Why Haven’t You Asked Yet?…

As soon as your are led to the group from above, immediately it starts increasing the value of the goal in order to enhance what is given to you as your first spark. In fact, only by way of this value do you outweigh lies and purchase the truth. And if you don’t receive this value from the group, you will either return to the lies or you will sit idle unable to leave eating yourself up.

But advancing on the path of the truth is possible only when receiving an inspiration from the importance of the goal and the environment. To the degree of this importance, you will be willing to suffer, your ego suffers and the truth grows.. After all, it is very painful.

Besides, the group helps me understand that to achieve something is possible only through prayer. A prayer is a plea to transform the desire from receiving to bestowal, from separation and hate to unity and love. I remember how when I was taking a walk withRabash in the grove near Beit Shemen and I was telling him about all my problems, complaining and screaming for about ten minutes and he quietly listened till he suddenly said: “But why didn’t you ask (Him)?”

We do not have enough of the request: “Why didn’t you ask?” Frankly, our nature doesn’t allow us to come to it, to just ask. Neither our mind nor our heart comprehends that we just need to arrange a plea for correction. And people suffer months and years unable to ask, to raise MAN.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/16/10, Writings of Baal HaSulam

A Unique Transformation That Gives You Life

Question: How can it be that Rabbi Shimon would cry at deciding whether he should or shouldn’t reveal the secret concealed in The Book of Zohar? Can a Kabbalist be trusted with such an enormous secret by which he would harm us?

Answer: Rabbi Shimon wasn’t some ordinary person made of flesh and blood who hid in a cave, but is an entire system, a part of the upper world that clothes in the Creator and receives everything He has according to the equivalence of their properties from Him. At the same time, he contemplates how to manage to pass thisLight to the other souls that it is yet required to give birth to and develop.

And to accomplish this, he employs one more spiritual system, Rabbi Abba, which makes it possible to pass this Light downward. With Rabbi Abba and the other 9 disciples’ assistance, each of whom represents one of the 10 Sefirot and is comprised of 10 sub-Sefirot, meaning they contain a full set of 100 Sefirot, after the concealment and reduction of the Light in this specific mechanism, the Light can be adapted to the souls of our generation.

This Light is designated specifically for our time and not for their contemporaries or for the periods of exile. This is a unique correction, just like the one that the sages of the Talmud performed on our behalf so we wouldn’t have to torment our bodies to find spirituality as had been written in those times: “Eat bread with salt, drink water, sleep on bare ground, and study the Torah—then succeed!” But after the time of Talmud, such restrictions are not necessary and it is sufficient to simply study the inner Torah (Kabbalah) without any corporeal limitations.

It became possible because Kabbalists of that time inserted a necessary addition into the spiritual system, thereby adapting it to us. And besides, it corresponds with how close we ourselves approached it thanks to the evolution of our will to receive (desire, ego). They (Rabbi Shimon and the 9 disciples) brought the Light closer to us while we have also come closer to it (by evolving in the reverse direction thereby increasing our ego), and now we have become so close to each other that the effect of the Light alone is enough for our correction. No corporeal suffering is necessary any longer.

All of this occurred thanks to the corrections made in the upper system built by the previous Kabbalists. These sages are part of the upper worlds and the innermost part of it; they are related to the souls. When they perform corrections, they add to the collective system such reformed elements that revive it. Because of them, it comes alive and starts working passing the Light down to us!
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/14/10, Writings of Baal HaSulam

The Train Stops At Each Station On The Way To The Goal Of Creation

The main difficulty on the way is that we don’t feel any deficiency for the goal of creation. Our deficiency is the opposite because I naturally think only about my inner state, how to complete what I lack, how to get this. And if I had everything, then I wouldn’t think about anything at all.

But I am not prepared to think about how to fulfill what the whole universe lacks, including the still, vegetative, animate, and human levels, or how to fulfill the Creator through them. Does He lack something? I don’t feel His deficiency. Somehow I can feel the deficiencies of others, but not the desire of the Creator. How would I know how to give Him contentment? I do not have the correct, purposeful, deficiency in me, not even the beginning of such a deficiency.

