A question I received: According to Kabbalah, we can’t correct ourselves. We have to place ourselves under the influence of the Upper Light. Also, there is no way we could feel the Upper Light. So, in order to place ourselves under the influence of the Light, we have to believe that it exists! Does this mean that at the initial stage (before the Machsom), Kabbalah is a faith and later, after the Machsom, it turns into science?

My Answer: Not exactly, because what incites you to study Kabbalah is not faith or someone’s persuasion, but your desire, the point in the heart that you feel compelled to fulfill. Therefore, it is similar to how you advance in any other science before you have mastered it. You do not have to believe; you have to know. This is what the Creator demands: “All will know Me, from the least of them to the greatest.” The revelation of the Creator is necessary to both man and the Creator.

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In the News (from MSNBC News): “Antidepressant use doubles in U.S., study finds” Use of antidepressant drugs in the United States doubled between 1996 and 2005, probably because of a mix of factors, researchers reported on Monday. “Significant increases in antidepressant use were evident across all sociodemographic groups examined, except African Americans,” Dr. Mark Olfson of Columbia University in New York and Steven Marcus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia wrote in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

My Comment: Because people are feeling a new, unearthly desire, which is impossible to fulfill in this world, they are experiencing an incurable state of depression and melancholy that they are trying to suppress with drugs or other addictive substances. However, this desire can instead be fulfilled with the desired pleasure by revealing the Upper World, using the method of fulfilling this new desire, the soul. This method is called the “Wisdom of Kabbalah.” Kabbalah is translated from Hebrew as “reception or fulfillment.”

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Preparation
I can feel empathy for someone in the material world, but this will only be a measure of my participation in his suffering. It won’t be pain that I myself feel.
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Part 1, on Baal HaSulam’s Letter 23
The spiritual world is not a theory. Actually, it is much more real than the “reality” we are familiar with now.
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Part 2, on Part 12 of Talmud Eser Sefirot, “Inner Observation”
All the corrections are made by the Light. So if a person acts on his own, he is acting inside his egoistic desire.
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Part 3, on “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot,” Item 142
Reality is something that you have in common with the Light. You gradually perceive one more part, and then another one, and so on, but you always perceive only the things you are ready for.
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A question I received from my student: Is it good or bad to use one’s fantasy in the inner work?

My Answer: If you are studying only Baal HaSulam’s books and are trying to leave behind all your previous prejudices and stereotypes, then you will gradually be “cured” of all your fantasies. Our task in Kabbalah is to start feeling a new reality, which is not a fantasy! You should come to feel an additional  world that is similar to how you now feel this world, but you shouldn’t make it up!

Right now, you don’t feel the spiritual world. Even though people tell you about it, you don’t discern it. Nevertheless, you wait to feel it and you aspire toward it by performing different actions and exercises in order to feel it. In virtue of the efforts you make and your practice, you will eventually begin to sense spirituality, even though initially you didn’t have any abilities to do so.

The same thing always happens with everything we do in this world, as well. If we seriously engage in something, then we begin to feel and understand it. Where does this sensation and understanding come from? It comes from the general system that we are all part of, where each of us is connected with everyone. We simply forget that we are inside this system. For example, if I don’t feel or understand anything about plants, but begin to study gardening and start taking care of flowers, then I will gradually begin to feel them, receive impressions from them, and will establish a connection with them.

Where does this connection come from? From our connection with all parts of reality, which already exists. Now, when we perform various exercises, we merely awaken the connection that is already there, but we are not creating anything new. We only discern this system in virtue of our efforts and desires.

The same thing also happens with the spiritual world! We are already in the World of Infinity, but we reveal this system in virtue of the efforts we make, by studying the Upper World and trying to reveal it together with others. We reveal something that is already there! So there is nothing in the world to which we can point and ask, “Where did this come from? Is it a fantasy?” Nothing is a fantasy! All we have to do is practice in order to awaken our sensitivity to something that already exists.

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Instead of examining our desires from within, we should examine them from above, “under a microscope,” and as quickly as possible. Our objective is correction, and only this “school of desires” will enable us to reach it, or to work for the sake of bestowal.

The entire spiritual world is something we build inside us, by using our desires. We stack them up into a “hill” and then rise on top of it. And we repeat this process again and again. The hill grows, and we grow together with it, becoming more and more giving.

