A question I received: Why does spiritual advancement require that we start every new step from zero and erase all that happened to us previously?

My Answer: “Starting from zero” means rejecting our old outlook on things. When a new step begins, that means the previous step has exhausted itself.

Just as each new generation must grow in its own way and avoid pressure from the previous generation, each of the 125 steps of spiritual advancement starts from our material world. As we know, Nukvah (Malchut of the World of Atzilut) becomes a virgin again every day and everything returns to zero so that a new copulation can begin.

Our contact with the Creator does not contain even a single detail of our past state; each time, a new soul is born. This is what we call a “life cycle” (reincarnation). Our previous state matters only insofar as it prepares us for a new level. What happened to us in the past is already gone. We can, and must start all over again! Each new state is a new set of ten Sefirot.

This renovation is necessary to qualitatively, rather than quantitatively, attain the Creator by using new aspects of our egoism and rising above it. This approach is very different from simply erasing our past because it was bad or unpleasant to think about. The same applies to this world. When someone starts a new business and it loses money, they have to shut it down and start again with something new. We cannot achieve anything if we do not consistently and completely renew our state of being.

It is written: “Let every day be a new day.” It is in our nature to continue with things as they are, to continue following the inertia of the past. Let’s learn from our downfalls. When Light is replaced with darkness and is then restored again, each new state is different and does not resemble its predecessors.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

In spirituality, decisions are made as if the present moment is the only moment there is. When I make a decision on my spiritual path to resolve a situation I face, I have to make it as if it were the last moment of my life. This is because resolving problems quickly and correctly leads to the next step in my spiritual path.

In the material realm, we are connected to this world and our egoism stretches out events and situations, thus creating the sense of time. In spirituality, however, each moment exists on its own and is unique.

That is why the screen of a Partzuf, as a result of the collision of the Inner and Outer Lights, weakens the Light and decides to reject it. When the screen rejects the Light, the Partzuf doesn’t know what will happen to it and which new condition it is approaching. The only thing the Partzuf knows is that it cannot remain in this situation for more than one moment, because it has lost its bond with the Creator. The Partzuf cannot remain in this new situation and it stops thinking of what will happen in the next moment. This makes its decisions and state in the spiritual world genuine.

Once in a while we see a video of September 11^th and we are reminded of how people jumped off the hundredth floor of a burning skyscraper. How can a person do that if he knows that he will inevitably fall to his death? The moment he jumps, he’s thinking only about escaping the fire. The next moment that he will spend in the air will be better than being burned in the fire, so he jumps! What will happen to him a moment later is not important for him.

The same applies to a Partzuf that realizes that it has lost its connection with the Creator. There can be nothing worse that this! It can make do without Light, but it cannot live without a link to the Creator! And thus, it rejects the Light.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

A question I received: In one of the Shamati articles it says that when a person truly screams from the bottom of his heart, the Creator hears his prayer. What does this mean?

My Answer: The Creator created only one thing: desire. All of matter, including rocks, trees, animals, people, and stars, is all the different levels of the desire to exist.

• The inanimate level preserves its structure or qualities;
• The vegetative level, besides self-preservation, desires to develop, absorb beneficial substances, and excrete the harmful ones
• On the animate level, the desire demands to be satisfied, to advance, and to give birth to offspring;
• A human being starts out his development like an animal (and in fact, every level of desire starts developing from the first level – everything comes from the “dust” and returns to it). However, after developing as an animal, a human being starts to feel cramped in the animate state, within the bounds of this world. Then a new desire emerges that summons him to come out of its boundaries.

This new desire becomes the central point, the main desire among the others. Our task is to reveal this desire further and magnify it using the right environment. We have to find out how to fulfill this desire, pinpoint that it is precious – a point in the heart, and then aim it toward the right prayer.

To “pray” means to make this desire most important of all. Then it will influence the Upper System, the Creator, and will receive a response. All the problems of our spiritual growth come from the fact that this growth occurs only under the influence of our desire. Therefore, one has to perform an analysis of what his heart really wants, and direct the most important desire in one’s heart toward the Creator, Bina, the system of one’s spiritual growth.

