The Book of Zohar, “Two Points,” Item 121:  …Thus, the locks, the doors, and the halls are three forms that come upon our substance, the desire to receive in us. Before we turn it into reception in order to bestow upon our Maker, that substance turns the light to darkness and the sweet to bitter, according to our taste… .

It is actually our intention of in order to receive that turns the sweetness into bitterness and we feel bitterness. When we correct the intention, the bitterness becomes sweet. This means that everything depends on the equivalence of form between us and what comes from Above. To the extent that we have an intention of in order to bestow, everything can be felt as sweet and above this intention everything is felt as bitter since I have nothing to sweeten it with.

It is the intention that makes everything bitter or sweet. There is nothing but the intention, and we don’t need to work with anything but the intention. Leave your desires and your attributes alone, they don’t matter. We already know from our experience that a person remains with what he is born with. Nothing changes in him except for one thing. Therefore, we only worry about the intention, about our attitude towards the Creator.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/13/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the The Book of Zohar“

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Baal HaSulam, Shamati #19 “What Is the Creator Hates the Bodies, in the Work”: One must especially try to have a strong desire to obtain the will to bestow and overcome the will to receive. The meaning of a strong desire is that a strong desire is measured by the proliferation of the in-between rests and the arrests, meaning the cessations between each overcoming.

Sometimes one receives a cessation in the middle, meaning a descent. This descent can be a cessation of a minute, an hour, a day, or a month. Afterwards, one resumes the work of overcoming the will to receive, and the attempts to achieve the will to bestow. A strong desire means that the cessation does not take him a long time and he is immediately reawakened to the work.

It is like a person who wants to break a big rock. He takes a big hammer and hammers many times all day long, but they are weak. In other words, he does not hammer the rock in one swing but brings the big hammer down slowly. After that he complains that this work of breaking the rock is not for him, that it must take a hero to have the ability to break this big rock. He says that he was not born with such great powers to have the ability to break the rock.

However, one who lifts this big hammer and strikes the rock in a big swing, not slowly but with great effort, the rock immediately surrenders to him and breaks down. This is the meaning of, “like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces.”

This is how we test and evaluate our advancement: by watching whether the cessations (interruptions) and breaks between the states, the rises and falls that we go through, shorten, by seeing the pressure and power we are applying towards our advancement becoming stronger. We see if we really jump from one state to another with increasing energy, desire, persistency, and this is a necessity.

This is the criteria that should be used for checking: How much time during a day  have we wasted in empty thoughts and actions not directly connected with the goal of creation, which we made without linking them to the Creator.

It should never happen, because everything is controlled by and comes from a single source and returns back to Him. We are only an intermediary in the middle, which either connects or disconnects the link between the two points: the onset of the action emanating from the Creator and the result of the action that returns us back to Him.

It’s essential to realize that we are positioned in the middle, thus we should always serve as a connection channel through all of creation, which is realized in us. Only we have this special area that is free of the Creator. If we try fulfilling ourselves with His presence, to the extent that He becomes the reason and the final destination for us, it will mean that we return everything there is to the world of Infinity, to the endless Light that fills the entire reality.

We are the reality since everything “happens” inside us. That’s why one can calculate one’s advancement by evaluating how much you try to reduce the gaps between the states and increase the pressure and the strength of one’s exertions.
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From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/14/14

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In the process of its development, the creation goes through three basic states.

The first step is the world of Infinity. The Upper Force, the Creator, made the creation perfect. Perfection cannot be divided into phases; it’s unified. It derives from the initial thought of creation according to which the creation and the Creator are at the same level.

However, the perfection associated with the initial state transforms into the third, final developmental phase only after it goes through the second phase. During this process, the creation descends from the world of Infinity through five worlds; it goes down 125 steps that separate the creation from the Creator. Gradually, the creation “distances itself” even more and thus develops a sensation of its “independence.” Finally, it ends up in this world: the worst, most distant condition from the Creator. It is through this separation that the creation can feel it exists independently.

And then the process of correction begins, an ascent from this world through the spiritual worlds back to Infinity. So man (Adam) begins developing in us; it’s not the body but the soul when we gradually acquire similarity with the Creator, the power of bestowal and love of neighbors.

And “neighbor” is one who is outside of our will to receive; he is the one we cultivate love towards. This sensation is above knowledge, beyond our emotions and intellect, above us, and above our perception of reality. Loving our neighbors is really feeling them, sensing that they are included in us. This brings us closer with them until it reaches love for them.

Thus, love for our neighbors moves us back to Infinity, rises us up and brings us to a state the final correction.

The whole world is entering this process; people discover it within. Why?—because nobody is in control of this tendency.

For thousands of years we never thought about our internal advancement; we simply went ahead, driven by our own desires. Until now, there was no contradiction between the vector of general development and our internal natural impulses. Our advancement matched and complemented our selfish aspirations.

As a result, we came to capitalism and within a short period of time made an egoistic “leap” in science and technologies, and in recent decades began to sink in crisis.

Our egoistic development is coming to an end. Our nature “rounds out”, integrates, and unveils new laws to us. Previously, we used our abilities to take advantage of others to earn money and succeed; now, this approach is winding down. Environmental conditions have changed; we can continue our path only if are consistent with them and adapt to them.

So in our perception and sensations, in our decision-making processes, we have to comply with nature: “round,” integral, and comprehensive. Without this, we won’t understand what’s going on and won’t find correct approaches. If we don’t comply, we will always make wrong decisions that won’t benefit us.

This is the situation we are in now and why Kabbalah is revealed to us. After all, we are in the beginning of the conscious state of the second developmental phase. Our descent from Infinity to this world is completed; the preparation period in this world is completed, and now we begin the correction, the realization of evil and ascent to Infinity.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/14/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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The meal is a very important act. In the Talmud there is a story that tells how a group of students who lost their teacher held a dinner in his memory. And suddenly they discovered that they couldn’t arrange the meal, they weren’t able to say the blessing because they didn’t have enough strength for that; the strength comes from Above.

During the meal there is a power that is present because it is compatible to receive the Light that Reforms, the Light that gives life to the body and the soul. Thus the meals with Rabash took place in complete silence. It was forbidden to speak with each other. Each one had to focus within himself and talk within himself.

There was a very strict order that was entirely directed toward inner work. There was such tension in the air, that each person was forced to accompany each crumb that went into his mouth with an intention. If after the meal, he wanted to remember what he had eaten, he had great difficulty remembering. The food, as if, had no taste, because the taste was received from the state itself and not the food.

We are not able to carry out these conditions since both women and children are present at the meal, but still we need to try as much as is possible. Our society is special; it longs for a spiritual goal, so let’s begin to rise up a little.

I want to thank all the friends that are involved with the convention preparations and wish for us to resolve all the problems that appear on the way. You need to feel that you are great. In the meantime, it is not understood or felt who we really are. But when it is discovered, you will realize that you are in the center of the whole creation, and all of the previous generations of Kabbalists and  all of  humanity is looking at you in anticipation of what you are now doing: as you tilt the world to the side of the righteousness.
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From a Talk during the Meal 1/17/14

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In the whole vessel everything is connected together: the deficiencies, the flaws, the refinements, and the attainments. Everything is linked together and interwoven into one whole: reception and bestowal, a sense of the depth of the vessel and the height of the Light. But when the vessel is shattered and separated into many small parts, then each and every part receives some unique characteristic that is typical only of it. And therefore everyone feels their own difficulties and suffers from the shattering, but each one in his very unique way.

We must try to see in each and every friend that the sufferings with which he lives are the sufferings that he endures for everyone. Each one receives some part of the vessel, of the collective burden: one receives one thing, and a second receives something else, and so forth. And each one carries what he receives for all, a carrier of some type of deficiency. That is how the shattering divides us from one another.

