Question: How can we accelerate the rate of the group’s development?

Answer: An egg, for example, won’t hatch before its time. It relates to the animate nature and obeys strict laws of development. In time, people watched a hen and learned how to simulate these optimal conditions in incubators. In contrast, not only should we take example from nature, but we also can employ natural forces and accelerate our own growth, modifying its quality. In other words, it’s all about how we perceive it.

In truth, our evolution is not limited to one beaten path. It’s not just that I enhance my own properties a few times. It isn’t enough. I must change myself, transform myself into the opposite.

Hence, I need auxiliary forces that first and foremost will let me become aware of these transformations. If we were not supposed to reform ourselves in the process of spiritual growth, who would mind? Who doesn’t want to grow? Even an egg wants to become a duckling, and a duckling wants to be a duck. This is a law.

However, if we shift from the property of reception to the property of bestowal, then receiving won’t help me achieve bestowal; it will only form a negative attitude within me toward myself. In that case, I will feel evil in receiving, start hating it, and wish to transform into its opposite.

It turns out that in order to evolve, I have to build an environment for myself. I have to create conditions that will assist me in being constantly aware of my current internal state as harmful for me so that I may wish to step out of it, to change.

My development is not that I simply grow, but that I become transformed. I don’t need to become big from being small. Rather, I must become similar to the Creator, assume an opposite form to my own. That is why I learn from the Creator to have qualities that must become mine. Then, I arrange the environment that will help me view these qualities as desirable, while viewing my current attributes as undesirable, evil, and harmful. Acting thereby, I do create a “green house” that will raise me correctly.

Thus, I am working with two opposite forms of nature: the nature to receive that characterizes this world and the nature to bestow, the force of the Light that characterizes the future world. I form an environment that will help me replace my values and realize that my current values are evil as compared to the spiritual ones that I will assume tomorrow. This is the only way I can advance.

What is necessary is not just to “warm” the current condition up. It must constantly stand before me in contrast to today’s and tomorrow’s qualities, showing me the direction I need to take to change and enhancing the importance of these changes. Then I will want to become “great” not in receiving but in bestowal. Knowing that my current state is evil and harmful, I will be happy to leave it behind.

In brief, you must arrange all the necessary conditions for yourself. We must work not on ourselves, but rather on the environment, on the “green house,” the “incubator,” and it will accelerate our growth. Then, we will reach a desired state not at the end of the allotted time period of 6,000 years, having gone through suffering under Nature’s hand, but we will come to it earlier, in a nice, easy, and pleasant way and in the shortest time.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/27/2011, “Introduction of The Book of Zohar”

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Question: The more efforts we make for the sake of the group’s success, the more we feel how we are working for our own egos….

Answer: You should be happy about that because it is the revelation of evil. Without revealing evil, we won’t reach goodness.

I see that in the end, the only thing I want from my actions for the group’s sake is to extract personal benefit. What next?

The problem is that this “point of epiphany” alone is not enough. You cannot do anything with it. My action has to be aimed; it has to have a vector. Otherwise my inner force remains merely potential, like a muffled engine. It may even be a good engine with a capacity of 200 cc, but so what?

I have to “wind up” my desire and aim it at a specific action. That means I need two points to make up a vector. The mind is what gives this direction to my force. That is why force and reason work well with one another. This is lawful.

So even if I have reached despair in my attitude to the group, this does not yet give me an opportunity to act. Now I have to connect my state with the goal.
I have just felt that I am opposite to myself. Egoism has been revealed in my actions or in one of my actions: I did it for myself and could not aim it at the friends.

First of all I have to remember that there is none else beside Him. The problem is not that I didn’t succeed at it, but that the Creator organized this situation for me, as well as its analysis. It becomes clear that I could not do anything because of my egoism, and that’s because the Creator wished to teach me, to show me that I am ruled by the ego.

So what should I do? Why did He want me to feel this? It was so that through it I would realize the importance of the goal, the quality of bestowal, which is opposite to what I have just revealed.

Where will I get this importance? From that very state. After all, there is no Light without a vessel, no sensation that does not include the combination of both the Light and the Kli. What will I compare myself to in order to feel that I am evil? It happens in comparison to how I understand bestowal, imagining that I could have acted better by treating the friends better.

In that case there are already two points! How then, can I now shift form the point of my own insignificance and nastiness to the point of bestowal? What do I lack? I lack force, and this is what I should demand.

But that’s not all. Why should I demand it? Is it in order to make myself feel good, to stop feeling repulsed by myself? After all, my egoism suffers from the recent “revelation.” In that case it would turn out that I am still an egoist, only having gone through a second “twist” and being on the next level of self-love.

Rather, I don’t want all of my work and its result to pursue personal profit. I want to perform an action in which I will reveal pleasure for the Creator. He corrects me and I want this to give Him pleasure.

That is how I try to advance forward a little bit more, and then a little bit more, as much as possible. These are my first attempts, which I must literally “chew up,” “taste” on my tongue, or more precisely, “break up” with my teeth.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/28/11, Writings of Rabash

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Question: How can I envision our common Kli (vessel)? What does the group within me mean?

Answer: The group within me is the place where the Creator exists. He organized such a place within me. This why when I enter the group, I seemingly come to my friends, whereas in reality, I enter my inner sensation of the “place.” If I continue to be connected with the group, it will serve me as the mother’s womb, the ark, the place of concealment, salvation, and protection.

This group exists within me. I only mistakenly perceive it as existing outside of me the same way I perceive the entire reality. In order to start sensing the true reality for real, I have to give up my pride, independence, and grandeur so I could become dissolved in the group, the ark, the mother’s womb. Then within it I will reveal the Creator—in my first spiritual degree of the spiritual embryo.
[36480]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/27/2011, “Introduction of The Book of Zohar”

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We are born in special, unique conditions: in the egoistic will to receive which is our nature. It permeates our mind and heart, meaning our thoughts and desires, and sprouts from the Reshimot (informational genes) that we received at birth. They manifest in the corporeal attributes we inherit from our parents and are instilled in us as the rudiments of spiritual properties.

This process contains various details which we will comprehend only when we have sufficiently evolved and realized what a soul is, how it circulates, and what transformations it undergoes from one degree to the next.

Thus, at birth, we receive a “package” of inner and outer attributes. There is no point in arguing with it. Likewise, we don’t choose the environment that we are born and will grow up in until reaching adulthood either. Thereby, we supplement our inherited properties with what we receive from the outside.

It corresponds with the development of the soul, which we study in The Study of the Ten Sefirot. At the stage of conception, a soul undergoes a period of “nine months” but doesn’t reach adulthood yet. It receives everything else from the outside only later when it is born from the upper Partzuf and resides next to it.

Having been born from the lower third part of Tifferet that is regarded as the “womb,” a soul rises to the upper third part of Tifferet regarded as the “chest” (Hazeh). And further on, all the Lights that it didn’t receive in the mother’s womb during the “nine month” period, the soul receives over the course of “two years” of nurturing.

We can say that being nurtured is the same as being conceived, but now it continues in the external conditions. And then, there comes a new stage of the outside development, the years of upbringing, the small state (Katnut), until maturity is reached, which is completed at the “age of 20.”

During all these stages, a soul discerns the Lights and Kelim (vessels) while evolving against its will, by virtue of the environment that obligates it to grow without its exercising freedom of choice. And choice, in its direct meaning, begins with the transformation of the soul as it reaches “20 years of age” and up.

This is how Kabbalists describe our spiritual evolution, the counterpart of which we observe even in our corporeal world.
[36270]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/24/2011, Writings of Rabash

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I have to change myself in conformity with the upper world. To do this I attract forces from that world through the group and change by means of those forces. Thus I ascend up 125 degrees and reveal the upper world. That is how it opens up to me, becoming more and more apparent.

In the process I am not working on something external, but on what is inside of me. I attract the forces of change to myself rather than applying my forces to something on the outside, the way we do in our world.

This determines my interactions with the environment: I do not want to change it, eliminate anything in it, or conquer it the way I conquer the people around me in this world, controlling them, submitting them to my power, and using them to achieve my own goals. This is especially vivid in our world among politicians.

In spirituality, however, everything is opposite: I work in the environment of friends quietly, often even without having any special discussions. If they were all chosen by the upper force to attain the spiritual world, then by bending down before them, I absorb their forces. These forces accumulate in me and join the point in my heart, and then I change.

This way, my criterion of progress is not the external conquests, but inner changes that manifest as new qualities and sensations, new understanding in relation to the study and the objects described in the science of Kabbalah. It isn’t simple to re-orient yourself and shift to the approach that accords with the spiritual world. It takes a lot of time for a person to reach despair and to discover that there is no other way, to understand that he has to act differently, to begin hearing and realizing what he hears, and to build everything in the right order, placing himself under the influence of the environment.

In essence, this is the most important thing. Whoever has taken these steps and formed the right attitude to the group, has already gone through the first and most dangerous stage of the path without falling prey to his own egoism. It is extremely important to place yourself in front of the environment the right way. Rabash particularly underlines this in his articles.

We can even say that the subsequent steps are easier to make because I already have the right approach and focus. I understand that the Light is primary, that it is the only thing that operates in reality, and we have to give it the opportunity to do so instead of getting in the way with our egoism, as if we have the strength and reason to do anything ourselves. In fact, the only opportunity we have is to naturally bend down our head before the environment and then to receive the forces for change and correction.
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/28/11, Writings of Rabash

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In our world we are used to acting independently. I use all of my strength, knowledge, energy, potential of being connected with my environment, my inborn abilities, as well as habits ingrained by upbringing and education. I am the source; I am the center. Coming from myself I act and pave my path in the world.

At every step of the way we see how effective this approach is. After all, we were born by the power of egoism, the will to enjoy. And since we are already using that desire to “succeed” and attain self-profit, we therefore use everything we have, both our inner capabilities and the external means.

I have strength, reason, drive, and audacity—all the things that are inherent to me, and I use them outwardly, in the direction of going from within me to the outside. But that’s not what happens during the soul’s correction. If my set goal is not to succeed in this world, but in the spiritual world, if I want to break through into that world and acquire it, then I discover that I am not fit for it from the onset. I do not have the forces, understanding, or qualities that enable me to come closer on my own and to attack, break through, and conquer the upper world.

It takes time to realize this. But afterward, seeing that my regular “instruments” are powerless here, I experience weakness, give up, and don’t know what to do. Usually this brings a person to a great descent. After all, he does not have any means to attain what he desires. So what should he do?

There are two things concealed here that one must realize:

1. I do not belong or correspond to the spiritual world in any way, shape, or form. Now this is completely clear to me. And this moment of weakness is a good beginning. After all, in essence this is talking about the realization of my own nature, which is detached from the spiritual nature and will not help me in any way. I do not have any inclinations, means, tools, or possibilities of finding my way to the place where I want to be. I cannot make heads or tails of it. I am spiritually immobile and inaccessible.

2. I am able to obtain a force that will help me and a mind that will direct me at acquiring the upper world through the environment. After all, the environment is the means of attaining the upper world, and it is present right beside me. It is the group to which I am brought from Above and through which I can receive upper forces in order for them to influence me.

I do not acquire the spiritual world by aspiring to go from within myself outward to it. I do not buy it, absorb it, or break into it. Rather, in order to conquer the upper world, I must only adapt myself to it. Then I will discover that I am in it.

