Every level summarizes and incorporates everything that takes place within it. We constantly are learning from ourselves about the states and characteristics through which we pass, which gradually accumulate, and after this, like a gauge, reach a stage where zero becomes one, and after that, again reach a stage where one becomes two, and so on. That is also how it is with us.

However, when the number one or two appears in me, it appears as a negative sum of all the previous negative discoveries above which I can rise, and I now rise above all of them together, and the first positive level is created for me.

Therefore, we must understand that the Creator is never revealed to us in a good way. He forces us to change, and then we feel Him, which is to say, our own corrected states will be felt by us as characteristics of the Creator.

Therefore, we don’t need to look somewhere else, rather only within us, clarifying where the characteristics are that are operating against connection that were created as a result of the shattering of the collective soul. We discover them and rise above them all the time. That is how we advance. This is to say, love covers over all unintentional mistakes and all crimes, and we advance according to this principle.

Now, when we are found in a good atmosphere like this, lacking mutual concern, first and foremost, we must make a “heavenly firmament” above us, such an environment, such a dome, that will hold all of us in constant awareness that we need to discover within us the opposition to connection and surmount it all the time.

If this doesn’t appear in us, this is a sign that we don’t yearn for connection, but when we truly yearn for it we immediately feel the opposition. This is because in spirituality there is no stopping. Immediately, all kinds of disturbances will be added to us as stages of advancement.

Many of the source texts talk about how the Kabbalists felt mutual hatred for each other. In The Book of Zohar it is said that the students of Rabbi Shimon felt such a mutual hatred that they were ready to burn each other to ashes, a fire of hatred burned among them.

Apparently, they had nothing about which to dispute. All of them were poor and lived in a small cave. About what did they feel hatred? It was because they wanted to get close to each other to correct their nature and discover with this the characteristic of bestowal and love, the Creator.

Therefore, the great power of the environment, the group, a constant reminder that if the group works correctly, then all the oppositions that appear among us are our only means for spiritual ascent.

From bricks like these, the corrected characteristics, the soul is built. The characteristics of rejection are the shattered parts of the temple of the soul. By connecting them, we rebuild this Kli, vessel, our collective soul.

We make an effort to connect and eventually discover the evil in each of us: We don’t want to connect. Along with this, we need to feel the pressure of the group so that we won’t flee from the hostility and hatred that appears in us about some of the friends or all of them. Under pressure from the group we begin to yearn for connection in opposition to the force of separation. Therefore, the pressure of the group must be strong.

Through yearning for connection, we begin to understand that, not only do we require the pressure of the group here, but also a higher power, the Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif), and so three compulsory components appear: ourselves, the group, and the Surrounding Light. Through them, this problem is solved and we connect.

The next time, it is the same thing. That is, the conditions for connection transform into a start. So, after connecting, again we need to search for an even greater reason to connect, and again, we get rejection and descend, over which we rise again, and go forward. We all are going through a process like this.
[112514]
From the St. Petersburg Convention “Day One” 7/12/13, Lesson 2

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Question: How can we work with the pride that was revealed after the convention?

Answer: After the convention there was indeed a revelation of pride especially in Europe. Every part of the world has its typical problems and weaknesses and Europe and Russia are different in that sense.

What is pride? In regard to whom and to what? A person has to clarify this by himself:

• I feel pride because I understand and know everything, for having attained something and now I am great and have everything. This will pass and disappear by itself in a couple of days.

• I feel pride because I am several levels above everyone else, and they are unhappy, struggling with their small crises, while I am above them, I understand everything and don’t really care about anything as I look upon them from above. This is wrong.

If we speak about connection and about the fact that we have to correct the shattering between us, then eventually we have to worry about everyone as about our own children. I don’t think that you would relate to people like that if you felt that they were your children, but this is exactly how we should relate to them.

Actually, I see no reason why you should be proud. What is so special about you? What have you attained by yourselves? Nothing.

You were in a group, you were brought, pushed, and different actions were performed on you. You participated passively without understanding the essence of why and where this should lead to. You didn’t even aim at the current state and didn’t know what it is like. This means that your actions were not focused and so it turns out that you were lucky. So what are you proud of?

