Question: When I lift a friend’s spirits, aren’t I adding satisfaction to his will to receive? And must he then somehow return this work to me?

Answer: The point is that everything depends on what your words are clothed in right now, on your intention when you praise a friend. I am not exalting him personally. I am exalting the idea of bestowal toward one another that exists in our group. By doing this, I educate the whole group and myself about how special and spiritual the act of bestowal is.

With the intention to praise a friend, by thanking him in front of the group, I must evoke a certain attitude toward the act of bestowal, not toward him personally. This should elevate all of us to the level of appreciating the importance of bestowal.

This is a problem we can observe in our ordinary daily life. I can give you something, and you will accept it with love because it feels good to you. But I can give you the same gift in such a form or with such an attitude that you will want to get rid of it at all costs. You will feel very bad. In other words, I can evoke all kinds of sensations in you through the very fact that I give you something.

We must clothe the praise of a friend in such an intention that I am elevating, not the friend, but the Creator who has given us the strength to act. Because if you had not received these forces from the Creator, you would not be able to do even something insignificant that is good toward me.

It turns out that for the sake of good relations between us, we turn, not to one another, but to the higher force that gives us the ability to do this.

First, the fuel, the intention within each of us directed toward bestowal, can be given only from above if we are worthy of it. By this we glorify the higher force, not ourselves.

Second, it becomes arranged in such a way that no matter how much you praise someone in the group, we cannot become proud of it, because the overall atmosphere is such that this simply cannot happen. We are occupied with advancement, not with looking at one another.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/24/26, Rabash, “Purpose of Society – 2”

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There is an action called bestowal, and the Creator’s position as the giver. By performing acts of bestowal within the group and thus building one’s Kli, perfecting oneself in this action, and becoming similar to the Creator in this action, a person attains the status of the Creator.

In one of his letters, Baal HaSulam gives the example of a king who wished to elevate a servant, so he  subjected the servant to various trials so that, through all these actions, the servant would learn what it means to be a king; and then, in his attained state he would become like a king. Bestowal as such is not the goal either. Bestowal is a form of external equivalence to the Creator.

Therefore, if we work in the group in order to bestow, because this form is the Creator’s external form in relation to us, then we merit becoming like Him in our inner qualities. And what those inner qualities are, we cannot even express, but one eventually reaches them. If the Creator were revealed, we would not be able to perform this, because in that case, He would have dominion over us.

But here we are in a state where there are no pleasures, bestowal does not attract, it repels. To counter this, we must intensify the greatness of the Creator, this ideal of becoming equal to Him. In order to carry out an act of bestowal within the group, we need the revelation of the Creator, not in the form where He is revealed as pleasure, but in the form where He is great as a goal. Then we gain strength to work with the group; it gives us fuel for bestowal.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/25/26, Rabash, “What Does It Mean that the Creation of the World Was by Largess?”

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Question: In the process of building the group, each of its members and the group as a whole receives obstacles. Is the purpose of these obstacles to increase the aspiration toward the Creator and the feeling of the need for Him?

Answer: You must imagine that a certain vessel is suspended in the air, and this vessel is the most important thing for us. Wie will reveal the Creator in it, at first as if it is outside of us and later perhaps in a more internal form when we feel that all our hearts together are building this vessel. Why do I speak about an external form? Because one must direct attention outward, beyond oneself. Under no circumstances should we relate to one another as to a closed society that needs no purpose beyond itself.

Question: I am asking about the tool called the group. In building it, a person receives obstacles. What is their purpose?

Answer: The purpose of the obstacles a person receives while building the group or while shaping his attitude toward it, is precisely so that he will establish the correct attitude. How do I know what that attitude should be? In other words, what should the final vessel look like? I attain this through the obstacles that I constantly receive and correct.

To overcome obstacles means to acquire them and integrate them within oneself as a beneficial force. Through this, I become wiser and more experienced, and next time, I will receive a greater obstacle. Each obstacle, once corrected, becomes within me an effective operating force.

Our problem is that we hardly feel that next time we will be stronger, because the next time we fall even deeper. And yet, every detail joins the whole. That is why I fall more deeply.

Without these obstacles, how would I build myself? It is the same in our corporeal life: another exam, another test, another assignment, and so on. Through this, a person grows.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/18/26, Rabash, “According to What Is Explained Concerning ‘Love Thy Friend as Thyself’”

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When a person works with the greatness of the group, he works against his desire to receive. I want the Creator to be as great as possible because this gives me more confidence, more peace; I belong to something great!

But when I work on the greatness of the group, what is its greatness? It strives more toward bestowal; it wants to invest more; this is what the greatness of my group is.

That is, I value the group according to its inclination to bestow, and this does not provide any fulfillment for my desire to receive. When the desire to receive gains no fulfillment, I have no choice, I must begin to value these qualities themselves.

