The Upper Light is at absolute rest, and the Creator is good and benevolent. This means that we are always standing in the presence of the Light, the absolute good that never changes. We are the only ones who change.

It is possible to pray only for my own correction. To ask the Creator to change is worthless because He is absolutely good to everyone, without exception, and cannot be otherwise.

The correct perception of reality is the understanding that there cannot be change in the Light and not even in us, but in me alone. This is because how I feel each one in the world and all the changes that everyone undergoes are determined only by how I myself am changed. Instead of demanding that others change, through mutual cooperation with them, I must summon a change in me, and then the whole world will be changed.

Wise people have long understood from their life experiences that it is meaningless to try to change others. Nobody is going to change and everything depends upon me. The wisdom of Kabbalah brings a person to a very simple perception of reality and explains that each one must correct only himself and not others.

But in order to convince myself to change, I require an environment. By influencing society, I influence myself. I seemingly want to improve the environment, but ultimately the environment influences me and changes me.

I play with the Creator and with the environment, but this is to influence me. Ultimately I change myself this way, by becoming similar to the Creator. I then attain a true perception of reality and I will see it as it is seen from the side of the Light, from the side of the Creator.

The Creator gave us this opportunity to change ourselves gradually, to constantly produce changes within ourselves to become more like Him, through the environment. If I perceive the whole world and all of the friends as perfect and only myself as requiring correction, by accommodating myself to them, I will be found in constant work that brings me closer to the level of the Creator.

And in truth, it doesn’t matter what happens in the environment, who is right and who is wrong. I perceive all of this as the Creator’s game with me. He is the one who organizes all of this theater around me to help me adapt myself to Him. For if there is none else besides Him and He is good that does good, then any other image that doesn’t come from the only good force testifies to my inner corruption that I must correct.

So I must be in a process of scrutinizing myself all the time, in an internal dialogue with the Creator scrutinizing what He is giving something to me to see, to hear, to taste, to touch, to think, and to imagine. What memories float up in me, what thoughts spin around within me?

The Creator creates an entire world around me so that I will not forget, even for a moment, that all this is made by Him, that I am conducting an incessant dialogue with Him, that I want to discover Him, and to understand! This is like an infant to whom something is said, but he doesn’t understand anything, and just looks with open-mouthed excitement. This is how we also must try to understand at every moment what the Creator wants to tell us through this whole world that He shows us.

Essentially there is only a very small desire for pleasure to receive, that feels itself as if it exists in a physical body with hands and feet, and around it there are other forms, other bodies, a whole world. This immense world is changing all the time, everything goes around within it. All this exists only in my inner perception, in my desire to receive and is portrayed within my imagination, but doesn’t exist in reality.

We live in an imaginary world like this. All of its images are shaped within our ego so that we will interpret them correctly. If we accept the intention to bestow over our desire to receive, then instead of all of the forms of this world, we will feel the Upper Light that fills all of reality. We must reach such a final form of perception.

All of the work is to correct our inner perception, to be released from this pathological imagination in which we now exist, from this imaginary world, and come to the simple, Upper Light. Through work with the environment, imagining ourselves as closer and closer to the Upper Light, meaning bestowal, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” we can change our perception; and instead of this world, we feel the Upper World.

This distorted perception that portrays this physical world for us will disappear and in its place we will feel the one Creator, and see that besides Him, there is nothing. And we exist within Him and everything is immersed in an ocean of white Light. This will be the true perception, and not the imaginary reality in which we now live.
[143698]
From the Convention In Chile “Day One” 7/30/14, Lesson 2

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The wisdom of Kabbalah says that the Creator is good that does good. In order to realize Himself, He created the desire to receive, which is called the “created being.” This desire should be developed according to the Creator’s plan, according to His program until the created being understands and feels Him as good that does good, as great.

This is the desire of the Creator. Kabbalists explain to us that it’s not because He wants us to recognize His greatness, His omnipotence, and our dependence on Him. We are talking about the highest so therefore it is clear that this is so. No, the Creator wishes to raise us to His level.

So, we have to go through a certain awareness of the higher force in our nature and to reveal how we can ascend to its height. The Creator enjoys that we experience Him, meaning reach His level. According to the law of equivalence of form, to achieve adhesion with Him means to acquire the same properties as His.

The period of our self-correction is the path, the ladder, the rungs of which lead us upward through the five worlds. The created being can realize this ascent only if it is sure and knows for sure it he must do this. Then it has the force to realize it.

From where does the created being get the power to take the actions leading upward from reception to bestowal contrary to its nature? The created being has to have an understanding, awareness, and sense that he is in the bad egoistic state of reception and has to come to a good state of bestowal that is completely opposite to his current one.

We are told that we can do this if we get help from the Creator. The Upper Light is shed on us, and then we begin to talk in a different way and understand that to receive is bad for us and to bestow is good.

Well then, simply let the Creator do this! He has created the desire to receive within us and now can “shine” on us to turn that desire into bestowal. But no, this cannot occur because we would then lose independence and become like “angels,” that is, forces that just perform certain actions. Instead, we must admit and accept for ourselves that to receive is bad and to bestow is good.

This internal statement is called the “recognition of evil,” and nothing else is required. We only need to recognize the evil of the desire to receive and the good that is inherent in the desire to bestow. Once this happens within us, we will definitely stop using the evil of the egoistic desire that is manifested at this moment, and begin to use the desire to bestow, manifested as good.

It would seem that this is not child’s play: If a doctor explained to me what is good and what is bad, what is harmful and what is healthy, I would appreciate and follow his advice. However, I have to recognize evil myself. Advisors who tell me what is good and what is bad will not help me. I have to very precisely figure out on my own that the desire to receive is evil and that the desire to bestow is good.

Here, such a thin “string” is stretched that it cannot be expressed in words. I need to remain neutral internally, rising above the created being, since the desire to receive is defined as evil and the desire to bestow as good, with the first quality belonging to the created being, and the second, to the Creator. However, I need to anticipate preceding the created being, to stand in front of it, and look at these two desires. Then, based on this completely independent point, I need to define the desire to receive as evil.

This will be the true realization of evil. It is not done “all to order” for me, not on the basis of pleasure and suffering that lead to my decision when time after time I play a “negotiation game,” choosing according to the criteria of my egoism. No, the “expert,” “judge,” and “tester” in me has to stand apart, neither on the side of the Creator nor on the side of the created being, but seemingly a step in front of it.

This is a prerequisite. It is impossible that the Creator is good in my eyes. Why is He good? Is it because He created my desire and is enjoying His presents? No, it is just a given, the creation in which we find ourselves. The Creator desires us to “anticipate” the created being, so that we agree with Him, that He made it in that way.

The benefit of this is great: We are no longer dependent on what and how He created us. We have to rise above good and evil, regardless of the intentions connected to them. We must reach another degree, rising above them to the beginning of the plan of creation that existed even before He created us, before He decided to be revealed to the created being as the giver and made the created being as receiving. We seem to find ourselves before that moment and even before its cause. And this is where we actually find ourselves.

Therefore, the realization of evil must go deeper, to within the qualitative depth. It is not about how terrible my endless egoism is and how beautiful bestowal is. It is about the quality and essence: Why do I define one as evil and one as good? This choice should be performed on my own feelings. It just measures the details of perception for me “for statistics,” and above it I reveal a higher principle, which is above the created being and before it. Thus, the recognition of evil encompasses the whole of reality and raises us above it.
[142785]
From the 5^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/3/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Light is the characteristic of bestowal, and the Creator is identified in our perception of the Light . In fact, there is the upper light and something higher, its origin, which may not have the same characteristics, meaning that it is something that is completely disconnected from us.

This is because we feel the Creator with our characteristics, with our sensations, with our Kelim, with our senses; and through these, we judge Him by attributing to Him the appropriate names and characteristics. In fact, we don’t know how He feels outside of our senses nor do we know His image. A person gives names to the Creator according to how he perceives Him.

Feeling the Creator can be diverse, multifaceted, and varied. Light is called the sensation of the Creator, which teaches, corrects, fulfills, and shapes us. It is just the way a child perceives his parents in various forms, as teachers and educators, as protectors and those who are concerned about him.

So the Light is such a perception of the Creator, where in principle we don’t feel Him. But we do sense the power that shapes, corrects, and changes us so that we can feel Him.

In other words, the influence of the Creator on us, which prepares us for feeling the Creator, is called Light. Certainly the Creator and the Light are the same thing. This is because only this one source exists outside of us. Besides Him, only we exist, as only one person. Ultimately, each one of us will begin to perceive everything else as parts of Him without intermediaries.

In any case, we perceive everything like this. At first, we require the Light of the Creator and only after this do we want adherence with Him. This is the right relationship with Him. If you want to attain a state of similarity to Him, to relate to Him as He relates to you, then you must think about how to change and correct yourself. In this case it is possible to approach Him. Then our relationship to the Light will be directed towards being corrected and becoming similar to the Creator with mutual bestowal, like the host and the guest.

