The effort we have to make in order to enter the spiritual world is beyond a person’s powers. It’s like having to lift the weight of a ton. A person can’t do that, of course. But if 50 friends come to a person’s aid, everyone lifts 20 kilograms and that is certainly possible.

The work of the Creator is arranged in the same way. This is done on purpose so that a person will yearn for quality and not for quantity: so that he will not just be attracted to the Creator, but that he will really yearn for Him, for the one force. This one force can be reached only if several individuals connect to attain one goal. Therefore the connection leads us in the right direction.

A person advances by mutual guarantee, by mutual commitment, and by measuring his concern for the Creator according to his concern for the friend in contrast to his concern about himself, his relatives and about whoever is in his inner circle. Then he prevents alien thoughts from dominating him, and if they appear it’s only so that he can clarify things and separate himself from them.

Everything is arranged so that nothing can be done alone. If a person discovers this, then at that moment he begins to advance. The main thing is to feel one’s self-weakness and the need for the environment’s help. Then he is ready for mutual guarantee and he defines the Creator, the Godly force differently, by accepting it as connection and unity based only on the many that are connected into one.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/20/13

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The moment a person comes complaining to the Creator, there is an immediate concealment and he is no longer aiming at the Creator but rather at another goal. It’s because the Creator is the only force, there is none else beside Him and He is good and benevolent. If you aim straight at Him, then you can’t have any complaints. The moment you divert a little from the right direction, you immediately feel dissatisfied and full of complaints.

Turn to the right direction and do your best until you divert again and start complaining. Thus, by your dissatisfaction and overcoming it each time you advance towards the Creator, like a boat that advances by tacking. It’s because you can’t advance directly to the Creator; you don’t have the attribute of bestowal, the attributes of the good and the benevolent. You have to build this image above your attribute of receiving, from your oppositeness. You build a replica of these attributes and not the actual attributes.

It’s common knowledge that the only way to create a sculpture is by removing the excess and or a surplus. You can take a big rock and take off all the unnecessary parts to get the desired form. You can take plaster and make a statue out of it, but in any case, the main thing is the border, the external form we create on top of the desire to receive by clarifying each time where to draw the line between the desire to receive and the desire to bestow.

So our work is always made of the inclination to resemble and for that reason a person is called “Adam – man” which means “Domeh” (similar to in Hebrew) to the Creator. Our work is to justify the Creator. I can’t focus myself on that, to become good and benevolent and there is none else beside Him, by myself. But by justifying Him I become equal to Him and attribute myself to His form.
[100875]
From the 1^st Part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/17/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: How can I check if my work is real?

Answer: Real work is when I use the environment, the group, as much as I can, wanting to discover our strong mutual connection. I have to discover a good honest attitude on the part of the group towards me and to accept it as the Creator’s attitude towards me, who dressed in the group. On my part, I have to express the same attitude towards the group: honest, warm, and good in perfect connection according to my level.

There is no other place we can meet and fulfill the relations among us except for the group. A group does not mean establishing personal connections with everyone, but treating everyone equally, by wanting to discover the Creator in the connection among us.

We are all different and each one brings along his uniqueness and his differences, all his complaints and his problems, and all the negative states he goes through. We come to the group with all these differences, with our minuses (-), but we work in the opposite manner so that everyone will turn it into a plus (+). All our pluses connect into one big “plus,” and thus we build the Creator since this plus was created above all our minuses.

In the minus I achieve my independence and remain my own self, the “self” is not erased. In our plus we reach a “void” since it is there that a person wants to dissolve and disappear in the group. Thus we go through a complete change: from one end to another and include the two forces within us. What we have is called “reason,” but above that there is “faith,” which is “above reason.” This means that we constantly prefer bestowal by placing it above receiving.

This is all of our work that can only be fulfilled in the group. The gap (∆) between the “self” and the “void” always determines the height of my level in which I feel my Light of NRNHY.
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From the 1^st Part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/17/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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We can find the Creator only in the vessel that we stabilize by ourselves. Therefore it says that the created being forms the Creator. What does that mean, because it sounds like heresy? But the fact that we build the vessel in which we want to discover the attribute of bestowal by ourselves means that we are forming the Creator.

We feel it only in the form that is dressed in matter, called Bo-reh (come and see), that is the Creator (Bore) and not in what is external to it. This dressing exists in a earlier root, of course, which we don’t speak about and don’t attain; our attainment is only possible up to the border called Bo-reh.

So in the workshop we had last night on the theme, “There is none else besides Him,” I tried to explain that this concept is attained only in the center of the group. There is no other place it can be attained, and we cannot prove this to ourselves in any other way. Only if we all, with our negative ego, yearn for the revelation of the positive connection among us, can we create such high tension between the two opposite forces that are in each of us: a “minus” and a “plus,” which can be attained only in the group. Then it becomes compatible to the height of the spiritual level, and we can rise to it.

The Creator had no other option but to first shatter the vessel, and enable it to develop the sensitivity to the attribute of bestowal. It is impossible to do that without feeling that and the desire to receive inside the vessel.

The Creator is only the force of bestowal. The created being is initially only a force of receiving. So in order to resemble the Creator, he has to include these two forces in him: the force of bestowal and the force of receiving, one on top of the other. We can establish this state only in the group. This is what I wanted you to feel in the workshop so that you will understand that it is impossible to fulfill this without a group.

In the meantime the balance of power is such that we are left with a big minus, we haven’t entered the borders of the group yet. Each one is somewhere on his way towards it, guarding himself and not wanting to enter it.

We have to guard our minuses, and they have to be big. They will keep on growing since the minus is created by the Reshimot (spiritual genes). The moment you manage to connect somehow, new Reshimot will immediately appear. But as long as you don’t spur yourself to work and don’t fulfill the previous Reshimo, the new Reshimo will not appear.

The Reshimot are revealed in a chain, one after the other, according to the plan. But the problem is that we don’t develop our “pluses,” and so in the meantime we remain on the level of potential knowledge but not its actual fulfillment. In order for that to be felt as part of our reality, we have to create a group, a shared space among us, in which we can form the Creator (“come and see”).

The Creator is formed in us when the desire to receive is left inside, and on the outside it takes on the form if bestowal, meaning “to receive in order to bestow.” Reception below and bestowal above, and together they are called the Creator.

In order to do that, we have to bend our head and annul our pride; we will have to crawl to the group “on all fours” as we acknowledge the fact that we are an “animal” whose head is even less valued than its body since it constantly worries only about how to serve the body. When you bend your head below the body, it will mean that you have reached the understanding that it is worthless and then you will be able to be Adam, a human being.
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From the 1^st Part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/17/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Lowliness is not when I don’t have the power to do something, but rather when I think that I actually do something. The lowly is not someone who cannot be a hero, but someone who thinks that he is a hero. If the ego awakens in a person, then everything he says indicates his lowliness.

After all, everything is managed by the upper Light. But a person thinks that he has his own power, feelings, and mind in his ego, and this is his lowliness. The lowliness is in the fact the he doesn’t understand, that he doesn’t feel, and doesn’t attain that his desire to receive is only a replica of the Light. It’s only a shadow of the Light and he has nothing but that shadow.

If a person feels and understands this, if he fights the lowliness that is evoked in him over and over again in order to reveal the gap between him and the Creator, then he enters another lowliness that is actually not a sign of lowliness but of adhesion. He doesn’t want to be adhered to his desire and serve it devoutly, not in the shadow, which is the opposite replica of the Light that imagines that it exists independently since it’s detached from the source. Instead he wants to devoutly serve the Light itself. Thus he reaches adhesion with the source.

Then he is filled with pride, with power, with everything that that Light has by having annulled his desire to receive before the Creator. He thanks the Creator for having created this desire to receive by which a person can feel how he can adhere to the Creator. Thus the clarification of self-lowliness constantly helps a person get closer to the truth, to the source. So where one feels His lowliness is the place where one discovers the Creator’s humbleness and His greatness.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/18/13

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When I try to imagine what my spiritual level really has to be and whether I can rise to it by my feelings, my knowledge, and my efforts, I see that I cannot. If I come to the right conclusions, I discover that without the Creator’s help I will not manage. After all, I have to correct my intention in order to bestow upon the Creator and I can reach that only through the love of others, by connection with the friends.

Here I see to what extent I work in the opposite direction, forgetting all about the love of others, unable to constantly think about mutual guarantee, about connection and about the love of friends.

It seems that love of friends and the correction of my desires are two different things. I have to love the friends and then I will be ready to do them a favor and to get a bit closer to them. But the correction of my desires and the revelation of the Creator are intimate personal things that belong only to me. I cannot connect these two conditions, and this is our main problem.

