Question: In our dissemination, do we have to evoke the feeling of shame in people by showing them how far they are from mutual guarantee?

Answer: No. We only explain to a person that he can be saved from troubles: Under no circumstances do we tell him that he is bad.

There is nothing bad in a person. We discover the evil in us only if we connect with others and want to care about others.

I have different physical attributes: good and bad, fine and coarse, but the evil isn’t revealed in me until I reach the group, until I begin to actually connect, until I hear about mutual guarantee, and until I see how reluctant I am to have it. This lack of desire—is the evil inclination.

Everything below that is on the beastly level and has nothing to do with the correction. The correction is realized only in the mutuality among people in order to reach adhesion, connection, and mutual guarantee. Only according to this criterion can you be good or bad.

So when we bring the message of mutual guarantee to people, we don’t tell them that they are bad. In what way is a person bad? After all, he was born that way. The Creator has placed him in these conditions.

A person has to discover the evil by himself and become his own judge. No one knows how this works internally when he makes an effort to join the friends in order to form a collective vessel together with them for the revelation of the attribute of bestowal.

It is only with regard to that, that evil is measured. When a person doesn’t want to be incorporated in the general vessel, this is where his evil inclination is hidden. If the vessel corrects itself, it is filled with the attribute of bestowal, meaning the Creator.

The more a person discovers his reluctance, the evil inclination, the more he will feel the need to do something. After all, he feels bad, and this is the salvation. There is nothing better or more important. So through the evil inclination a person reaches a prayer called “raising MAN,” and then he receives the answer and is incorporated in everyone.

So there is nothing bad in anyone. Every one is given his own traits from Above. Until a person enters a group and starts to develop himself on the level of the speaking, he doesn’t exist, and so there is no one we can talk about. A person doesn’t exist on the beastly level.

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Question: We spoke about the fact that we have to return to the level of unity that we attained in the December convention. It has been more than a month, the days go by and personally I feel that I am moving backward, sinking into the daily routine. How can we build an environment that will constantly evoke in me desires that are aimed at unity and the Light as it was in the convention?

Answer: First, do you really want to return to that level? Do you yearn for it? Do you see it all the time as a model before you in order to keep the point of unity? Do you watch the recordings from the convention again and again? Are you sorry that you’ve lost that burning fire?

If we had kept the connection, we would have already attained a much higher level, and would have risen above all the interruptions and the distances that separate us.

I must constantly renew the forgotten feeling, at least for a couple of minutes a day, for example, to see a short clip from the convention. I think it is very important.

Besides, are we working on disseminating our message? Do you take this into consideration in your work? We must join it and distances are no obstacle here. You must connect to the point, to make a plan for mass dissemination in every language.

Besides, in a month we are planning to go to the Arava again and to stay there for about three days. This requires great preparation. Otherwise the results will be the opposite of what we expect. It has to be something that is truly new, like it was the last time. We must make sure that we arrive there worried and anxious to enter a new state not knowing what it is and what fruit it will bear.

I am very concerned about this breakthrough into the unknown. We already know the place, and because of the habit we may repeat the same actions and feelings that we’ve already experienced. The atmosphere itself will remind us of them.

In short, a month isn’t a long time. We must make an effort to prepare ourselves as best as we can. Otherwise, instead of gaining we will lose. I am warning you about that. Start thinking what to do.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/13/12, “The Peace”

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The same question arises all the time in students: What should I do? With the question about the meaning of my life, I find the teacher and the group, and I begin to study. One needs to correctly organize all of this together so that with the instruction of the teacher and the help of the studies, one will reveal this spiritual form inside of this group.

It is as if I found a whole pile of blocks: This is the group. And now, I am sitting like a little child together with his father and an instruction book with a drawing of how to assemble the blocks into a house.

I look into this book, but this is not enough since I am still small and ignorant. I need an adult to help me. My father is helping me (from the blocks that make up the group) to build a house. This is what we have going on.

Due to the fact that I am building a house, I am gaining wisdom, I understand and feel ever more. And when I finish building this house, I begin to reveal life in it! Suddenly, some kind of small lights begin to illuminate, something begins to move inside of it, some sounds begin to emerge, and scents; it is starting to become alive as if in a wondrous fairytale.

At that moment, when I correctly assemble all of the blocks, everything suddenly lights up and begins to move.

Question: But the father first shows the child how to build the house, and then builds it together with him. Why doesn’t He help us build it?

Answer: Just start building and demanding His help for this. Maybe, you haven’t even started any building in the group, and you are already asking, where is dad? But what do you need Him for, if you haven’t even started?

When you begin to build and you see that you are not able to do it, then you will want Him to be with you. You will go and bring Him in by the hand so that He will help you in this game. But for now, it still seems to you that you will build everything by yourself and you do not need a father.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/1/12, “The Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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There are many ways we can check our desire in which all the clarifications take place: “What for? Why? Where does it come from and where is it leading to? By what means can I advance? How can I check whether my goal is the right one? What are my true intentions? Could it be that it is simply my egoistic desire and personal interests that naturally attract me, and that everything that is against them repels me?”

A very close and thorough examination is needed here. At the same time we should be careful not to be too absorbed in these clarifications because it is part of my work, only half of the “half a Shekel” that is my part. The other half should be expressed in action. The action is studying together with the group, feeling the friends, and the examination during the study: Is it in the same line of thought with everyone else, in contact with the teacher and the group?

The second half of the “half a Shekel” ends when a person receives the change from Above. All our efforts should end in attaining an open deficiency that waits for salvation from Above, like Nukva, the female desire that opens herself to receive the correction.

This is how we should prepare ourselves for the lesson. Here a lot depends on the greatness of the source from which we receive this bestowal, from the immense height of The Book of Zohar and its authors. The mechanism that operates in The Book of Zohar is the world of Ein Sof because it passes the upper Light from the head of Zeir Anpin, the Light of Ein Sof.

If a person works on all the levels: in his feelings, his connection with the group, with the teacher, with the state of the world, with the systems of the worlds, with the upper force, and connects it all to the one mechanism that he operates now, then there is hope that his awakening and his action will evoke an awakening from Above. And his prayer (MAN) will draw the response (MAD) from Above.

The prayer (MAN) (Mei Nukvin – female waters) is the desire, the deficiency. The response that comes from Above is MAD (Mei Dhurin – male waters), the power to overcome. We have to feel that we turn the weak, meaningless, painful, and defective state into bestowal, power, and correction, and feel inside us how our MAN turns into MAD
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/11/12, The Zohar

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We have try to imagine more and more correctly what we see and instead of the externality to see the internality. My teacher Rabash and I used to have discussions about the forces that we saw behind this world’s picture.

Once I saw a horse on the street eating from a garbage can, and suddenly Rabash said to me: “Look, this is an angel!” I was surprised because I didn’t see anything but the horse eating the scraps from our meal. The following day I asked him for more information about what he had said, trying to learn how to see the internal forces behind this world.

If I see a picture that is focused in my retina or the backside of the brain, then this is how the forces are depicted to me, like on a computer screen, together making up one form. But that form doesn’t exist in itself. I only need it so that I can hold on to something. In fact, it is an expression of an attitude of the one who gives me, who bestows upon me by means of some object.

There are three components: the one who bestows, his bestowal upon me, and its impact on me that creates some form. Through that form, I need to return to the one who bestows in order to understand what he wants from me by showing me this form. If I see a horse, what does the Creator want to tell me by showing it to me: what is the combination of forces, what is His attitude to me, what sort of reaction does He expect of me? How do I have to treat this horse and, through it, the one who bestows, the one who is showing me this movie? We have to learn all this.

Now we see the world in its external form and not the inner content. This is very helpful and isn’t meant to confuse us on purpose as we usually think. In fact it helps us attain spiritual perception! This is because we have to exert ourselves in order to switch from the external form to the internal form.

I promise you that if you begin to “penetrate” into the friends and see the “points in the heart” that are tied together, you will begin to notice that the whole world is arranged in the same way. You will understand that people are not external images, but desires, “packages” of energy. They are all in some kind of a relationship and you can influence them and they can influence you. You will see forces and not bodies!

Even today we already treat a person as some kind of force and speak about his essence, but you need to penetrate more deeply. The fact that we don’t see the world in its spiritual form but in its external form, and the gap between the two, always shows us that we haven’t reached adhesion with the environment.

The moment we adhere to the environment, and attain the first contact, all this confusion immediately disappears. You see people, but you relate to their essence and not to the external figures. Just like a good psychologist who when looking at people immediately sees their essence, their desires, thoughts, tendencies, and deviations.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/3/12, “Study of the Ten Sefirot

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Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”: The general will to receive, which is the very essence of man, appears and exists only through dressing in the shapes of objects that are likely to be received. We call that action, “life,” meaning man’s livelihood. As we have explained in the act we call, “desire.”

Accordingly, with the disappearance of the desire comes death. We always live in anticipation of  the desired future and not in the present. If there is nothing to hope for in the future, we reach despair, until the body stops functioning and a person dies.

So we have to create for ourselves more advanced forms of development. This can be done only by the influence of the right environment. Otherwise, a bad environment, which fills me with bad forms, takes its place, and then I become incorporated in them and want them.

For example, I can’t manage without the media. The growing egoism obliged me to get used to them. A thousand years ago everything was different: With the desires of the animate level in me I lived peacefully and without the media. Today I can’t live without television, without the flow of information that floods me. I constantly need to see the future forms that give me the power of life and the feeling of life.

What kind of life? We already know…and so we need to build the right environment by ourselves that will assume the role of the media. In this case, I create my future forms by myself, and no one dictates them to me and imposes them on me. This is where my free will is: I choose a better environment that shows me the right forms and directs my desire to the goal, so that it will be balanced with nature, in line with the Creator.

Thanks to this I live in the forms in which the Reforming Light is hidden and which later becomes the filling. This gives me the feeling of life until I reach the eternal existence. Gradually my forms draw away from the corporeal discoveries, which can exist only in the corporeal world and I can soar towards the forms of spiritual development.

Then I am no longer tied to the corporeal forms that appear before me in any way. I don’t feel anything in them except for the basic needs of the animate level in me. But I don’t worry about that either because I am already on the “other side.”

And so gradually, a person moves from building the potential force to attaining the force to execute and begin the spiritual self. Always this is realized by increasing the quality of the desire: I create my future form, my more advanced form, and I am drawn to it, until I reach it and attain it.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/10/12, “The Freedom”

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Question: Does creativity depend on the right contact with the environment?

Answer: Power and creativity depend on how much a person identifies more advanced forms of development on his way and discovers the means by which to raise to them.

Every instant, like a small child, he looks for new forms in order to discover the world, not this prosaic world, but the hidden mysterious world.

After all, in the eyes of a child everything seems mysterious and he looks for new opportunities to discover the world more and more. For him the world is divided into the revealed and the hidden: He sees something and something else he doesn’t notice, he hears something and something else just passes by his ears. Sometimes he catches just a few words of what is being said, sometimes he focuses on something and everything else remains outside his sight. He constantly tries to discover what is hidden from him.

This is what we lack…we provide kids with games and the necessary means, and we have to take care of ourselves by ourselves. Our means is the environment, and thanks to it we advance. The environment should be the image of the next level for me. I don’t agree with what I see, but I am incorporated in the group and oblige all the friends to take on newer and more advanced forms. This is all our work.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/10/12, “The Freedom”

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All the work is done by the Light, which returns to the source. But for this I first need to realize my evil, to feel that my desire, my qualities, my state cause me harm. I feel so bad that I am about to explode from this demand called MAN, a prayer.

However, this demand must be properly structured: Why do I wish to rid myself of my evil? Is it only to make myself feel good, or I am not able to tolerate this evil because it is not me that it harms, but others?

When I discover that my qualities are harming my neighbor and the Creator (and this can only be discovered through working in the group), I find myself before two uncompromising facts. On one hand, I value bestowal very much and wish to attain bestowal to the Creator through bestowing to the creatures, as it is written: “From love for the creatures to love for the Creator.” But on the other hand, I feel that I am very far from it, and this causes me suffering.

The reforming Light (the Light which returns to the source) gives me this realization, and this is called preparation, through which I realize my full measure and achieve an absolute prayer, desperation from my lack of the quality of bestowal, participation, mutual guarantee, and love for my neighbor, without which it is impossible to attain love for the Creator.

Man purposefully lacks the need for bestowal so he would feel that he needs it! Because only then will I have an opportunity to someday escape my egoistic desire, and when I attain bestowal, it will be the real bestowal.

But if I could see pleasure and a certain personal benefit in bestowal from the beginning, instead of being bestowal, this would be a concealed reception. This is why it is necessary to advance from the opposite by working in the group and preparing your desire. And until I feel that connection is more important than me and my friend is more important than me, I am not considered to have a desire to bestow and merge with the Creator. [Read more →]

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If I wish for the Light to influence me from above, I need to create my own desire from below, which would suit the upper Light. In other words, this desire must be directed specifically at bestowal, like the Light that comes from the Giver.

