Question: There is going to be a convention in Bulgaria this weekend (November 1-3), Dawn of a New World. What do you expect of this meeting?

Answer: First, the convention will be much bigger than we expected: We expected 200 people to participate but instead about 500 people have already registered and it isn’t final yet. Our friends from the former USSR, from Europe, from the Far East, and also many friends from Israel are coming. You can arrive before the convention starts. I intend to give my first lecture on Thursday evening.

It will be a very practical convention that is dedicated to the dissemination of integral education. We will all deal with questions of how to develop and how to implement the method of integral education and will also discuss current problems.

We are starting to establish a language of our own concepts that enables us to give more concrete explanations about the global crisis, about the disintegration of the institution of marriage, about problems in education, and other problems in every area of our lives. We will speak about how to approach ordinary people, how to talk to them in order to convey our thoughts, and will explain how they can be saved from the situation they are stuck in and cannot escape.

The deterioration and the downfall is everywhere and those who are at the top today will fall even lower than others. We are going to hear about new problems and decrees every day. The governments are not to blame. It’s simply the Lights that are revealed in which we will feel and discover an increasingly worse state.

There is only one way to avoid this and it is by connection. If we begin to connect, then we will feel better in the Light that today brings us the feeling of evil and darkness.

This is the transition from the path of suffering to the path of the Torah, which means from the path of “in its time” to the path of “I shall hasten it.” The tool for this change, for turning the darkness into Light, is changing me so that I will learn how to perceive it differently. I change myself and by that I also change the Light that reaches me. The Light is divided into two types: the Light that corrects and the Light that fills and we have to use it accordingly.

This is why the Torah is called the method of correction that includes the Light that corrects me and the Light that fills me. The two Lights together are called the Torah.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/29/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Bnei Baruch World Kabbalah Convention

The Bnei Baruch World Convention will be held February, 6-8, 2014. The convention will be held in Bnei Baruch’s new building if space permits.

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Convention in Bulgaria, Day 3, Lesson 5

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Convention in Bulgaria, Day 3, Workshop 7

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Convention in Bulgaria, Day 3, Workshop 8

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Convention in Bulgaria, Day 2, Lesson 3 

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Convention in Bulgaria, Day 2, Lesson 4

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Convention in Bulgaria, Day 2, Workshop 4

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Convention in Bulgaria, Day 2, Workshop 5

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Convention in Bulgaria, Day 2, Lesson 5

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Convention in Bulgaria, Day 2, Workshop 6

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The soul is the desire that was created by the Light, the Creator, which eventually must reach similarity to the Creator.

The Light (represented by the plus sign on image 1) creates an equal desire (the minus sign). However, once it enters the desire, they nullify one another. The desire does not perceive Light as pleasure because they are opposite.

However, as the desire acquires the quality of the Light, it gradually begins to transform into its opposite. It intends to make a restriction (Tzimtzum) and only work with the Reflected Light, in other words, to receive and enjoy only when it feels that it bestows to the one who gives it pleasure. In this way, it attains equality with the Creator.

In other words, Light comes to me with the desire to give me pleasure, but I accept it only under the condition that I feel equivalent to the Creator, as in the example with the Host and the guest.

The Host wishes to please the guest, give him everything there is (arrow marked “a,”representing the pleasure traveling and entering the desire). However, the guest only agrees to accept it under the condition that they are equal (arrow marked “b,” intention or Kavana).

If the intention of my action is to return what I receive from the Host, then as a guest, I can accept the pleasure. In other words, I only do actions that bring me closer to the Host, the Creator, that make me equivalent to Him.

In our world, we live in the action of receiving for our own sake. We wish to receive as much as possible. Nothing else interests us.

This is why we reach a state where we exhaust our possibilities; in other words, the correlation between the plus (what we receive from the Host) and the minus (which exists in us) disappears and we stop perceiving pleasure. In this way, nature, the Creator, pushes us to begin working on a second level in a state of similarity to the Creator. [Read more →]

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Convention in Bulgaria “Opening,” Day 1,

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Convention in Bulgaria, Day 1, Workshop 1

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Convention in Bulgaria, Day 1, Lesson 1

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Convention in Bulgaria, Day 1, Workshop 2

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Convention in Bulgaria, Day 1, Lesson 2

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Question: In the example with “the Host and the guest,” the Host offers the guest delicious treats and the guest refuses to take them. He makes a restriction on his desire to receive. Later, after the guest experiences the delight, he becomes dependent on it. How can we avoid being dependent on pleasures?

Answer: It’s about getting pleasure in the world of Nekudim, in the world where there was a shattering of the state.

