A person studying Kabbalah has to secure external support in the form of the group, the study, and dissemination so that they are always by his side, ready to help during a state of descent. It is written, “A righteous man falls a thousand times and rises again.” This is the path towards achieving spirituality.

Along this path, different situations and states occur to me. Throughout all of it, the most important thing is to remain in an environment that will always be supportive and inspire you when you face the descents. In the end, you will feel the Light that lies within this inspiration. The Upper Light will no longer be concealed from you, but will be revealed.

If we come to The Zohar Convention 2010 with the same inspiration that we experienced during our preparations for it, then the Convention will be very successful. We will be able to make great internal corrections and will feel the Creator’s revelation inside our connection with each other. It is my great wish that this will happen.

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The Creator enjoys playing with man just like a father enjoys playing with his child. In our world, nature has instilled in parents a desire to bestow to their children. However, this comes from the spiritual root. This corporeal example can help us understand the spiritual world. Just like we enjoy caring for our children, the spiritual parent, which is the Upper System, enjoys caring for its spiritual children. We are those children; we just don’t see it.

When playing with a child, the game itself does not matter. What matters is our attitude toward the child and his attitude toward us in return. When the child stops reacting, the game stops being pleasant to us. We only receive pleasure when the child receives pleasure, when he understands what we do for him, and when he appreciates what he receives from us. This requires a similarity of our desires and qualities. In our world, we don’t understand this because the bigger the children grow, the further they grow apart from their parents. However, in the spiritual world, it’s the other way around: the older the child gets, the closer he becomes to his parent and the stronger he bonds to him.

However, this doesn’t mean that the child becomes dependent on his parent. The child’s dependence ceases just as it does in our world, yet the connection between them strengthens. This same thing happens to parents and children in our world who share common activities and a goal; they unite.

The Creator and creation are connected through a common goal because they want to fulfill one another. They want to return pleasure to each other so that each would understand how much the other values what he has received and to discover love in this reception. Otherwise, we would never feel and understand the Creator.

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The Creator is the force of bestowal and love, and one who loves feels great suffering if he is unable to delight his beloved. The suffering that comes from the inability to bestow is much greater than the suffering that comes from not receiving. It is written, “A cow desires to nurse the calf much more than the calf desires to nurse.” The Upper Level greatly suffers when it cannot give of its perfection to the lower level due to the latter’s inability to receive it.

The Creator is the desire to bestow, give, and love. However, we shouldn’t think that there is no lack in this desire – there is. Only it doesn’t come from a lack of fulfillment, but from being unable to share its perfection. This is why the Creator created the will to enjoy – it was in order to fulfill it and express His love toward it.

Our desire already contains all the prerequisites necessary for receiving all of the Creator’s Light and love. However, in order for us to understand what He does and to feel what He gives us, we have to become similar to Him, reaching the same level and qualities. To do this, we are missing just one component – our independence, our own desire to feel His love and to accept Him as the one we love.

Unless this aspiration comes from us, it can’t be considered love. After all, you can’t buy love; you can only buy different services. For example, I pay money at a barber shop, a medical office, or a restaurant, and the people there take care of me from the bottom of their hearts. However, they do it because they love money, not me. What can I do to make them love me? This is a question we cannot answer.

Real love is possibly only if I am completely independent of others. Yet it is written that the Creator is “the first and the last.” Therefore, He faces a problem of how to create us while making us completely independent from Him, and at the same time, making us such that we can develop love for Him until we feel, “I am the first and I am the last” in this regard. This means that the ten Sefirot of Direct Light clothe the ten Sefirot of Reflected Light and complement each other.

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We mustn’t overly contemplate the stages of development we are on. We think that the better we understand and feel the material, the more we will advance, but this is incorrect.

Some people are sensitive, while others are rational and intelligent. And then there are those who are limited in both respects. This doesn’t matter because we don’t study with the mind. In addition, a sensitive person does not necessarily receive the right impressions for advancement.

Advancement is not at all dependent on how well we feel or understand the material. Success depends only on our efforts, as it is written: “I labored and I found.”

There is no way to test our advancement similar to how we do it with all the other things in our world. We cannot check whether or not we’ve felt the right feelings or completed certain actions successfully or otherwise. None of these criteria exist in spirituality. Forget about all the systems in this world. They mean nothing with respect to the spiritual.

