Enveloped In A Cloud

Question: What is our ego, is it a feeling or a mental perception?

Answer: We can compare the brain to a movie screen since it is actually blank. Today, for example, you seem to be ugly and disgusting, and tomorrow after a change of state, I may look at you and see before me a fine guy that radiates vitality. Does my brain depict these pictures, is it the screen? Or do I project them? My ego, my interest, depicts all these figures, but we don’t understand this until the end.

We believe that we are objective when it comes to the still, vegetative, and animate nature, but on the level of the speaking, in the relations between us, there are different variables. Generally speaking, we don’t actually understand that we are the ones depicting our own world on every level of the desire to receive.

This is why our world is called imaginary since it doesn’t actually exist. The moment you clean your ego from the perception of this world, it will disappear. And what will be left? Nothing?

So what will we be left with? Start establishing this “something” now. Start building a new world. It all depends on what you draw on the screen of your perception.

Question: But how do we draw these pictures if they immediately seem real to me?

Answer: I imagine a force that controls me, that surrounds me, that manages me and confuses me, sending me positive and negative things. This whole situation, the bubble I am in, operates on me; it is like a science fiction movie since we have to imagine something and work on something in our imagination. So I imagine a certain space in which a certain force or a force field operates. In the meantime, I cannot manage without this three dimensional illusion with the different phenomena of time and space. I am connected to it whether I want to be or not.

I imagine a force that surrounds me as if I am in a cloud. This force operates on me in every direction and in every possible aspect. Even now when I think about it, it actually operates me; I am relaxed, let it operate me. But what do I have besides this operation?

Because without any additions of my own, I can only constantly yearn for a good feeling and how to thank this force for its good care. It has created a deficiency in my feeling, a desire to receive, and I feel good in this world under its domination.

It turns out that we don’t need anything but that. The whole philosophy of the epicurean school is based on this approach. Other Eastern methods also believe in nirvana and peacefulness. This attitude is in fact the deepest since it is based both on the fear of disrupting something in creation and on the fear of cursing the Creator. So I have to constantly feel good. I constantly try to be calm and relaxed and to be happy with what I have, not because the ego drives me to do so but because of a more sublime intention. In short Abraham worked well with this approach in Babylon.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/02/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Tears And Joy

Baal HaSulam “Inheritance of the Land”: It is said, “according to my sorrow is my reward.” This means that the reward is measured by the amount of sorrow. Sorrows and exertions are needed only to find the vessel that will receive a good reward. And the more human one’s sorrow in spiritual work is, the greater his vessel is, which is ready to finally get the maximum reward. We measure everything according to the vessel, desire.  The Light is in absolute rest, and it all depends on the vessels, on how we develop them. And the vessels are the essence of suffering.

However, in spirituality this suffering becomes sweet and is called “pangs of love.” There, the pain of lack can be combined with pleasure, and they do not neutralize each other as in our world. Here, after a few sips, I am no longer thirsty, and every time, having received something, I become satiated. It is different in spirituality since both the need and pleasure are aimed at bestowal, they support and increase each other.

It turns out that I constantly feel lack and pleasure, but not as opposites, and I constantly flourish, develop in them. Together, they become a sense of eternal life for me. That’s where we are going. You see yourself that this knowledge can only come from above. The person himself has no opportunity to grasp at least its “edge.” No matter how much philosophers and thinkers have tried to figure out the age-old questions, it is impossible. After all, the answers are not inherent in our current egoistic nature.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/10/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

An Anti-World Founded On An Unknown Formula

It is so difficult to reveal and explain Kabbalah to the masses of the common man because it is a reality that he doesn’t feel.Besides, it is opposing him, an “anti-world.” And it is not just the opposite reality where “plus” can be replaced with “minus,” but the very fact of it being opposite is incomprehensible to a regular person since this formula doesn’t operate in our world. Therefore, it is only natural that this wisdom is practiced by few.

Even though great many people agree that Kabbalah is probably talking about something quite exalted, good, and correct, they, however, are unable to grasp it. Hence, we witness how mankind sinks itself deeper into deception seeking solace in all kinds of substitutes of the truth: theology, mysticism, and various “new age” trends. Well, what can one do? We have to wait till humanity grows up. The more teachings that claim to reveal spirituality continue to circulate, the sooner mankind will see what is good and what is evil.

