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.
[80337]
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/8/12, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

Related Material:
The Inexpressible Complexity
Beware Of Substitutes
The General And The Particular Attainment

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Inner Work, Perception - No Comments →

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.
[80002]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/07/12, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

Related Material:
A Matryoshka Put Together On The Inside
The Taste Enhancer
An Alliance To Mutually Draw The Surrounding Lights

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Egoism, Inner Work, Mutual Guarantee, Perception - No Comments →

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.
[79650]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/03/12, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

Related Material:
History Of The World: The Path To Mutual Guarantee
Either Mutual Guarantee Or Self Love, There Is No Third Option
The Group, The Nation, The World

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Inner Work, Mutual Guarantee, Perception - No Comments →

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.”
[79647]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/01/12, The Zohar

Related Material:
Born To Crawl In Three Axes
Fragmented Perception
Have You Ordered “The Magic Tablecloth”?

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Love, Perception, Unity - 1 Comment →

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.
[79711]
From the 1st pat of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/3/12, Shamati

Related Material:
How Much Am I Uncorrected?
The World Where “There Is None Else Besides Him”
The First Article, Which Is The Beginning Of Everything

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Inner Work, Perception - No Comments →

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.
[79581]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/01/12, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
The Most Expensive Call Home
Completing The Puzzle: What Is The Original Message?
Escaping The Foolish King

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, My Similarity to the Creator, Perception - No Comments →

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.
[79353]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/30/12, Shamati #61

Related Material:
The Spiritual World – The World Of Qualities
Science: The Moment Of Truth And Limitations
A Live Thread

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Inner Work, Perception, Q&A - No Comments →

The Creator isn’t a personality. It is forbidden to imagine anything in the immaterial spiritual world. It is a world of qualities, not even of forces in our current understanding of the word.

Today, when we think of a force, we imagine physical forces. And for the time being, I don’t argue with that. I don’t want to correct this degree of relation to spirituality because at least it gives us certain sensation of the field.

We envision a field, its intensity, characteristics, and the decrease or increase in its force proportionally to the square of the distance. This is how any physical fields expand. This gives us an opportunity to operate with at least something that exists around us in nature and technology. Therefore, for the time being we can imagine the spiritual forces and the spiritual field in this manner.

But in general, the spiritual field is a quality, a property. It’s not even a force.

However, we say the “force of reception,” the“force of bestowal,” “collision,” “mating while striking,” and so on. In other words, we speak of forces. But afterwards, we will feel that it’s simply just two properties that are interacting with each other in this manner: the property of the Creator and the one opposite to Him, the property of the creature that He made. They interact so that between them, between these two properties, man, consciousness, would arise. Consciousness—it’s what man is.

And when it comes to matter in our world, any quantum physicist will tell you that there is no matter, there aren’t even any elementary particles. Everything blurs, turns into a cloud, disappears into nowhere, and spreads like shagreen leather. There is no point, no forces, nothing, only nebulous cloudiness in the place of what previously appeared as particles simultaneously existing in all locations. That is, physicists are approaching the boundary of the physical world.

This is why it’s impossible to talk about something figurative. On the contrary, we will come to the point where all of our subsequent attainments, which we will call spiritual, meaning above-egoistic, will not be figurative, but qualitative.

For example, a dog sees the world as patches of scents. And we’ll perceive the world not as figures or images, but in a form of various qualities: greater egoism, smaller egoism, greater bestowal, lesser bestowal, interaction while striking, penetration, and so on. Only qualities! This is the upper world. And we’ll perceive ourselves in a form of qualities as well.

Even today you would like to see the essence of man and not his body.
[76635]
From a TV Program “Foundations of the Integral Society” 4/8/2012

Related Material:
Progressive Double Vision
The Taste Enhancer
An Angel – Digging In The Garbage

Filed under: Inner Work, Perception, Spiritual Teacher - No Comments →

Baal HaSulam, “Preface to The Book of Zohar,” Item 33: So is the matter before us: All these images and changes begin and end only with the impression of the souls. Yet, by the will of God, they appear as though they are in him himself. He does that to enhance and expand the attainment of the souls to the utmost, in accordance with the Thought of Creation, to delight His creatures.”

The gap between me and the desired picture, which I imagine, should be filled with knowledge. We must make efforts to understand and clarify and thus expand our vessels.

Eventually we attain a reality that is 620 times greater than the initial reality, and this addition comes from the head of the Partzuf. The desire that was created by the Creator stays the same, but it receives an additional understanding and recognition, and by that it grows qualitatively. Thus I attain not what I have received from the Creator but the Creator Himself.

Question: If I fill this gap with knowledge, what is the role of the feeling?

