Question: Where does our connection lie in regard to the spiritual records, the Reshimot?

Answer: What I draw from the environment is a new desire with which I appeal to the Light. This desire is what we call the need to connect.

The stronger our bond is, the higher we rise on the ladder of the spiritual worlds, getting closer together, uniting, and linking with one another up to Infinity where everything is unified. There, we become one soul.

Everyone’s individual soul depends upon the degree of integral connection he or she has attained. For instance, I see just a small part of what surrounds me, and that is what defines my soul, while you have revealed something much greater beside you, and it probably includes me as well. Everyone works with his or her soul until every desire links into one soul.

[44999]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/7/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Question: Is it possible to feel at least a tiny fraction of the spiritual world through the point in the heart?

Answer: How is it possible to feel anything in a point with no volume? To do that, you must add a desire and intention to it. The point in itself is formless; it has neither intentions nor desires. It is just a point.

What desire can I attach to it? Kabbalists answer this: Besides the point, you have bodily desires (food, sex, and family) and human desires (money, honor, and knowledge). Can you combine them with the point in the heart? Give it a try, but be aware that all of them belong to this world.

Where can you get the desires, the aspiration for the spiritual world? You can get them only from the environment if you value and praise it. You have no other opportunity. You will not be able to reach the point in the heart and enter the spiritual world with your material desires. Your only chance is to join a good environment and get from the friends their desire, their aspiration for this important goal.

Then, you will begin to advance toward it, to form a spiritual vessel. The point becomes the base, and the desire that you have received becomes the vessel. You ask the Light to come. It will influence you and give you a screen. Then, you will have the Reflected Light. In this way, you will have all the necessary components.

The Light is waiting, the environment is present, the point has awakened, and the bodily and human desires are inherent. Everything is ready. Go ahead!

Question: Are there milestones on this path? Is there any possibility to check the direction? How can I press only this point, to boost it and not egoistic desires?

Answer: To do this, you turn to the environment that influences you. This appeal increases your point in the heart, and in response, you receive a new desire, the only desire with which you can make a request upward.
[45003]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/7/2011, Writings of Rabash

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The worst and most painful state experienced by Malchut is the state of total fulfillment by the Light in the world of Infinity since it has nothing to cover itself with. All of this forces Malchut to undergo multiple transformations that we call movements, actions.

This chain of reactions that Malchut has to go through is regarded as motion on its part. Hence, it is all about the inner sensations, inner wisdom, inner movement, and about the fact that everything is done solely by the desire and the intention accompanying it. Nothing else is real but this!

Our world that we observe around us is imaginary. Everything is taking place inside Malchut of the world of Infinity until it completes itself and starts receiving in order to bestow, meaning abandons the feeling of receiving for self-gratification it used to have before the First Restriction. That’s so even though this first sensation didn’t qualify as egoistic since Malchut didn’t commit it consciously and didn’t know what state it was entering.

Thus, spiritual motion isn’t measured and evaluated by the number of corporeal actions, but only by the inner states a person is going through. This is why it is so difficult to measure. Everybody keeps asking: How can I know how far I have advanced? In fact, this can only be measured when you’ve entered the spiritual world and can count precisely how many spiritual actions you have performed.

Watching a little child, we see that he doesn’t have any idea where he is and what he is doing. Only as he continues to grow, he perfects the quality of his mind and starts counting what happened yesterday, today, and what will be happen tomorrow. He learns to sense time and later on, motion. He is taught: Do this and do not do that. In other words, he starts attaining certain things and the connection between them; he learns how to transition from one state to the other consciously, to listen to and follow what grown-ups recommend.

It is similar in the spiritual world, and we come to perform the spiritual acts. But all of them take place solely within a person. On the outside, nothing is going on, and nothing depends on the external actions. And yet, our external deeds can influence our internal state since it has to do with human psychology.

We get involved in the surrounding society by way of our personal participation, by certain corporeal actions, and thanks to that, we unify with it internally. And this inner bond impacts us and gets counted as our spiritual work.

Hence, it all depends on our awareness of the evil—that’s why we study and do spiritual work. The instant a person feels his egoism, he is ready to take spiritual action, meaning to change within, in order to get rid of this evil. And then the question is what kind of evil it is: how big it is in quality and quantity regarding bestowal or reception.
[44974]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/6/2011, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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Question: How do we move faster before the Moscow convention so as to not be content with the inertia of the previous conventions?

Answer: This convention is taking place in a very important region. Many people look down upon Eastern Europe; however, this is exactly where the method of correction received a new push to develop. Special conditions of time and place that materialized there gave rise to the modern form of the method which we strive to realize now.

At least half of the people who actively study with us come from there. And this is not accidental: Secretly and openly, Kabbalists acted there over the centuries, supplying the nation with solid education and drawing it closer to spirituality.

