Question: Why did Rabash put so much attention in building a sukkah? Don’t we learn that corporeal acts are meaningless?

Answer: He wanted to emphasize the importance of the covering, the screen.

Question: How do I find the strength to concentrate on the goal when I have lost my job? I spend sleepless nights tossing and turning, panicking about what is to become of me, and it is sapping my energy and focus. I know I need to help others, but there is a very real problem I can’t seem to correct. I know I can’t be the only BB student in this vise-grip. What is one to do when things look so bleak?

Answer: Imagine that there will be no work at all and invest all your freed-up time in the studying of the new world of mutual guarantee (Arvut). This will help you solve many problems.
[61548]

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In order to prepare for the convention in the best possible way, it is necessary to go over the talks we had at the convention in the Arava desert. Clearly, we will still have interesting talks and events, where we will continue to develop our common aspiration towards one single desire to bestow, which consists of a multitude of little individual aspirations and mutual help. A person really needs to watch everything attentively and feel it well.

It is recommended to become acquainted with the songs, the program of the convention, and the materials we will study ahead of time. Simply read the specified materials, watch clips, and join the common preparation. If you are coming with an entire group, you can work on these elements of unity together.
[61621]
From the Sunday Virtual Lesson Series 11/20/2011

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Question: What actions at the convention will help focus on the goal in the best possible way?

Answer: When people are internally aspiring to unity, they almost don’t express it on the outside. They can stand, hug, sing, do something together, but they don’t express on the outside what they feel inside. The inner work is the most intense one.

Therefore, you have to decide for yourself where it is better for you to be, with whom, and how. Certainly, you should try to be together with the mass, both with your body and soul. However, if this is an obstacle for you, if it’s hard because of your age or health, you can stand aside and not participate physically in the activities. This is not so important. What is important is that all the time you are trying to feel the highest point of unity with others and within it, the upper force that exists and becomes manifested in this point.
[61613]
From the Sunday Virtual Lesson Series 11/20/2011

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Question: While reading The Zohar, is there a time when we must apply our own effort and a time when The Zohar gives us a push by itself?

Answer: First and foremost you must understand what you are facing. If you watch a film that’s 30 or 40 years old, you’ll notice how naive people were, how they acted and put the film together. But it was their reality, and they thought they were portraying their lives in all seriousness. The actors were great. It’s just that the people were different. If you looked at people 200 to 300 years ago, you would think of them as even more simple and primitive.

What would you discover looking at all the nations, at the world 2000 years ago? People practically lived in the “trees,” like true barbarians, even in Europe in the Middle Ages.

But what if you took a look at the people who wrote books like The Zohar 2000 years ago? This is a science, a philosophy about the perception of reality. If such a person sat among us today, you would feel insignificant next to him. The concept of time doesn’t apply here. You are being given the opportunity to come into contact with something that exists beyond our world, with a system that governs all of reality.

This governing system, these forces, and the souls that wrote these books should be the ones you direct your plea to and scream out like a small child, wishing to grow with their help, in their arms! It doesn’t matter how much you understand and what state you’re in because you’re not the one in control of it. However, from your given state try to understand where you are, whose arms you are in and ask for help.

Question: What should be the plea?

Answer: I don’t know. You have to sense the need. “I don’t lack anything. Please take me into your arms, I’m sleepy.” This is also a plea: to be held in their arms like a child who feels warm and secure in his mother’s arms. He senses her, smells her breast milk, and sleeps peacefully. Wouldn’t you want to feel like that? So go ahead and reveal at least this.

Or perhaps based on that sensation of being held in their arms, you already desire something more scrutinized and are capable of utilizing their help. After all, an adult retains all of his previous connection with his mother. The infant-mother connection doesn’t vanish, but only grows, becoming more conscious.

The greatness of the upper one determines my ability to utilize His help and to exalt Him in my eyes, thereby obligating Him to ascend higher. Thus I make the path of the upper one equal to Infinity and am able to receive from Him as if from Infinity. However, if I disregard the upper one, what can I possibly receive from Him?

Hence everything lies within my attitude towards my current degree. If I elevate the upper one above myself, I’m able to receive and attain from Him. The higher I elevate the upper one, to the highest possible degree I can only imagine, the more I can attain Him. If I put myself above the upper one, then what can I possibly receive from someone who’s lower than me?
[61634]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/23/2011, The Zohar

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Question: How should we work before the December convention in order to deliver our message to the masses? Should we intensify the dissemination on the Internet, or should we focus more on internal work on unification?

Answer: Of course, we should work on the Internet so that as many people as possible from around the world will know about the convention.

On the other hand, when we get to the convention, we will have to worry about the world in a different way: through the network of our internal interconnection. At the convention I should forget about the Internet, about everything I left behind. My whole attention is focused on the friends who are here physically or are connected to us through virtual channels. In our network, we should manifest the connection and in it, reveal the image of man similar to the Creator, the vessel of Adam. Then the upper force will be revealed to us.

This vessel is called Arvut (mutual guarantee). After all, its attribute is reciprocity, mutual reinforcement, interconnection, and mutual care so that no one falls out from the common circle.

Imagine that we are standing on some sharp spire. If we don’t hold each other’s hands and don’t keep the general balance, we will all fall. We are like petals, surrounding the stem of a flower. It is enough for one of us to lose his balance and let go of someone’s hand, and all the petals will “fall.” This is the feeling of mutual guarantee.

Question: What is that “sharp spire?”

Answer: It is the Creator’s supportive force that manifests if we are connected. In the connection among us we find the One.
[61535]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/23/2011, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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When we try to connect, we start feeling that we lack some kind of help from Above because we cannot do it on our own. We can neither connect nor synchronize our movements, but this revelation gives us knowledge of the One Who can do this for us. It can only be the upper force!

And then we reveal the need for the upper one and the place in which He has to act in us. It always works this way in the spiritual world: I work, applying more and more effort, and at the end I reveal a “minus.” And from this minus I discover the “plus” that possibly has what I lack.

I always reveal a lack, a vessel, a desire, and against it I reveal the power, the Light, which can do what I couldn’t. No matter how much I tried, I didn’t manage. So I arrive at the conclusion that I’m unable to do it, but at the same time I see Who can.

That’s why our movements always start off in the negative direction and cause disappointment, tiredness, and anger in us. From the experience of our whole life we can’t understand how this can be. In our egoism we always used to act differently: He who makes an effort wins, succeeds, and receives a reward.

And about the spiritual world it is said: “I labored and found,” and not that I “won,” “earned,” or “stole.” This means that I didn’t achieve this using my own power when I start an action and finish it.

Here it works differently. Thanks to my efforts I reach a certain limit, when nothing turns out right and I fall into despair, leave it, and don’t want anything, feeling completely disappointed, and only then, if I move one millimeter ahead, I reveal that there is a force that can do this!

And this force hides itself deliberately, until I reach a state of total despair. Baal HaSulam writes in his letter: “There isn’t a happier moment in a person’s life than when he reaches the limit of his own powers and sees that there is no success” as only then can he raise a prayer and cry out. He will know Who he has to address—only then will it be revealed to him.

Furthermore, he knows that he doesn’t have a choice: He must cry out. And in reality, nothing more is required but this cry.
[61231]
From Lesson 2, Arvut Convention at the Arava Desert 11/18/2011

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The first person to reveal the secret of life was Adam. Just like us, Adam was searching for the meaning of his life. After his revelation, this secret began to spread from generation to generation, until it reached our time.

We develop constantly and our desire grows steadily. Since each new generation that came was new and possessed a greater desire for pleasure, it was able to add something to the method of revealing the secret of life.

On one hand, this is a very simple thing, and on the other, it’s incredibly difficult. It’s simple because it’s close to everyone, and it’s difficult because it lies beyond our capabilities. It’s as if the Creator stretches out a rope for us to jump over and then puts a wall right behind it, making it impossible to jump.

The thing is that all a person has to do is apply effort, and the Creator will complete the action. Moreover, the person’s action and the Creator’s action have to be synchronized with the group or the environment.

It is very difficult to connect these three components because they each seem to be turning in their own direction and performing their own movements. However, when they actually do come to unite due to the effort on all three parts, this is called “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are one.”

A person called “Israel” (straight to the Creator), meaning he who wishes to attain the Creator, acts in accordance with his soul’s root and the program of creation. He overcomes his nature and wishes to act in sync with his environment, which happens to be a collection of individual movements that are in motion together.

The Creator has His own movement. After all, He governs everything. He has a predetermined plan that leads everything toward one goal. For this reason, it’s very difficult to connect all three components into a single point where the initial contact with the upper one occurs. This contact is called adhesion.

Adam was the first person to reveal the method of obtaining unity with the upper one. Clearly there are no coincidences in life, and it was no coincidence that he was called Adam (“similar” to the Creator), although his parents weren’t aware of why they named him as such. He was the first person to reveal the correct method of revealing the Creator.

If we connect all three components into a single point, then through that point we begin to see a different reality. We bring things into focus, similar to when one gets an eye exam, where the three lines in the optical device have to connect in order to see anything. Therein lies our work.
[61237]
From Lesson 2, Arvut Convention at the Arava Desert 11/18/2011

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If we want to feel the real world we live in, we have to develop our sensations. Then we will begin to gradually see how limited our world depicted to us by our five bodily, “beastly,” senses is. It depends on these senses and exists as long as they exist. That is, our body is a limited egotistic desire, the existence of which is so short-lived.

A person returns to this world again and again and develops his senses. This is all in order to awaken him and to eventually develop sensations on a human level, on the level of similarity to the Creator, which is to develop the sensation of the Creator within him.

