A group is not a union of individuals but a union with the Creator; otherwise, it is not a Kabbalistic group. I come to this group exactly because the Creator resides within it; if not, why do I need all these people? People always unite by interests, and what can a Kabbalistic group give us? It can give us the Creator! And this is the only reason I come here, in order to find Him in the connection between us.

This is regarded as: “Israel (I, who aspires to the Creator; Isra– directly, El– the Creator), the Light of correction (the Torah), and the Creator (the root of all) are one.” All three of these components must become one in order for me to achieve them. This is the reason I come here, and it defines all actions I perform in the group, as well as my attitude to the friends, and absolutely everything else!

It turns out that I relate to this very notion of the group as to the Creator because He resides there within it! But I am not able to focus my eyes on Him. He keeps getting blurry for me, and I don’t know where He is. I can’t catch him with my targeting device.

Yet, I am told that if I look at it through the group, it is aimed precisely at Him, with the result correctly targeted. Therefore, I value the friends as much as I value the Creator; after all, only through them am I able to reach Him. Besides, it is written: “From the love of created beings to the love for the Creator.” In other words, if I achieve love in the group, then as a final result, I will undoubtedly reach Him and attain love of the Creator.

I can’t work on love in relation to the Creator since I don’t see whom I must work with. Therefore at each stage, I attain love for the Creator by working on love for the group. Otherwise, I cannot study the Creator: I imagine Him according to my correct attitude to the unity with friends. I build and uncover this form myself. If not, why do I need to come in the group? I do so only because they are selected by the Creator so that through them I could approach Him. That is why I love them! They are my salvation!
[24549]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/22/10, “The Freedom”

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A person who is thrown into darkness loses all connection with the previous state of ascent. If the Creator then shows mercy on him and awakens him with Light, this does not mean that the person performed a correction. If, however, he awakens on his own with the help of the group, then he really does become corrected.

During an ascent a person prepared the right way: He put everything he possibly could into the group, using it as an “inspiration fund.” The efforts he made enable him to keep the connection during a descent. Now, by grabbing onto the end of this string, a person can awaken and through the group attract Light, energy, understanding, and faith above knowledge. Thus, he will start coming out of the descent towards a new ascent.

By means of the group a person always has the opportunity to renew the unity. Unlike the unity of the forefathers who were unable to receive the Torah yet, our unity directly connects a person to the group. This is where one’s free choice lies: to start working with the help of the group and equalize the descents with the ascents.

It turns out that at the end of the day, our entire freedom is realized in the group. A person actualizes unity only with the help of the group.
[24922]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/26/10,  “600,000 Souls”

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The group is a chef and you are a burger in a frying pan. If you give yourself over into the hands of the group, it will bring you to the necessary state and you won’t get burned. The group constantly flips you over, putting different sides of you under the Light, and the Light influences you correctly, each time affecting the necessary part in the necessary direction.

From the lesson on 10/22/10, Baal HaSulam’s Letter 17

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Spiritual Simulator: Questions of the Day

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Question: What should I do to acquire strength and demand correction?

Answer: For this a person needs to have the correct idea about a network of interconnected desires or sparks, realize that they must work together and find between themselves the force regarded as “the Creator.” This force has left that place because in the connection of sparks there is no reciprocity, unity. But a person paints the picture of interconnection again and again, thereby summoning the Light from the corrected system.

It is just a game as of yet; a person is not expected to do spiritual work but to exert effort. He may even break things but at the same time, learn from it. A child doesn’t learn unless he breaks something. He has to take a toy apart in order to find out what’s inside it.

It is the same on the spiritual path, although in this case, we should aim at creation, at ascent. We deal with the broken system of ties between the souls more and more. In fact, we uncover nothing but that.

Within this network, we will see the mechanism that acts from Above downward. It unfolds and comes closer to me in my understanding and awareness from its central point, Malchut of the World of Infinity. This is the system of the worlds. After the breaking, it corrected itself and lined up before me so that I, with its help, undergo all the stages of correction that are programmed in it.

Thus, the system is already within me, we are all interconnected and unified in the state of the final correction (Gmar Tikkun). I only need to find myself in the correct unification and discover the force that is called “the Light” or “the Creator” between us.
[24287]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/20/10, “The Matter of the Slanders”

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A person’s advancement depends on his ability to ascend above the sensation and his previous mind by separating from them and always holding on to the Light, the Creator. However, this is impossible during a descent since the Creator disappears from one’s sensation and awareness. Then only the group can help a person by holding him on the level where he keeps the right attitude or the right perspective on what is happening to him.

That is why it is so important to be connected with the group, with its mindset and approach. The group never loses understanding, willingness, and a connection with the Upper One. It always knows that there is no one besides Him, who is Good and Does Good.

If a person absorbs the spirit of the group, then he quickly goes through all the states and always benefits from them. As he checks his sensations in his egoistic desire, he adds to them what he feels and thinks higher, above the desire. And that is something that comes from the group.

As a person advances along the path, he starts to understand that there are two fundamental elements inherent in his perception:

1. Inside the egoistic desire his thoughts correspond to the sensations; his mind and heart are unanimous.
2. When he shifts to the desires and thoughts of his friends in the group, he analyzes himself and builds faith above reason.

Everything depends on what a person identifies himself with and where his point in the heart is: below or above. That is one’s free choice.
[24778]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/25/10, “Show Me Your Honor”

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Question: How can we practically use a “prayer of the many” at the convention? Which thought and what kind of attitude toward others should I hold during the course of the convention?

