LM 25.5 — Achavi Lan Mana, Part 5 of 5 · תורה כ״ה

בעזרת השם יתברך, we are going to be learning the fifth shiur in Torah כ״ה, beginning with וזהו שאמרו סבי דבי אתונא, which is going to bring together the concepts that we've been discussing into the מאמר חז״ל, and then continue on and see some additions to the Torah that relate to earlier paragraphs after the main part. For anybody that did reach out, I love hearing how different תורות, different parts of the Torah, ideas hit you, so please keep any anything coming. Had some very interesting conversations, so I appreciate those. I've also started to try to put some notes up again, so if you like those, let me know.

As we as we begin, I'm just going to, again, review, reorient, and calibrate our thoughts based on the note from Rabbi' Chaim Kramer, which is helpful. He begins, "Each person must seek to break the מדמה in his heart. By doing so, he will be able to actualize his potential intellect and gain acquired intellect." And this really frames what we're going to be discussing. We addressed it in the difference between a top-down approach, if you will, and a bottom-up approach. What does this mean? If you can imagine brackets, in other words, like let's say sports teams or whatever, it starts off two, goes into four, goes into eight.

The higher up you go in the system, the more unified it becomes, and the lower down you are in the system, then if that's your vantage point, if that's your point of view, then the more disparity, the more separateness there is. If your point of view is higher up, then you'll realize that everything really unfolded from a single point. If your point of view is down below and you can't see higher up, you don't necessarily know whether things came from the same source or not the same source. Practical examples that we've used before might be a seed going into a tree, leaves, fruits, flowers, everything really incorporated in the seed and unfolding from a single source, but if the point of view is after the tree is already developed, it's not necessarily even comprehensible how it could have came from the same source.

Or if you imagine, let's say, a DNA molecule unfolding into a a person, as it were, everything that is going to come going forward is really incorporated within that original DNA molecule, everything that came and everything that will develop, that'll be reactive to something else. Everything really was contained within that initial seed, within that initial point. So the higher your point of view goes up, as it were, to that initial point, the more unity you see. And yet if you encounter it after everything is unfolded, different organs, different types of organs, different functionality, there's no real way to see that everything is coming from one unified source.

Things might seem to be contradicting each other, different parts of the system, you can't tell how they necessarily go together or trying to achieve the same purpose. Maybe one will be stronger than the other and it will trump, but you can't see that they're really unfolding from something that's inherently a single entity. The ultimate giluy, we could say, is where you see all of these the multiplicity of systems, and you actually see come l'maaseh into the עולם העשיה that there could be kavayachol, we've said before, almost like a דירה בתחתונים, you can see that the original רצון, the original thing that was בכח, בכח, בכח, now comes to fruition and plays out so that when you now take into account the universe of all of the overlapping and overriding and contradictory factors, and you see that they all actually fit into one picture, that becomes really a giluy of the unity that was there to begin with.

But going back to what we said, if you if you take a top-down versus a bottom-up approach, so if the the original seed, the original top, right? That is going to be in line with רצון השם, the ultimate truth, and then everything that unfolds from that, all of one's emotions, all of one's actions, all of those should be unfolding and should be to achieve the ultimate purpose for which one is in the world. If a person is starting bottom-up, a person has a physical body, a person has different emotions, they have different desires, well, what drives the bus, right?

What is going to dictate how a person acts? How does a person use those functionality? Well, if intellectually you might realize that the right thing to do is to act in accordance with the Torah and the right way, but a person might also act in accordance with the competing priorities, and there isn't, intellectually I guess you could say, but there isn't necessarily anything pulling one way or the other inherently. It's only as a person grows that they realize that any competing priorities, anything it's really it's really only a facade. The example we've used before is like two people arguing what's behind the curtain, and then one person looks behind the curtain.

Beforehand, I thought that it was a person holding up their fingers, and you thought that it was the silhouette of something else. Once a person looks behind and they get that higher level, that perspective of truth, it's not that I'm arguing with you, it's that I'm right, and you were simply mistaken, your argument your argument evaporates. In terms of the human functionality, we had said, if a person has a רצון, they have a brain, there should be a seamless process, let's say, between somebody wanting to do something and, let's say, their hand moving. There shouldn't be it shouldn't feel like there are multiple steps in that process.

Everything is really contained within the מוחין, within the brain, how they feel about something, how they act. If bottom-up, if a person's hands are not necessarily acting in accordance with their brain, what they wanted to do, that person is ill. There's a disconnect, there's a friction, it doesn't work. And therefore, a person has to get rid of the מדמה, the seeming multiple perspectives, the animal perspective, if you will, the other competing emotions. We have a job that we have to allow the Godliness to flow through our physical self and the physical world, but those should not represent anything that is an other, anything that is competing.

And the more that we rise in perspective, the more that we see this. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that as a person rises that there are no more ספקות. What this means is, you know, going back to our bracket example, if at one altitude you see that there are 16 different entries, and you rise one level above, you realize that there are really only eight different entries at the next level, though each one of those eight divided into two. At a higher level, you realize that there are eight principal points, which is how we can see, you know, that there's really everything will be folded into אנכי.

We've heard things like this before. If you go high enough, everything really comes down to emunah, in a certain sense. Now, this also means that as a person goes up, they're going to be dealing with kelipah that they haven't dealt with before. So let's translate this into a language of avodah. At the level that I'm holding, I spend my money on all sorts of things, some מותר, some אסור, whatever my particular taavah happens to be, and I think that halavai that I should want to give my maaser money to support Torah. I just have no desire.

A person goes, they grow, and now they graduate to the level where they are going to be giving part of their money to maaser, and it's going to be supporting Torah. And now they're dealing with a different challenge. Are they going to be altruistic about it, or are they going to be doing it for kavod? At the first level, when they looked up, they didn't look at those as even being differentiated points. The idea that they could just give their money towards Torah causes, that was just tzedakah. That was righteousness. It wasn't even something that they were holding by.

As they move to a higher level and they realize that there's no point in spending their money and resources on אסור things, so that fell away, they are now encountering higher-level, closer to the unity, and now, though, they are going to encounter higher-level kelipah. The way to get past that kelipah is to rise in the level where you see the source, right? The higher your perspective, the more that you realize that there is no other, everything is really is really folding in to something centralized, to something unified. And therefore, as a person rises in these higher levels, they're going to encounter new kelipot.

The other interesting piece that we did see is this dynamic between a person's avodah, as we, so to speak, rise through the levels and get closer to הקדוש ברוך הוא, and we purify, unify, if you will, ourselves to bring ourselves closer to Hashem, but also there is different there's a תיקון in the בריאה. At every level, if you imagine from the point of view of the structure, הקדוש ברוך הוא who created, designed the system where the the system has to be rectified, which is we do through our through our bechirah. Now, if you think about multiple people, again, we're using these משלים, multiple people acting within this system, which we went into in depth, let's say somebody else already occupied that challenge, does that mean that that point of the בריאה has already been rectified?

Or does that mean now if somebody's going to encounter that same challenge within the בריאה, they are still going to encounter that challenge? Looking from the point of view of the person, there's no reason that just because you dealt with the challenge, I shouldn't have to. From the point of view of the בריאה, maybe once an area, an altitude, a place in that chart has been rectified, it shouldn't have to be encountered anymore. And this is, again, it's a dynamic system, and we we explain that even though somebody else might have already occupied that box, occupied that challenge, and they, כלפי their avodah and their interaction, their vantage point, were able to create בירורים and were able to create clarity and get to the to the center of it where the קליפות, so to speak, evaporated, however, when another person is able to encounter that challenge, there's a various types of tikkun that have to take place until ultimately there's the there's a giluy and the world is going to be full of daat, and be'ezrat Hashem, soon we're going to see ימות המשיח and עולם הבא.

