If you don’t perform the right action during a descent, you are creating a double Machsom (barrier) before you. You should have overcome one Machsom during the revelation of a new void, but you postponed it and said that it wasn’t in your powers to do so. Now you’ll have to wait until the Creator turns to you again, which means that the new conditions for correcting that phenomenon will be revealed in you again, but differently. The Creator changes one angel, one force, with another and gives a person another chance to advance.

A person cooperates within a whole system in which he has to complete his part, which depends solely on him, in order to ensure the existence of the whole system and to advance it towards the goal. This movement takes place in the whole system, where every part is spurred and depends on others according to the order of correction from the bottom up in the chain of the Reshimot (informational genes).

What will happen to a person who doesn’t fulfill his Reshimot? Others will have to do his work. So a person damages everyone seriously if he doesn’t carry out the tasks that are revealed to him. By that he harms the whole system, the whole group. He doesn’t allow the group to advance and makes it work on extra corrections in order to complete what he couldn’t do. They have to carry him on their backs, like in a battle, when you have to carry a seriously wounded soldier on a stretcher. It’s a very sad situation for the group.

Since the whole system is whole, and the emergence of the Reshimot determines who should act first and who should act later, and how we are connected to one another, then all our actions depend on one another and complete one another. By not carrying out your task on time, you immediately condemn yourself and the whole world instead of judging yourself and the world to the scale of merit. You are standing on the scale tilting them to one side or to the other by being responsible for the whole world.
[88939]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/24/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: In the workshops we sit together and work on the cooperation among us, but what do I have to feel during the day when I am not in such an interaction with the friends?

Answer: Imagine that you are sitting with them, in a circle of ten men. How would you feel them, how would you mutually cooperate with them? Why would you do it that way? Go on clarifying the relations between you and don’t stop the discussions since this is the pattern of the soul, which will later grow all the way to Ein Sof (Infinity). That’s all. It is there in the relations that you clarify that you discover all the ten Sefirot, the whole network of the worlds; it is all there among you.

Let’s take the mutual connection between me and you and the general system for example. If we unite, I will attain Ein Sof, which means that there are no borders between us, that we are together.

Now there are five worlds separating us: Assiya, Yetzira, Beria, Atzilut and Adam Kadmon. By getting closer to you, I go up the levels of these worlds until I reduce the distance to zero and enter the world of Ein Sof.

Everything begins and ends here, in the connection between the souls. That’s all. The wonder is that if you are truly closing the gap with someone else, without lying to yourself, then you are also getting closer to all the other billions. It is exactly the same thing.

It is because we are in an integral, analog system and so all the other connections will concentrate in the connection between you and me. The whole system will display itself between you and the friend to whom you want to get closer.

An analog system is like a holographic picture—every detail in it is made of all the others. As a result of this wholeness, you will have to correct everyone and determine your attitude to all the souls in order to connect to your closest friend.

So don’t leave the picture of the overall unity, stay in it; carry on the workshop and you will succeed. It is the workshop that provides you with mutual work. The friends can awaken you and make you see how important the goal is and provide you with fuel. They help you and you help them. You want to and have to justify the friend, no matter what he seems to you, and you should carry on this work as much as you can, even internally, with other people.

Question: So what do they exist for? Why shouldn’t I spend my whole life in a circle of friends? Could it be that the others are just be interruptions that I should ignore?

Answer: No, you should also work with them, but differently. You have to accept all the external conditions as the corrections of the soul, the corrections of the connections with other people. Even if you work as a forester in the wilderness where there are no people, you still have to clarify your mutual relations with humanity: “Why am I doing this?” By that you are “feeling” and clarifying your own soul.

We have to see a network through which we enter spirituality in every situation in this world. You cannot draw away from everyone and be only with the group. One way or the other, we have to be connected with the whole world, and especially in our times when we have to correct the whole world.

So you have to work, you have to get married, you have to be connected with the world and be included in its suffering. Then, as it says, you will be rewarded with the comfort of the public.

Besides, if you turn to people in order to bring them the method of correction, in whatever form it may be, you are sufficiently incorporated in them by that, so that you can carry on the internal work. It is simply a wonderful opportunity to exit yourself and to come into the masses in order to include them later in the process of correcting the connection among us.
[88851]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/23/12, Questions and Answers 

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The group is my Creator. If we are in a corrected connection, and I suddenly fall from this connection and am outside it and alone, then a difference is created, a gap (Δ) between myself and general unity. Thus, for me, this connection is the upper level, the Creator, my savior. Thus I turn to Him, pray, and ask that He take me back. I want to be integrated in Him, to adhere to Him.

The Kabbalists tell us that there was a descent of the worlds from the world of Ein Sof (infinity) until the level of this world, and now I need to gradually return through rising through the levels. But I don’t know anything about it. I only know one thing, that there is me and my upper. What is the upper? I don’t know either. For me It is limitless. I don’t understand or feel It. I only know that there is something higher above me.

I have one, unique way to imagine the upper to myself, and that is the form of the group. This is since it is a complete system in which everyone is connected together (Σ). It turns out that this is my upper level according to its properties and definition.

So you ask, “And where is the Creator, the upper force, the Light?” Indeed, within this system the Creator is revealed, the upper force. I feel Him there. This Light is discovered in our Kelim (desires) as impression in the attributes that they acquired.

When our desires begin to connect in all kinds of connections, impressions that we call Light will appear in them, but it’s not the Light itself, but some kind of vibrations in the soul that It invites. You measure these vibrations and determine them as the Light of Ruach. And other vibrations will already be the Light of Neshama or the Light of Haya.

I attain only myself, but from the actions of the Creator in me, I will know Him. What I feel within the connection, I give it a name the “Light’’ and ‘’upper world.’’ What I feel outside the connection is called “the lower world’’ and my ‘’I.’’

The group are not the faces I see in front of me, but its inner model, our connection, that exists invisible to my sight. There is a group that is in unity and in the state of Gmar Tikkun (the final correction) and there is the image that I see, human beings as such.

What I see depends on me. But actually, the group exists in a corrected form; I need to believe that in faith above reason. The Creator says: ‘’I brought you to a good place. You need to become adjusted to it, to connect to it, to bow your head before them. I brought you to such a place in which I will be revealed, if you buy it!”
[88713]
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/16/12, The Study of the Ten Sefirot

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Baal HaSulam, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”: It is because, indeed, with respect to a person who is still within the nature of Creation, there is no difference between the love of God and the love of his fellow person. This is because anything that is not him is unreal to him.

I cannot feel others. I feel them to the extent that I depend on them. In other words, I don’t actually feel others, but I feel my dependence on them, how much I can lose if something happens to them.

This is the only way we calculate everything. Even a mother feels how much she can lose if her baby has any problems. This is the scale we call “love.”

“I love you” means that I depend on you. So, it is by no means spiritual love, but corporeal love. I enjoy someone and the fear that something might happen to him since otherwise I will suffer. I love someone with whom I feel good. He may be my son who gives me pleasure.

We, however, are talking about something that is totally different: about how, from the love of the created beings, we reach the love of the Creator. Although we use the example of a mother’s love in our world, we don’t know actually what love means on a “human” level.

We must develop a totally new type of love. The word itself is misleading, and we have to be careful of making mistakes. It is about a totally different relationship and discernment, about bestowal that comes from me outward to someone who is outside my feelings.

Today, I feel everyone. I feel what is going on in the world, and it is only according to the calculation of gaining or the fear of losing. The desire to receive is looking for sources of pleasure and stays away from what can harm it.

These are the only things that enter me, but I don’t feel anything that is not part of my pleasure or suffering. This is because my “sensitive material” is a desire to enjoy. It is the Masach (screen) on which the pictures of my reality are reflected. In such a display, I only can see things that are within the range of my interest, which might bring me self-benefit or pain and suffering.

There are things that I don’t feel because they don’t cause me pleasure or pain, like different fields, waves, X-rays, and so forth. As we develop, we recognize more things to which we should pay attention because they can be either beneficial or harmful.

