Don’t Be Afraid To Receive Pleasure

Question: In the example with “the Host and the guest,” the Host offers the guest delicious treats and the guest refuses to take them. He makes a restriction on his desire to receive. Later, after the guest experiences the delight, he becomes dependent on it. How can we avoid being dependent on pleasures?

Answer: It’s about getting pleasure in the world of Nekudim, in the world where there was a shattering of the state.

Let’s say you gave me something very tasty and sweet. I know what it is, so I make a restriction on this treat and build an intention on it. It’s as if I “paid you back.” I refused your treat many times and explain to you that I don’t feel comfortable accepting your dishes, that I am not hungry. You begin persuading me even more strongly saying that you baked this cake particularly for me and if I don’t try it, you’ll be upset.

Now you are the one who is asking me to do you a favor. When it comes to doing you a favor instead of receiving pleasure for my own sake, I “give up” and eat a piece of cake. I really think that I do it for you. I demonstrate to you how pleased I am so that you have no doubts that while I am enjoying your cake, I am doing so to please you.

All of a sudden I feel a delight that is a thousand times bigger than I ever expected from this piece of cake, something incredible, beyond my Kelim, vessels, beyond my abilities. I don’t see you behind it any longer. All I feel is overwhelming pleasure.

At this point, it’s not about a simple relationship at the level of “giving and taking” (level 1); rather, it is the relationship between the Creator and a person on the level of intention (level 2).

When I become equal to the Creator in my intentions (equal) and start giving to Him, I begin sensing Him and rise to His level. This state is above all the pleasure or suffering. It’s beyond anything! It is a sensation of the thought of creation before it was created.

It turns out that there is such a great inherent pleasure in this experience that I did not expect and which I simply cannot resist. Now, I will have to pay you somehow for this piece of cake.

This is called my shattering. All my intentions to bestow to you instead of pleasing myself, all my plans to avoid being a guest disappear. I just become a slave to the delight that fills me.

From that point on, a new type of pleasure that we receive from sensing the Creator builds the system of worlds: Atzilut, Beria, Yetzira, Assiya.

As a result, when we start self-correction within this system of worlds, we become equal to the Creator because our correction includes the delight that comes not from the Light per se, but from our sense of equality with Him on the level of “Adam – Man.”

The fact is that the level at which we used to exist and build our relationships with others with these calculations (“you give me and I’ll give you”), like a polite guest with a host, is simply animate pleasures at the animate level. Rejecting something because we don’t feel that it is right to take it or because we are embarrassed to accept it, as well as the host’s polite insistence, are ordinary human relationships. They are associated with our current level and there is nothing “lofty” about them. There is no bestowal in them whatsoever.

You simply want to please me because you care about me. I want to return my pleasure back to you because I don’t want to feel that I am the receiving party. I have my pride and shame and I cannot afford to accept your treats. I have to reject them.

A host who knows and understands human psychology acts in a way that will not only persuade me to accept his treats but to feel happy that in doing so I do him a favor. But all this is in the framework of regular human interactions. At the second level, we create a new relationship, not between two people but between me and the Creator, when I have to equate yourself with pleasure that I get from Him .

As soon as I merge with the Creator, I receive pleasures that don’t exist in this world, nor are they present in the Light that created us, since these pleasures derive from the level of the Creator and from our understanding that we are similar to Him. So here the shattering occurs, the structure of a new system. Only by ascending from bottom to top can we create desires and intentions that make us really similar to Him. And then, all our embarrassments and shame turn into glory and delight.

Question: Can we become dependent on pleasures at this level?

Answer: It’s impossible. The system is built in a way that while ascending we cannot be destroyed. It is made so that while we are not ready to receive pleasures correctly, it won’t reveal itself to us.

Pleasure comes from a sensation of understanding and realization, from the feeling of eternity and perfection, from everything that you disclose, everything that you already exist in.

You have to be ready for it. The entire ladder from bottom to top is built in accordance with three lines that lead us. That’s why the entire system is made so that it prepares us to attain this state.
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From the Stockholm Convention “Joy In Unity” Day One 8/30/13, Lesson 2

Collective Wisdom

As a result of connecting people during a workshop orroundtable, the collective mind is created. Such phenomenon as the “wisdom of crowds” is known. If people unite, then an additional force emerges and something new that exceeds their capabilities is born between them. Each possesses mediocre intelligence and capabilities and makes mistakes answering questions. However, when they are discussing it all together, listening to others’ opinions and complementing each other, the average response will be correct or very close to the correct one.

