I use the word "Stimulator" to call the system that we must now build because it comes from the Greek word “Stimulus,” meaning a sharp, pointed stick used to poke donkeys in order to keep them moving. Our “donkey” (“Hamor” in Hebrew) is our egoistic desire (“Homer”) which only understands the language of a “stick.” Yet, instead of driving this “donkey” by painful poking, we want to awaken the human being in us who looks ahead and yearns for the future on his own. We need a stimulus, but a positive one. We need to be driven by “lovesickness,” the desire to attain this state. This should be the only force driving us ahead, instead of corporeal pain pushing us from behind.

We have to invoke just one kind of suffering inside us, the question, “Why haven’t I attained unity with the Creator yet? Why am I not in awe of Him?” The first stage in returning to the Creator is “repentance from fear,” which occurs when I put forth efforts to cultivate an inner sensation of awe regarding the spiritual goal, the Creator, and bestowal, instead of running ahead because I fear painful blows that come after me. That is how I change my motivation or Stimulus.

If I run ahead motivated by the strikes (fears about things in this world or punishment in the world to come) then I am not returning to the Creator. In fact, this is how humanity has advanced naturally for thousands of years, but it isn’t spiritual evolution. It is the evolution of desire where we replace an unpleasant state of existence with a new, hopefully better one.

Yet, returning to the Creator is described as “Tshuva (return of) Hey to Vav,” which means that I invoke my own inner fear of not having the quality of bestowal and love. But what can I do if in actuality I am not concerned about this and feel no fear? Where can I get it? The answer is only from the environment!

If the environment paints a picture for me that makes me realize how horrible my condition is and, at the same time, that there is something incredibly wonderful awaiting me, then I will strive toward it. This is the correct, spiritual stimulus that enables us to advance. This way of advancing is correct because it is voluntary, and we therefore make this entire process an “awakening from below.”

However, if I don’t arrange an environment that instills this yearning for advancement in me making me run because I fear that I haven’t attained this goal yet and terrible misfortunes are following me because of it, I will never move into the next moment! In fact, I won’t move one bit.

That is why we need a “stimulator” and a positive one!

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Excerpts from my upcoming book, A Guide to The Book of Zohar

The correction of attitudes in a Kabbalistic group from love of self to love of others is possible only with the help of the very Upper Force that created “the evil inclination,” our egoism. Only this Force can turn the evil inclination to good, as it is written, “I created the evil inclination, and handed down the Torah for its correction since the Light in it Reforms”; that is, it unites us in love.

In fact, even now we exist in perfect reality. We are tightly connected with each other as parts of one body in mutual love and adhesion with the Upper Force that created us and filled with love and abundance. We just need to awaken to the feeling and awareness of this reality in the same way as a person who is unconscious has to wake up in order to feel alive.

This awakening, the resurrecting force of the Light that Reforms, can be felt only when we come together. In the group, we try to be connected in the love between us and rise above our instinctive egoistical emotions. Together, we read The Book of Zohar.

This book talks about unity among us and our corrected state of existence. So, our collective reading of The Book of Zohar with the intention to attain oneness arouses the Light that brings us back from oblivion. Gradually, we begin to feel the connection and within it, the Creator. In doing so, we achieve practical realization of the essence of the science of Kabbalah: the revelation of the Creator to the created beings.

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Question: What will help us to look at the group and be able to see only the friends’ strengths and not their flaws?

Answer: The group serves as a magnifying lens or glasses, without which it is impossible to see the Creator. I will be able to see Him only if I look through the group. It is my spiritual vessel and the instrument for the revelation of the Creator.

Only love will help here. Love suppresses our ego, and it starts acting in its opposite form: as the desire to feel pleasure being used for the sake of bestowal. Therefore, the attitude of the importance of friends is crucial.

In corporeal life, when a person forms an egoistic goal, he works in one place, gets paid in another, and purchases something in a third place. None of these places are connected. In spirituality, everything is united in one place: The effort, the reward, the goal itself, and the result are all parts of one whole. This is why it is difficult for us to understand spirituality since we are accustomed to the material world where everything is separate.

