FOUNDATION COURSE KABBALAH

are somewhat interwoven into a dialect. In adjacent areas it is closer to Germany then to
Holland as it were. Therefore your surroundings are very important. Surroundings mean the
people with whom you associate. When you learn Kabbala you need to know very well with
whom you associate because it always influences you. The only thing that you can choose is
your environment. So choose a good environment. Not an environment with people who
mock. They will say to you: “What are you doing? What does it give you?” They deride your
spiritual work. You have to bring up strength to carry through and to connect yourself with
those people that have the same goal or good books when you don‟t know any people. And
we have the Creator. I wish for everybody to only have contact with the Creator. Eventually
we only have one contact, with the highest, and that is the Creator. The rest is additional. You
will love the whole world a little only because you have a relationship with the Creator, the
Only Creating Strength. Because He gives the ultimate of Himself and you have to learn that
as well.
Look at the Binah. She doesn‟t need the light Chochmah. Why? She is constantly under
radiation of Chochmah. They are side by side. Chochmah has to give to Binah so she does
receive radiation. She is as it were in Or Chochmah but she doesn‟t need it. She only wants
Chessed, Or Chassadim, to give, love. For example, she doesn‟t care if her husband becomes
a Nobel Prize winner, it‟s of no interest to her. He has to work hard and has power but she
doesn‟t care. She doesn‟t want his money she only wants to sit with him at home or maybe go
out. He has to go to meetings and do important things but she says: I don‟t need your money
or power just be next to me and give me some of your light and not only give it to the country.
It is exactly the same with Binah, she is in the light of Chochmah but she doesn‟t need it. We
will see that everything is built up that way. But her children, Z”A and Malchut do need the
light Chochmah, they are hungry. Both Z”A and Malchut need the light Chochmah. When
they have shortage and need Chochmah they do MA”N, a prayer, just like us. With respect to
the higher we are just like them only we are at the bottom and we ask the Malchut and
Malchut goes to the Binah. When they want it, Binah gives it. Binah turns to Chochmah, the
father, she looks at him and we call that zivug. Zivug means that they look at each other.
Because great Cabbalists could look at something and they moved that in the inner or
enormous changes came. When Simon bar Jochai, who wrote the Zohar in 13 years in a
cavern, got out of that cavern for the first time after those 13 years he saw a farmer with his
cart and an ox. He looked at them and he thought: Such great teachings, great relief and
perfection has the Creator given us. Now look at that farmer, he has remained the same in all
these 13 years. With regard to the strengths he found it unfortunate and then the cart went up
in flames. It caught fire because of his strength and only by his „looking‟. Can you imagine?
While of course it was not a good strength. When he met the greatest sages of that time they
told him to go back to the cavern and spend a little more time there so he would not radiate
that burning strength but would also obtain the strength of mercy to compensate and rule over
that burning strength.
Sometimes people come to us and they can‟t handle the strength. Everything I tell has no
literal meaning. I don‟t speak a word about our world. Torah also doesn‟t speak a word about
our world.
When Simon Bar Jochai, the author of the Zohar, came outside and he saw the farmer
working on the land it‟s of course not meant literal. He saw an illiterate man and he had
shown this farmer as it were that he did not do his duty to experience the spiritual but that he
instead learnt the Torah literal, as a story. This you can compare with someone that just works
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