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Let us shed light on several questions related to the notion of “love of friends”:
1. What ground is there for the need to attain love of friends?
2. Should I choose the friends, and should they choose me?
3. Should each friend openly express his feelings toward the other group members, or is it enough for him to feel love for them in his heart, without expressing this feeling externally? Should he remain modest and not boast about his achievement?
Certainly, every person should openly express the love of friends that is in his heart because open expression of this feeling can awaken the friends’ hearts to the same. As a result, the friends’ feelings will unite into a common feeling, which will be much greater than their arithmetic sum.
Thus, every member of the group will receive a strong feeling of love of friends and will also sense a need to expand this feeling. On the other hand, if the group members do not express their feelings openly, they cannot be imbued with the common, collective force and overcome their personal egoism.
In this case, it is very difficult to view the friend in a positive light. Every person thinks that he is the only righteous one and that only he loves his friends, while they do not reciprocate his feelings.
It turns out that a person’s forces are too weak to be able to attain love for his friend and to express his feelings explicitly instead of hiding them.
One must constantly remind oneself of the purpose of the group’s existence since otherwise, one’s egoism will try to blur this goal because its sole concern at all times is its own benefit.
A person needs the group in order to attain the quality of being engrossed in the thought of delighting his friends without requiring anything in return, and not in order for the group to help fulfill his egoistic desires. After all, if every group member expects only to receive help from others, the group is founded on egoism and works only to increase it. In this case, a person sees the group only as a means to satisfy his egoistic needs.
Therefore, we must keep in mind that the group must be built upon love for the neighbor. What every group member must receive from the group is love for the neighbor and hatred for his own egoism. When a person sees that his friend tries to suppress his egoism, this gives him additional forces to fight his own egoism. Then all of the friends’ intentions merge into one whole. Thus, if the group consists of ten members, each of them will receive the forces of all ten friends who suppress their egoism and aspire toward love for the neighbor.
But if the group members do not express their feelings toward one another due to their feigned modesty, then their feelings do not grow stronger and each of them gradually loses the desire to progress towards love for the neighbor and regresses back to self-love.
(Based on Rabash’s article “Love of Friends (2))
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Question: You constantly speak about the family, but today the notion of family has changed completely and is gradually disappearing. What makes you think that we can return to the old family model?
Answer: I am absolutely convinced that after experiencing an enormous crisis, we will return to the old family model. The modern egoistic family will really cease to exist.
The birth of a new family will happen due to our movement toward the goal, the root. We will see that the only way for us to reach it is by being absolutely connected with others on all levels of existence, with the partner in the family, with children, and through one’s own family, to other families, society, and the world. In other words, we will return to the model of a regular family that will allow a person to reveal the Creator above our animal, corporeal existence.
We will not be ashamed of being little animals in a family because a special relationship called “real love” appears between a husband and a wife in addition to the animal attraction. It is a relationship where they reveal the Creator between them and really attain the higher goal.
People will create families for the sake of this higher goal and establish a physical and spiritual connection with their partner. In this way, the family will be reborn, both on the spiritual and physical levels. However, it will be mainly on the spiritual level and from there, on the physical level.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #12, 12/16/11
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Question: There are certain states or circumstances where a person doesn’t get a chance to sleep. Does this matter? Is it worthwhile to take a thirty minute nap?
Answer: This depends on the person. However, if a person is working hard on himself, then I would recommend taking a break in the middle of the day to rest. I would also recommend practicing a specific technique that teaches a person to sleep for about fifteen or twenty minutes and feel really well rested.
This is necessary in our work because we are in a constant state of inner concentration toward ascending, uniting, and we apply efforts beyond the typical mental and emotional efforts. Therefore, we must rest. It’s more important to rest during the day than to get a full night’s sleep.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #12, 12/16/11
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We don’t realize that we are enslaved by our egoism. It rules over us and tells us what to do. And we don’t even feel that we operate according to its orders because we are connected to it to such an extent that its desire becomes my desire, and we merge into one whole. Then a person does everything his ego wants thinking of it as his life and his own desire.
But that is an example of the opposite state that we must reach by uniting with the Creator, cleaving to him to such an extent that I stop feeling the difference between His desire and my desire. As for now I fulfill all the fancies of my egoism with devotion, which shows me where to turn, when to inhale, to act one way or another.
I feel the same way being united with the Creator by rising above my current desire and fulfilling His desires, without hesitation or any calculations, so I will become corrected. And naturally, I have to go against my desire and personal calculations by investing great efforts to reach such a correction. But in the end, my goal is to reach the same level of unity with the Creator as I have now united with my desire to receive, without feeling any difference between it and myself.
And when I’m able to break free from my egoistic desire, I begin feeling that it is my enemy, that it harms me. Sometimes I love someone, and we are great friends, but then it turns out that he uses me and harms me. It takes time before I’m able to break free from him and certain things about him become revealed to me. Only then am I able to break free from him, to see that there is no other choice but to leave him, and to start hating him.
Thus the whole world starts learning that its ego is its enemy. Every person reveals that to the extent that he works on it. As a result, we begin realizing the need for change because we feel at loss in this race against our egoism. This is a big advancement because a person becomes separated from his nature, from his initial quality that forces him to only take care of himself, and he begins to critically analyze it.
This means that he becomes separated from his evil inclination and starts listening and searching for what he can do next. Thus he finds the Torah, a means for correcting egoism. He needs a force that is able to change his attitude toward his egoistic desire and that gives him the ability to become completely separated, to no longer make any calculations of what is worth getting and when.
This transition is called Lo Lishma. A person is still inside a desire to enjoy, but he has to imagine to himself that working above it would be more beneficial, that he would gain more from that. So he already works above his desire to enjoy, not willing to follow its orders. But the result of these actions and this work is still inside egoism because otherwise a person would not have the fuel for doing it.
At this stage a person goes through various states, starting from working in order to receive pleasure in his desire to enjoy to have energy and fuel to keep on working. But in fact, he wants to be in bestowal. Thus he asks the Reforming Light to give him the power to make calculations on the desire to enjoy not in his egoistic interests, but only out of hopelessness because he is a machine that needs to be fueled.
In fact he would rather remain in the quality of bestowal, but not for the sake of receiving pleasure from it. He realizes that there is no other way, and he has to pay to be given some freedom while he is under the power of the master, the egoistic desire. He works this way until he becomes completely separated.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/14/12, Shamati #20
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Question: In case it transpires that some people in the group of integral upbringing have psychological disorders, how do we interact with them?
Answer: We mark them out immediately and try to understand the extent to which they can conduct themselves in a general framework and the extent to which work on themselves can negatively affect their psyche. In that case, we will remove them from the group, gently and carefully, for some period of time or permanently.
We have psychiatrists who can give their conclusion after observing the person from aside for some time and using references from their friends and close ones. Undoubtedly, if a person with a damaged mentality stays in a group for a long period of time, it may give a negative result, a surge of very bad energy.
However, we rarely come across such problems; there are very few of such people. As a rule, they become balanced somehow.
We remove them for some time and then we give them the opportunity to return. Then, we remove them again, and they come back again. This happens a number of times. They cannot advance at the same rate as the group. That is why it is beneficial for them to be distanced a little bit. However, in general, most of them find some strength to compensate.
Question: People today often encounter deep depressive states, not simply a bad mood, but the deepest depression requiring anti-depressants, hospitals, and so on. If we come across such occurrences, do we recommend that the person go to the doctor, or do we try to correct it through the integral system?
Answer: In clinical cases, only a complete change in environment can help, where you take the person together with a particular group to nature, to the beach, or the river, and there you begin to carry out very serious sessions with him plus a lot of sports in the fresh air.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #11, 12/16/11
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