The mission of the nation of Israel divides into several stages. First we rise to the degree of the end of correction ourselves. This is why we came out of the state of Babylon and then fell into the state of Egypt, and 400 years later received the method of correction while standing “beneath Mount Sinai.” Next, we rose to the level of the First Temple, which is essentially the particular end of correction for this group.

However, this is not yet the end of the world’s development, which is why we descended into exile and then rose to the level of the Second Temple, and finally, went into the last exile on the level of the nations of the world. Altogether, considering the intermediate phases, this was our fourth exile.

All phases of this path remained in our Reshimot, and thus, today we must finally correct ourselves. We will thereby rise to a level that is even higher than before since we mixed with the nations of the world, which will join us in the process of this final ascent. That is how we rise to the level of Israel’s correction and the level of the general correction.
[61021]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/17/11, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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Question: A convention in the Arava desert will be held this weekend, which will be attended by several hundred men from Israel to unite, to crystallize the inner force of mutual guarantee between us, and to become the nucleus for unification at the December convention. How can we do this?

Answer: Indeed, there has to be a special inner nucleus in which all the points will gather into one. This point is surrounded by a more passive part—the women of Bnei Baruch, and the widest circle is the external world.

On the inside, all of our friends from the whole world merge together. Why men? Because that’s the nature of creation: They are the ones who need correction to attain love and unity, whereas women reach this differently. Then, when we attain the desired state, we will be able to pass it on to others.

Question: How should women support men at this convention?

Answer: They have to think about our success. We need this support as without it we will have a very hard time. It’s exactly the same as how “the sons of Israel came out of Egypt by virtue of the righteous women.”

Women are a very powerful part of the common system and their support is simply indispensable. When a woman worries about a man, this gives him great forces, a great impetus to realize her yearnings. Without women’s support, we will not succeed.
[60933]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/16/11, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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Question: How should we prepare for the convention in the Arava desert, in order to arrive there with the right demand?

Answer: We know that the correction of the world happens in stages. The men have to perform the correction first, those who feel the true desire to connect and understand that mutual guarantee can only be in the connection between us. The women join this more passively.

So we are going to a place where we will have no disturbances from foreign thoughts and desires. There we will try to lead an attack aimed at the connection between us. I recommend that only the men will assemble in all our centers because if all the men in the world try to connect now, it will be the right preparation for the December convention.

Then we will move on to the next stage of preparation. By December, we will acquire more forces in order to add the men who can’t participate in the spiritual work with us now, and the women too.

Now we are consolidating the nucleus, and in December we will unite the external circles. The purpose of the December convention is for the part of humanity that takes part in the convention together with us to become an internal force that awakens the others towards connection and mutual guarantee.
[60794]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/15/2011, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)“

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The Book of Zohar was intended not for us to study it, but rather for us to demand correction from it. In makes no difference where a person is, in what situation or mood, how much he understands, and what his attitude to life is. It doesn’t matter what kind of person he is. If he opens the book, he should ask for some clarification, for advancement. One asks for understanding, and another, possibly, for a better life.

We have to understand that this is all not very important in comparison to the request to attain the goal. But I don’t know what the goal is. Just like it is in life: If I were able to read The Zohar when I was two years old, I could have asked for something good that may have seemed like the goal of life to me. But what would I have asked for, some toy?

This means that I don’t have to ask according to my desire: to feel good, happy, or the opposite. Grown ups for example, eat something and enjoy it. For me it is sour or salty, but they enjoy it. They do things that I don’t see any pleasure in and don’t understand why they want it in the first place, and so on.

If we are talking about the true state that I should attain, neither actions, nor fulfillments, nor any other criteria help me decide what to ask for. Kabbalists say that by reading The Book of Zohar you can ask for whatever you want. But I don’t even know what I want because I would rather not have these desires. Yet I have no choice.…

A person must approach the reading of The Zohar with a request for what the book itself wants to bring him. This is surely the right thing to do. It’s like being a smart baby who understands that he should ask to be a grown up, clever, strong, healthy, and successful, according to how The Zohar sees it.