It is the same when it comes to love of friends. We don’t know what it means and we don’t feel it in our senses. What can we compare it to? Is it bad when you are loved? It isn’t the love of the friends toward me, but my love toward them when I totally give myself to them, take care of them, worry about them, help them, and bestow upon them.

Who needs such love in our world? If they loved me and served me, it would be another issue: “I am ready to receive your love. Go ahead; who is first?”

However, we are speaking about a transition to the level of the love of the Creator, about mutual guarantee. The goal of creation is to love thy friend. Through that, we enjoy bestowal, but only the bestowal not in order to enjoy. We are bestowing against the desire, by overcoming it.

So, we must pay a little more attention to the right meaning of our work in the group. It is impossible to interpret it according to the images in our world. Closeness, love, and connection are all concepts that exist above the overcoming, above the Machsom (barrier). Until then, I won’t overcome anything, but am simply going through the period of preparation.
[88932]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/24/12, “Matan Torah (Giving of the Torah)”

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It is very important to take part in the conventions and meetings that we hold since this attack really advances a person and allows him to get closer and to connect to others.

There are people who even find it very hard to sit among others and they count the hours until all this is finally over and they will be able to go home. But it is important to feel even such situations deeply, since it is a very good way to learn. We should only try not to get stuck in this state for a long time and to move forward as quickly as possible. Everything is determined according to how you subdue yourself before the environment.

We shouldn’t think that we are advancing only during these attacks when we are under the influence of the powerful environment, subduing ourselves before it, since we have no choice. It is possible to advance even faster during the usual daily lesson. In every lesson a very strong Light is revealed to us, even stronger than during the convention.

The whole point is that during the lesson we cannot hold on to the same sharpness of the senses and devotion in the same intensity. During the congresses the special actions, the special conditions, and the feeling of the attack, influence us. During the daily lesson it is a continuous war.

We have to build up power during the convention, the power we have attained during the attack, but later we have to fulfill it day by day and to understand that these are the true conditions of the war. During the lesson we are in a daily war, until we finally reach the true prayer.

I have to constantly examine myself and constantly keep the three conditions of the prayer. There is nothing but a prayer, a request, which includes the feeling of how great the Creator is, a self-check of whether I did everything possible, and of whether I am really devoted to the goal with all my soul and value it more than life itself. In order to do that I must constantly examine myself since everything that is connected is the essence of my attitude to the upper, to the higher level, to the unified system.
[88860]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/23/12, Shamati #209

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Question: What do we get from the workshops?

Answer: The workshops allow us to clarify the types of connections among us.

Question: Do I actually discover a lack of connection with the friends or is it the opposite?

Answer: Both. Through the questions in the workshop, I clarify where I am and what I lack in order to attain what I desire.

Together with nine other friends, I begin to clarify the question we were asked and to penetrate their opinions and their thoughts, such as what they think about the same type of connection or the type of clarification. Through that, I already am in contact with them. I already see to what extent we “connect.”

We are all different, and in the workshops we clarify how we should connect. Is it possible? With whom should I connect? Do I agree or disagree?

I constantly build the forms of connection among us. This is the workshop, and it already clarifies and reveals this collective network. Thus, I have a twofold task:

• On one hand, I must see the friends as great so that I can lower my head before them and be small among them. Compared to them, I am a zero, while they are all number one with several zeros after it. Then, accordingly, I am incorporated in them and become a “spiritual embryo.”
• On the other hand, I must be one, or ten, or a hundred, and they must be the zeros. However, “zeros” in this context mean how much I can bestow upon them and what help and support I can give to them.

So, a middle line is created between these two extremes that equalizes them (=•=). Thus, the point of balance is created at which we reach a common ground. Each one respects the others as much as he can, each one humbles himself before the others as much as he can and, at the same time, is ready to raise the goal and the work in their eyes.

All this is in our thoughts when I am with the friends, and we discuss the questions in the workshop. I hear them and I think that one speaks nonsense, the other didn’t understand the question, and the third speaks logically instead of emotionally. The fourth seems to speak to the point, but I resent the fact that his words are deeper and wiser than mine.

Thus, I begin to work mutually with the friends and experience different states, and that is great. We just need to take what is going on seriously. “I have come here in order to connect in order to pass on to them my energy and to receive everyone’s power. This hour and a half is the most beneficial time for me.”

Of course, I see how the strange thoughts throw me off in different directions and how my inner resistance doesn’t allow me to agree with the friends. Great! I will not find an opportunity for more intensive clarification and to work on a higher “frequency.”

It is a pity that during the workshops there are those who exchange words like politicians, others who use different expressions from the bank they have in their memory, and others become psychologists and analysts. The main thing, here, is the feeling I experience in my heart.

We must learn from the ego’s endless urges since it is a “helpmate.” Our ego is an “angel” in the hands of the Creator through which He evokes us. So, I must see how the Creator doesn’t leave me even one moment of rest, and how he evokes my ego again and again in different ways in order to allow me to advance as fast as possible.

The workshops are the most helpful time, but, if we begin having them every day, attendance will drop immediately, and it will become a burden, hard work. We may think that it is a good idea to continue the convention for another week or two, or a month or two, until we succeed, until we rise to the spiritual level, but we are weak. We can hold on for another day or two, but not more than that.
[88844]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/23/12, Questions and Answers

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We are not able yet to provide each other with the constant force of mutual guarantee, and sometimes we enter this condition and then exit it. However, we must try to minimize the state of exit, those moments when we again become preoccupied with the care of ourselves and are drowning in the desire to enjoy. Try to get out of this state quickly, and find support that will help you rise above the worries about yourselves.

Taking care of oneself seems quite fair and justified to us. We feel insecure, uncertain, and unsure about receiving our necessities. However, above that feeling, there should be the force of confidence called the force of faith, the force of bestowal.

Perhaps, a person will find himself in very dangerous, frightening situations. They should not be glossed over. Instead, one must demand the force of covering above them from himself, the group, and the Creator so that there is a void that needs to be filled with the necessities and the things beyond necessity, and a person builds this cover, the screen, above this feeling of lack and emptiness.

He should try to do this as quickly as possible in those situations, in those moments of life when the force of mutual guarantee, protection, disappears. We can show our dedication to the goal in those moments.

We are not responsible for the moments of descent, and you should not regret that you fell, lost confidence and faith in bestowal and mutual guarantee. The Creator builds new voids in us because no single moment is like another.

We must give thanks that, now, above your feelings of insecurity, you can build an even greater connection and bestowal to strengthen these concepts so that they become strong, protective screens for us. The final correction is to fill all the moments of descent, all the voids that open due to the revelation of greater egoism, with the force of mutual guarantee and confidence originating from bestowal, adhesion.
[88942]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/24/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Three conditions of a prayer are the conditions that enable us to unite with the next degree: GE of the lower with AHP of the upper. They demonstrate the loyalty of the soul that is required and disappointment in one’s own strengths, dedication to the upper One, faith in the greatness of the higher degree, and the feeling of one’s worthlessness that allows one to cancel himself.

This refers to the faith in the greatness of the upper One, which fully depends on the influence of the environment. A person is unable to reach it on his own. The need for the upper One only depends on the environment because a person is not able to develop a need to bestow on his own. This is an abstract goal that contradicts his nature, and this is why it can come only from the environment that rules over him.

Only the environment can give me the strength that will allow me to rise above my body and decide that death is better than a life without the quality of bestowal, without a spiritual sensation, so that I would agree to bestow instead of receiving, no longer wishing to continue living in my egoism. The ability to carry out these three conditions depends on a person’s loyalty to his environment, on the environment’s ability to convince him of these values.

He is unable to develop this attitude on his own, and, even if he mentally and logically understands that the books state that such are the conditions of the spiritual world, he still will be unable to come closer to them. The environment was given the power to influence us in order to help us attain the perfect system, the quality of bestowal, to come out of ourselves and connect with other broken souls.

It is a known fact that when getting into the wrong crowd, a child who was formerly good and well-mannered in a short time becomes a criminal, and he even becomes the worst of them all since he uses the education he has received for the worst. Conversely, a good environment can correct a former offender, even though this is more difficult to do.

What is special about an environment that strives toward a spiritual goal and connection is that the Light from a higher degree helps it. It performs the actual action of lifting us from the plane where we now exist.

We wish to connect in order to become like the higher degree, and this is why we attract the Light that Reforms. Similarity to a higher degree represents a great connection between us, and, when we wish to connect with the purpose of pleasing the Creator, to materialize His desire to reveal Himself to the creatures, our connection receives an unnatural power from the higher degree.

This power depends on our drive to connect despite the fact that we are unable to attain it. In regular life, it is very easy to connect for the sake of an egoistic goal. There is absolute unity and loyalty in a criminal mafia, but we are unable to accomplish it, and, naturally, we will not be able to do it until the Light corrects us.

However, we attract the Light that Reforms with just a single desire to attain this. The group becomes the source of the upper force, which has an indirect effect like the Surrounding Light. This is not yet the Direct Light of a spiritual degree, but, time after time, when the Surrounding Light influences us in response to our attempts to connect, it helps us bit by bit, gradually building our connection.

In this way, through our mutual efforts when we operate from below and the Light operates from above, we finally attain the first contact with Him. This Light robes in our vessel, and we reveal our first spiritual degree.
[88854]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/23/12, Shamati #209

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Laughter during the discussions in integral groups is a good state that brings people to the understanding of the fact that we are all animals. We can open up completely to everyone. I did not make myself this way, nature did, and if you have a problem with it, then this problem is in you because you fail to understand that we are all nothing but animals. The only thing I should be ashamed of is that I am not fully using my opportunity to ascend toward the integral state, the things that are in my power on the “human” level, and everything else is not “I.”

In general, “human” is the spirit above the “animal” because it lacks a corporeal manifestation. The human in us is our inner content. For this reason, for as long as my inner content, called human, does not prevail, process, and include all my animal instincts, functions, desires, and thoughts, I must, somehow, slightly restrain them.

However, overall, I must reveal and examine them in a group because I do not have another instrument. The group is a lab where we can open ourselves up completely, like an infant laying before his mother. Who is he and what is he? It’s just a piece of flesh, but she does everything she needs to do with him for his proper growth and functioning. The same must happen in the group.

When we have a sober and sane understanding of it, and have an adult attitude toward what is happening to us and what we need to do with ourselves, then we already are in a state where nature is working with us, guiding, growing, and developing us down the path of evolution. So, this is necessary.

I think that a person can open up in the group completely, and, naturally, the group needs to be ready for this. If they constantly interact this way between them, they will achieve it. Shame will disappear. There is no state of “shame!” You must only be ashamed of one thing: failing to rise and raise others. Internal reconstruction of the entire scale of the importance of thoughts, feelings, desires, and revaluation of values, it all happens very fast.
[88808]
From a Talk on Integral Upbringing 3/5/12

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Question: There are discussions in a courtroom-style format in integral groups. What are we to arrive at as a group at the end of this kind of trial?

Answer: The trial should be based much more strictly, precisely, and more clearly differentiated so that later you can categorize it as a trial record that you understand what happened, what we have now, and what will happen.

Every person would evaluate the group and himself from the “human” level and the level of his egoism, that is, from the perspective of a number of roles such as the judge, the defense, the jury, and an observer, a listener, and the victim, the injured side.

There are many roles in every one of us because every person consists of everyone else. For example, there are five parts role-played in a group. This means that every person must find these five levels within him, and, on every level, he must feel how he regards this situation as he separates from everyone else.

Then, he reaches the conclusion that, in general, there is no one to judge and nothing to judge. He understands who can judge and who can justify, and everything we do only has the right to exist when it pursues a single goal: a connection.

When a person is able to softly change ranges—like a regulator, to go from one level to another—then he really becomes internally soft and integral. He activates absolutely all of his qualities, beginning with the lowest, animal qualities, and ending with the highest qualities, which are originating only in him, and, this way, he advances.
[88805]
From a Talk on Integral Upbringing 3/5/12

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