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Baal HaSulam: “The Arvut, (Mutual Guarantee)”: And once the whole nation unanimously agreed and said, “We shall do and we shall hear,” each member of Israel became responsible that nothing shall be missing from any other member of the nation. Only then did they become worthy of receiving the Torah, and not before.

We are demanded to correct the general vessel, the desires that now feel that they are detached, foreign, and even opposite to one another. Before, the Light advanced them to connection and to unity, but now, because of the shattering, it separates them, leads them to oppositeness, to quarrels, violence, etc. We need the Light to come and to correct and connect these desires.

We don’t know how to correct them, how to put the parts of the broken vessel together, because we don’t know in advance what the vessel should be like and any assumption we make is only a guess. So what should we do? The point is that we don’t correct anything by ourselves. We ask, demand, and evoke the upper One so that He will perform the correction.

There is no way a person can correct himself. Each time we rise to a higher level, but can a baby be smarter than his mother? So every ascent is accompanied by a request and the upper in response performs the necessary work on it and moves us to the next state.

There is a request on our part and the work on the part of the upper. This is why it is called “God’s work.” It is He who works, and my work is to request.

If we are constantly careful in dividing this work, we save a lot of energy and are not confused. We must make sure that we do that and do not forget about it. We as a rule want to operate on our own, while the actual action on our part is to prepare ourselves for His work, to exert ourselves, and then to discover our helplessness. Baal HaSulam says: “There isn’t a happier state in a person’s work than when he is despaired of his own powers.” A person should understand that only the Creator, the upper Force, can correct him, and that’s the way it is all the time.

It isn’t by chance that our mission seems so difficult: to become “as one man in one heart,” to unite completely; how is that possible? These are illusions that can only lead to crisis and disappointment, to an even greater collapse than the one we’ve seen in the USSR for example. It is really so if we use the wrong means, the wrong program. But the method of Kabbalah provides us with a natural plan that is led by nature itself: Your life doesn’t have to be bad, you only need to discover, to identify that you are in a bad state. This is enough so that you will demand a change and you will receive the next state.

Thus our work is simple. If we all gather and work according to the law of mutual guarantee, the mission becomes much easier: We discover the evil and at the same time we discover the good, which means the source and the means for the changes. The tension between these two poles advances us to correction; we summon the Reforming Light and it performs the work. This arrangement repeats time after time.

The real life, the real ascent, will be revealed in the permanent closeness of people, in common circles, in discussions, in impressions, in excitement, and in mutual help. Thus we will discover more deficiencies in us in comparison to the corrected state of the general unity; we will discover the effectiveness of the greatness of the state of mutual bestowal, and we will activate the upper Force that performs the whole work. It says: “He that makes peace in Heaven, will make peace on us.” This is the order of the actions.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/30/12, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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We need to try to turn every lesson of ours into a workshop. In the beginning we describe the central point of the connection between us, of the entire world group, and from within the feeling of this center, this connection, we listen to the lesson, and clarify all the questions. We exist within this unity. From within it, together we raise the prayer of MAN, and all of us together attain the answer of MAD, the Light. This bonds and brings us to the state of revelation.

Everything depends on the preparation, from the search for the common point shared by us all, the Shechina (Divinity). Thus the preparation for the lesson is the most important thing.

According to the order of spiritual work, the day begins in the evening. A person completes the “day” he went through, exits his work, and enters into the bestowal of the upper that begins to change his Kelim (desires), Reshimot (informational genes). And a person needs to prepare himself for this, connect to the property of Bina, bestowal, leaving less of his feelings and mind, acting as if half-asleep.

Thus he prepares himself to changes that occur within his desires, Kelim, that are disclosed specifically in the darkness. In the evening, everything becomes mixed: the good and the bad, the light and the darkness, bestowal and reception. Everything becomes identically gray and undifferentiated. But the person deposits himself in the hands of the upper one and “goes to sleep.” This means that he understands that he needs to completely annul himself now, like a fetus in his mother’s womb, which is called, “secretly sits in the upper.”

Then, despite everything, he can continue and awaken at “midnight”, since he received new Kelim and desires. From the beginning of the evening, he executes corrections, and after the completion of the stage where he doesn’t rule in self-control, he then receives new desires and begins to awaken at the coming of “dawn”. And then comes the new connection, which is called the morning prayer (Schema Kriyat), it produces Light. In this way he begins his new day, new revelation, a new advancement with fresh forces.

