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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It is said: “I created the evil inclination, and I created the Torah as a spice since the Light in it reforms.” Thus, first of all, we have to reveal the evil inclination, and then, to the extent that we feel it, we we will want to find a “spice,” a “remedy” that will turn it into the good inclination.

How can we reveal the evil inclination? To do that, a person must find the right environment. If he wants to be included in this environment so that all of them become like one man with one heart; if he wants mutual guarantee and integral unity with everyone, without any distinction, when everyone is responsible for everyone else, similar to the cells of a living body; if he does not judge others but cares about them so they can awaken him; if the main thing for him is his personal internal work; if he tries to be among the friends and bow his head before them only to receive from them the realization of the importance of the goal and cancel himself again so that the importance of his friends charges him with even greater recognition of the goal and the environment; if he is constantly in this circle and works in it, then he receives from his friends their collective, integral awareness of the importance of the goal.

This is no longer his vessel, his desires, but the desire of the collective. This is already Malchut. A single person who strove to raise his request to the group, to Malchut of the world of Atzilut, is now in it, if only he connects with his friends, awakens them, and works together with them. In response, they awaken him, and altogether they become one whole, one desire. Their personal requests become united and turn into Malchut of the world of Atzilut, which is close to us.

If there is unity between them, at least in something, it influences the higher degrees, to which we do not relate. Our feeling, perception, and our reality is only in Malchut.

Thus, our work should be aimed at Malchut of the world of Atzilut, at the connection with everyone else and together, at the unity with the source of the Light: the Creator. This work is divided into two components which, in fact, have to be welded with each other:

• One’s relationship with the group;
• One’s relationship with the Creator.

If we act correctly, we reach the first revelation. It depends only on the degree to which we unite our requests into a single prayer. And then everyone with his personal desire will find out that he is included into Malchut. In and of itself, Malchut is a point, but we “expand,” build it by our desires. The nine lower Sefirot are in the worlds of BYA (Beria, Yetzira, Assiya), in a broken state.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/6/2011, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”

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Question: Lately it’s felt that the world Kli is working in a single desire. At one time Rabash advised you to make an attack from this state. What exactly are we attacking?

Answer: Ourselves, our heart, our laziness, our pride, our past habits. I have to ascend above all of these calculations.

The most important thing is to dissolve among the friends, to intentionally push yourself into the group. I want to be there all the time. I want to lose my personal mind and feeling and to acquire the mind and feeling of all the friends. It’s as if I lose myself in them by my own desire.

This means acquiring the vessel of the mutual guarantee.
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/6/11, Matan Torah

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Question: How is it possible to remember the Creator all day long? How is it possible to bring Him into every moment?

Answer: We are in Malchut of the world of Infinity, which is entirely filled with Light. However, instead of this eternal, perfect state, we see and feel our own qualities which depict the material world to us. Therefore, if we want to aim ourselves at the goal, at feeling the world of Infinity, then we need mutual guarantee from our environment. The friends have to give us the forces, the desire, the persistence, the diligence, and the realization of the goal’s importance.

After all, I have just one goal—to obtain the right desire, and nothing else. Let me constantly feel that I’m not concerned enough about doing good for the Creator the way He does for me.

You might object, “But I don’t know what He gives me. Judging by my life, sometimes I could say that it would be better if He did not give me anything.” That’s true. Obviously, every person rejects things in accordance with his own defects. Therefore, my attitude to the Creator can be defined this way: I want to reach a state where I will desire to bestow to Him.

And the actual result will come thanks to the Light’s influence, thanks to the efforts that we make time after time. The Light pours upon us again and again, and suddenly these illuminations create a desire in a person.

