Question: Who are these friends that The Zohar writes about all the time? How can I identify them within me?

Answer: If you identify your friends as really belonging to you and being within you, then you will see that they are parts of your soul. With their help, you are building your spiritual world now, and you reveal the Messiah in it.

It’s simple: The present picture disappears, and you feel only the internal structure of the soul. “Friend” (Haver) comes from the word “connection” (Hibur). If you are able to attach to you someone who seems a stranger to you now so as to feel him within yourself, he is called your friend.

Friends are the same attributes you used to feel outside of yourself as strangers. You’ve worked on them to attach them to you, and, of course you failed to do it alone. Then, you asked for the Light to do it for you. It influenced you and attached them to you.

It created in you such an attitude toward the friends on the same path as if they were part of you. Then, you feel them as your “assembly.” An assembly means a common desire, a union of individual desires, each of which previously existed on its own, or so it seemed to me in my pride, in my egoism.

I lowered myself from the state of “standing,” reaching the state of “sitting” (Yeshiva). Then, sitting together, everyone can connect with each other as in the verse from the song: “How wonderful and pleasant it is to sit together as brothers” (Heene Matov uManaim Shevet Achim Gam Yahad). That’s why it is called “assembly” (Yeshiva), a small state (Katnut).
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/26/10, “Introduction from The Book of Zohar,” Article “The Vision of Rabbi Hiya”

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The Zohar, Introduction, Article “The Vision of Rabbi Hiya,” Item 57: At that time, the Messiah comes to Rabbi Shimon’s seminary crowned with high crowns from the heads of the seminaries.

…Now, however, after all those members of the seminaries have been rewarded with the degree of heads of seminaries, the Messiah was crowned with the Torah of the heads of seminaries. It follows that he is crowned with the highest crowns from the heads of the seminaries.

This passage talks about spiritual degrees within a person who discovers his inner structure. His entire inner construction is his collective desire (will to receive pleasure), divided and arranged by spiritual degrees (levels), capacities to bestow.

He has the structure of the world of Atzilut. Within this outer design, there are more internal structures according to the levels, from inside out, of Shoresh (root), Neshama (soul), Guf (body), Levush (garment), and Heichal (chamber). As in the corporeal world, there are still, vegetative, animate, and speaking (human) levels.

There is no difference between the material and spiritual design. Our material form is a mere projection of our inner properties that are painting a certain picture within us, just as we see this world before our eyes right now when, in fact, it is our inner reflection.

Getting to know my inner spiritual structure, I witness how, by way of transformations performed on me by the Light, all my properties become elevated from being “members of the seminaries” to the “heads of seminaries,” from the Messiah who has come from a certain level to the Messiah at a more exalted spiritual degree. Suddenly, I see Rabbi Shimon, the rung that hasn’t revealed within me before.

All of these are the degrees in a person’s soul, all the forefathers and their sons: Hesed, Gevurah, Tifferet, Netzah, Hod, Yesod, and Malchut. This explains how a person learns the design of his soul in more thorough details, wherein he discovers a great measure of bestowal in various forms. This is what we call getting to know the Creator.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/26/10, “Introduction from The Book of Zohar,” Article “The Vision of Rabbi Hiya”

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Question: What should I do when I am in a state where I have no strength, don’t feel anything affecting me, and don’t know what to do?

Answer: This is described in the weekly chapter of the Torah: “And the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage.” After a person comes to the realization that he has no power, all that he can do is beg.

Before, he thought himself big, smart, and understanding, thinking he could advance on his own, constantly gaining knowledge by adding effort and action. However, if up to this point he has performed a sufficient number of actions, he gets to see that nothing has been achieved therewith.

Why then does a person needs to perform all these actions? In order to realize that he won’t achieve anything. To reach the state of emptiness, a person has to exert a tremendous amount of effort.

