Question: Can you explain in general words what we are studying in Talmud Eser Sefirot (TES), Part 15? I don’t understand any of it.

Answer: Part 15 of TES is entitled “The Construction of Nukva.” First, Nukva was created, then broken, and now we are studying how to reconstruct her, meaning in which order to pick up her pieces and how, by way of which forces, to put the pieces together into a corrected structure.

Hence, the chapter is entitled “The Construction of Nukva.” The author says, “You wish to rebuild it? Please, go ahead. But keep in mind that you must learn to work with her substance. It will resist. Its parts depend on each other, and all of them have their own personality.”

However, how do I get all that I need to “build Nukva,” my soul? In truth, I myself have nothing. If I start asking this question, I start seeing a solution. It turns out that there are Upper participants in this construction process, Father and Mother (Aba ve Ima), from whom the entire Light of Wisdom and strength descend. Still, you will receive not from them, but from the two spiritual rungs nearest you. They will deliver to you the Light of Hassadim (Mercy), strength, and the Light of Hochma (Wisdom), knowledge.

You have to get to know them so that the relationship you establish with them will enable you to construct yourself as they did. After all, at present, you are formless, raw material. However, when you start building your relationship with them, then from each of your contacts with them, you will be acquiring forms like a stamp from a seal. These forms that you acquire for yourself are what is called “the Construction of Nukva.”

Baal HaSulam describes it in an expressive language, explaining how the spiritual system relates to you. He brings you in contact with the spiritual world, which you gradually discover before yourself.

You must yearn for its revelation!  And when it does start to unfold, you will see that it is similar to how in our world you get to meet your family, your father, mother, grandmother, grandfather, brothers, and sisters. You enter a family where everyone has their own personality and status, relationships, and problems. You must step into this family and become part of it, and then you will receive your definite form.

It is a very lively and human picture. It gradually becomes very easy to understand as if you are learning from life itself its laws and inner psychology. The most difficult part is the first contact. Until you “open the door and step into the house,” you are lost in the attempts to guess what is inside. However, once you enter it, you start getting around.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/10/10, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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Question: What should a child’s proper environment be like?

Answer: A child will always grow up to be like his environment. This is why caring for the environment is the same as caring for the child.

Think of the ways to influence his environment and control him indirectly by giving him games, books, and videos that contain the information you chose for him, but that is presented to him in an interesting manner. Teach children to protect themselves from bad, outer influence and also show them how to resist it on their own; give them the power to stand on their principles. After all, the system of values is built on the opposition of good and evil.

There is no problem building a good environment for children if parents arrange it. It is easy to bribe a child with games and sweets and, gradually, to connect him to the necessary environment. Then, it will begin to influence him.

Also, the teacher needs to have the ability to get down to the level of a child so the child will not feel that the teacher is bigger. He should sit with the children, play with them, and speak like them. He should invade the children’s environment like a secret agent and work with them. Then, he will be able to pass his spirit on to them and lift them gradually. However, if the teacher is higher than them, then the children perceive him like furniture. They run among the legs of the adults and push them around so that the adults will stop bothering them. They have their own world.

In other words, everything needs to be organized for the attainment of one purpose: to develop love for others in children in order to reach love for the Creator through it. This is the intention that a child must have in the beginning of his life and at the end of every action. It is specifically at this young age that this is easy and possible. If you instill love for others in your child from an early age, you will guarantee the highest degree of safety and success for him in life.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/10/10, “The Love of the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”

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Question: What does it mean to “raise a child with the ‘Torah and commandments’ and with the intention to bestow to the Creator instead of love for himself?”

Answer: Commandments are the steps of the correction of our egoistic desire, the desire to receive pleasure, which becomes revealed more on every step as if to hinder love between us. However, when we correct this egoism that pushes us apart and turn it into bestowal, love manifests itself specifically in it, that is, it becomes our ally. This is what we refer to as the Torah and commandments.

