The transcript has been transcribed and edited from English simultaneous interpretation, thus there may be potential semantic inaccuracies within it.

Daily Lesson (Morning) November 14, 2024.

Part 1: Baal HaSulam. Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot. #133.

Reader: Hello, we shall be reading from the writings of Baal HaSulam. Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot Item 133. You can find all of our text on Kabbalahmedia.info as well as through the Arvut system where you can send us questions live. Anyone asking a question in the study hall is requested to stand up, hold the microphone close to his mouth and to speak loudly and clearly.

Reader: Baal HaSulam, Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot. Item 133

Reading: (00:44) Item 133 We should also know that what we said, that there is choice only when there is concealment of the face, does not mean that after one has attained Providence of revealed face, one has no further labor or exertion in the practice of Torah and Mitzvot. On the contrary, the proper work in Torah and Mitzvot begins primarily after one has been awarded repentance from love. Only then is it possible to engage in Torah and Mitzvot with love and fear as we are commanded, and “The world was created only for the complete righteous” (Berachot 61).

It is like a king who wished to select for himself the most loyal of his subjects in the country and bring them to work inside his palace. What did he do? He issued a decree that anyone who wished, young or old, would come to his palace to engage in the works inside his palace.

However, he appointed many of his servants to guard the palace gate and all the roads leading to it, and ordered them to cunningly deflect all those nearing his palace and divert them from the way that leads to the palace.

Naturally, all the people in the country began to run to the king’s palace. But the diligent guards cunningly rejected them. Many of them overpowered them and came near the palace gate, but the guards at the gate were the most diligent, and if someone approached the gate, they diverted him and turned him away with great craftiness until one despaired and returned as he had come.

And so they came and went, and regained strength, and came and went again, and so on and so forth for several days and years until they grew weary of trying. Only the mighty ones among them, whose patience endured, defeated the guards and opened the gate. And they were instantly awarded seeing the king’s face, who appointed each of them in his right place.

Of course, from that moment on, they had no further dealings with those guards, who diverted and mislead them and made their lives bitter for several days and years, running back and forth around the gate. This is because they have been rewarded with working and serving before the glory of the king’s face inside his palace.

So it is with the work of the complete righteous. The choice applied during the concealment of the face certainly does not apply once they open the door to attain open Providence.

However, they begin their work primarily from the revelation of the face. At that time, they begin to climb up the many rungs in the ladder set up on the earth, and whose top reaches the heaven, as it is written, “The righteous shall go from strength to strength.”

It is as our sages say, “Each and every righteous is burned by the canopy of his friend.” These works qualify them for the will of the Creator, to realize His thought of creation in them, which is to “delight His creations” according to His good and generous hand.  

M. Laitman: Anyone wants to add anything or ask? 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (06:04) Who are these guards he speaks of? The Creator issues the decree, and we want to come to that gate, and open it, and adhere to Him. Who are these guards that push us back? 

M. Laitman: These are forces that stand in our way as we approach the Creator.

Student: Are these forces found within the person, within me, which keep repelling me?

M. Laitman: In effect, yes.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (06:55) He talks about their patience, which endured, their patience, that contains love, right? It's not the kind of patience that we know.

M. Laitman: I don't understand what you're saying.

Student: I want to know what is the measure of patience there? It doesn't sound like it's regular patience, it sounds like it contains something else, love.

M. Laitman: Maybe you can say it, but it's not clear from the text. 

Student: The quality of patience endured, how do we maintain our patience? Many times you tell us, everything but to leave, and that strengthens us.

M. Laitman: In each and every one there's a quality of patience that helps us reach what we desire. Although we see the path is long and hard, and we get hurt along the way, nevertheless, we endure. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (08:24) Can we develop the quality of patience, or did each one receive a certain measure of patience? 

M. Laitman: The virtue of patience, or the quality of patience, depends on the importance of the goal. To the extent the goal is important, the patience for attaining it is greater. That's how it works, simply.