I can tell you from my own experience that the higher a person ascends, the more he advances, and the closer he is to the Creator, the more humble and low he feels. It is because he sees the action of the infinite Light that arranges everything at any given moment that builds and revives everything.

Keep on working and the feeling of pride will pass. The main thing is that it shouldn’t divert you from your spiritual path. If there are any diversions and you behave like obstinate children, I am used to it. Therefore, nothing can be done but to gradually get over it. We will learn how.
[113122]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/21/13, “Faith Above Reason”

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Question: Does the ego continue to grow after the ascent to the upper level?

Answer: Of course! The difference is that now we have an ego on the corporeal level, and in the transition to the first spiritual level, we acquire a spiritual ego. As it says: “He who is greater than his friend, his ego is also greater.”

How can a person ascend otherwise? We don’t have a spiritual ego now. We are carried by our simple, small, corporeal animal ego. It’s actually nonsense. If the Creator wants to give us the world of Ein Sof (Infinity), we should have a huge infinite ego.

Very serious desires are waiting ahead, such that will simply tear us to pieces. But they will be revealed in us if we can control them in “faith above reason.” This is why the ascent along the spiritual path is through the Light and it’s a smooth ascent. We advance only if we do everything properly, and if we don’t, we remain on the same level or fall. We can only move forward when we are equipped in advance and have ensured that we have the Light.
[113068]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/21/13, “Faith Above Reason”

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Question: If the wisdom of Kabbalah is a science, how can we tie it to “faith above reason?” After all, faith seems to negate science.

Answer: We are on a corporeal level together with the sciences, the arts, and so forth, and in them we can develop.

However, how do we develop? It is only within the ego. The ego develops, and we develop with it, but as of today, the ego actually has ended its development.

Which sciences and arts are we talking about? We see that today everything seems to be stuck, delayed, and coming to a dead end, to a crisis. It has been going on for several decades now. Perhaps people simply don’t understand, but scientists do.

The ego reached its peak and has stopped developing after 6,000 years, having started from a zero point until today. We have been through a process of evolution during this time and have risen to a certain level in the fields of arts and sciences in which the ego has already exhausted itself.

We actually feel that we don’t want anything anymore. Today, we don’t pay attention to anything, and even space research and other sciences don’t interest us anymore.

So, how do we move on to the next stage now? The next stage is a totally different level, and we also must grow in it since there, too, may be a new unknown ego or certain desires.

This transition must be very special. We don’t even understand what it is. It is a transition to a new dimension.

It is totally different in its attributes, there are totally different forces and different connections. It is like our world, but in a totally different way. The still, vegetative, animate, and speaking levels of nature are connected according to different laws, the laws of a new dimension, the laws of what we call the spiritual world.

The new dimension is called the spiritual world since faith above reason dominates it, which means bestowal above receiving. The goal of corporeal existence is receiving. In the spiritual world, however, the goal is bestowal.

So, how can we move to an opposite perception in which the Keter of the lower becomes the Malchut of the upper? How can we move from the egoistic ten Sefirot to the altruistic ten Sefirot? It is only if we perform an operation on ourselves in faith above reason.

“Reason” refers to what I had on the corporeal level, and “faith” is what guides me on the spiritual level. Thus, I raise myself.

This is why it says in all the sources that the most important thing for us is faith above reason.

What is the practical meaning of faith above reason? It means that our previous reason gradually cools down. We are given help here since we cannot advance by our previous reason and immediately begin to rise above it. This is why there is a certain descent after the convention, the addition of ego.

In spite of and together with this, we must ascend and advance more powerfully toward the connection between us. This is why we must study, try to connect, disseminate, and do everything to achieve a stronger connection between us.

We should feel opposite inclinations since we must do everything in order to delve more deeply into it. Our global group must connect more strongly. This is why we should study, disseminate and do everything that needs to be done. It is all only in order to connect internally to the same feeling we had in the convention, but on the next level, on a higher level.

What do we lack in order to reach this? We lack the actual actions.

There is Isra-el, which means “Yashar Kel,” (straight to the Creator). This means that Israel is every friend who yearns for spiritual attainment. There is another part called “Torah,” which stems from the Aramaic word “Oraita – Ohr – light.” The concept of Torah includes the group, the connections, mutual guarantee, and so on, everyone’s adhesion to it, our goal. This is the exact path by which we must advance.