It is a well known fact that the more popular a person becomes, the sooner his real worth becomes clear. If a doctor advertises himself, everybody will rush to be treated by him. And if he is not a very good doctor, with so many patients it will quickly be found out and they will leave.

Prior to that, he still could have treated patients, but after the advertising effort, in general none will come to him. In other words, advertisement promotes revelation of truth.

This is why Kabbalists do not oppose any teachings; let everything have its place since all of them exist due to the uncorrected nature of desire. As long as people find some fulfillment in these methods, nothing can be done in that regard. Let a person make his own discernments in his egoism and later come to the truth. There are many obstacles and false teachings that stand in our way, but they serve as certain filters that help us filter our ego through them.

And when a person has finally passed through all these filters and stops believing in various forces (“multiple gods”) and his own powers, as well as all sorts of fetishes such as red bands, talismans, and blessings, he realizes that nothing can help him but theUpper Light that reforms and returns us to the source of love!

Besides, now he is certain he knows what “good” means. And then, he comes to it.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/16/10, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Why Haven’t You Asked Yet?…

As soon as your are led to the group from above, immediately it starts increasing the value of the goal in order to enhance what is given to you as your first spark. In fact, only by way of this value do you outweigh lies and purchase the truth. And if you don’t receive this value from the group, you will either return to the lies or you will sit idle unable to leave eating yourself up.

But advancing on the path of the truth is possible only when receiving an inspiration from the importance of the goal and the environment. To the degree of this importance, you will be willing to suffer, your ego suffers and the truth grows.. After all, it is very painful.

Besides, the group helps me understand that to achieve something is possible only through prayer. A prayer is a plea to transform the desire from receiving to bestowal, from separation and hate to unity and love. I remember how when I was taking a walk withRabash in the grove near Beit Shemen and I was telling him about all my problems, complaining and screaming for about ten minutes and he quietly listened till he suddenly said: “But why didn’t you ask (Him)?”

We do not have enough of the request: “Why didn’t you ask?” Frankly, our nature doesn’t allow us to come to it, to just ask. Neither our mind nor our heart comprehends that we just need to arrange a plea for correction. And people suffer months and years unable to ask, to raise MAN.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/16/10, Writings of Baal HaSulam

A Unique Transformation That Gives You Life

Question: How can it be that Rabbi Shimon would cry at deciding whether he should or shouldn’t reveal the secret concealed in The Book of Zohar? Can a Kabbalist be trusted with such an enormous secret by which he would harm us?

Answer: Rabbi Shimon wasn’t some ordinary person made of flesh and blood who hid in a cave, but is an entire system, a part of the upper world that clothes in the Creator and receives everything He has according to the equivalence of their properties from Him. At the same time, he contemplates how to manage to pass thisLight to the other souls that it is yet required to give birth to and develop.

And to accomplish this, he employs one more spiritual system, Rabbi Abba, which makes it possible to pass this Light downward. With Rabbi Abba and the other 9 disciples’ assistance, each of whom represents one of the 10 Sefirot and is comprised of 10 sub-Sefirot, meaning they contain a full set of 100 Sefirot, after the concealment and reduction of the Light in this specific mechanism, the Light can be adapted to the souls of our generation.

This Light is designated specifically for our time and not for their contemporaries or for the periods of exile. This is a unique correction, just like the one that the sages of the Talmud performed on our behalf so we wouldn’t have to torment our bodies to find spirituality as had been written in those times: “Eat bread with salt, drink water, sleep on bare ground, and study the Torah—then succeed!” But after the time of Talmud, such restrictions are not necessary and it is sufficient to simply study the inner Torah (Kabbalah) without any corporeal limitations.

It became possible because Kabbalists of that time inserted a necessary addition into the spiritual system, thereby adapting it to us. And besides, it corresponds with how close we ourselves approached it thanks to the evolution of our will to receive (desire, ego). They (Rabbi Shimon and the 9 disciples) brought the Light closer to us while we have also come closer to it (by evolving in the reverse direction thereby increasing our ego), and now we have become so close to each other that the effect of the Light alone is enough for our correction. No corporeal suffering is necessary any longer.

