Bold and in quotes: Original text of Baal HaSulam
Regular: Commentaries of Rav Laitman
lowercase italics: emphasized words
Capitalized italics: transliteration from Hebrew
Shamati, Article 50, Two Situations on page 78 .
There are two situations to the world. In the first situation the world is called “pain,” in the second situation it is called “Holy Divinity.”
The question is whether a person distinguishes between the states that he calls this way.
Our substance is the will to receive, so we either feel good or bad—that’s if we discern our sensation. In Kabbalah good or bad is normally called bitter or sweet. The question is: Do we feel bitter or sweet and ascribe that sensation to something so that in our discernments we can also change these definitions to practically the opposite?
Is the sensation of bitterness true and does it bring me to something that will eventually be good, or on thecontrary, the sensation of sweetness brings me to something that will eventually be perhaps bad? Thus I begin to judge my present sensation not the way it appears to me right now, but how it will ultimately bring me to wherever it brings me. The sensation that appears in the end affects what I feel right now to such an extent that the future sensation might completely erase the present sensation and bring it to practically the opposite.
Consequently there are many calculations and they are not coincidental or momentary but defined according to their purpose, or not according to their purpose but to where the situations that appear come fro m. Whatever the case may be, each and every situation can only be defined either as pleasure or as pain.
Whatever calculations happen within them and to the extent the reasons and purpose might appear (where the reason comes first and the purpose comes afterwards, and they affect my present sensation), nevertheless, that sensation can be either pain or pleasure. Because of the nature of our substance we don’t feel more than that. We either feel the presence of the Light that created the deficiency, or the absence of the presence of the Light within the deficiency that it created.
It is so because before one is endowed with correcting one’s deeds to be in order to bestow, one feels the world as mere pain and torments.
That too is a question. If we’re talking about an ordinary person, there are all kinds of situations for that person: perhaps he doesn’t feel anything, perhaps he feels pain or he feels pleasure. However, here we are talking about a person who craves from within his point in the heart to fill that point. Filling that point happens when it assumes correction (with the intention) in order to bestow and a person senses this correction as the filling of this very point. Then it’ll be pleasurable for him. Otherwise, this point will not relax or give him peace unless it is filled with its correction, the Ohr Hozer (Returning Light). We learned from the wisdom of Kabbalah that the filling is the Masach (screen) and the Ohr Hozer.
That’s why Baal HaSulam says here "one feels pains and he will not relax until he is filled." What he means is that a person feels pain because of the lack of correction in him and the filling from the correction.
Let’s review that sentence one more time.
It is so because before one is endowed with correcting one’s deeds to be in order to bestow, one feels the world as mere pain and torments.
It is because he still doesn’t have the correction that he wants, and the absence of the correction and the fulfillment is felt in him as pain. It may be that another person in his place would be filled with good and would feel and determine himself as being in heaven but because he wants corrections, he consequently determines that his present state is painful and he is in torment.
However, afterwards one is endowed with seeing that the Holy Divinity is clothed in the entire world, [When he corrects himself and the Upper Light begins to prevail in him, meaning that he discovers the Upper Light within his Kelim (vessels) according to the measure of their correction, he sees that this is the revelation of Godliness, the Holy Divinity that fills him and the entire world.] and then the Creator is considered to be filling the world. Then the world is called “Holy Divinity,” which receives from the Creator. This is called “the unification of the Creator and Divinity.”
One’s corrected Kelim themselves become forces of bestowal and what appears in them, he calls “the Creator.” But the corrected Kelim that are connected together among themselves, the correction in them is called “Holy Divinity” where the Upper Light dwells.
As the Creator gives, so the world is now occupied solely in bestowal.
How does one come to that? A person comes to that only according to the measure of correction that he makes in his own Kelim. He discovers that in the past it was like that too; that actually the world was previously filled with the Upper Light and that there was Divinity in the whole world. But before he didn’t see it and now he does. First, he was in exile from that state—that eternal state—and now he has discovered that this is the case.
