Do Not Lose Your Connection To Life

When reading The Zohar, we primarily need to think about the intention, as if I am planning on traveling and the main most important thing is for me to arrive at the correct destination.

But at the same time I need to do many things along the way. For example, if I need to go to another city, I get in the car, lock the doors, turn the ignition on, buckle up, and drive along many streets, sometimes even in the wrong direction, until I reach the main road. Why can’t I just go straight?

But the fact is that I consist of many systems, different desires, and I need to be connected with many conditions, parts of the common system of Adam (man), which operate in two directions: reception and bestowal. The different combinations of reception and bestowal are so complex and complicated that sometimes it is completely impossible to understand how a certain event or condition can relate to the goal; for example, horrible events like World War II and other catastrophes that cannot be justified. But every action brings us closer; we just do not see how it brings us closer. For this reason, intentions, actions, thoughts, and desires can become their absolute opposite, changing 180 degrees. But, at the same time, we must keep the goal.

Imagine what would happen if you forgot where you were going in the middle of the trip! Such illnesses occur in old age. This is not just a weak memory where you get in the car and don’t remember where you are going; it is a detachment from reality that occurs all the time. Such person can no longer take care of himself; he needs to be taken care of, like a child.

We have the same illness with respect to spirituality since we lose our intention! Every moment we lose the connection with life and forget: why we live, what we have done and are still doing, and for what purpose. This is an actual illness, and we need to fight it in every possible way otherwise we are not alive! When I lose the intention, I do not live a spiritual life! I live like an animal instead of a human!

Now tell me, how many moments in your life have you spent living like a human? How much effort have you put into being human? Are you at least trying to attain it? The number of these moments equals the number of times you have let the upper Light influence you. And you still want to attain some kind of result this way? You did not even give the Light a chance to work on you, maybe just ten minutes in ten years!

And now you count time by the calendar and complain that it has been ten years, how much longer? After all, it is written that this takes from three to five years! But what were you doing all this time?

You count time according to the clock turning, but did you spin with it around one intention? You did not? Then what are you demanding?

In other words, we all have Alzheimer’s, an absolute loss of memory, and we do not even suspect it. And how can we keep a pure intention this way? This is why there is mutual guarantee! Other people come to those who have lost their memory and help them! There is no other solution. So let us agree to keep the intention.
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From a lesson The Zohar 11/25/2010

Son Of The Future World

The moment I receive the intention “for the sake of bestowal” without receiving anything in return, I begin to be called a “son of the future world”; I enter the upper world in the perception through the intention to bestow, the aspiration to bestow.

Then I begin to perceive the Light that fills me, the Light ofHassadim, in my bestowal to others (only inside the desire, because so far I have nothing to bestow), in my attitude towards them. This fulfillment pulls me away from my egoistic desire.

It does not disappear, but I pull away from it, rise above it; it no longer feels important to me, the desires of others become important to me, just like what matters most to a mother is the desire of her infant, and she dedicates herself fully to caring for him. But this is part of her nature, and we attain this attitude towards others through the Upper Light.

In this way I reveal the upper world. And as I disconnect from myself and begin to live within the desires of others without any connection to myself, I reach a state called “freedom from the angel of death,” when my desire, where I previously felt alive, no longer feels like the source of life in me, something that brings me to life. It does not bring me to life. I perceive life in the fulfillment of other desires, Kelim, because they have become mine.

Freedom from the angel of death means that my desire, even on its lowest initial level, which seems as though my body can cease living, receiving even the minimal illumination that gives it life, Kista de Hayuta, and I do not feel as if I had lost something. I no longer relate myself to it because I have acquired a different Kli, called soul.

These others’ desires that I perceive as mine are called a vessel, the Kli of my soul. And the fulfillment within these desires is fulfillment with the Light of NRNHY of my soul. There I meet the upper force, the root of everything, and this means that I attain adhesion with the Creator.

Then I begin to understand that the little sensation in my egoistic desire, with which I had begun my journey, was a mere illusion in which I needed to live and exist in order to enter this universal reality of bestowal.

The previous reality was simply imaginary, existing only in my illusion, like in a dream. But in reality it does not exist, because there is no place for desire to receive pleasure. This imaginary, made-up world disappears like a dream.

