Prayer for the society is the aspiration to bestow to the other, which gets born in the person. At first, he feels that only his group, its inner desires, is “the other.” But then he realizes that the entire world is unified and filled with the Shechina, the Divine presence. And then the spiritual world, the upper reality becomes revealed to him.

Now he begins to understand why he had to go through hatred. This is how the process of his development was arranged from Above. Instead of fortifying his egoism through the society and using the others for his own profit, he had to come to the group in order to lower himself, to bow before the force hidden in the society, to develop the desire to connect with this force of bestowal, unite with it, and simply drawn in it.

This is the prayer of the many since he asks for peace for this society, meaning that he aspires to reach the property of bestowal, until he establishes such a connection with this society that there remains no difference between them, and they merge into one whole.

When a person acquires the form of the society, completely unites with it, this signifies their unity, “mating while striking” (Zivug de Hakaa) since untimately, this unity works against his egoism. He strikes his ego in order to unite with the others and in that extent builds his spiritual Partzufim, the forms of unification, and acquires the Creator’s properties.

The form he conceived in his head now becomes realized in him; it spreads in his “body,” fills it, and assumes the form of the Upper One. By receiving the intention “for the sake of bestowal” and clothing in the Light of Hassadim (Mercy), the desire to enjoy becomes fit to receive fulfillment, the Light of Hochma (Wisdom): the Creator’s form.

The Light of Hassadim lacks form; it spreads in breadth, as the gifts of a “generous hand”: for all and without any restriction. But when the Light of pleasure, Hochma, starts to clothe the desire, it imparts it with a certain form of bestowal called “the name of the Creator,” the form of the Upper One. Thus, by virtue of Zivug de Hakaa man attains the Creator.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/27/11, Preparation for the WE! Convention

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Question: How can an egoistic heart ask for bestowal?

Answer: Of course, an egoistic heart is unable to ask for bestowal. It prays for something that it deems better for itself. It doesn’t know how to pray in any other way.

However, the nature in which a person exists is one thing, but how he uses that mechanism is a different matter. Even though he is an egoist and his prayer and attitude to others are egoistic, nevertheless he arranges this entire mechanism in such a way that lets him attract the Light that reforms.

How does the Torah, the Light that reforms act? I am an egoist and I plan on using it egoistically, but through that I activate a mechanism that attracts Light to me that turns me into the opposite of what I am today. This means that this Light returns me back to its source.

If I was already asking for bestowal on my own, then I would not need to be brought back to the source. Everything would already be clear. However, everything is arranged so that even when I shout for bestowal, this is still reception in disguise.

The same thing happens on every level. When I ascend to a certain level and check: What did I pray for? What did I do? What love for the neighbor did I talk about? What I find is that it was all egoistic. What seemed like holiness on the lower level appears as “garbage” when you look at it from above.

But there is a special mechanism of ascent: the connection between AHP of the upper one and Galgalta Eynaim of the lower one. If I face darkness and confusion, and I lower myself before the society that helps me to do so, then I attract the Light that reforms. I mix Malchut with Bina – mercy that reigns in the upper one, with the force of judgment that is in me. That is how I attain my correction.

Therefore, we are not required to be holy from the beginning, but only to organize everything to the extent we are able in order to attract holiness to us. Before that, I am opposite to it! Otherwise, how would it be possible to correct yourself after the breaking?

Every time we receive any new state, all the previous states are erased from our memory so as not to confuse us. The current state is also not very clear to us and from this darkness we have to start arranging everything so as to attract the influence of the upper force to us – the influence of the higher level, the quality of bestowal that we don’t have. We continuously receive a new force and become a new creation.

This is what the common prayer is all about. It is the prayer to acquire the force to be included in society and to feel care for the neighbor.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/27/11, Preparation to the WE! Convention

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Question: Could you tell us about your intention while reading The Book of Zohar?

Answer: Kabbalists teach us what the intention should be. Every person has to actualize what he read to the extent he understands it.

It is impossible to tell you about the intention. This is something that cannot be explained to another person since the intention comes from a person’s inner state which he reveals.

I am in a state that’s unknown to me. I reveal it as it unfolds inside of me. From this state that becomes revealed to me, I create the intention.

