A person has to make efforts, to play in order to annul himself as much as he can, and to value the environment as much as possible. As a result of this game, the right line is built in him in which he thinks that he wants to stay for the rest of his life. The moment he reaches “satiation,” he cuts himself off from this state and dedicates time to the left line.

In the left line he checks himself: “Do I really think that way, and attain this way? Do I really feel the recognition of the Creator’s greatness within my vessels and the recognition of this wholeness? Have I really attained such an understanding and feeling in my heart and mind, or is it just an external impression like of an embryo in his mother’s womb who totally annuls himself?”

But I don’t want to annul myself. I have just annulled my desires in the right line and I want to feel the greatness of the Creator directly in the desire, which I now discover in the left line.

Then I feel a deficiency, but I keep these two lines so that they will balance one another and none of them will be tilted in order to keep the balance. There is no specific time limit for the right line or the left line, although it says that one should spend twenty-three and a half hours in the right line and only half an hour in the left line.

We have to try to add as much as possible to the right line and to the left line. We shouldn’t decide that we have done enough and that now we should wait for the Creator to start acting and to complete these two lines for me.

A person constantly switches from one line to the other until he makes enough efforts and then the third line is revealed. He summons this revelation by raising a deficiency from the left line to the height of the right line, asking that the Creator reveal His greatness to him in response to this request. He wants to reveal the Creator’s greatness, the greatness of bestowal, only so that it will allow him to work with the desire that was revealed in him in bestowal, “above reason.”

His egoistic desire surrenders to the greatness of bestowal that is revealed and agrees to work under the domination of the Creator. This means that a person builds his “head of the spiritual Partzuf,” where he calculates things that enable him to bestow in order to bestow and to receive in order to bestow.
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From the 1^st part to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/17/12, Shamati #11

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Rabash, Shlavey HaSulam (Steps of the Ladder), Article, “The Love of Friends”: And although a person receives some thought and desire that he should leave his self-love, which comes to him by hearing what writers and books say, but this is a very small power, that doesn’t always illuminate this opinion for him, so that he will be able to consider it or use it permanently…

Question: Is the power of Kabbalah books so small?

Answer: Of course. It doesn’t depend on the books but on the person himself, or what we call the “user.” A person will not succeed by himself even if he has the source of the whole Book of Zohar. Nothing will help him, because by himself he has no vessel. His success doesn’t depend on the books but on establishing an attitude to others.

There are two forces active in nature: the desire to enjoy (to receive) and the desire to bestow. The desire to receive is the created being and the desire to bestow is the Creator. The created being is in the desire to receive here in our world. If he wants to be in the Creator’s world, he has to acquire a desire to bestow, which means to switch to the second nature.

In order to do that, two factors must be activated:

1. Connection. In our world a person connects with others in order to reach the second nature.

2. The Light that Reforms. It illuminates only in response to the efforts of a person who wants to connect with others and to acquire the nature of bestowal.

Besides that, we should aspire to bestow upon the Creator, although at the beginning we are not required to have such pure intentions, which will come later on.

So there is the necessary means in our world: the group that enables us to build an “infrastructure” among us, the right relationships, a vessel, albeit still flawed, but that demonstrates our desire to be corrected. Of course we discover that we cannot and don’t want to connect, that we are repelled by one another. We reveal the evil inclination and not the blissful feeling of brotherhood and complete joy. Brotherhood: On the contrary, we have to connect, sobbing fiercely about the extent that we hate one another! Embracing although we shudder with repulsion.

It is very good since by that you discover the shattered vessel. Then you will have the reason for crying and calling for the help of the Light that Reforms. And it comes because you study from the books of Kabbalists and want to go through the states they go through.

