Question: Who are a person’s enemies if his whole world is inside him?

Answer: All your desires and thoughts are your enemies.

Usually people around you, who don’t really worry or concern you, don’t mean much to you. But it’s the people who seem to be your enemies or those whom you hate, they are the greatest help for your advancement. We should only understand how to use this kind of help.

If they are your friends in the group, you have to turn them from your enemies to your beloved friends. It makes no difference whether someone hates you or whether you hate him. Usually you are the one responsible for bad relations, but you have to change things from hate to love.

It’s not simple at all. Start calculating things in this opposite direction internally and you will see what intense work it involves.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/11/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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A person comes to the very gate leading to the spiritual world and at the last moment retreats. It is because this gate opens only if you accept the conditions of the upper. As long as you only approach it, you can stand them to some extent, but you cannot totally cut yourself off from the past and agree to take a step into the future. It is because this gate is the border between the past and the future, and so you go back.

Question: What do we lack at that moment?

Answer: There is a lack of mutual support, the force of the support of the environment. We can only evoke the Creator and force Him to act by mutual support. You cannot go through the gate without the help of the environment, without being pushed from behind and without others asking for you.

Going through the gate to the spiritual world means to connect with other vessels in order to discover together among us the reality that exists beyond that gate. We open this door between us, so it is impossible to manage without the support of others!

This support depends on the extent to which I can evoke the friends. They exist and support me only to the extent that I evoke them since they are the parts of my own soul. It only seems that they have freewill and that someone acts against me. All this is given to me so that I will correct myself and attain their support for that. In order to do that I have to subdue my ego—these are the rules of this game.

It is a theater where together with me there are also different actors on the stage: some seem like my friends and others as enemies, some love me and some hate me. With their help and by different means, I have to bring my ego to correction.

But in fact they don’t exist; they come out only so that I will perform my actions with regard to them. At one time I treat them as my friends and once as my enemies. This means that I perceive them “within reason.” Another time I work “above reason” and accept this as the Creator’s game. The whole Torah stems from the combination of these two perspectives.
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From the 1^st Part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/14/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: If the most important thing is to despair of my own powers along the spiritual path, then why do we need to cope with all kinds of corporeal problems, too?

Answer: The Creator doesn’t make life difficult for you and doesn’t place any obstacles along your path. It is you who is getting confused. If you could listen to the advice that we have to correct the relationships among us and that we have to find the connection among us—and, in it, discover the spiritual world from the very first moment you started studying—then the interruptions that are constantly increasing wouldn’t seem like interruptions. Rather, each time, they would seem like the revelation of a new thickness of the upper level.

No one stopped you from accepting this advice and from fulfilling it. It wouldn’t have interrupted, but rather would have helped you rise and tighten the connection and discover its inner essence called the Light.

However, you are looking for the revelation of the Creator, not in order to bestow and not by bestowing upon others, not among the friends, but in a totally different place. So, who is responsible for the fact that you don’t succeed? You may have built different barriers that separate you from the spiritual world instead of getting close to it from the moment you arrived until today. Although you eventually can reach the right decision along this way, too, it is by feeling despair and finally discovering that we have reached a dead end and must go back to follow a different path.

As it is written (Ecclesiastes 7:29), “This is the only thing I have found, that God made human beings upright, but they have devised many schemes.” In fact, it is a very simple point, but we simply haven’t located the right place of the shattering. We want to prepare our own heart for the filling. This is everyone’s inclination.

However, we don’t want to accept the fact that the place of the filling is among us! There is a cut, an abyss, a dark empty vacuum between us, but this doesn’t worry me at all. I worry about the fact that I don’t have a filling inside me! This means that I am thinking about a totally different place instead of the place where the upper force must be revealed.

I also interpret the idea of an upper force as I see fit, which is as some enticing filling, a wonderful attainment, understanding, a pleasant feeling, but the real upper force is totally opposite from what I imagine. Being equivalent to it is in bestowing upon others, filling the other while rising above myself, without thinking about myself, annulling myself, and restricting myself. I take everything from myself and deprive myself of all the fillings only in order to pass them on to the other. It is only above myself that I look for a way to fill the others.

