Rabash, “And He Shall Cogitate in His Torah (Teachings)”: And so we read in the Megillah “and after all this the king raised Haman.” Literally it is hard to understand, after all, after what Mordecai did, which was good for the king, the king should raise Mordecai and not Haman, and this needs to be explained…

When a person cannot see the true face of his evil, which means the true form of Haman, then a person cannot pray to the Creator, so that He should save him from evil. Only when a person sees the greatness of Haman, who wants to kill and to destroy all the Jews, which means that Haman wanted to destroy everything that belonged to Judaism, which doesn’t let him do anything that is related to Holiness, then he can raise a true prayer. Then the verse “the Creator helps him” is fulfilled.

Only if we yearn for unity like Mordecai who evoked the yearning for unity by discovering the plot against the unity and killing it (two of the king’s courtiers who betrayed him), then Haman is evoked. The evil inclination faces the good inclination, the desire to receive rises facing the desire to bestow, and a struggle between them begins inside a person.

Only by raising and empowering the good force does the evil force grow, and then we raise the good again and evil also grows. This process continues until we reach a state in which we have to make a decision in this struggle. We cannot ask the good inclination, since it doesn’t need anything, it doesn’t want anything, but only to bestow every chance it gets. So we always ask the evil inclination, and then we do the opposite.

This is called working in faith above reason. We know how our desire to receive feels and follow faith above reason. Otherwise we have no way of imagining what the spiritual world is, what it means to be above myself, what it means to bestow. But we know that it is opposite from our egoistic desire to receive, which we know very well.

So when the desire to bestow grows, we have to raise the desire to receive and to ask it what it thinks should be done, and then do the opposite! That’s the way it works.

It is because we don’t see the image of the good; we don’t have an image by which we can resemble the Creator. The only way is to form it as an opposite image of the desire to receive. Therefore we were given an environment that should help us turn the desire to receive, which means the intention to receive into an intention to bestow. This is called “to repent,” to return to the Creator, the rising of Malchut to Bina.

We have no idea what the image of the good is but only that is it the opposite of evil.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/25/13

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Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”: Therefore, they were certainly liberated from the angel of death, for death is necessarily an absence and negation of the existence of a certain object. But only while there is a spark that wishes to exist for its own pleasure is it possible to say about it that that spark does not exist because it has become absent and died.

However, if there is no such spark in man, but all the sparks of his essence clothe in bestowal of contentment upon their Maker, then it is neither absent nor dead. For even when the body is annulled, it is only annulled with respect to self-gratification, in which the will to receive is dressed and can only exist in it.

However, when he achieves the aim of Creation and the Creator receives pleasure from him, since His will is done, man’s essence, which clothes in His contentment, is granted complete eternity, like Him. Thus, he has been rewarded with freedom from the angel of death.

The desire to receive must only get rid of the intention to receive for itself, but the desire itself is never refined and doesn’t disappear, but acquires the intention of “in order to bestow.” If a person can fulfill this condition internally on its minimal level, on the first degree, if he wants this to happen, then the Light comes to him and illuminates on him, and makes him worthy of the first level called the gathering before Mt. Sinai.

In order to do that, he must accept all the conditions, rise above all the hardening of the heart, all the worries, and all the interruptions that were sent to him in order to attribute everything to the Creator’s dominion, to “there is none else besides Him,” and to decide that He is good and benevolent—to accept all this in faith above reason and to annul everything that belongs to him in order to aspire as much as he can for the Creator.

If a person wishes to detach himself from all his affairs in this world, not because they are unpleasant or threatening as it was during the time of preparation, but rather the opposite—when he can receive all the goodness but still gives it all up and attributes himself to the Creator—then the Light comes and builds the first level of bestowal, of Lishma (for Its Name) in him. This is called the receiving of the Torah since, for the first time, he sees how the Light in it reforms.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/21/13

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All our work is to discover the real, fixed, existing, eternal, whole, state that we are in. We have to evoke our feelings and thoughts so that we will feel it instead of the world we are feeling now. We have to open our hearts and minds without making a move but only awakening more each time until we reach adhesion with the Creator.

