A Letter With No Addressee

Question: We have to reach a deficiency for the desire to bestow in the Arava convention…

Answer: We don’t need anything but that. It seems that this is only half way, but in fact, it is half of the coin, the other half of which is provided by the upper one. It is enough for us to desire to unite so as to reach mutual bestowal in order to bestow upon the Creator.

We call it “a need for a deficiency.” But we don’t feel a desire to attain unity yet so that thereby we could bestow upon the Creator. Therefore, we build a compound deficiency made of a double filling. We do not intend to settle for a need for a deficiency so as to feel this deficiency during the next convention.

The need for connection will bring us to bestowal in the group. And there is another need: to bestow upon the Creator. Both relate to the same intention.

Question: We have to yearn for perfecton and this will provide us with the right desire. How can we make sure that the picture of perfection doesn’t hide the need for a deficiency from us?

Answer: We want to attain the desire to bestow in order to unite. Thereby we can carry on our desire to bestow upon the Creator and to reach adhesion with Him. One way or the other, it is all dressed on one “skewer” and is on one line. You shouldn’t draw any differences here. Think about this a little and you will see that there is no problem here.

If you mention the word “bestowal,” you continue to draw the line towards the Creator, without stopping on the way. Bestowal requires connection with the friends because only that will summon the reforming Light that brings the attribute of bestowal. Why do we all need this attribute? Do we need it in order to have a nice beastly life? No. It is in order to reach bestowal upon the Creator. Why do we need to bestow upon the Creator? Perhaps He doesn’t need it at all? No, He has no such deficiency. Our goal is to reach adhesion with Him because by that we bring Him contentment. We please the Creator not by bestowal, but rather by adhesion.

Question: How can we tie a need for a deficiency with a need for adhesion?

Answer: We need the influence of the Surrounding Light so that we will understand that bestowal is the solution for all the problems. It brings us to everything we want to attain. I want to desire to connect and this is what I ask of the Creator, of the Light that Reforms. But what for?

I want to desire to connect in order to reach adhesion with the Creator. This adhesion is part of my way, part of the calculation. Therefore, the plea cannot be whole if the three elements are not welded into it: Israel, the Torah, and the Creator. This is the nature of our desires, and we only need to understand it. Then you will see: You need to add the Creator to your plea. Otherwise there is no reason to connect in our world. You don’t want it, you didn’t come to study Kabbalah in order to connect with others in social protest.

Therefore, when you discover your desire fully, you reach the formula: “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are one.” Just part of the sentence, part of the clarification isn’t enough. When we go out to the desert, we cannot cut our request in the middle of the sentence. If the request is whole, it must end with the word about the Creator because it is from Him that you get the power to perform changes, the power of the reason, awareness, and understanding. Everything comes only from this source, and so our requests have to end with it.

Otherwise, it is like sending a letter with no addressee. If you do that, no matter what you write, you will clearly get no reply and the letter will be lost mid-way.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/14/2011, “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot”

Examination Of Spiritual Advancement

Question: What feeling indicates that I am progressing?

Answer: We advance in the form of turning wheels: some of the wheels go forward, and another moves backwards. Some of them move from bottom to top, some move from top to bottom. The wheel advances forwards, and its parts execute various actions.

If a person measures himself in relation to a goal, then he understands that he progresses. But if he measures himself only in relation to ascents and descents or in relation to other states, then it sometimes seems to him as if he is moving backward or standing still.

There are many possibilities to measure the advancement. But the most definite examination is: Do you feel today, as compared to yesterday, a greater necessity to find connection with group? That is the surest examination.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/13/12, The Zohar

Excuse Me, What Does Humanity Have to Do with This?

When a person comes to Kabbalah he does not understand why he needs humanity. Kabbalah tells us that there are forces that operate above our world that depict this world in our perception. This is why we want to fly away somewhere into the unknown, to the Creator, His spiritual system.

Accordingly, man also perceives the study materials personally, on his account, without feeling the urge to unite with others. This is the initial, very limited perception with which we, being egoists, all begin our journey.

Only after several years, as the result of the influence of the surrounding Light, I understand that I really must unite with my friends and reveal the Light in their inner interconnection. But when you think about yourself, the Light has an opposite affect: It shows me how mistaken I am, and then I see that I need to unite with the group. I will find the upper World there, in the depth of it.

This is a very big revolution in consciousness. Man begins to understand that the spiritual world actually exists; it exists in the connection between people, a place with completely anti-egoistic coordinates.

Then a problem arises: How do you prove this to yourself, how do you bring yourself closer to having a proper attitude. This must become so important that everything else will appear extraneous. From now on I focus only on the group, on uniting with it. It is my only aim and nothing else because I depend on it. This is the second stage.

And then the third stage appears, an even more complicated one, when you figure out that you also need to do mass dissemination. “Since when? We are going towards the Creator, after all. At first I wanted to get there alone, then I understood that I need a group. But since when do I need to take care of everyone else? A billion Chinese, a billion Hindus, half a billion South Americans, half a billion Europeans, Africans, what do they have to do with this? Who cares for whom and why do I have to do it?”

