Question: How do the guards guard me?

Answer: Let’s imagine a corrected world. A policeman, a guard, a teacher, and several other people come to you and start telling you what is wrong with you, and you are surprised and don’t agree with them.

But they say: “You are judging according to old standards. It is true that a month ago there were different conditions, and so then we didn’t have any complaints against you. But now we see that your behavior is undesirable. If you go on behaving like this and don’t correct yourself, then gradually your behavior will turn from undesirable behavior to intolerable.”

“You must correct your attitude towards the environment. Everyone suffers since they cannot advance because of you. You are delaying the general correction and do not allow everyone else to reach a good life! They are ready to do everything, but you don’t respond, so what can you do? You have to subdue yourself before the environment, to connect to it, to be correctly integrated with the others, and thus reach the end of correction. We speak for everyone, they have told us to talk to you and to tell you what is wrong with you.”

This is how a police car or a public representative comes to you and tells you all this, they worry that you may go on living like you have been living so far and that you may not advance. After all, the demands, the Reshimot (spiritual genes) are constantly renewed, revealing a new world, but you see it like you did before, and for you nothing changes. This means that you are on the “animate” level, and with regard to the spiritual world you are even on the level of “still nature.” You simply float with the currents of life wherever they take you, and this is wrong.

On the advanced levels, the guards and the policemen come to you and point out the fine details and special conditions that you have to pay attention to, but cannot identify. Then they tell you that you have to go down to that level. There is no place for you in this “neighborhood,” and there is no time to wait. You have to leave the city and move to the suburbs, to a neighborhood of thieves, and live among criminals.

You resent this, “How can this be!” But they tell you that you are not worthy of living among good, corrected people who are open to one another, since you don’t behave like them. You thought that you were worthy! But the guards tell you that they have checked and seen that you are not… there is nothing they can do.

At that moment you resent this and are angry at everyone, but later you look at things objectively and agree that it is really so, and that you are not worthy of living in this place with your wife and kids.

I must constantly adapt myself to an increasingly more advanced generation and even set an example for others. This is what Baal HaSulam says in his article “The Last Generation.”
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/2/13, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question from women: How can we effectively connect in internal work with the Creator through the men’s group without physical contact with it?

Answer: This happens automatically. When we reach the spiritual level, there is inclusion of the men’s part into the women’s part, and vice versa because everyone has both; there is no division in men and women.

That is why history mentions great women Kabbalists who were at the level of attainment, called prophecy. This is the level of GAR de Atzilut, a very high level, which was rarely achieved even by men. So, women are not less than men and are capable of spiritual attainment. The only thing that must be overcome are various external, earthly, small animal obstacles.
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From the Virtual Lesson 12/30/12

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Question: What do you expect from the women in their convention and from their mutual preparation with the men for the Arava Convention?

Answer: I expect a lot from the women because it is the principle part of our world group. The fact is that the women are much more modest than the men; they are very active, but they stay at the back, on the sidelines.

Women’s help is limitless, but all the fruits of their efforts they quietly give to the men. That is the nature of woman. One needs to note that in this they are certainly closer to bestowal than men are. Women do a lot, even though we don’t feel it. Thus I honor their work and am very happy about their cooperation and participation.

Besides that, in all of our worldwide groups, the number of women is not less than the men, and that is a huge force. Now, when humanity is beginning to gradually move to a new state that isn’t familiar to it, the women’s participation is especially important.

We need their desire, the yearnings, and their pressure on the men. We need to make them even more active so that they will pressure us, like a woman to her husband who is under her constant supervision. It is very important that a man feels that his wife values his spiritual work and follows after him, pushes him, understands what he is involved with, and controls him. It gives a man meaning and directs him.

We must feel this, and then we will be able to better advance forward. Thus, on the one hand, we must divide our work and part of our events to men and women. But on the other hand, we must encourage the woman’s part to connect, to unite, to work together, and give them every opportunity to share one huge powerful desire that will force us to realize it.
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From a Virtual Lesson 12/30/12

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Question: Now the whole global group is anxiously preparing for the Arava Convention and there is a great emotional intensity in the air. A while ago, you advised us to try to rephrase the mutual guarantee declaration in one paragraph, so that it will touch the heart of every individual. What would you write in the declaration?

Answer: The meaning of mutual guarantee is that we must give each friend the feeling that he will automatically, naturally, having no choice, stop feeling the need to care about himself. By that we neutralize his ego. Therefore, the sources say that mutual guarantee is essential for spiritual advancement.

Clearly, the spiritual field is above our ego, and we have to be above it, in the attribute of bestowal. But we cannot imagine how it is possible to be in this attribute of bestowal. Time after time we encounter the same ego, but in different variations. It constantly surrounds us and does with us whatever it feels like, and we cannot get rid of it and rise above it.

This is intentional, so that we will be able to attain the attribute of bestowal only through connection and unity, since that’s the main thing. It isn’t the ascent above the ego, but the connection and unity between us that’s important. When we connect and in this connection influence the friends, they begin to lose their ego. We care about them like a mother who cares for her baby, and they feel fully confident and don’t think about themselves, feeling no worry. What is more, this bestowal that is focused on the friend automatically denies him of his ego and allows him to focus on the spiritual work. This is the power of mutual guarantee, its wonderful attribute.

So if we develop such mutual cooperation among us, by making each other feel mutual guarantee, people who receive this feeling from us will simply start “jumping” out of their ego, ascending in “faith above reason” and will immediately start feeling the upper world.

It is not up to a person, but rather to his environment, which we create by ourselves by mutual guarantee by totally focusing on filling one another until we reach this state in which each of us feels the collective support.

So mutual guarantee is the guiding, mutual cooperation among us that summons the absolute feeling of confidence and the natural exit from the ego.
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From the Virtual Lesson 12/30/12

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Question: Who are the “guards?” Are they some forces that throw a person backward if he isn’t ready for the next level?

Answer: A person should create such guards for himself. It is written: “Make yourself guards and policemen in all your gates.” If you are thrown without your knowing, then it isn’t guards and policemen. Guards and policemen are those a person is in contact with and uses to check himself.

Guards and policemen are a person’s internal clarifications as to whether he is suitable or not suitable and what else he has to correct internally in order to get closer to the goal. It is a perpetual movement: a step to the right, a step to the left, when the Gevurot and the Dinim increase on the next levels.

A person discovers all this himself and asks the court for an internal trial. He wants to know what else can be done in order to advance. He checks his attitude towards the environment; he wants the environment to help him, to act on his side. This depends on how strong his connection with the environment is.

All the 125 spiritual degrees are determined according to how strongly a person adheres to the environment. Now too, we see ourselves through the environment. If I didn’t feel anything outside myself, I wouldn’t feel that I exist. One individual cannot exist; he feels that he exists since he feels the difference between himself and the environment. This is also how the concept of life and death is determined.

The final corrected state means the absolute, inclusive connection between everyone and the return to one soul, without any distinction, in which the light of NRNHY is revealed equally for everyone, becomes infinite and limitless, identically for all the parts of the soul. This is why I always check myself with regard to the environment.

If I attain such a level in which I constantly check and assess myself according to the degree of my connection with the friends and see my advancement only in this, seeing this as the only measuring tool, it means that I am already at the beginning of the spiritual ladder.

Unless I discover these guards and policemen inside me and clarify all the conditions my level presents to me, meaning, until I discover what is considered good and regret that I haven’t reached it, I will not start looking for the means to fulfill these conditions that will eventually fulfill them: Until I go through all these stages, I will not make one step forward.

The guards and policemen become my spiritual vessels.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/2/13, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: On the one hand, we need the perpetual internal burning, and on the other hand, we need patience. How do we combine these two things?

Answer: You become patient to the degree that you are patient. It is impossible to acquire this attribute any other way. I went through different times next to my teacher Rabash, and sometimes I was simply burning with impatience, but eventually, it isn’t that I got used to things since there is not habit in spirituality, but I simply received the recognition of my state.

This is the approach of “submission,” which is absolutely essential. If the Creator is good and benevolent for the good and for the wicked and according to His perception we are already at the end of correction, then everything that happens is only with regard to me, in my feelings. If everything depends only on desire, on my vessels, then it means that my whole correction is in accepting the upper Providence correctly, my current state.

If my state changes and becomes like my state at the end of correction, will I see a different world? Will I see the same faces around me? Didn’t Baal HaSulam, who was at the end of correction, see the same world that we do, with all the atrocities in it? But he perceived the world as absolute good and at the same time he dressed in our desires and felt how we perceive the world differently.

Being patient means that you understand that the world is already corrected, that everything is corrected, but there are still levels of correction that those who see a need for them have to correct. Eventually, you will receive this understanding. It is impossible to skip levels and reach it directly. You can help yourself only by trying to stabilize the environment for yourself, and that’s all.

You cannot have any complaints against the Creator since from the start He has created everything in a finite correct form, at the end of correction. But the created being has to develop the vessels in him so that he can attain and acknowledge all this goodness. It is impossible to give it as a gift, since by that the created being will not feel this infinite state.

In order to do that a person has to go through the state of the “recognition of evil” since you can arrive at the recognition of goodness only through that state. This means that there must be darkness first, concealment, the “recognition of the evil” of this state. This isn’t bad because your ego suffers as a result, but because there is no connection with others in it, there is no bestowal.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/2/13, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: In the article “Body and Soul” Baal HaSulam says that everything, whether it is concealed or revealed is in a person’s consciousness. What is hidden from me today will be revealed tomorrow. What is “concealed” from us now during the preparation phase?

Answer: First, it doesn’t refer to some abstract concept of the unknown, but a reality that actually exists but which we cannot study for the time being. I know that it exists and I know that it is hidden from me. In other words, it is as if the Creator is behind a “curtain” according to my calculations and all my experience.

It is also a kind of knowledge, but not a clear fact yet, for which I can testify and present to others. I have some elements, some proof, but the essence hasn’t yet been revealed. Baal HaSulam says in this article that the knowledge that is not fully part of our consciousness yet is “concealed.” He speaks about knowledge here and not about philosophy.

Experiments with the collider and particle accelerators, for example, enable physicists to come up with different theories about the structure of the micro cosmos. Its components are still unknown, but the data they have received allows them to come up with hypotheses and discuss these matters, since it is already clear: there is something behind this “curtain.” The facts may be a bit different than the theories and even opposite from the scientific hypotheses, but this approach is perfectly “legitimate.”

In our case, the “point in the heart” says to a person: “There is some force that controls everything, that encompasses everything, and that closes everything in one, and I want to discover it.” This desire already builds some kind of model of what we are looking for—the meaning of life, its source, its reasons, and its plan, “who is turning me around, who is managing me and everything around me?” A person guesses, he “senses” the Creator, and so he reaches the wisdom of Kabbalah, in order to get an answer to the question that has already been evoked in him. On the other hand, those who don’t have this question regard the wisdom of Kabbalah as mere speculation.

Later we will discover that the Creator is the force of connection, and that there is nothing but unity, and that it is through unity that all the other forces that make up our reality are revealed.

As for studying the unknown, we don’t examine the Creator but His actions. The wisdom of Kabbalah puts this principle very clearly: “From Your actions we shall know You.” We never speak about the Creator, since it is already an abstract form, and essence, which means something that it is unattainable. Our research refers to a form that is dressed in matter. This form is actually the Creator (Boreh) for us, literally “Come and see” (Bo – Reh). I am the matter, and the form that dresses in me is Him. I become increasingly more similar to the Creator and He is revealed in me, “dresses” in me.

Question: How do I study His actions?

Answer: On yourself. This is all our work. But first we have to receive His forms, His “fingerprints,” and prepare a place inside for it, correcting everything that needs to be corrected, and then receive the form of bestowal and pass on this attitude to those around you, to the friends. This is the form of the Creator that you study, and by that you study Him, which means that you attain what bestowal is, unity.

Question: But today I cannot attribute the Creator’s actions to Him.

Answer: In research a negative result is also a result. The negation in this case is the preparation for the revelation of the Creator. You reject Him and don’t accept His existence—that’s the way it should be. Everything is attained by its oppositeness.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/2/13, “Body and Soul”

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Question: What are the criteria for assessing the proper preparation for the convention?

Answer: The main criterion is that I feel the environment, that community that we are gradually creating, so that I feel that I am in it by getting out of myself. The most important thing is that I always try to be in this state.

Personally, I feel it when I am working with groups, giving lessons and workshops, and writing the blog, imagining my readers and trying to be with them. And this gradually creates a feeling when “I” become “We.”

Question: At a convention, such a concentration is felt because the entire world is in one action. How can we create this common field in the regular mode?

Answer: A convention is a convention, but the work itself is carried out not during the event but between conventions when a person can control himself and feel where he is, in what state, with what thought he falls asleep and gets up, etc. When waking up, the first thought is especially important. It says much, practically, what you were thinking about in your sleep, where you were.

We can achieve much by these concrete checks and goals. Moreover, conventions are intended only to fuel us, to make a breakthrough. In fact, the realization takes place between conventions.
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From the Virtual Lesson 12/30/12

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Question: How can we give our friends the feeling that we care about them as a mother cares for her child?

Answer: You should show a person that you care and think about him. Send him a text message or e-mail showing interest about how he feels, whether he feels that you are thinking about him, etc. We need to show our concern for others. This example is contagious; then the friend will have to do the same. He will be ashamed that he is behind and is not involved in this.

Question: Wouldn’t this excessive concern stop a person’s development?

Answer: On the contrary, this excites him, annoys, focuses, and directs him to do some work.

When a person sees how his friends take care of him, then it gives him an example and awakens envy: Why isn’t he doing this?

If this happens in a regular, non-Kabbalistic group, then a person, so to speak, “washes his hands” and starts going with the flow. And we have the opposite situation. As it is written in Rabash’s articles, such actions awaken envy and set an example. That is why we have to show this quite clearly and induce a sense of caring in him.
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From the Virtual Lesson 12/30/12

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Question: What can men do to support the women during the women’s convention?

Answer: Men have to show the women that they await their connection, communication, and unity, and that they count on their huge common desire that will shake the men and give them such momentum that they will feel the responsibility to rise to another level to fill the women’s Kli, vessel.
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From the Virtual Lesson 12/30/12

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