Rabash, “What is the Preparation for the Receiving of the Torah”: As for the Lord, it says “and the Lord descended upon Mt. Sinai, at the top of the mountain.” And as for the people, it says “and they gathered at the bottom of the mountain.” And we should understand what a “mountain” means. A “mountain” (Har) originates from the word “doubts” (Hirurim), which is a person’s mind.

If we accept this message in our mind, it means that the Creator is at the top of the mountain, meaning that He operates that way and we feel and agree that we have no choice and that we must receive the Torah. It’s because after we understand that the evil inclination prepares us for burial, we must receive the Torah, to be saved from death, from this doomed life.

So where is our free will if we are naturally forced to receive the Torah? The evil inclination itself, which is our desire to enjoy this life, leaves us to this choice. But is this called receiving?

So when we gather at the foot of the mountain and discover our evil inclination, and opposite to it we reveal the Torah, it’s a start. We clearly understand that we begin to live under these conditions. Now as the evil inclination is revealed in every step we make, we have to decide: Why has it been revealed, why do I need it, and how can it be corrected by using the evil inclination and the Torah that was given for its correction correctly? Can we ascend to the Creator’s level, to the top of the mountain?

This is the preparation for the receiving of the Torah, but it’s only the preparation and not its fulfillment yet. Here we still act out of necessity: There is such a revelation that doesn’t leave us much choice. We see that we have an evil inclination and a means to correct it, the Torah, and if we refuse to accept it, this will be our burial place. Otherwise we have no chance of being saved from this life, which is worse than death, and so of course, a person accepts the condition he is given.

Free will appears later with every step a person makes along the way, when we begin to fulfill the Torah during the forty years in the desert. All these years of wandering are already the real levels of the receiving of the Torah, by which we rise higher and higher, until we reach the top of the mountain.
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From the preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/14/13

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Question: What is a thought?

Answer: A thought is the point of connection between the created being and the Creator. It’s a special deficiency by which the created being can rise. On the one hand it’s a corporeal deficiency since a person is helpless, not knowing what to do with his life and how to manage in life. Everything begins from ordinary earthly, bodily troubles. But if a person manages to transcend these problems without leaving them but by seeing them as a means, then they provide the infrastructure from which he can rise to the Creator and thank Him for having awakened him.

If a person wants to know what the right intention is and the right attitude to everything that happens, it means that he demands a thought. He raises his corporeal point of deficiency to Bina by not asking about himself, but rather, by asking what this should lead him to in the connection to Godliness: How he can get to know the Creator by these deficiencies. Knowing the Creator is already called a thought.

Thus, this black point becomes Nukva for Hochma, which means that it’s incorporated in Bina that demands the understanding. This deficiency forces Abba ve Ima (Mother and Father) to copulate and to birth the future human being, to the next level.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/14/13, The Book of Zohar – Introduction

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Question: What inner action can I perform in order to help the friends and not just smile at them, but to actually bestow and give internally? I don’t want to just spend some time in the convention and then go home. I want to create and to perform this inner action, so how can I do that?

Answer: We are going to have workshops and you should try to listen to one another, and feel the circle that is formed by your ring. Everyone should lower his head before the others so that he can receive from them. At the same time, everyone can also add to the others, give to them. You should want a special force to appear in the circle, the force that will be shared by all the participants in the circle.

None of us has any feeling or mind of his own left since our own heart and mind belong to the animal, to the donkey, that is left outside the circle. In the circle, however, there are souls and not bodies. You don’t see physical people before you, but only their yearning to connect in order to reveal the Creator. This is for what this exercise is meant.

If we manage to connect correctly, we will begin to feel a certain closeness to something new that we haven’t felt as of yet. There will be a special feeling, a special force that is external to you, that pulls you out of your body. This is the experience we should attain.
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From the Convention in New Jersey 5/10/13, Lesson 1

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Question: Why do I have to make such great efforts not to fall asleep during the lesson although I exert a lot of efforts in the study and in dissemination?

Answer: I will tell you a secret: People who are attracted to spirituality, who want to reveal the Creator, don’t like to study…. It’s because they want to feel! They may even seem a bit stupid and sleepy. They can read the same passage ten times and not understand what it says. I have experienced it myself.

If you let someone on the outside read this passage, he will immediately “understand” what it says. This is very typical of the wisdom of Kabbalah since the point in the heart is awakened in a person when he reads, the point of feeling and not the mind. A stranger perceives the text in a totally logical way, and so he has no problem understanding what it says.

