Part 2
Morning Lesson October 10, 2021, Transcription
Shamati 18 (00:38 - 01:32 read twice) What does it mean "secretly my soul will cry" in work - 1
1. R. (01:36) We can see he is in a terminal state, he doesn't remember the past good or bad, only in a bad way and the same with the present and the future. Such a concealment but at least he feels where he is. That is already something of a livelihood because it is impossible that a person feels bad if there is nothing good within it because otherwise even the bad would not be felt. So, he is not dead, he is alive and he feels the bad.
Reader continues: “And crying is a very important matter….”
2. R. (04:39) Then he will reach the Gate of Tears, you will force them to open and this is how we enter the ‘Palace of the Creator’, the upper world. Only through tears – a person gives up on all of his powers and he knows that nothing can help him but as a result of a lot of work. What still stays with him is that he, nevertheless, has to achieve the goal. He is not despaired from having to achieve it, he is despaired with his own power that with his own powers, he has no more to add, he completely gives up in every way. It is not simple because the Sitra Achra always comes to say, ‘you have to add here, add there, maybe you need to learn or to do something and then he will enter.’ The Gate of Tears means that he has nothing to add of his own. He is 100% certain, and then the door to spirituality opens up for him. We gradually create that state that is called the Gate of Tears.
3. S. (06:31) When the Gate of Tears is opened, he can raise his voice?
R. It is not enough. Our desire is still not willing for us to begin to feel spirituality.
4. S. (07:00) The Sitra Achra, the other side, confuses a person after he did everything that he can still do something else; how do you overcome that, that everything in your power to do, do it. That he feels he did it all but he is still confused that maybe there's another thing to do?
R. That is a sign he has not gone all the way and he needs to continue to add more as much as possible. He understands where he needs to go, he needs to reach a state where he gives all of his powers but really all of them, not that he pretends in front of someone, that he really made every effort, he has the goal in front of him and he wants it 100% and he has used all of his powers 100% and he sees that he can't add. It doesn't come from laziness or his ego, it's just that he has nothing more to sacrifice in order to attain holiness. Then he comes to the outcry and through the Gate of Tears that he feels within him, that he is facing a wall and that there's nothing he can do about it, then all of a sudden it opens.
S. In such a state, the other side won't confuse him that there's anything else to do?
R. If it does happen then it's a sign, he has not reached the gate yet. What is the gate? The wall that he feels in front of him; suddenly in it, he sees that there is an opening and he goes through, this is how it works in spirituality. You have a wall that is stronger and bigger all the time and it is growing, there is nothing you can do with it. Nevertheless, it is called ‘an opening for those who knock in repentance.’ You want to break through this wall but there is no gate in the wall. Sometimes it’s as if there is, but it is completely locked. Basically, in spirituality there is only a wall. Even that, it takes a while before a person sees the wall but then the wall suddenly opens, suddenly there is a gate there. He writes about it in a letter, Baal HaSulam. Rabash also told me once that that's how it works in spirituality either a wall or an opening but you can't see in the wall ahead of time where the opening is.
5. S. (10:19) What exactly can't a person break through? What is the soul crying from at that point?
R. It is the wall of his heart. When he cannot make an opening in the walls of his heart so that the quality of bestowal can enter there, the quality of the Creator. This is what he can do, the heart is blocked, closed, it’s in this rigid crust, and there is nothing you can do. Only a prayer from the group, we need to connect together in the 10 and ask for everyone. And then for another day to ask for someone specific, “today we're paying for this person, tomorrow for another person, and the next day another” and in this way kind of by roster, praying for each and every one, in this way we will get used to demanding of the Creator to tend to the friends.
6. S. (12:03) What does it mean that one comes to a state of concealment?
R. When he feels that the Creator is hidden from him, he doesn't feel in his life that the Creator has grown closer, becoming revealed; that he is already in such vessels that he can respond to the Creator's drawing near or moving away.
7. S. (12:54) He says, “whenever the Gate of Tears is when all the other gates are locked that the Gate of Tears opens”. What is this state of advancement?
