Question: How can I keep the Light of Purim all year round?

Answer: There is no need to hold anything; this is wrong because it is an egoistic form of the desire to grasp, to possess, to dominate. I don’t care what will happen in the next moment!

If I am in the property of bestowal like Mordecai, I do not need anything else! The main thing is to be similar to the Creator and I am not interested in anything but that.

That is why you should not think about how to become fulfilled quickly and inflated like a bubble. On the contrary, you must think how to achieve such a property when no event will be able to influence you, to touch you. All the time, you will break away from yourself and rise above higher and higher to be completely only in the property of bestowal.

And the fact that you have such a healthy appetite, “I want to be full all the time,” is also good. This is useful; it drives a person forward. So, go on!

In the end, you will be able to be content only when the Light of Hassadim and the Light of Hochma fill Malchut in a balanced way. Then, you will really be able to fill your entire Malchut, all your desires together with the whole world. But on your own—no way.
[101679]
From the Virtual Lesson 2/24/13

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Question: What is the Light of Hassadim in the group?

Answer: The Light of Hassadim in the group is when everyone is included in the others and does not require anything for himself but to be included in the others: forgetting about himself, getting out of himself, and falling into the others.
[101677]
From the Virtual Lesson 2/24/13

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Question: How can a manager of an enterprise help his employees feel the common inner strength?

Answer: People will only be able to feel the collective strength as a consequence of workshops on integral unity; there is no other way. This becomes possible as a result of interacting when they work according to the integral program and discuss special topics that we propose.

They suddenly begin to see and hear one another. One speaks and the other complements instead of arguing because every person must lower themselves before the opinion of others. Together they become inspired by their collective work; they seek collective knowledge, collective sensations.

And suddenly, something light and warm begins to form between them in the middle of the roundtable, something promising that makes them want to stay. They feel a completely new energy that lifts them out of their bodies and gives them a new charge, a kind of inspiration, feeling as if you separated from your body and that your life is this community. This is what you need to give them at the seminars.

This feeling does not disappear after the seminar. People hold on to it, miss it; this feeling becomes their life.
[101381]
From KabTV’s “Professional Secrets” 2/8/13

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Question: How can we deserve to feel the holiday of Purim internally?

Answer: It’s very simple. Don’t we feel it? When we try to work on the connection with each other we constantly have some problems; suddenly we begin to criticize each other, etc. Or we arrive at a convention and everything seems fine. We invest our efforts as much as we can and after it, we suddenly feel a descent such as we have never experienced before.

As a result, we begin to understand that these are necessary states of cause and effect. Of course, this doesn’t make feel us better. But we can’t get away from them in any way because we still don’t have the Light of Hassadim, a clear intention to bestow.

When we acquire this intention, we have nothing to fear. No matter what happens to me, I am still in the property of bestowal; I rise above my world, above egoism, above what I have; nothing is important to me, I am afraid of nothing. I need nothing but to correct and pull the world to the same state, and in this case a person does not fall.

Sometimes, he is a little tired of his work, but he meets this extra load with gratitude, with an understanding that it’s necessary because it’s advancement. It can’t be otherwise because this is “joyful suffering,” the suffering of love, when we strive to fulfill all the conditions in order to unite.
[101624]
From the Virtual Lesson 2/24/13

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Question: How can I tell Haman from Mordecai?

Answer: Haman is our simple, straightforward egoism: I want, I need. “I want to rule over everyone, I want to be great, I want to…I-I-I.” Moreover, it’s not simply the egoism with which we were born but the egoism that we cultivate in the group.

When we start treating each other nicely in the group, preparing meals together, studying together (we are good guys, we are friends), suddenly something unexpected explodes between us: distrust, rejection, and hostility. This is the secondary egoism that appears as a result of our attempts to get closer to each other, and it’s called “Haman.” We need to reveal it as much as possible and not to be afraid of it.

That is why it’s necessary to prepare ourselves for the fact that there are very serious revelations of egoism ahead of us that work against our connection of unity in a single Kli (vessel) in which we can reveal the Creator. That is, this is the egoism that is clearly directed against the Creator.
[101619]
From the Virtual Lesson 2/24/13

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Question: What is the difference between Haman, the desire to receive for himself, and Esther, also the desire to receive?

Answer: Esther is the desire to receive that operates secretly. It hides under the Light of Hassadim and is necessary only for drawing the Light of Hochma. In fact, the Light of Hochma gets into the Light of Hassadim as if ennobled at its expense: I want only to bestow! Like a guest who, in front of the master, does not want to receive anything for himself even though he has huge egoistic desires, but he restricts himself and only wants to please the master—to bestow.