In essence, it is impossible to clothe this intention into words. There are no words for it. That’s because it includes a person’s inner desire (Hissaron) and the degree of his connection with the upper reality through his attempts to find the means that will bring him to the highest possible closeness to the Host, the Creator – to adhesion (Zivug de Hakaa) with Him.

What are those means? They are the books, the teacher, and the group. A person includes everything that he understands and feels from their entire sum total, and through them attains unity with the Creator.

All of these means have to be present. If you miss even one of them, then you don’t have the right contact. And in addition, each of them must be properly balanced with the others.
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/28/11, The Zohar

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You and I were not created by accident. The Creator wanted for creation to become the same as He, and everything happening to us is moving toward this goal. Therefore, on this path we have to go through the realization that we are divided, separated, and hate one another. However, we receive the force to unite above this hatred, which gradually increases more and more. That’s because we cannot overcome and rise above all of the hatred reigning in us all at once. But if we can overcome it gradually, step by step, then we will acquire the quality of bestowal, mutual attention, care, the quality of Bina that does not allow us to do to another what we hate. And after that we reach love for the neighbor “as for ourselves.”

That is why the entire science of Kabbalah, which is called the science of truth, talks only about unity. It’s because inside unity, we, people, attain the qualities of the Creator.

If people get together and unite in one desire in order to multiply every person’s forces and give each other the guarantee that through their common efforts they will attain the desired goal and will gain greater confidence, this is called “a society of clowns and liars.” That’s because they think that through their unity they will be able to gain greater egoistic benefit. Therefore, their common prayer acts destructively and separates them from the goal.

A person has to understand that he unites with others only in order to discern how to ascend above his nature. It’s not to receive greater force from the society or to satisfy the demands of his egoism, but to enter inside this society and start bestowing to it. This is the only force we should look for.

The force of bestowal to society comes form the Light, from the Creator, from what is concealed inside of a person’s relationship with the society, the group. That is to say, the group has to consist of people who unite precisely in order to attain the Creator, the common quality of bestowal.

The Creator does not exist separately from creation. The quality of common bestowal does not exist unless there is a person who reveals it. Therefore, if a person includes himself into the group that aspires to the quality of bestowal and there he desires to find this force, to attain this quality, he starts to understand from his unity with others that this care about society, inside of which the quality of bestowal exists, or care for the Creator, which is the same thing, is the prayer of the society.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/27/11, Preparation to the WE! Convention

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Question: What prevents a person from reaching the prayer of society if he already sees that all his intentions are for his own sake?

Answer: The problem is that a person understands that his intentions are egoistic, but he is willing to tolerate that. That’s because he only sees how ugly these intentions are, but he doesn’t understand what kind of harm they cause him. This is the entire problem!

If I simply accept the fact that I am an egoist, then so what? But I have to feel how this is killing me. Only then will I be able to separate from my egoistic intentions. My own ego will separate me from the thing that causes me harm.

So at first, I separate from my egoistic thoughts by virtue of egoism itself. That means Pharaoh brings the sons of Israel closer to the Creator.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/27/11, Preparation to the WE! Convention

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Everything depends on the intention with which a person approaches the environment from the very beginning. Does he come to the environment (the teacher, the books, and the group) to profit egoistically and receive knowledge, status, satisfy his pride? Or does he want to receive from the environment the property of bestowal, the shape of the Creator who hides inside the society?

If a person approaches the environment, the society correctly, he finds the Creator’s properties there. This is called: “The Creator dwells among His people.” This is the main test of one’s attitude.

Naturally, when we just start our path, we come with ordinary egoistic desires accepted in this world. And even though we are ready to listen to the nice words about love of others and bestowal, we nevertheless count on gaining something for our egoism.

And only under the condition that a person is in the right environment for a considerable period of time and absorbs its external forms of bestowal, lowering himself or herself before the teacher, the books, and the group, he gradually receives from them a force for comprehending and sensing spirituality, the force of unification. This force helps him realize that unification is not achieved through external actions: screaming, jumping, or rejoicing, but requires constant, hidden inner work invisible to the eye.

This work is performed at what is called “night.” And then a person gradually begins to acquire the property of bestowal. The transition takes place when a person begins to see the environment, its inner potential as the force that can correct him. He understands that without this force, he will be lost. This gives raise to the “prayer of the many.”

