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.
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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.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/19/12

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The whole world is a force and not matter. So you give importance to the force of thoughts and your attitude to the friends. It is what operates in reality. By your attitude to others, you correct and change the world. No one can stand in the way of such power. If you think and worry about the connection with the friends from morning to night and that it should bring us, the world, and the Creator good, then you are actually performing a very powerful action, which cannot be compared with anything else.

The power of thought, the power of our desire, is the most important thing. If you activate it according to the goal of the creation, then you influence things much more strongly than an ordinary person.

Question: Can this be proven?

Answer: The point is that I don’t want to prove it to myself. The proof will give me egoistic confidence, while I want the opposite, I want to bestow upon the friends by using these forces so that I won’t be able to see the result. I want to help, to connect, to love, but not in order to receive a reward.

After all, I need something else: I am ready to pay with my attitude toward the friends, in order to discover one thing only—whose command am I fulfilling? I want to discover the Creator and to bring Him contentment by that.

Then, I have to conceal the result, so that the reward won’t bribe me. By that, I attain the point from which bestowal begins.

Question: Why am I not attracted to this?

Answer: Because this truth is opposite from us.

Question: So how can we advance?

Answer: By small lies every step of the way. You conceal the truth from yourself and play as if it is attractive and will bring you some reward.

Question: What will force me to think about the friends all day?

Answer: The recognition of the importance: “I will profit from this, I will attain spirituality; otherwise, my whole life will be wasted in vain. I have to attain something in life.” It says: “Taste and see that God is good.” “So, where is He? How can I taste Him? I have to manage until the evening, no matter what…”

You are told: “If you worry about the friends, if you lower your head before them, if you join them, then you will discover spirituality.” You are ready for that; you imagine the reward according to your taste, as it says: “Educate a child according to his way.” You imagine spirituality as tempting, as some great spaces, hovering in space, forces, and you are drawn to them.

Everyone depicts his own image. Ask the friends to explain the goal and its importance to you. We have to feel the taste of love: Ask for it.
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From the 4^th Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/18/12, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”

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We need to understand that the more we advance, the more difficult the work becomes. Now when we don’t see a reward, it is easy for us to work. We only have to believe that we will get a reward. The friends tell us that there is a great goal ahead, the Creator’s greatness, for which we should work, and I run to it as if I see how great He is.

Actually I don’t see that; it is the environment that has persuaded me, and I receive energy and fuel from that. I need to keep only one condition in order to work for the right cause: to annul myself before the friends. This means that of all the conditions, I have to keep only one condition: to lower myself. Then the group will begin to impress me and to evoke the greatness of the goal in me, the greatness of the Creator, the reward, to motivate me. This is enough to make me run forward.

It is the easiest condition. After all, when later the Creator’s greatness is really revealed to me, how will I be able to work not for myself as if there is no reward if you know that at the end of the month you will get a million dollars? And it is for the easiest work, like opening the door for someone once a day, for example, and that’s it. How can I get rid of this thought? Now I have to work very hard, against my desire to receive.

The whole way, from one phase to another, to the extent that we advance, we discover what big and important business we are dealing with, the most profitable business. We will have to overcome this notion, as if we have nothing and to detach ourselves from our egoistic desire and hide.

It is very difficult. The first current condition that we have to keep is much easier; it is the simplest of all. So we finally have to keep it and to end this phase! I have to annul myself in order to receive from the environment the greatness of the goal, the greatness of the Creator, and the group, so that it will give me the fuel to advance. Only one condition is required, a small concession of my ego.

Then all these concessions will gradually grow and won’t be just self-annulment, but I will start working with the desire to receive. Each time I will have to agree or disagree, until I draw the Light upon me.

If I don’t manage to annul myself, I have to connect to the Light that Reforms. First I try to subdue myself by myself, but then I see that I cannot do that and that the resistance in me only increases. Then I begin to look for a way to annul myself and only then do I feel the need to draw the Light to help me. Now I already know what I have to look for during the lesson.

