Question: What if I have invested too much in a friend?

Answer: You speak as though you have acquired a friend, as if you invested efforts in him, and now he treats you well. “I gave him a candy, and now he is my friend.”

But in our understanding, a friend is someone who helps me connect with the Creator. A friend is an additional force through which I draw closer to the Creator, who is essentially my friend. And I invest my efforts in the group precisely in order to receive from it the strength to connect with the upper one.

Thus, I do not need to constantly maintain good relations with everyone so that they would all be my friends in the corporeal sense where people treat me well and I treat them well.

In the group, very difficult states are possible, states that are sent by the Creator. We cannot measure our true state by what is happening in it. We may go through turmoils and upheavals where everyone is in states of misunderstanding and hatred, when one cannot understand the other, etc., and still these states are beneficial, and we are truly talking about a group of friends.

They are called friends because each one wants to give to oneself and to the other in order to draw closer to the Creator, and everyone understands that this is the system.

The question of whether we are friends or not is not verified by human senses: I look and do not see anyone here who is a friend in the corporeal sense; the only thing that is real is the shared goal.
[353244]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/16/26, Rabash, “Make for Yourself a Rav and Buy Yourself a Friend – 1”

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Question: How can you help a friend who has fallen into trouble in the corporeal sense?

Answer: Suppose a friend comes to me and tells me about some trouble he is facing. It does not matter what exactly; let’s say he feels unwell. Relating to him as someone from the group, as a force with which I advance toward the Creator, I take his trouble and begin to pray to the Creator with his unfulfilled desire (Hisaron). This is called: “He who prays for his friend is answered first.”

I must take his Hisaron and his problems instead of my own and turn to the Creator with them as if I have no problems at all. If I truly had none, there is little wisdom in that.

But if I also have very big problems, and yet I take the friend’s problems instead of mine while maintaining awareness of what I am doing, meaning I put aside my ego a little and work toward the Creator with the friend’s Hisaron, then this is purely spiritual work.

Question: And what about the direction of the friend’s own work?

Answer: What concern is that of mine? I ask the Creator to improve his state, meaning to advance him toward the goal, because the lack of advancement toward it brings him these misfortunes. This may manifest in anything from owing a $10,000 debt to some illnesses or disaster.

I must accept the friend’s corporeal level as my own spiritual level. What does that mean?

By suppressing my own desire to receive, I take the friend’s desire and work with it. This means that I work spiritually; I am work in bestowal to someone else. If I take any corporeal problems of a friend, no matter how mundane, in place of my own troubles, my own requests, and arrange them in such a way that I truly ask the Creator for them, then this is called being “the leader of the people.”

A leader of the people is one who takes all the troubles of the people instead of all his own problems and turns to the Creator with them, desiring that they be fulfilled and not himself, that they receive everything, from their current state up to the end of correction, and he does not. And he is ready for this.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/16/26, Rabash, “Make for Yourself a Rav and Buy Yourself a Friend – 1”

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Comment: A person who is in a state of descent feels as if they and their desire to receive are one and the same.

My Response: In a descent, a person truly identifies with the desire to receive. They are immersed in it, completely under its control, and do not even sense that it is bad. It is similar to how the people of Israel did not feel bad in Egypt. They felt fine there and did not sense the burden of the work.

“And the sons of Israel sighed from the work,” that happened later, when another Pharaoh came, who turned evil. Before that, he was good: we work, but we also enjoy our efforts. This is how a person feels.

Question: If such a state exists, should the group come to a person and describe their state to them? Or should the person come to the group and ask for help?

Answer: The group can give a person various things, including general advice, because through this, a person develops.

For example, we are affected by reading articles about states we have not yet reached, or perhaps were in a little, or perhaps will be later. We need to awaken the upper light upon ourselves so that it constantly brings us new states. The group can speak about this.

How does it influence you? It is by reminding you that the Creator is great? But other people also shout something similar in their own way. How can that influence you?

The group must convey, through various impressions, the understanding that attaining the eternal and perfect state is the only thing that stands before you.

You have a point in the heart; you come to the group not knowing anything. But if you engage it with your point in the heart, the group acts upon you like a mother’s womb upon an embryo. It develops you. And all you need is to annul yourself, annul yourself before it.

There are people who come, and no matter how long they sit in the lessons, they understand nothing. Then they go to work in the kitchen for a month or two and this becomes their form of self-annulment before the group. And suddenly, they begin to feel that the group is influencing them. This happens under the influence of the light.
[353251]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/13/26, Rabash, “What Is the Preparation to Receive the Torah in the Work?-2”

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Question: How can it be that a feeling like envy is a force that advances us toward the goal?

