Go To The Craftsman Who Has Made Me

Because all the good spiritual attributes fell into the egoistic desire, they begin to cultivate it and make it cunning, corrupt, and cruel. Thus a corrupt person who can correct himself in the future is made.

An animal doesn’t need correction since it has no desire to bestow in order to receive, it isn’t cunning. Therefore it is called non-cunning animal. A baby isn’t cunning either until he grows. When he grows he becomes a human being and learns to cheat. Until the age of two or three he behaves like an animal and doesn’t know how to “outsmart” others yet.

We love the animate form since it is simple and innocent, and we would like to see all the people that way. But we must understand that we were meant to be human and therefore, “he who is greater than his friend his desire is even greater that he.” We only have to correct the ego and then everything will work out.

Any negative or deceitful attribute that is typical of humans only shows us that the harmful force must be turned into the beneficial one. What can a primitive, undeveloped, naive person do? He cannot rise and reach the desired height. Great people are usually not very pleasant, until they correct themselves.

So we should love the friend in the group (in his ten) with all his corrected and uncorrected attributes. It is because he has received them from the Creator and wants to correct them, and everyone should help him do so. To criticize the friend’s attributes is to criticize the Creator who has made him that way. “Go to the craftsman who has made me,” but we have to help one another to reach correction. Baal HaSulam often says: “I am happy about the wicked that are revealed.”
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From the 3d part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/27/13, TES

Can We Defend Ourselves Against The Creator?

The Creator is revealed as the one force that operates in all of our reality inside a person and on the outside. This leaves us—those in whom the point in the heart has awakened—a point of freewill from which we can study and understand the Creator who operates on us and who surrounds us on all sides. All the other people who think that they are independent simply don’t notice that they are operated by nature or the Creator (which are the same thing) in every step they make, every thought, every word, and every action.

When we think about the meaning of life, about the cause, the source; our questions stem from our dissatisfaction with life. This is how the Creator awakens us and pushes us to search. Therefore, in the “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” item 42, Baal HaSulam says that the reason for all the suffering in this world is our lack of understanding of the upper Providence. “…And I tell you that that preliminary reason is none other than the ‘lack of our understanding in His Providence over His creations,’ that we do not understand Him properly.”

We don’t understand the Creator, and the blows come in order to awaken us to search for Him, discover Him, and see that He is the only one who operates on us. Thus, we rise to the same level where He is revealed to us, where he controls all of reality.

From this perspective, we begin to understand what He does. Our entire history opens up before us, the entire “map,” the entire process that each of us goes through for many reincarnations. We see where we come from, where we are headed, and why everything is arranged the way it is. Everything opens up before us, and although we can point at the past, the future, and the present, we feel that it is the same thing. It is as if we look at the picture of reality that is spread before us in order to raise us and bring us to the full feeling of the Creator.

If a person feels this way toward everything that happens to him—if he understands that everything comes from the only force so that he will discover, understand, and feel Him so that he will be able to see all of reality like Him—then he relates to all the events in his life practically and doesn’t confuse anything personal with what he feels. Something else is important to him: to correctly understand why the Creator sends him the states he goes through and what the benefit in them is.

In the article “There is None Else Besides Him” in the book Shamati, Baal HaSulam says that there is no other force but the Creator. However, in the meantime, a person sees different opposite forces. There are forces that threaten him and forces that support him. The former are friendly and the latter are enemies.

On the whole, I perceive everything that happens as good or bad. It is as if I am between the good force and the evil force since that’s how they are depicted in my imagination.

However, I must know that everything comes from one force that intentionally shows me two sides and wants to bestow upon us by two opposite forms: the rejecting force and the attracting force. If I rise above it and understand that the rejecting force also can spur me to connection, it isn’t felt as good or bad anymore. After all, I ask myself why I feel rejection and I gather my powers to overcome it. The good force, however, can confuse and weaken me, and repulse me from the desire to connect, to advance, and to keep the inner intention.

