Question: How can we work in the group so that on the one hand we will remain creative and on the other, make decisions in a circle: listen carefully and hear everyone’s opinion and get everyone’s consent? These two processes usually don’t go along together.

Answer: Undoubtedly, we should aspire for a collective decision, but since we have to advance quickly, we cannot involve the whole group in decision making. That’s why there is the concept of the plant: We are divided into departments, into work groups and each group has its own job.

It’s impossible for the whole world to discuss and to be involved in every decision that is made. Therefore there are governments. When the nation of Israel was on a spiritual level, there was the Sanhedrin, a spiritual government that was made of sages, Kabbalists. Everything is always arranged in the form of a pyramid.

So there have to be groups that will engage in different projects. For example, I don’t know how dissemination, the editing of the books, or the movies are organized. It isn’t my job. I am asked about a direction, about the general strategy, and according to it those in charge work on a specific work plan.

We should learn from everything we have been through that all our decisions don’t operate in one direction or another. If a decision was accepted full heartedly, by trusting the friends, by being ready to devote ourselves so that they will do whatever they want, it’s a right decision. If we make any mistakes, we will correct them later. Then we will fall again and correct things again—our whole way is made up of mistakes.

It’s enough to see what the Torah tells us about the wandering in the desert: There were always problems that came up and which needed correction. This is also our way. So if we don’t succeed, we shouldn’t think that we have failed. If we discover that we are egoists and that we were wrong, it’s the right way and that’s the way it should be.

So regard all the problems in a balanced stable manner. Don’t panic as to what may happen to us if we don’t make the right decision. On the contrary, our advancement is a sequence of ascents and descents, in discovering evil and in correcting it. We have to accept the fact that we are headed towards our correction, and so we should relate to all the problems that arise in a balanced manner.

We shouldn’t worry too much about certain decisions that were made. No matter what you decide, whatever has to happen will happen. Be a little fatalistic, do whatever you can and accept whatever happens afterwards gladly.
[132105]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/03/14, Questions and Answers with Dr. Laitman

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Question: When does a person feel that Pharaoh sucks the outcome of his work?

Answer: After several alternating ascents and descents, a person forms a certain attitude towards them. He is constantly changing and improving, and eventually he begins to appreciate the ascents and descents, not with regard to the ascents and descents of his mood, but with regard to the purity of his yearning for the goal.

Then, even if he is in a state of descent, he doesn’t examine it according to his mood but according to how long he can stay connected to the Creator during the descent and not be detached from Him. There are such states during a descent when a person sees that he cannot hold on to the goal. Still he tries to relate himself to the goal although he fails to do so; that is, it isn’t a complete disconnection.

This is actually where he discovers Pharaoh and where he feels the inner force that belongs to something from nothing, which pulls him by his feet downward into the swamp. Pharaoh is revealed in the seam between one state and another, but it isn’t just a descent.
[132267]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/08/14, Shamati #86

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Question: How do our efforts to achieve the connection of the people, unity, and from them creating a whole army of trainers and educators go along with the whole process of correction?

Answer: We are in this world and first we have to be connected to the Creator. Therefore we connect and form a group between us. But now it is impossible to ascend to spirituality if we don’t do it for the liberation of all the souls that are in the ego.

We have reached a state called the final redemption. We already achieved this revolution in the past with leaving Babylon 1500 years BC until the year 2014.

Question: Where in this world today is Abraham who left Babylon with his students?

Answer: Abraham is us, our whole group that wants to advance to bestowal and to the revelation of the Creator by itself and which pulls the whole world behind it. The mission of this group is called Abraham.

Do you think that Abraham that the Torah tells us about is a name of a person or of an idea, a mission, a school, or a movement? Do you imagine Abraham as an old man with a cane, a revolutionist who wanted to change the world?

