Question: What should we think about during our silent internal convention?

Answer: It isn’t simply our silence and the stillness, but serious internal work. I feel this silence in such a way that it’s as if everyone is speaking! Everyone is performing clarifications, “stewing” together in a large raging cauldron that is boiling on an open fire—in a hurricane of all possible thoughts and sensations.

But we do all this together, simultaneously discerning the meaning of our life, its purpose, and what will happen to us and to me personally? And because of this, the thoughts of each person flow to the rest, get transferred from one to another, mingle together, and cause chaos and confusion.

This requires tremendous efforts, and a habit for this kind of work is necessary here. Kabbalists often used such a method, which allows one to perform a very deep analysis. In the end, you come out of this with a very well-purified head and heart.

The big convention allowed us to ripen for this work. You see that the lessons became different, the discernments are much deeper, and new words have been added. I feel as if a new dictionary has been revealed to me.

It’s like being in some country where my knowledge of the language was limited to only one hundred words that I could use to communicate, and then suddenly I learn one thousand words! Can you imagine how much easier it is for me to communicate and make contact with the others now. This is the kind of change that I feel after the convention, and much more powerful even.
[63812]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/21/2011, “Introduction to TES”

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The purpose of our studies is to develop recognition of evil within us. On the other hand, even without studying, people can identify the evil within themselves. We are brought up in a certain spirit and acquire cultural values; thus, we are unable to steal, beat or kill anyone. We become better, more open-hearted; we start charities and help the sick and needy. Hence, we learn to distinguish good from bad and intentionally want to do good.

At the same time, all people in this world no matter how highly developed or poorly bred they are act in accordance with their egoistic desires. Some people help others because they are afraid to get into a similar situation in the future. Others feel pain when they see their neighbors’ affliction and would like to calm down their own pain. Our egoism contains multiple bases for “altruistic” behavior, that is, caring about our neighbors.

However, it has nothing to do with authentic correction. All good and bad qualities as well as all principles of our world are rooted in egoism. A person can be the quintessence of kindness, be utterly concerned about his surroundings, be loved by everyone, but still is being governed by self-love.

In Kabbalistic terms, a person remains on the animate level since he is not in control of his own properties; rather, his properties are in control of him. No matter how wonderful he is, he is not the one who manages his behavior, but rather, his ego is in charge of him. We can call such person “an angel” according to the spiritual classification, meaning on the “animate” level.

In fact, inanimate, vegetative and animate developmental levels are considered “angels” since they implicitly fulfill “orders” of nature. This applies to everyone in this world. It explains why there are no such things as punishment or reward; they are applicable only to those who work on self-improvement in order to approach the Creator. The rest are simply ordinary “derivatives”; it’s useless to expect more from them.

We study Kabbalah because we are triggered by a point in the heart, which allows us to differentiate between reward and punishment on our spiritual path. What bothers us is whether we will rise above our nature that in fact is the Creator. We’d like to have power over it.

What does this mean? Do we really want to take over the Creator? Yes. It is said: “My sons have defeated Me. I created the evil inclination and they demanded that I create a force that corrects it.”

A person develops in order to validate his existence rather than blindly submit himself to nature. His development depends on the recognition of evil. What kind of evil do I disclose in myself? Maybe I am a thief or a liar…. But it is the Creator who made me this way.

The ability to differentiate between a human being and the Creator is in fact a genuine recognition of evil. Only in comparison with Him, my evil inclination reveals itself. It is about the desire that I identify as being opposite to His.

But how can I possibly compare myself with the Creator? For that, I need a group. It is my only opportunity, my only standard, and my sole criteria for evaluating myself. My negative mind-set towards my friends and detachment from the group allow me to acknowledge my evil inclination. Then, I unite with my friends in order to approach the Creator.

So, there are three components: myself, the group, and the Creator. According to them we evaluate evil and good inclinations, rewards and punishments, and all other details of our perception that we measure up to the Man (Adam in Hebrew) who is similar with the Creator. The rest is simply irrelevant.

Basically, this is the way to separate creation. This approach accurately focuses my attention on the goal. The group becomes a method of achieving the Creator; the Creator is hiding behind the group and reveals Himself to the degree that I immerse myself in it.

After I incorporate myself into the group, I realize that the Creator is also a part of it.  Thus, the group is a common territory between me and Him.

I disclose my evil inclination through my relationship with the group, while I am trying to unite with my friends in the group. Similar to when we exited Egypt, Mount Sinai emerges between us; it’s a mountain of hatred (Sina in Hebrew).

On the other hand we must unite and be as one man with one heart out of desperation. The gap between unity and enormous hatred constitutes the evil inclination. This is what we raise our demand to correct.
[62173]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/30/11, “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose”

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First we develop at this world’s level, in our egoism, when we only worry about it until we become wiser and see it as our most hateful enemy, which stands in our way.

But this is not a hindrance regarding life in this world, although here too egoism sometimes buries itself. The main point is that there are people in whom a new desire begins to grow, which is in conflict with this world and with a person’s whole life. Such people would like to disconnect from this life and rise to a different level of existence, to another reality, instead of the reality that satisfied them before.

So they enter a period called the time of preparation to enter the spiritual world (Lo Lishma – not for its sake), and begin to work on themselves by studying, the group, and a teacher. They try to enlarge the point in their heart, the first bud of the new desire, above all their egoism, above the egoistic heart.

As this new desire grows, a person begins to appreciate his new goal even more and to understand that the goal is bestowal, connection, the exit from his ego, and ascent to new desires, to connection with others. He doesn’t see his “self” any more, but the “we.” Thus, this “we” becomes so infused that the sum becomes “one.”

We aspire and yearn for this new dimension and try to rise from the egotistic level to the level of connection as we constantly increase the importance of the goal, annul ourselves and connect with others, and accept the opinion of the environment that our unity is more important than life inside our ego. The upper Light influences us in response to our efforts and advances us towards the internal change.

Eventually the internal shift, called birth in the new world, takes place, as our perception changes from receiving to bestowing. From now on we begin to see reality through the attribute of bestowal, which is totally different from our previous perception.

Now we see the same part to which we previously didn’t pay attention: the system of bestowal that exists in nature, the inner forces, the connections, the spiritual levels (Partzufim, worlds, Sefirot).

Until now, we only saw the levels of the inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human levels, and suddenly another part of reality is revealed to us, which is called the world of bestowal, the upper world. Then we begin to study this system and according to how much we join it, we enter it.

Each time as we achieve a stronger connection, the more we connect to this system, as if we are taking another step deeper into the forest, into the field of the new world. But our whole advancement is realized thanks to the connection. And so, we get to know the system of bestowal.
[63973]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/26/11, Writings of Rabash

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We are born and develop in a human society with our inborn qualities and the qualities engrained in us by society: parents, kindergarten, school, the neighborhood, and so on. All the qualities we acquire over the course of our lives and all our actions determined by the initial, inner program—is not who we are.

There is nothing private or independent in it, nothing cultivated and determined by the actual person experiencing the situation. In the end, this refers to a combination of the inborn qualities developing in a person and external influences.

Everything rolls along as it should, with the exception of one moment, which we cannot fully understand. Man learns that he can choose an environment, which will develop him in a specific direction.

The first question to appear is: Why is this unusual? Why is this called free choice?

For example, if I want to learn music, I surround myself with musicians. Is my “I” present in this? Is this my free choice?

I make new acquaintances in my musical environment and advance through them. Do I realize my freedom of will this way?

I am told “no,” that I am being driven by a desire that originated in me. There is nothing “yours” here. Simply the first impulse has directed you to this environment, and that is it. This happens to everyone.

Where is the freedom of will then? It is clear that I become inspired by the desires of the environment; they ignite me; I fall under the environment’s influence and wish to grow as a musician. But none of this speaks of freedom.

True freedom manifests when I resist the environment, oppose what it represents, refuse to realize my desire in it—yet in desperation, I understand that it is the only place to realize it. I must connect to my friends to attain the goal, but I hate them at the same time; I am repulsed by them, and I do not wish to act through them. In the presence of these two poles my choice is born—in the free space between these two opposite extremes.

Possibly this only happens when I have a point in the heart, when the Creator is before me, and the evil inclination is against me. In this case the group is the area where I must realize myself.

If everything was to be put in place, then my free choice, the middle third of Tifferet, really lies in the group, the unity of friends, which help me rise to the Creator. But when a person simply lives in our world, he has no freedom of choice.

Beginning with this point and realizing our free choice every time, we ascend the steps of the spiritual ladder and acquire the structure called “Man” (Adam) until we build it in its full volume on the degree of Malchut of the world of Infinity at the end of correction.

All this is realized through choosing the best environment: Every time we submerge deeper into the group, become better connected to it—and thus we grow.
[64432]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/27/11, Baal HaSulam, The Freedom”

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Question: What will be the system of bestowal between us that we will see once it becomes revealed to us?

Answer: We should see this system between us now, after the convention. Every person must see the points in the heart and understand that although he is distant from others, the network that connects our hearts exists.

There is a more internal network, that of all our friends (and inside it, the higher system of all Kabbalists of the past). Around it, there is a more external network: all of humanity. The systems are interconnected, and this connection doesn’t change, it is constant. Only our correct attitude was shattered.

As we say in our world, relationships break-up, meaning that they were good and have become bad. The relationships exist, but they are broken.

We have to discover the system in which we are all connected. It is impossible to tear apart these connections or to change them. Only the relationships within the connections can be changed. And now it is up to us how we will discover life within this system.

It relates to the entire world. For us, it is an inner action, our internal dissemination. Relative to the world, it is external dissemination. Thus, these two systems will begin to interact.

A person should feel internally that it is so. Then he will gradually begin to see that our world is imaginary. The more a person sees himself as part of this system and feels that he depends on it, the more he will see that everything in his life, even in his external, corporeal life, at work for example, depends on the intensity of his effort in this system.

Then, all the corporeal actions, the corporeal forms, and all the world you see around you will gradually turn into some kind of inflated external form, like a puppet that moves because the puppet maker’s hand is playing with it as if it were alive.

Instead of just people, you will see their connection with the general system. You will understand what motivates them, what signals they receive from the system, and their reactions to them. You will see that in each one, it is his connection with the rest of the system that operates, and nothing more than that. You will realize that the body that dresses this connection is like a halo, a cloud, that has no independent essence.

As long as we do not see this system, we are shown all these bodies and this world to demonstrate to us that something does exist and to give us the free will to penetrate it, to start living in the real world. This is what we have to enter now.

The convention gave us the point of connection with this system, and we have to hold on to it so that we can begin to see the system from it. This is our obligation.
[64213]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/25/2011, Writings of Rabash

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After the breaking in the world of Nekudim, the Light left from the broken desires. Now it affects them from Above as the surrounding Light—to the extent that they awake and ask for their correction.

Suddenly we begin to lack bestowal! We constantly strove only for material goods: money, power, knowledge, food, sex, and family. However, we do not wish to desire that any longer—only as much as we need for survival since we are living in this world. The most important thing, however, is to achieve the state that we desired in the world of Nekudim before we broke. That is, the key for us is complete correction. And in order for that to occur, we need the same Light to correct us.

If this request emerges in the same desires and they are able to raise it upward, then in response they receive the Light that was present in them and vanished. In fact, it is called the Light that Reforms.

So why didn’t it reform us before? It is because before we had not discovered yet that we need correction. And now we are saying that first and foremost we wish to be corrected, and we do not wish to receive the Light for our own gratification. We wish to enjoy giving!

Then too we desired bestowal, but now we realized what we truly lack: to attain the essence of bestowal, the screen, and the connection with the One who bestows. You think that you are just spending time with friends, eating and dancing together with them. However, by so doing you are activating a broken system, and it begins to work on and affect you while you are eating, dancing, and jumping around.

It doesn’t even matter what you do. It can happen so that while you dance, you activate the system more effectively than while you study. Everything depends on whether a need for the Light arises in you, influences you, becomes the inner Light for you, and does something to you.

And after this Light affects you time after time in accordance with how much you rouse it, your broken desires begin to slowly absorb this Light and gradually reach a level where they can receive an intention to bestow from the Light. The Light can already establish contact with them because there comes a moment when they suddenly stop opposing it. Childbirth, whereby an infant comes out of the mother, is the moment that it begins to correspond to the world that exists outside of the mother.

The Light continues to affect us, cleansing and correcting us until we become capable to come into the first contact with it. There comes a moment when we no longer run away from bestowal; we stop hating and are able to tolerate it.

It is suffering; after all, a child also screams as it is born. He feels poorly, the situation is tragic for him, but he is able to tolerate it already.

For a child it happens due to nature. But in our case, the Light gives us such forces that in spite of feeling bad (since bestowal is directed against our egoism), we are able to tolerate it. Thus we enter the next stage: With our point in the heart, we rise from the material to the spiritual world. Now comes the time of correction.
[64109]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/22/2011, “Introduction to TES”

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Question: What is love of friends in the Internet era?

Answer: The Internet is a wonderful means. Really, what prevents me from being impressed when I see and hear you on the virtual network? In what other way can you convey that you are impressed if not by hearing and seeing? Do I have to smell you, or are the eyes and ears enough? Actually I can be moved to tears, even if I only hear something without seeing. It all depends on my ability to use the contact in order to be impressed.

For example, people who viewed the convention we held in the Arava desert really felt that something was going on there. This is what obliged them to later come to the convention in Tel Aviv, and it even made some of them stay for several weeks. It’s all thanks to the ascent we achieved in the Arava.

I see that it works. If we can raise our intention, our connection, our desire, our focused yearning for the goal, just as we did then, then no matter where a person is, he will be lit by that fire. There’s no doubt.

We have friends in Europe and even in America who want us to inform them when we intend to go out again so that they can book flights. I don’t think that they should come. If they stay where they are in front of the screen worrying about missing even a moment, it’s much better than being here and missing the opportunities, not even paying attention to it. A person, who didn’t want to come to the big convention, but was impressed by our ascent in the desert and then nevertheless came, profited more than anyone else. This is because he received a strong spiritual charge.
[64313]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/26/2011, “The Freedom”

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Question: What are the best means to help each other at any given moment to make the right choice?

Answer: If we speak about the mutual connection between us, there is nothing more efficient than a thought. Everything is revealed in it and only in it. If we were strong in this, we could disseminate only by our thoughts.

We will reach that, and then, we won’t need so many materials. If we were strong, if we were united, we undoubtedly could fill the entire network with our force.

We have to create a powerful field around us, but we cannot do that yet. The moment this happens, we will leave all of externality. After all, even without that, everyone will begin to “sniff” around, trying to find out from where this spirit is coming. One web page would be enough, and they would come to us.

In the meantime, our spirit is weak. So, we need many materials.

Question: What is that thought?

Answer: It is the correction, the corrected state. We are all connected, the Creator is among us, and we are connected to Him: We fill Him, and He fills us. It is unity.

Question: What prevents us from holding on to this thought?

Answer: We can’t even reach the first level. In this force field, there are 125 levels of intensity, unity. This is a good environment. It begins to draw all the points in the heart to it, no matter under what material “trash” they are buried in. Its radiation penetrates the thickness of the desires to such a depth that the person himself doesn’t feel it; yet, there, behind the iron armor, it finds the hidden point.

However, we haven’t reached the necessary intensity yet. We are not generating this force field between us yet.

Question: What is preventing each of us? What is stopping us?

Answer: I don’t perceive the importance of the environment as a factor, as a place where I correct and discover my spiritual world, where I reveal the Light that reforms. I don’t see the group as our mutual system of connection that manifests as the system of the worlds.

In short, I don’t connect to the group everything that I really need on my way to spirituality. I am prepared to study, to make efforts, but I still ignore the place in which I can realize my efforts. I constantly forget that it is the group and nothing but that. I cannot convince myself that all the reasons and all the outcomes, all the spiritual discernments, including the Creator and the goal, are revealed in the group. There is simply no other place.

Our work is to constantly penetrate through the fog, through the 125 levels. Rabbi Shimon’s students also hated one another, even on the last level before the end of correction. Meanwhile, we haven’t risen to our first level yet. Our entire path is a search for the environment. It is the factor for our development.

Question: What exercise would you recommend for us in order to perceive this point?

Answer: The Arava convention and the convention that followed it were the best exercise. However, I am afraid to repeat it because a new experience can “erase” the previous, unique taste. We need to prepare ourselves, to decide that we have to break through to the next level and not return to the previous state.

If we go out to the desert, it should be different from the last time. First, everything must be new. We shouldn’t repeat the format we already used. We need a new breakthrough that will not remind us of the past in any way. After all, if we return to the past, it is already a Klipa (shell).

We need the necessity, the desire, the resolution, the challenge. It must be something that you desperately want to reach, but cannot for some reason. It must be a true yearning for the goal.
[64317]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/26/2011, “The Freedom”

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Our work, just like any other work, consists of three main parts: the workplace, the means to perform the work, and the knowledge to do what should be done. The workplace is the corrupt part, detail, matter, machine, or system that we must correct. This system is the main thing for us. We need to understand that we have to be in it. It was shattered and prepared for our work.

