Rabash, Shlavei Hasulam (Steps of the Ladder), “They Helped Every One His Friend”: Rather, it is one person who can help another by seeing that one’s friend is low. It is written, “One does not deliver oneself from imprisonment.” Rather, it is one’s friend who can lift his spirit.

This means that one’s friend raises him from his state into a state of liveliness. Then, one begins to reacquire strength and confidence of life and wealth, and he begins as though his goal is now near him.

Rabash, Letter 34: The way is as one who goes to his friend’s occasion. He doesn’t think of himself—whether or not he is in a good mood—but must take part in his friend’s joy. He must not frown, but show a happy face.

One has to see that the friends already sense unity. And if he builds a circle, if he seeks connection with the group, if he wants to be in it, then he acquires joy and forces, both negative and positive. Everything comes to him with the necessary force and in the correct amount so that he reveals the Creator in the interconnection with the friends.

Unification with the friends is a necessary condition for receiving help. But it’s incorrect to think that the friends have to come to me themselves. First (a) I turn to them, and then I receive the strength from them (b):
a – inclusion into the group;
b – receiving strength.

[70256] 
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/19/12, “Advice for the Arava Convention”

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Question: The coming convention makes me feel fear and pressure that are way too strong. I don’t feel happiness and love, but only instructions and warnings. I don’t feel like going to the convention any more. Why have I reached this state?

Answer: It’s because you’ve never thought that a convention is not a picnic. You always came to our conventions like to a festival full of lectures, performances, dancing, and meals…. If a person awakens himself with the help of such activities, they are serious and beneficial for him. But if he doesn’t, he can simply enjoy life, without approaching what’s important.

In the past, too, people used to come to the Temple because there was always fresh meat and good wine there. While others used to come there with rather different thoughts.

Today we make people understand where they are. Everyone has to understand and agree to this; everyone should feel great fear. The Torah even describes the external signs of this state, such as ground shaking, thunders, and so on. It is really so.

At the same time, this very important situation should evoke happiness in us. You are in Gevurot (strength), but the upper level is revealed to you, if you deserve it, of course. If you don’t, here will be your burial place. So you should decide whether you should come or not.

The quality of the participants is more important than the quantity. Mass dissemination of the principle of mutual guarantee is one thing, while a spiritual ascent in the desert is something else.

If a person comes there as if to a picnic, he will cause himself great harm. He will diminish our power and will disturb us with his foreign thoughts and desires, and he will be punished for that in the future. Such a person shouldn’t come. There is room here only for those who are very serious.

I will understand if people decide to stay at home. It will actually be a serious attitude: A person is afraid, not sure of himself, understands that he is still weak internally.…

Well, so perhaps in another two thousand years you will have another chance ?
[70380]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/20/12, “Advice for the Arava Convention”

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Question: The closer we get to the convention, the more we feel the emptiness of thoughts, feelings, and powers. What does that mean and how can we work with that feeling?

Answer: This always happens before any important action, when a person loses all his previous, lengthy preparations. All the decisions a person has made and all his readiness suddenly disappear and there is a certain emptiness left, like while waiting for something.

It is true, it happens in corporeal life too. There is nothing we can do about it. It is very similar to the silence before a battle, when we know that in a short while a military operation is about to begin or even a war, but there is nothing you can do. We have been preparing ourselves, and have done everything in our power, and all that is left now is to wait. There is such a waiting period, a period of silence before the battle.

The same thing happens in both the corporeal and spiritual worlds, and it is true. It is a period when a person must make finer clarifications of the state he is going to.

It doesn’t mean that you should leave time for idleness and throw up your hands as if there is no choice and nothing that you can do, no matter what may happen. I should intensify my sensitivity, the sharpness of the clarification, up to the next level and prepare myself for finer discernments and frequencies compared to what I had before.

We should sharpen our sensitivity and try to feel what we couldn’t feel before.
[70387]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/20/12, “Pri Chaham”

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Question: In what way should our intention in the Arava convention be different from what we had before? What should we prepare ourselves for?

