We had a very powerful and high quality convention in Kharkov, making a big step forward. This has advanced all our groups around the world. We have felt universal participation: Everyone was with us from all around the world, all connected. Let us hope that this will raise us to a higher, stronger, and more internal level of connection in comparison to the previous level.

It is clear that this success would have been impossible without all the preliminary work and self-sacrifice that everyone expressed to attain the goal of creation. I think that we have managed to feel it and realize it better. I am very grateful to all the participants and am proud of you. I am referring to all the organizers and all the participants of the convention who felt how significant this step forward was for us. I am glad that everything happened the way it did.

Let us hope that from now on we will continue to delve deeper into our connection and that inside it we will reveal how everything is determined by our appeal to the Creator. Even though right now I am referring to you, we must still thank the Creator for directing us, accompanying and advancing us towards Him, for having an upper force that guides us, and for having merited to advance towards it.

The main thing I wanted to convey to you at this convention is the feeling that when you are in a group that discusses, listens, and dances inside the notion of a “group,” then it holds you up. But the moment you leave this notion, even if physically you are still in the group, you immediately fall into your thoughts.

You had to feel this ascent every time when you are with our friends who influence you and possess your mind and heart, and a descent when for some reason you break your connection with them.

We needed to get a feel for how necessary it is to constantly be under the influence of the environment. Otherwise you immediately return to an animalistic state. I am only human when the group rules over me.

These two levels needed to become very clear to every person, and this goal is what the entire convention schedule was directed towards. If somehow we managed to reach this realization, now we need to strengthen it: to understand the extreme importance of the influence of the environment, which Baal HaSulam speaks of. This is my entire freedom of choice: to keep strengthening this environment in any way I can by increasing my susceptibility.

The environment must keep getting stronger and have a more powerful influence over me. Our mutual guarantee must manifest here: mine according to my attitude towards them and theirs according to their attitude towards me, to always keep me above my corporeal calculations. And this will lead us to modesty and devotion of the soul—the states which lead to the attainment of the goal.
[86207]
Excerpt from a Conversation During a Meal After the Kharkov Convention 8/20/12

Related Material:
Everything Is Ready, The Last Word Is Ours!
The Convention Is In Our Hands
Don’t Waste Time – Become Included In The Convention Now!

Filed under: Conventions, Free Will, Group Work, Inner Work, Mutual Guarantee, Unity - No Comments →

Humanity can be divided into circles that have a common center.

The internal circle, the source, is made of Abraham’s students who left ancient Babel and whom many other people from other nations and from different parts of the world joined. Today, after four exiles, on the verge of the fourth redemption, a circle of “those who left the current Babel” is formed of all of humanity. Such people want to fulfill the same goal and together according to their yearning they are called “Israel,” which means straight to the Creator.

Besides that, there is another part that belongs to the category of “Israel,” which is those in whom the same Reshimot (reminiscences), the same “signs” that were left from the past when they were in spiritual ascent, are rooted. The three lines are hidden in their basis; they have experienced ascents and descents going through a series of reincarnations, and they have to correct themselves in our world since they belong to the students of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

So there are three types of people who belong the group of “Israel” these days:

• Inside is Bnei Baruch (BB).
• Around them, there are our friends from the nations of the world, from all over the world.
• On the outside, there are those who are called Jews, who are divided into two parts: religious and nonreligious.

They all have to fulfill the correction whether they want to or not. Some of them are being awakened today; these are our friends, the world Kli (in red). But on the whole, everyone is obliged to do so.

On the outside the whole world, all of humanity, or the nations of the world surround us.

 [86080]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/21/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Nation”

Related Material:
Israel: By Birth Or By Goal
When A Child Does Not Want To Grow
The “Adaptor” For Connection With The Light

Filed under: Collective Soul, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Kabbalah Dissemination, Spirituality, World - No Comments →

Question: My question is regarding the qualities of reception and bestowal. Within these two properties, their symbiotic fusion, I feel like a complete altruist. How can I come to understand that this is not what I am?

Answer: There is no need for this! Not at all! You are a complete altruist. Continue to act this way in the group with all your heart, and you will gradually understand that you are a complete egoist.

Question: What is the difference between spiritual bestowal and bestowal in the corporeal world?

Answer: There is no bestowal in the corporeal world: It is a disguised egoistic desire to receive, to use another person. I do a favor for another because it is good for me, he will also do something good for me.

In fact, we are not able to perform any actions of bestowal. When have you ever given anything to anyone? Has this ever happened?

Comment: Always all the time.

Answer: You simply fail to see that all your actions are driven by egoism. Continue doing it, but in the group. Because outside the group none of it matters.

