The Zohar, Chapter “VaYechi (And Jacob Lived),” Item 24: The third exile is the long exile that we are in, which corresponds to 100 years in Jacob’s life compared to the forty (years) in the exile in Babylon.

We shouldn’t view this story as an historic recounting. There is no such thing as history. The reality we think we live in transpires within us as imaginary pictures; it unfolds inside of our desire (Kli).

All we are supposed to do is to correct the program of our perception. As we do that, we will sense genuine reality through our authentic properties (that are similar to the Creator who makes them).

This is why we have to treat The Zohar’s narrations as an invitation to reveal everything it describes from within, in our sensations and consciousness, and our minds and hearts.

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/16/10, The Zohar

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Excerpts from my future book, A Guide To The Book Of Zohar

In order to prepare us for spiritual development, the Creator rouses two sensations in us. The first is the emptiness of this world, and the second is the aspiration to attain the source of life, the awakening of the “point in the heart.” The point in the heart, like a charge in an electrical field, brings us to a place where we can give it nourishment and fulfillment. This place is the group.

Truly, we can see how people in whom a point in the heart awakens are drawn to each other naturally. It is always the case in human society that people with similar desires draw closer to each other and gather into groups. A group is a place where people realize the connection with their neighbor on a practical level based on new principles of love and unification instead of hatred and isolation.

Therefore, the work in the group is necessary and mandatory in order to reach a revelation of the Creator. It allows a person to truly evaluate his attitude to his neighbor and not to fall into illusions in regard to spirituality or his personal connection with the Creator. After all, the Creator is the quality of love and bestowal that dwells in the corrected connection among us.

Such groups have always been created over the course of human history. By changing their relationships in the group to mutual bestowal and love of people created the necessary conditions for perceiving the Upper, true reality. Reading books in which they wrote about the world they revealed allows us to acquire the enormous experience accumulated by them and to understand how to achieve a new life by the shortest and most effective path.

Such a group is called a group of Kabbalists. Their goal is to unite with each other in the spirit of what is written in the Torah: “As one man with one heart,” “Don’t do unto another what is hated by you,” and “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Thus, they correct themselves and achieve equivalence to the Creator.

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The flow of the actual story, which waves come at us and in what form is not so important. What is important is that I am always sailing on these waves with the intention of reaching the goal.

The actual story may be expressed in all kinds of forms; this does not matter. The important thing is for me to always stay above the narration of The Zohar and think only about what I want to attain through the reading. I want to attain the force of bestowal!

From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/19/2010, The Zohar

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Excerpts from my upcoming book, A Guide to The Book of Zohar

A corrected desire acts in accordance with the formula, “Israel, the Creator, and the Torah are one.” Israel is me. More precisely, it is my internal desire to attain the Creator and become similar to Him (“Isra-El” in Hebrew means “straight to the Creator”). The Creator is the goal I am trying to attain. The Torah is a corrected mechanism of connection among the souls, of love among them.

In order to illustrate this, let’s have a look at a human organism. All of its parts interact correctly and help each other by being related, mutually responsible, and united. This is how the souls have to function. The system of their reciprocal bonding and love (complete interaction) is called the “Torah.”

It includes 613 (Taryag, six hundred and thirteen) correct connections between each soul and all other souls as well as among all souls in general (the latter type of connection, commandment, links all of them into one whole through love). If there is no connection between the souls through love and, on the contrary, if they are linked together through hatred, it means that the Torah is corrupt and hidden.

Souls that do not sense connection between them are defined as being in “exile” from the Torah and the Creator. They lack this property because they are disconnected from the correct type of link among them (the Torah) and from the Creator who fills the correct connection among them. It is similar to the difference between a healthy body and a sick organism that is deteriorating because its systems do not function properly.

Internal corrections that we make within our desire in order to transform it from corruptness into correctness are called “commandments.” This is why it is said that “love thy neighbor as thyself” is the main rule of the Torah since it includes the whole system of correct connections between the souls.

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All books written by the Kabbalists can give me the Light that Reforms. The greatest force of Light descends on me when we read The Zohar; this is when the connection with the Light occurs.

However, the Light acts only if all of us together desire to attain mutual guarantee, unity, love, and become “as one man in one heart,” similar to the Creator. How well we understand is not important. If I am unable to unite, the Force will come from Above and do it.

As soon as I start feeling connected to all the others to the smallest degree, the spiritual world will be revealed to me in that connection. This occurs within us in the same way as a person who was unconscious starts coming back to consciousness and realizes where he truly is.

Concealment disappears, and I feel that this reality of which I wasn’t previously aware has always been and still is here. This depends solely on my desire to be connected with the rest of its parts. In the correct relationship between us, I find the true reality.

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/13/10, The Zohar

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The only opportunity to be in connection with the Upper Force that corrects us is by reading The Zohar. Certainly, the other books also help in this regard, but The Zohar has the greatest force to connect us.

If we could keep the right intention for a longer period of time, we would read The Zohar more often. As a matter of fact, we are still unable to maintain the right intention for more than 45 minutes. For the duration of these 45 minutes, however, we must concentrate on exactly what we desire from it and how we imagine our future state described by The Zohar. It is very important.

