Morning Lesson January 07, 2024

Transcription is made from simultaneous translation, which leaves a possibility for differences in the audio

Part 1:

Rabash. Article No. 17, 1989. What Is the Prohibition to Greet Before Blessing the Creator, in the Work?

https://kabbalahmedia.info/sources/BSpe81WK

1. S (33:35) It says that one who settles for little glues or adheres to the Kedusha. How do I know that I settle for little and not just become passive in my work?

R. Does someone have an answer?

S. He writes here that the sign for it is joy, a person should be happy that he is content with being given something in spirituality, so if one has joy I guess he’s in a good state.

S. It is written here that on the other hand a person should awaken in himself a value of the work on the path of truth, meaning what a person must correct. That’s exactly what he asked I think.

Reading passage again. (35:13) “However, on the other hand a person must awaken within him the value of the work on the path of truth, meaning what a person must correct.” I think this is exactly the answer.

S. He writes here he settles for little regarding the reward and not regarding the work. Meaning the work as Baal HaSulam describes here is the light that he receives from above, the Creators' help, so it only grows, so a person doesn't settle for little. 

R. Yes. 

2. S. (36:14) Rabash writes that the thanks he gives to the Creator makes a person feel whole. How can we feel whole in our present state and at the same time demand correction because I'm not really in a whole state? How do we maintain the two states, on one hand to thank the Creator, feel complete in the present state, at the same time demand for the correction because I'm really not complete. I feel complete now.

R. What do you feel complete about?

S. On the current state I’m adhered, I'm happy with my share for this moment.

R. Did you really receive an answer from the Creator?

S. Let's say I did. In the present state I get a complete state, everything is complete, but it's a feeling that it's the present feeling, it's not really, I haven't finished my correction.

R. If it's the present feeling that it seems like you are at the moment in completeness.

S. There's no criticism at that moment?

R. How, what do you compare it to?

S. I don't know, it's kind of euphoric, you depict to yourself a feeling of completeness in the present but you’re still aware that you haven’t completed your correction so you’re thankful for this moment.

R. What do you think?

S. A complete state is when we have a thoughts about the Creator and about the situation of the left we ask for correction.

R. That’s also true.

3. S. (38:22) He says here if he can see how he has a thought about spirituality: it sounds like a psychological exercise, I'm in a bad state but if I succeed in saying well it is good, it’s like that because I still touch spirituality and the Creator nevertheless notices me, so I invert myself. Is it a psychological exercise?

R. Why a psychological exercise? On one hand it’s like that, on the other hand it’s like this.

S. No, it's like something you made up, there is no other side here.

R. Because he’s connected to the Creator, he’s adhered to Him.

S. A person feels disconnected, in descent, and then he tells himself, so I got this descent from the Creator, so that's sweetens the situation for him?

R. Yes, don't you feel that it happens like this?

S. I'm asking, is it like a psychological exercise?

R. Not psychological, if I feel that I’m in a state of descent and I'm still adhered to the Creator, that I received this descent from Him then that situation is a complete situation in itself.

4. S. (40:08) He comes to a state that a friend was talking after he sees there are people to whom the Creator didn’t even give a thought about the work, and I did a good thought, so I'm grateful, I praise Him but there are people to whom He didn’t give a thought. In the beginning and in the end he says that the person is small world, that everything is within man, so who are those people, where does he see people who are not and who is this person who thinks he did get a thought, it’s all within a person.

R. Why within a person?

S. He sees the person is a small world so who are the people he sees to whom he didn’t give even a thought about the work? It’s him.

R. Okay, he's got a question. 

5. S. (41:06) It turns out that the right line itself is made up of left, descent and right, ascent. Is it correct to think that way?

R. Yes.

S. When he gets to that state out of a descent, and he appreciates what he got as an opportunity for ascending then in this wholeness only then he can greet his friend as he writes here? What does it mean to greet a friend?

R. To connect and justify.

6. S. (41:55) There's a paragraph here, meaning when a person feels how he has no desire to work which is truly negative, so the desire is within him. There's such a desire that he doesn’t want, that’s just negative and still if he can come out of it and see how he has even a thought to think about spirituality then he praises the Creator for having some interest in spirituality. These are states within a person that he sees what he has, what he doesn't, but it's this personal treatment that he is given a desire still.

R. All the states are within man. 

S. He has to put the focus on just being awakened, see that and be grateful for that, then ignore all the rest, put everything aside and only engage in that?

R. This is on the one hand, that even though he's in that state the Creator awakens him and gives him some thoughts with which he can deal, with what they raise in him.

