree. Thus we advance until we reach an absolute desire in this discrete, digital form, a portion at a time. This is our entire correction—correction our desires. [Read more →]

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The Creator created us as egoistic and forced us to break. We arrive after all of the preparations performed from Above downward, and that’s why it’s impossible to demand from us to want and attain bestowal. We need to be realistic and try to do what we are capable of doing.

But in reality, we are given the point in the heart with which we can perform some external actions directed towards bestowal. However, this does not occur inside the heart since it is completely egoistic.

This is how we establish our relationship towards bestowal: depending upon what will outweigh what: the point in the heart or the heart itself. The heart pulls everything towards it. This is its nature. The point in the heart is also pulling towards somewhere, and it’s not clear where. Both have forces opposite to each other. This state is given to me from nature.

However, through the means of the environment, I can increase the strength of the point in the heart by ten times, a hundred times, or a thousand times, that is, however much the opportunity presents itself thanks to the group and my connection with it. If the strength in the point in the heart becomes greater, I’ll be able to arrive at a state where I am able to balance it with the heart and try to outweigh it.

Sometimes the heart will win, sometimes the point in the heart will win, and in this way I will go through ascents and descents and move forward. It will continue until I finally have invested enough efforts in order to raise the point in the heart above the heart. One needs to continually try to achieve this overturn.

At first, I have the heart, black and evil, and the point in the heart. The point is very small, and the heart is much bigger than it. However, by virtue of connecting with other points and striving for bestowal, I receive from them the strength to withstand my heart, to fight and annul it, as it were.

Each time, applying ever more efforts of this kind, I finally arrive at the breaking and  understand that I am not capable of anything, I have no strength. This is when I raise a prayer (MAN) and a miracle happens—salvation!

There are a lot of transitions going on inside, and this doesn’t happen directly, but rather an overturn takes place. After all, we are not asking for what we receive afterwards. That’s why it’s called a miracle.
[64510]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/27/2011, “Introduction to TES”

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Baal HaSulam, “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose”: For observing Torah and commandments in order to bring contentment to our Maker rapidly develops that sense of recognition of evil, and here we benefit twice:

A. We do not have to wait for life’s ordeals to push us from behind, whose measure of goading is gauged only by the measure of agony and destructions….
B. We save time, for He operates to “enlighten” us, thus enabling us to increase our work and hasten time as we please.

On the second path we don’t wait for the suffering that constantly pushes us according to the natural process of evolution. Each time I feel negativity in the present state (desire -1), I run to the state that seems positive (desire +1). Then again I discover the negativity of the new desires in it (desire -2), and searching for a filling I move on (desire +2). Then again the whole process repeats itself: I discover a greater negativity (desire -3) and look for a way to fill it, until I reach a new positive state (desire +3).

Thus, I am being pushed forward by the sufferings that push me again and again in a most painful way. So how can we follow a different path?
It’s very simple: If you want to move on to the next state by yourself, before the negativity is revealed, don’t wait. You can hasten the process and shorten the time. You only need to understand what you are lacking. What you are lacking is a new desire, that minus (-).

“So this is what I lack! So I can have it with the help of the environment, meaning the group, the books, and the teacher.”

Thereby I do not advance under the pressure of egoism. My advancement is now different in quality: The desire of the friends motivates me, which is the whole difference. Before I followed my egoism, like a beast that only grows in size, but now I am moving forward with the help of another force, the force of the group that comes from the Light, from the Creator. This is where the human in me, who resembles the Creator, grows. This is because I receive the group’s desires and am filled with awe and impressions by them, which I fulfill.

Thus, I don’t just restrict and sweeten the path of suffering, but actually follow a different path, and that’s the whole idea.
[62259]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/1/2011, “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose”

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Question: I read the book The Kabbalist, which among other things talks about how Baal HaSulam tried to reach the world. He told people everything but they didn’t listen. Why should the world listen to us today?

Answer: Baal HaSulam lived at the beginning of the present era and really wanted to hasten time. Before WWII he tried to arrange for 300 Jewish families from Poland to come to Israel. He wanted to establish a special group in Jerusalem, whose members would work in a small factory in order to make a living and be together all the time, connect all the time. He wanted to unite the people with his newspaper “The Nation.” He went back to Poland when the workers’ uprising began, hoping to direct them all to unity….

