A Shadow Over The World

A ladder, which divides the worlds into levels and the Light into portions, descends from Above, from the whole state, all the way to our world, until the total concealment. The concealments were created so that we will grow and fill them with our recognition, our work, with our exertion and efforts.

Instead of working with the vessels of receiving, we should begin to work with the vessels of bestowal, which means with the desire to receive in the intention of in order to bestow and not with the intention of in order to receive. Thanks to that, a person acquires freedom and independence, knowledge and the feeling that he’s in the Creator’s world, in the upper world.

In order to bring a person to this state, he’s shown concealments from a certain point in his development, which is happening in our times. For selected individuals this already happened in previous centuries, but today the whole world feels the concealment, a kind of obscurity, confusion, helplessness, and disorientation. There’s a feeling that we can no longer advance with the old attributes and forces to calculate our exertion and our desires to make plans and achieve results.

There is nothing to yearn for since the world is covered by a shadow. But this shadow is the same concealment, which we have to balance and to fill with our exertion. We know that this concealment was given to us on purpose, not in order to divert us from the good goal, but on the contrary, in order to bring us to the good but consciously, by understanding and feeling it as grown-ups.

Accordingly we have to determine the right way to advance, by clarifying what is required from us and how to organize all the means we have and our vessel, so that they will raise us above the concealment. We don’t annul the concealment, but we rise above it.

Everything depends upon how a person accepts these states. It says: “and each man shall help his friend,” the group has to give each one the powers as well as to constantly remind him that “there is none else besides Him,” and that we must ascend the levels of bestowal in “faith above reason.”

Then all the concealments will turn into a shade of Holiness by which we acquire vessels of bestowal, which are called “holy.” If we forget that, both we and the group, it’s a serious problem because we no longer exert ourselves in order to rise above the concealment; we are not thankful for the concealment and don’t accept it as something that’s desirable, as a springboard to ascent. Instead, we are angry about the concealment and ask for it and all the unpleasantness in life to be removed.

The concealment can be very strong, but a person should remember that there is none else besides Him. A person is only required to determine his relationship with the group correctly in order to raise a request and to draw the Reforming Light, and then he will attain adhesion above the concealment. This is how he will advance.

Otherwise it will turn into a shade of the Sitra Achra, of the egoistic forces, which will lead to a greater fall, which won’t allow him to fulfill himself correctly. No matter what happens, he should rise again and start everything anew. The main thing is to determine a framework for himself: a schedule for studying and for working in the group, which will remind him in every state that his obligation is to differentiate between the shade of Holiness and the shade of the Sitra Achra.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/28/12, Shamati #8