Question: This congress is quite sudden, and we fear that we will not arrive with sufficient enthusiasm. How can we prepare ourselves in the time we have left so that the convention will not turn into a festival?

Answer: The congress will not turn into a festival; we will make sure it doesn’t. Don’t expect celebrations, but rather most likely a forced march with mattresses. So you can stop worrying, it won’t be easy.

As for the suddenness, the best and most important things appear suddenly, the exodus from Egypt, for example that took place in a hurry. So there is nothing to complain about, it is just the opposite case.

Besides, we are talking about connection and unity, so do we have to make a fuss about that and say: “Friends listen to the news, we have to unite! Let’s prepare ourselves and in six months we are going to unite…”

Are we talking about something new we haven’t heard of? Do we have to start preparing for it only now? Shouldn’t we be ready for that all our life and every moment in our life?

What do we need a congress for? It may very well be that we will receive what we want to attain today and then there will be no need for the convention and other actions will be required instead. We should expect the coming of the Messiah every day.

Question: What should I expect from the congress?

Answer: That by the connection and the unity with others I will attain the general from of bestowal called “the revelation of the Creator,” the revelation of the “upper force.”

Question: This is the first convention that in advance you are not awakening us, leaving room for our exertion. How do we examine ourselves to see whether we are preparing ourselves the way we should?

Answer: I act according to the situation. In the current state, I don’t feel that I can spur you in any way other than what I am doing. Listen to today’s lesson again, and you will see that I am constantly waking you up. It also refers to the recent lessons and workshops.

What can I do if you don’t take this into account, if you don’t pay attention to that? I am trying to do my work. Besides, you should demand! I am ready to give a thousand times more, but where is your demand? You have no spiritual hunger; it is as if you are all full: “Well, tell us some more and we will listen…” what else can I say?

Question: How can we consolidate our forces in order to break through the Machsom (barrier) during the convention?

Answer: We need the unity that is attained out of necessity, the awakening of the desires and the impression. It says: “Each man shall help his friend.” Nowhere does it say that the teacher has to dance before the group in order to evoke joy or tears. The teacher guides the group in the right direction, but the students should follow this direction by themselves. There should be a collective desire among the friends. The teacher cannot do what the group should do, and you are wasting your time if you are hoping for this.
[81968]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/2/12, “Questions About the Congress of Consolidation in North of Israel”

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Question: Does stubborn persistence on the path help overcome all the obstacles in the work?

Answer: It isn’t just stubborn perseverance that’s required of us, but also persistent clarifications. My task isn’t to simply endure like a concrete block, unyielding to any changes and standing on my previously formed opinions and understanding. Naturally, this is not the path of advancement. The Creator wants us to be developing, to analyze our states each time, and to reach more and more qualitative, internal clarifications.

In spirituality, power is not determined by quantity, not by amplifying the “volume.” Greater power always means higher quality. In spirituality, there are no quantitative changes in a force, but only changes in quality.

Every higher degree is above not because it’s simply more powerful. There are three stages: embryo, nurturing, and maturity (Ibur, Yenika, Mochin), and each contains 10 Sefirot. How are they different from one another? In this world, we clearly see that a tiny baby first grows into a big child and then fully grows and becomes an adult. But in spirituality, everything is determined by the measure of understanding, the quality of clarifications.

At first, a person doesn’t know or feel anything and isn’t capable of discerning and clarifying anything. But at least he annuls himself; this is called the still level, NHY (the lower part of the Partzuf: (Netzach, Hod, Yesod). And after, in every state he is already able to remain in bestowal (Hafetz Hesed) – HGT (the middle part of the Partzuf: Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet). When he unites with the higher reason, with the upper force above him, this is called HBD (the upper part of the Partzuf: Hochma, Bina, Daat).

All of these are qualitative clarifications and not mere stubbornness. Stubbornness is required for using every moment correctly.
[81747]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/27/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: In what way is the congress in the North different from the one we had in the Arava desert?

Answer: We already spoke about it yesterday in the workshop when we spoke about how our feelings change as a result of the workshops and our attitude towards them. We saw that each time the beginning is more difficult—it is harder to come to the workshop—but the entrance and the connection come more quickly and our impression grows and becomes clearer and more stable.

It is the same when it comes to congresses, since a congress is a kind of a workshop, but more complex since it is made of more parts, and we have to relate to it accordingly.

Of course, it is harder to get ready for the coming congress and to the impression we should receive from it compared to the Arava convention, in which we felt as if we were leaving Egypt and coming closer to Mt. Sinai. There was something of the legend there, a kind of an adventure. Today we are facing routine work: We are coming to a new place, we fix what is necessary, we have lectures…the previous impression is missing, it has been changed to a “standard procedure,” into routine.

