We have to get used to the correct perception of reality. Either we perceive it as it appears today, as though there is some external world out there, or we realize that all of reality is inside us.

This is a huge difference, because in the first case, I perceive all of reality from the perspective of using it for my own interests, and only in this egotistic way do I feel and understand it. And if I perceive reality through this egotistic filter, I feel what we call “this world” in my desire. However, if I perceive the world in the opposite way, which is called bestowal, not according to the formula of “everything is for me,” but rather that “everything is for them,” I feel a different reality called “the upper reality,” “the spiritual world.”

A person should check very carefully in what position his internal switch, the one that directs his thoughts, is: Is it for me or for all of us? Herein lies his free will each time.

The switch is in the middle position, just like an on/off switch, and I can turn it towards me, and then feel this world, or I can turn it “towards others” and feel spirituality. I’m like a switchman who turns the switch and feels either the upper world or this world in his desires.

The switch is in your hands, and how to turn it is your only choice. If you disconnect yourself from your ego and direct your thoughts toward others instead of yourself, you will advance toward bestowal and see the upper world in the same place, in the same desires.
[57958]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/18/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Question: How can the mutual guarantee be used as a coefficient in a formula? Is it really possible to measure human relations: 50% or 75% of mutual guarantee?

Answer: Of course relationships can be measured: There are 125 degrees of mutual guarantee (the same 125 spiritual degrees of which you have probably already heard). Everything can be measured precisely because according to the way that a person relates to others, every soul consists of Rosh–Toch–Sof (head, inner part of the body, and limbs), and here are parts that he restricts and parts that he uses partially, half, or quarter way.

There is no problem with measuring the mutual guarantee in spirituality—it corresponds to your degree. And are you are asking how we should evaluate the mutual guarantee in the economics of our world? Mutual guarantee does not and cannot exist in our world. The first degree of mutual guarantee is a spiritual degree.

Right now we are in a transitional period called “the time of preparation,” preparing for the entrance into the spiritual world. When I say that the mutual guarantee needs to be entered as a coefficient into the economic formula, I mean that the entire problem with the breaking and the crisis we are now experiencing is the fact that we lack one parameter from a higher degree.And when we acquire it, we reach peace, fulfillment, and balance for a certain time. And after  each time, we will feel like we have lost this balance—the lack of mutual guarantee and economic instability.

This will keep happening on every new degree, until we reach a state when every person suffices with the necessities needed for living, which he himself will determine. At the same time, every person will give the maximum to the extent of his abilities, and he will also determine this maximum himself. This is how corrected everything will be.

But if a person has not yet reached this state, the desires that he is not yet able to work with are being guarded. And this protection is not imposed by his forces since he is not yet capable of it; it is done through the environment, which pressures him. Baal HaSulam explains that the society of the future will be evaluating how much every person needs as well as encourage people by giving them medals, influencing people with encouragement or judgment.
[57526]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/2/2011, Shamati #219

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We are in such concealment that we don’t even feel it. We perceive all of reality only inside ourselves, and everything that we feel is impressions inside our egoistic desire that actually doesn’t exist at all.

In the spiritual world there is no such notion as the desire to enjoy that receives for its own sake. If the desire is aimed towards itself, it cannot receive anything and stays in the dark. Our egotistic desire, however, is on such a low, base level that we are allowed to feel some kind of reality in it, an imprint of what seems to us as reality.

When we begin to develop and gain greater desires and intentions for the sake of bestowal, we start sensing the upper system. Before it happens each of us is like an unconscious person in delirium who feels some kind of an imaginary world in which he seems to exist, like someone in a coma, who sees various images running through his head, as it sometimes happens in a dream.

When we wake up and come back to our senses, our desire is already on another level and has the intention for the sake of bestowal. Thus, we become aware that we feel everything inside our desire and that there is nothing on the outside. Everything that previously seemed to us as external was also a sensation inside the desire to receive.

We attain the spiritual world in our desire to receive too. The still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature, all the people, all this big world, and everything that’s happening in it are merely changes in my desire to receive, which make me feel that the world is changing. I discover the other souls, meaning foreign desires so that I can connect them to myself with the intention to bestow, and then they become parts of me that help me measure to what extent I am in bestowal.

I’m kept in the fog purposefully, so that I won’t be able to feel the others while I try to bring them closer and feel them as inseparable parts of me. If I try to bring all of what seems like the external reality closer to me, I can correct my vessel to bestowal.

The extent to which I bring the external, foreign desires: the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking and unite them into a single whole, into one spiritual organism that consists of “brain-bones-tendons-flesh-skin” (Moach–Atzamot–Gidin–Basar–Orh) or of “root-soul-body-garments-chamber” (Shoresh–Neshama–Guf–Levush–Heichal) is a measure of my approaching the truth. Indeed, there is no one but me who feels all of reality inside myself and thus builds a vessel within so as to perceive the Creator in it.

I have to bring all the parts together until they all become as “one man with one heart” and all the people that seemed to me as strangers become part of my soul. Thus, each of us advances without disturbing anyone. Each of us builds his own world on his own plane, in his own cut, attaining it as his inner world. And the Creator fills this world, which means that a person is in adhesion with the Light, with the Creator Who fills him.
[57427]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/12/2011, Writings of Rabash

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It is said: “The darkness will shine like the Light.” There is no day or night in our inner work. The Light shines in everything and fills the entire Malchut of Infinity. We exist in an ocean of Light. How can there be night?…

We have no day or night in spirituality, but we feel various changes in our states. It is necessary to discern these changes. Perhaps these are my days and nights that I feel in my egoism, when a day means that I have earned and conquered, while a night shows that I’m not that lucky. Meanwhile, the Creator’s day and night are opposite. For Him a day is a possibility to bestow, love, fill, and connect, while a night, on the contrary, is a lack of forces of bestowal and love.

Hence, we always have to discern in what we exist: in the darkness of the night or in the light of the day, mine or the Creator’s, and try to remain in the correct definition.
[57316]
From the 6th lesson at the Toronto Convention 9/18/11

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Question: How can you explain to people the integral system we have entered?

Answer: Everyone should feel in his mind and heart that the whole world is his family. Of course, at first it seems inconceivable or worn-out, but let’s look at the facts: Do we have a choice? The state the world is in today simply demands a “family approach” from us.

So how can we advance in this direction? After all, without it we won’t be able to make any right decision. Let’s take Europe, for example, which is desperately and unsuccessfully trying to come out of the financial crisis. And it isn’t that they lack money. They are ready to invest as much as needed, but they don’t believe it will have any effect. The same is happening in the United States. In the next few months things will become clearer: Our calculations have to correspond to the integral, analogous system that doesn’t operate according to our present mind and emotions at all.

Can I act in favor of the whole world and balance the coming storm with a gradual, general ascent? I am unable to feel this approach and estimate it because I myself am not like that. As a result, having discovered themselves in a global interrelated system, the world leaders still make the same narrow egoistic decisions. They simply can’t take into account that fact that “my own benefit” does not exist any more, but only “our benefit.” This is contradictory to human nature.

We also feel this. Do I think about the group? No. I first of all think about myself. Do I worry about my friends and their unity? No. I think about how I myself will reach spirituality. If I reach it, I will change and will begin to worry about them, but in the meantime I don’t. We talk profusely about unity and raise toasts to mutual guarantee, but inside everyone thinks: “What about me?” and not “What about us?”

Yet, we follow the path of free will, and so the crisis is revealed to us “softly,” but the masses are discovering it in a very hard form. If we don’t provide them with the right explanation, they will come to us, and we won’t just feel that there is some abstract global crisis—we will actually experience it personally.
[57771]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/16/11, “Peace in the World”

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Question: How can I personally affect the process of the emergence of worlds?

Answer: You already exist in the world of Infinity; you only need to discover yourself in it. We all exist inside the circle of the world of Infinity—all of us! We automatically exist in this system in an ideal state. Right now we also are in the world of Infinity in a completely corrected state, but not in relation to us. This state of absolute bestowal, love, and the full interaction of every person with everyone else is completely opposite to us.

It is gradually revealed to us to the extent that we are able to tolerate it. It is the most repulsive, hateful, and odious state I could imagine. And this is why it is revealed to me to the extent that I am able to potentially agree with it ahead of time.

In Baal HaSulam’s “Peace in the World,” “The Freedom,” as well as other articles, we study that we are all interconnected like wheels in one mechanism where they are all locked in together, linked in an ideal manner. They are so tightly connected that the tiniest movement of one of the wheels causes the entire system to move. Everyone depends on everyone else, and everyone must move harmoniously. We are in this system initially.

We are all so different, and we exist in this picture (see the box in the diagram below). This image can be two or three dimensional, it can be anything. In it, we are tightly linked like in a Rubik’s Cube: Every one of us consists of 613 desires, together with everyone else, where every individual also consists of 613 desires. In other words, we are completely “knit together.”

But thankfully, this image is not revealed to us because we are unable to tolerate it. However, we exist in it, and we automatically perform all our actions, including the current ones as well. And all these actions are righteous. In reality, all we do is bestow to one another. But we do not see it. Instead, we see an opposite picture, the one we want to see.

Kabbalah attunes us to gradually reveal our ideal state so this image will begin to live in me, so that I want it to live in me. And then it becomes revealed.

There is nothing new in the world. Simply a state initially created by the Creator and where you exist from the beginning becomes revealed. This is why our entire wisdom is wisdom about the revelation of the Creator, this entire system, and no more than that. All that is required of us is to want for that what exists to become revealed. But we must change ourselves and agree with this image in order to want it and to reveal it. This is our work.
[57500]
From the Sunday Virtual Lesson Series 10/2/2011

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Question: Does the upcoming return of the imprisoned Israeli soldier Gilat Shalit signify a new level of unity in our nation?

Answer: Certainly we have to be joyful that this finally happened. Our nation cannot tolerate such a situation when one of its people is tormented in captivity. We can see that it is not easy. On the other hand, this is not the end of our problems.

Let’s be glad about the happy end for Gilad. It is not a matter of how many terrorists are freed in exchange. He is coming back and this is good.

I don’t think that this will make a big difference in the unity of the nation. The saga has ended and we will forget about it in a month. We only have to understand that we have to care about each and everyone at least as much. After all, we are imprisoned by our egoistic desire, and it is time to come out of this captivity.
[57554]
From 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/14/2011, “One Commandment”

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In our world we all understand why children play games and what will happen when they grow up. But our world is a copy of the upper world, and this game symbolizes the fact that we have to advance slowly towards the truth, constantly choosing it from the opposite situation we are in.

The spiritual work begins with the fact that we are attached to false pleasures and actions that are totally egoistic. Yet we understand that we can grow only thanks to them, in order to have free will and to choose, to clarify our vessels, our attitude to the upper one by ourselves.

There is no other choice. Every time we fall and rise again, and thus we advance, as it is said: “A thousand times the righteous will fall and rise again.” This is how we move forward, and we have to be patient and to understand that this is the only way we will build a perfect, independent vessel. Whoever continues succeeds. The main thing here is consistency.

We see a copy of all spiritual processes in the corporeal life too. This is why we are born into it as small, brainless children; we play meaningless games and are unable to take care of ourselves, until gradually, thanks to these games, we grow up and proceed with more serious corrections. Many years go by until a person “stands on his own two legs” and is ready for life in this world.

Hence, after the Selichot (the ten days of Repentance), Rosh Hashanah (the New Year), Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), the five days between Yom Kippur and Sukkot, and the seven days of Sukkot, we reach the level of Shemini Atzeret (the Eighth day of Assembly): the unity with the Light. Gradually, day by day, we perform clarifications, the symbol of which is the covering of the Sukkah (Skhakh) made of “the waste of barn and winery.” That is, it is made of what a person disrespects and thinks nothing of, believing the food that we get from barn and a winery is most important, and not the waste.

But namely what seemed to him as worthless waste becomes the most important thing now. If I raise this “waste” above me and use it to cover my ego, if I hide myself under this covering, then I’ll be able to enjoy its shade. This is how we discover the upper Light, which is not revealed directly, without the shade. Thus, we reach the Sukkah of peace (Sukkat Shalom), under the perfect (Shalem) covering, the screen.
[57329]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/11/2011, Writings of Rabash

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It is customary to celebrate the holiday of Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles) in a temporary structure built specifically for this purpose, the Sukkah. The covering of the Sukkah (Skhakh) is the most important part of it. Some people even kiss the covering because it symbolizes the screen, the shade that you built. But you build this covering from waste material, “the waste of barn and winery,” meaning from the places where we make bread, which symbolizes the Light of Hassadim (Mercy), and wine, which symbolizes the Light of Hochma (Wisdom).

When the two are connected correctly, a person builds a screen from this waste, meaning from what he has rejected and disrespected before. Now he raises it above his head, by faith above reason, and thereby builds a shade for himself, about which it says in the Song of Songs: “I sat down under his shadow with great delight….” Thus a person acquires the vessel, into which the Light clothes: the Light of Hochma enters inside the Light of Hassadim. Then the waste is not garbage anymore but something important to him. This is how a person advances spiritually.

The symbol of the waste that turns into the most important thing is similar to the way children grow by playing games. It’s just like a little girl, who as a child loved her rag doll more than anything and didn’t want to play with a real baby,  when she grows up, as an adult, she enjoys playing with a real baby and not a doll. It is the same with us. We can’t touch a true pleasure and understand that namely it is the real thing.

Until we grew up, we needed false pleasures, in the form of a plastic or rag doll, and we couldn’t switch to something real. This is the time of childhood! Until our vessels grew, we couldn’t understand that playing with a real baby can bring us pleasure.

However, when we mature, our vessels grow. Hence, our work is to raise ourselves. In spirituality we don’t grow like in corporeal life where everything happens naturally. If a person works in order to keep himself from getting off the path despite the obstacles, if he asks for the Light and enables it to operate on him, then he gradually obtains a desire that understands what true pleasures are.

The disregard he felt for the real baby becomes his corrected vessel for receiving the right pleasure. Now he understands how naive his play with the toy cars and the rag dolls was. But it was important because he grew thanks to it.
[57332]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/11/2011, Writings of Rabash

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During the reading of The Book of Zohar, each one needs to demand what seems to him to be most important. But one needs to understand that by reading any Kabbalistic book and especially The Zohar, we awaken the Light that Reforms. This Light works on us to the extent that we are similar to it.

Suppose a wind blows on me. If I move straight towards it, in exactly the same line as it does, it influences me to the maximum. But if I move towards it at an angle, then according to this angle, I lessen its influence on me. If I am at a 90 degree angle in relation to it, I feel the influence as if it throws me aside. If I oppose it, meaning turn my back to it by 180 degrees, then it influences me in the opposite direction.

Everything depends on my position in relation to the Light. If I connect to it, the Torah for me is the elixir of life, but if I oppose it, the Torah becomes the potion of death for me. The Light itself operates all the time.

Thus Kabbalists warn us not to open Kabbalistic books without the correct intention. It was forbidden in Kabbalah, and Kabbalists frightened people because they didn’t want to inflict any harm on them.

But now we are already in a state where it is permitted for everyone to study the wisdom of Kabbalah since we are all becoming mutually connected and different laws are operating here. But when we want to reveal the spiritual world, we must position ourselves directly towards the Light. Will it be the Light that Reforms or the opposite? Each person has to decide for himself.
[57083]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/10/2011, The Zohar

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