Question: How can we work with the pride that was revealed after the convention?

Answer: After the convention there was indeed a revelation of pride especially in Europe. Every part of the world has its typical problems and weaknesses and Europe and Russia are different in that sense.

What is pride? In regard to whom and to what? A person has to clarify this by himself:

• I feel pride because I understand and know everything, for having attained something and now I am great and have everything. This will pass and disappear by itself in a couple of days.

• I feel pride because I am several levels above everyone else, and they are unhappy, struggling with their small crises, while I am above them, I understand everything and don’t really care about anything as I look upon them from above. This is wrong.

If we speak about connection and about the fact that we have to correct the shattering between us, then eventually we have to worry about everyone as about our own children. I don’t think that you would relate to people like that if you felt that they were your children, but this is exactly how we should relate to them.

Actually, I see no reason why you should be proud. What is so special about you? What have you attained by yourselves? Nothing.

You were in a group, you were brought, pushed, and different actions were performed on you. You participated passively without understanding the essence of why and where this should lead to. You didn’t even aim at the current state and didn’t know what it is like. This means that your actions were not focused and so it turns out that you were lucky. So what are you proud of?

I can tell you from my own experience that the higher a person ascends, the more he advances, and the closer he is to the Creator, the more humble and low he feels. It is because he sees the action of the infinite Light that arranges everything at any given moment that builds and revives everything.

Keep on working and the feeling of pride will pass. The main thing is that it shouldn’t divert you from your spiritual path. If there are any diversions and you behave like obstinate children, I am used to it. Therefore, nothing can be done but to gradually get over it. We will learn how.
[113122]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/21/13, “Faith Above Reason”

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Question: If the wisdom of Kabbalah is a science, how can we tie it to “faith above reason?” After all, faith seems to negate science.

Answer: We are on a corporeal level together with the sciences, the arts, and so forth, and in them we can develop.

However, how do we develop? It is only within the ego. The ego develops, and we develop with it, but as of today, the ego actually has ended its development.

Which sciences and arts are we talking about? We see that today everything seems to be stuck, delayed, and coming to a dead end, to a crisis. It has been going on for several decades now. Perhaps people simply don’t understand, but scientists do.

The ego reached its peak and has stopped developing after 6,000 years, having started from a zero point until today. We have been through a process of evolution during this time and have risen to a certain level in the fields of arts and sciences in which the ego has already exhausted itself.

We actually feel that we don’t want anything anymore. Today, we don’t pay attention to anything, and even space research and other sciences don’t interest us anymore.

So, how do we move on to the next stage now? The next stage is a totally different level, and we also must grow in it since there, too, may be a new unknown ego or certain desires.

This transition must be very special. We don’t even understand what it is. It is a transition to a new dimension.

It is totally different in its attributes, there are totally different forces and different connections. It is like our world, but in a totally different way. The still, vegetative, animate, and speaking levels of nature are connected according to different laws, the laws of a new dimension, the laws of what we call the spiritual world.

The new dimension is called the spiritual world since faith above reason dominates it, which means bestowal above receiving. The goal of corporeal existence is receiving. In the spiritual world, however, the goal is bestowal.

So, how can we move to an opposite perception in which the Keter of the lower becomes the Malchut of the upper? How can we move from the egoistic ten Sefirot to the altruistic ten Sefirot? It is only if we perform an operation on ourselves in faith above reason.

“Reason” refers to what I had on the corporeal level, and “faith” is what guides me on the spiritual level. Thus, I raise myself.

This is why it says in all the sources that the most important thing for us is faith above reason.

What is the practical meaning of faith above reason? It means that our previous reason gradually cools down. We are given help here since we cannot advance by our previous reason and immediately begin to rise above it. This is why there is a certain descent after the convention, the addition of ego.

In spite of and together with this, we must ascend and advance more powerfully toward the connection between us. This is why we must study, try to connect, disseminate, and do everything to achieve a stronger connection between us.

We should feel opposite inclinations since we must do everything in order to delve more deeply into it. Our global group must connect more strongly. This is why we should study, disseminate and do everything that needs to be done. It is all only in order to connect internally to the same feeling we had in the convention, but on the next level, on a higher level.

What do we lack in order to reach this? We lack the actual actions.

