Question: I first need to feel the Light in order to work with it, but I don’t feel it.

Answer: We feel the Light in Egypt. We realize that the darkness we feel is created by the Light and that it’s bestowal from Above. We are placed in total darkness that is called the darkness in Egypt.

The darkness in Egypt isn’t just darkness that an ordinary person feels. We feel that it’s dark in Egypt because we cannot reach bestowal and we are in chains under the domination of Pharaoh. This darkness is the posterior of the Light, and it’s the Light that makes us feel the darkness.

Everything is done by the Light. It either gives us a small illumination that makes us feel satisfied with our corporeal life or begins to shine more in its posterior making us feel that our life is becoming worse and worse on the corporeal level and also in the qualitative sense, meaning that we feel the deficiency to know what we are living for and why. All this is the influence of the posterior of the Light.

Thus we advance by the constant effect of the Light. All the changes in us are a result of its influence. It doesn’t change in quantity and remains more or less the same, but it does change in quality. According to these changes, I also go through different qualitative states and constantly change.

We cannot say that there is no Light in Egypt. There is Light! But it operates through its posterior.

When we are taught by the blows, it’s the same Light that operates, but we cannot understand, feel, or be impressed by the Light of love and bestowal since it will only spoil us like a spoiled child. A child only understands by punishments, and we have to teach him this way because he is under a foreign domination and we cannot take him out of there by simply treating him nicely.

When we receive blows, we don’t feel where they come from. But later, the pain is gradually conveyed to the mind.

Question: How can I constantly remember that it’s the Light that operates?

Answer: It depends on your efforts. If between the blows, when you are conscious you understand that you can properly act in the group, in the study, and dissemination, the Light that shines on you at a certain moment also illuminates the previous state when you were in the dark. Thus, being in one state, I learn about another state and reach the middle line.
[132660]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/13/14, Writing of Rabash

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Question: What does it mean to work like a partner with the Light?

Answer: It means that I summon the actions of the Light. In order to come out of Egypt, I have to feel that I am in an unbearable state, and at the same time I also have to know what the next state that I want to reach is.

The pain I feel in my current state cannot be real if I don’t know what I want instead. If something hurts, then I know that there is a state that is painless and which can even be pleasant compared to the point I feel now. This means that I lack states where there is no pain or states that are even pleasant.

“As the advantage of the Light from the darkness,” one is created by the other. If I am in Egypt I already have to feel a certain illumination from the life outside Egypt. So those who are in Egypt need to have a spiritual root that allows them to feel that they are in Egypt and to yearn to leave it.

Otherwise Egypt would seem like a wonderful place. It may not be so wonderful, but they may not yearn to leave it, as can be seen in the rest of humanity. A person needs to have a spiritual root so that he feels that he comes from the Light, that he is in an unbearable state now as he advances towards the Light, and that he must return to it. This mechanism has to operate in his subconscious, and it is called the root of the soul.

This root is found in the souls that belong to GE, or as a result of the mutual incorporation. Eventually, all of humanity will feel this way, but it will be revealed gradually.

Being in the state of Egypt doesn’t necessarily mean being close to the exodus. The exile in Egypt lasted 400 years, which means that it included many changes. The state we exit when we leave Egypt is a state we cannot bear any more. I know that if I stay here, I will die, and I am dying to reach the form of bestowal.

I want to be under the influence of the Light and cannot remain under the domination of my egoistic desire to receive any longer. These two discernments have to be felt simultaneously, and we ask the Light to create them in us.
[132668]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/13/14, Writing of Rabash

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Question: After the convention in Israel, egoism ripped us apart: We could not come to events, only five people were left from the entire group. Is it worthwhile to begin to disseminate in such conditions? How is it possible to strengthen the group and the inner work?

Answer: There are two levels of advancement. One of them is characterized by your attempts and efforts to do something with the understanding that all this is not you, that the hatred that flared up between you is truly senseless hatred and a result of the shattering of the soul.

The appearance of hatred is necessary in order to correct it and to reveal the Creator in the corrected and united state. And what is revealed in these harsh discoveries is indeed wonderful! You clearly see how much you disintegrate.

