Question: Does the order of my internal actions in relation to the Creator coincide in the case when I feel bad and in the case when I feel good?

Answer: On the spiritual path, bad feelings are not suffering in the usual sense, but the sufferings of love.

Imagine that you place an order in a restaurant. Why isn’t it brought right away even if everything is ready? They give you time to talk with your companion or just to sit, and this is no accident. Once, my friend was choosing a coffee maker for his office and wanted a machine that would take 15 minutes to prepare one serving. He needed time for a quiet conversation with clients.

This is what is called preparing desires, which we usually ignore. We want to “swallow” everything as quickly as possible, but this approach is incorrect. Because of it, we do not feel the taste in life, the meaning in life. Spiritual concealment is needed to cause a strong, firm desire in us.

Question: What should fill this time of delay before meeting the Creator?

Answer: I make a preparation, yearn for Him in the right way, and, then, I can discern the relationship and find contact. It is said, “I will eat what has been prepared in advance.” I do not discover anything new; my revelation is a direct result of this completed preparation.

Even now, I am in the world of Infinity, but I do not see it, do not notice the connection between people, do not distinguish the actions of the Creator, and do not feel the waves of this force, which changes everything. My eyes can see only separate, small phenomena. Thus, everything depends on preparation.

The problem is that I choose for myself a coffee machine with this or that “time of preparation,” but the preparation period is not set by me, and I do not know when it is over. So, you should hurry. It is very important how we cope with the preparatory stage. It is already underway and the fate of the entire world is here at this point.

Question: How can we apply every effort so as not to lose time?

Answer: First of all, are you trying to bestow to the Creator, or do you just want to get your “coffee” sooner? For whom is the pleasure of your efforts intended? After all, you have a chance to bring Him pleasure. What is it for you: a burden or an honorable right? If it is a right, then you want to finish the job quickly and prepare all the best for Him, and if it is a burden, then you evade it to the last moment. “It is a deadline, and there is nothing I can do; I must act.” The approach determines everything.

You can speed up the “coffee” cooking time without having to wait 15 minutes. Since The Book of Zohar was revealed and the science of Kabbalah came into the world, you can quickly complete the process and reach the end of correction. Don’t wait until 6,000 years pass; do it today! If you were given the means, time is not a function. If you wait, you advance in “due time,” according to the program of Nature, without adding your efforts in order to show your results to the Creator. So, accelerate, unite with friends, keep the intention all the time, strive for the goal, and understand that all the disturbances on your path are good for you. They help you connect with the friends, studies, and intention. Since you were given the opportunity, you must realize it.

Question: But all the friends already are doing this. So, where is the problem?

Answer: You do not ask. You are given an opportunity to ask. So, ask!

Question: But we are thinking about and asking this all the time.

Answer: If you had asked as you are supposed to, wouldn’t you have received a response? So, your request is not the right one yet. It is lacking either quantity or quality of effort, and the most important thing here is quality. Baal HaSulam writes about it in the 18^th paragraph of The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot: and, if one practices Torah and fails to remove the evil inclination from himself, it is either that he has been negligent in giving the necessary labor and exertion in the practice of Torah—as it is written, “I have not labored but found, do not believe”—or, perhaps, one did put in the necessary amount of labor, but has been negligent in the quality.

I received an awakening from the Creator. He lit a spark in me and now I must wake myself further, adding quantity and working on quality, to check why and for what do I do this, to what do I aspire. In whole, I need a vessel, a desire, a need for the right amount and quality. If I gather the necessary measure for the revelation of the upper Light, It will be manifested immediately. It is here; it is ready.

In physics, there is a concept of “quantum,” a minimal “portion” of light. So, when I have a need for a quantum of Light, I will reveal it on the first level of Nefesh. Then, I will form an even greater need, I will want “quantum squared,” and will reveal the Light of Ruach. At the same time, the vessel grows both quantitatively and qualitatively.

What we need is the desire. For that, we are always talking about self-annulment and restriction and we organize workshops in order to reveal, to “whiten” the desire.

So, why, after the lesson, don’t I feel a concern about the friends, to want the fire of desire to propel them forward? Why don’t I feel the same concern on their part and why don’t I flare up from their flashes? There is no care, no shared responsibility for us, for the world, and especially for the Creator who gave us a chance. In essence, our concern for us and for the world is shallow and egoistic, but we need to start somewhere. In fact, we have a chance to bestow to the Creator, but we do not want to turn toward this direction at all.

