Question: What are a deficiency of the individual and a deficiency of the general?

Answer: A deficiency of the individual doesn’t exist in spirituality because it isn’t about the ordinary corporeal desires. In spiritual desires, a person has only one point in the heart, which he still hasn’t realized.

A general deficiency is the ability to detach from oneself and to connect to the general. This means that a person already understands and feels from studying, from being part of the group, and from disseminating that the spiritual world is revealed only in a whole deficiency.

A whole deficiency means that it is connected, at least minimally, which enables a person to perceive several spiritual discernments. Until then, one doesn’t see anything, like in the evening at twilight when everything becomes blurred.

There is a saying that it is evening time when you cannot recognize the face of your friend from a certain distance (four Amot) as everything blends together. However, if I can recognize my friend, it isn’t evening yet.

Evening symbolizes the fact that I can see something, but that I don’t understand exactly what it is. Thus, we gradually begin to come to the understanding that, instead of a revelation, there are several discernments in which we can recognize, similarly to the way we recognize a friend’s face from a distance of four Amot, which means in the four minimal phases of the desire to receive.

In order to do that, I need to connect my desire with the desires of several other friends so that there will be a connection among us, and, from that, I will be able to discern good and evil, light and darkness. I need to clarify what receiving and bestowal means for myself and for others, or for everyone together, among us.

In the connection between us, I already begin to see these discernments: what “in order to receive” means and what “in order to bestow means.” In this place, built by me, in the deficiency by incorporating with others, I already understand to some extent what in order to receive and in order to bestow mean. This is an initial, minimal understanding, but I already can see the difference between the two.

A deficiency is formed in me, a vessel of perceiving by which I can see the spiritual world, to feel it and to see different discernments. Thus, my spiritual introspection opens up, which is different from the external perspective that I have in this world now, where we imagine that we see something.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/13/12, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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Question: How are we supposed to help each other? Let’s say I am a farmer and most of the time I don’t communicate much with other people. How can I possibly bestow to them?

Answer: Tell me, why and for whom do you work on your land? We think that we work for our own sake, but in fact that’s not what’s happening. A long time ago, humans were at the animate level thinking only about how to feed themselves. They didn’t feel that they were a part of each other or have a sense of community. But with the development of our receiving desires, people were no longer able to provide for themselves. Then, one became a farmer, another a shepherd, and another worked with tools. It is said: “Go and earn from each other.” Our desires grew more complex; accordingly, our world became more complex.

Ultimately, we think we serve ourselves, but in fact, it is really others. We are under the delusion that we act for the sake of our own benefit, but in fact, it’s a misunderstanding. Actually we work to get our salary, which is nothing other than a deception. In fact, we work to bestow and to provide for others.

For example, you grow tomatoes and all day long you are thinking about how to sell them and what you will earn. So remember, if you did not regard yourself through the deceitful prism of egoism, you would see that you simply are trying to find a way to help others profit. You are suppressed by a delusion that all you do is pursue profits because you don’t know how else to motivate yourself because you still don’t know how concern for others will serve the purpose. Well, you can remain under the impression of this lie if you want.

In reality, your pursuit of profit is a complete fraud. Soon the banking sector will collapse, and you will see this. Similarly, we encourage children or trick a donkey by dangling a carrot in front of its nose to make it work.

Question: So, a Kabbalist grows tomatoes, earns half a million by selling them, and constantly thinks about how to use this money for the benefit of others?

Answer: Of course! Otherwise, he wouldn’t be working for the sake of bestowal. What kind of a Kabbalist would he be?

Comment: But, people are constructed in a way that most of the time they don’t think of things like that.

Answer: You keep forgetting because your perception is not connected with bestowal as of yet. A mother feels her child within herself, so she never forgets about her baby. Internally, she never separates from her child; she simply cannot cut off the umbilical cord that connects them together. Wait, you too will discover the cord that joins you to others.

Comment: But even egoistically, I don’t dream about my future salary all day long.

