Ascents and descents are a sign of life. The changing of the seasons, the periodicity of the changes in human nature, the reincarnations, the global crises, the economic upsurges and declines are all an inseparable part of life.

It is impossible to advance in a constant current, since we have to develop constantly. Life is a development and this development is possible only thanks to the contractions and the expansions. This is called the secret of life.

This is actually what is happening to us now. The Creator takes our ego and doesn’t leave us anything. As a result there is a contraction, an exhalation. Thus He gives us now a chance to expand by ourselves. Then He contracts us again and we have to expand once more.

By these actions of contractions and expansions the process of “breathing” takes place—this is the pulse of life.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/24/12, The Study of the Ten Sefirot

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Baal HaSulam, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”: Indeed, know that for this reason, the Torah was not given to our holy fathers—Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—but was held until the exodus from Egypt, when they came out and became a whole nation of six hundred thousand men of twenty years of age or more. For then, each member of the nation was asked if he agreed to that exalted work. And once each and every one in the nation agreed to it in heart and soul, and said “We shall do and we shall hear,” it then became possible to keep the whole of the Torah, and that which was previously impossible became possible.

At first everyone participates individually in the group and not willingly but because he is compelled to do so. We see that we disrespect our obligations to our friends; we disrespect the option to be considerate of everyone and to follow the spiritual path. To what extent does a person understand that his advancement totally depends on his mutual cooperation and his connection with others, in rising above his ego, above his weakness and his laziness? Does he at least look for the powers of the general cooperation and the general doing?

If we keep these conditions, then out of a collection of just ordinary people we become a group. Then, like in the exile in Egypt, we experience different periods, good and bad, we work hard and we have to turn it into holy work for the Creator. Here everything depends upon how much people can identify the place in which they can fulfill the goal.

There can’t be an exodus from Egypt unless they find the deficiency within them which will enable them to unite more closely. This is because the exit from egoistic slavery is labor pains, when I simply have to reach connection, when I am better off dead than alive. Then I understand that I am buried in my desire, in my ego, like in a grave. From there I am born into the Light, but only if I connect with others. This is the only way the birth can take place. Then I reach the giving of the Torah, which means that I reach the instruction, the guide, the connection with others.

There can’t be any other kind of work and there can’t be an exodus from Egypt if I don’t cry out that I want to serve the Creator. It’s with this desire that Moses turns to Pharaoh: “I want to work for the Creator, to connect in mutual guarantee.” Therefore, I have to exit the ego, to rise above it, to escape from Pharaoh. It’s an obligation, since the next level is so desirable, so necessary, that I am like a developing embryo that can’t stay in its mother’s womb any more and must be born.

Baal HaSulam writes about it in the article “And This Is for Judah,” saying that the future redemption is already revealed in the previous level, in exile. The difference between exile (Galut  – גלות) and redemption (Geula – גאולה) is the letter “Aleph” (א), which symbolizes the Creator, the Champion of the world. The Creator can’t be revealed in exile—Galut since there can’t be a corrected vessel there. It’s because you are still in your ego, but when you rise above your ego, it’s called the exodus from Egypt, and then you acquire the first spiritual vessel and then you can reveal the Creator.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/24/12, “Matan Torah (Giving of the Torah)”

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Imagine that you come to the lesson and your arm hurts badly; you will think about the pain all the time, of course. It will interfere with your studying and will cause great discomfort; you won’t know how to get rid of this pain and you won’t be able to forget it.

The question is how should we feel the same pain for not having reached the end of correction yet, for not having reached our ultimate goal? I don’t want to wait a single day! If it is so important to me, I am burning with impatience, like a baby –I want it now and right away!

The problem is that I don’t want what I should want. Where can I get the right desire from? This is a reason for a prayer.

I see no rush to connect with the friends and to reach the love of others in order to reach the spiritual goal. These are problems on top of other problems that set many obstacles before me one after the other. If I really wanted to reach the goal, I would love the friends; after all, it is unattainable without them. But the point is that I don’t need this goal: Does anyone want to give? And so I don’t need the friends and I don’t want to pay for the goal by love of others. It all seems very distant, foggy and unrealistic. I sit in front of the book during the lesson thinking: “What am I doing here anyway?”

So we are given a tool called the Torah in which there is the force that brings us to the goal. For us this is the upper level from which the force called the Light comes and pulls us forward. This is what we have to think about during the lesson just as you think about the arm that hurts and which you want to heal.

It doesn’t matter what you are reading at the moment, you have to think about your “illness” and to dream about the healing. If you don’t have a deficiency for that, ask that it will be given to you, connect to the friends, check which desires they have.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/24/12, The Study of the Ten Sefirot

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Thanks to mutual guarantee a person reaches a state in which he feels that everyone supports him in order to provide him everything that he needs. Then he can think about others. It is only under this condition that he rises above his ego.

