Question: How do I connect everything written in The Book of Zohar with myself and the environment? How can I relate to this text through the environment?

Answer: Everything I read in The Zohar has to be revealed in the connection between us. There is nothing in the entire reality except the state called “one soul.” This soul is filled with the property of bestowal, the upper Light, the Light of love.

We exist in a confused, foggy, unclear condition, behind all the concealments (worlds) and must reveal a single, perfect state. All the other states appear only in our unconscious state, where we are unaware of spirituality. It’s as though I was stunned by a blow on the head, lost consciousness, and now gradually come back to my senses by my own effort.

Kabbalists teach me what efforts can help me return to spiritual awareness. The entire wisdom of Kabbalah is the revelation of the only state there is. The Zohar tells us about the states on our spiritual path, which are corrected more than those we exist in. It tells me about the degree where perfection will be revealed. The authors of The Zohar went through all 125 degrees, from our world to the world of Infinity, and from the height of these degrees they wrote this composition, in which they revealed the unity between us.

We are reading, and the Light shines upon us to the extent of our aspiration for this exalted state. This is how we become corrected, by approaching the Light. Therefore, while reading The Book of Zohar, one needs only to yearn for this higher state and value it.

Thus, if together we aspire to reveal the spiritual state The Zohar is telling us about, although we don’t understand it because we have no connection with spirituality, but since we desire to reveal it, we awaken the Surrounding Lights which correct and move us closer to revelation.
[43205′]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/16/2011, The Zohar

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The Book of Zohar, Chapter “Mishpatim [Ordinances],” Item 511: The Creator said, “And you shall be holy men unto Me.” This is why Israel were rewarded with being named “brothers of the Creator,” as it is written, “For the sake of My brothers and friends.”

Reading The Zohar, we try to interpret everything as happening inside a person who strives to connect with the environment and find the property of bestowal in his connection with it. Only on the condition that through the environment he wishes to reveal the property of bestowal, directed from him toward others, will this take place and be called the image of the Creator, which a person reveals.

Then, that person is called “Israel,” and the revealed property of bestowal emanating from him to others is called the “Creator,” the image built between him and a fellow human being (the “Creator,” Bo-Reh, means “come and see”).
[43209]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/16/2011, The Zohar

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Question: During the reading of The Zohar, is it enough to aspire only toward unity?

Answer: No, it isn’t. Baal HaSulam writes in “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 155, that a person who wants to reveal is eager to attain what he is studying and draws the Light that surrounds his soul onto himself. The Light comes to the degree of his aspiration.

“To strive to attain” means that I try to perform the actions described in the Torah within myself. The Torah is a manual, an instruction (“Torah” derives from Horaa, instruction, and Ohr, Light) for how I should correct myself by drawing the Light that affects me while I study this manual.

While reading this instruction, I try to discern within myself the states that it describes. This text is written in an unusual way, corporeal language talking about the spiritual world, so that under all these concealments, I would find and see what it is trying to tell me, what all my inner properties and desires are about.

I must uncover and learn what they are. I want to apply them in practice. I want the Light, the upper force, to elevate me above my will to receive pleasure so that I may start working with this matter instead of being chained in it, without even feeling and identifying myself with it.

I want to separate myself from it and study it from aside. Then, I can attempt to build one or another form from it, like a child who is making a tower from building blocks. I will be able to watch and examine what is going on with me. At that point, I will have a force that will allow me to work with my still matter. Then, I will acquire forces to work on my vegetative form of the will to receive, followed by the animate, and so on, until I recreate myself as human. To accomplish this task, I have to ascend to the degree of the upper Light.

Yet, this is the way we advance, yearning and desiring to know how to work. This aspiration to know how to find within myself these inner properties and how to work with them is vital. Where it is up to me, I want to be the master of my actions. It is as if I collate my desires and then tell the Creator: “Now, connect, correct them!”

However, I have to bring them to correction, to seemingly connect them, and when the Light comes and corrects them, it does occur. This means that I ask, and the Creator fulfills; I demand, and the Creator carries it out. He and I are partners.

Therefore, it is our duty to try to understand the Torah, The Zohar. However, after the Light has affected me, I also come to a state where I am able to see, feel, and understand all that is being described.
[43081]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/15/2011, The Zohar

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Question: During the past few weeks of reading The Book of Zohar, I’ve been very focused on the internal, spiritual work. Suddenly, I can’t stay with it even for ten seconds. What can I do when something like this occurs?

