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.
[83990]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/26/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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As it is written, “Confidence is the clothing for the Light.” The desire to receive is the basis for everything, but the desire itself is worthless if the Light doesn’t operate on it.

The greatest righteous one who attains many spiritual levels falls if the Light stops illuminating him, and he returns to his animal state. He even becomes worse than everyone else, although this is a good state since this is a great state but with a minus and the opposite from Holiness.

As long as the Light illuminates, there is confidence, and, if the Light stops shining, there is no confidence. Everything depends only on the Light that illuminates a person. To this extent he has the power to rise and to say something.

When the Light disappears, a person loses even his memory as happened to the Baal Shem Tov who couldn’t remember the letters of the alphabet. A person cannot understand in which world he is and whether there is an upper world or a Creator.

This means that everything depends on the intensity of the Light that comes to us and illuminates our matter, our desire. Therefore, as it is written, “There is none wiser than he who is experienced,” and “I labored and found.”

However, all this work, the exertion and the overcoming, all are aimed only at one action: to hasten the influence of the Light upon us. After all, it all depends on it while we are trying to prepare so that the Light will not disappear. Even if it should disappear, eventually all the difficult states will be in our favor, but we must do everything in our power to be close to it, to adhere to it, and to resemble it.

The way already has been paved in advance, and it is in our power to hasten the development and advancement along this way. The hastening depends on how much we all want to fulfill the new form, the next level, so that it will be fulfilled in us. This is actually where all the exertion is focused.

Confidence is an illumination from Above, and, if it stops, we have no confidence, no feeling, and no understanding. As it is written in the Book of Psalms by King David, “But when you hid your face, I was struck with terror.” We must achieve such a connection among us, which will oblige the Light to constantly be among us.

Together, by our collective efforts and with the help of the Light, we can create such an attribute of bestowal, of love and connection, among us that the Light will never cease to illuminate us. This is called confidence, mutual guarantee.

Thus, we attain the state in which the upper constantly illuminates us. Although each of us will rise and descend, and sway in different directions because of the multiplicity of mutual actions that take place in each one and in everyone together, we attain stability. Not only do we not fall, but on the contrary, we only keep on rising upward.

Our descents also become ascents since we are all connected in one collective fund. Thus, we achieve confidence, and there is no other way to achieve it.
[83928]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/25/12, Shamati #72

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The Writings of Rabash, Volume II, Letter 8: And once I have acquired this above-mentioned clothing, sparks of love promptly begin to shine within me. The heart begins to long to unite with my friends, and it seems to me that my eyes see my friends, my ears hear their voices, my mouth speaks to them, the hands embrace, the feet dance in a circle, in love and joy together with them, and I transcend my corporeal boundaries. I forget the vast distance between my friends and me, and the outstretched land for many miles will not stand between us.

It is as though my friends are standing right within my heart and see all that is happening there, and I become ashamed of my petty acts against my friends. Then, I simply exit the corporeal vessels, and it seems to me that there is no reality in the world except my friends and I. After that, even the “I” is cancelled and is immersed, mingled in my friends, until I stand and declare that there is no reality in the world—only the friends.

Of course, it is impossible to achieve such a state by my own simple efforts. Only the upper Light can bring us to this state as it operates on us for a long time until it evokes in us the collective desire. Then, we all are incorporated in one network, and then each one feels the society.

Each one will see that this is the center of his life, and this is where he receives the force of vitality and its impression. In this mutual connection, he gradually discovers the Creator’s form since by mutual bestowal, the friends stabilize a field from which, like in matter that develops and discovers, the Creator’s from is depicted and revealed.

Thus, when we attain a collective desire, the corporeal conditions cease to exist. The desire is the only matter from which, by mutual bestowal, we begin to stabilize and to sculpt the Creator’s image by revealing it to everyone. A person sees that outside this general network there is nothing but the friends.

This is why we are in this state in such a world, and through the actions and through the corporeal states, we can attain the spiritual world. Otherwise, we couldn’t do anything.

It can only be this way, through corporeal actions and the Surrounding Light that raises us to spiritual actions, but the impression comes from the general connection between everyone. I believe that it is already among us to some extent.
[83923]
From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/25/12

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Today, we need to create a system of integral education and upbringing. Within its framework, we’ll explain what the method of correction is, how the world works, what the freedom of choice a person has, and how our egoism developed throughout history and the dead end it has entered today. We’ll talk about the fact that the end of the egoistic development is felt as a crisis, that a new global and integral world is being revealed to us both from the side of nature as environmental disasters and in human society, which inevitably joined the framework of an integral system, with the result that now everyone depends on each other.

All of this is not revealed accidentally, but in order to force us to correct the connection between us and to move onto the next stage of development. The peculiarity of this stage is that it consists of two integrated and interconnected forces: Forces of egoism in the left line and forces of bestowal and love in the right line. Thus, we build a new relationship with the world and have to look at it differently. By improving ourselves, we fix family, the environment, education, culture, science, economics, finance, and everything else. After all, it’s us humans who have built all of that, and therefore by changing ourselves, we’ll change all these systems as well. This will be the consequence of the new internal human nature that changed and reached equilibrium.

We’ll distribute that knowledge to people through courses available to everyone. Fifteen meetings of two to three hours will open a person’s eyes to a new world in which he finds himself. The meetings will expand a person’s horizons, make a link between history, today, and tomorrow, and will reveal his own nature and the nature of the world. It will give an understanding of the evolutionary process through which we are going.

Everything will be presented in one set, including the role of the people of Israel and the nations of the world. By revealing this integral picture, a person sees that everything is based on mutual support and responsibility, thus mutual help is required from each and everyone in order to reach a “round” world. In fact, this methodology introduces nothing new in comparison to the same methodology of Abraham which laid the foundations of the Jewish people that we use today.

Mutual responsibility courses will quickly enable people to feel the situation changing for the better, both in their countries and around the world. The results will be seen within several months.

Question: What should be emphasized: mutual responsibility training or roundtable discussions?

Answer: This is a single system: Workshops are a part of the course program. The main thing is to start realizing it, and a positive result won’t keep you waiting.
[83830]
From a Conversation 6/5/12

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Question: How does our connection become the basis for the revelation of the spiritual levels?

Answer: Every level is a world that you feel, a world that is woven by the connection among all the souls. The first connection that has come from the world of Ein Sof (Infinity) gradually diminished until it was shattered and became totally detached in our world. Now, from this point, the ascent in the same levels of connection begins, and it is the only thing you have to reveal.

The “matter” of the souls is the desire to receive and the connection among them is the system we study about. The Ten Sefirot, the spiritual Partzufim, are all the essence of different methods of mutual connection of the souls between them.

On the whole, a whole body is thus formed as we rise to Malchut of Ein Sof, and all the connections are 100% bestowal without any obstacles and deficiencies. Then all the resistance in the transition among us disappears and the connection is immediately fulfilled in infinite speed. This is the state of Ein Sof.

The adhesion indicates a simple thing: What I have at a certain moment, you have too, and vice versa. This communication is unlimited. It isn’t confined to time and the resistance of the ego. The “resistor” among us disappears and our desires cooperate freely and to their full extent.

Question: How should it be expressed in the workshops?

Answer: Our adhesion during the workshops is an effort: We want to unite so strongly, as much as we can imagine, so that each one will lose his feeling of self and we will feel one desire, one thought, one whole. By these efforts, from the point of unity, we think about a solution to the question we were given by the teacher. The solution is within the connection.

Therefore, during the workshop we yearn to find the answer through the unity. Each time we search for a solution, we want to attain it by the unity, without using our logic. After all, we are not going to logically examine the words of the Kabbalists.

Without connection, there is no point in sitting in a circle. So what do we need it for? For an intellectual conversation or a scientific debate? No, the mission is given only in order to create a new quality. Then by feeling the collective quality, you find the solution.

The workshop is only meant to create a collective vessel that belongs to an upper level. We try to reach it as hard as we can, but if there is no solution, it means that we have not succeeded.

There is no point mentioning the connection while we are in the process, it has to be the goal from the beginning. Can we come to a workshop not in order to connect, and in this connection find the next level or at least find the solution to the question that leads to it?
[83843]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/13/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam 

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In the workshop, everyone must constantly check himself, and the friends should support one another and remind one another of this point so that throughout the workshop everyone will feel the fear of leaving the connection. During all our life, we must hold onto the center of the group, not only during the lesson or the workshop.

However, a lesson or a workshop is the main time to work on our collective thought, which determines everything. Here, we need each other’s support without words, and, at the same time, we have to feel the inner burning. We have to discover some collective field that constantly spurs us on and keeps us “in the air.” It is all up to us.

It is as if you were signing a contract with the friends so that they would constantly care for you and make sure that you don’t leave this field with your thoughts. Pay them so that they will take care of you. This is called “buy yourself a friend.” You have to give the friend something so that he will be motivated to constantly spur you on.

However, how can he spur you on if we are all on the same level, and he himself needs someone to spur him on? Here, the upper providence operates, about which it is written, “the Creator is within His people.”

If we decide that we are committed to spur one another on, the Creator spurs us on. He gives us this power so that at least someone in the group constantly will be in contact with spirituality and will be conscious. This means that “the Creator dwells among His people.”

If there is a connection, it is called a house of assembly for prayer (Beit-Knesset) in which the Creator is present. As it is written, “I came to the house of prayer and did not find a single person?” However, if there is a connection among us, then the Creator will come and find a “human” in it!
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/17/12, The Study of the Ten Sefirot

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I must understand that in my mutual relationships with others, the positive force is on the outside, and the negative force is inside me. It isn’t by chance that it is written, “Man’s heart is evil from his youth.”

It is a problem of how we perceive ourselves and the world. We naturally imagine that the world is corrupt and that we are corrected. We take care of ourselves, think about what is good for us, and look at everything from the perspective of how to use everything to our benefit. I constantly worry about one thing only: “How can I feel better?”

This indicator, this inner program that is constantly active inside us, is the ego. This program focuses all my thoughts and desires in one direction: to use the world for my own benefit.

If I imagine that my hardware, my “iron,” is the starting point, my abilities, my attributes, the potential of my thoughts and desires that are in it, then the ego is my software. This software of self-fulfillment was installed within me.

My attributes are neither good nor bad, but the egoistic software that operates me obliges me to use them for my own benefit and, at the same time, at the expense of others since this enables me to feel above those who are around me. This is our ego, the evil inclination. The inclination itself is the “iron,” and the evil is the software, the addition.

Now, I must turn this software from evil to good. The inclination stays the same, but I change the method of using it. I see that the endless chase of self-benefit only harms me in the end. The evil inclination is bad for me, but, when I begin with the help of the environment to change it to a good attitude toward others, it actually brings me good, too.

How does that happen? Why do I feel good when I treat others well, and why do I feel bad when I harm others? It is because I come closer to the truth this way and begin to feel that the others and I are the same thing.

It is like a mother who “merges” with her child. It brings us together so closely that we feel as one whole and merge into a new, inseparable system of mutual relationship by stopping to differentiate between what happens to myself or to someone else.

Thus, all of humanity becomes one family. Perhaps not right away, but it’s a start, and we already understand this approach that is totally based on psychology.
[83776]
From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 7/11/12

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Question: It has come to my attention that Israelis are very easily switched to feelings. While, say, in Russia, a person is used to solving problems with reason, and when I ask him: “What do you feel?”, he answers me with a question: “And what are feelings?”.

However, throughout the seminar on the integral method, which was carried out for regular people, I did not have to explain it. Maybe, it is a phenomenon of the influence by the common integral field?

Answer: I think that it is not only the influence of the common field. If you are not dealing with high level politicians, big public figures, and leaders of all kinds, who, by the nature of their work, have become so “covered up,” then everyone else can very quickly and very easily switch over to feelings. This can be seen in the results of the roundtables.

Even ardent enemies can face each other there, for example, Arab representatives from the so-called “occupied” territories and students from Tel-Aviv, who are absolutely different from each other, Bedouins from the Negev and so on. Meaning, that it can be professors and right next to them, the recently arrived repatriates from Ethiopia, Africa. And suddenly it turns out that the integral approach brings them to such a common denominator, that, say, after 40 minutes of talking, you no longer feel any difference between them.

That is an amazing phenomenon! It cannot be explained by anything other than the fact that we are moving towards commonality coinciding with nature, which begins to be revealed within us on the next level, today it is felt as unwanted, as a crisis and so on. And in reality, if we move towards it, then it turns out that here, in us, a kind of new force is emerging, new opportunities, a new internal structure of nature.

We suddenly jump up to a new platform, which is moving somewhere, and it becomes simple and easy for us. And based on our new commonality, which we literally have created in 30-40 minutes, we can reach agreements and solve various questions. We want to stay in this feeling. It must constantly be cultivated and developed, and then it will become the most important thing for us in our lives.

First and foremost, of course, we need to provide basic living conditions, food and shelter, for everyone. But in principle, this is what is actually physically needed for man, as a representative of the animal world, all else will be evaluated from the point of view of commonality. And maintaining this commonality, common confidence, common support, interaction, warmth, safety, everything that man subconsciously feels coming from what he has attained in this connection will be most important for him.

With no regrets, he will refuse all kinds of excess just to maintain this feeling and to exist in it, to live in it, so that there he would have everything necessary for life, and most importantly, the perception of himself in a warm environment, in harmony. This is because here he begins to feel the revelation of a special force, a special quality. This comes from the global integral nature, which today begins to influence us this way.
[83537]
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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A person must discover the whole corrupt vessel of the desire. But he discovers it only if he wants to reach bestowal, goodness. So if a person hasn’t started his spiritual work yet and doesn’t connect with the group hoping to reach bestowal upon the Creator, he doesn’t even approach the evil inclination.

So the evil inclination Kabbalists speak about doesn’t exist in our world. Our corporeal desires are aimed at food, sex, family and the human desires are aimed at money, respect, and knowledge. On the whole it is called the “animal” level.

As for the evil inclination, it starts on a higher level if a person is inclined to love, connection and mutual guarantee. If he acts in this direction, then to that extent he increasingly discovers the size of the evil inclination. At the same time the Light is revealed to him, which evokes in him the desire to correct himself. Eventually, a person comes to a state where he can’t bear the evil and from that certain point he begins to turn it into a good inclination.

There are two levels here: Bina, which means to bestow in order to bestow (the correction of 248 desires) and Keter, to receive in order to bestow (the correction of 365 desires). Eventually a person corrects all the evil inclination.

But evil is first revealed when a person makes the first attempts to bestow. So the evil inclination is not revealed in our world, which means not in a person who doesn’t draw the Light that Reforms in order to correct himself. All the discernments that are revealed in ordinary people don’t need correction since it’s their nature. Their desires and their attributes don’t stand in the way of true connection.

The truth is only being revealed these days. In the center of humanity there are Kabbalists (the forefathers) and we, Bnei Baruch, are around them. All the others do not yearn for bestowal, but they will receive an “illumination” from us and then they will understand that there is only one way—connection.

A person who tries to form a system of mutual connection is the one who discovers the evil inclination, the force of resistance, his reluctance, and the unpleasantness of this idea. So if a person doesn’t discover his connection with the environment, with the group, he doesn’t discover the evil inclination since it’s only discovered in what is against the shattering among us. So it’s a great thing to discover all the matter of creation, the whole evil inclination, and only the one who advances further and further until Gmar Tikkun (the end of correction) can do that.
[82584]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/10/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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