But we do not know what the desire to bestow is, and we could be wrong a thousand times without ever finding the right answer. The group is given to us so we could find it. The group is in opposition to everyone; it allows us to work from “the contrary” because I must love them, think about them, and care for them, which absolutely does not correspond to my desire. This helps me see how opposite to and how much I fail to correspond to the quality of bestowal, the Creator.

I can learn everything through this work. The main thing is to make sure to not become confused, and to strive towards the Creator through the group and then it will become like the Creator to me, evoking the same repulsion, hatred, and lack of desire.

This is because I will perceive the group as the place of bestowal, but I do not wish to bestow: I want to receive from it. I like being with my friends, helping them, and hugging them because I enjoy it. But I cannot connect with them in order to please the Creator; this would spread and would become consumed somewhere inside the group, in a concealed higher source there without bringing me any compensation in return. But this is the only way to achieve the right desire, which will eventually evoke awakening from Above.

The Creator must be my final goal, not the group. Only then will I discover how incapable I am of uniting with Him, and I do not even need the group. After all, the Creator is some kind of a disappearing upper root, which does not benefit me in any way.

I still feel like the group is somewhat beneficial: We get together, have meals, organize conventions, and have a good time. Many people in the world would pay a lot of money to be in this kind of a group, like a nice club, to embellish their lives; it is impossible to find a warm and spiritual circle like this anywhere else. [Read more →]

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Baal HaSulam, “The Arvut” (Mutual Guarantee), (abridged version): But the end of the correction of the world will be by bringing all the people in the world under His work.

Indeed the world will be corrected when it reaches complete adhesion with the Creator. This end is guaranteed.

But the role of Israel towards the rest of the world resembles the role of our Holy Fathers towards the Israeli nation: Also, it is upon the Israeli nation to qualify itself and all the people of the world to develop until they take upon themselves that sublime work of the love of others, which is Dvekut with Him. Thus, each and every Mitzva that each person from Israel performs in order to bring contentment to one’s Maker, helps to some extent with the development of all the people of the world, until it increases to such a degree that it can bring all the people in the world to the desired purity “shifting the balance to virtue.”

The general structure of reality is divided into several levels: the forefathers, the sons, Israel, and the people of the world.

The forefathers, according to their nature, yearned for the Creator. They didn’t need to be a people. It was enough for them to be in a small group. Some of them perhaps even managed without it, like Adam HaRishon, the first Man, for example. In Abraham’s time there were already groups, and his students were connected like one family. Still, it was a person’s individual work.

Later, since the days of the exile in Egypt, it was the sons’ turn. The egoism grew and now working with it demanded not just a group but a people, the people of Israel, that corrected itself by the Torah in the states called the desert, the Land of Israel, and the first and second Temples.

Then the people of the world join this process with the shattered part of Israel that is incorporated in them. Today we are all on this level together, and we should do the same thing the Fathers did for us. First we have to correct ourselves, and then pass on the correction to the people of the world.

We should remember that the people of the world will not begin to operate on their own. All those who belong to the other levels, the shattered part of Israel and the part of the people of the world that were mixed in it, awaken towards the correction. The ten lost tribes about which we know nothing are also incorporated here.

Thus, the people of the world come closer to the correction by those who can wake up, those who have the spiritual point lit in their hearts. There is no point to sitting and waiting for the general awakening of the people of the world. It won’t happen by itself, not now and not in the future. Our participation is needed here: We correct ourselves, and according to our level of correction, the Light passes to them and thanks to it they are corrected.

It is a relatively passive part of the general soul. It says that the people of the world will carry the children of Israel on their shoulders to Jerusalem, but we have to begin the correction. There are always two parts: the part that corrects and the part that is corrected by the forces that come from Above.

Of course, great preparation is needed for that, which is done by dissemination. Passive readiness to receive help and to take part in the process as much as they can is required on the part of those who are corrected.

But the correction itself comes from the people with the point in the heart who can pass the necessary forces though them from the top down.

So we shouldn’t expect only “an awakening from below.” Even the smartest and most intelligent people will not wake up by themselves. They may only agree to some extent, join the work a little, but passively.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/16/11, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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