Question: What is the slavery of a person in Egypt?

Answer: He tries to connect with others and is slightly successful every time through some new test, but the fruits of this connection go to Pharaoh who sucks them out of the back of the neck. This means that the ego steals everything and keeps it inside for itself. A person feels that he has nothing. This is what happens with us.

And then, as it is said, (Job 20:15): “He swallowed up riches and vomited it out.” The power of the ego swallows the fruits of the labor and then spits in out vomits giving everything back to the person all at once.

Question: When will this finally happen?

Answer: When a sufficient amount of efforts that have been swallowed by the ego accumulate, it makes it possible for a person to rise to for the sake of bestowal. It is impossible to stockpile negative exertion, negative impressions, in any other way. You cannot work if they are all in front of you.

Even when a little is shown to you, you take account of what you have, this is bad and that is bad, and you flee immediately. And so you won’t run away but will continue to work, your disappointments disappear. This gives us the opportunity to continue by coming again and again to disappointment about our abilities.

As a result, the accumulated disappointment and consequently the need for the group must be so great that you cry out and want to leave. This doesn’t mean fleeing the work, but fleeing from your ego, from yourself!

There are several conditions that must ripen and accumulate. This is a cumulative process; nothing can be done about it. In order to help you with it, there is darkness and the absorption of your failures. And then you need to be inspired by the group, the study, and the teacher, and every day you need to get back up on your feet again.
[132687]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/14/14, Writing of Rabash

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Question: Why does it say: “Come to Pharaoh?” What is the meaning of a person’s participation in this act?

Answer: A person has to be ready for it. He has to be able to hold on as he encounters increasingly greater blows. Moses is our innermost point that begins to work when we can connect. It is the point of our inner connection that leads us.

The only thing we have to worry about is the point of connection, so that we can later raise it to Mt. Sinai and receive the whole revelation of Godliness in it. Then it will lead us forward from the center of the group where everyone is equal and we are all connected. We all annul ourselves with regard to this central point of the group and establish in it the vessel of the soul. This is actually the whole method.
[132682]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/14/14, Writing of Rabash

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Psalms 143: Answer me speedily, O LORD, my spirit faileth; hide not Thy face from me; lest I become like them that go down into the pit. Cause me to hear Thy loving kindness in the morning, for in Thee do I trust; cause me to know the way wherein I should walk, for unto Thee have I lifted up my soul. Deliver me from mine enemies, O LORD; with Thee have I hidden myself. Teach me to do Thy will, for Thou art my God; let Thy good spirit lead me in an even land. For Thy name’s sake, O LORD, quicken me; in Thy righteousness bring my soul out of trouble. And in Thy mercy cut off mine enemies, and destroy all them that harass my soul; for I am Thy servant.

Here we see that a person is on a level of faith above reason. Future redemption has to be achieved hastily, the way it happened on the corporeal branch of the spiritual root during the exodus from Egypt. The exodus is from a state where no one has no more hope of coming out of the current state, and suddenly it happens, as if at the most unsuitable moment!

Kabbalists have always concealed the connection between the wisdom of Kabbalah and the rule “love thy friend as thyself.” They didn’t want to tell ordinary people that everything depends on love, on connection, on dedication, and going out of myself towards others, on the perception of reality that is external to a person’s desire and above his ego. They understood that it would make people reject the wisdom of Kabbalah and the correction. An egoistic person cannot hear that he is obliged to work only in order to connect with others that he naturally disregards. A person thinks only of himself and cannot think about bestowal without any benefit for himself, which means that he cannot think about anyone unless he receives a reward for it.

If we speak to people about such love, they clearly will never come close to correction. So instead of the method of correction, Kabbalists instructed people to engage in certain corporeal actions for the time being, to keep the “commandments” that they have learned since childhood. A child is taught to behave this way from a very young age, so that he will grow and think that this is the Lord’s desire.

Therefore, there are always those who oppose the wisdom of Kabbalah. They understand that they will have to reach bestowal and love of others and achieve the connection between all the parts of the shattered soul in the future, but not now. There are no clear signs yet that the time has come on the part of the upper Providence, judging by the general state of the world and nation of Israel.

Indeed, it is only in the 20^th century that we discover such signs, and the most important sign is that the Kabbalists are telling us that the time has come. But the closer we approach the revelation of the truth for everyone, the explanation of what the wisdom of Kabbalah really says and how it is actually fulfilled in practice through connection, the more repulsive people find it. It’s even hard for them to remember it. A person doesn’t instinctively yearn for connection. It isn’t the first thing he thinks about when he wakes up in the middle of the night or in the morning. So we are going to see how many people will join us and how many will fall along the way. It’s because an ordinary person doesn’t find this goal attractive.

Mysticism and abstruse theories use the knowledge of the wisdom of Kabbalah for foreseeing the future, for speaking about reincarnations, and about mysterious forces which attract the ordinary person, but the revelation of the Creator is the revelation of the attribute of bestowal. A person is ready for that if he is shown that there is some egoistic benefit in it, which means that he is ready to bestow in order to receive, but this must not be shown to a person until this occurs.

A person must not be told what brings the revelation of the upper force to the created beings. Baal HaSulam says: “Every individual in this world would cut off his hands and feet seven times a day in order to feel this taste one moment in his entire lifetime.” My translation: If a person were given this feeling, he would become addicted to it and would not be able to think about anything else anymore. So how will he be able to rise above reason and ever want to attain the attribute of bestowal? If he discovers the Light of Hochma first, the Light of Hassadim will not be able to correct him. There will be an even greater shattering than before. So three factors are required for a person’s correction:

• The first factor is the root of the soul, the Reshimo (reminiscence).
• The second factor is the Light that was once inside the Reshimo and wanted to fill it with the intention of in order to bestow, but disappeared from it, remaining in the form of the Surrounding Light. Now this Light illuminates from a distance waiting for the Reshimo that is in the desire to receive to get support from the desire to receive.
• The desire to receive cannot support the Reshimo, since its intention is only in order to receive, but it can connect with other Reshimot, which are called points in the heart and be impressed by them. Thus, these Reshimot will connect and get closer to one another. The more Reshimot that are revealed, the more the points in the heart get closer to one another, and the more they will spur the Light that Reforms.

The Light that Reforms can be individual and general. The individual Light always supports and takes care of the Reshimo and gradually advances it. The general Light is evoked thanks to the Reshimot that get closer as a result of people’s actions and corrects them since the Reshimot are also shattered.

So there are three factors: the Reshimo, the Surrounding Light, and our attempts to connect, which means the unity that can be attained only through the bodies in our fictitious world. This is how we work, and the main thing is not to worry about the difficult states that we go through, especially right before the revelation. We don’t understand what advances us and what doesn’t, what is closer to spirituality and what isn’t. Usually things seem the exact opposite from what our minds and hearts perceive.
[132676]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/14/14

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Question: I first need to feel the Light in order to work with it, but I don’t feel it.

Answer: We feel the Light in Egypt. We realize that the darkness we feel is created by the Light and that it’s bestowal from Above. We are placed in total darkness that is called the darkness in Egypt.

The darkness in Egypt isn’t just darkness that an ordinary person feels. We feel that it’s dark in Egypt because we cannot reach bestowal and we are in chains under the domination of Pharaoh. This darkness is the posterior of the Light, and it’s the Light that makes us feel the darkness.

Everything is done by the Light. It either gives us a small illumination that makes us feel satisfied with our corporeal life or begins to shine more in its posterior making us feel that our life is becoming worse and worse on the corporeal level and also in the qualitative sense, meaning that we feel the deficiency to know what we are living for and why. All this is the influence of the posterior of the Light.

Thus we advance by the constant effect of the Light. All the changes in us are a result of its influence. It doesn’t change in quantity and remains more or less the same, but it does change in quality. According to these changes, I also go through different qualitative states and constantly change.

We cannot say that there is no Light in Egypt. There is Light! But it operates through its posterior.

When we are taught by the blows, it’s the same Light that operates, but we cannot understand, feel, or be impressed by the Light of love and bestowal since it will only spoil us like a spoiled child. A child only understands by punishments, and we have to teach him this way because he is under a foreign domination and we cannot take him out of there by simply treating him nicely.

When we receive blows, we don’t feel where they come from. But later, the pain is gradually conveyed to the mind.

Question: How can I constantly remember that it’s the Light that operates?

Answer: It depends on your efforts. If between the blows, when you are conscious you understand that you can properly act in the group, in the study, and dissemination, the Light that shines on you at a certain moment also illuminates the previous state when you were in the dark. Thus, being in one state, I learn about another state and reach the middle line.
[132660]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/13/14, Writing of Rabash

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Question: After the convention in Israel, egoism ripped us apart: We could not come to events, only five people were left from the entire group. Is it worthwhile to begin to disseminate in such conditions? How is it possible to strengthen the group and the inner work?

Answer: There are two levels of advancement. One of them is characterized by your attempts and efforts to do something with the understanding that all this is not you, that the hatred that flared up between you is truly senseless hatred and a result of the shattering of the soul.

The appearance of hatred is necessary in order to correct it and to reveal the Creator in the corrected and united state. And what is revealed in these harsh discoveries is indeed wonderful! You clearly see how much you disintegrate.

And if you begin to connect above this fragmentation, at least a little, then the condition for discovering the Creator will appear in you, which is revealed only where the breaking happened, and now the connection.

You must enter the common prayer, to a state where you turn to the Creator with a request. You are not ready to connect by yourselves. So you must ask for Him to gather and connect you.

Take an ordinary prayer book that everyone uses. The members of the Great Assembly, each one of whom was a great Kabbalist, arranged it about 2200 years ago. The Siddur (prayer book) comes from the word “Seder” (order). All of the texts cited in the prayer book are sequential requests of a person to the Creator so that the Creator will correct him in a group.

In principle, all of these are common prayers. Only about five percent are personal prayers. They are read in the morning, when a person wakes up and personally turns to the Creator, for he is still alone, there is no connection at all with anyone or anything, he only begins to recover gradually. That is how the text is structured.

And then he comes in contact with others if he leaves home and goes to a place of general gathering, for general prayer. Essentially he reaches a state where he begins to feel the others, the group, and reaches a general shared prayer. This general shared prayer is a request for connection.

All of our requests are derived from the collective vessel. In all of the prayers it is written: “We, we, we,” it never says “I,” except at the beginning of the prayers during the morning when one wakes up and seemingly warms himself up and recovers from sleep.

So the feeling of the breaking that passes over you needs to be in your consciousness as something very important and necessary, as something very right and good. In other words, the feeling of hatred, the inability not only to gather and to talk, but even to come to the group—“I will stay at home, I cannot be together with you!”—is feeling the shattered vessel, the shattered soul. And if you gather in spite of all your feelings and thoughts, then through rising above them, you make a correction in which the Creator is revealed. So what stands before you now is an absolutely clear action; what remains for you is to realize it.

You can try by yourselves. If it turns out, good, and if not, then invite some other group to come and be your guests. It’s worthwhile spending money to get together. They cannot get along between them and you cannot get along between you. Therefore gather together and begin to arrange workshops, discussions, make a shared meal, and sing some songs. Organize these yourselves without involving the central group; you can even not see our lessons for a few days to deal only with each other.
[131942]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/28/14, Question and Answers with Dr. Laitman

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Question: What is the meaning of the vessels that we pick up from the Egyptians?

Answer: Without them, we are unable to reveal the Light (the Creator) because all we are able to do is modify the intention. Egypt is the intention for one’s own sake.

The land of Israel (Eretz Israel) is a desire (ratzon) directly to the Creator (Yashar-El). The same desire that exists in Egypt transforms to Israel after changing the intention.

We have only one desire. When we first reveal it, it seems like ancient Babylon because everything seems so confused. It is a huge egoism that mixes all states together. The first time we exit our ego due to Abraham’s method we strive to rise above our will to receive and detach from our prior states as much as we can.

This phenomenon is called “Abraham.” Abraham leads us out of Babylon and separates us from our usual, corporeal egoism.

In the beginning, when one comes to a group, one is taught how to work beyond one’s egoism and to connect with friends. While making attempts to achieve unity, one suddenly experiences a tremendous downfall.

This is an entrance to Egypt: a more egoistic and harsh intention. One wants to receive all the worlds. It is a more egoistic and focused intention. One even wants to use the wisdom of Kabbalah for the sake of one’s personal wellbeing. This is called the power of Pharaoh.

If we continue working, the group and the Surrounding Light influence us. We don’t sense the Light, but notice the consequences of its impact on us. We feel that we are obligated to exit our egoism, to get rid of it. We apply efforts and experience troubles and numerous problems that help us detach from our ego.

Sometimes we fall very deep into our egoism. Sometimes we detach from our ego and rise over it. We go through ups and downs. Our egoism (the Pharaoh) keeps receiving blows until we rid ourselves of it.

The first detachment from the egoistic intention is called exodus from Egypt. This is what we hope to go through all together when we unite. I anticipate that this coming Pesach won’t be just a holiday on the calendar for us and that we will experience a spiritual leap.

What will change in us if the leap happens? First, Babylon will turn into a sensation that we are in Egypt, in slavery, still inside the will to receive. Everything depends on our perception. In Babylon, everybody acted within their egoism and it was considered normal because this is human nature.

But we do not agree with this state and want to rise above the ego. When we tried to elevate, we transitioned from Babylon to the land of Canaan, the future land of Israel. There, we suddenly sensed that we simply cannot do it the way we tried and that we have to stay inside the will to receive, otherwise we won’t advance at all. This means that we have entered Egypt.

When we acknowledge the necessity of changing intentions from egoistic to bestowing, we start working on exiting Egypt and continue our work until we manage to disconnect from our egoistic intention. Detachment from the latter is the exodus from Egypt.

Then, we are uncertain of what should be done next: We have detached ourselves from the egoism, but what now? At this point, we start acquiring the intention to bestow that we add on top of the same desire that we had when we were in Egypt. That’s why each commandment that we observe, each bestowing action, is just a recollection of our exodus from Egypt.

I use the desire that previously was called Babylon, then was Egypt, and then transformed into the Sinai Desert, and in the end it finally became the land of Israel. The desire remains the same, but the intention improves each time.
[131706]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/3/14, Q&A with Rav Laitman

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Psalms 121: A song for ascents. I shall raise my eyes to the mountains, from where will my help come?
My help is from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.
He will not allow your foot to falter; Your Guardian will not slumber.
Behold, the Guardian of Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord is your Guardian; the Lord is your shadow; [He is] by your right hand.
By day, the sun will not smite you, nor will the moon at night.
The Lord will guard you from all evil; He will guard your soul.
The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in from now and to eternity.

We have to raise our deficiencies for the correction of Malchut, the shattered vessel, the shattered soul, until we reach the head of the world of Atzilut, from where will my help come, I shall raise my eyes to the mountains, which means to rise above every mountain of doubt. This ascent is according to the equivalence of form that I want to attain. Of course, I cannot do so at the moment, but I want to ascend there.

This is where my help will come from, my help is from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth, which means that He creates Malchut by the attributes of Bina and Zeir Anpin, HaVaYaH connects them.

A person can express his request this way from every state he is in, from the day and from the night, in order to discover that the Guardian of Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. All these days will accumulate and the Creator will help us and will dwell in the unity between us according to our yearning to unite.

We must not forget that we have to prepare a platform, a place for the Divinity. All our work is with the connection in a practical and down to earth manner, despite all the troubles and the obstacles. There are no coincidences in life, everything is arranged and organized to the very last detail from Above so that we will connect in these conditions.

The higher we ascend, the lower we descend by receiving more obstacles. Thus the shattered vessel, the shattered soul, is revealed until we clarify all its parts that we have to connect in order to attain the first spiritual level.

The main thing is to ascend to the first level of the spiritual ladder. All the other levels follow one another in a chain of cause and effect. They all have the same nature and the most difficult thing is to make the transition from the nature of in order to receive to in order to bestow.

Then there is the same manner of ascent according to the same rules. More and more details are revealed and the impression certainly changes, but it isn’t the initial transition of our nature anymore. So the main thing is to overcome the first level.
[132503]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/11/14

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Question: If we yearn for the Creator and want to discover Him, why is it so important to go out and work on the unity of the whole nation?

Answer: It is our duty since whoever belongs to the corporeal nation of Israel has sparks from the spiritual levels that he attained in the past. We have been through the exile in Egypt, we have built two Temples, the first and the second, and we were in contact with the Creator.

So these sparks exist and we need them in order to attain the power needed to breakthrough upwards. Abraham couldn’t come out of Babel by himself. He needed to take people with him in order to fulfill the goal of creation. The goal is fulfilled among people, and therefore we need a great power. 

What is the quantity of sparks that we need? What general power do we need in order to exit the ego and to start feeling the influence of the upper force? I cannot say. We are going to perform a totally new action that has never been performed before.

It says that there should be 600,000 souls, but we don’t know what it means. It can be a thousand, a hundred thousand, 600,000, or 6 million people. It is impossible to know now what the number of the people should be since 600,000 is a power that exists on the level of Arich Anpin, in greatness that we need to awaken.
[132558]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/10/14 Talk About Dissemination: Questions and Answers with Dr. Laitman

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Question: How does the descent called the Shaar haTuma (Gates of Impurity) come to be expressed?

Answer: Everything depends upon what we think is a descent. In the beginning, at the first gate of impurity, I simply see that I have no power, I don’t want to do anything, and I have lost the taste for life.

Whereas at the 10th or 15th gate, I lose the desire to learn, to be connected with the friends, to carry out acts of bestowal, and to be involved in dissemination; I lose faith in what is written in the books of the Kabbalists. I simply want to lie down and get away from everything or get drunk and pass the time idly.

Yet together with this, I begin to understand that these are not my states; rather they come from some external source. They pass me through them intentionally so that I will consolidate my relationship to the Source, to the Creator and to what He does.

So I say to Him, “Do what you want! You can create darkness around me—even this is good! When it’s dark I don’t want anything, and this is better than chasing after pleasures. But together with this, give me the possibility of being aware of you, the one who creates this darkness for me.”

It means that the Creator makes the heart of Pharaoh heavy. Here I begin to differentiate between my desire, the condition that is felt with it, and the Creator who arranges all this for me. This is already an internal separation, a crossroad.

That is how we continue to work and the darkness doesn’t dissipate. On the contrary, we pass through the 49 gates of impurity and arrive in the darkness of Egypt. Yet thanks to the exodus from Egypt, the darkness stops being darkness. We change our relationship to darkness.

Indeed, we are found in the same condition all the time, changes only our perception of it. It’s as if I put on other glasses and see the state differently, advancing further, whereas the state itself hasn’t changed. We are immersed in the Light of Infinity. 

However, one starting point is given to us in order to feel the world that we see now within the Light of Infinity. And the changes depend upon what I think is good and bad. Indeed our substance is the desire to receive and it’s up to us to decide what is good or bad in relation to it.

If we change the perception of reality, our relationship to it, then the whole world is different. What was hated becomes loved. Imagine that a big man clothed in a white robe approaches a little child, takes out a menacing syringe, and gives him a painful injection. How must the child relate to his actions?

But when we grow up, we understand that the monster in white is not a cruel demon, but a doctor who must give me an injection and it’s for my own good. This is unpleasant, but must be tolerated.

Reality is unchanged, it is complete; we must change. In our day this is what the world has to understand. The changes that result from the inner development of the ego are over. We have developed our ego to the end. It has reached its maximum point and doesn’t have anywhere else to develop in the physical world.

We have reached the limit beyond which we have to begin to change our relationship. So we are found at a very unique point: The ego has nowhere to develop, on the opposite, it begins to deteriorate and bring us down. Indeed, it wants nothing more from life. So if we want to advance, this is possible only with the desire to bestow.
[132385]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/09/14, Shamati #54

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Question: How can I delight the Creator if I don’t feel Him?

Answer: This is why we are given a group and all of humanity. It says: “I dwell among my people.” If I try to delight humanity, my group, then by exiting myself and entering them, I will feel the Creator. 

The Creator is felt in the center of the group. When we operate in the group we discover something common in its center: a common desire in which we discover the Creator. It is because the Creator is in the innermost point and His vessel is the common desire: our common intentions and the common desire of the group. In order to be attracted to Him, we need to build another more external layer, which is the whole world.

It is impossible to work only with regards to the Creator since He is concealed. But if I am incorporated into the group and constantly invest in it to such an extent that eventually I want to give myself to the group and melt into it, I discover the Creator within it, because I have already attained the attributes that match Him in some way.
[132097]

From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/03/14, Questions and Answers with Dr. Laitman

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