We have to organize an inner environment among us instead of the external, common human environment. Then our environment will offset the external influence and will influence us of its own accord, “brainwashing” us and intensively “advertising” spiritual ascent as the most important thing we have to accomplish in life.

Otherwise I will leave this world without any use. An animal lived and then died. The body has “strolled about” as long as it was allotted and then it decomposed, and in the meantime nothing was accomplished. The point instilled in it from the spiritual world remained a mere point and did not develop.

Everything depends on the importance of the environment. There is nothing more important than organizing a virtual environment that is warm and heart-felt. This is the most important thing. Otherwise my thoughts will disconnect from the right direction at every second and maybe the next time I disconnect, I will never return to it again.

After all, if I am given over to my own power, then I will never return to thoughts about spirituality. I stopped to think about it for the first time because the Creator, the upper force awakened me. The upper Light awakens Reshimot and that is how my spiritual Reshimo awakened, causing me to feel a desire that turns toward the Light. But this only happened once. Maybe the Creator will awaken the person once or twice more, but all the rest depends on us. I have to build an environment as fast as possible which will become a womb for me to raise my soul.

The spiritual environment has to be as numerous as possible, but more importantly, it must be as powerful and close-knit as possible. Baal HaSulam writes about this, and so does Rabash. The main force should be quality, not quantity. Quality determines everything.

The quality of the influence depends on how much we worry about one another, how inspired we become by one another, how much we return to the fundamental principles of the environment and take care to ensure that no one forgets about the goal. The thoughts of the friends are passed over to me and therefore, the more I inspire them, the more they inspire me in response.

I will not be able to awaken to spirituality unless I awaken the group to it. The group will inspire me also if I aspire it. We must always work in this closed circle.

That is why the virtual environment is important for us. We have to create a portal that will enable us to maintain unceasing contact with one another. It’s not accidental that communication means have been developed in the world enabling us to constantly stay in touch, to constantly see what is happening in our virtual environment.

I am dreaming about a virtual environment in which I will be able to constantly communicate and be in touch with you, to feel you by means of speech and music, 24 hours a day, non-stop. Then we will constantly give each other the realization of the importance of the goal, love, connection, and the right direction, and that is how we will hold ourselves in spiritual ascent and consolidation all together until we become a single vessel, one soul.

Let us hope that we will implement this platform and will stay in constant connection with it.
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From the 5th lesson at the WE! Convention 4/1/11

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Question: Should women put pressure on the men the way a mother pressures a child so the men would work on unity?

Answer: You should treat the men like children – with love! But if they don’t unite, then there’s no doubt that you should pressure them. It is written that “We came out of Egypt by virtue of righteous women” where “coming out of Egypt” means transitioning from this world into the spiritual world, and it happens only by virtue of the women.

We study that the ascent of MAN happens from Malchut and all the desires are in Malchut. Therefore, everything starts from women. If not for their desire, there would be no family and no new generation to follow.

The driving force of humanity is the force of the woman, who desires to give birth and to continue life. A man brings the executive force, but only on the condition that there is a need for it. That is how nature is built.

Consequently, the most important thing that we need is the women’s feeling of necessity. When new students came to Rabash, he immediately organized a women’s group that was made up of their wives. These women gathered together once a week, read an article, and discussed it. Rabash cared very much about how they understood what is written and about what is happening with them.

There definitely has to be a strong women’s organization that is able to demand from the men the execution of what they need in spirituality. However, the women shouldn’t do this by screaming, but through the need of the heart. Then the men will feel it. But this is not happening yet.

That is to say, by nature women do not know how and are unable to unite with each other. Every woman is separate. But in order to put pressure on the men, and only for the sake of this, they are able to unite in order to become one enormous need. And this need is essential for us.
From the 2nd lesson at the WE! Convention, 4/1/11

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We don’t even realize how deeply immersed we are in the egoistic nature. Our cells, our bodies, our world, our thoughts and desires, and generally everything that exists is just egoism and nothing more.

Everything aspires only to receive, to absorb as much goodness as possible for one’s individual self. This is the nature into which we are born and in which we live, not having the slightest inkling that there is a possibility for anything to exist besides this.

Nevertheless, we have to go from one world to another, or in other words, to acquire an additional, new world, to grow through from the point in the heart, to develop it into a new spiritual “body.” In essence, it is analogous to our current body, which only appears flat to us, but in reality it is depicted by forces and vectors. But instead of seeing this image on a computer display, we see it on the 3D screen of our consciousness.

We perceive reality on this screen of the receiving desire. Everything we are able to receive or perceive falls upon this screen and stops there, creating the picture that we see.

