Baal HaSulam, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)” (abridged version): And you evidently find that the giving of the Torah had to be delayed until they came out of Egypt and became a nation of their own so that all their needs were provided for by themselves….

The Exodus from Egypt is not just an escape from the domination of the evil inclination, although in itself this is also a great achievement. A person must really escape from his ego like he would from fire. No matter what, he is ready to sacrifice himself to the end. “I would rather die than live.” At the same time, bestowal upon others seems worse than death.

The second condition is to become a nation. It isn’t enough to escape my own egoism, I also have to agree to connect with others and to take care of everyone. I actually serve them, and my reward is that they allow me to do so. On the way to achieving this goal no one will lack anything. This means that I stand before the level of Bina.

However, while they were still mingled with the Egyptians…permeated with self-love. Thus, the portion that is given into the hands of foreigners will not be secured for any person from Israel because his friends will not be able to provide for those needs….

This is what causes a person pain and why he escapes from it. As the prisoner of the ego (self love), which is called Egypt, he cannot take care of others and so he decides to escape.

But here it turns out that in the material sense, everything is fine. Imagine that you have all the food that you need and that you live in the most fertile place. It turns out that you can do fine in life, in your egoism. Until now you have been pushed by suffering, and here, when you must escape from that to bestowal, it’s as if you are held back from the front: “But you can manage within your ego too.”

Then you go back to work, but it’s now work on the next level. Previously, you escaped physical sufferings, and in order to get rid of them, you were even ready to connect. This is why people connect when they have no choice in times of war or disasters. At a certain point, connection seems to be good, but suddenly it isn’t seen as good anymore.

You rise to the next level and you are told: “It isn’t worth it; you will live just as well in the corporeal world too.” This resistance from the front prevents you from yearning for connection egoistically. There are plenty of societies that connect wonderfully because of personal interests, but it isn’t the same with us.

If a person resists the braking force each time and nevertheless wants to reach connection, he develops a new desire that isn’t aimed towards himself. He falls and rises again and again, continues to study, to work in the group, and to draw the reforming Light, until he completes the second degree.

Now he is ready to connect only in order to bestow upon others. A direct attitude towards bestowal is revealed in him which he places above all personal interests.

Then the third degree comes. It’s when a person is with everyone else, feels good being with them, and bestows to them, forgetting about himself and his troubles and connecting to the friends, to eternity and perfection. And then it transpires that he still needs a reward, but of a higher quality. So it turns out that he is exchanging a cow for a donkey, meaning exchanging this world for the next world. Then a new form of resistance appears: It turns out that you have to act for the sake of the Creator.

Thus a person moves on to a qualitatively higher level of self-detachment. Now he isn’t interested in himself or the group, but in the Source, in the abstract idea, abstract in the sense that he has no connection with it.

It’s impossible to hold on to bestowing to the Creator: The Creator doesn’t know about me, and I cannot reach Him. So how can I form a vessel of such high bestowal? For this there is a special system which we will talk about later.
[60545]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/13/2011, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

Related Material:
Fanning The Spark With Mutual Guarantee
Never-Ending Energy
When The Creator Is Near

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work, Mutual Guarantee - No Comments →

Each of us has been in a situation when we were in a close relationship with someone, but all of a sudden had an argument. When this happened, we got angry and tried to get revenge; we strove to show what the split entailed for the other person and that he or she would pay a price for their actions. In other words, we wanted to demonstrate that spoiled relationships and separation will trigger suffering and bitter consequences.

Previously, we didn’t feel that we were able to treat each other so badly and actually enjoy the other person’s suffering. This is how the “stony heart” (Lev Ha Even) is revealed. When we split with another person, we want to turn our prior love and connection into hatred and evil in relation to another person so that we enjoy our hatred and evil even more than love.

Hatred unites both desires, mine and the other person’s, their suffering and my egoistic pleasure that I receive because I cause pain to someone. Thus, we double our vessel, perception.

This is how the stony heart reveals itself. Without it, we would be unable to reveal the hidden hatred within us and as a result, wouldn’t recognize love either. Initially, we had good relations. Now, we are going through craziness that doesn’t even remotely remind us of our prior relationship. The difference is huge; it’s like the gap between flowers growing next to each other or cute kittens playing together and two brutal egoists who mortally hate each other.

We can’t even imagine this difference. This is a birth of a new desire (Kli). It always has existed in the created being, but secretly.