Answer: That’s right! However, you constantly think of various pleasures that attract you. An expert receives sensual and intellectual fulfillment from doing his work well. Eventually, you’ll find out that you are working for the benefit of others. All of us are the Creator’s workers; we are giving to each other all we can against our will and do not acknowledge our bestowal. Instead of a beautiful and perfect picture of the world, we see a perverted and wicked image that alters the reality into its complete opposite.

Eventually, we have to “remove the blinders” and lift the veil of concealment. Nothing will change, except us; but when you change, you will see an inverted world.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/7/12, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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Everything takes place in the desire to receive, the only created being. And it is controlled by the Light that educates it and teaches it by everything that happens with this desire. The process begins from the fourth phase of the Direct Light from which we see that in addition to filling the created being that it created, the desire brings it to feel it, the Creator. Eventually the created being (the fourth phase – Behina Dalet) begins to feel that someone has created him and is now filling him, which means that there is something else besides the desire itself and the fulfillment.

We don’t feel it in our lives, since we feel ourselves as phase one, at the beginning of creation: I have a life and I am alive. We don’t feel that we are receiving this life from someone and that is why we don’t develop above the first level, the level of the inanimate.

The vegetative level already feels that its life is determined by someone’s desire, by some plan that leads to a certain goal. This means that it feels that there is a reason that leads to a process that leads to a goal. Thus two attitudes are developed in it: towards its condition and towards the one who provides this condition.

The created being can feel good or bad, and at the same time feel that this good or bad feeling comes from someone. Accordingly, he develops an attitude towards this “someone.” Instinctively, he loves the one who causes him pleasure and he doesn’t like the one who makes him suffer.

But thanks to the fact that he goes through many states, the created being begins to gradually accept the mental discernments along with the emotional impression. The mental discernments are formed in the created being thanks to the clarification of the process, the connection between the cause and the consequence, and by comparing the two. It is as if he begins to put a puzzle or Lego pieces together by putting together different parts, different states, by comparing them and connecting them with different reasons and outcomes.

After feeling many pleasant and unpleasant states and seeing that they are connected, he understands that it is impossible to judge and to respond only on the basis of the initial emotional feeling since there is no such program in bestowal. There is a certain formula that connects the cause and the consequence, and so we can be in many unpleasant states that are useful and eventually bring about better feelings.

Thus the ability to think begins to develop in us, and the thinking process appears. Together with the desires, the mechanism of the mind begins to take on a form, thus enabling a person to relate the process we are going through regardless of what he feels. We can already detach ourselves from our feelings and check these feelings by using the mind and relating to them objectively, as if from the side. This is how we begin to clarify our states.

As a result, the attribute of Bina appears in the created being, the understanding that is detached from the first phase, which is a pure feeling. A person begins to rise, with the help of the mind, above his feelings as a “clever man who sees the future.”
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/12/12, Shamati #121

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The wisdom of Kabbalah uses only those terms and names which are real and reflect reality. This is an immutable law of all Kabbalists: “That which hasn’t been attained is impossible to name and define.” Until an object is revealed completely, as if you’re holding it in your hands, Kabbalists don’t call it attainment but something else like understanding, knowledge, and so on.

In this manner, we attain a phenomenon to its very foundation, from the beginning of creation until the end, in every detail. And as much as we attain it inside our vessels of perception, to that extent we ourselves become enriched and complex in equal measure. After all, all the worlds are inside us and the entire picture appears within. I don’t study external phenomena but whatever occurs inside of me, and in the process, I understand myself more and more and realize to a greater extent that there is nothing outside of me. If before I saw the world as being outside, it was only due to a distorted perception, while in reality, it was a projection reflected in my brain.

Ultimately, the spiritual attainment leaves no doubt, just like I don’t doubt basic, elementary things, such as how many fingers I have on my hand. And this is why it is written in different places that Kabbalah doesn’t require proof, since it cannot offer any proof to a person who is not in attainment. Words taken on faith won’t help here; a person needs to ascend to a level of attainment, to feel inside him or herself the screens, the Lights, and the vessels. Then he will see reality—see it firsthand with his inner sight.

