A collective prayer that does not remain unanswered is a prayer “for the society,” a request to gather all of the souls that yearn for the Creator into one soul of Adam. This prayer is immediately accepted by the Creator (the system of Upper Forces of the World of Infinity, where everything is unchanging and perfect) because it aspires for perfection.

If people all over the world feel the need to know the Upper Force and unite their desires, then they do not feel separated by continents because they are in fact in a common “range” of spirituality. They exist in one spiritual plane without feeling geographical distances in our world but by feeling closeness in spirituality. They do not know and cannot explain how this happens, but their aspirations toward one goal pull and unite them inside a common spiritual field.

In this way, they all enter “Knesset Israel” (unity of those who aspire for the Creator, the quality of bestowal). “Knesset” (assembly, gathering) is the place where we all unite as one man, meaning Malchut of the World of Atzilut. Similarly, “Israel” (Yashar-El – straight to the Creator) signifies the souls who aspire toward one goal. Consequently, they become one assembly called Knesset Israel, the gathering of the souls who desire to attain the Creator.

They feel as one whole connected by one desire, one goal, and one purpose. Thus, there is a return to one body of the collective soul, as it was before the breaking of the Kelim (the vessels, desires) and the emergence of this imaginary corrupted world, perceived as our present reality.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/13/10, Article, “The Importance of the Prayer of the Many”

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The Zohar, Chapter “Lech Lecha (Go Forth),” Item 6: This is the herald that comes at midnight, at the start of the illumination of the left line from the point of Shuruk for the righteous to raise MAN for extension of the middle line. The herald comes out and calls aloud because it is in the blocking of the Dinim of the point of Shuruk. This is why it is discerned that he comes out with great force and calls upon the righteous to correct him.

Before us is the clarification of the order of extension of the three lines from Bina to ZA, from ZA to Nukva, and from Nukva to the souls of the righteous.

To the extent that the lower one can awaken the Upper One in the middle line by raising MAN (a prayer), the Upper One can fill his desire. We only have to bring our desire to the Upper One, a desire that is similar to His. This means we need to wish to be filled with His fulfillment. Then we will receive it.

There are no special conditions on the part of the Upper One. He is just waiting for our desire to be suitable for His fulfillment according to the law of equivalence of form. This is why all of our prayers and pleas should not be about receiving fulfillment from the Upper One. Rather, they should ask for help to create the correct desire, necessity, and intention, which fit the fulfillment existing in the Upper One.

I am not asking the Upper One to fulfill me since as it said, “more than the calf wants to suckle the cow wants to feed it.” My whole request should be: “I want to become ready to receive from the Upper One, to become fitting for Him.” There must be similar and corresponding properties between us. As soon as it appears, the abundance automatically flows from Him into me.

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/13/10, The Zohar

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It is believed that a collective prayer occurs when a person raises his or her prayer among others who are praying at the same time. Yet, those who are more spiritually aware believe that a collective prayer is a plea for society. Such a prayer is immediately accepted by the Creator, whereas an egoistic prayer (when a person prays for himself ) is not heard.

Nevertheless, even a request to the Creator for society is not perfect. In fact, if the Creator “is good that does good,” my request implies that society is suffering because of the Creator, doesn’t it? It seems like I think that the Creator is mistreating society, and that I should pray for them. However, if the Creator is always benevolent to everybody, for whom am I asking?

It follows that I cannot ask the Creator to change His attitude toward me (a personal prayer) or toward society (a collective prayer). Since the Creator is absolutely and invariably good, I can ask Him only to correct me and all the others in such a way that we will feel that He is only good.

If all who desire to be connected to the Creator in the property of love and bestowal are willing to unite with others in the same property, then through their aspiration, they create a place where the Creator is revealed. That place is our mutual love.

However, such a state can be achieved only through the correction of each individual’s 613 desires, which is called the “fulfillment of 613 commandments.” In the degree of our correction, we draw closer to each other since the correction of desires lies in their unification.

This is why the sages said that “love of others is the greatest law of the Torah,” and all the commandments are necessary only in order to attain the last one, the universal commandment: love. As a result, in these individual and collective corrections, we will feel the power of love and bestowal filling us.

But if we are not corrected and united, and everyone wants to receive for himself, our prayer is solely for material things. (Material is what is received egoistically, whereas spiritual is what is received in order to bestow). In this case, receiving for ourselves, we become “the nations of the world,” and not “Israel” (straight to the Creator).

These terms are not related to some nation or nationality. They describe the states of a person on the spiritual path. According to this, our prayer is either to improve our personal state of existence or to correct our attitude toward the others and the Creator.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/12/10, Article “The Importance of the Prayer of the Many”

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A prayer, a plea for correction, is the most natural desire, but the problem is that our heart does not want what is needed. Our desires are corrupted, and so we read articles by Kabbalists to learn what request we should form in our hearts.