Answer: The Creator wants only one thing from us, that we will build a mind above the feeling so that we will understand, attain, and reveal Him. By that our vessels of feeling expand as well, because the mind operates on feeling; if I know whom I receive pleasure from, then it is 620 times greater.

Before I was offered a candy, but I didn’t want to taste it. Suddenly I discover that someone I respect gave it to me and so the candy immediately tastes differently.

It all depends on our evaluation. Suppose you were served fine, vintage wine from special reserves, and you are also told about its history, of course you will pour it and enjoy every sip. But what if suddenly it will turned out to be a mistake and that the wine was actually from a barrel that was intended for an ordinary supermarket?

Our tastes and preferences depend on our values, it all depends on our evaluation. If I value something, I feel its taste. Then according to this taste, I evaluate other things. However, without any initial evaluation, I am like a computer without software, just a piece of metal. Of course there are genetic discernments of tastes, but the filling of my desire is what determines the set of values.

Therefore, the addition of 620 times provides me with a mental evaluation, recognition, of the one who brings me the pleasure.

Question: How should I establish the right evaluation if I see before me a picture that is totally opposite from the right order of priorities?

Answer: This picture was given to you on purpose so that you would correct it. I have to see the importance of the one who sent me this corrupt form that allows me to be corrected. Without the broken puzzle I wouldn’t put the separated parts together and wouldn’t acquire the mind of the artist through this process.

I exert myself in order to put the pieces together and eventually, by completing the original picture, I discover its message: “I love you.” What is more, now I know who is saying this to me and what His words mean.
[79259]
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/29/12, Baal HaSulam “600,000 Souls”

Related Material:
Not In Quantity, But In Intensity
The Taste Enhancer
The Void Where The Supreme Thought Dwells

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Inner Work, My Similarity to the Creator, Perception, Q&A - No Comments →

A ladder, which divides the worlds into levels and the Light into portions, descends from Above, from the whole state, all the way to our world, until the total concealment. The concealments were created so that we will grow and fill them with our recognition, our work, with our exertion and efforts.

Instead of working with the vessels of receiving, we should begin to work with the vessels of bestowal, which means with the desire to receive in the intention of in order to bestow and not with the intention of in order to receive. Thanks to that, a person acquires freedom and independence, knowledge and the feeling that he’s in the Creator’s world, in the upper world.

In order to bring a person to this state, he’s shown concealments from a certain point in his development, which is happening in our times. For selected individuals this already happened in previous centuries, but today the whole world feels the concealment, a kind of obscurity, confusion, helplessness, and disorientation. There’s a feeling that we can no longer advance with the old attributes and forces to calculate our exertion and our desires to make plans and achieve results.

There is nothing to yearn for since the world is covered by a shadow. But this shadow is the same concealment, which we have to balance and to fill with our exertion. We know that this concealment was given to us on purpose, not in order to divert us from the good goal, but on the contrary, in order to bring us to the good but consciously, by understanding and feeling it as grown-ups.

Accordingly we have to determine the right way to advance, by clarifying what is required from us and how to organize all the means we have and our vessel, so that they will raise us above the concealment. We don’t annul the concealment, but we rise above it.

Everything depends upon how a person accepts these states. It says: “and each man shall help his friend,” the group has to give each one the powers as well as to constantly remind him that “there is none else besides Him,” and that we must ascend the levels of bestowal in “faith above reason.”

Then all the concealments will turn into a shade of Holiness by which we acquire vessels of bestowal, which are called “holy.” If we forget that, both we and the group, it’s a serious problem because we no longer exert ourselves in order to rise above the concealment; we are not thankful for the concealment and don’t accept it as something that’s desirable, as a springboard to ascent. Instead, we are angry about the concealment and ask for it and all the unpleasantness in life to be removed.

The concealment can be very strong, but a person should remember that there is none else besides Him. A person is only required to determine his relationship with the group correctly in order to raise a request and to draw the Reforming Light, and then he will attain adhesion above the concealment. This is how he will advance.

Otherwise it will turn into a shade of the Sitra Achra, of the egoistic forces, which will lead to a greater fall, which won’t allow him to fulfill himself correctly. No matter what happens, he should rise again and start everything anew. The main thing is to determine a framework for himself: a schedule for studying and for working in the group, which will remind him in every state that his obligation is to differentiate between the shade of Holiness and the shade of the Sitra Achra.
[79182]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/28/12, Shamati #8

Related Material:
Until The Shadow Clears Away
Checking The Connection With The Group
“Until The Day Withers And Shadows Will Flee…”

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Egoism, Group Work, Inner Work, My Similarity to the Creator, Perception - No Comments →