A person comes to the very gate leading to the spiritual world and at the last moment retreats. It is because this gate opens only if you accept the conditions of the upper. As long as you only approach it, you can stand them to some extent, but you cannot totally cut yourself off from the past and agree to take a step into the future. It is because this gate is the border between the past and the future, and so you go back.

Question: What do we lack at that moment?

Answer: There is a lack of mutual support, the force of the support of the environment. We can only evoke the Creator and force Him to act by mutual support. You cannot go through the gate without the help of the environment, without being pushed from behind and without others asking for you.

Going through the gate to the spiritual world means to connect with other vessels in order to discover together among us the reality that exists beyond that gate. We open this door between us, so it is impossible to manage without the support of others!

This support depends on the extent to which I can evoke the friends. They exist and support me only to the extent that I evoke them since they are the parts of my own soul. It only seems that they have freewill and that someone acts against me. All this is given to me so that I will correct myself and attain their support for that. In order to do that I have to subdue my ego—these are the rules of this game.

It is a theater where together with me there are also different actors on the stage: some seem like my friends and others as enemies, some love me and some hate me. With their help and by different means, I have to bring my ego to correction.

But in fact they don’t exist; they come out only so that I will perform my actions with regard to them. At one time I treat them as my friends and once as my enemies. This means that I perceive them “within reason.” Another time I work “above reason” and accept this as the Creator’s game. The whole Torah stems from the combination of these two perspectives.
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From the 1^st Part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/14/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: What is the spiritual root for the existence of two nations, the Jews and the Arabs, in the land of Israel?

Answer: Our common root is Abraham, our patriarch. Islam does not belong to idolatry, and even the people’s sense is close to Judaism. Muslims do not worship “statues and images” and indeed, there are many similarities between these two religions. They regard the upper force in a similar way, but in Islam it is called “Allah” and in Judaism it is called “God.” In both cases it isn’t a name but a term that refers to the upper force.

As for the current conflict, it was founded during the Turkish and British rule in this land. It was then that the authorities initiated friction and discord. This was the principle of the British diplomacy, the use of strife between two nations. Isn’t the same thing happening in Africa these days?

Question: Should I, as a student from abroad, be concerned about the way Israel is regarded in the world today?

Answer: We have to be concerned about disseminating our message. From it people will understand that they should protect this part of the world since it is important spiritually. The spiritual “root” touches the corporeal “branch” here.

Overall, while our world is at the bottom, we also have to reach the fulfillment of full redemption. Every spiritual “root” must reach its corporeal “branch.” This is what our very long history leads to, including the war of Gog and Magog (Armageddon) that is taking place now. Let’s hope that it will pass quickly and only on the spiritual level.

After all, the trend of ascent is already being revealed in the world. We have received a method and if we manage to raise the world even a little, then we will already shift all the events to the spiritual level.
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From the 4^th Part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/13/13, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”

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Question: If the most important thing is to despair of my own powers along the spiritual path, then why do we need to cope with all kinds of corporeal problems, too?

Answer: The Creator doesn’t make life difficult for you and doesn’t place any obstacles along your path. It is you who is getting confused. If you could listen to the advice that we have to correct the relationships among us and that we have to find the connection among us—and, in it, discover the spiritual world from the very first moment you started studying—then the interruptions that are constantly increasing wouldn’t seem like interruptions. Rather, each time, they would seem like the revelation of a new thickness of the upper level.

No one stopped you from accepting this advice and from fulfilling it. It wouldn’t have interrupted, but rather would have helped you rise and tighten the connection and discover its inner essence called the Light.

However, you are looking for the revelation of the Creator, not in order to bestow and not by bestowing upon others, not among the friends, but in a totally different place. So, who is responsible for the fact that you don’t succeed? You may have built different barriers that separate you from the spiritual world instead of getting close to it from the moment you arrived until today. Although you eventually can reach the right decision along this way, too, it is by feeling despair and finally discovering that we have reached a dead end and must go back to follow a different path.

As it is written (Ecclesiastes 7:29), “This is the only thing I have found, that God made human beings upright, but they have devised many schemes.” In fact, it is a very simple point, but we simply haven’t located the right place of the shattering. We want to prepare our own heart for the filling. This is everyone’s inclination.

However, we don’t want to accept the fact that the place of the filling is among us! There is a cut, an abyss, a dark empty vacuum between us, but this doesn’t worry me at all. I worry about the fact that I don’t have a filling inside me! This means that I am thinking about a totally different place instead of the place where the upper force must be revealed.

I also interpret the idea of an upper force as I see fit, which is as some enticing filling, a wonderful attainment, understanding, a pleasant feeling, but the real upper force is totally opposite from what I imagine. Being equivalent to it is in bestowing upon others, filling the other while rising above myself, without thinking about myself, annulling myself, and restricting myself. I take everything from myself and deprive myself of all the fillings only in order to pass them on to the other. It is only above myself that I look for a way to fill the others.

This is the spiritual filling that I feel in the other to the extent that I am ready to provide for him above my own desires and passions, but we don’t even think in this direction. Sometimes, we slightly touch this feeling in some powerful convention in the desert, but, afterward, we each come back to our own personal interests, and, then, everything comes to an end.

The group doesn’t support me. It doesn’t hold me focused on this one sharp point. And my ego constantly pulls me downward to the abyss. So, what can I do?

All this is because we don’t support and hold one another. The force that can save us is among us, in the connection between us, in the collective flock, and not in each of us. The force of our connection is the Light, and this is where we should demand it: in the crevices between us, in the barriers, in the walls. The Light, the Creator is hiding in there.

We can discover it only if we begin connecting with one another in a way that the gaps will disappear, and, then, right in that place, you will discover the Creator, right there where He is concealed now.

The whole point is that you hear, but you don’t fulfill the advice in the right place. It is because you cannot accept what Rabash says, “We have gathered here to establish a society for all who wish to follow the path and method of Baal HaSulam…”

We must make a decision and then carry it out constantly, but if everyone worries about himself and not about others, it will lead to nothing. If I think about how to fulfill this by myself, it won’t work. The thought must go only through others since it is a closed, analog system.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/13/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Several basic conditions have to exist for the correction to take place. First, despair of one’s own powers. This clarification must be within reason from my own experience. I have to know for sure that nothing will help me and not accept this just as faith and give up my own attempts.

A person has to reach the feeling of coming to a dead end. But on the other hand, a new reality is revealed in the same vessel that is called the upper force that provides the force to pull a person out of this state of hopelessness. Besides, it’s important to know why a person wants this rescue so much so that the correction will not be for an egoistic filling, but it will bring him to a state of “from the love of the created beings to the love of the Creator“.

All the changes that a person gains this way accumulate in the same deficiency. The moment he is ready for the action of the Light, which means that he accepts all the right components, the Light immediately begins to bestow upon him.

The bestowal of the Light is made of the five Lights of NRNHY or ten Sefirot. These Lights are in accordance between them, according to the first level a person has to reach. There is the right ratio between all these rays of Light, a certain range that a person has to adapt his vessel to, all his deficiencies: the root phase, phase one, two, three, and four, in such a way that each one will be opposite its own Light. They have to include all the necessary components: the feeling of deficiency, gratitude, knowing, and faith above reason.

As a result of our work, all these things have to be ready in the right incorporation between them, so that the deficiency will be suitable for the Light: five levels of deficiency opposite the five rays of the Light. This means that the Light has to be exactly opposite the vessel and then it will be able to bestow upon it.

In that case, only restriction and a Masach (screen) will be missing, which the Light will give to the vessel. Then there is a complete connection between them, into one whole, by the corrections of the restriction and the Masach, and the feeling of the first entrance of the Light into the vessel. Thus the state of a spiritual embryo is created.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/12/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Baal HaSulam, article “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”: And because The Zohar is revealed in our generation, this is a clear proof that we are now in the time of the Messiah, at the beginning of this generation, about which it is said: “ And the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Creator.”

