Question: I think that we proved at the Arava convention that everything is possible. What’s next?

Answer: The problem is this: In this world when I see a goal and it is important in my eyes, I have enough energy and vigor to attain it, but if the goal isn’t obvious or isn’t important, then I have no strength for the work: “Really, why should I work hard?”

In the end, our problem is recognizing the importance of the goal. This importance is deliberately diminished so that we will create new importance each time, so that there will be a new creation for us, a new spiritual world, everything new.

And we, with the friends, need to build this ourselves. They need to tell me how important the spiritual path is even though they themselves don’t feel it. But we are committed to each other, and this is called Arvut (mutual guarantee). This means that we constantly need to tell each other how important it is, as a mother or grandmother tells the same bedtime story to a child.

Tell me, what was so special at our convention? What were your deepest impressions? Was there something tangible there? No. Did you receive something in your hand? No. Do you feel, hear, see, or taste spirituality? No. Actually there was nothing there, simply “you were filled with hot air” like a balloon, and from your swelling, you began to fly upwards. That was your entire convention.

So what is stopping you from doing that now? Why can’t you rise even higher? Specifically now when you feel heaviness and lack of interest, when all kinds of calculations appear to you, and you begin to think in a more “realistic” way—specifically now begin to act.

Question: At the convention, we, as if, banged our heads against the wall in that we tried to attain something impossible until we discovered that it is possible, albeit at a minimal level. And that means that everything is possible.

Answer: Excellent. Now continue. But don’t think that a spiritual sensation was revealed to you to a small degree to give you a solid basis for further steps. The opposite is true, your heart will be burdened, difficulties will be added, you will be forced to forget it, as if it doesn’t exist at all. They will take back from you all the “advance payment,” otherwise it will turn into an egoistic basis for advancement: “It is worthwhile to go forward since it is pleasant and wonderful. I want that kind of life.” This isn’t spiritual anymore, but Klipot (shells). Previously it wasn’t there, and now it appears. It is also, of course, an attainment, but not the one you were waiting for.

In short, continue. It is especially now that we begin to work with spiritual discernments: a little virtue, a little self-annulment, importance… we passed the hardest period, and now each time there will be something real, concrete. You will feel these things, “in your hand,” you will “ taste” them, you will feel them as internal heaviness, as resistance. In a while, you will even begin to measure them.

We passed the hardest stage, where we didn’t know where we were, what is happening, like a baby who just was born and still doesn’t really hear, or see, or respond…. and now begins the new stage.
[98491]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/21/13, Shamati #213

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Opinion (Silas Beane, physicist): “There is a famous argument that we probably do live in a simulation. The idea is that in the future, humans will be able to simulate entire universes quite easily. And given the vastness of time ahead, the number of these simulations is likely to be huge. So if you ask the question: ‘Do we live in the one true reality or in one of the many simulations?’ the answer, statistically speaking, is that we’re more likely to be living in a simulation. …

“In our universe, the laws of physics are the same in every direction. But in a grid, this changes since you no longer have a space-time continuum, and the laws of physics would depend on direction. … I gave a lecture on this topic the other week and the turnout was amazing. Half of the people looked at me as if I was disturbed and the other half were very enthusiastic.”

My Comment: I understand him perfectly, but as always with a breakthrough, scientists get hit by the ignorant, and they need to be prepared for criticism and wait patiently until people mature…
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Question: At one of the Arava congress workshops there was a question about the point of no return that we have to pass through on the path. How are we supposed to pass through it: individually or together with the entire group?

Answer: As it advances, the united group overcomes all stages of the path. Although everyone may be undergoing a particular state at his level, in fact, we all are going together.

Question: So, is it possible that the group will “drag” me through a certain state?

Answer: The group doesn’t act selectively, choosing him and only him; it “pulls” everyone forward. No one advances alone; our entire way is by the group. No matter how much a person puts in, he still “eats” what the others do. It may be in a lesser degree, but he still moves along with all the others. And hence, everyone passes the Machsom; everyone comes out of Egypt, including the “children,” “women,” “men,” and “elderly.”
[98488]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/21/13, Shamati #213

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Question: What is the relationship between quantity and quality of a congress? When there are more of us, how does it reflect on the quality?

Answer: Today, considering what state the world is in and what this puts before us, it is our duty to admit everybody and in this broad audience preserve ourselves as the nucleus. We need both factors together.

We can’t screen out those who don’t attend lessons daily, do not pay maaser, and so on. The congress will not be more powerful because of it. We should be guided by what Nature demonstrates to us. The Creator opens the doors to everyone, although the public is not in a hurry to enter. I hope that in the coming year, people will “digest” and understand the events of the recent years, including the crisis, despair, and all the rest. It takes time: A person reads something, hears about something, and little by little, it settles down in him until he sees how the world becomes “bleaker,” and “dissipates” without more to offer.

I hope that in this year, along with the broadest dissemination, we will be able to accomplish something…
[98482]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/21/13, Shamati #213

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Question: How do we become a lower Partzuf that annuls itself before the upper one and requests to be created in the spiritual world during the congress?

Answer: Our upper Partzuf is the group and only there does the Creator get revealed. We transform the group into Malchut, the Shechina, while the upper for it is Zeir Anpin, the Creator. We need to induce the state in which our connection with the upper force is revealed.

It’s quite doable and very likely to happen. Illumination from this state will certainly be granted to us, and we are already receiving it, everyone according to one’s degree. But when we truly connect, then instead of a personal illumination, we reveal the Light.

It will also be revealed to each person in the degree that one has achieved unity and exerted oneself. But it will be a clearly defined portion of Light and not some external illumination. I am confident that not only at the men’s but also the women’s congress we can feel such illumination. Our group’s annulment before the upper means that everyone renounces oneself in full force for the sake of unity and inclusion in all the others, and will lose one’s material self there and exist solely under the spiritual influence.

We studied in the article “600,000 Souls” that there is only one soul, everyone attains only it, and plugs into the very same soul. In truth, there is no division and only the force of the shattering is causing us pain right now because we think each of us has his or her own personal soul. We imagine it only because we haven’t reached complete attainment yet and remain in confusion, fog, and loss of awareness. Therefore, at the congress, we wish to plug into this one soul.
[98221]
From 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/10/13, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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The most unusual thing in the wisdom of Kabbalah occurs when a beginner hears the message about “love, unity, and mutual inclusion” that are totally contrary to our natural desires. In the beginning, Kabbalah appears to us as a conventional, hard science: “I want to understand the system, study phenomena behind the façade of nature, comprehend the upper force and the principles of Its work, learn the laws of universe, and find the hidden causes of history…” In other words, a person tends to study concrete formulas, and then he discovers that it is all about love.

Is there anybody who seriously addresses this subject? Hollywood? Serious people are sitting in Wall Street, whereas love is the domain for odd fellows and “Bohemians…”

It takes a lot of time to start understanding the message of love. It takes years to have this information “go under the skin” and reach one’s heart. Our egoism is not willing to accept things like love, nor does it allow the message that only through unity we reveal a new reality and that only due to love we rise to our highest state, become more kind-hearted and reveal new worlds. Our material experience doesn’t provide any examples of the above, nor does it prove these statements in any way.

Some people are more prone to accept these ideas; to others, this message is really hard to apprehend. It depends on the readiness of our souls and on the “depth” of the desire (Aviut). It also requires persistence, diligence, and a sense of utter necessity to achieve this state. If both factors, a strong rejection and an overwhelming attraction, force us to stay on our path no matter what, then, even before we reach love, we still discover that everything depends on our qualities. The upper Light influences us and triggers various impressions in us; thus, we begin realizing that our internal changes either shut or open the image of the upper world to us.

Something “clicks” inside us and we begin seeing much more and having keener sensations than ever before. We keep penetrating into the structure of reality; we acquire a clearer and wider understanding of it… Everything depends on our heart. It is the place where we sense and distinguish between everybody and everything that are within the field of our vision and sensations.

Then, the “door” shuts, as if a black cloud descends on our feelings and intellect, and now again, we stop understanding and feeling anything, as if we are walking in a dream and can hardly cope with our responsibilities. Time passes, the door opens again, and then, it shuts again. So gradually we begin realizing that everything depends on the level of openness or closure of our mind and senses.

And then we penetrate deeper into the core of the mechanism that closes and opens the doors. After we go through all these states many times, we realize that the “door” leads us not just somewhere outside us, but to others. When we feel extremely close to them, our eyes and ears open and we advance. When we are farther from them, everything shuts down.

This is the way the Light impacts us, thus gradually forming the connection between our feelings and mind and by building our attitude to our friends, adding more mutual care, deepening sensations and openness to each other, making us familiar with the upper world and the upper state. At this phase, a person realizes that this world is not somewhere in the clouds, nor it is behind the horizon, but rather concretely in our sensations: The more we open ourselves to others, the higher we rise.

