Question: Why doesn’t the Creator let us succeed in anything, and forces us to turn to Him?

Answer: He gives you this entire world and obligates you to perform different actions, and He trips you so that you will turn to Him. Otherwise, why and in what way would you succeed?

After all, all you need is to turn to the Creator. How else can you correct yourself and become similar to Him? You won’t pull yourself out of the swamp by the hair yourself, or, as it is written, “A prisoner cannot free himself,” since you are only a desire to receive.

So, you go through different states just like the rest of the world. The Europeans, for example, are trying desperately to keep their “union.” Actually, they seem to be blind and stupid, but what can they do?

Nothing will happen until they go through this entire process and finally give up. They will have to recognize their failure, either before the war or after it, saying, “That’s it. We don’t know what to do.” Then, they will listen to us.

So, we must prepare a letter in advance with instructions for them and send it to them. It is our obligation. It doesn’t matter who receives it or who reads it. It doesn’t matter what wastebasket it might be thrown into or in which file it will be buried. We must do it.

The same goes for each of us, but differently from the Europeans. We must turn to the Creator because He is the source of all the forces. Who else can help us? We need the Light that Reforms and we need the force of bestowal to reside above the force of receiving to stabilize it accurately with regard to it.

All our work comes down to turning to the Creator. All our free will is in doing it as quickly as possible, by preceding the afflictions. Why should I experience my failures year after year in order to break down eventually and then turn to the Creator?

As it is written, “Who is wise? One who sees the future.” So, I want to become a wise man now! Why should I suffer for years? What will I gain from it? This advancement is called the “path of suffering.”

The good way is when—without delays, through the group and by other means—I draw the Light and immediately understand what I have to do, how to ascend. Why should I sink deeper and deeper into the swamp of afflictions, diseases, disasters, depression, and constant threat?

Question: How should I want this if the Creator controls my desire?

Answer: He controls my desire and inserts into it a motivating urge from the next level. Now, this level seems dark. Turn to the group, ask for the Light that Reforms, and it will be illuminated. It is dark because you are looking at it through the opposite attributes.
[87078]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/29/12, “Exile and Redemption”

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Question: On the question of prayer: First, I have to ask; second, I have to ask precisely; third, I have to ask for the friends; and fourth, I have to ask with gratitude to the Creator. I feel at a complete loss, as if some heavy weight was put upon me. I don’t know what to do.…

Answer: It will all come back to normal. Connect together, and you will see that this is just one feeling, not divided into parts. Think it over. You’ll see how it connects together.

Any spiritual attainment consists of two opposite properties, and so we are always at a loss, a lack of understanding: “Is it so or not?” You cannot compare them within yourself until a connection between the desire to bestow and the desire to receive is formed within you. The screen is always the solution! Think about this contradiction all the time, and it will connect.

Question: But where should I move now?

Answer: Just towards unity with friends. Thinking about this contradiction, work on unity with the friends, only within. If we had continued these workshops, you would have quickly resolved these problems. You can solve them together with the friends, but within them. The center of the group is the place where all the problems of the world are solved.
[87208]
From the Kharkov Convention “Uniting to Ascend” 8/19/12, Lesson 7

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As it is written, “The end of the action lies in the initial thought.” This is how it is determined by the Creator and this is how it should be on the part of the created beings who want to attain the goal of creation.

“The end of the action” is adhesion to the Creator. The adhesion is possible only according to the equivalence of form, the acquisition of the attribute of bestowal, when the vessel has the same attributes as the Light. The equivalence of form in the vessel is attained by reaching the love of others that is fulfilled in a group of friends. In the group, there are all the conditions necessary for discovering this love by mutual support, understanding and cooperation.

The main thing is to draw the Light that Reforms upon ourselves, which influences the group when it yearns to be adapted to the Light. This means that the group wants to be connected—unified, one, as one man in one heart, where everyone is aiming at one goal—and everyone is incorporated in everyone. Then, we are compatible with the Light.

The greater the force with which we connect, the more we overcome our ego—the indifference, the mutual repulsion and the conflicts—so, the Light influences us more strongly by revealing in us one unified system. Then, by connecting to one another, this general body, our desires and intentions, turns into the body of our soul. The Light that fills this general desire is called the Light of the soul. Thus, we discover our first spiritual Partzuf, our first spiritual level.

Let’s try to imagine this state and expect the Light to fulfill it, but just by reading one sentence we feel that we have left the right intention, and now we need to return to it once again. So, when reading every sentence, we must check the internal states we are in. Thus, we intentionally will create constant “entrances” and “exits” in us so that we won’t have to go through long descents and ascents, and we will constantly advance by such momentary ascents and descents.
[87041]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/28/12, The Book of Zohar

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Preparation to the Lesson

Shamati #38 “The Fear of God Is His Treasure”

The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpt “Aharei Mot,” Lesson 2

Talmud Eser Sefirot, Volume 1, Part 3, “Histaklut Pnimit,” Chapter 3, Item 5, Lesson 32

Baal HaSulam, “A Handmaid that Is Heir to Her Mistress”

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Question: Since Kabbalah speaks of the spiritual world, does this mean that it does not recognize the reality of our corporeal body?