It is like a sad tune. Some players know how to perform the suffering about which the tune is composed, because all melodies are like a spoken language where the tune interprets the words that one wants to say out loud. If the tune evokes crying in the listeners to the extent that each and everyone cries because of the suffering that the melody expresses, it is then considered a tune and everyone loves to hear it.
However, how can people enjoy suffering? Since the tune does not point to present suffering, but to the past, meaning torments that have already past, were sweetened and received their fill, for that reason people like to hear them. It indicates the sweetening of the judgments and that the pains one had were sweetened. This is why these sufferings are sweet to hear, and then the world is called “Holy Divinity.”
At the beginning of the article it is written that we only feel pleasure or pain. This says actually that we can feel something only from the reality that includes two discernments, Light and Kli, two opposingthings. Thatis the difference between them, appearing as feeling.
Let’s say a Kli that measures something, is measuring between two things. He can’t measure any parameter, any stream, force or pressure, it doesn't matter what, without there being something against it, something that resists. So he measures the gap between the base that is given to him by calculating between zero and what happens now.
It's the same here because we can’t feel something that doesn’t include two opposing states. A state that one resists, collides with another. Therefore if once there was a state of pain, and now we have passed that state and the state appears as pleasure, this pleasure is built on previous pain. The suffering is the foundation and one doesn’t forget it, the Reshimot remain. They only pass sweetening.
This means additional Masach and Ohr Hozer on top offormer Aviut that appeared before as broken. Then the gap between them shows us the level, the degree that we’ve attained through the correction and the level of that degree is felt as pleasure. We can’t feel the present pleasure if we do not contain the state of the pain that preceded the correction. This is why Baal HaSulam says the ‘tune’ (a person’s sensation of being filled with having the measure of pain that he could feel as today), is from within the present state of sweetening, of correction.
The gap is between this breaking that he had before and the correction that he attained afterwards. Because the present state is corrected compared to the previous one and he feels it therefore as pleasure. That’s the only way we feel the good progressive states. That’s why there cannot be a good situation without there being initially the recognition of evil, the mistakes, the sins, the recognition of good compared to the bad, correcting the bad, and rising to the corrected state.
This is why we have to go through the breaking and from the breaking we determine our states. It is impossible for a person to reach any kind of sensation that is good, pleasant and sweet if he didn’t experience a bad, broken state that he determines as pain. And that’s because we are Kelim. There must be within us a sensation that consists of two contradicting things: the Light and the Kli. Whereas in the Creator this doesn’t exist; we don’t understand how, but in Him there is only Light.
That’s why this understanding explains many things and the whole process that we have to go through, all the descents that precede the ascents. They have to happen because the minimum sensation can’t appear in us without these two opposite states that build it.
The important thing that one should know and feel is that there is a leader to the city, as our sages said, “Abraham the Patriarch said, ‘There is no city without a leader.” One must not think that everything that happens in the world is incidental...
Sensations can be corporeal or animate, if they are aimed to benefit the self or for the good of all. (Because in the end a person can accept the public as he accepts himself.) And the sensations of the speaking are not people’s physical sensations if he ascribes them to the Creator. It is not that he measures himself but he measures and feels himself according to how much he ascribes it to the Creator.
As we’ve said about the sensation of self and the sensation of the goal, that the goal, the reason and the result can completely change the sensation itself. So he should now ascribe his sensation of bitter or sweet to the Creator. What does he cause to the Creator by that sensation? How is that sensation connected to the Creator?
Therefore it turns out that that sensation might change entirely so that instead of bitter, he’ll feel sweet and instead of sweet, he’ll feel bitter. This is why every sensation must be connected to the Leader of the world, to the King of the world, because He arranges all sensations for a person.
If a person really wants to discern where his sensation comes from and where it is leading, he should connect it to the Creator. The Creator is the reason of the sensation in a person and the Creator is the result of scrutinizing a person’s sensation in the right manner. This is why if we want to determine our states, our situation correctly (which is the only thing we have) then we have to connect it to the Creator as a reason and with the Creator as the receiver of the result.
