Part II: The (Gist of the) Wisdom of Kabbalah. Chapter 4: Mending Adam to Achieve Perfection

In the beginning of Chapter Three, we wrote that before anything was created, there was the Thought of Creation. This Thought created Phases One through Four of the will to receive, which created the worlds Adam Kadmon through Assiya, which then created the soul of Adam ha Rishon, which broke into the myriad souls we have today...

Because spiritual desires are divided into stronger and weaker, our world is built like a pyramid. The weakest desires are the least egoistic and form the base level of Creation, the still (Figure 8). Above these, and relying on them, is the vegetative level. In a sense, the vegetative is exploiting the still because they are nourished by minerals and water, which belong to the still level of our world...

In his “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” one of his introductions to the Sulam commentary on The Book of Zohar, Baal HaSulam explains the difference between spirituality and corporeality. He says that anything that has an aim to bestow, like the Creator, is spiritual, and anything that has an aim to receive, opposite from the Creator, is corporeal. Prior to Adam’s breaking, there was no such thing as an active aim to receive. Hence, his breaking also marks the first appearance of physical reality...

When Kabbalists talk about spiritually evolving, they are referring to climbing up the spiritual ladder. This is why Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag named his commentary on The Book of Zohar, Perush HaSulam (The Ladder Commentary), for which he was named Baal HaSulam (Owner of the Ladder). But climbing “up the ladder” actually means going “back to the roots.” This is because the roots of our creation, the Upper Worlds, are a part of us. In a sense, we’ve already been there, even though we’re not aware of it. Now we must figure out how to get back there by ourselves, consciously...

We still need to understand how the Surrounding Light builds our Kli and why it is called “Light” to begin with. But to understand all that, we must first understand the concept of Reshimot...

Before we focus on the desire for spirituality, let’s see what Kabbalah has to say about our individual desires: The only difference between people is in the way they want to experience pleasure. Pleasure in itself, however, is amorphous, intangible. When we cover it with different “dresses,” or “coatings,” it creates an illusion that there are different kinds of pleasure, when in fact there are simply many kinds of coatings...