Looking From The Creator’s Point Of View

Question: Egoism is the engine of progress. How do I get to the essence of it?

Answer: Start relating to it properly: Egoism is assisting you; it is “help against.” It unfolds so that you transform it into its opposite, and then it will become a helping hand. If we look at things properly, life will stop feeling like tough resistance and an “unbreakable wall.” On the contrary, you always keep playing with your egoism, constantly “juggling” it. You befriend each other, and it already knows that it’s the right thing to do.

And suddenly, behind egoism the Creator appears. It turns out that He is pulling the strings, and now He becomes your partner. Try to view everything not only from below upward, but also from above downward as well, not from creation’s point of view, but from the Creator’s angle, meaning how He has to restrict Himself, what He should send to you and how.

Suppose you have received something from Him. Now you consider how to work with it from below; besides, you can take a glance from His point of view and visualize how He sends you certain conditions and how they descend downward until they form the exact situation you find yourself in.

And what am I supposed to do now? You must appeal to Him from below upward, give Him credit for everything, and patiently start studying while discerning how to arrange things so as to reinforce the awareness of two principles within:

1. There is none else besides Him.
2. Good Who does good.

This is the key. After all, no matter what the Creator is giving me, every case comes down to this, and this is what I must be aiming at all the time. As a result, each time, my response should be as follows: to carry these two principles (1, 2) from state to state, enhancing them more and more. This is the sole purpose of all that happens.

Clearly, in order to implement this, I need a guarantee, support, the Light that Reforms (Surrounding Light, Ohr Makif – O”M), and in general, the Kabbalistic method. But one way or another, everything occurs solely in order to give me a chance to come closer to revealing the Creator, as there in none else besides Him, who is Good Who does good.

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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/14/12, “The Peace”

Commandment To Love

Question: What does it mean to delight the Creator?

Answer: To delight, to bring pleasure to, the Creator, to love the Creator—these are all very beautiful words. But how can we love a force, even if it is eternal and governs everything there is? All these words are told to a person so that he can adjust himself in some way.

We come to love for the Creator only through love for others. In the article, “One Commandment,” there is an instruction: to come to love for the Creator. But how can we be ordered, obliged to love? It is possible when we work on love of another, make a common mass of our yearnings toward each other, build a common connection above our egoism, and cover it with mutual love. It is written: “Love will cover all transgressions.” When we build a collective property of common mutual connection and yearn toward everyone while cultivating love within, then in our internal egoism there arises a completely new structure: mutual adhesion, mutual inclusion.

Love means that I assume all your desires and care for them, thinking solely of how to fulfill them, while you think about mine, and so on. Love means to fulfill desires of another instead of my own, using them for this purpose. If I arrange such conditions within myself, then by doing so I grow a vessel there that works for the sake of bestowal. And this common vessel that all of us are creating together contains our collective component called “love for the Creator.”

We begin to experience not only the common vessel, our attitude towards the others, love for them, bestowing to them, but also we begin sensing what fills me along the way. This sensation is called the Creator, Boreh in Hebrew (“Bo” – come, “Reh” – see). When we create one collective spiritual vessel, the Creator is revealed there as a result.

Hence, the main Mitzva is very simple: “Love your neighbor.” Through love for another, in the vessel that you created, you will feel love for the Creator and, respectively, His love for you.

Question: What is the final goal of this work?

Answer: It is in the fact that you come to a complete likeness and adhesion with Him in our own reformed egoism. This is how you rise to the level of the Creator. This is the final goal of creation. You begin to experience a sensation that you are in total adhesion with Him, but you don’t dissolve in it, because your entire vessel stays with you.

In other words, the sensation of being opposite doesn’t get annihilated since adhesion with the Creator occurs above it; otherwise, mutual annihilation would occur. Hence, we must view our egoism as the matter with the help of which we move forth. We should treat it with respect since it is the reverse image of the Creator. Conversely, our whole world is His reverse image at our level.
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From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/8/12, Lesson 4

Question: You said that a person should turn to the Creator through the group. What does that mean? Do we have to read Shamatitogether or have a workshop: what should we do?

Answer: I think that a person should behave very simply: First to take a short course in the wisdom of Kabbalah and then to study in a group. He has to participate in our lessons as much as he can, at least in the third part of the lesson, and to participate in workshops several times a week—that’s the least he can do.

Besides, we have a huge library, an archive of lessons and talks translated to many languages. It shouldn’t be a problem to find something to do.

