Question: During the lesson we work with the Light that corrects us. But what do we work with at the Convention?

Answer: At the Convention this happens even more! We don’t have any other means to influence what is happening to us besides the Light that reforms. It is the only thing we can awaken!

We awaken our future states that haven’t been revealed in us yet and which are about to be revealed. They are states of bestowal to the outside, where every person bestows outward, to his neighbor. This is precisely the quality that we want to discover—each person inside of him and all of us as a whole.

When we reveal this quality of bestowal, it means that we have revealed the Creator. As Kabbalists tell us, this quality gave birth to us, formed us, and dispersed us far away from one another so that by uniting with each other we would reveal it once again.

In the meantime, the Creator is in exile. What does that mean? We can say that He also disintegrated into tiny pieces and is inside all of these broken parts that are far away from one another. As soon as you begin connecting them, you start to recreate or restore Him, the common force of bestowal.

We have to build an image for ourselves that is close to the truth. Otherwise we live in various religious fantasies, imagining an unreal, non-materialistic picture.

We have to understand that the difference between faiths or religions and the science of Kabbalah is that faiths or religions want to imagine spirituality in the material desires, which perceive everything “within” and therefore build their notions according to the earthly reality, with creation being below and the Creator being above, as if they are separated by distance rather than qualities. They do not talk about man’s correction.

In contrast, the science of Kabbalah says that everything is inside of man. Thus, the upper reality or dimension becomes revealed in a person’s inner corrections and changes. Therefore, the most important thing for us is to correct man. By correcting our qualities, a person feels that the Creator is revealed inside of him.
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/21/11, The Zohar

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If a group has come to a dead end of mutual hatred, then it’s best to break it up in order to give people a chance to see the truth. Let each person stay home and evaluate his life. The hatred will become less blinding, and he will get a more objective look at the hatred between friends, bringing a little bit of rational thinking into the emotion.

Then he will start thinking about what he should do with this hatred, where it came from, and for what purpose it was given. He will then remember that hatred is the means for an ascent. After all, the Creator created the evil inclination and purposefully evokes the hatred between us so that we would appeal to and reveal Him. The science of Kabbalah is the means for revealing the Creator and you have the opportunity to reveal Him right now.

The Creator only becomes revealed above our egoism, and as long as we feel good we will not appeal to Him. We must understand once and for all that all advancement comes only as a result of negative sensations. If a person feels good, he won’t make a move; this is our nature.

Hence, it is possible to work on love of friends if we imagine all the processes and states that we will have to go through, if we discern them within ourselves and understand them, write them down, go back to the self-analysis a few times a day, and add logic and emotion to it. This is how we begin to control each state, bad or good, and use it as a necessary means or a lever that will allow us to turn it into the next state of advancement.

If each one of us will try to break our ego, our “stony heart,” it means that we enter the heart of our friends. Ultimately, we reveal the only state that exists, which our egoism was concealing from us.

We are not working on our friends or the group, but simply changing our perception of reality and our hearts. The problem isn’t in the friends and the group. There is only my soul, which I need to collect into one whole.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/7/2011, Writings of Rabash

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

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The difficulty lies in the fact that a person has to start feeling the need to turn to the environment and ask for the greatness of the goal; otherwise, he won’t reach it. This act is regarded as “Lo Lishma” (not for Her Name) that everything begins with.

A person wants to reach the spiritual world and, having no other option, turns to the environment and seeks in it the greatness of the goal; if not, he will withdraw from the goal for good. Then he begins receiving all kinds of impressions from this greatness, although he first turns to them egoistically and doesn’t feel the need for the environment itself except for the goal. A person only wants to use the environment to reach the goal and for now doesn’t link the former with the latter.

But gradually, he begins to realize that the environment contains all his Kelim, desires, within which he attains the goal, the fulfillment. As he studies and the Light works on him, he begins to feel that the goal itself exists in those very desires which he received from the environment by having united with them. In other words, his bond with the others is the place where the Creator is revealed.