In spirituality, only the effort counts. Are you truly applying yourself to the full extent? That’s what seals the deal. That is the key to success. There is nothing else.

Nothing else is taken into account. No matter how many good or bad states you may have experienced or how many blows you’ve endured – these things mean nothing. At every moment you must think only about your efforts – to what extent can you force yourself to connect with the Creator through the group? That is bestowal in the purest sense.

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We don’t know the qualities of the Creator Himself. We see Him the way He is perceived by our souls, meaning the way He is revealed to us when Malchut (the soul) unites with Him through Yesod – just through one point. Due to its unification with Yesod, it reveals the “picture of the Creator,” something that exists in front of it, inside itself.

This works much like an optical lens through which the Light comes to us. The rays focus in one point, from which we reveal Light in Malchut. This focus is Yesod, the only point of contact, and its revelation occurs in Malchut.

After passing through Yesod, the rays disperse and create a picture in us, in Malchut. The picture shows us what exists before this point, yet we don’t know the Upper System as we have no connection to it.

However, by adjoining it from this one point, which is the lowest point in the system, we reveal the whole picture of what exists above us. Thus, we only need to find contact with this one point; this is our point of contact with the Upper Level, Yesod, and in order for this to happen we all need to unite from the side of Malchut, thereby becoming similar to Yesod. We have to become one man with one heart, with one goal, intention, and desire in the mind and in the heart.

Through this point of contact with Yesod, through one drop of unification that we reach, the whole Upper World that is situated outside of us, becomes revealed to us. It is written, “Make Me an opening the size of a needle-eye, and I will open the Upper Gates of Light for you.” Through these gates we will reveal the whole Upper System, but the contact occurs in the smallest point of focus. Except for this, nothing else is felt in Yesod.

Everything else is revealed in Malchut, which is therefore called a picture (reflection) of the Creator.

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Rabbi Nachman from Breslov said, “Many tears are shed over The Book of Zohar until a person becomes worthy of understanding.” When thinking about the corrected desire, I should imagine that it is all mine. There are no other people; they are all, in fact, inside me. They are all me! Therefore, when I read The Zohar I should imagine that everything happens inside me. I read about mountains, summits, a stream flowing out of the Garden of Eden, top or bottom, corporeality or spirituality, Pharaoh, Moses, Abraham, men and women who get married and give birth to children; but all of this happens inside me, in my desires. There is nothing else.

In this manner I am being told about the different phenomena taking place inside my desire. The Zohar tells me about what happens inside me, in this entire, enormous vessel of desire which consists of everyone. Nothing exists outside of it; the whole reality is in me.

So where is the Creator? He is also inside me! If I can attain a feeling of unity, bestowal, and love between all His parts within this desire, it will mean that I have revealed the Creator. The Creator is called “Bo-Re” – “come and see.” This happens in the desire, where the Light is situated. The Light is perceived only in the desire.

The more you try to change your vision in this manner, the easier it will become. We simply need to take off the glasses through which we see our world and begin to look from a different point of view. Then we will suddenly reveal that reality is actually completely different from what we are used to. We only need to remove the regular picture of the world that blocks it.

The Zohar is deliberately written in a language that seems to speak about our world, as if it tells us about a family, such as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or about a nation that comes out of Egypt, and other things. It explains this to us purposefully, so we would switch from focusing on this world, our customary perception, to another type of focus that is more internal. Then we will see that everything happens inside us.

A person is a small world. Understanding this is the condition for understanding spirituality.

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The Zohar, Chapter ”Metzorah (The Leper),” Item 20: “She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her, and happy are all who support her.” The tree of life is the Torah, a high and mighty tree. It is called Torah (teaching) because it instructs and reveals what was hidden and unknown. She is called “life” because all the upper life is included in her and stems from her.

The “Torah” stands for the Light of Correction, which is the Light that Reforms. This Light is attracted through the study of Kabbalah. It influences our intention and changes it from the natural, egoistic one to an intention of giving. By changing our intention, our desire is redirected from “for my own sake” to “for my neighbor’s sake,” or in other words, from receiving to giving.

The desire itself is neither receiving nor giving. Desire is defined by the intention. To the extent of our similarity with the Creator, we reveal Him and the Light that fulfills us.

Correction of our intentions is referred to as carrying out the commandments or the Creator’s directions. When we correct the 613 intentions that are “for my own sake” by transforming them into “for the sake of bestowal,” it is called the execution of 613 commandments. The 613 Lights or “613 advices” (Tariag Eitin) correct us by filling the 613 desires.

“Isra-El” (directly to the Creator) refers to a person who strives to attain the Creator by correcting himself. Zeir Anpin of the World of Atzilut is called the Tree of Life because it brings the Light of Correction to us.

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The Zohar, Chapter “Ki Tissa (When You Take),” Item 16: “All those who are angered at you will be shamed and dishonored.” The Creator is destined to do unto Israel all that good, which He had said through the prophets of truth, and for which Israel greatly suffered in the exile. Had it not been for all that good that they await and see, which is written in the Torah, they would have been unable to tolerate and stand the exile.

This means that a person gains a greater desire for correction, called “Isra-el” (directly to the Creator), by anticipating the goodness and abundance that will come later on. And moreover, his desire grows even stronger when he gains an initial connection with that goodness.

In our world, a person feels like he knows that he will receive a future reward for his suffering. But in spirituality, this is not the case. There, a person doesn’t receive psychological relief by thinking that evil will turn into goodness. One who is studying Kabbalah relates to this differently. When a person is on the path of truth, he knows that evil is there to help him attain goodness. He sees that the evil is actually within him and he has to correct it instead of simply enduring it. Then, instead of feeling the evil, he feels goodness.

A person does not expect a lucky streak to follow a bad one, but knows that the “unlucky streak” he is experiencing is the revelation of evil within him, which he has to reveal and then correct. In this manner, he attains goodness within. It’s not that the suffering takes place in one place and the reward comes in another, or that he makes an effort here and receives a payment there. Rather, by carrying out the correction, he transforms the “evil inclination” into the “good inclination” – and that’s the reward.

That is why a person rejoices when the “wicked are revealed” – because this gives him something to work on and to correct. It is thanks to this work that he attains spirituality, the Creator, the property of bestowal. Yet, everything happens in the same place: the desire to enjoy.

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If you bestow less than you are able, then it’s not bestowal. This is how the middle line is built. It cannot emerge unless there is a precise measure of maximal bestowal.

The middle line does not exist initially and we do not know its measure, but it constitutes the entire “human being” inside us. We have to create this human being so he will be equal to the Creator. So how do we build and create the middle line in the Creator’s image, if it is to consist of two forces: male and female, right and left? We don’t know what this connection is or what form this creature called “man” should have. When he is born, he will be called our “self.” But before that happens, it’s as if we don’t exist at all.

We cannot know any of this ahead of time because we don’t see the Creator. When we complete this work and build precisely ten Sefirot, rather than nine or eleven, then the result will be called the Creator – “Come and See” (Bo- Re). We will reveal ourselves and the Creator together because a person cannot be revealed without the Creator and the Creator – without man; they can only exist together.

We don’t have any example or image of what the middle line is. We have to search and ask for it in order to begin finding the examples and the connection. That is how we start to see the game that the Creator is playing with us by awakening different feelings in us; this is His way of giving us hints to help us find the middle line.

Otherwise we won’t be able to understand it; we can only find the middle line by searching for it and trying to imagine it while in the darkness. This is the entire art and work of building the “Temple” – the manifestation of the Creator’s image on all levels of our desire: still, vegetative, animate, and human.

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A question I received: It is written that the Creator treats us mercifully. What does that mean?

My Answer: If the Creator didn’t treat us mercifully, then we’d never be able to correct ourselves. After all, in our initial state we are incapable of telling good from evil. Therefore, we naturally incline toward evil, since it is the basic quality that we are created from.

If the Upper Governance were to act from the side of evil with the same force as from the side of good, then we would always choose evil and we would be banished from the Upper World like any other sinner. If that were the case, we would never be able to reach the goal.

That is why a correction or addition is made from Above where my natural, inherent qualities aren’t taken into account. Indeed, it was the Creator who created the evil inclination; therefore, the only considered factor is how well I can utilize the means given to me – the group, the teacher, and the Kabbalah books – in order to take even the smallest step toward correction in spite of my nature. This is why it is written that the Creator treats us mercifully.

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