Question: What is a group?

Answer: A group is the vessel, that part of Malchut of the world of Infinity that is disclosed to a person now as a place from which he could begin his connection with all the souls.

These are the individual souls that are closest to him. And when he reveals this connection, he will see that everything belongs to one vessel, one soul.

In the meantime, only this part is revealed to him so it would be easier for him to join it. He does not even need to connect with the entire group; he can choose a few people to whom he feels closer.

We operate under the control of informational genes, Reshimot. According to the kind of Reshimot that are revealed in us, we look at people around us and see who matches us and who does not.

We think that this is determined by the physical genes and hormones, but really, it all depends on our internal Reshimot. Even unconsciously, we attach great importance to every detail, choosing by the form, smell, and behavior of the one who matches us more or less.

It seems to us that we choose simply by external qualities, but no, our internal Reshimot speak in us. Usually, we look for “complementary,” qualities that complete us. This happens in everything, beginning from ordinary, earthly love, friends, and as well in a Kabbalistic group where deeper, richer Reshimot are revealed. However, the same principle acts everywhere.

Thus we come to the group. But when we try to connect in it, a problem arises because these Reshimot are broken. We cannot just connect under these Reshimot, completing each other. The lack of agreement between us begins to emerge. On the one hand, I like these people and understand them. On the other hand, something interferes and divides us. We need to work above these disturbances.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/21/12, Writings of Rabash 

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A spiritual Partzuf is a manifestation of one’s attitude (or desire) that is focused on one’s neighbor. “The neighbor” is either somebody that one senses inside himself after he corrects his attitude or it is the Creator Himself.

A Partzuf reflects the degree of one’s bestowal and its “shape.” All Partzufim (Aba, Ima, YESHSUT, Tvuna, Zeir Anpin, Nukva, Atik, Arich Anpin) denote various forms of relationships and different systems of connection.

A Partzuf is a system of connections between the Creator and creation. The Creator is called Keter and creation Malchut. The rest of the Sefirot stand for the properties of bestowal that come from the Creator; creation’s task is to acquire (copy) these properties. A special form of connection that is imprinted in a snapshot is called a Partzuf. It’s a unique type of relationship between the giving force and the recipient, meaning either between two people, or between a person and the Creator.

Out of His general desire to give, the Creator transfers to us eight effects: Hochma, Bina, Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet, Netzah, Hod, and Yesod. Our personal properties and the desire to receive allow us to perceive His bestowal at the level of the last Sefira (Yesod), which is the place of assembly of all bestowing qualities; after we attain it, we act accordingly.

We sense ourselves and our desires to receive pleasure as pleasant or unpleasant. If we feel bad, it means that the entire system acts in a way that doesn’t allow us to trace who particularly is responsible for our pain. It seems to us that all our sufferings are the fault of others, and suddenly, we discover the entire world around us.

If one begins correcting oneself by making an effort to justify the Creator, or one tries to love his neighbor, and by doing so attains the Creator (meaning one sets the right relationships with the external world), then one discovers that everything is pre-arranged solely for his own benefit. One begins changing oneself so that at every given moment of his life he can regard everybody as wonderful, kind, and positive.

For that, one needs to constantly change oneself; it will eventually correct him. If we want to see the world as a perfect place, we have to perpetually change ourselves and correct our egoism to be adequate for a new perception of the world. It’s called “loving one’s friends”: We continually strive to maintain harmonious, loving and caring relationships with others, which will eventually lead us to the Creator. This mechanism constantly changes us. One continually keeps altering internally, but at the same time, one should retain a vision of his friends as great. If he manages to act so, one certainly self-corrects.

This is the way one works on the structure, on his Partzuf, which connects him with the Creator. It’s not perfect as of yet, so one doesn’t sense a reciprocal connection within this structure as between two people who are in love with each other: “I am for my beloved, and He strives to be with me.” However, one has to grow up into this condition.

Look at what great possibilities for work that the group and the environment give us. It’s totally enough if we perpetually test ourselves by asking, “What do I think about them? How do I support my friends? How do I connect with them? Are we together or not really?”

Everything is right in front of us; there’s no doubt that it’s oriented directly to the Creator. It happens automatically, since He is behind it all. One can be totally confident of this fact; there is no need to check it out. Of course, one has to maintain the right intention towards the Creator, since the final action is already included in the initial thought, so we have to direct ourselves toward the Creator in the first place. However, we have at our disposal a wonderful tool for measuring that clearly demonstrates to us what we are supposed to do in our current state.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/14/12, The Study of the Ten Sefirot

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The internal work begins when I begin to control myself. I have to examine how long I am in the right line and how long in the left line (Baal HaSulam says that we should dedicate twenty-three-and-a-half hours a day to the right line and the remaining thirty minutes to the left line).

