Baal HaSulam’s Letter No. 19, p. 70: “Know thou the God of thy father and serve Him.” Know means recognition because a soul that does not know is not good. This means that if a person does not know his master, even though he has a soul and yearns and longs to serve Him, it is not good.

Even though one has a soul, he is not ready to know Him, “Until the spirit be poured upon him from on high.” However, one must lend an ear and listen to the words of the sages and believe in them wholeheartedly.

It has already been written: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.” The Baal Shem Tov interprets: “The Lord is thy shade.” Like the shade that follows one’s movements, its inclinations lean every way the person does, so is man according to the Creator. It means that when love for the Creator awakens, one must see that the Creator has awakened toward him with intense longing, etc.

Even if the point in the heart emerges in a person, he doesn’t know how to wake up and cannot do it on his own, alone. He is awakened by the upper Light, the Creator, while a person, from all these pleasant and unpleasant awakenings, is supposed to understand and learn how the Creator deals with him. He must learn to speak the Creator’s language to communicate with Him.

We need to come to a desire, intensity, and longing, that corresponds with what is next, meaning the first spiritual degree that exists above us or the last step of the ladder that sprawls down to us, along which our soul had descended from the world of Infinity some time ago. That was the rung where we were still linked with the Creator, and therefore, today, we are supposed to achieve the same kind of determination, intensity,and  desire that connected us with Him there.

We come to this kind of yearning by using the exercises that the Creator provides for us in the time regarded as “wheels” (Ofanim). He presents us with various opportunities to become connected to Him, and we don’t know why it should be in this specific form and this kind of situation. He suddenly reminds us that He exists, and we start to feel that we are missing Him.

At this point, it is necessary to understand who caused this awakening. Did I wake up on my own, or was it the Creator who woke me up? What am I supposed to do with it? Do I give thanks for my awakening or blame Him for not calling on me and for my having nothing at all? To the extent that a person is aware of this whole process and constantly strives to receive a desire for oneness, he will come to success.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/1/2011, Baal HaSulam’s Letter 19

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Question: When a person receives a blow from the Creator, he or she can logically understand that it is beneficial to them. But we live by our sensations and hence should move on from mental comprehension to an authentic feeling that it is truly for our own good. How does this transition occur?

Answer: You discover that the Creator does not send you blows. It is not a blow really; it’s just that the Creator awakens you since He loves you and wishes to bring you to the most beneficial state.You find that the Creator did it intentionally so as to raise you a bit above your egoism that you are residing in and that He doesn’t have an alternative.

Suppose you are lying unconscious and need to be revived, brought back to life. Obviously, when you are waking up and returning to consciousness, you feel bad and are suffering from wounds since you lost consciousness while being in critical condition. Now you are being revived. The doctors rejoice: “The patient is back!” But what’s to be happy about? Now he is screaming, hurting, and suffering…. Wouldn’t it be best to leave him unconscious? Certainly not!

Now you understand where it hurts and why. Now you must only create the right attitude to this suffering in you: “I am hurting where I lack the correct connection with the Creator. He is waking me up, wishing for us to love each other at the first step to affinity: my first spiritual degree.

From this degree, He radiates His attitude to me, illuminates me with His Light. And I sense this first spiritual step in its various manifestations as a bad state since my ego cannot bear this state of bestowal, love of others, the connection outside of me. I experience darkness, evil, and pain. I don’t desire it!”

True! I am aware that I don’t want it, that I feel bad. Who is giving this state to me? The Creator is. Why does He? He points out to me that if now I make an effort to rise above my feelings and switch my attitude to the one desired by the Creator, which He is demonstrating to me, then we will come in touch. And this must occur!

But you seem to be refusing: “No, it hurts! Take it away from me! I don’t need suffering or reward! I don’t want anything!” Well, if you don’t, you don’t; what can one do…

What can the Creator do? At any rate, He has plans for you. He understands that you are a fool, so He goes “around” you: He gives you all kinds of suffering and problems in life outside of any connections with Him, when you don’t understand or feel that it is He who is waking you up. He pulls on and stings you from every direction and arranges troubles, misfortunes, and problems for you.

