We do not realize what harm we bring by our lack of participation in the work. He who does not invest the necessary efforts is already considered a thief who steals from everybody and destroys the common boat. There are more stringent rules in the spiritual world than in the material world.

This is due to the fact that we are in a collective vessel and are connected together as it is now revealed in this world, which manifests as integral and closed. And if I am now already included in the system but do not participate in its work, this means that I close it and do not let others reach the necessary level of mutual participation. It turns out that I steal from everyone.

It’s as if there is a large system in which a small element broke and stopped working. It is understood that it spoils the whole system. It cannot say that it is not to blame because it failed to add its tiny part. But since it is soldered into the system, it must operate according to its place; it has no way to escape. It is necessary to be aware of these conditions and understand that we are in the same network.

So, you cannot say that you do not want to do anything or ask to be left alone. And if you drop out of the system completely, you will find yourself under the power of the correcting hand that is much more ruthless than your group.
[111969]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/5/13, Writings of Rabash

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Preparation to the Lesson

Writings of Rabash, “Shlavei HaSulam,”  “You Stand Today, All of You“

The Book of Zohar — Introduction, “On the Night of the Bride,” Item 129, Lesson 45

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Peace in the World,” Lesson 1

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We should expect the attainment of the end of correction in the convention, in order to bring the whole world contentment from the bottom of our heart and soul, in endless absolute love!

Question: But if I come to the convention with great expectations to succeed, I ignite my desire to receive and it begins to work in the opposite direction, how can I overcome that?

Answer: It’s true that our desire to receive works in the opposite direction. We want to enjoy, to receive pleasure in our desire to receive. Receiving pleasure and enjoying is the goal of creation! This is why the Creator has created the desire to receive.

If we look at creation from the side, not from this world and not from the spiritual world, we will see that there is a desire to receive in it that was created and formed in such a way that it can only enjoy love. It was made by the power of love! Therefore it cannot enjoy anything else. Even if it is one percent of love, it will enjoy that one percent at least, but not anything else.

We also perceive a bit of this desire, of this pleasure, in our world, when we grow like little animals. Our parents, our society, let us feel some of that love, and to a certain extent we are surrounded by such love.

You have to feel love and to discover it in order to enjoy it. You have to open yourself to this love. This means that in order to do that, you have to love! Love cannot be one sided. This only exists in the corporeal world. Spiritual love is mutual love, when both sides are incorporated in each other, in each other’s desires. Filling each other’s desires is called loving.

So there is no other choice but to attain the state in which you fill the other. By that you develop yourself in order to discover and to feel this love. Opening your vessel before someone means to love someone. If thanks to this love you open your vessel before someone, you receive this love inside it. It means that you are filled with the Direct Light that is dressed in the Returning Light.
[111475]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/03/13, Writings of Rabash

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Question: In our world, there are a multitude of deficiencies (desires) and we are constantly looking for how to fulfill them. And it is in the spiritual world that they are all fulfilled, but it is up to us to find the deficiency for them. So, how can I create a deficiency for the convention to get fulfillment from it?

Answer: You need to describe the fulfillment to yourself, what kind of pleasure (fulfillment) there is for which I need to design a deficiency now. This requires work.

In our world, everything is constructed so that we will advance. You get a deficiency that forces you to run after its fulfillment, but the moment that the fulfillment touches the deficiency, the deficiency immediately disappears, and this awakens a new deficiency in us. Everything is constructed this way in order to bring you to the path of suffering (Beito), the growth of the ego.

Every time, a greater and greater ego is awakened in you, making you run after its pleasure. You meet this and your deficiency disappears; so it goes, again and again. So, the ego is growing more and more; it is a natural developmental process.

There is also pleasure in the spiritual world. We are found in a sea of Light, but we cannot approach this sea of Light with our egoistic Kli (vessel), desire. This is because the moment that the egoistic Kli touches the Light, the Kli disappears. So, we require a Kli of bestowal to be in contact with the sea of Light and to be fulfilled by it. We are included in it because our desires become like the Light.

The Kli and the Light become included in each other. That is how you enter into the spiritual world. The entire sea transforms into Surrounding Light, and what enters into your Kli transforms into your inner Light. You are found in the same state in both the physical world and the spiritual world.

