An Attack On My Armored Heart

Question: How can a person feel that he is not only part of his local group, but also part of the whole global group? What concentrated attention, efforts, and thoughts are needed for that?

Answer: Our egoistic nature doesn’t let us think about real values or to feel true reality. It doesn’t let us worry or think about those that we don’t feel naturally. Some distant group that I don’t quite even know the location of, I can’t feel it close to me and can’t be the focus of my concerns. I don’t have the same deficiencies and needs that they have, so what can I do?

We have to work on this artificially according to the advice of Kabbalists about the work with the environment. We don’t feel any attraction to the environment either, and it’s only later that we begin to feel that we depend on it. If you don’t drown in the friends and don’t throw yourself into their arms, you will not be able to advance. All your spiritual development depends on them, and it’s only from them that you can receive spiritual bestowal. This understanding comes as a result of years of careful work with the environment.

We mustn’t wait for the feelings of all the groups to reach us on their own; we have to work on it artificially. This is why we were given this Mitzva (commandment): Go and start working, “Go and make a living from one another,” start connecting!

It is written, “Love thy friend as thyself,” a commandment. Is it possible to force someone to love? On the contrary, if you love, then it’s impossible to detach from this. Here, however, you are pushed and told, “Love!” How can that be?

It means that there are certain actions that we have to perform in order to attain the love of others. This commandment has nothing to do with your emotions; you are not obligated to love, but to perform an action by which you will attain this love. This action has to be performed against your will. If they were compatible with your will it wouldn’t be necessary to command a person to love.

Suppose, I serve you gefilte fish, which is a traditional Ashkenazi food, and I tell you “love it!” but you are used to Sephardic food and you are disgusted by the cold tasteless fish. But if there is a commandment, then you have to start getting used to this against your will so that a habit will become second nature.

So you force yourself to eat this fish, although you feel like throwing up. But you try again and again together with a prayer. You curse the fish but you eat; you start from totally mechanical actions. In your emotions, you curse me for having given you the fish. Clearly you have no control over your heart, but you curse me and eat the gefilte fish again and again because you are obligated to love it.

The commandment of “love thy friend,” is worse than any disgusting fish. This commandment includes all the strange and hated dishes, but after you exert yourself enough, the Light that Reforms influences you and the unbelievable happens! You suddenly begin to get used to that fish. It seems that it has a different flavor and that it’s not as disgusting as it used to be. You are not repulsed by it like before and you begin to accept it.

This is thanks to the performance of physical actions above reason, against your will, by following the advice of Kabbalists. By having fulfilled their orders and in general the orders of the Creator that were passed on to you by Kabbalists, you receive the Light that Reforms through them. Thus, you receive new attributes and begin to love gefilte fish, the friends, others, and the Creator.

The commandment “to love” has nothing to do with emotion but with actions. Now we have a chance to perform such actions in the form of an attack! There is always an option for such actions, but especially now, when the European convention and Passoverare approaching; it’s a special time that we can attack. In the next two weeks, starting today, we all rush to this attack.
[102954]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/15/13, Shamati #38

Appointed To Be The Creator’s Servant

Question: What should I do if during the study of TES I feel despair because I don’t fully understand what it says?

Answer: There is no reason to despair. We study about actions that are performed by a person who has already received the power to realize himself. He can be totally independent of himself and doesn’t succumb to the temptation to do something for his own good instead of for the good of others; he cannot make such a decision.

Then he examines and assesses himself. He can feel the needs of others, something that we cannot do at our current state. After all, checking the needs of the other has to be done neutrally and objectively in order to find out what is for his good.

It isn’t what a person actually wants; perhaps he wants a gun to shoot himself. Rather, we should check just as we check what is good for a small child. If we give a child whatever he wants, it will harm him. We have to give him exactly what is good for him and this decision has to be totally detached from my feelings and from his feelings.

In order to do that, I need to see what the goal of Creation is, what the revelation of the Creator and adhesion with Him in the current state is, and help the other advance in this precise direction. After all, this is the most important progress that he can make only with my help. By helping him, I also advance in such a way that I reach adhesion with the Creator, an equivalence of form with Him.

If I am incorporated in the group and help the friends advance a little. It means that I treat them like the Creator does. The only difference is that He (the Creator) cannot move them in the right direction, but I can.

