The shattering of the vessels isn’t just a shattering, but is the revelation of the places in which previously there were flaws that were concealed. Now, however, when the flaw has been revealed, it is possible to clarify it, to examine it to its full depth, and to correct it by completing what is missing in it.

So a much stronger and more sublime state is created after we put all the parts together again. It only looked whole before, but inside there were many cracks. It’s the illumination that is added in the final third phase of creation that was lacking in the vessel of the world of Ein Sof (Infinity) in phase one.
[102937]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/15/13, Shamati #38

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Spiritual fear (awe) is the fear of using something for my own benefit, even if it’s the revelation of the Creator in any form, meaning enjoying the fact that I am correcting the world, that I am bringing the Creator contentment, that I bestow like He does, and that I reach adhesion with Him.

The Creator shows me that everything depends on me and He does so with everyone. Everyone hears from Him that he is the most special of all. This is the truth. He isn’t lying to me and doesn’t try to buy me off! But I have to overcome all this great Light, and in order to do that I need to build a shield to protect me from this fear in advance.

Therefore, our work is in concealment and we have to perform many actions to which we feel no attraction by working on the connection among us. We have to make efforts in the group in advance, although I have no desire and no yearning for that and see no value in it. It isn’t only about the local group that is close to you and that directly belongs to you. It is worthwhile to invest in this group according to many conscious and subconscious egoistic calculations. But I also have to try to connect to the global vessel.

We should understand that the more distant a person seems to me geographically or emotionally, the more important he is and the more critical his influence is on my advancement than the people who are close to me. It’s like the difference between the spiritual levels; if I shorten the distance between us emotionally or physically, it will turn into an amplifier for the level of my correction.

So all those that are distant from us are very important to us: the distant groups that are far away and the individual students who speak different languages, who differ in their mentality and who live under difficult conditions so that they have to to hide from others. Each of us needs to make sure that the physical distances will not keep us away from one another, so that those that are most distant will become the closest.

In this way, we will surely build the vessel called “fear,” we will understand what spiritual fear means, and will be ready for spiritual advancement.
[102933]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/15/13, Shamati #38

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Baal HaSulam, “The Peace”: And you find that all the seeds from which the good states grow are only the corrupted deeds themselves, meaning that all the exposed evils that come from under the hands of the wicked in the generation join and accumulate to a great sum, until they weigh so heavily that the public can no longer bear them. Then, they rise up and ruin it and create a more desirable state.

If I want to advance correctly, I have to participate in destroying evil by concrete actions along the way. These actions come down to the most efficient act, which is connection among the friends. It is the connection that destroys evil.

Question: What does it mean that the evil appears during the connection?

Answer: That’s right. The true evil is revealed only when I want to connect with others and see how repulsed I am by them and how much I hate them. I am attracted to them and this repulses me and I feel rejection. This is the evil inclination and that’s the only thing we have to correct. Everything else are animalistic feelings.

After all, Adam, a human being, is only someone who is attracted to the connection with others. The negative response to connection is the evil inclination that I correct and turn into the good inclination.

My first inclination is to establish a connection with the group and with the friends. Then I feel that I don’t want to study or do anything anymore. Instead I feel the hardening of the heart; I am tired of trying, “How much longer? I don’t see that anything good comes out of this…” This is the evil inclination, the Pharaoh in me that I have to work on now. His evil is that he opposes the connection.

On the other hand, the result of the connection is called “Creator – Bo-Re” which means come and see (Bo – come and Re – see in Hebrew). If I connect with all the souls or with some of them, then in the connection between them I discover the Creator. In other words, I reach connection and there inside it I discover the result.

But in the meantime I feel bad since my desire is extinguished and I fall asleep and don’t see the point in anything anymore, not in this world and not in the next world. Nothing is worth the effort anymore. Now when I feel the hardening of the heart, I have to find the power to act, to raise MAN, a request.

