Question: In our time, when divorces have become so frequent, what is the recipe for a happy marriage?

Answer: My teacher Rabash used to say that compromising is the key to a happy family life. Everybody should give way to the other—in everything! And then it will become possible to live together, and without it, not. Concessions and patience make a huge difference.

Question: What exactly does one need to concede?

Answer: We have to step on our own egoism and annul ourselves before our partner: to disregard our pride and to concede. This is the only way we can coexist in the family.

After all, everyone has enormous egoism and cannot tolerate one another, and as a result, the family falls apart after a year or two. We see that young people change partners not even every month, but almost every week and every day.

Therefore, if we want to be able to live together, we have to learn how to compromise. Our nature is just egoism. Everyone wants to establish himself and be above others. In the beginning, we are still ready to give up something, but then we get used to each other and do not want to give in. And this is the whole secret.

If we are not ready to compromise, then we should not start a family. That’s why divorces happen everywhere. People cannot live together for a long time. I understand this problem, because I also saw a lot of couples getting divorced. And yet I think that none of them eventually found a better partner than the former one. We just need to find some form of co-existence, especially if there are children, and to compromise to each other in some way.

Question: Is there such a thing as two halves of a soul, when the pair is already appointed from above?

Answer: It happens only in beautiful novels.

Question: Do you think that it is possible to connect any man and woman and they will be able to create a good family?

Answer: If we start good courses to educate boys and girls on family relationships and properly prepare them, erasing all negative habits and examples obtained at home and teach them correct habits, then practically any pair can create a family that will live happily together for many years.
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From the Webinar 6/20/17

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Question: How does one read Kabbalistic books correctly? What do we pay special attention to?

Answer: When reading a Kabbalistic book, a person should understand that this reading must reveal new organs of perception in him with which he will be able to feel what’s written in the book. A book will start to play within him and he won’t be just impressed, as from a novel, but will begin to imagine the upper world.

The upper world exists not according to the laws of the egoistic force by which we live in our world, but according to inverse laws. As it is written, “I saw an inverted world.” These are altruistic laws of love and not the laws of hatred.

If a person wants to feel this way and he accustoms himself to such reading, then he begins to perceive an entirely different, opposite story, in which other dimensions, conditions, and characters exist. Thus, he begins to reveal the spiritual world and the forces acting in it.

We must go through two stages in order to discover a spiritual book. At the first stage, due to the reading (mainly The Book of Zohar and the Writings of Baal HaSulam and the Writings of Rabash), we gradually approach the revelation of the book within us forming the sensory organs suitable for this.

Just as a small child doesn’t understand an adult book about adventures or love and must first develop to the right age, so also in Kabbalah, you must first develop inner properties within yourself that are suitable to react to the content of the spiritual book. Therefore, at the first stage, we need to cultivate and develop our organs of perception.

The second stage is when we begin to reveal what is written.

Question: Does it mean that it’s not enough just to open a book and start reading it?

Answer: It is enough to open a book and start reading but with the intention to develop. Obviously, we don’t understand anything in the book yet, but we read it in order to develop ourselves to reach the understanding. This is the main rule so far.

Once a person improves himself and through the book forms spiritual feelings, desires, and definitions within himself, he will start feeling it more and more. Similarly, as a child grows, the child understands and feels more.

There are books for each age in everyday life and in Kabbalah we read the same book as we grow, each time penetrating deeper into it and more and more revealing it’s inner meaning.

Baal HaSulam writes in the article “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot,” p.155: “There is a wonderful, invaluable remedy to those who engage in the wisdom of Kabbalah. Although they do not understand what they are learning, through the yearning and the great desire to understand what they are learning, they awaken upon themselves the Lights that surround their souls.”

This means that every person from Israel is guaranteed to finally attain all the wonderful attainments that the Creator had contemplated in the thought of creation to delight every creature. And one who has not been awarded in this life will be granted in the next life, etc., until one is awarded completing His thought, which He had planned for him.

There are no doubts that we will reach the revelation of the upper world and we all will enter it. And one who hasn’t been awarded in this life will be granted in the next life. But why wait if we can do it right now?

A Kabbalistic book has a special power that influences the reader and develops new desires, concepts, thoughts, and feelings in him. Then he begins to understand, feel, and see with his inner vision what the book says.
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From the Virtual Lesson “The Time of Kabbalah,” 6/13/17

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Torah, Deuteronomy 27:04: And it will be, when you cross the Jordan, that you shall set up these stones, [regarding] which I command you this day on Mount Ebal, and you shall plaster them with lime.

We move from mountain to mountain all the time. The word “mountain” is translated as Har in Hebrew, which stems from the word “Hirhurim,” which means doubts or problems. The mountains towering before us represent bursts of egoism. and without climbing them it is impossible to conquer our egoism.

What does it mean to conquer the land of Israel? “Land” (Eretz) comes from the word “Ratzon” (Desire). You take your desire and begin to change it from an egoistic nature to an altruistic one, which means you work with it for the sake of bestowal and you receive an opportunity to enter the land of Israel.