Baal HaSulam saw that the next level, the next state, is global unity. There are no intermediate levels. We have to rise from here straight to connection. But in his time there weren’t the right conditions for that. People ridiculed the Soviet Union in which a new society was formed by oppression. As a whole, the world has advanced the American way, towards attaining the “American Dream,” and it was impossible to talk about correction according to the method of Kabbalah.

However, today things have changed. I would like to emphasize that we are not talking about our accomplishments. On the contrary, we are small compared to all the groups that preceded us. However, considering the state of the world, we have to succeed. After all, today the world is helplessly facing all the emerging problems. The world has never been in this situation which seems like a dead end. It’s now clear that we are sinking into a total economic crisis and that we can’t do anything about it. There’s nothing to hope for and there’s no way out.

This is why the method for correction is being revealed now. It turns to the world not by calling it to bestow upon the Creator, but by a message of mutual guarantee that’s being revealed very clearly on the part of nature itself. Everyone sees it, but they don’t know how to reach compatibility with the Creator; they don’t know that it’s by equivalence of form with Him that we can have all the abundance in the corporeal world.

We are working together on our level, aspiring for the upper force to be revealed in the point of unity between us. For us mutual guarantee is unification at the higher, spiritual level of Galgalta ve Eynaim (GE), thanks to which we, Israel, will pour the upper Light onto the world. All of humanity is actually one system, and hence, if the Light will be in us, it will certainly flow onto others.

This is exactly what our convention is for: We draw the Light from the Source so that it will be revealed between us. Then after the convention we’ll see great changes in the world. People will feel a special force: “Perhaps we can connect after all?” Suddenly this will be the real solution for them. There is no need to “escape,” there is no need to break up the common market and international relationships. On the contrary, with the help of all the present institutions, we have to change the approach and to aspire for unity and not for anything else.

The previous mechanisms are being destroyed and we have to provide everyone with a minimal reasonable standard of living and a sense of security. Everyone should receive the basic necessities. Humanity that feels so helpless now should adopt this approach. The developed countries are in a state of economic, industrial, and financial decline.

According to what is written in Kabbalah books, today, considering our investment in the world’s needs, we have a very good chance to reveal the upper force in order to correct ourselves. We only have to use our intentions as much as we can.

Clearly we are all egoists, and each of us thinks about his own well-being. Even in the group each one looks for his gain and not for bestowal upon the Creator. If we are lucky, we remember Him occasionally. But this doesn’t matter. All our efforts are accompanied by an egoistic desire “Lo Lishma” (not for Her Name), and we aren’t demanded to do more, just like babies. We try, we really make great efforts, and so the convention can really unite us.

Then we’ll be able to reveal the upper force for the first time, in order to correct ourselves and to pass on the correction to the whole world. All the signs and Kabbalistic writings indicate that it’s possible, and we simply mustn’t doubt that.
[62272]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/1/2011, “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose”

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The main thing we lack is desire, similar to how a sick person who lost his appetite needs to regain it in order to start eating and get well. Or, it’s similar to how we want a child to study and he doesn’t want it, and we don’t know how to transmit our desire to him so he would attain a good result. There are many similar examples.

A sick, flawed place first of all needs a desire for correction. Our problem is that we do not feel that we need it. Nothing besides desire is required of us, whereas we are thinking about fulfillment, the total opposite.

All of my worries, searches, efforts, and thoughts—everything must be aimed only at finding the right desire. And if I am thinking about fulfillment, then it’s egoism and it is opposite to the right intention.

The entire problem amounts to the right environment, which will imbue me with this idea so I will constantly remember that I lack nothing but the desire. This is called “asking for rain”—if a person asks for it, then the rain will come, the Light will pour from above. The only thing missing is our request.

And this is a problem because we lack the desire, the passion, questions, pressure, and aspiration precisely for the spiritual goal. We don’t need anything else but the right desire. But for that, a person must always be under society’s pressure so he will feel how he lacks the right desires.

