Exerting yourself like “an ox to the burden and a donkey to the load” means working without feeling any taste in the work. I read The Book of Zohar because the doctor says that it works like a drug that will help me recover. Usually it is unpleasant and quite difficult. It is in contrast to my bodily desires and it isn’t to my taste, but the doctor has prescribed it and so I do it.

I don’t wish to feel pleasure in my mind and heart by reading The Zohar. Although reading The Zohar brings me joy, I am not glad because I seem to understand, to feel, and to follow the plot like in an adventure book, following the journeys of the great sages like following the great explorers of new lands and continents. I am glad only because I accept this reading as a medicine.

It isn’t the reading itself that brings me joy but the process I go through. First, I follow the orders of the sages, which means that I bow before them. Second, I have heard that it brings the Creator joy and pleasure. Finally, I correct myself that way and come closer to the Creator!

If you delve into the text, it means that you operate in your desire to receive by trying to fill it somehow by your egoistic heart and mind. Thus, you rob the intensity of your study, the intensity of the state. However, eventually, things will turn the other way and there will come a time when you suddenly understand that you have nothing. This egoistic sorrow will make you understand that you have been studying the wrong way.

This approach isn’t 100% accurate since how can I try to understand what The Book of Zohar is about with my corporeal mind? If you are a scientist, you study this world with the tools that you have, with your emotions and your mind, trying to understand it in your mind. This is how science operates in this world and it is called “reason.”

However, the spiritual world is on a different level. It is in a dimension where your emotions and your mind have no control of anything. You cannot even imagine what it is like. It is on a totally different frequency. It is as if you receive a frequency of 100 kilo hertz while someone else works on a frequency of 100 mega hertz. These are totally different frequencies; one is long, and the other is short. They cannot communicate and cannot generate any common forms.

How can you speak about a world that you cannot perceive? What can you hold onto? Nothing! However, you were given books that you don’t understand at all and cannot understand. You will not understand anything unless you reach the level of the book. This level of quality is achieved by changing all of your senses and your mind. Everything is changed in you, and you receive new emotions and mind, instead of the old ones. Before that you have no connection with the book called “Torah,” except for its unique quality.
[111650]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 7/02/13, The Zohar

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Question: What should the correct intention be when we read The Book of Zohar? Should it be permanent or variable?

Answer: As a rule, it is desirable to maintain a permanent intention when one envisages oneself as being united with others, having one common desire and sharing one joint aspiration. Within this integrated desire, aspiration, one reveals the entirety of internal attributes of one’s relationships with others to the extent of the level of their connectedness and their chance to divulge all possible forms of the connection through the mutual bestowal that The Book of Zohar writes about.

After all, with the help of various metaphors and through the Kabbalistic terminology (such as “Havakuk, Atik, Hamnuna-Saba…”) The Zohar explains to us the details of attainment that are associated with our connection. There is nothing besides it.

At some point, there was one spiritual vessel, kli, a solid ten Sefirot that had no dissimilarities among them. After shattering, we began distinguishing among various alien parts that now are separated and distanced from one another and that try to reconnect. We discover numerous types of connection. The Zohar tells us about the types of connection. There is not a single word in The Book that describes anything but this.

Therefore, by attempting to connect with the group, the Creator, and spirituality, we tend to reveal what particular forms of connection there are, how they manifest themselves, and what they represent. Maybe, we’ll manage to disclose at least some of these connections… This is what is called “the intention.”

In other words, in our effort to unite, we tend to reveal what the right forms of connection among us are. Then, we figure out their names—“Havakuk, Rabbi Hamnuna-Saba…” —it doesn’t matter which ones. Besides, it’s not that important what particular words or letters we look at since behind them we should be distinguishing just the attributes, the ways they connect with each other, why exactly these particular letters, words, or titles are used.

We won’t look at words or letters, but rather at the properties and internal aspects of their connection. Why are these connections so important to us? The answer is: Connections among detached parts allow us to attain spirituality (the Creator.) Through them, we start revealing one force. This is what gives us the ultimate delight: the attainment.
[111369]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/3/13, The Book of Zohar – “Introduction” 

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All the Kabbalah books are called the books of the Torah since they were written by people who attained spirituality and are beyond the Machsom (barrier) that separates us from the spiritual world. The only thing you need from these books is the unique quality in them.

