Question: When I want to pass an exam or find a job, I automatically get a passionate “prayer,” a powerful craving for the desired result. Why doesn’t this happen on the path towards the Creator?

Answer: Putting it differently, when will you finally get a real reason for turning to the Creator?

Say, something very unpleasant happened to you. For example, someone has dealt you a serious insult, so much so that you’re ready to disappear on the spot just to prevent others from finding out. At the same time, there’s nothing you can do about it. And it is here in a completely hopeless state that you receive “a gift from above”; you begin to feel that there is none else besides Him and that the Creator sent this to you for a specific purpose; you only need to turn to Him and ask that it wouldn’t be happening.

You turn to Him with this request and suddenly feel shame: “What do I want? To avoid misfortune? Or to be with the Creator? Let the fear and shame remain if only through that I would maintain a connection with Him.”

This is how we move forward: We need the fear, which we cannot handle, coming from our egoistic desires, and then we will truly have a need for the Creator.

Are you ready for that? Do you want this to happen? Without any reservations or concessions?

Question: So there’s no way of escaping disturbances?

Answer: Join a group, and together with the friends you’ll fly forward like a rocket. Because then, instead of shame and other “animal” troubles, you’ll receive other disturbances caused by the inability to love your friends and unite with them. You exert efforts but aren’t able to achieve that.

Either way, disturbances are necessary since you won’t turn to the Creator as long as you see even the tiniest possibility of correcting yourself some other way. Only complete helplessness gives rise to your request to Him. And this means that you need to grow your desire, striving for unity and elevating it above all the others. Then you’ll discover that you can achieve anything except for that. And the gap between the desired and reality will evoke a cry to the Creator.

Question: What exactly needs to happen in a group so that the situation would reach the necessary escalation?

Answer: Exert all possible efforts and obligate the group to influence you. This is precisely what we call “mutual guarantee.”
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/30/12, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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Baal HaSulam, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee):” With this collective responsibility, each member of the nation was liberated from worrying about the needs of his own body and could keep the commandment, “Love thy friend as thyself” in the fullest measure, and give all that he had to any needy person.

This means that we will receive such a great pleasure in our feeling that in our corporeal life we will not need anything but what is necessary for our existence, just as animals have no need for cookies, but only for the natural food that is enough for them. If our desires, which are not on the animal level, will stop confusing us and will rise to the “Human” level, we will get rid of all the surpluses that only pollute the earth and will leave only what we need for our basic necessities in the corporeal life.

By the connection with others we reach the fulfillment on the “human” level, similar to the Creator. Then, of course you don’t think about self-enjoyment except for what is necessary. We discover the Creator in the connection with others and so of course we give all our powers for the needs of others. This is why it says: “I reside within my people.”

Since he no longer cared for the existence of his own body, as he knew for certain that he was surrounded by six hundred thousand loyal lovers, who were standing ready to provide for him.

It is the supportive society that raises the importance of the connection in my eyes and provides a sense of security that I will not lack any of the basic necessities, which allows a person to care for everyone.

Later, this will also disappear and I will receive everything thanks to the unity with the society; I won’t have to see the system that provides proof for the love and concern of those around me. The love I feel for them will fill all my vessels.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/31/12, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)“

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Baal HaSulam, “The Arvut” (Mutual Guarantee): With this collective responsibility, each member of the nation was liberated from worrying about the needs of his own body and could keep the Mitzva, “Love thy friend as thyself” in the fullest measure, and give all that he had to any needy person, since he no longer cared for the existence of his own body, as he knew for certain that he was surrounded by six hundred thousand loyal lovers, who were standing ready to provide for him.

There are two discernments here.

First, mutual guarantee and mutual concern free a person from worries about himself. Each one leans on others and everyone feels good. This is the “psychological therapy” to get rid of fear.

Second, we actually connect in order to be connected with the upper for ourselves. We want unity because we see it as a way to reach this connection. We always yearn upward and every action we take below should be aimed at the final goal and not for self-sedation. Different from a football team that connects in order to succeed, our connection is in order to raise us upward. Even if by that we get rid of all our problems, it isn’t the tranquility we are looking for. We are simply changing the previous troubles and the problems that push us to unite, to troubles and problems of a different quality that are created when we unite with the Creator.

This is called “upper fear,” and this is where love resides. Fear is a vessel, and love is its filling. Now I feel fear in facing the Creator, not in facing the threat of troubles, shame, despair, etc. I exchange all that to fear of being close to the Creator, to the desire to go to Him, to be close to Him in bestowal. This is my goal.

