Question: Yesterday during the seminar, we really felt that we wanted to achieve the goal very much and were completely unable to do so. But then the aftertaste of despair remained: there are no count to these states.

Answer: True. It was what the sons of Israel felt in Egypt, a threat to remain forever under the rule of Pharaoh.

Question: In real life, if a person wants to achieve something, to learn something, he needs to pass the crucial exam. And he comes to the exam in despair because he cannot know everything.

Answer: Our examination is not based on knowledge. The task is not that you give the correct answers, but the fact of what you ask for.

Imagine that I am an examiner. Do not tell me about your positive and negative potential, accumulated during the training. Do not try to soften me with your confusion. You need to act differently here: If you really see that that there is no alternative, then bring the awareness of your own helplessness and the willingness to be changed. No more, just these two things: “I cannot” and “I have to,” and they both must be of equal strength.

So far, you haven’t obtained from the group either the sufficient demand or sufficient frustration. But they are opposite each other and depend on each other: If you do not crave the goal, you will not discover its unattainability. Both poles lack power so far. Yes, both of them have already emerged due to our workshops; however, the matter is how you fill the time between the workshops.

Question: And yet, in this world, there is a date of the exam, which I know in advance.

Answer: The time of the spiritual examination comes when you are able to pass it. Do you want it today? Please. Once you are ready, there is nothing that can prevent you.
[90918]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/22/12, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”

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Question: What is the state of the exile in Egypt with regard to a person’s work in the group?

Answer: The state of the exile in Egypt doesn’t have to last a long time as it may seem by the way it is described, according to which it lasted 210 years and was supposed to last 400 years. If we advance in a good pace, we can process and clarify it very quickly.

Besides, a person or a group doesn’t have to reveal all the details of the process described in the Torah by getting into all the details of the story. This is impossible since it is a whole sea with different states that will be revealed to the fullest only at the end of correction.

So what we go through is some section of the general state of this exile as it is described with regard to the souls, which is enough for us. We however discover only a certain layer that is suitable for our souls.

So there is no need to panic while reading about the exile in Egypt and to see how every blow described there suits what we go through. Don’t think that all this has to hit one person and that everyone has to go through this on such a scale as our global ego interprets it.

In fact, the exile begins when we really want to connect and feel the interruptions. It is only from that moment that the exile begins. The first “seven years of satiety” end, and the “seven years of hunger” begin. We begin to feel them to some extent. We only have to make some efforts in order to discover the real necessity required in order to receive the Torah.

The evil inclination has to be revealed as an obstacle that stands in our way, as a “help against him,” which we must correct and attach. The necessity to work in the right and the left lines brings us to the revelation of the Creator, to the giving of the Torah, to the middle line.
[90824]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/21/12, Writings of Rabash 

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A person has to make efforts, to play in order to annul himself as much as he can, and to value the environment as much as possible. As a result of this game, the right line is built in him in which he thinks that he wants to stay for the rest of his life. The moment he reaches “satiation,” he cuts himself off from this state and dedicates time to the left line.

In the left line he checks himself: “Do I really think that way, and attain this way? Do I really feel the recognition of the Creator’s greatness within my vessels and the recognition of this wholeness? Have I really attained such an understanding and feeling in my heart and mind, or is it just an external impression like of an embryo in his mother’s womb who totally annuls himself?”

But I don’t want to annul myself. I have just annulled my desires in the right line and I want to feel the greatness of the Creator directly in the desire, which I now discover in the left line.

Then I feel a deficiency, but I keep these two lines so that they will balance one another and none of them will be tilted in order to keep the balance. There is no specific time limit for the right line or the left line, although it says that one should spend twenty-three and a half hours in the right line and only half an hour in the left line.

We have to try to add as much as possible to the right line and to the left line. We shouldn’t decide that we have done enough and that now we should wait for the Creator to start acting and to complete these two lines for me.

A person constantly switches from one line to the other until he makes enough efforts and then the third line is revealed. He summons this revelation by raising a deficiency from the left line to the height of the right line, asking that the Creator reveal His greatness to him in response to this request. He wants to reveal the Creator’s greatness, the greatness of bestowal, only so that it will allow him to work with the desire that was revealed in him in bestowal, “above reason.”

His egoistic desire surrenders to the greatness of bestowal that is revealed and agrees to work under the domination of the Creator. This means that a person builds his “head of the spiritual Partzuf,” where he calculates things that enable him to bestow in order to bestow and to receive in order to bestow.
[90528]
From the 1^st part to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/17/12, Shamati #11

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Question: What is the indication that a person advances along the three lines and that he isn’t just deceiving himself, as if justifying the Creator in everything?

Answer: The indication of advancement is that he doesn’t just say “thank God” about everything, but that he sometimes finds himself in situations where he cannot immediately justify the Creator, although a true hero who is already high in spirituality does feel so. We have to reach a great correction in order to constantly examine ourselves and to have the powers to thank the Creator for all the evil as for all the good.