Thus we move from the level of the love of the created beings to the love of the Creator. Rabbi Akiva said “Love thy friend as thyself, it is the great rule of the Torah.” But that isn’t the end of the road yet. When you reach the first level of love, you worry about the fear: “Will I manage to love more? Won’t I lose what I have already acquired?” You have to act “from the other side.” After all, there are always two lines in the spiritual work and you are in between. So make sure that your love is accompanied by fear. Evoke the attributes of judgment—it is impossible without them.

Then, when you reach fear, you will acquire the “middle line”—the wholeness called bestowal or faith. This is already the end of the work, the fulfillment of love.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/14/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: How do we fulfill the rule “Love thy friend as thyself?”

Answer: It is when I stop feeling the difference between me and the friend. This is the first rule, to which we have to add fear and faith.

A mother, for example, has an instinctive love for her child. Is that enough? No. Love operates her and it is expressed in caring for the child and in constantly worrying about him.

So love is not enough, there must also be fear, worry about the loved one, and incorporation with him, worrying about his desires and a true concern about their fulfillment. So when I feel the fear, I express my love and this expression is called “faith.”

Love is the right attitude to others, but the goal of creation isn’t only about that.

We incorporate with others, fill them, and create one vessel and from the love of others reach the love of the Creator.

Question: How can the love of others give us power and provide the fuel that we need? How can a person who is submerged in self-love feel the desires of others?

Answer: With the help of the Light that Reforms. Of course only with it.

Question: Does that mean that we have to constantly create a desire aimed at this direction so that the Light will reform us?

Answer: Yes. Our work is only in creating the deficiency for love, for mutual connection, for incorporation, to want to be within the other and to take on his desire instead of mine.

In these kinds of actions you summon the Light upon yourself.

First you have to know how you can resemble the Light, its nature. It is one, infinite, and simple; it bestows and it wants to do good to everyone. If you can acquire this inclination in some way, then to the extent that you do so, you will approach the Light and it will operate on you. The Light doesn’t change, but by your attraction to it you increase its impact—both on your evil inclination and on the good inclination.

In the laws of this world, it is reflected by the fact that the influence of the general field is inversely proportional to the distance squared. So if you decrease the distance by half, the Light operates on you four times more strongly.

Question: We draw the Light during the study. So what do I have to do during the day? How should I work with the friends in order to build the right desire for the next lesson?

Answer: During the day you also draw the Light since you are still in contact with the most important thing. Besides, you are connected to the world group that never ceases its efforts. For example, there are friends from Australia or from South America studying with us who are getting the same message. We are one vessel and it isn’t only about your individual study. Of course, you draw more Light during the lesson, but on the whole we work 24 hours a day all over the world.

Question: How can we draw the Light most efficiently? What should each friend do, no matter where he is?

Answer: We should want to correct love of others, to unite with them and thus create a place for the revelation of the Creator. By that, we bring Him great contentment, by that all our pleasure is the pleasure He wants to bring to His created beings.

Question: Can we check our efforts and get a response from the general system?

Answer: If each of us makes some efforts, he will begin to feel daily internal changes, whereas now he experiences something new once or twice a month. Later the changes will become an endless chain: entrance – exit, entrance – exit, every few seconds.

Of course, your attitude will also change and you will have a stable path and be able to sort out the ascents and descents along two lines, evaluating them from within the middle line.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/14/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: You spoke about the fact that we are constantly awoken from Above, but that we don’t feel it because we lack equivalence of form. What happens Above when we read The Zohar, are we awoken more strongly or do we become more sensitive?

Answer: If you just read The Book nothing happens. You can either read it or not. It all depends on your intention. If your intention evokes an equivalence of form, then to the level that you are equal to a higher level, you are impressed by it. But if you are not inclined to be equivalent in form, if you don’t approach it, it doesn’t illuminate on you.

The upper level is in a fixed state and it is called Hafetz Hesed (which doesn’t want anything for itself). You can evoke it so that it will impress you if you exert yourself and increase your desire. Then it illuminates upon you. It isn’t that it illuminates especially for you, but you are impressed by it according to your vessels, your renewed desires.

But where can you get new vessels and desires? If you are connected to other friends then among you, you give birth to the spiritual vessel. None of us is a vessel that can absorb the Light. There must be at least several people who want to connect in order to nullify themselves before one another, and that is already becoming equal to the upper. According to such an equivalence of form, they can feel a more powerful illumination from the upper among them.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/14/12, The Zohar

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Establishing the right mutual relations in the group is the most important thing we need to implement, since the wisdom of Kabbalah is a very practical wisdom. We can use other wisdoms even without understanding them. For example, I sit in the car and I am shown what is around me, which buttons to press and go. This is what actually happens in everything that we do. It is enough to know a few things in order to use different scientific developments. Sometimes all we need is some basic knowledge: For example, get in and sit down and the train or the bus will take you to your destination, although you have no idea how it is done. I move from place to place, eat, drink, and participate in different events knowing nothing about the technical basis of things, just like a newborn baby who is carried in the adults’ arms or pushed in a stroller.

In spirituality, however, it is different. There I can use certain things only if I know and understand them. I have no control over things that I have not attained and have not discovered. I cannot just sit in some “spiritual carriage” and go somewhere. No, I have to know who I am, what this “carriage” is, how it moves, how to operate it, from where to where I should ride it, what is the place I started from like and what is the nature of my final destination, etc. I have to know what is going on, to be in control of the situation and not just “press the buttons.” Only if I can really implement this fully, having mastered everything, can I perform a certain spiritual act. Otherwise, I simply don’t exist in the spiritual world.

Therefore, we have to immediately ask ourselves: Which means enable us to discover, to know and to understand the spiritual reality and to learn how to manage it? Kabbalists explain that everything in our world is prepared for that. It is fully ready only for this mission, so that from here I will learn how to work with the spiritual world, live in it, and fully control it.

From this world I learn about the upper world. The main tool here is to practice love. We can call it the practice of connection, concession, but on the whole it is about love.

Why? Because that’s what it’s all about. Now I love myself, my desire to receive. I enjoy by filling and satisfying it. This I how the Creator made me, He connected the filling with the pleasure. Love of others means that I don’t absorb the pleasure but rather feel it in Him and by that enjoy. This is how a mother also enjoys every spoonful she can put into her baby’s mouth…
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/14/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: If I sincerely answer the question “What do I want?” then the answer that comes up in my heart is “to feel good.” I try to change this desire through the mind and say that I want to bring contentment to the Creator, but in the next lesson my real desire is once again to feel good. How can I exit this feeling? How can I reach the true spiritual desire?

Answer: If a person remembers that he has to say: “I want to bring contentment to the Creator” since otherwise he will not succeed, it will not help. The Creator does not enjoy it if I’m just saying that I want to bring Him contentment.

I can only bring contentment to the Creator by actions and not by empty words, by the act of connection. Thus I bring contentment to the Creator by revealing Him. I can only reveal Him in our collective vessel in which we are all united. But in order to connect with others, I have to exit myself and to try to connect with them. By that I bring the Creator contentment, because then He can be revealed.

This whole system of mutual bestowal can be revealed and this is called the revelation of the Creator to the created being. This is called bringing contentment to the Creator. I don’t do it by words, but by actions, by giving Him a place to be revealed.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/11/12, The Book of Zohar

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Baal HaSulam, Shamati, Article 42, “What Is that the Acronym Elul in the Work”: For this reason one is given a form of blackness from Above, and then one sees if one’s work is in purity.

In other words, if one can be in gladness in a state of blackness, too, it is a sign that one’s work is in purity, because one must be glad and believe that from Above he was given a chance to be able to work in order to bestow.

If a person feels glad, above all his moods, it is a sign that he is already detached from his desire to receive and that he can advance.

This is always the test: Are we immersed in our desire to receive or can we rise above it to some extent? A person doesn’t ask to be in a good mood in order to continue his work. On the contrary, he is happy about the darkness, about the bad mood and the confusion. Above all this, he is ready to make a slight effort.

