In spirituality, “mutual inclusion” is an action that is carried out by a force that comes from the Creator. Although our qualities tune into each other, the mutual inclusion does not happen outside of us since it is impossible to accomplish on our level. I cannot take two qualities and fuse them together in one plate here on the table before me. I need to raise them to the source where they can unite into one whole in the Creator. I can work on their mutual inclusion there.

My desire to include these qualities is here in this world. However, in order to create their mutual inclusion, I need to raise them to the root (Keter) of the given degree and connect to the place where they exist as one whole. This is not a material unification where a few atoms unite into one molecule and create a compound through a chemical reaction.

In spiritual unification, nothing remains from the right and the left lines. The middle line is a completely new entity. It does not consist partially of the left line and partially of the right. Rather, mutual inclusion produces a new quality that supersedes the qualities of which it is made.

The desire to enjoy (which connects to the screen) and the Reflected Light (the intention to work for the sake of bestowal) are depicted as a desire below and a screen above (the intention to bestow), as if the intention and the desire exist separately. They are depicted as if these are two separate components rather than one whole.

However, this explanation is only provided in this manner when using the terms of our world. In the spiritual world, the intention and the desire are forced to be completely inseparable, intertwined, and merged inside one another. The intention can completely change a desire by using it for the sake of reception or for the sake of bestowal.

Therefore, the work we do on the “third day” lies in merging with one another and creating one common body. Each person does the inner work of uniting his qualities from the right and the left sides into one whole in the middle line, tuning in to the Creator as a result. After all, the source of all these opposite things is situated in Him, where they all exist in unity. This is why on the third day, upon ascending to the Creator, a spiritual quality opposite to the Creator was revealed, which is the spiritual death of desires such as Shachem.

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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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It seems to us that The Zohar talks about the same thing over and over – the three lines. But that is only because the evil inclination is afraid of the three lines. As a matter of fact, the three lines express the principle of connection between all the parts, all the details in reality. However, this union occurs in different forms on billions of levels. Therefore, The Zohar presents this through various descriptions which awaken different forms of connection within you. All this is done in order to attune them to yourself, check, and organize them within you.

In reality, there is nothing except the desire to receive and the intention for the sake of bestowal. However, a new story appears each time because there is an infinite number of different unions. We simply are unable to feel a new mood, experience a different taste, a different connection, or a new revelation each time.

When we begin to feel every action that The Zohar tells us about, then we will understand that it instructs us to check a particular union, a particular action, then another one, and so on. It reveals new connections to us continuously, thereby opening the world for us.

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The desire to enjoy in and of itself is no obstacle for the union of the Creator and the creature. The only thing standing in the way is the desire’s egoistic form, which is opposite to the Creator. However, the desire itself is the perfect material for the reception of Light.

If I want to catch a radio wave, I don’t need to be the wave myself; I simply need my matter to attain the same quality as the wave. The matter itself is no hindrance; on the contrary, it is the foundation in which I reveal the wave. I only have to make this matter similar to the radio wave’s quality, and then within my matter I will catch its influence. In other words, I will perceive the form of the wave that I am capable of.

If it weren’t for my desire to enjoy, I would never be able to know and feel the Creator. How could I perceive Him if He’s the Creator, an entity that exists outside of me? For that I would need to accept Him within and feel Him within me, and that’s only possible inside my matter, by receiving His form.

I would never be able to feel Him outside of my matter because I am the creature and as such I only feel what is inside of me. However, my matter doesn’t hinder me; quite the opposite, I perceive the Light within my matter. I am like a radio receiver – although it’s made of metal, plastic, and silicone, it is able to catch the radio wave because it can reconstruct that wave’s form within itself. Therefore, I should focus on my matter, but only my intention, because the intention is the form.

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When you connect with other people on the level of spiritual desire, corporeality gradually loses its value. Of course, you still have to help people to live by the laws of society, but you start to see that there are deeper reasons and a purpose for everything taking place.

All your sensations start to focus on your connection and relationship with the Creator. You reveal that others also desire the Creator and they really need your help with this. You are all in one boat and you help each other navigate and arrive to the common goal.

This is what the Creator desires as well. He is the One that determines all our actions from the beginning. We have to leave our own desires behind and connect to the Creator and His desire as much as we are able to grasp and understand Him. We can only act to the extent that we can carry out His desire.

