Question: How do the guards guard me?

Answer: Let’s imagine a corrected world. A policeman, a guard, a teacher, and several other people come to you and start telling you what is wrong with you, and you are surprised and don’t agree with them.

But they say: “You are judging according to old standards. It is true that a month ago there were different conditions, and so then we didn’t have any complaints against you. But now we see that your behavior is undesirable. If you go on behaving like this and don’t correct yourself, then gradually your behavior will turn from undesirable behavior to intolerable.”

“You must correct your attitude towards the environment. Everyone suffers since they cannot advance because of you. You are delaying the general correction and do not allow everyone else to reach a good life! They are ready to do everything, but you don’t respond, so what can you do? You have to subdue yourself before the environment, to connect to it, to be correctly integrated with the others, and thus reach the end of correction. We speak for everyone, they have told us to talk to you and to tell you what is wrong with you.”

This is how a police car or a public representative comes to you and tells you all this, they worry that you may go on living like you have been living so far and that you may not advance. After all, the demands, the Reshimot (spiritual genes) are constantly renewed, revealing a new world, but you see it like you did before, and for you nothing changes. This means that you are on the “animate” level, and with regard to the spiritual world you are even on the level of “still nature.” You simply float with the currents of life wherever they take you, and this is wrong.

On the advanced levels, the guards and the policemen come to you and point out the fine details and special conditions that you have to pay attention to, but cannot identify. Then they tell you that you have to go down to that level. There is no place for you in this “neighborhood,” and there is no time to wait. You have to leave the city and move to the suburbs, to a neighborhood of thieves, and live among criminals.

You resent this, “How can this be!” But they tell you that you are not worthy of living among good, corrected people who are open to one another, since you don’t behave like them. You thought that you were worthy! But the guards tell you that they have checked and seen that you are not… there is nothing they can do.

At that moment you resent this and are angry at everyone, but later you look at things objectively and agree that it is really so, and that you are not worthy of living in this place with your wife and kids.

I must constantly adapt myself to an increasingly more advanced generation and even set an example for others. This is what Baal HaSulam says in his article “The Last Generation.”
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/2/13, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: Who are the “guards?” Are they some forces that throw a person backward if he isn’t ready for the next level?

Answer: A person should create such guards for himself. It is written: “Make yourself guards and policemen in all your gates.” If you are thrown without your knowing, then it isn’t guards and policemen. Guards and policemen are those a person is in contact with and uses to check himself.

Guards and policemen are a person’s internal clarifications as to whether he is suitable or not suitable and what else he has to correct internally in order to get closer to the goal. It is a perpetual movement: a step to the right, a step to the left, when the Gevurot and the Dinim increase on the next levels.

A person discovers all this himself and asks the court for an internal trial. He wants to know what else can be done in order to advance. He checks his attitude towards the environment; he wants the environment to help him, to act on his side. This depends on how strong his connection with the environment is.

All the 125 spiritual degrees are determined according to how strongly a person adheres to the environment. Now too, we see ourselves through the environment. If I didn’t feel anything outside myself, I wouldn’t feel that I exist. One individual cannot exist; he feels that he exists since he feels the difference between himself and the environment. This is also how the concept of life and death is determined.

The final corrected state means the absolute, inclusive connection between everyone and the return to one soul, without any distinction, in which the light of NRNHY is revealed equally for everyone, becomes infinite and limitless, identically for all the parts of the soul. This is why I always check myself with regard to the environment.

If I attain such a level in which I constantly check and assess myself according to the degree of my connection with the friends and see my advancement only in this, seeing this as the only measuring tool, it means that I am already at the beginning of the spiritual ladder.

Unless I discover these guards and policemen inside me and clarify all the conditions my level presents to me, meaning, until I discover what is considered good and regret that I haven’t reached it, I will not start looking for the means to fulfill these conditions that will eventually fulfill them: Until I go through all these stages, I will not make one step forward.

The guards and policemen become my spiritual vessels.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/2/13, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: What are the criteria for assessing the proper preparation for the convention?

Answer: The main criterion is that I feel the environment, that community that we are gradually creating, so that I feel that I am in it by getting out of myself. The most important thing is that I always try to be in this state.

Personally, I feel it when I am working with groups, giving lessons and workshops, and writing the blog, imagining my readers and trying to be with them. And this gradually creates a feeling when “I” become “We.”

Question: At a convention, such a concentration is felt because the entire world is in one action. How can we create this common field in the regular mode?

Answer: A convention is a convention, but the work itself is carried out not during the event but between conventions when a person can control himself and feel where he is, in what state, with what thought he falls asleep and gets up, etc. When waking up, the first thought is especially important. It says much, practically, what you were thinking about in your sleep, where you were.

We can achieve much by these concrete checks and goals. Moreover, conventions are intended only to fuel us, to make a breakthrough. In fact, the realization takes place between conventions.
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From the Virtual Lesson 12/30/12

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Baal HaSulam, Letter 25: It says in The Zohar that the Holy Shechina is revealed to a person who is awarded with repentance, like a loving mother who hasn’t seen her son for a long time, and they made many efforts to see one another, and for that reason they encountered great dangers, and finally they have reached this long awaited freedom and were awarded to see one another and then the mother falls on his neck and kisses and comforts him and speaks to him all day and all night, telling him about her longings and the dangers she had encountered on the way until that day, and how she had always been with him, and had not left him, but suffered with him everywhere he had been, but he could not see that.

Judging by what Kabbalists tell us, the Creator, the Shechina, makes great efforts for us, for the souls, by helping us wake up and to gradually come closer by climbing the spiritual ladder so that eventually we will be incorporated in the Shechina and connect to it. In fact, there aren’t any changes in reality. All the changes are only in our understanding, in our perception, until we discover the good and stable upper Providence that doesn’t leave us for one moment and that never changes.

Eventually a person attains that all of reality is in absolute rest. Everything that is born in his feelings is the revelation of the vessels that have to be corrected. All the changes are only the appearance of the corrupt vessels, one by one. The feeling of the created being in the vessels that are not corrected is what depicts the picture of the corrupt world for him, and of the bad Providence, meaning that which is not eternal and is incomplete.

But if the created being advances correctly, he understands that he has to build external support for himself in the form of the group and a teacher, as it says: “Make yourself a Rav and buy yourself a friend, and judge every person to the scale of merit.” This environment constantly influences him and evokes him. It will shake a person and not let him forget that everything that happens at any given moment is the revelation and the fulfillment of new Reshimot (spiritual genes) through which a person sees the world, and he has to correct these Reshimot.

The environment will help him to not forget and that he will constantly be reinforced by it. So “he who chooses a better environment” according to the Reshimot that can be revealed in him in order to be corrected, will not forget for one moment the goal of his life. He has to discover the right attitude and then he will be able to advance to correction until he embraces the Creator.

The meeting place between a person and the Creator is called the Holy Shechina. The created being prepares the desires, his vessels, according to which the Creator is revealed. Thus we attain adhesion which is the goal of creation.
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From the Preparation the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/2/13

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Baal HaSulam, “Body and Soul”: And they depict the body as an electronic machine with wires that stretch from the body to the brain, and operate by encounters with external things.

Also, they send their sensations of pain or pleasure to the brain, and the brain instructs the organ what to do.

Question: Is everything the body feels, is all our life actually like a “movie” that is being projected to it?

Answer: There are two approaches that are integrated here, the subjective and the objective. On the whole, if you already see, if you perceive a certain picture of the world, you cannot erase it and say that it is your imagination. It may be your imagination, but this “imagination” is our life and we have to accept it as a fact.

Question: So where is the truth?

Answer: There is no truth. Everything is relative with regard to a person. There are seven billion people on earth and each one has his own truth. After all, we don’t have an absolute scale according to which we can measure the truth. We are all hanging in space, just like earth, just like the whole universe; who knows where he is “hanging?” You are alive now, but in a moment you may be dead, and who is controlling this? In whose hands are the strings?

In our current state, when there are no basic standards, we cannot measure things accurately. We have established many systems and measuring units, which are relative: the Greenwich meridian, a kilogram, a meter, a watt, an ohm, but these are relative units for comparative measurements. They only confirm the fact that actually there is nothing we can hold on to and that we cannot actually measure anything.

We don’t know what the truth is, and we agree on a certain framework of nominal comparisons since we need a common language in order to lead a normal life. Otherwise, how would we be able to keep the connection between us and to live off one another? So there is no truth. No one needs it. If people discover something that is absolute, I would have to accept it as a fact, and I prefer my own “truth.” It is true that we can reach absolute values, but our ego doesn’t let us do that, and so we are immersed in relativity and instability.

We have to get used to this state and to accept it, to accept it as a fact. It is normal to show that I have changed with regard to yesterday. A person who advances understands that nothing is certain and stable. If what was good yesterday also seems good today, it means that I am “still,” not even on the “vegetative” level, but on the level of “still nature.” On the “speaking” level, however, I see “an opposite world” each day. After all, every level is opposite from the one that preceded it.

