Question: Does the Creator hear the plea of a person who is asking to raise him to the next degree because he wants to avoid pain?

Answer: Certainly! The Creator hears any prayer. Just ask! But don’t bother Him on trifles as the regular "folks on the street" do. We see that those prayers remained unanswered: People have been begging in vain for millennia.

However, if you wish to rise to the next degree from your present egoistic state, from your egoistic will to enjoy, from all the conditions set for you by the Creator, which are not up to you, and you beg to ascend, the Creator immediately hears and gradually transforms you.

Obviously, you beg from your egoistic desire in an attempt to escape suffering, have power, be recognized, and so on. Yet it doesn’t matter what goals you place before yourself. If you always ask for a higher spiritual degree and visualize it in your mind, in your egoistic desire, in a certain albeit false way for now, then it is called “Lo Lishma (not for Her name),” and thereby you advance.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/2011, “Introduction of The Book of Zohar,” Article “The Donkey Driver”

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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

What Is a Prayer?

Since half a thing is not given from Above, one must pray to the Creator to give him complete help. This means that during one’s prayer—when he arranges what is in his heart since a prayer is work in the heart—one must decide for himself that he wishes for the Creator to give him a desire to annul before Him altogether, leaving no desire under his own authority, but that all the desires will be only to glorify the Creator. And when he decides on complete annulment, he asks of the Creator to help him carry it out…. This is called “a complete prayer” since his desire is for the Creator to give him a complete desire, without any compromises for himself, and he asks of the Creator to help him always be with His righteousness.
– Rabash, Letter no. 65

The Lord is near to the brokenhearted.
– Psalms, 34
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Question: How does a Kabbalistic prayer differ from a religious one?

Answer: Kabbalah fundamentally differs from all other methods and from everything there is in our world. In short, Kabbalah is one thing, and everything else another.

What is the difference then? It is in the fact that Kabbalah is based on changing a person himself rather than something outside of him, his surroundings; neither is it built on asking some “dear God” to start treating me better or to change other people’s attitude toward me. I do not ask Him to change my state of health or fate, nothing of the sort. I ask Him to transform my egoism, only that!

The entire method of Kabbalah is arranged so that a person can transform himself. On the other hand, all other methods and religions are founded on the idea that the Creator should change His attitude to a person: I ask Him to be more merciful and kind to me while I bribe Him.

Kabbalah doesn’t allow anything of the sort. In connection to the Creator, I am like man that changes in the face of the Absolute. And this Absolute is unchangeable. If the Creator is a primordial cause, the beginning of all, and if He is absolutely good, absolute, eternal, and perfect, then He cannot change. Only that which is imperfect can change. He cannot change.

Therefore, all changes occur solely in man. In other words, depending on my strengths, internal states, and properties, I feel more or less comfortable. But it is just me because I can change. The Creator never changes; He is a constant, omnipotent force of Nature.

Accordingly, all the prayers Kabbalah describes constitute man’s plea to be transformed. Who does one address these to, a wall? If the Creator is constant, eternal, and complete, then He doesn’t react to you in any way.

However, when you appeal to Him, you become different and receive a different response because you increase your sensitivity while doing so. You are still present in the same constant field regarded as the “Creator,” in the same constant force. Yet you are praying while wishing to change, and as a result, this field affects you with greater intensity. This is what we call a “prayer.”

The word “to pray” in Hebrew (Lehitpalel) means self-imposed judgment. “To pray” means to judge, evaluate, and rebuke oneself. It isn’t an appeal to someone, in order to be shown mercy or favored. No, it is self re-evaluation. This is what a prayer is.

Hence, although religions use the same word, in Kabbalah it has an opposite meaning, much like everything else.
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From Lesson 2 in Moscow 1/16/2011, “A Prayer of Many”

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Question: You said that inner discernments begin even before the Machsom. But what should I discern if I still haven’t acquired the quality of bestowal and am entirely immersed in my will to enjoy?

Answer: It is precisely before the Machsom that you must discern just how much you desire everything in life only for your own good. However, these discernments are made with the help of the Light.

I constantly check: Am I doing this for myself or for the sake of others? I do this in relation to everyone and in all directions. I constantly discern what my thoughts and calculations are: “I hate him, but I have to ascend above this because my hatred comes from my ego, my will to enjoy. But if I ascend above my ego in the intention of bestowal, then I will start to love this person and act for his good. Even though this will evoke negative sensations inside the will to enjoy, in my intention I will feel that I have ascended to holiness and bestowal.” These discernments take place constantly before the Machsom.

Try to enjoy the fact that you are trampling your ego. One might think that this is masochism, a psychological disorder. But it’s not a disorder because at the same time you are united with your future inner quality of bestowal, which is good. You identify yourself with this new quality.

This does not mean that you like suffering. No! You like being inside this new quality of bestowal, and therefore you try to ascend above your will to enjoy. Even though you suffer inside it, you still enjoy in the quality of bestowal. And after making the discernment, you suddenly feel, “There’s absolutely no reason for me to suffer! On the contrary, I have turned my will to enjoy to the will to bestow, and this enabled me to ascend even more!”

This is not simple. But by virtue of several such actions, it happens. In any case pleasure is a sign that an action has reached completion: either in reception, Klipa, or in bestowal, holiness. Either way, pleasure has to happen as the completion. We enjoy in any case because the goal of creation is to enjoy.
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/11, “The Quality of the Hidden Wisdom – in General”

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Nothing that happens in the world is extraneous. Everything comes only from the necessity to bring us to the final, perfect state where we exist in total equivalence with the single Upper Force. Therefore, if we forget about this in the group, this force tramples upon us, bothering us and constantly bringing about all sorts of “cunning” events, and the most important thing to do is not to give in and to always remember that all of it is happening deliberately. No one ever does anything accidentally.

Unless a person is psychologically sick, then everything taking place to him in the group happens specifically in order for him to ascend above it and to relate to it the right way. This does not necessarily mean that we have to ignore the problems. But the most important thing is for us to connect them to the Creator, the Force that controls us. Everything comes from Him. He is the one who is tripping us now in order for us to learn to move above these problems and thus to ascend above egoism. However, the egoism we ascend over is not our personal one, but the one that emerges between us.

If I am enticed by certain egoistic actions, for example, I want to buy a better car, earn more, and so on, this does not belong to Kabbalah; it is my personal business. But the things happening between us in the group, the degree of my friction with others comes from the Creator and only from Him. We can cope with these problems only if we don’t forget that He influences us.

We will never be able to cope with them separately from Him even if we will constantly try to solve them with each other. Even if we understand that we have to solve them because we have to be together because that is how we unite in the group and it is not acceptable to separate, this still won’t help! We will sink into this more and more.

It is possible to solve this question cardinally, correctly, and realistically only when each of us, the group, and the Creator are together and we solve this problem together. He awakens the negative, egoistic phenomena among us in order for us to “attract” Him to us, or putting it differently, to reveal Him among us. Problems are empty space, which we want to discover as being filled by the Creator. This is the opportunity He gives us. That means the problem lies in correctly reacting to His challenge, when He awakens egoism inside each of us and friction between us.

The Creator “flirts” with us, awakening our attention to Him. The right reaction is the common prayer, when we begin turning to Him all together. That is to say, without entering any confrontations with one another, we gather together and turn to the Force, the Primary Cause from which all of this comes. This is called “the prayer of society.”

We call on the Creator, summon Him, and obligate Him to become revealed between us. He evoked the negative interactions between us and we transform them to a desire or need for His presence. We are like children who have quarreled and cannot do anything about it, and so they demand for their mother to come and stand between them. The Creator deliberately evokes problems inside us, and in response we have to realize this and call on Him to fulfill that space.
From the lesson in Moscow on 1/16/11, Writings of Rabash

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Question: As we prepare for the European Convention in Berlin, we are experiencing difficulties trying to receive forces from the environment. While we make the physical actions, how can we avoid losing a connection with the inner goal?

Answer: First of all, it is good that people feel a lack of intention because without the inner component, the intention of bestowal, the external efforts cannot succeed in attaining the Creator’s revelation. So where can we get the right intention for uniting and connecting, inside of which we will act?

We have to try, the way a small child tries to be an adult, with all our might to keep the intention and not forget that we carry out all of the external actions coming from our inner effort. To what extent will we able to do it—that no longer relates to our success.

It is possible that the Creator wants to show us that we really are small and unsuccessful so we would stop being proud of ourselves and would feel that without help from Above we will not be able to keep the intention and will not be able to unite with our own powers. If we were able to do it ourselves, then we would not need the Creator and would not reach the state of “Let us go to Pharaoh.” In essence, a person never has reason to complain about the states he receives. They become revealed as a result of his advancement and therefore at every moment they are correct. The question is how to be able to build the right attitude to them with the help of the group.

In most cases we give ourselves a guilt trip about the past, thinking about how we acted incorrectly, did something bad, missed out on something, were unable to do something, and so on. This is the influence of the impure force, Klipa, which brings us back to the past. The same thing is true about being disillusioned in our qualities: What is the point of blaming ourselves if it is a known fact that we are egoists and continuously reveal just this? We have to form the right attitude above this state.