Here we explain to the person that he, the group, and all of humanity must unite in order to become like the Creator. Another obstacle he disagrees with: “My friends and the world groups have one goal, but the others do not.”

And this also is true. After all it is written: “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are one.” I am “Israel.” The group is the “Torah,” the reforming Light. And together we go to the Creator.

On the other hand, the remaining 99% are below and they aspire towards their corporeal pleasures. So why do we need them?

In response to this, again and again, we need to explain that we are a transitional link and that we must become “a kingdom of priests”; in other words, we must educate all of mankind about mutual guarantee and integral unity. Then we will connect the masses to us, like AHP to Galgalta ve Eynaim (GE), and we will unite all the people with the Creator into the ten Sefirot.

It is very difficult to explain this to friends in the group. In the group is our field of our action, the source of everything, and where we reveal everything. The circle manifest there: AHP, us, the Creator—all inside, everything ends in the group in a single vessel, woven from the unity of the points in our hearts. A part of it comes from below and a part comes from above.

Our groups do not understand and do not wish to switch to being the messengers of mutual guarantee to the masses. It is very difficult for a person to allow himself something so opposite, to see how different things connect into one. But gradually everything will work out.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/14/12, Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

Look Into The Root

Question: What does it mean to “bring contentment to the creator”? The Creator is the attribute of bestowal, so to whom am I bringing contentment?

Answer: This is how you imagine your world: in the form of images that you can do something to and get a response from. You don’t feel that the Creator is behind all these figures, and that they are all just figures that He keeps alive and through them presents Himself to you in billions of ways.

The attribute of bestowal is the one who bestows. After all, you are building your attitude towards someone not according to his externality, but rather according to his essence. It seems that he is made of many discernments, but where are they? In the flesh or in some figure? Try to imagine a figure of a person “in the air” without a body. Take all of the spirituality out of him and all of his desires, his passions, and his thoughts, which are actually outside the beastly body. Undress the body and turn to the essence of the person.

Then turn in the same way to the essence of the Creator. The difference between the two is that the essence of the Creator is whole and it includes everything. It manages everyone. This is the general force of nature, the general law of nature, its general mind that is all good and benevolent. The general mind is good and the executing force is benevolent.

We shouldn’t be confused by what we see. It is time to consider the essences. The body does not exist. A person’s essence is truly eternal and I want to connect with it. It may be depicted to me as some “ghost,” but it is actually infinite and limitless. All our essences are the different facets of Malchut of Ein Sof. When we connect, it is as if they all “spread” on it and eventually make it up and create the corrected vessel.

Don’t forget that you should look at the group with internal eyes.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/14/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

Turn The Initial Spark Into Constant Burning

Reaching the goal is based on practical work in a society, in a group. The group is meant to be joined by people who aim toward the same goal and received a natural aspiration toward revealing the Creator. The same way, the upper Light, the Creator, gives these people a desire to reveal Him and get close to Him. He gathers them around their teacher and passes this knowledge on to them to reach revelation of how to realize this desire, which the Creator invokes in them.

The Creator creates all the conditions–gives books, a teacher, a group, and a desire–everything except for something that should come from the person himself who needs to organize all these conditions, to focus and direct oneself toward one goal.

Friends help every person come to the lessons, participate in the group work, and study, just like in regular corporeal studies and groups. But the main thing is that one hears that it is impossible to reach the goal with the mere desire that was invoked by the Creator because it is not more than 10% of the desire that is needed to require revelation.

And you have to obtain a full, perfect desire which you get by being inspired from friends’ desire to reveal the Creator, by seeing that they are eager to reveal the Creator, by their talking about it, and by seeing how much they do and how many efforts they put toward it. All of that inspires and evokes the desire inside of you because by nature, we are made this way.

But in spiritual work, a person needs to make his own efforts to notice his friends and be inspired and impressed by them. After all, you can neglect them and everything they do and all their work will remain unnoticed. On the contrary, it is possible that you can pay attention to every little thing, get inspired from how much effort everyone puts into waking up early to come to the lesson even though it is hard for them, how many foreign desired appear in them, but they overcome all of them heroically, how they yearn to be together, etc.

On one hand, the group should open itself and show its strong desire toward revealing the Creator and reaching the goal of Creation. This inspires a person and gives him that additional desire that he lacks. In fact, we get every desire toward the Creator from the environment. The point in the heart is just an initial spark, which ignites this whole process, but afterward we have to advance.

There is work here that needs to be made on a man’s side: to lower oneself and see friends higher than oneself. There is work that comes from the group: to show itself as high, exceptional, and strong with respect to everyone. This is the individual work of each person and work of the group as a whole. We need to take care of that and not to accept a disdainful attitude.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/12/12, Writings of Rabash

Spiritual Search: What Do We Find?

Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 93: These are the words of our sages “I labored and found, believe.” And we ask about, “I labored and found, believe,” that the words seem self-contradictory, since labor relates to possession, and a find is something that comes without labor at all, absentmindedly. He should have said, “I labored and bought.”

