Question: I know that many of our friends have major health problems, but I want to ask about my mother. She is a friend of our group and very invested in it. In the last two years she has been very ill and suffers so much that you can’t bear to see it.

Whatever we do, nothing helps. This causes anger at the Creator and interferes when you go out and want to convey His love to people. I don’t know how to handle this.

Answer: I understand that it is difficult to speak about love for the Creator when it is clear to us that everything comes from Him. Certainly if we receive great blows of fate, we are not prepared to justify Him.

This is because these are two mutually exclusive feelings: injustice and misfortune and immediate justification. One extinguishes the other because we don’t comprehend how it can be that from a good and beneficent power suddenly all the problems and sufferings of humanity emerge.

We have not yet reached a state where we can see the truth. We are not in a dimension in which the opposites are connected and there is no contradiction between the sufferings of a person and the omnipotence and uniqueness of the Creator.

This is a bit like the paradox: is an electron a particle or a wave? It seems to be both this and that. It depends upon the observer, how he looks at it. And what is the person himself? We don’t know what he is himself. It is the same thing here.

In any case, it is necessary to act: Go to the doctors, carry out their recommendations. And despite all the contradictions, my advice is to turn to the Creator. On the one hand, ask for help for your mother (in general, this is your need). On the other hand, ask the Creator to help you, not to understand Him, but to depart from the state where you condemn Him.

Question: Indeed for many of our friends throughout the world there are difficult problems like these.

Answer: Nobody can guarantee that we will develop in exceptional goodness. Once, ten or twelve years ago, I was getting ready to travel to Moscow to give lectures and disseminate the wisdom of Kabbalah. But one day before the trip I was in an accident. As a result, half of my liver was removed, I underwent a number of operations for my lungs, and in addition to that my leg was broken.

Looking at it logically, I needed to fly to Moscow to begin dissemination there, and look how they stopped me. So what is there to do after this, stop everything? We don’t know where we are going. But the blows do what they do.

Question: How much can the support of the group, the world Kli, help our friends in situations like these?

Answer: Basically, we say: “Let’s pray, let’s think.”, but essentially these words are not worth anything. Only our combined efforts give results, not words and exclamations.
[138402]
From the Sochi Convention 6/10/14, Lesson 3

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Question: Is it possible to conduct an experiment at home in order to see that reality changes for the better?

Answer: You can invite a couple of friends and organize a circle that operates according to the laws of the corrected world. You should feel as one man in one heart and love one another as yourself, as it is written, “All of Israel are responsible for one another,” and “That which you hate, do not do to your friend.”

If you implement these principles among you, then in the connection between you, you will begin to feel a different state and a different life.

Thanks to the changes that you make inside yourself, all the reality around you also changes. There is no other solution. The solution will not come from an army, no matter how much effort, force, money, pain and anger you put into it. This isn’t our weapon.

It is because you are connected to the whole system, which actually depends on the Israeli nation since only they can influence the whole world. By not influencing the world to be better, we actually summon all the afflictions that hit us.

Connection is the only means that can correct everything, but I cannot explain exactly where you should connect in order to correct a specific state. In order to do so, we should speak in terms of Partzufim and Sefirot.

If the Israeli nation advanced just a little towards connection and not just under external pressure, we could change the world for the better. We must bring the revelation of the upper force that is good and benevolent to the world so that it will dwell among all the people.

It is actually the Israeli nation that should bring about such a revelation, and this is called bringing Light to the nations of the world. If we could understand that this is all our work and our mission and the mission of the Israeli nation in the land that must be as one man in one heart, we would get rid of all the problems and receive the respect and gratitude of the entire world.
[138570]
From KabTV’s “The Meeting of Worlds” 6/16/14

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Question: The friends in Sochi are doing great dissemination work. How can one strengthen the connection with them in heart and soul?

Answer: Be envious! Envy is a very good emotion.

Tzimtzum Bet (the Second Restriction) was created from envy: The creature was detached from the Creator to become independent. Then everything also developed with the help of envy, even Arvut (mutual guarantee) and corrections. And everything is in order to realize envy correctly. Envy is a feeling of someone outside of me.

If I differ somewhat from the other, how is that exactly? Even if it is by one gram, is this gram better or worse? Is this other greater or smaller? This means that I am always examining the difference between us in pleasure or suffering.

So envy is the main feeling.

I believe paying for  a school as in Sochi, is worth it. There is something of which to be envious. The friends are doing amazing work, meaning amazing work is being done on them from above. This doesn’t exist anywhere in the world; the beginning of the realization of the correction of the masses. This summer will go down in history.
[138391]
From the Sochi Convention 6/10/14, Lesson 3

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Question: Baal HaSulam writes to his students in “Letter 48” that an arrangement has been built for them that will make it possible for them to remain in their state and not withdraw backward. What is this arrangement?

Answer: Every Kabbalist during his tenure in this world goes through a particular process of correction and organizes his students so that they will gradually be ready to hear about the wisdom of Kabbalah, and, after that, he begins to work with them gradually on the scrutiny of the wisdom itself and to guarantee them with actions that, in a direct manner, are relevant to correction.

In our group, we have passed through many states. In the beginning, we just studied, although, as was understood even then, we spoke about the connection and closeness between us. Gradually, we began to be involved more in the dissemination of the wisdom of Kabbalah in publishing books.

Thanks to these activities, we have begun to feel the system more and understand that it is closed and connected in all its parts and we cannot do so without external dissemination.

When we began to be involved with external dissemination, we began to change ourselves. Our manner of studying and the way of acquiring material changed. As a result of this, we have reached a stage where serious changes have begun to happen in the world. In the meantime, people don’t see all the changes, but we already have re-examined the entire path through which humanity has passed until today.

This entire way was egoistic; the ego grew and pushed us forward. However, now we are beginning to understand that this entire process is destructive and leads nowhere. So, we soon will reach the conclusion that it will be necessary to change the entire structure of human society somehow, from the family and the person himself to the society, the nation, and the entire world. Everything is in a serious crisis and demands change.

Crisis means both the destruction of the old world and the birth of the new. Accordingly, we are beginning to work differently among us and with the entire world. We are studying other chapters from the sources and going into them deeper.

The work is being made more practical, in other words, is directed toward realization: connection, love of friends, awakening their hearts, and adhesion as one person with one heart.

This is our main goal: above our ego, above Mount Sinai (the mountain of hatred [Sina]), to agree to be as one person with one heart, and always in response to this agreement, this aspiration, to receive the Light that Reforms which is called Torah.

In this way, we constantly advance and change, and most importantly, our present changes depend upon the entire world, and vice versa. Through the changes in us, we influence the entire world. Soon, we will begin to feel this whole system, how the entire, integral world advances, turns, and changes its form according to the decisions that we make here and that we realize among us.

The wisdom of Kabbalah first began to be revealed from its complete concealment and gradually unfolded in a theoretical manner. And then it was completely stripped of its mystical clothing. As Baal HaSulam writes in the “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”: However, when I begin to speak to anyone about this study, his first question is, “Why should I know how many angels are in the sky and what their names are? Can I not keep the whole Torah in all its details and intricacies without this knowledge?”

We already have been actively realizing this method. Our goal is to build a platform for the general correction of the entire world for those who step forward as leaders of this collective movement and for all the people who will go after us, in order to spare them from the blows.
[138321]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/24/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot“, Item 119: This is also why the great privilege, when one is awarded sentencing himself to a scale of merit, is still not enough for one to attain whole love, meaning the fourth discernment. This is so because now he does not attain His merit as being good who does good to the good and to the bad, but only His Providence over him.

Yet, he still does not know of His Providence in this sublime and wonderful manner with the rest of the people in the world. Thus, we learned above that as long as one does not know the dealings of the loved one with others, until none of them is missing, the love is still not eternal. Hence, one must also sentence the entire world to a scale of merit, and only then does the eternal love appear to him.

On the way to complete adhesion and attaining the goal of creation, we attain all our deficiencies and all of the Creator’s actions on us during the whole process we have been through when the upper Providence was concealed. Then a person sees how in all the stages, in everything he has been through, the Creator was good and benevolent to him in absolute love.

As a result, a person feels that he loves the Creator back. But this isn’t enough, since he also has to work on the future, so that he will keep the same attitude. This means that he has to develop vessels inside himself that are called faith and confidence, so that in every stage in the future he will not lose faith in the Creator’s love for him.

Even this is not enough in order to determine that the Creator is good and benevolent, since it is all true only with regard to a person himself, and now he has to determine the same thing in regard to everyone else.

This means that at the end of correction, he attains everyone’s end of correction, and from this point he sees the whole human history and the entire path all the souls have gone through in the process of their correction.