There is Isra-el, which means “Yashar Kel,” (straight to the Creator). This means that Israel is every friend who yearns for spiritual attainment. There is another part called “Torah,” which stems from the Aramaic word “Oraita – Ohr – light.” The concept of Torah includes the group, the connections, mutual guarantee, and so on, everyone’s adhesion to it, our goal. This is the exact path by which we must advance.

[112960]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/21/13, “Faith Above Reason”

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Question: How effective are spiritual processes in small groups of two or three people?

Answer: This is the problem with our virtual friends, with our individual friends and others. We have so many students who are scattered in various corners of their countries in:  Australia,  New Zealand, China, several European nations, South America, and so forth. Therefore, these congresses still form and connect us and give us the opportunity to focus together.

But the lack of a physical group remains a problem. I cannot imagine the solution. I know only one thing, when I asked Rabash for permission to move closer to him, he first turned me down and he was right; it’s necessary to check if your desire is real. And only two years later did he allow me to move.

Therefore if a student seriously studies with us for a long time, he needs to think about how to move to a place where there is a group or where it is possible to organize one. I don’t see any other way out.

As much as possible I think about this all the time and hope that with the help of a virtual system it will be possible to connect people and give them a feeling of unity, but in the meantime, a computer screen separates them. The person protects himself from others through the screen.

So what is the problem? Making people connect with others. We are found in a state that “connecting with others” means to sit together, to breathe together, to learn together, to hate the friends, to love them, and so forth.

And the Upper Light gives us all kinds of problems here, intentionally “causing friction” between us, rubbing us together, to remove the membrane from the heart. The hearts rub together in order to undress them. How is it possible to do this when you are found in a virtual connection? I can’t describe this to myself. Personally I would be happy to be with everyone in a virtual connection: I “type” some information in an email and that’s it, you are already “in love” with the friends.

Where can you really feel hostility to the point of hatred as those friends in The Zohar felt?! You can immediately unplug the computer or protect yourself with some kind of emoticon (smiley) and that’s it! How could it be otherwise?

I feel this with us in our country. There are groups that maintain a gentlemanly distance. There are those who are closer, participate more, want to integrate with us more, and want to build our center together. When there are opportunities for work, then the participation of each is tested. The idea is not just participation, rather it’s working together. This is what is essential. Therefore you must understand that it’s necessary to gather and organize in groups, and to organize large groups with departments, with an institute for distribution, with children’s groups. In general, all this is imperative.
[112794]
From the St. Petersburg Convention “Day Two” 7/13/13, Lesson 3

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Question: As a general rule, rejection is not with respect to the group but a friend. What is the working program in this case?

Answer: I don’t think that this is so. A person must see that he has an aversion to working with the group, to connecting with the friends, to dissolving into them. And if there is any kind of special prejudice against someone, it may gradually pass. Therefore there is no need to focus attention on this. It is not worthwhile.

First of all, what should interest me is how to “get into them,” to adhere to them. The main thing is that I shouldn’t manage myself, rather they manage me. This is what is called dissolving into them. This is to say I don’t have my own thoughts and desires. This is what is with them. And this is everything.

The moment that you make such movements, the Surrounding Light immediately acts and influences you. Experiences like these bring this, the Light cleanses you all the time and adds all kinds of contradictions to you, but you try to do it again. And after you pass through a necessary amount of attempts of this kind, attainment eventually arrives. And the group might not even know anything about it and may remain at the same level in which it was before, as in the example of Rabbi Yossi Ben Kisma.
[112800]
From the St. Petersburg Convention “Day Two” 7/13/13, Lesson 3

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Question: When I come to pray out of total despair, do I need to ask that I will change, or do I need to ask that a friend will advance spiritually?

Answer: Prayer is called a desire in the heart, the uncontrolled yearning of the heart. I can say whatever I want, nothing will help, and it’s just all movement of the lips. I could dance, cry, or roll on the ground; this also yields no results. The main thing is what I am feeling in the depths of my heart.

A desire is called heart and the fourth phase of my desire is what is most concealed from me. Sometimes when it is revealed I tremble from what is there. And this aspect is felt by the Light, contacts it, because it’s like the four letter name of the Creator.

