Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 138

Why Do Man and Woman Together Bear Male and Female Offspring, and Not Each Their Own Kind?

Man and woman together bear both male and female because each degree includes both aspects. Through their coupling, they produce the next degree. In the next degree, there is again a split between male and female, two opposing sides, “a help against Him,” until they find a correction where they cling together, and through their adhesion, they give birth to another degree, the next state. In every new state that we enter, we discover these two opposing elements of male and female, and begin to unite them.

We find within ourselves the discernments called “woman” (female desires). We correct these desires toward the goal, which is an act called “male.” “Male” refers to the Creator within us, the bestowing part. We make a coupling (Zivug) between the two, and thereby give birth to their next state. In the next state, we go through the same process. These are the inner reincarnations we undergo. We can sit in a lesson for just a few hours and go through thousands of reincarnations, from generation to generation, parents to children, and it all carries out within us.
From a Talk on the Article “If a Woman Inseminates,” 6/8/2002

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 137

What Is the Concept of “The World of Atzilut” in Our Work?

We perform various scrutinies regarding the purpose of creation and our relationship with the Creator. We try to integrate the many disturbances we encounter into “There is none else besides Him.” This is the work: against all kinds of disturbances sent by the Creator, we must return to the awareness that “There is none else besides Him.” Everything is sent from above so we will connect to the Creator.

However, from this work, we still see no benefit. We struggle to act, but cannot. We constantly battle internally, encounter various screams and blows, become disappointed and exhausted, and disturbances keep coming.

After we complete a certain portion of this work, an illumination comes from above. We receive help to connect to the idea of “There is none else besides Him” above all of our efforts. This is called the matter of “the world of Atzilut,” where there are no disturbances. “All judgments are removed from it.” The judgments descend from under us. Our heart and mind become clean, and for a few moments, we can adhere to “He and His Name are One.” This is called “Atzilut.”

This feeling spreads within us, and we realize ourselves through it with all of our prior efforts, after gathering all discernments into one, over all disturbances. It is not yet the end of correction, but it is a state toward it.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 136

What Is the Meaning of “Animal Food” and “Human Food”?

Each spiritual degree is nourished according to its stature. Animal food is vegetative. Human food is both vegetative and animate because the human belongs to the speaking degree. What distinguishes a human from an animal? Their degree. Baal HaSulam says that human food is processed from wheat, while animal food consists of raw grains and the wheat itself.

He explains this well in Sifra deTzniuta from The Zohar: A person comes to a city (“city” refers to the world of Atzilut) and sees that everyone there is eating various breads and pastries. He looks at the foods, and people offer him: “Taste.” He tastes and finds the foods very delicious. Then he asks, “What are these foods made from?” They answer: “From wheat.” And he is astonished: “I have never known foods like this, because my whole life, like an animal, I ate only raw wheat.”

The person reached the “city,” Atzilut, and saw that foods are sold and eaten there, but they are processed differently. They are called “human food.” Only a human can prepare such foods, by processing wheat with “water” and “flour,” which symbolize the discernments of Hassadim and Hochma.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 135

How Can We Direct Desires?

We cannot direct our desires except by examining whether a particular desire is beneficial toward our goal. If we have no goal beyond simply fulfilling the desire, then we are like animals: when commanded to crave grass, they eat grass; when commanded to rest, they lie down; they drink water according to command, and so on. In this animalistic state, we merely carry out whatever desire arises within us, period. We possess no other inner program aside from instinctively executing desires. Thus, we are called “inanimate,” “vegetative,” or “animate.” In the “speaking” or “human” degree, we have a goal, an additional program that connects us to our “host” through the processes happening within.

RABASH explains that there is something called “the sustenance of existence,” which exists in the inanimate, vegetative, and animate. It concerns how each being lives: how it has a will to receive, how it sustains itself, and what it desires for its own survival. But beyond this, there is a purpose: to bring this existence to a special state. The wisdom of Kabbalah does not deal with the sustenance of existence, with how everyone was given a desire and how we maintain ourselves like animals. It deals solely with the ways to reach the purpose, the additional inner program implanted within creation.

Thus, two programs were instilled within us, which create a split personality. We do not know which program to follow that will be better for us. The first program demands we protect our animalistic self, while the second demands we reach the goal. Then, we bounce between desires: we want money, then we want honor, then we want honor again, then we want the Creator, then we want the Creator again, then we want the purpose, and we scrutinize whether to act or not to act, constantly moving between a blend of drives. This is all because we possess two programs. As Kabbalah explains: when there is a host and there is also food on the table, the two contradict each other.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 134

How Does the Desire Change?

We should not engage in trying to change the desire, because it is not in our hands to do so. A person cannot change desires. Our preparation is to discern that a desire to change desire is no good, that the created being cannot change anything. Desires were created by the Creator.

We cannot change our desires by ourselves, nor even shift from one thought to another or from one desire to another, within them. This takes place only from above, through changes in the light.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 133

How Does the Desire Change?

We should not engage in trying to change the desire, because it is not in our hands to do so. A person cannot change desires. Our preparation is to discern that a desire to change desire is no good, that the created being cannot change anything. Desires were created by the Creator. We cannot change our desires by ourselves, nor even shift from one thought to another or from one desire to another, within them. This takes place only from above, through changes in the light.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 132

Is Prayer a Means?

Prayer is not merely a means. We refine our desire to make it better, to make it function, and to assume another form through prayer. What is prayer? It is a deficiency within the desire, a request for the desire to change.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 131

How Are the States of Male and Female Felt Before the Barrier?

The myriad spiritual discernments RABASH writes about exist within us as a copy. Even before the barrier, we can imagine various spiritual states. True, they exist only in imagination, but we already experience certain subtle sensations. We do not yet have full feelings, and what we imagine is inaccurate, but there is some shadow of truth.

In other words, within the point in the heart, there is already some volume, a space for each concept, sensation, and for the relationships between them. There is a certain distance, a kind of hollow, between every definition inside the point in the heart. We can sense that something belongs to the right side, and something else to the left side. One thing feels a bit closer, another more distant. We have an inner sensation corresponding to these, though not yet a real feeling, only a slight sensitivity, as if we can “smell” the real thing. Due to the breaking of the vessels, there are sparks left within, which allow some form of sensing.

How can we feel something through the sparks? If we work with the point in the heart, we attract various surrounding lights around ourselves. The light that comes during the study is not uniform; it carries many possibilities according to the vessel. It is simple light (Ohr Pashut), not inner light (Ohr Pnimi) or surrounding light (Ohr Makif) in the full sense, but a subtle illumination that constantly surrounds us. Depending on how we work with the point in the heart, how we develop it and make discernments within it, the surrounding light acts differently on these discernments time after time.

Even though this light is not yet like the clear inner light NRNHY (Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama, Haya, Yechida), which is distinctly tied to specific degrees like Hassadim, Hochma, and so on, it nonetheless contains nuances and shades. Therefore, it not only develops sensitivity within the point in the heart, but it also causes it to swell, and prepares it for the growth of future organs, like a seed cell. We can have a certain sensitivity that within this seed cell are tiny points, minuscule seeds, from which the future body of the soul will develop. Even before the barrier, we can have such sensitivities.

Of course, it is still just a seed, a drop. We must therefore prepare ourselves toward this drop, wishing for it to develop organs and different parts and relations toward the Creator. The organs—“hand,” “foot,” “liver,” “head,” etc.—represent different relationships arising from our various desires toward the Creator. We wish for it to be so, but do not yet find those desires and discernments within us, yet we still search for them and seek how we can relate to the Creator through them.

When we complete this search, this effort (when exactly is in the hands of the Creator), only then does the Creator give His response: He revives the seed, and it begins to develop. In other words, we must do half the work through our own efforts, and after dedicating all of our effort and completing our share, which is called “filling our measure,” we then receive from above.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 130

How Can We Be Concerned about Improving the Society?

As much as it depends on us, we need to prepare ourselves and act. We must be sensitive to what is happening among our friends. Perhaps everything they lack is already there among them, but they do not see or feel it, like a cat walking around between people’s legs, unaware of the changing states around it. Therefore, before anything else, we need to awaken our sensitivity to everything happening in our society, be impressed by our friends, and not dismiss them.

We must ensure that our sensory receptors are highly sensitive to things that can evoke admiration for the society. To achieve this, we should:

1) Awaken ourselves by reading Kabbalistic texts, listening to Kabbalistic music, and so on.

2) Demand from the society that, despite our sensitivity, the friends “perform” for us, that is, act in a way that stimulates our senses so that we can perceive their actions through our senses, to see and to hear them, and that the friends do not remain like hidden righteous ones. By making their actions visible, we can be impressed by them.

Indeed, this performance is somewhat of a lie, but through this lie, we reach the goal. Therefore, it does not matter if people act in front of each other. In Judaism and in Hassidut, it is customary for everyone to demonstrate to their friend how they pray and how they conduct themselves, because they learn from one another accordingly. However, in Kabbalah, this is done for the sake of attaining an internal state.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 129

How Do We Choose a Society That Will Bring Us to the Correct Desire?

It is according to the extent by which we are impressed by the society, by the friends, and think that the spirituality they engage in is unique, great, and overshadows everything else. If we are impressed in such a way, then this is the right society for us. If we are not impressed by anyone in the society, that society is no good for us.

If we observe the friends carefully and, no matter how much we look, we are still uninspired, it might be that we simply have no desire to see these matters as good. Or it might be that we are truly seeking, but no one does anything that inspires us. In the latter case, we need to seek out another society.

In other words, we must constantly be concerned about improving the society surrounding us. Baal HaSulam writes that this is the only choice given to us.

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