Question: What is the “prayer of the poor” that doesn’t go unanswered?

Answer: The prayer of the poor is a plea of a person who understands that no one can help him but the Creator. He feels that he has no rights, no merits, no good deeds, no support, and that he has nothing. Even his egoism no longer sustains him and this is called total poverty.

In this case only the Creator (through the group) can help him. This plea for help is the prayer of the poor for bare necessities, only to save his soul.
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabalah Lesson 1/30/12, Writings of Rabash
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Question: What can I discover in the Arava convention?

Answer: You will discover what you want; you will discover what you prepare yourself for. Perhaps you are preparing yourself to find out the meat and rice is delicious?

In our connection we want to reach a true deficiency, and we have to go to the convention with the right yearning. It has to be so clear that we feel it in our bones.

Question: Should we set conditions that must be kept before the convention? Will this help us discover the right deficiency?

Answer: Yes, of course. How is it possible without preliminary conditions? We can’t jump the gun. If someone doesn’t prepare himself, there is no point in his going. By that he is tripping up himself and the friends, and he will get a spiritual punishment for that, like the fool who drills a hole in the collective boat. Everyone should be responsible for what is happening with him. There is time for everyone to correct himself according to the conditions you decide on.

You should present these conditions to anyone you think is ready for the attack. So think, whom are you taking with you and whom not? Make a list of names. The criterion here is not how much a person knows, not the number of years he has studied, but the level of his desire: How much does he want to and is he capable of helping.

Everyone should carry out his job on the boat, from the captain to the youngest apprentice. The only question is: How focused is everyone on the goal?

Question: What is that spiritual punishment?

Answer: If I fail the friends by my wrong participation, then I will certainly be punished for that. The harm I cause will come back to me like a boomerang.

In the same way, I can also receive the reward through the friends when I advance with them and receive from them powers, directions, and assistance; I only add a bit from myself. In our world it is just like working in a certain field and being able to exchange my salary for numerous goods and services that others offer me. When I connect to them, I provide myself with everything that I need in order to live a good life. It is the same in spirituality: I work in my place on the boat and do my job faithfully—and together with everyone else I reach our destination. Could I cross the ocean by myself?

Question: How can I check whether I am ready for the convention?

Answer: Ask your friends all over the world what they think the preparation is. You should write about it yourselves, so that everyone will be able to check himself whether he is coming physically or whether he is going to participate virtually. Women and men should write separately, and then discuss the matter and closely stick to the decisions that are reached.

The main thing is the deficiency; we don’t need more than that. So it is about the clarification of the deficiency, or the clarification of the obstacles on the way to reach it, which interruptions should I take with me in order to sharpen things and bring about correction?

Question: For whom should I ask for the deficiency during the lesson: myself or the others?

Answer: It is written, “He who prays for his friend is answered first.” But if you are asking for the friends just so that you can be first, your prayer won’t be answered. That is not a prayer for the friend.

Question: The last time before we went out to the desert, we were given the chance to overcome many obstacles. Now, however, we have to ignite this desire by ourselves. Is this the minimum with which we have to come to the desert?

Answer: Today much more is demanded from you. At that time you expected some revelation, but we didn’t say what exactly should be revealed. Now we say: We have to reveal the desire, the deficiency. I don’t need anything but this desire.

What exactly is it aimed at? At the revelation of the Creator? No. It is aimed at bestowal. None of us has the desire for bestowal, and we want it to be revealed in all of us. After all, the desire to bestow that fills me is actually the Light. I am happy because I want to bestow, and I don’t need anything but that. Even if the Creator doesn’t let me bestow—the desire itself fills me with and brings me pleasure.

Then we begin to understand the details, and to climb the mountain to the King’s palace.

There is nothing to add here. We have the opportunity to reach the right deficiency, which will be filled. We don’t need anything else.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/29/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: It is difficult for us to wake each other up by means of external actions, but the internal ones are slipping away from us. What should we do?

