Question: A question about prayer. When you want to ask for something, do the words have any limits? How can I expand my request?
Answer: First of all, you can talk about this with your friends. Secondly, there are texts written by Kabbalists that are considered canonical prayers. There is nothing particularly special about them, just requests to the Creator for various kinds of help, identification of connection, development, and so on.
Any such appeal develops a person if they reflect on these words written by the Kabbalists. All prayers were written by great Kabbalists.
More than 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem, there was a group of Kabbalists called the Great Assembly (Knesset HaGadola). Before their time, there were no prayers at all because everyone knew how they should ask the Creator to establish their connection with others. Therefore, there was no need for any prayer books.
But these Kabbalists felt that people were on the verge of falling from the spiritual level, so they wrote a collection of prayers. This is what we use now.
What are these prayers about essentially? Only about the connection between us. We need to understand these words. But in general, they praise the Creator as the quality of bestowal, love, the highest quality of nature. They talk about how He does not forget us and strives to bring us closer to each other so that He can dwell within us. And we try to realize all of this, to bring joy to our parent just like good children. That is all; there is nothing else.
So you can use these prayer books. But, in principle, prayer is what a person feels in their heart. That is the first thing. Secondly, prayer is also considered correct self-assessment. After all, the verb “to pray” (Lehitpalel) means “to judge oneself.” This is what a prayer is all about, that I judge my actions, the circumstances I find myself in, and how I can rise above them.
It is important to understand that an ascent follows an unbreakable rule: “From love for the creations to love for the Creator.” It is only through this sequence and no other. We can appeal to Him only if we have a ten, only if we strive to gather all of humanity into a ten and offer the Creator the opportunity to fill them.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/28/20, “Questions from World Kli”
Related Material:
A Prayer Book Is The Saga Of Spiritual Life
A Prayer Book Or A Prayer In The Heart?
Prayer—Turning To Oneself
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We have only one prayer to pray—to raise the Shechina [Divinity] from the dust, and by this all the salvations will come. (Rabash, Notes 36 “Who Hears a Prayer”)
