Question: If a person must be ready to remain in a state of “smallness,” where can he get the desire and the motivation to advance?

Answer: But I want to advance in order to be more like the Creator! The Creator is an example of humility for us. I must reach a state in which I feel as if I don’t exist, just as the Creator does not exist for me now. Thus, I become like Him.

It seems that I really must fight myself in order to attain this, but this a wonderful war since in it, I need the Creator so that He will fight in my place. If I fought this war by myself, I would be in a critical situation.

However, since I need the Creator’s help, it makes me extremely happy. It is because, now, I have the reason to turn to Him.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/5/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: How is it possible to integrate nullification of yourself towards the group and the desire to understand the meaning of the text being studied?

Answer: One feeling does not cancel the other. I have to yearn together with everyone to connect in one common point. In this point of connection where we are together, we feel some phenomenon that is called Malchut.

First of all, everyone’s yearning to integrate together with everyone else is required. For this, the following components are needed: self-nullification, greatness of the goal, and importance of the friends and of the group. I have to focus all of this together and yearn for that point of general connection.

Other people participate together with me in this yearning. We act together, each one nullifies what he has. We leave this whole world at the bottom and all of us strive forward. Through our connection, we want to form the vessel of bestowal from which our relation to the Creator, the desire to bestow, will be born.

Then, in this yearning to bestow to the Creator, we will begin to feel Him, the upper Light that lands on us and fills us. The more this yearning is clarified, growing according to the thickness of the desire: 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4, the more developed it will become. And to the same extent, the force of bestowal, adhesion with the Creator will be revealed in us. This is in fact all of our work.

The question is: How can this yearning to self-annulment and understanding the material be combined? To understand means to know, meaning to reveal or connect. The Sefira Daat (Knowledge) symbolizes connection, as it is said, “And Adam knew Hava (Eve), his wife”.

When I nullify myself at the bottom, I help myself prepare for connection. Without this, I won’t be able to connect with others. In order to rise to the point of connection, I must nullify myself.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/28/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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In the News (from Inside Science): “When ants are confronted with information overload and face too many decisions – about where to live, for instance – they revert to the wisdom of the crowd.

“The colonies themselves are not very big, usually a few hundred workers, associate professor of biology Stephen C. Pratt said, and if an animal knocks a colony over, the roof falls in, or if they need more space, the ants have to move.

“But the ants live in areas in which the potential number of possible nest sites is overwhelming. One ant can’t cope with making the decision. No one is in charge in an ant nest.

“They distribute the task among colony members. That’s where the crowdsourcing comes in.

“According to Pratt and Sasaki, the ants send scouts to check out some potential home sites. The scouts look at such things as the size of the entrance and how big the cavity is. If the ant likes what she sees, she returns to the colony.

“She sends out a pheromone message, ‘Follow me,’ and another ant will join her in what is called tandem running. She takes her colleague out to view the potential site.

“If the second ant likes what she sees, she goes back and repeats the process, bringing back another ant. If she doesn’t like it, she merely returns to the colony. If enough ants like a site, the colony reaches a quorum, essentially choosing the new home.

“The scouts pick up their nest mates and carry them to their new homes, usually taking the nest queen along with them.

“Sasaki built an experiment in which one ant had to make the decision from two potential sites and then from eight. Half the potential sites were unsuitable in both experiments. He was forcing the ants in the laboratory to do what ants in the wild would not, send one ant to make the decision for the colony, Pratt said.

Individual ants, confronted with two choices, had no problems picking the most suitable site. When faced with choosing among eight, however, an ant often selected the wrong place.

“The two researchers tested a whole colony with the same choices, letting them send out more than one scout. The colonies, acting as a crowd, did equally well in both experiments, picking suitable sites 90 percent of the time. …

“Part of the advantage of the colony system, Sasaki and Pratt hypothesized, is that each scout visited only a few potential sites, minimizing the information it must process, while an individual ant, assigned to do it alone, had to visit them all and was the victim of cognitive overload. …

“‘Cognitive overload is a growing issue for human decision making, as unprecedented access to data poses new challenges to individual processing abilities,’ Pratt and Sasaki wrote in their journal article. ‘Human groups also solve difficult problems better when each group member has only limited access to information.’”

