Question: In your opinion, was it important to have voiced our common demand during the workshop? I had a feeling that at some point you were nudging the focus group towards expressing “Creator, fill us! We are ready. Change us.” Should these words be said out loud? Or perhaps only “I sensed. I felt…?”

Answer: No. We have to move forward through Kabbalistic sources. We need to read articles, analyze them, and precisely through these articles to penetrate the world of the Creator more greatly and deeply.

We can reveal Him only if there is a primary Kabbalistic source in front of you. Under no circumstances should you trust your thoughts and desires! It’s necessary to follow the text. If you don’t like one text, take another; you can change them.

I open a book, say, Shamati, on any page and I begin to do spiritual work from it. If I see that the page I opened isn’t right and doesn’t quite correspond to my state, then I can turn another 15-20 pages—that’s not important. Then I start reading and working here. But nevertheless, I work from whatever is written in the book.

After all, a Kabbalist describes sequential actions of cause and effect that incrementally lead you forward.

And if you’re going to make things up yourself based on that mass of thoughts and feelings that rise up inside you, then who knows where it will lead you. Being small, we learn like this from older kids, and they tell us what to do, how, and why. And so we must keep on studying like this, progressively.
[76505]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/25/12, Workshop 2

Related Material:
In The Kabbalists’ Footsteps To The Upper World
The Key To The Connection With The Creator
Knowledge Is Passed Down The Chain

Filed under: Conventions, Kabbalah Study, Prayer and Intention, Q&A, Workshops - No Comments →

Question: What exactly is our work in unity?

Answer: I have to yearn for a connection with the text that we study, to want that everything it says to be fulfilled in my connection with the general vessel, with the whole desire. I want to discover all the phenomena The Zohar talks about in my connection with the group.

The Zohar talks about the still, vegetative, and animate levels of the desire, nothing more. So there, it speaks about the sages, land, trees, animals, and donkeys—everything applies to the four phases of desire. We shouldn’t be distracted from this internal meaning and imagine an external picture.

Even if it “diverts” us, we have to hold on to the internality as hard as we can, and we always keep this struggle inside us with mixed success. The main thing is to try, which means that you are performing corrections and raising the internality over the externality, raising it higher and higher.

These are the greatest corrections, which only we can perform as the lowest level of the system. Until now no one could do that, not even the great Kabbalists of the past. We, in our generation, perform this most important work by raising the internality over the externality at the base of the system.
[76319]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/24/12, The Zohar

Related Material:
The Zohar: The Narrative About Unity
The System That Connects You With Infinity
The Zohar Is Being Revealed For Us

Filed under: Body and Soul, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work, Perception, Prayer and Intention, Q&A, Unity, Zohar - No Comments →

Question: Can we reach a true prayer artificially, through games?

Answer: Advancement is only possible through prayer, by the revelation of the deficiency. If you wish to count how many times and in what way you advanced, then you have to take into account the moments in which you discovered a deficiency for the Creator from the bottom of your heart.

This deficiency activates the Reforming Light. What depends on you is only the prayer, (the raising of MAN), then accordingly you can calculate things. How many times do you recall that you raised MAN yesterday by discovering a need for the Creator inside you and the desire to advance towards bestowal upon others, the group, and the connection with the friends and the rest of humanity?

Did you yearn for that yesterday, at least to some extent? If you didn’t, then there was no yesterday; you have erased that day from your history!
[76161]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/24/12, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
The 100th Letter
Light For All Those Lying In The Dust
A Prayer, Growing Secretly In The Heart

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Prayer and Intention, Q&A - No Comments →

The four hundred years of exile were given to us so that we would cry out and reach a true prayer. When you finally cry out “Help!”,  you come out of exile.

So, the conflict between the “shell” and “holiness” is about one question: Who will rule? Is it the human part in a person or the Creator that is in a person?

This is the middle neutral point called the middle third of Tifferet, the shell of Noga. The Creator rules the upper part, as it is written, “There is none else besides Him,” and below, Pharaoh, or myself.

Here in the free neutral point we have to clarify many things, because each time, Pharaoh grows stronger and denies the Creator’s control. This is after you have decided that the Creator should rule and you are totally under the domination of the Upper that does everything. For a moment I imagined this whole picture in my mind.

