In the “Introduction to the Book of Zohar” Baal HaSualm explains that the part of our brain responsible for our perception of reality is built like a photographic machine through which I see the world divided. I feel myself as a kind of body and see everything else that exists as outside of me. So all of reality is divided into two parts.

This, of course, is a lie and there is no such division. But the point is that there is a Creator and a created being, and the created being should attain the Creator as a result of his development. Attaining the Creator is possible only by observing Him from the outside, and so the created being has to feel that he exists separately from the Creator, standing opposite to Him.

Then by comparing the two opposites, the created being checks and understands the inverse attributes, realizes that he is opposite to the Creator, realizes that he is evil and that he needs correction to become similar to the Creator and to reach adhesion with Him. Thus he raises the level of “human” in him.

In order to allow a person to assess all these attributes, understand, get to know, clarify, and correct his perception—reality is divided into two so that it seems to a person that he and the external world exist separately.

This, of course, isn’t even close to the truth. The assumption that a person exists and the Creator is outside Him, outside the world of Ein Sof, is also not true. But such a feeling is necessary so that we will add our exertion to building our vessel and attaining the understanding and revelation. Then it will be a “human” who built all this out of his free will.

It is like giving a child challenging games and puzzles so that he will work and thanks to that grow, understand, see, try, make efforts, and build himself. The same happens to us with the dual perception that makes us sense ourselves and outside of us, the world.

All our work is to make efforts to connect the two parts into one whole picture called “there is none else besides Him” and “Israel, the Torah and the Creator are one.” This means to sense myself and the external world as one, and to understand that first I have to care about the external world and only then care about myself. After all, I will have to provide only what is necessary for the existence of my beastly body, and I have to try and see all the rest, all the external world, as most precious, my soul.

Then I will reveal that the external world is also me. It is because I treated it as something opposite to me that I hated, rejected and tried to stay away from it, that enabled me to learn about myself, about my nature, and about the “evil inclination.” I had a chance to fight all its fine attributes, the unperceivable, the coarse, and cruel attributes and by that to attain the Creator.

After all, in every incidence of hate towards the external world, there is a need for the Creator’s help in some way. So my rejection of the external world and my decision to connect to it, the power I receive for that from the Creator, and the unity I attain, all bring me to adhesion with the Creator.

So it turns out that there are actions of connection with the external world and there is the acceptance of this world, the feeling of unity or the Creator. By the creation of this division of me and the external world and the “neutral zone” (“Klipat Noga“) between us, I get help from the Creator—a state that is already partially prepared to attain the connection with Him because of this false perception.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/8/12, Shamati #36

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The group is part of the external world for me, but I can’t work with the whole world at once to get a response from everyone and measure myself in relation to the world. The world cannot support me along my path because it doesn’t have the same goal I do. It has all kinds of different goals and doesn’t know where it is headed.

So I find a group, a part of this external world that I can connect and work with to clarify things. Indeed, on one hand it is foreign, a part that is external to me, but it is close to me according to its goal, perception, and studies. So it is worthwhile for me to connect to the group in order to get power and support from it. I see that with them it will be easier for me to advance.

Eventually I begin to understand that this isn’t a group of people, but they are the very parts of my soul that I need to collect and add to myself. Or perhaps to the contrary: I need to exit myself and to find myself within them rather than in my present “self.”

Then, together with the group, we want to expand our relationship with the whole world into a wider circle. This circle does not share the same goal; it has different aspirations. This is my more external part.

The parts of my soul called “root,” “soul,” “body,” “attire” and “hall.” “Root, soul and body” are the internal part, which I feel as myself, the “attire” is an external part but it is adhered to a person, and the “hall” is the more external part.

And so I play with the group as the external part that is closest to me, that is ready to join the same purpose. I don’t see it as a group of people but rather as my desires that are only dressed up in these masks that make faces at me. But I understand that I must connect to them because it is there that I attain the goal. If I exit my ego and become incorporated in them, there I will find the attribute of bestowal.

But we can’t just work among ourselves on our connection. We need to work together on something external. This external thing is the world. But here too, my desires seem to oppose me; these are my seven billion different desires that are showing me that they don’t belong to me. My ego separates me from them and blinds me, confuses me, and obliges me to perceive them as foreign and opposed to me.

I must work with the world, but it is much more difficult than working with the group. After all, at least I have something in common with the group: a goal, studies, and common processes. In the group it is as if I am in a kindergarten, in comfortable conditions that constantly help me exit myself.

But the external world has no conditions that help me: There everyone is against me. The only thing that ties us together is a collective problem, although it seems to us that we are headed towards different goals. The world by running away from pain eventually has no choice, it will reach the same goal that I see as good and desirable. So I should relate to all the circles around me—the group and the rest of the world—as to myself. They are only presented to me by the Creator in this opposite form so that each time I will learn to work with a more external circle. I perceive the inner circle, and together with it I begin to work on the more external circles.

We cannot worry only about one another. Like a young couple: How long can you look at one another before you get to know each other and become used to one another? Then they need to have a child so that they will both take care of him!
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/8/12, Shamati #36

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Question: Why does Baal HaSulam write in “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot” about the forbidden part in the wisdom of Kabbalah: that Kabbalists can reveal what belongs to “Flavors of the Torah,” but cannot disclose the part that belongs to the first three Sefirot or the “head of the Partzuf?”

Answer: Even if Kabbalists tell about something that is “forbidden,” we won’t understand anything. It is like talking about anything next to a baby without needing to be careful because the infant still will not hear or understand anything anyway. He doesn’t connect the words he hears to any meaning. Just like when we read The Book of Zohar, single words are understandable, but for us they add up to senseless sentences

“The secrets of the Torah” are not information that is carefully hidden from us. It is simply our brain, which at the moment is on an ordinary beastly level, cannot perceive them. So for us it remains a secret, as does all of reality. Please, it is all revealed to you, look! Do you see anything? Who is to blame that you don’t have the means to perceive? Develop them and you will see reality. It is the same when it comes to the “secrets of the Torah.”

We study in “The Study of the Ten Sefirot” about what belongs to the head of the world of Atzilut, the head of Arich Anpin, and we know that there are the parts of RADLA (Reish delo Eiyada), parts of its “brain” (Mocha de Avirah, Kruma de Avirah) that are concealed from us in the upper Light. But we study everything that belongs to the “flavors of the Torah” and not its “secrets” in this system. The difference is that the “flavors” relate to the thoughts of the created being and the “secrets of the Torah” relate to the Creator’s thoughts.

There would be no point mentioning all this, if there weren’t people who claim that it is forbidden to study the wisdom of Kabbalah because it is a secret. There are no secrets in it; on the contrary, the wisdom of Kabbalah reveals reality to us! It doesn’t reveal some “forbidden secrets”: In order to reveal the secrets you have to reach them yourself by preparing your vessels, your desires, your vessels of perception. If you prepare all the desires that belong to the seven lower Sefirot (ZAT) in the full height of the spiritual ladder, then you begin to discover their upper part (GAR). You will be ready for this revelation and will discover this secret yourself. [Read more →]

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Question: What does it mean to proceed by the path of bestowal?

Answer: If the goal of creation is to bring pleasure to the creatures and the Creator is a positive force that does good, and only this is the essence of His treatment of us, then why do we need to pray for Him to do good to us?

Everyone screams out to the Creator, “Do something good to us!” But that is ridiculous! Why beg a kind person to perform an act of kindness toward me? He is already doing good; He cannot do anything else. After all, it is written that the Creator is benevolent to the good and the bad alike. He never changes His attitude, as it is written, “I did not change My HaVaYaH” and “the Light exists in absolute rest.”

That goes to show us that it is not worthwhile to ask Him for good. Yet all prayers, all requests, and psalms are composed by Kabbalists, people who exist in spiritual attainment. Then why did they pray, “Help me, save me, do for me”?

These are pleas to form the desire “Help me correct my perception!” That is called “the work of the Creator,” while for the Creator bestowing to us is not work, it’s pleasure.

My work is to ask for the right desire or vessel, and His work is to create this vessel. In other words, it is request for readiness to accept the fulfillment due to which we achieve adhesion rather than a request for a pleasant change.

The word “prayer” is translated as “self-judgment”; it is the creature’s request to be changed. When I ask, “Why have You forsaken me?” has He really left me? Or do I say this only in regard to my own perception within which I feel that He has left me and I realize this myself? In essence, I ask for Him to correct my sensation so that I would feel that He did not leave or become distant from me.

A prayer is a request for correction of our desires, and all this is called work for the Creator rather than fulfillment itself.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/15/12, Writings of Rabash

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Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”: The yielding due to satiation causes no grief. Relinquishment out of despair is full of pain and sorrow, and can therefore be called, “partial death.”

If we rise to a new desire, to a new level of awakening, we feel a growing despair and eventually die. We don’t die in the physical sense which is expected in any case, but the point is that our spirit is extinguished.

On the beastly level the spirit dies together with the body, but while the body lives, we can find a source that will allow us to rise anew each time, a new awakening. In it we feel life, livelihood, to such an extent that we become detached from the physical existence and its dependence on the body and begin to live in an awakening that is detached from corporeality. These become two different things for us, as it says “you shall see your world in your life.”

Thus a person acquires new vessels, desires, to feel life. This begins from the descents: When a person doesn’t feel life in the vessels of bestowal, he considers himself dead. Then he changes the reason, the vessel of awakening, from receiving to bestowal, and thus gets rid of the spiritual and the physical “angel of death.”

Spiritually he moves on to the vessels of bestowal that do not belong to our world. There is no death in them when the biological body dies; it ceases to feel the livelihood connected to it when the time comes for it to disintegrate and to return to the basic materials it’s made of, as always happens. But at the same time, a person acquires an awakening in the vessels of bestowal in which he feels life and the force of livelihood.  After all, he can always add something to these vessels.

As a whole, the feeling of life isn’t measured by a person’s present desire, but rather by the addition to the desire, by an acceleration coefficient. So a person should always be like a “bent old man” who seems to be looking for something he lost. I should constantly worry about losing the yearning for the goal. If a person performs this work, then he is young in soul. Otherwise we become “children who have grown old,” who retire without maturing.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/11/12, “The Freedom”

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Question: For quite some time now during The Zohar lesson I feel as if I am trying to find the right wave of a radio station, but I only hear noises. We constantly speak about the fact that while reading The Book of Zohar we should tune ourselves to one goal or another, and I can’t do that at all…am I missing something by that or should I just keep on going and it will come eventually?

Answer: The thing is that if we are talking about receiving a wave and not about the Reforming Light, then among all the noises I should find the exact frequency in which I will hear the silence; the silence is what I need to hear. This is the exact frequency of the station. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah this accurate direction indicates that I am getting ready to receive the Inner Light.

Here, however, we are talking about the Surrounding Light, about the Reforming Light, which you don’t recognize when it comes to you. You aren’t working here in order to receive some wisdom, to receive some “station” and to hear something new.

You are here in order to activate the maximum desire, and in it you will receive the power to overcome, not knowledge. After all, you are not looking for knowledge here, but for the desire to bestow, to annul yourself before the Upper, to adhere to Him, to His attribute of bestow, to the power of bestowal, to reach self sacrifice, and the ability to actually incorporate in the group in order to receive from it the power to find this upper spiritual mechanism there.

You are not tuning yourself to the “station” of wisdom. You don’t wait to be shown something like on a TV screen. This isn’t the channel through which the Reforming Light comes. It comes to the place in which you yearn for bestowal most and are ready to annul yourself and develop your connection with others. This is the result of the Reforming Light, which we should expect.

I don’t aspire to understand and to feel the material we study at all. I yearn to understand and feel the actions of bestowal themselves. After all, “to know the material studied,” as Baal HaSulam says in part 155, of the “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” means to know the Upper, and not to acquire knowledge. Knowledge in spirituality is the knowledge of bestowal, and it is in the Light that I study how the spiritual tool works. I won’t see it if I don’t have this approach.

After all, what does the Reforming Light bring us? It allows us to relate to the hidden world in which we dwell through the attribute of bestowal. When I begin to relate to the world using the attribute of bestowal, the world becomes transparent and through it I see the networks of connection. It is about these networks that I study, the networks in which I am incorporated, in which I begin to feel like a spider in a web.