Thus, I can measure the Creator’s bestowal according to my good and bad feelings or according to my understanding of the role He plays in rejecting me and bringing me closer. These two parameters can be opposite from one another.

The Creator bestows upon us by these four forces in order to confuse us so that we will not understand where we are and what is happening to us, like a child who is lost and confused. Then, like children, we need a grownup, the upper. We need His help and we need to hold his hand to discover Him and to force Him to take care of us since otherwise we feel that we are lost. This is actually the best state we can be in.

Here, we need a good supportive environment so that we will not escape and go off-track because of our confusion and so that we won’t begin looking for other methods that allow us to find peace and security. We don’t need such means since we reach the Creator differently: A person remains confused, helpless, and doesn’t understand what is going on, and still doesn’t leave. Only by this path does he reach the right outcry when he demands that the Creator be revealed to him and that He should take care of him. Then, he finally discovers that there is none else besides Him. That one force has created all these states for him. This is exactly what we do with our kids so that they will feel that they need us.

This one force controls all of the reality that He has created. He has created us so that we will become entangled in the complexities of this world and through that come close to Him and need Him. He bestows upon us by revelation and concealment through which all of creation advances back to this force: first man and then the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature. They all are incorporated in man and they all reach the same one root from which they came.

Whoever is rewarded with this revelation immediately sees the future of all of reality. You haven’t reached it yet, but you will be able to see everything from the root. When I drive, I don’t see what is hundreds of kilometers ahead, but I can clearly see the entire road network from a satellite. We must only rise and then everything appears before us.

My connection with the future depends on the height of this ascent so that if I am totally adhered to the Creator, the future and the present become the same for me. I feel the states I must go through and the final state, and so I advance.

Then, I discover that all the concealments were meant only to reveal the Creator. He conceals Himself on purpose in different states, behind evil actions and scary states, behind great confusion, so that I will hold onto Him and won’t let go, like a child for whom the father’s hand is the protection from all the troubles. This is how we also must imagine our relationship with the Creator.

When we unite with Him, we reach Ibur (gestation). We want to be in Him first because of fear, because we want to hide. Later, when we grow in Him a little, He begins to teach us His wisdom, His knowledge, and how He actually operates.

Thus, we grow during the nine months of the spiritual Ibur, until we are born into the world. Then, we go through the states of Yenika (suckling), smallness, and greatness when we already understand all of creation from the beginning to the end. We have not discovered it yet, but we are going to.

This revelation comes only out of helplessness. Otherwise, we never will want to come close to the Creator in our egoistic desire. On the contrary, we create such conditions for ourselves that will help us hide from the upper force. Everything that we do in life is meant to protect us from the Creator: a home, money, insurance, a pension fund, a health care system. Thus, we create the protective shield so that we will not need anyone. We do need social services, a state, and humanity, but not the upper force. Thanks to such systems, we have abandoned the different religions since we don’t feel that we need them anymore. A person doesn’t feel so weak anymore that he must pray to someone and depend on someone.

What does the Creator do? He sends us troubles. After we build such a strong, comfortable and safe world, hoping for eternal prosperity, we suddenly see that everything falls apart and nothing is safe, and that not only tomorrow but even the next moment is doubtful. The Creator evokes these negative forces in the form of terror, plagues, natural disasters, the breakup of the family, of society, of economy, and so on.

All this is so that we will rely less on our own powers and will feel how weak we are to a greater extent. It turns out that we have no control over our lives. If we begin to discover the upper force, we fill all our deficiencies by Him. Then, our corporal life also works out since we don’t need the negative external stimuli anymore if we see the importance of the good force and yearn for it.

So, the wisdom of Kabbalah turns to all of humanity, either in its original form or as the method of integral education, and explains that we should come closer to the force of nature that operates in all of reality. The word “Creator” equals the word “Nature” inGematria. In the future, we will suffer even more, and no technological, scientific, or economic progress or in any other area for that matter will help us. We are very weak.

