Question: How can we measure our advancement, in comparison to what?

Answer: I measure my advancement by checking to what extent I justify the friends, value them, and see them as the greatest in our generation, as special people, and to what extent I see the Creator’s image in them and want their attributes to become part of me.

I want to become the result of their influence because this is called the internal perception of the environment. What they imprint in me will be the form of the Creator, the human part in me.

I understand that this is how I should treat them, but at the same time I don’t see them that way. These are two feelings that don’t connect at all. On the one hand, I feel that the friends are great and special and that they are no different from the Creator. On the other hand, I understand that I treat them in a totally different way. This determines my attitude towards the Creator. If I disrespect the society, to the same extent I disrespect the Creator, it’s absolutely the same. If I want to change by the environment, it’s as if I place myself under the influence of the Creator.

If I can combine these two discernments, meaning hating and disrespecting the friends while at the same time respecting and valuing them, I attain these two polar opposite points. One becomes my Keter and the other becomes my Malchut and together they build my spiritual vessel.

By attaining such a vessel, I understand that this is my nature and I can determine that I am in “exile” because now I see the cause that requires my connection with the group and that I should place myself under its influence. On the other hand, I discover how far I am from connection, how I always forget it. I discover the difficulty in attaining it and how reluctant I am to do it.

Thus I see how harmful my ego is by not letting me be included in my environment in harmony, which means to be included and to melt in it as an integral part. This means that I transcend the Machsom (barrier) that separates me from the spiritual work.
[75729]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson, 4/19/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: If the Creator manages all the opposing forces that appear during this time, why is the transition between two degrees so dangerous?

Answer: Our main work is concentrated specifically in the transition between the degrees, not in the fixed state. When I am on a certain degree, I work only in order to delve into these states, to understand and examine them.

In our world, we think that the main thing is the achieved state, not the transition to it. However, in the spiritual world, what matters is the transition, not the state itself.

We remain in a certain state only for the period of time required for us to discover it. It could last for a second, then the transition, again, a state lasting a second and again, the transition. There was a Kabbalist who told his students that he went through 400 ascents and descents in a few minutes’ time.

In the spiritual world, we feel an inverted and different dimension into which we break within the framework of time, movement, and space. It is specifically by this that we penetrate the space between the seconds of our world. In our world, the seconds move directly one after another. Spirituality is found between them because spiritual life takes place specifically in the transitions, not in the states themselves.

A static state is a dead one, and it doesn’t count in spirituality. It exists only in order to complete the degree, which includes in its sub-degrees a great many internal transitions. This is why a person, who is in the spiritual world, is constantly going through changes and has no rest.

The spiritual concepts do not exist within our coordinates of time, movement, and space because in our world, there are no breaks between the seconds, there are no gaps either in time or space. Whereas spirituality indicates that you find an interruption between one second and the next, and penetrate its depth, thus entering the spiritual dimension.
[75516]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/17/2012, Writings of Baal HaSulam 

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A person cannot be corrected until he understands that he must rise to the next level. He must always picture this solution in his mind as if he is not in his current state, but already in the next state having attained the upper level to which he rose by the Reforming Light.

Usually we want to correct our current state. This stops us because we think that the current state has arrived so that we will correct it.

Thus we confuse ourselves because all the states come so that we will rise above them to the next states. There is nothing to correct in the present state. The correction is in rising from the current state upward.

It is very hard to accept this, because this approach does not exist in our world, but this is what happens in spirituality. This is because all the states are given not so that a person will correct them, but so that he will correct himself. It is possible to correct yourself only by rising above every state, which is called advancing by “faith above reason.”

Every time I feel a certain discernment or a wrong and unreal attribute, I see it as an invitation to rise above it. Thus I see that everything that happens to me comes only in order to show me my deficiencies. Their filling and correction takes place on the next level, and never in the current state.

Everything that I see with regard to myself, with regard to this world, with regard to the friends and the Creator, which seem as bad and imperfect, are the discernments of the places above which I should rise and adhere to greater bestowal. This is how I can advance until I reach complete bestowal.
[75600]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/18/12, Writings of Rabash

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Time, motion, and space do not exist. It is we who, in our consciousness, call our perception in some parameters as years or time, while in others as motion and space. According to this we see a certain picture.

However, there are no billions of years outside of us. If you ask whether there was a “yesterday,” it’s necessary to find out what “yesterday” or a thousand years ago means. What does “was” mean? It’s now that I feel these states and call them “yesterday,” “the day before yesterday,” or “tomorrow.” But if we separate this point of “I the perceiver” from this, there will be nothing left.

We concern ourselves only with how to exit this illusion. We are absolutely confused and there is no need to discuss what’s going on. We only need to search how to rise above this material feeling and understanding, and then we’ll sense and understand the truth and be able to judge our state. But while we are still inside of it, we won’t be able to judge; it’s absolutely useless.

We start with this reality because we must correct ourselves while staying in it. By addressing you, I essentially correct myself. There exists some kind of image of you that seems separate and even opposite to me. But in reality, it’s my inseparable part and I have to correct it. I see all my parts as seemingly foreign; this is called the shattering. And as soon as I correct myself, they all get connected.

And even at the very first degree, I will get a correct picture of time, motion, and space because a higher dimension will appear within me. I will start feeling what spiritual qualities mean; to some extent, I will begin to sense what the spiritual qualities, the three spatial coordinates, and time are. I will learn that time is a chain of causes and effects with no intervals that come out of mechanical actions.

A concept of spirituality is in us creating time by ourselves and defining its speed by our corrections. We don’t measure time by rotation of some material planets around each other for days, months, or years. Does the rotation of one cosmic body around the other define the concept of time according to which I live? Do I have to live in accordance with space rocks moving relative to each other?

There is no time in spiritual world. Each and every action happens right after one another: You do an action, cause a pulse, the next action, one more pulse, with no delays between them. We don’t take into consideration how the Earth, the Moon, or the Sun rotate at that time.

The root of the problem is that we don’t yet feel spiritual time. But the moment we enter spirituality even at the very first spiritual degree, we will start perceiving the world in new categories. This won’t be an illusion, but an actual feeling.

In the same way we feel this world around us in our internal perception, we will get an additional picture that will give us new definitions. Until the end of correction, we will be living in two dimensions: in a dimension of this world and in an additional dimension of the spiritual world. After all, until we are fully corrected, some part of the lowest degree of this world will remain in us each time. We will be revealing and extracting from this “Egypt” ever new qualities and correcting them.
[75190]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/11/2012, The Gate of Intentions

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Question: When I started studying Kabbalah a year and a half ago, I felt how much I love people, and how much people love me. Now I have a very strange sensation that I don’t actually treat people that well, and that people aren’t too good to me either. I feel ill will from people, even from those who study Kabbalah. What should I do with this feeling?

Answer: When a person is studying Kabbalah, he or she goes through all kinds of states. A person must go through the states where he hates everyone, pushes them away, and when he feels that everyone is treating him in this manner too—with some wily manipulation, ulterior motives, and so on. He or she goes through all the states that could possibly exist in any given person.

A person who attains the upper world ultimately goes through absolutely everything that humanity goes through. The individual and the whole are equal, and thus, there isn’t any feeling, any internal occurrence, or inner analysis that a person would not go through and wouldn’t experience.

We have to understand that we need all of this so that we could assemble within us those properties that are necessary for our balance with the entire world.

However, we need to view from a distance all of these occurrences and feelings that we undergo inside ourselves. In other words, I should observe myself from afar. What does “I” mean? Some creature, which right now is going through certain states, and who is being shown who he is, how he perceives the world, and so on. That is, in this case I am a participant of an experiment. The “I” is my body, my properties, my character. And who is studying this experiment? The point in the heart that’s outside of me. I am trying to pull it outward and to be a researcher with respect to my own self, to look at and see myself from the side.

If a person is able to do this, then he gains a great deal and progresses rapidly. Under no circumstances should we identify ourselves with our own self, because that isn’t us, it’s the Creator! He created the desire, and He plays with this desire as he pleases. But I shouldn’t be a toy. I should also exit myself and from the side watch how He plays.

Then why do I feel like the desire is mine? In order for you to truly understand and feel how He plays, you were given a feeling that it is yours, otherwise you would disregard it: “What’s the big deal, He’s just playing with some animals, plants, and rocks.” Everything is included in the Creator’s domain, one single force rules over everything. But when He rules over me: Oh, now this is a different story! Am I able to consider everything that He controls as being done by Him and not by me? The ability to “separate” yourself from your own self and to look at yourself from the side, this is a condition for rapid advancement forward.

So, it’s not you. Simply look at what He does with you. Try!

By advancing further in this manner, you will now be able to divide yourself into a researcher (this point will become your right line) and into egoism, which will always be growing in you opposite it (left line). This is necessary.

This is why we say “There is none else besides Him,” besides the Creator. Why? If there is someone besides Him that means it’s me. This is bad. I am sensing reality incorrectly.

“There is none else besides Him”: that means excepting the point which He gave me (a point in the heart), everything else—it is Him, while the point in the heart is given in order for me to be independent and autonomous. That means that I pull this point out, but everything else is Him. My character, my properties, all of that is from Him. This is how I should perceive everything. I have to identify myself with the point in the heart. We raise these points above ourselves and unite them. And everything else, our egoism, our body, remains below.

Thus, try to separate yourself like this all the time, and then you won’t have problems with the world. Naturally, I am an egoist, and I’m bad, and hate others, and others hate me. Everything that appears to me, it appears through my body, which in reality isn’t mine—this is how the Creator is showing it to me. This is work.
[75576]
From KabTV’s “Foundations of the Integral Society” 2/26/1

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Everything depends on a person’s attributes, on the state he is in. It is said: “A student who was exiled, his teacher is exiled with him.” Everything is measured only with regard to the receiver: “It takes one to know one” and “love will cover all the sins.”

This is what makes a Kabbalist’s perception different from an ordinary person’s. A Kabbalist understands that he receives the upper Providence and sees one picture out of endless pictures that are revealed to him. All this is revealed according to the upper plan and the efforts that he makes below.

Accordingly, the point where the plan of a person’s development and a person’s exertion meet is the picture of the phenomena he sees and feels.

The perception can be internal and external. Externally a person receives everything that is revealed to him as facts, the laws of this world. He understands that everything comes from the Creator, and that this is how the Creator shows him the world. This is the “landlord’s'” perspective.

The perspective of the Torah is the understanding that the Creator is showing me the whole picture that I see, but it is revealed in my desire to receive according to my attributes. Two different behaviors and perceptions stem from this, as it says, “the opinion of the Torah is opposite from the opinion of the landlords.”

So in the group we have to treat the friends, the Rav, the environment, and the books with respect, despite the disrespect that we feel towards them internally. If a person wants to advance, he is constantly in this struggle because his ego constantly grows, showing him the baseness of everything that is not part of his self-interest.

We have to preserve the internal feeling of the greatness of the Creator and the faith in the Rav, to treat the friends as the greatest in our generation, and to appreciate the quality of the group more than the quantity. We have to do all that in order to calibrate our vessel correctly.

If everything is revealed inside me according to my present attributes, I have to relate accordingly to the reality that shows me how I should change my attributes, so that I will constantly be able to advance by that.
[75510]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/17/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: I have understood more than I have felt at this convention. Is this normal or did I miss something?

Answer: Understanding without feeling is also good. At least you have seen the unity of people, you have seen their aspiration, you have understood that our attainment of reality is based on this specific aspiration.

Without uniting, we cannot create the sensor where we will be able to feel the upper world, the Creator. This is exactly why we are broken and exist at the very bottom: to start putting the pieces of the upper world together. And as we put it together, we will discover and feel new elements of the true, real, spiritual, world.

And we will see our world the other way around, as getting further from us, because essentially, it has nothing—it is smaller than a point. It is under the point of the straight line, under the “feet” of the Partzuf of Galgalta. There is Sium, or the end of all the Partzufim, and the point of our world is even lower, under it, meaning it is as if it doesn’t exist. And we exist in it, but it is like we are “nonexistent.”
[75481]
From KabTV’s “Foundations of the Integral Society” 2/26/12

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Question: Why does the Light need me? Am I really that important?

Answer: We lack the deficiency, the desire, to discover the upper, whole, spiritual world. The Light doesn’t need you; it is you who needs the Light so that it will build the right deficiency within you. When you really want bestowal, you will discover it.

We are in a sea of Light right now, but we don’t feel anything because we don’t have a deficiency. However, if I were to summon upon me the influence of the Light, it would build this deficiency within me. Then, I finally would feel what I lack.

As a simple example, let us say that I don’t want anything in life. I am indifferent. However, a friend comes over and invites me to go on a trip.

I agree reluctantly, and on the way, we go by a restaurant. I smell the scents and become a little hungry. We go inside the restaurant, and, as we eat, as it usually happens, the appetite comes with the meal. Then, I really have a true appetite.

So, we must open the curtain gradually. First, we only “smell” the Light by summoning it from a distance. Then, we taste it. Thus, the vessel is created within us.

I say to a child, “Taste this, you will like it.” The child asserts, “No, I don’t want to! I won’t taste it!” I respond, “Do it for me.”

This is how the Light creates the vessel.
[75415]
From the 5^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/16/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: What are our first steps of coming closer to the Creator, which is the goal of the wisdom of Kabbalah?

Answer: In spirituality, coming closer is not determined by time or space, or by mechanical motions, but by changes in properties, by quality. I need to develop additional sensations within me, a whole new feeling called bestowal. Right now I perceive all of creation only in the egoistic property, in pursuit to constantly receive fulfillment and enjoy whatever is good for me, while pushing away whatever I find unpleasant.

I behold the world only through these categories of good and evil. It’s like a dog that perceives the entire world just through scents and who can tell one thing from the other only based on how it smells. It sees virtually nothing and receives 99% of its information from olfaction. In the same manner, today we differentiate everything around us only relative to our egoistic desire: black and white, different colors, tall and short, distant and proximal, pleasant and unpleasant—thousands of different properties that I perceive in this world.

I do not even realize that I make judgments only based on how good or bad I feel personally. There is a grid inside me which discerns all impressions depending on whether they benefit or harm me, and this is how I determine all the colors, distances, times, movements, as well as various objects and their behaviors—I discern everything according to one egoistic principle.

I don’t even understand this because this egoistic sensation is the only thing that I have, and I cannot recognize its presence within me since I was born with it. Everything is perceived on the grid of the detector called my desire to enjoy. Like in photography, which requires a light-sensitive plate or film, within us there is a certain screen that is sensitive to what brings us benefit or harm.

In accordance with this I distinguish various forms and objects, even inanimate things: a glass of water standing on a table, different colors, people, cold and warmth, or distances. I evaluate everything from the perspective of what is better and what is worse for me. These are such refined differences that they paint me the pictures of this world, which I see in front of me. But all of it exists only in perception of the egoistic desire to enjoy.

In order to not depend on it wholly, the wisdom of Kabbalah is leading us towards desire to bestow. And within that desire I begin to see a “reverse world.” That is, I see all of reality through the eyes of bestowal, meaning to what extent each thing is useful for my bestowal towards others.

It is written: “The Creator made one against the other,” and in revealing both of these paradigms I can rise above these two principles of perception. Thanks to this, it’s as though I rise above the entire creation.
[75255]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/12/2012, Shamati #190

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Question: If everything that we see is actually within us, why do other people around us see the same thing?

Answer: It only seems that way, but actually it is all inside you. We cannot correct this distorted perception until we feel the spiritual world ourselves. Einstein also wanted to create a formula that would explain the order of creation, but he did not succeed. It is impossible to do that in our corporeal world.

Imagine a bug that crawls on the ground and feels the world in two dimensions: only by its length and width. You will never be able to explain to it what height means, it isn’t made for that since it is missing the third axis in its brain. We have three axes and time, and there is nothing other than that. This is why we cannot understand the world in the spiritual dimension.
[75187]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/11/2012, “The Gate of Intentions”

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