Question: Sages said that we should expect salvation from the Creator every day, but how do I keep this hype up so as to always feel as if I am about to get a revelation and not let go?

Answer: You should make this anticipation pleasant. A person can think about pleasant things all the time. However, if you get tired of thinking about it, it means you don’t take pleasure in it.

We are made of the desire to enjoy, and if we are enjoying something, we strive for it. If not, we try to get rid of it. Hence, we should do our best to make our thoughts about the revelation of the Creator and the spiritual world sweet and delightful. Then, we won’t be able to stop thinking about it.

I have to constantly tell myself that it brings a fulfillment that will compensate for everything I lack. It will satiate all my desires, hunger, thirst, and exhaustion. Spiritual revelation is the answer to everything. Then, I won’t forget about it, but always desire it instead. This thought will constantly haunt me in the background of everything else.

If thinking about spirituality is a heavy duty for me, it will certainly take a tremendous effort. However, it isn’t a job. It has to be enjoyable, like a “salve for an exhausted soul.”

After all, you have never before felt the love of friends as a sweet spiritual fulfillment. You simply enjoyed spending time with them. However, imagine that it will bring you to some very exalted, incredibly enjoyable, and fulfilling experience, to an indescribable feeling of peacefulness that you have never felt before, as if you were in tranquil, gentle waters, and then you will start yearning for it.

Obviously, for now, it is an egoistic aspiration, Lo Lishma (not for Her Name), and you simply seek pleasure. However, it still will allow you remain in this thought and, simultaneously, you will start discerning truth and lies, advancing thereby.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/10/10, Baal HaSulam, Letter No.13

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Question: Why do such notions as unity and mutual guarantee seem to us as flat and lacking any volume?

Answer: This is incorrect. Unity and mutual guarantee are corrections which connect us within the system. They contain Partzufim and Sefirot, worlds and Lights, but we do not see them.

For example, what does unity mean? We are opposite, repelling and hating one another, but we have to rise above our desire and unite in similarity, pushing away our differences. Every one of us has a point which is capable of uniting with others. We connect these points and try to increase their quantity and quality.

In this process we annul ourselves and above it, we reveal our connection and mutual guarantee. We want to create space between these points, but by what means? We create that space by adding Aviut (coarseness) to them because there should be something from Pharaoh.

We treat desires of the still, vegetative, and animate levels as a kind of necessity, but we work with the rest of the desires by connecting them with the points. Being connected with the points, these desires pass Aviut to them and create a place where the revelation occurs.

Then, desires which oppose unity increase, and this causes friction and arguments between the points. Some of them do not want to be together, and others attempt to take control. We have to work with these desires. At first, we have to restrict them, but later, we have to attach them to the points.

Then, the work in three lines begins. We constantly reinforce our unity and, together, we build a place where the system of the worlds and the Creator become revealed. Hence, on top of that dimension, the notions of unity and mutual guarantee include the entire reality, including this world.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/10/2010, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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Question: Do I have to look for suffering on the spiritual path, or on the contrary, avoid it?

Answer: You should never think about suffering. If a person feels suffering, he has to know that to the degree he feels the bad sensations, he is being controlled by impurity, Klipa.

That’s because suffering does not come from the Creator. He is good and does good. Everything I feel comes from Him, even though it seems to me that I am being influenced from different directions. Thus, if my sensations are opposite to goodness, if they are unpleasant and bad, that means I am ruled by Klipa, egoistic desire, to the same measure. It neutralizes the Creator’s good influence, turning it from Light to darkness. That is why I feel bad.

Thus, the bad sensation is meant to show me how much I am immersed in evil. This has to push me to turn my sensation to goodness. And if I am in the right environment, then I can immediately achieve this. The group’s support prompts me to immediately change the bad sensation to a good one.
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/24/11, Writings of Rabash

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Question: Does the Creator hear the plea of a person who is asking to raise him to the next degree because he wants to avoid pain?

Answer: Certainly! The Creator hears any prayer. Just ask! But don’t bother Him on trifles as the regular "folks on the street" do. We see that those prayers remained unanswered: People have been begging in vain for millennia.

However, if you wish to rise to the next degree from your present egoistic state, from your egoistic will to enjoy, from all the conditions set for you by the Creator, which are not up to you, and you beg to ascend, the Creator immediately hears and gradually transforms you.