[112960]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/21/13, “Faith Above Reason”

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Question: What are your plans for the future regarding virtual groups? Do you see their prospects for advancing in the future on the level of the physical groups?

Answer: Unity is beyond borders: virtual and, in the meantime, physical borders.

Question: How can women unite better? With friends with similar properties or vice versa?

Answer: It makes no difference because we rise above our characteristics.

Question: How is it necessary to behave with those who are listed as friends in a group but don’t take part in the life of the group at all?

Answer: Wait patiently until they change.

Question: Is it possible and in what way, to be in two groups  simultaneously, physical and virtual?

Answer: You can be in multiple groups because they merge.

Question: Is it difficult for you to be a Rav?

Answer: I am not a Rav, rather a teacher, a guide, a coach.
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Question: How effective are spiritual processes in small groups of two or three people?

Answer: This is the problem with our virtual friends, with our individual friends and others. We have so many students who are scattered in various corners of their countries in:  Australia,  New Zealand, China, several European nations, South America, and so forth. Therefore, these congresses still form and connect us and give us the opportunity to focus together.

But the lack of a physical group remains a problem. I cannot imagine the solution. I know only one thing, when I asked Rabash for permission to move closer to him, he first turned me down and he was right; it’s necessary to check if your desire is real. And only two years later did he allow me to move.

Therefore if a student seriously studies with us for a long time, he needs to think about how to move to a place where there is a group or where it is possible to organize one. I don’t see any other way out.

As much as possible I think about this all the time and hope that with the help of a virtual system it will be possible to connect people and give them a feeling of unity, but in the meantime, a computer screen separates them. The person protects himself from others through the screen.

So what is the problem? Making people connect with others. We are found in a state that “connecting with others” means to sit together, to breathe together, to learn together, to hate the friends, to love them, and so forth.

And the Upper Light gives us all kinds of problems here, intentionally “causing friction” between us, rubbing us together, to remove the membrane from the heart. The hearts rub together in order to undress them. How is it possible to do this when you are found in a virtual connection? I can’t describe this to myself. Personally I would be happy to be with everyone in a virtual connection: I “type” some information in an email and that’s it, you are already “in love” with the friends.

Where can you really feel hostility to the point of hatred as those friends in The Zohar felt?! You can immediately unplug the computer or protect yourself with some kind of emoticon (smiley) and that’s it! How could it be otherwise?

I feel this with us in our country. There are groups that maintain a gentlemanly distance. There are those who are closer, participate more, want to integrate with us more, and want to build our center together. When there are opportunities for work, then the participation of each is tested. The idea is not just participation, rather it’s working together. This is what is essential. Therefore you must understand that it’s necessary to gather and organize in groups, and to organize large groups with departments, with an institute for distribution, with children’s groups. In general, all this is imperative.
[112794]
From the St. Petersburg Convention “Day Two” 7/13/13, Lesson 3

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Question: As a general rule, rejection is not with respect to the group but a friend. What is the working program in this case?

Answer: I don’t think that this is so. A person must see that he has an aversion to working with the group, to connecting with the friends, to dissolving into them. And if there is any kind of special prejudice against someone, it may gradually pass. Therefore there is no need to focus attention on this. It is not worthwhile.

First of all, what should interest me is how to “get into them,” to adhere to them. The main thing is that I shouldn’t manage myself, rather they manage me. This is what is called dissolving into them. This is to say I don’t have my own thoughts and desires. This is what is with them. And this is everything.

The moment that you make such movements, the Surrounding Light immediately acts and influences you. Experiences like these bring this, the Light cleanses you all the time and adds all kinds of contradictions to you, but you try to do it again. And after you pass through a necessary amount of attempts of this kind, attainment eventually arrives. And the group might not even know anything about it and may remain at the same level in which it was before, as in the example of Rabbi Yossi Ben Kisma.
[112800]
From the St. Petersburg Convention “Day Two” 7/13/13, Lesson 3

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Question: When I come to pray out of total despair, do I need to ask that I will change, or do I need to ask that a friend will advance spiritually?

