Question: Am I “drilling a hole in the boat” by acting in all directions, in all 359 degrees except for one that is aimed toward the mutual guarantee?

Answer: But I signed an agreement with my friends that covers everything! My guarantee does not only apply to the tiny open gap through which I have to reach the mutual guarantee. You will not be able to concentrate one hundred percent on the mutual guarantee without taking the strengths from all the other directions and only leaving the vital necessities there.

Only when all the other directions become nothing but a necessity for you, which “is neither disapproved of nor praised” and all the strengths that remain after providing for your existence are directed towards reaching the mutual guarantee, only in this case, you are not drilling a hole in the boat.
[23347]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/12/10, “The Love of the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”

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Question: What is selfless bestowal to another? What do I have to bestow to the friend outside of the egoistic pleasure?

Answer: You don’t need to give him anything material. In your desires you offer him support so that he wouldn’t forget about advancement toward the Creator. This is what your bestowal is exactly. What can souls give to one another when they are apart? They can only awaken each other and give each other strength. It isn’t required to fill the friend’s pockets or refrigerator. Only the correct interconnection is needed, and the Upper Light will fulfill all the needs.

Provide the friend with energy, involvement, and joy from the goal for this is your duty. Without this obligation and spirit there is no group. The Creator has made it so that we exist in one place, meaning one spiritual space, one collective desire of all the friends from all over the world. But it still doesn’t mean that we are a group.

A group begins with the promise to inspire each other. Moreover, we are not talking about external actions, but the inner desire where we are interconnected. Everyone passes the collective impulse and confidence in the path to the others, and this is what is called mutual guarantee.

If you lose capacity to inspire the others, it means that you are drilling a hole in our boat. “And if I am tired, can I rest?” If you do, then you are unable to receive inspiration from the others and are drilling a hole under yourself in the common boat, and because of you, all the others drown.

You either take part in the mutual guarantee or you don’t. This is the way we have to strengthen our troops. Everyone and all of us must see how we depend on each other more and more. This is practical work: A person examines his demand for connection with the group day by day. This is the exact point of interconnection that has to become a foundation for all our hopes.

The boat will reach the point of destination, and in the meantime, our job is to keep it safe from holes and see to it that the certainty in achieving the goal and awareness of its importance gets passed on to everyone. Indeed, there is nothing more important than unity and revelation the universal force of bestowal – the Creator, the Light – among us.
[22717]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/6/10, “In Everything We Must Discern Between Light and Kli”

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Question: Is the whole process of the creature’s development and the measure of its bestowal predetermined?

Answer: Nobody is restricting you in any way! You have free choice and every opportunity. Even the prophets could not predict the way we will advance. In all the prophecies of the days of the Messiah and the war of Gog and Magog, the revelation was only in the left line, the line of natural development and not in the three lines.

Nobody knows ahead of time the extent to which we will be able to sweeten this path. That is, we cannot predict what may happen at the Mega Congress. It is entirely possible that we will cross the Machsom and continue our spiritual ascent!

Or we can rise over it for some time and fall again, needing to cross it several times so as to ultimately stay in the spiritual world. Everything depends on how we organize and realize our connection.

The other essential factor is how we will accept this revelation. If we have prepared ourselves to accept it only for the sake of bestowal, and do not yield to the pleasure it offers, then together through mutual guarantee, we will be able to use all the revelations, pleasures, and states that will come and continue our path upward in spirituality.

But everything is in our hands. Everything is ready!

From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/18/10, Article “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot”

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Sometimes a person feels that he is tired, that he needs rest, and that the path is not for him. Even though he knew ahead of time that these states would come, he suddenly forgets what to do. All the articles talk about this. They describe the inner struggle, the obstacles, and how the righteous ascend where the wicked fall. Thus, a person reaches a state where he is really given freedom of choice.

This requires a great deal of luck, where luck means that he was able to set up a relationship with the environment, group, teacher, and Kabbalah books that does not let him leave. He takes on various obligations and participates in all of the group’s actions in order to make habit become second nature. This prevents him from leaving these actions since otherwise those around him will start to look down on him.

If he realizes how weak his nature is and sets up these connections, then he is able to hold on and stay. This is similar to how sailors on a ship’s deck tether themselves to the boat with ropes so the waves won’t wash them into the open waters. They know that they won’t have the strength to hold on in rough seas, and so they tie themselves with tether lines.

You can’t do the tying when you are already being washed away. Everything must be prepared in advance. Sailors understand that they don’t have the strength to overcome the tremendous force of stormy seas that throws them in every which direction.

