While reading The Zohar, we first of all aim at the Light that Reforms. I think only about it as if I go through some healing process connected to an IV infusion with the upper force constantly flowing through me.

If I think about it, I can already advance. It says that the Torah is the essence of the holy names, which means the acts of bestowal, the Creator, the Light that Reforms, which brings me good thoughts and desires to bestow.

So I try to locate them inside me now while reading The Book of Zohar: “Perhaps something is happening in me?” I want to adhere to the same actions that the Light performs. I want it to perform them in me; I am ready to become Nukva, to receive everything. Let it come and dress in me and do whatever it wants with me.

This is called to “discover the holy names,” “to want to know what one studies, “to study the Torah,” to study the actions of the Light upon my desire to receive—how the Light reforms.

I don’t feel that the Light influences me, but I want to feel it! Being connected to an ordinary infusion a person can lie either unconsciously or consciously just looking at the drops dripping.

But we want to feel how the drops of the Light heal us and what each drop adds. I want to feel it because I want to learn about it, about how to act, how each drop changes my desire to receive; a drop here and a drop there, with relation to one thing or another. By that I learn how I can use every slight change in my recognition, in my understanding, when I get up after this healing process.

The main thing is that I expect to see the actions of the Creator in order to learn from them, in order to know what they are, who I am and how I can resemble the Light that influences me now. I have to perform actions that are identical to the Light’s, to learn from them, as it says: “From Your actions we shall know You.”
[90905]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/22/12, The Zohar

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Question: Yesterday during the seminar, we really felt that we wanted to achieve the goal very much and were completely unable to do so. But then the aftertaste of despair remained: there are no count to these states.

Answer: True. It was what the sons of Israel felt in Egypt, a threat to remain forever under the rule of Pharaoh.

Question: In real life, if a person wants to achieve something, to learn something, he needs to pass the crucial exam. And he comes to the exam in despair because he cannot know everything.

Answer: Our examination is not based on knowledge. The task is not that you give the correct answers, but the fact of what you ask for.

Imagine that I am an examiner. Do not tell me about your positive and negative potential, accumulated during the training. Do not try to soften me with your confusion. You need to act differently here: If you really see that that there is no alternative, then bring the awareness of your own helplessness and the willingness to be changed. No more, just these two things: “I cannot” and “I have to,” and they both must be of equal strength.

So far, you haven’t obtained from the group either the sufficient demand or sufficient frustration. But they are opposite each other and depend on each other: If you do not crave the goal, you will not discover its unattainability. Both poles lack power so far. Yes, both of them have already emerged due to our workshops; however, the matter is how you fill the time between the workshops.

Question: And yet, in this world, there is a date of the exam, which I know in advance.

Answer: The time of the spiritual examination comes when you are able to pass it. Do you want it today? Please. Once you are ready, there is nothing that can prevent you.
[90918]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/22/12, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”

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A person has to make efforts, to play in order to annul himself as much as he can, and to value the environment as much as possible. As a result of this game, the right line is built in him in which he thinks that he wants to stay for the rest of his life. The moment he reaches “satiation,” he cuts himself off from this state and dedicates time to the left line.

In the left line he checks himself: “Do I really think that way, and attain this way? Do I really feel the recognition of the Creator’s greatness within my vessels and the recognition of this wholeness? Have I really attained such an understanding and feeling in my heart and mind, or is it just an external impression like of an embryo in his mother’s womb who totally annuls himself?”

But I don’t want to annul myself. I have just annulled my desires in the right line and I want to feel the greatness of the Creator directly in the desire, which I now discover in the left line.

Then I feel a deficiency, but I keep these two lines so that they will balance one another and none of them will be tilted in order to keep the balance. There is no specific time limit for the right line or the left line, although it says that one should spend twenty-three and a half hours in the right line and only half an hour in the left line.

We have to try to add as much as possible to the right line and to the left line. We shouldn’t decide that we have done enough and that now we should wait for the Creator to start acting and to complete these two lines for me.