This is the reason that we sometimes see how new people come to the group and apprehend and master the material easily. It’s easy for them to understand what the text says, they immediately begin to study TES, and in a month or two already begin to discuss the most complex theory. People with the point in the heart, however, who have studied for ten years, cannot understand what it says since they are looking for a feeling and not for logic, like a clever donkey.

We should understand that there are two main obstacles for students. The first obstacle is when we discover problems in the group, in the relations between the friends, but we don’t understand that these problems are actually the springboard forward and we escape them.

The second obstacle is that a person reads the text over and over again and already knows it by heart, but feels that he doesn’t understand what it means. This is true not only with regards to the theory in “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah” or TES, but even with regards to Shamati and other articles. Certain articles may sometimes move a person, but most of them seem dry and do not touch the heart.

This is actually a good sign. It is said: “It isn’t the wise who learns.” It doesn’t mean that I am giving you permission to sleep during the lesson, but in fact I do understand it. I have never made complaints to students who sleep since I understand them. It isn’t just feeling tired, but a result of wanting to feel spirituality. If they don’t feel that, they don’t understand why they sit in the lesson.

It’s said about this: “Time does what the mind doesn’t do” since the mind cannot really help us here, but time can! This means that with time the Light influences us when we are in the group or even when we sleep during the lesson. You should just let the Light work on you, and the sensation will come.
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From the Convention in New Jersey 5/10/13, Lesson 1

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At this time, we are at a certain level of egoism, and its value, relatively speaking, is approximately one gram. Spiritual ascent makes the level of our egoism rise. At the next stage, it will be worth ten grams, then one hundred grams, then it will expand to ten tons, ten million tons, and so on.

Thus, our receiving desires constantly grow, each time making a new spiritual vessel. This is the place where the Creator reveals Himself to us, when our desires are directed to bestowal and the well-being of others. We constantly use our desire, rising above it, while it charges upwards again and again. This is why it’s said: “No matter how much a person rises above others, his evil inclination will still rise above him.”

This begets the stages of spiritual growth during which the vessel, desire, increases within me, and in parallel to it I receive the Light, the property of bestowal.

As a result, by climbing the spiritual ladder, we create more challenging situations, up to hatred, felt by Rabbi Shimon’s disciples in the beginning of their studies. It’s impossible to grow without going through this stage. This explains why we have to be happy when we reveal the “wicked” within ourselves— after all, we can now correct them.

Question: While it happens to us, who acquires new vessels: the entire group or an individual?

Answer: Only those who experience internal leaps of egoism are able to acquire new vessels. We apply a group effort that each one of us benefits from to the extent of one’s individual contribution. Subsequently, if one’s participation in general work is not enough, he receives the least out of it since he doesn’t have a “place” to accommodate anything bigger.

Everything happens proportionately to the affliction we go through; there are no compromises. Our efforts are equal to our ability to absorb new portions of the Light. We can never “digest” more than we have contributed, never more than we give, since our bestowal, our straining, our desire, allows us to feel the results.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/23/13, Writings of Rabash

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Question: You said that it’s necessary to try to see the Creator behind everything, including my thoughts and emotions. But when something bad happens, it’s very difficult to hold onto Him, not to speak about getting out of such states. Why does the Creator put us into conditions above which we are unable to rise? Intellectually, I understand the need to surmount this, but it’s impossible.

Answer: There are no states above which we are unable to rise. Every state accurately matches our present level, which makes it possible for us to overcome it. If we make the effort and fail, this says that we have not sufficiently prepared a base.

Suppose you have to take a test, and you want very much to succeed in this test. But you haven’t prepared enough, and therefore, no matter how much you “sweat,” no matter how much you try to answer the questions, this doesn’t help. So, what’s the point of complaining that you invested all your energy and failed?

So, humanity and each individual evolve according to a program, and if we prepare ourselves and our environment correctly, it cannot be that we will not succeed in overcoming all the states that we encounter on the way. For these states do arrive in stages according to a precise program, and we receive everything necessary to be ready for them.
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From the Convention in New Jersey 5/10/13, Lesson 1

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Baal HaSulam, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)” Item 17: The giving of the Torah had to be delayed until they came out of Egypt and became a nation of their own, so that all their needs were provided for by themselves, without dependence on others. This qualified them to receive the above Arvut, and then they were given the Torah.

The condition for the giving of the Torah, the method of correction, is readiness for mutual guarantee.

In general, the Torah is the Light that Reforms, which helps a person to the degree that he is ready to be a guarantor. In other words, the Torah works for a person if he is ready to unite with another, up to the point of loving the other.

If the person is not ready for this, the Torah doesn’t work for him, the Light is not shed. After all, the Light only comes as a reaction to a person’s effort to do something for another.

