Fundamentals of Kabbalah – 01.20.13
Posted on January 20th, 2013
A Virtual Lesson on Fundamentals of Kabbalah
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A Virtual Lesson on Fundamentals of Kabbalah
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During our studies of the wisdom of Kabbalah, we shouldn’t pay attention to how much we understand in the books of Kabbalah. The Sefirot, Olamot (worlds), and Partzufim aren’t important because we still haven’t attained the spiritual worlds and don’t know what is going on there. We are just juggling words.
However, the work in the group is first and foremost; the connection between us leads to the correct studies in which we, like children, want to rise to the next level. Some kind of mutual desire for the next level attracts the upper Light onto us, the force that develops us.
It develops us to the same extent that we yearn to be above. That is the only law of nature. Thus, we need to operate within this law and not forget that we unite and connect in order to discover within us the connection between us and the upper world, the Creator, in at least at the initial, minimal manifestation.
The great students of Rashbi, before they began to describe their feelings and the discoveries in The Book of the Zohar, felt such a great hatred between them that they were even prepared to burn each other. This means that they were at such a high level of attainment where the left line, their ego, manifested in such a terrible way. We need to grow a lot in order to reach this.
Thus, before us there lie many more great trials, and if we aren’t ready for them in the correct manner, then we simply will leave this way. Some of our friends have already left the way, and more are likely to drop out. Thus, we must always remind each other that we are involved with the Creator who gives us all kinds of states and determines all the relationships between us, along with the hatred, and if we ask, also the love.
The main thing is that the group must take upon itself the commitment to remind each friend before the lesson about what to concentrate on. What was discovered today in our relations concerning one another? Apathy? That’s good, and tomorrow it can be that we will reach such a state where we will begin to feel rejection for each other. This means that we understand that everything comes from the Creator, that purposefully He reveals our ego and the intellect within us! Just a small person is given small opportunities so that he won’t deviate from his path.
If people, leave the group anyway, it’s a sign that it didn’t work enough, that we didn’t explain to others the method of advancing in two lines: “We must advance in spite of the growing ego. In the end, we will rise together with it and transform, on the one hand, from being completely opposite to the Creator according to our developing ego, and on the other hand, to receive His same attributes.”
This means that there will be seemingly two states within us: one that is opposite to the Creator and the second that is similar to the Creator, and together they will stand facing each other, to be more precise, one under the other. Below, there will be the vessel, the Kli, that is completely under Tzimtzum Aleph (the first restriction), and above it, we will build the second vessel, Kli, the attribute of bestowal, and in this way, we will work with it.
[97477]
From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/8/12, Lesson 4
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During the preparation phase, a person who studies Kabbalah cannot use it as an exact science and operate according to facts yet. In this phase, I realize myself in the group, in the study, in the connection with the teacher, in the connection with the Creator, and through the sources. I study authentic Kabbalistic sources that are beyond the Machsom (barrier), although I haven’t transcended it yet. The group in my eyes is also beyond the Machsom, and especially the teacher as well as all the other Kabbalists and the Creator, the universal upper force.
Only I, miserably, am standing here below wanting to be incorporated in them all. I am incorporated in them through the group that has a guide. He doesn’t guide anyone personally; he belongs to everyone. He teaches the group according to Kabbalistic books, which were also written in a group, and all the friends together want to discover the Creator in the general unity.
This is the difference between the wisdom of Kabbalah and other wisdoms: Now I am just like a child trying to behave like a grownup, with the help of different “toys” that his parents have given him. If I do this, I grow correctly; I have a group, books, and a teacher—everything that I need. If I use them the way I should, I will advance.
One of the most effective means is our workshops. We make the most not from the wisdom but through connection; a workshop is an act of connection.
I hear what the friends say, and in my heart and soul I yearn to be with them, to participate in their unity, to feel what they feel, to think what they think. I am incorporated in them, and in that I begin to accept the necessary conditions for the upper Light.