A person constantly switches from one line to the other until he makes enough efforts and then the third line is revealed. He summons this revelation by raising a deficiency from the left line to the height of the right line, asking that the Creator reveal His greatness to him in response to this request. He wants to reveal the Creator’s greatness, the greatness of bestowal, only so that it will allow him to work with the desire that was revealed in him in bestowal, “above reason.”

His egoistic desire surrenders to the greatness of bestowal that is revealed and agrees to work under the domination of the Creator. This means that a person builds his “head of the spiritual Partzuf,” where he calculates things that enable him to bestow in order to bestow and to receive in order to bestow.
[90528]
From the 1^st part to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/17/12, Shamati #11

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Question: It says that a person has to change himself internally, but where can he get the powers to do so?

Answer: We are not responsible for our internal desires of course, but we can influence them by external actions. This is flattery and a lie of course, but by annulling myself externally, I attain my internal self-annulment.

It is because I am doing this on purpose, wanting it to happen. So my actions are considered a prayer, a request for help, MAN, because I really want to impress myself by them.

This is why it is so helpful to actually humiliate yourself before the friends and this kind of work summons internal changes. A person is afraid to annul himself and to remain mindless and lose his own opinions, to lose his “self,” all his life experience and the perspective of life he has established. If he still thinks this, it is a sign that he hasn’t reached the recognition of his real humility, and hasn’t realized that there is no way he can succeed by himself.

He has not despaired of his own powers and so it is too soon for him to deal with this kind of work. He will have to wait a few more years, until eventually he will realize that nothing helps and all he has to do is to erase everything in him and to receive what his friends have.

He doesn’t know what they have, but he only knows that what they have is exactly what he needs and that he wants to get rid of what is in him.

Then a person begins to see that actually there was nothing in him but a little pride and concern for his ego. In fact all of spirituality, the whole upper level is external to him.
[90407]
From the 1^st part to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/15/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: It says, “He who prays for his friend is answered first.” This is actual Lo Lishma (not for Her name); it is total egoism, simple absolute egoism.

Answer: Of course, in the meantime you advance egoistically and your ego grows, but you see that each time Pharaoh is getting tougher and tougher, “since I have hardened his heart,” and that is a good sign.

Question: How can I grow from hate to love and not to self-suppression?

Answer: It is impossible to build love without hate and envy. All the negative discernments are eventually implemented in love and you need each of them. After all, what is love? On what foundation is it firmly established? It is over the ego in the vessels of receiving, in perceiving others as close.

Annulment doesn’t mean that everything is annulled. Hate is never annulled, it is preserved in its full intensity, and it is exactly on top of it that you build love. It is as if you cover this whole “Mt. Sinai” (a mountain of hate) with cream and you get a cake called a “Mountain of Holiness.”

This means that the hate is inside. The gap between the Creator and the created being remains since otherwise the created being wouldn’t exist.
[90349]
From the 1^st part to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/15/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: You spoke about the fact that we are constantly awoken from Above, but that we don’t feel it because we lack equivalence of form. What happens Above when we read The Zohar, are we awoken more strongly or do we become more sensitive?

Answer: If you just read The Book nothing happens. You can either read it or not. It all depends on your intention. If your intention evokes an equivalence of form, then to the level that you are equal to a higher level, you are impressed by it. But if you are not inclined to be equivalent in form, if you don’t approach it, it doesn’t illuminate on you.

The upper level is in a fixed state and it is called Hafetz Hesed (which doesn’t want anything for itself). You can evoke it so that it will impress you if you exert yourself and increase your desire. Then it illuminates upon you. It isn’t that it illuminates especially for you, but you are impressed by it according to your vessels, your renewed desires.

But where can you get new vessels and desires? If you are connected to other friends then among you, you give birth to the spiritual vessel. None of us is a vessel that can absorb the Light. There must be at least several people who want to connect in order to nullify themselves before one another, and that is already becoming equal to the upper. According to such an equivalence of form, they can feel a more powerful illumination from the upper among them.
[90204]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/14/12, The Zohar

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We try to perform mutual acts of bestowal and we speak about the love between us although it isn’t there. Yet we still speak about bestowal, about the love of the Creator, about adhesion to Him, about adhesion among us, about connection and unity, in short about the corrected vessel. After the shattering of the general vessel, we speak about its correction. Once there was one soul, and we speak about the reconnection of the individual souls into one.

These talks enable us to be impressed by one another both qualitatively and quantitatively, and gradually all our efforts come together into one whole. Eventually we will create a state from which we will be able to cry out, which means to raise a collective prayer. When people get together, even though they are few, they have many vessels and discernments and so they raise a “prayer of many.”

But this prayer should be aimed at one Source, one goal, to be one. They want to receive the attribute of mutual bestowal, which they imagine as a supreme value, as part of their environment. This attribute, the force that gives birth to and revives everything, is called the Creator, and they want it to be revealed among them according to the efforts they have made.

The attribute of bestowal is not somewhere on the outside. So if the friends try, it will be revealed inside, among them. It is as if it comes to us from two directions: On the one hand there is no vessel, and on the other hand there is no Light, but when the friends try to be together as much as they can, at a certain point both the vessel and the Light are created simultaneously. They cannot exist separately.

We work by requesting, by a common prayer, and so we approach this revelation, the revelation inside us of the attribute of bestowal and love, which is the Creator.

Here it is important to remember that during the preparation phase we don’t discover the actual attribute, but the necessity for it. We don’t know in advance what this attribute is. It is as if we want to acquire it and then when it is revealed, it turns out to be a real surprise and far from what we have thought it would be. It is because it is about something that isn’t part of our nature.

We only need the feeling of necessity, so that we will anticipate and have a premonition of it. Even if it doesn’t reflect the future reality, a person still has to imagine the next state by this game.
[89757]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/5/12, Writings of Rabash

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Everything is very simple: the Creator is revealed in the connection among us. Therefore I should look for where I can work on the connection among us all day long. Where are the wires that I can stretch in order to connect us to one another? Between whom should they be stretched, between which desires? How should I connect everyone, and by what? What is the work I have to do?

It says that the Creator is revealed in the connection among us. If there are ten people, it is enough. We only have to connect and He will be revealed. But have I taken any practical steps towards connection? We only speak about connection, and the Creator is not revealed. So what should we do? Continue until the Creator is revealed.

It is a law! He will certainly be revealed as soon as the correct need for connection compatible to Him arises and is sufficient for the very first level of revelation, Nefesh de Nefesh. Or we will open up the opposite relationship, the opposite of Nefesh de Nefesh, so we have an indication that a desire to connect occurred and was revealed in the opposite, and then we will cry out so that the Creator will correct us.

This outcry comes automatically, since one action leads to another action. So when we cry out, the Creator will correct the connection among us and will be revealed. The broken part will be revealed to us in the coarsest from of separation between ten people. Then we will discover an increasingly more delicate shattering.

First we discover the shattering in its most primitive form: 10 big parts of egoism, opposite from one another trying to tear one another to pieces with their teeth, instead of connecting and holding on by their teeth, like cogwheels. Then we ask for correction and connect more coarsely, and so the Light of Nefesh de Nefesh is revealed. This is already the revelation of the Creator to the created being.

This is a very coarse form of connection, which we are capable of at the moment, 1/125 of the connection. Then the same thing takes place, but the resolution is higher. There are the same ten Sefirot, but we penetrate more deeply into them by discovering more and more individual parts.

The main thing is to discover the first ten Sefirot, the first level, because this is how you are born and take on a spiritual form. Then in this form, you already begin to improve. The most difficult part is to overcome the first level.
[89715]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/5/12, Preface to The Book of Zohar

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Not everyone can go through the first stages of preparation for the spiritual path and hold on to it. Many leave the group, the spiritual path, and the process of changing oneself. They go back to the external world and return to the life of the landlords by stopping the development of the point in the heart, which makes them the guests of the Creator—the Host of the Universe.

As we know “the opinion of the Torah is opposite from the opinion of the landlords.” If a person holds the opinion of the Torah, he feels that he is a guest and the Creator is the host. Therefore he wants to change himself in order to resemble the host.

This is called having the opinion of the Torah, placing the goal before him in order to be in bestowal and accordingly determine his states.

The first states, the ascents and descents we go through, are disconnected from our ordinary mind and feelings. A person sees that he changes completely. For the first time he begins to feel that some foreign dominion manages him. This uniqueness is typical of the changes that we feel in the process of our inner spiritual development.

Suddenly a person feels that he is under the control of some strange force. Before, he never had this feeling in his ordinary life. He always saw clearly whoever wanted to dominate him, which means that they were external forces. Here, however, for the first time he feels that some force descends and takes him over, ties him from the inside and controls him.

It is a very special feeling. I remember the wonder I felt when I first felt this. It is a very unpleasant and incomprehensible feeling until a person begins to get used to it and to acknowledge this action as the Creator’s work on him. Then he is already prepared to determine that this is so and to agree to it. Then he begins to evoke this feeling by himself and to expect it as you expect a meeting and a connection with someone you love.

He begins to value the Creator’s work on him and to expect that it should happen any minute. He appreciates the actual actions of the Creator and not their quality and how they are felt in his egoistic desire, which is not corrected yet. This means that he doesn’t care which states he goes through; what’s important is that the Creator should operate on him as much as possible.

This is what he prays for. He asks to go through as many changes as possible according to the Creator’s desire, since everything that the Creator does is for the good. Thus, his self-sacrifice is measured to the extent that he identifies with the Creator’s actions and expects them, of his voluntary slavery to the Creator, and the power of his prayer.

For the time being these are only the first stages of the spiritual work. Then the more controlled mutual work with the Creator begins, in mutual bestowal. A person already knows how to receive the powers for that and how to later work with them, how to start a dialogue with the Creator. Then he begins to work even with his desire to receive, by feeling the same tastes as the host and by feeling how the Creator tastes the refreshments and how he tastes it himself.

This whole path begins from the initial ascents and descents in which a person gets used to the domination of a foreign force over him.
[89654]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/12, Shamati #21 

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The friends should make sure that I don’t fall and they should constantly think about me. I have to repay them for that because they also need this kind of support. Only if we mutually worry about one another, will no one fall or forget the goal. We will hold on to one another.

We have no chance of achieving anything if we don’t all support one another. If we don’t do that, we won’t exit the ego. This is mutual guarantee.

If I cannot think about others, it means that they don’t think about me. It is both the cause and the result that exist simultaneously under the condition of our mutual collective covenant. Then the Creator resides in it and thus fulfills our covenant. Without this we will undoubtedly forget about Him and start having foreign calculations by supposing that we advance and years may go by leading to nothing.

A person cannot keep on the right track by himself. Do you know how many moments we can count during a whole day in which we really advance: 3-5 seconds at the most! They are so few because each of us lacks the external support.

The vessel of my desire is external to me and I have to make efforts to attach it to me. If we don’t operate this way with regard to others, we do not operate correctly and therefore we don’t draw the Light that Reforms, because the Light operates only within our mutual work. It comes in response to our yearning.

If there are no such yearnings, the Light around us waits passively. “His honor fills the world,” but we have to activate it. We have to keep this main condition: mutual guarantee that is made of our collective interdependence on one another and of the obligation to everyone. Without it no one can succeed, even if we assess it from an egoistic point of view and what is more if it is about high intentions.
[89601]
From a Talk about Inner Work 9/30/12

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