Before we begin reading The Zohar, we need to prepare ourselves with an internal feeling that we are within the group. We will then be similar to that same group of the Kabbalists who wrote The Zohar and will have an easier time understanding what they convey to us.

Understanding comes as a result of the Light’s influence. The Light acts upon us from within the connection between the souls of ten Kabbalists who together existed in the final corrected state, meaning in the final corrected connection between one another. When they corrected the connection between them to such a degree that nobody had a single uncorrected desire to receive pleasure, then between themselves they revealed the Upper Light called “Zohar,” the Light originating from the Rosh (head) of Arich Anpin, which is the Light of Infinity.

Hence, if we try to reach the same relation between us as the authors of The Zohar had, we will attract the Light from the same state which they attained. This Light can also create the connection between us as it is said, “One who makes peace in the Upper One, makes peace in us.” This is precisely what we should expect from reading The Zohar.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/16/10, The Zohar

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A question I received: The whole nation existed in spiritual attainment during the First and the Second Temples. Why wasn’t it possible to go through the destruction of the Temples only in spirituality and to reach the Third Temple without the material manifestation of destruction?

My Answer: All descents and ascents of the souls have to be reflected on the lowest inanimate level – our world. Up until the end of correction, ups and downs of the souls have to go through all layers of the desire to receive, through its entire depth, ending in this material world.

Therefore, we have no possibility to escape events that occur in this world, meaning in our egoistic desire which we feel as “this world.” Our big or not so big successes in the spiritual world, in our relations with the Creator, will always be felt as events happening in this world.

It is impossible to separate occurrences in the spiritual and material worlds because they are the same. A desire to receive with its different layers of Aviut (coarseness) covers the entire depth from this world to the World of Infinity.

A person who is at the bottom of the spiritual ladder raises his MAN to the World of Infinity. Thereby he determines the Light which descends from the uppermost level through all layers (worlds) of the desire to receive pleasure to his rung and further below. When a person exists somewhere in the middle of the spiritual ladder, the entirety of the Aviut of the desire below him is included in his MAN. Then the Light that comes as a response to the prayer goes through a person and spreads out further below to the very end. This is why every person has an impact on the entire thickness of Malchut of the World of Infinity.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/15/10, The Zohar

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The most important thing while reading The Zohar is to unite with the text. If we remember that the Light influences us, this is sufficient.

A small child lives among adults, but what does he understand from their conversations and behavior? Does he know their world? No; it’s all a secret to him. We are built by nature like a child among adults: Without understanding anything or being ready for it, a child perceives everything by means of the “surrounding glow.”

This is the manner in which development takes place: gradually, indirectly, from outside, a child begins to absorb everything from adults and tunes into them without understanding what is happening ahead of time. By entering them through his desire, he begins to feel and then to understand. This develops new senses and desires (Kelim) in him, and then the mind.

When we are adults, we don’t develop, but merely fill ourselves with knowledge and sensation. Our senses no longer develop. They can only develop on the condition that a person enters an “area” where even without understanding or feeling anything, he desires to become similar to it. By means of his desire and drive, without understanding or knowing anything, he begins to absorb forces from this area and that develops him.

Adults do not undergo the same inner development as children. They merely fill their previous desires. Both in our world and the spiritual world, new desires can only grow when you want to feel and discover where you are.

When I read The Zohar, I don’t know what it is talking about. But because I desire to reveal this picture, I develop the senses through which my soul perceives. This is why it is written, “The study does not happen through reason” (Lo HaHacham Lomed).

Our spiritual development takes place in exactly the same way as a baby develops in our world. It can only happen when the lower level completely annuls itself before the Upper Level. After all, we are learning to feel a whole new world!

Kabbalists write about this in many articles. Baal HaSulam writes in “A Speech in Celebration of the Conclusion of The Zohar” that a student has to cancel himself before the Rav just as children do before adults. That is the only way you can attain a higher state.

From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/14/10, The Zohar

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A question I received: The more you explain the structure of the spiritual worlds, the more confused I am. Why does this happen?

My Answer: Imagine that I go to a doctor and tell him about some of my external symptoms. He asks me to undergo medical tests, checks the results, and discusses them with another doctor. When they talk among themselves, I understand nothing although they are talking about me, my sensations, and my health. This is because their discussion about me is on a more internal, complex level, about what actually is occurring inside of me.

Then they give me a pill; its content is also unknown to me. I take it, simply trusting that they and the prescribed pill will help me. Of course, they have confused me with their technical medical discussion and I should have never listened to them. Yet, in our world the pill will work regardless of one’s understanding of what the doctor says.

