Question: What does this mean, “I dwell among mine own people” (Kings II 4:13), and how is this connected to our work with the wider public?

Answer: “I dwell among mine own people” means that we discover the Creator in Divinity, in all the desires that are accumulated in the speaking level and want to resemble the Creator. Divinity is the collective, the community, all of humanity that gathers to itself the nature of the still, vegetative, and animate and becomes a backing, a substance for a desire, in which the Creator, the Upper Light, is revealed.

We are now working according to the following sketch: Above – the Creator, in the middle – the group, and below – the community. We go out to the wider public, absorb their deficiencies, make them into our deficiencies, and raise them up to the Creator. The answer reaches us from the Creator, MAD 1 (The Light), and now we have something to transmit to the public, MAD 2 (in the sketch).

However, after certain work we reach a stage in which the group will begin working with the Creator found within the public. The vessel, the Divinity (Schechina), this is the public; and the Light, the inner part of the public, is the dweller (Shochen), the Creator, who is found within humanity.

First of all, I correct myself with respect to the group, and then I must imagine it in its perfected form, in the world of Infinity, seeing it as Divinity. If she seems broken to me, this is only to the degree of my brokenness. So I must accept her as fixed, and constantly change myself to see the group as more and more advanced, higher, spiritual, sacred in my eyes, where the Creator is revealed more and more. And when I am in descent and look at it egoistically, I say that it is I who is determining this and they will change for my good; meaning, I won’t serve them, rather they will serve me.

And when we take care of the public and through it (within the center of the group) reach the Creator, then the public becomes precious to us. The Creator is precious to us and the public is precious. That is how we begin to clarify the relationships between Light and vessel. In the vessel it depends on what kind of Light we discover in it and how we feel that we are causing the Creator contentment.

In this Light we discover the higher identity that comes to be expressed through the nature of the world. The Creator has no other form other than what we give to Him. Now we attribute zero form to Him, so He doesn’t exist for us. And to the degree that we can give Him some kind of form of bestowal within the vessel, to that degree He is revealed.

So it is said, “I dwell among mine own people.” In the next stage the group will be like our “point in the heart,” and all of the work will be in discovering humanity as the right backing for the complete discovery of the Upper Light.

This stage will come by itself to the degree of our development, but from this it is already necessary to understand how important dissemination is today. We don’t just do something good for the community; rather, we work on our spiritual vessel for discovery of the Creator.

In our day, we require a group; one is not enough for this. There was a time when two could discover this relationship by working together. Each one worked outside of himself within the connection, and this was enough, as is written: “The minimum of many is two” (Yerushalmi Yoma 13a).

But now even a strong and advanced group of a thousand people cannot discover the higher power. The beginning of the Divinity must be here, and so the emphasis will be more and more in the direction of the public. And we will discover very quickly that the public is not just Israel, but all of humanity.

The vessel will begin to react. All of humanity will suddenly begin to react all over the world.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/26/14

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The Torah, “Leviticus”, 22:26 – 22:28: And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: When an ox or a sheep or a goat is born, it shall remain under its mother for seven days, and from the eighth day onwards, it shall be accepted as a sacrifice for a fire offering to the Lord. An ox or sheep you shall not slaughter it and its offspring in one day.

This is speaking  about the corporeal part of a person’s desire and how it can be raised and corrected in relation to the previous level.

First, there is development in utero and then the period of suckling. A week is enough for an animal to receive and to adapt to a whole level of HGT NHYM, since an animal goes through only seven levels of development and not ten like man.

During the seven days (seven levels) the animal receives and adapts to everything from the upper level and detaches from it. It lives according to instinctive laws, and therefore a human being that is on the animal level works instinctively.

When you look at the world you see that everyone learns from others how to live and repeats what they see. Animals don’t have the three upper Sefirot that symbolize a head and therefore their head is on the same level as their body, not above it.

The same thing happens today, with a world that is currently on the animal level of development. Its head disappeared some ages ago when the real great minds disappeared.

Humanity evolves in a totally automatic manner, despite what scientists, philosophers, governments, bankers, or the masses say. They only pile up their meager  changes on every level of nature, but it does not at all change the perception of their evolution.