Answer: Your current feelings are true. If you do not believe it, pinch yourself and you will feel immediately that you are living in a body. However, by specific actions that help you correct your perception, you can feel yourself exist in a completely different state.

Your image of the world is very relative and depends on your sensations. You even perceive the existence of your body through sensations, through the sense of touch. It embraces the inner organs and everything you touch.

Overall, we can imagine that we are certain sensory mechanisms tuned to a certain pitch, so let us expand this scale. Let us spread the limits and the depth of how much our senses can be penetrated.

If you do this, your world will change, and you also will perceive your body in a different way. Everything depends on sensations, and Kabbalah teaches you to shift your senses to the unlimited mode of perception, referred to as the world of Infinity.

Today, you are limited by the perception of a limited reality. You perceive this world, yourself in it, and the seven billion other people, animals, plants, and so on. These are your limits.

Moreover, you are limited by the fact that you fail to see causes, consequences, and active forces, just like a child who sees pieces of a puzzle and fails to notice the logic in and interconnection between them. Bank robbers spray a special gas in the air in order to see the security laser rays. We also wish to see the strings that stretch to the spiritual world.

Once you uderstand these interconnections, you will be able to fix your life, at least in this world, at first, but this is not yet it. Your body is “sketched” in your senses. Change them, tune them to a new wave, and possibly the body will change, will take another, eternal form.

Everything depends on what your senses are tuned to. You can raise them to the level of their spiritual equivalents, which are called Keter, Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin, and Malchut. Then, instead of working to receive, to absorb, they will work to bestow, to give, and they will become eternal.

Thus, perception of reality is a very important thing. There is a reason that we first want a child to become acquainted with the world in which he lives. Before experimenting, let him first find out what is harmful and what is beneficial, to what he should strive and from what he should stay away. We first put him in the right position before the environment.

This makes it clear to me how I should act. It is best for me to reveal the true reality, to position myself correctly in relation to the forces that operate in it. Today, I am like an infant flailing my arms and legs without being able to see or hear anything, and this is why I need to acquire additional senses.
[87227]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/31/12, “Body and Soul

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Question: Can we come to a mutual prayer before each Zohar lesson?

Answer: We are learning how to tune ourselves. In reality, the only thing that exists is a person’s desire and how he tunes that desire toward correction, that is, the Light that Reforms.

In order to come closer to the Light, we must unite with each other. Also, if we understand that we must unite despite our egoism, then we ask that the Light unite us. Therein lies the entire method.

The most important thing is to keep the intention. Your appeal to the Light is for the Light to affect you, and that’s the only true prayer. If you study and carry out all actions with only one goal, which is to come to a true prayer, then these will be the most effective actions.

This will mean that either you already possess the correct intention or that you’re preparing yourself for this prayer or appeal. The only formula by which we should act is to ask for the Light that Reforms, which will help us obtain the quality of bestowal and give pleasure to the Creator.

Each person must strive to make a single, homogenous body out of the group, without any distinctions between its parts, and try to feel the friends as a single organism. This will be one’s personal prayer. When these individual prayers connect, they will be on a higher level, a level of connected intentions where a mutual prayer is formed.
[87039]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/28/12, The Zohar

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Rabash, “Lishma (For Her Sake) and Lo Lishma (Not for Her Sake)”: There is only one thing we can do and that is to try to attain the greatness of the Creator.

This means that by all our dealings in the Torah and the commandments we want that our reward will be to feel the greatness of the Creator. And all the prayers that we pray should be to “raise the Shechina from the dust,” since the Creator is concealed from us because of the restriction that took place, and we cannot evaluate His importance and His greatness.

…and for this reason a person should try not to forget the goal while studying the Torah, and to constantly keep it before his eyes that he wants to receive this from the studying, that the studying will influence the greatness and the importance of the Creator…that by that he will be able to get closer to the Creator, so that he will be able to bring Him contentment since the Creator is important, and that will be his reward; and he has no desire for another reward for his work.”

This is how the right kind of work is determined: working because of the greatness of the Creator and to bring Him contentment without any account for one’s self, but only in order to be fueled to bestow. This is possible only by bestowal upon others, in preparing the whole general vessel for the revelation of the Creator. It’s impossible to do it directly, since we have no contact with the Light except for one option, to let it be revealed by our help in corrected vessels.
[87031]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/28/12

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In the News (from The Wall Street Journal): “As Europe’s leaders struggle with a five-year-old economic crunch that has saddled Spain with the industrialized world’s highest jobless rate, young Spaniards are increasingly embracing such bottom-up self-help initiatives [time banks] to cope. …

“Besides time banks, they include barter markets springing up in barrios, local currencies designed to spur the flagging retail economy, and charity networks that repurpose discarded goods. …