The desire to receive pleasure was created by the Light; the Light is primary, whereas desire is secondary, it is a consequence of the Light. If not for that, the difference between “Yesh Mi Yesh” (existence from existence) and “Yesh Mi Ain” (existence from absence) would be clarified. However, it has never been discovered since the Light originally acted upon the created being, “sweetened” and supported it with its love.

The created being grew under the influence of love and had no chance to differentiate between itself and the Light. The Light ruled and suppressed the created being by its love and didn’t allow it to consider or sense its own needs. The needs were completely fulfilled, and that is the reason why the diffference between the Creator and the created being has never been revealed.

It became apparent as a result of the shattering. Now we begin to uncover our egoism even more, to the degree where we take advantage of everybody for our pleasure.

Egoism is not that terrifying in the corporeal world as it is in spirituality. There, in the system of impure forces (Klipot) appalling relationships get revealed.

Today, in our world every other couple goes through a similar split in their relationship. This is an example that in this world, on our small earthly egoistic level, we have already reached complete revelation of the stony heart.

The stony heart exists at each level starting with this world and up to the world of Infinity. It manifests itself according to the height of the degree, but only at the very top is true hatred revealed.

This is what the “spies” tell us: “Life is magnificent in the country flowing with milk and honey; wonderful fruits grow there! At the same time, strong and cruel people inhabit this land, and no one can prevail against them!” This is how the “stony heart” reveals itself.

This is why the sons of Israel screamed in the desert: “Why do we have to go ahead, let’s return to Egypt! We had plenty of meat and garlic there.… What else do we need?” This is the revelation of the “stony heart”; there is no other evil but it.
[60289]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/8/2011, TES

Related Material:
Let’s Add Up Our Pennies
Understanding The Boundaries Of Desires
The Correction Of “The Stone Heart”

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work - No Comments →

The people of Israel received the Torah when this group agreed to be as one man with one heart, in mutual guarantee. Because of their connection, they first received the ten basic commandments, the “Ten Commandments,” the plan of our complete correction against the ten full Sefirot.

This means that I have to be corrected according to these ten laws: respect that, don’t do that, and so on, that is, fulfill the ten conditions. Then I begin to adapt myself to the other laws that are revealed to me.

I discover that I as if build the “golden calf,” then the “waters of dispute” manifest to me, then the “sin of the spies,” or I may miss the onions and garlic that I ate in Egypt. This means that a person discovers different states, which he tries to correct. He must be immersed in the shattering and feel all these attributes. This is why the Torah describes so many sins.

So instead of the details of the ten main laws, we receive a whole book that gives us advice on how to gradually go through ever new corruptions and corrections within ourselves. If you act correctly, the Light that Reforms shines upon you, awakening you, showing and clarifying various dark hollows.

Then you begin to understand who you are, and you cry out, trying to connect with others as one man with one heart every time. And the forms of connection that you need for that are revealed to you.

Eventually, you complete all the corrections, and it means that you have fulfilled all the “ten commandments” that have been clarified to you through this process, made up of 620 corrections or “commandments.”

If you agreed to connect as one man with one heart, you have to move forward now, to keep this line, and in every step to be connected as “one man.” Then you will begin to discover one fall after another: the golden calf, the waters of dispute, the sin of the spies, and so on. Each time you will discover a problem and will correct it.

This way is called “the path of the Torah” or the “path of the Halakha” (the word “Halakha” comes from the Hebrew word “Alicha” or “walking”), which is a set of laws that one is supposed to follow. When you come across a problem and you don’t know what to do, the Torah tells you how to perform a correction. Thus you put together the whole vessel of the collective soul.

The book of the Torah tells us about the internal process you have to go through, about clarifications and corrections. If you read this book and feel what it says, you see the way.

The path is long, and you haven’t started to advance yet, but you can read about it, hoping that some correction from the future corrections will shine upon you. Then from there, you will receive the illumination called the Surrounding Light or the Light that Reforms.

This will happen if you want all these corrections and if you comprehend what you are reading about. Perhaps you are reading it like some historic novel or some law book? It all depends on your attitude.

It is the same when it comes to The Book of Zohar and The Study of the Ten Sefirot. All the books tell about the same thing: how to reveal the evil within oneself and how to correct it. This is called the “Torah” since both the revelation of evil and its correction happen thanks to the reforming Light. If a person works on these corrections, it means that he studies the Torah. Without this he simply studies in order to acquire dry knowledge.
[59553]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/2/2011, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”

Related Material:
From The Giving Of The Torah To The Giver Of The Torah
The Path To The Upper Oneness
Preparation For Receiving The Torah: The Light Of Correction

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work, Israel, Mutual Guarantee, Torah - No Comments →

Question: What’s the use of the group’s seclusion at the Convention in the Arava desert?

