Question: Baal HaSulam says that the happiest moment in a person’s life is when he comes to despair. How can a person feel happy in this state?

Answer: No. Then despair will be sweetened.

A lot of people in our world rejoice in some kind of suffering; they enjoy it. It is absolutely selfish suffering. A person loves to suffer, respects himself for suffering. This is absolutely not at all what Kabbalah is talking about.

In spiritual work, it is the striving for the upper, for changing oneself, and the realization of the complete impossibility of achieving this. And then a person has the opportunity to cling to the upper force.

Question: By studying The Book of Zohar  do we move away from suffering and choose a more direct path?

Answer: We move to another type of suffering: we lack spirituality. This is suffering for perfection, suffering for the light.
[279986]
From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #8

Related Material:
Why Do I Feel This Way?
Exile From Love
Brothers In Exile

Filed under: Spiritual Work, Zohar - No Comments →

Comments: At the very beginning of the Passover Haggadah, it is said that our forefathers were engaged in idolatry. That is, we had a fragmented worldview when people lived in selfishness and everyone worshipped their own god.

My Response: People did what they wanted to do.

Question: Then, after leaving Egypt, it is written: “Next year, in Jerusalem.” What does it mean?

Answer: This is a completely different kind of connection between people when they reach a new level in uniting over their egoism.

Egoism remains inside everyone, but above it, we build the next level, the level of mutual bestowal and love. This highest level is called “Yerushalayim, ” i.e., “ira shlema”—absolute awe.

It means there is no greater concern, no greater awe in me than to maintain the quality of bestowal and connection with everyone. This is what I value above all else.

But today we are in a completely opposite state. Today, Jerusalem is the very opposite of the spiritual property.

Comments: When the Kabbalists wrote this, they did not mean at all what we mean by these words.

My Response: It is not difficult for them to describe everything that exists in the spiritual world in terms of our world. They see it.

The walls of Jerusalem, the stones, and the city mean certain internal properties and levels of spiritual development.
[279675]
FromKabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/15/19

Related Material:
Jerusalem: Not Stones But The Spirit
“Everyone Who Mourns For Jerusalem Is Rewarded With Seeing Its Joy”
Jerusalem – A “Perfect City”

Filed under: Spiritual Work - No Comments →

Question: I cannot analyze myself at the level I am at. To do it, I must rise to the next level. What does “rise” mean? To go from your senses to a higher level, to the mind?

Answer: When you rise to the next level with your senses, you cannot intelligently process them in it. And the lower level from which you have ascended is now clear to you because it has already entered your mind.

When you ascend with your senses, you have intellectual feeling of where you have risen from. Therefore, the ascent from the lower level to the next in Kabbalah is called faith above reason.

That is what we do. When you get to the upper level, you begin to feel the lower level, perceive it in your mind. Faith above reason is no longer needed here.

And in order to understand the next step, again senses, faith above reason, and the lower level, which is within reason turns into knowledge.
[279998]
From KabTV’s “Meeting with Kabbalah” 3/1/19

Related Material:
Mind—Connection Between Specks Of Feelings
Mind And Feelings In Spiritual Development
The Mind Only Evaluates Feelings

Filed under: Spiritual Work - No Comments →

Comment: Thanks to your explanations, when one literally grasps your words with your teeth, it is like feeling a sensory perception in 3-D. This is really quite a shock to the rational 2-D perception.

My Response: It is indeed so. It takes a long time to get used to it. This is the reason that the upper world and the wisdom of Kabbalah are called the concealed wisdom. You begin to feel the Machsom, the spiritual barrier, which you have not felt before, and you gradually depict a new sense inside you. It is built on bestowal, which means on exiting yourself and entering the ten, and from the ten, the Creator.

Question: How can we integrate these two perceptions? After all, the rational perception will be felt to be defective after this.

Answer: No! It is simply felt on a different level. It is like a connection that you have with a baby, with a child, and with a grownup; they are on different levels!
[245238]
From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 4/4/19

Related Material:
The Objective Perception Of The World
Two Channels For Perceiving Reality
Horizons Of Perception

Filed under: Spiritual Work - No Comments →

The Book of Zohar, Genesis, 3:22: Now the Lord God said, “Behold man has become like one of us, having the ability of knowing good and evil, and now, lest he stretch forth his hand and take also from the Tree of Life and eat and live forever.”

Question: Is it necessary to live forever? It depends on what kind of life.

Answer: Indeed. There are many people who would gladly part with life painlessly because it is a chain of suffering.

And yet, we have a kind of an inner stopper that does not allow us to part with life and makes us suffer. If it were not for it, then I am sure that a huge number of people would calmly do it. Like this: you take a pill and fall asleep because, in principle, there are no prospects.

Therefore, it is said that now that a person has fallen into a terrible state, into egoism, it is necessary to arrange it so that he cannot kill himself, so that there would be forces in him and in the surrounding nature that would force him to develop although this development is very difficult.

Question: But why is it said “so that he would not live forever”?

Answer: This means that he would not remain forever in the egoistic state.

For this, on one hand, it is necessary that certain forces restrain a person all the time from ending his earthly existence within the framework of the animal body, and on the other hand, give him the opportunity to develop without feeling himself eternal, perfect and constantly feeling a state of thirst, lack, aspirations toward something. Thus, he will gradually return to the previous state from which he fell.
[279198]
From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar,” #7

Related Material:
Life Is A Game
How To Change Your Assessment Of Life?
Preparing For Spiritual Life

Filed under: Spiritual Work, Zohar - No Comments →

Question: Passover symbolizes the exit of each of us from the animal state. But it all begins with the Creator’s promise to Abraham to inherit the land of Israel. The Land of Israel is Eretz Israel, the desire for the Creator. Did nature originally provide that every person will achieve this quality?

Answer: In general, yes. As a result of our development, absolutely all people on Earth must achieve the quality of “Adam – Man,” that is, similarity to the Creator.

Question: What does “becoming a human” mean from the point of view of Kabbalah? What is this level?

Answer: “Man” in Hebrew, “Adam,” is from the word “Domeh,” which means “like the Creator” or “in God’s likeness.”

What does “in God’s likeness” mean? Since all the qualities of the Creator, His attitude to everything that He created, are love, bestowal, and good feelings, then a person acquires these qualities, becomes like the Creator, and is called a Human. And before they are acquired, he is considered an animal.

In other words, if a person is in his natural egoistic qualities and cares only for himself, then this is called the “animal state,” and if he cares for others, and the altruistic quality of the Creator is in him, then this state is called “Man – Human.”
[280228]
From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 3/26/21

Related Material:
Grow To Be Human
Gliding On The Waves Of Desire
Still, Vegetative, Animate And Speaking

Filed under: Holidays, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

Question: Going through the ten Egyptian plagues, each time a person is more and more aware of his egoism as the evil that must be gradually corrected. As our great teacher Rabash writes, this is possible only with a correct appeal to the Creator. Does this mean there is a certain positive force in nature, but it is necessary to address it correctly?

Answer: And how can we correctly address it if we are completely under the rule of the negative force, under the rule of Pharaoh? For this, we must all cry out to the Creator together, as it is said: “And the children of Israel sighed from the work, and their cry went up to God,” and He delivered them from Egypt.

Question: Does man clearly feel all ten Egyptian plagues as they are described in the Torah?

Answer: No, not like that. There is what is called the language of branches in which we describe spiritual properties and actions with words, formulations, and definitions of our world.

Therefore, a person in our world, experiencing some kind of limitation in his egoistic desires, cannot say: “Now locusts are passing over me.” It doesn’t feel like that.

Question: There are four types of language that express spiritual action. Can the exodus from Egypt be explained in Kabbalistic language?

Answer: Yes, it can. Unfortunately people who do not study Kabbalah will not understand it.

The fact is that allegories are used by those who try to rewrite the Torah in a common language. And Kabbalists write about this in purely technical terms.
[280114]
From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 1/30/20

Related Material:
Willingness To Leave Egypt
The Point From Which The Exit From Egoism Begins
Leaving The Magnetic Field Of The Ego

Filed under: Spiritual Work - No Comments →

Comment: The tenth Egyptian plague is the death of the firstborn, when man does not feel any pleasure in the coming future.

My Response: The most important thing in a person, what he strives for and what he should go forward with is his future, his firstborn children, the continuation of life, his aspirations. But he discovers that egoism in no way helps him in this, but, on the contrary, takes away from him the whole perspective. And so he is ready to leave Egypt.

The firstborn personifies the next state of man who comes to the realization that there is no point in continuing to exist in egoism. If he does not get rid of Pharaoh, if he does not get out of Egypt, then there’s no point in living. There is absolute darkness, there is no glimmer of life or hope.