It is specifically in this way that we need to prepare ourselves to the morning lesson.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/23/12

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Kabbalists wrote their books for two groups of people: For the group called “the level of the forefathers,” people like them who have attained spirituality and who will be enriched by these texts and connect so that they can perform corrections in the general system, thus preparing our ascent, and they also wrote for “the level of the sons,” which is us, in order to give us something to hold on to by which we can draw the Reforming Light.

We are in the same system, but we cannot evoke its influence upon us by ourselves. In the meantime it influences us by itself, and we advance by sufferings. But if we evoke the Lights, we hasten time and begin to advance more quickly by making the way easier.

How can we do that? According to the advice of Kabbalists, we perform different actions that are similar in quality to this advice. Their attribute is bestowal and so according to the level and the state we are in, we need to express our readiness to bestow. We give each other “presents,” we connect, we speak about it during the lessons, and we clarify the words of the Kabbalists. Then our inclinations, desires, and efforts become adapted to the system that they describe. We want to know what we study; we want it to be revealed in us, and then the Lights come to us; they are still unrevealed, but “surround,” and bring us closer to the revelation.

So all our work, all our life, and all our existence has to be aimed at evoking the Reforming Light. This is called “to study the Torah.” It says: “I have created the evil inclination, I have created the Torah as a spice for it, since the Light hidden in it returns a person to the Source.” We operate according to this formula. We must examine all its components to properly use them to reform every component and the formula as a whole.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/24/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: What is the center of the group?

Answer: The center of the group is the center of our reality, its utmost spiritual point. Reality doesn’t exist on its own, but exists in regard to the person who attains it. It is only possible to attain reality in the center of the group where I annul my ego and connect with the others equally so that it is stabilized inside me.

At the same time, I change the relationship between us on purpose, sometimes I subdue myself before the friends by seeing them as the greatest in the generation, and other times I rise above them in order to bestow something from myself. Eventually, by looking at the group once from above and once from below, I find an equal attitude towards it. This equality doesn’t exist at first; it is a result of my exertion.

On the one hand, I yearn as much as I can to be above the friends in order to help them, but on the other hand, I place myself below them in order to live and to be the one who receives through them. By these two poles, I suddenly discover what it means to be equal, although I didn’t aim towards this before and didn’t see this point. I see myself in Ein Sof (Infinity) higher than everyone else (+∞), and at the same time in Ein Sof lower than the friends (–∞); suddenly I find the center of the group where everyone is equal and discover that it actually exists. My corporeal life is left behind and only the devotion remains, the mutual guarantee, adhesion with everyone. I feel that I increasingly summon the Reforming Light, the Surrounding Light, which fills the whole “space” of my attributes. By discovering more powers, more support, more care from the outside, I feel that I am being stabilized, and that is the center of the group.

In the center of the group, I really discover the group, the friends, and no matter what they discover, in my reality everything is completely accurate. This is because the world of Ein Sof already exists, and the descent into this world is only meant to build the steps of the ladder of the spiritual revelation, the recognition, the understanding, and the feeling in us. When these steps appear in a person and he begins to climb them, he doesn’t depend on anyone: Everyone is in Gmar Tikkun (the end of correction). I am in front of the place where the Light of Ein Sof exists and everything depends on me, everything and all of reality are in me, and there I discover the truth. But this truth depends on my own investment, on my loyalty to the group, to the teacher, and to the sources, and I need to reveal it in practice.

There is nothing but the center of the group. I discover that it must become the center of the whole world, the place where all the souls assemble, all the corruptions and all the corrections. This is Malchut of Ein Sof with everything it is going to collect and include in it. In other words, when a person devotes himself to Malchut of Ein Sof, Divinity, by wanting to be an inseparable part of it, he becomes Malchut of Ein Sof himself, and by that connects it with the first nine Sefirot, meaning with all the worlds until Ein Sof, and so we advance.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/22/12, “Talk About the Workshop”

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Question: How do we work during a seminar, how do we listen to one another?

Answer: A friend can say things that I might or might not understand. He can say things that I think are great or maybe something foolish. In any case, I now perceive him as a manifestation of a representative of the Creator: The Creator is influencing me through him.

If I am repulsed by my friend’s appearance, expression, the actual meaning of his words, or everything else, I might not perceive him or want him. And this is a wonderful exercise! I need to rise above this! If he is a representative of the Creator, since “There is none else beside Him,” especially at an event like this that we are participating in, then I need to elevate my friend and try to penetrate the spiritual essence through him, which is presenting all of this to me and also presents itself this way. I must rise above myself to a state, where I will perceive everything in it as absolute goodness, absolute bestowal, an absolute spiritual quality—despite anything that I am feeling on the inside, despite the fact that I do not have it.