This isn’t easy since I am constantly confused about who the Creator is, who rules, and where my place and the place of others is. It is very difficult, here, to keep things balanced, as if standing on one leg on a high pole in a circus constantly trying to maintain balance, trying not to fall.

I need the Creator’s help here that He will give me the force of bestowal, which will make me independent of my desire to receive. Otherwise I will constantly need to stabilize the picture of reality in me that is absolutely impossible, and will have to balance on one leg on a pole like a circus performer. Only the power of bestowal can provide me with such a safety net and balance.

Thus, our point of freedom, “the shell of Noga” is revealed on the lowest level, “the middle third of Tifferet,” that obliges us to answer the question as to who will rule and “Who is the Lord that I should listen to His voice?”
[76221]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/25/12, Writings of Rabash 

Related Material:
Why Is It So Hard To Ask?
Between The Creator And Pharaoh
Thoughts Of Freedom Are Lies Over Lies

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Inner Work, My Similarity to the Creator, Prayer and Intention - 1 Comment →

Our goal is to reach a true prayer, which means to understand what we lack. It is true because it is accepted Above. This means that a deficiency on the part of the lower one and a deficiency on the part of the upper one have to be equal, the lower should ask for exactly what the upper one wants to give him.

This means that I have to feel that I only lack bestowal and the understanding that only the Creator can give me this filling: the force of bestowal and the ability to bestow, all the necessary conditions. The Creator has to reveal the desire to bestow and how to reach it inside me by showing me upon whom and what I can bestow.

This whole system of connection is called the Torah. And both the Light and our ability to bestow are included in it. But until then I have to work and first of all check what I want, what desires there are inside me, and to what extent they are all in order to receive.

Then I become included in the right environment and with its help, I gradually begin to change. I already begin to hear that the spiritual world isn’t meant for self-pleasure, but for the good of others. I realize this gradually and with great difficulty. I hear about it, but it takes a long time until I really understand this in my mind and feel it in my heart.

There is a great distance between simple awareness and actually doing something. We have to exert ourselves while in our natural ego in order to perform actions that are totally opposite to it, that are aimed at connection and bestowal. Even though it may be artificial and against my will, it is still called “above reason.”

But what can fuel my machine, what can be the reward? After all, I can’t work so that others will feel better, I don’t see any benefit in it and I can’t even move a finger for this cause, I can’t perform even the slightest action. My nature doesn’t work on bestowal energy. I don’t feel someone else’s desire as my own in a way that I can fill it and feel as if I fill myself.

In the meantime, I don’t feel anything, and it is as if others don’t exist for me. To fill the others is against my interests. So I operate mechanically, as if I bestow upon them and connect with them. Actually I do it for my own sake.

However, I understand that this is what “You labored and you found” means! I exert myself, and in the meantime the Light influences me and changes something in my soul. Gradually I begin to feel the greatness of the Creator and the importance of the environment, but it takes years to reach this internal attitude.

I advance by first realizing that bestowal is good for my own sake, and gradually I begin to perceive the importance of the attribute of bestowal itself. There are ups and downs on this path. One time I may value bestowal more and another time I may want to use it for my own sake, to enjoy the fact that I am on this path. Sometimes I don’t think about it at all, but only about receiving, and then I wonder about wasting my time and I have doubts about the whole way. So I advance by going through all these states.

The goal of the advancement is to bring me to a true prayer. I receive all the elements of this prayer from the environment. There is nothing in a person himself that can bring him to spiritual attainment. He needs a teacher that will constantly guide him, he needs a group in which he fulfills the whole process, and he needs books through which he receives the Light that Reforms.

These three elements are not part of our desire to receive and of the corporeal life. And they must be organized so that with their help we can attain the importance of the spiritual properties.

This is possible only by the Light. How can I otherwise wish for something that brings me no self benefit but only requires that I make efforts, and what is more to enjoy it. But the Light gradually cleans me and gives me this ability, and then I begin to value the spiritual connection with the Creator.

I attain a true deficiency, which is very powerful. Besides, its truth is proven to me since the Creator accepts it and responds to my request. Thus we meet Him for the first time “face-to-face,” the Creator’s deficiency connects with the deficiency of the created being.