Answer: Try to stay with it for fifteen seconds. I don’t have any other advice. There are times, especially when someone is just beginning to study the wisdom of Kabbalah, when a person is unable to work on himself yet. He hasn’t accumulated sufficient experience and doesn’t know how to deceive his ego.

Try to draw something next to a passage from The Zohar, highlight and underline, meaning work with the text, albeit mechanically at times, if you can’t do anything else. Sometimes, a person may be completely disconnected from spirituality. During such states, he can connect to it only by working with the text, processing it purely mechanically, by moving the commas around, breaking it into sub-headings, messing the text up, or organizing it.

No matter what a person is going to do with it, even if it’s just reading the letters, the key is to keep reading it. He should know that he is confusing himself thereby in order to keep reading, and that’s work.
[43085]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/15/2011, The Zohar

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Question: How can one affect his friends in practice so that they keep the correct intention during the lesson, especially when we are reading The Book of Zohar?

Answer: First of all, we have to support each other in our internal quest, our inner sensation, since this is what we call “mutual guarantee.” Without our mutual support, we won’t come to a state where we will feel the collective desire as our own.

It isn’t because the friends need me, but because I need them. These actions are much deeper than mere external support. Thereby, I awaken myself to an awareness that all this desire is my soul’s vessel.

Sometimes, I think about unity within the desires, but whether I understand it or not, I awaken the Light thereby; I perform the actions aimed toward unification of our spiritual vessels, desires. The Light is oneness, and if I don’t turn to it through a single desire or vessel, I don’t evoke the Light.

Therefore, I must think about the integral desire where we live in mutual bestowal and guarantee. Essentially, the guarantee is that very tiny opening through which we allow the Light to come in. In fact, the guarantee means that you are already bonded with the others in oneness similar to the oneness of the Light.
[43091]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/15/2011, The Zohar

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Writings of Rabash, Letter 25: One should always walk along two paths that negate one another, feeling deficiency and perfection, that is, prayer and gratitude.

The key is to gain a correct desire. We start with a small spark, without any idea of what we really want. We are brought to a place where they study Kabbalah without any understanding of what is being studied and why we should try to belong.

However, gradually, while doing all the sorts of things that we do and do not comprehend, we eventually start getting an idea, a feeling, and knowledge. We clarify our attitude to all this and realize who we are, what we are expected to do, where we are, and what process we are going through.

Thus, from a state of total ignorance, lack of knowledge and understanding, from an unconscious, instinctive yearning, we make a gradual transition to a state where we gain more clarity and see more details, what caused them, and why they are necessary.

At this point, we begin sorting out what is more and less important for us and while reading the books, search for what we’ve read within ourselves. We assess whether we have the notions of bestowal, reception, and the desire to bestow to the Creator, which seems totally artificial and unreal to us. We don’t comprehend the notions of love and connection to the friends that are being discussed.

The only thing we can still hope for is the Light that Reforms. All transformations on the spiritual path, from the state zero, the point in the heart, and further on, occur solely by virtue of the Light. If a person thinks that he can do something else and advance in some other manner, he is making a big mistake that could halt him on the path or even sway from it completely.

Therefore, he must do his best to learn about his connection with the group: to what extent he is unable to maintain it or doesn’t feel the need for and remember it since he doesn’t like thinking about and is appalled by it in the first place. One must assess all these negative things for himself without sinking in them.

Rather, every time something like this is revealed to you, keep rising above it. Even if you are unable yet to overcome this resentment naturally and employ it to do the work, that is alright. The key is to feel it for a mere instant and, without holding yourself back, keep moving forth.

In these efforts toward advancement that you make despite your feeling disdain, resentment, and rejection, there is now a certain plea, a prayer that draws to you the Surrounding Light. Under the impact of the Light, your hatred shows as more concrete and defined, and you begin to better understand what and why you resent and loathe so much. In other words, you come to know your true nature.

Essentially, we always study only ourselves relative to a certain force regarded as the upper Light. It isn’t the Light itself that we study, but ourselves against it as the background. It’s not the Light that we feel, but our being opposite to it. In doing so, we become ready to pray, to beg. After all, we must get these internal flaws corrected, rise above them, and move forward despite them. This way, our plea for the Light becomes more concise and precisely aimed.

Thus, the Light carries out its task and reveals the egoistic desire in us, the “evil inclination.” All of this is illuminated in us by the Light that cultivates our desire both quantitatively and qualitatively, thereby advancing us toward the goal.
[43071]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/15/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Since all changes are made solely by the Light, every time we act, our actions must show us how inadequate we are compared to it. In other words, I must act as He does to be able to see how different I am from Him at my present degree.