This way, the approach to the work and its result, as well as the reconciliation of myself and the upper world are completely opposite to what we work with in our world. Here I must attain, acquire, or conquer what I desire, while the spiritual world, to the contrary, is ready for me initially. I am already in it and all I have to do is change in order for this to become apparent.
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/28/11, Writings of Rabash

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The purpose of creating man is to have him transform himself from being opposite to being similar to the Creator, meaning to have him acquire the property of acting solely for the sake of others instead of acting solely for his own benefit. This transformation of nature can be achieved by studying The Book of Zohar because in the degree of a person’s need, a force that reforms man’s nature becomes revealed during the reading.

Even though a person may not have the slightest desire to change and thinks solely about his own good, nevertheless, being under the influence of the environment, he gradually agrees that the ability to bestow is the most vital asset in his life. Thus, he studies with the group so he may enhance his aspiration to get reformed.

If the friends present themselves as one whole, their study evokes an impact of the concealed force which then manifests as mutual love and bestowal. And despite the fact that nobody takes their transformation seriously, eventually, under the influence of the environment and the force hidden in the collective studying of The Zohar, everybody experiences authentic changes—everyone acquires the Creator’s nature and feels the upper world.
[36281]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/24/2011, “Introduction of The Book of Zohar”

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Question: When we start experiencing pressure on our egoism through the blows it receives, what is the correct way to appeal to the group? What should I focus on?

Answer: If a person doesn’t have an inner demand to the group, what can he say to it? Whatever we do, we do it willingly. If a person doesn’t see why he should turn to the group, he won’t.

I appeal to the group if I feel helpless, if I see that there is nothing that can save me, that I am unable to reform myself and achieve something, if I realize that all my learned intelligence and potential will have no solution for me.

Only then am I willing to ask the friends for help. The demand surfaces in me when I search and desire to break away from this horrible state of being. That is when I discover that I can turn only to the group.

I appeal to it externally or internally. The friends may not even feel it, but I do wish to receive support and strength from them. And then I turn to them with a plea.

Otherwise, can I really listen to advice and ask the group for help? Lip service won’t help here; it’s just a waste of breath. Only when a true desire has ripened in me do I turn to the friends. It doesn’t matter whether they feel it or not. There is the force of desire in my plea, which makes it true.
[36148]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/23/2011, Writings of Rabash

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From now on we can’t advance as we did before, blindfolded toward the unknown, without comprehension, wisdom, and precise knowledge, like animals running in an indefinite direction, fleeing to a place of safety to escape danger. This is how we have been advancing during the course of history, but today we must start evolving like the humans we are.

A human is someone who “has eyes” and sees the road ahead, knowing exactly where he is going. First, one attains the future state of existence in its “potential form,” and then he actualizes it in practice.

The forms we must now transition to are the forms of similarity to the Creator. Therefore, before anything else, we must manifest them in the connection between us, thanks to which we will acquire new properties. Then we will collectively realize our future state in practice: a stronger, tighter connection with one another, based on bestowal, wherein the Creator will be revealed.

In this manner, we will progress step by step, until we pass through all the 125 spiritual degrees. It will signify the exodus from exile to total freedom. Starting today and on, our advancement must be sighted and aware, without repeating the previous mistakes that we continually and methodically made time after time during all stages of human evolution.

Each time we tried to do something without knowing about the future, the leader who shouted loudest was given the opportunity to alter nature and human society. That person would carry out his ideas until either being overthrown or dying naturally, after which we discovered that everything he did was wrong. And the cycle would repeat all over again, from one error to the next.

Today, among all else, we are dealing with a predicament pertaining to the leadership of the world and this new trend. We are yet to see what an enormous obstacle it poses on our path and how worthless these leaders are. Eventually, they will be replaced by a worthy government, similar to the ancient “Sanhedrin” (assembly of Kabbalists), that is, an authentic spiritual council standing at the head of all of humanity.
[31183]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/29/2010, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”

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