Question: A person comes to study when he is an adult with an existing perspective of life. So he partly agrees with what he hears from the teacher and carries it out and he partly disagrees. Can he develop spiritually with such split feelings?

Answer: It is natural for a person who hasn’t yet felt the spiritual world, and so because of this, he doesn’t see it in the teacher. It says “one judges by his own flaws.” So you see the corruptions in the teacher according to your own corruption.

Here you need the power of the group to speak to you and convince you that the teacher is great and important. If you respect and value the friends and work with them, you will be able to overcome your feeling of disrespect by the power of the group.

This disrespect is natural and logical, and it cannot be any other way. It was given to you on purpose from above, but at the same time you were given a tool, a means from above by which you can overcome it. You have to get closer to the group and through the group get closer to the Creator. This is why this order of work is arranged for you.

But if it doesn’t work out, the problem is not that you disrespect the teacher. It is natural to disrespect him. The point is that you disrespect the group! You cannot connect to the friends in order to receive the power by which you can break through all the barriers.

You need to overcome the egoistic rejection of the friends to some extent: Start getting closer to them during meals that you have together, while singing, and in different pleasant moments. Start from a distance from your ego so it feels it’s worthwhile to be with the friends. You were given a chance to receive power from the group and by that to adhere to the teacher, and through the teacher to adhere to the Creator, and thus gradually receive the Light that Reforms.

It is natural for your ego to instinctively object to everything that the teacher says. Only a fool doesn’t object since he doesn’t understand where he is. Your nature rejects the Creator, as it says: “A person’s inclination is evil from his youth,” and so you are opposite from the spiritual work and from the teacher; you are opposite from the inner essence of the group, but the group has an external form too by which you can gradually get close to it.

The greatest difficulty is that a person doesn’t perceive the group as a means that allows him to connect with the friends in order to adhere to the teacher together. The teacher will connect you all with the Creator. We don’t have to turn into Hasidim, but you do have to feel that you are small compared to the teacher, just like a person has to feel that he is small compared to the group and all the more so compared to the Creator.

Start managing and arranging things by using all the means that you were given in this world and put them in the right order: This is me, this is the group, this is the study, and this is the teacher. Everything else is unknown because it comes from the Creator, but this is your entrance to Holiness, where you suddenly see a door that immediately becomes an opening and you enter.

If you don’t fulfill this condition, nothing will work out. A person has to depict this to himself, even draw it and write it, and then continue and correct it every day. So you should clarify this question more and more, day by day, until you fulfill everything.

You should understand that it is about clear and accurate laws. If you don’t keep them, then you can go not only through this life but through the next couple of lives too. No matter how many times you return to this world, it will still be the same. The spiritual Reshimot (reminiscences) are not fulfilled on every level unless it goes through these special conditions!

Everything works according to certain laws in nature. It is because of our lack of understanding that we may think that there is no law here, but wherever we can discover it, we see that “He has given a law that cannot be broken.” We have to understand this, to learn these laws and keep them. Our ego doesn’t agree to that, but we can rise above it a bit. Why should we wait for the sufferings to force us to get away from our ego? It is better to do it of our own will, by our mind, which means by acquiring the values from the group. The group will help us keep away from our egoistic mind and will draw the Light that Reforms unto us that will build a new scale of priorities and different ways of thinking.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/13/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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