Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 165

What Must One Do So That the Appeal to the Creator Will Be Detached from Oneself?

In order for an appeal to the Creator to be detached from oneself, we must examine our attitude to Him.

It is relatively easy for a person to imagine “I exist.” It is also not so difficult to imagine “my desire toward Him.” However, we cannot hold on to that sensation for long. We somehow grasp an inner image that tells us this is the Creator, but that image constantly changes, because we do not know what the Creator is in His ultimate form or inner sensation.

We can, in some way, position these two points of “I” and “He” in every state we are in. However, once these two points are present, the challenge is to examine the extent to which our attitude is directed at ourselves, and to what extent we imagine that it is directed at the Creator.

When we complete this scrutiny, we are given the next state, and the process continues accordingly.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 164

What Does It Mean to Prepare the Sensation?

According to the correction of the vessels, the Creator fills a person, dresses within them, and that is what the person feels. The preparation for this is the preparation of the sensations, the vessels.

A person who is hard of hearing buys a hearing aid. A nearsighted person buys glasses. Someone whose sense of taste is dull eats strongly flavored foods. A tired person drinks a cup of coffee to wake up a bit. If someone wants to heighten their sensitivity or stir their emotions, they might listen to special music. Various preparations are made in order to sharpen the senses.

Sometimes we see someone crying and it makes us laugh. At other times, someone tells us something ordinary and it brings us to tears. Everything depends on the person’s preparation.

We are in the most exalted state, that of final correction. However, due to our dull senses, we feel only a tiny fraction of it, and even in that tiny portion, we feel everything as the opposite of the final correction and curse our lives. The entire work of correction is the correction of our senses. This is “recognition of evil.” However, again the question arises: How can we know this if “the good” is concealed?

Baal HaSulam gives a parable about a wealthy man who locked his son in a dark basement with nothing but the food that was lowered down to him. The son cursed his father and saw him as a cruel torturer.. When he was finally taken outside and shown that there is another life beyond, his mental state worsened. He did not understand what was happening. He felt like the most miserable person in the world. These are exactly the kinds of states we go through.

Over time, we gradually learn from our state. What does “learn” mean? After his heart has been broken for twenty years, they bring light into the basement, and then he discovers all the treasures his father left there for him. He begins to understand that everything was done for his sake. And why was he in sorrow for twenty years? It was because he could not have digested all his wealth, in less time than that. Now he can. The vessel must be suited to the light, to the revelation.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 163

If Everything Comes from the Creator and the Person Does Not Truly Exist Independently, How Can We Understand Punishment?

That everything comes from the Creator does not erase a person’s existence. A person is the one who feels.

Who is the vessel? The vessel is the desire to enjoy from the Creator. The Creator fills the vessel with His presence. Aside from basic necessity, which is phase one of the four phases of direct light, all other fulfillments stem from the sensation of the Creator, from sensing the host, and not from what He has prepared for us. Therefore, the vessel is essentially what senses the reality of the Creator. The extent of concealment or revelation is the extent of emptiness or fullness in the vessel.

When we come to clarify the essence of actions from the side of the vessels, through screens and discernments, we see that the essence of these actions is awareness: “What is happening to me? Who is doing this to me? Why is He doing this? And what does He want from me?” After we clarify these matters, the states change, improve, and transform into the next states in line, and so on. In other words, we are not the doers. The Creator is the doer. But we are those who feel and who must, through our sensation, clarify what is truly happening to us.

The moment we clarify a state, it changes.

The entirety of these clarified sensations is called the work of discernment and the correction of sensation. Since we already exist in Ein Sof (infinity), we need nothing but the correction of our sensations. We need to correct our dullness of perception. Moreover, even the senses themselves are not truly corrected. Clarity comes from becoming aware that we find ourselves in dullness each time anew.

When we recognize the evil in a state, we reveal the posterior (Achoraim) of the Creator, which then turns into His anterior or “face” (Panim). This is how it is carried out each time anew. This means that our actions are only inner effort: exerting in finding that I, He, and the method are one, as Baal HaSulam writes in one of his letters. We must constantly sharpen this single point, again and again without pause, until the fog disperses more and more, until we discover that we are indeed where we have always been: in the final correction.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 162

Does Separation from the Creator Also Come from Him?

Certainly separation also comes from the Creator. Everything comes from Him. However, separation is punishment.

How should we respond to this state? We need to bless the good as we bless the bad and the bad as we bless the good. Yet separation from Godliness, or more precisely, the cessation of the ability to advance, meaning the ability to equalize our form with the Creator, is indeed the only punishment in reality.

