Question: If a person is used to seeing us only on television or a computer screen, what would make him switch to an active phase and make him come to the February congress? After all, he feels good being at home, even if he agrees with what he is hearing.

Answer: Undoubtedly, it is more comfortable being at home.

In this case, everything depends on your free choice. First, do you have an opportunity to come to the congress? If everything was arranged from Above so that the answer is yes—if money, time, health, and other conditions that do not depend on you are granting you this possibility—then you are obliged to come.

It is a different matter if you were denied the ability to, let’s say, buy a ticket. Our friends are gathering from all over the world, including the most remote corners. For example, traveling from South America or Australia is very expensive. For some it is almost a prohibitive amount, yet they are coming.

This is where the freedom of choice comes in: If you were given an opportunity and you did not come, then you are simply rejecting the chance given to you by the Creator to come closer to Him, to arrive at a meeting with Him. After all, as it is written, “I the Lord dwell in the midst of the people of Israel.”

If you are not granted this possibility, if insurmountable obstacles, which truly do not depend on you, are placed in front of you, then you will be given the same direct connection while being on the other side of the screen, but only on the condition that, for given reasons, it must be exactly this way.

One way or another, the analysis is entrusted to you. I already have received dozens of letters with similar questions and I almost never answer because this is a person’s free choice. He or she needs to make this decision on their own. Sometimes, there are unsolvable problems usually related to health. In that case, I take the responsibility upon myself and send a reply.

Essentially, we need to understand that this is where freedom of will lies. If you can come, then you must, and, if you are not able to—well, the Creator has arranged it this way so that, by staying at home, you will receive even more than from physical participation. Perhaps the external impression from what you would have seen in person would have been so negative that it would have flung you to the side. Perhaps it would have entered into an irreconcilable contradiction with your tastes, habits, and so on.

In any case, however, a person needs to make this decision on his own. He only needs to seize this opportunity because it is now that he can make a true breakthrough on the path.
[125899]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/19/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: When does a person get to see that everything that happens in his life comes only from the Creator?

Answer: A person gets to see, as it is written, “There is none else besides Him” when he rises to complete faith and is ready to work without any response or reaction from the Creator, from the only power. He stops hoping to receive some kind of answer within his receptive Kli to see the Creator and to be convinced that this comes from Him. Only then will he merit feeling the only higher guidance, for otherwise everything goes into his egoistic, receptive Kli.

You are waiting for when you will actually see that the Creator is doing everything and you can prove that everything is right and you are ultimately be released from all doubts. However, this gain would be felt within your ego, so you will never get it. You simply don’t understand what the path is. You must discover more each time that it is impossible to advance on this path through your corporeal senses and intellect but only through the force of bestowal and the total nullification of the self.

If you let go of everything that you have now, then you will reach a level of spirituality that becomes a nullification of this life. Besides the necessities for the beastly body, all the rest of life goes on in full self-nullification.

You discover that “There is none else besides Him” after you construct this single Creator within yourself.

Nullification is realized within a group. I throw myself into the hands of the friends, but this is so they will take care of me. I hand myself over, and at that moment, I feel that there is a system here like called a “group” and it is concerned about me.

Question: However, what if I give myself over to the friends and I suffer?

Answer: If you suffer, this is a sign that you have not given yourself over. I give myself over happily! I am happy that I don’t use my feelings or my intellect for I have friends, a teacher, the Creator! I don’t exist by myself. I only adhere myself to them and this is all. They are my head and I am only the operator, their body. Whatever they desire, I carry out.

This is what is called adhesion. I want to exist like this. And as much as all kinds of problems, egoism, and heaviness of heart are added to me, I aspire to adhere to them even more. I want them to decide for me. This is not saying that I release myself from any responsibility to make life easier for myself. I do this because I want to adhere to what is higher—and for the upper to be my head and I will be the body. I will receive all orders, all instructions, from it.

I don’t ask the Creator when He will be revealed. I don’t need to discover Him. I want to nullify myself and not discover Him.
[125817]
From a Talk during the Meal 1/17/14

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In order to give new examples in my lectures, I constantly process texts from the primary sources and follow the news, documentaries, and anything that can help me find relevant associations.

Even if I don’t share all the information that I accumulate during the lessons, it still exists in the overall system since I am connected to everyone. So I don’t consider it my personal intellectual acquisitions because it already exists in relation to others even if I don’t express it verbally.

Question: So you never have the feeling of losing time?

