Question: In the process of studying, everything is changing: There are both physical and virtual workshops. At what point is the individual work with oneself, with a book, with the source?

Answer: What for? Where do I solve the problem of creating within me a sense of the spiritual world? It’s only in the group! What is the use if I sit down and study on my own?

Sometimes, it is necessary to better understand what happens to me in the end. In such cases, I must admit that I need to study on my own, reread at home, not only such serious materials as The Study of the Ten Sefirot diagrams, but also the articles, the letters of Rabash and Baal HaSulam.

If individual studies are needed to better understand correctly what you have to do for the group, then study and if not, then why do you need other studies? They may even discourage you.

You will begin to understand a lot, to think that you are a wise person and that you don’t need anything else. As a result, you get the poison of death instead of the elixir of life. There is a symbol in medicine, a bowl with snake venom that can be a poison and can be the basis for drugs. So here; you need to be very careful when it comes to studying. The main thing is intention!
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From the Kharkov Convention “Uniting to Ascend” 8/19/12, Lesson 7

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If the friends become more important to you than yourself and your first concern is that they will discover spirituality and not you, it shows the greatness that you attribute to the Creator since by that you want to bring Him contentment. For Him, to reveal Himself is pleasure. He can be revealed only in desires that resemble Him, which means desires of bestowal that are compatible with His bestowal. A person who bestows reaches adhesion with the Creator according to the law of equivalence of form.

But the vessels of bestowal can’t exist in a person himself. They can only be if you take extraneous desires and the more alien they are to you, the better. Rabbi Shimon’s disciples felt such hatred towards one another before they began to study. Imagine what great desires they corrected by raising them in bestowal to the Creator so that He could fulfill His bestowal with them.

It’s the same with you when by wanting to reach the love of the Creator you try to love others, the friends. You agree to take all of their desires and raise them to the Creator for correction. This means that you are ready to be their servant, the conductor between them and the Creator. You only use the Masach (screen) and so you become like mother, Bina, who has nothing.

This is called a “kingdom of priests” that have no estate of their own. The Creator is their only property. You only conduct His Light through you for others and by that reach adhesion with Him.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/27/12, The Study of the Ten Sefirot

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The sum of our gratitude for the past gives us the total vessel (Kli) for the disclosure of the Creator, total sensitivity, power, intensity, suffering, movement forward. Why is gratitude so important? Because in this way a person already has a positive attitude to the Creator, to the Light; he sees It positively, and the Light shines on him as It is ready to shine the Light.

When we give thanks for the past, and everyone makes such an effort connecting with the friends in the group to gain the strength to relate to the past correctly, then we unite and form the common desire to understand and reveal the Creator. This is on the one hand.

On the other hand, this desire is filled with gratitude, awareness, and appreciation of the past because we begin to feel that it was absolutely necessary in order to come to this current state where we start to enter the upper world. Why is this state that we obtain by nullifying the negative past a means to reveal the Creator? Because it gives us absolute confidence that the world is ruled by only one positive force. Thus, we can feel like a baby in its mother’s arms. Nothing else is necessary; everything is in complete order. A baby can smell his mother, and he feels safe in her arms.

Once we reach this state of security and confidence, the world becomes infinite; it simply gives way. A person feels that he is unlimited. Nothing constricts us; we are under no authority, pressure, or constraints, neither conscious nor subconscious! And that is why the upper world is revealed, the total, true universe in which we live which has been compressed to the level, the size, of this world by our constant, alarming, apprehension of something unpleasant, and by lacking the proper characteristic of the Creator who rules and dominates everything. Thus revelation occurs. It is possible to bring yourself to the full revelation of the upper governance only by working on yourself, your past, present, and future. By this, we completely eliminate time, the most limiting factor of our world. Completely! If I think that I am in one constant force that controls everything and keeps everything in an absolutely positive state, then there is no time. What changes? There is no motion or movement, no top, bottom, no coordinates, just one simple space, the world of Infinity.

Of course, we need to grow to this state. I also don’t know what it is yet. But at least, the expansion of the sphere in which we exist by obtaining guarantees, security, the feeling of oneself in the mercy of the quality of bestowal which gives us this movement outwards to the expansion of the sphere.
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From the Kharkov Convention “Uniting to Ascend” 8/19/12, Workshop 7

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Question: Do I act correctly by praying for everybody and wanting that each of us will also ask the Creator for the Light for all? I want that everyone will find themselves in this society, in this Light, and that the Creator will help each of us to acquire it.

