Weekly Torah Portion – 09.25.12
Posted on September 25th, 2012
The Book of Zohar, Weekly Torah Portion, “Ha-Shavua” Selected Excerpts
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The Book of Zohar, Weekly Torah Portion, “Ha-Shavua” Selected Excerpts
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Question: How can we use the lesson in order to tighten the connection between us? How can we enter the channel that you open and hold one another?
Answer: We have to feel that we are mutually connected to one another. If you don’t feel that we are connected in our hearts a bit more today than we were two days ago, then you haven’t attained anything at the convention. This is the index for the success of the convention. We feel the connection a bit more, the warmth and the closeness among us; we have been through a certain process, we have experienced a certain event that connected us and has created a common understanding, feeling, action, power, investment, and general knowledge of what we had. All this has built a connection and now the feeling of connection has to develop further.
We have to feel this especially during the lessons, since during the lesson we actually develop our connections more deeply, and so I have to keep the way it feels inside me and thus to advance. Step by step, from one lesson to another, from day to day, I have to feel, just as I do now after having grown a bit closer to one another after the convention.
It isn’t felt in the mind and not in the heart, but in the feeling of connection, as we all become closer to one another. A few more such efforts and we will begin to feel different phenomena among us—that something is beginning to move, to shake inside, and this is already the spiritual embryo.
So we should want all our desires and thoughts to be around that and they will be part of our mutual connection. This is called the “center of the group,” the collective feeling that is built by similar actions.
It is impossible to hold conventions everyday; it isn’t good; we would immediately feel that it is useless. But we have to renew our connections during the morning lesson. Of course, there will still be the daily problems, difficulties, and the hardening of the heart as usual. But this is what we have to do: We have to check daily and assess the point of our connection and with it advance forward.
I think that today it should be clearer to everyone than it was before.
Question: Is the morning lesson a group work?
Answer: Yes. We know this from Rabbi Shimon’s students who also came to the morning lesson and discovered the mutual connection between them and wrote about it in The Book of Zohar. First they felt the evil among them, the hatred, a burning fire among them; they couldn’t look at one another or connect to one another. Then they overcame that state and attained the connection: love, unity, mutuality, and described these levels in their book. This is how The Book of Zohar was created.
There is nothing more than that; only the closeness among people when we clarify and discover among us the levels and the types of the connection. This is the spiritual world. If instead of receiving, instead of the desire to gain from one another, we reach bestowal, when everyone wants to give to others, then the corporeal world changes into the spiritual world and there we find the transcendental reality.
We should understand that only in this direction will we discover the sources and understand as described by the Kabbalists.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/23/12, Questions and Answers
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Preparation to the Lesson
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Writings of Rabash “Article 27”
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpt “Aharei-Mot,” Item 174, Lesson 13
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Volume 3, Part 8, Item 14, Lesson 7
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“Matan Torah (Giving of the Torah)“
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The only means for spiritual advancement is working in the group, thanks to which we clarify whether we want to connect with one another. Eventually we discover that we cannot connect and don’t even want to and totally reject the mutual connection.
Our whole nature rebels against such a connection. We are ready to put up with anything except that. There are relationships that we enjoy and we want them, but a connection with the friends, a mutual connection in which every individual serves the general—our heart will never agree to that.
Only such a mutual relationship is called “connection,” in which everyone is like a component in an electric circuit, or in an engine. So in every whole system, every component is part of the system and has to perform his job and keep his obligations to the other parts.
In order to do that, we need to annul the ego. People whose ego isn’t so developed are ready to be with others and it is easy for them to be close, to feel one another, to be friends. However, the more a person develops, the more his ego grows and the more difficult he finds it to connect with others. He doesn’t feel that he has friends at all.
Once, even several decades ago, people felt close to one another, but today everyone is by himself. We don’t even notice how everyone is closed up in his niche. We hide behind the computer screen and call it a relationship. We feel better this way, more comfortable! All of humanity is like that now.
There are different methods to make people connect, which are mainly based on Nazism, fascism, and fundamentalism. These methods are meant to evoke the feeling of solidarity in the masses. To some extent it stops their psychological development and so it is easier to manage them.
But in spiritual development on the other hand, there are two opposing approaches that are integrated. On the one hand, a person has to be very developed, a great individualist. Everyone must feel that he is totally isolated and that he doesn’t belong to anyone else. It is so prominent that it seems as if he doesn’t belong to this world.
On the other hand, we are required to connect so powerfully that everyone should totally annul himself against his desire to annul others. It is the most unrealistic demand that can possibly be in our world, and it is against the trend of human development. After all, as the ego develops people become increasingly more detached from one another. Everyone draws away from others and hides behind his computer, his cell phone, or at home.
Everyone lives in a niche he has created for himself. Suddenly he is required to do the opposite: to leave his niche and connect in his heart and soul. What is more, we have to do this not by being forced, but to want it ourselves! After all, we discover that this unity is the highest value.
There is no advantage in it, but this is where the truth lies. So it is very hard to approach the values of bestowal and love, if internally in our feelings we don’t find a justification for it.
But this is the principle according to which the spiritual world works! In order to acquire these values, which are totally opposite from our current values, we have to recruit the help of the upper force so that it will influence us and change us.
We have to ask for that during the study. After all, we study the actions that take place on a higher level—actions of bestowal, love, and connection—working on the systems of the souls. It isn’t a mechanical system that is emotionless, but a live system in which the mind and the feelings operate according to the law of mutual guarantee.
We study about the relations between our desires, which are in mutual bestowal, and we want to resemble them, which means to study them, to connect to them and to enter the same state. Thus, we draw ourselves to this state and spur the influence of the force called the Light that Reforms.
We have to think and study about these upper states, about how our egoistic desires operate loyally in mutual bestowal.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/19/12, The Zohar
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Preparation to the Lesson
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Writings of Baal HaSulam “Igrot,” Letter 18
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpt “Aharei-Mot,” Item 162, Lesson 12
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 8
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“Matan Torah (Giving of the Torah),” Item 15
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Preparation to the Lesson
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Shamati #209 “Three Conditions in Prayer”
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpt “Aharei-Mot,” Lesson 11
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Volume 3, Part 8, Item 9, Lesson 5
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Questions and Answers
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Preparation to the Lesson
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Writings of Rabash “Igrot,” Letter 76
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpt “Aharei-Mot,” Lesson 10
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Volume 3, Part 8, Item 8, Lesson 4
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“Introduction to the Book, The Tree of Life”
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Preparation to the Lesson
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Writings of Rabash “Igrot,” Letter 23
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpt “Aharei-Mot,” Lesson 9
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Volume 3, Part 8, Item 6, Lesson 3
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“Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot,” Items 4, 5
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The force of Love of the Creator that from the beginning isn’t found in the created being is transferred to him in an inverted way. This is called the evil inclination. According to the measure of love with which the Creator relates to us, it enters us in a reversed way and breeds in us the force of hatred, a degree of separation. If we would invert it now, then it would turn to love.
We must transform this hate back into love. That’s all! This is called the “mountain of hatred” transforms into the “mountain of holiness.”
We work only on our intention. We don’t consider the desire since it was given to us by nature. Everything depends only on where our thoughts are directed. Thus, it doesn’t matter what a person’s desires are. They don’t depend on him. From the beginning there are Taryag (613) desires, and all of them are for the sake of reception. Man wants to take advantage of the Creator and thus it is called Pharaoh. And all of our work is in transforming this Pharaoh into a holy angel.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/13/12, The Zohar
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Question: What can I do if not only don’t I have the desire to ask for the connection with the friends, but the opposite is true?
Answer: It is a sign that you haven’t prepared yourself. First, you must lower your pride, to subdue yourself to the environment, and to begin feeling that the friends are great people moving forward. While you are somewhere far behind, all alone, like a sleeping baby who was forgotten in his carriage.
Everyone has already moved forward a long way, and you, because of your pride, think that you are so special that you advanced forward by yourself. However, it isn’t so. It is they who moved forward, and you were left behind. First, you must acknowledge this. The detachment from the connection with the environment is the first reason for all the failures.
The problem is that you don’t have a deficiency, that there is no pressure. It is because you are not clarifying what is important. You constantly must make such efforts. If I constantly think about something, it becomes the most important thing for me and I don’t forget it during the study.
Besides, all the groups should work on this in order to awaken in everyone the importance of the spiritual goal. This is called the “mutual guarantee“—when we inspire one another to feel that there is nothing more important than bestowal. However, if everyone is under a kind of general anesthesia, a person cannot go against the power of the whole group, so he, too, falls asleep.
The problem is that you are used to advancing on someone else’s fuel, instead of each spurring others and then receiving from them much more that you have invested. The group should work as an amplifier of the individual passion of every individual desire.
However, I see that everyone is waiting for me to obligate this boat to move by my shouts and pressure. Without it, it is rocking on the waves, waiting to be pushed forward. The moment I stop pressuring, everyone immediately looks at me to see why I left. It is impossible to advance this way.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/11/12, The Zohar
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