We don’t know what Lishma, an awakening from Above, is. But when it comes, a person is able to say, “Now I know, now I understand.” One has to make efforts, like a little child, and from these efforts the sensation will emerge. But not before that.
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/7/11, Shamati

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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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Nature instinctively, firmly, and automatically supports the system of reciprocity, interconnection, assistance, harmony, globalization, and integration, sustaining life thereby. Thus we say that the upper force is the force of love. Yet, the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature have one “little” additional element: man, human society, that doesn’t wish to follow this law. It is intentionally created so as to evolve randomly, pushed by its egoism.

Imagine a gigantic system where one part, which is the most advanced, efficient, and fragile, doesn’t work in sync, in harmony, with the rest of it. Therefore, this entire system gradually reaches a state of complete imbalance. This is what we are beginning to finally realize. Humanity has become a cancerous tumor consuming everything outside itself, breaking the equilibrium, and naturally causing a corresponding feedback.

How then do we achieve harmony? After all, otherwise we will destroy the whole organism. This is becoming obvious. It doesn’t take a prophet to see where the things are headed.

That is exactly what the wisdom of Kabbalah describes: how we must reform ourselves by studying the laws of integral nature. Don’t get into mysticism and start studying astral phenomena; all we have to do is learn the laws of the closed, global, integral systems which are also called analog networks known to us from engineering. There is an enormous amount of scientific, mathematically accurate material which informs us how closed systems support their internal balance.

We have to study ourselves as the elements inadequate to this system in our actions, desires, and thoughts. And if we honestly wish to achieve some kind of normal existence, even at the level of the corporeal world (not to mention what else we unveil when we enter homeostasis with nature), then we bring ourselves to overall harmony.

Today, it may seem a bit unnecessary and unpleasant, but nevertheless, nature is already pushing, forcing, and demanding from us the internal efforts and actions aimed at transforming ourselves. After all, to be aligned with surrounding nature means to consider it and not to simply consume and drain it. How and in what sense can we change ourselves? The section where Kabbalah discusses this is entitled “Mutual Guarantee.”

Guarantee is our mutual agreement (not only pertaining to ourselves but to all of nature) to reach absolutely complete mutual understanding and total balance. In terms of Kabbalah, it is Malchut of the world of Infinity or, in other words, a common, mutual property of love and bestowal.

To obtain the “property of love” means to take into consideration the needs of another as my own. This is exactly how all parts of our organism interact at the biological level. And nature pushes us to reach the same degree in our social interactions by way of social unification with one another. It can force us to do so by causing suffering. If, however, we start moving in that direction, we will be transformed quickly, comfortably, and easily. And this is what the wisdom of Kabbalah is offering to us to learn.
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From the 5th lesson at the Moscow Convention, 6/11/2011

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Question: You are giving us good advice. Why don’t we hear and follow it? Teach us to do as you say.

Answer: One person can never succeed. Only a group of people who have a mutual agreement can reach the goal.

“We have gathered here to establish a society for all who wish to follow the path and method of Baal HaSulam,” as Rabash writes in his first article on the matter of the group. And we must move forth guided by this method, helping each other to reach the goal. We will certainly come to it, but only to the degree of our mutual assistance, the guarantee. We don’t need anything else.

Question: But what is preventing us from doing so?

Answer: We must begin doing it here and now. And when we part in body, we must not part in soul. I truly hope that we will keep and cultivate ever more the heavy potential we have accumulated at the present convention and before it. This is the essence of our work.
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From the 7th lesson at the Moscow Convention 6/12/11

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In order to accelerate our development, we are given all sorts of obstacles, pushed away, and confused into thinking that it’s not necessary to exert ourselves and we can simply wait until everything changes by itself. Or we begin to think that we had already put enough effort but haven’t yet found spiritual revelation. Perhaps, the Creator left His creatures, or this isn’t supposed to be for us right now, and we should wait for another opportunity, possibly in the next life. A person finds various excuses just to remove the obligation to exert himself.

However, it’s said: “The law is given and cannot be transgressed.” The upper Light remains at absolute rest, and we are inside it. Our desires can be developed only through our efforts. The extent of the correction of our desire and, consequently, the Light revealed in it depend on the extent of our effort. It’s a simple law.

We mustn’t forget about this law and should constantly remind ourselves to abide by this principle in the group, leaving no room for doubt and debate, various frictions, or questions: “Why don’t I receive anything? Where is the payment for my work, where is revelation, where is the desirable reward?”

Are you asking, “Where is it”? Here it is, right in front of you—take it! And if you don’t see it, cannot take it, it means that you are not ready yet. So, continue to exert yourself. What can be done if you don’t see what’s right beside you?

Thus, you shouldn’t think as if it’s possible to attain spirituality through some special, magical, secret means. Nothing will help except for work. The lack of sensitivity is what obscures the Creator and the upper Light. The sensitivity can be improved only through ascents and descents, solely through effort and search.

It’s also forbidden to listen to someone talking about disappointment and fatigue. Once somebody sighed heavily during Baal HaSulam’s lesson, and Baal HaSulam became furious at that person, saying that he never wanted to hear anything like that. A person can become tired physically, but he cannot be tired of the spiritual work, of inner efforts! It’s unacceptable to show such mood outwardly.

It’s understandable that people experience different states because they aren’t masters of them. However, a person shouldn’t show them to the surrounding people. On the contrary, no matter how one feels inside, he must always look inspired and willing to put effort into everything. This is the requirement of our mutual guarantee.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/18/2011, Baal HaSulam’s Letter 56

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In order to receive the Light that reforms, the force that will make us similar to the upper force, the Creator, and that will return us to the source of goodness and abundance so we would become just as good, bestowing, and loving, we have to place ourselves in the right conditions.

How can I prove to myself and prepare myself to make the right request from the upper Light so it would influence me? Only through the environment. I don’t have any opportunity in our world to prove that I want to become bestowing and good unless I organize the right connection with the environment to the best of my ability.

That is why before and during the lesson, especially while reading The Book of Zohar, every one of us must constantly feel that he has an unceasing connection with others, that he is in a net of connection where he loses himself and only feels everyone together. He must try to feel with all his might that he does not have his own “I,” but there is only “WE.” This is called the assembly of the souls of Israel (Knesset Israel)—the unification of all those who aspire to reveal the Creator.

If they unite together in order to reveal Him, that means the broken souls desire to unite together and ascend through their request for unification to Malchut of the world of Atzilut. Malchut of the world of Atzilut takes these desires, which aspire to unite and make mutual efforts to unite, and raises this request to Zeir Anpin. He, in turn, works on this request, corrects them, and then all who participate in it acquire the force of mutual bestowal and begin to feel closer, more connected together. Thus, gradually, step by step, very slowly they reveal the net of connection between them. When this net attains its first realization, we begin to feel that we are on the first degree of the spiritual ladder.

Therefore, while reading The Book of Zohar we must constantly aspire only toward unity among us so inside of it we would reveal the form of our connection called “the Creator.” After all, the Creator is the form of connection among us.
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/17/11, The Zohar

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Question: How can one affect his friends in practice so that they keep the correct intention during the lesson, especially when we are reading The Book of Zohar?

Answer: First of all, we have to support each other in our internal quest, our inner sensation, since this is what we call “mutual guarantee.” Without our mutual support, we won’t come to a state where we will feel the collective desire as our own.

It isn’t because the friends need me, but because I need them. These actions are much deeper than mere external support. Thereby, I awaken myself to an awareness that all this desire is my soul’s vessel.

Sometimes, I think about unity within the desires, but whether I understand it or not, I awaken the Light thereby; I perform the actions aimed toward unification of our spiritual vessels, desires. The Light is oneness, and if I don’t turn to it through a single desire or vessel, I don’t evoke the Light.

Therefore, I must think about the integral desire where we live in mutual bestowal and guarantee. Essentially, the guarantee is that very tiny opening through which we allow the Light to come in. In fact, the guarantee means that you are already bonded with the others in oneness similar to the oneness of the Light.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/15/2011, The Zohar

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