THURSDAY: TIFERET-TIKKUN CHATZOT תקון חצות – LESSON WITH RAV MICHAEL LAITMAN
READING: between after midnight and sunrise of Thursday.
Rabash. What Is, “There Is Nothing that Has No Place,” in the Work?. 20 (1991)
Morning Lesson June 27, 2023
Transcription is made from simultaneous translation, which leaves a possibility for differences in the audio.
Part 1:
Rabash. Article No. 20, 1991. What Is, “There Is Nothing that Has No Place,” in the Work?
Reading Article. (00:56) “Our sages said, “Why is the Creator called ‘Place’..?”
1. R. (31:48) Of course we can add here more and more and more because he took a great part of man’s spiritual life and we need to learn how to get through it until we acquire the desire to bestow we incorporate in it, we arrange our entire view of the world in the connection between us and with the Creator and this is how we advance. Okay.
2. S. (32:42) He writes that we have to work on the right line, meaning in order not to be cursed. It’s not clear if a person has to work on revealing how much he lacks wanting to bestow. How does it not cancel this deficiency when you justify the Creator and praise Him?
R. We will come closer to it and we will see. I don’t have enough words.
3. S. (33:18) He talks about a person needing to be in gratitude and joy while in Lo Lishma and also when he enters for Lishma, the joy in the work is taken away from him he should also be in joy. So what is the difference being in this joy and that joy?
R. First of all, the fact that he has connection with the Creator that is clear that one way or another he is aimed at the Creator either face to face or face to back. It doesn’t matter how but he has connection with the Creator. And that’s why he tries to imagine himself in connection and the forms of connections are not that important to him and the sign for it is that he should always be in joy. He is always in joy. He is happy because the connection is present, the direction is there, the environment holds him, purifies him all the time and he has nowhere to fall seemingly.
S. So that’s what’s common to the two joys of Lo Lishma and Lishma that there’s always on the path?
R. He sees that he, yes, he faces forward, facing forward.
4. S. (35:13) What is rewarded?
R. Rewarded means that he receives from above this power to advance in order to bestow.
S. What does it mean when he’s rewarded with a car, he’s acquitted at court, what does it mean he was rewarded?
R. He’s rewarded, it depends.
S. What depends on a person to be rewarded or not rewarded?
R. It does not depend on him that’s why he is rewarded. A person has to put in the exertion with everything he has got with all his might and if he’s rewarded whether or not the Creator brings him closer, that’s not the result of how much effort he has put in; rather he is rewarded. Otherwise it would not be in order to bestow, otherwise it would be for the sake of some profit, some gain.
S. This connects to labor and did not find and did not believe, etc.?
R. We don’t need to tie the result to a certain winning or reward. If we receive advancement in the work it is a gift from the Creator; it is always a gift.
5. S. (37:10) To begin a prayer with gratitude there is an advice here, and if I don’t feel gratitude I should remember some moment of good connection with the Creator in the past? So he writes, it doesn’t matter what a person enjoys as long as he enjoys it and then I remember this and this will help me begin with gratitude. So my question is: If it doesn’t matter what a person enjoys, can I take a moment when my will to receive enjoyed, let’s say, my favorite team won a cup, won a trophy or something, won the championship, can I take something like this or do I need to take something from the desire to bestow?
R. It all depends on you.
S. I want to reach bestowal, can I thank the Creator in my prayer of wanting to bestow, thanking for something that my will to receive enjoyed?
R. But seemingly the obstacle on the path if the will to receive enjoys and He places an obstacle before you.
S. So why does he write it doesn’t matter what a person enjoyed as long as he enjoyed it, meaning what counts here is the joy at least according to the definition here?
R. I don’t remember what he’s writing this about.
6. S. (38:60) Rabash writes at the end of the article first he has to begin with work to bestow and not wait until he comes to Lo Lishma because a person can remain in that state forever. What is that state of still being in Lo Lishma and not waiting that I will reach Lishma, to begin the work of bestowal, it is not clear?