All of this occurred thanks to the corrections made in the upper system built by the previous Kabbalists. These sages are part of the upper worlds and the innermost part of it; they are related to the souls. When they perform corrections, they add to the collective system such reformed elements that revive it. Because of them, it comes alive and starts working passing the Light down to us!
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/14/10, Writings of Baal HaSulam

The Train Stops At Each Station On The Way To The Goal Of Creation

The main difficulty on the way is that we don’t feel any deficiency for the goal of creation. Our deficiency is the opposite because I naturally think only about my inner state, how to complete what I lack, how to get this. And if I had everything, then I wouldn’t think about anything at all.

But I am not prepared to think about how to fulfill what the whole universe lacks, including the still, vegetative, animate, and human levels, or how to fulfill the Creator through them. Does He lack something? I don’t feel His deficiency. Somehow I can feel the deficiencies of others, but not the desire of the Creator. How would I know how to give Him contentment? I do not have the correct, purposeful, deficiency in me, not even the beginning of such a deficiency.

But the final corrected state that already exists in nature affects me; despite the lack of desire, I still am attracted to it, if not in my heart, then at least out of curiosity. Or I can get a deficiency from the environment, from the group. They all keep on saying how important this is, so I also begin to pay attention and work on the deficiencies of others. And in this case, the final state of perfection acts on me and begins to awaken changes in me.

Or I see that as the years go by I still have nothing, so I begin to consider what else I can do. I am not concerned about the importance of the goal, only about the years I wasted. I see that it is up to me to do something!

We must begin working with the environment in order to get a deficiency from it, and in response, the “Surrounding Light” arrives and begins to change me more and more.

The main thing is to bring me to a deficiency, to a Kli, and not to the fulfillment. It is up to me to imagine that I am standing before the “Surrounding Light” all the time and it is only up to me to ask! It is as if I come to the ticket window at a train station, peek in, and ask for a train ticket. It is only up to me to ask, and they will give me a ticket for wherever I choose.

I must feel that I will surely get the ticket but on condition that I know where I need to travel and what the next station is. But how would I know where the next station is? To do this, I have to be included in a group, to invest in it, to disappear into it, and to absorb the deficiency from them. If I come to the ticket window to buy a ticket with this deficiency, then without a doubt I will not miss it; I will take the ticket for the right train, for the next station.

That is how I advance from station to station. And it becomes increasingly clearer each time that the station at the final destination is to bring contentment to the Creator. This is also expressed as a deficiency. Because I begin to give contentment to the creatures, I receive a small part of the desire for giving pleasure to the Emanator, the Creator,” all the time. That is how this desire becomes more and more clearly portrayed.

Even though my request is very simple and I don’t understand exactly what I am asking for yet, I receive the Light in response a full set of the complete ten Sefirot. This also includes the Light corresponding to the stony heart, and I begin to understand that it is impossible for me to use it. This also includes the Light corresponding to the Sefirot ofKeter, which belongs to a level above me. Within Keter of the lower, we already feel theMalchut of the upper.

That is how I begin to connect many states from the past, present, and future in me. I already understand how it is up to me to build myself in an increasingly advanced form all the time. I begin to feel the cyclicality, the rotation of the wheels that sometimes turn forward, sometimes backward, but always propel the train forward. The wheels turn in different and opposing directions, butt the train steadily approaches the goal.

In the entire complexity of states, the most important thing is for me is to think about the point of a true prayer, that it must be a prayer for the desire for bestowal. The main thing—it is the desire to seek and not the desire to bestow, which is a Kli, the prayer before the prayer, the deficiency of a deficiency for bestowal. That is specifically what I need.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/03/13, Writings of Rabash

The Purpose Of Life – The Core Of All

Question: Goals promoted in the outer environment influence me much more strongly than the goal that is set by the Kabbalist and what the group tries to convey to me. What can be done with this contradiction?

Answer: I have a purpose for which I live. If not for that, I would be living the life of a “beast,” I exist because I cannot die and intermittently I satisfying myself with “animal feed.”

But no, I have a goal in life, and I need to be locked onto this with the help of the group, arranging everything so I aim only for this goal. And all the rest of my activities are done according to my life’s goal.

