Question: What does it mean to bring the Creator into our unity?

Answer: It’s the feeling that it is impossible to hold on to this unity without the Creator. We are gradually losing it since we lack the cause of all causes, the only force that sustains all of reality. This is what we need!

This is how a person feels himself in this world. We already have to reveal the great system that is outside our childish playground and to understand how it operates, and how the Creator has prepared everything for us. This is called the revelation of the Creator.

It’s time now after having attained and tasted the feeling of unity. Now we have to discover the One who has created and fulfills this unity.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/18/13, Writings of Rabash

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There is a force that operates inside us, in the desire to receive, in the whole creation, in Malchut of Ein Sof (Infinity), and our goal is to discover this force. We suddenly begin to feel that there are certain voids inside us and that we don’t know what to do with them. We cannot fill them by ourselves or control them. This feeling of helplessness and powerlessness repeats time after time and becomes increasingly clearer.

We understand that we have to solve the problem, but we understand more clearly that we cannot do that since it’s beyond our powers. We go through different feelings and states and cannot hold on to them. We can cry out to the friends, try to perform certain actions, but nothing helps.

We feel helpless as if facing fate and the upper force, and so we understand that we need the presence of the upper force, the force that operates the whole universe. It has to start operating and performing what we cannot do, to control all the voids that were created between us and in which we feel that we are drawing away from one another and that our feelings are cooling down.

It seems that the Creator must control this state, since we cannot hold on to it. This demand already focuses us on the Creator. This is how we acquire experience and the awareness that the void, the chilling down, the detachment, the created empty spaces that didn’t exist before the descents, are all meant to create a new space for the Creator.

Later you feel that there is nothing but these voids! All of reality that is revealed to a greater extent is actually an empty space. If the Creator doesn’t feel it, it will disappear, since you have no control. The only control you have is to obligate the Creator to control.

You are in the center of reality, in the black middle point, and reality continues to expand. This void develops to the dimensions of the whole universe, swallows you and you totally disappear in it. The illumination of the empty Malchut that we feel is a very scary feeling. So you simply must have this void filled by the Creator.

Thus you thank the Creator for having awakened you to get closer by evoking the feeling of detachment in you. This is the state we are in after the convention. If we don’t want the convention to end, we have to forcefully keep the Creator, the operating force, in this picture and to try to connect “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are one” equally like three partners.

We forget about that and think that the main thing is Israel, which means us. But if we don’t worry about all three conditions, we are not called “Israel!” We want something to happen in our unity and that is right, but what is lacking is keeping ourselves forcefully in these three conditions. We don’t feel the Creator that must be between us, like a root that we have to reach. We don’t always remember the Light that Reforms, the Torah that has to bring us to love. Besides we have to clarify what exactly love is and to what extent it is mutual devotion and the devotion of all of us to the Creator.

These are all important issues that we have to process and to clarify. Their clarification is to constantly search where Israel that yearns for the Creator is in the connection among us. What is the Creator that we yearn for? What is the Torah and how does it operate on us? What should we do so that it will operate on us so by its bestowal we will discover the Creator’s image among us and take on His form?

We have to work on that and it will seem more vague, unclear, and crumbling each time. The Creator will let us feel more and more detached each time so we will fill the empty space, the bigger and wider circle, the inner emptiness, with the Creator’s presence.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/19/13

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Question: What is the meaning of an empty void and how can we obligate the Creator to control it?

Answer: An empty void means that I don’t control it. The control can be mine, as Pharaoh says: “I will rule,” or it can be the Creator’s control. It’s one of the two and there is no third option.

And empty void means that I surrender; I cannot do anything. This is what happened in the convention, where there was a special feeling of unity, of connection, and of power. It was a very pleasant elated feeling, as if spiritual. But suddenly we begin to understand that it wasn’t just a corporeal feeling that was simply nice and pleasant.

It’s true that it was interesting and powerful and that we felt together and everyone stopped feeling himself and enjoyed the feeling of being incorporated in others, but where is spirituality in all that? From the new state we begin to examine things and see that perhaps there was nothing spiritual about it, but that we were just having a good time.

This means that now we feel the previous state as an empty void, a qualitative empty void. We understand that it wasn’t very spiritual since the unity of “Israel, the Torah, and Creator” was lacking in it and especially the Creator. We discover that we must bring the presence of the Creator into that state and to fill with His presence all the empty voids that are revealed.

It’s just like a child who is given more and more complicated, challenging games that force him to think and to understand, to know and to ask questions. He must develop and penetrate things and clarify what is lacking and how to fill it. This is how he advances.

So a fall is not a descent, but a revelation of areas that are meant for the spiritual filling. We have to work in order to fill them. First we have to see that we cannot control the feeling in these places of regression. But before that we have to make every possible effort, in order to find out that we are helpless. If the connection is still important to us, we will feel that we need the Creator’s help.

There are several levels here. Do we yearn for the same connection we had before or are we grateful that we don’t feel it now since we need the revelation of the Creator now?

