Question: What does it mean to be like the Creator?

Answer: It is written: “Just as He is loving and merciful, so shalt thou be loving and merciful.” We have to gradually reveal the connection between us, which means to be like the Creator. We don’t have any other examples of how to be like Him. The Creator does not let us sense Him, He does not send us pictures, images, or documentary films of Himself. We can only imagine Him based on our lives.

Those that have attained the Creator tell us that His example in our lives and the form closest to Him is the connection with the group of friends, and the articles about the group lead us to this very special bond.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/14/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Question: How can a person use the concept of “love of friends” so that he’ll advance toward it even when he doesn’t feel this love and connection?

Answer: If you feel that you must advance in the direction of love of friends because by doing so you are correcting your soul, then you know exactly what to do.

However, if you are in a state where you don’t feel the need to obtain this love, then you have to search for advice that will help you reveal the necessity and the importance of attaining the love of friends. This is the only thing that exists. If “love thy neighbor as thyself” is the main rule of the Torah, then besides it, there is nothing else for you to fulfill. All of your actions, in mind and heart, have to be directed at obtaining greater love and connection.

It seems like a simple thing. We don’t feel the taste for this work, and we don’t understand what’s so special about it. We want to be engaged in more serious activities, and we don’t get the principle of love of friends.

However, if I realize that the matter of creation is egoism and that the only way I can work on it is by working on the connection between myself and my friends, then our connection becomes a field. If I use it correctly, it becomes a field that’s blessed by the Creator and if not, it becomes a field that’s lurking with thieves and predatory animals.

We may feel that this isn’t serious or important and that there are far more exalted goals in this world. We are asked to love each other as if we are asked to be good children. However, there is really nothing else besides this.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/14/2011, Writings of Rabash

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The help from outside from the friends, group, teacher, and books are the necessary conditions, which you need to view as external forces, belonging to your soul. Everything outside a person is his soul.

If you connect to these forces, ask their help so they pull you out of yourself, out of your ego, you see that in your entire soul, existing around you, there are no closer to you and more important parts than your friends. Only these external forces can pull a person out of his prison cell, from the shackles of his ego.

Now it is clear why the group and love of friends are so important. After all, they are the closest to you, special parts of your soul, given to you by the Creator so that with their help you break out from yourself.

The closer I become to them, the more I draw them towards myself and seek them: I do not do to others what is hateful to me and I love the friends like myself. This way I acquire the vessel of my soul (the property of bestowal), which belongs to me.

According to the perception of reality, everything that a person sees he sees within himself. His eyesight and feelings are divided into internal and external, but this is just his impression. And then, at the end of correction all is connected into one. But for the time being, this division is present in all the elements, and its correct use is a springboard into the spiritual world.

That is why Baal HaSulam writes in “Preface to The Book of Zohar” how thankful we should be to the Creator that He divided our reality into internal and external in such a way that we see the world around us, although it is all inside. It seems external to us, and although it is an illusion, it helps us psychologically treat it as strange, external forces and use it to exit our ego and reach bestowal.

I was given the illusion that all my reality is divided into myself and what is outside me, which is not mine. In this form, I can imagine the ego, in which I exist, and the intention to bestow, in which I do not exist yet, in the example of this imaginary reality divided into an internal and external part. And then I can work with it.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/16/2011, Writings of Rabash

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We have to prepare our desire or vessel, and this is only possible by working together, which is the most difficult thing. Personal efforts made by each person alone won’t give him any results. Only if we make efforts together to reach the common goal, this common effort provides the desire for us.

It awakens the upper one and forces him to influence our desire, to change it, to process it so it takes on the right form, and then to fill it with the quality of bestowal.

We start working together out of necessity once we despair from our own efforts to achieve anything and once we see that this turns out to be incorrect and that there is no chance to attain the goal alone.

On the way we gradually discern the true goal and the means to attain it. First every person sets completely material, egoistic goals for himself and uses the corresponding earthly means. This continues until we begin to slightly discern and elevate the notion of bestowal, love, and unity.

At the same time, we begin to see that these qualities exist outside of us, and only by behaving correctly towards one another can we discover the influencing factor among us and awaken the Light, which will come and change us.

If we don’t work together to activate the third, external source, then our work is done in the wrong direction. Only by trying to attain bestowal to one another and the right mutual relationships with our joint efforts to rise above ourselves can we attract the Light that reforms.

Then it will change our attitude to one another so that inside of this attitude we will reveal the quality of bestowal. This is called faith. Inside of it, we will then reveal love.

But before that, we have to reveal hatred, the realization of evil. Where is it? We avoid it. It is impossible to awaken it artificially, but only through persistent efforts to be together and trying to unite.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/18/11, Writings of Rabash

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Question: There were plenty of people at the last Arvut convention who attended physically or virtually and did not feel the point of unity you and many others talk about. Could we say that the convention was useless for them and gave them nothing?

Answer: Of course not! They are also co-participants of this achievement, and it is in them, only it has not been manifested clearly, personally. It’s similar to how children live with us in one world, but cannot feel everything that adults do. If these people make necessary efforts, they will feel the point of unity that was achieved by everyone with their participation. It already exists in them in a hidden form.
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Question: After the convention, we received a “gift” of distance, heaviness, and tiredness. Since to some extent, this is a consequence of attaining the common Kli, is it possible that some friends will receive such intense heaviness and tiredness that it would throw them off the spiritual path?

Answer: Of course, why not? Everyone receives a precisely calculated measure of Lights against the Kelim (vessels). No one receives it without a reason and there is no protection here.

Everything occurs in accordance to the balance between forces and desires since we are situated within a system of laws. Although we say that this or that is done according to the Creator’s desire, these are merely words. However, if you exist within a system of laws, then it simply cannot be that He just decides to do something.