In any case, the Light is divided into many different influences on us. It is the Light of reason or the Light of feelings, under whose influence we begin to feel and understand who we are and in what way we are separate from the Creator.

Every understanding is built on our difference from the Creator. Even in our world when I perceive the people around me or a particular state, it isn’t important what, in any case we are feeling the Creator. It seems to us that these are some people or images. We are only feeling the Creator.

So we shouldn’t fool ourselves. When a person is involved with something or someone, especially with friends, he must understand that he is involved with the Creator. “There is none else besides Him.” This is one of the explanations; that there is nothing else besides the person and the Creator. And everything else that seems to exist for us, are fragments of my soul. So the main thing is the relationship with the Creator, since this is the Torah.

The Torah is all of those states that we must go through until full resemblance and equivalence with the Creator. This is all of the Light that we must perceive so that a change will happen within us from our first egoistic characteristic to the full completion of correction.

First we pass through a contraction of the ego; after that its neutralization, and after that, a correction, meaning the use of the ego for the purpose of bestowal. To the degree of these corrections, we perceive the Creator and begin to see that He relates to us like a concerned father who is teaching us.

Specifically, we feel the influence of the study, and this is called “Light.” And when the extent of this influence has itself been realized, then as a result of this, we feel the Creator Himself. And we feel Him differently, in a new way all the time, thanks to those characteristics and observations that are already corrected.
[142476]
From the Convention In Sochi 8/25/14, lesson 2

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Question: How can we accelerate spiritual advancement, unite, put all the pieces together, and adhere to the Creator more quickly?

Answer: How do we accelerate the time of correction? Actually, this is what we are doing.

It can be stretched out for decades and even centuries, resulting in repeatedly returning to this life until we rise to the next degree. Acceleration can only be achieved through drawing the Upper Light to ourselves; there is no other way! We have a very simple, very primitive method of working, which we only need to use. You can dig through thousands of Kabbalah books, but believe me, you will not find anything different.

After all, what do we learn from the model of creation itself, from the governing system? Only how to evoke the Upper Light, which will gradually correct us through its influence. And it is only possible to attract it through equivalence with it.

I often give examples of the way that children play in that they act like they are adults and gradually they become smarter and become like them. This, too, is the influence of the Upper Light.

Everything is only achieved through equivalence! When, in your current degree, you are striving to become similar to something, the next degree acts on you and you gradually ascend to it. Plants, animals, all cells and systems develop according to this principle. We need to develop according to this principle as well, both on the mental and spiritual levels.
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From the 2^nd lesson of the congress in Bulgaria. 7/11/14

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Rabash, Dargot HaSulam, article 798, “The Worth of the Small One”: When man receives anything he is given, the Creator becomes his debtor.

Example: a father gives his small son a penny a day. And then love for the son awakens in the father, and he gives him five pennies.

As the small son sees that today he has received a bigger present from the father, he becomes inspired to thank his father for this. But later, when the father gives him one penny as usual, the son becomes filled with anger towards the father because of the loss he has suffered.

It turns out that instead of bringing the son closer to the father, the addition he received yesterday only pushed him away. This is because now the father is his debtor, and the small son wants the father to keep adding every day. And if the father does not do this, then all his gifts are worth nothing.

Man dies when he receives, without having attained even half of what he desires.

It is not easy to properly combine the desire for pleasure and the intention to bestow. From this example we see that we do not understand the Creator. Egoism does not tolerate one-time additions. He perceives any addition as the new norm, and he becomes angry when he does not continue to receive it.

We do not understand that when the Creator subtracts, He gives us more, not less! It is not for the desire to receive pleasure, but for us to acquire the intention to bestow. However, egoism sees the loss: one penny instead of the five it had yesterday.

The son does not understand that he himself must complete the remaining four pennies with his faith, intention, and awareness of the Giver’s greatness. Then, instead of a loss, he will acquire a wonderful gain: similarity to the Creator.

The initial, basic desire was created by the Creator in the form of a black point in the middle of the Upper Light. And it will remain a black point. We carry out everything else, including the highest degree of Infinity, on our own through the use of only one method: elevating the Giver in his eyes.

The point in my heart will not grow on its own. It will only grow when connected to a friend, only through bestowal, with which I will manage to permeate my point. It has nothing else to grow on.

The Upper Light keeps influencing us more strongly, but we do not yet understand that development is not limited with the fulfillment of desire. We develop in an increasing Light as we go back through the steps of HaVaYaH.

On this journey, stages gradually replace one another. However, we just keep waiting for new portions of Light without understanding that the time to replace reception with bestowal has come. And even though the Light increases, we perceive it as something negative, as darkness.