The critical moment was when man began to produce and earn more than needed. From that point onward, capitalism began to develop, but until that moment everything was simple and natural. Man lived by providing his basic necessities, not because he wanted to, but because there were no new technologies to help him.

But when man invented the plow that allowed him to plow deep into the ground, he began to engage in making pottery and metal working, which were opportunities to make greater profits than needed.

The added value inspired the ego and the ego began to spur the added value. Instead of the internal, moral, ethical development of man, the world turned in the direction of technological development and this was the turning point that determined the direction humanity would follow.

But today we are at the end of this path, where our technological development is collapsing and we are facing a hopeless situation. We must understand that we have to decrease our desires to a level that is suitable for a decent living. It is as in mathematics: a necessary and sufficient condition. This means that consumption should be sensible, while all our energy and options should be focused on attaining the upper goal and making ourselves human beings together with all of humanity.

Comment: It turns out that there is no choice, just like in Pushkin’s legend of The Fisherman and the Golden Fish. He should have stopped when he had the luxury palaces, but the old woman couldn’t and eventually she was left with nothing,. We are at that same point right now.

Answer: But we have the option of a soft landing. By using the wisdom of Kabbalah we can show humanity, in a good and sensible manner, what would happen if we don’t accept this method. Otherwise we will still fulfill the goal of creation, but in a hard way, through revolutions, wars, and problems.

We see how conflicts suddenly break out in a seemingly empty place. You just need to strike a match. There is great hatred in the world as everyone hates everyone else and therefore the tiniest spark can start a fire.

We have to do our very best to make the world understand that the Torah speaks about the improvement and modifications of man along a good, healthy, safe, smooth path of harmonious evolution. Haven’t we suffered enough that we don’t want that? Do we have to suffer a lot more in order to change our path towards positive evolution? Therein lies our problem.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 5/28/14

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Baal HaSulam, “Matan Torah” (The Giving of the Torah), Section 17: From all the above, we can understand one of the most perplexing phrases of our sages: “All of Israel are responsible for one another.” This seems to be completely unjust, … But according to the above said, we can understand their words very simply; we have shown that each of the 613 Mitzvot in the Torah revolves around that single Mitzva: “Love thy friend as thyself.” And we find that such a state can only exist in a whole nation whose every member agrees to it.

We truly will have nothing to wait for and no hope that we can reach such an intensity of connection that is called love of others from our egoistic state, even though we have a group and study, unless we work in a dimension called the entire nation.

There must be an integration of very many connected desires here in which each one discovers his unique character, and then, to the degree of the full mutual integration between them, it will be possible to reach such a powerful desire that will attract the Light that Reforms, bringing them the quality of love.

The sons of Jacob were unable to reach this love, this intensity of desire, as long as they were closed within their family, and there was even hatred among the brothers, which testifies to the intensity of the desire required for correction. This is because each one had a different mother, his own share in the house of his father, and his own character.

However, even this was not enough for their connection, beyond rejecting each other, which would give them a fulfillment called love. Only when the great ego called Pharaoh was added to them and after they had gone through 400 years of the Egyptian exile and discovered all the levels of the ego, was the intensity of the separation sufficient for them to be called a nation instead of a group.

The idea here is not quantity, but speaks only about quality. Therefore, after they received additional ego, additional density, they began to call themselves a nation and merited to receive a means to make a correction that became imperative for them. This is because they no longer could correct anything themselves as brothers who felt themselves to be members of one family before their entry into Egypt.

With the exodus from Egypt and the heaviness of heart, after they took all the vessels of the Pharaoh, they already began to require the Torah.
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From the 5^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/27/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Baal HaSulam, “Matan Torah” (The Giving of the Torah), Item 16: For then, each member of the nation was asked if he agreed to that exalted work. And once each and every one in the nation agreed to it in heart and soul, and said “We will do and we will hear,” it then became possible to keep the whole of the Torah, and that which was previously impossible became possible.

To reach the state of receiving the Torah, first we need a heaviness of heart that is called the Egyptian Exile, darkness with heaviness of the heart, a reaction from the ego, the desire to receive. The more that it grows, the more terrible it is and kills the person. We must feel that the Creator is concealed and we have a great need to discover Him, meaning discovering the characteristic of bestowal.

