Question: What works while reading The Zohar: my intention, the text or the combination of the text and the intention?

Answer: The text doesn’t operate here. Were you impressed by the text now? Who can tell me without looking at the book, what we read about? The text doesn’t stay in us unless we have to use it in a certain way, to write something based on it or to teach someone else. But for ourselves, it doesn’t. As for now The Book of Zohar is like the surrounding Light for us, which comes and influences us from the outside. So while reading, we can aim our desires and thoughts towards correction, hoping that it will work.

What the authors of The Zohar write is so high that I cannot be connected to the text itself, but only with the “medicine.” I don’t know how the medicine works. It contains different materials that enter my body and join its chemical processes and lead to imbalance in it. But the imbalance is aimed at the disease and so it leads to balance.

It is called “the poison that serves as a cure.” What I swallow causes shifts in my body, but they are opposite to the direction the disease moved in that put the body in imbalance. Then one imbalance and the other imbalance lead to balance. It is written: “Each medicine is poison, but not every poison is a medicine.”

This is the work in the right and left lines, between which we create the middle line. Here the imbalance from the right line and the imbalance from the left line balance the middle line. If we are afraid to be in a state of imbalance, it isn’t the Creator’s work anymore. In short, you have to be a hero. The imbalance is a good state; it is a sign of advancement. After all, even when you walk, you move from one imbalanced state to another imbalanced state: You stand on one foot while the other foot is in the air.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/24/12, The Zohar

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Shamati #175 “And If the Way Be Too Long for Thee”
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Chapter “Beresheet (Genesis),” “Let Us Make Man,” (Start with: “Explanation”), Item 162, Lesson 45
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 6, Item 13, Lesson 9
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“Introduction to the Study of Ten Sefirot,” Item 58, Lesson 29
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Question: What should we think about while reading The Book of Zohar? Should we focus on some specific, simple thought?

Answer: During the whole day you must discern what you want to ask for. Suppose you have 20 requests. Choose one of them, the most important one, and check whether all the others are included in it. Don’t just choose one of the 20, leaving all the other ones behind. After all, that’s not how one comes to the King, who is able to carry out all of our requests.

There has to be one request, but it has to include all of your wishes. You have to be confident that if you address Him with this request and receive what you wish for, then you won’t need anything ever again. You come to the King once with one request, and if you receive an answer, then you are completely satisfied. Otherwise you would be belittling the King’s dignity and perfection.

But if you come with many requests, it means they don’t include a single real one and you are like a little child who came into a toy store and lost his head, not knowing what to grab because he wants everything. If you are in this state for now, then you won’t receive permission to come to the King as you don’t have a serious request. You are allowed to enter only with one request.

However, it shouldn’t be one request that temporarily emerged in you right now, but it has to be such that you probably won’t ever ask for anything else ever again. You discerned the most important thing that you need and this won’t change anymore.

This is the request you should write down and check – you have 24 hours to do so, until the next reading of The Book of Zohar tomorrow! And then check it for several days – whether it’s the correct request or not.

It’s desirable to check yourself and change this way your entire life, if necessary… Then you will see how your desires change and will learn who you are. All of the science of Kabbalah is a study of ourselves, the attainment of reality, the Creator through self-attainment.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/24/12, The Zohar

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Question: How is it possible to use that same point of unity that we obtained at the convention in December during The Zohar lessons in ?

Answer: That point of unity that we obtained has already disappeared, hidden itself, and was erased from our feeling. And we shouldn’t be sorry about that. We shouldn’t try to hold on to it by force. We only need to bring the warmth and enthusiasm of that spiritual uplifting since after all, we need to feel a secure basis. We can’t hang in the air.

The time has come to worry about a new point of unity. To connect does not mean hugging and holding hands. Unity is determined by the measure that I am able to detach from myself. In the connection with others, there is no need for anything from me; otherwise, there won’t be even a trace of real connection in it. I can’t connect with others. In the connection only the ” anti-me” needs to participate, when I convert myself as opposed to getting rid of everything I have in mind and feeling, from everything that I know.

Thus, first and foremost, I need to annul my “I,” and then the Light that reforms works on me, and with what is left, I attach to the states formed by my friends. Hence, together we discover the unity between us if we find our points within the hearts, within the ego, with the help of the Light that reforms that inverts them from the posterior of sanctity to the face of sanctity; if we connect with each other, then this connection is already worthy of adherence with the righteous, with the high souls.

We discover our connection with them and are ready to entrust ourselves to them so that they will take care of us. Since now we come in contact with them. Before that there was no contact. They simply spoke to us from afar. And then we will see how the writers of The Zohar, Rabash, and Baal HaSulam care for us and raise us.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/17/12, The Zohar

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Writings of Rabash “The Need for Love of Friends”
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Chapter “Beresheet (Genesis),” “Let Us Make Man,” Item 159, Lesson 44
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 6, Item 11, Lesson 8
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“Introduction to the Study of Ten Sefirot,” Item 54, Lesson 28
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Question: Can one remain in the sensation of the material world and attain spirituality at the same time?

Answer: A person who attains spirituality does not lose anything in his sensations. On the contrary, he feels this world much more as a source and motive to enjoy.

The spiritual world means that you attain the reason why you are alive. Then this entire life in the reality that you feel in your body, called “this world” is also worth it.

The spiritual world is the Creator. By collecting your previously dispersed and broken attitude to others into one, relating to them as to one whole which is yours and dear to you, you begin to reveal the Creator within that attitude.