My Comment: The individual mind of “flocking” birds and “herding” animals exists in a minimum capacity and strength, and collective intelligence is used for all occasions, the power of the collective. Thus, nature holds together “in itself” the still, vegetative, and animate.

The human being must consciously, by the perceived need and against his individualistic nature, make a collective and unified whole out of himself and other egoists, and then he will rise to the degree of “Adam” (human), will feel and understand oneness and integrality of the system of nature, and will be able to intelligently and actively exist at the level of Adam. He will not need the animal body because it is only necessary to rise from the level of the animate (completely controlled nature) to the level of Adam (who controls nature himself, instead of the Creator).
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Baal HaSulam, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar“: At that time you will achieve equivalence of form with the Creator—as all His actions are to bestow and to benefit others, so you, all your actions will be only to bestow and to benefit others. This is the complete Dvekut.

Question: What is equivalence of form? How can I be equal in form if I am a desire to receive?

Answer: Suppose you want to resemble me. I play with you, I present myself to you in some form, and then you try to be like me: You do what I do, think like me and talk like me. The next day I present to you an upgraded form and you have to adapt yourself to me even more, both in your speech and in your actions and thoughts. I give you examples and you have to follow them; this is called an equivalence of form.

Here you may ask: “But how can I resemble the Creator if I don’t see Him?” It says: ‘Return to the Lord, your God.’ How can I return to Him, how can I become increasingly more like Him? At least, give me some example…”

Ask. Ask the Creator to give you an example, to show you who He is and what He is, so that you could be like Him. If you don’t ask, it means that you don’t want to be like Him. When all you really need is an example, you will receive it.

Question: I have a cat, I can teach it everything that I know, but will it eventually be like me?

Answer: A cat doesn’t have a point in the heart. You cannot teach it, you can only tame it. You can make something out of it, but you cannot make a human being out of it, since a human being,  Adam, means “Domeh – similar” to the Creator. A cat doesn’t have the starting point for that, it doesn’t have the initial spark; it doesn’t have a point in the heart.

If it weren’t for the point in the heart that entered the desire to receive during the shattering of the vessels, then we too would develop up to the level of the animate. But when we complete this phase, the point of the speaking level erupts in us. This is what is happening today to humanity: It has reached the end of its development on the “animate” level.

Everything began from scratch, from chaos. Then the level of the still nature appeared, then the level of the vegetative, and then the level of the animate. If there weren’t the point of the speaking in the animate level, the human being that belongs to the level of the speaking, then there would be nowhere to develop to, everything would end here.

This is the surprise and problem in our world: People don’t understand that they are facing a new level. They don’t understand because they don’t see it; it isn’t tangible, it is spiritual. All the previous levels were concrete, while the level of the speaking is not.

If I am on the level of still nature, I cannot identify levels that are higher than mine: the vegetative and the animate levels. There is a connection between them that is visible both to the lower and the upper, but I have no idea what the human level is, and to rise to it is a big mystery for me. What can I do, if I have no way to hold on to it, no examples, but only one great unknown?

This is the reason that the whole world doesn’t understand what is going on and cannot accept the message of the future ascent.

Initially, the desire created by the Creator was the part that serves as the point in the heart (•), Galgalta ve Eynaim (GE). This is called “Israel” which means “Yashar-El” (straight to the Creator). Abraham took the people who belong to this part out of ancient Babel, while the other Babylonians without a point in the heart remained.

Then by the shattering, the destruction, the points of Israel fell and were mixed with the matter of the desire. This is the exile of the people of Israel, the mutual incorporation of the attributes resulting in every person having a point in the heart today.

Still, it is very hard for people to see that there is another phase in their development before them, another level that is of a higher quality and is more essential and powerful than the “animate” level. Imagine that you could only see plants on the surface of the earth. How different would this picture be from the next level, with the animals, birds, fish, and people with their civilization.

Now, when we are facing a new level, no one understands it and no one can perceive the need to rise to it.

