The wisdom of Kabbalah is the physics of the integral world. What this integral world is all about, we don’t know. We attain only a tiny piece of it which we are able to perceive through the sensory organs of our physical world, similarly to all other animals.

On the other hand, unlike them, we have a more capable mind, greater desire, and hence we fit into the world a little bit better than regular beasts, while trying to take the most advantage of it. Yet, our sensory perception as based on our five sensory organs: vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch is much worse than theirs. They are quite better at sensing nature than we are.

Only our mind and ego are more advanced, and that is why we are greater than beasts and are more cruel and perverted. We can take advantage of this world that they are also aware of. However, in any case, we are able to perceive but a small part of reality.

The wisdom of Kabbalah explains to us our entire existence, the attainment of authentic reality. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, the major difference between our limited perception of this tiny piece of reality and the ability to see a broader reality, as if to soar out of this narrow cage of our closed little world to the enormous and beautiful outer world, lies in knowing how not to make ourselves dependent on all kinds of changes, forces, and acts, but rather perceive one single force.

As soon as we start pulling this infinite number of forces, actions, chances, and thoughts, all of this surrounding mess, into one unified force more and more, it signifies that we are climbing the ladder of the worlds, until we reach the world of Infinity where there is, indeed, only one force and where all thoughts, desires, perceptions, predicaments, and actions, absolutely everything that was so confusing to me before, become unified. That’s when we attain that “there is none else besides Him,” this singular force, the Creator.
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From Lesson 8, WE! Convention 4/3/2011

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A prayer is a person’s connection with the upper force that reflects only his or her perception of it. There are people who pray asking for a better life in this world, there are folks who pray for the future world, and there are those who don’t pray and don’t believe in the upper force.

Still, they do think about their future, and every such thought is regarded as a prayer. But whom I am asking, however, is a whole other matter. Is it nature, fate, something unknown, my future state, or an upper force that can be bad today and good tomorrow depending on my request?

A prayer is the action I take in regard to the subsequent moment in hopes to achieve a specific state, meaning that this notion includes various states, but all of them divide into two parts depending on to whom I pray: Is it someone that changes and whom I can force to change?

That is when people start looking for hidden ways to gain control of the upper force so that it would become more kind and change present reality and the world. This hope to bribe the upper one is the basis for all mystical and religious quests. A person of this world who lives in his or her egoism thinks it’s possible.

However, there is another, very rare approach that says that the upper force can’t be changed; rather, you need to know how to alter yourself by using the forces nature programmed within you. It is the method of Kabbalah which opposes all other methods.

It doesn’t matter whether a person thinks there is one God or many, imagines himself facing nature or any other upper force. What matters is his attitude toward it.

Does he seek to employ the forces of nature and transform himself in order to reach the chosen destination, meaning that everything depends solely on him and his connection with this force? Or, does he look outside himself, seeking to alter the upper force, meaning does he approach the upper force, trying to use it for personal benefit so that it rewards him, which relates to his desire to change the whole world and take advantage of everything there is?
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/9/2011, Shamati No. 113

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Question: What does the mourner’s prayer (Kaddish) symbolize?

Answer: When someone dies, we thank the Creator. Seemingly, for what, for the death of a loved one?

However, we send gratitude at the spiritual level. We look from the height of the spirit, down to the desire to receive which shed its egoistic form by virtue of the Light, the Creator. Finally, He has made it happen. That part has died, and now I can realize the “revival of the dead” with it, meaning to take the desire that remains without an egoistic intention and begin to work with it for the sake of bestowal.

After the death of egoism, meaning the intention to receive, only the “body” of desire remains. It is decomposing, and I can start working with it. Thus, I received a great deal of help from Above and thank the Creator for that. These are not simply words, but the feeling that bursts out of a person when his egoistic desire dies at last.

The Kaddish appears contradictory in our present egoistic understanding. In fact, all our prayers, precepts, and rituals don’t correspond to the laws of our life. All of them are absolutely illogical, irrational in our eyes because they are the projection of spiritual laws.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/9/2011, About the Israeli Nation

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Question: We know that “Isra-El” is a calling and not just a stamp on an identity card. Yet, is there a special task for those who live in the geographic state of Israel?