If this is how we imagine this state, then we clearly understand that everything that happens to us signals the places we have to pay special attention to. It is in those places that we have to clarify our feelings, thoughts, intentions, and attitude towards our attributes in order to develop them more in a sequence and to be worthy of the revelation of the state in which we are in constant adhesion with the Creator.

So there is nowhere to run. We must return to the same internal point that starts from the point in the heart each time and make sure that it develops constantly. There is nothing else we can discover in all of reality except for the one force that is in us that supports us and takes care of us all the time.

If a person stops himself this way, by seeing only one right direction for his development that leads to the revelation of the upper force that is in the point in the heart, and does not leave this direction, and intentionally stops and restricts all the other ways that seemingly allow him to develop, see, check and feel, by strongly closing them, it means that he is aiming his powers on attaining the goal.
[100937]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/19/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Baal HaSulam, Shamati, article 70: “With a Mighty Hand and with Fury Poured Out”: We should know that of those who want to enter God’s work in order to truly cleave unto Him and enter the King’s Palace, not everyone is admitted. Rather, one is tested—if he has no other desires but only a desire for Dvekut (adhesion), he is admitted.
And how is one tested if he has only one desire? One is given obstructions. This means that he is sent alien thoughts and alien messengers to obstruct him so he would leave this path and follow the path of the populace.

And if one overcomes all the difficulties and breaks all the bars that block him, and little things cannot turn him off, then the Creator sends him great Klipot and chariots, to deflect one from admittance into adhesion with Him alone, and with nothing else. This is considered that the Creator is rejecting him with a mighty hand.

It takes a long time to finally realize that everything a person feels comes from the Creator and it is only meant to direct him to the goal. There isn’t an action, or an occurrence that does not direct a person towards the goal, which means to adhesion with the Creator. A person cannot change this in any way, since everything happens according to the Reshimot (spiritual genes). Only the intensity, the way the Reshimot are revealed is determined by how we fulfilled the previous Reshimot.

But everything is according to the plan in which a person has to discover a strong desire for adhesion, according to the spiritual desire, which means the fixed, intensive desire that is aimed at only one goal. “There is no slightly in spirituality,” but only the maximum, and a person should have such a strong desire.

So the Creator reveals His mighty hand by making a person face hardships and problems, by confusing a person in every possible way so that he will grow stronger by overcoming these obstacles. He has to examine his options and leave only one direction and intensify it so that it would be impossible to divert him from the right path. In order to do that the Creator sends increasingly tougher problems, like in the fable of the person who as he climbs the mountain to the King’s palace he encounters guards that are increasingly crueler along his way. All this is so that only one strong desire will be left in a person, a desire that is actually burning, yearning to burst out into the spiritual world, which means to attain the attribute of bestowal, self annulment, to break out.

It is like the birth process in which there are two active forces: the pushing force from inside and the force that blocks the exit. The tension between these two forces grows until it is strong enough for the doors to open and for the breakthrough to occur. Then the fetus can come out.

These two opposite forces, the force of the Creator and the force of the created being eventually reach sufficient tension for the breakthrough. As it says, “in the same place, at the same time, in the same woman” such concentration of tension is created that it leads to the application.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/19/13

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The moment a person comes complaining to the Creator, there is an immediate concealment and he is no longer aiming at the Creator but rather at another goal. It’s because the Creator is the only force, there is none else beside Him and He is good and benevolent. If you aim straight at Him, then you can’t have any complaints. The moment you divert a little from the right direction, you immediately feel dissatisfied and full of complaints.

Turn to the right direction and do your best until you divert again and start complaining. Thus, by your dissatisfaction and overcoming it each time you advance towards the Creator, like a boat that advances by tacking. It’s because you can’t advance directly to the Creator; you don’t have the attribute of bestowal, the attributes of the good and the benevolent. You have to build this image above your attribute of receiving, from your oppositeness. You build a replica of these attributes and not the actual attributes.

