Our attitude to the neighbor, to the environment in the world where we were born, which we feel inside of our egoism, is called the preparation period. When we go from love for the environment or love for friends to love for the Creator, this is already the time of the real work, when we acquire the qualities of bestowal.

As a result of acquiring these altruistic qualities and going through the degree of bestowal for the sake of bestowal, we finally attain love. But since this path leads to the attainment of love for the Creator, that is how the entire path is called.

And even though today we are working in our realm, in our world, with egoistic qualities, this is still considered work on love for friends, for the neighbor, even though all of it is very far from real love.

Love for the Creator, love for the creatures, and love for friends are the same thing because it is directly opposite to love for oneself. That is why it requires so many qualitative changes inside of a person. But the value of love for friends is very high because it allows us to acquire additional desires and sensations, to reveal the true reality we are in, meaning the Creator.

To the extent that a person values the Creator and the final goal, that is how important he considers the means leading to it, such as the exercises in the group, with the friends, and the studies because without these means he could never attain the goal.

On one hand, this entire world is imaginary and there is no one around me: not the still or the vegetative levels, nor animals or people. All of these are my own desires, which divided into these parts and therefore present the Upper Light to me in this way.

This is also how I must treat the group – as if nothing exists besides me. And everyone I feel around me: the environment, the group, the teacher, and even the Creator, are inside of me, in my sensation. I received this illusion that everything is outside so I could learn what the sensation of the neighbor means: so I could feel him, have relationships with him, and attain bestowal and love.

If a person perceives all of reality this way, then he does not err. Clearly, he still has to discern new details all the time and supplement the common picture with them, but he is already on the right path.
[62050]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/29/11, Writings of Rabash

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When we try to connect, we start feeling that we lack some kind of help from Above because we cannot do it on our own. We can neither connect nor synchronize our movements, but this revelation gives us knowledge of the One Who can do this for us. It can only be the upper force!

And then we reveal the need for the upper one and the place in which He has to act in us. It always works this way in the spiritual world: I work, applying more and more effort, and at the end I reveal a “minus.” And from this minus I discover the “plus” that possibly has what I lack.

I always reveal a lack, a vessel, a desire, and against it I reveal the power, the Light, which can do what I couldn’t. No matter how much I tried, I didn’t manage. So I arrive at the conclusion that I’m unable to do it, but at the same time I see Who can.

That’s why our movements always start off in the negative direction and cause disappointment, tiredness, and anger in us. From the experience of our whole life we can’t understand how this can be. In our egoism we always used to act differently: He who makes an effort wins, succeeds, and receives a reward.

And about the spiritual world it is said: “I labored and found,” and not that I “won,” “earned,” or “stole.” This means that I didn’t achieve this using my own power when I start an action and finish it.

Here it works differently. Thanks to my efforts I reach a certain limit, when nothing turns out right and I fall into despair, leave it, and don’t want anything, feeling completely disappointed, and only then, if I move one millimeter ahead, I reveal that there is a force that can do this!

And this force hides itself deliberately, until I reach a state of total despair. Baal HaSulam writes in his letter: “There isn’t a happier moment in a person’s life than when he reaches the limit of his own powers and sees that there is no success” as only then can he raise a prayer and cry out. He will know Who he has to address—only then will it be revealed to him.

Furthermore, he knows that he doesn’t have a choice: He must cry out. And in reality, nothing more is required but this cry.
[61231]
From Lesson 2, Arvut Convention at the Arava Desert 11/18/2011

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“Researchers at University of California, Berkeley found similarity rules when people find themselves drawn to potential romantic partners, the UK’s Daily Mail reported.

In what they refer to as ‘matching hypothesis,’ men and women fall for the potential partners of their own or similar league and desirability. Although personality and common interests play a factor, like is drawn to like when it comes to instant attraction.

“The researchers studied the popularity of 3,000 heterosexual users of a dating site in which popularity was measured by the number of opposite-sex individuals who had sent unsolicited messages to a user.

