Question: Should women act as if men already are in the quality of Lishma (altruistic intention)?

Answer: No! Women should not think that men already are on such a level. They must view them as children: All of us are participating in this game together. They treat men as a mother treats her children and as a wife who sends her husband off to work.

They say that there is a woman behind every successful man, and this is really true. It cannot be any other way. So we want to be some lucky men!
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From the Vilnius Convention 3/23/12, Lesson 2

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Question: There always has to be a connection between a man and a woman. When they are a son and a mother, this connection is of the son’s love for the mother and the mother’s love for her son. When they are a husband and a wife, this connection is the woman’s love for the man and the man’s love for the woman. When these are friends who share a single aspiration and goals, there needs to be sympathy and friendship between them. What kind of connection should we have?

Answer: In our world, the connection between a mother and a child or a man and a woman and so on comes from us being on the same egoistic level and trying to achieve something on it. There are only two of us who exist: a husband and a wife or a mother and a child.

But in our case, there are three of us: men, women, and the upper force—the Creator. In Him, the three of us connect together in mutual love. It’s never the two of us who connect! This is not animalistic love or a physical dependence. It ties us together only because we have one goal, and in it, all of us connect together into one common whole. This is why this is a completely different feeling, which has nothing in common with animalistic attraction towards one another.

Pardon me saying this about a mother’s feelings for her child, for example, but basically this is what exists on the animal level.

But here only the Creator and nothing else obligates us to have this connection. It is only the Creator because we demand for Him to manifest between us. We would be absolute strangers without Him. In other words, every time there is a relationship between myself and my friend, a man or a woman, I imagine the revelation of the Creator between us.
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From the Vilnius Convention 3/23/12, Lesson 2

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Question: The transition to a new level must be conscious. What exactly do we need to do to make conscious actions?

Answer: There is nothing specific we can do to make our transition, actions, and journey conscious. We only can wait for changes to happen within us under the influence of the upper Light. My efforts only evoke the upper Light, the upper energy, which affects me.

Even now I do not know what will happen to me in the next moment, even in my regular life. All this comes from the outside and is revealed from Above every moment of my life.

It is the same with spiritual work. I direct myself toward the quality to bestow, but it has to come to me and affect me, and then I will begin to understand what is happening to me. I myself can only contribute to my aspiration, but I am unable to understand.

Here, we need to be acutely aware of the fact that our drive upward, forward, is always accompanied by a question, a desire for it to actually happen. The upper Light comes from Above and provides a response. It gives us the answer since nothing can come from us. I only wait for the upper Light to manifest within us.

Since we do not have a strong enough question, desire, and drive forward yet, Ohr Makif (the Surrounding Light) does not manifest sufficiently. Is a question equal to the first portion of the Light in its intensity of desire appear in us? This is what matters.

Reaching this level means that we are reaching the threshold value of our question, our aspiration, our desire. Then, we find the answer right away. The Light always operates in a discrete manner, like inside an atom. When an electron drops from one orbit to another, it releases a quant of light. In order to lift it to an orbit, it needs to be charged with a quant of light. Then it rises and once again drops and releases a quant of light, and so forth, according to the laser principle. Nature is the same everywhere. This is why the same principle operates here.

We must rise to the threshold level.

Right now we are on one level, and we continue jumping up to reach the second level, but we are not reaching it yet. We constantly slide down, losing this level, try to rise again, and once again, we lose it. How do we jump over and rise to the next level? Once we rise to it, we will no longer descend, or fall from it.

Let us say that you are trying to jump onto a table. You jump halfway, three quarters of the way, or a quarter of the way. Every time, you fall back to the ground. Once you manage to land on the table, you will continue to stand there.

This is what we need to do. We are not willing to accept anything less than this.
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From the Vilnius Convention 3/23/12, Lesson 2

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Question: Negative feelings, irritation or even hatred appear in us when we begin to unite. What is the right way to work with them?

Answer: We need to divide the world into two parts: the way it appears to me, to my egoism, and the way it actually is. What is the world like in reality?

Once we reveal it in our common desire, we will see that it is full of Light and absolutely perfect. There is nothing to correct in it. In other words, we only need to correct ourselves, only our personal attitude toward the world, our personal perception.

This is why we need to divide the world precisely into the way it appears to us through the prism of egoism, and the world that actually exists outside of us. It is simply the upper Light that is in a state of absolute rest and has just the one quality of complete bestowal and love.

