Question: What does choosing the friends mean?

Answer: Choosing the friends means that I have to do whatever I can to get close to them at any given moment. Choosing doesn’t mean that I decide who I like best and that’s it. It is said: “He who chooses a better environment each time,” in order to keep on advancing.

We don’t look at the physical bodies in the spiritual work but only at the internality and so a person changes every day and everyday he is a new person. It turns out that I seem to be choosing a new friend each day, a new society, because it changes from one moment to the next.

A day refers to a change, so I constantly advance by working with the friends as I tighten the connection between us, which means that I choose stronger friends and a better environment each time. Nothing changes physically, and I see the same faces around me, but their internality is constantly renewed, and I grow stronger by all the changes that we both go through.

It may seem that there are positive or negative changes each time. Mostly I feel disrespect since my evil inclination keeps on working and is constantly renewed. So each time I feel another denial which is stronger than before and it seems that the friends are not worthy and that they have many deficiencies. I disrespect them automatically and so I have to spur myself to love them anew each time.
[122674]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/10/13, Writings of Rabash

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Question: How can we advance so that our fuel consumption is optimal? How can we cut down the consumption to minimum?

Answer: In other words, how can we shorten time? How can we maximize the effect of our exertion so that we will do it in the best way and in the right place?

This approach is very good and correct, but the question is does it stem from laziness. But still it is a good thing since one way or another we start our work from the desire to receive.

When we exert ourselves and acquire knowledge in our world, we learn how to preserve our rational efforts so that we will spend the exact amount of energy and not one gram more, at the exact place it is needed and not one millimeter away.

This is exactly what Kabbalists tell us. They tell us that we have to work only in the center of the group and to be as one man in one heart in mutual guarantee. If you reach this, the Creator is revealed.

The moment you attain this, the current level will disappear and instead Mt. Sinai will reappear, which means the mountain of hatred between you. Then you have to try to connect around it again so that each one’s point in the heart is connected to the points in the heart of the others, and after this connection, they rise above the mountain of hatred to connection and mutual bestowal. When your efforts succeed, you will rise to the second floor and so on.

Thus, you are given the exact place for concentrated effort during your work, during the study, during the assembly of friends, everywhere. You should constantly aim at this kind of unity in your thoughts.

How? By the support of the environment. Otherwise you will not be able to think about it. You should feel general concern here: You should be immersed and live in it, and it should affect you so strongly that you begin to shake with worry.

Imagine a situation in life when you have trouble with the police, a trial, when someone threatens to beat you or that you are shamed. A person who experiences this in life is miserable. So this is exactly the same level of concern you have to feel about being focused on the center of the group. This way you will save both time and efforts.

If you don’t worry about that, then you should worry about why you don’t worry. This is called “a prayer before a prayer.”

The yearning in the heart is immediately felt in the upper level. You don’t know it yet, but your heart is already on an upper level. The moment your heart matches the upper level they will be connected like a plug and a socket and you will begin to reveal it.

So you must pay close attention to what you feel in your heart. If your heart fidgets, then you should regret it. But it shouldn’t be false or pretend regret. On the contrary, you should place yourself in the environment so that it will influence you and you will really feel sorry. Only the environment can change your values and your standards.
[122517]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/6/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: How is it possible to be directed correctly before going out for dissemination?

Answer: A person is an egoist. Every time the ego in him flares up, he must somehow rein it in.

It is possible to do this only in the presence of the group. If a person goes out to some events without preparation, meaning, without reading our material, not approaching friends, then nothing will work out for him. For he is not himself accommodated to conveying an integral line to a group. He can do everything according to the method in the best way, but in the end, this won’t work.

Therefore, before going out to the public we gather and do the same thing as in the gathering of friends. The difference can only be in intensity, in depth, in language, and in vocabulary, yet no more than this! In any case we are trying, in our way, to bring the whole world to the integral form.

For example, it is possible to take a well processed Rabash article about the group without any additions of cleverness and other lessons, to read and discuss it, and with this we make some intentions as a critique: “I am the smallest of all,” “I am the greatest of all,” “I am equal to all,” “I am included with them into one general whole,” and “I am already ready to go out to the crowd.”

