What is the difference between advancing in the work of “love your neighbor as yourself” and the ultimate goal “love the Creator with all your heart and soul”? “Love the Creator” is the final stage when a person’s attitude to the Creator and the Creator’s attitude to man is absolutely equal.

Therefore, we are given work in a group to achieve the stage of love, adhesion with the Creator, and similarity with Him because here we can check ourselves, receive feedback from our friends, invest in them, and have it returned in difficult moments. We go through ups and downs; whenever I can, I do something for the group, and when I cannot, the group helps me.

However, none of these methods work with the Creator. With regard to the Creator, you cross the next degree and make a screen for yourself, which means, to this extent, you are with Him. If you did not, you are not with Him. There are no intermediate states, no possibilities to vary in any way: I feel bad or good, sometimes yes, sometimes no.

There is no “sometimes yes, sometimes no” with the Creator. Everything must be absolute. Every step, every measure of connection with the Creator is perfect in itself. Therefore, we are given the opportunity to model and implement all this in a group, because here, in our state, we can move in different ways.

Although there are two actions of bestowal: between a person and the Creator, and between a person and a friend, actions regarding a friend or a group are more important than actions regarding the Creator.

Why? Because actions toward the Creator will confuse me for now; I cannot relate to Him in any way, because He does not react to me, nor do I to Him. All I can do is create all the prerequisites for a correct attitude toward the Creator through my attitude toward my friend. It is written that relationships with friends can lead us to the last, highest level, because our states are unsteady, uncertain, and are induced by the environment.

That is, the group requires me to treat its members correctly. They demand that I love them and treat them right. This goal is closer to me; I see it; it feels tangible. My states and attitudes toward the group, in various forms, whichever they may be, are controlled and criticized by both me and others. While regarding the Creator, I do not know where I stand or what kind of relationship I have with Him.

This is the difference between an effective short path, when a person correctly accepts a given opportunity and implements it through the group, and a long, ineffective path: I have the Creator, I will figure out this science myself, do not touch me, I myself am smart. The only opportunity we are given to work effectively and accurately is the group. If a person runs away from it, there is nothing you can do.

There is a very simple rule in the Torah: “O Hevruta, O Mituta,” that is, either you are in a group, or you are spiritually dead; there is no third option. It turns out that those smart guys who refused to do this 5, 10, or 15 years ago (I have such examples) suddenly realized they had spent those years in vain, unable to step on their own little ego and just give themselves to this work.

There is nothing you can do: You have to step on yourself; you have to bend yourself. It is unpleasant; you want to run away from it, but there is no other way. The common soul is purposely broken to give us the opportunity, as we work on our relationships with other souls, to find the Creator’s properties there, feel Him, and adhere to Him. Only there in the general Kli.
[362253]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson, 10/1/26, Sitrin Convention, Sukkot 2003

Once a person establishes the Creator as sovereign over everything that occurs and determines that it depends on the upper force, their development proceeds correctly. Then he already connects every quality, every state, every effort, together with its direction and expected result to drawing ever closer to the Creator. At the same time, his perception of the Creator constantly changes and becomes more accurate and moves further from the desire to receive and closer to the true concept of bestowal.

In accordance with this, a person gradually, measure by measure, changes within himself his understanding of what the intention for bestowal is that exists in the Creator, and agrees to this quality, even though he does not possess it. He somehow understands that this is an important and exalted thing, to which it is necessary to get used to, and somehow to gather all the advice and strength to achieve it.

Thus, he must constantly work to ensure that bestowal, no matter how it may appear to him, stands before him as a concept that replaces all other words: the upper world, the Creator, upper force, peace, tranquility, in other words, those words with which he describes something above this world.

After all, we substitute one for another. For us, “upper” is what is good for my ego, what fills it. I can worship anything, as long as my ego receives fulfillment from it.

In essence, this is what is called the golden calf. Here, some kind of image comes into play. Therefore, it is desirable that instead of this image, I build before myself simply an abstract concept called bestowal, and all the time clarify it a little more and more, separating it as much as possible from my desire. This is what the whole work consists of.

And if I constantly hold this at the “head” of the year, that is, of my development, then the study, the books, the teacher, the friends, the group, and all the efforts I make become the means to understand and attain the concept of bestowal. And this, in essence, is the “spiritual,” the “Creator,” whatever you want to call it.
[361577]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/11/26, Rabash, “The Rosh Hashanah Prayer”

If a person feels a sense of confusion in their mind, feels exhausted,  and struggles to open one ear or one eye a little bit, this is very good, because the small efforts being made in such moments are not based on self-arousal. At this stage a person is already working precisely with the emergence of new sensations; new, unconscious Kelim are being created. You do not yet feel what you have today, but later this will begin to reveal itself.