Until then, there is a long way to go through many states. Sometimes a person finds himself in such states that he cannot agree with the upper Providence, doesn’t want it and doesn’t accept it. The left line is revealed and in it “Pharaoh,” evil, begins to speak.

We have to allow time for all the evil the Torah speaks about to be revealed in us, all the sins. When a person falls into such a state of sin, he says exactly what the Torah tells us: “Who is the Creator that I should listen to Him?” He curses the Creator, and takes the place of all the famous villains: Bil’am, Balak, Haman, since he has to discover all of the left line.

If he enters the right line from the start, not in order to “salve his wounds with honey,” but in order to advance, then he leaves the left line by that. Then he manages the two lines. Otherwise it isn’t called the right line, but just a state of serenity. A line is something that is limited on both sides.
[90534]
From the 1^st part to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/17/12, Shamati #11

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Question: Will self-annulment, which we want to achieve, help us if I think that it is simply replacing a small egoistic desire with a bigger one, giving up the current reward for the future one?

Answer: Let it be so in the meantime. We are in the preliminary stages of our advancement and do not take into account that the Light that Reforms impresses us. In fact it operates constantly, thus changing a person. We think that we will stay the way we are now, but will be a bit better. But it is qualitative changes that take place and not quantitative ones, and in the meantime we cannot take them into account in order to estimate in advance how we will change. We think that we will be better by intensifying a certain attribute that already exists, but we don’t understand that we will change in our essence. So it seems that we simply replace a small ego with a big ego, but it isn’t that way at all.
[90405]
From the 1^st part to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/15/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: The particular and the general are equal. If I connect with one person, then the general is incorporated in me. So why do I need so many friends?

Answer: It is said: “In the multitude of people is the King’s glory.” First it is easier for you to check yourself whether you are really connected to someone or just attracted to him egoistically. It may be that there is just a usual connection between you based on common attributes or interests.

Besides, don’t think that it is easier to connect with one person than with ten people for example. On the contrary, it is much easier to connect with ten, since you are impressed by the greatness of the self-annulment of each individual, of their mutual concern and their desire to achieve the goal together. By looking at them you are “ignited” and you burn with envy.

But if there were one person before you, how could you see his actions in relation to you and not in relation to other friends? You are a captive of your ego and so you cannot see the desired effect.

So it is desirable to be in a large environment. On the whole, the minimum of a majority is two, but still it is a minority, since it is very little and this case you will have to work very hard.

Actually, it isn’t a question of quantity. What’s important here is that you annul your ego, so that you will begin to see everything that is external to you as your own. You annul the boundaries and you are already outside your body. It is as if your desires are pouring outside and include the whole world inside.
[90352]
From the 1^st part to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/15/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: It says, “He who prays for his friend is answered first.” This is actual Lo Lishma (not for Her name); it is total egoism, simple absolute egoism.

Answer: Of course, in the meantime you advance egoistically and your ego grows, but you see that each time Pharaoh is getting tougher and tougher, “since I have hardened his heart,” and that is a good sign.

Question: How can I grow from hate to love and not to self-suppression?

Answer: It is impossible to build love without hate and envy. All the negative discernments are eventually implemented in love and you need each of them. After all, what is love? On what foundation is it firmly established? It is over the ego in the vessels of receiving, in perceiving others as close.

Annulment doesn’t mean that everything is annulled. Hate is never annulled, it is preserved in its full intensity, and it is exactly on top of it that you build love. It is as if you cover this whole “Mt. Sinai” (a mountain of hate) with cream and you get a cake called a “Mountain of Holiness.”

This means that the hate is inside. The gap between the Creator and the created being remains since otherwise the created being wouldn’t exist.
[90349]
From the 1^st part to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/15/12, Writings of Rabash

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Baal HaSulam, Shamati, Article 3: “The Matter of Spiritual Attainment:” Since the will to receive is called “creature” and a “new discernment,” the utterance begins precisely from the place where the will to receive begins to receive impressions. The speech is discernments, parts of impressions. For here there is already a correlation between the Light and the will to receive.

Question: What is Light?

Answer: Something special is evoked in you, an exceptional phenomenon, and you call it Light. When it comes, you know that that’s what you call it.

At the moment, however, you don’t have the right vessel to feel this phenomenon. Unless you acquire the spiritual attainment, all your desires are aimed only at your self-benefit: “everything for myself, for my own good, to use others, everything for my own good and against others.” This is more or less the way things work today, and so being in these desires you cannot feel the phenomenon of bestowal, love, cooperation, connection and an aspiration outwards—all the things that are called “Light.” For you it isn’t Light but darkness.

Sometimes it gets dark and bad: You feel helpless and you don’t feel like doing anything; you don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel. This is how your desires appear to you without the typical illumination in our world, without the slightest illumination that will light up the darkness in the vessel.

After all, in our meager desires only a tiny glow can show, giving a little bit of life and enjoyment. This spark is so small that it can penetrate even egoistic vessels of receiving. I live in them on the levels of the still, vegetative, animate nature; the whole human level is above this and I am not part of it.

