Question: What is “Jerusalem” in the spiritual sense?

Answer: “Jerusalem” (Yerushalayim) in the spiritual sense is a “perfect awe” (Yira Shlema).

As The Book of Zohar explains, we have a commandment of fear and a commandment of love. The first commandment is fear, which can be of different kinds: from this world, from the future world, for oneself, for the community, for the Creator, and so forth. So, “Jerusalem” is the perfect fear, the level of Bina, which then develops itself in order to become the basis for receiving the Light of Hochma for the sake of bestowal. That is why this level is called perfect, on it, the Light of Hassadim and the Light of Hochma are together in one vessel. This way, the fear, meaning, Hassadim, holds the Light of Hochma, and this perfect state is called Jerusalem.

Besides that, as we know, each of the four levels of the still, vegetative, animate, and human natures contains in itself all of the others. Accordingly, on the human level there are also the previous levels, the still, vegetative, and animate. Finally, the ascent along them reaches an interaction (Zivug) of a maximum depth, that “place” where all of the creatures, connected by a common net, come to an integral state and come to the merging, to the drop of unity with the Creator.

That is what Jerusalem is. This is how we will see it, as the point of the highest spiritual quality, as the drop of unity. The Temple will be there, the high priest will be there, we will bring everything into this point.

But, perhaps, you suppose that Jerusalem is a city on a map? No, we are not talking about that. The material world will disappear, will rise in our perception to a spiritual level. The picture, which we see today is distorted by the forces of filth. This is a dream of those who are in materiality. But we want to awaken from the dream, then the shroud in the form of this world will disappear and we will see the true reality in which everything is united.

So the point is not in the buildings located on the Temple Mount; the work we need to do is internal. Throughout all of the years that I spent with Rabash, just once we visited Jerusalem. In his time, Baal HaSulam left Jerusalem for Jaffa. Therefore, clarify your expectations regarding the ancient stone slabs. In the branches, they symbolize what is inherent in the root, and we need them in order to get to the root from the branch. However, if we cling to the branches, then we will never arrive at the necessity for correction.

Today, the material still dominates in us. Some believe that if the stone blocks were to be arranged according to the drawings, which seem correct to us, then we will suddenly breathe the spirit of life into them, that we will endow them with holiness and spiritual force. In the same way a child makes an airplane from the materials he has at hand in the hope that it will fly.

Who really knows how to create spiritually today? It is good people are waking up, thinking about it; however, we understand that in this approach there in no spirit of life, no understanding of what really needs to be done.
[84180]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/29/12, Writings of Rabash

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In the News (from DailyMail): “British children as young as seven are taking ecstasy and cannabis, it was revealed today.

“Nine-year-olds are also trying cocaine and often it is because their parents are failing to control them, experts say.

“The Government’s annual crime survey has shown for the first time the youngest users of the most popular drugs in Britain – cannabis, ecstasy and cocaine.

“They found almost one in three who have ever smoked cannabis first tried it when they were under 16.

“Around six per cent of those who had ever taken Class A cocaine took it first at school and 8.2 per cent had taken ecstasy before they turned 16.

“Jeremy Todd, chief executive of the charity Family Lives, said: ‘We speak to thousands of families every year and evidence shows that parents are the main influence on how children approach drugs and alcohol. …

“But it appears that drugs are getting less attractive to young people. (…) Cannabis use has dropped the most, while there have been reductions in ecstasy and cocaine compared with the 1990s.

“High school children taking drugs is down 12 per cent and the number of under-16s trying cigarettes is at its lowest for 30 years.”

My Comment: Drug use goes; the desire to reveal the meaning of life comes. This is the next form of desire that a person will have to satisfy. It begins to appear also in those who don’t use drugs. It is the desire to understand what makes life worth living, what the purpose of nature is, and what it wants from us. The very existence no longer gives people force to live. The struggle for life will become so severe that if not for drugs, then suicide. The sharp decline in birth rates, the general reluctance to start a family, the lack of goals will force people to find it.
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Question: What is an integral family or an integral relationship in a family?

Answer: When it comes to an integrated family, ideally, from the earliest years, literally from the cradle, it is necessary to prepare children to interact properly with each other. Parents need to understand that they must educate the child so that he will become an integral member of society, and then it will be good, easy, and secure. But first, you need to educate the parents in this spirit, and then this chain will continue since everyone is interconnected with each other, especially in a family.

I think that those people who didn’t receive an integral education, but have created a family and plan to have children, should begin to take at least a short course, which afterward will be supported regularly by weekly lessons and training via TV, via the computer. This should be mandatory.

After all, a woman during pregnancy inspects all kinds of advice. Therefore, if once a week she comes with her husband to an integral education course, it would be good for the family, also for the connection to her husband, and afterward for the education of the child as well.

If we introduce this education, then we will receive a completely different generation, both according to the quality and also according to the rest of the pyramid. The integral education of the child is latent in the family and afterward we need to naturally continue it in kindergarten, in school, and even in the workplace or schools where every person has the opportunity to take short integral courses, and afterward to simply be in some supportive structure.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 7/8/12

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An integral family is the system of bringing people closer to each other. This is not just an ordinary relationship of two people who do not have integral knowledge and who begin to interact at a natural, animal level that subsequently leads to their marriage.

Indeed, in that case, they do not understand why they want to be together. It is possible that, if they had learned more about each other, they would have understood that, in principle, they do not match each other.

It is not for nothing that fortune telling is so popular nowadays. We do not really know how to approach each other. People are turning to psychologists, to healers, and to all sorts of techniques. In the old days, grannies and nannies explained all that quietly, and that was enough.

Today, with our developed ego, in our spoiled society, we certainly need support and training so that we can learn how to interact with each other correctly, and, in general, to understand whether we can become partners. The institution of marriage is now crashing and going deep “underwater,” dissolving so that only memories of it remain; it is a consequence of that fact that we are running integral education and upbringing in the family circle.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 7/18/12

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Question: Should we prepare those who now are taking the course in integral education to become instructors?

Answer: Absolutely! The method of changing a person must serve all of humanity. Everyone who understands, knows, and knows how to teach this method will be viewed as a public treasure.

They will be needed at any enterprise, in manufacturing, government, school, and family, as family counselors, psychologists, and so on. People will need them.

That is why we just need to educate instructors from our friends who are studying both Kabbalah and the method of integral education. They are the foundation, the source through which the upper force will act on the entire world.

People will feel this. Each person will be worth his weight in gold. He will be appreciated greatly and be extremely popular. That is why we must prepare them as teachers, tutors of integral education, and for all ages, for both men and women.
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From a Fundamentals of Kabbalah Lesson 7/15/12

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Preparation to the Lesson

Writings of Baal HaSulam “Thou Hast Hemmed Me in Behind and Before,” Remember and Keep Were Said in One Utterance, Lesson 4

The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpts “Beresheet Bet (Genesis 2),” Lesson 147

Talmud Eser Sefirot, Volume 1, Part 3, Chapter 4, Item 4, Lesson 10

“Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 58, Lesson 23

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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Book of Zohar,” Item 53: After he purifies the animate part of his will to receive, and turns it into a will to bestow, “until He who knows all mysteries will testify that he will not turn back to folly”…

What supports a person if not the Light that breathes life into him? Without Light, the opposite form, “existence from absence” could not exist either.

Bina, which is present between all Sefirot, is the turning point, the point of transformation. At the degree of Bina a person purifies himself from the receiving desire and then once again begins using this desire, but already with the intention for the sake of bestowal. If until now, a person constantly fought the receiving desire, now he turns to it for help.

Thus, at the stage of Bina, a person acquires support from the Upper Light, which lets him turn his desire into a partner.