Everyone needs a “program of work”: What do I aspire to, what have I attained—which desire, how did I gain a better understanding of what I lack, did I come closer to it? Do I have the willingness to endure, because desire means suffering due to the lack of the desired thing? Am I happy that I lack spirituality, that I feel a yearning and aspiration for it—the suffering of love?

For that we need social pressure from every person upon every person in order to collect our common desires and attain revelation. The aspiration has to be logical, mutual, common, and total. Then our unification will be called “an assembly of souls aspiring to the Creator” (Knesset Israel).

What do people do in that assembly (Beit Knesset)? They ask, pray. Then it’s called Malchut, from which a request rises and to which fulfillment comes.
[64945]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/1/11, Writings of Rabash

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Question: How can I awaken myself from hibernation and not wait for the awakening to come by itself? After all, you said after the convention that we have to make sure our friends don’t fall?

Answer: If we look at ourselves and at the states we go through objectively, from the side, we’ll acquire experience for all the future “generations,” meaning future states. Then we’ll know that after an ascent there is a descent, and satiation is followed by the fog and the dullness of senses.

It’s okay, this way you will learn the process. You will get to know it gradually, in a balanced way. The wisdom of Kabbalah is self-attainment, nothing more. Indeed, there is no one besides me. The more I know myself from within, the more I will reveal the Creator who created me.

There is no humanity, this world, or upper worlds.… Allow me to know myself and the states I experience! This is a hazy state, but it’s all right. And before that there was some other state, and it is great too. Meanwhile, we immediately want to shade, correct, turn, and break it, but what for?

First of all, we have to perform a clarification. The Light that clarifies comes separately, and so does the Light that reforms, and you cannot instantly reject it by saying that you don’t want this state. First you should examine what you are rejecting!

If you still are at the state of the convention, try not to fall out of it. But if you nevertheless fell, look how you are falling. By examining this state you will later know how to use it in a right way.

If I don’t experience these states, don’t know their pros and cons, why and where they come from, how will I know myself? Have I ever said that I should wipe off the state before examining it? To overcome a descent and to accelerate time means to end the clarification rapidly, to allow the correction, meaning the ascent, come straight away.

Still, this is another type of ascent. We know that Malchut of the upper one transforms into Keter of the lower one. It means that what I regarded as the ascent in the previous state becomes a descent currently, in my present state.

I have to rise qualitatively, by conscious decision and deep analysis so that my previous ascent would now be regarded as a descent. What I used to see as bestowal, after the clarification proves to be reception! Earlier it was for me Keter, but now I see that this is Malchut.

Yet, I will not be able to do that if I don’t perform a clear analysis of my ascent and descent, the haze. I analyze how I satiated myself, how tired I became, and how unwilling I am to do anything, and I do it like a scientist who is observing and testing his dog or experimental rabbit.

I have a precise scientific method, and the only thing I have to know is what it means to me “to bestow” and “to receive,” who I and my society are—and the Creator above. I use my feeling and reason as measuring devices, working with them to reveal every state.

To be in the middle line, I analyze: What comes from the side of reception and what from the side of bestowal, what comes from me and what from the environment, as well as where all these factors are in relation to the goal. Our measuring device is the three lines.
[63305]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/15/2011, TES

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Each time I connect more strongly with the friends, I actually connect not to corporeal people, not to the friends I see before me, but with their internal desire. The Creator inserted this desire into them and prepared it for us on the ladder of spiritual degrees so that we will always have the means to ascend.

If I connect to my friends, I can rise with their help. When I connect to them again, I rise again. The first state is me at my present level, and in order to rise from it, I need to have a greater desire. Also, I need to draw the Light to this desire so that it will correct me. There are two important factors on my way: the group that increases my desire, and the Light that corrects this desire. Thus I rise to the next level.

The first preliminary condition is “make yourself a Rav (a teacher),” meaning to raise the goal in my eyes. Without the greatness of the goal I cannot start working with the friends.

But in order to increase the goal, I also need the friends. By myself, I cannot exalt the goal and want to attain bestowal and equivalence to the general force of bestowal that governs all of creation. In order to do that I must be impressed by the environment. Thus the environment is a preliminary requirement.

Then, I have to receive a greater desire from them in order to attain that goal since the fact that the goal is important doesn’t necessarily mean that I would yearn for it. I envy the friends who yearn for this goal, and I take this desire from them. Then I have to work on my connection with them, “to buy them,” by investing my powers in them so that I can the draw the Light that reforms through them.