S. But if he won’t do it now if he doesn’t praise that point he received then these thoughts will just cover him, drown him?

R. Yes, he’ll just go with the flow.

S. Flow meaning that he’ll fall even from the little bit he has, so how do you grab hold of that point and put the emphasis on this, on this gratitude?

R. Ask the friends. Who can help him? Explain your question again.

S. The state described is one sees he has no desire for the work but with it he also identifies that he has a thought that this state comes to him from the Creator. How to grab hold of that thought and be thankful for it and see it as a great thing, even if it’s a little thought, and not to just fall into not having a drive to do anything?

S. The last time we read the article I wrote this: this is what we always have to transmit to each other, how much zero in the vessels of reception is respected and even just a little bit of connection to the Creator is respected.

R. This is true as well but still, what is the answer to the friend?

S. I think it's just from always reminding each other how the connection to the Creator of any kind even the smallest even negative is greater than all the corporeal things.

R. Correct. 

7. S. (45:27) In the answer he also writes that faith in the sages is that even just a touch of Kedusha is a great fortune and to extract the joy out of this little thing is really work.

R. Yes, he still has a point of connection with the Creator.

8. S. (45:51) Here is the simplest example, he was asleep now he's standing up and supporting me. Same thing when something happens to you if you’re more responsible for the ten than for yourself you have to move.

R. Okay, he feels that this is an answer.

9. S. (46:31) Still how's is that different from saying thank God, my state is bad, it’s all bad but thank God it's coming from the Creator. There's some point I seem to be missing here.

R. That even during the descent you are adhered to the Creator, so you can say thank God.

S. But I don’t adhere to the Creator, I'm in a descent, I'm just saying so, I’m not truly bonded with the Creator.

R. Yes, so what do we do?

S. How is that different from common people just saying thank God for everything?

R. You want to come to a state of thanking the Creator even in the state you’re in, that for you remaining in contact with the Creator is more important than all of your personal feelings about this.

S. How to feel from the descents contact with the Creator? What’s a descent? A descent is that I'm detached from the Creator, I don't want to work, I don't feel like it, all kinds of things like that. How specifically in that point to hold onto it and say oh, that's connection to the Creator?

R. What is the problem about that? Ask your friend.

10. S. (48:11) I think the thoughts that come to a person you have to ask where they’re coming from because they’re coming from the environment, so the environment helps the person pay attention to the point in his heart through which he sees everything else and this is what we should thank for, that he has an environment that helps him pay attention to the little bit of thoughts about Kedusha that he has. 

R. Why don’t these thoughts come from the Creator?

S. It’s the same thing, from the friends, from the Creator, it’s the same. It’s an awakening of something from the good side of which the person doesn’t have much, just a little point.

R. Interesting. What do you think?

11. S. (49:16) In states of descent I’m trying to raise the greatness of the Creator and trying to cling to the books, that’s what I do.

R. What does that give you?

S. I feel the author of the book is there and when I read I receive the importance and greatness from him.

R. Okay.

12. S. (50:21) What does it mean to be at the friend’s doorstep?

R. To connect more, to connect more. 

13. S. (50:48) Maybe to add to the friend’s question, I noticed there are friends that it’s their style, their attitude, they’re able to see a great thing even in something small. Like this friend has such an obvious attitude, a positive attitude to things that happen. He always sees the positive and how things can be turned into something sweet and great, and I see that there are friends whose style is to see that we're not in adhesion and we haven’t attained, and we don’t have, meaning to always be in that left line which is also true, also real because we still haven’t attained and where are we compared to where we need to be and so forth. How do we balance it in the Ten across all of these tendencies that seem natural but it's just the friend’s style of work, that this is how he sees things and what he awakens, and other people awaken the other point all the time.

R. Yes.

S. Is there a way to balance it or what does it depend on?

R. It depends on a person.

14. S. (52:31) Following the friend’s question, first we went through a very serious treatment here by the article that makes it stand out these thoughts. What is a thought about a friend, about this and that and now it works as reality. That the thought about the Creator comes from the society and another thing that can hold us in our life is Arvut that enables the field to be in these thoughts, in this focus, in the Ten, with the Creator.

R. Correct.

15. S. (53:25) What does it mean that a person determines the state or subdues the state?

R. Determining the state means he determines where he comes from, what is the question, how he is going to resolve it, so by that he determines the situation.

S. Where is the man's intention basically?

R. In this, right now it’s in this.

S. In determining where I am now and by that you build a new prayer?

R. In this there is a new prayer.

16. S. (54:13) Continuing the question I think the main problem is to remember, meaning if in the moment of truth like in the state of descent I would see this paragraph and remember that this is the inner action that I need to try now. I believe that even if I wouldn’t even make it, I would make some attempt, some little attempt to try to hold onto it, or in the state of ascent, like what is the required action. The thing is that in the time of truth, with all the vortex of states how do you remember these important principles? How to remember it?

R. They are absorbed in you and as it is written, write on the tablet of your heart.

S. Now it's been more written in us as we went through it today?

R. Yes, and then you work with your desires.

17. S. (55:30) There’s a feeling that there's a big difference between articles. This is an article with a lot of big, strong, practical advice about the state of descent and how to be in joy and to be grateful and so forth. Other articles you feel just a general kind of state, he describes what a person needs to reach and so forth, so maybe we also need to work differently with each article? I don’t know, it’s an article that I feel that we really have to engage in the whole day like every meeting with the Ten, to try to extract this advice from here and practice it. Is that correct?

R. Yes.

18. S. (56:58) It is written according to man's work in attaining the vessels of bestowal, that removes the restriction and then one begins to feel the presence of the Creator and a person should always serve the Creator and think about how he can bring contentment to the Creator. If a person thinks about how to delight the Creator by that he acquires vessels of bestowal?

R. Yes.

19. S. (57:27) What is it in the gratitude that brings joy in the work, a prayer of gratitude?

R. The prayer of gratitude connects the Creator and the created being, this is why it corrects him.

20. S. (57:53) What is it to keep in contact with the Creator?

R. Keep in contact with the Creator, I think anything that a person receives from the Creator passes through his group and therefore if he performs actions that lead him to adhesion in the Ten then basically he comes into contact with the Creator.

21. S. (58:42) Malchut manages the person according to man's actions, is it about the Creator's response to our actions?

R. Yes, you can put it this way.

S. It says that a person can't thank the Creator if he has no good flavor. How?

R. When he has a beginning of a connection with the Creator, even though he does not feel the flavor in it but it's the beginning of the connection. 

22. S. (59:35) They are asking is the gratitude just a desire or a thought given by the Creator?

R. Gratitude? Gratitude of course it comes from the Creator and dresses in a person and that way a person feels his response to the actions, to the operations of the Creator.

23. S. (01:00:30) Why did the Creator choose us and not other people for this work?

R. We don't understand that. Everything follows the order of the refining of the vessels from the smallest vessels to the greatest ones. This is why the fact that we woke up, it's because this is how to begin with the upper light sorts us and shakes us in order to lead us to the path that we need to connect with, to connect and to change and that way reach adhesion with the Creator. It’s all from above, we can only add to it our work from below.

S. Does it give us the responsibility on the path, or He knows we're going to succeed?

R. I don’t understand the question. Of course the Creator knows all the thoughts and desires and all the tendencies of a person but how eventually does He come, there's no question about that. He relates to us because He knows but in order to teach us His goal is not to lead us into the corrected form but to give us all kinds of opportunities, possibilities so we will change, will want to change and we’ll change, and that way come to our correct form and achieve adhesion. 

24. S. (01:03:26) It doesn't matter if he works with complete knowledge but whether he attributes the work to the Creator. What does it mean to attribute the work to the Creator?

R. When he works in tandem, mutually with the Creator.

S. It says here that it’s better, it’s more important than knowledge or understanding, so what is it, is it some kind of feeling?

R. I am for my beloved and my beloved is for me. When I'm attracted to it, I'm attracted to it, I make efforts toward it and in the end I feel how much we have mutual influence, mutual help, mutual support until we begin to feel each other and come to love.

S. Say a person sits in the lesson and he doesn't understand the material, doesn't understand the text, doesn't understand what's going on. How above that state can he build the state of mutuality with the Creator?

R. The fact that he doesn't stand and doesn't feel and doesn't get it, it also comes to him from the Creator and it’s probably that in these states he actually wants them to connect. I don't see anything unusual or bad about it. There are people who don't understand what's happening to them and there are those who seemingly think they understand, it's also how each one was born, was made. I don't see any difference in this actually between all the created beings.

25. S. (01:06:02) I heard you say that the Creator’s goal is not to bring us to the corrected form but to give us opportunities to reach that form, that form of Dvekut ?

R. So we will understand it, feel it.

S. That's my question, how to identify the opportunities the Creator gives?

R. To be more alert, more sensitive to what is going through your mind and heart and how you can reply to the Creator from your mind and heart.