By placing the group before me instead of Him, the Creator gave me the opportunity to completely disregard my desire to receive and to exit it.

Therefore, He shattered the vessel of Adam HaRishon and gave each person the environment as a means to attain bestowal. Without this, we would be able to do nothing.

The group is the means for attaining the greatness of the Creator, for recognizing Him as the good that does good.

If I detach the group from the Creator, I will never come close to performing even the smallest action that leads to coming out of myself.

As an example, Baal HaSulam brings up Soviet Russia, which detached itself from the Creator and attempted to build a beautiful society independently; the Kibbutzes did the same. There were other similar examples in history, and they all ended in failure.

In our work, we must connect the group and the Creator with one another so that the group becomes the means. Rabash writes about this very clearly in all his articles on the group.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/26/26, Rabash, “What Is, ‘The Saboteur Was in the Flood, and Was Putting to Death,’ in the Work?”

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We study that attaining adhesion with the Creator is the goal. The means to this end is the building of a vessel (Kli). Adhesion with the Creator is a vessel filled with light, the final state when the qualities of the vessel become the same as the qualities of the Creator. Then a person fills this vessel with reflected light, with their attitude toward the Creator, and the Creator fills the vessel with His attitude toward the person, with direct light.

A person can build this vessel only with the help of the group because the parts within the vessel can be bonded together solely through the intention “love thy friend as thyself.”

The common intention that a person must attain can be obtained only in the group.

This does not mean that the group gives him the force of bestowal itself. Rather, it gives him the desire to attain the force of bestowal and the understanding that he is incapable of reaching it on his own.

It gives him the awareness that the Creator desires, awaits, and is ready to correct him. A person receives all this from the group to the extent that he relates to the friends and demands these forces from them.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/18/26, Rabash, “According to What Is Explained Concerning ‘Love Thy Friend as Thyself’”

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Question: For strengthening the group, what is more important, disseminating Kabbalah or our inner work?

Answer: I don’t think one can exist without the other. If a person understands how important inner work is, how will he express this importance? By the fact that we will simply sit together and study?

I don’t think that is enough. And Baal HaSulam, in the “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” writes that the Messiah will come precisely from widespread, mass study of the wisdom of Kabbalah. I do not think one can express the desire to deepen inner work in any other way than through dissemination. How else can we be connected to one another? How else can we perform a joint action? You for me, and I for you.

By engaging in dissemination, we sort of draw the Creator; He is found between us. After all, we are gathering in order to advertise the Creator to people. And this is a very effective action alongside the closeness and corrections in which we already find ourselves.

This must be done. From my experience, I see that very large groups, even those that were connected to Rabash, unfortunately ceased to exist solely because they neglected dissemination.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/24/26, Rabash, “Purpose of Society – 2”

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Relations between friends must be businesslike and directed only toward correction. This is how we test the group. No matter how many disturbances we are still destined to encounter, can we turn them into something useful? This is the greatness of the group.

And to what extent we will be able to receive numerous disturbances and turn them into strength depends on how we all resist these disturbances and help one another.

And all of this is in the mind. Of course, I may perform various material actions, but ultimately all these things lie within, because they build a spiritual vessel within us, which is no longer something material.

We are speaking about thoughts through which we increase desires that connect together, pass from one to another, and then all of us receive even more of these desires, and each one receives them from the other also in the form of a disturbance until he attaches them to himself. In short, each time it is work on attention, which is called intention.

As it is said: “A commandment without intention is like a body without a soul.” Thus, clarification means that a person must be sensitive to this each time. Everything comes only from inner attention to where my heart and mind are right now, on which point I am focused.

It is as if I am moving the beam of a flashlight from one thing to another, examining within the given situation how I must relate to it, what I must increase, what I should pay more attention to, how to attach this to myself, in which direction to turn, how to expand the existing connection.

This is inner work. Imagine how focused a person is on this within himself and to what extent he cannot be disturbed. Only through this does he grow.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/18/26, Rabash, “According to What Is Explained Concerning ‘Love Thy Friend as Thyself’”

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The group is my mirror. To the extent that I build it, it builds me. Both my attitude toward it and its attitude toward me are detached from my desire to receive, which helps me build relationships of bestowal rather than expand and fulfill vessels of reception.

If I were working directly with the Creator, I would certainly use the vessels of reception. Baal HaSulam writes that if the Creator were revealed, I would rush toward Him shouting, “Stop the thief!” The desire to receive itself would tell me how wonderful it is to work for the Creator; I would want to be close to Him, to do something for Him.

After all, if He fills me with a sense of confidence and pleasures, then why not work? Why not perceive Him as good and great? We always want to be near greatness.