It’s common knowledge that the only way to create a sculpture is by removing the excess and or a surplus. You can take a big rock and take off all the unnecessary parts to get the desired form. You can take plaster and make a statue out of it, but in any case, the main thing is the border, the external form we create on top of the desire to receive by clarifying each time where to draw the line between the desire to receive and the desire to bestow.

So our work is always made of the inclination to resemble and for that reason a person is called “Adam – man” which means “Domeh” (similar to in Hebrew) to the Creator. Our work is to justify the Creator. I can’t focus myself on that, to become good and benevolent and there is none else beside Him, by myself. But by justifying Him I become equal to Him and attribute myself to His form.
[100875]
From the 1^st Part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/17/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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We can find the Creator only in the vessel that we stabilize by ourselves. Therefore it says that the created being forms the Creator. What does that mean, because it sounds like heresy? But the fact that we build the vessel in which we want to discover the attribute of bestowal by ourselves means that we are forming the Creator.

We feel it only in the form that is dressed in matter, called Bo-reh (come and see), that is the Creator (Bore) and not in what is external to it. This dressing exists in a earlier root, of course, which we don’t speak about and don’t attain; our attainment is only possible up to the border called Bo-reh.

So in the workshop we had last night on the theme, “There is none else besides Him,” I tried to explain that this concept is attained only in the center of the group. There is no other place it can be attained, and we cannot prove this to ourselves in any other way. Only if we all, with our negative ego, yearn for the revelation of the positive connection among us, can we create such high tension between the two opposite forces that are in each of us: a “minus” and a “plus,” which can be attained only in the group. Then it becomes compatible to the height of the spiritual level, and we can rise to it.

The Creator had no other option but to first shatter the vessel, and enable it to develop the sensitivity to the attribute of bestowal. It is impossible to do that without feeling that and the desire to receive inside the vessel.

The Creator is only the force of bestowal. The created being is initially only a force of receiving. So in order to resemble the Creator, he has to include these two forces in him: the force of bestowal and the force of receiving, one on top of the other. We can establish this state only in the group. This is what I wanted you to feel in the workshop so that you will understand that it is impossible to fulfill this without a group.

In the meantime the balance of power is such that we are left with a big minus, we haven’t entered the borders of the group yet. Each one is somewhere on his way towards it, guarding himself and not wanting to enter it.

We have to guard our minuses, and they have to be big. They will keep on growing since the minus is created by the Reshimot (spiritual genes). The moment you manage to connect somehow, new Reshimot will immediately appear. But as long as you don’t spur yourself to work and don’t fulfill the previous Reshimo, the new Reshimo will not appear.

The Reshimot are revealed in a chain, one after the other, according to the plan. But the problem is that we don’t develop our “pluses,” and so in the meantime we remain on the level of potential knowledge but not its actual fulfillment. In order for that to be felt as part of our reality, we have to create a group, a shared space among us, in which we can form the Creator (“come and see”).

The Creator is formed in us when the desire to receive is left inside, and on the outside it takes on the form if bestowal, meaning “to receive in order to bestow.” Reception below and bestowal above, and together they are called the Creator.

In order to do that, we have to bend our head and annul our pride; we will have to crawl to the group “on all fours” as we acknowledge the fact that we are an “animal” whose head is even less valued than its body since it constantly worries only about how to serve the body. When you bend your head below the body, it will mean that you have reached the understanding that it is worthless and then you will be able to be Adam, a human being.
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From the 1^st Part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/17/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Shamati #69, “First Will Be the Correction of the World”: Hence, when individuals in the whole of Israel are corrected, the whole world will naturally be corrected. It follows that the nations of the world will be corrected to the extent that we correct ourselves. This is the meaning of what our sages said, “Rewarded—sentences himself and the whole world to a scale of merit.” And they did not say, “sentences the whole of Israel,” but “the entire world to a scale of merit.” In other words, the internal will correct the external.

Therefore we need to be more concerned and more worried that our acts will not remain just as private acts that belong to the person that does them towards the friends, the group, and even the whole nation of Israel, but rather it would be directed toward the whole world.

