Question: The friends in Sochi are doing great dissemination work. How can one strengthen the connection with them in heart and soul?

Answer: Be envious! Envy is a very good emotion.

Tzimtzum Bet (the Second Restriction) was created from envy: The creature was detached from the Creator to become independent. Then everything also developed with the help of envy, even Arvut (mutual guarantee) and corrections. And everything is in order to realize envy correctly. Envy is a feeling of someone outside of me.

If I differ somewhat from the other, how is that exactly? Even if it is by one gram, is this gram better or worse? Is this other greater or smaller? This means that I am always examining the difference between us in pleasure or suffering.

So envy is the main feeling.

I believe paying for  a school as in Sochi, is worth it. There is something of which to be envious. The friends are doing amazing work, meaning amazing work is being done on them from above. This doesn’t exist anywhere in the world; the beginning of the realization of the correction of the masses. This summer will go down in history.
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From the Sochi Convention 6/10/14, Lesson 3

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Question: Baal HaSulam writes to his students in “Letter 48” that an arrangement has been built for them that will make it possible for them to remain in their state and not withdraw backward. What is this arrangement?

Answer: Every Kabbalist during his tenure in this world goes through a particular process of correction and organizes his students so that they will gradually be ready to hear about the wisdom of Kabbalah, and, after that, he begins to work with them gradually on the scrutiny of the wisdom itself and to guarantee them with actions that, in a direct manner, are relevant to correction.

In our group, we have passed through many states. In the beginning, we just studied, although, as was understood even then, we spoke about the connection and closeness between us. Gradually, we began to be involved more in the dissemination of the wisdom of Kabbalah in publishing books.

Thanks to these activities, we have begun to feel the system more and understand that it is closed and connected in all its parts and we cannot do so without external dissemination.

When we began to be involved with external dissemination, we began to change ourselves. Our manner of studying and the way of acquiring material changed. As a result of this, we have reached a stage where serious changes have begun to happen in the world. In the meantime, people don’t see all the changes, but we already have re-examined the entire path through which humanity has passed until today.

This entire way was egoistic; the ego grew and pushed us forward. However, now we are beginning to understand that this entire process is destructive and leads nowhere. So, we soon will reach the conclusion that it will be necessary to change the entire structure of human society somehow, from the family and the person himself to the society, the nation, and the entire world. Everything is in a serious crisis and demands change.

Crisis means both the destruction of the old world and the birth of the new. Accordingly, we are beginning to work differently among us and with the entire world. We are studying other chapters from the sources and going into them deeper.

The work is being made more practical, in other words, is directed toward realization: connection, love of friends, awakening their hearts, and adhesion as one person with one heart.

This is our main goal: above our ego, above Mount Sinai (the mountain of hatred [Sina]), to agree to be as one person with one heart, and always in response to this agreement, this aspiration, to receive the Light that Reforms which is called Torah.

In this way, we constantly advance and change, and most importantly, our present changes depend upon the entire world, and vice versa. Through the changes in us, we influence the entire world. Soon, we will begin to feel this whole system, how the entire, integral world advances, turns, and changes its form according to the decisions that we make here and that we realize among us.

The wisdom of Kabbalah first began to be revealed from its complete concealment and gradually unfolded in a theoretical manner. And then it was completely stripped of its mystical clothing. As Baal HaSulam writes in the “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”: However, when I begin to speak to anyone about this study, his first question is, “Why should I know how many angels are in the sky and what their names are? Can I not keep the whole Torah in all its details and intricacies without this knowledge?”

We already have been actively realizing this method. Our goal is to build a platform for the general correction of the entire world for those who step forward as leaders of this collective movement and for all the people who will go after us, in order to spare them from the blows.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/24/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot“, Item 119: This is also why the great privilege, when one is awarded sentencing himself to a scale of merit, is still not enough for one to attain whole love, meaning the fourth discernment. This is so because now he does not attain His merit as being good who does good to the good and to the bad, but only His Providence over him.

Yet, he still does not know of His Providence in this sublime and wonderful manner with the rest of the people in the world. Thus, we learned above that as long as one does not know the dealings of the loved one with others, until none of them is missing, the love is still not eternal. Hence, one must also sentence the entire world to a scale of merit, and only then does the eternal love appear to him.

On the way to complete adhesion and attaining the goal of creation, we attain all our deficiencies and all of the Creator’s actions on us during the whole process we have been through when the upper Providence was concealed. Then a person sees how in all the stages, in everything he has been through, the Creator was good and benevolent to him in absolute love.

As a result, a person feels that he loves the Creator back. But this isn’t enough, since he also has to work on the future, so that he will keep the same attitude. This means that he has to develop vessels inside himself that are called faith and confidence, so that in every stage in the future he will not lose faith in the Creator’s love for him.

Even this is not enough in order to determine that the Creator is good and benevolent, since it is all true only with regard to a person himself, and now he has to determine the same thing in regard to everyone else.

This means that at the end of correction, he attains everyone’s end of correction, and from this point he sees the whole human history and the entire path all the souls have gone through in the process of their correction.

These separate souls discover the connections between them above the sea of hatred in which they are immersed that separates them and keeps them apart. Through these connections of love, they feel how the sea of the ego separates them, and thus discover that the Creator constantly takes care of them in the best possible way, and that all the sufferings, the blows, and the problems that they have been through during all of human history and the ascent of the souls through all the worlds until the world of Ein Sof (infinity) were all out of the Creator’s great love.

When a person ascends the spiritual ladder, he becomes detached from his ego as he ascends, and then he sees that it was only in the ego that he felt the afflictions. If it weren’t for the ego and the desire to receive for himself at the expense of others, he would always feel only the love and great care of the Creator for him.

This means that he sees and understands that all the negative feelings don’t come from the Creator, but rather stem from his connection to his egoistic desires. Thus he determines that he is in contact, in a covenant with the good and the benevolent, and that this connection, this covenant, is full of love.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/18/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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When going out to the external public, a person stands before them as before an exam: “A wonderful group in a world where everything is corrected except for me; I stand facing my uncorrected desires; all of this is a part of my soul.

My role is to convince this fragment of my soul or this fragment of my mind that we will converge into a single unified body. How can I do this and knock on the door of their hearts?”

That is what Abraham said to the inhabitants of ancient Babylon when trying to convince them that all were one single whole, that one should not quarrel with another, because if we separate, things will be much worse. Conversely, we need to come together.

So we go out to the general public with this plea. They need to feel our warmth, that we are not doing this formally, but whole-heartedly.

And people will respond to this. But we need to prepare ourselves internally. We need all the desires that were torn from us; we need to join them to us.

Question: So what touches my friends…?

Answer: The friends are also your desires who are already prepared to create one single heart together with you; whereas, the masses are not yet ready. But they all belong to one heart, one desire, your personal desire. Each one of you has his own private universe, his own private world. And everyone, except for you, is part of your desire, the entire nature of the still, vegetative, animate, and human. Connect all of this to you, i.e., love all.

You are going out to people because you need them; they must feel that your heart is open to them, that they are important to you, that your desire is directed towards them, and that through you a unique power descends to them. This is the first message.

And after that the Arvut will be revealed in the whole world. This is the condition for the right connection of all the shattered vessels.
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From the Sochi Convention 6/10/14, Lesson 3

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Baal HaSulam, newspaper, “The Nation”: It is shameful to admit that one of the most precious merits we have lost during the exile, and the most important of them, is the loss of the awareness of nationality, that natural feeling that connects and sustains each and every nation.

Two thousand years ago, we felt ourselves as one people because all of us were as one man with one heart. This is what was called the “people of Israel,” and it doesn’t exist outside of connection.

Today, we are not connected. Rather, we are huddled together, gathered like sheep because of the wolves that are ready to tear us apart. On the outside, we look like a people, but in fact, this is not so.

This is our main and only problem. The Creator Himself supports all the other peoples. He supplies them with Reshimot and Lights that are drawn one to the other, so their nations are built naturally. The people only implement desires given from above. The Jewish people are different; we must build ourselves above our egoistic desire, in opposition to it.

However, essentially, we are the biggest egoists because we passed through a Shevira (breaking). As a result of this, connection requires difficult efforts from us. The Creator doesn’t favor us. Rather, He only gives us the opportunity to connect. He creates external conditions so that we will implement internal conditions so that we will connect above our desire.

If we do it, we will be fine, and, if we don’t, it will be bad. In this case, He will throw us out of the land. Of course, if we could live well in other countries, everyone would flee from here. However, the Creator sends us troubles and problems throughout the world, and in desperation, we have come to the land of Israel.

Then He arranged troubles for us here, enemies surrounding us without any room for escape. Ultimately, there will be no nation, no people, who will feel any sympathy toward us. The entire world, everyone, will oppose us and won’t want any connection with us. We will be left alone here on a small strip of land, isolated, besieged, like the defenders of the ancient fortress of Masada, and we cannot do anything.

If this does not work, the Creator, as Baal HaSulam writes, may scatter us again throughout the world.

In our present state, we don’t deserve to live on this land, and basically, there is no place on the face of the earth to wander to.

So, what is to be done? As a people, we must be an example for the rest of the peoples, but the thousands of years that have separated us from ancient Babylon have not changed anything. We are the small part that Abraham singled out from the Babylonian for correction. And to the degree that it is corrected, it will be able to influence the rest of the “Babylonians,” will be a “light to the nations,” and then all of Babylon will be corrected, the entire world will reach the long-awaited correction.

So, it is up to us;  first, we must unite according to the principle of “As one man in one heart.” It will be the birth of the spiritual embryo.  Then is the turn of the principle of “That which you hate, do not do to your friend,” the level of Yenika, Katnut. After that, we reach “Love thy friend as thyself,” the state of Gadlut. It is incumbent upon us to pass through these three levels until the completion of correction, and then we will become priests to the world, as it is written, the “nation of priests,” (Exodus 19:6).

Today, we see how hatred toward us grows and expands day by day.

Even nations that were formerly sympathetic to us or were neutral will become hostile. No one will want to do business with us or deal with us in general. That is when we will feel besieged, completely isolated from the world. If we won’t change according to the laws of nature, or the laws of the Creator, that are coming down on the world now, then this will be our future until the war of Gog and Magog. In fact, it is happening now, but its external phase looms before us. And this is all because we are stubborn in not wanting to correct ourselves, and accordingly, we cause the activation of unbreakable laws.

Question: Will the workshops that we conduct with the wider public help us?

Answer: If we come closer to the hearts of people, softening them a bit, then we immediately will take a different direction. The main thing is to change the polarity from minus to plus. In other words, not transforming people from mutual rejection to connection, but at least bring them an inclination toward connection, at least so that they will acknowledge that the connection could indeed be salvation. Through this, we change direction, transform it 180 degrees, and this is a lot. This is because then the Light will illuminate in us positively.

Question: What must the roundtables bring the people to?

Answer: I suppose that, thanks to our work with those parts of the people who are ready to listen to us, we will change the attitude of people toward each other, for all of the people of Israel are not only responsible for one another, but brothers, and not just in times of trouble, but in times of happiness.

Then we will see for ourselves that in connection there  is a latent power that changes everything so much so that the government will not need to enact new laws. This is because, according to the Torah, we don’t need a king with his entourage. A spiritual kingdom dominates the people, and this used to be truly so. This is the only possibility for running a nation with the help of an equal connection between everyone on an equal level, without differences in levels. So, unique powers begin to act, and we hope that we will feel and learn about them quickly.
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From the 5^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/23/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: Even Baal HaSulam didn’t succeed in convincing people, so how can we?

Answer: Well, Baal HaSulam didn’t succeed nor did Moses, Rabbi Shimon, or Rabbi Akiva, but you will succeed. Everyone needs to tell himself that the entire world depends upon him.

