Congress in Israel, temporary pause in blog update

Due to the Congress in Israel, and the editor's participation in it there will be a 2 week pause in updating this blog.
The original daily blog can be directly accessed here.

The Ways From Babylon Are So Different

The Zohar, “Shlach Lecha” (Send Forth), Item 83: Israel are happier than all the nations in the world for the Creator wanted them, called His name by them, and was glorified in them, for the world was created only for Israel, so they may engage in Torah. It is so because one connects to one, ZA and Malchut, and Israel below, in this world, are His existence, whereby their good deeds they raise MAN for their Zivug, and they are the existence of all the other nations, who exist for Israel, who do their Master’s will.

The general soul was divided into two parts: GE and AHP. The desires that belong to GEreceived the sparks of bestowal during the shattering, and are therefore attracted to theCreator. They live in this world and ask about the meaning of this life, about their goal, and about the purpose of our existence here.

These questions don’t stem from a practical useful benefit but from an inner instinctive aspiration to discover the Creator, the source of our life. Such desires are called Israel,which means Yashar-El (straight to the Creator), and therefore, when the Light operates on the desires, it is this type of desire that emerges first before all the others.

The scrutiny is focused on the connection between us above our ego, which we define as the force that prevents unity. These circumstances were first revealed in a state calledancient Babylon.

There for the first time began to appear these desires feeling the urge to reveal the Creator, while all the other desires yearned for the revelation of their ego. Thus, they drew apart in different directions, according to their vector. Some went to one way and the others to another.

Israel were those who discovered the method of correction and fulfilled it. This entire method is about attaining “Love thy neighbor as thyself” with the help of the Light that Reforms. Thus, a person resembles the Creator and wants to delight Him by all these actions.

All the other desires didn’t yearn for that at the time but only wanted to fill their ego and began to develop in a capitalistic manner. They lived a simple life in groups, as one nation, as one community in ancient Babylon before the ego erupted in them. They cared only about their simple wellbeing and about how to provide their bread and the basic necessities for human existence.

However, when the egoistic desire to enjoy grew in them, and some of the people began to aspire for the revelation of the Creator, the other part continued to develop its desire to enjoy, the ego. This ego pushed them to acquire more than they needed. This is where the evolution of human society begins in the form that it has evolved until this very day in order to acquire greater wealth beyond a person’s basic needs.

This determined an entirely different  lifestyle and goal of life, compared to the goal of life of those who yearn for the Creator, of Israel, and, so, the two groups drew further and further apart. The Babylonians who called themselves Israel focused straight to the Creator and began to fulfill this work and thus drew further away from the others.

With time, newer parts of the Babylonians began to join Israel to the extent that the Light operated on them and clarified the desires from one generation to the next. Thus, more and more people began to feel the yearning for the Creator according to the correction of the desire to “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/29/14

Living On The Borderline Between Light And Darkness

Because we don’t feel any connection to the upper force yet, its control over us and governance, we don’t feel any need or yearning to turn to it with a request and all the more so with thankfulness. Our desire to receive may allow us to ask but to be thankful is something that we certainly forget.

We can be thankful when the gratitude promises us some reward for our ego and it reminds us about it. Many in the world do so. But in order to be grateful, we have to advance to conditions that are not beneficial for our ego but to our spiritual advancement, and there is a need for a lot of preparation in order to do so. This is why it doesn’t really work.

We should not think that the feeling of gratitude stems from a good feeling. Gratitude is a result of the recognition that the Creator leads me through the dark and helps me struggle and win, finding all my impure desires (Klipot) and rising above them.

A prayer of gratitude is born in this state, above the darkness, the evil, and the great unpleasant corrections of my ego. To the extent that I can ascend above my desire to receive and attribute myself to bestowal, to the soul instead of the body, to the force of bestowal instead of the force of receiving, to raise myself above the earth, I can be grateful.

All this happens simultaneously: I feel the darkness in the desire to receive and above the darkness I feel the Light in my desire to bestow. One cannot exist without the other.

Therefore, we have to gradually reach this combination internally, when you have a desire to bestow, an unpleasant feeling in it, darkness, and above it restriction, a Masach(screen), and the Returning Light above the Masach. This is how we establish the attitude towards the Creator called faith above reason.