First, I accept everything that the friends say about integrality, about the link between us, completely serious, as absolute truth, in that I want to feel myself as a child in relation to them, who hears with an open mouth. After that I speak about integrality, about the link between us and then others hear me and I am seemingly on top. After that all of us are connected and create a unified field, until we feel ourselves as one collective whole. The moment I have felt this state, I can go to work.

That is how we tune ourselves like a musical instrument, and when we go out to the world in order to teach the masses we have a feeling as if we are going to ask for them. In other words, the best intention is the understanding that giving satisfaction to the Creator is possible only through the right intention of the people for integral unity. Then He can bestow on this unity and gradually prepare them for His revelation, which is the best that we do for Him and the best that we do for the masses from our side.

We must know: “I am going out to the wider public because this is the same place where the Creator is revealed to the world.”

I take the Creator with me in order to create a place for His discovery. With this I can give Him satisfaction in being revealed to the creatures and give pleasure to the creatures in discovering their Creator. In summation, I am a transitional link, the organizer of this action.
[122713]
From Kab TV’s “Through Time” 9/24/13

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Question: We feel great intensity during the lessons, we yearn for connection and for internality but later everything somehow disappears. At about 11 a.m. there is nothing left. Where is the center of the group? What should I do? How should I keep the urge?

Answer: First, everything that I give you during the lesson isn’t lost but actually remains in each of you. There is no absence in spirituality. Even if a person doesn’t hear, doesn’t understand, and doesn’t perceive the words, even if he lives in another country, even if he doesn’t know and doesn’t understand the language, nothing is lost. The impression that the feeling of the lesson disappears and fades away is only so that a person should renew it on his part as much as he can. In any case, everything remains as long as I can give you lessons.

During the lessons you are under my influence. A person who wants it is given freewill with time and then his efforts become more qualitative. But one way or the other, this influence is a kind of infusion or transfusion that each one receives. You have to try to make something out of it.

If you are like a corpse there is no point giving you infusion. No, you have to show that you have grown by the daily injection every day; that you have advanced in the right direction towards the center of the group, towards connection between you, towards the demand to reveal the Creator, which is the mutual force of bestowal between you.

It is true that the impression you experience during the lesson disappears, but do you come to the lesson every day only to be impressed and not to work?

You mustn’t get used to it. You mustn’t turn the lesson into a standard ritual. On the contrary, you should sum up things at the end of each day: What have I done? What have I attained?

As for my presence during the morning lesson, it is not my doing. I may be making great efforts together with the teacher and the friends, but this is already a different matter. But if I hear the lesson passively and there is nothing left of the impression it leaves on me by 11 a.m., then it means that I have wasted five hours after the lesson and haven’t done anything with my impression. This isn’t a good thing.

I have to make an agreement with a couple of friends: “Guys, let’s stop this bad habit, let’s really do what Kabbalists tell us. After all, they only want what is good for us; after all, they are our forefathers. We cannot; we don’t want to; we are against it; it is all true, but it says that if we arrange and establish a different system of mutual relations between us called a group, we will be able to exert ourselves in it. We will at least be able to take a small step forward by ourselves.

So agree on that with the friends. It is simply a must.
[122513]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/6/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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A spiritual vessel is not just a sum of all the hearts, but a new entity that we have to build from our shared aspirations, effort, and work with respect to some new quality that did not exist before.

This is what we call the center of the group: the sum of all the efforts, “Divinity” (Shechina), the place where all the eyes meet and all the intentions are aimed. This is the area that we develop; we increase it all the time taking care of it as something precious to us.

This particular area Divinity (Shechina) does not exist until we join all our intentions into one. Only then will such a place be created, born, and the Creator revealed in it. And until then, the Shechina will remain in exile.

These concepts the “Shechina in Exile” and the “Holy Shechina” are two degrees that are completely unrelated to each other. That is why we only have to see the center of the group in every action, the unification of all our expectations, and the intention to build the Holy Shechina from this. Everyone strives to bestow to others, and when all these intentions come together, then they form this special area.