Each of them makes a mistake in a different direction, and thus on average, the answer is correct. However, it’s not only about the statistical law of large numbers but about the emotional aspect. When people unite and want to solve a problem together, they get a special sense. It is not just the average response. Since they have tried to find a solution together, a special addition emerges.

We do not simply ask for an answer to everyone individually as if in a statistical survey, but we bring them together and want to achieve one common result. Then, they do not make mistakes. This is the consequence of connection, not just an answer resulting from averaging when one mistake compensates another.

When people connect, a special additional force emerges that propels us to the next level. All of us are on the bottom step; ten on the lower degree are equal to one on the higher degree, in the same way as the entire still level is equal to one plant, and all the plants to one animal, and all the animals to one human being by his power and essence.

It is not a simple equation. The force of the Creator must be added to it because it is required to switch us from the still level, where all the still elements are joined together, to the vegetative level to become one plant. However, we should know that this force is always at our disposal. The Upper Light always shines. Once we connect, the Upper Light will begin instantly and automatically to work on us and raise us to the next degree.

Therefore, it is said that the entire still level is equivalent to one plant. The Upper Light is automatically included in this formula. We seemingly know a priori that the Upper Light will act and raise them.

The common answer is obtained not as the average of all the responses. By conducting a workshop and forming a circle, we must come to a common decision, a definition that will be at the center of the circle. We do not need ten separate opinions. That will produce nothing. It will just complicate things as mere philosophizing: One said this and another said that. This is analysis. However, we need synthesis, the general factor belonging to the upper degree!

We do not yet know how to use workshops properly. The workshop is a spiritual vessel, a tool for attaining the end of correction. As a result, we must rise to the level of the gathering of Rabbi Shimon’s group. We just call it by such a mundane word “workshop,” but it implies a real spiritual connection. Workshops should be changed. We will work on this. It cannot just be taught. This skill comes gradually, and the pressure from outside helps in this.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/10/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Don’t Sit Idle

It is clear that a person cannot do anything for the Creator. He operates out of fear of punishment or hope for a reward, but it is always for his own benefit. The moment things work out for him, he immediately forgets about the Creator. We see that a person usually turns to the Creator when he feels bad and when he cannot handle something. The moment he sees that he can manage without the Creator, he immediately leaves Him. We, however, perform actions by which we want to get closer to the Creator and we also want to correct our intention, or are at least making an effort to do so.

There are people who think that they already have the intention of in order to bestow and that they connect with the Creator through meditation. But the point is that it is impossible to operate the intention of in order to bestow or even want to reach the intention of in order to bestow if you don’t perform an action. An intention without an action is called a “demon,” a spirit that is not real.

However, if we operate with the desire to change our intention and to establish the first corrected part of our soul, it happens. This is why we are here now in the world of actions. We only have to perform the right action, the correctness is obvious, and the intentions are corrected by themselves to the extent that everyone wants to correct them. The main thing is not to sit by idly.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/08/13, Writings of Rabash

Without An Inner Fire There Is No Success

Question: How is it possible to make the work of every expert inintegral education more efficient in order to achieve maximal dissemination?

Answer: The most important thing for the person is recognition, praise, respect, and compassion for the community in which he works.

In principle, we want to do the same thing in that institution or enterprise where we disseminate integral education and information.

When we reach a community, we begin to weave a network of connections so that people will be interconnected, will understand how much they can inspire and uplift the community (it will be more comfortable and easier for them to work) as much as they can improve both themselves and the atmosphere in which they exist, as much as they can rejoice and feel themselves to be happy along with this. We need to artificially maintain a state like this until we begin to get it from an inner connection between us.

Therefore, it is necessary to appoint someone responsible as an initiator who must think about everything down to the last detail and be constantly concerned so that among the members of this community there will be in constant ascent. He needs to choose special materials for them and organize telephone communications between them for mutual support throughout the day; it could be that he might send each one of them some clip; it could be a five minute break or some friendly dinner to strengthen the connection andunity.

We, who are involved with dissemination, must understand that without an inner fire, we will not have anything to convey to others. For a person in a bad mood, in a personaldescent, cannot even go to work. Therefore, during descents he needs the community. It is necessary to lift him up, to stand him on his feet, to encourage, and to revive him. And only then will he be full of internal energy; with a special atmosphere of connection he can go and do something further, otherwise he will simply ruin all the work.

We know that before every meeting with either some person or group of people or even with a large audience, we practice and realize the permanent unity between us. Before we begin the study, we first need to unite, to reach a shared excitement, a feeling of security, safety, a sense of our higher state. When we come to people, we need to demonstrate the weightiness of our knowledge so that the community will think that we are found one level above all the rest.