And it is a very good thing that these two qualities are manifesting in me: my egoistic attitude towards my friend, when everything that I see in him does not take any criticism at all, and on the other hand, on the contrary, when I treat him through faith above reason, as a representative of the Creator, because nothing should come from anyone in the world that might be evil, bad, imperfect. And if it exists in me, then it is mine; I am looking at him with my own eyes.

This is why, if I am able to note these two states in me, then I have already done certain spiritual work. We must put together all the highest and lowest critical states in relation to one another, and we will have a common vessel—Malchut, which is on the bottom and consists only of unpleasant things—and it will keep getting brighter and worse in us, and we will be able to keep rising towards Keter over it. Then we will reach such distance between them, such tension, which will equal the state when the Surrounding Light will turn into Inner Light and shine there. And then we will acquire the first spiritual degree.

What does this do? We raise MAN towards Malchut of the world of Atzilut, which connects us together, and there we establish ourselves for the first time as newborns. And a person cannot be born alone, but only a minimum of ten people.
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The center of the group is the point in which we become free from all the fragments of the breaking and want to concentrate only on our sparks uniting them together. And the more we seek to unite these sparks, the higher we rise on the spiritual ladder.

Due to these efforts, we reveal a new depth of desire in us, and a greater Light is revealed in the unity of sparks. The connection of sparks is the “Reshimo de Hitlabshut,” and the depth of desire, above which we want to connect, is the “Reshimo de Aviut,” and thus we begin to connect in our first common spiritual Partzuf in which we will feel one soul.

The first time we will feel ourselves in the integral reality where we are all connected to each other, and inside it we will feel spiritual life—one for all. As it’s said: “There is none else besides the Creator,” one for everyone: one thought, one light, a unified system. We will feel ourselves living inside one upper force.

And then, we will begin to recognize it more and more, distinguish more features in it, different attitudes towards us relative to the size of Partzuf. But the very first point from which we have to begin is the point of our unity, called the center of the group. It consists of two elements: The first one is overcoming of our egoism, the Reshimo de Aviut, and the second one is our desire to unite through our sparks, which determines the Reshimo de Hitlabshut.

If I install them correctly relative to each other, it’s called faith above reason. It all comes down to one reality, to a single state. Faith is the connecting sparks, and knowledge is the force of the egoistic desire, above which we want to build our connection.

It doesn’t matter if we fail to reach the desired and connect in the center of the group. The main thing is how much effort we have put into it. The extent of efforts determines the successful state.

We will never achieve success directly through our actions, but only will attract the Light to ourselves, so that the Creator finishes this work for us! After all, “a prisoner cannot free himself from the jail;” everything happens due to the help from Above, through the prayer and the answer to it.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/24/12, “Talk About the Workshop”

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Question: Baal HaSulam says in the “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 155, that even if we don’t understand Kabbalistic texts, we draw the power of correction, the Surrounding Light, by reading it. So why don’t people who know these texts by heart ever reach attainment?

Answer: They don’t draw the power of correction because the Surrounding Light should turn into the Inner Light when you acquire a Masach (screen), which means the intention to bestow. The question is do you yearn to attain a Masach? Are you drawn to correction? Do you want to reveal the evil inclination? Are you ready to go through this although it is unpleasant? Do you see this as an obligation and a necessity? Do you invest all your energy in the society in order to be under the influence of the friends? Only then will they lift you from your desires and pull you out of this swamp.

When you hate someone you have to make an effort so that you will love him. It is as if he did you wrong and you rise above that although the feeling of hate remains, and you work only for love by wanting to give him more than you give to your own baby.

Do you do that and hold on to this inclination regarding these corrections? If so, you are drawing the Surrounding Light that operates on you and provides you with necessary attribute.

At the same time you are diverted from the path, and you are thwarted by more interruptions, but you still have to advance by subduing yourself before the friends and asking for their help. Thus you evoke the Surrounding Light upon you, yearning for that attribute—for bestowal and love—above hate and rejection. Even if you are absolutely right in all your claims regarding the friends, you still try to advance “above reason.”

As for those you are asking about, they deal with the wisdom and not with the Torah, not with the method of correction in which the Reforming Light is concealed. They read the texts without any connection with the evil inclination that will be revealed or that is already revealed. They don’t come to the lesson in order to correct themselves, and they don’t study the Torah, but wisdom. Therefore it says: “wisdom among the nations, believe.” The “nations” refers to those who don’t want to correct themselves. However, those who want to reach unity are called “Jews,” and this is the whole difference.

Abraham gave “gifts” to the children of the concubines, meaning intermediate methods. They studied for pleasure, received a slight illumination, but didn’t fulfill the correction and didn’t ascend the ladder of the spiritual degrees. Such people study the material by heart, discuss it, argue….

