Question: What is the difference between a lesson and a workshop?

Answer: The workshop serves as preparation for the lesson. And so, each lesson should also be similar to a workshop since we must prepare the common intention, the desire to become one, the one corresponding to the unified desire of one force. Without any preceding preparation like this, it would not be the learning of the Torah, but the study of wisdom.

The study of the Torah symbolizes the disclosure of the evil inclination that needs to be corrected. The correction of the evil inclination is the connection with others and the attainment of love, the correction of the breaking. Thus, each lesson needs to become an addition to the workshop and bring us to a higher level.

In the workshops, we learn how to prepare quickly for each lesson. Then, all of our lives will transform into one incessant workshop. This is so that we never lose the feeling of unity and constantly connect more and more.

In this way, we examine all the details in the common Kli and solve all the problems in life as a whole, both corporeal and spiritual. By our acting from within the center of the group, from within our shared feeling, we can perform real miracles.

The workshop is a clarification of our intention, the connection, our necessity to connect between us, mutual guarantee, responsibility, the commitment of each one for the other in the general group, and the obligation in regard to our teachers, the sources, and the entire world. Everything together determines our responsibility and the only obligation to the Creator.

Through our uniting in a circle, we create a place in this central point through which it is possible to break out of the material borders. Everything is in the hands of the group.

Thus, the subject of the discussion is not so important, but the main thing is how we try to connect via the subject. This means that it is just a means of searching after a greater connection.

All the worlds, Partzufim, Sefirot, and Reshimot are clarified only in the center of the group where the steps of the spiritual ladder are revealed. Nevertheless, only now are we starting the work from the beginning.

All of these workshops will go into the archive so that every person in the world can use them to emotionally participate in this work and advance. In the end, the entire world will become one group around one round table, one family.
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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: Social protest is being reborn today in Israel. As people find that prices are excessively inflated, people feel “used,” and this unites them.

Answer: That is right. There is an external impression that a protest is able to lead to real changes. Once well organized, it is possible to, for example, lower the prices twofold on products.

However, the Creator intentionally shows us this deceiving picture: as if in this way we were able to correct something He has ruined, and live happily. In reality, in the end we will not achieve anything this way, even if all calculations point to an enhancement of welfare.

It seems like before I barely lasted until payday and now I can even spend my money on other things. But the problem is that this will not happen.

After all, the Creator wants us to rise above our lives through these “exercises.” Just like at a certain point, a father begins to appear before his son in different images: forced formidableness, false coldness, etc. This is not just different facial expressions and changes of tone; this helps the son learn his father’s behavior. A small child is simply frightened by severity, but a bigger child thinks: “Why does he do this? What does he want?” Once he matures a bit more, the son already understands his father’s intentions, he already sees what his father wishes to teach him—and he joins the father, his love and his training program: “What does he want to show to my ruined desire with his unsatisfied expression? How do I change this desire to see a smile on his face?”

After all, the Creator wants us to associate ourselves with Him, perceive His mind and feeling and rise to a new degree, instead of dealing with the “faces” that this world is making. And this is why a social protest will not bear success and will not make our lives easier.

The question here is: Are we using the awakening of the people to bring them to the objectives they need to reach today? The time has come to explain the situation to the people: No matter how low the prices drop, we will not see any real benefit. A person lives through sensations, and even shopping with the money saved will not help him, he will be “set up” so that instead of feeling pleasure, he will become more depressed. On the background of wellbeing, we will see a wave of suicides or an increase in drug abuse.

Stop making short-term plans, nearsightedly expecting to take it out on those who rob us. Robbery is not limited to tycoons; however, we are not speaking about human egoism, but the one who is playing with us through these examples. So, we need to find a clear explanation to make people gradually understand what is happening.

One way or another, if the protest is not directed towards unity, when its purpose is to get even with someone, this will only harm people. Talk about crazy prices only blinds a person and shuts his mouth instead of bringing fulfillment to his heart and the mind.

If all of humanity is not raised to the point of the realization of the upper Force, the suffering will only keep increasing. The Creator wants to bring you closer, but you play with price tags and chant populist slogans. This will only turn into greater suffering. Even if you were to take all the money from tycoons, you will still have nothing left tomorrow. Because you will waste these billions, lose work places, and will leave people with no earnings, instead of what they have now even if it is insufficient.