Everything else goes against the process of spiritual development, no matter how “cruel” or “inhuman” this statement seems to us. Indeed, it’s not human – it’s divine! But in the meantime we aren’t able to understand it.

Therefore, we shouldn’t abandon our studies and seek to help all those who suffer. We should understand that we can’t help them this way. There is only one thing that can help, because everything comes from Above, from the Upper Light: this Light is lacking a desire to clothe into, and that is why we are witnessing so many disasters in our world.

We have to create a vessel in our world that is able to accept the Upper Light. Then, instead of all the catastrophes we experience, we will feel positive changes of the same force or even greater.

Life teaches us that there is no other way to overcome these tragedies. With every passing day, life on earth will become more dangerous. So if we don’t take the right path, we might see tectonic plates shifting in the near future, with all that this implies.

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Our entire nature is made of a desire to enjoy, and this desire will forever remain with us. However, the desire itself contains many contrasting parts which are different and disconnected from each other.

It is similar to how impossible it would be to compare certain functions of the human body such as the liver to the heart, or the brain to the kidneys, since each one has its own cells, distinct from the other. In fact, if we were to transplant part of one organ to another, it would poison and kill that organ; that is how different and alien they are to each other. But their common work together in harmony, for the same goal, unites them into a whole body.

That is why it is not unlike that which we read about in the spiritual systems within the soul’s body. The functions or qualities of Job, Pharaoh, Israel, Abraham, and so on, seem contradictory to us. However we must not destroy even a single quality. We only need to assemble them correctly so that they are ultimately included in one intention of love and bestowal, which is for the sake of the Creator.

Moreover, there is room for each and every desire, even the “negative” desires like Pharaoh, Job, Bilam, Balak, and even Amalek (the biggest desire for self reception). There is not a single desire that doesn’t connect to this one intention of bestowal. Our desires will remain different, but in the end, these differences will not be felt. Indeed, all parts of the system will work in harmony, interconnected and joined together with the aim of becoming like the Creator.

To become like the Creator means to replicate the system which is shown to us as an example through The Book of Zohar. It is similar to how we teach a child by example, such as how to behave in this world, while the child tries to emulate it. Likewise, we need to develop our desire to understand how to unite all of our desires, thoughts, and intentions into the system we read about in The Book of Zohar.

Right now very little of that system is understood to us, just as a baby barely understands his mother yet strives to know. While it is extremely difficult for the baby since he doesn’t yet grasp spoken language, body language, the world he lives in, or anything at all, he nevertheless exerts tremendous efforts to do so. Imagine that we are in this baby’s place; that is the exact same state described for us by The Book of Zohar.

We stand before big adults (the Kabbalists) who tell us about a world, which we neither know nor understand. But there is a critical difference between a baby in this world and us as babies in the spiritual world, and that’s the baby’s natural, inherent instinct to attain the world. It is a great desire to attain which defines an infant’s whole life, whereas we must create that same great desire to attain the spiritual world within ourselves, by absorbing this desire from our environment. Thus the environment functions as the organs of that same body, which are particles of our own soul that we unite together and attach to ourselves, so as to attain this whole system.

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I connect the points in the heart wishing to create a Kabbalistic group out of them, or the unification of the souls of Isra-el (“directly to the Creator”). Meanwhile, besides the point in the heart, each person also has a part of the egoistic desire. We are willing to cancel this ego of ours in order to unite. And to the extent that we unite in this common desire, according to its quality of unity and mutual guarantee, we feel the Upper Light, the Creator, the quality of bestowal, which governs within us.

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The whole world is parts of my desire, of myself. However, I don’t feel that others are part of me and therefore I’m not concerned about them whatsoever. Let the whole world burn, I don’t care!

The science of Kabbalah teaches us to reveal the truth – to see that everything “outside” of us is us, our desire. What we perceive as ourselves as well as the external world must all merge within us into one desire.

The Creator created only the desire, which is where we exist. We cannot see or sense anything beyond that desire. We reveal the Creator within our desire, which is why He is called “the Creator” – Bo-Reh, “come and see.” This world is what we feel right now, and the world to come is what we will feel a moment from now.

Everything takes place within the same desire, but we begin to perceive more and more things within it. We experience countless impressions, but in fact, this external reality doesn’t exist; it is merely the various phenomena that appear within our desire. This place we are in, this world, and this whole reality are imaginary. Once we discover the world of truth, we will exclaim: “We were in a dream!”

