Question: How can I invigorate myself during the study if I don’t feel the Creator and “the Shechina is in the dust”‘?

Answer: You have to raise the Shechina from the dust. This is exactly what Kabbalists write about.

Say you feel enormous physical fatigue. You feel like you have no energy and cannot focus on the lesson. But is this really physical fatigue or is it spiritual?

It’s very simple to figure it out. Go to a group that burns up with inspiration and spend some time among the friends. Sit together, sing, and eat a shared meal. Then take a look at yourself: Were you falling asleep there or not?

If you didn’t fall asleep there, it means the reason is not physical fatigue, but only the external influence.

There is no such thing as physical fatigue. It’s all spiritual forces! Rabash gave the following example: A person cannot get up for the lesson because he is very tired, but if you wake him up in the middle of the night and tell him that there is a fire in his house, he will immediately jump to his feet. He won’t respond, “Wait, I’m sleeping now, come back in the morning.”

In other words, everything is determined by the importance we put into it.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/6/10, Beit Shaar HaKavanot

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Question: What are “round” vessels (Kelim de Igulim), and how do they participate in our work?

Answer: “Round” vessels are the storage, archive of all desires, which we need to extract from there and correct. They are desires of the World of Infinity, still before the restriction. Through them the Upper Light can influence those who still don’t have a screen.

Souls that have a screen work with “straight” vessels (Kelim de Yosher). They are situated in “straight” unification with the Upper Light. However, if I don’t have a screen, I cannot influence the Creator.

And how can the Creator influence me? He influences me through “round” vessels since He exists everywhere, in all desires. Through them He can influence me since I, too, have “round” vessels which I still haven’t “straightened out,” directed them to the Creator.

Therefore, there are two types of Upper Governance: individual and general. I exist under the individual, private Governance if I am able to be connected to the Creator in mutual bestowal. In that case, He gives to me, I give to Him, and we work together completely “straight”: “the measure of suffering (effort) determines the measure of reward,” meaning the screen determines the whole profit, and this is how I advance.

Meanwhile, the “round” desires indicate that I am unable to overcome anything. I don’t even know or understand that I am receiving since the whole world does it. Until a person acquires a screen and starts working “in the line,” he is controlled through the “round” desires, meaning he receives without thinking, like everyone else.

The Light reaches us through the “round” Kelim and rouses a “straight” reaction in us because we have no other opportunity to respond to the Creator. If we react properly and in a “straight” manner to the way He influences us through the “circles,” we enter into contact with Him. We reveal the Creator as a Giver and receive the whole fulfillment in a “straight” manner, with the help of the screen.

And if not, then we are sent various disasters and misfortunes through the “round” desires. The “circles” control and turn us in all directions, but if we establish a “straight” connection, we take the control into our own hands.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/3/10, Explanation of the Article, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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Question: What should we do about friends who don’t awaken? Should we be patient with them just as with the outside world?

Answer: No. In the group we have signed a mutual agreement just as in the past Kabbalistic groups demanded newcomers to sign a statute. Do you want to be a friend? “A friend” is a person who puts forth all his energy working to unite. After all, the only way we will attain the goal is by means of uniting.

We do not have the ability to accept every person who is not yet ready for it as he will simply “water down” our forces, or might even confuse us and lead us astray. Baal HaSulam writes in the article “The Peace” that a person might understand that he cannot steal, yet not see anything wrong with not carrying out bestowal.

In spirituality, if you do not give the group everything you have to give it, it means you are stealing from it. Therefore, people who desire to enter the group have to know that they are signing the “bestowal declaration.” They are taking on the obligation to put in their contribution, to give all of their energy for the sake of unity.

Otherwise a person has no place in the group. So let him sit home in front of the television set.

This has to be understood and the group has to demand it from everyone and from each person. We will not attain anything without unity.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/6/10, The Zohar

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Question: Do I have free will to ask my own questions, or it is also done by the Upper Governance?

Answer: Free will doesn’t lie in your asking one or the other question. Free will means not sitting inside your ego getting blows. After all, submerged in your ego, you are unable to understand anything because you lack one more factor existing on the outside.