Student: So, if I want to develop the measure of patience, I need to magnify the importance of the goal? 

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (09:16) How should a person be patient in the Ten? 

M. Laitman: In everything. In everything. If he has a goal he has to raise its importance and this is how he reaches it. 

Student: But also we say that we have to be diligent. 

M. Laitman: One does not erase the other.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (10:00) So, can we say that the measure of patience is the desire to annul myself? 

M. Laitman: Yes.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (10:14) There's a sentence here I don't understand. I don't understand why he uses this sentence. He says that every righteous man is burned by his friend's wedding canopy. What does that mean?

M. Laitman: That is indeed a great question. Because each and every one has different qualities, a different path to revealing the importance of the Creator in order to remove and toss out all the disturbances along the way. That's why there's a special way of doing it, a special path, but he can't do it without this path because along this we receive many discernments that we will require later on. We need patience, in short. This is always lacking. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (12:31) He says that choice doesn't apply until he reaches the degree of complete righteousness. So what does he have? He's just beginning this work of repentance from love. He has all the degrees to go through, and we understand that there is a huge gap between each and every degree. So if there's no choice, what is there? The moment he reaches repentance from love, then he has the power to never give up, to go all the way?

M. Laitman: He's got the revelation of the Creator, the face of the King, and that helps him continue. 

Student: That's the ultimate confidence, right? It gives him confidence in the future. And if there's no choice there, then what is there? Between the degrees and the work?

M. Laitman: He needs to use whatever the Creator gives him and to start understanding that more than that, it's not worthwhile, because if there was more, he would have lost in the attainment and that's how he advances.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (14:21) What should a person have to counteract the patience so as not to end his incarnation patiently? What do you need so as to be able to act alongside with patience?

M. Laitman: Together with patience, he needs to see how he's advancing all the time and that should be a goal before his eyes. Patience can be that you're standing on the path and you don't move. But here, it's not the case. Patience means necessity in attaining the goal and in opening the revelation of the face.

Student: And there's this sentence, did you wait for salvation, always, and so on. So, it seems that there's no patience there. Here you want the revelation right now, immediately.

M. Laitman: The fact that he wants, it doesn't mean that he can ask for it, and demand it, and do it. Rather, he wants. We know it in ourselves that we're in it for a while already, but who knows how long, how much more time we will need.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (16:13) Seemingly, it follows from the text that only the heroes, that this path is meant only for them, really. They are the ones who succeed on the path. So, is the wisdom of Kabbalah only for such heroes? 

M. Laitman: It's possible that everyone is a hero. 

Student: It seems from the text that it's only the heroes. Also he writes in a different place, that many fall in the engagement of Lo Lishma, and they die without wisdom, and regardless, they're still richly rewarded. So, I want to ask about the method, is it meant only for specific, special individuals? What about all the rest? 

M. Laitman: No. According to what's understood to us, everyone attains. Everyone attains adhesion with the Creator in the end. That's the realization of the development. 

Student: Yes, so there's a contradiction here, because he writes that the wisdom of Kabbalah is meant for every person, meant to reveal the Creator to His creations in this world, but here he writes that it's only the heroes whose patience endured.

M. Laitman: He's writing about a special place on the path where you can continue from that disturbance only on the condition that you overcome it.

Student: So, what does it mean? That there are different degrees in one's spiritual development, and some people are meant for a certain degree, some are meant for another degree? 

M. Laitman: No, each one has his own way of developing, but eventually you all come to it.

Student: You come to what?

M. Laitman: Adhesion. 

Student: So, I'm trying to understand, those who grow weary of trying, what happens to them? They continue, but they don't go to the King's hall, they continue under the concealment of the face, what happens with them? Or do they completely return to their mundane lives? 

M. Laitman: Each one has his own fate, his own path, and in the end, we come to adhesion with the Creator.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (19:33) What's the difference between growing weary of trying and coming to despair with regards to one's own power? 

