So far we have developed “automatically,” because Reshimot awakened inside us and thus continuously pulled and pushed us toward different goals. In spirituality, the mechanism operates differently; there, everything depends on your awakening.

You have been awakened and have felt a burning desire. Thus you applied efforts and advanced accordingly. But if you don’t add pressure now, you will remain in the same place. Years of study do not guarantee you success if they are not accompanied by efforts on your part.

In regular life we rush for success as soon as we get up in the morning without anyone urging us to do so, but it does not work the same way in spirituality. Even though you receive an awakening, this is not enough. Now you have to add something of your own to it. You have to acquire a burning desire from the books and the group in order to strengthen your initial impulse using your friends’ desires. That is the only way you will move forward.

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A question I received: When reading The Zohar, we are supposed to follow the text as though we are travelling within ourselves. However, don’t we also have to exert effort in order to demand our correction?

My Answer: The Zohar itself directs you to correction and the necessary thoughts. It will tell you what is good and what is bad depending on your specific state and what you in particular need to clarify.

The book itself will provide you with this approach. On our part, we must simply be able to adhere to it and its flow, to “swim” along with it obediently and to go wherever it wishes to bring us. We have to let our mind and heart swim smoothly along with the stream.

Everything is pre-assigned, including my desire, the Reshimot in it, and the Light which realizes the Reshimot. However, everything depends on my effort and my consent to give the Light access to the Reshimot.

I only allow the Light to act, but beyond that everything happens without my knowledge. I just witness everything that happens inside me. My effort is called “Avodat HaShem” – the work of the Creator; I am only an accomplice to it. The Creator said to Moses: “Let’s go to Pharaoh. I will do everything and you will watch how I act toward him.” This means that my point in the heart, the first spiritual Reshimo, brought me to the entrance into a new world, which I know nothing about. And now, through this point in the heart, I am hearing an explanation about this new world. To the extent that I learn about it and connect to it, I will be able to live in it.

Baal HaSulam writes that just like it is impossible for material bodies to live in this world without knowing its laws, rules, and conditions, so it is impossible for the soul to live in the spiritual world without receiving the necessary knowledge about it. Thus, right now we are trying to receive this necessary knowledge. When we receive it, we will feel that we already exist in the spiritual world, because in spirituality, knowledge and sensation is the same thing.

Right now I feel only my animate body – an illusory reality; but I also have a point in the heart which can potentially feel the Upper World. This point that I was given is a tremendous opportunity; however, it is the only thing I was given. I need to develop the rest on my own, which is why I am given The Book of Zohar, which provides an explanation for me.

I learn about the Upper World similar to how a baby learns about this world without knowing anything about it in advance. A baby cannot attain the world with his mind, by performing an analysis and a synthesis. I am the same in regard to attaining the spiritual world. I learn about it only by adhering to the book and attracting the Surrounding Light. This type of study is the most natural. We discover a new world in the same manner as we discovered this world when we were babies.

The Upper Level can never be attained with the mind, since we don’t feel, see, or understand it. However, we have to begin to feel it.

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When reading The Book of Zohar we have to remember that “There is none else besides Him” and He Is Good and does Good. This is the only way we should approach our lives and everything that happens in the world. We have to understand that there is only one force behind everything.

There is no devil or evil spirits trying to trap us, drag us into hell and roast us on an eternal fire. When The Zohar describes various evil creatures, it is in order to show how a person feels when he reveals the egoistic forces within. He feels as if he is burning in hell and wishes to escape the control of these horrible, dark forces which control him. He sees that they prevent him from advancing towards the Creator, but he cannot fight them and is forced to follow them.

The Angel of Death comes to a person and hands him a sword whose tip is smeared with a drop of deadly poison, and the person obeys, opens his mouth and swallows the poison. The Zohar explains that the Angel of Death is our egoistic desire in its final, cruelest form. All of these qualities are inside us and they are killing us. There is nothing worse than this state, even though we don’t realize it.

