Question: Is it true that we need to perform internal actions only—an internal intention to fulfill the friends’ desires and not physical actions?

Answer: Yes, but how can I be sure that I have done everything correctly, and that I am not deceiving myself? If I support the physical actions in this world, I can be sure that my intentions are correct.

Otherwise, I can tell you how much I love you, but how can you believe if this is true or not? And it isn’t about the fact that I may be deceiving you, I am not sure that I am not deceiving myself. What can I do so that it will be the truth?

It is for this reason that we are in a group, in a physical world. If the action and the intention go hand in hand, it proves that we are acting correctly, honestly, and that we are not lying.

If I cannot perform any actions and only intend to bestow upon the friends, it means that my intention is false. If I only act without the right intention and do not intend to reach the Creator through the friend, the action is false, and we are actually doing it for our own benefit. So there must be a state in our world in which we have to perform physical actions that can be accompanied by the spiritual intention of bestowal.

When we are in a group, we have a chance to check ourselves. Therefore, this world was created on the lowest level on which we can perform false actions: smile at one another, help each other as if we bestow, but it is all for our self-benefit. If we begin to work on our intention in the group and to draw the Light, as we want to reach bestowal upon the Creator through the group, we begin to see our true intentions. There should be a combination of the two worlds here, this world and the spiritual world.

So we reach the world of Ein Sof (Infinity) when we climb all the 125 degrees, only if we exist in this world in a physical body as we do that. If we haven’t managed to go all the way up during our lifetime, we return to this world. After all, we must constantly exist in the two worlds: in the intention—in the spiritual world, and in physical actions—in the corporeal world.

This is why the situation today is so special. We’ve reached such a state in the corporeal world that pushes us to develop the intention to bestow. Otherwise, we will not be able to survive. People call it a crisis, and we call it a new path, a new phase in human development, in which we have to discover the spiritual world and to connect it to the corporeal one.

Only a person who studies Kabbalah can do that. This is why we have to develop as fast as we can in order to teach the world. The world won’t be able to it independently since it is only possible to reach a connection with the upper world if you have the “point in the heart,” an aspiration to rise spiritually. Therefore, we have to think about the whole world and to hasten our development.
[81350]
From the Miami Convention 6/23/12, Lesson 3

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Question: Can we advance in happiness?

Answer: If a person is immersed in his ego, in his desire to receive, then he certainly cannot be happy because it will only bring him pain. But if he rises above his ego so as not to worry about what goes on inside him, but to live on a higher level and to identify with the attribute of bestowal, with the world, with everything that surrounds him, he can be happy constantly.

It can be to such an extent that he won’t feel what is happening with his body at all. The body can die, but a person will not feel that he belongs to his body any more.

Now we totally identify ourselves with our body. But if we can develop so that we will gradually draw further from it, we will eventually stop feeling that we are tied to it at all. It is as if I float above this body, and it is indeed so, because I identify with the attribute of bestowal and I live in it, and this is the key to advancing in happiness.

I can attain this if I am incorporated in the environment and together with others form one general group force that is not egoistic, but that is formed from all our spiritual sparks that are connected above our ego. Our ego loses its value and we raise the sparks and see them as the top priority. As a result we begin to live in these sparks that are connected and create one harmonious group force.

Besides, by developing the force of mutual bestowal, which means that we can demand this force of bestowal from the upper force field, from the Creator, we will constantly feel happy. It all depends on how a person aims himself regarding the group, and how the group aims itself regarding the Creator, regarding the field of bestowal and love.

This is the only factor that determines everything. I have to detach myself from my “self” and to rise to the level of “we”; everything will be accepted happily! It isn’t simple, and there are ascents and descents, but this is how we advance. Each time we receive an additional ego, an additional desire to enjoy, so that we will grow stronger and connect more tightly to the field of bestowal. This is the only way to advance.

If a person identifies with the goal, he accepts everything that happens on the way happily because he understands that it is a means for reaching the goal.

