Question: How do we teach children the language of branches so they will come to understand the roots as quickly as possible?

Answer: I would read the Tanakh (the Pentateuch) with your child and explain the inner meaning to him. Children have good memories and imaginations, and they can easily translate the superficial tale into the internal process that you explain to them.

Then I would suggest to them to do the opposite by writing down the things they see in our world from an internal point of view, using the language of roots instead of branches.
[35136]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson on 2/10/11, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

Related Material:
Renewing All The Sciences
How Can We Influence Our Children?
The Purpose Of Education

Filed under: Children, Education, Kabbalah Study, Q&A, Torah - No Comments →

The language of branches is attained when you ascend from this world, and then in the upper world, you reveal the roots of everything existing in this world. But the goal isn’t simply to connect the branch with the root. This language does not connect us with the spiritual world, but with our teachers! This is the means that helps them to teach us.

We do not understand the spiritual language they speak as we did not learn it. And we do not have to know it because we are already familiar with it from our world. That is why we can hear it and learn from them about what happens in the spiritual world.

You open up the book in which some kind of words are written. If you were not living in this world, then you would not understand anything. But from our world, you are already familiar with what Kabbalists talk about, and you desire to attain the root to find out what they are pointing to in the upper world since they do not say a word about the material world.

Kabbalists do not describe our world with even one word. The Torah is not connected to our world and a person who interprets it this way materializes it and commits the greatest crime, creating “idols” for himself. It is talking only about the spiritual world. But in order to speak the same language as you, Kabbalists describe the spiritual world using words of our world in order to awaken some kind of connection or attitude to them within us.

This was deliberately planned in the thought of creation so we would begin rising from our world to the spiritual world. Thus, we have to take all of the means for this existing in this world.
[35001]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/10/11, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

Related Material:
Then You Will Remember Everything You Learned
Kabbalah Uses The. Most Precise Language
Timeless Language

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Kabbalah Study, Spiritual Teacher, Spirituality, Torah - No Comments →

The Book of Zohar, Weekly Torah Portion “Tetzaveh,” Selected Excerpts
Download: WMV Video|MP3 Audio

Filed under: Torah - No Comments →

When the question about the purpose of life (the point in the heart) arises in a person, Kabbalah turns to him or her and says: “If you change your attitude to the Light, you will reveal the system of 125 degrees of the Light, of the property of bestowal.” The transformations you will have to undergo relative to the Light are regarded as “Mishpatim” (laws). The states you are passing through are called life cycles (Gilgulim). The property you reside in at each of the states is called a soul. In other words, we are talking about the incarnation of the soul.

The weekly chapter “Mishpatim” (laws, judicial rulings) was written in a very comprehensive manner. It demonstrates to us all of the cycles that we have to go through over the course of 125 spiritual degrees to the end of correction, by advancing from the states the most distant from the Creator to the most exalted degrees that are closest to Him. Therefore, it is titled “Mishpatim (Laws),” where you must be your own prosecutor and judge, and no one else!

The Torah appeals to you: “Appoint judges and officers in all your gates.” At each gate leading to the Creator, you have to conduct a trial and rule upon a verdict to know who and what you are, how you sort your desires, with which of them you advance, and which you put aside for now.

We don’t work with “Ha Lev ha Even,” our “stony heart”; neither do we work with the “slave.” A slave must only assist, must only be present during the evolution but make no decisions; there is a master over him, the “Rosh” (head), and the former cancels himself before the master and advances thereby.

Everything is within a person who is a small world. That is why there have to be a maid and a mistress, a slave and a master, a widow, a wealthy, and a poor, all of whom are desires of our souls, and all of which unfold simultaneously. You don’t move on from one level to another, transferring from the state called “slave” to the state “master,” “Cohen (priest),” and so on. At each new step, you are comprised of all desires at once, each of which is in a certain condition. “A person is a small world” means that in each state, you contain everything there is.

I do not evaluate and verify my desires with the book: “This desire isn’t quite good; I have to fix it. But this one needs enhancing, so let me ‘tune it up.’” Rather, I analyze each desire relative to the Light.

I have to draw the Light on the right so that it would affect my desires. It is written: “In Your Light we will see the Light.” Under the influence of the Light, I examine myself and demand for the Light to return and reform me. And when I see that all corrections are complete, meaning the trial is over and I merit fulfillment, then the Light returns for the third time.

With the first coming of Light, I get to know my evil.
With the second coming of the Light, I get reformed.
With the third coming of the Light, I become fulfilled.

Thus, when we transition from one state to the next, we undergo three sub-states after which we complete correction of one degree and move on to the next. It means that I completed my Gilgul (incarnation, life cycle), my work with a set of desires that get revealed to me at a certain spiritual degree.
[34492]
From the Lesson on Weekly Torah Portion 1/26/2011

Filed under: Inner Work, Torah, Zohar - No Comments →

Question: Are we now making the right offering for the Tabernacle, or is the Creator putting it together piece by piece? Who is the architect?

Answer: Of course, we do not understand anything about our work just like a two-year-old child grows without knowing what he should become like when reaching three years. He does not plan the process of his growth and does not form himself at the age of three years. In the same way, we make a Menorah (a seven-branched candelabrum) by throwing a piece of gold into the fire and then having it emerge by itself. But how does it happen “by itself”?

The matter is that you cannot do anything yourself. If you prepare your intention (not the action, but only the intention!), if you build it in the middle line, then the Light will turn your matter precisely into the form that this matter has to assume. This matter cannot take on any other form! In other words, it already has this form, and you must only reveal it by having your intention reveal this picture to you.

You enter a world that is ready ahead of time! When you reveal the “ball and the flower," “the Menorah,” “the table,” "the onyx and other stones,” you are revealing what already exists. You are the one renewing your perception. You reveal it; it becomes revealed to you and inside of you. You build your vision, perception, understanding, and agreement. According to the extent of your agreement, you don’t see the external form, but you see that everything is inside of you. Your vision becomes internal.

Right now what you see seems external to you, but in spirituality you see that everything is inside. Then your perception is authentic. You no longer have the illusion you are in now where it seems to you that the world exists outside of you, that there is you and the world. In spirituality this lie does not exist. You feel that everything is inside of you, inside of the soul with which you identify yourself.
[34523]
From the lesson on the weekly Torah portion on 2/4/11

Related Material:
Wake Up In The Spiritual World
Becoming Conscious
Kabbalah: Revelation Of The Entire Reality Within You

Filed under: Perception, Prayer and Intention, Q&A, Spirituality, Torah - No Comments →

The weekly Torah portion “Truma” (Offering) is not talking about our false reality in this illusory world, which we perceive in our desire. Why is it illusory? It is because we have been given this form of our unconscious state where it seems to us that we exist.

There are movies showing how everyone sleeps a deep, somnambulant sleep and everything takes place in the dream. This is the state we are in today because we are separated from the true reality. Our reality is a kind of dream, which is why it is written, “We were like in a dream.”

It seems to us that we exist in reality, like the horse driver who went to heaven and to compensate for the suffering he endured, he received the reality he had in the earthly world: a wife, children, a home, a carriage, and a good horse. This means that a person receives what he desires. It says in The Book of Zohar that a person in the world to come is asked, “What did you want?” Of course, no one asks anyone about anything and nothing of the sort takes place, but in the end a person receives what he aspired to.

The same is true in our reality. Right now we exist in an imaginary world, but when we start independently building the true reality, we have to build it the way it says in this Torah portion. When I work on my desire, if I gradually transform my egoistic intention into the intention of bestowal, then I attain a new Kli in which I reveal a new reality. I build the Tabernacle and in the process I reveal the spiritual world more and more, until it becomes fully revealed.
[#34528]
From the lesson on the weekly Torah portion on 2/4/11

Related Material:
The Creator’s Call Sign
A Journey Through The Land Of Desires
This World Is Just A Starting Point