Through this entire world, like through a focusing lens, I focus all of my attitude to it – in love, unity, and connection, and in this point of focus I find the Creator.

It’s as if many rays (forms of my attitude) enter this lens (the group, humanity), come out of it, and focus on one point (the Creator).

Therefore, nothing disappears, but on the contrary – I use this entire world. Without it there is nothing for me to do. Until the full correction (Gmar Tikkun) I have to be in this world, and if I didn’t finish the correction, I have to return to the same reality, to its observation.

What does “this reality” mean? I return to the same qualities of perception, to the same desires that I did not finish correcting. And then I once again see a certain reality, feeling this world the same as now or maybe somewhat different. But I have to see reality in the intention to enjoy, in my flawed receiving desires, which I still retain, until I correct all of them. Then this reality disappears because it becomes unified.

Look from aside at this entire reality, which appears before us, and at the spiritual reality. We have to see the will to enjoy and how much we feel in it – for the sake of reception or for the sake of bestowal. According to this, we are in one reality or another. And our life cycles are like a change of Partzuf, one after another.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/12, The Zohar

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The Zohar tells of how the upper Light operates and bestows on us and builds from all of our attributes something that is similar to the Creator: not of our flesh, but from our inner essence that is called, “mind” and “heart,” from all of our thoughts and desires that constitute the person’s “I.”

I don’t know what He needs to do with them. In the meantime, all my desires and thoughts are involved with what I see before me in order to benefit myself. This is the way the ego, which stands behind them, operates.

And the Light that arrives during the reading of The Book of Zohar doesn’t leave me anything from the previous thoughts and desires, but begins gradually to give me other values, yet at the level of the state that I am in. And then later, it begins to detach me from the present reality, as each time He performs some changes in me. On occasions, I rise above this reality and then on other occasions, I again sink within it even more.

Thus, through all kinds of exercises and changes, He helps me stop being dependent on this reality, until eventually it isn’t important to me if I am in it or completely separated from it. And I can use all these forms just for the sake of one goal. Even if I were given all the King’s treasures, and even if I am a poor person living in the forest without even a shirt, it isn’t important because I am dependent only on the intention, something more exalted than my state. I agree with it and want it, above everything that can appear in my vessel (Kli) of reception, both in thoughts and desires.

If I arrived at such a state, thanks to the exercises, that is the work of God on me, and from this moment onward, I begin to see what the The Book of Zohar speaks about.

We hope that with each day and with each moment, we will enter such a state where the Light reaches us, the upper force, which will begin to change us and to raise us above all the desires and thoughts so that we will begin to be dependent on the Giver that bestows upon us.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/17/12, The Zohar

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There is a concept called “opening the Book.” To open means to attain its depths, its essence, to come to know whose force is contained within it. After all, a book is the source of wisdom, the source of knowledge, and the revelation of what stands behind it. A book is a concept consisting of three components: the book, the storyteller, and the story.

So, who is the storyteller, what is the story about, and who is telling it? There is the one who wrote the book. He wrote based on his impressions of something. That which he was impressed by has the source, the source that created this image from which he was impressed and that he described in the book. And there is the one who opens the book, the so-called Book of Heaven, reads it, and explains and tells you about it. He can tell you something by describing it in the book. And you read what he wrote.

It can also be so that you do not read it, but already enter inside this author, this storyteller, and have to identify yourself with him. If you do not identify yourself with Rabbi Shimon, you will never know what is written in The Book of Zohar. After all, it comes dressed in him.

That is why there are two constituents here (although there are actually many more of them since it is the Creator who “wrote” it). Minimally, we must clothe into Rabbi Shimon. To the extent that we can identify ourselves with him, respect him, reach toward him, and try to merge with him, we begin to receive impressions, to feel and attain what he conveyed in The Book of Zohar through various hints that can be conveyed in a written form.

We must reach such a state where we won’t be able to listen to The Zohar without the concept called “Rabbi Shimon.” Also included in this concept are his students, as his students are included in him.

The spiritual vessel from which we receive the impact is called “Rabbi Shimon.” This is not a person, but a sort of cloud of qualities, forces, and spiritual definitions. This system, as a whole, is called Rabbi Shimon.

I am connected to this system. I receive nourishment from it, and so it is very important for me to adhere to it. The more I merge with it, feeling that I am in contact with Rabbi Shimon in particular, then, accordingly, the more I will perceive what is inside of him. Moreover, it won’t be the external impression of reading the text of The Zohar, but a more internal attainment.

The fact that we separate something that conveys spiritual impressions to me into several components: the book, the storyteller, and the story, helps me to unite with this impression; it does not distance me from it. This is one more way to use the concept called “opening the Book.”
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/2/12, The Zohar

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Shamati #148 “The Scrutiny of Bitter and Sweet, True and False,” Writings of Baal Hasulam “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot, uMasbirot,” (To: “Let me explain it to you in an allegory”), Item 16
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Chapter “Beresheet (Genesis),” “Moses and Jacob,” Item 155, Lesson 43
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 6, Item 8, Lesson 7
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“Introduction to the Study of Ten Sefirot,” Item 52, Lesson 27
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Shamati #1 “There’s None Else Besides Him,” (Start with: “A man must always try”)
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Chapter “Beresheet (Genesis),” “Moses and Jacob,” Item 149, Lesson 42
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 6, “Table of Questions and Answers for the Meaning of the Words,” Lesson 6
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“Introduction to the Study of Ten Sefirot,” Item 50, Lesson 26
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