Let’s say you gave me something very tasty and sweet. I know what it is, so I make a restriction on this treat and build an intention on it. It’s as if I “paid you back.” I refused your treat many times and explain to you that I don’t feel comfortable accepting your dishes, that I am not hungry. You begin persuading me even more strongly saying that you baked this cake particularly for me and if I don’t try it, you’ll be upset.

Now you are the one who is asking me to do you a favor. When it comes to doing you a favor instead of receiving pleasure for my own sake, I “give up” and eat a piece of cake. I really think that I do it for you. I demonstrate to you how pleased I am so that you have no doubts that while I am enjoying your cake, I am doing so to please you.

All of a sudden I feel a delight that is a thousand times bigger than I ever expected from this piece of cake, something incredible, beyond my Kelim, vessels, beyond my abilities. I don’t see you behind it any longer. All I feel is overwhelming pleasure.

At this point, it’s not about a simple relationship at the level of “giving and taking” (level 1); rather, it is the relationship between the Creator and a person on the level of intention (level 2).

When I become equal to the Creator in my intentions (equal) and start giving to Him, I begin sensing Him and rise to His level. This state is above all the pleasure or suffering. It’s beyond anything! It is a sensation of the thought of creation before it was created.

It turns out that there is such a great inherent pleasure in this experience that I did not expect and which I simply cannot resist. Now, I will have to pay you somehow for this piece of cake.

This is called my shattering. All my intentions to bestow to you instead of pleasing myself, all my plans to avoid being a guest disappear. I just become a slave to the delight that fills me.

From that point on, a new type of pleasure that we receive from sensing the Creator builds the system of worlds: Atzilut, Beria, Yetzira, Assiya.

As a result, when we start self-correction within this system of worlds, we become equal to the Creator because our correction includes the delight that comes not from the Light per se, but from our sense of equality with Him on the level of “Adam – Man.”

The fact is that the level at which we used to exist and build our relationships with others with these calculations (“you give me and I’ll give you”), like a polite guest with a host, is simply animate pleasures at the animate level. Rejecting something because we don’t feel that it is right to take it or because we are embarrassed to accept it, as well as the host’s polite insistence, are ordinary human relationships. They are associated with our current level and there is nothing “lofty” about them. There is no bestowal in them whatsoever.

You simply want to please me because you care about me. I want to return my pleasure back to you because I don’t want to feel that I am the receiving party. I have my pride and shame and I cannot afford to accept your treats. I have to reject them.

A host who knows and understands human psychology acts in a way that will not only persuade me to accept his treats but to feel happy that in doing so I do him a favor. But all this is in the framework of regular human interactions. At the second level, we create a new relationship, not between two people but between me and the Creator, when I have to equate yourself with pleasure that I get from Him .

As soon as I merge with the Creator, I receive pleasures that don’t exist in this world, nor are they present in the Light that created us, since these pleasures derive from the level of the Creator and from our understanding that we are similar to Him. So here the shattering occurs, the structure of a new system. Only by ascending from bottom to top can we create desires and intentions that make us really similar to Him. And then, all our embarrassments and shame turn into glory and delight.

Question: Can we become dependent on pleasures at this level?

Answer: It’s impossible. The system is built in a way that while ascending we cannot be destroyed. It is made so that while we are not ready to receive pleasures correctly, it won’t reveal itself to us.

Pleasure comes from a sensation of understanding and realization, from the feeling of eternity and perfection, from everything that you disclose, everything that you already exist in.

You have to be ready for it. The entire ladder from bottom to top is built in accordance with three lines that lead us. That’s why the entire system is made so that it prepares us to attain this state.
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From the Stockholm Convention “Joy In Unity” Day One 8/30/13, Lesson 2

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Rabash, Letter No. 8: And once I have acquired this above-mentioned clothing, sparks of love promptly begin to shine within me. The heart begins to long to unite with my friends, and it seems to me that my eyes see my friends, my ears hear their voices, my mouth speaks to them, the hands embrace, the feet dance in a circle in love and joy together with them, and I transcend my corporeal boundaries. I forget the vast distance between my friends and me, and the outstretched land for many miles will not stand between us.

It is as though my friends are standing right within my heart and see all that is happening there, and I become ashamed of my petty acts against my friends. Then, I simply exit the corporeal vessels and it seems to me that there is no reality in the world except my friends and me.  After that, even the “I” is cancelled and is immersed, mingled, in my friends, until I stand and declare that there is no reality in the world—only the friends.

Aspirations like these bring people to a state where their last desperate desire is the yearning for closeness, to build a world in which they must exist under other conditions of contact between them. When they reach a true desire of this type, the Light transforms that into a reality.