R. We need to start with the work of bestowal regardless of the state you are in.
S. Even before Lo Lishma?
R. It doesn’t matter whether you are exactly at Lishma or halfway to Lishma, in the work of bestowal. We can begin to work whenever you see, as it is written before you.
7. S. (40:15) A simple conclusion comes from this article that a person should believe that, ‘There Is None Else Besides Him?’ That there is One governance which not only governs but cancels his authority, his own authority and to come to Him being Good and Does Good,’ and it connects sort of things?
R. Yes.
S. When a person reaches it he is in a new degree and then again all those fine tuning is taken away from him and he has to retune himself, is this our path?
R. If this is how you understand that’s also good.
8. S. (41:15) Normally tastelessness in the work is because we feel far from the Creator, we feel we are not serving Him and here the advice is to be happy about it because precisely now he is working for the Creator. But it is impossible to fill your serving the Creator if you have no taste, so what do you do?
R. Because if you have taste then maybe you are working for the taste because you feel taste.
S. And when there is no taste you feel you are working incorrectly or that you are far, maybe I should correct myself?
R. You need to look for a different reason not according to the tastes.
S. So how do you advance, what’s the indication, I just have to cling to the group and there’s no place for..?
R. You are speaking correctly. If the taste is lost then a person doesn’t know how to advance because he lacks the discernment, the greatest the most correct egoistic discernment for how to advance but it is always, say a dog always sniffs where to go and a person is this way but if it is lost he needs to go over to bestowal according to the higher sense. He has to seemingly clothe in the Creator and try to feel how can he give more pleasure to the Creator.
S. A person is working in order to bestow upon the Creator, does he have a flavor or not?
R. He does, certainly, He has taste, flavors; these are already spiritual flavors.
9. S. (43:29) How can a person attain a degree of having a desire to bestow? How can the will to receive become a desire to bestow?
R. Only through the light that reforms, the upper light shines to a person on his will to receive and his will to receive begins to change the intention; he is ready to work in order to bestow. This is called a miracle. The miracle of the exodus from Egypt is a miracle because it is truly above nature.
10. S. (44:33) It is said here that if a person asks for something for himself and he’s not rewarded, I have to bless the Creator and remember that the Creator has given me already and work from this. How do I thank the Creator correctly in the beginning of the work?
R. A person needs to thank the Creator for every moment of his existence and together with that to ask him to advance closer to adhesion with the Creator, to do it in the ten, inside the group, then surely he would advance correctly. Otherwise he can deviate from the path and he won’t even know about it. He will begin to feel that he is right, he’s righteous and so on and so forth.
S. And the place of the blessing: is it in the ten?
R. Yes, the blessed place is in the ten, when he is connected to everyone, he’s holding everyone, he cares about everyone, worries about them and he wants to lift everyone onto his hands toward the Creator.
11. S. (46:19) How is it that we can only work for the sake of the Creator and enjoy independence of having taste in the work?
R. It works out just fine that if I give to the Creator it gives me pleasure, flavors, so I connect with the friends I connect with the Creator, we all bestow upon each other, the Creator is the center of the group, we feel it as a source of abundance that we get powers from it, and to it we give all of our efforts all of our labors and we are filled with pleasures.
S. What do we do with these pleasures?
R. We pass it onto the Creator, we fill Him.
S. How can I feel the pleasures if I pass them on to Him?
R. You feel pleasure from passing everything that you have and that your friends have, everyone together, you are passing it onto the Creator; you want to thank Him, to give back like the guest to the host.
12. S. (48:29) It is written after he reached the state of Lo Lishma and he feels taste in the work they give him an awakening from above so that he will want to do something in order to bestow. What is that state in Lo Lishma and how do you come to it?
R. We receive from above in return for the work, for the labor. I have nothing more to say.
13. S. (49:19) If we are thankful and praise the Creator before approaching Him in prayer and we don’t come empty-handed why is this called being whole or being in wholeness?
R. I did not understand. (Question repeated by translator). Because I feel that I’m being filled by what He wants to give me and my whole purpose is also to fill Him to satisfy Him and the two of us are in the state of giving and receiving. What could be better? It’s like the guest and the host. So there’s no difference between the guest and the host because each is giving the other a place, a deficiency, a lack that the other one can fill and each one satisfies the lack, the deficiency that the other one is showing. What could be better?
14. S. (50:49) It says in the excerpt that a person, even when the Creator takes away the taste from him in the work, needs to be happy but a person also has a fear that he will never get the taste again so how could he be in joy?
R. Fears, all kinds of anxieties that we have during the work, they too operate in a direction where we guard our filling more and more, our approach, our honing, polishing our vessel, this is why we also like, let’s call them the little stresses we feel when we are worried, when we look at all kinds of states that could be better or God forbid not, like a mother’s always worried about her baby.
Maybe a little more of this, maybe a little more of that, maybe I should cover him some more, as better maybe it’s called, maybe do something else for him, like that, this concern adds to the love. She does not need… it’s not that the baby needs it, it’s the mother that needs it, she needs more connection with the baby. This is how it works. Pay attention. We need this anxiety, this concern all those things that are seemingly negative we need them in order to keep ourselves on an ascent in greater and greater and greater expressions of love.
S. How to be in joy inside this feeling?
R. Well, joy of course accompanies us at that time because we feel that our deficiency and the deficiency of the Creator and our filling and the Creator’s filling truly work one vis-a-vis the other and the more I show the Creator my deficiency He too can show me the filling and the other way around. This is why we truly feel adhesion with each other here until the deficiencies and fillings connect together to such an extent – I don’t think we have words for it really – but this is already the state of completeness.
15. S. (54:16) What is the difference between work until the thirteenth age and then after the thirteenth?
R. It is not a matter of age. He explains it in “The Introduction to the Book of Zohar” that there is work before the evil inclination in a person begins to manifest and after it begins to manifest.
S. In the article it’s written that, I know it’s not corporeal age, but in the article it says that the Klipa bestows its own lights during the period until the thirteenth age. What are the lights of the Klipa that we feel until the thirteenth?
R. That we need them otherwise we do not grow. There is a very simple matter here. There is the first period in our development when we need to grow by having the will to receive within us growing, that’s it, it grows. So in this period we have several inner periods when we grow like animals, and then like teenagers, and then like children, and then people grown-ups. Through all these periods, according to the period, we can perform all kinds of activities and we can go through all kinds of states in which we can use the will to receive in order to receive because without it we will not grow, and when we come to a state we are grown ups already and our will to receive has grown and is ready for activating it, then we shift to the correction, but before that there is nothing you can do.
Even in our world we see that little children can do all kinds of things, they can break windows, they can do all kinds of naughty things to people but we don’t really look at it like that. There is not even criminal law. We do not treat them like criminals because it is a will to receive that is still growing, it is growing in strength but not in the intellect so when it begins to acquire the intellect and can monitor its will to receive then we will be able to treat it, educate it, punish it, etc.. So that is what nature is like, and you also have it in animals to some extent. You don’t treat cubs, we don’t judge them, they’re allowed to climb on their parents heads even if it’s a lion or something, they do not get any… they are not harmed in any way because of it.
S. So can we say that the work starts from the age of thirteen in terms of the degrees?
R. Yes.
S. So before that in our work on the levels of Shoresh and Aleph in our desire of coarseness?
R. Yes, he writes more clearly about it in “The Introduction to the Book of Zohar”.
16. S. (59:16) It says in the article that we need to be careful not to fall into the Klipa shell of sadness.
R. Yes.
S. What is that shell of sadness?
R. A Klipa, a shell of sadness, there are states when I seemingly lose my feeling, understanding, my good relation to my existence, to the purpose of my life, and of course we have to attribute all this to one force from which I receive life and everything, which is the Creator. So the fact that I lose my good relation, my high spirits, my vitality toward my life, this is called punishing the Creator.
S. So what is this Klipa shell of sadness?
R. When all of those forces that push me towards such states they’re called Klipa, shell.
S. And what is sadness?
R. Sadness is when a person is sad, in a place where he has to attribute all these states to his development and he can’t. He is in the state of falling.