I have to decide what line I am in and not be thrown from side to side by the states that come along. It can’t be that as long as I am in a good mood I will be in the right line and the moment it’s interrupted I immediately fall to the left line. By myself I have to try to “awaken the dawn and not that dawn awakens.”

This means that the way to be human begins from a person’s work on himself, from his attempts to be above the two lines and to hold the two reins in his hands. Thus he advances correctly. The main thing is the efforts, although we can’t estimate how successful they are according to our knowledge.

If we work this way, we come to the recognition that we can’t keep ourselves above the states that throw us downward and upward like helpless babies. One time we are captives of the left line, of Pharaoh, and another time we belong to the right line, to the Creator, but we don’t agree to that; we want to be independent so that we’ll be able to adhere to the upper force and resemble it.

This means that both the left line and the right line have to be part of us so that we’ll sculpt our image from them. Thus we reach a prayer as we see that we can’t create the middle line by ourselves and that it isn’t born out of the simple connection between the left line and the right line. We need the upper Light here to come and show us how we can integrate the first two lines, how we can connect them.

After all, it isn’t simple and there’s a need for a special multi-sided, multi-layered connection. The vessels have to connect the Lights in every cell, in all the tiniest particles. The right line, the Light, determines the right connection with the left line. The left line provides the matter, the desire, and the right line gives it its form, and so a very complex structure is born of the two.

The matter of the left line is raw material, like stem cells that belong to the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature and the human levels, and the Light that comes from the right line knows how to make different forms of connection of all these cells. Like a form in which all the matter is made of the same basic particles (electrons, protons, etc.) but the complexity of the connection between them determines all the richness of the different atoms: 126 elements on the periodic table from which all the forms of the still, vegetative, and animate nature are built. A human being is already above them, since he includes the system of forces.

So we first have to understand how important the influence of the environment is: the teacher, the group, the study, meaning the factors through which we receive the Light that Reforms. Our purpose is to ascend above all the states that we feel. Since all our attempts to ascend above our mood are eventually doomed to fail, we despair of our own powers and realize that we need both the support of the group and help from Above. It’s very important to ascend above our state, above the two lines, since it immediately places a person at the starting point on the straight road to the Creator, at the middle line.
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From the 1^st part to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/18/12, Shamati #212

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So far, we are unable to play the game customary among the Kabbalists of the past, who were way above the Machsom. As opposed to us, they pretended that they were not at all concerned about bestowal since they were already in it. By acting so, they were giving each other a chance to feel the depth of the desire before it even appeared to them.

In order to ascend to the next degree, one has to correct the additional portion of the desire that has already been revealed to him. In the beginning, it appears to us as darkness or evil. At any given step, an egoistic side made by the Creator shows up first. The second condition, “I created the Torah as a spice to correct it,” comes next.

If a person asks for correction, the Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif) descends to him from the next degree and corrects him in response to his MAN.

If our ascent is a result of the revelation from Above of the evil inclination made by the Creator, then in order to accelerate our advancement, we can pretend that spirituality doesn’t mean a thing to us. If we act so, each of us will have a chance to overcome this disdain. It’s because when I receive such hardening of the heart, I want to escape spiritual work. So my friends deliberately concoct this internal condition for me in order to accelerate my advancement. This is the game we all will play after we enter spirituality.

Meantime, this state is still ahead of us. We don’t play the “adult games” as of now, but on the contrary, are inspired and have high spirits. I play in front of my friend as if I already have reached the upper degree. I have to demonstrate to him that everything is great, so where are you? It’s as if I urge my friend to rise as fast as possible.

The beginners have to be very cautious of their words and of activities that don’t excel the goal. Thus, we all have to inspire each other by the greatness of our spiritual purpose. We never work against the power of bestowal by enhancing others’ resistance, but rather push each other towards bestowal. Therefore, we have to be very cautious and by all means avoid being light-minded.

All our activities and conversations as well as the games we play with ourselves or with our friends (whether internal or external) have to be strictly oriented towards the goal. As little children who want to grow up and become adults, we should never make obstacles for each other. We should only push each other forward by setting the right example.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/10/12, Writings of Rabash

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Preparation to the Lesson

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Writings of Rabash “Shlavei HaSulam”  Article 20

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The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpt “Aharei-Mot,” Item 387, Lesson 28

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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Volume 3, Part 8, Item 35, Lesson 20

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“Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah),” Item 4, Lesson 2

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Humanity is a collection of the parts of the existing desire to receive. Generally these parts are divided into the “seventy nations of the world.”

