Question: It says, “He who prays for his friend is answered first.” This is actual Lo Lishma (not for Her name); it is total egoism, simple absolute egoism.

Answer: Of course, in the meantime you advance egoistically and your ego grows, but you see that each time Pharaoh is getting tougher and tougher, “since I have hardened his heart,” and that is a good sign.

Question: How can I grow from hate to love and not to self-suppression?

Answer: It is impossible to build love without hate and envy. All the negative discernments are eventually implemented in love and you need each of them. After all, what is love? On what foundation is it firmly established? It is over the ego in the vessels of receiving, in perceiving others as close.

Annulment doesn’t mean that everything is annulled. Hate is never annulled, it is preserved in its full intensity, and it is exactly on top of it that you build love. It is as if you cover this whole “Mt. Sinai” (a mountain of hate) with cream and you get a cake called a “Mountain of Holiness.”

This means that the hate is inside. The gap between the Creator and the created being remains since otherwise the created being wouldn’t exist.
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From the 1^st part to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/15/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: You spoke about the fact that we are constantly awoken from Above, but that we don’t feel it because we lack equivalence of form. What happens Above when we read The Zohar, are we awoken more strongly or do we become more sensitive?

Answer: If you just read The Book nothing happens. You can either read it or not. It all depends on your intention. If your intention evokes an equivalence of form, then to the level that you are equal to a higher level, you are impressed by it. But if you are not inclined to be equivalent in form, if you don’t approach it, it doesn’t illuminate on you.

The upper level is in a fixed state and it is called Hafetz Hesed (which doesn’t want anything for itself). You can evoke it so that it will impress you if you exert yourself and increase your desire. Then it illuminates upon you. It isn’t that it illuminates especially for you, but you are impressed by it according to your vessels, your renewed desires.

But where can you get new vessels and desires? If you are connected to other friends then among you, you give birth to the spiritual vessel. None of us is a vessel that can absorb the Light. There must be at least several people who want to connect in order to nullify themselves before one another, and that is already becoming equal to the upper. According to such an equivalence of form, they can feel a more powerful illumination from the upper among them.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/14/12, The Zohar

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We try to perform mutual acts of bestowal and we speak about the love between us although it isn’t there. Yet we still speak about bestowal, about the love of the Creator, about adhesion to Him, about adhesion among us, about connection and unity, in short about the corrected vessel. After the shattering of the general vessel, we speak about its correction. Once there was one soul, and we speak about the reconnection of the individual souls into one.

These talks enable us to be impressed by one another both qualitatively and quantitatively, and gradually all our efforts come together into one whole. Eventually we will create a state from which we will be able to cry out, which means to raise a collective prayer. When people get together, even though they are few, they have many vessels and discernments and so they raise a “prayer of many.”

But this prayer should be aimed at one Source, one goal, to be one. They want to receive the attribute of mutual bestowal, which they imagine as a supreme value, as part of their environment. This attribute, the force that gives birth to and revives everything, is called the Creator, and they want it to be revealed among them according to the efforts they have made.

The attribute of bestowal is not somewhere on the outside. So if the friends try, it will be revealed inside, among them. It is as if it comes to us from two directions: On the one hand there is no vessel, and on the other hand there is no Light, but when the friends try to be together as much as they can, at a certain point both the vessel and the Light are created simultaneously. They cannot exist separately.

We work by requesting, by a common prayer, and so we approach this revelation, the revelation inside us of the attribute of bestowal and love, which is the Creator.

Here it is important to remember that during the preparation phase we don’t discover the actual attribute, but the necessity for it. We don’t know in advance what this attribute is. It is as if we want to acquire it and then when it is revealed, it turns out to be a real surprise and far from what we have thought it would be. It is because it is about something that isn’t part of our nature.

We only need the feeling of necessity, so that we will anticipate and have a premonition of it. Even if it doesn’t reflect the future reality, a person still has to imagine the next state by this game.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/5/12, Writings of Rabash

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Everything is very simple: the Creator is revealed in the connection among us. Therefore I should look for where I can work on the connection among us all day long. Where are the wires that I can stretch in order to connect us to one another? Between whom should they be stretched, between which desires? How should I connect everyone, and by what? What is the work I have to do?

It says that the Creator is revealed in the connection among us. If there are ten people, it is enough. We only have to connect and He will be revealed. But have I taken any practical steps towards connection? We only speak about connection, and the Creator is not revealed. So what should we do? Continue until the Creator is revealed.

It is a law! He will certainly be revealed as soon as the correct need for connection compatible to Him arises and is sufficient for the very first level of revelation, Nefesh de Nefesh. Or we will open up the opposite relationship, the opposite of Nefesh de Nefesh, so we have an indication that a desire to connect occurred and was revealed in the opposite, and then we will cry out so that the Creator will correct us.