When a person realizes that one has to pray for the society, he acquires the intention for the sake of bestowal, the “garment” of the Light of Hassadim (Mercy), the right garment for his desire to receive.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/27/11, Preparation for the WE! Convention

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Question: I have a very strong desire to advance and reach bestowal, but I am totally confused. Where should I turn: within, to the group, or to the Creator?

Answer: A person doesn’t know what the true prayer is. For the time being, he simply feels pressure and doesn’t comprehend what is happening with him and where to turn. Only after a long time, when he reaches contact with the Creator through the friends, does he begin to visualize his appeal, the prayer, correctly.

But for now, it is simply an outcry from the heart. And don’t dread it too much that you are all tangled up and don’t understand; after all, you don’t really know what is going on within you. For now, you register only external changes and corporeal experiences in this outer shell that you are in. But inside, your soul looks like a “matryoshka” (a Russian nesting doll), and each of us contains 125 such internal nesting parts.

At present, you perceive only the very outermost “matryoshka” (shell) which doesn’t yet have anything to do with the 125 ones. But the rest of your inner “matryoshkas” are affecting you as well. And even though right now you feel that you are performing some puny actions (since you don’t feel their results), but by using them, you activate the parts of your internal soul.

Therefore, we need to treat seriously everything we do even when we just seem to sing and have a good time with the friends, and we think that this is something silly. But thereby, you set the whole worlds in motion, like an embryo inside his mother, who determines her entire existence without having any idea of it, or as a newborn baby who doesn’t understand why a dozen of people are suddenly working for him.

So it is with us, while we still don’t understand anything about spirituality. But the moment we at least somewhat start yearning for it, we immediately activate all our inner spiritual systems and all upper worlds!

And so it follows that you are still far from seeing and being able to understand the impact you cause and what you are doing, but it doesn’t matter. The key is to keep doing whatever you are able to do today.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/25/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Behind every word or phrase of The Zohar, we have to try to recognize forms of connection between man and his environment. In essence, this is exactly what The Zohar describes. There is nothing more in reality besides the forms of connection between a person and those around him.

Even now, when I see people and the walls of this room in front of me or hear the noises coming from outside, all of these are forms of connection between us. There is nothing besides these forces connecting us, which are forces of desire which appear this way to me in my earthly perception of reality.

In the same way, if we try, then we will begin to imagine other kinds of our connection, other forces which don’t operate inside reception, but inside bestowal among us. Then we will see that in reality, there have never been egoistic connections between us. We felt them like in a dream so that based on this illusory connection, which is opposite to the true one, we would recognize the true connection, the only one that exists in contrast from the illusory life—the desire to enjoy with all of its power.

After all, this desire existed only in order for us to transform it into the desire to bestow. The Creator supports it in this artificial form, but it does not have any real essence of its own. Only the force of bestowal exists in the world.

That is why The Zohar describes all the varieties of the force of bestowal to us, which we reveal in all the various forms, as well as the forces of reception standing opposite them, being the basis upon which the forces of bestowal are revealed in the process of man’s inner war.

This is the only thing we have to think about while reading The Book of Zohar, making efforts so the revelation of these spiritual levels will help us and will become revealed in us so we will include them inside of us.
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/23/11, The Zohar

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We have just been reading The Zohar for over half an hour. I ask you, during all of this time, how many moments did each of you yearn for the arrival of the Light that reforms, expecting something to happen? It is written that the angels asks a person after he dies, “Did you study the Torah and did you await salvation?”

How many moments did you spend in exertion, trying not to miss out and to "catch" something very important, like a goalee guarding the gate, or a hunter chasing prey? Were you passionately anticipating it, the way you might feel before a long-awaited date with your beloved? How long did you remain in this state? How many times did you return to this aspiration again?

Only these moments count in life. They are summarized and they determine the speed of life. The other moments don’t really exist….
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/23/11, The Zohar

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Question: What is intention?

Answer: Intention is what you desire from your state. The important thing isn’t what you say or do, but precisely where you aim, what result you expect from the present state, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s yours or ours.

Stated differently, how do you want to see your following state? How do you envision it now? What will you do: bestow to the Creator, receive for yourself, earn, steal, pass on, give out? How do you envision yourself in the next state? This is your intention.

That is why only the human has intentions. He is the only one in all of creation that is outside of time. The intention does not operate in the material time, but in spiritual time, which lies above our desire.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/20/11, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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