Answer: In the future, this land, this country, should become a symbol of the state that will be built completely on the forces of bestowal, reciprocal love, mutual guarantee, on the principals of “love thy neighbor as thyself” and “don’t do to others that which is hateful to you,” on unifying into “one man with with one heart.”

Here is the place with the most suitable conditions. Thus, if a person is drawn to spirituality, in a sense he is drawn here. It is impossible to establish the state of Israel on Madagascar or in Uganda. The law of the spiritual root and branch acts here, and this has to be taken into account.

Thus, we don’t have a choice. We are here and have to build a state of love and bestowal here, setting an example for the entire world. Only in this way can we defeat enemies, achieve independence, and avoid any new victims.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/9/2011, About the Israeli Nation

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Baal HaSulam, “The Nation”: The only hope is to establish a thoroughly new national education for ourselves, to discover and ignite once more the natural, national love that has been dimmed within us, to revive once more the national muscles, which have been inactive in us for two millennia, in every suitable means to this end. Then we will know that we have a natural, reliable foundation to be rebuilt and to continue our existence as a nation.…

Question: What is “national love?”

Answer: It is brotherly love. Every nation has its inherent love because the nations take their origins from the 70 roots of Zeir Anpin. These roots have a place for every nation. That is why people feel a connection to the mutual root.

Despite egoism and individualism conspicuous today in everyone, people have a sense of belonging to a particular nation. This feeling is common to all nations except the Jews. After all, Israel is not a nation; it has no root in those 70 roots. Of all the nations that inhabited Ancient Babylon, Israel was made of people with the point in the heart. They separated from the others and joined together because of this spark.

When the spark blazes and connects them, they live at the spiritual level, welded by their points in the heart into a single soul. But when this soul breaks, their vessel disappears, and they fall into regular desires, the desires of other nations.

Then, Israel stops being a nation because nothing connects them besides the hate of others toward them. Only external pressure keeps them together. If the pressure decreases, they become dispersed as far as possible from each other. They exist in comfort namely when their connection is weakened. We can see this in the Jews living among other nations.

When will Israel become a nation again? It will only be when they assemble around the message that Abraham laid in the nation’s foundation: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” It must be done not for themselves, but for the sake of the world.

We are at the last stage of redemption, the final correction, which has to embrace the entire world. Baal HaSulam writes about this in his articles “The Revelation of Godliness (Matan Torah)” and “The Mutual Guarantee.” Israel has to be united for the Creator to correct everybody through them.

Desiring to correct themselves, Israel raises MAN, a plea for the entire world. Then, it receives the upper Light, the Light that Reforms. This Light moves through the “template” called Israel and obtains the right form of unity. The Light is abstract and formless, but here it acquires the form called Mashiach (Messiah). Then, the great desire of the nations of the world becomes corrected.

If we act in this manner, we are Israel. If we don’t, we receive blows and troubles, both from the upper Light and the nations of the world. We are in the middle between them. Either we perform the coordinator’s task, or we are worse than everyone else and have to suffer the consequences directly from the Creator and indirectly through others.

The Light must find its vessel, and until then, it will not calm down.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/8/2011, “The Nation”

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Question: You liken the Jewish nation to a special forces unit that is sent on a special mission. Where to?

Answer: It is sent to conquer the evil inclination. “Israel” is a spark, the point in the heart, the foreign force in the “hostile country,” in egoism. We must strive to defeat this egoism and correct it. We have to strengthen ourselves first, and then, having been reformed, we must give egoists the Light and correct the entire world.

After all, it is true that we are not from here, not from the land of egoism. Our root lies outside of it; we infiltrated it by way of the breaking of the vessels, of the integral soul. Here, inside it, we were broken in the beginning, but in the end, we must become corrected. To the degree of our correction, we reform the collective ego.

Question: Who is the commander-in-chief that sent the special forces unit on the mission?

