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Question: In the article “Body and Soul” Baal HaSulam says that everything, whether it is concealed or revealed is in a person’s consciousness. What is hidden from me today will be revealed tomorrow. What is “concealed” from us now during the preparation phase?

Answer: First, it doesn’t refer to some abstract concept of the unknown, but a reality that actually exists but which we cannot study for the time being. I know that it exists and I know that it is hidden from me. In other words, it is as if the Creator is behind a “curtain” according to my calculations and all my experience.

It is also a kind of knowledge, but not a clear fact yet, for which I can testify and present to others. I have some elements, some proof, but the essence hasn’t yet been revealed. Baal HaSulam says in this article that the knowledge that is not fully part of our consciousness yet is “concealed.” He speaks about knowledge here and not about philosophy.

Experiments with the collider and particle accelerators, for example, enable physicists to come up with different theories about the structure of the micro cosmos. Its components are still unknown, but the data they have received allows them to come up with hypotheses and discuss these matters, since it is already clear: there is something behind this “curtain.” The facts may be a bit different than the theories and even opposite from the scientific hypotheses, but this approach is perfectly “legitimate.”

In our case, the “point in the heart” says to a person: “There is some force that controls everything, that encompasses everything, and that closes everything in one, and I want to discover it.” This desire already builds some kind of model of what we are looking for—the meaning of life, its source, its reasons, and its plan, “who is turning me around, who is managing me and everything around me?” A person guesses, he “senses” the Creator, and so he reaches the wisdom of Kabbalah, in order to get an answer to the question that has already been evoked in him. On the other hand, those who don’t have this question regard the wisdom of Kabbalah as mere speculation.

Later we will discover that the Creator is the force of connection, and that there is nothing but unity, and that it is through unity that all the other forces that make up our reality are revealed.

As for studying the unknown, we don’t examine the Creator but His actions. The wisdom of Kabbalah puts this principle very clearly: “From Your actions we shall know You.” We never speak about the Creator, since it is already an abstract form, and essence, which means something that it is unattainable. Our research refers to a form that is dressed in matter. This form is actually the Creator (Boreh) for us, literally “Come and see” (Bo – Reh). I am the matter, and the form that dresses in me is Him. I become increasingly more similar to the Creator and He is revealed in me, “dresses” in me.

Question: How do I study His actions?

Answer: On yourself. This is all our work. But first we have to receive His forms, His “fingerprints,” and prepare a place inside for it, correcting everything that needs to be corrected, and then receive the form of bestowal and pass on this attitude to those around you, to the friends. This is the form of the Creator that you study, and by that you study Him, which means that you attain what bestowal is, unity.

Question: But today I cannot attribute the Creator’s actions to Him.

Answer: In research a negative result is also a result. The negation in this case is the preparation for the revelation of the Creator. You reject Him and don’t accept His existence—that’s the way it should be. Everything is attained by its oppositeness.
[97069]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/2/13, “Body and Soul”

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Question: What are the criteria for assessing the proper preparation for the convention?

Answer: The main criterion is that I feel the environment, that community that we are gradually creating, so that I feel that I am in it by getting out of myself. The most important thing is that I always try to be in this state.

Personally, I feel it when I am working with groups, giving lessons and workshops, and writing the blog, imagining my readers and trying to be with them. And this gradually creates a feeling when “I” become “We.”

Question: At a convention, such a concentration is felt because the entire world is in one action. How can we create this common field in the regular mode?

Answer: A convention is a convention, but the work itself is carried out not during the event but between conventions when a person can control himself and feel where he is, in what state, with what thought he falls asleep and gets up, etc. When waking up, the first thought is especially important. It says much, practically, what you were thinking about in your sleep, where you were.

We can achieve much by these concrete checks and goals. Moreover, conventions are intended only to fuel us, to make a breakthrough. In fact, the realization takes place between conventions.
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From the Virtual Lesson 12/30/12

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Question: How can we give our friends the feeling that we care about them as a mother cares for her child?

Answer: You should show a person that you care and think about him. Send him a text message or e-mail showing interest about how he feels, whether he feels that you are thinking about him, etc. We need to show our concern for others. This example is contagious; then the friend will have to do the same. He will be ashamed that he is behind and is not involved in this.

Question: Wouldn’t this excessive concern stop a person’s development?

Answer: On the contrary, this excites him, annoys, focuses, and directs him to do some work.

When a person sees how his friends take care of him, then it gives him an example and awakens envy: Why isn’t he doing this?

If this happens in a regular, non-Kabbalistic group, then a person, so to speak, “washes his hands” and starts going with the flow. And we have the opposite situation. As it is written in Rabash’s articles, such actions awaken envy and set an example. That is why we have to show this quite clearly and induce a sense of caring in him.
[97166]
From the Virtual Lesson 12/30/12

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Question: Women often find it difficult to act together with each other. How can we force ourselves to support our girlfriends, take care of the women’s group, and participate in the general women’s events when the very thought of connecting with each other is unbearable?

Answer: This is only at the beginning, especially for women because they are not used to connecting with each other. Every woman is on her own; she does not need to connect with others as long as she has a connection with a man.

But spiritual ascent requires a connection between women and their joint effect on the men. That is why the ultimate goal is to have them begin to unite; afterward they will start to feel that it is possible to rise above their animal prejudice and be together. They can do that. It is happening already; I feel it.