This is why we need to separate these two sensations within us. One sensation is the real sensation of irritation and objections that appear purposefully so that we would rise above them and perceive the group as something absolute and perfect, where all the friends are the greatest people in the world who are absolutely corrected. I, alone, must include myself in them and be like an embryo inside a mother.

The actual things they say and their influence on me does not matter. I am given these obstacles purposefully so that I would manage to get inside through these obstacles and be inside my friends as I imagine them to be absolutely perfect in the state of rest with me inside them.
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From the Vilnius Convention 3/23/12, Lesson 2

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In exile (Galut) only the letter Aleph is missing to reach redemption (Geula). This letter symbolizes the appearance of the Creator, the actual sensation of the manifestation of the attribute of bestowal and love, which we sense it the same place where, being in exile, we craved to see it and to feel how it takes control over and fills us.

Therefore, all our work is to yearn for redemption in a true sense of the word. The moment we will picture it to ourselves as realistically as possible, as much as we can in our egoism that is so opposite to bestowal, and to the extent that we will come closer to what is called love, bestowal, connection, mutuality, and one collective heart instead of many people, to this extent we will approach redemption.

We should imagine this structure, form, desire, deficiency, and all of its details and components as clearly as we can. Everyone should think in this direction. This is all the work by which we will hasten time and reach redemption—the revelation of the Creator—soon.

We have to prepare a spiritual vessel that will enable us to reach a great desire in it and almost picture to ourselves a desirable form, a future picture, by yearning for it.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/15/2012

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Awareness is the new category born out of the lack of equivalence of form. I begin to perceive who I am when I feel bad and try to clarify: What it is that I don’t like and why do I feel bad? Then I begin to search for the source of all this evil, from whom does it come?

All the 125 steps are based on the lack of equivalence of form, which constantly gives rise to the questions: What is this work and who is the Creator that I should listen to Him? Pharaoh is constantly asking us these questions and we are trying to find the answer. This is how the Creator plays with us on both sides, teaching us to be more sensitive to the intention of in order to bestow.

From one degree to the next, the Creator gives us a more qualitative sensation of the lack of equivalence of form. If at first I felt good and bad only with regards to corporeal criteria, by judging to what extent I succeeded in stealing from someone, now I judge the good and bad according to my intentions regarding the Creator or the person from whom I once stole.

At first I stole without anyone noticing and didn’t think about what I was doing. Then I continued to do the same thing, but I began to feel that I’m taking from someone. Later I began to feel ashamed of stealing, that I take something from a stranger for myself. Then my awareness grows so that I don’t need to take anything that is not mine, but when I look at it I feel like stealing it, and I don’t agree to that either.

Later I continue to correct myself; I don’t allow myself to steal or even to think about stealing, and this thought occurs to me only rarely. Different spiritual discernments are becoming more and more accurate inside me regarding this. Here the Creator confuses us and creates different interruptions, and all of it is being clarified only in thought.

Eventually I reach a point when even a single thought about using others makes me feel bad: If I suddenly think that another will be ill instead of me, or that he will feel bad instead of me. I am shocked by the thought that I may profit at another’s expense.

This thought remains but it becomes more tricky, fine, and internal. The evil towards others remains until the end of correction, but it becomes more qualitative because we are correcting the shattering. We rise from the simple, petty, and coarse exploitation of others to the cunning, sophisticated exploitation that harms the roots themselves. As it says, “he who is greater than his friend, his desire is greater than his friend’s,” which means that the ego is of a higher quality.

You have a slight egoistic intention, but it seems to be huge, not like “a hairsbreadth” but like “a cart’s ropes.” The correction is in rising above your ego, but the desire to use others is renewed on every degree and becomes more and more internal and cunning. This is what we should work on, and the main lab for that is the group, where you can quickly clarify your attitude to others.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/11/2012, “The Gate of Intentions”

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Baal HaSulam, Shamati #52, “A Transgression Does Not Put Out a Mitzva”: I had heard another parable that he had told of two friends, one of which became a king and the other became very poor, and he had heard that his friend became a king. The poor went to his friend the king, and told him of his bad state.

The king gave him a letter to the minister of the treasury that for two hours he would receive as much money as he wanted. The poor came to the treasury with a small box and entered and filled that small box with money.