I work and think that by doing so, I am building the beautiful “store-cities of Pithom and Ramses,” gaining knowledge, and that soon I will unveil, see, and feel everything. I exert more and more effort, immerse myself in the studies deeper, only to suddenly realize: “How much have I put into it, and what have I achieved? I have nothing. What do I do next? What will become of me?” I don’t know, but I am willing to fall into a deadly sleep. Just give me a sleeping pill so I may sleep and never get up.

This is how a person feels at that moment, exhausted and powerless. In fact, he begins to understand that he will achieve nothing like this. At first, he doesn’t even know it and only feels that he has no desire for anything. Then, he wakes up and still goes on. However, at some point, he begins to understand that, on his own, he will merit nothing, and he needs the Upper Force: “If the Creator doesn’t come and help me, I, myself, can do nothing.”

He starts thinking this way only after 15 to 20 times, or maybe even 30 to 40 times that he has tried to advance on his own only to face disappointment and fall into despair. This is called the years of Egyptian exile, until they have “sighed by reason of the bondage.” For my ego, I build the “store-cities, Pithom and Ramses,” but for the human in me who desires to attain spirituality, these cities are poor and miserable, empty, and can give me nothing.

I start dividing myself in two. So what if I have knowledge, intellect, can discuss the wisdom of Kabbalah beautifully, and even seem to understand everything? It serves nothing. In truth, I don’t have spirituality. I can talk about it all day and all night, but am I attaining it or just talking about it? I am just talking.

Then, a person understands that at this point, he needs only the help from Above, some upper revelation, the Upper Force, something different which is not up to him. He understands that with what he has, it is impossible to reach spirituality. Finally, he really cries out, as it is written: “And the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage.”

It is a challenging path. A person has to undergo such states many times. Only the environment can help him in this and nothing else. The environment can support and protect him as well as promote his development.

Otherwise, who knows when he will wake up again? If not with the help of the environment, it will be by way of a changing Reshimo (spiritual information record) that he will be granted mercy from Above and given a new state. However, nobody knows when that will happen.

Therefore, when a person remains in a good state, when he is illuminated by the Light and has power, he has to bond with the environment as much as possible in order to receive the strength put into it when he gets weak again. Then, he will experience a descent as if by inertia and will start ascending again since he had accelerated the speed before he fell.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/24/10, “Perfection in Life”

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Question: Every person wants to be unique and realize the unique root of his soul. That’s why he is frightened by the explanation that he is a mere cogwheel in the common mechanism. He is afraid to lose his individuality in the society.

Answer: But why should you get lost in the society? On the contrary, you can become a righteous one who is regarded as the “salt of the earth”: to bestow to all and pull the entire world forward. Who is stopping you? There is no restriction on bestowal. Please, do bestow!

You are complaining that you are prevented or not permitted to use all the others. Obviously, nobody wants to let you take advantage of them. On the other hand, if you become great not at reception, but at bestowal, nobody will stand in your way.

One can be unique in the positive sense of the word, in bestowal. Why, then, do you insist on being different in the negative form, in egoism? Everybody wants to be special, so, please, do let them. Realize yourself in spirituality.

A person may be frightened by the very look of the linked cogwheels. He imagines being a robot or a screw, but it is a fact of reality, a picture that does exist in Nature. In Nature, nothing can be bad or good; it is simply a fact.

You may agree or disagree with it; it won’t change reality. You will only evoke blows upon yourself if you don’t comply with it. You may claim that you disagree with the law of gravity and deny its existence. Go ahead; we will see later how you will be falling off the roof.

It’s the same case here. We don’t understand how strictly we are connected with each other and we are still trying to do as we please. Everybody is pulling the blanket over their eyes. Later, we witness how everybody suffers, time after time, for thousands of years.

Now, we are entering such a state where our ego has grown to its maximum in all our earthly desires and tied us all to one another all over the globe. Nonetheless, we still don’t wish to admit it and we keep trying to deceive and use each other. However, we don’t understand that by doing so, everyone brings the very same pain onto himself that he brings to others.

