Question: What does it mean to “appreciate the state of spiritual ascent?”

Answer: Ascent is a state where I can justify anything that is happening to me, to justify the friends and the group by seeing them as angels helping me to realize my free will and to reach the goal. From the elements of this condition, I can assemble myself and my relationship with the Creator who is revealed within such a state.

The group, home, work, studies, health, and so forth comprise the components of my state. I have to determine that all of them are secondary in relation to the group. I have to “collect” everything but the group and enter the group with it even though the group is just one element among the many others. In the group, I also have to discern the multiple components until I select only the one: the desire to attain the Creator.

I go deeper and deeper in this work and these discernments, into the center. I am as if coming to the King’s palace from afar until I finally reach it. I narrow down and contract my focus verifying the route until I come to the goal.

At first, I feel there is a whole world around me. Soon, I see that there is only the group and the various situations within it. It remains so until I come to the realization of a very simple scheme: Everything around me is merely angels, forces aiming me at the Creator and helping me to reach Him.

What is this group? Is it a local group closest to me or the world group? The group is all souls. We begin with the entire world and gradually contract the circle.

The group for me starts with the physical bodies, the people I know around the world to whom I feel are connected to me through the common goal. These are the people who understand and sense me despite the fact that I don’t know them in person. However, in the spiritual world, we reside in one collective system. In this world, we may not have ever met, but in the spiritual one, we are together.

It is, undoubtedly, an opportunity for salvation because we are connected, support, and depend on one another. It’s not only the people of my generation who exist today in a similar state in relation to the Creator, but all the Kabbalists of the past beginning with Adam who was the first to discover the Creator 5770 years ago and to realize free will.

From that moment, the created being, a point of desire, began its journey of attaining similarity with the Creator. Since then and until today, all Kabbalists connected by this goal belong in one system regardless of their rung on the spiritual ladder. In regard to those who are not yet working in this system, they also belong in it, but we have to awaken them.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/6/10, “And Jacob Went Out”

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The general and the particular connect and plug into each other. Hence, those who are coming to us today, by uniting with us,  are able to use our experience of inner work and receive our understanding.

We witness how easily the new generation learns to use all modern devices, cell phones, and computers, which we had discovered and developed with such hard effort. But the young come to the plate ready to easily gobble it all up without paying any attention to us.

It is the same in spirituality: Those who come study Kabbalah will be able to achieve even greater success than we did since they “stand on our shoulders”! The first obstacle on the path is disappointment in one’s own capacity and ability to feel joy in descent. This discernment is possible solely with the assistance of the Upper Light, and not in dealing one on one with it, but rather in working through the group.

That is where the breaking between us unfolds, which I need to correct. I have to become a bestowing one in regard to this breaking, but I am incapable of it. Then, the Light comes and gives me an opportunity to connect with the others, and within them to find the Creator so I may bestow to Him.

This predicament has to unfold before me in all its depth, and I have to expect salvation from this innermost point. Such is the picture we should visualize, and then we will certainly find ourselves standing before the spiritual ladder leading upward.

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/6/10, Shamati #42

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The Zohar, Chapter “VaYechi (And Jacob Lived),” Item 210: Come and see how important are the works of the Holy King. In the deeds that are done below, they tie them with the high things above, in their root, since anything below in this world has its root above in the upper worlds. And when they are taken down and worked with, the act above awakens corresponding to them, in the roots in the upper worlds.

“Above” and “below” refer to Bina and Malchut. If we think that “Above” refers to some abstract place in spirituality while “below” alludes to a place in our world, that is incorrect. After all, the science of Kabbalah does not speak of our world whatsoever. It does not concern itself with man in our world or actions which we perform here. The science of Kabbalah alludes only to actions in the desire which we can perform in similarity to the Upper Force, in bestowal.

Therefore, “the work of the Creator” means to learn from Him how He performs actions and to perform the same actions in our desire. Herein lies our work. We study this and ask the Creator for the ability, the strength, and a model of how to do it (from NHY [Netzah, Hod, Yesod], AHP [Awzen, Hotem, Peh] of the Upper One in the lower one).

Our entire work is the connection between Malchut and Bina where Malchut wants to learn the qualities of bestowal from Bina and, in response, receive the strength and realize it so as to become similar to Bina. That is why Malchut is called the lower world and Bina is the Upper World. All the actions to correct Malchut (the creature or the souls) are made only in the World of Atzilut. The souls which wish to unite rise precisely into Malchut of the World of Atzilut.

Therefore, wherever The Zohar speaks of the lower and Upper worlds pertains to what takes place between Malchut and Bina of the World of Atzilut,

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Question: Why did Kabbalists intentionally confuse us by using “earthly” words in their books as if they were talking about our material world?

Answer: It is because only out of confusion do we realize the truth. Without confusion, you will never get to understand it. Kabbalists wrote so many books because we need to arrive at revelation from its oppositeness: from the desire to receive pleasure to the desire to bestow.

There is a huge gap between them. We think that it’s enough to modify “plus” into “minus,” but, in fact, it is not that easy. All our thoughts and desires are interconnected, and we have to go through this entire perplexity. Any “confusion” represents a question that we have to resolve. And to come up with a question means already being half way to revelation or even more.

Therefore, every state that we go through in darkness being weak and helpless is an absolute necessity for us. I have no idea how to reach the truth without going through mistakes and deceitful perceptions that are repulsive to my senses and unclear to my mind. However, I grow because of them. This is the only way that we can combine “plus and minus,” or the Creator’s desire to bestow with the creature’s desire to receive: to go through a system of exile, concealment, and complete bewilderment.

When I look back, I see that each moment of my path is irrevocable. If I get rid of even one instant, nothing will look clear to me any more, and there will be no perfection at the end. We won’t be able to recognize or reveal it.

That is why everything that happens to us is indispensable. It was impossible to write The Zohar any other way. A person cannot progress without making mistakes. We have to become conscious of something that is opposite to the truth.

How do we teach our children? We confuse them and allow them to make mistakes so that they learn from them and won’t make them in real life. This is the difference between advancement through affliction and through the science of Kabbalah.

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It is essential to understand that everything we read in The Zohar takes place within our connection. Our connection produces (gives birth to) “space,” a new dimension where the Creator will be revealed. In fact, this space in itself doesn’t exist. But if every one of us, with his point in the heart, yearns for connection with the others, our collective efforts construct this space, the network between us, for the revelation of the property of bestowal: the Creator.

This space can be regarded as the group. People constantly ask: “Where is spirituality: upward, downward, or somewhere on the side?” It is said in a prayer: “Where is the place of His Greatness?” It is no-where; it doesn’t have a place. You have to build this place from your relationship with the others. Together, you are constructing spiritual space and in it, you find the Creator.

Moreover, the Creator Himself is regarded as “the place” because we feel Him in the “place” that we create for Him. The Creator exists beyond any space. You yourselves have to build it: one collective and corrected desire similar to the Creator in the property of bestowal where the Creator will be revealed.

He can be revealed only in this way, in the equivalence of form, meaning in the place suitable for Him which is the very same property of bestowal. None else is possible. This place is the Temple, the House of the Creator, the desire of Malchut that has acquired the properties of Bina. This is why it is named Beit HaMikdash, the Sanctified House. Malchut is the house and sanctity is Bina’s property of bestowal.

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/8/10, The Zohar

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Klipat Noga is a state of “half good/half evil,” and it’s a very fragile and stressful state. It is as though a person is standing on the edge between performing a grave crime or, on the contrary, a very good deed should he receive help. However, he swings back and forth unable to lean one way or the other. It’s as though he is split in two without the strength to perform a final choice, not knowing on which side of the scale to place a final, determining grain.

On one hand, he is unable to reject his ego which is the enormous desire to enjoy and his entire egoistic “possession.” On the other, he understands that if he does not free himself from it now with help from Above, he won’t be able to pass to the other side and enter the spiritual world. In this manner, he stands on the threshold not knowing on which side to step. He is like a knight at a crossroads. This is a state where one needs to make a choice.

Here, only the group, only the Upper Light can help a person finally make up his mind and pass himself over to the hands of the Upper One, transitioning to bestowal through faith above reason. The prayer here is not about help since this would mean that a person has already made a decision. The prayer is about the state in which he is unable to choose. This state is the beginning of the year or the beginning of a new change.

On one hand, we feel that we are wicked, and on the other, we lack the strength to reject all these egoistic qualities and states. We are unable to imagine how it is possible to live without them or how to make a step in order to rise above it. Only the Upper Light that comes to us during this state helps us make a choice and elevates us to faith above reason (bestowal over reception). It is then that the New Year begins for us, and this is called “a good record in the Book of Life.”

The Upper Light, the Creator, puts His signature in the book of life for us and guarantees to a person that from now on that person will proceed by the good path. Before this, one should do all that is in his power to bring himself to this choice. The direct translation of a “New Year (Rosh Hashanah)” is a “beginning of changes” or a “head of changes.” They need to occur often for us and always be for the better: toward the Creator who is “good and does good.”

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/8/10, “Letter 67”

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Question: How do we constantly remain on the “spiritual trajectory,” meaning at the point of making a decision that the spiritual space and unity come before material achievements?

Answer: As soon as we succeed in creating this kind of connection between us, “a place for revealing the Creator,” it immediately fades. This is done so that we are able to make this decision again and again. Every moment should be the “Beginning.” And what helps a person to make this constant choice is only a strong environment which allows him to maintain a connection (see Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”).

It is impossible to maintain this decision on your own for longer than a moment. We need to bring ourselves to a correct society, like putting a seed into soil, and receive the realization of the importance of the goal from it. Then you will be able to unite the points of decisions, forming them into a straight line to the goal.

