All the pressures that we feel, the little pushes that advance the creation along the time axis forcing it to develop gradually, and the terrible afflictions that it goes through, all stem from the love of the Creator who wants to advance us and who operates only considering the goal. The Creator’s Providence is a purposeful Providence, and doesn’t take into account different events and states that we go through.

It is impossible to say that the Creator, the force of love and bestowal, doesn’t care how we feel. First, He feels it Himself, and much more than we do according to His level. The inadaptability, the lack of equivalence of form of the created being to the Creator, is felt as great sorrow on the upper levels.

We, however, feel only the faint resonances of this pain to the extent that we can feel it only on our account. Just as bestowal increases the feeling of pleasure by 620 times, so are the sufferings felt in the upper 620 times more strongly than we feel it. This is actually an infinite difference.

The Creator is an upper level compared to us and so our inadaptability, our deficiency, is felt in it sharply. To the extent that the future perfection is revealed in the upper level, we can see our deficiency in the current state, our helplessness, our suffering, and our inability to justify the Creator who operates for our sake as the good and the benevolent only out of love. Yet because of our corruptions, we don’t understand this goodness and so we don’t advance.

It is only a psychological problem of determining that everything we feel now is healing us and bringing us to adhesion. Then all the problems are solved, the darkness becomes the light of faith, and the bitterness becomes sweet. We don’t need anything else! In fact, nothing changes but the way we determine the state we are already in: It is like is says: “And you shall eat that which is ancient.”

Now we are in the Light of the Infinite, in the eternal word, in the fixed state. All the concealments are only in us, in our perception, in our understanding, in our inner attainment. We only have to change our attitude inside and to prefer bestowal to receiving, and we will feel that we are moving into the eternal and perfect world to the same extent. We will realize that our world was imaginary. So we actually don’t have to do anything but correct our perception of reality.

Question: How can I determine that everything that happens to me leads me to adhesion?

Answer: In order to do that, I have to accept the mind of the environment instead of my own mind. An environment is a group, a teacher, and books that have to perform such a change in me that a new state will be revealed in me; a state called the Creator.
[123739]
From the Preparation to the Lesson 12/22/13

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In the News (from ScienceDaily): “Writing in the current special ‘peace psychology’ issue of American Psychologist, lead author Bernhard Leidner, Linda Tropp and Brian Lickel of UMass Amherst’s Psychology of Peace and Violence program say that if social psychology research focuses only on how to soften the negative consequences of war and violence, ‘it would fall far short of its potential and value for society.’

“’In summarizing psychological perspectives on the conditions and motivations that underlie violent conflict,’ says Tropp, ‘we find that psychology’s contributions can extend beyond understanding the origins and nature of violence to promote nonviolence and peace.’ She adds, ‘We oppose the view that war is inevitable and argue that understanding the psychological roots of conflict can increase the likelihood of avoiding violence as a way to resolve conflicts with others.’…

“The authors acknowledge that conflict and violence between groups persist because they often give people ways to address psychological needs, for identity, safety, security and power.”

My Comment: The cause of all conflicts is our nature: egoism, the desire to fulfill ourselves at the expense of others. Until we correct it, we will fight for any reason, up to the point of causeless mutual destruction because the natural psychological need to conflict motivates us to action.

It is only left to head towards mutual destruction or to correction of our nature to the opposite so that connection, unity, and mutual concern become our psychological need. This transformation can be done only by the Upper Light.
[121994]

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Can I pray for myself if I really want to advance in spirituality? Of course not. How can I be sure that I am asking for power, for a change of mood, for a change of the real state so it will be for bestowal, for the Creator?

Only by asking for the group can I be sure and check myself as in the words of the song: “for my brothers and friends I shall speak peace of you.” This means that I am asking for the group, for the friends, and by that I hope to reach the right request and to delight the Creator.

