Baal HaSulam, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy“: The reason is that although this love is merely a consequence of the gift, it is still far more important than the gift itself. It is like a great king who gives an unimportant object to a person. Although the gift itself is worthless, the love and the attention of the king make it priceless and precious. Thus, it is completely separated from the matter, being the Light and the gift, in a way that the work and the distinction remain carved in the attainment with only the love itself, while the gift is seemingly forgotten from the heart. Therefore, this aspect of the wisdom is called the “Formative Wisdom of Kabbalah.” Indeed, this part is the most important part of the wisdom.

We are talking about the wisdom of Kabbalah with which I clarify and check the Creator’s attitude towards me and accordingly stabilize my attitude towards Him.

The King is very cunning: He gives me a gift and arranges everything so that in this gift I will feel His attitude towards me and feel shame as a result, since I don’t feel the same towards Him. He takes care that I will decipher it correctly, that I will “read” the situation and will not erase the shame inside me, but instead, the shame will help me resemble Him. When I receive love from Him, when I feel the gap between His attitude to me and my attitude to Him in my shame, I thank Him, although the shame burns like fire. It is this feeling that helps me build myself.

In fact, the shame can turn out to be the right deficiency. If I don’t want to erase it, it is already the right attitude, and now above this deficiency, I have to build my attitude towards the Creator. This means that the shame mustn’t disappear. On the contrary, it should grow, and I should try not to extinguish it, not to cover it, not to cover it up, but rather to turn it into such love, just as I feel it from the Creator and even more than that.

Why is it more? Because love is taken for granted by my ego. Everyone needs to love me. If I receive a gift of $20, I will forget about it after a short while. But if someone takes $20 from me, I will resent it, as if I had lost $200,000. This is the egoistic approach: I always deserve the gift and the harm is unacceptable. If someone says something good about me, I am satisfied until I forget about it. But if someone says something bad about me, I will not calm down until I repay him.

So feeling shame before the Creator doubles the love and helps me build a vessel of bestowal that matches my ego. Otherwise, I will see that only receiving gifts of love from Him is not enough for my ego. I simply must have the shame, the force that doubles the force of love, by allowing me to develop a greater deficiency for bestowal and to fulfill it.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/16/12, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”

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Question: In the article “The Peace,” it is said: “The store is open and the shopkeeper sells by deferred payment; the book is open and the hand writes. And all who wish to borrow may come and borrow, and the collectors return regularly, day-by-day, and collect from a person knowingly and unknowingly.” What is the payment?

Answer: And what is receiving? What do you get from the store? Do you steal by not knowing what?

All your life, all the thoughts, all the feelings, everything that continually passes through you, you get from the store, from the first atom to the very last great attainment. You are created in a certain way, with particular physical, internal, psychological, spiritual, mental properties so that you transform yourself. You got this knowledge and conditions. You are in a place that is involved in transformation. Bring yourself closer to the likeness of the Creator. Thus, you pay for what you receive.

Or else, a person does it involuntarily under constant successive blows and suffering. But his suffering pays for nothing. He just comes to the realization that he has to pay; he needs to change himself. This may take another 100 years.

You have the opportunity to begin to change yourself now and thus to justify your existence, meaning what you get from the store. Payment is made accordingly with our reasonable actions, aimed at becoming like the Creator, which is the way that I change the world into the likeness of Him. I change not only my attitude to everything, but also education, upbringing, dissemination, the whole world, but first of all, myself.
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From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/9/12, Lesson 6

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Question: To what internal, emotional state should I strive in every situation, as a man of the future of civilization?

Answer: Each one of us should feel a responsibility to make sure that this civilization is realized spiritually, so that humanity will accomplish its mission, becoming a place of revelation of the Creator!
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From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/9/12, Lesson 6

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Baal HaSulam, Shamati, Article 38, “The Fear of God is His Treasure”: Our sages said, “Everything is in the hands of God except the fear of God,” because He can give everything except fear. This is because what the Creator gives is more love not fear.

