In groups of integral learning, people experience serious changes during the course of discussions. It’s possible to tell just by looking at them, the wild development they are undergoing. After all, the material they are studying is not just simple material. When we work with it, we evoke the forces of nature concealed in us. When we speak of the next level, the forces of this level, this field, interact with us and constantly evoke strong reactions and turbulent changes. People undergo very serious inner processes.

And when they separate, they feel how much they lack this kind of communication. This is why it’s necessary to keep this virtual connection they manage to create between them. This is very important because it’s similar to parting with something great, something that gradually becomes somewhat more important than life itself.

When groups begin to live this inner life, they connect to a new source, the next level of existence. And then this separation from the group might be perceived as something very dramatic by a person, and we must also think about dampening the process of his separation or giving him a replacement, otherwise the person will feel like he is dying.
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From a Talk on Integral Upbringing 3/5/12

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A person fights cruel battles on the way to achieving the goal of creation, attacks and struggles with problems. It is so hard to attain this goal and in fact, it is practically impossible since it is against our nature. We cannot transcend nature; we don’t have the powers for that.

A person can only work in the range of the opportunities he was given. The goal we are seeking, trying to discover the spiritual world and reach equivalence of form with the Creator, is above us and is opposite from our attributes, so a person simply cannot do it.

Therefore, Rabash says that a united group of people should get together, in one place, under the leadership of one man, under the influence from Above, from the teacher, the Creator, the group, and all its members. Only then will we be able to take any steps to change our nature.

It isn’t so bad that we cannot change ourselves. The problem is that despite everything, we are constantly trying to reach the goal by ourselves: we get angry, we get pressure, and operate as we are used to in this world—attacking again and again, making a collective effort. We think that we will fight and win.

But we cannot succeed and win this way. Eventually we have to reach a state in which we really want the desired goal, but we cannot attain it. This is the recognition we should come to.

We have to fight; we have to try, but the more we tell each other that we need help from Above, the less energy we will waste in vain.

Why should we fight in vain against this monster, which is our egoistic nature? We will not be able to beat the ego by our own powers since they also stem from the same ego. It is impossible to beat the ego with egoistic powers; a person is deceiving himself!

This is why we were given a group. A person begins to understand that as long as he fights alone, he will stay in the same system, in one vessel, in his own cocoon. He will spin around himself like a dog chasing his own tail and will never break out of this closed circle.

If he understands this, he begins to look for a group. It may be that he has been in the group for a long time, but isn’t aware that this is an environment that was given to him to work in. He thought that these are just friends with whom he studies and dines with as is accepted in our world. But eventually he despairs of his own powers and understands that he needs help from Above.

He doesn’t see the Creator and he doesn’t know how to turn to Him. He doesn’t know whether the Creator hears his requests or not, and whether He responds. Perhaps he is just shouting in the desert, wasting his efforts and tormenting his heart. But he doesn’t feel that it leads to any results.

When he understands that he is lost without the friends’ support, he really needs a group.

Otherwise nothing will help him and he will end his life like the animal he was born. From that moment on he begins to look at his environment differently. He understands that it was given to him for a reason, and that the Creator has brought him to his good fate and told him “take it!”
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From the Talk Dedicated to the Memorial Day of Rabash 9/20/12 

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The difference between our actions is only in whether they lead to the Creator or not. We cannot reveal the Creator if everyone is not connected first, a connection without any differences, for the general wellbeing of everyone.

I should feel that I don’t exist anymore as an individual; I only perform these actions and forget about myself. I don’t even see or know what I have done. I don’t need that, since otherwise I can start enjoying my merits and look for ways to justify myself.

This reflects what bestowal is to some extent. Of course, it is impossible to reach such attributes. When we clarify it more to ourselves, we discover that it is unattainable and gradually begin to realize that it has to come to us from somewhere on the outside.

The more we try the more we see that we cannot do that, and so it becomes clearer that only the upper force can help us, something unreal. Then we demand that it will happen. This is already a prayer.
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From a Talk before the Unity Convention 9/20/12

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The only means for spiritual advancement is working in the group, thanks to which we clarify whether we want to connect with one another. Eventually we discover that we cannot connect and don’t even want to and totally reject the mutual connection.

Our whole nature rebels against such a connection. We are ready to put up with anything except that. There are relationships that we enjoy and we want them, but a connection with the friends, a mutual connection in which every individual serves the general—our heart will never agree to that.

Only such a mutual relationship is called “connection,” in which everyone is like a component in an electric circuit, or in an engine. So in every whole system, every component is part of the system and has to perform his job and keep his obligations to the other parts.

In order to do that, we need to annul the ego. People whose ego isn’t so developed are ready to be with others and it is easy for them to be close, to feel one another, to be friends. However, the more a person develops, the more his ego grows and the more difficult he finds it to connect with others. He doesn’t feel that he has friends at all.

Once, even several decades ago, people felt close to one another, but today everyone is by himself. We don’t even notice how everyone is closed up in his niche. We hide behind the computer screen and call it a relationship. We feel better this way, more comfortable! All of humanity is like that now.

There are different methods to make people connect, which are mainly based on Nazism, fascism, and fundamentalism. These methods are meant to evoke the feeling of solidarity in the masses. To some extent it stops their psychological development and so it is easier to manage them.

But in spiritual development on the other hand, there are two opposing approaches that are integrated. On the one hand, a person has to be very developed, a great individualist. Everyone must feel that he is totally isolated and that he doesn’t belong to anyone else. It is so prominent that it seems as if he doesn’t belong to this world.

On the other hand, we are required to connect so powerfully that everyone should totally annul himself against his desire to annul others. It is the most unrealistic demand that can possibly be in our world, and it is against the trend of human development. After all, as the ego develops people become increasingly more detached from one another. Everyone draws away from others and hides behind his computer, his cell phone, or at home.

Everyone lives in a niche he has created for himself. Suddenly he is required to do the opposite: to leave his niche and connect in his heart and soul. What is more, we have to do this not by being forced, but to want it ourselves! After all, we discover that this unity is the highest value.

There is no advantage in it, but this is where the truth lies. So it is very hard to approach the values of bestowal and love, if internally in our feelings we don’t find a justification for it.

But this is the principle according to which the spiritual world works! In order to acquire these values, which are totally opposite from our current values, we have to recruit the help of the upper force so that it will influence us and change us.

We have to ask for that during the study. After all, we study the actions that take place on a higher level—actions of bestowal, love, and connection—working on the systems of the souls. It isn’t a mechanical system that is emotionless, but a live system in which the mind and the feelings operate according to the law of mutual guarantee.

We study about the relations between our desires, which are in mutual bestowal, and we want to resemble them, which means to study them, to connect to them and to enter the same state. Thus, we draw ourselves to this state and spur the influence of the force called the Light that Reforms.

We have to think and study about these upper states, about how our egoistic desires operate loyally in mutual bestowal.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/19/12, The Zohar

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We consider it to be egoism only when people in the group repel one another rather than when a person is trying to achieve the most comfortable, advantageous, and winning position in an ordinary society. The latter is a regular everyday egoism.

Here we mean the societal egoism when a desirable state is set precisely in the group, when the goal is to become closer and rise above one’s natural properties and desires, when one has to rise above himself and enter into the common integral desire where a person will not be “I,” but rather “we” and his “I” will be annulled and suppressed staying somewhere at the bottom, while “we” will be cultivated. In such a state one’s inner opposition with this aspiration is called the egoism.

That is, egoism is a force that opposes the group unification.
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From a Talk on Integral Upbringing 3/4/12

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The connecting system among us is gradually revealed thanks to the fact that we connect. Within this connection we feel our desires, which gradually begin to connect, and the general force that flows in them.

This force and the Light that is revealed within our desires is the image of the Giver that is on the outside. We have built it by ourselves and discovered Him. This image is called the Creator, which means Boreh—come and see (Bo-Reh in Hebrew).

The Creator exists only if the created being builds and discovers Him within his desires, his intentions, his aspirations, and his efforts.

It may seem strange, since after all it says: “I am the first and I am the last,” “There is none else besides Him,” “His glory fills the whole earth.” And after all this, it says that a person himself builds his own Creator?

We are still ready to believe that we have to reveal the Creator who is concealed, as if to move the curtain behind which He hides. But it says that we are the ones who build the form we call Creator.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/20/12, Writings of Rabash 

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Question: How do we feel the right connection?

Answer: The correct connection is when we feel only the connection and don’t feel ourselves. It is the exact opposite of what is happening now.

If we all disconnect from ourselves, we will feel only the connections among us, which means the general body that lives and exists. Each one will not feel his own individual cell, but that he is included in the whole body, and will give himself until he doesn’t feel himself but only the general body. This means that we have attained connection.

Then the collective feeling of life in the general body that doesn’t belong to anyone personally but is a result of the connection among us, this feeling is called the Creator.

This vessel is called Adam (a human), and its filling is called the Creator, the Light of life, the mutual force of bestowal.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/20/12, Writings of Rabash 

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Question: We’ve started our convention after having been through many things. How can we hold on to the goal like a bulldog that doesn’t let go of his grip? How can we find the vitality in our exertion and not demand a cheap reward in the form of an impression?

Answer: You should feel pleasure by your exertion. It doesn’t matter whether the convention is a success; I enjoy the fact that we are making an effort together.

You should understand that there are no pauses in spirituality. If you don’t put constant pressure, spirituality will disappear. It exists as long as the next moment is different from the present moment. You have to be on a constant ascent, and constantly add something. This addition, the gap between the moments is the feeling of the spiritual life.

A state can stop or freeze only here in our still world. This is why it exists, so that from here our way will start. Therefore, we have to receive pleasure by putting an increasingly stronger pressure, and get pleasure from our exertions.

Question: Do we fixate on the exertion?

Answer: You have to build the greatness of the one you bestow upon.

Question: How do I turn this effort into a collective effort?

Answer: It can’t be any different. You can’t locate the Creator by yourself, but only with others. After all, the “Creator” is the group; it’s its center: this is where you channel the growing bestowal and from this you receive pleasure. The pleasure is caused by the addition and not by the state itself. Thus, a person who has made a million dollars wants more the next minute and doesn’t stop at what he has achieved.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/20/12, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot”

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Question: How do I force the upper to awaken me?

Answer: The upper awakens us from the start. As it says “I am the first.” This first awakening is given to a person before he begins to yearn for spirituality. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have had such thoughts from the start and it wouldn’t touch his heart.

Everything begins from an awakening from Above, called the “Reshimo” (reminiscence, information gene)—a reason, the influence of the friends, a desire that is suddenly evoked, a song—this is how I am awakened.

The awakening always comes from the upper, but usually in a concealed way without a connection to Him. It is as if I wake up by chance, suddenly. The upper hides on purpose, so as not to steal the “freewill” from me. The question is how will I work with this awakening, how will I respond to it?

First, do I understand that I have received it from the upper and thank Him for awakening me? In addition I have to clarify what exactly I have to wake up to? What are the options that I have?

This is the clarification of the question about the meaning of life, which I now have to ask myself: “What is the point in my life? Why should I go on living?” This means, what does my ego, my desire, aim at? What am I living for?

I begin to clarify the goal of my life in a more accurate manner, sorting the desires, until I find the most worthwhile desire for which it is really worthwhile to live. Suppose I had one last minute to live, and I had a chance to ask for one thing only, what would I ask for in this last minute?

I have to clarify what the most important thing for me is, what I should ask for. When we delve into this clarification, we see that we can only do it in a group. After all, it is the pattern of the upper world—as if the upper world descends into our world.

On the one hand, the relations among the friends are egoistic and they clarify this world for us. Yet, at the same time we have a point in the heart, which enables us to build a layer of upper relations, called the next world, the upper world.

Then we will be able to work on two planes: suppressing the lower, egoistic layer as much as we can trying to build another layer above it, a new level of relations based on love, mutual concern, mutual guarantee and connection.

The group enables us to build the pattern of the upper relations. It provides us with many opportunities to mutually work on our envy, on the lust, the hatred, and the love. Thanks to it we understand why we behave one way and not differently, and we begin to understand our states. Thus we quickly clarify our only right request.

We examine the other requests and see that they are all trivial and temporary and so we draw away from them. It says: “All the gates are locked, except for the gate of tears,” which means except for the last gate in which we demand adhesion according to equivalence of form. After all, we did everything we could, we tried to fulfill it and we saw that we can’t. We do not rest, but rather demand and ask, and thus reach what we desire.

This preparation includes many stages: The feeling of exile, the domination of Pharaoh, and then the struggle against him, until we manage to escape and reach a spiritual birth.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/19/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: How can the group awaken me?

Answer: This is part of our mutual guarantee. I must feel that if I don’t awaken them, they will not do the same for me.

This is actually the problem: Why do we fall asleep and not advance, lagging behind the world? Instead of carrying the world behind us to correction, we are waiting for the world to discover its illness, the shattering, more and more.

If a close relative, someone who is very dear to you, your child, were seriously ill, and he felt worse from day to day, would you wait tranquilly until he were in a fatal condition? Wouldn’t you look for a cure for him in every possible way? Wouldn’t you do anything to find a way to convince him to take the remedy?

Do you also worry about the world this way? If not, then you are not fulfilling your job. The group doesn’t awaken you, and you are not awakening the group.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/14/12, Writings of Rabash

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