Answer: This also happens sometimes. I used to see this when I was with Rabash and I didn’t understand how a person under the upper influence could be so detached from spirituality until he becomes nothing more than an ordinary protein body. Such states when you have no desire to read or to listen to anything are very rare, but from time to time they must occur, as if completing a certain rhythm in the spiritual development.

These states are very short, although they may sometimes take several hours, and when they are over, a person suddenly discovers a new stage and keeps on advancing. The best thing is if he manages to fall asleep when he is cut off, then it doesn’t pass in vain.

On the whole we deal with the desire and not with the body or with a person; the desire has to process itself to its full depth and its full height. It has to be incorporated, absorbed, and connected with all the other attributes, to develop itself, to respond, etc. Interestingly, when you are on the inanimate material level you feel it. But it is all a natural process.
[125976]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 8/19/13

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Question: Do you ever have the feeling that we don’t have time to manage to do something?

Answer: The feeling that “we don’t have time” isn’t relevant for me. I am already an elderly person who knows how much time I have left. I simply want to see a clearly assembled organization that is connected to the masses and to the Creator, and begins to work seriously. This is an organization called the “State of Israel.”

In this case, the State of Israel is not a geographic concept. It consists of different interconnected functional blocks, part of which operate in order to sustain themselves both physically and spiritually.

The part that is connected to the Creator is the Kohanim (Cohens – priests). The part that provides the ideological basis is the Levites. The part that provides the material basis is the people. And together they all tied to connect with all the outside world, and they have many connections with the masses, with all countries, and with all of humanity. This is how it all works.

If I could at least see a prototype of such an organization, I might not be in such a hurry anymore. And although it’s already looming, it is not enough; there is no clear contact with the general public; there is still no contact with the Creator,

The contact with the lower and the contact with the upper are mutually dependent and we are in the middle. The more we manage to approach the general public successfully, the more will need the Creator correctly, and will thus receive help from Above.
[125973]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 8/19/13

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To become integrated into others and breaking the huge resistance at the entrance is possible only due to self-nullification. Then I can sneak into the system like a virus, and it will not feel me. It is so hard to defend against viruses because they know how to become invisible to the bodily defense systems.

To the extent that each of us will feel and represent the group as a complete zero, the more he will be able to be included in it. You should nullify yourself to the maximum and thus you attain greater integration than others. It is in this that we should compete with each other: Who can nullify himself more. Everyone should strive to this and awaken others.

The group will become more connected as each friend will increasingly nullify himself before the others. When this mutual inclusion reaches the minimal degree, we will turn into one whole and immediately feel our first connection with the Creator. Since we have cancelled our own egoistic form and are ready to become clay in the hands of the Master, the form of the Creator will be manifested in us.

Then more egoism is added and we again have to cancel ourselves in order to be included into each other. Thus, we work until we merge into one whole that has no form and are ready for anything, that is, agree to become clay in the hands of the Master. Then we again obtain the form of the Creator: more accurately and specifically and will know Him even more.

The Creator will begin to dominate us and fill us with His multifaceted properties, clothing into all our thoughts and desires and giving them His form. Thus, for the first time we reach such a state that only the form of the Upper will be present in our material.

However, on the path to this state, some parts are able to agree to it, while others may not agree, and that is why they are contracted and separated from others. In this way, our progress occurs: The main thing is mutual inclusion, and it happens only due to self-nullification relative to those with whom you want to be included.
[126063]
From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/21/14

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Question: What does a Kabbalist feel when he sees people suffering?

Answer: He feels that they are about to receive a wonderful reward. On the whole they are already receiving it, but they cannot feel it at the moment because they haven’t corrected their vessels, their desires yet.

Suppose I give my little son a thousand dollar bill. He only knows that it is money, but he has no idea what this “paper” is worth and so he holds it for a while and then throws it on the floor. If he could understand what I gave him, he would use the money and buy a lot of ice cream, candy, and toys, but he doesn’t know how to turn this note into pleasure yet.

We are the same and even worse, instead of enjoying we feel pain and we suffer. I invest my exertion, and in return I receive a descent, a fall, a bad feeling. What kind of a reward is this? The point is that we really make great efforts, but we haven’t completed our correction yet so that we can receive the reward, the payment correctly. So we receive the payment, but we don’t understand that it is the payment and we don’t pay attention to it.

Imagine a donkey that is served cream cakes, but he doesn’t need cakes; he needs grain and water. He doesn’t like anything but that since for him grain and water are the greatest pleasure.