Thus He exhausts you and then gives you a wake-up call so you may remember Him: “I see… There is the Creator. Perhaps, my problems are justified. Maybe, it’s for my own benefit.”At this point you change your attitude. Sufferings soften the flesh, and you are willing to bear more.

Then He sets before you the same conditions of the first degree of adhesion with Him once more, and this time your attitude is different to it. Frankly, it isn’t very convenient and doesn’t feel that good. It’s unpleasant, but we can bear it. You start to understand now that the encounter with the Creator is above pleasant sensations inside your ego and you must rise above your pleasant animate feelings.

You already possess a certain amount of tolerance and willingness to suffer. And then you begin working with the help of the group. You no longer scream: “No!” while on the threshold. You know that you have a group, the environment; you see that the Creator still hasn’t abandoned you and that you are still bonded with Him by the covenant.

You start employing the entire environment that He has arranged for you in life as the means for you to rise above your perception and start building relationships by using the mind, based on the analysis of “truth or falsehood” instead of “bitter or sweet.”

This is a discernment of a human rather than of an animal: “How should I build my relationship with the spiritual degree so that I rise above my bad sensation and don’t perceive it as such? I can’t help it; it’s necessary for me if I wish to be connected to the Creator.”
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/1/2011, Baal HaSulam’s Letter 19

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Rabash, Shlavey HaSulam (Steps of the Ladder), Article “The Torah Is Called the Middle Line”: One must have faith that there is “None else beside Him,” meaning that only the Creator compels him to do righteous deeds. But since he has not yet merited knowing that he is compelled by the Creator, the Creator clothes in other people [who as though exist outside of a person] and carries out these deeds with their help.

We think that we are surrounded by lots of people, that they influence us in a variety of ways, and that we must react to them. But if we begin to relate to them (“them” meaning the group of people studying Kabbalah, and not the whole outside world) as the Creator’s manifestation, His presence between us, His presentation to us, then as we unite in the group, we begin to study and attain Him.

One must have faith that behind the human images stands the Creator and carries out all the deeds in people.
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From Lesson 8, WE! Convention 4/3/2011

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When we enter the spiritual space, we embrace other souls. Otherwise, I simply cannot enter the spiritual world since it isn’t some fenced area that I can walk into through a door.

Only if I unify with the others into one system and feel reality not just personally, individually, but as the integral life of the system where we are connected together, the friends and I, by having become one man with one heart, can I start perceiving more details in it, through additional organs of perception besides my own. Most importantly, I feel it through our common desire, the common spiritual vessel that we are building together and which includes us all.

It isn’t simply a sum of our desires, but rather a totally new property that is regarded as the property of bestowal. It is this property through which I start feeling another dimension, the upper, spiritual one.

It isn’t just certain supplementary details and peculiarities that each of us can see differently, nor is it an exchange of our personal impressions. It is one common impression, but it derives from bestowal, from the sensation of the Creator’s actions. We perform the acts of bestowal, that is, we repeat His actions!

You begin to feel what it’s like to be the Creator, and for this reason spiritual attainment is unlike material attainment. And although the system that you have built isn’t “divine” but comprised of our souls, it still has a special design, the integration of souls in love, mutual reciprocity and guarantee above their initial ego, evil nature, hate, and repulsion. And the difference between the first and the second properties is what creates the space, the new dimension inside which we start experiencing actions regarded as “bestowal.”

In other words, you have built within, inside your desires and qualities, a model of the Creator that helps you understand what He is. Previously, you simply looked at this world and saw some creation without having the slightest idea about it. But now that you are approaching it, you find the Creator inside this creation since you are assembling His image from your own parts, from all souls.

In the end, you discover such a great number of details that you reveal in this world what was previously hidden in it. You see that the Creator’s actions were concealed in it.

You keep delving deeper, to the extent that you can attach a greater number of parts (souls) to your system and link them closer together, until all individual souls, with their personal view of the world, unify as one soul, one desire, regarded as Malchut of the world of Infinity. There, in their connection with one another, in all its smallest details, the individual souls come to a personal feeling and attainment which completely matches the upper force, the root that created collective attainment from which we started on our path.

