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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Question: What should my response to the states be?

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

The state can be bad, but it makes no difference. It is enough if I only do my work no matter what all the other conditions are. I only want one thing no matter what happens: not to leave. If I have the end of the rope, I can hold on to it from now on and can advance from any possible state, even in the most difficult states if they are somehow connected to the goal, even in an opposite manner: It is enough.
[67583]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/25/12, Shamati #175

Related Material:
Get Well Soon!
Decoding Each Moment
Overcoming A Potential Obstacle

Filed under: Inner Work, Prayer and Intention, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: We are nearing the convention in the desert.

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

Question: How can we build this deficiency?

Answer: What are you going there for? Do you really lack something or is it just a trip? A most serious intention is required here. We must conquer this level in blood and tears. After all the word “tears” (Dmaot in Hebrew) is related to the world “blood” (Dam).
[67594]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/25/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

Related Material:
Not An Ordeal But No Picnic
When Will It Be Meaningful To Go To The Desert?
A New Breakthrough

Filed under: Conventions, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Prayer and Intention, Q&A - No Comments →

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

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

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

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

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

Therefore, as long as you aren’t protected from this kind of pleasure, you won’t receive any reaction in return.
[67577]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/25/12, The Zohar

Related Material:
Give Me What You Wish For Me!
I Don’t Know What I Want, But I Want It!
The Most Important “Toy” In Life

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Inner Work, Prayer and Intention, Q&A, Spirituality, Zohar - No Comments →

Question: What does it mean to funnel your request “through the group,” through unity?

Answer: “Through the group” means that I funnel my desire through the integral system. And if it is able to become similar to this integral system, this is a sign that my desire is similar to the Creator’s desire. It is written, “Make your desire like His.”

If I cannot do this, then I still address Him through the group and ask for the force of correction. But this does not mean that I funnel my desire through the group to the Creator so He would respond to me and fill me with His force of bestowal so I could bestow in practice.

On the contrary, I turn to the group and see how much I hate others, don’t want to be with them, am rejected by them or reject them. And then in these discernments, in the struggles and collisions with everyone, precisely all of these corrupted states are what I raise upward and ask, “Correct them! I am waiting! I want to unite with the others!” Then it’s a wonderful prayer.
[67580]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/25/12, The Zohar

Related Material:
Standing Before The Absolute
The Zohar Becomes Revealed In Love
Appealing To The Creator Together

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work, My Similarity to the Creator, Prayer and Intention, Q&A, Unity, Zohar - No Comments →

Question: Can we perform any action in order to bestow now?

Answer: It can be done at any moment if you rise to the height of that action. But we advance towards it gradually; first I am ready to bestow upon others 1%, and then 2%, and then 3% and so on until I reach 100%.

When I am ready to bestow upon them 1%, it means that I want 99% for myself! And if I want to bestow upon them 2%, it means that I want 98% for myself! And so I gradually rise towards bestowal, towards Lishma (for His sake).

This is called the time of preparation; it lasts until my intention becomes 100% for bestowal. So far, this 100% of intention extends into one gram of pleasure, one portion of Light, one quantum of Light. Then I intensify my intention so that it will be enough for two portions of Light and then three portions, until I can restrain myself from receiving all the incoming Light, which means I am building myself a Masach (screen) of Bina, to bestow in order to bestow. After attaining this level I can even receive in order to bestow, after having developed the right Masach.
[67455]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/24/12, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
How Wonderful That There Is Nothing To Steal
Restoring The Broken Screen
Not For Me, But For The Other Guy

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Inner Work, My Similarity to the Creator, Prayer and Intention, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: During a convention or the friends’ meetings it’s easy to attain the feeling of love towards the friends and the connection. But why does the opposite sometimes happen during the lesson?

Answer: The morning lesson isn’t meant to fill the student. The lesson should shake him strongly and put him in his place, so that afterwards he will be able to choose the direction correctly, to exert himself during the lesson and also afterwards, and to continue living in it the whole day.

The morning lesson is the minimal daily portion that everyone receives and continues to process the whole day. From it he chooses several principles for his internal work and for dissemination. I remember that when I studied, I never missed a lesson except for one time when I was very ill. If you spend the morning without a lesson, you will only feel your corporeal body the whole day and will serve it the whole day.
[67451]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/24/12, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
The Daily Lesson For The Whole Day
The New Habit
One Prayer From One Heart

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Inner Work, Kabbalah Study, Mutual Guarantee, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: We are not impressed by external actions any more, and internally we fail to influence each other.

Answer: You won’t succeed in that because you need to connect and demand that the Creator be among you to teach you, to reinforce you, and fulfill your desires. Or do you want to reach something by yourself? Everything is attained only by the power of prayer.

Question: That’s exactly it; we fail to unite and to turn to the Creator with the demand. This is where we fail time after time, and then we are pushed from behind. How can we hasten the process? How can I oblige myself and the friends?

Answer: It is about the internal work. We should still speak about it a bit although it is all internal. It is written: “And the children of Israel sighed because of the work.” It can’t be without it. You should despair of your own powers and only then, unite and cry out for help.

Baal HaSulam wrote about this in letter 57: “And also whoever didn’t receive the Creator’s love, everything that he worked for on purifying his soul the previous day, seems to be totally burnt the following day. And every day and every moment one should start anew, as if he did nothing his whole life. And then “and the children of Israel sighed because of the work.” Because they saw that they are forever incapable of seeing the fruit of their own work. And so their sigh and their payer were whole, and so ” they cried out” etc.,  because the Creator hears the prayer and He only waits for a whole payer.”
[67479]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

Related Material:
Goodness Has To Become Revealed
Difficulties Are The Help From Above
Want To Know The Creator? Done Deal!

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work, Prayer and Intention, Q&A, Unity - No Comments →

Question: What works while reading The Zohar: my intention, the text or the combination of the text and the intention?

Answer: The text doesn’t operate here. Were you impressed by the text now? Who can tell me without looking at the book, what we read about? The text doesn’t stay in us unless we have to use it in a certain way, to write something based on it or to teach someone else. But for ourselves, it doesn’t. As for now The Book of Zohar is like the surrounding Light for us, which comes and influences us from the outside. So while reading, we can aim our desires and thoughts towards correction, hoping that it will work.

What the authors of The Zohar write is so high that I cannot be connected to the text itself, but only with the “medicine.” I don’t know how the medicine works. It contains different materials that enter my body and join its chemical processes and lead to imbalance in it. But the imbalance is aimed at the disease and so it leads to balance.

It is called “the poison that serves as a cure.” What I swallow causes shifts in my body, but they are opposite to the direction the disease moved in that put the body in imbalance. Then one imbalance and the other imbalance lead to balance. It is written: “Each medicine is poison, but not every poison is a medicine.”

This is the work in the right and left lines, between which we create the middle line. Here the imbalance from the right line and the imbalance from the left line balance the middle line. If we are afraid to be in a state of imbalance, it isn’t the Creator’s work anymore. In short, you have to be a hero. The imbalance is a good state; it is a sign of advancement. After all, even when you walk, you move from one imbalanced state to another imbalanced state: You stand on one foot while the other foot is in the air.
[67464]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/24/12, The Zohar

Related Material:
One Request For The Rest Of Your Life
Light Is Poison For Egoism
The Entrance Ticket to The book Of Zohar

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Inner Work, Prayer and Intention, Q&A, Zohar - No Comments →

Question: What quantity of information is actually useful to a person, and what information could cause him or her harm?

Answer: If we teach a person a correct perspective of the world and nature, he will easily absorb any information because he will always attribute it to the general, global picture of the world. Consequently, he will have no problems with the stream of information.

Let’s say that today from morning to night I am reading and consuming a truly enormous amount of information on different topics related to the problems of modern society, science, finances, and the like. As I do it, my main task is to integrate that information into one integrated picture of the world.

How can I discern in all of that a manifestation of one single law—the aspiration of all possible egoistic forces towards unification into a single altruistic force in similarity to nature? How are today’s society and individuals being transformed as they involuntarily move towards integration under the influence of negative forces, referred to in our world as the crisis? In reality, the crisis is kindness unto us.

This worldview gives a person an opportunity to pass enormous flows of information through himself or herself, which supplement within him this overall picture and enter into the general harmony.

This is similar to listening to some symphony and sensing that some musical instruments are missing from the orchestra. Being an expert, you perceive that something is lacking; you don’t feel quite right, and then suddenly the missing element, harmony, appears.

Therefore there are no problems here. A person can truly be a walking encyclopedia, he is capable of absorbing all information that exists in nature. The most important thing is that all of it gets woven in him into a single picture. And then the more information he will receive, the more desirable it will be for him, and the more easily he will be able to absorb it. He will complete those blank spaces that he sensed inside him as a lack, as an absence of perfection.
[66411]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” #5, 12/13/11

Related Material:
The Stenciled Education
A Person Cannot Be Educated Without Connection With The Light
The Allure Of Mystery

Filed under: Education, Integral Upbringing, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: What will help us not forget about one another?

Answer: The need for spiritual work, the realization of the importance of the goal. I don’t forget about what is important to me.

If the spiritual goal is not important to me, then I have to gain its importance from the friends. But what if they don’t value it? It turns out that we are swimming across the ocean together without a steering wheel. There are many people on board, but they don’t have a direction. A few sailors on deck are yelling that we have to get to dry land, but the others are just having fun and don’t have a care in the world….
[67482]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/24/12, Talmud Eser Sefirot

Related Material:
Advice For A Person Who Wishes To Correct His Soul
Fixing The “Flesh” Of Your Soul
A Shadow Of The Evil Inclination On The Background Of Light

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Q&A - No Comments →