Baal HaSulam is writing it that because everything is realized by the upper Light. And when the Light is illuminating less, then the nation of Israel is in exile, if it illuminates even less, then we all are in troubles up to the loss of life, meaning losing this perception of reality. And conversely, when the Light illuminates more, then we feel vitality and we live a full life. When it illuminates even more, then we begin to feel the source of the Light and we are attracted to it.

Everything comes from the Light, and precisely it “shakes” the vessels, our desires, but in our era, its bestowing is changing. The revelation of the wisdom of Kabbalah, the thought of creation and its goal, the systems that humanity exists in, the global nature with its absolute laws, which is the Creator, all this brought great changes in our world. In the last century, the Light influenced the world in such a way, that as a result, The Book of Zohar was revealed, meaning that the strongest source of correction was revealed. The authors of The Zohar wrote openly that thanks to this Book, the people of Israel go out of exile. Therefore, it is necessary to see our time as time of spiritual ascent, and everything depends only on the correct use of the wisdom of Kabbalah.

From above there will be no concessions on what we are capable of realizing. But this way or that way, the revealing of The Book of Zohar and the wisdom of Kabbalah, the work that was done by Baal HaSulam that revealed the method of Kabbalah to this generation, and the works of Rabash that describe the rules of spiritual work—all this laid a foundation for our ascent. The two parts of the wisdom of Kabbalah that were prepared by our teachers were necessarily revealed in order for anyone who is awakened to self-realization in the path to the goal of creation (purpose) to be able to execute it.

Therefore, our time is the beginning of the period of the Messiah, meaning the stage of the final correction.
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From the 4^th Part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/11/13, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”

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Rabash, “Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God”: What does it mean that the Lord heals the brokenhearted, since we know that the main thing in a person is the heart, that “a heart” is the vessel that receives the Holiness from Above. This is as we learn from the shattering of the vessels, which means that if a vessel is shattered, it cannot contain anything that is put in it. In addition, if a heart is broken, it means that the desire to receive dominates the heart and so the abundance cannot enter it, since everything that the desire to receive receives goes to the shells and this is called “the breaking of the heart.”

The Creator can’t help a person unless the heart feels that it is broken, since until then, there is no one to help. The heart is broken at once but we correct it in small parts, and this is indeed a great easing in our work. After all, we don’t have to make great efforts in order to correct everything all at once from our current egoistic state straight to the world of Ein Sof (Infinity).

Instead, we can perform a gradual correction, in small portions, as if we are transferring the King’s treasure, moving one coin at a time from one place to another. Still, it’s hard for us to make the first move since it means moving to the opposite intention: from in order to receive to in order to bestow. So it can’t take place unless we clarify our desires and our intentions, unless we differentiate the desires and the intentions, unless we understand what is in our power and what is not, and where it is our part and where it is not.

We must clarify all this so that we can discern exactly what a broken heart is, and what exactly needs to be corrected. It takes a long time to clarify this discernment. This is because we forget about the group, about others, and about the fact that the desire has to be collective. Everyone begins to think about himself, about how he feels inside, and this has nothing to do with a broken heart.

The heart is broken since it can’t connect with others. This is what the shattering is about, but we don’t think in this direction at all. We try to imagine our personal shattering, and it takes a long time until we locate it correctly. But the moment this happens, it becomes clear that it’s a simple and concrete problem that needs to be corrected.

It takes a lot of work for the vessel to understand that nothing can happen to it individually, but only collectively, that it’s only part of the general vessel and one part in the Light. But the moment there is a diagnosis, there is no need to call the doctor and immediately see how the correction and the filling appear in that place.

So it’s very important that we reach the general thought, the general feeling, so that everyone will feel that he is in a force field of mutual guarantee. All our searching is done in the totally wrong place, we are searching inside ourselves instead of searching between us, and thus all our powers go to waste.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/13/13

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Baal HaSulam says that, in fact, the Jewish people have not received the land of Israel even though they live in it. The problem is that the Israeli nation is not fulfilling its designation. By having returned to our homeland and having gathered here again, the nation has to adjust itself to a new era, to the vessels that are revealed today, but it isn’t doing this.

On the whole, the state of Israel was founded on a miserable ideal, as the “refuge” for Jews all over the world. But do we feel good when we run to a shelter as we are under missile attack?

Of course, I am not against the state of Israel. When there are missiles outside, the shelter saves us. But the Israeli nation has to live here in order to fulfill its mission, and instead it wants the unattainable: to be like everyone else, not to “aspire” for anything, but simply be a “normal country.”

Question: So how can we explain all this to people?

Answer: One thing is clear: You can’t dictate the meaning of life to them, shame them, or “teach them the right way.” It won’t work. No one can bear such a heavy load being dumped on him. After all, a person needs a clear benefit. Where is the carrot the donkey can follow? Moreover, it needs to be such a carrot that there will be no need for the stick from behind.

When troubles are on our doorstep, it’s enough to entice a person a little and he immediately begins to move from his place. In the darkness of suffering, everyone will run to the light that filtering through a small window. But how can we lead the people forward without troubles and sufferings? Now they are sitting at their homes, strolling in the street, and everything is just fine. This means that we can only speak about the laws of nature with them, about being balanced with nature, and not more than that. But these explanations also seem abstract, since people don’t feel the crisis yet and so they are not ready to listen.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/12/13, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”

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Question: A new form of work has developed, “remote work or telecommuting” when an employee does not go to the office, but stays at home at his computer and goes to the office a couple times a month. Is this good or bad?

Answer: I think that in this case a person will still suffer from depression and emptiness. He needs to feel an integral connection. Working alone will not be effective enough. Today it is relevant because it is convenient for an employee, for an employer, and for a mother with children, but this is a temporary process.

In any case, a person will need to be integrated into a system, either at the place of residence or on the basis of something else. He must constantly fulfill his new desire, feel that he is inside an integral system. After all, the integral egoism that appears in us will still lead us to this. We are not free; nature develops us in this way.
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From KabTV’s “Professional Secrets” 2/3/13

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Opinion (Joseph Stiglitz, professor of economics at Columbia University and Nobel laureate): “The long malaise into which the economy seems to be settling, and the growing divide between the 1 percent and the rest — an inequality not only of outcomes but also of opportunity. To me, these problems are two sides of the same coin: with inequality at its highest level since before the Depression, a robust recovery will be difficult in the short term, and the American dream — a good life in exchange for hard work — is slowly dying.

“There are four major reasons inequality is squelching our recovery. The most immediate is that our middle class is too weak to support the consumer spending that has historically driven our economic growth. …

“Second, the hollowing out of the middle class since the 1970s, a phenomenon interrupted only briefly in the 1990s, means that they are unable to invest in their future, by educating themselves and their children and by starting or improving businesses.

“Third, the weakness of the middle class is holding back tax receipts. ….

“Fourth, inequality is associated with more frequent and more severe boom-and-bust cycles that make our economy more volatile and vulnerable. … The International Monetary Fund has noted the systematic relationship between economic instability and economic inequality, but American leaders haven’t absorbed the lesson.

Inequality leads to political inequality and a broken decision-making process. High unemployment, of course, depresses wages. Adjusted for inflation, real wages have stagnated or fallen. … Since the Great Recession, most of the increase in the nation’s wealth has gone to the very top.

“Meanwhile, as incomes have stagnated or fallen, tuition has soared. … We could have recognized that when young people are jobless, their skills atrophy. We could have made sure that every young person was either in school, in a training program or on a job. Instead, we let youth unemployment rise to twice the national average.  The children of the rich can stay in college or attend graduate school, without accumulating enormous debt, or take unpaid internships to beef up their résumés. Not so for those in the middle and bottom. We are sowing the seeds of ever more inequality in the coming years. …

“Globalization, and the unbalanced way it has been pursued, has shifted bargaining power away from workers: firms can threaten to move elsewhere, especially when tax laws treat such overseas investments so favorably. This in turn has weakened unions.”

My Comment: Inequality is the principle criterion of our world—egoism; it can be eradicated only through integral education which everyone should go through so that humanity can get rid of its evil and survive.
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