Now we desire only one thing: We wish that all of creation, meaning us, will not present any obstacles for the manifestation of the upper Light, so it will fill us without any resistance on our part. We want to make such a restriction on ourselves to give Him all the space for His revelation. At the same time we don’t exist, we are just transparent so that one single force would be passing through us and would fill us.

This is the first condition, restriction (Tzimtzum Aleph), from which to begin our meeting with the Creator when for the first time we really feel for real that “There is None Else Beside Him.”

We are transparent; we don’t exist because we have annulled our “I,” our egoism, and so now the Creator can fill everything.
[76353]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/24/12, Workshop 2

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Question: How can women create a strong common desire to maximize the ability to support the men during the convention?

Answer: To this day, we cannot explain to the women that they’re doing spiritual work just as men do, the only difference being that the style of their interconnection is somewhat different from the connection between the men.

With men, it all starts with a very simple friendship, with shared activities. They swim together in the sea, sit around, share meals, and study. With women this connection is much more complicated. But when they set a higher goal for themselves and understand that for the sake of this goal they need to unite, then they can accomplish it and achieve the goal. That is, the exalted goal becomes like a master for them, and they’re prepared to unite for its sake.

Question: Do women need to prepare for the convention in some special way? Perhaps we should do it together somehow or correspond with each other? Or should we only unite internally?

Answer: The importance of unification should be the same in women as in men; this is first. And second, they need to understand that they also need to achieve unity. Women are able to unite for the sake of a higher goal, and they need to explore and scrutinize this possibility.

The Bible tells about how Moshe’s sister Miriam united all the women together before exiting Egypt, how the women worked on themselves in Egypt, and how it was precisely that feminine part which nurtured Moses, that is, the force that then pulls us out of Egypt.

Question: What should women expect from the workshops?

Answer: The women, like the men, need to discuss all the details of unification. Let them try to do that; let them discover what is for them and what isn’t. In this manner, they will find their own path in a practical way since otherwise it won’t work.

On one hand, women ask: “Why not?” But when you offer them the work of unification, they say: “This isn’t for us!” And so a problem arises. And it’s unclear what can be done, what action to take, and how to approach this problem?

Women need to unite for a common cause, like in a huge number of existing women’s organization, where women can unite in order to achieve something not between, but outside of themselves. So let them unite in order to achieve something outside themselves as well, and for that purpose they can connect—not against anyone, but for the sake of accomplishing something. They can do it!

Question: Do women need to unite in order to achieve the goal or in order for the men to reach it?

Answer: They need to unite to attain the result together. Let them clarify this, and they will see the middle point into which they need to fit exactly to complement the men. And in no way is their work any less than the work of men; it’s actually greater.

Question: How should a woman prepare her husband for the convention?

Answer: You wash, dress, and feed him, then hand him his backpack, and let him go to school. I’m speaking absolutely seriously: Prepare him like you would a child. That is, let him know that you expect great accomplishments from him, that you hope that throughout the convention he’ll really go in the right direction with good and necessary thoughts. That’s how you get him ready. When it comes to that, a woman has what’s called the wisdom of life.

Question: How do men work correctly with women’s support during the workshops?

Answer: Men shouldn’t pay attention to it yet. Later, when we really become properly interconnected, we’ll feel the women’s influence, pressure on us.

It’s good when we can sense that; it obliges us. Let’s hope that we’ll be able to feel that too.
[76299] 
From a Lecture on Unity Day Around the World, “Preparation for the Congress” 4/22/2012     

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Question: We see plenty of faces at the convention, many new people. What should or shouldn’t we talk about?

Answer: What do you mean “plenty of faces, many new people”? Am I really interested in what a person looks like, or whether he or she is old or young?

The soul is ageless. The soul has no form. The soul is the property of bestowal. If so, I don’t look at anything else! That is why I neither notice nor remember people; I don’t recall their names because I am interested only in their internal field that they resonate around, that they emanate, but not in their looks or names. What’s the difference?

Question: In order to generate this field, what should we talk or not talk about?

Answer: You should talk only about the goal, only about the topic of the convention, only about maintaining the greatness of the goal, only about the positive, and in no way about the negative—that’s what Rabash writes in his articles.

A convention is not the place to make calculations. We do all that before the convention—take an example from me.

That’s it: The convention is starting, and we put aside all the problems; this is the past, and we should rise above it now. All our negative qualities, properties, connections, and contradictions between us, all that is left below. Now we rise above them and talk only about unification, about the necessity, about what we achieve by virtue of unity, about how impossible it is to reach it in any other way, about how we can’t reach it on our own, and hence need the upper Light.

All our work is precisely in order for us to realize that we cannot achieve anything ourselves. But this is after we perform a certain number of joint efforts and see that we aren’t able to do this. And then the upper force will be revealed in this huge frustration and huge desire, and it will perform the correction upon us, revealing the Creator within us. 

Question: What should I do if during a workshop a friend either talks too much or doesn’t talk at all? How can I relate to this correctly?

