Preparation to the Lesson

Writings of Rabash “What to Look for in the Assembly of Friends,” (Starting with: “And regarding ‘Buy yourself a friend'”) 

The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpt “Safra de Tzniyuta,” Lesson 2

Talmud Eser Sefirot, Volume 1, Part 3, Chapter 10, Item 2, Lesson 23

Kabbalah for the Student, “Time to Act”

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The Book of Zohar, Weekly Torah Portion, “Ha-Shavua” Selected Excerpts

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Preparation to the Lesson

Writings of Rabash “Igrot” Article 471

The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpts “Beresheet Bet (Genesis 2),” Lesson 157

The Book of Zohar– Selected Excerpt “Safra de Tzniyuta,” Lesson 1

Talmud Eser Sefirot, Volume 1, Part 3, Chapter 9, (“Ohr Pnimi,” Item 2), Lesson 20

Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Nation,” (Starting with: “However, when a person comes to Israel”), Lesson 7

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Question: How can we check what our intention is while reading The Zohar?

Answer: The Book of Zohar is the source of Light that comes to us if we want to use it correctly. Thus, while studying Kabbalistic books, I always summon some illumination upon me, but it comes according to the intensity of my efforts and my readiness. If I study in order to gain something corporeal or to gain the next world as a personal privilege, then the Light, by its influence, creates in me even greater darkness. I grow further away from the understanding of what this system was given to me for, what I have to do with myself, and how I should treat others. Even when I read wonderful words about love and connection, I don’t feel a sense of belonging anymore, I don’t see the connection and I don’t know how to perceive the text: Whether to let it enter my heart or not, this means that I study like a bat that is nourished by the night and doesn’t expect the dawn.

But if I try to connect with others and this is the reason I learn the method, by keeping and observing the condition for accepting it at Mt. Sinai, yearning together with everyone else to be “as one man in one heart,” to enter mutual guarantee, to attain brotherly love and through it the love of the Creator, then the Light begins to advance me. This isn’t the ordinary path that is overcome in stages anymore, but I gradually begin to discover the bad shattered state in it.

The egoistic study conceals my ego from me, and I see myself as righteous. On the other hand, by the right study, I discover that I am immersed in evil. The first thing that the Light reveals to me is my evil attributes, and I have to work accordingly. By discovering the evil, I feel even worse feelings than before. So what can I do? After all, according to my nature I want to escape when I feel bad.

Perhaps I should stop studying and withdraw from the group? Perhaps I should feel despair? Or perhaps I should be happy that I was allowed to discover the recognition of evil? It should be a law for me, an invitation: If I can rise above this unpleasant feeling, I will yearn for bestowal above receiving.

I prefer to receive a blow, since the sufferings that are revealed in my ego show me that I don’t work for it. Although I experience unpleasant feelings, I overcome them and aim at unity. I don’t escape in order to sweeten the bitterness; I don’t close myself, I don’t descend, and I don’t stop studying. On the contrary, I accept all the troubles that come from every direction on the way to unite with the friends, as being sent by the Creator and that there is nothing besides Him.

I accept every state as beneficial for my advancement. I don’t want to annul them and I continue to study in order to neutralize the bad feeling. I actually want it; I want it to stay since it focuses me exactly on how to rise above it, to be above reason. I gladly accept all the problems and interruptions, the pressure of the circumstances, the external mockery, the different sufferings, since they all help me focus on the goal correctly, creating such limitations, such frameworks, that by working within them I undoubtedly advance forward.

Thus build inside me the vessels of bestowal above the vessels of receiving. They continue to grow and to suffer, while I, being one level above them, want to hold on to the connection with the Creator until I attain full faith, the attribute of Bina, and begin using my vessels of receiving in order to bestow.

But then too I don’t intend to calm myself, since I have risen to such a degree that there should be no thought of complacency. On the contrary, I yearn more and more upwards and am even ready to receive pleasure, but not in order to fill myself, but in order to fulfill the Creator’s desire.

This is all our work. Along this path I need a real source, an egoistic desire that provides me with the force of bestowal thanks to my overcoming the problems and the sufferings that are revealed in it, and it’s clear to me that it all comes from the Creator.
[85707]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/16/12, The Book of Zohar

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We can attain everything we need to attain, as Baal HaSulam says, with the help of The Book of Zohar. A person who understands the power of The Book of Zohar doesn’t leave it for a single moment all his life. This is because The Zohar is such a great and powerful source that is unlimited in its intensity and in its influence on every one, and it is about this book that it says: “thanks to The Book of Zohar the children of Israel came out of exile,” and not by any other means.