Answer: Why for “each of us” and not all of us? Isn’t it better if it’s everybody together?

Why do we talk about unification, about aspiring towards unity? It’s because in spirituality there is no such state like “I,” “he,” “you,” and so on. It’s better to ask in the name of “we.”

Try and you will see that life will instantly become clearer, better for everybody. In this “we,” you will discover the only state that exists. And the current state will gradually move away from you and will indeed be felt as illusory—it’s just that we had been aimed like that before.
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From the Kharkov Convention “Uniting to Ascend” 8/18/12, Lesson 5 

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To actually achieve the desired result in spiritual advancement, we need to use all of the allotted time.

This is not a couple of hours a week, a few hours of dissemination or any other activities. We have to continue the same work that we did during the workshops; it continues in everyone internally during the breaks, during the meals, while travelling—no matter what! This is the most important thing!

After all, a morning lesson or a meeting like a workshop is like recharging, like connecting to the power source. When you connect to the group, you attract the upper Light to yourself; you charged yourself and can go safely in your life for 20 hours. Then come back again.

This is required once a day! Otherwise the spiritual connection is cut off. At least an hour a day, but there must be a connection to a physical or virtual group, to the Light; you recharge yourself and continue the rest of the time to work on this charge.

Now, we are gradually switching to a different kind of work, which is much more difficult than sitting in circles with each other. In this work, there are thousands of various disturbances. But we understand that these are not a hindrance, that we are surrounded by the Creator Who wants us to be connected to Him all the time through these disturbances. And then we will see that these are not disturbances, but opportunities to connect, to amplify the signal. Let’s try!
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From the Kharkov Convention “Uniting to Ascend” 8/19/12, Workshop 7

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Question: If I suddenly feel the desires of everyone else, what should I do with them? Should I fill them?

Answer: If you don’t just feel extraneous desires but the yearnings of your friends, their desires for the goal, then you identify with these desires and don’t divide them into “theirs” and “yours” anymore.

If you are yearning for the right thing, you turn into “there is none else besides Him,” into an integral part, so there is no division anymore. It should be like a test, a control for the right yearning.

You feel your friends’ desires as your own. You simply connect with them and so there is no “you” and “them.”

A person is a desire; each of us is a desire. If we want to feel others we perceive them as ours.

If a mother is filled with her child’s desires, her desires and his desires are still separate, but if we want to attain the revelation of the Creator by yearning for Him for “there is none else besides Him,” we feel our desires as absolutely identical; I don’t feel a difference between my desires and the desires of others.

Imagine that you have just connected with someone, that you spoke to him, felt that you think alike, and that you want the same thing, you become as one man. The external division of the bodies disappears, and there is only one, internal—not two connected but one.
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From the Kharkov Convention “Uniting to Ascend” 8/18/12, Lesson 5

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Change is possible only by the Light that Reforms. This Light comes by itself in order to advance us to attain the state in which we are. It constantly increases its illumination on us, or in other words, it constantly illuminates and the Reshimot (reminiscences) are revealed, change, and intensify, and thus we feel that we are changing.

When we want to do something, to reveal something, to develop technologies, and to advance, it is all according to the Reshimot. They oblige us and we act. Suddenly Newton discovers the law of gravity, suddenly Einstein develops the theory of relativity, then other scientists come along with new discoveries, and so the world advances. Different people come along, good and bad, and it seems as if they are advancing the world. And so under the influence of the Light, we live in the developing Reshimot.

But if we want to awaken this Light so that it wouldn’t illuminate in order to increase our egoistic desire but in order to change it, to correct it, and transform it into a desire to bestow, we have to do something on our own that is called “exertion.” This action is voluntary since we have to change our desire. We are making this change with the spiritual spark that is concealed in us, in our desire, and which helps us understand that things can be different, that we can play with our desire differently, and instead of using others, can act in their favor and attain love and bestowal for others.

The Light continues to illuminate our Reshimot, and we can only change its influence on us. If we somehow understand and approach this issue, then according to the extent that we fulfill the Reshimo that is evoked in us in order to use it in bestowal and not in receiving, the Light that illuminates for us brings about such a result, by performing the change in us.

So, everything depends on us, on how much we, no matter what state we are in, in the Reshimot that are revealed in us every moment, are wanting to fulfill the Reshimot instinctively in bestowal instead of in receiving.

