Question: You said that in order to comprehend The Zohar we have to make an “an opening in the heart.” Who makes this “opening?”

Answer: The Light! I myself am unable to do this. Only the Light can. As if through a magnifying glass, the beams of Light concentrate and become so powerful that they “burn through” your desire to feel pleasure thereby creating an “opening.”

Question cont.: Why can’t we make this “opening?”

Answer: It is not our job to make this happen. When two hearts unite through their desires, it is called the “openings” in the walls of their hearts. A wall in the heart means a whole heart, but we need the broken hearts. If our hearts, yours and mine, are “breached” and we connect these “breaches,” the job is done. I want what you want, and you wish what I wish. We are bonded already. If two have united and are connected in the quality of bestowal, that’s where the revelation takes place.

How powerful this revelation will be is based on everything you and I have in our hearts, besides the breaking and these “breaches” connected together. There are thousands of obstacles in your heart, all sorts of thoughts and worries; I have them too.

To the extent we are able to overcome these obstacles and stay connected, grounded in them all and constantly holding ourselves above them in order to remain in the common sensation of the quality of bestowal (since only through partnership can we stay in it), to that degree are we able to attain the property of the Creator in the connection between us. Thereby, we try and discern the taste of bestowal.

Question cont.: How do we connect the “breaches” in our hearts?

Answer: It is done by the Light. Our job is only to wish for it to happen. No other action is necessary! While reading The Book of Zohar, you wish for its words to “drill” and open a “porthole” in you.

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

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In order to attain The Zohar a person needs to open the channel that leads to the heart. And the tendency to understand it with the mind is given in order for us to resist this and wish for The Zohar to be revealed in the heart. Otherwise it will not work.

It is necessary to make an “opening in the heart” so that the text of The Book of Zohar is felt in inner attainments, in the desire, rather than just in the external mind where one connects words to each other. After all, the external picture which one imagines in the mind, remembering the meaning of words and building logical connections between them, does not allow him to constantly aspire to feel The Zohar.

Such an approach is doomed to fail. A person receives satisfaction from the fact that he seemingly connected a few things in his mind, and the problem is solved for him. He has no regret or desire left to feel and attain. He learns the external (comprehensible to him) definitions from the Book and builds a “Lego” out of them by connecting them to each other.

However, only under the condition that a person already feels what is written in The Zohar and wishes to connect the sensations, can he look at the words of the text and connect the sensations according to these words. If there are no sensations, it’s better not to activate the mind and just to wait for “the wonderful force” (Segula) that is contained in The Book of Zohar to affect you.

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

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

Darkness sensed within the desire to receive pleasure can be transformed into the Light provided that the direction of the desire is altered from “for my own sake” to “bestowal to my neighbor.” It means that one has to use his desire to enjoy in order to start bestowing to his neighbor and thus feel pleasure from giving. Only at this point does a person become unlimited in his actions since only bestowal knows no boundaries.

If I get pleased in the same way as the Creator does (from giving), I thereby become similar to Him and sense eternal and perfect life filled with love and bestowal. What do I lack in order to acquire this new type of fulfillment? I need to love my neighbor and find the fulfillment he needs. I can obtain “love of neighbor” from the Creator with the help of the Light that Reforms. I receive the Light of abundance from Him in order to fulfill my neighbor.

Thus, I become the Creator’s partner in everything that exists; I become similar to Him. This is how correction of the intention used by the desire to enjoy works.

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Question: During the lesson I tell myself that I want to feel what The Zohar speaks about, but I see that I don’t have the true desire for this. How can I attain this desire?

Answer: It’s a problem of our common thoughts. Maybe we aren’t fully aware that The Zohar speaks about our advanced states and the most important thing while reading this Book is our desire to attain those states.

What are our advanced states? It’s when we all unite together and inside the connection between us we reveal spirituality, the common quality of bestowal, the Creator. This is exactly the aspiration you should feel while reading The Book of Zohar. Otherwise all of the reading is a waste and it won’t help us in any way. It will even result in us receiving a sensation of darkness, a negative awakening. There is no choice about the matter: In any case we have to move forward, and in this case we will advance against our will.

Therefore, everything depends on how correctly we will be able to imagine the advanced state while reading The Book of Zohar, meaning how much we will see that it is a connection between us inside of which we reveal bestowal, love, mutual guarantee, and the unification that reigns in all of reality and all the worlds.

Everything becomes revealed only in the connection between us: all of reality, all the worlds until Infinity. We draw the Light of Correction to the degree we desire to reveal this state while reading The Book of Zohar.

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

In order to feel what is described here, let’s look at the following example: Suppose I visit the home of a very distinguished person. The hospitable host offers me the finest delicacies, invites me to play a round of golf, and to listen to some classical music. However, I am a simple man and have no interest in doing any of that since I have no connection to any of these pleasures. I have never experienced them in my life, and that is why I don’t desire them.

I look at the host in surprise and say, “What do you want from me? I didn’t come here to take pleasure in the things you love. I want to enjoy the things I love!” The host replies, “My dear friend, I want to bestow onto you such awesome pleasures. You cannot even imagine how amazing they are. Try to get accustomed to them a little bit and you will reveal infinite, higher pleasures which are incomparable to the ones you’re used to.”