This outcry comes automatically, since one action leads to another action. So when we cry out, the Creator will correct the connection among us and will be revealed. The broken part will be revealed to us in the coarsest from of separation between ten people. Then we will discover an increasingly more delicate shattering.

First we discover the shattering in its most primitive form: 10 big parts of egoism, opposite from one another trying to tear one another to pieces with their teeth, instead of connecting and holding on by their teeth, like cogwheels. Then we ask for correction and connect more coarsely, and so the Light of Nefesh de Nefesh is revealed. This is already the revelation of the Creator to the created being.

This is a very coarse form of connection, which we are capable of at the moment, 1/125 of the connection. Then the same thing takes place, but the resolution is higher. There are the same ten Sefirot, but we penetrate more deeply into them by discovering more and more individual parts.

The main thing is to discover the first ten Sefirot, the first level, because this is how you are born and take on a spiritual form. Then in this form, you already begin to improve. The most difficult part is to overcome the first level.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/5/12, Preface to The Book of Zohar

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Not everyone can go through the first stages of preparation for the spiritual path and hold on to it. Many leave the group, the spiritual path, and the process of changing oneself. They go back to the external world and return to the life of the landlords by stopping the development of the point in the heart, which makes them the guests of the Creator—the Host of the Universe.

As we know “the opinion of the Torah is opposite from the opinion of the landlords.” If a person holds the opinion of the Torah, he feels that he is a guest and the Creator is the host. Therefore he wants to change himself in order to resemble the host.

This is called having the opinion of the Torah, placing the goal before him in order to be in bestowal and accordingly determine his states.

The first states, the ascents and descents we go through, are disconnected from our ordinary mind and feelings. A person sees that he changes completely. For the first time he begins to feel that some foreign dominion manages him. This uniqueness is typical of the changes that we feel in the process of our inner spiritual development.

Suddenly a person feels that he is under the control of some strange force. Before, he never had this feeling in his ordinary life. He always saw clearly whoever wanted to dominate him, which means that they were external forces. Here, however, for the first time he feels that some force descends and takes him over, ties him from the inside and controls him.

It is a very special feeling. I remember the wonder I felt when I first felt this. It is a very unpleasant and incomprehensible feeling until a person begins to get used to it and to acknowledge this action as the Creator’s work on him. Then he is already prepared to determine that this is so and to agree to it. Then he begins to evoke this feeling by himself and to expect it as you expect a meeting and a connection with someone you love.

He begins to value the Creator’s work on him and to expect that it should happen any minute. He appreciates the actual actions of the Creator and not their quality and how they are felt in his egoistic desire, which is not corrected yet. This means that he doesn’t care which states he goes through; what’s important is that the Creator should operate on him as much as possible.

This is what he prays for. He asks to go through as many changes as possible according to the Creator’s desire, since everything that the Creator does is for the good. Thus, his self-sacrifice is measured to the extent that he identifies with the Creator’s actions and expects them, of his voluntary slavery to the Creator, and the power of his prayer.

For the time being these are only the first stages of the spiritual work. Then the more controlled mutual work with the Creator begins, in mutual bestowal. A person already knows how to receive the powers for that and how to later work with them, how to start a dialogue with the Creator. Then he begins to work even with his desire to receive, by feeling the same tastes as the host and by feeling how the Creator tastes the refreshments and how he tastes it himself.

This whole path begins from the initial ascents and descents in which a person gets used to the domination of a foreign force over him.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/12, Shamati #21 

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The friends should make sure that I don’t fall and they should constantly think about me. I have to repay them for that because they also need this kind of support. Only if we mutually worry about one another, will no one fall or forget the goal. We will hold on to one another.

We have no chance of achieving anything if we don’t all support one another. If we don’t do that, we won’t exit the ego. This is mutual guarantee.

If I cannot think about others, it means that they don’t think about me. It is both the cause and the result that exist simultaneously under the condition of our mutual collective covenant. Then the Creator resides in it and thus fulfills our covenant. Without this we will undoubtedly forget about Him and start having foreign calculations by supposing that we advance and years may go by leading to nothing.

A person cannot keep on the right track by himself. Do you know how many moments we can count during a whole day in which we really advance: 3-5 seconds at the most! They are so few because each of us lacks the external support.

The vessel of my desire is external to me and I have to make efforts to attach it to me. If we don’t operate this way with regard to others, we do not operate correctly and therefore we don’t draw the Light that Reforms, because the Light operates only within our mutual work. It comes in response to our yearning.