If we have no intention to bestow to others but a completely different goal, to use them for our own pleasure, then each of us is drowning in self-love, in egoism. In this case there is no Shechina in exile, no Shechina at all; this place does not even exist. It begins to form only when a few people who can think “outside of themselves” come together.

If many weak people with unstable intentions that come and go or a smaller number of strong people with more qualitative intentions get together, then it is possible to talk about building the Shechina. We add our intention to mutual bestowal and from this we can bestow to the Creator.

We are preparing a place for His revelation not for our pleasure but because we want Him to be revealed so that He receives pleasure from it according to the principle “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are one.” From this mutual concern, “each man shall help his friend,” we can feel day after day how we build this corrected vessel called the Shechina.

The Shechina is built from Malchut, which is corrected by the properties of Bina. Malchut is the desire to enjoy; the property of Bina is the intention to bestow. The Shechina is created when we all unite above our personal desires, aspire to mutual bestowal, to our goal, and to the Creator through it because we connect only in order to bestow to Him.

In integral education groups, the desired goal is to unite, and that’s all. But in a Kabbalistic group, we have to go to the very end, as it is written, “Return, Israel to its Creator,” and advance towards the goal with this intention.

We can reach it only on the condition that we raise the goal so much that it shines on us and seems important to us. Either we worry about it, about some critical moment which decides our fate, or we will appreciate it so much that it will beckon us to come. Both of these work for the same goal.

We constantly need to check whether each day we feel an increasing attraction to the goal, and use this to measure ourselves. We have no other screening criteria. Do we care about our connection in mutual bestowal in order to build a system of bestowal aimed at the Creator, to allow Him to be revealed and  to please Him by our efforts?

The system of our bestowal is called Shechina. The upper force called the Creator is revealed in our altruistic intentions if we meet the first minimum condition of His revelation, that is, if we reach the degree of “Nefesh de Nefesh de Nefesh.” Thus, we enter the first spiritual degree: “Embryo (Ibur)” and begin to exist in the upper world.
[122436]
From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/6/13

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Question: If a person leaves the group, will his accumulated “baggage” be saved or would he have to start all over again when he returns?

Answer: He will not have to start anew. He already has a bitter experience that will help him quickly cling to his friends with new strength.

However, it is better to avoid this. There is a fundamental rule: “Whatever happens, just do not leave the group.” We always move forward together with friends because parting with them is separation, turning away from the Creator, which should be avoided. This is against the spiritual process, during which I do not set my states but only strive forward.

Even if the Creator “trips me” on every step, that is His business. I thank Him for evil as for good, and in no way am I ready to deviate from the course.
[122739]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/10/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”: …as far as spiritual life is concerned, …here applies a natural law over the collective, to subjugate itself to the individual.

…And since the more developed in the generation is certainly the individual, it follows that when the public wants to relieve themselves of the terrible agony and assume conscious and voluntary development, which is the path of Torah, they have no choice but to subjugate themselves and their physical freedom to the discipline of the individual, and obey the orders and remedies that he will offer them.

Thus you see that in spiritual matters, the authority of the collective is overturned and the law of “taking after the Individual” is applied, that is, the developed individual. For it is plain to see that the developed and the educated in every society are always a small minority. It follows that the success and spiritual well-being of society is bottled and sealed in the hands of the minority.

This law is based on the original HaVaYaH, about which it is said, “I did not change My HaVaYaH,” from the four stages of direct Light, the program of development of desire under the influence of the Light, which is the only thing that acts in reality and defines all its forms. Everything is divided into four stages and their root, Keter, the basis of the source.

Similarly, human society is divided into levels: still, vegetative, animate, and man. The human level in humanity, like the most developed of them, is the smallest in quantity because in these four stages (HaVaYaH) quality continually increases during transition from stage to stage.

In the universe there is an infinite mass of still matter, relative to which the vegetation that covers the Earth seems like a drop in the ocean. But the animate world is smaller relative to the vegetative world, and the human is smaller relative to the animate. Baal HaSulam explains that the entire still level is equivalent to one plant, all plants to one animal, and all animals to one human. Quantity transforms into quality. The development of the entire still level is necessary in order for one plant to come out of it, and the development of all plants is needed for one animal to come out of it. And the whole animate level has to develop so that one human comes out of it.

If we want to advance, then we need to rise to a higher degree, and therefore we have to cleave to someone who is on the next degree. Thus it acts with respect to humanity and with respect to every person who includes the whole world within himself. A person must gather all his qualities of the still, vegetative, and animate levels in a pyramid so that they ultimately cling to the human level and bow before him. The human level in a person is his aspiration to adhere to the Creator. If he organizes himself in this way, then he will not be scattered in different directions, but will save time and turn from the natural path of development to the path of the Light, the acceleration of time.

Everything within a person should be organized in this way, and within a small or large community the same trend should be observed. If a society is organized in this way, it will save a lot of time and will save itself much suffering. If we want to advance on the spiritual path, we have to connect to a developed individual who shows us the way. In faith above reason, which exists on our lower degree, we have to accept his opinion coming from a higher degree and act according to it.

That is, we go forward with his head. Baal HaSulam writes, referring to the words of Rambam (Maimonides) that if a blind crowd has a guide who knows the way, then all the rest will certainly reach the same goal, although they can see neither the path nor the goal. All this comes from the very first HaVaYaH where the relations between quantity and quality have been established.
[122627]
From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah lesson 12/9/13

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Question: Why is it that every time our group takes a big step forward to a new qualitative state there are people who don’t succeed and who cannot take that step forward and therefore fall behind?

Answer: It isn’t that they cannot take a step forward, but that they cannot justify the action of the upper Providence on them. A person is taken out of the mass of humanity by forceps and is given personal spiritual treatment. It is just like baby Moses being taken out of the Nile in the basket and brought to the house of Pharaoh. There, he was taken care of, and his ego developed intentionally. He was taught the wisdom of Kabbalah and was told how good he is and that he was selected and more special than anyone else.

He feels good, until different problems arise. He begins to act incorrectly according to his ego, which means that “he kills the Egyptian” in him, and this is where his wanderings begin. It may seem strange that a prince kills his subject, a simple Egyptian, but it is a sign that he is not loyal to Pharaoh anymore and is not adhered to him. So, he must flee and escape to the desert. He goes to Jethro and stays with him for forty years. After being raised and educated in Pharaoh’s home for forty years, he continues to study for another forty years at the home of Jethro, priest of Midian.

This is the evolutionary process we must go through since otherwise you will not be ready to return to Pharaoh and confront him from an equal position, standing straight before him. Without this, you will not be able to bear the ten plagues and feel that it is Pharaoh who receives each one and not you. Moses, who returns from Jethro, is already totally different from Pharaoh. He doesn’t belong to Pharaoh’s home anymore, but rather to the Israeli people, and he already demands, “Let my people go!” Pharaoh turns into an enemy.

Moses learns this approach from Jethro, the great priest of Midian. He must connect to the concept of Jethro, marry his daughter, Tzipora, and have children. This entire process seems very complicated from an external glance. It is hard to understand what all these hardships are for: the struggle between the evil inclination and the Torah that is the means for its correction, and then the exit to spirituality. It isn’t a simple process.

These are processes that every shattered and corrupt soul must go through in order to be corrected and purified. So, people ascend and descend. Someone falls along the way, and another leaps upward. That’s true, but we don’t understand what is happening. The only thing we can do is keep quiet and endure. Only patience can help us here, and I speak from my own experience. I am naturally very impatient, but I am ready to be patient here because it is the only means that can help.
[122621]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/6/13, Writings of Rabash

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Question: I want to understand, what is Bnei Baruch?

Answer: Bnei Baruch is a special group of people that, for the first time in history, is meant to perform the correction of all of reality and reach adhesion with the Creator. This is happening for the first time not because the Creator has chosen a certain Kabbalist like in the past when he chose a Kabbalist in every generation who had to continue this chain. Here, it is about a real correction by a mass of people who pull all of humanity behind them. It is the first wave that is rising and attracted to Godliness.

The first group that is the vanguard of correction is the Bnei Baruch group, and I am leading it. There is nothing to be ashamed of. On the contrary, we should feel the great responsibility that we have and the support that we have. There is nothing to fear. We should learn how to stand between the two forces, how to cope with our inner enemies and those on the outside, with the entire world and with the general Pharaoh.

This is our work. It is impossible to advance any other way but between these two forces. We are in the middle, managing the battle, the struggle between us. The entire world is against us, and internally, we are also against this process! Still, we must identify with our points in the heart, and then we will succeed and win.

The war will be bigger, wider, deeper, more serious and more threatening as we advance. On the one hand, the world will understand that it has no choice since it is receiving one blow after another, and on the other hand, it still will resist. The Creator will increasingly harden Pharaoh’s heart.

It is time, in fact, to stop resisting because the world is falling into an abyss. However, there is such a hardening of the heart that a person doesn’t understand and doesn’t feel the danger. One may think that, after such heavy blows, people would agree, understand, come running to us, and demand the method of redemption, but the opposite will happen.

We must understand this process. It is a war that depends on us. The Creator cannot fight Pharaoh alone if we don’t use His force. Moses must stand between these two great forces, the Creator and Pharaoh, and by using his staff he should determine what this war should be exactly.

So, we must grow up and mature in order to feel and understand more. There is nothing to fear, but we simply should know that it is the war of correction and we should enjoy this process! I don’t mean that we should enjoy it in our ego, but we should be glad that this process has started and that we are the vanguard in the process of bringing all of Malchut of Ein Sof (Infinity) to correction.
[122616]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/6/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: How can I prepare myself even if don’t have the power to do so, if I don’t have the fuel?

Answer: The importance of the goal is given to us from above and we are also sustained from above. There are no heroes here who themselves hold on by their teeth. Each of us lives thanks to the mercy of the Upper. The moment we are given the slightest hardening of the heart, we immediately begin to cry. Everyone is like that and there are no exceptions, and it isn’t that you are weaker than others!

But we should understand that exertions aren’t physical work that I have to do by force. If you overcome something by physical power, it means that it’s a lie. You cannot have the powers for real exertion, which is above human powers. If you can make efforts and do something, it isn’t considered exertion.

Exertion is the attempt to connect to the teacher, the group, and the books to receive the importance of the goal, the importance of the Creator, and the importance of action from them, and to operate on their fuel. You don’t have any fuel to exert yourself. But if you receive fuel through them you will have it.

This means that exertion isn’t just any kind of work, but only when you are attracted to the teacher, the group, and the books in order to be spurred on by them and to receive from them the fuel that you need for your work. Only this is considered exertion and nothing but it. If you had any fuel before you turned to the group, it means that it’s simply ego and not exertion. If you have fuel afterward, it means that you received it from above and this isn’t considered exertion either. The exertion is in arranging things so that you will be impressed by the group.

We have to constantly see these three means: the teacher, the group, and the books that are the link, the coordinators, that connect you to the Creator. There is no other source of energy or vitality. It’s your infusion, your pipeline of oxygen. If you don’t connect to it, you will die. If the friends constantly help you, you will never forget this. This is called mutual guarantee without which you won’t reach anything.

If you don’t use the chance that you are given, then you bring it back once again but you don’t know when: It may be in another ten years or perhaps in the next life. Every moment is detached from the previous one and no one knows when this opportunity will appear again. The current moment is concealed and you may wake up again only after many more lives. This can happen to any of us.

Perhaps only in two hundred years according to the program of development, will you finally receive an awakening again. A friend did not do something properly, was lazy, and you did not get through him what you were supposed to get, and thus went to the next round.

Question: It turns out that I have been already penalized and nothing depends on me?

Answer: It depends only on you; you just need to awaken friends. The Torah is given from above every day. If you created the conditions from below, please, have it.
[122533]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/8/13, Shamati #219 “Devotion”

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