Question: Which requests reach the Creator?

Answer: First, we have to understand that if a request doesn’t come from a collective request, it is not accepted at all. People cry to the Creator from the bottom of their hearts when they break down and at the point of death, but nothing helps. Why? It is because their prayer doesn’t go through the filter, which is the only way a request is accepted. It is only through the system, only through the connection between us, no matter if it is good or bad, it is only with regard to the connection that the request is accepted.

Question: How can I tie my desire with someone else’s desire when I don’t feel it at all?

Answer: Try to feel or at least cry because you cannot feel. After all, you do understand that your single, individual desire cannot act in any way. If two arrive, that’s great! Well, what do you want? To establish a connection, to unite? You quarrel? But you are two; do you clarify the relationship between you? That’s good!”

Why is it time for correction now? It is because people begin to feel that there is something wrong in the connection between them. But was it okay before? Before, there was no connection. Today, we feel that there is something wrong and that we have to correct it; so the correction begins from our time onward.

If we don’t take into account the connection between us, no matter what it is like, then there is nothing with which we can come to the Creator. Personally, I cannot do anything; there is nothing to correct in me. The only thing we have to correct is the connection between me and others.

Question: You told us once about the system that converts an unreal request into a real one. Did you refer to the request of the individual or of the general?

Answer: There is no request of the individual! The fact that I cry out by myself doesn’t mean that my request is individual. The main thing is what I cry about. This is what determines whether my prayer is a prayer of many or not.

People think that if a Minyan (ten men) gathers, it is a prayer. It can be one person who asks for connection, for the correction of the system, and then it called “a prayer of many.”

So, when we approach the study, it is very important to come with the right request. Otherwise, the study distances us, and, instead of the elixir of life, it becomes the potion of death. We see that people run away, escape, and fall. Why does that happen? It is because the same Light that operates in the wrong way brings you darkness, which means that it leads you to the goal through the long path.
[82775]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/12/12, The Zohar

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Question: In discussing child education two to three years ago, I brought up a book by G.B. Oster, Bad Advice. In this book, the author teaches good things through a paradox, in a deformed way, such as hit the grandmother, take the candy, and so on. Why is this method considered wrong from the perspective of integration?

Answer: Because people who hear and absorb the negative information paint the images inside themselves against their will. Negative fragments remain in them, which later enable them to act. It does not matter that at this moment the person disagrees with it, this fragment, this image, this action still registers in them. I think that this is not the way to work.

It is very difficult for a person to work from a negative example. This requires a special analysis, the strength to ascend, overcome, and recognize evil, to bring goodness opposite the evil, to understand what needs to be done to rise above evil, and to build a good attitude, which is opposite to evil; in other words, to completely invert it in the opposite direction. This requires a great effort and mind. A regular person cannot just do it.

Let him try to do something positive instead of doing something negative, not just in colors but in expressions and poses. Let him “transfer” not just the smile or an evil expression from one image to another, but also with postures, gestures, correspondence between the bodies, and so on.

A person does not understand how comprehensive the difference is between the positive and the negative. Naturally, when a person is shown a strict negative scenario, he rejects it because he does not fully like this scenario. But it becomes stored, registered somewhere in him, and the person will still use it! One cannot be taught good actions through negative examples.

Comment: There are authors in Russian society, like Mikhail Zhvanetsky, to whom people listen; they are considered to be very wise. Zhvanetsky bases his works on negative examples. He takes a certain negative situation, and, every time, he finds a funny solution, a way out of it.

Answer: With all due respect, I do not think that Zhvanetsy and other “philosophers” like him create a revolution in society. He brings out the faults of society, shows them to the people, and they like it.

This resembles the cartoon where a wolf who is not hungry eats a bunny and then sits and picks his teeth. You explain his bad action to him, and he agrees, “Yes, really…”

The audience sits and listens to its faults, but there is no result. Even though there is a certain need for this and a social demand, this is not education.

Comment: The entire underground culture of Russian intellectuals, for example, the writings of Igor Guberman, is based on the comparison of good and evil.

Answer: Between us, this is purely a Jewish approach. Raykin and everyone else also used this. This is how the Jews preserved themselves. They laughed at themselves. In this way, they defended themselves by turning everything that was negative into something positive, a joke. They made the situation better with positive emotions in order to survive everything.