Therefore, we need to see the problems of each and every one not as his personal problems and difficulties, but our shared problems and difficulties. He just loaded them on his back, that i, he received instructions from Above to carry this burden. And the second one was chosen to bear another burden, and the third bears another and so forth. And from this we must change our attitude to the friends and appreciate their work in clarification and correction of our collective problems. In the end, we must reach a state where we see every person, man or woman, as a bearer of some specific flaw of the entire world.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/14, Workshop

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You should try to imagine and feel that you disappear into the general integration inside the others. That is, we are all united in this notion of one; one means that there is not one of us us personally. One is not our sum total; this is not “we,” but a single whole that cannot be divided into separate parts. It follows that on one hand, I seemingly disappear there. My “I” disappears, but instead of this, I feel all. So I discover two opposite extremes.

Once I felt myself existing separately, a limited personality, but with its sphere of ownership. But now, having nullified my egoistic authority, on the one hand, I have cancelled my individuality and lost my “I.” But on the other hand, with this I acquired everything!
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/14, Workshop

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Every problem can be healed through the connection between us. This will be understood from the clarification of the shattering. After all, before the shattering, there was one desire under one screen. But since it wanted to receive more than was possible for the purpose of bestowal, the collective soul could not hold the immense Light and was shattered.

It was separated into small fragments of individual desires: into money, power, knowledge, and all kinds of things that are in each and every person. All of these desires lost the anti-egoistic screen, because of which, the specific fulfillment in each particular desire was not important to us, but for whom we work is.

This intention was a common screen that comprised all of the desires, characteristics, and inclinations, uniting them into a single whole. But after the screen disappeared, every desire, every inclination, every characteristic took on a life of its own even within the person, but mainly between people. Therefore we feel the separation between us.

It follows that none of us is evil by himself! All the evil is between us, although it is manifested in ways as if it is me or others that are evil. But essentially, that is how the rejection between us is discovered. And within the person himself there is no evil. Rather the evil is the force of mutual rejection that is active between us.

We must try to see that the evil is not concealed in the friends and not in me, but only between us. If we rise above it and connect, then we correct this entire condition. That is my task:  to translate that evil that I see in me or in everyone as a problem of our uncorrected connection.

Therefore we must comprehend our personal problems and our recognition of evil as a discovery of our collective evil. Precisely from this we are able to build and stabilize the collective prayer, the “prayer of many,” and receive an answer from Above, that is, correct our collective vessel and restore its wholeness.

The Creator reveals the evil to us in such a way that it illuminates us a bit more from above in comparison to others. But each one of us feels this illumination in his own personal way and therefore below, we must connect between us in order to respond to Him as one, as if it were a one-on-one conversation. Therefore all personal shortcomings and problems should be accepted as our one common evil. This is the first step towards correcting our vessel.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/19/14, Workshop

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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 28: …that in the beginning the same body is revived, which is the excessive will to receive, without any restraints, just as it grew under the nourishment of the impure worlds…

And then we embark on a new kind of labor—to bring all that exaggerated will to receive to the form of bestowal. Then it is healed because now it obtained equivalence of form.

An unique illumination vitalizes the desire to receive for the sake of reception as well as the “stony heart,” and all of the desire to receive exists as matter only because the Light holds it. Yesh mi Yesh (existence from existence) holds and vitalizes the Yesh mi Ayin (existence from absence). We cannot manage without this “intravenous device.” After all, if I had closed it, I would have lost the desire and would not have been able to correct it. And this in turn would have prevented me from adhering to the Creator fully.

Question: So, how do we correct the desire?

Answer: For this, we don’t need any actions with the material itself, and there can’t be any. We are unable to kill or to revive it, even though we use these terms to describe what is taking place. The desire, as it was and remains, is found in the hands of the Creator who gives life to everything: the evil and the good.

Throughout the entire process, we don’t take any real actions in creation. Rather, only in regard to myself, I sort the parts that are revealed before me. We don’t enter into the creation itself. It is impossible to stop the influence of the Light on the desire, just as it is impossible to stop the Earth. These data “descend” to me from a higher level, and on my level I need to accept them, to learn from them, to sort them and to examine my relationship in regard to them. Specifically by means of this, I build myself. We don’t need more than this.

There is a choice and a wide variety of possibilities before me, all kinds of different desires in order to receive and in order to bestow, which are not new. However, they are discovered and developed more and more, and all this is so that I will determine my relationship in regard to all that is developed in the right way. With this, I understand and feel more, and that is how I build the Adam from myself.