Reason is what we feel inside the desire to receive. There is nothing in it but disappointments and thoughts against the spiritual path, but we ascend above them and despite all the evil according to our corporeal mind and feelings we establish our attitude above the darkness.

Thus we arrive at the right form and establish the middle line between the two lines that negate one another. They try to erase each other until the third partner arrives and makes peace between them.

We have to try to agree to this kind of work more and to stick to it. It is very important. Then we arrive at a solution, which is the right structure when the desire to receive below is felt as darkness. After all, Egypt, Pharaoh, and Haman are all inside me. The shell stands against holiness and the soul is between them.

When I see my state this way I begin to work on the structure of my soul and to put it together and shape its form.

We have to clarify all the stages, to be more sensitive to what happens inside us, to keep the darkness, the Light that is above it, and the relationship between them. We have to live in this conflict and not simply fall because I feel bad and don’t see anything, or start floating in the clouds like a hot air balloon the moment I feel good.

I have to keep these two states and to understand that this is how I feel my desire to receive, the shattering, above which I have to gradually establish my love and concern for others by adding a new attitude each time that is correct and continuous and aimed at bestowal. It is through these states that I establish my attitude towards the general force of bestowal called the Creator and reach the feeling of gratitude to the extent that I can keep myself above the darkness thanks to it.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/23/14

Add To Our Years From Generation To Generation

Psalms 61:1- 61:7: For the Leader; with string-music. [A Psalm] of David. Hearken, O God, to my request, listen to my prayer. From the end of the earth I call out to You when my heart becomes faint; on the rock that is higher than I, You lead me. For You were a shelter for me, a tower of strength in the face of the enemy. I will dwell in Your Tent to eternity; I will take shelter in the in the covert of Your wings forever. For You, God, have hearkened to my vows; You have given the heritage of those who fear Your name. Add days to the days of the king, his years as every generation.

The struggle is for unity of man so that a person will understand that all of his feelings come directly from the Creator, and this is even though everything that is happening is in concealment and the opposite of what would be expected from the good that does good. However, it seems to be the opposite because it is perceived through the opposite desires of a person who has not yet undergone correction.

This shows a person where he needs to correct himself to feel that the Creator is good and benevolent, even to the wicked, until, for him, everything is integrated into a single source. All expressions and manifestations of evil—encountering enemies, the wicked, all of these things—happen at the “end of the earth (Haaretz),” in other words, at the extremities of desires that are still uncorrected.

He must try to turn from there to the Creator, in other words, specifically to connect with the Creator from those desires at the ends of the earth, for, as it is written, “There is none else besides Him.” He does this until he attains full adhesion in the given situation and prepares himself for the next state, and that is what happens until the completion of correction.

If a person thinks about the present and prepares himself for the future, he is in a prayer, a request, thanking the Creator, which is to say that he always expresses his desire to connect with Him, to be in adhesion, and that is how he succeeds. The Creator lengthens his days and years from generation to generation.

In the beginning, it seems to a person that he has haters, enemies. He must struggle and defend himself against them, and indeed there are circumstances where we need to go to war.

However, after the person attributes everything to the Creator, no enemies and haters remain for him, in other words, that there is no other control than that of the Creator. Everything comes only from the Creator, either from His front or His backside, which shows a person that he must build two types of relationships and differentiate between the power of bestowal that comes from above and the power of reception that comes from below, from the person. That is how he can see that his true enemy is found inside of him.

When this enemy is awakened and rises up against him, it seems to a person that the Creator has gone away from him and disappeared. However, when the person attributes all of this to the Creator, then for him there is no difference between darkness and Light. He no longer depends on his mood and doesn’t attribute what is happening to all kinds of other forces or to himself. He understands that he has no control either. Rather, everything comes from the Creator.

The moment that a person directs himself in this way, he sees that even before then he was in a revised, balanced and correct state, and never left the sacred. However, he attained this only now, and the entire difference is in that.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/19/14

The Dweller, Divinity, And The Group

Question: What does this mean, “I dwell among mine own people” (Kings II 4:13), and how is this connected to our work with the wider public?