Answer: 7,000 people will arrive at the convention. This is an enormous force! If these people begin to connect even slightly (certainly, to the extent of their individual abilities since there are “big” and “small,” experienced and beginners, among them), if they simply want to be part of this process, this is enough. This is because in spirituality, the quality of the force is more important than its quantity. When there is one guide who knows the way, everyone else follows him, and he brings everyone to the goal.

We already have a large and experienced group that has been studying for 15 years. These people know and understand what needs to be done. And even if another several thousand new students will join, this does not matter because the spirit comes from the top of the pyramid. This is why everyone joins one direction and “many” become “one,” “like one man with one heart.” We know that this is exactly what happens based on our experience at previous conventions.

During the convention, everyone experiences different inner sensations: Sometimes you want to escape, at other times return. This testifies to the strength of the inner work, the intensity of the corrections and analyses that come to the person. Over the period of these three days one attains results that he is unable to attain over the course of a year. For this reason it is very beneficial to be at the convention.

Every day I give three lectures at the convention, besides there are gatherings of friends, seminars, cultural evenings, meals, and other events. All of these measures are directed towards the creation of one from many since we must become one whole in order to reveal the Creator. From this we understand what the condition of “love thy neighbor as thyself” means.

We will necessarily achieve something by acting in this direction. We cannot reach the infinite connection, but its 1/125th part, the smallest spiritual level, is quite attainable. And then we will feel that there is a small Light between us which gives the sensation of a spiritual life. In this sensation we exist above the body and perceive a different field, a different dimension in comparison to our physical senses.

All of this is attained through the connection between us, the prayer of the many. The “prayer of the many” means that I ask for the ability to bestow to many people in order to only feel the Creator in this ability.

Question: During which part of the convention can we expect this sensation?

Answer: This depends on the preparation for the convention. If we prepare properly, if we know the materials and the lecture topics, learn the songs, take part in writing the questions, and answer them, then nothing will prevent us from experiencing the mutual connection and the Upper Force that unites us towards the end of the first day.
[23542]
From Kabbalah for Beginners, “Prayer of the Many” 10/11/10

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Rabash, “Hezekiah Turned His Face to the Wall”: And Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and cried out to the Creator.

First of all, we need to strive to correct the collective Kli, and then everything else will fall into place. Every day the Shechina once again becomes a virgin, and once again we need to turn her into a vessel. It is written in the Tractate Sanhedrin: “A woman enters a union only with the one who has made a vessel.”

Every day we rise again deprived of a connection to bestowal, the group, Shechina, the Creator. This is a natural and proper way: We keep discovering vessels, and this is why every new day begins with a blank sheet of paper. We need to continue by raising faith above reason, never expecting that the property of bestowal will become important for us on its own. Of course it loses its value, and it is a good thing.

I need to be prepared and rejoice in it, rejoice in the fact that I have not forgotten that I have the strength. After all, this is a sign of the influence of the group, which immediately gives me the ability to react to my state in a proper manner.

Reception is important to me, but I realize that I should value bestowal instead, which means that I must go above reason in order to increase the importance of bestowal. So I look for the force to rise above the egoistic calculations in the external means, not inside of me.

One must not wait until egoism realizes the importance of bestowal since it will never happen. Every day and every moment a person can resume the prayer turned towards the “wall” or Shechina, the group, and advance this way. If he were to test himself and evaluate his state according to the constant search for the true direction instead of his sensations within the egoistic desire, then his joy would be purposeful and would help him advance quickly.

Everything depends on how fast a person awakens for the proper prayer every coming moment. And this is determined only by how he has built his environment.

If the group gives him strength every time he falls, he adequately sees what is happening. The egoistic desire is boiling within him, but the Surrounding Lights that come through the group are influencing him from the outside.

Due to this, man always sees the importance of the goal and raises the proper prayer.
[23427]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/13/10, “Hezekiah Turned His Face to the Wall”

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We clarify everything that takes place not from the outside, but within ourselves for there is nothing outside of us. The Upper Light is simple, and we reveal it only when we equalize ourselves to it in our qualities.

Therefore, only attainment can expose all the details of perception. The realization of importance and lack thereof, our desires, high and low, exile and redemption, ascents and descents, creation and the Creator, all this is revealed only in relation to us.

Our reality is initially arranged in such a way that spirituality is unimportant to us. The Creator and the Shechina, as the place of His revelation in us, the quality of bestowal, the group in which we advance, everything that pertains to the Upper One has no importance to us.

Our desires are purposely created this way. They present us with an opportunity to create effort on the path to an opposite quality so that bestowal would become important in our eyes. Why is this work necessary? It is needed in order to reveal all the qualities of the Giver from the opposite state. And for this we need to acquire and to incorporate these qualities into ourselves.

Thereby we will change our external form from reception to bestowal. Our ” material,” meaning our initial desire will manifest externally as though it wishes to bestow. Whatever it does in regard to the group and the Creator, it will always display itself as giving. Otherwise, it won’t act at all.

Consequently, we need to ask to raise the importance of bestowal in our eyes, which is called bringing the Shechina to life from the dust. The Shechina is a Kli (vessel) in which the quality of bestowal is revealed. Shechina is unity of souls. Everyone unifies the souls in spite of the rejection, and then this place acquires a screen and the Reflected Light, the quality of bestowal, intention for bestowal. As this intention grows, we reveal more and more that the Light, the Creator, dwells in our vessel.

Thus, our whole work is conducted between two states: exile and redemption. In Hebrew these words are similar, only the word “redemption”  has the additional letter Aleph (א) which means the Creator, Light, the quality of bestowal that fills creation and ascends the throne in its desire.
[23439]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/13/10, “Hezekiah Turned His Face to the Wall”

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Spiritual Simulator: Questions of the Day

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