When The Gates Open…

The Book of Zohar, “Two Points”, Item 120: At the end of all the gates, He made a gate with several locks. That gate is calledMalchut de Malchut, the final point of all the upper gates. This last gate is the first gate for the upper Hochma [wisdom]. That is, it is possible to be rewarded with the upper Hochma only after the attainment of this last gate specifically, as for attainment of the upper Hochma, it is the first gate. This is why it is written, “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” since “Fear of the Lord” is called the last gate, which is the first for the wisdom of the Lord.

Question: It is as if the gates are arranged one after the other so that we can enter them, but they seem to block the entrance, so it turns out that there is a blocking when one wants to enter.

Answer: Of course. To enter means that one finds himself in a certain state. How do you advance from one state to another? By opening another part of the desire to receive and by correcting it with the intention of in order to bestow, and thus going through all the gates.

So every gate is the increase of the desire and its correction. Gates, locks, and openings are all meant for a person to ascend from one level to the next, but without gates, there would be no change of states. A gate isn’t just a closed entrance that has been blocked. You will not feel anything if you don’t go through the gate, if you don’t acquire Aviut(thickness) and its correction, and adapt to that state which is called a gate.

There is nothing after the gate in spirituality. There is only the next gate. Every step is the next gate. There is no gate that opens widely and behind which there is a big city, and then the next gate behind which there is a field, and then another gate and another. There are only gates that come one after the other.

Question: So where do they lead to if there is nothing behind them?

Answer: There is everything in the gate, both the feeling and the attainment. Everything begins and ends in the gate. What do you need something other than the gates for if you are advancing towards identifying with the Creator? What else is missing but the gates? After all, each gate leads you to what you have to be. In fact, the whole HaVaYaH is one gate after another, ten Sefirot. Then there are ten more Sefirot, and another ten, etc.

Sometimes we say that only an entrance is called a gate and then one develops from it, but this development also belongs to the gates.

Question: What do you feel when you reach a gate?

Answer: You feel a blocked road.

Question: And how do you open the gate?

Answer: You open the gate by first accepting this blocking, by accepting the fact that the road is blocked. You accept this self annulment and the fear of the Creator, and thus on every next level until this gate becomes an entrance. Otherwise, it will not become an entrance. The gate itself should open, and when you go through the gate, it means that you accept all the Aviut correctly, and in this new Aviut, you see a new world.

Question: What does it mean that you accept that the road is concealed?

Answer: Accepting that it is all for our benefit. It is also a process to accept and be thankful for it.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/13/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam