Rabash, “On the Matter of Suffering in the Work”: How is it possible not to fall to a low state? Advice for this is that if the person takes account of himself, he will see how far from adhesion to the Creator he still is in his thoughts and desires. That is, at a time of ascent he already begins to seek advice how to raise his level.

But usually the order is that at the time of ascent, a person doesn’t want to search for his shortcomings. Therefore from Above they are compelled to give him descents. The sages said: “An old man walks around bent over, always looking at the ground as if he is searching for something.” An old man is someone who has acquired wisdom, that is, sees a new state being born. …He begins to seek how to rise spiritually even before he loses an elevated state, and hence he searches for shortcomings in his current state. And so there is no need to throw him down.

If the opinion of society, the opinion of the environment, will not support a person and will not hold him, he cannot relate critically to ascent. When he is in ascent, when he feels perfection, it is very difficult to search for shortcomings. On the contrary, a person wants to maintain this perfection.

However, it is necessary to understand that searching after additional shortcomings does not destroy the past, the perfection that he has already attained. A very subtle approach is required here. Therefore, he must connect to the group more strongly, be included in the studies more to attract more Light that will illuminate for him his lack of connection.

After all, he has not yet attained the final correction, and he has more to add according to the root of his soul. The Light that is added through learning will reveal to a person the places that need correction so as to advance.

The search for deficiencies should be conducted above the previous perfection achieved by the person, meaning happily. He has no feeling of deficiency now, so through his search for additional unfilled shortcomings, he finds possibilities for satisfying the Maker. Specifically now, at a time of ascent, he searches for deficiencies because he is sure that he has been cleansed of egoistic calculation. In this way a person advances.

The essential work is done at a time of ascent. However, if the person already has fallen and is in descent, he loses all the Light, and it is difficult for him to have the right intention. Only the group can hold onto him if he communicates with it correctly. However, at a time of ascent, a person has to exert more in his studies in order to hold onto his ascent and to add to it. He adds more and more to the right line until the deficiency in the left line is discovered.

We always need to yearn for the right line, for connection, as much as it is possible, until hatred becomes revealed. It is necessary to work with an ascent specifically using this method.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/9/13

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Question: What does the next integral stage of man’s development require of us since it will happen whether we want it or not?

Answer: It requires a reasonable approach. For the first time in the history of mankind, we will be able to control our destiny if we understand that we need to change.

We need to build a new, completely interconnected society which will be like nature itself. Once we enter this level, we will acquire and distribute all the things that we need for our corporeal existence according to individual needs. And this will satisfy us, and we will dedicate all our strength and time to working on unity because we will discover our new degree in it.

This way we begin to discover a completely new existence on the level of forces, thoughts, in the virtual world. And our corporeal world will remain a physical world where our bodies will continue to exist, but our spirit will simultaneously exist in a parallel, higher world where we find a new, absolute, and eternal existence in the communication between us.

Question: Will unity be the source of pleasure for future mankind?

Answer: Yes, unity will be the source of pleasure. This is a completely different kind of fulfillment because when we connect between us, we create a common desire so big that it receives a powerful energy that exists in the Universe.

We enter a level beyond time and space; we go to a completely different field that quantum physics talks about. We must enter this field with our new, common, integral feelings and mind. Nature is leading us towards this; it is the existence in this field that is called “man.”

It is possible to reach this state consciously either by accelerating our development and directing it down the path of good or through resistance, which is what we have been doing until now. This is why even though we are still going towards the very same state, currently we advance through suffering.
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From KabTV’s “Through Time” 3/17/13

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Preparation to the Lesson

Writings of Rabash “Shlavei HaSulam,” “One Should Always Sell the Beams of His House“

The Book of Zohar – Introduction, “The Letters of Rav Hamnuna Saba, the Letter Chaf,” Item 31, Lesson 20

Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings,” Lesson 2

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Question: After we have split up into groups of ten, we seem to be starting a new process. After many years of working together with the friends I have already built up quite a few inner “charges” both positive and negative….

Answer: All this has nothing to do with the real concept of a group. In a real group there is a mutual commitment since it is one. We are all in the same boat, and you have to work out the relations between you. It isn’t just an obligation, but it’s simply impossible to manage without it.

Today, you are just friends. You choose those you feel more comfortable with, but you have an obligation with regard to the real group framework. If you don’t, then it’s not a group or a group of ten yet.

We feel the group by our commitment; it’s as if I worry about a baby who needs endless caretaking. It isn’t about feeling pleasant but about the commitment that I have since I am committed to my friends. We have to develop these two aspects since otherwise everything is lost; there is no other way.

It’s a real wonder; we were shattered and each of us was given a spark that allows him to connect to other people, to connect artificially, to try to connect on the corporeal level. Without the corporeal reality all our sparks would be scattered infinitely distant from one another and we would never be able to get close to one another. But we live in corporeal bodies that enable us to be in mutual bestowal and receiving between us. The protein corporeal bodies help us establish ties and connect, although the sparks are still infinitely far from one another.

Our current ego belongs to the bodies and not to the sparks, since it isn’t the real evil inclination yet. But if we start getting closer to one another even a little despite the rejection that our bodies feel, we begin to evoke the Light that brings our sparks together.

So you should understand what a relief, what great help it is along our spiritual path. With the help of such a lowly, coarse system we can begin to connect the sparks. The Light that Reforms influences them, and in the meantime we go through the current phase which is the longest and the most difficult of all the phases. We will get through the other levels much faster, but this level is the coarsest, since here everything is done with the help of the bodies. It’s the preparation for the direct work with the Light and the desires, a wonderful stage, the Creator’s greatest benevolence. Although I hate the friend, I still connect to him; it’s an opportunity that is in contrast to nature. Nature operates according to honesty and the truth, while here there is a mechanism that is based on a lie.

So you have to yearn and to expect the moment that you will be pleased to see your friends like your own children and even more than that. Yes, yes, you will feel that the friend is more precious to you than your own baby.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/20/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Mutual Guarantee”

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Rabash, “What does the Rule of “Love Thy Friend as Thyself” Give Us?”: But because “all of Israel are responsible for one another,” through everyone, they are all kept. It is as though everyone keeps all the Mitzvot together. Hence, through the 613 Mitzvot, we can achieve the law, “Love thy friend as thyself.”

All the spiritual laws are integral laws and they exist only when there is a whole structure. There is no little bit in spirituality, and so everything begins from establishing a group of ten people, “a ten,” a Minyan, a minimal measure in which the spiritual reality can exist.

It is like the example of Rabbi Shimon’s group whose students formed the right network among them and by that reached the end of correction by attaining all the 125 degrees of the spiritual ladder. Thus, everything depends on establishing a Minyan.

All the laws of reality can be discovered in a small group, but because it is a tool meant to bring the Creator contentment, it must be expanded as much as possible, we must exit the group of ten and bestow and spread this message to the world in order to connect the rest of reality to us.

Such mutual incorporation also influences the structure of the ten and helps calibrate it, which means its inner correction that belongs to the fulfillment of 613 Mitzvot (commandments). By gathering and supporting one another, the group of ten is enough to attain all of creation (which means the fulfillment of all of the 613 Mitzvot). This is because its structure is compatible with the structure of the original Sefirot.

So, it is specifically a Minyan—a group of ten people, no more and no less—that is the right vessel of correction. However, when we speak about the fulfillment of love of others and the love of the Creator, it is fulfilled by the expansion of the vessel. This Minyan becomes one united, which operates in order to correct the world that is outside the group of ten.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/21/13

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Question: Israel is constantly under the threat of a military confrontation or war. Hundreds of missiles with conventional and nonconventional warheads are aimed at us. Not long ago I participated in a drill practicing an emergency situation. People may be complacent regarding what is happening, but the situation is actually very worrisome. How can we tell people about the external threat and about our message and the urgent need for internal changes?

Answer: This threat is actually hovering over us all the time. So first of all you have to be sure that the inner work is the key to all the problems. In addition to that, you have to bring this about in your connection with the friends. You have to connect and to unite with them and to fulfill the necessary actions in order to connect and bring the Creator contentment.

We have to tie these things together: If we brought the Creator contentment, we wouldn’t be facing the threats and the problems we are speaking of now. This is what we have to do: to discuss this, to “chew” it well and to finally “swallow” it and understand it. Then we will put together the general picture and see that first we need to correct ourselves internally. If we correct ourselves, we will correct the world.

As for the missiles, our nation has been in similar situations in the past. But now we have a chance to be saved from all the troubles and save the nation and the whole world. We have to examine this opportunity as a purposeful opportunity: when we act not in order to save the bodies but for the Creator’s sake. We have to raise ourselves to the level of this state, of this perception. Otherwise, we will not attain bestowal and will not be able to fulfill anything in the right direction.

It’s wrong to complain and to cry about the threats not knowing where to run to escape them. We mustn’t confuse the cause and the effect. It’s because the real cause is to reach adhesion, and this is what we have to attain. The means to attain that is to reach bestowal, which we can attain only by rising above our ego. In order to draw and to obligate people to do so we find ourselves in this situation.

We mustn’t stick our heads in the sand since by that we forget about the whole thing. There is no point sitting together and crying over this situation, it won’t help. Another response is required here, a different approach.

The whole point is how we accept these problems. They are not coincidental. So why do they happen? Instead of being overwhelmed by animal fear, we have to connect everything to the cause of all the results, to the Creator, to “There is none else besides Him.” Only we can do that; only we can turn everything around.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/21/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Mutual Guarantee”

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A while ago, we began to work in groups of ten and so far there have been many questions as to why such group work has been chosen. It is quite clear that the ten Sefirot are the basis of the spiritual reality and of the corporeal world. However, I still want to explain in greater detail so we will better understand our state today.

The Torah is the eternal order. It is impossible to change it according to time and place. The spiritual laws are fixed and absolute, and our attitude toward the Light that Reforms must be according to the general system. This system doesn’t change since we advance in our ego here in this world as we become more lowly, coarse, and egoistic.

Thus, our state becomes more sensitive and brings us closer to the “recognition of evil,” in the corporeal sense for the time being. However, the principles described in the Torah don’t change and never will. So, anyone who feels that he is aiming straight at the Creator (Yashar El), which means anyone who belongs to Israel, will have to go through the entire process that the Torah tells us about, including the time of the flood, Babylon, the exile in Egypt, the receiving of the Torah before Mt. Sinai, and the wandering in the Sinai desert, until he reaches a desire called Yashar El, the “Land of Israel.”

We are approaching this. The Torah is independent of time in concepts of earlier or later. Everything that is described in it is fulfilled on every level since, on every level, in every spiritual structure, every small or large Partzuf always is made of ten whole Sefirot, a whole HaVaYaH. The only difference is the level, as it is in every drop of semen in reality and in every child and grown up since the individual and the general are equal.

Therefore, we always go through all the states from the beginning to the end in every situation, and the only difference is the intensity of the states that are revealed in us and what we feel in them and understand. All of reality and every state are made of ten Sefirot. So, if we actually could open a certain state, we would enter the level of all of reality.

We advance according to the levels, one HaVaYaH after another, but at the same time, we constantly discover additional subtleties in each HaVaYaH and clarify another part of it. A new, whole formation appears on every level of HaVaYaH since each time there are new clarifications that depend on the level of Aviut (coarseness) that stems from the spiritual root.

Thus, we go through different states during our evolution. You cannot expect them, of course, so the changes that I perform may seem artificial. Suddenly, I tell you that we should split up into groups of ten in our spiritual work as if this thought has come to me by chance. However, I don’t just give you random orders. It is clear that we are advancing in an accurate order, and if you don’t identify it, believe me that I do see it. So, our advancement must be in groups of ten.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/23/13, Talk About Tens

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The preparation for the general spiritual work consists of several stages that are described as fables. The spiritual work in groups of ten is described in the Torah in the section about Jethro. Jethro was the chief priest in Midian, as well as Moses’ father-in-law, the father of his wife Zipporah. Moses lived at Jethro’s home when he escaped from Pharaoh and it actually is according to his instructions that the structure of the nation of Israel was formed.

It is a wonder why some priest of Midian, one of the sages of the nations of the world, brought such knowledge to the nation of Israel and knew how to form each of its camps so that they would better understand the laws and behave correctly according the Lord’s sentence. What do these subtle concepts that have to do with the inner corrections of the nation have to do with a priest of Midian who tells them how to organize the nation?

Jethro advises Moses after he already has received the Torah! This may seem very strange, but the method of organizing the nation stems from the wisdom of the nations of the world, as it is written, “If a person tells you there is wisdom among the nations of the world, believe him.” Besides, Jethro is not a stranger. He actually connects the desire to receive to the Torah to the desire to bestow.

We advance according to the steps that the Torah dictates, and it determines how we should divide into groups of ten, and then into groups of hundreds, thousands, and thus, advance in our spiritual work. It is a natural division according to the nation that should exist in a group. A simple crown came out of Babylon, and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob began to organize them into a nation.

They did not wander from one place to another in their journeys. The group came out of the general ego, from Babylon. It had broken off from the Babylonians and settled in one place surrounded by Babylon on all sides. In this place, they went through all the stages called Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Then, they reached the stage in which they began to feel that the ego is separating them—the exile, the distance—despite their strong desire to connect as they learned from their forefathers. After this group had received the method of connection from their forefathers, they already knew the stages of advancement to the revelation of the Creator. They understood that it is all revealed only in the connection between them, in “Love thy friend as thyself,” from which one comes to the love of the Creator.

However, when they actually began to work on the connection between them by following the advice of the three upper levels of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they began to feel how hard it is to fulfill this. They understood how exhausting this work is and how powerless it leaves them. They go through 400 years of exile and totally lose hope.

We try to fill ourselves through different external actions just to find new powers. However, all these innovations are always external, even if we learn another new thing and organize another convention. It is all fine and right, but it doesn’t lead to meaningful advancement. We are still building “Pithom and Ramses,” which means that we make efforts in order to discover that there is no hope!

Then, a more intensive, efficient and focused type of work begins in the groups of ten, and we see that if we want to be incorporated in the spiritual work, we first must split up into groups of ten.

There is a stage in which we must split up. The work in groups of ten already advances according to the regulations that stem from the advice of Kabbalists and especially Rabash who formulated all the principles of working in a group based on the method of Baal HaSulam. We have all we need for this work, but we must learn the special structure of the group of ten, how to build it and how to fulfill the method of connection that is the method for the revelation of the Creator.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/23/13, Talk About Tens

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The Torah, “Exodus,” Chapter 18, verses 13-14: It came about on the next day that Moses sat down to judge the people, and the people stood before Moses from the morning until the evening. When Moses’ father-in-law saw what he was doing to the people, he said, “What is this thing that you are doing to the people? Why do you sit by yourself, while all the people stand before you from morning till evening?”

It means that it is impossible to clarify anything and to advance this way with so many people who are not organized according to the spiritual structure.

Verses 15-16: Moses said to his father-in-law, “For the people come to me to seek God. If any of them has a case, he comes to me, and I judge between a man and his neighbor, and I make known the statutes of God and His teachings.”

Moses is the point in the heart that determines a person’s path, investigates and studies how to judge, and checks where he is according to his desire to receive. Thus, Moses judges the people with his point in the heart with regard to his desire to receive.

Verses 17-18: Moses’ father-in-law said to him, “The thing you are doing is not good. You will surely wear yourself out both you and these people who are with you for the matter is too heavy for you; you cannot do it alone.

It is impossible to clarify things in the spiritual work this way and to judge the people according to the Lord’s laws.

Verses 19-20: Now listen to me. I will advise you, and may the Lord be with you. [You] represent the people before God, and you shall bring the matters to God. And you shall admonish them concerning the statutes and the teachings, and you shall make known to them the way they shall go and the deed[s] they shall do.

This means that Jethro teaches Moses how he should organize everything.

Verses 21-27: But you shall choose out of the entire nation men of substance, God fearers, men of truth, who hate monetary gain, and you shall appoint over them [Israel] leaders over thousands, leaders over hundreds, leaders over fifties, and leaders over tens. And they shall judge the people at all times, and it shall be that any major matter they shall bring to you, and they themselves shall judge every minor matter, thereby making it easier for you, and they shall bear [the burden] with you. If you do this thing, and the Lord commands you, you will be able to survive, and also, all this people will come upon their place in peace.” Moses obeyed his father-in-law, and he did all that he said. Moses chose men of substance out of all Israel and appointed them as heads of the people, leaders of thousands, leaders of hundreds, leaders of fifties, and leaders of tens. And they would judge the people at all times; the difficult case they would bring to Moses, but any minor case they themselves would judge. Moses saw his father-in-law off, and he went away to his land.

It is clear that we are very far from what is described here and there is a great deal of work ahead, but we already have split up into groups of ten in order to clarify which states we are in and to what extent we advance. It is because the advancement of Israel is based on a strong connection, until we reach the revelation of the Creator which is called entering the Land of Israel, the desire that is aimed “Yashar El.” Therefore, we have split into groups of ten and we try to do the work. Then, there will be additional phases.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/23/13, Talk About Tens

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