However, we have to understand that the friend and I, the Creator and I, people who are far and close, small, big, and equal in relation to me, all make up my spiritual Kli within which I reveal everything, even myself! Until this Kli becomes revealed, I will not exist. It will not be me but a total deception, a chunk of egoism that I identify myself with. When we discover what the collective soul or the group implies, then inside it we reveal ourselves and all the rest.

And for now, I have only the point of breaking, restriction, and expansion that exist outside of spirituality and the Creator. We are given a sensation of being outside of the true reality, in some imaginary dream world. While being in this dream, if I manage to build the true reality that includes the society, the Creator, and my authentic self, then I will be able to enter it. In the meantime, I am only imagining my life.

All of this future reality is the group I need to construct. It is I who build my spiritual world, my soul. In fact, it is my soul that I am assembling from this illusory deceptive reality, from this dream state I have been submerged in, in order to make me my own Creator. In doing so, I, the group, and the Creator come together, and we attain absolute oneness and adhesion.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/15/10, "Concerning the Importance of Friends"

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Everyone thinks that the “enterprise” refers to the work we carry out during the day, whereas group work entails our mutual studying. However, this is incorrect. The “enterprise” is everything that pertains to releasing our materials, media, preparation for various events, and other physical and material work. If we are preparing food for the Saturday meal right now, this pertains to the enterprise. There is a head chef, the people responsible, and workers who execute everything, and it doesn’t matter whether they are volunteers or paid workers.

On the other hand, the group is a unification of ideas where each person annuls his egoism and is willing to unite with others in order to achieve a spiritual state. This is different from how we unite in order to publish a newspaper, a website, a TV program, and so on. All of these actions are group actions in character, but in order to produce a desired result everyone needs to be willing to unite in a pyramid where there is a boss and a subordinate, like in any enterprise. We have to do this in order to release a product.

It doesn’t matter whether people receive a salary or not, what hours they work, and whether they are preparing a meal at the center or shooting a TV program. Even though we initially made a voluntary decision to unite on equal grounds, nevertheless if you are a manager, you give me orders, and as a subordinate I am obliged to execute them.

In other words, as we approach any task, we make a voluntary commitment according to our abilities, and we also make a commitment to follow an order, to stay disciplined and abide by the hierarchy. Thus, on the inside we are all equal; we are a group in the form of a circle. But externally we have a relationship of manager and employee in the form of a pyramid. Nonetheless, everyone unites as one.

Unification at the enterprise is when we unite in order to realize the connection of friends in the framework of the enterprise. We maintain the hierarchy because we wish to maintain our unification. The desire to be in the group obliges me to follow the hierarchy and I bow my head and listen to the person who is appointed as my manager.

Let’s suppose that today I was sent to work in the kitchen and I carry out what I am ordered to do by the team leader. Although I may be smarter and more skilled, the friends decided that we would work according to a duty schedule. I come to my duty and there we are not friends. I need to inspire myself to work by receiving the fuel from the group, but I need to work in a way that is appropriate for an enterprise.

Even though a person might come to our center for just a few hours after his day job, for the duration of these few hours he becomes a worker for the enterprise the same as though he were getting paid for the work. That’s because he comes there in order to receive either spiritual or material advancement. He receives fulfillment and it doesn’t matter in what form! Yet, for some reason people separate one thing from the other and are surprised when someone demands something from them, People think, “Aren’t we friends in the group?” No! We are workers of the spiritual front! We are working for the Creator.

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Question: Why is reaching the purpose of creation such a complicated and multi-leveled process that involves descent, ascent, and the breaking?

Answer: It’s because it consists of two opposite elements: the Light and the desire (Kli), and the two build a connection based on their opposite nature. The developmental process derives from two conditions and dictates one law of evolution: Two forces opposing each other in the beginning must reach total equivalence in the end. The entire process inevitably results from these initial and final conditions. We cannot change anything about the process or act according to some other logic.

There are two strict conditions, one at the start and the other at the end:
Condition 1: There is infinite distance between them.
Condition 2: There is total adhesion between them.

Prior to this, one is solely giving and the other solely receiving. On one hand they are separated by an infinite abyss, and on the other hand there is a finite point where they merge and become one.

Now, try to come up with a formula where we can go from the first condition, total opposition, to the second one, total equivalence. In the World of Infinity there already exists a breaking of these two components as well as their union. Even though the Light and desire are present there, they are one and they complete one another. This oneness is sustained by the Upper Force of the Light.

In other words, the final condition is initially supported by the force of the Light, the Creator. This allows us to unfold the formula of how to make this transition from one state to the other. The potential conditions are set; now we have to implement them. Now all of reality unfolds step by step, scene after scene, before our eyes, where we are the creatures living in the World of Infinity. We never leave it.

In this one place (desire), created by the Creator, there is Light, desire, and the condition of their union, and all of this is taking place right now. Hence, we ourselves are regarded as the acts of the Creator, the products of His work: the creatures, creations, or masterpieces.

None of this can be changed. The initial and final conditions determine everything that will take place, including the breaking, according to the verse, “the final act is contained in the initial plan.”

From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/18/10, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot”

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There are two steps along our ascent to the spiritual world, and the first one is to obtain a desire (Hissaron). In our corporeal world, we are born with a desire to reveal this world and to rule, take advantage of, and connect with it. But in the spiritual world, it is different since we need to earn this desire.

It is the Light that helps us with this. We use it to arrange our egoistic desire in an opposite, altruistic form that enables us to obtain the desire for bestowal, that is, a spiritual Kli (a spiritual vessel is a desire to bestow).

In our world, we are given the desire to receive, understand, and feel. Likewise, in the spiritual world, there is a desire to bestow, love, connect, and unite. How are we able to obtain it? Clearly, we can receive it only from the Light that Reforms and nothing else. And for this we need at least some initial desire to receive the Light’s impact. This tiny initial desire is called free will which is given to us in a very simple and distinct form: as one singular point that we can find and discern within our current state.

This can be achieved solely through the connection between us and our collective effort, provided that we have the desire to bond and depend on each other. If such relationships are found between the souls (or people that carry them), then according to our efforts, the Light reveals itself, begins to give us a new desire, and passes its own desire to us.

This is the only real work that a person has as Baal HaSulam explains it in his article “The Freedom”: We need to exert the minimum effort, in a selective, narrow, and clear-cut direction in relation to the environment, and as a result of the measure of this exertion, the Light descends upon us. It clarifies our desires (their opposite side), gives us the sensation of a lack, according to which we reveal all the holy names of the Creator until the full revelation of the Light (all the names of the Creator).

Thus, a person attains a spiritual state where “Israel (the soul yearning for the Creator), the Torah, and the Creator become one,” meaning all of man’s desires become equivalent to the Light that reformed them. Through these sacred names a person attains all the general Light called the Torah and the Creator (the purpose of creation “to delight the creatures”) which is revealed in this Light.

All this is revealed within a person’s desire. The Torah is the revelation of the spiritual world attained through a person’s individual, partial revelation of the Creator’s names.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/11/10, “You Should Always Discern Between Torah and Work”

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We exist in an ocean of the Light of Infinity which contains all the sacred names of the Creator. These names have to become revealed in our desires to the extent of their similarity to a particular quality of the Creator included in this Infinite Light. This general force, the Light, is called the “Torah.” Of course, today we are unable to value and know it. This is beyond our capabilities and desires.

However, here is what we can do: If we desire to become similar to the illumination that reaches us from this infinite Light, we can reach some partial similarity and feel it within us as the revelation of the “Creator’s sacred name.” Sanctity is above the “body”; it is bestowal or the quality of Bina. After all, the “Creator’s name” is a spiritual vessel, a “Kli,” or a corrected desire (meaning desire with the intention to bestow).

Due to the power of the Light, our desire acquires such a form (intention) that it can establish a connection with the Creator, which is to say, with the Light or the Torah (names of the Creator). In this way, by being influenced by Ohr Makif (the Surrounding Light), we gradually reveal separate qualities and actions within us that are similar to the Light or the Torah.

All this is perceived and measured within us and in relation to us (the receivers) to the extent that we are similar to the qualities of the Light according to the law of equivalence of form. Only by becoming similar to the Light will we be able to feel it.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/11/10, “You Should Always Discern Between Torah and Work”

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Question: Who are people with a broken heart?