In this way we approach a different desire. And every time a person attains within theKelim of others, which become his own. And this is why it is written: “Man learns where his heart desires”; in that place, in those desires, he reveals an eternal, absolute, higher life.
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From the lesson 11/26/2010, Writings of Rabash

Where The Heart Desires…

Question: How do we ask for the Light to change us if we don’t perceive it?

Answer: It’s true, first you must have the desire, and only then can you turn to the Light.

If I wrote on a piece of paper: “I need to ask the Light!” and read it a hundred times, nothing would happen. This would become a habit; I would keep repeating these words like a broken record and nothing more.

But we are given the opportunity to change our desire with the help of our environment. After all, we exist among other people and not alone.

When I listen to them and watch them through a prism of envy, lust, and honor, all these properties that are part of my desire to receive pleasure, then I want to receive all the good things that they have, and rise even higher than them.

If they want to become thieves, then I want to become the most important, powerful, and successful thief, because they respect this.

When my environment deems it important to attain the property of bestowal, then naturally I will want to succeed in it the most, because this will become important to me.

So I can change my heart’s desire through the environment. And so it is written: “We shall do and we shall hear” because I am able to do such things that as a consequence I will suddenly desire something that was not in me initially, such as bestowing to others, deeming this to be important, somehow egoistically wishing to bestow.

After all, I exist in an egoistic society, and if this society starts convincing me that it is worth it to bestow, naturally I, just like all my friends, will begin to think that it is really worthwhile to bestow.

But at the same time, I think that this will benefit me, that I will become important in their eyes, I will be great, I will attain the Upper World, and the Creator will be mine. So bestowing it is; what matters is for me to profit. This is called Lo Lishma.

When driven by this aspiration, I still want the Light to come to me and change me, it begins to change me, and I suddenly catch a “virus” of some sort; I acquire something I did not have before, something I did not want, and I did not intend to get. I suddenly really begin to think that bestowal is something special, good, and sublime.

Where does this come from? This appears like an illness that you really did not want to have. I seriously begin to think that it is a good thing to think about others instead of thinking about me, without any kind of benefit or reward in it for me.

Naturally, I go through a sequence of changes here. First of all, I think that I should pull away from my egoistic desire to receive pleasure and that this will make me feel better and freer.

Then I begin to think that I should bestow to others, because in this way I will still acquire some kind of superiority, because in the end I will become close to the Creator, and this is also worth something.

And so on, until the Light gradually influences me in such a way that I attain a pure intention called Lishma, exclusively “for the sake of bestowal” without receiving anything in return. And I feel it; I check that I do not receive anything in return.
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From the lesson 11/26/2010, Writings of Rabash

Love Yourself (from Shabbat Page 22/8/14)

You must believe the teacher who tells you that the Creator loves you. He loves you absolutely; He always behaves most optimally, most correctly in regard to you in order to raise you. This is until you feel, God forbid, terrible suffering from this life and in your body, and in spite of it all, that this is His love, and He is suffering many times more than what you are suffering. It is like with your child. You are ready to lie on the operating table in his place if he needs an operation, God forbid. It is according to the level, according to differences in levels, that is the difference in the feeling.

From the Morning Lesson, The Writings of Baal HaSulam, Letter 2, August 19, 2014

Nothing More Than The Others (from Shabbat Page 22/8/14)

When will you begin to accept the Light that Reforms? The Light that Reforms can come only through your efforts to connect with the friends. The means for connecting to the friends must be mechanical, simple, like those things that you are ready to do. If you don’t do this, this is something else, but you are ready. This is what they gave you; they brought you to the group and said to you, “Take this,” so take it. According to these efforts, you will begin to feel how much you are included among them, that in everyone there is some kind of beginning of love of friends. When each one is impressed by the others, then he will receive tenfold. There is an article like this among the new articles, the first by Rabash, that it depends on whether you put zero or one in front of you. It depends on how a person bows his head towards the society, but in truth, it is not “as if.” It is when he tries to understand and feel that he truly has nothing more than others, that he wants the Light to illuminate this; for in truth, the society is the Shechina (divinity). If you don’t feel this, but you feel that you are higher, then you are sitting on your ego like on a sack, and I don’t want to say what is inside this sack. You are sitting proudly on this, and it is a bit smelly.