We have to write down the principles we will work on, so that this work will be shared by everyone. Everyone has to make efforts and to care about mutual guarantee and the collective fulfilling of the principles.
[95851]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/18/12, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Baal HaSulam, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”: Likewise, all the fixed pictures that we know and use to define materials are inconsistent and do not exist in their own right. Rather, they only dress and undress forms under the influence of conditions such as heat or cold.

During the lesson we think about the force that “draws” the material that actually doesn’t exist. If, while we are reading, we are together, we constantly think about the united group and want to discover the general force among us, then we discover a whole world and live in it in a much clearer, more emotional, and more intensive way than our current life.

This is no fantasy. Evoke these forces. Now you are looking at the friends sleepily, and they look at you in the same way. So evoke these forces together and you will understand that there are worlds between you and that everything depends on your closeness and unity in your mind and your feelings, in your yearning and your inclination, in the desire to feel your inner essence together. Suddenly you will see how the abstract force turns into something real and concrete.

Previously you only paid attention to “coarse” corporeal forces: heat, cold, pressure, etc. But there are much finer and stronger forces in a person than the ones that operate even in the micro-world, on a subatomic level. These fine forces reveal the real material to you. When you enter this field, you discover that it is the beginning and the end of everything, that all of creation is there with its plan. Here, however, there is nothing but the false, artificial, external drawing that is meant to confuse you and to focus you on the correction by false incentives without taking your freewill from you and so as not to turn you into a robot.

This realization should focus us on the main thing, on developing the forces that are between us. They are the strongest “weapon” against evil, against all our problems. Even in our imaginary world subatomic forces are much stronger than the ordinary forces of the macro world. A lot of energy is required in order to cause a collision between the particles in the collider. We, however, enter the field of our personal forces that operate between the friends. This is such great intensity that cannot be measured by using the means we have in this world.

It is a real force. We only have to reach it and to learn how to manage it, since it will not be revealed without an intention to bestow, for the good of others.

Question: Does this mean that there are forces in me that enable me to discover a new reality? How can I find them?

Answer: Start acting, exert yourself, fix the connection with the friends, annul yourself, and by that allow them to connect to you. Start evoking them so that they will impress you with the greatness of the goal. We should make such efforts every day, every moment, because the desire to receive is constantly renewed and constantly demands us to renew our relationships, the whole Ha-Va-Ya-H. This is all our work.

If you evoke and arrange the forces that connect you with the friends as correctly as possible, the force of bestowal and the force of receiving, you will discover that the relationships between you are much more important than the corporeal world.

It will come, since you study and you are expecting the Light that Reforms, and it will influence you. Suddenly you will discover that the relationships between you are the most important thing, and then you will begin to discover a new spiritual material, which is much more real and concrete than what surrounds you today. It will be so powerful, heavy, and real that the temporary, imaginary picture of this world will dissolve on its background.
[95768]
From the 4^th Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/18/12, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”

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Question: What do we need to keep in mind so that the group doesn’t turn into a bunch of mockers?

Answer: Each time, we deliberately fall under the influence of the Creator who taunts us and shakes us like babies so much He as if simply “shakes it all out” of us. Today we are so nice and “cute,” ready to love everyone and everything. But tomorrow we will once again be completely opposite. How can we forget that our path is made of ascents and descents? We can’t remember it if we forget about the Creator.

Why is it said: “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are one”? Israel means “yearning for the Creator.” Hence the remedy for correction: our studies, the group, where all of this gets realized, and the Creator Himself have to be as one, in one place. There are the Creator, the group, and me.

We have to constantly link it all together into one unified whole; there can’t be any other view of the world! In order to focus and properly look at what is happening, I need these three points: the eye, the sight, and the target. Otherwise, I won’t be able to do anything.

Therefore, if we wish to keep the group in the right intention, it is our responsibility to keep in mind that our goal is adhesion with the Creator. Otherwise, what is going to motivate us, our egoism? Today I am willing; tomorrow I am not.

Here the Creator appears as the definer, the first to act, or the one who initiates our actions, who forms the group and everything that is happening to us, who gives us everything. All that we have in our hearts and mind right now, all that we hear and feel, all of it is His doing.

