The Book of Zohar always talks about the unity of friends. It was written by the group of Rabbi Shimon, where he and his nine students make up the wholesome desire for bestowal (the Kli or vessel) which is similar to the Creator. Each of them represents one particular quality out of the ten Sefirot, and each one describes the situation differently depending on his nature. Each one describes the particular way that he connects with the Creator.

That is why The Zohar talks about ten friends, each of whom reveals the spiritual world from his point of view. Yet, all of them work together, because attainment and Light can only be revealed inside unity.

The Torah speaks to a person who stands opposite the Creator, and The Zohar talks only about a person’s inner forces. Therefore, when reading it, you have to imagine that everything is being said about you alone, and it all happens inside you.

You have to understand that your destiny depends on how you connect with your friends right now. This is the condition set for us from Above. There’s no other way to go; you have to study The Book of Zohar together with your friends. When all of you together follow the path by which The Zohar leads you, you begin to perceive the same things as the people who wrote The Zohar – the group of Rabbi Shimon.

You don’t need a lot of intelligence to perceive the spiritual world. All you need is heartfelt devotion and work on your egoism within a group, with friends who are next to you, as well as those who wrote The Book of Zohar for us. When we delve into this book time after time, trying to unite, then the book reveals itself to us and illuminates us with its Light – the Zohar (which means “Radiance”).

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A question I received: Do I have to correct my point in the heart?

My Answer: No, you do not have to correct your point in the heart because there is nothing to correct there. It is just a point and it has no volume.

What you have to do is connect your point in the heart with other points. When you create this connection between you, it is called correction.

You will then reveal that the “group” of points or desires is completely corrected. Everyone exists in the perfect connection, like cells of a healthy organism; everyone except you!

To the extent that you “bow down” before them, they will influence you and you will begin to have the correct intention for similarity to the Creator. When you read about the Upper World with this intention, the reading will evoke an influence upon you from the Upper Level. You will be influenced by the Surrounding Light, which will give you a feeling of the Upper Level from where it descends. So go ahead – start!

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A question I received: What does it mean to hear the Creator’s voice? Does it mean just remembering that there is none else besides Him?

My Answer: No, we need to try to feel this inner Voice inside of us, as we can do so by means of the Surrounding Light’s influence. We have to increase our soul’s sensitivity in order to feel that we need to hear how the Creator is addressing us. The Upper Force wishes to be revealed and is knocking at our hearts, but we are still incapable of feeling It.

The Creator is inside me, but I don’t feel Him! What do I lack? The truth is that I don’t place enough value on the quality of bestowal, on coming out of myself and rising above my egoism. However, if I come out of myself and enter the group, I will feel His voice inside the connection between us.

I don’t have a transmitter inside with which I can tune into the Creator. This transmitter is outside of me, in the connection between those who aspire to the Creator. If the quality of bestowal begins to dominate my qualities, then I will feel Him.

Search in your heart for what you can discuss with Him. It doesn’t matter whether it is good or bad, but it should come from the bottom of your heart. This is called a prayer – work in the heart regarding your thoughts, intentions, and desires – everything that can be connected to the Creator.

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Presently, all of humanity has reached the state of being the broken vessel (Kli) of the common soul. This was not always the case; in previous generations, we were individualists and everyone was on their own, scattered and remote from each other.  It is this separation and lack of connection, which does not allow the formation of a spiritual vessel.

When these disconnected parts try, but are unable, to unite the fragments (individual souls) into a vessel in order to form a common soul (Adam), everything falls apart. This is known as a broken Kli, and is the revelation of egoism. It is then that we reveal what is broken as well as what exactly must be done to correct and repair what is broken.

In other words, until a person tries to tune into the group, he does not see the egoism, through which he will see the Upper World, once he is able to correct it.

This is precisely what has been happening recently. The Upper Force is arranging us in such a way that as the egoism grows, we begin to see that we exist in one global vessel. This vessel is broken, and the Light that wishes to correct it flows out through the cracks between us, through our broken connections.

Therefore, humanity must quickly be brought to a realization that our salvation lies in our unification.

(From a lesson on “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah” 10.28.2009)

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Many people ask me: what should I do with my desires, and how should I fight the disturbances?

