It is written that we need to yearn to know what we are studying. To know is to connect, as it is written: “And Adam knew his wife Eve.” We want to discover, to establish connection with the forces and states that The Zohar talks about. We want to be in them.

We don’t know what they are in and of themselves, but we want to discover ourselves within them since they are the advanced states of our connection, of the formation of the general Kli (vessel or desire).

And then, out of the desire to connect to these forces and states, according to the measure of the collective aspiration, we discover the Light that Reforms. It comes closer to us to the extent that we yearn for it.
[59410]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/1/2011, The Zohar

Related Material:
Thousands Of Names For Love
When The Snakes Surrender
What Hides Behind Each Word Of The Zohar?

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work, Zohar - 1 Comment →

The Zohar, Chapter “Pekudei (Accounts),” Item 528: When a person passes away from this world, this animal comes out on four flying seraphim. They fly in front of him and it does not let all those evokers of judgment and sentence approach him. There are several messengers of peace around him, which are the seraphim. When they travel and are seen, those serpents and seraphim that come out of the serpent, who caused death to the entire world, surrender.

The snake, the beasts, and the angels, all of these are inner forces of the level lower than that of man. We are speaking here of the form in which these forces and inclinations come forth from each one of us, how with their help we connect between us, between all the souls, and gradually create a network between us, which becomes more and more corrected and thus comes closer and closer to the real Malchut of Infinity that always serves us as a criterion. Thus in all of these actions, we need to see the forces of connection between us.
[59413]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/1/2011, The Zohar

Related Material:
Thousands Of Names For Love
Yearning To Meet The Light
There, Behind The Words

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work, Zohar - No Comments →

The Zohar, Chapter “Pekudei (Accounts),” Item 525: These are the seraphim with six wings, which sanctify their Master three times a day. They are meticulous with the righteous as a hair’s breadth, and are poised to punish—in this world and in the next world—those who slight the man from whom they learned even a single matter in the Torah and are not respectful of him…

When we begin to ascend from this world to the levels of spiritual connection, our relationships receive these holy names either from the side of goodness or the side of evil. Either I love or I hate, and there are thousands of names that stem from my love or hatred: angels, seraphim, demons, and spirits, which came from the left or the right side, either out of hatred or love, and the connections between them.

All in all, two forces are being spoken about. After all, there is nothing except the force of reception and the force of bestowal. It is only that in our world we somehow find simple names for them, using the spoken language. But in spirituality they have exact names, according to the actions they perform, the forces and the coarseness (Aviut) of desire, which they activate, and according to the results they bring.

But all in all, the two forms of our relations are spoken about here: attraction and rejection, connection and separation. And between them there is our free choice, our exertion and efforts in using these two forces in order to continually strengthen our spiritual Kli (vessel), until all the forces of the shattering reveal the connection between us, which is 620 times greater than it was before the shattering.
[59417]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/1/2011, The Zohar

Related Material:
When The Snakes Surrender
Yearning To Meet The Light
What Hides Behind Each Word Of The Zohar?

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work, Zohar - 1 Comment →

Every person reaches a critical point once in a lifetime where he has to leave his parents’ home and start his own life. This is a very sharp and unpleasant transition. There are people who never get used to life’s new demands.

Today, this same transition is global. Until now, nature led humanity forward, enabling it to succumb to childish, egoistic games. We developed in our egoism and didn’t fight ourselves, but now our childhood is over and our adulthood begins.

In the same way that a person reaches adulthood, humanity has ended decades of youth. Our egoism has grown, and now we have to manage in the world on our own.

However, the world isn’t what it used to be. We are in a new global and integral world that is mutually connected, and in which we have to find our place and become a part of. We are not children any more. We have grown.

Of course, humanity doesn’t want that and doesn’t understand it. Just like a person who reaches adulthood and is suddenly faced with endless problems, he must rent an apartment, go to work, take on different responsibilities, and provide for himself everything that others have provided up until then.

Of course, he doesn’t want that. It is much easier and more convenient with mom. It takes time to get used to the grown-up’s world and to find the nice things in it. Humanity isn’t ready yet. It still prefers to dance to the tune of its egoism as before.

We are already in the new world, and we have to adapt to it. It demands our full cooperation and concern for everyone, yet people still want to go on playing like kids. They haven’t experienced enough pain to enter the new reality.

They should be told that the new world demands our full cooperation, that our work is to connect, and that we will solve all our problems only if we create the right mutual connection among us. The entire world is like one person now. Look at it as if looking in a mirror.

If you don’t feel that you are unemployed in certain areas, that natural disasters shock you in other areas, and that still other areas suffer from diseases, look at the general shape of this world. You will see that we have a systematic problem and we all have to be connected to one another, to work together in harmony for one cause, which is general balance.

Imagine that you had some medical tests yesterday and the doctor gives you the results today. It turns out that your body’s organs are not operating in harmony, but rather like children. One does too much, one does too little, and one doesn’t do anything at all.

After all, balance is the right connection among all the body parts and is the basis for feeling good health. So, now you can come to the right conclusion.
[59790]
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/4/11, “The Peace”

Related Material:
A Period Of Transition
In The Grip Of The Common Interconnection
The Will Of The Integral System

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Evolution, Inner Work, Perception, Society - 2 Comments →

Question: After reading the post “The Influence Of The Environment On Decisions And Memory” I wonder where the concepts of individual integrity and the existential term of living authentically fit into this equation. If you are not certain (are we) of the truth of your perception of memory, how would you be able to determine whether you have made a correct assessment of the choice of friends within social dynamics? Surely I can’t confine my activity to the friends I meet in the Kabbalah seminars? What do I do in my relationship to the people I meet day to day in my ongoing life experiences?

Answer: By developing spiritually, we are distancing from everyone who is not involved in this. According to the law of equivalence of form, they cease to be your friends.

Question: What is the difference between a screen (Masach) and an intention?

Answer: The screen is the true (working) intention.

Question: We must choose our words carefully. “I think that YOU should do this” is not the same as, “We would all be better off if we did this.” We should be careful with specifying who is the giver of the information since it makes people feel talked down to sometimes. When people say, “You have not reached it yet, you will know when you do,” it makes them feel bad like the person knows more. This creates resentment.

Answer: You are right, but I am a teacher, and this is my language for those who want to learn.
[59922]

Related Material:
Our Brains Are Slaves To Our Environment
To Precede Desire With Intention
A Teacher Is The Intermediate Degree Between The Student And The Creator

Filed under: Inner Work, Kabbalah Study, Q&A - 1 Comment →

Hatred is that broken desire that will be revealed as love in the next moment. It is becoming revealed because the Light shines and influences the desire.

However, when there is no Light, a person appears to love everyone, just as many people say. They aren’t lying. They are in such darkness that it really seems to them that it is so, but apparently, we read about righteous people like Rabbi Shimon and his students who were burning with the fire of mutual hatred.

How do we understand that? A religious person would say that that is impossible. Aren’t such highly righteous people, pure, all in white garments, incapable of hatred?

It is written, “The opinion of the Torah is opposite to the opinion of the masses.” The opinion of the Torah is black and white stripes of rising and falling, and religion tries to keep a person in a state of equilibrium so that everything will be good from one day to another.

All my previous experiences won’t help, even though it is written that “There is none so as wise as the experienced.” All of the previous experience were received in more shallow desires with respect to the new desires that are becoming revealed and getting bigger and bigger each time.

If I’m under the influence of a stronger desire, experience that I received from a more shallow desire won’t help me. I will hit the wall with my head!

Nothing can be done until I determine the full depth of my desire. We only increase the speed of the unfolding and improve our approach to accept every desire as a desired one. It doesn’t matter if it is a good or a bad one; the most important thing is to move forward faster.

The number of rises and falls has already been recorded in each desire within each of us according to the root of his or her soul. If you had seen this inner ladder of yours, you would have learned how much you have left to go through at this degree, how much on the next one, and so forth.

You are not able to change these steps, only to speed them up. We are not allowed to see them because, in order to work and increase speed, you don’t need knowledge, and, if you knew what you were meant to go through in advance, you wouldn’t be able to overcome that hardship. From your state below, you don’t understand the speed with which you can rise above, which is, simply, the speed of light.
[59741]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/3/11, The Book of Zohar

Related Material:
Pride, Forcing You To Bang Your Head Against The Wall
The Flame Of Love Above Seething Hatred
The Zohar: A Funicular To The Creator

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Inner Work, Spirituality - No Comments →

Baal HaSulam: “The Peace”: It (Providence) tends to its every need like a trained nanny who will not forget it even for a moment, until it has acquired the strength to emerge into our world. Then, too, Providence does not abandon it. Like a loving mother, it brings it to such loving, loyal people it can trust, called “Mother” and “Father.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Inner Work - No Comments →

Filed under: Crisis, Inner Work, Q&A - No Comments →

There is a desire to receive and there is a desire to bestow. The whole creation is nothing but an opposition of one to the other. The desire to bestow manages the desire to receive in order to bring it to the identification of itself and to make it equivalent to the desire to receive.  That is the initial program of the desire to bestow.

The nature of the good, according to the science of Kabbalah, is benevolence (doing good). As the Creator is perfect, to that extent he has a program of improving the creation. And there exists just one path toward perfection: The creation has to feel the Creator’s state. He created the creation as opposite to Himself, separated from Himself, and He guides the creation through a sequence of states through which the creation attains the wisdom of the Creator and feels what there is in the Creator.

