Question: How can women create a strong common desire to maximize the ability to support the men during the convention?

Answer: To this day, we cannot explain to the women that they’re doing spiritual work just as men do, the only difference being that the style of their interconnection is somewhat different from the connection between the men.

With men, it all starts with a very simple friendship, with shared activities. They swim together in the sea, sit around, share meals, and study. With women this connection is much more complicated. But when they set a higher goal for themselves and understand that for the sake of this goal they need to unite, then they can accomplish it and achieve the goal. That is, the exalted goal becomes like a master for them, and they’re prepared to unite for its sake.

Question: Do women need to prepare for the convention in some special way? Perhaps we should do it together somehow or correspond with each other? Or should we only unite internally?

Answer: The importance of unification should be the same in women as in men; this is first. And second, they need to understand that they also need to achieve unity. Women are able to unite for the sake of a higher goal, and they need to explore and scrutinize this possibility.

The Bible tells about how Moshe’s sister Miriam united all the women together before exiting Egypt, how the women worked on themselves in Egypt, and how it was precisely that feminine part which nurtured Moses, that is, the force that then pulls us out of Egypt.

Question: What should women expect from the workshops?

Answer: The women, like the men, need to discuss all the details of unification. Let them try to do that; let them discover what is for them and what isn’t. In this manner, they will find their own path in a practical way since otherwise it won’t work.

On one hand, women ask: “Why not?” But when you offer them the work of unification, they say: “This isn’t for us!” And so a problem arises. And it’s unclear what can be done, what action to take, and how to approach this problem?

Women need to unite for a common cause, like in a huge number of existing women’s organization, where women can unite in order to achieve something not between, but outside of themselves. So let them unite in order to achieve something outside themselves as well, and for that purpose they can connect—not against anyone, but for the sake of accomplishing something. They can do it!

Question: Do women need to unite in order to achieve the goal or in order for the men to reach it?

Answer: They need to unite to attain the result together. Let them clarify this, and they will see the middle point into which they need to fit exactly to complement the men. And in no way is their work any less than the work of men; it’s actually greater.

Question: How should a woman prepare her husband for the convention?

Answer: You wash, dress, and feed him, then hand him his backpack, and let him go to school. I’m speaking absolutely seriously: Prepare him like you would a child. That is, let him know that you expect great accomplishments from him, that you hope that throughout the convention he’ll really go in the right direction with good and necessary thoughts. That’s how you get him ready. When it comes to that, a woman has what’s called the wisdom of life.

Question: How do men work correctly with women’s support during the workshops?

Answer: Men shouldn’t pay attention to it yet. Later, when we really become properly interconnected, we’ll feel the women’s influence, pressure on us.

It’s good when we can sense that; it obliges us. Let’s hope that we’ll be able to feel that too.
[76299] 
From a Lecture on Unity Day Around the World, “Preparation for the Congress” 4/22/2012     

Related Material:
Women’s Special Kind Of Egoism
How Can A Woman Taste The Miracle Of Unity?
A Man And A Woman: Two Factors For Success

Filed under: Conventions, Group Work, Inner Work, Q&A, Women, Workshops - No Comments →

Question: We see plenty of faces at the convention, many new people. What should or shouldn’t we talk about?

Answer: What do you mean “plenty of faces, many new people”? Am I really interested in what a person looks like, or whether he or she is old or young?

The soul is ageless. The soul has no form. The soul is the property of bestowal. If so, I don’t look at anything else! That is why I neither notice nor remember people; I don’t recall their names because I am interested only in their internal field that they resonate around, that they emanate, but not in their looks or names. What’s the difference?

Question: In order to generate this field, what should we talk or not talk about?

Answer: You should talk only about the goal, only about the topic of the convention, only about maintaining the greatness of the goal, only about the positive, and in no way about the negative—that’s what Rabash writes in his articles.

A convention is not the place to make calculations. We do all that before the convention—take an example from me.

That’s it: The convention is starting, and we put aside all the problems; this is the past, and we should rise above it now. All our negative qualities, properties, connections, and contradictions between us, all that is left below. Now we rise above them and talk only about unification, about the necessity, about what we achieve by virtue of unity, about how impossible it is to reach it in any other way, about how we can’t reach it on our own, and hence need the upper Light.

All our work is precisely in order for us to realize that we cannot achieve anything ourselves. But this is after we perform a certain number of joint efforts and see that we aren’t able to do this. And then the upper force will be revealed in this huge frustration and huge desire, and it will perform the correction upon us, revealing the Creator within us. 

Question: What should I do if during a workshop a friend either talks too much or doesn’t talk at all? How can I relate to this correctly?

Answer: If he doesn’t talk, try to encourage him, to hug him, or to involve him in a conversation so that he participates in a discussion in some way, “breaks” a lack of contact, and makes contact somehow.

If a friend talks a lot, it is necessary to limit him because everyone should speak up, that is, the maximum number of people should speak within 2-3 minutes. He can say a couple of sentences, but they should be thought through in advance. He “shoots” them out, and the microphone is given to the next person.
[76360]
From a Lecture on Unity Day Around the World, “Preparation for the Congress” 4/22/2012    

Related Material:
Relating To Everyone With Warmth
A Field For Inner Work
Three Levels In A Group

Filed under: Conventions, Group Work, Inner Work, Q&A - No Comments →

Each convention is like an ascent to the next degree. In the convention you receive the rudiments of new sensations, which you have to develop. If you don’t, they die away, disappear.

You saw something at the convention, you heard or sensed something new: a new idea, a new inner movement, a new relation to others, and how others help you. Later you have to realize all of it in practice.

You have to go over, and perhaps more than once, everything that we’ve covered during the convention, to internally process, pass it through yourself, like through a meat grinder, and realize it in the group, in dissemination, and in the relationship with yourself and with the Creator. You have to put it all together into one general worldview, one picture of the world, being aware that thereby you are forming your view on everything, including yourself and the Creator. All of it has to become one unified whole within you.

How can I put everything that is happening on this sphere into one unified whole? Everything is happening only in order for me to bring this sphere into balance, harmony with the Light that exists at absolute rest, and so everything else has to come into balance with it. I’m responsible for bringing this entire system into a state of balance, harmony, and similarity to the Light.

We have to form in ourselves this view of the world and then realize it.
[76292] 
From the Vilnius Convention 3/25/12, Lesson 5 

Related Material:
Giving The World A Solution
Seeing The World Through The Prism Of Unity
There Is A Place For Everyone In The Convention

Filed under: Conventions, Group Work, Inner Work - No Comments →

I gave a talk about how women should prepare for conventions within the framework of the program “Rungs of the Ladder.”

The host of the program was Rachel Laitman, head of the Internet Department of the Arvut Movement.

[75813]

Filed under: Conventions, Inner Work, Women - No Comments →

Question: Why do we organize workshops, and how helpful are they?

Answer: Kabbalah is a practical science. That is why all the millennia while we didn’t have to do practical work it was hidden from people, and only few scientists, Kabbalists, developed this method and adjusted it each time for the generation in which they lived.

But they didn’t show this method to people, simply from generation to generation along the way as they developed, they modified it until the entire humanity reached our time and found itself in the integral global crisis, that is, in an obvious egoistic Egypt, in the feeling of exile from something good, kind, natural, and normal.

We see that our nature is destroying us; we cannot get out if it ourselves and are hostages of our egoism that drives us to such dangerous actions that we may just ruin the entire civilization. We are destroying nature, the Earth, and the environment in which we live, and in general are making a terrible future for our children.

Why do we raise them? I look at children whose parents create intolerable conditions in advance. Why do they give birth? Today you love them, but what will happen to them tomorrow? You are doing things so that they will not be able to live! They will die a painful death! Don’t you feel that?! No, the human being doesn’t feel that, he is still blind.

However, he is slowly beginning to realize that. But even knowing this, he cannot change himself yet and act differently. Nonetheless, he still uses everything possible, sparing nothing, taking nothing into account; it doesn’t matter what’s left to his children. That is how we relate to nature, society, everything.

Therefore the science of Kabbalah is revealed today in order to explain that this is called slavery, it’s what is called the expulsion from spirituality; namely this is the worst state, the most opposite to spirituality. And in order to help us get out of it, to pull ourselves out of it, the science of Kabbalah is revealed. Therefore, it has been revealed today when we should practice all its advice, laws, and rules.

But to put them into practice, we first need to learn.

And we have to learn this, as usual, in groups, at school, by helping each other, by studying textbooks and conducting workshops in small groups—a prototype for future work with the whole humanity.

Therefore, workshops are necessary; they are the most important thing! They are the real true realization of Kabbalah in principle; it exists for this purpose. It’s not a theoretical science, not philosophy, but namely a practice.
[76308]
From a Lecture on Unity Day Around the World, “Preparation for the Congress” 4/22/2012

Related Material:
Which Game To Play?
The Time Has Come!
Kabbalah Is Pure Practice

Filed under: Conventions, Group Work, Q&A, Workshops - No Comments →

Question: How should we relate to the newcomers during the convention?

Answer: I wouldn’t say that there is a big difference between the newcomers and veteran students. It’s because when all people incorporate into one another, the difference is always there, and in principle, in this case it’s not important how much a person knows or at what level he or she exists since this is a reflection of the entire humanity, which consists of the smallest to the greatest ones, those who already understand and maybe even partially sense the upper world. Hence most important is for everybody to incorporate into one another.

The veteran students have to help the newcomers. They have to work at full force, participate actively, and set everything into motion. We will hold preliminary talks with them on how to conduct workshops, how to talk with everybody and get them involved, and how to relate to everyone with warmth. Most important is to set an example.
[76305] 
From a Lecture on Unity Day Around the World, “Preparation for the Congress” 4/22/2012

Related Material:
The Power Of Beginners
Workshops Are The True Realisation of Kabbalah
Preparing For Period Of Conventions

Filed under: Conventions, Group Work, Inner Work, Q&A - No Comments →

Conventions are the necessary step to create a unified Kli (vessel, desire). If above all our problems, contradictions, distances, and differences in mentality and understanding we try to unite, then due to the differences between us and the connection above them, we will reach a powerful desire measured by the contradictions within it and the connection above it. This is the purpose of conventions. 

I understand that there are huge problems in every group and internal distances between the groups. That is why the main thing at the conventions is to try to rise above them. Don’t destroy, but learn to overcome the problems by uniting above them by “faith above reason” or love that “will cover all sins.” Let’s cover everything within us with this “blanket” and build our common desire for the Creator above this. It should be precisely like this, at the top, above all the contradictions. 

Everything that we have passed through, all the problems, the hardening of the internal Pharaoh—everyone’s personal Pharaoh and the common Pharaoh between us—all that has been given to us from Above, from the Creator. And now we only need to think about unity, how in this unity, according to the law of equivalence to the Light, we discover the upper Light in ourselves, in our connection between us.

The conventions, consisting of lectures and various exercises on connection, are dedicated to this.
[76235]
From a Lecture on Unity Day Around the World, “Preparation for the Congress” 4/22/2012    

Related Material:
Preparing For The Period Of Conventions
A Special Invitation For Our Students In The U.S.
The Waves Of The Convention Are Washing Away All The Dirt

Filed under: Conventions, Group Work, Inner Work, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: How can we best prepare ourselves for the period of conventions so as to create a feeling of a unified group?

Answer: We will work on this at the time of the conventions as well. To do this, we need to re-read the article “The Freedom” and Rabash’s articles about unification. We need to study again the shattering of the spiritual Kli (vessel), how it shaped our earthly perception of ourselves: We now see that we are distant from one another, existing in opposition to one another, in a growing egoism, hatred, and various egoistic desires.

We have to understand that our nature is made to be so opposite to the Creator on purpose, in order for us to rise above it specifically from contradiction, starting from the opposite state, and thus be able to sense Him, since otherwise we would be incapable of it. We begin to feel and build ourselves in similarity to Him specifically based on the contrast between our nature and His.

Hence the most important preparation is to repeat the material that we study all the time: a little bit from Kabbalah itself—about the shattering of the vessel and its correction, as well as the topic of the development of egoism from Adam till our days covered in one of the “Talks about a New Life.” In general, we have lots of materials on this subject.

But most important is to simply know why you come to the convention. You come there to participate in the general Kli, in the general desire, which we all created and in which we will sense the Creator.
[76232] 
From a Lecture on Unity Day Around the World, “Preparation for the Congress” 4/22/2012  

Related Material:
A Special Invitation For Our Students In The U.S.
America: From South To North
The Necessary Step

Filed under: Conventions, Group Work, Inner Work, Q&A - No Comments →

It’s said: “Those who love the Creator, hate evil.” `That is, we are given a reference point: If you are in the state of love for the Creator, then you hate evil, hate egoism, and this should be felt simultaneously; otherwise, you are straying from the direction. You will think that you love the Creator, but if you don’t feel the hate for egoism at the same time, then, you have no direction, it vanishes. In order to align it, to make it a straight line, on the one hand, you have to strengthen it in the hatred for evil, and then the second point will be precisely aimed at the love for the Creator. We don’t know what the Creator and the love for Him is. But if we start with the hatred for egoism, this is already a direction.

It’s said in this case: “Those who love the Creator, hate evil,” and they are whom the Creator saves from this evil. Therefore, our work is to reject and repel egoism and to attract good, bestowal, and love.
[76120]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/25/12, Lesson 5

Related Material:
The Only One Who Will Help Me
Am I Righteous Or Am I A Sinner?
Penetrating Love Through Barricades Of Hate

Filed under: Conventions, Egoism, Love, My Similarity to the Creator - No Comments →

What is the connection between the hatred of evil and the salvation from evil? On one hand, simply by being human, we understand that when I hate something I distance myself from it. This guards and protects me, helps me to be safe from evil. But this does not work in the spiritual. There it must evoke the upper Light in order to correct me.

There is another instruction for understanding this, which states the world is only created for two states, either the state, perception, and comprehension of absolute evil or the state of absolute goodness. There is no other option. In other words, the world is created either for absolute sinners or the absolute righteous; it is one or the other, there is no third option. This is why it is worse to be an incomplete righteous than an absolute sinner. How can this be? This is what is written. So what are the teachers showing us?

The fact is, they write, that from the Creator’s perspective there is nothing in the world that might have dual meaning, a little bit of goodness and a bit of evil. From the Creator’s perspective there is only absoluteness—either absolute goodness or absolute evil, either absolute bestowal or absolute reception.

And for this reason, when a person wishes to advance toward the goal, he has no right to accept that there is a bit of this and a bit of that in him! This is the worst quality, the worst state!

Accepting it is a bad quality. Being in this and consoling yourself that there is nothing horrible about this is a bad state: There is a bit of this and a bit of that in me, I am no worse or better than others, there are these and those. When I console myself with these kinds of thoughts I will neither be able to reach the state of absolute sinner or absolute righteous. When I fail to reach these states, I stay suspended somewhere and I lack the point of reference for advancement.

From the Creator’s perspective, there is no difference between good and evil. There is no double meaning from His point of view: absolutely everything is good.

In our state, in our world, when a person begins to perceive that everything comes from the Creator, then he is already analyzing his attitude towards the world. If everything comes from the Creator, I either perceive that the world comes from a good, eternal, perfect source or that the world is full of suffering, contradictions, and meaninglessness. And if so then I do not believe, feel, and acknowledge that the world is really eternal, perfect, and good as the One Who created it and fills it.

Why do we need this? When, from the beginning, we perceive the world as perfect, good, eternal, and full of Light, then the problem is in us, in our perception of the world, in our sensations. When I feel that it is opposite to this absoluteness that I am able to imagine, then I evaluate myself, my qualities, as opposite and egoistic. However, when I do not see anything good in the world, then I am a sinner—I am not justifying the Creator, I accuse Him of creating this. And if I do not feel either thing, then I do not even acknowledge the fact that He exists and that He has created and maintains all of this; in other words, I deny the presence of the upper force.

A person must clearly understand his attitude toward the world from which he comes, and what it is like in relation to the Creator.
[76117]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/25/12, Lesson 5

Related Material:
The Correct Attitude Towards The World
How Much Am I Uncorrected?
The Wicked Have Their Own Truth

Filed under: Conventions, Egoism, Perception - 2 Comments →