Each one that has the possibility to correct himself is called “Israel” “Yashar-Kel – straight to the Creator” and he must know that he received this ability to cause the correction of the whole world.

According to this goal, he is being given from Above, and according to this goal, it is also demanded from him. This is his fate and there is no free choice. The choice is only in how the man will realize this mission that was given to him. Therefore, we need to create such an atmosphere that will help each one of us realize his destiny 100%, to execute what the Creator demands from him and put on him by choosing him to be the correcting part of the world and not the part that is corrected.

This is a very big responsibility. Each one needs to see himself in a role and not just doing what comes up in his mind and refusing to receive the work that he doesn’t like. This is work that doesn’t stop even for a moment, every day. And in this work we will stumble upon disturbances that will throw us into a private egoistic approach. Therefore it must be a general opinion of the society that will hold the man so he will see all his life and all the hours as in executing an important mission, as the mother that is responsible for her babies and all the time must think about them.

And with such a big responsibility must also be the importance of the goal and a pride towards the task that obliges us to realize it and to serve the whole world. We received this mission and we must realize it.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/11/13

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Baal HaSulam, “Speech for the Completion of The Zohar“: We should understand what Dvekut (adhesion) with the Creator means. After all, the thought has no perception of Him whatsoever. Indeed, our sages have discussed this question before me, asking about the verse, “and to cleave unto Him: How can one cleave unto Him? After all, He is consuming fire.”

And they replied, “Cleave unto His qualities: As He is merciful, you are merciful; as he is compassionate, you are compassionate.

If we change several attributes in us by turning them from “in order to receive” to “in order to bestow,” how does that enable us to understand whom the Creator is? And, what is more, how does it help us resemble Him? How do we acquire this resemblance? How do we adhere to Him? After all, it is impossible to touch Him. So, how do inner “tricks” allow us to resemble someone who we don’t even see and with whom we cannot identify? How can we understand the principle of “from Your actions we know You?” How do the inner changes lead me to Him? How is it possible to love others if it isn’t my nature?

This is why I am not obligated to love directly, but I can correct my 611 desires, and, then, the 612^th correction will be the acquisition of the attribute of Hassadim to the fullest, and the 613^th correction will be “to receive in order to bestow.” So, it is impossible to obligate one to love, but it is from the corrections that precede it that we can attain it.

This is also how the resemblance to the Creator is attained. We fulfill and arrange all the necessary actions internally, and it isn’t the actions themselves that are important, but the clarifications we make regarding every detail. All the clarifications add up and accumulate and turn into spiritual vessels.

So, nothing is lacking in our work. We cannot reach the end of correction in one leap. In fact, we are already at the end of correction, but we don’t have the vessels to feel that. So, we must collect all the vessels along the way in order to finally reach this revelation.

Question: What does “to cleave unto the Creator” mean for us today?

Answer: I build His image inside me through the different discernments I make internally. It isn’t about external signs, but about an internal essence. The Creator is a spirit of bestowal that is born and fills me. It is an attitude in which I can produce to “bestow in order to bestow” or to “receive in order to bestow.” It is a reflection that I reflect from inside me, outward.
[100851]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/19/13, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”

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Lowliness is not when I don’t have the power to do something, but rather when I think that I actually do something. The lowly is not someone who cannot be a hero, but someone who thinks that he is a hero. If the ego awakens in a person, then everything he says indicates his lowliness.

After all, everything is managed by the upper Light. But a person thinks that he has his own power, feelings, and mind in his ego, and this is his lowliness. The lowliness is in the fact the he doesn’t understand, that he doesn’t feel, and doesn’t attain that his desire to receive is only a replica of the Light. It’s only a shadow of the Light and he has nothing but that shadow.

If a person feels and understands this, if he fights the lowliness that is evoked in him over and over again in order to reveal the gap between him and the Creator, then he enters another lowliness that is actually not a sign of lowliness but of adhesion. He doesn’t want to be adhered to his desire and serve it devoutly, not in the shadow, which is the opposite replica of the Light that imagines that it exists independently since it’s detached from the source. Instead he wants to devoutly serve the Light itself. Thus he reaches adhesion with the source.