In fact, such an egoistic state may seem like heaven to others, but not to him. He sees nothing in it!

Question: It is interesting that in the corporeal world, everything in a person’s life can be all right: a family, a job. But at the same time, he goes through such internal states from which only some force can bring him out. What is this force? Where does it come from?

Answer: A person is not able to get himself out of egoism. How could he possibly have the strength? He cannot use the ego because he has revealed its wickedness at all stages, at all ten levels. But get out of it? Where to?

But how can he use his primordial desire? Renounce it? That is one thing. And life? It consists in the fact that he must still receive light, energy, and connection with the Creator. He doesn’t have it. Therefore, a certain transition is necessary here to break away from everything previous and to connect with the future.

Question: Can we say that this is the so-called crossing of the Machsom, the exodus from Egypt?

Answer: Yes.

Question: And man does not come back?

Answer: No. We are not going back to Egypt. We must get out of it.

In principle, all of Kabbalah is built on the exodus from Egypt. Therefore, in all further ascents after Egypt, we say: “that you may remember the day when you came out of the land of Egypt.”

Question: Is this the most important event?

Answer: Yes, because only then can you become more and more like the Creator. Egypt is the zero transition point from which we begin to grow spiritually.
[280070]
From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 1/30/20

Related Material:
Willingness To Leave Egypt
The Point From Which The Exit From Egoism Begins
Spiritual Holidays, Part 9

Filed under: Holidays, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

We are approaching the holiday of Passover, which symbolizes the beginning of correction. Everything begins with the exodus from Egypt after which the giving of the Torah takes place.

Corrections are possible only in a person who has already gone through the Egyptian exile. The creation begins with the sin of the Tree of Knowledge and the shattering of the soul, and then the process of its correction begins.

Therefore, it is clear that first of all, we need to recognize the evil, to clarify the state in which we found ourselves after the shattering at the Tree of Knowledge where the soul was divided into many parts that we now need to assemble together. And this is despite the egoistic will to receive, which so far rules between us.

Thus, we add to the soul, which we are restoring, all of the revealed evil inclination, that is, the force of the light that once filled the soul and caused the separation of each part from the rest. When we connect them together again, working against the force of the light that was filling the soul and now has become hostile to it, we attain the qualities of the Creator and the qualities of the corrected creation.

However, all this begins with the recognition of the wickedness of the state in which we are now, with the revelation of the egoism that reigns between us: rejection, hatred, misunderstanding, and clarification to what extent everyone is immersed only in himself and is not able to get out of there. All this is the very first and necessary stage on the path of studying the Creator.

All the articles about Passover we should perceive only in relation to our separation and connection. When we move away from each other, evil forces rise up and reveal the feeling of exile in us.

Then immediately we can talk about connection and correction, and redemption begins. That is, we need to see everything in the light of exile and redemption, distancing and coming closer to each other, the revelation of the shattering and its correction.
[222984]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/8/18

Related Material:
Escape From Egyptian Darkness
Pesach Is A Holiday That Is Always With You
The End Of The Slavery In Egypt Is Near

Filed under: Holidays, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

Comment: After eight Egyptian plagues, the ninth blow comes: Egyptian darkness. If I understand correctly, this means that a person in his current state feels a complete lack of enjoyment.

My Response: I would say, rather, it is hopelessness; a person realizes that he has nothing ahead of him and nothing left behind, but he agrees to stay in this state.

Each plague is a condition when you accept the quality of bestowal as the only quality acceptable for you. It turns out that now, in full bestowal, which is required of a person in darkness, he agrees to it.

Question: Where does he feel the darkness? In his egoism?

Answer: Yes. Egoism can no longer inspire him in any way, can no longer lead to anything. A person realizes that this is a great evil, which can only be eliminated, not to feed on it, not to develop with it, because he cannot build anything in this state.

In principle, all ten plagues are ten renunciations of the ten egoistic desires that constitute our soul.

Question: Isn’t depression when a person feels darkness?

Answer: No. Not at all! This is a vigorous movement forward of a person who understands that only in this way can he reach the Creator.
[280035]
From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 1/30/20

Related Material:
Willingness To Leave Egypt
The Point From Which The Exit From Egoism Begins
Exit From The State “Egypt”

Filed under: Holidays, Spiritual Work - No Comments →