Answer: Prayer is called a desire in the heart, the uncontrolled yearning of the heart. I can say whatever I want, nothing will help, and it’s just all movement of the lips. I could dance, cry, or roll on the ground; this also yields no results. The main thing is what I am feeling in the depths of my heart.

A desire is called heart and the fourth phase of my desire is what is most concealed from me. Sometimes when it is revealed I tremble from what is there. And this aspect is felt by the Light, contacts it, because it’s like the four letter name of the Creator.

The last phase is actually found in contact with the upper phase Keter. A yearning for connection appears in it which is opposite that of “Keter”: It either wants to control it completely (in which case this phase is called “Pharaoh” who wants all the Light held within itself), or the opposite, it wants to resemble “Keter,” the characteristic of bestowal.

We have no control over this phase, in fact we don’t sense it and don’t feel it. Here all kinds of practical actions are required! This is not just sitting and meditating; the wisdom of Kabbalah doesn’t recognize this! All this doesn’t exist! You can go deeply into yourself, think that you could have all kinds of intentions, but all these are internal investigations that are ultimately determined by preliminary work and work that follows. These investigations are compulsory only to understand what I have attained, how much I can feel who I am at the present moment.

Therefore, if we truly want to summon the surrounding Light onto ourselves, action is required; as a result, the influence of the Light gives form to the right yearning of our desire in its latest aspect. As it is written, “The Creator puts the prayer in my mouth.” Even if the person is not thinking about anything, but mechanically carries out what is necessary, in the end, it will result in his most normal thoughts transforming into the most wondrous thoughts.

And the opposite is also true. The warning exists: “His wisdom exceeds his actions.” This is not allowed! It is believed that when a person’s wisdom exceeds his deeds, he kills himself spiritually. All kinds of philosophies, intentions, thoughts, and studying from morning to night is not good. Our world is a world of action. We are found in the last phase of the world of Assiya, translated as “action.”
[112797]
From the St. Petersburg Convention “Day Two” 7/13/13, Lesson 3

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The Creator vacates a place for Himself within us, giving us a feeling of coldness. But essentially this is not coldness or distancing. We were in a state of cohesion in our small group. Now the Creator extended this circle, and we feel that we don’t have control over the empty place that is created.

Before we only felt ourselves within our circle where a sense of the convention reigned. And now, after the convention has ended, we feel this empty place that grows more and more every day.

If it keeps on going this way, ultimately all the memories of the past will disappear and we will return again to the beastly state. Why does the Creator do this? So that now, while we are feeling how He is moving away from us and how the feeling of our unity dissolves, we will want to fill this empty place with the Creator. Because we understand that we are not ready to retain and keep the warm feelings that were there with our own powers and that it’s going further and further away. That is how the Creator empties a new place within us where His presence and His control must be felt.

The first thing is that we want to return to a feeling of connection. The second thing is that in order to remain in it, we need the Creator’s control instead of the emptiness that was created.

Our goal is connection, and the means for attaining it is the Creator. And now we need to switch their places, the Creator becomes the goal and the connection becomes the means. So we make a new clarification all the time and implement the opposite.
[112708]
From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/19/13

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When we speak about approaching the Light, the characteristic of bestowal and love, it raises the question about how could we find this, how would we know what this is?

Before us is a very simple laboratory, it is ourselves, severed from each other by our ego and in the same situation as the Light is in regard to substance, that is, in opposition. If I want to understand how to relate to the Light, it is up to me to understand how I relate to every person, to the others, and evidently the same relationships exist between people as between us and the Light.

So, if I ask how can I approach the Light before it pushes me with the help of a stick , I must maintain the condition from the Torah, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Nothing else is required.

Near me are many people with whom I can try to arrange relationships like these, and maybe I can even find people who understand me and we can help each other. We can attain mutual help between us. We can hint to each other how we should approach each other despite the mutual ego that exists between us. So, we learn.

To the degree that we want to approach each other, we will play at being good, nice, bestowing, and loving people. We approach the Light. Through this approach we attract much more of its attention to ourselves.

The increased flow of Light will change me, but no longer negatively. It no longer will awaken new egoistic desires in me. Rather, it will change my characteristics. The right intentions will appear in me. It is clear that I am playing with intentions, bestowal, and love for another that I don’t really have. However, I try doing this mechanically as if I am approaching the Light, and it begins to influence me, begins to awaken in me the right intention. Gradually, this will happen.