It turns out that the Creator is the only force that operates in reality. It is like a huge field that covers all of reality on all sides. Our main work is to discover this network that manages everything.
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From the Convention in New Jersey 5/11/13, Lesson 3

The Revival Of Love

Love has turned into an emasculated concept, devoid of real meaning. Thinking about it, we turn away from its deeper essence, which is diametrically opposite to the commonplace views. In fact, we are talking about the wholeness of the entire creation, all the worlds, the entire reality, how to align all the opposite forces correctly. However, today, this word completely negates a serious attitude.

In fact, love is the power of unity. Don’t confuse it with the feelings and associations that our egoistic world triggers. Here, we “love” what pleases us, fulfills us, but true love is the essence of a partnership between the Creator and the created being, between the opposite parts, between the “plus” and the “minus” at various levels of the still, vegetative, animate, and human nature.

Love is a special force of a higher order, linking the positive with the negative. It is said that it “covers all transgressions,” i.e. the gaps between the opposites. It is the third factor that unites them into one. It is the middle line that is given to us from Above. It is the force of the Creator that belongs neither to the “plus,” nor the “minus.”

It is in this light that we need to interpret the famous principle of love of others as for oneself. We and the others are opposite to each other, and that is why we need the third force that will connect us. That is when we come to love one another as ourselves.

In addition, this principle appears to us as the duty to reveal the Creator, to adhere to Him. After all, in order to overcome the hatred for others, I must appeal to the Creator for the Light that Reforms so that He becomes a partner, testifies to my connection with others, reinforces, and safeguards it.

Thus, at first, adhering to the Creator is our means to becoming united, and then we understand that all the breaks between us are intended precisely to reveal the Creator and adhere to Him.

Moreover, we adhere to Him on the basis of neither the positive, nor the negative, but on the basis of the middle between them. That is why it is necessary to seek the center of one’s group of ten, one’s group, and there and only there demand the Light that Reforms.

In the end, everything is connected in one action…
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/29/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Love As The Law Of Nature

“Love thy neighbor as thyself,” Rabbi Akiva said this is a great principle of the Torah.

We must understand that a “great principle of the Torah” is the fundamental law of nature encompassing the entire universe. With a correct preparation, we see that everything exists only thanks to this law of love for the other like for oneself.

The relationship between anything is possible only by means of special power, which allows and even requires various, even opposite parts—be they particles, fields, elements of living cells or people—to unite. This external force—the plan of creation—influences them, obliges them to communicate, and as a result, parts do not move from each other but gradually get closer, jointly building more complex systems of the still, vegetative, animate, human, and then spiritual nature.

All this together is the rule of the Torah, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” “Torah” is the essence, the system, existing between the Creator and the created being. And its law is love for the other as for oneself.

The “other” is the one who is diametrically opposite to me, just as we are opposite to the Creator. Nevertheless, the law of love works in the system obliging us to establish connection between each other because we cannot exist without each other at all the levels.

This law of stage-by-stage integration is realized without the participation of the created being, by evolutionary processes in the still, vegetative, and animate nature, as well as the similar levels of human nature. Here, the universal law determines and dictates everything, and the created being is under the “press” of development.

However, at the highest level of human nature, the created being begins to adopt and take upon himself the realization of this law. He finds out that the principle of love for someone else or even the opposite is the law of life. After all, there would be nothing without the connection between the created being and the Creator. Being aware of the importance of interconnection, defined as “love for your neighbor,” the created being begins to realize it on his own accord, although at the beginning he discovers that all the other parts are not like him, are foreign and opposite to him.

In general, our entire work is to realize this law. But first it is necessary to study it, to see how it acts in creation. After all, beginning with the Big Bang, all our development, although it seems to us as the process of disintegration and disagreement, is in fact a gradual linking of all the parts of creation, until matter is compelled to realize the fundamental law of nature and perform it on its own accord.

