Question: Is the level we’ve reached in the convention the credit we should work for, or is it the result of our previous efforts?

Answer: There are those who received it as a payment and there are those who received it as a down payment. Everyone has both aspects to some extent. Much of what we have received is in order to fulfill from now onward, like a down payment. We were given the opportunity to feel something in the unity, in the connection. We were given different special things from Heaven on purpose, and thanks to them we felt new phenomena in the connection among us. We should understand that this is a real gift. Now we have to process this gift internally and to fulfill it.

I personally see it more as credit for the future that we should fulfill now. I don’t underestimate all our exertion, but according to the state we were in, we didn’t deserve it. We received this credit because we made efforts, but we received it not as a payment, but as a down payment, with which we should now work.
[71000]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/26/12, “The Purpose of Society”

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We do not need to correct our inner nature; I will remain like this no matter what I do with myself. There is no commandment to correct animate qualities; they do not interfere. Instead of the force of repulsion, I need to get the force of connection; that is all. I have to work only on the connecting glue between us, not on myself.

That is why all our work is concentrated in the group, and the direction can be only at connecting our breaking. Any calculations with respect to the person are prohibited. There are plenty of those who sit and eat themselves up: “Who am I, what am I, and why am I like this?” In spiritual work, nobody is interested why you are like that, and the Creator is not interested either!

We all are different parts of one mechanism: one is a cogwheel, the other is an axis, the third is a filter, the fourth is a pump, the fifth is a generator, etc. Everyone remains internally the way he was; we just need to put it all together into one system. And you are sitting there and crying about what is going on inside of your pump; do not worry, it is in perfect order. The whole problem is just that you do not connect it properly with others.

This is exactly the opposite direction of the way the world thinks. That is why all the work lies in achieving love of your neighbor as yourself, the great rule;  you must include everyone into one mechanism, one system.
[70811]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/17/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: If we succeed in keeping the mutual guarantee conditions during the convention, what will happen after the convention ends?

Answer: The mutual guarantee conditions do not exist, not before the gathering at the foot of Mt. Sinai, not during the receiving of the Torah, and not afterward. If we manage to fulfill these conditions for just one moment, that would be enough! It is just as it was then at the foot of Mt. Sinai.

You are not responsible for how you will change. All the changes take place in us due to the Light. I can only ask for strength from Above to be able to fulfill these conditions below. And we are ready for that.

What will happen a moment later? I am not responsible for that. If you were given a spiritual vessel and Light, you’ve reached revelation. Immediately after that there is a greater fall, to the golden calf. But never mind. There are many different stages ahead, but they take place in the revelation and the concealment of the Creator. It isn’t the way it is now when we don’t understand who we are, where we are, and who we are dealing with.

You will then be either in concealment or in revelation. Even if there is concealment, you will already know that there is the Creator who is concealed from you. This is already a revelation, the revelation of the concealment! Now I already know that He is concealed from me. It is as if we are playing hide and seek. I have signs of His presence, a feeling.

Suppose on the levels of 0-1-2-3 (Shoresh, Aleph, Bet, Gimel) He is revealed, and on the fourth level (Dalet), he is concealed. Therefore I feel it. If He weren’t revealed in all the other levels of my desire, I would exist like an animal. He is revealed a bit, once here and once there, on different levels, through different attainments, at a certain level of recognition, and so I feel His presence. Even when I don’t feel Him clearly and am not in contact with Him inside my vessel, it is called concealment.

The concealment is a certain revelation, when He is inside me, but I can’t perceive Him. I feel how He turns me, but I can’t operate mutually with Him.

The concealment can be in the fact that I only pay attention to different signs but don’t reveal Him as a clear feeling.
[70754]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/22/12, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” 100: …The Zohar tells us that we should not even consider that the Creator wishes to remain in the Providence of concealed face from His creations. Rather, it is like a person who deliberately hides himself, so his friend will seek and find him. Similarly, when the Creator behaves in concealment of face with His creations, it is only because He wants the creatures to seek the disclosure of His face and find Him. …

We are talking only about those who receive, that is, the created beings that have feelings towards the Creator. There is a created being: a body, a head, arms and legs, everything is in its place. But is he automatically called a “created being?” No.

The created being is the desire to receive that feels the Creator, or that feels a deficiency in him. By that deficiency, I can be called a “created being” in relation to the one who is the “Creator” for me. If I don’t feel this deficiency for the Creator, then I cannot be called a created being because I don’t feel that I am part of something or of someone, and I stay on the developmental level of a “beast.”

