If I see negative things outside myself, it means that I have to correct myself and then I will not see anything that is bad or negative. A friend who has troubles will seem very successful to me.

In the article “The Creator’s Concealment and Revelation,” Baal HaSulam says that we see the friends as losers, ill, unsuccessful, etc. But the moment we correct ourselves, we will see that they are healthy, rich, and successful. This means that I actually have to correct myself.

But there is another way to help them become healthy, rich, and successful. I correct things by approaching the friends and correcting myself directly in them, and then I see that they are successful.

The right correction is actually my inner correction. By correcting the friends and thus seeing that they are successful is an indirect, alternative correction, not a direct correction.

A direct correction is correcting my relationship with the Creator and seeing that the whole world is repaired and corrected. The whole world is my vessel, and if I identify any deficiencies in it, then this means that the problem is in me because everything is already in a corrected state.

The world didn’t undergo the shattering. I am the only one who is shattered; the part that identifies the corruptions is the one who has undergone the shattering. Everything else is whole. I only need to correct myself, and then I will see that the whole world is in the Garden of Eden, in the world of Ein Sof (Infinity).

But we have been given an easy way to correct ourselves by mutual inclusion: I come to the world and help correct it by taking the shattered parts in the world and raising them as MAN, as a prayer. The world is the lower level, I am the intermediate level, and the Creator is the upper level, which means that I perform the priests’ work. This, however, isn’t a direct correction, but an indirect one by mutual inclusion and consistent actions.

Question: It turns out that I will see the outcome of the correction only after I correct myself internally?

Answer: Of course! Otherwise how can you say: “I see”? You cannot see the correction if you don’t correct yourself. The only question is whether you operate directly towards the Creator or in an alternative, indirect way.
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From the preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/16/14

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Question: What is the correct way to pray when I see that a friend has a problem and I want to ask on his behalf?

Answer: It says: “He who prays for his friend is rewarded first.” Indeed I don’t need to pray for the friend because he only seems ill to me.

Yet I cannot perceive this corruption as my own, and I am not close enough to the friend to feel his pain and his illness as my own. So I pray for him as if he is external to me.

Therefore, “He who prays for his friend is rewarded first,” because I am actually the one who is ill if I see a sick friend. And that’s why I need to be healed, and not the friend who only seems ill.

Correcting myself means, seeing all of creation the way it is in the eyes of the Creator: seeing the whole world from the perspective of a person who is fully corrected in his desire to receive, which means that all his vessels are in order to bestow.
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From the preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/16/14

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Question: Baal HaSulam published the paper HaUma (The Nation) in the 1940’s in which he warned about the approaching disaster. We are facing the same problems today. What does it mean to take them more seriously? What is lacking in our work?

Answer: We should simply do what Baal HaSulam says in the paper HaUma and in the article “The Last Generation.” It’s the same method, the same connection, and we just need to do the same things.

You worry about what will happen to a billion and a half Chinese. I cannot say, but I know that half a million Jews can do the work for the whole world. So I worry about dissemination in Israel first. If we succeed here, things will work out in the world.

The correction, which means the connection, must first take place in the Israeli nation. Then it will spread to the rest of the world. We are in the general network of connection between the shattered souls, and if we correct ourselves, not even the whole nation but just a part that corrects itself a bit in the connection between us, the force of connection will already spread among all the nations and will bring everyone to correction.

We must take everything that happens very seriously and leave everything but dissemination, studying, and the spiritual work. Dissemination is very important. Judging by how the world is approaching the path of in its time, the path of sufferings, we have to make greater efforts in order to put it on the path of I shall hasten it, the path of the Light.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/17/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: We stay to work in groups of five after the lesson today, but the truth is that I don’t feel like it…

Answer: Reluctance is a reaction by default, that isn’t worth speaking about. Of course I prefer to do what I like now, like lying on the sofa watching a football game with a beer and nuts, with the remote control in my hand, and let everyone leave me alone. Before the game begins, in expectation of the desired pleasure, I will even tell my wife how much I love her again.

But sitting with friends is not a pleasure. In fact it isn’t a pleasure being here, and no one says otherwise.

Question: Does that mean that I should do what I don’t want to my whole life?