But if a person thinks only about his stomach—absorbed in himself, unable to rise above himself, then he will certainly walk around with a sour face, will suffer in life, and will always have complaints about the environment, about the group, the friends, the Creator and the teacher—it all depends on how a person aims himself.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/21/12, Shamati #30

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Question: What can be done if, on one hand, I do everything possible, for example, studying, integrating into the group, and performing dissemination; and on the other hand, I see that I have stayed in my pride and haven’t taken anything else into consideration, meaning, have simply blocked myself?

Answer: You need to ask the friends to help you, to support you, to pray for you. “Prayer for the many” is the prayer for someone else, for others.

A person can’t pray for himself since that would be an egoistic request. Even if you convince yourself that you, as if, want the attribute of bestowal, in any case it would be egoistic since you want it for yourself.

When I am in the group, I only want one thing, to be a guarantor for everyone. I want to be their guarantor and that they will attain everything that they want! And in this way we are all mutual guarantors for each other.

Otherwise, we won’t be matching in our attributes to that of the upper field. We are within it like charged particles in a magnetic field that separates us instead of attracting and drawing us nearer. Because we want to take advantage of it for ourselves, it repels us.

How can we attain similarity with Him? For this we need to connect to the friends, and then I will have some similarities to this field. It is here that the exact laws of physics work as described in The Study of the Ten Sefirot; there is no mysticism here.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/21/12, Shamati #30

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The road is difficult if we are in our ego and want to make some egoistic arrangements among us. By trying to solve problems on the egoistic plane, we will constantly fight, argue, and disagree and it will never end.

But if we rise above our ego in order to connect and see all the arguments and the conflicts among us as an invitation to connect, as “help against,” we will constantly feel happy and powerful, elated and capable of anything. If we are not able to do something, we will have whom to ask for help. That is, we reach the request to the upper one, a prayer, which we would not be able to reach otherwise.

This isn’t just a prayer but the “prayer of many” that I pray for the whole group and not for myself. Asking for myself doesn’t help; on the contrary, it keeps us apart and thrusts us onto the path of suffering.

So during the roundtable discussions, we say that we want to leave all the strife. We don’t want to argue and find out who is right and who is not and to what extent. This is not a debate within the government. Here there are people who want to establish a new connection, without which humanity is doomed.

This is only possible if we stop all the arguments between us and rise to a new level of connection so that “love,” that is above everything, “will cover all the sins,” that are left below. We don’t mention the sins as if they do not exist. And we build a dome above us.

This is what we want to achieve in the discussions at the roundtable. Before we do it in public, we have to learn to implement it in our group. So we need to take every opportunity to connect in spite of all our arguments, conflicts, and rejection.

In this form, the upper force field operates on us by evoking such reactions in us and summoning conflicts so that we will need the help of the upper one. As it says: “He who brings peace in Heaven will bring peace upon us.”

We need to reach a state in which this force field will influence us not by its negative pole, but by its positive pole, in the opposite direction. Every force field, every magnet has a positive or negative effect, by the north pole or the south pole. It all depends on our direction, on our charge—on our intention.
[81170]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/21/12, Shamati #30

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Everything is determined by the inner intention and no words are needed for that. If we know that we must constantly be connected, by overcoming all the interruptions, both the collective ones within the group and the private ones each of us encounters, we will have the right intention.

We constantly return to the intention during the lesson, while listening to the recordings during the day, and while reading the blog. So, I always remind myself and bring myself and return to the intention to connect. Besides, I also worry that all the friends will be connected since if we have a strong collective desire, we will discover the Creator.

If this general collective vessel doesn’t exist, we will not attain the revelation.

This condition isn’t the Creator’s or the upper field’s whim according to which it seems that you are asked to pay in one place in order to later receive something in another place, like in a store. This doesn’t exist in spirituality.

You need to feel a necessity, the need for that attribute of bestowal, and only then will you be able to discover it. Now too, it surrounds you on all sides. You are in this upper field, but you cannot reveal it because you don’t feel a need for it. So what are you crying about?

You don’t even know what the attribute of bestowal or what the upper field that you are yearning for are. You are crying about something that is totally different, about the fact that you didn’t receive a filling in your desire to receive, in your ego. If you really needed the attribute of bestowal, then you would immediately reveal it within this field.

