Everything is gained through the power of prayer. If I am the desire to receive, I can’t do anything with myself because I lack the second force: the desire to bestow. The presence of these two forces existing in creation is necessary for me to fight, make decisions, and do something to one with respect to the other.

The first force is egoistic. It is given to us at birth. But how do we get the force of bestowal that comes from the Creator? That is the problem, and our prayer is about that.

Why do we need the second force? If I feel a lack with regards to the first, egoistic force, I begin searching for how to fill it. And this is also called a prayer. Even a thief, who is planning to steal but is feeling anxious about his success, creates a prayer for a successful robbery through his desire. And it also receives a response just like any other lack.

Thus the problem is not in the desire, but what it is directed to. It shouldn’t be a desire toward filling my egoism that develops in a natural way, making me act for my own good. The still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature are instinctively developed in such a way.

But the human level doesn’t exist in nature as a result of its natural development. “A human” not in the sense of a physical body of this world, which essentially is the highest level of the animate degree, but a spiritual human who is similar to the Creator can develop only under the condition of acquiring the second force, the force of bestowal in addition to the first one, the force of reception. Thanks to this, man becomes similar to the Creator.

But how can this force be passed to a person if it only belongs to the Creator? This transition cannot be direct. Rather, it can happen through some influence or example from the Creator, either in a hidden or revealed form, when the desire to receive in a person changes its shape and behavior. And instead of receiving directly, like it is intended by nature, it starts working differently.

The desire to receive inside a person will change itself. It’s not like two opposite forces becoming revealed inside him or her: the human desire to receive and the Creator’s desire to bestow. The force of bestowal exists only in the Creator. It can only be passed to a person through the influence of the Creator. And then the person’s desire will change its shape and external manifestation.

He starts acting in bestowal for the sake of bestowal, restraining himself and not harming or using another person. Or, he receives for the sake of bestowal by working the same way he used to, but with the intention to bring good to the other.
[61324]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/21/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Question: You’ve mentioned that the environment is the only means for keeping a person in the correct intention. Does this mean that the only way one can advance is by creating an environment like at the desert convention, which will constantly motivate him to remain in the correct intention and in the quality of bestowal?

Answer: This is correct. Without the influence of the environment a person loses himself. There are lots of people who simply burn their time by sitting home and watching soap operas or reading suspense and romance novels. Time passes by…. They feel that they fill their time with empty things, but they can’t do anything about it.

I receive complaints from people: “I am not doing anything! How can I break out of this state?” A person promises himself that starting tomorrow he’ll take charge of his life, but then tomorrow comes, and he is still in the place he was yesterday. Day after day goes by, and the clock can’t be turned back.

What can a person do? There is actually nothing he can do. This is how he’s being shown from Above that without the influence of the environment he won’t have the strength to advance. He must immerse himself in a correct environment, like a child who enters an adult environment. By doing this he will receive strength from them.

Rabbi Jossi Ben Kisma said: “What will I do without my students?” Did he need to receive knowledge from them? No, but he did need their general desire toward the goal. Did he not posses his own desire? After all, his desire was much greater than all of their desires! This is true. However, without connecting to them, he wouldn’t have his “billion times greater desire plus one.” Without them he wouldn’t be able to advance a single degree further. If he was left without his students, starting the next day he would go from reading The Zohar to reading the news.
[61011]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/17/2011, The Zohar

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The Book of Zohar was intended not for us to study it, but rather for us to demand correction from it. In makes no difference where a person is, in what situation or mood, how much he understands, and what his attitude to life is. It doesn’t matter what kind of person he is. If he opens the book, he should ask for some clarification, for advancement. One asks for understanding, and another, possibly, for a better life.

We have to understand that this is all not very important in comparison to the request to attain the goal. But I don’t know what the goal is. Just like it is in life: If I were able to read The Zohar when I was two years old, I could have asked for something good that may have seemed like the goal of life to me. But what would I have asked for, some toy?

This means that I don’t have to ask according to my desire: to feel good, happy, or the opposite. Grown ups for example, eat something and enjoy it. For me it is sour or salty, but they enjoy it. They do things that I don’t see any pleasure in and don’t understand why they want it in the first place, and so on.

If we are talking about the true state that I should attain, neither actions, nor fulfillments, nor any other criteria help me decide what to ask for. Kabbalists say that by reading The Book of Zohar you can ask for whatever you want. But I don’t even know what I want because I would rather not have these desires. Yet I have no choice.…

A person must approach the reading of The Zohar with a request for what the book itself wants to bring him. This is surely the right thing to do. It’s like being a smart baby who understands that he should ask to be a grown up, clever, strong, healthy, and successful, according to how The Zohar sees it.

So let us try to ask for this, and let The Book of Zohar do whatever it wants with us!
[60778]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/15/2011, The Zohar

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Question: What’s the use of the group’s seclusion at the Convention in the Arava desert?

Answer: We have gathered here to lay the foundation for a new society, whose purpose is to attain adhesion with the Creator. In order to attain adhesion with Him, we have to attain adhesion among us. And in order to attain adhesion among us, we have to unite, disconnecting from the disturbances of the outside world. After all, we’re small and we have to strengthen one another, so let the world not interfere with our doing so. That is why we are going to the desert.

In the past, groups of Kabbalists took much more extraordinary measures to isolate themselves from the external environment. A person has to allow himself a bit more freedom from this confused and senseless world, to collect himself inside a bit more and understand what his predestination is.

In the whirlwind of life, under the roar of the radio and television, you can’t make out the fine voice of your soul or attain the fragile inner inspiration. You simply don’t have the energy for it. Even Kabbalists living hundreds and thousands of years ago in a completely different world, which did not know the “wonders” of mass media, still secluded themselves, barring themselves from their habitual environment, and even “going into exile,” leaving home without taking anything with them and going off to wander for years, getting by with occasional earnings and food.

You don’t even know what you are losing in the modern world, which is stuffing and miring you with its filth. Do you want to attain something exalted? If you do, then what efforts are you making to break away from the lowlands?

It’s worthwhile for us to find time for this kind of seclusion where we will feel only our own forces, without the disturbances of the outside world. Let’s separate a day in life to feel who we are instead of who they are.

Obviously, we don’t force anyone to participate and we don’t make lists of participants or deserters. We don’t put check-marks for the future. Whoever doesn’t want to or can’t come just doesn’t come. In this sense, everything is very liberal and open. But on the other hand, if a person comes there, he has to participate in the actions that the group has assigned to help us detach from everything and feel only ourselves.

Don’t you sometimes wish to be alone with yourself? That is how the group wants to be alone with itself, to feel itself. You enter a room, close the door, and remain with your own thoughts. That is how we want to remain with our thoughts. In reality, this is clear and commonly accepted. But for us it’s not just a minute of rest, but a detachment from “the degree of women and children” and an ascent to the “men’s level.”

In the article, “The importance of the group,” Rabash writes, “When a person works on the true path, he needs to seclude himself from other people. After all, the path of truth requires fortification because it contradicts common notions. The world’s opinions are built upon knowledge and reception, whereas the Torah’s opinions are built upon faith and bestowal. And if a person is distracted, then he immediately forgets about all work on the path of the truth and falls into the world of self-love. Only in the group do the friends help one another, and therefore every person receives forces from it to fight the commonly accepted notions.”

The upper world is our inner world. We have to shift our gaze from externality to internality. Therefore, with the help of the friends, I try to go inside, to look inward, to acquire a deep wisdom, to attain the inner meaning of the Torah. There is no other choice—I need this.

A person must constantly immerse himself inward, penetrate into his depths—and precisely there he reveals the true world. The external world deliberately confuses us so through the conflict with it, upon the resistance, we would build our direction inward. Our struggle is to penetrate deeper and deeper on the background of this world’s reality, which pulls us outward.
[60927]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/16/11, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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Question: We only reveal the Creator, the force of bestowal, when we become similar to Him in our qualities. Then what is the meaning of the principle, “don’t lose hope in His mercy?”

Answer: It means that one has appealed a thousand times, like King David who symbolizes the collective Malchut, the collective vessel, one that is deeper than the Psalms reveal. Read them. They are all his appeals and requests, praises and lamentations. This is the meaning of “do not lose hope in His mercy.” Try to express and realize your lamentation the same way, and then you will come to a final blessing.

Question: So it turns out that the Creator is waiting for us to scream at the top of our lungs?

Answer: It is written that the Creator is waiting for prayers and a broken heart, that He likes people whose hearts are broken, and that He receives a lot of pleasure from your tears. This is because your tears are a sign of egoism’s weakness and your disappointment in it.