And therefore, Rabbi' Chaim Kramer says, on every level there are new measures of intellect surrounded by new illusions, new קליפות. As one ascends the spiritual ladder, he must subdue those קליפות at each new level, which is the process we just described, and as a person ascends to new higher levels, those קליפות are reawakened, meaning that there might have been they might have been collapsed, so to speak, evaporated, understood that they were not קליפה. The the the peel of the orange, as it were, is not a separate entity from the orange, it serves only to protect the orange.

If you look at the peel as separate, you peel it off, it just shrivels away, it dies, it doesn't have its own חיות. So as a person goes higher in level, but those קליפות might have been attach reattached to the פרי, reattached to the fruit by the first person who realizes that they're not separate, but now somebody else is going to have their their own challenge, which means that as far as he's concerned, those קליפות will be reawakened to present themselves again with the challenge. Are they are they unified or are they part of a or separate?

Because that new person has not yet broken those קליפות. As people rise in levels, they are now going to encounter a new system, new קליפה at every level, until they, you know, switch sides of the table and they gain a higher level perspective, and they're able again to see the unity at that new level, and we're able to go ever higher, closer to the אין סוף. Now, subduing the קליפות, he continues, requires a revelation of God's greatness, right? Unity. The more perspective of unity we have, the more that we have that higher level vantage point, the more that that subdues the קליפות, that the the the separateness evaporates.

We realize that everything is part of a unified system. How do we do that? Either by One way is by seeing the shevach of הקדוש ברוך הוא. We talked about this in the context of davenen, to have a giluy, to align your perspective with הקדוש ברוך הוא. What מצוות מעשיות, what act is able to engage one in this perspective? Where do we see that there are various different people, as it were, or I have my own resource and my own assets, I'm a different person, I want to use those for myself, and I realize that, no, I'm not separate from you.

Everybody, Klal Yisrael, 600,000 different perspectives are all reflecting ישראל ואורייתא וקודשא בריך הוא חד הוא, that the ratzon of Hashem is being refracted and reflected in different ways from perspective of this בריאה, but really everything is part of one שלמות, and other than the fact that I have my avodah in my body, for my vantage point, I'm not inherently ואהבת לרעך כמוך, I'm not inherently different than you, we're all part different parts of of a neshamah coming from the same Father? The mitzvah of tzedakah. And that is really an aspect of תפארת. תפארת is where you have all these different colors along the spectrum and they all come together.

When a person gives tzedakah and they realize that the money is not my resource to use for my purposes, then the money is בעצם a vehicle through which Hakadosh Baruch Hu is sending shefa to the world. That's what בעצם ממון represents. And when I give tzedakah and it shows how I relate to ממון, it rectifies the rest of my money and it brings me together, and it positions me כלפי כלל ישראל, tzedakah is an unbelievably tremendous mitzvah. And we spoke also about how the goyim see ממון in the hands of of Klal Yisrael and they see what it represents.

The example we gave is somebody sees a husband give a wife flowers and they see the emotion that surrounds it and they say, "I want those flowers." But the flower itself is nothing. The flower is only what it represents. And therefore, when the ממון goes into the hands of the goyim, then it's not ממון, so to speak. We said it's money. Right? It's like a person said, "I don't know what a wedding is, I know what a חתונה is." ממון is a vehicle, when used appropriately, through which Hakadosh Baruch Hu sends shefa, we gain attachment, we understand how we receive shefa and how we relate to each other.

And when people misuse it for their own purposes, then that that that that is the insatiable that insatiable drive and desire because that itch will never really be scratched. And this is really that our Torah. This is the avodah of gaining higher perspective and working ever closer towards unity and taking the בריאה at every level and and having it collapse until we get ever closer to the אין סוף and bring ourselves in line, ועשה רצונך כרצונו, until we become ever in line with Hakadosh Baruch Hu and we see any everything only from a unified perspective, not just despite separateness, but that there really is no separateness and never was any to begin with.

And that's our avodah. Going into the text: וזהו שאמרו סבי דבי אתונא: אחוי לן מנא דלא שוי לחבלא. Show us something that is not worth the damage that it causes. ואייתי בודיא ופשטוהו, and he brought a בודיא, he brought a mat and they spread it out, ולא עייל לתרעא, and now it was too big for the doorway. ואמר לון: אייתי מרא וססתרי לפתח עם הכותל. Bring a sledgehammer and knock down the door. עם הכותל, I read, with the כותל. But what does that mean, the door with the כותל? So interestingly, I'm going to read a note over here from what he has.

It says in the Gemara the לשון is אייתי מרא וסתרי, bring the a sledgehammer and destroy, but it doesn't actually explain what's being destroyed. Rashi explains: בנין הפתח והכותל. I read it לפתח עם הכותל. And he explains over here in the note that Rabbeinu, first of all, folds in Rashi into the way that he quotes the Gemara, but instead of saying והכותל he says עם הכותל, because there was two ways to learn this and we read it differently. One way is if you can't get the mat into the door, so then you break down the doorway, the doorway is made up of the כותל, so you break down the doorway with the כותל in order to bring the mat through.

But what the way that we're going to learn over here, which is fascinating, we're going to say, break down the פתח, what's another way to destroy the פתח? To build a wall in front of it. So he says, how are you going to be שובר the פתח, which we're going to align with the yetzer hara. will see, by creating a כותל, and we'll see the significance of the כותל, which will be representative of the גוונים, the colors that we discussed, the תפארת and צדקה. So let's go into the let's go into the explanation. פירש בודיא, what is a mat?

זה בדיות הלב. A בודיא is the בדיות, the imaginings of the heart. Like we said, if you're at the lower altitude, at the top we see that there's one רצון, and that רצון is HaKadosh Baruch Hu created us a stage and a universe to exercise that רצון, to create a תחתונים, as HaKadosh Baruch Hu created דירה בתחתונים. We have a physical world, and we have our our physical self, our נפש, רוח, נשמה. But if a person's perspective is at that lower level, then they have these imaginings of the לב, we're going to say the שרירות הלב.

They might actually be driven by the wrong thing. At that level, there's the way to do things in line with the Torah, in line with the אמת, in line with the רצון השם, and then there's other powerful כוחות. And what if they have the לב, their emotional component, their בהמה component, and that seems to be stronger, it seems to make just as much sense from at at that level. So over here where a person has the בודיא, the which we said is the mat, but we're going to say that that aligns with the imaginings of the heart, מה שבודה מלבו, what a person fantasizes about, היינו המדמה הנ״ל, at that point, it's the מדמה.

Now, it's only imaginary from the point of view of the higher perspective where you see the truth. Any imagining or any idea that's not in line with the truth is just an imagination. It's really there, it's really a thought, but it's it's it's illusory, if you will, it's not based on any reality. From the point of view of somebody in the system, they might not realize. The way or the way that a person is going to have to break that is by gaining the higher perspective. That's what we said, right? היינו בחינת שרירות הלב. These are the תאוות that are pulling a person's לב, they're they're driving a person in a certain direction.

And now, כשזה הכח המדמה שבלב גובר ומתפשט על האדם, when a person is driven, he's controlled by these visions of the heart, as it were, שעולה ממדריגה תחתונה למדריגה עליונה, literally translated as bottom-up, והקליפה הזו שהיא המדמה, this shell, as it were, which is the מדמה, I'm looking at the I'm looking at this fruit and I don't know what's the fruit and what's the peel. If the peel is just a שומר to the פרי and it's guarding it, then the peel is part of the פרי. But if I see, well, this is the fruit, but the peel of the orange is much brighter, it's much shinier, maybe that's the point.