We are ten people sitting together and in between them I find a warm common feeling. Even if I am viewing them on a TV or a computer screen, I am, in fact, looking at the connection, at the mutual cooperation between them. I observe and want to be inside.
Then I begin to perceive the Light that Reforms, the Surrounding Light, that develops my soul.
After several such exercises, I start to feel much closer to the friends, to such an extent that through them I perceive spirituality.
Don’t underestimate the workshops because they are very near unity. It will come sometimes, more and more, and not just in the form of inspiration but as a spiritual experience from which the illumination of the Surrounding Light will become the real Light.
[97418]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/1/13, “Body and Soul”
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Spiritual qualities are given different names: Nefesh (soul), Ruach (spirit), Neshama (soul). We begin to join the spiritual world by receiving the level of Ruach.
Nefesh, is the level of the inanimate of Holiness, when a person cannot move by himself. He comes to the lesson and thinks that everything is fine, that nothing more is required of him: today is the same as yesterday and tomorrow will be the same as today. He doesn’t explode and doesn’t feel sorry that he remains in the same state, but is rather happy that another day has gone by and that everything is fine. He accepts the daily routine.
But it is also an achievement if a person is in the group, trying not to interfere with its advancement, ready to join everyone, and to support it. He supports what the others are doing. But doesn’t show any special initiative; he doesn’t have the level of Ruach. There is no new force growing in him. And so he is called Nefesh de Kedusha (of Holiness).
But he still comes to the lessons and studies. I wish the whole world were on the level of Nefesh of Holiness. Nevertheless, this is called “spirituality” of the level of Ruach. Ruach means that a person already has something he can add. He doesn’t agree to remain on the level of the still nature. If he sees that nothing has changed since yesterday and that it won’t change tomorrow, then for him it is like being dead.
It isn’t just a state of motionless still nature, but a feeling of death, which means that it is the worst state. And so he asks himself, what else he can add. In the meantime, the only thing he can add is his actions. Baal HaSulam says in the article “The Freedom” that a person has no other means to change his state but by choosing the right environment.
A person who chooses a stronger influence of the environment is praiseworthy. It is through this that he can advance and not thanks to good deeds. He cannot do any good deeds, since we are not the masters of our actions. But thanks to having chosen a good environment that can influence him strongly, he begins to move.
In order to start moving by yourself and turning from the inanimate into the vegetative level, to rise from the level of Nefesh to the level of Ruach, to become a spiritual person, I have to constantly evoke those around me and to choose an increasingly stronger environment that will influence me more and more strongly and help me become more spiritual.
By such actions I constantly add from myself to the group and it constantly influences me and I yearn for spirituality, for bestowal, more and more. It turns out that I add to bestowal and finally I attain the next level that is called Neshama.
I act towards all the others and am influenced by them through the group that influences me. Thus, with its help, I constantly influence myself and raise myself. The environment serves as a lever to raise me higher and higher.
I rise through the environment and I want to start evoking myself, to connect to it in the most efficient and practical way. I want to increase my hold on spirituality so as not to be passive under its influence and wait for it to change me, but I want to bestow upon the environment myself, to make it stronger, so that it will influence me more strongly. Then we connect with the environment and raise one another to the spiritual world, this means that I attain the level of Neshama.
The main thing here is not to relax so that “each day is like the other.” There must be constant renewal, every moment, if not, then you will immediately fall to a state of death. It isn’t so easy to rise from the state of death. It is impossible to do it by one leap in order to return to the previous state. It is impossible to return to the same state. We have to make a correction: a new birth and new growth, everything anew.
But if a person doesn’t feel that he has to rise anew, it means that he doesn’t even feel his death, but that he has actually lost his consciousness.
[97342]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/28/13, Writings of Rabash
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The still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature operate instinctively, so humanity, located on the animate level of development, also acts by instinct. And only those who are beginning to aspire to the next level form a community called a spiritual group.
New bodies connect to this group. The “bodies” refer to the desire or the people who begin to be imbued with spiritual ascent, its necessity, its goal.
We are a group, which has a few million people around the world, plus the ones we do not know. They do not have to be in connection with us; it is enough for them to hear and see us on the computer screen. They do not have the inner need to get together and to feel each other closer yet; they should not be disturbed and forced out of their niches. I also was in the same state and understand it completely. A person must ripen.
[97404]
From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/8/12, Lesson 4
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Question: What does it mean to be impressed by the Creator?
Answer: To be impressed by the greatness of the Creator means to be impressed by His creation since we are not able to grasp Him Himself. It is “from Your actions we will know You.”
You are impressed by everything that you discover within you and surrounding you, in all of reality, that in the meantime you don’t connect to yourself and don’t feel that it is you yourself. You are shown only your inner world in a kind of external mirror so that you will study it better. We need to thank the Creator that He gives us the opportunity to see our inner pictures from the outside, and in this way can learn to know ourselves.
If you don’t connect together with the friends, the teacher, and the Creator, then, for certain, you are degrading them. It occurs automatically. If the importance of the Rav, the group, each of the friends, and the Creator aren’t completely equal for you, as something above you, given to you so that you understand yourself and the reality in which you exist, then it turns out that you degrade them.
You can’t just value the Creator. It isn’t the Creator if you don’t connect Him to the teacher, the group, the studies, and to all the components of this concept, the “Creator.” The main thing is to connect all the factors together; otherwise, it is impossible to talk about anything that is real and concrete.
“There is none else beside Him” signifies that all the rest, except for the single point inside me through which I am able to research the reality, is the Creator. And “the point of breakage” of mine that is separated from me was given to me so that by using this breakage, this special act of the Creator, I will get to know myself and Him.
We are both separated by the attribute of severance, purposefully created by the Creator. And only this one point doesn’t belong to the Creator, so that I will invert it into a point of adhesion.
And when I begin to work on this point of separation between us, it suddenly turns into five worlds, a black abyss that I constantly try to skip over. To skip, means to connect above this abyss that separates between us.
[96988]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/31/12, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”
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Question: When we read The Book of Zohar there are parts that I understand and there are parts that I simply cannot put together; how should we work with that? Should we try to understand or should we totally ignore the mind?
Answer: It’s true that there are parts in The Book of Zohar that we can understand and there are parts that we can’t. We have to look for the feeling; it’s a vessel of perception. If the mind can bring you such an emotional impression, then it works as it should. But if it only works as a cold mind, then it’s the wrong direction. It’s not because we don’t respect science or the rational approach, but because the mind is revealed in the vessels of feeling. The vessels come first; they are the basis. The mind can only control what is in them.
So I first have to make sure that I feel, and then from the feeling I should understand what I feel. This is called “the heart understands.” First comes the heart, the vessel. In the vessel we feel and not understand. Afterward, there is a desire; it discovers the Light. But what does it discover, what does it calculate? It calculates what corrections it has performed in order to discover the current feeling.
The corrections I have performed, my actions in order to reveal the current feeling, are called my mind, what I have attained is my feeling. It turns out that the heart understands. The corrections that I have performed in the heart are in the mind since I went through them, have performed them, and I compare, compile, connect, and subtract them like math. I do all that in the heart, in my vessels of feeling.
But now I delve into these corrections with the mind in order to discover a greater depth of the feeling. Thus I multiply my vessels of feeling by 620 times by the mind, by understanding now what corrections I have been through in order to discover the current state.
This means that the feeling without the mind remains on the level of the still nature, and by incorporating the mind in the feeling, I raise the feeling up the levels from Nefesh, to Ruach, to Neshama, to Haya, and to Yechida. There are no changes in the Light itself; it is only by delving into it with my new vessels of perception that I discover NRNHY in it. The Light itself is Nefesh.
[96580]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/26/12, The Zohar
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