When he came out, the minister kicked the box and all the money fell to the floor. It continued similarly time and time again, and the poor man was crying, “Why are you doing this to me?” Finally, he said, all the money that you took throughout this whole time is yours and you will take it all. You did not have the receptacles to take enough money from the treasury, and this is why that trick was played on you.

We have to be ready for the situation that the moment we fill our “box,” it will immediately be emptied. However, it’s not so that we continue to mechanically fill it and to take more and more from the treasury.

The ego feels how the box is being emptied again and again, and it itself starts training us to perceive this as something normal. And then we begin to ask why it happens this way, what’s the meaning of it, and we don’t agree with this.

We go through the same states again and again, while the Light acts upon this uncompromising repetition, and we begin to understand that we don’t need to worry about the full box, but about the work itself. The opportunity to transfer the King’s treasure from place to place gives us fulfillment, and thus we attain bestowal, “Lishma.”

We shouldn’t aim at and focus on the fulfillment that is pleasant and important to us today, but constantly think about what will be important tomorrow. We need to do that immediately, and then we will be similar to that same old man who walks bent over and is searching, as if he has lost something. He is constantly afraid of losing the importance of the goal and tries to clarify what this goal is exactly.

The goal isn’t about pleasant sensations. Pleasant sensations are needed so that I can rise above them and demand a different filling—to feel the importance of the One I am working for and to remain in concealment. I demand the revelation of the greatness of the Creator only in order to supply to myself the fuel for the work. As it is said: “Wisdom (Hochma) is for the humble” and “The reward for a commandment is a commandment.” This is what a person has to aspire to so that he is allowed to rise above one deed to the next deed, which has no relation whatsoever to the pleasure that he received.

It is as if I prepared some action by myself, executed it by myself, and received good results. And now I need to thank the Creator for executing everything from beginning to end. After all, now I understand that everything happened because He gave me desire, fuel, direction, intellect, and all the rest. He is the One who arranged everything, and I did nothing at all.

Thus I need to make a sacrifice (Kurban), to bring another part of me closer (Karov) to bestowal. I have to sacrifice the pleasure that I received thanks to “someone else’s” work and the money (Kesef) that wasn’t mine either, meaning a screen, covering (Kisuf) in this world. The Creator gave me all of that and He also gave me fulfillment. And I want to rise above all of this and to work not for this fulfillment, but for the sake of His greatness.

In this way we don’t lose the level we obtained and don’t descend. Now we determine an even higher goal for ourselves, like that old man who searches in case he has lost something.

And we indeed have lost something. For a small moment we felt how good and pleasant it is to be in unity, and now we have to rise above this pleasant feeling to the importance of the goal. And this same pleasant feeling we want to pass on to the Creator so as to bring him contentment.

It follows that this entire process he went through, all the refreshments that the guest received from the host, he now wants to return them so as not to receive them for himself. This is already a state that in some way becomes pure bestowal, “Lishma.” And this is already the correct attitude.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/27/2012, Shamati #52

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Question: If I study over the Internet, does the Light that Reforms affect me?

Answer: Even in our corporal world there are neutrino particles that pass freely through matter, hardly losing any speed.

The upper Light is at absolute rest everywhere. There are no barriers for this phenomenon in our world; it is above its nature. Therefore, if we want to summon the Light to operate on us, we have to change so that it can feel us, in other words, we have to be similar to it in our properties. This is the extent to which we get incorporated into the Light and receive the results of its action upon us. For this reason our work is directed at being more and more similar to the Light.

The Light itself is formless, while our vessel, our desire, has to take on the attribute that is similar to the Light. The desire to receive is made up of many layers and degrees, and hence advances towards similarity to the Light step by step. Our goal is to constantly, from degree to degree, become increasingly similar to the Light. After all, the purpose of creation is to attain full similarity to the Light. This is where the name “Kabbalah” comes from, meaning to receive (in Hebrew). It teaches us how to receive, to absorb all the attributes of the Light.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/12/2012, Shamati #190

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Question: How can I strengthen my connection with the friends in a virtual group?

Answer: It’s not easy. After all, a person responds to what he perceives in five senses. This is how we are built on the “animate” level: We react to those who are close to us, who are in the field of our vision and hearing, and whom we can reach for and touch.

There is a reason why business people spend so much time travelling. Can’t they reach agreement remotely? All necessary conditions exist for that. Why does it make a difference with whom you maintain business relationships? It could be someone from China, Taiwan, South America, or Europe—most important is nevertheless profit. Yet still, business people need full-fledged meetings, not only virtual contacts and correspondence. Thus, a natural need for real contact roots in man. He has to “feel on skin” whatever is important to him.

It’s not the case with us, but we too have to meet each other and get imbued with sensations, impressions from these meetings. This is why we hold conventions.

It’s like a scientist who can lock himself up in his laboratory and carry out experiments, forgetting about the external world. But once in a few months he has to fly out somewhere to meet other scientists and communicate with them. To have a full picture, he needs a physical sensation, no matter what research he is engaged in.

Similarly, we can be separated by a distance, but on the other hand, having an opportunity, we have to invest efforts into unification. This makes our path a lot easier. And for this reason, if a person hasn’t been at a convention yet, he simply must come. Otherwise he won’t receive the needed impressions for subsequent advancement.

Regarding those who were at conventions already, who have difficulties coming, who for whatever reason have no opportunity, these people, having previous impressions, can stay with a local group and participate in our gathering there.

But if a person cannot come either to the convention or to a local group, then he needs to organize for himself the best possible conditions at home and stay there, imagining to himself that he is wholly with us. This also works.

In any case, regardless of where a person is, it’s desirable to always aim at unity. After the shattering of the vessels we get corrected only through unification. Surely, we don’t really want it, we are not drawn to it at all since by nature we are a result of the shattering of that very property that unites us into one whole. However, if a person wants to reach the purpose of creation and reveal the truth, he needs to rise above his nature. He has to dwell above this life so as to come to the spiritual one.

I repeat, for those who have never attended a convention yet, it’s simply your duty to. I cannot advise you on how to make it happen, however, as it is said, do whatever is in your power to do. It’s necessary to come to a convention at least once, if such an opportunity actually exists.

And besides, it’s very important to prepare for the meeting. Visit our site www.kabbalah.info and press on the convention banner to get familiar with the preparation material.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/12/2012, Shamati #190

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Question: What are you expecting from your trip to South America and the upcoming convention in Brazil?

Answer: I look forward to this trip with excitement since it gives me an opportunity to achieve some results in the mission to which I have dedicated my life. But on the other hand, this result doesn’t depend on me, which is why I’m simultaneously inspired by this opportunity and cautious in my expectations.

And naturally, the outcome of the convention depends not only on those who’ll come to Brazil, but on all of our friends from around the world—you all understand this very well. And this is why I think that we need to conduct a very serious preparation, which is extremely important to each of us individually and to all of us together.

Let’s really prepare ourselves in a way Rabash describes in his articles “The Need for the Gathering of Friends” and “Preparation for the Gathering of Friends.” Preparation for a gathering includes clarifying why I need these friends, what they give to me and I to them. Even before I come to the meeting, I must clarify the purpose of creation and how it can be attained so that this convention, that is, the unification in which everyone is equal, becomes a means of achieving the desired goal.

I am glad that people understand this better and better, and I believe that through these conventions we will be able to leap to the next degree. All of it depends on our preparation. This is what we lacked before the European convention in Lithuania, where we didn’t have such joint preparation.

There was only participation of the whole world in the convention, the kind that I feel now as well. But it’s only participation; for now I don’t yet sense a real preparation, even though we know that it determines everything. Right now, we need to conduct a massive preparation, which is even more important than whatever will happen later at the convention.

At the time of the convention, all kinds of obstacles could come up, such as interruptions in the Internet broadcast or whatever else. But at that point it’s no longer important because the action itself doesn’t depend on us, we are charged only with its preparation. We should never forget about this!

Your preparation doesn’t depend on anyone other than yourself since it happens as if in concealment. It has not revealed itself yet, hasn’t been realized in action. It is said that the thoughts of a person are not accessible to the impure force, it knows only of his actions. And this is why we can freely prepare together, correspond, and share our plans. And it is very important. The action itself could even appear as entirely unsuccessful, but the result won’t depend on the action itself at all but on the preparation for it.

We are concerned with the way the action itself turns out because we’re still small in spirituality, and we use the impressions we receive to determine the “success” or “failure” of a convention. But in reality, everything is determined by the preparation, and this is why the main emphasis right now should be made specifically on it.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/9/2012, “Questions and Answers Regarding the Brazil Congress”

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