Question: Each of us feels the importance and need for physical contact in the group and the groups of ten for the sense of confidence and importance one feels in the connection. What can replace the lack of physical contact?

We listen to the daily lesson every morning and have different committees. We get text messages every hour, but physically we get together only once or twice a week.

Answer: The point is not how many times you get together but how many times you come in contact with people on the outside. The spiritual work is as follows: The Creator is above, and below the Creator there is the group, in the group, there is the teacher (Rav); all the Kabbalists from whom we have received our method surround the group and the teacher, and below there are the masses, society, the people.

First, we have to connect in the group. This unity is essential when each one exits himself, performs the first restriction, creates a Masach (screen), and connects to others. Then we connect to the Creator by wanting to bring Him into the group, which is the second part. Third, when the Creator is already among us, we go out to the people.

Among the people we begin to feel that it’s not enough for us since we discover different deficiencies. Then we return to the group and in it we return to the Creator. Through the group we are empowered by the Creator, and then we return to the people. Thus we constantly perform this cyclical work. So physical contact is not enough, we have to engage in external dissemination through the group.

Our whole group is called Israel, Yashar-El (straight to the Creator). What does Yashar-El mean? Where can we discover Him? In the same place where there is a desire that was created by the Creator. The Creator is Light. We are in the middle, like a switch. Israel is the conductor through which this connection is fulfilled; this is all our work.

Therefore, we cannot connect to the Creator if we have no contact with the public, since together with the group and all the Kabbalists, we are not considered a created being. We are an artificial creation that the Creator has created in order to fulfill the connection between Him and His created being since we operate by the desire in our heart which He has given us. The point in the heart is what is typical of our group.

We don’t generate this point; it’s the Creator’s attribute from above. We work from this point, so we can only be the switch, the connector, the conductor, between the Creator and the desires. The Creator is Light. There is a desire and there is the Light that has to correct the desire and to fill it. We are in between the two and we have to fulfill this.

You can listen to as many lessons as you wish and have committees, but it will lead to nothing. You will actually remain on the same level for 10 to 20 years until you dry up and leave this useless business since you don’t engage in disseminating to the public!

The wisdom of Kabbalah is the revelation of the Creator in this world! Read the definition of the wisdom of Kabbalah in Baal HaSulam’s article “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah.” The wisdom of Kabbalah is the revelation of the Creator to the people in our world. This is His desire, His goal, and the reason for all of creation.

We have to fulfill this goal. But in whom? It’s done in the masses, not in us. If we fulfill it only in us, we operate egoistically. The revelation of the Creator among the masses is not considered egoistic, since they don’t want it and have no desire for it; they are not egoists with regard to the Creator. They don’t need Him.

We, however, need Him! So we have to work for them, to discover the Creator among them, and then this revelation will be altruistic with regard to us. Study the diagram I drew and you will see that you cannot need the Creator if you don’t go out to the people. Only if you go out to the people and engage in dissemination will you feel that you need Him.
[115752]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/25/13, Question and Answers with Dr. Laitman

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Question: How can we tighten the connection with the friends in the group and in the group of ten, in order to hold on to the force of unity in our daily work connecting the world around us?

Answer: How can you tighten the connection in the group of ten and in the group? Only if you feel the need for it, if you feel that it is essential!

When the Light spreads from the top down it creates a desire. In the fourth phase of the development of the desire it begins to respond to the Light, to restrict itself, to form a Masach (screen), the Returning Light, etc.

Since we come from the desire and not from the Light, we need a reason in order to do something. You are asking: How can we tighten the connection among the friends in the group?” But is there a need for it?

If I go out to disseminate, to connect to other people in the outside world, I see that I need the group’s support and to hold on to the group. I feel the need for the connection with the friends and I connect to them. But if I have no desire to succeed in the outside world; I have no need for the connection with the group.

We are disseminating integral education in Israel in a very intensive campaign and all our people are involved in this external work. Wherever they are they speak about the need to unite in order to solve daily problems and they feel a greater need for connecting with the group! When they return, they feel how important the friends are to them, and how important they are in providing them with the power to convince others.

