There could be a condition where a person remains within a group physically, comes to lessons, participates in all kinds of activities and events, but in fact has already left the path and his heart is found in another place… .

Question: How is it possible to be careful and guard against this?

Answer: Only through humility and bowing the head. The ego burns in everyone, and therefore, my first action is nullification to the teacher, the lessons, and the group. First of all, I am not at all the wisest person among the students; rather the opposite, I want them to determine my way of life. For if I determine this myself, I will be carrying out the will of my ego exactly. And then I am no longer in the group. The moment that I get off the “train,” I am immediately found under the dominance of self-love.

In general, you have only two “authorities”: the group, which includes the Rav, the friends, the books, and the Creator, which comprises a complete unit; I and the world.

Question: I can “submit” myself externally. But how does one submit internally? What do I do with my thoughts and emotions? Can the person subdue them in a group?

Answer: There are two “scales”: On the one hand, the group that attracts the Ohr Makif (Surrounding Light), and on the other hand, the ego and the external world. So what is more important to me?

Certainly I cannot  guarantee my tomorrow for myself, but if all the possibilities that are found in my authority are used, then I can tip the balance to the right side. There is no other way.

Question: If I see that my group doesn’t sufficiently match the spirit of Bnei Baruch, how can I submit myself to the friends?

Answer: Try to “submit yourself to them” except in what you must add to them.

Parents subjugate themselves regarding their children, not because they are beginning to listen to their opinions. Rather, their submission is from concern and caring for them. A mother serves her small child with what he needs and not with what he wants. He can scream: “Give me!” but she won’t give it to him, and in this way, from her side, she is serving him faithfully.
[122770]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/10/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Preparation to the Lesson

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The Book of Zohar — Selected Excerpts, Parashat, “Beresheet,” Item 753 

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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Vol. 1, Part 2, Chapter 5, Item 55

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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Disclosing the Secrets“

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Baal HaSulam, “The Teaching of Kabbalah and Its Essence”: Whereas in the first discernment everyone receives equally without adding or subtracting, like Adam, in understanding the reality of this world. In viewing it, all are equal, but this is not so in understanding it—some evolve from generation to generation and some regress.

Question: What is the difference between a descent and regression?

Answer: We can describe our advancement like a electrocardiogram (EKG) with many ups and downs. It doesn’t matter if I am up or down as long as I advance.

Descents are part of our way since they are also aimed at the goal. My heart beats and it draws this curved line and it is normal. This is our life, a continuum of ups and downs where one cannot exist without the other. As long as I hold on to the intention to advance, both the ascents and descents are in a general flow forward.

It is just like a spinning wheel where each part reaches a maximal height and then begins to descend. What is more, at a certain moment it seems to be moving backward instead of advancing towards the goal.

The moment a person discovers that, he cries out for help. He sees that he is moving backward and that he is not advancing, and so he needs the greater support of the group.

On the whole society’s movement is forward, and accordingly, I am in the back part of the ring and my friends are advancing by moving forward. So when I am connected to them in my heart and soul, I feel that I am part of the whole that continues and advances forward.

But if I am disconnected from the friends, I am not the lower part of the general wheel and I am not in a state of descent, but am actually on the outside in regression. I am not part of the general process of the advancement forward anymore.

This means that the main thing is to be adhered to the friends. Then we all advance forward and I understand that even the descents are beneficial and that they are in order to ascend. When I descend, the others ascend, and thus we constantly change places.

We are like a valve, like a piston, and all these movements change alternately. There cannot be a change if it doesn’t include the two movements, backward and forward, backward and forward. There cannot be only a movement forward, there has to be a contrast, and it is only a matter of amplitude.

Therefore my connection with the environment is so important. If I am incorporated in everyone, then the common vector is clear to me.

Question: It says that there is no lacking in spirituality and that nothing disappears. But in a state of regression everything that you had is taken away from you…

Answer: This isn’t true. Regression refers to the revelation of a new level of the shattering. We don’t regress but rather discover a new vessel that isn’t corrected at the moment.
[122732]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/10/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: How can I appreciate the friend’s efforts?

Answer: The only way I can appreciate the friend is in faith above reason. It is because I don’t see the friend before me but actually myself and my attributes. It is written: “One judges by his own flaws.” I see only what I want to see in my ego, so I will always see that one is more stupid than I am and that another is lazy, another is absentminded and another is occupied by his own thoughts and doesn’t know what is going on at all, etc.