One must not think that everything that happens in the world is incidental and that the Sitra Achra causes one to sin and say that everything is incidental.
This is the meaning of Hammat (Heb: vessel of) Keri (Heb: semen). There is a Hammat filled with Keri. The Keri brings one to think that everything is Bemikreh (incidental). (Even when the Sitra Achra brings one such thoughts as to say that everything is incidental, without guidance, this is also not by chance, but the Creator wanted it this way).
Detachment of a person from the Creator is called Keri, it’s when his entire attitude to life becomes detached from the source. The person seemingly is hanging in the air, if he does not see that his state is the result and the act of the Creator, or if, examining the sensation and the intention that he wants to install over that sensation, he doesn’t see that the result is also in the Creator. All we do is that scrutiny that whatever happens to me in every single moment is what the Creator designs in me. And what I should do with what He places in me? To aim all of the elements and the sensations that are now in me toward Him. This way I connect the reason and the result to Him.
If a person doesn’t do it, he thinks that everything is seemingly coincidental (chance and Keri is the same word.) This then is called being detached from the reason and the result, from his root. Essentially, this is a person's sin. Because if he detaches himself from the reason, he can’t build his attitude towards the Creator, that is, the Masach and Ohr Hozer, the form of bestowal to the Creator, correctly. Then one is working with his desires by determining his states only according to how it is for him personally. This is called by ‘chance’ (Mikre) or coincidence (Keri).
Question: Does it matter if a person detaches himself from the roots consciously or unconsciously?
No, if a person is not in a situation where he is conscious, then he is not accountable. Accountability only begins when a person is awakened and according to the free choice, when the Creator puts one’s hand on the good fortune and says "Take this." From that moment on, a person begins to be in the work of God.
What’s the work of God? It’s as if a person is taken to work and he is told, "From now on, you have to do this and that." Then as he develops, and is given more and more chances from Above to feel and to understand in his mind and heart, but becomes detached and doesn’t want to use it, doesn’t want to make that scrutiny, he is becoming accountable. Accordingly, he is brought more and more reasons to awaken him to scrutiny, to work.
Whereas, if a person is not given that chance, then in the meantime he goes through these states like a beaten animal at the animate degree, he’s still not at the speaking degree. The speaking degree begins from the point in the heart that awakens and a person is brought to a place where he can receive the method of correction of that point.
Before that, the only calculation with him is at the animate degree. "They’re all like beasts," that's what it says. At the animate degree the calculation is only according to suffering, where one is still not given a chance to progress through the Light that pulls him forward, that reforms him but only through pain, like an animal.
Question: What does it mean to connect the sensation to the Creator?
Connecting a sensation to the Creator means to determine its reason, that what is felt now comes from Him. “If it comes from Him, why do I feel bad? Why do I feel totally good? How do I condemn Him or justify Him (the sign of justifying Him is joy)? How do I, ascribing my sensation to Him, feel happy for the future, or sad?” These are all sensations when a person connects himself to the Creator.
Again, the sensation is a test of the situation. A person does not know what his situation is. He checks the situation according to the sensation, “Whether it is good or bad? It is good or bad relative to what? Where does the sensation come from? What is that sensation for? What can I do with it? How can it be changed?” That is, (a person can change his sensation) by connecting it with the reason, with the Creator who awakens it in him, and also (examining) how he can ascribe it to Him independently, relating to that sensation in a purposeful way.
If a person transcends the sensation that he feels and begins to scrutinize and criticize it with his intellect, with reasoning and purposefulness, this is called activating the scrutiny of true and false in mind, beside the bitter and sweet which he feels. But after the scrutiny of true and false, he should check his sensation again because that's the only thing that expands in him, in the Kelim. But now that sensation will be in unison with the corrections. It won’t just be what is lacking in the will to receive or what is in the will to receive but from Whom the lack or filling is coming, and to Whom it is directed to. And perhaps the sensation will change here to its opposite without having any filling of the Kli.