There are many people in the world to whom the power for spiritual work has not been given, even in the simplest form, even unintentionally in an egoistic form as preparation. It wasn’t given! We see this regarding billions of people in the world, and we have merited that the Creator gave us desires and thoughts that allow us, at least in part, to participate in spiritual work, even if it is the simplest degree.

If a person is prepared to appreciate this gift, then to the degree that he attributes importance to spiritual work when he builds a new world (here only the feelings between us change), to that degree, he needs to thank the Creator.

You see, the truth is that we are not prepared to appreciate the importance of the fact that sometimes we are given even the smallest spiritual action to do. So, the person feels greatness and happiness in his heart and he praises the Creator whom he serves, and thanks Him and accordingly, he rises even higher.

The person must treasure the opportunity that is given to him to serve the Creator and to realize His will.

The “will of the Creator” means that a person constructs a model of the upper world from his relationships with other people.

Just as children play as if they are adults—daughters play with dolls and sons with cars or with war—so must we also play, and then we mature.

In our world, an adult is the one who stops playing. He stops developing, growing. This happens with us automatically because first nature pushes us so that we will grow and, then when free choice appears in us, nature no longer pushes us anymore, and we stop developing.

Therefore, those people, who decide that it is up to them to continue to develop, must continue to play those childhood games but on another level, that is, to build their future lives. They simulate what they imagine in their fantasies, discuss among themselves in a group, in circles, and build it so much so that they begin to feel the world they are approaching.

When a person sees an example of the future world and builds the right altruistic relationships with his friends, but he doesn’t succeed, he asks and demands, then help arrives. However, this happens only when he truly yearns for this. Just screaming and crying will not help here.
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From the St. Petersburg Convention “Day Three” 7/14/13, Lesson 6

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Man is not free to choose anything in his life. He is brought to a group and led away from it. He doesn’t control this. What depends upon us is how we construct an environment that will cause each one of its members to be a useful, spiritual part.

Therefore, it is said that the only free activity that depends on us is the choice of the environment. A person’s arrival to an environment doesn’t depend upon him since he is led there. And the choice of the environment  means that at every given moment, I choose my maximal integration within it. Does the rest of humanity, people without a point in the heart, have free choice? No, they don’t.

Only for us is there relative freewill in building the right environment and in the correct organization of humanity. Therefore, we have responsibility, both for us and for them. This responsibility is very harsh. If we don’t build the right environment for all seven billion people as much as possible, then we cannot advance because we are the upper part within the spiritual structure called Galgalta ve Eynaim (GE), and humanity is the huge lower part of creation that is called AHP.

The upper part, GE, is our particular part, called our group, and its lower part is our AHP. It doesn’t belong to us, but it is something that we develop, the method of integral education and information, various courses, and so on.

It is up to us to develop the subject, to act like adults, like teachers, in regard to the rest of the world, and in accord with the development of the world, it is up to us to bring the integral method and information to it with concern and attention.

All the rest of the world will need to accept it because, in spite of it all, the Light has an influence on all of us in such a form that there is nowhere to which to escape. It influences the entire world and pushes it with the help of suffering because the AHP is its opposite (the world is a big, egoistic minus), and when the Light influences it, it arouses in it even greater negative feelings, crises, and sufferings.

Ultimately, humanity searches for what to do, but it won’t find anything besides the Light that will be transmitted to them through us as a result of integral education. We need to create and construct all of this for them.

Therefore, in addition to the group work in itself, it must also take care of all the rest to the degree necessary to awaken humanity, which is awakened to a serious question, not about the meaning of life for the sake of some lofty goal, but about the meaning of life in order to be released from the sufferings, from the crises. This is enough so that we begin to take care of them.

When they discover their absolute helplessness, confusion, and inability to solve common earthly problems, and there is global awareness that they have no practical solutions, then we can confidently go out to the world and begin to look for the right ways of to whom and how to bring our method.

After all, the world already requires this unconsciously, even though it is like a child that still doesn’t understand where, what, and how. It doesn’t feel that this is the key to a different existence, to a new reality, to a new dimension, because for most of humanity there is no point in the heart and for us there is, and we feel that something must take place here. There is some kind of a solution here. We feel it only slightly, just to the degree that the Light shines on us, and the Light has no influence on them.

What does “it has no influence” mean? We are all in the field of Light, but they have no inner detector that can determine that there is some kind of illumination, that there are some kind of changes. We do have this detector; this is the so-called “sixth sense.” Therefore, everything depends only upon us.

We have a responsibility for everyone. Moreover, we have received the opportunity to advance spiritually only in order to bring the whole world to this, and if we don’t convey the Upper Light through us and don’t convey anything through us, then we feel only a minute illumination, in other words,  just a state of expectation, a neutral gear, and nothing more than this. Therefore, it is up to us to take this into account.

