Integral Education Convention, Day Two, Workshop 1
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Integral Education Convention, Day Two, Workshop 2
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Integral Education Convention, Day Two, Workshop 3
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Question: On the way to the convention, how do we keep from losing the approach and the guidance that we received while preparing for it?
Answer: I don’t think that a person loses his concentration when he is on the way. He yearns to be here, to be together with everyone. People are sending me emails or SMS that they are on the way and will arrive soon from all kinds of places. Their hearts are already here with us.
I am very happy that this time we are arranging a convention of true connection. We have reached such a state of ripening where it is possible to talk about love that has been built over hatred, about connection over distance. This indicates our ripening, our first level of maturity.
It is impossible to advance without being stabilized, without balancing the two forces within a person: the positive and the negative. The realization of the first spiritual level is to stabilize these two forces opposite each other and to be aware that this is precisely the way that we advance.
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From the Talk at a meal 1/26/14
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Question: We have tried to reconstruct the experience we had in the “aquarium” together with our friends who came to the convention. We held endless workshops and discussions. We had a certain feeling of connection between us, but each one felt it differently. What was it? How can we reinforce and keep this feeling that we all loved so much?
Answer: When people connect they go through special experiences. It happens in different kinds of connections, good or bad, no matter what their goal is. The connection itself gives a person a feeling of power, development, joy, and an outburst of energy.
But if the connection is aimed at everyone’s ascent above himself and at being able to dissolve among the friends, the spiritual force is revealed in it. The Light that Reforms operates on us according to everyone’s efforts to ascend above his own self, and it conveys the upper force that connects us and that makes us feel the connection. If everyone wants to annul himself with regard to the connection, the connection becomes very powerful since it is aimed at the Creator. This matches the attribute of the Creator, to connect above our ego, above ourselves.
According to our yearning “I am for my beloved and my beloved is for me,” we begin to receive the illumination. This special action of the Upper Light raises us higher to new states in which we begin to feel certain spiritual revelations. We don’t know what we feel exactly and cannot decipher it, but we have a feeling of a more sublime state that is different and unlike anything we felt in the past.
It is a special pleasant excitement, but it can also become unpleasant. Everything depends on how a person holds on to this state and continues his work in the group. What you feel is the continuous affect of the Surrounding Light to the extent that you want to annul yourselves and to devote yourselves to the group without any excuses, simply because this is what Kabbalists advise us, what the teacher says, and what the books say.
If you want to change and connect into one body so that everyone will not feel himself anymore, but only the collective “us” between us, the upper essence, then you receive the effect of the Surrounding Light. This is a special force that begins to operate on you and brings about changes in your inner software.
It isn’t that you just expand your perception, feeling, understanding, and mind. The essence of your perception changes and becomes integral. This is something that didn’t exist before. You begin to feel that the space that surrounds you is transparent, homogeneous, in which there is one force that operates. A person feels that he belongs to this integral system.
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From the Talk at a Meal 1/27/14
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Question: The women have conducted a very powerful friends’ meeting. It wasn’t easy. We had to make great efforts and we felt the connection between us. How can we focus this connection on the men now in order to connect with them?
Answer: Women go through states that are more difficult than the men and it requires greater overcoming. I really appreciate the women’s efforts and hold great hopes on them. The men’s success greatly depends on the women, but it is much more difficult for the women to connect, so I am really delighted by their efforts.
The moment women can connect correctly, they will discover the bridge that connects them to the men. It will be one woman that is ready to connect to one man. But first you have to reach a good, strong connection between you.
It is much more difficult for women to connect than for men. A man feels that he is free like the wind, that he is not tied to a home. A woman, on the other hand, is called “home” which means that she has a very individual character and wants to have something of her own, her own place, her own family. Thus, the connection between women must shatter the partitions that separate them and this is much more difficult than for men. We see that friendship between men is much more meaningful than friendship between women. This is nature.
It is very hard work and I truly appreciate it, but you can easily overcome it if you ascend above your female nature. There is no need to delve into your flaws but rather to advance and ascend to the good, to the connection.
When women are able to connect, they attain the ability, understanding, mind, and heart that guide them as how to help the men. For now you can’t help the men, you have to connect between you.
In the past we were on an evolutionary level where women couldn’t connect and the woman’s role was only to support the man. But we have reached a new era now in which the men connect between them and the women connect between them. Later we will see how we form a circle within a circle.
In the meantime, we are working only on connection and there is no need to look at the future or at the past. Today our work is the connection between the men and the connection between the women in order to reach mutual guarantee inside every circle.
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From the Talk at a Meal 1/26/14
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The “raspberry ball” is totally, absolutely losing all individual attitude to the friends. We take off all our garments of the physical body, and inner qualities of everything that we have received from nature; only the spark remains, the Reshimo, inherent in everyone, everyone’s spiritual core, his aspiration for unity.
If I still distinguish a different attitude, differences between us, then it is not a group. The group is when all the friends are equal, when I see no difference between them. They are all Reshimot; everyone is striving to reach unity.
During the first stage of the introduction to mutual guarantee, the Creator just brings us to connection and it is a rather theoretical state. On the other hand, to form the raspberry ball, we should already actively connect with everyone. The work with the raspberry ball starts with the efforts not to see any differences between friends and ends when all of them unite into one.
If we are united as a homogeneous group as the landing party, similar to other connections that people create in this world, it is not yet “one.” Indeed, in a physical unity of this kind, everyone wants to reach a goal; everyone has his own goal, and everyone is ready to unite for the sake of his individual goal.
We do not act like that. Here, everyone has to cancel himself for the sake of unity with others, giving up individual goals.
In this self-annulment, we don’t lose our mind or feelings but gain the mind of the entire group that is called “as one man with one heart.” One collective desire is revealed in which everyone feels his individual properties. Like in the system of cogwheels, he begins to spin with everyone, without pressure, and from here he understands how they rotate and why. This means “to know what the friend has in the heart.” Everyone knows this differently, according to his properties.
Thus we come to the raspberry ball.
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Overcoming the Ego with the Help of the Environment
Having attained a certain point of mutual guarantee, I hold on to it, value it, enjoy it, and want to develop in it. But as a result of the Light that Reforms that I summon, this point begins to grow in a way that is not desirable.
The Light never operated so as to simply bring me to Ein Sof (Infinity), to correction. On the contrary, according to its plan, in its relations with the vessel, it has to show me how opposite I am from it. So to the extent that I make efforts to unite, my yearning, my work, and my efforts turn into darkness.
The moment I accept mutual guarantee as the mutual unity that has to dwell between us in spirituality, the place where we feel that we are together and not separated, the obstacles called egoism are revealed. This egoism is no longer part of this world, but is actually the real egoism that is revealed in contrast to our unity, our connection, and our mutual guarantee.
All the discernments during the descent are merely an indication of how weak we are when it comes to mutual guarantee, and nothing but that. Here the mutual guarantee of the next level is revealed: What is the connection between mutual guarantee and the Creator? What is His attitude towards this? How does He dress in it? How can our mutual guarantee depict Him to me? And so on.
There are two types of mutual guarantee that operate during the states of descent and ascent, and it is the gap between them that determines the height of the level you reach.
Thus we advance. On one hand I should feel the influence of the Light on me as much as possible, and on the other, I should clarify this feeling: “Where does it come from and why? How can I turn it to its opposite form and advance to the desired state?” Later these two discernments become the head and the body of the Partzuf: The head determines what happens to the body and how it should operate. But this is only if you control the desire.
In the meantime you constantly try to look at yourself from the side as well: What is happening to you? What is the Light doing to you? How do you change and how should you change? How should you respond to each and every state?
On one hand it occupies your whole mind and all your feelings, and you experience such states which you simply don’t know how to exit. But on the other hand, you should know that the Creator sends you these states so that you will solve the problems that are created only in the connection with Him and with the goal. The solution to the problems begins with the fact that the goal is the resemblance to and the equivalence of form with the Creator and this is more important than the problem. On the whole, everything is less important than mutual guarantee.
The key to mutual guarantee is the recognition of the importance of the goal. It is because mutual guarantee is a kind of inner feeling which we have to attain: I determine the inner state and how it depicts the new reality. It isn’t just the point of our unity; it expands and becomes the point of the new reality. It is this recognition of the importance of the goal that sustains it and develops it.
We have to constantly clarify what we need and what we don’t in order to raise the importance of the idea of mutual guarantee.
From this point, we return to the greatness of the group and its effect on us. This effect should be versatile; we should use envy, lust, honor, ambition, everything that can pressure me, push me, and shake me. This should be the way everyone operates on everyone else.
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Question: How is it possible to hold onto the balance between the inner concentration and communication within the convention?
Answer: This is a perpetual problem that must be solved regardless of what you are doing. Very heavy or light moments can come, different pleasant or unpleasant feelings, but the person must always be composed of two parts. In one part he feels his beastly body, what is happening to it. And in the second part, he is like a person riding on his donkey (Hamor), on the egoistic substance (Homer).
Such a split feeling must be with us everywhere, in completely different moments in life; it should be with me when I am alone, with friends, with my family, with my wife and children, or when I am just walking down the street. I must divide myself into two parts: the donkey and me sitting on it.
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From the Talk at a meal 1/26/14
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