By restricting myself in order to take care of the neighbor, I won’t be secretly worrying about my own well-being in the slightest. I simply won’t think about myself. This is the correction that the Light performs in me. This is the meaning of rising above the desire, performing the First Restriction, and acquiring the quality of bestowal. All of this is the results of the Light’s influence.

My care for the neighbor is in no way connected to any material details. I continue eating, drinking, and providing all of my necessities. It’s all about my desire, my inner attitude to the action.

For example, say I really want to help a sick person, I want to feed him and give him drink, but the doctors don’t permit him anything besides a little piece of bread and a cup of tea. Thus, even though I would like to give him a rich, exquisite dish and I have the opportunity to do that, I am limited.

It turns out that everything is about the intention. We do not build relationships and mutual guarantee between us on an artificial basis. And that’s why it seems to us that it is impossible to attain bestowal and unity, that it is impossible to give up concern for oneself, not worrying even about one’s vital necessities, and think only about the neighbor. They are supplied for me by others so I would simply provide for myself. By their guarantee, they take care of my material needs, as well as taking total, 100% care of my spiritual success.

All of this has to be built correctly. Who are the friends? They are receiving desires that are corrected by the Light that reforms. Nothing here is done by our own efforts. Efforts have to be made in order to attract the Light, which will come and correct us. It’s funny to think that we would act for the sake of bestowal of our own accord. Can a person really jump above his own head?

Our problem is that we do not aim at the Light in all of our actions. We think that the action itself will bring the result: that we will hug and will start loving the neighbor. But that won’t happen. We have to hug with the intention that by virtue of this, the Light will come and fuse us together in the inner embrace. Everything is carried out by means of the Light that reforms. We forget about the most important component, about the only force that operates in reality.

It seems to us that it is very difficult and unrealistic to connect mutual guarantee, unity, adhesion, the neighbor, bestowal, and vital necessity into one so they would become a single vessel for revealing absolute bestowal, meaning the revelation of the Creator to creation. And the only reason for it is that we do not evoke the Force that will build this state for us. We mistakenly expect to create it ourselves.
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/11/11, Matan Torah

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Question: Is it possible to mix requests to the Creator, meaning to ask for one thing and another?

Answer: “One thing and another” means there is no desire. The desire has to be perfect.

The upper Light can fill thousands of desires. But how can it place several fillings in one desire? In that case it is not called a desire.

You are a desire. Does this desire want something? Yes. And it receives whatever it wants. It cannot want two fillings because it is one desire, one vessel. If you want several things, that means your desire did not take on the right form yet.

It’s impossible to love two people. After all, you want to unite with the person you love. It doesn’t matter what this desire is for exactly—for food, sex, family, wealth, honor, knowledge, or spirituality. Regardless, it has to be whole, “I want it!”
From the lesson on 7/8/11, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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“Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Items 15-18
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The Book of Zohar – Selected, Chapter “Truma (Donation),” “Hell’s Judgment,” Item 459, Lesson 19
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Talmud Eser Sefirot Part 1 “Table of Answers for the Meaning of the Words,” Item 50, Lesson 35
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Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah, Item 19, Lesson 14
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“Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah),” Item 14, Lesson 10
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Question: Egoism shrewdly and inventively depicts various pictures before me. How can I discriminate the lie in them, which appears like love for others? After all, all kinds of religions and methods also talk about love.

Answer: In our world “love for the neighbor” is a simple, primitive game of small egoists. Can you really find real, exalted love for the neighbor anywhere, which is really practiced on an ongoing basis?

True, people create separate settlements in order to live in love with one another: There is a village like that in Italy, one in India, and an entire city in Asia. But if you look a bit closer, you will see that they are still the same egoists who just decided to introduce more comfortable social customs. This is more comfortable and pleasant for them, and therefore, they have united in order to make their lives nicer.

Once upon a time kibbutzes flourished in Israel—agricultural settlements with collective property similar to a collective farm. People decided that it was worthwhile for them to live together because this brought them more benefit. “Let’s give up some of our egoism and then we will feel good.” Everything’s clear about this, but is this really altruism?

Humanity supposes that conceding to the neighbor makes a person an altruist. However, people who are slightly more informed about human nature or who study the science of Kabbalah know that any concession has to come with a profit. No matter what a person is giving up, you can find what he is gaining by that. Even if the profit is concealed, it is definitely present.

For example, I am willing to live in a kibbutz because this removes my worries about how to arrange my life. Is that not a profit? I have no worries. I simply do what I am told. But development follows its course and with time kibbutzes became outdated. As a whole, these kinds of communities have no future.

We already see that all forms of interconnection between people have to change due to the egoism that grows in them. Changes continue to take place, and this inner dynamic has to be realized in some way as there will be an explosion otherwise.

This happened over the course of history to various religions, faiths, and methods. Today they are undergoing a worldwide outburst because man has set out on a search once again. He is conducting the final revision: Can these methods offer anything real?

After this analysis these practices will fall for the last time. After all, today we are checking them in relation to the integral mechanism that nature places before us. We have never had this criterion yet. People are once again turning over the pages of all sorts of practices, confessions, and mystical teachings, trying to understand: Can they help us in the new, integral world?

This process will take a short time and will quickly come to an end with all the expectations crashing down. Everyone will see that it is pointless to wait for help from them. Any subject that is checked will persist for a few years at most after which it will reveal its inadequacy.

After all, if you don’t change man’s nature so he becomes just as integral inside of him as nature itself, then no recipes will help him. The only method that makes man global, integral, and united with others is the method of attracting the Light that reforms, the science of Kabbalah. Every person just needs to be given the opportunity to realize his evil. Then all the means and their combinations will turn out powerless, and this entire business of “spiritual” tricks will end up non-existent.

Man will not be able to calm himself down because the world has changed and the problem is no longer how to calm down, but a “conflict of interests.” No one will be able to survive in the integral system without becoming fit for it.
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/7/11, Matan Torah

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In essence, what we study in Kabbalah is the process that we have to go through. The science of Kabbalah explains to us what is the world, why and for what  it exists, and how we exist in it and realize the goal of creation.

Kabbalah points to the part we have to realize ourselves by setting it apart from everything else, which does not depend on us. We have to concentrate all of our forces precisely in the area that depends on us, making this victorious breakthrough and attaining success on the path to the goal.

Therein lies the entire Kabbalistic method: to show man this point, the tiny button among thousands of various buttons and switches that are not connected to anything. It’s like you are standing in front of a huge control panel to the world, but in reality it’s a dummy.

Only one button is connected to the system, and that button is lost among huge switches, bulbs, and color coded panels. Your whole life you press on buttons, click tumblers, tug at levers, shift sliders, spin wheels, and tune dials, but there are no results and you die as if you did not spin anything.

And moreover, all of your efforts accumulate into one tremendous negative charge, which you will still have to correct in the future. After all, egoism grows in every generation.

Therefore, at the end of the day, the science of Kabbalah explains to us where this secret button is found, which cannot be distinguished or recognized among thousands of others. This is precisely the button we must constantly press in order to advance.

Thanks to it, we begin to understand the system, to guess what is happening behind the panel, to surmise how the other buttons are confusing us and why only one of them works. In short, we reach the understanding of who we are, who is on the other side of the mechanism, and how this mechanism operates to connect the Creator with creation and creation with the Creator.

From everything there is in this world, we have to press one button called “love for the neighbor.” Only by means of this button will we be able to activate the system. All other buttons are a bluff, a lie. Together with billions of your contemporaries, you can press, spin, click, and nudge at these counterfeits, just like the past generations did just to pay their last debt in futile attempts.

Therefore, we have to understand how to find this special button and how to press it, how to use our free choice to act correctly, without letting anything go by us. We have to explain this to ourselves and to others so it will become clear to all of us: other actions, which are not connected to pressing this button that commutates (reverses the direction) love for the creatures with love for the Creator, are futile and useless. Moreover, they just increase the minus in our accounts and we will still have to return to them.

If your actions lead toward the goal, they get recorded in your account. Thanks to them, you advance forward, understanding and feeling more. However, if your actions are false, then you will have to become aware of this lie, of your mistake, and the harm you caused in order to correct it and then to keep moving further.

Thus, it turns out that we accumulate a highly undesirable addition, and therefore, we have to be cautious of actions that are inherent to the “correctors of the world.”
All the corrections that we have to carry out, meaning presses on the right button, are called “using the Torah and commandments.” I consist of 613 desires and by pressing on the button, I evoke a certain force that corrects me with its influence, turning my 613 desires into actions of bestowal.