Answer: The heart is all of a person’s desires. When a person discovers that all these desires are for the sake of self-gratification, he sees that they are broken.

What is the breaking? Once upon a time, initially, they were connected by the force of bestowal, the force of connection among them. This happened naturally due to the Light or awakening from Above since that is what the Creator created.

Then the Creator concealed Himself and the Light disappeared. For this reason the connection among them disappeared. The revelation of a lack of connection among us is called breaking. All of this is talking about the creatures.

The absence of the revelation of the Creator or the quality of bestowal caused disunity. This disunity may be felt the way we now feel: “It’s not so bad. Everything’s OK. I just wish others would stop bothering me, and I also won’t harm anyone.” This is called the revelation of the breaking.

Besides this, there is a state where we feel that we are in the state of breaking and there is no connection or unity among us. This can also involve varying degrees of the realization of evil: Without a connection among us, I will not attain a good material life; or through the absence of connection among us, I bring about natural disasters; or due to the absence of this connection, I do not attain the Creator, spirituality.

In other words, it is possible for a revelation to happen above the exile (meaning the lack of connection among us), or it is possible for a revelation to happen from below, which is what humanity is now gradually attaining.

From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/15/10, The Zohar

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Question: During the lesson I tell myself that I want to feel what The Zohar speaks about, but I see that I don’t have the true desire for this. How can I attain this desire?

Answer: It’s a problem of our common thoughts. Maybe we aren’t fully aware that The Zohar speaks about our advanced states and the most important thing while reading this Book is our desire to attain those states.

What are our advanced states? It’s when we all unite together and inside the connection between us we reveal spirituality, the common quality of bestowal, the Creator. This is exactly the aspiration you should feel while reading The Book of Zohar. Otherwise all of the reading is a waste and it won’t help us in any way. It will even result in us receiving a sensation of darkness, a negative awakening. There is no choice about the matter: In any case we have to move forward, and in this case we will advance against our will.

Therefore, everything depends on how correctly we will be able to imagine the advanced state while reading The Book of Zohar, meaning how much we will see that it is a connection between us inside of which we reveal bestowal, love, mutual guarantee, and the unification that reigns in all of reality and all the worlds.

Everything becomes revealed only in the connection between us: all of reality, all the worlds until Infinity. We draw the Light of Correction to the degree we desire to reveal this state while reading The Book of Zohar.

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/12/10, The Zohar

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In November 2010 we will be holding an International Kabbalah Convention in Tel Aviv, Israel where all those studying Kabbalah with us in Israel and the whole world will come together. It will be three days of unity!

The main reason why we organize such conventions is that the Kabbalists instruct us to hold meetings and conventions in order to unite. Rabash and Baal HaSulam write about this, but it follows even from the compositions of the Ari and Ramchal, as well as the writings of Rabbi Shimon and Abraham.

Correction takes place only by virtue of a connection among the souls, and connection starts with communication. Yet, there is one idea present in the communication: to attain the kind of unity that is called “the Creator,” bestowal, or the spiritual world.

Within this kind of unity we reveal the worlds (Olamot). They go from being concealments (Alamot) to revelation and therefore the Creator becomes revealed more and more instead of hiding behind the worlds or concealments. In other words, in the connection between us we reveal bestowal and love more and more, and that is called the revelation of the Creator. When this quality becomes revealed between us, we begin to feel that we live and exist inside it, and thus we ascend above the sensation of this world.

The revelation of the Creator can be attained on the condition that we carry out actions within the framework of this world. We start here and then continue the actions in the spiritual realm which becomes revealed in the connection between us. That is why it is necessary for us to meet and unite in this way using all the opportunities that this world has for us, physical or virtual, in order to build closer connections.

We would like to announce this event to everyone and to connect as many people as possible to it without any limitations. Any person from any corner of the world can attend and participate if he feels attracted to this idea. The task of those studying with Bnei Baruch is to prepare this convention, but the convention itself is intended for anyone wishing to attend!

From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/12/10, A Lesson About the Role of the Nation

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