However, you should know that this term, “find,” mentioned here, relates to the verse, “those that seek Me shall find Me.” It refers to finding the face of the Creator, as it is written in The Zohar that He is found only in the Torah, meaning that one is rewarded with finding the face of the Creator by laboring in the Torah. Hence, our sages were precise in their words, and said “I labored and found, believe,” because the labor is in the Torah, and the finding is in the revelation of the face of His Providence.

We act in order to discover a deficiency, a need for a certain phenomenon. If this deficiency is right, if it matches that phenomenon, then this phenomenon is revealed. Only then can we see what it actually is, because it is a “find.”

I lack the power of bestowal, the Light of bestowal, but I don’t know what it is. This is because my deficiency comes from below and it doesn’t exactly match the final phenomenon. This phenomenon belongs to an upper degree that is so different from me, like the degree of animate differs from the degree of vegetative. Every new discovery raises me to a new qualitative level and every time it is as if I turn from a dog into a man.

When the Light fills the vessel, it gives it a Godly mind and feeling that stem from the root that preceded the creation of man. The Light gives a person the knowledge, the feeling, the perception of reality that is above his root. We can hold on to this only if we come to life and want to resemble Him by that, above ourselves.

Therefore it says, “I labored and I found.” This find is always one level above the deficiency and the current exertion. This is how all the Partzufim of the spiritual ladder are built. There is nothing to be ashamed of here, because when I work on a lower level, I prepare myself for the total self-annulment before the higher level.

This is how the love of parents in our world bears children, takes care of them, and fills them. It is the same here, of course, where there is the love of the Creator, but at first I use it to rise to its level and to complete it to resemble the Creator.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/12/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

What If I Am Falling Asleep?

Question: How can I use The Book of Zohar to wake up the group for the attack before the convention in the desert?

Answer: We need to ask for a desire. We are constantly falling asleep in our life. It is no coincidence that our heart becomes burdened by the constant growth of the receiving desire. It has to grow to infinity, and thus we should react to this correctly. The desire becomes more and more violent and egoistic, more demanding and burdensome.

It is good if we try to bring it to correction, that is, to unity. And if we do not try, we experience troubles and misfortunes, which will force us to think about life only not because of the goal, but because of pain. Thus, we advance.

As for The Book of Zohar, it is possible to ask for the Light, which you lack.

Suppose, you are sick. You have fever, chills, you do not feel well, and want nothing, but to lie down and close your eyes. What do doctors recommended in this case? Indeed, you should not tire the body with physical activity; you need rest. You lie in bed, good for nothing, and even cannot eat; you lose your appetite, any food seems disgusting. But what can you do? Then, do the following: Open a cookbook, read the recipes, look at the photos in color, and gradually your appetite returns.

It is the same here: You are sick, you are sleepy, so open your book. Not necessarilyThe Book of Zohar, any book that is close to you and to which you respond. Depending on conditions, I use different books: The Gates of Intentions, Gate of Reincarnations, the 16th part of TES, and Shamati. Everyone is awakened by something else. It could be Psalms. It is written: “A man learns where his heart is.” The main thing is that they are our materials.

If a person is completely confused, the sages advise that he should think about the day of death. He can go to a cemetery and reflect on graves. Of course, this is just an example, but the point is to throw the body some calculations and shake it. In fact, it is not about physical death, but the death of the egoistic desire.

However, the most obvious of all the means is the group, the impact of the environment. If a person works in a way that he should be included in the others, it is very effective. As a rule, it helps a lot to organize an event for the public because he receives people’s desire and power to move forward.

Dissemination is the most effective method and the best solution. When one participates in it, he feels how much strength it gives.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/9/12, The Zohar

The Precious Gem

In the “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Baal HaSulam raises the question: How is it possible to reach love without the revelation of the Creator? This question baffles us, because if the Host is before me and treats me with love, then I can also show the same feelings towards Him. But what can I do if He is concealed? How and who, can I love in this case?

I must have some kind of revelation, some perception, some understanding, an image and a direction in order to develop the love in me. Otherwise, how can we reach the vessels of bestowal in our world? Is it possible? After all, they are so different from my nature, from my character. It is like transcending from a protein from of life to a silicon form of life that is based on totally different elements. Actually it is simply impossible.

We count on the upper Light, but it operates only when we want it. So how can we want it, and to want it even more strongly than we want to exist in our present state? How can we yearn for something without seeing, feeling, or understanding anything?

I start from my ego, from my desire to receive. How can I kill it? I am ready to do so only in return for a greater ego. Otherwise I don’t have the power to do it. So where can I get the third force? After all, without it I can’t reach a decision and I can’t fulfill it.

To answer that Baal HaSulam gives is that we have a “precious gem” that enables us to transform ourselves so that we will be like the Creator.

But first we have to understand the question itself. It is depicted by the example of the rich man and the poor man: If the rich man loves the poor man, the poor man begins to take advantage of the situation and to “manipulate” the rich man; “If he already loves me, then I can receive from him.”

But where can I find this love, so that I can start to act? Where can I feel that the Creator loves and bestows so that I can start manipulating if not Him then myself? One way or the other, I need the connection. How is the Creator revealed to me? How does He enable me to perceive the precious gem and to succeed? We should ask ourselves this question.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/2/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”