He allows me to do so, and so it means that I am incorporated in the Creator’s work.
[103032]
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/18/13, The Study of the Ten Sefirot

Corporeal Shame And Spiritual Shame

Question: What is the difference between spiritual shame and the shame that we feel in our daily life?

Answer: Corporeal shame is egoistic shame since I don’t want my pride hurt. Spiritual shame occurs after the restriction, when I don’t worry about myself and am not ashamed of my natural attributes anymore. I worry about something that is totally different.

I must feel shame! I actually look for it in my spiritual growth since it gives me great powers. If you were ashamed now, just imagine how enthusiastic you would become, and what powers it would give to move. You would not sit so calmly and doze in your seat like you do now. You would start moving until this shame subsides. You would continue worrying about this shame for a week before you finally calmed down.

You would be ready to do anything just so as to neutralize the reason for the shame and would not calm down until everything got back to the way it was before. If a certain person shames you, you would do anything to get revenge. Some people are more hot-tempered and some less, but everyone experiences the same emotions more or less.

The question is whether I will be able to attain a state that will not affect me personally, but that I will feel shame since I don’t contribute to the society, don’t participate in it, and don’t add what I have to add or even more. This is the only thing of which I am ashamed.

If we say to someone, “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” it’s as if we showed him that he is inconsiderate of others. This is the point where I begin my correction.

So my personal attributes are totally irrelevant since it’s my animal character. Have you even seen an animal that is ashamed of anything? Have you ever met a cat that blushed because it stole some cream and got caught?

An animal has nothing to be ashamed of. But the human being in us that we begin to build feels shame. The shame is related to him, to the person who worries whether he gives to others, adds for the benefit of others, and fulfills his duty in the general system.
[103039]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/18/13, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”

Desire Is Like A Target For The Light

Question: Can we ever prove that all of the matter of creation is a desire to receive?

Answer: Ask physicists, and they will tell you the same thing, but in different words. There are several basic principles, such as the second law of thermodynamics, and there are several natural constants. If we dig a bit deeper, we will come across the concept of mass. Behind mass, there is energy, and, behind energy, here scientific knowledge comes to a dead end.

We can say that there is a force behind energy, but what is that force? How can we describe it? Scientists are trying to find these bases and we their research will be completed, drawing a line from their studies to the desire to receive, the desire to keep its existence on all the levels of the still nature, the vegetative, the animate, and the speaking.

Even if we speak about the most elementary phenomenon, it is always about its nature. We refer to something that wants to sustain itself in its form of existence. This is the desire to receive, the desire to exist. Without it, there would be nothing, not even for a short while. In this source, even time doesn’t exist yet.

So, the desire precedes everything, and, beyond that, there are different forms that it takes upon itself.

All the sciences and the wisdoms speak about what man discovers here in the framework of corporeal reality. On the other hand, the wisdom of Kabbalah doesn’t speak about our egoistic desire that is only typical of this world, but about a raw desire, about a force that is not dressed in anything yet.

Question: Can it be studied outside the wisdom of Kabbalah?

Answer: No, outside the wisdom of Kabbalah, we simply don’t have the necessary tools. We cannot build an accelerator that would bombard the desire and record its responses. It is because it is much deeper than the micro-world, deeper than the quantum effects. Therefore, you can work only with it inside yourself when you become the “area” to which the Light comes. It hits the desire, and, as a result of their meeting—as a result of the cooperation between them—different particles are created, according to which you discover the Returning Light that descends to a lower level and evokes new Reshimot(spiritual genes) in you.

The elementary schema, according to the wisdom of Kabbalah, is a Masach (screen) that begins to ascend from Tabur. In the next level, there is Zivug de Haka’a (coupling while striking), and the Returning Light descends again from one level to another, thus overcoming the difference in energy in the previous state. From there, it “throws” Tagin on the letters (“crowns” above the letters), and eventually, the differences in energy bring about differences in frequencies, differences in attributes. This comparison enables you to discern the details and put together the general picture.

It is just like a baby who tastes everything, and thus begins to know the world since taste is the main sense that he can use and rely upon at the moment. In spirituality, the new Lights that are revealed in the desire are called “flavors.” They help us learn what is going on.

So, the matter that the target the Light hits is actually me, my desire to receive. Just like scientists who bombard their targets with particles by increasing their energy, we, too, do the same thing, not with corporeal matter, but with the matter of desire, by rising from phase four to phase three, to phase two, and so forth.

