Question: There are a lot of new people who are used to studying virtually. How can we describe to or give them a taste of the sensation of conventions so that they would come to the convention?

Answer: First of all, whoever can come should necessarily do so. If a person is given such an opportunity and he doesn’t utilize it, it harms him since he as if disregards an opportunity to connect. And he shouldn’t try to convince himself that it will be better for him to stay at home or with his group. If he can come to the convention, even if he is the only one from his entire group that doesn’t stay behind to participate in a mirror convention, he should still come, whoever can come should come.

Second, it is necessary to create certain conditions the way we did in the past, both during the convention in the Arava desert and the European Congress in Vilnius, meaning we should hold big mirror conventions.

Besides, we will broadcast from Bogota, Santiago, and other cities. There will be lectures for the 99%. So we will be in touch anyway, and you will feel this connection.

Question: How advanced should we be in order to come to the convention?

Answer: Not at all. You simply have to wish to be there, and then—you are invited.
[76229] 
From a Lecture on Unity Day Around the World, “Preparation for the Congress” 4/22/2012  

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Question: How can we make the convention in the U.S. unique so that it will connect the groups in America into one?

Answer: I don’t know whether we’ll succeed, but I have great hopes because the time has come.

Unfortunately, our friends in the U.S., even those who finished their studies at the Education Center and live in different places, still don’t understand or don’t see a need to unite. Quite possibly, at some point we need to organize a separate convention for them. The management of our Education Center in St Louis should take care of it.

Perhaps people didn’t study enough material on the importance of unification, about the fact that they can discover what they have learned about the upper world—how it manifests, becomes revealed, and is sensed in a person—only in unity, that is, not in a single person, but in a connection between us.

Where is this connection? Do they aspire to it? If they don’t yearn for it, they will not sense it. So they finished some theoretical course, and it all ended there.

Most important is practice, a practical revelation of the upper world for oneself. They are not doing it. Meanwhile, life is getting worse all the time. It pushes us towards unification, but not through the wisdom of Kabbalah, the good path, but through the path of suffering. I think that they should understand that after having a theoretical basis, it is best to realize it in practice, and so come to the convention.

I invite you all. Those of you who finished courses at the Education Center and live in the U.S., I would very much like to see you at the convention. Let’s make the most of it!
[76226] 
From a Lecture on Unity Day Around the World, “Preparation for the Congress” 4/22/2012 

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Question: What is a convention for you?

Answer: For me, it is a desperate, serious work, tension, and great joy—everything together. It’s because I see how every second this huge general desire is boiling in a “pot.” And this desire works, even if people don’t realize it yet, and reaches the boiling point inside. I feel this, and all of it fills me and gives me strength.

Imagine, after a convention my hair gets darker. That is, there is an influx of energy there, and it actives all sources of life. So come to rejuvenate!
[76223] 
From a Lecture on Unity Day Around the World, “Preparation for the Congress” 4/22/2012 

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The Book of Zohar, “Bo (Come unto Pharaoh),” The Passover Sacrifice, Item 189: When the Creator came to Egypt, He saw the Passover blood written on the door, and the covenant blood—how they were standing at the door.

Question: How can I keep the right intention while reading The Book of Zohar?

Answer: There is no doubt that I can’t keep the right intention, but I need to imagine the state I want to be in now.

First I need to totally detach myself from the voice of the announcer, as if I don’t hear anything. I know that I am connected to a pipe through which the Light flows unto me and it can either help me or harm me: it can become the “elixir of life” or the “potion of death.” It all depends on how I hear!

It is as if I put on earphones, but I turn the volume down and don’t want to hear. First I want to know what energy, what force, reaches me through these channels, how the Reforming Light should influence me. Do I receive it like a bat and sink even more deeply into the darkness, or like a rooster that expects the dawn? It all depends on my intention and so I have to clarify this first.

So first I block my ears in order not to hear anything. What should I do now so that the Light that reaches me will heal me? I don’t want the snake that is the symbol of medicine, to turn into a real snake and poison me with its lethal venom. The same poison can be used as a medicine even though it comes from the same source, from the same snake. In order to do that I have to prepare myself, to be in a group together with the friends, to want to connect with them in my heart and soul to become one man in one heart, to attain such a love into which we can all dissolve and feel ourselves as one whole.

To the extent that we can reach that by the Light that Reforms us into one body, we will feel the force that unites us, the Creator, internally. We will feel the source of the Surrounding Light. The Light determines the connection among us. The source of the Light is the Creator who is revealed in the vessel that is arranged correctly.

First I have to imagine this whole state accurately. When I see it before me by imagining it emotionally and even visually, I gradually begin to unclog my ears. Then I turn on the volume in order to hear the announcer’s voice, as long as I can keep the image I have created in my mind. But if what is going on disturbs me from keeping that image, I turn the volume down again. If it doesn’t disturb me, I follow that voice.

I try to hear the announcer and no matter what is being said: whether it is about Passover, the blood of the circumcision on the door, the details about the exodus from Egypt, I try to find all these discernments in that image in which we are all connected.

I don’t depict the image according to the corporeal meaning of the words which the “language of the branches” uses, but rather translate them into the “language of the spiritual roots”: Sefirot, Partzufim, reception and bestowal, the connection between us and the Creator, and the unity of the concepts “Israel, the Torah and the Creator.” I immediately get rid of the actual words, as from an unwanted shell. It is as if I clean the shell off the nuts before I begin to eat them, and thus I get rid of corporeal concepts and immediately move on from the branches to the roots.

I try to imagine what it looks like in the spiritual roots: what is the meaning of “lintel,” “Mezuzah,” or “blood.” Even if I don’t understand, it makes no difference. The main thing is my efforts, wanting to know what is being studied, to connect to what is being studied. The Reforming Light influences me according to my efforts.

We must constantly repeat these exercises over and over again, in every book that we study: the articles of Rabash and Baal HaSulam, The Study of the Ten Sefirot, The Zohar, the Mishnah, Shulchan Aruch, all the books are about how to connect the broken vessel.
[76148]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabblah Lesson 4/22/12, The Zohar 

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The world is the picture, the hologram that the Creator displays for us today, and we are in it. We are involved in this illusion, and it is the reflection of our inner qualities.

Looking at the world, I see my reflection and can tell from what inner qualities I am made up. I like this person and that one not so much; this is like this and another like that, etc. Hence, all these qualities are inside me. Each of my little qualities draws a certain image for me: each of us, everything in the world from the still, vegetative, and animate nature.

That is why if I see something negative around me, I see this deficiency in me; otherwise, I would have seen only the absolute even upper Light.

Of course, we are very far from this degree. But we can approach this state and reveal it only if we are seriously engaged in self-assessment of what we see.

Therefore it is said that the world was created only for the absolute righteous or absolute sinners. When a person admits that he’s a sinner, he understands that he’s opposite to the Creator. When he sees and justifies everything—only if he doesn’t lie to himself, but really sees the world full of everything good, kind, perfect—then he’s directed to the Creator and is called an “absolute righteous.” If he has a mixed assessment, a mixed view of the world, then his state isn’t fully conscious. He’s missing the realization of evil and should continue to work on himself.

It turns out that everything depends on our clear perceptions: if I feel good in the world, or if I feel bad.

By the way, I hear from many of our friends that they were expecting something greater from the convention. They thought that now they would “grow wings” and would be raptured away.

That is, people who have been studying for several years don’t understand yet the essence of our correction. And this is natural that they don’t understand! In no way I am laughing at them or blaming them. I know what school I went through, and how difficult it was, very difficult! People don’t realize that they have to correct, no matter how paradoxically it sounds, their attitude towards the world.
[76114]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/25/2012, Lesson 5

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Question: How do we plan to inspire all of humanity? For instance, my husband is not interested in anything other than soccer.

Answer: I don’t think that you are unable to influence your husband. After all, a wife always influences her husband. His opinion will change. A woman knows how to make this happen.

The ability to influence a man was purposefully given to a woman. If it were not for her influence, men would simply be lost. It is indeed so because without a woman’s desire, which a man realizes in life, he would realize his own desires simply like a child. It would be something odd.

The reality is that the world stands on female desires, the desire for a home, family, children, and all things that are serious and necessary for our lives. This is first.

Second, what does it all mean in regard to the world? We serve as intermediaries between the world and the Creator. We have to show and explain to the world our method, which brings a person closer to love and bestowal and makes him correspond to the upper Light, the general force of nature.

We can base it on the opinions of thousands of scientists who research nature and discover a singular global quality through which nature connects elements, creates life, and operates it. If we explain and disseminate this to people, we will reduce the world’s suffering. The world will move toward goodness, connection, and life.

However, if we don’t do this, we will experience even greater suffering. We have no choice but to disseminate the method of the correction of man, of human nature, to the world. If we want to, we will accomplish it. We simply have to give it importance.

We can think about love and bestowal only when we actually disseminate the method of correction. Let’s try together.
[75935]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/23/2012, Workshop 1  

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Question: During our work at the workshop, I had a feeling as though I was a guard for my friend. Is such a state justifiable? Or is everyone equal in a circle and has a right to make sure their friend is not diverting from the goal and from the topic of the workshop?

Answer: I have to perceive the group as something absolutely perfect: an eternal, infinite, and perfect system. I enter it as a small one into something huge that is forming me.

If being in the group I see or hear something unpleasant from my friends, something that seems to be bad or imperfect, I have to understand that this is because I am this way. In other words, the Creator sets me up so that I would perceive everything precisely in this way. He is playing with me since, as it is written, “there is none else besides Him.” I have to justify Him and say that I perceive everything in the negative way because of my incorrect properties.

If I exist in connection with my friends, I cannot see anything negative in them, but only perfection! Everything else is either my or the Creator’s fault.
[75945]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/23/2012, Workshop 1 

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Zeir Anpin is an upper mechanism. Whereas Malchut is my system that I can build together with the friends, that is, with the desires of the Creator that He arranges for me so that I can connect with them.

There are types of desires that do not belong to me; they are foreign desires, but they are also aimed at the Creator like me. I don’t look at their faces but only at the desires, or sparks.

Then I perform different external actions in order to unite us. I want to collect all these desires, all these small vectors into one bundle so that they will become powerful. When they are together, it’s impossible to break them as it is when they are separate.

We connect when each one annuls himself in order to attain the greatness of the Creator, the greatness of the attribute of mutual bestowal. We create it among us in order to show ourselves and the Creator that we are ready for bestowal and want it. Although it isn’t in our power to attain it and we can’t really bestow upon each other by annulling our ego, we still show the most we can reach in our group.

If we make such efforts, the Light that Reforms appears and fulfills the connection among us. Then from this connection (Malchut), we feel the attribute of bestowal that connects us with Zeir Anpin. Thus we discover the Creator: Yesod of Zeir Anpin connects to Malchut and Malchut begins to attain Him.

Malchut doesn’t connect to Zeir Anpin only by a point any more. It begins to open the attributes of bestowal inside it, which befit Zeir Anpin and at the same time are opposite from it because they cooperate with each other. Zeir Anpin and Malchut connect so that the upper Light is revealed between them: the Light of Hochma and Bina, the Light of AB-SAG, and thus we come to consciousness.

Everything depends on how we prepared Malchut. Accordingly, as much as a desire suitable for Zeir Anpin appears in it, it begins to grow together with Malchut. It absorbs its desire and thus grows.
[75950]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/18/2012, The Zohar  

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Question: How can we correct the situation when the heart doesn’t agree with the good intentions that I understand in my mind?

Answer: We are not the owners of the heart, the environment controls it. If I want to think about something serious and sublime, I take a book or watch a movie, or talk to myself. But if I want to change the desire in my heart, I need external influence.

It all depends on how I arrange my life. You have to regard ordinary life like a theater, that is, to give it only as much importance as necessary. I have to go to work and lead an ordinary life like everyone else. Yet I don’t treat it as my real life, but rather as a theater play, in which there are actors who play their role as was determined by the Creator and they’re not even aware of it.

The one thing that can really influence me is the group. In all of reality there is only this one tool, which I can influence and which can influence me. I can prepare myself to have a more sensitive perception of their influence and then I will get it.

So, all my work is concentrated only within the group. There’s no other way to change a person’s heart. Sometimes people think that it’s possible to study and to disseminate more and thus to advance. But the study is no substitute for the group. A person’s advancement is only possible through the group.

The group can be very big or very small or even virtual and not physical. But in any case I have to be around people who are like me, towards whom I can practically annul myself, give them presents, respect them, and see them as the greatest in our generation. I have to act before them by seeing myself as a total zero, as dust under their feet. Then through the group, the Light will influence me because I annul myself. This is an actual annulment and not some imagination like in relation to the Creator in front of whom everyone is ready to lower their heads. 

Then I will see to what extent these actions are efficient and how they could have helped me if I had done them many years ago. I don’t understand why I haven’t heard about this until now. After all, it is so simple. In fact, I did hear but didn’t carry it out. It takes a long time until a person finally hears and begins to do something.
[75953]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/18/2012, The Zohar 

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Try to constantly see two states: the real state that you see and the desired state. Most of the time we are in a rather latent state, and the way a person sets himself depends upon him. If you are given positive or negative awakenings from Above, you begin to act. But if you are not pushed from behind, you are half asleep, like in a dream. It’s here that the major work is concentrated, the search for how to spur yourself on. This is in order to see your state in the true Light and to imagine the desired state, so that the gap between them will show you how wrong you are and how much more there is to do. Then you begin to look for the means to change your state.

It all depends on the awakening from below, but you get the energy for that from the outside because there is nothing in us except for a machine that wakes up under the influence of an external force. Just like an engine that operates only if it continuously receives fuel or electricity. The moment the energy supply is cut off, it immediately stops. This operating energy can come from the actual source, from the Creator, and oblige our engine to run, or it can come when a person summons it by himself. This is the human part of the engine, when a person connects himself to the electricity network and operates himself.

You can operate yourself only by the group, by the equivalence of form. The more adaptable you are to the upper energy source, the electricity supplier, in bestowal and in a desire to do good to others and the Creator, the more easily you’re able to connect to the source of electricity, to the Light. And then the Light will influence you and operate your engine.

The energy of life always comes from the outside, from the Light. We constantly receive a tiny spark of vitality that revives us and enables us to exist. In addition to this spark, we receive an awakening from Above, according to time, to different periods, and to individual and global changes that one must go through.

Everything always depends on our awakening below which is the main part. All our advancement is by the awakening from below, all the 125 steps we have to go through, as we perceive a deficiency on our part. We have to operate our machine ourselves, by yearning for bestowal. By operating this way we advance step-by-step and each time our actions become more qualitative.
[76044]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/23/12, Writings of Rabash

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