Kabbalists put a lot of emphasis on the group, and the entire question of spiritual attainment is related to this notion. This is because the group is a method, an instrument, for the attainment of the Light. It is the well, the source, of Light in our world.

The Light is the only thing that works. It does everything, awakening all the desires. Hence, if we wish to change reality, we need the Light that shines in its usual direction, but we can add our own efforts to it and accelerate our development, as well as make it desirable and good.

If we wish to be masters in the spiritual art, the Light must become the method, the instrument in our hands, and make these changes. We can only attract the Light that Reforms in the group. This is why the purpose of the group, the environment, is to reveal the Light contained in it and to let it act upon yourselves and the entire world. And the Light is revealed in our world through the group.

The direction of the Light’s influence depends on us. We cannot change its influence at all; we can only accelerate our development, make the Light shine more strongly than it naturally does. In other words, we can only increase the velocity.

However, changing the velocity means to agree with its actions and change our sensation from development. Then, development will stop being forced and undesirable; it will no longer happen under the steamroller of evolution. Instead, we will develop according to our desire and aspiration to advance.

This way, group work becomes the main work that the revelation of the Light, the Creator, and the speed of development depends on. It does not matter that we, of course, do not understand in which direction we are developing and what we need to demand. After all, once the Light becomes manifested, it will explain and illuminate everything to us, clarify our thoughts and desires, and turn us in the right direction.

We completely depend on the Light. This is why we depend on building an environment, a group. In reality, this is the only thing that we have the power to do.

In regular life, we develop the obligated way, and no one asks us where, how, and why they should turn us. We simply turn as we should, without even realizing it. The Light either turns us in a concealed way in our world or openly in the spiritual world. The only difference is whether we understand this.

In the spiritual world, we act because we agree to act, and we want the Light to operate and do all the work with us. Let it do whatever it wants with us. We are ready for it, and we cancel ourselves before its actions.

In our world, every person cancels themselves before the actions of the Light, even though they neither understand nor realize it, like a small child who plays and thinks that he is given all the freedom in this world.

I do not have freedom in the spiritual world, but I already know that I am not free, and I agree with it. However, we are given freedom of choice in the middle, between that world and this world, in the so called “middle third of Tifferet,” for us to consciously choose to want to be under the influence of the Light.

In other words, here, I always remain independent, although we do not think that this is the condition of our independence— making the decision to put ourselves under the influence of the Light that Reforms. We do not understand what the point of our freedom is—to the extent we do not feel and do not understand what it is to be free. We exist in absolute darkness and are controlled from Above.

In the spiritual world, we also exist in the Light that controls us, but here, in Klipat Noga, in the middle between the forces of sanctity and impurity, we build our path from all these states, the points of freedom that, one after the other, add up to make a line. We follow it to absolute independence and at the same time to absolute adhesion and similarity to the Creator, something that is hard for us to understand now.

All of this is analyzed and realized in the group, in society.
[59196]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/30/2011, Writings of Rabash

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The preparation has already been made from Above, on the part of nature, the Creator, for every person according to the root of his soul so that he will be able to connect with other souls, to correct the shattering, and to reach his individual correction. This is how each of us fulfills all the preparations made for him or her, included in the root of his or her soul.

According to this preliminary preparation, people find themselves in different situations: Some awaken to spirituality more, some less, and there are those who don’t awaken at all.

It makes no difference whether in the meantime a person worries only about his corporeal desires, or whether he is lost in imaginary ideas about spirituality, which take him off the road of truth; whether he is closer to spiritual work, or whether he is already on the right track and has started rising on the spiritual ladder. We were each given the same conditions that were initially prepared from Above. They were created as a result of the descent of the worlds, the shattering of the desires, and their incorporation in each other. Thus, every person, at every given moment, has free will.

The system of the upper worlds spreads from the world of Infinity, and through the world of Adam Kadmon and the shattering of the vessels reaches the world of Atzilut, creating the worlds of BYA. Then Adam Ha Rishon (the First Man), the one general soul, the internal part of the worlds of BYA, the internal desire of all of creation, is born in them.

Then Adam Ha Rishon is also shattered, and all his parts get intermixed: The desires to receive and the desires to bestow, Galgalta ve Eynaim and AHP, are incorporated in each other and fall. All this happens to allow the best conditions for work.

When the process of mutual incorporation of the souls is completed (which the Ari told us about in his time), the correction of the world begins. Thus, we should understand that all the events in the world are only the result of our lack of correction, our failure to exercise free will on time, and our refusal to use the conditions that had been prepared for us in advance.
[58649]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/25/2011, Writings Of Rabash

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Question: Why is the law of mutual guarantee concealed from us? Why can’t scientists discover it?

Answer: You would like to place a person before irrefutable facts: Think badly of your neighbor, and a boulder falls on you from the sky; cause harm to someone, and you receive a threatening notice from the bank. You want to have an immediate response to your every action: reward or punishment. It would be a law of nature, an indisputable fact for you.

However, a person must be given freedom of choice. If we acted instinctively, there would be no problem. Nature would pressure us into becoming one whole. It is very simple: If you show me that I lose by disconnection with others, I will smile and be nice to everyone. I will build friendly relationships, take care of others, and make sure no one is treated unfairly. If we were programmed with mutual responsibility from Above, we’d gladly implement this program.

But the truth of the matter is that we must arrive at mutual guarantee by our free choice; we have to build within the human degree on our own. That is why the message of unity is hidden in the fog and we are lost in it, deprived of a sense of direction. The moment we begin to realize and feel it, it vanishes. Otherwise, we won’t be able to develop the human within ourselves.

The fog is not important. It doesn’t matter if we are slow or clever, clumsy or graceful. We must do only one thing: build an environment. Like a child building a house out of blocks, we should construct an artificial environment as an example of who we would like to be if we desired it.

If a person sits idle, Nature will oblige him indirectly, through blows and sufferings. But blows, too, will never force man to surrender his own nature because by this a person descends to the “animate” degree and builds the environment instinctively in order to survive. It would be a Soviet model of socialism with the Creator instead of the KGB behind your back. And you would become an animal living in unity with other animals in the herd. What kind of created being is that? Can we reach the level of the Creator like that?
[57435]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/12/2011, “Peace in the World”

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Question: Baal HaSulam’s words sound like a utopia. Clearly, if every person works for the common good, then everyone will be well off. But do we have the means to create that kind of society?

Answer: Of course we do. There is a set of elementary means that make it possible to do this easily and willingly, while being imbued with enthusiasm and providing enormous reward for yourself. Even from the purely egoistic point of view, it’s worth it because you will get rid of all the troubles of this world, will set up good relationships with other people, and in them you will acquire a new world, full of goodness. So what more could you want?

“But how can this be done?” you ask. The answer is: by realizing your free choice through creating an environment around you that will constantly brainwash you and press on your feelings with the profit of bestowal.

So what’s the problem? Everything is very logical. And if we don’t want it, then several disasters in the near future will change our priorities. When you lose work, when your fridge goes empty, when your children will demand something that you can’t possibly do for them, when your wife starts putting pressure on you, then not finding any alternative, you will discover that there is correction for this world, after all.

In reality, you evoke Nature’s harsh attitude to you yourself. You put yourself in conflict with it by not corresponding to the demands it is presenting to you. And these demands are clear: a global, integral, equal unification for all. We have to take an example from nature. On this path we will reach success, and on any other—only suffering. That is how the law of equivalence of form is expressed which operates in physics, biology, and all other fields. Until today only human society posed an exception, but today the time has come to observe this law in society as well, and to do it by our own desire.

So go ahead—try it. If you can’t do it, then you will suffer due to violating the law until it forces you to observe it. This is what always happens in the process of natural development. Previously you also received blows of differing intensity, which pushed you forward without you even being aware of it most of the time. You experienced pressure from different sides and solved the problems that emerged. Sometimes you had to wage wars and revolutions, which are greater impulses toward appeasement, when things were simply unbearable anymore.

That is how you developed until now and that is how you will develop from now on. You will always have an opportunity to take the next step. After all, you are matter that feels, a desire for pleasure, and this desire can be turned into anything. Just press in the right place with the right force, and it already shouts, “I want!” It shouts because it does not wish to suffer. Through this escape from suffering, you can be taught greater wisdom and be brought to bestowal as the desired redemption.

We know from our own experience that we can easily change our opinion depending on the circumstances. It’s enough for the circumstances to change and we immediately make a different calculation, raising a new truth onto the pedestal.

“What kind of truth is that? You just have greater profit there.” But you object, “No, it’s the truth!” And you say this from the bottom of your heart, even though it’s the sincerity of the belly, which forced you to rethink things. That is how the desire for pleasure operates in every one of us.

Therefore, if we don’t want to advance consciously, with awareness, then Nature will force us to do it. By our disagreement with its program of development, we create the future unpleasant states ourselves. Previously evolution led us “on a short leash,” but now everything is different. It’s as if you have been transferred to “standby mode” and given the opportunity to advance independently: Try to do something, activate your free choice, start organizing an environment.

However, if we don’t do that, then some time later, negative occurrences will be expressed in society, which will force us to budge. For example, today we are discovering that people cannot begin correction yet and cannot hear us. We are also guilty of that because we haven’t yet learned to disseminate materials that are clear and that warm every person’s heart. As a result, the next state is being revealed: The world feels bad, and we feel even worse. That’s because at the end of the day, the work is our responsibility.

If we do not wish to unite in the good way and turn to the world with the force of our unity, then we will desire it from the bad way. We can’t run away from this mission, just like Jonah the prophet could not escape his predestination.
[58529]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/24/11, “Peace in the World”

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Question: By our nature, every one of us tries to use others to the utmost, without taking the common good into account. So how can a regular person start taking others into consideration?

Answer: This can only happen with the help of the Light that Reforms.

You are forgetting that there is a force operating in creation which drives us. We are puppets. I cease being a puppet when I ask the Light to change me. I do not do anything on my own. The Light makes the actions in the vessels. However, I can influence it with my desire, with my request, “Change me more, accelerate my development.” This is the only thing I can ask from it.

If I attract it, then I advance by the path of acceleration, and this is my only possible personal contribution. Development unfolds one way or another. The only difference is in the extent of the troubles and suffering. I can either advance quickly, consciously, with awareness, by my own desire, or slowly, with “a lot of blood spilled.” But one way or another, I evoke the Lights that change me.

Naturally, I want to use the other for my own benefit and I will never want to unite with him. Why would I? I don’t have some hidden button that can switch the egoistic desire to an altruistic one.

However, if I use the environment and the study, if I persuade myself, if I form a “desire without a desire,” “a prayer before a prayer,” then all of my requests accumulate and work, even if they are insincere, and gradually I truly do begin to deem the quality of bestowal, love, and unification important. “There’s something worthwhile there, after all. I shouldn’t let it go by. It’ll come in handy.”

Sometimes I want it and sometimes I don’t. Later the desire no longer disappears, but it is small. And eventually, from the distant states, I reach a firm, decisive desire: “I want it, and that’s all.” Why? “Because.” What will you get out of it? “I can’t explain that. You wouldn’t understand anyway.” But still? “The Light is working on me. It has changed me and now I want this. The Light changed me because I resorted to all kinds of tricks and contrivances. I did everything I could, I made efforts, and I found.”

We should never forget this principle: Everything is done by the Light, and we can awaken it. Therein lies our free choice. Don’t look for an opportunity to change yourself directly and don’t eat yourself up for being weak. To achieve inner changes, we always have to turn to the Light. And that means constantly raising our prayer to the upper one.
[58422]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/23/11, “Peace in the World”

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The economic system of today’s world is the most obvious demonstration of our connection with one another. That’s because we are primarily connected through the economy, production, and trade. And we see that there are several thousand large corporations in the world that are interconnected, that envelop the whole world, not giving us a chance to move.

But they also can’t move! And now, to their shock, they are discovering this and don’t know what to do. They don’t have any freedom of movement in relation to one another.

This is how the common, global system of mutual guarantee is being revealed to us. But we don’t desire it, we don’t aspire to it from our end. Yet nature, the Creator, is showing us the mutual guarantee, our connection with one another. Under these conditions, how can my mind possibly help me?

The mind can only help me in one regard: to leave my animate mind and start learning, becoming familiar with this system.

However, this system is not built according to my earthly mind because my mind is personal, individual. It helps me exist in this egoistic world, showing me how to win more and do more for my own benefit, thinking that others were created to serve me.

But now, when I am revealing a system with which I am firmly connected and on which I am fully dependent, my previous mind stops working. I have to adapt to this new system! It’s as if I come to some unknown place and first of all I try to take a close look at what’s around me, to learn the customs of this place in order to adapt to them. And once I get to know it well, I can start acting in it and improving my state.

But how can we get to know this global system in which we have found ourselves if we cannot figure it out with our earthly mind? Even all of these huge corporations which seem to control the world, are in reality not in control of anything. And this is now being revealed to them. The mind of every particular person individually does not work just as the corporate mind does not.

It turns out that I now have to discard my animate mind and acquire a new mind—an integral way of thinking. This will be the creative mind, the mind of the common system, meaning the mind of the Creator.

It won’t be easy for us to acquire it. We will have to develop ourselves, turn ourselves into one, connected whole, try to feel ourselves as one person, one system. Then we will attain this single, connected system and will thereby “wrap up” our own egoistic desire and connect with one another. That is how we will gradually build our common vessel, reuniting the parts of the broken Lego.

Within the connection between us, we will reveal the upper mind, the program, its essence, and then we will understand what is happening! Only in this case will our state be corrected.
[58353]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/21/11, “The Acting Mind”

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In Kabbalah, nature implies forces, thoughts, matter, and everything that exists. It is still, vegetative, animate, and human matter pierced with a thought, a certain plan, according to which we develop.

Looking at history, we see that there is a certain plan that was implemented in life. We might say that it was an accident. However, it would be an “accident,” if for instance, a primate could write War and Peace.

But in nature everything is determined and tied to certain laws. If we were to “blow the thinnest layer of dust” off even the smallest, most superficial part of nature, we would see how wise and interconnected everything is in it. So why do we consider ourselves to be above nature? After all, we are just its creation, its part, and not the most perfect one.

For this reason, based on the things we learn in this enormous world, we see that it was made in a very wise, consecutive manner and develops according to a certain program. This program works for us. We are part of it and participate in the process of evolution.

First, still nature appeared on Earth. Then, the vegetative, animate, and then humans appeared, who also are part of the animate world because man is a biological, protein compound, subject to further development.

However, very strange things are happening to man. Unlike the other biological species, he seems to be developing independently, as if “from within.” His development assumes the development of the mind and feelings, meaning the development of the instruments for attainment of nature.

All this comes from the development of his desires. Desires beget thoughts in him. This means that man really is nature’s special element, even though he also falls under the same program of development.
[58088]
From the Talk on Mutual Guarantee 9/25/2011

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The Light created the point of desire, the only creature, “out of absence.” And around this point, it was necessary to build a system in which this point could reach the level of the Light that begot it: to come to it in full understanding and conscious sensation.

All this had to be provided to the point except for one thing: freedom of choice in its development. However, all other means, qualities, and preconditions had to be granted.

It follows that there has to be a bridge between the Light and the point of darkness. The bridge has to become a system by which the Light makes a path to diminishing itself down to the level of the black point that emerged out of nothing.

The dark point in itself is opposite to the Light. It needs to absorb all forms that exist on the bridge between it and the Light. When it will include all existing forms into itself in the shape of internal preparations called “informational genes” (Reshimot), it will find itself on the opposite end of the system of the worlds. Then, under the influence of its own awakenings that arise from within, it will be able to begin to climb the degrees of these worlds and will come to know the Light by itself.

All means come to it from Above: the informational genes, the Light, forces, desires, and states. All of them, but one: The creature always retains the freedom of choice and decides by itself whether to use them for the sake of ascent or not. And this is the key!

Just as with the example of the Host and the guest: The guest is not at fault that he is hungry and has a good appetite. He is not at fault that he is poor! Nor is he at fault that there is a generous and powerful Host who knows precisely what appetite, desires, and taste the guest has, and who has prepared for him a suitable fulfillment, both in terns of quality and quantity.

Nothing hurts the guest’s dignity here if he knows how to behave with self-respect and not to rush to eat. If he knows how to conduct himself well, his shortcomings turn into merits, his weaknesses transform into courage, and his worries and complaints become a blessing of sanctity.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/6/2011, “Pticha”

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After Baal HaSulam made his great discernments: what is the Creator’s desire, the goal of creation, and the ways to attain it, he descended to us and explained it, and all that remains for us is to tune into his method. We have to try to understand it with our mind and feel it with our heart so the Light would pass through us and fill us, allowing us to understand the inner essence of his words.

Let every word he wrote start to come alive in us like an inner mechanism, a means, a vessel that will start working in us in a way that we won’t have to think. We don’t have to plan anything. This teaching will just start to live in us and carry out actions through us, by virtue of us annulling ourselves. This is the work of Galgalta ve Eynaim, which annul themselves for the sake of AHP, absorb its desires, and on the other hand, they unite with the Light and it begins to act through us.

We are not aware of what we are doing and we do not know what we have to do. But the Light aims us and carries out everything. It is written, “I am the first and I am the last” and “There is none else beside Him.”

The whole world annuls itself in this way. But if we annul ourselves relative the Light’s actions with our own efforts instead of simply being governed by the hand that drives us from the inside, like a puppet into which a puppeteer’s hand is dressed, then this is a very big difference. By annulling ourselves out of our own free choice, we come to feel this hand, which controls the whole world through us. From this hand we learn all of its customs, the whole game, the whole program. We begin to recognize Him, the one who governs, the upper force.

The whole world annuls itself, having no other choice. But we have to annul ourselves by our own desire, and if we do so, we will be able to become similar to Baal HaSulam, who did the same, and to other Kabbalists. By virtue of that, he went from being a simple slave of the Creator to a loyal servant through whom the entire wisdom flows, allowing him to attain Malchut of the world of infinity and become included in it in order to feel the entire universe and the entire Light filling it.

We have to be grateful to the Creator for sending us such a great soul. Baal HaSulam writes that he could not stand to watch people’s suffering any longer. But this does not mean the small egoistic suffering. After all, we are not looking for a better fulfillment for our body, like a greener meadow for our cow, but we want to know the one who governs us and makes everything move.

We want to understand, meet, and reveal Him so His mind and feelings would dress in us, to unite with Him so our heart and mind would merge with Him. Then all of creation, its goal, all the worlds that the Kabbalists tell us about, and even what is even higher than them and what we don’t even have a name for—all of this will become our real sensation and fulfillment. This is the state that this person prepared for us.

In all of our history there is no one who is dearer and more significant for us. Obviously, we are unable to measure the true height of every Kabbalist. They are all holy for us. But Baal HaSulam did for us what no person has done throughout all of history. And therefore we are proud of having a spiritual father of this stature who cares about us. We have to feel how with each passing day, as we advance further, he follows us and rejoices at every step we take, one step after another.
[56998]
From a talk at the meal devoted to Baal HaSulam’s memorial day, 10/8/11

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Question: It seems that suffering is inevitable and that we won’t be able to manage without it.…

Answer: However, you can replace it with the suffering of love. If those around you start “brainwashing you,” you will begin to appreciate bestowal: “Why don’t I bestow?” You will be walking around with this question from morning to night: “Why do I lack it? Where can I find it? Perhaps here? Perhaps there?” You will look for it everywhere as if hypnotized.

Then there will be no need for the blows—the internal blows will replace them. But they will come in the form of a yearning for bestowal, for the purpose of creation, and you will be connected to it directly. It all depends on those around you. They have to constantly “transmit” to you how important bestowal is, and then you will strive for it.

But here is a question: Don’t you remain at the animate level by acting according to the dictate of the environment? That’s correct. This is why people with the point in the heart are told: “You have to build the correct environment yourselves, as well as do it for those who don’t have free will in this. Their freedom is more modest; it is in joining you.”

If you fulfill your free will and build your environment, you will be able to build it for others too. The problem is in the fact that you don’t have the right environment. You haven’t built it, and so you are not influenced by it. Thus, you don’t pass it on to others. You can’t be the environment for them yet.

Don’t complain that you cannot bestow upon others. Instead, think about how you can bestow upon yourselves. There are no tricks here, only practical work. If we don’t do it, we can forget about correcting the world. Who will correct it? We as we at the moment?

We have to create such a strong environment so that we can become a system that bestows upon the whole world. It shouldn’t be only by the media, not only by TV, radio, and the Internet. This is necessary only to some extent. The main thing is that we will influence the world because we will already be in the system of souls, in the system of mutual connection between us, where everyone’s thoughts and desires flow constantly.

Now we are in this system as well, but we don’t control it because we haven’t acquired the power of bestowal. If we are equipped with the power of bestowal, we will control the general system and will convey the importance of bestowal to everyone. This is true bestowal upon the environment.

Let’s hope that we will be able to make this year a good year for the whole world.
[56542]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/2011, “Peace in the World”

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