Question: You always say, “We have to ask, we should demand, and sometimes to do both ask and demand.” At what points should we ask and what should we demand?

Answer: This must come from the heart!

In general, the difference between a request and a demand is on two levels. When we work with the vessels of bestowal, meaning bestowal for the sake of bestowal, then we have a request, and when we work with the vessels of reception, meaning reception for the sake of bestowal, then we form a demand.

In other words, if we work with small egoistic desires, which only require clarification that don’t yet transform the ego into bestowal but only want to inhibit it, to transform it to Hassadim, this is only a request; and when we want to transform the ego into bestowal to work with Aviut ¾ (thickness), then we have a demand. This means that our request becomes a sharp and resolute demand.

In this way, the request or the demand depends upon the same Aviut (the thickness of the ego) with which you are working. If this ego is heavier, then you begin to demand that the Creator will correct it to the degree of its heaviness. However, if it is light and your desire is graded 0-2, then you’re just asking.

Question: However, people have different characteristics. How does one perceive?

Answer: This is not important. It doesn’t provide you with anything. Do you think that it is possible to think whether you are requesting or demanding, and how much and how? This is work in the heart!

You cannot monitor yourself with your intellect because the Creator is in the heart. First, the heart reacts with its degree of correction or destruction. Only after you feel your heart does awareness come to you.

So, it is pointless to carry out some kind of whim where you seemingly turn yourself this way or that. What? Are you going to play with the Creator?

Question: However, when a child asks me for something, my heart is softened and I give to him, and when he begins to demand, I refuse him.

Answer: This is not about that but about yearning for bestowal and love! If it is derived from small egoistic desires, then this is a request because I don’t need anything else, and if this is derived from heavy egoistic desires, then this request becomes a demand.
[130299]
From the World Zohar Week “Integral Education Convention” Day Three 2/4/14, Lesson 1

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Question: I want to ask a question on behalf of all of the sick and correlate this with the fact that there is none else besides Him. When I hear you, everything flows into me very well and I accept it, after that it passes to my intellect, and as a sensible person I cannot agree for some reason that He needs us to be sick.

Answer: This does not concern you. Use your intellect to recognize that there exists a single force in the world that gives you the possibility of thinking that He is not alone. Begin to “absorb” this initial expression: He gave us the possibility of feeling that we exist outside of Him, that He is not alone; he gave us the chance to choose to approach Him through equivalence of form.

Question: How is it possible to put yourself under this power so He will flirt with us in a different way?

Answer: It depends on how you perceive Him. He increases only His positive influence on you all the time. And depending on your situation, it could be that you feel Him as the opposite, negative.

Question: What do all of my sick friends and I need to do in order to feel this influence as positive?

Answer: Attain resemblance and equivalence to this force at least on the first level, that is, 1/125^th of its characteristic, this characteristic of bestowal and love. In this manner you will rise to the first level, pass through the border between an inability to feel Him and minimally feeling Him, this border is called the Machsom.

Do you want to be physically healthy? Yearn to resemble the Creator together with the friends. Imagine how you would nullify yourself in regard to the friends in order to reach the first restriction, Tzimtzum Aleph. It is possible to attain this only through mutual work.
[130216]
From the World Zohar Week “Integral Education Convention” Day Three 2/4/14, Lesson 1

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Question: To the degree of our advancement we truly begin to look at the world and people differently. But what must be done in order to see everyone in the end of correction (Gmar Tikkun)? Do you see everyone in this state?

Answer: I can’t imagine how it is possible to describe something from the spiritual world to you if the matching sensations don’t exist with you. I could say words to you and you would comprehend them in a distorted, egoistic mutation. It’s impossible to describe even those small levels close to us.

I am not in the end of correction. I am higher than you, but they also don’t let me rise higher, because I must be close to you. Therefore we need to go forward together.

It’s very good that you yearn for this feeling, want to feel and to understand it. But it’s not given if you lack the property of bestowal, and there is no possibility of creating  an appropriate picture within us. One can only ask; there is nothing other than prayers for all.