So we have to constantly work on the connection of “Israel, the Torah and the Creator.” The Torah is revealed only by the Light that Reforms, which connects all these components. After all, the important rule of the Torah is “Love thy friend as thyself.” The Torah is all the vessels and all the Lights in which love is revealed—from such a strong connection that turns to love.

We have to imagine a common vessel called the “Torah,” which is all the desire to receive that was created and that is shattered to pieces that are very far from one another filled with mutual hate. I want all this to be covered with love; I really want this! So I need the Creator and I focus on Him through this collective desire.

In that case I really need the Creator. I summon Him not just so that He will bring me pleasure, but as a result of an unbearable pain that is caused by my inability to connect to the general love in the relations between us.

This love has to be expressed towards the group in some way, towards the friends, even if it is not openly but more internally. This already depends on a person, on time, on the height he is on. The Kabbalists of Kotzk used to express an opposite attitude externally; we follow the instructions of Rabash to display love and  concern for the friends openly.

We have to constantly worry only about the general vessel, about the general connection that draws the Light that Reforms and the Light that fills the vessel. The Creator is revealed only in that vessel, as the one who builds and sustains, heals, and fills it.

All this takes place in that state; the trouble is that we don’t imagine it correctly, but think that the Creator can be revealed inside us, will enter our individual hearts. This is how every egoist thinks, since he is used to drawing all the goodness and all the achievements to himself.

This is the whole problem. Only by mutual guarantee can we support one another in order to remain focused on the center of the group, the nation of Israel, and the whole world as one system in which everything takes place. There is nothing but that.

Otherwise we are simply not living in reality. All the other perspectives except this one are called “an imaginary reality.” It isn’t even as imaginary as our world but actually fictitious and totally egoistic.

So we have to discover the snake that stands in our way that constantly takes us back into our impure heart. In that case, it is impossible to manage without the group’s decision that this has to be our only concern, and only through the help of the friends can I remain focused correctly on the group in order to see my correction in it.

This is the reason we cannot think about the Creator’s benefit, about true bestowal; it all depends on one another, and our thoughts are aimed in the direction of receiving and not bestowal. The revelation of the Creator seems like a sweet candy.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/13/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Unfortunately a person often defines exertion incorrectly and wastes a lot of energy doing things that don’t help him advance towards spiritual revelation and to bringing contentment to the Creator. He initially takes upon himself different difficult tasks, but by that, only fights windmills, fighting imaginary enemies and unreal forces that stand in his way.

It is not easy to unveil the forces that stand in a person’s way. They are very close to a person, and he cannot discern them since he thinks that they are him, himself. They cling to him so strongly that they force him to think as if they are an inseparable part of him. He cannot keep them away from him in order to see that they are his enemies, as it says, “The enemies of man are living in his own house.”

The main thing is to locate the enemies that stand in your way to the Creator. When a person begins to locate this and gets closer to the real discernments, he sees that all he has are his enemies. He has nothing of his own, no allies that he can trust and count on for support along this path by relying on their help in a pure correct way. It is because all the close forces are revealed as opposite from him.

Some of his desires, thoughts, and attributes laugh at him now; others intentionally place obstacles along his way, making his future path more difficult, but at the same time they disguise themselves so cunningly that he believes that they are doing him a favor. Others weaken him by holding him back, putting spikes in his wheels, thus inserting a force that operates against him and makes him stop. Thus they operate against a person under different masks, disturbing him in different manners both directly and indirectly, cunningly and by using terrible tricks.

Eventually a person discovers that he cannot count on any of his attributes, desires, or thoughts. So on whose help can he count, with whom can he advance? It turns out that there is no one! Only if he turns to the group from the point in the heart will he be able to come up with the right thoughts and forces on which he can rely along the way.

He turns to the group from his point in the heart since it is the only pure point in him, and he tries to use it only with regard to the friends, realizing that there is nothing more he can invest in them except this spark. He is careful not to turn to them with all the other thoughts and desires, like a person who is ill and is afraid to infect people who are close to him with his virus.

Then he receives from the environment everything that the others have for advancing towards the right goal. By his self-analysis he has already clarified what his real perception should be, which includes only the right attributes that were received from the environment. By that, the environment becomes a “burial society” that helps him bury all his natural egoistic thoughts and desires and receive from the environment, and actually from the Creator, new attributes.

