Question: What should we do so that the heart will decide to connect? We have decided to connect so many times, but we don’t know how to start?

Answer: We should build systems that will not let us escape. Imagine that we need to guard a very big herd in which there are many animals, cows, deer, bulls, sheep, etc. We have to know how to treat each type of animal: Some need watchdogs, and others need shepherds, and another type needs a fence so that they don’t run away.

We must provide each type of animal with the right kind of food: Some need grain, and others grass, and all need water. I have to take care of all these things. In the same manner, I also have to take care of the group and to provide it with everything that it needs so that we don’t escape but will successfully and securely achieve our goal.

We have to think about all that, and this is all our work. We have to attain the first ten Sefirot, which means the minimal connection among us. Even if it is egoistic and opposite from spirituality and holiness, it is already a connection. Now we are simply detached from one another, and no one wants to connect with others in any way. We are like cogwheels that do not connect by spinning independently.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/5/12, Preface to The Book of Zohar

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Connecting with a friend does not mean following his mind. When I subdue myself and hear what he says, it isn’t in order to later do what he says. I have to subdue my ego, but it doesn’t mean that I have to accept his advice.

I subdue myself before the inner connection among us. It is a totally different thing. I hear what he says, and I have to accept it as something that comes from the greatest in our generation before whom I subdue myself, discovering his inner level there, where he is in his spiritual height. Ein Sof is part of each of us; I actually subdue myself before this spiritual level in my relations with the friend, but not with regards to his corporeal opinions.

This is a very important subtlety. We don’t understand that all the worlds are in the relations among us, including the actual world of Ein Sof.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/5/12, Preface to The Book of Zohar

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I have to attribute all the powers I get to one source so that by acting together with them, I will be able to analyze myself and the whole world and then start operating in the opposite direction towards the source on my own.

There is me and this upper source, and between us there is the whole world. But the whole world can be compressed to the dimensions of one group so that it is clearer to me how I should work with it most effectively. Then I don’t have to clarify my attitude towards the whole world, towards all of reality, but the group is enough for the time being. All of reality is focused for me in this group, like through a lens.

If I work with nine other friends with regard to the Creator, like through a magnifying glass, then in this lens, I focus the whole world, the entire view of the universe: from me to the Creator and back to me. This is how the law that says that the general and the particular are equal operates. This is why the infinite creation with the infinite number of Partzufim and worlds are concentrated in the ten Sefirot that I determine, through which I relate to it. All of reality is now concentrated in the one particular section that I have chosen.

This is a great help for us and it is possible thanks to the shattering. Before the shattering there were no general and particular, which only appear after the shattering. Thanks to this we can achieve better results by attaining the general through the particular.
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From a Talk about Inner Work 9/30/12

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Not everyone can go through the first stages of preparation for the spiritual path and hold on to it. Many leave the group, the spiritual path, and the process of changing oneself. They go back to the external world and return to the life of the landlords by stopping the development of the point in the heart, which makes them the guests of the Creator—the Host of the Universe.

As we know “the opinion of the Torah is opposite from the opinion of the landlords.” If a person holds the opinion of the Torah, he feels that he is a guest and the Creator is the host. Therefore he wants to change himself in order to resemble the host.

This is called having the opinion of the Torah, placing the goal before him in order to be in bestowal and accordingly determine his states.

The first states, the ascents and descents we go through, are disconnected from our ordinary mind and feelings. A person sees that he changes completely. For the first time he begins to feel that some foreign dominion manages him. This uniqueness is typical of the changes that we feel in the process of our inner spiritual development.

Suddenly a person feels that he is under the control of some strange force. Before, he never had this feeling in his ordinary life. He always saw clearly whoever wanted to dominate him, which means that they were external forces. Here, however, for the first time he feels that some force descends and takes him over, ties him from the inside and controls him.

It is a very special feeling. I remember the wonder I felt when I first felt this. It is a very unpleasant and incomprehensible feeling until a person begins to get used to it and to acknowledge this action as the Creator’s work on him. Then he is already prepared to determine that this is so and to agree to it. Then he begins to evoke this feeling by himself and to expect it as you expect a meeting and a connection with someone you love.

He begins to value the Creator’s work on him and to expect that it should happen any minute. He appreciates the actual actions of the Creator and not their quality and how they are felt in his egoistic desire, which is not corrected yet. This means that he doesn’t care which states he goes through; what’s important is that the Creator should operate on him as much as possible.