לא שויה לנגד עיניה, right? It's like a a kid gets a present, and all they do is they play with the package. They they don't understand what's going on, they have too much of an immature perspective. לא שויה לנגד עיניה ההפסד והחבלה שנפסדה כבר מאיש שהיה במדריגה עליונה. So this klipah, which is the מדמה, again going back, we said that we're looking at the same avodah from different perspectives: from the point of view of the person growing to be מתקן the system, and from the point of view of the system that ultimately needs a tikkun and is presenting itself to each individual.

So this klipah, which from the the klipah itself knows that it's that it's illusory. In fact, the last time, as it were, somebody was elevated through the system and they saw past the klipah, they saw to the truth, the klipah, in fact, evaporated, right? Like using our example, this the the the the thing that's behind the sheet knows exactly what the shadow is. It knows that there's no real confusion as to what as to what's being presented. And therefore, the last time somebody looked behind the sheet, somebody saw the truth, so then the all of the falsehood just evaporated, it went away.

And yet, this klipah, this מדמה, as it were, right? We just said לא שויה לנגד עיניה ההפסד והחבלה שנפסדה כבר מאיש שהיה במדריגה עליונה. It doesn't realize it was it was it suffered loss, it suffered damage because of the last person that saw right past it. Here it was, it thought that it had all of this, you know, ga'avah, it's presenting itself as being an alternate reality, an alternate path, and the last time somebody saw right past it, how is it still standing there? Why is the klipah still presenting itself as an alternate road to the truth?

And yet, it doesn't it doesn't consider the loss that it already suffered, and it's still willing to give it another try. It's presenting itself to another person. Va'af al pi chen, even though within the abstract system this klipah already suffered a loss, it should have already suffered damage, nevertheless, היא מתגברת אחר כך כנ״ל, it's going to represent itself to another person. Now, the second person, we're not saying that he's not accomplishing anything or that the first person didn't accomplish something. When two people handle the same challenge, they're handling it from their own perspective, their own background, we discussed this at length a different way, and that way the בריאה can ultimately take on a tikkun.

But we see that the the klipah in the world will constantly present itself, even though avodah zarah, the shine of money, of of glitter and glamour was already seen right past in previous generations by different people, it still presents a lure to others. ולא עייל לתרע, and it doesn't go into the פתח, היינו שלא יוכל האיש לכנוס לשער הקדושה, this next person that comes up, as he's rising up through the levels, he wants to see the truth. He succeeded at the last challenge and now he's going to go to the next challenge, and at every level, this person wants to get to the kedushah.

He wants to see the truth, and he wants to go upwards towards the ultimate unity, towards kedushah, and therefore he wants to go through that next gate. And yet he can't get through the gate because he has these obstacles, he has these challenges. He doesn't see the kedushah clearly. שיהא שכלו מחמת התגברות המדמה, because again, of the of the מדמה that's presenting itself at that level. והעצה או עצה על זה, so what is the advice? סתירת הפתח, he has to destroy the פתח, שהוא המדמה. Now the way that we originally thought to read this Gemara is he wants to get through the to the other side of this פתח, to the other side of this opening, so what he does is he destroys the פתח, he destroys the gateway, as it were, right, the walls on the either side of the openings, so he can get through.

But now we're going to learn it a little bit differently: he has to destroy the פתח, שהוא הטומאה, כמו הבא לטמא פותחין לו. We're going to comment this on this in a second, but first, what we're going to say is that the פתח represents tumah, so he has to destroy the פתח. One way to destroy an opening is to fill it in, to build a wall. והוא בבחינת לפתח חטאת רובץ. Now, I want to just read a little selection from Likutei Halachot, Choshen Mishpat, חלק ב', Halachot Geneivah, ה', ל״ד, okay, if you were going to look it up, but it's brought in the note by Rabbi Atia, and it is really very sightistic.

Says, הבא לטמא פותחין לו, a person that wants to become tamei, wants to move towards טומאה, this is his desire, rachmana litzlan, it's a Gemara in יומא, פותחין לו, it is made available, it's open to him. Why? Because the sitra achra, the klipah, are able to present himself themselves to him things that previously were closed. What is the ikar? Really, it's in a person's machshavah, because כי האדם נברא רק בשביל הניסיון והבחירה. A person is created to succeed. If there's if he's going to succeed, then there has to be a challenge, there has to be an obstacle, ועיקר הבחירה והניסיון הוא במחשבה.

It's the it really takes place in how a person looks at things. We explained earlier why really it's the machshavah and not the the emotion, the flow through machshavah to emotion, but it's really takes place in a person's machshavah, how they think about things, שהאדם צריך לחשוב רק בתורה ועבודה ויראת שמים. A person has to have a clarity of perspective. They have they have to be rooted in truth. If the ultimate truth, HaMakom, is going to be Torah, is going to be yirat shamayim. If a person is has he doesn't takes these take these things as axiomatic, he has a different structure within which he evaluates his priorities, so then the whole nature of his challenges and how he evaluates things is going to be different.

אך תכף כשרוצים לחשוב בזה, עומדים כנגדו מחשבות הסטרא אחרא שרוצים למשכו לשם, חס ושלום. When a person wants to engage in truth, there's going to be all sorts of other things that are trying to pull his attention, his priorities, his perspective, because the עיקר יצר הרע and יצר טוב הם מחשבות שבלב. And this is just what he goes on next, I believe Rabbi Chaim Shmulevitz talks about it also in in a different place, he says, when a person this this is where a person has to be a pashut, emunah peshutah, say, a person recognizes the truth.

A person who is an איש כשר, פונה עורף ואינו מסתכל על המחשבות ראשו של סטרא אחרא כלל. Where I believe, I think I've seen a quote, I don't know if I saw it inside, where Rabbi Chaim Shmulevitz talks about it is when Chushim ben Dan saw that there was that that Esav was standing and not letting Yaakov Avinu be buried, and all of a sudden, the other brothers started to litigate over it, he but but Chushim ben Dan recognized that Yaakov Avinu was not able to be buried, he all he understood was this simple truth.

This he wasn't engaged in any different types of arguments and this and that, took off a sword, chopped off Esav's's head. A lot of times, we actually know right and wrong. We know it from our rabbeim, we know it from our parents, we know it from ourselves, we know it from the Torah, and at a at a level of 100%. The second that we start opening up a door, we start to litigate, we start to consider, we start justifications, all of a sudden, those lines become incredibly blurry. A person has to know, yes, we are we love questions, we are the religion of questions, the core of our emunah, the Seder night has to be in question-answer format, and we we we talk all about the Mah Nishtanah, we want to inspire questions, okay, we can have a whole shiur on that.

However, when a person understands what the emet is, two plus two is four, at some point, that is axiomatic, that is not subject to questions. And when a person starts to take things that should be written in stone, that should be axiomatic, and he starts to litigate those, he creates openings where there shouldn't be openings, at that point, the truth starts to become blurry, at least in the person's mind, and there And therefore, what is the etzah when a person has a פתח, when the מדמה is creating blurriness in the truth? At that point, a person has to just put his foot down, the buck stops here.

Those are the questions that a person should not entertain. That is where the yetzer hara is. He's in the פתח, he's in the opening, he's in the justification. We have to know where is it appropriate to question, where is it appropriate not to question, or how should one be questioning, within what framework. וסתירתו, how does a person destroy these פתח? על ידי הגוונים הנ״ל. Which is, we said, through the colors, through the tzedakah, through the שהוא גדולת הבורא הנ״ל, you know, through the shevach of הקדוש ברוך הוא, through seeing the truth, through looking behind the curtain.