Answer: No. My whole life is tied to the greatest most sublime goal: I am going to reveal the Creator and this is the greatest reward. What is more, there is an even greater reward, which is being able to delight the Creator without any self benefit.

Never mind if this seems unrealistic today and something that I cannot imagine, I belong to and am incorporated in things that don’t exist anywhere else. Recognizing this importance gives me support.

Of course, the upper Light sustains us now. It operates on the point in the heart and doesn’t let us escape. On the contrary, if it illuminated the egoistic desire to receive instead of the point in the heart, I would immediately disappear inside the group without a trace.

Question: Will I ever agree with my desire?

Answer: No. After all this state is filth, it is a Klipa.

Question: Does this mean that I will never do what I want?

Answer: You will do what you don’t want in your desire to receive but what you want in the desire to bestow. I establish everything above the desire to receive, above “what I feel like.” The goal is so important for me that I feel pleasure in bestowal. Now this idea is above everything for me, and I cannot identify with my corporal part any more, I don’t disrespect it, I take what I need from it, what is essential, but my heart is in the group, in bestowal.

So stay after the lesson not because you have been told to do so but because of the greatness of the moment. After all, this meeting with the friends brings you closer to a very high level. The sublime goal gives you powers not to forget the mutual guarantee and evokes the friends to care for each other.

On the whole I am not to blame if I don’t keep this direction the whole day, the group is to blame; blame one another and then each one will feel his blame from everyone. Generally, even if it seems like a paradox, it’s easier to think about others in the current state than about yourself. I am committed to care about the friends “like a man,” and that’s it, period. My conscience doesn’t let me escape from the responsibility and I will fight for my friends like in a commando unit.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/16/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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The Torah, “Exodus,” 34:12: Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest they be for a snare in the midst of thee.

A person has attributes that he cannot correct. We have to leave them, which means to clarify things and understand that we cannot manage with them, overcome them, or change them to love and bestowal.

After all, we don’t even have the power to rise above them. So we need to expel them, as if to destroy them, not to use them but not used in the sense that they really as if don’t exist.

All these attributes are on the lowest egoistic level called “the land of Israel,” and are revealed in us when we ascend to a higher level. Only then can we define and identify them. So we mustn’t cooperate in any way with what is called the seven nations (the attributes of HGT NHYM, the seven Sefirot) and determine that it’s forbidden to ever touch them.

In contrast to the coarsest attributes, which cannot be corrected, there is an immense Light, the Light of the world of Ein Sof (Infinity). It is for this reason that we have to disregard them and to let the Creator correct them, since these attributes belong to our creation.

When a desire is created from nothing, all the seven attributes are in the dry zone of “something from nothing,” in this point of connection. Therefore they are revealed at the last moment, when we already ascend all the levels that we can correct. The Torah ends with the entrance to the land of Israel, and a person still has to deal with all these attributes. How should he operate from here on? It doesn’t say. The Torah is only given to us as a guide for correcting what we can correct.

Question: But then there is the story about David, about Jerusalem, about the land of Israel, etc.

Answer: This is not the level of Moses anymore, but the level of the prophets, and so it is even more concealed. We should understand that everything that is described by the prophets in the Holy writings are levels that we have already been through in the past in our uncorrected desires. We will not have to undergo them in the future because the phases of the destruction of the two Temples and of the exile are over. We only have to undergo the phase that the Torah itself tells us and that is enough. Then we reach the land of Israel and the end of correction. The Torah tells us about what happened in our roots, and so we have to correct the state of transition from Mt. Sinai in the Sinai desert until we reach the land of Israel.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 9/16/13

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Question: How is it possible to arrive at a collective decision so that our ego will not grow and go out of bounds?

Answer: It’s impossible to stop the growth of the ego. In any case it will grow and be discovered more and more. If you don’t correct it, then it will be revealed incorrectly, and if you correct it, it will be revealed correctly, meaning as its opposite, with the characteristic of bestowal.

This is our entire evolution: From above the Light operates all the time, and from below the Reshimot are revealed more and more. And so every year, every day, every minute, we experience more and more powerful new desires and thoughts, greater and greater possibilities; only we don’t feel it.

