Question: How can we work with the next degree correctly? What is this next degree? How can we approach it, find it, see it, discover it? What is the difference between the degree itself and what is discovered in it?

Answer: Our world is the feeling of our egoistic division, of mutual repulsion. We comprehend everything in this state of mutual distancing: from one another, from the still, vegetative, and animate nature. And this state is called “our world.” In other words, since we draw everything towards us in an egoistic manner for the sake of personal pleasure, we separate the one spiritual Light into negligible portions and comprehend these as objects of the still, the vegetative, the animate, and the human nature of our world.

And on the contrary, if we begin to connect these objects together and relate to them as to a single whole, then we begin to feel the next degree, the upper world.

The group has been given to us so that we can find how to comprehend the space that surrounds us in another, correct form. Ultimately it follows that when we connect with each other, trying to unite emotionally, imagining the integration of our desires and thoughts, as one heart and as one mind, then we portray the spiritual world before us, and yearn for it. In the same manner, a child desires to be an adult.

Through this desire we summon upon ourselves the upper Light (Ohr Makif), which corrects the ego that separates us and in this manner forms the next degree, the connection between us, the AHP of the upper degree.

Thus we connect to the upper level, only through mutual cooperation between us. And then we begin to feel the field, the energy, the wave, that streams between us.

Problems between us will grow more and more, forces of repulsion will be discovered more and more, while we need the opposite: To rise above them and to connect ourselves all the time until the negative and rejecting forces of opposition, on the one hand, and the forces of our mutual connection, on the other hand, will attain the position of our first spiritual degree. And then it will be discovered in the middle line.

Thus, the spiritual world will be discovered through the connection between us provided that we rise above the repulsive forces, working patiently and steadily on the connection until we rise to the position of the first spiritual degree.

These accumulated degrees, when we tirelessly try to connect despite the incessant problems between us in a group, are simultaneously the internal development of the embryo through which we need to pass. And then we are born.

What do they say when a newborn arrives in the world? “Congratulations!”
[103439]
From the Meal before the European Convention in Germany 3/23/13

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The wisdom of Kabbalah says that all of nature is a desire for pleasure, a desire to receive fulfillment. This desire developed over billions of years from the still, to the vegetative, to the animate, to the level of the speaking. In the course of development, a person passes through the same stages of the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking.

Throughout all these stages, humanity passed from one stage to another, from one area to another. Life was created somewhere in Africa and from there wandered somewhere in the east, and after that moved to Europe…

And today, we have reached a particularly unique stage. Now Europe is found at the center of the world, and according to its mixture and integration, it has become a kind of modern Babylon. It sets the tone for the world: culturally, scientifically, and technologically. Despite the fact that America seems separate from Europe, it is in fact the same civilization. Thus, we need to speak about Europe as the center of the world. In a general way, what happens in Europe influences the entire world.

There was a time when humanity spread from ancient Babylon over the face of the earth. It existed there as a community of an immense number of different tribes who were united by a common area by means of a relatively common culture and level of existence. Today, the same thing is happening in Europe.

This is a huge number of people, a nation, if it is possible to say this, which is composed of a large number of tribes, peoples, and nations who as a whole are united by a particular culture, uniform level, comprehension of the world and mentality. Even though they are different from each other, they have, generally, the same common pattern. And this pattern has gradually spread throughout the world.

Europe is the origin and the spirit of modern existence. But it is itself passing through very painful changes, for our whole world is changing, and not only in a technological sense, but also because the desires found at the base of our system have changed lately in a particular, qualitatively acute form.

Throughout millennia, humanity was developing in a simple way through increasing desire. People wanted more: to earn more, to get more, to expand more, to enjoy. They simply wanted to fulfill these desires. In general, they developed quantitatively and, practically, very little qualitatively.

But today a very complicated transition is taking place towards new desires. We have gradually drifted from the traditional direction of development that leads to wealth, fame, power, and knowledge. Humanity no longer searches for these things that formerly interested and fulfilled it. Today it is passing through a passive, “amorphous” existence, because it is found in a transitional stage.

In our spiritual changes, sometimes we are found in great ascent and after that find ourselves in descent, indifference and even despair. And so we cannot do anything, we don’t want anything. And after that again something “explodes” from within, and again we are drawn in some kind of direction, and again we are filled with energy. With us these states transform very rapidly, and in humanity, in its development, they change very slowly.

And today we are passing through that stage. We have been found in it for quite some time: It is expressed in nihilism, denial, apathy; it originated in the years after the Second World War, in the fifties and the sixties. From that time, these phenomena received new forms: an increase in the number of divorces, people not wanting to establish families or to give birth to children, wanting to be alone, and abandoning their parents. There is no sense of a community that once provided for the family, a group of people who were connected by a feeling of family. This also is lost.

