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Obstacles usually come from two directions. The moment I want to bestow, familiar questions immediately come up: What do I need this for, what is this work for, and who is the Creator that I should listen to Him? However, if I operate for myself, the ego allows me to do whatever I want. It always supports me and makes me feel successful.
This means that if you follow the way of the truth, you will not encounter success, but only obstacles, barriers, and difficulties along the way. Whereas if you follow the way of lies, there are no problems and you will succeed in everything that you do. So, it turns out that obstacles and interruptions will surround me on every side and divert me from every direction: both by good and evil—by reward or punishment.
All these obstacles are essential because they guide us and help us exit our ego. In fact, they are not actually disturbances, but a way to correct our direction. With every step we make, we must learn how to aim ourselves in the right direction according to our desire to receive and our desire to bestow upon the Creator, according to our insignificance and the Creator’s greatness. Therefore, we always receive signs and signals from these two sources, from our ego and from the Creator. According to these signs, we can aim ourselves toward the goal.
This is why we should see all the unpleasant situations, hardships, confusions, hardening of the heart, and anger as corrections and tuning us on the way to the goal, to the Creator.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/4/2012, Writings of Rabash
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Knowing what is written in Kabbalah books means to connect with what is said, as it is written, “And Adam knew Eve.” We acquire knowledge by rising and connecting with the upper degrees. This is possible only through the connection between us that enables us to imagine the place where we receive spiritual filling, knowledge.
Therefore, even if we yearn to know what is written, we must not detach ourselves from the place, from the conditions, through which we can receive the upper knowledge. The place where we connect is where the revelation occurs. Otherwise, you will want to receive the upper knowledge about the spiritual world in your beastly, corporeal mind, and this is impossible.
Spirituality only operates in connection and is based on the intensity of the connection. Then, everything gathers into one point and returns to the spark from which all of creation started. If we don’t aim in the right direction, we will never understand what is written in Kabbalah books. We will come up with endless interpretations, but we will not come closer to the truth by that.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/8/2012, The Zohar
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Question: A source of information in a group can either be its moderator or exercises that help clarify certain theses. What is the relationship between these elements in a group of integral education? Should everything be conducted in form of a game or can the instructor be a source of information as well?
Answer: Absolutely! There should be an instructor both in the main, educational lessons and during the practical exercises since everyone, without exception, needs to receive an education.
It doesn’t matter that some people couldn’t bear themselves to listen to a single lesson in school, graduated simply because they were “pushed out,” and went to work in some factory or at the street market. That’s not important!
All people should receive an integral education in its minimum form, in form of laws and memorized rules that they constantly repeat, if that’s their level. They need to repeat all the rules and literally know them by heart until, under the influence of various life’s problems, excesses, and incidents, these rules begin to come to life within them and prove that it is indeed so, that is, until the rules come into action and show them their real applicability.
Indeed, certain segments of the population understand everything on their own level: They wake up, take care of their needs, eat, go to their vegetable garden, and go back to bed again. We should definitely work with them. Accordingly, we need to prepare various kinds of educational materials, starting with simple pictures, like for small children. These people learn more from video clips, motion pictures, and theater or cinema productions that are as simple as TV series. The most important thing is that they learn the integral laws, the main provisions of nature.
There are also those who go further, to whom we can present the theoretical elements of attainment. And they will agree with them on the basis of their logical conclusions.
But overall, this is a multilevel education that needs to adapt to all segments and layers of the population, both on the social and intellectual level, or maybe not even based on their level of development but on the natural predisposition that a person has for comprehension of a given topic (physics, poetry, and so on). Even among domestic workers, there are poets and physicists.
People who are working on group selection have to really take this into consideration. Accordingly, we need to prepare various types of materials, different kinds of lessons, examples, activities, and games. Everything should be very differentiated and customized.
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From KabTV’s “Foundations of the Integral Soceity” 2/26/12
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Question: There are people who are used to receiving an assignment, working on it at home, and then discussing the completed task in a group, and there are also those who are incapable of doing anything at home but are ready to take up anything in a group. Is it possible to practice both of these approaches in the method of integral education?
Answer: You should adapt to people instead of trying to break them down—this is the problem with today’s education. Of course we need to act in accordance with the individuality of a person.