Answer: Our intention during this convention is to add great fear, great anxiety: What if I don’t support the general effort correctly?

Just like in a poker game, I go all-in, wager all my resources, and put all the cards on the table. I am ready to give all of myself in order to attain the Light that Reforms. I am ready to give my share and to push everyone towards the goal. At the same time, in unification with all the friends, I want to receive through them the force that will connect me not with them, but to the One above them. We must do our utmost so that love will cover all sins. We must yearn for mutual guarantee and unity.

The difference is that this time we act on our own, without the external circles, in one thought, desire, and intention. We don’t leave it, we are constantly inside. We attack not only and not so much mentally as in desire and intention.

This is what we prepare, and everything else depends on the participants. They build this state.
[70369]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/20/12, “Advice for the Arava Convention”

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Question: Can the group forbid a friend to participate in the convention because of improper behavior?

Answer: We must check every case separately. On the whole, these are the criteria:

• participating in the lessons every morning;
• paying Maaser (tithing);
• participating in the gatherings of friends,
• participating in dissemination as much as one can.

These four conditions are mandatory. If a person fulfills them, he has a place in the convention.

But we made some mitigations and we don’t check the participants according to these criteria. Many of them don’t pay tithe, do not participate in the morning lessons, and so on. Surely, these people don’t quite understand what we have in mind and what we do. However, it doesn’t mean that we won’t be able to succeed in the convention and that it will only be a “practice.”

Besides, different people come from different parts of the collective soul of Adam HaRishon, and for some of them it takes twice or three times longer to master the system. They can advance in some particular aspect, but it is more difficult for them to change internally. There are those who even become worse: coarse, careless, and so on. Don’t judge your friend until you step in his shoes.

On the whole, we don’t judge the friends according to their external behavior unless it is related to dissemination work. The main thing is that a person doesn’t show disregard.

Question: Does this mean that in the meantime these criteria are a recommendation and not a demand?

Answer: This time we don’t impose them, but a person should know that not fulfilling them keeps him behind. He can participate in our activities, but he won’t advance. He won’t disturb us in the convention, and he will feel an ascent, but not as a “man” who comes out of Egypt.

We give these people a chance to be with us, at a lower level that limits the feeling and the advancement. There is nothing we can do about it.
[70373]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/20/12, “Advice for the Arava Convention”

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Question: How is it possible to enter happiness while reading The Book of Zohar?

Answer: We have the greatest means that promises us success. If you are near it, it only remains for you to use it.

It is like you had been searching for treasure for many years, you crossed continents and oceans, and then in a remote cave you found it, and now the chest with the gold is in your hands! All that treasure is yours! You only need to use it.

We have found the treasure: The Book of Zohar, and now we only need to use it correctly, it is already in our hands.

Also to use it correctly isn’t simple. You need to invest these “gold coins” making sure that you are doing so in a good way.

We are near the force that can also transform into a great destructive force, the “angel of death” instead of a “holy angel.” That is why The Book of The Zohar wasn’t revealed to people during hundreds of years, only during our times when man is really capable of using this power for good and when all of humanity arrives at a hopeless state and must change.

Therefore, we should rejoice that this force is in our hands. And now, with great caution, we need to learn how to use it correctly.
[70357]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/20/12, The Zohar

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Question: In what way is the most delicate, the most emotional request, expressed for that single image that has to manifest between us?

Answer: Begin to think: There is one reason, one force, one desire, and the concept of “One” includes all of that. This attribute-force-thought dwells above us.

We attain it from below, from the separation between us, since otherwise, without the initial division into parts, it is impossible to attain the whole. You can’t speak about one without knowing what two are.

This is why we attain perfection from within a lack thereof. And then, as the Kli (vessel) or desire discovers an increasingly greater shattering, meaning separation from the others, as well as a greater number of differences between us and this One whole, we attain His unity more and more.

It is impossible to convey this feeling. A person doesn’t lose himself, but becomes included into a new level, that of the single Thought.

Try to describe this to yourselves. At least we are already able to talk about it a little. The more we try together, the faster we will reveal this. But this is the discovery of a real force. And then you feel everything that exists below it, in our world, like a children’s game, like something fictitious.
[70360]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/20/2012, The Zohar

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Before reading The Book of  Zohar, we have to clarify the most important thing for us and to turn it into a plea. If we think correctly, the plea will only be one, and it will be the same for everyone. This happens automatically, by itself. After all, if a person really, very seriously clarifies the most important thing, he arrives at the same plea that the others have. And then it is called a “prayer of the many.”

We don’t even have to ask each other: “What are you thinking about? What are you asking for?” Even if we express our prayer in different words, still in our inner feeling, inner clarification, it really has to be the same plea. This means that inside we feel the desire, the need, for the single, shared form for everyone.

And then this inner deficiency, desire, longing, this inner hunger, is called a “prayer of the many.” Let us try to reach this. For this we also need the Light that Reforms.
[70363]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/20/2012, The Zohar

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Rabbi Elimelech from Lizhensk, “A Luminary and the Sun”: The main thing is to unite with each friend in love, serve the Creator with the single heart, to give a hand together, to extend connection among us and solder with each other’s hearts to become one whole and serve the Creator wholeheartedly.

In general, all our work is in one action: to unite as one man with one heart, to solder with each other’s hearts to become one whole and serve the Creator wholeheartedly. This is how we correct the breakage created specifically for us in order to reveal the degree of our separation and to build a bridge of love over it.

It’s in this manner of working with the help of an obstacle given from Above, the height of a bridge extending over the abyss of our egoism, that we build our common spiritual Partzuf and reveal the eternal reality in which we are to live. Thus, we’ll be getting even more blows of separation on the way and will be building a connection of love in mutual guarantee, unity, and complement like a perfectly tuned mechanism of an integral system. Each time we have to aspire toward perfection. Malfunctions and new details that need to be added to our system to become perfect will be revealed to us. And we’ll be happy to find and fix these details because corrections lead us toward true perfection.

We have to be happy with the evil being revealed. I am happy and rejoice in these apparent and appearing impairments, writes Baal HaSulam in the Igrot (Letters) 5, P. 11. He continues: I do indeed regret and complain about the impairments that are still covered, and are destined to be uncovered, for a covered corruption is in no hope…. Thus it’s very important for the flaws to be revealed. And they have to be accepted with joy. When a person is connected to a group in the right way, he accepts all the obstacles, problems, and difficulties with joy because he understands that by overcoming them and building a proper connection above them, knowledge, wisdom, and love will become revealed above evil. To the extent of an evil abyss’s depth, he climbs a spiritual height and perceives the Creator’s eternal world.
[70281]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/19/12, “Advice for the Arava Convention”

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The friends unite through one goal. Together with them I can constantly check what our goal is and how to achieve it through unity. It doesn’t mean that first we connect and then aspire to the goal. It isn’t somewhere on the outside, and we don’t look for it like a special forces unit (the green color). No, the goal is achieved in our unification (the red color). We are together, and we reach such an adhesion among us that the goal is revealed inside. It is in our adhesion that we discover the Creator, according to the law of equivalence of form.

The levels of our advancement are dressed into each other, and every step we make is aimed inwards. This is why the wisdom of Kabbalah is called the internality of the Torah.

Our egoistic desires are like black points, and we build the connection above reason with the help of the Light that Reforms. The Light itself is also inside, in us, and it is called the Surrounding Light not because it is poured on us from the outside, but because it comes from a higher level, that is, from inside. It connects us and fills the void of our interconnection, like a cloud covering a valley.

Then we feel that we are like croutons in a soup. It is as if we step into the fog, get into the water, and sink into the thickness of the collective sensation. In it we discover the root that’s there: the Creator and adhesion with Him.

It is all inside. There is nothing on the outside.
[70274] 
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/19/12, “Advice for the Arava Convention” 

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