Weekly Torah Portion – 02.17.12
Posted on February 17th, 2012
Question: There are thousands of students worldwide that read The Zohar with us during the morning lesson. This is a very powerful and high quality force. Why don’t we feel the results of our studies? Why doesn’t the correction come now? Why do we have to wait for the Arava congress?
Answer: We don’t have to wait for the congress! The correction can come right now. It really can! Everything depends on our efforts, not on the time or place.
However, since we exist in the spiritual framework that’s called this world, we can be impressed, not by changes in desires and intentions, but by external actions.
After all, what are our bodies, hands, legs, and all the matter we see around us? They are our desires. Only these are desires on an inanimate level so we can work with them even without intentions. We set them up and receive impressions for them.
However, these are desires! And we use them because we exist in them. When we advance to a higher degree, it will no longer matter whether we’re at a congress in the Arava or in the middle of a noisy market place.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/16/12, The Zohar
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Question: What feeling indicates that I am progressing?
Answer: We advance in the form of turning wheels: some of the wheels go forward, and another moves backwards. Some of them move from bottom to top, some move from top to bottom. The wheel advances forward, and its parts execute various actions.
If a person measures himself in relation to a goal, then he understands that he progresses. But if he measures himself only in relation to ascents and descents or in relation to other states, then it sometimes seems to him as if he is moving backward or standing still.
There are many possibilities to measure the advancement. But the most definite examination is: Do you feel today, as compared to yesterday, a greater necessity to find connection with group? That is the surest examination.
[69653]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/13/12, The Zohar
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The Zohar is the source of the power. But this power is like electricity: it all depends on what you connect to it—a heater or an air conditioner, a device that creates pressure or vacuum. This power can perform whatever you want.
Our desire is called an intention: what we want the power to do for us. And it does. Even our worst requests and our best requests that are aimed at the goal or at the opposite from it, the power performs everything according to the request of the lower. But if my direction matches that power, the benefit I receive is maximal. If my direction doesn’t really match the direction of the power, then according to my diversion from it, according to the cosine of the angle between us, I reach only partial fulfillment. If I aim at the opposite direction, then I am opposed to this power, the power neutralizes my power, and I suffer. But through the loss, this power still turns me towards the goal. This is because I always receive a combination of the positive or negative powers in the measure of my direction coinciding to the thought of creation.
There is a straight line to the goal and I should follow it. If I follow this line—our powers unite. If I digress from the line, then although our powers are the same, I lose the cosine of the angle, according to my diversion.
If I am below the zero, I feel pain, and if I am above the zero I feel pleasure. In any case, all of humanity advances with or without intention. The power that directs us works constantly. We call it the Reforming Light.
So the main thing is what we want because the Light operates, especially while reading The Book of Zohar.
[69756]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/14/12, The Zohar
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Question: How do I recognize the Light’s response to my request?
Answer: First of all, any change is for the good, even if it does not feel very pleasant. Secondly, there are constant changes, only we aren’t able to count them.
The level of our sensitivity is too crude to perceive the changes that happen in me. The counter is on, but only after it reaches 1,000 RPM do I begin to feel this jump into the 1,000-plus interval. And the counter keeps rolling; it reaches 2,000 RPM and I feel another change. I can’t recognize each small, subtle RPM.
But as I ascend the spiritual degrees, I increase my sensitivity, and begin to better distinguish the changes. This means that “the Creator is demanding of the righteous to the hair’s breath.” I distinguish this thin hair, but before I would not even see a big rock.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/14/12, The Zohar
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Chapter “Beresheet (Genesis),” “Creates Worlds and Destroys Them,” Item 214, Lesson 63
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Baal HaSulam, The Book of Zohar, Chapter “Beresheet (Genesis),” Item 195: It is so because upper AVI—Yod de HaVaYaH, GAR de Bina—are fear. YESHSUT—Hey de HaVaYaH, ZAT de Bina—are love. Therefore, when the Mochin de ZON come only from YESHSUT, Hey de HaVaYaH, it is considered that love preceded fear. And when they also come from upper AVI, Yod de HaVaYaH, it is considered that the fear preceded love, since Yod is fear and Hey is love. Thus, fear preceded love.