In the corporeal world, this separation manifests as troubles that befall us, as negative events in our lives, and even as effects on the physical body. All the good comes from Him, and all the bad comes from the posterior (Achoraim) of the Creator, from concealment. The issue is not the concealment itself, but how we receive it and relate to it.

Punishment is punishment. Nothing can be done against it. The more we feel the concealment, the more we resist it. Concealment can be corrected through Hassadim (mercies). To the extent that we detach from our personal sensation and rise above it, we become those who delight in mercy (Hafetz Hesed), and then we perform corrections. In any case, anything less than final correction is considered punishment. However, we who are in this process view everything that happens to us as reward.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 161

What Should We Do in the Next Moment?

In the next moment, we must unite more deeply with our sensations, further sharpen our senses, and develop greater inner acuity in our contact with the Creator. This search, this connection, this discovery of contact, is given to us by increasing the illumination upon us. That is the reward.

We need to understand that advancement toward the final correction, even though it includes various states of alternating light and darkness, is itself the reward. When we are given a deficiency and the ability to realize that deficiency, that is our reward. How could it be anything other than reward?

Punishment is when we feel abandoned, when we feel as though we are not being attended to, as if we are in suspension. There is no greater punishment. “Why have You forsaken me?” That feeling itself is the punishment.

Kabbalists are people who yearn for Godliness, and who are indeed, as it is written, “Jews,” meaning from the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. How was Abraham different from the other nations? It is that he was a Kabbalist. In that he recognized his Creator and wished to unite with Him, he differed from his Persian neighbors.

To clarify, the Israeli nation is not unique by biological genes, but because it is a group of Kabbalists that separated from the Persian people. Therefore they called themselves “Jews” (Yehudim) or “Hebrews” (Ivrim). “Jews” because they seek unification (Yichud), and “Hebrews” because they cross over (Laavor) the barrier (Machsom) between our world and the spiritual world. That is our nation. When we fall from the degree of Kabbalists, we become called “gentiles.”

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 160

If We Know That Everything Is the Creator’s Work, How Can We Feel That the Work Itself Is the Reward?

If we are in the sensation of Godliness, then we understand that the work itself is the reward and that there is nothing higher than it.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 159

Chapter 16. Preparing the Sensation

During the period of preparation and upon entering spirituality, there are many actions we need to undergo. These include passing through special spiritual states called “birth,” “conception” (Ibur), “nurturing” (Yenika), and “mind” (Mochin), or “smallness, infancy” (Katnut), and “greatness, adulthood” (Gadlut).

When we are already in spirituality, in the sensation of Godliness, we go through various stages called 24 hours of the spiritual day. In The Study of the Ten Sefirot, Part 12, we learn how prayer is continuously divided into these 24 hours. Even sleep (the departure of the Mochin) is not rest. Instead, it is a special preparation for the next stage, and within it too there is much inner work in every single state.

That is, spirituality speaks of states in which we need to seemingly exert great effort in order to perform certain corrections and connections.

However, here it is written differently: “There is none as holy as the Lord, for there is no one besides You.” Meaning, everything is the Creator’s work. The Creator performs all the work. It is His work. The person has nothing to do but reach the sensation that indeed “there is none as holy as the Lord,” that “there is no one besides the Creator” who performs all actions. The Creator is responsible for both the planning and the execution, and in whom the result also resides. Our entire work and efforts are only to feel what is truly happening to us, and to feel it as correctly as possible.

Therefore, we learn in the wisdom of Kabbalah that all the degrees and states, from the present state to the future, even to what is called “the future to come” (which means after the final correction), are states that we exist in now. The states exist, we only need to experience them, one after another.

We can pass through them only by the force of movement, which is the light that corrects and fills us at every stage. That is advancement. This light acts upon us without any intervention on our part. Even the request for the light to come and correct us is a special request that we cannot generate by ourselves since we do not know what the light is, what we should be drawn to, what we should yearn for, or what we should attain.

We only need to pay attention to what is happening to us, what the Creator wants from us, and what the Creator is operating upon us at this very moment. In other words, we need to be sensitive to our contact with Godliness.

The moment we fully feel a state, it changes. When we have felt, absorbed, and accepted it, the state becomes ours. Afterward, we must once again sharpen our senses in order to equalize our form and feel the next state. In this too, of course, the Creator acts upon us, but we must make some effort to intensify our yearning. That is, we must actualize the yearning that the Creator gives us, or become aware of the yearning that we receive from above, and in such a way we advance.

Therefore, we learn in Kabbalah that all these states—birth, conception, nurturing, and Mochin—are carried out by the upper one. The preparation that we make is only to sharpen our sensitivity. We must be ready for the actions the Creator performs.

This means that opposite the holiness (Kedusha) from above, we must prepare our holiness from below.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 158

Does a Person Who Turns to the Creator Imagine Him as He Truly Is?

If a person turns to the Creator, they are directing themselves correctly at what the Creator is. They still do not see Him. They will see Him later when the Creator helps them and grants them the sensation of adhesion. However, they are already aimed at the Creator.

This can be illustrated as follows: A person searches for the Creator on their own, knowing He is behind a curtain, and calls out, “Where are You? Where!?” When they feel they are incapable of finding the Creator by themselves, they become disappointed and cry out in frustration, “Reveal where You are!”

This is a sign that the person is truly now standing before the Creator. And at that point, the Creator will answer them.

From a Talk on the Article “When Is One Considered ‘A Worker of the Creator’ in the Work?” 6/10/2002

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 157

If the Final Disappointment Comes Only at the End of the Path, Why Should We Constantly Remind Ourselves About “There Is None Else Besides Him”?

If a person finally despairs and then turns to the Creator only at the end of the path, why do we constantly say, “There is none else besides Him”? Why must we turn to Him all the time? It seems one could sit, wait, forget about Him, and work within oneself as if He does not exist, until one eventually becomes disappointed with everything, and subsequently some “point” in the mind and heart will awaken and remind us to turn to Him.

The matter is that if we are not unceasingly relating to “There is none else besides Him,” then all the effort we seemingly make on our own is directed at another goal. We miss the target and do not advance in the right direction.

What is disappointment in our own strength? It is disappointment meant to establish that “There is none else besides Him.” That is the true point of disappointment.

What does it mean to reach the final correction? We are in a certain state right now. What does it mean to reach the final correction in this state? It means to reach it with everything we currently have. We do not know what else we will have later or whether there will even be anything more than what we have now. Perhaps what we have attained up until now is already the final correction and there are no further degrees? How can we know where we stand on the ladder? We do not know anything.

If we can now completely and absolutely connect our qualities within ourselves, the state we are in, and our environment (both our inner and surrounding conditions), together with the Creator, and if we can bind all these factors into one unified whole without any difference between them, this constitutes our final correction.

What will take place on the next degree and whether it even exists, who knows? Perhaps everything is about to become revealed in the next moment? We should not think about what will be. We need to act now.

If at this point we become disappointed in our own strength and turn to the Creator, that is the best possible action. Why?

It is because if we truly attempt to connect these three variables together, we arrive at the awareness that we cannot. This is a sign that we truly directed ourselves at uniting these three factors. It is like a person who aims a rifle, where they align their eye, the barrel, and the target into one straight line. If we cry out to the Creator that we are incapable, this is a sign that we have indeed found Him. If we are not precisely directing our appeal to the Creator, we still believe that we can succeed by our own strength.

If we truly turn to the Creator and the Creator performs this unification for us at our degree, it is as though we are in the final correction. We acquire an inner light, a spiritual standing, perhaps a part of the final correction. But how would we know it is only a part? We would not. We do not know everything, and accordingly, we do not know the value of that part within the overall picture. Kabbalists say there are another 620 such states until a person reaches the final correction.

A person becomes disappointed with trying to unite Israel, the Torah, and the Creator as one. Only from this work do we despair. This is the work, and it is what “There is none else besides Him” means. We despair of our inability to accomplish this unification. There is nothing else to do but this.

Moreover, if we despair at being unable to make this unification and turn to the Creator, it is a sign that we are indeed close to unity, perhaps already within it, because we turn to the Creator from the very state we have reached and want to connect the two: “There is none else besides Him.” What else is there besides this? It is that tightly connected.

This is the sign that we have truly turned to the Creator and not to something we imagined to be the Creator. It is the test that we have directed our path and our vision precisely at Him.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 156

When Do We Despair of Our Own Strength?

We come to despair of our own strength only after going through all incorrect searches. We aim our “rifle” at various states and things, and only afterward do we arrive at the correct state, where we truly feel this sense of despair. However, this comes only after all other states.

We need to pass through all such states, and there can be thousands of them. We do not know how many thousands, perhaps there could be billions of states, and through their mutual inclusion within one another, they all exist within us.

However, if we receive good support from the environment, we go through them without even sensing the pace at which they are passing.

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