A question I received: Does The Book of Zohar reveal the realm of desire to us? Can we reveal this through this book?

My Answer: The Light that shines upon us reveals various forms of desire within us. These forms are already inside us, but they are concealed. It seems to me that I grow, turning from a child into an adult and putting on weight and height. But this is not so.

In reality the Light influences me and I reveal a greater desire within me, along with its various new forms. All of these forms are my own and they have always been inside me. It’s impossible for anything new to be revealed; things only seem new to me.

I am enormous and infinite, but I perceive myself as being small. I have to evoke Light upon myself in order for it to reveal more and more of my forms to me, until I return to infinity with all my different qualities and desires. This will mean that I am growing, that is, ascending up the steps of the ladder.

The same thing takes place in our world, and it is how children grow as well. There is nothing new under the sun. There are only new revelations. Everything exists from the beginning, as it is written, “You will eat what has been stored away for a long time.”

It turns out that all I have to do in this entire process is desire for the revelation to happen to me, to reveal my inner qualities and forms that are more developed and closer to the Creator. I want to open myself up so the Light will come and open me up even more. I don’t reveal the Light, but attract it so it will open me up and show me the real me – the me that is greater and closer to infinity. When I can become more and more revealed to my own self, this means that I ascend up the spiritual ladder.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Zohar - No Comments →

The Zohar: “Who is that rising from the desert like pillars of smoke?” (Song of Songs), at the time when Israel walked across the desert.

A person on the spiritual path goes through states of darkness, emptiness and various problems, and he must constantly rise above all of this by acquiring the quality of bestowal.

The Shechina walked ahead of them, and they followed it.

If a person asks for help so he will have something to follow, and if he chooses to follow the Creator instead of his egoistic nature, then he sees a “pillar of fire” and “clouds of greatness” – signs that help him ascend up the spiritual ladder.

“The Shechina walked ahead of them” means that their only thought was about how to unite together into one gathering of souls, called Schechina.

The Shechina walked accompanied by all the clouds of greatness. And when the Shechina ascended, so did Israel, as it is written, “When the cloud rose above Sinai.”

When the Shechina ascended, the cloud rose to the highest peak. And all those inhabiting the world saw and wondered, “Who is that rising from the desert, like pillars of smoke?”

The desires that are able to follow the Shechina do so. And those that aren’t yet able to follow her are called “the nations of the world.” However, they also receive a revelation, and when everyone ascends, these desires also advance with them.

This is how a person advances by clarifying which desires within him are called “Israel” (straight to the Creator), “the nations of the world” (the desires that he is unable to correct for now), “Klipot” (desires that are completely unfit for correction until the end of all corrections). A person continuously sorts his desires and sacrifices them, causing the sacrificial smoke to rise, which means that he changes their use from “for my own sake” to “for the Creator’s sake.” Smoke (“Ashan” in Hebrew, also translates as “world, year, soul”) is the Reflected Light.

If a person works on himself in this manner, sorting his desires and attaching them to the Creator, then He attains similarity to Him. Thus, he raises the Reflected Light and opens the way to his next degree. In other words, he constantly reveals a new world, a new year, and a new soul.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Zohar - No Comments →

We yearn and desire to reveal everything inside our matter, inside our desire. But the surest place to reveal the breaking is in our attitude to our neighbors. If you want to find out what you have to correct and where to get the Surrounding Light, then start checking your relationships with the neighbor. You will soon see that this repels you and that you want to avoid this in every way possible; you constantly forget about it and don’t want to know about it. That is how you can immediately discover the place where the Light has to shine and  make a correction.

Spirituality is right here; it is right next to you! The place of the breaking is right here. This is so simple – the breaking is right in front of you and you can see and reveal it right now. But to correct it you have to imagine and envision it correctly, and understand what the corrected you has to be like. Try treating others with the same love that you treat yourself, no matter how repulsive, unwanted and inappropriate this seems to you. Then you will know how much you are repelled by spirituality, the Creator.

Nevertheless, we begin to change under the influence of the Surrounding Light and start to see everything differently. We start to understand that in reality there is greatness, unity and holiness concealed here. However, this change is impossible without the Surrounding Light.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

The science of Kabbalah is the method of developing the soul. However, while developing my soul, I don’t really understand the process. I don’t know what is good or bad for its development, what kind of desires should increase in me and to what extent. It’s as if I wander aimlessly between egoism, disdain and self-sacrifice.

Here we need to obey a simple rule: love for the Creator will come after love for others. I will attain Him exactly inside the connection between myself and others. Our entire study is devoted to this.

At first thinking of others seems like the most repulsive thing to me. I am sick of it, and I would prefer to just study and work on myself, but not depend on others. However, I soon discover that there is no other way to go.

Although we are not familiar with the program of our development, we can still try to establish an interconnection among us. But the fact is that the Light does all of the work. It reveals various properties inside us, revealing them individually in every person depending on the root of his soul. Therefore, one person advances in huge steps while someone else advances by small steps. Someone reveals anger in himself and someone – apathy. There are no exact templates and standard rules.

