Question: Do we really have a chance to correct the state of the world? After all, we see that things are getting worse every day.

Answer: No, the world is advancing towards a greater recognition of evil every day. People understand that they advance without any direction, not knowing where to go, unable to influence the way the world develops, or to ensure the sustainability of the world, to ensure life.

We are losing all the levers and there are no reins. There is no way we can manage the world and that is actually a good thing. People feel that they are like little children whose parents have lost them.

We gradually begin to realize who has forgotten us, who we have drawn away from, and who we should get closer to. This makes a person feel the need for the upper force, for balance with nature, with reality. It isn’t some mystical force, but we actually want to know how this system is built, the law, the formula according to which the world exists.

We must know where we are headed! After all, we are on a speeding train in total darkness not knowing where it is taking us…
[136182]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/28/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: How can a person control his thoughts so that he will not sin?

Answer: A person cannot control his thoughts. He cannot control himself in any way. Am I my own boss? Where do we see such things?! There is no such thing! But I have to invoke a positive force around me on such a level that it will influence me and sustain me. Then I will be able to control myself.

We always stabilize our state by external forces, by the environment, society, and external support, while a person has no control over it. He doesn’t know which state he will be in the next moment, so how can he control anything?

A person can secure his future only if he prepares all the external vessels, desires. If I worry that the others have a secure future, I thus ensure my own future.

If a person is an element in a system, then how can he ask about what will happen to him? He depends on the whole system, especially since it is arranged so that he has the free will to strengthen his surrounding system and then he can ensure his future. He will never have more than he has prepared in the system, but if he hasn’t prepared it enough, he will receive blows so that he will discover the need to prepare it.
[136133]
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/27/14, The Zohar

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Question: Suppose I decided that I want to be responsible for everyone. What’s the point if I will fall in five minutes?

Answer: It makes no difference. Five minutes is quite all right. It means that there are already five minutes of our whole life that are worth something and which last forever. All the rest of your life is a waste of time, but you could have lived five minutes!

Question: However, I want to follow the example of Moses!

Answer: Moses is a spiritual level. The Torah doesn’t tell us about historical figures, but about spiritual levels. You also will reach the level of Moses at some point, and instead of your current name, you will be called Moses. Everyone who ascends to a certain level receives the name of that level.

Rabbi Yossi, Rabbi Chiya, and Rabbi Shimon, all these great sages, have names that indicate the spiritual levels they speak from. If we say that someone is someone else’s student, it means that he is on an adjacent level that is near the teacher.

Being a student of a Kabbalist is a very praiseworthy, respectable title. We know that the teacher is on a certain level and the student is one level below, nourished by the teacher.
[136064]
From the 5^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/27/14,Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: Why does it say that all of Israel are responsible for one another?

Answer: If I am the only person in the world who determines the state of our general vessel, then of course everything depends on me.

Question: However, I am not alone in this game. The others also influence it, and there is the society!

Answer: The society also depends on me, everything depends on me. All the seven billion people are in a fixed state and I am the only one who is changing and who determines everything. I am the only one responsible for those who can act freely, but all the others do nothing.

I speak with the Creator and am responsible for them before Him, for better and for worse! If He has any complaints with them, he should talk to me. This is called mutual guarantee.

Mutual guarantee means that I am responsible for everyone. There is nothing I can ask them to do. I am responsible for everything that they do.

Start thinking from this point and don’t think that it is imaginary. It is really so. You actually are responsible for everyone.

When you listen to the news and see what happens on the streets, or when you hear the complaints of the friends who cannot reach a spiritual level to correct themselves, to connect among them, then you should know that, from this moment onward, everything is in your hands. You are responsible for everything.

You create and make everything that is good and everything that is bad, both in corporeal life and in spiritual life. The others are not responsible for what they do. They are passive participants. They don’t determine anything. You are the only who determines how the Creator will relate to them. They encounter hurricanes, tsunamis, wars, and disasters, and who is to blame? You!

All of Israel are responsible for one another, but everyone is responsible for his own attributes and for what happens to the world with regard to it. Everyone is responsible for the wellbeing of the society and the wellbeing of the world.

Don’t say that you depend on others. You must reach the state in which you determine that the entire world is in a state of absolute goodness.
[136078]
From the 5^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/27/14,Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: What does it mean to ask only for necessities?

Answer: If a person is concerned about bestowal to others, he doesn’t have to be concerned about his necessities because they will always come to fill his desires to a sufficient degree. But there are unique situations where a person must take a look at himself to clarify what is essential and where its fulfillment is found. And he sees that this degree of the necessities is found in the desires of bestowal that are directed towards the Creator.

On the level of Bina, a person doesn’t ask for necessities because that is taken care of by itself. He doesn’t have to be concerned about it. This is because the level of Bina is absolute bestowal, Hafetz Hesed, a state of Katnut (smallness) from the side of the vessels, the states of “embryo” and “nursing.”

But when a person goes through greater and higher states and begins to work with the receiving vessels, then he must become active and turn with a unique prayer for the necessities to determine what his work will be for the purpose of bestowal. This is even though he doesn’t have any need for this himself. But he determines that he is a creature, exists, and must exist in order to work to bestow and to serve the people, and therefore he asks for what is essential for himself.

This means that praying for the essentials is an effort for him. He would prefer not to do this, but he must do it as part of his work. This is like the Cohen (High Priest) who had to have special clothing, even though he didn’t need this himself. But in order to serve the people, he had to have special ceremonial priestly garments tailored for him.

This means that the request for the essentials also requires an effort from the person and is not felt as necessary. But this is a part of his work, and he asks for this through overcoming his reluctance.
[135966]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/27/14, Shamati #35 “Concerning the Vitality of Kedusha”

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We go out to the public with our ideas as to what the good future of the nation depends upon. The good future of the nation depends only on the connection between people and we must explain this in order to reach the right connection: why it should be this specific way and how it can be fulfilled and carried out.

Then we have to actually fulfill this connection by different exercises and keep advancing towards the right connection and unity. They have to feel that they are really acquiring a unique intensity in life, real support, and a sense of security, thus we begin to heal many problems. They will find out that the whole situation is corrected and is worthwhile.

Question: Will the format of the daily lesson and working with the sources change when many new people join us?

Answer: The Kabbalistic sources will be revealed naturally. If we begin to bestow unto one another, we discover the connections between us that the wisdom of Kabbalah teaches: Reshimot (reminiscences), deficiencies ascend from the bottom up and forces descend from the top down, and the connection between us is revealed more and more. This is what Kabbalah tells us.

In the meantime, we study about phenomena that are not practically fulfilled among us. We don’t discover yet that we are all Malchut and that the connection called Zeir Anpin is inside us, and that there are even more internal connections and forces that are still concealed from us.

But all this is only in us. There is no other place or state; everything is in the connection between us. When we begin to reveal this, we will reveal it right here, just like the fact that there are no ghosts but different forces like Rabbi Shimon, Rabbi Yossi, Rabbi Aba, Baal HaSulam, and Rabash.

There are forces that are depicted on our inner Masach (screen), and there are forces that are not depicted this way. They have been purified and can be seen only in vessels of bestowal according to our equivalence of form.

There are forces that take on an egoistic form of in order to receive and so we identify them, and there are desires of in order to receive that disappear, which means that they have been purified and we don’t identify them since they are purer vessels.
[135922]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/26/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: How can I ask the Light that Reforms for the public if I know that this brings me pain and bad feelings?

Answer: It is written: “He who shares the suffering of the public is rewarding with seeing the comfort of the public.” Therefore it is good that a person suffers for the public. But what is the suffering about? Only one thing can make me suffer: That I still haven’t realized the program of creation that the Creator designed for me.

In fact, everything is revealed only relative to me. I am privately viewing a film of life, of reality, of humanity. And everything that is revealed before me as humanity, the  universe, and the entire creation is revealed in my vessels of perception. I have to organize them, and hence the entire correction depends of me; the end of correction (Gmar Tikkun) depends on me.

I don’t need to wait for what will happen tomorrow or in another moment. Other than myself, everything else is only parts of creation where the Creator reveals all kinds of states. I have to feel them, to process them correctly, and to direct them towards adhesion so that though this I will change my attitude towards Him. Only that!

There is no reason to wait for tomorrow and there is no reason to think that this will change in any direction. Everything is prepared and placed before me as before the only part of creation that has free choice. All the rest was created for me to use and to help me, and I was created to serve my Maker.
[135970]
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/27/14, The Book of Zohar

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Question: We keep talking about the love of the Creator and of the group. Where does the general public come in?