Filed under: Perception, Prayer and Intention, Torah, Zohar - No Comments →

Writings of Rabash, Dargot HaSulam “When the Creator Loves Man”
Download: WMV Video|MP3 Audio

The Book of Zohar, Weekly Torah Portion “Terumah,” Selected Excerpts
Download: WMV Video|MP3 Audio

Explanation of the Article, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Lesson 12
Download: WMV Video|MP3 Audio

“The Study of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”
Download: WMV Video|MP3 Audio

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Torah, Zohar - No Comments →

Kabbalah, the method of attaining the upper world, includes two parts:

1. The first part tells us about how to unite with each other, or how to try to connect and unite;
2. The second part tells us about how to evoke the influence or effect of the upper Light upon us.

Before we begin to study we have to be perforated by the aspiration to unite our desires. Then every person will have a much greater desire than his own. He will begin to be permeated by thoughts, qualities, and desires of other people who also aspire to the same result and the same goal as he. This should be our main intention before the study.

A person who hasn’t prepared for the study in this way misses practically everything because the influence of the upper Light does not come upon the desire of each person, but upon the aspiration that each of us has toward others, meaning on our mutual aspirations to unite with one another, with everyone all together into one common desire.

If I imagine this one common desire and wish to be included in it “as one man,”as before the breaking of Adam into separate souls, then my aspiration receives the influence of the upper Light. Then I really gain spiritual attainment as a result of these efforts.

However, if I come there and listen without these efforts, without making attempts to be included in the common desire, then the upper Light does not have anything it can influence inside of me. I did not provide a surface or basis that it can influence and therefore all of my actions will only elicit purely formal knowledge. That is, I will hear and memorize what is written in the book, but no more.

Therefore, it must be crystal clear to us that the upper Light comes only to our mutual efforts. They have to be mutual! Therefore, the condition for attracting the Light to us is the same condition as was required during the reception of the Torah: “To be as one man with one heart.” Only in this case does the Light come.

So let us try to think this way.
[34265]
From the 3rd lesson of the Berlin Convention on 1/28/11

Related Material:
Anyone Is Capable Of Additional Effort
There Is A Way To Resolve All The Contradictions
Reaching The Right Request

Filed under: Collective Soul, Conventions, Kabbalah Study, Prayer and Intention, Torah, Unity - 1 Comment →

The Book of Zohar, Weekly Torah Portion “Mishpatim,” Selected Excerpts
Download: WMV Video|MP3 Audio

Filed under: Torah - No Comments →

Question: What does it mean to thank the Creator?

Answer: After all the efforts that are required from me in dissemination, studies, and the group, I reach despair and then I start perceiving my egoistic desire separately from myself. It’s the same as how a sick person feels the place of the illness and its source—the painful area inside him, which he discerns and wants to isolate.

Then he begins working to come out of Egypt, to isolate his egoistic desire. A person tries to separate from it, but cannot do it. That is how the first and second Egyptian plagues go by.

After that a person starts to feel that all of these changes in relation to his evil inclination are evoked by the Creator. As the Torah tells us, the Creator informs Moses that He has given more strength to Pharaoh in order to ascend and project Himself above him.

A person starts to see and understand that the Creator does all of the work inside him. He leads him up, out of the egoistic calculation, and then lowers him, and then a person falls back. Then the Creator brings him out once again and later a person falls again. That is how time after time, a person acquires the knowledge and sensation of the fact that unless the Creator performs these actions upon him, he will always remain in Egypt by himself, inside his egoistic desire.

These impressions accumulate, becoming clearer and stronger, until a person cries out, ready for anything—even pitch darkness for his egoism —anything to run away from it. This is the “Egyptian darkness,” the night of the exodus from Egypt. There is no darkness in a person greater than this one, but if he knows that he is following the Creator, then he prefers this darkness. Of course, he does not prefer it in the desire for pleasure, but because the Creator is walking ahead of him.

And the way to attain this is through meticulous work.
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/11, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
Diving Into The Depth Of Unity
We Need One Victory
One Instant Between Now And Eternity

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Egoism, Inner Work, Q&A, Torah - No Comments →