Kabbalists were always against memorizing, against learning by heart and against writing while studying, and so were the first scientists and scholars. After recording, you are limited by it. You put on paper or a computer what you should have put into yourself and used in order to change internally.

If you want to perceive the Kabbalistic, philosophical or even a scientific message, you have to change. You have to change so that the idea will live in you, not in the mind but in your emotions.

The mind should only help the emotions. It needs to clarify all the data, both the internal and the external ones, and to process them and evoke the desire to change so that the data will become our Reshimot (informational genes) in the desire and not in some memory box.

Therefore, we have to make an effort that the material we study will enter our nature and not stay only in the mind. It is possible that we read too much, hear too much, and download too much material from the Internet with all the encyclopedias that are there.

My teacher Rabash was against writing during the lesson, even if it helped us remember the text that we read; then too we had to make an effort so that it would penetrate more deeply so that through the network of memory cells it would drip and penetrate the heart. It does go through my internal filters, but, one way or another, eventually it should make me change. The information I receive and the clarification I make should change me, not intellectually, but internally.

If only the mind could be emptied and I could be new each day, start from a blank page without any additions from the previous day. I could study the same material I studied yesterday as if I see it for the first time. Why? Because I have changed in my desires and with the new desires I see something completely new in the “familiar” text. [Read more →]

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A person goes a long way until he finds out exactly what his work is. He reaches the study by looking for a meaning in life, in the search for an egoistic fulfillment. He stays with the same initial intention for quite a while until finally he begins to hear that it is absolutely forbidden, meaning “impossible,” to fill these egoistic desires. So what can he do?

They say that it is only possible to enjoy when in equivalence of form with the Creator. Do you want to enjoy? Learn from Him how to enjoy bestowal, but not bestowal as you see it, not bestowal from personal egoistic satisfaction. True bestowal gives pleasure to the Creator; this is the only thing you can enjoy.

This means that there is double incongruence: We have to change both our desires and our intentions—the place where the pleasure is felt. When a person moves on to these new desires, which he doesn’t understand at all, he is told: Here you are, now enjoy. This is totally different from what he imagines today in his present egoistic state. He must change his perception several times.

Going through this, he can only hold onto the group, the environment. After all, every time he advances a little, he feels that he is even more a like a child, even more confused and that he loses more of his power. This is so different from the ordinary, familiar way we advance— getting more, understanding more, and feeling more—that a person cannot bear such “progress” which seems to be headed in the opposite direction.

He doesn’t understand how it is possible to work and to feel a growing emptiness and lack of understanding, simply a state of death, of total helplessness when there is no light at the end of the tunnel—pitch darkness, the Red Sea (Final Sea – Yam Sof in Hebrew). Is all that called advancement?

A person feels totally lost, but if he continues despite everything, he begins to discover that without going thorough these states, it is impossible to reach the real desires: to receive in order to bestow. There is nothing left of the previous state, not the feeling, not the understanding, not the previous approach, not the intention or purpose of ordinary advancement. Everything seems totally new and so different from his previous experience that it is simply impossible to see it from afar.

The only thing that can help him here is to organize support around him and become incorporated in activities, studies, group work, and dissemination, so that he will develop gradually, like a child who plays and at the same time grows. Thus, step-by-step, he will gradually advance towards the state in which he can bear the spiritual idea.

He begins to understand that there are many spiritual and mystical methods in the world, but here he comes across a method that will bring him to a new reality by changing his perception. And only then will he understand what was happening to him.

Therefore, it is impossible to explain this to everyone. This is why it says: “A thousand enter the room and one comes out to teach.” After all, if a person’s soul is ready to attain the truth at any cost, it keeps him on track.

If he is really ready for that, then the environment can help him go through these phases quickly, and while still in this life to attain the world of truth!
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/16/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: What does it mean” half of the half” with regards to the work we have to do?

Answer: A person has to prepare his “half” and the Creator completes the other half. But how can you do that, after all, even in preparing my desire I cannot manage without Him?

