Question: Suppose a person has endured a serious illness, suffered greatly, and then recovered. Does this mean that he has drawn closer to the Creator?

Answer: In principle, by experiencing such suffering, a person begins to take his state and his capabilities more seriously.

But no one draws closer to the Creator through suffering, this is an incorrect method. He has absolutely no need for our suffering. On the contrary, the Creator wants a person to be in joy from the fact that He created the world, created man within it, and gave him the possibility to draw closer to Him.

Therefore, under no circumstances should one submit to suffering. This is an incorrect attitude both toward the Creator and toward life. We must try at all times to feel ourselves within the benevolent field of the Creator. The sufferings we have endured should teach us not to enter such situations again.

Question: But if, as a result of suffering, a person comes to the question, “What am I living for?” Is that getting closer to the Creator?

Answer: This is simply a question that should bring him into a special state in which he clearly clarifies what he lives for.

But under no circumstances should one sink into self-torment, because it distances us from the Creator. It may seem to a person that through suffering he becomes purer. This is incorrect. In Kabbalah there is no such view. It is quite possible that many religions welcome this, but under no circumstances does Kabbalah.

Suffering has never purified a person from egoism, nor has it given one the ability to rise above the ego. On the contrary, it pushes him away from using egoism only because he fears suffering. But this is not a correction.

Suffering merely pushes us toward a more correct decision. We must draw the correct conclusion and act as required.
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From Kabbalah Lesson in Russian, 1/26/20

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Question: What kind of “jar of oil” exists in the ten right now? How can this be checked?

Answer: This is something that needs to be worked on. If you form a single desire to be connected with one another and direct it toward the Creator right now, then you will feel it. This will be your common desire.

And then you must make it so that this desire senses itself, and you will feel how much it is connected to the Creator.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/20/25, Hanukkah

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Question: The miracle of Hanukkah is the miracle of bestowal. But the stopping on the spiritual path looks more like deciding what we want to receive.

At what point does it become clear to us that it is precisely the ten that has decided to stop and choose the correct direction?

Answer: When we connect together in our desire, we form a very strong Kli. And here, there is an opportunity to vary. What does it mean to vary? In what way do I want to receive, what do I want to receive, and how.

We only need to gather together and try, each of us, to determine what is the most important thing in our movement. What do we ask of the Creator? In what way would we like to receive from Him what we wish to receive? This is our main choice.

I think that today we are closer than ever to solving the problem by uniting as one whole, women and men from all corners of the world, and being able to receive from the upper light that part of it which would fill us.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/20/25, on the topic of Hanukkah

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Question: How do Kabbalists understand that it is time to move from Hanukkah to Purim?

Answer: These are completely different states. When you come to the conclusion that you must complete your mission in Hanukkah, then you will feel what this next state, Purim, is.

But this happens not according to your desire, but because this is how the rungs of the ladder of spiritual ascent are arranged.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/20/25, Hanukkah

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So is the matter with Hanukah. This is the meaning of Hanu (parked), where the parking was not because of wholeness, meaning an illuminating mirror.

Rather, the parking was Ko (here/thus far), meaning incomplete, which is a mirror that does not illuminate. In other words, the war of the inclination is still not over, but we have to come to the real completeness (RABASH, Letter No. 26).

Question: As we ascend in our unity, do we ourselves determine this stopping point?

Answer: Yes. Gradually ascending the degrees, we begin to feel in what we are able to unite and in what we are not yet able to unite.

And thus we come to the point where all the vessels of bestowal (Kelim deHashpaa) and the vessels of reception (Kelim deKabbalah) ultimately unite in order to be in one action and to be filled with the light of the Creator.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/20/25, Hanukkah

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Question: In our world, a person is born, develops, becomes an adult, and has children of their own. But when a person crosses the Machsom, does he then build himself, his soul, beyond it?

Answer: Yes. He already chooses: whether to “eat” from the mother or not, whether to be closer to her or not; he does things independently and learns from her.

Comment: In our world, a person eventually dies.

My Response: In spirituality, he dies on his current degree in order to ascend to the next degree. There is no death there as there is in our corporeal body.

He raises himself to the next degree, and after that, his previous degree dies. It seemingly disappears from his rigid governance. He begins to work with new qualities, with new ten Sefirot. The past remains beneath him; there is no longer any need for it.

Question: So is being born and dying like passing through one point in the heart until complete correction?

Answer: In spirituality, as we pass through 125 degrees, we die at each one and are born anew on the next degree.

What does “we die” mean? I have simply completed working on the previous degree and now I am as if born as a new person. I awaken and feel that new qualities have appeared within me. I begin to perceive the world in a new way. This is clearly happening to me.

Both birth and death are desirable! I myself evoke them within me.
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From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. Birth and Death” 9/18/10

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If a person correctly organizes the three inner qualities—the “candle,” the “oil,” and the “wick”—within themselves, they come to a state called Hanukkah (from the words “ḥanu ko,” “they stopped here”), meaning a short respite in the middle of the path.

