Question: What is the relationship between efforts to unite and the reaction of the Creator to them? What does He do more, help or place obstacles?

Answer: The stronger we are, the more He helps us by preventing.

After all, if you are stronger, you deserve bigger and qualitatively different obstacles, not simply quantitative interferences, as, for example, before you could jump 20 inches high, and now you have to jump 7 feet. No.

In the spiritual world, levels grow qualitatively. There, you have to solve different tasks. And that confuses you because you are used to particular manifestations of the Creator, to a certain kind of obstacles, and suddenly they are completely different.
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From a Virtual Lesson 12/23/12

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The Creator has set immutable laws. If we don’t know how to use them correctly, we feel bad, and if we know, we feel good.

The main point here is to understand that the laws of nature don’t change in all its levels. If this seems to us the opposite, it is because the conditions are changing and the same laws are revealed to us in a different way.

In space, for example, gravity “suddenly” disappears. Have the laws changed? No. If you return to the initial conditions you will discover them again.

Question: But if the Creator has already created us and set clear laws; why do we have to change? Why do we have to work for Him?

Answer: Under the current conditions, you work in order to profit for your own benefit and not for Him.

Question: But we still study the wisdom of Kabbalah. So why is our path full of thorns? It seems as if there is nowhere we can step.

Answer: It is because you have become more sensitive. A small child doesn’t know how to be careful. An ordinary person doesn’t have too many inhibitions. But a clever person already knows the possible outcomes of different actions. So it turns out that you have become more clever and more sensitive. About that, it is said: “He who adds knowledge adds pain.”

You can, of course, lead a simple, modest life without any questions and claims, work in some mechanical job that doesn’t require any mental efforts. But if you want to be “in,” if you want to advance, to develop, you will undoubtedly encounter problems and pressures. There is nothing new here.

Question: But I am an ordinary person, I am not looking for problems. And if there are problems, where is the reward?

Answer: If no pressure were put on you, you wouldn’t be asking about the reward, right? Now you have started to think and you are right.

Well a simple logical answer should be that the “pressure” must be the reward itself. If I make efforts along the spiritual path and to the same extent I receive blows, it means that this is my reward. It really does seem that way, and it requires an unbiased examination, an investigation.

If, for example, I am going through all kinds of tests with different medical instruments: They scan me with different rays and discover numerous problems. There is a phenomenon that is very common among students who study medicine; they discover they suffer from all the diseases they are studying.

So what is the reward for the study? What can we tell them?

– It will pass, everything will be fine.

– What do you mean it’s fine, if it’s time to hop onto the operating table?!

This is the feeling they experience.

Question: But still, will there be some relief along the way?

Answer: It will be when you feel the parental love in the blows. We should understand that the flaws are revealed to us, that’s all. How can we overcome them? How can we see not a problem in them but salvation?

First, it is a good thing that the place of the flaw was revealed to me—after all, the Creator has created the evil inclination.

Now I feel the necessity of the wisdom of Kabbalah as a means of correction. I can use this method only if I am connected to the group, to the study, if I enter the group as deeply as I can.

Then I discover that all the unpleasant “surprises” are revealed only in order to speed up my work. They are like calls to complete the necessary efforts. After all, the incomplete efforts leave a very strong feeling of bitterness.

Baal HaSulam talks about it in Letter 19: “The strong passion that is incomplete leaves great sorrow behind it, to the extent of one’s passion.” In such a case a person has to finish what he has started as fast as he can. Otherwise he is called “a fool who is sitting idly eating his own flesh.” Here the breakthrough is very important and it depends on our unity.
[96762]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/28/12, “The Peace”

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Writings of Rabash, Volume 2, “What is the Righteous are Evident by the Wicked, in the Work”: In order for a person to advance in the ways of the Lord, and to be awarded that all his actions will be for the sake of Heaven, and he feels that he is in a state of ascent now, and what else can he do. The Creator leads this world by the wicked, which means that the Creator gives him thoughts of the wicked, which means that it is not worthwhile to work for Him, but only for one’s self.