Thus, all the work, on every level, is possible only within the group! It is only with the help of our powerful connection that we can go through all these levels and attain the goal. From the beginning to the end, what determines the interaction between the environment and me is my work in the group.

Therefore, the condition “make yourself a teacher and buy yourself a friend” is essential for all our actions at every level until the actual end of correction. All our work is around that, all of our internal, personal, and social life, and our study and dissemination is devoted to that. It is all meant only in order to reinforce the environment and its effect on me, to bring me closer to the environment so that I can invest more in it.

So when we assemble without being on the spiritual levels where there is no distance between us, when we connect, see, and feel each other with our ordinary senses, we have to try to be impressed by the desires of the friends, by their stature, great efforts, seriousness, and devotion to the cause.

The higher we perceive these attributes, the greater the opportunity we will have to connect and to demand the upper Light to correct our connection and become revealed in it in the form of the Inner Light.
[62252]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/1/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Rabash, Letter No. 9, Article “But Man Will Sell His Roof”: If I really wish to love my neighbor, I need a group.

Love for one’s neighbor allows man to develop a spiritual quality where he seems to “exit himself.” All of our current actions and perceptions are built on our absorbing everything. We only perceive what enters our senses, and we do not perceive the enormous universe that remains outside of their limits. We do not even know what it is like.

This is why there is another possibility for existence besides this short and flawed life that we perceive in the quality to receive. This existence is in the bestowing organs of perception, not the absorbing ones.

When we acquire the quality to bestow, we enter an area that exists outside of us, and we begin to exist in it. We only need our physical body to overcome this potential barrier and come out of the quality to receive into the quality to bestow.

For this reason, I need a group, which was created for me to see how every friend makes an effort. Making mutual efforts helps every one of us. The environment influences man, inspires, guides, and pushes him forward. This gives the strength to overcome the potential barrier between our world and the so-called “other” world that can be experienced in the quality of bestowal.

Due to this, my small force of love, when I come out of myself and enter the state of bestowal, grows, and I will be able to work in the name of others much more than on my own.

A group is made up of certain people. And of course, someone wished to create this specific group.

In other words, people gather together who are inclined to strive to come out of themselves. They feel that they must understand why they exist, to understand the meaning of life and the secret of creation. This pushes them to unite. To be more precise, they are not being pushed by their own desires, but by being in a single field: the field of the quality to bestow, the upper Light that exists outside of us and attracts these special desires.

And he must have chosen these people because they are ready for the task. We instinctively search for a group, feel certain special qualities of people, their actions and thoughts, and we advance this way.

We move in this world just like an electric charge in an electric or magnetic field toward a point of maximum correspondence to the environment. Even though we think that we move autonomously, we are driven by this specific force that pushes us forward toward the place where we can receive answers to all the questions that interest us, in other words, where we can acquire fulfillment to our biggest, inner, and secret desire.

This is why every one of us has a spark of exiting himself, a spark of love for his neighbor. Truthfully, it is still egoistic and manifests in our desire to come out of ourselves in order to consume that other world. For now, we are still moving in his exact key.

But then an interesting change of intention will happen. We will begin to change under the influence of this field, this Light. We will begin to feel that the quality to bestow is actually divine and special. Once we possess this quality, we will really come out into the most unlimited field of existence.

This spark, on its own, is unable to ignite the flame of love to shine in every one of us. It is necessary for these sparks to unify for this. Then, in our unity, when we develop the power of bestowal, the power of unity, these sparks merge into one big spark from which the Light appears. The perception of the Light appears in us to the extent of our similarity to the one common spark, our common desire to bestow.
[62489]
From the Sunday Virtual Lesson Series 11/27/2011

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The creature must have a long journey in order to achieve its purpose and rise to the level of the Creator, the Light, and become equal to Him in its essence and height. Initially, the desire develops according to the four phases of the Direct Light, revealing how opposite it is to the Creator. It goes through the First Restriction (Tzimtzum Aleph) and acquires the screen (Masach), beginning to build the system of concealment in the relationship between itself and the Light.