The Torah is the Light that Reforms, love and bestowal, and commandments are the actions of correcting the human desires into love and bestowal. The Torah is the method that allows us to attain love, union, and bestowal because it contains the Light, the force of correction. This Light created the desire, and only it can correct it. However, there is a condition: We must desire the correction, evoke the Light to act. This is the role of man.

Children are raised neither by their  father nor mother, nor by the school teacher. Even if you were the greatest of Kabbalists, you would not be able to raise a child; only the proper society can do it. No matter how much parents put into their children, children do not take anything from their parents, but rather fall under the influence of their environment on the street or in school,  and there they receive all their models of behavior and life values.

They perceive their fathers and mothers as a system and not their environment. The environment is something that is close to the children. It speaks a language the children understand and it also understands them. They are on one level. The need for the environment arises around the age of three to four, and it is necessary to place proper boundaries around them.

In the wisdom of Kabbalah, we learn that we only perceive either the Partzuf that is equal to us or a higher one that has descended to us. We do not perceive above the level equal to us. This is why a child perceives the father and mother as those who must serve him.

This is why it is only possible to educate through the environment. Create a proper environment for your children. Then, you will be able to influence them.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/10/10, “The Love of the Creator and Love of the Created Beings”

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Question: I have already been to a Kabbalah convention. Would it be correct if instead of going there myself, I give my friend an opportunity to go by supporting him financially?

Answer: If a person is at the level of love of others “Love another as you love yourself,” then he must (and he desires!) to give the other his only “pillow,” that is, to send his friend to the congress. If neither of you go to the congress, then it is the quality of Sodom (Sodomite Rule). However, if you are the only one going, you are the “wicked.” But this is at the level of “love for another.”

The degree of love is the highest and last level of correction. Until it is reached, there are numerous other steps, and for the time being, we are at the level of the “wicked.”

Therefore, to act correctly means to act according to your level or “according to the law of Halakha” (the law), where “Halakha” derives from the word “Alicha,” movement (toward the goal). In other words, this means correct advancement, correct action. In your case, you should go, the one who has the funds; otherwise, you will instill hatred between you and your friend.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/13/10, “The Teaching of the Kabbalah and Its Essence”

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Question: What does it mean to act solely for the sake of the Creator? It greatly disturbs me since it feels as if I am forced to slave away for someone.

Answer: This “someone” is the absolute law of Nature, the unifying force that contains the entire creation and you in it. Beside this law, there is nothing else! And when you “bestow,” you do it not “for somebody’s sake,” but in order to establish this law over all creation so that it is revealed to all.

The Creator doesn’t need it, He doesn’t receive anything; He is the desire to bestow, which cannot receive. He Himself is not perceived within you; rather, what you perceive is your own impressions of Him. The law of bestowal is similar to a wall: It feels nothing, you may consider it to be still. This law of nature is the absolute law of bestowal, which you experience reactions to within yourself.

You don’t do Him favors! He doesn’t require that you cleave to Him and love Him; He doesn’t feel our work as we do. We can’t even discuss His essence for it is unknowable. Everything we discuss about Him is our personal impressions, our perceptions of Him in our broken or corrected desires. Therefore, I can’t say that I am working for Him. Expressions “cleave to the Creator” or “love your Creator” speak about me and my correction, after which I will attain love.

That is why we were given a group, in relation to which we have to work, instead of working with some abstract principle or a force that cannot be sensed or with the factor that everyone can turn as he pleases. Take, for instance, the science of Kabbalah. It is a program of how you should treat human society. Build your attitude to it according with this program and by doing so, you will reach your full correction.

Love for the created beings that you will experience with the help of the Light that Reforms will be your attitude to the Creator indeed. Instead of acting in relation to the Light that cannot be perceived, the soul broke apart, and its parts now interact with each other instead of interacting with the Light. Therefore, they have an opportunity to connect with each other, act, and examine things together, which they cannot accomplish if paired with the abstract force.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/7/10, “The Love of the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”

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Question: What do I do if while reading The Book of Zohar I keep thinking about various things including my new business?

