The movie and television industries are transitioning to 3D imagery. So do we, too, have to part with the superficial two-dimensional perception and get to see the depth of spirituality in our reality.

In my perception, there are three dimensions: width, height, and depth. This is my screen. On this three- dimensional screen, I view people, animals, buildings, the sun, and the entire world that surrounds me.

I experience all of this in my will to receive (desire). Yet, it draws the picture of the world for me not on a flat surface, but in three dimensions within me. Since besides this picture there isn’t any other, I experience it as true and the only existing one.

This image assembled during the breaking of the souls (Kelim, vessels) when my parts detached from me: my “self” which is GE (Galgalta ve Eynaim) and, outside of it, my AHP (Awzen, Hotem, Peh) which I don’t experience as mine.

Now, finally, instead of manifestations of my AHP, I start working with the group and interact with the friends. They gravitate toward me, and I toward them.

We are trying to work together as if we are in Arvut (mutual responsibility or guarantee), and this practice helps me understand that the group as well as everything else are mine indeed. Having amended my attitude to the “external” reality, I discover that it becomes closer to me and “spills out” from outward inward.

Hence, the group is a sort of laboratory where we attempt to correct within ourselves the corrupted desires (Kelim) so that they would return the forfeited depth to our reality.
[26020]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/5/10, “The Matter of Shechina”

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Question: Since I started studying the wisdom of Kabbalah and entered the group, I have been feeling how my desire for sex and other worldly pleasures are growing in me. How do I work with them?

Answer: It is written, “He who is greater than his friend, his desire is greater than him.” During the entire course of our history, we have been developing egoistically; our ego has been constantly growing. In the end, we come to a state when we are utilizing all of the enormous egoism this world contains.

Therefore, people feel despair, fall into depression and abuse drugs; terrorism and other misfortunes expand. We don’t know what to do with our lives anymore. Now, we must leap further with the greater egoism in order to reach the spiritual world and the Creator.

Therefore, people who come to the wisdom of Kabbalah think that now they will be like “angels with wings,” as if wings were the only thing they lack when no worldly pleasures can fill them any longer. However, when a person starts studying, he suddenly discovers more desire for food, sex, traveling, and other corporeal pleasures.

Why is this so? The ego is increasing, and there is nothing we can do about it. Age doesn’t matter. A person can be 80 or 90 years old, and he still begins having desires as a young person would. I don’t want to advertise it or we will turn in a group of oldies. But, in truth, there is no salvation; in a person who studies the wisdom of Kabbalah, all desires must keep growing.

The foundation of all desires is sexual pleasure, the root of which is adhesion of the Light and desire (Kli, vessel), the coupling of the male and female parts of creation. For this reason, a person first experiences an increase in sexual desire to such a high degree as has never happened to him before.

Previously, he was a stable person, and all his desires were in check. However, now, they manifest in such a grotesque form that they start getting in the way of his normal life. All of this is true, and we know that as a person begins studying the wisdom of Kabbalah, all our desires and tendencies get renewed.

What do we do with this? As we may know from the wisdom of Kabbalah, we are prohibited from resisting our desires. Don’t challenge the “evil inclination” directly, as if you are about to battle it as a hero; you won’t win. Just submerge yourself in the studies, the group, and connect with them to the best of your ability so that the Upper Light could affect you more strongly. Only in this manner will you be able to go through this with all the kinds of obstacles surrounding you.

Besides, there is no other choice. All of it is designed to purify the intention and thoughts in order to seek in all of these obstacles the point of bonding with the group since your free will lies solely in it.

You are given such states so that you may forevermore settle in your choice, even on the foundation of all the desires for wealth, sex, family, and other pleasures of the corporeal world. On this ground, bond with the group tighter and realize your only free choice.

You don’t have the power to fight your desires. Don’t be a fool and start a war with them. After all, you are not the one in charge; it isn’t your job. You are given external conditions so that, thereby, you could exercise your free will to a greater extent.

This must be understood while facing any predicament in our life. Act normally in our world; there should be no change in home, family, vacation, and health. However, all your attention should be focused on your only free choice.
[26030]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/5/10, “The Freedom”

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“Introduction of The Book of Zohar,”Article “Flower Buds,” Item 5: The flower buds are the patriarchs, who entered in thought and entered the next world, Bina, and were hidden there. From there, they came out in concealment and were hidden in the true prophets. Joseph was born and they hid in him. Joseph entered the holy land and erected them there, and then they appeared in the land and were revealed there.

Our entire connection with the spiritual world goes through the Partzuf of Nukva of the world of Atzilut. The broken souls raise their MAN, the request for correction, toward her.