A unique quality means that all your current attributes, your emotions, your mind, your quickness, and your intelligence, all your human attributes, have nothing to do with spiritual attainment and, therefore, are useless here. You can be the most foolish or most clever, but it is totally irrelevant. You can study all day like a fool, not understanding a word and not even knowing the language they were written in, but it makes no difference, and it is just like knowing the whole book by heart.

There is only one thing that can help you: if you use this book as a unique quality. A unique quality is the special connection that you can establish with these pages. However, how do you operate any forces through these pages? You don’t know. It is because you don’t know yourself. You don’t know what these pages are. You don’t know the upper system. However, the moment you perceive the text as a unique quality, you operate a certain system that you don’t know.

Then, the system begins to operate on you! However, it has nothing to do with your emotions or your mind. You can cry or laugh as you read and it means nothing. All you must do is operate the unique quality that is in this book. It is a special condition that connects you to some upper force.

You don’t know what this force is, where it is concealed, or how it operates on you and influences you. You simply use it as a unique quality. You don’t have to know anything except for the term “unique quality.”

Even if you study everything that is written here by heart, it will not bring you any closer to spirituality. On the contrary, it only will push you backward. As it is written, “The view of landlords is opposite from the view of Torah.” Wisdom without intention doesn’t help a person advance in spirituality since it has no unique quality. This is the reason that we don’t judge by the quantity of knowledge, but rather operate “above reason” by trying to draw the force that is above our emotions and our mind.
[111647]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 7/02/13, The Zohar

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Question: How important for spiritual advancement are the physical actions of women in a group?

Answer: They are 100% important because nobody can take physical actions from you. All your thoughts are self-deception. All that you transfer through the head or the heart is total ego, the physical actions are real actions.

Invest yourselves even though you have no feelings or negative feelings. Show everyone through your actions and deeds that the goal is important to you so others around you must see this! This is very important! Tell them that you want to see that they are purposeful because you depend upon them.

Question: I said this, but they don’t listen.

Answer: In that case, I must turn to the men: The desires of women are like this, the yearnings are like that, we must not take advantage under any circumstances!

If you reject the desire of a woman, you need to realize that you won’t attain anything. I say this with complete seriousness! We learn this from the correspondence between “Zeir Anpin” and “Malchut.” If, as representatives of “Partzuf Zeir Anpin,” you reject the desires of “Malchut,” then what kind of serious attainment can you be talking about?! Nothing will succeed for you!

You must feel the desire of women and what women expect from you very acutely! You need to expect this pressure because it is specifically the desire of women, called “Mei Nukvin,” which is essential for ascent!

Therefore, if men “don’t listen,” this is very bad and is the most severe accusation that can be directed at them, and not only from women.
[111201]
From the Convention in Krasnoyarsk 6/13/13, Lesson 3

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Question: Is spiritual advancement possible without having a deep knowledge of psychology?

Answer: Basically the Kabbalists did not learn psychology, after all they began to teach it around 50 – 70 years ago. At the beginning of the last century psychology as a science didn’t even exist. And even today it is difficult to call it a science because it is impossible to learn and to investigate the human while we are found on the present beastly level of development. To be able to investigate and learn something, we need to be one level higher.

Therefore it is possible to perceive the human and his psychology, which is to say, the structure of his soul, only within the wisdom of Kabbalah. Psychology is the soul. Who can learn and investigate the soul? Everything that we learn are all kinds of bestial reactions: either instinctive or the result of the influence of the environment or the human society on each other.

Psychology as a science ended around 20 years ago. We stopped understanding each other and therefore nobody can seriously be involved with it. Psychologists talk about this themselves. Since the beginning of the nineties of the last century, no new discoveries have been made in it, not even dependency has been defined, the human has become unrecognizable, one person cannot know another person.

For this sake we need to rise to a new level. Through learning the wisdom of Kabbalah it is possible to understand human psychology, his soul, because everything is established there. How is it possible to understand a person if we don’t know how he is managed, from where, what for, for what need, for what purpose does he go. The goal is what establishes all of his responses.