We said that through tzedakah, when you bring together the opposites and you realize that they really are all part of one system, let's go back to what we mentioned all the way at the beginning of the shiur. You can have the seed, it unfolds into all sorts of separate organs, and then you have the unified person, which when functioning properly shows that everything was really all part of סוף מעשה במחשבה תחילה. After you know this, you see that there's a person. I don't know how the person works, but I see that it's part of one unified system.

All of a sudden, I start to say, "Well, maybe it's not really. Look at the organs, they don't really seem to be accomplishing the same purpose. Maybe this person is not really one person." The The answer is, what are you even talking about? We already know. We see that there's a giluy. I have it through emunah, I have it through my eyes, I have Whatever it is, I know that everything is actually part of one shleimut functioning properly. Everything is aligned, everything is aligned with הקדוש ברוך הוא. Now you're going to start saying, maybe there's other priorities, there's other kelipah, there's other סטרא אחרא, that is a question that can't be considered.

Yeah, I want to come to an appreciation, I want to ask how, I want to grow through this shevach, that's fine. The first thing that I have to understand is I have to say there are no contradictions, everything is be'etzem coming together, from my perspective, maybe not, I have to work on myself and grow. However, through a shevach of הקדוש ברוך הוא, through tzedakah, I'm able to shut down this petach, I'm able to shut down this opening where I'm going to fall into an abyss and build a wall in front of that so that I can define my avodah to get closer to הקדוש ברוך הוא and not go sideways.

והם בחינת כותל, these colors, as it were, which again we're reconciling all the colors into one beauty, into one Tiferet, into giving tzedakah, כ״ו תל. It's 26 תל. That's how to spell the word kotel, it's coming from an אות בזוהר, כ״ו זה בחינת שם הקדוש, י-ק-ו-ק is בגימטריא כ״ו, שהוא בחינת גוונים, which is a בחינה of Tiferet, of these colors, of things coming together of a unified, all-encompassing whole that really actually is an expression of unity, כמו שכתוב ה׳ אורי שהוא אורות הגוונים, that ה׳ אורי is the lights of the the expression of the colors of the Tiferet, which we explained is coming from chesed and gevurah, Tiferet.

Okay, we're not going to go back into that now. I'm just going to mention from over here, the note from Rav Chaim Atiyah, he says that the word Kotel is the combination of the words כ״ו, which is numerically equivalent to 26, י-ק-ו-ק, and תל. What's תל? It's a mound to which everyone turns, referring to the Beit HaMikdash, specifically to the Kotel, the Western Wall, from which the divine presence never departed. And this is what we are looking towards. This is This is ultimately we look at the beginning and we look at the end, and then we can fill in the gaps how to get from the beginning to the end.

But if instead of you have a beginning point and an end point, our avodah is to draw that line. If we don't see the end point, well then we could just put in all of this work and end up going in the wrong direction, going missing the point. The first thing that we have to know when we are going to engage in avodah is we we tzifit, right? ציפית לישועה, there's going to be a yeshuah, there's going to be a ge'ulah. We look a mitzpeh is a watchtower, we look far off, we see what that end point is, and now we build towards that end point, we build towards that growth, but we know what we're looking towards.

So this is a בחינה of ה׳ אורי שהוא אורות הגוונים again. וישעי הוא בחינת בגדי ישע הנ״ל, these בגדים of השתוקקות, of הסתכלות, what we're looking towards, what we thirst what we thirst for, the end of the story. והוא תל שהכל פונים לו ומתאוין להסתכל בו. I think that this is a a beautiful way to end. And therefore, through this tzedakah, through realizing that everything is part of one system, all the Jews are part of one family, and ultimately answering to to one Father, to the גדולת הבורא, we present this as two different things, the shevach of HaKadosh Baruch Hu and tzedakah in the מצות מעשיות, but all of these things collapse the system so that not that the truth is stronger than the קליפה, but there really is no element of קליפה.

We look to the end where we see the ultimate unity, we see the the the ultimate unified approach, and even though we're not there yet, we see what it is that we're looking towards. And this is why Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananya said that the עצה against the מדמה is to destroy the פתח, to destroy the questions, to destroy these litigation in terms of not how to get to truth, but what really is true. How do we do that? By building a כותל, by looking towards כ״ו, right, or by by by using the גוונים. towards the the the תל, כותל, to see towards the truth that everything is really part of תפארת to the י-ק-ו-ק, and then we we we strengthen our emunah, and we we allow ourself to develop and move ever closer towards towards HaKadosh Baruch Hu.

מסימן כ״ד עד כאן לשון רבינו זכרונו לברכה. And now we're just going to have one more small piece, paragraph ה' before we get to the to the pieces that are שייך to the earlier paragraphs. So over here, paragraph ה': גם דע, also a person should know another idea how we're going to approach the subjugating the קליפה, the מדמה as it were, which we've been talking about, גם דע שכדי להכניע הקליפה המסבבת שבכל מדריגה כנ״ל, in order to subjugate the קליפה that presents itself at every at every level, we'll give one more mashal in a second which I think is really just complimentary to what we've been talking about, but it all it all fits together.

Different again, looking at things from different angles, but I think getting to the same point. על זה צריך שיעורר שמחה של מצוה על עצמו. A person has to be me'orer, he has to awaken a simchah shel mitzvah. I think in either in the beginning of this shiur or the beginning of the last shiur, we really went deep into into talking about simchah and specifically simchah shel mitzvah, but we'll we'll just comment again in a second. היינו שישמח על ידי שיזכור שזכה להתקרב להשם יתברך. First of all, a person should be besimchah, I'm leaving the term undefined for now, that he remembers, and we've said before that remembering doesn't mean as opposed to forgetting, we always talk about HaKadosh Baruch Hu remembering, you can only remember if it's possible to forget, right?

Generally speaking, we say if I just know something I didn't remember it, I remember something because previously I forgot it, well then where did the information come from? The answer would be that, you know, we think about things as remembering or forgetting, but forgetting doesn't mean actually gone, otherwise it would be impossible to remember. What it really means is taking information that is dormant and bringing it to the forefront of a person's mind as it were so that it goes into consciousness, and now a person is going to operate going forward based on this information.

So, you know, we've said before, I have a combination to a lock that I haven't thought about in years, and then somebody says, "Oh, you need to get in there, do you remember the combination?" I will now recall this thing that has just been dormant in my mind in order to use it going forward, and now it becomes operational. I remember a relationship, so now beforehand you were just a person, now that I remember the nature of our relationship, I'm going to relate to you differently. וזכה להתקרב לצדיקים המקרבים אותו להשם יתברך, obviously big topic, the role of tzadikim in our closeness and our attachment to צדיקים, so we remember that we're zocheh that הקדוש ברוך הוא drew us in and our attachment to the idea that we have the opportunity, if we're just sitting right here, by the way, we're mamash listening to a shiur, we're getting close to Rabbi Nachman as we speak, that is a zechus, that is an opportunity.

Many people, if they would be exposed to certain things, might just be over the moon, they might accomplish tremendous amounts. What we're doing right now, we should have a tremendous amount of gratitude that הקדוש ברוך הוא put us in the right place at the right time. There's even been sefarim that I've been exposed to that just didn't really strike a chord, and then later on I would see the same thing and I found it just totally life-changing. ועל ידי השמחה הזו, through this שמחה, הוא משבר הקליפה, that itself will break the קליפה, ונכנס למדריגה שניה, it will allow him to go upward.