But what does the “revelation of the Creator” mean to us? Do we perceive it as the force of bestowal that obligates us to be more devoted to everyone else, since by this devotion we bring the host greater pleasure? This is already the process of clarification. We are in a good state and we have to understand the process. The main thing is to be just as grateful for the bad as for the good.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/19/13

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If we yearn for bestowal, we have to check ourselves and what our demands are, how pure they are, and that they are without an intention for self-benefit. We have to do it now when we have received an additional desire and have to add the force of the intention and the force of our concentration for the work. We have to try to reach the right request without mixing it with our private requests and with our ego that has now awakened in us with the desire to benefit from the work we have done for the good of our desire to receive.

Everything has to be focused only on bestowal, so that we will not even want to know that we bestow. The reason is that the actual understanding is already our payment and our reward. We want all the payment for the efforts we have made to be aimed at bestowal. Then it will be a true Returning Light.

We have to constantly fear not to receive any reward for our efforts, so that all our intentions and actions, the bestowal upon the group and the environment, and our prayer will all be external to our body. We have to greatly fear that it will not come back to us and to guard ourselves from it. Thus we build a Masach (screen) above ourselves that first protects us from the reward so that it will not come back into our desire to receive.

If we can constantly do that and feel sure that we can keep the covenant on the previous level, not thinking about receiving, we can already begin to do another kind of work and to yearn to increase our bestowal. Thus we work in both directions. On the one hand, we guard the wall that doesn’t let any self-benefit enter our body, our desires. On the other hand, we increase our bestowal outside ourselves.

This is actually the same direction thanks to which the image of the one who bestows is revealed in us. It’s thanks to this guarding that doesn’t allow any self-benefit, guarding above our personal desires, that the desires begin to take on new forms and concern about attaining the goal. We have to guard them very well so they will not receive any response from our work of in order to bestow.

As a result of this work of restricting our desires and expanding the desire to bestow, we begin to form the image of the one who bestows inside us, the image of the Creator. Then we already begin to understand what bestowal is and what altruistic actions are. We begin to acknowledge the force of bestowal as the first, elementary, primary force that revives all of creation.

Then we already have someone to ask, whom to turn to in our prayer. First this sublime image did not exist in us and we used to imagine different things without any real basis. Now, there is already a basis, and the image by which we can understand that “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are one.” There is already a direction from us to the image of the one who bestows. This is how a person advances.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/17/13, Writings of Rabash

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Question: There was a feeling at the convention that every second a thought, a desire, was renewed and grew, and no moment was wasted. But after that, when we need to add more to that image of the unified man that we have created, instead of multiplying it, conversely, we are losing what we have achieved. What can we do when we go out into the world, when we become confused and cannot preserve the former state because our thoughts are running in other directions?

Answer: Going into the external world, you need to be in even greater tension because it has been created as a means to increase the previously reached degree. And if that does not work—this means that you do not feel yourself within the group.

Imagine that you are a scout sent by your friends to a foreign territory in order to find out the situation there. What will you tell them when you come back? Are you going to be like those scouts who were sent to the land of Israel and upon their return said that we would not be able to cope with the people who inhabit it and we will be defeated by egoism?

This is still called the development by the path of suffering because this takes places in the conditions of descent, alienation. If you feel that you slide lower and gradually come out of holiness, it means that you have already become disconnected from the upper force. In order for you to become included in the environment, you as if lock yourself in a submarine, in order to seek the upper force with which you will achieve mutual bestowal, “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.”

But being torn from this upper, internal force, you also pull yourself from the environment. Everything is connected by a chain: Israel, the Torah (group), the Creator. Since you are separated from the Creator, you also become excluded from Israel because you are no longer aimed “straight to the Creator” (Yashar-El). At the same time, your group turns from the gathering of Kabbalists into a crowd of clowns.

It is a critical point. We cannot keep ourselves in this environment because it lacks the general force of bestowal, the revelation of the Creator. We need to keep it with all our strength as much as possible. Otherwise, we will not have the motivation, the reason, to reach this environment and connect to it more and more strongly.

You need to work on this point, which is still clouded, by focusing your attention on it, and gradually it will begin to become clear. As if it were not visible and then began to emerge from the fog due to various other reasons, events, “from your actions I will know you.”
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/18/13, Writings of Rabash

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Question: How can we correctly picture the need for the Creator’s presence in the void that was formed between us?

Answer: It is essential that He should control that void. Keep on exploring the empty space and enter it more deeply. If the Creator doesn’t control this void, we will undoubtedly escape any connection with the friends, any form of bestowal.

This is the whole difference between the ten Sefirot of the lower level and the upper level. What used to be the cause on the lower level becomes the means on the upper level. In the previous state we felt connection and unity with the friends, but now we don’t feel that, and so we need the Creator to connect us. On the next upper level, the opposite will happen: Here I need the Creator in order to remain connected so that He will keep the state of the convention for me, and later all the convention and the whole empty state that was created will only be designated for revealing the Creator.

This is a qualitative difference between the levels, when Malchut of the upper becomes Keter of the lower. It is a change of the cause and the effect, which means that the reason that I do it changes. It is like a child who uses his parents when he is young and when he grows, he uses himself in order to help them. Another example is the guest and the host, when the host tries to do everything for me and serves me different refreshments, and if I, the guest, rise to an upper level, I repay the host for all his kindness. The cause and the effect change places.

This is why we feel empty now after the pleasant state we felt during the convention. There we felt the connection with the friends and it was nice and pleasant. Now this feeling is gone and we want to return to the same feeling. But what can help us here when we cannot bring it back and this feeling cools down and disappears. Only the Creator can preserve it, but where is He? We must feel His presence.

Then we begin to understand that it isn’t about drawing the Creator into our state so that He can correct it, but rather about using this state of the revelation of the Creator in order to bring Him contentment. We don’t wait for Him to bring us contentment anymore but rather use this emptiness in order to ask the Creator to reveal Himself so that we will be able to bring Him contentment.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/19/13

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Here are some pictures from the Convention in St. Petersburg, July 12-14, 2013.

[Show slideshow]

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Question: How can women feel the collective descent and unity? I don’t feel any descents; I come to the group with great happiness and devote myself to it. So where is my spiritual development?

Answer: There is something unique among women in comparison to men. It is not required of them to overcome their natural barrier between them. But in the spiritual work, they must be like the men.

Nobody requires them to, nobody demands of them the same method of connection as it is with the men. But inwardly, they are ready for this and must work on it especially between them.

And afterwards, both a particular detachment, ascent is created, and the sensation that you are a woman and this is a man disappears, when this outer envelope disappears, and becomes unimportant, then on one hand, what will remain is the physical world, and on the other hand, the spiritual world; both of them will be precisely differentiated: this being our beastly nature and that the soul, then they will be able to work like the men.

But until that moment there is a difference between men and women and therefore, we need to rise and desire spiritual attainment separately. Certainly we need to help each other in everything, but if we begin to work together, then we only become confused. We confuse images from the physical world and spiritual work and the outcome is very bad.

Therefore, in no way must we intersect in a serious way. Mutual help, supporting the center, dissemination, everything else is done together, except for spiritual work. Sometimes even the workshops can be jointly arranged. But in general, connection needs to be differentiated according to gender.

You understand and feel this yourselves that you can easily become confused. Moreover the women get more confused than the men. A man understands what he needs whereas a woman confuses spirituality with materialism, for her it is as if it is the same thing. And this is not at all so. She is simply lying to herself without understanding and feeling this.

When you pass through the Machsom and really begin to feel the upper world, you will then understand how much this would have been a mistake. But until then, no. And therefore with us everything is strictly divided into masculine and feminine parts.

Don’t interfere with the men, this is the first condition. Second, learn among yourselves. Nobody calls upon you to hug. Do everything that is beneficial for your connection.
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From the St. Petersburg Convention “Day One” 7/12/13, Lesson 2

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Question: The emptiness that we must find within us and fill, is this work with the ego?

Answer: Certainly. Emptiness is an egoistic desire that appears in me which I want to fill. These could be simple physical desires and they could be spiritual desires. With the spiritual desires this is slightly more complicated since I can never fulfill them by myself. And even the physical desires, basically, are only relatively fulfilled.

The idea is that I need to realize the spiritual desires that appear in me in someone else, to fulfill him, which is to say to transform “minus” into “plus.” A Kli is a very great negative desire or minus. I make a Tzimtzum (restriction) on it, the Masach (Screen), then the Ohr Hozer (Reflected Light), and in spite of this inner negative desire, I place someone else’s fulfillment above my desire. It follows that I transform the place where I feel emptiness into a mechanism for the fulfillment of the other or of the Creator, which in fact is the same thing.
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From the St. Petersburg Convention “Day One” 7/12/13, Lesson 2

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Question: Should we look for deficiencies and emptiness in the group?

Answer: Don’t you know what the friends want? They don’t need to say anything because it is clear to you that they want the revelation of the attribute of bestowal, the attribute of love among them. Thus, they will begin to feel everything else, all of creation, and the Creator that fills everything. This is why you are their friend.

You only correct and adapt your intentions, your desires, and your yearnings so they will be more similar to the Light. Then everything will work out and you will succeed in everything.

Question: But if the friends don’t speak about their desires, there is a kind of emptiness, a silence…

Answer: This happens because you don’t feel them, you don’t feel how much they want spirituality.

We have just heard some comments from the women. It is indeed different from what the men say. They all feel how much they long for spirituality, how much they want and yearn for it. Perhaps they didn’t speak very accurately, but this inaccuracy will be corrected until the end of correction, until the world of Ein Sof (Infinity). On the whole it was amazing!

What don’t you understand? No one in this world has the desires that I feel here in each of you. Everyone else in this world, except for the desires of our global group, is on the animate level.
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From the St. Petersburg Convention “Day One” 7/12/13, Lesson 2

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