Thus, the desire to receive would strive toward the Creator for personal benefit. But if instead of the Creator I have a group in which I do not find great personal benefit, power, confidence, or a strong influence on me, then within it, there are conditions that allow me to work not with my desire to receive, but in the direction of bestowal. I want to grow vessels of bestowal within myself, and therefore, I turn to the group.

It turns out that the shattering of the vessels is the opportunity to work with the desire to receive of others, those external to me, as though with the Creator. That the Creator placed before me someone else, someone “other,” aside from Himself is truly my salvation.

In this case, I can genuinely practice how to be a giver and not a receiver. I can determine whether I am giving or receiving. I can perform exercises that later will allow me to enter into a relationship with the Creator in which my attitude toward Him will truly be one of bestowal.

The group helps me exit my desire to receive because it is not a supplier of pleasures for me. Whereas, if I were working with the Creator, I would only work with Him as the source of pleasures and would never be able to exit my desire to receive.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/26/26, Rabash, “What Is, ‘The Saboteur Was in the Flood, and Was Putting to Death,’ in the Work?”

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Question: When should we work on recognizing the greatness of the group and when should we work on recognizing the greatness of the Creator?

Answer: In essence, I should work on recognizing the greatness of the Creator. After all, I have business precisely with the Creator. He is my beginning, He is the provider of strength, and He is my goal.

However, I travel this path against the backdrop of my desire to receive. I must recognize and cultivate the Creator within myself starting from the opposite state. Therefore, in order to turn off my “I,” my ego, my interest in Him when I appear as the one who receives, uses, and enjoys, I obviously set Him as my goal, but I cannot use Him.

I cannot maintain connection with Him if my desire to receive reveals pleasure, support, and fulfillment in Him. Then instead of Him, I need someone to work with and to be able to use this work to advance my intention for the sake of bestowal. In essence this means a group instead of the Creator.

Why? A group can provide criticism of my work. By itself it does not initially satisfy my desire to receive. As I get to know the group, I do not feel pleasure, confidence, eternity, or perfection. But if I work on this and want to reveal these properties within the group, then I begin to sense them.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/26/26, Rabash, “What Is, ‘The Saboteur Was in the Flood, and Was Putting to Death,’ in the Work?”

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Question: Are there different feelings of evil with respect to the Creator and with respect to the friend?

Answer: For our will to receive it makes no difference whether it is dealing with the Creator or with a friend. There is no distinction because it always forms its attitude from its own uncorrected vessels.

If a person directs his attention to something outside his will to receive, whether it is the Creator or the friend, the measure of correction and the magnitude and quality of the will to receive, determine his attitude toward that object. There is no difference.

Therefore, we can use the group and according to our reaction to it and according to our mutual relations with it, examine and critically analyze our will to receive, demand correction, and carry them out. After all, if something has a direction aimed outside the will to receive and stands beyond it, then it is the same with respect to the group and with respect to the Creator.

However, when it concerns my attitude toward myself, then of course it matters whether we are speaking about the group or about the Creator. What pleasures can the group give me compared to the Creator?

Everything depends on the degree on which I stand. It may be that I perform a restriction with respect to the Creator and say, “What is the Creator to me? What matters to me is the respect of the group.” Or, on the contrary, I may already restrict my attitude toward the group: “What do I need the group for? I want the divine.” But it is me who wants.

When a person tries to work without turning to himself at all, he discovers that if it is not for himself, but outside himself, then it does not matter to him for whose sake it is done or to whom exactly it will bring benefit. If it is outside of me, if neither at the beginning, nor during the action, nor afterward do I receive any response within myself, then what difference does it make which of a thousand possible factors I am now bestowing to if the results remain there and do not return to me?

What difference does it make what these factors are? From the perspective of the will to receive, I cannot analyze them; I have no connection with them. It turns out as though I throw something out of myself into space, and that is all.

But how do I evaluate my bestowal? Is it great or small? Of high quality? The fact is that I measure only the extent to which it is detached from me. As Rabash writes, there is an awareness of the greatness of the Creator before a person disconnects from himself, and there is an awareness of the greatness of the Creator after he disconnects from himself.

In the second case, I work in a state where I do not feel my acts of bestowal at all. I detach them from my “I” as though casting them into space.

Why do I do this? Because society gives me the sense of the importance of such actions. In other words, I acquire a feeling of the importance of something that is outside my will to receive, a Kli, an unfulfilled desire, and suddenly I feel that I must fill it by bestowing outward from myself. Thus, a certain desire outside of me becomes filled.

If a person works on this, he gradually passes into a state in which he can truly touch what it means to act not for himself, above reason. And this comes gradually.
[353558]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/26/26, Rabash, “What Is, ‘The Saboteur Was in the Flood, and Was Putting to Death,’ in the Work?”

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