Question: How can a woman begin to love the spiritual teacher?

Answer: I think that it is much easier for a woman than for a man since she feels no internal resistance or conflict with the teacher. To love the teacher means to love the source of your spiritual existence. In fact, the teacher is a kind of a transmitter of spiritual energy, but for you, it is the source. It is like parents who are the source for their baby because everything the baby receives, he gets from them.

It makes no difference whether it is a man or a woman with regard to the teacher. There were times when a woman for many years was the leader of the Israeli nation, its spiritual leader, the teacher, and those were actually years when the whole nation was on a spiritual level. This indicates that people are simply detached from their external wrapping. Today it is very hard to imagine it.

In the past many prophets were women: Deborah, Huldah, and others. A prophet is a person who is in a direct connection with the Creator. What difference does it make whether it is a man or a woman? We shouldn’t regard the teacher as a man, but as the source of the power, the information, and the filling, like an upper Partzuf. This will come gradually.
[142842]
From the Convention In Sochi 8/25/14, Lesson 3

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On the second day of the convention it is proposed that we examine the subject, “How do we get rid of the ‘stench’ of the rotten ego with the help of our efforts?” There are articles by Baal HaSulam and Rabash in which it is said that when a person looks at how his ugly desire gradually dies in agony, he is pleased by this because with this he is born. To the same degree that the ego rots, he feels that the Adam (man) is born in him.

The ego is like inverted, plowed under by the plow. This means it is reversed, reversed to altruism. The plow is the Light of the Creator. The fertilizer is our efforts with which we previously wanted to fill the ego.

Ultimately, under the influence of the Creator, the quantity of our efforts becomes qualitative. We receive an opposite ego in which the “flower bud from the ground” is revealed, the altruistic characteristic, our soul. This is talked about in the second article of The Book of Zohar, “The Flower Buds.”

After the true “self” grows in us, we must scrutinize if we are ready to connect to “we,” meaning to attain the same covenant about which we spoke in the beginning. Thus, the second day will finish with this, where we (individualists) are connected into a single “we,” meaning into our single “self.” With this we go to sleep joyful, satisfied, and happy.

The result of the whole day must be prayer, our gathered desire, as much as this is possible, yearning for the goal, for the power to realize this goal. Every stage must be accompanied by a better and better molding of this petitioning, this prayer.
[142775]
From the Convention In Sochi 8/25/14, Lesson 4

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One of the lectures planned for the St. Petersburg convention is called “the cycle of the ego in nature.” Is there anything else in nature but that?

Everyone should draw his whole ego out and tell us how much he loves to deal with it, like a dung beetle. We should not cry or beat our chest, but normally and seriously feel what the Creator said: “I have created the evil inclination; I have created the Torah as a spice.”

We have to bring out everything there is in us and compose a song about how ugly we are inside and how much we love our ugliness. Our greed, the inner lie, and our inability to see the truth, our inability to love and to bestow should be expressed in this song.

We have to feel it so well that we will really be disgusted by ourselves, but the most important thing in the revelation of our terrible primary attributes is that they don’t allow us to unite.

Question: We always try to end the day positively. But in this case is it better if everyone went to sleep in the shattered state, under the impression of the revealed ego?

Answer: No, I thing the revelation of our rotten internality should delight us. After all, we finally understand what our illness is, like a person who discovers the reason of his ill state. The next day he will come and get the medicine, but he will know the exact reason, and he will be glad about that.
[142771]
From the Convention In Sochi 8/25/14, Lesson 4

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We make a covenant at the convention because without the covenant we cannot reach the common desire by which we reveal the Creator. It isn’t anyone’s caprice but an essential condition that is necessary for the spiritual work.

According to the law of equivalence of form, a vessel (Kli) that discovers a certain attribute must resemble that attribute in our world too. Take physics, chemistry, physiology, or anything you like for example, it is the same on all levels.

Thus we should attain the attribute of resembling and becoming equal to the Creator, and it is attained in the connection between us when we ascend above the ego. This is what we should aspire to. Such acceptance of the way, the intention, and the attainment of this state is called a covenant. Although we have not attained it yet, we commit ourselves to that.

We can tell people about that in advance. We are not hiding anything, and this is the reason we are holding the convention that has to bring us all to maximum connection and unity and even, hopefully, to the first level of resembling and being equal to the Creator, which means to His revelation.
[142769]
From the Convention In Sochi 8/25/14, Lesson 4

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We are setting a simple standard for the upcoming convention in St. Petersburg: Those who come here and who will participate in the convention have to dedicate themselves to the covenant between us, so that the Creator and the general correction will be revealed in them. This is not subject to debate.

We tell ourselves that we are in an ideal state and that the distortion of the harmony is inside of us. Everyone must find the deficiency inside him that conceals the spiritual revelation from him and from everyone else. So the main thing is to delve into myself in self-scrutiny.

All the answers are inside me since I am surrounded by wholeness and the world of Ein Sof (Infinity). So this self-scrutiny and looking deep inside ourselves comes down to a prayer to the Creator and in increasing our sensitivity to Him.

This means that we should understand that even now we are in an absolutely ideal state and that all the problems are inside of us, in our uncorrected senses. We need each other’s help and together we can reach the state in which we feel the real ideal world. This is our mission in the convention and our mission in life.

Every day will start with a friends’ meeting in which the friends from Sochi bring everyone to an emotional state. The preparation is rather long and serious, and it increases our feelings and the inner tension. As a result, each one composes his personal prayer, which is poured from him and is expressed on paper.

Then there is the first lecture about what the Creator demands of me. In the sources, it says that the Creator demands fear. We have to unite and to connect in order to gather, establish, and create the right form of tremble.

Why is that the precondition with which we enter the next state? Fear is the feeling of necessity, the feeling of having no choice, the feeling of something that is approaching, of something that is not understood. It has to be established in the form of a special necessity. It isn’t fear but an inner tremble because I have to reach the love of the created beings and through them the love of the Creator, but I cannot attain that by myself.

The final outcome at the end of the day should be a serious prayer that is attained by the broken hearts, extracting every drop of blood from the heart, everything there is in it. The day ends with a general prayer to the Creator.
[142766]
From the Convention In Sochi 8/25/14, Lesson 4

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Question: In Sochi we attained such a connection and unification that you are calling all the participants in the activity the “Sochi Group.” Is it possible in the upcoming Saint Petersburg congress that all will become one homogeneous group of Saint Petersburg?

Answer: Even without Sochi, what I have seen throughout this month in South and North America amazes me: The friends have made a breakthrough and moved ahead. I have never participated in such unique conventions as in Mexico and New York.

Suddenly I saw people who could tear themselves away from their daily lives, their families, and the external world and break through together into a common denominator. Moreover, this was in America, a nation where people are afraid to get close to each other and they protect themselves with fierce dedication. Then suddenly, something like this was revealed.

There were more than a hundred students there from the Education Center that until the convention had not participated in anything. They sat hugging each other, sang in a bar in the evening until two in the morning. People suddenly “disconnected” from their American mentality.

And with the full enthusiasm of the participants, the convention began with an ascent, and also ended with this enthusiasm. Never before had the Americans experienced this. They always traveled home quietly a few hours before the end of the convention, but there was never something like that there!

When I was leaving, everyone stood, cried, and watched the convention end. For America this was something indescribable. I am very familiar with this continent. Moreover, these were not Russians and not Jews, but really Americans! So we have a starting point for truly making our united Kli.

After what we have done in Russia, if we make the same breakthrough as the Americans, then there is simply an infinite state ahead for us.
[142713]
From the Convention In Sochi 8/25/14, lesson 3

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Question: Upon returning from Sochi there is the fear of adhering to the friends who weren’t there so as not to catch viruses of the external world from them. How can we overcome this distance and not feel elated about being in Sochi while they weren’t?