S. So what does it mean to be aware not to fall into the Klipa of sadness?
R. Only the environment can help here. A person himself cannot, only the environment.
17. S. (01:01:05) Rabash writes to ask for something a person should be empty. Emptiness is not one of those states in which you turn to the Creator?
R. I guess he talks about a different emptiness. There’s emptiness from having nothing to give to the Creator and there’s a different emptiness, I do not want to be filled. There are all kinds of emptiness. Emptiness is when a certain vessel in a person is not showing the deficiency in it.
S. With what kind of emptiness one has to come to the Creator so that He will listen, so He will give?
R. When I have an empty place and I have to fill it with Your presence..
S. On the other hand he writes that if a person is in wholeness with the Creator this is a remedy for Him to fill his wishes. If he’s in wholeness with the Creator what does he have to ask of Him?
R. I guess he’s not still actually in wholeness but rather his wholeness is that now he probably came to the real deficiency and he understands what the real deficiency needs to be and he comes to the Creator with a request, a demand, a prayer to satisfy that deficiency, for the Creator to satisfy that deficiency.
S. When a person is in wholeness with the Creator he has no room for questions?
R. When a person is in wholeness with the Creator he has no place for questions, but well, it depends on what state, it depends on what state.
18. S. (01:03:16) You said that in order to be in joy it depends on my environment?
R. I may be in deficiency but in gladness. It depends of what I am deficient.
S. He says that I constantly have to find by myself something that good that the Creator is giving me. What does that mean? He says that we have to awaken these Reshimot, these records?
R. That what I feel, every single moment I have to find in it good signs of my advancement toward the Creator.
S. This is the meaning of being in wholeness with the Creator?
R. This is how I need to constantly look for wholeness.
19. S. (01:04:17) It repeats throughout the article the state of wholeness and deficiency, that we need both. There is also this reward that we asked about, that you have to come to the prayer to the feeling of having been rewarded. It seems like these two ends are necessary. It’s hard to hold on to both. How can practically a person bring himself to a state where he feels both this deep deficiency and wholeness at the same time, that these two ends are necessary for the prayer to be answered by the Creator?
R. I did not really hear it..
S. He writes that he has to feel the deficiency and the point of the Creator can help him, that is one on the one hand, and at the same time he must have the discernment of right which is wholeness.
R. Yes.
S. It says that if it is only a deficiency then it’s a wicked, a curse and a curse cannot be adhered to the blessed so there has to be some sort of merger between the two for the prayer to be answered?
R. The Creator can only be in one state, it doesn’t matter how you redefined it. We can be always in two states, we cannot get rid of the will to receive and therefore we need to balance it and fill it with a desire to bestow and then we feel ourselves similar to the Creator. That is why our state should be closed from several contradictory things, the will receive the will to bestow, empty, full, all kinds of deficiencies all kinds of discernments have to connect together and then we feel in them, completeness, wholeness.
S. In practice how do you hold on to these two states that are opposite?
R. Advance and see, advance and see, that is it. I can tell you an example can be only with a meal. Let’s say you have a great meal in front of you but you feel now with every little bite that you take off the plate you are destroying your appetite, although you’re filling yourself, but your appetite diminishes and because of it you feel that you enjoy less and less. That is the way it works.
20. S. (01:07:33) It describes in the article that deficiencies come to a person naturally from above, but about gratitude a person is searching for it actively awakens the records as it says. But sometimes, more than once it turns out that joy and gratitude awaken on their own seemingly; It doesn’t feel like he worked for it but it came to him from the same place the deficiency came, also gratitude came from there. What should be the attitude towards such gratitude that just erupts without a person preceding it with some work.
R. It happens. The Creator brings it.
S. It’s clear if not the person the Creator does it but what we have to be grateful for that as well or it is not considered as gratitude?
R. We have to be thankful for this too and try to learn something from it.
S. So that’s not enough, you also have to work.
R. Yes.
21. S. (01:08:59) He writes here that engaging in the Torah can lead one to the potion of life, it’s beautiful, you develop, you bestow, you reach adhesion with the Creator or the potion of death. What is that state where someone engages in the Torah and the Torah becomes for him a potion of death?
R. It shows him how uncorrected he is.
S. That’s called death?
R. Yes.
S. We are all not corrected when we approach the work?
R. No, no, no, no. It depends on how a person accepts it.
S. You say that the wisdom of Kabbalah is like a remedy for the evil inclination. It comes to advance a person but there’s a feeling that you received a remedy from the Creator and the Creator tells you listen this could be a potion of life or a potion of death. It makes you feel like you don’t feel like taking this medicine because you are concerned or unless you are a terminal illness type of patient, you’re not going to use this kind of medicine from the doctor. How not to be afraid to fall to that state where you seemingly put in the work and it doesn’t take you to anywhere good?
R. I do not understand.
S. There’s a way, there’s a method. They tell you listen, engage in this method. If you are rewarded it will take you somewhere good, if you don’t it will take you somewhere bad. With such a ticket, how will you get the confidence to go and put in the work if you don’t even know what might be the results of your exertion?
R. The results of your work will be from what you will, from the effort that you will make. The efforts you make you need to make in the group that is before you that was given to you. An area to work, a place to work, explanation, everything you need. All that you need, you only have one thing left to do. Just organize yourself and just do it.
S. I’m asking this question: Baal HaSulam did not arrange his books by saying this is for 1st graders, 2nd graders, 3rd graders. It’s a question that came up on the campus last night. A student reads such things and he says, maybe it’s not for me. My life was okay, now I’m getting on this path, I’ll take something. I’ll have portion of life or I need to annul, to bestow. A person has to come with a really big point in the heart and a really great despair of this life in order to take these steps and it scares them off at the beginning of the path.
R. It’s true that a person has to be, to despair from this life to some degree usually. When people come to the wisdom of Kabbalah, they come from giving up on satisfying themselves with what they have in life, so what. Who do you see that is happy with life? Ask about how many people take antidepressants and all the drugs that people consume every day, billions of people. A person comes to a state where he wants to know what he is living for. Can he achieve a special eternal goal in this life within the will to receive. Why is it all built this way in such degrees where part of the degrees we attain through the will to receive only. So that you will understand that you have something to gain in life.
S. Yeah, that is the answer that we gave, but a person in the beginning of the path he does not want to admit that he has nothing to get out of his life.. another trip, another vacation, another activity.
R. It is not like you have to get rid of it, but you are told that still coming to the truth in life, why we are alive, how it is arranged, how you can open it up, reveal it, know it. You have an opportunity not to be like all those wandering on the streets just passing time through life and that is it, just wasting their lives. Here you have a chance to know how life is organized.
S. We are in a special time before a convention and there’s a feeling that we need to give confidence to our friends and the whole World Kli that we are with them on the path and this is the right path. So, how can we express that confidence towards the friends that will enter the congress as one and not each one with his own states.
R. We need to see our lives in a way that it is an opportunity. An opportunity to roll over our lives just like all the rest of the creatures do, just like still, vegetative, and animal, also many people. And we have to go through life in such a way that we will feel and know how life is happening to us, who manages our lives, what he wants of us, where all the events of life come from and in what manner they come down upon us and how we can deal with them in the best, most correct way and what we benefit from in the end as already now we can talk about the end of the path and how we reach it.
We do not want to finish our life and die like animals do. We actually want to live with our eyes wide open and in this way go to the final correction to the end of life. We don’t want to go through our lives and make our lives be steps towards death and all our life that we are preparing before us how to just forget the last moment. No. We actually have to attain, what after this last moment will be now as it is written you should see your world in your life, in your lifetime.
22. S. (01:17:43) It is written that if he was rewarded or not, and it sounds like it is a gamble.
R. Well, so what.
S. So we are gambling?
R. Yes, what is the difference? You are being given a condition. Play with it. Play it. If you succeed, you will be rewarded. If not, no.
S. Is there a paved sure way towards the goal?
R. You cannot buy a ticket now for the whole life. You can’t. You have to exert every single moment in your lifetime.
S. So it’s a game.
R. Why is it a game? I would say it’s work.
S. And what keeps a person for sure?
R. The environment. Only the environment. If he builds an environment around him, it protects him. He himself cannot be certain of anything.
