Question: You say that our next work is to perform exercises in increasing our sensitivity.

Answer: This is what all our work comes down to. The only thing that changes in us is our sensitivity and therefore we perceive the world around us changing. But in fact, it remains the same. This means that the direct Upper Light totally fills everything.

My Reshimot (reminiscences) are constantly changing and spinning, substituting a new Reshimo under the constant Upper Light that fills everything, and therefore a different pictures appear in me, like single frames in a movie.

Question: What should we do in order to start feeling the pain and suffering of our friends?

Answer: We will begin to feel our friends only as a result of our efforts and through this, the Upper Light will influence us.

The Light operates in two ways: On the one hand, it can influence the unprepared vessel so that our Reshimot will constantly grow, and so we see that the world is developing and developing badly, because the Reshimot are revealed as more and more shattered each time. This is because the Reshimot come in an increasingly stronger flow appearing on the background of the constant white Light. But if we want to discover these Reshimot by ourselves, since their correct fulfillment enables us to move towards the Creator and to resemble and become like the Light, we will feel our evolution as good.

There are two options to perceive the Light: a negative one, like darkness, and a positive one, like the Light. Therefore, I give an example that there is Light (Ohr) and there is Orta (night in Aramaic). It is the same thing and these two words have the same Hebrew root.
[142653]
From the Convention In Sochi 8/25/14, Lesson 2

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Question: In order to correct and balance the ego, a person must feel it as evil. How must we make indifference and insensitivity toward others intolerable?

Answer: Indifference is the greatest problem. When I hate, this is good; when I love, this is very good. However, we go through 99% of our lives with feelings of indifference. People consider this normal in our current life.

What can help get me out of indifference, to awaken and hold me in this state every moment of life? It is only the environment.

You have moved through very good states of very great elevation of sensitivity, more internal, not an external request for change. This is enviable.

If all of our groups were like this, then certainly the general situation would become much better. It will be possible to attain this in the next convention by trying to prepare and transmit to everyone the feelings and sensations that you have experienced, are experiencing, and will again try to experience within you. It is possible.

If you connected the state that you experienced with the 300 friends who were in Sochi, and you multiply it by five, with the same mass that will be in the convention in Saint Petersburg, and after that, 500 times, then even much more, with the mass that will disperse throughout the world, we can achieve a lot.

This is one of the most useful examples because you will multiply the sensations, the demands, the aspirations to each other,  the neutralization of the ego, and the desire to be a single whole by that quantity of people with the help of envy, through showing them how this is working within you, and not in them. So, the multiplication of your yearning will happen together with their yearning, and this will produce an immense influence and impression.
[142491]
From the Convention In Sochi 8/25/14, lesson 2

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Initially there is only one force in nature that created, manages, and determines everything. It is neither positive nor negative. It is simply an attribute.

We can feel this force only by its opposite aspects because we don’t feel anything in the form of one phenomenon, one value. The term “value” means that it includes two parameters: the base and the dimension, one (what it is and what it wants).

Our feelings are always made of two opposite attributes that are based on different contrasts: black and white, silence and noise, etc. This means that as created beings we feel ourselves only if there are two opposite forces in us.

The Creator is one unique force that wants to create us and to bring us to the upper state, but in order to exist and to be able to reach every state we have to be made of three forces:

• The negative force which differentiates us from the Creator; the ego without which there cannot be a created being.
• The positive force that can balance our ego.
• The middle force that is created and revealed between them as a result of the right balance between the two forces, i.e., the best use of the ego in its correct form, in the form of bestowal and love. This is the result because the third line, the middle line, is man.

In order to balance the ego that we receive from the Creator, we have to assess it as evil and understand that it was given to us from above and to balance it in order to make something that resembles the Creator from it. Thus, all our work comes down to a request, to a demand, in an action that draws the positive force that can balance the negative force.

We have to assess the ego as a negative force that is inside us, and the attribute of love and bestowal, altruism, as the positive force that is external to us. It is the Creator’s attribute and therefore sustains all of creation. We should want to balance these two forces inside us by using the ego in its balanced state with the right line as much as we can.

All this can be fulfilled only under the influence of the right example that the environment sets for us because a person will never feel the desire to work against his own nature, against his ego. He will always avoid it and will find any means so as not to annul his ego.

Balancing the ego by bestowal means using it in a zero state only to exist in a minimal form or restricting the use of the ego and then allowing it to be used correctly by balancing it with the right line. But all this is only to the extent that a person can work with the environment.

This whole world (the still, vegetative, animate nature, and man), a condition we feel we are in, is given to us so that we can use the environment correctly and want to acquire the positive force that balances the negative force.

Therefore, the whole world is the revelation of the ego on the white background of the Light, and the ego should gradually bring us to a state in which we will begin to feel that this state is unbearable. Or it will develop under the influence of the growing ego and bring about sufferings that will force us to look for a way to cope with the ego.

We should develop the correct positive force inside us and by it feel even the smallest ego inside us as bad. That will be enough for us to want to balance, neutralize, and use it correctly.

But in any case, the natural course of our evolution, which is constant and which cannot be changed or affected in any way, means that the ego is constantly growing in us and in the still, vegetative, and animate nature but to a lesser degree. The only thing we can do is to feel that the ego is bad as soon as possible and thus draw the Light that balances and corrects it.
[142426]
From the Convention In Sochi 8/25/14, Lesson 2

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Question: What does it mean to give pleasure to the Creator with the right intention? “Giving pleasure to the Creator” sounds rather abstract.

Answer: Suppose we have the privilege of working with each other. We must become friends. I must reach a state where I feel you are so close to me that it seems that a part appears between us as a single whole, as if we were conjoined twins. There could be one liver or one heart and all the rest is different.

Something in common appears between us, and in this commonality, I feel the Creator who is connecting us together. He deliberately made a separation between us and is now connecting us. Ultimately we become connected together as a single whole.

Question: So to whom am I giving pleasure?

Answer: You discover in the connection between us a common force called the “Creator,” and you feel how happy He is about the state where we merge and become “One.” By merging into a single whole, we feel Him there because He is One.. This is already a single Kli (vessel) that can feel its upper source, the Creator.

This is one precise activity and there is nothing else like it in nature. As in mathematics, there is zero and something different from zero. Everything else is built only on this. So at the moment, when you reach the One, when you and a friend merge together, then his spiritual source, the Creator, is revealed in him. All the effort that you invested in your connection now becomes happiness that you discover in him.

In this is the right effort, to become connected together, “as one person with one heart.” “With one heart” means that you have the same desires, a single intention, the same thoughts, and the same yearnings to help and complete each other. This is what you must attain here, at least in some particular place under these conditions.

Comment: I don’t understand to what I must connect myself.

Answer: The Upper Light will influence you. You must do this! Only you can summon it. There is a kind of switch, and when you turn it on, the Upper Light works.

Question: Where is this switch found, in the mind or in the heart?

Answer: In the heart. The mind is necessary to understand what to do with the heart. The switch is found in the heart, meaning the desires, where are they directed, towards what states? “And the next state that I want to receive emotionally indicates the direction of the heart.”

Comment: I haven’t understood anything.

Answer: It is good that you understand that you haven’t understood anything. This means that already in you there is a very good internal collection of characteristics and feelings. You understand that this isn’t simple, that everything slips away, that our ego becomes an obstacle for us. What can you do with it? It is precisely because you want to feel everything deeply that you say that you haven’t understood anything. The heart understands, the mind doesn’t, and we don’t need to become confused about this. The mind is given to us only to scrutinize and analyze our states.

I am trying to answer you emotionally only, but I could convey everything through diagrams, like Kabbalists do. When my students have no spiritual states, I make sketches for them. And then, when there is an inner state, I address that specifically. Basically, how could this be portrayed? Every person already draws it for himself in his heart.

Turn on the switch, so that the Ohr Makif (Surrounding Light) will influence you. Nothing else will help! Only the Light! But you must know its direction and imagine that correctly within yourself.
[142581]
From the Convention In Sochi 8/25/14, lesson 2

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Question: What does it mean to be similar to Light?

Answer: Light is the characteristic of bestowal that is realized in us in only one form, mutual connection. So what must I bestow, give, and to whom? How? What do I have? Suppose that I give you my coffee or a slice of bread….

No. My giving is not giving something external; rather, I give myself. This means that I adhere to you, to your desires, aspirations, and yearnings. With this I become a complete helper to you. We produce the characteristic of bestowal this way, or an even higher characteristic, love. That is how our similarity and equivalence with the Creator is realized. As He is within us, He wants to be discovered. That is also what we want regarding every friend.

So it is impossible to become similar to the Creator before you transform to being like Him with the help of higher bestowal towards your friends, or at least one of them; that doesn’t matter. When you don’t work for your own sake, then you are completely indifferent to the rest of the world, you don’t feel it and it is tasteless. And if you can connect with it, you become similar to the Creator.

