5 Minutes Of Light From The Daily Lesson: Prayer, The Desire I Wish To Correct
Posted on October 29th, 2009
A question I received: Is there one prayer or several types of prayers?
My Answer: A prayer is a desire you raise in order to be corrected. You raise it to the Upper Level or Partzuf, the Creator, requesting and demanding correction.
The number of requests for correction you raise determines the number of different prayers. There’s a specific number of prayers depending on the states a person goes through on each degree.
That’s why Kabbalists were able to compile a prayer book for us, called “Sidur,” meaning “Order,” (for example, the way things are ordered or organized in a statute). There they described the precise order of ascent from this world to the World of Infinity, as well as all the intermediary states.
It’s a book of instructions. When you read the prayers in it one after another, they reflect the order in which you have to address the Upper Level in order to correct yourself. Any transformation can happen only under the influence of the Upper Level.
There is a special order for each day (for each Sefira or degree) , and if you want to go through a spiritual “day,” then this book tells you the order in which you have to raise your desires for correction.
If you correct yourself over the six “days” (degrees), then you will go on to different prayers (corrections), called the prayers of Shabbat, and then to other special states (days, Moadim) and holidays.
There are many states, and each one has a corresponding prayer, meaning ascension of a desire to its correction. It’s because there’s a change in your state of adhesion to the Creator. The prayers never stop in the spiritual work.
The most important thing is to reach a complete desire at every moment. Be like a baby: even though he will want something else the next second, right now, at this moment, he absolutely has to receive the thing he wants. This is very important: to ask and to scream for just one specific thing, and always try to live with a complete desire, taking it to the end.
When it comes to spiritual progress, a complete desire is the guarantee for success! If our desire isn’t complete, then it isn’t perfect, and that means it doesn’t match spirituality, which is perfect and complete on every degree. Therefore, if a person desires spirituality, but is still willing to compromise or give in in some way, then he could stay stranded between the heavens and earth all his life. He will not receive help from Above.
If you are able to feel inspired for just a moment, then try to enter this feeling deeper and develop it “beyond the possible.” These efforts will create your prayer (MAN) for ascension.
Be like a child who always wants to grow bigger than he is today and who always tries to do what he could never do before! He is always doing something for the first time, always adding something new and thereby advancing.
The prayer said on the Jewish New Year mentions three conditions of ascending to the spiritual level called the New Year:
1. Kingdom
2. Memory
3. Blowing into the ram’s horn (Shofar)
What does this mean?
1. Kingdom is the desire for the force of bestowal (the Creator), the Upper Force that created everything, to rule inside us.
2. We have “memories” or “reminiscences,” which are informational genes (Reshimot) that are able to bring us to a state where we will reveal the Creator to the degree of our similarity to Him, to the quality of bestowal.
3. The way to achieve this is by blowing into the ram’s horn, or in other words, by raising the quality of bestowal above the quality of reception. (The word Shofar – Horn, comes from the Aramaic word Shufra – importance.)
(From Part 1 of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson, on Rabash’s article, “The Prayer of Rosh HaShanah”)
A question I received: What is prayer (MAN)? Is it our desires that we raise to the Upper Level? How do our desires develop until they become ripe for the Upper Level to hear them?
My Answer: We develop our sensitivity and internal recognition of our desires. The spiritual world is not quantitative, but strictly qualitative. It only seems to us that in order to rise from one level to the next, we have to become stronger, but in reality, what has to become stronger is our scrutiny and sensitivity.
We have to become more perceptive and work on ourselves with “fine tweezers.” Real strength lies in being able to go ever deeper inside yourself in order to distinguish and classify more and more qualities within. This is how you grow: by developing your sensations and your analysis of them.
In our world, a baby grows in size according the number of pounds he gains. However, we do not evaluate his intellect according to the number of pounds he weighs, but according to the skills and qualities he has acquired. We evaluate how smart he is by what he is able to understand and do.
The spiritual world is built inside us by the Light. The Light descends upon us during the study of the Upper World and builds new qualities inside us. In the place where you felt nothing before, you now begin to perceive various new qualities and phenomena. When we read descriptions of the spiritual world, we don’t understand anything, similar to a cat that hears classical music and perceives it as mere noise. At times, we listen to the lesson while hardly being able to keep our eyes open.
But it is precisely in such semi-conscious states that the Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif) influences us.
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A question I received from my student: Can the Upper One pass on His desire to the lower one?
My Answer: This is exactly what He does, but only in response to our plea, “Give us the correct desires!” We pray only about our desire, for it to be like His: “Make your desire similar to the Creator’s desire.”
You don’t need anything else from Him, other than a new program for your behavior, for how to act. You have to receive a new mind, power and knowledge from Him, in order to be able to work with your “matter” correctly. More precisely, you have to recognize how flawed your current behavioral program is, because it is opposite to the program He is acting upon. And then, you have to ask Him to replace your program with one similar to His. That is when you will be corrected, made equivalent to the Creator.
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Questions I received on the commandments, the Hassidut, prayer and the Creator:
Question: Why do you teach that the 613 commandments are actually 613 desires?
My Answer: Because the only thing that was created is the desire, which was then separated into 613 parts. Our task is to correct the aim of this desire from “for one’s own sake” to “for the sake of others.” It is written, “I created evil (egoism) and created the Torah for its correction, because its Light returns one to the Source, to Goodness.”
Question: While you omit some commandments, you don’t reject others: you and your students wear Kippahs (skullcaps) and some of you have beards. Incidentally, wearing the Kippah is a relatively late commandment – given in approximately 1700.