The Light is at absolute rest. Desires change according to their Aviut (thickness or coarseness), according to the Reshimot (the informational genes) that are revealed in them. Therefore, there is no particular desire from Above that wishes to do anything. By praying and asking, we prepare our desire so that it becomes more acute, and thereby we perceive more than before.

Praying means judging ourselves. The correct interpretation of the word “praying” is when I do something with myself, rather than with Him. Who do I affect with my request? In my prayer, I think about how I may change so that I may perceive all the goodness from Him. After all, the upper Light is “the Good who does Good to the wicked and to the righteous” and no changes come from Him.

Thus, if some of our friends were thrown off the path after the convention, if some descended, others became a bit tired, and yet others got confused, this indicates that everyone was granted heaviness of the heart according to their Kelim. If he is able to manage this heaviness and return to the same degree of excitement and inspiration that he felt at the convention, he truly will reveal the soul.

At the convention, he achieved the point of unity and was thrown off it into the outside circle purposely. Now, if he returns to the same point of connection, the entire external circle will join this point. It will acquire “flesh,” meaning that it will have a Kli and Aviut.

Within this Aviut, he will reveal the world of Infinity. This will be his very first, minimal spiritual degree, but in his sensations, it will be revealed as infinity.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/16/2011, Preface to The Book of Zohar

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Question: After the convention, I feel more and more emotional at every meeting of friends, sometimes to tears. Is this indeed happiness and an ascent?

Answer: After the convention, we certainly have begun to relate to unity differently. It is easier to return to it now. It became more exciting and attractive; it no longer seems artificial like before.

We have reached this spiritual reality, the beginning of a spiritual degree. And now we need to join a little more of our effort to it so that it would penetrate within us and grow “flesh,” thickness of desire, on this point. Then in this thickness, we will feel real, spiritual reality.

Every person should exert effort, constantly returning to that understanding of unity that has already permeated into his sensations. In spite of the current emotional rejection or blurriness of feelings, I try to return to the state we have achieved.

What for? Maybe in order to feel good or in order to proceed further, even without positive sensations. And maybe I feel obligated in regard to the friends with whom we are in mutual guarantee.

The reward can vary, but overall, we all require a craving for unity. This is the most important thing: to aspire to unity constantly no matter where you may be at a given time.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/16/2011, “The Peace”

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Question: How do I find the right balance between inner work and circulation? How do I keep from pulling too heavily into either side?

Answer: One’s personal advancement depends on the degree of one’s concern for others to draw closer to the point of unity and always remain in it, together.

Every one of us exits and re-enters it on a regular basis, and ultimately everyone is always working with respect to it. Out of this point, out of this “baby” of ours, we form our soul and begin to feel ourselves in it. This is our main objective, and this is our inner work.

Our external work, conversely, is aimed at circulation. Without attracting huge masses of people to ourselves, we will not be able to advance since we will remain in our egos. In other words, our ascension upward hinges only on our expansion outward.
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From the Sunday Virtual Lessons Series 12/11/2011

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Question: The point of unity experienced at the convention felt like a tremendous jolt of bliss, freedom, and optimism, alien to our world. It was literally like a separate world, toward which my ego ran with great joy. And yet you were saying that the ego should be resisting this?

Answer: Don’t worry about your ego. It will come and start dragging you away from this state “by the ear,” and you will need to aspire to it again and again. It is precisely your ego that will now start distancing you from the point of unity, and you’ll need to actualize and reconstruct it within all the time.

This reconstruction is necessary not because it’s fun, but because all your friends are standing behind it. You must gradually come up with brand new motivations for what you do so as to support your friends because without you, they will not be able to locate this point.
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From the Sunday Virtual Lessons Series 12/11/2011

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We always need to check whether we are advancing correctly and acquiring a new force of desire and the intention to use it for the sake of bestowal and in no other way. So how do you evaluate yourself to see whether you are facing the Creator, heading toward Him?

For this purpose, apart from the Creator, we need another point of reference that provides the required conditions for advancement. It turns out that the solution is quite simple. Using the Light, we can increase the point of desire created by the Creator. Breaking it down into pieces, we can feel ourselves in contrast to the Light. The force of egoism and mutual separation stands between us. Instead of the power of love and bestowal, it is the force of reception, the quality of the ego, which is opposite to the Light.

When we begin to feel these pieces and try to become closer to one another, working against their desire, we will necessarily attain the goal: adhesion with the Creator. It turns out that connecting these distanced and opposite desires and connecting to the Creator is the same thing. This is because we become similar to the Creator, the Light, to the same extent that we become closer to each other.

This is why it is so important to love your friends and connect to the group. The laws and actions that we carry out as we connect with each other are the same laws and actions we need to carry out in relation to the Creator. In this way, we attain connection, love, correspondence, and adhesion, everything that is contained in the goal of creation, as it is written: “From the love of the created beings to the love of the Creator.”

We are given an initial point, and having it and our desire, we are in the beginning of “a field which the Lord hath blessed.” We must cross this field without becoming lost in it. This is only possible by connecting with friends.

When we are unable to work the proper way or when we try doing it but are unable to for reasons that do not depend on us, we enter the Egyptian exile, even though this is also a stage of the journey we must experience. However, it is only possible to come to this after getting lost in the field. This wandering around in the field is called the Egyptian exile.

Then, this field takes us out of Egypt. There, we receive the method of correction called the Torah to correct ourselves. This field turns into the desert and later, into the land of Israel. However, all of this is the same field, the same desire to enjoy that we must make similar to the Light.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/14/2011, Writings of Rabash

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