So just to comment on simchah as we finish really this section of the Torah, Rabbi Itiel has in the notes a whole discussion of of points of התבוננות, really coming from Likutei Halachot, in terms of understanding we won the lottery, אשר בחר בנו, ברוך השם we were born Jewish and how many how many Yidden don't even know that they're Jewish, or their circumstances set them up to not have an education, or like we said to not be exposed, or Baruch Hashem for all the challenges we had to be born into a time where we do have whether it's printed material, printed books or recorded material, Torah Anytime, Spotify, the Breslov website, whatever it is that we have.

In other generations, people would have to travel just to I mean, there's definitely an added advantage to having a personal relationship with somebody, but now we can reach out, the world has become so small, access has become so so easy. So when we think about just start from the beginning at the most basic level in terms of who we are, we're born from the זרע ישראל, אשר בחר בנו, we won the lottery, we're zocheh to be in a place to come close to צדיקים, to be able to realize our potential, and then we think about הקדוש ברוך הוא in our life.

He goes on from Likutei Halachot that every single second we think about we come to appreciate the גדלות of Hashem, the התפארות, we talked about it in terms of tzedakah, in terms of the unity, in terms of just gaining an appreciation of the ייחוד of the world that we live in, of every aspect having meaning. I think we talked about this in the first shiur in Torah י״ז, the idea of התפארות, just a tremendous Torah as well. Coming to find meaning in every aspect of our life, being able to reflect back and find that the ups and downs are both really part of a process.

I saw a unbelievable piece in the Meor Einayim on Parashat Yitro recently and he was he was really touching on this topic. I mean, when we think when a person is going through it It become, can become very hard. When we think about a ירידה שיהיה לצורך עליה, the idea of going from level to level, if one is climbing a ladder, they have to push down in order to go up, they go through a period of instability when there's only one foot on the ladder like the Baal HaTanya talks about. Think about throwing a ball, right?

A person has to go back to go forward and get energy. If a person would only go forward, they wouldn't have that energy. And he discusses the idea that there has to be a a down cycle necessarily in order to go into a period of growth. And when we realize the whole puzzle of our life, the megillah of who we are, then that can bring a tremendous amount of pleasure and there's added התבוננות. But the thing that I wanted to add, which I think, you know, is something an idea that people could even say over by the seder, but I think it's a nice way to finish this section of the Torah is and this this parallels, I don't I can't remember right this second if we said it already earlier in this shiur or certainly in earlier shiurim, we've used examples like this before.

Rav Itche Meir Morgenstern in the in the B'Yam Darkecha, he was discussing one of the מאמרים on Pesach and he discussed this idea in terms of what was it that we were trapped by in the קליפה of Mitzrayim? When we when we present we talked earlier about a top-down approach versus a bottom-up approach and finding unity as one goes higher up. I'm going to give an example similar to what we've we've spoken about before. Let's say there's multiple levels, and depending on a person's perspective, right, that is going to be how they define what they're looking at.

So from one perspective, you gave me a present, and multiple things and I can play with all of them. One of them happens to be paper, one of them is styrofoam, one of them is metal, and whichever one I like better, I'm I get excited by the thing that the most fun. From a person who has a higher level of maturity, a higher perspective, there's a cardboard box, there's the styrofoam things that are there to protect the present, and then there is a present, which might not do very much, maybe it's even a piece of jewelry, it seems not to do anything, and the kid has the most fun with the styrofoam.

How we forget about what I tell you, but how we define things will depend on on what level in that pyramid, as it were, like how far down you go, what is the scope of my perception. So for a kid, he sees three different types of things and he's evaluating it by fun. For somebody who's above, well then the there's no klipah, the box doesn't stand on its own, it's not ready for garbage, the box is very useful. The box and the styrofoam are there to protect the content inside. There actually is only one thing, and everything is it's really unified, it's one big package.

And the example that I recently gave somebody was I want I'm going to say a bunch of a bunch of different things that are really all definitionally, right, correct. One person says, "I saw somebody and he turned a knob, turned a piece of plastic. That plastic happened to be attached to the oven and therefore turned on a fire. The fire was boiling water. The water was preparation for soup. The soup was in preparation of a meal, right, an appetizer, and the meal was preparing to receive a guest. And then the that that guest was the king and it would bring a person happy happiness and it would be a gilui, okay, and go upwards, imagine you can go infinitely upwards.

If I ask five, 10 different people what just what happened, how do they define what happened? One person says, "I turned a knob." One person says, "I turned on the fire." One person says, "I'm boiling water." One person says, "I'm making soup," "I'm preparing a meal," "I'm getting ready for guests," "I want to make somebody happy." You get the idea. At at the highest level, it's the most כללותדיק. It's like we said earlier from the seed, it's the most all-encompassing. Once I say, "I'm making a party," that will include all of those details. They're not even separate.

There's no difference between them. Fire and water are opposites? No, they're boiling water, like the river, the kettle, and the bird mashal that if anybody's ever read the Rav Aharon Feldman ספר, The River, the Kettle, and the Bird, right? On one hand, fire and water are opposites. On one hand, when they come together, they're boiling water. That's what a kettle does. And therefore, what what is the way Rav Itche Meir said is that Mitzrayim was advanced. Mitzrayim was not a backward place, Mitzrayim was the most science, magic, call it what you want, teva. If if you think about the progress that I just described with making a party, making somebody happy, being whatever it is at the top of the pyramid and all of the details being at the bottom of the pyramid, מיצר ים, ים is the ים החכמה.

Chokhmah is at the height, right? חכמה, בינה, דעת. The מיצר ים is constricting from the ים החכמה, it kept a person at the bottom altitude. It doesn't make a difference whether a person would get the right ideas ultimately, they would subscribe to ruchniyut. The question is is what is your perspective? How do you look at the world? Do you look at the world as I'm making a party, in my example, at the ים החכמה, I'm aligned with Hakadosh Baruch Hu, and then when I look down, I see all of the pieces as part of a process, or do I see a million details and then, you know, somebody's trying to describe that they all go together?

מצר ים keeps a person in teva, in this world. Teva is, now is there, could there be a miracle, something happened, I can't explain it, י-ק-ו-ק, היה הוה ויהיה, as there's no makom for that. Not just it's true, it's not true, I believe it, I don't believe it, there's no makom for it within my paradigm. As a person grows in levels, they develop a mindset that is able, a different reality, a more all-encompassing reality, and that is what leads a person to simcha, because what is simcha? I'm going to use the definition from from Rabbi Tatz that I think we mentioned before.

Real happiness is what you experience when you are doing what you should be doing, and I'm going to expand that and draw more, and you're in line with who you are. You reach your source. You reach your your your reality. You're totally and fully settled. The closer that you go up towards the Ein Sof, we all have a neshamah, we all we we all have the Torah, the closer that we get to truth and to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, simcha is the driver of that. That's not outside. If a person is a טבע'דיק person and then they find something that they can't explain, it makes them very uneasy.

If a person lives with the Torah, with ultimate truth, and they're confined by, yes, by natural circumstances, by certain limitations, then that's what makes them uneasy. Which world is a person living in? And this is where we leave our personal Mitzrayim. Okay, I'm going a little bit off. Every single every single day, every single Pesach, whenever it is that we can attach, when do we totally break out of any paradigm that we are living in? That is the Yetziat Mitzrayim. That's when we get out of מצר ים. That's when we break into the ים החכמה.

That's when we engage in the process, and simcha is the driver of that. When we get in touch with who we we really are, we are בני בחירי ישראל. We're not the bechor of Mitzrayim, those bechorim, whatever. Again, the whole discussion what bechor represents, but בני בחירי ישראל, that's where we come in touch with who we are. That is the feeling of simcha, what energizes us to be able to break out of those limitations and at each level become a top-down person rather than a bottom-up person. And this is what breaks the klipah, and like we said, there's קליפה at every level.