The Creator doesn’t change the original action, and we also don’t act on anything. Everything is revealed only in regard to the person who perceives. The creation is unchanged. There is Infinity, and all the time a little of the curtain is opened and closed for us on the way toward it. However, through this we reach the level of the Creator. This “game” is enough for us in order to grow to the height of the Upper, to be aware and to understand Him, and really to be like Him.

The question arises: Is there something else besides what I am viewing and the inner changes? This is unknown to us.

Without changing anything in creation, we grow, improving our tools of perception, exercising, and correcting ourselves and only ourselves. Until now, we were allowed to think that we were changing the world. However, this approach doesn’t work anymore. From this stage onward, only one thing works: our similarity to what is discovered. And this is a new method.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/15/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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As Baal HaSulam writes in “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” we must “die and rot” so that almost nothing will remain of us, and after that we are “born again” with new characteristics.

Of course, we shouldn’t imagine this process as it is depicted in Hollywood movies. Indeed, in the books of the Kabbalists, there is not a single word written about our world; they books are only about spiritual phenomena and concepts.

This is speaking only about the desire to receive which is the only object that exists at all, and the wisdom of Kabbalah involves this. This desire is permanent. Indeed, it is from nothing, but it exists.

There exist two possibilities to capture, realize, and arrange it: for the purpose of reception or for the purpose of bestowal.

From the start, a desire to receive for the purpose of reception was given to us, as it is written, “I created the evil inclination.” Thus, the egoistic desire to receive locks itself on the level of the beast and doesn’t allow us to rise to the level of Adam. This is locked within us, and we can rise to it only on condition that we rise above the desire to receive that is discovered here. That is how we enter into the upper world, to the higher dimension.

So, after the desire to bestow changes us, we are developed along two lines: the “right line” and the “left line.” The left line is the egoistic desire that is awakened in us more and more, and, in the right line, we correct it, time after time, through the Light that Reforms and transform it into the desire to bestow. That is how the process takes place in parallel, this in contrast to that, until the entire desire to receive “will rot” in the end, to the state called “death.”

However, this is not enough because we still have not transformed that into a real desire to bestow. We only work above it in all kinds of forms. I make something of it, but some parts aren’t suitable and all the while seemingly slip below my ability. Then, the time arrives for a unique activity: the “revival of the dead.”

We see a few stages of development here in that the person uses his desire in different ways. In the first stage, he exits this world to the spiritual world and prefers to rise above everything that he has here and to live in bestowal instead of reception. After that, he passes through the Machsom and develops his altruistic intentions above the constantly growing desire and uses it to bestow for the purpose of bestowal. After that, he passes to an intention to receive for the purpose of bestowal, to “and you shall love your friend.”

As a result of using these means, a person is left with a desire that he still cannot use in bestowal. This is a very great desire called the “stony heart.”

It is necessary to indicate that when we enter into spirituality we can realize only a “thin line” in it. Even through the work that we do, we only slightly expand this line that descends to us from above to below. After all, the stony heart is the essence of the creation and the essential density that is left to us for the final correction. In fact, the stony heart is not the desire that the Creator created. This is a desire to receive that we discover and format ourselves. However, we don’t create it like the Creator did with His activity, but, nevertheless, we create something new.

The source of destruction is revealed in the “Tree of Knowledge.” After we have continued with this “thread,” we discover the gap between us and the Creator, the stony heart that is discovered on every level. It arrives from above as a data point, and with our work for the purpose of bestowal, we discover how much we are truly different, distant, and completely the opposite of Him.

The stony heart is revealed to us from below to above until it reaches gigantic dimensions, but only to the degree that we can erase it, burn it, and annihilate it. And in the end, we finally kill it and after it rots, it reaches its correction. In other words, after this desire passes through all the stages, it really goes back to the dust. It was on the level of the speaking, and after that, the animate, and after that, the vegetative, until it is completely rotted and reaches the level of dust, as it is written, “For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” That is how we finish the correction.