Then our world will suddenly appear to be inside as well. Indeed, as the desires are corrected, a person feels the facets and manifestations of the world inside him. When we work in a group, trying to bring the friends closer in unification, bonding, and Arvut (mutual guarantee) in order to become as one man with one heart, then through that, we prepare ourselves for that very same perception, which depends wholly on a person himself. And this is why spiritual attainment has no boundaries. All that we see outside transitions inward, becoming a part of us.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/8/12, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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Baal HaSulam, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”: “It turns out that he regresses the world, as they said, “One sinner destroyeth much good.” Because he could not overcome his petty lust, he pushed the spirituality of the whole world backwards.”

Baal HaSulam tells us about the general system in which we exist. A person thinks that he lives in a world that is made up of the inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature, and also seven billion people. He doesn’t understand that it is actually the Creator who presents Himself to him this way.

In another place, Baal HaSulam says that a person who causes his friend sorrow is actually causing the Creator sorrow. It is as if we are looking at a kind of “display”: the Creator is depicted to us in the form of the inanimate, the vegetative, the animate and humans who are around us so that we will respond to them and with their help, together with them, we will be able to reach the goal. He has prepared all this for us to ease our way to the goal.

If we all shared one desire to receive that is not divided into parts, facing one Light, that is not divided into an “Inner Light” and a “Surrounding Light” and to many other Lights and other influences, we would never be able to correct ourselves. Our desire to receive is now external as a result of the shattering of the vessels and is presented to us in external forms that are opposite from us. On the whole, I hate the others instead of loving them. If the desire were inside me, I would love the others and fill them, but this way I want to steal from them and to empty them by filling only what now seems to me as myself.

So we are facing a very special kind of work—in our distorted perception, in darkness, and in blindness, we can work as if we are already corrected.

I don’t love, I hate others’ desire to receive and I only want to steal from it, and now I have to bring it inside me. The hatred and the repulsion that motivate me aren’t really aimed at others but at my desire to receive that is presented to me as someone else. I am shown this false display of my internality, which seems to be outside myself, thus helping me to relate to my internality in a corrected spiritual way.

If my desire were felt as my own, I would love it and want to feel it, but now I hate it, reject it, and want to empty it. This helps me form the right spiritual attitude. Even without trying to change my attitude to others, I only need to change my understanding of the picture and to acknowledge the fact that what seems to be outside me is my essence.

Thus it is clear that the upper Providence is playing a special game with us, by working with others we work with our desire to receive. The hatred and the repulsion create the right conditions and only the “fact” that this desire isn’t mine, brings me down in the meantime from the spiritual height of the world of Ein Sof (Infinity) to the corporeal depth of this world.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/07/12, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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Baal HaSualm, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”: Therefore, the Tana described the Arvut as two people on a boat, when one of them began to drill a hole in the boat. His friend asked, “Why are you drilling?” He replied, “What business is it of yours? I am drilling under me, not under you.” So he replied, “Fool! We will both drown together!”

From this we learn that since those rebels wallow in self-love, by their actions they build an iron wall that prevents the observers of the Torah from even beginning to fully keep the Torah and Mitzvot in the measure of “Love thy friend as thyself,” which is the ladder for reaching Dvekut (adhesion) with Him. And how right were the words of the proverb that said, “Fool, we shall both drown together!”

This is a very clear example: No matter where the hole is, in any case, I eventually drown and as a result everyone dies. This is why we should worry about all the participants, and this concern should first be revealed internally, inside me, when I worry about my own desires, and also outwards when I worry about the group and the world.

A person is a small world. Eventually my inner structure connects with the structure of the group and the structure of the whole world. So it turns out that if I could keep the right, accurate, basic form of my vessels, the corrected and the uncorrected ones, I could keep the external vessels of the group and of the whole world. This is called “judges himself and the whole world to the scale of merit.”

We can bring the example of a Matryoshka (a set of nesting dolls): I am inside, then there is the group, and then the whole world. And all of this is only in my imagination—my ego is divided into “layers” from the internal layer to the external layer. Actually, however, it is about one structure, one system. Therefore, I am responsible for everyone. If I carefully guard myself, I guard the whole world by that.