My Answer: One’s appearance bears absolutely no relation to the commandments or the correction of one’s desire from egoistic to “love your neighbor as yourself” (the general commandment of the whole Torah).
Question: Why don’t you view the point in the heart in the same way as the Hassidut, which defines it as an awakening of the intelligent soul, which exists in the right part of the heart?
My Answer: The point in the heart is an aspiration to the Creator, which pertains to the quality of bestowal – “the right portion of the desires,” and the “heart” refers to the collection of all of a person’s desires. However, the physical heart lacks any desires whatsoever. What if a heart transplant was performed and a righteous man received the heart of a wicked person? Is this forbidden by the Torah?
Hassidut (the authentic one) comes from the word Hesed – goodness, which develops only in a person who studies Kabbalah. That’s because the study of Kabbalah is the only way to draw the Light of Correction to yourself.
Today the only thing remaining of Hasidut is the externality. It consists of rituals and the literal interpretation of the texts. This is why they interpret the statement, “Goodness lies in the right part of the heart,” literally. Kabbalah, on the other hand, explains the true meaning of these words.
Question: Why don’t you view a group of students as a Minian (traditional group of at least ten men) of those who pray?
My Answer: Prayer occurs during the studies, when a student asks the Creator for correction, and to help him attain the degree that he is learning about. Then, over the course of the day, he aspires for this transformation to take place, as it is written, “And he prays the entire day.”
Question: Some of the people who pray reach Lishma, even though they start out in Lo Lishma. This is exactly the same as your students! I am convinced that “all roads lead to Rome,” but apparently, you don’t think so?
My Answer: I don’t think, but I know, that no one reaches Lishma without studying Kabbalah thoroughly and correctly. And in order to understand my answers, you have to study it as well.
Question: If the Creator or the Upper Light is constant and does not change, then how could He have restricted Himself? And how is it possible that the Creator created anything?
My Answer: Constant and unchanging means that He does not change His intentions and actions – He is always “Good and does Goodness,” despite the fact that His actions seem contradictory to us.
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Two questions I received on “neighbors”:
Question: Can we begin to think of all of humanity as our “neighbors” instead of just the Bnei Baruch group? Maybe then our thoughts will make the world change?
My Answer: What you wrote is true: Everyone in the whole world is our “neighbor.” However, right now my “neighbors” are the people I can draw closer to mutually, through our common aspiration for the common goal. In other words, these are my friends in the Kabbalistic group. But gradually, this will come to include the whole world, to the extent that this desire will be revealed in everyone.
Question: What does it mean to pray for my neighbor if I’m the one who is uncorrected?
My Answer: By praying for your neighbor, you develop your connection with him. And to the degree that your prayer is sincere, you will uncover your own egoism. As a result, your prayer will turn into a plea for personal change. This is why in Hebrew the word for “prayer,” Lehitpalel, means “to judge yourself.”
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Three questions I received on the spiritual desire:
Question: First of all, thanks for a great Congress at Blackpool which I thoroughly enjoyed. Which prayers should we be saying as potential Kabbalists? I have watched the children’s lesson on prayer but cannot find the answer. Is there a particular prayer book we should use?
My Answer: A prayer is the heart’s desire. One should do all that one can to make his heart desire the goal of creation – the revelation of the Creator.
Question: Why does the Creator want us to need Him?
My Answer: Because He is the quality of “bestowal and love” within us. And this quality creates a sensation – within us – of an eternal and perfect life.
Question: You say that a person needs to feel a “deficiency.” What kind of deficiency are you talking about: spiritual or corporeal?
My Answer: This means that you must reveal that you don’t love others, and reveal it in such a way that it will suppress your self-love. It is as though you ascend on top of the mountain of your egoism through love for others, and to this degree, the Creator will be revealed to you, or rather, in you.
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News Report (from University of Miami News): Self-control is critical for success in life, and a new study by University of Miami professor of Psychology Michael McCullough finds that religious people have more self-control than do their less religious counterparts. Among the most interesting conclusions that the research team drew were the following:
My Comment: In our times, all of this is coming to an end because egoism is growing in every person. People no longer have “naive faith” like they did in previous centuries. Only those who are egoistically underdeveloped still have this kind of faith, to some degree. And whether directly or through their contact with the rest of the world (the other souls), these people will also reach a point where their egoism will develop.
Hence, faith is disappearing, and religion remains in the capacity of a custom, a culture, or a framework for domestic life. Religiosity is gradually disappearing, and the only thing that can help us stand up against the global egoism and mutual hatred emerging in us, is what Kabbalah reveals to us: the vision of our global interdependence and the need to observe the commandment, “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”
This is what we must do in order to survive, instead of any other, egoistic, commandments of any religion! Religion won’t help us cope with the modern uncertainty, suffering, and crises, despite the fact that people are still coming to religion in the hope of being saved from their misfortunes. Everyone has to go through this and become convinced that religion’s psychological effect no longer works to counter our developing global egoism.
The reason for this is that religion pertains to the level of “Domem de Kdusha,” where a person in society is obedient in a natural way, like a good child. This is the level of the still, vegetative, and animate egoism in us. But today, humanity is rising to the “human” (Adam) level of egoism, where egoism compels us to become individual egoists, and then to conquer this individual egoism and unite in order to attain the Creator.
This is why Kabbalah states that religion will be reduced to just the cultural traditions and customs of every nation, but it will no longer be able to provide psychological support for the people. Faith will be replaced by the knowledge of the Creator, as it is written, “For all will know Me, from the smallest to the greatest!” However, Kabbalah is not against religion, but is there to supplement it – to fill the void that is forming inside the growing, modern egoism, and which is impossible to fulfill by religion.
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