A person should dedicate a certain amount of time to dissemination, since by that we not only bring our message to the world, but also join the next level.

We have to bring humanity the information about the correction, the advancement, and the attainment of the next state. Otherwise how can we erase the deficiency that is now being revealed in people?

We speak about the fact that there is none else besides Him. So what is humanity’s problem? How can it correct itself?

We have now reached a “round” state, in which we totally depend on one another. The third phase is now being revealed and we are beginning to ascend to it from our current state, this is called a crisis.

The truth is that a “crisis” in Greek means “birth”—the birth of something new.

So we have to show humanity that we are on the border of a new world now and this new world is integrality.

The first spiritual level, the world of Assiya, is now being revealed only in its external outline, integrally, since the spiritual world is integral. We are starting to see that with our properties, we are unable to cope in this system. A network of absolute mutual connections is descending upon us, and we cannot do anything here. This is precisely how today’s crisis is expressed in education, in science, in economy, in every aspect.

So we first have to tell people about this, and second, to teach them the method of how to ascend internally to the next qualitative level, which means to change towards integrality, towards a mutual connection.
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From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/8/12, Lesson 3

Taking All The Sparks Out Of The Thickness Of The Desires

Question: What does it mean: “to connect with the friends’ sparks?”

Answer: To connect with the friends’ sparks means to connect our desires to the Creator. After all, the friends have come here since there is a spark in their great desire that yearns for spirituality, for equivalence of form and connection with the Creator. I am also here because of that desire; it is what has brought us to the group.

We have to connect in these desires, to connect only by the reasons that have brought us here. Let’s take only the ones that have brought us here out of all the thickness of our desires and discard all the rest like a bag full of liquid garbage, and connect the sparks from which our spiritual vessel will be created.

It will be only its upper part, and everything else is formed from the garbage we have discarded of when we annulled these desires. It isn’t easy to discard them, since we have to annul each of these desires one by one.

When we try to connect and want to love, hate is suddenly revealed in order to show us that there is no natural love in us. In the meantime it seems that you love everyone naturally and that you treat everyone nicely, as is accepted in our world—they don’t work on love and so they don’t discover hate.

In order to reach love, we must first discover the opposite—hate. But we don’t work on hate, we aspire for love, the more you yearn for love and really work on it, the faster you discover that you hate and that you don’t love. You are told the truth from Above.

To discover love means to see the friend as the greatest in our generation, and to look only for the positive attributes in him, to try and feel that his desires are more important than your desires, just like a mother feels towards her child.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/12/12, The Zohar 

Life Means Getting Closer To Love

Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot“: ‘The wicked, in their lives, are called “dead.”’ This is because their death is better than their lives, as the pain and suffering they endure for their sustenance is many times greater than the little pleasure they feel in this life.

If we don’t advance towards attaining the source of life, then life turns into an escape from sufferings. All our thoughts are only about how to avoid evil and unpleasantness. Therefore, we don’t imagine the good as a filling, since we cannot fill ourselves, but simply try to find some peace between the bad moments.

As a result, all the pleasures that we feel don’t last more than a short while, and so we are called “dead” even while we are alive, since we don’t receive a filling from the real source of life upon which all of reality and all of creation stand.

Of course, everyone has his own accounts, and if he sees how much pain and suffering he feels, how much he suffered and what efforts he has made compared to the few moments of pleasure that have made him happy and brought him joy, then he discovers that it wasn’t worth living. This whole life can only be justified as a preparation for the spiritual ascent. But if one examines this life as is, there is no point to it.

Now when we are awarded the Torah and Mitzvot (commandments), we are awarded with the real happy and joyful life by keeping them, as it says: “Taste and see that the Creator is good.” This is what those who have attained it feel. Then we can choose between good and evil. After we receive the Torah, the way, the spiritual principles, we begin to work with the two lines.

This is what the writings mean by: “and you shall choose life so that you and your descendants shall live.” Actually it is a repetition: “and you shall choose life so that you shall live.” But it refers to living by keeping the Torah and the Mitzvot. Then one really lives. “But life without the Torah and the Mitzvot is harder than death.”

This is how a person perceives the difference between life and death: Life means spiritual advancement, and death means lack of advancement. A person gradually understands that advancement means getting closer to love, to bestowal, to self annulment, to rising above one’s ego. Only this is called “life,” without any account of what we feel in our egoistic desires.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/11/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot” 

Four Stages Of Love

In his article, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy,” Baal HaSulam writes that love consists of four parts, meaning that when one starts to feel that he is receiving “something,” one can divide this “something” into four levels.