We need to begin with the cause and not the consequence: The Creator creates this situation so we will come to Him. Do social protests lead to Him? They do if they push us towards unity. But if they are about breaking and bringing someone down, then no.

Rise a little and see what is driving everything. There is nothing that can be done without changing human nature, which determines the current system. Change it, raise people: This is the solution. Otherwise, for the happiness of the haters, you will bring things to the point of a revolution, like those which already have been so numerous in history.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/18/12, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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Question: How can I check that I have returned to the center of the group during the workshop?

Answer: The center of the group is our only upper point, the upper desire, the place, where all our desires unite and wherever we look we see Divinity, the revelation of the Creator.

We will learn to check this in more “professional” ways in the future, according to the three parts of the existence of reality “world-year-soul,” according to the three lines. But as long as we cannot hold on to all these spiritual discernments, I check that I have reached the center of the group when I begin to discover that there is something outside my “I.”

It is as if I am under the influence of the force that is above me, which controls me, but only according to my desire, only if I let it control me! It doesn’t enslave me as often happens in other methods when a person is hypnotized like a “zombie” under their influence and cannot escape.

Here I am constantly conscious and fully understand: I understand that I can disconnect myself from this influence. Yet, I constantly choose to stay under its control. Every time I choose a greater connection, I add finer discernments to this state, both in feeling and in the mind. This means that I am at the most central point.

This central point begins to grow in relation to me and to clarify different discernments that are in it: my attitude to the friends, to myself, to the study, to the teacher, and to the whole world. I feel that all my relationships and my connections with everyone are centered in this one point. This means that I begin to work on it in every situation in my life.

In order not to detach myself from this center, I have to invest emotional and mental efforts in the mind and heart. According to these efforts I will discover what the true mind and heart are, because these are not ordinary corporeal attributes, but rather special spiritual attributes.

All my work is to clarify to what extent I can adhere to the center, to the upper, in every situation. I am like an organ that is returned to its place that feels that it isn’t simply stitched on to the body, but begins to live in it, to use its powers, and to bestow something on my part by taking part in the collective actions. This is already the feeling of life!
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/22/12, “Talk About the Workshop”

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From a lesson of Rabash: “Israel that are in exile—Divinity is with them.” We learn that the vessels of Malchut descend downwards, when the Upper rises, the lower rises too, but an explanation is needed here, and we should understand this too. We learn from everything both the negative and the positive. We learn about the restriction of Bina and we learn about the sweetening of Malchut. “Israel that are in exile—Divinity is with them.”

When they are in exile, they are tasteless, and they say that their Torah is also tasteless. Do you understand this or not?

So one feels the Upper in the same way he feels himself. This is called “restriction.” On the other hand there is “sweetening,” and this is called “I am the Lord residing with them in their impurity.” Although they are not purified yet, there is still the dressing of the Lights in the form of Surrounding (Lights), which are evoked each time, without inner vessels.

When a person is awakened, he doesn’t say: “I want to wake up now.” It isn’t like pressing a button. He is awakened, it happens by itself. This is called the “Surrounding Light. When it comes to the lower it is called “the Inner Light,” the lower raises MAN. Do you understand the difference?

When the lower does it the lower is the host. The Upper…a house, he wants to re-enter. There is no longevity. The awakening—has no longevity, well!

This is also called the raising of MAN—the lower wakes up by itself.

Listen, there is an attitude and there is a reality. I am speaking about an attitude. The actual reality begins only after a person attains his vessel of receiving. We are only speaking about the attitude and not more than that.”

The Creator always takes care of a person who wants to advance. But sometimes it is revealed as he brings a person closer to Him, and sometimes He exiles him. The exile is felt when the Upper restricts Himself and bestows in a different way, by the “Surrounding Light.”

While getting closer to the Creator and the awakening the “Direct” (Esher) Light is more active and during the time of exile, the “round” (Igulim) Light is more active. But a person is always being taken care of from Above if he exerts himself in his advancement.

Therefore it says: “He who resides with them within their impurity,” (Leviticus 15, 16), which means that the Divinity is in exile together with a person, since he was exiled intentionally and it is meant for the servants of the Lord in order to advance them by another hidden Providence, of the Upper Providence. The desire to reveal Him is the true desire.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/20/12

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Baal HaSulam, Shamati, Article 69, “First Will Be the Correction of the World”: He said that first will be the correction of the world, then will be the complete redemption…that first the interior of the worlds will be corrected and subsequently the exterior of the worlds…and the root of Israel is from the interior of the worlds.

“Israel” are those who are drawn to Yashar-El (straight to the Creator), those who have the “point in the heart.” In the past in Ancient Babylon, a group of people discovered this desire and broke off from the others, and named itself according to its direction to the goal. Later this group became a nation that went through ages of development.

Now history is repeating itself, and again there is a group that organizes according to the same principle and is also called “Israel,” according to the direction of its development. It belongs to the interior part because it is the desires of Galgata ve Eynaim, the vessels of bestowal.

This is the meaning of “for ye were the fewest of all peoples.” However, by correcting the interior, the exterior is corrected too, though in small pieces. And the exterior will be corrected every time, until all the exterior is corrected.

Thus, it is enough to correct the “one percent” in order to correct the whole world, bit by bit, part by part.

This means that we have to find people who feel the importance of the goal of creation, of the interior development. They should connect so that they will feel and understand where our evolution is headed. By connecting and correcting themselves, they will pass on the correction to the exterior part as well and influence the whole world.

This is why we are having a convention in America, not for external dissemination, but for people who yearn to discover the upper force. We should provide them with the necessary conditions to unite, so that they will be able to fulfill the correction and then it will flow from them to the world.

They have to feel that they are responsible for that, since the exterior part cannot operate independently. Ordinary people, from the leaders to common folks cannot correct themselves. Only those who have the point in the heart can do that. We turn to them by explaining to them what the correction depends on and what they should do in order to help the world.
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From the Lesson in New Jersey on 5/10/12, Shamati #69

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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 141: “Now you can understand the meaning of the words, “Forsake Me and keep My law.” They interpreted, “I wish that they had left Me and kept My Torah—the Light in it reforms them.”

There is a link between you and the Creator, the Light, which is your corrupt desire to receive. If you correct it, you will feel the same result called Light or Creator meaning “Come and see” (Boreh in Hebrew) in the same material. The Creator is revealed in your corrected desire according to its correction.

On the whole the method by which you gradually correct your desire in order to feel, understand, and reveal the Creator is called the “Torah.” With its help you evoke a special force, the force of bestowal, that is external to you and which corrects your desire. To the extent that you ask for it, this force changes the desire dressed in it and you feel the Light, the Creator, your sublime state.

This is the only way you can advance. If you don’t ask for the correction and turn to the “Creator” that you have invented, your work will be futile, since it doesn’t match reality.

Question: What is meant by “keep my law”?

Answer: It means that all your actions should be aimed only at the correction of the corrupt vessel according to the principle: “I have created the evil inclination, I have created the Torah as a spice for it.”

If you work correctly on the correction of the desire, it begins to take on the form of the Creator. Then you begin to understand, to acknowledge, and to adhere to Him. You have “material” that has taken on a new form, a form of bestowal and love. Thus, through the matter of the desire you reach adhesion with the form of the Creator.

Question: If we are speaking about having to find the point in the center of the group, what does that have to do with “keep my law”?

Answer: It is there, in the center of the group, that you correct your evil inclination. It is there and only there that you discover the Creator, your advanced spiritual states. There is no other place where the evil “matter” of the desire can be revealed except for the center of the group that should be revealed as a mountain of hate, as “Mt. Sinai.”

So by committing to mutual guarantee, to the alliance, and to mutual help, we begin to discover the Reforming Light. This is also called the “receiving of the Torah”: We receive it if we feel that we cannot correct our connection, but we don’t try to run away from the problem. Then we receive the Torah and correct the separation—and then the Creator is revealed.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/20/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: How should I work with the evil that is being revealed?

Answer: The method of Kabbalah is intended for the correction of our evil inclination, meaning the corrupt desire that is entirely directed to its own benefit, instead of bestowal to another person. This correction helps us to become similar to the Light, to the Creator. According to the similarity of form, the Light becomes clothed in a vessel, and then we sense the upper reality.

Question: What happens in the relationship among the friends when I feel envy or hatred?

Answer: Despite the vices being revealed, you keep going and try to unite with your friends above this corruption. There is nature, but we must be above it. This is how we correct ourselves. We are not destroying the egoism, but we are working above it.

I cannot stand my friend, and I do not wish to interact with him. However, I am trying to connect with him above this rejection.

After all, this rejection is the result of my corrupt, egoistic desire. With my purpose being correction, I try to rise above it and treat my friend in the opposite way, with love.

Both of these forms coexist within me. I recognize my rejection, and, at the same time, I decide to express a different attitude, seeing my friend as a great person.

This is our work.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/20/12, The Study of the Ten Sefirot

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We can feel something new every minute, not just once a year. The point is that many times we receive new things, but cannot feel them. We cannot perceive them since we have no vessel for them.

Miracles happen to us every day, and we find ourselves before “Mt. Sinai.” There are endless innovations because the world of Ein Sof (Infinity) is before us.

Everything depends only on our ability to perceive things, on our vessels. Therefore, a blessed innovation is when a person can feel. Everything is measured with regard to the person who attains, so we must work on our sensitivity, on the vessels.

The Reshimot (informational genes) are constantly evoked inside us. We go through many states, but at the moment, we are developing passively, on the beastly level, unable to feel the essence of these changes, unable to attain the intensity of the level, the connection with the Creator.

The difference in the levels can be compared to buying something new, bringing it home, and putting it in the living room, whether it is a flowerpot or a dog, or someone who came to visit me. This is what we feel when we are brought inside the King’s palace; it all depends on the form we have when we enter it.

Am I an object, a plant, or a living thing? Have I prepared my deficiency so that I can consciously enter the palace and understand where I am, thanks to the equivalence of form, like a human being that resembles the Creator, the host?

It all depends on the preparation of our vessels. We go through many states unconsciously in the form of an inanimate object, a plant, or a living thing, so we don’t feel anything new in them. Only the change a human being goes through is considered an innovation, when he attains, understands and feels in order to resemble the Creator
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From the preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/18/12

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Today, gradually, a deeper and stricter interconnection between countries, nations, and people is being revealed. Even individually, we are connected through chains with several links. However, there is a certain problem: We are not yet capable of properly realizing this connection.

The modern crisis is expanding and encompasses the world. It will not end even though many are promising that soon things will begin to improve.

Problems will not end until we reach balance. After all, the cause of the crisis is imbalance, in other words, the lack of connection between us.

Here is where we discover the law of mutual guarantee. The Torah explains to us that in the end a person will love his neighbor as himself.

“Love” is proper systematic unity when every person works for the benefit of everyone, and there is absolute harmony between us. In the end, once we reach the final correction, all of us, once again, will become parts of a single soul, like organs of the body that operate in absolutely different ways, but exist in unified harmony, and this is why the body lives.

Every organ performs its own work, its own function, but within the framework of a common program that encompasses and obligates everyone to work together. To the contrary, when there is imbalance between parts of the body, illnesses appear.

We must treat our correction according to the same principle. Today, I exist in absolute, total egoism. I want everything to “spin” on my command, carry out my wishes, and think like me. We all begin our journey in this state.

In the first stage of working with myself, I must come to the degree of Hafetz Hessed. I do not get in the way of others. Like a cogwheel, I freely run on my axis, according to the desires of my neighbors. Do what you want with me. I am ready to “spin” at your request, as if I had no desires of my own, as if it were not me, but some supporting force intended for you.

We are speaking of a very high degree. After all, I must work with my egoism so that it will not get in my way of serving others.

To do this, I must know the desires of others and never get in the way of their realization, being absolutely neutral. We are referring to an enormous correction, during the course of which I set up screens of the zero, first, and second degrees over my desire.

Then, I rise to the next degree. I direct my desires, abilities, qualities, and the entire potential of my strength and energy, everything, toward the benefit of my neighbors. Now, my egoism is not just neutralized, I am not just freely running on an axis, but I am connected to my own engine that works for their benefit. This is the degree of love. I give you everything for the good of it.

This path stretches from our world to the world of Infinity (∞) through 125 degrees. Part of them I realize on the degree of Hafetz Hessed, being neutral, and the other part I realize by actively putting my efforts into benefiting my neighbors.

During the first stage, I correct 248 desires and during the second stage, I correct 365. Overall, the correction of 613 desires is called observing the commandments. In this way, the common desire is divided according to my inner structure.

All this is to achieve complete and absolute mutual guarantee, a state where I will interact with everyone in harmony, just like any other person.

Hence, it is clear the kind of correction to which mankind must come: Everyone will perceive and include within them the entire reality to the point of fully identifying with it. This is why Kabbalah is being revealed now, because if we do not know how to realize this, then our path will be very difficult and painful; indeed, it would truly be the “path of suffering.”

However, if we try to act in the group, our path will not be easy, but it will be good (the red arrow on the graph). We get together, feel each other, evoke the Light, and it works on us, influences us, and awakens us. By mutually feeling each other, we allow the light to do its work.

This is the essence of the method. You neither know nor understand anything, you are not capable of anything, but you want to “swallow” all the pleasure, and you only need to learn to evoke the Light. If you learn, you will achieve success so easily and beautifully, together with everyone in joy.
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From the New Jersey One Convention 5/12/12, Lesson 3

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Question: Why will the next stage of the work be unity among the groups? How is it connected to the unity within each group and to the individual work of a person?

Answer: In fact, unity begins from a group of ten people. A human is built in such a way that he can apprehend specifically this amount of people. Ten is a convenient “round” number, neither too large, nor too small. It is called the “Minyan,” meaning it’s what can be “counted” (Limnot). Our perception is structured in such a way that it comprehends only this kind of a system, since it completely enrobes our internal structure (the ten Sefirot).

However, at the lesson when we’re not talking about our own impressions, but in general are reading articles and discussing the material, a very large group can participate in this, including the whole world. Therefore, during workshops we sit in groups of ten, while at the lesson there is any amount of people who are capable of such a clarification and discussion using the Kabbalistic language.

We just need to worry that it doesn’t turn into a routine, and for this we need to constantly increase the desire inside of us and the importance of the goal. Each time we will be talking about another, new character of the revelation of the Creator.

By uniting with the group, we are creating a “One,” the commonality for all of us, not belonging to any one of us, but only to all of us together. It’s the higher essence, the “amalgamation.” It’s not simply our sum, but a kind of an addition to it. It’s because in order to have arrived at this sum, each one must have traded-off his egoism. The concept of One, being above us, is composed of all of these personal cancellations of egoism. This is how we build our higher level.

If we were to unite simply as egoists for a common profit in order to build something together or to win, like a football team, then the result would be an empty sum of our efforts. However, if we are cancelling our ego, then we are building a new common vessel above all of us.

It belongs to all of us; those ten who are sitting in a circle having a discussion are cancelling themselves out and are exalting the group and friends. The highest Sefira, Keter, is defined by how I listen to everyone else, how I place the group, the Creator, and the goal above myself. And I value myself as  low and I lower myself relative to my friends. This is the way my Malchut is defined.

After each one has clarified these two points, Keter and Malchut, we unite all of these Keters and Malchuts together. And if each one is doing it with enough capacity for the first level of revelation of the Light, then it reveals in this gap between the Keters, united into one, and the united Malchuts. An internal luminescence occurs between them, since we have cancelled ourselves out.

Although it’s not yet the constriction or a screen, the Light is already being revealed and is beginning to work to the extent of our opposition to our egoism and desire to unite. It’s because both of these principles are already spiritual. We are exalting the spiritual, bestowal, and we are disregarding the material, receiving; we’re taking the actions which we are capable of, like small children.

And then the ten people, supplementing each other and ready to unite, are creating a large tension, a distance between the united Keter and a united Malchut, building our common spiritual vessel in this way. And when we have built it among the ten of us, we understand that the rest of the friends around the whole world, are exerting the same efforts right now. All of our joint efforts are combined regardless of the size of each group.

If after our efforts to unite in our circle we want to include the rest of the groups inside of us, then we are uniting everyone together. And then a truly huge and powerful vessel is being formed, capable of revealing the first level of the Light, according to the similarity of qualities. The more distance there is between the common Keter and the common Malchut, the bigger the vessel, and possibly it will already be enough for the first revelation of the Light.

The Light is revealed in a discreet form, in portions: Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama, and so forth. And if we reveal it, then it will be revealed in each group and in each person according to his personal efforts, more in some and less in others to the extent of the efforts invested.

That’s why we need to long to connect all of the groups and separated friends to us, and even the whole world since it has a huge vessel. It’s there that the true desire to enjoy lies, and if it will join us even in a passive form, then it will add a lot of material to us. And if we with our longing towards the spiritual are working on this material, then we are receiving a huge additional capacity.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/17/12, “Talk About Past Conventions” 

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