Answer: This is wonderful! Let your egoism pray together with the group about the revelation of evil and its correction and also about the prosperity of your business. But it has to be everything together!

There is nothing outside of the system of correction. It is said that all “sinners” (egoistic desires) will be corrected and join the “righteous” (desires of bestowal and love). Why can’t your business be inside them? Don’t neglect anything; include everything into correction.

When the words “escape from the Pharaoh” are said, they do not mean running away from the Pharaoh, but rather ascending above him. It is said, “We left Egypt with great belongings.” We take everything there is, our entire ego, and exit. Thus, our ego becomes corrected.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/7/10, The Zohar

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Question: When reading The Zohar, is “to receive the force of bestowal” the correct intention?

Answer: We do not need anything but the force of bestowal. There are only two forces in the entire reality: reception and bestowal. We do not lack the force of receiving. When we correctly prepare ourselves by working in the group and studying Kabbalah, the force of reception, our evil inclination, becomes revealed to us.

However, if I have not yet begun to arrange myself with the group or the study, I do not reveal the egoism against the Creator in me as something that hurts me, as evil. At first I need to reveal my evil. If I do not see the evil in me, I have nothing to begin correction with.

But when I reveal the evil in me, I reveal it in the group, and for this reason I already have the Light to correct it. After all, it is where I reveal my rejection of friends that I find the strength to overcome this rejection.

Question: If I do not feel the need to read The Zohar, do I still need to do it?

Answer: A person beginning to study Kabbalah needs to know that it is specifically the reading of The Zohar that helps him go through the stages of the revelation of his evil and its correction. The evil will keep being revealed, while he will keep rising above it until he reveals the entire altitude of evil, the entire 125 degrees between our world and the World of Infinity.

He will rise high, above the evil being revealed, to the top of the mountain as if he were on a funicular. This is why he needs both: the mountain, the evil that is being revealed, and the funicular, the force of the Light that lifts him to the top.

This is the reason we need to study Kabbalah, which reveals the evil to us. This is called “I created the evil inclination,” and then we need the force of correction, which is called “and I gave the Torah for its correction because the Light in it Reforms,” that brings me to the top of the mountain.

This is why in the beginning the Creator told Abraham: “Your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own,” meaning that they will be under the influence of the egoism, but they will leave with great wealth (egoism), and they will need its correction: the reception of the Torah, the method of correction with the force of the Creator, the Light. Having stopped using egoism (Egypt) and having turned it into a “desert,” they will then use it for the sake of bestowal and turn it into the “Land of Israel.”

There is only one desire, but the gradual changes of the intention over this desire turns the desire into “Egypt” (in Hebrew “Mits-Raim,” “the concentration of evil”), then into the Sinai desert (in Hebrew “Sinai,” hatred), until it turns it into good, the “Land of Israel” (in Hebrew “Eretz Yisrael,” desire towards the Creator). That is, one goes through the stages of the evil inclination – “Egypt,” then “bestowal for the sake of bestowal” – “the Sinai desert,” and then “reception for the sake of bestowal” – “the land of Israel.”

The desire to receive pleasure remains the same, you only determine your attitude toward it, which becomes increasingly corrected every time.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/7/10, The Zohar

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Question: Despite the fact that you so meticulously keep trying to explain to us the mechanics of the spiritual worlds described in Talmud Eser Sefirot (The Study of Ten Sefirot), I still don’t understand anything.

Answer: I cannot be meticulous because there are too many details in it, which you are unable to remember. A person can remember what he feels and not some mechanical data. Even the latter he has to translate into impressions and only then he may remember them. Although memory seems to be part of the mind, it is the sensory experiences that are preserved in the memory cells.

Suppose I am entering some information into the computer now;  this data is the outcome of my sensory experiences since my substance is based on feelings. It perceives good and bad in multitude of forms. When I enter this information into the memory, I give my impression a definition; otherwise, it won’t be recorded.