And if you begin to connect above this fragmentation, at least a little, then the condition for discovering the Creator will appear in you, which is revealed only where the breaking happened, and now the connection.

You must enter the common prayer, to a state where you turn to the Creator with a request. You are not ready to connect by yourselves. So you must ask for Him to gather and connect you.

Take an ordinary prayer book that everyone uses. The members of the Great Assembly, each one of whom was a great Kabbalist, arranged it about 2200 years ago. The Siddur (prayer book) comes from the word “Seder” (order). All of the texts cited in the prayer book are sequential requests of a person to the Creator so that the Creator will correct him in a group.

In principle, all of these are common prayers. Only about five percent are personal prayers. They are read in the morning, when a person wakes up and personally turns to the Creator, for he is still alone, there is no connection at all with anyone or anything, he only begins to recover gradually. That is how the text is structured.

And then he comes in contact with others if he leaves home and goes to a place of general gathering, for general prayer. Essentially he reaches a state where he begins to feel the others, the group, and reaches a general shared prayer. This general shared prayer is a request for connection.

All of our requests are derived from the collective vessel. In all of the prayers it is written: “We, we, we,” it never says “I,” except at the beginning of the prayers during the morning when one wakes up and seemingly warms himself up and recovers from sleep.

So the feeling of the breaking that passes over you needs to be in your consciousness as something very important and necessary, as something very right and good. In other words, the feeling of hatred, the inability not only to gather and to talk, but even to come to the group—“I will stay at home, I cannot be together with you!”—is feeling the shattered vessel, the shattered soul. And if you gather in spite of all your feelings and thoughts, then through rising above them, you make a correction in which the Creator is revealed. So what stands before you now is an absolutely clear action; what remains for you is to realize it.

You can try by yourselves. If it turns out, good, and if not, then invite some other group to come and be your guests. It’s worthwhile spending money to get together. They cannot get along between them and you cannot get along between you. Therefore gather together and begin to arrange workshops, discussions, make a shared meal, and sing some songs. Organize these yourselves without involving the central group; you can even not see our lessons for a few days to deal only with each other.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/28/14, Question and Answers with Dr. Laitman

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In the News (from The Conversation): “Bacterial diseases cause millions of deaths every year. Most of these bacteria were benign at some point in their evolutionary past, and we don’t always understand what turned them into disease-causing pathogens. In a new study, researchers have tracked down when this switch happened in a flesh-eating bacteria. 

“‘The date we deduced coincided with numerous mentions of streptococcus epidemics in the literature,’ Musser said. Since 1983, there have been several outbreaks of streptococcus infections across the world. For example, in the UK, streptococcus infections increased in number and severity between 1983 and 1985.

“It is the same story for many other countries, with Sweden, Norway, Canada and Australia falling victim to what is now an inter-continental epidemic. The symptoms ranged from pharyngitis to the flesh-eating disease, necrotizing fasciitis.”

My Comment: Any part of our body and the environment can turn into a monster carrying death, as it is written, that the enemies of man populate his house. But the conversion into enemies depends on the relationship between people as enemies.

After all, we are at the highest stage of the development of egoism, and therefore our behavior as rational and conscious, requires that the lower levels of nature (still, vegetative, animate) establish the same relationship between themselves relative to us.

If we correct our relations to being friendly, we will become convinced in the truth of the Bible, which states that in the future the wolf will live with the lamb, and a child will play with them.
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From The Study of the Ten Sefirot, Part 15, Item 44: Now, the deliverance from the Egyptian slavery is considered as an exile.

Deliverance and exile are related. Under different circumstances the same state can be considered an exile or deliverance. The exile at a certain step can be spiritually higher than the deliverance at another level.

Let’s say I am a junior at a university and have no clue what I am studying, i.e., I am “in exile.” Compared to freshmen and sophomores, I am in the state of deliverance since I somehow managed to ascend to a higher step than they have.

Rabash writes that the level of faith that we attain each time turns into the foundation for the next step: Reshimo de Hitlabshut turns into Reshimo de Aviut; this is how we advance. Deliverances transform to exiles.

