A question I received: You say that books on Kabbalah speak about the spiritual world. However, currently I can only perceive the material reality. How can I switch over from the material perception to the spiritual one?

My Answer: This can only be done with the help of the Light that Reforms. This is why Kabbalists advise us to read Kabbalah books despite the fact that we don’t understand anything they say.

You have to read them with the desire to feel and see what is written in them, to enter the hidden world they describe. It is concealed from your senses, as if you are in a state of sleeping, of concealment, and your senses are numb. You have to desire to sharpen your senses of perception.

You will start to feel that the spiritual world is right here. You will begin to feel the spiritual forces and will discover that the spiritual world is completely connected to you, rather than separate from you. You will feel that all these forces act inside you and belong to you. This is an issue of revelation, and revelation occurs by way of the Light’s influence, even if you don’t know what the Light is.

There is a special force. With the help of a book, when you aspire to the reality that the book is speaking about, that force will influence you, gradually bringing you to perception of that reality. First it enters your feelings and then your understanding. This is how we are born into the spiritual world.

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Kabbalah is a science, and Kabbalists are scientists who realistically reveal the concealed, Upper World and the Unified Force, the Creator. The revelation happens by correcting one’s nature and transforming it to the nature of the Upper World.

There have been Kabbalists who revealed the concealment (Tzimtzum Alef and Tzimtzum Bet) of the Worlds of Atzilut, Beria, Yetzira, Assiya and even the World of Adam Kadmon and the World of Infinity, along with the governance by one and three lines, and so on. Each Kabbalist made a revelation to the degree of his correction.

But as long as the souls are fine (not very egoistic), Kabbalists are unable to reveal very much, since they lack a big enough instrument. The Reflected Light (Ohr Hozer) is weak and does not reach the higher levels. Therefore, the Kabbalists of the past revealed creation in general, without the particular details.

As time went by, the same souls went through many reincarnations and accumulated additional egoism (Aviut) and desires. Thus, they became able to work with a more corrupted material, which is why they conducted a deeper research of the matter of creation, the Creator’s work (Avodat HaShem).

This research is similar to research in any other science. However, the external science provides an external knowledge and attainment, meaning only about our world. It doesn’t change us. Kabbalah, on the other hand, gives us a higher mind and sensations, correcting man himself. This is why we find our way into a new world. It’s because we change and the world changes as well.

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A question I received: How can I overcome feelings of hate and confusion along the spiritual path?

My Answer: During our spiritual development, we feel a great deal of hate and envy, as well as the desires to rule and to destroy anything we don’t like. The spiritual Kli is built above these material passions, including love for power and envy.

The only way to do this is by giving more importance to the Creator and the connection with Him, even if that connection is one-sided (from your end) and it seems like He doesn’t even know you exist. This has to be enough for you to rise above all the pleasures of power and fame.

This point of connection is called the point in the heart. A person doesn’t need anything besides this contact with the Giver, which he attains by virtue of the other desires he has.

Many people had been given the opportunity to have this point of contact with the Creator, yet they let it go by and did not acquire that connection. If you’re starting out on the spiritual path, you should be afraid and careful for the same thing not to happen to you.

Even though the whole world has become global and the spiritual path is open to everyone today, there are no compromises when it comes to spiritual attainment and revelation. It is operated by the law of equivalence of form between the desire and the Light, and therefore it’s impossible to neglect any condition in order to ascend to the level of revelation.

It’s true that time is becoming “denser,” but nevertheless, every person will have to go through the correction he is due.

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The fatigue we feel is deliberately sent to us from Above. It seems to us that there is nothing good about spirituality and today’s lesson is talking about the same thing as yesterday. And this fatigue we feel will only get stronger. If a person does not receive energy from his environment (the group and books), then he will not be able to continue advancing spiritually.

However, the greatest forces come from disseminating this knowledge to other people. When you do, you will come out of the lesson revived and much stronger than before. It’s because you connect to the desires of many people and you all experience the material together.

Inside your new desires, you reveal the world on a deeper level, and you experience this revelation as new energy and strength, a revival of your soul.

However, if you do not feel pleasure and the force of life from the lesson and dissemination, then you are not connecting with the desires of the friends. The correction lies only in unifying the broken connection between the souls. We have to correct what was broken. As soon as we attain the first connection with one another, to this degree we will immediately feel the Upper World.

The Light, the sensation of connection, bestowal, and love does not appear from some place, but it appears inside us as soon as we attain this quality. This quality comes from the Creator and envelops us.

The fact is that we are always immersed in an ocean of Light! That’s why we don’t feel that there is water all around us. We can only feel it inside our glass. So connect several souls together; you will then form a vessel and will feel the spiritual world!

This is so simple. When it finally becomes revealed to a person, he is taken aback because he sees that it was always right under his nose, and he wonders: why didn’t I do this ten years ago?

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A question I received: Who should I ask for forgiveness on Yom Kippur, if we learn in the science of Kabbalah that there is no one outside of me?

My Answer: First of all, we have to ask our friends for forgiveness. If a person doesn’t have everyone’s forgiveness, then he won’t have anything with which to turn to the Creator. But what is forgiveness in spirituality?

Forgiveness is the revelation of my current state, which I can correct, in contrast to the desires I couldn’t even fathom being able to cope with and to ask for their correction. I have to discern my desires gradually and advance step by step.

Forgiveness (Slihot) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) mean the revelation of our broken vessel (Kli) or soul. We check it and compare it with the state of the full correction – Purim. This is why we call the opposite, uncorrected state that we reveal, Ki-Purim – Like Puirm).

Therefore, Yom Kippur symbolizes a time when a person truly asks to be forgiven for all his “sins.” But he doesn’t want this because it is written somewhere, but rather because he reveals how opposite he is to the final state, which he is able to envision. This state is the unity of all the souls for the sake of equivalence with the Creator, the force and desire to love and bestow.

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A person who wants to reveal the concealed part of the world has to understand that there is nothing standing in his way. The revelation depends solely on his desire.

We exist inside the general, integral system of Nature, and we receive from it at every moment depending our desires’ similarity to Nature, which is unchanging. Nature is always in a state of perfection, whereas each of us has desires or Reshimot that are constantly changing. We experience ourselves and our existence inside these desires to the degree they are similar to Nature.

This is why we feel miserable: because our desires are opposite to Nature. If you aim your desire at becoming more like Nature, then you will immediately feel an improvement of your state.

So, there’s no sense waiting for any changes to come from outside. The positive changes can only take place when you change to become more similar to Nature – to this perfect, unchanging system.

This process is similar to a baby’s relationship with its mother. The mother has everything, and as soon as the baby desires something that’s good for it, it will immediately receive it. But if the baby desires something that’s bad for it, then it won’t receive it and will feel bad, since its desire will remain empty.

Thus, we feel bad inside our current desires because the Creator – the perfect system – does not fulfill them, due to the fact that they are opposite to Him. It is written, “Make your desire the same as His desire” – and then it will immediately be filled.
(From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson)

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A question I received: I have heard that a special Upper Light comes down to our world during the holiday period. What does it give us and what inner changes does it make to us?

My Answer: If we unite with one another during the holidays, when we will be influenced by an additional spiritual glow, which we will be able to use to advance. This can happen today more than ever, because there are many thousands of people studying Kabbalah with us.

So let’s unite and discern that our desires are egoistic and broken. This sensation is called Slihot – the Days of Repentance, where we check ourselves and see how opposite we are to what we desire, the quality of bestowal.

Let us then try to reveal how opposite we are to spirituality. This sensation is called the Day of Awe or Judgment Day. This revelation gives rise to a prayer and the blowing into the ram’s horn (Shofar).

In Aramaic, Shufra means importance. So, blowing into the Shofar means that we exalt spirituality, bestowal and love, making them more important than corporeality and hatred. We want spirituality to become the most important and highest thing to us, and for it to rule over us. We demand for the force of the Light, which is now present in the world, to operate within us, and to help us attain “the Ten Days of Repentance.” This means that the Light will influence us and enable us to feel that we are totally opposite to the quality of bestowal, inside the ten Sefirot of the soul. And thus we will come to Judgment Day (Yom Kippur).

