Question: How should we prepare for the convention in Brazil in the best possible way?

Answer: First, I would like to say that in the beginning I will be having short meetings with the groups in Columbia and Chile. But this doesn’t replace the convention in any way. Therefore, I am inviting all our friends from South America and, in general, from the whole world to this convention. I strongly recommend that you come to Brazil. I think that we will have a wonderful “carnival” there.

It is very important to attend a convention at least once. I don’t know when I will visit South America again, and so let’s meet. It isn’t just any meeting, but another kind of contact, not like via the Internet. If it doesn’t work out, we will meet in Columbia and in Chile, but if you can, come to Brazil.

This convention will be multi-lingual. Perhaps it will be easier for those living in Australia or in the Far East to come to Brazil than to our other conventions, and it is worth it. It is a problem if a person has never attended a convention “physically.” After all, in our world we exist in a body and need this kind of interaction. We can’t form a virtual connection that leaves such a strong impression yet.

It isn’t by chance that business people fly to meetings all over the world, although they could call each other or use Skype. We may wonder why would a person waste so much time flying. It would be better if he sat in an office; he could get much more work done. But people still need direct communication, even if it lacks any feeling and warmth. Dry, cunning, and far from being honest, these contacts still require personal face-to-face meetings.

So trust me that for us it is very important. By creating such contact we will be able to carry it through, and without it, it is very hard to advance.

The collective preparation is just as important. This is a collective convention, and so we should feel it. Disregard will cause great harm to all of us. We mustn’t sit and wait for someone else to organize things. If this happens you will not benefit from the convention in any way. Without preparation it is even worthless to connect via the Internet because it would be stealing, actual stealing. You have to make efforts and you will benefit accordingly. If no one thinks about it, no one worries about it, no one cares, the convention will only bring harm.

Everyone has to take an active part, at least in some way according to one’s abilities. One should be concerned at least in the heart: “What did I do for it?” Without participating, you will have no vessel. So what will you be able receive? In what will you receive it? Clearly, it is only by our joint work that we are creating this vessel.
[74230]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/2/2012, “Introduction to TES”

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It is written, “there is none else besides Him [besides the only force of nature].”  This means that there is no other force in the world… that is opposite or similar to it, that exists besides it. That is, there is only one force in the world, Nature, which includes everything in it.

Actually, it doesn’t include anything in it; it only seems to us that it is divided into many parts. It seems to us that there are many forces, reasons, results, and different occurrences in the world, but it all stems from this one force.

We are among many people, with such big problems, worries, and constantly changing actions on purpose, so that despite everything, despite all these actions, problems, and interruptions we will focus our attention only on the force that created everything around us.

Everything that seems like interruptions that negate the uniqueness of this force, Nature, and that stems from one plan, one thought, one goal, all of it is meant to repel us from it so that we will return to the same track, like a missile that has to constantly follow the same course. It constantly checks itself when it is off track, and only so it can aim itself again towards the goal, like an ordinary surveillance system.

I have to direct myself at the goal, but I am on the path, not knowing how to advance, as if hanging in the air, and there are no road signs around. So how can I do anything? This is the state we are in: We don’t see the goal. It is totally hidden from us by the screen that conceals it.

Since there is a screen, we don’t know what goes on behind it. So how can we reach this goal?

To do that, we have “road signs” and certain diversions, and we constantly check ourselves and thus advance forward. By diverting from the goal, I calculate the error and return to a normal state. And this happens all the time.

But what state is considered normal? How do I know it? After all, I have never seen this great goal, so how can I aspire to it? I aspire to it when I aim all my thoughts, longings, actions, the reasons, the results, and everything that happens in the world to one source only. I have to attribute all the minuses and the pluses, everything that happens to me to one thing only—to this source.

This means that there are individual forces of a single force of Nature, which purposefully acts with the intention to divert a person from the goal.
[73794]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/24/12, Lesson 3

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Question: On whom does the ability to annul oneself with regards to the upper one depend: on a person or only on the Light?