Specifically the Creator is what is called the discovery of the characteristic of bestowal, and not some mystical power that serves us the way we imagine within our ego.

We decide that the desire to receive is darkness to us, and the desire to bestow is the Light. And it is impossible to receive the Torah, meaning the Light that corrects us and raises us above the desire to receive to the desire to bestow, except in a group that will be big enough in intensity, quantity, and quality.

In this group we must gather people who support each other and are ready to devote their lives for the benefit of the society. They are sure that the best thing is to be dependent upon the opinion of the society.

This doesn’t mean that a person throws himself egoistically into the hands of the society so that it will be concerned about him and he doesn’t need to think about anything. He also doesn’t do this absent-mindedly, throwing himself into a group and thinking that whatever will be will be. No, rather the concern in overcoming his ego, in understanding all of his power, emotion, and intellect, is that he nullifies himself towards the environment, rising above his emotion and intellect.

Being a very wise, sensitive, mature, and serious person, he nullifies all this and accepts the opinion of the society, which is the opposite of all of his knowledge. He sees that this completely refutes his healthy intelligence, his logic, his mental strength, and his vision of the world; he discards all of his data and nullifies himself toward the society.

Just imagine what kind of difficult work Rabbi Yosi ben Kisma did in nullifying himself before his students. Certainly he didn’t actively show this to them in order not to ruin them. But he himself accepted being in the small, wretched, beginners group that the Creator arranged for him, and made himself even less and lower than them.

In order to get energy for spiritual advancement, a person must nullify himself towards the group. This is done “above reason” and is extended into all areas of life, but this happens only after many very serious calculations.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/26/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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If a person doesn’t feel that everything that happens inside him and in all of reality comes from the Creator who is the only source of life, it is called punishment, although the feeling of detachment itself also comes from the Creator and isn’t the person’s will. There is no greater punishment than being detached from the Creator, which means to forget that everything comes from Above, from Him.

A person should continuously renew his contact with the Creator, consider his thoughts, and decide how to answer every appeal that comes from Him. What happens to me makes no difference. What’s important is that everything comes from Him: both the negative and positive thoughts. At one time I bless Him and another time I curse Him; at one time I want to remember that He is everywhere and another time I don’t want to remember that He exists, but I yearn for physical corporeal pleasures.

But He sends all that, and we should examine all these situations, which are mostly unpleasant. It is because the Creator shows me to what extent I am immersed in my shallow lowly ego, while I have to find the right answer and to understand why the Creator sends me such desires and thoughts and why I want to respond the way I do and not the way I should.

If I work that way, I begin to feel that I need support and that it is impossible to manage by myself. I can escape the group and manage by myself only in my corporeal life by hiding from the Creator and without feeling guilty in any way, but if I really want to advance, I immediately feel that I must clarify my relations with Him.

There is no one in the world I settle my accounts with but Him because He is the only source. Therefore, I feel that I have to be in a group, connected to the teacher, and that I need support.

In that case I already tighten the connection with the friends and with the teacher and begin to listen. It is because I need advice as to what to do in order to be constantly connected to the Creator and to not forget about Him, to properly see that every moment in my life comes from Him. I must remember that even my trivial thoughts and my corporeal desires come from Him. Everything comes from Him in order to push me to even greater adhesion to Him, to closeness.

This is what my response should be. It means that we speak the same language. He sends me different signals, and I respond to them: “I understand and I tune myself more and more to You.”

Thus I get closer to the Creator and perceive Him in greater and more accurate resolution. I begin to learn His language. There are many languages in the world, which don’t allow us to understand one another. Here I learn the Creator’s language: how he turns to me and how I should answer Him.

If a person and the group focus themselves that way, they succeed very quickly and attain contact with the Creator since He begins to teach us every moment in our life.

All of creation is influenced that way by the Creator and thus advances and gets closer and closer on its way back to the Creator. First, there was the spreading of the worlds from the top down and the shattering, then human history evolved and now we begin to ascend in order to return to the world of Infinity.
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From the Convention In France “One For All And All For One,” Day Two 5/10/14, Lesson #4

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In spiritual work we proceed in the right line, which is towards bestowal, approach, and unification. And everything against this that is awakened in us is what we need to correct. Only this! All the rest is done intentionally and isn’t subject to any correction. We get all kinds of disturbances so that we will choose what we need more clearly. This is so that we will begin to choose from the general providence, which isn’t subject to any correction or individual, personal attainment of the Creator. This is specifically where following our efforts, we are shown how much we are not ready to do this.

Why? So that we will require help from above.

The forces that are awakened specifically in this place of unity and push us away from each other are an expression of the shattered Kli.

Specifically, we must not miss these desires and characteristics. The moment that this snake reveals himself inside, you should immediately grab him, constantly choke him and not let go. It seems to you that you have strangled him, you breathe easily and can then embrace him. But after a moment, he wakes up again. This happens even within a second, and there is no interruption! And this is good. We must constantly make starting and stopping movements like these.

The recognition of evil is the first stage and is very difficult. On every level it will be more and more acute and will require a more precise, conscious, emotional, and analytical intention. “Why is this feeling awakened, for what purpose, or is this just rejection? Why this? What for? What does the Creator want to tell me?”

I begin to associate the recognition of evil with the Creator, “He deliberately tripped me up.”

When we give a child something to do, understandably he tries to do it because instinct is pushing him towards this. And we are led forward, not by instinct, but by feeling the environment. The group holds me, obligates and directs me. There is tension in the air all the time and a need for constant methodical work until the completion of correction.

The group must constantly push me, and we all do this for one another. After all, the group is not a team of external employees. The group is what we organize and hold and the reason why we obligate ourselves. And each one of us, when he feels pressure and resistance from within, must feel that the group is holding him and won’t let him relax or go beyond its limits. This situation must be constant.

Clearly, new outbreaks of ego, anger, rejection, and trouble will be awakened. And the group must awaken in us an increasingly sophisticated sense of responsibility and the need to work specifically on the new sensations that are awakened in us. This is so that nobody will flee or try to justify himself and say “All of this is nonsense. I don’t want it and it doesn’t interest me anymore.”

These disturbances are very sophisticated, but it is precisely through this sophistication that we begin to be aware of the Creator. It is specifically in this way that I learn about Him. Just as in life when we live with someone, we begin to understand him through all kinds of good and bad relationships in our mutual dance. It is the same thing here. We have no other way of becoming aware of the Creator.

In these states, we have to go through a particular amount of necessary mutual movements. The Creator shows me negative characteristics, I try to overcome them, He shows more, and again I overcome.

Like a gilded statue made from plaster covered with gold, so have to cover our desire for pleasure with a desire to give pleasure, meaning to use it in order to bestow. And so all kinds of egoistic, negative desires constantly come to me that are awakened regarding others, and I must cover them and transform them into characteristics of bestowal and love instead of hatred. We advance according to this principle.

After I have learned a bit and have understood how the Creator plays with me, I am ready to be closer to Him. I have passed through the first stage. I am now aware of Him, understand Him, and can somehow resist Him. I have accumulated data and experience and am no longer found on such a level where it was possible to get rid of me, to confuse me with one small blow. I already understand more, I am more self-controlled, I have gathered a group that is appropriate for me, and have surrounded myself with friends, and so forth.

Ultimately, after I have learned some of the characteristics of the Creator, I can be in a more complex interaction with Him, and He then begins to be more revealed before me.

He is revealed to me: “Here I am”, and who are you?” I am negatively and egoistically worse. But I begin to understand that all of these are expressions within me, and from this I begin to understand the opposite positive image by correcting my characteristics, which have already become shared characteristics.
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From the St. Petersburg Convention “Day One” 7/12/13, Lesson #2

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The amazing system called Jethro is part of the general spiritual system that includes egoistic attributes as well as several altruistic attributes that are totally the opposite.

The connection between Jethro and Moses was kept through Zipporah and the children.

Question: Why was Moses allowed to marry Zipporah, Jethro’s daughter? Is it because the nation wasn’t divided into tribes then?

Answer: We mustn’t look at that from the perspective of division. All the biblical figures throughout history took wives from hostile tribes. Jacob, for example, married Rachel and Leah who were the daughters of his greatest enemy Laban.

Jethro doesn’t support or side with Moses either, but there is a very clear connection between them as Jethro is totally immersed in Pharaoh (the ego) with one foot and, thanks to that, can be connected to Moses.

The question is about what Moses did with Jethro for forty years. Why did he need this intermediate level? Forty years is the level of Bina on every level.

Having studied forty years with Pharaoh, Moses spends the next forty years with Jethro and only then does he spend the same number of years with the nation of Israel.

Question: If Pharaoh is the higher level of study, why must he study from Jethro afterward?

Answer: It is in order to know how to change to the attribute of bestowal. A true connection is formed between opposite attributes, just as was the case with Jacob and Laban’s daughters. What is more, Jacob had concubines and servants who also had his children. This may seem like an unclear mess, but this is how the world of desires is created, and this is how they are tightly connected.

Ruth, the mother of King David’s dynasty, belonged to Moab, which was a nation that hated the Israelis. David’s heir is the Messiah Son of David, who will bring the entire world to unity many years later at the end of time.

An ordinary person who doesn’t see the whole picture doesn’t see the beginning and the end, the entrance and the exit of this system. He doesn’t understand why it closes this way, but the integral system closes precisely in this way.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 5/21/14

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The High Priest is the highest point, the highest intention through which a person communicates with the Creator. In our world, he was chosen by the great assembly.

The hierarchical division of the people of Israel began from the time of Moses. After he received the Torah and brought the people into the wilderness, his father-in-law Jethro taught him how to correctly organize the hierarchy of the people.

Before then people always were in a circle, gathered around Mount Sinai and feeling that they were equals. In the Exodus from Egypt, they needed to work in three lines, correctly integrating their egoistic desires, arranged according to a hierarchy with an altruistic intent that had to be circular. This was because even though it was directed toward the Creator, it was derived from the center of the circle. How was it possible to integrate these two things? For this, Jethro gave Moses a method for correctly handling the people.

People must yearn to become round in their intention but not in their mutual compliance with movements toward the Creator. The equality can be only in intent because from the start the desires are not ours. They are given to each one of us from above.

Jethro suggested dividing the people into tens, hundreds, thousands, and so forth. Each of the twelve tribes went to its camp. All kinds of unifications and connections between them were prohibited. For example, it was not allowed for them to marry others from another tribe. Each tribe had to keep to itself, but simultaneously, they had to advance together.

The correct combination between individuals and a single unity was revealed through choosing ministers for tens, hundreds, and thousands, while the High Priest was chosen from the tribe of Levi, which was composed of Levites and Cohens only.

In this way Jethro established and arranged hierarchical work with the ego because he had been a servant of Pharaoh. However, because he precisely knew the entire system of Pharaoh he could be an intermediary between Pharaoh and Moses.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 5/21/14

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Question: Where are we today? The people of Israel left Egypt, received the Torah on Mount Sinai, understood that they had some kind of task, a mission, and what was next? What kind of task has been placed before us today?

Answer: Our actual task today is to develop the people of Israel in the land of Israel so that they will know what they must do to sustain themselves and continue to exist.

When our people will ensure their existence, they must explain why they exist, for what higher purpose. Only if we carry out this higher purpose and yearn to bring all of humanity to adhesion with the Creator do we merit being connected with Him.

This knowledge must reach the people, and we will attract the Light that must illuminate us when we go to meet it through our yearning to connect and provide an example for the entire world. However, if we don’t connect, then that same Light will illuminate us through its backside.

If we are not ready to approach this Light, it will be revealed to us in an opposite way, and as a result, we will experience terrible misfortune such as wars, disasters and another holocaust like we passed through 70 years ago.

We see from day to day how the world situation is developing and becoming worse. Everyone in the world is beginning to talk about anti-Semitism as if it were a normal phenomenon. No one is ashamed anymore, and no one considers it to be bad. England, Scandinavia, and Spain, essentially all of them, are recognized as being openly anti-Semitic, as if it were self-evident.

