Question: What does it mean “to rejoice over the friend’s joy and to grieve over his grief,” and how do we achieve this?

Answer: To rejoice over the friend’s joy is to feel happy that we reach our spiritual goal together, that we are on the path together. It’s when I feel the friends’ yearning within me and don’t feel my own presence or personal eagerness toward the goal, but rather how I aspire to it with them. In fact, my “self” disappears, dissolves into the others. This is how I attain eternal life, too.

A person’s “self” no longer exists. It functions only as a conduit of the Creator’s Light to all others. So it turns out that all our “selves” disappear. And instead of them, there emerges one integral whole, multiplied by the number of the “selves” that there used to be.
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From Lesson 1 in Moscow 1/14/2011, “Introduction of the Book of Zohar”

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Question: Does the law of “The general and the particular are equal” mean that one can undergo the ten blows both individually and in the group, or is it an exclusively internal, personal process?

Answer: Yes and no. As a rule, all Kabbalists go through this individually; I know this from my own experience. One feels so desperate in his egoism that he tears away from it and cannot use it anymore.

There is no doubt that it’s easier to do this while being in the group, even if the latter knows nothing about it. It can be a small group in terms of the number of members and level of advancement, but its general atmosphere, its determination and aspiration to the goal helps a person and doesn’t let him escape from this process. A person holds himself intact at the time he is receiving a blow, which is what matters the most, and he passes through it.

However, even if he tells himself, “That’s it, I give up! I can’t stand it anymore! I wish to live solely for bestowal,” he eventually descends deeper into the egoistic desire and gets revisited by those thoughts and internal discernments. He sees that at the deeper, inner level, he is still stuck in his will to receive where he hasn’t yet made a final and irreversible decision that he desires to rise above it all.

The ten blows are not only just different in character, not at all. They differ in their depth since they become more and more internal. Therefore, even if during the previous test a person decided that he wouldn’t be using egotistic desires any more, now he sees that he hasn’t worked on this particular desire yet. He hasn’t become aware and realized that it cannot be employed and that he can’t comply with his egoism.

If a person has a strong and correct environment, he passes through these states with enthusiasm. He is aware that he is undergoing a blow that will help him tear away from egoism and get refined. I don’t think a student can go through it without the support of the teacher and the group.

The blows themselves are very specific, and one should move through them quickly and distinctly. It all depends on our discipline, the interconnection between us, and our willingness to lose interest in our egoism which is our nature.
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From the Lesson on the Weekly Torah Portion 1/6/2011

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Nothing that happens in the world is extraneous. Everything comes only from the necessity to bring us to the final, perfect state where we exist in total equivalence with the single Upper Force. Therefore, if we forget about this in the group, this force tramples upon us, bothering us and constantly bringing about all sorts of “cunning” events, and the most important thing to do is not to give in and to always remember that all of it is happening deliberately. No one ever does anything accidentally.

Unless a person is psychologically sick, then everything taking place to him in the group happens specifically in order for him to ascend above it and to relate to it the right way. This does not necessarily mean that we have to ignore the problems. But the most important thing is for us to connect them to the Creator, the Force that controls us. Everything comes from Him. He is the one who is tripping us now in order for us to learn to move above these problems and thus to ascend above egoism. However, the egoism we ascend over is not our personal one, but the one that emerges between us.

If I am enticed by certain egoistic actions, for example, I want to buy a better car, earn more, and so on, this does not belong to Kabbalah; it is my personal business. But the things happening between us in the group, the degree of my friction with others comes from the Creator and only from Him. We can cope with these problems only if we don’t forget that He influences us.

We will never be able to cope with them separately from Him even if we will constantly try to solve them with each other. Even if we understand that we have to solve them because we have to be together because that is how we unite in the group and it is not acceptable to separate, this still won’t help! We will sink into this more and more.

It is possible to solve this question cardinally, correctly, and realistically only when each of us, the group, and the Creator are together and we solve this problem together. He awakens the negative, egoistic phenomena among us in order for us to “attract” Him to us, or putting it differently, to reveal Him among us. Problems are empty space, which we want to discover as being filled by the Creator. This is the opportunity He gives us. That means the problem lies in correctly reacting to His challenge, when He awakens egoism inside each of us and friction between us.

The Creator “flirts” with us, awakening our attention to Him. The right reaction is the common prayer, when we begin turning to Him all together. That is to say, without entering any confrontations with one another, we gather together and turn to the Force, the Primary Cause from which all of this comes. This is called “the prayer of society.”

We call on the Creator, summon Him, and obligate Him to become revealed between us. He evoked the negative interactions between us and we transform them to a desire or need for His presence. We are like children who have quarreled and cannot do anything about it, and so they demand for their mother to come and stand between them. The Creator deliberately evokes problems inside us, and in response we have to realize this and call on Him to fulfill that space.
From the lesson in Moscow on 1/16/11, Writings of Rabash

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Question: Would it help our spiritual development to know exactly where we are on the scale of the inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human levels? What does our progress depend on? What instruments could help us determine where we are? And how can we change?

Answer: All of this is determined the moment a person comes to the group. He can begin evaluating himself only in relation to the environment: How much does he aspire to his friends, to the common desire of bestowal, to feel everyone as one desire?

This common desire is the Soul that was created. And if we attain it as one whole, then in it we will feel the quality of bestowal, the Creator. It was precisely in order to enable measurement, attainment, and control over our state that the common soul, creation, and desire were divided into an infinite multitude of parts. Every part of the desire, every person thereby received the opportunity to imagine the other parts as united, depending on his aspiration to this state.

If this person or part begins to work to unite with all the other parts, seeing them as perfect and receiving from them the right aspiration forward, the motivation, the importance and value of spiritual development, then he gains absolutely clear abilities to measure his state and to receive help from outside.
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From the lesson in Moscow on 1/14/11, The Zohar

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Shamati #187: In order to make the right choice, one must choose that which obligates him to increase his efforts.

Plants, animals, and other organisms that do not develop by their own efforts see a picture that is set in advance. We, on the other hand, must rely on the help of books and a teacher in order to build our future state on our own and to imagine it in the group. What is it like? What should the relationships between us be like?

Then each one of us will aspire to become more similar to these relationships and we will constantly build the Creator out of ourselves, inside ourselves, and outside ourselves. We will do it ourselves. We have to create Him on our own, imagine him ourselves, choose Him, and design this future form among us. That is why we are considered similar to the Creator. Just as He created us, so we create Him. It says in The Book of Zohar that we “make” the Creator.

A person’s work amounts to this search for the perfect model. And it is built in the group. That is why the Creator broke creation into many parts so we would have the opportunity to build Him. After all, our ideal state is Him. We have the opportunity to work, making efforts and continuously building ourselves in a more ideal form, in bestowal, through consolidation in spite of our egoism. That is how we form the new state. We simultaneously form Him and ourselves by adding our current state to the desirable next state.

This is our spiritual work to reveal the Creator. We ourselves “draw,” reveal, and research Him: What is that ideal state called “the Creator”? By conducting the search we arrive precisely at this ideal, where the quality of bestowal and the quality of reception become fully revealed. They mutually complement one another, never becoming annulled and never losing anything. That is how the ideal picture called “the world of Infinity” is created, being the unlimited state of the whole creation.

As Baal HaSulam says, the choice of progress forward always lies in greater effort. As clearly as possible, we must discern two opposite qualities which make up all of nature: the quality of reception and the quality of bestowal, and we should try to combine them together. This mutual combination, their maximal participation will give us the following picture, the next level. They come together in the middle line by means of the screen.

Every subsequent level that we build is called “the presence of the Creator.” Once we build it, we discover new flaws and new lack of similarity. Once again there is overbalance to the left side, the left line of egoistic desires which disturb unity, harmony, and the integral picture. Then we must once again build the surrounding environment that will help us establish balance between the right and left lines, making the middle line from them that combines these two forces of nature.

The choice always lies in maximally using them—in greater effort.
From the lesson on 1/17/11, Shamati

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Question: What is our reality like in the worlds of BYA (Beria, Yetzira, Assiya), when we ascend along the degrees of these worlds to the world of Atzilut?

Answer: Presently I perceive everything in my desire which is entirely egoistic, aimed only at self-gratification, and disconnected from all the spiritual forces and the Creator. I have no spark of bestowal and live the life of a beast. Such a state is called “this world.”

When I begin to scrutinize which of my desires I can elevate to correction, it means I am in the worlds of BYA. That is, I can annul myself before the group, receive the strength of my friends, unify with them to some degree, and achieve the mutual guarantee, unity, and wholeness like one man with one heart.

To the extent I am able to do this, I rise to Malchut of the world of Atzilut. Elevating my desire, changing it for the better, means that I ascend. I connect to Malchut together with everybody and then in our collective desire (Kli) called Shechina where we are all united together as one man with one heart, we receive the revelation of spirituality, the Creator.

It follows that the worlds of BYA are states in which I scrutinize myself while studying and working in the group where I have the opportunity to connect with the friends to at least some small extent.

The difference between the worlds of BYA is the degree of our connection according to which we can elevate our pleas to Malchut of Infinity and achieve correction. But we always remain in the worlds of BYA, only we bring about their ascent, together with us, to the world of Atzilut.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/1/2010, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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Question: Why is it that even when a person knows what is good for him, he still goes and does things that harm him?

Answer: We even see this happening with small children. How many times do you have to punish a child until he starts to understand something? And even then, is this a result of the punishment, or did he simply grow up and become smarter? Maybe the punishments were not beneficial at all? This is indeed a question: What causes us to change our actions?

In reality, we do not change by being punished. Overall, there is no such thing as reward and punishment as we understand it. We never learn under the influence of fate’s misfortunes. We simply grow until we outgrow our Reshimo. Then new ones emerge in us and the surrounding environment changes, and we change under its influence as well. We only change from the confrontation of two parameters: our inner informational data (Reshimot) and the surrounding society. As they interact with one another, they determine our state.

We have to bring our Reshimot to balance with the environment. This is all we aspire to. It is the basic law of the universe: similarity, balance, equilibrium. Everything in nature automatically aspires to this. That is why as soon as an imbalance emerges inside us with the surroundings, then consciously or not (depending on a person’s development) we immediately put all our energy toward trying to bring ourselves to balance.

For example, when you enter a certain society or a certain group of people, you always adjust yourself because you desire to be similar. That is how things are built; it is the law of equivalence, the initial law that the Creator put at the head of everything. Having created a nature opposite to Him, the will to enjoy, He desires for it to gradually reach equivalence with Him, the will to bestow. That’s because growth creates a mind inside the desire, and then the creation gains awareness, sensations, and reveals the Creator, becoming equal and identical to Him.

A person differs from any inanimate creation by the emergence of a mind that consciously directs creation toward similarity to the Creator. Therefore, our entire freedom of will lies in constantly creating a surrounding environment for ourselves that will “pull us up” to the Creator. That means we have to take care of the environment so it would be a level higher than we are. In that case we will want to become similar to it, and thus we will keep advancing toward the Creator. By envisioning the group as higher, greater, and more ideal than ourselves, we advance forward.

Therefore, everything depends on creating the right environment because it will enable us to automatically pull ourselves forward. Therein lies the entire law of growth.
From the lesson in Moscow on 1/17/11, Shamati

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Question: Why does the Light work on us so slowly? What else must we do?

Answer: We are advancing in big steps. However, we can’t measure how many more steps we have to take in order to switch our perception from consuming inward to bestowal so as to draw the force that will link the “cogwheels,” our souls, together, thereby letting us feel the upper world.

