Question: If the Creator is love and endless truth, then how is it possible to connect to His frequency?

Answer: The Torah speaks in the language of people, and therefore we associate the Creator with our own properties.

In reality we live in a world of laws. I am in front of a law. I am in some space where a single force acts, and I can attract its influence on me to a greater or smaller extent. Thus, the force does not change, I am the one who changes.

But, in my mind, I transfer my changes to it, and this leads to confusion. I want the Creator to love me more, despite the fact that His love is already complete. I want Him to bestow to me more, despite the fact that He already bestows on me 100 percent. I ask Him for good, I beg Him to replace His justice with mercy, but how can you plead to the absolute? What changes can be expected from the force of Good that constantly does good to both good and bad people? So imagine that Creator doesn’t hear, doesn’t feel, but just gives all the time, always bestows.

You are built in such a way that you feel your state in the desire to receive. The desire feels what fills it, and this awareness causes certain feelings. We have feelings, and therefore we always talk about our emotional reaction to something. For example, if I will touch you with an electrical wire with a voltage of 100 volts, then you will feel it. The problem here is not in the electrical wire and not in the desire itself, but in the contact between them, in the touch, and that is what gives birth to the sense. In such a way, all the feelings are born inside us, and not in the Creator, but we, as though, ascribe our feelings to Him.

Therefore, it’s best not to imagine the Creator as someone alive. We deal with a law, and to the extent of the changes within us, we rediscover its influence. Here everything depends only on our sensitivity, our perception.
[92043]    
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/2/12, “Preface to The Book of Zohar”

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Question: In the book Shamati, in the article “The Most Important Thing is to Want Only to Bestow,” it says: “The force of faith is sufficient for one to work in the form of bestowal.” What is faith?

Answer: We don’t know what faith is. It is a kind of force that doesn’t exist in our world. In our world, in all the natural sciences, in physics, chemistry, biology, and other sciences, we discover the forces of the still, vegetative, and animate nature that operate as forces of attraction and rejection.

In the spiritual world we suddenly discover forces that operate oppositely from these forces. Suppose, there is a natural force of rejection that we see in this world, but in spirituality it is the opposite, the force of mutual attraction is formed between these objects, as it says: “Love shall cover all sins.”

We begin to discover this to a certain extent in quantum physics: If we place elementary particles that are equally charged (electrons for example) in the same place, they will begin to reject one another, not only because they have the same charge, but for quantum reasons as well (the force of anti-symmetry); none of them wants to be where the other is.

So what is the force of bestowal? It is a force that is revealed above our nature in a form that is opposite from it, as it says: “I have seen the opposite world.” We can only say that the spiritual world operates according to intentions and not actions. There are no actions there; only what takes place in the intentions is taken into account, since our bodies don’t exist in the spiritual world, but only the desires and the intentions.

Imagine that your desires operate. What terrible things would happen in the world! In a split of a second the world would cease to exist, people would burn one another.

So in order not to find ourselves in such a world, we are all in an imaginary world in which we can perform physical actions as much as we are allowed to. To the extent that a person can operate his desire for the good of others, he ascends above his body and enters the spiritual domain where he acts according to his desire and his intention.

Otherwise, how could it be possible to bring a person into a reality that is totally under the domination of his desire?! After all, he has no control over his own desire and his intention.

So only to the extent that a person to hold his desires and work correctly with his desire and his intention does he enter the spiritual world, is he allowed to enter. It is called “entering the King’s palace after having climbed the mountain,” and there he begins to correct the world, to the extent that he can control himself.
[92082]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/4/12, Shamati #30

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A lot of work is required in order to attain the attribute of Bina, which means to attain freedom. So a person needs great support from the environment in order to constantly feel the greatness and importance of the goal.

The Creator can harden Pharaoh’s heart on the left line and send him questions like “Who is the Lord that I should listen to Him?” and “What is the work that you are doing?” according to how much he empowers this support. All these questions, doubts, and problems will increasingly take control of a person, until they become the “waters of the flood,” that are about to drown him.

Then he will have to seek refuge, and from fear and with the help of the environment, he will finally reach the conclusion that he can only be saved in the ark. The ark means unconditional bestowal, which is the only place one can hide from the flood.

“A person can feel constant wholeness since he is content with his fate.” But he doesn’t hide in the ark in order to be content, to feel peace, and to settle for less. His accounts are above his ego, above his desire to receive. He doesn’t take into account what will happen with his ego, with his desires, with his life. All the accounts are above that: only in order to connect, to unite, which means for what is outside his skin, besides his egoistic interests.