Answer: “I dwell among mine own people” means that we discover the Creator in Divinity, in all the desires that are accumulated in the speaking level and want to resemble the Creator. Divinity is the collective, the community, all of humanity that gathers to itself the nature of the still, vegetative, and animate and becomes a backing, a substance for a desire, in which the Creator, the Upper Light, is revealed.

We are now working according to the following sketch: Above – the Creator, in the middle – the group, and below – the community. We go out to the wider public, absorb their deficiencies, make them into our deficiencies, and raise them up to the Creator. The answer reaches us from the Creator, MAD 1 (The Light), and now we have something to transmit to the public, MAD 2 (in the sketch).

However, after certain work we reach a stage in which the group will begin working with the Creator found within the public. The vessel, the Divinity (Schechina), this is the public; and the Light, the inner part of the public, is the dweller (Shochen), the Creator, who is found within humanity.

First of all, I correct myself with respect to the group, and then I must imagine it in its perfected form, in the world of Infinity, seeing it as Divinity. If she seems broken to me, this is only to the degree of my brokenness. So I must accept her as fixed, and constantly change myself to see the group as more and more advanced, higher, spiritual, sacred in my eyes, where the Creator is revealed more and more. And when I am in descent and look at it egoistically, I say that it is I who is determining this and they will change for my good; meaning, I won’t serve them, rather they will serve me.

And when we take care of the public and through it (within the center of the group) reach the Creator, then the public becomes precious to us. The Creator is precious to us and the public is precious. That is how we begin to clarify the relationships between Light and vessel. In the vessel it depends on what kind of Light we discover in it and how we feel that we are causing the Creator contentment.

In this Light we discover the higher identity that comes to be expressed through the nature of the world. The Creator has no other form other than what we give to Him. Now we attribute zero form to Him, so He doesn’t exist for us. And to the degree that we can give Him some kind of form of bestowal within the vessel, to that degree He is revealed.

So it is said, “I dwell among mine own people.” In the next stage the group will be like our “point in the heart,” and all of the work will be in discovering humanity as the right backing for the complete discovery of the Upper Light.

This stage will come by itself to the degree of our development, but from this it is already necessary to understand how important dissemination is today. We don’t just do something good for the community; rather, we work on our spiritual vessel for discovery of the Creator.

In our day, we require a group; one is not enough for this. There was a time when two could discover this relationship by working together. Each one worked outside of himself within the connection, and this was enough, as is written: “The minimum of many is two” (Yerushalmi Yoma 13a).

But now even a strong and advanced group of a thousand people cannot discover the higher power. The beginning of the Divinity must be here, and so the emphasis will be more and more in the direction of the public. And we will discover very quickly that the public is not just Israel, but all of humanity.

The vessel will begin to react. All of humanity will suddenly begin to react all over the world.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/26/14

A Person Without A Soul

If a person develops a desire that is directed towards upper, spiritual attainment, then inside this corrected desire one starts feeling a new reality. One starts living in this reality as though in the physical world, though this reality is even more real since the spiritual impressions do not disappear, get dull, or weaken.

A person aspires to advance. With this in mind, one starts to understand what is going on with him in this world throughout every moment and why certain events take place. One learns how to properly utilize it all in order to develop his soul even further.

Eventually one becomes a real dweller of the future world. This means, a person perceives an additional reality to the world he exists in today. There is a reality we perceive through regular means through our five senses we received at birth. However, there is yet another reality that governs our world and influences it.

If we could attain this higher governance and knew how to correctly react towards it, then we could manage our life in the best way possible. If we have no idea about it, then we have to suffer.

Question: Does it turn out that until a person develops a soul within him he has no soul?

Answer: Of Course! No one possesses a soul. A person is born with one informative spiritual gene (Reshimo). It is like a drop of semen that in the future will develop a soul. If a person does not develop it then he has no soul.
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From the Radio Program Israeli 103FM 2/1/15

Transforming The Impossible Into The Possible

Baal HaSulam, “Matan Torah” (The Giving of the Torah), Item 16: For then, each member of the nation was asked if he agreed to that exalted work. And once each and every one in the nation agreed to it in heart and soul, and said “We will do and we will hear,” it then became possible to keep the whole of the Torah, and that which was previously impossible became possible.

