Question: When you go out to disseminate, people’s positive responses make you feel good. So where do these powers come from, is it from my ego or from the Creator?

Answer: If you don’t demand powers from the Creator, then you naturally receive them from the ego. There are only two sources for a person’s motivation and accordingly it may be egoistic or higher, either in order to receive or in order to bestow.

So how can you check yourself? How can you find out that you are actually working in order to bestow?

I feel different disappointments, problems, emptiness, and even troubles in my desire, but I only demand one thing from the Creator, to raise my altruistic motivation without any reward for myself. I am glad that my ego feels bad, that it is empty and dissatisfied. It is a good sign; if I can continue working now it is indeed in order to bestow.

According to Kabbalistic terms, I “restrict” my desire, and put a screen (Masach) and the Returning Light (Ohr Hozer) on top of it. Generally speaking the desire always remains empty since restriction is not nullified. Then I begin to work above my desire in order to bestow, being sure that I relate to life, to reality, to the Creator, and to everyone correctly.

But if I don’t feel emptiness, disappointments, or troubles in my ego in order to be drawn above them to bestowal, to worrying about the Creator, then it means that I am still in my egoistic desire. I work in it, and although I advance towards the intention of in order to bestow, I am still immersed in self love. Of course, I try to bestow, but all my attempts are nourished by egoistic motives. This means that if I didn’t receive pleasures, I would have no motivation, no powers, no urge to carry on along the spiritual path
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/8/13, Questions and Answers

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The Creator begins to awaken us through His illumination and changes in relation to us in the last stage of development where we are most distant from Him. We are just the “material” of desire that is possible to “awaken” and activate.

We ourselves are unable to initiate a single action, our desire can only react and does not have the slightest potential of independent undertaking. It has no creative power of the Creator, the force of creation; it has no Light, no source of energy. It’s capable of only two things:

• Either to merely receive fulfillment without any freewill
• Or by means of a special attitude towards the Host, the Light, to form a qualitatively different response.

As a result, we are always under the full control of the Creator: He sends us the Light, and it depends upon us as to how to accept His attitude. Either we accept it applied only to the “material” of our desire. That is, we enjoy to a greater or lesser degree, or besides that, we respond to Him above this or that level of enjoyment.

If I start calculating my attitude to the Creator in response and this becomes more important for me than the pleasures received by the “material” of desire, then I work in faith above reason. In other words, receiving the feeling of my own being from the Creator, I make calculations every second of my life: Do I take into account only my attitude, my “physical” reality, or, based on this reality, do I respond to the Creator with bestowal? Can I respond to Him with bestowal using what I feel in my life now?

Thus, I begin my path along the steps of getting closer to the Creator. And my calculation on this path is the following: To what extent, above the growing desire with its changeable sensations, good or bad, can I build a reciprocal relationship with the Creator?

In fact, I proceed from the assumption that only absolute good comes to us from the Creator. He can cause no harm to anybody, and if the created being feels evil, then in the end the only reason is that it cannot build within itself the correct attitude to what it receives.

For example, we know from life experience, how many people are willing to pay a surgeon who performs a vital operation on them, including injections, intravenous infusions, blood transfusion, a difficult period of rehabilitation, and other painful sensations. That is because the goal is important, so important that a person does not feel any pain because he is wholly focused on the goal and wants to get rid of the disease. The surgeon for him is not an enemy but a well-wisher who it is worthwhile to pay.

So, it all depends on the attitude. My attitude to the Creator is changing dramatically: Having changed the intention to bestowal, I feel from Him only good instead of evil and I feel pleasure. In contrast to the example with a surgeon, not a trace is left in my perception from some painful surgery on my “body” of desire. On the contrary, my “body” feels that I am enjoying. But again, all this is possible only if I obtain the intention to bestow. It all depends on the change of intent.

How do I change it? Here lies the work of the fourth degree of human development. I constantly have to ask so that besides good or bad affects felt in the desire, the Creator helps me correct my attitude to what I receive from Him.

I want to feel Him as He is, according to His bestowal upon me, completely Good That Does Good, but not because He brings me good, but because I don’t want to think ill of Him, to treat Him badly. If I feel that the Creator causes me pain, then surely He is not good for me. This is the natural reaction of my lower levels. It’s obvious to them. The egoistic desire cannot experience other responses to the source of evil. That’s why I don’t want to build a direct relationship with the Creator based on the feelings in my own desire.

Thus, there is a game: We need to be ready to feel increasingly bad feelings in our desire, in various forms, more and more complex, sophisticated, and at the same time more qualitative. In other words, I will feel evil, more and more directed at the Creator. And the more, in spite of my bad feelings, I try to see the source of good in Him (only not to internally curse Him and not in order to avoid evil), the more important my attitude towards Him will be, the further I advance.

At first, during the first few years, a person faces a lot of confusion. No matter, the core of the matter is my attitude to the Creator that should be tied to what my desire feels. This is not masochism: by truly changing my attitude to Him, I no longer feel bad sensations. Everything in me says it’s pleasure, including the still, vegetative, and animal levels, which are attached to the fourth stage, to the intention.

However, much work is required to establish connection with the Creator, so that He changes my response from negative to positive. That is the goal: To establish contact with Him. That is why we have two “alert systems”: One is based on the feelings of desire on the first three levels, and the second one, on my response on the fourth level. Together, these hub systems form connection between man and the Creator.

For example, I see those who surround me in one system and I react to them in the other one. There is no “feedback,” meaning a conscious response to the Creator, on the still, vegetative, and animate levels, only instinctive reactions. He just makes them act as necessary and no more. On the other hand, on the fourth stage, we have to participate in responses, giving them a certain form using the screen and the Reflected Light. This response to the Creator is the human being, Adam.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/6/13, Shamati #8 “What Is the Difference Between a Shade of Kedusha and a Shade of Sitra Achra”

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All the created beings are under the control of the Creator, the upper force. The Creator created only one thing—the desire to receive that is divided into four levels: still, vegetative, animate, and human. These stages descend from the connection with the Creator, from the “world of Infinity” to the state of “this world” in which they are completely disconnected from the Creator. They descend because only by participating in the creation of the connection with the Creator will the created beings feel, understand, attain, and make their life have the same state as His.

To do this, the entire desire to receive should take the form of the desire to bestow, inherent to the Creator. On the way, the created beings attain the upper management and obtain the ability to act as the Creator does. That means to be like Him.

In order to bring all the created beings to the state of belonging to all four levels, the most developed desire of the fourth stage—the human, Adam—must first establish connection with the Creator. Only the fourth level is able to keep this connection consciously and deliberately by starting to feel his own reality against the Creator, seeing himself opposite to Him, agreeing or disagreeing with Him, acting for his own benefit or the benefit of the Creator, etc.

Thus, in essence, the fourth stage is the center of creation. On the other hand, the previous three stages are connected to it without having freewill. It is the fourth stage that determines how these components will take part in the process. It is the intention, the direction, while others just act in this direction without any free choice.

Thus, we are talking about people in this world who above all should feel that they are in concealment and then can to work in order to establish contact with the Creator from the stage of complete separation from Him, from the point most distant from infinity.

Schematically, it looks like this: The Creator is in the world of infinity, and we are in this world, and the distance between us is divided into 125 degrees. We must establish connection with Him from here, from this world.

It begins when the Creator awakens us—shines more and more. Due to His Lights, the desires of the fourth level begin to rise in our world; in turn they are also subdivided into various types according to the same four stages. The “purest” desires awaken first; they are followed by more “coarse” desires. Thus, the process of correction continues from easy to difficult. In other words, those “easy” parts that we correct at the beginning help us correct more “coarse,” “heavier” parts later.

Correction is carried out due to the fact that the Creator awakens His illumination, His attitude to us, and it begins to be revealed not just as good towards the “material” of desire, as on the still, vegetative, and animate levels, but deliberately good. In other words, due to the illumination of the Creator, we will have to get closer to Him.

To do this, we need to change our intention. That is, instead of the still, vegetative, and animate level, we have to form a human stage in ourselves. And the human stage is intention over matter.

We know this from the four stages of the distribution of the direct Light: The fourth stage in the end decides to make restriction (Tzimtzum) and respond to the master with the same attitude that He shows in relation to it. This is the intention.

