Question: If I loaned a friend $1,000 but he returned only $1, should I consider it to be $1,000?

Answer: You clearly see that it is $1, but you want to take it as the full amount because you want to justify your friend and rise in faith above knowledge since you are in a spiritual relationship with him.

If you act in this way, if you bestow to your friend, then you build the quality of bestowal within yourself, faith above knowledge. You obtain a spiritual quality.

Question: So, I should not ask him about the rest of the money? Meaning that I value the connection with the Creator so much and with my friend as a means to the connection, that I am willing to sacrifice the money?

Answer: You are not sacrificing, but you are gaining. You are receiving an opportunity from him to ascend to the spiritual degree through faith above knowledge.

The fact is that you are not asking for your money back because you feel that by giving to a friend you are already gaining. But this is only in a case where there is a special relationship between the two of you.

Question: Where do I gain the strength to treat him in this way? How do I come to this?

Answer: You come to this when you feel that by being with him in the same spiritual body, you are neither giving nor receiving; it is all one. By giving to a friend, on the contrary, you have brought deep meaning, great help, and a huge investment into your common spiritual body. And you are thrilled about being able to do so.

Question: And, in all of this, am I not afraid of being tricked? These thoughts do come up.

Answer: If you really are in a ten, in a group, and trying to attain the Creator together, to reach His level, then the opportunity to give to a friend inspires you. What could be better?
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 4/1/19

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Baal HaSulam, “Shamati”, 34, “The Profit of a Land“: It is known that nothing appears in its true form, only through its opposite, “as far as light excelleth darkness.” This means that everything points to another, and by the opposite of some thing, the existence of its opposite can be perceived.

Hence, it is impossible to attain something in complete clarity if its parallel is absent.

This principle is inherent in our lives and we use it instinctively, so there is nothing particularly Kabbalistic about it. We always need more light in order to see the difference between light and darkness in contrast. We may also need to darken something a little in order to see the light better.

We always learn about one compared to the other, for example about good and bad. We cannot measure any object or any phenomenon by itself but only in comparison to a state that is opposite from the phenomenon that we want to explore.

Question: Can we say that a person can be happy only if he was miserable before?

Answer: No. A person can be happy and feel miserable at the same time. The two components are created in him and he understands how happy he is now.

This is crucial since otherwise, we see how the state of happiness fades away, especially when it comes to two lovers. They do not understand and cannot appreciate that there can be a state in contrast to the state they feel. This is the reason they lose what they have.

A wise person sustains the two states internally. This is what is referred to by the expression “there is none wiser than the experienced.” This means that no one is wiser than the one who has been through all the opposite states and who can appreciate everything correctly. If he experiences a certain pleasure, he feels something in contrast to it at the same time, so his pleasure is whole.

Question: Is this the secret of a long life together with a spouse?

Answer: It is possible in marriage or in any other relationship in different states. You can appreciate something only if you lose it. There is nothing to be done about it. This is the reason that any early marriage and close relationships do not last long. Basically people with great egoism like today need experience.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 12/15/19

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Question: Should we be afraid of losing the feeling of love, or the object of our love?

Answer: In reality there is no object of our love. It is an uncertain state. Love does not mean a person loves someone’s hair, physical features, or special qualities another person has, but is actually external to matter. It stems from the attribute of general attraction that exists in nature and is part of the Creator. Loving another is a gift from the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 12/15/19

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Question: If a person who studies the wisdom of Kabbalah integrates with ordinary people does this help his or her point in the heart to awaken?

Answer: Yes it awakens them, but they do not know it. What is more, he does not need to integrate with them.

He can integrate only with friends who share his views around whom a special spiritual field is created which ordinary people are attracted to, not really knowing why. They suddenly find something. Their point in the heart suddenly awakens.

This field spreads in waves from people who study the wisdom of Kabbalah and others already get closer to them.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 2/9/20

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Baal HaSulam, Shamati, “Article 138”: When fear comes upon a person, he should know that there is none else but Him. And even witchcraft. And if he sees that fear overcomes him, he should say that there is no such thing as chance, but the Creator has given him a chance from above, and he must contemplate and study the end to which he has been sent this fear. It appears that it is so that he will overcome and say, “There is none else besides Him.”

