Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 278

What Should One Do When Darkness Takes Over from Within?

A person who is in a descent goes about in the society like a dead man walking, barely functioning and barely dragging himself along. In such a state, he cannot do anything by himself, not even feel that he is behaving like a dead man or feel that the process is acting upon him, but it indeed acts on him. Therefore, he is compared to a dead man, because he does not feel that it acts. Meanwhile, the society resuscitates him and gradually gets him back on his feet. The society must believe in this and continue reviving him for another half a day, another day, another two days, and it passes.

The question is to what extent can we surrender ourselves to those who take care of us, to the society. That is, to what extent we disconnect our thoughts, our head, and let our body do whatever the friends ask, as though we have no head of our own. This is also how we learn in Kabbalah. What does it mean to be “small”? It is when the great one constantly makes all the calculations and the small one carries them out. This is how it is in spirituality. It is not like in our world, where the small one, the child, is the head, and the great one, the mother or father, merely carries out his requests. We surrender ourselves to the upper one and receive the head of the upper one through devotion. Afterward, we develop our own head, but our gaze is always directed upward, at the head of the upper one, to learn from Him, to be like Him.
From a Talk on the Article “What Is “He Who Has a Flaw Shall Not Offer [Sacrifice]” in the Work?” 6/19/2002.

Related Material:
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 277
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 276
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 275

It is written in the Midrash that after the Creator created the nations and they spread across the earth, He approached each of them and offered them the Torah, hoping that someone would want to accept it. But no one except the people of Israel wanted to accept it.

What is so undesirable about the Torah that no one wanted to accept it? Does it contain not only good but something bad as well. Otherwise, why would the Creator have approached everyone?

A person has only one desire called “Israel,” which corresponds to something called the “Torah.”Does this imply that Israel needs the Torah because it is inherently flawed? As it is written: “I created the evil inclination, and I created the Torah as a spice.” But does only Israel have an evil inclination while the nations of the world do not?

Rabash writes that it is specifically Israel that is egoistic and opposite to the Creator and not the nations of the world. It is Israel that needs the Torah. Understanding this, Israel needs the Torah because the Torah is the force of correction. Anyone who feels that they lack the force of correction is called Israel.

This Hisaron (deficiency) comes from above. A person does not have to do the Creator’s work or create desires within themselves. But they must feel which desires are speaking within them at any given moment and work precisely with those desires. They must not remain indifferent and passive, but must use the means called the light of the Torah as much as possible.

To bring Israel, that is, those who want to correct themselves, to the goal (and here this also refers to the nations of the world who acquire the qualities of Israel and also desire correction), the right desires must gradually be developed within them. This happens only with the help of the light.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/30/26, Rabash, “What Is, ‘He Who Is Without Sons,’ in the Work?”

Question: In the article “What Is the Work of Man, in the Work that Is Attributed to the Creator?”, Rabash writes about awe before the Creator. Should we fear Him?

Answer: Who does not feel fear? Only those with no reason have no fear or those who have never really encountered life, who have not received blows, experienced suffering, or felt any limitations placed on their desires. But anyone who has already felt a boundary and knows there is a limitation feel a certain sense of fear.

We have a Kli, the desire to receive, and accordingly, there is pleasure. A Kli is created by pleasure, light, and corresponds exactly to the light in quantity and quality.

The Kli is the desire to enjoy. If the desire to receive feels it cannot enjoy because something restricts its ability to fill itself, fear and awe arise from this, from the faintest sense of some boundary to the greatest fear.

Fear results from the emptiness of the Kli. The feeling of an empty Kli can go in two directions: fear of an empty Kli either in receiving for my own sake or in my intention to give.

Therefore, there are two types of awe. A trembling directed at myself, at all the pleasures of this world, whether I have them or not (such as family, health, money, honor, and so on). And fear for the world to come, whether I will attain it. Sometimes fear for this world outweighs fear for the world to come, and then fear for the world to come is discarded.

Sometimes a person develops such fear for the next world that they are ready to give up this whole world to ensure the next. So, he goes to a monastery and subjects himself to various forms of suffering.

Ultimately, a person always seeks to overcome a certain fear, whether it is fear of this world or the next world. But both are sensations of this world experienced in the present. It only seems to the person that they are thinking about the next world. In reality, they are not. What they must overcome is their current negative sensation, a sensation they perceive to be linked to the future.

There is also awe about whether I bestow, how do I bestow, and how I fill my Kli of bestowal. In other words, am I filling the Creator’s Kli? Although it is completely unclear to me what His Kli is, because I can only gauge it through the sensation of my own Kli. To the extent I understand what bestowal is, to the extent I realize and feel what I am doing in relation to the Creator, to this extent I have a Kli of bestowal, and I fill it.

That is, this is also my Kli, my inner feeling. As for what is going on outside, I know nothing. All these feelings are inside us, and they all exist in the present, not in the past or the future.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/27/26, Rabash, “What Is the Work of Man, in the Work that Is Attributed to the Creator?”

Question: Sometimes a desire is called Makom (place) and sometimes Ish (person). What is the difference between the two?

Answer: We can speak about this in terms of the internal and external. Sometimes we speak about an entire world (which, in essence, is a single person); at other times, we refer to things that are more internal or more external. For example, when one passage speaks about a Beit Knesset (synagogue), and another speaks about a person in a Beit Knesset, it is clear that these refer to states of the point in the heart in relation to all the other desires.

The point in the heart works in such a way that all the other desires gather around it, whether animalistic or human, and eventually even the desires of the Klipot. All of them become like one bundle directed toward a single goal, like the point of Moses that gathers all the other desires toward one goal and leads them forward.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/16/26, Rabash, “A Congregation Is No Less than Ten”