The fourth stage has nothing to give back to the Creator back—it can only continue to receive His good with the intention that turns all that is received into bestowal onto Him. Then, all the person’s thoughts and all his heart are in the Creator. It does not matter what he receives; the person is like a guest who looks at the Host and wants only to please Him.

That is what the change of intention is, a change of attitude; I switch from “for my own sake to the sake of the Host,” which becomes the determining factor. The Host is first for me, His state is my first and main concern. And according to this, I do with myself everything that is required.

Thus, it is no longer important which states he goes through, only if they are for the benefit of the Host, and in this case he accepts them as given, he is happy, and his intention is completely aligned with them.
[113993]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/6/13, Shamati #8

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Question: How can a person find out whether he acts on his own awakening from below or if he is awakened from above?

Answer: A person never acts on his own awakening. The awakening from below does not exist. Where could it come from? However, if a person works correctly and establishes the right attitude to his life, feeling within that everything is organized by the Creator, then his reaction is called the “awakening from below.”

However, the “awakening from below” as such does not happen. Can a material be awakened if it is completely dead? It is not even able to feel anything. It goes a long way of developing: electrons and positrons are combined into atoms, molecules are built from atoms, molecules begin to link with each other and grow. At some point, life appears inside of this creature. It begins feeling itself first, then the environment. Due to these feelings, the mind develops in it, and some kind of intelligent life emerges.

All this requires many changes in the initial element of matter that consists of the plus and the minus, and although we do not see, it already contains those internal forces that later will develop into the mind and heart in the form that will become similar to the Creator.

The awakening from below cannot exist because at the heart of creation, first of all, there is the Light as “existence from existence.” Therefore, no matter what happens, everything begins from this existence from existence. The only question is where to begin counting the reaction of the created being that can be called “existence from absence,” as if from nowhere, as if his own prayer (MAN) is the awakening from below.

We begin to count this awakening from the first conscious human response to something that happens in him when he realizes that all of this comes from the Creator and that the Creator created him in this form and set all the external and internal conditions. If a person wants to react as if seemingly against his own desire and builds his attitude toward the Creator above his nature, then this is called the awakening from below.

There are some kind of calculations and actions of the person in this reaction, but of course, all this is based on what the Creator organizes for him from above. We see the same thing in children. A child grows up and suddenly begins to respond as an independent person showing his character. Prior to that, he acted instinctively and suddenly he demonstrates his own attitude to what is happening.

We already are beginning to see how a person is manifested in him because he begins to act independently. Of course, there is no independence in our world, and in essence, a child just shows one of the forms of his desire to enjoy that are inherent in him. However, if a person builds faith above reason, that is, bestowal against his nature, then it is called spiritual work.

This faith can be built only with the help of the Light that Reforms and according to the example that a person sees in the attitude of the Creator toward him. Therefore, the first moment, when he begins the creative work of building his own self in order to become similar to the Creator and become like Him, is considered the beginning of the human being and the beginning of the prayer, MAN, the awakening from below.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/31/13

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Question: When I come to pray out of total despair, do I need to ask that I will change, or do I need to ask that a friend will advance spiritually?

Answer: Prayer is called a desire in the heart, the uncontrolled yearning of the heart. I can say whatever I want, nothing will help, and it’s just all movement of the lips. I could dance, cry, or roll on the ground; this also yields no results. The main thing is what I am feeling in the depths of my heart.

A desire is called heart and the fourth phase of my desire is what is most concealed from me. Sometimes when it is revealed I tremble from what is there. And this aspect is felt by the Light, contacts it, because it’s like the four letter name of the Creator.

The last phase is actually found in contact with the upper phase Keter. A yearning for connection appears in it which is opposite that of “Keter”: It either wants to control it completely (in which case this phase is called “Pharaoh” who wants all the Light held within itself), or the opposite, it wants to resemble “Keter,” the characteristic of bestowal.

We have no control over this phase, in fact we don’t sense it and don’t feel it. Here all kinds of practical actions are required! This is not just sitting and meditating; the wisdom of Kabbalah doesn’t recognize this! All this doesn’t exist! You can go deeply into yourself, think that you could have all kinds of intentions, but all these are internal investigations that are ultimately determined by preliminary work and work that follows. These investigations are compulsory only to understand what I have attained, how much I can feel who I am at the present moment.

Therefore, if we truly want to summon the surrounding Light onto ourselves, action is required; as a result, the influence of the Light gives form to the right yearning of our desire in its latest aspect. As it is written, “The Creator puts the prayer in my mouth.” Even if the person is not thinking about anything, but mechanically carries out what is necessary, in the end, it will result in his most normal thoughts transforming into the most wondrous thoughts.

And the opposite is also true. The warning exists: “His wisdom exceeds his actions.” This is not allowed! It is believed that when a person’s wisdom exceeds his deeds, he kills himself spiritually. All kinds of philosophies, intentions, thoughts, and studying from morning to night is not good. Our world is a world of action. We are found in the last phase of the world of Assiya, translated as “action.”
[112797]
From the St. Petersburg Convention “Day Two” 7/13/13, Lesson 3

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We should understand that a descent is an indication of the revelation of the illness, the revelation of evil. Evil is when we have no connection with the Creator who is concealed in our environment, in the group of the spiritual commando. Our efforts to return to the previous feeling of unity has to be focused on the Creator and not just on our connection.

The Creator was absent from our intention. We thought that we could simply connect and thus attain everything. We have lost the last link in this chain, the Creator. Now we have to emphasize this most important component according to the formula: “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator,” and realize how important it is since without it there is no mutual guarantee and no covenant; without it nothing can exist!

Now we have the chance to feel the one major component that is missing which sustains everything. This is the reason that we have to gradually lose the feeling of unity and to descend further and further down, only in order to realize how much we need the upper force, which is responsible for our connection and which operates everything. If we think about the Creator, we belong to Him and He takes care of everything and will make sure that we will not exit Holiness.

It says: “For my brothers and my friends I shall speak of peace.” On the one hand, I pray that the Creator should help me with my brothers, and on the other hand, I work with my brothers in order to reveal the Creator, to reach Him and to bring Him contentment. This means that I worry both about the vessel and about the filling.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/18/13, Writings of Rabash

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You can value yourself only according to the extent that your heart worries about others: your group, our global society, and the whole world too. You may not attain it all at once, but in stages, yet eventually it should all become the most important thing for you.

At first you will see that the group is the most important thing for you, and then our whole global society and finally the whole world. But then everything will turn the other way around: the world will become the most important thing and the global society, the group, and yourself will only be the means for conveying the Upper Light to the whole world.

So you can value your advancement according to how important you consider everyone else and worry that everyone should know and discover the Creator. It turns out that a prayer is the indication of where a person is.
[112388]
From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/16/13

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Baal HaSulam, Article “A Sage’s Fruit”: The Zohar compares this to two people who were on a boat when and one of them began to drill underneath himself. His friend rebuked him, “Why are you drilling?” And the fool answered him,”What business is it of yours, I am under me, not you?” Truly, one person can ruin everything.

In the physical world, in a case like this all of us will drown, and what happens in spirituality?

And this is the secret of the prayer of many, it is forbidden for an individual to leave the collective. And it is forbidden for him to ask only for himself, about himself, even if it is to give satisfaction to his Maker, rather he must ask only for the entire collective.

First it is necessary to reach love of others. And from this state one will reach love of the Creator. Which is to say, first of all we must connect and only then can we go on to the next step. There can be no spiritual action if it doesn’t come from connection.

Spirituality doesn’t exist by itself rather we build it from our Kelim, vessels, we form a picture of the spiritual world on a background of white Light. Certainly we are not allowed to portray just what comes to us, we are limited by the picture that potentially exists already within the Light.

We need to gradually adapt ourselves to the Light, approaching it by the 125 levels that we construct. It’s specifically we who build these states within our Kelim. And therefore we don’t have anything to build without connection. And someone who is not directed toward this goal is not directed towards a spiritual action. Every other action besides this brings us to “another way,” the way of “Beito,” to the way of suffering, to the long and difficult way that is designed to return us to the recognition of the need for connection.
[111925]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/05/13, Writings of Rabash

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A person has no right to cut himself off from society and ask only for himself, even if he has the best intention to bring contentment to the Creator. By a private prayer or by crying alone, we don’t help in any way, but only harm ourselves and others.