Though we understand that this is psychological work, the main thing is to approach everything the right way. It is necessary that there be an internal explosion, a kind of fire, warmth between us. When we go out to the community, people must feel that it is not three people standing before them, rather it is one, a common whole. We begin to play with the community with six hands, as one body. This is what we are compelled to do.

Therefore, we cannot make any move without feeling connection and unity. Even if we visited some team in a factory today and after that need to go to some office for dissemination, we still need to recharge between these two events.
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From Kab TV’s “Through Time” 9/17/13

Hatred As A Carcinogen

Baal HaSulam, “600,000 Souls”: Indeed, the whole is found within each item, since in the end, all the souls will unite into one discernment, returning to their spiritual root. Hence, all the miracles and wonders and all the journeys they had travelled throughout the world during the 6,000 years should be experienced by each soul. The good soul draws to itself from all the discernments of Kedusha before it and after it; and the evil soul does to the contrary.

The “evil soul” doesn’t aspire to connect with others, either over time or in certain cases, and so it becomes a “cancerous tumor” that only wants to eat its surroundings.

This is very much like what happens in the biological body. For there each cell is connected with all the other cells in the body. And if this connection is normal, it provides for the health of the body. Accordingly, each “good soul” like a healthy cell, strives to achieve universal unity, whereas the evil soul, which is not corrected, like a diseased cell, according to its nature, distances itself from everyone and wants to exploit others for its own benefit.

In this state, a person sits alone and seeks personal benefit (↓↓), in this he embodies the opposite of love, which is hatred. He loves others just like he loves fish for dinner.

The next higher level is the still one  (↓).  But he doesn’t act at the expense of others and becomes a state of Hafetz Hesed with a minus sign. Let the whole world burn and this doesn’t matter to him. This is called indifference.

On the next higher level  (↑), a person wants good for others but doesn’t do anything about this . He simply wishes everyone well, and is Hafetz Hesed, a pure intention.

And finally, on the highest level, is a person who is connected with others (↑↑). This is love, intention, and action.

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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/10/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Don’t Expect Others To Do Your Job!

All of us reside in the ocean of the Light of infinity, the Light of bestowal and love, but we don’t perceive it because we are separated from each other. How do we experience it? Start unifying with everyone; after all, there is a reason why it is written: “Love your neighbor as yourself— it is the great law of the Torah” (Torah has the same root as the word “Ohr” (Light).

To achieve this you are granted a group. If you reach such a connection with the friends that is similar to the Light in a small degree, you begin to perceive it, to unveil it. And it depends only on you! Don’t expect the group to do this work for you; the group is already there. If you enter it correctly, you will get to see that it is already inside the Light.

It is only that “anyone who judges does so based on their own flaws.” And if you are not ready and are not inside it, all of them will seem to you as worthless egoists that are unable to accomplish anything. But if you enter the group correctly, you discover that all of them are mutually connected by the mutual guarantee and reside in perfection inside the Upper Light. And you plug into this Light.

Thus, by way of uniting the desires, Kelim (and all of us are desires), thanks to the quality of this unity, you arrive to the Light. Within these desires, you discover phenomena regarded as the Light, similar to how you discover that some mechanism is run by electricity. The Light that is revealed to you is the degree of connection, the measure of bestowal, between all of you.

And all the sayings of the Torah such as “All Israel are friends,” “Love others as you love yourself,” “Don’t do to others what is hateful to you,” etc., are not mere words. They are the laws of nature; by observing them, you find the Light that fills you.
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From Kab TV’s “Kabbalah for Beginners” 12/8/10

It Is Pointless To Regret What Was Swallowed In Ein Sof

Question: What should I do if I feel sorry about my previous failures and it prevents me from thinking about anything else?

Answer: When something has already happened there is not point feeling sorry about it, and you should let bygones be bygones. There is none else besides Him and you did whatever you could, according to “If I am not for we, who is for me,” and everything else is in the hands of the Creator since there is none else besides Him. We shouldn’t regret the past. The past is already swallowed in Ein Sof (Infinity). I am not responsible for it; it is the Creator acting through me.

I did everything that I could and my success or lack of it depends on the Creator. This is how He has arranged my actions wanting to show me how distant I still am from Him so that by my next action I will be able to connect to Him.

I shouldn’t think about the previous states now, as if it were I who chose and decided what they would be. These impure thoughts (Klipa) are a mistake, a real deception, if I think that I did something and it wasn’t the Creator who did everything through me. We cannot say this about the future, but we should undoubtedly refer to the past that way.

We repeat this mistake all our life. A person tortures himself about a mistake he made back at school or at the university, and regrets it his whole life, including yesterday and the last couple of moments, but it is forbidden to do so.