So keep on tightening the connection with the world around us, enter it, disseminate, and bring it to connection and unity. Thus you will tighten the connection with your friends qualitatively.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/25/13, Question and Answers with Dr. Laitman

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Question: The term “groups of ten” cannot be grasped by my group, and we don’t talk about it. There is a kind of collective agreement that the group of ten and the group are two different things and that the group of ten belongs more to dissemination. But when we discuss dissemination no one talks about the groups of ten. Why does this happen?

Answer: On the whole I don’t know what the difference between the group of ten and the group is.

A group of ten is a collection of people who can connect and then separate.

A group, however, is more organized, fixed, and connects people. It creates certain conditions around it: It has a building, a certain kind of work, a group is more stable, solid, and versatile.

A group of ten can be organized spontaneously, in order to clarify a certain problem for example. If ten friends who are not in a hurry to get to work now get together, they form a group of ten.

I believe that the groups of ten shouldn’t be fixed. Different members in my group, in the global group, in another group can be members of my group of ten. This morning it is one way and in the evening it can be different, etc. This means that the group of ten is a method of getting together, in order to ascend, to solve a specific problem, to pray, and to form an intention. When people are about to go out to perform a certain activity they gather, and this gathering can also be called a group of ten.

A group of ten is called Minyan in Hebrew, and it stands for a Sefira. It is customary to pray only in a Minyan, (in a group of ten people).

This means that in order to turn to the Creator, we have to be at least ten people. When the group is smaller than that, its prayer is not accepted since one person cannot raise his personal egoistic desire to the Creator. When he annuls it in order to connect to others and they do the same with regard to him, a collective desire is created among them, a common intention.

Let’s suppose that a circle is made of ten people. In this circle all the ten, by annulling themselves one before the other, create a common desire called a “raspberry ball.”

Such a group of ten has a special attribute, since the spiritual levels are in an identical relation to each other, and the group of ten on the first level is equal to 1 on the next level. So in order to ascend from one level to the next, we have to establish such a connection that all the ten people will be as one. This is the whole idea of the spiritual work. So a group of ten is called Minyan stemming from the Hebrew word meaning numbered.

So the difference between the group of ten and the group is very clear. A group of ten is a spontaneous collection of people who have a special desire to connect and to draw away from their ego.

The ego throws each of them backward and then they connect internally against it, yearning to unite. This means that the “raspberry ball” is the sum of the efforts to connect (Σ).

It turns out that each one feels that he is in the circle in the group of ten, detached from himself and connected to the others. Psychologically I have ascended, flown, exited myself, but in fact I have not exited myself to some space and am not flying somewhere meditating. I am together with the others in a special volume of the collective efforts and our common yearnings.

It is in this state that the yearning for the Creator is created. Our collective inner efforts (the next circle) are not just efforts, but MAN, a prayer to the Creator.
[115622]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/25/13, Questions and Answers with Dr. Laitman

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Question: How can we demand the power to ascend from the Creator the moment the activity of the group of ten slows down?

Answer: It happens that together we go through a state of descent and feel that our activity slows down, we feel powerless, a descent in our yearning, and a certain emptiness. What is more, if the emptiness is mutual, it influences us even more strongly than if I were by myself.

When I am alone and I am in a state of descent, I may feel bad when I look at others since I am at a lower state than they are, or it my impress me and I may make an effort to be on the same level they are on since I understand that I have no choice. But when the group of ten goes through a general descent, it is very difficult.

This happens very rarely, but it happens. We also see it during the lessons. Last week for example, there was this state of emptiness and it was a very difficult blurry feeling.

What can we do to exit such a state? There are several options.

The first option is to hope for help from the other groups of ten; we are not alone; we are many.

The second option is for everyone to lower their heads. If such a big wave comes along, we all have to lower our heads and this wave will pass over us. Then we will float on top of the water again, we will begin to breathe the air again and gradually come out of this state. Sometimes we have to act this way.

Sometimes we have to resist, which means not to wait for the influence of another group of ten and not to lower our heads submissively (although it is also a big problem to lower yourself before the Creator), but to act against Him. If you can gather and demand this from the Creator, then it is great. Cry out, demand, curse, do everything you can, but resist somehow.

If you can’t do anything at all; if you were active before and everything was fine and now it is as if you have all received a blow on the head and cannot exit this state in any way, at least follow this state, study it and see to what extent you are merely “rags,” and that the whole group of ten is worthless.

