Rabash, “What is the People’s Shepherd is the Whole Nation in the Work”: But the main difficulty is only the lack of faith. Thus, a person has to devote all his work and perform actions in order to buy the faith in the Creator, which is the only thing that provides him with everything.

It is about a special force that, together with all the troubles, problems, tensions, and internal conflicts, keeps a person in the state of Hafetz Hesed. This means that it doesn’t make his life easier, but that it keeps him above the heaviness of life.

This force doesn’t solve the corporeal problems and doesn’t free a person of them. On the contrary, every spiritual level is built above the unsolved corporeal conflicts of the current level. Otherwise, a person would not be forced to rise above it. Having no choice under the pressure of the ego, he needs the state of Hafetz Hesed. Otherwise, he will simply not be able to live. On the other hand, this is necessary because he will never bring the Creator contentment.

This is the choice between these two discernments, between the two causes according to which a person advances to a spiritual life.

Question: What is his choice exactly?

Answer: You may choose to be in Hafetz Hesed in order to simply walk around in the forest with a flower in your hand and not wanting anything more than that, or you may not be able to stand the pains that this life brings and wish to escape to a place where everything seems good, where everything is for the best, since there is none else besides Him. Indeed, don’t I deserve such a good state?

You either yearn for the state of Hafetz Hesed because it is a higher level that allows you to remain above all the unpleasant feelings in the desire to receive or in order to remain in bestowal and to appreciate it more than receiving. It is quite hard to explain this to ourselves, but it is already the beginning of the real state of Hafetz Hesed.
[104195]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/3/13, Writings of Rabash

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Writings of Rabash, the essay, “What is, ‘a shepherd of the people is all of the people’, in the work”: And then he can understand what the “Shechinah in the Dust” is; being that he then sees how where he needs to do something for the sake of Heaven and not his own benefit, immediately the body complains and asks, “What is this work to you”, and doesn’t want to give him the energy to work, this is what is called “Shechinah in the Dust”, meaning what does he want to do for the good of the Shechinah, he tastes dust in this, and he doesn’t have the strength to overcome his thoughts and desires.

Generally, we describe the Exodus from Egypt simply: “It was very bad for us there, and we fled from this evil to a good life.” The superficial, egoistic, childish approach is like this: “We were slaves, and now we are free.” And this is correct really, for the will to receive accepts only this simple explanation.

But we need to understand that we advance on two levels: within reason and above reason. What is discovered within reason doesn’t point towards the exodus from Egypt at all, rather the opposite; Egypt only becomes stronger and more and more difficult for us. And that is why we can rise above Egypt all the time to go above reason.

This is called the spiritual exodus from Egypt, and therefore, with every commandment, that is, with every correction, we say it is a reminder of the Exodus. It is not arbitrary that it is said that the person must personally feel as if he is now leaving Egypt. In the spiritual path, we always feel not just a difference but an opposition between these two levels: reason and rising above it. And we establish our reality, the reality of the Human Being (Adam), through the distance between them.
[104188]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/3/13, Writings of Rabash

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Question: The current period is very difficult. We feel the pressure put on us; the Creator is very strict with us. In what way, here in Europe, can we rise above all our fears to respond appropriately to what the Creator wants from us?

Answer: Our main goal is connection, unity. Even if we don’t disseminate the method of integral education, our connection will influence the world anyway. It will seemingly spread under the ground and influence everyone.

Everyone will begin talking about this. Everyone will begin to think and to understand since the entire world is interconnected anyway. This is known from scientific research, and people already feel this: Something that I think about in one country in the world suddenly begins to be discovered in thoughts and actions in another country, and so forth.

So, first and foremost, we need unity. Especially, if we begin to connect beyond the borders of Europe! And the moment we begin to do this, we will feel that the relationships between nations, between people, will become completely different. The media are beginning to present information in a slightly different form: in a softer, mutual form, with the understanding that there is no other choice, it is necessary to campaign for good relations with one another. Therefore, we need to go towards this.

And then, from our connection, we already disseminate the method of integral education itself. This is not complicated at all. You can’t imagine how quickly this will be realized; we simply need to take on the right form and to act; this is the main thing in the wisdom of Kabbalah. For you can invest immense amounts of energy, years of toil, squeeze out of yourselves everything that is possible, but if this doesn’t progress in the right direction, deviating a little to the side, then nothing will come of this!

Baal HaSulam writes in his book Shamati, that Israel is someone who is directed straight towards the Creator; the Torah is the system that connects people because it acts to implement the general rule “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” This is to say, if you direct yourself towards love, towards the connection between you, directly towards the Creator, then you will reach the Creator. But if you distort this way slightly, then you veer to the side. This angular distance can be very small, but when you advance, the distance grows.

Therefore, it is forbidden for us to err, we need to correct ourselves all the time: a little more and more, like any tracking system.