However, the forces of bestowal are entirely different. We cannot stop them with the screen of the receiving desire and therefore we do not perceive them. Only by creating a screen in the bestowing desire will we reveal the second half of reality. In truth, we won’t feel half, but nearly 100% of everything that exists. Whatever amount of Light this new screen, the intention of bestowal, will stop, that is the kind of picture we will see on it.

It is very difficult to start raising a second “body” from your point in the heart. To do that you have to enter a group, like a mother’s womb, and start growing inside it. This looks very repulsive and unreal to a person. The whole world is against it and therefore he does not think about it or attribute any significance to it.

That is why it is very difficult for us to focus on the group. Whatever the environment deems important, that is what’s important to us as well. If the world considers work in the group to be unimportant, then we also forget about it at every second. Even if we try to extend a thread of connection, to listen about it and to maintain it in our thoughts, it still seems infantile, unrealistic, and naïve to us, and that is because it is not important to the greater world. And vice versa, if the most unrealistic thing becomes important to everyone, then we would think about it, talk about it, and aspire to it.

That is why we need the “social opinion,” the confidence, the mutual influence that convinces us that we are doing something real and that our world is really not worth a thing. What do we have here besides a fleeting life full of suffering? If it weren’t for the unique opportunity to acquire eternal, perfect life during this time, then there would be no use from this world for us or for our children.
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From the 5th lesson at the WE! Convention 4/1/11

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Question: You said that by rising to the spiritual degree we can wield power over the four lower levels of nature: our body, the animate, vegetative, and still nature?

Answer: If we reach a state when we connect together with our points in the hearts, we rule over everything. We attain the Divine force, the universal force of nature, and acquire unlimited power. In short, we rule over nature.

Question: It would be logical to assume that if we are now at the human degree, we can control the three lower levels of nature: animate, vegetative, and still, can’t we?

Answer: No, we can’t rule over them. We do govern them, but recklessly since we are not familiar with the general program of nature, the general law of the universe. Hence, we destroy nature, vandalizing all lower levels: the animate, vegetative, and still.

In truth, it is a very deep question. There are two ways to rule:

1. By force, as we do today, by destroying nature without any compassion, understanding, or reason, without considering what will happen to us tomorrow or in a near future.
2. By reason, when, being aware of the entire picture of development, we are able to decide what we should do. To know the system from end to end means to rule over it not by force, but by reason.
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   From Lesson 1, WE! Convention 4/1/2011

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Kabbalists try very hard to explain the main moment of our work: how we arrive at free choice. They start by explaining that we have no freedom whatsoever. Findings in biology, ecology, psychology, genetics, and other sciences make it evident. We are not free.

Every person is born into a family he didn’t choose, a society he didn’t pick, a nation he didn’t decide on, with the traits that were not his choice. He was schooled at a place that he didn’t select either. And how could he have made a choice himself? His family, kindergarten, and school provided the environment, under the influence of which he developed.

Very seldom, as if accidentally, a person finds himself or herself under a foreign influence, for instance, of the books, and develops slightly differently than his surroundings. There are very few people like this, and they being guided from Above.

With regard to everything else, as Baal HaSulam writes in his article “The Freedom,” I’m not independent in the way I sit, eat, sleep, dress, or speak. In general, it is not me. Everything is imparted on me by the environment, the priorities of which force me to hold myself and behave in a certain way even when I’m alone. I have internalized the values of the environment and they have become my own.

Initially, I was a drop of semen; I received everything else from the environment: my parents, the close ones, educators and teachers, friends, street, city, and so on. Even a drop of semen itself wasn’t me either, but a set of traits I inherited from my parents.

It follows that man has no freedom, has nothing that could be said to be his own. From one side, it is very hard to agree with this, but from the other, scientists have discovered it already and subscribe to it completely. Only in the human society we nevertheless judge a person by what he or she is, even though in reality, a person embodies the environment which “sculpted” him or her.

From the spiritual point of view, given the conditions in which we find ourselves, we can’t talk about ourselves as such. In spirituality, each of us begins with a drop of semen called the “point in the heart.” When a person begins to feel this point within himself or herself, he or she is brought to the appropriate environment.
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From Lesson 1, WE! Convention 4/1/2011

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Writings of Rabash, 1984, “Purpose of Society”: We have gathered here to establish a society for all who wish to follow the path and method of Baal HaSulam, the way by which to climb the degrees of man, and not remain as a beast… And this is why we gather here—to establish a society where each of us follows the spirit of bestowing upon the Creator.

