Question: Let’s talk about trips to nature, including going abroad to nature preserves and all kinds of remote corners. The modern urban person at least somehow tries to connect with nature and receive pleasure from it. How do you relate to that?

Answer: I travel around the world a lot and always try to keep a few moments for myself to be in nature. My teacher Rabash and I would leave the city each day to talk while walking through the woods and fields. On the way to Jerusalem, far from highways and people, we would happen upon very beautiful places.

When I go out into nature I see there a world of reciprocal complementarity of all its parts. I see that everything in it is in balance except for humans. Even though there are animal species that eat each other, even though one exists at the expense of the other, all of this is out of necessity and not out of malice. The general form of existence and development is like this.

When I am in nature I feel the power of nature. It doesn’t elevate, It doesn’t raise us; on the contrary, it controls us. We humans don’t perceive this. The nature of the still, vegetative, and animate is the “envelope” of our existence: On the one hand, we move away from it, but, on the other hand, we must approach it by understanding that it is all a general system that must be unified.

Indeed the ego, the evil inclination, develops within us. It is specifically this that separates us from the animal world. As a result, we raise ourselves above it through the evil force of subjugation. We become distant from nature and want to control it to exploit it at any price. Worse than this, we value the damage that we cause nature through our activities; we are not concerned about it but only about our personal future. This is not at all the accounting that is required of us.

This is because our role is to maintain the harmony of nature, which is inherent in it from the start. But we fell from this because the egoistic desire grew in us, which invited all kinds of conflicts and compels us to engage in an incessant struggle between us.

And this is also how we relate to nature: “What can be stolen from it, what possible enjoyment can be had from it?” We don’t care what happens after that. The main thing is to get what we require at this very second. Even though in the next moment the coming damage will be maifested, we don’t pay attention to this.

So it follows that the growth of the evil inclination summons a destructive attitude in humans, which is harmful to us and all other parts of nature. As a result, humans must become aware of our evil and understand that our egoistic approach is damaging the entire system. The main conclusion is that a person grows within the evil inclination in order to correct it, to correct his relationship to the still, vegetative, and animate nature; and to complement the entire system, he must transform it into a single, unified, wonderful, harmonious, integral system.

And conversely, if together with the development of the mind and feelings, a person uses his resources incorrectly, ultimately he will certainly stumble into natural disasters.

This is what will continue to happen to us as long as we don’t see that our ego has grown to such a scale that it is no longer possible to rein it in. We have dropped the “reins” of the management of the world from our hands, losing control in all areas: family, work, and the relation to nature in general… .

And since we have become a bad global factor for nature and since we are a single system, in reaction, nature has begun to reveal an appropriate attitude to us.

This is the situation today.
[146312]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” 10/21/14

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Question: What is the role of Israel today and of the Jewish people in particular?

Answer: The role of Israel was first discovered in ancient Babylon when one of the great sages of that generation, the Babylonian priest Abraham, provided an answer for what was happening there.

At that time, Babylon was undergoing the same processes that the world is undergoing today: a small society of three million people, which was almost the world civilization at the time, suddenly began to sink into mutual hatred because of the sudden eruption of the ego.

Until then, the Babylonians lived as a small society between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, and everything was fine. But when the great ego erupted, it turned out that, on the one hand, they were integrally connected to one another, and on the other hand, they couldn’t exist together egoistically. Therefore the term the Tower of Babel symbolizes the ego that literally grew up to the sky.

This is what is happening today. On one hand, we discover that people are mutually connected to one another and on the other hand, they hate each other. The two forces that mutually operate inside us require a solution, since otherwise we will reach a dead end.

One of these two forces, the force of nature, ties us together and shows us the globalization and mutual connection between everyone to everyone. This force closes us integrally and shows us that we are one whole body. The second force is the egoistic human force that tears us apart from the inside, separates us, and doesn’t allow us to be one whole.

These two forces were first studied in ancient Babylon and there were two answers to the question of “what should we do?”