But the final corrected state that already exists in nature affects me; despite the lack of desire, I still am attracted to it, if not in my heart, then at least out of curiosity. Or I can get a deficiency from the environment, from the group. They all keep on saying how important this is, so I also begin to pay attention and work on the deficiencies of others. And in this case, the final state of perfection acts on me and begins to awaken changes in me.

Or I see that as the years go by I still have nothing, so I begin to consider what else I can do. I am not concerned about the importance of the goal, only about the years I wasted. I see that it is up to me to do something!

We must begin working with the environment in order to get a deficiency from it, and in response, the “Surrounding Light” arrives and begins to change me more and more.

The main thing is to bring me to a deficiency, to a Kli, and not to the fulfillment. It is up to me to imagine that I am standing before the “Surrounding Light” all the time and it is only up to me to ask! It is as if I come to the ticket window at a train station, peek in, and ask for a train ticket. It is only up to me to ask, and they will give me a ticket for wherever I choose.

I must feel that I will surely get the ticket but on condition that I know where I need to travel and what the next station is. But how would I know where the next station is? To do this, I have to be included in a group, to invest in it, to disappear into it, and to absorb the deficiency from them. If I come to the ticket window to buy a ticket with this deficiency, then without a doubt I will not miss it; I will take the ticket for the right train, for the next station.

That is how I advance from station to station. And it becomes increasingly clearer each time that the station at the final destination is to bring contentment to the Creator. This is also expressed as a deficiency. Because I begin to give contentment to the creatures, I receive a small part of the desire for giving pleasure to the Emanator, the Creator,” all the time. That is how this desire becomes more and more clearly portrayed.

Even though my request is very simple and I don’t understand exactly what I am asking for yet, I receive the Light in response a full set of the complete ten Sefirot. This also includes the Light corresponding to the stony heart, and I begin to understand that it is impossible for me to use it. This also includes the Light corresponding to the Sefirot ofKeter, which belongs to a level above me. Within Keter of the lower, we already feel theMalchut of the upper.

That is how I begin to connect many states from the past, present, and future in me. I already understand how it is up to me to build myself in an increasingly advanced form all the time. I begin to feel the cyclicality, the rotation of the wheels that sometimes turn forward, sometimes backward, but always propel the train forward. The wheels turn in different and opposing directions, butt the train steadily approaches the goal.

In the entire complexity of states, the most important thing is for me is to think about the point of a true prayer, that it must be a prayer for the desire for bestowal. The main thing—it is the desire to seek and not the desire to bestow, which is a Kli, the prayer before the prayer, the deficiency of a deficiency for bestowal. That is specifically what I need.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/03/13, Writings of Rabash

The Purpose Of Life – The Core Of All

Question: Goals promoted in the outer environment influence me much more strongly than the goal that is set by the Kabbalist and what the group tries to convey to me. What can be done with this contradiction?

Answer: I have a purpose for which I live. If not for that, I would be living the life of a “beast,” I exist because I cannot die and intermittently I satisfying myself with “animal feed.”

But no, I have a goal in life, and I need to be locked onto this with the help of the group, arranging everything so I aim only for this goal. And all the rest of my activities are done according to my life’s goal.

And the goal of life is the revelation of the Creator, which is adherence with Him. This goal is attained through the principle, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” by means of connection in a group. And I must be attracted only to this and adhere to this alone.

In fact, we are talking about the construction of the spiritual Partzufim that are “inserted” one within the other. The core of everything is the purpose of life. To reach it I need the group. To strengthen the group, dissemination is needed. And therefore I need the entire world or the “nations of the world.”

But the main thing for me is the goal of life, while all others are the essential components required to attain it. And if not for the goal, I would not resort to them. I do and use only what helps me on the way to the goal.

According to this, from the group I need only what is good for attaining the goal, and therefore the entire group must realize the goal for me. Therefore it is said, “He chooses a better environment all the time,” I change the group all of the time and take from it things that are required for me to attain the goal.

The process is dynamic: The dissemination is changing all the time according to what we need for strengthening the group in order to find the shared power in its center and to discover the Creator. But in order to discover the Creator in the center of the group through the power of the guarantee within the group and through the right dissemination, I need to go out to the wider world, to receive deficiencies, obligations, fears, and anxieties from people so that they will push me and obligate me to act. Then I will reach the right demand, and then I discover the Creator.

All of these components are needed on the way except from the external world as it is, the dissemination that we do is enough. We have three levels: the Creator in the center of the group, the group itself with a guarantee and I’m in the group, and dissemination. This is the right agreement that is familiar to us: the lower, the upper, and the upper upper; or interior, middle, and exterior.

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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/01/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Red Line: Beware – Human!

Question: If man is simply a small part of nature, then where can he get the power to destroy it?

Answer: We have an additional part in us which is above the animate body and is regarded as “human.” The human can be good or evil because he possesses freewill unlike an animal. It is human, the ego, that exists above nature and that is where you have the right to choose.

All creation exists in perfection: the still, vegetative, and animate—everything except man. Each of us has an animate part, the body, and a “human” part, which is the only corrupted one. It is the part that stretches beyond the essential existence of the body; it makes me exploit nature and even destroy it if that’s what is necessary to make me feel good.

An animal deprived of freewill cannot ruin nature since it acts correctly by following its natural instincts. Therefore, our corporeal world exists only at the still, vegetative, and animate planes, which are in the state of perfection and balance. But man is above this world.

The animate part of man is also in harmony with nature. The problem lies in the “human in man,” a degree in which I started destroying the world. As long as we were undeveloped, we didn’t cause much harm to it since we were living merely as animals that consumed each other in order to survive. But when we reached the current level of evolution and received so much power, the problem immediately arose. Even Aristotle warned that science shouldn’t be revealed to evil people who may use it to destroy the world and mankind.

If they can’t use the human power correctly, then they must not be allowed to step outside the animate sphere—beyond this red line; they can do so only if they know how to use the human power correctly. To use it correctly means to make this red area similar to nature by employing one’s own consciousness and understanding by becoming equivalent to the Creator, the upper one. We must achieve the same balance with nature as all the other parts, but through our own effort, since we initially lack the balance.

It turns out that we have a nature where no freewill exists and we only need to use it correctly. The part above it relates to the Creator and human where freewill does exist, but we have no clue what do with it or how to use it. There we must reach balance in order to bestow.

In the past, the previous Kabbalists achieved attainment by placing restrictions on their body as described in the “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot”: “Bread and salt you should eat, water in measure you should drink, on the ground you should sleep, a life of affliction you shall live, and in Torah you should labor,” then you shall reach spirituality. In truth, if the part of a person related to the animate, vegetative, and still levels lived only with bare essentials, like a beast, and on top of that he studied the Torah while thinking about how to become similar to the Creator, he did advance.

But 2000 years ago we reached a state where we started to exploit all of nature, to harm the still, vegetative, and animate parts, this whole “inner” circle. Hence, this is why we’ve come to such need for the Light that Reforms. It is the only way we can transform ourselves.

Previously, the Light of correction worked only at a highest rung. But today we need a much greater Light to work on all of nature since we have corrupted it too by making it entirely egoistic by engaging in it.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/21/10 Writings of Baal HaSulam

The Spiritual Commando

Baal HaSulam wrote: I have built for you the order that will help you not to roll backward. And the main thing in this arrangement is the unity of friends. And I give you my complete assurance;this is to say, he really guarantees that this love is true, factual, and actual. …and with this I remind you of the validity of this love and all those useful things that follow after it. And if you are strengthened by this, then without a doubt you will go from strength to strength towards spiritual success. Because the idea is to make yourself like the upper world. This being where you want to enter.

What does entry mean? In what kind of relationships with people do we want to enter? This is our mission that is to be solved between us.