This means that the Creator is revealed and then a person rises above his ego and begins to work in order to bestow. This whole process is divided into two parts: The first phase is the preparation for the true prayer. The moment we attain it, we begin to advance with it by gradually revealing a greater deficiency. But from the moment we attain this true deficiency our attainment of the Creator begins.
[76157]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/24/12, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
The Only One Who Will Help Me
The Last Gate
Prayer And Gratitude

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Inner Work, My Similarity to the Creator, Prayer and Intention - No Comments →

The spiritual work is different from the work we do in this world. This world is the world of actions. I perform a certain action in order to get a certain result. There is a thought, there is a goal, a plan, and accordingly I begin to work to fulfill the action in order to reach the goal—this is how I perform the whole process.

But in spiritual work we have another key partner that does the work. We only create the work for Him. He works and performs all the actions, the plan is His and He does everything. We are only responsible for the fact that we can activate Him.

The boss here is the Creator, He has His own plan and all the materials and the power to fulfill it, everything that is needed. Everything takes place according to a predetermined plan, but only if we hasten it.

It is as if there is a lazy contractor that undertook to build us a house, but we always have to come to him and ask that he do something. As long as you demand, he does; the moment you stop demanding, he immediately stops. We fuel this machine and only then does it begin to work.

It is very hard for us to internalize this, to understand, and to feel it because we don’t feel the one who performs this work and we think that we have to do everything by ourselves! What is more, this work is done on us, so we don’t really perceive what is happening.

If I could see the Creator and understand that everything depends on Him, then I would certainly constantly ask Him, beg, and urge Him. The problem is that I don’t feel Him! This is the essence of the concealment of the Creator, that I don’t feel that I am in His hands, and so I don’t ask Him to do anything.

I don’t feel that I depend on Him, but I think that everything is within my abilities. This concealment created the egoistic power in me, a shell, by making me feel sure that I myself will rule! So the Pharaoh in me says: “Who is the Lord, that I should listen to His voice? Do everything by yourself!”

This is the point where the domination of the ego is revealed; this is the place where the “shell” and the “Holiness” in me clash.

“I rule!”, means that I will do everything by myself and not the Creator. I prefer to do everything by myself, instead of asking Him to do something. But we know that our work is to reach the request. This is the only thing that we need. Then everything happens by itself.
[76242]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/25/12, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
The Only One Who Will Help Me
Lie, But Honestly
The Unbearable Bitterness Of Slavery

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Prayer and Intention - No Comments →

The Book of Zohar, “Bo (Come unto Pharaoh),” The Passover Sacrifice, Item 189: When the Creator came to Egypt, He saw the Passover blood written on the door, and the covenant blood—how they were standing at the door.

Question: How can I keep the right intention while reading The Book of Zohar?

Answer: There is no doubt that I can’t keep the right intention, but I need to imagine the state I want to be in now.

First I need to totally detach myself from the voice of the announcer, as if I don’t hear anything. I know that I am connected to a pipe through which the Light flows unto me and it can either help me or harm me: it can become the “elixir of life” or the “potion of death.” It all depends on how I hear!

It is as if I put on earphones, but I turn the volume down and don’t want to hear. First I want to know what energy, what force, reaches me through these channels, how the Reforming Light should influence me. Do I receive it like a bat and sink even more deeply into the darkness, or like a rooster that expects the dawn? It all depends on my intention and so I have to clarify this first.

So first I block my ears in order not to hear anything. What should I do now so that the Light that reaches me will heal me? I don’t want the snake that is the symbol of medicine, to turn into a real snake and poison me with its lethal venom. The same poison can be used as a medicine even though it comes from the same source, from the same snake. In order to do that I have to prepare myself, to be in a group together with the friends, to want to connect with them in my heart and soul to become one man in one heart, to attain such a love into which we can all dissolve and feel ourselves as one whole.

To the extent that we can reach that by the Light that Reforms us into one body, we will feel the force that unites us, the Creator, internally. We will feel the source of the Surrounding Light. The Light determines the connection among us. The source of the Light is the Creator who is revealed in the vessel that is arranged correctly.

First I have to imagine this whole state accurately. When I see it before me by imagining it emotionally and even visually, I gradually begin to unclog my ears. Then I turn on the volume in order to hear the announcer’s voice, as long as I can keep the image I have created in my mind. But if what is going on disturbs me from keeping that image, I turn the volume down again. If it doesn’t disturb me, I follow that voice.