Answer: The level of your self-annulment depends on the group. You will never be able to annul yourself before the teacher and before the Creator if the group doesn’t encourage, support, and strengthen you. You cannot annul your desires by yourself; you don’t have the strength for that.

You have to work with the group in relation to the Creator because without it, you won’t be able to approach Him. You have to assume the correct form that draws you closer to the Creator, and you do that with the help of the group. The group gives you this form of annulment, the approach, the point of contact with the upper one—you do all that within the group.

During the convention in the Arava desert you felt the existence of this contact point, the point of general connection. It isn’t in the upper one yet, but it is the result of our collective efforts. Now we need to develop it so that we will feel that this point is in the waters of Bina, in the Upper Mother (Ima Ilaa). This is the state we have to attain.

We should feel that we are inside the upper one and annul ourselves more and more on top of the growing ego in us, on top of the conflicts and problems that come up. We annul ourselves for the sake of unity, in order to stay in the upper one, to bring Him pleasure and not to reveal our desire, because otherwise we will become a foreign body and there will be a shattering, an abortion.

We have to attain greater loyalty to the upper one, which will symbolize that we are growing and expanding inside Bina, until we fill the entire space of Bina by our desire. The result is that the desire to enjoy is in it, but we have annulled ourselves completely above our ego and thus have grown. This is called a spiritual embryo.

When it reaches the size of all of Bina, of all the spiritual womb, its doors open.
[72292]
From Lesson 2. The Internal Convention, 3/2/2012

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In preparation to my visit to Colombia on April 27-29, 2012 a comprehensive site explaining the principles of global education has been created by my students, with information about the lectures that will take place to address the general public in Bogota, the capital, and Barranquilla, the second largest city.

I will also have a warm encounter with the Colombian group, including special lessons and meals. The students are coming from nine different cities in the country.
[74257] 

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Baal HaSulam, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”: With this collective responsibility, each member of the nation was liberated from worrying about the needs of his own body and could keep the commandment, “Love thy friend as thyself” in the fullest measure, and give all that he had to any needy person, since he no longer cared for the existence of his own body, as he knew for certain that he was surrounded by six hundred thousand loyal lovers, who were standing ready to provide for him.

This is the condition: The upper force is revealed only if we really need it for unification.

Question: Where does this agreement come from?

Answer: It comes from the general desire. One is not able to correct himself without the other. The correction is made through the universal unity. The force that corrects needs to be common to everyone.

The force and the mind, the effort and the approach, everything needs to descend from Above. Everything accumulates into one and as if “sews” me to others.

This is what we need to think about. If we want this to happen, then first of all, we need mutual guarantee. After all, in the general mutual inclusion, every single point that is soldered with the others contains all the rest.

Question: Is our cry to the Creator our agreement to this?

Answer: I would say yes. Only actually it isn’t a forced scream. We reach agreement about our state, about the helplessness, and the need to reach mutual bestowal, mutual guarantee, mutual connection, and mutual assistance and support. When you begin to connect all of these things, you discover that you lack the upper force. Then you really need it, while previously your needs were of a personal nature.

You discover that you need the upper force in order to really fulfill the conditions of connection in mutual bestowal between everyone. But it’s not starry-eyed idealism already since the goal is to discover the true attribute of bestowal that lies above the needs of all.

Thus, here the general agreement is required: We carry out the unification but not for the sake of corporeal benefit. Thus, it arrives as a result of our search, our work in analyzing the state.

Question: By what does the friend complete me?

Answer: Without one another, we are not able to understand what we need to receive the Light that Reforms. We can’t reveal our real deficiency if I don’t help him and he doesn’t help me.

Question: Do I ask for the friends?

Answer: I try to pray for the friends, I worry that they will receive spiritual revelation, understand, and feel what the spiritual world is. When everyone supports each other, each one shows the correct desire.

You want something that seems to you like spirituality. And it doesn’t matter how correctly you picture it to yourself. Let everything be artificial, until we receive the Light that Reforms. And still, try to think about the friends: “I wish that they will achieve this before me.” If you initially wish for the greatest things for the friends, this is already spirituality.
[71969]
From the Arava Convention 2/24/12, Lesson 6

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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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