Therefore, we cannot speak with scientists about such matters. Of all the sciences, physics is the closest to the wisdom of Kabbalah. We speak about concrete phenomena and forces.
[102834]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/14/13, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

Let The Most Distant Become The Closest

Spiritual fear (awe) is the fear of using something for my own benefit, even if it’s the revelation of the Creator in any form,meaning enjoying the fact that I am correcting the world, that I am bringing the Creator contentment, that I bestow like He does, and that I reach adhesion with Him.

The Creator shows me that everything depends on me and He does so with everyone. Everyone hears from Him that he is the most special of all. This is the truth. He isn’t lying to me and doesn’t try to buy me off! But I have to overcome all this great Light, and in order to do that I need to build a shield to protect me from this fear in advance.

Therefore, our work is in concealment and we have to perform many actions to which we feel no attraction by working on the connection among us. We have to make efforts in the group in advance, although I have no desire and no yearning for that and see no value in it. It isn’t only about the local group that is close to you and that directly belongs to you. It is worthwhile to invest in this group according to many conscious and subconscious egoistic calculations. But I also have to try to connect to the global vessel.

We should understand that the more distant a person seems to me geographically or emotionally, the more important he is and the more critical his influence is on my advancement than the people who are close to me. It’s like the difference between the spiritual levels; if I shorten the distance between us emotionally or physically, it will turn into an amplifier for the level of my correction.

So all those that are distant from us are very important to us: the distant groups that are far away and the individual students who speak different languages, who differ in their mentality and who live under difficult conditions so that they have to to hide from others. Each of us needs to make sure that the physical distances will not keep us away from one another, so that those that are most distant will become the closest.

In this way, we will surely build the vessel called “fear,” we will understand what spiritual fear means, and will be ready for spiritual advancement.
[102933]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/15/13, Shamati #38

The Obligation To Illuminate All Of Creation

Question: How can you contain it if you suddenly feel the Creator’s love for you?

Answer: It is indeed very difficult, there is no greater problem than to feel the Creator’s love; it simply breaks a person. So we have to be equipped in advance with the vessel for that attainment of fear by working with the friends in the group by developing mutual guarantee.

It’s for this reason that the vessel was shattered into many parts and we have to put them back together again against their will. They resist and don’t want to connect. Then as they adhere to one another we acquire the attribute of fear of the Creator. By working with the friends on the connection between us, we attain the fear of the Creator.

This is what we have to add to creation by ourselves and this is for what we live. All of creation already exists and the only thing missing in the king’s treasury is the fear of the Creator. This mission is recorded in our Reshimot (spiritual genes), and as we begin to fulfill it, we discover that it’s worthwhile to be in the attribute of bestowal and that we have to live in fear. I have to fear and to start enjoying my bestowal so that it will be completely external to me and so that nothing will return to me.

Even if I bestow and know upon whom I bestow and how much I bestow, by making an accurate calculation, I don’t need to feel any compensation. I don’t want to feel any pleasure in it, but only the actual action. Then I decide that I also want to feel pleasure and the action itself but I convey all that to the one I bestow upon. This continues until I reach phase four, which is the last phase—complete bestowal.

Everything is already complete in creation except for what a person has to add, which is fear. Imagine that you are in a big world now that is totally dark. You have to switch on the light that is made of your fear and by that you illuminate all of creation.

This fear is not to receive pleasure from my bestowal, of the fact that I manage reality instead of the Creator, of my closeness to Him, of the pleasures that He gives me, and of the fact that I suddenly discover that I am the most important person in the world.

The Creator comes to me and tells me, “I have chosen you of all the people! There is no one like you. You are the only human being in all of creation, in all of reality.” You have to be ready to accept this attitude that can make a person explode and you have to not be bought by it.

You have managed to bring the Creator contentment and feel what contentment you are bringing Him. Everyone will feel that he is special in his point and that there is no one except him out there. So we have to prepare for that in order to receive this revelation, the adhesion. Here it becomes clear that we will never receive anything in the vessels of receiving and that we have to annul them completely.

The vessel of fear annuls the vessels of receiving and is totally focused on the Creator, like a projector. Then you begin to work with the vessels of bestowal in which enormous Lights are revealed; you move to the other side and become the one who bestows instead of the one who receives: You bestow, bestow, bestow…

It’s as if the Creator appoints you to be the manager of his treasury so that you will bestow upon everyone. It turns out that now you appear before the created beings instead of the Creator. Imagine what pleasure there is in that on the part of the one who bestows that he has a chance to bestow goodness upon everyone. This is already the real work, and from this point the work with the real Masachim (screens) starts when you become like the Creator with regard to the whole world. The fear never disappears; it constantly accompanies you just like the basis of the desire to receive that remains.
[102951]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/15/13, Shamati #38

Do You Like Flowers?