Kabbalists call the pleasant sensation that comes to us under the influence of the upper Light a gift. When we receive a present, we start searching for who gave it to us; we explore what this quality is that is the reason He treats us like this, with what intention and so on. In other words, we don’t get anything but the gift, but we can learn about the Giver by examining His gift and the impact that it produces on us.

If we were presented with a little box as a gift, we are unable to determine much by only looking at it, but we would obviously think that the one who sent it to us treats us well.

On the other hand, if the gift penetrates into us and produces a certain action in us, then we can figure out what the Giver expects from us and why He modifies our internal states the way He does.

We know our prior states and we feel our current, altered state, and the difference between them in certain properties and aspects. Then, we can realize what He wants of us. From the differences between the past and the present, we can tell who He is. In accordance with the changes as they change, we feel His positive qualities. He always changes us for the better, to the positive, to more. It makes us grow, and we start to realize that that is His qualities and that He wants to raise us up to Him.

Accordingly, we are able to distinguish between the four levels of attainment and the four worlds.
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From the Fundamentals of Kabbalah 12/2/12

The Group As A Spiritual Entity

Question: What is a group as a spiritual unit, spiritual entity? How can I properly interact with the group so that we derive the maximum mutual benefit for spiritual growth?

Answer: A group, as a spiritual entity, is the common desire that seeks likeness with the Creator, the property of bestowal. If people who are in the group act contrary to their egoism, then above it, over their general contradictions, they build the property of love and bestowal that they direct at the Creator.

This is called a group. Constant work should be carried out inside it. If a person joins the group, becomes included into it, dissolves in it, he loses his “I,” and he wants to disappear in the group, to give himself fully to what takes place in it; this means that he is a member of the group.

Our “I,” originally created in us, exists only as a black dot, above which I have to accept all external desires as my own. This is called “love your neighbor.”

To love means to perceive all his desires and properties as my own. I restrict my own desires, do not feel them. I exist only in order to feel everything that exists in others as my own. In reality, all our common desires are my field, my Kli, vessel. I will feel the upper world in it; I want to bestow upon the Creator through it, and in it I will reveal Him. And my dot will remain a black dot. In this way I should perceive myself in relation to the group.
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From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/8/12, Lesson 4

The Progress Of The Friend Is More Important Than My Own Progress

Question: If love towards friends means to prefer his desire more than mine, what desires are talking about?

Answer: As Baal HaSulam writes in his article, “The Last Generation,” one needs to be concerned that each person in the world will have his necessities for normal material existence met. And if the friend himself will relate to it like that, he will not need any extras.

And all the rest needs to be directed toward of the support of the friend in the spiritual path. So what does it mean that I love the friend? How can I fulfill his desires? If I worried about food for him and anything he needs for his existence, in the other things I support him spiritually: showing him my awakening and transferring to him the feeling of the greatness of the Creator and the importance in the spiritual path that awakens me and fulfills me in force. I act towards him as toward my child, that I want to attract to a beneficial action, and therefore I show him my interest, the desire, my appreciation. Exactly in the same way I must show an example to the friend. It means, that I supply him with spiritual nourishment besides the corporeal nourishment, it means, that I love him.

Precisely this attitude, we must develop in our group. To give a friend the feeling of the greatness of the goal and my personal example of the loyalty to it,  this is called to love the friend. And by that I prefer his desire above my desire. I take into consideration what he needs, the necessary corporeal means, and all the rest is toward his spiritual development. All this I must supply to him.

I must worry that he will arrange his life in a normal form, to help him to find a job, etc. And from a spiritual aspect,  I must encourage him with the greatness of the goal. And by that I prefer his desire above my desire, I am worried for his development, and not mine. If I worry for a friend, this is the best thing for my development. But all of that I do in order to reach to the love of God.

One must connect to a whole one: Israel, Oraita, and Kedosh Berach Hu (Israel, the Torah, and the Creator). Otherwise, it turns out that I simply love the friend in a natural egoistical love like for my child.

Precisely this form of work is called “the work of God.” If I relate to a friend in this form, through him I direct myself to the Creator. Love of others is necessary only in order to reach love of God. Through this man reveals the concealment that was made by the Creator, so we will practice in the love of others and reach the love of God.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/13/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”