So how do you do that if I already want to receive a sleeping pill for the rest of my life? Here we need an environment to help us wake up. This environment does two things:

First it “buries” my evil inclination.

Second, when we connect, and together rise to Holiness, we ask for the force of bestowal by the prayer of many with all our might.

Therefore, the good inclination can only be revealed in the group. Then from Above, I receive the good force, the force of bestowal that unites me with the friends and the Creator.
[102887]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/15/13, “The Peace”

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Question: Does a combination of people in the integral circle form a new force, integrality, meaning people’s minds and feelings are combined together?

Answer: They are not simply combined together, but, rather, the mind and feelings are mutually complemented. Therefore, they form a new, physical, integral force. This is not just a sum, but rather, a sum of all common efforts to rise above oneself to connect with others; that is, it is a spiritual force.

Spiritual means “apart from egoism” because everyone must rise in order to begin connecting with others.

All our small efforts accumulate together. Then, from our connection, we begin to sense something new. It’s very good, kind, pleasant, and safe.

Let’s say that ten people sit in the circle. However, during the discussion, they form not just a combination of the ten people, but it’s multiplied by an infinite number. This is because, when I annul myself in order to connect with one and another one and a third one, and they, in turn, do the same, in this way, each of us receives the integral desire. Then, with this integral desire, we, again, “enter” one another in one experience, and, in this way, we form a multiplicity of multiplication. It is as if we pull ourselves by our hair from our world into the spiritual world.
[101930]
From KabTV’s program, “Professional Secrets,” 2/10/13

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Question: Would you say that the quantity and quality of our exertion depends on our envy of the friends?

Answer: Yes, it also depends on your envy. It says, “Envy, lust and honor take a person out of this world.”

We may ask ourselves what is so good about these attributes, what can be worse and more reprehensible than losing your human form? A person who is envious can harm others and enjoys stepping on others and destroying them.

In short, we are talking about negative attributes, but they are actually the ones that take a person out of this world into the upper world. After all, they show me the real ego.

How else can I establish my connections with others if I don’t feel envy, lust, and a desire for respect? If I don’t have such attributes, I don’t need anything; I can live somewhere in the suburbs and sometimes go out shopping or doing different errands to provide my basic necessities and come back home.

But suddenly, in this peacefulness, I discover that I envy others; I want to attain the same things that they have and even more in order to seem higher than them. Then I move to live in the city and start a “career”…

It is impossible to advance without revealing my own bad attributes. We should only understand that they are “help against.” We shouldn’t block them but rather let them come out, as Baal HaSulam says, “I am happy with the revelation of the evil.”

Question: How can we combine feeling envious of the friends and requesting not for me but for them?

Answer: The envy of the friends is a great catalyst for my advancement, but advancement towards what? Towards bestowal. I don’t mean to reach greater achievements than them on the corporeal level; I want to succeed on the spiritual level. In spirituality, success depends on how much I annul my “self.” When I want to advance, I organize everything that I have received from the friends by envy, lust, and the desire for respect, and then I begin to understand that spiritual advancement is actually transcending myself.

Thus I receive a desire to ascend from the friends, but I don’t interpret it correctly: to ascend means to rise above myself, and to be incorporated with them. Thus the group is “help against”; it evokes a negative awakening in me, which I turn to positive in order to eventually return to the connection with the friends.

Here I have a problem again, the desire grows again, and I repeat the whole process…

Question: How can I aim the envy, the lust, and the desire for honor in the right direction? After all, it is very easy to justify myself in pursuing the right goal and finally fall into the darkness and distortion along the way. How can I build the internal boundaries that direct me, in addition to the teacher, the group, and the books?

Answer: You have to annul yourself before the friends. As a result of the annulment, you evoke the envy, the lust, and the desire for respect inside you; you open your eyes and begin to examine things and don’t just let them go on.