Answer: The Creator did. Israel is a part of Him, the vessels of bestowal sitting in egoism, in the vessels of reception. The commander-in-chief sent the soldiers out, having supplied them with all the necessary gear and ammunition. To cast them onto the hostile ground, He intentionally “broke” them up so that they may look like everyone else and not stand out in the crowd.

Thus, we can be likened to secret agents. Each of us looks exactly as all the natives of this egoistic country. Imagine being dropped into Africa, and you look exactly like them: You have the same character, mentality, tastes, and likes. Everything is identical to theirs, inside and out.

For a while, the planted agent doesn’t receive instructions. He has to settle in at the new site, find a job, and make a family. Years go by before he embarks on his mission. However, one day, he receives a reminder. By now, he has forgotten all about it when the phone starts to ring: “So and so is speaking….” It’s just like in a movie.

We have received our wake-up call: It’s time to remember that we have a special mission here, that this is not, in fact, our home, that we came from a totally different world. In truth, we are from another “planet,” from another dimension. We received an impulse and came out of dormancy. All of the aliens on this planet have woken up, are gathering in the groups, and starting to prepare themselves to conquer the planet Earth. That’s our mission.

Question: How do we win it then?

Answer: We are being sent instructions, gradually explaining all that we need to know and put into action. Then, we gain a new mind and a new sensation. Our mother planet is sending us the power of our initial nature, with the help of which we will conquer every citizen of the Earth.

We came here for one reason: to establish the same order here as exists in our own world. There, everything is opposite. It is governed by love and bestowal.

Now, we must end all the horrors that are viewed as the norm here. People are destroying themselves and the life on the planet, while we have come to help, to save them and provide a totally different life for them. We were woken up by a special signal from home, on a special wave, which means that it’s time to act.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/9/2011, About the Israeli Nation

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In commemoration of National Remembrance Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism

I liken the Jewish people with a special forces unit that was sent on a mission with a special task. On the way, the unit encounters various problems. Some of the soldiers fail, and some make it further in since they understand the objective better.

Suppose they went to another planet they knew nothing about. While there, they have to assess the situation and make decisions independently in order to take over a new territory. This group overcomes all sorts of obstacles, struggles through jungles and swamps, crosses a desert, deals with internal arguments, and goes through confrontations and reconciliations. It isn’t a bed of roses for the special forces unit sent to win planet Earth.

I think the example I made closely describes a battle we are leading. It also explains our special attitude and consideration for the fallen friends and those who are calling us forth marking the path. The process consists of many stages. It is a real adventure, a history of incarnations of souls that time after time carry out the orders they had received, until they reach the final destination.

When they come to the designated place, they must start preparing for the final combat. Everything would be fine if events would develop like in an adventure book; if we, similar to explorers of the new lands having crossed an ocean, would battle with natives, conquer or make peace with them, and so on.

However, we have a different kind of war, an internal, not external, one. We can’t let out our ambitions and blaze through the external enemy in solid egoistic rows holding up a banner. We cannot employ our natural instincts: envy, hate, lust, vanity, and ambition in order to gain victory by force. We have a totally opposite process here. All of us, together, must win in the internal war.

We constantly think that we are supposed to defeat an external enemy. In fact, it is just a game of imagination. If we conquer ourselves, the external enemy will vanish. However, in the meantime, we have to battle with it so that we may win “time.” So far, we exist in an uncorrected state that results in the notion of time. Thus, in order to free the space and time for ourselves to do spiritual work, we have to work on the corporeal plane as well.

Hence, we live in the world which is split in two. One of its parts is material, and the other is spiritual. We should treat the friends in a similar manner. Some of them lead material battles, and the others lead the spiritual ones. Both make vital contributions to this exalted war, the purpose of which is to reach the end of correction.

According to Baal HaSulam, many friends will fall on the path, and more will fall in the battle field, internal and external. However, in the end, all of them give their lives to reach the purpose of creation. Therefore, their souls incarnate and line up for the battle yet again, until all of them are transformed, having reached unity and adhesion.

As for us, we must always look forward to the future, rather than to the past, and strive to battle internally, which will greatly reduce the external battles.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/9/2011, About the Israeli Nation

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Question: Why is it much easier to read those parts of The Zohar where Baal HaSulam explains it using Kabbalistic terms?