Question: A contradiction is created within me between the concept “There is none else besides Him” and the “prayer of many.” Meaning, can the focus of the person be directed towards only one thing?

Answer: No, this is the same thing. The prayer of many to the Creator is the completely accurate accommodation of an intention towards the goal. In the prayer of many you pray for yourself because the many is you, but when you describe them outside of yourself, you are detached from your egoistic “self.”

Question: It follows that the search for There is none else besides Him is not found within me, but is found outside, in the friends?

Answer: He is found everywhere. Don’t divide everything into physical distances but emotional distances that you need to integrate together.
[130213]
From the World Zohar Week “Integral Education Convention” Day Three 2/4/14, Lesson 1

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Question: When we come to a group we have a yearning for some inexplicable property. Then we begin to feel some tastes and understand that we are attracted towards the characteristic of bestowal. But when you say: “Try to feel all this as one,” then we are terribly afraid. There is a desire to flee, it’s unclear to where because this state presses from behind.

Answer: This is very good because there is nothing more opposite to our nature than bestowal and love. We are terribly afraid of it; we don’t want it, and when we reach it, we turn around and go back.

Question: How can we help each other, for indeed you cannot even help yourself?

Answer: Only the group can direct you so that you will cross the Machsom. I very much like the example from the Harry Potter films, Platform 9 3/4. In order to reach it, they must pass through a barrier that separates between the 9^th and 10^th platforms. So the mother of one of the children advises Harry: “All you have to do is to go directly into the barrier. Don’t stop and don’t be afraid that you will hit it, this is very important.” That is, you shouldn’t see this obstacle, it doesn’t exist, and so you will pass through.

Question: But how is it possible not to see it?!

Answer: You lack a connection. If you connect and unite among yourselves, the obstacle disappears. When you dissolve within the group of ten, the wall also dissolves.
[130210]
From the World Zohar Week “Integral Education Convention” Day Three 2/4/14, Lesson 1

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Question: You have suggested that I should try to feel “there is none else besides Him,” to imagine it, because it is not the reality I am in….

Answer: This is not the problem. The problem is nullifying yourself to such a degree that you feel that only the Creator exists.

Question: How? I don’t feel that He exists in our reality.

Answer: Ask. You turn towards a force that you don’t feel and ask Him to give you the possibility of feeling Him.

Feeling Him means becoming like Him. It means nullifying yourself since the feeling of self occurs because you are opposite to Him. And to that degree that you nullify yourself, you feel Him.

He and I cannot exist simultaneously. So you ask Him to nullify you, and with this, you will become like Him.

Repeat this many times together with the friends, and this will gradually begin to enter into your emotions. There is no other way.
[130111]
From the World Zohar Week “Integral Education Convention” Day Three 2/04/14, Lesson 1

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Baal HaSulam, Shamati, #25, “Things That Come From The Heart”: Regarding things that come from the heart, enter the heart. Hence, why do we see that even if things have already entered the heart, one still falls from his degree? Why do we see that even if things do enter a person’s heart he still falls from his spiritual level? We see that even if a person is impressed by what the teacher conveys to him, he still falls from the level on which he received the Torah, the intention and the thoughts of the teacher.

The thing is that when one hears the words of Torah from his teacher, i.e., the wisdom of his teacher, he immediately agrees with his teacher, and resolves to observe the words of his teacher with his heart and soul, because he really wants it to be fulfilled. But afterwards, when he comes out to the world, he sees, covets, and is infected by the multitude of desires roaming the world, that is, to other people’s desires, thoughts, and plans dealing with all sorts of nonsense and not spiritual development in this case, and he and his mind, his heart, and his will are annulled before the majority, that is, those conditions the environment is in.

As long as he has no power to judge the world to a scale of merit, they subdue him. He mingles with their desires…. What does that mean? If I am in a foreign environment, it is the Creator Who plays with me and Who places me there in different external conditions so that I will grow stronger with regard to the inner decisions that I have already made, despite the external influences that appear.

