Question: Your teacher Rabash wrote that creation from the moment of birth consists of two opposites: the will to receive and the will to bestow.

There is no greater oppositeness than between these phenomena that appear together one after another. And there is a middle line that includes both states: receiving and bestowing.

Does a person have to balance both forces in himself?

Answer: He has to gather these two forces to achieve the goal. And the goal is mutual support, mutual guarantee, when each force, as if, decreases itself and does everything to support the other one. In such mutual direction they work between themselves.
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 9/11/20

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Question: The fundamental principle of a holistic system is that the properties of the whole are sometimes not reduced to a simple sum of the properties of the parts. A team potentially has its own intelligence. If you take ten people, then united, they get much more power than each of them. What is added with such a connection?

Answer: Their egoism is added with which they previously rejected each other and now they are obliged to attract in order to connect with each other. Therefore, here both positive and negative properties work for a plus. After all, we rise above rejection, we begin to use it for agreement with each other, and therefore, the result is greater.

Question: Let’s say I have two kilograms of selfishness, you have three. We unite, and we have not five kilograms, but more. Why?

Answer: Because, having decided to unite, each of us overcomes his individual egoism. In a simple amount it is five kilograms of egoism, and yet if we overcome our ego, then a much greater amount is yielded, a great overall strength. Thus, we are looking for reserves to rise above ourselves!

In other words, we receive additional energy from above, and huge additional forces are added to our total egoism in order to rise above our five kilograms and unite. So instead of five kilograms, it yields five hundred.

Question: Does such a fusion between us take us to a higher level?

Answer: To a completely different, qualitatively new level!

If people are sensorially united, a special power of community, reciprocity, connection, which did not exist between them before, is manifested in them. Instead of the former separation, they acquire the power of unity. And this new property guides them.

From it they begin to feel a completely different nature, they see that it is integral. And they didn’t know it before. They believed that nature is built on individuality, on egoism. But it turns out that nature is absolutely not selfish.
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 9/25/20

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Question: The world has become interconnected and strives for standardization and unified models. But people stay in their shells, habits, traditions, and thoughts, and care for themselves. Therefore, when we try to talk about global challenges of the world, people simply do not hear us. Their attitude is: “Tell me what needs to be done specifically. If it is not hard, I will do it.” What is the reason for this phenomenon?

Answer: It is because our egoism is constantly growing. It does not allow us to improve ourselves. This will continue until we recognize the evil of our egoistic nature and become convinced that this is the only thing we need to change.

Question: We constantly talk about unification. Is there a danger that due to extremism, unity may turn into racism, chauvinism, fundamentalism, or religious fanaticism?

Answer: Everything is possible. A person must scrutinize all his qualities in their positive and negative variations and choose the most optimal ones. The optimal thing that we will reach as a result of our development is “love your neighbor as yourself.”

Question: Can we say that the balance between giving and receiving is the basis for correct communication?

Answer: No. I cannot make that equation and monitor how much I give or how much I receive. On the contrary, it resembles the Sodomite rule: “What is mine is mine, and what is yours is yours.” Proper communication is when I feel what the other person lacks and provide it for him. That is, I get what I need and give away everything else.
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 8/21/20

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Question: The ability to listen consists of three functions: attention, understanding, and acceptance. Attention refers to non-verbal cues. The main non-verbal signal is eye contact. Now, in the era of coronavirus, when we are all in front of screens most of the time, it is very difficult for us to listen and to be heard.

How do you cope with this problem while teaching thousands of students?

Answer: First, I have a constant daily contact for three hours with my students. In addition, they have an opportunity to access the Internet sites of our organization all the time, to read necessary materials there, to watch, to listen, and to participate in common events, etc.

Question: How do you understand that they are listening to you? You cannot see their faces.

Answer: I am waiting for their questions. Students from 150 countries of the world connect to our virtual studies that are held with simultaneous translation into 40 languages. Therefore, we have a huge field of communication: We read small excerpts on a certain topic, everyone listens, and if students have questions, they immediately ask them.

Question: So you do not need to see their faces?

Answer: In principle, no. It is not necessary. I feel a person by his question.

Question: What do you do when you see that a student resists and does not accept what you are saying?

Answer: It depends on what it means that he does not accept. If he is against something, then I must explain it to him. If he is against it anyway, then I have to postpone it for a while.

Question: Do you think that it is useless to prove something?

Answer: No, it is all right to prove. It is very good to do it, just within reasonable limits, since our audience is thousands of people, and I must always feel the time limit.
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 8/14/20

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Question: The great Kabbalist Baal HaSulam believed: “Everything in reality, good or bad, and even the most harmful in the world, has a right to exist and must not be destroyed and eradicated from the world.

It turns out that none of our properties can be destroyed. You can only use them correctly. This is the most important principle of communication. Could the realization of this principle change the situation in the world?

Answer: Of course. We need to understand that everything that seems harmful and bad to us is not really so. Either we do not see it correctly and that is why it seems harmful to us, or if it is really harmful, we only need to fix it but not destroy it.
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 9/11/20

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Remark: It happens that a person has potential, is talented, but does not have motivation to do a certain type of work although he could do it.

In my opinion, there is no such thing in nature. If an animal has some potential, it uses it in full.