Fear preceded love. This is said about the created beings because this is the order in which they should correct themselves in relation to the Creator. While only love comes from the Creator, the created beings need fear, too, in order to evoke them to reach love.
This can be explained differently. The relationship between a father and a son should not be based on absolute love between them. This is so that they will always be careful that one wouldn’t stop loving the other.
After all, if one person loves the light without limit, he evokes hate by that. This is because the other person doesn’t feel the limits, and without them, he doesn’t feel love. It is very hard for him to get along with someone who has no limits.
We are built in such a way that we have to feel everything within a certain framework. Then, we can feel. However, without a framework, we lose the feeling. So, on one hand, I feel that the other loves me, but, on the other hand, I have nothing to hold onto when this love is limitless.
Therefore, I demand that he lets me feel his love. I begin to hate him because by his limitless love, he deprives me of the vessel in which I can feel this love. Without a vessel, I don’t feel it.
Therefore, Baal HaSulam says that, if parents love their children with absolute love, the children begin to hate them or at least to disrespect them. So, when we speak about education, we speak about limits, punishments, and pressures that parents have to put on their children so as not to deprive them of their vessels, the vessel of perception.
This is related to the upper system of Aba and Ima (fear) and Ishsut (Love) that must connect in influencing the lower. In other words, the upper part and the lower part of Bina (thought) must connect in order to influence the lower.
This means that fear and love must be connected. When these two systems connect, they influence the lower correctly. This will build the vessel and then fill it.
Thus, the deficiency that comes from the upper and demands correction will receive the light. This is so that it builds the lower in a way that will enable them to feel fear and then love, not in the opposite order, not love first, because this cannot be.
So, first of all, we must create our collective vessel and worry about the connection among us. Then, if the connection is fulfilled, love will flow in it.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson2/8/12, The Zohar
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Question: From whom or what do we ask for connection and correction during the reading of The Book of The Zohar?
Answer: The Light, although this force is concealed. It holds everything in perfection, but it is concealed from us. I am shown life through all kinds of imperfect forms, so I will ask for the perfection. But I need to imagine, on my own, what this perfection is.
Perhaps the meaning of perfection is that I will be fulfilled, great, wise, knowing, and in control? Or maybe perfection is that instead of receiving all these fulfillments, I specifically degrade them and rise above them to love and bestowal? No, that isn’t perfection. So what is?
We need to learn about perfection from Above, because It is perfect. And to just bestow, or to just love someone, that isn’t perfection either. Perfection, I must learn from the upper one.
So I ask Him to reveal to me what perfection is. And this is revealed. We see we lack perfection and from each revelation of this lack of perfection, which the Creator reveals, we learn, from blow to blow. After all, there is a gap between the blows, which is designed for our recognition, understanding, and comprehending what was bad and what could be better.
In this way, people advance, as according to Baal HaSulam: They destroy the previous state after they no longer are able to endure it, and agree with the new state, which previously they didn’t want to agree with, and now they see that it is desirable. But this is the way of suffering, the way of the evolutionary development of nature.
But if we want to advance rapidly, from within consciousness, understanding, and self-participation, then we need to search for what is called “perfection” on our own. And then we ask the Creator to reveal, to give us the appropriate mind and feelings.
For this purpose he places a condition: You want to discover Me? You want to learn the system, to advance consciously, to understand and comprehend what perfection is, what life is, what the system of reality is? Please! I also want the same. I want you to be a son and not a slave.
But for this you must execute actions, exercises, like at work, so that through them you will learn about this system. How? In the group. If you are ready to connect with the friends and to learn about unity, which means One, Unique, and Unified, and to learn what love based on hatred is, then you have a system of relationships with the friends.
I organized this system for you. I brought you to it, gave you teachers from all generations who already attained this system and described it for you. Everything is in your hands. Take it and begin to realize it. According to the measure of your advancement, I will reveal more and more means to you. And thus you will understand, will attain, and will discover what perfection is.”
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/13/12, The Zohar
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