Discovering The Need For A Solution

A question I received: What forces assist in the “rotting” of the desire to receive pleasure, called “body”?

My Answer: The despair is due to the inability to be filled, rather than despair from the desire for pleasure. One reaches a point where he no longer believes that it is possible to be happy in this life. The unsatisfied desires bring us to depression. This, of course, is for a purpose. It is so that all of humanity will reach this stage in order to discover a need to search for a solution and a need to rise to a higher level. Egoism will help us reach this point and will force us to make a decision. This is called “help against you.”

Driven By Suffering, Curiosity, Or The Point In The Heart

The only thing that is required of us is to cleave to the Creator.That is why everything that happens to us is arranged so as to oblige us to turn to Him, to feel the need in Him now, while we are not in the property of bestowal.

A person lives completely tied and entangled by this life. And all this confusion, problems in life, its order, and disorder gradually push him to a state when he sees that he is unable to cope with this life. He cannot understand it, feel its purpose and reason, and come to its root. And then he feels that he must find the root of life, the One who holds this life, and to reveal and know Him.

Sufferings, curiosity, even the point in the heart hiding inside a person suffering due to a lack of adhesion with the upper one, or something else gradually leads a person to an understanding that he can no longer claim that he runs his life himself, like sovereign Pharaoh who says: “Who is the Creator that I should listened to Him? I am the only ruler here!”

This is how our ego thinks, until it gets the blows that make me see that the Creator is the righteous one and I am the wicked one. And then a person understands that he must reveal the Creator.

Even when a person embarks on this path and makes the first steps, finding himself in a group and beginning to study Kabbalah, much time passes before he starts to realize that he is in a completely deterministic, closed system where everything is already predetermined. This system accepts no free movements or chances in any of its parts: still, vegetative, animate, or human. All of them exist according to the perfect law that advances the entire creation to a state where all of its elements reach adhesion with the upper root.

This adhesion is realized by the human level, the highest element of this system, which includes all the previous steps. But it does not happen due to his own efforts. He needs to ask the Creator to perform all the actions.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/27/2011, Shamati #50

The Creator’s Acting Mind

The Creator is the authentic acting force in reality. On our path we attain the Creator, His plan, His work, and thereby become “the Creator’s workers,” meaning that we participate in this work ourselves as His partners.

For this to happen His mind needs to be revealed to us. After all, in the end we rise to the highest degree of the entire creation, to its program and thepurpose that forestalls it.

“The end of an action is in its initial thought.” We reach the point in the Creator’s mind from which He started the work in which He thought of creation. Everything originates from this tiny point; it is the acting, creating mind which we acquire.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/28/2011, “The Acting Mind”

The Most Difficult Task Is To Ask

Thanks to our Kabbalah studies, we finally understand that theCreator performed, performs, and will perform all actions. And all that is asked of us is a request that constitutes our freedom of choice. That is, we have to want the Creator to correct us.

Everything that the Creator did with us before did not require our consent; we obeyed the direct order of our nature, and thus we had nothing to ask. We simply followed our natural instinct, satisfying our growing desire in all its manifestations. However, in order to give us an opportunity to develop on our own, to acquire self-knowledge, and to reveal the Creator and His actions, at a certain moment, the Creator begins to act against our nature.

This turning point occurs in our generation. The Creator does not follow us, pushing us forward, but stands in front of us and demands that we get closer to Him by our own will. In fact, this is our job: to mobilize within ourselves forces, desires, and the understanding that we must come closer to Him. And we cannot do that ourselves; we can only request, demand from Him that He brings us closer.

To do this, we need to come and work together to discover within ourselves the desire for mutual bestowal. We must recreate within ourselves the desired form of the Creator, the perfect property of bestowal. We have to aspire within our group to achieve such relationships between us that the force, existing there in concealment, becomes revealed. This means to reveal the Creator, to know Him, in order to cleave to Him.

Then, we will advance and govern ourselves. But just as before we unquestionably obeyed our egoistic desire without even thinking about it, so now we want to obey the Creator with the same devotion. After all the issues, challenges, and scrutiny, in spite of our objections and resistance, we want to be fully managed by Him and become His faithful workers, as it is said: “Love covers all sins.”

And the key in this process is to find the point of addressing the Creator, the request to change and correct ourselves each time. We shouldn’t look within ourselves for the forces and means of becoming “righteous,” doing “good deeds.”

Clearly, it is impossible to reach true prayer at once, and we have to go through much scrutiny on the way to it. But the main obstacle is a person’s thoughts that he is the master of his actions and should correct himself and his environment by his own forces. He forgets that he is merely clay in the Master’s hands, and that “there is none else besides Him,” the only One who performed, performs, and will perform all actions. And our freedom of choice, given to us to get closer to perfect bestowal, is only to ask it from that property, that force, which will reign between us.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/27/2011, Shamati #50

If There Is No Answer, The Request Was False

We need to reach the revelation of the Creator, and this is why we were given the method of Kabbalah to come to this revelation through our various actions, exercises, and work which is all of our efforts. The Creator is revealed to us as the property of bestowal and love, which is manifested within us, meaning in our desire to enjoy, our essence.

