It is written, “There is none else beside Him.” This means that there is no other force in the world (there is no other power, beside the one Upper Force, neither in the smallest of deeds, nor in the entire universe in general), that has the ability to do anything against Him. And what man sees, that there are things in the world that deny the Higher Household, (the Creator’s power over me), the reason is that this is His will.

We become confused when we supposedly think that there are friends, a group, people, a big world with its supposed “rulers,” and even I, who makes decisions. The Upper Force wishes for me to think this way, to think that I control things, and that there are other people and another power beside Him.

And it is deemed a correction, called “the left rejects and the right adducts,” meaning that which the left rejects is considered correction. In other words, also the things which appear bad to us—rejection from the spiritual, the path, and the group, when I forget about the goal and do not want it, when I think that the group does not want me—all of these problems come only from one force, which rules over everything, regardless of whether I can see it. The Creator controls the external world and inside of me, all my thoughts and desires.

I want to advance, join a group and to attain the Upper Force through it, I want to reveal Him, cling to my friends and reveal the Upper Light within them, the quality of bestowal. But even when I strive towards this in the most direct and sincere form, with my whole heart, I still experience descents and confusion in the most sincere point, which I rarely manage to attain through hard work. I suddenly fall from my very direct path.

I could understand it if I were to go in some wrong direction and I were being returned to the direct path. But no, it is when I am already standing on the very direct path that I deviate and fall.

A person is pushed away from the goal and the group, suddenly becomes confused and loses the desire. He thinks that his friends are no good, the path is wrong, and the entire system does not work, and it is unclear who has ever reached and attained the spiritual world. But it is this kind of rejection that helps him acquire an absolute desire. Next….

And this is exactly what we need. Right now I have a small desire for spirituality, but I do not feel that it is not enough. Everyone thinks that his heart is about to explode and that he is ready for anything! But in reality, in order to achieve spiritual power, we need a much stronger inner pressure, inner desire, and thirst.

And we become rejected in order to increase our aspiration to the sufficient level—to acquire a complete desire and understand that there is nothing we can do without the Creator’s help.

We need to reach a state when our scream passes through our unity, our connection, and is directed towards the Creator—with the request for the upper force, the Light which returns to the source, the common force of bestowal, which encompasses all of nature, to help us! Let it correct my only egoistic part in nature and pull it forward.

Otherwise I see that I am doomed. In other words I must reach a state where I see that I have done the most I could for the sake of my connection inside the group, that I have put all my effort into attaining unity, a connection with friends, those with who I wanted to reach the connection with the Creator, to reveal the power of bestowal, so it would reign in us and fill us with this unique quality.

And here we lack a common cry to the Creator, the upper force. We must feel lost so that a single scream of ours would be enough. But it must really come from a state of despair, when we see that we will never achieve success without His aid.
[63568]
From Lesson 4, The World Arvut Convention 12/7/11

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The law of loving thy neighbor is based on observing 612 commandments, correcting 612 desires that become revealed in our spiritual structure. By observing them, we reach the general rule: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

612 commandments are our 612 desires that pursue the egoistic intention to please oneself. None of us can observe these 612 commandments on his own, but only by connecting with others and beginning to examine our mutual relations with one another. This is the only way to reveal all these desires.

Not a single person has the ability to observe a single commandment. This is because a commandment stems from the principle of love thy neighbor. The egoistic connection between us is called a transgression, and the altruistic connection is called a commandment. This is why one neither commits crimes nor observes commandments before he begins to connect with others. He just leads a simple beastly life, which we are not talking about here.

And egoistic desires that connect him with others only become revealed in him under the condition that he wishes to connect with them in order to use them to attain bestowal. Only then can we speak about corruption and correction.

The defect referred to as “I created the evil inclination” is a very advanced stage, when one reveals part of his 612 vices that pertain to the connection with others. And then he attains the realization of evil whereby he understands that he must correct his egoistic attitude towards others. This means to reach repentance, the “Days of Awe,” when he understands that he uses his neighbor egoistically. And then a switch happens in him, referred to as the beginning of the new year, Rosh Hashanah, which is the beginning of a new journey, when he wishes to turn his evil into its opposite.

And this is after spending a long time working in the group and understanding the need for correction. And then he gradually turns 613 transgressions into 613 commandments.

But without beginning to work in the group, he will never reveal any of his 613 transgressions. This is because all of them relate to the same principle of love thy neighbor and do not exist outside of the connection with others. This common rule includes all individual details. This is why all the types of connection that exist between us come out of the principle of love thy neighbor and pertain to our 612 actions in relation to each other, the qualities we need to correct.

