Question: For what should we ask the Creator?

Answer: There can only be one request: for the Light that Reforms, the force. I cannot change myself. The entire humanity is gradually becoming desperate trying to do it. It is becoming clear that in the end, we only get more confused even in the systems that we have built ourselves.

It is true that we must reach despair in our work. It is not easy. Baal HaSulam writes that there is no happier moment in a person’s life than the moment when he becomes completely disillusioned in his strength. And then, when he sees that he has no other choice, he turns to the Creator, and the Creator responds because his appeal is absolute.

The Light does not work before there is desire. There are 125 degrees on the way towards it. If I rise to the first degree, if I lack Light even to the smallest extent, then the Light influences me. Thus I enter the zone of Light. On the fifth degree, my need increases, and the Light works accordingly because I became closer to it. Such are the laws in the zone of Light.

So far we exist at the level of this world, we lack demand. As soon as a demand appears, the Light will immediately begin to work since it created the desire and maintains it. Desire can never do anything on its own.

In this case, how can the desire have a need (Hissaron) for the Light? There is a spark of Light in the desire, which was left in it after the breaking of the souls; it awakens you, and draws you towards the Light even though the desire pulls you down.

Nothing is expected of a person before the spark becomes manifested, he is simply being developed egoistically. But once the spark ignites, the Light stops working and gives you the opportunity to ask for it. At this stage you are brought to a place where you can magnify your spark until you begin to desire the Light’s influence.

[22348]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/1/10, Shamati #38

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Question: Кabbalists speak of the steps of spiritual ascension. At which step do we become independent masters of our destiny? When does the Creator hand us the reigns?

Answer: Climbing the spiritual ladder is a gradual process. It is the same in our life: With each year, children become more independent; they learn to walk, feed themselves, dress, attend school, shop, go to work, get married, and give birth, all of which characterizes a mature person.

Rabash once gave me the following example. Children are playing outside, and one of them suddenly has to leave. “Where are you going?” the others ask. He replies: “I’m going home, to get a snack.” At home, he opens the refrigerator, doesn’t see what he wants, and starts complaining to the mother: “Why didn’t you buy what I asked you to?” He feels that he “belongs” to the parents; hence, he expresses his dependence instead of independence.

But it takes several years, and later the young man visits the neighborhood. “How are you? Where are you going?” ask his friends. “My wife and I are visiting our parents who invited us for dinner tonight.” This is maturity: The person doesn’t feel like a master, yet at the same time, he is independent.

Thus, to be independent of the Creator, two factors need to be met: the ability to act independently and detachment. On one hand, you are constantly drawing away, but on the other, you become equivalent, close to Him.

[22351]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/1/10, Shamati #38

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Question: How should a student prepare himself for each lesson?

Answer: Any study begins with preparation, and we need to understand the importance of it. To prepare for the study means to clarify what I want to achieve by it. Then, the study becomes a means of achieving the goal. Preparation specifically determines the direction in which I advance as I study. For this reason, preparation is more important than the study, and this is what the student must learn.

The wisdom of Kabbalah differs from the corporeal sciences where the direction is clear from the beginning: I want knowledge and nothing else. However, in Kabbalah, I don’t want knowledge. Rather, I want to change myself so as to bind myself to others. The entire study is a means of achieving this connection with others and, through them, with the Creator.

If I have learned all kinds of information during the study, but haven’t made even the slightest step in my inner correction, this means that the study was useless. What was missing from the study was the proper preparation, intention, and goal. This is the only way to evaluate if the intention was correct. Knowledge in and of itself is irrelevant.

Some people are drawn to the structure of the upper worlds and their actions. Others are more concerned with the psychological aspects, history, and tendencies of development. However, Kabbalists pay no attention to the quantity of knowledge for “it’s not the wise one who learns” (Lo HaHacham Lomed). Everything depends on using the wisdom for the soul’s correction.
[22354]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/1/10, Kabbalah Learning Approach

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Question: On the night of Hoshana Rabbah ("Great Supplication," the seventh day of the Holiday of Sukkot) it is customary to check the “shadow,” meaning the screen with which one can then receive the Light. How is this screen formed?