Question: If the point in the heart determines everything, can I be compared to Pinocchio today?

Answer: Without the point in the heart you would be a “log,” but in this log there is something else, and so when Geppetto begins to cut it with his axe, it cries out; this is “the point in the heart” that raises the voice of man. Everything else in us is indeed only a “log.”

The next level cannot be formed from nothing. So the people who feel a need to develop come to us, to Bnei Baruch, in order to advance by love, with an inclination upward. Others will have to develop by the path of suffering in order to reach this level.

If the point in the heart doesn’t stand out and doesn’t remind people that it exists, only sufferings will push them forward. The point draws people forward while the sufferings push them from behind. It is like a dipole and everything depends on what moves you—whether it is Torah or suffering.

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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/3/13, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”

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The internal work begins when a person feels that in every situation and place, no matter what he finds himself in with his desires and his thoughts, there is an awakening from Above, and he has to add his response to this upper action. First he wants to differentiate himself from what he feels and to try to find out what it is exactly that the Creator sends him, why, and for what reason; what does He want to build in a person with that? He needs to clarify what is happening inside him in order to differentiate his natural response from the one that he has to develop inside above that natural one.

The response that a person builds above his nature is composed by his participation in the events and the other half, he is forced to raise to the Creator, knowing that he cannot do it by himself. But he is glad that he discovers the part in which he needs the Creator’s participation, feeling the Creator as a partner, as the eminent, and as his savior inside him!

In this case, a person sees a clear goal before him, understanding that he must reach connection. This means that the first awakening that comes from the Creator in a person’s mind and heart reaches the right implementation. The sign that it is implemented correctly is a person’s change of attitude to the opposite of what it was before, and the great joy he feels about it, which means a successful attempt to rise above himself.

And all of this progress is due to the upper force that now remains in a person. Every action that we make in every moment is fulfilled that way if it’s received correctly in a person.
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From the 1^st  part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/3/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: Does Kabbalah have any proof for beginners? How can I be sure that I am on the right track?

Answer: You have no proof and no certainty. You can go if you want to.

This is the condition for entering the spiritual dimension. The alternative is suffering, which eventually will make you accept this condition.

If you are not able to nullify yourself and refuse payment, you will not enter spirituality. Haven’t you heard about this? You are looking for proof, incentives, this is understandable; things cannot be any other way. These objections are just, but there is no place for them. They only awaken in you so you would rise above them.

Even the support of your friends cannot be rewarding to you. It is because deep down in your soul you cannot stand them and would never unite with these people. So this is not about friendship and its benefits.

Simply today, you do not yet know what the First Restriction (Tzimtzum Aleph), the screen, and the Reflecting Light are. In reality you will never receive anything. Once you enter it, you will discover that you have always been there, but you only were able to perceive it the moment you became willing to reject everything. And you perceive it in the vessels of bestowal, rejecting for yourself, never for yourself, but only for others.

Question: Isn’t there anything to cheer us up?

Answer: I do not want to put glitter before your eyes. The group and our friends from all over the world that are connected to us must know the truth: Spirituality lies beyond human strength. When a person has a point in the heart, he understands that this is right. And even though sometimes it seems that an obstacle cannot be overcome, only this can be true and nothing else.

Thus you discover all the truth. Conversely, any appeal to the egoistic desire, any attachment to it, is not the spiritual path.

– But will I at least get something?

– Nothing!

– What do I get?

– You don’t!

– What about receiving spiritual attainment?

– Spiritual attainment is the antithesis to reception. You only reject, you do not want anything for yourself. Your entire enormous desire to receive, which you are not yet aware of, your entire egoism, you raise it from the “stomach” to the “head” and fully reject it. And thus you form the real “head,” the screen and the Reflecting Light. You do not take anything for yourself no matter what comes to you, you give everything to others. It is best when no one even knows what you did because this could also serve as a “bribe.”

And then you begin to feel what it is like to be on the degree of the Creator…

Your point in the heart must agree with this. It is the truth and it has the same qualities. And whoever does not agree is free to go. These people are supporters, but they are not Kabbalists.

Question: This means that we are striving to attain something that is not real?