Our egoistic desire is divided into twelve parts; therefore, the Torah speaks about twelve stones, twelve tribes, and so on.

It is written, “you shall set up these stones, [regarding] which I command you this day on Mount Ebal, and you shall plaster them with lime.” This means purifying the stones; turning them into whiteness is the quality of bestowal. Exactly upon the common quality of bestowal, it is already possible to carve the letters of the Torah.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 11/21/16

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Preparation for the Lesson

Writings of Rabash, ” Vol. 1, Article 24

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 40

Lesson on the Topic: “The Period of ‘Between the Straits'”

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Question: The Creator wants enjoyment on account of our correction in which we receive for His sake and that we will attain this at any price. Therefore, the Creator is the greatest egoist. Is this the level of altruism we must achieve?

Answer: The Creator is the characteristic of absolute goodness. It can be said of Him that He is the greatest altruist or egoist, yet this is just one unchanging characteristic. The Creator is the nature in which we are found.

We are immersed within a “black bubble” whose characteristic is absolute egoism, and we need to gradually get out of it.

The desire of the Creator is to bestow. We cannot wonder whether He is an egoist or not because there is nothing in Him except for a desire to bestow. The Creator is only a desire to bestow and all of His creations are only a desire to receive. We were created this way intentionally to be His opposite, otherwise we would not be called creations, meaning separated from the Creator.

To be like the Creator, to attain the same level and to serve with identical happiness, with fulfillment, our desire to receive must receive only with an intention for the sake of bestowal; it will then be equal with the level of the Creator, even though having a characteristic opposite His, a nature of reception not bestowal.

Therefore, our work is summed up as the acquisition of an intention. To the degree that our intention is to bestow, we can use the desire to receive as much as we want because then our actions will be directed toward bestowal and we will be like the Creator, equal to Him, understanding Him, and fulfilled like Him.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/26/17

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Question: What should I ask from the Creator for a friend and how should I do it?

Answer: If I don’t feel the particular needs and urgencies of a friend, then all of us have one need: we want to unite and discover the “Creator” in this unity. This is the request that I must ask for myself, for the friends, and for the entire group. This is a general, common, and constant turning toward the Creator.
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From the talk at a videoconference with the Learning Center students, 5/21/17

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Question: Is it possible to approach spirituality by refraining from fulfilling desires like wealth and control? Is it possible to fulfill myself by feeling these desires through work in a group of Ten?

Answer: No. First, we need to move through many different egoistic possibilities: wealth, control, respect, all kinds of pleasures. There is nowhere to escape from this.

In order to push a person to correction, it is specifically these desires that develop in a person and then he must rise above them.

Therefore, I don’t believe that it is up to us to run away from any desires and classify them as necessary and unnecessary, good and bad desires. It is not necessary to be engaged with them; rather, one should be involved with maximal attraction of the upper Light within the group, with entry into the first spiritual level. This is what we are involved with every day in the morning lessons.

Despite our yearning for spirituality, various desires and problems increase for us all the time: financial, familial, health, and others.

We cannot run away from them anywhere, and we must simultaneously act and understand that the solution to spiritual problems always happens on a background of material problems.

The more we advance it will become more and more understood by us that we need to rise above all these problems, and then they will be solved very simply.

Suppose that some problem pops up and it is clear that it appeared because you didn’t work on the connection with the friends enough; if you deepen the connection, then the material problem will begin to disappear.
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From the Webinar 5/21/17

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One should work for the well-being of people as much as one can and even more than one’s ability, if needed, until there is no hunger or thirst in the entire world. (Baal HaSulam, The Writings Of The Last Generation).

We do not understand the mindset of a person who is advancing to this state. He sees in the whole world the acts of the Creator, which he must correct and thus achieve adhesion with Him.

Therefore, at the first stage, love for the neighbor becomes a tool for achieving this great stage of eternity, infinity, and perfection for him. And he strives for it. And when he begins to deal with this, he sees that in fact it is not a tool, but a field of activity in which he merges with the Creator.

It is written: “One should work for the well-being of people as much as one can and even more than one’s ability, if needed…” This means that I can ask and pray to new forces and new opportunities for the benefit of others, not for my own sake.

I do not care about myself at all, because being in bestowal, I am sure that I will always have necessities. I just do not think about it, and I am only busy giving to society.

Question: What does the phrase “until the hunger and thirst disappear in the world” mean?

Answer: This means that until basic egoistic needs disappear, people desire to fill themselves. Being engaged only in bestowal, they will stop thinking about it, and the world will move to a different state. And spiritual hunger and thirst will not disappear anywhere. On the contrary, they will increase, infinitely.

Question: Won’t a person even think about his basic necessities?

Answer: These necessities will disappear. We will move to a state in which there is no food, nor this world, nor our ordinary physiology because selfish needs will disappear; they will be overridden by love and mutual participation between us. This world will disappear from our sensations. Baal HaSulam writes about this in many articles.
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From KabTV’s “The Last Generation” 6/5/17

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