Question: At the convention we get overwhelmed with the feeling of unity. What can we do not to forget the intention during this time?

Answer: I don’t think we will have problem with that during the convention. After all, there we work constantly connected. There are those who return home in the evening and suddenly rediscover an entire world with its problems and difficulties. And then they are amazed by how big the gap is between what we live in internally and what is going on externally.

And now that gap will be even bigger because the shattering is being revealed on the outside, while unity—inside. The contrast between these two states will manifest with even greater intensity.

We need to prepare internally for the convention in December in order not to lose the intention during the lectures, the activities, or the breaks. In general, the environment constantly needs to put pressure on us and thus direct us so that we have this sensation all the time.

Besides that, we have another month and a half before the convention, and I think that during this time new people from Israel and from all over the world will be attracted to it, including those who do not have the point in the heart, but nevertheless feel that this is important and that a solution is hiding here, even though they don’t yet understand it.
[58431]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/23/2011, “Peace in the World”

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Question: How many hours per day should be devoted to studying? Four hours or half a work day? Sometimes, I don’t want to get burnt out, and I also don’t want to leave comments on the blog all the time. How often should one participate if they are not physically in a group? Or should we just follow our hearts with it and participate when we feel like it?

Answer: It’s best to read the blog, sort the material, or comment during your free time or, at least, during the fixed hours that you decided to devote specifically to this, regardless of your mood.

Question: In the post “Kabbalists On Perception of Reality, Part 5” it says: “There is a sort of a photographic machine in our hindbrain, which portrays everything that appears to us and nothing outside of us.” What are the things then that “appear” to be outside of us?

Answer: There is nothing but desire and hence, we talk about a sensation “inside us,” in desire. We cannot talk about anything outside of desire as a “place” that exists.

Question: I want to make sure I am understanding the post “All The Difference Is In Intention” correctly.

If there is a request from the group for articles or artwork or writing, then I see that in some way I can fulfill these desires and submit something to the group. While I am doing it, I am receiving the gift of writing, art, or ability to look for articles in order to bestow, which is giving to the group. It is work to do this, but along the way, I find I enjoy giving and doing something for the group. The way that people take joy in doing a commandment. I don’t expect “a thank you” back from doing this work for the group; I don’t expect recognition for anything; I don’t even sign my name on what I submit so that I don’t get recognition, and so it is authentic giving without wanting to receive anything in return. Is this the process you are talking about?

Answer: However, you are filled with a sensation of what you have done, and this pleasure is your reward, or recognition, or …. If you truly bestowed, you would feel being filled with the Light of bestowal. But keep on doing your exercises, and the Light will come!
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The Book of Zohar, Weekly Torah Portion “Noah,” Selected Excerpts
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Question: Unemployment is rising around the world. It’s also affecting our friends from different groups and regions….

Answer: The world does not understand what disaster it’s facing. Soon half the population will be left without a job. And for this reason the first point of our proposed solution is to stop viewing unemployment as a catastrophe, which needs to be dealt with so everyone can get back to working 10-15 hours a day. Instead, everyone needs to work enough to provide one another with food, clothes, and other basic goods.

We are entering a time, a period, when we can forget everything there was before. We need to switch our minds to the new regime because it’s impossible to return to the old one. Very soon we will only need to care for the most necessary things. The next wave will wash over the entire world like a tsunami, and we’ll need to make a simple economic calculation: What we need to produce to provide us with more or less normal basic conditions and nothing else.

In other words, this means that we need to maintain balance with nature. The upper governance will not allow us to do whatever we want, just like it doesn’t allow a wolf in the woods to stock up several month’s cache of prey in order to feel secure about its future. The world will change dramatically, and the Creator will force us to live with so called “faith”: If everyone takes care of each other, things will go well, and if they do not, we have famine, destruction, and wars.

The calculation will be simple: We only work to provide everyone with the necessities, and nothing more than that, nothing in excess, no saving for the future or “rainy day money.” Naturally, this does not mean that everyone is wearing hand-me-downs or is half starving. We have simply forgotten what a normal life is, how life was 200-300 years ago.

And this is why unemployment is not the problem; it is simply the way that humanity is ridding itself of extra activities that only destroy and contaminate Earth. “Unemployed” is the wrong term. This refers to people who finally stop doing useless things. Now they need to start studying, and this will become the most important job along with unity and dissemination, while manufacturing will be reduced to life’s necessities.

People should not hope for the direction to change. More people will be losing work instead of finding it. We need to change our attitude towards life, and then we’ll see that those who have lost work are not unemployed. Having rid themselves of extra work that harms everyone, they are ready to take on a real job: correction. This is what it means to “serve the Creator.”
[58246]
From the Talk on the Economic Situation in the World 10/20/2011

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The Creator is now showing us a common, integral, and perfect system, where everyone is connected to one another: in economics and in everyday life, in consumer goods and in everything. This system is so tightly bound and all of its parts are so completely interconnected that we can’t change anything inside it, regardless of how hard we try to influence it. On the other hand, any interference or attempt to change this system on our part leads to its negative reaction, all in order to properly direct us towards attaining the Creator’s mind.

We must do all kinds actions within ourselves in order to bring ourselves into conformity with this system. This upper system is exactly the system of the mind and emotions; it is the program that the Creator shows as Himself. It is the system of mutual guarantee, love towards the other, and common bestowal, a system of the mind of the Creator.

And we must become like Him, bringing all of our qualities closer and closer to full correspondence with this system, until we see ourselves included and merged with it and this process, which must take place without any difference between us. This means that we reach full integration with the “acting mind.”

In this process we reach the mind, feeling, and knowledge of the Creator, His height. By becoming similar to the upper system, to connections among all of its elements, we build our common soul—a special society. And as a result, we suddenly reveal ourselves as being merged with the Creator in our qualities.

The Creator’s qualities are the first nine Sefirot projected in Malchut. Malchut is our desire to receive, which becomes similar to the Creator by attaining these first nine Sefirot and adopting their qualities.

The Creator presents Himself through these first nine Sefirot. Hence by mimicking and imprinting this matrix in Malchut of our desire, we build ten Sefirot of the Reflected Light from below upward, as a response to the ten Sefirot of the Direct Light coming from above down. By that we become fully equal to the Creator.

The imprinting of Malchut, these ten Sefirot split into “613” individual desires, meaning corrections or commandments, and seven additional commandments called “de Rabanan,” which is a particularly high spiritual level (GAR of a degree). On the way towards a complete adhesion with the Creator, we reveal different Lights corresponding to the corrected desires and thus each time reveal ever new names of the Creator, meaning the way He is revealed in our desires. The name of the Creator is a form of His revelation.

By building new spiritual degrees (Partzufim), we create matrices of HaVaYaH, where the Creator is revealed, filling them with the Light, meaning with various fillings: “Aleph” (Hassadim) or “Yod” (Hochma). Thus, the names of the Creator are revealed to us through TANTA (letters, points, and crowns above letters).

Then we see that by making corrections upon ourselves, we study the whole text of the Torah: from the first word “Beresheet” (in the beginning), until the last word “Israel.” All the words with all of their fillings (points, that is, Lights), in the same sequence as it is written in the Torah, all of these states go through our desire to receive, acquiring the form of these letters and words.

Thus we gradually correct ourselves, until we attain the acting mind as a result of this process. And then the Torah, the Creator, the upper Light, the corrected creature, the holy names, and the 620 actions of correction called 620 commandments, all merge into one.

For this reason, the Creator created the entire process in order for us to fully attain Him and reach His degree. And this means: “To bring contentment to the created beings.”
[58263]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/21/2011, “The Acting Mind”

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Question: Everything is relative in the world, and everything moves and depends upon from where you are looking. Is there anything constant in the world? Can the wisdom of Kabbalah offer a constant point that can be taken for the beginning of the coordinates and used to develop the code of a new program?

Answer: A constant point is Malchut of the world of Atzilut, which exists in the form of the point of Sefira Keter that is attached to Yesod of Zeir Anpin. And it is the point of our adhesion with the group.

This is the point of the beginning of the coordinates, the foundation in relation to which we can always correctly measure ourselves in a very precise and rational form. Everything is evaluated on the basis of this point. After all, everything that exists below Malchut of the world of Atzilut: the worlds of BYA, referred to as being “separate” from sanctity, our “imaginary” world, all of this is foggy and unsteady, meaning it ascends, descends, and disappears.

And everything that exists above Malchut of the world of Atzilut is states Malchut attains and then reveals them to everyone inside of her. This is why it’s the only point where we can stand firmly and measure our state in relation to it.

You can object by saying that this point is above the Parsa, so how can we lean on it without yet having attained the spiritual world? But it’s exactly because you do not have anything that this period of preparation is called the time of darkness and exile! And on the contrary, if you were to cut off all your past false foundations, you would find this true point.

The fact that we are not willing to hold on to it and think that it’s unattainable somewhere behind the Parsa is exactly what gets in the way of our finding it. But you will find it here and now, inside of you, under the condition that you throw away all your egoistic foundations, which you think keep you firmly standing on the ground, and grab on to this point called faith above reason.
[58094]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/2/2011, Shamati #219

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Question: Economists explain that in the modern global and integrated world, the entire world influences an individual, and an individual influences the entire world. This is a very large system, which must be taken into consideration entirely, and this is why the old economic laws are no longer working. The problem with an individual person planning to open a certain business is that to do it, he needs to know about all the influence he receives from everywhere, but where can he learn this?

Answer: This knowledge can only be acquired from the wisdom of Kabbalah once we begin to reveal the common network. And then we will purely, instinctively be acting in a proper manner since otherwise this network would not have been revealed to us. It only becomes revealed under the condition that I act properly in it and wish to connect to it in bestowal.

Then this system becomes revealed to me, and I naturally receive only what I need to receive from it to bestow. And if something gives me the opportunity to bestow more to others, I will receive more with this purpose, but I myself will always remain in the “small state” (Galgalta ve Eynaim), in balance.

The wisdom of Kabbalah does not explain to us the process of the attainment of one’s first “balanced” state. This is called the transitional period or the period of preparation. It happens under the influence of the environment, while you want to find certain precise stages and mechanical economic laws here ahead of time so as to instruct every bank and organization what monetary sum to transfer and where, what loans to give and with what interest rate.

But this is impossible to do before we connect into a true system that has not yet been revealed. However, certain separate ways can already be figured out today, and we will keep trying.

We need new global education and fair distribution based on nationwide referendums, which will allow us to find out the speed with which the establishment of the mutual guarantee can advance. It’s like a statistic.

This must be revealed to us, but for now it’s hard to say something specific. It’s like we don’t know what our path will be like before the first spiritual degree. We only know the factors that influence it: environment and man’s efforts to be in touch with this environment and to find this net of mutual guarantee in it.

But we don’t know anything more than that; everything else becomes revealed along the way. Of course, with my spiritual vision I see a bit more and a bit further than a regular person does, but for me things are not clear all the way, and I am not embarrassed to say it. Right now no one can say how this process will be unraveling because our freedom of will is involved here.

When you are on the spiritual degrees, you can precisely determine your current and future states. You do not know when it will come, but it is clear to you that you will go from state “A” to state “B.” However, you can’t say this during the transitional period.
[58096]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/2/2011, Shamati #219

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All holidays are symbols of man’s spiritual advancement. When I begin to develop the desire to bestow in me, I go through “repentance” (the period before the New Year, Rosh Hashanah), when I clarify my evil. In other words, I see how great my ego is, which I can’t resist, and I commit many crimes, as it is written in the Rosh Hashanah prayer for absolution: “We have transgressed, we have betrayed….”

And then I see that I must begin the path from the beginning and make a switch within me from being an egoist, who directs everything towards benefiting himself, to being a giver, who only cares for the benefit of another. After all, I begin to understand that I myself am the actual “another,” who seems to be a stranger to me. And the one I thought was me actually is not me, but an evil spirit, my ego, a serpent sitting in me which constantly demands fulfillment from me.

When a person develops this kind of attitude towards himself, as if he were a cunning serpent and others were him, his true “Self,” then this switch in consciousness is called the beginning of the New Year for him.

After this he has nothing left to do but correct himself, become like the upper force, the force of the Creator, a giver. Reception for our own sake gives us the sensation of “this world.” But when my “I” is directed towards bestowal, outside, towards the others, in this aspiration I begin to feel another, the upper, world.

Bestowal is when I love someone and want to give him pleasure, like a friend to a friend or a host to a guest. I care for him so much that I restrict my own desires and wish to not receive any pleasure, only thinking about his pleasure. And once I have this “shield,” which guarantees I do not receive for my own sake, I become ready to receive and thus please another.

Everything I receive is for him, like we tell a child: “A spoon for mommy, a spoon for daddy.” But it is not a simple action in the spiritual world. I must restrict my desire and open it for pleasure, only thinking about another. In other words, my heart and mind are in him, and then all the pleasure that goes through me only goes for the others.
[58133]
From the Night Lesson of Hoshanah Rabbah 10/19/2011, Shamati

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I asked the Messiah: “When will my Lord come?” And he answered: “Know that when your teaching becomes known and reveals itself to the world and when your sources spread outside to the extent that they, too, will be able to unite and to ascend, then all evil forces will vanish, and there will be a time of desire and redemption.
– Baal Shem Tov’s letter, Mekor Maim Chaim, Chapter “Noah”

Man’s soul is the Creator’s candle. In other words, commandments (corrections) attract the Light into the soul. Hence, the word “commandments” (Mitzvot) derives from the word “unity” (Tzavta). [That is, all our corrections come down to unity].
– Zfat Emet, Dvarim (Deuteronomy), Chapter “Titzeh”
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Writings of Rabash “The Matter of the Forefathers Entitlement”
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Chapter “Pekudei (Accounts),” “And Moses Established the Tabernacle,” Start with:  “Then they are rewarded,” Item 382, Lesson 16
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Talmud Eser Sefirot Part 8, “The Eser Sefirot of Olam ha Atzilut,” Lesson 2
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Writings of Baal HaSulam “Peace in the World,” “Pain vs. Pleasure in Self-Reception,” Lesson 12
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