Writings of Rabash, Volume 2, “What is the Righteous are Evident by the Wicked, in the Work”: In order for a person to advance in the ways of the Lord, and to be awarded that all his actions will be for the sake of Heaven, and he feels that he is in a state of ascent now, and what else can he do. The Creator leads this world by the wicked, which means that the Creator gives him thoughts of the wicked, which means that it is not worthwhile to work for Him, but only for one’s self.

And by that he receives a descent and thinks that he has received a descent not because it was given to him, so that he would advance in the way of the Lord, to be awarded with reason of Holiness. Instead he thinks that he is going backwards because he cannot work individually, but rather needs to work generally. And because from the general, he loses both ways, since he cannot enter the general again, a person feels that he is hanging between Heaven and earth. He feels that he is in a worse position than other people. Then a person can ask from the Creator from the bottom of his heart, and can pray, as it says, “save me oh Lord, for I am miserable, heal me oh Lord for I am frightened, and until when oh Lord.”

This means, until then will I remain in a state in which I feel that I am worse than any other person, and that I have no connection to spirituality. So there is no other choice but that a person should believe in what is written “that You hear the prayer of every mouth,” which means even the worst mouth in the world, that even if it is impossible to be lower and worse in the world, still the Lord hears him.

This is what our sages said, “He who comes to purified, is aided from Above.” The Zohar explains this saying that “he is given a Holy soul.” So it turns out that the Creator gives him thoughts of the wicked so that he will have a place to ask the Creator to help him, since otherwise he remains in the state he was at the beginning of his work, and would stay there all his life.

The problem is that we escape from these unpleasant moments when the Creator brings us to the state of the wicked by letting us see to what extent we are not adapted to the spiritual levels, to the spiritual work, that we are totally opposite from God’s work, and are not ready to reach bestowal, the love of others, the love of friends. We discover that we have no hold of the spiritual world, which means that we cannot exit ourselves towards others, towards the friend or the Creator.

We escape from these discoveries. The Creator opens our eyes a little in every state to see our real state, but He cannot force us, since it would deprive us of our freewill. Each time He brings us to a certain recognition and waits for us to add to it of our own freewill, in order to attain a prayer, a request, and to want the correction ourselves and not according to a verdict from Above.

Therefore, it says, “he who comes to be purified is aided from Above!” We have to come on our own and not because a desire for correction was inserted into us from Above, and in response to which the correcting force comes from Above. Not everything can come from Above; our own exertion is also required, a vessel that belongs to us.

But instead of adding our exertion after having been awakened by the Creator who has brought us to the beginning of the recognition of evil, to the state of the wicked, we are frightened by the revelation and try to hide it, to sweeten it, and to cover it from ourselves, while we have to develop this feeling by ourselves and attain the unbearable state. It is unbearable not because it is unpleasant; I would even agree to remain in this state if I could attain bestowal by it.

Here we usually escape, and cover up the state, and so we don’t reach the true prayer that could help us open our eyes. The Creator awakens us, He provides us with all the necessary conditions, the whole package that is needed in order to attain the goal. But we don’t want to connect all these components in order to fulfill it. In order to do that, we have to be connected, to evoke one another, to support, to encourage, to give each other confidence, but for the time being this is lacking.
[96751]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/28/12

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Question: A prayer, this is what my heart cries. You often give an example of the ten Kabbalists who felt hatred before they discovered love. Actually, at the moment, their prayer was to erase each other, and instead of it love was revealed. How is that possible?

Answer: That wasn’t their prayer. The Creator arranged that. In The Book of the Zohar, it is said that each time, before mutual work, the authors of The Book felt that the hatred helped one another. They had to concentrate together on the intention, to rise above that hatred, to discover the love within them, and within this new level to write The Book. It was constantly this way.

To them, millions of different reasons appeared to separate them from the connection, from the group, not to mention that the hatred at these levels is a terrible trap that is placed there by the Creator.

Question: I understand that with me it isn’t the same hatred. But if, when I feel strong hostility toward a friend, do I need to catch myself in this, stop, and try to rise above the hostility, to understand that the Creator is giving it to me?

Answer: From the beginning, one needs to determine where it is in you, to recognize that it is not you. You are a cog mechanism, in which certain data was now planted, and you feel it within you, and thus you think that it is yours. Where does this implant come from? From the Creator. He implants in you this data so that you will change into its opposite and create a connection with Him so that He will be revealed specifically in the group, specifically in hatred, in alienation.