Suppose I am on my way home from the convention now and when I get on the plane I am already under the domination of a foreign environment. Can I remain in the same inner condition that I felt during the three conventions—concentrated, focused on the goal, feeling elated and feeling my friends—when I am under external conditions that pressure me? If I can, it is a state in which I control the outside world; if I can’t, it means that the outside world controls me.

But afterwards, when he comes out to the world, he sees, covets, and is infected by the multitude of desires i.e., society at large, dealing with nonsense, then if he cannot overcome himself, his thoughts, desires, and heart obey the majority.

Overcoming the multitude consists of two parts.

First, when I realize that I am detached from the support of the friends, I myself internally alienate them and keep away from them.

Secondly, I don’t see that everything is managed by the Creator anymore and that the thoughts of the multitude are sent to me on purpose so that I will tighten the connection with the group, with the sources even more than before, and will regard the external effect as the Creator’s game. After all, He sends me “helpers,” guards who want to throw me down the mountain I have been climbing on my way to the Creator, but I keep moving forward, holding on with my teeth in order to stay above the water and in the right direction. No matter what the influence of the environment is, I don’t go along with the current, but rather row towards my goal.

As long as he has no power to judge the world to a scale of merit…

After all, the Creator works for a person through the whole world! If I justify the world because it actually operates in order to help me advance, it means “to judge the world to the scale of merit.”

But if I cannot judge the whole world to the scale of merit, which means to draw it in my direction, realizing that the Creator sends me these obstacles on purpose so that I will advance more strongly; if I cannot connect to my friends and to the goal more strongly, then the world becomes external and the Creator disappears from it. If I forget that He is the one who has arranged everything and think that the world influences me by itself, the Creator disappears from it and I am left under the dominion of this world. … they subdue him. He mingles with their desires, i.e., a person diverts from the goal.

Then, when a person subdues to the desires of the world that surrounds him, he is led like sheep to the slaughter. He has no choice; he is compelled to think, want, crave, and demand everything that the majority demands; that is, he is under the domination of the external society. This is also under the authority of the Creator. He shouldn’t think that anything other than Him operates here. But this is a completely different control, not I shall hasten it (Achishena), but in its time (Beito). He then chooses their alien thoughts and their loathsome lusts and desires, which are alien to the spirit of the Torah. In that state he has no strength to subdue the majority, and goes along with the current, like the rest of the world.

Instead, there is only one counsel then, to cling to his teacher and to the books. This is called “From the mouth of books and from the mouth of authors.” He has to hold on with his teeth to the lessons and to the sources and to choose what is closer to him and what impresses him most strongly. It may be a certain article or a passage from TES, a song, anything. What’s important is that it should strengthen his connection with our society. Only by cleaving to them can he change his mind and will for the better. However, witty arguments will not help him change his mind, but only the remedy of Dvekut (adhesion), for this is a wondrous cure, as the Dvekut reforms him.

Only while one is inside Kedusha (Sanctity) can one argue with oneself and indulge in clever polemics that the mind necessitates that he should always walk on the path of the Creator. But this is all nonsense. However, one should know that even when he is wise and certain that he can already use this wit to defeat the Sitra Achra (other side), one must bear in mind, that all his wit and nice conclusions, the studying and the agreement with the friends, that all this is worthless. This is not an armament that can defeat the war on desire, for all these concepts are but a consequence he has attained after the aforementioned Dvekut.

Everything depends on how strongly a person ties himself to the group. After all, he has to speak to his friends on the phone, to contact them on the Internet, to prepare some material for them, to participate in the daily work. If he doesn’t do that, nothing will help. We are the ones who need the dissemination and not those to whom we disseminate. It compels us to be in constant movement and to improve. This is the only way we can advance!

What I say is based on my personal experience. Unfortunately I can think of 30-40 people who I once brought to Rabash who also engage in Kabbalah to a certain extent now, but you can feel what it means to study Kabbalah without advancement when you speak to them.