A bit of Light was taken from you and you are already in such a state. This means that we are under the total control of the Light and this is also something that we should feel.
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Form the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/25/13, Question and Answers with Dr. Laitman

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Question: After I have already annulled myself in front of my friends, what else should I do?

Answer: By nullifying oneself, one becomes as a drop of semen that enters a uterus and attaches to its lining. Then, the spiritual fetus has to grow. It starts receiving blood (desires associated with the inanimate level) that adds more material substance to it. Later, this inanimate material will to turn into a vegetative substance, then it will develop into animate and speaking levels.

All of a sudden, one feels hatred toward the upper and thus one has to work on it in order to nullify oneself again. Because of this self-annulling, one shapes oneself similar to the upper, since one becomes receptive of everything that the upper gives him. It’s said that “a fetus in its mother’s waters sees the entire world from one end to another. A candle is lit above his head (the Light of Keter) and he is taught the whole Torah.” The Light hits all of his 620 desires and corrects them by adding the intention to bestow to them.

All of the above happens as a result of self-annulling. There is nothing else we should do, nothing but this: Our advancement starts with self-annulling. Each new step of ours is just a new level of self-annihilation. One rescinds oneself and the upper starts working on him as his mother’s uterus. Same as in regular life, a fetus conforms to its mother. It’s as if it doesn’t yet exist, nor does it understand or feel a thing; All the fetus does is totally annul itself. Later, we start nullifying ourselves at higher levels, Ruach, HGT.

Then, a period of “feeding” (nourishment) begins; it’s about self-annulment that is even bigger than the previous stage. The upper demonstrates to us that He acts and that some of His actions are recognized by our egoism as incorrect and even terrible. Look at what the Creator does to the world, what affliction He causes in people! All our problems are originated by Him.

When corrupt desires wake up in us, we feel them as a manifestation of the Creator’s horrible attitude to creation. It means that real egoistic powers (Klipot) rebel in us. We have to “disregard” ourselves and accept these situations by going with faith above reason and regard them as the best circumstances that could have happened to us.

We receive energy for self-negation from our friends, from our “ten.” There is no other place for spiritual revelation; we exist only in this group. The power comes from the Creator to us only through this group of people. Before, we were all equal, but now we see our friends as very big ones. We were the ones who made them look big, whereas they in fact remain the same, but due to our self-nullification, we start receiving nourishment through them as a fetus from his mother.

We can receive the entire world of infinity through them, since as we speak we are in it, but we don’t see or feel this endless Light only because of our corrupt properties. So, if we continue working correctly, we can receive everything through our “tens” to the degree of our self-nullification. This process doesn’t depend on our friends at all. Their task is just to stay ready to do the same thing to at least some extent, this will already be enough so that through them we will achieve the state of the world of infinity.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/24/13, Writings of Rabash

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We need to construct our work according to a precise arrangement.

1. I cannot turn to the whole, to the general public, before I am included with the group (group of ten).

2. Only after I am included in it, do I receive the Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif).

3. After that I influence the whole, people, which we call “education.”

4. We unite with them.

5. I bring the whole of them to the group, which is called bringing the “Nations of the World” to “Israel,” and all merit discovery of the Creator.

From the group I transfer to the whole (←) and from the whole back to the group (→), and by means of the Surrounding Light we receive Inner Light (Ohr Pnimi). Because now we have a Kli, a desire to receive, together with the intention.

I am simply found in the middle, implementing the action. I work in a group with Galgalta ve Eynaim (GE), and with the public, which is the AHP, and I am left in the middle of the Upper Third (1/3) of Tifferet where there is free choice.

Therefore, if I am not included in a group, I have nowhere to begin. Each one of my steps must begin from this inclusion and this is the most important action and the foundation of all actions. If there is inclusion, then it is possible to continue to act; if there is no inclusion, then it is impossible to continue. For after this I act not with my own powers, but specifically through the power of the mutual inclusion that I received from the group, thanks to submission. My individual power is egoistic and only through nullification of my ego, through inclusion among the friends (1), can I receive from them the power of bestowal with whose help I turn to the general public (2).

And then I work with it also according to how I did this with the group of ten. My inclusion within the society is like inclusion with my baby to whom I want to give everything good. I don’t condescend; rather, I bow my head before the public with love.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/20/13, Talk About the Groups of Ten

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The tens should not be isolated from each other. None of them should feel that it is separate or distinct from others.

I join the group of ten in order to neutralize my ego and be loyal to the whole world. If I do not come to this feeling, if I am not loyal to the world, not connected to it, this means that my ten is useless because it does not prepare me properly.

The group of ten is a mini-world in which I am learning how to be integrated with others. If I am not included in them, I do not arrange my ego as it should be—in the direction from the love for the created being to the love for the Creator.

In the group of ten, I should carry out various exercises of exiting myself to feel myself “extended,” “spread out” between everyone. I do not exist, do not feel myself, my individuality, my “self,” and the group of ten has to help me in that. “Each man shall help his neighbor”; this is how we have to be connected with each other.

As a result, our common desire, belonging to everyone, has to burn in the “center” of the group of ten. I feel in this desire that there are no “me” and “others,” but only “WE.”

On the basis of this unity, we think, feel, and make decisions—only from US. I resist all that is called “I,” and raise and nurture all that relates to US. Only our unity stems from my thoughts and feelings, and through it, like through glasses or binoculars, I look at the world all around.

A certain inner effort is necessary here in order to “dissipate” my “Self,” not allowing the focus on it, but keeping focus only on the center of the group where WE are together, and seeing the world, reality, in this way. Nothing that does not belong to US exists for me.

A person has to live and work in this inner effort as much as possible. For it is through the center of the group of ten that he imagines that he will get the Light that Reforms.

However, to focus on US, on the center of the ten correctly, the whole group of ten has to hold the intention to bestow. How is it verified? In its relation to other groups of ten and to the world. When the group of ten becomes one whole, when ten men become one, this unity acquires volume, and again it is reduced to one and acquires volume, until finally we come to the One, the Creator.

So, the criterion of our unity is the desire of the group of ten to get connected with others and become one whole with them. How can we do this? How can we test ourselves?

I can check myself if I enter any group of ten and feel like I am within my own group. There are no primary or secondary groups of tens, and I do not care which one I am in. I simply connect to the people who want to unite, connect without any distinction.

To make our work as pure as possible, we cannot consider the current group of ten as our “home,” and all the rest as a “foreign territory.” No, all the people who want to unite is my “territory,” the same group of ten. It is sufficient that they have a small attraction to unity, and I can already be together with them.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/20/13, Conversation About the Tens

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We must make efforts only to unite everything to one point, where the Creator and the created being, “something from something” and “something from nothing,” are adhered. All the concealments, the distortions, the contradictions, and the events seem to exist only because we don’t feel and don’t perceive the unity. There is no time or place. There is only the state of lack of unity and this is what we experience and live in.

Everything that I feel now around me and inside me is the lack of unity in every possible way. The moment I can unite everything the world becomes the world of Ein Sof (Infinity).

Question: How can we connect all this to working in a group of ten?

Answer: The group of ten is a support tool in a “sight” through which I view the world. It helps me focus on it and attain unity. Suppose there is a small circle in the center of the lens with an “X” in the middle that helps me focus on the target.

Dissemination helps us clarify the goal that we don’t see at the moment and cannot focus on since it is beyond the horizon. Dissemination creates the conditions, the data that we must put into the formula in order to calculate the right direction to the goal. There are a thousand parameters we must take into account in order to shoot, such as heat, cold, weather conditions, the wind, different diversions, constant and changing states.

All this must be included in one formula in order to ensure that we hit the target. This formula is this entire world, everything that we see in our 613 senses.
[113629]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/24/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Baal HaSulam, “The Love of the Creator and the Love of the Created Being”: By that the creature develops in the degrees of the above sublimity until one loses any form of self-love and self-reception. In that state, one’s every attribute is either to bestow or to receive in order to bestow. Our sages said about that, ‘The Mitzvot were only given in order to cleanse people with,’ and then one cleaves to one’s root, as it says, ‘and to cleave onto Him.’

Why are we here in this world, the worst of all possible worlds, at the step below which there is nothing? Only for one reason, to learn to bestow and go through all the stages on the way until we reach full adaptation to the Creator, which is called “to cleave onto Him.”

This is what the wisdom of Kabbalah tells us. It corrects the evil inclination that was initially given to us and which develops in us. This means that we have to learn how to correctly use the method which has the Light that Reforms and learn to do the right actions in order to provoke this Light, since it corrects us and thus we advance.