And your friends found here, just as you have been blessed with love between you, so you will continue and will not separate. This will be to that moment when the Creator will rejoice with you and will be revealed among you. He will reveal the world according to you, and thanks to you, peace will be revealed in the world. As it is said, (Psalms 122:8) “For the sake of my brethren and companions, I shall now speak of peace in you.”

All this happens solely and only within the group and not in any other place. And to the rest of the people we disseminate gradually, with soft steps, treating them with “kit gloves,” because only a few people would truly stand up for the idea of love, friendship, and unity.

Therefore Rabash writes for us: Ultimately the people will be united under one leader who will stand with them against everything that comes against them. And this is what we need to understand very clearly, not to be afraid of anyone and to go forward. This is our idea, this is our goal, and this is our faith! Whoever doesn’t like this can leave. We aren’t harming anyone; we want unity and love of the other according to the global laws of nature upon which our method is based. We are not pursuing any other goal.

Without a doubt these are strong people, with a spirit that is as strong as steel, who will not be moved even a single step backward. These are first-class warriors who understand the meaning of creation and how to act to the degree of their advancement.

And nothing more is needed. We always get as much as is needed in order to do the right action at that moment, and if we do more, we might do the wrong thing. Like a little child that they let play with blocks but not something like an electric screwdriver, as this is not for him. It’s the same thing here; there is nothing to blame the Creator for, for not giving us the tools for our development. He gives them precisely to the degree that we will not err and will not harm ourselves and others.

And they have only one mission, to win in the sacred war for the sake of the Creator. This is to say, to build relationships between us like these (instead of hatred, love), where the Upper Light illuminates us and brings us victory, so, the Creator is the one who fights. We prepare the ground. Therefore all of our life, all of our existence is called “preparation,” and the Creator is the one who will finish it.

Rav Kook, the great Kabbalist, the first Chief Rabbi of the land of Israel, a member of the same generation as Baal HaSulam, (they were very familiar with each other), writes: Oursoul is great. It is strong and mighty, it shatters an iron wall, it explodes mountains and hills. It is broader than infinite space, it is impossible to shrink it, it must spread over all those millions of our Israeli souls on all their levels, in all of the cities where they are found, and in all the depths into which they have descended, our soul is extended towards all, all of them, embracing them all, all will be revived and encouraged.

This is essentially that aspiration towards which we turn, the “spiritual commando.”

The main thing is to understand that at each and every moment I’m given exactly what I need in order to advance to my next level. And then I only need to invest my small efforts in order to unite with the others over the background of all of those various problems or circumstances in which I am found. Everything is found in our hands and we lack nothing other than mutual support.
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From the St. Petersburg Convention “Day Three” 7/14/13, Lesson 6

The Truth Is More Precious Than Life

Question: In our times, when we experience new problems from all different sides every few seconds, and all we do is battle with them. what special means are offered by Kabbalah that do not exist anywhere else?

Answer: The wisdom of Kabbalah explains where all this evil comes from and the reason for our bad states. It asserts that evil does not come from somewhere on the outside, from other people or circumstances, it points directly to the inside, telling me: “You are the cause of all evil!”

A person finds it very difficult to agree with this so one immediately pushes Kabbalah away. However, after Kabbalah points to the cause of evil, it explains that there is just one chance to reach goodness: by correcting the evil in oneself to goodness. And the good isn’t for me, it is for all the others!

So not only do I need to admit that all evil is inside me and to correct myself so that others receive the good, I also need to enjoy this without feeling my state and only worrying about how good others feel. Who will buy such a methodology?!

This is why it is only appropriate for those in whom there is a point of truth, and due to their nature, they are unable to remain in a lie any longer: They need the truth no matter what! This demand comes to a person from nature and not because he is so special and such a great hero.

