Question: Can we advance in happiness?

Answer: If a person is immersed in his ego, in his desire to receive, then he certainly cannot be happy because it will only bring him pain. But if he rises above his ego so as not to worry about what goes on inside him, but to live on a higher level and to identify with the attribute of bestowal, with the world, with everything that surrounds him, he can be happy constantly.

It can be to such an extent that he won’t feel what is happening with his body at all. The body can die, but a person will not feel that he belongs to his body any more.

Now we totally identify ourselves with our body. But if we can develop so that we will gradually draw further from it, we will eventually stop feeling that we are tied to it at all. It is as if I float above this body, and it is indeed so, because I identify with the attribute of bestowal and I live in it, and this is the key to advancing in happiness.

I can attain this if I am incorporated in the environment and together with others form one general group force that is not egoistic, but that is formed from all our spiritual sparks that are connected above our ego. Our ego loses its value and we raise the sparks and see them as the top priority. As a result we begin to live in these sparks that are connected and create one harmonious group force.

Besides, by developing the force of mutual bestowal, which means that we can demand this force of bestowal from the upper force field, from the Creator, we will constantly feel happy. It all depends on how a person aims himself regarding the group, and how the group aims itself regarding the Creator, regarding the field of bestowal and love.

This is the only factor that determines everything. I have to detach myself from my “self” and to rise to the level of “we”; everything will be accepted happily! It isn’t simple, and there are ascents and descents, but this is how we advance. Each time we receive an additional ego, an additional desire to enjoy, so that we will grow stronger and connect more tightly to the field of bestowal. This is the only way to advance.

If a person identifies with the goal, he accepts everything that happens on the way happily because he understands that it is a means for reaching the goal.

But if a person thinks only about his stomach—absorbed in himself, unable to rise above himself, then he will certainly walk around with a sour face, will suffer in life, and will always have complaints about the environment, about the group, the friends, the Creator and the teacher—it all depends on how a person aims himself.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/21/12, Shamati #30

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Everything is determined by the inner intention and no words are needed for that. If we know that we must constantly be connected, by overcoming all the interruptions, both the collective ones within the group and the private ones each of us encounters, we will have the right intention.

We constantly return to the intention during the lesson, while listening to the recordings during the day, and while reading the blog. So, I always remind myself and bring myself and return to the intention to connect. Besides, I also worry that all the friends will be connected since if we have a strong collective desire, we will discover the Creator.

If this general collective vessel doesn’t exist, we will not attain the revelation.

This condition isn’t the Creator’s or the upper field’s whim according to which it seems that you are asked to pay in one place in order to later receive something in another place, like in a store. This doesn’t exist in spirituality.

You need to feel a necessity, the need for that attribute of bestowal, and only then will you be able to discover it. Now too, it surrounds you on all sides. You are in this upper field, but you cannot reveal it because you don’t feel a need for it. So what are you crying about?

You don’t even know what the attribute of bestowal or what the upper field that you are yearning for are. You are crying about something that is totally different, about the fact that you didn’t receive a filling in your desire to receive, in your ego. If you really needed the attribute of bestowal, then you would immediately reveal it within this field.

After all, you are within this field, but your charge, your desire to perceive it, is weak at the moment. It could be that this charge is directed in the opposite direction, not in order to receive the attribute of bestowal, but simply in order to enjoy it.

You can check whether you are aiming at the same direction as that field by using the attribute of bestowal if you try to connect with others. Then you will see whether you really want connection or not, whether you need bestowal and love or not.

We will not receive the inner attributes necessary for the contact with the upper field, with the Creator in order to ask Him for the force of correction, until we begin to connect in the group above our ego, by trying to connect. Therefore working in the group is an essential preliminary condition. Therefore, it says “from the love of the created being to the love of the Creator.”

It is for this reason that the shattering of the desires occurred, so that by working with others we will be able to attain the necessity and the need for the attribute of bestowal. The main thing is the desire to learn to bestow.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/21/12, Shamati #30

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Question: I am actually only an animalistic body and I don’t have a “soul” yet. How do I acquire it?

Answer: A soul is part of the Creator from above. It is bestowal; it is the level of Bina, the level of general love.

If you acquire this attribute, it means that you have received a part of godliness from above. “From above” means that you consider the value of bestowal and love as higher than all your other beastly desires.

If you acquire this part of the attribute, it means that you have received a soul. Why? It is because, with this part, you will be able to love others and to bestow upon them. You will feel a different world, the next world, something that is external to what you are feeling now. Every sphere that you are feeling now, as if you were in it and which surrounds you, is a sphere that you feel inside your ego.

If you acquire the attribute of bestowal, it is as if you exit this sphere and enter an upper sphere that is external to you. You get an extra corporeal feeling, a special emotional state (extra sensory), and then you begin to discover the upper world, thoughts and desires that are aimed fully at bestowal and love. This is called an “addition” above the five senses with which you currently depict this world: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and feeling.

You add extra senses to these five senses, which operate in bestowal, called Keter, Hochma. Bina, Zeir Anpin and Malchut in which you feel something else that is totally in bestowal. The new structure that you have acquired begins to take on the form of Adam, which resembles the Creator.

Now, you exist in an egoistic sphere called “this world,” you feel everything only within your ego, and this is your life. Suppose you expand yourself all the way to some external sphere. What you would feel in it is called the upper world.

So, the vessels that you acquire along with that, the desires and the thoughts, are called Adam, the one who resembles the Creator. The Light that you attain in these vessels, the filling, is the Creator, the attribute of bestowal and love.

Then, you attain an even greater world, the next level, and thus you advance up 125 degrees. However, there, you already have an upper mind and feelings that help you understand what is going on. The main thing is to exit the first sphere because its nature is aimed totally inward, and it is opposite to all the other spheres whose nature is aimed outward.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/15/12, The Zohar

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Question: Is it important to understand exactly what the Creator wants from me or is it most important to simply continue as best as one can?

Answer: The Creator wants only one thing from you: for you not to leave Him.

There is no thought, desire, or action in the world, which does not lead towards the revelation of the Creator, directly or indirectly. There is nothing besides this.

We would have revealed Him directly, but this is practically impossible to do. And since we are not capable of moving from point “A” to point “B” by the shortest direct path, a number of indirect reasons arise that direct us and make us move.

These events may confuse a person in many ways, placing obstacles in front of him and making him spin around them for many long years before he makes one step forward. Although it would seem that he could have moved directly without going around.

But in everything that is happening in the world and in the whole of the human history, there is nothing besides the movement towards the Creator. Why else should all events occur if everything is defined by the opposition of the Light and the vessel and the revelation of the Reshimot, (informational genes)? Everything is directed only at clarifying and correcting them. Either, we directly perform our work on them, or as a consequence of the separation, nature will make us come to the same result by the path of suffering. However, this will take a long time since the forces of egoism (Klipot) are stretching it out like rubber, turning each point into a long period, in this way depriving us of strength and confusing us.

As it is said: “The Creator created man straight, but people have thought up of numerous retributions.”
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/5/12, Shamati #25

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The Zohar is the Light that Reforms, and The Book of Zohar is also called “the Upper Light.” We can enjoy this Light only if we know how to draw it, when we are in equivalence of form with it.

What should we do in order to attain equivalence of form with the Light? The Light bestows, how can I bestow? If I tighten the connection with the friends, annul my ego a bit in order to connect with them, try to be a bit closer to them through different actions, events, and by dissemination, I become a bit more similar to the Light. To the extent that I get closer to it, I am rewarded by it influencing me more.

The Light is fixed in its bestowal, but by my actions I draw myself closer to it and become more like it. Thus, I am rewarded with the influence of the Light, and as a result my vessel becomes the one that bestows.

According to my internal change, when I become the one who bestows in my desires and my attributes, I begin to discover the changes that occur in me. Suddenly I discover such desires and thoughts (in the heart and mind) that are totally different from the ones I had before. Thus I feel more and more changes inside me until I acquire a new state in which I feel: “That’s it, I’ve changed!” This change reveals a new collection of attributes, desires, and thoughts in me that is called a Partzuf, man (Adam), or the Creator, which are all the same.

Since according to this new structure, the sum of the attributes, desires, and thoughts in me, I discover a new internal figure, which is a “human,” and in it, I discover its root, the reason that gave it birth, which is the Creator. Thus we discover our spiritual development.