As a result of this, a person is found in a state of confusion. And this is felt in particular in Europe as the most developed part of humanity.

But in a fundamental manner, this process is only a transition to a state in which we search for meaning. People have lost pleasure, lost desires, lost the urge for the former fulfillments. There is nothing to do here. There is simply no urge! It is difficult to compel people.

You yourselves at work, at home, at various events, probably meet people like this: a little disappointed, empty, and indifferent. Various communications media, advertisements, try to arouse them all the time for something: sports, soccer, shopping, and so forth. All this looks exciting, but in fact it is not. A person is attracted to this only because he needs to fill himself with something.

Moreover, this process in Europe has added to other processes. You see, in principle, the unified force of the Light influences all of us. To the same degree it influences the mental and moral level, all the levels. And as a result of this, we feel a collective descent.

However, the crisis has influenced not only the family, education, and culture. The most important thing for us at the moment is the economic, financial crisis. You see, the economy, finances, have always connected people. If people were not dependent upon each other economically with the need to earn money in order to exist, they would not have organized into cities, peoples, nations, and all kinds of associations; they would not have had the incentive to do so.

What, in principle, stimulates connection between us? We need to make a living, to exist, to enjoy, and to develop in a shared form. And when there is a crisis, the financial, economic gap between us already becomes a basic, fundamental separation, and it represents the most significant transition to the next stage.

And here, the role of Europe is very important: Europe is found at the focal point of events today and can show the whole world the right approach to a solution to problems, with which, sooner or later, everyone will need to contend.
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From the European Convention in Germany 3/22/13, Lesson 1

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Question: Why does the Passover Haggadah gladly tell about the plagues of Egypt?

Answer: First, while a person is under the control of his ego, it seems as if these plagues are performed on him because he does not separate himself from his egoism. But then, having exited his ego, he feels these blows as happening to another body, some past state, which does not belong to him, but to his egoism.

After all, he has already separated from his ego, and that is why these plagues are sweetened. This sweetness causes a special joy in a person.

The exodus from Egypt takes place on each new degree. Whenever egoism is revealed, it is necessary to overcome it, to run away from it, to rise above it, and then correct it to bestowal, so that the angel of death turns into the angel of life, the good angel. It is like a mini-exodus from Egypt on each next level, in “every generation” because in this way we ascend the steps.

The more our egoism grows and we rise above it, correct it, and pull it up to our degree, the further it helps us grow. We connect with each other more strongly as a people and thus affect the world, passing the methodology and then the force that allows rising above egoism, uniting, and revealing the spiritual world.

However, only the upper force is able to pull us out of our egoism, not we ourselves. Because we connect, we give the Light an opportunity to affect our connection and realize it. After all, we cannot unite on our own; we are able only to ask and apply efforts, which the upper Light influences and realizes this state. Then we feel within our newly formed bond, the exit.
[103596]
From KabTV’s “Kabbalists Write: The Night of Passover Seder,” 3/4/13

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Today’s Egypt, which keeps the people of Israel in exile, and Pharaoh, which doesn’t allow us to get out of slavery, are our ego and the egoistic relationships between us. It is what does not allow us to become a people free from egoism and to feel the next degree both in a spiritual and in a material sense. That is why we cannot eliminate the external threat and hatred towards us from other nations. All this is because of the inner egoism that rules over us instead of the property of bestowal and mutual love.

Once, we seemingly managed to get out of this slavery, to mark the future when we would be able also to get out of our inner Egypt, from slavery to freedom. Today we are slaves because we are dependent on the entire world and on our egoism that governs us from all sides. We need just to realize that we are in a terrible and dangerous situation.

The most important is to feel that we have a duty for ourselves, for the whole world, and the Creator and we must realize the goal. This mission is entrusted to the people of Israel because we have received the method of correction and connection and are obliged to implement it.

Having gathered today at the festive table, let’s discuss these questions, and this is called the preparation for the exodus from Egypt. To get out of Egypt, a person prepares himself for “400 years,” that is, he goes through four full stages of egoism. At the beginning he has to experience as if egoism advances him and brings him advantage, what is called the “seven years of satiation.” And later there will come “seven years of hunger” and the Plagues of Egypt. Then, he has no choice but to flee.

It is important to move from the material perception of these events to spirituality and to hold the Passover meal in that spirit.
[103535]
From KabTV’s “Kabbalists Write: The Night of Passover Seder,” 3/4/13

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Question: During the Seder meal different generations gather at the table, and the elder is obligated to tell his son about the Exodus from Egypt. What is the message that this story conveys to the new generation that can also be seen simply as an historical event?