However, a reaction or response comes only if my desire corresponds to the system’s desire, based on the principle, “Make your desire like His desire in order to make yourself like Him.”

True prayer comes from the bottom of one’s heart, from the most important desire. Each of us has thousands of desires, and this is our problem. We disperse and scatter our efforts on many different goals, and as a result, we do not achieve the most important thing in life. Therefore, our life goes by, but the most important element in it is missing.

We have to focus all our desires on realizing one, most important desire. Let everything else serve it, bring it into focus, and strengthen it. This will in fact be the prayer – the real desire of the heart.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - 1 Comment →

We came into this world thanks to our parents. But many of our qualities were determined and instilled in us even before we were born. We inherited them from our former states or reincarnations, which we lived through in this world.

As we develop, we accept everything that happens as self-evident. First a person simply perceives himself and the world in which he exists; then come words, cognition, and understanding. Everything unfolds slowly and naturally, and we do not realize how peculiar and unnatural this process really is.

But we deem the entrance into the Upper World as unnatural, even though we reveal it in the same exact manner as we have revealed this world for ourselves! First we receive a desire to be born in the Upper World – “the seed of spiritual semen” (the point in the heart – the embryo of the soul). Then we are led to a place where we can develop our point; this place is called the womb in our world, or a group in the spiritual world.

We are not speaking about people that we encounter and who are our companions, but rather, we are talking about other aspirations to the Creator, similar to my own. By correctly building my attitude to them, I provide myself with the right environment for spiritual growth.

When a person is born into our world, his development occurs forcefully. No one asks for our consent and we are filled with knowledge, impressions, examples of behavior, and definitions of “what is good” and “what is bad” without any freedom of will whatsoever. However, in our spiritual development, the spiritual force that develops us, called “Father and Mother” (Aba ve Ima of the World of Atzilut), requires us to make an independent decision to develop spiritually. We have to decide how to do this, what future state we desire, and what goal we want to reach.

We are required to use our freedom of will, to understand and realize what we are doing and where we are heading. The stages of spiritual growth and formation are similar to physical development, but they are activated by our desire. This is the difference.

Therefore, in our world we are slaves (like animals), whereas in the spiritual world we are free creatures (people, Adam, meaning similar to the Creator). I create the “motherly womb” around me on my own. This is the group in which I become absorbed like a drop of semen. I receive from it everything I need in order to develop, including nourishment, strength, understanding, and examples.

When the desires of the group become my own and I am ready to outgrow them, then I am born into the Light. Thus, I advance from Aviut 0 to Aviut 1 and become a spiritual embryo. From now on, I can use the force of the Creator to form myself. I proceed to apply my own effort on the path, and gradually I begin to understand how the Creator raises me. With time, I become grown-up and wise like Him, based on the principle, “I will know You from Your actions (by becoming like You).” This is how a person becomes equivalent to the Creator.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

A question I received: Right now I exist on the negative side of the scale, completely opposite to bestowal. Does that mean that in order to cross to the other side of the scale, I must first pass through the zero point?

My Answer: That is correct. At some point along the path, we have to make a “restriction on our desires” (Tzimtzum Aleph), temporarily stopping the use of the desire to enjoy. Later we will turn it in the opposite direction by attaching a vector of bestowal to it.

For example, say I’ve gained some weight and now I realize that it’s time to get back in shape. So I fast for one whole day and after that I am able to restrict myself to a different eating pattern. Moderating myself is difficult, but if I break off with the past completely, it becomes possible to come back to it in a new way.

The same is true for spiritual progress: In order to ascend to a new degree, I must completely disconnect from my present one. Restriction must always come first, followed by a reassessment. That is how you will be successful. A complete break eliminates the need to suppress yourself; instead you can begins a new life.

This is the process whereby a new state is born between the spiritual degrees, and we must learn from this example.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

1. The teacher or instructor directs me toward the goal and explains the stages leading to its attainment.
2. The books (authentic sources) are the source of the Surrounding Light that corrects me, and to a lesser extent, a source of knowledge and examples.
3. The group or environment exploits my feeling of envy (Kinat Sofrim) and jealousy in order to awaken my aspiration to attain the quality of bestowal despite the egoistic desire to receive that dominates me.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - 1 Comment →

The only thing that our world needs is the revelation of the Creator. Then, our world will become the spiritual world, and all the forces of the spiritual world point to only one thing – their Master.

