Question: What if the group work and studying bring me egoistic pleasure? How should I relate to this?

Answer: A person cannot make a single move without pleasure. We don’t pull anyone into a monastery; we don’t call anyone to live in a barrel like Diogenes, sleeping on the bare ground, limiting our diet to bread and water. We are talking about internal changes, which we can realize in our nature solely by the external force, the Light that sustains the life of the entire universe. Together, through our collective efforts and with correct organization, we can influence this force so that it changes the inclination in us.

Today we are approaching the moment in human development when we do this ourselves, having formed a request, prayer, intention, in advance; otherwise, the Light will do this without our request. Here we have a choice. Having realized it, we will go ahead of the wave of change, desire it, and ask the Creator to give us the force of bestowal. If we do not realize our choice, disasters will come and take it away, systematically sending us series of suffering. Then there again will be a period when we will have to understand that it’s better to head towards bestowal than to remain in reception because here we get blows, and there there will be no blows.

Thus, we begin this path with a very primitive, “cheap” degree: with the calculation of gain. After all, a person lives by egoistic feelings. Later, however, when the second force is added to egoism, something new starts gleaming between them.

Our problem is that we don’t understand the nature of the spiritual vessel, don’t see its brilliance and uniqueness. It sounds as if we just move from one power to another. “It was bad there, and I have chosen something better,” is this a choice? And what is so special if earlier, when I suffered, I cursed the Creator, and now, when I feel good, I praise Him?

We don’t feel the point of freedom hidden in the middle of Tifferet, where we can act based on understanding (Daat). After all, “Man” is the Sefira Daat. We build it on two authorities, and then we begin to understand that the Creator has given us the highest “supernatural” gift that does not relate either to the nature of the receiving desire or to the nature of the bestowing desire.

After all, bestowal, too, is the power that obliges us to obey. But knowledge (Daat), which we form between the two authorities, cancels everything. It cancels the origin of the creature, inherent in the giving desire, and the necessity to go through the receiving desire in order to choose bestowal again and then to use both of these forces….

Daat raises a person to Keter, and thus we seem to soar above the point of creation. It’s true that we act within the parameters oriinally specified by the Light. But in the point of Daat we rise even above them as well.

Thus, a person who strives to the goal discovers that the Creator has created a special opportunity for him to rise above His own creation, ascend above the parameters, conditions, and laws acting between the two desires, between reception and bestowal, between good and evil, which leave him no choice. We rise above all this to a certain point, preceding the Creator’s decision about creation.
[75334]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/15/2012, Writings of Rabash

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Rabash, Dargot HaSulam (The Steps of the Ladder), Article 921, “The Need for the Action from Below”: The power of the influence of pleasure upon us is the rule of the evil inclination that keeps a person in exile. … If a person could give up these pleasures, he wouldn’t be enslaved to it. Therefore, when Pharaoh bestowed his pleasures upon the sons of Israel, they were enslaved to Pharaoh and could not come out of exile.

The more a person advances towards spirituality, the weaker he becomes. This is called being enslaved to Pharaoh—a person becomes weaker in resisting pleasures. He used to be a hero and could overcome his desires, control and oblige himself. But as he advances, he seems to grow weaker and can no longer oblige himself to overcome, to “step on himself.”

The whole point is that previously he worked on himself egoistically, in order to gain more and to succeed. He responded to the calls of receiving and his efforts justified it. But now, when the spiritual work deprives him of the egoistic bait in the form of a clear, “burning” fulfillment, when there is nothing attractive ahead anymore, a person loses strength, runs out of fuel, and becomes a “wimp.”

This is sign of advancement. We look at other people who are strong and self confident, but they receive fulfillment in the vessels they are working with. For us the filling should come in the vessels that are opposite our “working” vessels. How can it be: I exert myself and someone else gets the pay? Try to offer this to any man in the world and you will have to oblige him to work the way it used to be in the USSR, where it was necessary to put supervisors and policemen next to every worker so that the productivity would not decline….

Therefore, we mustn’t agree with the weakness we feel. In fact it indicates that we are advancing toward bestowal.
[75338]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/15/2012, Writings of Rabash

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Question: Do you recommend us to pretend that we already are in spirituality in order to accelerate our advancement? How do we do it?

Answer: How do we play with children? We show them how to do things. They want to become big and they play! And we often play with them.

We need to do the same. All of nature, a person’s entire growth is based only on game. Even now we play big, great people who are equal to the Creator. We want to ascend by one degree and become equal to Him. Can you imagine the audacity of this behavior?! Yes, I want to be like this!

