A question I received: How do we recognize the "Moses" inside us?

My answer: The "Moses" inside a person is the closest point to the Creator or the point of contact with the Creator. If a person advances in a correct manner, he takes care of and protects this point as if it were his most precious jewel. After all, it connects him to the Creator.

"Moses" is the quality that is closest to the spiritual world. All the other points strive to the spiritual world only at some times, under certain conditions, on different levels of Aviut (thickness of desire), and due to various reasons, whereas the "Moses" in a person is truly devoted to the goal.

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The Zohar, Chapter "VaYetze (And Jacob Went Out)," Item 60: … Indeed, so it is in the Merkava—Abraham and Isaac are right and left, and Jacob is in the middle. It is written, “The land,” Nukva, “On which you lie.” Thus, together, they are all one holy Merkava, the three lines with the Nukva. And here Jacob saw that he would be the senior among the patriarchs.

The Zohar tells us so much about the lines and especially about the ones that are opposite one another (about Abraham and Isaac) since we simply don’t sense yet how hard it is for a person to work with intention and action that are opposite one another. After all, in our world, everything works in one direction. If I give to someone with the intention to do something good for myself, it doesn’t mean that I give and that I work in two directions. It is work in a single direction which is for myself.

When we begin to work outside of the desire to receive pleasure, then every element includes two opposites which are in intention or in action. Hence, it’s not a coincidence that The Zohar always encounters such calculations. It seemingly says over and over where Abraham is, where Isaac is, and where Jacob is, or in other words, where the right line and the left line are.

This is because the work in three lines is very difficult on each level. It is the connection of the desire to receive pleasure that doesn’t have anything to do with spirituality, or with the intention to bestow so that this exact desire would become active, determining, building the foundation, and performing a spiritual act.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/14/10, The Zohar

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A question I received: Why is it so difficult to carry out the condition of “buy yourself a friend”? Shouldn’t our egoism derive pleasure from this?

My Answer: You “buy” friends by lowering yourself before them and doing what they want. This is called “paying.” Rather than proudly walking into a store with a pile of money and choosing who to buy, you buy a friend by doing what is necessary for him; you serve him. You don’t buy him “from above”; you buy him “from below.” You are willing to do everything for him as though he does not need you.

In other words, you bend down before him and ask, “What can I do for you so that you will become my friend? I am ready for anything, just give my spiritual desire, my soul back to me!”

You cannot forcefully demand that he return your soul to you since it is in his possession. If now you want to receive your soul, you need to approach him from different sides, trying to find the approach which will make him free your soul. Your success depends only on his positive attitude towards you. If he does not wish to treat you well, then you are lost.

Did you ever take care of someone, trying to gain their positive disposition to you?  Imagine that you are standing before a judge who needs to announce your sentence now. He is disposed strictly against you and is just seething with anger. How would you try to change his anger to mercy?

“A person and a group” is a whole Kabbalistic drama.

From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/14/10, Article, “Make Yourself a Rav and Buy Yourself a Friend – 2”

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People always aspire to reason and don’t understand that attainment comes only from above reason, that is, in the spiritual vessel of faith above reason. Only there will true knowledge be revealed. As we now study RABASH’s articles about the group and try to build our Internet community in accordance to the principles they describe, we want people to occupy themselves with it as much as possible. How much they understand these articles is not so important. What counts is that people work on them throughout the day as well.

One may get confused, not understand anything, curse all this, and want it all at the same time. It is most important for one to constantly occupy oneself with it. Thereby we will draw the Light that Reforms which will change our desires, and then we will understand.

However, understanding is not the goal in itself. The goal is to carry out correct actions which will bring us closer to bestowal. We don’t study in order to receive knowledge; we study in order to change. Otherwise it would be too easy, just as our egoism desires: to grab the Upper, spiritual world for itself also.

The whole Torah (Kabbalah) is given to us for a single purpose: to correct our egoistic nature. That is, the Torah works in the opposite direction, meaning against our ego. You do not climb into spirituality by yourself; rather, the spiritual Force of correction enters you. And you should desire and anticipate this force of correction. It is called your Mashiach (Messiah).

Of course we need to work on these articles about the group: make a plan, write a brief summary, take certain definitions, laws, and principles from them and use them to build our statute. Yet what matters most is being engaged in it all the time. The results will come as a consequence of this work and not from understanding. Everything will depend on how much we wish for this to happen. This is called the prayer (MAN).