When will I yearn for it? When it doesn’t matter what is behind me, as long as it increases my attraction forward.

Thus we exchange the corporeal problems with spiritual problems called “love pangs.”

Question: But if the friends absolutely support me, don’t they extinguish my main problem, don’t they blur my desire to approach the Creator?

Answer: If I enter the group correctly, I acquire new fears instead of the old fears. No one is promising me a tranquil life; there is a restless adventure that I anticipate, which mountain climbers, pioneers, and world travelers experience. Their concern is the anticipation, they are constantly advancing toward something better; so I also feel a deficiency on the spiritual path, but I anticipate the joy, and this anticipation is better than the joy itself.

We know from experience that the pleasure disappears immediately, but the anticipation can make a person feel alive for many years. In spirituality this is really a filling, which we summon with the help of the Returning Light, above the desire to receive, clothed in bestowal.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/30/12, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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Baal HaSulam: “The Arvut, (Mutual Guarantee)”: And once the whole nation unanimously agreed and said, “We shall do and we shall hear,” each member of Israel became responsible that nothing shall be missing from any other member of the nation. Only then did they become worthy of receiving the Torah, and not before.

We are demanded to correct the general vessel, the desires that now feel that they are detached, foreign, and even opposite to one another. Before, the Light advanced them to connection and to unity, but now, because of the shattering, it separates them, leads them to oppositeness, to quarrels, violence, etc. We need the Light to come and to correct and connect these desires.

We don’t know how to correct them, how to put the parts of the broken vessel together, because we don’t know in advance what the vessel should be like and any assumption we make is only a guess. So what should we do? The point is that we don’t correct anything by ourselves. We ask, demand, and evoke the upper One so that He will perform the correction.

There is no way a person can correct himself. Each time we rise to a higher level, but can a baby be smarter than his mother? So every ascent is accompanied by a request and the upper in response performs the necessary work on it and moves us to the next state.

There is a request on our part and the work on the part of the upper. This is why it is called “God’s work.” It is He who works, and my work is to request.

If we are constantly careful in dividing this work, we save a lot of energy and are not confused. We must make sure that we do that and do not forget about it. We as a rule want to operate on our own, while the actual action on our part is to prepare ourselves for His work, to exert ourselves, and then to discover our helplessness. Baal HaSulam says: “There isn’t a happier state in a person’s work than when he is despaired of his own powers.” A person should understand that only the Creator, the upper Force, can correct him, and that’s the way it is all the time.

It isn’t by chance that our mission seems so difficult: to become “as one man in one heart,” to unite completely; how is that possible? These are illusions that can only lead to crisis and disappointment, to an even greater collapse than the one we’ve seen in the USSR for example. It is really so if we use the wrong means, the wrong program. But the method of Kabbalah provides us with a natural plan that is led by nature itself: Your life doesn’t have to be bad, you only need to discover, to identify that you are in a bad state. This is enough so that you will demand a change and you will receive the next state.

Thus our work is simple. If we all gather and work according to the law of mutual guarantee, the mission becomes much easier: We discover the evil and at the same time we discover the good, which means the source and the means for the changes. The tension between these two poles advances us to correction; we summon the Reforming Light and it performs the work. This arrangement repeats time after time.

The real life, the real ascent, will be revealed in the permanent closeness of people, in common circles, in discussions, in impressions, in excitement, and in mutual help. Thus we will discover more deficiencies in us in comparison to the corrected state of the general unity; we will discover the effectiveness of the greatness of the state of mutual bestowal, and we will activate the upper Force that performs the whole work. It says: “He that makes peace in Heaven, will make peace on us.” This is the order of the actions.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/30/12, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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Question: How can we maintain unity with a friend when he denies it?

Answer: We cannot enter into contract between us if the Creator is not used as a guarantor for this agreement. How can we commit to each other if we aren’t in control, but are completely managed from Above? How can I seriously promise something for tomorrow and expect something from you? This is completely naive.

We need to call the Creator, so that He will be a witness to our agreement, and only then will the agreement exist.

By signing on an agreement, we, first of all, clarify if you are the full owner of this property. If this land, the property, and the bank account, are under someone’s authorization, and that owner doesn’t participate in the signing of this contract, then what is the point of signing it?
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/29/12, Writings of Rabash

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If my goal is connection, I see everything in the world as fragments of the shattering that have drawn away from me only so that I will be able to collect them and put them back together again. The particles don’t have to be identical in order to connect. On the contrary, they have to be different!