If the group is indifferent, then it is very difficult to work with it. You need to finish this stage as fast as possible. The hatred gives a kind of awakening, and the state of indifference is, as if, rather foggy. Start working on building the connection between us, and you will see serious forces of rejection.
[96551]
From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/9/12, Lesson 6

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Question: What is a collective prayer?

Answer: A collective prayer is a condition in which I am connected with the group, and we have one desire, one intention, one goal, which was formed specifically in everyone, but in general this is one whole. And through this one whole, in our shared desire, intention, and goal, we want to reveal the Creator.

It cannot be that “I am alone.” In any case, a person should not imagine that he is alone. If he feels his “I,” it is spiritual death. There is no “I” in the spiritual world, only “we.”
[96461]
From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/9/12, Lesson 6

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Question: We live in the physical world where there are many temptations. We are only able to give if we receive. How is it possible to direct the desires of corporeal pleasures to bestowal?

Answer: If there is a correct intention in your mind then do what you want, since you won’t be able to do anything bad. You will do what you need to do in order to raise the body and soul. Let’s suppose that you need to eat two lunches because your body demands it, so eat, but together with this, you need to have the correct intention.

Question: Will my desires interfere with my spiritual work?

Answer: But if you have the correct intention, then how could they interfere? There can’t be an act without the correct intention, since the intention determines the meaning of the act. A person can do anything if he has the correct intention.

In principle, the wisdom of Kabbalah forbids any kinds of restriction. If you cling to the Creator, and you hold Him like a bulldog, then you do all the rest of the things. You do them because it’s needed for your progress.
[96455]
From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/9/12, Lesson 6

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Baal HaSulam, “Letter 52”: It says, “Call Him when He is near,” which means when you call the Creator asking Him to bring you closer to Him, you should know that He is already close to you. If it weren’t so, you would surely not call him… And it is clear that when one knows this, he grows stronger in pouring out his heart, since there is no greater privilege, as the King of the world is listening to you. Like the sages said: “God yearns for the prayer of the righteous,” because when the Creator yearns for a person to get close to Him, great longings are evoked in a person and he yearns for the Creator. And it turns out that a prayer and hearing a prayer go hand in hand, until they become a whole measure and acquire everything… and pay attention to these things, which are the fundamental elements in the ways of the Creator.

We have to find a direct wave that goes to the Creator and back from Him in order to feel that we are on the same channel of contact with Him, as it says “I am for my beloved and my beloved is for me.” Everything that happens in me comes from Him, and if I want to answer Him correctly, I have to connect to Him and to find the right answer in Him as to how I should answer Him.

On the first wave of connection that initially comes from Him, I have to see how to answer Him correctly on the same wave, so that everything will end in Him. Thus I receive my form from the Creator; He constantly teaches me, and I constantly ask Him to show me how I should be, how to answer Him, and how to respond.

If a person continuously works on this point, it turns out that he only has this one point of detachment from the Creator, the one point in which he feels that he doesn’t belong to the Creator. It is from that point that he wants to reveal the Creator as the one who builds different attributes, questions, and appeals in a person by stabilizing different external and internal conditions for him.

Thus everything is done on the Creator’s account, and the person is only the point that separates and discerns that. From that point, a person turns to the Creator asking what he has to do next and how to respond. He always remains on the one point of discerning. It turns out that everything a person has comes from the Creator.

So we should constantly try to discern that everything that speaks inside me is only the Creator, and the way I intend to respond to that is also Him. Thus I discover that “There is none else besides Him.”
[96373]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/24/12

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Question: We are now preparing for the upcoming congress in the desert, the place of our future spiritual unification. Is it possible that we will become so much more united during our preparation that there will be no need for a physical place, no need to go to the desert?

Answer: The place of spiritual unity is the state of the congress. Whether it is held in a desert or a backyard is irrelevant.

At every given moment, as we prepare for the congress, we need to expect to reach the unity that we want to achieve at the congress, and that will be our preparation for it.

Then, the extent to which we are able to reach it before the congress will determine our preparation for it. Let´s say that I intend to reach unity at the congress with an effort of 10 lbs. That means that I need to attune myself to this now. Possibly during the preparation for the congress we will achieve a unity that is worth 100,000 tons of effort, then let it be realized now. That is the correct preparation.