In short, we still have much to do. Don’t wait until the coffee is ready.
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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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Baal HaSulam, Letter 47: Therefore, turn away from all the fictitious dealings, and pay attention to think and to come up with the right inventions to connect your hearts as one heart… and start connecting lovingly to the right extent, and then you will find a taste in it.

Question: What are “fictitious dealings”?

Answer: Fictitious dealings are all sorts of efforts that are not aimed at attaining the spiritual goal. This includes any effort that is above the effort to provide the body with the basic necessities and dedicating everything else to attaining the goal.

Any effort that is even a little bit off this track is fictitious, which means that it only seems to you that you will gain from it, but in fact, it immediately pushes you to the path of “in its time,” the path of suffering.

It seems that there is a spiritual goal before me (!), and if I work for it, I will gain something. I exert myself and gain from it. If it is a real goal, which means that it is on the path to the Creator, then I work correctly.

But this goal may not be directed towards the Creator (!), and I don’t know the right direction, and it seems that this goal is real. If I invest my powers in it, then, in return, I receive sufferings that push me from behind instead of a gain. These are called “fictitious dealings.”

It seems that I profit from them and that I yearn for the real goal. Even material profit: physical profit, money, respect, knowledge, all these eventually lead me, after many efforts along the way, to a void, to sufferings.

This fictitious goal, the fictitious dealings, can be very complex and complicated. It may take 30 to 40 years for me to finally realize that the goal was fictitious. It isn’t just one business and may very well be many dealings. Everything that you do beyond the basic necessities of the body belongs to these fictitious dealings.

Dealing with the basic necessities is a must, since you have no choice. All your attention, 100% of it, must be focused in one direction—on the Creator. Then, to the extent that you have to exert yourself for your family, it is already a necessity because all your thought will be focused on the Creator.

It is not clear that this goal is fictitious. It is a big question for you. Even if you are aware of it rationally, you disagree with it emotionally. Then you find yourself in an inner struggle, not knowing what to do. You make different concessions, forgive different minor weaknesses, thinking, “Well, never mind, I was a bit distracted.” Fictitious dealings appear in many different manners.

So, how can we clarify which dealings are fictitious? Everything that does not relate to the group, to the teacher, to the study, to dissemination, to the inclination to unity with the Creator—are all fictitious dealings! If you focus all your efforts on the goal, then the family worries are also included in it. Then you discover that the Creator has arranged all these things for you in the most perfect way, but only if your family doesn’t object to your path and allows you to study.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/4/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: Does an awakening from Above occur every minute, and what is the correct response to it on our part?

Answer: It isn’t only the awakening from Above, but it is actually all our existence that is possible thanks to the upper Light, which constantly sustains us, like a magnet holding a piece of iron in the air, and performs all sorts of actions on us.

There is no doubt about it, the matter of creation wouldn’t be able to exist, wouldn’t change, and wouldn’t feel itself without the upper Light. The Light does everything.

The right response on our part is to try to increase our sensitivity and our refined understanding towards what the upper force does with us, to understand how we should respond in order to be exactly like it, and to adhere to its attributes, to the changes that it makes and to its influence on us.

This means that in every bulge or indentation that the Creator makes in me, I immediately join His action and dress in it, like the desire of Nukva on the desire of the male. It turns out that we constantly cooperate in the general action, like partners. Thusly I should try to operate throughout my life, and then I attain the state of wholeness called adhesion.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/3/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: What can be done when a person is disseminating without the right intention?

Answer: It does not matter! Intention will happen the next time. But now just do the action, intention and action will coincide.

Sometimes a person disseminates, but at the same time his mind is blank; he is only occupied with what he is doing and is incapable of anything more than that. He is not able to think about his connection with the Creator and the group when talking with other people and explaining things to them. Another example is when a person works with books and can only think about the text; he is proofreading, and it is hard for him to also think about the intention at the same time.

If a person is not yet able to combine spiritual aspiration with work, then he can’t do it. He will get to this point later. Eventually, no matter what he does, he will automatically direct everything towards his spiritual advancement.

Question: What is more important when it comes to dissemination: the process or the outcome?