The result is that each of us erects Mount Sinai – the mountain of hatred (in Hebrew, Sina means hatred), in order to rise to its peak and build a king’s castle there, the Creator’s palace. We create all this out of our own, broken, egoistic desires, which are revealed inside us one after another. It is precisely by correcting these desires, and inside them, that a person reveals the reality of the Creator. Or in other words, one builds his work “for the sake of bestowal” from these desires.

Therefore, all the spiritual worlds and degrees are inside us. Everything becomes revealed inside our desires that we correct. This is because the Creator created just one common desire, and we reveal the Creator inside the forms of this desire.

The 125 spiritual degrees are not something outside of us. Their potential is instilled in our Reshimot, and each one of us must personally develop his desires from these Reshimot, work with them, and change the way he uses them. This is how one builds the spiritual world from them.

I was given a desire (matter) and Reshimot (forms). Now I must attract the Upper Light upon myself and thus connect these two components with each other. This way, I unite the Lights, the sparks, and the Kelim (in Hebrew this is called ANAH – Orot, Netzutzim, Kelim). They will then form my soul, and inside it I will feel the spiritual reality. Right now I also perceive the reality inside the soul, but only in its lowest layer, called the “material world.” In order to truly reveal the soul, we must attain the Creator.

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A question I received: You have said that the goal of human development, the reason we are born, is to reveal the Upper World inside us, to acquire His qualities and love for Him, as well as for the entire universe. Practically speaking, this means we must attain the ability to feel unconditional, infinite Love.

How will humanity be able to come to this end state if every person subconsciously operates by a strict calculation: how to fulfill his own instinctive needs to eat, drink, sleep (don’t worry about sex – it’s just extra work) and protect himself from others? Today a person may even let his own children and family starve, because he perceives even them as external and alien. For the same reason, people (especially youth) do not even fear death, because there is nothing to lose; this is no life. This is not anyone’s fault, but it’s a disaster!

Fear is no longer a motivator. So what can force all of this to change? In theory, the sensation of lack is what motivates a person forward. But how can one strive toward something he doesn’t feel, and therefore has no sensation of lack related to it?

My Answer: You will see that all of a sudden, people will start to feel the desire for spirituality, and will start to behave accordingly. After all, they are puppets, and are now experiencing a sensation of emptiness and lack of purpose. It is all happening according to the Creator’s plan. There is a time and a place for everything. And as for you, the next stage is already beginning to happen!

Our entire lives are a process of gathering the sensations necessary to come to feel the Creator. Therefore, resistance is useless. What we have to do is speed up the process. That is how everything will change. You will then acquire the same impressions, but without the suffering.

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A question I received: When a person crosses the Machsom, where does he sense this attainment?

My Answer: Everything is sensed internally. It is similar to how you sense yourself and this world today. You always feel either suffering or pleasure within. This is also how you will sense spirituality.

The method is very simple. You will learn what pleasure and suffering are, how you currently sense them, and how you can begin to interact with them, enjoy them and gain control over them.

After all, our material is the desire to enjoy, and the Creator is the pleasure that’s revealed inside this desire, along with the Source of the desire. This is why there is nothing besides the Kelim, and why you will sense the spiritual world in the same way that you sense the physical world. Don’t think that spirituality is far away or out in space somewhere. In Kabbalah, you are learning precisely about what is currently taking place inside of you, as well as what will take place in the future.

However, there is one big difference in spirituality. Today, I sense my life and my existence inside my small Kli. In fact, it is so small and limited that our lives can’t really be considered real life. Once we expand our Kli, however, we will feel life and existence based upon a new condition: that we want to use our lives as a means to help us pass pleasure on to others, to bestow, to love, and to come out of ourselves. Otherwise, if the Kli remains egoistic, the pleasure is negated within it.

In other words, even now you are filled with Infinite Light. But you neutralize this Light with your egoism, because when the Light of Infinity reaches a desire, it immediately turns off, as though it short-circuits between two opposite ends that have no resistance between them. You have to use your own egoism as that resistance, and then you will feel the pleasure. Otherwise, the pleasure is not sensed and leaves. What we are left with is this minuscule corporeal life, where all we sense is just a spark of Light in order to have something to cling to.

But the pleasure that is ahead of you is billions of times greater. There is no obstacle to getting this pleasure; you only have to expand your Kli. Everything depends on you. All you need is the Kli, but the infinite pleasure is sitting right in front of you.

What does “infinite” mean, and how can the Kli be infinite? When your Kli reaches the size initially intended by the Creator, it will feel unlimited pleasure. This is what an infinite Kli is.

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Spirituality takes the form you build for it out of your own desires. The only thing we receive from Above is an informational record, a Reshimo, but then we have to build the form ourselves. In addition, if we request it, we also receive from Above the strength and the intelligence to implement this.

Some people think that a ready-made world will suddenly come tumbling down on them from Above. But it’s pointless to wait for this to happen. We have to build the spiritual world through our own efforts. We have to draw this world ourselves on the background of the Light.

To the extent I make efforts, I draw the image of the Upper Level and it gradually becomes truer. I do everything in my power, such as imagining various forms. Sometimes I am better at it and sometimes worse, and sometimes I am mistaken. I create them and erase them over and over again until I achieve success.

In the process of this work, I suddenly see that the Upper Level begins to help me! It clothes into me like a hand in a glove, and works there. It helps me like a mother playing with her child, helping him to build a house out of Lego pieces. When I try to do something, and succeed, I suddenly feel that it is the Upper Level that helped me understand the proper way to do something, and that it was not the way that I thought was right.

However, all of this happens by virtue of my efforts, because I try to build something. The Upper Level elicits the beginning of my inner effort, but I am the one who has to continue it. I have to find the “sprout” and begin to work with it. This is the meaning of the verse, “I, the Creator, am the first and the last.”

The way to build the place where the Creator will be revealed is by building a connection with our friends. We thus build the “picture of the Creator” by using our own matter. Without this, He has no image. I project Him onto myself, onto my own desires, onto the part of me that I can make similar to Him.

Then, using this desire as the basis or as a screen, I begin to see a “picture” of Him. It begins to be projected onto this screen, like a photograph dipped into a developing solvent. This picture, which is shown on my screen, is called “Reflected Light.” This is how I receive two spiritual forces: the “screen” and the “Reflected Light.”

But all of this has to come from me. That is why time and a preparation period of about three to five years are required to enter the spiritual world. The time of concealment is when I make attempts to build this picture. And then, the spiritual world becomes revealed…

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A question I received: In our world, we are used to knowing that progress is always expressed through some kind of proactive actions. But the activity you speak of seems to be more like an inner reflection, similar to meditation, where all I have to do is perceive the world differently. In that case, how do I express any activity?

My Answer: Your activity is expressed in your desires. After all, there is nothing in existence aside from desires. Our body is nothing but an animal which grazes in a field in order to remain alive. The more actions you carry out above and beyond what is necessary for this animal to survive, the more you will impair your internal efforts to understand who you are, where you are, the reason for your existence, and what is happening around you in the world. This is what internal reflection really is.

If instead of going deep into yourself in this way, you will spend your time on various mechanical actions, then you will be stealing from your internal efforts and as a result, bringing harm to yourself. Moreover, you will be harming the whole world. The only thing a person has to do in this world is to make actions that are vitally necessary for his body, while devoting all the rest of his time to inner development. This is exactly how all of the harmony in Nature is achieved, and Nature will compel us to maintain the same harmony.

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In the News (from The Guardian): “No sex please, we’re British and we’re lazier than ever” – Despite a huge government push to encourage healthy living, Britons are lazier than ever, concludes the study conducted by Nuffield Health. One in six people would rather watch a TV programme they didn’t like rather than leave the sofa to change the channel if their remote control was broken. A third (36%) …would not run to catch a bus and more than half (59%) would not walk up two flights of stairs to reach their office, choosing instead to take the lift. More than half of dog owners (52%) did not walk their dogs, and two-thirds (64%) of parents admit to always being too tired to play with their children. The laziness epidemic appears to have spread to the bedroom, with almost three-quarters (73%) of couples saying they regularly do not have enough energy at the end of the day to have sex, with more than half (58%) blaming a lack of fitness … The nation has fallen into a vicious circle of laziness…

My Comment: Kabbalah says that there is no laziness, but only lack of interest, meaning a lack of desire. Now we are going through a stage where our desires are changing from material to spiritual, and this explains that apparent laziness. In other words, it is a lack of desire to fulfill those previous desires that we used to have, but are no longer tangible to us.

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