We don’t see it, but if it were clearly revealed to me and I got an immediate, reciprocal blow at the moment when I harm someone, I would act like an animal that doesn’t have free will. I would keep swinging between blows and pleasures, working like a machine, if the law of mutual connection affected me openly.

Therefore, this law is concealed in order to give me an opportunity to add to it by using my free will. The law does exist, albeit  hidden, and I can make up for concealment myself as if it were revealed. After all, I wish it to work this way: I want bestowal to be enormous and powerful and prevail over receiving. It may be a law written out in every book, but I wish it to become revealed in practice. This is where my free will lies.

I was given one white spot which means that the Creator is concealed. I can bring Him out of concealment and fill this white spot with His presence. It will be my own presence since I will be exactly like Him. I will come to the place where He is hiding and replace Him. It will be as if He and I are partners, and I pledge that I will do His work for Him where He is hidden.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/26/10, “Peace in the World”

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In reality, it’s not the group that has to influence you, but you have to tune into the group yourself. When we say that the group has to influence a person, we want to inspire each person to bestow to the group.

The group’s response may be powerful or weak, but that will not affect a person. That’s because our connection and interaction is with the inner group, not the external one. The external behavior of the friends does not play such a substantial role.

Here everything depends on how strongly I tune into them, how much I try to feel their inner aspiration, which does not depend on me or on them. This is a spiritual reality, the unity between us on the level of Infinity.

Therefore, the group influences you to the degree you tune into it and desire to receive its influence, its bestowal.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/27/10, Writings of Rabash

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Question: Correction occurs within us, and the message expands from us. Today is the Unity Day, and on January 28, 2011 there will be conventions in Berlin and San Francisco. In the light of all this, what is our duty?

Answer: We have to discover that we are the cogwheels connected into a single mechanism called the “Worldwide Bnei Baruch Movement,” and that we are about to link with the whole world. Imagine how powerful our engine must be in order to “spin” everybody in one direction, with one intention, one pulling force, and in order for us to be able to connect the whole world to this “spinning momentum,” the movement toward oneness.

The force must be such that additional load wouldn’t stop us, but rather would add more power to it. And this is what we are aiming to achieve.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/26/10, “Peace in the World”

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Question: What is my responsibility for the world? If during the day I haven’t succeeded in something, does it reflect on the world?

Answer: It certainly does. After all, you are a “cogwheel” in the common mechanism of creation. The Creator created the system where everyone is an egoist. This system is divided for you into 125 degrees or spiritual states: from complete separation from the others to an increasingly closer and tighter link of your cogwheel with the others, until all of you become one whole.

Besides, this is how it looks only to you; in reality, there aren’t multiple people but only Adam HaRishon. You are affected by the same laws that work on everybody else. Your will to receive (desire) is simply greater than that of the others. They are satisfied with “trifles,” while you wish to “consume” the spiritual world as well.

The point in the heart is not bestowal yet. On the contrary, the most “restless” desire of pleasures unfolds namely in spirituality. And only then, when this abyss opens up, a person is prepared for transformation.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/26/10, “Peace in the World”

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Question: It is written: “Do not trust yourself until the day you die.” Then what does Arvut (mutual guarantee) mean if I can’t trust myself or the friends?

Answer: Obviously, I cannot trust myself. But this doesn’t refer to the friends. The group is not an assembly of people that just came to the lesson. The group is their inner unity between the souls.

The Creator created desire (the will to receive pleasure, Kli) regarded as “the world of Infinity,” where the souls reside. These souls are mutually connected into one collective system, one soul, filled with the Light of Infinity.

But this system is blocked from you by the concealing screen, a filter, through which you see it somewhat corrupted or broken. Within, it is perfect and filled with the Light of Infinity, but presently you see it as distorted. Further on, behind the next filter, it seems even more corrupted to you.