It is similar to a little child who is trying to copy adult behavior. After having done so, he realizes how correct or incorrect his actions really are. It’s as if he is doing exercises by assembling tiny little toy structures from construction blocks or by doing his homework for school.

All of this is done so as to test ourselves and compare our results with the correct ones. Our advancement is based on the differences revealed between the “desired and actual,” between what I am capable of and what I am supposed to be by now.

This means that we constantly must try to perform acts of bestowal and use them to examine and assess what I haven’t achieved yet. I should not despair every time I fail, but love this state of illumination. After all, that’s what is teaching us how to move forward.

It doesn’t really signify that I did something wrong and now should feel guilty. To the contrary, I succeeded, and hence I am being shown what else I can advance in. The Light keeps showing me changes to take the next step. If I were unable to do it, the Light wouldn’t reveal it to me, and I would step into some kind of fog, an unconscious state. I would be numb, and I would feel good. The Light wouldn’t illuminate my flaws to me and wouldn’t show me what to do.

I won’t have anyone to talk to if I haven’t prepared myself by working in the group, serious studying, and doing other things. Therefore, the Light couldn’t allow me to take further action which had no foundation underlying it. In that case, it would look like I were alright and nothing needed to be done. I would enter a sort of illusion that might last a very long time, even years.

In fact, everything depends on preparation, while preparation depends on the environment. Thus, we are supposed to perform a few material acts, such as arrange the studies, the group, connection with the friends, and all discernments which we strive to do together.

If I am eager to unite with the others and reveal the property of bestowal there, I will have to eventually form my attitude toward the inner concept of the “group” or the “place” of the spiritual space, the integral desire where the property of mutual bestowal among all is revealed.

It is the Light that reveals bestowal to us, and when this revelation reaches a certain, full measure at the minimal level, it will fulfill us. We will experience bestowal itself and its very origin, meaning the presence of the upper force which sustains this property. We will reveal not only the Light, but its very source.

Rabash concludes his letter: “May the Creator help us accept the upper governance above time and space and cleave to Him always.”
[43068]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/15/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Question: How should one perform his clarifications in relation to the group: talk to them, act together, or be in one place physically?

Answer: “Everything is clarified in the thought,” and nothing can be seen from the outside. A person can appear indifferent, even rude, impatient, not expressing his good attitude towards others. Perhaps, he has such a character, or he pretends on purpose, so not to weaken his great internal efforts.

One has to look for the inner image of the group, the place where all our desires, thoughts, goals, common hopes exist, and to cling to it. Judging by its external manifestation, it may be difficult for you to accept the group. It will come later, when you stop paying attention to externality because “love covers all sins.”

You came to this place because the people who gathered there have the points in the heart, so get closer to these inner points.
[43065]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/15/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Question: What is the meaning of “necessity” which we must always care about?

Answer: A necessity for me is to always feel my connection with the Light which guides me like an adult guides a child by the hand. This is the way I wish to be connected with the Light in order to constantly feel it guiding me forward.

Do you remember being dragged by the hand by your mother? Let the Light lead us in the same manner!
[43062]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/15/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Question: What should we focus on in order to reveal the connection in our common desire?

Answer: Everybody must strive to visualize the group (the world and/or their own) to the best of one’s ability and enter it: the place with no physical bodies but only desires aimed at the Creator. A person sees how these desires are mutually connected into one system, wishes to be with them, but still feels separated. They are all bonded, while he still is not.

And then, in the degree of his ability to bestow to them, he begs and demands from them to influence him in response and include, take him in. Thus, dancing in a circle, you let another person enter it from the outside: You free room for him and he joins in. This is what it means to receive support from the group.

Depending on how strongly he asks for it and desires to be included into the group so as to get the strength, desire, and thoughts from it, and how willing he is to replace his own thoughts and desires with those of the group, leaving nothing of his own, in this extent he annuls himself. And if instead of having his own thoughts and desires, he receives something from the group, we say that he has gained spirituality.

Then, in the group he has entered, he yearns to reveal the collective force that fulfills and connects them. This force lives among them: mutual love and connection. A person desires to plunge into the forces that tie all the parts of the common desire together. This is regarded as his engagement in adhesion with the Creator, when he receives the mind and sensation of the upper degree.

But by doing so, he does not annul himself; rather, he begins to experience himself as new, born thanks to the fact that he nullified himself, received thoughts and desires from the group, reached a connection, and within it felt a vital force, the Light. This means that now, his vessel (Kli) and the Light are new, spiritual.

These are the steps you need to take first.
[43030]
From Lesson 8, WE! Convention 4/3/2011

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