I have to assign a specific place for this in my memory, give it a title and definition, similar to how we specify the complete passage through many “slashes” when we are dealing with a link on an Internet page. In the same manner, the “address” in our memory is formed. And even though this memory is “mechanical,” it still records impressions. If I begin to remember an event from the distant past, I suddenly experience my forgotten feelings and remember a scent, a sound, and so forth.

Therefore, if we have never felt the spiritual world, we cannot remember information about it. That is why Baal HaSulam was so angry when he met “Kabbalists from Jerusalem” who were practicing mechanical memorization of  Kabbalah theory and thought that it was enough to succeed. This is not our way. We try to study Talmud Eser Sefirot, but do not evaluate our spiritual advancement by how much knowledge we obtain. We measure it by how much we can feel!

What can you possibly know if you don’t feel the words, as it is written: “Taste how wonderful the Creator is”? Does a person know what these words mean? Has he ever felt what they signify? If not, then his knowledge is worthless. We are studying in order to draw the Light that Reforms! Our desire, as described in The Book of Zohar and Talmud Eser Sefirot, gives us an opportunity to connect with the material.

But we don’t understand what it means that Zeir Anpin is falling asleep or is ascending with MAN to Bina; for us, they are merely words for now. Hence, for now, the entire Kabbalah is an empty science, but it gives us the foundation for a desire, preparation, and the cause for revelation. I wish to know it since everything in the text is talking about me and what is happening within my soul!

Who is ascending from Malchut to Zeir Anpin and Bina? My soul ascends, receives fulfillment there, and returns back down! All these actions are occurring in me right this instant, but I don’t feel it. I wish to finally feel what are they like? Why do I suddenly have such eagerness? This is because your spiritual gene, your  Reshimo, has woken up.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/7/10, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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Question: Am I “drilling a hole in the boat” by acting in all directions, in all 359 degrees except for one that is aimed toward the mutual guarantee?

Answer: But I signed an agreement with my friends that covers everything! My guarantee does not only apply to the tiny open gap through which I have to reach the mutual guarantee. You will not be able to concentrate one hundred percent on the mutual guarantee without taking the strengths from all the other directions and only leaving the vital necessities there.

Only when all the other directions become nothing but a necessity for you, which “is neither disapproved of nor praised” and all the strengths that remain after providing for your existence are directed towards reaching the mutual guarantee, only in this case, you are not drilling a hole in the boat.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/12/10, “The Love of the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”

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Question: We are speaking about collective correction. But there are people with a lot of experience in the group who have already been studying Kabbalah for 10-15 years and also those who are just joining it now. How can new members compensate for this enormous distance created by years of studying in order to unite into one group with the advanced students?

Answer: Every person, when he comes to the group, receives from it as much as he invests into it. If we had here Rabbi Shimon with his students who have attained the final correction, you would also receive from them only to the extent of the efforts you apply.

This does not depend on the level of your friends in the group, but on your attitude. You cannot drink from the source of infinite heights since what you receive from it corresponds precisely to the similarity of your properties to it!

Infinity is always right in front of you, but how much do you receive from it? You receive one drop at a time through a tiny opening. Why is that so? It is because you are unable to make a bigger opening (Nekev), you lack the desire (Nekeyva) for it.

This is why the level of the group does not matter. Two hundred years from now, when the world will be closer to the end of correction, will it really be easier for a person joining the group? No, it will not. The Creator, the upper system of governance, cannot forgo even man’s smallest effort because he will lack this effort in the final corrected desire, and it will be incomplete.

Every person will have to complete all the corrections. His time of awakening depends on the order of the correction of souls in the common system. But everyone does the same work.

Subsequently, from the state of Infinity, you will perceive the perfection of calculations of every state for every soul, in absolute equality among everyone, regardless of the part of the common soul of Adam they belong to. This is because every soul attains the entire common soul of Adam.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/6/10, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Being”

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