Question: Who has to overcome evil: me or the Creator?

Answer: No matter what others tell me about the Creator, I have to work on my own from beginning until end. Then, according to the things that become revealed, I will be able to tell how exactly this takes place: by itself, by virtue of my efforts, or with the help of a certain Upper Force.

We shouldn’t wait for anything to come from Above. Nothing will come. With my forces and efforts I have to reveal a picture that already exists.

Everything depends on how much I yearn for it. I am like a child who grows only to the degree he wants to grow. And I have to add this desire myself. Now just imagine what life would be like for that child.

In our world children develop naturally and we can barely keep up with them. A child runs around all over the place and always wants something. That is how we should do our spiritual work as well. Otherwise we won’t develop and grow. However, what we do instead is take “breaks” all the time and time-outs to stop and think it over.

Does a child ever take a time-out? No, he does not experience a moment of rest. He has to attain the world at every moment.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/11/11, Writings of Rabash

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Question: What is goal-oriented pleasure?

Answer: Goal-oriented pleasure is pleasure from bestowal, and the only way it is possible to enjoy bestowal is when you love the person you are giving to.

So how can I achieve love? By virtue of correction, by replacing hatred with love. Who or what makes this correction happen? The Upper Light.

When does it happen? When I ask for it. So when will I ask for it? When the group obligates me to do so.

When will it obligate me to do so? When I lower myself before the group and in it find the force that obligates me.

So when will I finally lower myself before the group? It will happen when we work on this together with the friends.

And that is where we stumble….
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/11/11, The Zohar

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Question: When does a person finally realize that only the Creator can help him and that this help is only in adhering to the group?

Answer: This occurs at the final step before exiting exile. Only then does a true plea, a true need arise. However, this step comes in stages as well: the escape, the crossing of the Red Sea, the mountain of hatred (Sinai), the appeals, and finally, the despair. This speaks of many things.

We keep asking, “When will the work finally be done and the Creator be revealed?” This is correct. He will become revealed, but then more work will follow.Yet, a person will view it as an adventure, as enjoyment since if you love someone, to make effort for the sake of the beloved is pleasure. You enjoy the fact that you are doing something for them.

When you work for self-gratification, you exert labor to enjoy its fruit later on. If you could taste it without having to work, that would be best. But it isn’t the same when you do things out of love for another. In that case, the effort itself brings pleasure. While you are working, you are also gathering the reward.

Try to do something for someone you love such as your son, for example. No matter what effort is required, you feel even better when you exert for it. If you simply bring a present to your child and see how happy you made him or her, you won’t enjoy it. When you love, it is the effort that makes it all worthwhile.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/9/2011, “What Are the Powers Which Are Needed for the Work”

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Question: Can our efforts be viewed as preparation for the spiritual life?

Answer: Yes, they can. Effort is a broad idea. However, note the following:

1. It isn’t that I run around for no reason like a child for whom running is reason enough in and of itself. Rather, my effort has to be purposeful. I exert it where the breaking occurred, in oneness with others, since from love of others, I will reach the degree of love for the Creator.

2. The effort must be motivated by the Light which, essentially, arranges the next step for me. There, I may have to face greater despair or higher attainment, deeper emptiness or greater fulfillment. It doesn’t matter what it is. This is the next stage of the journey since we move forward between the right line and the left line.

Hence, besides the right place to exert an effort, I need the right source of the Light, the books that connect me to it. Therefore, I have to be in the group that studies the sources.

3. Additionally, I need a mentor in order to learn the right way to work with the books and how to relate to the group.

If a person has all three of these tools and knows how to use them, he is all set. Now, everything is up to him. Time after time, he must evaluate these three components: the teacher, the books, and the group, and seek an opportunity to utilize them in the most effective way.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/9/2011, “What Are the Powers Which Are Needed for the Work”

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Question: We work with egoism on the human level. But how should we relate to desires on the still, vegetative, and animate levels?

Answer: By the principle of vital necessity. Take only as much as you need. Everything else only bothers you. It is written, “The more property you have, the more worries you have.” If you are thinking about the human level, then on the rest of the levels you only have enough energy left for the vital necessities.

For example, some people keep a dog at home. The dog barks loudly in the morning, demanding to be taken out for a walk. The two of them walk together: the master and the dog on a leash. I walk with my “dog” inside, while his dog is outside.

Indeed, this “animal” needs to be taken care of. I feed it, walk it, wash it, put it to sleep, and do everything necessary so it would let me work spiritually.