Answer: It is not just envy that drives me to my goal. There is nothing bad or good about me at all because that is how I evaluate my qualities and states. In reality, there is nothing that was created in vain, nothing unnecessary for attaining the goal.

We may feel ourselves to be anything at all, but as we learn, we descended into this world from the highest degree, and everything that exists in us now will later, with the help of screens (Masachim), become the very best qualities.

Therefore we should not engage in correcting character traits but only in striving toward the goal—and then all our qualities, all parts of the desire, will serve only as help.

A person must not hide or suppress any of his desires; this is not the method of Kabbalah! Kabbalah says the opposite. If a person suppresses something within himself, he thereby kills a part of the creation within him.

We must only follow the law: “The light contained in the Torah returns one to the source.” That is, during study and during various activities in the group when all my thoughts are about correction, the surrounding light (Ohr Makif), the light that returns to the source, shines upon me. There is no other way of correction.

A person should not think that he is capable of evaluating which of his qualities are good and which are bad or what kind of correction each requires. Otherwise, he will begin to approach correction selectively, and decide what to correct in himself and what not to correct. There is no greater foolishness than to claim that he understands anything about this!

A person must act only where he has a point of free choice, that is, to organize for himself an environment that will influence him. In any case, he needs some external force that will pull and push him forward.

The external force is either the environment or the Creator. But unfortunately, I cannot yet influence the Creator so that He will help me; I do not yet have a desire sufficient for Him to respond. He responds only to a complete, perfect desire.

It is precisely the environment that builds within me this complete desire, so that afterward I may turn to the Creator, and then the light will return me to the source.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/9/26, Rabash, “What Does It Mean That Before the Egyptian Minister Fell, Their Outcry Was Not Answered, in the Work?”

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Question: If I feel that the group is not doing what it is supposed to do, does that mean that I am not ready for this situation, or is the group truly not doing it? How can I know whether this is my problem?

Answer: The group must carry out its action toward you if you commit to carrying out your actions toward it.

We are talking about both external actions and internal ones. External actions by themselves mean nothing! If we perform only external actions, it will just be an enterprise.

That is why internal actions are extremely important here. What do I want from the group? For what purpose do I invest my desire, energy, and efforts into it? Am I doing this for no reason? I want to reach something through my efforts!

With my actions, I am essentially demanding from the group that it fulfill all my hopes, that it advance me, awakens me. Otherwise, why am I doing all this? Just to pass the time?

I must receive something from the group. The question is: What am I asking for?

And this is what the group must teach me: what to ask from it.
[352856]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/8/26, Rabash, “And There Was Evening and There Was Morning”

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Question: If I feel comfortable in the group, does that mean I have nothing to give it?

Answer: If you feel good and comfortable, then in that state you certainly cannot give anything to the group.

Only when a person feels tension from lacking the goal, when they question the meaning of life, can they contribute something. If a person has no desire, they are as if dead. When there is no desire, that is called death!

In that case, one must delve more deeply into study and into actions that are performed without intention since in that state one cannot add intention, and then the actions themselves will lead to intention. These are actions in which one unites with others and receives their desires from friends.

Let them engage in dissemination and they will receive a boost of spirit. Let them study and they will receive inspiration from the author of the book. Let them go work in the kitchen and they will serve the group and receive inspiration from the group.

A person must invest themselves in something at the level they are capable of, even at the inanimate level, in order to awaken at a higher level—vegetative, animate, and speaking. A person can always invest themselves, even without any intentions.

Thus, someone who does not create frameworks that obligate them to return to actions in relation to the group is not valuing time, not shortening it, and advances only sporadically.

Therefore if you lack work, take on translating articles, work on some material…do something!

Every group, no matter where it is located in the world, must, even artificially, build such frameworks for itself so that each person has some responsibility toward the group and the group toward the individual. Otherwise, if we feel free, we behave according to the desire to receive.

This is the very first and most important thing a group must establish for itself: a strict order of actions that allows no deviation so that no one feels free even for a moment, even in their free time.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/8/26, Rabash, “And There Was Evening and There Was Morning”

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Question: Do feelings such as envy, desire, and ambition arise in me when I see that I lack what my friend has in relation to the Creator?

Answer: No! There are negative and positive envy, lust, and glory. If I see something good in another, I might think that it would have been better if I hadn’t seen it so that I would not suffer. After all, when I see some good quality in him, it makes me feel bad.

Or I see something good, and it awakens in me the desire to also attain it. Then I must be grateful to the one who gave me the opportunity to see these special pleasures that can be achieved. Before I did not even think such things existed in the world. This is good envy.

Bad envy is when I see people who are doing well, but I, say, do not sufficiently desire to be like them. That is, I weigh that the effort I must exert greatly exceeds the pleasure I would gain. The goal does not justify the means.

In other words, I am lazy. This is called laziness. And to avoid suffering, I would just like that not to exist for them either. Or I become annoyed that I saw it, and now I am envious. Everything is reversed. Instead of striving to reach a higher level, I wish to see these people at a level lower than mine. “The suffering of many is half the consolation.” They have less, and I have more, immediately my mood improves.

It all depends on the person’s goal—how he wants to use qualities like envy, lust, and honor. Either he wants to rise with their help because the importance of the goal obliges him, and then he uses these qualities in a useful, effective, constructive form.

Or it can be otherwise, when he wants to destroy everything he sees in another because comfort is more important to him than advancement. The suffering is not yet strong enough for him to want to leave the current state. It all depends on the calculation and what we expect from the state we are in.

Imagine the situation. We see that half of those here are asleep, and the rest do not care. Inside them, there is no burning desire to break free from this state, where “better death than this life.” Ask them: “Do you wish that your next state will reveal that there is no possibility of stagnation?” They will answer: “Well… we can try, maybe it is better.”

But there are also those who will say that they are waiting for it and are ready for anything because without it there is no advancement. So it all depends on prior preparation. In the group there must be some idea, some goal, for which it would be worthwhile to exist.
[353152]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/14/26, Rabash, “What Is, ‘The Creator Does Not Tolerate the Proud,’ in the Work?”

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Question: On the one hand, we say that a person must constantly work on developing a feeling of lack for the light, even to the point of “Egyptian darkness.” On the other hand, it is said that until one accepts concealment as the best possible state for himself, he cannot attain revelation.

How can one reconcile building a deficiency, a thirst for the light that does not let him sleep, and agreeing with concealment?

Answer: This contradiction stems from the fact that within us there are two “systems,” called “Mocha” and “Liba.”

Liba is the heart, the desire, which can only feel. You cannot deceive it by saying, “You feel good!” when it feels bad, and vice versa.

Mocha is the mind, a person’s understanding of what is taking place.

For example, I have a toothache. What should I do? Even “against my will,” despite the protests of my animate nature, my heart, I make a rational decision and go to the dentist. He causes me even more pain, gives me an injection, removes the nerve, and so on, and I even pay him money and thank him. And all this because, in the end, I understand, not feel, but precisely because I understand that I will feel well after the procedure.

From this we see that if a person does not develop both of these systems, Mocha and Liba, within himself, he will remain merely an animal, and act according to his feelings, according to his nature.

Thanks to the mechanism of Mocha, he is capable of bringing the future closer, of doing something that carries no benefit whatsoever from the standpoint of the present moment. The more distant the future a person is able to take into account, the greater that person is.

We see that there are people who work for 20 or 30 years in order to achieve something, and they truly achieve a great deal. And there are others who are incapable of more than working in a small shop: give, receive, take payment “right on the spot,” a few coins, but immediately. A person is satisfied with a bird in the hand; a small mind is not capable of more.

We are required to develop a highly advanced mind, Mocha. I must be ready to go through the entire process of correction. It would seem that I am ready for this, yet it is not without reason that the Creator says, “Come to Pharaoh!”

On my own I am incapable of doing this, and I would not even be able to want it except in the case where I know that it is to my benefit to go together with Him and correct myself for the sake of the goal, perhaps a very distant one. Perhaps only after five, seven, or even ten years will I truly attain the upper one. But it is worth undertaking, because I see no other fulfillment in this life for which it would be worthwhile to live.

If a person constantly returns to the analysis of this point, he will not leave the battlefield.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/9/26, Rabash, “What Does It Mean that Before the Egyptian Minister Fell, Their Outcry Was Not Answered, in the Work?”

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In all of reality there is nothing but the Creator and the created being. Why did the Creator arrange it so that creation, man, is not alone, but is surrounded by many others like him, surrounded by an entire world, in which, entangled, and not directed toward the Creator?

If the Creator were standing before me, I would somehow get along with Him. In any case, I would not avoid contact with Him, and even if I did try to avoid it, I would still know that I had no choice, that only He exists, and I must establish contact with Him. He would not disappear from my field of vision.

However, the world is arranged in such a way that instead of the Creator I am forced to deal with all kinds of things: friends, society, the teacher, and books. I need to organize the entire world, my family, my children, so many details in my environment that I only move farther away from the Creator and forget about Him. And even if I remember Him, the environment immediately confuses me, and once again I drift away from the goal.

This is done intentionally so that through my own efforts I will raise the importance of the Creator. If only the Creator stood before me, I would automatically be directed toward Him: There would be no way out, whether I wanted it or not, I would be obliged to establish this connection, and there would be nowhere to run.

If, besides the Creator, there are many other attractions, factors, and causes, and it seems that they are the ones shaping my life, confusing me, appearing more important, as though they give me more pleasure than the Creator, and determining my life instead of Him, then I have a serious problem. In that case, I must organize my relationship with the Creator while being connected with all these things.

This is how the Creator “plays” with me. Wishing to be important in my eyes, He surrounds me with various things, and they confuse me, draw me in, determine my life, as though I depend on them and not on Him. This continues until I clarify that in truth all of this is false, and it is not my wife, society, the world, fate, nations, or the country that governs me.

I come to the conclusion that I must constantly build my relationship with the Creator against the background of these disturbances.

If I constantly place His importance in my eyes above every disturbance that He erects before me, then I undoubtedly become more and more attached to the Creator and gradually draw closer to Him. He already knows which disturbances He can use to strengthen the bond between us.

This process is called working on recognizing the importance of the Creator. In all the obstacles, I constantly see that behind them stands the same one and only Creator. In this way, I build myself and gather strength in order to reach Him. All these disturbances turn into organs and forces for me that become incorporated into my soul.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/16/26, Rabash, “Make for Yourself a Rav and Buy Yourself a Friend – 1”

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Question: Who makes up the spiritual directorate?

Answer: I brought the people in the spiritual directorate together precisely because they have a predisposition to finding a common ground, and none of them wants to stand out. For this reason alone!

They understand that a joint decision is the correct one. And not because it is correct in itself, but because when it is shared, collective, it draws a blessing from above, from the Creator.

In fact, it may be absolutely wrong compared to what some smart students of ours might come up with. But he is alone and therefore, he will not receive spiritual support from above. They, however, are together, and therefore, they will receive spiritual support. In the end, they will win.

There is a saying: “What the young build leads to destruction, and what the old destroy leads to construction.” And this is truly so.

Compared to all the smart people of our world, I am worth nothing. But I say what I think at my level, and it comes true. Why? Because only support exists. Only this support determines and organizes everything.

According to logic, you can say: “This should not be so.” And still nothing will work out for you, while it will work out for me. Therefore, if the spiritual directorate makes collective decisions, the others can safely follow it with their eyes closed. Under no circumstances should lone “smart guys” be part of it!
In my place there can only be a collective, and that is why I chose it in advance.

Question: And how does the upper force clothe itself in this collective in the process of decision-making?

Answer: They themselves do not know. I do this through them by means of the upper force. They have nothing to do with it. It passes through them purely automatically, and that is all.

Who are they? They are at the same level as you, or even lower. What difference does it make?! You can see for yourself, are there special people there? They are simply people who understand that a collective decision prevails over a private one—over any private one! Bring in the strongest, the smartest, the most exceptional, whatever you like, it makes absolutely no difference.

Question: How can one prevent the “smart guys” from seizing power?

Answer: If everything remains as it is now, only with the spiritual directorate in my place, and anyone who begins to oppose is immediately removed from “Bnei Baruch”; let them go wherever they want, in any direction, then our community will continue to exist in the correct form.

Only the collective! No one in my place. No one. Everything stays where it is, everyone remains in their positions. No one commands, no one stands out, and everything in the organization proceeds according to the same hierarchy as now. Only the spiritual directorate leads. No one has the right to make decisions or do anything without it.

Question: But can people argue with the directorate in order to stimulate it?

Answer: No, that is not called arguing, but proposing. And if the directorate finds it necessary, it will accept the proposal. But it is best not to propose anything at all. Who can propose what? The one who proposes must understand who he is.

Suppose we are now preparing for a congress. There may be proposals to organize it one way or another, but only on the purely technical level of this world. Everything that concerns decision-making on a higher level, no.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The Destruction of Laitman” 9/18/10

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