“High- popularity users contacted other popular ones at a greater rate than would be expected by chance, the study found. Similarly, the less popular users of the site also contacted other low-popularity users.

“As a follow-up study, researchers found a similar result where potential mates seek someone in their own league for a date. ‘Individuals on the dating market will assess their own self-worth and select partners whose social desirability approximately equals their own,’ the researchers concluded.”

My Comment: Kabbalah talks about the general law of the world: the law of equivalence of form. Now this has been discovered by scientists.
[61354]

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According to the laws of interaction between the Light and the vessel, we have to go through the gravest misfortunes on the path toward the goal. And that’s where the science of Kabbalah comes to our rescue, helping us avoid having these blows come down on our animate flesh and instead transferring them to the human level, to the height we should be on.

Today I am receiving blows from three levels: still, vegetative, and animate. They are whipping me along on the human level. Stated differently, I am being pushed from behind by a bad force, evil, suffering. And I can only obtain one means to help me, a yearning, an attraction forward, coming from the wonderful goal that illuminates my path like the sun. In that case, I will still experience suffering, but it will be the sweet suffering of love.

It is easier to bear this kind of sorrow because it is caused by a longing for the good future. I feel disappointed and fall into despair, but I do not run away because I understand that these pains have to reach a specific, total measure (Σ), similar to how penny after penny eventually adds up to a big sum.

I accumulate great pressure within, a great desire to make a leap toward the goal. I need a gap between me today and the corrected me. And this gap has to be felt as suffering, caused by the difference between who I am and who I should be. This is unavoidable. This abyss has to open up inside of me, but there is absolutely no need for it to be created by wars, diseases, and other disasters.

The real correction is just starting now, when humanity is starting to come together, to merge as one man with one heart, either unwillingly, under a torrent of negative forces from behind, or with the help of the Light that flows ahead. It is impossible to describe how these two paths differ. After all, we have to open up Malchut of the world of Infinity, either in the darkness of inconceivable suffering which purifies our egoism, or in the Light that reforms.

Thus, everything comes down to how we will experience the abyss separating us from correction. We can overcome the path willingly, by agreeing with it, by building an environment that supports us; or we can ignore the solution as long as possible until the pressure from behind forces us to understand from where, why, and for what the disasters are happening, which we cannot escape no matter how much we try.

A person may need decades to get smarter and reveal the Light. And that is why the science of Kabbalah was given to us. But one way or another, this gap between the Creator and creation, between the receiver and the Giver, has to be felt inside of us to the fullest.
[60295]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/9/11, Writings of Baal HaSulam “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”

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In order to get a slight idea of the difference between corporeality and spirituality, imagine that the world is a shop you have entered to buy something for yourself. And next to you there is a shop for newborns where you enter to buy something for your baby.

It’s clear that you will feel completely different in that store and will have a completely different attitude to the purchases. You will do it with a thought of bestowal. You will think only about making the other (the baby) feel good because by nature you love him more than yourself. You will always choose what this other one needs with this intention, whether it’s diapers or baby formula. Everything will be aimed only at the baby and how to give him the best possible thing.

Maybe you are able to think that way about someone other than your baby, such as your friends, the entire society, or even all of humanity, or perhaps even about the Creator. This depends on the height of your attitude to others.

This is the difference of working for your own sake and working for others. It’s just difficult for us to understand what the force of faith means, which lets us feel the importance and necessity of thinking not about ourselves, but about others, something we did not do before. In our world there are examples of that, but they are egoistic and we care about the neighbor only when we feel that we need him.

So how can we do the same thing, but against our egoism, above it, and build our attitude to the neighbor upon constant nullification of ourselves? We can understand this when it comes to the people close to us. If we love them, then we even experience pleasure by limiting ourselves for their sake. That is how we measure the force of our love and bestowal: by how much we give to them and take care of them.
[60136]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/08/11, Writings of Rabash

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Question: How does one bestow upon the world?

Answer: You take the desires of everyone and fill them as much as you can. That is called love. That is the act of love.

Question: Which desires do I take?