The thing Kabbalists explain to us are what belongs to everyone with no exceptions – what is the goal we all have to reach and how to exert efforts on the path to the goal. Kabbalists reminds us time and time again that no matter what is happening, we shouldn’t forget to push on the gas, always strive to accelerate and always move straight ahead.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

Kabbalists explain that the desire is the only creature that the Creator created. It consists of 613 (Taryag) different desires with all their different manifestations. We live precisely within these desires. They are all us.

The Light of the Creator shines on these desires. In reality, it is He who separates one common desire into a multitude of particular desires, because the desire becomes divided and made more complex under the influence of the Light. This is why it divides into different pieces, even pieces that are opposite to one another.

Among these desires, some desires are contrary and opposite to the Light, and others support and are similar to the Light. The evil desires in us pull us away from the Light and alienate us from it; they are called “the evil inclination” (Yetzer Ra), “evil forces” (Kohot HaTumaa), or the opposite side (Sitra Achra). The good desires in us, called Yetzer Tov, pull us closer toward the goal and help us attain it. They are called “forces of sanctity” (Kohot HaKedusha).

There are also desires in us on different levels of development: still, vegetative, animate, and human. In addition, there are desires called “angels,” “demons,” “spirits,” and so on. There is an enormous multitude of different kinds of desires, but they are all inside us; we consist of them.

However, we relate to our desires and qualities in different ways. We treat some of them as if they are closer to us and useful, whereas others seem farther away from us, opposite to us, and harmful. We treat them one way or another depending on our goal, on our way of working with them, and other considerations.

Nevertheless, regardless of what we say, think, or name, we are always referring to our desires. The people we see around us are also expressions of our desire, a desire that has taken “our” form under the Light’s influence.

Some desires are big and relatively constant; if they change, they do so slowly. These desires are on the still level of development. Other desires are more flexible, and they are on the vegetative and animate levels. They change faster or slower according to their type and strength. All of these desires depend on a higher level of desires – the human level, also called “the soul.” The “animate” desires that are smaller than this level are called “spirits” and “angels.”

In addition, “chambers” are different kinds of spaces or cavities; these are desires of the still level that have their own characteristics. Some desires operating inside these chambers are more active and flexible, and they are referred to as “spirits,” which are on the vegetative level. Desires that are even more active operate inside the spirits; these are “angels,” the animate level. Finally, on an even deeper level there are souls that help one another.

In this manner, The Zohar reveals the entire word to us. But this entire world is within me and my desires. It is as if I am traveling among them, like a tiny person in a cartoon wandering inside his own body, penetrating different organs and spaces between them and seeing how his entire organism operates.

The Zohar describes something very similar. It tells us what we are like in the spiritual world and that the entire spiritual world is our desire, which appears to us as being on the inside or on the outside, in all kinds of different states. And all of this is intended for us to work with.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Zohar - No Comments →

Our broken desires enumerate to a total of 320 (8x4x10). They are separated into 320:10=32, which is Malchut, as well as the other 320-32=288, which are the nine Sefirot up to Malchut. Stated differently, there are “288 spiritual organs” that we can work with, and the “stone heart” (Lev HaEven) – the 32 parts of Malchut. The correction of the stone heart amounts to not working with it. We don’t need to conquer these desires or implement them for the sake off bestowal. We just need to discern them and reject them.

However, we don’t perform this discernment on our own. It is done by the Light that comes to us. It colors the desires that pertain to the first nine Sefirot, 288 spiritual organs, into all the colors of the rainbow, and makes the 32 desires of the stone heart black, showing us that we cannot touch them. We can’t use them, since we have no power for this. As soon as you touch such a desire, you immediately fall under its power – into the hands of the evil angel Hatata, who “stands waiting for you at the entrance” into the spiritual world and leads you astray.

The first nine Sefirot are also not corrected by us, but by the Light. However, we can ask for this correction, whereas we are unable even to request for the stone heart to be corrected to bestowal. That’s because it holds such great pleasures that when we find ourselves before them, we are incapable of asking to be rid of them and to give the pleasure to someone who seems like a stranger to us. Therefore, we cannot touch these desires.

This is instilled in our nature; these desires are our primordial material. When we undergo correction, we adopt the Creator’s qualities. But our own material is incapable of correction. For example, imagine that I am situated in a place (a desire), where I can “hold the Creator’s hand.” The Creator says, “Let’s go to Pharaoh!” Then, even though I am small and weak, I hold His hand like a child holds an adult’s hand, and I’m not afraid of anything! I feel strong like a child who knows that the adult will give him anything he wishes.

However, the desires of the stone heart are for the sake of “Me and Me alone!” They lack the first nine Sefirot and the Creator’s “hand.” He is not present with me in these desires, and on my own, I am unable to do anything. The minute I am separate from the adult, I am incapable of anything, and by trying I will immediately cause damage to myself. This is the meaning of the desires of the stone heart.

Therefore, our work is to check all of our desires, qualities, situations and actions to the maximum and to clarify where we exist together with Him, in adhesion. We also need to discern the desires where we cannot be together with Him in order to avoid touching them or using them. By doing so, we will correct them.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - 1 Comment →

A question I received: Will I always feel darkness while being in the preparation stage, where my desires are not corrected yet?

