Ascents and descents are necessary on our path; we must treat them equally and constructively and understand that we build ourselves through them. We think that the ascents are good because they feel more pleasant for our egoism. But in fact, a true worker feels better about the descents because they allow him to expand his work. A true master is happy that he has difficulties, experiences, burning, and search.

The ten is like King David’s harp, which the Creator plays on its strings. We want to make this instrument from ourselves, to join the Creator through our connection, to help Him in everything He does with us, and to try at every step to reveal His every address in order to allow Him to play on us. This is how we come to adhesion with the Creator.

If the friends want to connect in such a way that everyone complements the other, they reveal how much they all can adhere to the Creator through each person in the ten. No one can contact the Creator alone. Each time someone establishes a connection with the Creator and joins all the others to it.

There is always a structure of ten Sefirot where each one plays a special role, representing one Sefira, and we all attack together. It is like a military unit that goes on the offensive, and the one in front is the first to shoot, and then he retreats behind the backs of his friends. Then the second comes out in his place, while the first reloads the gun. Then the third, and the fourth one, and so on.
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From the conversation on preparation for the Convention, 1/22/21

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Question: What does hastening the spiritual path mean and why do we need it?

Answer: Spiritual acceleration means speeding up development. It can happen only to the extent that I am not doing it for myself but only for the group, for the Creator, for humanity, meaning for anything that goes beyond the framework of my egoism.

If I yearn to speed up my spiritual development in order to help others, I will receive additional strength, and by accelerating my development, I will draw the entire Kli, the whole soul, after me.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 12/9/18

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Question: Baal HaSulam writes that there is nothing more sublime than truth and nothing lower than a lie. How can we define categories “truth” and “lie” in our world? Where is the truth here? After all, everyone has their own truth.

Answer: This is exactly the problem. Therefore, we are not properly oriented to anything in our life and we replace lies with the truth and the truth with lies all the time.

Question:  Where can this measuring device be found? What and who is the benchmark?

Answer: Only the science of Kabbalah talks about that. We see how all religions, philosophies, and psychologies go wild. And so, the whole world.

Comment: Indeed. There is no generally accepted agreement that this is true.

My Response: None. You can even go through the criminal, procedural, and all sorts of other codes, from country to country, and you will see that everyone has different concepts of truth and false.

Question: But if it is natural, maybe it is correct? Who said that there should be one concept of truth?

Answer: If Indians live somewhere, Eskimos somewhere, Africans somewhere and they are not connected with each other, then it is normal. But if the globe becomes round and everyone communicates with each other and everyone needs some common ground to understand each other,  for this we practically need one law.

This is the same as physical laws. For example, the law of gravity is the same for all and nobody has problems with it. This is natural. Social laws should be the same. But because we are egoists, everyone wants to bend laws for themselves.

We cannot change the laws of nature in any way. And social laws are given to us so that we can adapt them all the time to ourselves and to the truth. That is why it is said: “Seek justice.” Seek for a long time, seek all your life, from generation to generation, and gradually you will advance. Then you will have a society that will truly move forward.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/22/19

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Question: What is the shame that is said to be a kind of creation?

Answer: There is a Creator (the quality of pure bestowal) and there is creation (the quality of pure reception). The connection between them lies in the fact that the creation wants to receive what comes from the Creator. This is how it was made.

At the same time, the creation can absolutely not feel the Creator Himself, but only what comes from Him, like a newborn child who receives everything from his parents. He has no shame: he asks, demands, grabs, and uses his natural desire to receive to fulfill himself.

And suddenly there comes a point when he feels the difference between his parent’s nature and his own. Then he begins to understand that he is a receiver and his parents are givers.

Before, he simply knew that his parents gave and he wanted to take without evaluating anything, whether this was good or bad, or about the benefit of giving or receiving. He felt no qualitative difference between giving and receiving. And suddenly, he begins to feel it.

Then he goes out into the world. If he is always with his parents, he may not feel this difference unless they were teaching him, distancing him from themselves, showing what was allowed and what was not, what he had to work on or needed to earn.

But once we go out into the world, we interact with a wider external circle and begin to understand what I can and cannot do, what is different from the way it was with my parents. If I receive, then I must give, that is, I must work to earn a reward, and so on. Then there is already a feeling of giving and receiving, of upper and lower, of dependence on one another.

It may be simply in the fulfillment or it can be in a sense of quality, especially when there are higher and lower qualities, those that are accepted in nature and society.

It follows that I have qualities that society praises and those that it condemns. And it turns out that I begin to evaluate myself critically. This is how all sorts of complex self-analyses arise.

Question: So shame does not arise from what I receive, but from the fact that I am the opposite of either some social values or the Creator?

Answer: Yes. If I feel another person above me and myself below them and this feeling comes from the fact that this is accepted in my society, then I feel a special attitude toward my egoism, which is my main quality, the desire to receive.

I begin to feel how much my egoism humiliates me. I feel inferior to others and my ego suffers, not because I may have less or more of something, but from being morally inferior to another.

This is shame! I’m ashamed of my nature. What is interesting is not the nature in which the Creator created me, but my present state. I attribute it to myself. I cannot attribute it to the Creator. It depends on us both.

Comment: But He created me this way.

My Response: He created the desire to receive in me, and I’m ashamed of how I use it.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/22/19

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In order to build a spiritual vessel, we need to collect its shattered fragments and connect them into a single soul. By increasing this connection, we get closer and closer to the form of the Creator who will appear in both quantity and quality within us.

This is the actual work and there is nothing else. The upper light is in complete rest, only the vessel is missing.

This vessel does not exist in one person, but is created only when we are included in each other trying to repair all the cracks between us in order to become as similar as possible to the Creator.

The re-establishment of the broken vessel into a single body, attaching to it all its organs, strength, and spiritual qualities is called the revival of the dead. This is only possible through integration between us. In this way, we assemble the image of the Creator, His qualities, as it is written “You have made Me.”

Then we understand more clearly that there is not a single suitable, ready-made property, desire, or intention in us that can be used for this structure. We cannot use any desire, thought, intention, or quality that we have because there is nothing perfect, correct, or broken in any of us.

All of us are the result of a complete, final shattering arranged by the Creator, and only through connection and integration between us can we find vessels suitable for correction. When we try to connect with our desires, intentions, and thoughts, and we see that we cannot achieve that, then we reveal that only by the Creator becoming our partner can do this work.

That is when we really need the Creator and we do not just cry in advance. The Creator must finish for us the work we started. After we have made an effort and discovered the place of His work, recognizing that we cannot integrate with each other by ourselves and need the help of the Creator, we feel a real deficiency for the Creator and turn to Him.

Then the Creator, acting from the state of final correction, glues together our cracks, which seemed wrong and not ready, and directs us toward integration and unity. He makes from us one Kli in which He can be revealed both as the one who does this work and as the one who shows us the essence of the unity, which is Himself.

Therefore, there is no need to regret and be ashamed that we do not have not only any correct quality but even a broken one. Even the broken qualities we still need to collect, extracting them from our connection. Only then do we understand that we are completely unable to connect and even more so to be integrated with each other and that all this is the work of the Creator.

He must make corrections and connect all the cracks. Our work is only to ask Him for it, to demand it, to beg for it. This is our correct partnership. The Creator only needs our desire to connect into one whole in order to reveal Him as a single force. This is our work, our prayer, and our final state.

Therefore, it is not a big deal that working in the ten we do not see suitable qualities in us and cannot imagine the exact place of work. This is how it should be, it happens to everyone. We only have to search for the opportunity to reach this integration between us, and the Creator will make it happen.

We do not understand the form of this integration; our task is only to make all the necessary preparations, and the Creator will finish this work for us, making us a perfect Kli. The light that needs to dress into the vessel will also do the correction, as it is written: “I am the first, and I am the last.” Everything is done by the Creator.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/2/21, “Mingling/Inclusion”

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Usually we feel either distance, resistance, the egoism between us, or attraction to each other and a desire to get closer. But to feel both sensations at the same time, both separation and connection, is a great art, which can be achieved only on the spiritual path.

This is how a skilled cook adds special spices to the food: in a sweet dish a drop of bitterness is added; to emphasize the sweetness of the cake, it is soaked in cognac. We are not able to feel only one side, we perceive everything from its opposite, as the advantage of light from darkness.

Small children usually love only one thing, only sweets. And when they grow up, they already want to feel two opposites together, so they like spicy and salty food. It is the same in our lives. If everything goes well and smoothly, only love without any problems and quarrels, then we are missing something, as if there is nothing to cling to if there are no quarrels and clarifications.

You should always add a little bitter to the sweet to emphasize the sweetness of sweet. This is how we are built, it comes from the foundation of creation, from us being opposite to the Creator. Therefore, in order to feel Him, we also need to feel ourselves and along with ourselves—Him.

Otherwise, we will not be able to feel anything. We do not feel anything outside of ourselves, but only if the qualities of the Creator enter into us and create this contradiction between the qualities of the Creator and the creation, as it is said: “God has made them one opposite the other.”

Therefore, the principle applies: “Love will cover all crimes.” On the way to achieving love, the goal of our development and correction, we must reveal all the sins prepared for us by the Creator in order to be able to attain perfect love.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/29/21, “Love Covers All Transgressions”

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We should evaluate any state only from the point of view of the connection or disconnection between the friends in the ten and as internally as possible. This will help us advance faster toward our goal.

If we are constantly checking how close or how distanced we are from the friends, we will very quickly discover the attitude of the Creator toward us and the way He is teaching us the foundations of the connection that we have to acquire in order to return to the single soul of Adam HaRishon.

From there, we will understand that everything that happens in the world depends only on the connection between us and that only through the connection between us is it possible to correct the world. The more control we give to the Creator through our connection, the better the world will become. Then we will begin to connect between the tens: ten tens together, a hundred, a million… But they will be felt in us as a single ten.

We will discover that the Creator always exists between us, either with greater concealment or greater revelation. And this way we will feel this beating of the pulse of spiritual life, a constant contraction and expansion, advancing more and more toward unity between us and toward connection with the Creator.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/29/21, “Love Covers All Transgressions”

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All bitter feelings must be perceived purposefully, relative to the group and the Creator, in order to rise above them. Therefore, I do not see any evil in what is happening in the world, nothing harmful. All the troubles and misfortunes that exist in reality were created during the shattering of the desires and their fall.

And now, when it is their turn to correct themselves, they rise from the depths to which they have fallen and demand correction. Therefore, their revelation should cause us joy.

Of course, they burden the heart and cause pain, but they lead to the light of the day. Therefore, I should be glad that bad thoughts, states, qualities, and egoistic desires are revealed in me. If they have appeared in me, then I can correct them and rise above them.

They are all already prepared from the moment of the shattering of the common soul of Adam HaRishon, so any broken state that requires correction should bring us joy. It all depends on the connection between us, whether we are ready to pick up those broken desires that have appeared in us, attach them to ourselves, and correct them.

The Creator raises them to us; we only need to take them and, by connecting with Him, pray that He will help us to hold them together in the center of the ten and raise this broken Kli in prayer to the Creator. In response, the upper light will come and correct this part of the vessel and shine in it. Thus, we will rise to the spiritual level.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/29/21, “Love Covers All Transgressions”

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Question: In one of your lectures you said that suffering is remoteness from the Creator, from the light, correct yourself, and you will not be suffering; and in another lecture, the opposite: the brightest and the best people suffer the most. Can we possibly find the logic here?

Answer: Yes, we can. The fact is that the one who knows how to use egoism wins.

And the great ones suffer because they try to reach out to ordinary people and raise them. And those, unfortunately, are deaf. And so it happens.
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From KabTV’s “Ask the Kabbalist” 3/20/19

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Question: Kabbalah teaches that it is possible to summon the upper force through my desire. Is it any desire or a special one?

Answer: The upper force forms the attribute of Bina, faith above reason, in us, a spiritual attribute of bestowal that turns into love for one’s neighbor.

These are totally altruistic categories that are not typical of our world and which can only be summoned by the influence of the upper light. The upper light is drawn by different actions in the group, in the study, and by everything that the wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us as means of receiving the properties of the upper.

If a person acquires the attribute of bestowal, he or she enters a certain area of sensations called the upper world and feels the forces that cooperate between each other and with them, and one begins to understand these forces. This is what the wisdom of Kabbalah engages in.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 12/23/18

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