So if we feel that we are in exile, (we will have to feel that, and it isn’t simple at all), we have to turn all the unpleasant feelings in our desire to receive, so that they will serve as an example for unpleasant feeling in the desire to bestow, which we haven’t attained yet and which we yearn to attain.

We can do that if we connect all our desires to receive in the group, and by that begin to switch all the yearnings, the anxieties, and the hopes from the desire to receive to the desire to bestow. This is how it happens if we focus them on the group, on the connection between us.

So we have to first clarify where I am, in what state, what is important for me, what I lack, and what my attitude is towards the group and the Creator. I have to bring all the internal states of my vessels, my passions, my goal, anxieties, and hopes into the group. I enter the group with all that, and then they all take on a different tone; it is as if you enter an elite military unit where everything you had before takes a totally new direction. By the incorporation in the group, all your deficiencies and desires turn into a power pool where you accumulate forces; you receive them from the environment and you can act. This is the switch from darkness to Light, as it says: “and the darkness shall illuminate like Light.”

So when we perform such an internal makeover, by connecting among us and being incorporated in each other, we can thus receive the Light that Reforms instead of the Light that previously just opened our vessels, illuminated from a distance, and as a result we felt different negative feelings. Now, however, we rise above the unpleasant feelings to the connection among us. We don’t want to erase the feelings, we don’t close our eyes and ignore them, but we see the way to advance forward. It is good when there are unpleasant feelings, since they spur me to connect with the group. I come to the group with them and want its help not to dismiss them, but to turn them into a power that moves me forward, that brings me closer to “There is none else besides Him” from where all the unpleasant feelings are sent. Then I will be able to be together with everyone in an act of connection and revelation. Thus we will reach the feeling that we are bringing contentment to the Creator.

We have to try to imagine the state that we are bringing Him contentment in our corporeal life, how unlimited this feeling is, how it raises us above the animal level to the human level, to the level of the one who bestows; what unlimited pleasure there is in the act of bestowal compared to receiving. This is because by that a person is in equivalence of form with the Creator, connecting with the source of unlimited energy. So by bestowing upon someone, a person feels that he has transcended matter.

So let’s read The Book of Zohar with the intention that the Light that comes from it can bring us correction instead of the darkness that it makes us feel first.
[85520]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/14/12, The Book of Zohar

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Preparation to the Lesson

“The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee),” Items 21, 22, 23

The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpts “Beresheet Bet (Genesis 2),” Lesson 156

Talmud Eser Sefirot, Volume 1, Part 3, Chapter 9, Item 1, Lesson 21

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Preparation to the Lesson

Shamati #69 “First Will Be the Correction of the World“ 

The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpts “Beresheet Bet (Genesis 2),” Lesson 155

Talmud Eser Sefirot, Volume 1, Part 3, Chapter 8, Item 8, Lesson 20

Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Nation,” (Starting with: “There is a pre-condition”), Lesson 6 

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Preparation to the Lesson

Writings of Rabash “Igrot,” “Letter 25”

The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpts “Beresheet Bet (Genesis 2),” Lesson 154

Talmud Eser Sefirot, Volume 1, Part 3, Chapter 8, Item 1, Lesson 19

Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Nation”

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When reading The Zohar, we are facing the Light that is capable of everything. The Creator makes Light and He makes darkness; He raises and lowers. He does everything. If so, then the problem is only us: We are unable to ask Him for the right thing. The Light has no problem bringing us anything we could possibly desire, even in our greatest and most exorbitant fantasies. It has no problem. It is a force that contains everything and its possibilities are infinite.

So what should we really ask for, coming from our desire rather than deception? And how can we form that desire? Say, I come to a toy store and, like a small child, my head starts spinning: I want this, and that, and a third and fourth thing.

How do I choose the only, best, most useful and necessary thing from everything I see before me? How do I entrench myself in my desire in order to ask precisely for this, and to do it in such a way that I will receive it? If I demand the right “toy,” then I will receive it. But if I ask for something else, which is not entirely for my own good, then I won’t receive it. Let us ask for this from the Light as well, for it to help us choose.
[85417]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/13/12, The Zohar

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Preparation to the Lesson

Writings of Baal HaSulam “Igrot (Letters),” (To: “Because of that”)

The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpts “Beresheet Bet (Genesis 2),” Lesson 153

Talmud Eser Sefirot, Volume 1, Part 3, Chapter 7, Item 8, Lesson 18

Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Nation”

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