I try to hear the announcer and no matter what is being said: whether it is about Passover, the blood of the circumcision on the door, the details about the exodus from Egypt, I try to find all these discernments in that image in which we are all connected.

I don’t depict the image according to the corporeal meaning of the words which the “language of the branches” uses, but rather translate them into the “language of the spiritual roots”: Sefirot, Partzufim, reception and bestowal, the connection between us and the Creator, and the unity of the concepts “Israel, the Torah and the Creator.” I immediately get rid of the actual words, as from an unwanted shell. It is as if I clean the shell off the nuts before I begin to eat them, and thus I get rid of corporeal concepts and immediately move on from the branches to the roots.

I try to imagine what it looks like in the spiritual roots: what is the meaning of “lintel,” “Mezuzah,” or “blood.” Even if I don’t understand, it makes no difference. The main thing is my efforts, wanting to know what is being studied, to connect to what is being studied. The Reforming Light influences me according to my efforts.

We must constantly repeat these exercises over and over again, in every book that we study: the articles of Rabash and Baal HaSulam, The Study of the Ten Sefirot, The Zohar, the Mishnah, Shulchan Aruch, all the books are about how to connect the broken vessel.
[76148]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabblah Lesson 4/22/12, The Zohar 

Related Material:
The Passover Sacrifice
The Zohar: The Narrative About Unity
Through The Letters Of The Book Of Zohar

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work, Perception, Prayer and Intention, Q&A, Zohar - 1 Comment →

By trying to unite in the group, we don’t just evoke the Light, but the Light that Reforms. It doesn’t correct me, but it gives me new details of perception. Its job is to show me that I am totally detached, opposite, broken, immersed in hate, and laying at the bottom. First, I come to this recognition.

Beyond that, the Light obliges me to feel that nothing can save me, and it is impossible to come out. It gives me the feeling that there is no force in our world that can correct me, although I seemingly do want to connect with the friends and love them.

However, I continue to work and do my best, together with the great hate for separation and the great desire to unite. With the help of the Light, I begin to understand that this is very important. Then, it reveals the most important internal point to me: the understanding that only the Creator can help me.

Thus I reach two things. On one hand, I begin to hate evil, and on the other, I come to love the good, meaning absolute bestowal, when I actually want to go out of my way toward others. I have acquired a big deficiency, the need for unity and love. In addition, above the call of the heart, I have reached the understanding that no one can help me except the Creator.

So, eventually, I acquire a deficiency for the Creator. First, I assumed that together with the friends, we would tear down the Machsom (the barrier separating us from spirituality), and as a result of this demand, I would penetrate nature more deeply and discover the inner force hidden in it—the only one force that can help me. I feel that the desire aimed at the Creator is born in my heart.

This is the top, the climax of my work on the corporeal degree, with all the means available here. From this point on, I am “locked” onto the Creator: How do I ask, demand, oblige, and beg Him for help?

This desire develops and takes on new forms. For whom is the Creator’s help meant? I begin to see that until now, I wanted to use Him, even pay Him. However, I actually need the changes in order to bring Him pleasure. So, by changing internally, I begin to change our mutual relations, until above all my personal calculations, I want all the changes to bring Him pleasure.

This is the work of the Creator: I work and consciously aim all the fruit of my work toward Him. Then, I ask to feel Him. I ask not as I do now, not for my self-benefit, but on the contrary, I tell Him: “Don’t reveal Yourself, otherwise my desire to receive will begin to enjoy. Just tell me what is for Your good. This is the only thing that I want.”

So, from the level of our world, I move on to another kind of work, done relative to the Creator. At the same time, I continue to work in the group, but now as one whole with it.
[75857]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/20/2012, “Preface to The Book of Zohar”

Related Material:
Penetrating Love Through Barricades Of Hate
Difficulties Are The Help From Above
When The Upper Force Wears You Down

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work, Prayer and Intention - No Comments →

We must separate from all our problems in order to have success in inner work. We represent an integral community, a small group, which is the only thing that exists in the world.

Everything else that exists in the world also connects to us: both the feminine and the masculine parts. They embody the entirety of mankind, the one common soul, the one single Kli (vessel): Malchut of the World of Infinity. Imagine that we now wish to reveal ourselves inside this Kli, not at the point of our world (the lowest point), but at its highest level.