Otherwise, you find yourself in corporeal envy, lust, and desire for respect; you want to be different, to rise above the friends. But the group is built in such a way that it won’t let you fall into this. You will change in any case since the atmosphere here is special and people are dealing with inner search, and so your attitude towards the friends gradually takes on a more correct form. So even new friends here receive the right direction and aspire for the truth and not for the usual profit for themselves.

Question: But each of the friends was given the optimal conditions to advance, so what is there to envy?

Answer: I want to include them inside me. In each of them there is something special since otherwise he wouldn’t be here. So I want the same thing, this means that I want to be Adam, a human being.

The optimal conditions are not reason to relax, but rather a reason to bring the good out of everything, from all the states and the friends.
[102762]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/10/13, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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A person cannot exit his ego by himself. Only the group can help him by throwing a lifeline to whoever wants to join it. The group is external to a person, so when he wants to exit himself, he cries out to them, “Save me, I have fallen into a deep well! Throw me a rope so that I can tie it around me and then pull me out of here!”

Only the group can offer such help to a person who needs help, by wanting to be with everyone. The rope is an invitation to connect with the friends, with their love. If a person tries to hold on to this invitation and tries to be in equivalence of form with them, then the friends will begin to pull him up. He has to overcome his ego more and more, on his part, which means that he rises from the well towards the friends.

Each time more problems and new interruptions that hold him back will build up on that rope, but he will overcome them and hold on more tightly to the rope, climbing it until he comes out of the well.
[102816]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/13/13, Shamati #36 

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As one advances, a person begins to feel that everything spiritual is outside of his body, in everything that surrounds him in the still, vegetative, and animate nature, in humans. This is what the world is, the area we must learn to treat with love and care as a great treasure so that the world, which is outside of our body, will become very important to us.

The feeling of existence in the physiological body occurs only in our imagination through a combination of forces that are acting on us. That is why we feel as if we live in the material body, and, if a person has an aspiration to live outside of his body—in everything that surrounds him—this is already the need to feel the soul.

Having begun working on this, a person sees that he needs to concentrate all his work on the correct environment because only from there can he get help and support. Such an environment is the group, as a representative of the external world, which may respond to me, attract me, and help me exit myself.

Then, I view the group as my savior, who throws me a rope to pull me out as if from a well. I do not associate myself with the body and wish to get out of it, and thus I grab the rope. The group, friends who are outside of me, help me break away from my body.

Thus, working together, we take turns helping each other climb up and exit ourselves. After all, only outside of his skin, outside of his selfish interests, does a person begin to feel that the group is not a gathering of some people but the holy Shechina in which the Creator dresses.

The body consists of Klipat Noga, the part that gives me freedom of choice, and the “snake’s skin,” the most powerful egoism that pulls me back, so that in trying to get out, I am able to apply sufficient effort correctly aimed.

Due to my desire to get out of my egoism—self-love and thoughts about my own good—to break out beyond my skin and think about the group and the world, I awaken the force that comes through the group, the teacher, and the Creator, which saves me from this prison. All this is due to the mutual work in the group with the teacher and with the books, and thanks to studies and dissemination, which are all the means in which the force of the Creator dresses and helps me exit myself.
[102824]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/13/13, Shamati #36

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Question: We had an exercise yesterday in which we tried to relate to everything as a “dialog with the Creator.” After all, He is the one who is sending us all these states and we have to respond to them correctly. How can we “grow stronger” in implementing this approach without settling for a couple of attempts a day? How can we deepen this insight so that it will run through our whole life?

Answer: A person cannot always evoke himself by himself. He needs an external “stimulus.” The best external stimulus is the group. This is why we speak about mutual guarantee.

In the framework of mutual guarantee it’s not enough to guard the other so that he won’t make a hole in the boat; it isn’t enough to guard the other so that he won’t have evil thoughts; in addition to that, we have to make sure that he has good thoughts. If we all keep the mutual connection and the common yearning for the goal, no one will have evil thoughts but only good thoughts.