And this is why it is vital to prepare ourselves for the forthcoming convention. A great force is hidden there as well as in entire Russian-speaking world. Let us hope that we will be able to unite strongly and turn the convention into a powerful event.

We will have three intensive days, seven lectures, various happenings, meetings of friends, and so on. We have to try to be together with all our might. If someone connects to us virtually, try to connect live as much as possible.

Conventions greatly accelerate our progress. Yesterday, for instance, we had a wonderful evening dedicated to the holiday of Shavuot. We felt that it didn’t pass in vain, that people are becoming imbued with our message. And it doesn’t matter that we invested a lot of efforts and means; it was worth it. There was a feeling of unity, cohesion, a desire to bond, to change toward spirituality. We heard excerpts from the works of Baal HaSulam and Rabash, and their melodies. It all makes a great impact on the people.

In our world, no other means are more powerful and effective than that. Now, we talk more openly, too; we use simpler language. New words are coming to the surface, while previously the conditions weren’t right for this yet. They appear as a response to the inner need of the people.

All of it gladdens the heart. I hope that it will bring about big, real changes in our world, and we will see the crisis as a springboard to the future of humanity. Today we stand at the threshold of the new paradigm of our entire life. Baal HaSulam writes that this is already obvious and it is backed by research.

So let us do our best.
[44993]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/7/2011, Writings of Rabash

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When a person starts practicing in the group, trying to step outside of himself and unify with the desires of others in love and bestowal, working above his egoism, he discovers a distance separating him from them: the full measure of his hatred and egoistic resistance. Gradually, he begins to see how infinite this distance is: This is how distant he is from the others.

However, when a person works on himself and achieves a certain closeness, he discovers that the distance, as well as the upper Light, the upper force, are concealed. It turns out that the distance between him and the others is divided into 125 stages or steps. All in all, this path is subdivided into five worlds, each of which consists of five Partzufim, while each Partzuf is comprised of five Sefirot, which are also counted as ten.

With each new step, a person adjusts himself more accurately to the form regarded as a spiritual Partzuf that includes ten Sefirot. We move forward by clothing in them and structuring ourselves internally to match them. Gradually, we grow closer to their ideal form, until the entire structure of the Tree of Life has clothed in a person. That is why it is said that man is the Tree of Life.

Today, in the final stage of humanity’s evolution, our egoism is satiated. It has no further development. Therefore, we feel depressed, exhausted, and turn to drugs and terror, unsatisfied with the way we live.

Essentially, our egoistic satiation is the impulse to exit to a more exalted reality, to become enriched by love. Indeed, we don’t have another choice. We think that we are restricted by the integral world locking in on us, but that is beyond the point. It’s just that the time has come for humankind to rise to another level of existence, to a higher dimension. This is why the world is changing so rapidly before our eyes.

Let’s hope that we will manage to educate the public as to how to reach love and unity so that they may step into the new dimension by taking a pleasant shortcut, without dramatic shake-ups. It is the only reason we are working around the world and telling everybody about our experience.

Our perception of the world dictates that we explain to people as quickly as we possibly can that the world is entering a new state, that nature is totally global. We must explain that nature put us in a sort of “bubble” where only one force is at work, and if we don’t harmonize ourselves with that force, we will face enormous problems.

But how do we harmonize ourselves with the unified force? To do so, we must be connected in the same manner as the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature are linked instinctively. The entire ecology is but an integral network of ties, where only man in his egoism destroys this balance. If we don’t harmonize with nature, we won’t survive.

Hence, we are circulating Kabbalah and explaining to humankind the necessity to unite, to rise above egotism and to align ourselves as best we can to match nature. Otherwise, we are a cancerous tumor on its body, which consumes the environment and dies.

Clearly, there is a difference between inner, personal, individual progress and our work on the global scale that offers a lesser quality. Nevertheless, we undertook this task simply because it’s time to start taking care of the whole world. That’s what the wisdom of Kabbalah is destined for.
[44749]
From the Lecture in Rome 5/20/2011

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Question: Are the mother’s love for her children and the love between husband and wife egoistic?

Answer: This love is not considered egoistic. All our desires are divided into the still, vegetative, animate, and human levels (1,2,3,4). The desires of the animate level that arise in a person are similar to the desires of animals, only they are more developed. These include the mother’s desires in relation to her child or the desires that appear between spouses.

The mother’s instinctive attitude to her children is not egoistic. Nature forces a human being (a mother) to behave in this way to satisfy the desire of another person (child). On the other hand, the ego is the desire to enjoy at the expense of a fellow human being, that is, it’s when I want to feel good at someone else’s expense. Even the fact that someone is in a bad situation can give me pleasure.

This kind of pleasures could be divided into many levels. For example, I can get pleasure from turning the other into my slave. Also, pleasure exists in the possibility of harming him, humiliating him, and causing him suffering. Pleasures from the exploitation of others, rather than from a natural desire to enjoy, is considered egoistic.

My desire to get pleasure from tasty food, from communicating with my children, or from something in life that does not harm anybody is not considered egoism. Egoistic actions are aimed at using others for personal gain.

We reveal our true (spiritual) ego at the “human” level when we come to the group. Then, we start feeling a special hostility to each other and put a wall between ourselves.

To the extent that we want to become closer to each other, to study together, to have common meals, and unite in order to reach the property of bestowal, to that extent we feel an even greater hatred towards one another, aversion, and reluctance to connect. Our ego manifests at this particular moment. It is not present in common people; only those who want to connect to reach spirituality have it. These people find out that they cannot do anything with it. Why? It is so that they later develop a need for the upper force.

Where does this force come from? It is present initially in a perfect system and disappears (becomes concealed) after (as a result of) its breaking. This force exists but hides inside. If I try to unite with my friends and will not be able to, my level of egoism will be revealed to me more and more (to a certain extent). It will be my first spiritual degree, the first 1/125th of the total ascent.

I am working on this for months, until I reach the state which I will not be able to overcome myself. Then, I will develop the need for the Light which used to fill us and now is hidden inside, and I will want it to come, to become revealed, and to connect us together.

This requirement frees the first spiritual degree for me: I, my friend, and the upper Light between us. Afterward, my goal will be to reach the next degree, where the ego will grow even more and hatred that I didn’t know existed will break out.

I will be irritated and repelled by small things in my friend. Together, we will have to work hard and will ascend to the second of 125 degrees, and in this way until the end of correction.
[44827]
From Lesson 1, Convention in Spain, 6/3/2011

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People in whom the point in the heart has awakened strive forward for unification. Granted, when they are just beginning to study, they do not think about connection; they do not have this need yet. But the science of Kabbalah teaches that namely in the connection between each other can we rise spiritually and cross the Machsom, the spiritual barrier, to the revival of the property of bestowal within us.

We have to unite above the Machsom. From the Machsom itself until the state in which we all attain complete unity, from 0 to 100 percent, we have to ascend 125 spiritual degrees of unity.

The entire path from the moment when we come to the group, begin to study, and try to connect is called the preparation period. Kabbalists say that this period may last from three to five years and may be longer because it is very important preparation: Without it, people do not understand at all where they are heading.

A person has to prepare himself or herself for the sensation of the spiritual world, create the correct environment for oneself, start sensing it, and advance together with it. In other words, he or she must understand the need for unity with others.

We have to unite again, having returned to the state in which we used to be in the world of Infinity, where we were united and filled with the upper Light. But to accomplish this, we have to tame our egoistic desire, and this is not easy and might take years….
[44890]
From Lesson 2, Convention in Madrid, 6/3/2011

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Question: What’s the difference between Malchut of the world of Infinity before the restriction and after the correction?

Answer: Malchut of the world of Infinity before the restriction is the initial state created by the upper force. This is the creature that was formed as the upper Light acted upon the desire to receive that was created “from absence.” The Light developed this desire in four phases and brought it to a state called Malchut of the world of Infinity.

And here He finished His task, that’s it! From this moment onwards, an awakening develops inside Malchut itself. It starts slowly realizing that apart from the will to receive, a will to bestow also exists. This will to bestow was introduced into it in the first phase as the sensation of the root, meaning a sensation of the Giver. This starts developing inside of it resulting in the second phase in which it wants to become like the Giver, resisting His bestowal and overcoming its own desire to receive.

That’s why it starts restricting itself and building screens on top of itself, and then it breaks. Serious work begins with this breaking, when the desire to bestow penetrates every desire to receive.

The qualities of reception and bestowal aren’t next to each other anymore, meaning one above the other, separated by a screen, working like You and I, the Creator and the creature. After the breaking, the qualities of the Host penetrate the qualities of the guest, the qualities of bestowal penetrate the qualities of reception and intermix with them.

And then, working from the bottom up and climbing the spiritual ladder, we perform specifically these clarifications because every detail now contains both these forces, bestowal and reception. We separate them from each other into two lines, while we stay in the middle. And now we want to command them and connect with each other in the correct form, the middle line.

This is the way that we start working, trying to become like the Creator. But how can I do this if I don’t know Him? This is what the environment is for, in relation to which I start working on this.

Now I have both the desire to receive and the desire to bestow, the qualities of the Creator and of the creature. I have the Light that Reforms and a state that I can study by analyzing my relationship with the environment and connecting all these forces. This is the field of my work, my “laboratory.” Everything is in front of me!
[44330]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/30/2011, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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Question: Today we will be holding a convention to celebrate the holiday of Shavuot. But when I imagine what will happen there, I don’t want to go. Does that mean I have to rise above reason?