After all, you are within this field, but your charge, your desire to perceive it, is weak at the moment. It could be that this charge is directed in the opposite direction, not in order to receive the attribute of bestowal, but simply in order to enjoy it.

You can check whether you are aiming at the same direction as that field by using the attribute of bestowal if you try to connect with others. Then you will see whether you really want connection or not, whether you need bestowal and love or not.

We will not receive the inner attributes necessary for the contact with the upper field, with the Creator in order to ask Him for the force of correction, until we begin to connect in the group above our ego, by trying to connect. Therefore working in the group is an essential preliminary condition. Therefore, it says “from the love of the created being to the love of the Creator.”

It is for this reason that the shattering of the desires occurred, so that by working with others we will be able to attain the necessity and the need for the attribute of bestowal. The main thing is the desire to learn to bestow.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/21/12, Shamati #30

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Baal HaSulam, “Messiah’s Shofar”: And because of that, Rashbi permitted himself and disclosed the wisdom of the hidden in his books, The Zohar and the Tikkunim. However, it was with great care, since he only permitted Rabbi Abba, who could disclose with intimation, so only the sages of the children of Israel would understand, and the sages of the nations would not understand.

The reason for that is that if people driven by egoism find something in this wisdom, they will not be able to advance. In another article, Baal HaSulam brings the example of an unripe fruit that can harm a person. Answers that are received without exertion, without self-advancement, only block a person’s way.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is revealed gradually, so that a person would understand more according to his internal spiritual growth, and thus advance. However, if he received the answers in advance, without growing and developing a vessel, it would stop him and not allow him to advance. Then he wouldn’t need to change and to acquire new attributes, and it would prevent him from discovering the way to the spiritual world by himself.

This is why Kabbalists took great care not to reveal things that people are not yet able to understand. The wisdom is acquired according to a person’s readiness. We study in order to summon the Light that Reforms, and when it corrects us, we begin to understand and to feel the material that we study.

The process is as follows: We connect in a group of about ten people, and then by the power of our unity we can raise MAN to the upper force. As an answer, we receive the Light that Reforms, which means the Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif – OM). This is what changes us, meaning, truly unites us (∑) and corrects us, and thanks to this correction we discover the upper world in our corrected attributes.

So these are the stages of the process:

1. We unite
2. We raise MAN for correction
3. The Surrounding Light corrects us
4. We discover the upper reality.

If we don’t perform the two initial steps, connecting and raising MAN, then nothing happens. Therefore, Kabbalists wrote their books in stages, according to our advancement in our study. When we read it for the first time, we discover our ego. Then we understand that there is only one choice, to rise to unity (∑), and then we discover that it isn’t enough either and that we have to raise MAN. If we do that then the Upper Light, the Surrounding Light (OM) completes the work.

The Kabbalistic books are revealed to us according to these stages, and it is all by the study. In the first stage, I discover the evil, in the second stage, I see that I cannot do anything and that I have to connect with the friends, and in the third stage, I understand that we will not manage without a request that the Light will connect us because we cannot do it by ourselves. Then the Light comes and completes the work. The first half of the work is our responsibility and the second half is fulfilled from Above and it is called “the work of the Creator.”
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From the 1^s part  Daily Kabbalah Lesson  6/20/12 in Toronto, “Messiah’s Shofar”

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On one hand, the commandments “between a person and his friend” are more important than the commandments “between a person and the Creator,” since from the love of the created beings one reaches the love of the Creator. But on the other hand, we mustn’t forget the final goal: We must build the mutual relations among us correctly only in order to connect with the Creator.

Otherwise, we would simply demonstrate “idealism” trying to overcome the crisis, to improve the educational system, to become better and happier people… All this is fraught with evil and leads to an even greater collapse. After all, by that we divert humanity from its internal part, leading it to a side road. Then people would feel even greater suffering trying to leave these attempts, no matter how wonderful they may seem.

We want to stop the hunger and to make everyone healthy, to fill everyone with joy. But if at the same time we don’t aim at adhesion with the Creator, with the goal of creation, if we don’t intend to bring the Creator contentment and to enable Him to reveal Himself, then instead of the direct path upwards, we are choosing a side road, and then more sufferings would be needed in order to get back on track.

Thus, by our seemingly good actions, we would summon negative results, so as it says: “It is better to sit and do nothing.”
[80382]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/12/12, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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Question: From Baal HaSulam’s article from the book Shamati, “What Is the Day of the Lord and the Night of the Lord in the Work,” please clarify what are “the day of the Lord and the night of the Lord” as opposed to our days and nights?

Answer: It is said, wherefore would ye have the day of the Lord? It is darkness, and not light. The question is: What is the day of the Lord? If one strives to achieve similarity of properties with the Creator, then the day of the Lord is a state in which one is able to bestow. It’s not about fulfilling one’s desires, but rather a state that is contrary to a fulfilled desire when one demands only one thing: to obtain the quality of bestowal, the property of faith above reason.

In other words, within constantly changing desires, one senses darkness and doesn’t want the Light to shine in them because it would mean that one is in a state called “within reason.” The Creator wants us to obtain a new nature, which will allow us to feel that only when we rise above the sensation of the darkness can we actually learn to bestow to Him.

What can we bestow? Only our aspiration! This is the point at which we start to thank the Creator for making us egoists by granting us huge individual desires that we can play with and in doing so, learn to go against them. It’s as if the Creator wants to fill our egoistic desires and we are afraid to receive from Him. This is how we rise above our desires; this process gives us a chance to get a “gift,” help, from the Creator, which in its turn enables us to realize that the power of our counteraction plays the role of actual help. It’s our tangible bestowal to the Creator.

Our plea is never genuine, since the desires that emerge in us are completely egoistic. Therefore, even if we pray to acquire the quality of bestowal, our actions still originate in the corrupt desire to receive, the desire that we bear inside of ourselves, the desire to get “for our own sake.” That’s why our demands are not authentic and are called “miskhak,” a game.

On the other hand, the Creator also plays with us, as it is said He sports (plays) with Leviathan. It means that the purpose, which is the connection of the Creator with the creatures, is only in sport (game); it is not a matter of a desire and a need. Consequently, it becomes possible to plead and demand for Him to grant us the quality of bestowal in a “non-serious” manner, thus bringing His and our seriousness into equivalence. It promotes our similarity with Him, equivalence of form.

All we have to ask is, that in the constant Light of the Creator, to flow above our internal conditions that occur because of the Reshimot. There is nothing to ask for except “drifting” above the Reshimot as if we were floating on waves, above any desires that emerge in us and all the properties that we have. We should strive to rise above them in order to be able to bestow to the Creator.

This is the only thing we can give to Him; there is nothing else that we can bestow.  If we don’t receive the power of bestowal from Him, we won’t be able to generate this property on our own.

If one were to be told that formal knowledge would be his profit from engaging in Torah and Mitzvot, (instead of self-gratification) one would say, “I consider it darkness, not light,” since this knowledge brings one to darkness.
[79063]

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Question: What do I need to do in order for the Light to hear me: scream, cry?

Answer: It doesn’t matter how your request will be expressed outwardly, whether you’ll be dancing or crying, screaming or being silent. The main thing is for the request to penetrate as deep as possible into the heart. There’s only one way to check: Is your desire directed in a more and more precise way towards connection since only through connection can you come closer to the Light?

If the Light doesn’t respond to your request, it means that you don’t yet have the desire. Desire in the heart; this is a request toward the Light. If you develop the desire within you, then the Light will begin to influence and fulfill it.

It is said that every person is constantly praying; the Light affects every desire that arises in our heart. After all, the Light is at absolute rest, it is a force that fills all of creation, the informational force field in which we’re all submerged like in an ocean of water. And the moment some desire appears in me, it affects the Light.

But the fact is that there are desires that don’t go in the same direction with Him. And the Light still works on them because it affects everything—it is an immutable law, like in physics. But because these desires don’t correspond to the Light, the Light develops them in a negative form until a person discovers that he or she feels bad. Then he begins to look for a cause and finds out that he was moving in the wrong direction and he needs to change his desires. This is called the path of suffering.