In other words, all the concepts upon which he builds his building, saying one must always follow in the path of the Creator, is founded in the Dvekut with his teacher. Thus, if he loses the foundation, then all the concepts are powerless, since they will now be lacking the foundation. Hence, one must not rely on one’s own mind, but cleave once more to books and authors, for only that can help him, and no wit and intellect, as they are lifeless.

In principle, this article says that everything that is sent to us in life is sent to us intentionally by the Creator, and we mustn’t forget it. We have to take advantage of all the obstacles in order to advance and to grow stronger in our advancement.

In fact there are no interferences. All these obstacles and barriers are a springboard. If we overcome them we will advance; if not, it means that we will have to overcome them indirectly. Everything depends on our participation.

The point is that we are not given any obstacles from Above that cannot be overcome. The Upper Light operates in a manner that is adapted to each of us according to our personal circumstances. All the obstacles that we encounter are always adapted to our abilities. It’s the ego that we have to correct on the next level. If a person remembers that, he adheres even more strongly to the advancement towards the Creator, to the teacher, the books, and the group.

Thus, he is not controlled by the external environment, although he is in good relations with it, but internally he is loyal to himself and to the environment. Moreover, gradually and without words, he begins to influence the environment so that it suddenly begins to change.

Let’s keep the connection between us so that the impression of the week we spent united, feeling wholeness between us, and in a wonderful state will only grow stronger! After all, we will each go our own way and each one will receive his own interferences and we have to keep the spirit of mutual guarantee and be committed that nothing will detach us from the group and that we will overcome all the obstacles and feel that we are together as if we have never gone our own ways.

If the interferences don’t pull us in different directions, we will feel the connection between us even more strongly, and this is actually what we need. If we can do that, then there are no words that can describe the level to which we will immediately ascend. We can fulfill our dream within the coming week! If we all, regardless of the distance between us, think about the fact that our friends should remain connected just as they are now, we can be sure that the Messiah will come. The word Messiah stems from the Hebrew word “Moshech,” “to pull,” and the Upper Light is revealed that completes all the corrections, pulling a person out of his ego to full adhesion with the Creator.
[129190]
From a lesson in Russian, 2/07/14

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Question: All of our thoughts come from the Creator. How can we be sure that we truly engage in spiritual work, and not in unattainable fantasy?

Answer: At the beginning, when a person is born and raised, he has no free choice. He is born into some family, he is being taught and given certain education that shapes his attitude towards the world and life. This initial program that a person adopts during the first 15 years of his life determines the development of his personality, and he can’t move beyond that.

One may ask: “How can it be? We don’t choose after all.” Indeed, we don’t choose where to be born, when, and in what family—we don’t choose anything. So what can we do with our spiritual development? You have to be at the place where your heart leads you to. But if you came to us, you have to strictly follow everything that you are being told.

How can you be sure that you are on the spiritual path? You can’t. Until the Creator becomes revealed to us, and clearly, not in a mystical way, as some vague inner sensation (which you are still unable to comprehend), until that you can’t be sure in any way. That’s why I can’t appease or support you, but on the contrary, I stir up even more doubts within you. It is said: “Come and see how wonderful the Creator is.”
[130114]
From the World Zohar Week “Integral Education Convention,” Day Three, 2/4/2014, Lesson 1

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Question: Where is it possible to find the border between where I need to make personal clarifications myself and when I need to turn to the group to receive help?

Answer: There is no border. It is best to do it in the center of the group. But of course not hammering them with petty questions: which potato to take to peel or which cucumber to buy?

Question: So a group discussion and decision is higher than a private clarification?

Answer: As long as you do not personally put into the collective opinion, then you are accessing the collective wisdom of the group. And afterward, it will pass through and begin to live within you. Then you won’t need to turn anywhere else.

Question: Let’s say that a friend comes up with an idea to come to live in Israel. Can he go to the group with this idea, and whatever the group decides that will be the real criterion?