But all this happens if a person advances persistently and eventually reaches the conclusion that he needs an ark, that he must rise above the selfish calculations. The waters of the flood, the questions of “Who?” and “What?”, all come in order to help him detach himself from the calculations within his ego and to determine a connection with the inner point of the group.

In order to do that he needs the Creator’s help, to whom he turns with a prayer in order to advance and to connect more strongly with the group. “Many pennies add up to a big sum” in all this work, for “seven years of hunger.” But this is only if a person collects them by connecting all the obstacles and all his exertion to one goal, by constantly trying to fulfill the conditions that are revealed to him correctly. Then it is possible to say that he is advancing.

Just like the story about Noah, who doesn’t reach redemption immediately and at one time. It is a long story about how he builds the ark, how he comes to the decision that has to build an ark into which he collects all his attributes, all the levels of his desire, and only when all the desires and the ark are arranged, can a person hide in it.
[92037]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/31/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: How do we turn the vessels of receiving into vessels of bestowal?

Answer: We create a variety of different forms from metals. We make gears, grilles, bars, etc. We also work with the desire to receive according to the same principle, although it will never bestow itself. In Kabbalistic terms “vessels of bestowal” are vessels of receiving that can bestow when they operate in a special way. In other words, they take on a special form. After all, they cannot do anything but receive.

So receiving is improved to such an extent that it will become like bestowal.

Today, whether I like it or not, my intention remains egoistic. In order to correct it I need a special external force. To do this, we study in order to evoke it.

I cannot change anything by myself, and so I don’t worry about my desires; they will develop according to the plan. I don’t have to worry about whether my vessels are full and if they are what there is in them and how much. Here everything is fine, and I am only concerned about the intention, about aiming my thoughts. I differentiate between the action and the intention and only in my intention am I constantly adhered to the goal. As long as I keep the same focus, no matter what I do—I am corrected and everything is fine with me. This is why it says that a person is where his thoughts are.

100% of an intention to bestow ensures me 100% of correction. It is the intention that counts and not the action. So even if I steal and destroy, I steal and destroy parts of my egoistic desire in order to perform acts of bestowal. A person is not responsible for his actions; it is the intention that determines everything.

The problem is that when we look at one another, we see actions and not intentions. But this problem brings us to correction. I have to rise to the height of mutual connection in order to judge others according to their intentions and not their actions. This obligates us to be Kabbalists. There is no other choice; otherwise we cannot connect correctly. The disasters are increasing, so where is my influence on the upper?

Question: If the intention is the same form that is dressed on the matter of the desire, how do we correct it?

Answer: With the help of the Light that Reforms. We try to act in bestowal, we try to connect and our failures reveal the need for the Light.

After all, there is a part of Galgalta ve Eynaim (GE) in every person. As a result, some people are drawn to the Light, and this attraction is revealed in them when the question “What is the meaning of life?” arises. They want to know, to discover the secret of life. Such people are especially egoistic. They are very far from being nice and they are even quite disgusting and don’t care about this world at all. They disrespect it and are not satisfied with its “nonsense.” In short, people who are not nice at all reach the wisdom of Kabbalah. After all, a great desire suppresses small desires. Eventually, a person burns because of one thing only; he wants to know why he should go on living.

Other than that he can be worried about high philosophical questions like: “What is the universe? Why does all this exist?” in other words, he feels that it is crowded here and he cannot stand it.

All this is caused by the part of GE that has awakened and is in AHP in the meantime, increasing it and pushing a person to search, forcing him to open himself to everything, trying to “swallow” all of reality, including the Creator.

Then, thanks to his actions in the group and the study, a person begins to appreciate and to sort out all these phenomena correctly and then he comes closer to correction.

In addition, it depends on the root of his soul, on the quality of his GE. Someone may yearn for general, global knowledge according to his Reshimot (informational genes). After all, certain Reshimot were very high once, and fell so deep that they require much work. Such people don’t succeed immediately, but after decades, they ascend accordingly while others don’t.

In any case, “He who is greater than his friend, his desire is even greater.” This is what the number of actions of correction he has to perform depends on.

But in any case, parts of GE and AHP are initially in everyone, including the nations of the world. After all, we have all been through the shattering including in ancient Babel. Then too the crisis was revealed as it is today, and as a result, only a small group came out of the crowd—the nation of Israel. Now when all the other “Babylonians” are suffering, having no choice, they will have to correct themselves together with this small group in order to finally leave Babel. Then everyone will be called “Israel,” which means “straight to the Creator” (Yashar—El).

It isn’t about a nation but about resembling the Creator. The difference is the order of things: Someone begins the process and someone continues. Each one does his share, and eventually everyone corrects the shattering of Babel.
[92001]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/02/12, The Zohar

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There is nothing more important than prayer, MAN. After all, it sums up all our great efforts in concentrating on the importance of the goal, on the greatness of the Creator, and on the qualities that we strive to obtain in order to overcome and re-shape our ego, the desire to receive.

In order to formulate a prayer, we must work on it. Rabash kept reiterating that it is the kind of exertion where every penny counts and eventually amounts to a large sum. I heard him say this ten to twenty times a day.

It means that, at each given moment in life, a person collects and stores one’s efforts, every moment fine-tuning them to the goal. And that is why we must establish a system of mutual guarantee, a structure of common opinions and sensations that will re-direct us constantly to focusing on the most significant and vital things, instead of concentrating on less important matters.

It should help us come to the conclusion that the most essential thing for us is the greatness of the Creator. And if we consider Him indispensable, He instantaneously gains power over us and perpetually re-shapes our desire to receive, our self-awareness, and attitude.

Now I look at life from this new point of view, and new hindrances emerge in our way, and again I change. This is how we collect pennies. According to Baal HaSulam, in one of his letters (No. 18), “There is no other way to self-correct, except connecting one’s present and future moments in life with His great name.” We should never cease doing it.
[91526]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/29/12, Writings of Rabash

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It says that the Creator puts a prayer in a person’s mouth as if filling a person with the right prayer. The Light arranges our deficiencies and then we can cry out with the revelation of the right deficiency for which we will already receive a correction and a filling. Everything comes from the Light. There is nothing that isn’t done with its help.

So when we are in front of the source of Light, which is The Book of Zohar, we have to demand, to ask, that this Light will arrange, sculpt, and format the correct prayer, the deficiency, the necessity, so that we will undoubtedly advance to the attribute of bestowal. This attribute will help us reach revelations that will be only in order to bring the Creator contentment, not for ourselves. Let the Light do its job.

So together we all yearn for one deficiency, one form of the one deficiency for the Creator. It may be that this deficiency, our appeal to the Creator, will fill us and we don’t need anything else but that. This will already be the answering of the prayer. The yearning and the deficiency can actually be the filling.
[91533]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/29/12, The Zohar

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From an article by Rabash, “What is Half a Shekel in the Work”: There are two factors that make a person escape the work, even when he begins the work in order to adhere to the Creator, since after a person begins to follow the path of the truth, his lowliness is revealed to him from Above, which means that the more he overcomes the more he receives the hardening of the heart from Above, so that there will be room for the Light of the Torah, called letters, which helps him reform, to be revealed.

This means that there is no Light without a vessel, and so by the hardening of the heart, the deficiency is revealed to the fullest. And the Creator knows when it is to the fullest and when the vessel is complete. So sometimes a person escapes the work, when he sees that he has already prayed enough as he sees it, and the Creator does not pay attention to him. It says “and the poor will not diminish,” which means that a person should not diminish himself, and say that the Creator cannot help a lowly person like him. It says “the Lord is sublime and He will see the lowly.

Sometimes a person leaves the work because he knows that he is rich, which means that he has a lot of Torah, a lot of good deeds, and he knows that he is above others. So when he asks the Creator to help him do everything in order to bestow, why doesn’t the Creator turn to him? He knows that he has already prayed so much for that, so he says that the Creator doesn’t want to answer him and so he escapes, but “a person must always overcome.”

“A person must always overcome” means that in every direction, in every sense, he has to keep the straight line which he should follow in order to reach the goal.

This line is like a route that is limited on both sides. On one side towards his ego, there is the feeling of self-lowliness, his self-submission. On the other side, there is his adhesion to the group, in faith above reason, above his small animal mind, which doesn’t let him see the next state, the upper level. Thus a person advances.
[91400]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/28/12, “Conversation About the Group”

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Baal HaSulam, “The Giving of the Torah”: …we must understand that the rest of the 612 Mitzvot (precepts) in the Torah, with all their interpretations, are no more and no less than the sum of the details inserted and contained in that single Mitzva (singular for Mitzvot), “love thy friend as thyself.”

There are 613 “commandments,” that is, 613 actions that lead to correction. We should alter intentions that are associated with the desire to receive from egoistic (for the sake of receiving) into altruistic (for the sake of giving). When we do so, it means that we have “fulfilled a commandment.”

The number of commandments is defined by the amount of individual desires to receive which the vessel of the soul encompasses. It is divided into two parts:

Top           Galgalta Ve Eynaim (G’E), 248 desires
Bottom      AHP, 365 desires

The intention to receive is called the “evil inclination”; whereas, the intention to give is called the “good inclination.” The action per se remains the same. We can differentiate between good or bad actions only by intentions that stand behind them. Thus, a process of correction is in fact a modification of intentions. If it is self-oriented, then it is considered to be the evil inclination; if it is focused on our neighbors, then it is good.