Answer: If you love them, you fill only their necessary desires. You won’t buy unhealthy food for your child. You buy him something tasty, but the main thing is that it is healthy.

Question: But what if he specifically wants fast food?

Answer: If you love, you can’t fill the desires that are bad for him. After all, you wouldn’t give your son a knife to play with if he asked for one. Isn’t that the same thing as fast food?

A true relationship, a real love, hardens you. The pity you feel now is actually egoistic pity; you feel sorry for yourself, not him. If you really had pity for him, you would give only what is healthy for him, only that which benefits his development and nothing else.

The child will get used to this very quickly. If you behave this way from the beginning, he won’t even ask you for things that are harmful.
[58815]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/26/2011, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”

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Question: Everyone recognizes and respects the principle of love for the neighbor as yourself. But in the new era, how can we turn people to love instead of hatred and separation?

Answer: To do this we gradually transition from the egoistic intention to the altruistic one. Every person wants to be loved the way he is. In other words, love is above all calculations. Someone appears handsome to me and someone else appears ugly. Someone appears good in my eyes and someone bad. Yet, if I love someone, then I love them as I would my own child, no matter what he is like.

It’s just that we love our children naturally, whereas here we need love that towers above our nature. It is written, “Every person denies others according to his own defect.” If you see a defect in someone, it means that defect is inside of you.

However, we are initially incapable of attaining unconditional love because by our nature we hate one another. I always look for flaws in others because this makes me feel better and higher than them, which is already pleasant by itself. When searching for self-gratification, I have to see flaws in others that put them beneath me at least in some regard. If someone appears higher than me and I cannot justify it, then I fall into depression.

So how can we attain love? First of all, “loving” means being imbued with the desires of the neighbor and being ready to fulfill them. Right now I am ready to use and exploit the neighbor, but I am told, “Use yourself in order to fulfill him.” Yet this is completely opposite to my nature. I can never climb up that wall.

That is why Hillel the sage made the challenge easier by putting it this way, “Don’t do to another what you yourself hate.” Be neutral, give up hate and love for the neighbor. By carrying out this condition, you will overcome the first half of the path.

You will thereby detach from your egoism, from the previous desires. You will give up the ill-intended plans and intentions. From now on you no longer want to harm your neighbor, either by mistake or deliberately. You don’t want to use him because it always harms him. And even though you still think that you can profiteer off your neighbor, you already begin to understand that you will end up a loser yourself. What’s good for him is good for you, and what’s bad for him is bad for you. You already see that both of you are connected together by a global network which is becoming revealed in the world today. That is why you have no other choice but not to harm one another, at the very least.

This is the first phase: You turn off your Malchut and raise it to Bina, to the small state, Katnut, Hafetz Hesed. And then you have to continue on the path to love.

All of these phases are actualized on the condition that you advance “from Lo Lishma to Lishma,” if in your egoism you nevertheless aspire to the altruistic goal. “It’s worthwhile for me to treat my neighbor well,” you reason. “After all, we are interconnected and there is no other choice….” And eventually, as you tread this path, you evoke the Light that reforms, which corrects your mind and feeling.

And then you understand, “I have to love others, but not because I will feel good and not because we are in one system, no matter how global and integral it may be.” That is not what matters. You are simply enchanted by the quality of bestowal in and of itself. You don’t know what makes it so good, but you feel that besides bestowal, you don’t want anything else. You do not fulfill yourself and do not anticipate pleasure. You bestow out of awe, reverence, greatness, out of recognizing bestowal as such in the pure form. Now it is everything to you.
[58899]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/27/11, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”

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Baal HaSulam, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”: “…a great rule in the Torah” … the verse of “Love thy friend as thyself.” It is difficult to understand how such a statement can contain the sum-total of all the Torah? At most it can be the rule (the collective) of the part of the Torah and texts that relate to the relationships between man and man. But how can you include the greater part of the Torah, which concerns work between man and God in the verse, “Love thy friend as thyself”?