From the Morning Lesson, The Writings of Rabash, “Love of Friends”, August 18, 2014

The Power of Faith (from Shabbat Page 22/8/14)

All of reality has been designed so that you don’t forget that “There is none else besides Him,” that He is “the Good and Beneficent,” and you must relate above this reality. Together with this, I am alive and doing everything in this life in all its forms, in personal life, in social life, in all that happens. Together with this, I am found in a perception that, “Thou Hast Hemmed Me In Behind and Before,” that “There is none else besides Him.” All of this is shaped by the Creator in the perception of reality that we learn; all of this is only within us, only within us. And through this form, this reality, I want to connect to the source. If I know how to connect to the source, all that I am feeling now must be “good and beneficent,” from “There is none else besides Him.”  Imagine to yourself with these terrors, with the missiles, with all that there is, that this is an imaginary form that is being shown to you within your Kelim, and together with what you feel, you must hold yourself in “the good and beneficent” and “There is none else besides Him.” All of this that is happening, is happening within my Kelim, and I rise above them. I rise above them; I don’t nullify them, I rise above them. We must try to hold onto this, and then wait for the Light that Reforms which depends upon your efforts. You will make an effort to hold yourself correctly, and then, as a result of this, you will feel a change in perception, how you are really found up in the air. You will feel the power of faith that comes to you. Certainly here, you will feel how much you depend upon one another, need one another. It is impossible to hold onto this alone; it is only if there is an environment, an atmosphere like this.

From the Morning Lesson, The Writings of Baal HaSulam, Letter 18, August 15, 2014

The Effort (from Shabbat Page 22/8/14

You are not stimulated by the world as it is; rather you control what happens, interpreting all that happens correctly, attributing everything to “There is none else besides Him,” “The Good and Beneficent,” but, but (!) you are working on this; you don’t forget. It is as he tells you, “Before you go to the market, and after you return from the market.” This means that you don’t forget about the “good and beneficent.” You know that all of the work depends on you, on your efforts. This means that when you are working, you cannot say, “But everything is from the Creator and this is also from the Creator.” This means that essentially, what you are saying is that this is not from the Creator, it is about your effort. This is the difficulty that he wants to explain in the letter there. Before a person goes to work, he must remove himself from everything that comes. After he returns, he says, “Even if I had stayed at home, I would have earned the same amount.” That’s it. That is the effort. That is the whole idea here. Usually we give up the effort. We say, “Ahah, The Creator will straighten it all out,” and then we fall into this world, and then we begin to pay attention to what is happening here and depend on Obama, on Hamas, on everything. Even in dissemination, you must see that everything that is arranged, the Creator arranged it for you. You will bring some power of faith to every place where you are found in contact with Him.  

From the Morning Lesson, The Writings of Baal HaSulam, Letter 18, August 15, 2014

Adherence with his Rav (From Shabbat Page 22/8/14)

Adherence with a Rav means being adherent to the advice that he gives. For who is this Rav?  This is someone who has gone through some kind of way before you. This is someone who also received Torah from someone who was before him, and this is designed to transmit this Torah to others according to how it seems to the eye. So he transmits it to you. And when he transmits to you, you must take account, will you accept this Torah or not? If you accept it, he is called a “Rav.” If not, he is just called a teacher. Let’s say that in science there is a concept that the more that a student learns from the teacher, he must always criticize him, for maybe the teacher didn’t discover everything, for the science before us is something that we didn’t know. We investigate it with the mind, with emotion, within the instruments, and they could be new instruments, a new intelligence, or a new emotion. So from generation to generation, we see that the students rise above their teacher, and that is how they advance. That is how it is with every science: with everything, with every area in culture, in education, in all the sciences, the natural sciences, and so on. For criticism is constructive there, and the external teacher arouses criticism of himself; is he right or isn’t he? He must do this if he wants to raise students, every one of whom will be even greater than he. Even with us the spiritual teacher wants the students to be greater than he; otherwise he is not a teacher. It is like every person wants his children to grow further, to be even more successful than him. He is proud to say that his son has become great, even though he is himself a simple person. That is how it is, as it is written, “No person is envious of his child or his students.”

From the Morning Lesson, The Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Faith in the Rav, What Is the Measure”, August 15, 2014