Therefore the ego will grow constantly. We only need to equip ourselves with tools for its correction.
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From a lesson in Russian, 2/2/2014

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Question: Why is fear the first Mitzva that includes within it all the Mitzvot of the Torah?

Answer: Fear is a characteristic of Malchut reached through the desire to receive. If I work with the desire to receive in order to correct it, I am standing on the right point from which I can always begin. Every level begins from fear. Every time I fall and begin to build the next level, I first experience all kinds of fears.

Question: If I fall, then I fall. Why must there be fear in this?

Answer: First it is necessary to clarify what is called falling. If you have a bad mood or a bad feeling, this is not a fall. A fall is an inability to approach the Creator, to bestow to Him. I fall if I lose interest in the friends, the desire to be with them, and to feel the warmth and closeness in our connection. Everything depends on this according to what I check regarding my fall.

I feel bad because I don’t have love for others, and from this I don’t have love for the Creator. It is specifically this condition that I establish as a descent. When I come to a group, I don’t feel any desire to connect with the friends to discover the love between us that is called the Creator.

If I perceive that I don’t have a desire like this, this is already good; this indicates that I am in exile. Attaining exile is a great attainment because I see that “there is no divinity within me” (Devarim 31:17).
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/14/14

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Question: What else is there to do after it has already become clear that everything depends only on the Light that Reforms?

Answer: That is, from now on I only look at how to awaken and to attract the Light to me more. I understand that this is the only remedy, and I am a sick man lying unconscious and depend upon this Light one hundred percent. Each and every moment that I abandon this Light, I am dying, and as long as I am held within it, I continue to live. I live within this feeling.

Question: But what can continuously hold us in a feeling like this?

Answer: Fear! Fear that the Light will leave me. It is very important for me to be healthy, to advance through the power of bestowal. This becomes my eternal concern, a real obsession.

I feel myself in a field of forces that shakes me all the time, agitating like waves in the sea, unable to relax. The group must provide me with a field like this. A person cannot do anything by himself.

First and foremost, a mutual feeling in the group like this is imperative for us, where we depend upon the Upper Light, the help of the Creator; we must awaken this all the time. That is how we transform the path of “in its time” (Beito) to the way of “I will hasten it” (Achishena). This is the realization of mutual guarantee.

Question: Where exactly is the freedom of choice of a person? Through which actions does he attract the Light to himself?

Answer: I must yearn for the Light that Reforms and to be integrated into a group so that it will hold me in a connection with the Light and in anticipation that with the help of the Light, I will change myself and will begin to be concerned about the Creator. In the meantime, I don’t know what giving contentment to the Creator is, but at least I begin to be care about Him as about a friend.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/9/14

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There is a general misconception about the meaning of thanking the Creator. We fall down to our knees and coax the Creator, ready to make any sacrifice, like in ancient cultures, etc. But this is entirely wrong. We should know what it really means.

Praising the attribute of love and bestowal expands our mind and our desires because if we do this, we draw the Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif) upon ourselves and open ourselves to its influence, although we don’t actually understand what we are doing. In any case, even on the lowest level there is an outcome.

Praising the attributes of love and bestowal in the group among the friends, elevates in our eyes the Creator, the upper force, which is called so because it is above us in quality, and so we can come closer to revealing Him. All the beautiful phrases about love of the Creator, praising the Creator, yearning for Him, bowing to Him, draw us closer to the Creator.

Most of us don’t understand this attribute because we are only in the material world, but now we begin to see that it isn’t matter but actually forces that give us the feeling of matter and of its mechanical movement. We realize that the Creator is the only attribute that exists in nature, the attribute of love and bestowal.

Therefore, it’s necessary in the group to constantly keep and raise gratitude, and the greatness and uniqueness of our work. Then we don’t simply raise the spirit of our friends, which is also important, but attract the Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif), which acts on us and corrects everything.

We can even take turns in the group so that every day several people will engage in praising the Creator, the group, the study, etc., that is, both the objective and the means for attaining the goal. Taking turns was common practice in the 17^th century in Ramchal’s group and among serious Kabbalists.

When we artificially exalt bestowal and love—although it’s not perfect and the spiritual work exhausts us because it is unnatural for us and we don’t always feel like dealing with it—it is specifically in these states, if we try to praise them a bit, we summon an enormous Light upon us since we yearn for it artificially.

