Entries in the 'Spiritual Work' Category

The Need for the Teacher

249.01Question: What should I do with the feeling of instability in my perception of the world?  Deep internal dissatisfaction and uncertainty are revealed, which creates a need for the calming voice and explanations of the teacher. Is this a sign of incorporation in the ten?

Answer: No, the teacher has no connection to the work of the ten. I cannot interfere in its work.

You have to figure it out for yourself and get involved in it so that using what you hear from me you implement it within the ten and thereby attain the revelation of the Creator.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/28/19, “Questions and Answers”

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The Whole World Is a Continuous Disturbance

767.2Question: Is it possible to go through all disturbances on the physical level without blows, just within the group, and how can we achieve this?

Answer: It depends on how you relate to the disturbances. Let’s say a disturbance arises. But because I exist on the physical level, how could I perceive it if it were not physical? I do not have any other sensations besides corporeal ones, so I experience them this way.

Since we are on the animate level, naturally, all disturbances emerge within us on this same level.

It is clear that these include our bodies, our families, our lives, work, and relationships with others. All of them constitute our world, and we experience various disturbances within it.

In fact, the whole world is one continuous disturbance. If we reach a level where these disturbances no longer matter to us and instead we feel only spiritual disturbances, this world will gradually fade from our perception or take up only a minimal part of it.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/28/19, “Questions and Answers”

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Hope for the Creator’s Help

935Question: How can we practically feel the Shechina between us? Should we feel it simultaneously or at different times, each one inside oneself?

Answer: Everyone in the group should feel it, but not necessarily at the same time. Some may feel it now, some in a week, others in a month, etc. But everyone should come to feel it.

Question: How long will our trials last before we attain the Creator?

Answer: For as long as you are engaged with your egoism. As soon as you rise above it, all trials will end.

Question: Rabash’s article “Purpose of Society – 1,” says: And although we have not yet achieved this goal, we have the desire to achieve it. And this, too, should be appreciated by us, for even though we are at the beginning of the way, we do hope to achieve the exalted goal.

Is “we hope” because we cannot vouch for others?

Answer: No, this is because we hope for the help of the Creator, who will elevate us and give us correct, good thoughts and actions.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/3/24, for Graduates of MAK—the International Academy of Kabbalah in Russian, “We have gathered here”

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Questions about Spiritual Work—199

281.02Question: Why does it seem too heavy and make me want to stay in the darkness when I feel the Creator’s love ?

Answer: Such difficulties, troubles, and obstacles are given to us deliberately to develop a true desire for the Creator within us.

Question: How can we, as a ten, reach the boundary of “above our strength”?

Answer: Together. When we understand that not a single one of us can fulfill even the easiest, smallest commandment of the Creator unless we help each other.

Question: If each person, to the extent of their contribution, can feel the Creator within the ten, how can we achieve a unified sense of the center of the group and the Creator? After all, everyone contributes according to their own capabilities.

Answer: It doesn’t matter; the direction remains the same.

Question: How can we develop the desire to delight the Creator to bring him contentment?

Answer: For this, we must think about Him. The thought must come in this particular form: I will do something specifically to bring Him contentment.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/12/24, Writings of Rabash “Overcoming”

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Feel Shamati

216.03Question: Baal HaSulam and Rabash left us a treasure in the form of the Shamati articles. How can we learn to work more deeply with these articles to strengthen our connection and feel each other more?

Answer: First, read an article, and then make an effort to dissolve into the group. Then, read another article, and once again dissolve into the group. Alternate in this way, and each time you will see completely different states, whether in the same article or in different ones. It all depends on you and it will be perceived as new each time, critically new.

My teacher Rabash always opened the notebook with the Shamati articles recorded in it before sleep, read a few lines, and then fell asleep. This notebook was always beside him.

Imagine the degree of Kabbalist he was, and what he saw in these articles that we read now—those of us who do not even understand what the spiritual world means. He had already ascended and descended through all the degrees, played his scales like on a piano, moving up and down through the entire space of the spiritual world, reading the same articles we are now reading.

Therefore everything depends on how connected we are with each other, in order to express from ourselves the attribute of bestowal in caring for the ten. And in this measure, we will feel Shamati.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/28/19, “Questions and Answers”

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A Friend in Spiritual Work

944Question: What is a friend in the ten?

Answer: A friend is called “haver.” “Haver” comes from the word “hibur,” connection. Connection implies that we are different in our natural desires and at the same time united together in one goal.

Let us say there is one Kli and a second Kli, and they cannot connect with each other, but they can work to achieve one goal in which they unite, meaning, we unite only in the Creator and in no other way.

Egoists who are ready to annul their own egoism in order to unite in the Creator, to be incorporated in Him, are called friends. It is either women or men, but of the same gender. Only the Creator can connect us, and we can only ask Him about it. Even if this is not a real prayer, we can still ask.

If a person chooses the goal of attaining the Creator, then it can only be achieved by uniting different desires into one goal. Therefore it is said that the smallest group is two people.