M. Laitman: Simply never leave the path and day in day out to return to perhaps the same exercises, same assignments and that's how you advance. 

Student: And what determines if a person ultimately, simply stops trying, despairs and stops trying or despairs and, well according to what's said here, he's supposed to never despair at all, just continue and succeed somehow?

M. Laitman: Yes, he has to worry about the endurance of his patience that develops in him, and that depends on the importance of the goal, how great it is in his eyes.

Student: So, how can he come to a request like that? If he's so patient, he can remain, as the friend said, he can remain patient until the end of his days.

M. Laitman: I don't quite understand what you're saying. 

Student: In order for prayer to burst out, one needs to despair. But if you're always very patient, and there are people here who are very strong, they can persevere for years, patiently, not lazily, but truly with determination and patience. How can we reach despair and a prayer like that? 

M. Laitman: We have to organize such an environment that will always be an example to a person how to advance. 

Student: That just gives more, that just empowers the patience, it doesn't bring you to despair and prayer. 

M. Laitman: You need despair to some extent. If a person isn't despaired of anything, he's unaffected by what's happening to him. You need to have both, a special delicate balance. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (22:12) Now, to continue: these qualities, impatience, patience, could you say that you need to be patient in the long term, but at the moment you need to be more demanding in the moment, but in terms of the long run, you need to be patient?

M. Laitman: Okay, the main thing is not to let go and day in day out to return to that. 

Question (New York 3): (22:59) Some of the friends, by nature, are more patient than others, or naturally impatient. How can we help each other in the Ten with patience? 

M. Laitman: When each one wants to be a good example in the eyes of the environment. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (23:26) He writes that only the mighty ones, whose patience endured, defeated the guards, and those mighty ones, the heroes, succeeded because of the root of their soul. 

M. Laitman: Yes. also.

Student: Why does one manage to overcome while the other fails and falls? 

M. Laitman: There's no answer. No answer. Because it's all within the power of the person, and that's how each one grows. 

Student: What depends on the person? What is within one's power to do? 

M. Laitman: Patience, to keep going. Necessity, willingness to persevere. 

Student: How can patience not counteract diligence? The desire to advance, because you said that the person needs to use what the Creator gives him, and to understand that more than that would not be good. So as though to settle for what the Creator gives. So how, on the one hand can a person be patient, but at the same time to constantly push forward and to want more?

M. Laitman: This combination of these two forces, patience and determination, it's a special combination in each and every one, and each one needs to reach his true virtue.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (25:32) By what can one overcome the guards?

M. Laitman: By using patience. By not leaving the path.

Student: So, a force that repels me arrives, and I remain patient, and then at some point that force will not repel me anymore, it expects nothing of me but to continue going forward? 

M. Laitman: Maybe there's other options for being on the path besides doing nothing and suffering. 

Student: That's exactly what I'm asking. How can a person overcome all the thoughts that repel him, all the states, the desires so as to advance?

M. Laitman: By turning to the Creator.  

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (26:36) The Creator invites us to the King's palace, and he sets guards to repulse us. What is this work of attraction and repulsion on the spiritual path? 

M. Laitman: Attraction to the spiritual goal and repulsion from the spiritual goal. They play an important role. Yes. According to that, a desire, a yearning awakens in a person for attaining the goal. In each one, certainly in a different manner in each one, but specifically because he has that, he obtains the goal.

Student: So, I hear that the need for attraction and repulsion is to establish a yearning. What is the yearning that we want to have? 

M. Laitman: We want only such a desire that will bring us into contact with the Creator. A state where we see ourselves and the Creator working together, and then to that extent we can also appreciate creation, who is seemingly a negative thing, we face Him, we go against Him. Gradually, we begin to see all those forces and qualities that were in opposition to our connection with the Creator, together with that we begin to see that specifically, these bring us to adhesion with the Creator. 

