Baal HaSulam, “This is for Judah:” The Creator made creation existence from absence. Hence, there is not a single creation that was not previously in absence. However, this absence has a distinct form in each element in creation, because when we divide reality into four types: still, vegetative, animate, and speaking, we find that the beginning of the still is necessarily complete absence.

However, the beginning of the vegetative is not complete absence, but merely its former degree, which, compared to itself, is considered absence. And in the matter of sowing and decay, which are necessary for any seed, it is received from the shape of the still. Also, it is the same with the absence of the animate and the speaking: the vegetative form is considered absence with respect to the animate, and the animate form is considered absence with respect to the speaking.

The main thing a person has to clarify on his current level in order to ascend to the next level is that he doesn’t have the upper level! As it says: “absence precedes presence.” I don’t exactly know what my next level has to be, but I feel that I lack it! If my deficiency regarding the next level is ripe enough, I move on to it. This means that “absence precedes presence.”

This is what happens in the transition from the level of the still to the level of the vegetative, and from the level of the vegetative to the level of the animate, and from the level of the animate to the level of the speaking. How can one ascend from the level of the speaking to the level of the Creator? Where can we begin to clarify what we lack?

Hence, the text teaches us that the absence that precedes man’s existence is the form of the beast. This is why it is written, “a wild ass’s colt is born a man,” as it is necessary for every person to begin in the state of a beast. And the writing says, “Man and beast Thou preserves, O Lord.” And as a beast is given all that it needs for its sustenance and the fulfillment of its purpose, He also provides man with all that is necessary for his sustenance and the fulfillment of his purpose.

Therefore, we should understand where is the advantage of man’s form over the beast, from the perspective of their own preparation. Indeed, it is discerned in their wishes, since man’s wishes are certainly different from those of a beast. And to that extent, God’s salvation of man differs from God’s salvation of a beast.

It turns out that we need to feel that we don’t want the Creator and the spiritual world, but that we want to remain beasts who carry on with our comfortable life in our pen and nothing but that. This means that I have to discover my real desire in the current state and my refusal to leave it by even one millimeter. This is a feeling of absence.

I don’t feel that I lack the next level and actually see that I don’t miss it in any way. According to my nature I am ready to remain on the corporeal level forever. Without this feeling I cannot reach the recognition of the negative form.

This teaches us that the form of the absence is but the negation of the presence. And we know the form of the presence, redemption,  from the verse, “and they shall teach no more every man his neighbor… for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them.” Hence, the form of the previous absence, meaning the form of exile, is only the absence of the knowledge of the Lord. This is the absence of the Aleph, which is missing in the Gula (exile), and present in the Geula (redemption) —the Dvekut (Adhesion) with the “Champion of the world.” This is precisely the redemption of our souls, no more and no less, as we have said that all the letters of Geula are present in Gula but the Aleph, which is the Champion of the world.

If all we lack is the revelation of the Creator, the force of bestowal, not for our own pleasure but because it’s a more sublime attribute, we are ready to advance to the state of redemption.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/31/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: Rabash writes: This is like the Light and Kli—the suffering that is endured for something is the Kli that can receive Light if he will free himself from the suffering. (From the article, “What Is the Blessing,”…who has done miracles for me in this place in the work.) How can I free myself from suffering even before I receive Light? I thought that the Light is specifically what releases us from suffering.

Answer: The Kli for receiving the Light is not the desire to be filled with pleasure but the desire to feel how others have enjoyment from me. My pleasure is in this. But I don’t work for its sake. Pleasure for me is only an indicator, a means for measuring that I have really attained bestowal to others.

This is called “freeing myself from suffering,” for I have no other thoughts or intentions regarding myself. I am concerned only for what is outside of me; therefore I merit discovery of the Creator.

These sufferings of love are when I am not in the desire to bestow. I suffer from this, and not on my account. If you suffer for yourself, you are found in this material world and are not directed towards the Creator at all. Being directed towards the Creator means that you want to be like Him, identify yourself with Him, and take an example from Him. And to be like the Creator means to think about what is outside of you.

My suffering becomes completely different because it becomes sufferings of love from my lack of ability to bestow to others and from concern that by bestowing to others, I am doing this for my own sake and not for His benefit, meaning not for the sake of bestowal, and without an intention to receive a reward. I demand the power from the Creator to help me to become like Him.

Question: And the Creator always helps in a case like this?

Answer: If you are really asking for this, He must help. You simply have never asked. You only need to want to be like Him, at least somewhat.
[132165]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/02/14, Writings of Rabash

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Question: Does a person need to do some kind of work with disappointment, with his heaviness of heart, or should one simply be sorry and that’s all?

Answer: In general I would not recommend entering or deepening this sorrow, but relating to it with maximal simplicity, as if you don’t remember anything and don’t feel anything of what was. Every day you must be a new person.

It is written, “A fool sits with his hands folded and eats his own flesh.”  “What did I do and why did I behave like this, oh, oh, oh my, ay ay! How badly I behaved, what I have done!” This is foolishness, especially because of your lack of faith in what the sages said, that everything is managed from Above and that the Creator in advance has arranged the results of all of your actions.

So we follow a different line and never look back. Certainly this is not always successful because suddenly thoughts arise about how much harm you caused, what you did, and you begin to eat yourself up. You are given these states intentionally because you must rise above them.

Everything that a person did in the past sinks into the past; everything is done according to the instruction of “There is none else besides Him.” It’s forbidden for you to get involved with this and think that supposedly you could have changed something in the past and brought about other results. Everything went out one hundred percent correctly regarding what had to be; and at the end of correction, it will be revealed how correct this actually was.

Believe me, I have experience; it’s forbidden to think that something in the past depended upon you. Nothing depended upon you! So at every moment, you need to become a new person, “I was born just now; what do you want from me? There is nothing to demand of a newborn.”

You were born and will begin the work anew, clarifying: “Who am I, what am I, and who is this higher power that I must resemble? Ah, so I have a group, how nice! What do I need to do with the help of the group? Connect with them? Okay, I will connect. What for, why, and how do I get that?”

At every moment you begin to clarify from a clean slate, and don’t carry anything from the past with you. At every moment a new Reshimo is discovered within you; so how is it possible to continue something? It has already transformed, just like digested food; it’s impossible to begin to digest it again. You must want to become completely new, like a fetus.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/14/14, Writing of Rabash

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Preparation for the Lesson

Writings of Rabash, Article 13

Workshop

The Book of Zohar — Selected Excerpts, “Parashat,” “BeShalach“

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Question: What is the correct act of dissemination?

Answer: The correct act is when I don’t take account of what is good for me and what is bad for me. I disconnect myself from it, like a judge who must be neutral and only look at where I can bring the most effective benefit and bestowal.

In accordance with it I evaluate all possibilities, go and carry them out. And the more that I hold myself above the calculation of how pleasant or not this will be for me, not figuring out what I will get in the end, the higher my state is.

You should try not to focus on yourself, as if you are under a local anesthetic for pain. As if they gave me an injection of anesthetic and now I don’t feel if it’s bad or good for me. I have detached from myself as if everything is numb inside of me from the anesthesia, all sensations of pain have disappeared.

And then I have the possibility of thinking only about what I see and hear, and inside I don’t feel pain, happiness, or pleasure. Imagine that they gave you a numbing injection, that you stopped sensing the taste of the food and now eat because it is necessary to eat. You even check the clock: “I have been eating for ten minutes, this means that it’s enough.” You do not feel satiated or hungry.

Try to work like this and you will see that you will begin to work in the right way. This is even if you aren’t given anything like this to do from Above, you should give yourself an opportunity for overcoming. As an exercise, this is very useful.
[132080]
From the 2^nd and 3^rd parts of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/3/14, Questions and Answers with Dr. Laitman

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Question: I am ready to realize the advice of the teacher if it is a particular task and it is clear what must be done. But how can I realize the advice to discover spiritual worlds in a connection with the friends? This is not really clear.

Answer: If I am in a group and I have no feeling about it, then this means that I am disconnected from the spiritual world. The spiritual world is a place, a desire to bestow.  The desire to receive is the physical world.

The spiritual world is the place between us, the shared desire that we build together and where we connect. In the center of the connected desires, we discover Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama, Haya, and Yechida, which are called the Creator, the Keter that is discovered as a result of our effort.

This is what our teacher, the spiritual guide, teaches us, and it is up to us to realize this. How exactly we do this is written in books. If we clarify that we are not ready to realize this, then we scream, pray and ask. In addition to this, there is another possibility, and it is to go out and disseminate. Then we feel that we must return to the group and receive power from the center of the group to continue with dissemination.

And with dissemination we are back to the center of the group for we can bring fulfillment to people only through that. When we work mutually, we constantly go through changes and stages in our deficiencies.

Comment: I understand how to perform physical activities: going out to disseminate, sitting in a lesson. But I don’t know how we attain a connection with friends and how we discover the spiritual world between us.

Answer: To connect with the friends and discover the upper world within the connection, you only need to invest “half shekel,” to do only half of the work. You only need to develop the deficiency, and even that comes from the Light that Reforms. Fulfillment also comes from this Light.

But some kind of action is needed from your side to connect with everyone, in the form of a game, to the degree that you are ready to do so. Go out to disseminate to the wider public and do something for the benefit of the Creator. If it is good to Him, you must at least do half or a quarter of the action and “the Creator will finish it for you.”

Don’t think about the result for it is clear that you are not able to do anything spiritual. The Light does this. But effort is required from your side, not even in relation to the Light but to the collective Kli. And from this, a prayer for the Light will be produced.

There is no other possibility besides dissemination, meaning besides connection within a group and external efforts. When we go out to disseminate, we go out to connect. Rabash writes that “the main thing is unity of the friends because this compensates for all the deficiencies” including the physical deficiencies. Everything will improve if there is unity between us because the upper Light acts and fills all deficiencies. So we go out to connect as many external deficiencies as possible to us.
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From the preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/26/14

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Baal HaSulam, Shamati No. 159, “And It Came to Pass in the Course of those Many Days”: The thing is that, indeed, they were very fond of the work in Egypt. This is the meaning of “But mingled themselves with the nations, and learned their works.”

We, ourselves, do not want to exit Egypt. The war is with our inner Pharaoh.

It means that if Israel are under the dominion of a certain nation, that nation controls them and they cannot retire from their dominion. Thus, they tasted sufficient flavor in that work and could not be redeemed.

Egoism reigns over the heart and mind of a person. All the borders could be opened for him—he himself won’t want to exit this slavery. He is devoted to Pharoah more than all Egyptians. After all, the bestowing desires, falling under the rule of egoism, become even more devoted to the ego than the receiving desires.

They don’t want to leave Egypt; they work for Pharaoh with devotion. Egoism has a strong grip over them, specifically them become Pharaoh’s very strong and faithful workers. Indeed, the force given to them for future spiritual work and devotion to the force of bestowal is now faithfully working for the egoistic force.

Nobody holds us up in Egypt—we ourselves do not want to abandon it. We enjoy our life with its spiritual problems even more than a regular person delights in his earthly existence.
[133050]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/18/2014, Shamati #159

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Question: What stops a person most from coming out of Egypt?

Answer: A person forgets that we acquire spirituality by connecting. So this becomes the work in Egypt. If you work alone, you are called Pharaoh’s slave.

We should always check ourselves with regard to the group because there is no other scale we can use. We were given vessels, shattered deficiencies that are scattered among all of us since everyone is incorporated in everyone else. Therefore, we don’t understand what is happening. We need to start arranging ourselves in the group and to bring it to the form of a spiritual Partzuf.

It should be a form in which the upper force, the Creator, is revealed. This is all our work: building ten Sefirot, not nine and not eleven, no more no less. All of creation is made of ten Sefirot.

We have to find our place in the Partzuf, the place of those who want to connect in bestowal. This matches GE, the phase of Israel, and rest are AHP that join us and help us. How can we grow? We grow by the AHP, with its help. The bigger the AHP is, the bigger our part of the GE above it can be. Thus we build Aviut (thickness) in GE too, and then the work with the real AHP begins.
[132903]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/16/14, Writings of Rabash

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Question: How can we determine the exact measure of the desire needed for a prayer? Perhaps a person who asks for bread has to go hungry for two weeks first, but a person who hasn’t eaten for three days may feel that this cry is the strongest it could be.

Answer: There is no standard measure. It’s a personal feeling that I cannot remain in this state any longer. Besides, we also need a prayer before the prayer because I cannot feel real hatred towards my Egypt and I want to experience the slavery so that I can really hate it. This is also a prayer because this hatred also comes from the Light that Reforms, and every prayer is meant to draw and bring the Light closer.

All these states are carried out very quickly. The Torah tells us a lot about what happens before coming to Egypt. Then there is the story about how the children of Israel entered Egypt, about the birth of Moses, about his escape and his life with Jethro. However the actual exodus is very fast, as if it takes no time. Therefore we only need to ask.

If the Light begins to work and a person is dominated by the Light, he immediately goes through states as if above time. We are very close to this and we can force the Light to operate.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/13/14, Writings of Rabash

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Question: Could it be that the outcry from the slavery in Egypt is not my own frustration but our common frustration?

Answer: Indeed, I begin to see myself as an integral man. I am not myself but my connection with others, the mutual incorporation. I make the decision that I is my connection with the group, that I am not here inside my body but there inside the group.
[132185]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/02/14, Writings of Rabash

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