Start doing it seriously in the group, together with studying, together with dissemination, together with learning, bestow to your friends, involve them in something. But to bestow does not mean to boss them around. Give yourself! Start doing it, and you will suddenly see that everyone is bad, they do not want anything, you will see where you are, etc.

Comment: I am trying to do this, but this does not help me stop seeing myself as an altruist.

Answer: Lack of connection with the group: I have nothing more to say. This is the only thing that leads to the realization of the real evil. It does not happen on its own; so I am an egoist, so what. But evil directed against the Creator only manifests through the group.
[86047]
From the Kharkov Convention “Uniting to Ascend” 8/17/12, Lesson 3 

Related Material:
A Tuning Fork For David’s Violin
Salt And Pepper In Spiritual Work
Everything Depends Upon You

Filed under: Conventions, Egoism, Group Work, My Similarity to the Creator, Q&A - 1 Comment →

Question: You said that there is no such thing as “lethargy.” How can we focus ourselves on the goal in order to become an eternal engine?

Answer: It only depends on the importance of the goal. In fact, there is no tiredness. Suppose you have a small child and you are busy with him 24 hours a day with feeding, diapers, and all the rest. This, of course, is very hard work, but it is the physical fatigue in our world.

In the spiritual world, if a person advances, he is nourished by the Light and doesn’t get tired. This doesn’t mean that he doesn’t sleep or eat, and so on. He needs to do all that, but the detachment, the mental fatigue, doesn’t exist. Of course, he sleeps physiologically, but only because it is essential for his body.

That is, if we are charged by the upper Light, constantly looking for a way to be fully focused straight on it, then we always fulfill our normal physiological needs: the basic amount of calories, sleep, and so forth. It will always be on a normal level, and this will be no problem. But it must be observed! Kabbalists say that a person needs 60 breaths while he sleeps.

We are in a field of forces. You may think that it is mysticism, but actually it is a science, physics, and vectors. How do I focus myself on that field, in the inverse square of the distance between us, that is, direction, the direction of the angle so that I catch the energy from it? Everything follows the same laws operating in our world with some form of energy like radiation, for example.

However, once again, we encounter the problem of mutual guarantee: Will you support your friends? Because a person in an instant may lose the direction, and then nothing works. In an instant, he may find himself in some incomprehensible space! And then any external, silly, narrow-minded, external interruptions begin to influence him.

So, the most important thing is to create the need in the group to constantly support each of its members. Afterward, there is nothing to worry about. You will always succeed.
[85963]
From the Kharkov Convention “Uniting to Ascend” 8/17/12, Lesson 2

Related Material:
Attaining Unity
Burning With Spiritual Work
There’s No Such Thing As Physical Fatigue

Filed under: Conventions, Group Work, Mutual Guarantee, My Similarity to the Creator, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: You recounted many obstacles that a person meets when he begins to work in the group. One of them is that they can appear as opportunities to a person; they can appear very tempting and attractive, able to improve his life and not interfere with his engagement in spiritual work.

Answer: They all interfere with spiritual work. Otherwise, they are not obstacles. It only seems to you that if something breaks, if something happens, then you have to fix it, and then you can return to spiritual work, but actually it is an obstacle that is specifically against your spiritual work. Each kind!

Question: If a person wants to deal with some of his regular corporeal desires so that they don’t distract him, then would that also be an obstacle?

Answer: As it is written, “If there is no flour, there is no Torah.” We must create all the needed conditions for existence, necessary and sufficient, like in mathematics. This means to conduct a regular life. Today, also, that might not be so simple. Everything depends on what I consider sufficient. for myself

Once I asked Rabash about this, and he gave me a very interesting answer, “The essential level of self-sufficiency is such a degree that you would be happy if there was no need to deal with it.” This means that you would be happy if you didn’t need to eat, drink, sleep, purchase a Chevrolet, or go on vacation to the Caribbean Islands. The essential level is what you really are forced to deal with—forced—and you are not at all happy about it since you must maintain the life of this body in order to rise to the next level. What do you need for that?

If a person’s mind is in the right place, he simply doesn’t pay attention to what is essential to him. Take any musician or writer who “lives” in their work. For any creative person, creativity is everything. He doesn’t need anything else!