Student: That we can support the friends to get more yearning?

M. Laitman: I don't know any other path besides the one that Baal HaSulam is teaching us and as much as I took interest in other sources, I couldn't find anything clearer or more suitable. 

Student: And attraction and repulsion is also between friends. How do we have to work between friends with attraction and repulsion? 

M. Laitman: Again.

Student: He is asking if repulsion and attraction also works in the relations between the friends. And if so, how to work with that?

M. Laitman: No, there's no, there are no states between us like between each one and the Creator. So, better think of attraction and helping and mutual equivalence.

Student: And you advised us to read Psalms now together on the path to Lishma. And King David is expressing very beautifully the longing for the Creator. How do the Psalms support us to adhere to the Creator? 

M. Laitman: King David was very special in that, in his closeness to the Creator and his holy work and the fact that we reveal the connection with Psalms, we actually connect to his powers and in this way, we advance. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (33:05) How to describe the faith of a person who walks the path and overcomes all the barriers until he reaches the King's hall? I feel from the text that it requires complete faith. 

M. Laitman: Faith is a quality that comes to a person as a result of his efforts. It's not like he's born with something. So, we need to hope if we do reveal the faith, each and every one, in its own form and intensity, and continue.

Student: How to reinforce this faith in the path between us in the Ten? 

M. Laitman: Only in realizing the counsels, the advice that we get.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (34:41) I wanted to ask regarding the role of patience in one's path towards Lishma. What does patience do exactly? What does it work on?

M. Laitman: It works on everything. There are those who think that the quality of bestowal comes to them from birth. There are those who don't necessarily share the same thought or are certain that they deserve it. But each and every one needs to nevertheless learn from the Torah. How much can we develop according to the demand of one another. What do we need to do so that the Creator will begin to take care of us. 

Student: For patience, you said there needs to be insistence also. So, what should patience work on exactly? 

M. Laitman: It's written that it should be as new in your eyes. Meaning day in and day out you have to start anew on this path, to have one new day.

Student: What does it mean to start the path anew every day? 

M. Laitman: To check yourself relative to what the Creator is asking of you and expecting of you and advance it in this way.

Student: When you said that there needs to be insistence also with respect to the path. What is that about? 

M. Laitman: That he's not afraid of the disturbances that he reveals each and every day.

Student: Maybe one last question. In that parable about people going up the mountain and the guards rejecting them, what determines if a person will get to the palace?

M. Laitman: Their patience, as it's written.

Student: Doesn't patience in a certain way weaken the person, turn him off?

M. Laitman: No, it reinforces his assertion in service 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (38:38) What does it mean that the King issued a decree? 

M. Laitman: He announces to everyone, those he wishes to announce to, that the door to the palace is open and that He issues permission to everyone to enter.

Student: That's the question exactly. Why should all the people of the country want to enter into that network? It doesn't sound so attractive. Maybe if there was a decree that everyone can come and get gifts, and good things?

M. Laitman: I would say that this is in the hands of the Creator, who He wants, who He doesn't want, what kind of force He uses to attract people but we just need to be grateful for giving to us. The Creator doesn't owe anything to the created beings. The fact that He's giving us an opportunity to come closer to Him is indeed a great reward, and a very special attitude. 

Student: So how can you appreciate that attitude on the one hand? Okay, so first of all, how can you appreciate that kind of treatment? And before that, He talks about the concealment of the face. It doesn't seem that people have any kind of relation to... 

M. Laitman: It doesn't get to any... I'm sorry, I don't deserve any attitude. But the fact that the Creator gave me the start of the path to Him is a great thing. 

Student: And that's what can provide me with the quality of patience also? 

M. Laitman: Yes, if I understand the greatness of the assignment, of His attitude, then I'm on the path, and I have no other way.

Student: In this perspective, how does one relate to disturbances then? Does it change? Do they look different?

M. Laitman: Disturbances, we later accept them as helpful forces, guiding forces.

Student: And during the disturbance?

M. Laitman: Also during the disturbances, it depends on the person's experience, how much, to what extent he can understand, and feel, and is in contact with these forces.  

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (43:05) This patience is measured according to the importance of the goal. It's not just that I sit down patiently, and if it comes to me, it comes. The quality of patience, specifically it’s when we're constantly attacking, continuing the attack. The quality of patience comes at the moment when a person loses all his strength, is exhausted, or how to put it, when he despairs with his own power, and then he needs patience to continue. Is that correct? So, in this story, also the difference between those who succeeded in getting into the King's palace and those who did not is the patience that has allowed us to persevere, to continue in that attack mode. Okay, so it's not a kind of idleness, rest, right? Between attack and attack?

M. Laitman: Yes.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (44:27) How can you clear your despair away? Purify yourself of despair. What can help us do that? 

M. Laitman: Envy is an extremely important thing. 

Student: To envy what? What should I envy?

M. Laitman: Whatever you see in the friends.

Student: Rabash says that only those who want to escape but have nowhere to escape to, those are the ones who succeed. There seems to be a point where it's not actually the yearning, but rather some kind of a lack of choice. So we need to understand how to determine, set it in our hearts that there's no choice. Because it seems that this patience is actually with joy and yearning, and constantly adding to that yearning, and you never grow tired, but it seems to be made of more than that. 

M. Laitman: It's made differently. Not that there's a reward before me. I'm not turning back. It's not exactly that I'm saying it, but there's nothing that actually pulls you forward or pushing from behind. Rather, a person needs to reach a state where if he constructs the correct relationship with the environment, then those friends that he has, the connection with them is sufficient for him to advance correctly.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (47:06) Before the story about the king who invites those loyal to him, he says that we first need to reach the core of the work in Torah and commandments. And most of the lesson we've been talking about patience on the path. But I also want to know, also you said that the disturbances are a part of our work, they help us advance. So, what is the core of our work, the mainstay of the work on the path? Because as I gather from the story, the Creator is inviting those who love Him. And if I look at the disturbances as you tell me to, that they help me advance, the Creator wants to invite us, and the disturbances are the actual work that we get to overcome the disturbances, the rejection? Another question, he says that a person is awarded with repentance from love. So, you say that I need to see, it says that I need to see every day as new. The Creator invites only those who love Him here in this story, He doesn't invite anyone else?

M. Laitman: Right.

Student: So, how to look at our daily work in the connection with the Creator? As for our part, it's repentance from love. 

M. Laitman: We can't feel it yet, but let's hope we'll get there and we'll feel it. 

Student: We need to be happy that we have these disturbances and rejections?

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: It needs to be joyful. So, how to act joyfully also when we have these objections, and we don't see the friends as good, we don't sentence them to the side of merit, but we want to go through this path with joy despite all these disturbances. So how do we elevate this joy above everything, despite everything? 

M. Laitman: Despite everything, simply. Despite it all, we have to reveal the joy.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (50:05) Can I ask about repentance from love? Repentance from love. Is that when the created being feels that the Creator loves him or when he feels that he loves the Creator?

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: Which is it? This, or that, or both? What is repentance from love? 

M. Laitman: He loves the Creator.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (50:45) The quality of patience, does it depend on the environment, or is it from the root of the soul, or a combination?

M. Laitman: Environment.  

Student: So it has nothing to do with the root of one's soul.

M. Laitman: It certainly depends on the root of the soul, but the development and the opening of the quality of patience, that depends on the revelation of the soul. 

Student: Another question. How does the Creator relate to all the created beings that He created? Is it like the force of gravity or the sun, which just casts an influence on the created being? The more it changes itself, it feels the Creator more. Or does He treat every created being specifically? Okay, so I have a billion cells in my body. I don't know each cell, about each cell. The Creator, is He the same, or does He relate individually to each and every created being? Or is it a general kind of bestowal and that's it? 