To reach the state of receiving the Torah, first we need a heaviness of heart that is called the Egyptian Exile, darkness with heaviness of the heart, a reaction from the ego, the desire to receive. The more that it grows, the more terrible it is and kills the person. We must feel that the Creator is concealed and we have a great need to discover Him, meaning discovering the characteristic of bestowal.

Specifically the Creator is what is called the discovery of the characteristic of bestowal, and not some mystical power that serves us the way we imagine within our ego.

We decide that the desire to receive is darkness to us, and the desire to bestow is theLight. And it is impossible to receive the Torah, meaning the Light that corrects us and raises us above the desire to receive to the desire to bestow, except in a group that will be big enough in intensity, quantity, and quality.

In this group we must gather people who support each other and are ready to devote their lives for the benefit of the society. They are sure that the best thing is to be dependent upon the opinion of the society.

This doesn’t mean that a person throws himself egoistically into the hands of the society so that it will be concerned about him and he doesn’t need to think about anything. He also doesn’t do this absent-mindedly, throwing himself into a group and thinking that whatever will be will be. No, rather the concern in overcoming his ego, in understanding all of his power, emotion, and intellect, is that he nullifies himself towards the environment, rising above his emotion and intellect.

Being a very wise, sensitive, mature, and serious person, he nullifies all this and accepts the opinion of the society, which is the opposite of all of his knowledge. He sees that this completely refutes his healthy intelligence, his logic, his mental strength, and his vision of the world; he discards all of his data and nullifies himself toward the society.

Just imagine what kind of difficult work Rabbi Yosi ben Kisma did in nullifying himself before his students. Certainly he didn’t actively show this to them in order not to ruin them. But he himself accepted being in the small, wretched, beginners group that the Creator arranged for him, and made himself even less and lower than them.

In order to get energy for spiritual advancement, a person must nullify himself towards the group. This is done “above reason” and is extended into all areas of life, but this happens only after many very serious calculations.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/26/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Binge-Watching TV Shows Is Linked To Depression

In the News (Newsweek): “At the University of Texas at Austin, researchers surveyed hundreds of millennials to find out what psychological factors lead people to watch three or more TV episodes at a time. What they found was troubling—people who binge-watch are more likely to be depressed and lonely, two factors that are also in harmful binge behaviors such as eating and drinking.

“The authors, who concede that they too binge-watch, were correct: they discovered a correlation between binge-watching and loneliness, depression, and having self-regulation deficiency, which is an inability to control compulsions.

“For people who feel lonely or depressed, the authors suggest, binge-watching allows them to escape from negative feelings. And the more episodes someone watches, the longer that person can escape. Experts call this an avoidance coping strategy.

“Original programming on streaming sites seems made for binge-watching. Netflix has been dropping an entire season’s worth of new episodes at once since the American premiere of Lilyhammer in 2012; House of Cards, Orange Is the New Black and Netflix version of Arrested Development all premiered the following year.

“The University of Texas researchers are joining a growing field of academia taking on entertainment. One study from last June suggested that binge-watching increases a viewer’s risk of early death. In September, a communication research expert told theHuffington Post that it’s hard to break from a marathon viewing because humans are hardwired to watch for changes in environments, including images on a computer screen.”

My Comment: In the near future,when people have more free time, this will be the only accepted pastime until suffering raises a person from the couch and throws him into the arms of others!

By disseminating the method of integral connection, we will prepare the environment, making it possible for all the people who spend time sitting on the couch to enter into this environment.
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The Holiday We Do Not Notice

Torah, “Leviticus,” 23:03: [For] six days, work may be performed, but on the seventh day, it is a complete rest day, a holy occasion; you shall not perform any work. It is a Sabbath to the Lord in all your dwelling places.

In the material world, Saturday comes at the end of each week, so psychologically speaking, we are in the habit of not taking it as a spiritual state.

In fact, it is the most powerful tool for development. On the seventh day, Malchutreceives all that was done in six days, and, if I do not comply with the terms of the Sabbath, I will not rise above or reach new spiritual levels that already are characterized as holidays.

Saturday is like a turn in spiritual work, and then there is another turn, and another. After a certain number of turns, I reach a festive stage toward which it is impossible to go without the Sabbath.

