It is written, “There is none else besides Him,” meaning that there is no other force operating in the world besides the Creator. But in this case, where will a person get the forces to work? And in general, how can he make any independent action, even the smallest one, whether mechanical, material, or spiritual, in desire or in thought?

After all, there exists just one single source of energy on which everything runs, like the Sun that gives life to the entire Earth. One force gives energy to everything, to all parts of nature and in every form, material and spiritual. All positive and seemingly negative things come from one source.

It turns out that the laziness that bears down on a person, and all of the obstacles obstructing his advancement toward revealing the Creator also come from one upper force. And a person is in the middle and has to decide how to accept this upper governance, meaning how to relate to the forces influencing his desire.

The entire universe is the desire of a person who feels that there is him and that around him there are the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature, and people. But all of this, both the internal and the external, appears within his desire and comes from one upper force.

All he needs is to attach all of these forms, this entire picture to one source. And while trying to do so, a person begins to see one guiding hand in the entire process, in all of the occurrences that happen to him. In them he sees the expression of one upper governance of the Creator, who is the only thing that exists.

The Creator arranges things so we feel this single governance in the form of a multitude of forces that fight with one another, positive and negative forces that eventually unite in the middle line and facilitate the revelation of this single upper force to man.

By revealing this one force, a person begins to recognize the general program – the system of creation. And his desire, in which this reality is revealed, becomes ordered into the system of worlds. But when he properly arranges the picture of perception of reality and through his efforts relates it to one force, then suddenly, an occurrence takes place that destroys all fruits of his work.

Then he must once again work with new informational data (Reshimot) that awaken in him and must relate everything to one force, which is good and does good. Thus, by virtue of the Reshimot’s revelation from the Creator’s end and efforts from man’s end, the two work as partners. The Creator continually presents new conditions to a person, while a person has to use them to gather together this mosaic where just one force will operate and surround him.

It will confuse him, becoming revealed and then concealed again and again. And it turns out that on his end, a person constantly adds what is missing in the general picture, in this mosaic, in order to reveal the image of the Creator in it.

Every piece, every Reshimo, every state and situation helps a person to discover that everything comes from one upper force, and the forces of good and evil act together here to let him grab hold of the picture that is built out of black and white fragments. But he has to start paying attention not to the black and white, but just to his belonging to a single source from which these two forces come.

That is how he will reveal the upper governance. His objective is only to make efforts to reveal the Creator as the cause of everything happening inside of him and in the reality he perceives, in the process that he undergoes by virtue of all of these experiences.
[79711]
From the 1st pat of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/3/12, Shamati

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Question: If I already feel the importance of the Creator, what should I do in order to connect with Him?

Answer: There is a constant struggle in us over who will control: the Creator or Pharaoh, our ego. But if a person already feels the importance of the Creator, there are no doubts. He will do whatever he can in order to constantly reinforce this feeling of importance. Then his desire will focus on the Creator’s work by being free of worrying about himself.

If I think that bestowal is important, I immediately think of different ways to work in order to bestow and have no questions about what I should do. The feeling of importance opens up all the roads and all the means for me.

Before that, the desire to receive held me chained, and I worked only for it. If I discover the importance of the Creator instead of the importance of my ego, I can already work for Him.

Everything is determined by a person’s desire, which is the matter of creation. This desire can work only for what it sees as important. So all our work is to clarify what the most important thing for us is: either an old foolish king under whose domination we were born, or a poor clever child, which means the desire to bestow and the feeling of the Creator’s greatness, which we can develop inside us.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/01/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: How long should a workshop last, because a moment comes when there is no more strength.

Answer: At the last workshop, I felt that the central group warmed up and approached a general movement of beginning to work on unity only after 50 minutes. This is the lack of preparation and hope that I will create something.

I cannot create anything. I only suggest a topic, nudge, and tune everyone like a musical instrument, but you have to play it yourself. However, you cannot set up quickly and start playing.

To do this, it’s necessary to disconnect from oneself, come together, imagine everyone compressed into one tight space, and then walk a bit away, fill the vacant space with love so as to remain completely united, and start the discussion through this unity.

Here, there was no unity, no preparation for the workshop before the beginning of the discussion, although we talked about that not too long ago. However, everyone left for the break, and the break erased everything. In general, the community was not ready!