If I restrict the desire, creating a screen and reflected Light above it by correctly interacting for the sake of bestowal, then this desire transforms from a transgression to a commandment. That is how I have to correct all of my desires on all five levels of Aviut of each of them. This is my work, which we have to perform by pressing the right button, meaning by establishing the right connection with the neighbor.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/7/11, Matan Torah

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Shamati #38, “The Fear of God Is His Treasure”
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The Book of Zohar – Selected, Chapter,” Truma (Donation),” “This Is the Donation,” Item 385, Lesson 16
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Talmud Eser Sefirot Part 1 “Table of Questions and Answers for the Meaning of the Words,” Item 44, Lesson 33
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Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah, Item 17, Lesson 12
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“Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah),” Item 13, Lesson 8
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In Baal HaSulam’s Letter #1 there is a parable about a king who grew so fond of his servant that he wanted to raise him above all the ministers….

He appointed the servant a guard at the city gate, and told a minister who was a clever joker to pretend to rebel against the kingdom…

The minister did as the king had commanded and with great wisdom and craftiness, pretended to fight against the king’s house. The servant risked his life and saved the king, fighting devotedly and bravely against the minister, until his great love for the king was evident to all.

Then the minister took off his costume and there was great laughter for he had fought so fiercely, and now realized that there was only fiction here, not reality. … Every single item in this terrible war became a round of laughter and great joy. …

[Then for a second time the king] said to that minister that he must disguise himself as a robber and a murderer, and wage fierce war against him. The king new that in the second war he would display wondrous wisdom (Hochma), and merit standing at the head of all the ministers.

In the meantime, the servant inherited “wisdom” (Hochma) from after-knowledge, and “love” from fore-knowledge, and then has been erected for eternity.

It is true, that all the wars in that exile are a wondrous sight, and everyone knows in their kind interior that it is all a kind of wit and joy that brings only good. Still, there is no tactic to ease the weight of the war and the threat on oneself.

We really do not know why we have to go through all of the suffering, problems, wars, and confusion, and on the other side of that, clarification, successes, and failures…. What is the use of all this suffering?

But later on this path, we gradually realize how from this we acquire knowledge, wisdom, power, and understanding of the general system. We study the Creator’s actions that are done to us, and as a result we attain and understand Him, as it is written, “We will know You from Your actions.” To the extent we understand Him, we start to sense Him.

Yet, the reason why we definitely had to reach this by such a difficult path is not clear to us. And now, while we are still on the path of correction, we won’t be able to understand it, but only when we rise above its limitations to the state of perfection. Then we will gain the necessary mind and feelings, the means enabling us to discover the justify this path.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/26/11, “A Parable about a King”

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People’s desires are not sufficiently developed yet to grasp the altruistic message. And they couldn’t bear it either. They would immediately run away. That is why there is a concealment preventing us from perceiving the idea of love. People start hearing its reverberations and changing little by little.

Everything happens by means of the upper Light. However, under its influence people do not get smarter because we are not talking about regular wisdom. Spiritual ideas can only be grasped with the help of the Light. When it pours upon me, I start understanding something, and that’s how it happens again and again. After a period of despair and pressure, I suddenly feel that the time did not go by in waste. It turns out that this was a transition to a new phase of inner development.

Everyone experiences these transitions. We are still unable to prepare for them or to control them, to regulate their ascents and descents, the fillings and revelations. However, the time will come when you will control them, as it is written, “I awaken the dawn instead of the dawn awakening me.”
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/27/11, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”

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Question: How can we explain to people why love is necessary?

Answer: You can love to eat fish for lunch, you can love your little son, or you can love your neighbor or the Creator. The same words designate completely different notions.

Is it worthwhile to praise love for the neighbor to a person who loves fish? How can you describe to him the pleasure from bestowal? What will he understand? That he has to give his fish to someone else? Is this love?

What does it mean to love the neighbor? It has a completely different meaning. Loving the neighbor means attaching his desire to yourself and working with your desire in order to fulfill his desire. Then we both meld together into one whole, where I fulfill him and he becomes fulfilled. In what does he become fulfilled? In his desire. His desire in relation to mine is like Malchut in relation to Zeir Anpin. I am like the Creator, and he—the creation. That is what my work is.

Thus, “love” is the relationship between the Creator and creation. Only this is love—the creation’s attitude to the Creator. If I can build this kind of attitude to others, or in other words, if I acquire the quality of the Creator, the quality of bestowal, and by means of it I relate to the neighbor’s desire just like the Creator does, it turns out that the Creator is inside of me, and I make the necessary action in relation to the neighbor. This means that I love the neighbor.

We don’t have the right to use the word “love” in any other sense, context, or case. Otherwise we will confuse it with our “love of fish.”

We are talking about the extent to which the Creator, the quality of bestowal, dresses into me. First of all we have to carry out the principle, “Do not do to another what you yourself hate.” That is how I become neutral. After that, I have to acquire his desire instead of my own. Another person’s desire becomes more important for me and therefore he becomes higher than me. I am ready to do everything for him, just like I would for my sick child in our world. I am entirely “short-circuited” on his desire; it is what makes me act.

That is exactly why I am similar to the Creator, like Zeir Anpin who receives a request from Malchut. The more another person’s desire is able to activate me to bestow, the higher I am than him. This is love. Do you see how different this is from our current notions?

The more I can bestow to another person, the more I provide him with the Light of correction. After all, there is mutual guarantee between us. I do not fill his egoistic desire, but I reveal inside of him the desire to be in one system with me so the Shechina would reign between us. So what should I provide for him? I give him my support of the mutual guarantee, which he also provides for me by revealing it in his desire. This is love.

No one is indulging the other’s egoism. I don’t reveal the egoistic desire in the other person, but the desire for mutual support in order to reveal the Creator in the relationship between us. The Creator cannot be revealed in any individual or just in my attitude to another person, unless it’s fortified by the same attitude from him. Love does not work in one direction. It is a two way street. It requires a connecting net through which impulses of bestowal are flowing, a net permeated by feelings of love, relationships of mutual guarantee and mutuality by which we strengthen one another.

In the meantime, egoism remains below, without making any calculations to fulfill it. After all, we rise above it, connected by our mutual intention for the sake of bestowal. And when it reaches a specific level of unity, creating a net above us, then we reveal the Creator, the mutual quality of bestowal and love between us.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/20/11, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”

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Kabbalah is the method that talks about the need to unite with each other according to the plan of Nature, the single force which controls the entire universe, all of us, all of creation. Since the days of ancient Babylon, this science has been hidden from humanity. Kabbalah only states that this teaching would be passed through a tiny “stream” from teacher to disciple for thousands of years, from ancient Babylon to the present time, until our world becomes a modern Babylon, meaning the world turns into one whole with complete interconnection regardless of borders, countries, continents, nations, races, groups, and the religions that have emerged over the course of history. Our interdependence will become so strong that it will eliminate all these barriers.

On the other hand, our egoism will remain and continue to develop. Because of this, we will hate each other even more. We will repel each other automatically; we will think only of ourselves subconsciously and instinctively. We won’t consider the others and will only use them maximally for our own profit. This will be our nature for 3700 years, Kabbalistic sources said.

We will come to enormous egoism, and it will be natural for us. We will not even realize that it is special, but only that this is us and this the manner of our life. Nonetheless, this egoism, together with our extensive integral connection and the communication that we have developed between ourselves, will eventually turn us into Babylon again.

Besides that, during the last stage of development when this huge egoistic society becomes global, we will practically deplete all the natural resources and sources of: energy, oil, coal, gas, water, minerals, and metals. Everything is coming to an end. Even if we’d like to grow our egoistic potential, it won’t be possible.

The consumer society that developed during the 20th century has exhausted itself, emptying the Earth of all resources, and as a result, we cannot continue in this life even physically. We have reached such a confrontation with each other and the environment that it forces us to do something.

Our society will become different—uncontrollable. Recently we see revolutions taking place in different countries; we see how communication and connection between people urges them to demand social change. However, we still do not understand how or why this happens: Today it is there, tomorrow it may happen here or elsewhere. We do not see where any of this leads.

In this state of confusion, not being able to understand the next stage, we see the science of Kabbalah being revealed to the world again. I remember when I studied with my teacher, we used to travel to special, Kabbalistic places and sit there together, across from each other. During those evenings and nights, he tried to tell me that the time would come when Kabbalah would be revealed.

What does “revealed” mean? “Revealed” means that it is not you who starts talking about it, but people who want to hear start coming. It depends not on you, but on the ones who will listen.

We see that this time has come because there are plenty of people from different countries, on different continents, in various languages, who want to hear what nature, the Creator, demands from us. They want to know what we should resemble, how we should change ourselves, on what level to rise, how to enter an entirely different dimension, how to perceive the general level of nature, eternity, and perfection, and to feel this here and now in our world. It is said in the science of Kabbalah that such people would appear at the end of the 20th century.

I did not really believe it: I did not see these conditions. However, at the end of the last century, thousands of people became interested in Kabbalah, subconsciously and instinctively sensing this urge thanks to their desires which had developed and reached maturity. In the next stage, a new dimension is conceived in this finally ripened egoistic desire.
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From the 1st lesson at the Moscow Convention 6/10/11

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