When I look at the friends, I see my inner state. We don’t see the world but our inner replica reflected on it. So I have to accept the fact that I am in the world of Ein Sof (Infinity), that everything is corrected, and that everyone is at the end of correction (Gmar Tikkun). All the corrections that are left are those that I have to go through, as it says: “And I shall eat that which is ancient,” and I will see that the world is changing because I am actually changing.

It is the same when it comes to the friends and the group. It isn’t they that have to change but I. It is hard to perceive this but it is the truth. So in order to explain it simply Kabbalists don’t tell us about it as if it happens inside a person but as the world is used to, saying that the world is changing, that it is in a crisis, and that it goes through different states and processes.

Kabbalists explain this artificially although they don’t feel comfortable doing so. A Kabbalist prefers to see things as he sees them internally. He sees the world of Infinity, himself, and the corruption between them. This is called help against him, as his ego comes between him and the world and because of which he sees the world of Infinity in the form of this world or in the form of some temporary spiritual level, which is one of the 125 levels he is on now

But a Kabbalist cannot explain it this way to others since it would mean that he would constantly be talking about himself, about his corruptions, and would be discussing the corruptions in his internal systems. He would speak from the side of the corruption and not from the side of the correction, and so they don’t speak that way. It is better to explain things as is accepted in this world, by speaking about the fact that the world is corrupt and that we have to connect in order to correct ourselves and the world. It is a special style of conveying a message in which one moves from the internality to the externality.

There is no other choice. Otherwise the explanations will not be understood. But in fact when a person thinks about this himself, he has to see himself in the Light of the Infinite that fills all of reality and only because of his corrupted vessels and attributes does he see the level of concealment and the level of revelation, and this is what determines the height of his level.
[122716]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/10/13, Writings of Rabash

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Question: What does choosing the friends mean?

Answer: Choosing the friends means that I have to do whatever I can to get close to them at any given moment. Choosing doesn’t mean that I decide who I like best and that’s it. It is said: “He who chooses a better environment each time,” in order to keep on advancing.

We don’t look at the physical bodies in the spiritual work but only at the internality and so a person changes every day and everyday he is a new person. It turns out that I seem to be choosing a new friend each day, a new society, because it changes from one moment to the next.

A day refers to a change, so I constantly advance by working with the friends as I tighten the connection between us, which means that I choose stronger friends and a better environment each time. Nothing changes physically, and I see the same faces around me, but their internality is constantly renewed, and I grow stronger by all the changes that we both go through.

It may seem that there are positive or negative changes each time. Mostly I feel disrespect since my evil inclination keeps on working and is constantly renewed. So each time I feel another denial which is stronger than before and it seems that the friends are not worthy and that they have many deficiencies. I disrespect them automatically and so I have to spur myself to love them anew each time.
[122674]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/10/13, Writings of Rabash

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Question: How can we advance so that our fuel consumption is optimal? How can we cut down the consumption to minimum?

Answer: In other words, how can we shorten time? How can we maximize the effect of our exertion so that we will do it in the best way and in the right place?

This approach is very good and correct, but the question is does it stem from laziness. But still it is a good thing since one way or another we start our work from the desire to receive.

When we exert ourselves and acquire knowledge in our world, we learn how to preserve our rational efforts so that we will spend the exact amount of energy and not one gram more, at the exact place it is needed and not one millimeter away.

This is exactly what Kabbalists tell us. They tell us that we have to work only in the center of the group and to be as one man in one heart in mutual guarantee. If you reach this, the Creator is revealed.

The moment you attain this, the current level will disappear and instead Mt. Sinai will reappear, which means the mountain of hatred between you. Then you have to try to connect around it again so that each one’s point in the heart is connected to the points in the heart of the others, and after this connection, they rise above the mountain of hatred to connection and mutual bestowal. When your efforts succeed, you will rise to the second floor and so on.

Thus, you are given the exact place for concentrated effort during your work, during the study, during the assembly of friends, everywhere. You should constantly aim at this kind of unity in your thoughts.

How? By the support of the environment. Otherwise you will not be able to think about it. You should feel general concern here: You should be immersed and live in it, and it should affect you so strongly that you begin to shake with worry.

Imagine a situation in life when you have trouble with the police, a trial, when someone threatens to beat you or that you are shamed. A person who experiences this in life is miserable. So this is exactly the same level of concern you have to feel about being focused on the center of the group. This way you will save both time and efforts.

If you don’t worry about that, then you should worry about why you don’t worry. This is called “a prayer before a prayer.”

The yearning in the heart is immediately felt in the upper level. You don’t know it yet, but your heart is already on an upper level. The moment your heart matches the upper level they will be connected like a plug and a socket and you will begin to reveal it.

So you must pay close attention to what you feel in your heart. If your heart fidgets, then you should regret it. But it shouldn’t be false or pretend regret. On the contrary, you should place yourself in the environment so that it will influence you and you will really feel sorry. Only the environment can change your values and your standards.
[122517]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/6/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: We feel great intensity during the lessons, we yearn for connection and for internality but later everything somehow disappears. At about 11 a.m. there is nothing left. Where is the center of the group? What should I do? How should I keep the urge?

Answer: First, everything that I give you during the lesson isn’t lost but actually remains in each of you. There is no absence in spirituality. Even if a person doesn’t hear, doesn’t understand, and doesn’t perceive the words, even if he lives in another country, even if he doesn’t know and doesn’t understand the language, nothing is lost. The impression that the feeling of the lesson disappears and fades away is only so that a person should renew it on his part as much as he can. In any case, everything remains as long as I can give you lessons.

During the lessons you are under my influence. A person who wants it is given freewill with time and then his efforts become more qualitative. But one way or the other, this influence is a kind of infusion or transfusion that each one receives. You have to try to make something out of it.

If you are like a corpse there is no point giving you infusion. No, you have to show that you have grown by the daily injection every day; that you have advanced in the right direction towards the center of the group, towards connection between you, towards the demand to reveal the Creator, which is the mutual force of bestowal between you.

It is true that the impression you experience during the lesson disappears, but do you come to the lesson every day only to be impressed and not to work?

You mustn’t get used to it. You mustn’t turn the lesson into a standard ritual. On the contrary, you should sum up things at the end of each day: What have I done? What have I attained?

As for my presence during the morning lesson, it is not my doing. I may be making great efforts together with the teacher and the friends, but this is already a different matter. But if I hear the lesson passively and there is nothing left of the impression it leaves on me by 11 a.m., then it means that I have wasted five hours after the lesson and haven’t done anything with my impression. This isn’t a good thing.

I have to make an agreement with a couple of friends: “Guys, let’s stop this bad habit, let’s really do what Kabbalists tell us. After all, they only want what is good for us; after all, they are our forefathers. We cannot; we don’t want to; we are against it; it is all true, but it says that if we arrange and establish a different system of mutual relations between us called a group, we will be able to exert ourselves in it. We will at least be able to take a small step forward by ourselves.

So agree on that with the friends. It is simply a must.
[122513]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/6/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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A spiritual vessel is not just a sum of all the hearts, but a new entity that we have to build from our shared aspirations, effort, and work with respect to some new quality that did not exist before.

This is what we call the center of the group: the sum of all the efforts, “Divinity” (Shechina), the place where all the eyes meet and all the intentions are aimed. This is the area that we develop; we increase it all the time taking care of it as something precious to us.

This particular area Divinity (Shechina) does not exist until we join all our intentions into one. Only then will such a place be created, born, and the Creator revealed in it. And until then, the Shechina will remain in exile.

These concepts the “Shechina in Exile” and the “Holy Shechina” are two degrees that are completely unrelated to each other. That is why we only have to see the center of the group in every action, the unification of all our expectations, and the intention to build the Holy Shechina from this. Everyone strives to bestow to others, and when all these intentions come together, then they form this special area.

If we have no intention to bestow to others but a completely different goal, to use them for our own pleasure, then each of us is drowning in self-love, in egoism. In this case there is no Shechina in exile, no Shechina at all; this place does not even exist. It begins to form only when a few people who can think “outside of themselves” come together.

If many weak people with unstable intentions that come and go or a smaller number of strong people with more qualitative intentions get together, then it is possible to talk about building the Shechina. We add our intention to mutual bestowal and from this we can bestow to the Creator.

We are preparing a place for His revelation not for our pleasure but because we want Him to be revealed so that He receives pleasure from it according to the principle “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are one.” From this mutual concern, “each man shall help his friend,” we can feel day after day how we build this corrected vessel called the Shechina.

The Shechina is built from Malchut, which is corrected by the properties of Bina. Malchut is the desire to enjoy; the property of Bina is the intention to bestow. The Shechina is created when we all unite above our personal desires, aspire to mutual bestowal, to our goal, and to the Creator through it because we connect only in order to bestow to Him.

In integral education groups, the desired goal is to unite, and that’s all. But in a Kabbalistic group, we have to go to the very end, as it is written, “Return, Israel to its Creator,” and advance towards the goal with this intention.

We can reach it only on the condition that we raise the goal so much that it shines on us and seems important to us. Either we worry about it, about some critical moment which decides our fate, or we will appreciate it so much that it will beckon us to come. Both of these work for the same goal.

We constantly need to check whether each day we feel an increasing attraction to the goal, and use this to measure ourselves. We have no other screening criteria. Do we care about our connection in mutual bestowal in order to build a system of bestowal aimed at the Creator, to allow Him to be revealed and  to please Him by our efforts?

The system of our bestowal is called Shechina. The upper force called the Creator is revealed in our altruistic intentions if we meet the first minimum condition of His revelation, that is, if we reach the degree of “Nefesh de Nefesh de Nefesh.” Thus, we enter the first spiritual degree: “Embryo (Ibur)” and begin to exist in the upper world.
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From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/6/13

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Question: If a person leaves the group, will his accumulated “baggage” be saved or would he have to start all over again when he returns?

Answer: He will not have to start anew. He already has a bitter experience that will help him quickly cling to his friends with new strength.

However, it is better to avoid this. There is a fundamental rule: “Whatever happens, just do not leave the group.” We always move forward together with friends because parting with them is separation, turning away from the Creator, which should be avoided. This is against the spiritual process, during which I do not set my states but only strive forward.

Even if the Creator “trips me” on every step, that is His business. I thank Him for evil as for good, and in no way am I ready to deviate from the course.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/10/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”: …as far as spiritual life is concerned, …here applies a natural law over the collective, to subjugate itself to the individual.

…And since the more developed in the generation is certainly the individual, it follows that when the public wants to relieve themselves of the terrible agony and assume conscious and voluntary development, which is the path of Torah, they have no choice but to subjugate themselves and their physical freedom to the discipline of the individual, and obey the orders and remedies that he will offer them.

Thus you see that in spiritual matters, the authority of the collective is overturned and the law of “taking after the Individual” is applied, that is, the developed individual. For it is plain to see that the developed and the educated in every society are always a small minority. It follows that the success and spiritual well-being of society is bottled and sealed in the hands of the minority.

This law is based on the original HaVaYaH, about which it is said, “I did not change My HaVaYaH,” from the four stages of direct Light, the program of development of desire under the influence of the Light, which is the only thing that acts in reality and defines all its forms. Everything is divided into four stages and their root, Keter, the basis of the source.

Similarly, human society is divided into levels: still, vegetative, animate, and man. The human level in humanity, like the most developed of them, is the smallest in quantity because in these four stages (HaVaYaH) quality continually increases during transition from stage to stage.

In the universe there is an infinite mass of still matter, relative to which the vegetation that covers the Earth seems like a drop in the ocean. But the animate world is smaller relative to the vegetative world, and the human is smaller relative to the animate. Baal HaSulam explains that the entire still level is equivalent to one plant, all plants to one animal, and all animals to one human. Quantity transforms into quality. The development of the entire still level is necessary in order for one plant to come out of it, and the development of all plants is needed for one animal to come out of it. And the whole animate level has to develop so that one human comes out of it.

If we want to advance, then we need to rise to a higher degree, and therefore we have to cleave to someone who is on the next degree. Thus it acts with respect to humanity and with respect to every person who includes the whole world within himself. A person must gather all his qualities of the still, vegetative, and animate levels in a pyramid so that they ultimately cling to the human level and bow before him. The human level in a person is his aspiration to adhere to the Creator. If he organizes himself in this way, then he will not be scattered in different directions, but will save time and turn from the natural path of development to the path of the Light, the acceleration of time.

Everything within a person should be organized in this way, and within a small or large community the same trend should be observed. If a society is organized in this way, it will save a lot of time and will save itself much suffering. If we want to advance on the spiritual path, we have to connect to a developed individual who shows us the way. In faith above reason, which exists on our lower degree, we have to accept his opinion coming from a higher degree and act according to it.

That is, we go forward with his head. Baal HaSulam writes, referring to the words of Rambam (Maimonides) that if a blind crowd has a guide who knows the way, then all the rest will certainly reach the same goal, although they can see neither the path nor the goal. All this comes from the very first HaVaYaH where the relations between quantity and quality have been established.
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From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah lesson 12/9/13

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