Answer: Each of us is an egoistic desire. When we wish to reach spirituality, we unite into a group. Naturally, none of us desires to engage in exercises of “bestowal,” but each has a “spark” on top of his egoistic desires which pulls us into the unknown.

Kabbalists explain that we exist in a field of “Light.” This field encompasses all of reality and influences us in such a way that the “sparks” awaken in every person. To the extent that they are roused, they interact with the field of Light which orients them, and people gather in one physical and/or virtual place, consequently wishing to unite. This is called a group, a connection of people through their spiritual desires. Egoism is left behind by everyone and they unite through their mutual aspirations for spirituality.

If we begin to aspire to mutual bestowal, we rouse the influence of the Light in the common efforts and begin to change. Gradually, we feel continuously greater egoistic desires, but at the same time, their value drops in our eyes. And we raise the spiritual desire on the scale of values.

The construction of the Sukkah (hut) indicates raising the quality of bestowal (the roof) over the desire to receive. We wish to separate bestowal and reception so that the Light does not enter the egoistic desire through the covering of the Sukkah.

The Light corrects us in such a way that all of our spiritual desires make their way over the roof of the Sukkah, and the egoistic desire remains inside. In other words, we hide the egoistic desire in the shadow. We build a covering on each desire for we do not wish to use these desires egoistically. By creating such a “shade,” we acquire a spiritual sensation in which we feel spiritual reality: the world that we perceive in the quality of bestowal.
[22205]
From the Hoshana Rabbah Night Lesson 9/29/10, Shamati #8

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Question: Do we draw more Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif) if we study in a group, and does everyone receive it equally or to the extent of his individual aspiration?

Answer: All of our efforts get accumulated in the group. When many people unite into a group, we create a special “space” between us where everyone exists in mutual bestowal. It is in this space that the Surrounding Light is revealed. It was there before also, but in a concealed and passive form, and now even if it still remains hidden, it already actively influences our aspirations to unite.

Initially, we are all situated in a field of Light, but we don’t feel it. We rouse the Light’s influence to the extent that we exert effort in the place where we can build a connection between us and become similar to the Light. It corrects us, and when the quality of bestowal emerges between us, it becomes clearly revealed.

Striving for mutual bestowal all together, we reveal the presence of the force of bestowal. However, each person reveals this force or the Light according to his individual qualities and to the extent that he exerts effort in the unification of the group.

For this reason, joint work is required. Alone a person will never be able to reveal the Surrounding Light. His efforts to bestow and to create the place where the Light can be revealed have to be applied in relation to someone.
[22209]
From the Hoshana Rabbah Night Lesson 9/29/10, Shamati #8

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Question: What enables the middle line to combine the right and left lines?

Answer: Essentially, the right and left lines are diametrically opposite to one another. The right line is absolute bestowal, and it does not know nor does it want to know what reception is. While the left line is the receiving Kelim (vessels) which do not understand what it is to bestow.

But any one of our desires, impressions, or thoughts necessarily consists of a combination of Bina (the bestowing desires) and Malchut (the receiving desires). They can only be separated through the power of the Light, when I "suppress" one in relation to the other. Also, the right and the left lines both have their own three lines. We are incapable of separating a thing in its pure form.

The breaking soldered them together for eternity by the Light of the highest power. It fused them together to the depth of their core so that not a single detail or particle was left without containing both elements in it. For this reason, in reality, the right line is the bestowing Kelim which work on the receiving Kelim, and at the same time, in the left line, the bestowing Kelim hide beneath the receiving Kelim. Once I attain the middle line, I acquire the Kelim which have both these properties combined in them.

