A person who was very ugly came by his way. He told him, “Hello rabbi,” but he did not reply. He told him, “Vain, how ugly is that man, are all your townspeople as ugly as you?” He replied, “I do not know, but go and tell the craftsman who made me, ‘How ugly is this vessel that you have made’” (Baal HaSulam, Shamati 56 “Torah Is Called Indication“).

We are not talking about any external manifestations of a person but about his internal qualities. Ugliness is one of the expressions of human egoism. The Torah never talks about external ugliness, only about internal ugliness, which needs to be corrected.

Comment: When I see ugliness from the outside, wanting to correct it, I catch myself thinking that I justify myself more than I strive for my own correction.

My Response: This is how our egoism manifests itself. Therefore, keep learning, and gradually you will put up less and less with the fact that you see the world as bad. On the contrary, you will see yourself as bad, and the world more or less corrected, normal, good, and kind.

Invest in the ten, get closer to it, and you will quickly get completely different answers from the Creator.

The true correction is that you feel more and more attached to the group and are ready to work and live for the sake of your friends.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/6/23, Writings of Baal HaSulam “Torah Is Called Indication“

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The externality are the nations of the world. The branch that extends from the externality is the rest of the nations. They have not been imparted the qualities that make them worthy of receiving the conducts of development of the purpose one at a time. Rather, they are fit to receive the correction at once and to the fullest, according to their upper root (Baal HaSulam “A Handmaid Who Is Heir to Her Mistress“).

Question: What does it mean that Israel, unlike the nations of the world, can receive the conducts of development of the purpose one at a time?

Answer: It depends on how we define Israel. Israel is Yashar El, straight to the Creator, that is, those who are directed at the Creator, no matter whether they are white or black.

When there is no difference between them, then Israel is everyone who has a desire to come closer to the Creator either from birth or after some event in life. Accordingly, a person decides to develop.

The nations of the world are those who have not received or do not want to receive the desire for development in the direction of the Creator.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/5/23, Writings of Baal HaSulam “A Handmaid Who Is Heir to Her Mistress“

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Question: When thoughts about myself begin to overwhelm me, how can I not plunge into this baseness?

Answer: We must always hold on to the Creator and get closer to Him together with our friends. Only with the help of your friends can you hold on to Him. But this does not give any guarantee since only from descents do you approach a real ascent.

Therefore, you need to constantly strengthen the connection between each other. If there is a ten in which everyone thinks about everyone, nothing can lead you astray. Nothing. Even if you get ups and downs from above, no matter what, everything will be only for your benefit.

In the ten, every person is important, and if everyone succeeds in uniting with the rest, then this will be able to raise all friends higher and higher.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/6/23, Writings of Rabash “How to Recognize One Who Serves God from One Who Does Not Serve Him”

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Question: What are the practical actions aimed at making an individual descent become the ascent of the whole ten?

Answer: It is necessary to combine personal descents with global descents and ascents. If I am able to turn to the Creator and ask Him to raise me from my personal descent to a higher degree, and He does this, then I am strengthened at this higher degree and begin to receive for the sake of the Creator.

Question: And if there is no sense of the Creator, but only a sense of friends?

Answer: Then, you have to continue working until you begin to feel the Creator. Start bestowing to your friends, influencing them, and then you will see that the Creator is hiding behind them.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/6/23, Writings of Rabash “How to Recognize One Who Serves God from One Who Does Not Serve Him”

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Question: Where in our world can we see the manifestation of the first and second restrictions? These are, as if, two basic laws that Kabbalists revealed in the spiritual world. So, should there be some consequence in our world?

Answer: The fact is that our world is under complete restriction. We can bestow to each other or receive from each other, but these are not the same bestowal and reception that we talk about in Kabbalah.

These are exchanges of a completely different type. If I give something to someone, then I automatically calculate the benefit for myself. Therefore, even though I give, I feel that I receive.

That is, in our world these two laws do not operate explicitly. We are below them. It turns out that we act instinctively, like animals.
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From KabTV’s “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah” 9/26/23

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Comment: TANTA is a process when pleasures enter desires; when they exit it, they leave Reshimot, that is, memories of these pleasures.

My Response: The interaction of creation with the Creator is the interaction of the desire to receive with the upper light.

The light is inherently bestowing and desire is receiving. If the creation can make a restriction on its desire to receive and work in the same way as the light, with the desire to bestow (which means that it will still receive, but already for the sake of the Creator, with a different intention than initially), then it turns out that the Creator gives pleasure to creation in the form of the light, and creation, by receiving it, gives pleasure to the Creator.

Comment: In principle, Kabbalah explains the most natural processes that occur even in our body, in our world. How to receive pleasure, what memories remain from past pleasures and future pleasures, Kabbalah studies and describes all this.