That is how a person should prepare, and the group must offer guaranteed support so he won’t leave the path even in the stormiest of conditions. The person must also use all of his qualities, such as pride, the common ego, and all sorts of calculations to ensure that he won’t run away from the path and that he will reach the goal.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/8/10, Writings of Rabash, "And the Children Racketed Withing Her"

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A question I received: What is “mutual guarantee”?

My Answer: Yesterday during the Lesson for Children I gave the following example: Every person possesses a very small egoistic force. We can’t reach the spiritual world with it because spirituality entails total bestowal. The spiritual world exists one degree above our world, which means that we have to be stronger by one degree than we currently are.

How can we transform a small, egoistic force into a big, bestowing one? By uniting! We have to unite in the form of a mutual guarantee, that is, to unite overriding all the borders. How?

Suppose there are 50 people, of varying stature. If everybody incorporates himself or herself into the smallest one, he becomes a giant, his height reaching 60 feet and weight 2000 pounds. And what will happen if everyone joins the biggest one, who is taller than everybody else? The result will be the same: There will a 60 foot, 2000 pound giant. In other words, there are no small or big ones in mutual interconnection; rather, everyone becomes equal.

In that case, when will they enter the spiritual world? If they are incorporated into each other, they will do it together. This is what is called “mutual guarantee.”

This is how we should relate to our common spiritual vessel (the soul, Kli). There is no difference between the souls that comprise it, neither in their “height” nor in their “weight.” If new students connect to us, they become worthy of receiving everything that we achieve. Such is a special, miraculous force that mutual guarantee contains.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/7/10, The Zohar

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Two questions I received on love:

Question: You often say that one’s relationship with the Creator should be similar to how a groom courts a bride, how she conceals herself, and so on. In addition, you have said that in the past women were bought for money, and it was enough to meet someone just once before getting married to them. But where is passion and tension in this?

My Answer: There is no need for love on the corporeal level, because it is created later through mutual compromise and habit. However, passion and tension are necessary in one’s relationship with the Creator because these feelings are higher – contrary to egoism. For example, it can be compared to a dramatic love story where the lovers (man and the Creator) aspire toward each other (through bestowal), against the desires of the whole world (against all their egoistic desires) – and this creates passion and tension.

Question: In a TV show you were asked, “What is love?” and you said, “It is the fundamental quality of the universe, mutual bestowal that permeates all levels of nature, except man. We are left to our own devices, and we do everything in the world except this.” However, you also say that man doesn’t have freedom of action and everything is determined by the Creator.

My Answer: This is how things were initially determined by the Creator: All nature in our world is egoistic due to man’s egoistic downfall, and the correction of all of nature depends only on man. To the degree man corrects his inanimate, vegetative, and animate desires, he also corrects the external inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels of nature.

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Two questions I received on love:

Question: What is “the suffering of love”?

My Answer: There is no love in our world. What we call love is the aspiration for pleasure, or to be fulfilled by pleasure. In other words, corporeal love is one’s attitude to that which gives one pleasure. It is measured by the degree of one’s fulfillment from the source of love.

Spiritual love works differently. It’s when a person rises above his egoism and no longer depends on it. He then begins to perceive the desires of others as his own, and unites with the entire desire that was created by the Creator (with the common soul, Adam).

Once he acquires this property of bestowal and concern for fulfilling desires outside of him, he then finds the Creator – the general quality of love, inside this common desire. In this case, “the suffering of love” is when one suffers because he still doesn’t love the Creator, or in other words – because he is not inside the property of bestowal completely.

Question: If spiritual love can only be felt toward one’s neighbor, then it is probably impossible to love those who are not part of my close environment (spiritually speaking)? And when we say “love for others” this means that we understand the egoistic nature of others and realize that these egoistic qualities are temporary?

My Answer: That is absolutely correct. But in addition, it’s also necessary to provide them with a way to become acquainted with Kabbalah in a form suitable for them, and to put it in front of them discretely, so that as soon as their “point in the heart” (a desire for something other than this world) will surface, they can immediately discover the means to fulfill it.

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Love is characterized by giving. I love – means I give; I enjoy from pleasing the other. How could it be that I please the other? What do I please him with? With my attitude toward him. How can he receive pleasure from me? Only if he loves me. In this case, if I relate to him with love, he receives pleasure from it. However, if I don’t love him, I will perceive his good attitude toward me as hatred, and this will push me away from him even more. [Read more →]

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