My Answer: How can you feel darkness if you don’t know what Light is? The darkness you feel now comes from the fact that you feel bad from not having fulfillment in your desire to enjoy. However, this darkness is egoistic, rather than spiritual.

The Zohar talks about a different kind of darkness. It’s when you want to ignite your desire with love for the neighbor, bestowal, and a connection with others. It’s when you desire the Upper Light in order for it to reveal the connection between you and others. This is what Kabbalah means by Light and darkness. It’s when you reveal evil within yourself, work on yourself and want to connect with other people in order to bestow upon them, but you are unable to do so. This sensation is called “night” because you sink into the darkness of egoism.

However, if while being in this dark state, the night of egoistic desires, you make efforts during the study and you desire the Light to come and correct your attitude toward other people, and you believe that love for others is Light and day, then the night gradually dissipates and a tiny luminosity called “dawn” begins to emerge. You begin to feel your attitude to others changing,  you really want to bestow upon them, and you start to feel much closer to them.

Suddenly, you understand that Light means bestowing upon others. Light is kindness, the feeling that all others are parts of you. Previously you wanted to feel love and goodness inside these desires, but you couldn’t, and that’s why everything was so dark. But now in these same desires, you feel that you can be kind to others, and this means that the Light is shining from them upon you.

The difference between darkness and Light is only your attitude, whether you can bestow inside your desires or not. This is called spiritual Light. In order to attain it, the Surrounding Light has to come and correct your perception, thoughts, attitude, and definitions of good and evil, as well as what is Light and darkness, night and day. In spirituality, everything is measured relative to the force of bestowal.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - 2 Comments →

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.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Zohar - No Comments →

When reading The Zohar, we have to try our hardest to pull away from all the corporeal images that might arise in our imagination. We have to fight the temptation to materialize the concepts, and think about the only created thing – the desire, inside of which there are only two acting forces: reception and bestowal, which come in a multitude of styles.

This general desire is separated into many individual desires because it is influenced by the Light, and this influence causes the emergence of various qualities, varying inclinations to bestowal or to reception. Different desires establish different connections among one another, such as opposition, adhesion, or conflict with one another. Yet, we are always talking about our one desire – the only matter of creation, the only thing created by the Creator. The Light influences the desire, and depending on the thickness (Aviut) of the desire, it comprehends the Light’s influence differently and adjusts to the Light.

The Zohar tells us precisely about the influence of the Light on the desire, although it usually doesn’t mention the Light as the original cause and only talks about what happens in the desire. It’s the same as how in our world, we see actions or consequences of the Light’s influence, and we treat everything as “that which is taking place,” without relating it to the original cause of the actions.

Many actions occur under the influence of the Light within the desire. However, there is a small portion of actions that stem from the desire itself; this is called freedom of will. We are able to discern this free desire out of the entire collection of all the actions, and if we direct it properly, it will be called the “human being.”

Therefore, we are only talking about the gradations of qualities within the desire. There are no imagined images.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Zohar - No Comments →

A question I received: Isn’t the Surrounding Light mysticism?

My Answer: Who can explain how a child matures and becomes an adult? Why doesn’t he remain the way he was yesterday? We simply got used to seeing that this happens, but actually, we have no explanation for it.

Science can tell us what stages a child has to go through, as well as which stage comes first and which comes next, but it is unable to explain why this is so. It can explain what happens within matter, but it doesn’t see the cause that exists outside of matter, pushing it to develop.

The answer is that a child is affected by the same Surrounding Light that affects all other parts of nature, including Kabbalists. Every person has to go through many reincarnations in order to eventually reach the final goal. This is why the Upper Light acts within matter and creates vegetative, animate, and human nature from inanimate nature. Otherwise, all matter would remain dead and invariable.

However, the purpose of this matter is to develop. The Upper Governance is also present as a force in our world, but none of the sciences suspect this. This is why I left science. I wanted to learn: where does the force of life come from? Is it inside atoms, molecules, cells, or their subsystems? However, science doesn’t explore this, and therefore, what use do we have for it, if it can’t help us discover the most important thing and doesn’t even try to find out what it is?

The Surrounding Light is the Upper Force, which cannot be captured by any physical instrument. We only see its consequences or effects, such as the way a child develops year after year. This is evident to us.

The force that takes us from one stage to another is called the Surrounding Light. However, this is only true in relation to a person who attracts this force on his own, consciously, wishing to develop. On the other hand, in our world this Light causes the natural evolution, following a path called “in due time.” The train of evolution crawls along slowly according to its own speed, and the Upper Force operates within matter, pushing it ahead toward the goal.

If you enter the spiritual world, you will be able to investigate every stage of evolution – even the age of the dinosaur, if this was your area of interest, since all previous forms were predetermined. They were obliged to form by a certain combination of the quality of reception and the quality of bestowal.

It was only recently that we developed to such a state where we can attract this force of life, the Surrounding Light, on our own.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - 1 Comment →