People should go to the workshop as to a special event. They should understand how to prepare for it and how to be included in it. They have to worry about every minute, if it should pass without unity through which they discuss and begin to feel what they talk about.
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From the Virtual Lesson 5/27/12, “Fundamentals of Kabbalah”

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Question: How much do I have to pay the Creator for my correction, as if I pay a surgeon for an operation? What is the work that I have to do?

Answer: All you need to do is to connect; in our world there is nothing but connection. This work is very simple. You pay with your exertion; you have to connect with everyone and love everyone in order to transcend from the love of the created beings to the love of the Creator. Try to attain the greatest rule of the Torah: “Love thy friend as thyself,” the rule that includes everything, and then you will be filled with the Torah, with the Light of Ein Sof (Infinity).

It seems so simple, but this is the hardest thing for us. You can spin around this point for along time, like a dog chasing its tail, and find that it isn’t in your power to achieve connection. You’ll find many excuses; you’ll postpone it until tomorrow and suggest different conditions.

A person doesn’t attain connection by himself; he has to yearn for it and act for it. Suppose I hug you although I don’t feel that I like you. It’s for this reason that I chose you because I feel how much my desire to receive hates this action. Then it’s the gap between the action and the desire that draws the Light and brings me a new desire.

It’s common knowledge that people adopt children and invest so much in them until they begin to love them as if they were their biological children. If a person marries a woman who has a child, he must invest in the child with more efforts than with his own child. This is because if it were my child, he would naturally feel that I am his father, but another child doesn’t see me as his father and I also know that he isn’t my child, and so I have to invest in him many more powers. I’m afraid that he may disrespect me or may hate me because he’s a stranger to me.

But thanks to the fact that I invest in him more than in anything, I begin to love him more than my own child in whom I don’t invest so much. Everything is determined by the efforts made; therefore, there is nothing else you can do but invest your powers.
[79509]
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/31/12, The Study of the Ten Sefirot

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We grow only with the help of the environment, like children who take examples from adults. To the extent that I appreciate my environment, it will serve as an example for me. If I see those around me as ordinary people, no better than me, what can I learn from them?

If I work on myself, on my ego, in order to raise the friends, I see them as the Creator’s emissaries. After all, besides a person there is only the Creator, as it says: “There is none else besides Him.” In such an environment I can grow.

I grow precisely with the understanding that there is no one else besides the Creator. I constantly have to see myself in contact with the Creator, and as a result, to check which attributes and thoughts separate me from Him in “words” and especially in “deeds.”

This is woven and becomes a request, a prayer, because a person begins to fear disconnecting from the thought and from this feeling that may be the very first, and very weak feeling of connection with the Creator. If I manage to feel the fine thread that ties me with the Creator, I have to be careful that it doesn’t break or disappear. No interruption can negate the recognition that I have that I am tied to the Creator by this fine thread.

This fear begins to live in me, and so I accept all the troubles and problems that arise in my extraneous thoughts, desires, and confusion, I take as a “helpmate.” I see that the Creator sends me all this in order to let me overcome the obstacles and to strengthen our connection.

I cannot overcome any obstacles by myself, and I must ask the Creator to help me. Then the Creator gives me power, and instead of one thread that ties us together, there are already two!

Then another obstacle comes along and thanks to it, I receive a third thread. Thus, gradually, the threads are woven together and become a thick rope that strongly ties me to the Creator.

I shouldn’t ask that “all the evils that are revealed should die,” which means that all the obstacles should disappear. Otherwise, how would I build my connection with the Creator? I have to ask that the evil be “reformed” and turned to the Creator, which means to use these obstacles, and as I rise above them, to strengthen my contact with the Creator.

If I am constantly careful to preserve and strengthen the thread that ties us together, it gradually becomes a pipe through which flows the energy of life.

At first I receive the power of life only from the feeling of my connection, but later I begin to learn its character, its different faces, its different forms. I accumulate experience: Which obstacles did I face, how did I overcome them, thanks to which request, how did the Creator arrange these obstacles in order to make them the threads that tie us together? So I learn how the Creator treats me as I turn the negative states into positive ones.

I work on this contrast of black and white: Once, I see the Creator’s angry face on the background of some disturbance, and once, His kind and loving eyes. So I begin to know Him according to these two looks, like a father who sometimes turns to his son with a loving, smiling face and sometimes looks strict, and in this way teaches him.

I constantly strengthen the connection between us, and the levels of this connection determine the levels of the spiritual ladder. At first the connection is very weak, just in order to hold on to him like an embryo in his mother’s womb. But later, a person begins to be more active, a state called Yenika (feeding). Then he becomes an “adult,” which means that he knows how to use this connection consciously; he evokes it more or less and through it receives the Light for a certain goal.

All this depends on how strongly a person holds on to the group that provides him with support, constantly learning. Then a connection is formed from the hair of these tiny threads that are created by his endless efforts not to allow this connection to break even for a moment, which brings a person to revelation. But all the work begins from the reverent fear that a person’s connection with the Creator may be cut off.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/30/12, Shamati #61

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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 138: Yet, you should know that the distance between the dresses of the Torah in this world and the dresses of the Torah in the world of Atzilut is immeasurable. …

“Dresses of the Torah” stand for imaginary pictures. In fact, there are no dresses whatsoever, but rather there exists the Light and a vessel that portrays its own “reality” against the Light to the degree of their similarity. The Light stands for absolute bestowal, and the sensation of the vessel depends on the level of its correspondence to the Light.

This is what is meant by dresses of the Torah, the wrappers that conceal the Light from the vessel, from the person. And of course, at the level of this world where one is maximally corrupt, these screens that cover the Light happen to be the greatest possible cover-ups.

Yet, the Torah itself, meaning the Light within the dresses, is unchanged at all between the Torah of Atzilut and the Torah of this world, as it is written, “I the Lord change not” (Malachi 3:6).

The Light constantly remains in complete rest; however, it descends to a person depending on one’s level. It goes through the “dresses,” which are intended to help in a way that a person acquires them, and covers his ego, and by doing so reveals the Light, since he manages to change the type of dresses from obscuring to revealing.

This is so because the concealment is the reason for the disclosure. After its correction, during the disclosure, the concealment is to the disclosure as a wick is to the light that grips it. The greater the concealment, the greater Light will cling to it when it is corrected. Thus, all these crude dresses that the Torah is clothed in, in this world, their value is not at all inferior to the Light that clothes it, but quite the contrary.

Let’s mark the Light with red and the dresses with blue. The lower we descend through the worlds of Atzilut, Beria, Yetzira, and Assiya (ABYA), the more dresses we find. The Light of Infinity is constant; everything depends on the place where the receiving person is. Of course, major dresses of the world of Assiya finally disclose the most powerful Light to a person. It is called “the opposite order of the Lights and vessels.”

Answer: Concealing screens. In spirituality, there is a law of similarity of properties: If you possess a certain negative potential (-), the Light will manifest itself negatively (-) so that there is equality between them (=). Otherwise, you are unable to stay alive.

The Light has to diminish itself to your degree. That’s why the system of worlds (Olamot) exists—the system of concealments (Alamot): The Light decreases to the extent that you can tolerate it.

Question: What turns concealing dresses into revealing?

Answer: A person does. By rising above reason, one makes a decision to create a dress and demands that it hide his egoism; at the same time, he strives to be above his ego and to rise to the level of bestowal. This is how a person acquires a screen and starts working “on top” of it.

In the same way, the fire clings to the wick: The depth of our desires, our separation from the Creator, and our aspirations eventually transcend into the Light. There is no Light on its own. Our efforts enhance the thickness of the desire, and the darkness starts to illuminate. Without the wick there is no fire since fire cannot burn in a void; it needs fuel, which will shine and illuminate as the Light.

Question: What do we need for that?

Answer: We need to accept concealment as the biggest help that allows us to gradually move on and approach the giving force.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/20/12, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: Why does it say that a person is responsible for his own exile?

Answer: Once we existed in the upper world in our roots, but because of the sins of Adam, the “first man,” who received the Light egoistically for himself, the “shattering” occurred, and we found ourselves here in this world. Instead of feeling the five stages of the world of Ein Sof (Infinity): Shoresh, Aleph, Bet, Gimel, Dalet (0-1-2-3-4) and the five spiritual Partzufim: Keter, Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin, Malchut, we found ourselves feeling the corporeal reality that is perceived through the five levels: the root, soul, body, clothing, and palace.

We feel a reality that actually doesn’t exist and we don’t know that there is another reality that is real and that was created originally. We are in exile from it, as if we were exiled to some distant foreign land, as they used to send criminals by ship  to Australia in the past.

Being in this world, a person doesn’t feel that somewhere in his homeland he has a home and a happy life. He has already gotten used to this exile! But there are people who feel that they are in exile, and who are told a little about their homeland where the real life awaits them. Then a person understands that he is in exile. He has to worry about holding on to the first piece of information that doesn’t evoke any feelings in him and to begin examining it and tightening the contact with it.

This is a very fine string that was thrown to us to hold on to, which sometimes totally disappears and is sometimes evoked in our feeling. From this moment onward, everything depends on a person’s work. The Creator has given us the end of the string, He has started the connection, but it is only possible to tighten it by a person’s desire, by his concern and fear that he might lose it.

It all depends on how important a person sees this connection without fearing any interruption. He should be ready to give up everything for it. Suppose you could call home but it costs a thousand dollars for five minutes. And you are willing to work for a whole month in order to make this call.

Then you rise to a new level of connection, and you are allowed a videoconference, but this costs ten thousand dollars. Again you are ready to work only to be able to make the call. This is how you advance until you suddenly discover that you can be constantly connected. But the advancement is made by concessions that express that you appreciate the connection with the Creator more than anything in this world, more than any possible pleasure, by acquiring a Masach (screen) over the first, second and third level, one level after another.
[79353]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/30/12, Shamati #61

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It is very important in which way we fall asleep in the evening, and even more so, how we wake up in the morning, how we trained ourselves to get up. Even a short wakeful time left before the morning lesson should be used in the most effective way in order to awaken the heart. It happens thanks to a single, common desire shared by everyone, one topic, or one song that helps all of us to aspire to one center together.

Such preparation for the lesson is necessary so that everyone will approach it in full readiness, as one.

The readiness is tested by your desire, aspiration to attain something new both in your heart and mind. To obtain a sensation of being the one who bestows, a person has to agree  to pursue the property of bestowal with all of his devotion and to refuse any profits of reception. He has to “warm himself up” a little and feel the difference between his desirable state and the real one, to sharpen his perception and readiness to grasp the deepest details.

It is very important to prepare yourself before the lesson this way. Otherwise you will be listening and will hear nothing, as if you are just beginning to wake up. And this is a great loss. A person who happened to be unprepared as if wasn’t at the lesson.

From Above, only the preparation is taken into account for us since this is where we put forth our efforts. If I am sitting and waking up at the expense of the lesson itself, then it happens not because of my personal efforts, but thanks to the environment. Such preparation is no longer attributed to my account, and hence it’s better for me to do it myself.
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From the Preparation for the Lesson 4/23/2012 

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The Creator isn’t a personality. It is forbidden to imagine anything in the immaterial spiritual world. It is a world of qualities, not even of forces in our current understanding of the word.

Today, when we think of a force, we imagine physical forces. And for the time being, I don’t argue with that. I don’t want to correct this degree of relation to spirituality because at least it gives us certain sensation of the field.

We envision a field, its intensity, characteristics, and the decrease or increase in its force proportionally to the square of the distance. This is how any physical fields expand. This gives us an opportunity to operate with at least something that exists around us in nature and technology. Therefore, for the time being we can imagine the spiritual forces and the spiritual field in this manner.

But in general, the spiritual field is a quality, a property. It’s not even a force.

However, we say the “force of reception,” the“force of bestowal,” “collision,” “mating while striking,” and so on. In other words, we speak of forces. But afterwards, we will feel that it’s simply just two properties that are interacting with each other in this manner: the property of the Creator and the one opposite to Him, the property of the creature that He made. They interact so that between them, between these two properties, man, consciousness, would arise. Consciousness—it’s what man is.

And when it comes to matter in our world, any quantum physicist will tell you that there is no matter, there aren’t even any elementary particles. Everything blurs, turns into a cloud, disappears into nowhere, and spreads like shagreen leather. There is no point, no forces, nothing, only nebulous cloudiness in the place of what previously appeared as particles simultaneously existing in all locations. That is, physicists are approaching the boundary of the physical world.

This is why it’s impossible to talk about something figurative. On the contrary, we will come to the point where all of our subsequent attainments, which we will call spiritual, meaning above-egoistic, will not be figurative, but qualitative.

For example, a dog sees the world as patches of scents. And we’ll perceive the world not as figures or images, but in a form of various qualities: greater egoism, smaller egoism, greater bestowal, lesser bestowal, interaction while striking, penetration, and so on. Only qualities! This is the upper world. And we’ll perceive ourselves in a form of qualities as well.

Even today you would like to see the essence of man and not his body.
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From a TV Program “Foundations of the Integral Society” 4/8/2012

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