Question: If the exodus from Egypt occurs in a hurry, then why is preparation necessary?

Answer: One has nothing to do with the other. Preparation is necessary in order for me to be able to come to fulfillment. I need to experience a lack for this. After all, we come out of Egypt with our desires rather than with our feet, from one desire into another.

If I don’t have a need for a new state, it means that I haven’t prepared myself for coming out of Egypt. I need to desire to reach bestowal to such an extent that I see only this in front of me. Let the force of bestowal unite us as one whole: This is what I desire.

Let us all dissolve and merge into one without any differences: No one exists individually, and there is only one common force of bestowal. And then the upper Light will fill us.

Do I have a need for this? If not, I am not ready to come out of Egypt. Possibly I still don’t feel that I am in exile, and I have not completed the “seven years of famine.” Everything is fine for me, the group studies,  joint meals, picnics, conventions…. Only when the state becomes unbearable, meaning when we must unite with each other and that this will specifically be redemption for us, then we prepare for the exodus from Egypt.

Question cont.: Then why do we come out in a hurry?

Answer: A person cannot know ahead of time when the cup of his efforts will be filled. There is no time in spirituality. As soon as the cup is filled, as soon as you have exerted your desire to a sufficient extent, immediately a leap occurs and you come to the action: the escape from Egypt. Yet even a moment prior to this, you still don’t know that the cup is just about to be full. On the contrary, the previous moment may seem the most distant from redemption to you: Egyptian darkness and disasters that befall you….

Up to the very last moment you associate yourself with Pharaoh, until you break away from him. Therefore, you experience very intense and heavy blows, and you see no chance of coming out of this storm. Every blow only shows you how weak and incapable you are.

Then suddenly, precisely in the midst of this darkness, a force is revealed, and using it, you can run away from Pharaoh. Darkness is revealed to you, and this aids you in your escape. And as soon as the desire is finally revealed, the redemption begins immediately.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/10/2011, Preparation to Going Out From Egypt

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Question: What can we take away from this whole process of the exodus from Egypt in terms of our daily inner work?

Answer: We need to aspire for one thing only: unity in the group. The group is a mini-humanity. We cannot immediately act in a global scale, in the masses of humanity, but in the group we can work out all the principles of human connection.

There we will reveal all the states: “the descent into Egypt,” “the immersion into Egypt,” and “the exodus from Egypt.” We will feel the hatred for Pharaoh (our ego), the blows we receive from him, and the scrutiny of our nature.

This is all scrutinized in one place: in my connection with the friends. I need the group, my “friends,” for I cannot come to love the whole world. For me, the group represents the whole humanity, and in the group I can work out all my inner qualities.

Each time I try to unite with the friends, I discover the breaking within, the hatred and repulsion of others, and I perform new inner scrutinies. It could be that these scrutinies still pertain to the work “in Egypt” or even “before” that. None of that matters.

We cannot yet clearly make out these phases. On the whole, we cannot see anything clearly until we leave Egypt. Only afterward do we begin to understand what exactly we’ve gone through. After all, this work is done in the darkness, under the rule of egoistic desire, when I try to somehow exist in it, together with it or against it. That is why these scrutinies are unclear to us.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/13/11, The Book of Zohar

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My Good Environment – Dr. Laitman’s Daily Advice for the Week

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Question: How does the way we treat the words written in TES (The Study of the Ten Sefirot) differ from how we relate to your explanation of the text?

Answer: It is difficult to explain why the Creator made it so that we need someone to connect us with the upper reality in our world. It is similar to a mother and father we have in this world, who connect us with life. Indeed, it weren’t for the mother, I wouldn’t be born in the first place and wouldn’t exist until I grew up.

The same goes for the spiritual birth: I need someone who will give birth to me, tend to me till I mature in spirituality! It manifests in the birth of material bodies in our world and also in the birth of the souls, all of which is the derivative of the laws acting in the spiritual world where there is a certain order of spiritual Partzufim, and Aba Ve-Ima (the upper Father and Mother) give birth to ZON and tend to the souls.

But so far, I haven’t linked my broken soul into ZON of the world of Atzilut and cannot cause Aba ve-Ima to work on me; so I need a guide to spirituality! And he, right now, also looks as some material person to me since I cannot see the spiritual world.

The same pertains to the friends: I cannot perceive their spiritual desires and I think I am surrounded by some physical bodies. But later on, I will see that it isn’t so. The teacher and the friends are a spiritual mechanism, spiritual forces with whom I work.

That is how I should treat the teacher and the friends, with an understanding that they are part of the Creator given to me in order to help me connect with Him. In the degree that I value the teacher and the group and lower myself before them, to the same extent I will reach contact with the Creator. I don’t have any other opportunity to connect with Him and no chance to tap into Him in any other way.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/12/11, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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Question: Why does the condition of becoming “like one man with one heart” arise only at Mount Sinai and not before, during the exodus from Egypt?

Answer: "One man with one heart" is already a correction which we can achieve only if the Creator is revealed. He performs this correction on us. How can people who are still in “Egypt,” in their egoistic desire, be obliged to unite like one man with one heart?

If I am still immersed into my egoism and I have not yet escaped from Pharaoh, haven’t risen above my ego, how can I unite with others like one man? I escape from Egypt with the help of the Light, due to my desire to come out from there, to jump out of my ego! There is one point in me with which I wish to come out and to which I wish to relate, to identify myself only with it. I wish to connect to others only through these points. For now I merely want this, but I am not in this yet.

We run for salvation together. However, there is no unification between us yet; this whole escape is carried out with the force from Above. We do not understand that we are not doing anything on our own yet. We are only preparing ourselves as much as possible.

It is written: “And the sons of Israel cried out from this work!” We are standing in front of Pharaoh and the Egyptian plagues, and there is no way out: These blows come to us and help us separate from our ego. Who suffers from these blows? The Pharaoh within us, our egoism, does. And I have suffered so much from it that I am willing to break away from it.

Imagine what will happen if some Egyptian plagues befall our world and there will be nothing to eat or drink, no air to breathe—it will be impossible to receive anything if we act egoistically! And then there will be no choice but to run away, not knowing where, into darkness, with closed eyes, only to be saved from a completely hopeless state. We have destroyed Earth and human society and reached a state where every living moment causes terrible pain. It is then that we are ready to run.

For now it is only a general run for the sake of salvation, and not unity. We understand that we need to unite as one man with one heart, but for the time being we are unable to imagine what that is. In order to understand this, we will still need to reach Mount Sinai (the mountain of hatred) and go through the Final Sea (Yam Suf) on the way.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/10/2011, Writings of Rabash

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One should send the arrows of love into the friend’s heart in his inner intentions. On the outside he should show everyone how inspired he is by spirituality and try to motivate the friends to feel the same. But internally a person should always think about how he can penetrate the friend’s heart.

Corporeal gifts won’t hurt, but they mustn’t replace one’s inner efforts and his true desire to connect. After all, our work is in awakening the inner forces within, the net of forces or the scope of a single force of the Creator. This is the force we connect to in order to penetrate all the hearts and souls.

External gifts can help in our work, but the main goal is to try to tune into this connective system which binds us with one another. In it we reveal our connection and penetrate it. This is called penetrating the heart of the friend.

The deeper I wish to penetrate into the heart of the friend, the more I melt away my own heart. As my heart becomes softer, I begin to see that the friend’s heart is becoming more and more revealed and I’m able to enter it and unite into a single heart.

When I first begin working with the friend’s heart, I think of him as a stranger. However, with time I begin to see that he isn’t a stranger, but rather a melting pot in which I can melt my heart. By relating to him and by wanting to unite, I’m conducting work on my own heart. In this connection I don’t depend on the friend or on the degree of his openness to me. Rather, I depend on my heart, on the degree that I was able to soften it so that it could enter the “stranger’s heart.”

And in the end of this work, I reveal that neither my heart nor his heart exists, that there is only one heart and one desire, and that it has always been this way. It only seemed to me that these were separate hearts, hearts that were strange and different, distant from each other.
[40448]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/12/2011, Shamati No. 86

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Question: How, after the convention is over, can we keep ourselves in the state that we achieved there? After all, there usually comes a downfall?

Answer: We cannot afford it, similarly to how a mother who has a little baby on her hands cannot show that she is sick. There are situations when necessity puts everything else in the background. And only if a mother is on her deathbed does someone else take care of a baby.

In our case, we don’t have time for rest, lofty phrases, and downfalls. The world around us is developing very quickly, while we lag behind and thus must get abreast of its speed. We will feel more and more how all bad things happening in the world are related to us since we are late with our correction.

This is why I don’t even let the thoughts about a post-convention downfall cross my mind: It just can’t happen! Besides, until the summer our schedule is packed with important events: conventions in Italy, Spain, and Moscow. We all have to unite and prepare for them. This is why we don’t have any breaks, everything is compressed in time. And this is good because it corresponds to the speed of changes taking place in the world.
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From the Talk about the Convention 3/25/2011

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Question: What should I do if I am not Jewish and I don’t celebrate Passover?

Answer: Go ahead, celebrate it—what’s the problem? Why can’t you be related to it? After all, you belong to “Israel,” the desire that aspires straight to the Creator (Yashar-El).

Besides, you can celebrate this holiday in honor of the fact that there used to be a group of Kabbalists that went through the entire path of corrections and then broke up in order to help us re-ascend again today. By celebrating Passover, we associate ourselves with this group: not with a nation, but namely with a group of Kabbalists.

Every person wishing to climb out of the current state into the spiritual world has to respect and value this group, which has gone through the path and written books with instructions for us that we can use to advance forward as well. We celebrate and honor our teachers, without any connection to national belonging. We belong to this group and want to be related to it.

Later, when we enter the spiritual world, we will discover that we are together with them, that our group does not only include the friends from the whole world, but also them. Mostly they are all the Kabbalists of all the generations who once turned away from Babylon in order to take the spiritual path. And we are in their group.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/13/11, Writings of Rabash

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The Book of Zohar, Chapter "Yitro (Jethro)," Item 533: There are two gemstones and one Masach between them, standing between each other. The upper gemstone is colorless, it is not openly visible.

Item 534: Malchut is called “a gemstone” because it clings to NHY de ZA, which are called “legs.” Because of Malchut’s ascent to Bina, Bina, too, is called “a gemstone,” and it is an upper gemstone.

There exists the ladder of the spiritual degrees extending from the world of Infinity to our world. This ladder consists of 125 rungs. The upper part of each degree contains the lower part of a higher degree, while the lower part of each degree is immersed in an even lower degree.

The upper part of the highest degree is the world of Infinity, while its lower part is inside the lower degree. It follows that the lower part of each higher degree exists together with the upper part of the lower degree. Hence, in each degree there is a common part between the upper and lower degrees where both of them unite into one.

The upper part of each degree is called Galgalta ve Eynaim (GE), while its lower part AHP (Awzen-Hotem-Peh). In sum, they comprise 10 Sefirot, but in a way that the lower degree contains the AHP of the upper one, and the GE of the lower degree clothe this AHP. It follows that the upper part of each degree is comprised of 10 Sefirot in total, which the upper and the lower degrees form together. This is how it is at every degree.

In the collective system of souls we are all connected together, all seven billion souls. Hence, all parts of my soul are included into everybody, and if I connect with them correctly, all of their parts are within me either as my GE or AHP. That is, nothing is left of me but my initial point with which I started my path. Only it remains in me; it is my foundation. I acquire everything else from the others: either the GE or AHP. I include everyone within myself: It is the body of my soul.

This is what The Zohar explains: It is impossible to create a "gemstone," Malchut, the spiritual vessel of each person unless he or she connects with everybody. I need everyone: They are my spiritual vessel. I have to receive my GE and AHP from everybody. And who am I? I’m the point in the heart from which I started the path.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/8/2011, The Book of Zohar

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Question: Why is it not enough to simply care for the common goal together, but instead we need every person to care for everyone else?

Answer: The common care is something vague and unclear. Every person’s care for everyone else does not mean that I am specifically concerned about a certain person. I am concerned about the notion of the group that, in my understanding, stands for our mutual connection which enables a new reality to be built within many hundreds of thousands of points in the hearts.

There are separate points, aspirations for the spiritual world, and there is a connection of these points, the system where these separate parts join together. There is something that converts this connection into one whole, and I care for this one whole, for the degree of connection of these points into one.

Imagine that the points in the hearts are pieces of tin that you put next to each other, and then they melt from the heat of love and fuse into one solid mass. In other words, this turns into a new essence: one vessel, one desire.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/10/2011, Writings of Rabash

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