If we really want to fulfill the Reshimot, our action is divided into two parts at least. First, we gather in order to work on the connection among us. The connection that we want to fulfill among us resembles the connection between the shattered souls in order to make the general soul from them since this is our goal. This is the aspect of the desires, the vessels. From the aspect of the Lights, we want the one Light to illuminate in us, to connect us, to reveal the Creator for us, meaning the general collective force of bestowal that is revealed among us.

This is why we read in Kabbalah books about the actions that are fulfilled within a group of people who try to connect. Of all the books, the most effective is The Book of Zohar since it describes these actions, this system, in the most perfect way.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/26/12, The Zohar

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Question: There is a spiritual committee in our group. Three men are elected to raise the importance of the goal in the group throughout the week. You say that the presence of women is always additional help. Can the spiritual committee also have three women participating on this committee from the women’s part?

Answer: No, you cannot. When men are talking about their spiritual problems, they must clarify them separately. You must find another place to solve some problems together, but not during the time the men designate as their strictly male meeting time. You can’t do that! This will not work!

We, meaning humanity, are purposely separated into two very sharp parts: male and female. This dissection and separation comes from above to below, as the Creator to creation. These are two worlds. It’s impossible to connect and compare them in any way.

Unity between man and woman happens only through the Creator; otherwise, this unity doesn’t exist. Therefore, we see where this is leading in our world. With everything that is happening around us, we can only balance it through the Creator. In the same manner we can also balance our families, but only if we accept the necessary condition that the Creator has to be between us, as between me and my friend, also between me and my spouse. If He’s not there, then there won’t be any connection between us. In the end, this is what we are coming to.

However, joint meetings of men and women must really be held and also men’s and women’s meetings separately. And women need to be thinking about how they can unite among themselves and how to help the men.
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From the Kharkov Convention “Uniting to Ascend” 8/18/12, Lesson 4

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Question: The last workshop was more difficult than the previous one since instead of a short question you read an entire paragraph from an article and then asked us to discuss it. But it wasn’t at all clear what exactly should be discussed.

Answer: I did that on purpose in order to force you to talk from the heart, from within feelings. If, during the reading, you follow me through your feelings, then you don’t need to remember the question and to think. You simply feel and say only a few words about it. That’s enough!

This is exactly what I wanted to achieve: to direct you to emotionally penetrate into the text so that together we would feel what is hidden there behind the words. If we try to follow the feelings that come after my words and not to look for the answer through the mind, then it works.

I don’t want you to discuss through the mind, but to begin to connect between you through the impressions you received from what you heard. In each paragraph there was some emotional development. And together you had to find your overall impression from it. Building a mutual Kli (desire, vessel), means to come to a shared impression.

A group, in general, is a shared impression in separate Kelim, desires, that connect in order to operate together. When they are ready for this one, shared impression, then this is revealed in them.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/30/12, The Study of the Ten Sefirot

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Baal HaSulam, “600,000 Souls”: It is said that there are 600,000 souls, and each soul divides into several sparks. We must understand how it is possible for the spiritual to divide, since initially, only one soul was created, the soul of Adam ha Rishon. In my opinion, there is indeed only one soul in the world, as it is written (Genesis, 2:7), “and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” The same soul exists in all the children of Israel, complete in each and every one, as in Adam ha Rishon, since the spiritual is indivisible and cannot be cut—which is rather a trait of corporeal things. Yet, saying that there are 600,000 souls and sparks of souls appears as though it is divided by the force of the egoism of each person.

At the beginning we feel that we exist outside of the common soul because our ego fences us off it. Ultimately, everybody attains completely this one common soul, the spiritual vessel, the corrected desire of the creature who is in adhesion with the Creator in the world of Infinity.

The Creator created only this one soul of Adam ha Rishon. But because of the force of shattering, which has entered us, each of us senses only himself. However, by virtue of actions called “the Torah and commandments,” a person has an opportunity to attract upon himself the Light from the common soul, if he wants to draw closer to it.

The soul is a collection of all souls merged into a single whole. The more a person aspires towards it by the means of the group, the friends, and the study, the greater is the illumination that he invokes from there. This illumination helps him to remove the partition that fences him off this soul and to reveal it.

That is, everyone discovers that they are inside this soul. But all parts, into which, as it seems to us, we are now divided by imagining different people, they differ from one another and stem from different roots. Some relate to 600,000 souls, and others to the sparks. But this determines only the differences on the path: who comes first, who at the end, and who in the middle in the process of correction; who belongs to the degrees of HBT–HGT–NHY, “fathers,” “sons,” or the entire world. And ultimately, everybody discovers the common soul in its entire fullness, without any difference between us.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/26/2012, “600,000 Souls”

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