Besides, there is a desire to bestow that is external to our reality, the Godly part from Above, the attribute of bestowal. It was first revealed as the “point of the heart” of Adam HaRishon (first man), and later was revealed in the twenty generations that lived from Adam HaRishon to Abraham.

When it came to Abraham, this desire rose to a higher level and he began to publicize the method of the correction of the egoistic desire by the “point in the heart.” Then suddenly thousands of other people were discovered in ancient Babel with this inclination. When Abraham gathered them, they separated themselves from the environment of the Babylonians and moved to the Land of Canaan. The purpose of this transition was so they would unite as “one man in one heart.” This is what each one’s “point in the heart” demanded.

Thus the group that is led by the spark and which acts according to the attribute of bestowal and doesn’t belong to this world, which is absorbed in the desire to receive, was created. Abraham’s followers seemed to be ordinary people but they belonged to the spiritual world. They were like “aliens” in their attributes, their attitude; everything among them was infused in mutual bestowal, which means that it matched the attributes of the upper world.

This is the reason that the people of Israel are not part of the other nations of the world, with the seventy different desires to receive. It is a separate special desire aimed at bestowal.

Later in order to increase this inclination of bestowal, the children of Israel received the hardening of the desire to receive, called the “Exile in Egypt.” In Egypt something special happened—Abraham’s group entered this vessel, “absorbed” its desires, and left it. First it only had GE and now it received AHP.

When they left Egypt the children of Israel received an addition to Abraham’s method, called Moses’ Torah, which enabled them to correct the “Egyptian” ego. When they corrected it, they created a wonderful spiritual vessel called “the First Temple.”

But later this vessel was shattered because of the connection with external vessels, desires. After all, the First Temple that the children of Israel built was only their own corrected vessel, their own end of correction. They turned into bestowal the whole desire to receive they took from Egypt and absorbed into them. It was only part of the work, and then they fell once more from their level and got closer to the nations of the world in the “exile of Babel.”

Then the sons of Israel finally sank into the vessel of the nations of the world, in one last exile, which lasts until our days, in order to mix with them.

As a result, everything is mixed in our current world: There isn’t the smallest part of AHP that doesn’t contain GE, and there isn’t the smallest part of GE that doesn’t contain AHP. The ten tribes that disappeared during the time of the First Temple also added to that. There are no more vessels of GE or of AHP in their pure form if we speak about the internal essence and not about external expressions of the “genes.”

Now comes the next stage, in which we have to differentiate the parts of GE from AHP, to raise them and to correct them. Then we have to correct the parts of AHP that are in GE and then the parts of GE that are in AHP, and finally just before the end of correction the true AHP. This is the process.

GE is the people of Israel as we see it. In the second stage, its correction will influence the AHP that is in GE and then it will be the turn of the parts of Israel that are in the nations of the world, and the pure AHP will be corrected at the end.

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From the 3^rd part to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/19/12, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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The group is the AHP of the upper. I have to annul myself, to give up my AHP and to remain only in GE in order to adhere to the AHP of the group. There I feel darkness and despite that, I have to annul myself and to incorporate with the friends.

This is our work. Now too we are in two Partzufim, in the upper and in the lower. I am below the Machsom (barrier), and the upper intentionally lowers his AHP, the group, to me. If I want to connect with it, with the friends, I have to leave only the GE with me. There is no other choice.

What actions are required in order to do that?

First of all, is the annulment of my own AHP (1). Next, I have to intensify my GE as much a possible. I annul them by that (↓), and then I can connect to the upper (→), to see it and to receive it.

The upper seems like darkness, and I am ready to receive it that way. It is good for me, since it is the upper, and I value it. It is depicted as darkness for my ego, but it is good for my “faith above reason.”

The moment I annul myself before the upper, we become one vessel, and then it already gives me the feeling of greatness, of connection, of expansion. It is simply because our GE and AHP together make up ten Sefirot.

Then it isn’t the AHP of the upper any more but my AHP of the upper. It is like a child who says, “This is my Dad! This is my Mom!” by that he understands that they belong to him.

In addition, this upper has his own GE and AHP, which is a totally different AHP from the one he displays to me.

But the upper remains in a state of smallness and begins to raise our ten common Sefirot, the AHP to which I am adhered and my GE, and then I transcend the Machsom.