This is the spiritual filling that I feel in the other to the extent that I am ready to provide for him above my own desires and passions, but we don’t even think in this direction. Sometimes, we slightly touch this feeling in some powerful convention in the desert, but, afterward, we each come back to our own personal interests, and, then, everything comes to an end.

The group doesn’t support me. It doesn’t hold me focused on this one sharp point. And my ego constantly pulls me downward to the abyss. So, what can I do?

All this is because we don’t support and hold one another. The force that can save us is among us, in the connection between us, in the collective flock, and not in each of us. The force of our connection is the Light, and this is where we should demand it: in the crevices between us, in the barriers, in the walls. The Light, the Creator is hiding in there.

We can discover it only if we begin connecting with one another in a way that the gaps will disappear, and, then, right in that place, you will discover the Creator, right there where He is concealed now.

The whole point is that you hear, but you don’t fulfill the advice in the right place. It is because you cannot accept what Rabash says, “We have gathered here to establish a society for all who wish to follow the path and method of Baal HaSulam…”

We must make a decision and then carry it out constantly, but if everyone worries about himself and not about others, it will lead to nothing. If I think about how to fulfill this by myself, it won’t work. The thought must go only through others since it is a closed, analog system.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/13/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Several basic conditions have to exist for the correction to take place. First, despair of one’s own powers. This clarification must be within reason from my own experience. I have to know for sure that nothing will help me and not accept this just as faith and give up my own attempts.

A person has to reach the feeling of coming to a dead end. But on the other hand, a new reality is revealed in the same vessel that is called the upper force that provides the force to pull a person out of this state of hopelessness. Besides, it’s important to know why a person wants this rescue so much so that the correction will not be for an egoistic filling, but it will bring him to a state of “from the love of the created beings to the love of the Creator“.

All the changes that a person gains this way accumulate in the same deficiency. The moment he is ready for the action of the Light, which means that he accepts all the right components, the Light immediately begins to bestow upon him.

The bestowal of the Light is made of the five Lights of NRNHY or ten Sefirot. These Lights are in accordance between them, according to the first level a person has to reach. There is the right ratio between all these rays of Light, a certain range that a person has to adapt his vessel to, all his deficiencies: the root phase, phase one, two, three, and four, in such a way that each one will be opposite its own Light. They have to include all the necessary components: the feeling of deficiency, gratitude, knowing, and faith above reason.

As a result of our work, all these things have to be ready in the right incorporation between them, so that the deficiency will be suitable for the Light: five levels of deficiency opposite the five rays of the Light. This means that the Light has to be exactly opposite the vessel and then it will be able to bestow upon it.

In that case, only restriction and a Masach (screen) will be missing, which the Light will give to the vessel. Then there is a complete connection between them, into one whole, by the corrections of the restriction and the Masach, and the feeling of the first entrance of the Light into the vessel. Thus the state of a spiritual embryo is created.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/12/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Baal HaSulam, article “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”: And because The Zohar is revealed in our generation, this is a clear proof that we are now in the time of the Messiah, at the beginning of this generation, about which it is said: “ And the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Creator.”

Baal HaSulam is writing it that because everything is realized by the upper Light. And when the Light is illuminating less, then the nation of Israel is in exile, if it illuminates even less, then we all are in troubles up to the loss of life, meaning losing this perception of reality. And conversely, when the Light illuminates more, then we feel vitality and we live a full life. When it illuminates even more, then we begin to feel the source of the Light and we are attracted to it.