How can he bestow? Then he discovers that he can do so only if he receives from the master. He begins to weigh how much he can receive. And the part that he can receive inside the Light of Hassadim for bestowal in order to please the master is called “Esther.”

Haman is the entire Kli (vessel), huge desires. It will never be fulfilled directly; the first restriction was done on it, and it will go to Esther. In the end, Esther brings her entire hidden desire under the Light of Hassadim that becomes clothed on the Light of Hochma. That is, by changing our intention to receive in order to bestow, we raise the Light of Hassadim.
[101616]
From the Virtual Lesson 2/24/13

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Question: How should I work on my inner states? Accept them? Rise above them? Ask for something? Demand?

Answer: It depends on your level.

We gradually begin to enjoy the fact that we can be above our states. It isn’t masochism or blind detachment; we are aware of our feelings, we calculate things, and at the same time detach ourselves from them. It is the next stage in creating the Masach (screen): A person tries to be detached from good and evil and to really be objective and independent of the feeling of his body.

Question: How can we hold on to this level, allowing the pleasant and the unpleasant feeling do their work in the vessel, and at the same time observe this from the outside?

Answer: In the Book of Proverbs, it says, “Acquire truth and don’t sell it.” We cannot discern this externally. There are many layers in a person’s calculations and it is impossible to remain at one point all the time until the upper Light makes it “stable.”

But if a person makes efforts and tries, he really wants this to happen. First he is given a feeling that he can “hold on to this standard.” Then, of course, he is sent a feeling of failure and powerlessness. Then it turns out that he cannot even think about it, and then he holds on to this thought, but cannot fulfill it. This is how the four phases typical of this process develop.

But in any case, in the whole scale of feelings, from maximal negativity to maximal positivity, I have to try to hold myself at this point and focus on the goal. No matter what happens, it makes no difference to me. Although the feelings can tear me apart, I rely on one thing only and “lock” myself on the goal.

All this is possible only at “the center of the group“. It isn’t beyond the horizon nor above the clouds; it is only in the center of the group that I find and discover the spiritual world. By working with the group, I begin to discover that I am not surrounded by coincidental faces but by special people who were chosen from Above. Together they make up a whole network, and if I am incorporated in the group, if I am ready and assist it with all my powers, then I am included in Malchut, in the Shechina.

In addition, I get to know the force that sustains it and that is revealed in it, and I want to identify with that force. I influence the friends from below and it influences me from Above, and there, in the group, we finally meet in order to unite. Then it turns out that the group is our common “baby”….
[101634]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/21/13, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”

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Question: How are the two types of work we have to do connected: the internal and external vessels and desires?

Answer: Different opportunities come along occasionally and you should understand that your inner vessels are in the “center of the group” and everything that you feel internally has nothing to do with spirituality. Spirituality begins at the point where you want to break off from your “self” and to be incorporated in the group and lose yourself there by fulfilling only what is in the mind and heart of the friends.

Question: On one hand, a person lowers his head, and on the other hand, the group influences him, so where do we fail?

Answer: We don’t understand that spirituality is actually hidden in the connection between us. It is not quite clear to what extent so that we would yearn only for the “center of the group” where the Creator is and also the created being, the spiritual worlds, the Shechina, and everything there can be. We are learning how to relate to this central point correctly.

But we have to act and, in the meantime, our actions are not intensive enough. All the friends have to understand that it is only in the center of the group that we build our collective feeling and mind. Ibur (gestation) is associated with three elements: the Light, the sparks, and the vessels. It is only by connecting them that we reach a substantial “volume” in which something already happens even if it is on the initial primitive level of an “amoeba.” We need at least this for the spiritual start.

On the whole, it is about a long process that lasts until the end of correction. It all exists in the connection between us to the extent that the group attaches new people to it.

Even now we already have all sorts people in our global group. If they start to connect, then a kind of a mini model of the end of correction is formed in a qualitative sense, which contains all the possible details of perception, representatives of all the nations, all the streams, everything there is. If we could connect, we could form a nucleus, a beginning of the correction of all of humanity and of all of reality in general, of all the worlds. In this unity there would be all the “seventy nations of the world,” and then we would also bring all the nations in the external world to unity. We would complete the correction for them by collecting all their attributes, which means that we would effectively accomplish our mission and everyone else would join on their own. After all, if we have already corrected ourselves together with the attributes of the world that have been part of us for ages, it is done.

This is what we are required to do, and it is all “the center of the group.”

Question: What prevents us from taking a step towards this connection and to focus on it?

Answer: I can prepare a thousand reminders for myself about the fact that the center of reality is the center of the group. It won’t help. It is because my egoistic desire negates and erases this. There must be a stronger influence of the environment’s opinion that constantly pressures me and by that obligates me to think and worry only about that.