So let us try to ask for this, and let The Book of Zohar do whatever it wants with us!
[60778]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/15/2011, The Zohar

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The Book of Zohar, Chapter “Pekudei,” (Accounts),” Item 844: In this palace stands Dumah. He is standing above, in the third palace of the Sitra Achra, and below in the first palace. It is he who grips the soul when she is repelled from the holy palace by the appointee, Tahariel. Dumah stands at the gate of the first hall of Kedusha, to grip the soul and draw it into the palaces of Tuma’a. Also, there are several instigators of law and sentencing with him.

Suppose I am in a courtroom where different forces operate, and I am told about them: “This one can help you, this one is for you, and that one is against you.” I am constantly thinking about how they can help me improve my situation.

At the same time, as I hear about all these forces, I don’t think about how they interact with each other. It doesn’t worry me. I only think about how to solve my problem and to win the trial.

This is how we should read The Book of Zohar: to constantly want that all the forces it talks about will help us advance, succeed, and attain revelation.
[60774]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/15/2011, The Zohar

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Baal HaSulam, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)” (abridged version): And you evidently find that the giving of the Torah had to be delayed until they came out of Egypt and became a nation of their own so that all their needs were provided for by themselves….

The Exodus from Egypt is not just an escape from the domination of the evil inclination, although in itself this is also a great achievement. A person must really escape from his ego like he would from fire. No matter what, he is ready to sacrifice himself to the end. “I would rather die than live.” At the same time, bestowal upon others seems worse than death.

The second condition is to become a nation. It isn’t enough to escape my own egoism, I also have to agree to connect with others and to take care of everyone. I actually serve them, and my reward is that they allow me to do so. On the way to achieving this goal no one will lack anything. This means that I stand before the level of Bina.

However, while they were still mingled with the Egyptians…permeated with self-love. Thus, the portion that is given into the hands of foreigners will not be secured for any person from Israel because his friends will not be able to provide for those needs….

This is what causes a person pain and why he escapes from it. As the prisoner of the ego (self love), which is called Egypt, he cannot take care of others and so he decides to escape.

But here it turns out that in the material sense, everything is fine. Imagine that you have all the food that you need and that you live in the most fertile place. It turns out that you can do fine in life, in your egoism. Until now you have been pushed by suffering, and here, when you must escape from that to bestowal, it’s as if you are held back from the front: “But you can manage within your ego too.”

Then you go back to work, but it’s now work on the next level. Previously, you escaped physical sufferings, and in order to get rid of them, you were even ready to connect. This is why people connect when they have no choice in times of war or disasters. At a certain point, connection seems to be good, but suddenly it isn’t seen as good anymore.

You rise to the next level and you are told: “It isn’t worth it; you will live just as well in the corporeal world too.” This resistance from the front prevents you from yearning for connection egoistically. There are plenty of societies that connect wonderfully because of personal interests, but it isn’t the same with us.

If a person resists the braking force each time and nevertheless wants to reach connection, he develops a new desire that isn’t aimed towards himself. He falls and rises again and again, continues to study, to work in the group, and to draw the reforming Light, until he completes the second degree.

Now he is ready to connect only in order to bestow upon others. A direct attitude towards bestowal is revealed in him which he places above all personal interests.

Then the third degree comes. It’s when a person is with everyone else, feels good being with them, and bestows to them, forgetting about himself and his troubles and connecting to the friends, to eternity and perfection. And then it transpires that he still needs a reward, but of a higher quality. So it turns out that he is exchanging a cow for a donkey, meaning exchanging this world for the next world. Then a new form of resistance appears: It turns out that you have to act for the sake of the Creator.

Thus a person moves on to a qualitatively higher level of self-detachment. Now he isn’t interested in himself or the group, but in the Source, in the abstract idea, abstract in the sense that he has no connection with it.

It’s impossible to hold on to bestowing to the Creator: The Creator doesn’t know about me, and I cannot reach Him. So how can I form a vessel of such high bestowal? For this there is a special system which we will talk about later.
[60545]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/13/2011, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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Each of us has been in a situation when we were in a close relationship with someone, but all of a sudden had an argument. When this happened, we got angry and tried to get revenge; we strove to show what the split entailed for the other person and that he or she would pay a price for their actions. In other words, we wanted to demonstrate that spoiled relationships and separation will trigger suffering and bitter consequences.

Previously, we didn’t feel that we were able to treat each other so badly and actually enjoy the other person’s suffering. This is how the “stony heart” (Lev Ha Even) is revealed. When we split with another person, we want to turn our prior love and connection into hatred and evil in relation to another person so that we enjoy our hatred and evil even more than love.

Hatred unites both desires, mine and the other person’s, their suffering and my egoistic pleasure that I receive because I cause pain to someone. Thus, we double our vessel, perception.

This is how the stony heart reveals itself. Without it, we would be unable to reveal the hidden hatred within us and as a result, wouldn’t recognize love either. Initially, we had good relations. Now, we are going through craziness that doesn’t even remotely remind us of our prior relationship. The difference is huge; it’s like the gap between flowers growing next to each other or cute kittens playing together and two brutal egoists who mortally hate each other.

We can’t even imagine this difference. This is a birth of a new desire (Kli). It always has existed in the created being, but secretly.

The desire to receive pleasure was created by the Light; the Light is primary, whereas desire is secondary, it is a consequence of the Light. If not for that, the difference between “Yesh Mi Yesh” (existence from existence) and “Yesh Mi Ain” (existence from absence) would be clarified. However, it has never been discovered since the Light originally acted upon the created being, “sweetened” and supported it with its love.

The created being grew under the influence of love and had no chance to differentiate between itself and the Light. The Light ruled and suppressed the created being by its love and didn’t allow it to consider or sense its own needs. The needs were completely fulfilled, and that is the reason why the diffference between the Creator and the created being has never been revealed.

It became apparent as a result of the shattering. Now we begin to uncover our egoism even more, to the degree where we take advantage of everybody for our pleasure.

Egoism is not that terrifying in the corporeal world as it is in spirituality. There, in the system of impure forces (Klipot) appalling relationships get revealed.

Today, in our world every other couple goes through a similar split in their relationship. This is an example that in this world, on our small earthly egoistic level, we have already reached complete revelation of the stony heart.

The stony heart exists at each level starting with this world and up to the world of Infinity. It manifests itself according to the height of the degree, but only at the very top is true hatred revealed.

This is what the “spies” tell us: “Life is magnificent in the country flowing with milk and honey; wonderful fruits grow there! At the same time, strong and cruel people inhabit this land, and no one can prevail against them!” This is how the “stony heart” reveals itself.

This is why the sons of Israel screamed in the desert: “Why do we have to go ahead, let’s return to Egypt! We had plenty of meat and garlic there.… What else do we need?” This is the revelation of the “stony heart”; there is no other evil but it.
[60289]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/8/2011, TES

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The people of Israel received the Torah when this group agreed to be as one man with one heart, in mutual guarantee. Because of their connection, they first received the ten basic commandments, the “Ten Commandments,” the plan of our complete correction against the ten full Sefirot.

This means that I have to be corrected according to these ten laws: respect that, don’t do that, and so on, that is, fulfill the ten conditions. Then I begin to adapt myself to the other laws that are revealed to me.

I discover that I as if build the “golden calf,” then the “waters of dispute” manifest to me, then the “sin of the spies,” or I may miss the onions and garlic that I ate in Egypt. This means that a person discovers different states, which he tries to correct. He must be immersed in the shattering and feel all these attributes. This is why the Torah describes so many sins.

So instead of the details of the ten main laws, we receive a whole book that gives us advice on how to gradually go through ever new corruptions and corrections within ourselves. If you act correctly, the Light that Reforms shines upon you, awakening you, showing and clarifying various dark hollows.

Then you begin to understand who you are, and you cry out, trying to connect with others as one man with one heart every time. And the forms of connection that you need for that are revealed to you.

Eventually, you complete all the corrections, and it means that you have fulfilled all the “ten commandments” that have been clarified to you through this process, made up of 620 corrections or “commandments.”

If you agreed to connect as one man with one heart, you have to move forward now, to keep this line, and in every step to be connected as “one man.” Then you will begin to discover one fall after another: the golden calf, the waters of dispute, the sin of the spies, and so on. Each time you will discover a problem and will correct it.

This way is called “the path of the Torah” or the “path of the Halakha” (the word “Halakha” comes from the Hebrew word “Alicha” or “walking”), which is a set of laws that one is supposed to follow. When you come across a problem and you don’t know what to do, the Torah tells you how to perform a correction. Thus you put together the whole vessel of the collective soul.

The book of the Torah tells us about the internal process you have to go through, about clarifications and corrections. If you read this book and feel what it says, you see the way.

