Entries in the 'Prayer and Intention' Category

“Know Your Creator and Serve Him”

276.02Comment: You said that there are three conditions for a request: the Creator has what I want, He has the desire to give it to me, and I have the knowledge of how to ask Him for it.

My Response: Perhaps, in order to “truly call upon the Creator,” as Rabash writes, these three conditions are not enough. Perhaps several more can be listed.

I spoke about the conditions in our world. Imagine that you want to buy some new thing. What does the possibility of fulfilling yourself depend on? It does not matter whether it is for bestowal or for reception, and it does not matter which lights and Kelim we are talking about. The main thing is that you have a Hisaron (a need).

How do you attain the fulfilment of this Hisaron? You need to go to the store. In order to receive this thing in the store, I must pay money. In order for me to have money, I need to receive it. Where will I receive it from? From the owner.

But in order for him to give me money, I must work for him in return. In order for me to be able to work, I need energy, fuel. What is this fuel? My understanding that the shirt I want to buy in the store is important enough to me to obligate me to make an effort at work right now. In all these matters, I am dealing with the owner and the seller. The owner will want to give me money if I do a certain work for him; that is, there must be an equalization of desires and an understanding of the connection.

The same thing happens in every place. In this sense, there is nothing new in spirituality. We need similarity of properties with the Creator. “Know your Creator and serve Him.”

The first knowledge in contact with Him is faith, rising above the desire to receive. Therefore, Baal HaSulam writes that you have no greater commandment than this: to acquire faith, the Kelim of Bina, the properties of Bina.

When Malchut acquires the properties of Bina and rises to the degree of Bina, then everything is open; there are no restrictions. We are confused by the words we use: “faith,” “above knowledge,” “the righteous shall live by his faith,” and other concepts and sayings. But in essence, this action can be understood very well if one studies it. Without the ascent of Malchut into Bina, there can be no action.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/15/26, Rabash, “What Is, ‘We Have No Other King But You,’ in the Work?”

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How Can We Obligate the Creator to Preserve Our Union?

137How can we preserve a state we have attained for the future? Can I somehow guarantee what will happen to me? Of course not!

But my desire to guarantee this creates the next Kli (vessel) within me. I offer this Kli, this desire of mine, as a prayer, as MAN, to the Creator, to the higher degree, which preserves this Kli for me and prepares its fulfillment.

Under what conditions, should we establish a covenant between us? Surely it is not enough simply to say some words, asking Him that things not become worse than they are now? What does my signature under this covenant signify? What must I concretely create now in order to obligate the Creator to preserve the relationship between us?

For His part, the Creator adheres to this. He always relates to me well. How can I guarantee that I will always relate well to Him in one of the 620 channels of our connection with Him?

This can be done only by raising MAN, a prayer for what I want to receive in the future. I am very afraid that in the future I may become worse than I am now. Where does this fear come from?

As usual, we look back, and from this fear a Kli arises. I have fallen many times, suffered setbacks, and seen to what extent I suffer, how bad I feel when I have become detached from the Creator. Now this fear, these sufferings, have prepared me to raise MAN, to offer such a prayer that I say: “Let anything happen, only do not let me become distant from You.” As it is said: “Do not cast me away from before You, and take not Your holy spirit from me.”

If I truly have such preparation as a result of past sufferings, then my prayer is correct. Perhaps I suffer and cry pointlessly, like a small child, whereas within me a mature prayer of an adult must grow so that by means of it I sign the covenant. This signature implies the fulfillment of many conditions. It is not simple.

In fact, this is a long path. All the previous sufferings must necessarily be taken into account; they must be gathered and not lost. And we know that all the previous degrees disappear if we have not yet arrived at their final definitions and results.

Only the final definition, which is recorded in Malchut in each state exists, is fixed, and is preserved. All other definitions are erased, because they did not reach the final point of their development.

Therefore, we must constantly add to the work until we have worked through all the particulars. And when we have finished everything, we come to the conclusion that we ourselves are incapable of doing anything and that accepting the agreement is the best thing possible.

In our world, we come to an agreement out of hopelessness. But with the Creator, we must reach such a state that I sign a covenant because I have no better state (and there cannot be one) than the state that has come.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/8/26, Rabash, “What Is Making a Covenant in the Work”

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Ask for a Book Instead of a Ball

243.01Question: On one hand, we say that one’s desire has to be clarified in order to know what to ask for. On the other hand, we do not know what is good or beneficial for us. How should we ask so that it is not according to the desires of the body?