We need to pay attention to this, and then it will not be complicated and difficult at all. Very quickly, really immediately, you will feel the right reaction from the world. People will suddenly begin to find you, to turn to you and ask: “Where were you up to now?”
[103915]
From the European Convention in Germany 3/23/13, Lesson 4

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We need to accept all events patiently and see them in two ways, along two lines, from the point of view of judgment and of mercy, so as to distinguish precisely between what influences my “donkey” (my egoistic substance) and what may influence the human in me. Then I will feel a split within me and to the extent that it is possible, I will adhere to the human in me.

If I suddenly discover that I have been in the donkey part for quite some time, I need to be thankful for this instead of being sorry about it. After all, it is the Creator who arranged it so that without noticing it, I became clothed in my “donkey” so that I again would include the donkey desires and discover that I again had returned to the donkey calculations. From there, I must rise to the human calculation and strive more and more to hold onto that with the help of the group.

If I forget about the group and I have nowhere to take their material, their thoughts in order to attach and develop the human part in me, the Creator throws me into my donkey again. Thus I gradually build the human in me with the help of these two sources: the group and the donkey.

When we suddenly find ourselves below, within our will to receive, and again make pragmatic material calculations as if there were no Creator and higher purpose, and no spiritual path, rather only our ordinary life, we don’t need to regret this. One should regret only a little that the Creator threw him into a “place of filth,” into the stinking ego, and the main thing is to draw conclusions, to depart from this descent and begin to compare the states to understand and feel them better.

In this way, these terms enter more deeply into the mind and feelings of a person who makes an effort to analyze them within himself. Thus he constructs a control system for himself and his states, and so he advances.
[104133]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/3/13, TES

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Question: How can I become an example for the group?

Answer: You simply have to be it. Let’s say that starting today, I become an example for the group. I smile to everyone, love, help, remind about the importance of the goal, and do what is written in Rabash’s articles about the group. This is all.
[104214]
From Lesson 5, European Convention 3/22/13

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When the descent ends, you begin to realize that it would be better to control it and to ask for a Masach (screen) that would enable you to transcend such state. Then, despite the inner repulsion, you would be able to aspire to the friends and to still feel love and connection. You understand that this is the better way.

The first time it happens, you can’t make any decisions while in the state of descent. You only feel how total darkness falls on you, burying you under it. Then you examine yourself and think that it could be good to learn to somehow control such states. The next time darkness comes, you try to somehow resist it and ask for help.

You don’t really succeed, but when the darkness disappears, you examine yourself again and think with what to arm yourself for the next round of darkness so as to ask for a screen. Thus, each time you grow wiser since “there is no wiser than the experienced.” Eventually, your reach a state in which you begin to demand a screen—you begin to work with the Light.

This is the most important moment in our work: being able to see the Creator as your partner and to actually start working with Him, as it says, “I am for my beloved and my beloved is for me.”
[103765]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/28/13

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Question: Have we reached the lowest point from the Creator?

Answer: We are at a doorstep of sensing the Creator. We can tell by observing what is going on in the world and within ourselves. We exerted enough, held a huge number of conventions, including the ones in the desert. We hope that this current convention, the upcoming Passover week in Israel, as well as our efforts that are directed to unity and mutual connection will become the last attempt and we will attain revelation.

We don’t know when it will happen. It always happens unexpectedly. It’s described in the original sources. Generally speaking, we are standing at the doorstep of a spiritual revelation. As a rule, it always emerges out of the darkness. The transition to the next step always takes place similar to the exodus from Egypt in the middle of the night or to the birth of a child who comes into the world out of nothing, from the darkness.

Let’s hope that we will attain revelation here and now. We have to stay alert, wait, and wish for it to happen to us every minute of our lives. Even if it doesn’t happen immediately, still my personal understanding and experience tells me that it will definitely happen.

By no means can I sign for it or pledge that it will happen since everything that occurs to us depends on the entire the world. That’s why neither I nor the greatest Kabbalist of the world are capable of predicting how and when it will happen. We are pioneers. Past Kabbalists were individualists; they revealed spirituality among themselves, in small groups, such as Rabbi Shimon’s disciples, students of the ARI, Ramchal, and Baal HaSulam.

Now, it’s our turn to transition to the next level. I can’t accurately predict the exact date or any specific conditions that will bring us to revelation. Nevertheless, we are at the doorstep, on the eve of entering a spiritual realm. Nine months of intrauterine development are over and the labor has already started. This is the state we are in at this time. It can last for a while, similarly to how a child moves slightly back and forth, and the mother senses this movement as birth contractions. We are already at this stage.

Question: Is it the lowest point from the Creator in respect to the humanity?

Answer: It’s the farthest point and at the same time it’s the closest one. After all, there has to be a difference of potentials.

On one hand, “birth contractions,” a huge tension and tremendous efforts, are inevitable. One may wonder, what is happening? But we know from everyday life that this is the way children are born. Everything will turn out well.

Question: How do we sense the life of this point: individually inside each of us or in the group?

Answer: It’s not a point any more. We will be born when we connect. Connection among us will be a construction consisting of ten parts, ten Sefirot—the first image of an infant that we will birth. This construction of ten parts has to have a certain structure: an internal tension and a huge power that connects all antagonistic, egoistic, desires together. A unity of complete opposites creates a “voltage” where the upper Light becomes revealed.