But it is not enough just to understand and feel, the creation attains the Creator’s nature by itself including everything that is in the creation and its management. So, the force of giving is called “Light” and the force of reception “a vessel”. Similarity in their qualities is called “an intention of bestowal” or “a screen“. Due to the altruistic intention and by the nature of its action, the desire to receive becomes the one of bestowal. If it receives to please somebody, it, in fact, commits an act of bestowal using reception as a means: It doesn’t have any other way to establish contact and give anything to anybody.

How can we participate in the process? How do we gain more understanding? How do we reach the degree of the Creator? How do we feel His actions? In short, how do we become like Him? After all, this is the goal—to become like Him.

We still don’t understand what it means “to bring pleasure to the Creator,” but “equivalence to the Creator” is closer to our current egoistic understanding. To be like Him means to bestow, to understand bestowal, to take upon oneself, to govern the creation… Everything is in that.

But in fact, to be like Him is to understand the whole program and the complete course of actions assumed by it from the beginning to the very end in the first place. Such an understanding requires the whole to be disassembled and then put back together. In this way, we reveal the gap between the Creator and the creation together with the connection that brings them into equivalence. In that, Light and darkness, plus and minus, positive and negative connect on every level.

In the process of our development, under constant influence of the Light, a vessel acquires various shapes until it reaches the “final stop”—complete equivalence of qualities with the Creator. But the vessel has to go through these states of sequential changes with understanding, in agreement, by desiring them, and even acting independently.

Thus, we need to realize our oppositeness to the Creator, want to change and become like Him, understand the program that will change us, enact it by our own desire, and carry out the whole chain of sequential actions ourselves, upon ourselves and at the same time upon all the levels of the creation under us: inanimate, vegetative, and animate.

This ascent from the breaking to the correction, we must realize with our full personal participation. According to the changes required at the moment, we have to gain mind and feeling, become included into the common program, and make the actions to invoke and guide the necessary forces.

Only in this way will we reach equivalence of form with the Creator and become like Him in force, understanding, and everything else. That is the highest degree of our development.
[60065]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/7/11,  “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”

Related Material:
The Third Force
Evolution Of Consciousness
Valuing The Means As Highly As The Goal

Filed under: Body and Soul, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Free Will, Inner Work, My Similarity to the Creator - 1 Comment →

Question: If a person advances through the path of Light, what does he lack to feel, understand, remember, and live in it?

Answer: He lacks mutual help to remember about the Light! We constantly forget about it, and every person thinks that he can advance on his own, through his own desire, instead of attracting the Light through the group for it to advance us.

We forget about this undesirable turn of events. It is repugnant to our egoism, and this is why we do not wish to remember about it. I think that I will study harder, understand more, pray more, scream, pressure myself, do something special, and cry, that I will do anything but attract the Light through a connection in the group and let the Light develop me.

And this is why years and decades go by, and people just fail to understand that they are trying to break through the wall, when there is an open door right next to them. But they do not see this door! They just do not want to look in that direction because that path goes through building a connection.

We treat spirituality the same way we treat corporeality, and we think that we will be able to do everything with our own mind and hands. We have been developing throughout our entire history by creating everything with the power of our mind and the strength of our hands—this is how we have built our entire lives. So why can we not continue the same way?

I understand that everything requires effort and am ready to give everything up to understand, attain, feel, and develop. I follow the same path, the same direction, and use the same methods as always. But they are absolutely not fit for spiritual attainment!

This is because only the attraction of the Light helps in spiritual advancement, and nothing else. This presupposes work through the environment, turning to the Creator with a request (the raising of MAN), the Light of correction AB-SAG, the Light that Reforms, all of which is referred to as the path of Light. This is not an animalistic, corporeal path.

And the main obstacle here is the lack of consistency on this path. I am inconsistent because the environment is not providing me with enough support. And this is why I am not always able to remember and realize that this is the only way for me to develop. I forget about this most important point that serves as the beginning for our actual, proper development and head off to wander in my own directions.

This is the reason for the emergence of religions, different beliefs, and new age movements, of anything that does not lead in one true direction. If you do not keep this one point, you throw yourself in a thousand different directions, like an animal let out to freely walk the field.

There is no choice, you must make an agreement with your environment, referred to as a union or mutual guarantee. You should agree that you won’t allow each other to forget about this point and will connect with one another to draw the Light from this connection.

And it is not our business how the Light will operate. It does not concern us at all. It knows what it needs to do—we only accelerate its influence over us, but we do not instruct it what to do.

The Light brings us back to its Source, the goodness that it knows about. But I do not know what this goodness is because my source is beastly egoism.
[59824]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/30/2011, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
A Covenant Of Mutual Assistance
Knowledge That Accumulates In The Heart
Pride That Makes One Bang His Head Against The Wall

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work - 1 Comment →