Identifying yourself with someone or something outside of you, you will be able to see yourself from aside. It will teach you to recognize two conditions: the Light and the dark. And then you will be able to advance faster.

But if you don’t enter the group, live in bestowing to it, and being affected by it, you do not advance. It is so because spiritual advancement lies in understanding the process of creation. In order to gain it, you need two initial points: one is within, the other-outside yourself. Hence, the group is given to you so that you may find this second point.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/1/10, Baal HaSulam, “Beit Shaar HaKavanot”

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Question: In the article dedicated to the Hanukkah celebration, we read about choosing the environment. How does one relate to the other?

Answer: What is another way to come to the celebration of Hanukkah in the soul? Only with the help of environment that wakes a person up to demand the property of bestowal. And then we start asking it, by raising MAN (female waters, a prayer): It is our revolt against the “Greeks” above whom we must rise with our collective desire.

This is a war against inner doubts; waged until we defeat them all and climb to the top of the mountain made of these doubts (mountain in Hebrew is “har,” from the word “Irurim,” doubts) to the holiday of Hanukkah. And when we are in the final stage of the climb, when Hanukkah ends, all of its 8 days (the 7 Sefirot of Zeir Anpin plus Malchut), then we start approaching Purim. Now we collect the desires we rose above and attach them to Bina, thereby reaching the big, mature state of adulthood (Gadlut).
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/2/10, The Writings of Rabash

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Question: How should I work with faith above reason if the heart doesn’t open?

Answer: You need to be patient. It is hard work we do while in Egyptian bondage when we keep building new “pyramids” by exerting the greatest effort until the heart suddenly starts feeling. And in this work, the circulation of Kabbalah helps tremendously; it is beneficial to the person himself. The more he invests in the others, even if the motives are diversely egoistic, the faster he starts feeling how his heart unfolds.

I see this in the example of people who put much effort in studying but don’t get involved in the dissemination of Kabbalah. It is not enough to simply study and stay in the group: the heart doesn’t open! Everybody has to find himself a unique job, no matter how small, in order to make it his constant concern, so that he knows: This is what I bestow to people; through me, this wisdom gets spread.

This is a magical instrument as I have seen from my experience: A person who is involved in dissemination advances much more rapidly. Therefore, I recommend it to all.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/2/10, The Writings of Rabash

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Question: You explained that the text we read in Talmud Eser Sefirot and The Book of Zohar describes the forces of connection between us. Can you give me an example of this connection?

Answer: If you were in spirituality, then you would actually reveal everything you read about in the book. You would reveal the forces of connection among us, including their might, character, how they operate, and how they unite together into the net connecting us.

You would participate in the net of these forces and its work, in the illumination of the Shechina. You would see how much you are able to take an active part in it, how much you can add to it yourself. While reading the text, you would see how this entire net behaves.

However, if you do not live inside spiritual attainment, it is impossible to convey this to you. Baal HaSulam writes in his poem, “Whatever your eyes will see, you will see it and no other.”

As long as you do not feel spirituality, you have to read these texts hoping that it will become revealed to you. We read the Kabbalistic texts in the quality of Segula (a miraculous quality), and not in the form of facts.

For example, suppose I am blind and I am listening to a physics professor tell me about optical laws. He tells me how a ray of light splits into several colors. Yet, I am just hearing about it. I do not understand what he is talking about, but only hear that these phenomena exist.

I can keep studying this way my entire life, without understanding what it is talking about. However, if I make special efforts and begin to feel the phenomena I heard about, then they become my life. This is called “Taste and see how good the Creator is.” You have to taste it – to receive these Lights and feel their taste.

The real science of Kabbalah begins only after you have this sensation.
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/6/10, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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Question: For whose sake should I demand unity now? For the group or for the whole world?

Answer: The common soul divides into many parts, and the order of their awakening divides into many phases. Meanwhile, we are going through two processes:

1. Being a part that received an awakening from Above, we are obligated to actualize it and become corrected. Only after being awakened in this way does a person ask the question about the meaning of life and find the answer by revealing the Creator. This task is incumbent on us first and foremost.

