Question: Which criterion can we use to constantly check whether we are in the right environment?

Answer: The right environment is an environment that guides a person’s thoughts and desires to connect with the Creator with maximal force.

The right environment is all my inner qualities relative to my point in the heart, which connects me with the Creator. Everything else in me must contribute to this point of connection with the Creator.

My properties, desires, and aspirations are called my environment. My “I,” which is called “Moses” in me, that is, the point where the formation of the soul begins, can grow only in the right environment.

Rabash writes that there must be an initial state, stages of development of this state, the environment, and stages of development of this environment. If all this works together for the connection with the Creator, optimal conditions are created for the development of the soul.

I have to check which of these four parameters I can influence and which I cannot. It is a pity to waste time, for this is our work. There are many people who waste their breath, unable to see that their pursuits are empty. Of course, they will understand this over time, but it is a shame to make an effort only to realize the mistakes.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/15/26, Rabash, “What Is ‘Do Not Slight the Blessing of a Layperson’ in the Work?”

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Question: Why is it necessary to put pressure on the group so that it is more precisely directed toward the goal? What does it mean to put pressure? It seems as though the group is constantly resisting this.

Answer: No, the group simply consists of people just like you. Putting pressure on them is also part of your free choice.

By placing yourself under the influence of your friends, as if standing under a shower so that they may influence you and cleanse you, you must also examine exactly how they are influencing you. Maybe they are being frivolous; maybe you are sitting in the “company of mockers.”

You must constantly demand that the group improve.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/14/26, Rabash, “What It Means that ‘Law and Ordinance’ Is the Name of the Creator in the Work”

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Question: How is the group related to “existence from absence” (Yesh mi Ayin)? Why should it provide me with forces that it has no connection to?

Answer: The group does not belong to Yesh mi Ayin, and therefore, it can give you additional strength. The strength of the group lies in its connection to our root where all souls are united together.

Therefore, here in our world, through my external actions, I can awaken those upper forces in which the power of my ‘”I” is not merely an individual force, as it is in the corporeal world, but is inseparably connected with another 599,999 such forces.

At our root, I and all the other souls exist on the level of Adam HaRishon. Therefore, while living in our world, I can draw strength from my root.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/15/26, Rabash, “What Is ‘Do Not Slight the Blessing of a Layperson’ in the Work?”

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Question: What should one expect from the commandments of the Torah?

Answer: A “commandment of the Torah” consists of extracting the concept of the “Torah of life” from the Torah, attaining life itself. Baal HaSulam writes about this in TES (The Study of the Ten Sefirot). He refers not to the study itself, but to its result.

Question: Suppose a person is sweeping the floor in our building or working in the kitchen. Is this considered that he is studying Torah?

Answer: If I do something in our kitchen and intend thereby to attain something in my life, then the desire that arose in me at that moment, multiplied by the good, beneficial thing that I contributed to the group, that is, multiplied by the group’s collective desire to attain spirituality, becomes my own desire.

By serving my friends, I thereby acquire their desires, include myself in them, and then those desires influence me, and direct my own desire into the proper course.

As a result, during the lesson I intend to draw the light of the Torah that reforms from what I study, not to become a great sage or anything else.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/14/26, Rabash, “What It Means that ‘Law and Ordinance’ Is the Name of the Creator in the Work”

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A person cannot raise a genuine inner plea to the Creator; they can only do so by drawing strength from the group because the importance of the connection with the Creator, which they absorb from the group, surpasses the power of their own pride.

In an ordinary state, a person with a certain degree of pride cannot independently realize the importance of connection with the Creator, since pride acts like Pharaoh within them, and it is impossible to get rid of it.

Only when, as it is written, the children of Israel sighed from the work (that is, when a person gathers all his strength and receives help from the group), can they raise the level of importance of connection with the Creator, which will become greater than the level of one’s own pride.

Then they subdue their pride and turn to the Creator with a request for the Creator to reveal Himself and give them the strength to truly keep their pride under control.