Say an empty Kli is filled with Ohr Hassidim (the Light of Mercy). A person should thank Him for being deficient because now he has the possibility, by deficiency, to express his attitude toward Him. A person receives from Him the ability of the Light that corrects him in such a way that now he is filled with Ohr Hassidim and is happy with a share and doesn't need anything else. So the sensation has changed. The Creator gave one the sensation of darkness and the opportunity to think about Him, to check this darkness purposefully. Having obtained corrections and from within that darkness one can now relate to that state with love. Nothing more is required bringing about elation.
Previously there was a sensation and now too, there is a sensation. The sensation is the measurement. But is it ascribed to the Kli itself or to the Creator as the reason and the result? Either we look at what we have within the Kli or we look at how with the Kli, with that sensation, we work with it. This is why Baal HaSulam says that a person who has detached himself from the Creator is considered to be judging everything as incidental because he’s detached from the root. Then his attitude to his Kli is called ‘ Keri’ (incidental). He detaches the Kli from the reason.
However, one must believe in reward and punishment, and that there is a judgment and there is a judge, and everything is conducted by providence of reward and punishment. This is because sometimes when some desire and awakening for the work of God comes to a person and he thinks that it comes to him by chance, he should know that here too he made an effort that preceded the hearing. He prayed to be helped from above to be able to perform an act with intent, and this is called raising MAN.
In the past he worked, he studied and did all kinds of things in the group and thought about it and listened to all kinds of articles and experienced them within, felt something in them. He prepared himself to some extent and now when he falls to a certain state, it seems to him that that state came by chance, detachment. Later even when something awakens in him from within that state he is already in despair, he doesn’t understand, he’s fed up and everything. Suddenly something awakens in him and he also thinks that it happens by chance.
If he knew, he would see that everything is measured very accurately, very meticulously, every form of sensation and pain, as to how long he should feel it and in which manner. Why it should appear now precisely in this way, not in another way. These are natural laws, which balance very accurately all of these sensations. Even though a person is coarse and doesn’t feel so, there is a very accurate calculation that appears in his sensation in a specific manner, after specific actions that he performs.
A person shouldn’t take into account with respect to every moment in his life that he did something, even though Baal HaSulam says “it’s as if he made these efforts.” Every moment he should say, “From now on I received an awakening and continue it.” Because we can’t know exactly why the previous actions happened the way they did; that can never be the right calculation. Only from now on toward the next step a person can always say, “If I am not for me, who is for me.”
Yet, one has already forgotten[that he worked before and made preparations]about that and did not consider it doing because one did not receive the answer to the prayer instantaneously so as to say, “for You hear the prayer of every mouth.”
This means that we don’t transfer what happens with us from one state to another, from one instance to another. We don’t connect the situations to the Creator. If we connected every moment to Him, then all of these moments, all the situations would connect because it's a succession. If we don’t connect it to Him, then we have detachment between the states because there is no one through which we can connect. Because what happens to us, happens only through the Light that goes through all of our desires and all the Aviut in them and gradually awakens every desire from light to heavy and thus awakens Reshimot. It’s like a spiral we draw within us.
If a person was able to be constantly connected to the Light, to the Creator that awakens him and all of these elements that build every situation in him, then he would understand the reason and thus he wouldn’t feel all these situations as incidental. But the minute he’s detached from the Creator, it’s considered that he has already distinguished between the two states and the connection between the situations is only through the connection to the root.
Still, one should believe that the order from above is that the response for the prayer may come days and months after he prays.
We don’t know the whole system of Adam ha Rishon where each action operates; how much it awakens other desires, souls and actions and how it should come back to us so that we use our Kli again to once more connect to the whole system and to the Creator through it. All of these things are completely hidden from us and that’s why we can’t clearly, realistically follow them, we can’t discover the system.