A person with a point in the heart aspires toward the spiritual world, and spirituality is bestowal and unity. Because of this, he strives to unite with others, and he is given the opportunity to do this in the group.

When a person carries out the condition of ascent and creates a Kli (vessel), he connects with Malchut de Atzilut. She raises the common appeal of the friends to Zeir Anpin, and He gives them the Light that Reforms. Then, the souls that wish to become one whole ascend the degrees of unity.

First, they rise to the state of conception (Ibur). Here, they unite through nullifying themselves before one another. Each lowers his head before the environment and becomes “like a fetus in its mother’s womb.” Then, they reach the nursing degree (Yenika, drawing of sustenance) where their unity becomes stronger. Now, they become able to work with their desire to receive pleasure, and rise above it.

Then, the souls move on to a grown state (Gadlut, adulthood). The degree of their unity enables them to connect with Zeir Anpin, and this degree is called Yesod de Gadlut or Joseph.

This helps us understand the story described in the Torah of how Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers. These events unravel around our fight for unity, for us to attain the mutual guarantee to the degree that is sufficient for revealing the Creator between us.
[28446]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/2/10, “Introduction of The Book of Zohar,” Article “Flower Buds”

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The world is entering a qualitatively new period of development, and Israel is becoming the leader in it. This has not happened before because we were in the period of "exile." Now we have entered the time of “redemption.”

“Redemption” means similarity to the Creator, becoming closer to Him and revealing Him, discovering the laws of nature, and attaining harmony with it. To reveal nature means to accept all the upper laws in order to observe them.

All these laws must begin to be realized in human society and within us through our own efforts. In other words, right now we do not need to work on anything besides our similarity to nature, the Creator.

Meanwhile, we are going in the opposite direction, and we do not want to listen. This is the source of all the catastrophes. Before, suffering was revealed in a simple manner to just slightly push us ahead. However, today, it works in a direction opposite to us, against us.

Before, suffering was like small pricks from behind that would turn us in the right direction and stimulate us to develop faster, but they worked together with your own aspirations. They simply rushed you, like a donkey who is pricked with a sharp stick. Now, anywhere you try to advance in development, nature faces you head-on and hits you straight in the face. Do you want to continue your old journey? No way! By doing this, you will attract more problems. As it is written: “Sit and do nothing is better.”

In other words, we must begin correction, and, in this world, Israel is the conductor of correction because it possesses the method. This is why Israel will continue to experience more and more problems if we do not advance properly.

Here, everything depends on us. First of all, as we see the catastrophes that are happening, we need to draw the right conclusions. These are not “accidental events.” In nature, everything is connected, and everything has a reason.

If we are going into a head-on opposition to nature by becoming opposite to it, which has never happened before, we should hurry with correction. Instead of being opposite, we need to come to similarity and do what the Creator, nature, wants us to do: attain harmony, connection among us as one man with one heart, and achieve brotherly love.

When we achieve this, all the disasters will disappear, and all the nations will begin to support Israel. We will become the center of correction of the world. If there is hatred of Israel in the world, it is only because we have the method of correction, but we are not fast enough to realize it and disseminate it around the world.
[28608]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/3/10, Special Talk on the Tragedy in Northern Israel and Balance in Nature

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Question: If the Creator always resides in our mutual connection, how can we unite and at the same time, forget about the Creator and stray off the path?

Answer: What forms of unity could divert you from the path? All kinds of them! The Russians tried to do it, didn’t they? They did. Fascists tried (“Fascio” in Italian means “unify,” “tie in a bunch”), didn’t they? They did! Kibbutzim, Sparta, armies, vegetarians, fundamentalists, and so on are all various forms of association.

This is why unification has to be thoroughly scrutinized, analyzed, and implemented not by us, but by the Upper Light. First of all, we must keep the principle of “I am the First, and I am the Last,” “The end of an action lies in its initial thought.” I must advance toward the Creator and not simply strive to achieve love and bestowal between us in a secular fashion.

We should be dominated not by the force of egoism, but by the force that is above egoism since all advancement occurs by way of “faith above reason,” above hate and not within or with the help of hate.

We hate each other, but there is someone we hate even more. Therefore, we unite, and our general hatred mutually connects us to even greater hatred for a third party that we wish to destroy.

There is a great margin for error here. That is why we have to employ the Torah, an instruction that always leads you to the Light; and it is the Light that corrects you, not you yourself. Neither in the mind, nor in the sensations, nor in any action on the way to correction, do you ever use what is in you except the Light that Reforms. You have nothing to add to it except your effort to annul yourself.