But if after all this, the fear has not departed him, he should take it as an example and say that his servitude of the Creator should be in the same measure of the fear, meaning that the fear of heaven, which is a merit, should be in the same manner of fear that he now has. That is, the body is impressed by this superficial fear, and exactly in the same way that the body is impressed, so should be the fear of heaven.

Question: So, by invoking a sense of fear in us, does the Creator invite us to switch our attention to Him, to be in awe before Him, or have some other attitude toward him?

Answer: And how else can the Creator awaken an egoistic person who is locked within his petty goals so that he would start paying attention to his development and ultimately to the Creator?

How else can this be done if not by awakening all kinds of anxieties, fears, and troubles that supposedly take place? All this is similar to how we scare a child: “Do not go there! A grey wolf is hiding there.” We must somehow stop him.

Therefore, we have to understand that the Creator is playing this way with us small egoistic creatures in order to direct us toward Him.
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Form KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 4/26/20

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Question: The concealment of the Creator is the concealment of the fact that everything is sent by Him, that He is within us, He arranges everything. Why does He do this?

Answer: In order for us to demand His revelation. After all, by wanting this, I want to reveal the qualities of bestowal, love, and the qualities of connection in me. And it turns out that then I change myself from an egoist to an altruist.

Question: Is concealment not understanding His goals and plans, even if it is clear to me that He arranges everything for me?

Answer: This is a very complex system of relations, so I cannot answer unequivocally. If we carefully analyze this issue, then we must come to understand what “faith above reason” is.

There are many alternative states that can exist between a person and the Creator, and there are many more than between people.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 4/26/20

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Question: What is the center of the ten? Each time we touch this concept, but then we lose it. Does it happen when we connect with our points in the heart and annul ourselves?

Answer: The center of the ten is the point from which each of us annuls himself with regard to the other friends. When the whole ten annul themselves with regard to each other, we attain the center. Then the revelation of a wonderful attribute takes place, the attribute of spirituality, and the entrance to the upper world opens up before us.

This is actually a wonder, a miracle, the transition to another dimension that is between us. If each of us fully annuls oneself for the sake of togetherness, the point of togetherness suddenly becomes the gate, the passageway, to the upper world. This is what we have to do, and then everything will be revealed before us.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 12/1/19

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All the work is about raising oneself from the level of knowledge to faith above reason. And for this we will have to day-by-day, or rather, night-after-night, fall into the knowledge that is called “night” for us, and rise to the height of faith above knowledge that is called “day.” Indeed, faith is the light of the Creator.

All Kabbalists wrote about this transition from knowledge to faith above knowledge. At all times, they wrote only about this: how to go from the stage of man to the stage of the Creator, or in other words, from the animate stage to the speaking one.

It is difficult for a person to realize this transition. It must be understood that the Creator did not create anything but the egoism within which we are located, and this is called “inside knowledge.” And from this level, we must, through our efforts, request, and prayer to the Creator, rise to the level of faith above reason.

This is what we need to follow: how much are we in knowledge and how much higher is faith in knowledge, how much is the frequency of these transitions from knowledge to faith accelerated. Kabbalists say that in five minutes, 400 such changes of states took place: knowledge — faith is higher than knowledge. It is these changes that form a spiritual perception of reality in us because the Creator created one against the other: below knowledge, inside it, and above it.

As a baby, being born in this world, until he understands his parents, he feels them purely physically and gets used to what they are doing to him as good. So we gradually reveal faith above knowledge, the absolute goodness of the Creator, who organized all the path we have traveled, our entire history, past, and future. Thus, a person gradually sets himself opposite the Creator.

The main thing is to imagine in any state that it came from a higher power, beside which there is nothing. Only the Creator organizes my whole life, my thoughts, my desires, and even my attitude to Him now, no matter how it seems to me that I define it myself. So we correctly process all the states within the knowledge given by the Creator in order to rise above them with our efforts and prayer to faith above reason.

Only this is worth talking about and worrying about, and with this we will fix all problems. There is no greater crime than remaining within knowledge. The Creator throws us there, “kills,” but only so that we rise above knowledge.

This is what we must try to do every moment. It doesn’t matter that we don’t yet feel how the Creator organizes our life, but it is these efforts of ours that are very dear to the Creator, like a parent is pleased with the baby’s smile much more than the smile of a grownup child.

Therefore, while we are in a state of a newborn who is just beginning to respond to the Creator, relate to Him, ask, we already bring the Creator more pleasure than we will bring in the future. So it is arranged in the spiritual where there is a reverse order of lights and Kelim.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/19/20,  Baal HaSulam, Shamati 225 “Raising Oneself”

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The holiday of Shavuot comes on the 50th day after Passover. For 49 days we perform the Omer count, which is like counting tied bundles, because the main work of man is to bind himself with the Creator. If we bind all of us together with our desires and intentions, we create one common vessel, we create a place for the revelation of the Creator’s light.

There are seven Sefirot in the soul, seven qualities that are developing in the head of the spiritual Partzuf (Rosh): Hessed, Gevura, Tifferet, Netzach, Hod, Yesod, and Malchut. In each Sefira, there are another seven Sefirot, that is: 7 x 7 = 49, and combining all together, we get 50.

Therefore, on the 50th day after exiting Egypt, from the moment we began to correct our spiritual vessel, the connection between us, we come to this special day when the connection between everybody emerges. This day is called the holiday of Shavuot.

In Egypt, we were still under the control of the desire to receive and could not connect with each other. Pharaoh kept us in slavery and did not allow us to connect with each other. When we escape from the slavery of Pharaoh, we can begin to connect, and that is why we run away from him. After all, it was very good in Egypt in the corporeal sense. It was bad only in the spiritual sense because of the inability to connect.

Those who wanted to connect, considered it a spiritual gain and were not afraid to sacrifice material things for this purpose, they came out of Egypt. After that, when we start to connect with each other, we come to the state of Omer, a bundle. So, we join part by part, counting these bundles until we reach the last, 49^th day in the Omer count when we are already able to receive from the Creator the light that will fill us.

And for 49 days, we were receiving only the light of correction, so it was called the Omer. Each time, we found egoistic qualities between us that did not allow us to connect, but we tried to correct them and connect them, until on the 50th day, everything finally connected and we reached the common quality of mutual bestowal between us and from us to the Creator. Now the Creator can also give us the light and this is why it is called the day of the giving the Torah.

The symbols of this holiday are milk, the sign of bestowal, and a connected group bound together in one bundle (Omer) and in adhesion with the Creator.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/28/20, “Feast of Weeks”

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When a person comes to studying the wisdom of Kabbalah he does not understand where he has come. He thinks that the main thing is knowledge and study.

He is curious to know how many angels are in heaven, what their names are, what the upper world is, what our lives are, who controls us, and how we can control our own destiny. However, he does not have and cannot have the right attitude to spirituality.

This is like a three-year-old child who does not understand how the world is organized,  how everything works, and what the true reasons is for everything that is happening. He lives by being close to the adults who arrange his world. And he perceives this world to the extent of his abilities.

So also a person who comes to the wisdom of Kabbalah at first hopes to learn something interesting, to gain some kind of power. However, over time, he understands what “faith above reason” means, which allows him to see with his inner vision the real world, the world of truth.

Then he begins to prepare himself for the transition from the perception of the world in corporeal sensory organs to perception in the vessels of bestowal in order to see the world as the Creator sees it. He wants to become like the Creator, to adhere to Him, to be together with Him, and to feel like He does; therefore, he always checks himself regarding his attitude to the Creator.

When he falls from this perception and begins to feel only this world, he returns to his demand to feel the Creator and all of reality as the Creator feels it, in the qualities of bestowal.

In this way, he constantly moves from the qualities of reception to the qualities of bestowal, from the left line to the right one, and begins to climb the degrees of the spiritual ladder, as though with two legs. He does not try to hop from step to step on one leg because this is impossible; rather, he first steps with his left leg, rising in the left line one degree higher, and then lifts his right leg there. And then again: the left line a degree higher and the right line that joins it. A person rises and each time changes his perception and measure of adhesion with the Creator. This is how his advancement takes place.

Therefore, the preparation for the lesson is aimed at increasing our sensitivity. It depends on what part of the world a person is in and what time of day they come to class. For many, it is early morning. They wake up from sleep and need to awaken their dulled feelings.

If a person lives in America, he comes to class after work, with the burden of the day’s worries. Therefore, we need preparation before the lesson, which should inspire the person, let him know where he is going and with whom he is dealing.

If he just woke up, he is completely detached from reality. And if he just came from work, he is immersed in his material problems and should shake them off. Therefore, we need to set ourselves up for the correct sensory perception of the study.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/24/20, “The Right Way To Study The Wisdom Of Kabbalah”

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