I do not see this same, humorous approach among other nations. This is a consequence of exile and suffering. This philosophy belongs to an exiled, degraded people who were hit in the face and are trying to turn it into a joke because otherwise the situation would be very painful to them. In other words, this philosophy does not lead to a change in the society.
[82722]
From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/28/12

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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 33: And you must know that any contentment of our Maker from bestowing upon His creatures depends on the extent that the creatures feel Him—that He is the giver, and that He is the one who delights them. For then He takes great pleasure in them, as a father playing with his beloved son, to the degree that the son feels and recognizes the greatness and exaltedness of his father, and his father shows him all the treasures he had prepared for him.

Question: Why is it so important for the created beings to feel that it is the Creator who brings them pleasure?

Answer: The created beings can feel only that in which they have an equivalence of form. If they want to feel the Creator as the one who bestows, they have to understand what it means; they have to be included in bestowal and actually rise to that height. Then they will receive that pleasure, the same level of existence and power of vitality that the Creator possesses.

Question: There is the example here of a father playing with his son wanting him to regard him as the source of all pleasures. This seems to be a very egoistic act.

Answer: But there can be another example of a similar attitude: A father had the son not in order to enjoy him, but in order to bring him goodness. The father does everything in his power until the son grows in order to bestow upon him. Then when the son grows and receives all the father’s treasures, in understanding and feeling a whole eternal existence, it brings the father contentment. This means that if the Creator enjoys, it’s a sign that I have reached perfection. This is how you should see it, that it stems from His love.

On our part we have to try to bring Him contentment and to bring full and infinite bestowal to the upper force. We receive deficiencies from it, empty desires, and from it we receive the Lights that correct these deficiencies by turning them from in order to receive to in order to bestow. Thus we advance towards resembling the Creator. This is the only correct and desirable way by which we can advance. Accordingly we feel the force of the spiritual life that fills us, called Light.

This process is described in our language, in corporeal language, and so it seems that the Creator cries and feels sorry if we don’t act as we should or if we don’t keep up with the desired pace. Thus Kabbalists convey the reactions that we summon in Him by our undesired actions. However, if we succeed, they say that He is happy.

In one way or another, “the Torah spoke in the language of humans.” This is where the example of the father who intentionally changes his expression towards his son, thus expressing dissatisfaction, desire, or happiness, comes from in order to allow the son to establish the connection with him. But it’s only an expression, since the father himself summons different states and moods in the son, and he is the one who creates the circumstances that accompany his growing up. The child totally obeys his father internally and externally. Therefore, different images appear before him: he either sees that his father is serious, laughing, dissatisfied, or satisfied.

In general, my whole inner world and my environment are all the Creator. Inside it’s totally concealed from me, and on the outside I can attribute the major role to fate and even to the upper force, although I don’t see it yet. The goal is to understand where the “cut,” the difference is, where the self is here.

It says: “There is none else besides Him.” The Creator sends me everything that I feel internally; He controls my thoughts and desires and everything that happens to me, how I receive it, and how I respond to what is going on. In an x-ray, I could see that I have no control over anything, that He manages everything.

So what am I? “I” is the point that wants to reveal the Creator, that’s all. It’s a point that is outside the Creator, the point of separation, of the shattering, the point of my “self,” my basis from which I must discover the Creator and His uniqueness.
[82693]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/11/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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Question: How do the desires on the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking levels of nature differ? Which parameter changes in this scale?

Answer: Part of the Creator that is in still nature turns it into the vegetative level. Another part turns the desire of the vegetative level into an animate one and another part raises the desire of the animate level into the level of the speaking. Each time another qualitative force is added: Malchut of the upper turns into Keter of the lower. The Creator’s force that is concealed in it erupts upwards and gives birth to a new lower level.

The form of the new level is determined directly from Above, while its content, the filling, the essence of the level according to which the level is determined, comes from the Creator. So in all the four phases of the Direct Light there is the same typical matter of the desire to receive, but they are totally different, since each phase has a new supplementary part of the Creator.

The level of still nature can only preserve itself the way the Creator created it. It is called “an embryo in its mother’s womb.”

The vegetative level doesn’t totally annul itself before the upper; it already wants to add something of its own; it receives food only when it wants to eat, etc. It can bring the mother contentment, and accordingly it suffers when it is away from her and happy when it is close to her.

The animate level already comes closer and draws away independently. It already has a mind and it can be opposite or similar to the upper one. Shuddering by the oppositeness, it resembles it again, thus bringing more contentment. It isn’t by chance that we love naughty kids more than quiet ones. It is because you sometimes don’t feel a quiet child, while a naughty child, who causes trouble, makes you feel the discrepancy between the states, and you love him more and feel closer to him. He spurs you and changes your mood and eventually summons love. He constantly carves a “notch” in your heart and sometimes “spreads” something good on it.

As for the level of the speaking, it can take the Creator’s place in the creation. It takes care of everything and sees all of creation as a chance to bestow upon the Creator.

This is what is typical about this development: The more the created being is adhered to the Creator, the more clearly he discovers his oppositeness from Him.
[82690]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/11/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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Question: At the turn of the 20^th to the 21^st century, society chose a certain form of suppression as a way to defend themselves against the growth of linear egoism. This is the way we raise children: We forbid them to speak loudly, express their feelings, and so on. The majority of methods of psychotherapy are based on helping people rid themselves of these barriers and at least begin with freeing a person’s reaction. In the integral method, can a person actualize himself when he rejects this level and aspires toward unity?

Answer: During a class of integral upbringing, we offer the students: “Friends, let us sit in a circle and play a game. Let us be like children because this is a new level where we need to be born. Let us hold hands, touch knees, and look kindly at one another. We are the first to discover this next level. Let us try to pretend we are there. A child grows when he plays, we also want to grow, and, if we will feel all important and so inflated, we will have no other choice but to explode. We will not find anything else.”

In other words, you introduce a very positive, childish learning environment where people can allow themselves to say foolish things, to search, and the main thing is that they really will be able to find completely new relationships and solutions in this new kind communication. What else do we need?
[82677]
From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/28/12

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Question: Do we get any pleasure on the level of “to bestow in order to bestow,” Hafetz Hesed, since we are not using our desire on this level?

Answer: Hafetz Hesed, pure Bina, doesn’t mean a monk’s life in a monastery. Here, it is important for whom and for what I am in the state of Hafetz Hesed, which means that I want Hassadim, only bestowal. A person gets pleasure since his fulfillment comes from the Creator.

It seems that something is lacking in the state of Hafetz Hesed since you don’t receive, so what can you give? Nothing! However, you are giving the feeling of adhesion. You say that you want to adhere to the Creator every way that you can.

He isn’t a hermit who lives in the woods where nothing worries him because his desires are not developed and he is satisfied living a very simple life, like an animal. There are beggars who live on the street who also don’t want a different life.

If you offered to make such a beggar a rich, successful businessman, he would refuse. He would ask, “What do I need this for?” You would answer, “You will make lots of money and then you will be able to rest and do nothing!” He would reply, “But now, too, I rest and do nothing.” He doesn’t understand the difference between Hafetz Hesed that has nothing and lives on the street and someone who only wants bestowal after he already has received everything.

However, this is the entire difference that people don’t get. Hafetz Hesed in the spiritual work is a person who has risen above his very big desires, and it isn’t about such small desires like the desires of a beggar on the street. Above all the very big desires, he has the power to stay adhered to the Creator in a form called “smallness.” Then, he is like a child who adheres to his father, the Creator. He annuls all the other vessels. This is called Hafetz Hesed.

A person reaches this level with big, cruel vessels, but is ready to annul them and to give them up only in order to adhere to the Creator since this is the only way he can be in bestowal and adhesion with the Creator. He is ready for everything, but he has nothing to bestow.

He asks the Creator, “At least give me a chance to be beside you, just to adhere to some point so that I won’t escape you.” At that moment, he cannot express his loyalty in a more powerful way.
[82866]
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/11/12, The Study of the Ten Sefirot

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Question: Today people speak a lot about women being downtrodden, oppressed, etc., but no one speaks about the fact that men also are a pitiful sight.

On one hand, he is essentially oppressed in his family; he has no role. On the other hand, he must provide for the family and bring everything the family needs. But the needs have reached a point where not too many men are able to satisfy this need. Moreover, the crisis is making it so that even the things that a man was able to do before, he is no longer capable of doing. As a consequence, he wants to be rude, violent, beat his wife, etc.

Answer: We are in a state that can explode. This is why this problem needs to be solved as a group, integrally: open courses at universities, on television, through housing boards, community centers, night schools, etc.

In other words, we must educate! First of all, we must educate women, because they will take the education further. Second, the same problem must be solved with men in a group who must be “forced” to attend a course.