If you annul yourself, you give the Light an opportunity to work on you and make out of you a correct future form. Otherwise, the Light will make the wrong form out of you so that through suffering you would discover the correct method you hadn’t understood previously.

The Light affects you all the time. The question is whether the Light and desire are opposing each other or not, and you are the one who determines that.

This is the deciding point, the point of free will. Only the group can help you to place yourself under the Light correctly. While the Light illuminates constantly, you have to continually examine yourself in the group.
[25010]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/22/10, Baal HaSulam, Letter 17, 1926

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Question: What does it mean to nullify yourself before the group? Is self-annulment not renouncement of egoism?

Answer: Self-annulment is not cancellation of egoism. I “annul myself” before my manager who tells me what to do, before the police, and even before my own children. When my children demand something, I nullify my desire to rest and take care of their desires.

In reality, I am not nullifying anything. I simply trade one trouble for another. I prefer one thing to another, leaning on healthy egoism. This is not freedom of choice.

When I understand that I should cancel myself before the group since I will reach more in it, it is not self-annulment. This is a good egoistic calculation. The real self-annulment happens when I know that, egoistically, I do not need this. After having completely checked myself, I do not find any benefit in this, and still I rise above my reason and feeling.

We are gradually coming to this. And everything else is carried out “within reason.” I choose the group because it is better for me to be in it than on the outside. Many people go to different clubs according to their interests because it is worth it. Religion is also based on personal benefit.

However, the wisdom of Kabbalah is based on principles that are opposite to egoism. Here, we do not choose something that benefits us. Even though in the beginning we seem to strive toward the lesser evil and even goodness, which is defined as eternity and perfection, still, on the way, we ascend over egoism. Then, one must reject himself and join the desire of the group.

Like a commando brigade, we selflessly carry out the common task in order to reach something. At first, we act purely egoistically, but with time, one realizes that he must reject himself because the common strength, the common unity, is preferable to any personal success.
[24792]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/25/10, “Show Me Your Honor”

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Question: What is the mind of the group and how can I understand it?

Answer: What we read in the articles, what we speak about, sing about, and study, what we imagine as our unity, meaning the desire and aspiration it has to be imbued with, the thoughts that should preoccupy the group, all of these things are the mind of the group.

The group is like the Creator. It is our unity. When we are one, we see that there is none else beside the Creator, the Good that Does Good. This is the way we describe the Upper Governance that leads us towards the goal.

This becomes revealed through unity, that is, the “mutual guarantee,” when everyone becomes sealed together on the way to the goal, and everything that happens only pushes us towards it. The goal is the kind of unity between us when we reveal our integrated interconnection, the single system of Adam. There, we all operate like the cells of a body, in mutual harmony.

This harmony, this law, the mutual bestowal, the reins between us, is the Creator (Boreh), which comes from the words “come” (Bo) and “see” (Reh). The “Creator” is what we attain in the connection between us; He is the flow of our common life.

This is where all the thoughts and desires of the group come from. I am a separate cell, while the group is a live body, Malchut of the world of Infinity, Shechina, something that contains the spiritual application. This is how I should be imagining it.

The group is Malchut, Shechina, that is, the “place,” the common desire, where I reveal the Creator.
[24800]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/25/10, “Show Me Your Honor”

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Question: When studying Kabbalah, how can I can be sure that I don’t “philosophize” about concepts that I have not actually attained, such as love, adhesion, unity, and bestowal?

Answer: If a person studies the wisdom of Kabbalah from authentic sources, receives proper instructions, and clings to the teacher, a true Kabbalist, then he can’t fantasize. He can only compare himself with the Light that Reforms.

He is already developing the correct approach and knows that it is the only source of life. He learns in order to attain the desire to bestow, thereby attracting the Light. Although he hasn’t come to study the genuine spiritual world yet, he is working with the group as in a laboratory.

In a group you’ll discover what an egoist you are. On the other side, you will attract the Upper Light which will begin to shine on you from afar, making you see your properties against the Light. You’ll suffer because you’ll want to be like the Light, but you’ll realize that you cannot. This tension, the gap between the desired and actual, will bring you to an outburst, and then you’ll pray to the Creator for help. That’s when you will receive the force of bestowal.

From that moment, you will become a Kabbalist and begin to explore the spiritual world. Then you will be able to taste, to a small extent, what differentiates the receiving and bestowing forces.

You’ll become a research scientist, exploring yourself and the Creator, which is actually the same. It will be possible since you will both share a common “area” that will be within your reach. Thus, you’ll have the opportunity to explore the spiritual, the “human” degree.
[29857]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/15/10, “A Handmaid that is Heir to Her Mistress”

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