Abraham is a name of an inclination, a movement, an idea, a philosophy, a perspective, and so he is called the father of the nation. Due to this knowledge, approach, philosophy, people can arrange life differently—not according to the desires of our corporeal bodies but according to their spirit that yearns to come out to a wider space. We are in it, but we have to discover it and live in it.

Question: Why should we turn to the people and teach them this ideology?

Answer: It is impossible to complete the correction otherwise. We need to go through the state we are all in now in our world, from anti-love and anti-bestowal to love and bestowal. We acquire vessels, deficiencies, desires, with which we can later discover a different reality.

Question: Who demanded this correction? Was it Abraham’s compulsion?

Answer: It was the Creator’s passion, He wants our correction! His desire is to do good to His created beings.
[132396]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/11/14, Talk About  Dissemination: Questions & Answers with Dr. Laitman

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Question: How does this fit together, that on the one hand, the world is the still and imaginary and on the other hand, it’s necessary to act within it, exerting, disseminating?

Answer: It seems to you that through going out to the wider public you are becoming included and weighed down by their desires. But these are not their problems, these are your problems, you are only hearing about them through someone else.

You are included in the parts of your soul. You will not hear anything from the world that is irrelevant to you. There cannot be something like this! They are all in you: the still, vegetative, animate, and especially human beings. They seem to you as if they are outside; you hear them, you carry out all kinds of activities with them in order to bring them back into yourself.

You will never hear something from them that is not relevant to you. They are like cells that need to return to your vessel, but  now they seem to be outside. They only seem external to you because of your clouded perception.
[132274]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/8/14, Writings of Rabash

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Question: What can we do if we don’t manage to bring the majority of the group to do the very least that they have to: pay maaser, disseminate, work in the group, and come to the morning lessons? Is it possible to establish mutual guarantee with friends who don’t come to the morning lessons?

Answer: Ninety-nine to one hundred percent of the groups that Kabbalists formed throughout history were unsustainable. But the conditions were different then and there was no need for general correction and dissemination, and so they disintegrated.

Today when we can go out and participate in collective events, I don’t understand why you can stay away from such relationships as we deal with other people, and through them correct ourselves and the mutual relations between us. The Creator is actually concealed in the ascent above the mutual repulsion that we feel! If you overcome the repulsion and build a bridge that connects you above it, this is the point that the Creator will be revealed.

This opportunity is before you right now. If you want to reach the revelation of the Creator, go ahead. Here is the upper world, the Creator who gave you this condition: The revelation of the mutual hatred. You don’t need anything else. You have already reached this wonderful state. Baal HaSulam said: “I am happy at the revelation of the wicked,” I am very glad at the revelation of all the problems since otherwise I would have no chance to ever attain anything.

We need a creative approach in order to deal with the negative feelings that arise: the repulsion, the hatred, the weakness, the reluctance to do anything. We should understand that this is the building from which we, as crushed stones, construct a building in which we begin to feel the upper world. We need to collect these scattered bricks of hatred by force and become the material that connects them! This is called the correction of the general soul.
[132023]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/28/14, Question and Answers with Dr. Laitman

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Question: I am trying to clarify, what is it that my prayer needs to include?

Answer: Prayer is work with the heart. If you try to relate to reality correctly, then what happens in your heart is called “prayer.” You cannot plan to pray between 10:00 and 10:30. It’s not possible to work this way.

Everything that we experience in the depths of the heart is called prayer. We can carry out all sorts of different actions to influence the heart, but we are not able to arrange a prayer in it. We can only prepare the heart to feel, and then this sensation will be a prayer.

The Creator is within your heart in its most central part where the fourth phase (Behina Dalet) of your desire is felt. The Light acts from the depths of the heart, in the fourth phase. Arranging the prayer means carrying out a variety of activities around the desire that form an impression in it, soften it. Yet ultimately what happens with this desire will be called prayer.

We are not masters over the prayer itself. Sometimes you invest immense efforts in order to reach the heart, yet it remains dry and doesn’t want to react. You run and try, sing and cry, read emotional texts, yet the heart doesn’t react.

Maybe it only seems that way to you, for who knows what happens within the heart? We don’t feel its depths. However, the efforts that you invest bring much benefit. The strongest prayer is when you don’t feel that your heart reacts even though you do everything to change it. And it is silent and doesn’t react.

You understand your absolute powerlessness and you feel the true stony heart within yourself that is not changed at all. You can cry, run, jump, do everything, read psalms, prayers, Shamati articles, go out to look at the sky, be integrated into a group, yet the heart remains a stone. But specifically these efforts to change it to a heart of flesh are the most beneficial means. Then you will receive a response to your efforts.
[131507]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/31/14, The Zohar

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Question: Is a person’s work to search for the desires of others?

Answer: Certainly, you need to search for desires in order to bestow to others through them. Suppose that you decide to bestow to me and you bring me a ball or a cake. But it’s forbidden for me to eat cake because I am diabetic. I don’t want to play with the ball. So what have you done? You first need to clarify what my desire is: What can make me happy and what will I enjoy, and then behave accordingly.

If you understand that the best thing for me is not a ball and not cake but correction, then you take my desires together with your desires and as a middle Partzuf you begin to raise them higher to the Ali Elyon (above the Elyon) in order to bring me the Light of correction and the Light of fulfillment. This is called saving me from the prison from which I cannot save myself. That is how each one acts towards the other.

To have the right intention, this means to be in the right relationship with others in order to help them to attain a connection with the Creator. This is because it is precisely this that the soul of the person wants the most!

You don’t need to ask the friend about what he loves or what he wants unless we are talking about luxuries and not about food for the soul. Besides the necessities, a person only needs to discover the Creator. And he can get this solely and only if the friends care about him. And the friends will care about him only on condition that he also cares about them. This mutual relationship is called mutual guarantee.
[130885]
From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/24/14

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Preparation for the Lesson

Shamati #41 “What Is Greatness and Smallness in Faith”

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

Shamati #86 “And They Built Store-Cities”

Writings of Rabash “Shlavei HaSulam,” “Love of Friends”

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Question: What is connecting with a friend?

Answer: This is when my friend and I are outside of our desires in a mutual connection that is called the vessel of mutual guarantee. My desire to support a friend and his desire to support me exist, and so we are in the middle between us.
[132278]
From the 4^th part of the  Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/8/14, Writings of Rabash

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Question: How can we get used to the ascents and descents that take on different forms each time so that we can cope—”anything but leave?”

Answer: If a person comes to the lesson every day, engages in dissemination, and is connected with the friends, then the only thing he needs is persistence.

There are states in which a person is totally detached, he seems to be in the lesson physically, but he isn’t actually there. Even at work he walks around absent-mindedly.

A habit is very important: You have to commit yourself in different ways that will tie you down. For a person who seriously wants to advance, it is worthwhile to marry someone that shares the same interests goal and who strengthens his connections with the society. All this strengthens him, ties him down, and doesn’t let his animal escape.

The main thing is to continue. The Upper Light arranges different states for us and we have to be patient and wait until all these states pass,accelerating them as much as we can. Hastening these states changes our attitude towards them, which means that I already see the states I go through in a different light, and I approach them as desirable states.

I remember how I once ran to the operating room and laid myself on the operating table so that I could be operated on as soon as possible since I felt so bad after a car accident I was involved in. Usually the patient is brought in on a gurney and carried to the operating table, but I ran there myself. I was so anxious to have this operation since I had difficulty breathing because my lungs were full of blood.

We have to feel the desire to run to spirituality, then we won’t care what happens because life after that is more important.

Then we become like spectators watching the crises we go through from the side. We understand the descent we are in, measure it, study and examine it. Gradually we begin to relate to our desire to receive as a place of work as we decide what to do with it.
[132308]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/9/14, Shamati #54

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