The first answer was given by Nimrod, the king of Babylon, who decided that the Babylonians had no choice but to break up and move away from one another. He disintegrated his kingdom fearing that his subjects would begin to destroy each other. This is where the concept of building the Tower of Babel comes from and its outcome was the dispersion of the people and the mixing of tongues, which was a sign that people ceased to understand one another.

That was one way of solving the problem, but today we, the modern Babylonians, have nowhere to go since we have no other planet. Therefore, we cope with the question that we have to answer.

The second solution was given by Abraham, one of the leading priests in ancient Babylon. Abraham understood that the ego separates us from the inside, while the external forces of nature, which bring us closer, were given to us on purpose so that we will ascend above them and resemble nature. This means that we will work against our ego on the connection between us.

How can this be done? How can person oppose his own nature? Abraham suggested organizing small groups of people that would begin to connect, and in their attempts to connect, they would draw the external force of nature that would be revealed internally among them and correct and raise them above themselves.

The main goal of nature is to bring humanity to a state of “love thy friend as thyself,” whether we like it or not. The problem of our separation should be solved immediately, and only in this manner.

About five thousand followers joined Abraham. The great 12^th century philosopher, Rambam, writes about this and it is also contained in earlier writings like in Midrash Raba and other sources.

The Sefer Yetzira (Book of Creation) is the only remaining book written by Abraham, and it tells us about the whole system of nature that affects all of human society.

Led by Abrahan, 5,000 people left Babylon and came to the land of Canaan, the modern land of Israel. Abraham taught them how to ascend above the ego in the connection between them according to the ancient Jewish commandments of “love thy friend as thyself,” “don’t do unto others what is hateful to you” and “be as one man in one heart,” etc. This group is known by the name Israel, which means Yashar-El, straight to the Creator, resembling nature. After all, the Creator is not a picture on the wall or a grandfather sitting on a cloud. The Creator is nature! All of nature is called the Creator.

The 5,000 people who left Babylon with Abraham were called the nation of Israel, stemming from the word “Yashar -El,” straight to the Creator. It is a nation that did not grow out of biological roots like all the other nations but according to an ideology, a purpose that defines where it is headed and how it is going to establish society.

Although we are the biological descendants of those people, unfortunately, we don’t resemble them at all because we have lost that ideology. Therefore our current state is called exile from the spiritual level they had achieved.

When the Jewish nation left Egypt and wandered in the desert, it constantly worked on its connection. Their ego kept on growing, just as the ego of humanity grows from one generation to the next (which is what makes us different from animals), and the people worked on it.

This continued until the ego suddenly erupted as it developed. It happened on the eve of the destruction of the Second Temple in the last year BC. People could not ascend above it in the good connection between them and they fell to the egoistic level.

A Temple refers to holiness, bestowal, love of others, and to the incorporation of everyone into one whole. When the Jewish nation fell from that level, it determined the rest of its history of 2,000 years of exile.
[144229]
From the interview with V. Kanevsky in Toronto, 8/5/14

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Question: What is the attitude of the wisdom of Kabbalah to the modern development of the world? Towards what is the world advancing? Will there be an end to the situation that we call the “crisis”?

Answer: The translation of the word “crisis”” from Greek means, a new birth, rather than the destruction of the old. Basically, destruction of the old means that the new already exists. It has appeared, but we have yet to discover it.

How can we pass through this state of the birth of a new world comfortably, rapidly, and pleasantly?

We have always developed with the help of the ego that has consistently pushed us by way of all the social structures until we have now reached a state in which we have totally lost the desire to evolve. Space exploration, the development of nature, and a wide range of scientific studies have all gradually waned.

For the first time in human history, we feel that our ego has completely failed us.

The world is sinking into nihilism, into lack of activity, and into an absence of desire to create anything. We see that even with the best intentions, everything that we do ultimately acts against us. The world around us doesn’t make us happy and doesn’t provides us with pleasant situations. We don’t want to bring children into the world or establish families, nor do we see anything good about the future. And all this is because our ego has exhausted itself, and we no longer have any motivation to advance.

