As we return to the world of Infinity from the place on the edge of the universe, where each of us has been cast, and approach the center, we feel an increasingly greater closeness with others. And so it is until we come back to Infinity. This means that we return to carrying out the law of unity and mutual guarantee in a greater and greater degree, along the 125 rungs of connection, everyone’s dependency on all.

A person starts discovering this integral and desired interconnection and, accordingly, feels the Light that fills him within. After all, he became similar to the Light, and the property of bestowal fills him now. And then he begins experiencing the spiritual world.

All this space on his path to the world of Infinity is regarded as the spiritual world because it can be perceived only in the extent of one’s unity with the others. All reality left behind this sensation is regarded as this world since that’s how one feels it when he breaks the ties with all the rest.

In other words, there are two types of reality. In one, we wish to withdraw from all others and therefore feel this material world. And if we gravitate to the opposite side, wishing to bond with them instead, we experience the spiritual world.

The law of mutual guarantee is the supreme law of all creation; it is timeless and mandatory for its every part. All the still, vegetative, and animate nature obeys it instinctively, following the inner call, under the influence of the embedded genes and nature’s forces. And the same pertains to man at the preliminary stages of his development when he carries out the law instinctively within.

And only when a person comes to the “speaking” level of development does he start receiving properties that do not blindly abide by this law. A person must accept this law willingly and start following it.

First of all, a person needs to discover this law, study it, and learn to desire to follow it, ask for ability to follow it, meaning ask to be transformed by the Light that Reforms. And when this Light descends to him, he accepts the conditions of the mutual guarantee and willingly starts following, sensing, and keeping them, thereby discovering one unified soul, the mutual bond.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/14/2011 on Mutual Guarantee

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Question: How can I control a prayer in the heart when the heart is not corrected?

Answer: If the heart is corrected, there is no prayer! A prayer is an appeal for correction if I feel that I am corrupt, or if I do not feel my own corruptness, then I ask the Light to discern my desires (Kelim) for me, to show me my shortcomings.

Suddenly strangers start telling me that I probably need glasses that I don’t see well. However, I haven’t noticed this before because I didn’t have anything to compare this with.

Thus, I have to ask the Light to show me my corruptness. When I sense it, I will ask the Light to correct me. When I am corrected, I will ask the Light to fill me. The same Light, the Creator, performs all these actions within me. However, He is manifested through different actions in accordance with my appeal.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/13/2011, The Book of Zohar

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The weekly Torah portion “Pekudei (Accounts)”describes who takes part in erecting the Tabernacle (Ithamar son of Aaron, Bezalel son of Hur, Aholiav son of Achisamach), as well as the structure of the Tabernacle, the materials used to furnish it, the specifics of how all its accessories and sacred coverings…. After the work on constructing the Tabernacle is completed, they bring it to Moses, and Moses blesses it….

The Tabernacle is our soul. There is nothing more important than its construction since all our work lies in constructing the integral soul, the oneness of all of us. Each of us is a part of the collective soul that is regarded as “Adam” (man or human), and when we build a correct connection between us, it means that we build the Tabernacle.

Kabbalists pass to us the knowledge and the program we must accomplish in the language of branches. When they tell us about trees and rocks, what textiles and metals we must use, and who specifically must do this work or the other, they speak about the four levels of our desire (the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking) and how these desires have to inter-connect. By unifying, we gradually construct the integral soul where we find the presence of the Creator, the upper Light. Thereby, the Tabernacle becomes the place of our spiritual life.

It is written:“I created the evil inclination, and I created the Torah as a spice.” This means that first, we get to know how much we hate each other. Then, we reform this hate and turn it into love and oneness.

Granted, it is a long path that cannot be described in a few words, but when we achieve interconnection and discover that it is actually the vessel, the receptacle of the Upper Light and spiritual life, we begin to realize what a difficult, delicate work it is. We must, with great accuracy, with a pair of tweezers, assemble this vessel by connecting all people in the world with one another.