Let’s hope that by our yearning for the level of Adam, which means that in return for the annulment of our ego, the connection with others and with the whole world, and the study of The Zohar, we will enjoy the Light that Reforms and will receive the form of a “human.”
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/15/12, The Zohar

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In the News (from New Scientist): “It is one of the greatest mysteries of pregnancy: how a fetus avoids being attacked by its mother’s immune system. …

“The mammalian body usually responds to foreign cells or tissue by releasing chemicals that promote inflammation and summon immune cells called T-cells to destroy the invaders. But during pregnancy, something turns off this process. This means that despite containing genetic material from the father, the embryo can implant in its mother’s uterus and grow there safely without triggering an immune response. …

“Erlebacher’s team [Adrian Erlebacher at the New York University School of Medicine and his colleagues] found that cells of the decidua, the lining of the uterus where the embryo implants, did not produce the usual chemical signals that would trigger inflammation and summon T-cells to the site. Closer inspection of these decidual cells revealed changes to the structure of DNA around the genes that usually produce these chemical beacons, resulting in them being silenced. …

My Comment: Turning off the synthesis of the foreign body signaling protein occurs under the influence of “unnatural” forces of love and bestowal arising in the egoistic body relative to its progeny that develops in it. This is due to the penetration of the upper Light in the desire that It created in the first stage of the four stages of expansion of the Light. And the Light in the desire gives the desire Its property—to create, which is similar to the process of reproduction—gestation and birth.

The process of conception, birth, breastfeeding, and upbringing is similar to the act of creation of the Creator. It occurs in stage 2, Bina that wants to be like stage 0, Keter. Thus, on the instinctive level of the desire (0 – 1 – 2 – 3), the creature, which is forced by the desire, becomes similar to the Creator. And on the fourth stage of its development, it forces itself to become like the Creator consciously, in attaining His attitude toward the creatures and in comparing oneself to Him, in the process of its correction; that is, spiritual reproduction, development of the soul: its conception, prenatal development, birth, breastfeeding, and growing up, up to the full equivalence with the Creator.
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Question: What is love of the Creator?

Answer: Love is an opportunity to fill someone else’s deficiency (vessel) using my own vessels. In our world we love because it gives us pleasure: delicious and familiar food, people that please us, my children to whom I am naturally attached. We call this love.

But spiritual love is not when I fill my vessels by someone or something, but when I fill the vessels of others. This is the exact opposite of what we are used to thinking about the concept of love. The spiritual world is opposite from the corporeal world. If I worry about someone else’s vessels and want to fill them the way he wants them filled, it means that I love that person.

As long as we love each other and everything is fine, we make a covenant with the Creator in order to sustain this relationship, even if everything changes because of different external reasons. No matter what happens—I want to keep the same force of love and connection between us.

The question is how can this be done if I suddenly discover that the Creator is responsible for all my troubles? My faithful and beloved partner suddenly stops looking at me and causes me all kinds of troubles and problems. He betrays me in every way and does everything against me and becomes my chief enemy. So how can I maintain the good attitude towards Him under such conditions?

But the adhesion to the Creator means that I have gone through different states and have reached a state in which I receive nothing from Him, nothing but the feeling of darkness. But above all that I build a relationship of love, bestowal, and connection despite the problems and the sufferings that He causes my ego. In such a case it can be called adhesion.

The vessels in which I attain adhesion have to be restricted and concealed. Above them there is my Masach (screen) and Returning Light, and there is adhesion in the vessels of bestowal.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/17/12, Shamati #76

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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” item 4: Hence, those who claim that because of our lowliness and nothingness it is not fitting for Him to watch over us, and therefore, He has left us, do nothing but display their ignorance. Try to imagine, if you were to meet some man who would create creatures, precisely so they would suffer and agonize their whole lives as we do, and not only that, but cast them behind his back, not wanting even to look after them, to help them a little. How contemptible and low you would regard him! Can such a thing be thought of Him?

We are very limited in our feelings and cognitive abilities, in our self-perception, and in perceiving what is above us such as the laws of time and place. So of course we cannot accurately understand and establish the right attitude to life and to the Creator.

It isn’t by chance that it says: “Don’t show a fool a job that is half done.” Seeing only a small part of reality, can we determine the general picture? Even in our lives there are different states. Most cannot even imagine in advance that one state will pass and will turn into the opposite state. So if we speak about what is concealed from us, is it possible to come to any conclusions?

I believe, however that it doesn’t stop us. Kabbalists want to save us hard labor, blows, and the prolonging of time, so they tell us from the beginning that the Creator is good and benevolent and that He is in a state of absolute rest. After all perfection is not subject to change; on the contrary, all the changes take place in us. They will occur one way or the other, but we can determine the form they will take.

You can assess the changes egoistically by measuring how much pleasure they bring you and you can also assess them differently, according to how close they bring you to the One who bestows—to what extent you’ve managed to resemble Him. If you assess the changes according to how much you receive, you will suffer until you learn to assess the states you are in and life itself by other values, according to your closeness to the Creator and your similarity to Him. According to this calculation, the degrees of your ascent as a man (Adam) that resembles (Domeh) the Creator will be built. This in fact is the whole point.