Actually these are all the actions we have to perform, actions of bestowal by which we always provoke the greatest Light that Reforms upon ourselves. It already knows which desire needs to be corrected and what the phases of correction are. We don’t have to do its job since in the meantime we cannot even speak about it. Let it correct us since it is its business and we just have to give it a chance. This is what it depends on, and giving it a chance is our responsibility.

So there is nothing else we can do but actions by which we bring contentment to the other and help him. Why? This is the commandment of the upper. I don’t care about the other at all and I don’t want to get to know him; I don’t feel him at all. But there is an upper force and it obliges me to do so and explains to me that it is by such actions that I can bring it contentment. Thus I turn to the other.

It is therefore clear that if I help the other without the intention of bringing the Creator contentment, these are false actions that lead me to the opposite result, to destruction. It is because the Creator has created everything for so that we will reach Him. The nice urges to do something for the sake of humanity, like communism in Russia or the Kibbutzim movement, only lead to destruction.

I have to fulfill the principle of “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are one” in all my actions. “Israel” is me, the “Torah” is the right connection between me and all of humanity starting from the people who are closest to me to the most distant, the connection that the Light that Reforms has established. The Creator is what is revealed as what encompasses this network.

The fulfillment is in the relations between people. The Light that Reforms carries it out and I evoke it, and everything is in order to allow the Creator to be revealed, since this is what brings Him contentment. So we mustn’t avoid the general, humanity, and especially the group, my group of ten…
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/2/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: How can I want connection with others so that I feel that this is truly something I require?

Answer: You will want to connect with others only on condition that you despair of attaining the goal alone. Exactly as in our world, when I must move a fifty kilogram block but I don’t have the strength to do this, but I have no choice, I must move it, and so I am forced to turn for help.

Therefore I go to someone and say: “Please, until now I thought that I didn’t need you. I agree that I was disrespectful to you. I am not trying to justify myself, but it was natural for my ego to behave like that. But now I need you, I have no choice. Therefore I come to you begging that you will become my friend and will help me to carry this load. And if you need something like this, then I could also help you!”

We begin all this from the ego. But after this, through egoistic efforts, we see that we require true reciprocal connection on a permanent basis. And if we persevere in our work through “groups of tens” and workshops, we begin to feel how from this permanent reciprocal connection something new is born. If we do not retreat and we overcome the coldness that appears from time to time, eventually we will discover that we can use this model of the connected groups of ten as a tool, as a means, as leverage.

This is the fundamental compulsory means; this is a “point in the heart” that includes everyone, from which we begin our spiritual line upwards if we relate to this in the right form. And then we require from the connection between us more and more qualitative results. Everything is born from connection only and all the rest, the teacher, the books, they only help this. But the main thing is the connection within which ascent is realized.

Therefore it is not necessary to wait for me to bring you spirituality on a platter. You will discover it only within your connection, within the group of ten. Therefore it is necessary to strive that this workshop will be sustained permanently without pausing even for a moment. For every condition that appears in my life, it is as if I am discussing it with the friends in this endless workshop. It is as if I am found in dialog, in discussion with them at every moment, and in this manner I clarify all the questions.

I have no other way out of any situation besides the center of the group of ten! For everything in life I relate only from this point of our connection, from our collective consciousness, in which all of us nullify each other, are linked with each other, and complete each other. Only in this way will there be realization of the correct and precise point that is my point in the heart that connects with all the rest. This is how I need to describe myself all the time.

And so through the friends I try to develop the importance of the goal, to be “ignited” by their enthusiasm. I appreciate them as great and am happy that I merited a connection with another ten greatest of the generation. I thank the Creator that he sent them to me so that I would surely be able to communicate with Him.

Indeed I still don’t feel the Creator, but I already have a connection with him through this group of ten (through this Minyan). Perhaps the connection is still not that good and it is still egoistic from my side and therefore I don’t hear the voice of the Creator in the earpiece, but this telephone already exists and it works. I speak into it and believe that the Creator hears me. Because I have prepared the Kli, this apparatus, we are connected together, have nullified ourselves; I appreciate and respect the friends and am sure that the Creator is the One who arranged this group for me, put my hand on the good lot and said, choose for yourself.
[111570]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/04/13, Writings of Rabash

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