NETZACH: TIKKUN CHATZOT תקון חצות – LESSON WITH RAV MICHAEL LAITMAN
Lesson on the topic of “The Approach to Studying the Wisdom of Kabbalah”
Morning Lesson May 22, 2022 Transcription
Transcription is made from simultaneous translation which leaves a possibility for differences in the audio
The Approach to Studying the Wisdom of Kabbalah – Selected Excerpts from the Sources. #23
Reading Item 23 (00:25)
1. Rav’s Introduction: (01:27) Yes, we must always remember that we are created beings and the created beings can attain something only out of its opposite, the difference between the two things. We cannot be only in one of them but rather we must always have also the feeling of the other side as the advantage of light out of darkness. Therefore we should be concerned or we should pay attention to the falls and descends and disappointments. They should serve for us as a basis as the correct discernment towards an ascent, towards rising, and not to be afraid or ashamed of all of these bad states, the states of weakness. But rather to the contrary as it says the advantage of light out of darkness because the light in it reforms one. When does the light come? When we are able to rise from a descent to an ascent, then the light performs this action. This is why all of our work is not to forget about the fact that we exist between two states, between the bad and the good, between darkness and light and this is how we should constantly hold ourself to realize that only in between the two we can exist and determine our state and feel others.
Therefore as much as we rise we rise on two lines, the evil inclination with a greater ego and also with the good inclination rising above this ego and therefore we rise to a greater egoistic desire and above it we rise to an altruistic desire, bestowal, love which is greater. In this way with these two desires we go from state-to-state and this is why we have work in the Torah. That we need to see our ascents, how do we do it, how do we help each other because without mutual help we cannot go through the degrees, and the most important is the first degree. Why is that? Because in it we learn how much we depend on each other and we’re not capable of doing on our own even one step at any stage in the ladder unless the friends are doing these things for me and I am doing it for them and with one alone it’s impossible for him to carry out this ascent. Well I see there no questions about that for the time being it is all clear and the rest of it will be will become clear along the way.
Reading Item 24 (05:09)
2. R. (05:36) This means that all that we need to do is called Torah and Mitzvot. Torah is the upper light that performs the change in us it elevates us each time to a greater will to receive and also a greater will to bestow upon the greater will to receive. And in this way through the upper light we step on the left and on the right, on the rungs of the ladder like that. But we have to understand that each and every ascent includes two. The revelation of the bad must be there and then coming out of it is already the revelation of the good, and both of them have to be on the same degree. First we discover the bad and then above the bad when we overcome it then we discover the good and in this way each and every time we attain these forces in creation. The bad force that the Creator created is the left side, and it we start from the left, then we continue on the right. Left, right, left, right, this is how we do.
At first there is the revelation of the bad the revelation of our true nature and only after we understand who we are, what we are for the time being, when it is revealed in a sufficient manner than we truly begin to ask, to cry out, to demand to rise above our nature since we cannot tolerate it and when we can no longer tolerate it then with our demand we are rewarded with help from above called the reforming light. Then we get the good inclination. And the good inclination when it arrives above the bad inclination, when it covers it then in such a way we begin to rise on the right side of the degree and then it’s left, right, left, right, so that each time the left and the right together are considered one degree on the ladder. Through such ascends we need to see ourselves each and every time, meaning each and every moment I need to depict myself, to locate myself, to find myself either on the left side or on the right side; but that I am in some direction of ascent because the left too is an ascent. From the fact that a greater will to receive is revealed this is nevertheless my ascent on the ladder.
3. S. (08:51) Here according to the excerpt it says that adhesion with the Creator can be attained through Torah and Mitzvot and eventually we come out of self-love and we reach love of others. Is love of friends and adhesion with the Creator, are they the same?
R. Of course these are stages in the same direction, in the ascent and as much as we disconnect each one from himself by engaging in connection between us, and the connection between us pressures us and it compels us and it brings us out of self-love, then by that we rise above ourselves. And from that state of rising above our ego we can already begin actions towards the Creator, and this is what matters. This Is how we rise and therefore there is no possibility to be aimed towards the Creator if we’re not aimed toward a connection between us and specifically in the connection between us we can depict our ascent towards the Creator.
If we wouldn’t have friends I wouldn’t be able to distinguish between any two states but rather specifically through the connection with the friends, at least with one friend let’s say. There were states in history where Kabbalists were only in pairs, where each one could find for himself only another one. And in that way, in the connection between them they were able to detect states towards each other and to rise. But if it would be only one person and the Creator, one Adam, and the Creator wouldn’t break him into pieces, into many human beings then that person, that man would have no ability to exist and to rise from the degree of the beast to the degree of Adam, similar to the Creator.
4. S. (11:32) You said now that each and every second we need to check where we are, on the left side or the right. How to check it?
R. It is precisely towards the friends towards the friends. We have no other indication but only towards the friends of where are, up, down, right, forward, backward, it does not matter. All of these directions we can locate ourselves only with respect to others.
S. Let’s say, this moment I am hearing you, I’m seeing the friends. I can’t know where am I, left or right?
R. You should start to become incorporated between them, between us so much so that you will disappear between us, will dissolve between us. And in that way you will find the first point, the initial point of your correction, when you are like a drop of semen inside the womb, when you are inside the group. Later on you will already start to perform all kinds of actions of connections, gradual ones, deliberate ones through your efforts towards the friends and you will see what are you adding to that state when you were disconnected. And in that way you will learn how you can acquire relations with the friends, new ones, new relations with the friends and what does that add to you. This is considered that you are beginning to build your soul. And when you would start to build that you will see how much you will need the Creator because you are actually doing it for Him. Meaning not exactly for Him but in order for Him to help you in the right construction, to connect these desires that you gather from the friends into one desire.
So you will need the Creator in order for him to connect these desires in one heart and then you will build from yourself the degree of a man, as in one man in one heart and you will already be incorporated with that. That way you will discover the process, you will discover the process that we need to build and each time you will want to advance and you will realize that there is no choice, you have to become incorporated with them and in order to become incorporated with them you have to subjugate yourself before them and to perform all kinds of actions of subjugation. They don’t have to be external all even through if it’s external it also helps and works. But inside when you constantly start to feel yourself as lower, more lowly, more dependant on them, opposite that, in between you will sometimes feel pride and that your ego is rising, etcetera.
Because it is impossible to advance only from one side, only on one leg, it has to be the left and the right or as in a wheel when we say that one side goes back but the other side goes forward, and this is how we will advance. In that there are many manners of advancement and the most important is not to despair, not to leave and not to follow whatever your mind tells you, the mind alone is simply a beast. But rather we have to reach a state where the most important thing for me is annulment. This evil inclination that the Creator says I have created the evil inclination, it is in order for us to annul it, to annul the evil that is in the inclination, in the desire and instead of it we will invert it into a good desire, a good inclination and then we will resemble the Creator on that same degree, in the same world, in the same state, in the same reality, above all of life and death and all the definitions that we have now. We have to aim ourselves to eternal life and this is in bestowal, in love, in coming out of our present state, coming out of our ego. Okay?
5. S. (17:15) Why is it the left line considered the advancement when the Creator grows my will to receive and doesn’t allow me to feel the greatness of the friends, importance of the path or importance of the teacher?
R. Apparently you’re not responding correctly to whatever he has established in you, what he has prepared in you or maybe you did correctly but you need to advance but once again he’s advancing your egotistical will to receive he’s showing how far you are from the friends and the Creator, each and every moment in our life we get help from above. However the question is, how much we detect these things and work with them correctly but each and every moment we get an awakening. It does not depend on the Creator it depends on us, whether we’re capable of advancing before we are awakened to the next state then it comes immediately.
Our problem is that we in every step along the way we stop and we want to rest and we want to sleep and to invest ourselves. We’re willing to give up on everything as long as we can be addressed, that is our problem, the evil inclination stands here and starts explaining to us that we are okay, we are right, we are advancing already, we don’t need to add and so on. Baal HaSulam writes about this in his letters that we nevertheless must not believe what we feel of ourselves because what we feel of ourselves for certain comes to us from our beast.
6. S. (19:45) Can we subjugate the left line, repress it if you feel there is nothing happening in the ten?
R. We have to be in one of two states, because there is no middle, the middle is built out of these two states, it is either left or right. Just how you walk, you stand on one leg only for a moment until you change that state but actually it’s either left or right leg and then out of choice, you must be in one of them. This is how we also need to be in our work to constantly try to somehow fix, to ourselves or locate, discover for ourselves what is the state that I am in but each and every state has to be as exiting the previous state and entering the next state.
S. It turns our the time of left or right can feel like new feelings?
R. This depends on the person, how much he is connected to the society and going forward with the friends, we nevertheless need to somehow cause movement, general, collective movement. I always need to think about the group, how he advances and I along with them. Specifically advancing with them I support them, only in such a way is this possible to advance towards the general Kli, the 10 Sefirot ,the Partzuf of the Soul otherwise each one of us is only the part of the soul and we cannot feel what is happening in the entire system of the soul. This is how we advance and therefore of course the more we will advance, we will feel in each and every state that we are advancing forward but along with that we nevertheless are still behind, lagging behind. Each and every state includes two, it depends on how we approach it, how we detect it, how we work with it.
7. S. (22:57) The question from our friend, how do we know that we have risen above the ego at the end of the day. I see I am fighting for myself. How can I use my ego for love?
R. Without the ego, we would not reach love, specifically when I detect my ego, how much I love myself then I can rise above it in my relation to myself and my friend. Here I can already measure how much the friend is important to me, how close he is to me and this is how we need to advance. That is necessary for us to, even in our own life this is how we can see ourselves, how close we are to the family, to the children and also according to how much we’re able to make concessions on ourselves, consider for their sake.
This is actually all in all exiting our will to receive and this is why we’re built in such a way, that we have to be in families with children, with parents and we need to we have to be in advancement specifically out of criticism, monitoring, checking how we are in relation to each other because we have no measurements towards the Creator. Only out of that we can understand where we are with respect to him, all of the relations between us that are built in this way, in our life, a person with his family, a person with his friends. We can reach from that what is the person with the Creator, otherwise we have no possibility to build any kind of relations or measurements or actions between us and the Creator. This is why it says from the love of people to the love of the Creator.
8. S. (26:07) We hear there is a right line and the left line, there is the vessel, the reflected light before all of that you said you first have to build in the intention, if we lack intention we can despair?
R. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m sorry I don’t know what you’re talking about. We exist in our will to receive and we want to locate the will to bestow, what state it is in and how do I advance from my state to a higher state, a spiritual state.
S. But do we first need the intention?
R. This is called the intention that I want to rise from my will to receive, my present one, to a will to receive which will be more in order to bestow, with greater bestowal.
S. But in the same way I do not distinguish between left and right, who am I?
R. You have the friends, you have the group you can check if there, you can locate and arrange it in that way, to advance. This is why a person does not exist alone but rather the Creator shattered man, Adam, into many people so that they will be able to discover themselves in relation to the society and to build the right relations through the society.
S. We are talking about how in the group in the tens we have the attitude of 23 and a half hours to be on the right side and half an hour to be on the left, and then the individual work of the person, what should happen there, how to appreciate my state individually, how to value that?
R. How is it possible to value if it’s not on the individual aspect one doesn’t see anything, one can see a state clearly.
S. That’s a question that person doesn’t even have an opportunity to see it, only in the group?
R. That’s right, that’s right, now you know we can only detect ourselves only in respect for the group, not each one with respect to himself. Inside myself I have no friends, no change of my states between them or them for the worst and better in different directions. I can say anything about myself. I must be in an environment, I need to be in a group and only in respect to them do I build and position myself.
S. You said before that we need to be either on the right or on the left, if this attitude exists that you have to be more on the right than on the left is that correct to look at this way?
R. We have to be constantly more in the quality of bestowal that’s called right and only half a day I can be in criticism which is called the left, that is also not for us, forget about these conditions. Baal HaSulam writes about this is not for us as we need to be concerned how to connect without any differences between us, without any conditions but rather be constantly connected in mutual bestowal once we locate that state then with respect to it we will start to measure all the negative things on the left line.
9. S. (30:50) What is the remedy of the Torah, what is the life of the Torah?
R. The remedy or the virtues, the lights which comes to us while we engage in bestowal, in coming closer to the friends, to the group and to the Creator then by that we draw from above the reforming light which is a light of bestowal and that is the remedy.
10. S. (31:45) How do we escape the judgment of the friend and bad thoughts towards them?
R. Through mutual support, through mutual Arvut that’s one thing. Second is that we understand that all of these negative things come from the Creator, that is the second thing, so we have two. So the Creator awakens in us the evil inclination in order for us to turn to Him and correct the evil inclination through the good inclination that we will demand and get from Him. This is how we will advance. So everything seemingly is before us we just need to locate the direction and constantly walk in that same direction and the steps will always be in negative, positive, negative, positive, minus, plus, left side, right side. There will be distancing between us and nearing between us. And this is how we will advance, left, right. And we shouldn’t be afraid but rather we should know that otherwise we cannot walk, we cannot get closer to the purpose of life.
11. S. (33:32) I have this question. We read that in the Torah there is the reforming light. There are other Kabbalistic texts that contain light. The texts of these Kabbalists where there is less light or no light, what is the remedy in the text which includes light and other texts don’t have that?
R. There are those that are that are closer to us and those that are farther away from us and it also depends on the period of time when the Kabbalists were living. Some texts may be more philosophical, there were some periods of time where the texts were more related to history, to all kinds of such things. It depends on the external expression of the message. Nowadays we need a greater force and influence of the light on our desire, it has to be more intensive and direct and therefore we are engaging in texts that are closer to the truth, that are more revealed. Because this is our time, the evil inclination becomes more revealed and we against it have to position the bad force and the good force so that they will work on our desire, on our inclination and give it validity, strength against the Creator and then strength for the Creator. And in between the two of them we will advance on the middle line until we detect it.
S. So it’s more about the topic than how the text is built?
R. It certainly depends on the expression. The texts of Kabbalists, sometimes we can’t quite study them. It’s according to a time Rambam or even the Torah, we’re not able to truly extract the method of our correction straight from the Gemara, or the Talmud, the Babylonian or Jerusalem Talmud or other excerpts and these are very important manuscripts, very strong ones however for our time it is not quite suitable. The moments that Kabbalists express themselves in the style of the ARI’s Etz Chaim, the Tree of Life and Baal HaSulam later wrote the study of 10 Sefirot as an interpretation for the Tree of Life; so we have no vessel or no means which is more important than that. And especially as he writes that we use all of our spiritual work of Baal Shem Tov and the spiritual style of the ARI. This is actually what we have today.
12. S. (37:28) When it’s revealed, its accompanied by the feeling of helplessness, lack of success. How to come up with the right attitude towards the revelation of the evil so together with the unpleasant sensations we will feel there is an opportunity here?
R. We need to be ready so that the revelation of evil is an opportunity for an ascent and not in any other way. That nothing is revealed except out of the broken state so that we will feel it, so that we will know what it is that we have to correct, and what is it that we have to run away from, and against it where do we need to reach. So I don’t think that the revelation of evil is truly the revelation of evil, it’s the revelation of the means by which to reach the Creator. Otherwise we would never be directed towards Him because our will to receive, our nature is entirely egoistic. How would we locate anything which is not against our nature? There is no such thing. The moment that the Creator created the evil, so we need to be grateful for it, that we have a certain discernment with which to reach Him, the Creator. This is called help against him, this is how we advance and if we would only be incorporated in the Creator in what is good, then we would be like cells, we would be alive but without any development, let’s say like a cell inside the womb, no development.
S. You said to be prepared in the beginning, we have to be prepared for the evil that is revealed. The question is if we would be prepared would we will feel this is an opportunity here?
R. Yes, if we build for ourselves the right environment then immediately according to this environment we will start to get from above the means for assembling the right life, assembling the group and putting together our advancement in order to build the system of the soul.
13. S. (40:17) You said that our entire work is not to forget that we are between the two states, the good and bad, the darkness and light so how can we come to complete awareness for our work in the ten?
R. Our goal is to feel all the friends, that they truly become incorporated in my desire. This is called to be as one man with one heart and in this desire we discover the Creator because we have build the vessel for his revelation. This is our goal and this is the state that we should advance to. That is called the good. Now if I don’t yet feel that I’m in this good then I have to perform actions in order to reach it, that’s all.
14. S. (41:19) It is easy to identify the bad the evil but can you explain what Kabbalists mean when they relate to the good in order to rise above it?
R. Yes, the opposite of the bad is the good. The good is when we build between us such relations as it seems to us that these are the relations between the Creator to us and these are the relations that need to be between us and the Creator. This is called from the love of people to the love of the Creator, from the love of people to the love of the Creator. This is the practical work that we need to do and not to run in all directions but to the contrary, each one should give an example, a clear revealed example to the others during all the hours of the day as much as possible, in any opportunity. That we have to awaken each and every friend in our entire world Kli so that they would know that we’re engaging in connection between us up to the degrees of love and then we expect that in that the Creator will be revealed. For sure it will happen but on the condition that we will reach a vessel in which the Creator can be revealed.
15. S. (42:52) You said that the way a person measures his attitude toward the friend and from them he can measure his attitude toward the Creator, the same as with the family. What correct measurements should I have with the family in order to measure my attitude toward the Creator?
R. We need to arrange such relations in our families that there too there will be some kind of advancement toward the Creator in the relations between a husband and the wife or the husband and the children. In that too a person can measure how much he is relating correctly to his household. Look the whole of the Torah begins with Adam and Eve and other such forms, images. So we need to try to be in the families in such a form that that we are building the correct connection, we’re building the correct connection. There is a reason why it says a man and his woman, Divinity, Shechina is between them and other such things. So we need to try to be nicely connected also to our our household, to our family.
16. S. (44:33) What exactly the relationship should be between the husband and the wife, parents and kids?
R. Give them as much as you can and leave for yourself all your engagements with the Creator.
17. S. (44:55) Are there any recommendations for material you can read during an ascent and during a descent?
R. There’s a lot written in the articles of Baal HaSulam. And we have no other possibility to have a more effective ascent, quicker ascent on the ladder, all the way to the end of correction except through us attaching ourselves each one of us to the friends, more and more and more.