“The growth of time banks revives a concept pioneered by 19th-century anarchists and socialists in the U.S. and Europe, who wanted to test their philosophy that prices of goods and services should more closely reflect the labor involved in producing them. …

“The Valladolid Time Bank, started by the city government just before the crisis started, has attracted more and younger members with the crumbling of Spain’s economy. The new unemployed appreciate the bank’s egalitarian ethos, says 32-year-old administrator Juan Manuel Primo. ‘Everyone’s hour has the same value here,’ he says: An hour’s labor by a seamstress is worth as much as that of a lawyer. …

“’Having a network of support like this is really important at a time when you’re vulnerable,’ says Alessandra Melis, 30, who recently lost her housekeeping job after her employers were themselves laid off. She has been using the bank to get rides for her errands around town, in exchange for offering cooking lessons and dog walking services.

“When a hair stylist who belonged to the bank had to shut down his slumping salon not long ago, he was able to count on meals and other necessities from members in return for cuts. …

“Spaniards are also bartering goods—say, books or furniture in exchange for fresh produce—at markets that are being organized in seemingly every neighborhood.”

“Carlos Bravo, a 35-year-old information technician who helped launched a small bank in central Madrid this year, says time banks have a different sort of value: helping urban Spaniards rekindle a sense of closeness among neighbors that facilitates asking for favors and other forms of mutual assistance. …

“‘Some economists worry that the rise of such informal systems of economic exchange is pushing more of Spain’s economy underground—out of the view of regulators and tax collectors, and effectively sending the country back in time developmentally. …

“Others, though, say the measures represent a significant stabilizing force in society. For ‘people who can’t find work, these kinds of possibilities of exchanges and mutual help can help make bearable a situation that otherwise would be unsustainable,’ says José Luis Álvarez Arce, director of the economics department at the University of Navarra.”

My Comment: This is the element of reciprocity, mutual aid, and it will exist as long as the state does not become sympathetic to the people and the entire society does not acquire the form of mutual help. For the time being, the government does not like such a tax-free exchange even if it helps people survive. The next step is to organize one’s own network of buying and selling goods and services without a hundred percent markup and middlemen.

Then, this network will dictate its prices and necessary goods to producers. This can bring the prices of essential goods to the minimum cost. Then, people can become responsible for volunteer service to the population, the city, and thus reduce all the municipal costs and consequently all taxes (levies) on the population, and people can organize studies for schoolchildren in groups, additional classes and clubs, etc.
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A few years ago we published a wonderful book called The Future Generation. The book is based on three articles by Baal HaSulam that relate directly to our times and especially the “Writings of the Future Generation.” I suppose that the time in which this book will become the basis for establishing a new society is very near.

The writings of Baal HaSulam are kept in our archive. The “Writings of the Future Generation” was originally written as a rough draft, and in the book they are presented in an organized form. We have to see it as the guide for the new era.

I strongly recommend studying it. By the way, it was warmly acclaimed by leading members of the Israeli Academy who said that Baal HaSulam preceded his time and speaks not only about his time but about our days. Professor Eliezer Shveid from the Hebrew University wrote, “Much of what he foresaw is happening in our times and his explanations are valid, like an instrument that enables us to overcome the future problems of humanity.”

We will find a great part of his innovations here and so I think that this is an essential book for everyone. Even those who are far from our studies can look into the future of the world through this book as a Kabbalist sees it. It’s because his perspective is much deeper than ours. Even if he writes about it very succinctly and laconically, it’s still interesting to learn about his opinions.

Among other things it’s about what will happen in a couple of years. Isn’t it interesting to find out where the world is headed without using horoscopes, fortunetellers, soothsayers, etc.? After all, everything that is written in Kabbalistic sources has been fulfilled to this day, so this is also part of the plan. It isn’t fantasy nor science fiction Jules Verne-style, who actually foresaw many things. A Kabbalist sees the future that already exists and radiates it in our times so that we will know how it will be fulfilled.

Besides, by our inclination to what is to come we summon the Surrounding Lights from there, which correct us. It’s very useful to read about the future. It isn’t by chance that children love to read adventure books and to see movies about the future. It stems from their natural desire to develop. So by reading about the future, we draw Surrounding Light from the same model that is about to appear and which Baal HaSulam describes. It’s very helpful for our advancement.

The book “The Future Generation” was written in a simple language. I suppose that Baal HaSulam intended this book for the general public. He hardly mentions the wisdom of Kabbalah, but he does speak about the principles of just distribution, about organizing mutual relations between people, and it touches such things that thanks to them the reader immediately sees to what extent he agrees or disagrees with the writer. At the same time, from the first words a person reads, he already starts the spiritual work.

Another thing is that this book will help those who find it hard to tie the wisdom of Kabbalah with our message of mutual guarantee, those who contend that it’s useless to bring this message of unity to the masses. Here we see that a Kabbalist actually pushes us to do so and the faster this is fulfilled the more we will succeed.
[87027]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/27/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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