Writings of Rabash, “Shlavei HaSulam“, 1986, Article 15, “A Prayer of Many”: Therefore, he prays for the collective. This means that if there are a few people in the collective who can reach the goal of Dvekut with the Creator, and this will bring the Creator more contentment than if he himself were rewarded with nearing the Creator, he waives himself. Instead, he wishes for the Creator to help them because this will bring more contentment above than from his own work.

If a person doesn’t join the collective, he has nothing to turn to the Creator with. After all, the Creator doesn’t feel individuals, He only feels the collective.

This is why we have to go out to the public and why we have to connect. Everything belongs to one system, and it is impossible for one part to work when other parts do not.

During human evolution, our work was performed parallel to our waiting. Kabbalists who wrote The Book of Zohar concealed it for two thousand years until our days. All the parts of the Bible they wrote about, the Torah, the Prophets, and Scripture still had to be developed.

But we are a special generation, as Kabbalists say, and we have to perform a practical correction both inside the group and outside the group, among the public. The relationship between the members of the group, the group and society in general, between the individual and the collective, is the only framework where we can raise our request.

Even if every member in the group asks for it, we cannot advance unless our request is incorporated into society’s desires. This is the only way the Creator will listen and feel us. After all, the Creator is the general force, the Upper Light that has created the whole desire to receive. Therefore, it only feels all of its parts together. If we regard Him that way, as a whole desire, then we will be able to convey our deficiency to Him and ask Him for correction or for revelation. Only through the collective can we formulate the correct request that He connects.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/13/14, Writings of Rabash

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Question: How can I work with myself if I feel tired from the effort to remain with the right intention because I don’t get any pleasure or results from this?

Answer: Of course, a person is not ready to do this. The group must support him. It is up to us to find an action that on the one hand we are ready to carry out, meaning that our desire to receive makes it possible for us to do it because it sees some kind of benefit in it. On the other hand, as a result of the benefit that we get within the desire to receive, there must be something that will change us.

For example, I bring some medicine for my sick child. For him this is candy and for me this is a medicine. For him this is “yummy” and for me it is a cure. Why? Within his desire to receive he swallows and enjoys it for he has the strength to swallow. He gets pleasure within his desire to receive, and together with this, he gets a medicine.

So, the Torah is called an “elixir of life,” “health to all their flesh,” a medicine that we take in this form. This is called the “clothing of the Torah.” So it is up to us to be creative and wise, not opposing our nature, but understanding it and recognizing how it is possible to fool it so that on one hand our ego will see the purposefulness in a particular activity. On the other hand, if I act with joy, I also get a portion of the Light that changes me. So the next time I will already want to perform an activity that is a little closer to bestowal.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/23/14, The Zohar

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Question: How can we properly raise a prayer to the Creator?

Answer: I begin from the current animal state, immersed in my egoistic desire, and from there I make the first efforts, although I don’t know exactly what I have to do. First I begin to move, listen to advice, and try to formulate my prayer, my appeal.

At first I don’t ask correctly. I ask for things that don’t lead to correction, but by that, I still force myself to turn to the Creator and I realize that I am not my own boss.

Then I establish my attitude to all of reality: It turns out that even the questions are not mine nor are the problems, the answers, and the decisions. They all come from above; everything is sent to me by the upper force and everything stems from one source.

Eventually I stabilize myself correctly with regard to the upper force—the one unique and special force—according to what it is and what I am at the moment.

After I stabilize myself this way, I am in a more or less right direction, on the right track that I have stabilized by myself; together with the group, while studying and disseminating, I have formatted myself as much as I could.

Then on this new basis, I ask for help. My request isn’t directly aimed at bestowal yet, but it is enough.

After all, the Light that Reforms illuminates me from Above. Once it dwelled in my corrected soul, and then it left it as a result of the shattering and now it is on the outside. I summon the influence of this Surrounding Light and it invokes the state of the shattering in me or in other words the shattered Reshimot (reminiscences).

When they are awakened, I have a new desire, which is deeper and more real. The arrangement of all the parts of creation is revealed in it and I see how everything is connected and that everything has to be corrected. This is how the Creator arranges my prayer and the right desire in the right direction in me.

Two kinds of Reshimot are revealed to me: Reshimo from Light (Hitlabshut) and Reshimo of thickness (Aviut). The Reshimo of thickness reveals my shattered state to me and the Reshimo of Light relates to a higher level.

This gives me the direction. If, for example, I am in a desire of zero thickness and discover the Reshimo, the Light, of the first level, I understand where I have to come with my vessel (Kli). Thus, the Reshimo of thickness indicates its next level, a new depth. I yearn for the Light not the way it is, not for its revelation in the vessel, but for a vessel of bestowal on the first level. This is how the work with the Reshimot is performed.

Thanks to it, I reach the true desire and it depicts a new picture for me: I am in a certain reality trying to feel it, to imagine it, as clearly as possible in a perspective of bestowal, and now I ask the Creator to fulfill it.