Our goal is to reach adhesion with the Creator. Adhesion is attained by equivalence of form. Equivalence of form is attained by reaching the love of God, to the same extent the Creator does.

This means that we must attain love. The Creator constantly adds to this love on His part and as a result we feel that we are advancing by the path of suffering because we don’t add anything on our part.

In order to reach love a person has to build his spiritual vessel called “fear“, fear that he may not feel love towards the Creator.

In order to attain this fear, a person needs the Torah, the Light that Reforms, Mitzvot (commandments), and the right intention to fulfill them. Otherwise he will remain on the level of the still nature. He needs the environment to remind him of the right intention during the study of the Torah and Mitzvot, so that others will hold him in the right intention and won’t let him forget the Creator’s good. So the Torah and Mitzvot were not given to an individual but to many, and everywhere it says “You” in the plural sense and not in the singular meaning.

It’s impossible to advance without the intention to attain the Creator, the love for Him. This must be the reason with which everything begins and which obligates all the actions.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/27/12

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We are at the bottom of the spiritual ladder, where every level has its special Light that grows as we climb in quantity and quality. Its influence on us changes our attributes in which we begin to know the reality that we live in. The only reality is the Creator.

It turns out that the levels of concealment become levels of revelation. Every level is made of two wholes. The first whole is a person’s yearning to reach the right deficiency by subduing himself each time to the environment, ready to accept its influence, and to be impressed by the upper Light, ready to rise above reason. He constantly prepares himself for the influence of the Light, which is called working at night, in the dark, in raising MAN, in prayer.

He operates according to his powers and doesn’t know what he yearns for. This means that Malchut rises to Bina, to Hafetz Hesed, to faith, and the main thing for a person is that his action will bring the Creator contentment. As a result of this correct and fulfilling action, the Light influences him and changes him.

All our advancement is by our being reborn over and over again. It is said: “Every day should be new to you,” which means that it’s impossible to compare today to yesterday. It is because every day a new vessel is born and it has a new basis, new Reshimot (spiritual genes), new values, and by that it is completely different from the previous state. A person already understands that his actions yesterday were mistakes, malicious actions, or Mitzvot (commandments), and he attributes everything to the Creator which eventually brings him to adhesion.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/26/12, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: How do we build a student’s readiness to perceive the wisdom of Kabbalah in the group?

Answer: Through the connection. A person cannot be ready to perceive if he is not connected to the friends. They have to unite by raising the teacher’s greatness in their eyes, thus building the right connection. Someone small can only receive from someone great, from the group, from the teacher, from the Creator, if he lowers his head before them. This is the path up the spiritual ladder.

When the students connect, they create the necessary condition, and become one whole. It is a sign that each one has annulled himself before the others, and considers himself the smallest in the group, ready to bestow upon others. Being connected means to keep all the society’s conditions.

We begin to connect, and after many years go through the hardening of the heart, which is also called “the ten plagues of Egypt.” First we may think, why don’t the plagues begin immediately when they arrive in Egypt? But it isn’t so; first it is nice and pleasant to connect, just like it was nice and pleasant for the children of Israel when they settled in Egypt and received all their nourishment through Joseph who connected everyone to Yesod.

Joseph is Yesod that connects the five phases or the five senses: Hesed, Gevurah, Tifferet, Netzach, and Hod. Rabash used to give the example of a salad that is made of five ingredients: tomatoes, cucumbers, pepper, onion, and parsley. If you cut them all up and mix them, they will create something new, which is the result of the connection between them. It is the same with Yesod; it has nothing of its own, but it is the outcome of the connection, of their attributes. Through it, the children of Israel acquire thickness in Egypt and an increasingly greater desire, but in the meantime, during the “seven years of satiety,” this thickness operates in favor of the connection between them.

It was at the beginning of the exile in Egypt that the sons of Jacob together with Joseph sang “How good and pleasant it is when brothers sit together.” They felt that it is worthwhile to connect since together they succeed; together they are strong. Thus Egypt enslaves us by an egoistic connection.

This is the process until such a great thickness is revealed that it is impossible to do anything with it. Then Moses escapes from Egypt to the desert. He simply couldn’t be together with his ego. During the “seven years of hunger,” we discover that this enslavement, the adhesion to the corporeal values, is not in our favor, but the opposite, it detaches us from the goal. Suddenly I begin to understand where I am and what is happening to me. I look at my “animal” desire that has grown into a giant heavy body, and I see that this “animal” is no longer mine, that I am under its control, under it.

This is called “a new king rose in Egypt who didn’t know Joseph.” It is a good thing, since he shows us the truth, our true state compared to the Creator, and thus he brings us closer to our Father in Heaven.

Then, at the end, there are the ten plagues: We hold on to our unity and these plagues hit us in order to break us apart; they are all aimed against the connection.

If I am ready to rise above the ego, to beat the king of Egypt, I rise above these plagues in order to remain connected and united. It is more important for me than Pharaoh’s afflictions. On the background of the plagues, I ask the Creator to keep us connected since without this connection, we will not be able to leave Egypt; this is all our work.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/26/12, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”

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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot“, Item 107: Hence, after one attains the illumination of the face in such a measure that each sin he had committed, even the deliberate ones, is turned and becomes a Mitzva for him, one rejoices with all the torment and affliction he had ever suffered since the time he was placed in the two discernments of concealment of the face.

…has now become a cause and preparation for keeping a Mitzva and the reception of eternal and wondrous reward for it.

From this we learn that the more I have suffered, the more I am rewarded now. So does that mean that it is worthwhile to suffer in order to receive a greater reward later? That’s what it sounds like in our language, in our egoistic perception. The past is not erased; the correction is in turning it from sorrow to delight. Instead of a vessel that has suffered from darkness, from lack and emptiness, from wars, from diseases, from pains, which mean from lack of filling, we now feel a filling and in it we feel a reward and love.

Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 108: This is similar to a well-known tale about a Jew who was a house trustee for a certain landlord. The landlord loved him dearly. Once, the landlord went away, and left his business in the hands of his substitute, who was an anti-Semite.

What did he do? He took the Jew and struck him five times in front of everyone, to thoroughly humiliate him.

This is about the ego and about the point in the heart in a person, about how the ego dominates a person now and beats the “point in the heart” called “Jew” (Yehudi), which stems from the Hebrew root “unity” (Yehud). This point wants to unite with the Creator and suffers because it cannot do so. This means that it receives blows from its ego.

Upon the landlord’s return, the Jew went to him and told him all that had happened to him. His anger was kindled, and he called the substitute and commanded him to promptly give the Jew a thousand coins for every time he had struck him.

The Jew took them and went home. His wife found him crying. She asked him anxiously, “What happened to you with the landlord?” He told her. She asked, “Then why are you crying?” He answered, “I am crying because he only beat me five times. I wish he had beaten me at least ten times, since now I would have had ten thousand coins.”

In the earthy representation of this story, this seems coarse and egoistic, but we understand that the Torah tells us about a person’s internal world. Whoever understands this interprets it correctly.

“A person is a small world,” in which there are two opposite sides: a point in the heart and the heart itself. The heart hates the point in the heart that yearns for unity with the Creator.

The greater the desire to receive that is revealed in us, called the cruel egoistic heart, the more strongly it seizes the point in the heart and doesn’t let it advance. The point in the heart makes different attempts to escape it and to advance, and so it suffers from its domination and from its own slavery, from the tormenting exile. The tension and the struggle between them constantly grow and the point in the heart feels more and more pain since it cannot unite with the Creator.

This creates a vessel and so the filling arrives, which is called “upon the Landlord’s return.” The reward is felt in the same sufferings, in the same empty places that were created during the exile. This means that it isn’t the desire to receive itself that becomes in order to bestow, but the struggle against it
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/25/12, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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The desire to receive, which we are in now, is bad. It is very good if we want to enjoy life, and it helps us as much as it can. But it becomes bad and cruel if a desire to bestow is evoked in us, and it doesn’t let us adhere to the Creator, to the upper level. The desire to receive places a Machsom (barrier) between the upper and us, which does not allow us to pass.

The point, the spark of bestowal, strongly yearns to adhere to the Creator. The more the desire to receive dominates it, the more it yearns for the Creator. The more the domination of the ego is revealed, the more strongly this point has to struggle with it. And so its intention for the Creator grows and at the same time the sorrow and the pain also grow from the inability to adhere to the Creator. Its feeling of exile becomes greater and more bitter.

The tension, pressure, and yearning grow, and thus the vessels are formed. The vessels for attaining this upper level are not formed by the desire to receive that has turned into a desire to bestow, but are derivative of it. It is a result of the efforts and the sufferings, of the struggle between the spark of bestowal in a person and his desire to receive.

The spark struggles in order to adhere to the Creator, but it cannot do so since the desire to receive holds it by its feet and doesn’t let it break free. Then its exertion (for which the desire to receive is responsible since it held the “point in the heart” in its hands) becomes the vessel in which the unity of the next level is revealed.

This means that the desire to receive itself doesn’t become this vessel, it always remains restricted, but we work above it, by building our vessel above it, from the bricks of our exertion.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/25/12, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: How can a whole Partzuf of ten Sefirot be created from one Sefira? Where is the power needed for that?

Answer: How do the ascents and descents take place, the birth of one Partzuf and of another Partzuf? How are new Sefirot added to it, and how does a “zoom in” or “zoom out” take place? How can a whole body develop from one point, from one sperm cell?

The body is already in it. We only need to add the material, which means to discover the desire that is concealed in phase one. In phase two, we already must discover it by our own efforts. It turns out that all the reality that is revealed is a reflection of our efforts.

So, the whole World of Atzilut is built only of the ten Sefirot that were in the world of Nekudim.

The world of Nekudim is only called a “world,” but in fact, it was one Partzuf. Now, a whole world stems from it, and what a world; it is so complex! It is thanks to the fact that the mutual participation of the upper and the lower are added here.

This cannot be explained mechanically. The Creator describes to us some concrete attribute, an event, a phenomenon, but in order to attain this phenomenon, we must build “ten whole Sefirot” with regard to it.

The Creator shows me this phenomenon as one point of Keter from Him. I must establish a desire for Him and discover different actions with regard to this desire, my reaction to this phenomenon, to know how I will attain it by myself so that I shall know Him. Thus, I will attain the Creator and understand what He wants to achieve in His attitude to me, when He draws this phenomenon for me. I must respond in the full “ten Sefirot.”

The world of Atzilut sets the first example of what the created being should look like. The created being cannot attain anything if he hasn’t been through the four phases, if he hasn’t built all the “ten Sefirot,” if he hasn’t attained the root of the phenomenon, knowing the Creator who has arranged all this. So, we must build ten Sefirot, a whole Partzuf, from every point the Creator describes to us.

This is the reason that we need to work so much for so long. After all, we must attain ourselves through the root of the whole phenomenon, to connect Malchut with Keter.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/19/12, “The Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Baal HaSulam, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”: …for we do not define by name or word that which we do not attain. That is because a word designates some degree of attainment.

The root of everything is the unattainable and imperceptible essence of the Creator (Atzmuto). We never speak about it because something can be described something only on the basis of their attainment through our bodily senses when we analyze our sensations with our brain.

A person consists of two parts: mind and emotion. The emotional part is a desire. The part that measures and explores is the mind, which develops next to the desire. If we don’t experience any “feedback” from either of these two parts, it means that we are deprived of the ability to perceive. The “insight” happens in the desire that lies underneath a dry, mental analysis.

As it is said in the “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” besides Atzmuto, there also exists an abstract form that we are unable to attain. As opposed to abstract form, both materialized form and matter are attainable. Thus, in Kabbalah, attainment occurs from bottom to top to the extent it is actually possible.

On the other hand, philosophers do not contemplate the steps of ascent; they talk about some “force” that is outside us and scholastically deliberate on it as if this kind of “research” is legitimate. This kind of approach has actually ruined philosophy. Today nobody takes it seriously. When it comes to abstract conversations, everybody hypothesizes as much as they want to. Moreover, this principle lies at the very foundation of philosophy; a person can build their own picture of the world based on speculation; it is “legal.” This “pluralism” has resulted in a fountain of fantasies and nothing is left of the serious real foundation.

The wisdom of Kabbalah, on the other hand, declares a very simple thing: Reality can be explored only by the observer, meaning, it can be researched only in conjunction with the explorer. Everything is evaluated through the observer and the picture that is created in the observer’s bodily sensors is in accordance with the law of similarity of properties. A person is comprised of both matter and form.

Matter is the desire to receive.

Form is the intention either for the sake of receiving or for the sake of bestowal.

We perceive reality through ourselves in accordance with the level of our ability to change. What is outside us, we just don’t know. Discoveries of Kabbalists can’t be applied to our personal research until we achieve the same level they did.

So, we use the wisdom of Kabbalah to attract powers from these steps, trying to reach them, like little children who strive to grow. In other words, we still use the wisdom of Kabbalah as a “special remedy” that is not clear to us yet, but it works. Then, when we attain revelation, we will research and apprehend the same phenomena inside our own vessels. At that time, Kabbalah books will help us examine ourselves and will direct our advancement.

But still, we never know what actually is outside us. Kabbalists who advanced further due to their internal changes tell us about some 125 steps of attainment and describe what they have perceived at each of these steps. They outline specific remedies that will allow us to widen our limits of perception. Their desires are vessels of the soul; they perceive something called “Divinity,” the power of bestowal that emerged in them to the degree of their similarity of properties with Divinity. When receiving desires shape themselves as bestowing ones, they feel that “something” is fulfilling them. This “something” is called the “upper force” or the “Light.” But again, that, too, is perceived only by the person.

So, the “Light” is a reaction that happens in our sensations, in our receiving desires, as it is being filled. In other words, the “Light” is a phenomenon in the vessel. Even the Light that in Kabbalah is called “external” is, in fact, located inside the vessels, only more distant from clear perception. One way or the other, it’s always about what is happening inside our sensations and desires. This is the way we advance.

Regarding Atzmuto: according to our logic, we say that there is a higher root. We never sense it, nor will we ever attain it; however, by of course, there must be the source of our existence, of our sensations, and all the changes in us. And yet, no matter what we feel, we feel it only in accordance with our own properties. That’s why the “Creator” (Boreh) means “Come and See” (Bo-Reh). This phenomenon I also perceive internally and Atzmuto is outside us.

The entire reality is divided into three parts:

A man

The fact that he feels

The source of his feelings, which is imperceptible

The approach of the science of Kabbalah calls upon everyone to study reality. After all,  there is the commandment, “Know your Creator and serve Him.” How? According to the principle “From Your actions we will know You.” Man changes himself and is constantly trying to come into agreement with the upper force and become similar to it. Then he feels the changes made in him, and according to these changes, begins sensing new phenomena. It is the upper force to which he aspired.

So the “Creator” is a new modified form clothed in  the changes that happen to us, the property of bestowal that is revealing itself within us. Subsequently, the wisdom of Kabbalah is very strict about its major rule: Never detach reality from the person comprehending it. Otherwise, we’ll end up being philosophers.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/5/12, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”

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