Answer: The point is that each one of you falls asleep and despairs. This is natural, and this will continue until you feel that each one depends on the others and must care about the others. I must understand that my desire depends on you, and yours depends on me. Only then will we arrive at the real desire.

Today, you are searching for this desire personally, individually, but not together. Each one thinks about how to increase his own desire, but this is incorrect. You will not be able to do that. On the contrary, you fall asleep, counting on indulgences from above. Nothing else can possibly happen, while a person makes the calculation only for himself. Alone, nobody is capable of establishing even the smallest contact with spirituality since it is absolutely opposite to him. We still cannot imagine the depth of this divide.

However, we have the opportunity to make this leap across the distance separating us from the spiritual world. This depends on the group, on how we play within it, how we play such a game from which we simply have nowhere to escape. In this “play” of the group, I must constantly demonstrate this environment, its continued staging: all of us on stage together in every act, in every scene. No other means will help without this.

It is said: “A hero will not save himself by his own strength.” The power of the Creator is needed for this, but it can only be summoned through the group. We must think in this direction and play, like in the theatre. We need to build this play, where everyone will participate without exception. In our play, we give the mutual guarantee to each other; we display our participation, attention, and the need of each one for everyone and everyone for each one. We will not come out from Egypt otherwise.

If you are working on this and encounter obstacles along the way, then we can go out to the Arava desert, since we will have something to go with, we will have the suffering of the whole Kli that is not able to unite. It is said about this: “And the sons of Israel cried out from the work!” For their egoism, they have built the wonderful cities of Ramses and Pithom, while they have found themselves to be in poor cities, threatening not to let them out from the exile.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/26/12, “Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: What should be the minimal hold to the group, and what is most important about it?

Answer: There are many types of work and relationships in the group: when the friends are smaller than me, greater than me, or equal to me, and whether I relate to them as the revelation of the Creator or use them as a shield. The group is everything. It’s a desire I can manage, play with, and through it, I determine my attitude towards the Creator. Through the group I acquire a Masach (screen). All my requests, my prayers, my desires, my definitions, and my clarifications go through the group to the Creator.

The group is the compass with which I can focus on the Creator, the upper force. If I can connect with the friends and be incorporated in them, I will be more concentrated and more accurately focused on the Creator. In the corporeal world I see someone and I can approach him. But in the spiritual world, I don’t see the Creator, I don’t know what the attribute of bestowal is, or where it is, in what range of frequency. It’s as if I have a radio, but I don’t know how to find the station I am looking for among millions of other stations.

So I have a problem because I don’t know what spirituality is at all, and I imagine it in a totally wrong way. If it were simply the opposite it would be good, it would at least give me some direction. I don’t know where to look for it at all. I am standing in the middle of a circle and can go in any direction in 360 degrees, and according to my nature I will never be able to guess the right direction.

Therefore, there is only one means: the group, through which I can somehow imagine the attribute of bestowal. If I yearn to connect with them internally, then in that connection, in my yearning for them, I will begin to feel what the Creator’s attribute of bestowal is. Thus I can establish my attitude towards Him inside me.

Hence, the group becomes the most precious thing for me, a means by which I attain my only and most important goal. I begin to feel that it’s when I am with the group and we establish the connection among us, that I can discover the Creator. The Creator is revealed only in that state, in the collective deficiency, in the collective feeling that is created between me and the group. Otherwise He has nowhere to be revealed.

It is as if we build a stage together on which the Creator can appear and perform, inside the feeling of our collective connection, the mutual guarantee, our adhesion. If it didn’t exist, there wouldn’t be the attribute of bestowal in which the Creator could be revealed, because an equivalence of form is required for that.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/25/12, Shamati #175

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Question: Where should each of us start to create our own environment?