A person who is about to die has to say that his whole life passed and it didn’t really belong to him and it wasn’t he who did everything. The upper thought has created him and gave birth to him sometime in the past and put him through a certain path, through different actions, and now he is coming to the end of this path in a certain state and is moving on to the next state.

We cannot change anything in the past and cannot plan anything in the future, not even a couple of moments ahead. Now we discover this truth more and more in the world: All our long-term plans don’t work at all. You can act only at the current moment you are in, and your job is to adhere to the Creator. But the thought about the moment that has passed or about the next moment to come is a sign of lack of faith, of lack of adhesion, of lack of bestowal.

In my current state, I am totally adhered only to the Creator. Make your desire His desire and your actions like His actions and there is nothing else you have to do; it is very simple.

Regretting the past is a great terrible Klipa, impure force, that is constantly depicted to us in pictures from the past forcing us to feel great sorrow: Why did I do that; why did I hurt someone; how did I go wrong; what did I do wrong, etc.  it is a well known mistake and everyone goes through it.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/07/13, Introduction to The Book of Zohar

The General Soul: Mine And Ours

Baal HaSulam, “600,000 Souls”: Moses is equal to 600,000…

“Moses” is a concept. However, in this case, let’s say Moses is a person who has reached complete connection with all the parts of the one soul that exists in reality. It has been divided into 600,000 parts and these parts have been divided into smaller fractions. Moses is an attribute, a state in which all the parts are incorporated.

Accordingly, a person who reaches the level of Moses can live in one soul, and reaches the connection with all the other parts according to the principles: “Don’t do unto your friend what is hateful to you” (a righteous), and “Love thy friend as thyself” (a complete righteous). And hence the principle of “love the Creator your Lord” is fulfilled, the perfect state.

Therefore it says that Moses is equal to all the other souls, the whole world.

On the other hand, however, it says that everyone must reach the level of Moses, since in addition to belonging to a general soul, each of us has a private spark, and in this spark, he has to include all the other souls and connect them into one soul.

Everyone can reach the level of Moses and connect everyone around him. By that he attains the whole general soul. It appears as his soul; he just discovers it from his spark, from the root of his soul.

For me, the process begins with the connection with others. There are people to whom I am connected in a state called a group, and there are the others, the external world with whom I establish an external connection for the time being. But eventually, I connect everyone into one and discover unity. But I discover it on the basis of my Reshimot(spiritual genes) in my point in the heart (•). Because of it, I can see the world. No matter how strongly I connect the intention of in order to bestow to myself, I am still the one who bestows. My perception always remains subjective and I cannot see the world through someone else’s eyes; I cannot actually dress into someone and feel what he feels through him. These are the laws of nature.

I discover the sum (Σ) of all the vessels (desires) based on my attributes, which do not disappear. Someone else also connects to the whole world, including me, and discovers it in himself, based on his attributes. We both discover the whole world, each from his perspective.

Later, after I connect with the whole world, I reach my private end of correction. Besides, after everyone reaches this level, a special force arrives, the Light that connects all our whole private states into one whole general state, the general end of correction.

I don’t know what it is; I don’t know whether the individual responses disappear there.  After all, now all the parts are corrected and they make up one whole body. There are different assumptions. Perhaps all the cells are incorporated into one another in every way and become the Partzuf of Adam HaRishon (first man) once again, the way it was before the shattering, before the sin, only now the intensity of the connection with the Creator is 620 times greater.

Thus, we have the same soul, and each one must reach the level of Moses, which includes all the souls. There is no contradiction here.

Each soul is ready to absorb the souls of Moses, Aaron, Samuel, David, and Solomon within it, as you progress through periods of development. During the exit from Egypt and the reception of the Torah, the soul of Moses revealed in it.

We have been through a periods of correction, through which part of the collective soul was already corrected. This part is called “the forefathers.” This is the head of the Partzufwhere everything is in order to bestow.

Then there is the part called “the sons” which is imperfect. It was corrected during the exile in Egypt, the first and the second Temples, and there are corrections and corruptions in this part. The last part, the last two thousand years, is not corrected at all and we still have time to reach complete redemption.

So we use the general system in which there is the corrected part of the “forefathers” (HBD), the part of the “sons” (HGT) that is partly corrected, and us, the generation of the exile, the “last generation.”

We are all incorporated in everyone, and the whole history that we have been through operates on every generation from the state of the previous generation. That is why there is the concept of “the merit of our forefathers,” the vessels that these souls have already corrected. Thus today we work on incorporating and we have what to rely on.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/10/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam, “600,000 Souls”