The created being, a man, begins the search for his source, for the Creator. Only then is a spiritual vessel born in him, the deficiency and the need to reveal the Creator. Until then he goes through the stages of preparation as he hasn’t attained the fourth phase of his desire yet.

On the whole, it is only about the intensity of the desire to receive, about its “coarseness” and about the new attribute that guides a person in his search for the source. When this new desire is born in a person, he begins to feel that he is in concealment. Thus the concealment is also a stage of the revelation: I discover inside me that something is concealed from me, and it isn’t trivial. If such an “appetite” is evoked in us, some deficiency, if emptiness is revealed inside me, a deficiency for something, it is already an embryo, a beginning of the future vessel. Its further development depends on my efforts, but its beginning, the end of the string, is placed in my hands.

Therefore, we should love and respect the concealment and not reject or disrespect it, but rather we should know how to work with it. This is our craft, because the concealment leads us to revelation. Furthermore, the revelation will also come to a person in a concealed manner if the Creator creates a veil for him, and then the person builds it by himself and discovers the Creator in it.

The Creator shows him that He is concealed from him: He places a “partition,” hangs a “curtain,” between them, so that a person would feel His presence in the concealment. Here a person should make calculations: This is happening because I am in my egoistic desire. If I create that curtain now, not over my recognition but only over my ego, then I will be able to partly ascend above that “curtain,” above the Masach (screen), and there I will discover the Creator. Only my ego will remain in the lower part that is below the Masach, the desire to receive in order to receive. When I build such a Masach, such a curtain above my ego, I unveil the curtain that conceals the Creator.

Therefore we work in concealment and do not annul it immediately. All the Masachim (screens) are concealments: I check what I should cover and what I should reveal and to what extent and in what way. This is all my work.
[70677]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/22/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” 100: In other words, there would be no way or inlet for people to attain the Light of the King’s countenance had He not first behaved with them in concealment of the face. Thus, the whole concealment is but a preparation for the disclosure of the face.

Yesterday I spoke with a man who practically knows everything that is in our books. He really made great efforts in his study. His question was simple: “What’s the use of having studied all that?”

The point is that the revelation of the Creator doesn’t depend on the amount of knowledge and the number of years one studies. It only depends on the intensity of the mutual connection among us. This is the whole problem. Our spiritual vessel is called “mutual guarantee” and it depends only on how much we can connect with one another so that each one can depend on the other and trust him. It can even be a “baby,” in other words, a person who just started studying. Seniority has no meaning.

We study the material and “chew” it, but don’t think that if you study a certain additional number of pages you can discover the Creator. If you can’t do it now, you won’t be able to do it later either. You mustn’t postpone the redemption. We should expect the coming of the Messiah at any moment. The revelation doesn’t depend on anything physical.

Baal HaSulam says in letter 17: … when today will become tomorrow, and instead of now you shall say later. And there is no remedy for that except to make an effort to understand this mistake and this distortion, that the one who is saved by the Creator, is saved only as someone who needs help today, and if he can wait for tomorrow he will understand things at the end of his life.

And this is because of your negligence to fulfill my request and to make an effort in the love of friends, which I have explained to you in 70 languages (in every possible way), that this virtue is enough in order to complete all that you lack.

This means that a person didn’t do what he had to do and remained empty. He will only understand his mistakes at the end of his life, when it is too late.

So don’t think that we should study some more, or we should work on ourselves some more. Every person, even the newest student, must see himself as ready and worthy. The Creator Himself built the present situation for us. It isn’t my caprice. Until about a year or two ago I didn’t think about it, but now, when the external conditions have been revealed, when we must fulfill them, it is a sign that we are ready.

Even if I don’t understand and don’t feel what Kabbalists say, it isn’t an obstacle. When a person feels that he is empty, then it is the truth and is good. This is because our spiritual vessel is not in any of us at all, but only among us. Everyone feels the spiritual world outside him, in his mutual connection with others.

If we calculate things now and check how much more effort and preparation we need, then actually everyone thinks about his own deficiencies, and with himself one cannot have any calculations. No matter what is inside you, it has nothing to do with spirituality. This is your “beast.” The spiritual world is among us, in the space of our mutual connection. It is there that my spiritual vessel is found. Actually it is all of Ein Sof (Infinity).