And by that he receives a descent and thinks that he has received a descent not because it was given to him, so that he would advance in the way of the Lord, to be awarded with reason of Holiness. Instead he thinks that he is going backwards because he cannot work individually, but rather needs to work generally. And because from the general, he loses both ways, since he cannot enter the general again, a person feels that he is hanging between Heaven and earth. He feels that he is in a worse position than other people. Then a person can ask from the Creator from the bottom of his heart, and can pray, as it says, “save me oh Lord, for I am miserable, heal me oh Lord for I am frightened, and until when oh Lord.”

This means, until then will I remain in a state in which I feel that I am worse than any other person, and that I have no connection to spirituality. So there is no other choice but that a person should believe in what is written “that You hear the prayer of every mouth,” which means even the worst mouth in the world, that even if it is impossible to be lower and worse in the world, still the Lord hears him.

This is what our sages said, “He who comes to purified, is aided from Above.” The Zohar explains this saying that “he is given a Holy soul.” So it turns out that the Creator gives him thoughts of the wicked so that he will have a place to ask the Creator to help him, since otherwise he remains in the state he was at the beginning of his work, and would stay there all his life.

The problem is that we escape from these unpleasant moments when the Creator brings us to the state of the wicked by letting us see to what extent we are not adapted to the spiritual levels, to the spiritual work, that we are totally opposite from God’s work, and are not ready to reach bestowal, the love of others, the love of friends. We discover that we have no hold of the spiritual world, which means that we cannot exit ourselves towards others, towards the friend or the Creator.

We escape from these discoveries. The Creator opens our eyes a little in every state to see our real state, but He cannot force us, since it would deprive us of our freewill. Each time He brings us to a certain recognition and waits for us to add to it of our own freewill, in order to attain a prayer, a request, and to want the correction ourselves and not according to a verdict from Above.

Therefore, it says, “he who comes to be purified is aided from Above!” We have to come on our own and not because a desire for correction was inserted into us from Above, and in response to which the correcting force comes from Above. Not everything can come from Above; our own exertion is also required, a vessel that belongs to us.

But instead of adding our exertion after having been awakened by the Creator who has brought us to the beginning of the recognition of evil, to the state of the wicked, we are frightened by the revelation and try to hide it, to sweeten it, and to cover it from ourselves, while we have to develop this feeling by ourselves and attain the unbearable state. It is unbearable not because it is unpleasant; I would even agree to remain in this state if I could attain bestowal by it.

Here we usually escape, and cover up the state, and so we don’t reach the true prayer that could help us open our eyes. The Creator awakens us, He provides us with all the necessary conditions, the whole package that is needed in order to attain the goal. But we don’t want to connect all these components in order to fulfill it. In order to do that, we have to be connected, to evoke one another, to support, to encourage, to give each other confidence, but for the time being this is lacking.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/28/12

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Question: Recently, I’ve been visiting at the hospital frequently and I notice that some patients lack a basic drive for life. People do not cling to life. What has happened to this basic desire?

Answer: It disappears in sick people, and the elderly, and the young. This is the natural course of evolution: The egoistic desire is growing, not only quantitatively, but also qualitatively.

We still judge by quantity; we strive to a greater scale, greater luxury, but in the meantime, the quality changes. And suddenly we discover that development requires something higher, values that do not exist in our world. There are new requests in me, and my environment cannot give me answers to them. It turns out that I have nothing to do here, there is nothing to look for, nothing to live for, nothing to enjoy because I do not just seek pleasure, but want to discover something more essential.

But wait, what essence is there? People themselves do not know what they want.

This is because our world has nothing more to offer them. And then the defense mechanisms of the body push many, especially the younger generation, to all kinds of whims and follies, as well as to suicide, drugs, terrorism, and anything negative. They are looking for something, but cannot find anything. Today, a new egoistic desire is manifested, which sees a wall in front itself: “What have I come to? The world is lifeless. Why am I here?”

People whose mind and feelings have not been yet developed enough become economists, lawyers; in short, they look for success in life. They are still attracted by something, enticed by some benefit. But those who have evolved a bit more can no longer find anything worthwhile for themselves. They initially have no taste for life, and this produces much more serious phenomena than we see on the surface. After all, the media and Internet save many people from suicide. The general opinion makes everyone participate in these “games,” distractions from the main question. But soon, this will end; in six months or a year, the wave will subside, and we will see how media resources and virtual reality lose their popularity.

And then a problem will emerge: how to occupy people? By that time, the number of unemployed will increase; the scale of deprivation will grow. A person will have nowhere to go, even the means that used to be before will disappear…

Question: It is known that the statistics of depression and emptiness are increasing. Where will people get a new desire that will lead them on the spiritual path?

Answer: In fact, it is impossible without the “Light” from above. Of course, we will not be able to awaken them if we do not get the Light for us and for them, according to the principle “the first-born takes double.” Only in this way, will we be able to show them the way, to show them a spark of the Light, which is enough for everyone. In the end, it is our duty.

And if not, the only alternative is a world war. People would feel that that would be better than to continue to live as before. No one will oppose a war. On the contrary, in this month, many looked forward to the end of the world, hoping for at least some diversity. “It hasn’t come yet? Well, let’s wait for the next one…” People will embrace a war, albeit unconsciously…
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/30/12, “Body and Soul”

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Baal HaSulam, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy“: The reason is that although this love is merely a consequence of the gift, it is still far more important than the gift itself. It is like a great king who gives an unimportant object to a person. Although the gift itself is worthless, the love and the attention of the king make it priceless and precious. Thus, it is completely separated from the matter, being the Light and the gift, in a way that the work and the distinction remain carved in the attainment with only the love itself, while the gift is seemingly forgotten from the heart. Therefore, this aspect of the wisdom is called the “Formative Wisdom of Kabbalah.” Indeed, this part is the most important part of the wisdom.

We are talking about the wisdom of Kabbalah with which I clarify and check the Creator’s attitude towards me and accordingly stabilize my attitude towards Him.

The King is very cunning: He gives me a gift and arranges everything so that in this gift I will feel His attitude towards me and feel shame as a result, since I don’t feel the same towards Him. He takes care that I will decipher it correctly, that I will “read” the situation and will not erase the shame inside me, but instead, the shame will help me resemble Him. When I receive love from Him, when I feel the gap between His attitude to me and my attitude to Him in my shame, I thank Him, although the shame burns like fire. It is this feeling that helps me build myself.

In fact, the shame can turn out to be the right deficiency. If I don’t want to erase it, it is already the right attitude, and now above this deficiency, I have to build my attitude towards the Creator. This means that the shame mustn’t disappear. On the contrary, it should grow, and I should try not to extinguish it, not to cover it, not to cover it up, but rather to turn it into such love, just as I feel it from the Creator and even more than that.

Why is it more? Because love is taken for granted by my ego. Everyone needs to love me. If I receive a gift of $20, I will forget about it after a short while. But if someone takes $20 from me, I will resent it, as if I had lost $200,000. This is the egoistic approach: I always deserve the gift and the harm is unacceptable. If someone says something good about me, I am satisfied until I forget about it. But if someone says something bad about me, I will not calm down until I repay him.

So feeling shame before the Creator doubles the love and helps me build a vessel of bestowal that matches my ego. Otherwise, I will see that only receiving gifts of love from Him is not enough for my ego. I simply must have the shame, the force that doubles the force of love, by allowing me to develop a greater deficiency for bestowal and to fulfill it.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/16/12, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”

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Question: How can I check whether I am worthy of participating in the Arava convention?

Answer: We don’t aspire for making this a mass convention, but rather a qualitative one. This convention is open to anyone who wants to come, and we don’t want to check anyone and ask for references. We are waiting in this convention for all our friends from all over the world who are really willing to annul themselves before the society.

This is the only condition! A person should make this inner calculation personally. No one knows what happens inside a person, but he has to make an honest soul searching. This will be felt according to his participation, according to his readiness and his devotion.

We don’t need people who just happen to come and who usually don’t participate in their local conventions. We need people who are dedicated to the goal. It is because in such conventions the quality is more important than the quantity. People shouldn’t come in order to just walk around like observers and to criticize things, or to come for one day instead of three days.

Whoever wants to come must be present from the beginning to the end, to dive with his head and heart into the convention. Otherwise, it is not worthwhile coming! This is my warning.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/26/12, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: In the article “The Peace,” it is said: “The store is open and the shopkeeper sells by deferred payment; the book is open and the hand writes. And all who wish to borrow may come and borrow, and the collectors return regularly, day-by-day, and collect from a person knowingly and unknowingly.” What is the payment?

Answer: And what is receiving? What do you get from the store? Do you steal by not knowing what?

All your life, all the thoughts, all the feelings, everything that continually passes through you, you get from the store, from the first atom to the very last great attainment. You are created in a certain way, with particular physical, internal, psychological, spiritual, mental properties so that you transform yourself. You got this knowledge and conditions. You are in a place that is involved in transformation. Bring yourself closer to the likeness of the Creator. Thus, you pay for what you receive.

Or else, a person does it involuntarily under constant successive blows and suffering. But his suffering pays for nothing. He just comes to the realization that he has to pay; he needs to change himself. This may take another 100 years.

You have the opportunity to begin to change yourself now and thus to justify your existence, meaning what you get from the store. Payment is made accordingly with our reasonable actions, aimed at becoming like the Creator, which is the way that I change the world into the likeness of Him. I change not only my attitude to everything, but also education, upbringing, dissemination, the whole world, but first of all, myself.
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From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/9/12, Lesson 6

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Question: The exertion is the same vessel in which the Creator is revealed, but what does my exertion have to do with the exertion of the friends? Is my exertion enough for the Creator to be revealed in them, or does it have to be the sum of our collective exertions?

Answer: It is impossible to answer this unequivocally. I see the friends as my eyes show me, in my perception. If I see them today as I saw them yesterday, it means that I haven’t changed at all. If I see that, today, they are greater, deeper, cleverer, and more successful, it means that I have changed.

However, we cannot connect all these states yet. They advance, or I advance, seeing their advancement. The truth is that they are all at the end of correction already, at an infinite height, and it is just me looking at them from my level.

The growth and the advancement of the friends impresses me, but isn’t it they who grow? I have changed, and therefore, I see that they have grown.

We cannot explain this by using our earthly language, which is totally egoistic. It is just as it is impossible to explain the new economy by using old terms since a healthy economy is the right integral connection. For the same reason, it is impossible to explain the relationships among the friends.

We have no choice if in the meantime we operate in our egoistic desires. We must look at things like in mathematics, one parameter after another. If there are several variables, and I depend on them all, I must fix one parameter and check how the change affects the second parameter.

Then, I fix the second parameter and check its dependence on the first parameter. Only then do I connect them to one system of equations in order to solve them together.

There can only be one element in every equation that I can find. If there are two elements, we need another equation. When we have two equations with two elements, we can already solve the problem.

However, in the meantime, we cannot combine two equations in our analysis. We can see what happens with one parameter and with another parameter separately, but we cannot connect them into one system.

Our brain cannot perceive these two opposite parameters as one. So, by explaining this, I am like a woman in labor who cannot give birth yet. It cannot be explained in words. Everyone will discover this according to his vessels.

In Kabbalistic explanations, we must pass the information from the world in which everything is united, to our world in which everything is totally separated.

This means that these are different software, different formula, and different approaches.

We try to understand the explanation by using earthly language and to grasp in our earthly minds what happens in the upper world. Even physicists already understand that it is simply impossible. They come across phenomena that are on the borderline where matter disappears, and, thus, the scientific language ends.

Modern physics will advance in a way that in each of the following stages, in every experiment, there will be more and more hidden parameters. It will become a hidden science. We will see that we have managed to advance to a certain point after which everything we had before disappears. Science can reveal only how each of the parameters disappears, but not more than that.