Everything comes from the Light, and precisely it “shakes” the vessels, our desires, but in our era, its bestowing is changing. The revelation of the wisdom of Kabbalah, the thought of creation and its goal, the systems that humanity exists in, the global nature with its absolute laws, which is the Creator, all this brought great changes in our world. In the last century, the Light influenced the world in such a way, that as a result, The Book of Zohar was revealed, meaning that the strongest source of correction was revealed. The authors of The Zohar wrote openly that thanks to this Book, the people of Israel go out of exile. Therefore, it is necessary to see our time as time of spiritual ascent, and everything depends only on the correct use of the wisdom of Kabbalah.

From above there will be no concessions on what we are capable of realizing. But this way or that way, the revealing of The Book of Zohar and the wisdom of Kabbalah, the work that was done by Baal HaSulam that revealed the method of Kabbalah to this generation, and the works of Rabash that describe the rules of spiritual work—all this laid a foundation for our ascent. The two parts of the wisdom of Kabbalah that were prepared by our teachers were necessarily revealed in order for anyone who is awakened to self-realization in the path to the goal of creation (purpose) to be able to execute it.

Therefore, our time is the beginning of the period of the Messiah, meaning the stage of the final correction.
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From the 4^th Part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/11/13, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”

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Rabash, “Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God”: What does it mean that the Lord heals the brokenhearted, since we know that the main thing in a person is the heart, that “a heart” is the vessel that receives the Holiness from Above. This is as we learn from the shattering of the vessels, which means that if a vessel is shattered, it cannot contain anything that is put in it. In addition, if a heart is broken, it means that the desire to receive dominates the heart and so the abundance cannot enter it, since everything that the desire to receive receives goes to the shells and this is called “the breaking of the heart.”

The Creator can’t help a person unless the heart feels that it is broken, since until then, there is no one to help. The heart is broken at once but we correct it in small parts, and this is indeed a great easing in our work. After all, we don’t have to make great efforts in order to correct everything all at once from our current egoistic state straight to the world of Ein Sof (Infinity).

Instead, we can perform a gradual correction, in small portions, as if we are transferring the King’s treasure, moving one coin at a time from one place to another. Still, it’s hard for us to make the first move since it means moving to the opposite intention: from in order to receive to in order to bestow. So it can’t take place unless we clarify our desires and our intentions, unless we differentiate the desires and the intentions, unless we understand what is in our power and what is not, and where it is our part and where it is not.

We must clarify all this so that we can discern exactly what a broken heart is, and what exactly needs to be corrected. It takes a long time to clarify this discernment. This is because we forget about the group, about others, and about the fact that the desire has to be collective. Everyone begins to think about himself, about how he feels inside, and this has nothing to do with a broken heart.

The heart is broken since it can’t connect with others. This is what the shattering is about, but we don’t think in this direction at all. We try to imagine our personal shattering, and it takes a long time until we locate it correctly. But the moment this happens, it becomes clear that it’s a simple and concrete problem that needs to be corrected.

It takes a lot of work for the vessel to understand that nothing can happen to it individually, but only collectively, that it’s only part of the general vessel and one part in the Light. But the moment there is a diagnosis, there is no need to call the doctor and immediately see how the correction and the filling appear in that place.

So it’s very important that we reach the general thought, the general feeling, so that everyone will feel that he is in a force field of mutual guarantee. All our searching is done in the totally wrong place, we are searching inside ourselves instead of searching between us, and thus all our powers go to waste.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/13/13

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Rabash, “What is that A Man Must Give Birth to a Son and a Daughter in the Work”: But when a person, after his great efforts, sees that he cannot exit the domination of the desire to receive for himself, yet he sees that he is working within reason and that only the Creator can help him.

As the sages said “a person’s inclination grows daily, and if the Creator didn’t help him, he wouldn’t be able to overcome it,” he doesn’t have to believe in “above reason,” as ordinary worshippers who observe the Torah and Mitzvot, who believe “above reason” that the Creator does indeed help them, do. But rather as people who want to work in order to bestow, for whom it is within reason, to such an extent that they have to believe above reason that the Creator can indeed help them exit the domination of the desire to receive.

It says that, “there is none wiser than the experienced.” We need real vessels of perception and not imaginary ones. First we need to attain everything that we need within reason, and only then work above reason. We have to do everything that we possibly can to build and to attain our vessels of perception.