The difference is that in the physical world, your deficiency disappears immediately the moment that it contacts the Light, like in a short circuit. Because your Kli is the opposite of the Light, it is annihilated immediately when it encounters this, and in the spiritual world, your deficiency is like the Light so that you can advance and develop it.

So, in order to advance spiritually, we must describe the expected pleasure and understand what the appropriate deficiency for it is. Even in corporeality we do the same thing. We dream about the expected pleasure in the future and stimulate ourselves. From the start, we form within us a deficiency in just the same way that we would excite our appetite before going to a feast.

That is exactly what needs to be done regarding a convention. Think about what you want to get from this, what kind of fulfillment, what attainments, and what kind of effort all of us want to make there, how to be included with everyone and receive help from everyone. This complex is the confluence of a lot of pain, tension, and mighty efforts by thousands of people throughout the world.

At the time of the convention, all of our friends in the world will be gathered in order to participate together with us. Also, at the convention there is much work to be done nonstop, day and night. Everyone is looking forward to this convention with great hope that we will succeed in connecting and ultimately feeling this mutual connection and within this connection, discovering the characteristic of mutual bestowal, and in that, at least a little, we will succeed in feeling the Creator.
[111449]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/3/13, Writings of Rabash

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A person has no right to cut himself off from society and ask only for himself, even if he has the best intention to bring contentment to the Creator. By a private prayer or by crying alone, we don’t help in any way, but only harm ourselves and others.

Now, imagine how many corruptions we have caused during exile. Everything was in order to discover our evil and understand that correction is only possible by connection. Exile was necessary in order to find out where the place of correction is and to advance from an individual prayer to the prayer of many.

Every desire in the heart is called a prayer. A prayer is the work in the heart. If every request went through society, it would be accepted. We already would be in a totally different state, in absolute rest and abundance. However, because our requests—all the desires a person feels, as well as those he doesn’t feel—don’t go through the connection between us, they harm us, and they first harm the one who makes the request.

We should understand how serious the situation is since we all are connected by one network that now is being revealed in the world as the one, connected, integral system. In this state, we clearly see that we cannot break free of this system and that we must be part of it. The time that was allocated for the recognition of evil is over. From now on, we will get to know evil by blows on different levels or by starting to act according to the network that is revealed between us.

A person should picture this very clearly and as a very serious caution, we mustn’t ask by ourselves, although we really feel like it! It is our evil inclination that is opposite from the Creator. The ego is our desire to attain the Creator but in order to rule by ourselves.

The desire, “I will rule,” is not aimed against the Creator, but against society, against the group. The evil inclination is our desire to turn to the Creator by ourselves and ask for our personal success. We all have this desire. We are ready to pray, to ask, to recognize the power of the upper, to recognize His domination over us, but the entire problem of the exile in Egypt is that each one begins to feel that he is detached from others.

This is the sin of the sons of Jacob, the reason for their hatred toward their younger brother Joseph. Joseph wanted to collect all the brothers together and connect them, but they wanted to remain separate. They didn’t understand that there must be a middle line, connection, and so they had to enter the exile in Egypt and by the path of suffering discover the need for brotherly connection.

Only after they had recognized evil, after long years of exile, were they rewarded with receiving the Torah. This was the entire purpose for the round they made in exile in Egypt.

The entire process of evolution in the upper worlds and in our world, the whole game, is only about connection. So, I am very happy that today we already can speak about that, and understand the need for it and feel this issue closely.
[111963]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/5/13, Writings of Rabash

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A person may have a special soul that awakens him all the time and forces him to continue working despite the hardening of the heart and the confusions. But if he doesn’t have that, the only option he has to remain on the right track is the right environment that doesn’t let him escape and forces him to be equipped with the tools that will help him return to the right kind of life.

A person has no chance of advancing and has no power to respond correctly every moment to the interruptions that come along, if he doesn’t have the proper preparation, the habit of working internally, and the connection with the environment that guards the connection between a person and the sources, the teacher, and the group. And then it turns out that a person doesn’t pay attention to the interruptions at all or that he is drawn into them.

In the first case, he is not sensitive enough, so he lowers his sensitivity threshold in order to avoid the strong influence of the interruptions. In this case he doesn’t advance. His life becomes more peaceful and quiet and instead of encountering interruptions ten times an hour, for example, he feels interruptions several times a day and that’s all. His pace of advancement is determined accordingly, which means that he holds himself back on purpose. But if he feels the interruptions and tries to fight them, blaming himself and his environment, the teacher and the spiritual path in general, he might divert from it and leave everything; it is that serious.