Answer: It is hard to say what is more important. For us the process is more important. Of course the outcome is also important, but the thing is that it can become apparent only in a number of months or even a couple of years. So we need to keep working.
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From the Virtual Lesson 2/3/13

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Question: What is a sin in the internal work that corrupts its outcome?

Answer: If a person is already incorporated in the internal work but is now too lazy to constantly support it and to add to it, it’s considered a sin. Since if he doesn’t advance, it means that he is going backward. It’s impossible to stop and stand in the middle.

We sometimes think that we can allow ourselves to take some time off and to rest from this work, but in spirituality there are no days off, the clock is constantly ticking and the counter constantly counts our efforts, so it isn’t like our world where we can stop and be idle, to go to sleep and not do anything until the next day.

This does not exist in spirituality. Perhaps I don’t perform any physical actions, but during this time many Reshimot (spiritual genes) go through me, and if I don’t fulfill them, then it means that I go backward. So I have to make sure that I constantly do something.

My advice is to place yourself, even passively, under the maximal influence of the environment: to listen to tunes and songs, to read our material, to see a lesson one more time or to listen to it, to be among friends. But we have to be very careful in using this means of communication, since along with the gain and the great benefit it can also bring about great loses and harm if we don’t use it correctly.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/7/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: Why should a person be careful not to humble himself before strangers, but only before the friends along the spiritual path?

Answer: The friends want to act with the intention of in order to bestow and so you can humiliate yourself before them and thus adhere to them, connect to them, and get close to them spiritually. Therefore, you should humble yourself before them.

But if you try to humble yourself before other people, then with regard to what do you humble yourself? Do you do so with regard to their corporeal desires and egoistic goals? They don’t operate towards the direction of the spiritual goal. When you annul yourself before a friend, it helps the two of you since you are serving as an example for him. If he is your friend along the spiritual path, then he will understand you correctly. He will see that you are working on self-annulment, on bestowal, and that you are giving him an example. This means that your action of self-annulment is correct in every sense: both towards the one who performs it and the one who sees it.

But if you behave that way with regard to a stranger, he will think that he is greater if you lower yourself before him, and he will take pride in it and his ego will begin to grow. He may also not understand why you are suddenly ingratiating yourself before him and would think that you want to deceive and to use him. From all these examples, we see that it’s only before a friend along the spiritual path who will understand me that my annulment can be beneficial for both of us.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/7/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: On one hand, it is written: “There is none else besides Him,” but on the other, a person wonders: “If there is none else besides the Creator, if everything depends on Him, then what can I do?…”

Answer: “There is none else besides Him” means that everything comes from the Creator so that I reveal it for real and stay with Him in adhesion. He leaves me space to do my work, He does not block me from every angle, but rather gives me an opportunity to become like Him.

But in every other regard, it is true that “there is none else besides Him.” I should not think that there is anyone else near me. Seeing the multitude of factors that influence me, I must understand that essentially, all these factors are just He alone.

Sometimes I feel positivity coming from Him, and sometimes negativity; besides, these pluses and minuses can take various forms. But at the end I tell myself: “No, He is always one big positive, and He only influences me through pluses of various kinds. Meanwhile, I sometimes perceive them as pluses and sometimes as minuses. Thus, I must change myself so everything would become a plus to me.” Then, He and I will be equal, and this state will be called adhesion.

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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/7/13, “The Article for the Completion of The Zohar”

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Rabash, “What is a Cup of Blessing Should be Full in the Work”: But before the Yenika (suckling) there is the phase of Ibur (gestation), which means that the upper corrects him. This can be when a person is like an embryo in his mother’s womb, as the embryo annuls himself before the mother and has no mind of his own, but as the sages say, “An embryo is part of his mother and eats what his mother eats,” and has no entity of his own to ask any questions, but he doesn’t rise as a name. This is called that he is mute and has no mouth to ask questions.

This is the time when a person can go above reason with his eyes closed, and believe in the faith of the sages and go to the end. This is called Ibur, that he has no mouth, Ibur means (TES, part 8) “the level of Malchut which is the more restricted smallness called Ibur, which stems from Evra and Dinin, as it says “and the Lord became impregnated for you.”

And the matter of Evra and Dinin should be explained, since the body resists the work that a person should go above reason with his eyes closed, and so a person must constantly overcome, which is called “wrath, rage and trouble,” since it is hard work to constantly advance by overcoming and to annul one’s self before the upper, so that the upper will do whatever it wants with a person. This is called Ibur, which is the more restricted smallness.