In fact, they are right, after all, we have not transmitted the method of correction to the world. We have not carried out our obligation.

Comment: The problem is that not everyone believes that this is really our obligation, our function.

Answer: It is necessary to listen to what the sages, the Kabbalists, say. We have no other choice. We will never attain the truth as long as we have not corrected ourselves and have not attained revelation. So we cannot sit and wait until the truth becomes known to us. It will never be known to us if we don’t advance toward it.

We welcome everyone in this world to connection and a simple unity. We are not required to wait until the heavens open and we see the spiritual world. Sit in a circle with others and in 20 to 30 minutes you will see how you begin to feel this higher power. In the center of this circle, in the center of our connection, we feel the origin of a unique force.

This is possible and this must be done quickly among all of the people of Israel! The problem is that it is not for nothing that these people are called “stiff-necked.” In spite of it all, you must not despair, for the people of Israel in relation to the entire world are like the Cohens and Levites among the people of Israel.

Although we are not ready to be Cohens and Levites, the people of Israel who yearn to be Yashar El (straight to the Creator), will be required to become them, since the world will require this from us.

The moment that we begin to seriously realize this task together, and the moment we begin to carry out this unification of the people of Israel, the entire world will settle down. Everyone will look at us and say, “See what they are doing! We will wait. They have initiated something special.”

The nations of the world will feel this because within them are the roots of the shattering due to the sin of Adam HaRishon with the tree of knowledge, and if Israel begins to correct this sin, then the nations of the world will feel this, “Oh, they are making this correction! We didn’t even know that it was possible to correct this at all and come closer, whereas the Jews are doing it!”

The nations of the world will immediately change their attitude towards us. We will begin the correction and it will be known immediately to the entire world. We don’t even need to advertise anything about it. Not long ago, I published a large article in the largest American newspaper, The New York Times and, after that in the English newspaper The Telegraph and in the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera. However, in the future, there won’t be a need to advertise anything. The nations of the world will write about it themselves because they will feel it themselves.

However, if we don’t bring them this correction and don’t carry out our task, the anti-Semitism, which we are now witnessing, will continue to grow. So, come. Let’s cross the wilderness quickly and reach the land of Israel.
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From KabTV’s “The Torah Chapters with Shmuel Vilozni” 2/2/15

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Baal HaSulam, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”`: With this collective responsibility, each member of the nation was liberated from worrying about the needs of his own body and could keep the Mitzva, “Love thy friend as thyself” in the fullest measure, and give all that he had to any needy person, since he no longer cared for the existence of his own body, as he knew for certain that he was surrounded by six hundred thousand loyal lovers, who were standing ready to provide for him.”

I will succeed in attaining mutual guarantee on condition that I will feel personal security. This security comes from the environment that shows me that it is concerned about me so much that it neutralizes in me any need to think about assuring my existence. So I depend upon the environment. The main thing is to find an environment that will influence me with the power of mutual guarantee, for through this they neutralize my ego and force me to forget about myself and to love others.

This means everything is found in the hands of the society that can transform me into a lover of all people, only if I want it. It is possible to take the most cruel and unruly person, and if all of us surround him with mutual guarantee, he will be forced to reach love of others.

A person depends on the environment one hundred percent. But his work is to obligate the environment to influence him with the help of the power of mutual guarantee. To the degree that he does this, to that degree he becomes sensitive to receiving the power of mutual guarantee from others and in that way he reaches love of others.

But this is a closed circle. Even the best environment will not be able to convey the power of mutual guarantee to a person if he has no sensitivity. We recognize in ourselves how much we are insensitive to external influences. In childhood our parents tried hard to influence us, but we discounted them. So from his side, a person must influence the society, and to the degree that he does this, he becomes more and more sensitive to the influence of the society.

The influence must be mutual. We cannot take ordinary people and surround them with the power of our mutual guarantee because they will become even greater egoists. We must educate them so that they will understand that this works only like this: Me– towards the society, and the society – towards me. But if the group influences me and brings me the power of mutual guarantee, then it changes me and directs me towards love of others.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/28/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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