A question I received: In our world, we are used to knowing that progress is always expressed through some kind of proactive actions. But the activity you speak of seems to be more like an inner reflection, similar to meditation, where all I have to do is perceive the world differently. In that case, how do I express any activity?

My Answer: Your activity is expressed in your desires. After all, there is nothing in existence aside from desires. Our body is nothing but an animal which grazes in a field in order to remain alive. The more actions you carry out above and beyond what is necessary for this animal to survive, the more you will impair your internal efforts to understand who you are, where you are, the reason for your existence, and what is happening around you in the world. This is what internal reflection really is.

If instead of going deep into yourself in this way, you will spend your time on various mechanical actions, then you will be stealing from your internal efforts and as a result, bringing harm to yourself. Moreover, you will be harming the whole world. The only thing a person has to do in this world is to make actions that are vitally necessary for his body, while devoting all the rest of his time to inner development. This is exactly how all of the harmony in Nature is achieved, and Nature will compel us to maintain the same harmony.

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A question I received: It is written that nature will continue to develop according to the Creator’s conditions until His plan is successfully carried out. So what are the conditions that the Creator gives us?

My Answer: Everything must reach adhesion with Him. The Creator created nothing aside from a single point of desire, in which we exist. This point exists in an ocean of Light within the Creator. All we have to do is to feel all this power, fulfillment and oneness with the Creator, which exists in this single created state. Everything that follows occurs in that same point which was created “out of nothing.”

All our experiences and sensations take place within that point. All the experiences we go through take place while we imagine the world as us and the surrounding nature and people. But in reality, all of this is contained in that one point, which undergoes all sorts of changes within in order to reveal its true state.

The Creator wishes for that point to go through this entire path consciously, with understanding, by means of our efforts. That is how we will come to attain what is the Light and the Creator, which created this point out of nothing. We must come to know what “out of nothing” means, what the “point” is and what the “Light” is, and why He created everything the way He did.

We don’t know what will happen to us after we reach this realization, but apparently some new, additional horizons will become revealed to us after we reach perfection.

But this doesn’t really matter. After all, we advance step by step, and each previous step is just a preparatory phase for the next. We cannot skip steps. But nevertheless, we must always aim for Infinity, because that is the place to which we raise our prayer (MAN) and from which we receive our answer (MAD). This is the only way we can attain the correct attitude, make the right actions, and merit a result. It’s because everything aspires toward Infinity and descends to us from there; and it doesn’t matter that there are many degrees separating us from that state. All these degrees are your future states which are hidden from you for the time being. The degree immediately ahead of you is what you deem to be Infinity.
[4654]

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A question I received: Say I am carrying out an inner action, rather than an external, mechanical one. What is the inner driving force of this action? And what is its meaning?

My Answer: The whole meaning of our actions is to reveal reality by means of very hard efforts. This is what constitutes a person’s work in this world. A person comes into this world in order to reach the realization of his own evil, the evil of his existence. Granted, this realization comes gradually, whether to each person individually or to entire nations or even civilizations. It occurs in due time, according to the pyramid that constitutes the structure of humanity.

But eventually, every person needs to come to the realization of evil; that is, to understand that mankind’s material existence is good for nothing, and we are incapable of correcting it even if just to live like corrected animals that feel well.

And even if we could correct our corporeal existence and make our bodies feel well, we would be like cows standing before an endless green meadow. The cow has sunlight, water, and everything it could possibly want, but the grass and the cow’s life will come to an end one day! Our lives also will end someday and that’s it… And this thought, which the cow doesn’t have, suddenly begins to torment every person, once he reaches a certain level of development.

Most people don’t think about this, or they try to forget about it. But in the end, a person develops to such an extent that he begins to ask about this. He wonders: Why is this so? What for!? Moreover, if he sees an inevitable end ahead of him, and pictures it clearly, he feels sick from all the green grass around him. It fails to give him any pleasure if he knows that one day it will all end.

At that point, a person doesn’t want to live the moment. And that is when a very complex inner battle and discernments begin to take place in him. Does he want to continue enjoying the pleasures that he can receive today, tuning himself out from the next moment, or does he live for the future and exist only for the future’s sake?

This constitutes a person’s decision: to live for today and not think about the future, as though it doesn’t exist, or to live for the future and not worry about the present moment. It is one of the two. If I only think about the present moment, I am called an animal, and if I think about the future, I am called a human being. When a person begins to feel this sensation, he turns to the science of Kabbalah. He does it out of despair, due to being unable to find any meaning in mankind’s material development. That is when Kabbalah steps in and explains to the person why everything was created and how he can continue to advance.

The other sciences, too, confirm that man’s activity in this world is inherently flawed, and that we are destroying the world. We need to take from the world only as much as animals take. After all, our body is just an animal. And the rest of our efforts should be devoted to spiritual development, in order to rise to the “human” degree. This is where Nature is pushing us: to reach the human level.