Eventually we have to correct 248 and 365 desires; all together they comprise 613. However, in reality we only correct 612 desires, since the last commandment (the one about love) remains “problematic.” As Kabbalists say, by improving 612 desires, we will attain love. In other words, from love of friends we come to love the Creator.

In the overall system, there is a special part of desires, of course interconnected with the rest of desires, the group that must correct itself. I am not there at the beginning. But as soon as I start working with the group, with friends, wanting to connect with them, and doing so in reality, I will find that in my nature everything is against this: “I cannot, I am not able, I don’t want to, I will not do this.” This is what the evil inclination is, that I do not want to unite, and it hinders me.

Then I call it my “hater” and demand correction from the friends, who are near and far, from anywhere. I discover where correction is, how to realize it, how to overcome my inclination. And I do so until I feel the need to turn to the Creator.

It will not happen immediately. I can scream now, but then the egoistic desire grows, and the thought of the Creator becomes unbearable. I hate Him, I am ready to destroy Him, anything but not to turn to Him. I think that I am required to do the impossible, as if instead of destroying the enemy, I have to love him and help him. It is very hard. And then, feeling hopeless, desiring to achieve bestowal in spite of everything, I turn to the Creator.
[90804]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/21/12, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”

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Question: You say that we lack unity in our intentions while reading The Book of Zohar, what does that mean?

Answer: We deal with corrections, and a correction is made by the force that created us; this force is called the Light that Reforms. It created, shattered and corrupted everything on purpose so that from the special corruptions we find ourselves in we will be able to understand and to attain the wholeness.

But in order to be able to ascend from our corruption we need the force to operate on us. This force comes only if we first want to be corrected, if we feel a deficiency in its action. Then it operates in perfect accordance with our deficiency in quantity and in quality.

This means that we have to know in advance which corrections this force is going to perform. But we don’t know which corrections are required, so how can we summon it? This is why we are given a kind of a game in our state in which we play connection and unity and getting closer to one another in discussions, as if we are corrected, as if we want to be corrected, as if we want to connect, etc.

If we are drawn to that during the game, since nothing more than that is required of us, if we fulfill this at least in some connection with the correction, the Light operates and influences us. There is a kind of an agreement: I do it “as if” and you do it “for real.” The lower needs to cry out and the upper, in response to these outcries, brings the correction. This is the order of the levels on every level.

So if this is the case, what should we do? All our prayers should only be for connection among us, since this is the correction of the shattering. The connection I try to reach is meant for that, so that I will know that I cannot do that and I need the upper force to do it.

So on the one hand, I am drawn to connection, and on the other hand, I know that I can’t fulfill it without the upper Light. Then the Light comes and does the work. This is the whole action.

This means that the preparation for the receiving of the Torah is a deficiency for the action of correction. The Torah itself is the method of connection, and the upper Light is the force that brings me the connection. There is nothing else but that.
[91395]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/28/12, The Zohar

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• Without the right intention, the Light can’t enter a desire and it remains in its filth. Only the intention purifies the desire’s “body” and allows the Light to enter it.

The intention emerges when the body realizes the impurity it is in, desires unity with the Creator, and makes actions to attract the Light that Reforms. Then the Light of the Torah corrects the desire with the intention for bestowal, and then dresses into it.

First one must reveal one’s egoistic intention. This is also an attainment. Then a person needs the Light in order to change his intention to bestowal.

Question: Is this intention formed by the right environment?

Answer: No, the intention is formed by the Light, while the environment supports this process so a person comes to demand correction from the Light.

Question: So that means only prayer will help one achieve this?

Answer: Yes, prayer, request, or demand aimed at the source, in other words—a need.

Prayer, MAN, is a need, an unfulfilled desire that comes from Nukva that is included in Bina. That’s where the name MAN comes from—Mey Nukvin, literally, “female waters.” Bina creates Nukva, the female quality from the desire to bestow, while Nukva desires to become similar to Bina from its receiving desire. These are the two stages: First, when breaking, Bina becomes included in Nukva, meaning Malchut, and then when Malchut is corrected, it becomes included in Bina.

Question: Then why are all of these physical actions we make in this world necessary?

Answer: Without them I can’t provide for my existence. But if I add the right intention to my animate desire to live and fulfill myself, then I allow it to become corrected. I aim all of my life at correction.

Question: Is it possible to add the intention to every action?

Answer: Yes, even to the “coarsest” one. By virtue of the intention, any action becomes spiritual. Any desire can be corrected, even the most insignificant, the lowest, and stupidest one. The Light will issue a “ validity certificate” to every desire.
[91537]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/29/12, “Matan Torah”

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