In total, from the first state, the world of Infinity, to the last one, our corporeal world, there are 125 such degrees or filters, concealments from the state of Infinity. Therefore, you look at the group with your corporeal vision and think: “Who are they, anyway? I am not lower than them! Are they really unified? No, they aren’t. Do they really wish to unite? No, they don’t. Do they truly understand something? Give me Rabbi Shimon’s group; there, I will agree to be a baby in their arms! And these… Who are they to me?..”

But this is incorrect. Everything is determined by your attitude to the friends. If a person “penetrates” through them, wishing to connect, not with what these corporeal bodies, which are in concealment, represent and understand, but rather treats them as the group that resides in Infinity in complete union, then the job is done: He adheres to this perfect state.

So could Rabbi Yossi Ben Kisma not be without his beginner disciples. Do they desire spirituality in any small degree? That is enough for him to enter the spiritual state through them, where they are all one, as one man with one heart, although they themselves are not aware of it yet.

This is called the environment, the group. However, I myself reside in the place where I can imagine myself. Then, I visualize myself against the ideal, perfect environment from which I can receive anything. And only through it do I gain the strength.

Therefore, the group is not a physical assembly of men, but rather my inner spiritual property.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/24/10, “Perfection in Life”

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Question: If the souls manage to unite, the Creator is revealed in their mutual connection. Who creates this connection, we or the Light?

Answer: We never do anything. Everything is done solely by the Light. It broke desires (Kelim) and it reforms them. We must only express our willingness to raise MAN (Mayin Nukvin, female waters) and ask the Light to correct our connection and get revealed between us, fulfill us. It will do all that is needed.

We don’t need anything but the plea, like a baby who is constantly crying and demanding. This is our entire work. There is nothing easier: demand, beg, cry! Oblige Him!

This is what is called “my sons defeated Me.” We pressure Him, demand from Him, and that’s all He expects from us. This is how the entire upper system works: It expects only a plea from below since all that Bina (the Upper Mother) yearns is to “feed” the souls, fill them with the Light.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/24/10, “Perfection in Life”

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The Creator created something totally new “from absence” (Yesh Mi Ain), and it is regarded as “desire.” We don’t know what it is; it is simply a sensation of some kind of lack, need, but of what? Since the Creator created this desire, it is the need to feel Him.

Experiencing Him makes us feel pleasure which remains as a memory in that initially created desire, and desire starts yearning for it on its own. Thereby, it begins to understand itself and realize what it is yearning for and what is worth desiring. This triggers the development of desire from this first initial need created by the Creator.

Creation is a completely unique act that can be accomplished only by the Creator, by the force of the Upper Light. The entire process that follows becomes the evolution of the created being led by the interaction of its two participants: desire and the Light. Nothing new occurs in this process. Something new appeared only in the point of “existence from absence” (Yesh Mi Ain), which is regarded as the creature (Nivra), from the Hebrew word “Bar” (outside of the Creator).

Everything that we see here, in this world, and in the upper, spiritual worlds is the work of that very same desire to enjoy. On one hand, we know that the entire work is done by the Light. On the other, it is written that no changes occur in the Light; what does change is only the will to enjoy. In that case, who is working?

At this point, we have to draw a clear line between the following:

1. Changes may occur only within the will to enjoy (desire);
2. But only the Light can perform an act.

Therefore, this work is mutual: Desire always stands against the Light and must demand from Him certain actions. Until the Light affects it, desire will not change. However, until desire wishes to change, the Light will not affect it. Therefore, they work together, in tandem.

This bond between desire and the Light defines all changes and relations that may exist among created beings and between them and the Creator in the upper worlds and in this world.

We think that we are addressing each other, whereas each of us is a mere desire to feel pleasure, appealing to the Creator. Only He is hiding from us, making us experience various beings, attributes, the sources of pain and pleasure. But, essentially, beside man there is only the Creator.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/24/10, “The Freedom”

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