To prepare my half means to try and find the deficiency and the right aspiration. But I don’t have that at all. I have to look for the right deficiency instead of the black false bubble I am in where I imagine this false life that doesn’t exist at all that will later seem like a dream.

How can I want and try to wake up from this deep sleep and to feel willingness for it by myself, because this is the only thing I need! But without this willingness, I will not be able to receive the upper world that is revealed at the end of this dream because I have to develop a deficiency for it.

People with a great coarse egoism come to study Kabbalah in order to attain the upper world . It isn’t enlightened “spiritual” people for whom meditations are enough who come here . The people who come here want to receive and to gain big time, to discover the spiritual world. Here it depends on whether a person can hear what he is told and bear all the conditions.

Two natural spiritual laws operate here, which you cannot change in favor of your egoism. We are told that we have to do “half of the half,” but this doesn’t mean that there is some concession here. A person must perform his half, and then he will receive the other half from Above. The other half will change him and will turn him into something that is totally different.

When he is 100 percent ready to change, it means that he has done his half of the work. Then 100 percent of this change is performed from Above; this is the half that the Creator is responsible for.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/16/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: The elderly have an especially emphatic fear that arises in any group: What if I won’t have enough time to reach the sensation of eternity and perfection? How to handle that fear?

Answer: We need to set very concrete tasks before them, not prospective ones, like for the youth, and to set defined goals that are attainable and realized very quickly. At the same time, we need to tell them about the entire global picture of nature’s system, its eternity, its life cycles, as well as our life cycles within it. That is, here we need to provide serious psychological support from the very beginning.

Question: During one of the programs you explained that a fear of death paralyzes a person’s life, impedes him. It manifests less in young people and more at a certain age.  How does the methodology of integral upbringing regard attitude to fear? How to work with it?

Answer: I think that a correct clarification of our place in nature is the key to understanding a person’s place within it, the place of death and our biological life. We need to bring a person to the next level of understanding, not even feeling yet, but simply understanding of this.

A person will reach the sensation of eternity and perfection when he or she will be integrally connected with a certain critical mass of other people who are also attaining this integration. Then it is as if we rise above ourselves, creating above us some image of one person with one heart and mind. And our physical body exists nearby as an animal that accompanies this one image, the way our dog or cat lives alongside of us.

We need to focus people’s attention on that and to try bring them to this kind of sensation. In principle, psychologically it’s not that difficult considering that there is no resistance on their end, but on the contrary, support and anticipation of results. They represent that part of humanity that joyfully strives towards integration and closeness, understanding that all else passes and vanishes.

Elderly people easily part with everything for the sake of achieving the feeling of ascent above death, rising above the very factor of the seemingly inevitably impending end. We need to give them a feeling as if they are in a plunging airplane set to crash into a mountaintop, but suddenly some great force force lifts it up, and it speeds upwards with boosted power. I think that such sensation can be created in them quickly.

Besides, the courses for the elderly naturally need to be easier. They don’t require great theoretical and practical studies; they will gladly just participate. And I think that precisely the egoism and fear that appear in all older people, the desire to achieve a result that uplifts them, all that will provide a very serious basis for movement to other groups in society.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #4, 12/13/11

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Question: We spoke about the fact that in the integral upbringing courses people meet for seven to eight hours a day, and together they first go through the preparatory informational stage, that is, receive an education, and then proceed to the practical part, the upbringing, where now in their psychological interaction they go through various states. Aside from study and upbringing, is there room in this program for joint celebration of holidays?

Answer: Constantly. After all, in spending seven to eight hours together, they need to participate in some sort of a meal at least once, perhaps even twice. There should be a lunch and also a small break, like an afternoon snack. There need to be breaks for rest and a constant change in activities; otherwise a person will simply be unable to handle it, especially the elderly—they’d all be falling asleep.

Since they have free time, we need to break their day into morning and evening lessons, and in the middle to give them some time for rest, for housework, for their natural needs. After all, this is a special age group whose physiology may not be fully healthy anymore.

