Question: In order to correct and balance the ego, a person must feel it as evil. How must we make indifference and insensitivity toward others intolerable?

Answer: Indifference is the greatest problem. When I hate, this is good; when I love, this is very good. However, we go through 99% of our lives with feelings of indifference. People consider this normal in our current life.

What can help get me out of indifference, to awaken and hold me in this state every moment of life? It is only the environment.

You have moved through very good states of very great elevation of sensitivity, more internal, not an external request for change. This is enviable.

If all of our groups were like this, then certainly the general situation would become much better. It will be possible to attain this in the next convention by trying to prepare and transmit to everyone the feelings and sensations that you have experienced, are experiencing, and will again try to experience within you. It is possible.

If you connected the state that you experienced with the 300 friends who were in Sochi, and you multiply it by five, with the same mass that will be in the convention in Saint Petersburg, and after that, 500 times, then even much more, with the mass that will disperse throughout the world, we can achieve a lot.

This is one of the most useful examples because you will multiply the sensations, the demands, the aspirations to each other,  the neutralization of the ego, and the desire to be a single whole by that quantity of people with the help of envy, through showing them how this is working within you, and not in them. So, the multiplication of your yearning will happen together with their yearning, and this will produce an immense influence and impression.
[142491]
From the Convention In Sochi 8/25/14, lesson 2

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Initially there is only one force in nature that created, manages, and determines everything. It is neither positive nor negative. It is simply an attribute.

We can feel this force only by its opposite aspects because we don’t feel anything in the form of one phenomenon, one value. The term “value” means that it includes two parameters: the base and the dimension, one (what it is and what it wants).

Our feelings are always made of two opposite attributes that are based on different contrasts: black and white, silence and noise, etc. This means that as created beings we feel ourselves only if there are two opposite forces in us.

The Creator is one unique force that wants to create us and to bring us to the upper state, but in order to exist and to be able to reach every state we have to be made of three forces:

• The negative force which differentiates us from the Creator; the ego without which there cannot be a created being.
• The positive force that can balance our ego.
• The middle force that is created and revealed between them as a result of the right balance between the two forces, i.e., the best use of the ego in its correct form, in the form of bestowal and love. This is the result because the third line, the middle line, is man.

In order to balance the ego that we receive from the Creator, we have to assess it as evil and understand that it was given to us from above and to balance it in order to make something that resembles the Creator from it. Thus, all our work comes down to a request, to a demand, in an action that draws the positive force that can balance the negative force.

We have to assess the ego as a negative force that is inside us, and the attribute of love and bestowal, altruism, as the positive force that is external to us. It is the Creator’s attribute and therefore sustains all of creation. We should want to balance these two forces inside us by using the ego in its balanced state with the right line as much as we can.

All this can be fulfilled only under the influence of the right example that the environment sets for us because a person will never feel the desire to work against his own nature, against his ego. He will always avoid it and will find any means so as not to annul his ego.

Balancing the ego by bestowal means using it in a zero state only to exist in a minimal form or restricting the use of the ego and then allowing it to be used correctly by balancing it with the right line. But all this is only to the extent that a person can work with the environment.

This whole world (the still, vegetative, animate nature, and man), a condition we feel we are in, is given to us so that we can use the environment correctly and want to acquire the positive force that balances the negative force.

Therefore, the whole world is the revelation of the ego on the white background of the Light, and the ego should gradually bring us to a state in which we will begin to feel that this state is unbearable. Or it will develop under the influence of the growing ego and bring about sufferings that will force us to look for a way to cope with the ego.

We should develop the correct positive force inside us and by it feel even the smallest ego inside us as bad. That will be enough for us to want to balance, neutralize, and use it correctly.

But in any case, the natural course of our evolution, which is constant and which cannot be changed or affected in any way, means that the ego is constantly growing in us and in the still, vegetative, and animate nature but to a lesser degree. The only thing we can do is to feel that the ego is bad as soon as possible and thus draw the Light that balances and corrects it.
[142426]
From the Convention In Sochi 8/25/14, Lesson 2

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We exist in a field of thought. When this field operates in one direction while I operate in another direction, the difference between the pathways, my error and its degree, are perceived as the degree of my suffering.

The bigger the error, the bigger the suffering. Everything depends on how opposite the direction of my desires are to the program of creation.

How do I test myself in relation to the program of creation? I have the group for this. When I cancel myself in relation to the group, in other words, when I bring my desire closer to the program of creation, I begin to move according to this program and then I feel good, suffering cannot affect me because the source of all the suffering is our lack of correspondence to the program of creation.
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Question: What does it mean to give pleasure to the Creator with the right intention? “Giving pleasure to the Creator” sounds rather abstract.

Answer: Suppose we have the privilege of working with each other. We must become friends. I must reach a state where I feel you are so close to me that it seems that a part appears between us as a single whole, as if we were conjoined twins. There could be one liver or one heart and all the rest is different.

Something in common appears between us, and in this commonality, I feel the Creator who is connecting us together. He deliberately made a separation between us and is now connecting us. Ultimately we become connected together as a single whole.

Question: So to whom am I giving pleasure?

Answer: You discover in the connection between us a common force called the “Creator,” and you feel how happy He is about the state where we merge and become “One.” By merging into a single whole, we feel Him there because He is One.. This is already a single Kli (vessel) that can feel its upper source, the Creator.

This is one precise activity and there is nothing else like it in nature. As in mathematics, there is zero and something different from zero. Everything else is built only on this. So at the moment, when you reach the One, when you and a friend merge together, then his spiritual source, the Creator, is revealed in him. All the effort that you invested in your connection now becomes happiness that you discover in him.

In this is the right effort, to become connected together, “as one person with one heart.” “With one heart” means that you have the same desires, a single intention, the same thoughts, and the same yearnings to help and complete each other. This is what you must attain here, at least in some particular place under these conditions.

Comment: I don’t understand to what I must connect myself.

Answer: The Upper Light will influence you. You must do this! Only you can summon it. There is a kind of switch, and when you turn it on, the Upper Light works.

Question: Where is this switch found, in the mind or in the heart?

Answer: In the heart. The mind is necessary to understand what to do with the heart. The switch is found in the heart, meaning the desires, where are they directed, towards what states? “And the next state that I want to receive emotionally indicates the direction of the heart.”

Comment: I haven’t understood anything.

Answer: It is good that you understand that you haven’t understood anything. This means that already in you there is a very good internal collection of characteristics and feelings. You understand that this isn’t simple, that everything slips away, that our ego becomes an obstacle for us. What can you do with it? It is precisely because you want to feel everything deeply that you say that you haven’t understood anything. The heart understands, the mind doesn’t, and we don’t need to become confused about this. The mind is given to us only to scrutinize and analyze our states.

I am trying to answer you emotionally only, but I could convey everything through diagrams, like Kabbalists do. When my students have no spiritual states, I make sketches for them. And then, when there is an inner state, I address that specifically. Basically, how could this be portrayed? Every person already draws it for himself in his heart.

Turn on the switch, so that the Ohr Makif (Surrounding Light) will influence you. Nothing else will help! Only the Light! But you must know its direction and imagine that correctly within yourself.
[142581]
From the Convention In Sochi 8/25/14, lesson 2

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Question: What does it mean to be similar to Light?

Answer: Light is the characteristic of bestowal that is realized in us in only one form, mutual connection. So what must I bestow, give, and to whom? How? What do I have? Suppose that I give you my coffee or a slice of bread….

No. My giving is not giving something external; rather, I give myself. This means that I adhere to you, to your desires, aspirations, and yearnings. With this I become a complete helper to you. We produce the characteristic of bestowal this way, or an even higher characteristic, love. That is how our similarity and equivalence with the Creator is realized. As He is within us, He wants to be discovered. That is also what we want regarding every friend.

So it is impossible to become similar to the Creator before you transform to being like Him with the help of higher bestowal towards your friends, or at least one of them; that doesn’t matter. When you don’t work for your own sake, then you are completely indifferent to the rest of the world, you don’t feel it and it is tasteless. And if you can connect with it, you become similar to the Creator.

The entire external world is the revelation of the Creator in a form that is our opposite. The moment that we attract this world to us and become adhered with it, with love for everyone, for our haters, for our opponents, for the masses of millions of people who are completely unimportant to us, gradually, in circles, we develop an identical relationship with the Creator. The Creator is found in them, and we discover Him in them. This is called: “I dwell among my people” (Kings II 4:13).
[142562]
From the Convention In Sochi 8/25/14, Lesson 2

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The Torah, “Leviticus” (Metzora), 15:19-15:21, 15:24: If a woman has a discharge, her flesh discharging blood, she shall remain in her state of menstrual separation for seven days, and whoever touches her shall become unclean until evening. And whatever she lies on during her menstrual separation, shall become unclean, and whatever she sits on, shall become unclean. And anyone who touches her bedding, shall immerse his garments and immerse [himself] in water, and he shall remain unclean until evening. If a man cohabits with her, [the uncleanness of] her menstruation shall be upon him, and he shall be unclean for seven days, and any bedding he lies upon, shall become unclean.

This speaks about the division of the pure and the impure desires. Touching an impure desire is being infected by the Light. A spiritual contact takes place when I somehow recognize myself with my ego. Therefore I have to enter an ark and shut myself from the egoistic desires and constantly be in a spiritual shell.

The Torah, “Leviticus” (Metzora), 15:25: And a woman whose flow of blood flows for many days, outside of the time of her menstrual separation, or she has a discharge after her menstrual separation, then all the days she has her unclean discharge, she shall be unclean just like the days of her menstrual separation.

In the past women kept away from the house chores during their monthly period and waited until it was over. Today there are tribes who still keep this custom.

When the period was over a woman used to purify herself and then get back the house chores. It was all according to the law of branch and root. But in our world, people tried to follow the external form of the Torah instead of observing it not only externally but internally as well.

The Torah, “Leviticus” (Metzora), 15:29: And on the eighth day, she shall take for herself two turtle doves or two young doves, and bring them to the Cohen, to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting.

A purified woman takes her corporeal desires and raises them to the level of the Cohen (priest), the level of Bina. In that case Malchut rises to Bina and is ready to receive the Upper Light. It is ready for the next level.
[142557]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/5/14

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Question: The Torah tells us that the Creator told Abraham what land he should go to from Babylon. So, did he initially know where he was going?

Answer: No. It is not about the coordinates on a map. If we do not think about millennia of history, we do not consider kilometers of the earth’s surface either. Time and distance have no control there. When a person’s inner feeling, called “his Creator,” tells him what to seek, where to go, it means that he should move not to another location, to a new place of residence, but on to the next spiritual state, which will be called “the land of Israel.”

Question: That is the “land” that he found in himself?

Answer: Of course. Because the concept of “land” (Eretz) is derived from the “desire” (Ratzon). “Eretz Yisrael” means the desire aimed “straight to the Creator” (Yashar-El). When you get to the point where all your desires are directed to the Creator, then one would say that you arrived, entered “the land of Israel,” whether you are in Canada, in Africa, in the US, or anywhere. After all, our body is not taken into account. The whole matter is in a person’s desire.

Let’s go back to Abraham; he worked with his students on unity. Many Kabbalists write about this, especially Maimonides, the great Kabbalist of the 11-12^th century. Abraham began to work with them according to the system “love thy neighbor as yourself,” and thus began to unite, assemble, and “form” a completely new society from them, in which everyone was internally connected to everyone else.

States, countries, and people are also connected, but externally, meaning that they have health care systems, social security, laws, education, etc. But we are not talking not about the external but the internal systems of connection between people. This approach of Abraham’s is different from the concept of Nimrod, who offered people dispersing so as not to interfere with each other and, at the same time, keeping in touch from afar.

It would seem, indeed, let the diplomats negotiate, let traders take caravans along the “Silk Road” or “from the Vikings to the Greeks,” let the sailors discover America, etc. But here we are talking about another journey, about connecting with each other internally. We are not talking about bodies, but intentions, focus, and overcoming internal obstacles. A person travels not in the mountains, not through the Sinai desert, but through the desert of the soul, because he feels his attitude towards others is a wasteland that dries him out, in which there is nothing with which to be fulfilled.

That is why the way to get closer to others is through the desert. Then, a person really gets closer to them; internally through the “Sinai desert” he comes to the “land of Israel.” And here he finds his desire “flowing with milk and honey,” emanating, “radiating” all the good things.

In essence, this is a “paradise.” In the past there was a desert, or even “hell,” and now the “Garden of Eden.” Unwillingness to come into contact with others, hatred of one’s neighbor, all of this is turned into goodness.
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From KabTV’s “Babylon Yesterday and Today” 8/27/14

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The Torah, “Leviticus” (Metzora), 15:19: If a woman has a discharge, her flesh discharging blood, she shall remain in her state of menstrual separation for seven days, and whoever touches her shall become unclean until evening.

It is about the revelations of very serious corrections of Malchut and the cycle of the moon to which everything is connected in our world. In the past all the women in Israel had their monthly period at the same exact time of the month, for one week in which the discharge of the blood occurred at the same time for all the women together: on the same day at the beginning of the month. This indicates that by being corrected under the clear influence of the moon they were connected into one woman.

The moon symbolizes our resemblance to the sun. An eclipse of the moon by the earth or the revelation of its illumination symbolizes the level of correction. On the whole we bless the new moon since we begin to work on the revelation of the moon, which means on our resemblance to the Creator.

Eventually, after the end of correction, the two great lights will illuminate to the same extent: the big light, the sun, which symbolizes the Upper Light and the small light, the moon, which symbolizes the created being. This means that the moon symbolizes the level of our resemblance to the sun, to the Creator.

Therefore, previously, in the correct state, which means in the state of resembling the sun, the monthly period of all the women began at the same time. But when the ego entered these pure desires and the shattering occurred, the women’s period was disrupted. In any case, the moment the blood appears a woman should wait until the discharge of the blood ends and then consider herself impure for another seven days.

From a spiritual perspective, a discharge is the desires that cannot be corrected in a certain month and so they have to come out because they cannot be corrected. Once they have come out and the body has been cleansed and purified of them it is possible to work with them and to become pregnant. In our world to purify means to immerse in the Mikva and in the spiritual world it symbolizes the purification under the influence of the Upper Light.

When the discharge of the blood ends, the seed that the woman receives is nourished by the blood of the pure Sefirot that are left in her. Thus the white seed of the father and the red (blood) of the mother develop and an embryo is created. The Creator gives the soul, the Light, which connects them, and the next level is born.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/5/14

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Light is the characteristic of bestowal, and the Creator is identified in our perception of the Light . In fact, there is the upper light and something higher, its origin, which may not have the same characteristics, meaning that it is something that is completely disconnected from us.

This is because we feel the Creator with our characteristics, with our sensations, with our Kelim, with our senses; and through these, we judge Him by attributing to Him the appropriate names and characteristics. In fact, we don’t know how He feels outside of our senses nor do we know His image. A person gives names to the Creator according to how he perceives Him.

Feeling the Creator can be diverse, multifaceted, and varied. Light is called the sensation of the Creator, which teaches, corrects, fulfills, and shapes us. It is just the way a child perceives his parents in various forms, as teachers and educators, as protectors and those who are concerned about him.

So the Light is such a perception of the Creator, where in principle we don’t feel Him. But we do sense the power that shapes, corrects, and changes us so that we can feel Him.

In other words, the influence of the Creator on us, which prepares us for feeling the Creator, is called Light. Certainly the Creator and the Light are the same thing. This is because only this one source exists outside of us. Besides Him, only we exist, as only one person. Ultimately, each one of us will begin to perceive everything else as parts of Him without intermediaries.

In any case, we perceive everything like this. At first, we require the Light of the Creator and only after this do we want adherence with Him. This is the right relationship with Him. If you want to attain a state of similarity to Him, to relate to Him as He relates to you, then you must think about how to change and correct yourself. In this case it is possible to approach Him. Then our relationship to the Light will be directed towards being corrected and becoming similar to the Creator with mutual bestowal, like the host and the guest.

In any case, the Light is divided into many different influences on us. It is the Light of reason or the Light of feelings, under whose influence we begin to feel and understand who we are and in what way we are separate from the Creator.

Every understanding is built on our difference from the Creator. Even in our world when I perceive the people around me or a particular state, it isn’t important what, in any case we are feeling the Creator. It seems to us that these are some people or images. We are only feeling the Creator.

So we shouldn’t fool ourselves. When a person is involved with something or someone, especially with friends, he must understand that he is involved with the Creator. “There is none else besides Him.” This is one of the explanations; that there is nothing else besides the person and the Creator. And everything else that seems to exist for us, are fragments of my soul. So the main thing is the relationship with the Creator, since this is the Torah.

The Torah is all of those states that we must go through until full resemblance and equivalence with the Creator. This is all of the Light that we must perceive so that a change will happen within us from our first egoistic characteristic to the full completion of correction.

First we pass through a contraction of the ego; after that its neutralization, and after that, a correction, meaning the use of the ego for the purpose of bestowal. To the degree of these corrections, we perceive the Creator and begin to see that He relates to us like a concerned father who is teaching us.

Specifically, we feel the influence of the study, and this is called “Light.” And when the extent of this influence has itself been realized, then as a result of this, we feel the Creator Himself. And we feel Him differently, in a new way all the time, thanks to those characteristics and observations that are already corrected.
[142476]
From the Convention In Sochi 8/25/14, lesson 2

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Baal HaSulam, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”: Indeed, if you take the body of a small animal, whose only task is to nourish itself so it may exist in this world for enough time to father and carry on its species, you will find in it a complex structure of millions of fibers and tendons, as physiologists and anatomists have discovered. And there is much there that humans have yet to find. From the above, you can conclude the vast variety of issues and channels that need to connect in order to achieve and to reveal that sublime goal.

Have we ever thought about the essence of the process called evolution? About how all of the matter of the universe with all its complexity and variety was created out of a tiny particle, out of a grain, the first unknown matter that was the foundation of creation? According to which plan did all this take place and according to which laws? What determines the still, vegetative, animate nature and the human body?

We seem to think that it all happens by itself, but is that possible? Is it possible to make one step forward without clearly knowing what we are doing it for? On the contrary, “drifting” leads us into trouble.

But we continue to believe that there are redundant parts in our body or in nature in the whole, in the vegetative and the animate, which nature has forgotten and left by chance. We attribute nature with such misses after which there were more attempts…but one judges according to his flaws. We attribute our qualities to nature.

It says first, think, then act. There is not one detail in evolution that is not predetermined, not aimed at the final goal, and not already in the state of the end of correction. Therefore, there is nothing new in the whole process except for what the created being has to develop by himself. Evolution leads the created being, prepares, and obliges him to establish the new additional component: the adhesion, the recognition, the understanding, and his own feeling of the Creator. All the other things develop in order to bring a person to the element he has to establish by himself. Therefore, everything is predetermined and nothing is coincidental or random as different philosophers and scientists think.

We have to try to somehow imagine this enormous mechanism that includes and encompasses the beginning and the end of creation, including all the processes, and everything possible, all the details separately and together, on all the levels that are still unknown and not understood. These are all a network of forces, a system that the wisdom of Kabbalah tells us about a little, and we cannot even understand this explanation. But at the end of our evolution, this system will be ours internally, and then we will feel it, control it, and understand it.

We must understand that there isn’t a single detail in our world that is not connected to the rest of the system and that all the laws also relate to it. When an individual performs a certain action it is because he is forced to do so and he causes the reaction of the whole system that responds and advances accordingly.

Thus everyone advances together from the beginning to the end and from the end to the beginning. We think that we understand something in our world but it is merely a meaningless part in a system that we will have to discover; all this is called the wisdom of Kabbalah.
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From the 5^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/19/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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