So, what is next?

The wisdom of Kabbalah reveals the whole picture of reality to us. It says that at present, we are at a crossroad in history where we must change our egoistic nature from reception to bestowal. This means changing our nature into one that is altruistic. We must come to realize the eternal Biblical principle, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

And so through a new covenant between us, we begin to experience a new picture of reality. We begin to attract the positive forces of nature because we ourselves create a positive society from ourselves.

The wisdom of Kabbalah explains how to do this, so our task is to study this science.

Throughout all the thousands of years of its existence, the wisdom of Kabbalah has been the inheritance of only a small handful of people, the Kabbalists, who developed it from generation to generation. For many years this hidden science flowed within humanity like a small stream, although many scientists and philosophers: Newton, Leibnitz, Pico della Mirandola, and others, investigated it.

Plato and Aristotle took the basis of their knowledge from the wisdom of Kabbalah. The 16^th century German philosopher, Johannes Reuchlin, wrote a great work, De Arte Cabalistica (On the Art of the Kabbalah). This is to say that the wisdom of Kabbalah has been known to scientists, and yet, it didn’t go beyond their circle.

In our time, it has been revealed to everyone because it must explain to us how we will attain mutual connection between us.

The wisdom of Kabbalah says that our world is integrally connected as an analog system in which all parts are connected to each other. From our daily work we discover that this world is an absolute closed system. The still, vegetative, animate and speaking levels of nature are connected to each other and are found together as a single complex.

If this is indeed so, we need to reach complete harmony in the connection between us in order to reach a good and beautiful state.

How can harmony like this be reached? For this we must develop a good connection. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, the moment we begin with the right circuits of interaction, we will immediately feel how we attract a higher positive energy onto ourselves. This will not be the negative egoistic power that exists in our world and in which everything is based upon opposition and blows, but its opposite. This is a positive energy that fills, supplies, strengthens, and connects us to each other and creates a single whole.

This general harmony will be like the unified power of nature, the great global system, this sphere within which we exist.

The general crisis, which is in fact a product of the disharmony between nature and humanity, will then disappear. We will feel the universe absolutely differently, as eternal and whole. We will merit that eternal and complete existence and our world with its ego will begin to gradually disappear from our senses.

I hope that the present generation will understand what opportunities are in our hands, and how we can truly overcome the crisis in a good and beautiful way. If we are able to do this, we will reach the better, higher state that is intended for humanity.
[143625]
From an interview with the television agency, NTV 6/20/14

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The Book of Zohar, “Tzav” (Command), item 16: “Command Aaron” comes to crown that spirit of holiness up above, separate the spirit of impurity and lower it down from Israel by desire and prayer, and from the priests in the act of sacrificing the sacrifice, each by what is appropriate for him.

A priest is the heaviest and most egoistic part in a person (the fifth level), who by correcting himself, reaches the most sublime heights.

The popular belief is that the priests have the worst character, as they are rude, rigid, and have no feelings. This is because when the lowest ego is corrected it reaches the greatest heights in its opposite form.

The ego of the priest is reversed and ascends from the lowest level to the highest level, and thus the priest can be the leader of the nation, the spiritual guide. Being on a higher level than everyone else according to his ego, he now becomes higher than everyone else according to his altruism.

On the whole, all Kabbalists are very stubborn, coarse people who work on themselves only to change internally and resemble the Creator. This is not seen on the onside, and in everyday life, they are ordinary people. All their spiritual work is concealed from the eyes of strangers, and therefore it is called the concealed wisdom.

The more a person develops spiritually, the tougher, more stubborn and obstinate he becomes. The Upper Light sustains him in this state and in all his actions. A person is in a state of clarification at every moment in his life as to what happens to him and how he can direct himself to the right path.

He first clarifies this and then sorts it out, burns, cuts, and kills his egoistic intentions by four kinds of deaths and leaves only the pure desires. Only then does he begin to correct them by attaching them to his altruistic intentions. Instead of thinking about himself, he begins to think about others; instead of worrying about himself, he worries about others; instead of loving himself, he begins to love others. Thus in every situation in life he puts his intentions through others to the Creator.

Therefore, for the priests it is the most sublime, greatest, most serious, and most spiritual law and decision.

On the outside it seems that the priest’s decisions constantly change, but on the inside he focuses on one point. But, because the ego is constantly swinging in different directions, it turns out that a person seems to be going round and round in the Sinai Desert until he cleans it completely.

He doesn’t change his initial decision, but only more finely tunes it, like a missile that constantly corrects itself according to the system that observes its flight, each time changing the angle of its flight and getting back on its initial track. A person also thinks that there are constant changes inside him while the goal and the direction remain the same. This is his future adhesion to the Creator, with the attribute of absolute love and bestowal, in the complete unity of all the shattered souls,

If a person constantly aims at this, he follows the optimal path.
[134081]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 11/27/13

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Question: Billions of people have been studying the Torah in different ways (in Judaism, Christianity and Islam) for ages and have not managed to find the way.

Answer: We as yet don’t understand the uniqueness of the spiritual vessels. If they don’t exist in a person, he cannot picture, understand or feel them in any way. No one can jump above his level.

We can try to explain and teach this to a person for 10 or 20 years, but he will be able to open his ears and heart to hear what the Torah says, only after a Light from above, a spirit from above, is revealed to him. But unless the upper Light and spirit from above are revealed to him, he is unable to hear anything.

The difference between an animal and a human being is actually in whether his heart opens up to what the Torah says or not. This is possible only by the action of the Light.

Therefore you can look at billions of researchers and billions of sufferers and see that they cannot attain anything. It is as if you have a million sick cows. Will their suffering help them be cured of their disease? They will not be able to overcome or get rid of it by themselves. Only a human being can save them and cure them, an expert who knows and who brings them the right medicine, which means he who draws the Light.

Only from an upper level is it possible to correct a state we see in our life and in this world. Unless the Light appears and influences us, it is impossible to do anything. All we can do is treat people patiently in order to gradually prepare them to receive the Light on their level.

The Light appears and operates as the Surrounding Light, from a distance, as a general illumination, and a person gradually acquires a mind and feelings. The ego, the evil inclination, grows inside him, which means attributes that are opposite to the Light, in order to highlight this even more.

Thus, we shouldn’t be impressed by the fact that our world is full of clever people and at the same time is in crisis. The correction comes only by the upper force and we cannot do this by ourselves. The preparation for it is our only responsibility.
[145766]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/17/14, Writings of Rabash

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A few years ago, if you were to hear from me about the evil of the ego, you would think that I was simply preaching morality to you. Now that a connection has been created between us, this feeling of dependence upon your ego has been handed over to you. Soon, you will begin to feel that it is really tiresome for you to be a slave of Pharaoh and to serve him.

After this, the prophecies and movements will begin as they did with Moses, “Come to Pharaoh,” and everything will continue to happen just like in the story. You will feel how Pharaoh puts pressure on the people of Israel, loading more and more work on them. The ego brings evil to you; life will go on without benefit. All of the fruits of your work will go to Pharaoh. Everything will be swallowed up by him, and as much as you try to correct something nothing will come of it for you.

In principle, you would want a little revitalization to make your soul happy, but nothing works. A little later, the crisis will appear everywhere, even in America and in Europe. However, it is possible that it won’t come to such a state. Instead, you will do all scrutiny in emotion and intellect, and not in coarse material. The problem is that people don’t hear the warnings.

It is possible to depart from the ego without waiting for the plagues of Egypt by developing the heart and mind. But in any case, this takes time, and it is not just a few waves that will pass over you because it is impossible to overcome the ego through one wave. One big wave would drown you so it is divided into several small waves.

Here, patience is required, but it means that you have to arm yourself with all the means at your disposal: connection with friends, with the teacher, along with the study and dissemination. Then, it becomes possible to hasten time very greatly.

Question: It is terrible to discover that someone always is cheating you and striking you, and you don’t even feel that this ego is living in you as a part of yourself. Why don’t they let us see it so that we can ask to be free of it?

Answer: You could ask, but this wouldn’t help you because this would be an egoistic request. You want to see the wretch who deceives you all of your life and destroy him? However, this will work only when you ask for this in order to reach the Creator. Then, you will be shown this wretch, otherwise, no.

Moses, the “point in the heart,” must come to Pharaoh and close accounts with him. Otherwise, you are acting for the sake of your own benefit because you want to be released from difficult work, from whomever is deceiving you.

A substantial reaction is required as in a chemical experiment that makes it possible to examine the composition that is filtered and separated it into several components. If you want to discover and see the truth in Egypt, it is possible only if you try to become a single whole with the group. Then, you will begin to feel what it means to go against Pharaoh. While still in Egypt, a reaction or mechanism will appear within you that will make it possible to differentiate and clarify where Pharaoh is and where is that which is above him.

This is because you never work directly regarding the Creator. In Egypt, this is not possible at all. So, you work in relation to the group, which is called the “people of Israel.” Begin to connect all of your friends in Egypt, which is, today, what all of this world is called, and then you will see where the power of Klipa is and where the Kedusha is, where Pharaoh is and where he isn’t.

Pharaoh is everything that disturbs unity. So, you will discover him more and more until the ten plagues of Egypt, and all of these plagues are relevant to the increasing connection. Ultimately, you will understand that you must leave Egypt.

However, this is possible only through such a connection where you squeeze all of the Pharaoh out of the group like lemon juice. All of the ego will ooze out, and only the group will remain. Then, this group must be filled with the power of bestowal, something that is impossible to do in Egypt, and so it departs from there.

All of the work is done only on the connection. It is impossible to work directly against Pharaoh. You can only summon blows upon him through a connection with the friends. The ten plagues correspond to the ten Sefirot. By rising higher and higher, from Sefira to Sefira, to a greater and greater intensity of connection, you summon the Upper Light to act and influence Pharaoh and filter the ego.
[145255]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/8/14, “Sukkot”

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Question: The path of the ten plagues of Egypt is actually the path of suffering. Is it possible to bypass them and avoid them, or is it impossible to avoid them even if I focus on love and bestowal toward my group of ten, the people who are close to me, and the teacher?

Answer: It depends on the person who follows the spiritual path. If he identifies with the forces of Egypt and with Pharaoh, he surely suffers. However, if he identifies with working above reason and ascending above it, his ego suffers, but he doesn’t identify with his ego and so he doesn’t suffer.

The time of the spiritual development is called the plagues of Egypt, which means the plagues that the ego feels that help a person rise above it. However, if he is in his ego, they force him to rise.

It all depends on to whom you compare your position.

Question: Do the plagues of Egypt reflect a certain state that we go through?

Answer: We must process and practice together to the fullest, everything that is written in the Torah! You will see that we cannot miss even one step. There may be levels that I have gone through but did not realize it, then ten years later, as often happens in life, I begin to realize what I went throug and what these actions and circumstances were.

Question: This means that we have no chance of skipping any of the plagues?

Answer: What for? How can you detach from your ego if you don’t go through all the ten plagues? You will not have a whole vessel, a vessel of ten Sefirot.
[144947]
From the Convention In St. Petersburg “Day Two” 9/20/14, Lesson 3

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I feel immense joy in the fact that now most of my students in the world are beginning to understand and feel that the spiritual world is discovered in the connection between us.

Although we have been studying the spiritual system for many years, and in spite of all this, the heart does not want to hear about the shattering of the Kli of the collective soul, its descent and fall into this world, the division into a multitude of people, the expansion of the Kli, the equal distance from the center to the periphery all over the Earth, and the growth of the ego. Generally, this takes a lot of time, and many years pass before the heart understands and reaches the awareness that something is not okay, and it will then respond to problems with connection, with unity.

From the very moment that the person begins to hear this, he enters into the way towards the goal of creation and goes forward at a constantly increasing the rate, amassing experience and gathering the distant, scattered and shattered parts of his soul. He already knows that everything is concentrated only in his group of ten, in a hundred, in a thousand, and that the upper world, the Creator, and the completion and goal of creation are found precisely in this place.

If he automatically turns to the group, no matter what happens, this is a sign that he is standing firmly on his own two feet and is facing the goal correctly. I hope that the results of our convention will become a feeling like this for many who are here and those who are together with us throughout the world.

This is the most difficult starting point of the countdown. Nobody, anywhere was ever was able to attain this. Many have tried to do this through all kinds of conditions for thousands of years, but only individuals succeeded, even though people were ready to sacrifice everything for the sake of this. So a gradual approach, recognition and discovery of the starting point and investment of much effort required subtle and continuous work.

It seems to me that we are seeing its beginning. The sensation that everything begins and ends with contact, connection within the group, that everything is determined there and besides this there is nothing, will show us later how to operate in the world, and how to manage nature through our unification. This is because we are raising MAN, our desire for connection, unity, and correction.

The world will then advance forward towards harmony, unity, happiness, and fulfillment of the law of equivalence of form at the same rate as us. In this transition from  “me,” the yearning for the Creator that I imagine, to the we, where within this we is one single whole within our separated we, the general power of connection called the Creator is discovered.
[145310]
From the Convention In St. Petersburg “Day Two” 9/20/14, Lesson 4

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Rabash, “Dargot HaSulam,” Article 31: It is said: What does the Creator demand from us? – Only trepidation in front of Him.

It means that the Creator (a system of higher nature that has only one force that manifests itself through the system) inputs “something” into our thoughts… i.e., He asks us a question.

There is no other force in the universe except “none else besides Him.” Of course, the Creator would never make a creation that would go against Him; however, He created the thought (against Himself) so that trepidation in front of Him appears…

It is as if a person follows the Creator in his desire to find and reveal Him by scrutinizing in what kinds of interactions between us He can be found.

We cannot imagine how easy it is. Everything is right in front of us, but we look into the distance and don’t see what’s next to us. There is nothing but a psychological barrier. As soon as we switch and get out of ourselves, we begin sensing the Creator in the connections among us.

I move towards others and go outside myself. All of a sudden, it turns out that the natural force that connects, regulates, and holds everything together in the form of a perfect balance exists right here, together with us.

We are the ones who distort the balance and harmony by our egoistic intentions, desires, and relationships. We feel that it is us who are spoiling the balance and harmony. So, it’s clear that the world is something that is created solely by us against the background of perfection.

Attainment is about searching for the Creator using faith above reason. Attainment happens when we find the properties that are beyond this material level, above our earthly considerations and contrary to our logic. All our perceptions stem from the desire to receive for our own sake. That’s why we can’t agree with anything that contradicts this desire.

Conversely, the real world is outside us; it is in our external perception. That’s why faith above reason is a condition to which we all have to eventually arrive through sensing things that happen outside of our natural egoistic needs and aspirations.

Because of the sinner’s question, one has to agree to the power of the Creator over us again and again. This process is called “trepidation.”

The sinner’s question are the constantly arising needs, demands, and thoughts about the ways to please ourselves. It is a permanent movement towards ourselves. It’s when we take care only of ourselves in every possible way and at all levels. Sinners’ questions are given to us on purpose so that after we shake them off, we again start advancing.

And so on without end we fall into egoism by taking care of ourselves in our thoughts and desires. Then, we make efforts and rise again. This process continues until we get tired and refuse to fulfill this job. It goes on until we come to understand that only the environment ​can support us in this process and help us learn how to think of others.

If we stayed in the state of mutual guarantee and maintained the thought about helping each other, not just ourselves, everything would be very good. Why is that so? It’s because we are unable to think of others. We keep falling into desires of our own. However, if we are able to think about others and at the same time ask the Creator to help us, He will extend His help to us since He responds only to ​these kinds of thoughts and prayers because they are similar to His properties.

So, as soon as we begin aspiring to serve others and ask the Creator to grant us assistance, He responds immediately and helps us, since we, the group, and the Creator are on the same wavelength and in one joint movement. If we do it on our own, without the Creator, nothing will ever happen. Even if we are together with the group, it won’t happen. There must be a system of a triangle: Me, the group, and the Creator.

This structure must also be accompanied by trepidation. We have to be careful and watchful so that we won’t turn away from our path or lose the correct direction. Our egoism will tear us apart, split us from the inside and whisper: “Please forget about the Creator and the group. Nothing is wrong with abandoning them! The main thing is to either think of yourself or just about the others without involving the third element.”

At this point, we need tremendous support. The more of us that participate in this movement, the better it is. The general mass of people who secure an absolutely correct advancement is called 600,000 souls.

It is a conditional number that is not even a number, but rather a general advancement that causes the impact of Zeir Anpin on Malchut. Since Zeir Anpin consists of six Sefirot that influence Malchut, by influencing a point in Malchut with the Light of Hochma, its level multiplies to 600,000.

Thus, by getting support, we really become able to feel trepidation and constantly stay in the state of permanent aspiration to advance.

This explains the meaning of the phrase: “The Creator made everybody fear Him.” Every bad state that one feels is essential to keep one in one’s current condition.   

In other words, if one has not yet climbed the stairs of the Creator’s greatness, one has no chance to overcome oneself. Only when one feels the greatness of the Creator, one’s heart surrenders. It means that one has already ascended the steps of trepidation.

How can one understand that one has reached the state of trepidation, attained the correct level of excitement, and knows how to take care of others? It happens when a person realizes that in his care for others he feels the Creator’s fulfillment. One’s Kli (vessel) becomes corrected only when it receives fulfillment. Until then, we have to continue searching for the fulfillment both in quantity and quality so that our concern, trepidation, and intention will be correctly formulated and will match the level that is above our ego.

For that, we are given the greatness of the group, the importance of our friends, as a means of connection among us, as an exercise tool. It is done solely to feel the Creator’s fulfillment at the end of the process; the gratification inside our ten Sefirot that we can sense only together in the connection between us. When we tie ourselves into this knot, we begin feeling ourselves as a unity inside the unified.

Naturally, one vanishes when one reaches a state of an overall connection. One loses one’s “I-ness.” From one’s individual “I,” one transitions to “we,” from “we” to unity in which “me – we – the Creator” are one whole. It is said: “He and His Name are One.” The Creator is the Light and His name is a Kli (vessel).

So, all these questions and other numerous obstacles bring one to sense the need in the Creator, in His help.

In other words, we are not capable of asking questions and we can’t even make correct mistakes since when we let ourselves go, we commit errors that immediately make us fall. In order to make correct mistakes, we have to aspire forward. It is said: “I created the evil inclination and the Light to correct it.” How does the evil manifest itself? Where can we detect and see it?

It turns out that these words are not about the evil that exists in this material realm and it is not the evil of our relationships with each other. Not a single person in the world knows what the evil made by the Creator is in fact. The wickedness that has to be corrected reveals in us only when we aspire to unity in the right way.

If we aspire to unity and strive to correctly connect in mutual advancement and if by sharing trepidation, we manage to help others not only ourselves, then we begin sensing our egoistic nature, we realize how strongly we are repulsed by it and how extensively we hate, not only each other, but also ourselves. This revelation is so disgusting that we repel it. We stop searching for other internal negative qualities.

At this point, the recognition of evil occurs. The Creator warns us beforehand that it is He who made the evil inclination and that it is us who should reveal it by aspiring to Him. So, we need a special kind of trepidation. We have to make efforts not to shy away from them, and to control, inspect, and check ourselves regularly.

We have to take a close look at whether we subconsciously avoid the revelation of our egoism as something very unpleasant for us. On the contrary, we have to enjoy the process of revelation of the evil inside us since it is an essential stage in our advancement.That’s why we have to be prepared to deal with very unpleasant sensations and enjoy them because they are accompanying our advancement towards the Creator.

At the same time, we should never forget about the Creator’s greatness. We cannot imagine what the upper force is, what, in fact, exists in the universe and not just in the limited picture that we sense now. It is impossible to understand to what extent the picture that dwells in our thoughts and sensations is artificial.

Scientists have already figured out that we are in a dormant state, that we live in illusions and inside a matrix that creates a distorted picture, a dream. Our egoism locks us inside ourselves, which is why we regard everything that happens as if it takes place inside us. Only when we go out and stop sitting in the shell of our own selves do we begin sensing the real world.

Before it happens, it is very difficult to visualize what the upper reality is. It is not at all like our universe, nothing like the solar system, and the Earth or its surface. We just visualize these things as if we are asleep, in our dreams.
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From the Convention In St. Petersburg “Day One” 9/19/14, Lesson 1

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Filed under: Body and Soul, Conventions, Egoism, Group Work, My Similarity to the Creator, Spiritual Work, The Creator - No Comments →

In The Book of Zohar, it is written: Evoking fear on both sides of love (during the periods of “trials” and the periods of mercy and benevolence) is essential. During the time of mercy and success on His Paths, it is necessary to trepidation awakened before the Creator to avoid committing sins and to prevent our love for Him “cooling down.”

There is no such thing as the fear of punishment. There is no retribution whatsoever. Only to our egoistic desire does it look that we are being punished for our wrongdoings.

Similar to how we egoists relate to each other in this realm, we assume that there is either a reward or a punishment for everything. Our whole life goes by between these two categories and clarifications: “How can I feel better, how can I reward myself? How can I hide from punishments?”

​The ​spiritual path lies above this level. There is no egoistic reckoning whatsoever, neither with the plus nor minus sign. There, it has nothing to do with rewards or retributions. In spirituality, we are the ones who create a scale of spiritual recompenses and paybacks.

When one is given a chance to care about others, it is a reward. If for some reason one is unable to take care of others, one considers it to be a punishment.

The true reality can be attained only when we bring our bodily sensors outside ourselves and begin sensing life not internally, but externally. We have to acknowledge and feel it. That’s why it is said: “You will see your world while you are still alive.” However, moving in this direction becomes possible only if we connect fear with love.

From Baal HaSulam’s and Rabash’s articles and from our own experience, we know that love never comes without fear. Real, spiritual fear cannot occur if it is not accompanied by love.  We shiver because we are scared that our love can weaken or love of those who care about us will diminish. We are in distress, not because we just enjoy being together as two egoists who are delighted to be with each other. Rather, we worry that we won’t let the Creator love us because we don’t please Him by loving our neighbors.

These are mutual sensations. We experience them only at the level of fear. Fear is necessary to make us rise above our egoism and work with it inversely.

… In order to avoid falling to wickedness and diminishing our love for the Creator, we have to connect fear with love.

The same happens on the “other side of love,” at the time of stringent trials when He judges us for our deeds. Awakening of fear before the Creator is essential so that we won’t fall in​to the state of judging ourselves according to egoistic criteria.
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From the Convention In St. Petersburg “Day One” 9/19/14, lesson 1

Related Material:
“Fear Must Adhere To Love”
How Can We Be Afraid Of Someone We Love?
Anatomy Of Fear And Love

Filed under: Baal HaSulam, Conventions, Egoism, Group Work, Inner Work, Love, Spiritual Work, The Creator - No Comments →