We reach the common rule of loving the created beings by making individual corrections, and through it we reach love for the Creator. By correcting my 612 desires from egoism to bestowal, I reach absolute connection together with everyone, where the common rule of love thy neighbor becomes revealed. This is the preparation for the revelation of the “unifying factor,” the Creator, the so called “plus 1,” inside it.
[63204]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/15/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Question: What do you recommend to the English listeners during the reading of The Zohar: to follow the printed text or to just listen? Should we do it in Hebrew or English?

Answer: When a person simply listens to the sound of the text we are reading and constantly makes an inner effort to reveal the text inside the quality of bestowal, wishing for this quality to become revealed in him, this is best.

Let us say that I simply listen to the sound of words, but I do not know what they mean. In order to understand them, I need a certain inner translator, which will translate them for me. The translator, which will be able to translate the words of The Zohar for me, is only the quality of bestowal. If it becomes revealed in me, I will immediately understand what The Zohar speaks of. I will see this picture through my senses, I will enter it, and it will come alive within me.

I do not need anything but the quality of bestowal. Then I will immediately reveal everything Kabbalah speaks of inside this quality. It is as if there is a broadcast on television, but you are unable to turn the screen on. You can see it as soon as you turn the screen on. And meanwhile? And meanwhile something is being concealed behind the screen, something is being transmitted through the cables, but you are unable to turn it on.

We only lack the screen….
[63211]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/15/2011, The Zohar

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Everything we now reveal in our world is a corrupted form of connection between us. In reality there are no cars or houses, no still, vegetative, or animate nature, there are no people—none of this exists.

There are only five phases inside the soul and its connections with other souls, and these connections are corrupted. These corrupted connections give us the form of this corrupted world. And because the world cannot exist in this form (since ultimately, it is corrected), it is called an artificial world, which for now exists in our uncorrected qualities.

As soon as we begin to correct it, we immediately see a corrected world and a corrected state instead of the corrupt state or the corrupt world, until it becomes the world of Infinity where there are no limits for the distribution of Light and everything is corrected.

In the end, we either exist within the single structure of the collective soul, or we are there as if broken into a multitude of interconnected pieces. When this structure is unified, we refer to it as whole—this is Infinity. And when it is as if it were divided inside into a multitude of pieces and is not perceived as a unified whole, we refer to it as the “world,” a certain concealment of Infinity. And then we see the same Infinity as if in lesser resolution, in a much worse form. These are the worlds, the worlds of concealment. But we always only see the connection between us.

And in our world we build different, seemingly artificial things: houses, cars, and so on, and all these things are also forms of connection between us. In order to make up for the separation, distance, and the breaking between us, we have to build different artificial connections. Instead of correcting ourselves, we are busy with this entire external cover. And this is why our world keeps getting more corrupt on one hand, and full of unnecessary things on the other.

If we were to correct ourselves, we would not need any of this technology. But we must exist in this world in the way it is organized in order to reveal the end, the breaking, the crisis, and the lack of purpose in it and then move on to the inner correction. This is the revolution that is happening in our generation—the change of a paradigm.
[63214]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/15/2011, The Zohar

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Everything we wish to attain beyond our nature, trying to understand, perceive, and become impressed by spirituality, we attain all of it only with the help of the Light. Also, all the changes in our corporeal world, in our states, only happen through the Light, which shines stronger every time. But it keeps shining stronger because we keep growing in our egoistic desire.

New desires keep developing in me, and this happens over the course of my entire life, as well as from one generation to another. And although the Light is constant, every time it shines at a greater desire. As a result of this, I feel greater changes in me.

In our world, we develop this way as well, even though we do not perceive the Light here. As Kabbalists say, the same happens in spirituality. When we attain revelation, we simply reveal the same process of development that we are going through now. The Light shines constantly, as it is written: “I have not changed my HaVaYaH,” “the upper Light exists at absolute rest,” but our Reshimot (the informational genes) constantly change in us, unraveling like a chain. Greater Reshimot come out of it every time, rising back up in the same order they have spread from above downward.

But if this is the way things are, where is my participation? Will I continue to reincarnate the same way I was developing until now, over the course of thousands of years? No. Kabbalists say that this stage has ended. If you have received a desire for your inner development, you must use it in a different manner. How? You accelerate your development, personally participate in it. You begin to understand and comprehend what is happening, you control your development. Development will no longer happen without you.