If I thought that we wouldn’t succeed, then I would sit in my house and be engaged only with the wisdom of Kabbalah. However, how could you allow yourself to leave the world without help?

Question: Why must we succeed where others have failed?

Answer: We are living in a different time and in a different generation. We have received all that the great Kabbalists of the past have prepared for us in our hands, and we have brought the method closer to each and every one. And we need to continue forward, especially now.

Only in the past year have we started going out to the people. Before then, we disseminated the wisdom of Kabbalah and attracted people in whom the aspiration for it was awakened, people with a point in the heart. But now, no person can be left outside the circle; everyone must join it.

This is only the beginning. We still don’t know how to organize this so that all of the people will receive re-education and how and in what form it is necessary to do this to prevent bad development and reach the good. All this is really being clarified now.

Baal HaSulam produced his newspaper before the war. Who could hear him then? But today, after all the blows and troubles, people are wiser.  And besides, the entire world is covered by a general crisis. Nothing is sacred today. There are no people ready to stand on their principles no matter what. There is a decline in everything: helplessness, incessant threats, and growing anti-Semitism. All this frees up space for the true method  and makes it possible for people to listen to it.

The method itself is becoming more accessible. It has become clear that it is based upon the laws of nature and rational things, not upon beliefs or mysticism. All this is based on common sense.

The method has developed to the degree that the connection between us has become stronger. We are the ones who have developed this method. It is impossible to compare what we have today with what we got from Baal HaSulam and Rabash. We received their articles, letters, The Study of the Ten Sefirot, and The Book of Zohar. That is all. But today, all of us together, students throughout the world, working among ourselves and with the external public, have milled these materials, on all of these materials, like through a grinder, and deduced from this a practical method of correction.

Of course, we didn’t invent anything new, but we have started understanding the method, accepting it from Baal HaSulam and Rabash, and conveying it into practical footing. That did not happen before. And what will happen tomorrow, I don’t know, and so it should be. I see the distant future, but I cannot say what will happen tomorrow. Indeed, we need to create this method in practice.

Theoretically, I do not know everything, but in practice it is born anew each day. Today we are building tomorrow’s level, and we see how we have advanced! Sometimes we are faced with difficulties and feel helpless and in doubt. How do we conduct workshops and attract people? What questions do we discuss? Are people ready for this activity or another? How do we tell them about the necessity of connection?

We are looking for the way, and we are looking for it within us, because, in the meantime, we don’t have all the answers. It is as if we are taking care of someone, but, in fact, we are changing ourselves, and that is how it is day by day. This is the way, and it is possible to advance only in a this form.
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From the 5^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/20/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: Where does a person find the power that enables him to awaken the friends?

Answer: I would say that this force comes from heaven, since it belongs to the spiritual spark, to the Reshimo (reminiscence) that awakens in a person. We can actually feel if and how much a person is drawn to it.

This inclination can be revealed in different ways: one may act quietly and calmly while another may be burning and sparkling, but these are only external attributes.

Only the inclination to awaken people belongs to the spiritual spark. If this spark is seriously revealed in a person, we can see it by a person’s actions. He cannot be locked up inside himself.

Of course, he goes through different times when he yearns to know and to study, to be totally immersed in the spiritual world, which he doesn’t know and doesn’t understand. But the inclination to disseminate this knowledge and to tell others about it burns inside him.

If a person has even a small inclination, he should be spurred and supported by the environment. If he has been brought to the group, it means that he has been given the chance, but how he fulfills it is up to him.
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From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/24/14

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Question: What should I do if I don’t agree with the group’s decisions regarding dissemination? Should I insist on what I think or should I accept the opinion of the group as if annulling myself before the teacher?

Answer: If a person generally agrees with the way the group disseminates and the group makes a certain concrete decision, everyone must see this as an opportunity for a spiritual ascent.

However, a person usually escapes this, thinking that if they have decided something they should also carry it out, but he takes no part in it. He doesn’t understand that by that he misses an opportunity to ascend.

I am very sorry and sad to see what happens to such people. It is actually when they have the chance to ascend that they move aside and escape.

What do I actually care what the group decides. The more naively I accept the friends’ decisions and the more faith I have in them, the more deeply I will be incorporated in them, which means in the vessel where the Light will be revealed. I am not required to do anything else, but my mind and my ego don’t allow me to accept the fact that they are right.

What does it actually matter if they are right or not? It doesn’t matter at all. But I am critical. I have to know in advance that I will be able to remain in the group afterwards and accordingly I decide to what extent I can be critical.

The shattering occurred when they wanted to unite and at the same time criticize one another, but then they discovered that they can’t attain unity under these conditions. This is exactly the sin of the Tree of Knowledge.

The first taste from the Tree of Knowledge was okay, under the conditions of self annulment. But they couldn’t do it a second time. They couldn’t find the limit up to which they could be critical and not more than that. It is because in order to criticize the upper, we must first be adhered to Him.

Only when you become a drop of semen adhered to the upper do you gradually begin to open up, cell by cell. Thus you add one cell after another to your body by activating the egoistic desire and resisting it, so that later, together with it, you can adhere to the upper, and thus your spiritual body grows cell by cell.
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From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/23/14

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The question is whether we were given a mind so that we can examine things by it and delve deeper inside or whether it was given to us so that we will actually confuse ourselves by it and let the upper force enter us and correct us.

This is the question: How do we use the data that are inside of us, which control us, in our inclinations, in all the attributes a person has?

Why were they given to us? In order to reach a certain correction or to use these data and our abilities the way they are?

If I want to use them just the way they are, I thus negate the fact that there was a shattering, which means that I want to keep on working with my mind and my heart directly, using them to discover the world.

Then we see the gloomy outcome and the crisis that such an attitude brings us to. Although we haven’t even reached the initial awareness of the unfolding of the crisis, it is about to be revealed soon.

It is because it is only the shattered vessels that are revealed. If I use my mind and heart and don’t listen to the Kabbalists’ warnings saying that it is all shattered, and keep on working with them, I eventually will discover that it is all shattered. When I discover that the system is shattered it means that I have reached the crisis.

It will take a long time and lots of pain until I recognize the crisis and understand it. It is because this attitude is called the path of natural evolution, “in its time” (Beito), the path of suffering, the path of the shattered mind.

But there is another path, the path of “I shall hasten it” (Achishena), hastening time. Along that path I am told: “Do you know why everything is shattered? So that you will be able to feel distracted, feel your helplessness, and realize that you have neither a mind nor a heart and that you cannot exist this way. Isn’t the crisis that you see before you enough in order to want to stop this stupid chase and say: enough!”

Now I begin to use my heart and mind differently: I am out of the egoistic focus and this is actually the reason that I open up a passage for the Light by allowing it to influence me and to change me internally. This means that I use my heart and mind, but differently.

I don’t want to use my heart and mind directly, as they were given to me. My mind was given to me so that I will understand that I don’t have a mind. All my feelings were given to me so that I will understand that I don’t have any feelings. My heart and mind cannot help me discover the true reality.

There are only two ways to use the data that I was given correctly: either within reason or above reason. Choose!
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/13/14, The Zohar

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The Torah, “Leviticus” (Shemini), 11:41-11:42: And any creeping creature that creeps on the ground is an abomination; it shall not be eaten. Any [creature] that goes on its belly, and any [creature] that walks on four [legs] to any [creature] that has many legs, among all creeping creatures that creep on the ground, you shall not eat, for they are an abomination.

Swarming on the ground on your belly is the lowest level of the egoistic desires. It is impossible to raise them to a level that they can be used or eaten as food.

What does food and eating symbolize? It is using a desire from the animate level in order to revive the level of the speaking. However, this type of desires cannot even be detached from the earth (from the ego).

But all these images are allegorical. In fact, we have to look for such desires inside us and sort them out.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 1/22/14

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