Daily Kabbalah Tip

Advice in the daily Kabbalah lesson is recommended, practical tasks for advancing spiritually

The period of preparation does not mean that we have to prepare to be very patient and wait for this period to pass. It won't pass unless we do everything in our power for it to be over the very next moment. The right way to "wait" means that at every moment I am ready to put efforts into this, again and again, without ever despairing of it. And at every moment I expect that I will receive a reward now - the force of bestowal, which I demand. I do this over and over again at every moment, without ever getting tired of it.

If I am capable of this, if the states (the entrances and exits) quickly come to replace one another, this is a sign that I really am able to merit a higher, deeper level. The more sins and mistakes a person reveals during the preparation period, the more he advances later on when he enters the single and double revelation after the Machsom. That is how he achieves his correction.

During the preparation period, the group has to provide every person with the force of consistency, persistence, confidence, and patience, as well as the understanding that we have no choice but to advance in this way. That is how we continue year after year, until we are ready to refuse immediate gratification at every moment and to work even without it. At that point we are worthy of passing the Machsom.

A person has to have such a great aspiration for the next level that by virtue of his tremendous, passionate, burning desire for bestowal, he is ready to give it up and continue the preparation period. If the Creator wants to give me only this preparation, and I only want to attain bestowal, then I am satisfied with this and I don't need the Machsom. And then I receive it.

Daily Kabbalah Quote

"Here I came and there is nobody" (Yesha'yahu, Nun, Beit)

Large Audiences gather together, blowing the horn (shofar) near the Western Wall, asking various things and shouting. Tens of thousands of people fast on Yom Kipur, enforcing different kinds of fasts and limitations upon themselves. So why doesn't the Creator answer that? Why don't we reveal Hidden Hassadim (Mercy, Hassadim Mehusim) among ourselves? Why isn't our situation changing?

Why don't they get an answer from above? Because our requests are not intended towards the connection between us. On the contrary, everybody is ready to despise others, to step on others just to reach the top, and achieve whatever they think they want to achieve. I want the Creator, and I am ready to step on everybody to achieve that. Only, these are two totally opposite things. People don't understand that it is only through the love of others (Ahavat Hazulat) that it's possible to reach the Creator. The absence of the "prayer of the many" (Tfilat Harabim), the prayer for the many, is the reason that we are not reaching the discovery of the Creator. For that it is said: "Here I came and there is nobody", and there is no "minyan" - there is no spiritual vessel (Kli) that contains all the souls.

 -from the 1^st part of the daily Kabbalah lesson (minute 44)

Daily Kabbalah Reality Check

Examples in the daily Kabbalah lesson elucidate spiritual concepts through explanations of situations in this world

Magnifying Glass

Our goal is to discern who we are, what our reality is, who the Creator is, and what qualities we need in order to attain Him. To help us accomplish this, a multitude of different opportunities become revealed to us in life, but the more we spread ourselves thin on them, the more we will suffer. If, on the other hand, we discern them, reduce them and focus on just one aspiration, then we will feel pleasure.

We enjoy only when we reduce the field of our searching, and after making many discernments, concentrate on one single point. When dealing with all the other pleasures and opportunities, we have to discern them one after the other and thus build a special instrument - like a huge glass lens that can focus all of the light that comes to it into one ray. The greater the lens is the greater is its ability to focus the light and the more light it is able to focus. Eventually it can compress the light to such a small point whose concentration and might are so powerful that anything is possible within that point of Light and desire.

This is obvious in the field of optics, by examining the way lasers work. We can do the same in our inner work when we focus a multitude of different desires within us. That is exactly how we achieve a higher, spiritual force. Everything is built on what is now present inside us. The more our egoistic desire grows, the more we spread ourselves thin on it; we desire everything there is in the world! If it were possible, we would receive everything: money, power, knowledge, and everything else.

But why is it that we see so many different pleasures before us? It's because that is how fulfillment appears to us in our desire. The entire descent of the worlds from the World of Infinity down to our world consists in multiplying the number of different Lights, desires and pleasures. It is a gradual division of the Direct Light of the World of Infinity into many Lights.

This distancing from Infinity and perfection amounts to a multiplication of qualities, which come out of one point and that we imagine. If we learn to unite all of these multiple qualities together and reach the One, Unique and Indivisible, then we will achieve correction and unity. That is the only way we will eliminate all suffering: by choosing the one force of bestowal, preferring it over all egoistic pleasures. That is how we will ascend upwards.