Answer: We have gathered here to lay the foundation for a new society, whose purpose is to attain adhesion with the Creator. In order to attain adhesion with Him, we have to attain adhesion among us. And in order to attain adhesion among us, we have to unite, disconnecting from the disturbances of the outside world. After all, we’re small and we have to strengthen one another, so let the world not interfere with our doing so. That is why we are going to the desert.

In the past, groups of Kabbalists took much more extraordinary measures to isolate themselves from the external environment. A person has to allow himself a bit more freedom from this confused and senseless world, to collect himself inside a bit more and understand what his predestination is.

In the whirlwind of life, under the roar of the radio and television, you can’t make out the fine voice of your soul or attain the fragile inner inspiration. You simply don’t have the energy for it. Even Kabbalists living hundreds and thousands of years ago in a completely different world, which did not know the “wonders” of mass media, still secluded themselves, barring themselves from their habitual environment, and even “going into exile,” leaving home without taking anything with them and going off to wander for years, getting by with occasional earnings and food.

You don’t even know what you are losing in the modern world, which is stuffing and miring you with its filth. Do you want to attain something exalted? If you do, then what efforts are you making to break away from the lowlands?

It’s worthwhile for us to find time for this kind of seclusion where we will feel only our own forces, without the disturbances of the outside world. Let’s separate a day in life to feel who we are instead of who they are.

Obviously, we don’t force anyone to participate and we don’t make lists of participants or deserters. We don’t put check-marks for the future. Whoever doesn’t want to or can’t come just doesn’t come. In this sense, everything is very liberal and open. But on the other hand, if a person comes there, he has to participate in the actions that the group has assigned to help us detach from everything and feel only ourselves.

Don’t you sometimes wish to be alone with yourself? That is how the group wants to be alone with itself, to feel itself. You enter a room, close the door, and remain with your own thoughts. That is how we want to remain with our thoughts. In reality, this is clear and commonly accepted. But for us it’s not just a minute of rest, but a detachment from “the degree of women and children” and an ascent to the “men’s level.”

In the article, “The importance of the group,” Rabash writes, “When a person works on the true path, he needs to seclude himself from other people. After all, the path of truth requires fortification because it contradicts common notions. The world’s opinions are built upon knowledge and reception, whereas the Torah’s opinions are built upon faith and bestowal. And if a person is distracted, then he immediately forgets about all work on the path of the truth and falls into the world of self-love. Only in the group do the friends help one another, and therefore every person receives forces from it to fight the commonly accepted notions.”

The upper world is our inner world. We have to shift our gaze from externality to internality. Therefore, with the help of the friends, I try to go inside, to look inward, to acquire a deep wisdom, to attain the inner meaning of the Torah. There is no other choice—I need this.

A person must constantly immerse himself inward, penetrate into his depths—and precisely there he reveals the true world. The external world deliberately confuses us so through the conflict with it, upon the resistance, we would build our direction inward. Our struggle is to penetrate deeper and deeper on the background of this world’s reality, which pulls us outward.
[60927]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/16/11, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

Related Material:
Women’s Support
Consolidating The Nucleus Of Global Connection
Before An Attack

Filed under: Body and Soul, Conventions, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work, Kabbalah Study, Prayer and Intention, Q&A, Society, Spirituality, Torah, Unity - 1 Comment →

Our main work is to rise above our thoughts and desires, to manage to separate from them, and to ascend to the height where we all exist together, where the soul is. There is only one soul in the world.

This is why it is written that before receiving the Torah, the sons of Israel had to abstain for three days. Each one was trying to rise above all their corporeal concerns, thoughts, desires, and calculations in order to dedicate themselves only to the higher goal.

It is very difficult and requires dedicated, meticulous work, similar to picking up tiny grains until we get all of them, one by one, and our egoistic calculations end, until useless thoughts and desires stop awakening in a person, which pull him in different directions. Then, he will be more or less ready to include himself in thoughts and desires of the environment.