Our job is to continue with our exertion in the group, and eventually everything will be clear.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/25/12, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Baal HaSulam, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”: The above is much like a fable that our sages tell: Asmodeus (the devil) drove King Solomon four hundred parsas (a distance measurement) from Jerusalem and left Him with no money and means of sustenance. Then he sat in King Solomon’s throne while the king was begging at the doors. Every place he went, he said: “I am Ecclesiastes!” but none believed him. And so he went from town to town declaring, “I am Solomon!” … As King Solomon could not display his wisdom to the scholars at the place of his exile and had to come to Jerusalem, the place of the Sanhedrin, who studied and knew King Solomon, and testified to the depth of his wisdom

So it is with the wisdom of Kabbalah: it requires great sages who examine their hearts to study it for twenty or thirty years. Only then will they be able to testify to it.

Today everything is totally different. First, we now have Baal HaSulam’s books that are suitable for our generation. This greatly hastens the process. Baal HaSulam prepared the scientific part for us, the part of the wisdom, and Rabash prepared the practical part, and so our steps along the spiritual road have become much faster. It still takes years but not decades.

Besides, today man’s general state also plays an important role. In the past, Kabbalists did not depend on the external pace of development; they did their work and laid a “pipe” so that the wisdom of Kabbalah would flow in a parallel channel. They didn’t have to reveal it to their generation. On the other hand, we are living in the age of fulfillment, which means that we need to fulfill the general ascent and therefore depend on the whole world. To the extent that it develops, we are also given something to hold on to and new revelations and advancement.

This means that we have to prepare ourselves to serve the world. I know it about myself: I have to “chew” these things, to repeat them, to delve into them, although I don’t need them for my advancement. Imagine that a person who has to become a scientist is also taught how to be a kindergarten teacher and an elementary school teacher.

This is actually what today’s generation is demanding and no one person is taken into account other than his place in the general system. There is no point in raising any one separately; even the great Kabbalists were raised only to do the work they had to do at a certain point in the general process, so that the results would serve others.

Today we all depend on the world’s advancement, and so we can, for example, stay on a certain level until it takes the next step. Changes for the good will only come according to the pace of the general global changes. But this doesn’t mean that we can sit and wait now: “We have done enough, and now we can wait for them.” No, our work is mutual; our corrections “are poured” into all the other nations and it’s their advancement that helps us.

Let’s hope the year 2013 will be good for us. We have to make both internal and external efforts in order to reach the most distant places, including countries that are in serious crisis and their existence in danger, like Greece or Spain. We have to find and use all possible means in order to disseminate the wisdom of Kabbalah everywhere. This will greatly hasten the external development and will allow us to develop internally.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/27/12, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”

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The desire to receive, which we are in now, is bad. It is very good if we want to enjoy life, and it helps us as much as it can. But it becomes bad and cruel if a desire to bestow is evoked in us, and it doesn’t let us adhere to the Creator, to the upper level. The desire to receive places a Machsom (barrier) between the upper and us, which does not allow us to pass.

The point, the spark of bestowal, strongly yearns to adhere to the Creator. The more the desire to receive dominates it, the more it yearns for the Creator. The more the domination of the ego is revealed, the more strongly this point has to struggle with it. And so its intention for the Creator grows and at the same time the sorrow and the pain also grow from the inability to adhere to the Creator. Its feeling of exile becomes greater and more bitter.

The tension, pressure, and yearning grow, and thus the vessels are formed. The vessels for attaining this upper level are not formed by the desire to receive that has turned into a desire to bestow, but are derivative of it. It is a result of the efforts and the sufferings, of the struggle between the spark of bestowal in a person and his desire to receive.

The spark struggles in order to adhere to the Creator, but it cannot do so since the desire to receive holds it by its feet and doesn’t let it break free. Then its exertion (for which the desire to receive is responsible since it held the “point in the heart” in its hands) becomes the vessel in which the unity of the next level is revealed.

This means that the desire to receive itself doesn’t become this vessel, it always remains restricted, but we work above it, by building our vessel above it, from the bricks of our exertion.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/25/12, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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