From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/9/10, “Rosh Hashanah”

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All our corporeal properties are related to the animate level of existence, but we have to build a human within ourselves, which means to become “similar to the Creator” (Adam) and exist in bestowal. Bestowal, however, can be realized only in the group, in love of friends, in order to attain the Creator. Through our relationships, we create a desire similar to the Creator: the place where the Creator is revealed.

Hence, all the personal qualities and capacities that are embodied by our corporeal form don’t have any relation to spirituality. In regard to spirituality, I work solely with the point in the heart and should disregard the rest of my “earthly” properties. I cannot succeed in my quest for the Creator through them for they are secondary, and I strive to work “above them,” always preferring bestowal to reception, “faith above reason.”

The essence is the point in the heart. I must connect it with the others, with the friends. So, now I have to make the correct decision and determine that I want to reach success not in the material world, but in the unity of the points in the heart. It is the place where the Creator will be revealed as soon as it becomes similar to the Creator in the very least.

I have to constantly ponder this question. Only this determines how successful my spiritual advancement is.

Hence, this point is regarded as the Beginning of Change (Rosh Hashanah). It is the decision which should always signify a new beginning.

As a matter of fact, the line of trajectory we are moving by consists of multiple points. A spiritual path is a sequence of dots, and each of them has a “nip,” a “gap” in motion between the previous and the following points. Thus they create a single spiritual trajectory line.

In order to continue moving along with the others, in the same direction, in each point of the trajectory, I have to be totally opposite to the previous and the future states of existence. Only then can we adhere to this line of trajectory.

Therefore, in each point, at each moment of my life, I must make up my mind for the Beginning of Change within me.

From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/9/10, “Rosh Hashanah”

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The Zohar, Chapter “VeYechi (And Jacob Lived),” Item 244: For the next world, it is written, “For as the days of a tree shall be the days of My people.” “As the days of the tree” means the tree of life.” At the same time, it is written, “Death shall be swallowed up forever,” for there are no changes and no death in the tree of life.

This passage talks about the situation when a person is at the threshold of making a decision, a choice between good and evil, in Klipat Noga. All this system derives from the following: On one hand, the Creator forbids Adam to eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, but on the other, He sends Adam a “woman” who tempts him to sin by tasting the forbidden fruit.

The two opposites co-exist. As for us, we shouldn’t get confused and feel the split in our perception. Rather, we have to realize that the very disagreements present in each state where the Creator is shown as two-faced and having two different attitudes to us are designated to place us in a predicament where we won’t be able to discern what to do and will be forced to need Him.

This is what is called Klipat Noga, the point of our freedom. This freedom appears at this specific point, where two attitudes of the Creator, good and bad (as it were), come together and make it impossible to tell them apart and remove their conflict, other than by appealing to Him for help.

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/8/10, The Zohar

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The Upper One exposes to us its lower part, Malchut, as a black void, promising nothing good. The “Upper World” (the spiritual world) is presented to us so unattractive on purpose. Meanwhile, in “this world” that we feel in the Keter of the lower one, we find at least some pleasure.

I exist in such state that even this world doesn’t attract me, and the state of the Upper One seems to be even worse. Actually, I am not even filled in my egoistic, receiving desires, but the Upper One loads some more on me by suggesting: “You wanted to be in bestowal!” I don’t have anything, and yet the Upper One is telling me: “Come on, share what you have with the others!”

Hence, I can accept what the Upper One suggests solely without thinking, without any conditions, and not through my own efforts. I can do it only by the force of the Light, without making any plans and having hopes to fill my egoism and receive some benefit in “this world.”

Most important for a person is to reach the state of bestowal. And then, he will have everything, but only after he rejects it! He will receive fulfillment (satisfaction), yet not through reception, but through bestowal.

This is how we should view the month of Elul before the beginning of the New Year, the start of one’s spiritual journey. ELUL, as an acronym, means “I am for my Beloved, and my Beloved is for me.” The Upper One hands down these hopeless conditions to me so that with their help I may break free from my egoistic state. In fact, if He promised me something good, I would never be able to tear away from my egoism, as I am chained to it by pleasure.

It is written: “The Creator places man’s hand on a good fate” by submerging his life into darkness and void but, on the other hand, reveals to man a tiny beam of Light to show the way out of the dark. This beam of Light is not an egoistic, material gain. The Creator provides me with the help on my spiritual path: He brings me to a Kabbalistic group, where I can exercise my free will and choose the correct environment.

The Light “illuminates” a bit, meaning that it gives me a sensation that bestowal in particular is the Light. It makes me feel that the Light is ascent above my egoism when it doesn’t matter whether it’s filled or empty since what counts is Whom I’m connected with.

The Creator lets me know the following: You suffer in the corporeal state, so don’t seek material fulfillment. Rather, being in this state, look upward: Think about what other life may exist, in other values, in bestowal, in another dimension (of happiness).

This means that a beam of Light is shining onto me through the cracks in the wall that separates me from the Upper World, the world of peace (rest from my egoism and worry about filling it) and perfection (aspiration to bestowal and love).

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/6/10, Shamati #42

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