When we try to connect, we start feeling that we lack some kind of help from Above because we cannot do it on our own. We can neither connect nor synchronize our movements, but this revelation gives us knowledge of the One Who can do this for us. It can only be the upper force!

And then we reveal the need for the upper one and the place in which He has to act in us. It always works this way in the spiritual world: I work, applying more and more effort, and at the end I reveal a “minus.” And from this minus I discover the “plus” that possibly has what I lack.

I always reveal a lack, a vessel, a desire, and against it I reveal the power, the Light, which can do what I couldn’t. No matter how much I tried, I didn’t manage. So I arrive at the conclusion that I’m unable to do it, but at the same time I see Who can.

That’s why our movements always start off in the negative direction and cause disappointment, tiredness, and anger in us. From the experience of our whole life we can’t understand how this can be. In our egoism we always used to act differently: He who makes an effort wins, succeeds, and receives a reward.

And about the spiritual world it is said: “I labored and found,” and not that I “won,” “earned,” or “stole.” This means that I didn’t achieve this using my own power when I start an action and finish it.

Here it works differently. Thanks to my efforts I reach a certain limit, when nothing turns out right and I fall into despair, leave it, and don’t want anything, feeling completely disappointed, and only then, if I move one millimeter ahead, I reveal that there is a force that can do this!

And this force hides itself deliberately, until I reach a state of total despair. Baal HaSulam writes in his letter: “There isn’t a happier moment in a person’s life than when he reaches the limit of his own powers and sees that there is no success” as only then can he raise a prayer and cry out. He will know Who he has to address—only then will it be revealed to him.

Furthermore, he knows that he doesn’t have a choice: He must cry out. And in reality, nothing more is required but this cry.
[61231]
From Lesson 2, Arvut Convention at the Arava Desert 11/18/2011

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The first person to reveal the secret of life was Adam. Just like us, Adam was searching for the meaning of his life. After his revelation, this secret began to spread from generation to generation, until it reached our time.

We develop constantly and our desire grows steadily. Since each new generation that came was new and possessed a greater desire for pleasure, it was able to add something to the method of revealing the secret of life.

On one hand, this is a very simple thing, and on the other, it’s incredibly difficult. It’s simple because it’s close to everyone, and it’s difficult because it lies beyond our capabilities. It’s as if the Creator stretches out a rope for us to jump over and then puts a wall right behind it, making it impossible to jump.

The thing is that all a person has to do is apply effort, and the Creator will complete the action. Moreover, the person’s action and the Creator’s action have to be synchronized with the group or the environment.

It is very difficult to connect these three components because they each seem to be turning in their own direction and performing their own movements. However, when they actually do come to unite due to the effort on all three parts, this is called “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are one.”

A person called “Israel” (straight to the Creator), meaning he who wishes to attain the Creator, acts in accordance with his soul’s root and the program of creation. He overcomes his nature and wishes to act in sync with his environment, which happens to be a collection of individual movements that are in motion together.

The Creator has His own movement. After all, He governs everything. He has a predetermined plan that leads everything toward one goal. For this reason, it’s very difficult to connect all three components into a single point where the initial contact with the upper one occurs. This contact is called adhesion.

Adam was the first person to reveal the method of obtaining unity with the upper one. Clearly there are no coincidences in life, and it was no coincidence that he was called Adam (“similar” to the Creator), although his parents weren’t aware of why they named him as such. He was the first person to reveal the correct method of revealing the Creator.

If we connect all three components into a single point, then through that point we begin to see a different reality. We bring things into focus, similar to when one gets an eye exam, where the three lines in the optical device have to connect in order to see anything. Therein lies our work.
[61237]
From Lesson 2, Arvut Convention at the Arava Desert 11/18/2011

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If we want to feel the real world we live in, we have to develop our sensations. Then we will begin to gradually see how limited our world depicted to us by our five bodily, “beastly,” senses is. It depends on these senses and exists as long as they exist. That is, our body is a limited egotistic desire, the existence of which is so short-lived.

A person returns to this world again and again and develops his senses. This is all in order to awaken him and to eventually develop sensations on a human level, on the level of similarity to the Creator, which is to develop the sensation of the Creator within him.

This sensation also arises through the five senses, but together they form the giving, altruistic desire, which absorbs what is on the outside. Today we perceive only what is inside us, while the spiritual organ of perception captures the external reality, according to the law of equivalence of form.

When a person calibrates his internal sensation, he rises above his egoistic desire towards the opposite desire: towards bestowal. Only so can he understand what bestowal is: as something opposite to him. As he rises, he begins to perceive what is outside of him and thus discovers the external world.

What will help me feel this external world? Exercises. If I am in contact with other people, with my friends in the group, if I feel them inside me and connect with them, we begin to awaken each other so as to feel that the friend is more important to me than myself. Thus we come closer to the out of body sensation because the spiritual world is “outside our skin.”

How can I “jump out of my skin”? With the help of the group. These are special people who also want to feel reality outside their beastly bodies. This reality is called “the eternal world” since it isn’t limited by the corporeal existence and the five bodily senses. So I begin to appreciate these friends since they help me acquire eternity. Thanks to them I can develop sensations that are independent of my body and rise above my present “self.” This is what the group is.

This is why the collective soul was shattered. The multitude of individual souls, numerous bodies in our world, enable us to develop the external, spiritual feeling in us by ourselves. The wisdom of Kabbalah was intended only to help us do that.

Thus we acquire the new body, the body of the soul. It also has five senses: Keter, Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin, and Malchut. In other words, it is the desire to receive with five levels of Aviut. It is in this body that we begin to live our real life, a life on the level of bestowal, everlasting, eternal, and the one that we imagine in our fragmented senses, like this world.

The present physical reality gradually “disintegrates” inside a person. It isn’t because his corporeal body dies, but because he rises above this feeling. As we advance in the spiritual reality, this world disappears from our perception. It was depicted in our imagination from the start so that on the basis of this world we would discover the true one.
[61246]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/20/2011, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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Shamati #69 “First Will Be the Correction of the World”
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Chapter “Beresheet (Genesis),” “The Brightness of the Firmament,” (Start with: “Explanation: to Emanate Yeshsut”), Lesson 4
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 8, “Seder Siba Umesuvav,” Item 1, Lesson 24
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Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose,”  “The Absolute Good,” Lesson 2
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