How should we, together, respond to it, based on the fact that we felt something coming from Him? From this moment on, our work begins. This is exactly the moment when all of us clearly felt that it was He who brought us together right now; He connects us all in one desire, one intention, and the same thought. It is He who arranged everything for us, so that we all together started to ascend to and strive for Him.

So how can we rise to Him so that we could consciously fortify among ourselves what He has created? What does it mean: “I now link myself with the group?” I link myself along with the others and the Creator into the common desire, one common goal, and common aspiration. If the effort that each of us exerts links all the others and the Creator together, this is precisely our active response. This is how we must act. If we envision that everything derives from the Creator and know how we should respond to it, then it will be very effective work, a very effective move.
[95564]
From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/8/12, Lesson 4

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Question: How is it possible to love a friend like your own son?

Answer: In our world, we were given this example of a natural, human love for one’s child. And according to this, we need to measure what spiritual love means. It’s love at a level “+1.”

Question: But it’s quite obvious that this is impossible?

Answer: Nothing is impossible! Because everything is impossible without the help of the Creator, only the Light makes everything possible. And if something seems impossible to us, this means that we need to ask first, and only then it will become possible, the Creator will do it.

The world is divided into two parts. One part is the action that the Light performs automatically, without our request, and this is what we refer to as “possible,” and we think that we’re doing them ourselves with our own will. But we don’t do anything ourselves; we’re not capable of doing anything. However, we don’t need to ask in advance for the Creator to do those things.

But there are also actions that we must request first, because through asking, we show that we desire this action, that we desire correction. This correction should happen in me, it should bring things inside me into order and reformat me, and thus it must be preceded by my request.

This request means that I cleave to the Creator, I reveal him through His actions. But this entire correction is done by the Creator. So all actions are divided into “possible” and “impossible.” Impossible ones are those that won’t happen on their own but only after my request.

You love your son with a natural, animal love. But love for a friend is an ascent to the next degree of love, love that is perfect and eternal, which is much greater than the love for one’s own child.

The very first spiritual love towards others, which appears in the very first degree, is already an order of magnitude greater than all your love for your family. Just ask the Creator for it, and He will do… The entire world was only created as an example so that you would have something from which to begin loving, something relative to which you can measure yourself.
[95462]
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/13/12, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: Do we draw the Creator by actions that are aimed at the revelation of spirituality? In other words, do we raise the actions or do we lower the Creator?

Answer: There are no such terms as “up” or “down” in spirituality in the simple sense of the words. We can divide them according to quality: Up means a higher quality and down means a lower quality.

I want to be connected to the Creator in all my actions; I want to feel how He manages me from the inside, I want to feel that all my thoughts, feelings, and decisions stem from Him. He is inside me, as the hand wearing the glove of the puppet, the puppeteer.

No matter what I do, it is Him, but everything depends on the extent to which I discover that “there is none else besides Him.” Therefore I ask and yearn for it in order to discover Him in me.

But I can do it only when I am with the group, because it is impossible to discover the attributes of bestowal alone. I am an egoist, an individualist, which means that I have to be with a group and to adhere to it.

I am included in a group, connect to the friends, and try to be with them in one desire, one inclination. Through them I ask for all of us, because I cannot ask for myself, since it will be egoism again. I ask for all of humanity—that the Creator will be revealed in us and that we will all feel Him and feel how He operates in us. This is how I want to see what joy and contentment we are bringing Him.

This is fulfilled by the law of “the end result is in the initial thought,” since in spirituality there is no time and no sequential actions. There is a static state, and it is only with regard to us that it is revealed this way, so that we will perceive it gradually.

We must understand the whole formula of creation from the beginning to the end, since otherwise it won’t work. We have to be moderately involved in it, since even our slightest participation is made of the same ten Sefirot according to the law of “the general and the individual are equal.” So we have to feel ourselves deeply, the group, humanity, and the Creator together in one general picture and to complete it.

Question: What is the Creator’s joy?

Answer: The Creator’s joy is the state in which we are all connected, adhered inside Him, enjoying the same wholeness that is actually the Creator Himself.
[95574]
From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/9/12, Lesson 5

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