When I feel the whole system of connection, I begin to correct it, to pull the strings that are drawn from me and to see upon what I bestow. Eventually, this is our whole study: about how I move the whole system and how with its help I correct my actions and work for this system, and how this whole system moves until the Creator, the general force, is revealed.

This is why I don’t look for the “station” that should be revealed by The Book of Zohar. But the “static” will gradually bring you to search for another “station,” and you will find it.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/11/12, The Zohar

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We have try to imagine more and more correctly what we see and instead of the externality to see the internality. My teacher Rabash and I used to have discussions about the forces that we saw behind this world’s picture.

Once I saw a horse on the street eating from a garbage can, and suddenly Rabash said to me: “Look, this is an angel!” I was surprised because I didn’t see anything but the horse eating the scraps from our meal. The following day I asked him for more information about what he had said, trying to learn how to see the internal forces behind this world.

If I see a picture that is focused in my retina or the backside of the brain, then this is how the forces are depicted to me, like on a computer screen, together making up one form. But that form doesn’t exist in itself. I only need it so that I can hold on to something. In fact, it is an expression of an attitude of the one who gives me, who bestows upon me by means of some object.

There are three components: the one who bestows, his bestowal upon me, and its impact on me that creates some form. Through that form, I need to return to the one who bestows in order to understand what he wants from me by showing me this form. If I see a horse, what does the Creator want to tell me by showing it to me: what is the combination of forces, what is His attitude to me, what sort of reaction does He expect of me? How do I have to treat this horse and, through it, the one who bestows, the one who is showing me this movie? We have to learn all this.

Now we see the world in its external form and not the inner content. This is very helpful and isn’t meant to confuse us on purpose as we usually think. In fact it helps us attain spiritual perception! This is because we have to exert ourselves in order to switch from the external form to the internal form.

I promise you that if you begin to “penetrate” into the friends and see the “points in the heart” that are tied together, you will begin to notice that the whole world is arranged in the same way. You will understand that people are not external images, but desires, “packages” of energy. They are all in some kind of a relationship and you can influence them and they can influence you. You will see forces and not bodies!

Even today we already treat a person as some kind of force and speak about his essence, but you need to penetrate more deeply. The fact that we don’t see the world in its spiritual form but in its external form, and the gap between the two, always shows us that we haven’t reached adhesion with the environment.

The moment we adhere to the environment, and attain the first contact, all this confusion immediately disappears. You see people, but you relate to their essence and not to the external figures. Just like a good psychologist who when looking at people immediately sees their essence, their desires, thoughts, tendencies, and deviations.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/3/12, “Study of the Ten Sefirot

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The current crisis we are experiencing in our world is not a crisis of economy and our entire life, but the revelation of the absence of the right perception of reality. Previously, we perceived reality completely shattered, divided into separate pieces between which there is no connection, no common nature, no single force, and without a single plan, goal, and process of development. Now, with the help of the crisis we are beginning to become increasingly aware of the connection between all the parts of reality.

This is a sign of a new era, a paradigm shift, the perception of a new reality. Now we are discovering reality to be broken and separated in our awareness: This is called the general crisis. But this is not a crisis of anything, but rather a previously non-existent revelation. Before we lived with the perception of our layer of reality, but now a more internal layer is being revealed, and then we see that nothing is working out and that everything is really broken. It is true that this is a crisis. But this crisis is the revelation of a new state and an opportunity, an invitation for correction.

From here we see that we can correct it only by advancing towards unification between all parts of reality and revealing within this unification a natural law that exists in that system, as well as various forms of relationships and different tendencies. In short, we will begin to see reality correctly.

What do we need for this? Of course, nothing in our world will help us now. After all, it doesn’t have to do with egoistic development but with the correction of the ego, which reveals itself in the form of the crisis. It follows that nothing can help mankind but the Light that Reforms. This is why the wisdom of Kabbalah, the method of correction, becomes revealed. And this is why we must bring this Light to the world through us. Even though for us it will be the Light that Reforms, for the rest it will be the right, new structure of the world, so it will stop appearing broken to us. This is what our correction will be like.

This is why we must understand that everything is determined by this approach: seeing the world as one whole and explaining to others that it is one. But we explain it to them simply from a scientific perspective, similar to the way scientists explain things. But for us this unity assumes a single desire, which includes 620 desires, which we must connect into one. And nothing else exists but the perception of a person, who must reach a state where he will be able to see the entire reality as a single organism.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/10/12, The Zohar

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Everything depends on intention. This is like the valve in the internal combustion engine, which opens if I have the right intention. And as soon as the intention is gone, the valve closes. That is how I work all the time: I open the valve and close it. Let us hope that we will be able to start up this engine.

The size of the intention is determined by which desires it can rule over. Maybe my intention is only enough for the still level of my desires, or for the vegetative or animate, or for the human level. And clearly, the strongest, most efficient and powerful intentions also influence the small, lower desires.

Therefore, the most important thing for us is to think about group unity, mutual guarantee, because by virtue of that we can undoubtedly rule over all the other, lower desires we have. That is why the condition of mutual guarantee is so necessary.

I think that the friends are also outside of me, and the whole world, all of humanity, and the Creator are also outside of me. But I have to try to attach all of that to me in mutual guarantee, in the right connection, mutual dependence so these desires would unite: me and the Creator inside of me, and all the external systems will also become mine. I should not see anything else besides this, but just the image of one person, who I assemble and take care of.

And if I come out of this inner perception and speak to other people, I live in this world, so naturally, there is a collision between this inner perception and the external world, which appears to me in my senses. But I will have to accept this duality for now, which is no more than a psychological problem. And gradually, I will begin to see a more internal picture.

It’s similar to how there is the perception of an adult and of a child. A child sees only the external side, whereas an adult understands things deeper and sees the inner reasons for what is happening. Even though this is aimed in one direction, but just penetrates deeper into matter since both our intentions and external behavior are egoistic.

However, by developing a habit and making efforts, we can attain a new, true perception of reality.

Therefore, all discernments of intentions, my entire work is to try to change my vision by means of this inner perception, the inner wisdom called the science of Kabbalah, the inner part of the Torah. Then I will see the whole world as one organism in which everything belongs to me and there is nothing besides me.

Let us try to reach this sensation, and especially while reading The Book of Zohar.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/10/12, The Zohar

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Question: How can we awaken care for the whole world inside our hearts?

Answer: We all exist in one spiritual vessel, in one desire. The Creator created one soul and it is impossible to selectively care for just one part of it, but only for the entire, full vessel. Nothing exists “partially” in spirituality.

If we are talking about bestowal, then we have to be concerned with becoming a candle for the Creator, which means correcting the full vessel. Since the Creator made one, single desire, bestowal can only awaken in all of it entirely. And as Baal HaSulam explains in the article “Mutual Guarantee,” we exist only for this sake.

Therefore, a person who does not care for the common vessel does not care for himself. We just have to open our eyes and see that this is the exact same thing. The world is an imprint of what we have inside; it only seems to exist on the outside.

Therefore, the aim isn’t for “me to care for the world,” but to open my eyes, to see the truth and understand that care for the world and care for yourself is the exact same care. We have to dispel this fog and clearly see that this is one soul!

Instead of “awakening care for the world” inside myself, I have to take care of myself—of why I don’t see that the whole world is my spiritual vessel, my soul.

From this it is clear that I cannot stop caring for the world under any circumstances because this is the main part of me. Everything I feel inside of me now is just my body, and this sensation called “the body” will die one day and will disappear from my consciousness. And only the care that I will acquire for my external “body” will become revealed to me as my soul and will remain with me forever. In it I will acquire my true, eternal life.

This is the inner revolution we have to go through. Essentially, this is the meaning of passing the Machsom (the boundary separating us from the upper world). When a person begins connecting and identifying himself with what is outside instead of the ego that he previously perceived as being himself, this is called passing the Machsom.

Baal HaSulam says that this requires only a psychological revolution. This blindness and deception holds the reason for all of the evil we feel now.
[65711]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/8/12

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