Answer: Start from the need to evoke inspiration and to impress everyone by your desire to create the environment. Try to spur them without words that we should all yearn to create an environment that will oblige us, change us, and bring us closer so that we will connect. This is a must. Without such a society, without the right connections among us, there is nowhere that spirituality can be revealed. Spirituality is revealed only in the connection among us.

The form of the connection among us is the form of the spiritual world, the form of the level a person is on. The moment it influences me and I want to discover it, the level of the connection will depend on me. In the same group there are those who see it on level 50 and there are those who see it on level 5 and others can see it as absolutely perfect, in Gmar Tikkun (Final Correction).

Spiritual reality doesn’t have a predetermined form; it all depends on a person. This is why I need the environment so much, so that it will oblige me to treat it correctly. That’s all we need.

Actually, when I see that it is corrected, I see that it has always been that way, and I only lacked the desire to discover this, I lacked the sensitivity. Now too we are in a group and in an environment that is in Gmar Tikkun, in the world of Infinity. But it doesn’t spur me to discover that. By evoking the friends, I create an effect that helps me discover that they are absolutely corrected.

As a result of this cycle, which comes back to me, I correct myself. This is called to pray, to judge myself, how do I return to the right attitude through the environment. We have to give it a lot of thought because it all begins and ends here.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot” (37): Hence, until this day there has indeed been a fortified wall around this wisdom. Many have tried to begin to study, but could not continue for lack of understanding and because of the corporeal appellations. This is why I have labored with the interpretation, Panim Meirot and Panim Masbirot, to interpret the great book, The Tree of Life, by the Ari, to make the corporeal forms abstract and to establish them as spiritual laws, above time and place. Thus, any novice can understand the matters, their reasons, and explanations with a clear mind and great simplicity…

It becomes a real problem if people perceive the teaching of Kabbalah in its external sense and assign material meaning to spiritual forces. There is a commandment that prohibits creating idols and images. This is exactly what triggered Abraham to exit the material realm and rise to the spiritual world.

There still is a danger of going back to worshiping idols if we happen to allocate any spiritual essence to material subjects or actions. Many people think that certain objects possess spiritual power: red strings, holy water, icons, etc. On numerous occasions, people used to bring such objects to my teacher Rabash, and I always gave them away to those who wanted to have them since he never kept them for himself.

People are inclined to assign spiritual properties to letters, pictures, objects, animals, and other people. There are many objects of worship. A spiritual aura is ascribed to various actions as well. In fact, there is no spiritual force in materiality whatsoever. It hides only within the intention of a person when he interacts with the reforming Light.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/15/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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We have to understand that every movement we feel around us is given to us as help. After all, without it we wouldn’t be able to move. We also come across very exhausting states that last for days, and it seems to a person that there is no pleasure and no need for them.

There are days when a person sees himself as a beast. But in fact, it isn’t his job to check his state; he only needs to use every state correctly and to make the best of it. He may stay in these states until the end of his life. These states come from Above, but a person’s response comes from himself.

So we must constantly check and assess the essence of the state, not according to the state itself but according to our response to it, and thus decide whether it is good or bad. The states themselves may not change, but a person constantly responds to them differently trying to find different tricks in order to rise.

Although the state itself doesn’t change, he continues to fight stubbornly in order to reach some bestowal, some connection, to come closer to the Creator. This is exactly how he assesses these states, which let him feel even the slightest deficiency to enable him to advance.

He is grateful that he is not totally detached, and that the Creator gave him the desire and urge to cling to the end of the rope, and he expects that at any moment he will be led to the place where he will be able to exert himself. This is enough for him, he doesn’t ask for more.

It is in the most serious work that the slightest grip is required: just not to be detached. From that moment on, everything is already in a person’s hands.

So it is very important for a person to have a fixed schedule in studying, in dissemination, and in taking part in the group, and to constantly keep himself on track, at least several times a day, if he can.