So, what am I to do? I can trust the host and try to let him teach me new tastes even though I’m not used to them and for that reason am not drawn to them. Gradually, however, I will learn to feel in them a special, heavenly flavor. Or, I can tell the hospitable host, “You know what? It’s hard for me to get used to these new tastes and such difficult conditions and forget all my past habits. I cannot do it. Leave me alone and let me get back to my simple life.” What would the host tell me then? “Sure, go on.”

However, when I get back to my regular life, I begin to experience unpleasant states. That is when I remember the host’s words describing other, higher tastes, so I come back to him. This process may repeat itself several times as I return to my former life and then back to the host.

Ultimately, I will realize that there is no other way: I simply must return to the host so that he could help me replace my tastes with his for good. I know now that I will savor the taste of life in them.

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

It is important to understand why we need all this. The fact is that the Creator desires to bestow to begin with, so there’s no point in asking Him to give us Light and pleasure as we usually do.

The Creator has what we need and He has the will to give it. However, He wants us to not merely be receiving from Him, but to become like Him, meaning to be great, independent, bestowing, and similar to Him in the quality of love and bestowal. Therefore, this is precisely what we have to ask for in order to acquire that which the Creator has: the will to bestow and the quality of love and bestowal.

We are used to asking for fulfillment but what we need to ask for is correction. As soon as we become corrected, the Creator’s Light will instantly fulfill us. In other words, our problem is that we don’t understand what it is we should ask of the Creator. We exist in an ocean of Light, goodness, and pleasure, but we lack the necessary vessel to feel all this abundance within. This vessel is the quality of love and bestowal, and that is what we need to ask of the Creator. As soon as we acquire this quality, the Light of abundance will fill us on its own.

There is only one restriction set by the Creator, only one condition for receiving the Light: We have to become like Him. After all, He desires for us to feel just as much pleasure as He does.

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Question: What does The Zohar mean by, “When a person lies asleep and the soul leaves him and testifies to that person” (Chapter “Lech Lecha [Go Forth],” Item 359)?

Answer: The soul is the Light in the desire (Kli). We can correct our desire to receive only in the Sefirot of Keter, Hochma, and Bina, while correction in the Sefirot of Zeir Anpin and Malchut can only be partial. For this reason, the largest Light that can manifest in us for now is the Light of Neshama, while the Lights of Haya and Yechida can serve only as small supplementary illumination from below upwards.

Therefore, our collective desire is called “the soul” (Neshama), by the name of the greatest Light that the soul can contain within it until the end of correction. If the desire exists in a state where it is able to attain the Light of Neshama, it is called the soul (Neshama). That’s because we name desires by the names of the lights which fill them. However, if the desires cannot contain these lights and be filled with them due to the lack of the screen, there is no soul. It is because the filling is the screen and the Reflected Light, the property of bestowal.

The soul is not my reception of Light from Above. The soul (Neshama), like all of the Inner Light in the desire, is formed by my giving this Light to someone else, by passing it through myself and thereby getting filled by it. This is called my Light, the Light that I receive. I receive the opportunity to bestow, and that’s what fills me.

This is why “at night,” when I am not yet able to correct my desires and gain control over them with the help of the screens (the property of bestowal), I receive a negative impression in my desire called darkness. But what is “darkness”? Darkness is when I cannot bestow and this state feels as “night,” meaning the lack of bestowal on my part. I feel regret and prepare to correct my desires.

I merit the “day”  through my work “at night.” I got up at dawn to attend the Kabbalah lesson and united with my friends; I made various corrections and obtained new desires and screens. In all of these screens and desires I create a new form of bestowal that fills me. This means my “day” has begun.

Hence, “night” is also a spiritual state for it is the preparation of desires. And if a person doesn’t have a desire to attain bestowal, even the “night” doesn’t exist for him for we define “day” and “night” according to our spiritual states.

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/5/10, The Zohar

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

The Upper worlds do not exist in corporeal space; rather, they are like qualities without space, volume, weight, or size. When a person exists in his inherited egoistic desire, his qualities paint for him the picture of “this world.” But once the “point in the heart” awakens in him, he begins to want to attain the Upper dimension.

By working on himself in a group of friends who study the wisdom of Kabbalah, he begins to draw the Light from the degree of “Infinity” which descends onto him from Above through all the worlds. This Light creates within him the need to achieve the quality of bestowal (Malchut of the World of Atzilut) along with his group. Having achieved that level, he begins to feel the Creator and to bestow to Him just as the Creator bestows to the person.

The common desire of the souls united in the Malchut of the World of Atzilut ascends to Zeir Anpin, then higher to Aba ve Ima, and higher still to the World of Infinity. Then the Light descends from the World of Infinity through all the degrees back to the souls and fulfills them. With this fulfillment the souls grow and unite with Zeir Anpin who bestows to them. This is called the unification of ZA and Malchut, the Creator (Kadosh Baruch Hu) and Shechina, the merging of the souls with the Creator.

Many such actions are necessary before all the desires within the souls actualize themselves and bring about the adhesion with the Creator. When all the desires are corrected and bestowing to the Creator, just as the Creator bestows to them, it will be the end of correction (Gmar Tikkun).

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The Book of Zohar – Selections, “The Intention in the Prayer” and “Raising a Prayer”
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