Then, the force of bestowal gradually awakes in his relations with the others, and he realizes that they are that same very Kli, the property of the Creator, thanks to which one becomes similar to Him. There, within these relations with the other people, a person and the Creator meet and become one whole by achieving adhesion.

Egoism that the Creator created as His reverse imprint within the desire must stay! In fact, above and in opposition to it, a person holds himself in the equivalence to the Creator. If he didn’t possess this reverse form, he wouldn’t be able to reach the property of bestowal and recreate himself in the image of the Creator.

Thus, attainment of the greatness of the Creator is our Kli, the soul of each of us, which we receive from the environment and within which we experience our spiritual life.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/16/2011 on Attaining the Greatness of the Creator through the Environment

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Question: Is revealing one’s evil inclination the most important thing?

Answer: We shouldn’t try to reveal our evil inclination and it’s not important what states we experience. The most important and the only possible action we can perform is to attract the upper Light.

The Light will lead me through all the stages which are currently unknown to me: I will reveal my evil inclination, correct, and then fulfill it. Only the Light can help me along this path. I have to aspire toward the upper Light which will act upon me. The form and sequence of those actions are none of mine concern.

I shouldn’t be thinking about the Light revealing my evil inclination because I don’t know what it’s supposed to reveal. And even though it is written in the books about it, I don’t yet understand what the “evil inclination” really is. It’s not worthwhile taking your attention and concentration away from the essence: attracting the Light.

Otherwise, we start looking for this evil inclination within us and start thinking that each negative quality we posses is the evil inclination. But believe me, we haven’t revealed it yet.

The evil inclination is an angel. That is, when we reveal the evil, we discover that the Creator is concealed within it, and that this evil inclination comes from Him. This is why in order to reveal the Creator, we must think about unity instead of hatred! And while I aspire toward unity, I reveal that the evil inclination is what gets in the way.

I am always aspiring toward unity, while the upper Light acts upon me and ultimately reveals to me who I am. I have to go through all the stages: 0,1, 2, 3, and on stage 4 (Behina Dalet), I always feel that I’ve completed a certain step and received a new understanding. And then once again I go through all the stages, and on the fourth stage a new understanding is revealed.

This, however, doesn’t change my attitude toward the past, present, or the future. I always aspire toward unity without thinking about anything else. And it doesn’t matter to me whether I’m in a good state or a bad one.

I’m fine with whatever becomes revealed to me. Nothing can stop me from going forward: neither the good, nor the bad, nor any philosophical theory that I conjure up in my head, which only confuses me, making me believe that I understand what’s happening. All of my attention has to be focused on unity only. Then I can be sure that I’m attracting the Surrounding Light.

When you begin to over-intellectualize and decide for yourself what to do, you instantly lose the Surrounding Light. You must aspire only toward the Light which is whole and absolute. It is written that we must be ready to accept the mutual guarantee as one man with one heart. We should think only about this.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/17/2011 on the topic of “I created the evil inclination, and I created the Torah as a spice”

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

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When I begin reforming my relationships with the entire world, with all other souls, and with the friends in the group that study with me, I suddenly discover that there is only the Creator and me, and nobody else. In other words, there are my friends, the world, the still, vegetative, and animate nature, people, and souls, and all of which are, essentially, the manifestations of the Creator as pertains to me.

After all, the Creator cannot show Himself to me as the Light without the vessel (Kli) since I will have nothing with which to perceive Him. Therefore, the Creator divides creation into two parts: the creation itself, its soul, and the other desires besides this creation which are properties of the Creator.

“The Creator” (Boreh) derives from the Hebrew words “come” and “see” (Bo and Reh). In other words, if the created being connects with the Kli that is seemingly outside of it, thereby it expresses its attitude toward the Creator, and in this vessel, the Light appears. All of this gives the creature an opportunity to perceive the upper (relative to itself) force.