This is also what I understand. We have been served a large wonderful “cake,” but first we have to correct ourselves in order to be adaptable to this pleasure. I have received the pleasure, but at the moment it’s felt as suffering. It’s because we are hungry and we are looking for our “grain” and don’t understand at all what this business with the cream cake is.

I wonder and resent this. “What do I need this for?” and in reply I hear: “Advance to the human level, and you will enjoy it.
[125986]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: Why must our way to attain the good, the beautiful go through the discovery of the evil of our nature? And besides this, at first, we don’t even realize that this evil is in us, rather we see it in others, until we transform it into our own in the end.

All the faults that we see in others are a result of my own flaws. If I see bad characteristics in others, this indicates that this evil always was in me and now it’s revealed to me. And I must transfer the guilt in my direction; that is, to realize that this is my personal deficiency and to correct it within me. But why does the Creator reveal the evil to me in this form?

Answer: If I prepare myself through the environment, the study, the teacher, the sources to the fact that “There is none else besides Him,” then all of the deficiencies and the evil that I see in others I can attribute it to myself immediately. For it is said, “Everyone judges according to his own flaws” Therefore I will be able to rejoice about all the “wicked that are revealed in me.” If they are revealed, this is a sign that I am ready to correct them and to transform them into good characteristics through connection with the friends and the “Prayer of the Many.”

That is how I will be happy about all the evil that is discovered in others and in me. I don’t “eat myself up” about whatever events or mistakes that I did in the past or the present, rather immediately I will understand that this is revealed in order to correct the evil.

Everything depends on the connection between us that makes it possible to hold each and every one with the right preparation and intention, in the right state, so that I will immediately be ready to accept all the evil that is discovered in the right form. It follows that all of the disturbances, the discoveries of evil in me or in others, the mistakes that are made and the clarification of the shattering, they are means to advancement.

The mistakes are not my fault, rather they were sent to me with the intention of helping me to advance. The Creator created all the evil, the evil inclination. And I only need to discover it, to learn from it, to demand correction and to see how the Creator corrects it. And from all these opposite forms of the evil before my correction and of the good after the correction, in these gaps, I learn about the Light from within the Darkness.

Everything depends on the degree to which we prepare ourselves to accept all of the discoveries of “evils” in a good and correct form. It’s only necessary to never forget that everything comes from the Creator and only to help us reach a sensation that “There is none else besides Him.”
[125886]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/19/14, Workshop

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The Book of Zohar, “Two Points,” Item 121: …as it is written, “This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous will enter through it.”

However, prior to being rewarded with inverting the desire to receive in us through Torah and Mitzvot, into reception in order to bestow, there are strong locks on those gates to the Creator, for then they have the opposite role: to drive us away from the Creator. 

This is their role, like flirting, to tease the desire, to increase it and to ignite it more and more so that it will want more and more. The deficiency is increased by the rejection, and thus we reach a strong enough desire in order to break through the gate.

This is why the forces of separation are called “locks,” since they block the gates of approaching and drive us away from the Creator.

But if we overcome them so they do not affect us, cooling His love from our hearts, the locks become doors, the darkness becomes light, and the bitter becomes sweet. Over all the locks, we receive a special degree in His Providence, and they become openings, degrees of attainment of the Creator. And those degrees that we receive on the openings become halls of wisdom.

With the help of these movements—rejection and coming closer to the gate, and again repulsion approaching again—we pump ourselves up so we will have the strength to break through. And then the locks that become the openings.

Of course, the first opening is the most difficult to break through.
[125944]
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/13/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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The Book of Zohar, “Two Points,” Item 121:  …Thus, the locks, the doors, and the halls are three forms that come upon our substance, the desire to receive in us. Before we turn it into reception in order to bestow upon our Maker, that substance turns the light to darkness and the sweet to bitter, according to our taste… .

It is actually our intention of in order to receive that turns the sweetness into bitterness and we feel bitterness. When we correct the intention, the bitterness becomes sweet. This means that everything depends on the equivalence of form between us and what comes from Above. To the extent that we have an intention of in order to bestow, everything can be felt as sweet and above this intention everything is felt as bitter since I have nothing to sweeten it with.

It is the intention that makes everything bitter or sweet. There is nothing but the intention, and we don’t need to work with anything but the intention. Leave your desires and your attributes alone, they don’t matter. We already know from our experience that a person remains with what he is born with. Nothing changes in him except for one thing. Therefore, we only worry about the intention, about our attitude towards the Creator.
[126043]
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/13/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the The Book of Zohar“

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