At one level the קליפה is the plastic interface, then it's am I doing the fire, then it's the pot, and whatever it is. At every level the קליפה is the the multiplicity in those factors that all seem to be competing, rather than what's really the the the ייחודים that we create, period. Okay, I'm going to leave it there and now we are going to go back into these pieces that relate to the earlier Torah, but I would love to wanted to finish off on that note. I just I was thinking about it last night, actually, and it just totally paralleled in my mind this whole this whole dynamic that we're talking about of learning to to climb to become a top-down person, I think very very in line with this Torah.

Okay, the first piece that is שייך to an earlier paragraph, which a lot of these things we fleshed out, so we'll see what חידוש, but we'll see what what these paragraphs are coming to add and to round out. Again, some of the ideas that we've already worked in. The first one is שייך לאות א'. We had mentioned the פסוק זבחי אלקים, the sacrifices of הקדוש ברוך הוא, רוח נשברה, are a broken ruach. What does this mean? ששבירת הדמיון, that the breaking of דמיון, as we've been discussing, which is a level of consciousness, let's say a בהמה has a consciousness more than a plant or a rock, right, as we as we go upwards.

And yet that דמיון is not the דעת אלוקות, it's not the that's the level of a מדמה. And we had discussed what is it that's driving us? What is our motivation? Is it coming from the highest place that makes us into a human being, that makes us into Yisrael, a נשמה, or is it coming from that lower level of of knowledge, of awareness, of emotion, the things that are present in us at our level of an animal? There's actually a discussion about is when we have the levels of let's say דומם, צומח, חי, מדבר, ישראל, right, the Kuzari talks about Yisrael, are the higher levels inclusive of the lower levels or are they separate?

And if we say that they are inclusive, this would mean, right, in other words an animal also has organic material that is not alive, so there could be there's fingernails that are present let's say in a person, so the higher up you go it also includes the lower self, which would mean that even when we have a Yisrael, a Yisrael also incorporates the physical animal part. So the question is, is is he operating at his highest level of consciousness or is he only actualizing his animal self? So thinking about that for a second, ששבירת הדמיון הם הקרבנות, the breaking of the דמיון, as it were, to get out of the way so that we're not limited by that perspective, that is the קרבן, עיין שם.

וזה בחינת סמיכה על קרבנות, when we go and we lean with our full weight with both hands on the קרבן, כי קרבנות מביאים מבהמות, the קרבן is coming from a בהמה, שהם בחינת כח המדמה, which is that that level of consciousness at the animal self, at the instinctual, at the pleasure, כי בהמה doesn't have the דעת of a person, of a מדבר, of a Yisrael for sure. יש לה גם כן כח המדמה, but a בהמה at that level does have that level of whatever it is that driver of animal instinct, pleasure, physical is. וכשאדם הולך אחר המדמה שבלב, when a person uses that to be his motivation, that's how he relates, the level of consciousness at which he relates to the world, דהיינו אחר תאוותיו חס ושלום, right?

When he thinks about the things that could be at the height of קדושה, he thinks about them as physical activities. How do we relate to it? שבא מכח המדמה, that is because he is using the lens of his כח המדמה. זהו מעשה בהמה, that is a מעשה בהמה. The note over here brings the Gemara מנחות, which says that a סוטה brings her קרבן, her minchah from שעורים, which is animal food, because she was acting a מעשה בהמה, so her korban is a מאכל בהמה, okay? So it says זהו מעשה בהמה ממש, כי גם הבהמה יש לה כח המדמה.

ועל כן כשאדם חוטא חס ושלום, when a person chas veshalom sins, וכל החטאים באים על ידי כח המדמה, interestingly, by the way, the lashon of chet is to miss. It's really relating to a shogeg, right? In other words, it's not that I went and I used my daas and I was lehachis and doing something bad. Actually, when we talk about a chet, we misconstrued something, we went after the wrong thing. It was a miss, it's like when an archer misses something. So it says וכל החטאים באים על ידי כח המדמה, we went after the wrong driver, we're relating to things differently through the animal self, but that's not the truest perspective.

שמשם נמשכים כל התאוות, that's where the ta'avot come from. על כן הוא צריך להביא קרבן מבהמה. So therefore, we're going to sacrifice, we'll get that out of the way. Let's break down the foundation to dig a deeper foundation. You can't just build on top of a shallower foundation, you have to break it down first. So we bring a korban from בהמה, וצריך לסמוך עליו ולהתודות כל חטאיו. So we transfer, as it were, we do somech, full leaning onto the animal. Lehitvadot, a person says vidui, a vort that I relate to very strongly, we say vidui ten times on Yom Kippur, and we don't say "I am bad," we say "I did bad," אשמנו, בגדנו, they're all in verbs.

Why? The more that I say it over and over again, I'm not bad, I did bad, the more that I separate, and that's not who I am, it's what I did. The more that I take these things, I related to it as myself, it's not myself. These are the things I did, that I engaged in, the more that I am actually separating myself from the מעשה עבירה. The more that I do that, the more that I understand that I be'etzem am a neshamah. I'm just really trying to get back to my true self. And the more that you say a vidui, the more that you say אשמנו, the more that you say it in terms of a verb, "Here's what I did," every one of those things chip away from any idea chas veshalom that I am bad, it's I did bad things.

על הקרבן בשעת הסמיכה, and therefore I make the vidui on the korban. ועל ידי זה נמשכים כל החטאים, כל כח המדמה על הבהמה, and then it draws all the chata'im and the כח המדמה, all these onto the behemah where they belong. All these things are animal-related activities, but I am a medaber, I am a Yisrael, I am higher than that. Everything that I did was not what I did, it was that כח הבהמה, I put it on the behemah, I'm able to sacrifice it. And now that that's out of the way, I break it, I'm able to get to who I really am, שבבחינת מדמה כנ״ל, all those things are really the מדמה.

ואחר כך תכף לסמיכה שחיטה, and then once I transfer it onto the behemah, שחט the behemah, ושחט את הבהמה לקרבן, and I bring that back, I reorient it towards Hashem, I'm going to make a דירה בתחתונים, I'm going to elevate myself. Everything that I do within my physical interface, I'm going to contribute that, I'm going to break it and redesignate it towards Hakadosh Baruch Hu, it becomes a korban. Through that I get close to Hashem, a korban. ועל ידי זה נכנע ונשבר המדמה, and through this I'm able to subjugate, and then ultimately break past that level of מדמה, so that now the physical thing is a vehicle and can be an expression for kedushah, but it doesn't relate to things in a בהמהדיק way.

It's subjugated, and then it's broken, and then we are able to reorient at a higher level. We break into the higher עולמות like we went on and we said. That's the first one. The next one really could deserve a shiur of its own, could deserve a season of its own, but I don't know that we'll do it justice, but unbelievable. שייך לאות ב׳ וג׳, מבואר שם שכשאדם נעתק ממדריגה למדריגה, as a person is growing, is growing in levels, right? We've said many times before, the or doesn't change, it's the keli, it's the keli that changes.

So as we expand ourselves, we expand our perspective, and we are growing ultimately through the levels, our top-down becomes higher up. אז צריך לו לילך דרך אלו הדמיונות כדי להגיע להקדושה, the way that we described, we described in the פסח ווארט, at every level there's going to be that level of קליפה that we encounter. And earlier in the shiur we were talking about this point, both from the perspective of the person growing, and from the perspective of the תיקון, the system, as it were, the needs a תיקון. ותיכף כשעולה למדריגה השנייה, as a person is growing, אזי נתעוררת הקליפה שבמדריגה זו וסובבת אותו.

Now, you know, when we talk about it from the perspective of the person, the system seems passive. When we talk about it from the perspective of the system, and the קליפה that presents itself that needs to be subjugated, in other words, the the idea of the קליפה in the system itself needs to be put in its place, put into an appropriate context. So we said that the קליפה at every level will present themself to the person that is now growing up through the levels in order to be subjugated again, to achieve its תיקון, but now it's going to present itself to this to this individual so that he now, once again, has to see through that קליפה, subjugate that קליפה, so that he can see through it to the אמת, understand it in its appropriate context, and then continue to grow.

Okay, we I'm not giving this full justice this piece full justice because we discussed it at length so much. וצריך להכניע אותה מחדש, and he has to subjugate this level of קליפה from anew. Now, ואף על פי שכבר נשברה הקליפה שבמדריגה עליונה, even though the קליפה at that level was the the facade was already subjugated, it was already put into its appropriate place by the last person who had this challenge, so to speak, אף על פי כן, כשהפנימיות של העליון נתק משם, ופנימיות התחתון עולה, אזי הקליפה חוזרת וניעוררת, עיין שם. And this is I mean just going back to the previous example we had.

We have if you think about the the the example we used, we have a box, we have the styrofoam, the the box is the ultimate packaging, we have the styrofoam which is the protection, we have the thing inside. The last person that took a look at this box saw a bunch of different, shiny, useful things, worked it all out, and and then put everything to its place. The box is the box, the styrofoam is the protection, and the the the jewelry, the toy inside, that's what the toy inside is. Now, another kid comes to this box, oh wait a second, from the point of view of the בריאה, everything was already put into its proper place.

Now, another person is going to have a chance and is going to be מתקן from a different perspective. Maybe he'll have a different perception, different challenges, whatever it is. Hakadosh Baruch Hu set up a system so that, again, from the point of view of people being מתקן themself, everybody has their opportunity, and from the point of view of the system, the the you know, it's like if you imagine another person going through an escape room, and then somebody solves it, and then the next person comes to the escape room, the truth is, is that they you reset it up, there's the real clues, the false clues, they might actually be thrown off by the false clues in a different way.

After everybody goes through that system, the universe of challenges and facades will ultimately be dealt with. Now, ואמר אז בזה הלשון, ready? Now רבינו said like this, unbelievable. ובזה טועין החסידים Take this, highlight it, circle it, fold the page. ואמר אז בזה הלשון: "ובזה טועים החסידים הרבה," the חסידים are very mistaken, שפתאום נדמה להם שנפלו מעבודת השם, it suddenly seems to them that they have fallen from עבודת השם, when they see that they they thought that they succeeded at one level, they graduated, everything at the previous level, now they think they're rocking, right? They have total momentum.

They they passed the eighth grade, now they're coming into high school, this is the big time. They're going to college, they're going beit midrash, kollel, wherever they're going, they have that momentum, they're just going to kill it, they're going to do amazing, they're they're just going to take over the world. And all of a sudden, they're totally blindsided, and they think that this is a yeridah. ובאמת אין זה נפילה כלל. This is not a nefilah, right? If I want to throw something that's 10 lb, I have to wind up a certain amount. If I want to throw something that's 50 lb, I have to wind up even more.

Is that a nefilah, or is that that I got stronger for the next task? Is that yeridah a yeridah, or is that yeridah a windup? Everything is perspective. And yet when we have a narrow thing when we're going down, when it's too heavy for us, when we're blindsided, but now we risk, right? So now when I'm doing that bigger yeridah to throw the heavier thing, cuz now that I've graduated, and I think it's so heavy and I'm going down, if I give up, I just end up falling to the floor hard. רק מחמת שצריכים לעלות ממדריגה למדריגה, that new windup, that new yeridah, it's not a nefilah, it's yeridah l'tzorech aliyah, is part of the process of growth.

You have to respect the process, right? We all want to be going forward, but we don't want this is the true this is the secret, this is the secret. I think we quoted before from Rabbi Tatz, literally he has a chapter, I just want to literally read this line, page 109 of the the teenager book, he has a chapter called Getting High, Staying High: Why do the good times never last? Things come, they go. And he says the deep secret here, it's a רז, right? The the Maor Einayim talks about this as the the רז, a secret, by נעשה ונשמע, the who revealed this secret?

There's a deep secret here. Understanding it can change your life. Trying to go through life without knowing it guarantees disappointment. and understanding it well can change potential disaster into happiness. The Maor Einayim is making a little bit of a parallel point, so you can look it up inside before you quote that actually. But ואז מתעוררין ומתגברין מחדש הקליפות. This person, he did so well at the escape room, so now everything is going to get set back up again. By the way, even if the same person would go, now that he's at a higher level of understanding, right, you ever see something and it's hard, and then you figure it out and it's simple, and now that you look a level deeper, you realize that it's hard for an even deeper reason, right?

Just this process. Respect the process of growth. שהם התאוות והבלבולים והדמיונות ומחשבות המניעות כנ״ל. That the the desires, the confusions, the illusions, the bad thoughts, the obstacles, as we've said, על כן צריכין להתגבר בכל פעם מחדש. The process which starts over, it's necessary to renew a person's strength. And if a person doesn't say, "Okay, now I got 10 lb, now 20 lb, but now, all of a sudden, it's heavier," so they think they're falling, but it's not the same resistance. It's not even maybe sometimes it's the same thing, a weight is the same thing, but heavier, maybe it's a different type of challenge.

And all of a sudden, they say, "I thought I was so strong, and now it's so heavy. I'm having a yeridah. I'm not even going to try. It's a different weight." It's respect the It says, ולחזור להכניע ולשבר הקליפות והמניעות שבכל מדרגה ומדרגה מחדש, ובאמת אין זה נפילה כלל. That is not a nefilah, a yeridah which is yeridah l'tzorech aliyah. They're encountering the They're encountering the challenge all anew. Just you can go go over this paragraph 100 times. The note by R'' Chaim Kramer: "After studying, praying, performing mitzvot for a time, they begin to feel themselves beset by confusion and obstacles.

This is because they have attained the highest degree of intellect at that particular level. Instead of recognizing these barriers as hurdles to be overcome, the devotees see them as insurmountable, and so give up. They conclude that there's no hope of ever going beyond their evil desires." Meanwhile, they it's the I mean, the tragedy of tragedies, the בל תשחית, if you will. They've now graduated to the higher level. They're holding a heavier weight than they ever dreamed. Right, we look at the strong people struggling over a 500-lb bench press, I don't know, whatever it is. We look at that, that person is struggling.

He's struggling He's struggling with 500 lb the way that you're struggling to lift 100 lb, so you're looking at him as the strongest person in the world, and this person doesn't see what's on the other end of the bar. He thinks it's a struggle, so he stops trying. He thinks he got weaker. Is that a tragedy? This person has has has graduated. This, again, I I found this paragraph just unbelievable. Okay? And now the the the the last pieces שייך לאות ג'. ודע שאין שני בני אדם שוין. We said that no two people are the same, right?

Everybody, even if they are in a similar situation, everybody has their own perspective, their own culture, environment, maturity, whatever it is. No two people are, even if they're in the same situation, are actually in the same עבודת'דיק situation, and they're not handling, they're not accomplishing the same thing, either on a in their personal level or on a tikkun level. And then when we we went on, we said, "But from the point of view of the system," again, it's hard to understand exactly, but we just mashal, if you imagine like, you know, different slots, no two people are going to be addressing the same thing at the same time as they go up through the through the olamot in terms of how they're going to impact the olamot.