Question: Under what conditions is this bestowal fulfilled?

Answer: We need to make efforts; we need to attack; there has to be the unity of Israel, the Torah, and the Creator. Perhaps we are missing one of these elements. A person himself cannot perform an altruistic action and only the Light can bring him closer to that. This means that we need the source of the Light; we need to summon it and obligate it. And this requires the “prayer of many“.
[101631]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/21/13, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”

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Question: I have been studying Kabbalah for two years. How can I help my husband join the studies of Kabbalah if he refuses to do so?

Answer: You can help him only in one thing: Do not include him in anything and do not influence him in any way. Just let him feel that you are grateful to him for allowing you to study. Otherwise, it will be worse.

You cannot force a person by putting pressure on him. If he does not want to study, he doesn’t need to. The only thing that is required of him is that he does not prevent you from studying. This is enough to make him gradually move toward it himself. If you do not put pressure on him, you will see that he will gradually become interested in what you are studying. Give him a book that is far from Kabbalah but talks about our worldly problems so that he understands that this is not mysticism or something like that.

In general, act in a hidden manner a bit, like Queen Esther. It is not by chance that she symbolizes a special female feature, a special approach to the man from whom she cannot escape.

Men are more direct, but a woman can quietly and calmly incline him to what she desires.
[101550]
From the Virtual Lesson 2/24/13

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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 2: In order to clear all that up, we need to make some preliminary inquiries. And not, God forbid, where it is forbidden, in the Creator’s essence, of which we have no thought or perception whatsoever, and thus have no thought or utterance of Him, but where the inquiry is a Mitzva (commandment/good deed), the inquiry of His deeds. It is as the Torah commands us: “Know thou the God of thy father and serve Him,” and as it says in the poem of unification, “By your actions we know you.”

At the beginning of the “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Baal HaSulam raises five major questions that a person faces on his way to spirituality, and then he adds preliminary inquiries to them that are meant “to clean things up.” After all, my questions are accompanied by confusion and are surrounded by trash and “weeds” that prevent my understanding, clear examination, arrangement of everything in its place, and the ability to differentiate things.

It is as if I search in a dirty messy place, and so the first thing I must do is clean it up and find out what it is exactly that I am looking for, where exactly, why, and according to which rules. This means that there are many additional conditions that I have to discover in order to clarify my questions and to find the answers and filling for them.

So we first get rid of everything that is redundant; we get rid of it simply, and have no contact with the Creator while we search. The Giver remains up there out of reach because He is not dressed in the matter of our desire so we cannot study Him. From the “Preface to The Book of Zohar” we know that we can study and investigate only matter and form dressed in matter; if we can dress our matter with the form of giving, then from it—which means from the Creator’s actions “by Your actions we know you”—we can study Him.

It is about the actions that He performs on me by having created me. From that moment on, I begin to work on the inner changes, having connected to Him, until I attain the whole process, until the end of my correction. Thus I get to know Him better, and He operates on me more and more. At the end of my correction, I reach the exact same form He has and the upper is completely dressed in me.

Thus, “by Your actions we know You,” I don’t know Him but His image that is dressed in me by his actions. This is the origin of the word “Bore – Creator,” which means “Bo-reh – come and see.”

We solve many problems this way: We immediately stop “floating in the clouds” in an attempt to study the upper and “come down to the ground,” to the basis of everything. It is because the main thing for us is to discover the Creator.

All our other actions are arranged around that, our whole life, all of reality. All this is only so that the created being will discover the Creator.

So we have to remember that we are innately limited by our very form. Only by the Creator’s actions can we know Him, as it says: “by Your actions we know You.” This approach solves many philosophical problems, and besides, it sets me in the right direction showing me that it is I who needs to change and not the Creator. I have to act in order to discover His actions; all the beginnings are in me. I am the changing element in the system. It is the most important thing.

We are not speaking about Atzmuto, about Ein Sof (Infinity), about eternity, about wholeness, about the absolute. It is only I who discovers the Creator according to the changes in me; it clears things up from the confusion and the usual trash and brings us closer to the right implementation.

Question: Why do we attain the Creator by His actions, as it says: “We know You by Your actions?”

Answer: If you tell me about your mother, I will probably hear about what a great cook she is and how she takes care of you. You are telling me about her actions but not actually about her! Try to take the actions out of the story and you will see that it is impossible.

Question: So what are the Creator’s actions?

Answer: You are His action. It is His deed; this is how we are made, unable to attain anything except for His actions. It is only His actions and not their essence that we see and it is only about His actions that we speak.
[101500]
From the 4^th part of Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/27/13, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar“

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