In reality Light is good, but in order to receive it as good, we need to become a vessel like it. In the end it pressures us, until we at least somehow agree with the order of the day and take another step towards bestowal.

This is why, instead of working directly with the desire, we need to work on the change of attitude towards the Giver. Development is not a quantitative process, but a qualitative one. We will move ahead quickly if we remember this.
[28580]
From a lesson12/03/10, Writings of Rabash

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Question: Why is modern humanity yearning again for religion?

Answer: There is a crisis in the world. After the last world war, which was less than three generations ago, the population of developed countries with predictability, stability, and confidence in the future. Whereas now, with the appearance of the global crisis, it feels uncertainty, instability, a lack of a quest, certainly lack of a future, and a lack of hope for success.

Moreover, this feeling encompasses the entire planet. This feeling summons waves of concern all the time. Nothing is stable, not the future, nor any plans. After losing all hope, only one hope remains, which is hope in the Creator, an image ready to take the first position in the world and  to stabilize it. So a person creates the Creator for himself.

The wisdom of Kabbalah says that there is nothing in the world other than nature, the force of bestowal and love that creates everything, directs and develops us to a state where we can understand our difference and opposition to this force and want to resemble it; which is to say, to acquire the characteristic of bestowal and love. Therefore the goal, “And you shall love your friend as yourself” (Vayikra 19:18) must become the principle for all of our activities.

Religions heard this commandment and forgot it, because in order to implement it, they had to change the egoistic nature of the person to an altruistic one (to bestowal and love for all). There is no profit in altruism; therefore all the religions speak about “And you shall love,” but not one of them implements it or understands its intent, because within the egoistic characteristics it is not possible to understand the characteristic of bestowal..

If they would understand what “And you shall love” means, then all religions would disappear and everything that separates people would disappear. The modern yearning for religion will lead to its reassessment by humanity and its replacement with a religion called, “love.”
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Also see the article, “The Essence of Religion and its Purpose”

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We should be trying to decipher the Creator’s game and get closer to the real picture. And then we will feel that we are in the force field of bestowal, like in a cloud. As it says: “His glory fills the world.”

We are all in this force field. The Upper Light fills all of reality and is in a state of absolute rest. We need to develop our vessel so that we begin feeling the upper Light.

In order to do so, we were given our broken nature so that to the extent that we make efforts to connect, we will begin to reveal ourselves in the force field. This field is unified and whole, but we discover it to the extent that the attribute of bestowal develops in us. The more attributes of bestowal inside me, the stronger the feeling of the force field becomes.

This is how the law of equivalence of form works, like in every physical force field, whether it is electric, magnetic, or radioactive. The only difference is that we can identify the forces that operate on the corporeal level naturally or by instruments that we have built.

However, there are forces and attributes that belong to the speaking level, so in order to perceive them, we have to change and to improve. No instrument can help us here. We have to create our own internal instruments by working on our connection and establishing the attribute of bestowal in us in which we feel and discover this field.

The main thing is not to leave, for even a moment, the thought that we are in a field of bestowal, as in a dense medium. It surrounds all our movements, our body, and our feelings, and fills everything,

There is nothing a person cannot feel, we just have to make efforts and practice. Our job is to develop the  sense, the vessel for feeling that field of bestowal, of the Upper Light we are immersed in.

The exercise of “stay away from evil” that we have just begun is also intended to reach this goal. On the whole and in every lesson, we need only to take the Light into account, to what extent we can somehow evoke desires inside us that will help us approach, feel, and touch the upper force. This is the goal of the lesson.

The exercise of staying away from evil is intended to develop the sense of perceiving bestowal in us, by which we will discover that we are in the force field of the upper.

In one of my first books, I describe the feeling of this field with the example of a person who suddenly felt this spontaneously, as a result of great sufferings that he had experienced in a Siberian prison. Later he read my book and came to meet me. It was very interesting to meet him, but I didn’t feel that he have the spiritual life anymore. This is because the revelation wasn’t the consequence of his purposeful work.
[138976]
From the preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/06/14

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Question: In working with the people, through discovering and fulfilling their desires, with this do we activate the way of accelerated development, “I will hasten it”?

Answer: We don’t discover and don’t fulfill the desires of the general public. We only create the point of contact with them.

When we gather together to go out to a dissemination event, we must feel that in the connection between us the Creator is found in potential. But He is in a concealed state because the Kli (vessel) in which He will be discovered is the external public.