Answer: I do not know what is beneficial for me and what is not. So how can I ask for anything?

The Creator does not take into account what you ask for. After all, you are like an uncomprehending infant. Rabash wrote in one of his articles about a child walking with his father and crying all the time, while the father does not react at all. They ask him, “What is the matter?” And he answers, “Do you know why my son is crying? He is asking for a pin so that he can clean his eye with it.”

Of course, the example is not entirely realistic. “Sight” and “pin” are all spiritual terms. The point is that the child is asking for something that could harm him. He does not understand what is good for him and what is bad. It seems good to him. So should we give him a pin? No, it is better to let him cry.

What is the benefit of tears? Why does the father not calm him down? Because in this way, through crying, the child will understand that his desires do not coincide with his father’s, and apparently the father knows better what is good for him. Then it is worthwhile to stop crying and start working on making his desires coincide with his father’s desires.

Let us say the father wants to buy him a beautiful book while the son wants a ball. But the father will buy the book anyway. And the child, through crying and tears, will nevertheless understand that his transition to the next state can happen only through the book, and gradually he himself will want it. And he will gradually examine his desire for the ball and come to the conclusion that all it does is make him cry, that it causes him pain.

At first, he will hate both his father and the book, and look for some other father who will give him a ball. But he will see that nothing will come of it until he wants his father as well as the book. Then he will definitely ask for the book because otherwise he will not receive it. And even if he does receive it, he will simply tear it apart. The father wants him to read it, while he would shred it. The book would be harmful to him.

Until the child learns how to use the book, and what benefit can be derived from it, he will not receive it. Look at the path he has to go through from his initial state, where he wants a ball, screams, and bursts into tears, to the desire to receive a book.

We are looking for how to approach people who want nothing but television, sex, food, and entertainment. How can you give them our books, which are so difficult, so that they will become interested and open them? People do not read anything at all.

How can we prepare a desire within humanity so that it will want Kabbalah, so that it will want a book instead of a ball? Two billion people watch football. If two million became interested in Kabbalah, the world would be turned upside down. And against the backdrop of what problems does the world watch these things?! What problems do people find themselves facing as a result?! It is something frightening. This is the power of the Klipa.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/30/26, Rabash, “What Does It Mean that Oil Is Called ‘Good Deeds’ in the Work?”

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Moses Is the Force that Elevates the Soul to Bina

740.03Kabbalists have prayers that depict imperfect states using words that seem to be addressed to the Creator to someone who understands nothing. But one who understands sees from this text which of his inner desires and inclinations he should direct to the Creator. The prayer is composed in such a language that, in principle, anyone can adapt it to himself, depending on the level he is in: from zero to the level of the final correction.

Kabbalists have always used the language that Moses received and used to write the Torah, not only to specifically address those who study Kabbalah, but also to address everyone regardless of their spiritual level. If you delve into the prayers, you can see all the interactions and all the levels of every human desire toward the light, toward the Creator.

Moses described everything related to receiving the Torah and the ascent of the soul to Bina. This is his task.

Moses is the force that raises all person’s desires from Malchut to Bina, up to entering the Land of Israel. And afterward the corrections take place without him

Since the quality of “Moses” pulls Malchut to the level of Bina, his mission ends at this point, and he dies. He dies in Jordan, looking from afar at Israel, as it is said in the Torah: “He went up Mount Nebo and died there on the 5th of Adar.” He was born on the 5th of Adar and died on the 5th of Adar. All of this is according to the spiritual roots…

It is not about the person Moses, but about the quality. I cannot imagine a person who would do this, it does not form any kind of picture in me at all. But it can also be understood that way, it does not matter.

Every spiritual root must touch our world, clothe itself in matter. Therefore, everything that should happen in the spiritual world must happen in this world with all of us. As of today, everything has been realized except Purim, except Gmar Tikkun (the final correction).
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson for the holiday of Sukkot, 9/25/26

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How Creation Becomes Independent

232.03If a person correctly connects the right and left lines, such that they complement each other to the fullest extent with neither suppressing or dominating the other, it is called attaining a true prayer. One must ensure that both lines are in the proper combination and at the maximum intensity they are capable of. Only then is it called a prayer.