So if that is the case, the only thing we can do is to be attached as much as possible to our root, to the extent that He awakens us, and how much everything we do is with respect to Him. That completes our lack of knowledge of the system because if the system was clear and revealed entirely, a person would do everything without any mistakes in the best way, seeing from the discovery.
Now that it is not revealed, a person doesn’t have a choice. If he wants to be part of the system he has to do it through the Creator in a way that he constantly attaches himself blindly to the form of bestowal.
That’s our salvation that we don’t see the system because otherwise, we wouldn’t come out of our will to receive. In this way we can serve the system in order to bestow. This means to be connected to all the other souls, but not in a corporeal manner like our cells are connected in our body where we don’t have a choice. Those cells know that if they do not live together in this way, the system will not exist and they’ll die, so they don’t have a choice. We say about this form that even though it is altruistic, it is actually an egoistic, corporeal form because they understand that otherwise, they too will suffer. It is worthwhile to give to everyone because I don’t have a choice.
But the Creator wants us to acquire another system of relationships where we would work not out of wanting to be happy together like communists or kibbutzim, and live for this purpose. On the opposite, the system is deliberately hidden so that we will reach Lishma, the form of bestowal not because it saves our lives or gives us something beyond it but because of the form of bestowal itself. That this is the highest that I want to exist in because it is higher than my corporeal existence, that it’s got higher value to it.
This is why the connection to the Creator during the concealment is what brings a person out to the degree of Lishma and eventually one should be at the same level, as if we see and know the whole system from beginning to end. Faith must completely fill the vessels of reception just like Ohr Hochma (Light of Wisdom), just like knowing.
One should not think that it is by chance that one has received this present awakening. Sometimes one says, “Now that I feel that I do not lack anything and have no concerns. My mind is clear and sound now and for that reason I can focus my mind and desire on the work of God.”
It follows, that one can say that his entire engagement in the work of God is, “his power and the might of his hand hath gotten him that wealth.” Thus, when one can engage and attain spiritual needs, one should believe that this is the answer to the prayer. What one has prayed for before, that prayer has now been answered.
Suppose one is given an opportunity to do something above reason while in darkness, in a bitter feeling, in confusion, when a person is in a bad state in mind and heart. But if he is given one more point that is connected to the reason, to the goal, through that point he can transform his whole sensation into a sensation of joy and eternity. Then he will want to use his Kli as the Kli of bestowal. The Kli of bestowal is always filled, lacking nothing as we say about the permanent state.
The only thing that a person lacks when he feels bad is one point, where he would be able to connect this situation to the Creator. If that’s awakened in him, as Baal HaSulam says, "If he is awakened from Above according to the previous effort he’s made, then that is enough for him to be happy and from that to cultivate the right attitude."
Also, sometimes when reading some book, and the Creator opens one’s eyes and he feels some awakening, then too one’s regular conduct is to relate it to chance. However, it is all guided.
It’s like when I asked Rabash, "What to read?" He would say, "Open the book," (we always had a book of Psalms there.) "Take the book, open it with your finger on some place that you don’t see what is written. Now look and think about it."
Because there are no coincidences. Don’t turn it into an ordinary cheap game, it’s not some game of luck. But if you don’t want to choose, if you don’t have exactly what to hang your sensation on and from that begin to wake up to think; if you have inner fogginess, then just open the book at random, read a few words and they should give you a direction.
If they’re not directing you, then do it again. Because it could be that to this extent you still can’t, even though it was arranged for you this way but you are unable to wake up. It seems like some game of chance but for a person in fogginess, who wants to arrange himself, to set himself up purposefully, then he can do that.
Though one knows that the whole Torah is the names of the Creator, how can one say that through the book one is reading came some kind of sublime sensation? One must know that one often reads the book and knows that the whole Torah is the names of the Creator, but nevertheless receives no luminescence and sensation. Instead, everything is dry and the knowledge that one knows does not help him at all.
Hence, when one studies in a certain book and hangs his hope in Him, one’s study should be on the basis of faith, that one believes in providence and that the Creator will open his eyes. At that time one becomes needy of the Creator and thus has contact with the Creator. By that one can attain adhesion with Him.
