Question: You are saying that we lack joy. How can we reveal it together with the broken heart, which we need to build the spiritual vessel?

Answer: Joy is revealed from the perception of the importance of the goal, the comprehension of the connection with the upper One. Even if I have not yet received what I desire, I am advancing towards it, I am in this process, I am working on the realization of the goal that is important to me. All of this must evoke joy in me.

Moreover, a person is the product of his environment, and when he does not feel joy, it means that the environment is not influencing him the right way. You need to take care of it.

It comes to me as a shock every time, is it really that difficult to be joyful? After all, we are given all the conditions for revealing the Creator. And we keep being unhappy about something, but what else do we have to demand? We do not realize that revelation can happen any moment.

Only our readiness is lacking. And joy is one of its conditions. It demonstrates our value of the importance of spirituality, and this is lacking. We think that we are more important than the Creator—and this is why He is not revealing Himself.

Stop setting your own conditions and demanding things, and you will see that revelation will happen immediately. But when you have certain demands of your own, how can you then be in the state of bestowal?

You are saying that you want to reveal the Creator? But He bestows, and you wish to reveal His bestowal, which means that you yourself wish to bestow. Then what is there for you to demand? One completely does not correspond to the other.
[71341]
From the Arava Arvut Convention 2/23/12 Lesson #2

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Question: I once watched a movie where a microchip was installed into a monkey’s brain and as a result, it procured bananas using an artificial arm. That’s when I understood that my body does not exist because it can also be just as artificial. In this case, where is the desire to reveal the Creator located, which I now feel within me?

Answer: The desire for spirituality is not located inside of the material body. Desires aren’t inside the body at all. We confuse the biological, animate body, which operates according to natural instincts, personality, and inclinations that determine its natural desires and needs, with the desire that is disconnected from this body and belongs to the attainment of spirituality.

Our body is an animal, like that monkey with a banana. But when a new desire awakens in us, above our animate needs, it is on a completely different level and is not inside the body. The body may live or die, but nothing happens to the spiritual desire.

The animate body lives and dies, and all of its animate desires, aspirations, and goals die together with it. But there is also a desire called “the point in the heart,” which we have to develop. If we connect it with other desires like it, which are present in others, then we will build a common desire out of them in which it is possible to reveal spiritual life.

I have a drop of spiritual semen, called “the point in the heart.” I can grow it by adding more and more “meat” to it, just like a baby grows from a drop of semen in a mother’s womb.

So how can I attach the spiritual meat to my point, the drop of spiritual semen? For that I have to unite with others. That is how I will build the vessel of my soul and will begin living inside of it, inside of this new desire that I collected.

If I don’t build it, then I will remain that initial drop of semen, with the informational gene (Reshimo) alone, and will once again return and go through life cycles, one after another, receiving the opportunity to develop that drop.

My animate body only accompanies the drop of semen, the point in the heart. Therefore, stop focusing on your body and give it what it is supposed to get to lead a normal existence. And devote all of your attention to the point in the heart, to how to connect it to other points in order to build a general vessel out of them for revealing the spiritual world.

As for the microchips, leave them to the monkeys.
[71350]
From the Arava Arvut Convention 2/24/12, Lesson #2

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Question: You say that we need to catch the end of the rope that the Creator throws us. When I was a child I used to dangle a string in front of my dog’s nose and as he would jump to catch it, I would pull it up. So, now it turns out that I’m in a position like that dog.

Answer: It really is so. However, think about Who is playing with you. Isn’t this an honorable game?

If you take into account Who you’re playing with then you should be satisfied. What else do you need? Try to feel that you’re partners with the Owner, or His loyal servant.

You must jump after this string with the intention to bestow pleasure to the Owner. After all, the dog that you played with as a child played with you as well. It received pleasure from playing with you! Try to elevate at least to the level of that dog. I’m totally serious; this is quite difficult.

If you play this way in order to bestow pleasure to the Creator then you will become a human.

You will jump because you have a connection with Him. You will jump and play together with Him; you’ll understand and feel Him. What separates you from the rest of the people who jump after this string their whole lives is that they will remain animals and you will become a human.
[71262]
From the Arava Arvut Convention 2/24/12 Lesson #2, 

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We must keep the intention towards unity. This is because the whole benefit is concealed in this precise intention. What we hear at the lessons is not that important. What is important is that during the lessons we can continuously work on the unity of all our friends in the whole world. To the extent of our efforts to unite, we move forward, and this is where all of our benefit lies.

However, if we do not work during the lesson, it can give us a sort of an understanding, move us forward a little bit, but this will not be spiritual development.

This week we are watching the recordings of the lessons from the congress in the Arava. A question arises: During this, can we reach even stronger unity than what we attained there? If not, it would be better to return to the usual routine of the lesson. The answer remains up to you.

The most important thing here is to constantly work on unity. It is not about how much I understand (this is completely unimportant), but it is about how much effort I apply toward unity. Since it is precisely in unity that I will be able to feel what is being talked about.
[71201]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/28/12, “Questions and Answers”

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We had a special convention in the desert, which had a very strong impact on all of us and gave everyone a sensation of a certain new capacity of desire (Kli), and today it is very important for us to work with this vessel.

Every moment, every day, we will continue to see increasing consequences of this new desire. It will not be lost, forgotten, or disappear like everything else in this life, retreating under the pressure of a new day. On the contrary, what we experience today will help grow everything we have attained there. And we will see our present only from the focus and perspective of the convention, through the prism of the society and unity that we received there.

To realize this in practice, we need to return to the same material, and preferably study it together, with at least ten people. As we return to the same material, we will continue to rouse the memories (Reshimot) of it, and critically analyze them from the point of view of today.

And even though we will be present in the same conversation, it will not be like watching a Hollywood movie or a nostalgic memory. We do not return to the past state; now we want to attract the same deep impression from our past into the present, into our current desires, and experience it all over.

But I do not return into that old picture I had there. I am not concerned with when it happened, where it happened, and who was there: I do not look at any of it now, even though I cherish these memories as a wonderful part of my life. However, now I want to work with all of it and use it for my new state.

Some time has gone by, I have changed; I have left that place and seem to have returned to my old, regular routine. But I want to raise my regular life to that same level. And this is why I return to the same inspired feeling I experienced before, but to raise it to the height of the current burdening (Aviut) of harsher disturbances and concerns.
[71186]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/28/12, Shamati #25

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A person becomes filled with sacred spiritual sparks, and connection is always sanctity when it is for the sake of the mutual guarantee, adhesion with the Creator.

Now we have slightly moved away from this state because we have to do other things, and we no longer have the tight contact we managed to achieve at the convention through our efforts and help from Above.

And today once again, we need to look for this common thought, the feeling of community so we would maintain and strengthen our connection even though we have returned to various parts of the world.

All our friends around the world need to feel how we keep strengthening our connection from day to day. It should not be something accidental, which appears several times a year from one convention to another. Otherwise, we will not get the desired results.

Therefore, we need less empty talk and more work every single moment on preserving the attained connection. And moreover, we need to turn our aspiration for the past unity into a current, real state. The moment we remember something from the past, our memory should not be nostalgic sadness.

This sadness about the past needs to be felt in the present and lead to a new state of increasing connection between us. And even though my friends are not in a physical contact with me now, I feel our true, inner contact: the same feeling, the same nature, but with an even greater strength than before.

And the main thing that now needs to be added to the connection we had there is our mutual responsibility to keep and continue to increase this connection. This responsibility towards each other is called the mutual guarantee. This way we keep guaranteeing more and more for one another, as if we were signing guarantees for even greater amounts every single day.

We guarantee for one another that we will overcome all the obstacles of time, movement, and space, and of all forgetfulness, that special force that operates in us! We do not need anything else: just to maintain the attained unity in new difficult conditions. And we understand that for this we constantly need to keep increasing its protection and our mutual guarantee, our connection; only this will allow us to rise.

After all, the only difference between all the degrees of ascent is only a more detailed realization of details of every new degree. Every higher degree is greater than the previous one because I consider more elements of bestowal, connection, and mutual guarantee than before. Thus we need to evaluate what we have attained today in relation to yesterday.

It seems to be the same feeling, the same state, the same friends, but I recognize more details and better understand how much I need the mutual guarantee and support, for others to support me, and for me to support them. The increase in the number and significance of all the details is a good sign, which shows that we have really risen.

We need to very precisely distinguish a simple nostalgia from building new advanced states on the foundation of past state.
[71182]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/28/12, Shamati #25

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Question: How do I check that I strengthen my connection with friends during the lesson?

