World Zohar Convention, Day One, Lesson 1

World Zohar Convention, Day One, Workshop 1

World Zohar Convention, Day One, Lesson 2

World Zohar Convention, Day One, Workshop 2

World Zohar Convention, Day One, Lesson 3

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Arava Convention Day One, Workshop 3

Arava Convention Day One, Workshop 4

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“Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Article, “You Are in Partnership with Me,” Item 64: When that word of wisdom that was innovated in this world rises, it connects to those words of Atik Yomin, ascends and descends with them, and enters eighteen concealed worlds, which “Neither has the eye seen a God besides You.” They come out of there and wander, and they come full and whole, and assemble before Atik.

The Zohar explains how we can reach partnership with the Creator to us. To the degree that we take control of our egoistic desire to receive, we are found in partnership with the Creator to this degree. The Creator dominates all of reality and all of reality was created from a desire to receive. Therefore, we also ask the Creator to give us control over our desire to receive. And in this way we reach equivalence of form with the Creator.

Our desire to receive is that field within which we work together: both the Creator and us. We act within this field, and within it, we meet the Creator, and there we become His partners. After all, we ask for a force from the Creator that will make it possible to manage and control our desire to receive just as He controls us. The Creator created all of the worlds, and we want to create them; He shattered the worlds, and we correct them.

We become partners of the Creator to the degree that we are in control when encountering the ego, when encountering our desire to receive. Our degree of control over the desire to receive determines our degree of adherence with the Creator and our spiritual levels. The entire hierarchy of levels is our greater and greater level of partnership with the Creator, our working together.
[126238]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Arava Convention Day One, Workshop 3

Arava Convention Day One, Workshop 4

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“Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Article “Two Points,” Item 121: This is the meaning of the locks on the gates. First, all the many contradictions to His uniqueness, which we taste in this world, separate us from the Creator. Yet, when exerting to keep Torah and Mitzvot with love, with our soul and might, as we are commanded—to bestow contentment upon our Maker—all those forces of separation do not affect us into subtracting any of the love of the Creator with all our souls and might. Rather, in that state, every contradiction we have overcome becomes a gate for attainment of His wisdom.

Question: What does it mean “every contradiction we have overcome becomes a gate for attainment of His wisdom…”? What is a contradiction?

Answer: A contradiction is something that can be resolved this and that. A contradiction is when one doesn’t see, agree, or understand. It’s something that does not connect with His uniqueness and with the notion of “there’s none else but Him” or with the concept of “Good that does good.” It just doesn’t fit together.

We get numerous blows from various sides. We have no idea whether they are right or wrong, but we still have to justify all of them. If we knew that it’s just a form of a punishment for something we did wrong or if we were sure that if our behavior were good, we’d receive an award instead of a punishment, then we would feel more or less fine. However, it’s against our logic. It is said: “The righteous feel bad.” There is nothing we can do about it. These states are called “contradictions” in the Upper Governance.

Question: What do “the righteous who feel bad” have to do?

Answer: Because they are righteous, they justify the Creator even though they feel bad.

Question: But the goal of creation is to bring contentment to creation. Does it really help when even though one feels bad one still justifies the Creator?

Answer: In fact, one feels good, but the truth is that there is evil in him. Obviously one suffers because of one’s own wickedness; however, one still continues justifying the Creator. That’s why one is called the righteous.
[125828]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/13/14, Introduction to The Book of Zohar

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Preparation to the Lesson

Workshop

Writings of Baal HaSulam  “Introduction to The Book of Zohar“

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The Book of Zohar says that its purpose is to lead the entire world out of the exile and bring us to deliverance. Interestingly, when we studied Kabbalistic texts in the past, we didn’t tune ourselves to The Book of Zohar. We studied The Study of the Ten Sefirot, “The Book of Life,” “The Gate-House of Intentions,” articles and letters written by Kabbalists, in short a lot of texts. On the other hand, The Book of Zohar looked great, but we did not feel it or feel particularly concerned about it.

It is not an accident! It’s said that The Book of Zohar will reveal itself to our generation when the process of final correction begins. Humanity went through a lot of suffering before discovering that there is The Book of Zohar and that its mission is to help us; now, we cannot abide without it.

We need a lot of time to develop internally and to be able to access The Book. One comes to the wisdom of Kabbalah, explores numerous sources, and only afterwards discovers that The Book of Zohar possesses a huge power and unusual possibilities that come with different clarifications and are accompanied by a new sensual and rational background. The Zohar is a book that encompasses everything there is. It’s not an easy discovery!

Many of our friends sleep during The Zohar lessons since they don’t feel any connection with it. In the course of time, they will be able to sense in the lines that they read various forms of bestowal and receiving, the correlation of the Lights and vessels, and will learn to connect them together: the Kabbalistic language of branches, the language of Tanakh and Agadah. Everything of which The Book of Zohar is comprised has to be regarded as one whole. It talks about the details of perception using different languages.