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When a person begins to read The Book of Zohar, oftentimes he is in a state of “sleeping” and from there he has to start attuning himself to reading and penetrating into the material. Depending on how correct a person’s intention is, how he positions himself, turns himself around and pushes in a particular direction, he will move further in the right direction as he reads the book. Therefore, it is important to tear one’s feelings and thoughts away from all earthly matters and refocus them on the manner in which The Zohar is written.

There are many ways to “organize” yourself and prepare for reading the text of The Zohar. Here is one of them:

Only one thing was created: the desire to be filled by the Light (the Creator). This desire, inside a person, can be filled by making yourself greater, higher, stronger, and more powerful than other people. Alternatively, the same desire can also be filled outside of you, by fulfilling others. In that case, the more you fulfill others, the more you are filled with the sensation of others’ fulfillment. By measuring this fulfillment inside of you, you yourself are fulfilled.

In both cases you use the thickness of the desire, all five levels (or layers) of it, but you either do so for your own sake or for the sake of others. The Zohar tells us about the sensations that are felt in the desire to bestow. The Zohar says that the desire to fulfill yourself is unnatural, because what’s natural is the Creator. The Creator, the quality of bestowal is contrary to the way we have become used to feeling because we were born with this perception.

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A question I received: Why does a person have to go through so many breakings? There’s the sin of Adam HaRishon, the intoxication of Noah, the animosity between Cain and Abel, the destruction of the Temple, and others. Why couldn’t we just go through the breaking once and then proceed to correct everything?

My Answer: The breaking is necessary in order for our desire to receive to become aware of itself, to feel that it is on the receiving end and someone gives to it, that someone wants to give to it and waits for a special reaction in return. This is all done in order for creation to learn not only to receive, but also to become similar to the Giver. Creation has to understand that reception and bestowal are just a means for connecting the Creator with creation. It is a means to bring creation to bestowal, to similarity with the Creator, and to help it ascend to His level.

When the egoistic desire begins to understand and feel all of this, it becomes “human.” Reception and bestowal are just auxiliary actions that help to elevate a person to the Creator’s level. All of the breakings are done in order to develop us and bring us to this level. All the states, feelings and realizations we go through are necessary; without them we would be unable to attain the Final Correction.

We cannot get there in one leap because wisdom comes with experience. We have to go through many states and compare them; we have to experience many inner conflicts and struggles in order to understand them. Our task is not to research the desire to enjoy that’s in us, but rather, through its reactions we study the Light, the Creator. We do not feel the Light itself; we are unable to perceive and understand it. However, by going through different layers of the desire to enjoy, the broken or uncorrected states, by being emptied of Light and filled by it, we study what happens outside our egoistic desire.

We don’t know what is really happening “outside.” We only feel the changes happening inside us and we compare them. This is how we study the third component – the Light. Even though we don’t know anything about the Light and we can’t feel it, we are nevertheless able to attain it through its actions. But this cannot be done all at once.

The more complex one’s desire becomes, the more contradictions and “shades” it contains, and the greater one’s ability to recognize the Light and the Creator. Therefore, we shouldn’t think that someone is deliberately placing obstacles on our path. The nature of our egoistic desire, which is opposite to the Light, requires it to perform these many actions in order to understand what the Light is, which is so far removed from it.

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The best means of spiritual advancement is to disseminate Kabbalistic knowledge. By doing so, we are sure to realize the Creator’s desire.

The Creator wants all his creations to unite as one in order to come into adhesion with Him. A common desire, which has been split, broken, scattered, and crushed into billions of parts needs to join together above this separation, once more become whole, and unite with the Creator. This constitutes the goal of creation and the Creator’s desire.

If our actions are aimed in the direction of connection, and if we disseminate the science of Kabbalah as the only means that leads to this goal, we thereby draw the Surrounding Light upon ourselves.  This Light which we receive when we move towards connection is several times more powerful than that which we would have received on our own.

