The Book of Zohar was intended not for us to study it, but rather for us to demand correction from it. In makes no difference where a person is, in what situation or mood, how much he understands, and what his attitude to life is. It doesn’t matter what kind of person he is. If he opens the book, he should ask for some clarification, for advancement. One asks for understanding, and another, possibly, for a better life.

We have to understand that this is all not very important in comparison to the request to attain the goal. But I don’t know what the goal is. Just like it is in life: If I were able to read The Zohar when I was two years old, I could have asked for something good that may have seemed like the goal of life to me. But what would I have asked for, some toy?

This means that I don’t have to ask according to my desire: to feel good, happy, or the opposite. Grown ups for example, eat something and enjoy it. For me it is sour or salty, but they enjoy it. They do things that I don’t see any pleasure in and don’t understand why they want it in the first place, and so on.

If we are talking about the true state that I should attain, neither actions, nor fulfillments, nor any other criteria help me decide what to ask for. Kabbalists say that by reading The Book of Zohar you can ask for whatever you want. But I don’t even know what I want because I would rather not have these desires. Yet I have no choice.…

A person must approach the reading of The Zohar with a request for what the book itself wants to bring him. This is surely the right thing to do. It’s like being a smart baby who understands that he should ask to be a grown up, clever, strong, healthy, and successful, according to how The Zohar sees it.

So let us try to ask for this, and let The Book of Zohar do whatever it wants with us!
[60778]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/15/2011, The Zohar

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The Book of Zohar, Chapter “Pekudei,” (Accounts),” Item 844: In this palace stands Dumah. He is standing above, in the third palace of the Sitra Achra, and below in the first palace. It is he who grips the soul when she is repelled from the holy palace by the appointee, Tahariel. Dumah stands at the gate of the first hall of Kedusha, to grip the soul and draw it into the palaces of Tuma’a. Also, there are several instigators of law and sentencing with him.

Suppose I am in a courtroom where different forces operate, and I am told about them: “This one can help you, this one is for you, and that one is against you.” I am constantly thinking about how they can help me improve my situation.

At the same time, as I hear about all these forces, I don’t think about how they interact with each other. It doesn’t worry me. I only think about how to solve my problem and to win the trial.

This is how we should read The Book of Zohar: to constantly want that all the forces it talks about will help us advance, succeed, and attain revelation.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/15/2011, The Zohar

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Baal HaSulam, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)” (abridged version): And you evidently find that the giving of the Torah had to be delayed until they came out of Egypt and became a nation of their own so that all their needs were provided for by themselves….

The Exodus from Egypt is not just an escape from the domination of the evil inclination, although in itself this is also a great achievement. A person must really escape from his ego like he would from fire. No matter what, he is ready to sacrifice himself to the end. “I would rather die than live.” At the same time, bestowal upon others seems worse than death.

The second condition is to become a nation. It isn’t enough to escape my own egoism, I also have to agree to connect with others and to take care of everyone. I actually serve them, and my reward is that they allow me to do so. On the way to achieving this goal no one will lack anything. This means that I stand before the level of Bina.

However, while they were still mingled with the Egyptians…permeated with self-love. Thus, the portion that is given into the hands of foreigners will not be secured for any person from Israel because his friends will not be able to provide for those needs….

This is what causes a person pain and why he escapes from it. As the prisoner of the ego (self love), which is called Egypt, he cannot take care of others and so he decides to escape.

But here it turns out that in the material sense, everything is fine. Imagine that you have all the food that you need and that you live in the most fertile place. It turns out that you can do fine in life, in your egoism. Until now you have been pushed by suffering, and here, when you must escape from that to bestowal, it’s as if you are held back from the front: “But you can manage within your ego too.”

Then you go back to work, but it’s now work on the next level. Previously, you escaped physical sufferings, and in order to get rid of them, you were even ready to connect. This is why people connect when they have no choice in times of war or disasters. At a certain point, connection seems to be good, but suddenly it isn’t seen as good anymore.

You rise to the next level and you are told: “It isn’t worth it; you will live just as well in the corporeal world too.” This resistance from the front prevents you from yearning for connection egoistically. There are plenty of societies that connect wonderfully because of personal interests, but it isn’t the same with us.

If a person resists the braking force each time and nevertheless wants to reach connection, he develops a new desire that isn’t aimed towards himself. He falls and rises again and again, continues to study, to work in the group, and to draw the reforming Light, until he completes the second degree.

Now he is ready to connect only in order to bestow upon others. A direct attitude towards bestowal is revealed in him which he places above all personal interests.

Then the third degree comes. It’s when a person is with everyone else, feels good being with them, and bestows to them, forgetting about himself and his troubles and connecting to the friends, to eternity and perfection. And then it transpires that he still needs a reward, but of a higher quality. So it turns out that he is exchanging a cow for a donkey, meaning exchanging this world for the next world. Then a new form of resistance appears: It turns out that you have to act for the sake of the Creator.