Answer: When I look at everyone with an external perspective, I see that the Sochi group is much higher, more united and enlightened than the friends who were not here.

Of course, I cannot adhere to them after Sochi. On the other hand, the Creator has given me this state! He depicts this picture for me. But in fact I have to look at the group like Rabbi Yossi Ben Kisma who, as a great Kabbalist, saw the future state of his students who were still mediocre.

The future is actually constant, which means that you can see that the whole world is corrected even now. All these states exist in the spiritual world! They are simply portrayed to us in a certain order according to our ability to perceive them. Therefore it is said: “They have eyes but they cannot see, they have ears but they cannot hear.”

I will try to look at the group before me as a higher group than the one in Sochi, since in Sochi I saw an advanced group according to my attributes, while here, I see a group that is not corrected according to the same attributes.

One judges according to his own flaws and so I have to make an effort to see them as greater than the ones in Sochi, and to adhere to them with my soul, to the same state that I reveal in them as a higher state.

Then a new opportunity will open up for me, but it will already be the next higher level, when I correct all the ego that I see in my friends through my attitude towards them. I don’t see this ego; I already see it as corrected.
[142705]
From the Convention In Sochi 8/25/14, Lesson 2

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Question: If my friend is in a difficult situation, what must my prayer be? Must it only be about him or about the whole world?

Answer: In cases where you don’t know how to behave and you have no clear discernment about how to act, and even in those cases where you seem to know how to behave, you must consult with other friends. You are part of a large collective and you don’t have the right to act and behave on your own, as your mind or heart tells you.

You are a small cog in a large machine, and you must realize that according to this general mechanism, you alone cannot insert new relationships into the work. It is impossible for a person to act according to the principle, “That is what I decided, that is what I suppose, and that is what I will do.” In such a case, we will remove you from our machine. Even though our mechanism will become smaller, it will work in partnership.
[142676]
From the Convention In Sochi 8/25/14, lesson 2

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Question: How do we hasten our development?

Answer: Hastening development depends only upon the intensity of the correcting Light, the Light that Reforms. And its intensity also depends on the quantity and quality of the demand for Light.

So you must coordinate your common intentions, common decisions, the yearning, the desires, and shared demands in such a form that among you, there will be no internal gaps.

As a result of the morning workshop, you must reach a united intention for the whole day, and after that, hold onto it throughout the day so that when you look at each other you will feel that everyone is in this. Just the way a dog feels the mood of its owner is how you must feel about the movements of your friend, his behavior, and his drive.
[142673]
From the Convention In Sochi 8/25/14, lesson 2

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Question: When they disperse from Sochi to their homes, the people no longer want to be the way they were before. But what can they do if the city “cloaks” the person with all of its problems?

Answer: We must have two “coverings,” which we must always be concerned about guarding.

There is my external covering. Before everyone I perform like a theatrical actor. Everything that I display to my co-workers, neighbors, and even my family is all external. And inside is my own self. This is my “Sochi,” my friends, my spirituality, my true life.

When you are in your Sochi, you can allow yourselves to be temporarily composed of one part with which you come in contact with everyone and make yourselves a single Adam (man). And after that, when you disperse, when you go out to the external world, you must immediately clothe yourselves with your “outer shirt.”

It is precisely in the opposition between these two states, these two bodies, in one person where one grows.

Comment: So then when a person returns from Sochi he will sit at home longing and suffering.

Answer: We can use the coming convention in Saint Petersburg. We need to gather everyone into a single whole. Why do we think that people are longing and falling? There are no descents! There is only ascent now, and that is all:  rant and rave! What has already been, already was. They descended; so they descended. This was because the external environment influenced everyone. But now it is necessary to very quickly cheer up and begin to work.

We can use this immense power! People are ready to unite, and they understand you! So you must begin to connect and unite them, to prepare them and draw them to the convention.
[142666]
From the Convention In Sochi 8/25/14, lesson 2

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