Knowing about this wonderful opportunity, we summon people to disseminate. If every person participates in this action, the force of the Light that we draw will be multiplied by many times and will benefit us all.

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When a person correctly arranges the three qualities inside him called “candle,” “oil” and “wick,” he reaches a state called Hanukah, which comes from the words “Hanu Ko” – “stop here.” He thus reaches a short breather in the middle of the path.

The “oil” is our matter, the will to enjoy, the contents of the vessel or Kli. It is unable to light up on its own using the Light we attract from outside. It can only light up with the help of a wick. The wick has to be immersed in the oil, but a part of it has to reach outside, because the wick symbolizes the screen that we build outside our egoistic desire (outside the oil).

The only part of the egoistic desire that is able to shine (to be in contact with the Upper Light) is the part we are able to include inside the screen. Stated differently, only the oil that has saturated the wick can be lit up. This can only happen under the condition that the oil does not just permeate the wick, but also rises above the level of the rest of the oil (egoism), rising towards Bina – the Light, bestowal. Only then will it be able to shine!

The Light emanates from the upper end of the wick, the place where the wick comes outside and loses contact with the oil, egoism. The Reflected Light is the fire that ascends from below upwards, there attaining Keter of the ten Sefirot of the Reflected Light. At that point there is hardly any connection between the Reflected Light and the force of the desire to receive, egoism, which provides the power for the burning to take place. The oil ascends upwards along the wick, and that is the only place where contact is achieved, or equivalence of form between the oil in the wick and the Light. They can only shine together. The Light cannot manifest until it connects with the wick and the oil inside it.

By imagining a burning candle, we can understand the inner work of a person on the spiritual path and what we have to do in order for our soul to attain equivalence with the Light, the Creator. The desire does not disappear; rather, it must be entirely attached to the screen, the wick. From it we create the middle line inside us, to the degree we are able to bring the oil (desire) inside the wick.

The screen can include only a small part of the desire. The wick symbolizes this shaft, the thin line that is the measure of similarity between our desire and the Light. The screen, or the middle line, is built from these two forces – the oil and the wick, the right and the left lines. The right line is bestowal and Light, and the left line is reception, the oil. The middle line, which we create from the two Upper Qualities of reception and bestowal, is called the soul.

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A question I received: What is the breaking of the Kelim, when the Creator’s qualities penetrate into the qualities of the created being?

My Answer: I am created as a receiver and I only understand fulfillment. The Upper Light has influenced me and suppressed me – it showed me the quality of bestowal and instilled shame for my egoism. This was all done to me by the force of the Light. When I see the Light, I am willing to imitate it. However, inside I remain the same as I was previously.

It is as though I find myself in a profound group of people who talk about music, literature, and art, and I also want to be like them. I am proud of myself and when I think back to how I was before I came here, I feel ashamed. But then I leave there and see that everything is allowed: there are no shameful desires, it’s ok to lie and engage in all kinds of filth, and therefore I also begin to think and act this way, thinking that this is the truth of life.

In other words, the created being was under the influence of the Light, but this is not his inner essence; this is not the correction. We need darkness in order to begin to shine like Light, and to correct all of the filth within creation. The egoistic desire which was initially opposite to the Creator needs to be corrected, not just restricted.

So how can the created being be fooled into doing this and forced to reveal itself? It is as though you bug someone continuously until he shows his true colors. This is precisely what happens to the creation when the breaking of the Kelim (qualities) occurs.

However, the creation doesn’t know anything about this yet. It exists under the influence of the Light. It is as though I attach myself to a good group of people and then I also start to feel worthy, respectable, and clean. Then suddenly I am given some kind of assignment, and the whole truth is revealed – everyone finds out who I am. Imagine what shame I experience from this! I wanted to do the same thing they do: to receive for the sake of bestowal, but when it came down to business, all my evil became revealed.