The last phase is actually found in contact with the upper phase Keter. A yearning for connection appears in it which is opposite that of “Keter”: It either wants to control it completely (in which case this phase is called “Pharaoh” who wants all the Light held within itself), or the opposite, it wants to resemble “Keter,” the characteristic of bestowal.

We have no control over this phase, in fact we don’t sense it and don’t feel it. Here all kinds of practical actions are required! This is not just sitting and meditating; the wisdom of Kabbalah doesn’t recognize this! All this doesn’t exist! You can go deeply into yourself, think that you could have all kinds of intentions, but all these are internal investigations that are ultimately determined by preliminary work and work that follows. These investigations are compulsory only to understand what I have attained, how much I can feel who I am at the present moment.

Therefore, if we truly want to summon the surrounding Light onto ourselves, action is required; as a result, the influence of the Light gives form to the right yearning of our desire in its latest aspect. As it is written, “The Creator puts the prayer in my mouth.” Even if the person is not thinking about anything, but mechanically carries out what is necessary, in the end, it will result in his most normal thoughts transforming into the most wondrous thoughts.

And the opposite is also true. The warning exists: “His wisdom exceeds his actions.” This is not allowed! It is believed that when a person’s wisdom exceeds his deeds, he kills himself spiritually. All kinds of philosophies, intentions, thoughts, and studying from morning to night is not good. Our world is a world of action. We are found in the last phase of the world of Assiya, translated as “action.”
[112797]
From the St. Petersburg Convention “Day Two” 7/13/13, Lesson 3

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The Creator vacates a place for Himself within us, giving us a feeling of coldness. But essentially this is not coldness or distancing. We were in a state of cohesion in our small group. Now the Creator extended this circle, and we feel that we don’t have control over the empty place that is created.

Before we only felt ourselves within our circle where a sense of the convention reigned. And now, after the convention has ended, we feel this empty place that grows more and more every day.

If it keeps on going this way, ultimately all the memories of the past will disappear and we will return again to the beastly state. Why does the Creator do this? So that now, while we are feeling how He is moving away from us and how the feeling of our unity dissolves, we will want to fill this empty place with the Creator. Because we understand that we are not ready to retain and keep the warm feelings that were there with our own powers and that it’s going further and further away. That is how the Creator empties a new place within us where His presence and His control must be felt.

The first thing is that we want to return to a feeling of connection. The second thing is that in order to remain in it, we need the Creator’s control instead of the emptiness that was created.

Our goal is connection, and the means for attaining it is the Creator. And now we need to switch their places, the Creator becomes the goal and the connection becomes the means. So we make a new clarification all the time and implement the opposite.
[112708]
From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/19/13

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When we speak about approaching the Light, the characteristic of bestowal and love, it raises the question about how could we find this, how would we know what this is?

Before us is a very simple laboratory, it is ourselves, severed from each other by our ego and in the same situation as the Light is in regard to substance, that is, in opposition. If I want to understand how to relate to the Light, it is up to me to understand how I relate to every person, to the others, and evidently the same relationships exist between people as between us and the Light.

So, if I ask how can I approach the Light before it pushes me with the help of a stick , I must maintain the condition from the Torah, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Nothing else is required.

Near me are many people with whom I can try to arrange relationships like these, and maybe I can even find people who understand me and we can help each other. We can attain mutual help between us. We can hint to each other how we should approach each other despite the mutual ego that exists between us. So, we learn.

To the degree that we want to approach each other, we will play at being good, nice, bestowing, and loving people. We approach the Light. Through this approach we attract much more of its attention to ourselves.

The increased flow of Light will change me, but no longer negatively. It no longer will awaken new egoistic desires in me. Rather, it will change my characteristics. The right intentions will appear in me. It is clear that I am playing with intentions, bestowal, and love for another that I don’t really have. However, I try doing this mechanically as if I am approaching the Light, and it begins to influence me, begins to awaken in me the right intention. Gradually, this will happen.

As the Light carries out some kind of positive changes in me, so I advance; at the same time, it also will arouse negative characteristics in me, meaning that I will discover additional portions of ego to work on.

Ultimately, it will become clear that I am taking my personal development into my own hands and am no longer left completely formless, blindly controlled by nature. Instead, I control my own advancement.