Of course we often look in a book and have no sensation, intellectually or anything. We try but everything is dry and there’s nothing we can do. We can’t attribute it to the fact that by nature, one likes or doesn’t like to learn or maybe is more or less sensitive naturally. It’s because of all the influences on us from Above. All the personal conditions we experience are measured very accurately according to what is given at birth.
Of course here, there is the society, the group, the Arvut that can help a person. But whatever the case may be, after all the calculations, if a person begins to see that he is awakening during his study, he should immediately switch and ascribe his awakening to the Creator as the reason for his state. It’s not that the Creator needs it. But if one’s attitude to one’s state is that it is coming from the source, that one was awakened by the Creator from Above, this positions one correctly to act now, to scrutinize and to connect himself purposefully to Him. This is why gratitude for the past aims us correctly toward the future goal.
There are two forces that contradict each other, an Upper Force and a Lower Force. The Upper Force is, as it is written, “Every one that is called by My name, and whom I have created for My glory.” This means that the whole world was created only for the glory of the Creator. The Lower Force is the will to receive that argues that every thing was created for it, both corporeal and spiritual things, all is for self-love.
The will to receive argues that it deserves this world and the next world. Of course, the Creator is the winner, but this is called the path of pain. It is called “a long way.”
It’s not that both of them work together here, but they work one against the other until the Creator defeats the will to receive and forces it to come to discern that everything should be to benefit the Creator, that everything should be under the domination of the force of bestowal, the attribute of bestowal. Of course, the result both in this case and when there is a desire and effort on a part of a person is always the same. Either the Creator wins against the desire or the Creator wins because a person wants Him to win over his desire. As we learned, the difference is either the path of pain or the path of Torah, not in the result. The way is what we gain here.
Of course, according to our calculation we still end up with the same results. Maybe it’ll be a little more painful, maybe a little less painful. The difference is that the way is not one where I can progress in the path of pain but as we learned, moving forward in spirituality is possible only out of appreciating spirituality. The forces of pain, the afflictions only awaken me to understand the nothingness in the will to receive and will help me to begin to recognize the sublimity, the eternity, and how much the will to bestow and to be in Lishma is worthwhile. Then I progress.
This means we never progress by means of pain from one phase to another. If we progress by suffering it would be considered progressing on the level of this world, just like humanity is progressing through the ego. “Now I feel bad, I don’t have a choice so I run to the good.” You can’t rise to spirituality and progress on the same level just like we have evolved in this world for thousand of years.
From below upward in spirituality, one can only progress by being drawn to a higher degree by oneself, by building its image as something higher than everything and by one wanting only that. Even if a person is not given suffering here in this world but the opposite, all of the fulfillments of this world, he doesn’t prefer them to progress toward this darkness of the higher degree. This darkness seems to him as Light because he wants to attain its attribute of bestowal. Then the path of pain is not really a path, it’s just called that way, according to how a person is awakened.
When a person is awakened through pain, he should obtain the greatness of the attribute of bestowal to such an extent that he won’t feel these blows and even be thankful for them because they awakened him. Like a donkey he couldn’t wake up. Then through this high appreciation that he ascribes to the attribute of bestowal, he proceeds to attain it from below upward. So instead of the beating, he gives himself pains of love when he wants to wake up and looks for how to wake up and brings upon himself the beating. Now these beatings are not because he suffers in that state but simply is in it, suffering because he is not attaining this higher attribute of bestowal. By that he shortens his period of scrutiny but he can never progress from one degree to another through pains. He can do that only through appreciation of a higher degree by preferring it to all the other states that can be given to him.
Instead, there is a short way called “the path of Torah.” It should be everyone’s intention to shorten time. This is called “I will hasten it.” Otherwise, it will be in its time as our sages said, “Awarded, I will hasten it; not awarded – in its time.