It’s a law of physics, a superficial molecular tension, nothing but that! We observe the same things in everything around us: in nature, in technologies. Any natural phenomena are built from opposites.
[103407]
From the European Convention 3/22/13, Lesson 1

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Question: In what way can each of us invest effort in the common Kli; what do we need to do?

Answer: Every one simply needs to think about what he would want to have happen to him, to the group, and to the entire world: men, women, children, the old, all the peoples, all of humanity. Today, we are all in the same boat, a real Noah’s Ark.

It is said about Noah’s Ark that all were stowed in it and nobody ate anyone else, rather all lived in peace. For this ark is the characteristic of Bina, which encompasses and holds everything within itself. And therefore they were saved from the deluge, from the great ego, that erupted outside the walls of the ark and appeared in all its terrible forms: volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, tsunamis, blizzards, and burning fire.

The ark protected all who were found within it, for they wanted to save it. The more we protect the ark, the more the ark will protect us. For the ark is the characteristic of Bina. Entering the characteristic of Bina is like entering a womb, into an ark that will protect you from all bad and harmful external influences; nothing can harm you anymore.

This is what specifically needs to be explained to the world—that all the problems of humanity are derived from its raging ego. But if we all build an ark for ourselves and do not eat each other, instead, all of us will dwell together within it, in our small closed world; if we make an ark from our small closed world, then we will be saved. Otherwise, what happened to all those who remained outside of the walls of Noah’s Ark will happen to us, all of us will sink into the waters of the deluge.
[103932]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/28/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Baal HaSulam, Shamati, Article 35, “Concerning the Vitality of Kedusha“: Hence, it is a correction that each time one extends something and has a descent, he must begin anew, meaning new scrutinies. And what one had from the past has fallen into the Sitra Achra, and she holds it in her authority as a deposit. Afterwards one receives everything that she had received from him this whole time.

Thus we can see that everything that happens is in our favor. Thanks to the desires that the Creator has shattered and thrown into the sea of the impure forces (Sitra Achra), to the other side, into egoistic desire to enjoy, we have a chance to advance towards Holiness, towards desires to bestow. These desires to receive force us to draw more and more Light.

At the moment we draw a little Light and the desires of the Sitra Achra immediately swallow it. This happens over and over again until the measure is filled, and then the ego “vomits” everything it has swallowed, and we get back all the Light that we have managed to draw for a while but were unable to keep. Thus the Sitra Achra helps a person accumulate his exertion, collect all the tiny Lights, and then give it back to him as one full measure that enables him to attain the spiritual level.

This is why we create the “holy animals” from the descents, from the states we usually don’t want and don’t like. But we have to understand how grateful we have to be for all the mechanisms in the system of the upper Providence and especially for the system of the forces of impurity, which rules over us during the whole period of preparation, until we enter the authority of Holiness, of the desire to bestow.

As long as the force of impurity dominates us, it fulfills its role with utmost dedication, which is even greater than the dedication of the system of Holiness. After all, the Sitra Achra must work in the opposite manner from the Creator, in a form opposite to Him. It’s a special “angel,” a unique system, which follows the Creator’s command, His desire, and performs actions that are opposite to Holiness according to a decree from Above.

A similar story is told in one of Baal HaSulam’s letters: A king appoints different villains to rule over his subject whom he has decided to raise to the rank of the first minister. In order to do so, the king sends his servants to him dressed as criminals and murderers, and thanks to the struggle with them the loyal slave grows more and more.

All the “villains” who had to fight him are fulfilling their job with all the viciousness and the creative cunningness only because it is the king’s order and not because it’s their own will. The force of impurity, our internal systems that seem so horrible to us, works in the exact same way.

All the crimes that take place in the world, the murders and the falls, seem to contradict the Creator’s desire and we have to hate them. However, we should understand that there is no evil—there are no criminals in the King’s palace and it’s all His systems that operate from two directions: from the good side and from the bad side. We should only hate our own laziness because we cannot fulfill our free will in choosing our environment, the group, the only place where we are free.

We shouldn’t complain about any event in our life, except for one: our inability to hurry at the right time, to use the environment and with its help to advance and to hasten (sanctify) time.
[103832]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/29/13

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Question: Sometimes when we are working in the group, the Creator gives us an ascent, advanced states. How can we use them to advance the 99% of humanity?

Answer: We need to think about it constantly because everything is resolved in thoughts. Our thoughts are the greatest forces of the world. If the thought is in the right direction, it enters the vector, in connection with the Light, and that is something that can change the world.

The Surrounding Light affects us, and by our vector we make it directed Light. If we light a flashlight or spotlight, it shines directly. Imagine that we can do the same with our thoughts.

If you think about someone being in the correct state, in good thoughts, you will see how you will cure, correct, improve by this. Everything will be successful.
[104034]
From the European Convention in Germany 3/23/13, Lesson 5

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