World Kabbalah Convention, October 2025 - ״In One Prayer"

Lesson 3 "The Conditions for a Prayer from the Bottom of the Heart"

Selected Excerpts from the Sources

1. Baal HaSulam, Shamati, Article No. 209, “Three Conditions in Prayer”

"There are three conditions in prayer:

1. Believing that He can save him. Although he has the worst conditions of all his contemporaries, still, “Will the Lord’s hand be too short to save him?” If it is not so, then “the Landlord cannot save His vessels.”

2. He no longer has any choice for he has already done all that he could but saw no cure to his plight.

3. If He does not help him, he will be better off dead than alive. Prayer means “lost in the heart.” The more one is lost, so is the measure of his prayer. Clearly, one who lacks luxuries is not like one who has been sentenced to death, and only the execution is missing, and he is already tied with iron chains, and he is standing and pleading for his life. He will certainly not rest or sleep or be distracted for even a moment from praying for his life."

1st Condition: Faith and Confidence in the Creator

2. RABASH, Article No.6 (1984), "Love of Friends - 2”

"We must also use faith to have confidence that we can reach the goal and not despair mid-way and flee the campaign. Rather, we should believe that the Creator can help even a low and ignoble person like myself. It means that the Creator will bring me near Him and I will be able to attain adhesion with Him."

3. Baal HaSulam, Letter No. 34

"We rush our pleas above, knock by knock, tirelessly, endlessly, and do not weaken at all when He does not answer us. We believe He hears our prayer but waits for a time when we have the Kelim [vessels] to receive the faithful bounty, and then we will receive a reply to each and every prayer at once, since “the hand of the Lord will not be short,” God forbid."

4. Baal HaSulam, Letter No. 24

"You already know that prayer and confidence go hand in hand. We must believe in complete faith that the Creator hears the prayer of every mouth, especially concerning the Shechina [Divinity]. With this faith we acquire confidence, and then his prayer is complete, with confidence that he will be saved, and he is rewarded with confidence and joy all day, as though he has already been saved."

5. RABASH, Article No. 17 (1984), "The Agenda of the Assembly – 1"

"We need to begin with praising the Creator is that it is natural that there are two conditions when one asks for something of another:

1. That he has what I ask of him, such as wealth, power, and repute as being wealthy and affluent.

2. That he will have a kind heart, meaning a desire to do good to others.

From such a person you can ask for a favor. This is why they said, “One should always praise the Creator, and then pray.” This means that after one believes in the greatness of the Creator, that He has all sorts of pleasures to give to the creatures and He wishes to do good, then it is pertinent to say that he is praying to the Creator, who will certainly help him since He wishes to do good. And then the Creator can give him what he wishes. Then, also, the prayer can be with confidence that the Creator will grant it."

2nd Condition: Only the Creator Can Help

6. RABASH, Article No. 16 (1984), "Concerning Bestowal"

"When he begins to reach the degree of bestowal in his work, he sees that he is very far from it, that he has no desire for a thought, word, or deed that he would have the ability to aim in order to bestow. And then he doesn’t know what to do to obtain the power of bestowal. And each time he adds effort, he sees that this whole matter is far from him. In the end, he realizes that it is not humanly possible that he will ever reach it.

At that time, he realizes that only the Creator can help him, and only then does he understand that he must engage in Torah and Mitzvot in order to receive reward. And the reward for his labor will be for the Creator to give him the power of bestowal. This is the reward he hopes for, since he wants to achieve Dvekut with the Creator, which is equivalence of form, meaning bestowal."

7. Baal HaSulam, Shamati, Article No. 1, "There is None Else Besides Him"

"It is written, “There is none else besides Him.” This means that there is no other force in the world that has the ability to do anything against Him. And what one sees, that there are things in the world that deny the upper household, the reason is that this is His will.

This is deemed a correction called “the left rejects and the right pulls closer,” meaning that what the left rejects is considered a correction. This means that there are things in the world that, to begin with, aim to divert a person from the right way, and by which he is rejected from Kedusha [holiness].

The benefit from the rejections is that through them a person receives a complete need and desire for the Creator to help him since he sees that otherwise he is lost." 

8. Baal HaSulam, Shamati, Article No. 5, "Lishma Is an Awakening from Above, and Why Do We Need an Awakening from Below?"

"The prayer must be a complete prayer, from the bottom of the heart. This means that one knows one hundred percent that there is no one in the world who can help him but the Creator Himself.

Yet, how does one know this, that no one will help him but the Creator Himself? One can acquire that awareness precisely if he has exerted all the powers at his disposal and it did not help him. Thus, one must do every possible thing in the world to attain “for the sake of the Creator.” Then one can pray from the bottom of the heart, and then the Creator hears his prayer."

3rd Condition: Death Is Better for Me than Life

9. RABASH, Letter No. 9

"One who is accustomed to the work and wishes to see the truth in order to walk in it, and his wish is only to correct his actions, then according to his desire for the truth, exactly to that extent is he shown his true level from above—how far he is from the work of Lishma. From this he is compelled to be in lowliness because he (sees) the bad in him more than all of his contemporaries, since the whole world does not see the truth, how they are placed under the governance of evil and have not begun the work for the Creator. But he does see that he cannot do anything for the Creator and therefore feels that he is separated from the Creator.

He feels as though he is dead because he is separated from The Life of Lives. And because he feels the taste of death, he is in utter lowliness, since there is none who is lower than the dead. At that time he cries out, “I am better off dead than alive,” for at least he would not blemish the Torah and Mitzvot, meaning use holy things for his own good, as then he would feel that he is using the holy names for secular needs."

10. RABASH, Article No. 5 (1989), "What Does It Mean that the Creation of the World Was by Largess?"

"Sometimes, the suffering becomes such that a person says, “I’d rather die than live,” if I cannot satisfy my deficiency. But this is because of the suffering he suffers from his lack. Naturally, when he receives the satisfaction of his need, of which he said “I’d rather die than live,” what pleasure he feels when he receives the filling!

When speaking of the work, a person must come to such a lack at not having Dvekut [adhesion] with the Creator that he says, “If I cannot achieve Dvekut with the Creator, this absence causes me such torments that I say, ‘I’d rather die than live.’”

This is called a “real desire,” and this desire is worthy of satisfaction."