This sensation also arises through the five senses, but together they form the giving, altruistic desire, which absorbs what is on the outside. Today we perceive only what is inside us, while the spiritual organ of perception captures the external reality, according to the law of equivalence of form.

When a person calibrates his internal sensation, he rises above his egoistic desire towards the opposite desire: towards bestowal. Only so can he understand what bestowal is: as something opposite to him. As he rises, he begins to perceive what is outside of him and thus discovers the external world.

What will help me feel this external world? Exercises. If I am in contact with other people, with my friends in the group, if I feel them inside me and connect with them, we begin to awaken each other so as to feel that the friend is more important to me than myself. Thus we come closer to the out of body sensation because the spiritual world is “outside our skin.”

How can I “jump out of my skin”? With the help of the group. These are special people who also want to feel reality outside their beastly bodies. This reality is called “the eternal world” since it isn’t limited by the corporeal existence and the five bodily senses. So I begin to appreciate these friends since they help me acquire eternity. Thanks to them I can develop sensations that are independent of my body and rise above my present “self.” This is what the group is.

This is why the collective soul was shattered. The multitude of individual souls, numerous bodies in our world, enable us to develop the external, spiritual feeling in us by ourselves. The wisdom of Kabbalah was intended only to help us do that.

Thus we acquire the new body, the body of the soul. It also has five senses: Keter, Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin, and Malchut. In other words, it is the desire to receive with five levels of Aviut. It is in this body that we begin to live our real life, a life on the level of bestowal, everlasting, eternal, and the one that we imagine in our fragmented senses, like this world.

The present physical reality gradually “disintegrates” inside a person. It isn’t because his corporeal body dies, but because he rises above this feeling. As we advance in the spiritual reality, this world disappears from our perception. It was depicted in our imagination from the start so that on the basis of this world we would discover the true one.
[61246]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/20/2011, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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According to our attitude toward the environment, we can see how effectively we are working to raise the importance of the friends in our eyes. We must understand that we cannot estimate their true height, but only the height that we ascribe to them. My estimate of the environment is completely subjective and depends on me alone.

We need to form an image of the group before us in order to advance. They cannot interrupt me in any way, everything depends on me. Then we begin to see that it isn’t an external environment but the internal vessel that was built by my efforts. I use this vessel and bring it to the desired form, designing and shaping this vessel like dough. My whole spiritual advancement depends on it.

The higher, broader, and more important the vessel is within my reason, the greater is my advancement. I will feel that this vessel is mine because I have built and shaped it myself. I could have built it another way, underestimating and humiliating the friends, but instead I built a powerful group, where each member is the greatest in his generation. And now this whole spiritual vessel belongs to me.

I feel all this in my reason because I do all of it myself. Furthermore, I am constantly developing this attitude towards the environment because there are always foreign thoughts and desires that divert me: Envy, lust, and ambition “take a person out of this world,” meaning from the state he is in. This is an invitation for me to develop the importance of the environment and to rise to the next degree. This is the way we advance.

If a person understands that the external environment itself doesn’t exist, but is only an image created of his own world he built, he receives this vessel in order to work with it within reason. In his attitude to the Creator he has to be above reason.

But the environment has only the form a person gives to it. The environment is like a springboard, means to advance, and according to the height a person raises the importance of the environment to, he rises himself.
[61433]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/22/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Baal HaSulam, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee) (abridged version)“: The Torah was not given to our fathers because the commandment of “Love thy friend as thyself,” the axis of the whole Torah and around which all the commandments revolve, cannot be observed by an individual, but only through the consent of an entire nation. And this is why it took until they came out of Egypt, when they became worthy of observing it. And then they were first asked if each and every one of the nation agreed to take that commandment upon himself. And once they agreed to it, they were given the Torah.

We learn about the structure of the spiritual world, the creation of the soul, which is the only creature, and about the shattering of the soul that got divided into many parts from Kabbalistic sources like “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah (Pticha),” “The Study of the Ten Sefirot“, and the Ari’s “The Tree of Life”. We can say that these parts of the soul also existed before, but they were merged together in one intention, in one thought, in a special state.

In the first state there was the one notion of Infinity, which included the vessel that was equal to the Light. Their equality, connection, and adhesion were provided by the power of the Light. All the souls, parts, and desires were there previously, but the Light held it all together and so they remained imperceptible.

Then the second state was created: the shattered vessel that is totally different from the Light and exists under its own authority—the desire to receive in order to receive. Thus, the shattering of the vessels brought the creature to the state of “this world.”

Finally, as the third state, the vessel once again becomes equal to the Light. We reach adhesion, but by ourselves now.

Eventually, we go through this whole process consciously, we understand and feel it. The descent into our world was prepared from Above, and the present state of ascent is the time of correction. Therefore, today we feel that we are at a very special point in history, which Kabbalists designate as “1995.” It is the border after which the general spiritual ascent of humanity begins.
[61447]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/22/2011, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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