For such a prayer, a person already receives what is known as the middle line. I do not know exactly what the middle line is. It represents the birth of something new. That is, while I can compose a prayer within myself, receiving an answer to it means being granted something from above that I never possessed before.

What I receive from above is called the vessel (Kli) of my soul, a desire for spirituality that is now truly mine. It doesn’t belong to not the Creator (the right line) nor to the creation (the left line), that is, the nature from which I originated. It is something absolutely new, a fragment of my true self within the spiritual world. This is the beginning of the soul, a new Kli.

In this way a person begins to grow. This Kli constitutes the person’s “self.” They begin to view these two lines and relate to them as two angels, two parameters, two forces, and two distinct natures—the nature of the Creator and the nature of creation—which are given to them so that they can use them together correctly.

This is necessary so that a person gives birth to a third element. The middle line is that third element, something that never existed before, something that the person brings forth into being. Obviously, the Creator does this through the light, but the demand to fill the Hisaron (lack) must come from the person. The sensation of the Hisaron, the awareness of it, and the preparation for it must come from them. Until these exist within a person, nothing can be born.

The Kli born in the middle line is something completely new, something that never existed in reality before. And here the creation truly feels itself to be independent. The Kli is the screen and reflected light, and this is truly the “self.” I sense within them that this is my “self,” and that my “I” is, in essence, the desire to bestow, the desire to be similar to the Creator.

There is neither shame nor a feeling of baseness or discomfort there. All the negative sensations of a person do not come from their “self,” but from the Hisaron of the left line, which is given to us initially, because the Creator created it as “existence from absence” (Yesh Mi Ayin) only so that we could use it to perceive its complete oppositeness to the Creator.

The only choice a person has is to arrive at the correct combination of the right and left lines, which creates the prayer. What does prayer mean? It means the formation of a Hisaron to which we receive an answer from above. When the light comes to fill a specific desire, the proper Kli , screen (Masach), and reflected light (Ohr Hozer) are formed. The screen and reflected light are the vessel with which creation already begins to work independently.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/13/26, Rabash, “What Is Do Not Add and Do Not Take Away in the Work?”

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Connecting the Qualities of the Creator and the Creation

571.01Question: What does the correct connection between the right and left lines mean?

Answer: Correct connection consists of taking the qualities of the Creator and the qualities of creation so that, based on them, creation can attain the Creator. What happens at the end of correction? The entire right line and the entire left line, and everything that is revealed in the process of attaining them, become united into one. What am I doing now? Now I use them to the extent that I am able to, to begin the correction and ask for it.

How is this done? Baal HaSulam says that you must connect yourself, your qualities (“Who am I and what am I?”), with the qualities of the Creator (“Who is He and what is He?”). In other words, your present action should be directed toward bringing these two together.

Start doing this now and observe what your inner resistance is like, the explosions that arise within you. This is how the forces for prayer are created within you. The fact that today you cannot connect these two lines, but you nevertheless make an effort to connect them, that itself is a prayer.

Prayer is not at all the state in which you have already connected everything: everything is, thank God, fine, and now you are in control of the situation. All these actions merely precede the prayer.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/13/26, Rabash, “What Is Do Not Add and Do Not Take Away in the Work?”

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Reveal the Chain of Reshimot

261Prayer is a desire, Hisaron, that is already present in a person. This desire has already been analyzed, it is ready to receive fulfillment, an answer. And the effort is in attaining such a desire. The desire itself, the prayer itself, is secondary. The whole essence is in the work beforehand.

Question: Is prayer my deepest intention? Is it about what I am looking for?

Answer: You do not know what you are looking for. You have what we call a “spiritual gene”: a chain of Reshimot (reminiscences or spiritual records) that resides in you because your soul has descended from above to its present low, corrupted state. All the degrees that it passes through are now present within it, but only in the form of Reshimot, in the form of information about each degree.

You can acquire this degree if to this information you add the strength for the conquest of the degree. The force with which the attainment of the degree takes place is called a screen or an intention for the sake of bestowal.

Our work consists of using various actions to reveal the next Reshimo. If I have realized it and continue onward, then the next Reshimo is revealed, a higher one, then an even higher one, and another. And in this way I return to the place from where the soul descended.