It turns out that as a great number of particulars connect, you move on to the collective attainment which is extremely detailed and extensive. Through every soul and all of them at once linked together, you attain the Creator, the spiritual world. And it is you who is constructing Him since there is no Creator without the created being! This is why He is named “the Creator” (Bo-Reh), “come and see.”

Indeed, the key here is the work of the system. From the “matter” given to us, we build the “bricks” of the souls that each of us puts into the common system, while rising above our personal hate, egoism, repulsion, and at the same time preserve all our unique characteristics. Thereby, we create a very powerful system of our personal attainment.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/29/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Writings of Baal HaSulam, Letter 19: A person is not ready for adhesion with the Creator all at once, but gradually, as it is written, “Goodness and mercy shall follow me.” That is why he creates yearnings, which are the beginning of adhesion, as it is written, “a righteous who suffers.” He suffers because the Creator does not desire adhesion with him. That is why the person feels yearning and sorrow without love, which is necessary for adhesion. He feels suffering which will turn into the delight of adhesion.

Question: How can we aspire to a connection with the Creator in states of suffering that He sends us?

Answer: The Creator does not send us suffering. Only goodness comes from Him, but in my egoism, I feel His kind attitude in the opposite way, meaning that I experience suffering. But this is exactly the “awakening” that is necessary for attaining the goal, for changing my egoism to bestowal. Then suffering turns into pleasure.

Nothing changes besides my attitude to the world, as it is written, “You will eat what is old.” You have changed yourself and your attitude to what happens. You have ascended above your will to enjoy, and therefore, instead of suffering you experience pleasure.

You used to aspire to imaginary sources of fulfillment, but now your aspiration for the Creator, your sorrow and suffering turn into fulfillment because you don’t want anything but this. You only want to desire Him, and this already fulfills you.
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/1/11, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Writings of Baal HaSulam, Letter 19: A soul is a measure of yearning and longing….

Question: The concept of the quantity of yearning and longing can somewhat be understood, but what is the right quality?

Answer: Every person’s quantity and quality are determined subjectively, depending on the root of one’s soul and his mission. Similar to our world, there are all sorts of states we can measure by height and character, by the degree of one’s suffering or joy, the intensity of sensation, and the rate of their influence on a person.

Baal HaSulam gives just three examples for assessing them. Even though we differentiate much more, in the end, they all amount to these three, “in that place, at that time, in that woman” (these concepts are explained in the lesson).
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/1/11, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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The Creator is the authentic acting force in reality. On our path we attain the Creator, His plan, His work, and thereby become “the Creator’s workers,” meaning that we participate in this work ourselves as His partners.

For this to happen His mind needs to be revealed to us. After all, in the end we rise to the highest degree of the entire creation, to its program and the purpose that forestalls it.

“The end of an action is in its initial thought.” We reach the point in the Creator’s mind from which He started the work in which He thought of creation. Everything originates from this tiny point; it is the acting, creating mind which we acquire.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/28/2011, “The Acting Mind”

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Question: If the Creator is unchangeable, why do each one of us perceive Him differently?

Answer: Each one of us perceives the Creator differently to the extent of the development of his or her soul, according to his or her desires and qualities. This is because the Creator Himself cannot be perceived. I never feel Him; I perceive myself in relation to the “simple upper Light.” And in relation to this simple upper Light, I discover myself.

So, where am I? You are the entire world. Do you feel it? Yes. Do you exist together with those around you? Yes. Well, then you are this entire world. It is your desire where you perceive everything.

Do you feel as if it were happening on the outside? You are wrong. All of it is inside you. The entire world is inside you. You simply perceive your reality this way, against the upper Light. You do not perceive this upper Light, but it exists, and also not on the outside, but inside of you.

Anything you could ever imagine is inside you, the upper Light as well. But what is the upper Light? You can only speak about it based on your experience. Where is it? It is inside your desires. Everything is inside man.

This goes on until we actually reveal the upper force.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/26/2011, Shamati No.1

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