This is what he prays for. He asks to go through as many changes as possible according to the Creator’s desire, since everything that the Creator does is for the good. Thus, his self-sacrifice is measured to the extent that he identifies with the Creator’s actions and expects them, of his voluntary slavery to the Creator, and the power of his prayer.

For the time being these are only the first stages of the spiritual work. Then the more controlled mutual work with the Creator begins, in mutual bestowal. A person already knows how to receive the powers for that and how to later work with them, how to start a dialogue with the Creator. Then he begins to work even with his desire to receive, by feeling the same tastes as the host and by feeling how the Creator tastes the refreshments and how he tastes it himself.

This whole path begins from the initial ascents and descents in which a person gets used to the domination of a foreign force over him.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/12, Shamati #21 

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The friends should make sure that I don’t fall and they should constantly think about me. I have to repay them for that because they also need this kind of support. Only if we mutually worry about one another, will no one fall or forget the goal. We will hold on to one another.

We have no chance of achieving anything if we don’t all support one another. If we don’t do that, we won’t exit the ego. This is mutual guarantee.

If I cannot think about others, it means that they don’t think about me. It is both the cause and the result that exist simultaneously under the condition of our mutual collective covenant. Then the Creator resides in it and thus fulfills our covenant. Without this we will undoubtedly forget about Him and start having foreign calculations by supposing that we advance and years may go by leading to nothing.

A person cannot keep on the right track by himself. Do you know how many moments we can count during a whole day in which we really advance: 3-5 seconds at the most! They are so few because each of us lacks the external support.

The vessel of my desire is external to me and I have to make efforts to attach it to me. If we don’t operate this way with regard to others, we do not operate correctly and therefore we don’t draw the Light that Reforms, because the Light operates only within our mutual work. It comes in response to our yearning.

If there are no such yearnings, the Light around us waits passively. “His honor fills the world,” but we have to activate it. We have to keep this main condition: mutual guarantee that is made of our collective interdependence on one another and of the obligation to everyone. Without it no one can succeed, even if we assess it from an egoistic point of view and what is more if it is about high intentions.
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From a Talk about Inner Work 9/30/12

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Question: Is it important to match people in the integral education groups according to their properties?

Answer: I wouldn’t say we should match people according to their properties. After all, the characteristics can be completely different, and no qualifications matter there.

What matters is the so-called “threshold attitude,” the preparation to what we are doing. Someone may have already taken certain courses, undergone some integral superposition with others, while another may not know what we are talking about. He was brought from outside and wonders, trying to catch his breath: “What are the rest of the people doing here?” This should not happen: They will simply not understand one another. People should be approximately at the same level according to their integral preparation.

The integral experience should be similar.

We should know beforehand that in the group of twelve people there are, say, five who are more or less prepared and who feel and know already what’s going on. And then they include all the rest within themselves as though they enclose them and take them together with them. Then the joint work begins.
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From the talk on the integral upbringing, 03.04.2012

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We are inside a Force called the Creator (Boreh). Since we don’t attain it yet according to the principle of “come and see” (Bo–reh), we give it different names according to the current measure of its revelation to a person.

I am in this Force’s field along with everyone else. The question is how can I induce its influence? Indeed, this is man’s entire work: How can I awaken this force so that it can raise me?

We descended from the spiritual height to the “zero level” on purpose, and now it is up to me to ascend back to the same height. In order to do that, I have to awaken the Light that Reforms upon me. There is no other force that can raise me to spirituality. I only have the means that exist on my level. The Creator wakes me from the dream by the first “sting,” and then I have to process what awakened me internally by special means: the group, the study, and the teacher.

So I turn to the Light that awakened me initially. I ask that it will influence me, and I do it consciously and knowingly. The Light only stings me time after time and by that I have to establish my attitude to it: What do I ask from it, what kind of influence do I expect, what do I want to attain, and so on. On the whole I picture to myself how to be in accordance with the One who “stings” me. I have to look for His form, His image and to ask from Him:

– “I want to bestow!”
– “How do you want to become the one who bestows? Is it really the one who bestows? What will your bestowal be like?”
– “Don’t you see? I study, I work in a group and in dissemination, I do all sorts of actions, and based on that I ask.”

If a person doesn’t perform actions directed at unification, there is no basis for his request. These actions make up the infrastructure that he can use to raise MAN, a prayer. I build this infrastructure between me and the friends from which the MAN, “a prayer of the many,” rises. I will never be able to ask for connection by myself. A prayer for connection can only be collective, at least between two people.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Our main force is the ego. Except for the ego there is only one small point in everyone’s heart and we have to connect these points. If we connect them into one big point, we’ll feel the spiritual world inside. Then everything will come together: me, the group, and the upper force.

On the other hand, the ego wants to push all our points away from one another. It’s actually meant to push us in the opposite direction from connection, and this is why it’s called a “help against.”

How should we build an environment that will help us fulfill the points in the heart and our egoistic forces so that together we’ll connect into one big wonderful point? Despite the interruptions of the ego, by using it, we want to connect our points in the heart into one point. How can we use the power of the ego to achieve this goal?

The point is that I don’t know the way to the spiritual world. For me it’s a question mark hidden from me. How can I reveal it? How can I focus myself correctly? With the help of the group, I use my ego in the opposite way; it becomes a “helpmate” (Ezer Ke Negdo) and helps me focus myself accurately on spirituality, on the Creator. This is only possible in the group when I work with the point in the heart in order to turn the ego in the opposite direction, (the broken green line in the drawing). Then instead of pulling me downwards, the ego will direct me correctly, so that I can enter the spiritual world.

So there is only an ego and a point in the heart in a person, and with the help of the group, we change the ego and find the way to advance in the opposite direction each time.

Actually, it isn’t only about the egoistic desire to receive different things in our world. It’s a special ego aimed only against connection, against the collective point in which I discover the spiritual world. This is why I disregard and ignore all the desires and the thoughts that are not related to connection. Instead I work in the group trying to connect with others, and I discover how opposite I am from that: I don’t want anything of the kind, I hate the friends and I can’t even think about connecting with them. It’s this repulsion that’s the real ego opposite connection. Everything else doesn’t matter.

The group has a key role here: It increases the importance of unity in my eyes and constantly spurs me and obligates me to keep it. Only the environment (Sviva) leads me to the unknown, serving as a model that helps me subdue myself and still connect internally. The environment actually brings me to connection.

Thus we actually ascend to the first level (step 1) above the Machsom (barrier) when we turn our entire ego, all the rejection and the resistance to connection and unity to the opposite direction—to the force of connection and unity. This is the meaning of “help against.”

Then we move on to the second level. Here the ego is revealed again, but this time bigger than before, since it already belongs to the next level (step 2). Here I have the choice of unity with the help of the group, where the ego begins to show itself again. If I am not attracted to unity, I don’t discover it.

This is why strangers don’t understand what ego we are talking about. The point is that it isn’t just human relations; it isn’t about good deeds and intrigues. People believe that treating others badly is egoism and treating others well is altruism. We judge only by the point of unity. Therefore, after I discover the first level, I want to go on and connect to the group. I discover the ego on the second level (Ego2), and I work against it and ascend to the second level. On the whole there are 125 such levels on the way.

Eventually I reach perfect unity, with all of humanity; we are all together in one point called the “drop of unity.”

What kind of environment should it be in order to allow me to discover the right ego, to separate it from the animal ego of this world, and to turn it into a driving force? How should the environment influence me so that I will reach the goal?

Furthermore, how should we use our conventions, when we mutually influence one another, so that this powerful connection will allow each of us to discover the point of unity: “Where is it? What should I do in order to attain it? How do I enter the upper world? How do I discover it?”

How should we worry about everyone in order to allow them to reach this inner point (the center of the group), our “womb” (Rechem)? After all, we enter the group as if we enter a mother’s womb, and we develop like an embryo. How can we prepare such a “wrapping” for each of us, in which each one will develop like from a drop of semen?

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From the Convention in Italy Day One, 9/28/12, Workshop 1

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Question: How should a new student who joins the group be awakened to do the right kind of work?

Answer: The group leads him to certain actions and gives him a chance. It isn’t by chance that we live here and not in a different reality. In the world of actions we can exist even on the “animal” level, detached from spirituality, which we build above us. Above my current attributes, I gradually create the image of a human being. I build it by the connection with the friends and by creating the force of the Creator among us. These are all internal spiritual actions that are above our current selves.

