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Question: Do we really have a chance to correct the state of the world? After all, we see that things are getting worse every day.
Answer: No, the world is advancing towards a greater recognition of evil every day. People understand that they advance without any direction, not knowing where to go, unable to influence the way the world develops, or to ensure the sustainability of the world, to ensure life.
We are losing all the levers and there are no reins. There is no way we can manage the world and that is actually a good thing. People feel that they are like little children whose parents have lost them.
We gradually begin to realize who has forgotten us, who we have drawn away from, and who we should get closer to. This makes a person feel the need for the upper force, for balance with nature, with reality. It isn’t some mystical force, but we actually want to know how this system is built, the law, the formula according to which the world exists.
We must know where we are headed! After all, we are on a speeding train in total darkness not knowing where it is taking us…
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/28/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam
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Question: How can a person control his thoughts so that he will not sin?
Answer: A person cannot control his thoughts. He cannot control himself in any way. Am I my own boss? Where do we see such things?! There is no such thing! But I have to invoke a positive force around me on such a level that it will influence me and sustain me. Then I will be able to control myself.
We always stabilize our state by external forces, by the environment, society, and external support, while a person has no control over it. He doesn’t know which state he will be in the next moment, so how can he control anything?
A person can secure his future only if he prepares all the external vessels, desires. If I worry that the others have a secure future, I thus ensure my own future.
If a person is an element in a system, then how can he ask about what will happen to him? He depends on the whole system, especially since it is arranged so that he has the free will to strengthen his surrounding system and then he can ensure his future. He will never have more than he has prepared in the system, but if he hasn’t prepared it enough, he will receive blows so that he will discover the need to prepare it.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/27/14, The Zohar
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The Torah, “Leviticus” (Shemini), 9:5-9:7: And they took what Moses had commanded, to the front of the Tent of Meeting, and the entire community approached and stood before the Lord. And Moses said, “This is the thing the Lord has commanded; do [it], and the glory of the Lord may appear to you.”
And Moses said to Aaron, “Approach the altar and perform your sin offering and your burnt offering, atoning for yourself and for the people, and perform the people’s sacrifice, atoning for them, as the Lord has commanded.”
This is about the correction of a person on the level of the altar. The word “altar” in Hebrew stems from the word “sacrifice” and the root to get closer, which is getting closer to the Creator by beginning to correct one’s desires with the intention of for myself to the intention of for society, humanity, and the Creator. Then He is revealed in these corrected desires.
Question: What should the people do so that Aaron will succeed?
Answer: The people refers to the component of Aaron (of this attribute in a person) that must adhere to him, which means all my small desires and attributes that have to participate in the spiritual work together with the upper desire called “Aaron.” In other words, I have to totally draw myself to get closer to the Creator. At the same time, I also have to involve the whole nation by the action of offering sacrifice because I have to check and to discover all the inclinations, desires, and urges inside me, gather them all, and focus them on attaining the level that is now the revelation of the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 12/18/13
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Question: Suppose I decided that I want to be responsible for everyone. What’s the point if I will fall in five minutes?
Answer: It makes no difference. Five minutes is quite all right. It means that there are already five minutes of our whole life that are worth something and which last forever. All the rest of your life is a waste of time, but you could have lived five minutes!
Question: However, I want to follow the example of Moses!
Answer: Moses is a spiritual level. The Torah doesn’t tell us about historical figures, but about spiritual levels. You also will reach the level of Moses at some point, and instead of your current name, you will be called Moses. Everyone who ascends to a certain level receives the name of that level.
Rabbi Yossi, Rabbi Chiya, and Rabbi Shimon, all these great sages, have names that indicate the spiritual levels they speak from. If we say that someone is someone else’s student, it means that he is on an adjacent level that is near the teacher.
Being a student of a Kabbalist is a very praiseworthy, respectable title. We know that the teacher is on a certain level and the student is one level below, nourished by the teacher.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/27/14,Writings of Baal HaSulam
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In the News (from the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation): “Group cohesion, mutual responsibility, is a phenomenon of the collective. Group cohesiveness expresses the degree of importance of the group to its members.
“It is defined by the expression of friends’ individual personality traits and qualities of mind, necessary for successful professional group activity: self-discipline, professionalism, mutual aid and support, willpower and determination, diligence, personal effectiveness, judgment and fairness, responsibility, intelligence (creativity and other qualities of the mind), health (emotional stability).”
My Comment: Here the group is represented only as a more effective tool to achieve a goal. But a Kabbalistic group is not simply a more effective means of achieving goals, but a prerequisite for achieving it: the goal is achieved precisely by uniting friends in the center of the group.
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Question: Why does it say that all of Israel are responsible for one another?