If there is a plus in one place and a minus in another, if there is more here and less there, then there is a connection between the parts. A big one can give to someone who is small, and a small one can receive from the big one. If they are both perfectly equal, what will they be able to give one another, how will they be able to connect?

It is the equality that leads to detachment! So how can we achieve general equality? Here we begin to understand that the concept of equality doesn’t refer to attributes, thoughts, desires, or identical actions, but rather is expressed in attaining the goal. It is for the goal that we all connect and with regards to it we are all equal.

We will never be able to be equal if we don’t connect with the Creator and don’t consider Him as our goal. Accordingly, I already begin to recruit forces, to find out what the method of connection is, to look for ways to connect with others; I examine everything that goes on in the world as an opportunity that is given to me every moment in order to rise above my ego, above the forces of separation, and to attain general connection.

We can connect as equals only when the Creator is among us and is the goal of our connection. Therefore it says that the condition of: “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are one,” determines the correct direction for correction.

By wanting to connect and to attain full equality, but at the same time for each one to keep his uniqueness and his own individual attributes, we connect as one body. The Creator, the upper Light, has to give this body life according to the law of the equivalence of form.

Many desires connect in one spiritual body, in one Partzuf, under one Masach (screen), in order to create a general adhesion with the one Light. Then there is Zivug de Haka’a (coupling of striking) with the Light in the head of the Partzuf and a formation called the “soul” (Neshama) is created. At the same time, all the individual particles keep their natural uniqueness in their thoughts and desires and operate as organs in one body, as everyone does his job and connects with others in order to attain the general goal, the spiritual life. This life is equivalence and adhesion with the Light.

Here the formula of “Love will cover all sins” is activated. The sins remain, the differences between us are kept, and on that basis everyone judges and justifies himself. Of course, he accuses the others, since “one judges according to his own flaws.” But by connection we understand that all the differences between us actually help us attain a greater connection among us if we can fulfill the connection on a higher level by rising above all the differences between us.

If we just erase the differences between us, we will have no basis for connection, we will have nothing to give one another. Everyone needs to give others, by appearing as their “minus” with regard to a “plus” and receiving from others as a minus from a plus.

This means that we are all different! But if we do it under one “umbrella of love,” then everyone comes out equal. When a baby smiles to his mother, she is ready to give him the whole world. It says “love will cover all sins,” and if there is love, then it ties us all in one net. Then we connect above all the gaps for one cause and attain it.

This is the method that was prepared for us by the Light, by many preliminary actions. The Light created a desire and works on it by lowering it and making it go through all the degrees, by breaking it and creating the worlds of BYA of Holiness and of impurity and the “first man” Adam who is also shattered.

Only today, in this new era in which all of humanity finds itself, we begin the correction of the world, so that instead of a terrible and terrifying world, whose growing sickness and corruption are revealed day by day, we will see the world of Ein Sof (Infinity) before us.
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From the lesson 5/25/12, Writings of Rabash

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In our longing to rise above our ego, to correspond to nature, to its attributes of bestowal and love, we need to be careful not to postpone our correction until “later.” This is what our ego pushes on us in its resistance to be diminished. Whoever postpones his correction from “ today” to “tomorrow,” “That which changes today for tomorrow for you,“ will discover his mistake only after many years of lack of advancement, “And he that can wait until tomorrow will get lost after years, G-d forbid.”

The reason for such a loss is the negligence in relation to the efforts in loving his friends, in relation to the necessary and sufficient methods of correction of all our ego.

We must understand what a huge force is hiding in the unity of the group and in each one of the friends. After all, we are not dealing with friends or a group, but with the huge force of nature. Each one of us is in unity with it, only the illusion of this world around us and all of its parts confuses us and hides from us the great forces and attributes of nature, of its system of governance regarding us so that each one of us will attain the attributes of bestow and love.

If we connect our forces to each of nature’s representatives, then in the assembly of friends, in love and friendship, we will discover forces that change us to be similar and to become equivalent to the upper force of nature.
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From Baal HaSulam, Pri Hacham (Fruit of the Wise), Letter 13, 1925

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A person needs to see himself as a point that receives everything from the outside. The friends and the world in general, and even the inanimate, the vegetative and the animate, are all parts of my soul. All of this is one Malchut (kingdom), one Kli (desire/vessel), one man who stands across from the Creator.

Therefore, to the extent that I try to connect the enthusiasm and impressions that reach me now from the friends, not to cancel them, to that extent they become real, since I join the parts of my soul to myself. And then I acquire a new intellect and emotions as a result of the connection of the broken Kli.

It’s forbidden to extinguish any state. We need to rise above and examine it from a higher level; this is the correct approach. And therefore, it doesn’t matter how I feel during the workshop: good or bad, since in any case I must rise above everything, and clarify where the feelings come from and why, and then continue. We need to gather and accumulate the most positive and negative impressions in order to advance onward above them.

I must, in advance, agree to every state that comes, since my self – annulment will be built above all of these states. Everything that I go through is necessary in order to teach me to take control of all my states and above them to connect with the friends in spite of my rejection. The most important thing for me must be the connection that I will manage seemingly via two reins, and all my feelings and experiences will be in the background. The end of the act is in the initial thought. If a person behaves in this way, then he correctly uses all of his discernments.

It’s forbidden to allow your horse to run away, not to the left or right. There’s a goal in front of you and you need to constantly examine yourself according to it: if you deviate to the left, then you need to add from the right line, and if you deviate to the right, you need to add from the left line. Everything is determined only by the direction to the goal, and the goal is unity. We don’t see any other goal in spirituality other than the point of unity, Arvut (mutual guarantee).
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/20/12, “Talk About Past Conventions”

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Question: In what way is the giving of the Torah different from the receiving of the Torah with regard to the holiday of Shavuot (Pentecost)?

Answer: The Torah was given from Above, and the question is whether we receive it below. Therefore the holiday of Shavuot is called the “holiday of the giving of the Torah,” meaning that if you went through the early stages of the preparation, then you are given the opportunity and you are given the Torah which you should receive under certain conditions.

According to the way it’s described, we see that it isn’t enough just to reach Mt. Sinai; we also have to discover that it’s the mountain of hatred. This means that we return from the “right line” to the “left line.” Why do we need it after the escape from Egypt when I have already detached myself from the ego? But the Torah isn’t given just like that, I have to evoke the “Egypt” in me again, my evil inclination, while standing before this mountain and connect it with the Creator, with the Light that can correct me.

Then, by standing against the Light, I see the conditions that are revealed in my ego, I see what relations I have to establish between them, so that “the darkness will shine like Light,” so that the ego will resemble the Light by fully dressing in bestowal.

In order to do that a person undoubtedly needs many external forces of bestowal because I don’t have these forces and never will have them. So where can I find them? I am ready to connect with all the friends under conditions of mutual guarantee, and this enables me to connect with the general power of bestowal, meaning the upper Light, with the Creator. Thus the main condition is revealed: If we receive it, we will advance towards the Light, towards life, and if not, “here will be your burial place.” This is the condition of mutual guarantee; I annul myself only in order to connect.

If I accept this means, meaning mutual guarantee, the goal of creation, which is mutual correction of all the vessels of bestowal until adhesion into one whole according to the principle of “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are One,” then I accept the method, the instruction, called the “Torah.” Then I enter the desert and start correcting myself. Each time new parts of Egypt, of the “left line,” are revealed to me; each time I find sins, mistakes, and evil inside me and correct them by rising to the level of Bina.

When I rise to this level after “forty years in the desert,” I will be worthy of working with the desire to receive in receiving in order to bestow. This is already the work in the Land of Israel, meaning in the desire that is aimed directly at the Creator (Yashar El). By fulfilling these corrections, I build the Temple, a special vessel into which I draw the Reforming Light and the Light of fulfillment. Thus I reach my Gmar Tikkun (the end of correction).

Then new vessels, which do not belong to Israel, are immediately evoked. Where do they come from? The point is that I didn’t take into account all the vessels because I selected and corrected only part of them in order to include Malchut in Bina, and not more than that. Now when the desires of Malchut itself are evoked, I see that my Temple is in the Land of Israel, meaning in Malchut that has joined Bina. But this isn’t enough. We have to reach the state in which the Land of Israel will spread all over the world, to bring Malchut back from the level of Bina to its place.

Thus the third Temple will be built from the desires of the whole world that will go through complete correction. Therefore it’s clear that all our history was only a preparation for the final correction, which we are fulfilling today.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/25/12, Writings of Rabash

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