It doesn’t matter to him how he looks and what he eats. He “burns” with his work. Thus, when you burn with your work, then there wouldn’t be such a question.
[85955]
From the Kharkov Convention “Uniting to Ascend” 8/17/12, Lesson 2

Related Material:
Obstacles Guide Us On The Way
Lessons About A New World: Let The air Out Of The Balloon But Not The Demons Out Of The Bottle
Don’t Hope For a “Maybe”

Filed under: Conventions, Group Work, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: You said that we have to play actively in front of each other that we are at the next degree, so that others envy and follow us. How can this be expressed? Should we simply be good, kind, helpful, smiling and this will excite and draw the friends? Or should we be firm in relation to the goal? How should I show this in order to cause maximum envy?

Answer: We are in the world of Infinity, the full connection with each other. The only problem is that we do not perceive it. We are like blind kittens. We need to begin to feel where we are in reality through our properties.

That is why the 125 spiritual degrees are called the rungs of revelation, the revelation of what you exist in. But you are underdeveloped and don’t feel that. Here now, as if in the same space (although not actually in the same space, but in other dimensions), there are plenty of various phenomena, objects, relationships, and actions. We feel none of this; it is outside of our senses.

Some people, including psychics, sense this a little. In fact, it is so. Bedouins living in Israel feel what’s going on 100 miles from them according to various manifestations of nature. But all this is at the level of our world. Psychics like Wolf Messing feel a little higher of course, outside of time, because the next degree raises man above time, etc.

That is, we play the next higher level, thus wanting to attract the forces of nature to ourselves so that they pull us towards it. We do the same thing in our lives; people play: I want to be like someone, for example, like scientists or musicians, I play this, do exercises, and thus come closer to them.

Why do the exercises pull me towards this? Because I’m attracting the same upper Light, only at our egoistic level. This is a physical law: If I aspire to something, these forces of aspiration realize everything. Therefore, we must become inspired to play.

But most importantly, we have to desire this inside ourselves because initially we are connected with each other, and if I want something, our desires concentrated together and directed at the same state will lead us to it.

That is why there are people who are dancing in front of you with a harmonica and inspiring others, and there are those who are standing modestly on the side and cannot even join the circle or sing along with everyone else; there are different people, it doesn’t matter. Externally, we must also show this for our friends in order to be inspired together. But the most important thing is an internal aspiration.
[85917]
From Kharkov Convention “Uniting to Ascend” 8/17/12, Lesson 1

Related Material:
125 Steps From Me To The Creator
Seeing The World Through Desire
Pray For The Internal Power Of Bestowal

Filed under: Conventions, Group Work, My Similarity to the Creator, Prayer and Intention, Q&A, Unity - No Comments →

Question: Is fulfilling the principles that Rabash conveys in his articles essential in order to attain spirituality, or is it sufficient to keep the group’s statute? For example, can I criticize a friend if I think it is for his own good, that I would be doing it out of love for him?

Answer: You have no right to teach anyone since you will always find a justification for your actions. You have to see the friend as great in “faith above reason.” This means to accept the fact that he is great and that only your egoistic eyes cannot see it. But! There are two buts here.

The first but is whether he is a real friend: Does he participate in the connection and unity in the group? This is the important condition and actually the only one. Does he yearn to participate in the connection and unity in the group? If he does, he is a friend, if he doesn’t he isn’t one.

Second, the criticism should be only regarding his participation in the group or in the work that he does. Suppose he works here as an electrician or in dissemination and he does something wrong, here we criticize him, which means that we try to correct his slips. But this doesn’t affect my love for him as a friend in any way. In such a case, I treat him as a performer of some physical work and that’s all. The two aspects have nothing to do with one another.

If he is a real friend, that is, he works for connection and unity, then I must simply accept him as absolute, as the Creator. “From the love of the created beings to the love of the Creator.” It is the same thing! Rabash writes beautifully about it saying that eventually the group is corrected only by love among all its members, which becomes the Creator.

So we don’t criticize a friend, but express our love to him openly. It is an essential condition. Thus we work correctly against our ego.
[85889]
From the Kharkov Convention “Uniting to Ascend” 8/16/12, Preliminary Lesson

Related Material:
My Friend Is A Representative Of The Creator!
Each Friend A Treasure
My Friend, The Great Sage!

Filed under: Conventions, Egoism, Group Work, Love, Q&A, Unity - No Comments →

Question: If one person in the group reaches the Machsom, how can we make better use of him in the group?

Answer: It cannot be. One person in the group cannot reach the Machsom! A few people can, but not just one.

Question: What if this happens? What would be a better way to make use of this person in the group?

Answer: You should continue in the same way as before, to be included in each other. In this case, he will help you more intensely. But he will not tell you about what he has revealed! To the extent that he feels this, he will keep silent.