When we gather together with Him inside, we become Galgalta ve Eynayim , the upper part of the Partzuf. The masses are the lower part of the Partzuf. Within us, in Galgalta ve Eynayim, the Creator cannot be revealed. He can be revealed only when we are in contact with the AHP, with the lower part, with the external public. It is specifically this contact that we are looking for.

We must realize that this is our work because we can only attain contact with the external public in our world. Within us exists a spark that yearns for the Creator, and so by concentrating on this, we can create His potential discovery among us. When we enter into contact with the external public (with the AHP), we specifically create this path and we reveal the possibility that He will pass into them.

Then we see an amazing result. People don’t even understand why joy, fulfillment, and wholeness suddenly take hold of them. They will feel that they have no need for anything in life, but only this. The Upper Light pervades everything.

But we must create the unity in which the Creator is found in potential, because Galgalta ve Eynaim cannot realize more than contact with the AHP, with the external public. With this, we feel that we are giving the Creator the possibility of being revealed in them as much as possible. Nothing exists here on our account.

So, we no longer think that we need a certain number of people to convey some kind of information to, etc. We talk with people, we arrange some events for them, but inside we always need to remain in a state of unity with the Creator. This is the main thing. And even if externally we are automatically working with the public in any case, the effect will be amazing.
[138555]
From a conversation at the Sochi Convention, 6/9/14

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Baal HaSulam, Thou Hast Hemmed Me in Behind and Before: Thou hast hemmed me in behind and before, meaning the revelation and concealment of the face of the Creator. This is because indeed, “His kingdom ruleth over all,” and everything will return to its root because there is no place vacant of Him. But the difference is in present tense or future tense.

Because who connects the two worlds, discovers His clothing in the present: everything that is done is a clothing for the revelation of divinity. And this is deemed the present tense, meaning that now, too, he comes out in royal clothes and evidently shows that the rider is not subordinate to the horse.

The Creator doesn’t disappear in His clothing, which is all of reality, the whole world.

But although it seemingly appears (to a person) that the horse leads the rider.

We are confused with regard to the Creator’s clothing to such an extent that we are distracted by everything that happens, which conceals the upper force from us and confuses us so much that it seems that the rider is subordinate to the horse.

The truth is that the horse is provoked to any movement only by the sensation of the rider’s bridle and headstall. And this is called “the construction of the stature of divinity,” and it is also called “face-to-face.”

If we discover the reason, the active force, the thought of creation, and how it directs each of us and all of us together, we can thus clarify and discover the rider, that there is none else besides Him, the first cause and the first source.

We then realize that the clothing by which the Creator conceals Himself, is actually so that we will discover Him behind them, learn to understand His language, and realize why He is concealed behind everything that happens.

It is actually by such concealment     that we reach His revelation. Otherwise we would not feel anything in the simple white Light, even if we perceived its white shade. It is actually by these concealments, by such games where the Creator is concealed, that we begin to learn His nature, His character, by comparing Him to ourselves, which means to the opposite form. The opposite form is revealed as clothing, as the concealment that separates us, but if we try to reveal the Creator and ask Him to help us reveal Him correctly and adhere to Him, if we are ready to change, the concealment will turn into a revelation.

The same forms of concealment will turn into opposite forms and will help us in the revelation. Without them, we could not taste, distinguish, see, or feel the Creator, because our nature is opposite from Him. Therefore, there is the need for an adaptor between the Creator and the egoistic force or shell, which is us and which later turns to Holiness.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/14/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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I hope that through dissemination we will feel a need to adhere with the Creator. The group itself doesn’t have a big enough deficiency for this. If the dissemination will be with a strong enough intensity, in return, this will create pressure on us. We will then need to mature, like a young couple who become parents and begin to take care of a child. They are forced to become more serious, more mature, responsible and independent.

Then you will need to see that in every stage of life it is only a picture and nothing more. It comes from the Creator as a game, and  with the help of the environment, you must position yourself towards it in the right way.

The more you participate in the group, in dissemination, and essentially in the world because you are going to bestow to the whole world, the more and more actively and practically you enter into this game with the Creator. This helps you to participate in it with more understanding and more feeling.

Just as the Creator acts on you, manages you, and plays with you, you act in exactly the same way towards the external community, managing and playing with it. Meanwhile, you still don’t know and don’t feel this yourself, as you have not yet accommodated between you, the community, and the Creator. But this will come.

During the process of work in the community, you will feel that it is very much like what the Creator does with you. In sum, what does Bina do? It takes what is before it, from Keter to the middle of Bina, and bestows all this to Malchut.

So our dissemination is really the game of life where we learn and transform ourselves in order to become similar to the Creator.
[134549]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/04/14, Writing of Rabash

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