We must reveal the truth in order to awaken to the true reality, much like a person awakens from unconsciousness. This is the purpose of the science of Kabbalah – to return us to consciousness. Until then, it’s no use speaking to a person because if he currently exists in an unconscious state, he must first be reanimated back to life.

Therefore, when we open The Book of Zohar, we must imagine that nothing exists other than our desire. This world, myself, and everyone around me – none of these things exist. They are all my illusion.

There is only one desire to enjoy, and everything that can possibly happen takes place within that desire. This world and the world to come, life and death, the still, vegetative, animate and human levels of nature – there is no other place for any of them to be other than my inner desire to enjoy.

The Book of Zohar allows us to enter a state of feeling everything within our desire. That is what the Kabbalists call the spiritual world.

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I have this false perception that there is somebody existing outside of me, that there are people close and far whom I can push away, cheat, or exploit. But all of this is nothing but an illusion. It is an intricate game, an exercise that lets me scrutinize and invert my desire until I begin to love others more than myself. Then I will give others my last chair and my last pillow, because I will come to view their desire, which has been so abhorrent to me before, as more important than the one I used to regard as my own.

There are desires that exist in me from the beginning and which I perceive as my “self.” These are actually the weakest desires, pertaining to Aviut zero. The first level of Aviut appears as being separate from my “self,” such as my family and relatives. The second level is even further away, such as the people who provide me with all kinds of benefits and on whom my wellbeing depends on in some way – for example, doctors, scientists, and so on.

The third level is further still – these are people I want to exploit, but I’m willing to let them live. The farthest level is the fourth; these are my mortal enemies.

It follows that the further away the desire I perceive, the greater its power compared to my own desire. Therefore, when I attach these “external” desires to myself, I experience them as much stronger than those which previously appeared as my own. This is why I am so willing later on to give my “last pillow” to these desires.

I prefer them to my initial desire of Aviut zero because it is so weak. Indeed, what is really the extent of my current desires for food, water, family, money, and knowledge? They are truly insignificant when compared to my other desires, the desires of my “friends.” These are the desires that enable me to acquire the spiritual worlds and higher states.

If I manage to attach the desires of my friends to myself on the first degree by making them my own, this is called reaching the World of Assiya. What follows is the Worlds of Yetzira, Beria, and Atzilut. These worlds represent the distance between me and my friends.

Therefore, “love your friend as yourself” is not a slogan for this world, appealing for world peace. It’s talking about the correction of the soul, where I attach the entire universe to myself, correct my vision and perception of all reality, and attain eternity.

All the worlds are me; I am Malchut of the World of Infinity – the whole of reality created by the Creator.
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A question I received: How can I tune into the Light that Reforms while studying The Zohar?

My Answer: The Light that Reforms is the force of bestowal that comes from Above and builds qualities of bestowal above our will to receive. But how can we attract this force if we are just egoistically thinking about wanting to bestow? This will not help. Instead, we have to tune into the system that influences us.

Our soul has to receive the influence of the Surrounding Light. This is why we were given The Book of Zohar, which tells us all kinds of stories about a donkey and a snake, different nations, three lines, Zeir Anpin, Malchut, the Temple, and many other things. I don’t know what desire I am working on now and whether I have the right intention, but while I am reading The Zohar with the right mindset, it operates as a connecting system between my soul and the Upper System.

There exists an Upper System wherein my soul is already included in a fully corrected state; meanwhile, my uncorrected soul is below. These two systems have an identical structures. The only difference between them is the use of the desire, meaning the intention, which determines how the desire is used. As I correct my desire, my soul will expand, starting from a point, and new, concealed desires will surface. But I need a mechanism to connect me and these two states:

The Book of Zohar functions as this connecting link. When I read it correctly, I reveal this connection. All I have to do is try to imagine myself in the corrected form. I have to tune into the text and start living inside it. I have to desire for it to “clothe” me so I will become the protagonist of everything being described there. It is talking only about me and my inner battle with my corrupted self, where I am fighting for a chance to be similar to the Creator. All the qualities and characters are me; it is all inside of me.

If this is how I prepare for reading The Zohar, then I will proactively attract the Surrounding Light to myself.

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