Question: What does it mean to exit my body and treat the world outside me, rocks and flowers, with love?

Answer: It is about a state in which a person has already entered the spiritual world, not simply loving nature, plants, animals, and people who are close or distant to one’s self. In order to really be able to exit your ego, you were given friends, a group, and you have to use this means. If you establish the right attitude towards the group, then you will see how it can help you and take you out of yourself.

Only then will you understand who you were, what was on the outside, and why the Creator has created this world that we see as external to us. You will understand why you have a special body in this world that is meant to help you perform this exit.

Only after you begin to come out by all the external help of the good environment, will you feel that your attitude towards the still, vegetative, and animate nature is also changing. You will treat all of humanity differently since you will see everyone in the Light of bestowal and will start judging everything differently.

The ultimate goal is to reach equivalence of from with the Creator, after which you will certainly justify Him in every way; you do all that not in order to better your personal state, but because you want to bring Him contentment so that He will enjoy you.
[102819]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/13/13, Shamati #36 

Envy Each Other More

Question: Would you say that the quantity and quality of our exertion depends on our envy of the friends?

Answer: Yes, it also depends on your envy. It says, “Envy, lust and honor take a person out of this world.”

We may ask ourselves what is so good about these attributes, what can be worse and more reprehensible than losing your human form? A person who is envious can harm others and enjoys stepping on others and destroying them.

In short, we are talking about negative attributes, but they are actually the ones that take a person out of this world into the upper world. After all, they show me the real ego.

How else can I establish my connections with others if I don’t feel envy, lust, and a desire for respect? If I don’t have such attributes, I don’t need anything; I can live somewhere in the suburbs and sometimes go out shopping or doing different errands to provide my basic necessities and come back home.

But suddenly, in this peacefulness, I discover that I envy others; I want to attain the same things that they have and even more in order to seem higher than them. Then I move to live in the city and start a “career”…

It is impossible to advance without revealing my own bad attributes. We should only understand that they are “help against.” We shouldn’t block them but rather let them come out, as Baal HaSulam says, “I am happy with the revelation of the evil.”

Question: How can we combine feeling envious of the friends and requesting not for me but for them?

Answer: The envy of the friends is a great catalyst for my advancement, but advancement towards what? Towards bestowal. I don’t mean to reach greater achievements than them on the corporeal level; I want to succeed on the spiritual level. In spirituality, success depends on how much I annul my “self.” When I want to advance, I organize everything that I have received from the friends by envy, lust, and the desire for respect, and then I begin to understand that spiritual advancement is actually transcending myself.

Thus I receive a desire to ascend from the friends, but I don’t interpret it correctly: to ascend means to rise above myself, and to be incorporated with them. Thus the group is “help against”; it evokes a negative awakening in me, which I turn to positive in order to eventually return to the connection with the friends.

Here I have a problem again, the desire grows again, and I repeat the whole process…

Question: How can I aim the envy, the lust, and the desire for honor in the right direction? After all, it is very easy to justify myself in pursuing the right goal and finally fall into the darkness and distortion along the way. How can I build the internal boundaries that direct me, in addition to the teacher, the group, and the books?

Answer: You have to annul yourself before the friends. As a result of the annulment, you evoke the envy, the lust, and the desire for respect inside you; you open your eyes and begin to examine things and don’t just let them go on.

Otherwise, you find yourself in corporeal envy, lust, and desire for respect; you want to be different, to rise above the friends. But the group is built in such a way that it won’t let you fall into this. You will change in any case since the atmosphere here is special and people are dealing with inner search, and so your attitude towards the friends gradually takes on a more correct form. So even new friends here receive the right direction and aspire for the truth and not for the usual profit for themselves.

Question: But each of the friends was given the optimal conditions to advance, so what is there to envy?

Answer: I want to include them inside me. In each of them there is something special since otherwise he wouldn’t be here. So I want the same thing, this means that I want to be Adam, a human being.

The optimal conditions are not reason to relax, but rather a reason to bring the good out of everything, from all the states and the friends.
[102762]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/10/13, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”