We will have to do this, and this work has already started in our generation. We have reached the point when global egoism unfolded in us. Therefore, the method of its correction, the wisdom of Kabbalah, is being revealed as well.

It describes in what way we should be interconnected and how to get to know the upper force, the Light that reforms, which will help us to unify since, as we are, there are no grounds for the connection within us. In the degree of our unification, we will begin to comprehend what the Bible describes because it tells about the degrees of our correction, the establishment of the connection between us.

This description is viewed as a manual on building a house with all its accessories and internal furnishings, but it becomes a sanctuary. Sacred (Kadosh) means separated from our egoism which resides above us. When we unite among us in the union of love, it is regarded as holiness. This is the degree of Bina, the level of bestowal that we acquire by love of others when we unite in mutual guarantee as one man with one heart.

When we gradually arrange such a connection, we merge into one soul yet again and find the Light that fills us, the presence of the Creator. By way of the force that is revealed in the unity between people, you can rise to a higher degree.

This is despite the fact that it takes place in the barren “desert,” meaning a person doesn’t have any more strength, has no place to go, and doesn’t know how to move ahead, yet the upper force is revealed which shows us how to rise higher and higher until we reach the land of Israel, the desire totally aimed toward the Creator. Our egoistic desire becomes fully transformed for bestowal, for the good of others, according to the principle of “love your neighbor as yourself.”
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From the Lesson on Weekly Torah Portion 3/3/2011

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Kabbalists are scientists who study nature that exists above the limitations created by our physical body, meaning above the limits sensed in our egoistic desire. In this desire we feel a certain reality we call this world, in which we exist.

However, if a person has the opportunity, the aspiration, and the means to obtain the desire to bestow, through this desire he begins to sense a new reality, as it is said: “I saw a reverse world.” Then a person senses two realities: He continues to sense the old world in his desire to receive, and he perceives an additional, new world in his desire to bestow.

The egoistic desire has a certain time frame of existence within a person, and while it’s there, a person senses life in this world. The desire undergoes three stages: conception, nurturing, and adulthood (Ibur–Yenika–Mochin). The desire grows through these stages and then gradually weakens, until it disappears completely.

These stages determine the sensation of our life: birth, childhood, and adulthood. A person lives his life, then grows older, and dies. One feels death because he can no longer feel anything in his desire to receive.

However, life within the desire to bestow isn’t as temporary as the corporeal life. In it we receive an unlimited perception of reality. It doesn’t depend upon our desire to bestow since bestowal is directed “outward,” unlike the egoistic desire that’s directed inward. This is why we always have the opportunity to develop. Our desire to bestow never runs out or dies because it continues to expand without any limitations.

For this reason, a person senses an eternal life within the desire to bestow. And because this fulfillment never ends, but on the contrary, becomes greater, such existence is called eternal and perfect. But in order to become familiar with this state, one must first carry out a course of actions to acquire the desire to bestow, in which he will sense his spiritual life.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/14/2011 on Mutual Guarantee

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All our work is not aimed at correcting our natural qualities and making the world a more comfortable place to live. All the evil unfolding within us must surface as quickly as possible to show us our true colors.

In others words, our task is to speed up our development, to transition more quickly “from one movie frame to the next,” from picture to picture. I have to work so that my inner states will change as fast as they can, that my thoughts and desires, mind and heart, will get renewed quickly, and I will transition to an increasingly more advanced, true state.

It all depends on how hard I push myself toward greater development of my receptivity, thereby nearing my perception of the Light. The chain of these changes is already written in the program I carry within, and I can only expedite them. Therein lies my only free will and the means to express myself, my acceptance of the final state, adhesion with the Creator, which I wish to reach.

Therefore, we need to receive additional forces from the environment and push ourselves toward inner development, toward awareness of evil. We have to realize that all these states unfolding within us are given to assess what we lack in order to reach adhesion. I regard these flaws as evil.

The force of advancement, acceleration, comes only from the environment, as it is written: “Envy, lust, and ambition bring a person out of this world.” After all, I don’t wish for these changes to occur; they are against my nature. I don’t want to change toward bestowal, but because the environment stimulates me and convinces me that it is very important and is worth doing, I dive into a state that I would never have chosen on my own.

The environment gives me the strength to resist my nature, and hence I am able to bear such changes toward bestowal and am willing to nullify myself, sacrificing my egoism. The desire to reach bestowal that the environment infuses in me is stronger than my natural instinct to seek self-gratification.

Thereby, I expedite my development and advance. Since I dig out all my evil methodically, it immediately turns into good, as it is said: “Just look at them, and they will crumble to dust.” Everything depends on our perception of the negative properties that become revealed to us.

If we perceive all evil in the world as our own flaws of perception, we can understand what needs to be corrected in order to unify both worlds into one. To do so, we need to keep our environment awake as much as we can so that with its help, we may reach a corrected state where we will no longer see any evil in the world.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/13/2011 on Evil

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The Creator initially creates a perfect being. However, in order for it to realize and feel where it is, it first needs to live through various sensations and impressions in order to learn, sense, and examine the state created by the Creator and see that it is perfect for itself.

Hence, the state itself doesn’t change. The Creator is good and does only good, but in this perfect condition, we undergo multiple tests and assessments that aid us in understanding and feeling more correctly the depth of all the good that the Creator prepared for us.

This defines the entire process we undergo, all our experiences at the intermediate stages of this path to awareness. It is not our state itself which changes, but rather our perception, the revelation of this perfection. We start to understand more and more where we are and what is happening to us, until we learn what our authentic state is.

When our real state becomes revealed to us, it is regarded as spiritual birth. Later on, we go through 125 rungs of becoming conscious of it. When the impressions of this path accumulate and gather in us mentally and emotionally, we will finally realize the state we were in from the beginning, with only one difference: We have transformed ourselves, our perceptions, and have become able to feel this perfection.

On this path, we undergo two stages. First of all, we attain that we are unable to experience this benevolent state, and that is why we call it evil. In reality, there is no evil, no egoism, and nothing which would be against the Creator. The only problem is my inability to recognize and sense the Creator, the Light, so I call it evil.

My egoism involves the same very properties in my feelings and mind which do not allow me to perceive goodness present in my state. I constantly want to come to adherence with the Creator, but I can’t due to my undeveloped feelings and thoughts which are precisely what I call evil, the ego.

This first stage, where I get to know my evil and rise above it, is regarded as the transformation “to bestow in order to bestow,” the degree of Bina. It is my evil that aids me in ascending.

When I finally rise above it, I begin to transform evil into good, that is, to “receive in order to bestow,” at which point I employ my ego in its reverse form, relative to the one that had previously unfolded in me. This means that I have risen over the “angel of death,” freed myself from it, and am now learning absolute love, the degree of Keter (Crown).

Thus, the stages of my development are the levels of revelation. First, I reveal my evil, or the properties that don’t let me feel love, and then I use it correctly. Hence, I am always grateful for the fact that it’s not evil, but a mere revelation of lack of feelings and understanding in my mind and heart, which does not allow me to attain good in its perfection.

Evil just helps me see where I lack receptivity, oneness, and similarity to the Light. Therefore, I always view the unfolding of evil as discovering an ailment, a symptom, which shows where I need to be reformed in order to ascend along all the 125 rungs and reach the state of perfection.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/13/2011 on Evil

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There is a rule: “For social life, take after the collective, in spiritual life, take after the individual.” For example, I enter a group. Does this group represent the majority for me? Do I have to listen to my friends? I see three hundred men before me—this is a force.

If they demand something from me on the corporeal level, that’s one thing, but what if they are dictating their terms on the spiritual level? Do they understand more than I do? Are they, taken together, smarter than I am? How should I behave in regard to them? Do I have the right to influence the group? After all, if they are the majority, then I have to lower my head and accept their opinion.

