Question: What does the “union of hearts” between the friends in the group mean?

Answer: From the wisdom of Kabbalah, we know that the breaking occurred to enable the correction of Malchut. Unless Malchut incorporates the desires of bestowal (the Kelim of Bina), it’s impossible to correct it. Malchut is gradually being corrected through the mutual penetration of Malchut and Bina, with the exception being its basis, “the stony heart (Lev Ha Even),” which becomes corrected last.

We correct Malchut through incorporating the properties of bestowal, Bina, into the properties of reception, Malchut. In souls, this happens through their mutual penetration until all the souls completely intermix and become corrected through the others (Israel vs. the nations of the world within each person).

Our corrections can only occur by incorporating ourselves into one another. To correct oneself means to correct your mutual incorporation with all the other parts of the common soul. The basis of correction lies only in the correction of the broken connection between us. Everything results from this: the entire group charter and the laws that we need to aspire to fulfill by following the advice of the Kabbalists that are based on their understanding of the Upper World.

All of this comes from the correction of the Kelim which need to be included in one another. This is attained through the effort to connect by attracting the Light which corrects the mutual incorporation.

All the recommendations of the Kabbalists described in their books come from the laws that define the nature of the breaking, correction, and the perfect state. When they speak about it, they say, “Unite, hold gatherings of friends, raise your friends’ spirits.” However, we need to understand that this comes from the need to become incorporated in one another in order to jointly attract the Surrounding Light that will correct the connection between us.
[22113]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/28/10, The Zohar

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A person has to aspire to fulfill himself by pleasing others rather than by pleasing himself. I fulfill you, feel your desire and how it’s getting filled, and thus get pleased myself. I become filled by sensing your satisfaction, which is why I strive to please you as much as possible, like a mother who is happy because she fed her child.

I am not willing to fill myself directly, only through my neighbor. It is not about how much food my corporeal body has consumed; it’s about the fulfillment of my soul. My soul becomes happy when I satisfy others, when I fill the Creator. Then I become similar to Him since He enjoys delighting us. If we are incapable of accepting pleasure that emanates from Him, we make Him experience the affliction of Shechina.

The Creator feels pleasure from our fulfillment; all we can do is “allow” Him to delight us. We have to reach a state at which this is all we wish for.

This appears to be a paradox: How is it possible “to get fulfilled by giving”? And this is what love is for: to connect all of us together. If there is no love between us, we just cannot be pleased from bestowal. I have to sense my neighbor’s desires as more important than my own.

For a mother, her baby’s sensations are much more essential than her own. A mother feels her child’s pain from within. This is natural love. We have to attain the same type of love with the help of the Light by allowing it to correct us. As a result, we will have the same desire as the Creator and will attain spirituality.

Imagine that you have billions of babies and you are in possession of something that can fulfill them since you have access to a channel of unlimited Light. What bliss you will experience while sensing desires of other people and their fulfillment as your own! You will fulfill yourself 620 times stronger since you managed to build love above hatred.

By fulfilling them, you feel 620 “ounces” of joy instead of the 1 “ounce” that each of them received. I connect their souls to myself and sense them as if they are my own.
[22189]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/27/10, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”

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Spiritual Simulator: Questions of the Day

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Question: What does it mean to “love your neighbor as yourself"? What do I actually have to do?

Answer: Loving your neighbor as yourself means that our entire world (the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature, as well as humanity) and our entire universe become an integral part of you, "as one man with one heart." You connect everything to yourself and perceive it as your "self." Otherwise, you don’t exist!

Our egoism separates us, but above it we must receive a force from Above, the desire and ability to feel every person as myself and even more than that. I have to feel that this is all me. However, this "me" is not an egoistic feeling because the hatred between us remains and even grows. I unite with others precisely above this hatred, and in that case they are called my "neighbors," or the people close to me.

A "neighbor" is a person whom I hate, but at the same time I "love him as myself." "Love will cover all sins" means that the previous hatred remains, but love is added above it.

In our world everything is driven by one egoistic desire, whether in reception or bestowal. In the spiritual world, however, we find ourselves between two opposite forces: bestowal and reception. Egoism grows, but the quality of bestowal emerges parallel to it. These two qualities enable me to reach the sensation that I am standing before a mountain of hatred (Mount Sinai, which comes from the word Sinah – hatred). However, prior to that I have to go through "Egypt" – the slavery of egoism, the Pharaoh. I have to come to hate it and then run away from it, searching for the force to correct it.

When I stand at the foot of the mountain of hatred toward my neighbor, I have to say whether I really am ready to unite with others, to love them above my hatred, and to become as one man with one heart. If I have gone through all the blows and plagues of egoism (Pharaoh) and I feel that I have suffered sufficiently, then I agree to it! That’s because I hate my egoism even more than I hate my neighbor.

I agree, thinking that this will enable me to reveal the Creator. Eventually, however, I understand that love and bestowal to my neighbor is what fulfills me. I no longer demand anything but this. This action in itself fulfills me, and that is how I become equal to the Creator.
[22460]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/3/10, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”

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Question: How would you describe our current state before the November congress?

Answer: I think that we are in a state of preparation for a jump; we need to join forces, demand of ourselves, and prepare and connect under pressure. If we prepare well, we will experience an inner revelation at the congress.