My Response: The only problem is that we cannot reproduce them in ourselves quickly, as if by a textbook. We must work at this for a long time in order to begin to receive the force that would raise us above egoism, and we would be able to receive and bestow according to our own decisions.
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From KabTV’s “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah” 9/26/23

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Question: In one of the articles, Baal HaSulam writes that during a war there are states when governance is transferred to a destructive force, which then is manifested in the corporeal world.

Then this can no longer be corrected; you have to wait for time to pass. This happened during World War II, during the Holocaust.

What kind of destructive force is this?

Answer: This is the enormous force of the Creator, which He decides to use in educating people. Then bad conditions descend on humanity, and the Creator begins to deal with people according to the strict law.

Question: Baal HaSulam writes that when governance has already been transferred to this destructive force, even prayers do not help. Before this, you could correct something, pray, and somehow change the situation, but when the destructive force is manifested in matter, nothing helps. There are many such cases in history. Or is there still something that can be done?

Answer: Of course, there is. We still have to do something despite the circumstances. But we must not forget that there is a good time and an evil time.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 10/29/23

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Question: In Hebrew “army” is called “tzava” – “tze ve bo”, which means entry and exit from the power of the evil principle, i.e., our egoism.

When a person fights with it, he is either under the power of egoism, or comes out of it. Can we say that the most important thing is the work process itself, and the result of the war is not important? Or is winning still important?

Answer: The result is very important to us! But besides this, we need to understand why the war occurs, its reason, in what case it can stop, and so on. We must learn to work with this correctly.

Question: Does the result of war depend on the Creator or on people?

Answer: It is always from the Creator. The result depends on how much our plans and desires coincide with the Creator. And then there will be no defeat.

Question: For an external war, are the same principles true as in war with the evil inclination of man?

Answer: Yes. If a person wins a war with an evil inclination within himself, he can thereby win a war that has already manifested itself in the outside world.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 10/29/23

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Question: Are internal wars with an evil inclination possible without external manifestations?

Answer: Theoretically wars fought only mentally by the desires of the heart are possible. But when we will get there, I do not know.

After all, we can come to this only after we are absolutely sure that with our own desires, we create a place for wars and all negative actions.

The Creator, as the highest governing force, manifesting itself in external war, influences humanity to realizes the futility of its attempts to correct the world.

Question: What does external war bring out in a person? Does it awaken questions about the meaning of life in him?

Answer: No, we practically do not see this. For how many millennia have people been fighting each other and still this does not help them understand the meaning of life. Suffering does not raise these questions.

I think that they can only be caused by an educational process, by soft persuasion, when we sit opposite each other and correctly explain our point of view to everyone.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 10/29/23

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By this we have succeeded in understanding the answer of our sages that this world was created because “One who eats that which is not one’s own is afraid to look upon one’s face” (Baal HaSulam, “The Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Chapter 4, Inner Observation, Item 20).

Question: How does shame awaken that you eat something that doesn’t belong to you, since we don’t have such a feeling?

Answer: Shame arises from the fact that we are only in reception and cannot change in any way. We are ashamed of our friends, we are ashamed of the Creator, we are ashamed of ourselves.

But we don’t have that in us yet. And then, when we gradually begin to feel that we are unable to do anything for the sake of bestowal, we will have a feeling that we cannot tolerate ourselves. And then we will have the opportunity to correct ourselves.

Question: It turns out that the desire to connect with the Creator gives you the feeling of someone else’s food, which you eat every time you receive?

Answer: No. The fact that you absorb the energy of the Creator, the qualities of the Creator, does not bother you yet. At the first stage, you feel ashamed that you are not changing. It seems to you that all the friends have changed, but you haven’t.

You look at your friends in the group and see that you are worse than them. You don’t understand what we study, you don’t understand the questions, you don’t understand the texts, you don’t understand the answers, you are not with your friends. You cannot interact with them because you think the others have been united for a long time. This is a problem.

Question: But every time it is unclear how to get to this degree. It appears that you are not putting enough effort because you don’t feel that way?

Answer: Firstly, there is not enough effort. Secondly, you may be hiding it too much from yourself so that you do not feel unpleasant.

Question: How can you reveal this in yourself? How can you notice the merits of friends?

Answer: Look at how they are connected, how they help each other, how you lag behind them, and how they participate in everything, understand texts, and ask questions. Look how much they are ahead of you in everything.

Question: But how can you see this in the friends in the ten who are currently absent? You want to see that they participate more in all events, and in the end you participate more. How can you distinguish this quality of advantage in them and put it above yourself?

Answer: It will come. First you think you are the best, and then you will see that it is the opposite. They will unite and show that they are above you.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/9/23, Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Study of the Ten Sefirot (TES)”

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