The path is long, and you haven’t started to advance yet, but you can read about it, hoping that some correction from the future corrections will shine upon you. Then from there, you will receive the illumination called the Surrounding Light or the Light that Reforms.

This will happen if you want all these corrections and if you comprehend what you are reading about. Perhaps you are reading it like some historic novel or some law book? It all depends on your attitude.

It is the same when it comes to The Book of Zohar and The Study of the Ten Sefirot. All the books tell about the same thing: how to reveal the evil within oneself and how to correct it. This is called the “Torah” since both the revelation of evil and its correction happen thanks to the reforming Light. If a person works on these corrections, it means that he studies the Torah. Without this he simply studies in order to acquire dry knowledge.
[59553]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/2/2011, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”

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Writings of Rabash “The Spies,” Beginning with: “Therefore men”
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Chapter “Pekudei (Accounts),” “The Fourth Palace of the Sitra Achra Is Demerit, Corresponding to the Miry Clay, and Corresponding to the Stumbling Stone,” Item 882, Lesson 35
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Talmud Eser Sefirot Part 8, Histaklut Pnimit, Item 5, Lesson 19
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Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee),” Lesson 5
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Question: What’s the use of the group’s seclusion at the Convention in the Arava desert?

Answer: We have gathered here to lay the foundation for a new society, whose purpose is to attain adhesion with the Creator. In order to attain adhesion with Him, we have to attain adhesion among us. And in order to attain adhesion among us, we have to unite, disconnecting from the disturbances of the outside world. After all, we’re small and we have to strengthen one another, so let the world not interfere with our doing so. That is why we are going to the desert.

In the past, groups of Kabbalists took much more extraordinary measures to isolate themselves from the external environment. A person has to allow himself a bit more freedom from this confused and senseless world, to collect himself inside a bit more and understand what his predestination is.

In the whirlwind of life, under the roar of the radio and television, you can’t make out the fine voice of your soul or attain the fragile inner inspiration. You simply don’t have the energy for it. Even Kabbalists living hundreds and thousands of years ago in a completely different world, which did not know the “wonders” of mass media, still secluded themselves, barring themselves from their habitual environment, and even “going into exile,” leaving home without taking anything with them and going off to wander for years, getting by with occasional earnings and food.

You don’t even know what you are losing in the modern world, which is stuffing and miring you with its filth. Do you want to attain something exalted? If you do, then what efforts are you making to break away from the lowlands?

It’s worthwhile for us to find time for this kind of seclusion where we will feel only our own forces, without the disturbances of the outside world. Let’s separate a day in life to feel who we are instead of who they are.

Obviously, we don’t force anyone to participate and we don’t make lists of participants or deserters. We don’t put check-marks for the future. Whoever doesn’t want to or can’t come just doesn’t come. In this sense, everything is very liberal and open. But on the other hand, if a person comes there, he has to participate in the actions that the group has assigned to help us detach from everything and feel only ourselves.

Don’t you sometimes wish to be alone with yourself? That is how the group wants to be alone with itself, to feel itself. You enter a room, close the door, and remain with your own thoughts. That is how we want to remain with our thoughts. In reality, this is clear and commonly accepted. But for us it’s not just a minute of rest, but a detachment from “the degree of women and children” and an ascent to the “men’s level.”

In the article, “The importance of the group,” Rabash writes, “When a person works on the true path, he needs to seclude himself from other people. After all, the path of truth requires fortification because it contradicts common notions. The world’s opinions are built upon knowledge and reception, whereas the Torah’s opinions are built upon faith and bestowal. And if a person is distracted, then he immediately forgets about all work on the path of the truth and falls into the world of self-love. Only in the group do the friends help one another, and therefore every person receives forces from it to fight the commonly accepted notions.”

The upper world is our inner world. We have to shift our gaze from externality to internality. Therefore, with the help of the friends, I try to go inside, to look inward, to acquire a deep wisdom, to attain the inner meaning of the Torah. There is no other choice—I need this.

A person must constantly immerse himself inward, penetrate into his depths—and precisely there he reveals the true world. The external world deliberately confuses us so through the conflict with it, upon the resistance, we would build our direction inward. Our struggle is to penetrate deeper and deeper on the background of this world’s reality, which pulls us outward.
[60927]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/16/11, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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