As the Light carries out some kind of positive changes in me, so I advance; at the same time, it also will arouse negative characteristics in me, meaning that I will discover additional portions of ego to work on.

Ultimately, it will become clear that I am taking my personal development into my own hands and am no longer left completely formless, blindly controlled by nature. Instead, I control my own advancement.

Despite this, I must understand that all this depends on the environment that I choose, on my attempts to connect with my friends in spiritual work, on building a laboratory of our ourselves to correct human nature together. All of the conditions, all of the laws, that we learn in the wisdom of Kabbalah are derived from this. In principle, this is our entire method.

It is clear that there are many conditions and various additions: how we must change ourselves, how to inspire a friend so he will influence me positively and will draw me forward, what can be done to influence him more, and how we must help each other to rise above our nature.

Our entire approach is the method of yearning for the Light. We don’t need to wait in vain for the Light to effect us, obliging us to do something through its negative influences.

So, we organize groups and students, and try to organize large conventions with specific preparations where it is most important to understand that everything depends on me, on us, on the sum of our intentions. Everything depends upon everyone, men and women who have been learning for some time and those who arrived not long ago but who already have a clear understanding in them that has more or less crystallized that the right intention will bring our substance closer to the higher force.

So, from our own desire, we advance quickly to a state where we begin to feel the Light that influences us; for if I desire it, then I am the first and it is the second, and so to the degree of my advancement toward it, I will feel its influence on myself and will begin to discover it. However, that is only if I have an inclination to approach it according to my characteristics. That is how we work.

Along with this, reality is changed. I begin to feel a discovery of the force of nature within nature—how it acts within the substance of the still, the vegetative, and the animate within us and connects all this into a complete, global whole—and then I begin to understand the entire essence of this. The masses of human beings and all that exists are imbued with a single power within a network of forces, and this is revealed to me according to my intention.

Therefore, we are gathered here in order to try to work seriously among us with one intention, one goal, which is to feel this connection between us, this network of forces that passes through the entire universe, a network that manages and gives life to all that exists, and when we begin to discover it, we begin to discover its laws, the true inner natural laws of all of creation. We begin to learn them.

This helps us to strengthen our intentions even more, to understand better the nature of the Light, the higher power of nature. We can perfect the relationships between us and our relationships with nature, with the Light, more and more. We will see which relationships between us, which desires, skills, and characteristics are most useful and optimal.

In this manner, we will begin to choose new ways for ourselves: how to bestow, how to maneuver within our egoistic characteristics, how to change them gradually, starting with one characteristic, and later changing the rest with the help of the characteristics that we corrected before, and so on. This is to say, we begin to learn an inner, personal, and deep psychology.

The internal integration of the person after he begins to feel all of these characteristics within himself and how he can control them will be discovered between us more and more. And most importantly, we will feel each other clearly, and suddenly will feel how much we are glued together within a single network. Cooperation like this between us will be so strong that, with the right intentions within us, we will connect all our matter, which will absorb and be filled with the characteristics of bestowal and love, with the characteristics of the Light, in the single likeness of Adam (Man).

This is our utmost goal, and the minimal goal is to begin to act this way between us, to resemble the Light as much as we can with all the power available to us. This is enough. If we realize this goal both quantitatively and qualitatively with what we have already accumulated within us, even for a brief moment, if we can discover a little of our equivalence of form with the Light, then we will discover it within us.

There exists only one precise law of physics here, the law of equivalence of form. This is the state that all of us want to reach at our convention. I hope that we will succeed. Everything depends on each one of the participants, those who are already found here today and those who will arrive tomorrow, and will begin our great convention together.

We now are found in a special place. In this city, they often have tried to make various corrections, revolutions, and changes during the course of human history, and I think now it all depends upon us. We want to make an internal revolution within us, to become the bestowers, the lovers, as religions and the laws of nature have required of us and which essentially is the same thing.

I hope that each one will relate responsibly to the task that stands before us, and we will do it.
[112156]
From the Preparatory Lesson St. Petersburg Convention 7/11/13

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