This might seem like a super egoistic endeavor. However, revealing the Creator means revealing the quality of bestowal, love for the neighbor, and realizing it through unity with others. Bestowal is self-rejection, self-nullification. You come out of yourself towards others and there you find your soul.

Therefore, the first impression is deceptive. You are endeavoring to find your soul and to fulfill it with eternal pleasure. The Creator Himself has given you this opportunity and endowed you with an impulse to achieve this. Any way you say it, it sounds extremely egocentric, but the real content, the inner essence is above egoism.

That’s because we actualize all of this together by means of bestowal, love, unity, and mutual help. We do it by aspiring to come out of ourselves, instead of absorbing everything inside.

In the past Kabbalists did not have the opportunity to disseminate the science of Kabbalah throughout the world, to study it publicly, and to teach others. Yet, back then the particular correction of their souls in small groups was also aimed at the benefit of the whole world. That’s because they acquired a great force of bestowal which operated among all the souls in the world, even though the world did not feel it.

2. Today we have to act in one more direction. We not only correct ourselves and acquire a greater inner force of bestowal in our groups, but also disseminate the Kabbalistic knowledge all over the world.

These are the two parallel vectors of our efforts, and they are both necessary.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/6/10, The Zohar

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Question: What should we do this Hanukkah so that the spiritual world becomes reality?

Answer: All of us around the world have reached the point of breakthrough. We are approaching the exodus from Egypt, from the sensation of just our world inside our ego.

On the one hand, we feel that the Pharaoh, egoism is holding us by the toes and stubbornly refuses to let us go. On the other, we understand that we must break out of our ego. These forces are fighting one another.

Every day brings us greater understanding that the spiritual world and its perception are above the ego, which is called faith above reason. However, when we attempt to reach the spiritual world, we feel that we still lack the forces to make the breakthrough and escape from Egypt.

Therefore, we need more events such as the recent Unity Day, which was held by all the world groups with great success. Our world group is already big and diverse enough, giving great power of unity to our Kli. Therefore, we have come to a state where we are fighting against the “Greeks” in us, wishing to be free of them.

The difference between the Pharaoh and the “Greeks” is the level of the struggle: The Pharaoh represents the passions of the material world such as the desires for food, sex, family, wealth, fame, and so on, while the Greeks represent the struggle between materialism and Kabbalah. A person who stops being tempted by these things despite having all of them, and who realizes that other things are more important in life, wages the war for ascension above this world since his life lacks meaning. He doesn’t know what to live for.

Thus, the Maccabean War is a spiritual war. The ancient Greek philosophers argued that our world is real and that we have to live in it and develop it. This approach is opposite to the wisdom of Kabbalah, which says that we must rise above this world because it can no longer fill us; we have to realize the thought of creation.

We have reached a very advanced level, although we always want to achieve more. I think that all of us, including those who are advancing together with us in groups, as well as individual students all over the world, will quickly prevail in this war.
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From the lecture on 11/30/2010

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Question: Why do we feel comfortable when there are candles glowing in a room?

Answer: We relate a candle to warmth, light, and hope. That is how we perceive it according to our spiritual root.

The candles of Chanukah symbolize the outcome of man’s war with his ego. What is a candle, really? It’s a body that contains oil, a wick inside the oil, and a fire burning on the wick. Each of these components has a meaning: The body is the spiritual vessel or Kli, the oil symbolizes the Light of Hochma that becomes revealed to us, and the wick stands for the discernments we make. All of this together gives us fire, the Light.

When a person makes enough inner discernments, waging a war with his ego, desiring to ascend above it, independent of the egoistic approach where all his actions are aimed only at fulfilling himself, when he desires to get rid of his egoistic nature, this is called “the war of the Maccabees against the Greeks.”

In Hebrew the Maccabees are called Makabim, which is an abbreviation of the phrase, “Those who are going toward the Creator, follow me.” In essence we separate from the “Greeks” inside us – the rational thinking, the egoistic desire to enjoy – and slightly rise above everything earthly to bestowal and love for the neighbor. The level of Bina means, “Do not do to another what you hate.”

In other words, a candle is a good, beautiful symbol of the spiritual nature. That is why we feel so good and comfortable when it glows.
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From the program “Kabbalah for Beginners” on 12/1/10

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