There are no other forces. The ego is the only force that dominates us and only in a group can we neutralize it.

If the group doesn’t neutralize and annul my ego, I will never be able to do it myself. I will be buried in it forever and will not be able to be born, to exit it. Mutual guarantee is the law of life for me, it is the precondition for my spiritual birth.

Unless I receive from the group the secure feeling of full protection and of the provision of everything that I need, I will not be able to rise above myself. In fact, it is mutual guarantee that gives birth to this feeling in me, and it isn’t up to me any more. If the friends influence me by their mutual guarantee, I will not stop thinking about them at all. That’s the way it works.

It is like a baby in his mother’s arms who feels that he has no troubles. He feels instinctively safe, and that he will be provided with whatever he needs. This is how I should feel, like a baby in the arms of the group, who feels that all his troubles are gone, all the thoughts, the anxieties, and the questions.

There is nothing that is connected to me; it is as if I am floating in the air. From this moment on I can begin to think about others.

We are talking about unchangeable laws, about forces that operate on us. It isn’t my fantasy or a guess. If the force of mutual guarantee operates on me, then I detach myself, and it makes no difference whether I want to or not. If the friends operate on me with this force, I am free of the ego’s domination. From that moment on I can think about others.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/24/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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If you don’t perform the right action during a descent, you are creating a double Machsom (barrier) before you. You should have overcome one Machsom during the revelation of a new void, but you postponed it and said that it wasn’t in your powers to do so. Now you’ll have to wait until the Creator turns to you again, which means that the new conditions for correcting that phenomenon will be revealed in you again, but differently. The Creator changes one angel, one force, with another and gives a person another chance to advance.

A person cooperates within a whole system in which he has to complete his part, which depends solely on him, in order to ensure the existence of the whole system and to advance it towards the goal. This movement takes place in the whole system, where every part is spurred and depends on others according to the order of correction from the bottom up in the chain of the Reshimot (informational genes).

What will happen to a person who doesn’t fulfill his Reshimot? Others will have to do his work. So a person damages everyone seriously if he doesn’t carry out the tasks that are revealed to him. By that he harms the whole system, the whole group. He doesn’t allow the group to advance and makes it work on extra corrections in order to complete what he couldn’t do. They have to carry him on their backs, like in a battle, when you have to carry a seriously wounded soldier on a stretcher. It’s a very sad situation for the group.

Since the whole system is whole, and the emergence of the Reshimot determines who should act first and who should act later, and how we are connected to one another, then all our actions depend on one another and complete one another. By not carrying out your task on time, you immediately condemn yourself and the whole world instead of judging yourself and the world to the scale of merit. You are standing on the scale tilting them to one side or to the other by being responsible for the whole world.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/24/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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The group is my Creator. If we are in a corrected connection, and I suddenly fall from this connection and am outside it and alone, then a difference is created, a gap (Δ) between myself and general unity. Thus, for me, this connection is the upper level, the Creator, my savior. Thus I turn to Him, pray, and ask that He take me back. I want to be integrated in Him, to adhere to Him.

The Kabbalists tell us that there was a descent of the worlds from the world of Ein Sof (infinity) until the level of this world, and now I need to gradually return through rising through the levels. But I don’t know anything about it. I only know one thing, that there is me and my upper. What is the upper? I don’t know either. For me It is limitless. I don’t understand or feel It. I only know that there is something higher above me.

I have one, unique way to imagine the upper to myself, and that is the form of the group. This is since it is a complete system in which everyone is connected together (Σ). It turns out that this is my upper level according to its properties and definition.

So you ask, “And where is the Creator, the upper force, the Light?” Indeed, within this system the Creator is revealed, the upper force. I feel Him there. This Light is discovered in our Kelim (desires) as impression in the attributes that they acquired.

When our desires begin to connect in all kinds of connections, impressions that we call Light will appear in them, but it’s not the Light itself, but some kind of vibrations in the soul that It invites. You measure these vibrations and determine them as the Light of Ruach. And other vibrations will already be the Light of Neshama or the Light of Haya.

I attain only myself, but from the actions of the Creator in me, I will know Him. What I feel within the connection, I give it a name the “Light’’ and ‘’upper world.’’ What I feel outside the connection is called “the lower world’’ and my ‘’I.’’

The group are not the faces I see in front of me, but its inner model, our connection, that exists invisible to my sight. There is a group that is in unity and in the state of Gmar Tikkun (the final correction) and there is the image that I see, human beings as such.

What I see depends on me. But actually, the group exists in a corrected form; I need to believe that in faith above reason. The Creator says: ‘’I brought you to a good place. You need to become adjusted to it, to connect to it, to bow your head before them. I brought you to such a place in which I will be revealed, if you buy it!”
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/16/12, The Study of the Ten Sefirot

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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot,” Item 4: This is what has sustained us thus far, to maintain the armies and the wall around the wisdom of truth, so no stranger or foreigner would break in….

The wisdom of Kabbalah was concealed because all the nations had to develop. The entire world must advance until it is totally disappointed with the ego.

Then, when they feel powerless and cannot continue, people will see that the current form of life on earth has come to an end. This refers to the social and ecological destruction, and to a person’s inner destruction.

So, the wisdom of Kabbalah must be concealed in order to allow the ego to develop and not to stop this process in the middle. It is because it speaks about overcoming the ego, but if it isn’t ripe yet, there is nothing to overcome. Thus, we must wait until it reaches its full development. Kabbalists determined that the final phase began 500 years ago in the times of the Ari, but the last alignment was necessary so that, in our days, it will be absolutely clear.

Today, the entire world is beginning to acknowledge the fact that there is nowhere to develop and advance, and that none of the known methods can help us develop in the right way. So, the wisdom of Kabbalah—which, until now, was rightfully concealed—is being revealed to the world.

Question: To whom is it actually revealed?

Answer: It is gradually revealed to everyone. If we take the Europeans and the Americans, for example, if they see that they have reached a dead-end and have no means to correct the social crisis and the crises in industry, commerce, education, and in any other area, then thanks to our internal and external dissemination, they finally will be able to understand that there is a method that can help them overcome the ego that is destroying and viciously consuming them like a cancerous growth. This method will allow them to cope with it and begin living the good life again.

First, the cells of the general human organism grew separately, each according to its own form, like buds that sprout out of the earth. It was a natural process, and the wisdom of Kabbalah waited patiently in concealment for them to fully grow.

Finally, they have grown and begun to connect egoistically, and this egoistic connection very soon will lead to death since they are all connected, but “pulling the blanket” in their own direction. This is the nature of cancer. As a result, the terminal state is revealed, but, together with it, the wisdom of Kabbalah also is revealed immediately in order to allow its recovery.

The remedy cannot be revealed unless the patient discovers how critical his condition is. There must be “recognition of evil” here and “free will” as to whether to take the remedy or to ignore it. We, on our part, must work, and humanity must feel that it is ill. This is the process.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/19/12, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot”

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Baal HaSulam, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”: It is because, indeed, with respect to a person who is still within the nature of Creation, there is no difference between the love of God and the love of his fellow person. This is because anything that is not him is unreal to him.

I cannot feel others. I feel them to the extent that I depend on them. In other words, I don’t actually feel others, but I feel my dependence on them, how much I can lose if something happens to them.

This is the only way we calculate everything. Even a mother feels how much she can lose if her baby has any problems. This is the scale we call “love.”

“I love you” means that I depend on you. So, it is by no means spiritual love, but corporeal love. I enjoy someone and the fear that something might happen to him since otherwise I will suffer. I love someone with whom I feel good. He may be my son who gives me pleasure.

We, however, are talking about something that is totally different: about how, from the love of the created beings, we reach the love of the Creator. Although we use the example of a mother’s love in our world, we don’t know actually what love means on a “human” level.

We must develop a totally new type of love. The word itself is misleading, and we have to be careful of making mistakes. It is about a totally different relationship and discernment, about bestowal that comes from me outward to someone who is outside my feelings.

Today, I feel everyone. I feel what is going on in the world, and it is only according to the calculation of gaining or the fear of losing. The desire to receive is looking for sources of pleasure and stays away from what can harm it.

These are the only things that enter me, but I don’t feel anything that is not part of my pleasure or suffering. This is because my “sensitive material” is a desire to enjoy. It is the Masach (screen) on which the pictures of my reality are reflected. In such a display, I only can see things that are within the range of my interest, which might bring me self-benefit or pain and suffering.

There are things that I don’t feel because they don’t cause me pleasure or pain, like different fields, waves, X-rays, and so forth. As we develop, we recognize more things to which we should pay attention because they can be either beneficial or harmful.

It is the same when it comes to love of friends. We don’t know what it means and we don’t feel it in our senses. What can we compare it to? Is it bad when you are loved? It isn’t the love of the friends toward me, but my love toward them when I totally give myself to them, take care of them, worry about them, help them, and bestow upon them.

Who needs such love in our world? If they loved me and served me, it would be another issue: “I am ready to receive your love. Go ahead; who is first?”

However, we are speaking about a transition to the level of the love of the Creator, about mutual guarantee. The goal of creation is to love thy friend. Through that, we enjoy bestowal, but only the bestowal not in order to enjoy. We are bestowing against the desire, by overcoming it.