If there are no such yearnings, the Light around us waits passively. “His honor fills the world,” but we have to activate it. We have to keep this main condition: mutual guarantee that is made of our collective interdependence on one another and of the obligation to everyone. Without it no one can succeed, even if we assess it from an egoistic point of view and what is more if it is about high intentions.
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From a Talk about Inner Work 9/30/12

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We are inside a Force called the Creator (Boreh). Since we don’t attain it yet according to the principle of “come and see” (Bo–reh), we give it different names according to the current measure of its revelation to a person.

I am in this Force’s field along with everyone else. The question is how can I induce its influence? Indeed, this is man’s entire work: How can I awaken this force so that it can raise me?

We descended from the spiritual height to the “zero level” on purpose, and now it is up to me to ascend back to the same height. In order to do that, I have to awaken the Light that Reforms upon me. There is no other force that can raise me to spirituality. I only have the means that exist on my level. The Creator wakes me from the dream by the first “sting,” and then I have to process what awakened me internally by special means: the group, the study, and the teacher.

So I turn to the Light that awakened me initially. I ask that it will influence me, and I do it consciously and knowingly. The Light only stings me time after time and by that I have to establish my attitude to it: What do I ask from it, what kind of influence do I expect, what do I want to attain, and so on. On the whole I picture to myself how to be in accordance with the One who “stings” me. I have to look for His form, His image and to ask from Him:

– “I want to bestow!”
– “How do you want to become the one who bestows? Is it really the one who bestows? What will your bestowal be like?”
– “Don’t you see? I study, I work in a group and in dissemination, I do all sorts of actions, and based on that I ask.”

If a person doesn’t perform actions directed at unification, there is no basis for his request. These actions make up the infrastructure that he can use to raise MAN, a prayer. I build this infrastructure between me and the friends from which the MAN, “a prayer of the many,” rises. I will never be able to ask for connection by myself. A prayer for connection can only be collective, at least between two people.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: Where should I start the true demand to bestow? How is it possible to defeat the avid sinner inside me?

Answer: We don’t have a true demand for bestowal, and we cannot have one either unless the Light influences us. When the Light comes, you will be surprised and wonder: Is this the attribute of bestowal? It will be in contrast to everything you have thought.

It is a totally new thing and a person living in our reality has no preparation or premonitions as to what it is like. When a person has this delicate feeling, he begins to act, even unconsciously, in order to get closer to it. He begins to attach all his life, everything that he has been through, to this goal only, to attaining a drop of adhesion with the upper.

For the first time he has an inner inclination for something that is distant and from that moment on he begins to develop.

It is impossible to express this feeling in words, but a person cannot wake up if the upper Light doesn’t wake him. A person who has already tasted it knows what it is about, but as long as you haven’t experienced it yourself, you will not understand.

So it is impossible to ask for true bestowal unless you have attained this attribute. But thanks to this game, we advance when a person fills all the necessary requirements. Not knowing in advance how to do it, an inner awakening takes place, and it is as if a spark of Light is kindled and a person begins to feel that there is something that is different from this world, which is bestowal.

We just have to play the best that we can, everything that is in our power. I am sure that we are approaching this revelation, but everyone should ask himself at what speed.
[89598]
From a Talk about Inner Work 9/30/12

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No matter what happens in my life, I must understand that it all comes from the upper force that undoubtedly controls everything. But so far it isn’t revealed to me that way, but in concealment, and so I suffer.
The Creator is good and benevolent, but He is revealed to me after going through a “filter” that turns all the good into something bad and unpleasant. I call the thickness of this “filter” “single concealment.” In addition, the Creator can place another “filter” and send me to a “double concealment,” which is much worse.

So how can I get rid of the veil that turns the goodness of the Creator into evil? To do this I ask: “Correct me! But not so that I will get rid of the unpleasant feelings, on the contrary, they help me, and spur me. Without them I wouldn’t even think about something else. They focus me on You, on the source of something that seems bad. Therefore, I am asking for help in order not to feel that something bad stems from You.

I don’t want to be behind the “filter,” but in front of it, in direct contact with you. Not in order to feel good, but in order to know you better. I want to bless you, but now because I have no choice, I curse you. My body screams because of that; “I feel bad and I curse the source of evil. But You gave me the feeling that the evil stems from You. You are playing with me by using hints, half revealed and half concealed. But I don’t want to curse You anymore.”

Question: Where is the group here? I can also ask for all that without the group.

Answer: Try. If you start, you will be confused and you will discover that the true plea is only possible in the group. There you are protected from making mistakes; there you really turn to the Creator for correction despite your good and evil desires. Eventually the group allows you to see clearly what to ask for, what it is that you actually want and whom it is that you actually turn to. That’s the whole idea.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/2/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: Why don’t I keep the Creator in mind at all times?

Answer: You don’t remember the Creator because you don’t need Him. When you need someone, you keep thinking about them. Our ego easily does this.

Question: To what extent should it break me to make me actually remember Him? No matter what I do, nothing at all helps.

Answer: That’s not true. There is always a chance to add efforts to unite or to take care of friends in the group. I am talking about internal exertions here, the ones that do not depend on how busy one is or how much physical energy one has. Here is a sensitivity: We need to constantly try not to distance ourselves from the friends, keeping them in mind and disclosing our own future through them.

Question: At the congress we had an environment conducive to our internal work. We were given a taste from Above and now all that is left is for us to imprint it in our minds.

Answer: Isn’t it enough to wake you up?

Question: No, not at all, since we succumb to our desires.

Answer: Really? Now, you still remember the state you were in and feel a little sorry that it is gone. So, can you make yourself take certain actions? Can’t you obligate each other to enter into a union and begin mutual guarantee?

What will happen if you don’t? You should try. Then, you’ll see that you are helpless and will realize that you need the Creator to be your partner.

Demand Him! It was only after Moses reached the bottom that the Creator told him, “Let’s go to Pharaoh.”

Moses grew up in the Pharaoh’s house, was brought up there, he was a beloved prince; he was very successful through his strong egoism.

Now, he wants something opposite to it. He acts as if he doesn’t even know his grandfather and approaches him as if they were complete strangers, “We have nothing in common. You are the Pharaoh, and I relate to you as the Pharaoh, not as my grandfather.”

Question: But, the desire rejects such an approach. Even if we realize that we require a third factor, the desire won’t let us appeal to it.

Answer: Make a few more efforts, and you’ll discover that you really need the Creator. At this point, you don’t feel a necessity for Him; you don’t believe that He is capable of helping you, that He exists and has governance over everything there is, that He arranges everything in your life, that He hardened the heart of Pharaoh. You don’t connect one with the other.

Question: How can we fill this gap when our mind understands, but our desire still strives for a completely different thing?

Answer: Only your experience with this work with persistency and consistency will help you. If you are desperate, it is ready to go; if you can afford to sit and do nothing—primarily in your mind and heart—turn to your friends for help. Find someone who is still alive and hot, those who are ready to come to the rescue. Seek your guiding point, Moses, who is connected to the Creator.

Nothing can be done; it’s impossible to go against desires. However, we have to mobilize such a force and means which seem to support the desire, but in the way of turning into its opposite.

Question: How do we do that? Theoretically, it is very clear, but in reality?

Answer: There is not enough clarity. We must continue to work to destroy our desire, to break the desire. Why would we even want to break a wall? When bashing against the wall, you will suddenly become smarter, and you will understand how to approach the Creator and ask Him to help you.

Rest assured that He will destroy the resistance, although, at this point, you are not referring to Him, nor do you understand how important it is, even though you apply certain efforts to unite with your friends. So far, your losses are not big enough to make you scream to Him.

Instead, you step aside as if you have poorly invested a hundred dollars, and even though you are not happy about your loss, you still are ready to lose this much money. What would you feel if you had invested everything you have, all your property? Then, you wouldn’t be able to step back and would do everything in your power to regain success.

It’s not about quantity, but quality. Suddenly, after you knocked on your friends’ hearts and made every possible effort to connect with them, you find out that you cannot continue your exertions any longer. And yet you go on more and more, and when it’s really unnerving, in this very point, you reveal the Creator: “Now I demand for Him to connect us. I already feel the overall system and the evil inclination, mutual hatred. And there I want to reveal the Creator. I can see Him; he arranges it all, it is He who deliberately hardened the heart of Pharaoh. And now I will oblige Him to act.”

Even if you understand what I’ve just said, you still won’t be able to oblige Him right away. It’s essential that you line up your desires and intentions in a more or less correct order. The Creator wishes you good, doesn’t He? However, He needs a complete vessel full of corrected desires.

Question: Does it mean that I just have to keep hitting the same point over and over again?

Answer: It’s not that simple, the point that you are pursuing constantly varies. Each time it’s a little bit different, more profound, more interconnected with all the other points. After all, you are constantly advancing.

Question: What do I do with the harm that I bring to my friends while I pursue my path?

Answer: You only bring good to them since you try adding something that is above your desires to the unity. So, why do you call it harm?

Question: It’s because, in my thoughts, I don’t take care of my friends continuously throughout the day.

Answer: It happens this way because the Creator intentionally brings up all sorts of obstacles on your way. It’s He who hardens your heart, the Pharaoh’s heart, although you still apply effort on top of it, like Moses who disagrees with the Pharaoh. It’s your effort, whereas the hardening of the group’s heart comes from the Creator. So, why are you upset? Everything is fine!

Question: I know that I must give my friends much more, but I can’t.

Answer: Everything—including the Pharaoh (the evil inclination), hatred among friends, and the group with the potential to love in the future—is the Creator. He presents Himself in various shapes to attract you and make you connect with Him.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/25/12, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”

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