On the other hand, we are talking about spiritual life and therefore, one must follow an individual as opposed to the majority. Am I that individual?

These aren’t simple questions and they are relevant to every group. In the corporeal sense, everything is pretty clear when it comes to the majority. However, even there we see many movements, parties, governments, and mafia. There is no common opinion in the world.

It’s actually quite simple for us. I establish a separation between the spiritual and the corporeal life, and then my corporeal existence is narrowed down to the vital necessities. I should be content with that.

I ensure a normal life for myself: home, work, family, bank, social security, health insurance, vacation, pension, and so on. This is where I follow the majority and do what’s considered the norm. Here my obligations toward society end. In our world I’m set. This is how I realize the concept of “follow the majority,” which refers to obligatory social conditions.

Besides this, all of my attention and strength are directed at my spiritual development. In my spiritual life, I work with the group. Rabash writes that one must lower himself completely before the group. I lower myself before a spiritual society as I do with the majority.

Where is my freedom then? After all, I have to follow my own opinion when it comes to spirituality.

In reality that’s exactly what I do because I determine the degree of my connection to the group. No one is taking this freedom away from me. This is the meaning of the law of “follow the individual.” Each one of us is an individual and decides freely to be a part of the  group. There are no laws obliging us to do this and no external pressure. We apply the same principal in our dissemination of Kabbalah: Whoever wants it takes it, and who ever doesn’t is free to say no.

And so your freedom consists of you lowering yourself before the society without there being any pressure to do so. In the corporeal world, the society obligates you, but in the spiritual one, no one does, including the Creator. You must mature and come to this decision on your own.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/11/2011, “The Freedom”

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Question: I cannot aspire to bestowal since I don’t have the slightest idea what it is. What is bestowal?

Answer: Any spiritual property such as bestowal and love is revealed from the state opposite to it since we don’t know what it is. Actually, if I knew what bestowal is, I would already possess this property.

But I do not possess it. So how can I acquire it? I can do it only by performing mechanical actions: I influence the group, while the group acts upon me. And all these actions have no relation to spirituality, which is the reason we perceive ourselves as presently living in this world.

It is an imaginary reality that contains some desires and even corporeal bodies in it, meaning that they are not, in fact, desires, but rather something that doesn’t possess free will. The spiritual world, however, is full of desires, aspirations, and forces, such as love, hate, and lust, which are manifestations of man’s will. And without this manifestation of will, there isn’t a world; it doesn’t exit.

It is similar to a laser image: I turn on the laser, and the picture appears in the air. If I don’t turn it on, there won’t be one. This is how we perceive the spiritual world as well. As to the material world, it exists even without my expression of will. In this reality, I pass through life cycles, and it transforms me without my being aware of it; it asks for no participation on my part.

Therefore, this reality seems to me so “material.” All changes in it occur without my conscious participation, my strive for bestowal; they simply unfold naturally under the impact of the upper force that pushes everything to evolve.

But when in this corporeal world I reach a state when I want to take an active part in my development, the question about the meaning of life arises in me. And from this moment on, I start seeking the answer.

Yet, it is all so that I start activating the spiritual reality. At the instant I become ready for it, I will discover the part of reality that was activated by me. It is what you can regard as your first spiritual degree.

Hence, all our actions must begin with corporeality, with the idea that I force myself to influence the environment and the environment influences me in all possible forms by using all available forces and capacities, as it is written: “All that you can do, do!”, meaning grab any opportunity, no matter what it may be.

After all, if you perform all these actions in the material form, that is, without the correct conscious participation, you still awaken this reality. This is the way it is built.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/10/11 on Prayer

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When the created being starts to clarify what free will is, he sees that if the property of bestowal in him is above the property of receiving, then the former leads him to the truth and freedom! Thereby, the created being chooses bestowal since he understands that only bestowal carries completeness and independence from one’s desires, meaning the absolute truth that is above the Creator as well as the creature.