We must lift people from the animate level to the “Human” level, because today they are a pitiful sight.

Women are better adapted, more capable and ready for changes, because they have a maternal instinct, a strong drive to live, and to survive no matter what. Overall, the woman is a strong element, and the man is a weak element, and he simply needs to be well organized.

There should be no parasites or loafers. If a person does not work, he needs to study. And a working person still needs to study, in the workplace, for example.

All of us need to complete a course of integral education and upbringing. Nothing can happen without it. This must become a government program. Even if it requires financial investment (I do not think it will need much), the immediate economic effect it will produce in every aspect of society will be many times more beneficial than any expenses.

The main thing is to obligate and require people to come and learn, and to not waste time. But this absolutely must be accompanied by a vast mass media campaign, advertising the method of integral learning as a national government program.

I think that this is very possible in Russia, which has such a high demand for a national idea. In general, this does not threaten the government in any way; they can continue to govern, because we are only speaking about the education of the society.
[82715]
From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/28/12

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Question: How should we build integral relations in the family? Which attributes and features are typical of man’s behavior and woman’s behavior from the integral perspective? Or perhaps there are no such discernments according to the integral method?

Answer: We have what we were given by nature. No matter how hard I try, I cannot be a woman, not in cleaning, washing, ironing, cooking, or in tidying up the whole house in ten minutes. It would take me five hours, and it would still be untidy. Nature hasn’t given man the same skills, the same attitude, the same movement towards what is called a “home.”

This is a woman’s issue, the female part, the female fate, the female area. A woman should manage the home. She should feel that she is the manager of the home and that it is hers.

A lack of education has created a totally different attitude towards the home and towards the family, but as a whole the concern for the home was given to women by nature. You can observe animals: each male mates and leaves, while the female gives birth to the offspring, takes care of them, licks and feeds them, teaches them how to hunt, how to be grown-ups, and sends them out into the world. We can see that in every species. That’s the way it is determined by nature, except perhaps for certain periods of time like when birds sit on eggs together until they hatch.

When we look at people, everything is organized this way, the man goes hunting while the woman guards the home, and you cannot escape this. The closer we are to nature, the more comfortable and pleasant we will feel and the stronger the agreement between us will be. In any case these attributes are part of us and we cannot suppress them in any way. Even if there are mutations, we still have our instincts, Hollywood, unisex, and other fashionable trends do not change a thing.

Therefore, we should arrange a place for everyone to talk about relative rights and duties, and the relationships between men and women. If we don’t have the right relationship, then there will be no family or anything except a negative population growth. So we have to put an end to this once and for all and not dance to the tune of different political parties that want to reach the government, trying to be so original by demanding rights for different groups.

I am not for limiting rights or for the oppression of any group in favor of the other. I am for learning from nature and being similar to it as much as we can; that’s all.

Second, our deck is arranged so that the man has to be the chief provider, and the woman has to take care of the family and educate the children. There is no way we can escape this! We see that if a woman doesn’t do that, then no one does. The result is that the next generation will be even worse than this generation. This means that we have to make sure that the woman will be free, not busy but actually free.

It isn’t that we lock her up in some domestic monastery or behind a locked door. On the contrary, she should study, go to the university at whatever age, and even all of her life. She should take different courses and constantly enrich her knowledge so that she will be an educational role model for her children and her husband. This means that a mother that feels as the real owner of the home should also feel that she is the backbone of the family from whom the whole family will learn about the world, about the right attitude towards life, about education, and everything else.

After all, a man is always under the influence of a woman. Who doesn’t listen to his wife and is secretly afraid of her? It is because everything comes from the mother; after all, we understand our psychology.

So it is very important that we constantly elevate the woman, educate her, and fill her. Through her, this fulfillment passes on to the rest of society. This means that she should take an active part in her own development and education, and also in the education and teaching of all the members of the family.

If we don’t have this revolution, then we will lose the family, the children, our population, society, etc. We can do all this through the woman. In order to do this, the media has to make a little effort. It should not be a government plan but a global one.
[82718]
From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/28/12

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Question: In describing our condition, Baal HaSulam cites the example of a worm living in a radish that eventually comes out into the light. Suppose two worms decided to come out, but on the way one of them despaired, why does that happen?