Despite this, I must understand that all this depends on the environment that I choose, on my attempts to connect with my friends in spiritual work, on building a laboratory of our ourselves to correct human nature together. All of the conditions, all of the laws, that we learn in the wisdom of Kabbalah are derived from this. In principle, this is our entire method.

It is clear that there are many conditions and various additions: how we must change ourselves, how to inspire a friend so he will influence me positively and will draw me forward, what can be done to influence him more, and how we must help each other to rise above our nature.

Our entire approach is the method of yearning for the Light. We don’t need to wait in vain for the Light to effect us, obliging us to do something through its negative influences.

So, we organize groups and students, and try to organize large conventions with specific preparations where it is most important to understand that everything depends on me, on us, on the sum of our intentions. Everything depends upon everyone, men and women who have been learning for some time and those who arrived not long ago but who already have a clear understanding in them that has more or less crystallized that the right intention will bring our substance closer to the higher force.

So, from our own desire, we advance quickly to a state where we begin to feel the Light that influences us; for if I desire it, then I am the first and it is the second, and so to the degree of my advancement toward it, I will feel its influence on myself and will begin to discover it. However, that is only if I have an inclination to approach it according to my characteristics. That is how we work.

Along with this, reality is changed. I begin to feel a discovery of the force of nature within nature—how it acts within the substance of the still, the vegetative, and the animate within us and connects all this into a complete, global whole—and then I begin to understand the entire essence of this. The masses of human beings and all that exists are imbued with a single power within a network of forces, and this is revealed to me according to my intention.

Therefore, we are gathered here in order to try to work seriously among us with one intention, one goal, which is to feel this connection between us, this network of forces that passes through the entire universe, a network that manages and gives life to all that exists, and when we begin to discover it, we begin to discover its laws, the true inner natural laws of all of creation. We begin to learn them.

This helps us to strengthen our intentions even more, to understand better the nature of the Light, the higher power of nature. We can perfect the relationships between us and our relationships with nature, with the Light, more and more. We will see which relationships between us, which desires, skills, and characteristics are most useful and optimal.

In this manner, we will begin to choose new ways for ourselves: how to bestow, how to maneuver within our egoistic characteristics, how to change them gradually, starting with one characteristic, and later changing the rest with the help of the characteristics that we corrected before, and so on. This is to say, we begin to learn an inner, personal, and deep psychology.

The internal integration of the person after he begins to feel all of these characteristics within himself and how he can control them will be discovered between us more and more. And most importantly, we will feel each other clearly, and suddenly will feel how much we are glued together within a single network. Cooperation like this between us will be so strong that, with the right intentions within us, we will connect all our matter, which will absorb and be filled with the characteristics of bestowal and love, with the characteristics of the Light, in the single likeness of Adam (Man).

This is our utmost goal, and the minimal goal is to begin to act this way between us, to resemble the Light as much as we can with all the power available to us. This is enough. If we realize this goal both quantitatively and qualitatively with what we have already accumulated within us, even for a brief moment, if we can discover a little of our equivalence of form with the Light, then we will discover it within us.

There exists only one precise law of physics here, the law of equivalence of form. This is the state that all of us want to reach at our convention. I hope that we will succeed. Everything depends on each one of the participants, those who are already found here today and those who will arrive tomorrow, and will begin our great convention together.

We now are found in a special place. In this city, they often have tried to make various corrections, revolutions, and changes during the course of human history, and I think now it all depends upon us. We want to make an internal revolution within us, to become the bestowers, the lovers, as religions and the laws of nature have required of us and which essentially is the same thing.

I hope that each one will relate responsibly to the task that stands before us, and we will do it.
[112156]
From the Preparatory Lesson St. Petersburg Convention 7/11/13

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If we felt that something in the convention was missing, it’s only because we were not ready for it yet and now we have to work on it. This means that we have to summon the feeling of the connection between us in order to discover the Creator (the Light) in this connection. Thus both the means (the group) and the Torah (the Light) will bring us to the Creator, according to the rule “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are one.”

The point is that in ancient Babylon they spoke Aramaic, which since then is parallel to Hebrew. Hebrew and Aramaic stem from the same root and they are two opposite languages. One language conveys the information through the vessels and the other through the Light: Aramaic does it through the vessels, the desires, while Hebrew does it through the fillings. There is nothing other than these two attributes and so these two languages exist in a parallel.