The interconnection that I attach to the middle line is the force of the Upper Light or, to be more precise, it is the force of the Creator, the Thought of Creation that has preordained and evoked the breaking. This way, by beginning to combine the two lines into one, I use the force of the Creator Himself.

I plan and intend to reveal Him specifically, and the middle line connects me to Him, the Source of the breaking. In the middle line I attain the reason behind the breaking and the Creator’s intention. By rising above nature, I merge with the One who exists above it. This way, the Creator conceals himself in the middle line, and I touch Him due to its uniting force. This is where the meeting point of the Creator and the creature is.
[22104]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/28/10, “What is Silver, Gold, Israel, the Nations in Work”

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Question: What should a student receive as a result of studying with you: knowledge or a certain attitude toward the study?

Answer: The primary goal is to master the method because the method of Kabbalah differs from all other educational methods. All other ways of study have specific, material criteria by which a person can assess his or her advancement. Whether it’s sports, school, or science, the grades a person receives determine his success.

But the method of studying Kabbalah is different because here a person is preparing to start sensing another world. So how can he check how close he’s come to a world that’s concealed from him? The assessment is performed through the group: to what extent a person feels connected to others, awaits the Creator’s revelation precisely through this unity, and wishes for the whole world to unify? In other words, a person’s degree of solidarity with the Creator’s expectations of him, his proximity to His thoughts and plans determine how close he is to actualizing himself.

The concealment remains in effect until his thoughts, actions, and desires become 1/125 equivalent to those of the Creator. At that moment he will feel Him at the first degree of revelation.
[22356]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/1/10, Kabbalah Learning Approach

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Question: How would you describe our current state before the November congress?

Answer: I think that we are in a state of preparation for a jump; we need to join forces, demand of ourselves, and prepare and connect under pressure. If we prepare well, we will experience an inner revelation at the congress.

Even if the new students do not feel an actual revelation, at least they will experience a sensation. They will understand the essence of Kabbalah, the need to unite; illusions will fade, confusions will disappear, and everything will become one whole, one common picture; the only operating Force will become manifested, and all the “decorations” will only remain as connections between us.

This is because the world is an illusion, concealment, and I see different images in the place where I am not connected with the Creator.
[22191]
From the Talk On Unity in the Group 9/24/10

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Question: Do you feel like our development is happening with variable speed, in spurts?

Answer: It is true that development never flows evenly and in a linear fashion, there are always spurts. This is the way it manifests in our sensations because of the flaws in our work, and it will continue this way until the final correction. Good and bad periods alternate, war and peace replace one another, and we keep experiencing sudden changes. Periodicity is an inherent aspect of development.

The same applies to the structure of the Partzuf which divides into five degrees of Aviut (the depth of the desire). There is a screen and a Light on every degree; they are organized discretely and consecutively, not linearly. Everything comes in portions and drops, it does not flow evenly. This is why periods can sometimes be positive and sometimes negative; they need to be used differently. We learn this from our own experience.
[22192]
From the Talk On Unity in the Group 9/24/10

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Question: There are common laws of development in nature: birth, maturation, maximum efficiency, and dying away. Does the group develop according to the same laws?

Answer: Undoubtedly, we go through these states in our personal and group development. But the group still develops in a little different manner. On one hand, it constantly expands, but on the other, it begins to unite with the Creator once it transitions into the spiritual phase. Once its corporeal part, the desires to receive, dies away, it enters the Creator with the intentions to bestow and exists infinitely there in its root.

Certainly, the notion of the “group” eventually disappears because it becomes replaced with the notion of “Adam,” a single soul. The group (Kvutza) is still something limited; it represents a union (Kibbutz), an alliance of souls united under pressure. Once it merges with the Creator, the souls begin to exist in one another without dying away, the unity between them does not disappear, and at the same time everything becomes one whole.
[22190]
From the Talk On Unity in the Group 9/24/10

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