The world is awakening. Moreover, it is being awakened by darkness: The egoistic desire is no longer receiving fulfillment and it feels that it finds itself in a multi-crisis. I marry and divorce. I have children, but they do not respect me. I want to give them a good education, but the results are nothing like I had imagined.

I want the simple joys of life, but instead I become depressed. I want to save some money, but I get hit by life and am left with nothing. I have spent my life putting money in my retirement plan, and it is disappearing together with the evaporating bank assets. I look for peace in nature, but it responds with natural disasters.

What matters in all of this is the feeling that the world is being submerged into darkness: There is no reason for a person to live, no reason to have children…. The program of development has its hands on humanity and keeps demonstrating more clearly the absence of fulfillment and darkness.

The same is happening with us, but we encounter the same symptoms, quickly find points of support, and jump over this state. This is because we have the method, the guide for action, that helps us move forward.

However, the world does not have anything like this. People do not understand the darkness that has come over them, its reason and purpose. At the end, no matter where a person turns, nothing fulfills him, nothing really makes him happy.

This way, the world is also moving towards a critical state, when through a lot of hard work people will need to accept that the time has come to change the way of life. Otherwise, this darkness will not clear since it is the opposite side of the Light. It speaks of the Light, the quality of bestowal, that is coming closer to us. But we keep feeling worse as it approaches us, we do not want bestowal, we do not want to live in it. On the contrary, we want to keep satisfying our egoistic desires.

However, there is no other solution. We see the way Nature is presenting itself to humanity: “I am bringing the quality of bestowal to you, and you will suffer until you will want to accept it as the best thing possible.”

Who will explain to people what is happening? We will. We must explain the essence of these changes to them. And the more we delay this explanation, the more people will hate us. Because on one hand, people do not want the quality of bestowal, but on the other, they will feel that we have the solution to the problems and we are standing in their way towards goodness. We must explain to them: What is happening in the world and what to do with the darkness that has fallen over them.

So far we are “imposing” on them with our message: “Look, we can explain world events. It is time to change the direction; man needs to change, not the world. The global integrated crisis is not a crisis. On the contrary, the quality of bestowal is here.” But for now they do not hear us.

Another several months will go by, we will be hit by several other disasters, and people will start listening. They will begin to understand the cause of darkness, helplessness, confusion, and the inability to control the world in the old manner. After all, nothing works, all the systems are collapsing.

And on our part, we must hurry with circulation. It is like an armada of flying saucers standing over Earth, with their projectors at full strength—this is how the quality of bestowal is influencing us. And only when we become like this quality, will we see light, warmth, joy, and hope for the future, eternity, and perfection in it.

It is not easy to explain the truth to the world. We need to rewrite the materials, explain them in various forms and from different angles. It is really difficult for people to switch their perception, direct it in a new way.

However, our time is special. Generations of Kabbalists have dreamed about it, but we are the ones who have merited to not only live in this time, but also understand what is happening.

Many people are now experiencing the crisis in their lives, an inner collapse, family drama, or drug abuse. This does not depend on the level of prosperity: It is also a disaster to have had fifty million dollars and be left with five, even though it is difficult for us to imagine this. People do not know that the blows have a purpose—and this is awful. A person can survive anything if he knows that he is moving towards a goal and the suffering will pay off and turn into gain. But what do you do when nothing shines ahead?

You and I know about the Thought of Creation, its purpose and that everything bad leads us towards goodness, and this is a gift from Above. There are billions of people in the world suffering without a glimpse of light ahead of them. And we must explain to them that there is a reason and a purpose to what is happening, a big reward and a possibility to turn every blow into a good blow.

It is necessary to bring this news to the world. The time has come. Even if people are deafened by suffering and do not want to listen (after all, only pain comes through blows), yet, having waited for the right quiet moment, it is possible to instill a drop of explanation into a person. Then do it again and again. This way sensations will alternate with information. We must watch the waves that flow through the world and fill the intervals between them with information about the cause and the essence of events.

Then people will perceive every new blow with a greater understanding, until the understanding counterbalances the disasters and brings them the feeling of causality and purposefulness, and later also of benefit. Instead of pain, a person will suddenly experience the desired relief because now he is being compensated. But when I am immediately rewarded for hard work, I do not feel the effort.

When the result is visible, the efforts are recorded as an asset, not an expense, because they bring profit. Moreover, they add weight and flavor to it since they helped me form a need, a vessel, an appetite in me, that allows me to enjoy the wonderful meal.
[54959]
From the 3rd Lesson, Kabbalah Convention in Toronto, 9/6/2011

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Question: How can one reach a prayer about bestowal instead of about oneself?

Answer: This is called a “prayer of many,” and it is only possible to reach it by virtue of Light. If I wish to reveal my true desires in order not to be in an illusion that I already exist in the spiritual world and bestowal, and if I wish to understand my true place, then I need the Light to illuminate myself to me.

The revelation of evil is only possible under the condition that the Light precedes the desire, when I want it myself. And then the Light comes and reveals this desire to me, and I see one against the other. As a consequence of this, I strive to goodness, wishing to replace my intention.

We need to change our intention. This is the only action that works as a trigger and causes this overturning. The Light brings me from an egoistic intention to an intention to bestow. Therefore, we need to aspire to this force that performs all the changes in the creature.

The Creator created my desire that acts as evil, and He can also turn it into good. An egoistic intention is revealed from a breaking. When we become more distant from each other, this is called evil. We reveal the extent of our unification above this separation.

It is impossible to destroy the separation as if it didn’t exist. The distance stays, but we build connections of love above it and thus reveal 620 times more Light! You discover resistance between souls, and precisely in this separation, instead of the Light of Nefesh de Nefesh, you reveal NRNHY, like in a light bulb filament.
[55051]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/9/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Question: How much longer are we going to suffer like stubborn children that do not wish to create a good environment? How do we overcome our stubbornness?

Answer: We need to convince ourselves of the need to advance. Otherwise, we will suffer. We should be ashamed of the fact that the world is suffering, and we are not giving it what we can and what it needs. We truly should feel guilty for the suffering of the world. Let this shame burn us, finally causing us to do something.

The individual calculations that we use to justify ourselves as we sit home and do nothing are of no use here. Regardless of what may seem to us, we need to use all our strength to be imbued by the suffering in the world and see that we are responsible for leading it to correction.

It is truly a big problem if we treat the world and people with neglect, thinking: “Let them suffer; maybe then they’ll change.” They cannot change. Only we can change, and then through us, they will be provided with ready decisions.

On the spiritual path we reveal that the world is our own system. Now imagine that for many years you purposely caused people harm, treated them as enemies, and enjoyed it, and now suddenly you discover that they are your children. Imagine the misery you feel now, as you remember everything that they were forced to endure because of you.

This is the part of shame that is revealed to us. Therefore, in order to reduce it, we need to hurry ahead of time by rejecting personal calculations. Whatever happens, do not pay attention to the behavior of people. After all, the Creator purposely presents them in this manner so that you would think only about bestowal and wish them good.
[54915]
From the 1st Lesson, Kabbalah Convention in Toronto, 9/6/2011

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To enable us to become the same as the Creator and rise to His level, an enormous barrier was created between us and Him, called our will to enjoy, the ego. It has many different faces: pride, lust, envy, ambition, and many others, whereas our work is to understand how to see help for advancement in all of these obstacles.

After all, when our evil becomes revealed, we immediately repel it. However, we must only feel hatred for its use, to hate it without erasing it.

This bribe is also in front of our eyes and through it we see the world in whatever way is profitable for us, where “for us” means our egoistic desire that rules over us for now, meaning our temporary ruler. Yet it turns out that this bribe is for our own good and was created specifically so we would outsmart it. Like a cunning snake, it is trying to bribe us and aim us toward its benefit, showing us various ways by which it can use us for its own benefit.

And we have to attract the Light that reforms with the help of the group and the study so inside of its cunning we would see a hint showing us how to learn this wisdom from it. It wants to bribe us and use us, but at the same time it shows us that it is doing this deliberately because at the end of its bribe and wile, there is a point we can grab on to, that we can catch—the tail. And in this way, we can win, turning everything around to benefit us.

Then we will no longer be acting for this snake’s benefit, but will reveal that the bribe was necessary only to teach us greater wisdom. This is our work.

Therefore, on one hand, “a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise,” but on the other hand, without this blindness, which we reveal and through which we attain the wisdom of the Creator, who hides inside of this snake, we won’t be able to advance. Precisely upon the contrast of two opposites, we learn this cunning—the reverse lie, the reverse wisdom. In this way we correct the breaking and acquire the corrected spiritual vessel, desire.

This corrected vessel contains the entire broken desire and all of the obstacles, together with all of the bribe that was received by our egoism, which played with us. However, we outplayed it from our end and attained correction.

We enjoy revealing its entire many-faced wile. It’s as if we decipher secret moves inside an intricate chess game, and we like playing this way. The more sophisticated are the opponent’s ploys in trying to trick, use, bribe, and confuse us, the deeper is the mind, the plan of creation that we reveal inside of this game. Therefore, we like this bribe because it helps us acquire great wisdom.
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/20/11, Shamati
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A Collection of Tips and Principles of Spiritual Work Studied During the Daily Kabbalah Lesson

Everything depends on my qualities. We don’t really understand this since we have gotten used to the particular qualities with which we were born, grew up, and are living today. However, if we really change them, we will completely transform our reality. We will grasp a higher layer and perceive it as eternal, situated above time, space, and motion. We can live in completely different conditions there.

All this can come true; this ability is instilled in us. We can influence the Light that forms us, and accordingly, it will give us various qualities. This mechanism was used by Kabbalists of all generations until today.

Yet today we find ourselves in a special state, where the whole humanity acquires this ability. An impulse is born in us to change the present form of existence; we feel continuously worse in this world and find less and less benefit from living in it. We are still holding on to it due to hopelessness and unwillingness to suffer, but we ask more and more persistently “What for? Why? What is the purpose of this existence?”

Questions and suffering of different levels push us to search. At the same time, we develop an ability to control the force that created us, to such an extent that we truly change due to it. Then, during this period of time, this life, in our reality, we will be able to turn the wheels inside us and find ourselves in completely different dimensions.
[Read more →]

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All that we need is to turn our desire to the upper one, to raise a prayer (MAN). But it must be in a plea for Arvut (mutual guarantee), and not “give me an apartment and affordable goods.” Without an aspiration to bestowal, we won’t be able to raise our prayer since it needs to be somewhat purposeful. I can’t simply say: “Give me a raise in salary.” That won’t help.

Thus, first of all, we must learn about mutual guarantee. All of us need to know that we will succeed only if we connect. This element must be in every request. Every problem, even the most corporeal, everything needs to include mutual guarantee. I want an apartment that I don’t have—I will receive one thanks to mutual guarantee. I want everything that is necessary for life, meaning health, vacation, pension, and free kindergarten—I will receive all of it, but only on condition that I clothe my corporeal demands in the wrapping that allows me to attain it all only through our connection.

Nature shows us that it is global and integral and by this, it specifically reveals to us the connection. We have no choice: We also need to be connected. Otherwise, we won’t be able to find a solution to anything. We will be able to provide for all our demands only on condition that we correspond to what is happening today in human society, that is, if we connect in the correct way.

We need to at least want to move in this direction, even if we still don’t succeed in connecting. And don’t think that no one wants to hear about this. People want to connect, they are ready to listen to it. Even if they don’t listen today, tomorrow they will begin to talk about the same thing by themselves. This is how it works, and hence, nothing more is needed. If a little thought about mutual guarantee comes up in the mind of a person, that’s enough. Naturally, all of his other worries are about making a living. After all, all of us have to eat something every day, and that comes first.

Ultimately, all the worries will amount to very simple demands: housing, food, heath, and security. All the rest are not so important. The main thing is to have a place to live, food to eat, a healthy body, and security. This is actually what man is concerned about. If we dress these needs in the wrapping of mutual guarantee, with a little understanding and a little feeling that only together can we solve these problems, then that’s enough.

Everyone understands that the connection is worthwhile, even from a corporeal point of view, according to the following logic: If we connect and help each other, poor and rich as one, an atmosphere will be created in the nation that people will actually want to share, to create greater social justice. It will also work beyond our understanding where there is no rational solution whatsoever. Hence, we have no choice: We will be able to solve problems only by way of mutual guarantee, both rationally and also beyond any rational logic.

If we explain this to everyone so that everyone connects all of their hopes and aspirations with reaching mutual guarantee, that will become a real prayer that will be answered. I think about cottage cheese, but together with mutual guarantee; I think about an apartment and security and connect that to mutual guarantee, with the general connection. So, my prayer rises and reaches the upper one.

Otherwise, it won’t reach the upper one. Will the Creator listen to my prayer if I just pray for an apartment or for cottage cheese? Actually, He took all this from me just so that I would add to it the element of mutual guarantee. Then it will be a real prayer: I want cottage cheese for my stomach and besides that I want mutual guarantee for my soul. This is already the attribute of Bina—this is how Bina and Malchut connect at the lowest level. One desire comes from the stomach and the other from the heart: cottage cheese and mutual guarantee. One can’t exist without the other.

And then we truly raise MAN, a request that is received Above. Otherwise, you can shout to the Creator: “I need cottage cheese!” And He will only reply: “I know. Actually, I took it from you.”
[54621]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/2/2011, Rabash’s Letters

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Question: How can we explain to simple people how the Light that Reforms works?

Answer: This can be explained with many examples that show that man is a result of his environment. For example, children who were lost in the woods and brought up near animals acquire the behavior of these animals, and animals that live near people become more human-like.

A person’s environment does everything. I can advance without the environment, similar to when nature was changing and thereby revealing in me different forms of existence as well. Once, I was like an amoeba. Then, I became a more complicated creature. So it continued, on and on, until I developed into a person that I am now, under the influence of the environment, nature. As nature changes, it changes us.

Now, we are discovering that everything changes: Explosions happen on the sun, the climate changes, and magnetic and geographic poles are shifting. We do not yet know what is happening here. We do not yet realize the thousands of factors that influence us and cause us to advance.

Everything happens through the environment, but this environment is called Nature. It seems to be inanimate, and some changes are taking place there—possibly, according to a certain program, but maybe not. We constantly want to find out about it because we think it is an accident, not a program. If we knew that everything is happening according to a plan of nature, we would have a completely different attitude toward it.

Today, we are facing a problem. We are encountering sudden, dramatic climate changes, and we want to know whether these changes are happening according to a plan or if they are accidental. Are we contributing to these changes in nature (and there are many studies regarding this), or are they so random that there is nothing we can calculate here?

Although, what kind of accident could it be? We study the processes that occur within the Earth, and we know that we live on the thin cover of a blazing volcano. This is why a really important question arises: whether or not we affect these processes? If we have no effect, then “eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die,” as people say. However, if we can affect them, then how do we do this? Is it with thoughts and desires or burning less oil and gas? Scientists are looking for answers to these questions because they suspect an upcoming, unpleasant course of events.

The globality of the world, which is being revealed to us now, has to ultimately make us smarter. We should realize that everything around us is a single system, and we are also inside it. There is a mutual influence: We affect the external system, and it affects us, We change through its affect on us.

This brings us to the solution that derives from the wisdom of Kabbalah. Can we intentionally change the environment so that it would affect and change us in the direction of the same goal, but in the good and fast way?

A problem then arises. We must change a lot of data placed in our mind. First of all, we must understand that we exist inside a universal, global, general nature where all the parts exist in unity, and that this entire process has a plan, a tendency, according to which we have always developed. Really, even when we look at the evolutionary process, we see that there is a certain plan of development in it. Suddenly, we forget about it because it refers to our ego, which suddenly makes us dumb. “There is nothing but me.”

If we first begin to perceive the image that there is a global, integrated, common system with humanity inside it and that we must come into balance with it, then we will be able to ask: “What does nature demand from us right now? Is it to come into balance? What kind of pressure and which conditions will it use to do it? Can we realize it on our own?”

We really begin to understand that nature cannot do it alone. We can call it the Creator (Elokim) Who has a mind and feelings, or we can consider that it does not have feelings. Either way, it is still nature; this does not make a difference.

We will only feel pressure on the still, vegetative, and animate levels, only on the level of our body. This is because we must build the environment for the human, “speaking,” level on our own so that it would change us with its pressure, giving us the proper form. This is why all the suffering, such as wars, misfortunes, and epidemics will be on the still, vegetative, and animate levels, on the level of our animal body, its life and existence.

This will continue until I realize that all of still, vegetative, and animate nature is a common, global system and that I must become like it on my level. To be global in the human sense means to treat this system as our own, where everything is interconnected and exists in unity and harmony.

Then, another stage begins. I build the environment for it to change me, to make me more global and integrated, connected to all parts of nature and all people. I want to do this since suffering forces me to do it. Suffering on the level of this world will lead to our understanding of the fact that our nature is completely interconnected, integrated, and we must be connected with all its components.

What will this provide? When I build this system, essentially, I am building an adapter between myself and the upper Light, the Creator (Elokim), the degree in nature that is above this globality and integration, above the structure of Malchut of Infinity. I as if make myself similar to the Light, even without knowing about it (we are referring to all of humanity that does not know exactly what it is doing). The Light influences me, does this work—lifts all of us to the next level.