But in order to create a whole group, it is desirable to be ten. Rabash writes about this in one of his first articles, not nine people and not eleven, but precisely ten. Why is this so? We study this from the unfolding of the four stages of direct light, from the structure of the ten Sefirot.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/28/19, “Questions and Answers”

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Why Do We Gather at Conventions?

947Question: How can one reach the correct, true prayer at a convention?

Answer: All those attending the convention must understand why they are coming and what they will ask of the Creator. I come to the convention to be in such a connection with others that would give us a common force capable of breaking through the wall between us and the Creator.

Therefore, I come to the convention to unite with others, to be influenced by them, and to be inspired by how well they can do this, how they are managing, and the strength and opportunities they bring. I see friends who have traveled from far away, who are eager, who understand that there is a chance to break out of the shell in which we are trapped.

Baal HaSulam gives the example of a worm that lives in a radish, feeding on its bitterness, it thinks the whole world is like that. But when it pokes its head out, it sees sunshine, light, and hears birds singing: “Ah, what a beautiful world! Where was I before?”

This is what we need: to break through the shell of the radish we are in because beyond it, we see nothing. We come to the convention to absorb each other’s impressions and inspiration and together turn to the Creator.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/28/19, “Questions and Answers”

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Ask for Your Spiritual Self

232.031Question: What is connection and my care for friends, for the group, for the ten?

Answer: This comes gradually when you make many efforts and realize that they do not give you anything. Then in complete detachment, you finally begin to understand that you have to follow the path indicated by the Kabbalists.

Therefore, you need to turn to the center of the group, and within the connection between you ask not for yourself, but for the others. By asking for them, you are actually asking for your spiritual self. And when you ask only for yourself, you ask for the physical self. And all of this a person begins to reveal only from his defeat when he sees that he is at a dead end.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/28/19, “Questions and Answers”

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The Creator Is Everything

557We have a very complex relationship with the Creator. On one hand He is a friend; on the other, a master, and from yet another perspective, a correcting, fulfilling force.

The Creator is everything. He cannot be defined as a single entity. Everything I feel at any moment, everything I relate to, receive from, or connect with is all the Creator.

Then the group fades away in my perception. It becomes my Kli, that is, the feeling through which I sense the Creator.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/28/19, “Questions and Answers”

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Personal Questions, Sincere Answers

281.01Question: You said you could not rest; you were always looking for something. Did you understand what you were looking for? This is a personal question for you.

Answer: Not quite. The meaning of life. What is going on with me? How should I act to find answers to the questions? This type of questions.

Question: So something did not satisfy you?

Answer: Sure, I was dissatisfied with meaninglessness.

Comment: Scientific work is pointless, as is…

My Response: Of course, all that is…

Question: Was there some kind of premonition that it had to be somewhere, that you must seek it?

Answer: In general, it is somewhere because nature itself does not tolerate this emptiness. It screams outright, screams there is a goal and there is truth, and it is for everyone although each person may have their own, but one can find it.

Question: Did you feel this inner cry?

Answer: Yes, of course.

Question: Did you reach a point where if you could not achieve your goal, there was no point in living?

Answer: Definitely. For many years it was meaningless.

Question: How did you come out of these states?

Answer: It is not easy, but I think a lot of people are still in such a state.

The most important thing is to understand that it does not depend on you, it is given to you from above, it is a gift from nature. And you must keep looking for answers to the question of your fate.

Comment: That is, on a positive note, you keep going, you are not stopping.

My Response: Absolutely, yes.

Question: How long do these states last: “If I do not find it, life is not worth living”? Are these statements internal?

Answer: I have had it for decades.

Question: What is the most important moment in your life?

Answer: The most important moment was when I found my teacher. I realized that a great happiness had befallen me now.

Question: In all the time that you have been studying Kabbalah, have you ever regretted it?

Answer: No. How could it have happened?

Comment: Probably the person asking may have doubts.

My Response: Doubts, meaning to forget and fall asleep?

Comment: I do not know, maybe there is something else.

My Response: I am not hiding from anything, and I am not turning a blind eye to anything; there simply is nothing else.

Question: You have been studying for a long time. More than forty years, nearly fifty. Was there no moment of doubt? Have you ever regretted it? Or were there some doubts like if you were in the right place?

Answer: No, such depth and horizons are revealed to you that you have nothing more to look for. Either you give it up, or you stay with it.

Question: So you never had any doubts, and you went along with it. But you did go through different states, right?

Answer: Of course.

Question: Why are these states given on the path?

Answer: To test yourself.

Question: So, you were questioning yourself?

Answer: Yes. “Do I need it?”

Question: “Am I in the right place?” Did you ask yourself this?

Answer: “Am I in the right place?” Not really. Whether I have the right sources, whether the methodology is correct, whether I should behave this way—all such questions were there.

Question: How did you answer these questions?

Answer: My answer was that I did not believe in anything, and therefore—to check.

Question: Is there anything in life you regret most and would like to take back and do differently?

Answer: Yes, I would like to take back and redo absolutely everything except my choice in life. That is, the choice itself is correct, but its implementation could have been more intense.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 9/1/24

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