Until now you developed through Reshimot replacing one another, unraveling like a chain. In this way you completed your development on the still, vegetative, and animate levels. All these stages were realized in common nature: in the entire universe, on the surface of planet Earth, and in all of humanity, which has also gone through the still, vegetative, and animate levels of development.

But now the time has come to realize the human degree, and it can no longer continue this way. The difference between the human and the animate degree is in the awareness of life: “What am I living for? What is happening to me?” This is only possible when man does his own work every time, making an effort. Through his effort he comes to a qualitative attainment of the reality where he exists: What he is living for, why, and for which purpose.

When all these attainments become revealed to man, they are called the “spiritual world” or the “upper world.” And then we perceive where we really are, what kind of system becomes revealed before us, and how it controls us. We already engage in our life and existence on a different level—in the upper world.

The Light exists at absolute rest. Reshimot become revealed more and more every time. But if I do not properly realize the connection between the Reshimot and the Light, I suffer from the lack of correspondence of qualities.

This way this obligates me to search for a solution, and this is exactly what is now happening with all of humanity. And the solution lies in finding a formula of how to become like the Light. To become like the Light means to attain the quality of bestowal. How can we want to attain? With the help of the group. And we realize this desire through the Light.

This is why when we read The Zohar, we must think about the Light’s actions over us: It must connect us, realize the Reshimot, lift us to a higher level, make us more connected between us, and reveal the concealed. We must ask for everything that we desire during the lesson.

Naturally, every person should examine to which extent his desires are directed down the same trajectory as the Light. Otherwise, he might ask for something that is opposite to what the Light is about to give him. And then his request, his prayer, will bring him to an opposite state: the revelation of evil instead of goodness.

So let us think together about our connection and for the Light to influence and connect us, and there we will attain the quality of mutual bestowal, which is already a spiritual degree. It does not matter what we read about in The Zohar. What matters is what we think about together about the actions of the Light over us. Think not about us, but about the actions of the Light, which it performs over us.
[62240]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/1/2011, The Zohar

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Question: This year I didn’t feel a descent after the convention. Is there something wrong with me?

Answer: The ups and downs aren’t measured in of itself, but by feelings. Baal HaSulam says that a coarse person can steal openly before everyone, believing it is acceptable since “everyone steals.” A more refined person will stealthily take something he’s not entitled to and feel “it’s no big deal.” An even more sensitive individual is unable to possess something undeserved.

So, you check and determine the magnitude of the descent yourself. It doesn’t have to be a blow, after which you can barely recover. It is enough to simply feel somewhat detached from the excitement we felt at the convention, and with this decrease in enthusiasm you already see it as a descent.

It is the same on spiritual levels: You receive a slight blow, but it is felt as real pain. “Who gave me this blow? Why and what for?” The quantity turns into quality; otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to withstand it. We always advance with the help of qualitative additions.

So try to raise your sensitivity of the current state in order experience it as the worst. Then you will begin to ascend: “Why do I feel good? Everything is fine and nothing hurts. Okay, so am I checking myself according to beastly feelings? Am I connected to the friends just as I was during the convention? But I don’t care. So does it mean that I’ve become indifferent and have waved the convention goodbye?”

Start checking yourself and you’ll see that you are in a state far worse than previous descents: “Last time I felt awful and was ready to explode. And now I’m in a descent and feel fine. Then I was sick and wanted to get well, to get up. Even if I cursed everyone, I still wanted something. Today I am satisfied, as if retired and free of all obligations. I am a living corpse.”

This is the deepest descent. Awakening such forces will cause pain no less than the pain felt previously. It is very difficult, and you’ll feel that you cannot raise yourself by your own powers. This means that you have to turn to the group so that the friends will start working on you and inspire you toward the importance of the goal. When you touch their unity and love, you feel your lowness.

In general, our state following the convention is indeed different from what we are accustomed to. It isn’t the same bad feeling that many felt in the past. Today a qualitative examination is required. A person can feel good, and he sees no reason for advancement. But don’t be fooled—work.
[63330]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/16/2011, “The Peace”

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Question: What can you say about our state now that nearly two weeks have gone by after the end of the convention where we revealed true life?

Answer: Our entire group, the “world Kli,” has to awaken and understand that this entire fog in which we have found ourselves after the convention is given to us on purpose and we could do nothing to resist it. Every person felt it in his own form and at different times.

Some people are still in an elevated state, even though it might not be precisely connected to the goal, in unity with others. But the sensation itself has remained. After all, there was a reason that caused the sensation, and there is the actual feeling that I feel good. And I already forgot why I feel good, but the pleasant sensation still remains.

It gradually cools down more and more, like along 4 levels, returning back to the previous state. First I was very inspired by the goal, then simply from being connected to the group, then from attaining some kind of success at the convention, and at the end I am simply left with the sensation that I still feel good, until this feeling disappears as well.

First of all, we have to value all of these phases, which are necessary for building a new desire. And the new desire has to be such that we will begin to live in the same intention, in the same sensation all the time, and this will become our constant state!

If at the convention we achieved this through an attack, a break-through: dancing, different events, and never-ending songs, then now we have to reach the same state internally, quietly. I have to feel this state introvertedly, inside of me, and that will be my convention.

Maybe we will soon get there and will hold conventions precisely in this way: without saying anything for three days, without doing anything besides inner intentions, and by getting impressed and inspired just by seeing one another. And afterwards, we won’t even have to see each other, and thus will gradually reach the true realization where we won’t need words, vision, hearing, or jumping and embraces. Let’s advance towards that.

But now we have to hold a convention inside of us, so this will become our permanent state—calmly, quietly, with a more serious, more internal attitude.
[63579]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/19/11, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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Question: Once you said that it is forbidden to recall the previous states, whatever they were, and look back….

Answer: And we do not look back. We want to return to the point of unity in our new egoistic state. This is no longer the return to the past. We do not want to be in the past!

Today we wish to return to that state, which we left, in our grown egoism. And when we return to it with our real egoism, it is a new, stronger, clearer state.

Otherwise, there is nothing. The whole difference between spiritual steps is only in the added egoism.
[63443]
From the Fundamentals of Kabbalah Lesson 12/11/11

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The Creator’s “problem” with the creature lies in the creature needing to attain Him. It is impossible to bring man to goodness if he remains in his original state. It is necessary to endow him with power, understanding, and sensitivity, and to make him equivalent to the Creator.

Similarly, the host must elevate the guest to a level equal to his own, so that he wouldn’t feel shame toward the king’s feast. To this end, the guest must obtain all the wealth of the host. And here the will of the host alone (“directive from Above”) is not enough.

So how can the guest be brought to this equivalence? Is it enough to simply shower him with presents? No. Perhaps it’s OK to help him? That’s also a problem since the host was never helped. Transitioning from “existence out of absence” to “existence out of existence” is a real problem.

This includes a great many things that we will only understand further along the path. They cannot be explained in simple terms. Ultimately we need to reveal the means that allow us to actualize our only free choice and to reach the goal.

And we know ahead of time that we’re talking about the group, about participating in its life. With the help of the group we reveal the force of bestowal, with its help we reveal the Creator’s quality. In the group we create His image and likeness, His support. This is called Shechinah—the place where He dwells (Shochen).

We must make a precise template for His reign. This will be the Temple (literally “House of Sanctity”), that is, Malchut who receives the quality of Bina. Thanks to this the Light of Hochma can clothe in her with all its forms and fulfill her.
[63480]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/18/11, Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”

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We began to study Baal HaSulam’s article “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot,” which appears to me as his most important introduction among all the others. Partly, it includes the excerpts from The Book of Oracles by the ARI, written by his disciple Chaim Vital. In fact, this introduction contains the entire path that we need to go through in order to reach the goal.

Although we have plenty of other materials, nothing explains the path along which we should advance and change as consistently, step by step, methodically, and deliberately. Other articles and introductions give us a general view of the wisdom of Kabbalah or view it from some particular angles.

But this introduction selects a very narrow, aimed line to show the person, either religious or secular, who starts with the question about the meaning of his life, how to achieve his ultimate realization with all the difficulties and scrutinies on this path.

This is why this introduction is unusually deep and not easy for beginners. It takes years to begin to assimilate, understand, and find oneself in it. It needs to be studied in small portions, carefully, until a person grows and might be able to reveal more. We must understand that this introduction was written by the man who stood at the head of a new era, the last stage of human development, which was to go from unconscious to conscious development.

Now we need to rise to a new level from the stage at which we could not even be called human beings but only highly developed animals acting in accordance with instincts and fully managed by the forces of nature. Something designed to be similar to the Creator begins to develop inside this creature.

We need to understand the man who was at the beginning of this process, his approach and view, and try to emulate him.
[63493]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/18/11, “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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