Answer: Exactly. For you, for your vessels, this is unrealistic; it is opposite for you. This is why it is written: “I saw an upside-down world.”

Question: And yet, what will we achieve? What will we attain in spirituality?

Answer: Baal HaSulam writes in Letter #8 about it: “Everything that happens in the world has a worthy goal called ‘a drop of unity.’ When the dwellers of ‘corporeal homes’ experience all the horrors, through their absolute pride removed from them, a certain opening appears in the walls of their heart, which is not receptive at all according to the actual nature of creation. And they become worthy of the installation of this drop of unity in their heart.

And they will become like an impression from a seal, and they will see for themselves that, on the contrary, it is through these horrors that they come to attain the absolute, removed from alien pride. Unification with the Creator happens only there, and it is there where a drop of unity can reign over them.”
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/1/13, “The Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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The principle is very simple: Everything depends on how important our desire to receive, our nature, sees something. If I see an important person I have a desire to get close to him, and I appreciate him according to how important he is.

Then I look at that important person without taking my eyes off of him, just like a mother who cannot take her eyes off her baby since he is the most important thing for her. I will follow the important person and try to appreciate and even love whatever he likes, and gradually I will change my tastes in order to resemble him. To get close to him means to love what he loves, and to behave as he does. This is the law of bestowal and love, the law of importance.

Therefore, the first condition is “make yourself a Rav,” by seeing that the Creator is important to us; the goal of His creation becomes important for us, the law of equivalence of form, which we should attain. This is what we should work on.

The Creator is concealed so that we will not chase Him egoistically like we chase an important person in our world because being close to him promises me a real gain. I have to yearn to chase the Creator so that it will only be beneficial for my vessels of bestowal, so that there will not be any self-benefit in my bestowal and my connection with Him; that it should be only for Him, for being equal to Him and not for the filling of my ego.

It is because by the filling of my ego, I cut myself off from the Creator and only want to receive from Him. In order to allow me to chase the Creator so that I can adhere to Him by changing my attributes to His attributes, the Creator is concealed. We, however, have to change ourselves by the help of the society.

To the extent that the environment depicts and presents the Creator’s greatness to me, I can think about the changes in me, about changing my attributes to His attributes. Then by “make yourself a Rav,” which means by seeing that the Creator is important, I attain “buy yourself a friend” and connect to Him by resembling His attributes.

This is the whole process that the sages expressed in the short message of “make yourself a Rav and buy yourself a friend!” If we don’t see the Creator as great and important, we will not be able to get close to Him and to annul ourselves.

So there aren’t people who cannot succeed because they have a weak character or don’t have the brains, the sensitivity, or power to do so. The only explanation for our failures is the lack of feeling the importance of the goal, which we can always buy from the environment.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/31/13

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Question: What kind of work should we do with regard to analysis and acceleration of time?

Answer: To become like the Light means to reach the degree of bestowal. At first it’s necessary to separate yourself from the still, vegetative, and animate levels, and to understand the human degree, the degree of Adam, the one “similar” (Domeh) to the Light, bestowal. It’s necessary to figure out how I gather pieces of bestowal or grow them within through the correction of my relationship with my environment and the Creator.

This work is done every time above my desire, which naturally is inside me on the animate level. And I build the human degree, the form of bestowal, above it. The better the person begins to distinguish between these two notions, the greater the difference he begins to feel between the animal form within him and the human form, which is above this animal. All our work takes place on the borderline between the first and the second form, with the purpose of increasing the human form within us.

It’s not easy to separate these two forms within us in such a way that we perceive them in a completely equal way, as an inseparable pair: a rider, riding on horseback. Only then will we attain the understanding of what an animal and a human are. This is the main work of a beginner who needs to figure out how much attention he can dedicate to his animal and how much he must dedicate to his human in order to separate them and put each one in its place, so the one would control the other.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/30/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam 

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Question: What does “adhesion to the Creator” mean?

Answer: Adhesion is according to the equivalence of form. The Creator is the level of Bina. This is how Keter presents itself to us through Bina that is totally in bestowal. This means that in order to reach the Creator I also have to be one who bestows.