Answer: We all come out of Egypt together: young and old, women, children, men, and the elderly together with all the cattle, which means with desires that are on lower levels compared to man. They take from Egypt the gold and silver vessels, which refers to different desires, all the egoistic desires, that can be raised above our ego and can be turned into bestowal instead of receiving. This is called the “Exodus from Egypt.”

This is why we have to connect, to sit at one table and to talk about this, thus emphasizing how important it is for us to be focused in one direction: freedom from our nature.

Question: What does the Afikomen (a piece of hidden unleavened bread) that we search for according to the custom during the festive meal symbolize, and why is it the children who look for it?

Answer: The Afikomen symbolizes our readiness to come out of our ego with all our might. It is the children who look for it because they embody the weakest forces of all the “generations” in a person. They are the smallest, undeveloped desires that lead a person forward.

The older the generation, the more knowledge it has; and the younger the generation, the more energetic it is. The meal of the Seder symbolizes the connection between the generations, when everyone gathers and we all come out of Egypt, the whole family. There is a certain division of labor in this family and the younger generation’s role is to pull forward in the direction that the older generation is showing it.
[103530]
From KabTV’s “Kabbalists Write: The Night of Passover Seder,” 3/4/13

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Question: Why did Moses need to spend forty years with Jethro, the priest of Midian? What does this mean in the spiritual sense?

Answer: Jethro, as well as Abraham’s father Terah, was a priest, an expert in all the religions and idols, which is to say, a servant of his ego. In particular, if Terah had listened to his son Abraham, then they would have worked together and they could have begun the correction of the world. But this was impossible without the Egyptian exile, the exodus, and the reception of the Torah because a person needs to immerse completely into the ego. Therefore Terah was against Abraham, and Abraham was forced to flee from him, away from Babylon.

Moses, like Abraham, is a completely different level: He already was in the ego, passed through all of this stage and left Egypt. The forty years that he spent with Jethro, as it were, their mutual union, a connection through the Jethro’s daughter Zipporah, Jethro’s ego, who gave birth to children, meaning the next level. This is all the combination of the egoistic Jethro and the altruistic Moses within a person.

Moses passes through a process that toughens him from a stage with the ego in order to return again to Egypt, into the depths of the ego. Thus, only Jethro could teach Moses and the people of Israel how to work with that ego that was beginning to be discovered. Therefore the weekly Torah reading called “Jethro” begins from after the exodus from Egypt, when it’s necessary to begin to correct the Egyptians, the entire ego of the person, and Jethro takes his daughter Zipporah, her and Moses’ children, Jethro’s grandsons, and comes to Moses.

In other words, the time comes when these characteristics begin to rise within a person and show how to proceed. For now the entire ego that departed from Egypt (the vessels that were taken out of Egypt), slowly, gradually begin to rise within the people, and that means that Moses needs to judge the people.

To judge means to explain where the characteristics of bestowal are, where the characteristics of reception are, with what perspective it’s necessary to act and join above ourselves in order to discover our connection to the next level, the Creator. That is, the right mutual cooperation is required here. But where is this hierarchy in this egoism?

The characteristic of bestowal is about to expand: expansiveness of soul, an open heart. It’s dispersed over the surface of the area like water. And the ego works continually in a vertical manner. And these two parameters are as if not integrated together.

Therefore Jethro says to Moses: “You need to construct another system, in the form of a pyramid, to divide your whole ego into parts, tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands. You need to return to the state when you entered Egypt, twelve brothers. Thus you also exit there, the same twelve tribes, like twelve streams, lines. But in every one of them you need to calibrate yourselves according to the egoistic levels. Therefore for every level there must be its own hierarchy: its own laws, managers, and subordinates. You now work not just in order to bestow and to love, you work with the ego that is needed on that level with a quality that is possible to correct.

If Moses hadn’t gone through this school with Jethro, if he hadn’t connected with the ego and hadn’t begun working with it a little, then when he returned to Egypt, he wouldn’t have been able to stand against Pharaoh, he would have had no contact with him. For before then, Moses simply fled from Pharaoh after a confrontation with him.

And now he returns to Egypt, that is, he turns again to his ego and says to Pharaoh: “I need to take my people (the characteristics of bestowal) away from you.” In addition, he takes from him the huge ego that must later be corrected over the course of forty years in the wilderness. But he could not do this if the characteristic of bestowal in a person had not been connected in the beginning with the egoistic system called Jethro.

And Jethro takes from Moses the method of working with the ego and returns to his people in order to teach it to them. We see how a constant mutual connection of the two characteristics takes place within a person. And this is the system of correction.
[103047]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/11/13

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Question: The night of the Passover Seder is a special night for the people of Israel. It is thought that on this night this people was born and began its new way. So really, in what way is this night of the exodus from Egypt so unique?

