Our spiritual vessel lacks capacity because we are afraid of the two opposite states: hatred and love. We avoid hatred and don’t want to feel it. The defense mechanism of the body doesn’t even allow us to truly hate.

And in general, we are afraid of hatred. Indeed, it is written that we need to love the friends, and yet we suddenly discover that we hate them. We don’t even want to think about it! Therefore, we block these questions that arise within us.

And love, for what do we need it? I don’t feel the need to love them. I can get along without it. I don’t let myself reach these two extreme emotions. And it’s possible to reach them only after investing much effort.

If I don’t invest in a child, he is growing up by himself somewhere in the yard, and I think to myself: “Well, what will be will be.” And then afterwards, when they put him in jail, I mutter to myself: “Well, what can be done?”

But if I invest efforts with him, from day to day, placing demands in front of him and worrying from the bottom of my heart about everything that happens to him, then I am filled with both love and hate. They both create the capacity in me for great worries. Everything depends upon my investment.

So what should be done if we want to arrive at the approaching convention with a big and expanding vessel? We once went on an excursion to the mountains in the north of the country, and it was almost impossible to climb the mountain without each other’s help. This is a very good exercise. Even games like these that seem “childish” help us to feel the togetherness between us. But now, before the convention, each one must search for how to invest his strengths as much as possible in what the group is doing.
[61510]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/22/2011, TES

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Question: I know that the effectiveness of the studies depends entirely upon the connection between the friends during the lesson. So why do I discover within me only the resistance?

Answer: Would you like for there to be no resistance? We need to understand that all of our development occurs thanks to the forces that stop us. All of our forward movement is carried out with the help of those same disturbances that constantly appear to us. These are the forces that confuse us, make us criticize others and curse the Creator, the group, and the teacher, everything!

And I need, on the contrary, to appreciate and raise it all upward, to the height of all those who belong to my spiritual advancement. I need to artificially do it since after all, my natural way is my ego. If I want to act naturally, I will remain an animal since that is my nature.

The Creator created us like that, and He doesn’t hide it. It’s exactly what He says, directly: “I created the evil inclination.” He’s not embarrassed to say that He created us like animals. But He gave us the opportunity to make ourselves into human beings instead, and we must do this.

If I constantly forget, don’t understand, don’t feel, am confused, and don’t grasp what I am learning, then I finally need to understand that this is sent to me as help. Everything that happens to me at each moment: with health, family, at work, on the street, in the group, during studies, with my inner clarifications, and with my thoughts, all the burdens and confusion, everything is given to me only so that I will arrange all this data correctly on a value scale. I need to clarify what is higher and lower, what can or cannot help me, to cut it from me, and to not pay attention to it now.

This means that from all of these disturbances, I build a spiritual structure, a spiritual Partzuf. From all of my desires, thoughts, and relations, from all the influences on me, I must create a model of myself that shows me who I want to be now, how to relate to everything, what is important for me and what is less, and what can help me or is completely useless.
[61516]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/22/2011, TES

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Question: Regarding the problem of revealing our connection within group activity and practicing love of friends: What does it mean to “judge our friends with a scale of merit” and everything will fall into place naturally? Does this mean that if a problem is perceived regarding love of friends, judging with a scale of merit will fix things? Can a scale of merit be used as a personal tool for correction? (from the article “One should Always Sell the Beams of His House”)

Answer: The key is to reach unity first and only then judge others, already treating them like your children or relatives. That is why it is said that the basis of correction is the principle of, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” and after this property is mastered, the correction is in reaching the property of “love the other as thyself.”
[61714]

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The world needs to unite and is looking for a way to do so. In the meantime, unity seems unfeasible to it.

We see that Europe cannot unite: Different conflicts and new cold wars are going on there, only to keep the people busy somehow, to distract them. Lots of various egoistic motives arise, and people need to overcome them, yet they don’t understand or feel that.

Undoubtedly, it is important to set some kind of an example for the world and to introduce the altruistic force into it.

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, we exist in the one and only desire that was created. We are a certain part of that desire, and if we fill this part with the attribute of bestowal, it will begin to spread gradually to all other souls, people, societies, counties, and cultures.

We are all connected to one another, and what happens in one part in the world “infects” its other parts virtually. Our unification includes a great number of students from all the continents, nations, races, religions, and different mentalities. Since we are a great mass of people who are aimed precisely at a certain goal, we certainly make up one big, strong whole.

When, for example, our friends in New York go out to the streets, we see that people meet them with interest and ask questions and that university professors bring their students to talk with them and to learn about what our friends offer. This means that we are a strong influential group that has its own goal, outlook, and idea based on serious scientific data and not on mysticism or different beliefs. This group actually penetrates the different levels of humanity and gradually shapes it according to its own form.

We should definitely reinforce our dissemination because the world is about to collapse. Undoubtedly, we will eventually reach a state when people will begin to listen to us. We can already see that.
[61706]
From the Sunday Virtual Lesson Series 11/20/2011

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There is a certain unification, preparation, that only men can carry out if they detach themselves from their families, from the women, and seclude themselves. When you go beyond the boundaries of our world and exist only in unity with the friends, this produces a special prayer, special sensations. We felt it. It is really so, and it cannot be described in any other way.

Women’s preparation is not in order to connect themselves, but to help the men to do that, to try to create all the necessary conditions for it, and to quietly push them towards connection. Women can help men overcome their ego and reach unity.

By the way, our women, all over the world, understood this point very well. They supported us and I am grateful for that. Their support was felt throughout the Arava convention, and by that they performed a great service for us.

The December convention already entails the state of standing at the foot of Mt Sinai, where there are women, children, and the elderly. However, the foundation is the men, 600,000 souls, not by their quantity, but might.

In the wisdom of Kabbalah everything is measured by its power because Kabbalah talks about uniting into one general desire. This one mighty desire is expressed as the number 600,000, which symbolizes the power of our unity. To rise to the level of 600,000 means to reach the complete revelation of the upper force, the Creator.

I hope that we will attain it because we have all the prerequisites for that. At least we are doing everything that is in our power. The whole world also needs what we are doing, and it is thanks to this that we receive support from Above. We succeed not because we are so special and talented, but because the world needs a group that will lead it forward.
[61708]
From the Sunday Virtual Lesson Series 11/20/2011

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The decisive week before the convention has arrived. These are special days preceding the reception of the new state. In order to demand the new state, we need to correctly prepare ourselves, to feel sure that we will receive it, and to be ready for it. And then it will happen.

Everything depends on us. The opportunity is given to us, everything is ready, and it depends only on our desire, on how successful we will be in demanding this.

We hope that we will join our forces and succeed in reaching a cry. Essentially, this is all we need, nothing more. The other half will come from Above.

Therefore, there is no need to go all the way and try to be nice in order to do it all by ourselves. We can’t be nice, we only need to want it to happen.

Half is already easier. We only have to think about this: how to make an effort and to cry out. And after that, the upper force will come. We only need to draw the boundary and understand where our part ends. This will make it easier for a person to prepare for the first revelation of the Creator.
[61881]
From the Talk During the Meal 11/25/2011

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Question: Why do I face so many obstacles to attending the convention? Maybe I’m not ready for it yet?

Answer: Obstacles are put before you on purpose. In “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” there is an example about how we climb the mountain where the castle of the Creator stands. The higher you climb, the more roughly the guards push you away and throw you down; you have to clamber up again. This continues until you make enough effort and finally overcome the obstacles.

You will suddenly see that the obstacles did not really harm you. They merely awakened a true desire in you. This is like a flirt, when the desired distances away from you and thus fires an even greater desire. This exists at all levels of fulfillment. That is, to come into contact with the Creator, you must reach a true desire.
[61840]
From the Sunday Virtual Lesson Series 11/6/2011

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Question: What is the psychological change that we have to go through?

Answer: The transition to feeling the upper world is merely a psychological change that a person goes through. He still feels our world, he continues to live as usual. Nothing disappears or escapes him. He remains an ordinary person: in the family, at home, at work, and everywhere. Yet in addition, he receives an “inner snap,” a change of phase that enables him to start feeling another quality existing in our world: the quality of bestowal.

This attribute is much higher than the attribute of reception on which our world is based because it is unlimited, infinite, and perfect. It is free! It is omnipotent! Thus it is called “the Creator.”

The attribute of bestowal keeps our world and nourishes it like a mother, including our egoism, our attribute of reception. Everything in our world: the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking levels of nature, all of them, are attributes of receiving. We, being the attribute of reception ourselves, perceive only these types of egoistic existence.

When we acquire the attribute of bestowal, we begin to feel totally different forces, fields, and attributes, which are much wider and more sublime than our world.

When we enter the field of bestowal and begin to feel it, then our whole world, cosmos, and the entire universe immediately shrink to a minimal dimension. Everything outside of our world begins to feel truly infinite and unlimited, like the attribute of bestowal itself. We feel that we live in it and develop along the 125 degrees that we study about in the wisdom of Kabbalah.

I hope we will reach this state in the coming convention. It all depends only on the preparation of the people who will assemble there. Even if accidental people with minimal egoistic desire or beginners who don’t really understand what they came for participate in this gathering, they will not disturb us.

The main point is that if we, all the active members of the Bnei Baruch movement and the friends from overseas, will gather together and all those who will not be able to come will connect to us virtually, then we will easily be able to incorporate into ourselves all the new visitors and those who just happened to be there, and they will participate in this connection involuntary. We are the key, the core, and the principal part of this great connection for the attainment of the upper one.
[61710]
From the Sunday Virtual Lesson Series 11/20/2011

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Right now we are on the threshold of great unification: the December convention. To prepare for it, we need to constantly worry about our connection, about revelation of a common desire between us. To the extent that this desire will truly be common, we will be able to feel the spiritual force in it. After all, unanimity of desires creates the condition, the so-called “vessel,” the Reflected Light, the screen, because we connect together against our ego.

The more egoistic we are in the relationships between us, the more each one puts pressure on himself in spite of his ego and requests for the Light to influence him and help him connect with others, the stronger the screen and the greater the force of overcoming is that we activate to rise above the ego that separates us and pushes us apart from each other.

This common force of overcoming, referred to as the force of mutual guarantee, becomes our common force. The Creator created the forces of rejection between us purposefully, as it is written: “I created the evil inclination,” and we feel how we repulse each other. But we try to overcome these forces of rejection through our common actions and our study so as to attract the Light that Reforms, as we wish to connect despite the forces that constantly push us away from each other like little demons between us. We must prevail over these evil forces and connect.

To the extent that we try to be together as hard as we can so as to eliminate all the differences between our desires, thoughts, and actions and to truly be like one man with one heart, to that extent we reveal that only we can help each other acquire this common aspiration for connection, as it is written: “Man will help his neighbor.”

Then in this common aspiration we discover that we are not able to connect. But we already uncover our common desire to unite, instead of individual separate desires to connect with others. This common desire is called the prayer of many, a common prayer. And then our request for the Light, the Creator, rises specifically out of this common prayer. And help from Above comes only in response to these mutual efforts, which means that it comes from within, from unity above our degree. This is called MAD, the correcting Light that creates a connection between us despite the forces of rejection.

These rejecting forces are called “Aviut” (the thickness of desire), and the forces of connection are called the “screen.” These two forces together, which we form to bestow to a higher degree, the Creator, are called the Reflected Light since we wish to be exactly like the Light that has corrected us, that is, we wish to bestow. And then we realize the condition under which the Creator, the Giver, becomes revealed in us.

We complete all these stages only with the help of the Light that Reforms. This Light may shine on us even when we do not ask anything of it, like an infant who does not know why he is screaming, but he is taken care of. Alternatively, we can begin to distinguish what exactly it is that we need, and then our prayer becomes more directed and thought over. Or we really consciously raise our request in the right direction, knowing clearly that we demand the ability to bestow to the upper degree.

But everything is done by the Light that Reforms. To tell you the truth, what could be better than constantly reading The Zohar and doing all these actions…This is the ideal state. But reality is such that man must go to work, go about his daily business, and then come for a few hours and raise his prayer. At first he collects different problems, desires, aspirations, and hopes within him, and afterwards he comes to The Zohar. And then we connect together and raise our common prayer through studying together.
[61527]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/23/2011, The Zohar

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Question: If our entire purpose is to become like one, then why do we see the upper system separated into an infinite number of pieces?

Answer: Everything is done to bring us to be One. After all, this system originates in One and ends in One, but to cover this interval, it must go through us, work with us to give our desire to receive pleasure the form of bestowal.

This is why the upper system branches out and separates in time, movement, and space into a variety of combinations of states so as to perform this action in the end. This entire splitting and imperfection, and all the flaws that the system clothes in exist only in relation to us. Doesn’t a mother playing with her child appear silly and unreasonable if you don’t understand for whom she is acting this way? A grown woman suddenly starts talking like a baby, what is this really?

But we understand that she does it for the child. And naturally, this is a flaw in her because it is not suitable for her age and position.

The same can be said regarding the upper system: It doesn’t act for its own sake. The upper system is the world of Infinity. In general, there are no worlds without the creature. The moment the creature appears in the precise state when it awakens in the direction of the world of Infinity, that very moment the system of concealments, of weakened connections, which always follows the degrees of corruption, forms between the creature and Infinity.

The upper one is perfect, but it must lower itself to the level of the lower one so as to take care of it. But this is not like in our world when a mother takes care of her child. The upper system only begins to take care of us from our preliminary request.

Or it can awaken us secretly, as if acting from behind the scenes. But Kabbalah does not study processes that happen naturally, “in its own time (Beito),” since we will develop this way anyway. The only thing that interests us is “hastening time (Achishena).” This is why we study the system that we awaken ourselves.
[61530]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/21/2011, TES

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