Question: How is it possible to reach correction if we leave the influence of the group and immediately fall into the corporeal, beastly existence?

Answer: The group must help a person. It’s possible that I am in such a decline that I am not able to connect to the group by myself—that I feel hatred and rejection concerning the group and I neglect the friends.

However, if I have a group in which I previously invested, if I tried to install it in the correct orderso that everyone would help each other and would immediately lift up those who fell, then they also will worry about me when I fall.

Question: How do you strengthen the group so it never leaves a person?

Answer: It is impossible that a person will never disconnect from the work, won’t forget the friends, and won’t curse everyone, including the Creator. It’s impossible that he will not think that he is insignificant and that everyone else are nothing as well. You must go through all the states. You will not succeed going through this path in a smooth way and avoid feeling all of this.

You have to dive into your ego, feel it, and go through all the discernments, and then, later, you will begin to become integrated with the others, and the exile must be four hundred years, four levels that one must pass within the desire to receive. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have anything to correct, and how would one reach the summit?

You are in front of Mount Sinai, and you must raise above all that hatred (Sina) in order to reach the Creator. Don’t be afraid. If you have a teacher, group, studies, a general connection, and dissemination, then you need not be afraid. However, if you are missing any element, that is already a problem, and this is because, at the end of each process, there needs to be the goal to delight the Creator. It is impossible if you don’t connect all the components together and make from them the basis for your bestowal to the Creator

Question: Desires constantly grow. Will they be corrected all at once or will the correction take place gradually, portion after portion?

Answer: The correction takes place gradually in small portions. We progress toward correction gradually because it is hard for us to agree to these changes. We are not able to execute them all at once, and in addition there must be a mixture between feelings and intellect, which corrects them and connects them to each other.

We must go through all of this together. In order to reach Malchut, you must also connect the history, your inner development, and all the souls that existed before you. You must pass through the entire process, and at the end of it you turn into a messenger who represents the huge desire, a huge balloon, with one point above, which is you who is connecting the whole Kli (Vessel) with the Creator.

You become the representative of the whole of humanity, and that’s the intention: that you correct the entire Malchut on your part, concerning yourself, and thus, each one does. So each one, for himself, attains the entire Malchut. Each soul attains the entire creation from one end to the other.
[132055]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/6/14, Writings of Rabash

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From Rabash “Yenika (feeding) and Ibur (Impregnation)”: And the person must believe that before he is born, meaning before the descent of the soul into the body, the soul adhered with Him be He blessed, and now it yearns to return and adhere, as it was before its descent.

The soul was in adhesion with the Creator because there was a single complete Kli, all of whose parts were connected and whole. The single Upper Light filled them equally in a state of “He is one and His name is one” (Zechariah 14:9).

This state is most permanent, stable and secure; it is the foundation of all of creation. And therefore after the shattering, the vessel was fractured into a multitude of pieces and each one of the pieces yearns to return to that connection. For now they have become parts; they cannot feel fulfillment and always feel deficiency. In this world there is no happiness, fulfillment, and true wholeness, and perfection cannot be. This is because each one is only part of the system, and as long as the system is not whole, deficiencies and problems will always be discovered in it. And that is how it will be until the end of correction.

So each and every part, every person, subconsciously yearns to connect with others. This tendency and inclination is discovered gradually according to the development of the person. Ultimately, the necessity of connection is discovered because we can reach wholeness only in this way.

But for this it is necessary to win the struggle between my yearning for wholeness and connection and my ego that wants to dominate. And connection can only be between equals. So I need to decide what to choose—this or that. But we cannot resolve this inner dilemma.

Until the end of correction we will be found in such an inner crisis. On the one hand, I want wholeness, which can be felt only through integral connection, equality, the general inclusion of everyone. On the other hand, I want to dominate! This may be a connection, but it is one where I dominate and not all are equal and integrally connected.

Therefore, humanity constantly fluctuates, sometimes to one side and sometimes to the other side. And that is how it will always continue until we reach complete recognition of evil.
[128073]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/14/14, Writings of Rabash

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Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Halevi Epstein, Maor va Shemesh (Light of the Sun): The writing implies that the goal of the creation was that no bestowal should descend unless by intervention from below and the raising of MAN, which the assembly of Israel awaken, and, by raising MAN, all the worlds thus ascend and add to the desire to adhere to their root.

This is the main delight for the Creator, that Israel purify themselves from the depths of corporeality and yearn to adhere to their Maker.

There is the Light of Ein Sof (Infinity) and the vessel of Ein Sof. The vessel of Ein Sof is all of humanity, and there is a pipe between them with a valve or a tap, which is us. The more strongly we unite, the more we open that tap, the greater the flow of the upper abundance that reaches the vessel of Ein Sof, all of humanity, through us.

Therefore, everything depends on the assembly of Israel, on the connection of the people in whom the Reshimot (reminiscences) have awoken that oblige them to yearn to the Creator, which means to look for a special connection with Him. On the other hand, they can be connected with the whole, great vessel of all of humanity.

We must determine a mutual connection both with the upper level and with the lower level in order to connect them through us. To the extent that we unite in this work, we will attain bestowal.

At first, this work is depicted to us as if there is the Upper Light above and a big vessel below, and we are in the middle like a pipe that conveys the Light. When we connect, we open the pipe and the Light and abundance flows through them to the lower, corrects, connects, and fills them.

But it is only now that we believe in this schematic form. Later, we will see that it’s a bit different, that the Creator is already in the big vessel of humanity, and therefore we enter that vessel in order to meet the Creator.

It is by our connection that we allow Him to be revealed in the created beings, but He is already in them. All this work takes on a different form. We begin to feel that the Creator and the created beings are adhered as one, and only we are external to this connection and unity. This is the second phase of the work, and then there is also a third phase.

In the meantime, we must picture this work this way, as if we were a pipe with a tap and that, according to our connection, we are rewarded with conveying the Light from the Surrounding to the surrounded, which means from Ein Sof of the Light to the Ein Sof of the vessel.
[135793]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/25/14, Talk about the Importance of Unity

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Question: How does a person need to revive himself in states of descent?

Answer: Above there is a tank with Light from which two pipes with faucets extend and connect to the soul. The Creator turns on the faucet in one pipe and begins to stream Light into the soul. From this, a person begins to live, acquires the meaning of life, works, and everything is completely okay.

Suddenly, the Creator turns the faucet off and a person feels powerless, without any vitality. Everything is colorless, tasteless, and everything is gray. Where are the colors of life? Where are the tastes? The world has faded and fallen asleep.

The Creator does this so that the person will turn on the faucet himself and begin to fill himself. This is because in this way a person will make himself similar to the Creator. He will get the mind and heart, understanding the higher management and providence. This is not just a faucet. Rather, this is a system of management of the entire world, all of reality.

Through equivalence of form, he achieves correction and transforms into a man (Adam). So, the Creator sometimes closes the faucet and sometimes opens it, each time in different ways, and accordingly a person must open or close his faucet until he achieves equivalence with the Creator in all of his characteristics.
[135628]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/21/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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The life of the group is first of all the study. But why do we have to study so much? Why do we study for so many years? The point is that it isn’t an ordinary study in order to acquire knowledge. People don’t come to the lesson in order to know more but in order to receive a portion of Light, the influence of the Upper Light that comes through the teacher.

A ladder made of 125 levels descends into our world from the world of Infinity. We are in this world and the teacher is above since otherwise he wouldn’t be a teacher. A teacher is a spiritual leader who leads us upward to the Creator. He doesn’t have to be in the world of Infinity, but he must have spiritual understanding and comprehension, having attained at least the first stages of the path and is on some spiritual height.

Then he shows us how to ascend. In our world I can find my way by myself. But in the spiritual world there is no path before me and I have no idea what to do and where to put my foot down and which way to go.

Moreover, in the spiritual world I not only don’t know how to make a step forward, but I also don’t have the power to do so. After all, this advancement is in bestowal, in giving, and how can I advance in bestowal if I don’t have this attribute at all and only have the force of receiving?

I have to receive the force of bestowal from above first, in order to bestow and to advance. I can receive this force from above only through the teacher who is the channel through which the Light from above, from the world of Infinity, flows into this world to me if I am connected to the teacher. In that case I receive the power, the knowledge, the right direction, and the support from him and can advance.

I have to advance with the friends by engaging in the study and in dissemination, but this cannot work without a teacher. Therefore, the daily lesson in which we all sit together and study is not in order to study another part of TES, or the “Introduction to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” The Book of Zohar, or articles and letters by Baal HaSulam, but in order to connect and to receive a force through the teacher, which gradually becomes the force of advancement for the students.

If you don’t participate in the daily lesson for at least an hour every day, you won’t advance. You can do it in a different time according to the time zone of the country you live in, but it must be during the specific day the lesson took place. If you don’t have enough time to see the whole lesson, then do it for at least an hour. Without that you can forget about advancing in spirituality.

If you cannot dedicate an hour a day for the wisdom of Kabbalah, then there is no point engaging in it at all since you will only have false hopes that you are gradually advancing, but in fact you don’t advance. You should listen to the daily lesson at least an hour a day no matter how much you understand.

It cannot be that a day goes by and that you have missed a lesson. It is as if you don’t eat for a whole day. It is clearly very difficult and a person will not hold on for long that way.
[134983]
From the Convention In France “One For All And All For One,” Day One 5/9/14, Lesson 1

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Question: How do I need to prepare myself for the workshops and how should I behave during them?

Answer: How do we organize ourselves to speak with the Creator when this is possible only through the center of the group? If I want to make a connection with someone by telephone, I need a telephone line, a device, and the right frequency.

I need to speak with the person on the second line in one language, communicate with him exactly at a pre-determined time, and he must specifically be the person that I need. This means that everything must be adjusted.

So how do we arrange the line of communication that extends from the center of the group to the Creator to be sure that this line is working, more or less?

First of all, in order to create a connection like this we need to unite among us. This means that each one of us begins to work in the direction of the center of the group. That is how we create something shared in the center that is called “we,” and each one strives for that.

That is how we construct the telephone apparatus for connection with the Creator. Everyone knows that this device is complex even in our world, and even more so in the spiritual world in which the connection is realized at a completely different frequency.

This wave is not allowed to go out from me, for after all, I am the opposite of the Creator. I am entirely a big minus, an egoist. And the Creator is entirely a big plus. We are not ready to understand each other! So how will I be able to construct a device that works on His frequency and connects me to Him?

Each one of us must make a Tzimtzum (restriction) on the ego, meaning he must freeze himself inside and not think about himself. This is called “Tzimtzum Aleph.” In this way I stop being concerned about my “self.” After all, in the spiritual world, in that place with which I want to make a connection, I don’t exist.

So I am compelled to carry out a Tzimtzum on my desire, a Masach (screen). Besides this, I need to bring something out of myself, so from within me I think about the group. Through this I create a single component that is ready to connect with others.

It is desirable that ten people will create components like these from themselves. And then all of us together connect in the center of the group, and our common component (we) is called the sense of bestowal, that resembles the Creator. Between them a connection can be created.

As in telephone communication where the bandwidth can be different, it is the same here. It depends on the greatness of the desire that the person overcomes, great or small, how much he is included with the others, how much they understand each other, to what degree the goal is clear to each and everyone together, and so on. These conditions determine the strength of the connection.

But without constructing a device like this we cannot create a connection with the Creator. So it is up to us to create a force like this, our common connection with the Creator, which is our voice, our mouths. And there can be many voices and mouths like these: it is possible to divide the seven billion people into groups of ten. Less than ten is not enough power. It is possible to try five or three people, but by no means less. Ten is the optimal number.

And more than ten we are not ready to grasp, for we are constructed with a perception of reality like this suchthat we are not ready to see more than our ten fingers.
[134759]
From the Convention In France “One For All And All For One,” Day Two 5/10/14, Lesson 2

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Our good fortune depends upon establishing good relationships between us. I try to do this in every way, but suddenly there is an explosion and somebody takes me out of balance and away from the right direction. In order to maintain this intention, we must have general agreement, a system of education that is designed especially for this purpose..

This is what must be taught to children at school, so that they will not behave the way they do today. This is a nationwide problem that must be solved on a national scale, and doesn’t just depend on someone’s desire or lack of desire.

No one wants this since it is contrary to our ego and not easy to realize. So we must create a system of education that will bring us closer to one another.

Our entire salvation is only in this. Two thousand years ago the people of Israel lost their land precisely because of unfounded hatred. Today we have again found ourselves in a dangerous situation, so let’s get closer to each other.

Baal HaSulam writes: All of our hope is in recreating a national education that is designed to discover the natural love that is latent in our people so that by all means we will go back and revive the same national muscles which have not operated in us for two millennia.

From the days of our father Abraham, who left Babylon, until the destruction of the second Beit HaMikdash (Temple), that is, for about 1,500 hundred years, the people of Israel lived in complete unity.

Question: What does it mean to live in unity? Does it mean that there won’t be any quarrels with one’s wife at home?

Answer: For this, it is necessary to have education that will lead to good attitudes, including women and children.

Question: This sounds like some kind of utopia. What exactly will happen with people? Will they stop being egoists?

Answer: People will be able to control their ego. You won’t do this to become good and to not quarrel with your wife, but because through quarreling, you are destroying the lives of all people in the world. This is specifically you, and even because you quarreled with your wife.

Imagine that your relationship with your wife influences the relationships of an immense number of men with their wives, because you are a Jew.

Question: So if a Frenchman quarrels with his wife, this doesn’t influence others as strongly?

Answer: No, this doesn’t have an influence in the way that a Jewish man quarreling with his wife does. This is because Jews are the first in the general system who must realize the law of Arvut (mutual guarantee), the connection between everyone. And after that, the whole world must also be included in this law of Arvut, in the general unity. It is specifically towards general unity that nature is pushing us, towards general unity.
[155681]
From Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 3/08/15

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If a person doesn’t feel that everything that happens inside him and in all of reality comes from the Creator, who is the only source of life, it is called punishment. And the feeling of detachment itself also comes from the Creator and isn’t the person’s will. There is no greater punishment than being detached from the Creator, that is, to forget that everything comes from above, from Him.

A person should continuously renew his contact with the Creator, consider His thoughts, and decide how to answer every appeal that comes from Him. What happens to me makes no difference. What’s important is that everything comes from Him: both the negative and positive thoughts. At one time I bless Him and another time I curse Him; once I want to remember that He is everywhere and another time I don’t want to remember that He exists and yearn for physical corporeal pleasures.

But all of that is sent by Him, and we should examine all these situations that are mostly unpleasant. It is because the Creator shows me to what extent I am immersed in my shallow, lowly ego, while I have to find the right answer and understand why the Creator sends me such desires and thoughts and why I want to respond the way I do and not the way I should.

If I work that way, I begin to feel that I need support and that it is impossible to manage by myself. I can escape the group and manage by myself only in my corporeal life by hiding from the Creator and without feeling guilty in any way, but if I really want to advance, I immediately feel that I must clarify my relations with Him.

There is no one in the world I settle my accounts with but Him, since He is the only source. Therefore, I feel that I have to be in a group, connected to the teacher, and that I need support.

In this case I already tighten the connection with the friends and with the teacher and begin to listen. It is because I need advice as to what to do in order to be connected to the Creator constantly and not forget about Him, to properly see that every moment in my life comes from Him. I must remember that even my trivial thoughts and my corporeal desires come from Him. Everything comes from Him in order to push me to even greater adhesion to Him, to closeness.

This is what my response should be. It means that we speak the same language. He sends me different signals and I respond to them: “I understand and I tune myself more and more to You.”

Thus, I get closer to the Creator and perceive Him in greater and more accurate resolution. I begin to learn His language. There are many languages in the world that don’t allow us to understand one another. Here I learn the Creator’s language: how he turns to me and how I should answer Him.

If a person and the group focus themselves that way they succeed very quickly and attain contact with the Creator because He begins to teach us every moment of our life.

All of creation is influenced that way by the Creator and thus advances and gets closer and closer on its way back to the Creator. First, there was the spreading of the worlds from the top down and the shattering, then human history evolved, and now we begin to ascend in order to return to the world of Infinity.
[135416]
From the Convention In France “One For All And All For One,” Day Two 5/10/14, Lesson 4

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Question: How do I identify the spies inside me who force me to be critical about the group and the friends in the spiritual work?

Answer: If a person doesn’t divide himself into two parts: he and his feelings, he cannot identify the spies. He cannot distinguish that they are spies but thinks that they are friends who help him along the way.

The spies do indeed help a person, but they are help against. It is the Creator who sends them even when he hardens Pharaoh’s heart during the wandering in the desert and throughout our life. But if I don’t identify with the Creator, I cannot see that they are spies and will not see that they operate from the negative side.

The main thing is to attribute everything that happens to me to the upper source and to see that He is before me playing with me. I must understand how to respond to His game and how I can defeat Him thanks to the group and to everything we have learned and all the Kabbalists’ advice! As it says, “My sons have defeated me!”

I defeat the Creator. He gives me new exercises each time and I have to realize that it comes from Him and that there is nothing but the upper leadership, the good that does good.

When I wake up in the morning I have to say: “If I am not for me who is for me?” And in the evening: “There is none else besides Him.”

Comment: But these spies appear suddenly and divert me to different external thoughts!

Answer: Ask yourself why you are not ready to accept them as you should? Now when you are sitting in the lesson you are smart and can distinguish where the Creator and all His creations are. You realize that He is playing with you and thus teaches you like you teach a child and brings you closer to Him.

Now, it is absolutely clear to you that this is a fixed game with a predetermined end and you know that you cannot refuse to play. The only thing you are required to do, like a small child, is to understand that and to participate in it so that you would grow and become like the Creator, like your teacher.

But why don’t you accept every moment of your life that way? Why aren’t you ready for it? This is the only thing about which you have to ask; this is the only important thing: how to be constantly aware, perceive, maintain the right attitude towards everything that happens in order to understand the situation.

But why do you keep falling? You lack something so that you won’t fall. You lack adhesion with the Creator! So ask! If you are adhered to the Creator, at least a bit, you will accept every picture that opens up before you in a consecutive order as a game you are playing with the Creator. Then you will hear Him say: “Come to Pharaoh for I have hardened his heart,” and you will make one more step.
[134477]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/4/14, Writings of Rabash

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Question: What is the difference between development with personal participation and development without personal participation?

Answer: In the course of development there were small and insignificant changes in different kinds of plants and animals, but we understand that a horse and a cow could not willingly change except as a result of the environment or certain genetic changes. On the other hand, we think that we develop according to our initiative developed from generation to generation by wisdom, science, and changes in social structure. Thanks to correct nutrition man became taller, the quality of his way of life improved. Even the results of our medical tests changed. And we assume that it is thanks to our efforts.

But we study that all matter is the desire to receive. It makes the maximum efforts to come closer to fulfillment, and in every situation distances itself from suffering in every place in the optimum form, according to the prospect it sees in the future.

Education and science influence it, but actually man chooses for himself the good and makes efforts to escape the bad. Therefore, we are totally managed from above by pleasure or suffering; we are between two reins without any freedom of choice, as if the person does not exist.

We progressed in this manner until today, although we are proud of our high achievements in culture, creativity, science, and construction. But all of these are still without the involvement of man himself. Man has always searched for the most benefit in the inner and exterior conditions that the Creator molded for him.

Therefore, man used to change and do things like a small child who plays with a game he received. However, in addition to this, man also developed the recognition of evil. In the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature he developed an instinctive form, similar to the level of animate, and at the level of man he searched for what is better for him or less good for him.

An animal does not think, it always knows what to do. It receives the recognition of the situation and the command at the same time. In man it’s not the case. Therefore, he must develop science in order to know how to behave in each moment in an optimal form. The process in which we developed is called “in its time” (Beito). And we were able to continue to develop, but we found ourselves facing big problems. No more instructions from above as to what to do, no more hints for instinctive solutions. Now, by ourselves, we need to correctly face the coming situations by “raising MAN (prayer) and good deeds.” This is why we need a new science that is opposed to our nature, because now we need to take this upon ourselves in addition to “the work of God.”

For that we need to receive “the Godly part from above.” If the Creator is not giving it to us, then we must demand Him to bring down the upper software and according to the software we will be able to progress. It means that we need the soul, the part that enables us to understand how to continue our existence in the new terms.

Whether it is “in its time” or “hastened” (Achishena) we will be obliged to acquire the new software, the new operation, the awareness, the solution, and the feelings. We will be obliged to be equipped with all the forces in order to continue from now on in an independent form and not an instinctive form. Therefore, this is the reason for the wisdom of Kabbalah being revealed and how it guides us. We must understand that we are in a new era.
[133649]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/25/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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