Action should not be postponed. Everything is now. In essence, the preparation is in fact the same action that we carry out practically, unlike preparation in our world where we only prepare all that is necessary and then begin to work. By preparing the desire (Kli), I work on the whole realization, and then it is formed.
[96288]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/24/12, The Zohar

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Question: How can we perform changes in the group together, so that we can advance?

Answer: We are committed to kindle the awareness of the greatness of the Creator in the friends throughout the day, just like the “burning bush” that is on fire, but doesn’t burn. About that, everyone must think and worry. Even if you succeed to hold on to this worry a few minutes more than the previous day, it’s already a meaningful addition. Don’t underestimate the small exertions, the “pennies” that add up to a big account. These are the additions that count.

Suppose that now when you are impressed, you decide whole-heartedly to advance towards the Creator’s greatness, even though your thoughts throughout the day about what’s important depend on the Creator and on the group, by this you already obligate the friends to encourage you to this: “I am asking you, evoke me as much as you can, ceaselessly, so that the deficiency for the Creator’s greatness will grow in me.”

And you should ask the same thing from Him. It’s only by that, through the group, that you can awaken yourself. Establish this inner demand during the lesson and by that create a deficiency inside you. It seems that the friends will help you only after you turn to them, but in fact your request from the group is your deficiency contrasted to the Light. Everything else was created as an “illusion.” The Creator is concealed in the group and is revealed there, but actually this is all your desire you work with all the time. The group is also inside you, although it may seem that it’s external. You evoke the friends in order to bring the external illusion closer to you, by becoming one vessel in which the Creator is revealed.

Question: So whom am I asking for help?

Answer: The society, since you can’t say that it is you yet. But imagine that “the society is the vessels, my desires, my part, which is separated, cut off from me.” There will come a time when you will demand that the Creator give it back to you, as it says: “It is my brothers I am looking for.”

So we have to make increasing daily efforts that should be felt more strongly and more clearly. You don’t know what stages you still have to go through, but you are advancing, until you feel that this whole vessel is yours, that the friends’ desires are your essence, that it is all internal. When you cease to see the friends on the outside, you will begin to feel them inside you, like a mother who feels her baby, even though he has grown.
[95969]
From the 4^th Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/20/12, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”

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Question: We need to connect in an inner form, in our desires. But how can I approach the desire of the friend?

Answer: For you, your inclination to the Creator is enough. Only with this inclination, without trying to dig deeper, do you connect. Both of you do not understand this desire that the Creator “planted” in each of you. But precisely this desire in the friend, and only it, is important for you. This is a subtle inclination from the refinement of the soul. You love the friend’s spiritual spark, his inclination to the Creator. His character and his customs are not important to you; it is only the Creator who connects you, because “in Him our heart will rejoice.” It is in Him. You want to meet in the Creator.

The other desires are connected in a different way; they remain in you and simply are searching for fulfillment together. But practically this is not unity with the other, but it is taking advantage of the other.

And we on the other hand, do not connect only between us. Light comes to us that bestows upon our desires, connects us, and dwells in us, in our connection. And then all of us together are glad that we gave the Creator the possibility and the ability to be revealed.

Therefore, for you, it is enough for you to have the inclination for the truth, for the Creator, for the goal. You yourself still do not know where you are going to, but the yearning exists already, and you need to always raise and care for it. How? By connecting with the friends. As a result of it, enough yearning will appear in you that the Light will correct you, will connect to a big single desire that in it you will reveal the Creator and will rejoice in it.

From day to day it will be clearer to you how to use all kinds of means in order to prepare yourself for the new state. You will not succeed in understanding it in advance, and you don’t need to demand understanding but the force of bestowal in “above reason.” Precisely by this yearning for bestowal above reason,” the knowledge will be revealed you and you will know.
[95530]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/12/12, Writings of Rabash

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The Book of Zohar, Chapter “Naso,” No. 93: When the Tree of Good and Evil rules, which is the purity of weekdays and the filth of weekdays, then these sages, who are compared to Sabbaths and holidays, have nothing more than the weekdays give them. As well as on Shabbat, there is no more than is corrected with its help on weekdays.

A man by himself, in his foundation, is just a point. He receives all his “body”/desire from the environment by means of the Light that Reforms. And this “body” is filled with the Light, the Creator that is revealed in it.