The entire external world is the revelation of the Creator in a form that is our opposite. The moment that we attract this world to us and become adhered with it, with love for everyone, for our haters, for our opponents, for the masses of millions of people who are completely unimportant to us, gradually, in circles, we develop an identical relationship with the Creator. The Creator is found in them, and we discover Him in them. This is called: “I dwell among my people” (Kings II 4:13).
[142562]
From the Convention In Sochi 8/25/14, Lesson 2

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Light is the characteristic of bestowal, and the Creator is identified in our perception of the Light . In fact, there is the upper light and something higher, its origin, which may not have the same characteristics, meaning that it is something that is completely disconnected from us.

This is because we feel the Creator with our characteristics, with our sensations, with our Kelim, with our senses; and through these, we judge Him by attributing to Him the appropriate names and characteristics. In fact, we don’t know how He feels outside of our senses nor do we know His image. A person gives names to the Creator according to how he perceives Him.

Feeling the Creator can be diverse, multifaceted, and varied. Light is called the sensation of the Creator, which teaches, corrects, fulfills, and shapes us. It is just the way a child perceives his parents in various forms, as teachers and educators, as protectors and those who are concerned about him.

So the Light is such a perception of the Creator, where in principle we don’t feel Him. But we do sense the power that shapes, corrects, and changes us so that we can feel Him.

In other words, the influence of the Creator on us, which prepares us for feeling the Creator, is called Light. Certainly the Creator and the Light are the same thing. This is because only this one source exists outside of us. Besides Him, only we exist, as only one person. Ultimately, each one of us will begin to perceive everything else as parts of Him without intermediaries.

In any case, we perceive everything like this. At first, we require the Light of the Creator and only after this do we want adherence with Him. This is the right relationship with Him. If you want to attain a state of similarity to Him, to relate to Him as He relates to you, then you must think about how to change and correct yourself. In this case it is possible to approach Him. Then our relationship to the Light will be directed towards being corrected and becoming similar to the Creator with mutual bestowal, like the host and the guest.

In any case, the Light is divided into many different influences on us. It is the Light of reason or the Light of feelings, under whose influence we begin to feel and understand who we are and in what way we are separate from the Creator.

Every understanding is built on our difference from the Creator. Even in our world when I perceive the people around me or a particular state, it isn’t important what, in any case we are feeling the Creator. It seems to us that these are some people or images. We are only feeling the Creator.

So we shouldn’t fool ourselves. When a person is involved with something or someone, especially with friends, he must understand that he is involved with the Creator. “There is none else besides Him.” This is one of the explanations; that there is nothing else besides the person and the Creator. And everything else that seems to exist for us, are fragments of my soul. So the main thing is the relationship with the Creator, since this is the Torah.

The Torah is all of those states that we must go through until full resemblance and equivalence with the Creator. This is all of the Light that we must perceive so that a change will happen within us from our first egoistic characteristic to the full completion of correction.

First we pass through a contraction of the ego; after that its neutralization, and after that, a correction, meaning the use of the ego for the purpose of bestowal. To the degree of these corrections, we perceive the Creator and begin to see that He relates to us like a concerned father who is teaching us.

Specifically, we feel the influence of the study, and this is called “Light.” And when the extent of this influence has itself been realized, then as a result of this, we feel the Creator Himself. And we feel Him differently, in a new way all the time, thanks to those characteristics and observations that are already corrected.
[142476]
From the Convention In Sochi 8/25/14, lesson 2

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Question: We felt a special state when we delved deep into the workshop and lost track of time; time passed and we didn’t even notice it. Does that mean that we drew the Light?

Answer: I don’t want to disappoint you, but this wasn’t the Light. Of course, if you were busy with something else that interested you, you would feel the exact same state. You shouldn’t care whether everything around you disappears or not, it is meaningless.

Do you see yourself inside the friends? Do you feel their movements as your own: their desires, intentions, direction, and changes? Do you feel the same inner sensations that the friend feels because there is one common heart beating inside you? We should try to examine this.

Question: The Creator waits for us to turn to Him. And turning to a friend, bestowing to him, should I expect something in return?

Answer: When you turn to a friend, you turn to the Creator. What do you expect in return? What do you want from Him? Do you want a certain inner connection and adhesion in order to attain the upper root and to discover how you delight Him by that? Everything is already included in such an action, but it should be dressed on specific figures, and in specific clothing.
[142564]
From the Convention In Sochi 8/25/14, Lesson 2

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Question: We have created a weapon so powerful that all of us have the opportunity not only to nullify and dissolve, but also to develop, to grow for the good of the society.

We have learned to feel ourselves as a single whole. What do we need to add to feel the Creator more clearly? Where must we make an effort besides in the lesson, besides praying for the success of our friends?

Answer: Everything that I feel around me is my soul, it is all me, but, in my perception, all of the people are detached from me by my ego. If I neutralize it, I will stop feeling them as contrary and opposite to me. I will begin to wish for them what I formerly wished for myself, meaning the best. Then, I will be using myself, my ego, in the right way, to correct it.

It is not about having the right attitude toward others, not about love of others; rather, it is to correct my ego within me.

How can I correct it? It is only according to the examples that I see: This one, I don’t love for this reason and that one for other reasons. That one is distorted, this one is repulsive, evil, and so forth. My ego portrays an emotional picture for me of my relationship toward everyone. I criticize everyone, just like everyone else does, for they have something to criticize others about, as it is written, “With his own blemish he stigmatizes [others] as unfit” (Talmud Kiddushin 70a).

I criticize the world that is portrayed to me as terrible, and I see it as getting even worse because the ego is growing. We perceive the world this way, according to how the ego portrays it to us: people fighting, someone kills someone, everything possible. That is how the ego draws a picture of the world for us, not within us, but outside of us so that everything will be perceived more vividly, clearly, and juicily.

In order to correct the ego, a very good indicator has been given to me. I must bring myself to such a state where I see the world as the Garden of Eden (paradise): People love each other, they are only doing good for one another, and they merge into a single whole of mutual love.

In addition, it is the same thing in the still, vegetative, and animate nature. It depends on the internal correction of the person. The world itself doesn’t change; it is permanent. The person is the one who changes and sees the world differently. This is the entire correction.

When you are together, do you perceive a situation like this where you don’t see anything negative in the friends?

At first, one seems lazy to you, another seems dirty and disorganized, and a third is noisy. One annoys everyone with his pomposity and another through his shouting. No one knows his place. That is how you evaluate everyone at first.

Can you now say that these people are closer to you, that you don’t see any distorted faces, any harmful gazes? This is because when you live with someone, you no longer pay attention to his defects and perceive him as some kind of general image. For example, a little child doesn’t see his mother, but knows that there is someone big next to him: This is his mother.

Can you say the same thing about your relationship with the friends? Has some kind of change taken place in them, at least partially? Do you feel, even egoistically, that you can’t imagine your life without them? Do you feel that fragments of you are scattered throughout Russia, as if your body has been torn to pieces and scattered to different locales?

A person’s sensation must be precisely like this, really to such a degree that you will begin to feel each other, experiencing parallel states, and, after that, a single common state of ascent or descent. You even will begin to feel each other’s physiological states: how this one has a stomachache and that one a headache.

There was a time in ancient days when these were the requirements of a doctor. This is because medicine was not based on all kinds of devices, but on the doctor’s feeling the state of the patient because he was a divine doctor. Correction was a profession where one corrected another. So, by feeling him, he had to work together with the Light to convey it to the patient, to help him. This was a completely different medicine.

In this way, it is necessary to scrutinize what we are missing all the time so that the situation of the separate bodies will disappear and everyone will become “like one person with one heart.” They will move in sync. They will understand and feel each other where everyone must optimally be at every moment. This is not Brownian movement; it is not chaotic. Rather, it is internally coordinated because a single Light acts upon and influences everyone.

If we direct ourselves like this, we will raise our sensitivity. Then, we will begin to feel how one force is working within us and is gathering us together to the degree of our sensitivity toward it, to the required degree, by our inner yearning and constant attraction.

This is all of our common work that only can be done collectively. One person can jump, walk, make an effort, but, for him nothing will come of it. Essentially, he is doing everything right, but the proof that he is doing this for the sake of the Creator, is when he carries out these activities together with others, wanting to connect with them.

Why? It is because the ego was created specifically to separate us, and, through nullifying it, a person directs himself toward the Creator, toward resemblance and equivalence with Him. The ego is a helper that we cannot do without.
[142480]
From the Convention In Sochi 8/25/14, Lesson 2

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Question: Not everyone has the opportunity to come to the convention in Saint Petersburg in September. How can all the friends in the world help each other to connect to it?

Answer: This convention will engage the Sochi group, that is, those friends who were doing dissemination work in Sochi this summer, and in three days, we must go through what they went through.

Clearly, not only those who are coming to Saint Petersburg will participate, but rather all our groups and students from all over the world. So, all of us together as a whole, by internally feeling all that they felt and experienced in Sochi, will absolutely acquire a new level. We are standing before this. We are waiting and expecting from them preparation for realizing the convention in Saint Petersburg.

There is no obligation at all to come physically to the convention. A trip is not at all relevant to this. Distance means nothing. I saw this in the example of our groups in South America who adhere to us without separation through integral connection and are tightly connected with the daily lessons. They simply have no feeling of detachment or of distance.