When I wanted to become a doctor, a driver, or a cowboy as a child, I played pretend. Now we also play. Anywhere you go, play is really the method of ascending to the next degree. A person begins to age as soon as he stops playing. This is why I need to play even now without being ashamed of the fact that I do not know or understand who I am, why I need the group, and so on. We must pretend and play, and then we will achieve everything.

We are like a child who makes an effort and evokes the same upper Light; after all, the same force develops all of us. Only we now wish for it to develop the next level in us, based on the example we draw from the upper nature, and not our world.
[75379]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/23/12, Lesson 2

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Question: Should women act as if men already are in the quality of Lishma (altruistic intention)?

Answer: No! Women should not think that men already are on such a level. They must view them as children: All of us are participating in this game together. They treat men as a mother treats her children and as a wife who sends her husband off to work.

They say that there is a woman behind every successful man, and this is really true. It cannot be any other way. So we want to be some lucky men!
[75376]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/23/12, Lesson 2

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Question: There always has to be a connection between a man and a woman. When they are a son and a mother, this connection is of the son’s love for the mother and the mother’s love for her son. When they are a husband and a wife, this connection is the woman’s love for the man and the man’s love for the woman. When these are friends who share a single aspiration and goals, there needs to be sympathy and friendship between them. What kind of connection should we have?

Answer: In our world, the connection between a mother and a child or a man and a woman and so on comes from us being on the same egoistic level and trying to achieve something on it. There are only two of us who exist: a husband and a wife or a mother and a child.

But in our case, there are three of us: men, women, and the upper force—the Creator. In Him, the three of us connect together in mutual love. It’s never the two of us who connect! This is not animalistic love or a physical dependence. It ties us together only because we have one goal, and in it, all of us connect together into one common whole. This is why this is a completely different feeling, which has nothing in common with animalistic attraction towards one another.

Pardon me saying this about a mother’s feelings for her child, for example, but basically this is what exists on the animal level.

But here only the Creator and nothing else obligates us to have this connection. It is only the Creator because we demand for Him to manifest between us. We would be absolute strangers without Him. In other words, every time there is a relationship between myself and my friend, a man or a woman, I imagine the revelation of the Creator between us.
[75374]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/23/12, Lesson 2

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Question: The transition to a new level must be conscious. What exactly do we need to do to make conscious actions?

Answer: There is nothing specific we can do to make our transition, actions, and journey conscious. We only can wait for changes to happen within us under the influence of the upper Light. My efforts only evoke the upper Light, the upper energy, which affects me.

Even now I do not know what will happen to me in the next moment, even in my regular life. All this comes from the outside and is revealed from Above every moment of my life.

It is the same with spiritual work. I direct myself toward the quality to bestow, but it has to come to me and affect me, and then I will begin to understand what is happening to me. I myself can only contribute to my aspiration, but I am unable to understand.

Here, we need to be acutely aware of the fact that our drive upward, forward, is always accompanied by a question, a desire for it to actually happen. The upper Light comes from Above and provides a response. It gives us the answer since nothing can come from us. I only wait for the upper Light to manifest within us.

Since we do not have a strong enough question, desire, and drive forward yet, Ohr Makif (the Surrounding Light) does not manifest sufficiently. Is a question equal to the first portion of the Light in its intensity of desire appear in us? This is what matters.

Reaching this level means that we are reaching the threshold value of our question, our aspiration, our desire. Then, we find the answer right away. The Light always operates in a discrete manner, like inside an atom. When an electron drops from one orbit to another, it releases a quant of light. In order to lift it to an orbit, it needs to be charged with a quant of light. Then it rises and once again drops and releases a quant of light, and so forth, according to the laser principle. Nature is the same everywhere. This is why the same principle operates here.

We must rise to the threshold level.

Right now we are on one level, and we continue jumping up to reach the second level, but we are not reaching it yet. We constantly slide down, losing this level, try to rise again, and once again, we lose it. How do we jump over and rise to the next level? Once we rise to it, we will no longer descend, or fall from it.

Let us say that you are trying to jump onto a table. You jump halfway, three quarters of the way, or a quarter of the way. Every time, you fall back to the ground. Once you manage to land on the table, you will continue to stand there.

This is what we need to do. We are not willing to accept anything less than this.
[75307]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/23/12, Lesson 2

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Question: What are our first steps of coming closer to the Creator, which is the goal of the wisdom of Kabbalah?

Answer: In spirituality, coming closer is not determined by time or space, or by mechanical motions, but by changes in properties, by quality. I need to develop additional sensations within me, a whole new feeling called bestowal. Right now I perceive all of creation only in the egoistic property, in pursuit to constantly receive fulfillment and enjoy whatever is good for me, while pushing away whatever I find unpleasant.

I behold the world only through these categories of good and evil. It’s like a dog that perceives the entire world just through scents and who can tell one thing from the other only based on how it smells. It sees virtually nothing and receives 99% of its information from olfaction. In the same manner, today we differentiate everything around us only relative to our egoistic desire: black and white, different colors, tall and short, distant and proximal, pleasant and unpleasant—thousands of different properties that I perceive in this world.

I do not even realize that I make judgments only based on how good or bad I feel personally. There is a grid inside me which discerns all impressions depending on whether they benefit or harm me, and this is how I determine all the colors, distances, times, movements, as well as various objects and their behaviors—I discern everything according to one egoistic principle.

I don’t even understand this because this egoistic sensation is the only thing that I have, and I cannot recognize its presence within me since I was born with it. Everything is perceived on the grid of the detector called my desire to enjoy. Like in photography, which requires a light-sensitive plate or film, within us there is a certain screen that is sensitive to what brings us benefit or harm.

In accordance with this I distinguish various forms and objects, even inanimate things: a glass of water standing on a table, different colors, people, cold and warmth, or distances. I evaluate everything from the perspective of what is better and what is worse for me. These are such refined differences that they paint me the pictures of this world, which I see in front of me. But all of it exists only in perception of the egoistic desire to enjoy.

In order to not depend on it wholly, the wisdom of Kabbalah is leading us towards desire to bestow. And within that desire I begin to see a “reverse world.” That is, I see all of reality through the eyes of bestowal, meaning to what extent each thing is useful for my bestowal towards others.

It is written: “The Creator made one against the other,” and in revealing both of these paradigms I can rise above these two principles of perception. Thanks to this, it’s as though I rise above the entire creation.
[75255]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/12/2012, Shamati #190

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Question: Negative feelings, irritation or even hatred appear in us when we begin to unite. What is the right way to work with them?

Answer: We need to divide the world into two parts: the way it appears to me, to my egoism, and the way it actually is. What is the world like in reality?

Once we reveal it in our common desire, we will see that it is full of Light and absolutely perfect. There is nothing to correct in it. In other words, we only need to correct ourselves, only our personal attitude toward the world, our personal perception.

This is why we need to divide the world precisely into the way it appears to us through the prism of egoism, and the world that actually exists outside of us. It is simply the upper Light that is in a state of absolute rest and has just the one quality of complete bestowal and love.

This is why we need to separate these two sensations within us. One sensation is the real sensation of irritation and objections that appear purposefully so that we would rise above them and perceive the group as something absolute and perfect, where all the friends are the greatest people in the world who are absolutely corrected. I, alone, must include myself in them and be like an embryo inside a mother.

The actual things they say and their influence on me does not matter. I am given these obstacles purposefully so that I would manage to get inside through these obstacles and be inside my friends as I imagine them to be absolutely perfect in the state of rest with me inside them.
[75310]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/23/12, Lesson 2

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In exile (Galut) only the letter Aleph is missing to reach redemption (Geula). This letter symbolizes the appearance of the Creator, the actual sensation of the manifestation of the attribute of bestowal and love, which we sense it the same place where, being in exile, we craved to see it and to feel how it takes control over and fills us.

Therefore, all our work is to yearn for redemption in a true sense of the word. The moment we will picture it to ourselves as realistically as possible, as much as we can in our egoism that is so opposite to bestowal, and to the extent that we will come closer to what is called love, bestowal, connection, mutuality, and one collective heart instead of many people, to this extent we will approach redemption.

We should imagine this structure, form, desire, deficiency, and all of its details and components as clearly as we can. Everyone should think in this direction. This is all the work by which we will hasten time and reach redemption—the revelation of the Creator—soon.

We have to prepare a spiritual vessel that will enable us to reach a great desire in it and almost picture to ourselves a desirable form, a future picture, by yearning for it.
[75323]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/15/2012

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Question: How can I check that my actions are actually in order to bestow, and not an illusion?

Answer: If it truly were an action of bestowal, you would have no doubts because the Creator would be revealed in it, participating in it to the same extent that you want to bestow upon Him.

The goal of an action of bestowal is to bestow upon the Creator. It is impossible to do that without the ultimate addressee. If such action takes place, you will discover to what extent you actually bestow upon the Creator, meaning you will discover Him.

At first the revelation will be in concealment, to bestow in order to bestow. It is hard for us to understand what it is because the intention to bestow in order to bestow is Bina, an action that is detached from our desire to receive. We can somehow imagine the intention to receive in order to bestow as something opposite to us. But if it is only in order to bestow, it is impossible to understand how you can live without any connection to your desire, as if you are hanging in the air.
[75329]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/15/2012, Writings of Rabash

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