This austerity and abstinence, the enormous effort a person makes to prepare himself, is not a simple thing. A person must break his ego, come out of himself, pull himself off his position with actual physical effort, and become physically included in others. Then, he has to try to lower his head and accept their spirit from them, which will influence him. He cannot allow any freedom to his thoughts because they can throw him back outside the limits of the society, the group.

A person must lower himself and force himself to concentrate so as to put everything under the power of the environment, in both the corporeal form and on the inside, spiritually, in thoughts, in the desire. He must lose himself! He must let that which exists in the environment influence him so that no heart or mind would remain within him, and the only thing controlling him would be whatever exists in the environment.

This is the first stage of preparation in becoming included in one another. If we are able to do this, we can begin to speak of the influence of the upper force, the power of the group.

The group is not the physical formation that we imagine; it is not a group of physical bodies. The inner force of the group will influence us together with the Light that Reforms that exists in the group, gives sanctity to everyone, and enables them to rise above themselves. Then in this ascent a person will begin to feel the general force that fills the universe, and he will be able to understand what was written.

For this reason, during our convention and at least three days before it (and we should begin to accustom ourselves to it today), the most important thing for us is to be above all foreign thoughts and calculations and to limit ourselves to necessities that leave us no choice. Act through faith above reason in every regard.

Especially during the last three days before the convention, we must begin a real attack, days of abstinence, both physical and in thoughts and desires, so that we have only one aspiration and feel the least amount of disturbances.
[60638]
From Lesson 1, Israel Arvut Convention, 11/11/2011

Related Material:
Let’s Attack Pharaoh All Together
It Must Happen Here And Now
To The Convention With Burning Heart

Filed under: Conventions, Group Work, Inner Work - No Comments →

Question: We only reveal the Creator, the force of bestowal, when we become similar to Him in our qualities. Then what is the meaning of the principle, “don’t lose hope in His mercy?”

Answer: It means that one has appealed a thousand times, like King David who symbolizes the collective Malchut, the collective vessel, one that is deeper than the Psalms reveal. Read them. They are all his appeals and requests, praises and lamentations. This is the meaning of “do not lose hope in His mercy.” Try to express and realize your lamentation the same way, and then you will come to a final blessing.

Question: So it turns out that the Creator is waiting for us to scream at the top of our lungs?

Answer: It is written that the Creator is waiting for prayers and a broken heart, that He likes people whose hearts are broken, and that He receives a lot of pleasure from your tears. This is because your tears are a sign of egoism’s weakness and your disappointment in it.

We receive blows from egoism, not the Creator. However, it takes time to understand that. Really, what do you want from the Creator if you are being hit by your evil inclination?

This is why we need to strictly determine that our place of work is the group. Only then will we reach a true prayer, and naturally, it will happen through a number of disappointments.
[60648]
From Lesson 3, Israel Arvut Convention, 11/11/2011

Related Material:
He Whose Heart Is Broken
Awaken The Frozen Earth
He Whose Heart Is Broken

Filed under: Conventions, Group Work, Inner Work, Prayer and Intention, Q&A - No Comments →

The upper worlds are showing us a model, and we must become similar to it. Our connection between us is the quality we are able to achieve in order to correspond to the Light. When a person connects with others, with his bestowal, he builds out of himself a spiritual Partzuf from the ten Sefirot.

Bestowal cannot exist in any form other than the ten Sefirot. When it assumes the right form, it manifests as a spiritual Partzuf whose height we can measure according to the rungs of the spiritual ladder in the upper worlds.

It turns out that we can measure the height of a soul, meaning the connections of separate desires, and understand the power we attain through it in relation to the entire common soul. In the end, the desire created by the Creator remains, but it acquires the form of the Sefirot, the sources of the illumination that reach me from all the worlds through which the simple Light of the world of Infinity passes.

The Creator places the system of worlds in front of me, and it serves as a source of Light that is always ready to influence me, that is ready to affect my desire if I have prepared it for use. The Light is in a state of absolute rest, and the way it will affect me only depends on my desire. There are no changes in the Light. All the changes take place only in my desire, which I am able to change as I work on the connection in the group.

After all, the connection of a group is the actual desire that awakens the Light, forcing it to shine and return us to bestowal, a connection with one another. There is no other desire but the one that exists inside the group and is directed toward unity. Only this kind of desire can attract the Light because they have the same nature. None of the other desires are subject to correction; they are egoistic.

The only desire that counts is the desire to unite with a friend, with the group. When a person really rises above his corporeal body and wishes to connect above it, “in his head,” placing this aspiration for connection above all his private goals, only to this degree does the Light reach a person across all the Sefirot and correct his desire, connecting his private desire to the common one.

This way, we correct the shattering and reveal the vessel of our soul and the Light that fills it in our connection. Then a person sees that worlds do not exist on their own, outside of man. All of this exists only in potential and is realized only in practice when we want to connect. Then, to the extent of the power, height, and nature of this connection, we reveal the upper Light that is always ready for it. This means that the system of the worlds is being revealed to us.

This system of worlds does not exist without our appeal. It is entirely in the world of Infinity, in the Thought of Creation to please the created beings. Only at the exact moment when there appears a desire that demands to be corrected for the purpose of connection does the system of concealment begin to operate in relation to this desire, suiting it exactly according to its height and nature. The Light influences the desire from this system and reforms it.
[60666]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/14/2011, Shamati #68

Related Material:
From Infinite Complexity To Absolute Simplicity
Opening The Way To The Light
Freedom Is Voluntary Dependence

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work, Prayer and Intention - No Comments →

Our entire work consists of attaining similarity with the qualities of the Light. In relation to us, the Light divides into 613 Lights (Taryag) and builds 613 desires in us. However, in the end, it is one desire and the Light.

Our work consists of lending the will to enjoy the same form as the Light’s desire to bestow. Naturally, we cannot turn the desire to receive pleasure into the desire to bestow. First of all, the desire to receive pleasure stays, but we reveal its form: We distinguish the desire to receive pleasure from water, bread, and so forth. All these things are forms where it wishes to receive fulfillment.

For example, the fulfillment experienced in a certain form of desire is called “bread.” The fulfillment experienced in another form of desire is called “water.” The fulfillment experienced in other forms of desire are called “meat,” “fish,” “sweets,” “sour,” “bitter,” and so on. Everything depends on the forms of the desire to receive pleasure. It is the same with everything, even technology, frequencies, and light spectrums. All these things are forms of the desire to receive pleasure. Material is desire, and everything is determined by the form it assumes.

We must give proper forms to our desire to receive pleasure. This does not mean that it would be more proper to desire “meat” when I desire “bread.” The proper form is the way I wish to receive the fulfillment called “bread,” “meat,” and so on. It is the way I distinguish that it’s still forbidden for me to use these desires due to a variety of reasons since I will not be able to bestow in this form and be similar to the Light.

There are two components here. The first is the desire to receive pleasure, which assumes a certain form because otherwise, it is no more than shapeless material, as it is written: “Everything comes from the dust.” This dust must assume a certain form because it has no taste on its own. And I must taste the flavor in the desire to receive pleasure. My pleasure depends on the greatness of the desire and the variety of forms in which it can receive pleasure, such as food, sex, family, money, respect, power, and knowledge, according to the scale of values accepted in our world.

Moreover, there is an additional, special form that robes into this matter: the intention either “in order to receive” or “in order to bestow.” This is referred to as the Creator’s work. In this form, there is a difference between the creature and the Creator.

Not every person can detect this inner difference. As a rule, people only distinguish the regular form that their desire to receive pleasure assumes: what and how much they want in comparison to others. Their entire analysis ends there. In other words, they do not speak of the quality of the desire in relation to the Creator.

In order to have a spiritual, vivid perception with respect to the Creator, man must have another special element in his desire, where he will distinguish whether it is close or far from bestowal, closer to truth or falsehood. This element awakens in him in the form of the so called point in the heart and does not allow him to simply agree with the forms that are only convenient for the desire to receive pleasure.

He must develop his own attitude toward the Light that shines at him from afar in such a way that he neither knows it nor understands it. However, this Light awakens the need in man to attain similarity in qualities with it.

Then, a person gradually rises above his desire to receive pleasure in all its different forms and begins to care about the intention in which he exists, whether it is for the sake of reception or bestowal, and he tests himself in relation to this form. The Light keeps awakening him and brings him to the group, through which it influences him. In other words, the Light affects him through the desires (Kelim).

In the end, a person finds himself in such an uncomfortable, bad state that he either tries and escapes the influence of the Light that Reforms, the Surrounding Light, refusing to accept new forms since it always happens under pressure, as if he were being molded like clay;  or he understands and agrees that he must accept the new form out of hopelessness, as a result of studies and the influence of the group.

Then, he works in the group, demanding new forms for his desire from the Light. At first, he expects the Light to bring him good things, wishing to derive from the new forms of Light some benefit for his substance, the desire to receive pleasure. This is called “bestowal for the sake of reception.”

Gradually, through a desperate desire to achieve what he wants and the influence of the Surrounding Light that affects him through the group, he reaches a state where he no longer cares about any conditions. This is called working without conditions when the only thing that matters to him is to accept the form of Light, the forms of bestowal.

He is not able to understand precisely what is happening to him and why he is experiencing these states, but the nature of forms that go through him makes him agree and begin to wish for this to happen. He begins to receive power above his reason, as if he were drunk with the Light. He truly wishes to accept new forms and most importantly, to know that advancement toward the Light is guaranteed for him. He guarantees it himself by participating in the group.

When he prepares correctly, being in a group, trying to cancel himself before it, and accepting the Light that Reforms through this common vessel without any conditions, but only wishing to cancel himself so that the Light would influence him, then the two kinds of efforts that he makes during the study and work in the group bring him success.

Otherwise, he finds himself in a state about which it is written: “A fool sits with folded hands and eats his own flesh.” He can “devour” himself for a decade without advancing.
[60525]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/13/2011, The Zohar

Related Material:
Like An Embryo In The Mother’s Womb
Bestowal Exercises
Deposit Your Desire And You Will Receive The Light

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work, Zohar - No Comments →

When I rise above my egoism and begin caring about others, I don’t erase my previous desire to receive, nor do I rid myself of it and move blindly to the desire to bestow and start to enjoy bestowal like a joyful mother feeding her baby. If a mother treated someone else’s baby like hers and showed the same love (though this is not natural), then she would acquire another nature: the desire to bestow above her desire to receive. In the difference between these two levels, we discover the depth of our vessel (desire) and its four phases by which we attain creation.

This is how our “formal education” develops, and we have to arrange ourselves to await the arrival of new forms of bestowal. No matter how unexpected and surprising, they should arrive as soon as possible. The readiness to accept these new forms comes only on condition that a person practices it in a group.

The group is controlled from Above, and if we put ourselves into its hands, it properly prepares us to accept all forms of bestowal from the Light that Reforms. Our task is to prepare ourselves and enable the upper Light to do its job. In this we are its partners. On one hand, everything here depends on us because without preparation the Light will not operate as it is at complete rest. Our preparation provides us with the ability to sense the influence of the Light.

But in actuality, we only discover our vessel and reveal the Light, previously hidden, in a new form. This means that we prepare the forms, but they are realized and felt by us in the measure that they are similar to the upper Light.

There are “613” different Lights in the upper Light, as well as all the rungs and the entire plan of creation from the beginning to the end. The vessel develops from the point of “absence,” going all the way: first down and then back again from below upwards. At a certain point of development, when the created being realizes itself, it becomes the Creator’s partner in creating the forms resembling the Light.

All our spiritual education is a formal education, learning forms within forms. The desire searches for its forms that resemble the Light, and if it finds them, it reaches adhesion with the Light.
[60529]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/13/2011, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
What Is Good And What Is Bad?
I, My Environment, And The Light
Let The Light Work!

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work - No Comments →

Baal HaSulam, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)” (an abridged version): Rabbi Elazar said that the whole world is included in mutual guarantee, but first, only Israel (those who have an aspiration for it) begins the correction of the world… (while others, due to a big ego) do not agree to exit self-love.

The first ones who are willing to be corrected are those who, besides egoism and usual troubles of this world, also have a special calling, spark that beckons forward. They take the direction straight to the Creator (Yashar-El) and therefore are called “Israel.”

The 99% of humanity develop only under the pressure of suffering from behind. This circle is called the “nations of the world.” And there is also an inner circle, which besides suffering, also has an aspiration to move forward. These people are called “Israel.” Of course, those who have both the pressure from behind and are also pulled forward come to the realization of mutual guarantee sooner. However, the entire world will have to enter the framework of mutual guarantee eventually.

The “nations of the world” also have parts that will connect with “Israel,” by suddenly discovering a spiritual calling or the point in the heart. But others will not enter inside. So one way or the other, the central group must correct itself, becoming a home for those who are attached to it and who support it from outside.

The conclusion is simple: It is our duty to realize correction. Everything is entrusted to us: to correct ourselves and the world. There is nothing to add.
[60687]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/14/2011, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

Related Material:
Along The Path Of Correction
Fanning The Spark With Mutual Guarantee
The Front Brakes

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work, Israel, Mutual Guarantee - No Comments →