From Rabash’s Article “The Meaning of Exile”: “Falling” in spirituality does not mean that one loses faith. It means that at this time one is required to work even harder; that’s why one’s prior faith is considered a downfall compared to his current state.

Keter of the lower Partzuf becomes Malchut of the upper. It proves that we should never judge our state from within but only in combination with the related states. Each time we are elevated to sanctity and we never downgrade. Even if we end up being in the darkness, the new state of darkness is still higher than a good state we were previously in.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/26/14, “The Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: What is the meaning of the vessels that we pick up from the Egyptians?

Answer: Without them, we are unable to reveal the Light (the Creator) because all we are able to do is modify the intention. Egypt is the intention for one’s own sake.

The land of Israel (Eretz Israel) is a desire (ratzon) directly to the Creator (Yashar-El). The same desire that exists in Egypt transforms to Israel after changing the intention.

We have only one desire. When we first reveal it, it seems like ancient Babylon because everything seems so confused. It is a huge egoism that mixes all states together. The first time we exit our ego due to Abraham’s method we strive to rise above our will to receive and detach from our prior states as much as we can.

This phenomenon is called “Abraham.” Abraham leads us out of Babylon and separates us from our usual, corporeal egoism.

In the beginning, when one comes to a group, one is taught how to work beyond one’s egoism and to connect with friends. While making attempts to achieve unity, one suddenly experiences a tremendous downfall.

This is an entrance to Egypt: a more egoistic and harsh intention. One wants to receive all the worlds. It is a more egoistic and focused intention. One even wants to use the wisdom of Kabbalah for the sake of one’s personal wellbeing. This is called the power of Pharaoh.

If we continue working, the group and the Surrounding Light influence us. We don’t sense the Light, but notice the consequences of its impact on us. We feel that we are obligated to exit our egoism, to get rid of it. We apply efforts and experience troubles and numerous problems that help us detach from our ego.

Sometimes we fall very deep into our egoism. Sometimes we detach from our ego and rise over it. We go through ups and downs. Our egoism (the Pharaoh) keeps receiving blows until we rid ourselves of it.

The first detachment from the egoistic intention is called exodus from Egypt. This is what we hope to go through all together when we unite. I anticipate that this coming Pesach won’t be just a holiday on the calendar for us and that we will experience a spiritual leap.

What will change in us if the leap happens? First, Babylon will turn into a sensation that we are in Egypt, in slavery, still inside the will to receive. Everything depends on our perception. In Babylon, everybody acted within their egoism and it was considered normal because this is human nature.

But we do not agree with this state and want to rise above the ego. When we tried to elevate, we transitioned from Babylon to the land of Canaan, the future land of Israel. There, we suddenly sensed that we simply cannot do it the way we tried and that we have to stay inside the will to receive, otherwise we won’t advance at all. This means that we have entered Egypt.

When we acknowledge the necessity of changing intentions from egoistic to bestowing, we start working on exiting Egypt and continue our work until we manage to disconnect from our egoistic intention. Detachment from the latter is the exodus from Egypt.

Then, we are uncertain of what should be done next: We have detached ourselves from the egoism, but what now? At this point, we start acquiring the intention to bestow that we add on top of the same desire that we had when we were in Egypt. That’s why each commandment that we observe, each bestowing action, is just a recollection of our exodus from Egypt.

I use the desire that previously was called Babylon, then was Egypt, and then transformed into the Sinai Desert, and in the end it finally became the land of Israel. The desire remains the same, but the intention improves each time.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/3/14, Q&A with Rav Laitman

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There isn’t a more important state than our current state, since this is where our spiritual evolution begins. It is in our situation, in our condition, that the exit to the first spiritual level is possible. It cannot be any other way. Everyone starts off this way. We are given a special opportunity and we have to use all the means that we are given in order to bring ourselves to the feeling of exile, to feeling that we are in chains and in the worst possible state under the domination of Pharaoh.

Pharaoh controls even our smallest thought, our smallest desire, wherever we turn and whatever we do. Every impulse and every move we make stem from him; every thought and every stream of consciousness, every desire and all the desires that stem from it, are all determined by the ego. No matter which way we go and how far we try to move away from evil, we remain in the ego.

A person determines that he cannot leave exile, although he really wants to exit it and makes many attempts, many great efforts, and exerts himself, but it leads to nothing. When he cries out desperately with the last powers he has left for only this last cry, a miracle takes place and he comes out of Egypt.

Now he begins to understand and to feel what it means to be under the influence of the Light. He comes out of his enslavement to his desire and voluntarily becomes enslaved to the Light, by choosing to be under the domination of the attribute of bestowal, above reason.

He knows that he is becoming a slave, that he is enslaving himself, and that he isn’t free anymore, but he is free of the desire to receive and from his beloved self, about whom he constantly worries. He is under another kind of domination and actually wants to be under this domination.

There is no neutral state on the way between egoistic Egypt and complete bestowal. A person immediately moves from one kind of domination to another, but he wants it and yearns for it even when he is still in Egypt. Besides the repulsion, the hatred, and the rejection he feels towards the state in Egypt, he also yearns for the total domination of the Light so that it will totally rule him, guide him, and manage him.

This is how we should prepare ourselves internally. Let’s hope that we are somehow ready for that and as for all the rest – the Lord will complete the work for us.
[132569]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/13/14, Writings of Rabash

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Psalms 121: A song for ascents. I shall raise my eyes to the mountains, from where will my help come?
My help is from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.
He will not allow your foot to falter; Your Guardian will not slumber.
Behold, the Guardian of Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord is your Guardian; the Lord is your shadow; [He is] by your right hand.
By day, the sun will not smite you, nor will the moon at night.
The Lord will guard you from all evil; He will guard your soul.
The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in from now and to eternity.

We have to raise our deficiencies for the correction of Malchut, the shattered vessel, the shattered soul, until we reach the head of the world of Atzilut, from where will my help come, I shall raise my eyes to the mountains, which means to rise above every mountain of doubt. This ascent is according to the equivalence of form that I want to attain. Of course, I cannot do so at the moment, but I want to ascend there.

This is where my help will come from, my help is from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth, which means that He creates Malchut by the attributes of Bina and Zeir Anpin, HaVaYaH connects them.

A person can express his request this way from every state he is in, from the day and from the night, in order to discover that the Guardian of Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. All these days will accumulate and the Creator will help us and will dwell in the unity between us according to our yearning to unite.

We must not forget that we have to prepare a platform, a place for the Divinity. All our work is with the connection in a practical and down to earth manner, despite all the troubles and the obstacles. There are no coincidences in life, everything is arranged and organized to the very last detail from Above so that we will connect in these conditions.

The higher we ascend, the lower we descend by receiving more obstacles. Thus the shattered vessel, the shattered soul, is revealed until we clarify all its parts that we have to connect in order to attain the first spiritual level.

The main thing is to ascend to the first level of the spiritual ladder. All the other levels follow one another in a chain of cause and effect. They all have the same nature and the most difficult thing is to make the transition from the nature of in order to receive to in order to bestow.

Then there is the same manner of ascent according to the same rules. More and more details are revealed and the impression certainly changes, but it isn’t the initial transition of our nature anymore. So the main thing is to overcome the first level.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/11/14

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Question: In society there are excessively violent, aggressive children, which even hit their parents. Will the integral circle correct them?

Answer: In these cases, it’s necessary to raise the level of education and morality by discussing behavior like this in circles. And a good example is needed.

Let the children talk about love for parents, about softness. Can they compensate their parents for what they gave them in early childhood, remembering how their mother took care of them, how their father was concerned about them? The discussion should also include normal children, and the aggressive ones should listen to them. And then it’s necessary to try very carefully to include them in the conversation so that this will penetrate into them.

But there must be very serious integration, sympathy, and empathy. If aggressive children see that their peers as strong, serious, and healthy as they relate to their parents with love, understanding, sympathy and concern, then they will get a good example from them.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 12/12/13

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