You may ask: “So what have we done until now?” We worked in order to understand this, and not more than that. The understanding takes years, and all the rest is practical work when a man’s soul teaches him. It is written: “Love will cover all the sins.” “Will cover” means that it will complete everything. You don’t need anything more.
[70674]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/22/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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The upper Light is absolutely still. We are in an ocean of Light, like in an electrical, magnetic, or some other kind of field. It does not matter what kind of Light we have here. It exists; I do not need to create this second force, I just need to reveal it.

It turns out that every time we need to achieve a connection between us to form a detector, an instrument for revealing the field in which we exist. This detector is a desire, a need, which is sensitive to the field I am going to reveal: the quality of bestowal.

In other words, I must feel a need, a desire, to reveal the quality of bestowal. This is the only thing we lack, nothing else. As soon as we together reveal the need for the quality to bestow, we reveal it. That is, we must calibrate ourselves in relation to the quality of bestowal, to manage to reveal it without being in it, but only through an idea of what it represents. This is exactly what we are asking: to know what the quality of bestowal is, to be able to connect with one another the right way for the desire, the need, to bestow to appear in the connection between us. And that is all! This is the Kli (vessel) for revealing it.

We please the Creator with this attitude toward the quality to bestow, this field, the Creator. This is not that difficult and not so far away. All the effort needs to be in the thought: What is the detector of the quality of bestowal? And there is nothing else.

Baal HaSulam wrote in the book The House of the Gates to Intentions: There is a Creator and a creation, and he continues to explain that the creation’s entire problem is to reveal the Creator within which it exists. There is nothing else.

For this reason, when a person concentrates on the question: “How do I build the vessel for revealing the Creator, the quality to bestow, so it would reveal in me?”—he understand that this quality cannot reveal in him because he does not have a vessel for it, he lacks sensitivity for this quality.

Sensitivity to the quality to bestow can only appear from our revealing the desire for it together in our connection. My vessel gains sensitivity to the extent of our simultaneous rejection of one another and the desire to reveal the quality of bestowal between us. So I increase the extent of its sensitivity. And that is it.

Question: Why do I need to want to reveal the need for the quality of bestowal instead of revealing the actual quality?

Answer: There is no point to my revealing the actual quality to bestow: It exists. There is a treat in front of me, which contains everything. Everything in the world is in front of you. But you do not have an appetite for it and you cannot taste it. For example, if I am sick and have not eaten for two days, what do I think about? Revealing tastes? No I think about my need, my desire because, in fact, this is what I lack. Everything else is ready.

The upper Light is absolutely still. We are inside it. Increase your sensitivity, from opposition to it, from the negative, at least make it zero, and keep increasing it little by little until you reveal it.
[70651]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/22/12, The Zohar

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The more the goal of attaining bestowal unto the Creator is important to us, so should the work of creating the collective vessel and attaining bestowal unto friends be important. Thus, we will have to turn to the Creator in prayer (MAN), in order for Him to give us the force of bestowal, the will to bestow, the ability to connect amongst us and attain bestowal.

In a group, a person learns how friends should be treated, how to bond with them. When he “buys” friends for himself, he raises a prayer for them, receives strength from them, assistance. We need to attain cohesion with the Creator, as His partners, in equality and mutual love; one needs to attain that state with the friends in order to reveal what it is.

Surely, the will to receive and our initial nature despise this business. Yet, we will have to engage in it because other than that, there is no meaning to our reality, our life. For that purpose, we are born and exist on the beastly level, in the meantime, in order to reach correction.

Hence, it turns out that the friends are no less important than the Creator. And creating the collective vessel is equal to attaining the goal of Creation, attaining the love and cohesion.

We need to realize the immense power found within the group, and that is the only means to attain the goal of Creation, meaning, the attribute of bestowal. That is what our inner, personal work in the group is devoted to, and similarly, the external work relating to the entire world.

The whole world is also suffering. The question of “What is the purpose of my life?” leads each one of us to a group at some stage to study Kabbalah, and to a teacher, obligating us to study. Likewise, the entire world is seeking the meaning to its lost life, and nature is uniting us coercively into a group, an integral, global world. Whether people want it or not, they are beginning to feel they are interdependent.

Therefore, there’s not a big difference between what our groups are going through and what the whole world is enduring. Certainly, there is a difference in the pace, conditions and exposing the material; yet, the more we advance forward, we’ll be more similar, simply like twins. Our small group (those hundreds of thousands of friends belonging to it) will grow closer and closer to that large group comprised of seven billion people alive in the world, thus, we’ll reach a closer understanding of the goal.

Of course, every person does that in accordance with his degree and perception, but everyone, with no exception, must attain the importance of the “friends,” meaning, from the state in which one sees the other people as strangers to attaining the love of brothers toward all and loving each one “as himself.”
[68558]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/2/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: What is the basis of the fusion of the three concepts: “Israel, the Light, and the Creator?

Answer: The basis is that these concepts are not separated. Everything is One. Reality is simple: the desire to receive filled with light. And the question is only one: How can we discover where we really are? How can we discover this reality? How can we add the knowledge about it to our lives, to our current state? In the end, this is what the wisdom of Kabbalah reveals.

Beside this, there is nothing. This reality is permanent. There is no time, place, or distance, but reality simply exists. We can’t imagine this to ourselves without the characteristics of this world, but it exists. Within it we discover both the Kli (vessel or desire) and the Light, meaning all of its components, and thus we reach real existence.

We don’t understand how separated we are today from the truth. Israel, the Light, and the Creator seem separated to us. But we need to connect them into One.

The person who tries to discover the true reality is called Israel since he yearns “directly to the Creator (Yashar Kel).” Light is the Light that reforms, that brings a person to the goal. The goal is the Creator, the upper force, the root to which we long for. Thus everything is connected at the root, and through this, I return to Him, I really become like Him.
[70668]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/22/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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A person should reach a state in which he feels that is the Creator’s partner: I do half the work and He does the other half. Half for me and half for Him. It is like a saw with two handles that two people hold, each one in his turn pulls to his side: One time the first person and then the other person, and so they saw the log.

A person should also feel that they act alternately: One time he acts and one time the Creator. Of course, I don’t do the work by my own powers. The power comes from Above. The Creator performs the action and the request comes from me, then again an action on His part and a request from me. Thus we complete one another each time.

The best state is when a person feels that he can perform this rotation without stopping. It means that we are actually working “face to face,” and that a “horse and his rider” are working together as one whole to such an extent that a person begins to feel more and more what the power he is about to receive will be, and what exactly he should give on his part.

After all, we raise a prayer, MAN, until the world of Ein Sof (Infinity), until the last coupling before Gmar Tikkun (the end of correction), which is the coupling of “Rav Pealim Mekabtziel” in which all the previous prayers come together. On every step of the spiritual ladder, the prayer becomes more clarified and more accurate, more detailed and clear, because a person understands and feels more. This is all the attainment.

He doesn’t feel any shame because he gives his share and so he is the Creator’s partner, in adhesion. Thus he overcomes the “judges and policemen” that reject him and seduce him, and he makes them his assistants. He already feels their actions as assistance.

We can describe this as if a person and the Creator work together on the desire to receive. A person feels that he is together with the Creator above this desire, or that the desire is between them, that the person is on one side and the Creator is on the other side, and between them is the desire to receive that separates them. A person doesn’t see the desire as his own. The very first thing is to disconnect from the egoistic desire and to receive above it, to be separate from it.

Then we should already see the ego that separates us, that is between the friends and a person and the Creator, as our common obstacle. Therefore we work on it together when we connect with the Creator or the friends in order to work together against the ego that disturbs us, without trying to erase it because we cannot do without it, but I yearn to rise above it.
[70551]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/21/12, Writings of Rabash

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The Book of Zohar, Chapter “Beresheet (Genesis),” Item 237: This is why it is written about Moses, “No shrub of the field was yet in the earth,” meaning that the righteous, Moses, has not yet grown, from whom the verse, “Truth springs from the earth,” is written, and of whom it is written in regard to truth, “Cast truth to the ground,” referring to disciples of the wise, who are like grasses that grow in the earth. They do not grow and do not come out of the Divinity in exile until the verse “Truth springs from the earth,” comes true.”

On every level, in every state, all of reality is revealed to us, but to differing extents. It is Ein Sof (Infinity), but each time in a minimized or enlarged manner. Just like a holographic picture where all the details are always there but we see them more or less: Yet it is always a full spiritual vessel.

Therefore, now we should relate to our situation this way, since if even the smallest spiritual degree is revealed, it seems like Ein Sof to us, and there are all the forces including Moses.
[70517]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/21/12, The Zohar

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