It’s simply that the desire to reveal the truth becomes more important to him than all the other aspects of life. A new desire to reveal the truth suddenly is born in him; this desire was not there before. Meanwhile, those who just have the one previous desire for our world are willing to live in a lie. So they run after everything that contributes to this lie by satisfying their egoism. Only those people in whom a desire for the truth arose, which they are powerless to suppress, accept the method of Kabbalah with gladness. After all, they have no choice; nothing else will help them. And such people advance.

However, if a person is still able to consent to some compromise, he will run away. We cannot blame or scorn him for this since you would have done the same thing if you were in his place… Such is nature: The stronger of two forces outweighs the other; the mechanics is very simple.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/16/10, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Sanctifying The Time

Question: Why must we go through so many troubles if we prepare ourselves properly? After all, we want to hasten time and go through all the bad things internally.

Answer: Hearing about troubles and feeling them are two different things. We must clarify all the levels, both to their negative depth and to their positive height. It is impossible to avoid these states. The only thing we can do is to go through them at a different pace. If we hasten time, we feel them differently.

It isn’t about how quickly I perform a certain action or a movement. Hastening time means pushing myself with the help of the group faster than the inevitable force of advancement obliges me. I am like a horse that wants to precede its rider, wanting to advance toward the goal by myself.

However, the goal is Hassadim. There is the Light of Hochma. There is a vessel of the desire to receive, and what is lacking is the Light of Hassadim that prepares the vessel in order to receive the Light of Hochma.

However, where do I get the Light of Hassadim? If I really want it, the spiritual system will work and provide me with everything that I need for correction. Everything will be filled and the Creator will be revealed to me.

So, I can receive the recognition of the importance of the Light of Hassadim from the environment or in other words, the goal of creation, bestowal, and love, which areHassadim. There is no other way. Only the right environment can influence me so that I will want it, although, naturally, I don’t want any such thing. The environment can persuade me by making me feel shame, lust, honor, envy, and so on. It is because they “take a person out of this world” into the next world.

The main thing is constantly to be in the right environment, to improve it, and to incorporate in it. There are no other means.

The environment is the teacher, the group, the books, and our activity in this framework. So let’s all incorporate in it over our heads. This is what all the Kabbalists say.

Question: However, I can do that only if I fear a terrible blow, great troubles.

Answer: So, let me be driven by fear. It will be the first level of true fear.

I certainly don’t want any terrible trials but the moment I switch to a higher frequency and run forward before the stick, my reality changes. It isn’t just about hastening my advancement, as it is written, “Israel sanctifies time.” Notice that the sources refer only to sanctifying time and not to “hastening time.”

When I sanctify time, I feel it differently, in the vessels that I strengthen. It is true that now I feel the exiles to their full depth, but I constantly prepare myself by the Light ofHassadim, respect the states that I go through, and enjoy them since they already illuminate flashes from the end of correction, and I already understand differently and see things differently. I was like a beaten animal before and now I am a human being who is about to undergo an operation, understanding that it is impossible to get better without it, or as it is said, by “taking preventive steps.” So, one way or the other, I will take the medicine, but the whole point is when: before or after the attack?

Humanity is constantly ill but only after many attacks does it begin to think about where it can find a remedy. It takes a long time before people agree to accept it to some extent.

In the meantime, the medicine includes both the feeling and the understanding that I must experience the illness. As a result, I begin to relate to it as to Hesed (mercy) and I “bless the evil just like the good.” Only now after having received the evil in the Light ofHassadim, am I capable of doing so.

It is just like Abraham blessed the Creator when he found out that “your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs.” Is it pleasant to hear such things? You cannot go through such things without advance preparation elevating the greatness of the goal, from where the Light of Hassadim shines on me. It illuminates precisely when I keep thegreatness of the goal.

Otherwise, I will not be able to overcome the troubles. Not even Abraham, Superman, or Wonder Boy can do so since it all depends on the support from above. No one excels in it in any way. On the contrary, everyone is a rag. Everyone is a shattered desire to receive, and they all need support.

If we speak about great people, it is only because the Creator arranges them that way, from the one that we perceive as the greatest to the one we perceive as the smallest.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/29/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam