Question: What should we think about during our silent internal convention?

Answer: It isn’t simply our silence and the stillness, but serious internal work. I feel this silence in such a way that it’s as if everyone is speaking! Everyone is performing clarifications, “stewing” together in a large raging cauldron that is boiling on an open fire—in a hurricane of all possible thoughts and sensations.

But we do all this together, simultaneously discerning the meaning of our life, its purpose, and what will happen to us and to me personally? And because of this, the thoughts of each person flow to the rest, get transferred from one to another, mingle together, and cause chaos and confusion.

This requires tremendous efforts, and a habit for this kind of work is necessary here. Kabbalists often used such a method, which allows one to perform a very deep analysis. In the end, you come out of this with a very well-purified head and heart.

The big convention allowed us to ripen for this work. You see that the lessons became different, the discernments are much deeper, and new words have been added. I feel as if a new dictionary has been revealed to me.

It’s like being in some country where my knowledge of the language was limited to only one hundred words that I could use to communicate, and then suddenly I learn one thousand words! Can you imagine how much easier it is for me to communicate and make contact with the others now. This is the kind of change that I feel after the convention, and much more powerful even.
[63812]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/21/2011, “Introduction to TES”

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Question: What is love of friends in the Internet era?

Answer: The Internet is a wonderful means. Really, what prevents me from being impressed when I see and hear you on the virtual network? In what other way can you convey that you are impressed if not by hearing and seeing? Do I have to smell you, or are the eyes and ears enough? Actually I can be moved to tears, even if I only hear something without seeing. It all depends on my ability to use the contact in order to be impressed.

For example, people who viewed the convention we held in the Arava desert really felt that something was going on there. This is what obliged them to later come to the convention in Tel Aviv, and it even made some of them stay for several weeks. It’s all thanks to the ascent we achieved in the Arava.

I see that it works. If we can raise our intention, our connection, our desire, our focused yearning for the goal, just as we did then, then no matter where a person is, he will be lit by that fire. There’s no doubt.

We have friends in Europe and even in America who want us to inform them when we intend to go out again so that they can book flights. I don’t think that they should come. If they stay where they are in front of the screen worrying about missing even a moment, it’s much better than being here and missing the opportunities, not even paying attention to it. A person, who didn’t want to come to the big convention, but was impressed by our ascent in the desert and then nevertheless came, profited more than anyone else. This is because he received a strong spiritual charge.
[64313]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/26/2011, “The Freedom”

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Question: What are the best means to help each other at any given moment to make the right choice?

Answer: If we speak about the mutual connection between us, there is nothing more efficient than a thought. Everything is revealed in it and only in it. If we were strong in this, we could disseminate only by our thoughts.

We will reach that, and then, we won’t need so many materials. If we were strong, if we were united, we undoubtedly could fill the entire network with our force.

We have to create a powerful field around us, but we cannot do that yet. The moment this happens, we will leave all of externality. After all, even without that, everyone will begin to “sniff” around, trying to find out from where this spirit is coming. One web page would be enough, and they would come to us.

In the meantime, our spirit is weak. So, we need many materials.

Question: What is that thought?

Answer: It is the correction, the corrected state. We are all connected, the Creator is among us, and we are connected to Him: We fill Him, and He fills us. It is unity.

Question: What prevents us from holding on to this thought?

Answer: We can’t even reach the first level. In this force field, there are 125 levels of intensity, unity. This is a good environment. It begins to draw all the points in the heart to it, no matter under what material “trash” they are buried in. Its radiation penetrates the thickness of the desires to such a depth that the person himself doesn’t feel it; yet, there, behind the iron armor, it finds the hidden point.

However, we haven’t reached the necessary intensity yet. We are not generating this force field between us yet.

Question: What is preventing each of us? What is stopping us?

Answer: I don’t perceive the importance of the environment as a factor, as a place where I correct and discover my spiritual world, where I reveal the Light that reforms. I don’t see the group as our mutual system of connection that manifests as the system of the worlds.

In short, I don’t connect to the group everything that I really need on my way to spirituality. I am prepared to study, to make efforts, but I still ignore the place in which I can realize my efforts. I constantly forget that it is the group and nothing but that. I cannot convince myself that all the reasons and all the outcomes, all the spiritual discernments, including the Creator and the goal, are revealed in the group. There is simply no other place.

Our work is to constantly penetrate through the fog, through the 125 levels. Rabbi Shimon’s students also hated one another, even on the last level before the end of correction. Meanwhile, we haven’t risen to our first level yet. Our entire path is a search for the environment. It is the factor for our development.

Question: What exercise would you recommend for us in order to perceive this point?

Answer: The Arava convention and the convention that followed it were the best exercise. However, I am afraid to repeat it because a new experience can “erase” the previous, unique taste. We need to prepare ourselves, to decide that we have to break through to the next level and not return to the previous state.

If we go out to the desert, it should be different from the last time. First, everything must be new. We shouldn’t repeat the format we already used. We need a new breakthrough that will not remind us of the past in any way. After all, if we return to the past, it is already a Klipa (shell).

We need the necessity, the desire, the resolution, the challenge. It must be something that you desperately want to reach, but cannot for some reason. It must be a true yearning for the goal.
[64317]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/26/2011, “The Freedom”

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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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