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Two questions I received about how to deal with the erroneous ideas and imprints we receive in life:

Question: When people begin to study Kabbalah, they often bring their baggage of erroneous ideas, and they can get lost in the authentic concepts. What is the quickest and best way to sort out this inner mess?

My Answer: We must accept the student the way he is. The only thing that affects spiritual progress is the inspiration received from one’s environment, which is then aimed at the Creator. Besides, we don’t understand the value contained in false methods, as per the law “the rind protects the fruit.” This will be revealed to us at a later time.

We come to Kabbalah burdened with a myriad of misconceptions and stereotypes received in childhood and over the course of our lives. Everything we heard in childhood forms the foundation of “facts” within us. Then, the person is guided by these “facts” and unable to rise above them.

Until he acquires new qualities, which act within him with the same force as those “slogans and facts” that he naively heard and believed in as a child, he will not be able to feel the Upper world. But he is unable to rid himself of the old conceptions on his own, because they need to be replaced by the new – and this can only be done by the Light, which descends from the next degree of attainment.

Question: To what degree does everything we took in as children limit us?

My Answer: When a person receives the spiritual power of bestowal and rises above the corporeal, and begins to see his corporeal self from the side, he is astonished by the incredible amount of utterly baseless stereotypes that he is filled with. These are just things he had once taken on faith. It had entered his childish mind and left a non-erasable imprint, which he couldn’t do anything about.

That is why anyone can come and start studying. And only as time goes by, gradually, i.e. under the influence of the studied material, will he rid himself of false stereotypes and beliefs. The conceptions one had acquired later in his life are easier to part with; it’s the things that he had absorbed in his childhood that are the most difficult. Nevertheless, step by step, man peels himself of all this “rind,” until he begins to use the spiritual fruit when it truly becomes ripe.

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A question I received: How is it that an external Upper Force balances Malchut (the desire to receive pleasure) with the spiritual worlds, if all the worlds are within a person?

My Answer: The spiritual Force resides within us. There is nothing outside. Everything is within a person: the Creator, the creature and all of creation. And if it seems to me that an external world exists, it is because I am lacking the true, corrected perception.

But, if I view myself as being the entire world and concern myself with becoming similar to the Upper Force, if I constantly imagine this Force as increasingly more bestowing and loving to all, then to the degree that I understand and feel this Force, I will organize all my internal desires and qualities in such a way as to unite with others. And all this is done within me.

It turns out that I must correct only myself and my perception that the world supposedly exists outside of me. I begin to sense that indeed the world is all within me, and thus I correct reality. It turns out that the correction consists not in changing my relations with others, but in correcting my current perception that others exist outside of me and are not part of me. But having discovered that everything is mine, do I still remain an egoist?

Then, all of reality, its external and internal parts, seem to be as one. And even if I’ve yet to reach the true spiritual perception of reality and everything does not seem to me to be one single whole, it does not matter. The most important take-away from the science of Kabbalah is that a person has to correct only himself.

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A question I received: What’s the connection between the revelation of a new Kli or desire, and the revelation of the Creator?

My Answer: These are the same, because the Light shines to us inside the concealment. What do I mean by that? The science of Kabbalah explains that this process is like a flirt. In our world, for example, a woman covers herself up and then gradually reveals herself to a man. It’s a game, where beauty is revealed out of concealment, and the concealment attracts.

While we are in the state of concealment, we acquire a desire for revelation. But that’s not all: the revelation that we later achieve must be concealed from our own egoism, as well. So, the Creator maintains the concealment in order to reveal Himself to you. He reveals Himself while in concealment. On the other hand, if you are ready to accept the screen that conceals the Creator from your egoism, and to build a screen yourself, concealing your ego, you thereby rise above your egoism and reveal the Creator.

At that point, there are no more screens of concealment between the two of you. Instead, you guard your ego yourself, so as to keep it hidden. You always preserve the concealment, but now you do it in your attitude to the Creator. This, however, is not a concealment of the Creator, but a concealment of your egoism. This is how you achieve fulfillment.

Our whole problem in this world is that we annul the screen and try to fulfill ourselves directly, but this fulfillment immediately neutralizes the desire. No matter how passionately a person wishes to achieve what he desired – whether food, drink, sex, or fame – as soon as he achieves this, the pleasure immediately fades. He wishes for it so much, and spends years chasing after something, but as soon as he receives it, the pleasure is gone.

Why is this!? A person saves money for a new apartment for several years, then finally buys it, and just one week later, or two weeks, or a month, he no longer has that feeling of novelty and pleasure. And that is because by buying this apartment, he nullified the screen.

The entire science of Kabbalah talks about how to reveal and receive pleasure while keeping the screen. That way we can guard the pleasure, ensuring that it will fulfill us without fading away. As a result, we achieve the feeling of eternal and perfect life.

The only reason we ever feel worthless, defective, and mortal is because we reject the screen – the partition that has to exist between the pleasure and the desire. People who work in technology know how to implement this principle. They don’t just connect two wires directly, because that would cause a short circuit to occur. Instead, they place resistance between them – a resistor, and then they can derive a beneficial product. However, when it comes to our lives, we disregard this principle, and this is why our devices work, while we, the main device, are uncorrected.

The greatest wisdom is in knowing how to keep the covering with which the Creator first concealed Himself, because then the concealment will always attract us. However, we will then need to conceal our desire, our egoism, and rise above it. That is how we will reveal the Creator. When we do so, we do not lose our Kli or desire, because we constantly get an additional desire, as well as a screen over it, and thus, the revelation of the Creator.

This is the science of revelation – the science of Kabbalah, where we really receive what we desire and we don’t lose it right away, the way we do when acquiring anything in our world. In the spiritual world, you can’t achieve a revelation of the Creator even for a second if you plan to reject the screen. You have to first prepare the screen that hides your egoism, and then you can reveal the Creator above it. You need the preliminary preparation.

This is why we have to go through the period of preparation – the first few years of studying Kabbalah. In the long run, a person has to learn how to force or convince himself, and to understand that he requires a covering. This is why it is written that “wisdom is for the modest” – meaning those who can hide their desire to receive pleasure. It is precisely by hiding his desire that a person can receive fulfillment inside that same desire, and this fulfillment will never fade.

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Preparation
Your spiritual desire has to be like a flame that flares up and envelops you whole. Otherwise, if you settle for anything less than perfection, you will never achieve it.
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Part 1, on Baal HaSulam’s Letter 20
One must strive forward with all of one’s heart and soul, without sinking into “sorting out the past” sessions.
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Part 2, on Chapter 12 of Talmud Eser Sefirot, Item 203
The higher the range of my perception, the more correct the picture of reality that I reveal within.
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Part 3, on “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot,” Item 137
“Evil” is the desire to cause harm to another person and the pleasure you feel when things are going better for you than for others.
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Preparation
There is no slavery worse than being enslaved to your own egoistic nature.
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Part 1, on Baal HaSulam’s Letter 20
The breaking did not occur to myself, but to my connection with others. Thus, it is the interconnection among the souls that we have to correct.
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Part 2, on Chapter 12 of Talmud Eser Sefirot, Item 203
The Talmud Eser Sefirot describes the unification of the souls, as they overcome the egoism that becomes revealed in them.
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Part 3, on “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot,” Item 137
The only thing that comes from Above is the spark that ignites the fuse. But the flame within the soul continues burning in virtue of the efforts we make during the period of concealment.
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A question I received: You say that if a person willingly and consciously carries out the program of creation, he will attain the Creator’s plan. But when a child is putting together a puzzle, all he wants is to arrange the whole picture, and doesn’t connect to the thought that had created the game, right?

My Answer: The child doesn’t merely put together the contents of the box that contains the pieces of a puzzle.  As a result of his actions, he develops toward a state when he discovers an adult’s intelligence within himself, much like the one used by the person who had created the puzzle.  He begins to understand the purpose and function of the game’s every element – and therein lies his growth.

Our whole life is a puzzle! But the puzzle contains the thought of the Creator who created it. Therefore, as we put together this puzzle with a conscious desire to attain its creator, we attain Him. From the very start we are created such that by seeking the Creator of the world in our state (and Kabbalah tells us how to seek Him), we reveal Him. The effort of the search is the only thing that is required of us, just as a baby needs only to nurse in order to grow.

Question (con’t:) And what about all these spiritual worlds if we reveal the Creator in our world?

My Answer: This is the inner mechanism – our connection to the Creator across all the worlds. I exist in this world only in my perception, understanding and sensation, while in reality I exist in the world of Infinity, connected inseparably to the Creator. But He wants me to desire this connection on my own volition. That is why I feel distant and separated from Him, so that, gradually, I could come to Him, to the state in which I already exist and in which I have always existed. I need only to add a bit of my own effort in order to reveal this mechanism.

For instance, modern science needs only to look at a drop of semen to determine the future qualities of the person that develops from it. In other words, everything already exists within that drop of semen; all it needs is the force of development. The same is true with our soul – everything is already included within the tiny spark of Light and we need only to apply our own effort to it. We do not create a new creation; we merely reveal an already existing mechanism.

Our connection with the Creator already exists. All we need is to express the desire to reveal it!

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A question I received from my student: Can the Upper One pass on His desire to the lower one?

My Answer: This is exactly what He does, but only in response to our plea, “Give us the correct desires!” We pray only about our desire, for it to be like His: “Make your desire similar to the Creator’s desire.”

You don’t need anything else from Him, other than a new program for your behavior, for how to act. You have to receive a new mind, power and knowledge from Him, in order to be able to work with your “matter” correctly. More precisely, you have to recognize how flawed your current behavioral program is, because it is opposite to the program He is acting upon. And then, you have to ask Him to replace your program with one similar to His. That is when you will be corrected, made equivalent to the Creator.

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