This means we shorten our time, our postponement in every situation in order to clarify it but it’s not that we can ascend just by mere pain. Ascension is always only from the sensation of the best thing when we can picture a higher state although with respect to my will to receive it is darkness.
...“that I place upon you a king such as Haman, and he will force you to reform.”
The Torah begins from Bereshit (lit. In the beginning) etc. “Now the earth was unformed and void, and darkness etc.” and ends, “in the sight of all Israel.”
In the beginning we see that the land is “unformed and void, and darkness,” but then when they correct themselves to bestow, then they are granted, “and God said, let there be light etc.” until the light appears "in the sight of all Israel."
The whole book of Torah begins from Bereshit, namely from our correction through all the limitations of the Tzimtzum Bet (the second restriction.) And when a person receives an awakening he then begins to experience all the phases in the book of Torah where every letter is a situation, a state that he has to experience from Bereshit to the word “Israel,” the last word in the Torah. All of that is from the awakening of the point in the heart if he works and draws on himself all of the Light that Reforms. This means the Torah is the Light that Reforms, the force that corrects and the Light that fills. Because everything is in that Light of bestowal which fills a person, it’s all in there.
Question: How can it be that my will to receive seems dark and I feel good?
This is called that upon the dark will to receive a person acquires the Masach and the intention to bestow, and the darkness shines as Light. This is when we do not fill our will to receive with what it wants to be filled but we fill it with Ohr Hassadim (the Light of Mercy).
The will to receive is never filled with Ohr Hochma that it wants. It wants, that’s how it’s built against the Light but it is never filled with it and it never was filled. There is no such thing as ever having a will to receive filled with Ohr Hochma, the Light that he wants to be filled with. It’s a non-existent thing. Even in the breaking of the vessels we say, "It was only a touch." Just touching this ability, drives all the Lights away. The sparks in the Klipot are only from a kind of virtual meeting between the pleasures and the desire. Pleasures can never fill the desires directly—there is no such reality.
The only state of filling in the will to receive is being filled with the attribute of bestowal. The attribute of reception in the will to receive that demands fulfillment is only to stimulate us, help against it, to look for corrections, fulfillments and bestowal. It can never be that a person will fill his will to receive with pleasure when it’s really a will to receiving pleasure. What we feel is a spark from the meeting between them, which leaves immediately.
Question: Is there a meaning to the name we ascribe to a sensation if we have only two states of sensation of bitter and sweet?
No, we always feel either good or bad and there is nothing we can do against that sensation. If we feel bad now, it’s bad; if we feel good, it’s good. Now, if we go and check why we feel bad? From whom and for what purpose we feel bad? What can we do after this with our sensation? How can it change? Then perhaps, from that bad through scrutiny and relating it to the process, instead of this bad we will feel good. By adding the reason to that sensation, the purpose for this feeling, a person will then feel good. His sensation will change but nevertheless he has to feel and determine what they are feeling and after that, why?
There is a separate sensation which is one’s measurement, it’s his gauge. A person has a dial and it measures if he feels good or bad, plus or minus and how much. That sensation is in and of itself, always a truth, that’s it.
Now, I feel bad. One might say, “No, but…” There is no ‘but’ with respect to a situation; I feel bad. Why? Where does that sensation come from? For what purpose, what can I achieve through it? Is it really bad? Maybe it awakens me to good things but for the time being, it’s bad, that’s why it’s called ‘a wicked.’
There is a wicked or an evil who doesn’t feel that he’s evil because he doesn’t connect his sensation to the reason and where it came from, and there is a person who says, “No, I am evil probably because that sensation comes from the Creator who gives it to me because there is none else beside Him, He gives me something bad.”
One feels bad in his Kelim so in his Kelim he is called ‘evil.’ Why? Because one feels His influence, His bestowal as bad, and it means he did not correct his sensation. Now, if one relates to it correctly, “Why does the Creator send me that sensation? What I should do with it? To what state can I reach with it? What does He want by giving me a bad sensation and the understanding that it comes from Him? What does He want by giving me these two things, the sensation and the understanding? He wants to bring me to the good.” Then, from that moment on, he begins to justify Him.
However, actual justification is also measured according to the final sensation. If a person connects that bad sensation to the Creator and because of that he eventually feels a good sensation instead of a bad one, the gap between the two sensations is called sweetening, correction (Tikkun). And what is experienced, which now in retrospect is how one experiences it all, is called ‘enjoying the tune that was then sad but now, has been sweetened.’
This is what we should do with every situation that awakens in us. If a person has a sensation and along with it a tiny remembering, that it comes from Him, that’s it, that’s all they need, everything else is His work.
Question: Why when a person prays from the bottom of his heart to the Creator doesn’t he get an answer immediately but only after days and months, if it’s a prayer shouldn't he get an answer immediately?
We don’t know the whole system. The system is big, very long and rich, these are all the Kelim together, the whole body of Adam ha Rishon. And if you are working, you don’t know what situation you are in. You don’t know what you‘re influencing, what you should do exactly; if the awakening is even really yours.
First of all you were given it so now you’re awake. You were pinched, and you’re crying. You think that you’re raising MAN but you’re not raising any MAN, you’re only crying that you’re miserable but you think, “No, I am doing some work now.” That’s not work, it's a cry about not having. It’s not a cry of wanting the attribute of bestowal, it’s crying for not having fulfillment. So why should you receive an answer at all? Why should this prayer be answered? It’s not a prayer.
We still need to examine if we are actually praying and whether we ever raised a request Above, for Tikkun, for Ohr Hozer, for the Masach, for an attribute of bestowal; to belong to the collective, to be integrated in the collective, to give of ourselves, to dedicate ourselves to the collective, to be in Arvut, not to think of ourselves; to rely on that and to engage only in bestowal without any thought of ourselves so that it is certain that what comes from our bestowal will be powers to allow me to engage in bestowal and I don’t need more than that?
Did we ever have such cries upward that this is all we need regardless of whatever physical sensations we are given here? The whole abundance of this world is there and a person doesn’t want it, feeling poor because he doesn’t belong to this system, does not bestow upon it.
That's what we can somehow call prayer and then one can look for an answer to it. “When will I have the strength to bestow? When will I stop thinking of myself? Not because of suffering to stop thinking of myself but because I appreciate the attribute of bestowal. I don’t want to run because I feel bad, I want to progress.” If it’s from evil that a person wants to progress, then he wants to progress to physical fulfillment, egoistic.
Progress can only be by being happy in one’s present state, when one doesn’t need anything, but the attribute of bestowal. In everything he has here, he feels poor, really poor, feeling terrible suffering. It’s like the AHP of the Upper One is described as dark without anything even though it has everything. But it is in bestowal, and it seems to one that he doesn’t anything.
One should change the order of events.The AHP of the Upper One should appear to a person as filled and abundant because it’s in bestowal, that’s all we need. In one’s own state where he sees abundance now, he sees that it’s all bad, it’s loathsome darkness because it doesn’t have the attribute of bestowal.
Then, if one has these two contradicting points of the present state and the next one, where a person determines them with respect to bestowal, then the gap is between them. If it is really a gap that has any strength to it, it’ll be called MAN, a real request for acquiring the desire to bestow. That cry perhaps, will give them the answer to the prayer, if it is in great strength. In that too, as it is said “many pennies make a pound” and until that happens it is being concealed from a person, it’s a process.
Question: Does raising MAN bring an immediate answer or does it happen after days and months? From raising true MAN, do we get an answer on the spot?
If a person raises a real MAN, he gets an answer on the spot. The problem is what is a real MAN, how do we reach it? In spirituality there is no time, we get an answer instantaneously. It means that after we do an action, then comes an act from Above. If between those actions ten years pass, that’s called ‘on the spot’ because there were no other actions between them. But you see, we don’t have a choice. In the end there is a situation that we should just say to ourselves, “That’s the way it is.” Otherwise, we’ll constantly be lying to ourselves.