There is no other way to get rid of it except by truly asking the Creator for the strength to do so. Only the group helps to generate a genuine request.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/15/26, Rabash, “What Is “Do Not Slight the Blessing of a Layperson” in the Work?”

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Question: Is it possible to escape from evil for a month, or at least for a week?

Answer: I do not think running away from evil for a week or a month would help, because you would very quickly find that you need the disturbances of this world. You have not yet absorbed enough of them.

How can you verify this? Go to some remote village, isolate yourself there, begin studying the wisdom of Kabbalah, study the authentic sources together with your friends, and you will see that after a day or two at the most, boredom will set in, and you will have nothing to do. I am certain that this is exactly what will happen.

Question: Do we not provide one another with enough material for internal work?

Answer: No. You will not even feel the need to work with one another. I must constantly receive the disturbances of this world. Then I will have the need to connect with my friends in order to overcome these disturbances and attain spirituality. Otherwise, I will have no need for society, let alone for studies.

Do you think your studies will become more productive if you isolate yourself by withdrawing from this world? No, they will not improve, and your studies will not become more effective—they will not truly exist at all. The studies will become completely theoretical, with no real necessity for them. We have no possibility of advancing toward spirituality unless we remain connected with everyday life.

I, too, never stayed away from Rabash for long. Sometimes it lasted three days, but only occasionally. Of course, during the day I spent many hours with him, yet I still did not separate myself from ordinary daily life.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/14/26, Rabash, “What It Means that ‘Law and Ordinance’ Is the Name of the Creator in the Work”

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Based on an understanding of our animalistic nature, we begin to realize that no one can ever unite with another. Each person remains separate.

Today we see that the family, as it once existed, is disappearing. The former relationships between parents and children are no longer the same. The reason is that as humanity develops, its ego and its desire to receive continue to grow. As a result, each person becomes increasingly distant from everyone else, and all the bonds that once existed within the family, the extended family, the nation, and society are breaking apart. Egoism destroys every framework and leaves the individual isolated.

After making the necessary discernments, one can come to the conclusion that a connection between people is possible only through the Creator. If we wish to fulfill the law, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” it cannot be achieved by force, as was attempted in Soviet Russia. Only through our connection with the Creator will we begin to unite with one another.

Even the smallest group can exist only under this condition, and all the more so the whole world, when it begins to fulfill the law, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This is because every true connection can exist only on the level of the human. By “human” it means a connection with the Creator.

Everything else we do, apart from establishing a connection with the Creator, belongs to the animate level. These things require no correction, and we should pay them no attention, because it is a waste of time and effort.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/16/26, Rabash, “What Should One Do If He Was Born with Bad Qualities?”

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All the qualities that exist in a person that extend from the four qualities FWWD [Fire, Wind, Water, and Dust] have nothing to do with the evil inclination (Rabash, “What Should One Do If He Was Born with Bad Qualities?”).

It does not matter what kind of character a person is born with, whether irritable, foolish, lazy, or proud. From my own experience, I know that it is not necessary for only one of these qualities to exist within me. I feel that I have all of them, and one does not exclude the other. In other words, all four foundations can exist together within every person.

We say that if someone tries to break or eliminate all these tendencies within a person, then he is engaged in psychology, and nothing will come of it, because these qualities are not subject to change.

A person can be a great Kabbalist and still retain all these qualities without paying any attention to them. In our approach, this is not even the alphabet, it is only the very first letters of the alphabet: not to engage in correcting the animalistic qualities within ourselves, but only to work on our relationship with the Creator.

The “human” within us begins to grow only in relation to the Creator. And only in relation to Him can we weigh the good inclination against the evil inclination, that is, determine everything that needs to be revealed and cultivated, or, on the contrary, uprooted. But all of this is done only in connection with the Creator, and not in relation to my “self,” my natural character.

I should look at the friend in exactly the same way. The problem, however, is that when we work together, my animalistic nature and his animalistic nature may find it difficult to coexist.

But that becomes the second stage of our joint work, after we have come to know our own character well: whether irritable, wasteful, lazy, power-hungry, and so on. Once we know our character, we begin to see how we can work together by combining these qualities in order to understand what exists above: the unique character of each person in relation to the Creator. And here, perhaps, true unity becomes possible.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/16/26, Rabash, “What Should One Do If He Was Born with Bad Qualities?”

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Question: A person is governed by desires. How can we make the desire for the Creator the greatest desire?

Answer: Suppose I have to choose what I am going to drink. The doctor has told me that it is good for me to drink a medicinal tea. If I believe him, then I will drink the tea. Besides, the Torah says that a doctor has permission to heal. Perhaps this tea is not tasty. I may not like it and feel no “taste of life” in it at all. Yet I drink it and enjoy it because I feel the light of my future health, for I believe it will come! In other words, I myself determine what is pleasant for me and what is not. This medicinal tea becomes more enjoyable to me than ordinary tea, even the finest variety.

From this example we see that all we need to do is ascribe importance to the Creator. We are capable of giving importance either to ourselves or to the Creator. This is the only thing we can do.

Question: But what if I have no taste for the Creator?

Answer: That does not matter at all! Enter a certain society and constantly listen to what the people there are talking about. Disconnect yourself from everything else! Turn off the television, do not watch football. Listen to what is being said in the group.

Of course, this alone is still not enough. You must work together with the group and make your own efforts so that the opinion of the friends becomes important to you. You need to unite with them in such a way that their thoughts will carry weight for you.

After all, you listen to what your children say. It is important for you to know what they think of you. I know this from my own experience. For example, the day before yesterday my daughter told me that she wanted to start driving lessons. I answered that I did not have the money for it. The very next day she booked the lesson! So yesterday, after the night lesson, I rushed home so that I could give her the money in time. It was so important to me that she would be able to pay for the lesson.

Would I have done that for someone else? I do not know. Just for anyone? Of course not. That person would have to be just as important to me as my daughter. But for that to happen, I would have to work on it. It does not come by itself. For this, I would have to invest in that person as much as I have invested in my daughter over the past twenty years. For twenty years I have been giving, giving, and giving to her. And now I see that everything I have invested is within her, it all came from me.

If a baby were taken away from its mother immediately after birth, then despite everything, in the end she would forget about the child. Everything depends on how much has been invested.

As for my daughter, yesterday I simply could not calm down. I kept thinking that she had already booked the lesson and how uncomfortable it would be for her to tell the instructor that she did not have the money and would pay later. That is why it was so important for me to get the money to her in time. And when she thanked me, what great pleasure I felt from it! Can I relate to my friend in the same way? It is not so simple.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/5/26, Rabash, “What Does, ‘Everything that Comes to Be a Burnt Offering Is Male,’ Mean in the Work?”

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When a person connects with others in physical work and invests their efforts in a fellow student, they achieve a state where their own yearning for the Creator is supplemented by that of their friend, effectively doubling it. If the friend shares the same desire for the Creator, then the person’s own strength is doubled.

You double the power of your positive desires and strivings, despite the many obstacles that exist. One can give the example of a rocket that, while maintaining the same weight, gains what is essentially double the propulsive force. With the same “weight,” with the same will to receive, a person’s strength doubles, thereby cutting their path to the Creator in half. For example, instead of ten years he will need only five.

If a person chooses a group of friends and is confident that they are true like‑minded companions who provide the additional forces needed to advance, then there is nothing better.

But if, after constantly checking the connection, they become convinced that there is nothing more to add, they can of course stop there. However, if it is possible to “press on the gas” or switch from  a “dirt road” to a “wide highway,” then they should look for the means to do so.

Possibly, by improving their connection with his friends or by changing groups, they will be able to advance further. This is precisely what is meant by choosing the right environment.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/15/26, Rabash, “What Is ‘Do Not Slight the Blessing of a Layperson’ in the Work?”

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