The Zohar, Chapter “Chayei Sarah (The Life of Sarah),” Item 220: …‘I said that you are all angels and sons of God,’ meaning upon the reception of the Torah. And since you damaged yourselves, meaning sinned, you will indeed die as humans. Hence, that evil serpent that darkened the world cannot govern anyone who engages in the Torah.

Because we study Kabbalah, the Upper Light holds us up like a magnet, while the serpent, the egoistic desire that takes life from us, remains below, and is unable to rule over us. Man rises above his animate life and does not even feel it. We only need a desire for the Light to change us while we are reading The Zohar.

Kabbalah is a wisdom that explains everything that happens in our world and our entire path, but if we want to rise above it, we need a force to raise us to a higher degree. Our mind and our feelings will not help us; we must acquire a new development from the higher degree. We are unable to understand what it is like to live in spirituality, just like a rock is unable to think like a plant and a dog or a cat is unable to understand what it is like to be human; it is the same thing. This is why we need the Upper Force to make this change within us. And we will acquire it from The Zohar.

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The Book of Zohar — Selections, Chapter “VaYaera (And The Lord Appeared),” Item 67
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The Zohar, Chapter “Chayei Sarah (The Life of Sarah),” Item 41: Such are the ways of the Creator. If He gives wealth to a person, it is to nourish the world and to do His commandments. If he does not do it, but takes pride in his wealth, he will be struck in it, as it is written, “Wealth kept for its owner is to his hurt.”

…Similarly, when the Creator gave them of the beauty of the superior good of Adam ha Rishon, He gave it to them to keep His commandments and to do His will. They did not do it, but were proud; they were struck in that same beauty with which they were blessed.

Therefore, a person that cries, “Why does the Creator treat me this way?” has to understand that a person himself is provoking the harm. We are the ones who cause our own blows by not correctly using the opportunities that the Creator gives us in order to rise. We stumble on these very opportunities, fall down, then we essentially beat ourselves. This is what The Zohar tells us, “They were struck in that same beauty with which they were blessed.”

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There is a universal connection, a hierarchy, or chain in the common system of the souls. The development of the different types of souls happens according to this connection. In their development, the souls always depend on the preceding souls. They are connected like a father and son, cause and consequence, or teacher and student. However, there is one, special, exalted system above all the types of connections. It penetrates the system like a live organism and operates in different directions. This system is called the system of Rashbi.

It is the transition between the part of the system that is corrected and the part that is uncorrected. The corrected part is filled with Light and contains the corrected desires which are all ready for the common, final correction of the entire system. This part includes those that have already revealed the entire 125 degrees of the proper development of the common system of creation. The uncorrected part still needs to realize the state it is in and begin its correction. The uncorrected part is us, all the souls on the level of this world.

All of us will have to go through the step-by-step correction with the help of the system of Rashbi which is absolutely at the height of the 125th degree. The revelation and the influence of these corrected souls happens to us through those connections and preparations that they have built in the form of a system called The Zohar (the Light that descends from Arich Anpin of the world of Atzilut).They have created this kind of system for us so that we will find ourselves in a proper environment as we connect to it. After all, our entire development depends on the environment.

When we try to connect to The Zohar, we can receive everything we need for our correction from this system that represents the group of Rashbi and his students. These souls have made special corrections in the Upper Light in which we can clothe ourselves through The Zohar. Through them, we also can connect with the Light or with the Creator.

Rashbi uses The Zohar to reveal to us the gates that lead upward. He reveals them to the extent of the value that we give to the greatness of this system and our ability to connect to it with the purpose of using it to attain the spiritual goal.

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The Book of Zohar — Selections, Chapter “VaYaera (And The Lord Appeared),” Item 48
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The Zohar, Chapter “Song of Songs,” Item 482: The wisdom that one should know: to know and to observe the secret of his Master, to know himself, to know who he is, how he was created, where he comes from and where he is going, how the body is corrected, and how he will be judged by the King of All.

We think of these merely as pretty words: “where he comes from and where he is going,” and “how he will be judged by the King of All.” However, the most important part is, “to know and to observe the secret of his Master.” This is exactly what we must attain.

The Creator wants us to reveal His entire work, His entire creation, the entire reality He created, the reasons for its creation, the thought of creation, the ways to realize it, and the goal that the entire creation is to reach. The only way to learn all this is by attaining it, which means, basically, to clothe into the entire creation with all of its states and experience all of them. Only then, by including our actions in the entire creation, can we attain it in us or in our desires (Kelim). From this attainment, we will reach everything that we need to reach.