I cannot foresee the next desire that will arise when I reveal the next Reshimo: what I will look then, what my thoughts, my desires will be, who I will become. It is simply foolish to imagine now the state I am not in yet. On what basis would I do so?

We see that all the states we go through are such that it is impossible to even guess what the next one will be like. Therefore, I should not think about future desires, future thoughts. It is not without reason that it is written regarding spiritual work: “As an ox to the burden and a donkey to the load.” It is exactly in this most primitive form that I want to come to something greater. But what is something greater? If I begin to imagine something myself, it is already wrong.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/24/26, Rabash, “Who Testifies to a Person”

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Everything Comes from Infinity

255Question: How can we speak about gradual development when the gap between any two consecutive degrees is infinite?

Answer: The infinite gap between the degrees does not contradict gradual development; on the contrary, it makes it possible because the connection between the degrees passes through infinity.

Each degree is like a piece of sausage, like a slice containing all of its components, and you, as it were, return to the original whole form of the sausage in order to receive the next slice. Each time, you return upward in order to continue the work below.

We say that at each degree there is MAN (Mayin Nukvin, a request from a lower Partzuf to the upper one for the ability to receive the light of Hochma) and MAD (Mayin Duchrin, the response). Even if we do not know what this means, do not consciously raise a prayer, and do not receive the light from above, nevertheless, this order is maintained at every degree and in every state. MAN rises to infinity, and from there the lights descend.

There is no state whose initial cause does not lie in infinity. And our states are no exception.

We call our states corrections, and we do not experience states that existed before. Something similar once existed in the broken vessels, which, incidentally, were not our vessels. Our vessels are vessels of human desire; they are something else entirely. They are not the Kelim that, upon falling, serve as a root or preparation.

Therefore, everything we have—every picture of the surrounding world, every state—reaches infinity and returns. This is not a long journey. We should not imagine it as a round trip spanning many kilometers.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/28/26, Rabash, “What Is the Prohibition to Teach Torah to Idol-Worshippers in the Work?”

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Torah—The Light of Correction

167Torah is the force that corrects and fills a person. Torah is the light that comes as the light of correction and fulfillment of the Kelim. A person performs the preparation called a commandment, and the light that consequently fills one is called Torah.

The Creator gives a person the strength to correct oneself to the extent that one reveals the need to receive this strength specifically from the Creator. This is called the “raising of MAN.”

Raising MAN is a combination of conditions, inner definitions, sensations, and experience. All of this together is called a “Reshimo,” which prompts the upper one to help the lower one.

We cannot say that the upper one does not want this, but He is on a higher degree, and if a person has a desire to awaken this higher degree, it means that he can become part of that degree. This is the meaning of a request.

In truth, it is not simply a request, but the Kli (vessel) becoming equivalent to that of the upper one. Then the upper one fills the person’s Kli, and by receiving this fulfillment, one becomes similar to the upper one. This means that one has risen to the degree of the Creator.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/2/26, Rabash, “What Is ‘The Concealed Things Belong to the Lord, and the Revealed Things Belong to Us,’ in the Work?”

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For Whom Should We Ask for the Light?

261Question: For whom do I ask for the light that reforms and returns to the source? Is it for my friends, who supposedly are already corrected, or for myself?

Answer: A person asks from a deep inner need, from a desire. The desire must be for the society. After all, if we are talking about attaining spirituality, then in spirituality there is no personal calculation with anyone.

There is no such thing as “I” that exists in spirituality. I am the collective of souls into which I am included. And therefore a person cannot remain there alone, detached from others.

So for what kind of life does one ask for strength? The life force is for the common body, the one soul. Therefore a person should ask for strength in order to bestow to this body. One’s entire life is determined by how much they give to the common system.

Therefore, even if one’s prayer is caused by a desire to receive strength, it is a prayer that one be given the strength to bestow to the common body of the soul. And therefore, whether a person asks for everyone or asks for oneself, it is one and the same prayer.

When we speak about there being a “prayer of one” and a “prayer of many,” this is still an uncorrected prayer. There is no other prayer except the “prayer of many,” a prayer for the society.

But as long as a person is not yet in a completely corrected state, one partially asks for oneself and partially for the society. According to this, a person is corrected by having one’s direction adjusted so that one feels where it is better and where it is worse, and in this way a person is brought to the correct prayer.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/24/10, The Zohar

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