So there is a beginning, the process itself, and an end. The events occur and you have no say, and you don’t determine how you will change either. You only have to determine your feeling: How do you accept the inevitable changes? This is the only thing that depends on you.

People who accept their development as desirable are called “righteous.” Those who resist this development and don’t want it are called “wicked.” Accordingly, we feel good or bad: The feeling of life, our development, reality, everything depends on how you aim or “calibrate” yourself to perceive what is happening. Of course, whatever has to happen will happen, but depending on your internal calibration called correction, you can feel the full range of emotions from minus Ein Sof (Infinity) to plus Ein Sof. Everything depends on the degree of your agreement with what is happening.

It is by that, that the wisdom of Kabbalah helps us. If a person agrees with the changes and the corrections, if he wants to be corrected and to accept all the new steps as desirable, if he even wants to hasten these states so that they will pass as fast as possible and is ready to accept whatever the future brings “above reason”, above all the calculations, since he is already in a state of faith and bestowal, then it doesn’t matter what actually happens at the moment. In this case a person hastens the development, feels it as special, sublime, and wonderful, and this is desirable in the eyes of the Creator.

Everyone should reach this form of development, and until then, we won’t advance since we cannot advance in a bad way. A person can simply stand still, receiving new troubles and sufferings each time on the present level, until he agrees to change himself and to establish the right attitude towards his development. So on every level a person either prepares oneself in advance to the changes or accepts every change as a blow, which cause him to change under the pressure of different forces. In any case, the changes are necessary, and so consciously or under a shower of blows, a person will be compelled to accept the development as a wonderful and desirable thing.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/17/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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You can find many allegorical examples that illustrate the process of the spiritual closeness. For example, a clock with a pendulum that moves from side to side reflects that a person does half the work and the Creator does the other half.

A person is only required to prepare a deficiency—this is his free will—to prepare a deficiency with the help of the environment. The Creator is revealed according to the environment since the Light is constant and doesn’t change. If a person prepares a deficiency in the size of the first ten Sefirot in which he can reveal the upper Light in the new level, the Light is revealed.

So a person is always preparing a new deficiency and then the new level of the upper Light is revealed.

We should remember that the Light is in a state of absolute rest; it is eternal and unchanging. The Creator on His part always maintains the covenant with a person and doesn’t change its terms. A person must constantly renew the covenant.

Each time he shifts with his pendulum and makes a step forward and by that is rewarded with the revelation of the Creator, closer proximity to Him. By every such attempt, he should come out with the right impression so that all his work, on the level he now finds himself, between two ascents or two descents, will be for the benefit of the King. This means that his work should be in one direction “above reason” with one intention of valuing the attribute of bestowal above the attribute of receiving. Thus a person gets closer to the Creator.

Regarding this it says: “on all your sacrifices you shall sacrifice salt.” A sacrifice symbolizes closeness to the King, and by constantly keeping the covenant between you and renewing it, you are rewarded with a revelation.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/17/12, Shamati #76

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If the Creator is revealed or at least comes a bit closer to a person according to the equivalence of form one has attained, a person mustn’t allow himself to be lightheaded and to enjoy this pleasant feeling during the ascent. On the contrary, the time of the ascent is the most suitable place for working when we are required to add maximum exertion in order to more tightly hold on to the study, the group, the books, and dissemination.

We should try to maximize this time and understand that no one guarantees that all this won’t stop the next minute. Therefore, you must now, using all the means you have, tie yourself to the state of ascent, so that even if the pleasant state changes into the exact opposite state and becomes dark and unpleasant—a state of fogginess, confusion, helplessness, and powerlessness—then even in such states which are full of despair, you will want to remain adhered to the Creator.

This closeness will not sustain the pleasant states, but although you feel bad now in your desire to receive, you wish to remain loyal and to adhere to the King. So neither the ascents nor the descents will affect you if you feel or don’t feel a filling in your vessels of receiving. On the contrary, it is when there is no filling that you can be sure that you are operating without any self-reward, in order to bestow.

In order to do that you need a “covenant.” If you yearn for bestowal, you discover that you can form such a covenant with the King, and that the Creator will keep this covenant. Thus you can be sure that when the descents come and you feel that you are totally empty and cannot hold on to bestowal, thanks to your earlier work, you will be able to remain adhered even in the “dark.”

Our whole work is actually done at “night,” where bestowal and faith are. As it says: “Say your grace in the morning and your faith at nights,” since it is at “night” that faith and bestowal are revealed.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/17/12, Shamati #76

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