We should understand that it is in these states, when we don’t feel glad and don’t feel the greatness of the friends, the connection between us, the goal of creation, when we feel tired, distant, and detached, they are all guidance! They are all interferences! The spiritual state is continuous and eternal.

If the states we are in change, it is only so we will raise the standard even higher. We actually have to rise above ourselves artificially since otherwise it isn’t considered work. All our work is focused against the ego, against what is revealed in us every moment.

Even if I am suddenly in a state that I laugh with the friends, feel impressed, and a feeling of love and unity erupts between us, I should understand that it is all given to me from Above, so that I should ascend even higher because this state isn’t mine. Like an old man, I should look for: “Where I have lost something? Where I can find an even higher state?” I shouldn’t denounce my current state, but rather look for the penny I have lost here and ascend.

This means that we are never given a certain state so that we should relax and let go! This is clear egoism! The shell (Klipa) immediately begins to operate on us and it is very hard to leave it afterwards. It accumulates like slag, like waste material, which we have to process later, just like we pollute the earth and the oceans and later have to do something about it. Without this we will not reach spiritual life.

In this sense, it is very important not to enjoy what we are given at a specific moment but rather to find pleasure in our efforts! We should get used to this.

All our efforts, all our spiritual life is above the first restriction (Tzimzum Aleph) above the Machsom (barrier). Restriction is a state in which we make our accounts with our ego and begin to calculate only how to exit ourselves and to find pleasure in it.

It isn’t masochism, it isn’t self-beating and self-mutilation but rather accepting an egoistic ascent with great efforts, but this effort is included in the Upper Light. I hope that we will gradually begin to feel this now. Let’s get ready for it.
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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 128: All that concerns he who does not pain himself with the public, and is not awarded seeing the comfort of the public, for he will not be able to sentence them to a scale of merit and see their consolation. Hence, he will never attain the attribute of righteous.

It’s impossible to advance without empathizing with the sufferings of society because each step has to be perfect. Therefore, there is no choice but to feel the suffering of society. This happens at each stage to achieve a state of the righteous or a full righteous.

In these states there are many levels. The entire vessel is divided into many parts, each of them must reach the level of a righteous and then the degree of a complete righteous. Therefore, people must prepare for this desire, the need for the filling, that is suffering.People aspire to bestowal and unity, but they are unable to reach them and are looking for the ways of attracting the Light that Reforms. We have to sense these desires from the outset.

We have to observe the rule of loving our neighbors not only while we are building the Temple, although it embodies precisely this vessel, a house of sanctity, but also we have to look at the giving of the Torah. The question is: “Are you ready to for it?” It’s not about whether or not you are “able to” do it at this time, but are you “ready to go for it?” If the answer is “yes,” then just do it!

It means that we have to feel the suffering of society because we have to feel the desires of our neighbors as our own. But there is a subtlety as we don’t pick up our neighbors’ desires for food, family, money, power, or knowledge directly. Rather, we should be compassionate and feel others’ pain as our own since it is something that matters to them at their level. But we have to decipher their states from our level and understand that the reason for their affliction is a deficiency of the Light that Reforms, a shortage of the Upper Light’s presence in their desires.

Their desires require correction and therefore they experience multiple problems: diseases, troubles with children and family,  and all sorts of troubles. The reason for all these sorrows is a deficiency of the Light in general. At our level, we are able to understand this situation and then transfer their prayers into our plea (MAN). This is what it means to be imbued with the the suffering of the public.

The question arises about how can we penetrate their spiritual desires if they don’t yet aspire to spirituality but only crave material fulfillment? Let’s say I am at the 50^th stage, but the general public does not represent my immediate lower Partzuf since it has not yet reached the 49^th level. Is it possible that I see their desires in the 49^th stage?

The fact is that we see the general public’s desires solely from the level we’re on, as all the stages already exist. All one can do is sense the  desires of society that are at one’s same level. This means that one raises society’s desires to one’s own level. That’s why even a complete righteous can be impressed by the suffering of the public in a very material state, even before the preparation period, prior to Lo Lishma. After all, the state already exists in the spiritual world.
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From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/5/14

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