The breaking or corruption means that the unified creation (the soul, the Kli) divided or broke into many antagonistic parts. Their correction lies in gathering all of them together in spite of the force of their rejection. In other words, the force of unity (the Light, bestowal, love) must be stronger than the forces of mutual rejection (egoism, hate). These forces, however, don’t annul each other, as it is written: “The hero is not the one who kills the enemy, but who makes him serve him.”

Thus, we shouldn’t look for the evil inclination in our daily affairs, but only in our resistance to unifying our desires toward correction, which is equivalence to the Creator. As soon as a person’s ego matures enough for the person to begin correcting it, a point in the heart appears inside him, which is the beginning of his aspiration toward unity. He is then brought to the group, where the Creator bring together all those who are ripe for correction.

If a person participates in the group in order to unify the individual aspirations for the Creator into one strong desire for unity, this evokes the force of correction during the study. Then the force shines on the common aspiration for adhesion between us and the Creator, who is the force of bestowal and love. That sets off the process of “pursuit.”

A person feels as if he is riding a fervent stallion that’s running amok, carrying him forward, and the person is helpless to do anything. The stronger you become in the group, the quicker you correct this, and the faster and stronger you enter inside the group on the next level. This, in turn, reveals your ego to you even more and you find yourself flying ahead on the stallion’s back once again. That is how you quickly reach the end of correction.

Some day the race will be over, because the forces of the ego are not limitless. Each person has his own measure, the capacity of the soul, and he has to reveal and correct all of it.

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A question I received: How can I make the most of the Surrounding Light – through the Daily Kabbalah Lessons, the television programs or other types of media?

My Answer: Right now the most powerful means for this is the Daily Kabbalah Lesson. Especially for beginners, the only way to receive the Surrounding Light and to attain the force of unity is through studying. Nothing else comes close.

Baal HaSulam writes in Item 4 of “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot” that the Creator puts a person’s hand on the spiritual path and tells him: “Choose this path!” He brings a person to the group, the books and the teacher in order for him to realize the purpose of creation. But this is only possible if a person uses the Daily Kabbalah Lesson as a means.

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A question I received: Every New Year stirs new hope in me to reach the spiritual world, but at the end of the year I experience disappointment. How do I hold on to the hope?

My Answer: New hope and new disappointment are both good! You only have to connect them together and understand that no one is going to serve us the spiritual world on a silver platter.

There is no Creator outside of us. There is no world outside the person. We have nowhere to receive from! A person will reveal everything in his corrected self.

When one corrects his Kli, he reveals the Creator in it. Everything is revealed in the corrected (previously egoistic) desire (the Kli).

It is not easy to agree with this, but no one is standing in the way of us reaching the spiritual world – the quality of bestowal and love.

You exist in one reality, in one place – in your desires. By changing them, you feel that you are in a different world. By changing the desires from “for myself” to “for bestowal,” you reveal the Upper World!

Everything is inside you – this world as well as the world to come. This world is what I perceive now. If I correct my Kli, I will begin to feel the spiritual world – my world to come.

There is just one law operating you: you always feel your own qualities, and nothing else. So you have no one else to ask to change the world or to change you. You can change anything only by changing yourself through using the laws of Nature.

If a person is standing at a stoplight and it doesn’t change for five minutes, will he start cursing and flinging his boots at it? No, because the stoplight is not alive. In the past, however, instead of stoplights there were human traffic regulators, whom you could ask for something.

So, everything depends on who you imagine standing before you – a living being or a law. We think that the Creator is “alive” like us and that we can influence Him or ask Him for something. However, thousands of years of history should teach us otherwise.

Question cont’d: So what about our prayers?

My Answer: To pray means to judge yourself. Through prayer, a person changes his desires and qualities. With his plea, he sets into motion the system,in which he exists. This system affects him, and to this extent, his desire also changes.

Question cont’d: And what about the Light that Reforms?

My Answer: Revealing the Light means receiving a sensation in your corrected desire – your quality of bestowal. This sensation of your corrected state is, in fact, the Light!

When you reveal the Light within the Kli, the Kli itself reveals its corrected qualities. When the Light that Reforms shines to you, you thereby reveal your future state, which is already being illuminated to you now, in the present.