The person who really begins to feel the spiritual world does not talk much about this topic. The Tzimtzum, restriction, screen will work in him, and he does not need to advertise. For him, it is so dear and so internal that he just does not let it out. If he begins to teach, he will explain it clearly in certain portions. He will never show any miracles as they don’t exist, and he will know how to explain the method in portions. There are such people among us who are more or less in the feeling of this state. Of course, it must be still strengthened. But they will say nothing to you.
[85901]
From the Kharkov Convention “Uniting to Ascend” 8/17/12, Lesson 1

Related Material:
When External Levity Helps and When It Harms
A Shield Against The Ego
Crossing The Machsom Together

Filed under: Conventions, Group Work, Q&A, Spirituality - No Comments →

Question: How is it possible to precede the acts of the Creator each time and to become more rigid in relation to the ego so as not to surrender to its treacherous schemes, and on the other hand, to be sensitive to the hints of the Creator?

Answer: Don’t think about the ego under any circumstances, not of how to surrender to it or the opposite. All of these games with the ego won’t help. It is more cunning than you and everyone else.

Egoism is a very strong nature that is completely opposed to the Creator and is equal to Him in its intensity. The entire egoistic system was created by the Light entering into the desire, which made its nature and all its attributes in all of its forms. Thus, the struggle against the ego won’t help at all! It is only rising above it and having the desire become similar to the Light that will help! But to face the ego head on is hopeless.

You don’t need to pay attention to it! Only yearn to move ahead! Don’t wait until it pushes us from behind.

Question: What should you do if you constantly think about this, and at the last moment forget about the ego and also about the Creator?

Answer: That is because there is no connection with the group and the environment doesn’t help you go forward.

Here there is a very simple system of forces. From the beginning you are given a point to lean on, you are given direction, pushes. It is said that the Creator puts your hand on good fate and tells you: “Choose this.” And then you choose.

Baal HaSulam writes, for this person it is constantly said to choose an environment for yourself that is stronger and stronger, one that will strengthen you, and in which you will not fall and not forget the goal.

The choice of a strong environment depends only on your investing in it. You don’t need to change people, you need to invest in them more, and then you will feel a greater influence from them. This is the point of choice of the new environment. It is not a matter of faces of people, but to what extent you can take from them that same upper energy that is in them, but they themselves don’t even know about it.

If it doesn’t succeed, then it’s a sign that you need to yearn to attain this. There is nothing to do. The work is only in that.
[85837]
From the Kharkov Convention “Uniting to Ascend” 8/16/12, Preliminary Lesson

Related Material:
From Feeling To Reason, From Pleasure To Truth
The White Island On The Map
When You Start Looking For A Group

Filed under: Conventions, Egoism, Group Work, Prayer and Intention, Q&A, Unity - No Comments →

There are several circles that share the same center: Inside there is a small group in which I work, then there is the world group, and then all of humanity.

On the whole, the Light is everywhere in this whole volume. It doesn’t go away and doesn’t disappear. When we say that the Light is revealed, we refer to something that is similar to developing film. The Light is simply concealed from us in the deeper levels. Our yearning for unity summons and reveals the upper Light from the inside.

First I work in my group (1), since it is much closer to me. There is nothing we can do about it, that’s the way we are built: I feel people whom I can see, hear, and feel physically and with them I work more intensively.

Next there is the world group (2). We gather virtually in conventions trying to connect as strongly as possible. Thus we help since the upper Light created a system that is separated into several parts, into several levels. So my 100% effort in my group is like the 50% effort of the world group; it is as if we have made a 100% effort since the level of our concealment from one another is also taken into account: On this level we cannot cooperate more intensively.

Even if we feel other people who are living in other countries, in other continents, far away from us, if we try to connect with them, if we form mutual connections and hold conventions, etc., it is enough.

In the meantime, we cannot attain a connection in which the internal group and the external group are identical. It is impossible. It will only happen at the end of correction. Still, the constant efforts are enough to summon the upper Light. So we shouldn’t feel sorry that we forget the external groups, it is only natural.

Finally there is humanity, and if we only think about it a little and disseminate, create different forms of media, and operate through all the media channels, it will also be enough so that in these circles in the spreading waves, we will show the upper Light our efforts, our yearning for connection and unity, to the extent that it is possible in different areas.

We mustn’t forget all this under any circumstances. The Light is collective and it fills the whole space. We too have to incorporate this whole space inside us, on a different level, proportionately to how close it is to us.
[85856]
From the Kharkov Convention “Uniting to Ascend” 8/17/12, Lesson 1

Related Material:
The Decimal System Of Circles
The Circles Of Correction
A Circle Made Of Numberless Straight Lines

Filed under: Conventions, Group Work, Unity, World - No Comments →