We'll just use this mashal for now. So it comes out that as one person graduates for him to address a certain level of the beriah, the the whole system is going to be interconnected and a dynamic system. So if somebody else was at that point in the system, so then they will actually slide up. ואמר בזה הלשון, and this is what רבינו said, וזה בחינת הרמה. This is a system called הרמה. The example that we gave when we addressed it earlier in the שיעור is if you have a classroom and one person becomes elevated, then the רבי will end up giving a שיעור at a higher level.

Every little person makes a difference. One joker makes everybody joke around more. One serious person, it'll affect his chavrusa, it'll be a higher level of learning. So when you're in a dynamic system and an interrelated system, any one piece can actually affect everybody around them. So the בחינה of הרמה is when one person grows in the עולמות, that will actually push others ahead. מה שאחד מרים ומגביה את חבירו, כי על ידי זה האדם שבמדרגה תחתונה עולה מדרגא לדרגא, through one person rising levels, על ידי זה הגביה והרים את חבירו שבמדרגה עליונה לעלות למעלה עליונה יותר.

Okay? So we can imagine this like interconnected system where you have a structure in the world, and and everybody has their own place in terms of what they'll what they're fulfilling, and when one person through their own avodah grows, they can actually push others ahead, affect We talked about ערבות, כל ישראל ערבים זה בזה. We talked about a lot of factors. This can actually impact others. וכן חבירו דחבירו הגבוה עוד יותר מחבירו עולה עוד יותר למעלה, וכן למעלה למעלה, כי אי אפשר שיהיו שני בני אדם במדרגה אחת. Now, before we move on from this point, I think it is, you know, maybe we can just just add in, again, in אות ב' אין בית מדרש בלא חידוש, because we spoke about it earlier, is the, I'm going to quote from a sefer called Moadanei Hamelech: שמעתי מהרב החסיד רבי לוי יצחק בנדר שזה ענין שעולה על ידי עלייתו של חבירו הוא פועל ביותר דוקא באם הם חברים בעבודת השם יתברך.

When you have a system, we said when you have a classroom, right, when when people are all trying to learn, they're all trying to advance, well, then, one person learning better, that's going to affect his chavrusa, it'll affect the level of questions, it'll affect the seriousness of of the class. Let's say you have a person that's just detached, he's doing his own thing, he's removed. Well, that person actually might not affect the class as much as somebody who's trying and going in the right direction, right? If you can imagine, almost, two people that are working on a problem and the sum could be better than the than the than their parts.

They start finishing each other's sentences, right? Sometimes if you have two people, one person says an idea during the other periods of silence, somebody else fills in the gaps, it inspires more creativity. When people are moving in the same direction, so then, besides for building on each other, they all can impact each other. When a person is removed, it might not actually be part of the system. So, this is not exactly what we said before, but it's an interesting idea, especially again, we're going into the seder, we talk about the chacham and the rasha, and we said that the rasha was הוציא את עצמו מן הכלל, and if he was there, he wouldn't have gone free.

Different people are can be sitting at the table. Some people are doing better, some people are doing worse. The the worst thing that a person can do is remove themselves from the system. As long as a person is part of the klal, we quoted earlier the Gemara that that that the קטורת had the חלבנה in it, that every fast day has to include the reshaim, not just because the reshaim need the tzaddikim, but the tzaddikim need the reshaim, that everybody is part of a klal, and therefore, the שלמות of the system demands that every single piece is included, even if some pieces are higher, some pieces are lower, so that the entire system of שלמות can better, even perfect itself, and and and so on.

Okay, if it's שלם, it's already complete, but it could be שלם at a higher at a higher place, at a higher altitude, it can continue to continue to grow. When a person is הוציא את עצמו מן הכלל, that really is the worst thing that they can do. There, those are the people that even Datan va'Aviram, I saw recently a sefer discussing, went free, because, yes, they they had their problems, but when what was required to go out of Mitzrayim? To want to leave, to be part of Klal Yisrael. Datan va'Aviram ultimately had their own development, but the who didn't leave?

The people that didn't want to go out. They weren't interested in being part of a גוי מקרב גוי, of being a nation that left, and everything that that's that that's included. And Rav Levi Yitzchak Bender over here quotes, that's how could it be that somebody like Korach and others were able to not grow? If you're telling me that everybody's growth should impact everybody else, how could you end up like that? And those are the people that formed their own klal, they formed their own side minyan, they didn't want to be included, they're הוציא את עצמו מן הכלל, and that really becomes the the beginning of the end.

Okay, that is the last the the last one of the additions, and now we'll just read the last few lines, but but again, every one of these, these are a little snippets on their own, this is the culmination of of of several shiurim, of many hours of shiurim. So, comes along Rabbi Nosson and he adds on, אחר שאמר מאמר הנ״ל, after Rabbeinu said this מאמר, ושם מכנה וקורא כל התאוות, היצר הרע, בשם כח המדמה, and he referred to all of the desires of the yetzer hara as the מדמה, אמר אז, he said, צריכין לקרות לו ולכנות לו שם אחר.

So, Rabbi Nachman said we are now going to give a new name to the יצר הרע, היינו לבעל דבר והיצר הרע צריכין לקרות אותו בשם אחר. What are we now going to call the yetzer hara? דהיינו שלא לקרותו בשם יצר הרע, רק בשם כח המדמה. We are now going to refer to the yetzer hara as the כח of, we imagination's not really the right term, but this that we've been discussing, ואמר זאת בדרך שחוק, אבל הבנתי שהיה לו בזה כוונה שלימה ולא זכיתי להבין כוונתו בזה. He said this as a לשון שחוק, an offhand comment, and Rabbi Natan says, I understood he meant something incredible and I was not zocheh.

I'll read from Rav Chaim Kramer's note from the Mevu Hanachal in note 87 over here, he says that the Gemara tells us that the yetzer hara has seven names, and these correspond to the seven the seven lower sefirot: chesed, gevurah, tiferet, netzach, hod, yesod, u'malchut. And he says that at creation, only levels corresponding to the seven lower sefirot were revealed. The next higher level, binah, right, depending how you look at it, whether it's chesed, gevurah, tiferet, chochmah, binah, da'at, or keter, chochmah, binah, so if you say keter, chochmah, binah, so the level above the seven lower sefirot would be binah, and binah was reserved, it wasn't revealed, it was reserved for the time preceding the coming of Mashiach.

He quotes from the Zohar: binah is מבין דבר מתוך דבר. And he goes on, we have already seen that for every level of kedushah, there is a corresponding, contrasting level of סטרא אחרא, and he brings that now that we are in the times of עקבתא דמשיחא, and certainly we see just how much is being revealed, פנימיות התורה in a way never seen before, the excitement about Rabbi Nachman, פנימיות התורה in general, and he says that now in עקבתא דמשיחא, that there are new levels that were previously unrevealed within the world at the level of binah, there also has to be a זה לעומת זה, a level of סטרא אחרא corresponding to that.

And that's why he said until now we were only relating to the yetzer hara at the seven lower levels, now that we have, Baruch Hashem, the giluy, that when there's added giluy, then there's also going to be added challenges and the yetzer hara to correspond to that level of giluy. And therefore in the times of עקבתא דמשיחא, now that we have an additional level of בינה in the revealed world, to counter this higher level of holiness, the מדמה in man's heart, the fantasies, the illusions which contrast true understanding has awakened, and the new, the eighth name for this יצר הרע is the כח המדמה.

And therefore, it allows us to understand the playing field, we understand what we're dealing with, and a lot of, half the battle, as it were, is understanding what the challenges are, as difficult as they are, so that we can address it. And Baruch Hashem, this is this is Torah כ״ה, we could start again and probably give go through the Torah in a way, like we said, now a higher level, but we'll go against that יצר הרע, so to speak, just to start over and go mamash back through it. And we move on, Be'ezrat Hashem next time, Torah כ״ו.