Therefore, everything depends on the effort. It is impossible for a person to be unsatisfied and to want something different, but that doesn’t matter because the sensation comes from Above. Beginners are shown how successful they are, being encouraged and supported like small children. On the other hand, those who advance are shown their flaws and mistakes not so they would correct themselves, but so theywould demand correction. And all of the reactions are for our own good.

A person’s inner work in relation to the group should be separated from the actions done to organize the studies, the conventions, and dissemination. One does not relate to the other. The inner ascents and descents should not affect the external work. There has to be a daily routine and program, according to which we act independently of desires.

In our inner work we make efforts as much as we can, but the sensation we receive—good or bad—depends on what exactly we should be feeling. If we do not feel inspired, excited, and generally supported, it means that this sensation is being sent to us to help us detach from egoism.

Disappointment with the states that come to us shows a person that the egoistic desire does not support him and thus he naturally turns away from it. Egoism itself helps us to reject it, which is called “help against you.” Our unpleasant sensation in the work is help from the opposite side, until we are able to ascend above our nature and look at it from Above together with the Creator. This is called standing against Pharaoh together with the Creator. That is how one ascends and passes the Machsom.
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From the lesson on 12/24/10, Writings of Rabash

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Question: Can we build the collective intention before the lesson begins? If so, how?

Answer: The collective intention has to be founded on the common goal. Our ultimate purpose is to delight the Creator, whereby we equalize ourselves with Him. In order to accomplish this, we must get to know Him since He wishes that we see His love and kindness. It isn’t our personal need; the Creator wishes for us to know Him.

Getting to know something means to become equivalent in form. Hence, we do our best to aim all our efforts at bestowal. I exert effort not to gratify my egoism, but yearn to step out of myself and desire to find the Creator namely to delight Him therewith.

To accomplish this, I need to possess the Kelim (properties, vessels) of bestowal, and I turn to the aid of the Light concealed in the Kabbalistic texts, especially in The Book of Zohar. The Light can reform me, walk me across the abyss that lies between my properties of reception (receiving Kelim) and bestowal (bestowing Kelim).

However, if I think about it alone, there isn’t sufficient force. It doesn’t even sustain my ability to hold the intention to bestow. On the other hand, if I work with the others as a link in the chain, in one desire where everyone nullifies himself before all the others, then our common spirit gains great power. Kabbalists, who had already passed these stages, promise us that this is the way to success.

Hence, I am happy to be among the friends and to be able to build the intention with them by withdrawing from myself as far as possible in order to finally bring pleasure to the Creator. In this way, we become similar to the Creator in qualities and get to know Him in the same degree; moreover, we achieve adhesion with Him.

Therefore, we must start preparing before the lesson and arrive to it with a fully formed desire. By thinking about it, a person “heats” himself up more and more until he finally succeeds. It is written: “Mitzva (commandment) without intention is like a body without a soul.” You are given a commandment to study the Torah, a Kabbalistic method that is designated to reform the evil inclination. With its help, you will attain bestowal, feel love for all others and, ultimately, for the Creator. The Torah derives from the Hebrew word “Ohr” (light) and from the word “Oraa” (instruction).

But if you haven’t equipped yourself with the necessary intention, you are sitting at the lesson dead and performing mechanical actions deprived of spirit and the Light of life. So it is up to you to decide what you are getting up for at night and what you are doing.

Even if a person is unable to keep the intention, let him at least feel how strongly he lacks it. The heartache caused by the empty, bitter heart is just as important.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/1/2010, “Introduction of The Book of Zohar,” Article “The Buds”

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In the past Kabbalists advanced by a personal path and it was very difficult for them. It even says that a thousand people come to study, but only one of them comes out to the Light. However, in our times, with the help of a properly organized environment we can advance practically without any losses, without losing our friends on the path.

This depends only on whether we will be able to build our common, external desire among us. Therefore, the most important thing is “the prayer of society” where all together we try to unite our desires so they would evoke the influence of the single force that fills space. This force will then be revealed as the force that connects us and exists among us. Revealing this basic, fundamental force of Nature means revealing the Creator because it is primary and we are its products.

How, then, can we elicit the influence of this force so it will give birth to us, pulling us out of ourselves to the outside, so that like a baby coming out of a mother’s womb we would start to feel what happens outside of us? We have to elicit this force in order to be born. It will make us and everything around us strain in order to “push” us out into the Light.

