I don’t correct myself, but rather my incorporation in others. There is nothing to correct in me, except for my connection with others.

Who are the “others?” Here we should understand that the “me” I was yesterday is not the “me” I am today. I have to clarify the relationship between me and others according to the different states I am in. Every day a person starts a new leaf and the corrections are always with regards to the mutual connection between the Partzufim.

It says that the love among people is aimed at the love of the Creator. The love of friends is the same vessel, the same attitude in which I express my bestowal upon Him. After all, the Creator is the general law, the general attribute that I discover in the mutual connection among all of us.

There is nothing except for the general vessel. In my attitude to the friends, in my spirit, in my heart, I create the Creator. Until then He actually doesn’t exist.

Question: We are having an exercise in the group: Everyone should think about everyone worrying about everyone else in their thoughts. We remind each other to think about that and add, “with the help of the Creator.” Does this bring us to true love?

Answer: Yes, if you mean that everything can exist only with the help of the Reforming Light, then you really are creating the necessary conditions for fulfillment.

Love has no limits; it spreads until Ein Sof, (Infinity) and onward. Each time we define it differently—when we exit our present desires and intentions. The current exercise is effecitve against forgetfulness: A friend reminds another friend about three conditions: me, him and the upper force, the Reforming Light. In other words, the Reforming Light brings us back to one another. Once the Light resided in the connection among us and now when it “welds” us anew it fulfills the necessary condition of the correction in order to reside among us again. This is called a Mitzva (commandment) in the language of Kabbalah.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/1/12, The Study of the Ten Sefirot

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A person in our world is similar to a person who has lost his way in a field. In our time, all of humanity can also be likened to a great mass of people who, having lost all reference points, are wandering around the enormous field of life in the dark.

The way out of this situation, which arose as a result of our egoistic development, lies in creating an integral society. That is, it lies in searching for people who have realized that the current situation is at an impasse and that the only solution is to establish an integral connection between people.

In this case, the field of life transforms from a wild, empty field to a blessed field of life because the people in it desire to work on their egoism to attain the quality of mutual bestowal and thus, to become equivalent to Nature. In this case, their path is called “the path of bestowal.”

Because our egoistic nature is completely contradictory to this path, there is just one way to set out on this path: to be in an integral upbringing group that works on developing “love of friends” and where every person can help his friend progress precisely down this path.
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(On the basis of Rabash’s article “Love of Friends”) 

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As man undergoes evolution, all of his development occurs by way of the development of the will to receive pleasure, called self-love or egoism. Therefore, if a person does not feel that he will receive something, he is incapable of making even the smallest action. He feels it within as a lack of motivation or energy, necessary for him to make an inner or physical movement.

But Nature is the quality of altruism, bestowal and love, opposite to egoism. And it drives man to acquire this quality by developing him in ever-greater suffering, which he gradually comes to see as a derivative of his own egoism and the overall egoism of all mankind. In other words, the objective that Nature sets for our development is for man to attain equivalence with it. And this objective is intended expressly for man because egoism is absent on the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature, which are governed and exist instinctively, simply obeying their nature.

Since suppressing egoism is contradictory to our nature and our entire being, we therefore need a group of single-minded people to give us a greater force to suppress it. That is why we need a group that unites people who have one desire: to achieve an ascent above egoism and mutual repulsion, and to rise to mutual love.

The result of uniting towards a common goal is that instead of being totally weak and unable to resist our egoism, each of us acquires a great force that helps him rise above his egoism to unity.

This great force emerges as a result of us putting together our small, individual forces, or rather, not even forces, but just wishes. These small forces of ours will combine together and multiply one another, allowing each of us to rise above his small egoism to unity. That is how every person acquires a tremendous desire to rise above his own egoism and attain a single goal.

But in order for this to happen, every group member has to suppress or lower his “I” in relation to others. This can only be done by not noticing the friend’s flaws and paying attention only to his good qualities. If one member of the group considers himself at least slightly better than others, he is no longer able to truly unite with them.

During the group’s engagement in integral upbringing (unification), we must be serious and not deviate from the goal for which we have gathered here, the achievement of a single desire of mutual bestowal and love, as similarity to Nature demands of us.

But with outsiders, we should behave simply, courteously, and politely, taking care not to impose the idea of unity, mutual bestowal, and love upon them. This is because efforts to rise above one’s egoism cannot be made in chance meetings, but only in a constant group of friends under the guidance of an instructor. During their work in the group and generally, in life, members of the group must try to bar light-mindedness from their desires because thoughtless behavior or even thoughts destroy all personal and group efforts to unite.

But if an outsider has accidentally found his way into a session held by the group, it is first necessary to politely eliminate his presence and to continue the studies only after that.
(Based on Rabash’s article “Purpose of Society (2)”  
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Since the wisdom of Kabbalah raises a person from the “beastly” to the “human” level (“Adam” or “man” comes from the word “Domeh” or similar to nature, to the attribute of bestowal and love), a person who rises faces the problem of “going into the unknown.” To help us rise into an unknown state again and again, we are offered a game, an exercise, to prepare within ourselves, together with the group, our next, more altruistic state. Moreover, even if we fail, it leads to the right solution: a request for the force of bestowal, an ascent above our egoism.

Today all of humanity should master this method of advancement in everything that it does. We should also be ready for descents, for feeling the mistakes, and from them to understand that only the upper force of nature can provide us with the new attributes in order to investigate, to attain, and to build ourselves, family, society, education, and economy correctly.

Until now the mistakes and failures were not acknowledged by people, but only by Kabbalists because only they rose above the general nature of humanity, egoism, to the attribute of nature, love. But today we must acquire this new attitude regarding ourselves, those around us, and the world and to teach our children to develop by learning from their mistakes.

We must not only learn from our mistakes, but also understand where they stem from: from the appearance of the new level to which we are not adapted. So a mistake (a descent) is the attainment of our lack of correspondence to the new state, and it should make us yearn to implement it internally. This is attained in the group, by yearning for nature’s general force and for similarity to it.
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The Babylonian Talmud, Treatise Taanit 7: He who engages in the Torah for its sake, the Torah becomes the potion of life for him, and he who engages in the Torah not for its sake, it becomes the potion of death for him.

If there is such great danger concealed in the Torah, perhaps it’s better not to engage in it? After all, if you study correctly, you “rise to heaven,” and if you don’t, “you sink into the ground,” into the abyss.

The problem is that if you don’t study correctly, the Light concealed in the Torah puts you into states that are opposite from the truth, but you don’t even notice that. The Torah doesn’t bring you death, but rather “the potion of death,” when you don’t feel that you are dead. You can study the Torah day and night, memorize page after page by heart, and at the same time be dead, meaning not understand that this is totally opposite from the goal for which the Torah was given.

The Torah was given to us so that we will reach the love of others. It says: “I created the evil inclination, and I created the Torah as a spice because the Light in it reforms.” What does it mean that it reforms? It’s the “great law of the Torah”—”love thy friend as thyself,” or in other words, the general goal of everything that we do according to the Torah.

In every precept we perform, in every detail, we must advance towards the love of others. Only through the love of others will we reach the final goal, the love of the Creator and adhesion with Him, according to the equivalence of form between a person and the Creator.

Therefore, before the study, we have to prepare ourselves and keep all the necessary conditions so that the study of the Torah will bring us the desired goal: adhesion, that is, the correction of our intentions from egoistic to altruistic. This work is clarified only in the group, where we can check ourselves practically.

Each time we will discover hate among us and will get a chance to rise above it towards love. To do that, we need to organize ourselves correctly: We want to connect in order to reach adhesion and to discover the Creator in it, thereby bringing Him contentment. It’s possible to discover the Creator only in our collective vessel of bestowal. It’s necessary that we prepare ourselves for the lesson in this way so that we’ll approach the study correctly.

Question: If the potion of death doesn’t let me feel that I am dead, does the potion of life enable me to feel death?

Answer: I feel that I am living from the “potion.” It isn’t an ordinary existence anymore. In the intention of in order to bestow, above my nature, I attain life. The potion has the effect of making me lie to my egoistic desire and not to myself. On the other hand, the potion of death drowns me in the lie, which I don’t notice, and then I see myself as “righteous,” although I haven’t even entered the rank of “wicked.”

Question: How can the wisdom of Kabbalah save a person from the potion of death?

Answer: It can do it by the Light that Reforms. If you arrange all the conditions for yourself correctly, if you enter the group and disseminate, which is an inseparable part of the preparation these days, and if you participate in everything that the group experiences in order to reveal the connection, then you are preparing correctly for the study, and your intention during the study is not to read yet another paragraph, but to receive the Light that Reforms. It isn’t by chance that Baal HaSulam wrote in “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 18: “…that while practicing Torah, they did not set their minds and hearts to draw the Light in the Torah….”

Everything is solved by the preparation. The right study is the study that you have prepared yourself for correctly. Then you read the text correctly, with the right intention, in the right group, with all the necessary conditions. And what do you get from the study? You get the chance to work and to rise: the feeling of hate and rejection of the friends….
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/13/2012, “Introduction to TES”

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We have gathered to lay the foundation of the group for those interested in learning the laws of nature and following them. Our development represents a path that allows us to rise from unconscious development under the pressure of the forces of nature at the animate level and reach the level of conscious development appropriate to the human level. The difference between animate development and development at the level of human is in the understanding of the process of our natural development and its conscious realization.

The essence of the human level is that instead of developing under the compelling forces of nature, a person studies the laws of nature and follows them consciously. Thus, he wins twofold: He moves on his own accord and quickly, without suffering blows and gladly accepting all the changes within himself. He penetrates the laws of nature and becomes the master of his destiny.

It should be made clear that the cause of all our suffering is our lack of understanding of the laws of nature with respect to the individual and society. We study and are able to understand nature at its still, vegetative, and animate levels, but since we are at the level of human, we cannot comprehend this level, that is, the attitude of nature toward us. We can study only what is at the level below us.

Nature is integral, whole, and it gradually develops all its parts, including us, to this state. Until our time, we were developing in a simple, linear, egoistic progression, instinctively obeying the orders of nature within us. However, recently, we have completed the phase of our linear, egoistic development and further must become, individually and all together, similar to integral nature. The objective of our natural development is to learn the essence of nature, its program and purpose.

By studying the laws of integral, analog systems, we recognize that it means our complete unity in a single society, mutual bestowal and love. We realize that this is completely opposite to our egoism, the nature in which we were created. We wish to fulfill only our personal desires. This is opposite to that level of full interconnectedness that we have to achieve according to the plan of nature.

By uniting in spite of everyone’s egoistic desire through our actions of mutual bestowal, we are building a model that is similar to nature, to its quality to give to and to fulfill its parts. Through our efforts of mutual bestowal and love, we leave behind the impact of the harsh driving forces of development and advance toward the goal: complete integration and similarity to nature.

We can be proud that we evolve consciously, not running away from the blows like an animal, but by attaining the force that governs us. This raises us to the highest level of nature, to its complete attainment, toward being fulfilled by its upper force and goodness.

Although we have not reached the goal, we have the desire to achieve it. This also should be important for us, although we are still at the beginning of the path. However, we hope that we will reach this exalted goal.
(On the basis of Rabash’s article “Purpose of Society (1)”
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Question: What should I do with the hate towards the friends that I reveal on the spiritual path?

Answer: Learn from the authors of The Book of Zohar. Gathering together in order to “engage in the Torah,” that is, discover the Creator, they felt hatred towards one another first. This was the result of the great work of connection they did previously. Each time a new state, a new desire to receive, a new Reshimo (the informational gene), was revealed to them—and everyone felt it as corrupt: “I hate the others and I love myself, I want everything for myself.”

This is the right preparation: the revelation of new conditions that I have to correct now. First I discover the corruption and then I work on the correction, for which I need the Torah. It says: “I created the evil inclination, and I created the Torah as a spice.” When the evil inclination is revealed, I can turn to the Torah for help.

If you don’t discover the evil from the start, you don’t reach the Torah either. In this case you don’t learn the method of correction, but theory. The “Torah” is the Light that Reforms that you draw from the writings of Kabbalists to the extent that you discover the evil within you and suffer because you don’t want it. This is because you yearn for bestowal, and the evil that is revealed to you disturbs you by not letting you reach it. It’s not that it brings you misfortunes or bad luck in this life; it prevents you from reaching bestowal in particular.

So the preparation for the lesson is the most important thing, as Baal HaSulam writes in “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 17. This is how one should approach the study. Wherever people study you can check: Do they reach the recognition of evil? Do they not just beat themselves on the chest and confess, but truly discover the evil in them?

A person doesn’t discover this with regard to his neighbors, colleagues, or family members, but only in relation to the friends, when he hates them instead of loving them. He tries to connect with them with all his heart, with all his might, but he cannot. Instead, he feels how hateful and repelling just the thought of it is.

There is no greater rejection and disapproval—after all, it is as if you are being forced to love. It comes to very difficult sensations. And it is then that you should engage in the Torah, that is, the method of correction.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/13/2012, “Introduction to TES”

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Question: What can a person do while reading The Book of Zohar in order to stay in contact with the group throughout the day?

Answer: You receive some medicine in the morning, an injection. Suppose I have high blood pressure. I take a pill in the morning so that I will feel good the entire day. The pill does its job because it works on the same level: the still, the vegetative, and the animate.

On the other hand, our spiritual development depends on our efforts. My healing depends on my participation. Why? It is because thanks to the healing, from the animate level I attain the level of man.

So, it isn’t enough to get a “pill” in the morning, for example, half an hour before reading The Book of Zohar, when I am very enthusiastic and moved to tears by the strong emotions. It isn’t enough. I have to organize a daily schedule so that I will be under this influence all the other 23.5 hours.

In our world, the pill has an effect on me for 23.5 hours if I suck on it for half an hour. Gradually, as the digestive juices are extracted, the pill releases all the substances it contains so that they are absorbed by the body for several hours.

We have to do the same. However, a person cannot do that because he is constantly on his level, while here, he has to be between two. Two levels, as it says in The Zohar, are the letters of the upper “Hey” and the lower “Hey.” The upper “Hey” is Bina that operates on me, and I am Malchut, the lower “Hey.” What should be between us? It is the Creator.

So, I have to place the Creator before me, which means that all the awakenings that my Malchut feels, my desire, as a result of receiving half an hour of “infusion,” all its potential preparation for correction, all must be revealed practically during the 23.5 hours. I have to assist it by trying not to detach myself from the goal of “Israel (one who yearns for the Creator), the Torah (the Light that Reforms), and the Creator are one.” For that, I received the injection.

Of course, I can only do it with the help of the group where we are in one thought and thus influence one another. There is no other choice. A person cannot do it by himself. Even if he writes himself a thousand memos and puts them everywhere, he won’t see them. Even if he takes a servant to remind him, he won’t hear him.

It is possible only in the form that is above him, when the force that obliges him to hear, that is, to establish a connection between the two letters of “Hey,” comes to him. You can do that only in the group.

Therefore, mutual guarantee is expressed when you are in this activity, in absorbing the medicine that is already within you. If you swallow it and don’t use it, it is as if you received poison from a snake because every medicine is poison. It isn’t by chance that the symbol of medicine is a snake coiling around a cup of poison.

If you don’t use this means correctly, it becomes the potion of death. Then you will discover it through suffering and not by the Light. This is mechanics, and it must operate this way. There is nothing but the laws of nature here.

This is the root of all the mistakes people make throughout their lives and throughout human history. You could write entire novels about it, but humanity already has no time to read them….
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/8/2012, The Zohar

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Baal HaSulam, Shamati #99, “He Did Not Say Wicked or Righteous”: Now we can understand what is written, that the Creator says, “Return unto Me and I will return unto you.” And Israel say the opposite: “bring us back, Lord, and then we shall return.

We want the Creator to first perform His action. But He tells us: “First you return to Me, and then I will return to you.” It is as if we argue about who will be the first to solve this difficult situation. In every state there are two such discernments: on the Creator’s part and on the part of the created being.

The work is done as usual: through the teacher, the books, the group, the study, and dissemination so that all of this will influence a person in every state. Otherwise he will not be able to exit his state and will remain “himself.”