Thus a person moves on to a qualitatively higher level of self-detachment. Now he isn’t interested in himself or the group, but in the Source, in the abstract idea, abstract in the sense that he has no connection with it.

It’s impossible to hold on to bestowing to the Creator: The Creator doesn’t know about me, and I cannot reach Him. So how can I form a vessel of such high bestowal? For this there is a special system which we will talk about later.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/13/2011, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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Each of us has been in a situation when we were in a close relationship with someone, but all of a sudden had an argument. When this happened, we got angry and tried to get revenge; we strove to show what the split entailed for the other person and that he or she would pay a price for their actions. In other words, we wanted to demonstrate that spoiled relationships and separation will trigger suffering and bitter consequences.

Previously, we didn’t feel that we were able to treat each other so badly and actually enjoy the other person’s suffering. This is how the “stony heart” (Lev Ha Even) is revealed. When we split with another person, we want to turn our prior love and connection into hatred and evil in relation to another person so that we enjoy our hatred and evil even more than love.

Hatred unites both desires, mine and the other person’s, their suffering and my egoistic pleasure that I receive because I cause pain to someone. Thus, we double our vessel, perception.

This is how the stony heart reveals itself. Without it, we would be unable to reveal the hidden hatred within us and as a result, wouldn’t recognize love either. Initially, we had good relations. Now, we are going through craziness that doesn’t even remotely remind us of our prior relationship. The difference is huge; it’s like the gap between flowers growing next to each other or cute kittens playing together and two brutal egoists who mortally hate each other.

We can’t even imagine this difference. This is a birth of a new desire (Kli). It always has existed in the created being, but secretly.

The desire to receive pleasure was created by the Light; the Light is primary, whereas desire is secondary, it is a consequence of the Light. If not for that, the difference between “Yesh Mi Yesh” (existence from existence) and “Yesh Mi Ain” (existence from absence) would be clarified. However, it has never been discovered since the Light originally acted upon the created being, “sweetened” and supported it with its love.

The created being grew under the influence of love and had no chance to differentiate between itself and the Light. The Light ruled and suppressed the created being by its love and didn’t allow it to consider or sense its own needs. The needs were completely fulfilled, and that is the reason why the diffference between the Creator and the created being has never been revealed.

It became apparent as a result of the shattering. Now we begin to uncover our egoism even more, to the degree where we take advantage of everybody for our pleasure.

Egoism is not that terrifying in the corporeal world as it is in spirituality. There, in the system of impure forces (Klipot) appalling relationships get revealed.

Today, in our world every other couple goes through a similar split in their relationship. This is an example that in this world, on our small earthly egoistic level, we have already reached complete revelation of the stony heart.

The stony heart exists at each level starting with this world and up to the world of Infinity. It manifests itself according to the height of the degree, but only at the very top is true hatred revealed.

This is what the “spies” tell us: “Life is magnificent in the country flowing with milk and honey; wonderful fruits grow there! At the same time, strong and cruel people inhabit this land, and no one can prevail against them!” This is how the “stony heart” reveals itself.

This is why the sons of Israel screamed in the desert: “Why do we have to go ahead, let’s return to Egypt! We had plenty of meat and garlic there.… What else do we need?” This is the revelation of the “stony heart”; there is no other evil but it.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/8/2011, TES

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The people of Israel received the Torah when this group agreed to be as one man with one heart, in mutual guarantee. Because of their connection, they first received the ten basic commandments, the “Ten Commandments,” the plan of our complete correction against the ten full Sefirot.

This means that I have to be corrected according to these ten laws: respect that, don’t do that, and so on, that is, fulfill the ten conditions. Then I begin to adapt myself to the other laws that are revealed to me.

I discover that I as if build the “golden calf,” then the “waters of dispute” manifest to me, then the “sin of the spies,” or I may miss the onions and garlic that I ate in Egypt. This means that a person discovers different states, which he tries to correct. He must be immersed in the shattering and feel all these attributes. This is why the Torah describes so many sins.

So instead of the details of the ten main laws, we receive a whole book that gives us advice on how to gradually go through ever new corruptions and corrections within ourselves. If you act correctly, the Light that Reforms shines upon you, awakening you, showing and clarifying various dark hollows.

Then you begin to understand who you are, and you cry out, trying to connect with others as one man with one heart every time. And the forms of connection that you need for that are revealed to you.

Eventually, you complete all the corrections, and it means that you have fulfilled all the “ten commandments” that have been clarified to you through this process, made up of 620 corrections or “commandments.”