Answer: First of all, this is most important. Our spiritual gain increases when we constantly strengthen the connection even more than at the last convention in the Arava. You need to add new efforts to what you felt there. The Light that Reforms comes when during the lessons we listen to the story about the spiritual system on a whole and about its structure. However, emotional inspiration is higher during mutual actions of unity. And this is why we need to connect one with the other.

In any case, we have to feel like we are together at the lesson. Even if we hate each other, like the friends from the group of Rabbi Shimon, we nevertheless feel the state of our interconnection.

Question: A certain image might be appearing in me, but how do I turn it into a common asset and reward?

Answer: The group, the system, and my attitude towards my friends, everything must merge into one, into a single image besides which nothing else exists. Until you focus on it, the target will not be in your cross-hairs. However, you must work on strengthening your interconnection even at the expense of comprehending the material. This is the difference between wisdom and acting smartly.
[71197]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/28/2012, Questions and Answers

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We should be very happy that we have come to the most important work, the most important analysis that exists in all the worlds, even in the spiritual ones. Baal HaSulam writes that there is no happier moment in a person’s life than the moment when he discovers that he is unable to exit his ego and no effort of his own can help him. Then he comes to his first prayer, his first cry for the Creator.

This first cry is birth. An infant cries as soon as he is born into the world. And this means that a person was born.

Let us hope that we will attain this cry and become Human. This is why the effort we make towards it is called birth pangs. And we must be happy that we have come to this. After all, who do these birth pangs reach? We have to be happy and serious at the same time. But joy has to come from the status, the mission. This is where spiritual life begins.

When an infant is born, adults are happy even though he is crying and screaming. Likewise, the Man within us (the one who did all the work and all the analyses) rejoices, and the infant, now being born, is still suffering from the pressure, sadness, and the perception of disturbances. They both must be together.
[71174]
From Lesson 1, The Arava Convention 2/23/2012

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Question: Does a person feel the effect of the Light that Reforms? And if he does, how does he feel this influence?

Answer: The Light that Reforms constantly affects us. But its effect is revealed after a number of stages through which it puts us. It’s just like in the four phases of the expansion of the Direct Light—only when Malchut reaches its completion and the entire realization of Keter occurs in it, only then does a leap to a new degree take place and Malchut of the upper Partzuf becomes Keter of the lower one. And once again there is a multitude of inner actions from Keter to Malchut, the degree becomes completed, and a birth on a new degree takes place.

This is why the Light always acts upon us, but naturally, as strongly as the power one uses to activate it. But even when the Light affects one in a good way, there is still a need for certain inner actions, until one begins to recognize Keter, the root, inside these actions: Why things happened the way they did, who did it, and so forth.

This is why when we begin to feel Who works with us, what for, what He wants from us, how He created us, how we need to react to Him, and the way we react to Him now, this means that we have reached the point of Malchut within us.

This way in the four phases of the expansion of the Direct Light Malchut suddenly feels: “Keter is an absolute giver, and I am an absolute receiver. I cannot tolerate myself the way I am! What do I do with myself?! I want to restrict myself!” Malchut has the power to restrict itself. Kabbalists tell us that on such a high level the power to restrict oneself and to stop working with the egoistic intention really exists.

But we do not have this power. Why not? It’s because we need to attain love and bestowal. This is why we have to connect with others. This is how we learn what bestowal is, and together we demand for the root, Keter, to give us this power.

Everything fully corresponds to the four phases of the Direct Light, either directly, from Above downward, or in the opposite direction, from below upward. There is nothing else.

Hence, when a person feels within him that he is beginning to perceive where the influence of the Light is coming from, this means that he has not only attained the realization of evil, but also the root of this realization.
[71171]
From Lesson 1, The Arava Convention 2/23/2012

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Question: If we intend to receive only for our own sake and wish to come out of this intention and bestow, what can we give? We have nothing to give because we only wish to receive….

Answer: We can give our desire to bestow to the group. This is enough. The fulfillment comes from the Creator, and the desire to bestow comes from us. I have nothing to give, nothing to bestow. I will give you what He will give me to give to you. This way we examine the connection between the Partzufim: The upper one, the one who receives first, gives to the lower one what it has received from its upper one.

We only need to build the intention between us, for me to desire to bestow instead of worrying about what I can bestow.
[71165]
From Lesson 1, The Arava Convention 2/23/2012

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