This is good since this is how nature provides us with a more mature attitude so that we will try to penetrate our feelings and to be impressed by more profound things.

We say that in the Arava we attained the level of Shoresh (the root level) of our vessel. The fire burned in us and we felt like heroes looking forward to an adventure. Now we’ve moved on level one or two, the desire is also “thicker,” and our attitude should be more serious. There is no room here for the “airy” euphoria, to the childish impression anymore; we should search for all this inside, in the depths of our feeling and understanding. That’s what’s important.

Today we must attain the connection under difficult conditions, without the first impression, with a desire that is thicker. We have to be thankful for having received a thicker desire. Apparently we’ve managed to do something in the past and now we should attain a much stronger impression than before that isn’t childish but much more mature.
[81971]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/02/12, “Questions About the Congress of Consolidation in North Israel”

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Question: How should a woman, studying Kabbalah, maintain a balance between the material and spiritual life, and is it necessary? Should she simply turn away from everything material and aspire just to spirituality?

Answer: I don’t understand why it applies to women. Why doesn’t this apply to any person? First of all, it doesn’t matter whether it is a man or a woman.

In no case we should turn away from the material life. Kabbalah is not in favor of monkhood or seclusion. We must think about this world, about the essentials for living, this is stated in Kabbalah. A person should provide himself with everything he needs, rather than hope that “maybe someone will help.” He needs to have his place and normal, reasonable income. It is a must! And we have to take care of this first of all, instead of relying on others, waiting for help.
[81942]
From a Talk During the Meal in Toronto 6/19/12

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Question: Yesterday in the workshop I felt inspired by the hopes of all the friends about the coming convention that will take place in a few days in the northern part of Israel. In the next few days, we will try to keep the motto “knocking with repentance!” Today, however, I feel that I am in a completely opposite state, and that I don’t have the demand I had yesterday. I feel as if the carpet has been pulled from under my feet.

Answer: I think that such changes shouldn’t occur from one day to the next but from one moment to the next. A moment ago I was so adhered to the goal, and I yearned for it with such intensity and energy and a moment later it is totally the opposite, as if it had never happened.

What is going on? What is this wonder? To what extent do our desires change? There is no problem here; this is the creation. We are like a TV screen on which we are shown what we see and we don’t see what we are not shown. I am not the one who projects the film, and whatever is projected is not up to me.

The question is how can I become the one who projects the film if I want to see and not the one I am being shown? I don’t want to be in the life I am being shown in this movie. I want another movie!

Question: But can I project this movie, how can I prepare myself correctly from this moment onwards?

Answer: The problem is that I can change my feeling towards the movie that I am being shown only if I reach its real form. I am constantly being sent new Reshimot (reminiscences), signals, new pictures, which constantly come to me from Ein Sof (Infinity). It is a very long way, and in the meantime, I respond to them like an animal yearning for good feelings and escaping the bad ones.

If I don’t want to advance like an animal, like the pictures and the feelings that come to me in which I am in this three-dimensional space that determines my life, if I want to advance quickly and smoothly, I have to identify with the One who projects the movie to me. I have to connect to Him, to His plan, to agree with the process, to agree with what He sends me, and to understand that what he sends me and what I see are two opposites.

There is, for example, a picture that you can see in black and white or in white and black, negative and positive. Here too, I have to change my perception, but for us it isn’t just black and white, but forms that are opposite in many different properties of perception. I have to want to perceive the picture in the way the One who sends it sees it. The picture comes to the three-dimensional screen I am in, and I can’t feel it the way He depicts it, the way He sends it to me. He sends me a picture that is filled with goodness and delight, since He is good and benevolent, while I see it as the absolute opposite in my perception, my desires, and my thoughts.

In order to see it in its real form, I have to change my perception, my attributes, and my desires to the opposite. This is possible. I have another connection with Him besides this picture, and through the picture, I can connect with Him.

If I take this picture, as a whole, the whole world, everything that is before me, and want to connect it all and to attribute it to the One who projects this movie, I connect with Him and can demand that He changes my attributes.

Thus, with the help of the world, by arranging it correctly according to this method, I connect with the Creator, and He performs this change in me. Then I see that the picture changes, and I understand what I have to do. The main thing is to accept this change for the first time. From now on you already know how to proceed, you have a way; you have the right approach. Let’s hope that we will be able to fulfill this first action.
[81813]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/01/12, The Zohar

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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Book of Zohar,” item 15: When you examine the above three states, you will find that one completely necessitates the other in a way that, if one were to be cancelled, the others would be cancelled, too.

If, for example, the third state—the conversion of the form of reception to the form of bestowal—had not materialized, it is certain that the first state in Ein Sof would never have been able to emerge.