S. So the ten actually skips over?
R. Let’s say it’s that way upon all the disturbances.
23. S. (01:19:12) At the end of the article he wrote that if a person sees that he cannot do anything for the sake of the heavens and he has ascents and descents and the person sees that he needs the help of the Creator and the help He gives: ‘he who came to purifies is aided.’ He asks with what? And he says with a holy soul. Can you explain what this help is?
R. A holy soul. A little bit of upper light that illuminates upon a person and explains to a person also the negative things and also the positive things that are before him and in him and this is how a person sorts himself more correctly in how should we say, relative to the upper light.
S. And he says that every time that you attain another part.
R. Yes, yes.
S. Is there a way that person can discern between those parts?
R. With more understanding, more feeling, yes.
24. S. (01:20:39) The feeling of spiritual deficiency already gives pleasure. When the person feels the yearning for bestowal.
R. Yes
S. Is that pleasure already the filling of the vessel?
R. Also.
S. So there’s another pleasure, another filling. What is that?
R. That is the true deficiency within which you receive the filling.
S. So a person has a true deficiency, he feels that he’s getting pleasure that he is yearning to be more like the Creator and then he gets a pleasure from it and then you are saying that there’s another pleasure that he gets in this deficiency to be in bestowal?
R. Yes.
S. Can you explain what that lack is?
R. Of course. He has a new deficiency which is the deficiency or lack for bestowing and in that lack he already has the feeling, which he truly can bestow.
S. So he really needs to bestow in order to feel that fulfillment?
R. Yes.
S. How do you bestow from that state? What does it mean that a person can bestow here, what can he do?
R. He wants.
S. He wants what he has, he feels pleasure from wanting, now we said that beyond wanting he is able to perform an action and he will get even a greater fulfillment.
R. Yes.
S. So what is this action that he can bestow except for one thing because what can the Creator give him?
R. He does not need anything beyond that he wants to bestow to the Creator. He wants to fill Him.
S. That’s the first degree that we said that he already fills him and it gives him pleasure, I’m asking if there is something beyond that that he wants.
R. He does not receive complete pleasure because he just wants but beyond that beyond that deficiency, additional deficiencies are revealed in him until he begins to receive in them fillings from the Creator. There is the matter of the Klipot there, complete worlds of the Klipot and their fulfillments. We will learn about that. He writes about this not broadly but in the tree of life of the ARI not by Baal HaSulam but in the tree of life of the ARI it is written.
25. S. (01:24:05) He says that the main work of man is to reach the knowledge that he is lacking the will to bestow. Why does he say that this is the main work because if you think of the ten you see that you do not have a desire to bestow. Why does he say that this is the main part of the work?
R. You need to feel yourself as the owner, as responsible, as the father of the ten because from your quality, which you can truly collect them with, bind them and fill them there is no one else and this is how it is with each and every one of us in a ten.
S. So you have to add the necessity that if he won’t bring it to you so…?
R. Yes.
26. S. (01:25:12) He writes that he wants to do something in order to bestow and then the true work starts until from above he is given the desire to bestow. The question is what is the desire to bestow?
R. Whoever receives it knows what it is, otherwise it cannot be explained. A desire to bestow.
S. It is known that happiness is a result of good deeds and also good deeds bring peace to the world. What is unknown is who causes all of this?
R. Probably the Creator.
27. S. (01:26:15) I see that in the work once I try to think of the friend so there’s no taste in it but I do it because I heard that we need to do it, it’s not for my desire. Sometimes as we read here there is a reward. Suddenly I get a thought and gratitude and the thought of the friends, it fills me up somehow. Should it always be that way that a person gives an effort and the Creator just gives a thought?
R. Yes, why is that not good?
S. Because I like to do that for myself so that it would be from my own desire.
R. Do, don’t wait.
S. But it’s not working. So what can I do?
R. So at least you have pressure from this?
S. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
R. Then it’s a sign that you can succeed. It is a sign that you can bring yourself to a state in which you will have a lack both at the beginning of the work and at the end of the work, try.
S. Thank you.
28. S. (01:27:36) It’s written that when the person comes to ask the Creator for something he doesn’t have to be empty, that he has nothing but the person has to try to find something that the Creator gave him, he blesses the Creator for that. So what do we have to strike a pose to the Creator?
R. Why, you have to pose, you have to scrutinize why the Creator gives you specifically such things upon which you have to thank the Creator for.
S. But now I want to ask for something that is painful, something that is broken in me.
R. Well.
S. So if something is broken in me and I need help?
R. Yes.
S. So I don’t have this discernment that He gave me something, I don’t know what He gave, now it’s broken?
R. Then come to Him like a little child comes to you when something is broken for him and he cries and doesn’t know how to fix it. You come to the Creator that way and ask to be corrected.
S. That I understand, that is one emotion that fills the whole heart. But why do they tell me here that before I understand I have to try to find something that the Creator gave him and he blesses for that and only afterwards he can ask the Creator?
R. If you were not able to see anything good, then you would not reveal the evil and cry about it. You have to discover the two edges, the two sides. I don’t have quite the words but if we were not certain that the Creator is good then we would not approach Him to cry to Him whatsoever. You understand, so there’s no one to come to.
29. S. (01:30:05) We talked about it and then there’s a feeling that this bipolar feeling that on one hand there is great gratitude for the privilege of being in the path with a friend and so on and on the other hand, there’s great frustration and helplessness and despair but it’s a small feeling. How do you develop that?
R. Only through the greatness of the society in my eyes. Then all of these things in the correct relations are revealed and are intensified.
S. It has to reach a state that on one hand where a person needs to be as though he’s being executed as we learned in, the three conditions to prayer, that he has to feel that he got sentenced and that he will be executed?
R. Yes.
S. And in that state the person could be in a state of wholeness, gratitude, satisfaction?
R. He could be, yes, because otherwise he would not have the other pole.
30. S. (01:32:05) A person doesn’t have to come empty-handed in order to pray but find something that the Creator gave him, that he can give gratitude for. Can it be something material and not spiritual what the Creator gave me?
R. That I do not know, it is not important to me how you interpret but what the Kabbalists write they write only about things that have to do with spiritual development.
S. I hear from friends that what I’m concerned about what I feel pain about, and I see that friends don’t not see anything good in life, not in life, not in the Creator, I don’t know how to help, I don’t know how to bestow to them? As we know that a person himself cannot take himself out of prison and he says before prayer we have to be in some happiness and gratitude, so how can I help a friend with that?
R. I do not know what to advise you. I only know one thing: we need to unite together, assemble together and together decide how we are going to come to the Creator. That is the only thing we need, this is the only thing that can raise us upwards and even save us.
S. Also, when I feel in such a state that I’m closed, it’s like me one on one before the Creator hurts and I don’t want anybody to get into this and say good things and pleasant things. It is like I’m enjoying that hurt, and it is a complex state that I’m hiding between two walls, also between the friends and also the Creator. How can anybody reach me in such a state?
R. Ask from the friends. Ask from the friends.
31. S. (01:34:49) We are the will to receive, will we one day be able to live in this place of the Creator that is a place of bestowal or will we always be on that border?
R. No, we need to move to the upper Palace, to the upper Hall and to be in mutual bestow upon one another. This is what we need to yearn for and arrive at as fast as possible.
32. S. (01:35:32) He explains at the second and third division, the second division, if I understand it is not for her sake, and the third is for her sake, and he’s saying that at the end of the second division the final degree is that he falls in love with the Creator and he cannot cannot fall asleep and so on. And we learned that we enter Lishma, for her sake, every time a little bit and not all at once, that you go back to Lo Lishma and then to Lishma. So the question is, is that really the state that you fall in love with the Creator and before we enter Lishma, is working no taste.
R. It could be this way or that way, it all depends on the measure of connection between the person and the group.
33. S. (01:36:41) Usually we have a tendency to search for a way to justify ourselves in the Torah. Is that a potion of death?
R. No, it’s not a potion of death. It is usually a certain kind of childish tendency.
S. But it is a desire to justify a will to receive?
R. Okay, yes, yes but that passes along the way.
34. S. (01:37:18) Is the sensation of gratitude, no matter what the situation is that bestowal?
R. Let’s say that yes.
35. S. (01:37:45) Rabash is describing transitions between states and each transition is by different types of light and that is how we are activated. So my question is, how can a person in the ten take that and bring the ten all those feelings of changes in order to help the ten advance and pull them ahead? Is there different work compared to every light and every change of state?
R. Yes.
36. S. (01:38:20) A friend is asking when she has a taste in the work, what should be the right attitude between man and the Creator in order not to receive it in the vessel of reception?
R. Again.
S. When the person has taste in the work, what should be the right attitude towards the Creator in order not to receive that taste in the vessel of reception?
R. He needs to think about whether he’s receiving it in the right vessels, in the vessels of bestowal; how he answers, how he replies to the Creator just like the Creator turns to him? The main thing is if he does it together with the friends so that he will keep himself from receiving in order to receive.
S. How can the ten help a friend that has no taste in the work?
R. Try to hold her close to you for the time being, but again don’t follow her, but rather let her incorporate in the group.
37. S. (01:40:04) We can reach a request towards the Creator as long as we do not see our flaws. So how can we discover and be aware of our flaws in order to reach the right demands towards the Creator?
R. This is only if we connect between us and the group, and we want to help one another then we will quickly realize that we do want or don’t want and what calculations are between us and so on. It really advances us. It is very advanced; it’s not pleasant, we go through many unpleasant states but it advances us very quickly. This is what I recommend to do. Meaning we enter a state for a very unpleasant period of time in which we are truly connected to one another in a powerful strong connection, and want to be dependent on one another, and we connect with one another, and then we rub very well against each other, all of us, and by that we feel that advancement. We can feel the advancement; It’s like when you are cooking something you throw all kinds of things into the pot and you start to cook and cook and cook these components that are in the pot, and this is how we need to tolerate ourselves as we are being cooked this way, but it causes all together for us to receive the correct vessel.
38. S. (01:42:33) I have two questions that came up in the lesson, the first one is you said that each one in the ten has his own uniqueness and I’m asking myself why we do not feel, if I felt my uniqueness that my ten needs so much, so I will have more motivation and I would invest more in giving them from my uniqueness, so why is that concealed?
R. It is not concealed, it’s just not being shown to you. The group is not arranged correctly, it’s not disclosing to each and every one, the extent of which it needs each and everyone. It is all the deficiency that is in you.
S. Okay. How do you recommend to show each one how much we need them, what to tell them how you contribute, how much you…?
R. Even that, yes, yes, yes.
S. And what else?
R. Start with that.
S. I have another question: Even a person that is not in despair from life can attain the purpose of life and advance towards it?
R. Without despair from life. It is very difficult. But if he is in the right environment then he gradually gets those discernments from them.
S. Is it right to bring the fact to every person, to all humans in fact, that there’s a purpose in life, that there’s a great reward in this life? Is that alright to bring this notion to everyone?
R. Yes, in our times, yes.
S. And what should they do as a result of that knowledge?
R. I don’t know, you’ll see. Maybe they will beat you up since you are bittering their lives.
39. S. (01:45:17) I wanted to ask about the first division if I may, he writes that in the seventy years of work divides into four divisions and in the first division he says that he wants to attain the whole corrupted will to receive and he discovers the four worlds of ABYA which are impure. And he writes, if we don’t have that, if you won’t discover it you won’t be able to correct it. So only a person reveals it or the whole ten?
R. No, It’s not every person and not the whole ten, it’s all in all, kind of revealed in this way.
S. What does that mean?
R. It’s not that a person who enters spirituality, first of all he discovers all the worlds of impurity, it’s…
S. No, he discovered shells or?
R. Well, the world of Tuma’a, impurity are Klipot, shells.
S. The will to receive in order to receive, a person discovers it or the whole ten?
R. No, the person.