First, we need to correct our desires. When a sensation of the Creator is revealed in the very first, minor, corrected desire, we will know exactly what we should ask for in order to draw increasingly closer to Him. For this reason, the sages of the Great Assembly (Anshei Knesset HaGedolah), all of which were great Kabbalists, wrote a prayer book for us so that everyone could at least read about what a corrected heart should ask for. When we open a prayer book, we need to remember that we are reading about the very elevated states which we need to achieve.

Along with the prayer book, we need a wise mentor who will teach us how to make our heart desire what the prayer talks about. After all, the point is not just to repeat the written words, but to reach a sensation deep in our hearts. A person’s heart should utter all the words of the prayer.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/1/12, Article, “The Importance of the Prayer of the Many”

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A question I received: What can I ask for society?

My Answer: If the question is posed fundamentally, then it is incorrect to even think that there is a society and that I have to ask for something for its sake. The problem is not lack of food or health. The Creator has an abundance of all of these things and everything comes from Him. What we have to correct is the breaking. We have to attain equivalence of form with Him, and then we will have everything! But if we don’t ask for the most important thing, the reason we are here, then we also won’t have the means to sustain our existence.

The sensation of all suffering, from the most insignificant to the global, comes to us only in order to bring us to the right request. The reason for all ills is the breaking of the common soul into particular souls that hate each other, and therefore, the true prayer of society lies in desiring to unite with everyone. It is when everyone desires to become as one man with one heart once again in order for the law of mutual guarantee to influence us in complete equality and brotherhood.

This should not happen like the Communists did for the sake of a better life in this world, but for the sake of unity with the Creator above our world. Then the Creator, the Upper Light will correct our egoism and hatred by transforming it to bestowal and love. It will unite us all, the desires of the soul, into one aspiration to become equal to the Creator.

By making this correction we revoke the ego that separates us and become equal to Him and unified like Him. All of us together become a vessel that He fills, just as in the beginning of creation in Malchut of the World of Infinity.

That is the prayer of the society.

From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson, 7/13/10, “The Importance of the Prayer of the Many”

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Everyone knows what prayer is. It exists in all the religions and cultures. People turn to each other with prayer begging for something. Prayer can be directed at people or at the Upper Force (however a person imagines it).

Prayer contains great power because when a person feels that he is in a dead-end situation, a true prayer for help bursts forth by itself. This is a natural reaction that we call prayer, a plea, or a cry. There is also a prayer of gratitude that pours out of the heart. This action awakens enormous inner reserves of a person and brings about healing, the ability to overcome obstacles that seem insurmountable.

However, in Kabbalah “prayer” is not just any plea, but a request for correction, for attaining the goal of creation. Prior to our fall from the sensation of the Creator, we did not have prayer books because people felt the Creator and every person turned to Him from the heart, according to the verse, “A person’s soul teaches him. “Every person knew what he needed to discern and what he needed to do in order to come closer to the goal, to unite with the Creator and attain equivalence of form with Him.

This was the case before the destruction of the Temple because the entire nation lived in the higher sensation and felt what it needed to ask for. The sensation in people’s hearts was essentially the prayer. People lived by the principle, “Whatever one feels in one’s heart is what one speaks.”

People felt in their hearts an aspiration for bestowal, love for the neighbor, love for the Creator, and equivalence with Him. This was felt by the heart and therefore words were not needed. Expressing this verbally is often done for us, in order to hear ourselves and to understand what our heart feels.

This was a time when we were in a corrected state. However, then the Temple was destroyed in our hearts due to the general fall of people from “love for the neighbor” to “unfounded hatred for one another.” Thus, we stopped being similar to the Creator and lost equivalence of form with Him. Therefore, He disappeared from our sensation and we started asking for things for our egos instead of our own correction!

We ask for things that are requested by the new desire that has taken over us, our egoism. And what can egoism possibly want? It wants to feel good and for others to feel bad since then it will feel even better compared to them!

That is how our new heart, “the stony heart,” operates. Obviously, we don’t attain the true prayer until we correct our desires. But on the other hand, we still have to know what the true prayer has to be in order to understand it at least with our mind (if not with the heart), and to advance in this direction by correcting our qualities.

That is why Kabbalists composed a prayer book for us, so we would know what to ask for.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/12/10, “The Importance of the Prayer of the Many”

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The Creator will never unite us “just because”; unity won’t happen until we ask for it. We must realize that we lack and desire only unity. The desire for unity stands opposite to all the other desires that arise, desires whose purpose is to obscure our yearning for unity. Rising above all the obstacles that only increase our desire to unite, the desire for unity will grow so intense that we will start crying. That is our goal,opposite to all the other desires as it is written, “And the sons of Israel cried out by reason of the bondage.” Only with this cry will the Creator unite us. If you sit and wait for this to take its own course, it will never happen. No spiritual action will occur until there’s a definite and complete desire for it.

Such a desire must burn within the group. Make sure to awaken the others and demand that they awaken you. Be willing to pay any price for them to be awake and to keep waking you up.