Answer: If I am the only person in the world who determines the state of our general vessel, then of course everything depends on me.
Question: However, I am not alone in this game. The others also influence it, and there is the society!
Answer: The society also depends on me, everything depends on me. All the seven billion people are in a fixed state and I am the only one who is changing and who determines everything. I am the only one responsible for those who can act freely, but all the others do nothing.
I speak with the Creator and am responsible for them before Him, for better and for worse! If He has any complaints with them, he should talk to me. This is called mutual guarantee.
Mutual guarantee means that I am responsible for everyone. There is nothing I can ask them to do. I am responsible for everything that they do.
Start thinking from this point and don’t think that it is imaginary. It is really so. You actually are responsible for everyone.
When you listen to the news and see what happens on the streets, or when you hear the complaints of the friends who cannot reach a spiritual level to correct themselves, to connect among them, then you should know that, from this moment onward, everything is in your hands. You are responsible for everything.
You create and make everything that is good and everything that is bad, both in corporeal life and in spiritual life. The others are not responsible for what they do. They are passive participants. They don’t determine anything. You are the only who determines how the Creator will relate to them. They encounter hurricanes, tsunamis, wars, and disasters, and who is to blame? You!
All of Israel are responsible for one another, but everyone is responsible for his own attributes and for what happens to the world with regard to it. Everyone is responsible for the wellbeing of the society and the wellbeing of the world.
Don’t say that you depend on others. You must reach the state in which you determine that the entire world is in a state of absolute goodness.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/27/14,Writings of Baal HaSulam
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Question: What does it mean to ask only for necessities?
Answer: If a person is concerned about bestowal to others, he doesn’t have to be concerned about his necessities because they will always come to fill his desires to a sufficient degree. But there are unique situations where a person must take a look at himself to clarify what is essential and where its fulfillment is found. And he sees that this degree of the necessities is found in the desires of bestowal that are directed towards the Creator.
On the level of Bina, a person doesn’t ask for necessities because that is taken care of by itself. He doesn’t have to be concerned about it. This is because the level of Bina is absolute bestowal, Hafetz Hesed, a state of Katnut (smallness) from the side of the vessels, the states of “embryo” and “nursing.”
But when a person goes through greater and higher states and begins to work with the receiving vessels, then he must become active and turn with a unique prayer for the necessities to determine what his work will be for the purpose of bestowal. This is even though he doesn’t have any need for this himself. But he determines that he is a creature, exists, and must exist in order to work to bestow and to serve the people, and therefore he asks for what is essential for himself.
This means that praying for the essentials is an effort for him. He would prefer not to do this, but he must do it as part of his work. This is like the Cohen (High Priest) who had to have special clothing, even though he didn’t need this himself. But in order to serve the people, he had to have special ceremonial priestly garments tailored for him.
This means that the request for the essentials also requires an effort from the person and is not felt as necessary. But this is a part of his work, and he asks for this through overcoming his reluctance.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/27/14, Shamati #35 “Concerning the Vitality of Kedusha”
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We go out to the public with our ideas as to what the good future of the nation depends upon. The good future of the nation depends only on the connection between people and we must explain this in order to reach the right connection: why it should be this specific way and how it can be fulfilled and carried out.
Then we have to actually fulfill this connection by different exercises and keep advancing towards the right connection and unity. They have to feel that they are really acquiring a unique intensity in life, real support, and a sense of security, thus we begin to heal many problems. They will find out that the whole situation is corrected and is worthwhile.
Question: Will the format of the daily lesson and working with the sources change when many new people join us?
Answer: The Kabbalistic sources will be revealed naturally. If we begin to bestow unto one another, we discover the connections between us that the wisdom of Kabbalah teaches: Reshimot (reminiscences), deficiencies ascend from the bottom up and forces descend from the top down, and the connection between us is revealed more and more. This is what Kabbalah tells us.
In the meantime, we study about phenomena that are not practically fulfilled among us. We don’t discover yet that we are all Malchut and that the connection called Zeir Anpin is inside us, and that there are even more internal connections and forces that are still concealed from us.
But all this is only in us. There is no other place or state; everything is in the connection between us. When we begin to reveal this, we will reveal it right here, just like the fact that there are no ghosts but different forces like Rabbi Shimon, Rabbi Yossi, Rabbi Aba, Baal HaSulam, and Rabash.
There are forces that are depicted on our inner Masach (screen), and there are forces that are not depicted this way. They have been purified and can be seen only in vessels of bestowal according to our equivalence of form.
There are forces that take on an egoistic form of in order to receive and so we identify them, and there are desires of in order to receive that disappear, which means that they have been purified and we don’t identify them since they are purer vessels.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/26/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam
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