It is all in a person’s hands and he should decide what he considers a “day” and what he considers a “night.” If he holds on to the end of the rope, it is already the beginning of the day. No matter what states are sent to him from Above, what is important is how he evokes himself. As it says “I will awaken the dawn!”

Question: What should my response to the states be?

Answer: If I don’t fall into a state of total unconsciousness, when I totally forget about spirituality and begin to think like an ordinary person, if I am given a feeling that there is the work of the Creator, a purpose to life, a means called the wisdom of Kabbalah, and other such thoughts and desires, at least as a reminder: This is the only thing that I need.

The state can be bad, but it makes no difference. It is enough if I only do my work no matter what all the other conditions are. I only want one thing no matter what happens: not to leave. If I have the end of the rope, I can hold on to it from now on and can advance from any possible state, even in the most difficult states if they are somehow connected to the goal, even in an opposite manner: It is enough.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/25/12, Shamati #175

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It isn’t easy to reach the understanding that the most important thing for us is the deficiency and that day and night and good and bad are measured in comparison to it.

If there is a deficiency, it is good and is called “day.” If there is no deficiency, it is called “night.” This is how you should always check yourself. This is completely opposite from what we are used to because it doesn’t match the feelings in our desire to receive but rather in our tendency for bestowal, for holiness.

You should picture yourself standing in front of the King, trying to please Him, to bestow upon Him. But what can you bestow upon Him, with what can you please Him so that it can be considered our bestowal? We should check what He enjoys.

All the actions the Creator enjoys are called Mitzvot, and they can be performed only with the help of the reforming Light, called the Torah. All the Mitzvot are in the connections among the created beings, and so love thy friend as thyself is a great rule in the Torah. It is called the correction of the general desire by means of the Torah because the Light in it reforms. Then thanks to all the actions in which we connect, one great bestowal is created, called the general vessel, the one soul.

This yearning is called day, and the actions of connection are called Mitzvot. The general attribute that is revealed in that is called the attribute of bestowal, or Masach, the Reforming Light, in which the Host’s pleasure is revealed and the Host Himself. The direct Light is revealed in the returning Light according to the equivalence of form. Thus we advance.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/25/12, Shamati #175

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Question: We are nearing the convention in the desert.

Answer: It is still doubtful. You are preparing it, but are you preparing yourselves? If there is the right deficiency, there will be a convention. If there is no deficiency, the meals won’t make the convention.

Question: How can we build this deficiency?

Answer: What are you going there for? Do you really lack something or is it just a trip? A most serious intention is required here. We must conquer this level in blood and tears. After all the word “tears” (Dmaot in Hebrew) is related to the world “blood” (Dam).
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/25/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: It’s difficult to put all of one’s energy into the request for correction and to come out “empty-handed” again and again. How can we keep from getting disillusioned in the path?

Answer: What are you asking for? To have the true request, or for something else? You don’t need anything besides this. If I turn to Him with a request, I must constantly check to make sure that my request is the best, most correct and precise one, that it hits the goal right on target and I don’t demand anything from it. Why would I need anything else? After all, any answer to it would already be a payment, and I don’t desire payment.

What do we aspire to?
– I aspire to unity, togetherness, bestowal, to give pleasure to the Creator!
– Please, go ahead, you’re doing it.
– I just want to know whether He likes it or not…
But if you find out that you are doing something pleasant for the Creator, that will be the greatest pleasure for you, and you will receive it for your own sake.

By going through all these states, where you don’t receive anything and keep going, and you do it over and over again, you thereby build a screen with which you receive a reaction from the Creator that you give Him pleasure, and this won’t enter your receiving desires, but will be above them.

But for now, if you received a reaction in return right now, this would give you enormous satisfaction. Say you wrote a letter to someone very great, and that person received it and responded to you, saying, “I got your letter.” That would be enough, you would already be happy.

Therefore, as long as you aren’t protected from this kind of pleasure, you won’t receive any reaction in return.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/25/12, The Zohar

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