It’s very hard to keep and to accept all the awakening conditions as desirable and as sent by the Creator as “there is none else but Him.” These are the best conditions for our advancement and the only question is how to respond to them correctly, to accept them correctly, and to be grateful for them in order to advance towards the goal.

We need to study intensively and patiently, and to prepare for constant transitions from one state to another. The main thing is our submission, the ability to understand that all the hardships that come along are the right interruptions along the way. Every person in the world receives such interruptions and clarifies whether he should advance by these interruptions or not and in which direction.

Some people determine a certain attitude at the beginning of the way, which is either right or wrong with regard to the group, the teacher, and the books. Others have to clarify this anew each time and can change. This is how they advance.
[111849]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/07/13, Writings of Rabash

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We are advancing on two legs: left and right. Our job is to constantly take a step with the right foot. This is what it says everywhere; according to Jewish laws, moral laws, in the Torah, everything always starts with the right side. This is why Hebrew is written from right to left.

The right line means that I try to do everything perfectly, in bestowal, above myself, in contrast to what I identify as my nature, above what I see, feel, and understand, above my reason.

The next spiritual level that I yearn to be on is not attained by the same method that is accepted in the corporeal world in which we constantly accumulate knowledge, information, power, and intelligence, in which we study and acquire academic degrees. This is how we acquire the next levels in this world that is based on the desire to receive where we must constantly add more and more.

The spiritual level, however, is built on oppositeness. We study that the Malchut of the upper becomes Keter of the lower and Keter of the lower which is its upper Sefira becomes the lowest Sefira of the upper, its Malchut. They are opposite from one another.

So our work is to become the opposite of what we are. Therefore the more we try to be above what is in our current emotions and our mind, the closer we get to the next level, the next phase.

Here we discern that the moment we try to ascend above our nature: from receiving to bestowal, from our logic to the logic of the upper, the moment we exert ourselves, we are immediately given problems and failures. It is because our corporeal egoistic emotions and mind are enlarged so that we should rise to the same height, to the same level of the upper level compared to the current level.

But because we cannot immediately leap to the next level in our corporeal emotions and mind and place a Masach (screen) and the Returning Light over it and turn it to in order to bestow, we do it gradually, bit by bit, until “many pennies add up to a big account.”
[112043]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/01/13, Shamati #72 “Confidence Is the Clothing for the Light”

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The Book of Zohar, Introduction, “The Donkey Driver,” Paragraph 85: Rabbi Elazar and Rabbi Aba dismounted from their donkeys and kissed him. They said, “So great is your wisdom, and yet you drive donkeys behind us! Who are you, then?” He replied to them: “Do not ask me who I am, but let us go on and study the Torah. Each of us will speak his wisdom so as to illuminate our path.

The donkey driver is the “Surrounding Light,” the Light that Reforms. What is the difference between it and the Light that is discovered later? The Surrounding Light becomes “Inner Light.” When it is discovered, then it will be clear that this is, for example, the Light of Yechida, and until then we don’t know what level we are approaching, who our guide is.

The donkey driver is that Surrounding Light that takes us across the density of our desire of our “donkeys” from level to level.
[111843]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/23/13, The Zohar

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Preparation to the Lesson

Shamati #2, “Divinity in Exile“

The Book of Zohar — Introduction, “On the Night of the Bride,” Item 126, Lesson 44

Writings of Rabash “Shlavei HaSulam,” “What Is, Anyone Who Mourns for Jerusalem Is Rewarded with Seeing Its Joy, in the Work“

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A person has no strength to do a single spiritual action. We need to take a sober look at the reality, understanding that we act in the framework of strict laws and forces, which we have to organize for ourselves. That is why if he does not connect himself with the environment correctly, in order to connect through it with the source of the method of correction, that is, with the teacher, and through the teacher with the Light that Reforms, then he will be constantly spinning within his desires and aspirations that lock him in this world.

He will never go beyond the limits of this world. And while he will learn something, ultimately he will remain with the same nature with which he was born and will remain on the same level. It is possible to rise to a higher degree only under the condition that a person receives an additional, qualitatively new desire, rather than increasing his common earthly needs for money, family home, power, and knowledge.