It is because the perfection materialized there only because the future third state was already there, as though it is in the present. And all the perfection that was pictured there in that state is like a reflection from the future into the present. But if the future could be cancelled, there would not be any present. Thus, the third state necessitates the existence of the first.

The whole plan, including the initial part, the middle part, and the final part couldn’t exist without the future form. It is said: “The end of the action in is the initial thought,” which is true according to every plan and every action—the future form is mandatory and in itself determines all the details.

The beginning is only the point of the created being, which is separate from the Creator. In the future form, the created being should be like the Creator, when he rises to the level of Adam, the “human” level, stemming from the word Domeh (similar.) This determines the process: to get from the beginning to the end, we must start our development from the end to the beginning. That means that “the end result of an action lies in the initial thought.” An “action” is already the end, the final and complete form, from which we know how to approach things. It is the only way the spiritual work takes place.

In our world we assume that we operate differently, but it isn’t so. It simply seems that way since half of our actions and thoughts are concealed. It seems that something new is going on, that I am doing something, but in fact I don’t see what is going on behind the scenes where everything is arranged for me, where the future form determines the current form from which it is supposed to stem.

It seems as if I go through some process of development and that I can affect it according to my desire and my plan and to obey the desire of those around me. In the meantime, I simply don’t see that everything is predetermined and programmed.

The future form determines everything there is and everything that there will be, and only our attitude affects the feeling, the manner according to which we accept what is happening.

So we don’t need to think about the actions themselves at all. Our intention is the action. Our attitude towards what is going on is the one new element we can add on our part according to the principle of “Thou hast hemmed me in behind and before.” The Creator holds everything in His hands and all the created being has to do is to change his perception of reality as he accepts it as good, in equivalence of form, or in the form of suffering.

Question: How can it be that although the final phase already exists we still have to make our own independent efforts?

Answer: Our independent efforts are necessary only so that we will want to format new internal values for the new perception. If you waste your energy in order to change the world, it only means that you are foolish. You don’t need to change the world in the present but to contact the future. Animals do it instinctively, and man developed this ability when he climbed down from the tree.

After all, it is impossible to advance without knowing the future. Ancient pagan beliefs were intended only to connect to the future. Today we simply don’t understand them and that actually the customs, the dances, the rituals, and even the martial arts were designed not in order to harm someone but only to “lock” the future upon ourselves.

Man has always faced the problem of contacting the future and of feeling it. If I shoot an arrow from a bow, for example, I only have to capture the moment in which I actually hit the target, feel the future moment in which the arrow already reaches the target. That’s enough. This is called “living the future,” being in contact with it. Then by that feeling I can arrange my actions on my way to it.

But we have not been developing in this direction for quite a while since the growing ego has deprived us of the natural perception that was in our basis and we lost contact with it.

If I don’t know the future form and don’t connect to it, I don’t act; it is a sign that my desire isn’t clarified yet. So there is nothing to cry about—I have to aim all my actions towards the connection with the future.

Our future is the attribute of bestowal and I have to express it by different means. When it is clear to me how I have determined my future form, I ask for its correction and then I discover it.

Accordingly, now too, if I imagine the group correctly, it shows me the future in which I am totally connected to it in all my attributes. This is my first spiritual level. On the next level I will be given a greater egoistic desire, I will draw away from the friends again, I will begin to disrespect and hate them even more in order to reunite with them after I overcome these interruptions. This process continues until we become like Rabbi Shimon’s students, united above the burning furnace of hatred.
[81819]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/1/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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Question: In ancient Greece, the birthplace of the foundations of psychology, four types of people were distinguished according to their individual characteristics: sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholic, and choleric.

In modern psychology, the branch dealing with diagnostics of individual qualities is very broad. A person wants to know about himself and his properties in order to maximize his potential.

Why don’t we use, let’s say, 16 types of individual properties in the integral methodology, instead of only four?

Answer: Because these are egoistic qualities corresponding to four types of egoism. But there is one more, the fifth one, which all of the other ones come from and which doesn’t have its own shape. Indeed, this corresponds to a four-level structure of human perception and his soul. But all of that is related to egoism.

While egoism was still at work, we really could divide people into these types, and make calculations with respect to their zodiac signs. Up to this day, many magazines publish all kinds of divination.

But we see that this is nothing we can really work with. Why do we relate to a fact that has outlived itself? We have become different people, and we no longer have that. Outwardly, each corresponding temperament manifests itself, of course, but there is nothing we can do with it today.

If before you could pick a pair according to the sign of the zodiac, try to select a couple according to astrology today. Would you get happy marriages from that? No. If you give some advice to a sanguine and other advice to a choleric, would they be happy? No. So why do we need this old classification?

It used to be correct about the older active egoism that was linear, individual, and directed towards self-needs.