Answer: People will dance there, but you don’t like to dance. There will be delicious food there, but you won’t like it. There will be many children there, and you are not too excited about that. It turns out that there really is no reason for you to go.

Or you can imagine the situation differently: What do I care about the food, the movements people make with their bodies, the songs, the screaming children, and all the people who are there? All of this is the external form of the desire that is being awakened by the Creator. He puts people together who wish to come closer to Him. Out of the entire Malchut of the world of Infinity, He has gathered a group of separate desires in order to unite them in the future. That is why He now gives them this necessity. They don’t even know why things turned out that way. Every person has his own reasons for coming and every person imagines why he is there differently. But I came there in order to join the Creator’s desire, which is hidden inside of them.

You can sit quietly in the corner and constantly try to keep an intention of being connected with their desire. I don’t look for their inner urges, but precisely for the desire that the Creator awakens in them. This is what I need. This need is my soul. After all, I have just the point in the heart and I have to attach these desires to myself, which will give me the volume of the spiritual vessel. Then I will be able to advance.

However, if I don’t make a connection with them, then where will I get the desire, where will I find my soul? Into what will I receive the revelation of the Creator? By myself I don’t and won’t have anything besides the initial point. So should I not go to the convention? Should I let the opportunity go by?

Question: Can’t I watch the broadcast on TV and join in people’s desire that way? Is it really necessary to be physically present?

Answer: This depends on what makes it easier for me to be permeated by their desire and its outburst, and on how many efforts I will make for it. Maybe if I watch it from home, I will receive 50 pounds of desire from them, but if I go there, then even while sitting in the corner, I will experience such great repulsion that I will barely acquire 2 pounds. However, if I prepare ahead of time, and if I start dancing together with them even though I absolutely hate doing anything like that, if I hold the intention inside—why am I doing this?—then it will be very beneficial.

We all work above the desire even though we don’t talk about this all the time. All spiritual work is done above the desire, so the mind will rule over the heart.
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/6/11, Writings of Rabash

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Essentially, Kabbalah is the method of correction of man, man’s nature. And so, within the framework of our studies, we are involved in widely distributing this information.

We have around two million students worldwide; we teach in 26 languages in many countries. We see that all different kinds of people and representatives of many nations express their need for this wisdom, and they begin to understand that the world has no future without it.

Besides that, we teach children and see how much more developed they become, how it opens them up. We publish books, broadcast on television, and work actively on the Internet. We promote development.

We study the wisdom of Kabbalah in groups. It is not about growing apart from others; rather, a person develops individually when he is in the group, in the environment, and constantly changes himself through the group dynamics. Essentially, a person adapts himself to the environment that has to show him, time after time, the need to rise above egoism and exit from himself into love of others. A person practices this in the group.

By establishing contact with the environment, a person feels its needs and unites with it. Then, a connecting network is revealed between everyone; it is above personal egoism, and a person feels common bonds, a common force that dwells between them. As a result, it’s as if everyone exits oneself and starts connecting to this collective force.

Thanks to this, we find out that above the reality that we are aware of, there is a higher reality. We perceive our current reality inside, in our vessel, and thus we are limited. We want to receive pleasure, and when the pleasure enters the desire, they cancel each other due to their mutual oppositeness.

It turns out that each time we achieve something, we enjoy it for a moment—and the pleasure disappears immediately. We run after the next pleasure, touch it, and it vanishes as well. As soon as the pleasure enters the desire, it neutralizes the latter at once: A short circuit between the plus and the minus leads to annihilation.

On the other hand, when a person exits himself and above his egoism starts to unite with the group, with other people, he creates a vessel above himself, an external desire. Now he feels outside himself both the desire and the pleasure, and they do not disappear. On the contrary, reality turns into the flow of infinite life above time.

Pleasure that enters and disappears over and over again creates for us a sensation of time. But if the pleasure is not extinguished, if we feel how it flows endlessly, then we rise above a sensation of time and begin to perceive the general force of nature, which surrounds and arranges us together.

We begin to discern connections between all the parts of reality, resembling the interwoven threads on the reverse side of an embroidered picture. Outside, we see a “pattern” of our world, but if we look behind its surface, we will see the threads tying the parts of this picture. This is what we discover with the help of the science of Kabbalah: the connection and mutual influence between us.

This produces a great impact on people, and they change. Having seen this reality, they understand that we cannot manage without connection and mutual understanding because they can see the harm they may cause to others.

Thus, we need not faith, but attainment. In this way, a person becomes free and begins to see the world clearly. Then, according to his degree, he determines the correct course of actions for himself.
[44617]
From the Lecture in Rome 5/20/2011

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