Thus, the created being identifies himself with the Creator, and then they both will come to the basic principle, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/28/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Men And Women: Mutual Expectations

Question: In the workshop on the subject of integral unity for married couples, the question was asked: “What do women want from men?” And one of the women said: “I want my husband to survive through all my states.” What does that mean?

Answer: A woman expects fulfillment from a man. She relates to a man as to her source of mental, spiritual, and psychological fulfillment. In some way, she begins to grasp the world through her husband, through the man. It’s specifically what she is waiting for and wants. Without that she doesn’t feel that she is connected to the world, to life as it should be. It’s as if she has no base point, a point of support.

Psychologically, a woman wants to be next to a man who will be as a source of inner fulfillment. For this she is ready to give everything material, everything external, in order to receive from him what she is not able to create herself, meaning mental, spiritual, and psychological fulfillment.

While the man, on the contrary, doesn’t need mental, spiritual, or psychological fulfillment from the woman. He needs support on the regular corporeal level. And thus they come in contact with each other. This is the way nature created us.
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From a Talk on Integral Education 4/4/13

The Names That We Give

Rabash, Letter 41: Thus the Torah is names of pleasures, and each pleasure has a different name.

Question: There are also sufferings and troubles other than pleasures, what names should we give them?

Answer: We name things according to the vessels, to the desires. It’s because we understand and perceive everything in the vessel, including the Light. It doesn’t exist by itself, apart from us, but rather like electricity about which we speak only with regard to its effects. Similarly, we discern the phenomena that stem from the Light, the effect of its actions inside us.

Pleasures are extra Light, a filling by the Light, and everything is revealed in the vessel. This is where the names stem from. Each one indicates the beginning and end of an action, as well as what happened in the actual process.

The name expresses an action that was performed by the force behind it. We, the created beings, have no other way to describe something. It’s because we don’t have any contact with the Light itself. We are limited in the matter of the desire and the form it takes on as it changes from its initial state until it resembles the Creator.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/14/13, Writings of Rabash

He Escapes, But Turns His Head Backwards

Rabash, “What is an Optional War in the Work,” Part 2: It is said: “My beloved is like a deer.” A deer turns its face backwards when it escapes. Thus the face becomes the posterior again. This means that He yearns and longs to adhere to Israel again. This generates longing in Israel too and the longing to be adhered to the Creator, and the extent of the yearning and the longing is actually the face itself.

This is the only way we advance, and it isn’t only spiritual advancement, but also in the corporeal world, where time goes by, and there are good times and bad times in our evolutionary process. From the time of the shattering of the vessels onward, the Light constantly influences the vessels and the Reshimot (information genes) change all the time from face to posterior and back to face again, at one time corresponding to the Light, and at the other no, and this goes on continuously.

So it seems to a person as if the Light comes and then it’s dark according to the state he is in. This is how the corporeal life is arranged, as joy and sadness constantly change, and it’s the same in spiritual work. But in spiritual work everything depends on a person and on his ability to awaken himself with the help of external means: the study, the group, the teacher, and dissemination.

Thus he hastens time. The more he participates actively in hastening time, the more strongly he feels the lowliness of his nature, but at the same time, he also feels elation and the greatness of the goal he wants to attain. It turns out that the Creator constantly turns His face or His posterior to a person, which is in fact only the person’s feeling according to his attainment. It all a result of the changing Reshimot in a person and his own participation.

So there are three factors that influence this process:

• a person’s Reshimot, which is the Aviut (thickness) of his desire;
• a person’s participation, which is his future Masach (screen);
• the Light at absolute rest, the Creator who always wants to be in a state of “face to face” with a person and is waiting for this relationship.

The main thing is to see that every state comes from the upper force and that it’s only in order to help us advance.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/17/13