How do I perform this bestowal? I hand my vessels, my desires, to Him so that He will bestow in them. I must have the right intention here, “Please bestow upon me since by that I want to bring You pleasure, to bring You joy, and to make You feel good.” Thus I place myself at His service.

Before I wanted to receive the goodness for myself, but now I restrict myself instead (Tzimzum Aleph – ZA), place a Masach (screen) over it to create the Returning Light, and all that in order to care for and think about Him, about the one who bestows. Afterward I already have the right intention, and to that extent I am ready to receive everything from the Creator.

It is because His desire is that I receive that I want to receive everything so that He enjoys. I will know this if I discover joy in Him. This is my goal—to bring the Creator joy just as He wants to be the good and benevolent for me.

This means that only one thing is required of us—to hand Him the vessel for the induction and the revelation of the Creator. This is why we yearn for His revelation.

So ask yourself: Why does everyone yearn for the revelation of the Creator? Is it in order to bring Him joy or to bring you joy? This is the whole idea.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/30/13, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”

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We are made of the desire to receive and we feel everything in it only as some gain for ourselves. Besides that, a person doesn’t understand or feel anything. The correction is in the fact that we tune the desire to be in order to bestow.

In the meantime, these are only nice words for us and we don’t understand what it is about. This means that we can penetrate someone else by using our desire to receive and feel what is happening inside him, which means to know how he feels and understands what is happening in us! And, we act accordingly.

This means that we shouldn’t examine the actual feeling, whether it is sweet or bitter, sour, warm or cold. I have very strong senses, but I examine everything from inside him and how good he feels. After all, everything that I feel comes from the Creator, so I want to feel how this operates in me according to the pleasure that the Creator receives.

It makes no difference what my senses or my tastes are. I value everything that happens inside me only according to what the Creator feels because of what I feel. We must be together, which means that I must be inside Him in order to know for sure how to tune myself, to adjust myself will all that is happening inside me.

Everything that is in my mind and heart comes from the Creator; the Creator is inside me. So, I must know how to perceive His feelings by my senses. I must yearn for the feeling that He is “the first”—He is inside me, and He evokes all my feelings and thoughts—and that He is “the last” since I must see by which response I bring Him more contentment. This means that I must examine how I should respond to what is happening in order to bring Him the greatest contentment.

If I act that way, it means that I yearn for the love of the Creator. It makes no difference what I receive from Him. I receive everything as “good and benevolent,” but I must make sure that it is really good, and in order to do that, I must connect to Him and in my reality, feel that the Creator enjoys. I examine everything only according to my feeling in Him, both in the beginning and in the end, and so I want to remain adhered to Him, to get close to Him and to discover Him since, without it, I cannot tune my responses to what I receive from Him.

In that case, both love and fear develop in me simultaneously. Love develops above the fear since the fear is the essential condition for love without which love cannot exist. I must feel constantly “in fear and trepidation” as to whether I receive all my feelings from the Creator and whether He dresses in me. What does He want me to feel? How should I respond in order to bring Him the greatest contentment?

This requires my devotion, self-annulment, adhesion, and the need to feel joy in Him since “For in Him, our hearts shall rejoice.” By that, a person becomes a violin that plays according to the responses and feelings he receives from the Creator.

I constantly tune and calibrate myself so that the Creator will be “the first”—as it is written, “There is none else besides Him”—and that He is “the last” and that “in Him our hearts shall rejoice.” A person is in the middle: On the one hand, he annuls himself, feeling the Creator’s attitude toward the created being and, at the same time, expresses in response the created being’s attitude toward the Creator.

Thus, absolute love only can exist in a vessel that tunes itself accurately in all its 620 attributes, its desires of “in order to bestow.” He doesn’t need anything for himself except for one thing that he discovered in the beginning, that “There is none else besides Him,” and ends with the “good and benevolent.” This means that he understands that he receives everything from the Creator that is dressed in the person’s image (“There is none else besides Him”). Then, he, himself, dresses in the Creator as the good and benevolent, wanting to bring Him contentment
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/29/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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