We receive blows from egoism, not the Creator. However, it takes time to understand that. Really, what do you want from the Creator if you are being hit by your evil inclination?

This is why we need to strictly determine that our place of work is the group. Only then will we reach a true prayer, and naturally, it will happen through a number of disappointments.
[60648]
From Lesson 3, Israel Arvut Convention, 11/11/2011

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The upper worlds are showing us a model, and we must become similar to it. Our connection between us is the quality we are able to achieve in order to correspond to the Light. When a person connects with others, with his bestowal, he builds out of himself a spiritual Partzuf from the ten Sefirot.

Bestowal cannot exist in any form other than the ten Sefirot. When it assumes the right form, it manifests as a spiritual Partzuf whose height we can measure according to the rungs of the spiritual ladder in the upper worlds.

It turns out that we can measure the height of a soul, meaning the connections of separate desires, and understand the power we attain through it in relation to the entire common soul. In the end, the desire created by the Creator remains, but it acquires the form of the Sefirot, the sources of the illumination that reach me from all the worlds through which the simple Light of the world of Infinity passes.

The Creator places the system of worlds in front of me, and it serves as a source of Light that is always ready to influence me, that is ready to affect my desire if I have prepared it for use. The Light is in a state of absolute rest, and the way it will affect me only depends on my desire. There are no changes in the Light. All the changes take place only in my desire, which I am able to change as I work on the connection in the group.

After all, the connection of a group is the actual desire that awakens the Light, forcing it to shine and return us to bestowal, a connection with one another. There is no other desire but the one that exists inside the group and is directed toward unity. Only this kind of desire can attract the Light because they have the same nature. None of the other desires are subject to correction; they are egoistic.

The only desire that counts is the desire to unite with a friend, with the group. When a person really rises above his corporeal body and wishes to connect above it, “in his head,” placing this aspiration for connection above all his private goals, only to this degree does the Light reach a person across all the Sefirot and correct his desire, connecting his private desire to the common one.

This way, we correct the shattering and reveal the vessel of our soul and the Light that fills it in our connection. Then a person sees that worlds do not exist on their own, outside of man. All of this exists only in potential and is realized only in practice when we want to connect. Then, to the extent of the power, height, and nature of this connection, we reveal the upper Light that is always ready for it. This means that the system of the worlds is being revealed to us.

This system of worlds does not exist without our appeal. It is entirely in the world of Infinity, in the Thought of Creation to please the created beings. Only at the exact moment when there appears a desire that demands to be corrected for the purpose of connection does the system of concealment begin to operate in relation to this desire, suiting it exactly according to its height and nature. The Light influences the desire from this system and reforms it.
[60666]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/14/2011, Shamati #68

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We need to receive from Above the power of faith called “art.” Naturally, we ourselves do not have it. And on this path a person sees how weak he is. It is written that inner work “weakens a person” because he begins to feel that he does not have anything but egoistic desire.

And if he supposedly manages to overcome his egoism, it simply means that a larger egoistic desire has defeated a smaller one. This way, instead of advancing in the direction of spirituality, he is moving in the opposite direction, using an even greater egoism.

Sometimes people are very successful in their studies, they work and study a lot, and you would think that a great force of bestowal is driving them. But this is not the case. This simply is the great force of egoism because they see a greater benefit before them.

We always advance from “Lo Lishma” (for oneself) towards “Lishma” (for the sake of bestowal) and naturally act with the help of our ego. But still, our responsibility is to evaluate our true position and the intentions that drive us.

Gradually, as a person exerts effort in studying, dissemination, and mainly in group work, he reveals how incapable of anything he is. Man realizes his true state when he sees that no matter how much he tries to overcome his ego, putting all his effort into it, he is still incapable of doing anything with himself.

A person spent all his time working for the importance of the goal, but at the end, he lost his strength and realized his evil. He understood that he has nothing but the ego and that his every movement is driven by an egoistic purpose. As a result, he reaches a deep state of despair, described in the following way: “There is no happier moment in a person’s life than the moment when he becomes completely disappointed in his powers and feels absolute helplessness, and thus he becomes ready for a complete prayer.”

And a complete prayer is a request to acquire the power of faith. And then the power of greatness of faith, greatness of the Creator clothes him, and thus a person continues to work, but with another kind of “fuel.”
[60139]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/8/2011, Writings of Rabash

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In order to get a slight idea of the difference between corporeality and spirituality, imagine that the world is a shop you have entered to buy something for yourself. And next to you there is a shop for newborns where you enter to buy something for your baby.

It’s clear that you will feel completely different in that store and will have a completely different attitude to the purchases. You will do it with a thought of bestowal. You will think only about making the other (the baby) feel good because by nature you love him more than yourself. You will always choose what this other one needs with this intention, whether it’s diapers or baby formula. Everything will be aimed only at the baby and how to give him the best possible thing.

Maybe you are able to think that way about someone other than your baby, such as your friends, the entire society, or even all of humanity, or perhaps even about the Creator. This depends on the height of your attitude to others.

This is the difference of working for your own sake and working for others. It’s just difficult for us to understand what the force of faith means, which lets us feel the importance and necessity of thinking not about ourselves, but about others, something we did not do before. In our world there are examples of that, but they are egoistic and we care about the neighbor only when we feel that we need him.

So how can we do the same thing, but against our egoism, above it, and build our attitude to the neighbor upon constant nullification of ourselves? We can understand this when it comes to the people close to us. If we love them, then we even experience pleasure by limiting ourselves for their sake. That is how we measure the force of our love and bestowal: by how much we give to them and take care of them.
[60136]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/08/11, Writings of Rabash

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The only desires that can be corrected are desires that have an addition, a special form of an attitude towards desire called an intention. There are instinctive desires for fulfillment on the still, vegetative, and animate levels, which are simply enrooted in us by nature. And there are desires that operate through an intention, which assume a special attitude towards the source of pleasure, and not the pleasure itself.

The reason I want to be rich is not because I receive pleasure from buying things with money, but because I am envious of my rich neighbor. I want to be big, beautiful, and slender, always comparing myself to the others. A certain attitude towards others is part of this, and it gives me an additional pleasure. If the attitude towards my neighbor disappears, I will have no reason for this pleasure.

Egoistic desire appears from the fact that we were once connected and then became distanced from one another. And this distance, breaking, affects our desire, increases it, and gives it the form of an attitude towards other, foreign, desires, and ultimately the Creator. In other words, it defines my attitude toward something that exists outside of me.

When it comes to a simple instinctive desire, I only want to fulfill it. And the others do not concern me at all—it is only my desire. But the desires of the “human” level are not my inherent desires, but acquired ones. I have acquired them by being connected with others some time ago or by being in an environment that rouses this kind of desires in me.

The desires that get corrected have an intention that appeared from the past connection into a single desire. This is why this intention is present in us and constantly awakens, demanding correction.

We attain the understanding of the creature, the Creator, and a 620 times greater fulfillment and connection specifically through the correction of this intention.
[59653]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/3/2011, Writings of Rabash

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So many preparations were made by our breaking and so many opportunities were opened up by it for our benefit that it was nothing short of a divine act. This is such an ingenious invention that we are unable to even evaluate it duly.

This is expressed especially in the material garments, in which we are able to exist egoistically while advancing toward bestowal. It is impossible to even imagine how such a miracle is possible! I am in a minus, in evil, in hatred for the neighbor and the Creator, in total opposition to Him, and at the same time, I use them in order to profit off them (or at least that’s how it seems to me). And when I use them for my own benefit, as it seems to me, I actually advance in the reverse direction, meaning toward bestowal to them.

It turns out that by virtue of the breaking, two separate laws of creation emerge, which are connected in a way that enables us to use them even while we are in egoism.

After the breaking, all actions are performed upon us by the world of Atzilut. That is why such a difficult, complex, and perfect mechanism exists in it. After all, it has to work on us from the upper dimension, from the world of bestowal. It has to connect with us, egoists.

And even though we desire the opposite things, nevertheless the system of the world of Atzilut is by its nature built in such a way that it treats us correctly. Even if we are asking for ourselves, egoistically, yet by virtue of the fact that our external actions seem bestowing because we are trying to unite into a group and are working for the sake of dissemination, this is enough for the surrounding Light to shine upon us.

The Light can never become inner and enter these egoistic vessels, but it glows for us from afar, even in these desires that are opposite and unsuitable for it. We have absolutely opposite intentions, yet it shines for us.

This is a very complex mechanism.
[59305]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/31/11, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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