The word Kabbalah can be interpreted in different ways. One of its meanings is “passing something on,” because the language of Kabbalah can only be passed on through a connection between a student and teacher. All other languages (Tanach, Halacha and Haggadah) can be learned on your own, provided that you receive books from previous generations explaining the key concepts, and that you have someone to advise you. However, when learning these other languages, you don’t have to have a close connection with a teacher; you don’t have to learn how he thinks, feels and relates to everything. You don’t have to absorb anything from him or copy his attitude and worldview.

However, in order to attain the language of Kabbalah, you have to cling to a teacher. That’s because he is higher and you are lower. He gives you his AHP and you have to view it as something positive and wanted, in spite of the external appearance that deliberately repels you. Of course, you won’t agree with the teacher and you won’t want him. You will push him away and even hate him. However, in reality this is in order to show you how much you don’t want spirituality.

You have to receive the language or program that already operates in the teacher but still not in you. You have to try to copy the examples you are given. When there is a teacher who is next to you, in the same world and with the same senses, you can use this to help you enter spirituality. You are able to cling to the teacher’s attitude to spirituality, in spite of the external obstacles that try to block your opportunity to attain an inner connection. If it were not for these examples given to you by the Creator, you would be totally cut off from spirituality and would have no hope of ever reaching it.

It is impossible to extract spirituality from the books, because it cannot be attained with the earthly mind. A person has to nullify his egoism and destroy the barrier between him and the teacher in order to see the teacher’s inner content. Only when observing this condition does the student absorb the teacher’s inner worldview as much as he is able to.

If you are able to perceive the program of the teacher’s connection with the Creator, then you can continue onwards; otherwise, you cannot. This is exactly what the Ari meant when he said before his death that only one of his students, Chaim Vital, can continue studying Kabbalah, because he has learned the basics of the language, the program of connecting the Creator, from the Ari, while others did not.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

A question I received: How does a Hassid differ from a Kabbalist?

My Answer: A Hassid wants to erase his egoistic qualities. He is fully immersed in the Light of Mercy (Hessed), which does not expand in height, but only in breadth.

In this situation, a person feels that everything is simple and good, the Creator is the only force present everywhere and in everything, there is nothing besides Him, I live in the Creator’s world, there is no egoism, I accept everything with joy, and I ignore all the doubts. This is a wonderful attitude to life for small people to have, because they immediately accept everything with gratitude to the Creator. This also provides enormous psychological help in dealing with all of life’s difficulties. However, when you have this attitude, you are not working with your egoism.

A Kabbalist, on the other hand, uses his egoistic desires (the left line) and adds them to the right line. The right line has to be present and you have to achieve it first and foremost. You have to start everything from it. But after that, once you have the power of the right line, you should immediately turn to the left line and select the egoistic desires (desires that oppose your spiritual progress) that you can correct.

By correctly combining both lines inside you, you build the middle line. This is done using the power of the left line – the desire, together with the intention of the right line, the intention “for the sake of bestowal.”

Spiritual growth takes place only in the middle line, by using egoism and rising above it. You then receive the Light of Hochma inside it and thus reveal and attain the Upper World, the Creator.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - 1 Comment →

A question I received: What is bestowal?

My Answer: Bestowal is love. However, love is an attitude, whereas bestowal is an action expressing love.

What we normally call love in our world is an aspiration to fulfill our ego. But what is real love between us? I have a desire, and you have another desire. If I am able to attach your desire to mine and make your desire more important, then my desire will serve yours; it will be aimed at fulfilling your desire. That will mean that I love you. Furthermore, when I fulfill your desire in this way, this is called an action of bestowal.

We were all created as one desire. But afterwards, this desire was broken into many pieces and we separated from each other. The ego emerged between us, making us feel distant from one another. Now we have to apply efforts towards building a connection among us above our egos. We shouldn’t destroy the ego, but use the ego to make our connection stronger!

