Here is an inner exercise: We are far from each other in our qualities and thoughts—foreign and different ones; we are separated by everyone’s individual egoism. There are so many of us, and we differ so much from each other in order to reveal the Creator through our connection.

Our differences, distance, and rejection show the distance to the Creator. I see how far I am from the people who study with me, who are my closest people in the world in spirit, purpose, aspiration, and understanding of life. And we are still so far from each other. I am even more distant from all the other people in the world. If I test myself in relation to every person, then this entire cumulative difference will be the distance between me and the Creator.

Now the meaning of the group becomes clearer. This is why we unite between us: We want to be able to achieve some kind of correspondence at least between us and become closer to each other, which means to be closer to the Creator. We aspire to at least overcome the difference between us. We push our egoism away, rise above it, and wish to connect only with our higher thoughts and desires, to become closer to the Creator in one form or another.

This way we begin the journey. And then we will see that there are no people here, there are no individual souls, there is nothing—only a blurry vision, which causes me to see people instead of the Creator. It is as if I am not able to focus; everything is blurry, and instead of one person, I see two, three, or four. And now I see billions of bodies before me. But if I manage to combine them all, I’ll get the Creator.

This is what I need the group for: to start this process one way or another. All our unity exercises must be directed towards the revelation of the Creator! After all, they are a means for revealing Him. There is no meaning in a group on its own, but only from the point of view expressed as: “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are one.”

Baal HaSulam writes that there was a horrible crime done in the socialist Russia in starting to build an altruistic society and having completely deformed the principle of being one man with one heart, one desire, one purpose. Everyone was together; fair distribution, mutual guarantee, everything was wonderful, except for one thing: They have turned a means for attaining the goal into their goal. And this made them lose big time.

It is the same as focusing and combining blurry images in order to see them themselves, and not what stands behind them. And I will naturally miss because my focus is not on the image concealed behind these illusions, but on the illusions. And this is why Russia has failed.

We cannot allow for this to happen to us, and this is why there must always be three components present: I, the group (the place and the means for revelation), and the Creator, that is, the revelation of the Creator to the created beings.
[62147]
From Lesson 2 at Arava Convention 10/28/2011

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Question: Today we are holding a Unity Day in the World Kli, which includes a special lesson, a seminar, and a friends’ assembly. On this day, how can we maintain the place of unity that we created at the Convention?

Answer: We have to renew this sensation on the background of the new conditions. We have to imagine the net of our interconnection, the state of unity we are in. We have to feel that this unity is working. I want to live it, and this sensation has to become constant for me. By being in it, I want to discern the feeling and the mind in it: how much we unite in feelings and intentions. I want to feel mutual guarantee from within, mutual support among everyone.

When being inside this net, I don’t have to yell to be heard. I demand from it that the friends, whom I imagine as its parts, won’t forget about me. After all, in essence, I am the one who needs help. Therefore, I want to join them, who are already united into one.

And let the Singular one be revealed in our unity, besides whom nothing exists. He created this system, formed and activated it so that in the end, by making our efforts we would reveal Him and reach unity with Him.

These thoughts must occupy a person constantly, until he sees this system with his own eyes.
[64217]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/25/11, “The Freedom”

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Question: Why does our analysis eventually become increasingly blurred and vague?

Answer: The point is that you are shattered. It says that the Creator created man simply, but people have made many calculations. After all, the shattering preceded us.

Fundamental questions become “blurred” in your eyes because you don’t pass them through the group. After all, you can clarify things only in the group, in the commonality that you want to solder into a single whole.

There is no other place you can look for answers. You are looking for them in your mind, but your mind is “flat,” superficial. Our job is to connect all the shattered parts into one vessel. This is why I come to the group. For me it is a picture of many parts, and I have to collect them into one.

In other words, the group is the “model” of the Creator. It seems that He is “shooting” at me from every direction, but I have to identify Him as one. Through the whole world, through all the confusion both inside and outside, I only want to see one source. So how can I do that?

I have been given a big world and in it, the group. It seems that there are friends and that we have to make great efforts. But in truth, by developing my attitude towards them, I connect to my personal parts. From total strangers we become one. Thus I correct and build my vessel, and then I understand what “unity” is.

In the convention we somewhat attained this feeling of unity, and this is our great achievement. We felt that above us there is mutual bestowal and love, a reciprocal, single sensation, when we are all connected. This is already the beginning of the spiritual world. After all, spirituality is the dimension in which the level of my equivalence to the Creator is revealed.

So I have to find the answers to the questions that seem so vague in the right place—only in the group.
[63983]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/22/2011, “The Freedom”

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Question: How should we prepare ourselves for the quiet internal convention that we decided to have so that thanks to this silence and inner concentration we will reach maximum spiritual advancement and rise to a new level?

Answer: After the great successful convention that we had, after three days of an incredible uplifting spiritual experience from this stirring and delightful festival, we should also understand that the main part of our work is done internally. Of course, there was also internal work in the convention, but actually this kind of work doesn’t require any external movement.

Our millions of friends who study with us and are tied to us in their heart and soul don’t have to travel anywhere either. We have to do our internal work that is aimed more internally, connects one heart to another, one brain to another, and ties us together most deeply. Therefore, we need to be silent at times, to withdraw into ourselves, and to try to connect there. This kind of work requires great efforts, more significant than those needed for jumping and dancing. It’s very hard work that requires the greatest inner effort.

We have to make an effort so that everyone together will feel this silent connection. Kabbalists say that in order to reach the state of “Hear Oh Israel” (which is a very high level, from GAR de Zeir Anpin and above), they prepared for two hours in the corporeal world, sitting quietly and preparing the desired intention.

The meals at my teacher’s were also in absolute silence. It was forbidden to speak with the person next to you. We ate the simple food that was there, drank, and kept quiet. After half an hour Rabash spoke for a few minutes, and it was all over.

Many actions took place in silence, in keeping quiet. Sometimes someone sang and the others were quiet. On Friday evening we had a meal for an hour and a half and didn’t even eat there because we were already full. Every person received a small apple, a glass of malt beer, and a tiny piece of black bread so that everyone could bless together. Thus two hours went by without any movement or words.

Sometimes, in the lesson or during a meal, Rabash would say “Let’s think!” and he would close his eyes and lower his head, as if he were asleep for about 40 minutes.

The point is that we have to do a lot of internal work. After a lesson we go out into the world and enter its turbulences, flying with its hurricanes that throw us from one state to another. A person has no chance to stop and think, to be with himself, to internalize what he has heard, to put things in the right places, and to do some soul searching. We come to such clarifications only rarely, at tragic moments.

So I think that we have to be silent. But in order to do that we must be prepared for the inner connection so that inside we’ll feel a powerful force, a cry, singing and dancing, all our studying. It shouldn’t be just silence, but a roaring silence!
[63815]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/21/2011, “Introduction to TES“

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Question: Is it necessary to strive towards the maximum unification that one can possibly imagine at the given moment?

Answer: We have to strive towards maximum unification and ever-increasing feeling of unity starting with the point we reached at the convention, and try to rise above it in spite of all disturbances. This is how a spiritual life begins.

On one hand, this point of unity becomes ever more subtle and sensitive, while on the other, you have more and more access to it. You start to develop yourself within it, and various interactions with your first spiritual state begin to arise in you, even if without complete conscious awareness. But as you return to it time after time, a certain attitude arises in you, a certain approach, a revelation of this state.

In this manner you gradually bring yourself to greater and greater contact with this point. And it expands, acquires all kinds of inner properties, certain “organs,” like in a person whom you do not know and then suddenly begin to see his manifested qualities. You have to gradually expand this point to the first ten Sefirot, and then you will begin to feel your existence within it.

The acceleration of this process depends only on you: on how frequently you will attempt to enter this point again and again. You will be cast out, but you will try to reenter it again. In this manner, quantity turns into quality.

Every person who felt this point of unity, and even those who didn’t feel it, can catch up to us, experience it (because it already exists, it was already born, it exists outside of us), and develop independently at a pace that depends only on the person himself. To the extent he will be thrown away from this point and to the extent he will strive to return to it—that is how he will advance.
[63285]
From the Sunday Virtual Lesson Series 12/11/2011

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Question: What should women’s work be now, after the convention?