The Babylonian Talmud that everyone studies today is in Aramaic since it’s about correcting the vessels. The whole Talmud is a system of correcting the vessels, the desires, but it’s described as the states of the still, vegetative, and animate nature of these desires. The Torah, however, (which stems from the word Light) is in Hebrew, since it comes from Above. This means that the Talmud comes from below and the Torah from Above.
[113072]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/21/13, “Faith Above Reason”

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Question: How should we work internally with the state where I seem to have two options in which you see either your ego or the right work? What should you do so as not to remain idle?

Answer: Here, we feel the need for mutual guarantee, mutual support, that must exist in a group. It is like a wall that guards the group both from external influences and from negative internal influences of all its members.

This wall—the spirit, the wholeness—is built out of the importance of the goal, of the readiness of all the group members to annul themselves before the idea of a group, like in a family where there is a certain inner basis. There can be anything in it, but there is something that constantly balances it, gives it weight, lowers it to the ground, and doesn’t let it break apart and disintegrate.

This is why a family is made of several generations: grandfathers and grandmothers, parents and children. Once, everyone used to live together. The generations change gradually like spinning wheels, but there are always three generations that support each other and which depend on each other. Now, of course, it all disintegrates. In the group, however, we must adhere to it.

There should be a substantial mass in the group that makes it stable and balanced. It doesn’t pull downward, but simply balances different eruptions and disorder. Therefore, a person who goes through different states must have the inner feeling that the group is stable, massive, and permanent.

This is what we must cultivate and actually establish as our foundation. Anything may happen, but we have our foundations.

My job as a manager is to make all the small groups all over the world into one whole, one unified foundation that will support everyone. Then, different problems and conflicts that the Light will certainly summon in us will serve us correctly only in order to grow.

You can call it mutual guarantee or by any other name, but we must do it. The group is like a hot house, an incubator. As it is said, “My home is my castle.” A person needs to exist in an environment—the root, soul, body, attire, and all.

We must establish all this. The group must talk about that, to think. There must be a feeling that this is my family, my home, where I come and don’t want to leave! That’s the way it should be.
[112790]
From the St. Petersburg Convention “Day Two” 7/13/13, Lesson 3

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Question: If I make an internal movement toward connection with the group and am rejected, from where can I get the strength to rise above this and formulate a request for correction? How can I make an effort to ask the Light to come and correct this?

Answer: There must be an incorporation of wisdom from the group against the ego here.

The idea is that, if friends come to you and call you to come to a Gathering of Friends or to some other shared event, it will be unpleasant for you to decline, and you should go with them. However, in this way, you are moving because of their fuel and not your own fuel. So, there will be bestowal, but it will be very small and passive.

In order to be integrated wisely within a group, you must prepare yourself in some way and find within yourself the strength to overcome your ego, just like that, as if you are jumping into a quagmire with your eyes shut, which is very difficult!

There already could be a prayer here to be included in a group. It no longer is considered individualistic but is a group matter because you want to be with them, want to be among them as a force of bestowal together with them. This is already something else.

However, if there is no other choice, then it is desirable that they will come and save you and somehow bring you out from a state of descent and include you among them. However, if you can, try to do this by yourself as much as this is possible because the surrounding Light will illuminate you precisely to the degree of your personal effort.

If they just come after you and it would be unpleasant to refuse, then you will not get any Light. Where is your effort? It is not yours.

The group will advance because it supports a friend, sustains itself, and so forth, whereas for you, no. You will get something general, comprehensive, very distant, but no personal advancement since they included you among them. This is to say, it will be your movement, but it will not be wise, like an embryo in its mother’s womb. They include you among them, and you advance within them together with them, but as an inanimate creature. Therefore, at all costs, it is necessary to try to go outside of yourself into the group.

All the rules of the group are derived from here: To submit yourself toward the friends, to mix with them, to hold onto them, to be useful somehow, to do everything in order to be within the group, not from above and not from below. The main thing is within! Try to be in the center. This is not saying that I am this center of the group. Being in the center means to be protected from yourself within the group.

Question: What is it saying that I made the right effort, a prayer? How would this feel?

Answer: You will get a new perception, a new feeling, and a new understanding of the world order.
[112763]
From the St. Petersburg Convention “Day Two” 7/13/13, Lesson 3

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