R. It is when you think that you have several approaches, several routes, several activities by which you can get closer to holiness and enter holiness, enter spirituality. And now you are discovering that nothing opens, everything is locked or closed. But it is not as if your desire disappears– you have a big desire. It’s just as if you lost your way and there is nothing that you can do in order to achieve spirituality, to touch the quality of bestowal. To bestow, I can't reach it and then you discover that there is a way to receive the quality of bestowal and what is it? It is to connect to the Creator. Now I understand that revealing the Creator, meaning connecting with Him means to connect with the quality of bestowing, with love, with connection with everyone and general concern for everyone the way the Creator cares for everyone; and this is called connecting with the Creator, ‘coming to connect with the Creator.’ I didn't think about it before, I thought that connecting with the Creator is done by seeing and feeling more, understanding more, me me me. That I would be filled and now I see that revealing the Creator and connecting with the Creator is when I get a chance to bestow and care for everyone. I didn't think previously that this is what had to happen. Maybe if I had known about it previously, I wouldn't have come to it or to approach it, but now I know and I am still moving toward it and I want it to happen to me.
S. It feels that, like if a person reaches complete breaking – it's hard to define, it's like he's completely shattered to reach a place that he cries?
R. What did you think: that you wanted to love and give to everyone so much and everyone is basically the Creator, “I dwell among my own people.” So, you want to love and bestow to everyone so much and sympathize with them, this is the only reason you want to exist, this is like the Creator when you burst out in tears and this is called ‘standing before the Gate of Tears.’
S. We see it as a positive state to reach such a state?
R. Of course it is, when you don't want to think at all about yourself but you want to bestow on everyone. That you are sick with not having a chance to do good to people.
S. How do you reach a state of such an outcry, like you are saying that you're completely shattered?
R. When the whole world and your whole life seems like total darkness that you cannot do good to them.
S. So you want to say that we have to reach such a state that the inner emotional breaking?
R. Yes, so should I bid you farewell, are you leaving?
S. I am already broken
8. S. (17:43) These Gates of Tears, is this what?
R. It is the entry into the world of bestowal and love, outside of ourselves into faith above reason. By this we enter the world of Truth, the actual reality that exists, that we exist in except we are locked in this tiny shape where we feel our world and live within ourselves.
S. You are saying that we reach these gates after you have done everything and you can keep going, so in the group there is always something that you can do towards the friends?
R. The more that you can add, please add. But when you come with your inner efforts to a state where there is nothing more, there cannot be more, but that state is a complicated state. You really want to add, to bestow upon others, that you really want to help the group but you simply cannot do more than that. You see that you are powerless, hopeless, incompetent – it is a state that the Creator depicts for us and then when you burst out and you agreed to every condition as long as you can be in adhesion with everyone and help everyone. Even, you want to use the Creator in order to help everyone else so that the quality of bestowal in you will really be for the sake of all of reality, the whole world, all of humanity and then you burst into spirituality through the Gate of Tears. Well, there are all kinds of measures but basically that is how you can picture it.
S. It says I have to take all my forces out and only then I pass through the gate. And we have a 10….
R. No, no, no, precisely by being in the 10 you can add more powers and reach the Gate of Tears more quickly. Without the 10 you don't reach the Gate of Tears, you don't read anything, you're not advancing. The Gate of Tears is, nevertheless, along the way to correction.
S. What forces do the friends have to give me?
R. Everything: the rightness of the way, the greatness of the goal, the exaltedness of the goal, everything that we have as much as possible. You don't sort what to take from the 10 or not, you just cling to them and go along with them.
9. S. (21:36) There is the quote with the opening of the gate you were speaking about.
Reader Article 26 Baal HaSulam (21:48 - 22:26)
10. R. (22:27) We will explain it more elaborately later but the example is correct: there is a wall and I discovered this wall in front of me and it is impossible to go through this wall in any way – you can't jump over it, you can't go around it, nothing – but the minute that I discover the quality of faith that we have to discover then this quality of faith creates the opening in the wall and I go through. I wish it for all of us.
11. S. (23:12) Can you explain in a better way what it means that ‘the Gate of Prayers were not locked’?
R. We need to constantly try to pray with the friends and all of us to the Creator to help us connect together and locate what is the force of bestowal and with this force of bestowal to be able to come to Him.
12. S. (24:01) Can you invest a complete measure of effort and reach the cry?
R. You have to, you have to think this way all the time. That right now and today, you have to come to the states where you give all of the quantity and quality of the labor and effort to reach the Gate of Tears, yes.
13. S. (24:41) Such a wall that we reach, let’s say like being in the 10 and we are talking and we see that nobody understands the other and we are not able to agree?