And the goal of life is the revelation of the Creator, which is adherence with Him. This goal is attained through the principle, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” by means of connection in a group. And I must be attracted only to this and adhere to this alone.

In fact, we are talking about the construction of the spiritual Partzufim that are “inserted” one within the other. The core of everything is the purpose of life. To reach it I need the group. To strengthen the group, dissemination is needed. And therefore I need the entire world or the “nations of the world.”

But the main thing for me is the goal of life, while all others are the essential components required to attain it. And if not for the goal, I would not resort to them. I do and use only what helps me on the way to the goal.

According to this, from the group I need only what is good for attaining the goal, and therefore the entire group must realize the goal for me. Therefore it is said, “He chooses a better environment all the time,” I change the group all of the time and take from it things that are required for me to attain the goal.

The process is dynamic: The dissemination is changing all the time according to what we need for strengthening the group in order to find the shared power in its center and to discover the Creator. But in order to discover the Creator in the center of the group through the power of the guarantee within the group and through the right dissemination, I need to go out to the wider world, to receive deficiencies, obligations, fears, and anxieties from people so that they will push me and obligate me to act. Then I will reach the right demand, and then I discover the Creator.

All of these components are needed on the way except from the external world as it is, the dissemination that we do is enough. We have three levels: the Creator in the center of the group, the group itself with a guarantee and I’m in the group, and dissemination. This is the right agreement that is familiar to us: the lower, the upper, and the upper upper; or interior, middle, and exterior.

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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/01/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Red Line: Beware – Human!

Question: If man is simply a small part of nature, then where can he get the power to destroy it?

Answer: We have an additional part in us which is above the animate body and is regarded as “human.” The human can be good or evil because he possesses freewill unlike an animal. It is human, the ego, that exists above nature and that is where you have the right to choose.

All creation exists in perfection: the still, vegetative, and animate—everything except man. Each of us has an animate part, the body, and a “human” part, which is the only corrupted one. It is the part that stretches beyond the essential existence of the body; it makes me exploit nature and even destroy it if that’s what is necessary to make me feel good.

An animal deprived of freewill cannot ruin nature since it acts correctly by following its natural instincts. Therefore, our corporeal world exists only at the still, vegetative, and animate planes, which are in the state of perfection and balance. But man is above this world.

The animate part of man is also in harmony with nature. The problem lies in the “human in man,” a degree in which I started destroying the world. As long as we were undeveloped, we didn’t cause much harm to it since we were living merely as animals that consumed each other in order to survive. But when we reached the current level of evolution and received so much power, the problem immediately arose. Even Aristotle warned that science shouldn’t be revealed to evil people who may use it to destroy the world and mankind.

If they can’t use the human power correctly, then they must not be allowed to step outside the animate sphere—beyond this red line; they can do so only if they know how to use the human power correctly. To use it correctly means to make this red area similar to nature by employing one’s own consciousness and understanding by becoming equivalent to the Creator, the upper one. We must achieve the same balance with nature as all the other parts, but through our own effort, since we initially lack the balance.

It turns out that we have a nature where no freewill exists and we only need to use it correctly. The part above it relates to the Creator and human where freewill does exist, but we have no clue what do with it or how to use it. There we must reach balance in order to bestow.

In the past, the previous Kabbalists achieved attainment by placing restrictions on their body as described in the “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot”: “Bread and salt you should eat, water in measure you should drink, on the ground you should sleep, a life of affliction you shall live, and in Torah you should labor,” then you shall reach spirituality. In truth, if the part of a person related to the animate, vegetative, and still levels lived only with bare essentials, like a beast, and on top of that he studied the Torah while thinking about how to become similar to the Creator, he did advance.

But 2000 years ago we reached a state where we started to exploit all of nature, to harm the still, vegetative, and animate parts, this whole “inner” circle. Hence, this is why we’ve come to such need for the Light that Reforms. It is the only way we can transform ourselves.

Previously, the Light of correction worked only at a highest rung. But today we need a much greater Light to work on all of nature since we have corrupted it too by making it entirely egoistic by engaging in it.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/21/10 Writings of Baal HaSulam