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Question: How is it possible not to depart from an intention for a single moment and do everything for the sake of the Creator?
Answer: For this, you must be in full and absolute adherence with the friends so that, among you, the feeling called the Creator is revealed.
The Creator is your inner feeling, Bore (Bo Re), meaning come and see with your inner vision. Reach such a state, feel it, and remain within it. This is called adherence with the Creator.
However, this is attained only with a shared, collective Kli, in other words, in your right connection with the friends, with mutual wholeness, building a mosaic such that all of its borders merge into the creation of only a single desire.
This happens under the influence of the Light. From our side, only effort is required, half of the coin (the Shekel), and the second half, which is the realization of this effort, comes from Above.
Speaking about the Creator (about the love of friends) and being with the Creator (realizing the characteristic of bestowal and love) are two different things.
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From the Sochi Convention 6/10/14, Lesson 2
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Question: In order to leave the ego, is it necessary to want this?
Answer: The person does not want to leave the ego! I can play all the time, deceiving myself that I want to leave the ego. But in fact, I don’t want that, and every time in the next stage, this will become clearer and clearer, until the Upper Light will change me.
Question: Through involvement with integral education, we see how we advance and grow together with the external public, and here the sharpness of the goal, the intention, becomes blurred. It follows that we still are continuing to develop egoistically.
Answer: Every moment you must check yourself: “What is happening with me? What am I doing?” You need to watch all of your physical actions, every word!
This is constant internal work, “What motivates me? What for? What kind of conclusions must I draw from this? What kind of result will this bring me, spiritual or material?” In the end, it could be that we are slowing down our actions, but they will be more correct.
Question: What could the criteria for this truth be? Indeed, each one of us is found in his own truth, in scrutiny.
Answer: It is necessary to scrutinize the truth all the time. It is necessary to advance! In the end nothing just disappears, for all of the efforts will be gathered together.
So, it is not necessary to be clever. In other words, it is not necessary to draw conclusions on the basis of what you feel now, how you think. There could only be risk in this.
The main thing is to invest effort. If you cannot do this internally, then invest external effort. In the end, it will create a new level of consciousness.
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From the Sochi Convention 6/10/14, Lesson 2
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Question: Baal HaSulam wrote in the newspaper The Nation about the threat of the Holocaust almost eighty years ago. Is our situation today better than it was then, or does it only seem that way to us since hatred and anti-Semitism have just kept going and growing everywhere?
Answer: The situation today is much worse than what it was before the Second World War. This is because the threatening situation that is being created today is everywhere and not just for one nation and some of its allies.
This was a small area in relation to the entire world, and the Jews could rely on the help of other people and nations. Today, there is nobody and nothing to rely upon. Even the United Nations, which is the representative of all the nations, is against Israel. So, we have nowhere to flee.
Besides this, the situation today is much worse than before because it was founded on and has grown on the basis of a general breakdown, the global crisis, in everything and in all aspects. Humanity is going to lose all rational direction and lose everything. When it finds itself in such a bad state, it will blame the Jews for all of its problems and failures. We hear about these accusations from everyone because the crisis is global.
This is such a terrible situation that in comparison Hitler will seem like a little child playing pranks in his backyard. The present Holocaust could spread around the entire globe.
Question: We see that many European nations who supported us before are now united with our enemies, and so we need to mobilize all of our forces, and it could be that we are doing this, but I don’t see true understanding among the public. Everyone is more concerned about money and property, and doesn’t want to hear us that much. How do we awaken people and explain that the situation today is similar to the situation that existed before the Holocaust?
Answer: Try to bring this to people. Baal HaSulam didn’t succeed, but we must succeed in doing this. He did everything possible, and he published a newspaper when everyone was afraid of saying a word. The haters broke his windows with stones many times.
We are facing dissemination operations that are broad and powerful in scope, but we must prepare ourselves for them by searching and finding points of contact with people and influential points both in Israel and the entire world. We are succeeding every day in making our explanations more accessible. It might also be worthwhile for us to publish a newspaper and distribute it both on the street and on the Internet.
It is necessary to try to do everything possible. I am looking at the future optimistically. I see the great rate with which we now have begun dissemination. The main thing is not to reduce the rate or pressure and to organize workshops in circles and roundtables. Then we surely will succeed and can advance people towards the goal of creation more rapidly than the troubles that come at us and overtake us from behind.
If we advance even more rapidly, then these troubles will become helpful and will serve us as a support. In the beginning, we only run away from them, and after that, we completely turn them around. We yearn for a state of “bestowal for the sake of bestowal,” and after that, a state of “reception for the sake of bestowal,” and then we use the troubles and problems for our own good.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/20/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam
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Baal HaSulam, The Nation: It is also clear that such an enormous effort, a solid and steel-hard unity is required, from all parts of the nation, without exception. If we do not come out with united ranks toward the mighty forces that are standing on our way to harm us, we will find that our hope is doomed in advance.
Baal HaSulam says that the Israeli nation must connect above all the differences. We were connected in the past and we must reach the same connection and unity now. By that, we overcome all the interferences and leap over everything, thus bringing ourselves and the entire world to the inevitable correction.
If we don’t, a whip will appear that will force us to reach correction, but that will be along the path of suffering, the path of “in its time.”
Question: The problem is that the nation doesn’t have a real need for connection. People admit that we are approaching the public prematurely.
Answer: Does that mean that we must wait until the troubles and the afflictions increase? Will we be able to speak about unity only when things get worse?
But wise men can see what is being born in the world. We still can put on the right glasses, or bring our eyes to binoculars or even a telescope, or look through a microscope in order to identify lethal bacteria before they kill us.
This is what we do in science or in medicine. In every area, we try to identify the illness before it breaks out, and weed it out. This is what wise people do.
Why should we wait until people feel bad and look for changes? We must intensify our educational measures and dissemination actions now. When people feel so threatened by the buds of evil, they will feel compelled to connect. What we see as minor evil, they see as great evil and great troubles.
However, here too, we must be cautious. Scaring people isn’t our way, although it is very efficient. Doctors usually use this method, as do green organizations that scare us by speaking about ecological disasters that are coming.
We must operate differently. We shouldn’t use the method of scaring people but simply show them what they immediately gain when they connect.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/22/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam
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Question: Why was the paper The Nation that Baal HaSulam published immediately shut down?
Answer: The paper was shut down because of the mixed multitude that joined the Israelites during the exodus from Egypt. According to them, the correction is in remaining the way we are now and waiting for the Messiah, instead of connecting according to the principle of “love thy friend as thyself.”
Of course, they don’t like it when someone like us calls for the love of others and for the connection among the whole Israeli nation.
Their objection is clearly understood since when we call out for that it stands in their way of pulling people in their direction. Instead we guide people in a totally different direction, letting the whole nation know that the correction is in connection and unity, as the Torah requires.
It turns out that our Torah, our teaching, is opposite from their study. It says: “the opinion of the Torah is opposite from the opinion of the landlords.” A landlord is someone who thinks that he is his own boss, while we think that it is the Creator who has to correct us, that this is what we should pray for, and that our correction actually depends on the connection among us, when we become as one man in one heart.
They, on the other hand, want to separate everyone and to pull them apart from one another, since that way it is easier to control people. This is the style of the mixed multitude.
They are called the great affliction that accompanied our exodus from Egypt until this very day. They are the ones who bring about all the dangers and the problems of the Israeli nation, including the destruction of the first and second Temples, the exile, and today’s interferences. It is all their doing.
Their role will be revealed, but one way or the other, we have to do our job.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/22/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam
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Baal HaSulam, “The Nation”: Hence, we have taken upon ourselves the publication of this paper, to stand guard and warn of the trouble, and explain it to the public until all the segregating elements will be silenced.
Question: It is no secret that in our day publications are undergoing a crisis. Will newspapers survive in the future?
Answer: It is difficult to say how much longer they will last considering the strength of electronic formats. Today a person essentially doesn’t need a newspaper or a book, he sees everything on a computer screen conveniently and comfortably where one can adjust the font and style of the text.
Today it is possible to take electronic devices everywhere, like a newspaper. And tomorrow we will really be able to open an article and keyboard in the air in front of us, in the form of a hologram generated from some small device the size of a wristwatch.
So I don’t see a future for the printed materials, not for a newspapers or books, besides our books, even though most of them will be transferred to a screen format.
Humanity is creating electronic instruments according to its desire, and this is becoming more sophisticated all the time. So I suppose that there won’t be a return to the era of print.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/22/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam
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Our way is reflected in the reaction of the other nations to the people of Israel. When we see that our enemies and haters are strengthened in the surrounding nations and organizations, according to this we can identify the rate of our advancement. And we must understand that serious and strong work is required of us.
Against every new external wave we must strengthen the unity of the Jewish people. For the power that makes it possible to neutralize the external evil is found only in our connection here. And this is specifically what will bring the world to correction.
And as much as the nations want to “catch” us more and more, so our unity must be stronger. Then we can influence them and change them. This is exactly what our war is.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/22/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam
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Question: How do you attain simple faith?
Answer: Simple faith is absolute bestowal, Hafetz Hesed, when I try to be free of all my pragmatic thoughts, when I think about the friends and about the group and try to exist only in order to fulfill our connection.
The first phase is the minimal attainment of the level of mutual guarantee in the group. We begin to understand that different forces constantly are operating on us. Of course, they all come directly from the Creator’s trying to separate us and disrupt our connection, to divert our attention from thinking about the upper force, about connection, about unity, about the goal of creation, and about our obligations.
These forces arrive continuously in different forms, in different directions, confusing us, and dulling our senses. It isn’t in our power to resist them if there isn’t the right spirit in the group that can help us survive. Therefore, as it is written, “They helped every one his friend.” This is our obligation.
Otherwise, the days will go by, and everything will change, but a person will remain the same. So, each one must support the others and worry about them so that they will worry about him. A person cannot worry about himself since these forces operate on each one, pressuring him on all sides, trying to tear him from the others by forcing him to worry about himself.
The moment he focuses on himself, it is very easy to detach him from the goal of creation. It is because the real goal of creation is in the connection among everyone. Therefore the impure intentions are the Klipot; it is not thoughts that separate a person from the Creator. The entire world is ready to think about the Creator, to cry out to Him, to go and pray in different holy places. A person has no problem doing that.
The goal is unity, connection. As long as a person holds on to it, he is fine. However, the moment he breaks away from this form of connection, he is no longer a danger to the Klipot, and they leave him alone. He can study by himself, acquire knowledge, but that doesn’t disturb the egoistic forces. They allow him to observe all the Mitzvot (commandments) very carefully, everything but connection, everything but “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”
Everything else doesn’t disturb them. On the contrary, if he has no intention to advance toward the love of others, all the other actions pull him in the opposite direction.
So, when the point in the heart awakens in a person, it is important to know how to fulfill one’s freewill. The Creator brings a person to the good fate and tells him: “Choose!” And this is what a person must do, that is, understand that fulfilling the Reshimo (reminiscences) is only through connection.
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From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/15/14
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