Question: What does “a clear decision” mean? Aren’t a decision and a desire the same thing?

Answer: A decision is in the heart. It is not simply words written on paper and stuck to a wall. It is said: “Write them upon the tablets of your heart.”

Question: But each person has a different character. How, then, can a unified desire be created?

Answer: What does this have to do with character? Suppose that we, 80 people, want to build a house. Does it matter what character each person has and what problems each one has? We are all focused together on one goal.

Comment: But one imagines a palace and another imagines something else.

My Response: It does not matter what each person imagines and what each envisions. We, of course, cannot compare the states, intentions, and internal analysis made by each of us. And in general, it is not the group that should do this; it is each person’s personal matter. But we want each of us to participate in this to the extent that they can.

Certainly, no more is demanded of a person than what was initially given to them from above from birth. One person can, for now, think only for one moment a day; another, after a month of study is entirely immersed in it; a third might engage in yet another way.

One perceives more with the mind, another with the heart. For some it may feel like an act of self-coercion, while others feel a sense of inspiration. We are not discussing the specific, personal states of each one; we are talking about a collective effort without delving into particulars; it does not matter in what state each of us is.

Perhaps for one person, the greatest investment they can make, the greatest sacrifice they are capable of, is that today they will sit for ten minutes and listen to me attentively, while for the rest of the time they will be as if dead. For them, this will be a great effort. Whereas for another, studying all day might require only a standard, routine level of effort.

The effort is what counts; therefore, in this case, the first contributes more than the second. We cannot check these things, and it is not we who should do so at all. Moreover, we are forbidden to speak with one another about personal states.

We must strive for the unity of desires, not by speaking about how each of us relates to the Creator, but simply speaking about the Creator Himself rather than our individual relationship to Him. In other words, we should speak about the importance of the goal rather than where I am now in relation to it.

Therefore, one must make the friend’s words important to you. Invest as much effort in it as you invest in your child, and you will see how important it will be to you. “Buy yourself a friend.”

Set the goal to be at the lesson as a single group, with a single intention, and a single unified effort.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/16/26, Rabash, “A Congregation Is No Less than Ten”

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