As a result, the unity we achieve will be 613 times greater than the original whole desire created by the Creator. We will then feel similar to the Creator, because we won’t be filled by the original Light of Nefesh, but by the supreme Light of NaRaNHY – the Light of love and bestowal!

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

A question I received: Why did the Creator give us egoism if we have to unite and get rid of it sooner or later?

My Answer: People learn about the world by comparing opposites, such as hot and cold, black and white, and so on. We feel one thing on the background of the other. If everything were only white or only black, then we wouldn’t feel a thing. We always need contrast, such as the difference between colors, sensations and places. What we actually feel is the gap between things and not each thing on its own.

The Creator is the pure quality of bestowal. However, I cannot feel this quality of bestowal unless I am opposite to it. Then I will have two “inhabitants” living inside me: a monster named the Evil Inclination, and opposite to it – the beautiful Creator, the Good Inclination. The inner opposition between them will enable me to differentiate one from the other.

Before I discover the evil inclination within myself, I can only have a tiny sensation of this world, the smallest possible feeling. But by revealing that inclination, I can also discover the Creator, who stands opposite my egoism.

This is why we need egoism, in order to be our “helper” from the opposite side. Because it is opposite to the Creator, it helps us attain and perceive Him.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

We have to understand once and for all that the Torah does not say a single word about this world. It speaks only about the soul and the soul’s correction. There is no other topic in it.

Our soul, our egoism, or our “evil inclination” is what was corrupted. We still have to carry out the serious task of clarifying what the egoistic desire is, and then correct it. We will then reveal the Creator in our corrected desire and achieve equivalence to Him in our desires and thoughts – in the heart and mind.

A person has to strive to see the spiritual world through this world, and to understand that the spiritual world is eternal and we are in it even now. We just have to reveal it for ourselves.

All the books of the Torah are written particularly in order to reveal the Upper World. In Hebrew, “Torah” comes from the words “Oraa” – instructions, and “Ohr” – Light. It tells us how to reveal our eternal state, in which we already exist but do not feel. It tells us how to develop the inner sense that will allow us to feel the hidden part of the world.

All the books of the Torah talk exclusively about this, because our purpose is to reveal the entire, perfect Nature in which we exist.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - 1 Comment →

In order to reach a new nature, a person has to perceive his egoism as evil. He has to come to hate it like an enemy that does not allow him to reach what he most desires. This realization of egoism as evil can be achieved under the influence of the right environment (group) and the Light. Along with this, one reveals that only the Upper Light is capable of correcting him, since It created him this way.

A person does not have to destroy his nature. He has to use it as an instrument in order to rise above it. We have nothing except egoism; it makes up all of us! We have developed it throughout many reincarnations, which were very costly to us. We were continuously given more egoism, and every time we tried to use it , we received blows as a result. But we needed all this suffering and the efforts we’ve accumulated throughout all our lives. This is a person’s asset and the only thing he has. Now, all that remains is for us to ask the Light to help us use our nature correctly.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

The Creator wishes for the creation to become similar to Him, to be just as eternal and perfect. Therefore, through an explosion He implanted His quality to bestow into the creation’s quality to receive. Due to this breaking in the Upper World, we are born as little egoists in our world. But in the process of our development, the quality of bestowal begins to be revealed within us.

Particularly in our generation, when we as humanity have reached the greatest possible egoism, we are discovering its emptiness. This is why so many people are depressed. But suddenly, precisely in this situation, as if by a ray of Light in a dark kingdom, we can find the entrance into the Upper World!

A new desire pulls us somewhere and instills hope in us. In our generation, many people already feel this addition to their regular egoism, which has developed in us throughout many millennia.

In the previous generations, this small spark called the “point in the heart,” the sprout of an altruistic intention, was awakened only in special, chosen people, who became Kabbalists. However, today millions of people are feeling this new quality that is awakened in them. It pushes them ahead and demands to be realized. Previously, we were pushed ahead by egoism, but now egoism no longer sees anything worthwhile to chase in this world.

