Question: What are the actions in the ten that we perceive as reward and punishment?

Answer: To get closer to each other despite mutual alienation is our reward. And vice versa: to not get closer to each other is our punishment.

A reward is getting closer to the Creator, understanding the Creator, and feeling that He is among us.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson, 12/7/25, Baal HaSulam, Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot

Comment: You once said that 99.9% of people who study Kabbalah leave before they reach the initial state.

My Response: Usually, in their attempts to ascend, many fall from this path. Then in the next cycle, or after several years, they try again. It is very difficult.

In principle, 99% leave because they do not understand or do not realize that 99% of their effort is the effort of the upper light. The light works on them, and they need to contribute only 1%.

But this participation must be very subtle, delicate, and selective. It must be precisely such that it draws the influence of the upper light upon oneself. A person, when he carries out certain actions, should assume that through these actions he is drawing the upper light onto himself, and see his future and his fulfillment in this alone. It is as if you are waiting for air, for something that does not depend on you, it will come, and that is it!

This is the state that we must have, where we act with all our strength—we study, we try to unite, to disseminate, anything—and on the inside there is this feeling of waiting. This is the concept of “awaiting the Messiah.”

This is why Jews were called “zhidy”—from the word “to wait”—those who wait for redemption. This is the redemption.
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From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. Soul without a Body,” 10/5/10

Question: What does it mean to reveal the Creator’s attitude toward oneself? How can I influence this?

Answer: You must bring yourself to a state in which it becomes clear to you what the Creator wants from you, and you desire to realize His attitude toward you.

Question: How should one correctly relate to concealment?

Answer: A person must strive for a state in which he is as close as possible to the Creator.

Question: If a person does not find contact with the Creator, does this mean that he is not connected with his friends?

Answer: No, a person must constantly examine himself and clarify why it seems to him that he is not sufficiently connected with the friends and with the Creator.

Question: How can one reduce oneself to the complete “point in the heart”?

Answer: The point in the heart is the single desire that I have toward the Creator. If I reduce myself to such a desire, beyond which I have nothing else, then I am in the point in the heart.
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From Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/7/25, Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot“

Question: What does it mean that we reveal the Creator through a friend?

Answer: It means that through my attitude toward my friend I discover the measure of my own desire to attain the Creator.

Question: And who is this friend that I am constantly searching for?

Answer: It is the Creator Himself.

One must strive to attain the Creator as one’s great friend, the one before whom you can open yourself entirely, in what is called “face to face.”

Do not hide anything from Him. Simply desire that every concealment be lifted and revealed.
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From Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/7/25, Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot“