It doesn’t matter whether I read The Zohar or whether I am on duty in the kitchen; what’s important is that I constantly yearn for the Light that Reforms and to connect with the friends. I cannot yearn for the Light without unity or connection. It is an essential pre-condition, which we don’t even speak about since it is obvious.

If there is no connection, my yearning for the Light is egoistic and false and is only for my own benefit. Without it we cannot climb Mt. Sinai because from that point onwards we begin to think only together.

This doesn’t happen automatically, of course, and we have to constantly remind one another about it, and this is the reason for mutual guarantee. This is why it was agreed to accept mutual guarantee at Mt. Sinai, since no one can yearn for a real vessel unless all the other parts of this vessel agree to it, the 600,000 souls that make up a whole vessel.

600,000 souls is a symbol of your yearning for reaching the goal by planning it first. The ultimate goal is to reach the level called 60 Ribo, Arich Anpin, and so we have to collect 600,000 souls, which means that we have to yearn to climb to the top of the mountain together.

Question: How do we strengthen the mutual guarantee between us by yearning for the Light while reading The Zohar?

Answer: One simply doesn’t work without the other. This is the principle. Therefore, “love thy friend as thyself” is the general rule and the only way by which we can receive the Torah. Without it the Light will not come, or may come only in a very weak form.
[129833]
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/11/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: What does working with “faith above reason” mean?

Answer: Working with “faith above reason” means investing effort, using all kinds of strategies in order to get a vessel that is called “faith,” meaning a desire that is entirely bestowal. Faith is bestowal.

What is called bestowal is that I make a Tzimtzum, stop thinking about myself, and use all the possibilities in which I have the opportunity to make changes in the group, in the connection between us, to give contentment to the Creator through this connection.

A group is a unique device found between me and the Creator. According to how I change it, I bestow to the Creator. Therefore, I think about what kind of changes need to be made in society, in my environment, in order to bestow contentment on the Creator. I perform the action in society but I think about the pleasure that I will be making for the Creator.
[129766]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/12/14

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Question: Must we agree internally with all the disturbances that come from the external world?

Answer: In general, the first reaction of a person to what is happening in the world is a desire to change everything, to organize the world anew, to change the borders, to make the economy healthy. This is the natural reaction of our ego, meaning ourselves, which is discovered until we suddenly begin to understand that all of this is nonsense!

Where have you seen that a change from one system to another has helped to improve the situation? On the contrary, in the end, it will get worse. At first it seems to us that everything is going well, that apparently we have achieved something and that everything is okay. But as time passes, it turns out that it will be much worse than what had been before. And this is natural because we are not advancing towards correction.

Now what is left for us is only to recognize our uncorrected relationship to the world.

Everything that happens in the world can be corrected only through our approaching the Creator, because everything is derived from Him in order to push us to become closer to Him. We are constantly moving away from the Creator. If we understood that it is necessary to yearn for Him, then we would truly begin to approach something good. But in the end, He pushes us further and further away so that we will reach a full recognition of our ego.

When we begin to correct ourselves somewhat, we advance into our ego like the right and left lines, and we already understand further how to act. A method of how to work with the crisis appears within us and we correct it, that is how through it we approach the Creator. Through this we correct ourselves; we remove and clear away the crisis without touching the economy, education, information, technology, or anything else. This is all nonsense because change and new organization in all of these areas will not ensure anything good in any case.

But the more tightly we approach the Creator, the further He keeps us away from Him, and through this the evil is discovered, and in this way we quickly move all of the evil towards the good. Therefore it is not necessary to aspire to change the world, society, and all areas of life.

All we need to do is to change the person as a foundation for changing the world. This is specifically what we need to learn by ourselves, to explain to humanity, and to teach others.
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Question: I always magnify and elevate the friend. For me he is a means and a help for acquiring life in spirituality. So how can I be envious of him?

Answer: We always see others through the prism of our ego. And so it seems to me that everyone is worse than I am. And if someone is better, here I begin to feel bad and need to balance this somehow, otherwise I will suffer.

In fact, only I exist. All the others are my negative characteristics that are wandering around me. If I were corrected I would not see them, instead I would see the parts of my soul that are connected together with me into one unified whole, I would see the Light. That is how I see all kinds of people. They are all my internal characteristics.

How must I relate to them? As if they are angels.

Question: But that envy that should exist isn’t in me. Am I envious of anyone? I see that everyone is as miserable as I am.

Answer: This is because you see the friends through your ego. In fact they are all perfect! For the Creator created such a perception of the environment for your sake. If you correct yourself, then you will see everyone as perfect! Nobody needs to be corrected, only you.
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Question: Is a “drop of unification” a state that exists on every level?

Answer: There is nothing but a “drop of unification,” the point of contact, and a person provides everything else. The Light has no measure and all the measurements are done by the vessel.

A drop of unification that comes to us from the Creator or a sea of unification is the same thing if it refers to something that comes from Above. All the measurements, the limitations, and the expansions always depend only on the one who receives. A drop of unification is renewed on every level, of course, but all the changes with regard to that drop of unification are in the vessel itself.

Question: What characterizes the first contact with the Upper?

Answer: You begin to care about hearing the word “Creator,” as if you hear the name of your little daughter, and you immediately respond and are filled with a warm feeling. This is exactly how you perceive the word “Creator.”

Before, you heard “Creator” and felt nothing, and didn’t link it to any image. Now it summons a response in you, like a name of a dear one. This response already signifies contact, some connection with your desire. You have filled your measure in doing a certain work, and then the Light already touches the flesh.

Only persistence and constant efforts will help you here. First you have to develop such sensitivity towards the friends in you . But your attitude to the friends is more general, and it only softens your heart. Your heart is a heart of stone and you begin to melt and to soften it with the help of the society. Then a new feeling towards the Creator is born inside your soft heart. The society only melts your heart and changes it from a heart of stone or wood into a soft and flexible heart, like rubber.

The heart already begins to beat: It expands and contracts and in between the contractions and the expansion there is a point where you begin to feel the Creator and that you belong to Him. You already feel that the Creator is not a stranger but that there is a point for Him in your heart, just like there is for the name of your beloved daughter.
[129668]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/11/14

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If we want to come near the Creator, we have to be equivalent in form to Him. In the place where we reveal the Creator, we will reveal His humbleness, His mercy, His descent to us.

He diminishes, minimizes, annuls, and subdues Himself before us, just as we do before our children when we play with them. We have to lower ourselves before children in order to connect with them, to play with them, and to serve them, although we also maintain all the options as adults.

The point is that if we received a certain portion of feelings of a certain revelation during our convention, some new feelings, it is only thanks to the fact that the Creator descended to us, was revealed before us on lower levels.

We have had great success even thanks to this minimal contact with Him, which brought about some positive changes in us. We don’t feel them yet, but we will feel it as negative changes in the future since this is the way we advance until the full revelation, until a person feels that everything becomes worse and worse, further and further away from spirituality. Unfortunately, many are caught on this hook, feel disappointed and leave.

This is the test of our unselfishness: Why do I want to attain the upper world? Is it in order to feel good or is it in order to really help all humanity ascend and thus delight the Creator? This is why we have to accurately clarify the reason we are on this spiritual path.

When we feel certain changes internally, it means that they occur because the Creator is getting closer to us, which means that He is lowering Himself. The point where we feel His intensified feeling inside us is the place where we reveal His descent, and we only have to exert ourselves so that this descent will not seem too free to us, and that we already know and understand everything. If this nonsense comes to a person’s mind he only loses as a result.

So we mustn’t forget that we have only started to feel what real advancement is at the point that we have attained: in the unity between us and in the collective work on ourselves in order not to be separated.

We must understand that we are constantly being played with, but with a good intention. No one wants us to fail, no one wants to push us downward, even what we call “the guards that are at the top of the King’s mountain,” are not actually trying to push us so that we will roll down. They are trying to hit us qualitatively, so that we will not fall but so we will simply discover the attributes that we still lack at the current point of our ascent.

If the Creator touches us with a certain question it makes us feel that we descend and encounter different problems in life, but it is only so that we will ascend and make the next step. There are actually no descents but rather a gradual revelation of opportunities of the rest of the ascent, and the guards are the Creator’s great helpers.
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In the world there is nothing bad except for our wild stubbornness, which we must correct within us. I would say not to correct even but to use it in the right way.

In a place where we find the Creator we discover His descent to us, and we need to thank Him for this, to embrace this characteristic and to try to go forward together with Him by accepting every disturbance as an invitation to ascend. The main thing in our work is the deed.

Now, when we are scattered throughout the world, we integrate with our groups, mix with those who are not with us, with our work, the study, with all the problems of life that pop up all the time. The main thing is to accept all of this as an invitation, that in spite of all the changes in the surrounding conditions, and to remain in the state that was at the convention. This is our first goal.

You are traveling from here to the airport, boarding the airplane, flying, and landing: your country, the language, the noise, the commotion, all of this is only intended to help you to connect even closer with the friends. Suppose that as of today we have attained a particular level of connection. We cannot attain a greater level. Therefore, we now need to add to it all kinds of disturbances in order to process them afterwards and to become even closer with their help.

It’s not important when our next approach will be, it doesn’t have to be the physical meeting of the next convention. But it will already be enough to discover not the Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif) but the Inner Light (Ohr Pnimi).

What we have attained now is something great. We have truly reached a single whole. We understand each other; we have no need for any further explanations. The gaps have closed with us, shared thoughts have appeared. All this is becoming something unified even emotionally and intellectually on a level that already speaks of an understanding of going forward.

We are together within the group for the Creator. And we are together outside of the group for all of humanity. If you talk with anyone in the world who doesn’t study our system but is involved with Kabbalah, with meditation, with mysticism, with Torah, it’s not important with what, you will discover that none of them have a clear understanding of a method for advancement towards the goal of creation, of the correction, like we have.
[129650]

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Question: In the beginning our work is tiring, and after that it keeps us busy and overtakes us….

Answer: This depends upon your skill. If you become an expert in your occupation, then work is a pleasure for you. When you enjoy what you are doing and your work is not felt as a burden but as pleasure, as self-expression,and then you don’t feel tired, like true artists who fall asleep at the easel from physical exhaustion and not because they detached themselves from the work.

Question: Sometimes I am so tired that without connection to the spiritual uplift and the group activity I feel that I am like a servant who doesn’t need anything. How is it possible to pass to a state of mutual cooperation?

Answer: We need to work together with everyone, and this is all. I know that there is no other way, and it seems to me that I cannot agree with this, it’s difficult for me, I would do everything differently, but there is no choice, it’s necessary; a higher goal exists.

It cannot be that I will advance towards truth because I gain some benefit from it. Truth and benefit don’t exist together. Benefit is only for my ego.

The higher goal forces us to advance. We give contentment to the Creator with this; we raise ourselves to His level.

Look for obligations with regard to the group, with regard to the friends, responsibility for everyone; rise to this level, don’t lower yourself. The Creator will give you all kinds of side-effects. Suppose that you are doing something good together now, He will push you towards a better job, better pay, better conditions, and so forth.

It’s impossible to accept this as charity or pay. There is only one payoff: I want to discover the characteristic of bestowal and love as a result of my work. Therefore, try to pull yourself closer and closer to the property of bestowal all the time.
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Question: While reading The Zohar, why do I suddenly have feelings which are opposite my efforts to hold on to the right intention and think about the friends, a feeling of actual hatred?

Answer: It turns out that I think and worry about the friends and suddenly I feel how the hatred towards them is evoked in me. This indicates that I don’t find the work desirable yet and that I simply force myself to think about them, and so this type of work is eventually nullified.

But it is a good thing since it is already a clarification that I lack the foundation. Indeed, why should I worry about them all of the sudden? It is as if I were given some strange baby and am forced to take care of him, but I feel indifferent towards him, and actually have no feelings towards him at all. I worry about him as much as I can simply out of compassion and pity, and then I lose patience and demand that he would be taken from me. He made me feel so tired that I simply began to hate him.

However, if he were my baby, I would endure anything and take care of him infinitely. This means that love gives us power. If I don’t have the power to worry about the friends in the group, it means that I lack love. It is a nice revelation!

If I worry that all the friends advance and that we will all be rewarded with a revelation while reading, if I worry about them gently and lovingly like I worry about my baby, I can actually measure to what extent I advance towards the goal. It is a very accurate measurement. This attitude towards the friends comes from the Light that Reforms, of course, and not just like that. So I should thank the Light that illuminates and gives me such support.
[129544]
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/10/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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