The Light influences us and introduces into us the system of upper laws on the instinctual level, which replace the habits and laws we have artificially decreed upon ourselves. This is called “above reason.” I unify actions on my level, and I suddenly receive a new form of existence, a spiritual life on the instinctual level. I rise to the next degree. This is called “I labored and found.”

In this way, we raise our level, “modernize” ourselves. Even though we do all the actions on the corporeal level, meaning try to connect with others and treat them with love, nature influences us in order to lift us even higher. Thereby we raise ourselves with the help of the environment. Nature did it on its own on all the previous levels, but now we must obligate it to do it because this way, we acquire a new mind and feelings.
[54614]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/9/2011, Rabash’s letter

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Question: I decided to write to ask you to help me like a “haver” (friend). I’ve studied now with BB for seven years and have attended several congresses. Approximately just before the last congress, another (Kabbalah) “teacher” suddenly came into my life.

I listen both to you and the other teacher. How do I and others who might be in the same situation (inner struggle) deal with this? Whom do I truly believe? Which one should I choose? Both, so to speak, “speak to me,” although perhaps on different “levels.” Would you be ever so kind to possibly help me and others that might be living in this reality?

Answer: One should learn where his heart desires. Therefore, I advise you to listen to yourself, but namely to yourself. A teacher is he who uses the primary sources to teach you how to master the property (intention) of love and bestowal.

Question: I’m a student of Kabbalah for maybe four years, and you are my teacher from the beginning. I want to marry a girl whom I knew before I found the wisdom, and she is a Sufi with a Sufi spiritual teacher.

The problem is that from the beginning we had these differences: I was a Salafi Muslim and she is a Sufi Muslim. Our faiths, cultures, and our way of thinking are different. But what kept me with her is her altruistic attitude to people.

At first I wanted to leave her, but then I started working on the differences between us and realized how much pain is caused by my ego. And now I don’t know what to do: Marrying her is like slaughtering my ego, but what will it give me? Can you please help me sort out my thoughts?

Answer: I would nevertheless ask my teacher!
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Opinion: (Michael Khazin, an economist, from newsland.ru): “I am confident that the crisis will last a long time. Here is why: Crisis is a change of a certain parameter that transitions from an unnatural state into a natural one. Until this process is over, the crisis will continue. Our modern day crisis is related… to credit-based demand stimulation, that is, people lived on credit. As a result, huge amounts of debt have been accumulated. In and of themselves, debt is not deadly… but it cannot be increased any more. And if so, it is impossible to maintain a high level of demand.

“This is the reason why the world economy will decline by 30-35%, …while the American by 55-60%. In a country like the U.S., this will cause a socio-political catastrophe.

“The crisis will persist until world demand will continue to decline. The collapse will end when demand stops exceeding the real income of the population.

“Ordinary people will experience the crisis through the growth of unemployment, lower standard of living, smaller salaries, increasing cost of goods, the transition of many goods that we currently consider ‘common’ into the ranks of ‘luxury’ items, and so on.

“For the last 30 years the middle class in the West was sustained only by credit. The reduction of credit will force many people into poverty; they won’t be able to afford a car, an apartment, or medical services. Fifty percent of Europeans belong to this pool of population, and forty percent of them will fall into poverty.

“Prices will grow faster than wages, and hence purchasing capacity will drop.

“The price of gold will continue to grow… and eventually gold will replace the dollar as a measure of value.”

My Comment: Slow movement towards rational consumption would be a bliss, but it won’t happen because Nature doesn’t plan simply to return us to balance. Instead, it wants us to unite into one system similar to Nature itself. No tricks will help until we go through change towards reciprocity and unity, in similarity to a unified system of Nature, and stop being a cancerous tumor in it.
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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

There is a strict condition during the engagement in this wisdom: to not materialize the matters with imaginary and corporeal issues…. To rescue the readers from any materialization, I composed the book Talmud Eser Sefirot (The Study of the Ten Sefirot) by the Ari, in which I collected his major explanations and presented them in a simple and easy language.
– Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 156

Most students materialized the matters explained in Kabbalistic books and although the spiritual concepts are above time and above place, pictured them as set in times and places. Additionally, they were confused by the fact material is expressed in corporeal terms.

Thus, I have come out with this preface, to connect the matters and the foundations of the wisdom in a concise manner, so it will be readily available to those who want to study this science.
– Baal HaSulam, “General Preface to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot,” Item 1
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