This principle resembles an electrical system with resistance (R). Depending on the amount of resistance between me and another, the Light that Reforms, the Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif –OM), will come.

There is no other possibility. Hatred can burn between us. Our relationship can be negative (-), neutral (0), or positive (+), it makes no difference. The main thing is that these relationships will be such that work will be done, that the friends will exert efforts.

To do this, we need to study so as to learn what we have to attain. We also need the group that establishes the order of activities.

So, the Light that Reforms also called the Torah influences us. And it acts upon us on the background of inner clarification discerned through the evil inclination, which is what provides the resistance.

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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/1/13, “The Mutual Guarantee”

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Baal HaSulam, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)” Item 17: When the sons of Israel came out of Egypt and became a nation of their own all their needs were provided for by themselves, without dependence on others. This qualified them to receive the above Arvut, and then they were given the Torah.

By uniting among ourselves and building a mechanism of general interconnection out of many people, we create a perfect, whole system. We don’t need anyone in this mutual connection: Everything happens internally, among us.

So, these particular conditions were created in those times, and the external environment didn’t influence the sons of Israel. Thus, they became a nation that exists in a state of interconnection and attributes itself to the upper force.

In that case, the nations of the world cannot hurt the nation of Israel in any way. It is because it is on a different level, lives in a different range of frequencies, and simply doesn’t intersect with or touch others.

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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/1/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Mutual Guarantee”

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Question: What does a person feel when he is receiving the Torah?

Answer: He feels that his attitude toward others is changing. He begins to understand that precisely in relationships with others, there, in the middle between them, is a place for the new world, new states, new development above at a higher level.

By establishing a mutual connection, we form between ourselves the third factor: the upper one. This is the soul; this is the Creator whom we reveal. This is the upper world, which lies not just anywhere but precisely between us in the form of the middle line.

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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/1/13, “The Mutual Guarantee”

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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot” Item 19: The angel of death comes with a drawn sword with a drop of poison at its tip; the person opens his mouth, he throws the drop inside, and he dies.

The angel of death is our ego that cuts us off and distances us from spirituality all the time. And obviously, it does so according to that method, according to that general plan by which we must advance. It has to grow in order to justify its name, the angel of death.

We see that, in our day, a global crisis has been revealed. Humanity is gradually coming to understand that the problem is not in bad economy or finances, not in the broken family, but rather in human nature itself. This means that we will not escape the crisis through a simple change of the external system. Ultimately, we reach an understanding that the angel of death lives within us and is killing us. We must kill him ourselves before he kills us. Time after time, he intentionally cuts us off from the good life more and more so that we will feel that we have to kill him.

The sword of the angel of death is the influence of the Sitra Achra, called “Herev” because of the separation that grows according to the measure of reception, and the separation destroys him.

A person is not prepared to refrain from using his ego. We see people continue to behave egoistically even though they know that they are harming themselves. However, they are compelled to use their desire to receive, and finally: One is compelled to open one’s mouth, since one must receive the abundance for sustenance and persistence from her hands.

So, we are killing ourselves from generation to generation, returning to this world again and again with an even greater desire for pleasure and again, swallowing that deadly drop”: In the end, the bitter drop at the tip of the sword reaches him, and this completes the separation to the last spark of his breath of life.

People must finally understand that using the desire to receive kills them. No matter how much we burn with new hope of exploiting it, looking for different forms, and trying to overcome it, in spite of all this, we understand that our nature is compelling us to kill ourselves.

The angel of death kills itself by showing us what is causing us to die. It arouses us to fight against it. This is reminiscent of the story of the Egyptian exile. At first, it seemed that Pharaoh was good! With seven years of plenty, absolute abundance, it seemed that we had succeeded in controlling the angel of death and that was on our side.

However, in the end, we began to feel the seven years of famine. This was no longer the same Pharaoh. The angel that led us through life suddenly became cruel. We used to think that all of life is in front of us: With all the opportunities of the “American dream,” we would continue to progress and get more and more from life. It seemed to us that the entire world opened before us for our benefit.

Suddenly, we discovered that we are locked within this world. Every day becomes darker and darker, cramped and horrible, threatening to kill us and, at the end of the matter, we realize that the problem is not in the world. Rather, it is in us, in the egoistic nature that is found within us and inspires us to life, in our angel, meaning our internal power.

So, it essentially is fulfilling its role, like Pharaoh who brought the children of Israel closer to the Creator. This is that angel that, through opposition, carries out its faithful work. An angel is a force of nature that has no choice, a part of the overall program that operates until we finally feel that we have no choice and must flee from it.
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From the Men’s Convention “The Next Step” 4/26/13, Lesson 1

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