Question: How can I correct my perception if I only see evil in the world around me?

Answer: Only the Light that Reforms corrects everything. We, on the other hand, are required to continue persistently, since despite all the explanations and the efforts that we make in our heart and mind, we will not understand anything until we reach the first revelation. Then a new mind and feelings open up for us.

Today, no matter how much we want to perceive the explanations, we are wasting great efforts by trying to perceive new spiritual discernments in our current vessels. We constantly yearn for that, but in fact, our work should be totally different.

It is as if we are stuck in one place just burning our fuel, our attention and time. It is because such efforts don’t help us attain the spiritual world. It is as if we are trying to push a ball through a square opening, but it doesn’t work; it’s a completely different system of measurement. The more efforts we make in bestowal and connection, and the less we try to get spiritual information in our current corporeal perception, the more we will succeed.

No matter what, by using our current mind and feelings, we will never understand what the books say or the states that we are going through now. We are like a child who is trying at the age of three to understand his own psychology. Of course he cannot even understand himself, and certainly not the mature and more advanced thinking. It is simply impossible.

So we must simply do what Kabbalists say; this doesn’t mean that we have to act with our eyes closed and without feeling and clarifications, but we shouldn’t stall trying to understand these experiences, except for what is needed for our practical advancement towards unity, connection, and love. It is only towards this goal that we should focus our study and all the events and actions. Otherwise it is called that “his wisdom is greater than his actions.”

I am telling you about this since I also used to make the same mistake in the past. For a long time I couldn’t be convinced that the spiritual world is attained only by self-annulment, by self-submission, by devotion, and not by the rational mind, sensible understanding and feelings.

It is important to remember that “it isn’t the wise who learns” and to keep the right attitude towards the study, the right attitude between what is essential for our advancement and what can interfere with it.
[95668]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/16/12, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Baal HaSulam, Letter 1: And since the supervisor and the supervised are one, it is impossible to distinguish between the evil and the good, and everyone is loved and everyone is clear, since everyone carries the Creator’s vessels, ready to praise the revelation and the uniqueness of the Creator, and this is felt by sense and according to this value, they eventually know that all the actions and the thoughts, both the good and the evil, carry the Creator’s vessels, and He prepared them and they came out of His mouth, and this will be revealed to everyone as the end of correction.

But in the meantime, it is a long and threatening exile, and the main problem is that when a person sees some action that is not right, he falls from his level since he thinks that he performs this action, forgetting that He is the one who is the cause of everything and that everything comes from Him, and there is no one else who operated in the world besides Him.

We can attribute the good events to the Creator, but a person begins to torture himself because of the bad events, to feel sorry about his actions and to regret what happens with him. It is hard for him to attribute all that to the Creator. He is upset and sorry about his past, about his failures, thinking that he is the reason for the unpleasant events or for not advancing enough, or for having missed something. Only later can he correct these “errors and malicious acts” with regard to the past and turn them into “rights.”

It is the same with regard to the present and the future: If a person considers something as bad, it means that he doesn’t attribute it to the Creator, but rather to other reasons. This is how it is arranged by the upper Providence. If he thinks that there are other reasons than the Creator, then he is actually guilty of what is happening, and it is called “and you shall worship other gods,” idolatry.

Thus a person breaks the first law of “there is none else besides Him,” and therefore, gets off track. He is not focused on the goal of creation anymore, on the revelation of the Creator; he is not between balanced forces that bring him to the truth.

Therefore, all our work is to reveal the upper Providence as the private Providence that comes from “there is none else besides Him” in the form of the good and the benevolent, at any moment in the past, present, and future, and it is the same for all the people in the world.

A human being is the point from which a person determines that “there is none else besides Him” and that He is the good and benevolent. The point from which a person determines the quality of the upper Providence grows gradually until it reaches the dimensions of the Creator. This is where all the 125 degrees of our spiritual growth are.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/16/12

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Question: How is awe of the Creator demonstrated in our work with the world?

Answer: Awe of the Creator is expressed in awe before the world, whether we can correct it. I really should be afraid of whether I am doing everything to make the world not only avoid suffering (although this is the initial stage of awe), but also to come to the Creator the easy way. After all, the Creator is not interested in having someone suffer for even a moment, and the suffering of the world depends only on how I will lead it to the Creator. I am responsible for it. This will gradually appear before us like a great mission with great responsibility.
[95571]
From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/9/12, Lesson 5

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Question: If “there is none else besides Him,” where is the point of applying our efforts and how do we not sink into the temptation to explain the reluctance to make efforts by the fact that everything comes from the Creator? From time to time, this motivation appears in the group.

Answer: This happens because people forget that one half comes from the Creator and the other half from us. From top to bottom, we get everything from the Creator. He shapes our attitudes, thoughts, connections between us, as well as everyone’s character and education, absolutely everything. Now consider what we do with it in order to strive for the Creator because He can be felt only through the connection with the rest of humanity because it’s the same mass in which He is revealed.
[95441]
From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/8/12, Lesson 4

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In his article, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy,” Baal HaSulam writes that love consists of four parts, meaning that when one starts to feel that he is receiving “something,” one can divide this “something” into four levels.

Kabbalists call the pleasant sensation that comes to us under the influence of the upper Light a gift. When we receive a present, we start searching for who gave it to us; we explore what this quality is that is the reason He treats us like this, with what intention and so on. In other words, we don’t get anything but the gift, but we can learn about the Giver by examining His gift and the impact that it produces on us.

If we were presented with a little box as a gift, we are unable to determine much by only looking at it, but we would obviously think that the one who sent it to us treats us well.

On the other hand, if the gift penetrates into us and produces a certain action in us, then we can figure out what the Giver expects from us and why He modifies our internal states the way He does.

We know our prior states and we feel our current, altered state, and the difference between them in certain properties and aspects. Then, we can realize what He wants of us. From the differences between the past and the present, we can tell who He is. In accordance with the changes as they change, we feel His positive qualities. He always changes us for the better, to the positive, to more. It makes us grow, and we start to realize that that is His qualities and that He wants to raise us up to Him.

Accordingly, we are able to distinguish between the four levels of attainment and the four worlds.
[95007]
From the Fundamentals of Kabbalah 12/2/12

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The corrections take place due to the Light that comes from the teacher. The corruptions come from the environment, from the group. But only if a person tries to be incorporated in the environment, taking part in its life and work, studying and being dedicated to the cause, is he sent corrupt desires.

These special corruptions are not only foolish pride or other primitive desires, but corruptions that can draw the Light of correction upon them. This means that a person has to have defects that are totally opposite from the corrected form. He receives all these desires from the environment.

We are speaking about a person who tries to do everything that he can in order to advance spiritually. Then he receives “red light” (redness) from the group, like from a mother’s womb. The group is a mother for him. He receives the “white light” (whiteness) from the father, from the teacher, and this whiteness is his Sefirot, his attributes.

Now a person already has two lines and he has to work in the “middle line.” It isn’t that he can receive it automatically without doing anything. A person has to make efforts in order to be incorporated in this kind of work. Then to the extent that he annuls himself before the group, the teacher, the study, and the Creator, all these factors begin to operate on him and he attains a new level.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/12/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam 

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From the article by Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 68: We must know that all the inclinations, tendencies, and properties instilled in a person, with which to serve one’s friends, all these tendencies and natural properties are required for the work of God.

To begin with, they were created and imprinted in man only because of their final role, which is the ultimate purpose of man, as it is written, “he that is banished, be not an outcast from him.” One needs them all so as to complement oneself in the ways of reception of abundance, and to complement the will of God.

We need all the details of the relationships that unfold between friends. We should not retouch, cancel, hide, or suppress anything or prevent it from developing. All aspirations have to awaken, open up, and develop in everyone. Precisely these bad and good inclinations (no matter which one) with respect to the relationship of a person and his friend we afterward will have to turn into the relationship between a person and the Creator.

This is why the one who does not develop his relationship with his friend is not ready to become even one step closer to the Creator.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/13/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: There is a rule: “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” and in it, love for oneself is not cancelled by love for one’s neighbor. Is it possible to love one’s neighbor without loving oneself?

Answer: Love for one’s neighbor is impossible without self-love! Therefore, egoism is not destroyed. I always have to check relative to myself: I love myself, and the neighbor—just a bit more.

Why more? Now you love yourself more than you love others, so, based on the rule “love as yourself,” you have to love others a little more than yourself. Moreover, you need to constantly watch, compare, and take an example from how you love yourself. Thus you begin to know yourself.
[95347]
From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/8/12, Lesson 4

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Question: We have to turn to the Creator in order to ascend and to attain connection. Does this happen through the group, through the collective desire, or through a dialogue with the Creator? What should I spend my time and my exertion on?

Answer: You are a particle in a giant system, and through it you receive everything from the force that is revealed in all the system. You don’t discover anything inside you, no matter what touches you. Nothing from you is passed on to the Creator, but only to the extent that you are incorporated in the whole system.

According to your level of development, like a child, you are given a small corner—a bed, or a whole room, or you may even run around the house or even go out and play in the sand box, meaning that the range is gradually expanding.

But you are actually “protected” by the Creator, and you turn to Him through the same world that you feel, just like a kid who feels his world.

You should understand that everything that happens to you is a result of the whole world and its condition. You are a man of your generation.
[95263]
From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/8/12, Lesson 3

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Question: How does the system of: person – group – teacher work? What is the function of each component in this formula?

Answer: The role of the teacher is to correct the student, and the role of the environment is to evoke the egoistic desire in him, not for the corporeal filling but rather for the spiritual filling.

There are two systems: the system of the uncorrected desires, the left line and the system of corrections, the right line. (Although it is clear that everything is run from above and designated for correction).

The teacher is on a higher level since he passes the Light downward to the students and for him the good and the evil come from one source. With regard to the student, which means on the lower level, the good and the evil are perceived as coming from two different sources, a good one and an evil one.

The teacher’s goal is to pass the Light to the student by the help of the study and the Creator, so that it will correct him and the good and evil will become one whole for him. This means that on his current level, the student will reach a feeling that “There is none else besides Him, the good and the benevolent.” Thus he ends the current level and goes on to the next level, and so he rises time after time.

It turns out that all the components have to be divided into two parts: the right line and the left line. And who are you? You have to try and reach the middle line, the upper level, in which there is no good or evil and where there aren’t many factors, but rather, everything converges into one: the group, the study, and the teacher—everything belongs to the Creator, and there is none else besides Him.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/12/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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