Answer: In principle, a woman’s work is the same as a man’s: It is in caring for our unity, for the birth of our new state. In men, however, this state is more active, directed specifically towards unification.

By the way, I saw an impulse towards that in women as well: the way they suddenly embraced and held onto each other. It is very unnatural in our world, but on the other hand, it truly stemmed from their feeling of striving towards unity. It was quite wonderful to observe this. When people rise above themselves, they lose perception of gender, age, and all the differences of our world and unite in the internal awakening towards the upper one.

You sensed this aspiration from within your essence as a woman, and now you can describe and convey that to all the other women so they would have a good example. I was impressed by women’s behavior: to what extent they desire to support the men and are prepared to sacrifice everything for the sake of success. This is the women’s work—among themselves and in support of the men. The women comprise a single female part, and the men the single joint male image, and in this manner they work together.

I hope that you will feel this even deeper. We don’t yet have the ability to describe the sensations of our states. We lack the words; we don’t yet understand where we are. But try to do that anyway, at least with psychological impressions. Women know how to do that.

Write about yourselves, write about all your states, don’t be shy. Let it become an example for all the other women and enter our network so that through the women’s page on our website you could unite and prepare for the next convention. This is very important. Without women’s support no kind of success will be possible.
[63288]
From the Sunday Virtual Lesson Series 12/11/2011

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Question: Judging by the sensations of the last few days, we are entering the next state after the convention and can already make a new attack. In the near future we are planning to concentrate internally, to unite together quietly, to enter the picture of the spiritual reality. What would you advise us to focus our efforts on?

Answer: There is the current state and the desirable one, and there is the transition between the two, which we have to overcome. The means to go from one state to the next can be similar to a convention: a focus of our efforts, hopes, forces, joy, actions, and events, where we are all together and we focus all our efforts over a few days and try to realize them non-stop.

But there are also other means that can help us go from one state to another. Kabbalists used them mainly for more internal concentration, which they attained by making external actions only in order to concentrate everything in the inner actions.

That is to say, they assembled together, preparing all of the external conditions so they would not interfere and would help them focus, such as by meeting in a cave, an isolated, quiet place, away from all possible external disturbances, and in a special state of day or night, which also influence a person. In short, they arranged everything so the friends could unite with one another internally, with the help of inner, more spiritual efforts.

Obviously, we must also make actions like that. But for that we need preparation and the realization of the great importance of this event, so we don’t end up with something boring or useless, something that doesn’t provide fulfillment.

Every person must understand that progress is possible only by virtue of efforts, that “penny by penny adds up to a great capital,” and that in the sum of these efforts, in the efforts to unite them together, in one place, in one Kli or vessel, we attain the common might that is called a cry, a demand—and then the gates open up to us.

We carried out a great preparation in Israel and in the whole world during the convention, and now we must perform several opposite actions—in more internal concentration, in humility. Let’s try to do this. How effective this will be is up to us.
[63955]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/22/11, The Book of Zohar

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After the convention we are in a vague state, as if in a fog, but this is good. This is the way it is supposed to be. After a heavy lunch you become fat, awkward, and cannot move.

It’s the same after the convention: You have filled your “stomach” with all of the wonderful fillings that were there, and now you gradually begin to digest them. For this reason you have slightly relaxed. It’s like an animal that having eaten his fill is now sleepy, laying, and waiting for the food to be absorbed by the body.

You’ll see how you return to your normal state after a week or two. No state should be neglected. They need to be studied from the side. Now you are in such a state when you don’t care about anything: neither the friends, nor the teacher, nor Kabbalah, nor the whole world in general. You don’t want anything, only to sleep, and you cannot and do not want to come out of this hibernation, willfully submitting to this flow.

Yet, don’t resist and at first try to study this state, like a research scientist. Now you are indifferent to everything and want nothing but to enjoy your idleness. You feel that you are a complete zero with the fog both in the heart and head, as if half-asleep.

So study this state well and very seriously in order to clearly understand: Why you are in it, what the Creator wants from you this way, and what is the benefit of such states? First of all, study the state, do not annul it. Afterwards, you will understand how to proceed further on.

These are inevitable states. It’s like a lion that caught its prey, has filled himself, and is now resting. That is, after receiving the fulfillment, you need time in order to digest it. There is a long period that is required to put all of the systems back in order. However, you must keep this whole process under control and not try to cross it out immediately.

Don’t be afraid that you’ll never wake up again. We’ll help you. You only need to constantly check your state, not even fighting it, but only to account for where you are. Don’t eat yourself up for being such an insensible animal, but simply look at yourself from the side, at your state. This is enough.

If a person starts to eat himself up, it’s not good. This doesn’t help or correct! After all, in the end, he begins to justify himself, comforting himself by the fact that he does not agree with such a state. Here, the protective force of egoism begins to function. However, if you look as an unbiased scientist at your animal body that is now sleeping, like a full lion, then you see the kind of a process you that are going through. And the awakening will come.
[63308]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/15/2011, TES

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Question: Is the point of unity situated between spiritual and physical unity? Or does physical unity not exist at all?

Answer: Physical unity makes no difference here. When we meet, we constantly subconsciously search for this point within us. Now we will begin to work with this and will understand it.

It was important to reach the state of our point of contact. Now, when it has been achieved, we just need to develop it. And even those who have not reached it can come to feel this contact since it’s already our common acquisition.

Now we just have to broaden this point in spite of all the obstacles. We need to understand that the obstacles are meant precisely in order to broaden it, to make it grow. I hope that over the next few months we will form the first ten Sefirot from it. And that will be the first demonstration of our soul.

In these ten Sefirot we’ll begin to feel the forces, plan, flow, and the entrance and exit of the Light. We’ll begin to feel all the movements in them like in a live organism, and we’ll begin to live our common inner life. A soul, rather than just a point of contact, will emerge within us. The Creator created one creature, and each of us will begin to feel himself or herself in it. In other words, it will be our “hostel.”

And gradually we’ll start to perceive our physical bodies as something that accompanies us. The broadening of the point of unity, the expansion of this higher quality will begin to prevail over everything to such an extent that we practically will not associate ourselves with our bodies. We’ll perceive ourselves as living only in the point of unity. Meanwhile, our bodies gradually will become more and more distant, irrelevant, and unneeded, until they dissolve completely as if they do not exist.
[63446]
From the Sunday Virtual Lessons Series 12/11/2011

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From our life and from lessons of Kabbalists, we learn that there is no other force in the world except for the Creator ruling everything. The difference between us and the Creator is huge. He is absolutely opposite to us.

We fully consist of the desire to receive for ourselves, to enjoy and attract everything possible to ourselves—this is our nature. He, to the contrary, is a desire to bestow, to please others—this is His nature. And the purpose of creation established by Him is to bring us to His state—the highest eternal state of perfection.

The relationship between a person and the Creator is like that between an infant and a parent. If a parent wants to teach a child to walk, he shows the child how to do that: He puts the child on the floor, supports him to stand strongly on his feet, and then lets him go. A child stands in the middle of the room—he can stand, but he can’t walk yet! So he cries and doesn’t know what to do.

He gets confused and frightened that everyone left him. And he doesn’t understand that he was left alone to make a step forward! Regardless of everything, we have to do that in such way, because the child wouldn’t learn to walk without that.

And he takes one step forward—and we catch him right away. Just make one step! He almost falls forward, but before he falls, we catch him, put him on his feet and let go. And he wobbles again and doesn’t know what to do, but there is no other way—either he falls in the same spot or takes a step almost falling forward and we catch him again. Thus time after time, he learns to take steps on his own, holding onto something at first, and walking little by little afterwards.

Our world is a snapshot of the spiritual world. It is made inside of our egoism, but all the actions reflect the actions in the spiritual world, but in a reversed form. Thus through this example, we can realize what happens to us in this life and in what ways the upper force which stands in front of us all the time, teaches us to move forward to overcome the distance separating us from the Creator.

On one hand, the distance is huge. And every time we feel as an infant who doesn’t understand what’s going on and why this happened to him—where is his support and why he was left alone. Why after a good state comes such a bad state?

But if we perceive the Creator’s behavior in the right way and know how to use Him properly, we accept these not very pleasant states with love and happiness realizing that we grow through to them.
[63571]
From Lesson 4, The World Arvut Convention 12/7/11

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