This new desire begins with the question, “What is the meaning of my life?” We feel emptiness and see that it is impossible to receive any more egoistic fulfillment. However, there is another side to the question, “What can I receive pleasure from?” Its opposite realization is: “Who can I give pleasure to?” That is when a person begins to feel a need to bestow. He feels that he can find true fulfillment in that!

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

A question I received: Why are there so many words in our world while there are none in the spiritual world?

My Answer: In our world, egoism separates us from each other and forces us to develop all kinds of egoistic connections above all the differences between us. That’s how languages are created.

Language is a program that gives us the ability to connect. It is much like the software program in a computer supplying the language that makes it possible to create connections between different parts of the operating system and memory. The computer by itself is an empty shell with a bunch of microchips, but the installed program describes how all the microchips and systems interact. Language is very much the same in that it’s just a program of connection between us.

All our development lies only in the development of our language, from the egoistic levels of still, vegetative, and animate to the “human” language of bestowal. That is all we do. All types of connections between us, such as culture, religion, education, trade, manufacturing, and all other types of connections created by society during humanity’s history, are reflective of the development of language, the connection between us.

Through language in its different forms, people are trying to egoistically compensate for the lack of altruistic connection between them, which disappeared after the breaking of the one Soul into a multitude of souls. All through our development, we have been aiming to create egoistic interconnections between us, in order to compensate for the lack of spiritual, altruistic connections.

Development of the Internet, mobile communications, trade and cultural exchange have brought us to global, egoistic connections. But the crisis caused by these connections is the crisis of incorrect connections between us, and that is why we now feel that there must be another type of connection, another language, which is one for all.  That language is one of bestowal and revelation of the Creator between us.

Each person has his own egoism, his own language, so people must now reveal that the time in which we are now living is a time when all the world languages will transform into a single language of mutual bestowal.

(From the Daily Lesson on the article “The Essence of the Science of Kabbalah”  10.26.09)

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

Currently we wish to approach the Creator from below upwards in order to attain Him. However, when we disseminate, we move together with Him. Therefore, a person who does this is considered an equal partner of the Creator.

The Creator cannot carry out the dissemination instead of us or disclose Himself in our world. If the Creator was revealed in our world, we would automatically aspire for Him like for something incredibly valuable, great, and worthy. Then, we would never get rid of our egoism. Our egoism would be obsessed with the Creator to such an extent that we would go crazy wishing to receive His fulfillment. Therefore, He has to conceal Himself until we perform a restriction on ourselves and rise above our egoism.

When we do, we will be able to reveal Him in order to become similar and, at the same time, opposite to Him. If I make this shield or screen for myself that blocks me from Him, then the Creator can be revealed. There will still be a 100% concealment between us. The only question is: does He conceal Himself, or do I conceal my egoism from Him? To the extent that I form my own screen, the Creator can take the screen off of Himself. The dissemination of Kabbalah, the revelation of the Creator to the creation, is not something that goes against us. Rather, it is when we move together with Him and become His partners.

Then we will even be able to walk ahead of Him by disseminating the knowledge about how to reveal Him. We will then be His messengers, agents, and helpers – His hands. That’s how important our mission is to the Creator, let alone to all the people who are suffering like small, foolish children, without even understanding why they are suffering.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - 2 Comments →

Today, our egoism is global, mutual, and integral. This is why we have the “Butterfly Effect,” making all people absolutely interdependent. But that’s not all: our egoism will continue to grow and reveal itself in awful ways. This kind of egoism can already be considered spiritual because it points to the cause of all our misfortunes: the breaking of the right connection between us.

The breaking of our common desire (the unified Kli) took place in the spiritual world. Today we are beginning to attain that state from below upwards, starting from our world.

All people constitute one common vessel which shattered into small pieces and is now unable to hold anything inside. It’s impossible to sense the Upper Light within it, since It can only flow between people.

If we restore the connection, we will feel the Upper Light fulfilling us, since It won’t seep out of the vessel anymore. We will then sense an eternal, perfect existence within the Light.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →