Baal HaSulam, Letter 12: But it is foolish to think that the Creator is obliged to bless exactly the place where the action takes place. On the contrary, usually, the action is in one place and the blessing in another place, in a place where a person doesn’t do anything, because he either didn’t know or couldn’t do anything there.

We exert ourselves in one place and the result is revealed in another, and so we don’t understand where all our work disappears. Actually, we don’t know what kind of work we are doing. Are our actions good or bad? Do they lead to the goal or not? Who carries them out: we or the Creator? We don’t understand all this because we are in a very confused state.

Why are we in concealment? We don’t know exactly what we should do with it, we don’t know if we act correctly or not.… Why is it that the fog, the confusion, the lack of understanding, the lack of orientation, or the lack of responsibility bear some result according to the principle of “I have labored and I found?” Why is it called exertion? Wouldn’t it be better if we were told in writing exactly what we should do?

No, that’s not the way it is. Although we cannot agree with this approach, it is described in endless places in Kabbalistic writings, in thousands of excerpts.

Our work is abstracted from results, and it is really very hard to accept this. I have to act like a “dummy,” like a beast, like a madman. I am offered a lie: to hug with the friends while I don’t want to, to speak about love while not feeling it…. In short, I have to do what I don’t understand.

This dualism is needed so that we will rise from this world to the spiritual one. The spiritual world is opposite from this world, it is unfamiliar, unperceivable. Therefore by these incomprehensible actions we acquire the vessels that guide us to the place we haven’t reached yet.

So we need the orders from Above to fulfill these actions. We want to enter the dimension that doesn’t go together with our attributes in any way, and in fact there is nothing that draws us in that direction. We have to act “automatically”: Kabbalists say and we do.

If a person understands that there is no choice, if he really wants to rise to a higher degree, then he is aware of the fact that this is a totally different level and it isn’t a quantitative addition at all. I will not be smarter or understand more, I will not acquire more earthly blessings. I act on the assumption that this world is exhausted and over. There is nothing I can add here.

I am getting ready to add something else to myself: a spiritual degree. Therefore, I have to be equipped with the vessels, the Lights, discernments, and Reshimot (informational genes)—with everything that belongs to the spiritual world.
[72050]
From the Arava Convention 2/25/12, Lesson 7

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All the obstacles stem from the unified force of nature. What do we need these obstacles for? Suppose I realized that this force has cut the ground under my feet, that it has misguided me, has forced me to forget the goal, the search, because it has caused me pain, worry, an unpleasant feeling, and I began to feel afraid of something, to worry about something. After all, I am only human, and it’s very easy to knock me out. And what’s next? What do we need all this for?

We need it so that we will feel that we cannot manage without this force, without its personal help to each one; that without our appeal to what we call the upper Light, the Surrounding Light, we cannot advance. Attaining this state is the next level of our development. When I understand that everything that happens is done only by this one and only force, and that it does it on purpose so that I will need its help, while I cannot do anything on my own, this is already the beginning of direct interaction with it. This is a very important and serious stage that cannot be attained if the surrounding environment doesn’t support me.

We have talked about the fact that a person actually has no free will in this world. He is totally managed by his genes, hormones, and other things. There are people who can predict a person’s future. It is really so, except for one thing: Free will is actually expressed in self-development aimed at the search for this force, for the direction towards it, the connection with it, and the demand that it help us, which is most important. This is actually what it wants: to help us if we ask it to do so.

Why does such an immense, perfect, and eternal force that includes all of nature, not confined by our corporeal frameworks of time and place, and unlimited in its capabilities and actions, why does it need us to need it, to ask it, and to expect that it will do something with us since we cannot do it by ourselves? Why does it need such actions on our part, our weak attempts?

It’s necessary so that we will develop a new desire in us that doesn’t exist in nature: a desire to be in contact with it, to attain it, and to work together with it. To the extent that this desire develops in us, this force makes contact with us and is revealed in this desire. Then I can feel this great managing force.

From this recognition, from this feeling, we begin to understand everything: who we are, where we are, for what reason, for what purpose, and what is happening to us. Therefore, I should want the revelation of this force in me. I have to develop this desire in me by myself; otherwise I will not be independent. If it gives me this desire, I will not be free. And if so, what’s the point in creating all this?…
[73788]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/24/12, Lesson 3 

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Question: If disturbances come to me in the form of foreign thoughts, can I just stop thinking about them and ask the upper force to direct me back on the right path?

Answer: If I get a disturbance from the upper force, why should I ask It to remove it? It is the same as when my mother asks me to assemble a new toy from a Meccano kit, an airplane or a car, and I say: “I don’t want to.” How can I grow? If I want a car that is already assembled, I will grow into an undeveloped child. It is because when I assemble, take apart, or break something, then everything happens the way it should. Just like all those years at school or university when we were constantly given assignments. They could have given us the answer. Why do we need disturbances?..

Question: Suppose an external thought came to me. Do I simply break through it further, realizing that this a disturbance, and think about how to work with it?

Answer: Work with a disturbance should be done in the following way: After you focus on the idea that everything comes from the Creator, you should process this disturbance together with the friends. That is all! You will not be able to direct yourself at Him on the same frequency. You cannot. You can do it only together in the group!

When you are together in one group, and all kinds of mutual relationships exist between you (we are talking only about the relationships that are relevant to the goal), then this single force of nature exists around you and above you. You have to create a resonant circuit in yourself like in a radio receiver, which tunes to Him, and then you will pick Him up. This force fills everything around and inside you, but you can pick it up when you tune into the same frequency.

People come to the group with their problems, with the minuses. What happens next? They connect with each other, and all the minuses disappear because we only desire to work on bestowal. I rise above my problems—they remain below. There are plenty of minuses below me and below each of our friends, but we understand that they are created in order for us to aspire to mutual bestowal, so that we work on these minuses.

In what way? They come from a single unified force. It does this on purpose so we rush towards it in spite of the problems that arise in each of us, and most importantly between us. After all, great hatred, dislike, contradictions, and misunderstanding arise between us: No one understands me, and I do not understand anyone; no one appreciates me, and I do not want or appreciate anyone.

Everyday problems are more or less discarded, but the problems that exist in the group and repel us from each other are the central problems. “Stacking” these problems, aiming them forward together, we as though tell the Creator: “You will not divert us from the path. We understand where this comes from. You put all these problems in front of us so that we’ll rise above them, like above Mount Sinai (the mountain of hatred), to You.”

Here, against all the disturbances that He causes purposely, you generate a completely new property: unity. Thus, you begin to discover Him between you—His quality, His force. This is your radio receiver, your sensor, the sensory organ that you create in yourself. In it, you immediately reveal Him—not somewhere outside or above, but here, inside.
[73966]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/24/12, Lesson 3

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Why don’t we feel progress? We can aspire to each other for a long time, try to organize a group, and in the end we get no results.

The truth of the matter is that we need to pass through what is called the “preparation period.” It is exactly like the first twenty years in a person’s life, which he spends to become a grown up and enter into life. Only after that does the next stage, the real correction, begin.

At the new level, we continue to work in the same group. However, if previously we had the group and the Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif or OM), now we have the group and the Direct Light (Ohr Pnimi or OP). Therein lies all the difference.

Of course this is a huge difference. During the preparation, we work in darkness and constantly suffer with questions. It is precisely here that the work is the strongest. After all, we work having no understanding, no knowledge of what we are doing.

Actually, the most important work is realized at these levels. It is also like this with small children. During their growth process, they set the basis for their subsequent existence, for their entire life. The way a person spends his first twenty years, prepares himself, absorbs the good acts, the intentions, the understanding of what is happening, knowledge, and so on, that’s the way he will continue to exist in this world. And in spirituality the situation is even more rigorous: Until a person passes these years, meaning the time of preparation, he doesn’t enter the upper world.

In this way, the preparation period demands a question: How many years do we need to devote to it? The answer is simple: It’s not about the number of years—it depends on us. We see that many new students come to the group much more prepared than we were in the past. Everything is already internally arranged within them, they quickly grasp the principles and connect to the group; it’s as if it’s easier for them. From this we see that the time changes everything.

Thus, this time depends only on us. We can compress, shorten it. Only the intensity of our studies determines how quickly we will advance on this path, this introductory phase, the time of preparation.
[73865]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/24/12, Lesson 4

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Question: When people start to treat everything according to the principle of “There is none else besides Him,” it’s as if they stop functioning in life; they lose jobs, family problems arise, and the material foundation crumbles. Ultimately, this really interferes with their spiritual advancement. We know that there’s also another perspective: “If I am not for myself, then who is for me?” How can I discern “There is none else besides Him,” when I have to find the second perspective within and approach life according to “If I am not for myself, then who is for me?”

Answer: We shouldn’t throw these phrases around since in principle, they also speak about other degrees. Usually these phrases pertain to spiritual development, and not only the corporeal. What can be done in order to correctly aim a person at the goal so that he won’t err on life’s path? It’s difficult. I’ll give you an example of just how difficult it is.

I also quit my job. I had a wonderful clinic with twelve doctors, a large staff, technology, and so on. In those times, you can say that the turnover of this clinic was in the millions. I simply gave it away, gave it away! I didn’t even sell or liquidate it, but gave it away in order to get rid of the management duties, without getting even a cent afterward. I could not continue working. This is why I understand people like that.

The best thing is when you work at a simple job. My teacher Rabash said the same thing. He was always being offered promotions at work; they wanted to make him a team leader and then a department manager. “Under no circumstances! I want to be a simple worker.”  “But this way you can earn five or ten times more!” “I don’t want that.”

Until the very last day of work, until his retirement, he remained a simple clerk. He worked in the income tax offices, filled out forms and papers, understood these mechanics perfectly, and didn’t want to climb higher. He would say that this allowed him to think about his spiritual work while he filled out papers on autopilot. And before that he worked in construction and wherever else as a simple laborer.

In other words, when a person has a creative job, when at work he must bring something into being, then it is difficult for him. But if he does mechanical work that doesn’t require creativity like in a machine shop or a garage, then he can continue working and I don’t see anything shameful in that. He is required to work. A person is required to be married, have children, family, and a job. Through this he exists within the framework of our world, and on that basis can develop further.

The group needs to support him in that and help. But again, he needs to work in order to provide a normal life for his family, and not for the sake of excess. But this he does have to do. How can we help with this? Within the group there needs to be such an atmosphere that obliges you to look after your friends so that they won’t fall and neglect their jobs. And if someone’s husband is having some kind of problems, the wives have to inform the group about it.
[73958]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/24/12, Lesson 3

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Question: All of us, men and women alike, are looking for ways to ascend to the next degree. How can a woman come to the correct understanding of it? After all, the men unite and discuss these questions in the groups, while a woman doesn’t participate in this process?

Answer: A woman is the vessel that a man needs to fill with his work towards the Creator. What does he fill this vessel with? With the Creator. Here a man acts only as a means. This is what we call a screen and the Reflected Light. This is the men’s work. And the women’s work is an enormous desire for the revelation of the Creator.

So where do you see a small role of a woman if she is actually the very desire without which a man has nothing to do? This is why unmarried men were never accepted into Kabbalah. What’s there for him to do if he doesn’t have a wife? This is called “half a body.” There is such a concept in Kabbalah: An unmarried man is half a body. With only half a body you shouldn’t be coming to study.

This is why we need to understand what the role of a woman is.
[73951]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/24/12, Lesson 3  

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Question: During the seminar one friend said that when he was a child he played with toy cars and that the game was reality to him. What is preventing us today from revealing that everything we are doing isn’t a game but reality?

Answer: If we truly played, we would have revealed the Creator already. The whole game is in the group. Up until today we hadn’t gotten together as needed. We were doing the preparation work, and time didn’t go to waste. We were waiting for the general state and atmosphere in the world as well as our own inner readiness. Gradually we’ve come to the point where we’re ready to realize this readiness in the group. Such groups will multiply throughout the world.

There isn’t any other way to realize this other than in a small group of ten people. If the group is large, it has to be divided into tens and then rotate. It doesn’t matter who you’re seated next to because you’re revealing your point in the heart. You don’t pay attention to the animal essence of your friend. You can dislike him for his inherent qualities—it only makes it better. It will make it easier to find contact with his point in the heart and not his corporeal part. This is how we have to work, and this is called “playing the game of toy cars.”
[73945]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/24/12, Lesson 3

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Question: All my life I have been looking for connection with the Creator. And now I am feeling it; I understand that the Creator sends me serious disturbances. There is an internal dialog with the Creator. I need to understand what He wants from me. How can I understand this, how can I feel Him?

Answer: Everything related to the revelation of the single upper force, the Creator, also applies to women. Only women lack the ability to create a detector, a sensor, a sense of perception of the Creator.

Men cannot create this detector if they do not have women’s support. We work together. Women have to create an environment around men: to push, persuade, help, support in everything they can, but the main thing is their desire. Your desire should influence the men. Like a wife who sends her husband out of the house, let him work and bring home income because the family has to survive.

Without this, men would be playing with their “toys” all their life. It is because of women’s desire that the world develops in our world and in the spiritual world.

The woman is better suited for dissemination. If she is engaged in dissemination, this is her function: She gives birth, she expands. In doing so, she works much better than men. I believe that this realization is the most true and correct.

In addition, she must support the men’s group, take care of it as a mother does her children so that they do not argue and fight, to settle and soothe them. The women also should agree. If there is a good, correct agreement between them, the men inside will not be able to argue. Try it.

Men always feel a little bit of a mother in the woman; it remains with them for life. If you create such an even, good atmosphere, the men will feel that in this environment they have to behave differently. If you begin to further their unity, your desire will suddenly start working towards their connection, that is, their spiritual advancement. Can you imagine, what work you are doing, and what you cause!
[73962]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/24/12, Lesson 3

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Question: I feel that I’m able to hold on to the thought that everything comes from the Creator. What I can’t understand is how to accept with love the disturbances that cause me pain? I can understand that they’re good for me with my mind. But how can I add love to this? Where is this love?

Answer: You’re not completing the action, which is why you don’t feel love. You understand that the disturbances probably come from the Creator, and that, evidently, this is good. You know that you can’t escape the disturbance, so you accept it. You don’t finish it off with love. You don’t process this disturbance together with the group and invert it, thereby perceiving the disturbance as an expression of love.

It’s like when parents punish a child, he needs to understand that they’re doing it out of love for him. They’re not punishing him, but his ego. What’s more, they want to raise the child above his ego. When he divides himself in two, “this is my ego and this is me,” and realizes that disturbances arise in opposition to the ego, then his “I” draws closer to the Creator and feels love.

Imagine that you’re a clever child who understands: “My parents need to punish me to prevent me from misbehaving. They’re not punishing me, but simply giving me an opportunity to overcome my ego.”

Comment: When I was a child I had no idea that someone was relating to me with love. All I saw was punishment.

Answer: Then get smarter! You need to grow up, after all!

You need to reach a state when you perceive the greatest problems and hardships as tremendous kindness and love. I’m being very serious. Everything depends only on your perception! We exist in a field of infinitely good Light. Nothing exists in the whole world but this. Only infinite love and infinite goodness! But our perception is flawed, and as a result we feel the opposite sensation. If you reconstruct yourself and grow your understanding, instead of hatred you will feel love, instead of evil, goodness, and instead of suffering, delight.
[73948]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/24/12, Lesson 3

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Question: If we achieve the goal and unite in one common world Kli, what changes will occur in Europe?

Answer: We must understand that all the problems, including the crisis with all the suffering, appear for one reason: to guide people to find the root of the cause, to find why this is happening. We see that scientists, economists, and politicians cannot do anything.

The world has entered the stage that Kabbalah mentioned a long time ago. We talked about this before the 21st century. I heard about this twenty years ago and did not believe that this could happen. “So,” I thought, “they talk. What can I do?”

The world entered a different stage. Today, we are on a completely different level. We must reveal the unity of nature. That is why the world is global, it is integral, not only in us, but around us.

Today, we reveal the upper force at all levels of the development; the still level of nature including space, not to mention the higher layers, and vegetative and animate nature are one whole. All of this is a global, integral force from zero to infinity, one whole.

There is an exception that is a problem. Inside, there is a human being, the center of the world. He is given freedom, and he does whatever he likes in spite of everything else. He is a terrible negative against everything else.

We compare this human, that is, all of humanity, this collective image, to a cancerous growth because he eats everything around him. He destroys everything living and is in contradiction with the rest of nature. The rest of nature is global, integral, and united. We are not united at all, not integral and not global.

We say that the global crisis has come. What does that mean? It means that you do not match the rest of nature! Where is the crisis? Is it in you or in what surrounds you?

You must rebuild yourself. You are a human society that also must become global and integral. How can this be done? It can be done by uniting, achieving equality, interconnection, and mutual understanding. All of our development shows us the extent to which we are interconnected. We cannot get away from it.

Look what happens: A country is boycotted, disconnected from financial transactions or something else, and it cannot do anything. That is it; life has ceased. Cut it off from the rest of the world, and it cannot exist. That is the extent to which the world is global. This never happened before.

Our society is opposite to this globality; the present human nature is opposite to it. That is why, naturally, if we remove this contradiction, we will see the force of nature revealed in its entirety.

We will find ourselves fully connected with the entire world, moreover, as limitless, infinite. We will feel ourselves existing eternally in harmony with all other layers of nature.

This applies not only to countries that are suffering from the crisis. We should consider the level to which we rise and see all these crisis phenomena as obstacles for us to overcome to reach the highest goal. Just as a person has crises in the individual sense, a state does in the national plan and human society is in global terms. This is the only way to look at life.

We cannot approach governments today and talk about this with them because they are the greatest egoists and will not be able to understand it. Nevertheless, their minds are changing. There is a big difference between what they said five years ago and what they say today because blows and punishments make a person wiser and more receptive. That is why I hope that we will be able to accomplish this.

In addition to the materials that we are preparing to submit to UNESCO, the United Nations, and other international organizations, we are connecting many scientists to our work who have the same opinion that we have, those who understand that human nature, the nature of human society, must be fundamentally changed.

The problem is that they do not have a method. There is no doubt that we need to be in global equilibrium with nature, to be in homeostasis with it. Thousands of scientists in the world are talking about this, but we also should do it. How can it be done? We must…? There is no answer.

Millions of people around the world are becoming unemployed. The crisis will bring us to a point where we will produce only things that are necessary for our existence.

That is why people must understand. They should study themselves and change themselves instead of polluting and depleting nature. I do not need much to feed my “animal” for my normal existence.

I have to dedicate the remaining time, the rest of my strength, to changing human society. Then, we will feel eternal and total harmony. This will be much more than what we try to achieve today. Therefore, we should view the crisis as an obstacle above which we must rise together. That is why we are here.
[73894]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/24/12, Lesson 3

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