Question: How do we ensure we are not deceiving ourselves in the ten?

Answer: It is not easy. Gather together and be open with each other. Check how much you can be transparent with one another. Unite so that nothing remains outside your connections, and attack your egoism.

Question: Does this mean we completely annul ourselves?

Answer: In general, yes. The ten should reach a state where everyone feels each other and starts helping each other rise higher and higher, and even higher. This is how you work on yourselves. You need to learn this. But learning this is possible only through practice.
[324128]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/18/24, Writings of Baal HaSulam “Sing unto the Lord, for He Has Done Pride”

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Question: To work in spirituality, we must make efforts. Some friends say: “But everything comes from the Creator. I will sit from morning until evening and do nothing.” What is the difference between our efforts together and the condition of there is none else besides Him?

Answer: Everything that the Creator did, He did so that people, His creations, would continue what He had planned. Moreover, He has prepared all the problems in the world in advance, and they all appear in accordance with our development to push our further growth.

Therefore, you must try to understand the sources correctly, and then you will understand everything.
[324003]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/17/24, Writings of Baal HaSulam “A Field that the Lord Has Blessed”

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Question: What should I do if it seems to me that my desire is greater than that of my friends? Do I need to annul my desire?

Answer: No, on the contrary, include the friends in yours and you continue to expand your desires and direct them to the Creator.

Question: When I ask myself why am I following this path, I get an answer from my mind—so that everyone can achieve final correction. But on the level of feelings, I cannot connect with it. How do you ask yourself the right question so that the mind awakens a feeling?

Answer: Ask the Creator to allow your feelings to unite and rise to Him.

Question: It says there must be a desire for both the spiritual or the material. Is it possible to say that the material is the external performance of actions and the spiritual is the intention for these actions, and they should be as one?

Answer: Yes, although we should not emphasize the physical execution. The most important thing for us is to strive for a spiritual desire for bestowal.

Question: How can a person develop feelings and determine what harms and what benefits him?

Answer: Everything that brings him closer to his friends and together with his friends to the Creator is for his benefit.
[324228]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/22/24, Writings of Baal HaSulam “There Cannot Be an Empty Space in the World”

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Question: As far as I understand, the first step that needs to be taken to see the ladder of spiritual ascent and start working is restriction.

What is the difference between restriction and annulment?

Answer: The annulment of egoism is simply an annulment when a person switches from one state, from one relationship to another, as if excluding his egoism.

But it happens sometimes that he needs to gradually reduce his egoism in order to see what state his connection with the group and with the Creator is in. Thus, he gradually learns the possibilities of his actions and the reaction of the Creator.

Restriction means that he stops using his desire that he used before.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/24, Writings of Rabash “What Does It Mean that the Ladder Is Diagonal, in the Work?”

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It is as the verse says in the name of the righteous: “You are idle, you are idle; therefore, you say, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to the Lord our God’” (Baal HaSulam, Shamati 150, “Sing unto the Lord, for He Has Done Pride”).

Question: Sacrifice is like atonement. But we need to work in the ten so should we should strive for unity and not sacrifice?

Answer: Yes. But to strive for unity, you need to make a sacrifice. You sacrifice your egoism, various qualities, and perhaps your attachment to earthly matters to ascend to the Creator.

Question: It is said: “Let us go and sacrifice to the Lord our God.” How do you free yourself from pride, by thinking that you have already offered the Creator the proper sacrifice since He brought you closer, as if He owes you?

Answer: You have to start all over again. If a person feels that the Creator owes him, it is the worst feeling.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/18/24, Writings of Baal HaSulam “Sing unto the Lord, for He Has Done Pride”

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In the verse, “Sing unto the Lord; for He has done pride,” it seems that “prune” is like “[The Lord is] my strength and song.” This means that we should always prune and cut the thorns off the Creator’s vineyard (Baal HaSulam, Shamati 150, “Sing unto the Lord, for He Has Done Pride”).

Question: What is this vineyard where we have to clear everything of thorns?