In our world a child takes examples from adults, wanting to become similar to them in everything he sees. Nothing else is important to him. He has no understanding, attainment, or anything else and just repeats the examples that the adults demonstrate to him.

In a similar way, we should desire to feel the reality that The Zohar tells us about and imagine that everything is the connection among us. The Zohar constantly describes the connection between us: Zeir Anpin, Malchut, the three lines, limitations, and so on. We reveal all of this among us since our shared desires is the only “place” where revelation can happen. Therefore, we don’t need anything except for a shared, strong desire for the Light to come and reveal the connection among us. All these phenomena that we read about in The Zohar are to be found there.

The action itself is quite simple, but it is not easy to accomplish. It takes time to achieve a state in which I sit in front of a book, imagine that it is talking about the connection among us, and in it, I reveal all these words and actions. Everything is in the connection among us; this is where the Creator is revealed.

It is quite difficult to combine all this, but when you achieve it, the desire to reveal the connection among everyone becomes the only link with the Upper Force. And you have no other means except for the holy Book of Zohar which describes the states that you will reveal.

Then, like a baby that strives to be like an adult, you desire revelation and aspire to it with all your might.

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/12/10, The Zohar

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Excerpts from my upcoming book, A Guide to The Book of Zohar

Some of the souls within the general system are already corrected. If we, too, desire to attain the revelation of the Creator, but feel that He is concealed, then from the spiritual standpoint, we exist in “darkness” or “night.” It is precisely in this time of “night” when we have to exert efforts and raise our prayers whereupon those exalted souls in which the Creator reigns will influence us through The Book of Zohar.

The Book of Zohar was written specifically so that we could create the link between us and these souls. When we read The Zohar, we establish contact with them, and in return they send us a force called the Light that Reforms through this Book.

For the time being, there is no compatibility (equivalence of form) between our souls and the Light, so this Light is not yet penetrating our souls so as to fill them. Nonetheless, it acts upon us as a mother’s womb, enveloping, embracing, and caressing us. The Light gradually corrects us until we begin to perceive it, the corrected souls with whom we’ve established contact by reading The Zohar, and the Creator who reigns in the entire system of souls.

This Light is called the Surrounding Light. As we continue to correct ourselves, it enters us, fulfills us, and becomes the soul’s “Inner Light” which is our spiritual life.

Inside the mother’s womb, which this Surrounding Light forms for us, grows the middle line. The middle line is a precise calculation on my part which combines the two forces of nature, the force of desire and that of the Light, in the most optimal way for the Light to correct the desire.

The part of the desire that becomes corrected in this process and thereby similar to the Creator is called the middle line. In other words, the middle line is the measure of my ability to become similar to the Creator. It is the Creator’s image that I have constructed within myself and out of myself by this process. It began with that very request: the prayer that I had raised in the time of the “night.”

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The Zohar, Chapter “VaYechi (And Jacob Lived),” Item 26: “And he called his son Joseph.” Jacob questioned his sons and told them, “I see many and great troubles coming over your children. It is necessary to find higher Rachamim [mercy].

Everything described in the Torah, The Zohar, and all the “holy books” (books written by Kabbalists, those who attain the Upper World based on their sensation of that world) takes place exclusively inside of us. Nothing exists outside of us!

Our entire current reality, everything we feel now is intended only to help us awaken to the perception of a new reality, or more precisely, to form it inside of us. We have to change our qualities and then we will form the world to come, a new reality inside us. There is no time or external changes. We are only being awakened with the help of unpleasant states in order to change and see the only true reality, the World of Infinity.

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/16/10, The Zohar

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Baal HaSulam, Rabash, and other great Kabbalists tell us that if we desire to advance, the easiest way to do so is never to stop thinking and imagining that we are all together. They are describing the spiritual reality while already being there. But how can we get there? To do this we have been given an auxiliary means: to imagine that we are connected through love and mutual guarantee with our friends who also desire to attain the same reality.

In this way, by doing my inner work I enter a state that is concealed from me. I don’t see it yet and I can’t imagine or understand it. Therefore, let’s imagine that we are together. This will definitely bring us closer to revealing the reality described by The Zohar.

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/16/2010, The Zohar

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Question: Besides the desire to understand The Zohar, I also really want to remember the definitions of words in order to connect them to each other. What should I do if I constantly forget?

Answer: You need to demand to feel! It is very good that you forget. Kabbalists prayed to forget everything they learned every minute. There is always a break between the degrees when everything you attained on the previous degree is forgotten and erased from your sensations and memory.

We attain in sensations in the corrected desire. All the names and titles about which we read in The Zohar (HaVaYaH and Elokim in all the various combinations and manifestations) are revealed in the corrected desire. When they are revealed one after another in my desire, I begin to work with my feelings just like in our world.

It seems to a person that feelings are less important than the mind. However, feelings come and unite with the mind in order to help or serve it. If we learn all the parts of Study Of The Ten Sefirot, this is just to rouse us to use all this knowledge as a basis to demand feelings. After all, “learning” means “uniting,” and “knowledge” is unification or adhesion (Zivug).

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/11/10, The Zohar

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