Thus the correction is carried out internally. Of course I should also worry about the external part, but the real work is done inside me. Therefore by growing stronger internally, we radiate the power upon our groups and upon the whole world.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/03/12, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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The difference between spiritual perception and corporeal perception is in the fact that a person feels that the spiritual world is inside him, in his desire to receive, and the feeling that the world that is outside of me doesn’t belong to me is this world. The difference between the two is determined by the ego that distances certain attributes that are in me and seems to place them on the outside. This separation is created because of the shattering of the desires that made them alien and distant from one another, as if they were not part of the egoistic interests of others and of those who are opposite from their own desire.

But it is exactly for this reason that we have a chance to connect, as in the beginning, in the final, corrected state, but now with the feeling, understanding, and attaining its existence to its full depth. After all, we’ve been through a long way of recognition towards the final state, comparing what we feel inside us and outside of us.

This is possible thanks to the fact that my ego separated me and threw millions of my attributes away from me: the attributes of the inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human, which I feel as foreign. Now thanks to the fact that I compare them to myself and draw myself forcefully closer, whether I want them or not, I intensify my feelings and increase my understanding until I begin to love all the others.

When I bring them back inside me I acquire such a wide perception of reality that encompasses all of Ein Sof (Infinity), 125 spiritual degrees.

Just think how hidden and unfelt are all the processes that take place inside us. But on the outside I immediately pay attention and react strongly to every change, even the slightest one, whether it is good or bad. After all, my ego increases them as it looks at them as if under a magnifying glass.

With regard to what happens inside me, my ego is not as picky as toward what happens externally. Therefore, I am so sensitive to anything that happens around me, but if the same thing happened inside me, I wouldn’t even notice it. A person doesn’t know himself; he doesn’t feel and doesn’t see himself as others see him. Sometimes it is a real shock for him to discover what others think about him. They open his eyes, and he cannot believe that he is really so.

We don’t know ourselves! We don’t feel ourselves and don’t know our own attributes. We only want to fill ourselves, but we are not familiar with the internal intricacies. While everything that takes place on the outside concerns us, and we passionately judge those who act in a certain way with regard to us and contemplate what we should do about it.

So thanks to the shattering that has brought all of my internal attributes outside and has left only a very small desire inside me, I can begin to work with what seems to me as external to bring it back inside in order to connect the Light and the vessel into one desire. Thanks to that I acquire a fine perception since I have to take into account and understand every stranger. I may hate him, but I have to love him when I turn my whole perception to the other pole.

Such an understanding rewards me with a Light that is 620 times stronger and the understanding of where I am and what I feel. This is the difference between the world of Ein Sof, that was initially created by the Creator in which the created being was only one small point, and our world. We increase that small point until Ein Sof by adding everything that is on the outside by bringing the whole world inside according to the rule: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/01/12, The Zohar

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It is written, “There is none else besides Him,” meaning that there is no other force operating in the world besides the Creator. But in this case, where will a person get the forces to work? And in general, how can he make any independent action, even the smallest one, whether mechanical, material, or spiritual, in desire or in thought?

After all, there exists just one single source of energy on which everything runs, like the Sun that gives life to the entire Earth. One force gives energy to everything, to all parts of nature and in every form, material and spiritual. All positive and seemingly negative things come from one source.

It turns out that the laziness that bears down on a person, and all of the obstacles obstructing his advancement toward revealing the Creator also come from one upper force. And a person is in the middle and has to decide how to accept this upper governance, meaning how to relate to the forces influencing his desire.

The entire universe is the desire of a person who feels that there is him and that around him there are the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature, and people. But all of this, both the internal and the external, appears within his desire and comes from one upper force.

All he needs is to attach all of these forms, this entire picture to one source. And while trying to do so, a person begins to see one guiding hand in the entire process, in all of the occurrences that happen to him. In them he sees the expression of one upper governance of the Creator, who is the only thing that exists.

The Creator arranges things so we feel this single governance in the form of a multitude of forces that fight with one another, positive and negative forces that eventually unite in the middle line and facilitate the revelation of this single upper force to man.

By revealing this one force, a person begins to recognize the general program – the system of creation. And his desire, in which this reality is revealed, becomes ordered into the system of worlds. But when he properly arranges the picture of perception of reality and through his efforts relates it to one force, then suddenly, an occurrence takes place that destroys all fruits of his work.

Then he must once again work with new informational data (Reshimot) that awaken in him and must relate everything to one force, which is good and does good. Thus, by virtue of the Reshimot’s revelation from the Creator’s end and efforts from man’s end, the two work as partners. The Creator continually presents new conditions to a person, while a person has to use them to gather together this mosaic where just one force will operate and surround him.

It will confuse him, becoming revealed and then concealed again and again. And it turns out that on his end, a person constantly adds what is missing in the general picture, in this mosaic, in order to reveal the image of the Creator in it.

Every piece, every Reshimo, every state and situation helps a person to discover that everything comes from one upper force, and the forces of good and evil act together here to let him grab hold of the picture that is built out of black and white fragments. But he has to start paying attention not to the black and white, but just to his belonging to a single source from which these two forces come.

That is how he will reveal the upper governance. His objective is only to make efforts to reveal the Creator as the cause of everything happening inside of him and in the reality he perceives, in the process that he undergoes by virtue of all of these experiences.
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From the 1st pat of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/3/12, Shamati

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The attitude towards the friend, the group or towards all of humanity, which we currently perceive as existing outside ourselves, is actually the same thing. Such a perception of reality isn’t acquired immediately; we must constantly connect “Israel (one who yearns for Yashar –El, straight to the Creator), the Torah, and the Creator” to one whole.

A person should constantly work in order to form the real picture inside him. It is gradually stabilized, in all its parts, in all the connections between the different parts, until it is revealed to a person.

It is like seeing a blurred picture on a screen when you cannot distinguish anything and thus you feel confused. In the same way, we see the world through our internal photographic machine, which is totally out of focus. But gradually this picture is focused and becomes clearer according to how close I can bring my internal attributes to the attributes of the Light.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/01/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: Why does it say that a person is responsible for his own exile?

Answer: Once we existed in the upper world in our roots, but because of the sins of Adam, the “first man,” who received the Light egoistically for himself, the “shattering” occurred, and we found ourselves here in this world. Instead of feeling the five stages of the world of Ein Sof (Infinity): Shoresh, Aleph, Bet, Gimel, Dalet (0-1-2-3-4) and the five spiritual Partzufim: Keter, Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin, Malchut, we found ourselves feeling the corporeal reality that is perceived through the five levels: the root, soul, body, clothing, and palace.

We feel a reality that actually doesn’t exist and we don’t know that there is another reality that is real and that was created originally. We are in exile from it, as if we were exiled to some distant foreign land, as they used to send criminals by ship  to Australia in the past.

Being in this world, a person doesn’t feel that somewhere in his homeland he has a home and a happy life. He has already gotten used to this exile! But there are people who feel that they are in exile, and who are told a little about their homeland where the real life awaits them. Then a person understands that he is in exile. He has to worry about holding on to the first piece of information that doesn’t evoke any feelings in him and to begin examining it and tightening the contact with it.

This is a very fine string that was thrown to us to hold on to, which sometimes totally disappears and is sometimes evoked in our feeling. From this moment onward, everything depends on a person’s work. The Creator has given us the end of the string, He has started the connection, but it is only possible to tighten it by a person’s desire, by his concern and fear that he might lose it.

It all depends on how important a person sees this connection without fearing any interruption. He should be ready to give up everything for it. Suppose you could call home but it costs a thousand dollars for five minutes. And you are willing to work for a whole month in order to make this call.

Then you rise to a new level of connection, and you are allowed a videoconference, but this costs ten thousand dollars. Again you are ready to work only to be able to make the call. This is how you advance until you suddenly discover that you can be constantly connected. But the advancement is made by concessions that express that you appreciate the connection with the Creator more than anything in this world, more than any possible pleasure, by acquiring a Masach (screen) over the first, second and third level, one level after another.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/30/12, Shamati #61

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