Question cont’d: But a person feels tired, disappointed…

My Answer: One should feel disappointed only by the fact that he did not make enough effort. Otherwise, he would be able to change himself and feel this change – the Upper World or State.

Precisely the effort brings me to a realization that I am incapable, I have no strength, and I will never reach the spiritual world using my own strength. I can find the strength for this only in the group. A person can sit alone and cry for a long time, but this will not help him.

One must receive forces from others, connect them together, and then he will have enough strength to change his qualities, revealing a new world in them.

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Preparation to the Lesson
The group “charges” me with the importance of bestowal, and at the same time, let me see how far away I am from this quality. As a result, I am able to demand correction.
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Part 1, on Writings of Rabash
“Darkness” is the breaking of the connection between us. When we really desire to unite, we light up the darkness.
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Part 2, on“Preface to the Sulam Commentary”
Being able to enjoy something that isn’t bestowal is just an illusion we have. In reality, pleasure and bestowal are the same thing.
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Listen >>

Part 3, on Baal HaSulam’s article, “Thou Hast Hemmed Me In Behind and Before”
You have to nourish your egoism, pretending that what you’re doing is good for it. After all, we will need egoism in order to undergo correction.
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Listen >>

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Questions I received about marriage:

Question: If Eve’s condemnation following the sin is that man will rule over her, what can we do in this world to adjust to this condemnation without conflict or suffering?

My Answer: There is no submission. Instead, there is the proper realization of common natural qualities. This is why you have to study Kabbalah, realize it together and aspire together to reach the third one – the Creator.

Question: What if a man does not know if he wants to stay married, and a lot of issues from the past come up?  What if the woman does not want to divorce and neither of them are in a religion?

My Answer: Go to your common goal which is the Creator, instead of both of you retreating into your shell.  Only then will everything turn out all right.

Question: I partially understand that marriage is part of a man’s correction. However, I have very few corporeal merits that would make me remotely appealing to the opposite gender. I am poor, bad with money management, own no house, have no car, and am only concerned with one thing, which is Kabbalah. Should I divert time from my studies and work in the group to make myself more corporeally fit for marriage? Do I really even need to be married?

My Answer: Continue doing what your heart aspires to, since this is the reason man was brought into this world. All the rest will follow and the group will help you find your match.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Love, Family And The Purpose Of Creation
Laitman.com Post: Why Does A Man Need A Woman In Kabbalah?
Laitman.com Post: Man, Woman and Divinity Between Them
Article: “Today, It’s Spiritual Relationship or No Relationship”
Kabbalah Today Article: Man, Woman, and the Snake Between Them

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In truth, all development happens by means of the Light, which is concealed from us. And even though everything is done by the Light alone, when this takes place in our egoistic development, we don’t know anything about the Light and are not connected with It in any way. Therefore, when a person develops, he becomes more distant from the Creator, because he understands that he can do without Him. After all, where is the Creator in our world and how is He present in all that I do?

This is why the era of Enlightenment took place, when people left religion. But now, after all our development, we are revealing that we have reached emptiness. After studying and understanding this world, we now see that it is dirty and horrible. But the most important thing that we have come to understand is that the more we develop and the more efforts we make and despite becoming smarter and more skilled in some ways, things just keep deteriorating and the world becomes worse. So by developing the world, we have only made it worse, not better.

This is why people are reaching a point of despair. But this is not enough, and the Upper Force will not allow humanity to run away from it all through drugs. Together with all that is happening, the point in the heart is surfacing in people, and it is pulling them to further development. This is where we come up against a problem: on one hand, this point is egoistic, because it’s the reverse side of holiness. But even though this egoistic point is a result of the breaking, it can be turned into an altruistic point. We can turn it into a “drop of semen,” which will become a spiritual embryo.

As for the rest of the ego – this entire world – I cannot make it spiritual since all of it is inanimate matter. So, in order to develop spiritually, I then come to the group and the Kabbalah books, but still remain in the same place like a donkey, until I finally “get it”: I need an Upper Force, the Light that returns one to the Source and then I begin to demand It and plead with the Creator to become revealed to me and to correct me.

Therefore, our earthly development is over. All the cultural and scientific development has reached an end. People will now feel that it’s impossible to do anything new in these areas – it has exhausted itself.

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