Even if the new students do not feel an actual revelation, at least they will experience a sensation. They will understand the essence of Kabbalah, the need to unite; illusions will fade, confusions will disappear, and everything will become one whole, one common picture; the only operating Force will become manifested, and all the “decorations” will only remain as connections between us.

This is because the world is an illusion, concealment, and I see different images in the place where I am not connected with the Creator.
[22191]
From the Talk On Unity in the Group 9/24/10

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Question: Do you feel like our development is happening with variable speed, in spurts?

Answer: It is true that development never flows evenly and in a linear fashion, there are always spurts. This is the way it manifests in our sensations because of the flaws in our work, and it will continue this way until the final correction. Good and bad periods alternate, war and peace replace one another, and we keep experiencing sudden changes. Periodicity is an inherent aspect of development.

The same applies to the structure of the Partzuf which divides into five degrees of Aviut (the depth of the desire). There is a screen and a Light on every degree; they are organized discretely and consecutively, not linearly. Everything comes in portions and drops, it does not flow evenly. This is why periods can sometimes be positive and sometimes negative; they need to be used differently. We learn this from our own experience.
[22192]
From the Talk On Unity in the Group 9/24/10

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Question: There are common laws of development in nature: birth, maturation, maximum efficiency, and dying away. Does the group develop according to the same laws?

Answer: Undoubtedly, we go through these states in our personal and group development. But the group still develops in a little different manner. On one hand, it constantly expands, but on the other, it begins to unite with the Creator once it transitions into the spiritual phase. Once its corporeal part, the desires to receive, dies away, it enters the Creator with the intentions to bestow and exists infinitely there in its root.

Certainly, the notion of the “group” eventually disappears because it becomes replaced with the notion of “Adam,” a single soul. The group (Kvutza) is still something limited; it represents a union (Kibbutz), an alliance of souls united under pressure. Once it merges with the Creator, the souls begin to exist in one another without dying away, the unity between them does not disappear, and at the same time everything becomes one whole.
[22190]
From the Talk On Unity in the Group 9/24/10

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Question: When I have a connection with someone in our world, I feel either love or hate, but what happens in a spiritual connection? What does the revelation of the Creator feel like?

Answer: Spiritual phenomena are bestowal. These relationships are reciprocal connections of bonding, love, and mutual inclusion into each other. We build a connection of unity and love between us, and then we reveal the Light that was previously concealed within this connection.

This Light corrects our connections, shapes them, and builds a “place” or a “desire to bestow” out of them. Then we reveal an even greater opportunity to bestow in this “place,” and the main force of the universe, the Creator, becomes revealed in the opportunity to bestow.

But all of this happens in the same place, within our unity, and the Creator becomes clearer each time to the extent of our new property of bestowal and love.
[22036]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/26/10, “600,000 Souls”

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Presently the Creator is concealed from me, and I am only able to search for Him inside the group which stands between me and Him, as it is written: “From love of the created beings to love of the Creator.” If I direct myself to the group and clarify all the answers through them with respect to our connection and mutual guarantee, then I transfer my desires into the group and am able to see whether their desire is to receive or to bestow.

In return, the group provides me with a feeling of the Creator’s importance, and this feeling becomes important to me whether I want it or not. I begin to believe in the greatness of the Creator and that the greatest reward is to be near Him. The group restructures the order of my values, placing bestowal and the Creator on top and my egoistic desires at the bottom.

Then I begin to work to increase the greatness of bestowal, and this feeling continues to grow until it turns into a full-fledged mutual guarantee and we all become as one. If we achieve the sensation of “one man” in even the smallest measure, then we cross the barrier (Machsom) which separates us from the Upper World. And then, according to the law of equivalence of form, we begin to feel the Creator, the quality which defines the entire universe.

The group is my only means of defining spiritual definitions such as light and dark or day and night. After all, I come to the group utterly confused, without a clear understanding of what I want from this life, what is important, what determines advancement, and what the Creator wants from me. I scatter in all directions without even realizing where I’m going.

I have no clear direction whatsoever, and only the group can help me find my way. Books alone are unable to do that for me; they may even confuse me by giving me the impression that I have advanced spiritually by accumulating knowledge and that by grasping the information in a literal sense, I will attain spirituality. I was given the group as a model of the spiritual world temporarily, in place of the Creator, and the more I realize that my advancement takes place within the group, the quicker I will advance.
[22308]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/1/10, “What is Day and Night in Work?”

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I think I feel something, but in reality I don’t have any individual feelings. Each feeling is a sum of the feelings of all souls, all of Infinity. This is called the spiritual vessel.

The spiritual vessel does not belong to me personally; it is what we reveal between us. As to what I discover within myself, it is regarded as the animate degree, and Kabbalah doesn’t talk about it. Each of us is an animal. But the way we connect with each other is exactly what is called spiritual connection. In spirituality, only the connection between us is what counts.

This connection is broken; nonetheless, it belongs in spirituality. This is why we are able to arrange a comfortable animate life for ourselves though it has nothing to do with spirituality. Spirituality starts with the discernment of our mutual connection.

It’s not just any connection, but the one that is aimed at the revelation of the Creator. I desire to know the Creator. Therefore, I discern that I need other people since from love of others we arrive at love of the Creator. This is the sole reason why the Creator broke our souls.
[21978]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/26/10, “600,000 Souls”

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