Then he is filled with pride, with power, with everything that that Light has by having annulled his desire to receive before the Creator. He thanks the Creator for having created this desire to receive by which a person can feel how he can adhere to the Creator. Thus the clarification of self-lowliness constantly helps a person get closer to the truth, to the source. So where one feels His lowliness is the place where one discovers the Creator’s humbleness and His greatness.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/18/13

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It is obvious that we have many complaints to the Creator about our state, the conditions we would like, and about the host who is responsible for everything that happens to us. But this won’t help. We either agree to the conditions we have been given or we have to advance by the path of sufferings.

After all, in order to set such conditions, we have to know the whole process, the whole system; we have to understand that everything is for the best and that it’s impossible to fulfill the conditions if we don’t know the systems and are in constant concealment as we advance from the bottom up. The only thing left for us is to believe that all our work has to be done above criticism and complaints. When we look at everything from our ego, we can’t come to any other conclusion since the advancement is actually with regard to the desire to bestow and not toward the desire to receive; so in our state, we will never be able to understand how we advance.

It says, “Open a gate for me that is as big as the eye of a needle,” which means just exert yourselves a little, “and I shall open the upper gates before you.” But we have to discover the “eye of the needle” by ourselves, and it’s a very difficult task. It is because I have to lower my head, to annul my pride, and to understand that we will not be able to perceive and to appreciate anything inside our ego, but rather it is by the feeling of our lowliness, the lowering of our heads, that we begin to understand what is happening.

After all, it’s by the concealment of our ego that we begin to know the Creator who is concealed and we begin to resemble Him in some way. A mother who takes care of her baby is also in concealment from him, since the baby doesn’t know how much she cares; he doesn’t have to know either. What’s important is that the result of all her efforts will be fulfilled in him, the conditions for his growth.

But if we yearn for the Creator, we have to discover His actions with regard to us and to repeat them by ourselves. In order to do that, we have to humble ourselves like a mother who forgets about herself for the sake of her baby, or like the Creator with regard to the created beings. We only feel the result of the Creator’s care for us, but all His actions with regard to us are not revealed since we are babies who can’t understand anything.

So how can we be evoked so that we will want to know the Creator’s work? It’s impossible to know it until we become parents too. Only then will we appreciate what our parents did for us. In order for us to grow in the spiritual world and to become spiritual parents, the Creator doesn’t fill all our childish desires, He doesn’t serve us sweet porridge like a loving mother, doesn’t change our diapers and doesn’t amuse us with different toys so that we will be happy. He doesn’t spoil our desire to receive, but rather evokes different questions in us, sufferings, and unpleasant discernments with which we have to work in order to discover the reason for it, since this is how we will be able to discover His work.

If I don’t feel good, I must discover why. Of course, first I feel dissatisfaction; it’s my natural response, I resent the fact that I feel bad! The next thought is already aimed at the Creator and at why He acts this way. He is wrong; He should change! But if the problem doesn’t go away and I can’t get out of it, the blows force me to be more patient. I don’t resent this anymore; I ask, “What is the point of this kind of life?” This brings me to study the Creator’s actions.

I am told that I am responsible for everything that happens. Did I do something? All is done by the Creator! But it turns out that everything is opposite from the way it seems to me, “There is none else besides Him,” “the good and the benevolent,” and all the good that He gives me turns into many different contrasting forces within me. I don’t see that all this stems from the good and the benevolent. Although sometimes something good happens, it’s mostly bad.

I have to determine that it’s a fact that everything that I receive comes from the Creator who is good and benevolent and that there is none else besides Him. If I do that in the state I am given now, I will reach my first spiritual level. Later the same kind of work is expected of me but more qualitative and sublime. This means that our work is first to see that we are the source of the problem and not the Giver, and then to correct ourselves so the problem will disappear. The Giver, His action, and I should connect into one whole called “adhesion“. This will be the proof that I have reached an equivalence of from with Him.
[100767]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/17/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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