Answer: First of all, the real point is to make the collective above the personal. These kinds of questions constantly come up. We certainly don’t object to a person moving here, and it doesn’t matter where he is from. But the principle is that he, first of all, needs to ask himself, “Where do I bring the most benefit?”

You know how it used to be in Russia when a person would complete the military academy, he would be asked: “Where do you want to serve, comrade?” and he would answer, “Wherever my homeland sends me.”

If a person is guided specifically according to this condition, according to this standard, to this level, then certainly he is really a valuable friend. But if he wants to move because of the weather or because it will be better for him here, then that is doubtful.

Thus, you need to clarify in your group and in the central group where you are of real benefit and afterward decide if you physically have the possibility to move here. But the main thing is where you will really bring the greater benefit. This is the criterion of truth.
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Question: Sometimes we feel bored, fall asleep during the lesson, or are carried away by foreign thoughts. Why does the Creator prepare things this way? What does He want to show us? How is it possible to keep the same level of intention all the time?

Answer: When you listen to my lessons you should try to feel every word I say to its full depth. Everything is built on your identification with me.

I don’t say anything before I create some images inside me that I then convey verbally to others, hoping that they can hear them and accordingly build that same image inside them. When our images correlate, we start a dialog of inner clarifications of that image: what attributes, merits, and movements are in it.

If you don’t form an inner sensory image inside yourself from what you hear from me, you probably are sitting without your incorporation in me and my incorporation in you. This is the problem. So, after a while, you surely fall asleep, lose contact, and the meaning and feeling of the necessity of this lesson.

There are people who cannot operate this way because they think they know a lot. What’s important for them is to hear me in order to dispute me. I am not offended by them since this attitude is naturally imprinted in them and it is very hard for them to perceive the material correctly. I identify with them, but they should overcome these states because if a student doesn’t form the image that the teacher conveys inside him, he doesn’t learn.

On the other hand, when you have a dialog with your friends, it is certainly easier, simpler, and better for you. Everything between you is built especially on sympathy and empathy. It is much easier for you to communicate with the friends because their language is much simpler than mine.

We try to convey the lessons in the form of workshops. This method helps people feel and connect to the text and the one who wrote it much more deeply.
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Question: What does it mean to hit the ego in the teeth?

Answer: Every word a Kabbalist says stems from his spiritual attainment,

Thirty-two teeth symbolize thirty-two elements which correlate to the thirty-two currents of the Light of Hochma that descend from the mind, from the head of the spiritual Partzuf, go through the hairs and the inner parts of the head, and create the inner part of the mouth and the teeth, including the teeth for grinding food.

The spiritual filling includes water and food: Water is the Light of Hassadim and food is the Light of Hochma. There are thirty-two attributes called teeth that are used to grind the Light of Hochma, which isn’t easy since we have to receive in order to bestow.

It is a whole system by which we understand why we were created the way we are and why the forces of nature integrate in such a way in order to create the ultimate forms, which on our level are fulfilled in the form of a mind, brain, head, and all the other forms of the face. What is more, these forms differ in different peoples and different civilizations.

All this is necessary! And we will discover all this on the way to our correction. There is no point studying the wisdom of Kabbalah artificially since we will not be able to correct ourselves that way.

Thirty-two teeth are thirty-two systems of correction of the upper current of wisdom before it can enter the body in which there are many systems: the trachea, the larynx, the esophagus, etc.

A person should perceive information according to his feeling, not mentally but by his feelings. A small child doesn’t always understand what he is told, but when he grows up he can already perceive and understand this information.

A “blow in the teeth” means that a person doesn’t chew properly, which means that he doesn’t digest the information and he clarifies it in an opposite manner, clarifying everything for his own sake.

There are very clever people, but they turn everything for their own sake, since this is how their mind works. In the end, after many years, this turns out to be a mistake, but in the meantime, they avoid this fact and so nothing can be done with them. Five to ten years may go by before they gradually realize how to clarify things correctly.

So “hitting the teeth” means to annul the option of the wrong clarification of the Light of Hochma in us.
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