There are desires to receive and desires to bestow on that level that will be revealed in me one opposite the other. The left line is the evil inclination, the true ego that is revealed to the extent that I want to connect with others and I do so. Then I draw the Light that Reforms and try to acquire the good force and work between the two inclinations in the middle line, which is called Adam (human).

In the meantime I am on the level of the animate, under the domination of my small ego, receiving only a ” thin candle” in the vessel that is made of the first three levels. From a spiritual point of view, this is not considered life or an existence. So our world is called a virtual world, it is as if it exists below the level of consciousness.
[90105]
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/12/12, Shamati #3

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Question: The external world around us is reflected in our heads in the form of a certain cognitive structure. This structure, which was formed with the help of our five senses, does not correspond to the true picture of the world. Hence, the internal image of this realm within our brains is quite distorted. When the knowledge is being transferred, it has to be verbalized either orally or in writing. Strangely enough, when we describe an N-dimensional model, we still define it as a one-dimensional space; it means that we allow multiple misrepresentations.

Some time ago, Aristotle mentioned that “the one who tries to put one’s knowledge in writing is unwise, so is the one who later on hopes to find it intact and thinks that it is ready for further use.” Why has nature created such a weird and complicated way to visualize a real picture of the world? Why in order to transfer knowledge are we using a tool that is so “defective”?

Answer: Everything that nature does is perfect, although we use our trivial, tiny potentials to take advantage of it at our current low egoistic level, like a monkey playing with a computer. We will never comprehend the world that exists outside of us if we don’t acquire qualities similar to it. Aristotle and Plato clearly understood this fact and described it in their works. They thought that the direction would develop egoistically (as in our time, modern science), for its own goal.

Thousands of years of evolution that were flowing in this direction led us to a deadlock and made us finally realize that we are simple little creatures who think of themselves too highly because of our narrow-mindedness; at this time, we have to turn the wheel in a new direction. However, not too many people understand it! There are very few special individuals who not only clearly recognize that we have been trapped into a deadlock, but they also know that our further development can happen only through profound changes in human beings.

A man is the lowest developmental stage of nature, not the highest one. This is a problem. The only thing that the lowest level of nature can do is start climbing back up.

To the extent of our ascent, meaning the modification of our properties from egoistic to altruistic, from linear and individual to global and integral, we will acquire new tools for analysis, synthesis, and conceptions. Then, we will create new devices, an innovative cognitive apparatus, and a novel language.

Thus, everything will be subject to changes. It’s as if we are being born anew internally by perfecting ourselves. Both components of which we are comprised (desires and intellect) will also change. The major difference between them is that the desires are original, whereas the intellect is ancillary.

So, if we intend to explain to a person what the world is that he lives in and what “externality” is, we have to change him; otherwise he won’t understand us at all. He will be on the same wave with the egoists who describe the world using a “square” system that is similar to them, not more than that. None of them realize what the authentic realm in fact is, nor do they feel it whatsoever.

Only the deadlock that we are in at this time can “shake and sober” us; it can force us to think in quite a different way by triggering tremendous sufferings. Instead of changing the world around us, we will have to change internally. We will stop considering everything around us as “damaged,” but rather will re-direct any modifications inward. Only through our internal changes can we alter the society. When the society (us included) starts changing, everything there is (inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels of nature) will be exposed to us as a new upper world.
[89701]
From KabTV’s “Integral World: Formula of an Integral Society” 7/3/12

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We do not have to correct our current desires on the levels of the still, vegetative, and animate nature directly. As Baal HaSulam says, they accompany the ascent of the level of the speaking and are corrected with it.

Question: What do we have to do now, during the preparation period when the level of the speaking has not been revealed to us yet?

Answer: The work during the preparation period is very simple—a connection to the greatness of the goal. This is called “Israel, the Creator, and the Torah are one.” I connect with the friends and together we work on the recognition of the greatness of the goal. In order to do that, we need the study, dissemination, and everything that we do in general, and that’s it. What’s important is to connect in order to attain what we believe to be the upper goal and that’s all.

What is more, the goal is not external to us, but within the connection between us. So we are constantly working on the quality of the connection so that it will be as pure as possible.

During this process we discover many facets of our ego, but only in spirituality will we truly know it. It isn’t by chance that Rabbi Shimon’s students feel hatred towards one another, the kind of hatred that doesn’t exist here. I don’t think about how I can harm or kill the friend all day, but actually, it is on these kind of thoughts my ego “fixates,” and I cannot get them out of my head.

Now, however, I encounter minor interruptions: I don’t want to keep in contact with the friends, I don’t love them, I don’t want to connect with them, I don’t get the importance of the unity in the group. It seems that I can still wait: “Tomorrow everything may work out and we will connect and will remember the greatness of the goal…” This is our current ego.

Question: What do we mean by the term “connection” when it comes to the general public?

Answer: For them it is only one thing: If we connect nicely with one another, we will get rid of the crisis and return to the good and comfortable life we had. There is no other choice, since nature itself obligates us to do so.

As Baal HaSulam says, we are one family, so we simply must be connected.
[90102]
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/12/12, Shamati #3

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