But now I no longer have my personal needs. I don’t want anything. They went up to the next level where I feel some need, but can’t tell what it is. I don’t see where to find the source of fulfilling my needs. I get into some kind of sexual perversion or spend time somehow, in order to forget myself. In addition to that, I get into drugs, terror, or something else because I don’t see the source of pleasure.

And it can come to me only through the integral society when I place myself into it. Thus, I must enter the integral society and then in there, in its heart, I’ll find the source of my fulfillment. But today, a person is still not at the level where he realizes that.
[81700]
From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/24/12

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Question: A member of our organization, a very emotional adult, developed sleep problems. He went to see a specialist and was prescribed a medication called Ritalin. I was simply shocked by this. His problem is that he does not express himself enough, according to his nature, and the doctor limits his self-expression even more.

Should this impulsive, naturally vocal person still be given a place in the organization for him to realize himself?

Answer: If you help him properly set his mind towards group work, he will feel such strength from it, such a warm organization, that he will have no problem restraining himself, so other people will have no problem actively participating in the discussion. This happens automatically; every person becomes its balanced particle under the influence of the common field. Thus no pressure or limitation is needed here.

We understand that specialists have no other tools at their disposal; they automatically prescribe Ritalin, and this basically is the essence of their profession, if it may be called so today.

People need to be put together in a circle, given a proper intention, attitude, and instructions; you need to watch them to make sure that they behave in an undulating manner in relation to the group, going up and down. Everyone moves similar to the way you churn cream to make butter: above the group – beneath the group, above the group – beneath the group.

And suddenly a new body appears between them, which has an absolutely new life of its own. And as they feel themselves in it, they begin to feel that this new thing is the next stage of my development, I am in it. Instead of associating myself with my body, I associate myself with this something common we have all begotten together, and there I am no longer sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic, or melancholic, I simply include everything in me. I am all the qualities put together.
[81689]
From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/24/12

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Question: Can we say that only my attitude separates my current state from the next state?

Answer: Attitude determines everything, or in other words, the intention. When you change your intention, you change the worlds in your perception. The difference between this world and the world of Ein Sof (Infinity) is in the intention. All the states differ only according to your attitude, to your intention. In fact there is nothing but the state of Ein Sof. Everything else is a picture that we depict by our intention.

Question: Today I hate and I don’t like the people I come in contact with during the day. On the other hand, if I respected them, any contact with them could bring me pleasure and I would gladly help them all day long. Is it a good connection that I need or is the force that will be revealed the important factor here?

Answer: It is the main thing. The point is not to be “nice,” or “sweet.” You have to unite with others because in the unity you discover the Creator. In Kabbalah, this is called a Mitzva (commandment): You are fulfilling a commandment.

On the whole, the purpose of all our actions is so that we will become equal to Him, like a guest who becomes equal to the host. In other words, to bring the Creator contentment, just like He brings us. So the right attitude towards others should be aimed at attaining a good attitude towards the Creator. Without it, why do I need to be in good relations with those around me? For my own good? This is absolutely contrary to what is expected of me.

So it says: “The end of the action is in the initial thought,” and “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are one”; it is on this principle that we should establish everything.

A Kabbalist uses any contact with others only in order to advance. He performs necessary physical actions in order to make a living, but he always calculates what energy, what attention is required of him in order to perform spiritual actions and thus bring the Creator contentment. Thus a Kabbalist uses the world in order to please the Creator.

Question: Does he enjoy doing this?

Answer: Yes, not in order to enjoy, but in order to perform the necessary actions. The pleasure is not the reason for his actions anymore.

Such an attitude changes everything and thanks to it you see the spiritual world. After all, your relations with others and with the Creator become clearer and you discover the network of forces, the network of relations, the network of thoughts, the network of intentions, and the network of operations. This is what actually exists. Then our world gradually becomes less important for us and so does its form, as it “evaporates” into this network, since it becomes meaningless.
[81816]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/01/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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Question: What is the evidence that we are making a real effort in work?

Answer: A person makes a true effort when he works together with others as much as possible in order to understand with his heart. All the understanding comes to the heart when the Light of Hochma, called understanding, is revealed in the heart, in Bina, the vessel of bestowal, as it is written: “It is the heart that understands.”

A person, in the beginning of his spiritual work with the purpose of correcting himself and becoming a detector of the revelation of the Creator, the Light of Hochma, needs to attain an inner conviction that all these notions: the Light of Hochma and its vessel, the Light of Hassadim, reception and bestowal, must manifest in him, in his desire, his sensations.

He needs to try to free the space from different opinions, feelings, and impressions that are now perceived closest to his body in order to fill this space with spiritual impressions. He needs to strive to feel the real taste of all these notions: Hochma, Hassadim, reception, bestowal, connection, closeness, and distance.
[81756]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/28/12, Shamati #145

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