Here during the study, I read what these Kabbalistic “doctors” write about me: one Kabbalist writes to another describing what happens internally to souls in the system where the souls have to correct themselves. Of course, I understand nothing about it! However, because I get involved in this story and want to understand and feel it, I connect to them and get closer to becoming like them.

If I want to become a “doctor” like them, I use my connection with them and learn. If I feel confused but want to grasp the essence, if I feel that the book explains the correction of my soul, I  have no choice. I must learn their language (like Latin used in the medical field) and then I understand what they are talking about.

Kabbalists wrote these books for their fellow Kabbalists. They talk among themselves in the language that they understand because this language explains different worlds and spiritual concepts. At this point, I don’t understand what they mean at all.

However, if I aspire to understand what they teach me, and I strive to live in it and feel it, then I open these books and try to enter them. The level of my understanding does not matter. What matters is my wanting to enter inside with my feelings, rather than to my attempting to understand it with my external mind. I have to ask for revelation.

I have to see what they write about. They describe what they see and feel, and I have to want to feel this as well. This is why my lack of understanding, vision, and feeling will only push me to advance.

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/2/10, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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If I, along with my friends, wish to reveal within myself the inner qualities described in The Zohar, they will be revealed. I only need to desire greatly that the property of mutual bestowal, love, and guarantee will be revealed in all of us. By doing so, I affect all the parts of my soul whom I see as strangers so that each of them would awaken himself.

You are a part of me, but I can’t act in you directly as we are separated by our egoism which acts as a divider. I have no access to you even though you are a part of my soul. So, what should we do? I realize that I can reveal the Creator or the Upper World only inasmuch as I restore the soul. I search for ways to influence you in order to awaken and revive you since you are my part. I affect you and, when you correct or revive yourself, it is my doing. Thus, this corrected part belongs to me. In this manner, I adjoin the whole of creation to me.

It’s written, “the corporeal of a friend is the spiritual of you.” That is to say that I rouse him to correct himself through corporeal actions and thereby bring a part of my soul closer to me. Everyone acts in this manner and returns everyone else to himself. It turns out that I never work against someone else. By bestowing to others and by loving the neighbor, I simply relate to parts of my own soul in a different, correct, “egoistic” form. Later, it will be revealed to me that these are parts of my own soul.

For example, I hate the son of my neighbor for disturbing me by playing the piano. Then, suddenly, I discover that he’s my own child and I repent my hatred bitterly. In other words, I take the mistakes and the transgressions of the past and turn them into merits.

In the same manner, we reveal our sins right now on the stage of preparation for spiritual revelation. We reveal our hatred in regard to everyone. Later, we learn that it’s all our own and correct it.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/6/10, The Zohar

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I am trapped in my skin which cuts me off from the Creator who is situated “outside.” I am a slave and I cannot break out. At every given instant, a force influences me and automatically returns me to my own self, to the egoistic center.

How do I force myself to pay attention to what is happening on the outside in order to understand that it is also me? My true reality is “outside”; there, I am together with the Creator; there, I am outside of my animal; there, my soul is outside of the egoistic “I,” which I currently imagine myself to be.

These are two forces that act in nature. I need to arrange them in such a way that the second force (centrifugal) would influence me in the same natural manner, instinctively and inevitably, as the first force (centripetal). Let it occupy my mind and heart and drag me out by force. Let it force me to think about others and worry about them. I need this since this is the only way for me to find my soul.

In this regard, the force of a Kabbalistic group helps me; only the group can convince me to come out of my circle and turn my attention to what is “outside of it.” When I change my attitude from the “intra” (within) to the “extra” (outside). I stop worrying about the body and begin to be concerned with the soul.

I understand that the external reality, which seemed foreign to me and which I was completely indifferent to, contains the real me. This external circle is actually much more valuable to me than the inner one since it contains my soul which is eternal. Meanwhile, the inner circle is merely an animal, which is allotted some 70 years.

However, the concealment does not allow me to see all this. When I begin to realize this, I am amazed to what extent the Creator plays a joke on me.

From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson, 4/1/10

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The Creator constantly confuses a person by placing obstacles before him all along his spiritual path. And it so happens that the joyful occurrences confuse us even more than the troubles. We suddenly uncover extraordinary opportunities, find success in business, have a chance to go on an exciting trip, and many other small temptations that come to us at every moment.

This causes us to start revealing that we don’t have any ability to control our state without the support of the environment, which is called “mutual guarantee.” If I don’t have global, universal support, with thousands of people all over the world also aspiring to reveal the Creator, despite all the obstacles which He deliberately places before us, then I cannot go through the “49 gates” – the obstacles that separate me from the Creator. And then I cannot reach the last, 50^th gate, where I unite with Him. (40 designates the distance from Malchut to Bina, and 10 is my own structure. Together they add up to 50.)