By lighting the spark in his heart with their help he begins to build his spiritual vessel. This means that he absorbs the powers and desires of the society, of all the others, and thus attains his first correction.

Unless a person totally changes all his attributes to the attributes of the society, he will not be able to build the vessel of his soul. We should understand this since we know that the desire to receive is not refined and does not change, but a person restricts his initial desire to receive and its natural form.

When he receives a desire from the environment, he acquires his first ten Sefirot, the attributes of bestowal. To the extent that he annuls himself, he receives from Above attributes that come instead of the ones he has stopped using. Thus instead of a restricted vessel he receives a new vessel.
[100501]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/11/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam 

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Question: Our main instrument is our inner changes that we go through and our desire to reveal the Creator to others. How can we convey this from our Kabbalistic group into the integral education we conduct for the masses?

Answer: By no means can we do this since the masses don’t have an internal desire for the Creator, they don’t need it. For example, at the Arava Convention, we saw antelopes. If you had a desire to talk about them, I would gladly discuss their beauty and grace with you. However, you don’t have this desire, so I don’t work on it.

If you have no desire that stems from within, from your genes, hormones, and Reshimot, if you don’t have even the slightest aspiration for the upper, spiritual world, I shouldn’t be talking with you about it because I will never get any response from you.

Question: But don’t we go to the 99% wishing to reveal the Creator to them instead of just improving their material life?

Answer: This is wrong! A person is a set of desires. If one lacks the spiritual level of desire, meaning this kind of desire still sits very deep inside and is not yet revealed, then I shouldn’t try to wake it up. I won’t talk with this person about the Creator at all. All I want is to make him connect with others.

Being inside of this material egoistic union, he will eventually sense that it works well: “It’s good that we are together!” Then, he will start sensing that being “together” is great in general, irrespective of the material profit he gets out of it. It will become clear to him that this “togetherness” has a certain flavor, which all of a sudden starts fulfilling him.

You should constantly send a message to the masses about connection and unity; they will get it through you. Without you, they won’t be able to do a thing. You should work as transmitters of the Light from the Creator through the group to the masses. You are valuable to them since you have the group, and inside it, you can receive power and channel it to AHP, meaning to this mass.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing,” 1/20/13

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Question: Who are a person’s enemies if his whole world is inside him?

Answer: All your desires and thoughts are your enemies.

Usually people around you, who don’t really worry or concern you, don’t mean much to you. But it’s the people who seem to be your enemies or those whom you hate, they are the greatest help for your advancement. We should only understand how to use this kind of help.

If they are your friends in the group, you have to turn them from your enemies to your beloved friends. It makes no difference whether someone hates you or whether you hate him. Usually you are the one responsible for bad relations, but you have to change things from hate to love.

It’s not simple at all. Start calculating things in this opposite direction internally and you will see what intense work it involves.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/11/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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A person comes to the very gate leading to the spiritual world and at the last moment retreats. It is because this gate opens only if you accept the conditions of the upper. As long as you only approach it, you can stand them to some extent, but you cannot totally cut yourself off from the past and agree to take a step into the future. It is because this gate is the border between the past and the future, and so you go back.

Question: What do we lack at that moment?

Answer: There is a lack of mutual support, the force of the support of the environment. We can only evoke the Creator and force Him to act by mutual support. You cannot go through the gate without the help of the environment, without being pushed from behind and without others asking for you.

Going through the gate to the spiritual world means to connect with other vessels in order to discover together among us the reality that exists beyond that gate. We open this door between us, so it is impossible to manage without the support of others!

This support depends on the extent to which I can evoke the friends. They exist and support me only to the extent that I evoke them since they are the parts of my own soul. It only seems that they have freewill and that someone acts against me. All this is given to me so that I will correct myself and attain their support for that. In order to do that I have to subdue my ego—these are the rules of this game.

It is a theater where together with me there are also different actors on the stage: some seem like my friends and others as enemies, some love me and some hate me. With their help and by different means, I have to bring my ego to correction.

But in fact they don’t exist; they come out only so that I will perform my actions with regard to them. At one time I treat them as my friends and once as my enemies. This means that I perceive them “within reason.” Another time I work “above reason” and accept this as the Creator’s game. The whole Torah stems from the combination of these two perspectives.
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From the 1^st Part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/14/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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