Question: When Abraham disseminated his ideas about unity in ancient Babel, many thought that he was naive, detached from reality, and only very few Babylonians followed him. What should we do today when we hear people say that we are naive and detached from reality?

Answer: I agree with these people. Indeed calling for unity and love seems naive, especially if we look at human history. A mother’s love for a child is more or less understood, but with regard to everything else, we are managed by corporeality and hormones and consider their influence on us as love.

In fact, in our world, love is receiving pleasure. One may love meat, another fish, and a third his or her partner. These are all pleasures.

Therefore, those who don’t believe in love are right to a certain extent. From their point of view we speak about something that is abstract, about a form of love that simply doesn’t exist in our world.

After all, love is when I annul my desire before the desire of another, do what is good for him, and enjoy it. I have no contact with him: He isn’t close to me, but a total stranger.

Where can we find such things? After all, it is against nature. This means that my message is naive and detached from reality.

Question: So what should I do? Abraham didn’t give up. He did a thorough job until he gathered around him people who thought like him. How did he relate to those who claimed that he was naive?

Answer: We are speaking about a unified system. And consequently with those who consider you naive, you work with them as being in an outer circle. For now you collect those who are close to you and who wish to be with you.

In addition, you have the group and you work on its connection so that it will be as close to the Creator in its attributes as possible. In this manner, the Light that Reforms will be revealed among the friends so that thanks to it,  they will receive the Creator’s form, meaning that their desires, their vessels, will connect in mutual bestowal.

When the Light illuminates among the friends, it will also pour unto the others. After all, we are connected and even those who think less of you because you are naive are still connected to you. Even if the communication channels between you are inactive as yet, the upper Light will flow in them and even a negative connection that is revealed at the beginning will be a basis for what follows. Then you will suddenly discover that those who oppose you are already willing to converse with you.

Question: Where will I find the power not to give up and to continue to disseminate?

Answer: From the group. The group where everyone hears complaints about his naivety receives powers from me. This is the way the world is arranged, and there is nothing we can do about it. This is our work, our destiny, and we must understand that every penny adds up to a big account.

The Light is here and it is pressuring us. We have to try to draw it.
[134202]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/04/14, Talk on the Unification of the Nation

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Question: How can we keep people in a group?

Answer: I understand that we are going through situations that are difficult, but it is always necessary to burn with the importance of the goal in the group.

This is because we don’t have anything except for the importance of the goal that takes a person out of this world, gives him a feeling of eternity and infinity, helps him to overcome the limitations of death and to truly discover all of nature and the entire system of creation. Without a doubt this takes years, but it is necessary to give a person the importance of what he is involved with and what he should be involved with.

Certainly he will do everything through the egoistic force because connection with others is against his nature. This condition is placed before him and it must be overcome because the importance of the goal must be above all these problems.

For example, we live in this world against our will and we don’t have another way out, even though we often are not happy. But even if troubles are ahead and the world doesn’t serve anything good for us, in any case, on the beastly level an instinctive attraction to existence works in us and protects us.

And within, we need to struggle in order to add a qualitative existence to this beastly existence, meaning a connection with a higher perfect and eternal level, which is the upper world. But we need to develop this within by ourselves, because this is not instinctively implanted in us.

Indeed we struggle with existence on a physical level in our world also, even though if we look objectively, there is no meaning to it. A person is born and over some time, after much effort, suffering, problems, troubles, and illnesses, he dies.

What is he living for? It follows that it is in order to suffer. How many happy moments does he have in life that he can say it was worthwhile living for? Instinct forces him to live a miserable life, while in spiritual work, there is no place for instincts. Therefore, we need to struggle to add an additional part to physical life that will make it truly worthwhile to live.

It is necessary to earn this, for we live in order to add an absolute, perfect, and eternal existence to our beastly existence. But it is necessary to invest in this! And then our physical life will also be justified.
[134108]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/24/14, Questions and Answers with Dr. Laitman

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Question: How can we turn envy into a force that helps us advance and not a force that hinders us?

Answer: It is better to feel envy towards the group than towards an individual. I don’t need to envy someone personally because he advances successfully and because I feel that I lag behind compared to him.

Envy should be with regard to the group, with regard to how united they are, how strongly connected they are, while I am not. I have to constantly evoke this feeling in me. This is very good envy.
[134277]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/24/14, Questions and Answers with Dr. Laitman

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Question: Hatred is our natural state we are accustomed to living with. If I have an aversion to someone, I always can justify myself, and the thought that I need to love him awakens resistance in me. How can one leave hatred and rise above the ego?

Answer: To the degree that I hate a friend, I hate the Creator. That the Creator formed us and awakened mutual hatred in us is His exact intention.

It could be that this is the only stumbling block that disturbs our connection. One must not remain with this.

The entire group should connect with a prayer about how to ask the Creator to grant you love for a friend. Maybe, in the meantime, this is not love, but you look at him as someone who is close to you because you have revealed the connection between you and the Creator. Ask the Creator not to remain blind to this, and begin to feel that, specifically here, between the friend and you, the revelation of the Creator will be discovered.
[134275]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/24/14, Questions and Answers with Dr. Laitman

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Question: Where is the Creator before a person discovers Him?

Answer: Nowhere. I always see that people don’t understand that the Creator doesn’t exist. We create Him by ourselves by ascending to a higher level. It is the next state in our evolution, and when we attain it, we make the Creator, as it is written in The Book of Zohar, “You make Me.”

However, we create Him by the attributes that He has prepared for us in advance in which there is a force that we haven’t discovered at all that is called Atzmuto. We discover the image of the Creator inside us by attaining Him in our inner attributes, in our inner senses.

After we determine our contact with the Creator, a person advances according to different principles. However, it doesn’t mean that he has any special guarantee. On the contrary, he encounters increasingly greater obligations with regard to himself and to others. However, at the same time, he also discovers increasingly greater support.

The main thing is to rise to the first level, and it is a problem. Then, there are totally different hardships that a person encounters, like an expert who becomes more and more involved in his profession. He already is devoted to it, immersed in it, and finds unique subtleties and problems in it. However, they don’t repel him since he is totally involved in it.

He already sees our world as a weak reflection of the upper world, which is presented to us in distorted emotions on purpose so that we will exit them and make our way to the real feelings and see everything that happens between us not as the true reality, but as a form of guidance.

Question: So, he probably feels sorry for all the other people who play with the toys of the corporeal world.

Answer: Why should he feel sorry? I have children and grandchildren, and I don’t feel sorry for them. They are parts of the general, enormous desire to receive who also will go through such states with time. At the moment, they are simply on another level.

By the way, a person becomes indifferent to his relatives to a certain extent. He has no desire to devote more attention to them than to anyone else. He becomes a citizen of the universe.

He understands the objectivity of what is going on and treats everyone equally. The moment he has spiritual urges, he immediately passes his knowledge to them. At the same time, he doesn’t commit himself, but does it with ease thanks to the altruistic attributes he has acquired. It is said that a father must teach his son a craft, which means to bring him to the level of Bina.
[134272]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 11/27/13

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Widespread dissemination is work on our new desires because there is nothing except for the one collective soul, Malchut of the world of Infinity.

Spiritual work is designed to reveal that to us and this will be my completion of correction. So there is nothing more important than dissemination. The group becomes only an intermediary, a source for the power to disseminate.

It seems to us that the main thing is the group. No, the main thing is those who are found outside. For their sake we exist as a group, as a people yearning for the Creator, Israel. Everything that we do is only to go out to them and to begin the work of connection, unification, and education among them.

The world is the most important of all, and not the group. In the group I find the Creator, connect with Him, and by way of the group, I receive power from Him. The connection is like the Creator in its characteristics, and according to the law of equivalence of form, I feel this power. But I receive it only in order to go forward and combine a wider circle to myself.

If I combine it with me, then the Upper Light begins to be extended in it as a very small illumination (Nefesh de Nefesh). But this is enough for an enormous Light to be revealed in the higher spheres of the world of Infinity. With this I give contentment to the Creator, shortening the distance between the two extremes: external circles which are not at all adapted to it, and Himself.

Giving contentment to the Creator is possible only by means of the combination of the external circles with Him through me. He enjoys connection with them, so they are very important in His eyes! Whereas, I am only a conduit.

Furthermore, I work on the connection between the Creator and the external desires. But everything that I do is not done for my sake. I carry out the work like a machine, like a precise mechanism, because the Creator gave me the possibility of organizing this relationship with Him.
[133838]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/17/14, Questions and Answers with Dr. Laitman

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Question: What does it mean to be in the center of the group?

Answer: To be in the center of the group means to relate to everyone in an identical way. You shouldn’t divide them into respectable or not, old or new, smart or dumb.

Like a family in which you relate to everyone with the same love, even though it is expressed differently to each one , but everyone is important and necessary. It is especially this sensation that gives the feeling of the center when there is no difference between people.

In my daily work, I can, of course, prefer a specific person from among the people I lean on according to the hierarchy of the factory. But when I think of the group, that is already a completely different picture. Before me there appears a mass, forces that are equal towards everyone and forces that are equal for all.

The group is the equality of everyone for everyone in all categories. There are no differences between others according to any standards. After all, in a family I relate towards everyone according to their needs and don’t ignore anyone: the baby needs this and the grandmother needs that, the wife needs this and that, etc. Each one has his needs and to each one I give the attention that is needed.

Question: Both during the lesson and the meal, we need to constantly look for the center of the group. What do I need to search for within myself?

Answer: One needs to be very careful, so that the center of the group doesn’t bring you to the state of apathy and indifference towards everything that happens, and that you would think that this is the center of the group.

The center of the group is equal relations, goodness, and warmth towards everyone without any differences. It is my family. Bring the group closer to you and you will feel that you are with them and will feel their warmth.
[133835]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/17/14, Questions and Answers with Dr. Laitman

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Question: New people who strive to actively participate in the life of the group should receive a set of rules that state how they should behave during the meals: staying silent, listening, singing together with others, etc. Although, if a person doesn’t have the right desire, he won’t understand that these rules are not invented by us; rather, they have a spiritual root.

Is it worth holding a series of meetings at which major moments in the life of the group are analyzed in the form of seminars?  Shall we choose “rules at joint meals” as the first topic?

Answer: Today, in the state we are currently in, when all of us are members of a big community and we have no time left to communicate with each other, we hold the meals together with women and children. Therefore, it’s quite different from how Kabbalists did it.

I still hope that we will be able to rise above this situation and will behave correctly even though it is a very hard task to achieve. Our meals are accompanied by music, songs, speeches, questions and answers. They include everything except one thing: silence!

I am afraid that if we start holding real Kabbalistic meals, after one or two events people will stop attending them since it is very hard to keep complete silence throughout the meal. We cannot push people so hard although my teacher Rabash, was very strict about this requirement and imposed this kind of behavior on us.

I understand that we have to raise the importance of Kabbalistic meals and eventually we will do them. Through the ritual of sharing food—a purely animalistic activity—people will aspire to elevate this action to its spiritual roots. We know what receiving for the sake of bestowal inside the Kli (vessel) means: It is a Tzimtzum (restriction), reflected Light, etc. When we really necessitate actions that bring us closer to spirituality, we eventually begin acting so.

At Rabash’s meals we sat silently for 45 minutes to an hour. Nobody slept. The tension was very tangible. However, I don’t think it’s feasible to behave like this in our groups.

For that, we have to go through serious internal clarifications. Possibly, a person in his or her everyday routine doesn’t have time for self-exploration, choosing, analyzing, systematizing questions, finding answers, having arguments, setting up intentions, etc. One just cannot scan or scrutinize oneself, nor can one put things on the right shelves and clean up one’s internal house.

I don’t know if people can agree to act this way or if they are capable of doing these things at all. It was much easier for Rabash, since he had 20-30 students; whereas, there are more than 300 people who come here and thousands of others who are present at our events throughout the world. In essence, during Kabbalistic meals we start internal self-clarifications that are similar to the ones we go through during our lessons. It is good work.
[133449]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/17/14, Questions and Answers with Dr. Laitman

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Baal HaSulam, “Shamati #59,” “About the Rod and the Serpent”: “And the Lord said unto him: ‘What is that in thy hand?’ And he said: ‘A rod.’ And He said: ‘Cast it on the ground…’ and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from before it” (Exodus 4).

We must understand that there are not more than two degrees, either Kedusha (Sanctity) or Sitra Achra (Other Side). There is no intermediary state, but the same rod itself becomes a serpent, if thrown to the ground…

A hand means attainment, from the words, “and if a hand attains.” A rod means that all one’s attainments are built on the discernment of inferior importance, which is faith above reason.

(This is because faith is regarded as having inferior importance, and as lowness. One appreciates the things that clothe within reason.)

Reason is attainment in the mind and the heart, which means that it is my current state in which I feel and see myself and the world and I want to advance towards the goal of love, bestowal, and connection. I do what the Kabbalists say in their books and follow the advice of the teacher and the friends, but everything turns out just the other way around.

This is what I discover within reason. It is important how I relate to it, it is an important point. No matter what I feel, what’s important is how I relate to what I feel!

What I feel is called reason and I have to relate to my feelings above reason. This means that I follow the faith of the sages, the greatness of the teacher, and the greatness of the friends by holding on to the upper force. When I have no more powers, I ask the Creator and the friends for powers. I keep on advancing although according to my heart and mind I see that I am at a dead end with regards to the work in the group, the dissemination, and the study.

According to my heart and mind there is no way I can attain anything but despair before a blocked Machsom (barrier). I see that I am standing in front of a wall and cannot do anything. But I relate to this obstacle in faith above reason, and carry on in bestowal as if I have powers, a mind, and heart, as if I am full of enthusiasm. I must operate this way, although me ego certainly doesn’t allow me to do so. Here I turn the serpent into a rod by taking it in my hand.

Whatever happens, the state itself doesn’t matter, because it is arranged by the Creator. What’s important is how I relate to this state. If I relate to it simply, directly, it is called within reason. Then I fall powerless and think that the goal is unattainable and leave this path. However I can advance by faith above reason, and here I need the help of the friends, mutual guarantee, and a daily support schedule.
[133501]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/20/14, Shamati #59

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From Rabash, Article, “On My Bed at Night”: “On my bed at night I sought him whom my soul loves,” to lead me out of her, since the Nefesh de Kedusha belongs to the assembly of Israel, and she is in the other, impure land, and asks of Him whom my soul loves to deliver me from it, from the impure land.

This means that since the Nefesh de Kedusha is in lowliness, the Nefesh de Noga does what the three impure Klipot want. It therefore follows that the Nefesh de Kedusha must tolerate the governance of the impure Klipot, which govern them. This is why the Nefesh de Kedusha asks to be delivered from this exile….

We often come across a state like this called “on my bed at night.” The question is, how to clarify it, how to contend with it and to use it to advance.

In each one of us three forces are at work: Nefesh de Kedusha, Nefesh of the three impure Klipot and the Nefesh de Klipat Noga, which doesn’t belong to Kedusha or to the impure Klipot and gives us free choice. So we are sometimes inclined in the direction of Kedusha and sometimes towards Tuma’a (impurity), depending upon who is dominating us.

Sometimes illumination reaches us from Above and the Nefesh de Kedusha is awakened in us. In the meantime, it is not the true Neshama, we don’t have a Neshama yet, but the Light is revealed on the right side, on the side of bestowal. And so we begin to have more appreciation for bestowal, giving, and connection. We feel the illumination in it and so egoistically we prefer it.

The next time it’s the opposite, nothing illuminates us with the power of bestowal, from the right side, with the Nefesh de Kedusha, and so we are drawn towards the Nefesh de Tuma’a, to the left side. This means that we begin to be concerned about everything that will interest our ego.

We are rarely able to influence these two sides, yet their action on us ultimately comes to be expressed in the middle line, in Klipat Noga. That is how we determine our situation and our future, what we will decide next time.

It is always about the future, because in the present state, there is nothing he can do. He must accept it as good and as given for his own good. The main thing is not to forget that all states intentionally come from Above.

All the states are specifically arranged for us so that we will relate to them correctly. They don’t require anything from us except for our correct attitude, meaning the intention. We ourselves don’t change anything in reality.

This reality is determined; this is Malchut of the world of Infinity. Yet thanks to our correct relationship to it, which is an awareness that there is none else besides Him, the good and benevolent, and with the help of adherence with this singular power that manages all of creation, we set points on the way for ourselves. The entire work consists of the understanding, attainment, and justification of this active force.

Specifically due to these states, the “nights,” we must always rise and justify the higher behavior, in spite of the darkness of the night. This justification is through thanks and praise for the Creator, His exaltation, “I am the first and I am the last,” in His relationship of immense love for all of creation. All of the states through which the Creator brings us are given for one goal, to bring the creatures to the point of adherence with Him.
[133374]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/23/14, Writings of Rabash

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