Baal HaSulam, Letter 38: In former times, an attainment of the Creator had to be preceded by all seven external sciences and horrible self-torture. And despite all of that, a few have found favor in the eyes of the Creator. However, since we have received the teachings of the Ari and the services of Baal Shem Tov, it is truly equally available to everyone and the above mentioned preparatory stages are no longer necessary.

We don’t know how and to what extent a time of the material world corresponds to a spiritual time, the processes of descent and subsequent ascent when the vessels, the desires, begin to gather into one whole. But of course, the closer we get to completion, the more people are able to open the gates of holiness, the gates of bestowal. They resort to the help from ancestors who thoroughly explored the spiritual system, established themselves and fixed connections in it. So, step by step, going in circles one after another, generations ascend the steps of the wide staircase. Each of them goes farther, and some people make generations ascend a few steps in a row. This is a complicated process.

At the current stage, the thrust towards disclosure of the Creator embraces the whole masses. However, we must understand the immutability of spiritual laws. The Creator doesn’t sacrifice them, and thus, we also need to comply with the terms of ascent, albeit at a different level, according to the current state. Here comes the mutual guarantee, rejection of egoism, and striving in the right line in order to rise above the left line in unity and cohesion, thus trying to build a model of the higher world to the extent we are able to understand it. So we’ll move forward.

Baal HaSulam brings an example of a king who needs to move his treasury from one place to the other. All of his subjects are egoists; they wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation and certainly would steal any amount of money exceeding their ability to resist. Therefore, the king gives a penny to everyone, which doesn’t make sense to steal because royal prestige in their eyes is more valuable. Thus they move the treasure without losing it.

And we are the same. Though it is not the most worthy “fact of our biography,” nevertheless it is a fact. Let’s hope we will be able to bring our penny, and first of all, recognize it as a start. The majority of our work is dedicated to that—to figure out what our goal is and what it means to “find favor in the eyes of the Creator,” which means bestowing to Him, and how to come to such a request, raising it above all the others. After all, by overcoming them, we create a longing for the Creator and build His image.

All of that is done by many ministers of the King who carry pieces of His treasury through many intermediate stages like circuits, from one state to the other. In fact, it is a great way to go if we accept it as a precept of the King. After all, He enjoys every little step we take, each state, as parents enjoy seeing their children’s efforts.

It is necessary to stay on the course, but to remember about the King’s joy and to try to please Him at each stage, here and now, even in the smallest detail, on the lowest level. Indeed, there is nothing low in His eyes. He sends me all the states. And if I somehow try bringing pleasure to Him, that is enough.

That’s why people going in the right direction on the path always feel joy and ascent. We need to check ourselves: Where do descents should come from if everything is arranged from above? The Creator creates each state, and only one thing depends on me: to respond with understanding and feeling or at least with the awareness of the Creator standing behind the current circumstances. Then I can assert myself in giving to Him every second.

In fact, there are no despicable and unpleasant states in our work, if I take them internally from the hands of the Creator who teaches me. Just like the slave, from another parable by Baal HaSulam, who fought a war against the king’s minister who deliberately presented himself in different enemy disguises. Here we have the same story, and most importantly, do not forget that all our states at every moment in life come from the Creator. If we attain this level, then we will be able to perceive what is happening and react to it properly.

Let’s try to unite with the spirit of our ancestors: Ari, Rabash, Baal HaSulam, and others. Let’s not forget about that and help each other in devoting every moment to the service of the Creator.

It is possible. You are already capable of many things. You’ve made some great steps, and now the question is in something else—in pride. Of course, it comes from the Creator as well, and yet, how do we not indulge in it?
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From a Conversation During the Meal Commemorating the Death of the Ari 7/25/12

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Question: What is the difference between the constant attempts to think about unity while reading The Book of Zohar and the attempts to think about it during the day?

Answer: The whole day depends on how long you can hold on to the feeling of unity you created during the lesson, if you haven’t learned that, then you didn’t connect to the source.

Suppose you have an electric vehicle, you come to a gas station, you connect to the socket, recharge the battery, and drive off.

Have you filled your “battery” or not? If you come to the lesson with the right preparation, with the right perception, by preparing all the conditions so that your “battery” is properly connected to the Light, then it is filled. This is what you can come out of the lesson with and for the rest of the day stay connected to the source and keep the right intention, by existing thanks to that filling. It is because you have filled yourself that you now know what to do with all the interruptions and all the problems.

On the whole, this is what we are required to do. If we do everything the way we should, we will suddenly understand and discover that this world wasn’t just formed, but was created as a special system that is a continuation of the spiritual system, so that we will be filled by spiritual energy, and then mingled with the world by benefiting from one another, facing problems in the family, at work, etc. All these systems were not created without reason, since nothing happens by chance. It is in them that we fulfill what we have received in our “battery” and thanks to that we ascend to the next level. Thus, we illuminate the world, correct it, and with its help we ascend.

Then we recharge the battery again and start the next day, day after day, as it says: “Let every day be as new.”
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/30/12, The Zohar

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Question: What does it mean that I have to address all my questions to the Creator?

Answer: We’re not used to remembering and thinking about the upper force. It isn’t because we’re not religious; religious people don’t think about the Creator in the sense I am referring to. No one thinks about Him.

To think about Him means to realize that only He does everything. We can speak about it using high words and read about it a lot in books, but nothing helps.

We, meaning all of humanity, all the souls, all the desires, the general network, the system, Malchut, the Shechina (Divinity), exist within one force called the Creator. We have to discover that we are within Him. This is the only problem we have to solve: the revelation of the Creator to the created beings, and this is what the wisdom of Kabbalah deals with.

The revelation of the Creator to the created beings can either be through the path of suffering and great troubles when out of the great sorrow and hopelessness, the ego shrinks and restricts itself so as not to feel the suffering. It gives up its desire to enjoy and is ready for everything but only not to suffer.

But imagine what terrible troubles and suffering one has to go through in order to give up his desire to receive. It isn’t about suicide, but about an action that is a billion times greater than our life. Yet under the pressure of the great sorrow the ego can shrink to such an extreme that it can restrict itself until it doesn’t want to exist.

We’re not talking about the tiny desire we are in at the moment, but about a desire that constantly grows and suffers so much that it restricts itself. Then the desire grows even more, the suffering becomes even greater, and the desire restricts itself again.

This is called the path of suffering. If we follow this path, then “death is better than life,” and it will be impossible to die.

But it’s possible to advance, to restrict the desire to receive and to correct it so that it will bestow by discovering the Creator that is in it by an external force called the Light that Reforms. That is, with the help of the same Creator, it’s possible to turn to Him in a special way.

This method can’t be revealed independently. We see that even when people hear the explanations, they still don’t understand what the Light that Reforms is. The uniqueness of this method is in the fact that instead of suffering as a result of the influence of the Creator who makes me feel bad as He approaches me, I ask Him to correct me.

I want to be like Him; I want to be good. I take preventive measures and the Creator helps me! But I have to ask, I have to be ready for this bestowal. After all, if I just cry from my desire to receive, nothing will help. How can the Creator influence me by the Light that Reforms if I don’t ask to be reformed and my desire to receive restricted?

I have to turn to the Creator so that He will help me restrict my desire to receive and turn it into bestowal that is like Him. It shouldn’t be at the cost of suffering but by His action.

Thus we were given the opportunity to turn to Him through the connection between us. If we arrange the connection among us, the form of this connection will be the form of bestowal we want. We build this connection like children who by playing seem to be doing something. We all know that we are egoists, that our connection is egoistic, and that everyone wants to succeed and to profit from it. But still, we are all asking the Creator together so that He will do it and change us.

This request is egoistic since it’s impossible to cry it out differently from the dark, from exile. But eventually it’s fulfilled because the upper Light, the Creator, takes the state you are calling Him from into account. He understands that you can’t turn to Him with a more spiritual, altruistic request since you are in your ego and only want to receive.

It is like a baby who cries and doesn’t understand what he wants, but the mother must understand and take care of him. We too have to cry: First we should try to do everything that we can and then cry. This is the Kabbalistic method. Don’t wait to be pitied from Above for no reason. The Creator knows no mercy since mercy is bestowal.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/25/12, Shamati #72

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Our desire was created as existence from absence, which means that it exists only because of the force of existence in it. The force that stems from the Creator gives the desire life and builds the opposite form in it.

Question: How can these two forces stay together?

Answer: The one Force sustains the two of them so that the created being could exist, so that there will be something besides the Creator. He constantly sustains our being since without it, we simply wouldn’t exist.

Just think of how the term “existence from absence” sounds: Existence is being sustained above nonexistence, above nothing.

Question: How is this expressed in the group among individuals who are starting to unite?

Answer: They only have to take the connection between them into account. Nothing else is relevant to their force and their abilities; nothing can be changed except a prayer for the connection.

When they feel that everything depends on their mutual connection, it is already a good clarification. Then, as a result, they sign a treaty of mutual guarantee.

Question: But the ego doesn’t disappear and isn’t annulled, is it?

Answer: Yes, it grows. How can these tow forces exist without one another? How can one be measured without the other?

We think that love and hate can exist independently and that love by itself is enough. But it isn’t so;  even when you love someone very much, you suddenly discover that some “spice,” some roughness is missing so that you will have a true contact and a real connection. The feeling of connection is always composed of the negative and the positive that covers it. Otherwise there is no connection. A connection can only be between two distant opposites and and it lies namely in between them.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/26/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar” 

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The “matter” of our desire is “dust,” and it doesn’t change. The only thing that changes is the level of connection between the particles of this “dust.” So first of all we have to perceive ourselves not just as the desire to receive. It is because this desire takes on 613 different special forms, and in each of them we want to enjoy only for ourselves.

This is quite clear: Everyone wants to enjoy something and this way separates and breaks apart the grain of their desire into 613 particles of self-enjoyment. Of course, no one can count this number and we use it as a figure of speech.

Then the work on our connection with other people begins. These “crumbs” actually remain lifeless, as it says: “From dust you came and to dust you shall return.” What counts is the special connection among the particles, which gives them life.

Scientists cannot understand them and cannot turn the still nature into life. They try to use electric discharge and other means, but a person cannot do such a thing. It isn’t alchemy; it is much more complex since the upper force has to be revealed in an actual form of life. A person can do it only if he summons the action of the Light that Reforms. In order to turn the still nature into the vegetative level, the vegetative level into the animate level, and so on, there should be a portion of the Light that Reforms each time.

Therefore, by the connection among us our murky particles discover life in this connection. They remain in the desire to receive of the still nature, but the mutual connection they create among them, the mutual guarantee, the mutual bestowal, the network they want to build with the help of the Light, turns into the vegetative level and in it flow the forces of life that stem from the source of life, from the Creator. Then from the vegetative level they change to more complex forms of the animate and the speaking levels of nature.

We should understand the basic structure, the essence of this system: The particles remain the same desires that were created as existence from absence, and the connection among them is existence from existence.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/26/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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Question: How can being on duty during the convention advance me on the spiritual path?

Answer: All those who will be on duty have to be supplied with a radio and headphones so that they will take part simultaneously with all other participants at all the events. We must try to schedule duties during lectures, questions and answers, and breaks, but not during the events such as workshops. Those on duty should rotate constantly.

Question: How important is it to be on duty?

Answer: Actually, this is the most important thing. When I do something for society, it does not even matter how much I hear or if I am physically involved in an event because here, I am doing the right job one-hundred percent.

That is why being on duty physically gives a person a huge push forward. There were many people who came to big conventions just to work, and it was during that work that they suddenly began to feel the emergence of a shared, common, and great field. This is the beginning of the feeling of the Creator.
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From the Virtual Lesson 7/15/12, “Fundamentals of Kabbalah”

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We attain the Creator, which means that we reach the attribute of bestowal, the revelation of the spiritual world, only if we acquire two discernments:

• A great desire that is aimed at that, which is clarified enough and which is one degree lower than the level of attainment. A person imagines what the revelation of the Shechina (Divinity), the Creator’s face is, what the Light and the attribute of bestowal are.
• A person must feel great pain since he doesn’t have the attribute of bestowal. A person suffers and he knows that the attribute of bestowal symbolizes the rising above his ego and a complete detachment from his previous life and from all his personal accounts.

It’s very hard to reach that, since we act against our nature. Therefore a person advances on two legs, step by step, between two lines: left right, left right…from his part a person should try to start from the right line and fall to the left. But from Above, he is always given the left line, darkness first. On every level, by the darkness and the Light the “letters of the work” are registered in a person, the relations that are drawn between the types of darkness and the Light, the attributes of receiving and bestowal in different manners.

The letters are different on every level. Each time the darkness and the Light are depicted to him in different attributes according to different criteria. Accordingly the letters also take on different forms. This is why each time a person has a new Torah, a new Creator, a new world, everything is new and he is also new.

Thus a person grows by his consistency that indicates how much patience he has, and thereby he advances and comes closer to the right forms of the great deficiency that are aimed at true bestowal. Here we see the principle of “I have labored and I found,” meaning a person is looking for the Creator’s face, the greatness of the attribute of bestowal. Connecting to the attribute of bestowal, the force of bestowal summons in him the feeling of belonging, warmth, up to the actual feeling of love. Since to love the Creator is to love bestowal, to love the attribute of love itself, it begins to fill a person and enables him to dwell in it.

We have to go through great changes in our nature by detaching ourselves from our old values, from the previous understanding of what exertion means and what the goal is, who the Creator is and what the Torah is. Each time we re-evaluate the great desire that is required of us and the suffering that we experience. The values naturally change in the transition from one state to another, and a person constantly changes and becomes another, a new person.

Therefore it says in the Torah, “Abraham is an old man.” “An old man” is someone who has acquired knowledge, who has been through and “plowed” the whole path. A person acquires the attribute of bestowal gradually, the mind and the understanding of how to work with it, the feeling, the loyalty, the self-sacrifice, and how to identify with the Creator. Thus he attains the level of “an old man” which means his point of adhesion with the Creator. Then the attribute of bestowal fills him, and he feels love and appreciation towards it.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/13/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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In order to bring a person to the attainment of the true reality that is outside the limits of his perception, understanding, and ordinary feelings, the Creator puts us through a gradual process of development. So we have the opportunity, while living in this world, to prepare ourselves for the perception of the true reality. If we prepare ourselves, then according to the plan of creation that operates on us, which brings us closer and closer to this true reality, we eventually discover it, which means that we attain the revelation of the Creator to His created beings.

But if we don’t prepare ourselves correctly and don’t use our life in order to correct our perception, but try to enjoy it directly in our ego, we feel pain as the Creator gets closer to us. Wherever we operate by using our ego, we feel the general global crisis and different problems in all the areas in life.

Wherever we use our ego, which is not ready for correction and for a change, we feel a crisis: in education, in culture, in the economy, in finance, in ecology, in the break up of the family, in terrorism, and in drug abuse. If we examine the painful points in the imaginary picture of our world and try to find out where the feeling of crisis and pain stems from, meaning the bitter taste of the refreshments on the King’s table, we see that all the bitterness stems from our growing ego.

Anywhere our ego (which was supposed to be corrected but was not prepared for this) is involved, we encounter a crisis and all the problems that are being revealed in the world now. So the conclusion is that we have to prepare ourselves with the help of all the opportunities we have.

If we work in the group, in the study and in dissemination seriously, using all the means that were given to us by the Creator, we will feel a good sweet taste by getting closer to the revelation of the Creator, and not bitterness. It all depends solely on our preparation, on the work that is seemingly our free will.

You were brought to the study, to the group and were given all the explanations as to what you should do; now decide! You are free to do whatever you see fit in the King’s palace, but if you forget that you came there in order to prepare yourself for the festive meal, you will feel an awful taste when it arrives, since you are not prepared for it. So everything is in your hands and it all depends on the preparation.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/13/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam 

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Question: Suppose something happened to me and I feel such a sense of shame that I’m ready to disappear. What should I think of at this point? Should I think of the goal?

Answer: That doesn’t help. What does it mean, “I should think of” or not? You must be prepared in advance for all sorts of influences from the environment, books, friends, the group, and other things that are the effect of the common field on you so that you are reminded of the goal. That is, you set up an external “reminder” for yourself, otherwise you won’t remember. You begin to associate the goal with what happened to you. And that’s the main thing. It means that you already know that what happened was intentional and happened for a reason.

Where do I feel the pain and shame? In my egoism. So, I have to rise above it. Or conversely, let me stay with the feeling of shame because it directs me towards the goal. Then I’m ready to experience it all the time in myself so as to not forget about the goal, to be associated with it, and to move towards it. And let my sense of shame be stronger and stronger, so that I will move toward the goal and it will get closer and closer.

It’s here that we begin to deal with the re-evaluation of values, and thus rise. From now on what will dominate the movement, achievement, and attainment of higher states of love and bestowal above the feeling of egoism as evil and everything that’s in it is basically shame.

Question: Is the mechanism that you described suitable for the 99% of the population?

Answer: Not only for the 99%, but for everyone because the desire to receive is the only matter.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/30/12

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Everything depends on the preparation and there is the issue of the group here, since the connection is the expression of the acquisition of the attribute of bestowal, the closeness, the adhesion between those who work together and follow one path; it is an expression of the attribute of love that they acquire.

The unity among them is similar to the uniqueness of the Creator, since if they want to be “as one man in one heart,” which means to be mutually incorporated in thought and desires, without any differences between them, as one integral system, they yearn to resemble the Creator who is One.

Thus they prepare themselves, all of them together and each one on his own, to feel the true taste of the meal that was prepared by the Creator.

This is why we were given freewill in our world, in order to enable us to reach the meal of the wicked or the meal of the righteous. You decide whether you prepare yourself seriously, or whether you play with toys!

We speak about those who have reached the wisdom of Kabbalah. We cannot demand anything from those who have not reached it yet. They simply continue to suffer from the general crisis that pushes them to correct themselves from below. These poor people don’t understand what is going on. They expect salvation, but salvation can only come from those who have prepared themselves correctly for the King’s meal. Then through them, the meal will reach all the others who have not started preparing yet.

So all our work is in the group, in mutuality, “as one man in one heart,” as it says: “Each man shall help his brother,” “Don’t do unto your friends what you hate,” “Love thy friend as thyself,” and “From the love of the created beings to the love of the Creator.”

All these principles can only be fulfilled through connection, since this is the preparation for the revelation of our relationship with the Creator, so that He will be revealed within our preparation, within the connection. This means that the attribute of bestowal and love is revealed in the vessels that we have prepared and corrected, in order to reveal this attribute according to the law of the equivalence of form.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/13/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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