If I am not connected to people who are doing the same thing, then it’s all over for me and I will never attain the goal. I will stretch this work out for several lifetimes, and unfortunately, this is what is happening to people.

Even conventional science is now revealing that human thoughts are interconnected and transferred miraculously from one end of the world to the other. Scientists explain this by saying that our very nature causes us to think in synchrony. However, we who study Kabbalah understand that we are simply connected to one another through our desires within one common net of souls. That is why my thoughts and desires are transferred to everyone else.

Moreover, if we aspire toward the spiritual goal, then with this thought we begin to actively influence everyone and it spreads all along the entire system. Mutual guarantee is this inner intention, rather than sending each other SMSs over the phone. Mutual guarantee is when I think about spirituality, I desire it, and I’m burning with the desire for others to think about the same goal as well. Then I am redeemed from the angel of death.

If others don’t think about this, then nothing will help me and I will never be able to make the right calculation. I will always be distracted by something else. I won’t have the basis, the connecting net that holds me inside like a mother holding a baby in her hands. Without this, it’s impossible to attain our goal.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/7/10, The Zohar

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A question I received: What desires within me belong to the "stony heart" that will be corrected in the very end during the final correction?

My Answer: All desires which are discussed in the wisdom of Kabbalah, such as GE, AHP, and the stony heart, are our broken desires. We were once connected together through them, but this connection broke apart. These desires are not at all directed to the fulfillments of this world.

In fact, the broken desires which exist between us are actually the absence of connection between us, but we don’t feel them whatsoever. Do I really feel that I’m disconnected from you, that I miss this connection and it’s broken? Do I really regret that I hate you?

We don’t even sense the desires which require correction. For now there is nothing to correct since we don’t see what’s missing and broken. This is why none of us have desires belonging to the soul except for the single point in a heart (in those who already have it awakened). It becomes the beginning of our soul if we start discerning our connections requiring correction within it.

At the same time the ordinary human desires have no relation to our connection with other souls. This is why we don’t have a soul yet, but only material bodily desires which are not related to the soul.

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A question I received: If reality depends on the environment, then what do reincarnations of souls mean in this context?

My Answer: Reincarnations of souls are changes in the desires. After all, nothing exists but the desire and this desire changes. Within this transient desire, we perceive ourselves in one reincarnation or in the next one, within the intention for the sake of receiving or for the sake of bestowal.

The difference between this world and the future world, between the Creator and the creation are all different states of the desire. The desire that is in the state of bestowal is called “the Creator.” The desire that is in the state of reception is called “the creation.”

Currently we perceive within our desire that we are living here, in this world. The desire will change, and we will begin to feel that we are living in a different reality. A change in the desire determines everything. But, we cannot imagine states in which we do not yet exist.

However, for Kabbalists who exist in the desire to bestow as well as in the desire to receive, both parts of reality are above corporeal life and death, since they are in control of both types of phenomena in the desire.

Certainly, a person who has not corrected himself yet goes through reincarnations or various changes of the desire, until he completes his path by acquiring control over all the desires, all the qualities that can possibly be revealed.

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We don’t have any other means for advancement, any other leverage that helps us move forward but the influence of the environment. If I am entirely, fully focused within myself, what force can possibly direct me in the opposite direction, from within myself, outside? I don’t possess any such powers. All of my powers work “for me,” “for my benefit.” How can I fashion an opposite action “for the sake of the other”? Where can such a power of nature come from?

For this, our soul has been divided into two parts: I and the surroundings, the world. The only freedom we have is to choose what’s more important. If you want to reach spirituality, you have to organize your environment so that it takes precedence over you. In reality, it’s not the external environment, but your soul, your AHP, the “garments” and “house” of your soul’s Kli, which are only seemingly outside of you.

Envy and honor attract you to a certain environment, to the parts of your soul, so you can organize these parts artificially in order for them to influence you.

From our level, we have been given this psychological approach. Yet internally, it is a spiritual approach. I connect with the desires (Kelim) that allegedly surround me, and use my feelings of envy and honor. In doing so, I essentially draw these desires back to myself so that they become connected with me and define my system of values.

What is the source of envy and honor then? It is the breaking of the souls into two parts: I and my world. By desiring to use “help against him,” against my ego, I engage these external desires of mine so they influence me in return.

Consequently we discover that we work with ourselves, with our desires, with our properties and this is how it has been set up from the beginning. But without organizing the environment, the other force that is capable of taking me “by the ear” and directing me toward my true desires (the soul) is not present, and it will never be revealed.

There is no other force in the world but the environment. Suffering can only make us more sensitive and urge us to find the solution. Yet the solution will be the same: to put yourself under the influence of the environment.

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