On the spiritual path, I don’t simply add new things to what already exists; I am transforming each time and there is nothing to be ashamed of. There is no need to be an “indestructible rock”; we are all constantly changing, which is good. Only small children who are constantly restless and uneasy can grow.

Well, we cannot determine that anything is absolute, and so we have to believe that “a judge only has what his eyes can see,” and to accept this picture as real. There is only one truth—that there is nothing stable, and that everything changes with regard to a person.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/31/12, “Body and Soul”

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We read so much from different Kabbalistic sources, we see ourselves and the world in different potential situations, and it seems that correction is a very complex and difficult thing which is practically impossible.

That’s the way it seems until a person understands that all he has to do is to check for and to identify the corruptions as much as he can and ask for their correction. We don’t have to think about how they will be corrected since we can never understand and even imagine what state will come instead of the corrupt state. We only have to want to correct each and every state.

Our problem is only in what we mean by the concept correction. Suppose I have a car and I see different malfunctions in it: There is flat tire, a problem in a piston, or in some other part. My request should be not about fixing the car, but about using it. Then I will discover that it is fixed.

We have to correct our intention and not the action. This is what we forget, because we want to see the corrected state. But things can be corrected only according to how we can and want to use it correctly, in the right direction, in the right action. Otherwise…the car is on the edge of a cliff, and I have to say in which direction I want to drive it. It will remain out of order unless I choose the right direction, because we “rise in Holiness and not lower in Holiness.” That’s the only way!

It is very important to know this: We don’t correct the action but the intention. This is a totally different level of perception; it is as if I choose different glasses in order to look at life, in the derivative. If this is how I begin to see things, then the correction itself is not difficult any more and is not a problem at all, since it isn’t my responsibility. I only have to choose how to use correctly what is being corrected. It says: “make you desire His desire”; if my intentions in using this part of the desire are absolutely identical to the Creator’s intentions, then it is corrected immediately; the Light completes everything.

To a certain extent this is a wonder. Look at it this way and it will help you differentiate between the action and the intention, since this is a mistake that constantly drags us to actions and constantly takes us to a plane that is totally irrelevant for us, to a corporeal plane and not to the “human” level. The “human” level is similar to the Creator, and if it is similar, then the Host and I are at the table and the table is only the reason for being connected to one another. The main thing is the intention, the relations between us and not all the delicacies on the table.

So don’t look at the world as something that is difficult to correct. On the contrary, sensitivity in identifying what needs to be corrected, that must be corrected on my part, is the whole problem.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 01/01/13, The Zohar

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Question: What does it mean to judge the whole world to the scale of merit?

Answer: It means to attain a level in which I am incorporated in all the desires in the world, in all the souls, in all the parts of the one general soul, to such an extent that it all becomes me. Prior to this, in the previous levels, I already attained my personal end of correction, having totally justified the Creator’s attitude to me in the past, the present, and the future.

Now I attain the general end of correction by including all the souls in me and by being in one vessel with them. This is called judging the whole world to the scale of merit and by that I actually attain the Creator’s attitude to all of them. It is because I am in their end of correction and in my end of correction, and it becomes the same thing. What is revealed in this corrected vessel is called “absolute love.”

Until then, all I have in the meantime is my own vessel and I judge according to my feelings in it. So at a certain moment I can say that the Creator is good, but the next day when something unpleasant happens to me, I don’t justify the Creator any more. I cannot annul myself and determine that the Creator is good unless I correct all my vessels. I am constantly in the slingshot, tilting from one side to another each time.

When I correct myself, I begin to incorporate with all the other vessels, with all the people, with their internality. By this love for them, I reach the love of the Creator. These are not just nice words that call me to love everyone in order to use them as a means of getting to know the Creator; they are my spiritual vessels!

I am increasingly filled with love for them that is expressed by my being able to bestow upon them. Greater desires join me each time, and I work with all this accumulative desire.

Suppose I had 50 kg of desire yesterday by which I could connect to 50 people, and today my desire to receive has grown, and I feel melancholy, but I overcome this feeling and rise, and now I have 70 kg of desire. By that I can now connect with several more people.

My process of correction is by connecting to others and bestowing upon them, by love connections with 20 more people. It is possible to explain this simply, although it actually doesn’t happen so simply, but as an integral incorporation in “circles.”