They are connected to the extent of the ability of the desire to enjoy to become like the Light, and they are concealed to the extent of the lack of its ability to do it. This is called the condition of balance, the correspondence of the form of the Light and the desire. This serves as the foundation for the building of the ladder of degrees. At its very height, the vessel, the desire, is absolutely one-hundred percent similar to the Light. The further we descend down this ladder from the very topmost state, the stronger the concealment becomes.

At the top, there is zero concealment and one-hundred percent desire. At the bottom, there is zero desire and one-hundred percent concealment. If you pick a point along the path from above downward, it will be partially revealed and partially concealed. A certain part of the Light becomes revealed, and the rest remains concealed. This is how the spiritual degrees and the worlds are formed, namely Adam Kadmon, Atzilut, Beria, Yetzira, and Assiya.

Everything is built on the basis of correspondence, that is, to the degree of similarity between the desire and the Light. In this way, the ladder descends to the level of our world where the desire completely separates from the Light in order to become independent.

We seem to live a life that is completely independent from the Light because we do not know anything about it. This is exactly why we can begin to rise from this independent point that is separate from the Light and bring ourselves to the state of correspondence with it: We can change ourselves and become more like it. This is what it means to rise up the rungs of the ladder all the way to full correspondence. This is called the final correction (Gmar Tikkun).

The universe is made in such a way that at first, the system of concealment is built, from Above downward. As we rise from below upward, we need to use this concealment to discover ourselves as similar to the Light. The law of correspondence of qualities always remains. After all, the reason that the Creator created the creature was to please it, that is, to bring the creature to a state of absolute correspondence with Him and adhesion.

We must realize our similarity to the Creator in every state, on every degree. To do this, one first needs to value it: to wish to become like the Light and make this appear incredibly important to him. The quality of the Light, the quality of bestowal, must become the most honorable and elevated quality in our eyes. We must strive to correspond with it to the extent of all our strengths and abilities, as much as we can.

Accepting this condition and becoming like the Light, bestowal, as much as possible is called “make yourself a Rav” (important, big). This means that this quality of bestowal must become bigger (Rav) than all my egoistic qualities.
[62246]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/1/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”: Therefore, we must understand that in every emergence in the world there are four factors where from the four of them together arises that emergence. They are called by the names:

A. The source;
B. The unchanging conduct of cause and effect, related to the source’s own attribute;
C. Its internal conduits of cause and effect, which change by contact with external forces;
D. The conducts of cause and effect of external things, which affect it from the outside.

The repeating influence of these four factors and their interaction with each other eventually results in a “product,” meaning a human being or any other kind of being. “There is nothing new under the sun.” Anything we observe has stripped off its former shape that grew up under the influence of the four above-mentioned factors.

Why is it so important to know about them? It’s because we won’t identify what we are dealing with without having an understanding of them. Who am I? What do I see? What influences me? I understand nothing about my thoughts, desires, or actions.

The simple question “what is it?” forces me to consider the four factors that created the object I am studying. Having studied them, I get to know the object, be it a phenomenon or a property, something active or subordinate, something spiritual or corporeal.… My original perception of reality is built in a way that things that do not undergo the four factors do not exist for me. I am unable to know them.

Whatever I see has already gone through a certain developmental process, and as a consequence, it’s revealed in me. By asking “what is it?”, I in fact question the origin of the object. Hence, there always are the four factors that lie between the source of the object and my perception of it. Without them, I am unable to recognize objects and phenomena. The question about the essence of any object is an inquiry about the difference between its prior stage when this phenomenon was not yet known to me and my current sensation of it.

In this case, can we call each prior stage “the source”? What is it? Does a primary (original) condition called a primary source exist?

In spirituality, at all times there is a beginning (a root) followed by the development by four stages and completion. This entity represents a standard “unit” in which the root stage is named “the source” that initiates the whole process.

It is an entity that has stripped off its former shape and taken on another form, different from the original. And that entity, which shed its previous form, is defined as “the source.” In it lies the potential destined to be revealed and determined at the end of the formation of that emergence. Therefore, it is clearly considered its primary cause.

The source contains potential force that further turns into an action and acquires a final shape at the last stage.

[63233]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/15/2011, “The Freedom”

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