Therefore, working with the articles is essential. However, it should not be work to acquire knowledge, but rather work to realize them.

From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/14/10, Article, “Make Yourself a Rav and Buy Yourself a Friend – 2”

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A question I received: Why is it written in the Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot, Item 55, that a person who attained “open Providence [that is, revealed the Creator] is certain that he will not sin again”?

My Answer: A person is certain that he won’t sin because he has corrected, with the help of the screen and the Reflected Light, all his desires to receive. He rose above them and now can proceed further. He needs “the Creator to testify” for his correction in order to continue working with his desires to receive and start using them for receiving in order to bestow.

I need an additional general force which is called the testimony of the Creator. Now I have to open my Pandora’s box that contains all my desires and begin to clarify in which of them I can receive pleasure and thereby delight the Creator. This is a totally new tendency, which has never existed before. I have never done it, and now I have to taste pleasures in order to delight the Creator much like a guest who partakes in the feast to satisfy the host.

In order not to err, I have to collect the unique, new forces provided by the Creator’s testimony. Otherwise, I shouldn’t even touch and start disclosing my new receiving desires. I need an additional assisting force. And “When He who knows all mysteries will testy that I will not turn back to folly,” I will be able to begin correcting my transgressions.

In this stage, transgressions have already turned into mistakes, and I should feel better, as it were. I have already corrected half of the receiving desire, and it is fully filled with the Light of Hassadim. Now I have to begin working with it in the three lines and introduce a little bit of the Light of Hochma into it.

This means that my transgressions have become mistakes. I am going to receive in order to bestow, but I already possess the intention “in order to bestow.” I only need to very carefully add reception to it.

When we attain such a high spiritual level, we will realize what this work is all about.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/13/10, Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot

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A question I received: How can a person transgress at the very first stage of double concealment (as mentioned in Item 58, Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot)? At this point, he doesn’t really see spirituality; in order to transgress one has to be able to see what he is doing.

My Answer: Kabbalah says that you are a criminal from the start; you were born that way. We are all criminals! But we don’t need to be caught because we are already imprisoned by being in this world. All we can do is realize that we are jailed criminals and that such a state is given to us from the beginning. If someone wishes to leave the jail, he can go ahead, the door is open! However, in order to do so, one has to change himself.

Our transgressions and mistakes reveal to us how opposite we are to the Creator. If we don’t see them as such, there aren’t any transgressions or mistakes. This is the stage called the “Providence of reward and punishment.” Reward is the opportunity to act in bestowal. Punishment is the lack thereof.

Transgressions are the effect of double concealment; mistakes are the effect of single concealment. One concealment is over “There is none else but Him,” and the second one is over “He is good and does good.” If we err in both, it is called a transgression. If we err in one of them, it is a mistake.

Therefore, it is easier to correct the mistakes. In correcting a mistake, we correct half of a transgression, and it becomes easier to correct it in full because a transgression has now become a mistake. Essentially, we are always correcting mistakes since even transgressions first turn into mistakes and get truly corrected only when we begin to receive in order to bestow. This is what is called repentance from love rather than fear.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/13/10, Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot

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A question I received: How can I be sure that my Kabbalah teacher is a real Kabbalist if I have to go by “faith above reason?"

My Answer: How can you possibly check what level your teacher is and whether he is a Kabbalist or not? Who are you to examine this? What tools do you have and what tests can you perform?

Maybe you would test how well he knows theory and the Talmud Eser Sefirot? But everybody remembers Baal HaSulam’s story about the “kabbalists” whom he met in Jerusalem. They knew all the ARI’s books and the entire Book of Zohar by heart. If they heard the beginning of a sentence they could continue it to the end of a chapter.

Yet does it prove that they were Kabbalists and had attained spirituality? They were just a computer with good memory. Beside theoretical knowledge and the ability to present it skillfully, there seems to be no other criteria to be certain. How can you test this if you don’t have the appropriate tools?

Spirituality exists in the properties that you don’t possess yet and this makes you incapable of determining whether other people do have those spiritual properties or not. Besides, any Kabbalist can conceal himself as well. Even to another Kabbalist, another can “camouflage” himself to the extent that the other won’t recognize or sense anything.

That is why the only way to check someone is with one’s own heart. You should open your heart to yourself, never deceive yourself, and then see whether you are ready to follow this person without regret or self-coercion, and without fighting your doubts.

There might be some things that you don’t agree with, but you proceed anyway in order to give them a chance. You might not like his way of teaching or his behavior, but you are ready to check the principles he uses and why.

You are the one who has to investigate; no one else can do it instead of you. Who else can you trust? There is no difference between believing your teacher and trusting a person who tells you things about him. Whose word can you rely on? “To rely on someone” means to use “faith above reason" and trust that your teacher is in spirituality and knows what he is talking about.

That’s why only your heart can give you a hint. As it is said, “One should always learn where one’s heart desires.” It’s necessary to figure out exactly what your heart wants and then avoid other people’s opinions so that you can rely on your choice.

From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/13/10, Article,  “Make Yourself a Rav and Buy Yourself a Friend – 2”

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If I rise above my egoism and come out into the desires of other people, I receive an endless spiritual vessel where I can sense the entire Light of Infinity. This works very simply. It’s like a big pipe and the Light flows in it. There is a valve on top of this pipe with which I can significantly change the flow of the Light by opening it fully. This is how it works in our world where even a little child can turn the faucet and change the flow of the water. In relation to spirituality, I can do the same.

I have only a small desire for spirituality. It’s a single point in the heart. However, if I turn to the desires of other people and include myself into the common body of the soul as one of its cells, then I bestow to this common body, and in response, it begins to take care of me. Then I receive all of its endless capabilities.

Hence, this is not a coincidence that Kabbalah instructs us to come out of our desires and enter the desires of others. By doing so, we receive “613” times greater capabilities, spiritual vessels, and desires, compared to what we had before. Previously we only had a point in the heart, but now each of us receives the entire body for our use.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/10/10, Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot

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All our work in terms of free will is conducted in the concealment of the Upper Governance. This period is described in the Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot, Item 53: …"The reward is according to the pain.” Since His Guidance is not revealed, it is impossible to see Him but only in concealment of the face, from behind…and might doubt…In this manner, one is always left with a choice to either keep His will or break it. This is because troubles and the pains he suffers make him doubt the reality of His Guidance over His creations….

Imagine that you see through the prism of your egoistic desire a person standing in front of you. There are the Creator and me, and in between us stands my egoistic nature. It is as if a kind, good person is approaching me, as if he is a doctor holding a syringe in his hand to give me an injection, and I am a little child. I am looking at his kind smile and the syringe that he is hiding in his hand, and I freeze in horror. Yet, he is coming closer and closer, it seems, to hurt me.

Get the picture? That’s the state we are in. We need to get acquainted with Him, understand Him, and sense His intentions, even if He may want to give us an injection. We have no other choice if we are ill and need to be healed (corrected).

Why did He arrange everything in this way? He did so precisely in order for us to know Him; otherwise, it would be impossible. The benefit of the Light can be known only from the darkness.

Then, you understand that all these imaginary terrible pictures – the injection, this entire world with its suffering and evil – are merely the pictures drawn in your egoistic substance. Reaching the degree of faith means rising above this substance and not feeling it any longer. You will realize that all of that was a childish fantasy which in reality never existed. The Light, the kind attitude of the Creator, seemed to your egoism as a painful injection. Like children who are scared of syringes, so were we afraid of Him.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/10/10, Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot

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A question I received: What is “faith” before crossing the Machsom (barrier to the spiritual world)?

My Answer: Before a person crosses the Machsom and enters spirituality, he has no faith. The concept of faith in Kabbalah is totally different from what is customarily referred to in ordinary life. In Kabbalah, all of these concepts are defined at a completely different level.

Faith is sensing the Creator. If I sense the Creator, I believe in Him. Note how different it is from what I thought before. In our regular lives faith is something that we don’t see or know, but believe in as though it actually exists in reality.

Kabbalah says that this is not faith, but merely a fantasy. Kabbalah relies exclusively on realistic, true inner sensations: To the extent I feel the Creator, I receive the strength to work against my ego. One force against the other; positive against negative. This is what we call “faith above reason,” that is, faith above egoism and the sensations within it. I rise above all this because I am able to use the Upper reason and sensations. Yet if I don’t have them, how can I work? Based on stories told by someone else?

This is not what we call faith. It’s a game people play in this world because they don’t know of a better way to reassure themselves. To attain faith, we have to reach revelation. The wisdom of Kabbalah is the revelation of the Creator to the creatures, and this is called “faith.”
[15514]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/11/10, Shamati #50

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