Question: Why do we live such a hectic life, swallowing life without feeling its taste? How can we find the right balance?

Answer: Everything depends on the pace of life to which a person calibrates himself.

If you think about your spiritual ascents, the pace of your life will not seem tiresome, frustrating, or obligating.

You should make sure that your continuous work is concerned with your spiritual advancement. Everything else will come along, but only according to what you really need, which means that it cannot be ignored. And everything will seem very simple.
[194604]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 6/19/16

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Torah, Deuteronomy 11:18: And you shall set these words of Mine upon your heart and upon your soul…

A person must recognize all the changes that happen to him and move exactly according to them, perceiving each of them as coming from the Creator, as a necessity for his advancement.

With these states that are, as if, the “words” of the Creator, he must format his heart and his mind, in other words, transform them into a completely different format.

Just as it is required to delete a previous program in a computer in order to install a new one, in the same way we, while moving forward, must gradually delete each degree within us and record a new one to replace it. We need to gradually rewrite the entire egoistic attitude to the world, to life, and to each other in an altruistic way. And we need to do this independently.

Therefore it is written, “set these words of Mine upon your heart and upon your soul,” meaning write down My program, the program of bestowal and love, upon your egoistic heart.

But the heart doesn’t really want to accept it, so this program can’t immediately go to the heart! It really isn’t easy.
[194783]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 6/15/16

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Question: Shame is the strongest and most hated feeling that a person experiences. People are willing to commit suicide in order to not feel public shame. Why is shame revealed in such an unhealthy form?

Answer: It is because this is a direct defeat to our ego; there is no greater injury to narcissism than such actions.

In the past, they used to duel, kill, and be killed, knowing that they might die, but they could not overcome the defeat of egoism. This was indeed a great folly, but a person could not act otherwise.

Question: What does the wisdom of Kabbalah suggest in a case like this?

Answer: Only the return to our source, that there is none else beside the Creator who arouses all of this within us. We need to be involved with Him only.

It is up to us to settle our accounts with the Creator because only He arranges everything for us. What does a person do? He is a puppet, a marionette on a theater stage. If through this puppet we constantly begin to “grasp” the Creator, then we will inevitably discover Him!

Comment: But in this case a person is dealing with society….

Answer: There is no society if we are talking from a scientific perspective. So all of this is necessary to discover what is happening behind the scenes in our world.

We focus on the people themselves instead of the disclosure of the only force acting in the entire universe, the Creator!

In any case, no matter what; we have only one rule of behavior: to see the Creator behind them.

Question: But must I make a connection with people to see the Creator behind them?

Answer: You create a connection with them to discover the Creator behind them.

He activates them like puppets on a string, and someone who doesn’t want to be a puppet relates to them as puppets on a string in order to discover the Creator.

In this manner, we become like Him and acquire our independence and identity.
[193426]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 5/1/16

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Question: On the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), there is a custom to pray and ask for forgiveness for all the sins you have committed. Can we, indeed, receive such forgiveness from above?

Answer: This calculation is not with some kind of deity that watches us from above, but with the common system of nature, where we exist. A person must bring this system to the absolutely perfect form with respect to himself so that everybody in it is connected and receives through him a force of goodness that fills everyone. Each one must do so: any man and woman.

The only way to correct our sins is to move forward and correct the past through this advancement. There is no need to eat at yourself about past sins, we must always look forward. Everything I’ve done until today wasn’t done by me, but rather because the program of nature was unfolding this way.

However, my innocence for the past crimes doesn’t relieve me from the obligation to correct them. After all, the problem exists! Therefore the Creator tells us that He created the evil inclination, and every day this action of creation is updated; in other words, this evil is renewed every day.

He himself confirms that everything we did until present day is recorded on his account. But the state we are in today,  we need to correct ourselves. Nobody blames us for the past; however, we must repay our debt.

Question: Then what does it mean that transgressions can be in relation to the friend and in relation to the Creator?

Answer: Asking friends for forgiveness for transgression means to scrutinize and correct our relationships with everyone, one after another, point by point. And if I relate to the system in general, in the integral form, addressing its common quality, called the Creator or “come and see,” then I make a calculation with respect to Him. After all, I created this “place” and corrected it.

To ask the Creator for forgiveness means to ask everybody together for forgiveness. Then I discover that there is a force within them that connects everyone. And if I caused this, it means I reached full repentance.

If in the connection with others I connect with the Creator, then my plea for forgiveness was accepted. The Creator fills the system that I have constructed and it becomes me.

Connection with other people is what leads us to the connection with the upper force, the plea for forgiveness from everyone is the repentance before the Creator, and the blessing of everyone is the blessing of the Creator.
[194667]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” 9/27/16

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Question: Who created the desire to receive if there is no Creator?

Answer: The Creator.

We have to understand what is meant by the question whether there is a Creator or not. We have to ask with regard to whom He exists. Can you say now that He exists for you? No.

A person can speak about the Creator, but it doesn’t mean that He exists, and so we say that the Creator exists or doesn’t exist only with regard to the person who attains Him or doesn’t attain Him.
[194367]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 5/8/16

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Question: I don’t know who or what the Creator is, even though I have been listening to you for five years. During this time, I have understood my nature and I don’t find it appealing. I cannot change my nature independently, the group will not accept my ego, and my ego cannot accept the group. What can I do?

Answer: There is a method for dealing with egoism to correct it. If you have such a terrible ego, you must continue studying and being present in a group in spite of everything.

You have good characteristics and foundations, I immediately feel a person who asks a question. It is just necessary to be serious and persistent. Five years is not enough time, it is basically a first acquaintance.

But the next five years will be more meaningful, when we begin to “stand on each other’s values.” Five years later, we begin to make contact, we disclose each other somewhat. In another five years, we truly begin to discover the Creator through our integration. Basically our entire lives are intended just for this.

When I began to study with Rabash, he told me that when his father Baal HaSulam was a young man, he once came to his teacher in Pursov, near Warsaw. While waiting for his teacher, he took a book from the shelf, opened it, and was amazed by what was written there! This book was apparently Etz haChaim by the Ari, which talks only about the wisdom of Kabbalah, and he so much wanted to know it.

His teacher came in and said: “What did you take?! Put it back in its place right away!” He put the book on the shelf, but already knew what it was talking about. So he immediately went to a bookstore and bought it, he sensed from the start that now he was already “on the horse”! But at that time he didn’t know that in order to understand what is said in the book would take him 20 years! And this was for such a great soul as Baal HaSulam!

I still wonder how Rabash could tell me something like this without being worried that I would be disappointed. And I really wasn’t disappointed.

We just need to understand that life is given to us so that we can reach the upper world. And after that, everything goes on according to this contact.
[193962]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 5/8/16

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Тоrah, Deuteronomy 11:16: Beware, lest your heart be misled, and you turn away and worship strange gods and prostrate yourselves before them. When a person gets another revelation of a new egoism, a new degree, it is always revealed as an evil, in the uncorrected form, because all the degrees are parts of the broken Kli, the vessel of the shattered soul.

The uncorrected state is represented by evening, night, and darkness. Then the day comes, the correction and reception of the Light into the corrected state. Therefore, when a person goes through these states and succeeds in something, a new degree appears in front of him immediately and his egoism tells him, “Well done, you corrected yourself! You can do it alone.”

It turns out that then it is very difficult to adapt to the next degree correctly and start working with it. The “snake,” a person’s “I,” rises in him again, either from a bad or a good side, but always it.

Question: When his “I” manifests in him, can we consider it as a sign of the next degree?

Answer: Naturally, because everything starts with the night, but how hard it is for us to understand that this is a beginning of the next degree.
[194776]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 6/15/16

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Question: To what degree should our ego develop to reach discovery of the Creator?

Answer: Our ego needs to be developed to the point where it covers the whole world. In other words, I connect with everything in this world—inanimate, vegetative, animals, and human beings—and absorb their egosim, their characteristics, within me, and correct them within me.

This is a state where I see that the whole world is just a projection of my uncorrected internal characteristics, and when I correct them, they are already in me.
[193764]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 5/1/16

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Question: Perhaps for the correct prayer we lack the desires of the lower ones?

Answer: Certainly. I stay in contact with all groups in the world. This is a broad geography covering practically all the territory of South and North America, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, European groups, and groups from Africa.

We have to be in contact with one another because the lack of the outer desire relative to every ten limits it and it does not feel the ability to advance further.

I purposefully try to be in some connection with everyone as much as my time allows me. After all, I don’t have more time than anyone else does, but I try to absorb desires, sufferings, and the doubts of the groups.

I do not attempt to enter someone’s private life. It does not give anything. In spirituality, one can sense only the common state of the group, its common opinion, and its aspirations. This is what becomes inscribed on the spiritual map!

However, if it is not a group, not an assembly of at least a few people, I am not interested in them even if they are some great individuals. I do not become included in them because their desires do not exist in the spiritual world.
[189111]
From the Convention in Moscow, Day One, Lesson 3, 5/2/16

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Question: Where does the feeling of revenge come from?

Answer: It is a very sharp strong impulse common to all. Revenge can torture a person to satisfy all his needs. A person is even ready to die for revenge. It’s a terrible feeling of egoism, called defeat, a blow to his “I”.

Question: What do you advise us to do in this situation?

Answer: A person is given a wonderful opportunity here to revenge his own egoism, which generates this attribute in him. When the feeling of revenge is ignited in a person he has to think about how he can direct it to the correction of the general system and how not to harm himself and others at the same time. In other words, we have to understand correctly the circumstances under which all the attributes appear in us, both the positive and the negative ones.

Question: Suppose a certain person harms my family and the feeling that I have to take revenge rises in me, of course. Do I have to revenge myself now, my egoism? Why do I have to start working with my egoism when someone harms my family? What has my egoism have to do with it?

Answer: Your family is also your ego, which means that the person who has caused harm to your family has harmed your ego in some way, yourself. You have to be grateful to your egoism for having hurt yourself so that you can see to what extent you are hurt by his belittling attitude toward you. You can now rise above your egoism and think how to behave properly.

Question: What should a person do if it is about a vendetta, when someone in the family is killed?

Answer: You should still work on correcting your deficiencies that have been revealed to you this way by the upper leadership. We actually don’t receive anything from other people but only from the Creator, “there is none else besides Him.” This is the reason we have to think about how we can restore the mutual relations with the Creator who operates on us this way through another person, who in this case, is an angel. We have to see everything as an invitation from the Creator and to respond to it correctly. There are not people in our world; there are puppets on strings who act before us in a play through which we have to see the leading director. If you continue to get back at a person, you enter the play this way and become a puppet on a string too.

Question: Do thoughts about revenge torment only me or the one they are directed at as well?

Answer: It makes no difference. We shouldn’t assess different events in our life this way. On the contrary, we should keep in mind that we are being played with through the general problems in the world. We have to respond to them correctly and instead of getting back at someone, we should look for contact with the upper leadership. It makes no difference who or what it is, whether it is an empty space, or even an insect through which the Creator irritates us. Everything is only an indication that we have to find how to be in contact with the Creator. It has nothing to do with anyone else. We have to ascend above such people. I understand that it isn’t always easy and that we are in special, serious mutual relationships. When taking revenge, I work only with myself, and here I have no rivals but the Creator.

Question: Do I have to take revenge quickly so as not to torture myself or think about it all the time and then I can work out my relations with the Creator?

Answer: On the contrary, your thoughts about it are also a correction. You should see the world correctly, and not the opposite world.

Comment: But it isn’t easy.

Answer: What is most important is to reach the state that “there is none else besides Him,” the one force that manages and operates everyone to bring us to the goal of creation. Therefore, He is the only one I deal with. All the others are those through which he bestows unto me. The goal is to ascend above our ego, above the self that rages inside of us. This is of course impossible without the right environment that supports and directs us.

Question: Can one person overcome such strong emotions that arise with regard to another?

Answer: According to the wisdom of Kabbalah: hate, lust, and envy, despite being terrible emotions, are actually the most blessed emotions, which can lead to a great correction.
[193181]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 5/1/16

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