We do not know how to use this principle. Everyone is sure that they love their neighbors. As for specialists in the humanities—philosophers, political scientists, social scientists, and psychologists—they also reason about love for the neighbor as if it were easy to implement.

In general, the notion of “love” only confuses people. They cannot separate it from the natural, instinctive, hormonal attraction that is inherent to the animate and even vegetative kingdoms. In man, who has an evil inclination, this attraction acquires even greater scope, yet it still bears no relation to real love.

“Loving the neighbor” means fulfilling his desire while not receiving any direct or indirect benefit from that. It is aimed entirely at the well-being of the neighbor, while I am like an external part of the universe, a “tube” coming out of a power station that generates all the pleasures. This tube is not part of the action in any way. It does not need anything for itself. It is just a conductor.

But how can I become such a selfless conductor if I am entirely imbued by feelings, if I want to enjoy myself? After all, unlike a tube, I have my own life.

Moreover, I am told that this rule is “the general principle of the Torah.” That is, there is nothing but this principle in the Torah. Yet the Torah describes the most diverse areas of life. Could it really be that they are all connected to the neighbor?

If so, then how can I bring all of the facets of my reality, including my relationship with the Creator, into my relationships with other people? Won’t I be narrowing things down too much? How can the entire world with all of its diversity be squeezed into several psychological models?

Question: So how is it possible to love the neighbor in the modern, global world?

Answer: In reality, there is no means in our world that could allow us to correct our egoism. Only the Light that reforms is capable of that.

After all, only the Light and the vessel exist in reality. The force of bestowal (“existence from existence”) created a point of reception (“existence from absence”), and there is nothing else besides them.

Next, the force of bestowal influences the force of reception, leading it to altruistic actions until these two forces become equal to one another: the force of bestowal gives, while the force of reception receives in order to give. In the end, they end up in unity and adhesion.

But that is not enough because the state of Malchut of infinity was created by the upper one. It was simply “lowered down” to creation. The desire that was created by the Light received the “full package” from it, including the altruistic intention, and it lives to its content in union like a “dummy.” Having emerged from absence, it cannot make any independent action and it looks into the mouth of the giver: “Do you want altruism? Go ahead. Do you want egoism? Go ahead. You can have anything you wish.” That is how the matter of creation is built.

But in that case, it cannot be called a full-fledged creation. After all, the Light performed all the actions to it. So who is unified with the Creator in the end? For now—no one. An independent being did not emerge yet. So how can it be formed?

For that the receiving desire has to be brought to total opposition to the Creator in every regard, and then it has to be given the opportunities and the means to attain itself separate from bestowal and to acquire the forces for correction. A very great preparation is necessary to make creation, and it begins precisely here, from our world. This is why the spiritual worlds descended and why the material development unfolded until the earthly evolution brought us to modernity. And now, we are starting to gradually gain awareness of ourselves and our state.

This is the source of self-awareness, whose criterion is the Light, the Creator, the human society that is already demonstrating its global, integral facets. This causes you to experience discomfort: “Something here isn’t right. Something doesn’t make sense.” That is how the realization of evil emerges, opening up the path to correction before us.

We won’t understand what is happening and what we are facing right away. Humanity is only stepping onto this path. However, this also does not involve anything more than a combination of two forces: reception and bestowal. Within their mixture we must always look for the operating mechanisms. Like inter-atomic actions, they will show us what kind of unity is possible at this stage and which qualities are inherent to it.

You are learning to connect two forces and you must always reach the right formula of their balance. If you attain balance, it means you are on the right path and you are forming yourself in the right line. In reality, all of the scientific formulas describe equivalence of form. That is what we study and attain in nature: similarity and balance of all of its parts.
[58818]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/26/11, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”

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Question: Why do we say that the system is perfect if I am missing in it?

Answer: The system of the worlds that expanded from the world of Infinity to our world is perfect. Only the Light is missing in it. The system is in a small state (Katnut), which is the minimal Light necessary for existence; it is only filled with the Light of Hassadim (Mercy).