“Oil” is our material, the desire to enjoy; it is the content of the vessel (Kli). It is not capable of igniting itself from the light that we draw from outside; it is only with the help of the wick.

The wick must be immersed in the oil and also protrude from it. It symbolizes the screen that we build outside the egoistic desire (outside the oil). That part of the egoistic desire that we are able to include within the screen, that is, the oil that has soaked into the wick, only that can shine and come in contact with the upper light.

But this is only on the condition that the oil cannot merely penetrate inside the wick, but also rise above the level of the oil, the egoism, toward Bina, toward the light, toward bestowal. Only then can it shine!

The light emerges from the upper edge of the wick, where it comes out and loses its connection with the oil, with egoism.

The reflected light, the flame rising from below upward, reaches Keter in the ten Sefirot of reflected light, and there the connection between the reflected light and the force of the receiving desire, the egoism, from which the force of burning comes, almost breaks.

The oil rises upward along the wick, and only there is contact achieved, a similarity of properties between the oil in the wick and the light. Only together can they shine. The light cannot be revealed until it connects with the wick and the oil within it.

By imagining a burning candle, we can understand the inner work of a person: what we must do with ourselves so that our soul attains similarity to the light, to the Creator.

The desire does not disappear; all of it must join the screen, the wick. From it we create our middle line to the extent that we are able to bring the oil, desire, into the wick.

Only a small part of the desire can be included in the screen. The wick symbolizes that core, that thin thread by which the correspondence of our desire to the light is measured.

The screen, the middle line, is built from these two forces oil and wick, left and right. The right line is bestowal, light, and the left is reception, oil.

The middle line, which we create from the two higher qualities of reception and bestowal, is called the soul.
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From Daily Kabbalah Lesson on 12/13/09, Rabash, Letter 43

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Question: In “The Preface to the Sulam Commentary,” a system is described that seems external to humans. How can I imagine it as relating to me, within myself?

Answer: There is no soul in my animal body, no ten Sefirot of the soul. I only have a point from which I have to build them.

It arose in my egoistic desires. If I can connect to other points in the heart with my egoism, then my ego will give me material desires, and connection with other people will create a structure of nine Sefirot within me.

I myself turn into the point of Malchut, into the tenth Sefirot, and my first nine Sefirot are my attitude toward other people. All other souls, everything in front of them, the whole world, and everything around them are my nine Sefirot (Tet Rishonot).

And if I connect them to myself with love and understanding that we are one, and rise above my egoism, if I can rise above my Malchut in order to bestow, then I will connect these external properties of giving, and my soul will arise in me, a complete Partzuf of ten Sefirot.

Where do I reveal the Creator? In the very desires that I have acquired by bestowing to others.
Everything that is around a person is his own soul structure. But after the shattering, the fall into egoism, I want to use these parts of myself egoistically to get everything that is in them.

Now I need to return to bestowing to them, to connect them to myself with love, and I will reveal the light of my soul in them. In myself, in Malchut, I will never reveal the light, because the first restriction (Tzimtzum Aleph) cannot be canceled.

Therefore everything depends on how I get out of myself and connect with other souls, how I feel their desires as if they were my own. In this common desire, I will reveal the Creator.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson, 9/8/2009, Baal HaSulam “Preface to the Sulam [Ladder] Commentary,”

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Question: On what basis do I choose which states to keep and which to discard for the sake of adhesion with the Creator? What do I rely on?

Answer: On what you have already experienced. Now you have reached at a state in which you already possess a certain part of the path, when, as it is said, “the Knower of secrets testifies about him that he will never again return to folly.” That is, the Creator guarantees this state to you.
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From Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/11/25, Baal HaSulam “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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A “day” is not when there is sunlight, but when spiritual light is revealed to a person. This may happen once in several months, once in a lifetime, or every single moment.

And each time a person attains a revelation, it must be complete and perfect. Therefore, one is obligated to say: Hear, O Israel, the Creator is our God, the Creator is One!

This means that he has attained “One,” that is, the understanding of the one, unified force of nature.

“Hear” means the degree of Bina (hearing, ear). “Israel” means one who aspires “straight to the Creator,” Malchut rising into Zeir Anpin, and together with it ascending to Bina. The Creator is our God; the Creator is One means that everything unites in Bina into a single whole.

The souls that unite together in Malchut join Zeir Anpin, then Bina, and all together are included in the word “One.”

The word “One” sums up all the corrections a person has made, arriving at the state “He and His revelation are One” (Hu veShmo Echad). Therefore, the prayer Hear, O Israel, the Creator is our God, the Creator is One is a sign of the correction of the degree and its fulfillment.

This is how we must reveal our state at every degree, i.e., every “day.” “To say” means not only to attain, but also to be able to express what has been attained.
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Preparation for the Kabbalah Lesson 4/4/10, The Book of Zohar, “VaYakhel“

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