What is “bestowal to the Creator”? Everyone gets confused by these terms. And in general, Rabash wrote his articles in a language that we are not used to. We have to rewrite these words so they will sound clearly. “Bestowing to the Creator” means awakening the general force of nature (because the Creator is nature) and acquiring the force of bestowal in likeness to nature, in equivalence of form.

Baal HaSulam gives an example of the situation with a guest and a host. I can reveal the host’s bestowal to the degree that I with to bestow o him. But how can I desire this? After all, he is invisible to the eye and I will not reveal him until I reveal my inner desire to bestow to him.

I can only reveal him inside of the aspiration to him. With my desire to bestow, by attaining equivalence of form or the same “style” as the host, I remove the concealment and “open up the veil.”

To do that I have been given the society, the group where I can practice bestowal. Then, in the same place, among the friends, I discover the host, the Creator, and continue bestowing to Him through the group and together with the group. That is how we reveal Him.

This is our work: We want to unite among us in order to reveal the general force of nature, the bestowing force that is inside of us, in the group. There, inside, it becomes revealed to us, and in it we discover the spiritual world consisting of five levels or five worlds. In it we discover Partzufim, levels, Sefirot and much more.

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From the 5th lesson at the WE! Convention, The Purpose of the Group

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Question: Essentially, I don’t have any freedom of choice. Nature rules over me. So does everything really depend on me?

Answer: Creation begins with the still level, followed by the vegetative, animate, and human degrees. The human degree, too, begins to develop from the still level and undergoes the same stages. This was the course of evolution on Earth over millions of years.

Finally, we have reached the degree of “human within human” and become accountable. We used to live like animals under a stick, but now we have to meet certain demands. Whether we like it or not, today we must undertake certain actions.

A few thousand years after what happened in ancient Babylon, we are handed the method of correction once again. Free will, as well as responsibility that comes along with it, begins specifically with the “human within human,” with our current level. Hence, we are talking about absolute goodness, about the purpose of creation, and about how to stay on course, in order to advance without cataclysms.

Conscious development begins now, while until this time suffering spurred egoism on to develop. Without these “injections,” it wouldn’t have made a single move.

The still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature do not possess free will. Neither does a human being who exists at the still, vegetative, or animate level. The possibility of free choice appears only now. After all, now you have the “point in the heart” and you can use it to connect with the friends and find Infinity in your unity.

Choice is impossible without inner struggle. You choose with whom you want to be: your friends or yourself. It’s either we or me.

Absolute goodness is awaiting all of us at the end of the path, but you have received the opportunity to choose, and hence you can already aim at it. For this, you have to always hold onto the middle line, using your “Self” and the environment together.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/25/2011, The Principles of Global Education

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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

Only the Light in the Torah Reforms the Person

Torah refers to the Light [of correction] clothed in the Torah [in the aspiration to reach the property of bestowal by connecting with the friends, to be as one], meaning, as our sages said, “I have created the evil inclination, I have created the Torah as a spice.” This refers to the Light in it, since the Light in it reforms it [creates within a person the property of bestowal].
– Baal HaSulam, Shamati [I Heard], Article No. 6, “What Is Support in the Torah in the Work”

The Torah is the only spice to annul [to correct by the upper Light] and subdue [to replace man’s nature with the opposite nature, that of the Creator, to shift from egoism to bestowal and love] the evil inclination, as our sages said, “The Light in it reformed them.”
– Baal HaSulam, “The Teaching of the Kabbalah and Its Essence”
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Question: Each person reaches a point where everything that used to help him advance and develop becomes completely useless. What should his plea to the Creator be in such a state?

Answer: Ask for anything you want but it won’t help! The Creator is a perfect force of nature. It isn’t an old man or a force that can be influenced. Not at all! The Creator is absolute and therefore does not change. If the Creator changed, that would mean He was different before and now became better or worse.

To ask the Creator means to develop new desires within me. The reason I sense change in His constant influence over me is because I change. The Creator never changes! He doesn’t hear or see anything from us. He is simply a great, eternal, existing, and perfect force of nature. We are the ones that must change until we become similar to Him.

Our prayers are self-judgment, self-evaluation, and the desire to change. There’s nothing to ask of the Creator, otherwise it’s as if you are saying: “You are not that good. Please be better!”

Gradually we will discover that we are dealing with nature. The Creator is nature. And within this nature only we can change. A human being is the only one who can change himself. Then a question arises: What state do we have to reach and how do we reach it, in order to feel eternal and perfect, like nature?
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From Lesson 3 in Moscow 1/16/2011, Questions and Answers

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