M. Laitman: It's the general force that works on each and every part in creation.

Student: And He knows and recognizes each and every element?

M. Laitman: It's not like us, the force of gravity that you mentioned. Is it busy checking itself and checking each particular part in creation? Does it influence it? How does it respond to it and so on and so forth? No, it works according to the law that He prescribed in advance. 

Student: So the Creator is like the force of gravity. He just acts, right? And He has a purpose to bring us to… 

M. Laitman: Yes, but don't ascribe to Him all kinds of things we never spoke about.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (53:13) The Creator always shows us that He's the Good Who Does Good. So why don't some of us feel good? 

M. Laitman: He’s the Good who does good to everyone.

Student: Okay. It is known that we are always talking about desires. Desires called patience. Do they act within the righteous strongly enough for the root of one's soul in every righteous man? 

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (54:02) He opens that gate, then each one is awarded with the appointment that befits him. Let's say each one of us gets the appointment that befits him. What makes us heroes, mighty ones, multiple?

M. Laitman: Those in whom a special force was revealed, and they can be connected between them, connected between themselves, in connection, and by that help the Creator build the system of the correct society.

Student: During this connection, we're included in the guards, and then each one is like the guardian.

M. Laitman: We have a lot here.

Question (Turkiye 2): (55:52) How can a person be patient and work with the same intensity when he sees he has no results? He sees that he doesn't reach any results in the outcome?

M. Laitman: First of all, a person understands that by trying to carry out these actions of the Creator, he's giving Him contentment. Even when he doesn't feel it at the moment, it doesn't matter to him. What matters even more is that he brings contentment to the Creator without payment in return. 

Student: To what degree can a person convince himself to persevere even when he sees no results? 

M. Laitman: I don't know, but we have to keep going. 

Question (Moscow 1): (57:25) It's written that the world was created for the complete righteous or the completely wicked. They have the same conditions applied to them? 

M. Laitman: Clearly not. They have completely different conditions, but we don't need to rely on them.

Question (Hadera 1): (58:02) All the rejections and all that, it's all so that a person can overcome and refine his vessels so they're compatible with the palace, right? 

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: So, those who have patience and the strength to build their vessels and reach the hall, those are the ones in whom patience endured.

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: Student: Can I ask? This whole game is made of two things. On the one hand, a person feels an urge to reach the goal, to discover the upper one, and he's also pushed forward. A lack is revealed to him. So, a person simply runs away from suffering. And there's great suffering. And there are two paths: either to try to magnify the lack or to minimize it, which is the teachings of the East, right? As you said before, they have these methods by which to minimize the will. Now, because the wisdom of Kabbalah was concealed for many years and their teachings were widely known, the Eastern teachings, the whole world is running to the East, getting inspired. They're great scientists also, they learn spirituality, so to speak. My question is, this great difference, we're together in the group, and each friend is burned by the other friend's wedding canopy. Is that what gives us the power to continue working on magnifying the desire, the will, the lack, rather? 

M. Laitman: No, I don't think so. We'll talk about it in the future, but why this approach? Do you want to turn the whole Torah upside down?

Student: I don't want to, but in dissemination, talking to other people, this question comes up.

M. Laitman: No, I don't accept that. 

Question (ITA 1): (01:00:56) How can we tell if we're facing a closed door that requires us to continue on insisting, working, or if we're facing a wall that will never break open? 

M. Laitman: Once again, I didn't get it.

Student: How can we tell if we're facing a door that can be opened, or a wall that can't be opened? 

M. Laitman: It's promised to us that if we advance correctly, then ultimately when we reach the patience that he describes here, then the wall opens, and we enter the Creator, and He receives us and gives each one of us the right place for work. And from that moment on, there are no more guards and cops, and everybody feels that they are in their rightful place.

Song: (01:02:40)