Gradually, we approach the “edges” and start distinguishing the details of our desire to receive. We separate it into steps and levels; in view of that, we build the desires next to the mind.

It takes time. We have to include ourselves into the group as much as only we can; literally “throw ourselves” into the group as into the sea; “lose” ourselves in it, dissolve into our friends. Due to this kind of “self-annihilation,” one “soaks” in others and realizes that “it’s not important what we get from this connection and mutual-inclusion. Everything that comes from our friends is the territory of the Creator. Everything that is in me is the territory of the evil inclination, the “angel of death.”

When one realizes this much, the requirement “to love one’s friends” emerges. One feels that he needs them and strives to relate to them as if they were very close to him, as a mother who permanently internally embraces her children in order to protect them from harm.

From this point on, it gets much easier to advance, since one has already built one’s path correctly: One already knows that everything is inside him, inside his sensations, in his attitude to his friends and neighbors who in fact are the parts of his own soul. He understands that instead of seeing externality in the shape of inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature, he has to observe “external” details that are produced by his mind and senses as something that belong to him, but at the same time is separated from him by the “cloud” and “dust” that cover one’s perception of the world. It means that one has to return a clear picture even though there is a confusion created by the evil inclination; he tends to merge with the correct picture of the world and become one unified feeling and intellect.

This is the essence of our work. If we manage to do it, we gradually will ascend the ladder of the worlds. To the degree of our ability to return our “external” parts, we sense them as being filled with the upper Light.
[98167]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/16/13, “Love of Friends

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Preparation to the Lesson

Writings of Rabash “Make for Yourself a Rav and Buy Yourself a Friend – 2,” Lesson 2

The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpt, Parashat “Shlah Leha,” Item 99, Lesson 10

Talmud Eser Sefirot, Vol. 3, Part 9, Lesson 22

Writings of Rabash “Love of Friends“

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Now, after the “Flame in the Desert” convention we will go through many states. We have attained a certain level of connection, unity, detachment from matter, the importance of annulling ourselves before the friends, different inner spiritual discernments that are close to a real spiritual level.

We have no control over the process we are going through, and we advance according to the order of the Lights and vessels. We are between them like between a millstone, and different forces constantly operate on us advancing us towards the goal, according to our understanding, agreement, will, and support of their action.

Eventually, all the work of the “millstone” is only according to our agreement, that can be under the influence and pressure of sufferings, or by the help of the Light that Reforms. We don’t do anything by ourselves; this work is called “God’s work,” but we have to agree with the actions and want it to take place, although it is against our basic nature.

Since this work is against our nature and we feel it as very difficult, against our will, it allows us to become free, to have freewill and to transcend our nature.

Now after our convention, we go through very special states, and we must use them as quickly as possible to rise above them a few steps ahead. Therefore, these days are very important for whoever participated in the convention physically, mentally, and virtually. We now have to process everything we have received in the convention correctly, as much as we can, and to continue our advancement forward quickly.

The processing of the states is in clarifying the importance, who do we attribute it to, is it important that we have somehow discovered the connection with the Creator, with the spiritual space, with self-detachment, with the new space in which we can really live and after which there is an opening, and if I am born there, then I am born in a new reality, in some matrix, in a new dimension; or do I sink into the current of ordinary life and return to my ordinary animal life?

It is very important to rise above our matter, above the desire to receive that actually pulls us “by our feet” back into the abyss of the ego the moment we want to rise a bit. We, however, have to try and rise.

This effort can succeed only if we operate together, like in the convention where we attained a new level only thanks to the connection for which we have received powers from Above and felt that there is something above nature.

This is how we should continue now, so that all the forms of the egoistic desire and the thoughts that cross our mind will immediately be incorporated in the new ascent. Then we will constantly, every minute, rise higher and higher and will not wait until all these awakenings that the Creator is sending us in the form of the “hardening of the heart,” as an addition to the egoistic desire, as strange thoughts, as blurring and fatigue, will add up to a “big account,” and then we would have to go through them through the path of sufferings and different blows.

On the contrary, every moment we have to go on and on and thus “one penny is added to another and they make up a big account.” We shouldn’t wait until these “pennies” accumulate by themselves; it is much more difficult and disrespectful in the eyes of the Creator; in the eyes of the Creator it is respectful when you don’t leave Him.

So while reading The Zohar we have to connect and to think about how to receive help from Above in order not to break away from the great appreciation we feel towards self-annulment, connection, love, self-detachment and adhesion to the Creator.
[98419]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/21/13, The Zohar

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