Now, imagine how many corruptions we have caused during exile. Everything was in order to discover our evil and understand that correction is only possible by connection. Exile was necessary in order to find out where the place of correction is and to advance from an individual prayer to the prayer of many.

Every desire in the heart is called a prayer. A prayer is the work in the heart. If every request went through society, it would be accepted. We already would be in a totally different state, in absolute rest and abundance. However, because our requests—all the desires a person feels, as well as those he doesn’t feel—don’t go through the connection between us, they harm us, and they first harm the one who makes the request.

We should understand how serious the situation is since we all are connected by one network that now is being revealed in the world as the one, connected, integral system. In this state, we clearly see that we cannot break free of this system and that we must be part of it. The time that was allocated for the recognition of evil is over. From now on, we will get to know evil by blows on different levels or by starting to act according to the network that is revealed between us.

A person should picture this very clearly and as a very serious caution, we mustn’t ask by ourselves, although we really feel like it! It is our evil inclination that is opposite from the Creator. The ego is our desire to attain the Creator but in order to rule by ourselves.

The desire, “I will rule,” is not aimed against the Creator, but against society, against the group. The evil inclination is our desire to turn to the Creator by ourselves and ask for our personal success. We all have this desire. We are ready to pray, to ask, to recognize the power of the upper, to recognize His domination over us, but the entire problem of the exile in Egypt is that each one begins to feel that he is detached from others.

This is the sin of the sons of Jacob, the reason for their hatred toward their younger brother Joseph. Joseph wanted to collect all the brothers together and connect them, but they wanted to remain separate. They didn’t understand that there must be a middle line, connection, and so they had to enter the exile in Egypt and by the path of suffering discover the need for brotherly connection.

Only after they had recognized evil, after long years of exile, were they rewarded with receiving the Torah. This was the entire purpose for the round they made in exile in Egypt.

The entire process of evolution in the upper worlds and in our world, the whole game, is only about connection. So, I am very happy that today we already can speak about that, and understand the need for it and feel this issue closely.
[111963]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/5/13, Writings of Rabash

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Baal HaSulam, Pri Hacham (The Sages Fruit): A person who is an exception and pleads for his soul doesn’t build but rather destroys his soul. It says “he who is proud,” since one cannot be an exception if it isn’t for the attire of pride, and woe to the one who brings destruction upon his soul.

If a person doesn’t aspire to dissolve and to disappear into the general, then from a spiritual point of view, it means that he is immersed in pride. It isn’t the pride we know in our world that compels a person to feel higher and more successful than others. If he doesn’t want to connect with others and to enter them, it is called spiritual pride. He destroys his soul if he doesn’t pray in order to be incorporated in the general and to operate through the general, which means for the good of the general, as he annuls himself and disappears there.

The moment we begin to cry and pray in order to connect, we receive the power to exit Egypt and to hide from our own ego. The exodus from Egypt is an escape from my own ego thanks to the recognition of the necessity of connection.

The Light spreads and dwells in the vessels of receiving of the general when we all unite above each one’s ego and are filled with the Light of Hassadim. At the same time each one annuls himself before the general, giving up his desire to receive, uniting into one desire, into one vessel, that is filled by the upper Light.

The preparation is actually in the connection, which means in bringing ourselves to the form of the Light that is one. Then one vessel receives one Light. The moment we reach even the slightest level of adaptation to the Light, we immediately discover that we are in it, connected in unity with the Creator.

This is revealed only through the connection. Everyone who thinks and hopes to reach something independently and not through the group perceives reality the wrong way and thus draws himself further away from the goal and destroys the group. What’s more, it refers to absolutely every action, even in our personal life, since corporeality has to disappear into spirituality. This is a very serious condition and the more we advance, the tougher become the conditions.

It says that the giving of the Torah occurs every day, which means that the spiritual state already exists and is before us and everything depends only on our preparation for the receiving of the Torah, when we will manifest a great deficiency to reach the first connection be revealed in us. Then we will immediately exit Egypt, receive the Torah, and be incorporated in the process of the spiritual work.
[111922]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/05/13, Writings of Rabash “Igrot,” Letter 33

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