Then, of course the evil thoughts will begin to awaken at a very rapid pace, but they will immediately fall onto the right ground: It will be clear to a person that it’s an interruption, “help against,” that is meant to evoke him and to tighten the connection with the friends and through them with the Creator. Then everyone will be able to easily process even millions of similar thoughts a day, and within a few days he will fulfill the whole level of this world.

Everyone worries about everyone else. Everyone is connected in one mission, in one common goal. I feel that I have to think about the goal for the sake of the others. I want everyone to yearn for it; I can’t leave the connection with the goal and with the Creator since if I do, I would betray my friends and would turn into a criminal, a cheat, a thief, who steals the spiritual world from others and who nullifies their exertion along the spiritual path. What’s more, I steal from the Creator; I deprive Him of pleasure since I hold the group back and don’t allow Him to give the friends what they yearn for. I am the one responsible for that.

This is what everyone should think. After all, there is no “little bit” in spirituality: If someone doesn’t work to the fullest, everyone suffers. So think carefully about what you do and about what worries you during the day.

Other than that, there are times when you admit, “Now I can’t think about the friends. I have to rest, take a nap, or be distracted by something else at least mentally.” These breaks are external to the adhesion to the group and the Creator and later you will not feel a need for them.

But in the meantime they are necessary, and so at a certain point you say to yourself, “I will take a break and rest from everyone.” You may fall into an “animal” state for half an hour or an hour, but you decide for how long; you decide not to think about what’s important for a while. Then you will feel the “foreign” thoughts about spirituality…
[102520]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/12/13, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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Question: We have to yearn for the changes that the Creator sends us along the spiritual path. But these changes involve unpleasant feelings, how can we want them?

Answer: When a person’s ears get clogged, he has to listen more carefully, “Has anyone said anything? Did I understand correctly?” This is the inner effort to hear the one who turns to you.

We have to feel the same about the Creator. Something happens every minute: someone is looking at me, someone is talking to me, something happens in the world; inside me, I have had different thoughts, I have had different desires, different problems come up… All this is the Creator’s language. He is the one who sends me these messages.

Let’s take a certain object, for example, that is being bitten on all sides by particles in the air, by atoms. I am also constantly under the influence of the Creator. I only have to increase my sensitivity, and then through my “skin” I will actually start to discover Him; I will decipher his “conversation” and understand how and what He does.

It is all about my inner sensitivity. Even if I grow tired of paying endless attention to everything that happens, I have to ask for such sensitivity. It comes thanks to the mutual exercises I do with the friends, and with their help, I discover that at any given moment I am given different opportunities to have a dialog with the Creator. If I don’t miss them, then there is no room for thoughts, everything turns into feelings, and the feelings don’t go back and forth between us, but rather become common feelings…

We have to apply simple, direct psychology here and as little “accounting” as possible: eventually it is the Creator turning to me through different “garments.”
[102482]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/11/13, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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Question: How can I move from “me” to “we?” What is the meaning of justifying the Creator only when a person is happy not because he is successful but because his friend is successful?

Answer: The point is that you should adhere to the friend and through him feel reality. How can I check my devotion to my friends? It is according to how happy I feel when they are happy and how sad I feel when they are sad, bringing myself into the group only in order to help them reach the good state.

Here I begin to discover to what extent I actually want the opposite: what fire of hatred and envy is revealed in me towards them, and to what extent I cannot want anything good for them because I like this separated state.

There is a great deal of work I have to do here so that these examinations will bring me to the right conclusion: I have nothing but the friends among which I live!

If my friend has a problem, I work with it as if it were an obstacle standing between me and the Creator. It makes no difference. I will be able to annul myself there, my “I,” and on the other hand, will feel great with respect to the friends, meaning that I want to do everything so that that they will feel good, like a good mother.
[102406]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/10/13, Shamati #6

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