We can attain this by correcting our desires. These desires are given to us from Above and they are corrected by the Upper Light. However, the Light only appears according to our readiness, our efforts, and our desire for the Light to come and correct us. This is called the raising of MAN. Man must strive to reach a state when he desires the Light to correct him.

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The Zohar, Chapter “VaYaera (And The Lord Appeared),” Item 37: He taught him every profound and sublime secret in the Song of Songs and adjured him to not use any verse in it, so the Creator will not destroy the world because of him, since He has no desire for people to use it because of the great sanctity in it. Afterwards, Rabbi Akiva went out sobbing and his eyes were shedding water. He said, “Woe my teacher, woe my teacher, the world will be orphaned without you.” The rest of the sages entered and asked him, and he replied with words of Torah.

We can continue reading The Zohar for hours on end, but the question is: Do we have the right intention? The text itself might seem very difficult and closed to us, or it might seem simple. Regardless, we are always talking about inner qualities where Moses, Rabbi Akiva, Abraham, Esau, and good and evil forces are all inside a person. This is the manner in which The Zohar describes the phases of our spiritual path.

I don’t understand what is written here, and I don’t even want to know it. I want to feel it, to attain this state so as to experience it for myself, to live it. I don’t want to understand it through my mind, but through my inner qualities. I want my inner qualities to change so I will identify with the states that The Zohar describes.

It is talking about things that are inside of me, but are concealed from me. I am being told about what is taking place within me, and I want to feel it. All of these qualities and states, all of these “scenes,” all 125 degrees exist in every person right now because there is no time in spirituality. I want to reveal the degree about which I am reading in The Zohar, and I am entitled to this because that degree is mine. I want to change so as to experience this state.

This is called “to attain what one studies,” as Baal HaSulam says in Item 155 of “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot.” He writes, “…through the yearning and the great desire to know what they are learning, they awaken upon themselves the Lights that surround their souls.” Here “to know” means to unite, as it is written, “And Adam knew Eve.”

I want to unite with this state, to live it. I don’t need anything else but this. Everything else inside me is bad, and I don’t care if I don’t understand or feel anything. I only want to “open” this text through my sensations, rather than through my mind. I want to experience it.

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The Book of Zohar — Selections, Chapter “VaYaera (And The Lord Appeared),” Item 21
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The Zohar, Chapter “BeHukotai (In My Statutes),” Item 24: …This is so because justice is neither corrected nor completed but in righteousness, as it is written, “In righteousness shall you be established.” This is said to the assembly of Israel, Malchut, which is completed only in righteousness, as it is written, “And do them,” which is done by the awakening of the lower one.

What do MAN, appeal, tears, charity, “gates of tears,” and prayer mean? It all means that I want to become like the Creator. It is only under the condition that being like the Creator is the only thing I ask for, that I will awaken Zeir Anpin, so that He influences Malchut.

Only when the lower wants to become like the Upper, can the Upper influence him and lift him to the next degree giving him strength and understanding of what it means to be the Upper. After all, what else can the Upper give? The Creator only has perfection, and He can only pass the degrees of this perfection to us, gradually and according to the state that we are in.

This is why we have nothing to ask of the Creator except for the opportunity to gradually become like Him, where every time our qualities become equal to a greater degree. He has nothing to give us besides our correction. We would really like to become like Him; this is our connection with the Creator.

Therefore, this is why all the other cries and tears that we shed in this world do not lead to anything. Looking back at history we can see that it does not help. The only thing that works immediately is when I attain the “switching point.” Beginning with this point, which is that I want to be like the Creator, when I determine precisely who He is, what He represents, what I lack, what I really need to strive to, and when I make my desire into a desire like the one He has – this is what is called the beggar’s prayer, tears, the gates of tears and charity.

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The Zohar, Chapter “Chayei Sarah (The Life of Sarah),” Item 203: When a person is destined to account for his deeds, before he leaves the world, this day is a day of reckoning, when the body and the soul report. Afterwards, the soul departs the body and parts with it, and the body, which was created from dust, returns to dust and everything returns to the place from which it was taken. And until the time when the Creator revives the dead, everything will be concealed from it.

Equally in our spiritual advancement, we don’t know what the upper rung means, or what it is that constitutes our next state. Today as well, none of us know what the next minute will bring to our lives. We can try to predict, but it won’t help. Nobody can grasp the future. The next rung is always concealed and it is revealed either through the path of suffering (Beito, in time), or through the path of goodness (Ahishena, accelerated time).

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