Therefore, in the spiritual world, Saturday is the biggest holiday. After putting in the work, the force over egoism, I reach a point where all the states are realized in me and bear fruit.

In this state, I do not have to do anything but allow the Upper Light to reform me.

Let’s say that I repeatedly produce efforts to work within the so-called six days (six degrees), which are Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet, Netzach, Hod, and Yesod. By putting six consecutively defined and clearly designed efforts together, the seventh force comes from above because I was not able to make it on my own. Only it can make the highest Light that then comes and changes me.

In the spiritual world, if I do not fulfill this condition, I will not be able to form any other states.

In the material world, it can be represented in the form of a person who always aspires to something, and at some point, comes to attainment. In other words, the so-called six days can take several years.

In essence, the whole life of mankind is seven days, from Adam who first attained the system of spiritual correction, up to the most recent person upon whom the system will come to a close after lasting for seven thousand years, where each day is a thousand years.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 5/28/14

Controlling Reality During Our Lifetime

Question: If the world is the way I perceive it in my attributes, what will happen to it when I die?

Answer: We have to try to change reality before we die. When a person dies he is released from the perception of reality in his physical senses.

If he hasn’t acquired the feeling of another reality by then and hasn’t begun to perceive it according to his freewill, he has no other reality. Therefore, he has to return to this world, to the same state, and he gets another chance to attain control of his reality during his lifetime.

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, if a person transcends the perception of reality inside himself and tries to be inside the others, he begins to see the world through them and then the picture that he sees is called the upper world. It is because he sees it in senses of bestowal and not of receiving, through the eyes of love, not hate.

Start to ascend above your body according to the condition of “love thy friend as thyself” and you will see a reality that is external to you. It isn’t the same world that you perceive inside you through your five corporeal senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. You ascend above them and feel reality that is external to you the way it actually is, in its true form.

Until then you perceive every object inside you in the way is depicted by your feelings and emotions, but if you ascend above yourself, you transcend the limits of your body and perceive everything the way it is. This means that you feel the upper spiritual world.
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From the Radio Program Israeli 103FM 2/8/15

Unity Or The Tower Of Babel?

Question: Couldn’t today’s integral connection between people be considered like the Tower of Babel?

Answer: There is no connection between people. There are unifications of markets, banks, etc., and this is the construction of the Tower of Babel (egoism). But it threatens to collapse and bury us under its ruins.

Kabbalah offers the same solution proposed by Abraham 3,500 years ago to the same problem. We must reach unity above our egoism and in spite of it. We will master this method in a good way, meaning by the Light, or in a bad way, through suffering. There is no other way. The predetermined goal of nature is before us, which is to reveal theCreator through unity with everyone.
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First Escape Velocity

Question: What is the upper world that I can feel if I can develop a system of an additional perception of reality?

Answer: The spiritual world is called the upper world because it is higher than the material world according to its properties. The properties of the spiritual world are bestowal and love—something that is above our own egoism.

This means that I must exit my egoism in the same sense as a rocket that overcomes the Earth’s gravity when it goes into orbit. Much energy must be spent in order to accomplish this.

When a satellite is in orbit, in free flight, the gravitational force pulls the satellite toward the center of Earth. However, a competing force allowing the satellite to push away from Earth neutralizes it.

This means that we need the kind of force that can push us away from our egoism. Egoism pulls us toward itself, wishing to lock us internally; this is why we are so connected to the material world and cannot separate from it.

Technically, this problem can be resolved by creating such powerful engines that would be capable of lifting us off. In order to escape the gravitational field of Earth, one must reach certain speeds called the first escape velocity (4.97 mi/sec) or the second escape velocity (6.96 mi/sec).

Then, it is possible to orbit the Earth without feeling its attraction. Thus, we neutralize the gravitational force with the opposite force of our desire to get away from it, to rise above it.

The same phenomenon occurs in the wisdom of Kabbalah. If we overcome our egoism that pulls us down toward itself by utilizing the forces of bestowal and love, we rise to such a dimension that is completely built upon bestowal. This means that it is located above our physical bodies, and we enter the new world.
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From the Radio Program Israeli 103FM 2/1/15