Imagine that I am in a certain state now, as if I stop time with a stopwatch. It is my current state on my present degree. How can I change it and do something with myself, operating within that state? I will never be able to do anything. I need some external force to push me from behind by suffering or to pull me forward by pleasures.

These are all the tools that I have. But where can I get them in every state? I need to arrange them in advance, and so I have to make sure beforehand that in every state there will be the teacher, the books, the group, dissemination, and the friends’ meetings, which will not let me relax and forget, so that I will not fall without anyone knowing about it. Even if I live in the North Pole, isolated from everyone, I still need to “buy” friends who will care about me all the time, who will call me, and do something with me. This is the only way I can advance.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/12/2012, Shamati #99

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While advancing toward revelation, we have to understand how to collect broken vessels (desires). Baal HaSulam writes about this in Igrot (Letters), Pg. 70: “However, because of the breaking of the vessels, all the Otiot (letters) were ejected to corporeal conducts and people. When one corrects oneself and reaches the root of one’s soul, he must collect them by himself, one-by-one, and bring them back to the root, to holiness.”

With the breakage of the vessels in the spiritual world, a coarser layer of desire was formed called “this world,” which is where we find ourselves now. Everything that happened at that time of breakage is now being revealed in our world in a corrupted form, between corporeal people.

And if a person realizes that everything happening between him and others is a result of the shattering of desires, he then takes all the connections with other people and returns them to the root, corrects them one by one. That means he “sentences himself and the entire world to a scale of merit.”

“The matter of the unification of the Creator and Divinity that one induces when he has had his fill of yearning and longing is precisely like the underside coupling, applying in the birth of a corporeal body. It too extends necessarily by cause and effect, meaning the hardening that is a certain measure of longing and yearning, called hardness in the corporeal tongue. Then, one’s seed is also blessed…” (Baal HaSulam, Igrot [Letters], Pg. 70).

A person reaches unity with the Creator only when he ardently longs for it. We possess a desire toward spiritual attainment, but it’s given to us from Above and doesn’t belong to us. Everyone was brought into a group at some point of time, and he comes to study because he is being awakened from Above. Everything he does is guided from Above; his actions are not yet his own, but the work of the Creator on him.

Apart from a desire, there is also yearning, and that is a special notion: an addition to the desire. It comes to me not from the Creator, but from the environment. When I connect with others, I receive their yearning toward spirituality. It’s an addition to the desire that I get from working with the environment. Only this yearning is counted in spiritual work, meaning only the additional desire that I gained with my own efforts, and I advance accordingly to it.

A simple desire toward spirituality can be great, and a person may be ready to study around the clock and to disseminate. But that’s not his own desire. He’s being wound up from Above like a windup toy; when you turn a key, it starts jumping. And a person can do a lot, but the question is whether this can be attributed to his own earned desire or to a desire given to him from Above.

Looking from aside, it’s impossible to know what’s the case. Only a person himself can examine and discover that. And in so doing, he won’t be able to complain about studying for so many years, learning so much, but not receiving a revelation. This is because the desire he is working with is not his, but belongs to the Creator who created it. He has to receive an addition to this desire that is called spiritual yearning.

It’s very important. However, many make the mistake of working with the original desire thinking that everything is fine: “Look at how much I do.” But only an addition that I earned with my own efforts is counted in spirituality. Everything that was given by the Creator is not counted because it existed in the world of Infinity. This is not why the development of the worlds and the breaking of Adam HaRishon took place. Everything already existed in the world of Infinity.

The only thing that didn’t exist in Infinity and that is required for us to start ascending from below upward is a spiritual yearning, pressure, and our own awakening. This is called MAN, a prayer.

We have to take this additional desire that didn’t exist in the world of Infinity from the environment. We have it thanks to the shattering! This is why I feel all the others as strangers. If they are separate from me, I can receive an impression from them. This impression is called “envy, lust, and ambition lead a person out of this world.”

I envy what others have and thereby increase my desire. This addition to my desire, which is called yearning, pressure, or perseverance with which I realize this desire, is what helps me build my spiritual vessel.
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From the Arava Convention 2/25/12, Lesson 7

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