Answer: If he doesn’t talk, try to encourage him, to hug him, or to involve him in a conversation so that he participates in a discussion in some way, “breaks” a lack of contact, and makes contact somehow.

If a friend talks a lot, it is necessary to limit him because everyone should speak up, that is, the maximum number of people should speak within 2-3 minutes. He can say a couple of sentences, but they should be thought through in advance. He “shoots” them out, and the microphone is given to the next person.
[76360]
From a Lecture on Unity Day Around the World, “Preparation for the Congress” 4/22/2012    

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Each convention is like an ascent to the next degree. In the convention you receive the rudiments of new sensations, which you have to develop. If you don’t, they die away, disappear.

You saw something at the convention, you heard or sensed something new: a new idea, a new inner movement, a new relation to others, and how others help you. Later you have to realize all of it in practice.

You have to go over, and perhaps more than once, everything that we’ve covered during the convention, to internally process, pass it through yourself, like through a meat grinder, and realize it in the group, in dissemination, and in the relationship with yourself and with the Creator. You have to put it all together into one general worldview, one picture of the world, being aware that thereby you are forming your view on everything, including yourself and the Creator. All of it has to become one unified whole within you.

How can I put everything that is happening on this sphere into one unified whole? Everything is happening only in order for me to bring this sphere into balance, harmony with the Light that exists at absolute rest, and so everything else has to come into balance with it. I’m responsible for bringing this entire system into a state of balance, harmony, and similarity to the Light.

We have to form in ourselves this view of the world and then realize it.
[76292] 
From the Vilnius Convention 3/25/12, Lesson 5 

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The four hundred years of exile were given to us so that we would cry out and reach a true prayer. When you finally cry out “Help!”,  you come out of exile.

So, the conflict between the “shell” and “holiness” is about one question: Who will rule? Is it the human part in a person or the Creator that is in a person?

This is the middle neutral point called the middle third of Tifferet, the shell of Noga. The Creator rules the upper part, as it is written, “There is none else besides Him,” and below, Pharaoh, or myself.

Here in the free neutral point we have to clarify many things, because each time, Pharaoh grows stronger and denies the Creator’s control. This is after you have decided that the Creator should rule and you are totally under the domination of the Upper that does everything. For a moment I imagined this whole picture in my mind.

This isn’t easy since I am constantly confused about who the Creator is, who rules, and where my place and the place of others is. It is very difficult, here, to keep things balanced, as if standing on one leg on a high pole in a circus constantly trying to maintain balance, trying not to fall.

I need the Creator’s help here that He will give me the force of bestowal, which will make me independent of my desire to receive. Otherwise I will constantly need to stabilize the picture of reality in me that is absolutely impossible, and will have to balance on one leg on a pole like a circus performer. Only the power of bestowal can provide me with such a safety net and balance.

Thus, our point of freedom, “the shell of Noga” is revealed on the lowest level, “the middle third of Tifferet,” that obliges us to answer the question as to who will rule and “Who is the Lord that I should listen to His voice?”
[76221]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/25/12, Writings of Rabash 

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I gave a talk about how women should prepare for conventions within the framework of the program “Rungs of the Ladder.”

The host of the program was Rachel Laitman, head of the Internet Department of the Arvut Movement.

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Question: How should we relate to the newcomers during the convention?

Answer: I wouldn’t say that there is a big difference between the newcomers and veteran students. It’s because when all people incorporate into one another, the difference is always there, and in principle, in this case it’s not important how much a person knows or at what level he or she exists since this is a reflection of the entire humanity, which consists of the smallest to the greatest ones, those who already understand and maybe even partially sense the upper world. Hence most important is for everybody to incorporate into one another.

The veteran students have to help the newcomers. They have to work at full force, participate actively, and set everything into motion. We will hold preliminary talks with them on how to conduct workshops, how to talk with everybody and get them involved, and how to relate to everyone with warmth. Most important is to set an example.
[76305] 
From a Lecture on Unity Day Around the World, “Preparation for the Congress” 4/22/2012

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Conventions are the necessary step to create a unified Kli (vessel, desire). If above all our problems, contradictions, distances, and differences in mentality and understanding we try to unite, then due to the differences between us and the connection above them, we will reach a powerful desire measured by the contradictions within it and the connection above it. This is the purpose of conventions. 

I understand that there are huge problems in every group and internal distances between the groups. That is why the main thing at the conventions is to try to rise above them. Don’t destroy, but learn to overcome the problems by uniting above them by “faith above reason” or love that “will cover all sins.” Let’s cover everything within us with this “blanket” and build our common desire for the Creator above this. It should be precisely like this, at the top, above all the contradictions. 

Everything that we have passed through, all the problems, the hardening of the internal Pharaoh—everyone’s personal Pharaoh and the common Pharaoh between us—all that has been given to us from Above, from the Creator. And now we only need to think about unity, how in this unity, according to the law of equivalence to the Light, we discover the upper Light in ourselves, in our connection between us.