Just think about how long we have been talking about the preparation for a prayer, a preparation that in itself is called a prayer. The Creator divides our appeal to Him into these two parts and additional phases appear in each of them.

We actually don’t need anything but this appeal. I appeal to the Creator in the most accurate manner and advance thanks to these appeals. We cannot advance without the appeals. Those who don’t place themselves in this framework of humanity, the group, the center of the group, and the sources, and don’t attribute them to the Creator, don’t close this circle, and don’t do what they are required to do. In the meantime, the Creator performs His work only after our appeal, and we finally establish the right way to Him.
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From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/20/14

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Question: From your spiritual height can you recommend to us what would be preferable to do for the sake of unity? The years are going by.

Answer: If you are always thinking about unity in order to discover the only force (the Creator) in it and feel pleasure within it that you summon through your actions, then there is nothing more that needs to be done.

If my thoughts are directed towards this, that in all of my actions in connection to others I discover the Creator in order to feel the pleasure that He feels, then with this I build a vessel (Kli) and summon its filling with the characteristic of bestowal and love, meaning the right state of these two objectives. There is nothing else in the world. We only need to be involved in this; there is no importance to anything else. Whatever you do, whatever you receive, you must aspire to this one goal.

In general there is no obligation to tune into this only in a group or a dissemination event. You can do this wherever you want.

As is written, (Deuteronomy 6:4-6:5) Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God; the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your might. Whether you are sitting or walking, going to sleep or waking up, are at home or outside of it, you must remember this.

The prayer, “Shema Israel” (“Hear, O Israel”) is the same mantra that determines the most essential intention in all a person’s activities. Therefore, it is considered to be the central prayer; even though nobody knows what it was written for.
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From the Conversation at Sochi Convention 6/9/14

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We study that there is no other work but reaching connection. But we don’t create the connection by ourselves, which is bitter, general misconception that corrupts our way and prolongs the exile.

We should only want to connect and to pin this connection on an external factor, on the upper force. We don’t correct ourselves, but only discover the need for it.

The need for connection stems from our yearning to avoid afflictions and from the desire to delight the source of the Light that manages us. It is quite a long way, a whole ladder of spiritual levels that we have to climb in our understanding and our consciousness in the connection with the source of Light.

Therefore, we must first stop thinking that we are the ones who establish our connection. The call “let’s connect” means “let’s connect to the source of the upper force, the upper force of bestowal that will connect us.” All we have to do is to just raise MAN (female waters), which, on one hand, is a request and a prayer for the revelation and the raising of a deficiency. On the other hand, it is food that we eat during the forty years of wandering in the desert.

This means that we are not required to do anything but raise MAN, the full recognition of our dependence on the upper force. We have to invoke the right deficiency in our hearts and try to connect them into one heart that wants to be connected. We then turn to the host with the request to connect us in order to delight Him and become grateful guests.
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From the preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/03/14

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Ramhal, “Mighty in Heaven”: The sages said, “The work in the heart is a prayer.” Thus Nukva, because of how it manages all the worlds, is called a heart. And it turns out that all the hearts in all the people are nothing but parts of that heart. This means that all the hearts stem from Nukva and are therefore called its parts. And here this matter of the heart is interpreted in all the souls that stem from it.

And it turns out that there is no whole heart unless it includes all the phases of the heart that stem from it in all the souls. Then when it includes (them all), it will understand in the sense of “the heart understands” all of the general Providence.

We should understand that we are parts of the general Malchut that is called the general heart, and that we should unite our hearts, and thus correct them. None of us needs a private correction; there is nothing to correct in a person, only his attitude towards others.

This is the first discernment that we have to realize: No one is corrupt; it is only the connections between us that are corrupt. By correcting these connections between us, we can merge into one general heart. According to our connection we will understand the One who bestows, His level, and His attribute because we will become like Him.

This is what we should engage in, in our connection above all the egoistic discernments that are revealed, separate us, keep us apart, and make us repelled by one another. All the events in our life are meant to show us the place of our work and where there is no connection between us yet.

Everything that happens to us in this world is the sum of all the individual states that stem from lack of connection. When these states connect, we feel this reality as this world, which means the lack of connection in different discernments. It is revealed to us to the extent that we can survive under the conditions of lack of connection and start our correction from it.

Therefore, all our work is in raising MAN for this connection by using all the means we have. Then the Light that once used to fill the whole vessel of the soul influences all our parts and reconnects them, as we return to being one soul, one heart,

All our work is done in a broken heart in order to connect our hearts in it, and in accordance with this, we  feel and understand what it is to be one whole general heart.

If we feel that we are like a guest before the host and from this state we pull the lines to our current state, we will never be wrong in any of the states that we find ourselves in.
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From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/3/14

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If you open a Kabbalistic prayer book, you will see individual letters instead of complete words; they express sensations, inner actions, screens, the repulsion and attraction of Light. There are no words in spirituality.

We usually use the words of this world and relate them to spirituality; it is common. But we can do without words. A person who attained spirituality doesn’t operate with words.