Man achieves such an exalted state. After all, both the Creator and the creature reside in their corresponding properties: those of the Creator and the creature. But man has to make a choice that is independent of both these properties.

It looks like the force of the Creator and the force of Creation stand against each other, whereas man performs a unique act regarded as a “prayer.” He makes a choice that lies above both of these forces. Thereby, his new desire (Kli) is produced in which the property of receiving and the property of bestowal, or the attribute of the Creator and the attribute of the creature, unify as one above these properties.

This is how man receives a unique result: He finds the Creator’s Keter. It is not the Creator’s acts by which man himself is made, but rather His thoughts, the plan that precedes creation. This is an outcome of the middle line that rises above the first two: the right and the left, the properties of the Creator and those of the created being, which reach man in action. But in the middle line, man rises above the beginning of Creation.

Herein unfolds a new opportunity given to the created being: to rise above all existing forces and properties. Indeed, all forces, properties, desires, information genes, everything that exists in the universe and is revealed to us—the matter of reception, the force of bestowal—are only the instruments to bring the creature to more exalted notions preceding the act of Creation.

Hence, in every state where the creature needs to make a correct choice, it feels totally helpless relative to the point that precedes its entire birth. It needs to discern the vessels and the Lights, the desire to receive pleasure that it possesses and the desire to bestow, while the choice lies above both of them.

The prayer is born when the created being realizes that in the state that he has reached as a result of all of his discernments, he does not and cannot have any chance to rise above these equally valuable options and make a decision. Here the Creator has the final say!

We think we need the Creator only to defeat the force of egoism with our own force of bestowal, to dethrone Pharaoh. But there is more to this than a simple confrontation of desires when man stands between the two forces: the Creator and Pharaoh. The essence is not in clarifying who is more powerful and thus will win, but rather in unifying both of these forces as one in the middle line and ascending over them.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/10/11 on Prayer

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Question: What is a prayer?

Answer: The Creator created only the desire to receive pleasure. Desires can unfold automatically, triggered by the inner engine that activates in me one desire after another, by actualizing the sequence of the Reshimot (informational genes). A prayer is methodical work on a desire that unfolds in a person.

Every desire or Reshimo consists of 613 (Taryag) desires. These 613 desires, by surfacing up, paint the picture of the world for me: Each instant in new desires, I discover a new frame of reality, a new world.

But I, myself, can wish to work on my constantly unfolding desires, speed up the development of new Reshimot in me, control how they unfold, and not allow my evolution to take a random course. I can look forward to the emerging of new desires so as to work on them, justify the Creator every moment, advance in adhesion with Him, and see the necessity and purposefulness of each state.

Such work with desires is regarded as a prayer. A prayer is work in the heart, and the heart is a collection of all the desires of a person. Hence, the work with our desires is regarded as a prayer. This is why it is written: “May one pray all day long!” which means let a person constantly work with his or her desires, motivating themselves to corrections.

It radically differs from the opinion of the masses who think that by reading prayers from a prayer book, they perform spiritual actions or anything at all. Our entire history demonstrates to us how pointless and worthless this interpretation of “prayer” is. They are mere external actions that are carried out during preparation for the true spiritual work on ourselves during Kabbalah studies. Only then is the work aimed at the correction of one’s self regarded as the “work of the Creator” since it is done by His Light, Ohr Makif.

Authentic work lies in accelerating desires. I want them to unfold in me as quickly as possible so I could work on them, having prepared myself and the environment: the teacher, the Kabbalistic texts, and the group; so I would always be ready and trigger my own development, “bring on the dawn” myself. It is dawn because each desire unfolds in me as the dark void, while I immediately bring it to the Light.

Hence, a prayer is all our work, and there is nothing but work with desires.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/13/2011, The Book of Zohar

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