So, we must pay a little more attention to the right meaning of our work in the group. It is impossible to interpret it according to the images in our world. Closeness, love, and connection are all concepts that exist above the overcoming, above the Machsom (barrier). Until then, I won’t overcome anything, but am simply going through the period of preparation.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/24/12, “Matan Torah (Giving of the Torah)”

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It is very important to take part in the conventions and meetings that we hold since this attack really advances a person and allows him to get closer and to connect to others.

There are people who even find it very hard to sit among others and they count the hours until all this is finally over and they will be able to go home. But it is important to feel even such situations deeply, since it is a very good way to learn. We should only try not to get stuck in this state for a long time and to move forward as quickly as possible. Everything is determined according to how you subdue yourself before the environment.

We shouldn’t think that we are advancing only during these attacks when we are under the influence of the powerful environment, subduing ourselves before it, since we have no choice. It is possible to advance even faster during the usual daily lesson. In every lesson a very strong Light is revealed to us, even stronger than during the convention.

The whole point is that during the lesson we cannot hold on to the same sharpness of the senses and devotion in the same intensity. During the congresses the special actions, the special conditions, and the feeling of the attack, influence us. During the daily lesson it is a continuous war.

We have to build up power during the convention, the power we have attained during the attack, but later we have to fulfill it day by day and to understand that these are the true conditions of the war. During the lesson we are in a daily war, until we finally reach the true prayer.

I have to constantly examine myself and constantly keep the three conditions of the prayer. There is nothing but a prayer, a request, which includes the feeling of how great the Creator is, a self-check of whether I did everything possible, and of whether I am really devoted to the goal with all my soul and value it more than life itself. In order to do that I must constantly examine myself since everything that is connected is the essence of my attitude to the upper, to the higher level, to the unified system.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/23/12, Shamati #209

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Question: What do we get from the workshops?

Answer: The workshops allow us to clarify the types of connections among us.

Question: Do I actually discover a lack of connection with the friends or is it the opposite?

Answer: Both. Through the questions in the workshop, I clarify where I am and what I lack in order to attain what I desire.

Together with nine other friends, I begin to clarify the question we were asked and to penetrate their opinions and their thoughts, such as what they think about the same type of connection or the type of clarification. Through that, I already am in contact with them. I already see to what extent we “connect.”

We are all different, and in the workshops we clarify how we should connect. Is it possible? With whom should I connect? Do I agree or disagree?

I constantly build the forms of connection among us. This is the workshop, and it already clarifies and reveals this collective network. Thus, I have a twofold task:

• On one hand, I must see the friends as great so that I can lower my head before them and be small among them. Compared to them, I am a zero, while they are all number one with several zeros after it. Then, accordingly, I am incorporated in them and become a “spiritual embryo.”
• On the other hand, I must be one, or ten, or a hundred, and they must be the zeros. However, “zeros” in this context mean how much I can bestow upon them and what help and support I can give to them.

So, a middle line is created between these two extremes that equalizes them (=•=). Thus, the point of balance is created at which we reach a common ground. Each one respects the others as much as he can, each one humbles himself before the others as much as he can and, at the same time, is ready to raise the goal and the work in their eyes.

All this is in our thoughts when I am with the friends, and we discuss the questions in the workshop. I hear them and I think that one speaks nonsense, the other didn’t understand the question, and the third speaks logically instead of emotionally. The fourth seems to speak to the point, but I resent the fact that his words are deeper and wiser than mine.

Thus, I begin to work mutually with the friends and experience different states, and that is great. We just need to take what is going on seriously. “I have come here in order to connect in order to pass on to them my energy and to receive everyone’s power. This hour and a half is the most beneficial time for me.”

Of course, I see how the strange thoughts throw me off in different directions and how my inner resistance doesn’t allow me to agree with the friends. Great! I will not find an opportunity for more intensive clarification and to work on a higher “frequency.”

It is a pity that during the workshops there are those who exchange words like politicians, others who use different expressions from the bank they have in their memory, and others become psychologists and analysts. The main thing, here, is the feeling I experience in my heart.

We must learn from the ego’s endless urges since it is a “helpmate.” Our ego is an “angel” in the hands of the Creator through which He evokes us. So, I must see how the Creator doesn’t leave me even one moment of rest, and how he evokes my ego again and again in different ways in order to allow me to advance as fast as possible.

The workshops are the most helpful time, but, if we begin having them every day, attendance will drop immediately, and it will become a burden, hard work. We may think that it is a good idea to continue the convention for another week or two, or a month or two, until we succeed, until we rise to the spiritual level, but we are weak. We can hold on for another day or two, but not more than that.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/23/12, Questions and Answers

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