We can express various notions in different languages of this world; however, they all are about one sensation, one phenomenon. In The Zohar many languages are closely intertwined. There are numerous ways of presenting the material. The reader has to be educated and prepared; one has to sense the reality that is described in The Book, no matter what language is used there to depict it.

Similar to when we use words of foreign origin in our speech, there are Greek and Latin words in The Book of Zohar. At that time, these languages were very widespread and common. The authors of The Book of Zohar were not at all reluctant to use them. They could have used Gematria values, Hebrew or Aramaic equivalents, but they chose not to do so.

It means that if we learn at least a little bit of the languages that are used in The Book of Zohar, meaning that if we become more knowledgeable of the styles and forms of presenting the materials that are described in The Book, we’ll be exposed to many additional sensations to those previously experienced. We’ll see what its “multilingualism” is caused by: Every word or phrase in The Book of Zohar whether Gematria, the language of Sefirot, concepts of Tanakh, or terms of Halacha (the collective body of Jewish religious laws) reflects the spiritual essence.

When I turn on a Halacha radio station, I listen to things that are very clear to me from my prior experience: Halacha speaks about a preparation of our vessels,desires, about the ways of working with egoistic desires at the inanimate, vegetative, animate, and speaking levels. This work is regulated by a set of laws named “Halacha.” It outlines a correct treatment of vessels, the order of their correction, and ways to ascend to a speaking level.

After all, this level gives expression to everything. We work internally with inanimate, vegetative, and animate desires, with the desires that correspond to our level and also with the desires of our neighbors. This is how preparation of all four steps happens. This is where an expansive and rich language of Halacha derives from; no other language is more precise than the one of Halacha.

However, let’s return to The Book of Zohar: Its authors and readers find the iridescent, multilingual sound of the book habitual and clear. It’s similar to using well-known foreign words in our speech. Habit is all there is.

Baal HaSulam writes that the language of Kabbalah includes everything. I hope that soon we will be able to understand that The Book of Zohar embraces the entire complex of notions and languages, includes all imaginable components, and delivers the “cure” to us in the best possible way.
[124936]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lessons 1/8/14, Lesson on the Topic: “Preparation for the Convention”

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Preparation to the Lesson

Workshop

The Book of Zohar — Selected Excerpts, “The Commandments of the Torah, the First Commandment,” Item 189

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“Introduction toThe Book of Zohar,” “The Torah and a Prayer”, Item 182: Come and see an advice for a person: when he goes to bed at night, he should take upon himself the kingship of above wholeheartedly and come early to deposit his soul to Him. …

And when he does so, the governance of the night cannot blemish him any longer and arrest him from the pleasantness of the work of the Creator, for to him, the evening and the morning are one day, and the night is only a real part of the day. Hence, he is immediately saved from any bad illnesses and from all the evil spirits, which do not control him, for his night has already parted the domain of the Sitra Achra, since nothing can ever part him and the holy Divinity, and the forces of the Sitra Achra and the Din do not govern him any longer.

How can we turn the night into day? Of course there is no night or day, and it only seems that way in my corrupt desires. If additional deficiencies are evoked in me and it is time to correct them, I feel darkness in them, night. Night is lack of unity, lack of the revelation of the Creator, the force of bestowal that should fill all my vessels.

My vessels are my reality. The whole world is my vessel, all of the still, vegetative, animate nature, and human beings are inside me. If this vessel is filled by the force of love and mutual bestowal that unites everything into one whole, then there are no big or small, distant or near; everything is one. Because love covers all the sins and erases all the differences. This means that I discover the Creator, He fills me, and I unite with Him.

But there are still more uncorrected desires in me that I have never felt and seen, and they suddenly begin to rise and to appear. So I begin to think badly about the friends, the group, the teacher, and the Creator. I am thrown from side to side until I ascend to the last ultimate level of the end of correction, and until then I discover deeper and worse levels of my ego of increasingly greater Aviut (coarseness). I am thrown very far from spirituality or even become totally unaware that I was ever in spirituality and that I have left it now. The coarse levels of the corrupt Aviut that are revealed in me will be so coarse that they can totally disconnect me from the feeling and recognition I had before.

Then I feel night in these desires. Night is the force of separation and it isn’t just darkness and loss of interest in spirituality and the goal. I am either thrown to a state of total helplessness or I disrespect the spiritual goal and the group and I am aware of that, or I may totally lose this recognition and descend back into this world worrying only about my corporeal existence, which means that I lose even the human level of this world and descend further and further down to the animal level until I totally fall unable to move, like a corpse.

All these forces that separate me from adhesion to the Creator, from the one force that dominates and fills all of reality with the attribute of love and bestowal, are called darkness and night. But there is an angel called night that actually brings the drop of semen to the Creator and asks, “What will be born from it?” This means that night is actually the force that brings the drop of semen from which a human develops. A person is reborn every day and has to determine his own fate: whether to be wicked or a righteous.
[126143]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Preparation to the Lesson

Workshop

The Book of Zohar — Selected Excerpts, “Rabbi Shimon’s Exit from the Cave,” Item 185

Talmud Eser Sefirot, Vol. 1, Part 3, Chapter 6, Item 5

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 41

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