Then, an action is performed that we are certainly unprepared to do, but we want it very much: the “revival of the dead.” The stony heart, which was the opposite to the Creator, separates us from Him, and it is discovered thanks to the efforts that we made as if they were all designed for this. When I wanted to advance toward the Creator with all my power and might, with all efforts, according to this, I discovered my oppositeness to the Creator. It is as if I discovered it in the depths of the creation that were hidden from me, and therefore, with its correction, the general correction is completed.

Returning to “decomposition” and the “revival of the dead”: certainly all of this happens in the ascent of the spiritual ladder and there is no connection to this with our “beastly” bodies that live and die in this world, like all the other bodies. All of the wisdom of Kabbalah speaks only about the inner idea that is called the Adam in us, and it is not about our biology and zoology that belong to the physical reality only.

In the article, “The Freedom,” Baal HaSulam writes that, “the wisdom of Kabbalah mentions nothing of our corporeal world,” and in The Book of Zohar, Parshat “VaYetze,” 139, it is written, “The Zohar doesn’t speak about physical events at all, but about higher worlds.”

Also, in Talmud Eser Sefirot, Baal HaSulam writes in Volume 1, “We must remember that all of the wisdom of Kabbalah is founded upon spiritual concepts that don’t occupy space or time. All the difficulty for beginners is that they comprehend these things with physical expressions with the limitations of time and space, replacement and permutation, which the authors use merely as symbols of their higher roots only.”

Also, Rav Kook writes in “Letters, 1,”: “I was appalled to see that a corporeal form was depicted for the concept of Adam Kadmon of the Kabbalah, which is only a metaphysical concept, a Godly concept. God forbid that we should allow ourselves to materialize these sacred concepts, even as a way of studying.”
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/15/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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The Book of Zohar, “Two Points”, Item 120: At the end of all the gates, He made a gate with several locks. That gate is called Malchut de Malchut, the final point of all the upper gates. This last gate is the first gate for the upper Hochma [wisdom]. That is, it is possible to be rewarded with the upper Hochma only after the attainment of this last gate specifically, as for attainment of the upper Hochma, it is the first gate. This is why it is written, “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” since “Fear of the Lord” is called the last gate, which is the first for the wisdom of the Lord.

Question: It is as if the gates are arranged one after the other so that we can enter them, but they seem to block the entrance, so it turns out that there is a blocking when one wants to enter.

Answer: Of course. To enter means that one finds himself in a certain state. How do you advance from one state to another? By opening another part of the desire to receive and by correcting it with the intention of in order to bestow, and thus going through all the gates.

So every gate is the increase of the desire and its correction. Gates, locks, and openings are all meant for a person to ascend from one level to the next, but without gates, there would be no change of states. A gate isn’t just a closed entrance that has been blocked. You will not feel anything if you don’t go through the gate, if you don’t acquire Aviut (thickness) and its correction, and adapt to that state which is called a gate.

There is nothing after the gate in spirituality. There is only the next gate. Every step is the next gate. There is no gate that opens widely and behind which there is a big city, and then the next gate behind which there is a field, and then another gate and another. There are only gates that come one after the other.

Question: So where do they lead to if there is nothing behind them?

Answer: There is everything in the gate, both the feeling and the attainment. Everything begins and ends in the gate. What do you need something other than the gates for if you are advancing towards identifying with the Creator? What else is missing but the gates? After all, each gate leads you to what you have to be. In fact, the whole HaVaYaH is one gate after another, ten Sefirot. Then there are ten more Sefirot, and another ten, etc.

Sometimes we say that only an entrance is called a gate and then one develops from it, but this development also belongs to the gates.

Question: What do you feel when you reach a gate?

Answer: You feel a blocked road.

Question: And how do you open the gate?

Answer: You open the gate by first accepting this blocking, by accepting the fact that the road is blocked. You accept this self annulment and the fear of the Creator, and thus on every next level until this gate becomes an entrance. Otherwise, it will not become an entrance. The gate itself should open, and when you go through the gate, it means that you accept all the Aviut correctly, and in this new Aviut, you see a new world.

Question: What does it mean that you accept that the road is concealed?

Answer: Accepting that it is all for our benefit. It is also a process to accept and be thankful for it.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/13/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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