Only our collective outcry can save us. There are many people who are eager to cry alone, but the Creator doesn’t hear it as this is a voice crying in the wilderness. However, if we cry out together as one and if we possess only one common desire, effort, and goal, He will hear us at once because we will be similar to Him in our desire.

Otherwise, there is no way to draw the Light that Reforms. You don’t have the desire to receive this Light. It has to correct your egoism and the separation into bestowal and interconnection. However, you don’t yet feel the need for such correction.

We have to examine ourselves to make sure that all our actions are aimed solely at attaining the common prayer: that everyone’s desire should match the common goal so that all will be united in one common outcry. This is a prayer that will receive an Answer.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/30/10, Article, “You Are Now Standing All of You Today”

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The Upper One is in a constant state of perfection, it needs nothing but bestowal. It is not something that senses or changes its mood. Rather, it is a system, an unchanging law that has been set in place. To the extent that you align yourself with this law, it influences you positively.

But if you don’t abide by it, if you are not similar to it, it acts upon you negatively. Our initial and ultimate states in creation are predetermined, and they have to become completely realized regardless of whether you are going along with or resist it, understand it or not.

The lower one (you) has only one good opportunity: to participate in this process consciously and pass the desire for it to the Upper One. This desire is what we need to reach; we need nothing but the desire! We also need to know how to “raise” this desire in order to pass it to the Upper One. The Upper One is in a state of perfection; it is always ready to give everything required to the lower one.

The lower one is a collection of all the souls, while the Upper One is one: one Light, one Thought of Creation, or one Force. If the lower one wishes to resemble the Upper One (meaning it is willing to unite and become as one), it is able to raise its desire to the Upper One. The Upper One hears no other requests but this one. This is what is called a prayer, MAN, that is, a desire to become a single whole.

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/23/10, “Preface to the Sulam Commentary”

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The Zohar, Chapter “VaYigash (Then Judah Approached),” Item 2: However, everything was created in the Torah, and everything was perfected in the Torah. And as the Torah begins with Bet, the world was created in Bet. This is so because before the Creator created the world, the Nukva, all the letters came before Him and entered one at a time in reverse order, in the order of Tav-Shin-Reish-Kof and not in the order of Aleph-Bet-Gimel-Dalet.

Item 3: The letter Tav came before Him and said, “You wish to create the world with me.” The Creator replied, “I do not, since many righteous are destined to die in you. …This is why the world will not be created in you.”

Item 4: The three letters, Shin-Kof-Reish, approached each on his own. The Creator told them, “You are unfit for the world to be created in you for you are the letters used for reading Sheker [deceit/falsehood], and a lie is unworthy of rising before Me.”

This can be compared to how we ask the Creator to help us unite the desire (Kli). The letters are the formation of Malchut. Essentially, it is her that we are trying to construct from our points in the heart.

Hence, if we come to the Creator with our desire (although we don’t presently realize it), crying like infants not knowing exactly what to ask, it works as though we are appealing to the Creator in all kinds of forms and letters. Yet we get nothing in return until we discover the correct desire or the correct letter.

Item 5: The letters Peh and Tzadik approached, and so did all of them until they reached the letter Chaf. When the Chaf descended from the Keter [Keter written with Chaf in Hebrew], the upper ones and the lower ones were shaken, until everything came to exist in the letter Bet, which is the sign for Beracha [blessing], and in it, the world was perfected and created.

We have to attain a desire, a state where only the blessing from Above can give birth to our spiritual vessel. Only if we join the force of blessing and become one with the Creator (and not by any other efforts of ours) can we acquire the spiritual Kli.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/6/10, The Zohar

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A question I received: We have to rise MAN (Mayin Nukvin, a prayer). Is this action performed within the desire?

My Answer: MAN means that I’m asking for the force of bestowal. From within Malchut, I turn to Bina and ask Bina for the ability to bestow. However, I have to reach the state whereby becoming filled with this prayer (MAN) is enough for me; I feel joy from being able to rise MAN.

How does the Torah describe this state? It is when you come into the “daylight.” A “day” is when you have nothing and have been wandering in the desert, looking for MAN (the desire to bestow), and you find it. When you do, it enlivens you, satisfying all of your tastes. It contains everything that you desire.

What kind of “taste” is it? Where is it coming from? What is MAN? It comes to you from Bina. It is when a mere possibility to make a plea to the Creator is enough for you: “I have the connection with Him. I can ask Him. Nothing else is important to me.”

Yet, don’t I want to have the desire within which I can reveal the Creator? No. I’m satisfied by merely having an aspiration to Him. This constitutes my fulfillment now. The connection with the Creator through the group fulfills me.

"But what kind of connection is it? How can you have anything? You have nothing." True, but can I appeal to Him by rising MAN? When this is possible, that’s enough. This is called “wandering in the desert,” acquiring the properties of “Hafetz Hesed” (he who doesn’t want anything). In the desert you are deprived of everything, you truly desire nothing for yourself. Yet thereby, you acquire the correction by the property of bestowal, similarity to the Creator, and this is your fulfillment.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/6/10, The Zohar

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