It could be that there are groups with a good inner preparation. Its members study seriously, come to all the lectures and lessons, but they don’t want to go outside. Ultimately, these groups will transform into a barrier for the spiritual Light, and because they are linked to us, they  burden us and damage all of us.

Therefore, we must be careful, but still compel them, encourage and cheer them gently, trying to explain and attract them to this work. After all, this is needed from a global integral system.

If this is a closed system, then you don’t have the right to abandon some part of it (even though this may not be a small part but about 99.99% of it). Even if it were only 1%,, even then you would not have the right to abandon them because if there is some uncorrected part of an integral, analog, closed system, then the whole mechanism is uncorrected. So if a need for correction is discovered in the world, you must think about all seven billion who require it and somehow activate the mechanism.

The principle of the formation of all of our groups, or of the world group, must also include all of humanity because the time has come to uncover and reveal the general link between us.

Prior to Abraham, only isolated Kabbalists had spiritual attainment. From Abraham and onward, it was groups, and from the times of Baal HaSulam and on, it is all of humanity.

Baal HaSulam wrote in the twenties of the last century that all of humanity is one family. This suggests we must consider them as part of our group. Therefore, the principles and foundations for building the group must include this component: how can we interact with the whole world.
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From the St. Petersburg Convention “Day Two” 7/13/13, Lesson 4

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Baal HaSulam wrote: I have built for you the order that will help you not to roll backward. And the main thing in this arrangement is the unity of friends. And I give you my complete assurance; this is to say, he really guarantees that this love is true, factual, and actual. …and with this I remind you of the validity of this love and all those useful things that follow after it. And if you are strengthened by this, then without a doubt you will go from strength to strength towards spiritual success. Because the idea is to make yourself like the upper world. This being where you want to enter.

What does entry mean? In what kind of relationships with people do we want to enter? This is our mission that is to be solved between us.

And your friends found here, just as you have been blessed with love between you, so you will continue and will not separate. This will be to that moment when the Creator will rejoice with you and will be revealed among you. He will reveal the world according to you, and thanks to you, peace will be revealed in the world. As it is said, (Psalms 122:8) “For the sake of my brethren and companions, I shall now speak of peace in you.”

All this happens solely and only within the group and not in any other place. And to the rest of the people we disseminate gradually, with soft steps, treating them with “kit gloves,” because only a few people would truly stand up for the idea of love, friendship, and unity.

Therefore Rabash writes for us: Ultimately the people will be united under one leader who will stand with them against everything that comes against them. And this is what we need to understand very clearly, not to be afraid of anyone and to go forward. This is our idea, this is our goal, and this is our faith! Whoever doesn’t like this can leave. We aren’t harming anyone; we want unity and love of the other according to the global laws of nature upon which our method is based. We are not pursuing any other goal.

Without a doubt these are strong people, with a spirit that is as strong as steel, who will not be moved even a single step backward. These are first-class warriors who understand the meaning of creation and how to act to the degree of their advancement.

And nothing more is needed. We always get as much as is needed in order to do the right action at that moment, and if we do more, we might do the wrong thing. Like a little child that they let play with blocks but not something like an electric screwdriver, as this is not for him. It’s the same thing here; there is nothing to blame the Creator for, for not giving us the tools for our development. He gives them precisely to the degree that we will not err and will not harm ourselves and others.

And they have only one mission, to win in the sacred war for the sake of the Creator. This is to say, to build relationships between us like these (instead of hatred, love), where the Upper Light illuminates us and brings us victory, so, the Creator is the one who fights. We prepare the ground. Therefore all of our life, all of our existence is called “preparation,” and the Creator is the one who will finish it.

Rav Kook, the great Kabbalist, the first Chief Rabbi of the land of Israel, a member of the same generation as Baal HaSulam, (they were very familiar with each other), writes: Our soul is great. It is strong and mighty, it shatters an iron wall, it explodes mountains and hills. It is broader than infinite space, it is impossible to shrink it, it must spread over all those millions of our Israeli souls on all their levels, in all of the cities where they are found, and in all the depths into which they have descended, our soul is extended towards all, all of them, embracing them all, all will be revived and encouraged.

This is essentially that aspiration towards which we turn, the “spiritual commando.”

The main thing is to understand that at each and every moment I’m given exactly what I need in order to advance to my next level. And then I only need to invest my small efforts in order to unite with the others over the background of all of those various problems or circumstances in which I am found. Everything is found in our hands and we lack nothing other than mutual support.
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From the St. Petersburg Convention “Day Three” 7/14/13, Lesson 6

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