Answer: It happens because the Creator brings it the “hardening of the heart” and the worm does not agree: “How come? Why hasn’t anyone paved the road? Why is it all this way and not differently?” Pride is what humiliates a person and drives him off track.

Question: What should the other worm do in this situation?

Answer: Try to help as much as it can. But it is not in one’s power to do the work of another.

The main thing here is to lower your head, to lower your nose and to accept the rigid laws of nature. Today, you don’t understand them, and no matter how hard you shout, nothing will change. You can curse the law of gravity law in the same way, will it get “better” as a result, will it stop affecting you?

We must understand that we are in a world of absolute laws and only by keeping them can we advance. But if we resist, the laws will operate accordingly. This is the difference between the path of Torah and the path of suffering.

The same thing happens in our world, but here we live in a society with homemade artificial laws, and so it seems that it is all a matter of buying and selling, and that everything can be “bent,” and you only need to wait for the right opportunity.

On the other hand, by coming out towards the Creator, we discover that there is nothing more fixed and absolute. We either work with Him in a good way or in a bad way; there are no intermediate states.

So when the worm feels the “hardening of the heart,” it should understand that it has no choice. Our problem is the false hope that the bad state will go away by itself and the good one will come by itself. We remember the saying, “What the mind doesn’t do, time does.” But it will do it only if during that time I try to do everything possible despite the mind and despite the lack of understanding of what is going on.

During a storm there is no point in sitting and waiting for good weather. I have to act, even foolishly, without a mind, but to act, to exert myself. Then time will do what the mind doesn’t do.

In other words, by many activities, I do what the mind would probably do without any delay.
[82783]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/12/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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Question: Suppose, a person walks down the street. Someone pushes him hard and “knocks” him out of a positive mindset. Today, modern man tolerates suffering and inhibits a reaction because we are taught to restrain ourselves from childhood. So conflicts rarely happen. People who restrain themselves accumulate a number of unaddressed insults that eventually burst because of some little thing; this usually occurs at home, and the accumulated aggression is dumped onto close ones. This is a typical emotional reaction mechanism of modern man. Maybe you need to respond to that push as if something positive?

Then I become happy about this effect on me because I can become even more included into this general mechanism, become even more integral,

Answer: Of course, it’s positive! I begin to perceive everything that happens as something happening for a reason in this huge enclosed mechanism. If somebody pushes me or something happens to me, it’s in this way that I’m pointed to where I can increase my contact with this general mechanism and enter even deeper into the integral relationship through this negative impact. I’m being shown my lack of my inclusion.

Then I can become happy for this effect on me because I can engage more in this general mechanism, become even more integral, and I can climb the stairs of values, visions, feelings, and awareness of the world around me, the extent of my understanding of its causal flow, its purpose, my vision and role in it. I start seeing further through time.

The fact is that the man who caused harm to me has nothing to do with it. He’s just another element in the common system, the same as I am. And I don’t react to him in any way, neither from the point of gratitude nor from the point of negative emotions. I don’t feel anything with regard to him. I look at this general mechanism that controls us, increasingly engaging us into overall interaction, and I’m extremely happy about that because I reach a new level of existence and life this way.

I need to learn and understand this system, to get a hold of it, and then the depth, which is beyond matter, beyond this tinsel in which we live and play, will unfold in front of me. I don’t want to participate in this game, but I want to be inside of the forces of the mechanism that governs all of this because in that way I’ll become eternal and perfect as the higher Nature itself.

Question: It turns out that by rising above the emerging conflicts and hatred, we reach the depth of the connection with other people. That is, this supposedly negative aggression is fuel for connection?

Answer: In general, yes. We can say that. There’s no doubt that this negative potential, which we have accumulated over the long process of our evolution, is necessary. We came all this way in order to have something to rise above.

Comment: By working with people, especially during group interactions that imply a certain level of unity, there are two stages. The first stage is a so-called positive transference when students begin saying, “What a wonderful methodology! What a wonderful teacher! What a group! How lucky we are!” And then begins a so-called negative transference.

Answer: I think there will be neither acute positive nor negative periods. There will be, of course, relative and passing undulating ups and downs so people will make progress in their understanding and sensing of this methodology and the way it works.

Here we don’t work with our past, and therefore, we prepare people for the fact that today we find a completely new level of perception with which we have nothing to compare. I don’t feel that there is a place for familiar reactions, maybe to a small extent, but not to the extent that they appear in other groups or clubs
[82570]
From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/28/12

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