The conventions, consisting of lectures and various exercises on connection, are dedicated to this.
[76235]
From a Lecture on Unity Day Around the World, “Preparation for the Congress” 4/22/2012    

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Question: How can we best prepare ourselves for the period of conventions so as to create a feeling of a unified group?

Answer: We will work on this at the time of the conventions as well. To do this, we need to re-read the article “The Freedom” and Rabash’s articles about unification. We need to study again the shattering of the spiritual Kli (vessel), how it shaped our earthly perception of ourselves: We now see that we are distant from one another, existing in opposition to one another, in a growing egoism, hatred, and various egoistic desires.

We have to understand that our nature is made to be so opposite to the Creator on purpose, in order for us to rise above it specifically from contradiction, starting from the opposite state, and thus be able to sense Him, since otherwise we would be incapable of it. We begin to feel and build ourselves in similarity to Him specifically based on the contrast between our nature and His.

Hence the most important preparation is to repeat the material that we study all the time: a little bit from Kabbalah itself—about the shattering of the vessel and its correction, as well as the topic of the development of egoism from Adam till our days covered in one of the “Talks about a New Life.” In general, we have lots of materials on this subject.

But most important is to simply know why you come to the convention. You come there to participate in the general Kli, in the general desire, which we all created and in which we will sense the Creator.
[76232] 
From a Lecture on Unity Day Around the World, “Preparation for the Congress” 4/22/2012  

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Our goal is to reach a true prayer, which means to understand what we lack. It is true because it is accepted Above. This means that a deficiency on the part of the lower one and a deficiency on the part of the upper one have to be equal, the lower should ask for exactly what the upper one wants to give him.

This means that I have to feel that I only lack bestowal and the understanding that only the Creator can give me this filling: the force of bestowal and the ability to bestow, all the necessary conditions. The Creator has to reveal the desire to bestow and how to reach it inside me by showing me upon whom and what I can bestow.

This whole system of connection is called the Torah. And both the Light and our ability to bestow are included in it. But until then I have to work and first of all check what I want, what desires there are inside me, and to what extent they are all in order to receive.

Then I become included in the right environment and with its help, I gradually begin to change. I already begin to hear that the spiritual world isn’t meant for self-pleasure, but for the good of others. I realize this gradually and with great difficulty. I hear about it, but it takes a long time until I really understand this in my mind and feel it in my heart.

There is a great distance between simple awareness and actually doing something. We have to exert ourselves while in our natural ego in order to perform actions that are totally opposite to it, that are aimed at connection and bestowal. Even though it may be artificial and against my will, it is still called “above reason.”

But what can fuel my machine, what can be the reward? After all, I can’t work so that others will feel better, I don’t see any benefit in it and I can’t even move a finger for this cause, I can’t perform even the slightest action. My nature doesn’t work on bestowal energy. I don’t feel someone else’s desire as my own in a way that I can fill it and feel as if I fill myself.

In the meantime, I don’t feel anything, and it is as if others don’t exist for me. To fill the others is against my interests. So I operate mechanically, as if I bestow upon them and connect with them. Actually I do it for my own sake.

However, I understand that this is what “You labored and you found” means! I exert myself, and in the meantime the Light influences me and changes something in my soul. Gradually I begin to feel the greatness of the Creator and the importance of the environment, but it takes years to reach this internal attitude.

I advance by first realizing that bestowal is good for my own sake, and gradually I begin to perceive the importance of the attribute of bestowal itself. There are ups and downs on this path. One time I may value bestowal more and another time I may want to use it for my own sake, to enjoy the fact that I am on this path. Sometimes I don’t think about it at all, but only about receiving, and then I wonder about wasting my time and I have doubts about the whole way. So I advance by going through all these states.

The goal of the advancement is to bring me to a true prayer. I receive all the elements of this prayer from the environment. There is nothing in a person himself that can bring him to spiritual attainment. He needs a teacher that will constantly guide him, he needs a group in which he fulfills the whole process, and he needs books through which he receives the Light that Reforms.

These three elements are not part of our desire to receive and of the corporeal life. And they must be organized so that with their help we can attain the importance of the spiritual properties.

This is possible only by the Light. How can I otherwise wish for something that brings me no self benefit but only requires that I make efforts, and what is more to enjoy it. But the Light gradually cleans me and gives me this ability, and then I begin to value the spiritual connection with the Creator.

I attain a true deficiency, which is very powerful. Besides, its truth is proven to me since the Creator accepts it and responds to my request. Thus we meet Him for the first time “face-to-face,” the Creator’s deficiency connects with the deficiency of the created being.

This means that the Creator is revealed and then a person rises above his ego and begins to work in order to bestow. This whole process is divided into two parts: The first phase is the preparation for the true prayer. The moment we attain it, we begin to advance with it by gradually revealing a greater deficiency. But from the moment we attain this true deficiency our attainment of the Creator begins.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/24/12, Writings of Rabash

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