Our task is to have a person connect to a group and thereby acquire for themselves a new society in which they live and not merely pass their time, but find there their bright future. We need to create for them an atmosphere of joyful anticipation that would psychologically support and indeed heal them. Starting with the very first hours of them being with us, we need to work specifically on that.

We should organize dances for them, some kind of special evening functions. In other words, there needs to be a special approach here.

I would like to emphasize once more that their disposition towards our methodology, their desire for it to come true, and their goodwill will play a positive role within other age groups. Elderly people can and know how to influence everyone. We are well familiar with this age: In reality it is quite active. We only think, based on their physical guise, that they are passive, but in fact their influence is very strong.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #4, 12/13/11

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Question: What is unique about teaching integral approach to the elderly?

Answer: I think that they will receive it with greater understanding because a person who has already lived a lifetime understands to what extent one is not the master of one’s own life. It’s as if it passed by above him, commanding him, and not him being in command of it.

People of that age agree more with the fact that nature works on us, and now, when they don’t have that much time left to understand, realize, and possibly correct that in some way, they are more diligent, sensitive, and compassionate.

Besides, the enormous hard-won life experience gives a person a completely different approach to what is being offered. From the very beginning, a person is open to learning, so naturally, his participation in the studies is most amicable. We are offering a person to achieve harmony in that short segment of time that he or she has.

These are people who live and measure themselves not relative to some achievements, but relative to the end of life. Generally speaking, this constant subconscious sensation in a person determines his or her entire behavior.

And here is where we need to imbue the endpoint of their life with joy, attainment, and ascent towards a new state that exists beyond the end of corporeal life. We should give them a sensation that it’s as if they’re flying and about to crash into something, and suddenly a motor appears that carries them up above the obstacle. It is precisely a sensation of this possibility that will give them strength, and then, of course, it will be very easy for them to work in a group.

I hope that these groups will be a serious help to us because in principle, the more groups of this kind we can create, the easier it will be for us to include ourselves into all of humanity.

By the way, longevity inherent in our time (life expectancy is more than doubled compared to the previous centuries) means an accumulation of life experience by an individual. At some point, people lived 30 or 40 years and died young, without gaining any experience in life. From the ancient times and all the way until the 18th century, a person lived no longer than 35-40 years. It’s hard to believe now that there was once such a short life cycle. A person practically had no time to attain anything in life, grew old very quickly, and died. Everything somehow broke off very abruptly.

We need to take advantage of the fact that in our time, the developing ego offers us an opportunity, in accordance with its development, to simultaneously live through and internalize the experience and the point of view that develops in a person by the age of sixty and beyond. Today elderly people comprise the vast majority of humanity. We need to take advantage of this group, which is sympathetic to our methodology and its outcome, and through them create in all of humanity a certain correct background for integration.

Therefore, under no circumstances should we pass these groups by, although our usual automatic attitude towards this segment of the population is: “We’ll create all the necessary conditions so they wouldn’t bother us. Let them sit somewhere on a bench and calmly live out their life.” No, we need to build very powerful groups out of them, and they will disseminate this method, its usefulness, and a life-saving solution that it offers to mankind among their children and grandchildren.

Question: We know from experience that the majority of the elderly really love to tell the story of their life. Should we give them an opportunity to share their stories?

Answer: Only if it helps us in the capacity of a psychological example: What you related, what you saw, what you lived through. Naturally, the elderly love this, but their stories need to be accompanied by investigation and analysis: Why this happened, what it provided, what this should teach us today, and so on.

Elderly people passing time in various gatherings is their own business, but we need to take it into consideration and teach them how to relate to the lived experiment of life.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #4, 12/13/11

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Shamati #108 “If You Leave Me One Day, I Will Leave You Two”
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Chapter “Beresheet (Genesis),” “Three Lights,” Item 140, Lesson 39
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 6, ”The Eser Sefirot of ha Olam Nekudim,” Item 5, Lesson 4
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“Introduction to the Study of Ten Sefirot,” Item 47, Lesson 24
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