If we receive the desire to live, we have to be incorporated in this system. We make up Malchut, the last part of the system. There is only one point in Malchut through which we can enter the system and bring our desire into it. It isn’t about the egoistic desire of a certain individual, but rather our common desire. In other words, it is the desire to bestow.

If I bring the desire to bestow into Malchut, if my friends and I want to become as one man, then this desire to be a single whole is not the personal desire of each one, but our common desire. This is called the “prayer of the many,” and it is received in Malchut.

In this case, it becomes the tenth Sefira of all the ten Sefirot, before which there are nine Sefirot, five worlds. We make up the last point, the Malchut of all the worlds. This is where we bring our desire to connect, meaning to bestow, and thus we activate the first nine Sefirot, the attributes of bestowal. They begin to influence us according to our aspiration for bestowal, and thus they correct us.

The last Sefira, Malchut, becomes the desire to bestow and enlivens the first nine Sefirot and all the upper worlds. It unites with them in a general merger into one system.

This is how we enter the upper system and get to know it. Then we actually begin to attain everything that we read about in The Study of Ten Sefirot: Atik, Arich Anpin, their actions, Aba ve Ima, and ZON that ascend and descend, the interaction between the different parts of the spiritual Partzufim, and drops of Light that trickle (Mazalin) from Above . We see all these relationships between our spiritual roots, get to know them, and can already start to activate them based on our knowledge of the system.

I become familiar with everything in it. It’s as though I see that here is the supermarket, the bank, myself, my family, my relatives, the distant ones, and so on. This is how I begin learn about the upper system and advance in it.

Then the Kabbalah books become manuals for me and not just a miraculous remedy (Segula). It’s like buying a washing machine, for example, and opening the manual to read about how to operate it. This is how I open The Study of the Ten Sefirot and see how to activate the upper system.

I can even manage without a book, as it says: “Man’s soul will teach him.” I can learn about the system even without the books and become integrated in it.

And all this is right before us! There is only one last step to make.
[56537]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/2011, Shamati #42

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The Creator made creation in order to bestow total goodness to it, which means giving us the opportunity to bestow and love. When we do so, it will mean that He fills us with all the pleasures.

Delighting creation does not mean satisfying its egoistic desires in all kinds of ways. Rather, when my desire changes from egoistic to bestowing, this opens up the possibility of bestowal for me, which becomes my pleasure. This is called being filled by the Creator’s pleasures, by the Light that fills the entire universe.

Our attitude to this new creation, at whose threshold we stand, is similar to entering a certain privileged club where the only people allowed to enter are those having special, outstanding qualities, and by special invitation only. Before entering there, you have to receive permission, an entry pass, and for that you must first study the system of relationships that exists among all its members.

In this “club” some participants are more important and some less, and they have all kinds of relationships with one another: familial, amicable, business, and others, meaning they are connected through all forms of connections. If you establish contact with every person and become included in this connection between everyone, combining yourself correctly with this entire system and knowing how to activate it, then you will be able to use it to your benefit.

That is how the system of worlds operates, the spiritual net which we are entering. I have to know what relationships exist between all of its elements. And that means I have to study its constant structure, which is called VAK (small state).

Besides, I have to know how to activate it with my request (MAN), how it will react to me entering it and influencing it. Then I see how motion begins to happen in it: how Sefira Daat ascends to YESHSUT and Aba ve Ima, how Hassadim and Gevura descend from there, evoking further ascent, and so on.

This is what we have to learn from the science of Kabbalah ahead of time, before entering the upper system. The study forms special qualities inside us and brings us closer to entering the upper system. By the force of our desire to attain this system, I awaken an influence from it upon myself, and some kind of fluids or energy flows reach me from there, bringing me closer to it.

After all, I want to get there! It is written, “I am for my Beloved and He is for me.” This is called the month of ELUL (the acronym for “I am for my Beloved and He is for me”), the preparation for ascending into the upper system. And when I finally enter there, this is called a new beginning, the celebration of the New Year (Rosh HaShana).
[56436]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/11, Shamati

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