It doesn’t matter what mood we are in, we don’t see it as important, but rise above it. If things look bad in the vessel of receiving, I can work above it in bestowal, in unity and in love of friends. It is a sure sign that I am on the right track. All our work is in feeling the darkness in the vessel of receiving and making even the slightest effort above it, yearning for a connection, for bestowal.

This is why we have to perform the right exercises, to play games by which we learn. Of course, it isn’t easy for a new student during the first few years, but then he begins to feel the gap between his feeling and his intention, which means between two different systems.

He may feel good and then he may feel bad, and he understands that it doesn’t matter, that he should work only above these feelings and that time after time they will provide him with different details of the perception of reality that are necessary on the way to learning about the different forms of the Creator’s Providence. A person accepts all the feelings—the good and the bad ones—as a benefit, in order to rise above them and constantly keep the right direction towards the goal.

We have to constantly make these efforts as we try to preserve the energy of the ascent that enables us to use the time and the means we have rationally, so that we can also use it during a descent. True, it is very hard, but at least we have to try. Thus we gradually detach ourselves from the vessel of receiving and move on to another kind of work, already living in the intention and not in the feeling.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/11/12

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It is clear that we were created so that we are only capable of worrying about our own good and we have no drive to act altruistically. In all the next 125 levels we increasingly discover this truth lurking in our ego, which totally controls us.

The only way to break away from it is with the help of the Light that Reform, that raises us from the egoistic intention to the intention of bestowal. We remain with the same desire to enjoy, but its intention changes.

This is only possible under the influence of the Light. When the Light shines on the desire, it holds on to the intention to bestow. The moment the Light stops influencing the desire the enjoy, it immediately returns to the intention of for its own good. It all depends only on the intensity of the Light that influences the desire.

It turns out that all our life depends on how much the Reforming Light influences us. This is why we have to summon its greatest influence upon us. In order to do that, we need a deficiency, a desire. Where do we find it?

For that there is a mutual inclusion. After all, none of us has a great desire to achieve bestowal: We don’t understand it and don’t see any benefit in it. So I have to incorporate in the group, in the right environment, which impresses me and tells me about the greatness of bestowal.

It doesn’t matter if the others don’t know what they are talking about; I am impressed by them since that’s how I am built. If I place myself under the influence of the environment that acts out bestowal, even artificially, as a game, it impresses me, and I begin to want to bestow! After all, it is the environment that has inserted the idea that it is a great, valuable attribute in me.

It’s like fashion that is advertised on all channels with lots of publicity, colorfully with famous actors taking part in the campaign, who tell me how important it is to have those products. Eventually I want to buy what they want to sell, although none of the actors have even thought of buying these products themselves, and the ones who hired their services simply want to make a profit. They all work only in order to confuse me and eventually they succeed: I go out and buy what they advertise.

We need the same thing, but we should organize this game by ourselves. We have to increase the importance of bestowal and to convince ourselves that it is good to bestow! Everyone must sell this merchandise to others.

We are first incorporated in each other’s desires and everyone acquires a desire to reach bestowal. Second, we work together building our environment so that it will provide each of us with the greatness of bestowal.

Eventually I receive an internal desire to bestow and so does the environment, the group that inserts the importance of this attribute in me. This is why I want it! Everyone acts as if he has ascended and is in bestowal and is attracted to it. I am impressed by that and want to attain the same thing.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/10/12, Writings of Rabash

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After the shattering, under the influence of the informative genes (Reshimot), the shattered desires go through different states detached from spirituality on the levels of the still, vegetative, and animate nature. And so they gradually understand their state until they finally reach the human level.

Then they begin to understand that something brought them into our world, into a state in which they feel only themselves in a special desire called “body.” It is as if a particle from the upper world was thrown downward and immersed in some liquid in which it has remained.

Now a person is faced with a dilemma: Should he work for this world, for the sake of adding, for the benefit of the body, or should he work for the benefit of the soul? He has to choose one of the options.

Of course the choice isn’t up to a person, but rather stems from the reincarnations he has been through on the levels of the still, vegetative, and animate nature where he examined his state. A soul that has come closer to its fulfillment is called a “high soul,” and with it a person can already decide to act for the benefit of the soul and not of the body.

In order to act for the benefit of the soul, a person needs this whole world to help him reach the awe of the Creator. Fear is a spiritual vessel, a desire aimed at bestowal. The illumination from above called the “Light of the soul” is dressed into this desire, or more accurately into the intention that is built on top of it.

This intention is built from the depth of the desire (the thickness), a Masach (screen), and Returning Light—which make up a person’s spiritual vessel. Of course it is possible to develop it only from this world when we ascend from it up to the height of 125 degrees.

People who have reached this fulfillment according to their Reshimot come together. The upper Light operates on everyone equally, but if the informational genes are revealed, the Reshimot that are ready for this correction come very close to one another aspiring to connect. As a result a person comes to a group in our world.

But after he comes to a group another law begins to operate on him, which allows him freewill. After all the Reshimot have to be fulfilled in a person’s desire.

Even if it says “I am the first and I am the last” and “there is none else besides Him,” the preparation for this revelation, for the recognition of the greatness of the spiritual goal from the darkness of exile, is totally in a person’s hands.

Here nothing can be done. Whether this load seems heavy or light to a person depends on the height of the goal and on how much a person values the one he serves.

If he disrespects the teacher, the group, and the Creator, then nothing can help him. After all, these three components are inseparable and supreme for a person. If he doesn’t value them, he will eventually divert from the path and leave the spiritual development

If he works on it as he makes every possible effort so that it will save him, it will help him belittle his ego, his corporeal mind, and his life experience that seems to have some value. It is revealed as totally useless before the new states he has to go through, but it will also empower him and give him fuel to advance along this path.

This is only possible if the greatness of the goal, the group, the teacher, and the Creator are more important to a person than his egoism.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/09/12, Writings of Rabash

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The goal of the society is to raise us to the human level. This is possible only by the greatness of the Creator, which we don’t see in our darkness. But it is in the dark that we can establish new values among us that have no egoistic foundations.

We know that these values are totally unjustified, since otherwise they would stem from our ego. But the spiritual foundation is above the ego, like the Sefira of Yesod that is above the Sefira of Malchut. So everything depends on the foundation we choose: Is it just dust that is totally inanimate or dust from the ground (Adamah) that already resembles (Domeh) the upper, as a man (Adam), similar to the Creator?

It all depends on our priorities and on what we consider to be important. We begin to play with the importance of the Creator, the teacher, the group, the study, and the goal and it becomes a most important and serious game in the group. It is because in our ego, in our desire, we only see darkness. The ego constantly grows, thus increasing the darkness. But if on top of this darkness we develop the greatness of our common goal, everyone in the group receives fuel and energy to advance through the darkness.

This means that instead of advancing by the stick that pushes us from behind, we choose by ourselves to be drawn forward to the greatness of the upper, to the greatness of the attribute of bestowal, mutual help, connection, love, and all the supreme values that are specific to the Creator’s nature.

It is for this purpose that the Kabbalistic group is based, and as such it must keep itself by constantly clarifying its goal, its basis, more and more accurately. The members of the Kabbalistic group are heroes in quality not in quantity. Only people who can really advance this way should join it. Therein lies our strength, because we want to achieve the greatest possible similarity to the Light, to grow in height and not in width.

And this is why we gather here—to establish a society where each of us follows the spirit of bestowing upon the Creator. And to achieve bestowal upon the Creator, we must begin with bestowal upon man, which is called “love of others.” (From “The Purpose of the Society,” Rabash)
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/09/12, Writings of Rabash

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