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Dec 8, 2024 6:23 AM -

Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 20

Correction With a Gentle Guiding Touch: The Inner, Middle, and Outer Desire

It is not our role to judge ourselves as strong or weak, brave or cowardly, wise or foolish. We need to exert ourselves to the best of our ability in the developmental process according to our inclinations and inner nature.

It is written, “The prayer of every mouth.” This means that the Creator hears every person’s prayer. In other words, it does not matter who we are or what we feel; we each, with our own feelings, and even deeper, in our heart, pray to the Creator. This deficiency influences our attitude to the Creator and the Creator’s attitude toward us.

In the heart, there is an upper and outer layer through which we feel our desires, and through which we can direct them to the Creator. For instance, we might want to appeal to the Creator with a specific desire that belongs to spiritual work, which is directed at the purpose of creation. Such a desire, albeit external and artificial since we have awakened it, is received above. However, to the extent that it is external for us, it is also external above.

If we delve deeper and examine our innermost desire, by assessing what our heart truly wants, we might discover that our heart does not long for the object of our prayer. We might find that we actually desire rest or some small pleasure instead of treading the path toward the purpose of creation and aiming at lofty matters. Such a feeling is also part of the prayer. The more we expose our innermost desire, the more it is received above.

In the heart, there is an even deeper inner desire that is beyond the level of our awareness and sensation. It is entirely hidden from us. But because it is the innermost, truest, and deepest desire, it is fully received above with its entire power and strength. When a response to this prayer, this hidden desire, comes from above, it is rarely understood.

Everyone exists at every moment in a state that results from the feeling in their heart, which stems from their prayer. However, we do not know how to connect the inner, middle, and outer prayers of the heart with the Creator’s response, as we are unaware of our heart’s deepest desire.

If we were aware of this desire and felt it, even from our current state, based on our present qualities and feelings, we would understand the extent to which we diverge from what we should feel in order to progress toward the purpose of creation. If we felt this deviation, we would know what specific correction needs to be made from above, and we would then understand the spiritual states the Creator sends us to receive through which we become corrected. However, for now, such states are concealed from us.

Nevertheless, at all times and in every state, we raise a prayer, MAN, and receive MAD in return. In other words, what rises from our heart is received above in the general system, which also contains the mechanism that operates on us personally. The response returns to us, which is essentially a correction of direction. It is our next spiritual state, which is aligned with our soul’s root and the purpose we need to reach.

Before we engage in spirituality, we lack the understanding and feeling that this mechanism operates in such a way. However, when we enter spirituality, we start seeing it clearly, and begin working closely with MAN and MAD. We form a reciprocal relationship with the Creator, which connects us to Him and which dictates our every action and our life’s course. This is called “half a shekel.” Half of the work is given by the person and half by the Creator.

Baal HaSulam provides an example of farmers in the Negev who are entirely unaware of the prayer they raise. Nonetheless, their request for rain is received above, and they receive the response below. Every layer of our heart—the inner, middle, and outer—rises upward, and it becomes felt and received by the mechanism responsible for bringing every created being to its correction and root. Accordingly, we correct the heart, which is our desire through various external conditions that continuously correct our direction toward the purpose of creation.

The more the inner desire is directed precisely at the purpose of creation, the more delicate the correction of the direction will be. That is, it will be a small and soft correction, felt as a gentle, guiding touch, like a mother tenderly supporting her child while it is learning to walk. The greater the deviation between the heart’s content and the feeling in our current state toward the purpose of creation, the more significant the correction will be and the more painful the effort to bridge the gap between the present and the desired state. We then feel the force that guides us to goodness in a more severe way, because the environmental conditions we are placed in become more challenging.

This mechanism of MAN and MAD from souls toward Malchut of Atzilut and the returning influence on the souls is a simple mechanism that we study in the book The Study of the Ten Sefirot.

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Dec 8, 2024 5:57 AM -

629.3Question: Let us say a person has been awarded the sense of adhesion with the Creator and considers the bestowal that he makes as a gift from the Creator. Can he ask to receive for the sake of others?

Answer: If he purely bestows and has no desire to receive for himself and does not want to use it, then he can ask to receive for the sake of a friend.

Question: How can I tell if this feeling is genuine and I did not invent it myself?

Answer: There is no way. Just act. As a result, you will begin to feel which of your desires were genuine or false and what you can do with them.
[337354]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/19/24, Writings of Rabash “The Discernment of “In Everything”

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Dec 8, 2024 5:53 AM -

276.02In other words, through reinforcement in Torah and work, he was rewarded with repentance from love, when sins became as merits (Rabash, Assorted Notes, 354, “Abraham Gave All that He Had”).

In order to strengthen in the Torah and in the work, each member of the ten, despite having multiple obstacles of all kinds, must try to break through them and connect with the Creator in such a way that all the obstacles further strengthen his connection with the Creator and attach him to Him.

And when sins become merits, you feel how the Creator’s attitude toward you changes, and you begin to understand that everything you previously evaluated as bad was actually for your benefit.

Question: What does it mean “to be rewarded with a response out of love”?

Answer: It is a state when a person asks the Creator to give him strength to relate to the Creator with love.
[337369]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/18/24, Writings of Rabash “Abraham Gave All that He Had”

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Dec 8, 2024 5:47 AM -

572.02Question: How much love can I receive in order to pass it on to my group?

Answer: If it is true love, then there is no limit to receiving love and no limit to giving it. The whole problem is in receiving love that does not turn out to be limitless. Baal HaSulam writes that boundless love turns into hatred in us. We cannot answer it because we cannot limit it in our Kli.

Therefore, if parents endlessly love their child, then they disfigure him. After all, he does not have the opportunity to feel where the boundaries are. As a result, he begins to hate his parents. It comes from nature. He gets the desire to pierce them, to do something in spite of them, because they do not set boundaries for him with their love.

It is a well-known principle that we receive everything in our Kli in a limited form. Thus, when we give something to another, we must explain these boundaries, convey them along with our love: “I love you from here to here and no more.”

By nature, we are very limited and do not perceive infinity, which we will be able to feel only with complete correction. Therefore, if you give infinite pleasure to a small Kli, it turns into hatred. In no case should you do that.

But you can always add love to our work. Do not be afraid, you are still far from making it endless.
[336971]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/28/19, “Questions and Answers”

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