Question: What is the most prominent sign of being in exile?

Answer: We want to reach mutual bestowal and we have no power for this; we want to give contentment to the Creator, and it’s possible to do this only through mutual bestowal between us. Our goal is to build an infrastructure called mutual guarantee. From an inability to do this, we feel ourselves in exile.

Redemption means that our desires are organized, connected, fixed, and linked so that we acquire the form of pure bestowal. This means they take on the form of the Creator, the bestower and loving. We build from ourselves a model, an example, a form similar to the Creator.

There are 125 levels of resemblance like this, 125 portions in which we can resemble the characteristic of bestowal, of love, more and more in all kinds of ways with tighter and tighter guarantee. This is the work of Israel, and that part of it is done in Egypt, in the wilderness, until we reach the construction of the First Temple.

We need to feel all of these states. This is not talking about building a structure from clay and bricks. The construction is done from our substance, from desire, where we correct it and whiten it, and then from that grows a house of Kedusha, the Holy Temple (Beit HaMikdash).
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/26/14, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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The most common mistake is “eating yourself up” over your shortcomings, and this could continue for years if we are not prepared to be freed from it through mutual guarantee. To do this, pressure is required from the group to influence my mind and free my head from self-concern, from concern about what I did, what kind of damage I caused, what kind of wicked person I was, and what mistakes I have made.

This is a Klipa that takes over a person, and only with the help of mutual guarantee is it possible to be freed from it. The group must influence me so that I will stop thinking about myself, so that it will obligate me to think about it.

All of us pass through the same states—not simultaneously, but one after the other—but everyone must go through this. If you see that a friend is eating himself up and blames himself for his deficiencies, then you need to tell him that there is nothing to be sorry about. Rather, he must be concerned about the group. The spiritual vessel is specifically within the group and not within himself.

In general, regarding everything that happened in the past, it is necessary to say, “There is none else besides Him,” and everything happened according to a decision of the higher supervision. Until this moment, I didn’t do and didn’t decide anything, and from this moment, “If I am not for myself, then who is for me?”

However, the person on his own is not prepared to be detached from these thoughts. The Klipa will always draw him toward that same swamp, in repentance and remorse, and on the higher levels the condition is much worse. Only the power of the environment can strengthen the person and hold him above all the calculations. Otherwise, he will fall into the Klipa and will suffer severely for a long time.
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From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/27/14

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Question: A person who lives in society has many kinds of connections: at work, in the family, and so on. What is the type of connection that he must correct?

Answer: It is understandable that we must maintain and work on good relationships in the family. However, the main correction is among the friends in the group. Through it you get the Surrounding Light. You need to correct the connection with those whom you are building Divinity.

Question: But, I come into daily contact with only a number of people, whereas the rest are not included in my sphere. How can I correct my connection with everyone? Does it follow that it is up to me to correct something that I haven’t felt yet?

Answer: You must ask and pray to feel the connection with all of our friends throughout the world. I need to see people with whom I am building the Divinity, the place for discovering the Creator. Who are those with whom we share an important part in the discovery of the Creator? I think that this is everyone, for otherwise the Creator would not have brought them here.

The Creator gave me these people as a group, so I want to connect with everyone, no more and no less. They always will give me the optimal number of friends, according to external conditions that we don’t understand. I am not responsible for this, and so, I accept it as it is. The Creator brings them to me, and it is up to me to think about how to construct them into a network of mutual connection. This is the spiritual connection and the material connection, as needed, in order to build the Divinity together with them.

It is up to us to connect with mutual concern for each other so that each will help everyone. This is how we build the center of the group between us, a mutual connection, concern according to the laws of “Love thy friend as thyself” and “the one who prays for his friend receives first.” If we act this way, then a network that takes on the form of mutual bestowal is discovered between us.

Even though this bestowal is egoistic, Lo Lishma, it attracts the Light that Reforms. It is not important that we still don’t have an intention to bestow. The main thing is that we yearn to attain it. We want the Creator to be discovered through the connection between us because we yearn to know, to understand, to feel Him, to go out to the upper world.

Our intention is incorrect and egoistic, but we are connected. In our condition, we are not ready yet to not to think about personal benefit. This is called Lo Lishma. Therefore, the Light that Reforms illuminates us from a distance, even though we are damaged. The main thing is that our group becomes like Him, meaning we build the connection between us.

Question: However, what exactly must I correct in relation to the friends?

Answer: What must unite us is mutual concern to discover the higher power in the connection between us, meaning bestowal and love. Mutual concern is a shared desire for the Creator. The desire for the Creator is not found in any one of us, but it is found among us. It doesn’t exist at all; it is up to us to build it. There is no vessel! There are only the personal desires of each, but there is no shared desire called Divinity.

Question: What about the correction of my characteristics, my qualities?

Answer: Only the connection with the friends requires correction. There is nothing to correct in me; I am a beast there, and a beast cannot be corrected. You already tried to connect with someone and discovered your ego. Have you already entered Egypt? If someone just annoys you, this is not connected to spiritual work.

Only if I invest effort in a connection with other people to reach a connection between us called Arvut—within which our concern for discovering the Creator, the characteristic of bestowal and love, is discovered—then I will feel how I hate everyone and am not ready to connect, and this is what is up to me to correct.
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From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/27/14

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Question: What kind of connection do we need to correct between us, we don’t feel it?

Answer: We must attain reciprocity so that nobody will be working on himself, but only outside of himself, for others. If each one works outside of himself, then with this we create a network of connection between us called mutual guarantee.

Being a guarantor means that I work for you, you work for him, he for someone else, and that one for me. I don’t know to whom what I am doing is going.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/27/14

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Question: What efforts must one make to reach spiritual action?

Answer: Efforts should be applied only to connecting with the group; this is the only thing that we are missing. We are the result of the shattering; we are its shards, so all of our activities are directed only towards connection between us.

There is nothing in any of us to correct! This is a bitter mistake that constantly delve into and blame ourselves. This is a Klipa that sucks all of the powers out of a person. I have nothing to correct in me; only to correct the connection between us needs to be corrected.

This is a difficult and fatal mistake; if we were to refrain from it, we would attain correction very quickly. The whole problem is that we don’t pay attention to the place where we truly must correct the vessel in order to reach Divinity.

We only need to correct our connection. We don’t need to look at ourselves and others: I can be good, I can be bad with horrendous characteristics, but this is not at all relevant to correction. Correction is only  for the connection between us.

It’s like a volleyball net where the main thing is the strings and not the knots. All the knots are egoistic and individual people. They have appeared in our world until our time and are in control by force. But today they can no longer dominate because all of our power has passed to the strings. A completely different approach has begun.

So there is nothing to correct in the person himself, only his attitude to the group. Only there is his free choice and surety realized. Shifting the emphasis from personal correction to general correction is called passing from ethics, from morality, to the wisdom of connection, to the wisdom of Kabbalah.

It’s very important to understand this approach because we still act individualistically and look only at ourselves. But this is not associated with discovering evil or its correction. Therefore it’s said that the opinion of Torah is opposite to the opinion of the masses, that is, even those who want to fix themselves.

This defines our approach to everything in life: education, culture, and politics; this is radically different from the usual. This is a completely opposite attitude because we don’t ascribe any importance to that which everyone pays attention. What sense is there to be involved with things if it doesn’t help?

The whole world is now in crisis because they are paying attention to the person instead of paying attention and correcting the connection between people. Therefore all of the rulers are losing their power and ability to control anything as the world becomes more and more connected.
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From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/27/14

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Question: How can we hold on to the feeling of the morning lesson all day long? I leave the lesson and shortly afterward I notice that I am a completely different person. Why can’t I keep relating to everything that happens in the morning lesson?

Answer: The first reason is the lack of connection between you. The group lacks the general force that unites everyone and can provide support and the right infrastructure for everyone.

A person who leaves the group and engages in his business has to feel that he is connected to the group by a cord. He has to feel that the friends think about him and that he thinks about them because they have committed to support him and he has committed to support them. This is the beginning of the connection in the group, a union that later turns into mutual guarantee, and we have to make sure that it is so.

Why can’t you feel that you are in the group all day long? It is like wearing certain clothes before going out. You should dress in the group and go out! You have to do it, because without it you have no chance of succeeding. If you don’t dress in the group, the day will go by idly.

Let’s sign an agreement between us, and you will sign it and think about us. Let’s see how it will compel you. If you stop thinking about us, you will be causing great harm to yourself and to us, so you will be afraid, fearful, and worried as to how you can hold on to these thoughts. It is easy to tie one’s hands and feet, but how can you tie your thoughts to the group so that they will stick to the group?

How can I control my thoughts? After all, it is clear that you will forget! How can I make this thought obsessive? How can I keep myself from becoming someone else the moment I leave the group and go into the outside world?

There is no way you can remain connected to the group if the group doesn’t provide you with the power to do so. So you must come to the group and say: “Friends, I am ready to do anything that you ask, I am ready to pay you, to serve you, just help me not forget about you please!” Start asking for this!I promise you that the day you begin to worry about the friends, you will feel that you enter the group.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/24/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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It doesn’t matter whether I read The Zohar or whether I am on duty in the kitchen; what’s important is that I constantly yearn for the Light that Reforms and to connect with the friends. I cannot yearn for the Light without unity or connection. It is an essential pre-condition, which we don’t even speak about since it is obvious.

If there is no connection, my yearning for the Light is egoistic and false and is only for my own benefit. Without it we cannot climb Mt. Sinai because from that point onwards we begin to think only together.

This doesn’t happen automatically, of course, and we have to constantly remind one another about it, and this is the reason for mutual guarantee. This is why it was agreed to accept mutual guarantee at Mt. Sinai, since no one can yearn for a real vessel unless all the other parts of this vessel agree to it, the 600,000 souls that make up a whole vessel.

600,000 souls is a symbol of your yearning for reaching the goal by planning it first. The ultimate goal is to reach the level called 60 Ribo, Arich Anpin, and so we have to collect 600,000 souls, which means that we have to yearn to climb to the top of the mountain together.

Question: How do we strengthen the mutual guarantee between us by yearning for the Light while reading The Zohar?

Answer: One simply doesn’t work without the other. This is the principle. Therefore, “love thy friend as thyself” is the general rule and the only way by which we can receive the Torah. Without it the Light will not come, or may come only in a very weak form.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/11/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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When I think about the group I don’t see specific people and I don’t remember faces or names. This is especially true since people change a lot, not externally but internally. So I don’t see individual people but rather the general desire of the group that has to be given a form that is as real as possible.

So we shouldn’t think about specific friends but about the whole group, which I have already added into one integral sum. Individuals remain on the left side of the formula, under the integral, while I already think about the right side of the formula, about its result, and this is where I start working.

Question: But this generalization seems like some abstract concept.

Answer: It isn’t an abstract concept but a live one! This general concept of the group is actually full of life, while every individual is dead. It is like the elementary particles, atoms, that begin to connect by some upper force that is not among them. Suddenly these atoms turn into something that is alive, and then a process of metabolism suddenly begins between them, which means life is formed!

One cell receives from another, absorbs things that it needs and extracts materials that are bad for the connection between them. They begin to look on the outside for whatever is good for the connection and helps them connect. All this stems from the connection, without which they would be dead, still, merely particles: electrons, protons, neutrons, ions, etc! These are only elementary particles in which there is no life, and suddenly by the connection between them they reach such a developed form.

Then an inner and external feeling begins to develop by connections that are increasingly more complex. The connection between the organs leads to such an unusual complex combination because each one is ready to take on a special role with regard to the others and worry about nothing else. The liver, for example, cleans the blood that the heart pumps and conveys to the other organs, but what can the liver do without the heart or the heart without the liver? All these organs reach such a loyal connection between them that each one is ready to sacrifice its life for the sake of the others.

The body wouldn’t be able to function without one of the major organs, without the lungs, the liver, the heart, the kidneys, or the brain. One is worthless without the others. Notice how close and connected they have become, ready to sacrifice their life for one another and not worry about it. Each one worries only about the mission it was given and feels 100% responsible for everyone else. This is called mutual guarantee.

Before that there is no body. So the general concept of a group is not an abstract concept but actually the only thing that lives and exists!
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/10/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: When we work together a “collective head” is created,which helps us clarify things and quickly leave bad states. But on the other hand, I hear friends say: “This state must simply be.”

Is “must simply be” always possible or is it only with the close connection with friends, or can you train yourself psychologically?

Answer: You can train yourself so that the distance or the circumstances will not come between you. It is possible since everything depends only on our state.

A mother, for example, can feel her child and constantly think about him, even if she is at work or far away from him.

Question: So why should we work so closely on mutual guarantee? What is the benefit in that?

Answer: Mutual guarantee provides us with the place where we receive the revelation of the Creator. Everyone has to be incorporated in mutual guarantee. Nothing can be fulfilled without mutual guarantee. An individual is not a soldier in the battlefield.

Notice how ignorant we are when it comes to fully understanding what the place is where we reveal the Creator. So we have to keep on working and clarifying all the concepts and states much more.
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Preparation for the Integral Convention: Integral Educators.

We discover that we are destined not to maintain our link to the Creator and that we don’t need the wider public to keep the “raspberry ball,” rather we must have the raspberry ball in order to serve the wider public. And specifically through this discovery we approach the end of correction.

This makes it possible for us to see the integrality, the links, and the Arvut (mutual guarantee) in nature. We begin to determine our relationship to the wider public: how much we need it, for without it we cannot give contentment to the Creator, and how much the Creator wants humanity and not us.

That is how we attain our destiny and disappear. A “nation of priests” is when you don’t exist. You serve the wider public, serve all of humanity, and serve the Creator. And in this you see your anonymous role. You have no part or inheritance in anything, in sum you are the connecting link, a conduit, a component for transmission. And this is good because with this we can truly be closer to the nature of the Creator.

We must present and give an example to the world, and through this example convey to it the spiritual condition that we have attained. Even though in the meantime this is the opposite side of the spiritual state, if we succeed in turning the face of the world towards us, we can turn our face towards the Creator. By turning toward the world with love, we can turn with love towards Him. About this it is said: “From love of the creatures to love of the Creator.”

And in order to turn the face of the world towards us, it’s necessary to awaken the people to the right understanding of solidarity with them. For this it’s necessary to convey the inner tension in words. The words must be very clear and deep. Only in this way can we be integrated into the outer circle, truly connecting with them. And then we receive the required addition that will help us to rise and enter into a higher level.

The correct integral educator for spiritual development must awaken this development in a student. If we succeed in reaching the hearts of the people, then specifically those experiences and impressions that we awaken in the wider public will make it possible for us to grow the raspberry ball, enhancing and strengthening the point of contact with the Creator and feeling Him.

It is said: “I learned from all of my students.” We will yet understand why through a connection with students a person can learn more than from teachers.
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