It is the same thing with the friends in Sochi who wholeheartedly let me go home after a one day visit so that the following night, I could transmit a lesson to everyone. I feel that they also have the same feeling, the same connection, the same fulfillment and satisfaction from the lessons.

So, all of us are mutually connected, and there are no problems for anyone regarding connecting to the convention. Someone who really cannot come to the convention doesn’t need to take the trouble and invest superhuman efforts beyond the limits of his ability. It is preferable to organize mirror conventions in your groups where you keep maximal contact, and I assure you the same intensity of connection and the same enthusiasm. If you are with us, then we are with you as if we are found in a single place.

In general, we want the experience in Sochi to be conveyed to everyone in sensation. Our great world community will be integrated with what they go through and their experiences, so this will be a very good level.

Our friends, men and women, attained a very good and beautiful mutual cooperation and mutual integration there, truly real dedication. We hope that we also will be integrated with them. This is why friends exist.
[142256]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/26/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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During spiritual development a person passes through a multitude of stages before reaching despair. From despair he further experiences all kinds of states until he discovers that only the Creator can help him.

If we are in a group, then as it is said, (Isaiah 41:6) “They helped every one his neighbor.” We remind each other that the Creator is the one who is giving us all kinds of exercises and that behind all of these states that happen to us we must discover Him at every moment. But we are confused by forgetting about this between these moments that all of this is coming so that we will ask Him to be revealed. By ourselves we are incapable of discovering the Creator.

About this, Baal HaSulam writes in the article, “There is None Else Beside Him”: And the benefit from the rejections is that through them a person receives a need and a complete desire for the Creator to help him, since he sees that otherwise he is lost.

So we must focus all of our attention on how to discover the Creator in everything that is happening with us. We must check what the Kabbalists recommend for us to do when we are studying, when we are in a group, and when we are disseminating so that all of these activities will be directed towards discovering the Creator in every situation that happens to each of us and with all of us together.

The Creator only helps those people who truly want to get closer to Him. It is impossible for them to stop in the middle of the way and remain in the false situation they are currently in.

If a Reshimo, a desire to approach the Creator, is truly awakened in them, He helps them by placing them in even more complicated situations where it is even more difficult to comprehend, understand, and agree that everything comes from the Creator. Or He lets them relax; everything is okay, everything is wonderful: They study, they advance, they disseminate, everything is going well and they have no lack of anything.

But if the person invests effort in every circumstance and tries to gather additional desires with the help of the group and work with the external public, all of these desires acquired from the friends or from the external world become parts of his soul if he gathers all the desires from them, all of the deficiencies for fulfillment, all of their failures in life. He transforms them into a single desire, a single demand directed towards the Creator. So He organizes all of this for them. And then he cannot justify the Creator and he is so confused that he is not prepared to attribute everything to the Creator only; he thinks that all kinds of other causes and forces may exist.

And by beginning to be involved with them, the person suddenly sees that he is not linking everything to the Creator. Likewise, he cannot say that everything that is happening is for the good. So he has a reason to advance, there is an imperative to shout to the Creator to help him so that He will give him the right perception, so that He will be discovered. But this is not because the person is confused. In this case he would be asking from the side of the ego for things to be better and more pleasant for him, for everything to be okay.

On the contrary, he wants to remain confused and have claims against the Creator. By not agreeing with Him, he blames Him for what is happening in the world and cannot bring himself to a state in which he sees that all of the events that are happening in the world, even the most difficult and worst situations, all this is a higher mercy and everything is coming from the good and that does good.

And all the vile and terrible situations only pass over our ego so that we will be distanced from it, and will purify ourselves of it, and then they will all remain in the ego, whereas, we detach ourselves from it and move toward the side of the Creator.

This means that the blows only help us to distance ourselves from the ego and move to the other side. They don’t pass over us, but over our ego and are felt in us to the degree that we adhere to it. But if we rise above it, then the blows remain there, within the ego.

Likewise, through these blows we must understand that this is the Upper Light that is shining more strongly than usual, but it cannot shine within the ego, so within the ego it is felt as the opposite, as darkness. And this darkness in the density of our desire, of the still, vegetative, and animate, and speaking, brings us the feeling of a world full of suffering.

If within this desire on the speaking level we build a group, with its help we can become detached from every egoistic desire. Then we rise like a spaceship and take off towards the Creator.

That is how we detach from all the bad sensations and are very happy about this because we begin to discover that there is none else beside Him and that He is the good that does good, and now we can say that about Him and not blame Him. We see the truth and so we are happy, not that we now feel that things are good for us, but because we can say good things about the Creator.
[142035]
From the Convention In New Jersey “Day Two” 8/9/14, Lesson 4

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