On Yom Kippur, we feel that we are opposite to spirituality, and we see that the quality of bestowal – Bina, and the quality of reception – Malchut, are opposite. They are separated by an infinite abyss. That is when we take on the restriction of Judgment Day and refuse to use our egoistic desires, which are opposite to spirituality.

As a result, I begin to demand correction. I don’t demand to feel better, but to ascend to a different level of desires – the desires of bestowal. And then an even higher Light comes to me – the Light of Sukkoth, which gives me a covering (Schah) over my egoism.

When I correct seven of my Kelim during the seven days of Sukkoth, then my desires receive fulfillment, and I reach the eighth day, called “Atzeret.” At that point, I block the Light and the Light becomes revealed. This is called “Simchat Torah” (the Joy of Torah).
(From Part 1 of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson, on Rabash’s article, “Kingdoms, memories, and blowing into the horn.”)

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There was an entire infinite Kli, none of which was corrected, and the Creator seemed to be a source of evil. I then corrected a single element in the Kli, just the element that belongs to me at this moment, and suddenly I discover that the Creator is now good to me!

So what was happening yesterday? As I continue the correction, I feel that He has always treated me well – in the past, the present, and the future!

But what about other people? When I connect to them, I discover that they are also part of my Kli. I thus expand my correction to encompass the entire creation – Infinity, and I incorporate it all within me.

Everything depends on my correction. To the extent I correct myself, I discover that the Creator is good, and to the extent I don’t correct myself, I reveal Him as evil. Every person judges things to the extent of his correction or lack thereof. There is no past, present, or future; there are only degrees of revelation of the corrected Kelim, the degrees of my correction.
(From Part 3 of the revelation)

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Revelation is an upshot of concealment, just as fire is born from the wick of a candle. A person experiences a great deal of concealment on his or her path. And this concealment is necessary, as an oil in which a wick is immersed, the very oil that feeds the wick and allows the lamp to light up. But the light and the wick don’t have fuel to burn, only the oil (desire) does.

The oil, however, can’t burn on its own – it needs the “means of revelation.” Darkness, evil and the burdening of the heart that a person feels on his spiritual path, all remain. But not a moment is wasted: all of our efforts throughout the period of the Upper World’s concealment accumulate and create a body, like the oil in a lamp or the wax of a candle. When enough oil, or enough desires for the revelation of the Creator are gathered, then the wick appears together with a spark of fire.

The greater the concealment, the tenser a person becomes when awaiting to reach revelation, and the hotter the flame of revelation that will arise. After all, from Above we receive only the spark with which to light the wick. But the burning of the wick does not come from Above; it’s the Reflected Light (Ohr Hozer) that rises from the burning oil.

The Creator just supplies one spark that Lights a person, provided that this person is ready for the Creator’s revelation. Then a person is lit like a candle, and the flame nurtures the oil of disappointments and searches – the states that he went through while in concealment.

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Through the study of Kabbalah, we enter the second, concealed part of reality, which is 99.9% of what exists, because our world compared to the Upper World is like a tiny grain of sand in relation to the whole universe. We want to penetrate into this concealed dimension, which is operated by completely new forces, qualities, and laws, unknown to us today. We can be “born” into this new world, or in other words, we can give birth to the sensation of this world inside us.

But how can we reason about it today, before ever being born there? After all, your birth in the spiritual world means that new qualities will surface in you. Their emergence will be caused by the Light, which causes new qualities to develop.

For now, all of this is concealed from us. We can’t see which qualities and senses will enable us to reveal the stages of our spiritual advancement. All we can see is the efforts we are investing, which just keep disappearing somewhere, like pouring water into a broken bucket. At the end of the day, it’s as though we didn’t do anything!

This is why it is written in one Kabbalistic text: “Great wealth is built one penny at a time.” But where are these “pennies” being collected? Show them to me! Well, the reason we can’t see them is that the collection of our efforts will only be revealed to us once we enter the next dimension.

And even though we disagree with this arrangement, we demand revelation. Thus, even though we are in concealment, we still advance, and eventually we develop and start demanding the right things from ourselves. After all, we have been provided with all the means needed to attain the Upper, Eternal World: the Light, the correct environment, the books, and a teacher. Now we just have to place ourselves beneath the influence of these means, so they’ll influence us in the best possible way.

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