When a person attains spiritual vision, they come to cherish such states because they are the most fruitful: At this time, the next degree is being formed within him. He feels it as something empty and confused, while he himself feels tired, egoistic, and somewhat lacking interest: “Where is my former life?” All of this is good! You cannot even imagine how good it is!

You should not push such thoughts away. If you push them away, you will not use the Aviut that is now coming to you, and you need to move forward with it.

Try to adapt to it in complete agreement with yourself. It is very easy to detach from this world and fly among the clouds. Or, conversely, to detach from those clouds and descend into this world. You need to live simultaneously in both, that is, with the inner acceptance that this is how it should be. The Creator must clothe Himself in this world. He must descend into your world and fill it in all your states: at work, in the family, and in everything else.

You should not break something within yourself: “Now I am engaged in the spiritual, and afterward I will deal with this world, where everything is more real.” There is no such division. It is one and the same reality; it is simply that we cannot bring the spiritual reality down into the corporeal in such a way that we can see it. But in reality, this is how it should be.

If we detach ourselves from this world, we will remain a point and thereby stop our spiritual development, which is built solely on containing spirituality, the Creator, the perception of the upper, within everything that exists here in our world, from the lowest corporeal states to the highest ones.

In other words, wherever you are and whatever you are engaged in, business, romance, some advancement, some decision, some quarrels, if you do not bring the Creator into it, if you do not make such efforts, then it is not spiritual work. Spiritual work consists of bringing the Creator into our world and into our states, without leaving anything behind, without escaping anywhere, and containing Him within all of it. We need to fill our ordinary life with such spiritual sensations until, and to the extent that, we begin to perceive the Creator through them, the living force that truly gives life to all of this and moves it.

You should not run away into Kabbalah for two hours a day in order to detach yourself from this world. No! You should do this so that afterward, throughout the entire day, during all the remaining 22 hours, you live by combining everything with what you received. All the energy, all the exaltation, all the impressions you received must be placed into all the remaining 22 hours. Only then can it be considered that your life is truly being realized correctly.

It is not the two hours a day that you spend studying Kabbalah or in dissemination that count. What counts is how, during all the rest of your time, you force yourself to bring into everything what you received during those two hours, how you try to live those two hours throughout all the remaining 22 hours.

Therefore, our daily life is arranged in such a way that we are required to work eight to ten hours. And the Kabbalists obligate a person to work, to participate in the entire life of the surrounding society, under no circumstances to withdraw anywhere, and not to detach himself from the large external world that supposedly frightens him.

We think it would be good to withdraw somewhere from the external world and live there peacefully, creating an artificial world for ourselves. Absolutely not! The Creator did not do anything needlessly: a wife, children, boss, mother-in-law, and so on, all of these are necessary disturbances, into which we need to infuse spirituality.
[362222]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson, 9/30/26, Sitrin Convention, Sukkot 2003

Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 261

Does the Study Material Change When We Cross the Barrier?

Beyond the barrier, the study material becomes reality itself. What does it mean that beyond the barrier we have a screen of a certain measure? Suppose we have a screen over all our vessels, and while we study and read, our screen works in us according to what we read because we are connected to the book, to the light from the same degree on which the book was written. This light comes to our screen and they operate together. They carry out what we read, and we are present in those very actions.

It is not that we ourselves know how to do this. It simply happens within us, as though we are watching a theatrical performance, or as though we are reading a magic book in which actors appear on the page we are reading and begin to perform in vivid color. We immediately live the reality we are reading about. We attain it immediately.

In our present state, if we intend correctly during the study, we attain surrounding light. We do not actually feel how it shines on us or to what extent it illuminates one particular sentence compared to another. We can go through an entire page of The Study of the Ten Sefirot, and the surrounding light will change in all kinds of ways without us sensing it.

We are like a cat in a room of a musician who is composing a symphony. The cat lies in the corner of the room and does not care about anything, as though it hears nothing; whatever it hears is insignificant to the cat. It is simply on a different degree. The musician performs magnificently while the cat sleeps and feels nothing. That is, when the light comes to the screen no longer as surrounding light but as inner light, the light and the screen perform the action. There is a clear order to these actions: we are provided an example of how to perform, and we do so.

Related Material:
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 260
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 259
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 258