Answer: This is our life. We must accept it and transform ourselves within it so that we can enjoy all its fruits without fearing anything.

In corporeal life you pick a bunch of grapes, squeeze, extract the juice, and drink it. In this way, you obtain a concentration of the vitamins you need. In a metaphorical sense, it means that you absorb the best from the world and can consume it.

From a spiritual perspective, the wine made from grapes symbolizes the concentration of the Creator’s light. By uniting with each other, we together as if squeeze the grapes, and from the point of unity turn to the Creator. In response, He fills us with light.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/18/24, Writings of Baal HaSulam “Sing unto the Lord, for He Has Done Pride”

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However, before we achieve the completion of the degree, we cannot know anything for certain. This is called “learning first, understanding next.”

A little one, who begins to eat bread, still has no knowledge, but only of the bread. And when beginning to grow, he begins to understand that there is a reason for the bread, which causes the shape of the bread (Baal HaSulam, Shamati 166, “Two Discernments in Attainment”).

Question: How can one feel the attainment of the spiritual degree if it is impossible to talk about the final result?

Answer: In our world we also do not see the final state, but gradually, from degree to degree, from state to state, we attain partial causes and results, then another cause, and another partial result. And so we rise through the steps of attainment.

Question: By uniting in tens, how do we transfer some states from one to another if it is impossible to fix something in common?

Answer: But this is how we learn. That is not yet attainment, but simply steps to the Creator like in school and as in life. As explained in the example of a child who through the fact that he is given bread to eat, begins to understand where it comes from and what it is. So it is here.
[323723]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/12/24, Writings of Baal HaSulam “Two Discernments in Attainment”

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Question: When we form a prayer in the ten, what should we wish for: for the influence of the Creator to spread in the world or for people to simply have an easier time?

Answer: In principle, it is the same, it depends only on the degree of the revelation of the Creator. Either He reveals Himself very slightly, and then it becomes easier for people, better, or He reveals Himself a little more, and then humanity’s eyes are opening.

We have come to a state where we desperately need His revelation, otherwise we simply will not survive.

The Creator has already brought us to the point where we must realize that we need to grab onto Him and move with Him to the general correction.

Comment: I have such a desire for the Creator to come into the world and begin to govern. This desire just weighs heavily on me.

My Response: This is what the Creator wants to achieve.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/17/24, Writings of Baal HaSulam “A Field that the Lord Has Blessed”

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Question: If we perform all the external work, what about the internal work that helps us cling to the degree of a righteous person, and what actions will lead to ascent?

Answer: Clinging to a righteous person can only be achieved by fulfilling his wishes, i.e., studying and coming closer to friends. Everything we learn is the desire of a righteous person. And if, to some extent, it becomes the desire of the student, then the student is considered to be coming close to the righteous person.

Therefore, we can merge with the Creator only by creating closeness between us and the Creator over all the circumstances that He sends us.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/16/24, Writings of Baal HaSulam “Why We Need to Extend Hochma”

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Question: We are in the state of a child who eats bread and does not understand where this bread comes from. What is the similarity to the Creator here?

Answer: By eating bread, we gradually begin to attain its roots. This is called attaining the Creator. This is how we grow.

Question: How can we achieve the state of eating bread?

Answer: This does not depend on us, but only on our spiritual roots, because those who are drawn to the study of Kabbalah have one common spiritual beginning—for men, for women, for everyone. Therefore, we were assembled in one group and given the opportunity to be connected with each other, to get to know each other better, and move toward the goal together.

Question: But a child who eats only receives. What is his bestowal?

Answer: We are also receiving in the meantime.

Question: But how can we bestow?

Answer: We are trying to bestow by the fact that we want to connect and get closer to the Creator. It is as if we are extending our common Kli to Him. And when it becomes similar to what the Creator wants to give us, then we will be able to be in contact with each other and with the Creator and discover the upper world for ourselves. We are already on the way toward it.
[323833]
From the Daily Kabbalah lesson 1/12/24, Writings of Baal HaSulam “Two Discernments in Attainment”

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