This is the right order: from the love of the created beings to the love of the Creator. Through the love of the created beings I can see and be sure that I am aiming correctly and that I am not confused and or lying to myself. So through the love of the created beings, I have to focus myself on the love of the Creator. It is impossible to reach the Creator without the level of transition of the love of the created beings. This is why the shattering occurred and our shattered world was created.

Otherwise, we could never bestow upon the Creator since He is concealed from us. If He were revealed, we would run to Him like a thief who runs before the crowd, crying out “Catch the thief!” I would yearn for Him as the source of pleasures and I would want to connect to Him for my own benefit. But because He is concealed, I have nowhere to run and I don’t even know who the Creator is.

This is the reason for the shattering of the vessels, and from the whole shattered world I was given a small part called my group. If I practice correctly in the group, trying to connect to it like with the Creator, then I can always check myself and do what needs to be done. Eventually I reach the stage of implementation, the goal of the wisdom of Kabbalah and its practical addition, which is integral education.
[123760]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/23/13, Writings of Rabash

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Question: How can we learn to make use of the changing states towards the group: getting colder – getting warmer, love – hate?

Answer: It is possible only through workshops, round tables, and integral education. This is the only way a person can feel that he has a field where he can work on himself just like in the spiritual world. We have to stabilize a field where a person can work on himself when he stands before the group, so that he will see that he can actually work in it with his desires, his feelings, his thoughts, with all his actions, with everything that he has. He is actually incorporated in the spiritual work with his whole body, with all his attributes, fulfilling them as if with his own hands.

We have to prepare such a framework for our friends in the global group to work in and to teach them how to do so, and then the whole world. This method has to be so clear and evident to a person that he will understand that it is enough to make one step into it, which means to connect with the integral education group just once, and that is all he has to do! He will already be caught it in, like in a positive trap, as if taken by Noah into his ark together with everyone else. Then Noah closes the door and he is protected inside.

From this moment onward, the environment begins to operate on him and influence him; it explains, defends, and resolves all his questions and doubts. He is already inside it and cannot come out. Thus, we have to build the system of integral education in the form of a positive trap since actually there is nowhere a person can escape to. Integral education is called “Noah’s Ark.”
[123752]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/23/13, Writings of Rabash

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Question: The moment you reach a group, you have no problem in nullifying yourself towards the friends because you see their greatness. And after this, when you are included in the group work and they begin to humble themselves toward you, then your “serpent” immediately raises its head and begins to whisper: “Look, you are just like them.” How is it possible to deal with it so as not to succumb to all its schemes?

Answer: First, don’t think that you can somehow win in this struggle or even to stop it; this is impossible. It is certainly possible to flee from it entirely. But the spiritual way amounts to this, that you must transform the evil “serpent” into the good “serpent,” that is, transform all of its poison into medicine.

In order to do this, we must create a relaxed and serene atmosphere between us so that it will be comfortable to think constantly about spiritual elevation. Around us there must be an atmosphere like this in which I feel very good: I don’t make an effort and I don’t get tired.

Suppose that we are in a convention now that is tiring and we are falling asleep in spite of it all, but it is necessary that we have a feeling of softness, freedom, warmth, and lightness.

All of this must be lifted, raised, entered into the heart, and not passed through the intellect. It is pleasant for me among the friends in the group; I don’t get tired and I feel much better myself than when I sit in the living room on the sofa. A state like this is what we must attain in a group. Incidentally, women can do very much for this.

Prepare tea, coffee, light refreshments, be concerned for each other, at least create a relaxed, calm environment because internally we are under much tension. Especially if I must monitor myself all the time about what I am thinking, how I evaluate my states, then it is necessary to do this in order to make work with my “serpent” easy. In fact, the group can neutralize it, put it to sleep so much so that it will be very easy to go forward.

If it is hard for you, you become tired, or you try to flee homeward; this is a sign that your relationships in the group are incorrect. If you are tired while you are in a lesson, this is a sign that you do not comprehend the material correctly; it is not clothed smoothly on your heart.

Furthermore, the conditions in a group and in a lesson must be close to the spiritual state. And the spiritual state is eternal, not because it is like this in itself, but because you want it to be eternal. Therefore, it is up to us to yearn for our mutual relationships to these states, where you want them not to end, like a meeting with your girlfriend who gives a sensation of brightness, love, reciprocity, and warmth. This is all in your hands.
[123661]
From the Moscow Virtual Convention “Unity Without Boundaries” Day Two 12/14/13, Lesson 4

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The goal of the spiritual work is to acquire the attributes of the upper world. We call it upper but it is actually the only world there is. We, however, are external to it, as if senseless, unconscious, like in a dream.

How can we awaken from this dream in which the ego closes us in like a cocoon?

We are immersed in ourselves since we constantly think about ourselves and want everything only for ourselves. As a result, the space around us is distorted since all the forces are drawn inside and are locked up in there. So it is as if we are in some kind of cocoon made of forces and cannot see anything external to it.

There is a huge world around me and I am just a tiny point, an embryo, that cannot exit the cocoon and feel what is actually happening.

All this is arranged that way in order to help us be born independently. The birth should be on our account since otherwise we will not feel the real enormous world we live in but which we don’t feel at the moment.

In order to feel this world, we have to gather and establish in us the senses for perceiving this world. Thus, we will discover exactly what we lack and how to feel what we don’t perceive.

When I do something by myself, I know exactly what happens in every part of this “machine.” If I start to illustrate a machine  to someone and show and explain how it operates, it will take many years before a person understands its structure and all the subtleties will still remain a riddle for him. He will find it hard to understand why I have created the parts of the machine from special materials that I have put together this way and not any other way, how I thought about it, and jumped out of bed in the middle of the night when an idea came to my mind and drew it. I remember such times in my life.

A person who studies this, looking from the outside, will not understand anything anyway. You have to give birth to yourself, and then it will be yours. So we have a mission: to give birth to ourselves in the only, big, eternal, perfect world, in the Creator’s world, which is the only force that wants us to want to know Him and to attain and to reveal Him by ourselves.

He has created a special state for us called our world or this world in which we live like in a cocoon tightened by a great egoistic energetic force, so that we will begin to actually feel and to attain the Creator outside His luminous world. It is in our world that we can give birth to ourselves by gradually developing and creating in us more and more new attributes that can help us discover the Creator’s world and gradually resemble Him.

But how can we break through this massive egoistic protection, through the border, which we have to change?

As strange as it may seem, this is why there is a very special attribute when people come together. By getting together, we create a special energetic form. If each of us gradually exits himself and connects to others, the preliminary conditions for the attributes that exist in the real world are created.

Although we are inside a cocoon, we already manage to move in it somehow and to do something among us by partly connecting to some common form that is gradually formed as everyone tries to annul himself and imitate others, to some extent at least, and to connect with them.

A person experiences pangs of conscience since he sees that all the others manage to exit themselves, can sacrifice something and give in to others, and that they are not so tight-fisted, arrogant, and cruel and can be considerate of others; the connection between them is somehow natural, but not for him. He doesn’t succeed in anything.

When a person goes through such states, he is cleansed internally according to our collective efforts to get closer and to create a certain form that resembles what is external to it, inside the cocoon, by our mutual yearning for connection.

Don’t be put off by this, don’t fear, don’t think that it is a return to the old socialism, since there is nothing to be ashamed of here. Try to do everything that you can in order to nullify your individual egoistic urges and to attain something that is collective.

It is this collective “something” that will eventually be born and which will be called a soul.
[123419]
From the Moscow Virtual Convention “Unity Without Boundaries” Day Two 12/14/13, Lesson 4

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Preparation to the Lesson

Writings of Rabash, “Shlavei HaSulam,” “Concerning Above Reason”

Talmud Eser Sefirot, “Histaklut Pnimit,” Vol. 1, Part 2, Chapter 7, Item 74

Writings of Baal HaSulam “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 2

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Baal HaSulam, Article, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”: We can see that all the interpretations of The Book of Zohar before ours did not clarify as much as ten percent of the difficult places in The Zohar. And in the little they did clarify, their words are almost as vague as the words of The Zohar itself.

As Baal HaSulam writes in “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot” in paragraph 155, the books of Kabbalah were written for those who already had spiritual attainment or wanted to acquire attainment. For these people, these books are like a means for advancement; it is possible to attract the Light that Reforms with them.

So why do the interpretations and explanations matter to us? Why did Baal HaSulam write the Sulam commentary to The Book of Zohar?

The Sulam commentary helps us to rise to the text of The Book of Zohar in order to use it and get the Light that Reforms from there. First it is necessary to approach, to come close, to rise to this book, and then you derive benefit from it and enjoyment from it and receive the correcting Light that Reforms from it. After that I rise again, come close to it, and again receive the Light that Reforms from it. And that is how it is throughout the 125 levels.

This is to say, there are 125 levels in The Book of Zohar, and the Sulam commentary also has 125 levels that make it possible for me to rise to the level of The Book of Zohar and to use it according to its mission, to attract the Light that Reforms and correct myself. It is as if I am climbing up a ladder in a library to going from tier to tier getting a new edition of the same book each time.

Consequently, the Sulam commentary is not just an explanation for the book. Hence the name because “Sulam” means ladder. Therefore by involvement with The Book of Zohar and this commentary together, I can use the language of Kabbalah and the language of Midrash, “the language of the branches,” that make it possible for me to come close to the text and to yearn to activate what he describes there and attain what is latent there.

I don’t imagine a Garden of Eden with souls floating there, rather I know that it is talking about my inner world, about how I am linked to a group, how I describe to myself the picture of the spiritual state that comes into being within my desire to receive through rejection and reduction of the reflected Light.

Therefore the book must prepare us for the correct comprehension of what they wrote. And from the start it was clear that The Book of Zohar not only had to be hidden until our day but also it had to receive an addition that would make it possible for our generation to use it in order to take the Light that Reforms out from it.

Without the Sulam commentary we would not have the possibility of taking the Light that Reforms out from this book. And in fact, for a thousand years after the discovery of The Book of Zohar, we could not truly use it until the time arrived to submit it to the people. And so Baal HaSulam came and gave his commentary to it, which is used as a “ladder” through which we have the possibility of rising to every level of the 125 levels of spiritual attainment.
[123691]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/23/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: If everything depends on our desire and work, and not on the Creator, why do we ask Him to help us connect?

Answer: We try to attain additional desires for connection, we make an effort, we search. And when we turn to the Creator, this says that we activate yet one more deficiency, and then the Light acts on us with this additional deficiency. This is even though the Light itself is constant, like constant voltage in an outlet.

If I have a socket with a voltage of 220 volts, then I can connect devices of various resistances and intensity there; so accordingly a different current will flow in them, more or less: Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama, Haya, Yechida, according to the desire that I connect to it. It is as if I have an electric stove and I turn the knob, change the intensity of the heat: 1, 2, 3, and every time I activate a new spiral in which a new light is revealed: 1 – small, 2 – greater, 3 – even greater. The “voltage” of the light is constant, but the “intensity of the current,” this is to say, my “NRNHY” depends upon the strength of my resistance.

Outside, nothing changes; there is a power station full of infinite energy there. Connect to it anything you want! From the world of Infinity to our world, the voltage is graded according to the levels, like in our world, where there can be different voltages: 380 volts, 220 volts, 110 volts, 24 volts, 12 volts.

A scale of voltages goes out like this but at every level the voltage is constant, and everything depends on this, how you connect to it: Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama, Haya, Yechida. You finish this level, you have used all the divisions of the switch on your “stove,” and now you can move to a new “stove.” But there are no changes in the outlet; it gives you everything that you need.
[123675]
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/19/13, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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