In our attempts to activate this system, we should discover its malfunction, just like we discover a malfunction in an engine when we try to start it. Then, we try to determine what exactly isn’t working. Doctors, too, perform tests, checking the body to diagnose the sick and unhealthy parts. It is an essential, preliminary stage.

This way we make efforts in diagnosing the system, having the knowledge, the means, and the possibility to diagnose it in order to discover the malfunction. This is part of the work, and it isn’t so simple. Sometimes, you pay a lot of money to get the correct diagnosis. After all, the key is to diagnose the illness, and then the remedy can be found.

So, we must understand that it all begins, is realized, and ends only in the group. That is the system that we should correct. We haven’t discovered where the malfunction is. We may have felt it, but we missed it. Still, that is okay as that is how a diagnosis is performed. In any case, before we start the correction, we must check everything thoroughly.

However, we first of all have to understand, clearly and unequivocally, that we have to be within this system with all our desires, knowledge, and attributes. Only then will we be able to speak about the next steps. It must be absolutely clear: If we abstract ourselves from the environment, from the network of our mutual connection, there is nothing else to talk about. In such a case, it means that we haven’t found the place for work and the correction.
[64322]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/26/2011, “The Freedom”

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Question: What is the screen composed of and how it is able to keep the Light from neutralizing the desire?

Answer: The screen is not the desire, but the force of resistance. The screen is felt as a calculation for the work on the desire.

How can I rise above the desire if I am in it? I get a special force from the outside (from the environment or from the Light, that is, from some external factor), which allows me to become detached from my desire.

And then I don’t sink within my desire and nor do I identify with it. I am not under its control, when I think only of how to fulfill it, similar to a slave who receives orders from his master and runs out to search for how to attain what his master has demanded. I receive a different kind of force from Above, a different calculation, which happens either by way of great suffering or through intellectual enlightenment.

Before this, I only worried about my desire and wanted to fulfill it, that is, I was a big egoist. This big egoist doesn’t exist any more within its small desire. He is detached from it and from the side examines how it is possible to fulfill it more and more.

But by separating from from egoism for the sake of greater fulfillment, I begin to perform a calculation outside of my ego. A kind of split is created between my ego and myself in making decisions: The mind and my desire are as if split. And then I begin to understand that the desire always enslaves the mind and turns me into its slave.

Many people in the world experience this, for example alcoholics or drug addicts. If something causes obvious damage, a person understands that he has become a slave of his desire, of the vicious habit.

But if I look at my desire from the side (and of course a big and developed ego is required here: both the mind and desire), I begin to be sorry that I constantly obey it. I would like some relief from it, and here the development of man begins.

I begin to reflect if it is at all possible to somehow change my desires, to limit some of them and to increase the others? This is possible via the environment. If the shattering had not occurred and the environment had not emerged, we wouldn’t have any chance to exit our desires. But since I am connected to the environment that awakens me and provides me different values, as a result of this, I gradually change.

I compare them with my values and see that I am interested only in good food, and if the environment talks about music, theatre, and opera, I start feeling ashamed and begin to make calculations that distance me from my desire. At least I begin to criticize it, and thus a problem is created: I am not satisfied with myself any longer, and I am compelled to change to fit the environment.

Thus the influence of the environment brings us to such calculation when we are prepared to completely change—only so that others will respect us. But for now I act purely egoistically, without any screen. For the meantime, it is the egoistic screen. I want to be thin and pretty, thus I limit my food intake. Although this is also not easy, people do it anyway. Everything depends on what is more important to me and what gives me the greatest pleasure: how I look externally or food.

Everything depends on my calculation, when with the help of the environment I can increase the importance of one thing over another. Thus whoever is interested in losing weight or in being rehabilitated from a harmful habit must be included into a suitable society that values life without that habit.

But if you want to acquire the anti-egoistic screen, it is something else. For that you need an environment that makes you feel the importance of bestowal. It should hurt you that you are not able to bestow. You will feel that you are belittled because of it, that you aren’t worth anything and are wasting your life, and that in general, there is no reason to live if you don’t attain the attribute of bestowal.

The influence of the environment needs to be very strong, up to the point where you feel that you would rather die than live like this. And then you will begin to demand, to request, to pray, to perform all kinds of calculations and actions in order to acquire the screen. And when you see that there is no way to attain it, you will begin to ask for the Light that reforms. This is what will bring you to the recognition of evil.
[63311]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/15/2011, TES

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