So it is impossible for a person to say in advance that he believes in everything that is written in the book and only waits for it to be fulfilled. He must first exert himself as much as he can.

There is a law that “Nature abhors a vacuum.” So we have to understand that there cannot be a vacuum. It is an undesirable state and whoever creates a void means that he desecrates (from the same root in Hebrew), that he brings about corruption. So we must do our best by our exertion to collect all the necessary data and reach a certain decision.

If we complete our part and see that only the Creator can operate from there onwards, then we have to continue our work in faith above reason so that He will fill the void that is left. Otherwise we will not be able to carry out this mission.

A religious person says in advance that everything depends on the Creator who does everything, and there is nothing a person can do but pray. He believes that everything is in the hands of the Creator and everything is for the better. But if he determines this in advance, he cannot do the first part of the work and will not reach the recognition within reason and so he will not be able to later continue his work above reason so that the prayer will be above him.

We, however, have to fulfill “you should do whatever is in your power,” and only then can a prayer burst from inside. It is because we discover a new void that the Creator can fill by our exertion, and this will already be “above reason,” in vessels of bestowal, in the head of the spiritual Partzuf.

This is the big difference between people who work below reason and those who work above reason. The difference is that those who want to work above reason must first reach reason and to know from their clarifications and experience that it isn’t in their power to perform any spiritual act. I strongly advise that you hurry with this clarification.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/12/13

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There are two types of work: in feeling a deficiency and in feeling complete wellbeing. After all, we were created of matter that is always in a state of emptiness. So we aspire for a connection with the Creator who created us and who has everything that we lack.

If we include these two forces inside us—the natural force of receiving, our matter, and the force of bestowal, the small “spark” that is in us and which we want to develop so that it will dominate all our matter—we will have to clarify two things: On the one hand, with regard to the matter, we have to clarify the spark of bestowal, and on the other hand, with regard to the spark, we have to clarify and examine the matter. In other words, on the part of the created being, we have to study the Creator and also our own desire.

So we do one type of work with our desire to receive, which is a work of requests, prayers and the sorrow of Shechina (Divinity), the destruction of the Temple. If we don’t feel all the hardships of this state to their full severity, we will not be able to reach the right prayer, which means to reach such an intense request that will summon a response of bestowal from the Light.

This is because the Light only bestows upon a whole desire. The levels of the whole desire are called “spiritual levels,” and we have to attain at least the lowest level.

The other type of work is when we are before the Creator who created us, manages us, takes care of us, corrects us, and raises us to His height of perfection. Then our work is in gratitude and praise.

These are two opposite forms, and in both cases a person has to make sure that one will not annul and cover up the other. Both forms are essential for a whole true measure. The clash between them, the tension between them, creates a point that will draw the Light so strongly upon itself that it will raise a person and turn one end of his work to Keter and the other end to Malchut. So the first level of a person’s spirituality made of ten Sefirot is within the desire to receive, from requests, begging, a broken heart, and also from gratitude and blessing the Creator, which means from the point of Keter. This is how we should advance.

A person constantly forgets these things and is confused. He thinks that the confusion is coincidental and stems from the daily hardships of life. He supposes that if he lived by himself somewhere on a desert island in the middle of the ocean far away from the daily interruptions, he would advance quickly and successfully along the spiritual path. He, however, has to worry about endless things and go through life dealing with different problems, both internally and externally.

But this is a wrong attitude since everything belongs to one system. There is no justification to move or to change the external conditions. A person should try to make efforts to constantly remain in the spiritual work without changing anything externally so that through the environment that he has now he will be able to bring the Creator contentment.

We should understand that this is the environment that the Creator has prepared for him. Later a person will understand to what extent these conditions were the most suitable for his advancement.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/10/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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The Torah, “Exodus (Ki Tissa),” 31:12-31:13: The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: “And you, speak to the children of Israel and say: Only keep My Sabbaths! For it is a sign between Me and you for your generations, to know that I, the Lord, make you holy.