Alternatively, I can proactively use the method, which explains what one must ask in order to correspond to the Light from the very beginning. To do this I join a group, which encourages me, fueling my desire. None of us wants to unite, but when we all talk about the importance of connection, then eventually everyone will want it. After all, it is a law of nature; we are impressed by our environment.

So I choose such an environment that infuses me with the right thoughts and desires, that constantly talks about the benefits of unification and the great achievements that are possible through it. And then I see that I simply cannot do without connection to others, and I begin to desire it.

If everyone works in this correct manner relative to the others and we desire to unite together at least in some way, then the Light begins to affect us and brings us closer to connection. And when it brings us to the very first, smallest connection of our desires, then it becomes revealed in them as the Light of Nefesh. This means that we have begun to live—we were born in the spiritual world. That is, we united together even if for the time being it’s through the weakest initial connection.

Then we continue on from this achieved connection already having some sensation of our state and the ongoing process. Again we begin to ask, now for an even greater connection. The Light affects us more strongly and raises us to the level of Ruach, from the still degree to a vegetative. This means that we can move on our own, we feel some movement in our connections with each other, an ability to do something ourselves. The degree of Ruach means that we weren’t simply born in the spiritual world, but we’re acting and living within it! Ruach (wind) is a vegetative degree and it means the ability to move.

And then we advance even further and reach the animate degree, Neshama (soul). At this point a person ends his cycles of reincarnation. There’s an even higher degree at the end of correction (Gmar Tikkun) when everyone will be corrected and unite together. But for now we need to ascend along the preceding degrees, and this entire advancement only happens in a group, in unity, in order to reveal the Light that will fill the correct bond between us.

In other words, if we achieve the right connection between us, then the feeling of our unity is called a sensation of Light.

Demand it in any way you can, again and again, and each time you’ll receive an impression, clarify Reshimot, and eventually it will happen. The most important thing is to continue. You need to study, participate in the entire life of the group, try to get close to everyone, and then it will come. According to what is written: “I labored and found.”

And if it hasn’t happened yet, it means that for now there’s still an insufficiency, though not of time and actions, but of your inner desire that still has to develop and become perfected. New, more advanced Reshimot still need to appear, which you will realize thanks to your work, and then it will happen.

You can scream and cry, but it won’t help. Only one thing helps: meticulously and persistently, patiently and stubbornly continuing your path.
[80159]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/8/2012, Writings Of Rabash

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In order to understand what prayer is, we have to rely on our previous experience and imagine a state opposite to Holiness, in which a person feels that he is dead. This means that he feels envy, ambition, a desire to control, and the ordinary desires of the ego for food, sex, and family. He feels that he has become enslaved to these desires through which the rule of the upper force becomes apparent.

At the same time, he is aware that this state is opposite to bestowal, caring about others and about the Creator, which has to be above all the worries and the calculations regarding himself, his relatives, and everything that has nothing to do with spirituality.

The goal of creation is the revelation of the Creator to the created beings. If a person chooses this goal as his mission for which he is willing to work, as it is written, “as an ox to the burden and as a donkey to the load,” in order to become the link that conveys and connects, to be the smallest agent who receives no reward, in that case it means that he turns to the Creator with the right prayer. He doesn’t even know that he is the one who brings about the revelation, and what is more, he doesn’t want any reward for that and is satisfied with having been given the opportunity to work without a reward.

This attitude is revealed in us thanks to the influence of the Light in different states, and by that, we begin to respect and value the darkness more. The more contradictory the states revealed in a person, the sharper his clarifications, thoughts, and feelings become, from which he can form his request to the Creator to be saved.

Every prayer stems from despair, from having fallen under the control of egoistic thoughts about oneself, instead of thinking about the revelation of the Creator to the created beings, about the “good and benevolent.” If a person aims correctly, he attains a state in which all of his desire works only for the revelation of the Creator in the vessels of the created beings, of Malchut, Shechina (Divinity).

This is called the prayer of eighteen blessings: nine degrees of the Direct Light and nine degrees of the Returning Light. Thus, a person reaches a true prayer.
[80177]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/10/12, Shamati #113

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