Even if we imagine the highest level, which exists 125 degrees of five worlds away from us, we still will not be able to imagine anything different than the opposite part of the next degree because our imagination does not go further.

Then what is our problem? When we study the system of the worlds, we learn that next to one Partzuf (the first state), there is a second one, an upper one (the second state).

How can we ascend from the first to the second state? Only by canceling ourselves and entering the next state, without creating any disturbances in it—like an embryo.

This next state is called AHP and Galgalta ve Eynaim (GE) of the upper one.

We must simply use our desire and aspiration to pull ourselves into this upper state.

In relation to our state, the upper state is the state of absolute bestowal, when we fully rise above ourselves and leave our entire animal part below.

Aspiration upward is called “Adam” (the human part); it is our consciousness, our desire, directed toward bestowal. We wish to connect them to our aspiration. This is the state of spiritual ascent, which we evoke.

When we strive upward this way, then Light comes to us from the Galgalta ve Eynaim of the higher degree, which helps us, pulls us up, and influences us.

This is the Light that Reforms.

We are not able to do this on our own. We only have the effort, the intention, but never the actual action.

The actual action happens under the influence of the upper Light. So we only need the desire, gathered together to be annulled before each other, to be collected into one single whole, and a firm demand for ascent, for the manifestation of the Light in us, to request that the Light influence us and lift us to the quality to bestow. This is the kind of intention we must have.
[75177]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/23/12, Lesson 2

Related Material:
An Opening For The Light
The Help Of Which No One Will Know
Like An Embryo In The Mother’s Womb

Filed under: Conventions, Prayer and Intention - No Comments →

If we are in our desire to receive yearning only to receive a filling, we don’t feel that there is something else outside our desire. We only understand that there is a void in us that must be filled and that feels that it is empty. As long as our desire doesn’t receive all the filling, it will not calm down. It is like a crying baby that doesn’t calm down until he receives everything that he needs.

How can we teach such a desire to receive another pleasure, pleasure from bestowal? It doesn’t even understand what it is, and cannot feel and do such a thing. But gradually we begin to teach it according to a plan.

The whole study is based on the readiness to suffer, because the desire needs to give up its filling, to give up the desire for the filling, to give up the feeling of the self, the self pride, the envy, the respect, and the control, which means its independence.

At first a person thinks that he can correct himself, until he sees that it is impossible, and that it can only be realized by the upper force. He learns from failing all the time. Thus he is taught that he should lower his head and ask, ask for the one thing that he doesn’t want. Then he receives help and changes, becoming his opposite, by beginning to enjoy what was hateful before.

We have to go through this whole process in understanding, in recognition, in agreement, in our feelings and in the mind, in our consciousness. Everything you were proud of before and considered respectable, now seems the opposite, and you discover your lowliness and your helplessness. Our desire to receive, which doesn’t know anything but to fill itself, feels all this when it learns about a totally new method.

This process takes place according to the three symbols: “Pesach” (Passover), “Matzah,” and “Maror” (bitter herb). It is called “Pesach” from the Hebrew root to skip, as a person constantly jumps from one side to its opposite, and so he turns his small measures of receiving into bestowal. He does that by Matzah, “the bread of affliction,” since he has no other food and he agrees to settle for what he receives from bestowal.

A person constantly raises the importance of bestowal, while his desire to receive only gets the “bitter herb.” Thus he raises the right line, the Matzah, over the left line, the bitter herb, like a hero who overcomes the bitter taste and wants to turn it to the sweetness of bestowal. Then he reaches Pesach, the changing of his consciousness.

By the new attitude towards the desire to receive, that doesn’t change, he builds the human in him. “Adam” (Man) is what is built above the desire. This is the system that begins to work according to the new principle with the same natural attributes, but by using them in order to bestow.

The mechanism, that is created by that is made of all the person’s actions and exertions as he overcomes his desire to receive, is what is called “Adam.” All this is done by the three special components that symbolize the holiday of freedom from the ego, Pesach, that are called Pesach, Matzah, and bitter herb.
[75097]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/10/12, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
The end Of The Slavery In Egypt is Near
The Seeds Of Light Are Shown Now
A Leap To Freedom

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Egoism, Holidays, Inner Work, Prayer and Intention, Suffering - No Comments →