If I do not integrate with the group against my desire and do not demand the friends to accept and hold me to free me from my egoistic prison, then I will never succeed. Even if I succeeded in integrating with my friends for a while, the time will surely come when I lose all the desire and want to be left alone. I will hate them and will not even want to look at them.

Then again, a time comes when I manage to overcome myself, and then, at the call of the point in the heart, I come to the group again and want to connect with it. We receive such opportunities from above and can only reduce the time between the attempts.

Again, I join the group and fall out of it again, moving from one polar state to another. Sometimes I don’t want to think about the group or even about the wisdom of Kabbalah at all. Then, suddenly I realize that spirituality is only within the group and I need it. Such polar states indicate progress.

At first, it seems that there is one desire in us called Joseph that pulls us toward connection and there are his brothers who protest against him. Later we will understand that there really is no separation between Joseph and his brothers; these are the very same desires that are raised by the reforming Light and then fall.¹

All the corrections, all the 613 commandments, can be kept only through global connection both in general, connection of the people of Israel and throughout the world, and in the ten, the minimal cell of correction.

The rule “Love thy friend as thyself” says that even my initial, individual correction cannot be done outside the framework of the ten. It is only through mutual integration that one can build a system in which at least some connection is manifested or its absence is revealed in order to correct it.

All corrections happen not in each element separately, but in their connection.²

Each friend makes every effort to integrate with the others and by receiving strength from the other nine, he connects with them. And so one fulfills one’s personal commandment of “Love thy friend as thyself.” When all ten friends reach such a state, their individual corrections connect together into one collective “Love thy friend as thyself” inside of which the Creator is revealed. Love of friends leads them to the love of the Creator.³

None of us can keep all the 613 commandments, corrections. This is possible only through integration of each one with all the others. Each one contains 613 desires within, but one cannot correct them without connection with the others. It is only in this connection that we can fulfill all 613 commandments.

Each requires a new connection, as if on a telephone switchboard where operators once used to manually connect the lines. A person is always at such a switchboard station where he must activate various properties in the friends and put them to work. They incorporate his properties in their work, and thus eventually the ten Sefirot are formed—a mini model of the entire universe.⁴
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/16/19, Writings of Rabash, Vol. 1, Article 5 “What Does the Rule ‘Love Thy Friend as Thyself’ Give Us”
1 Minute 39:35
2 Minute 47:00
3 Minute 50:00
4 Minute 59:55

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The Ten—A Special Kind Of Unity
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