This is a difficult situation, since a person is not used to such an attitude. To annul one’s self completely is even more difficult than simply lowering himself, and being in smallness. We already have the preparations for smallness by nature, but the state of an Ubar (embryo), which means the transition (same root in Hebrew) from one world to another with regards to using our desires, the inner discernments, is a very difficult process.

Here we are required to totally annul ourselves in faith above reason in order to rise above all the discernments and the desires that are evoked in us. It isn’t a passive state as it may seem. A person has to participate in it and to make his greatest efforts in order to overcome the obstacles he encounters. Otherwise it will be impossible to annul the previous level.

He is called an embryo since he cannot work with the discernments and the intention of in order to bestow yet, and so he annuls himself before the bestowal of the upper and allows the upper to do whatever it does with him by accepting everything as good, blessed, in full consent, understanding and delight. In that case he is called a spiritual embryo.

From this we should understand how we should prepare ourselves and the group in order to enter the state of an embryo in the spiritual world. We have already talked quite a lot about this, and now we should try to fulfill this.

It is a state in which a person feels pressure, the Dinim that he encounters. He doesn’t understand why this happens in the world around him and what the world’s attitude towards this whole process is, but eventually he sees how the whole world begins to enter the state of Ibur in preparation for the new birth.

It is because the whole world is in a person and so a person sees how the whole world, all these discernments, enter the state of Ibur. To the extent that he annuls his previous attitude to everything that happens, he discovers that the whole world around him becomes the reality of the spiritual embryo. When he annuls himself, he sees that the Creator operates in everything around him.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/7/13

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Question: How does the Creator allow me to make mistakes? Doesn’t He want me to advance faster?

Answer: The Creator must open all the treasures of the Light for you. These treasures can be opened only by the depth of the desire that is attained in the dark. You have to feel your desires and to enter them. But if you really enter them and sink into them, there is no way you will be able to come out of them.

So the Creator’s work is to give you the vessels of receiving in their real form, completely separated from the Light. But if you remain totally disconnected, you will never be able to exit the abyss of your desire.

But if you are not immersed in them and are not included in these vessels of receiving that are totally opposite from the Creator, you will not be able to attain Him and will not be able to stand before Him as an independent entity.

Therefore, at every step of the way, you are left to stumble and fall slightly, and to go wrong a little. This “little” bit can be very severe, and at each stage there are very hard trials. But all this depends on how you were supposed to receive them according to the plan of creation.

If we could have received the whole Torah as we should have from Abraham onward (if we can say so in retrospect), then there would be no evil in the world. The whole world would advance in the best, most wonderful way towards correction.

The question is whether we could manage without the destruction of the First and Second Temples and without the four exiles at the end of which we are now. I don’t know how it could happen otherwise…perhaps all the corrections could take place in spiritual discernments.

We shouldn’t think about that now. Our job is to unite all the conditions that we were given—the Creator’s attributes and the created being’s attributes by the system of the Torah, and then we will reach correction.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/6/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: How can I avoid making mistakes and diversions along the way if I have to totally annul myself?

Answer: To annul myself doesn’t mean to totally erase myself. Self-annulment means that although I have the greatest egoistic desire, I am ready to work without any reward for my desire to receive, without any compensation for my ego.

I have pride, lust, envy, etc.; I would like to be like the King! I come to the palace and offer my devoted help. I can really do any kind of work in the palace, arranging and fixing everything. There isn’t a job that I cannot do!

Instead I am told: “Great! The king has a farm far away from here, on the border of his kingdom. Go there and wash the floor. It will take you twenty years to get there. You will wash the floor and then come back and report to us; that will take you another twenty years. So your whole life will go by, but never mind, you will at least do something for the King. We, his ministers, give you this mission. We will not even tell Him about it, why should we bother Him with such trifles? It is enough for you to know that you are doing this job for Him. At the moment we have no other available job.”

You gladly take this job and dedicate your whole life to washing the floor in some distant place about which the King will never know and his ministers have long forgotten about the mission that you were given.

This example shows us a little of what self-annulment means. It means that you don’t annul your desire to receive; you annul your demands. We cannot annul the thickness, the thickness is not refined; it only ascends or descends according to the Creator’s plan with regard to everyone individually or to everyone together. But it is not refined; it is only revealed or concealed.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/6/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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