These separate souls discover the connections between them above the sea of hatred in which they are immersed that separates them and keeps them apart. Through these connections of love, they feel how the sea of the ego separates them, and thus discover that the Creator constantly takes care of them in the best possible way, and that all the sufferings, the blows, and the problems that they have been through during all of human history and the ascent of the souls through all the worlds until the world of Ein Sof (infinity) were all out of the Creator’s great love.

When a person ascends the spiritual ladder, he becomes detached from his ego as he ascends, and then he sees that it was only in the ego that he felt the afflictions. If it weren’t for the ego and the desire to receive for himself at the expense of others, he would always feel only the love and great care of the Creator for him.

This means that he sees and understands that all the negative feelings don’t come from the Creator, but rather stem from his connection to his egoistic desires. Thus he determines that he is in contact, in a covenant with the good and the benevolent, and that this connection, this covenant, is full of love.
[138195]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/18/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: Where does a person find the power that enables him to awaken the friends?

Answer: I would say that this force comes from heaven, since it belongs to the spiritual spark, to the Reshimo (reminiscence) that awakens in a person. We can actually feel if and how much a person is drawn to it.

This inclination can be revealed in different ways: one may act quietly and calmly while another may be burning and sparkling, but these are only external attributes.

Only the inclination to awaken people belongs to the spiritual spark. If this spark is seriously revealed in a person, we can see it by a person’s actions. He cannot be locked up inside himself.

Of course, he goes through different times when he yearns to know and to study, to be totally immersed in the spiritual world, which he doesn’t know and doesn’t understand. But the inclination to disseminate this knowledge and to tell others about it burns inside him.

If a person has even a small inclination, he should be spurred and supported by the environment. If he has been brought to the group, it means that he has been given the chance, but how he fulfills it is up to him.
[138325]
From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/24/14

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Question: What should I do if I don’t agree with the group’s decisions regarding dissemination? Should I insist on what I think or should I accept the opinion of the group as if annulling myself before the teacher?

Answer: If a person generally agrees with the way the group disseminates and the group makes a certain concrete decision, everyone must see this as an opportunity for a spiritual ascent.

However, a person usually escapes this, thinking that if they have decided something they should also carry it out, but he takes no part in it. He doesn’t understand that by that he misses an opportunity to ascend.

I am very sorry and sad to see what happens to such people. It is actually when they have the chance to ascend that they move aside and escape.

What do I actually care what the group decides. The more naively I accept the friends’ decisions and the more faith I have in them, the more deeply I will be incorporated in them, which means in the vessel where the Light will be revealed. I am not required to do anything else, but my mind and my ego don’t allow me to accept the fact that they are right.

What does it actually matter if they are right or not? It doesn’t matter at all. But I am critical. I have to know in advance that I will be able to remain in the group afterwards and accordingly I decide to what extent I can be critical.

The shattering occurred when they wanted to unite and at the same time criticize one another, but then they discovered that they can’t attain unity under these conditions. This is exactly the sin of the Tree of Knowledge.

The first taste from the Tree of Knowledge was okay, under the conditions of self annulment. But they couldn’t do it a second time. They couldn’t find the limit up to which they could be critical and not more than that. It is because in order to criticize the upper, we must first be adhered to Him.

Only when you become a drop of semen adhered to the upper do you gradually begin to open up, cell by cell. Thus you add one cell after another to your body by activating the egoistic desire and resisting it, so that later, together with it, you can adhere to the upper, and thus your spiritual body grows cell by cell.
[138171]
From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/23/14

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Psalms, 122:8-122:9: “For the sake of my brethren and my companions, I shall now speak of peace within you. For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I shall beg for goodness for you.”

A person must constantly justify the Creator regarding all events that happen to him and his friends, the people who are spiritually close to him.

In our spiritual relationship, we must pray that our friends will feel the good relationship of the Creator. And for ourselves, we must ask to feel the relationship of the Creator as good all the time.
[137872]
From the Sochi Convention 6/10/14, Lesson 2

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Question: What should I learn from yesterday’s experiences?

Answer: I should realize that yesterday my relationship with others was bad and what damage I have caused myself by that. Things cannot get better without the recognition of evil.

I have to realize how my short-sighted ego injures me since I have hurt others without feeling that it is actually me.

I decide that from now on I will do good for myself and for others, as it is written: “Love thy friend as thyself.” I reach the recognition of my evil egoistic nature and decide to rise above it. Thus I ascend above myself and move on to others, that is, I incorporate the desire of others inside me that become as important to me as I am to myself.

It is like a mother who feels the desire of her baby and lives within him. It is this same state we need to reach and begin to live in others. In this way I get closer to the concept of eternity by ascending above time.

Question: How can I not torture myself if I see that yesterday I treated others egoistically?

Answer: But I see that it wasn’t up to me; that it isn’t my fault and that I was created that way, a desire to receive.

Comment: But anyone can say, “It isn’t my fault, this is my nature!”

Answer: The whole question is whether I accept this nature or not. If I clarify it as a result of the right education, according to the method of connection, I realize that it is intentional so that I would want to change. I have to incorporate into others by different actions so that my desire and the desire of others will become one.

It is as if we all live in the same bowl. There is no difference between what is good for another and what is good for me or between what is bad for another and what is bad for me. This is the feeling I have to attain.

Thus I change the past, the present, and the future, because I include all of reality, all the people, into one desire and it all becomes my desire. The human desire also includes the desires of the still, the vegetative, and the animate nature. It turns out that all of creation is me!

Then I begin to discover that life is eternal and that there is no time: no past, no present, and no future. There is only the constant, increasingly growing incorporation into everyone else. This is a totally different time, as the change of states of an increasingly deep incorporation and an increasingly stronger feeling of life.

I see that I can discover the desire of others infinitely by my connection with others and enjoy together with everyone for everyone, like a mother who has a billion children and can fulfill all of them.
[137089]
From the program “A New Life” 4/17/2014

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Baal HaSulam newspaper, “The Nation”: In that sense, we are like a pile of nuts, united into a single body from the outside by the sack that envelops and unites them. Their measure of unity does not make them a united body, and each movement applied to the sack produces in them tumult and separation. Thus, they consistently arrive at new unions and partial aggregations. The fault is that they lack the inner unity, and their whole force of unity comes through an outside incident. To us, this is very painful to the heart.

Someone who supposes that we can unite the people and build a nation according to the usual pattern is greatly mistaken. Without understanding our nature, he thinks that we can act like other peoples who go back home after a forced expulsion, such as in the days of Stalin. The people who were expelled returned and re-organized their lives. But we have not succeeded in doing this because we have lost our original roots. We were once united and were brothers to each other, not brothers in misfortune like today, but brothers in mutual bestowal. Abraham initially gathered people from all corners of Babylon who were ready to go toward connection with him, unlike the rest of humanity.

This unity that Abraham gave was reinforced at Mount Sinai when the people who fled from Egypt became as one man with one heart and received the Torah. But later the connection was broken and the love became unfounded hatred; as a result of this, we went into exile. This hatred passed in part to the nations of the world as well.

As of today, we are not ready to be reborn as a people and a nation without reaching a correction of each one separately and a collective correction between us. If we don’t reach this, then only an artificial “collection” of people who do not correspond to the higher laws of nature or the laws of the lower nature that operate here.

We are not ready to build something according to the laws of this world because we originally didn’t belong to this world, and we cannot be built according to the higher laws because we have not as yet connected to the higher level. Aa a result, we are not here nor there, not this way nor that way.

What is amazing is that we were always strangers and foreigners in this world. And the 66 years of the existence of the nation of Israel are not proof of anything. I am not asserting this for anti-Zionistic reasons but from the spiritual standpoint: We undoubtedly have lost the natural power of unity, which is inherent to all the rest of the peoples on a physical level.

For us it was a spiritual force that united us. So now we are not a people, and our current consolidation is not a nation until we understand and agree that we only have one simple constitution, which is, “And you shall love your friend as yourself,” Arvut (mutual guarantee), “as one man with one heart.” We have no other constitution. And if we maintain this condition, we can restore the people and the nation.

We must build our lives according to this constitution, for it isn’t just plucked out of the air. Rather it was received from above, and this is the difference between it and the beautiful words that can be found in the fundamental laws of every nation. Clearly this will not be immediate, but we must realize this law gradually, and bring a spiritual life on earth. And it is also up to us to be a “light to the nations” in its full meaning.

Yes, it’s hard work, but without it we will not succeed in anything. Otherwise we can be fellow sufferers at best, like nuts in a sack, and nothing better will happen with us.

This is the current situation, and it may continue for another number of years until one of two things will happen:. Either we will carry out the correction or we will not be able tolerate the situation any longer.
[138043]
From the 5^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/23/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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