S. What does it mean to respond to the Creator for the opportunity?

R. In any state you're in, that state was created by the Creator, but you have to think why is He giving me specifically this state?

S. What’s the expression of realizing your opportunity for adhesion? What does it mean that I realized the adhesion in the opportunity I got?

R. That I made all the efforts to bring myself into tight contact with the Creator.

S. The Creator doesn't do the changes to us at all if He only gives opportunities?

R. He doesn't need to give anything more and we need to turn these opportunities into degrees.

S. How do you change an opportunity to a degree?

R. By accepting it as coming from the Creator and I use it as much as possible, as much as I can to justify the Creator and to bring myself into adhesion, into the possible adhesion.

26. S. (01:08:49) A person receives a tiny thought about spirituality from the Creator. We learn that all thoughts come from the Creator, come to a person from the Creator, any thought, the slightest of the slightest, whether it's a thought about soccer or nonsense. Who does the filter to say this is a good thought and all the rest are not good thoughts? Who tells the person to pay attention to this thought that comes to you from the Creator, hold on to this and the thoughts about, I don't know what, ice cream, sleep, or soccer, bad things they too come from the Creator but put those aside?

R. What helps him sort?

S. Sort out, yes.

R. The fact that he wants to feel the Creator, understand the Creator and in this way to advance.

S. Still what helps the person say this is good and this is bad, how does he get the mind to say the thought about going to sleep is bad and going to the lesson is good? Both thoughts come from the Creator, what helps the person say this is good?

R. I think it comes to him, actually he's the one who is building the group and feels how it is formulated out of his qualities and this is what actually positions him, so he responds this way to what he feels. It all depends on the extent to which he does not disconnect from the environment.

S. Following the friend’s question, how does the person identify an opportunity?

R. According to the thoughts that run through him.

S. But thoughts come from any direction. How do I know it's an opportunity, that now I need to do the work and turn that to a degree?

R. If I'm thinking about the purpose of creation then all the thoughts pass through me, but I feel from them the ones that belong to the goal, that pertain to the goal.

S. Can I take any thought and aim it towards this goal?

R. No no, but I judge them, to what extent they are on the way toward the goal or not.

27. S. (01:12:17) We learned that first we come to the love of friends and then we come to love of the Creator. Does this contradict it? Does that contradict the law that says from love of friends to love of the Creator? To bless or to justify means to love, right?

R. What is he asking basically? Again.

S. First love of friends and then we come to love of the Creator, but it feels to me that first this is saying to justify the Creator and then love of friends is a different thing, but first we have to come to love the Creator, to justify the Creator? How to discover that before love of friends?

R. I can't grasp the state.

S. I think he means when a person is in a state of descent where it says to settle for a little and justify the Creator, so we learn that we come to the love of the Creator from the love of friends. How can you justify the Creator directly without getting to love of friends, is that what you meant? Yes, it sounds to him that the order is opposite in this article because it says to justify the Creator but to justify the Creator we have to love the Creator and we learn that we have to first love the friends and then the Creator, so it sounds like it’s opposite.

R. Nice. In other words it is impossible to come to love the Creator without being in love of friends, it is impossible to come to love of friends before I love the Creator, so which is the truth?

S. The goal of everything is to come to love of the Creator but how can I receive the importance of the Creator, that everything comes from above if I won't put myself in an environment? Why not first bless the friend, the article says we have to first bless the Creator?

R. Without the Creator we will not be able to unite and bring ourselves into one Kli, one vessel and then in that vessel we will reveal the Creator.

S. How to receive the right deficiency, that we have to turn to the Creator with our deficiency, how if we don't see the friends? It’s like the greatness of the friends direct me towards the greatness of the Creator, it’s like the opposite, that love of friends brings us to a deficiency towards the Creator. Our deficiency to the Creator needs to come from the friends?

R. Yes, so what is the question and what is the answer?

S. You're asking me?

R. It doesn’t matter.

28. S. (01:17:35) The friend is asking it turns out that in the article you’re coming to the Creator, you’re in a descent, you attribute it to the Creator, you justify Him and then seemingly you receive a sweetening, a mitigation of the situation here. He’s saying where are the friends in this round? We learn that we have to go through the love of friends first and from there to come to the love of the Creator. Here in this paragraph that we're reading, in the article first I'm in a descent, I go straight to the Creator. Then where are the friends in this whole game? Is that the question?

S2. The goal is to first come, you bless the friends from which I get the greatness of the Creator, but this says that if you come to a friend to connect with him in order to reveal the greatness of the Creator, first we need to have a blessing for the greatness of the Creator. Where is the order here? It's probably the opposite from what we have learned.

R. Okay, all right. Is this question clear?

29. S. (01:19:44) I also once asked you that question and you said to me that in you these both happened simultaneously, you're both in love with friends and in love of the Creator and if I don't manage to be in both then be once in this and once in that for the time being.

R. That is correct but is that an answer?

30. S. (01:20:16) Is the answer that we're not supposed to approach love of friends before we have the intention bestowing contentment?

R. True.

31. S. (01:20:34) It seems to me that the person first wants to come to love of the Creator then he understands that without the love of friends he can’t, and he asks the Creator to help him with love of friends and when he somehow gets there to love of friends, he somewhat comes to love of the Creator, that's how he goes, back and forth.

R. Yes.

32. S. (01:21:07) Can we translate the title in such a way that's to bless the Creator is to bestow and receive peace is to receive in order to bestow?

R. It’s possible.

33. S. (01:21:36) I want to make it even more confusing. He writes here for the first time in the paragraph before the end that we need to know in the matter of the work that every person is a complete world. It turns out that also his friend means the body as he has the Nefesh of the Klipa of the foreskin, so it seems like it's the first time that he talks about his friend meaning the body. What's the meaning of that? 

R. He’s dividing the person into a body and the soul and that's how he scrutinizes the relationship between them.

S. How is it connected to us feeling and seeing friends to the fact that in internality the friend is the body, what's the connection between this and that?

R. In its internality each and every one is part of the general soul. I see that we got into this loop today.

34. S. (01:23:39) What is necessary for a person to feel and attain wholeness and how does the deficiency help us rise above the Machsom, above the barrier?

R. Again?

S. What is necessary for a person in order to attain wholeness, perfection, and how does that deficiency help us rise above the barrier?

R. Because to attain the complete fulfillment from our source is to be above the barrier, the Machsom. That's in essence the same.

35. S. (01:24:47) How do we maintain this priority of connection with the Creator during the day?

R. Connection with the Creator? We determine it, we establish it through the Ten. What's the question there?

S. How do we maintain this priority of connection to the Creator?

R. That is also from the Ten from the feeling that it is the most important thing for the Ten. Okay?

36. S. (01:25:58) I also have a question and maybe an answer to our friend. This state of lowliness which we attribute to the Creator, and this mitigates the situation, it's because he has no choice, he has no other ability to perform any movement here and the moment he attributes it to the Creator and sweetens it he can make some form of action towards the friends, that’s maybe also question and an answer.

R. Okay.

S. The question is whether this is an egoistic state because he writes it's a whole state? 

R. Yes.

S. What is it whole?

R. In what can you add to the state?

S. It's a state that altogether just sweetened his lowliness. He came to a certain point of joy from being higher than what he was before but in what is it whole now? There's no bestowal here yet.

R. There's no bestowal yet but he's advancing, taking one step forward.

37. S. (01:27:33) It seems like Rabash in this article is giving small tips on how a person needs to appeal to the Creator, how he needs to build a prayer, if it's correct?

R. Yes.

S. He's truly very juicy in the tips that he wants the person to pray and again scrutinize how to come out of this state. 

R. Yes.

38. S. (01:28:11) If I understand the Rabash here is telling us this is the work in one person in the way of the work and a person is a small world that the friend is the body, it’s not the friend in the Ten and that's why the right should control the left, He has to first see that even though he's not whole, that he's working in spirituality is wholeness, and only then he will be able to talk to the body but first arrange the wholeness, the intention, and then he will be able to work on the correction of the environment?

R. This is much more forward but correct.

39. S. (01:29:01) Can we say that there are only two states that exist in reality which are being connected to the Creator and being separated from the Creator? Since there is no independent reality, things are being depicted to us as bad or good depends only on the state that we are currently in, in other words if we are close or distant from the Creator?

R. Yes.

S. The more we think of others instead of ourselves the closer that we get to the Creator?

R. Very well, thank you.

40. S. (01:30:00) My question would be on the friend’s question. It says love of friends, actually in order to develop love of friends, we need Arvut and this Arvut would be to help each other to justify the Creator and by justifying the Creator we reach love of friends, and from that we reach the Creator. Is that the correct approach?

R. It seems as if it's the opposite but it's correct. It seems like it's the opposite, but it is actually correct.

41. S. (01:31:09) A moment ago you said that we should ask ourselves why we are going through every state, so the question is whether in these questions that we should scrutinize we should come to the understanding of what the correction is behind every state?

R. Yes, yes.