We see the person only in his everyday worldly life when he only organizes himself to live the seventy years of his life. This is not psychology, rather a normal level of animal existence. Therefore, only by learning the wisdom of Kabbalah is it possible to learn psychology.
[110656]
From the Conventions in Krasnoyarsk 6/16/13, Lesson 5

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Question: We go through various stages. Earlier you talked about the need to study the Kabbalistic sources, and now you pay more attention to integral education…

Answer: I do not deny what I once said. I see in this the sequence of our movement towards the creation of the common Kli (vessel). There is no contradiction.

I come to the class in the morning and do not know what we will study, not the topic, nothing; it’s not important to me; in principle, we study the same thing. The same material is repeated all the time, although, for example, Rabash has a huge number of articles, many of which we haven’t opened or read. The Study of the Ten Sefirot contains whole volumes that we have never studied either, and so on.

Moreover, apart from the works of Baal HaSulam and Rabash, there are many interesting books on Kabbalah that we do not touch. We just have no time for this, and frankly, we do not need it. We have to be involved in attainment instead of studying all the Kabbalistic literature that was created before us. It’s impossible to learn all of it. There are dozens, even hundreds, of true Kabbalistic sources, but not all the Kabbalists could present material well, although they were great in the attainment of the upper world. However, presenting materials in an accessible manner requires other qualities. Even Moses talked about his difficulties because he could not express himself well.

This is why practically we study only the most necessary. And I rely on the students in this. They select the material and establish the external form of the lesson, but the inner content of the lesson is going according to a certain line. So, there is no deviation.
[109948]
From the 1^st Preparation to the Convention in Krasnoyarsk 6/13/13

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Question: The wisdom of Kabbalah has used four languages throughout history: the language of the Bible, the language of Halacha (Jewish Law), the language of the Haggadah, and the language of Kabbalah. Can we say that the language of integral education is the fifth new language that we use in order to communicate with the world?

Answer: No. It’s more like the language of Kabbalah, adapted for “babies.”  It’s because we speak to people about love, connection, submission, about the collective force of bestowal that is revealed in the connection between us. This force is revealed from a higher level and dwells among us just like wisdom for the masses. We explain the psychology of integral education using today’s terminology behind which there is no other but the wisdom of Kabbalah: the Sefirot, Partzufim, the worlds, ascents and descents, mutual connection, Reshimot (reminiscences), etc.

Question: If in the past it used to be enough for me to study the wisdom of Kabbalah and to connect with the friends and the group, do I also have to study this style of Kabbalistic language today?

Answer: Yes. It is the uniqueness of integral education. Similarly, we explain to children and adults the same things in different ways. The connection with the world goes through a different level of communication and we have to learn it.

It’s the Light that Reforms that corrects everyone. It doesn’t come to the masses if we don’t participate in the process. If the world starts connecting independently, it will speed up the pace of advancing along the path of suffering.

For example, if Europe begins to strengthen the union that it needs so badly today, it will lead to Nazi regimes, and local communes that abuse others. But if we work on the unity of Europe, then it will take on a spiritual form, according to the rule of “love thy friend as thyself.” Therefore, we mustn’t give the world time to start the egoistic connection. Only if we initiate the process of connection among them will it lead to a positive result.

Question: How can we do that?

Answer: By using the media, through our groups, and mainly through the general network that connects all of us “below the surface.” Through it, we will influence people and they will begin to understand that we have the right method of correction and no one else.

In fact, accepting integral education is the criterion that a person is ready to be corrected. This is the fulfillment of the wisdom of Kabbalah, as it says in the articles “Matan Torah” (The Giving of the Torah) and “The Arvut” (Mutual Guarantee). So our role is to become teachers, a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation” with regards to the nations of the world. This is actually the field where we perform our external actions—”a field blessed by the Creator.”
[109551]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/03/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: Is physical contact important for a student who rarely meets the Kabbalist teacher and other friends?

Answer: The point is that studying by correspondence or virtually is a new thing. Usually studying by correspondence in a university is not considered a very serious thing.

When it comes to the wisdom of Kabbalah it is even a more acute question, since there must be some contact between the teacher and the student at least once in a lifetime. It allows them to connect initially and then to already act from a distance, by developing the feeling of the contact between them. But if there has never been any contact, it’s very complicated.

After all, witnesses are those who see and not those who hear; even in court or anywhere else people ask, “Have you seen or heard?” So a true witness is someone who has actually seen things.

