Question: Where is the center of the group found and how do we direct ourselves towards it? Is this a mental activity?
Answer: The center of the group is found in a place towards which all eyes and all hearts are directed, at the point where the friends expect to get a response for all of their efforts.
We have a common task and each one of us invests in the center of the group to the extent of his efforts and desires. In other words, the center of the group is the center of all the investments and hopes, the location of the prayers, and from there all of the requests rise upward. We invest all of our lives in the center of the group and we want the center to become the conclusion, the result of our lives.
We want to discover the guarantee there, for otherwise we cannot discover the Creator. The guarantee and the Creator, the Kli and the Light are discovered together as one thing. One cannot be without the other.
From the beginning of creation, there is no Light without a Kli and naturally, there is no Kli without the Light. This is what the Ari tells us in “The Tree of Life”: “Behold, that before the emanations were emanated and the creatures were created, the upper simple light had filled the whole existence.” This is to say, the reality and the Light already existed. One never existed without the other.
In the thought of creation, in the program of the Creator, the two components already existed as a single whole. There is no benefit to the Light if there is no Kli.
Therefore the center of the group is the place in which the Light and the desire need to be discovered together. This is the place in which the Creator is discovered within the creatures as a result of the correction of our properties.
The Kabbalists say that there must be at least ten people who invest effort in accord with the complete spiritual structure of the Ten Sefirot. If the group of ten (Minyan) invests effort in order to be a single whole, then in its center the Creator is discovered.
In order to be a single whole, they must maintain the general rules: “Don’t do to your friend what would be hateful to you, and you shall love your friend as yourself,” which means, to yearn for connection, unity, to be like one person, so that in a link between us, the characteristics that we attribute to the Creator will be discovered.
For we mold the Creator within the Kli, within our desire. And the moment that this desire will be somewhat like the Creator, to the smallest degree, then to that degree we can immediately discover Him. For this, a complete Kli is required, a HaVaYaH, the smallest Ten Sefirot, but it already exists.
To the extent that we kill our egoism, the image of the Creator begins to live in us. The attributes of the Creator live only in those people who kill their egoism for His sake, for the sake of His attributes of bestowal.
The center of the group is everything! There, in that center, all the worlds, Partzufim, Sefirot, the entire spiritual ladder, and the world of infinity are revealed. Everything takes place only at that center because when we begin to reveal the true concept of the group, it turns into the limitless vessel of the world of infinity for us. We learn all the systems—the entire world of Atzilut—from the center of the group.
So, when the creators of The Book of Zohar got closer to each other, to this center, they attained something new and told us about it. Thus they wrote The Book of Zohar, chapter by chapter, from attainment to attainment, defined by the measure of their unity.
Attainment comes from a new place every time: from Rabbi Yossi, Rabbi Abba, Rabbi Elezar, Rabbi Shimon himself, depending on what Sefira of the 10 was the most important in this attainment, and a new look, a new perspective, opened through its properties. Each Sefira is a different quality; that is why we see a complete structure through the prism of one quality or through the prism of another, which helps the understanding.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/6/13, The Zohar
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