Answer: The entire humanity joins the group. Inside the shattered vessel, there is the part called Israel, and the part called the nations of the world. It all exists within the same vessel, in Babel.

The pure part of the desire came out of Babel, and out of this part, during the Egyptian exile and the First and Second Temples, the nation of Israel was established in a shattered form. The second part that came out of Babel wasn’t shattered, but was totally egoistic.

Israel ascended to the spiritual level from which it fell and was shattered, while the nations of the world are not shattered in the process, but already go through the shattering in their roots. We have no choice but to collect and to connect all the shattered vessels which is all of humanity, as it is written: “For they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them.”

The Creator connects to all of humanity as one whole, and Israel is the connection between the parts. Israel actually does not exist. Do you think that you are the main element to which everyone connects, the Creator from above and the general public below? You are simply a pipe that the Light that connects the two goes through.

The Creator actually wants to be dressed in the nations of the world, in the created beings that are external to Israel. This is His goal. They have a real desire to receive, while Israel is the connection between Bina and Malchut, and can only be a connector.

Israel feels the greatness of the goal in their attributes, but this action is in order to serve the Creator and humanity. This action is very important since without it, the Creator and the created beings will not be able to connect to one another for it is Israel that connects them, and only that. The Creator’s desire is directed toward the nations of the world. He looks at them since they have the real raw desire to receive.

The Creator is revealed in the great desires found in all of humanity. Israel is only the connector between them, which is a very respectable role since it is the mediator between the Creator and the nations of the world. Therefore, we should know that if Israel thinks that the nations of the world hate them, then the Creator “hates” them to the extent since they don’t fulfill their obligation.
[135862]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/25/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: What is an inner voice? Is it the Creator speaking to a person?

Answer: Stop dreaming and imagining. It is said, “He has given a law that cannot be broken.” The wisdom of Kabbalah is a science like physics. If you are on the same frequency as the Creator, you hear Him. You convey your message to Him, and He responds.

However, if you don’t meet by the exact adaptability of attributes, in equivalence of form like a plug and a socket, you can cry out until you lose your voice—the Creator will not hear you.

Does He respond to people crying in this world or to our complaints about our suffering? He knows how you feel even before something happens to you since He is the one who causes this.

What can we ask of Him if He is the cause of everything? If you turn to Him, you should give Him something new of your own. Otherwise, there is no point in crying out. He pokes you a little in order to spur you, and you already cry out as if the entire world is falling apart.

Question: So, how should I respond when the Creator pokes me? What does He want to tell me by that?

Answer: The Creator wants to awaken us to work to connect with the group. Through this connection, you can make a demand to Him: “I did my part. I want to connect with the friends. Help me!” If you manage to carry this load on your back but it falls, you can cry out: “Help! Help me!” Then, the Creator helps out.

Question: Do I have to connect to the friends if the Creator sends me a certain illness?

Answer: Yes! You can turn to the Creator only with the right deficiency and the right request for correction, which means for connection. There is nothing but connection. You can feel endless troubles and problems, but they are all an outcome of the manifestation of the shattering since there is no other action.

We can say that every complaint, even without hearing it through, is:”This is the shattering, the shattering! And this is also the shattering!” So the remedy for every illness is connection, connection, connection.

Question: Is the Creator forced to arrange such a minus in the bank for me so that I will connect to the friends?

Answer: The upper Light operates on the vessel that it has to correct and evokes different deficiencies in it. It created the vessel so that we have banks, police, spouse and children, all sorts of illnesses, problems, and events, and it constantly evokes something in them. The upper Light is at absolute rest, but the Reshimot (spiritual genes) are constantly revealed. Every new Reshimo that is revealed makes you feel a new reality and thus moves you from one picture in the movie to the next.

However, if you yearn to connect with the Creator before something happens, it is called hastening time, Achishena. Then, you have no problems.

If you run ahead in order to connect with the Creator and to avoid problems, it is called Lo Lishma (not for Her sake). However, if you do it in order to delight Him, it is called Lishma (for Her sake).
[135859]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/25/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Preparation for the Lesson

Workshop

Shamati #33 “The Lots On Yom Kippurim and with Haman”

“The Book of Zohar” — Selected Excerpts, “On the Night of the Bride,” Item 136

Writings of Baal HaSulam “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 55

Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Mutual Guarantee” 

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