Besides, during the meetings there is contact between me and the audience, while the people in the audience also connect amongst themselves trying to be one whole and it’s then that we can reveal the upper state. But when a person studies virtually and is somewhere all alone or with a few friends, it’s not enough.

So massive gatherings where I am also present should have a very strong impression which cannot actually be felt virtually. Therefore, I must go to conventions. There is no other way; that’s how it should be.

We mustn’t underestimate physical contact, since the coefficient of the benefit of what this action leads to is great. It’s for this reason that our world was created in a physical form, since it’s from this level that the spiritual contact begins, so let’s make the best of it and let’s all meet.
[109247]
From the Virtual Lesson 6/2/2013

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Rabash, “A Prayer of Many”: With that, we can interpret the words of the holy Zohar, which advises those people with an inner demand, who cannot accept the state they are in because they do not see any progress in the work of God, and believe what is written (Deuteronomy 30:20), “To love the Lord your God, to listen to His voice, and to cleave unto Him; for this is your life and the length of your days.” They see that they lack love and Dvekut [adhesion/cleaving] and they do not feel the life in the Torah or know how to find counsel for their souls to come to feel in their organs that which the text tells us.

The advice is to ask for the whole collective. In other words, everything that one feels that he is lacking and asks fulfillment for, he should not say that he is an exception, meaning that he deserves more than what the collective has. Rather, “I dwell among my own people,” meaning I am asking for the entire collective because I wish to come to a state where I will have no care for myself whatsoever, but only for the Creator to have contentment. Therefore, it makes no difference to me if the Creator takes pleasure in me or can receive the pleasure from others.

In other words, he asks of the Creator to give us such an understanding, which is called, “entirely for the Creator.” It means that he will be certain that he is not deceiving himself that he wants to bestow upon the Creator, that perhaps he is really thinking only of his own self-love, meaning that he will feel the delight and pleasure. Therefore, he prays for the collective.

A person begins to search for the meaning of life above the ordinary, earthly interests: food, sex, family, money, fame, knowledge. He does not even wait until the final outcome of his earthly quest to become aware of its worthlessness, but believes the opinion of the environment under which influence he develops. And if society has already verified these values and become disenchanted in them, then a person does not need to check them; he immediately switches from these earthly goals to the next, higher goals.

So, he begins to question, “What’s the meaning of life? For what do we live? Is there any reason to continue living except for the animal fear of death? Will this life came to nothing, or might it be an opportunity to continue to exist for some eternal purpose?”

All these questions lead him to the wisdom of Kabbalah if he is lucky. Besides it, nothing can give him the answer, and if humanity keeps on developing and judging itself, then its condition will not be enviable. It will not find an answer anywhere else. This is why the use of drugs is on the rise. What can those millions who are unemployed do while at the same time they are wondering about the meaning of life? They are pushed on both sides, despairing because life leaves them no opportunities to enjoy it and because they refuse in advance to look for those opportunities that according to general opinion bring no contentment.

But the person in whom this true question about the meaning of life has been awakened, which is related to the spiritual quest that is beyond the usual householder’s interests in food, sex, family, money, fame, and knowledge, he must find the answer to this question. That is, he wants to look beyond this life into its root to understand where it comes from, who controls it, where it flows, and to what form of existence it is intended to lead us.

These people who are involved in finding the root of this life gather into a special “active” society. They not only develop due to their environment, but also develop it themselves. That is, they join the environment to do mutual work, becoming an incubator that accelerates a person’s development and points him in a certain direction. A human being seemingly does not want to rely on what nature allows him to harvest in a natural way (eggs, chicken, meat, grains, fruits, and vegetables) but creates favorable conditions artificially, meaning he builds an artificial environment. And then he can approximately know what produce he will get.

He can adjust the temperature in the incubator to get more eggs and the humidity in a greenhouse to get a larger harvest. In the same way, he can create a favorable environment in which to grow himself. Affecting the environment, he can regulate the direction of his development and its final goals. For many generations, we have taken the Kabbalists’ advice to speed up our development through a specific environment, without waiting until all of humanity comes to the same understanding albeit by the path of earthly suffering.

In this specific society there are principles, “Each shall help the other” and “God dwells among His people.” This means that it’s possible to establish a connection with the Creator only through connection with the environment that will direct us to the Creator. This society is built on the basis of equality and unity, mutual guarantee, as one man with one heart. And then within that unified heart, we will reveal the Creator.

That is why, all our work is to adjust ourselves correctly, like a musical instrument, so that it’s not out of tune but seeks the Creator truly. If we come together with this goal and there is the Reflected Light between us, meaning an altruistic attitude, mutual guarantee, concern for each other building to love, then inside it we reveal the force of the Creator to the extent of the strength of this connection. Thus, we go through 125 degrees from the very first, initial connection to complete unity with each other.

Thus, we adjust our vessel to the sensation of the Creator and begin to feel Him inside ourselves. The Direct Light is revealed in the Surrounding Light, giving us a sensation of life in the upper world: in the field of the force of bestowal instead of the force of reception. And the only thing that is required is to correct one’s vessel that will lead us to corrected relations.
[108813]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/31/13

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Baal HaSulam, “The Peace”: Rabbi Akiva depicts two kinds of people: the first are the “open store” type, which regard this world as an open store without a shopkeeper. He says about them, “The book is open and the hand writes.” Meaning, although they do not see that there is an account, all their actions are nonetheless written in the book, as explained above. This is done by the law of development imprinted in Creation against humanity’s will, where the deeds of the wicked themselves necessarily instigate the good deeds, as we have shown above.

The second type of people is called “those who want to borrow.” They take the shopkeeper into consideration, and when they take something from the store, they only take it as a loan. They promise to pay the shopkeeper the desired price, meaning to attain the goal by it. And he says about them, “All who wish to borrow may come and borrow.”

Question: How can a person check what type he is?

Answer: According to his intention, according to what he wants to get from the study.

First, if I am like the guest who wants to thank the host, I have to imagine the next state. I stand before the “store” or in front of the “table with the refreshments” which is actually the group. In other words, the “table” is the means by which I can receive the presents from the host and also give Him presents. The group is like the table that is set and prepared for me by the host, so that I will taste from what He has prepared for me and thus bestow upon Him. Therefore it says: “everything is prepared for the meal.”

Question: So what is the calculation that I make here?

Answer: There are two options:

• I approach the table without even asking who has set it and I begin to taste the refreshments and fill myself.
• I approach the table but first I ask who the host is and only then take something.

This is how people differ in their attitude towards the refreshments on the table, or even in their attitude towards the host. But still they take everything for themselves. There are those who enjoy the refreshments that the host has prepared for them. For them it isn’t just refreshments but refreshments that were served by the upper force, by the Creator: “How nice of Him to have prepared this whole world for us and also the next world, Heaven…” This is how people use all of creation.

For them the Creator is a source of pleasure that they can enjoy. They want the Creator to protect them and to benefit them. The creation was given to us by the Creator in order to help us resemble Him, yet people see it as a means to enjoy.

This brings up some difficult questions of course: “Why does the Creator send us such sufferings? Perhaps we are guilty of something? Or perhaps the troubles don’t come from Him? Could there be someone else? Perhaps it is just by chance?…”

But there are also other people, and if I belong to them I stand before the table and admit that “there is none else besides Him” and that everything is meant only so that I will try to resemble Him by using my own powers. Then I relate to everything in a perfect manner. I understand that everything depends on me alone and that the troubles are revealed because by that I see that I am not corrected. But if I correct myself everything will be fine.

Question: But how can I know that I have to pay for the merchandise in the “store?”

Answer: If I am already attracted to what is beyond the “store,” if I have the point in the heart, I come to a group, to friends, to a teacher, and the books that tell me everything. It’s because I have a point of truth in which I can understand that there are no coincidences. The starting point of honesty has been revealed in me and I cannot put up with a world that is so “dirty” and lowly. I cannot put up with it internally…

But there are many in whom the seed of honesty has been planted and they still put up with the daily routine as a result of their upbringing, their experience in life and different obligations, and as a result they sink into the swamp they are unable to come out of…. Others who take this world for granted feel that everything is just fine and they only need to find their place under the sun.

We are looking for people who have the point of honesty and who cannot put up with the way that the world is currently. Those who yearn for spirituality belong to this type. Although they lead their lives like everyone else, they are in a constant inner conflict, unable to accept what is going on.
[108394]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/24/13, “The Peace”

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