In the meantime we connect on the corporeal level without spiritual intentions, and thus we build the environment. We have the necessary infrastructure to do that, which is “this world” from which we begin our spiritual advancement. We have a rare opportunity here: On the one hand, this basis is adaptable in a way to the spiritual world, and on the other hand, it allows us to exist without any adaptation to it. The reality that I see and feel in my five corporeal senses is actually a precious gift: I am on the verge of a spiritual action here, a spiritual ascent, and at the same time I can influence spirituality.

Question: And what can I do if I am the opposite and I am inclined to detachment? For example, a convention is approaching, and I don’t want to go. Is this the shattering?

Answer: Of course. What is more, the lack of desire to go to the convention is not the strongest interruption yet.

If you were invited to a party that you liked, you would gladly join it, since the flavors that you like and the performances and everything that “blows up” your ego is waiting for you there, so you would run when you got the first call.

Here, however, you advance spiritually, and so you feel that the convention is a place to exert yourself. This is where the rejection stems from: Suddenly you become lazy, and you feel disrespect, and “something more important” comes up and there are other calculations…this is all a result of the Light that illuminates for you, so it is a good thing, but use it where you see a place to work.

The more we advance, the more we feel this way. Accordingly you will see that there are fewer and fewer people among us. Now we assume that the more we advance the more of us there will be, but in fact it isn’t so.

In 2007 I was on a tour in ten cities in America and there were about 600 people in every lecture that I gave, and 2,000 people in New York. Today, however, there are about 50-100 people.

Why is that so? Because we have advanced and so has the public. People are not that attracted to the word “Kabbalah” itself. They understand more and they know that it is about internal work. Thanks to the Lights that are closer now, people understand something new and on the whole they don’t want to come to the lectures or go to the conventions.

There is a small minority left and these are the people who will fulfill the correction. All the rest will join the “pioneers” in some way but only by the way of sufferings. Very few move forward by the Light while the rest move by sufferings…
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: It isn’t enough just to know that everything comes to me from the Creator. After all, in such a case, I may be enjoying this “picture,” without asking any questions. On the other hand, if I have a question, I overcome all the obstacles since I look for an answer.

Answer: That’s right. A person must check himself constantly.

Baal HaSulam writes about it in the article, “Concealment and Disclosure of the Face of the Creator”: One prays and gives charity for one’s troubles, but is not answered whatsoever…

A person checks himself and sees that he doesn’t succeed in anything. However, he is still connected to the Creator since otherwise he wouldn’t pray to Him and give charity.

And precisely when one stops praying for one’s troubles, one is answered. Whenever he overcomes, believes in Providence, and betters his deeds, luck turns away from him and he mercilessly falls back.

A person can make serious inquiries, try to do everything the right way, and see the opposite results. This state is called “double concealment.”

And when he denies and begins to worsen his deeds, he becomes very successful and is greatly relieved. One does not find one’s sustenance in proper manners.

A person can advance in devious ways and be around successful criminals. Then, the good environment seems like a poor, stupid, deprived environment.

When Providence arranges things in this manner for a person, it is called “concealment within concealment.”

However, he understands this and is aware of what is going on. So, after all the inquiries and the attempts, a person, himself, determines clearly and accurately which concealment he is in with regard to the Creator: whether it is a single concealment or a double concealment.

We must do that every minute and in every situation. It is possible. Baal HaSulam gives us clear instructions as to how to arrive to the real state, to the real connection with the Creator.

When Providence arranges things in this manner for a person, it is called “concealment within concealment.” This is because then one collapses under one’s weight and cannot continue to strengthen the belief that one’s pains come from the Creator for some hidden reason. Finally, one fails, becomes heretic, and says that the Creator is not watching over His creations whatsoever.

This isn’t even double concealment since the Creator is totally absent from the picture of the world.

And all that transpires, transpires by fate and by blind nature. This is not seeing even the back.

Therefore, the moment I wake up, I immediately begin to check myself and the state I am in. Clearly, one can say a couple of blessings automatically or sing a song, but, on the whole, the scale should not be the tunes or the blessings other people have composed, but my own.

Thus, I gradually understand that, eventually, everything depends on the influence of the environment. Then, I discover that I must submit myself to the environment because this is what pulls me forward through the double concealment and the single concealment toward the revelation of the Creator. Only self-submission before the group brings me the Light that Reforms.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/3/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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