Our women’s organization is perhaps the only one in the world that can show realistically how women can unite above their individualistic nature.
[97161]
From the Virtual Lesson 12/30/12

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Question: What can men do to support the women during the women’s convention?

Answer: Men have to show the women that they await their connection, communication, and unity, and that they count on their huge common desire that will shake the men and give them such momentum that they will feel the responsibility to rise to another level to fill the women’s Kli, vessel.
[97158]
From the Virtual Lesson 12/30/12

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In the News (from Iowa State University): “The Media Violence Commission’s research-based report concludes that the research clearly shows that media violence consumption increases the relative risk of aggression, defined as intentional harm to another person that could be verbal, relational, or physical. …

“In their report, the commission wrote that aside from being sources of imitation, violent images — such as scenes in movies, games or pictures in comic books — act as triggers for activating aggressive thoughts and feelings already stored in memory. If these aggressive thoughts and feelings are activated over and over again because of repeated exposure to media violence, they become chronically accessible, and thus more likely to influence behavior. …

“While most public policy has focused on restricting children’s access to violent media, the commission found that approach to have significant political and legal challenges in many countries. For that reason, it recommends putting efforts into improving media ratings, classifications, and public education about the effects of media on children.

“‘Improving media ratings really has two pieces. One is that the media ratings themselves need to be done by an independent entity — meaning, not by an industry-influenced or controlled system,’ said Anderson, himself a leading researcher of the effects of violent media on children. ‘They need to be ratings that have some scientific validity to them.’”

My Comment: Since these media are beneficial to many, it is much more difficult to ban them in our society than smoking. The environment forms a child, but even parents cannot talk in the organized manner against the media that destroy their children and all the efforts of parents to instill good education. Are WHO and UNESCO opposed to these media? Did anyone put forward such proposals in the UN? There is one answer—we cannot resist such media because we ourselves are no different!

According to Kabbalah, a person never commits his own acts, but only what society, his surroundings, his environment, dictate to him. That is why by choosing the environment, a person completely determines his actions, which are the result of the influence of the environment. That is, one can determine his actions only through the environment in which he exists. And his free will is only in choosing the environment. (See Baal HaSulam, “Freedom of Will”)
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Question: As part of my job, I have been in contact with several professors lately and among other things we speak about Kabbalah. I must say that they understand the principles, but they don’t believe.

Answer: True. They have a rational approach. “We have studied so much about our world by different sciences that the picture is clear on the whole. But here this guy who doesn’t seem ‘mad’ comes along and starts talking about some concept that we are not sure where he brings it from. He says that this is the basis of all sciences and he ties everything to Lights and vessels.”

“We don’t know anything about this. We don’t see any evidence of what he tells us about. His explanations may well sound very logical, but he establishes his wisdom on a virtual assumption. ‘Let’s suppose that it is so,’ he says, and on this assumption he bases a whole perfect philosophy.”

“But why should we accept it as a science, if according to our standards it is not a science? A science is what can be studied and thought about. He is saying that his science only requires living according to it and changing internally. We’ve never heard about anything like that. What does it mean ‘to change human nature’? We have a culture, and education, we teach people to be kind, empathic; what could be better? What does this have to do with science?”

Scientists cannot acknowledge the relativity of their perception. They don’t understand that the changes in a person change his reality since it is all created by internal responses.

The wisdom of Kabbalah explains this accurate mutual connection; to the extent that I change myself, the world that I feel changes. This is the key formula that has a fixed coefficient and a changing parameter that reflects the vessels, my desires, my sensitivity, my intentions, my thoughts, etc.; they change and then the world changes.

X is me, K is the fixed coefficient and Y is the world. I speak to those who are willing to listen to this.

But scientists are not ready for this. They lack a new desire that pulls them out of this world. If they haven’t developed to reach it, they will not listen. One has to be sensitive not only to worldly phenomena but also to phenomena of the spiritual world.

Question: So what does that mean? That intelligent people, scholars, cannot understand us?

Answer: They are actually the most “resistant” since they are sure that they already have a solid foundation.

Question: So who can we turn to then?

Answer: There is a Kabbalistic fable about a man named Ptachiya who came to a town and took all the “empty” people to the desert. After all, if the new question about the taste of life is evoked in a person he feels that he is miserable and empty.

However, if a person doesn’t feel that, if he has no vessel, no desire that matches it, it means that he hasn’t reached a certain level of perception.

We don’t stop disseminating, of course, but only a person who has a point in the heart can hear the message of the wisdom of Kabbalah. The alternative is to feel that you are a beaten animal that has nowhere to run from the endless blows that hit it. Then it will be ready to follow us, just to get rid of the troubles.
[97078]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/2/13, “Body and Soul”

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Everything the authors of The Zohar write about is revealed in the ten Sefirot when we see all of reality as one spiritual Partzuf. Then different phenomena are revealed in it. These phenomena must be tied to one system, and thus we advance.

Each time something leaves this system and something enters it, something grows and something stands out, as if it is unstable, and there are different signs of illness revealed in it, evil is revealed. But it isn’t an illness and not evil. It’s the revelation of what needs to be corrected now in order to rise to a higher level. This means that everything that is revealed is always revealed negatively from a higher level. Correct yourself and then rise.
[97073]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/2/13, The Zohar

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