To achieve this we need a “prayer of society.” All together we must reach the realization that this is necessary. Naturally, we will then see and feel everything that really happens in the world. Everything, including all the causes and actions, will immediately become clear to us. We will find ourselves born into the sensation of a new world and will no longer identify ourselves with the body, but will exist in a connection with the single force that fills all space.
From the lesson in Moscow on 1/16/11, Writings of Rabash

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Love does not belong in our world. If you start to relate to others with love, it means that the soul has begun to operate in you. However, now you have just one broken point from that soul. If from that point you start building an attitude of love for another person and creating this “vector” of intention, the aspiration called love, it will become your soul.

It will be built on your desire to enjoy, which was corrected by the intention “for the sake of bestowal.” This is called love.

If you acquire this intention, then you will become a spiritual person. Inside this attitude to another person you will start revealing the Light of NaRaNHY, the upper worlds, everything that is between you and the other.

This will continue until you feel him completely the way you feel yourself, experiencing the two of you as one whole. This means that you have attained the world of Infinity because there are no boundaries, no limitations left. This signifies the spiritual world.

I have to relate to everything that happens with love. However, if someone attacks me with a knife, then what should I do? I must also take a knife and kill him, but with love…. That is the law. And if a Levi, a tax collector comes to me and tells me that I have to pay him, then I will pay him. Inside, in my heart, I may be crying over my empty wallet, but my soul will rejoice.

We have to understand that our attitude to the neighbor is built on our desire to enjoy and its correction for the sake of bestowal! If I take all the needs of another person and fill them using my desire, that means I love him.

However, if I merely restrict my desire in order to avoid harming another person, that means I am in the state of “bestowal for the sake of bestowal” (Hafetz Hesed), but not love. It is written, “Do not do to another what you yourself hate.” This is the test of how I should relate to him. If you don’t like something yourself, then don’t do it to another.

But maybe there is also something that he likes? I don’t know that because I can only test it by my own desires. This is “materialistic psychology.”

Love is also not beyond materialistic psychology. Yet, in this case I feel another person so much that I feel his desires. Therefore, I take them and fulfill them by what I can practically fill them with using my desires and opportunities.

If I love the neighbor and absorb his desires, then I can raise his request (MAN) to the very world of Infinity! He cannot do this himself, but I can do it for him!

In spirituality, none of us can take a bite and put it in our mouth directly. We can only eat it if I give it to you and you give it to me. And it can only happen on the condition that I know exactly what you want and you know the same about me! Then you will be able to place that bite into my mouth, and I for you. That is how we are connected and none of us can receive fulfillment by himself.

And all of that has to happen here, in this world! The Light of Infinity has to expand down to this world, as it is written, “His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives.” Spiritual relationships will become such that you will not be able to act differently in the material world as well.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/12/11, “The Quality of the Hidden Wisdom – in General”

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Our entire work comes down to a very thin line. We must advance only along this line since otherwise the smallest deviation will eventually lead us very far away from the goal.

This line is described by the formula, “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are one.” The goal, meaning the Creator, must be our aim initially, from the first step. But what is the Creator as a goal?

This is pleasure from bestowing to Him. The more energy and efforts we have to make in order to please our beloved, the more we enjoy it. Pleasure from bestowal is evaluated by the efforts that you made in order to acquire the necessary pleasure and pass it on to your beloved.

This goal is called “bread of mercy” or “perfect faith.” In relation to it, we can asses the “Egyptians” in us and “Israel” in us. We discern our desire to reveal the Creator more and more accurately in order to give Him pleasure and to enjoy from that. That means we must acquire love for Him because without love it is impossible to enjoy giving to someone.

Therefore, I must discern the goal from the beginning, as well as its reason and the means to realize it according to the vessels and the Lights. How can I make it come true already now without making a mistake? What device can help me to aim?

What weapon should I use to shoot my bullet so it will precisely hit the goal, which I do not see? What kind of barrel does this cannon have? And what is the bullet like? Who am I, and what desire do I use to actualize this?

Thus, in the current state we necessarily end up with a certain device that can serve us as an exercise machine, an experimental stand, a set-up we can use to conduct full blown experiments. We won’t just be practicing to aim, but will know for sure that our efforts do reach the goal, even though it is inaccessible to our eyes.

This device is the group. A person places the final goal into the initial plan and relates to the friends, the group, and work in it as to the Creator. Placing the group in the Creator’s place, he calibrates himself on it, puts efforts into it, and has it before his eyes.

Then he can be sure that behind this set-up, behind this “firearm,” there is the goal, the Creator. This tendency, the intention, the attitude to the goal is what brings a person’s work to the Creator.

Therefore, we have all the opportunities for building a small or great human society so that by uniting through love for the neighbor as for ourselves, we will acquire love for the Creator.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/11/11, Writings of Rabash

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