The degree of Bina is a transition from childhood to adulthood. Until now a person was corrected in relation to what is more important for him. He rose above egoism again and again, preferring the Creator over it. But now that he has acquired the degree of Bina, the Light firmly holds him on that degree and a person will no longer return to his folly, will not fall into the bondage of the receiving desire. This “promise” is given to him from above, being the “testimony of He who knows all mysteries.”

That is when a person receives the permission and capabilities of working with his desire in a new way – by receiving for the sake of bestowal. Previously I couldn’t even look at this “bait.” I just turned away, trying to stay as far away from it as possible, until I rose to the level of Bina. Here I receive the Creator’s support and guarantee – He testifies that nothing bad will happen to me. Then I carefully look back on Malchut, looking for a chance to turn her into bestowal, with the help of the Creator, who constantly keeps me from falling.

This transition point from altruistic bestowal to altruistic reception is very important. Here a person needs a covenant with the Creator, firmer support from Him. After all, he will have to work with egoism for the sake of bestowal…
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/1/12, “Introduction to the Book of Zohar”

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The world is ruled by one force of bestowal. This force is called the Creator since He created the quality opposite to Himself, the desire to enjoy, in order to raise it to His level. In this way, this desire can bring itself to perfection.

That is why all of our work consists of reaching the quality of bestowal. However, we do not disappear into that, but we change the form of our desire, the initial material, to bestowing. It continues to act with all of its fierce strength and power with which it used to think only of itself before and is revealed as an unclean egoistic system, opposite to bestowal, but now this desire corrects itself and the form of its action. Now, instead of receiving, it desires to bestow.

Such a change happens due to the Light that Reforms. However, until such a change happens inside of the desire to enjoy, it absolutely does not understand what is being talked about here since it is completely located in egoistic qualities, meaning in thoughts and desires for oneself.

The change that it undergoes is truly a new birth, similar to how something develops from a drop of seed in which there is nothing besides internal information about a future person, and in the end, it finally turns into an independent personality which thinks, understands, feels, and answers for its deeds. Where does it all come from? Is it simply out of emptiness? However, in exactly the same way, our own spiritual birth happens.

This process is incomprehensible to us and hidden from us. Until we experience serious changes, we completely do not understand how all of that is being realized on matter, how the Light works, how it changes our qualities, and what is left for us from each of the levels from which we have ascended.

Man becomes confused and does not understand where he really is. It is said that the Creator is the first, and He is also the last. So, where is the human in this? Perhaps he is at least in the middle? There is an initial state of the world of infinity, and there is a final state, the return back to Infinity, and we are on the path somewhere in the middle between the former and the latter.

In addition, what can we add from ourselves to the Creator’s actions, with whom everything begins and ends? We only can speed up our development to show that we want to move toward being similar to the Creator and to not to be pushed from behind by suffering.

The Creator has created a desire to enjoy inside of me that feels the good and the bad in relation to itself, and, now, with the help of these good and bad feelings, He can control me! However, if I am controlled only by my pleasant and unpleasant feelings, then I am acting like an animal. If I want to move forward to that same goal through my own efforts, then I need to feel its importance, to receive the strength for development, acting against my nature.

I must rise above the egoistic perception of good and bad toward the perception of truth and falsehood, and consider them as the good and the bad. These forces must pull me forward, having replaced pleasure and suffering with themselves, by which I am being pushed from behind. This is called the level of a human, not an animal.

That is only possible to achieve by the means of an environment that instills into me such values, such an importance of truth and falsehood that provide the strength for my development. However, in order for that to happen, I must listen to the environment, meaning that all of my work on the attainment of the Creator and toward reaching the goal of creation—to rise from the natural feeling of good and bad toward reason, from the animal level toward the human level, from the perception of pleasure and suffering toward the perception of truth and falsehood—all of that is work with the environment.

My goal is to find an environment that has these goals and values, and to be impressed by it. Thanks to that, I will receive the strength to develop as a human and not as an animal since an animal moves only because it sees a sack of grain in front of it or if it receives blows from behind. However, a human considers pleasure and suffering to be the approaching or distancing of the quality of bestowal, the truth and the falsehood.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/27/12, Shamati #13, “The Eighteenth Prayer”

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Baal HaSulam, Letter 38: In former times, an attainment of the Creator had to be preceded by all seven external sciences and horrible self-torture. And despite all of that, a few have found favor in the eyes of the Creator. However, since we have received the teachings of the Ari and the services of Baal Shem Tov, it is truly equally available to everyone and the above mentioned preparatory stages are no longer necessary.

We don’t know how and to what extent a time of the material world corresponds to a spiritual time, the processes of descent and subsequent ascent when the vessels, the desires, begin to gather into one whole. But of course, the closer we get to completion, the more people are able to open the gates of holiness, the gates of bestowal. They resort to the help from ancestors who thoroughly explored the spiritual system, established themselves and fixed connections in it. So, step by step, going in circles one after another, generations ascend the steps of the wide staircase. Each of them goes farther, and some people make generations ascend a few steps in a row. This is a complicated process.

At the current stage, the thrust towards disclosure of the Creator embraces the whole masses. However, we must understand the immutability of spiritual laws. The Creator doesn’t sacrifice them, and thus, we also need to comply with the terms of ascent, albeit at a different level, according to the current state. Here comes the mutual guarantee, rejection of egoism, and striving in the right line in order to rise above the left line in unity and cohesion, thus trying to build a model of the higher world to the extent we are able to understand it. So we’ll move forward.

Baal HaSulam brings an example of a king who needs to move his treasury from one place to the other. All of his subjects are egoists; they wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation and certainly would steal any amount of money exceeding their ability to resist. Therefore, the king gives a penny to everyone, which doesn’t make sense to steal because royal prestige in their eyes is more valuable. Thus they move the treasure without losing it.

And we are the same. Though it is not the most worthy “fact of our biography,” nevertheless it is a fact. Let’s hope we will be able to bring our penny, and first of all, recognize it as a start. The majority of our work is dedicated to that—to figure out what our goal is and what it means to “find favor in the eyes of the Creator,” which means bestowing to Him, and how to come to such a request, raising it above all the others. After all, by overcoming them, we create a longing for the Creator and build His image.

All of that is done by many ministers of the King who carry pieces of His treasury through many intermediate stages like circuits, from one state to the other. In fact, it is a great way to go if we accept it as a precept of the King. After all, He enjoys every little step we take, each state, as parents enjoy seeing their children’s efforts.

It is necessary to stay on the course, but to remember about the King’s joy and to try to please Him at each stage, here and now, even in the smallest detail, on the lowest level. Indeed, there is nothing low in His eyes. He sends me all the states. And if I somehow try bringing pleasure to Him, that is enough.

That’s why people going in the right direction on the path always feel joy and ascent. We need to check ourselves: Where do descents should come from if everything is arranged from above? The Creator creates each state, and only one thing depends on me: to respond with understanding and feeling or at least with the awareness of the Creator standing behind the current circumstances. Then I can assert myself in giving to Him every second.

In fact, there are no despicable and unpleasant states in our work, if I take them internally from the hands of the Creator who teaches me. Just like the slave, from another parable by Baal HaSulam, who fought a war against the king’s minister who deliberately presented himself in different enemy disguises. Here we have the same story, and most importantly, do not forget that all our states at every moment in life come from the Creator. If we attain this level, then we will be able to perceive what is happening and react to it properly.

Let’s try to unite with the spirit of our ancestors: Ari, Rabash, Baal HaSulam, and others. Let’s not forget about that and help each other in devoting every moment to the service of the Creator.

It is possible. You are already capable of many things. You’ve made some great steps, and now the question is in something else—in pride. Of course, it comes from the Creator as well, and yet, how do we not indulge in it?
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From a Conversation During the Meal Commemorating the Death of the Ari 7/25/12

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