Saturday is the symbol of the end of correction. The six weekdays preceding Saturday allegorically symbolize the six thousand years during which the ego is revealed in us.

The Jews have been keeping their calendar since the first day that the ego was revealed as evil. This occurred in the year zero, and since then they have been celebrating this day as the new year.

Thus the Jewish calendar is spiritual since we celebrate the day that a man called Adam was the first to discover his ego and managed to correct it. He understood how the other part of the world that is concealed from us is arranged, why our world is so egoistic and is built on negativity and on the abuse of others, and how it should be corrected. After having discovered this system, Adam described it in the book The Angel Raziel, which means “the hidden force” (angel is a force). We have been keeping record of the chronological events since the day of the revelation of the spiritual system until the end of correction.

Adam was the first to perform a spiritual correction and attained the equivalence of form with the Creator, and is therefore called Adam HaRishon (the First Man), which means the first to resemble the Creator (stemming from the same root in Hebrew). It takes six thousand years until the general equivalence of form and similarity to the Creator to be attained. At the same time, this period can be shortened since we have free will during the last phase, which enables us to shorten it. But if we don’t use it, the initial date will remain unchanged.

Six thousand years repeat on every level of correction in the spiritual form and thus create six small levels. The seventh stage symbolizes the seventh millennium, which means the “end of correction.” Hence, the term “week.”

There is no astronomical concept of week in our world. There is a day, a month, a year, etc. But there is no week. A week is actually a spiritual concept that comes from Adam.

It says: “Remember the seventh day.” This day symbolizes the general correction and it is therefore forbidden to work on the seventh day. It’s as if we show that we want to reach this state, when there will be no need to correct anything anymore.

The day Adam attained his ego, wanted to correct it, and was shattered is the sixth day, that is, Friday. The New Year begins from attainment, from the sixth day (Friday). We call the five days until the sixth day “the days of the creation of the world.” But it’s actually on the sixth day that Adam felt that the world is totally different from what was depicted in his corporeal feelings, and is actually much wider, higher, and totally unrelated to our physical body.

There is the still, vegetative, and animate nature and there is a human being, Adam (man), whom we have to raise in us.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 9/2/13

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Question: How can we become similar to the Creator if we sometimes think that His actions are wrong?

Answer: Not sometimes, but constantly! What good is there in this world? Even the most evil villains can’t bear what’s happening in it. And yet, this world is created by Him.

The fact of the matter is that we regard this world as being a 100% opposite to the Creator. Why? It’s because we are opposite to Him. The Creator shines within us and His Light is absolute goodness. But when the Light falls on our “light-sensitive film,” it makes a negative that is opposite to the original. So, the more Light we receive the greater the darkness becomes, and vice versa. This is the way we see the world.

The Light draws various shapes on the screen of our desire to receive, and all of them are drawn on the negative. They are opposite to the Light. This is how the world is outlined within us.

How can we achieve similarity with the Creator? How out of our oppositeness can we see Him and not an imaginary picture? For that, we have to transform the “frame” and to reverse its contrast range. And if we do it with the first “frame,” we attain the first spiritual degree. Then, we will work with the second, the third, and all subsequent “frames.”

So, the entire Torah correlates with a person and lives within him. Every person is a small world.

This way, it all has to do with the “technology”: how to work internally so as to transform the imaginary darkness into light and the imaginary light into darkness. For this, I need to turn my own properties into their opposite: to transform a negative into a positive. This inner transition is the Torah, the Light that Reforms. This is what I need.

I feel the Creator within me. Even now I perceive Him in the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature and in people. Everything around me is the Creator who “translates” Himself for me and copies Himself within me. I only have to decode this picture.

I work not with the world, the friends, or the Creator, but rather with myself, within myself. While doing so, I’m allowed to use the shapes, seemingly external ones, so as to decode the original image.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/31/13, “A Speech on the Completion of The Zohar”

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