My Comment: But they have animalistic motivation, so there are no problems there. Animals, as a rule, cannot have such a state as depression, lack of motivation. True, they began to display this as well lately but only because they receive everything from man. However, this is not inherent in them by nature.

Question: What is the reason that a person can have potential, have abilities but no motivation?

Answer: Because a person grows above his animalistic state and nature demands precisely motivated actions from him. “What do I live for?”—this is the question where the lack of motivation and all the negative problems come from.
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From KabTV’s “Management Skills” 8/28/20

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Question: There are several conditions for people to unite. First, there must be social sensitivity, that is, a tendency to unite. Second, the presence of women in the team is needed, and third, absence of a declared leader.

Under these three conditions, a group of people can unite and solve a problem that lies on a higher plane. The intelligence of individual group members is secondary.

Equality and diversity are what make it possible to make the best decision in a team. Why should both of these factors be present at the same time?

Answer: If two opposites are able to unite above their egoistic qualities and goals, then between them they reach a new collective quality, which is already higher than both of them.

Question: Does it mean that individuals must be very different but equal in relation to the goal they want to achieve?

Answer: Yes. Therefore, they achieve hundreds of times more.
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 9/25/20

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Question: There are several ways to improve your listening skills. First, it’s recommended to avoid distractions, especially now with virtual learning. It comes to the point that many people simply turn off their screens. What do you advise here?

Answer: It is necessary to constantly start discussions, have questions and answers, conduct role-playing games, in general, everything that can be done to turn the learners into participants of the event.

Remark: Second, it is advised to clarify what you have heard. The lecturer should always ask some questions.

My Comment: Yes, this is the basis for conducting workshops.

Question: Moreover, questions should be asked openly in order to ensure understanding of the rest of learners. Normally, you require students to concentrate on the questions of the other friends. For what purpose are you doing this?

Answer: If a student speaks in accordance with the subject, it does not matter how he formulates the question, because the answer is still relevant for everyone. Therefore, there are no stupid, simple, unnecessary, or extraneous questions if people ask in accordance with the subject.

Sometimes I answer them harshly. For example, today at the lesson one student asked me something that we learn in the first or second Kabbalah lesson. And there were people who have been studying for 20 years. Therefore, I answered him harshly that one should read the primary sources.

Question: It is also believed that information is transmitted to the listener through the speaker’s posture. Do you think it’s important to look at someone’s face and nod your head?

Answer: Today, when we are dealing with distance learning, I don’t think it is that important. Well, what can I transmit with my body? I sit in one position for three hours and transmit information. In practice, it is a broadcasting head.
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 8/14/20

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Question: There are several forms of receiving information. If a person listens to a teacher at a university in order to gain knowledge, this is one thing. If he listens to a friend talking about a dramatic situation in the family and empathizes with him, this is different. And third, a person listens to his like-minded friend in the group in order to unite with him and reveal the plan of nature.

Is there any difference between these situations?

Answer: The difference is huge. Especially when friends are trying to achieve the highest goal of nature because it unites them. Everyone works against themselves to connect with others.

There is already a clear classic communication, above your egoism, when you must necessarily rise above yourself in order to connect with another and with him feel how you penetrate into a third thing—into the very structure of the universe.

Question: What does “see” and “hear” mean in spirituality? Is this a special level of communication?

Answer: Hearing is a work of bestowal. Seeing is the transition from bestowal to reception for the sake of bestowal.

Remark: Even the primary sources say: “And they heard the voice of the Lord.”

Answer: Yes. There are those who hear, i.e., work in the light of Hassadim. And there are people who actually see, they work in the light of Hochma.
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 8/14/20

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Question: According to Baal HaSulam, the particularity of recognizing negative feedback is such that the blow is perceived and delivered exactly in accordance to the level of development of humanity and a person himself. Are the impacts felt more today than thousands of years ago?

Answer: No. Thousands of years ago there were other kinds of blows. For example, if it rained, it destroyed the harvest or something else. And today it is wars, enormous suffering in accordance with the forces that a person has.

Question: Do you think that people are suffering more today than a few thousand years ago?

Answer: Physically, maybe less. But nature has another rule: to bring man to awareness, to understanding, to bring him to his senses.

Remark: This means that as mankind develops, nature begins to put more pressure on us. If a thousand years ago it affected us by, say, X kilograms, today it affects us by X+10.

On the other hand, we see that there was much more suffering before. Wars were constantly going on, and one simply could not go out to the street. Today, laws are much more humane.

My Comment: But people felt that suffering on a different level. We are unable to withstand physical suffering today, but we could then. However, now our higher-level suffering is moral. It is very difficult for me to explain this because nature, at different times and at different levels, relates to people from the point of view of integrity.

Nevertheless, nature’s task is to lead man to the realization that he must work integrally, in correct communication between all parts of humanity and with herself.

Question: Baal HaSulam writes that if humanity does not take into account the threat hanging over it and does not draw the right conclusions, then nature will defeat us, and then we will be forced to comply with the laws of bestowal. So it turns out that only punishment and suffering can help us and without them we will not be able to move?

Answer: Exactly. Only the carrot and the stick. But thanks to this, a person grows smarter, begins to properly handle the carrot and the stick, rises above his nature, and he himself becomes a man, he himself controls his nature with the stick and the carrot.
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 8/21/20

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