Neither I nor anyone else in the world, including all the Kabbalists of the previous generations, have ever experienced the state we are undergoing today. Never before has such a large group of people striven to the end of correction based on the lack of connection between them, as well as the lack of the Creator’s revelation in them. Since there is no precedence for it, I cannot say in which form it will occur.

In truth, in the wisdom of Kabbalah, everything is identical to nature. If something isn’t revealed, you can’t know how it manifests. A real scientist will say that according to his data, it must be this way or that way, but if he makes a step forward, he steps into the unknown.

There are scientists that spend decades studying some phenomenon and are certain that they have found an explanation as to how it works. Yet, they suddenly say, “No, we were wrong“ and start all over again.

The same is true in reference to the wisdom of Kabbalah. It is a science. We have to explore the upper world ourselves and not expect an email, SMS, or something else from there. All that has been revealed up to this point, unfolded in personal, individual Kelim (vessels) of each Kabbalist.

Now, we must uncover the upper world in this enormous collective desire, in our mutual unification. And it will be done for the first time. All seven billion people might not unify, but there will still be hundreds of thousands or even millions.

In other words, the aspiration to see the spiritual world has become collective rather than individual. This has never been seen in the past. Hence, it is impossible to tell when it will occur, but we are advancing at a very fast pace.
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From the Lecture on the Unity Day 12/26/2010

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We need to try to build a state of an endless convention and be constantly impressed with many thousands of people gathered in one place. I have to feel the same “electric vibrations” anytime and anywhere. Distance doesn’t affect this spiritual force field. It depends on us; we can make this state of existence permanent.

This unique field of spiritual connection and direction is what is called a Kabbalistic group. In it, everyone retains the influence not only of the 7,000 friends, but of the millions of our friends around the world.

First of all, we create the group out of several thousands of our students, in which all of them are mutually connected within our integral network. If part of this group reaches the state of Arvut (mutual guarantee), it starts projecting this illumination outward, and it cannot be stopped anymore.

This is what is called the authentic circulation of Kabbalah. Everyone will have a chance to come, see, learn, and examine whether it fits him or not, and if it doesn’t fit today, then perhaps it will tomorrow.

This convention must show us an example of such a state, and it has to become permanent so we may ascend higher and higher. This is what will become the impact of the environment on a person, and it is our job to create it.

If the environment determines my entire future and the velocity of my spiritual advancement, then I must be concerned solely with how to make this environment stronger so that it would constantly inspire and pull me forward “by the ear.”

In that case, I will definitely come to the convention. After all, what else can advance me forward? I possess no other means but this one. I will come, but we must keep providing the same kind of influence all the time. Granted, there isn’t any other engine that fosters spiritual growth.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/4/2011, “Exile and Redemption”

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I receive the strength to reach spirituality from the environment, and it is a unique force. We arrive to the wisdom of Kabbalah with a desire for spirituality, but this desire is egoistic: to obtain both this and the future worlds.

This enormous desire pushes a person forward, but when he intends to bond with the friends, he has to annul himself and increase the importance of the friends. Thereby, he elevates his attitude to the friend at a minimal spiritual level. He annuls himself, desires to unite, and acknowledges the friend as the important one.

It is a very unpleasant, repulsive endeavor, but there is no other choice: We must unite. And if we do, I receive from the friend the importance of the goal, the strength to ascend. This strength is spiritual. After all, in order to turn to the friend, I nullified myself and raised his value. Since I related to him according to the spiritual rule, the importance of the friend, I received from him the strength to ascend despite the fact that he is just like me.

Even if I act out of hopelessness because I wish to obtain the spiritual world egoistically, I receive the true power from the friend, which raises me above myself. Acting this way with the friends, I acquire the correct approach to spirituality. Moreover, the friends may pay no attention to it nor even be unaware of what fuels me with spiritual power. I acquire it by performing an egoistic act, nullifying myself in relation to them despite the force of resentment.

It is very difficult, but if I manage to overcome myself, I receive from the friends the strength to advance further. This is the essence of our work, and this is the objective of the upcoming convention.
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From the Lecture on the Unity Day 10/31/10

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