Baal HaSulam prayed to descend from his level to a state where he could find adequate words, by dressing those attainments into “material” words so that they could be understood, to convey to those below him what he attained

In spirituality, there are only sensations. I don’t have to dress them into words, since I have Reshimot and tastes (Ta’amim). I don’t have to explain them to myself unless I am willing to share my impression with others. But sharing is always limited. Not a single word can include the whole meaning that it actually embraces.

Therefore, a prayer is the work in the heart, a cry from the depths of the heart, without any language or a prayer book. Prayer books were written for us by Kabbalists (members of the Great Assembly) before the exile when we all fell from the spiritual level. If you fall from the awareness of the spiritual worlds into this world, you have nothing to say about spirituality. And so they wrote prayers for us so that we could at least talk about spirituality in the form of prayers. Nonetheless, the connection with spirituality still remains, and when during the exile numerous people pronounce the words that are written in the prayer book they cause a certain “agitation” in the Surrounding Light that in turn protects the nation. But they work only at the time of exile and not for long. It is not a real prayer.

Currently we are arriving at the state when we have to start working on the point in the heart that draws us back into Bina.
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From the lesson 10/18/10, The Zohar

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Psalms, 122:8-122:9: “For the sake of my brethren and my companions, I shall now speak of peace within you. For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I shall beg for goodness for you.”

A person must constantly justify the Creator regarding all events that happen to him and his friends, the people who are spiritually close to him.

In our spiritual relationship, we must pray that our friends will feel the good relationship of the Creator. And for ourselves, we must ask to feel the relationship of the Creator as good all the time.
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From the Sochi Convention 6/10/14, Lesson 2

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The Rabash, Shlavei HaSulam (Rungs of the Ladder) (1987/88), Article 27, “What is, The Creator will not Tolerate the Proud, in the Work”: … Hence, when one prays, he acts as a “representative of the collective” because he is praying for the entire assembly of Israel, of which he is a part, and for this reason one offers a special prayer, namely requesting the Creator to give him help from above, in order to know his true deficiency, and precisely according to this, one prays for help.

Often, we stand on the path of the correction of the soul, not knowing what to do. Something happens to us, but what it is, is unclear. For example, we do not understand how to address the wide audience, how to take care of it.

From time from time, it will appear more distinct. We do not know what exactly to ask, what exactly we lack. This problem occurs constantly and we must get used to it.

In general, our Reshimot aimed at the purpose of creation, albeit broken, are directed toward correction. And it would seem once this Reshimo has been manifested in me, what more is there? It remains only to awaken, ask for the desire, and receive the Light that Reforms.

However, it is difficult to discern exactly what I am missing. Therefore, a person raises the “prayer before the prayer,” and this request is not verified yet, as much as our work with the masses is not verified. In this case, it is important to establish the primary connection, like an annoying child who in principle does not need anything but wants attention. Something similar happens between adults; it is a matter of communication or its renewal.

It is customary to behave with the Creator in the same way. Honestly, it is not important what question I ask Him. The very address helps me take the right direction. I want connection. I want His attention, I ask Him to look at me, and only then do I raise the true request.

The initial prayer does not even have to come from the heart. Let’s say that I open a prayer book, and reading the text, I tune in a bit to the desired wave. Then, the true desire is revealed to me from Above.

Why is this desire considered true if I have not experienced it before? It is because the Reshimot that remained after the breaking of the soul are revealed to me.

Thus, writes Rabash, the prayer that a man raises for what seems missing to him is just a wonderful means, due to which the Creator sends him from Above the answer for the knowledge of what he really lacks. This is what a person really asks the Creator about.

This happens because it is very difficult for us to find and extract the true Reshimot remaining from the breaking of the soul. They appear as a sequence on the path from here to the end of correction, and the main thing is to ask, to demand, so that the correct desire is revealed to me.

It is said about this, “Let them understand what they say; answer what they ask.” In other words, put the right prayer into their mouths.

Thus, the true prayer is revealed from Above. When a person comes to this in his mind and heart, when he merges with this desire, then he reaches this miraculous means, the prayer that precedes the prayer. He prays from the bottom of his heart, not yet knowing what he will ask later.

This state is called a “messenger of society.” A person prays for the whole community of Israel, in which he is included.
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From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/20/14

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Question: How is it possible not to depart from an intention for a single moment and do everything for the sake of the Creator?

Answer: For this, you must be in full and absolute adherence with the friends so that, among you, the feeling called the Creator is revealed.

The Creator is your inner feeling, Bore (Bo Re), meaning come and see with your inner vision. Reach such a state, feel it, and remain within it. This is called adherence with the Creator.

However, this is attained only with a shared, collective Kli, in other words, in your right connection with the friends, with mutual wholeness, building a mosaic such that all of its borders merge into the creation of only a single desire.

This happens under the influence of the Light. From our side, only effort is required, half of the coin (the Shekel), and the second half, which is the realization of this effort, comes from Above.

Speaking about the Creator (about the love of friends) and being with the Creator (realizing the characteristic of bestowal and love) are two different things.
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From the Sochi Convention 6/10/14, Lesson 2

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