Then, the creature begins to understand the Creator’s “language,” the conversation that the Creator is having with it. Sometimes, it seems to the creature that this “external” Kli is above it and at other times, that it is below it. At times, it views the world as an empty vacuum where there is nothing at all. However, if the creature realizes that it is the Creator who makes this empty space for the creature to fill with its desire to bestow on its own, it receives room for work.

In this void, there is a lack of the Light of faith, the Light of bestowal, Hassadim (Mercy). If the creature is able to fill this empty dimension with the Light of Hassadim, consequently, it joins the Creator and can find there the Light of Hochma (Wisdom) as well.

There are opposite states when the Creator allows the creature to feel itself fulfilled. First, you feel that you stand before an enormous Light that is outside of you for now. This sensation is given to us in the first nine Sefirot (Tet Reshinot). You have to make a restriction on it, lift your inner boundary so that you can receive the Light (in the Nikvey Eynaim), and work in the three lines in order to measure the fulfillment that stands before you with your screen, or to discern to what extent you can receive it in order to bestow.

Thus, we advance, undergoing various states, while not always being aware of them. However, they unfold only when we don’t forget that there is only a single Light and a single vessel that is divided into many parts for our sake, which we have to gradually incorporate into ourselves with the intention to bestow.

On this path, there are two stages for us. The first one is the rung of Bina (Hafetz Hesed) where a person cannot really connect with the others for now and only learns to resist his or her egoism, rise above one’s desires over one’s “evil inclination” that is being revealed to them, and obtains the Kelim of GE (Galgalta Eynaim).

Later on, a person starts working with the “unification of the property of mercy and the vessel” when even one’s desires to receive that are included in him are used solely to bestow.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/15/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Question: Why is it so difficult to keep the intention while reading The Book of Zohar, or to imagine the connection between us and to grab on to the text? What should we do?

Answer: If a person found himself in a great disaster and was told, “Read this text for half an hour and there you will reveal how to get out of the disaster,” then you can imagine how he would spend that half hour. Would it be difficult for him to concentrate on it? What kind of pressure and hope would he feel in trying to penetrate inside the text, to understand what is being required of him, what he can find there, what kind of salvation is there, and how it will arrive….

Everything depends on the environment, on how much it “warms up” this inner attitude to The Zohar’s text. All other Kabbalistic texts are beneficial to a smaller extent with regard to their text’s influence on the reader because when reading them we can involve the mind and feelings, and somehow connect them to ourselves.

The Torah, in turn, is perfect, pure, unattainable, “in the heavens.” What does “pure” (Tmima) mean? No one touches it. It is the upper Light. We only wait for the results from it that will manifest in us.

Only the group can give me this attitude to reading The Zohar so I would passionately wish to receive a result from it. Otherwise it won’t happen.

We have already gone through this state when we just began reading The Zohar. During the first few months people were so inspired that this common excitement influenced every person and every person felt the surrounding illumination to some extent, feeling the power of The Zohar’s influence upon him.

Now this inspiration has waned because at first we received it from above, whereas now we have to develop it ourselves. Nothing happens by itself in nature. You receive an initial awakening and then it is taken away so you would add it from your own end, so you would complete the space that has been emptied of inspiration from above with your own efforts.

If we don’t add to it ourselves, then we cannot keep the intention for correction over the course of 45 minutes while reading The Zohar, and we just wait for the lesson to be over. If we don’t awaken a person, if we don’t stimulate the inner vibrations in him so he would feel like a sick person facing the only means of salvation, the only opportunity to be healed and saved from disaster, then of course it is difficult for him to keep the intention and to grab on to the text. In essence, he blames us because we do not let him feel the vital necessity of this, meaning the importance of the goal.
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/17/11, The Zohar

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My Good Environment – Dr. Laitman’s Daily Advice

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