R. You will see what the wall is, you have to bump your head against it many times, and then you will see what it is so basically, we are building the wall through our collisions.
14. S. (25:23) About the Gates of Tears, is this something that we still have to retain? You say it's always open but do we have to retain the tears to pass through it? Is it the result of feeling broken or what is that? How does that work?
R. Yes, of course, we are in a state where we have to reach the Gate of Tears. Only through the Gates of Tears do we enter the upper world, spirituality.
15. S. (26:15) We learn that we need to pray through the friends and here, I hear that I have to ask for myself that I will be in adhesion and bestowing, so what is the right prayer to reach this gate praying for the friends or my state?
R. The right prayer is called a prayer of many and it is written about it in all of Baal HaSulam's articles and the articles of Rabash, check it and look in there, delve into it and then you will find how to put together a prayer.
16. S. (27:03) Baal HaSulam says there's no happier state than reaching this, so it's when we look back, we see it's the happiest state?
R. Why in retrospect? If I know that reaching the Gate of Tears is the most advanced thing, that’s the border between this world and the upper world, so I am happy, so why is it called ‘tears’? It is called ‘tears’ because I give up totally and finally with my own strength. That I, myself, I'm certain that I, myself, cannot reach this form of bestowal, of love, I cannot achieve it.
17. S. (27:57) You said that the prayer itself can be like in the group also towards the individual friends, what should be the right prayer?
R. I can't explain these things to you, try to find expressions for it. I am just saying, let's say today we're praying for someone: you see this poor guy, we are praying for him so he will finally be happy in life. Tomorrow we will pray for another, see that’s it. And he is responsible for the women so we are praying for him and likewise for each and every one except for me. We are not praying for me, don't pray for me but for each and every friend in the group, do pray for them. That you wish that they will reach the Gate of Tears, spirituality, anything. ‘One who prays for his friend is rewarded first,’ it really promotes people, advances them.
S. But this friend, should he be present when the prayer takes place?
R. No, no, no. That is unrelated, you don't need to speak about it, it's unrelated to what you say. A prayer is the work in the heart.
18. S. (30:10) Are the tears at the Gate of Tears, tears of joy?
R. it is tears of joy that come from attaining the true weakness in the will to receive, yes.
19. S. (30:47) What are ‘cries and tears’ in spirituality?
R. ‘Weeping and tears’ are ‘weeping and tears’ in spirituality. It has nothing to do with weeping with tears that leak out of our eyes or weeping where it's not about making sounds which are external signs for an internal excitement, but it is excitement.
20. S. (31:36) Are there gates except for the Gate of Tears and if yes why?
R. There are other gates but they come on the way. It's not that they come to disturb open only on a special condition. They are gates that exist, 39 Gates, there is the matter of gates and we will learn them. But the Gate of Tears is a special gate that opens only if a person understands that he has no power to perform any act of bestowal, on the one hand and on the other hand, he must achieve the acts of bestowal and it doesn't matter to him what happened and he is willing to sacrifice anything for it as long as he can be a giver, and then this gate open.
S. Is the Gate of Tears a state of one-time thing or every degree you have to reach this?
R. Beautiful question, it is a one-time thing. After that, there are ascents and descents, there’s something similar to it but a person becomes experienced, already. He has records and he already feels and understands what he is doing. ‘There is none so wise as the experienced.’
21. S. (33:21) It is written, ‘when concealment overcomes a person and he reaches the state where he doesn't feel taste in the work, we learn we have to work in gladness’. Could there be a cry and a scream along with happiness?
R. Of course, why not. If I feel that I am absolutely powerless to achieve the quality of bestowal on the one hand, then I can weep because of my own strength, like a person who is despaired of his own strength, as he writes ‘there is no happier moment than a person is life when he gives up on his own powers and he cannot help himself.’ But then he can burst out in prayer, in a real litany, a real request and the Creator hears his prayer.
22. S. (34:23) How do we reach a state that we did everything that we can because we always feel that we can do more effort?
R. Baal HaSulam writes about this: that the Sitra Achra comes first and says, ‘you need to add some more,’ so when can we say that we have done everything, only in the 10. When I hear from others that we cannot do anymore, if the 10 agrees and unites around the concept that it did everything and it can't do any more than it might happen in that state when it agrees.