Answer: It’s because then it’s clear to us that these are technical definitions and not earthly images. However, everything depends on one’s level of qualification.

If I invite a specialist to fix my computer, I show him the images on my screen and tell him that I don’t like the color shades or display quality, but he doesn’t look at the actual picture. A computer specialist looks at the electric signals, the forces that create this picture inside, at the quantity of the colors installed in the system. He doesn’t care about the picture itself because for him it’s nothing but an external reflection, a symbol for what’s happening inside, which indicates the computer’s proper or improper functioning.

On the other hand, when I show him this picture and ask how to fix it, he explains it to me in technical terms: “Here you need to replace HGT, NHY, reconcile the forces of the right and left lines…” and I don’t understand what he’s talking about either.

We are confused not by The Zohar speaking this way or that, whether it’s the language of legends or the language of Kabbalah, but by our inability to correctly discern the actual picture and realize what it’s talking about. Every word of The Zohar indicates a desire which must be corrected. There is nothing else to it besides that.

The Creator gave rise to desire. This desire must be brought to correction and fulfillment. Until it achieves its correction followed by fulfillment, we’re only talking about this desire. As soon as it becomes corrected and fulfilled, we stop talking about it and begin to discuss the next degree, a deeper desire which follows right after.

This is how we correct desire after desire, layer after layer. This phased approach to the whole power of the desires within us, which we correct step-by-step, one after another, is called Mishpatim—judgments or reincarnations of souls. “Reincarnations of souls” means that I am always undergoing these inner transformations.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/6/2011, The Book of Zohar

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Question: Why was it necessary to withdraw from the Creator to the utmost point in order to get corrected and come to adhesion with Him?

Answer: It is not sufficient to descend through all of the worlds to this one. We have to descend even deeper. Only when we enter the group do we start attaining what a “broken man” is. Then, we fall lower and lower, much deeper than when we just started to study.

After all, previously, we were not familiar with our evil inclination and didn’t feel bad about it. At that point, we still thought that the desires we had were good, and the more our ego evolved, the more energy it provided for us to advance.

Then, we begin to want to unite with the others and reveal the internal essence of the group. We do this while constantly thinking about it in order to find the internal connection between us, which does exist, but is concealed from us. It’s only then that we discover that we always forget about, reject, and hate it. Thus, a person gradually starts attaining his nature.

This is still a descent since he hasn’t revealed all his evil, and all ascents and descents are defined solely by how the creature feels about it. A person doesn’t see himself as more distant from the Creator just yet. All of his understanding and experience is based on the degree of his being distant from Him, as if he is moving further and further away.

Hence, he feels an even greater void, bitterness, and frustration. He doesn’t understand how it can be that he works and studies so much, only to feel worse as the world is becoming still darker for him. Yet, he finally realizes that this is how the created being is revealed, and it is necessary to go through it.

In the end, he agrees with it, which is regarded as “unconditional acceptance.” He is prepared for whatever may come and thinks that it’s all right if he feels lower than low; most important is not to give up!

In that case, he receives an even greater burdening by the ego while, simultaneously, he gets an opportunity to correct it. Here the advancement is based on two opposites since when he starts correcting, equalizing himself with the Creator and coming closer to Him with every new step, he must reveal his opposite nature in the “left line.” Then, in accordance with that, he will plead for the Light “in the right line” and correct himself in the “middle” one.

That means that over the course of this entire ascent to Malchut of the world of Infinity, to the very last moment, the adhesion regarded as “Rav Paalim UMekabtziel (He Who Blesses and Adorns Her),” he will keep revealing increasingly greater evil. It cannot be avoided.

Otherwise, we won’t find in ourselves the need for the Light. We need room where we can make the Creator within ourselves. This space is supposed to be opposite to the innate properties of the Creator, and then it will be up to me what to do in it.

That is why we find this void, all the places that comprise it, and all of its parts as separate, opposite, and distanced from one another, like the broken parts of a construction set. We, however, begin to assemble it, looking for matching pieces and placing them in the correct sequence, in the correct order of cause and effect, so as to align all the details that were taken apart.