To the extent that I connect with others this way, they become me and all of reality becomes mine. Thus I see the Creator’s attitude to reality, since it is the same thing, just like His attitude to me. It is like judging your attitude to me according to your attitude to my baby. Because I love him, your positive attitude to him is the same as a positive attitude to me.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/30/12, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Rabash, “What is Thou Shall not Add and Thou Shall not Detract in the Work”: We should understand that when a person wants to begin the work of Holiness, he must first know what it is about. This means whom he wants to serve. This means that he must first estimate how important the King that he wants to serve as a slave is, which means that he will be as “slaves serving the Rav not in order to get a reward.” But who is the one who gives him the desire to serve the King without any reward. Only the greatness and the importance of the King fuel him to want to work without any reward. So all his work is to depict the importance of the King to himself, and to thank Him, for having given him a desire and a thought to take some part in spirituality.

The importance of the Creator is the only reason that can commit us to the real work. There are many kinds of awakenings, but they all come and work on the part of our ego. Only if we get an inspiration to work and are impressed by the Creator’s greatness, does this motivation come on the part of bestowal. The greatness of the upper obligates us to bestow and helps us to attain bestowal.

We have to divide it accurately into two. All the other types of awakenings, even those that come from the group, from the friends, all eventually influence our ego and evoke us egoistically: through envy, lust, and honor, which are on the part of the desire to receive.

It’s only the Creator’s greatness, which we ask Him to reveal to us, that motivates us. We don’t want His filling. We only want to be impressed by His height and to see His greatness. This really draws a person.

We know that without a push from behind and being drawn forward, we can’t move. Since we are naturally lazy, we don’t want anything but absolute rest. This is how the desire to enjoy is built. Only to the extent that we see a certain pleasure ahead, can we move from our place according to the pleasure that we imagine. Therefore, we want our desire to receive to move by being drawn by the Creator’s greatness, the King’s greatness, then we will undoubtedly advance correctly.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/31/12

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Nothing in the spiritual world is valued by its quantity, and so the smallest detail is as important as the greatest detail. Everything depends only on how things are valued in a person’s heart. We always see the same reality before us. The extent that it’s revealed to us (whether more or less) depends upon our perception, to what extent we can develop and refine our spiritual vessels and make them precise and delicate, so that they can detect the smallest discernments.

Reality itself, however, never changes. It’s said, “There is no partiality in spirituality.” Therefore, great and small only seem that way to me according to the scale of whether I am looking at it through my near-sighted eyes or whether I am wearing glasses, or using binoculars, or even a telescope. This means that everything depends upon my vessels of perception, on the desires, and to what extent I enlarge and correct them.

Everything depends on my scale. So it makes no difference whether it’s a small or a great thing: If I focus on the right goal, if I only worry about attaining the feeling of the Creator’s greatness that leads me forward, if I constantly develop it and respect it, by not letting myself disrespect it or forgetting it, then by that I will necessarily advance in the right direction towards the goal.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/31/12

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Question: What is the use of making an effort trying to hasten one’s correction if one’s path is predetermined: all the corrections he has to go through and all his mistakes and transgressions?

Answer: If you don’t make an effort then you will never go through these mistakes and corrections. Suppose you are in the 3^rd grade and have to go into 4^th grade, but you don’t want to study so you are not allowed to go on to the 4^th grade! What happens then? You will be punished and everyone will treat you badly: your parents, the teachers, and the school administration. You will remain in 3^rd grade for another year until you complete all your assignments and are ready to go on to the next grade.

Have you gained anything by your laziness? So why do you ask about the benefit of your effort? You can’t go on to the next phase unless you complete the previous phase because the vessel isn’t prepared for it. How can you feel it, how can the next level be fulfilled in you?

It’s impossible to go on to the next spiritual level because of “favoritism.” It’s possible in our world, but not in spirituality. It’s because you don’t have vessels to feel, and you need to develop them by yourself, by the ascents and descents, by being confused and encountering problems, by making wrong decisions, by trying to break through by different nonsense, like a child who learns something.

Otherwise you will not advance. These are the laws of nature, so there will be no tolerance here and no forgiveness. Being tolerant is for someone who makes a mistake because he doesn’t know. This is acceptable only among people, but we are under a clear deterministic process in which every step is predetermined.

It’s impossible to go on to the next stage without completing the previous one first, until you are impressed by it, and acquire knowledge and feeling; until it’s engraved in your memory and you are ready to advance with this experience, until you have put together a vessel in which you now feel all the phenomena. Only then can you move forward.

In our world things don’t happen this way; here people find different detours since they don’t understand their states at all. When the Light comes and illuminates our state, we will understand the reasons why it happens this way and for what reason, the benefit in it, and how to relate to it correctly. Until then we act blindly according to our animal instincts.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/30/12, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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