Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 125

Why Do We Need the Surrounding Light?

We need the surrounding light because we fall into problems. The Creator darkens everything around us, which means that the Creator performs part of the work in concealment and part openly.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 124

How Can We Want to Be Male, to Bestow, Without Knowing What It Is?

The male desire is given from above. It is as a “half” or a “half shekel.” We need to do the first half of the work on our own, and afterward, to the extent we are ready, the light comes from above and completes the work, that is, it creates the vessel. Of course, we must equip ourselves with the desire that these corrections be performed within us. We prepare ourselves for these corrections through the surrounding light.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 123

Is “Female”—Bestowing in Order to Receive—a Klipa?

Bestowing in order to receive is called a “Klipa.” However, first this vessel must exist, and then we identify it as female, and from there we develop the desire to become male. In other words, the female stage is necessary.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 122

Is “Female” the Natural Intention We Are Born With?

We are not born with a natural intention “in order to receive.” “In order to receive” is an intention that becomes expressed solely in relation to the Creator and not simply as a drive to enjoy life. Merely enjoying life requires no correction. If we drink a glass of water in order to receive, this action does not become “in order to bestow.” “In order to receive” or “in order to bestow” become expressed solely in relation to the Creator and not in any other matter. Therefore, the wisdom of Kabbalah does not relate to this world; it relates only to Godliness. It deals with how we relate to the Creator, whether we want to draw from Him or to give to Him.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 121

Chapter 13. The True Nature

We cannot reach our root, the purpose of creation, without passing through every single state. Sometimes it might seem to us that we have already gone through a certain state or that we will not need to experience it because we already recognize and understand it. But that will not help us. We must pass through all the states.

We comprise all the discernments written in the books, and even those without mention. That is, we must enter into all the discernments of impurity (Klipa), holiness (Kedusha), Pharaoh, angel, and so on, to be in them, to want not to be in them, and to prepare ourselves to exit from them and advance, each time donning a new form and a new role, like an actor, thus passing through many garments.

We cannot avoid discerning something, meaning, we cannot skip degrees. We cannot desire to be male before we have been female. We must be and feel female, reject that state, and then, from that rejection and remorse, we will reach the state of male. In every single state, we need to prepare a deficiency for correction, and afterward, a deficiency for fulfillment.

So what is our true nature? Our nature is neither male nor female. Male and female are two states that we need to undergo, one after the other, at each and every degree. “Male” and “Female” represent intentions, not the will to receive.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 120

Can We Escape the Blows?

It is impossible to escape the blows. Our entire learning is based on how to pass through them. Even though all these states are predetermined, we learn how to navigate the path with awareness and willingness, so that even if we were given a different set of circumstances, we would still prefer to learn about ourselves and how we are opposite to the Creator.

In other words, we want to walk the path with full awareness. And when we do, we do not experience the blows as suffering. Instead, we pass through them joyfully.

We might feel the pain of disappointment, but at the same time, we observe ourselves from the outside, as if we were a body lying on an operating table, ready for surgery and correction. We actively participate in our own correction. Experiencing difficulties from this external perspective is an entirely different feeling. Instead of enduring each blow over the course of 50 years, we can pass through them in 10 minutes.

Corrections that would otherwise take an entire lifetime of struggle in the material world, through suffering (because suffering also purifies the body), are nothing compared to the corrections made by someone who studies Kabbalah.

We do not even understand what it means to go through these difficulties with full awareness. What humanity has done for thousands of years, what we ourselves have done over many reincarnations, can now be completed in a single lifetime, in one great leap forward.
From a Talk on the Article “On My Bed at Night,” 6/7/2002

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 119

Is This Process Predetermined?

The process itself is inevitable. Every obstacle along the way has already been written before we ever existed. If we could see the entire path in advance, we would see what blow is coming and what it will teach us. But without actually experiencing and confronting these blows, growth is impossible. As it is written, “He strikes him and says, ‘Grow!’”

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 118

Is Prayer a Request for the Strength to Work?

Prayer means that we ask only when we have no other choice. We turn to the Creator only when we have no alternative. Gradually, we begin to recall the Creator’s existence, and even this remembrance is something the Creator does. He makes it seem as if we remember Him on our own. In truth, we would never think about the Creator by ourselves.

The will to receive is structured such that it is entirely closed within itself. It is a closed system. The Creator introduces a tiny, imperceptible ray of light, and suddenly we think: “Oh, the Creator exists!” We feel as though we remembered Him on our own, without any help.

But in reality, it was the Creator who reminded us of His existence and let us turn to Him. This process happens repeatedly, and its entire purpose is to strengthen the connection with Him. Through this process, we build our inner spiritual system. It is how we acquire the Creator’s qualities and become similar to Him.

However, before this can happen, before we can recognize what is opposite to the Creator, before we can understand our “self,” the Creator needs to place us in unpleasant situations that are the exact opposite of the state we are about to attain.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 117

How Can We Gain Strength for the Work from a State of Helplessness?

How can we who realize that we lack true knowledge, who feel powerless and incapable of acquiring anything from what we read, who see that the door to spirituality is closed before us, how can we find strength to move forward if this work is placed upon us alone and not upon someone else? Where can we draw the strength for the work?

There are two completely different states that we tend to connect as one. The first is a state in which we are completely insignificant and beastly, with no spiritual strength at all. We do not understand anything about the spiritual world nor even about this world. We have no idea what will happen to us or to the world in the next moment. We have no concept of how everything is structured and operates. The more we open our eyes, the more we feel like a small child playing with pebbles on the shore of a vast ocean, just as Newton described his scientific work.

And this is a correct feeling. To some extent, this is what it means to sense the immense forces of nature. This is our reality. We cannot grasp this concept through our own strength.

This state described above is actually a springboard to an active state. Active in what way? In that we can demand strength and we can ask for corrections to be made within us. The previous state is meant to show us that, at our current level, this is truly our reality.

How can we ascend from this? We forget that we truly lack these forces. Why did the Creator make it so that at every step we get stuck and realize that we are nothing? It is so that from this helplessness, we will remember that the Creator exists. We then turn to the Creator, and He arranges everything for us in a way that lets us move forward, to understand, to act, and so on.

Why did the Creator make it this way? It is because this entire process is a means for us to connect to the Creator. It is intended so that we will surrender, so that we will feel a need for the Creator, and through this need, we will acquire the Creator’s attributes.

Ultimately the Creator wants us to become eternal and perfect like Him.

Each time, the Creator shows us weakness, helplessness, despair, ignorance, and a lack of grasp on reality—the exact opposite of His state—so that we will desire to turn to Him and receive the opposite of what we feel. “The opposite of what we feel” means receiving something from the Creator, His qualities and level.

Thus, through contrast, we arrive at a more complete state each time. The deeper we sink into feeling what is bad, the greater the good we can attain in contrast.
This is how all the spiritual levels are built.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 116

How Is the Concept of “a Vessel of Bestowal” Possible, Both a Vessel and a Bestower?

Indeed, there is something strange about the concept of a vessel of bestowal, a will to receive for the sake of bestowal. Since the Kabbalists lacked linguistic tools to express spiritual states, they used various simplified and condensed formulations. Had they not done so, they would have had to write entire books just to describe states such as Ibur (embryonic state), Katnut (smallness), Rosh (head), Toch (inner part), and so on, and even that would not have been enough. Therefore, they developed a language that would let them express spiritual states.

How does this language work? Through a kind of pre-agreed “password,” information is conveyed. This password carries extensive details about the subject matter and the intent of the author. If the reader is on the same spiritual level as the author, they share a common conceptual framework, and the meaning of the password is immediately clear to them.

For example, someone who does not know the meaning of the word “Rosh” (head) in Hebrew will have no idea what to do upon hearing it. We must be familiar with the word to understand its meaning.

However, mere familiarity with the word is not enough to grasp its full context. We must also understand the intent behind the term.

The language of Kabbalah is like a coded language where only those who recognize its codes can comprehend the meaning hidden behind the words. That is, in order to read Kabbalistic texts, we must know what the Kabbalists mean by their terms. They write to one another much like spies communicating in coded messages with no one but themselves able to understand what they were writing.

Why is it necessary to read Kabbalistic books? Baal HaSulam writes in “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot” (item 155) that when we long to understand the inner content of the words, without deceiving ourselves by forming imaginary, physical representations of them (as people often do when reading the Torah as if it were a historical narrative), and without interpreting the text in a corporeal, materialistic way, but instead deeply yearn to grasp the true, inner meaning of the words, we draw upon ourselves the surrounding light (Ohr Makif) from the state the text describes.

However, if instead of delving into the deeper layers of what the Kabbalists write, we imagine pictures from this world, then both the narrative and the imagery remain within the framework of this world. In such a case, we do not draw any illumination from above and remain stagnant, unable to progress.

This is the essential difference between the method of Kabbalah and any other approach to studying the Torah. In Kabbalah, we seek to draw the surrounding light upon ourselves. We strive to understand the inner meaning. This is called studying the inner aspect of the Torah, that is, learning precisely what it is conveying in its coded language.

Then, as we repeatedly attract the surrounding light during our study, we gradually advance until we enter the spiritual world.

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