Answer: The person begins to feel that he is found in the Egyptian exile, in slavery to his ego, which is called Pharaoh, and that it is necessary to depart from under its dominance, to flee; yet he cannot do this. He begins to scream internally, he is no longer prepared to endure a life like this. He invests effort in regard to the group, the environment, the teacher, and the books. He really feels that he is in prison, in darkness.

Gradually he sinks into a state that is called the “darkness of Egypt,” the night of the exodus from Egypt. This night is absolute darkness; no hope is left for him, no chance in life. He doesn’t feel that he is prepared to continue to live within his ego, since he hates everyone, and he is unable to relate well to anyone.

He strives to love the friends, to love the other as himself, but he sees the opposite, he becomes worse and worse. The Pharaoh in him, his ego, becomes stronger and more brutal. So in the end, the person is broken, for he sees that he has no chance of leaving this servitude.

He passes through very difficult inner states, which ultimately are amassed together: all of his attempts to flee from his ego, to rise above it, all the victories of the ego that show a person how strongly this Pharaoh is holding him from within. He really finds himself in the middle of the struggle of two forces: On the one hand, the person pushes since he yearns to go free, and on the other hand, the ego hangs on to his legs not letting him flee.

Ultimately, these two forces reach the peak of the struggle between them, and the person finds himself between them, feels absolute darkness. This state is called the night of exodus, the darkness of Egypt. And so suddenly he hears a call from within this darkness: “You must leave! You are ready to do this! You can get up and flee from your ego, here and now, at midnight, that is, from the darkest state. Don’t take anything with you to the new state, except those things that you really need for bestowal, the attainment of unity, the connection, the love”.

In this case the person is ready to leave and flee from his ego, wants to rise above it. This is called his spiritual birth.
[103509]
From KabTV’s “Kabbalists Write: The Night of Passover Seder,” 3/4/13

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In the News (from PsyBlog): “No matter what it is—a pair of jeans, a car or even a house—in that moment when an object becomes your property, it undergoes a transformation.

“Because you chose it and you associate it with yourself, its value is immediately increased. If someone offers to buy it from you, the chances are you want to charge much more than they are prepared to pay.

“That is a cognitive bias called ‘the endowment effect.’

“It’s the reason that some people have lofts, garages and storage spaces full of junk with which they cannot bear to be parted. Once you own something, you tend to set its financial value way higher than other people do.

“When tested experimentally the endowment effect can be surprisingly strong. One study found that owners of tickets for a basketball match overvalued them by a factor of 14. In other words people wanted 14 times more than others were prepared to pay. However, this is a particularly high one and the ratio will vary depending on what it is.

“The endowment effect is particularly strong for things that are very personal and easy to associate with the self, like a piece of jewelry from your partner. Similarly we also overvalue things we’ve had for a long time.”

My Comment: Such is the effect of our egoism. Loss is felt more painfully than a lost opportunity of an acquisition of equivalent value because egoism includes a thing in “its” possession, and “one’s own” has more value than “outside of oneself.”
[103186]

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Today I comprehend the picture of reality in the will to receive, and as a result of this I feel tired all the time and don’t want to open the windows of my perception wider; and there are those who prefer to close them completely. I limit myself all the time because my desire is very small, very narrow.

We build all kinds of devices that expand our view of the world: telescopes, microscopes, radio receivers, and we discover a reality that is much richer than that reality that we feel on our own. But we try to contract and even limit this segment of reality found within the range of our vision.

In the end, I become tired and closed until I die. I die because I agree with death and want to contract my instruments of perception. The picture becomes repulsive to me and gradually I fade together with the fading of my life. This is what happens with the will to receive.

On the other hand, with the will to bestow, which I build above the will to receive, I open myself and discover a reality that is found outside of me, outside the will to receive. This is an eternal reality, and it begins to supply me with forces of vitality. Now, even though my body will die in a natural manner, I already live in another “region” that is found beyond time and space. And there I receive the Light that streams from everywhere.

In our world we move from place to place where we see a kind of reality in that. But if I were to move close to the speed of light, then as a result of a change in the perception of space, I would see the reality that surrounds me from all sides. And the problem here is not my vision; rather the light itself seemingly reaches me in a form like this. In accordance with this, I emerge from a “linear” comprehension and enter into a “circular” one in the Surrounding Light (OM).

We contract time precisely this way. For with this, distance and time are “zeroed,” and I don’t just receive the Light from all sides, rather I begin to perceive all of the reality existing in circles; I rise above time. Now it no longer exists for me; it simply cannot exist. There are no more spaces between “today” and “tomorrow,” no spaces between two moments. I receive everything equally from all directions, everything is balanced, mutually nullified, and I am found everywhere all the time in one integrated whole, in the unified reality of creation.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/19/13, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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