You won’t be able to change people, and it is not necessary. We need to present the integral method to each type people in their own key, in their form and style.
Question: If in the experimental group for preparing future instructors one person will study at home and another will work only in a group, will that be sufficient?
Answer: No, absolutely not! A person won’t be able to study at home. We can give more theoretical and descriptive homework assignments to a group of such people, but they are required to go through practical exercises together with the entire group.
We need to assign them homework that allows them to prepare themselves for practical exercises. And then they will be coming with an understanding of what they need. They will be in agreement with it in advance, and it will be easier for us to work with them, even with those who initially didn’t seem prepared for that.
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From KabTV’s “Foundations of the Integral Soceity” 2/26/12
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Question: Could you describe a day of a healthy integral family?
Answer: The alarm clock rings; everyone gets up. The children are going to school as usual. Mother stays home, or together with dad goes to study, to work.
People are working part time jobs in fields that are necessary, although it is not important where they work; it does not matter to them. Each one works as much as he can in a place where society decides it is the most useful and needed for society so as to supply food, clothing, a standard apartment, heating, health, retirement, vacation, medical help, and so on.
The husband and wife are working as needed, but regardless of whether they are working or not, they must study 5-6 hours a day in the group. This is considered as work that completes the job they have. People are studying the method of integral upbringing and education and the system that we all exist in: the worldwide, universal system of the upper mind, force. By learning, they are trying to discover it more and more and realize it through the connection between them.
This is the day and the life of people because they know that through this, they achieve a better mutual connection between them, and in it, they discover an eternal and perfect existence and an enormous, unlimited fulfillment that for them substitutes for absolutely everything.
This world they will feel as a means, as a place of work, until they reach the complete attainment of the system of nature. By this, they will achieve the whole system and they will fit in it by becoming equal with it, equal to the Creator, which is called adhesion with the Creator. They will reach a state where the feeling of this world will disappear, and instead of their biological bodies, they will feel spiritual bodies, meaning the forces that painted this world and themselves on the uncorrected ego.
Essentially, people will do only this. But as long as they are still in the egoistical desires, they will feel their bodies and will need to take care of them. However, it will be clear to them that this is the picture they have to “nourish”now with egoistical fulfillment such as food and other necessities of the body.
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From KabTV’s “Foundations of the Integral Society” 2/19/12
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Rabash, Shlavei HaSulam (The Steps of the Ladder), “What is a Blessing and a Curse in the Work”: Each day, man needs to start anew and say that today he will be awarded to see “I am your God” and that he will not escape from the battle. He should not say “I already prayed many times that God will give me the vessels of bestowal, and I will exit the desire to receive for myself, and I did not receive any answer for my prayer, so what is the benefit of praying again?”
The truth is that we never request vessels of bestowal because it is impossible.
Yes we ask for what is called “bestowal.” We ask to be able to love the other, but that is how we call it; this is not bestowal; it is not love for the other or bestowing desires. We never truly pray for the spiritual world, or the spiritual state, or spiritual vessels. In our current desire, in our current mind and feeling, we simply are not capable to request it, and we do not even know what it is.
Therefore, it is said: “I labored and I found.” One needs to put effort in what Kabbalists tell us to do, to follow strictly their recommendations, and to understand clearly that we do not have any chance to come directly and independently to the correct prayer; we cannot break our heart and raise a request for correction (MAN).
At first each one of our prayers is based on how to receive, to gain, and to take advantage of the friends, the Creator, of any one. That is the fact and there is no place to escape from it. But above us, there is a system of breakage that translates our actions, our broken requests, to correction.
On the way from above downward, the desires broke, and on the way back, when I rise from the broken state, they are corrected in this system. They rise as if I requested what is needed, as if I really plead for love and bestowal to the other and for connection with the friends and the Creator whom I am ready to accept as goodness.
This system is the broken world of Nikudim and the world of Atzilut that was created later is the adapter: On one side of this system, there are the false world, the worlds of BYA that are disconnected from the Creator, and the states opposite to bestowal, in which we exist. On the other side, there is the Creator, perfection.
My plea for love is a lie, but we all arrange this lie in a correct form as if we really want something besides self-benefit. If between us, we come together in the correct form, if we arrange the study and all our actions correctly, then our request goes through this system that corrects it, and this is what is called “I labored and I found.”
Although we don’t know the world of Atzilut, it does its work. And that is why we need to do exactly what Kabbalists tell us without lying to ourselves or being ashamed. It is true that we do not request spirituality, but scream like a baby and mother knows what he needs. Mother needs only a tiny scream from the baby to know what his needs are.
This is what is required from us. “Do everything that is in your power to do,” and this will bring good results.
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From the Arava Convention 2/25/12, Lesson 7
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Question: How can we combine the internality and the externality in our work correctly?
Answer: We are confused when it comes to what is really important and we run around from one end to the other. A person has to clearly decide each time what he should see as more important. It is all about the intention: Who gets the results of my exertion? This is what you should clarify.
Question: We disseminate all the time. What should be the most important thing for me here?
Answer: How to bring contentment to the Creator.
From here you can draw a whole chain of intermediate actions and intentions. How can you bring contentment to the Creator? We have to understand what He wants. He wants the correction of the vessel in order to be revealed in it. What is a corrected vessel? What is revealed in it exactly?—The Light of Hochma that is revealed in the Light of Hassadim. And all this is in the general desire.
This means that I need the general desire that is corrected by the Light of Hassadim. Then it will become the vessel in which the Light of Hochma is dressed. This is the state of Ein Sof (Infinity), of Gmar Tikkun (the end of correction).
Where can we find this desire?—In all the seven billion people in the world. Where can we find the Light of Hassadim, the internal attire?—This is me when my vessel reaches the level of Hafetz Hesed and can draw the Light of Hassadim for the whole world. Then the Creator will dress in it.
What is the role of Israel and what is the work of the nations in this process? The nations have to yearn for a good life at the level of their development, without any mysticism. Israel should provide everyone with the basic necessities. Israel gives the Light of Hassadim from itself and by that enables the Creator to reveal the Light of Hochma, which means to be revealed to everyone.
Israel can bring all the nations to the first restriction first, then to the level of Hafetz Hesed that is above the ego, and even to a state of to receive in order to bestow.
Question: Suppose I meet the head of a government as I disseminate, do I have to first build this whole chain?
Answer: It says: “I dwell within my people.” It should be within the people and not in the government. This is the law: We have to turn to the people in order to achieve correction. It is impossible to turn only to scientists, to the rich, and to the decision makers; they cannot be the support for the revelation of the Creator. The “wealth” blinds them.
Among the people we have someone to work with. We can only explain to the elite in a rational manner that it is worthwhile to establish integral education and teaching in society, because it serves their interests. We turn to every person according to his desire.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/9/12, “The Role of Israel and the World”
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Question: Don’t we tend to put greater emphasis on actions than on intentions during the day?
Answer: All our work is based on intentions. Can we bring about real changes in the world only through actions? By disseminating our message we want to change people’s intention. We have to approach them in different ways so that they will absorb it and be inspired, and then their attitude will begin to change.
If there were a wave on which we could convey to them by mind power the knowledge about the integral world, we would do that. But on the other hand, a method that resembles hypnosis or an injection wouldn’t be effective here. People have to understand, to perceive, and to internally analyze what we bring them.
It is impossible to simply “inject” another perspective of the world into a person. He needs to consciously acquire this knowledge, without lies, confusion, or fraud. We have to create the right conditions for him, thanks to which he will reach the desired result by himself and will share our point of view. So even if there were a wave for conveying information mentally, it would only lower a person to the “inanimate” level, while we, on the contrary, have to assist his development. This is the whole problem.
So we should offer a person “food for thought” with which he will agree or argue internally until the right tools will be created in him, the “tools” that enable him to understand the situation. Today by “flowing with the stream of life” a person cannot understand and assess this flow by looking at it from the outside. He doesn’t penetrate the depth of nature in order to understand its laws; he doesn’t know himself and his environment.
We are not talking about the artificial environment people have created for themselves. In that area they are “experts,” and many feel like a big fish in the sea. But the natural systems that move a person, society, and nature are unknown to them. We have to make that accessible for them so that they will begin to feel the essence of things, so that they will get to know the basic laws of the external nature and the essence of humanity. This is the Creator, even though it is still in an adapted corporeal form.
In the meantime, people have no idea about that. They are living their ordinary lives in an artificial net that they have woven for themselves. This is what the global processes of modernization and urbanization have brought us to. The whole world is living according to these laws today, and so we are facing very hard work: We have to spur the need for ascending in people, to lead them to the level of clarification and of a new feeling, and to guide them to the root so that under the guidance of the artificial mechanisms of civilization, they will see our natural mutual connection that penetrates all levels of nature.
By bringing a person to this thought, we bring him inside, into a totally different system about which he doesn’t know and which he hasn’t taken into account at all. He encounters a problem: He detaches himself from the artificial net and has to solve basic questions by himself: “Who am I and what am I? What is the environment, what is nature?” Here another environment is revealed to him, the system of the upper nature.
This is the reason scientists today are much closer to our message. Soon we will be so close to them that we will actually begin to speak in the same language. On the other hand, in the meantime we cannot have a real conversation with businessmen, industrialists, merchants, politicians, etc.; in their environment the laws of the market exist.
We are really facing a difficult dissemination problem. We have to understand the way a person feels the world, the picture he sees before him, the social services that he uses, his interests, etc. He is living in an artificial blown-up “bubble” and he doesn’t understand what we are talking about.
We, on the other hand, speak about the fact that man is part of nature in which there are clear and definite laws. They resent this idea, “What laws are you talking about, all the laws are written in the constitution.” And so all the problems are “solved” by legislation and adding a few more items to certain laws. This is how the artificial system by which people are hoping to change something grows.
Eventually we have reached a global crisis: Two systems, an artificial one and a natural one, are now one opposite the other. The problem is that the artificial system is beginning to break down as a whole, whereas we want to bring people to the natural system, and this is a big problem. We too are gradually going through this process, so what can we say about humanity?
So don’t hope that intentions will be enough. First, we have to enter the bubble and establish a connection with a person. We descend to his level, to his state, become part of him, and from there we begin to gradually explain that we all depend on the second natural system, on balance and on the right mutual relations with it. In addition, we have to act gently; otherwise, people will not accept our message because they only feel their bubble.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/8/12, Writings of Rabash
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Shamati, Article 159: And it came to pass in the course of those many days that the king of Egypt died… (Exodus) The greatness of the ego, all the good corporeal life, a person’s desire to feel better in life—everything falls, collapses, and dies. So what can a person do? This is what humanity as a whole and every individual are going through now. We cannot operate according to the ordinary ego for the ordinary corporeal causes.
And then, the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, which are those who yearn for spirituality, even if they don’t know what it is yet, and those who are already close to it, who somewhat understand that spirituality symbolizes bestowal and love regardless of their personal interests. Thus they begin to check themselves and see that they cannot go on this way.
This is a pyramid that contains those who simply cannot be consumers and serve their ego through those who have already clarified that spirituality symbolizes bestowal instead of self-love. Everyone takes his place in it and everyone “sighs” in his own point from this egoistic bondage.
There are those in whom the “point in the heart” has awakened, and there are those who simply suffer not knowing why. Everyone sighs under the burden of their situation, not knowing how to fill themselves.
And their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage—they don’t just cry, it is because of the hard work: from the futile attempts to fill their ego or from those that are more advanced but still cannot leave their old habits and take upon themselves the burden of God’s work and start working in bestowal and love of others.
But despite everything, “And God heard their groaning.” The Creator hears everyone that responds to what the Creator does with him. The system is built in such a way that the upper takes care of everyone according to a person’s level, but especially those who understand and have to aim themselves practically at bestowal and love in the group, in “brothers sitting together,” among those who yearn for the Creator.
They suffered so much that they could not bear it any longer. Then the people pleaded with prayer so much that their cry came up unto God; they were exhausted by this work. But on the other hand we see that that they were saying: “Would that we had… when we sat by the flesh-pots, when we did eat bread to the full.” And they also said, “We remember the fish which we were wont to eat in Egypt for naught…” which means that it seems that before everything was fine.
A person has two points at the same time: One is corporeal and the other which is seemingly spiritual. So he is between them and the further apart they are, the more space he has, and the more he knows his place and what he does.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/8/12, Shamati #159
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