Obviously, you beg from your egoistic desire in an attempt to escape suffering, have power, be recognized, and so on. Yet it doesn’t matter what goals you place before yourself. If you always ask for a higher spiritual degree and visualize it in your mind, in your egoistic desire, in a certain albeit false way for now, then it is called “Lo Lishma (not for Her name),” and thereby you advance.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/2011, “Introduction of The Book of Zohar,” Article “The Donkey Driver”

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Question: There are two principles: “faith above reason” and “judge only according to what you see.” Don’t they contradict each other?

Answer: A person only needs to judge according to what he sees. This means that I must check everything in accordance with criteria subject to verification and analysis.

Faith above reason is a degree of bestowal, which I precisely measure over my receiving desires. To believe above reason does not mean to have my head in the clouds. We measure and organize the quality of faith according to the property of reception being revealed. In my effort to rise above it, I make precise measurements; this is my only accurate test. And then, I acquire faith above reason to the extent of my success with turning reception into bestowal.

Suppose that I checked and calculated that I am able to turn 20% of my receiving Kli (vessel, desire) into bestowal. I perform a restriction over the entire 100% of my Kli, and I’m only able to utilize 20% from reception into bestowal. Thus, I precisely verify and calculate this action.

Knowledge helps construct faith above reason. And this is why there can be nothing unmeasured in it, nothing unseen by me, which would prevent me from making a precise judgment.

We simply do not understand that the property of bestowal can only appear from opposites. The receiving vessels turn into bestowal through very diligent work and meticulously regulated, specific efforts. Moreover, measurements here are even more precise than in the actual vessels. This is because I measure and test their resistance, which costs me a lot of effort.

When doing this, my efforts are 620 times more precise than when receiving. When I receive, I simply “open my mouth,” but in order to bestow, I need to check my desire and the desire of another, compare all the data, and perform many different actions.

This is specifically why the property of bestowal represents the limit of accuracy, whereas the property of reception exists without any control in us and is left to its own devices.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/2011, “The Matter of Tu Bishvat”

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Question: Is there a margin when patience on the spiritual path begins to cause harm?

Answer: “Patience” does not mean that I sit and let the grass grow under my feet. It is written: “A fool sits on his hands and eats his heart out.” “Patience” means that I constantly, non-stop, try to attain unity.

I keep discovering time after time that I am very far from it, and I keep trying. I fall off again, and once again I return to the path; I keep climbing the mountain as I am being pushed down, over and over again. The higher I get, the less merciful the “guards” become, but I still do not give up.

I only care for my perseverance: I persistently perform a correct evaluation of my actions; I persistently grab on to the goal every second; I am adamant in my decision to attain it. I have nothing in life but this.

And as a consequence of my perseverance, my comprehension of evil and good, my understanding of the purpose of creation constantly changes. I keep getting inspired, as I keep revealing something new in it. Whatever I saw yesterday as bestowal, the Creator, and the evil today acquire new, completely different shapes. In this way, perseverance constantly renews my inner definitions, my connection.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/2011, “The Matter of Tu Bishvat”

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The true evil inclination correlates with the good inclination, which is revealed to us from Above. It is written that the purpose of creation is to delight the created beings. And to do this we need to become like the Creator, to bestow like Him. Once we acquire the opportunity to bestow, we will discover that this is His benevolence.

There is no better gift than the opportunity to bestow. From it, we will enjoy like the Creator enjoys when He bestows to His creatures.

This means that I must come to the exact state when it will be goodness to me: to delight in bestowal to my neighbor. And my “neighbor” is someone I extremely hate. When I bestow to him and enjoy it tremendously, it means I have realized the principle of loving my neighbor as myself. In this case, my pleasure is similar to the Creator’s, and between us there is adhesion, correspondence, and similarity.

This must be the criteria of goodness for me. But if I’m unable to see it on this level, then I lower it. Let’s say that goodness is an ascent above my current egoism. No matter what I want, I verify this desire according to my proximity to the purpose of creation, bestowal, and spirituality, instead of the fulfillment of my Kelim (vessels, desires). And if it is unknown to me, then the most reliable thing to do is to check how this desire brings me closer to the books, the teacher, and my friends.

Our eternal problem is to measure correctly. We always deviate to the side. A bribe from our egoism blinds us. We say: “What can we do,” forgive ourselves, and continue to measure incorrectly. And this is why we fail to reveal the evil. But how are we to correct the evil if we fail to reveal it? This error always remains with us.

It is necessary to combine three things: books, teacher, and group. If a person is able to connect them and begin to test himself in relation to them, then he has a chance to reveal the evil. These three factors can help a person begin to form a point of unity with Israel, Torah, and the Creator so that the books, the teacher, and the group would direct him towards the property of bestowal, the Creator.

And as a person passes further in the correct direction, he will see that both the means and the outcome, the tree and the fruit, are truly one.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/2011, “The Matter of Tu Bishevat”

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Question: When The Zohar speaks about man, does it refer to the desires?

Answer: According to The Zohar, “man” is a property similar to the Creator. Clearly, this only refers to the desires. This is because the image of man standing before us does not exist in reality. This is a trick of the imagination.

Let’s say that you see an image on the computer screen. Does it exist in reality? Something exists in the computer’s memory, and all the actions happen there. But in order for you to see what happens in the memory (which is there only for your knowledge and for the connection with you), there is a screen where you see a certain demonstration of something that exists in the memory. But the actual original image is there, inside, in the form of electric signals, forces that exist in different combinations with each other.

You see the external symbols of these combinations which are very limited and strictly specific because you are unable to perceive them otherwise. After all, you cannot live in a computer’s memory, understand, and see whatever exists there.

It is the same with The Zohar. Its authors convey to us a certain spiritual impression, which at this point we are able to hear only externally, imagining it somehow in our uncorrected, limited perception. But this vision has nothing to do with the actual spiritual image, concealed on the inside, behind the external forms of the letters, words, and images, which arise in your imagination. The authors of The Zohar have something completely different in mind.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/2011, “Introduction of The Book of Zohar,” Article “The Donkey Driver”

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Question: What does it mean to realize the informational genes, the Reshimot, within the group?

Answer: There is no other type of realization of each person’s Reshimot except by completing his engagement in the group to the absolute state of perfection. This is how Reshimot are actualized.

The group is the only place and way to realize them: I must enter the group with all the desires, properties, and informational data unfolding in me, and until I start seeing it as perfect, under all of its conditions, I cannot say that I have realized a particular Reshimo.

The moment I see all the friends as perfect, that is, connected, bonded, and loving (according to my degree), it means I have finished processing a given Reshimo and have realized it completely. And immediately the next step unfolds before me: as hatred, rejection, envy, lust, and ambition.

Now, yet again, I must bring my present condition to perfection. This is the only way I can actualize my Reshimot and achieve a complete state, a state when there are no more Reshimot which I need to correct with love of others and bring to eternal wholeness and perfection.

And at each more exalted rung, you are definitely going to face greater hatred and rejection, calculations you can’t avoid. You are led by an endless flood of hate and egoistic calculations involving others, while thinking only about how to deceive, take advantage, and place yourself above them.

You think about it every instant until your head cracks. And if you are also arranging a plan to carry it out, you break your heart as well. And then you understand that you can work only in the group. A person is cast into such states when all the problems are focused around only this. This is the way it is until the very end of correction (Gmar Tikkun).

These calculations are not going to leave you alone; they look like some kind of nonsense, and you think you’re done with it. But in an instant, they re-appear all over again! And it keeps repeating time after time, without an end! All we can do is exercise patience and keep returning to the same thing endlessly, until the breakthrough finally occurs.

Rabash used to share how a physician prohibited him from drinking whiskey, but he would soak a piece of pie in it and little by little ate it. It looked like he was eating a pie, while there was less and less whiskey in his glass.

We are unable to receive the Light of Hochma (Wisdom): We can only keep absorbing it in our desire drop by drop, until after an enormous number of actions we absorb all of it. How does a computer work? It doesn’t understand anything but “0” and “1,” while everything else is done through multiple actions.

This is how all of nature is structured: quantum physics, chemistry, and other sciences. There is nothing but “plus,” “minus,” and a tremendous number of acts. The whole trick lies in this multiplying of actions. Each action, no matter what equation it is defined by, comes down to “plus” and “minus,” connection and separation.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/2011, “The Quality of the Hidden Wisdom – in General”

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