He can get all this in this world. But if he needs to move from the earthly plane of “money-family-power-knowledge” to the next, higher dimension, then he needs a completely different desire—the need for the property of bestowal—because our world is based only on the desire to receive. The spiritual world is based on bestowal, to which a person has to become attracted and aspire to as to the greatest treasure:  the desire that will be able to serve as a lever for him, a springboard.

He has to suffer because he is not capable of loving and giving, but is this possible? Only the envy of other people that appear great, attractive, and important to him can help him. He discovers that they are glad that they have the ability to bestow, they find something unusual in this property of bestowal, and in comparison to them he is nothing.

If he has the point in the heart, he begins to envy them. Without this point he has nothing to hold on to, has no sensing organ to feel that they have something special that he does not have. He will not feel that he lacks something. It is like a person who loves music and dreams of becoming a musician will not envy the one who wants to become a physicist. Physics and poetry are completely different worlds.

This also works in spiritual aspiration. Only if a person has the point in the heart, he has at least an initial opportunity to envy people who are in the property of bestowal. At first he is attracted because it seems mystical, promises some supernatural abilities, the power of the mind, the ability to manage his own life and the life of others, power over the entire creation.

That is, at the beginning, the property of bestowal is clothed in all kinds of material garments, not at the bodily level “food-family,” but at the level of “money-power-knowledge.” In essence, it all comes down to one thing: to the power of dominance (the power of money, the power of knowledge). It is a purely egoistic desire, but one hopes that he will reach success in the revelation of the spiritual world.

If he has a strong desire, then initially it seems to him that he advances quickly and successfully, but later he suddenly discovers that he is behind, and that he cannot really connect with others. On the other hand, he hears that connection is the main tool for advancement. He begins to hate this method, but has nowhere to go.

There a decisive battle takes place from which many escape. But there are those who remain. They increase their point because due to helplessness they surrender to the environment. Then they finally begin to understand that spirituality is not in money, power, or knowledge, but only temporarily it became clothed in these material garments in order to lead a person further.

And now spirituality pulls him further upwards because he begins to appreciate the property of bestowal and love for the other on its own. He feels that this very force, this property, is unusually exalted and unique; it is above this world and possesses the divine essence. Precisely these forces of bestowal rule in the world.

Gradually, the person bows lower and cancels his egoistic nature, agreeing to annul himself before the property of bestowal. All this work takes place within the group. The influence of the environment is the only factor of such change of values in which bestowal and love for the other becomes more important for a person than the usual good things: food, money, family, power, and knowledge.

He is increasingly imbued with the desire to bestow from the environment, and thus he comes to the stage of the path that is called “Lo Lishma.” He invests all his efforts and does everything possible to increase the portion of “Lishma” in “Lo Lishma”; that is, he bestows and bestows, wanting to be involved in the property of bestowal, but still expects to get something in return. For the time being, it is still egoistic bestowal, for the sake of reception; however, it is approaching altruistic bestowal.

Here, he needs humility; self-nullification; the greatness of the goal, of the group, of the teacher, of the Creator. All this becomes very important for him, and except for this, there is nothing else… Everything he dreamed of before is gradually devalued: first money, then honor, then power. Whom does he need to rule over and for what purpose? He wants the upper Light to rule over him. That is, it is not just the desire to dominate himself, but the desire to bow before the Light so that it can do its work.

The person discovers his weakness in everything: He can neither cancel himself nor acquire the property of bestowal. He does not find a single bit of bestowal and love for the other within himself, but he cannot rule over his egoism either. He feels that he is naked and helpless. Because he is no longer interested in wealth, honor, and knowledge, he has nothing left but the point in the heart that is called the sign of the covenant with the Creator. Suppose he learns everything that happens in the world, all of the science invented by humanity. But all this is included in the same Light, and in its true, direct form, instead of the reversed back form, on which all earthly science and knowledge are based.

As a result, he remains dependent only on the Reforming Light that comes to him through the entire ladder of spiritual worlds, through the teacher, through the group, under the condition that he wants to return through them everything that he has back to the Creator. The Direct and Reflected Light clothe in each other.
[111003]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/24/13, Shamati #175

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