Thereby, I reveal how the Creator feels about me, that He is good that does good which created the point of “existence from absence” that I need to correct in myself. This awareness that I am created “from absence” helps me understand the “existence from existence” (Yesh Mi Yesh) which created me.

The entire process that this point created by Him passes through is necessary solely so that I may attain the infinite Light. All these stages were pre-set long before, during the plan of creation, preceding the creation of this point “from absence,” as it is said: “The end of an action is in its initial thought.” Thus, it arrives at the attainment of the force that created it and to the understanding of what the essence of this entire correction process was.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/8/2011, ”All Who Suffer for the Public”

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A true prayer is “the prayer of eighteen blessings.” They are nine Sefirot of the Direct Light and nine Sefirot of the Reflected Light not in Malchut, the desire to receive pleasure, but in Yesod, which is above the egoistic desire. In other words, it implies the intention to employ Malchut to bestow. From here derive 18 types of our relationships with the Creator: nine from the Direct Light and nine from the Reflected one.

To use Yesod in the place of Malchut means to act on the side of “mercy” since we are seeking the property of bestowal, striving to become equivalent to the “first nine Sefirot” (Tet Rishonot), which descend from the Creator to the created being, Malchut, the 10^th Sefira. And our sole desire is to reveal these nine Sefirot, the properties of the Creator, meaning to take them in, absorb, and become similar to them in our nine Sefirot of the Reflected Light.

Thereby, a true prayer forms within us. After all, because of my desire to get equivalent to the first nine Sefirot, I engage my nine Sefirot of the Reflected Light and ask to utilize them in order for Malchut to become totally identical to the nine properties of the Creator who enters it. Thus, my nine Sefirot of the Reflected Light become the vessel (Kli) accepting the nine Sefirot of the Direct Light, and I receive the Light into my prayer right then and there.

If we know how to pray like this, then we engage the upper Light in the right way by seeking how to receive mercy and the force of bestowal from it, and afterwards, by dressing in our Reflected Light from below upwards. Thus, the prayer will be an act that contains absolutely everything within itself, revealing the first nine Sefirot in Malchut, perceiving them as the nine upper properties in it, and the ascension of the Reflected Light from Malchut downward upwards, which becomes “garments” for the Direct Light as it gets calculated and received in the Reflected Light. All of this is accomplished through the prayer of “eighteen blessings.” Hence, “the prayer of 18 Sefirot” is the key prayer in spiritual work.

If “ascension of the worlds” occurs during the spiritual work, such states as the “Sabbath” (Saturday), a special “holiday,” it results in the “prayer of 18 Sefirot” being altered because a more powerful Light descends from Above which makes the work below it, in the nine Sefirot of the Reflected Light, change in order to contain the entire Light coming to us during the holidays. This is the way we arrange our spiritual work.

This is why it is written that “Anything is done by the power of prayer” and “Contemplate Him day and night,” since prayer is an act that contains all stages of making the spiritual Partzuf: entering of the upper Light, followed by the calculation in the Partzuf’s head, its interaction-by-striking with the Light (Zivug de Hakaa Be Rosh), and the expansion of the Light downward. All of which implies the entire process undergone by the Partzuf in its development: conception, nurturing, maturity (Ibur, Yenika, Mochin). All of this is contained in the prayer of the 18: the nine Sefirot of the Direct Light, which dress in the nine Sefirot of the Reflected Light.

And this all occurs while I keep the intention to be transformed rather than trying to alter the upper Light, which is at absolute rest and always radiates at its fullest in the infinite measure in the head (Rosh) of each spiritual degree. A person who is only beginning his or her spiritual work must take time to examine their attitude to the upper force as unalterable, which fills the entire creation, meaning it isn’t subject to change.

After all, the upper one is totally open to us and radiates all its Light, while the changes occur solely in the one that receives. Therefore, my prayer is not a plea for the upper one to change, but rather a search for the right desires in me that will help me to connect with the upper force and gradually nurture myself in becoming identical to Him.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/9/11, Shamati #113

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