Even in our world, light and darkness, as well as all their different shades and any other pictures we see – everything depends on and comes from the sun. Without the sun, there would be nothing but utter darkness.

The same is true for the spiritual world. Essentially a person reveals only one thing in addition to this world – the Upper Force, “There is none else beside Him.” But this force shows us all kinds of pictures and qualities of the Upper World.

What we reveal is not the actual Upper Force, but its manifestation and governance over the network that binds all the souls. That is why we never speak of the Creator’s essence, but only of His giving quality.

However, a giver must have someone to give to; He must be in a place where His giving can be revealed. He cannot reveal Himself, but only His actions with respect to someone else. Therefore, the Creator can only be revealed where He acts and governs – in matter, the desire that He created, which is the souls that are connected to one another. And the stronger their connection, the greater is the Creator’s revelation.

He created our matter and resides within it. On our part, we are brought to a Kabbalistic group where we must reveal unity. Once we reveal that unity, within it we will reveal the Creator, the force that unites us.

There is nothing else for us to reveal. We can never attain the force in and of itself, but only its manifestations – the matter and form of bestowal that it assumes. It’s similar to how in our world we only attain matter – the desire to enjoy and the form it assumes.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

It is impossible to receive spirituality (meaning, to acquire the quality of bestowal that’s similar to the Creator) just by studying the books by yourself. You need a live teacher because only he can connect your present level with the spiritual level. The teacher has to serve as the intermediate level between you and the Creator. On your own, however, you will never be able to “jump” up to the Creator’s level. Your teacher is the intermediate degree between you and the spiritual world. He is able to do this because he exists in both worlds simultaneously.

The Ari and Baal HaSulam both write that intermediate states are the means to shift upwards. For example, see Part 3 of Talmud Eser Sefirot, “Inner Reflection.”

Even if a student could ascend to the first spiritual level on his own, it would still take him a very long time to learn about the Upper World without a teacher’s help, and then he would not have enough time to correct himself. Just like in this world, first you have to grow up for about 20 years, and only then can you begin to live on your own. But if you did not spend the first “20 years” of your “life” next to a teacher, then you are like a child who never received an upbringing or education, and who grew up without any support from adults.

That is why a person must listen to what the teacher tells him and make every possible effort to carry out the teacher’s advice. The student should accept this advice above his own egoistic surmises. Don’t be like a child who refuses to open his mouth and accept food, since what will the teacher be able to give you otherwise?

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - 1 Comment →

The spiritual world is built as an analogous or analog structure, not a discreet or digital one. We imagine it as discreet because our brain is incapable of understanding an analogous structure. We will never, with our minds, be able to understand how an analogous system works.

Even when we study the human body, a system in which everything is interconnected, we still perceive the organism as a discreet system where every part works on its own, be it the heart, the kidneys, or other organs. If we interpret the body as a discreet system, we make measurements which can only be made when something is separated from the whole. Only eastern medicine exercises a partial and purely superficial approach to understanding our body as an analogous whole.

There is a contradiction between the unlimited property of the Light to “bestow” and the limited “screen” that is being corrected by our egoistic desires to match the properties of the Light. There is opposition between the round world of infinite bestowal and the square world of creation (our physical world).

We assess the properties of Light through the Kli, just as we assess the integral between the connection and the sum of all its discreet parts. In spirituality, each new state constitutes a new world and subsequently a new correlation between its elements.

In the system of souls, everybody is connected and any change I make also changes the state of the whole system, and vice-versa. It is impossible to feel this spiritual reality with our discreet intellect; we are automatically limited by our inability to measure beyond discreet parts.

Those who start sensing the higher world are given a new set of tools (instruments) to live in this new system. They start to understand and feel everybody’s bestowal as part of a single whole and are able to superimpose the circle on the square – the analogous and discreet systems. Only by having both forces – reception and bestowal, can we can join these two systems together.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →