Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 39: Now we have shown that the Creator’s desired goal for the Creation He had created is to bestow upon His creatures, so they would know His truthfulness and greatness, and receive all the delight and pleasure He had prepared for them.

So there is something good that He has prepared for us and we have to develop in order to be ready to receive this pleasure.

At the moment we don’t feel it as pleasure, but rather the opposite, as the greatest sufferings and terrible darkness.

It is because the Creator has prepared the pleasure of bestowal for us, to be in the same state He is. The Creator enjoys bestowal and so we have to reach the recognition of evil of our own current state and the recognition of the goodness of the attribute of bestowal, of the desire to bestow. So all we have to do is to be equipped with a desire to bestow and to feel the pleasure of bestowal in it.

By discovering these things we begin to appreciate the greatness of the attribute of bestowal, the attribute of love, as much as it is within our power. We understand how sublime, great, and special it is and accordingly, we begin to value the Creator whose attribute it is.

It says: “We know you from your actions.” This is the way it works and the second phase doesn’t arrive until the first phase is fulfilled. By fulfilling the actions of bestowal by ourselves, we discover and get to know them and by that we get to know the Creator. It is only through this extent that we can respect Him, “to know His truthfulness and His greatness.”

This is the goal of creation.
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From the 4th part of the  Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/4/13, “There is None Else Besides Him”

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Question: Who can be considered a true friend?

Answer: “Friend – Chaver” is from the word “connection – chibur”. I don’t mean friends that connect in order to go out for a good time together at some sports club or a pub. In a Kabbalistic group someone is called a friend if he is someone with whom I connect in order to create a shared deficiency for mutual bestowal between us. From this I will learn what the characteristic of bestowal is.

After we know what the characteristic of bestowal is, we can expand our common Kli, vessel, and deepen it, seek the higher power within the characteristic of mutual bestowal that we have discovered. This advancement links us together with each other, soul to soul! We discover that we belong to a single system and that our souls are close to each other. This is a connection of the parts of a single soul, and therefore we are found together; for this reason the upper Light gathered us into a group.

I don’t look at faces, whom do I like and whom I don’t, according to which I will distance myself or approach someone. I accept everyone! If he has come, he is apparently part of the puzzle that is closest to us. Without him we cannot finish the puzzle. And with every friend who arrives, we assemble more and more of this puzzle, the structure of the collective soul.

This is what is called a friend, someone with whom we connect our souls and complete the collective soul between us. After we nullify our ego that separates us and disturbs us from sticking the parts of our puzzle together, we can adhere to each other. This is what is called a true friend.

Certainly we go through ascents and descents by mutually helping each other. I understand the friend, feel when he falls and needs help, and also when I fall, I need his help and support. Everything is permissible except for cynicism toward the group and the spiritual path. If some kind of mood or cynicism falls on him, this is already a problem. But difficulties on the way are unavoidable and we overcome them together; therefore we are called friends.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/3/13, Writings of Rabash

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The Torah, “Exodus” 20:21: “And the people stood afar off, and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was.

The Creator is the force of nature, the attribute of bestowal called Light. This is the Light of Hochma that created life and revives, it is the Light of warmth.

The “thick darkness” is an allegory for the concealment of the Light. There is a Masach (screen) that conceals the Light of Ein Sof (Infinity) like a veil, a cloud, as if it is in a kind of a capsule. A person doesn’t perceive or feel that it exists! But when he begins to form a Masach, he gradually removes the layers of the cloud of concealment accordingly.

In other words, there are five levels of desire in me. If I acquire a Masach on top of my first finest desire, I remove the finest layer of concealment (which is also made of five parts) and seem to partly enter this cloud.

When I continue to work, I focus the anti-egoistic Masach more accurately on me and advance in this cloud. To the extent that I can dress in the altruistic intention and in love of others, I enter the cloud. Thus, I attain a state in which I discover the Light, the attribute of bestowal directly in me. Gradually I become free of my ego and a person of Light.

Question: Why isn’t this last phase described in any of the books?

Answer: No one has attained the phase of the end of correction yet, it will happen only in the general end of correction. So there are still more presents and great revelations ahead.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/4/13

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Question: Who completes a level and goes on to the next level, a person or the group?

Answer: Everyone completes the level. The completion of a level is called the general connection between everyone, Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are one; everyone merges into one.

Question: Does everyone end the time of preparation together?

Answer: It seems that everyone ends it together. You cannot attain spirituality by yourself without the others. When you attain spirituality, you see that everyone is already there since otherwise you would not be able to attain it.

The only thing you lack in order to complete the current level is connection, mutual cooperation, advancing towards the same goal, when everyone reveals the one force as one. You have to feel what you lack in order to reach wholeness by yourself, relative to how you picture it. Perhaps your clarification is not accurate enough and incorrect, and so the upper Light shines on you and influences you a bit more strongly, evoking individual deficiencies in you that you were lacking in order to rise above them and grow stronger in the group.

We advance only “above reason.” Reason is the egoistic desires, the problems, the inclinations, and the egoistic passions, and they provide us with the “flesh,” the thickness and the depth of the vessels, above which we form the inclination for bestowal, love, connection, strengthening, justification, and appreciation of the other. We establish all that above our ego.

The Light that Reforms enlarges our ego so that we will have a chance to work above it. It teaches us not to remain on the animal level since we yearn for animal love, and for corporeal achievements. The Light teaches us to rise above them and to take more sublime values into account and to live a more purposeful life.

The Light clears and clarifies everything, it reforms us in many ways; it increases the attributes that you need, both the good and the bad. It navigates you and directs you in every sense, the Light does everything! You only have to do one thing: to justify the friends and to try to be in contact with them, to evoke them. That is enough.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/30/13, Writings of Rabash

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Question: What actions can we perform in order to the draw the Light that Reforms more strongly?

Answer: The Surrounding Light is the revelations of the Inner Light, in ten Sefirot that complement one another. This means that every Sefira is incorporated in all the ten. Therefore there should be ten friends who connect. Thus everyone includes all the others inside him. Ten friends live inside me. Now they are all together. 10 x 10 make up a whole vessel.

Then in their connection “above reason,” above their ego, the Inner Light is revealed. The Aviut (thickness) remains below, the Returning Light (Ohr Hozer) above and in this Returning Light there is a revelation of a new degree, Direct Light (Ohr Yashar).

We have not attained such a state yet and are at the lowest point. Our job is to organize and arrange the right connections between us so that the Inner Light is revealed in us as Surrounding Light. The Surrounding Light includes the Light of Hochma that is dressed in the Light of Hassadim since it is the same Light that shines in our upper Partzuf, which we will arrive at soon.

We have to try to reach the same corrected form in which everyone is incorporated in everyone. This is called yearning for the love of the created beings. Such a connection, mutual incorporation of one desire in the other, a desire to fill all the strange deficiencies, is called love of others, love of the created beings. This is what we should yearn for, since by that we attain the love of the Creator. When the Direct Light shines and is revealed in the Returning Light, it gives us a feeling that we have attained connection, unity, and adhesion with the upper force of bestowal, which is called the “Creator.”
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/30/13, Writings of Rabash

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In spiritual work nothing goes smoothly. If you advance seriously then the ego will grow and will show you your true nature all the time. So how can you feel good along with this? Therefore the importance of the society and support from the collective are compulsory; they always go back and say: “This is magnificent that we feel ourselves in a form like this and that our terrible nature is revealed to us!”

And this is not an erosion of the self, it is because you are working on yourselves and therefore it is revealed to you that you can do this, you can ascend. On the contrary, you need to be happy about this.

Question: How long will there be evil?

Answer: Until this “evil” seems good to you.

It is bad for you now because your ego is very close to you, you love it, and when it feels a deficiency in itself, then this is bad to you. But when you are detached from it, the feeling of deficiency in it will seem like something good to you since you are passing from the characteristic of evil to the characteristic of bestowal and adhering to it, then you will be happy.

So the feeling of emptiness within the ego will become greater and greater. And all the time you will feel: “Oh, even worse!” as long as you don’t push yourself away from it again in the direction of bestowal. And that is how we swing like a pendulum, left, right, left, right.

Now it is bad for you because you identify yourself with your ego. So look at it from the side. So it will suffer; but you, your “I,” is not found in it.

You need to enjoy and be happy because spiritual happiness appears when emptiness and troubles are discovered within the ego. Otherwise you would not detach from it! If they were to give you some kind of pleasure within the ego, you would simply adhere to it.

For what are they giving you all these negative feelings? This is only to help you become detached from it. Draw the right psychological conclusions from this: Life hits us from all directions like pesky little animals so that we will gradually begin to understand that we must leave our egoistic nature.
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From the Convention in Krasnoyarsk 6/13/13, Lesson 3

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In the News (from The Wall Street Journal): “As European Union leaders head to a summit meeting Thursday, they face a crisis that could be even harder to fix than the region’s debt problems: Europeans are losing trust in the EU itself and the benefits of unifying the region. …

“EU officials and many analysts say the medicine must include centralizing more policy-making in Brussels. But European voters appear less and less open to that, creating political tensions that are breaking into the open. …

”Even the traditionally pro-EU Netherlands is souring on European integration, with the country’s governing coalition declaring last week that the EU goal of “ever-closer union” should be buried.

“No country that has the euro wants to leave it, according to opinion polls, and only in Britain is there strong political or public support for leaving the EU. But across the continent, the EU’s low public standing is depleting support for strengthening its institutions.”

My Comment: Europe has become obsolete, and if there is no integral education, the EU will disintegrate and Europe will dissolve in immigrants. Euroscepticism is justified!
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Question: Do we draw the Surrounding Light by participating in a certain dissemination activity?

Answer: By participating and engaging in dissemination we expand our vessels and by that the vessels of the whole group. Thus you ease the ascent of the group by expanding its infrastructure. All the people who received information from you join us as the still, vegetative, and animate levels of the same pyramid in which we are at the human level.

Thus you lower the tension in the group and change our efforts from quality to quantity. We lose in the distance but gain in power. It’s as if we use a pulley to lift a heavy load, and by turning it, by many motions, we can gradually lift a very heavy load. Thus we increase the distance but reduce the power that we have to invest.

It’s the same when we disseminate the wisdom of Kabbalah or Integral Education: We lose with regard to the length of the path by putting forth small efforts, but we gain in power, as if we acquire the power to lift a ton with our hands. It’s the same principle of gears in a bicycle that enables us to climb a hill.

So the more groups there are that join us before the convention, the more we will all gain. It will be easier for us to attain the desired state.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/30/13, Writings of Rabash

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Question: After the first integral discussions in circles, people who participated in them said that the more they use this method, the more egoistic they become.

Answer: They begin to see their nature as egoistic, begin to see themselves. This is good. That is, there is truly a reason to connect. Don’t be afraid of this. They will not have any negative phenomena, deviations, or depressions. Their ego is just being revealed in its integral form. And this is good. This says that a greater need to connect is appearing among them.
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From the Convention in Krasnoyarsk 6/13/13, Lesson 3

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