If you agreed to connect as one man with one heart, you have to move forward now, to keep this line, and in every step to be connected as “one man.” Then you will begin to discover one fall after another: the golden calf, the waters of dispute, the sin of the spies, and so on. Each time you will discover a problem and will correct it.

This way is called “the path of the Torah” or the “path of the Halakha” (the word “Halakha” comes from the Hebrew word “Alicha” or “walking”), which is a set of laws that one is supposed to follow. When you come across a problem and you don’t know what to do, the Torah tells you how to perform a correction. Thus you put together the whole vessel of the collective soul.

The book of the Torah tells us about the internal process you have to go through, about clarifications and corrections. If you read this book and feel what it says, you see the way.

The path is long, and you haven’t started to advance yet, but you can read about it, hoping that some correction from the future corrections will shine upon you. Then from there, you will receive the illumination called the Surrounding Light or the Light that Reforms.

This will happen if you want all these corrections and if you comprehend what you are reading about. Perhaps you are reading it like some historic novel or some law book? It all depends on your attitude.

It is the same when it comes to The Book of Zohar and The Study of the Ten Sefirot. All the books tell about the same thing: how to reveal the evil within oneself and how to correct it. This is called the “Torah” since both the revelation of evil and its correction happen thanks to the reforming Light. If a person works on these corrections, it means that he studies the Torah. Without this he simply studies in order to acquire dry knowledge.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/2/2011, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”

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Question: What’s the use of the group’s seclusion at the Convention in the Arava desert?

Answer: We have gathered here to lay the foundation for a new society, whose purpose is to attain adhesion with the Creator. In order to attain adhesion with Him, we have to attain adhesion among us. And in order to attain adhesion among us, we have to unite, disconnecting from the disturbances of the outside world. After all, we’re small and we have to strengthen one another, so let the world not interfere with our doing so. That is why we are going to the desert.

In the past, groups of Kabbalists took much more extraordinary measures to isolate themselves from the external environment. A person has to allow himself a bit more freedom from this confused and senseless world, to collect himself inside a bit more and understand what his predestination is.

In the whirlwind of life, under the roar of the radio and television, you can’t make out the fine voice of your soul or attain the fragile inner inspiration. You simply don’t have the energy for it. Even Kabbalists living hundreds and thousands of years ago in a completely different world, which did not know the “wonders” of mass media, still secluded themselves, barring themselves from their habitual environment, and even “going into exile,” leaving home without taking anything with them and going off to wander for years, getting by with occasional earnings and food.

You don’t even know what you are losing in the modern world, which is stuffing and miring you with its filth. Do you want to attain something exalted? If you do, then what efforts are you making to break away from the lowlands?

It’s worthwhile for us to find time for this kind of seclusion where we will feel only our own forces, without the disturbances of the outside world. Let’s separate a day in life to feel who we are instead of who they are.

Obviously, we don’t force anyone to participate and we don’t make lists of participants or deserters. We don’t put check-marks for the future. Whoever doesn’t want to or can’t come just doesn’t come. In this sense, everything is very liberal and open. But on the other hand, if a person comes there, he has to participate in the actions that the group has assigned to help us detach from everything and feel only ourselves.

Don’t you sometimes wish to be alone with yourself? That is how the group wants to be alone with itself, to feel itself. You enter a room, close the door, and remain with your own thoughts. That is how we want to remain with our thoughts. In reality, this is clear and commonly accepted. But for us it’s not just a minute of rest, but a detachment from “the degree of women and children” and an ascent to the “men’s level.”

In the article, “The importance of the group,” Rabash writes, “When a person works on the true path, he needs to seclude himself from other people. After all, the path of truth requires fortification because it contradicts common notions. The world’s opinions are built upon knowledge and reception, whereas the Torah’s opinions are built upon faith and bestowal. And if a person is distracted, then he immediately forgets about all work on the path of the truth and falls into the world of self-love. Only in the group do the friends help one another, and therefore every person receives forces from it to fight the commonly accepted notions.”

The upper world is our inner world. We have to shift our gaze from externality to internality. Therefore, with the help of the friends, I try to go inside, to look inward, to acquire a deep wisdom, to attain the inner meaning of the Torah. There is no other choice—I need this.

A person must constantly immerse himself inward, penetrate into his depths—and precisely there he reveals the true world. The external world deliberately confuses us so through the conflict with it, upon the resistance, we would build our direction inward. Our struggle is to penetrate deeper and deeper on the background of this world’s reality, which pulls us outward.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/16/11, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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Our main work is to rise above our thoughts and desires, to manage to separate from them, and to ascend to the height where we all exist together, where the soul is. There is only one soul in the world.

This is why it is written that before receiving the Torah, the sons of Israel had to abstain for three days. Each one was trying to rise above all their corporeal concerns, thoughts, desires, and calculations in order to dedicate themselves only to the higher goal.

It is very difficult and requires dedicated, meticulous work, similar to picking up tiny grains until we get all of them, one by one, and our egoistic calculations end, until useless thoughts and desires stop awakening in a person, which pull him in different directions. Then, he will be more or less ready to include himself in thoughts and desires of the environment.

This austerity and abstinence, the enormous effort a person makes to prepare himself, is not a simple thing. A person must break his ego, come out of himself, pull himself off his position with actual physical effort, and become physically included in others. Then, he has to try to lower his head and accept their spirit from them, which will influence him. He cannot allow any freedom to his thoughts because they can throw him back outside the limits of the society, the group.

A person must lower himself and force himself to concentrate so as to put everything under the power of the environment, in both the corporeal form and on the inside, spiritually, in thoughts, in the desire. He must lose himself! He must let that which exists in the environment influence him so that no heart or mind would remain within him, and the only thing controlling him would be whatever exists in the environment.

This is the first stage of preparation in becoming included in one another. If we are able to do this, we can begin to speak of the influence of the upper force, the power of the group.

The group is not the physical formation that we imagine; it is not a group of physical bodies. The inner force of the group will influence us together with the Light that Reforms that exists in the group, gives sanctity to everyone, and enables them to rise above themselves. Then in this ascent a person will begin to feel the general force that fills the universe, and he will be able to understand what was written.

For this reason, during our convention and at least three days before it (and we should begin to accustom ourselves to it today), the most important thing for us is to be above all foreign thoughts and calculations and to limit ourselves to necessities that leave us no choice. Act through faith above reason in every regard.

Especially during the last three days before the convention, we must begin a real attack, days of abstinence, both physical and in thoughts and desires, so that we have only one aspiration and feel the least amount of disturbances.
[60638]
From Lesson 1, Israel Arvut Convention, 11/11/2011

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Question: We only reveal the Creator, the force of bestowal, when we become similar to Him in our qualities. Then what is the meaning of the principle, “don’t lose hope in His mercy?”

Answer: It means that one has appealed a thousand times, like King David who symbolizes the collective Malchut, the collective vessel, one that is deeper than the Psalms reveal. Read them. They are all his appeals and requests, praises and lamentations. This is the meaning of “do not lose hope in His mercy.” Try to express and realize your lamentation the same way, and then you will come to a final blessing.

Question: So it turns out that the Creator is waiting for us to scream at the top of our lungs?

Answer: It is written that the Creator is waiting for prayers and a broken heart, that He likes people whose hearts are broken, and that He receives a lot of pleasure from your tears. This is because your tears are a sign of egoism’s weakness and your disappointment in it.

We receive blows from egoism, not the Creator. However, it takes time to understand that. Really, what do you want from the Creator if you are being hit by your evil inclination?

This is why we need to strictly determine that our place of work is the group. Only then will we reach a true prayer, and naturally, it will happen through a number of disappointments.
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From Lesson 3, Israel Arvut Convention, 11/11/2011

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The Book of Zohar, Chapter “Pekudei (Accounts),” Item 839: As there are degrees and palaces on the side of Kedusha, there are also on the side of Tuma’a, and they are all present and ruling in the world on the side of Tuma’a. This is why there are seven palaces opposite the seven names of Hell, which are called by those names of the seven departments of Hell, and all are standing to judge and defile, for those wicked of the world to whom they have adhered, and who did not guard their ways while in this world.

Hell is my desire to receive. It may be small and weak and may not seem so bad to me at the moment. It is against connection, or not so much for connection when I think about myself: How will I profit, what will happen to me, and so on?

According to my level, this desire seems quite reasonable at the moment, and it can be called Heaven because thanks to it, I profit, attain, and feel good. But the more I understand the upper system, the more I begin to see this desire as Hell. It’s because in it, I think about myself, “burn down,” draw away from, and am opposite to the Light, the Creator.

It all depends on how a person sees his desires. This is the whole difference between Heaven and Hell.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/14/2011, The Zohar

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Question: If there are no separate parts, what does The Book of Zohar describe, the way one soul corrects itself?

Answer: The Book of Zohar tells us how we connect into one soul. After all, there is nothing else to talk about. There is a perfect state, one soul, and there is an imperfect state when the soul is shattered. We have to return ourselves to the perfect state.

Essentially, the shattering exists only in our consciousness. When we discover what is corrupt, we will see that everything is corrected. I only need to correct my perception, my vision. This is why this wisdom is called the “wisdom of Kabbalah” (“Kabbalah” means “reception” in Hebrew)—it is the wisdom about how to receive, to perceive reality. That’s all! Reality is perfect, and there was no shattering—it is all with regards to those who receive, a person who attains it.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/14/2011, The Zohar

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