This healthy attitude makes life much easier. You have to put your material existence into simple, “mechanical” boundaries, subjecting it to the needs of the system like cogwheels in the mechanism of a watch. I have to get along with everyone and maintain a certain material balance in my family, at work, and so on, while devoting the bulk of my energy to the thing that matters most.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/10/11, Writings of Rabash

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Question: At what point does the Creator decide: “That’s it, I am done. I’ve submerged you in total desperation”?

Answer: Is it worth worrying about it? The Creator is an unchanging force, an unbendable law, perfection, eternity, and consistence. There are no changes in Him; everything is up to me. Depending on which side I turn to Him with determines the kind of response I will receive, in perfect correspondence with the course aimed at the purpose of creation.

The Creator is the world of Infinity (Ein Sof) where I’ll find the perfect Kli (vessel), the perfect Light, a perfect screen (Masach), and where all efforts, disappointments, successes, and everything else are collected. That is where my Reshimot (informational data) are leading me to.

From this perfect state, from the perfect strokes of the final picture, I receive motivating forces, according to my personal state. I am guided forth by small doses of despair and strength, enlightenment and concealment, that is, by the multifaceted and intricate governance.

I, however, don’t know in what combination these or the other beginnings will come. It is determined by the design of the soul that I attain gradually by advancing further and further. It is the soul where we attain the bond with Infinity, and hence, start to realize how the whole links together with its part, until they become one.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/9/2011, “What Are the Powers Which Are Needed for the Work”

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Question: If only “desire” was created, then what is intention? Is it a type of desire as well?

Answer: No it isn’t. Intention comes to us from the Creator. Every person has a point in the heart, “the Creator’s part given from Above.”

The truth of the matter is that we resulted from the breaking. Before us, there was a system of Infinity (Ein Sof), where the entire desire and the Light were one. Then we experienced the system of the breaking of the Kelim (vessels).

What did it give us? Now that we are here in the corporeal world, we still have desire, but instead of the Light, there are only sparks. Our desire is broken and acts solely with an egoistic intention to receive. In the course of history, from generation to generation, from lifetime to lifetime, it has developed at the still, vegetative, and animate levels.

Finally, during one of its lifecycles, it reaches the final stage when a point, a spark of Light, the Creator’s part given from Above, emerges in a person. “What about me?” it asks as it wakes up to life, and that’s when man feels a conflict within.

At the animate level, such internal conflicts don’t arise because at that point we were developed by instinctive impulses and urges. We wanted to use others to the utmost and succeed in all that we did.

All people, young and old, strive to gain the most out of this world. They exist only in one desire: the will to receive pleasure. Thinking that it is worth living for, they don’t ask questions about something greater than that. After all, questions grow from within, from the fertile inner ground, and until then we are mere mammals. We view vital issues through the prism of our mind and various beliefs.

This goes on until man despairs of the desire, until his or her point in the heart unfolds, which characterizes our generation. Thus, the point in the heart is the beginning of the soul. This is what triggers human development.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/7/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Question: You have said that when properly taught, the new generation will naturally transition into spirituality without sinking into egoism. How does this fit with the notion that man comes to Light from darkness as he reveals the evil within?

Answer: We exist in a very large system of souls that was created by the Creator. Now, instead of it, we feel our physical existence and broken interconnection. There is only one reason for this: our inadequate and faulty perception. And this is why we need to find out and learn how to transition to the correct perception.

If we were to come to Kabbalists at a young age, they would have given us the education that we as children should have received. To educate means to accompany a child as his desires grow and impulses take over due to the changing Reshimot which unfold in the process of his natural development, and provide him with the means to manage them, properly arrange them, and weave them into the correct attitude towards the world.

Today we teach our children to exploit the world, to enjoy it egoistically, and to use everything and everyone. Instead, we need to teach children an altruistic and friendly attitude towards the world, teach them love. This way a child simply receives a different education method from us and no more than that.

“How will his evil inclination manifest?” The evil inclination does not go anywhere; it keeps growing, while we provide children with the appropriate means to correct it. So why am I teaching adults, who are also transitioning from the animate to the human degree, when I can be working with children? Today, all of them are born with inescapable questions about life. There is no need to wait for them to grow up and become full of animate desires. I can immediately teach them to be human.

Parents must provide their children with education one way or another. And if my goal is bestowal and love of my neighbors, then would I really teach my son anything else? Of course, I will teach him the things I value.

Our duty is to provide our children with a method that will bring them to the human degree. We clearly see what is happening in the public education system. And this is why we naturally need to do everything we can to ensure our children receive spiritual education.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/7/2011, Writings of Rabash

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