Because our egoistic material in its nature is completely opposite to the Creator, His bestowal, it is exactly the place to apply efforts so as to wish to receive the property opposite to your nature. There is no coercion in spirituality! As long as you do not wish for the property of bestowal to clothe in your desire, in your substance, and as long as you do not care for that substance you work as the property that has clothed in it, according to the saying: “And darkness will shine as the light,” it will not happen.

So, we have to develop a true desire to bestow within us. And if we ignore this, missing the available moments and opportunities, then the states, in which we were supposed to reveal the need for bestowal, become disclosed as its absence, but in the opposite form showed in our egoism.

And if in my current state, I can not succeed and by my own free will yearn for bestowal, that is, I haven’t switched from the egoistic desire to the need to reach bestowal, to reveal the Creator, then the desire, which I had to turn into the request to the Creator, is revealed to me as sufferings. I did not realize this desire correctly, did not work on it, and did not turn it into a prayer by my efforts. This happens to us at our every step.

It turns out that our only work is to replace our egoistic needs with the aspiration for bestowal. The main thing is to obtain this desire, and all the remaining corrections will come from Above. Each time this desire is disclosed, it should be scrutinized at all four phases. When through my efforts, I reach the fourth phase, I then realize this desire and understand what it means, what I want from it, and how I can implement it. I connect in it with the Creator and make a request for Him to perform this work on my desire.

That is, when I come to the fourth phase of my work on my desire, I become able to raise the “Reflected Light” (MAN) out of it up to Keter. And if I reach such a request, this means that my desire was correct, it was scrutinized.

And all the prior requests were deceitful and false because the need for bestowal and a true desire for it were not revealed to their full depth in them. The connection with the upper force did not appear there to request only one thing: the revelation of the property of bestowal within me. Namely, it is called the revelation of the Creator by the creatures, and not various fantasies in which people imagine the Creator as a force existing outside of us.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/26/2011, Shamati #213

I Am My Own Worst Enemy

A question I received: Who is a person’s worst enemy in the spiritual work?

My Answer: The worst enemy is the person himself, his qualities, which are opposite to the Creator! They are revealed to us gradually, to the extent that we can oppose them. Otherwise, we would be paralyzed and unable to do even a single inner or external action. Therefore, the concealment is revealed to us incrementally, showing us that we really do not exist as some individual!

A small piece of truth is revealed to me only to the extent that I am able to hold onto the Creator. In regard to all other thoughts, desires, and qualities, I am not shown just how much I am controlled from above. It is instilled in me that I seemingly determine everything on my own. In other words, only gradually is it disclosed to me that I actually do not exist – I am just a puppet, whose strings are being pulled!

However, to the extent that I am able to annul myself before my environment and the Creator, and use my freedom of choice, I am granted independence. An opportunity is revealed to me to build more and more minor parts of my independent personality – until I ascend in all my magnitude. This means that I will exist in adhesion with the Creator – in the opposite desire, but in the same intention.

It turns out that we never come out from the authority of the Upper Force, but progressively the concealment diminishes according to our willingness to adhere to the Creator. It is as though a curtain draws apart in front of me. At first I am in pitch darkness, where I think that I exist and have independence. To the extent that I will be able to tolerate the fact that I am helpless, to endure this inner blow, this shame, and to adhere to the Creator, the curtain will be drawn apart more and more for me, and the concealment will fade.

Everything depends on my sensations. The state itself does not change – only my perception changes.

Stop Looking At The World Through A Torn Curtain!

Question: What sentence can I write in front of me in capital letters so that every time I get distracted and my thoughts wander, I could come back to it and refocus again?

Answer: Imagine a state that is worth constantly aspiring to, and describe it so this sentence would immediately remind you that you perceive reality as divided and broken up into different parts only because you are inside of egoism.

As soon as you discard this view through your ego, everything becomes a single whole. It’s like you are looking at reality through a curtain that has small holes in it and what you see seems to be made up of separate parts. But then you remove this curtain from your eyes and all of reality turns out to be one.
From the 2dn part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/28/11, The Zohar

The Joy Of The Long Awaited Encounter

The reading of The Zohar can be compared to a long awaited meeting with a person you love, someone you wished to be closer to. When the two of you finally meet, it doesn’t matter to you what exactly he is saying. The most important thing is that while being next to him and hearing his voice, you feel your closeness. The actual words are not important. Let him talk. You don’t even listen to them that closely. Through the words, you want to feel how you come closer to him and feel him more.

And it’s the same with The Book of Zohar. All the different words and stories that are written in it seem to confuse us, but then, we understand why this is written there: It is because all of it are names of our connections. But I don’t care about what is written in the book exactly, what it is talking about. What matters is that I am close to it at this time. Because I rejoice at being connected with it, I don’t really pay attention to its words. The most important thing is that we are close.

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/27/11, The Zohar