The Creator and the created being are situated next to each other, and they are separated by a thin barrier called Parsa. If we break this wall, then creation will reveal all the evil that is in it, compared to all the goodness that exists in the Light. It seemed that they were near each other, but suddenly the wall (Parsa) between them broke and they now stand face to face!

You then see how kind and bestowing the Creator is – but look at yourself! Without this revelation of your nature in contrast to the Creator, we cannot achieve similarity to Him.

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The desire created by the Creator is divided into a multitude of parts or desires; it then undergoes a series of changes until it stabilizes in a state where the desire called the “self” is revealed. This desire feels like an inner desire existing in an outer desire, in a world of alien desires, in images of people, animals, birds, fish, vegetation and rocks. However, these are all parts of the same desire that descended from Malchut of Infinity to a state where it begins to discern and feel that it stems from the inner point called Adam HaRishon after the breaking.

This is the “I” within every one of us – the lowest degree of the desire’s development. On this degree, the desire begins to gather all the fragmented desires that appear alien, thus returning to a state of wholeness and perfection. By uniting the desires together as one, we study our “self,” the way it was created, and our Creator. As a result, this “self” becomes similar and equal to Him.

However, I am not the desire. I am the point outside the created desire. Like myself, the Creator too exists outside the desire He created. He created this “I” and He created the desire opposite Him so that by studying this desire opposite Him, “I” would attain Him.

The desire between us is like food between a guest and a host: it allows them to grow closer, until reaching absolute love and unity. In other words, the desire created by the Creator is the means of my unification with Him.

The Creator exists outside this desire, as do “I.” The Creator has one point of contact with the desire, as do I. It follows that the two of us are equal! Between us is the desire He created as well as the Light that fills it. I am the sensation or consequence of the breaking, a spark existing outside the desire, which is given to me so that I could attain the Creator.

Within the desire, He constructed worlds, Partzufim and Sefirot – and my job is to reinstate its former wholeness and perfection, to bring back the One, Unique and Indivisible. Then I will be completely equal to Him and I will know Him according to His actions.

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It is impossible to use the forces given to us by the Creator to correct the desire He created – Malchut of the World of Infinity. Suppose that we received everything that is humanly possible with the intention “for the sake of bestowal”; all that would result from this is a thin ray of Light (Kav Dak) in the center of infinite emptiness. All the other desires except the ray would still remain empty.

Let’s say we received just 1% and we cannot give it back to the Host. His attitude to us is 100% good. Even if we didn’t receive anything for ourselves, we still wouldn’t perform any correction by this. However, if the Host gives us the power to receive all 100% for the sake of bestowal, then what is the sense in this? After all, it will come from Him!

Therefore, it is necessary for a point of freedom to be created, a point that is independent of the Creator and the human being. Then a new creature could develop, one that is equivalent to the Creator rather than just a mechanical being. To the Creator, the worst thing is for everything to happen according to His desire. This means that there is no creation. If the Creator creates something that just blindly carries out His desires, this belittles Him. He has to create someone with the freedom of will.

This is why He creates a human being whose desires are completely opposite to His, who neglects the Creator and is opposed to Him in every way. These are the most necessary qualities of the created being. Only from this point, the point where a human being is opposite in all aspects to the Creator, from the point of total hatred and global opposition, can there emerge someone capable of attaining Him.

People say that the greatest hero is one who turns his enemy into a friend. The Creator does not force man to come to him; He does not make any compromises and He does not play an unfair game with us. Even though it is written, “There is None Else Beside Him” and the Creator governs completely over creation, He governs particularly in order to make sure that the created being will not reject its freedom!

This is His primary concern, since otherwise there is no creation; there is only a controlled element. It would be a blow to the Creator’s dignity if He allowed creation to blindly follow Nature, regardless of whether it is good or bad. For the Creator, both of these options are no good.

He wants only one thing: for the created being to be separate and independent of Him, and to act while being in this independent position. Only a creature like this can be called a “human being.”

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