That is why Kabbalists write how, through desires/vessels/Kellim received from the environment, a person each time reveals the Creator. Everything what is written in The Zohar are the levels of revelation of the Creator in the desires that we get from the environment.

The Creator is revealed inside desires, within the environment, in the same place. The Zohar describes the degrees of this revelation both from the evil side and the good side, in opposite ways, because it is impossible to try something and feel its flavor if it is not salty, sweet, etc.

That is why The Zohar takes us through different experiences. But we know nothing, reveal nothing, except the Creator. The concept of the environment and specific details of perception disappear, and all this becomes more and more connected in “there is none else besides Him,” in one whole. In the end, we discover one desire/vessel, and inside it—the Creator. And nothing else.

That is why, if a person is yearning to the greatness of the Creator, to have only that in front of him, this directs him correctly.
[95945]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/20/12, The Zohar 

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Rabash, “Make Yourself a Rav and Buy Yourself a Friend 1”: If a person is very tired and goes to sleep at around 11 pm, if he is awakened at 3 am, of course he will say that he has no energy to get up to study because he is very tired. And if he feels a little weak or has a slight temperature, the body will certainly have no power to rise at the time he is accustomed to rising.

But if a person is very tired, feeling sick, and goes to sleep at midnight, but is awakened at 1 am and is told, “There is a fire in the yard; it’s about to come into your room. Quick, get up and you’ll save your life in return for the effort you are making,” he will not make any excuses about being tired, mindless, or sick. Rather, even if he is very sick, he will make every effort to save his life. Evidently, because he will obtain an important thing, the body has the energy to do what it can to get what he wants.

Therefore, while working on “Make for yourself a rav,” a person believes that it is, “For they are our lives and the length of our days.” To the extent that he feels that this is his life, the body has enough strength to overcome all the obstacles, as written in the allegory. For this reason, in all of man’s works, in studying or in praying, he should focus all his work on obtaining the greatness and importance of the rav. Much work and many prayers should be made on that alone.

In the words of The Zohar, this is called “Raising Divinity from the dust”

…It follows that all we lack is, “Make for yourself a rav, to sense the greatness of the Creator. Then, everyone will be able to achieve the goal, which is to adhere to Him.”

We see how in our groups around the world there are sometimes many people who arrive at the lesson and sometimes very few. It is hard to judge them, since it says: “Do not judge a friend until you are in his place.” But no matter what the hardships are, the reason for being absent from a lesson is still the same—the lack of feeling its importance.

The feeling of importance depends on the group and not on the person himself. We see different groups on the screen during the lesson: Kiev, Moscow, St. Petersburg, and many other groups. Sometimes we see that the place is full of people, but usually there are just a few. The reason for all that is the lack of feeling the importance of the goal, which we don’t develop in us. From Above, the feeling of the importance is intentionally lowered, so that a person will need the group and feel that he depends on the environment that should increase the feeling of importance. To the extent that he adheres to the group, the importance of the goal increases in him, and he is attracted to the group and advances.

But if he doesn’t feel the importance of the group and doesn’t adhere to it, then accordingly he doesn’t feel the importance of the goal. Therefore, he will not be able to advance and eventually will leave.

It all depends only on feeling the importance of the goal: to what extent a person yearns for it, studies, and demands the awareness of this importance during the study. It serves him as the fuel necessary for his advancement.

Our main concern should be that we lack the feeling of the importance of the goal, the fuel, the Creator’s greatness, that it should be enough for our advancement, so that I won’t stop thinking about Him, and will constantly worry that the feeling of importance will draw me to the center of the group in which I will find the entrance to the spiritual world.

“Rav” (big, great) is the Creator. “Make yourself a Rav” means to raise the Creator above all the other values a person has, so that nothing compares to it. According to such priorities, a person will determine his daily schedule and his attitude to everything.

“Buy yourself a friend” is required in order to increase the importance of the Rav. Therefore, you should buy yourself friends; pay them by your attitude, by your efforts, by serving them, so that they will help you acknowledge the greatness of the Rav, the greatness of the Creator.

Then during the study, we will have the right prayer for the one thing that we need—the Creator’s greatness. Everything is focused only around this greatness: the prayer, the illumination, and the love. Only the environment can help us by that, if a person evokes it by himself.
[95863]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/19/12

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