We don’t argue and don’t discuss anything, for us only the Reforming Light is important. It doesn’t matter how much a person knows, what’s important is to keep in contact with the text that brings him the power of correction.

Eventually, however, the correction is everyone’s share, and I don’t underestimate anyone. If a person opens Kabbalah books, even if he walks in the dark, he is still moving forward.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/23/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Man feels the desires, which arise in him, and based only on them he perceives reality, feels it and lives in it. The perception of the world depends on the informational data (Reshimot) revealed in a person, and that is why people don’t understand each other. Indeed, each person sees, feels, perceives, and interprets what’s going on according to his own needs.

Besides this, there are no two similar moments since new desires emerge in us all the time and in accordance with them so do thoughts. That is, the perception of reality changes constantly: A person never remains that same person. From this, one needs to understand that we have no possibility to judge ourselves in our own states, or even more so to judge others.

This is because each person is controlled by that sprout of desire that awakens in him at that moment. The only decision is to learn how to aim towards commonness and unity, above all of these desires. And if all of us are mutually connecting into each other, then we can reach the “common denominator,” which is called the center of the group, unity, the point of connection, Malchut, the collection of all of the souls, longing for the Creator.

It is impossible to judge particular qualities and perceptions of each person at a given moment since this is predetermined from Above. There are people who come to study because they want to receive knowledge and automatically memorize what is written. There are those who are searching for new perceptions and possibilities to discover the upper Light, angels, and spirits.

There are people who by their nature are closer to this method and instinctively long towards unity, while others, having perfectly studied all of the articles about the group, nevertheless, cannot understand that it relates to them and that they need to realize this on themselves. Alternatively, they agree to realize it, but purely externally, like religious rites, instead of investing their heart into this.

All people are different, and based on this, we cannot judge a person. His behavior is derived from the root of his soul and there are many roads which lead to the Creator. That is why only longing is needed for each person to be under the maximum influence of the correct environment, which will help him move on his own path at his own pace, and what will happen, will happen.

We need to be more patient and tolerant of each other regarding the things that have to do with spiritual development. For here a person possesses the freedom of choice only in joining the correct environment. And this depends on the kind of Reshimot that will be revealed in them and which kind of Light that will be influencing him. And the pace and order in moving forward in joining the group are very different from person to person.

There are people who grasp these principles very quickly and are ready for unity. However, this may be because they have a weak desire, which does not cover up the value of unity from them. While in others there may be a very large and rigid egoistic desire, and that is why it is so difficult for them to accept that the whole spiritual goal is revealed inside unity with others.

They are not able to attach importance to commonality and that is why they move forward in another way, the larger part of it in darkness, in concealment, with much hardship. However, at a later time, suddenly, a leap forward happens.
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From the preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/23/12

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Question: What is the difference between a lesson and a workshop?

Answer: The workshop serves as preparation for the lesson. And so, each lesson should also be similar to a workshop since we must prepare the common intention, the desire to become one, the one corresponding to the unified desire of one force. Without any preceding preparation like this, it would not be the learning of the Torah, but the study of wisdom.

The study of the Torah symbolizes the disclosure of the evil inclination that needs to be corrected. The correction of the evil inclination is the connection with others and the attainment of love, the correction of the breaking. Thus, each lesson needs to become an addition to the workshop and bring us to a higher level.

In the workshops, we learn how to prepare quickly for each lesson. Then, all of our lives will transform into one incessant workshop. This is so that we never lose the feeling of unity and constantly connect more and more.

In this way, we examine all the details in the common Kli and solve all the problems in life as a whole, both corporeal and spiritual. By our acting from within the center of the group, from within our shared feeling, we can perform real miracles.

The workshop is a clarification of our intention, the connection, our necessity to connect between us, mutual guarantee, responsibility, the commitment of each one for the other in the general group, and the obligation in regard to our teachers, the sources, and the entire world. Everything together determines our responsibility and the only obligation to the Creator.

Through our uniting in a circle, we create a place in this central point through which it is possible to break out of the material borders. Everything is in the hands of the group.

Thus, the subject of the discussion is not so important, but the main thing is how we try to connect via the subject. This means that it is just a means of searching after a greater connection.

All the worlds, Partzufim, Sefirot, and Reshimot are clarified only in the center of the group where the steps of the spiritual ladder are revealed. Nevertheless, only now are we starting the work from the beginning.

All of these workshops will go into the archive so that every person in the world can use them to emotionally participate in this work and advance. In the end, the entire world will become one group around one round table, one family.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/20/12, ”Talk About Past Conventions”

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