By that we should understand that we have no other AHP and no other upper but the group.
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From the 3^rd part to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/19/12, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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Question: What do I have to aspire to, the greatness of the friends or equality with them? What is the true connection?

Answer: You have to aspire for unity with the friends, as one man in one heart. You rise above them in order to impress them with the message of the greatness of the goal, and you lower your head before them in order to receive the message of the greatness of the goal.

Otherwise, it will be as if you are equal, as if you neutralize one another, which means that you don’t impress one another. It is easiest to be “equal” to one another by turning our back to one another: “This is yours and this is mine.” Then I don’t compare what you have with what I have. Even if we just pretend to be equal, I still live calmly and have no complaints.

But true equality means that we want to connect and to impress one another with the greatness of the Creator as much as possible. In order to do that, we annul ourselves and value the society as much as possible. So all of us, who are created so differently from one another by the Creator, become truly equal, equal with regard to the goal.

If we yearn to bestow upon one another, if we yearn to subdue ourselves before the friends, if we yearn to ascend and to see the Creator as greater, if we only yearn for Him, if we want to connect, to restrict ourselves, to annul ourselves and to adhere to Him, we become equal by that. Eventually our goal is to connect with Him. By incorporating with Him, we all become equal even in the attributes by which we differ from birth. It is the Creator who has made us different and so by incorporating in Him the inequality disappears.
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From the 1^st part to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/18/12, Writings of Rabash

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If a person includes two roots, his ego that so far has been simply a corporeal ego and now turns into a real evil inclination and a spiritual spark, this is already a preparation for two lines. Without this he doesn’t even have one line, since one line indicates that that there is another line, another direction.

Without it, it is simply a desire to receive that belongs to the animal level, while the human level begins when two lines begin to grow in a person, as it says: “God has created them one in contrast to the other.” Then the third line appears, which decides between the first two lines; a Light comes from Above and ties the left and the right lines according to a person’s work, and builds the form of a human.

So a human is created when these two elements appear in him: a desire to receive and in contrast to it the spiritual spark. His desire to receive isn’t just a corporeal desire for this life that looks for ways to use others and to profit more. It already gives birth to questions a person has according to the spark that illuminates on him and demands him to ask: “What is the meaning of my life and what I should do with it?” This means that his desire is already aimed at complaining to the Creator in the left line.

When a person begins to develop these two lines, he reaches a group. First he doesn’t understand what he needs it for. He begins to study, and in the meantime he doesn’t know why. But then the two lines develop in him.

He begins to go through different states for the first time: ascents and descents. The first stage of preparation ends when he understands that the importance of the goal has to be above every private state he feels.

He may be in such a critical state that his life is in danger, but he still has to be above this state, as it says: “Even if a sharp sword is placed on his neck, he shouldn’t despair of mercy.” This means that you still have to be above that feeling.

It is the same in the opposite state: No matter which state of greatness he may feel, which makes him recognize the greatness of the goal, whether a state of elation, love for the friends, euphoria, he must still understand that it all happens because he is given an illumination from Above and he is like a small kid under the full domination of the upper force.

There is no need to annul or to suppress these states in you, like people who sometimes repress their joy in order to seem more serious. Here a person should try to intensify and to deepen these states as much as he can, both the fear and the gratitude, both his ego and his adhesion to bestowal. But he himself should want to be above these feelings, in order to examine them and to control them.
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From the 1^st part to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/18/12, Shamati #212

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The Book of Zohar, “Aharei-Mot,” item 316: When they do things that are wrong and leave the correct path, the morality of the right, the Light of Hassadim. And the left dominated the right vessel. Then there are incests, and the Dinim are revealed in Bina and in Malchut, which is pubic disclosure. Woe to the villains that bring this about in the world, since they will not be blessed from Above, before the villains below will perish. As it says, and all the villains are gone, my soul blesses the Lord, halleluiah.

There isn’t one word in The Zohar that was not written from the middle line, where bestowal is above receiving; the right line is on top of the left line. Here they are balanced: The left line provides the “matter,” the desire, and the right line provides the form, the intention.

So even if we read in the Torah about terrible things, we should understand that it is about forms of bestowal. Everything in Kabbalah books is holy and even Pharaoh is holy.

All the villains in the Torah are clarifying the middle line and putting together a “topic” for it. A Kabbalist can reveal them only through the correction in the middle line and only then does he write about it in the book. So all the words, all the names in the Torah are holy, and they are expressions of bestowal.

So we have to relate to the words of The Zohar like to expressions of connection and love. In fact there is no difference between what seems attractive and what doesn’t.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/16/12, The Book of Zohar

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