The entire progress is realized only in the group of ten. From that moment on, we only work in it. The group of ten could be hundreds of our friends around the world. This also is called ten people, not nine or eleven.

Everything has the same structure of the ten Sefirot. The only difference is the scale, a greater or lesser resolution. You see ten people before you, but when you approach, each of the ten people turns into ten, and then each of these ten turns into other ten, and thus to infinity.

However, in essence, you see the same HaVaYaH, the same group of ten in which absolutely everything is included.
[111566]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/4/13, Writings of Rabash

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Question: What do the  groups of tens need to do in the framework of preparation for the convention?

Answer: First of all, you need the materials for the convention so you can create a connection with what is happening there with all your might.

Question: What kind of environment, what kind of an atmosphere, do we need to create in the World Kli to help every friend have ready access to the convention, to raise all of us together to a new level?

Answer: Remember how you prepared for the birth of your child or your wedding, externally and internally. Understandably, the main thing here is inner preparation: “Where are we going? Towards connection. What else can we do to succeed in connecting and with this connection discover the Light, the characteristic of bestowal, which is discovered to the degree that we become equal to it?”

Ultimately I need to come to the convention completely ready, without expecting any surprises except for one, our connection, and nothing more. I don’t need new wisdom, I want connection. And with this I will feel the text with a new depth and in general everything will seem new to me, sparkling, and bright.

And on the contrary, if there won’t be connection, I must feel that I am left with nothing.

That is, we must see and understand that everything depends on connection, and connection depends on preparation.

Question: About whose connection should I be more concerned, my preparation or that of the friends in the  group of ten?

Answer: That of the friends. If we are speaking about spirituality, first of all I need to be concerned about the spiritual needs of the friends. This is called the “prayer of the many,” a prayer for the friends. It is said, “Whoever prays for his friend is answered first.”

Question: What will we require at the convention for a transition to a complete inner scream?

Answer: The preparation. Specifically we don’t scream because we are not prepared, we don’t add a “penny and another penny,” so that they will combine into one great scream. Instead of this we wait: “So, when will the breakthrough come already?” This will never happen without preparation.

Question: How can we avoid falling into a lack of participation at the convention?

Answer: This again depends on the atmosphere and the preparation. If the person is ready, then he apparently sinks into a force field that won’t readily let him go.

Question: Do we need to see a passage through the “Red Sea” at the convention in St. Petersburg?

Answer: And even Arvut standing before “Mount Sinai.”
[110818]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/25/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam “Peace in the World”

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Question: At present I am found in a virtual group of ten that includes women from different regions with great time differences. What should we do?

Answer: A woman is exempt from all time-bound occupations! She can learn quietly and independently without any connection to other women. And when she has spare time she can be in connection with us through our Sviva Tova website, through a chat, Skype, and so forth.

Question: I heard that everyone needs to be with an inner mutual responsibility including the women for six minutes per hour, everyone is responsible for this time. Does that make sense?

Answer: I don’t know what to say; I didn’t say something like this. It’s forbidden for both women and men to do this. This is because you will be tense all the time and ultimately neglect everything. This process needs to be much more smooth and acceptable to our lives. Imagine an engineer who would stop the train for six minutes to be involved with spiritual work. This is hyperbole.

Each one of you needs to do it at a time that is convenient for her. It’s clear that it would be good to work according to the clock, but understand that you will be tense all the time. It’s a waste of nerves. And for what? Eventually this will lead to a nervous exhaustion, and instead of getting a good impression from spiritual work you will feel the burden of its obligation and be anxious all the time. It’s forbidden to do this!

Question: I heard that women, like men, must read articles by Rabash in their group of ten after the lesson or at another time.

Answer: Gather once per week when everyone is free without disturbing anything (the family and so forth) and read something. At home prepare some coffee, sit relaxed by the computer, and read an article together with everyone. This is pleasurable and this is good.

Question: Is it worthwhile to connect to groups of ten according to the same time zones?

Answer: If you connect with each other only on weekends and this is easy for you, then you can even take ten time zones, and if you cannot, then there is no need. Spiritual work needs to be relaxed! It needs to be as easy and systematic as possible!

The only thing that is not easy is the departure from the ego. We do everything else without effort. It’s possible to be in connection with everyone and to be lying relaxed on the couch because we are engaged in spiritual work. Therefore there is no reason for people of different regions with different times to be connected at the expense of their hours of work and sleep. A connection like this cannot last for long, for at the end of the matter the person will break. This has no connection to the work in the groups of tens.

It’s enough for  groups of tens to meet three times per week for 15 minutes. With us at Bnei Baruch in Petak Tikva, the  groups of tens meet for ten minutes after every morning lesson and this is all. If in your region there is the possibility of meeting for ten minutes in the evening and clarify something, even if this is through a virtual connection, this is good and is enough. This is the life of the  groups of tens.

Question: But we don’t meet physically, rather we communicate every evening, read an article and observe the time of six minutes. Everyone is sitting at work or just concentrates on thinking about the  groups of ten and this doesn’t disturb his work. Is it worthwhile to stop these exercises and to do what you said now?

Answer: I cannot advise a person to think about something foreign during work hours. I don’t know what his or her work involves. Perhaps it is complicated, dangerous, and illegal. You are taking everything that I say in a fanatical, irrational form.

There is no provision that a person must suffer from the spiritual work in which he is engaged. It is forbidden! The goal of creation is to enjoy, to benefit, only to bestow.
[110805]
From the Conventions in Krasnoyarsk 6/16/13, Lesson 6

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Preparation is the key to success!

• From this moment, I have to imagine the convention in its ideal form. What do I need to do this? Gathering of friends—what should they be? Emotional experiences—what kind and by what external means can we achieve them? Lectures—on what topic? Perhaps, I will recommend my own. What questions do I prepare; what would I like to ask after the lectures and workshops? How do I connect with everyone? How am I getting ready to perceive everyone? As a guest? As a host? As a friend? As a student? As a teacher? As a servant? Who am I in relation to everyone? And how should I behave in each state of this spectrum?
• I am working on what is the most difficult for me. For example, if I do not like to dance with everyone all together, then I prepare myself to participate in this in advance, sparing no efforts and pressuring myself with all my strength.
• I will try to stay in the correct intention constantly, to hold myself in it all the time because everyone depends on my intention. It is true that I transfer the Light through my thin “pipe” to them and thus I have to stay “online” constantly. I need to talk to my group of ten: everyone supports everyone else, so that none of use loses this “pipe.” We share it, and we want to turn it into a wide channel of communication for the entire convention.
• I am concerned that no one is disconnected from the right intention—concerned to the point of inner trembling, in fear and anxiety. When something happens to the baby, it is a disaster for us, the “end of the world.” Now, I worry even more. The problem is that this fear is not in our hands; we cannot feel it well; we are not sensitive to the detachment from intention. So, I should be literally in a fever, shaking with fear for everyone so that they do not lose the intention. Success depends on this.
• No matter what the friends do, no matter what they say, what songs they sing, I want everything to turn out for them as it should. I constantly worry and care about them as the mother of a baby who started doing something. I look at him with anxiety—if only he will succeed. It is said about this, “a concern in one’s heart, let him tell it to others.” My concern is transmitted to all.
• I try to come as early as possible in the morning to prepare everything, to speed up everything, and to start uniting with the friends, to sit and sing together even there are only fifty people, but we are already starting to fill the “space” of the conventions with our feeling.
• Each time, on the way to the convention and back, I try to make sure that none of my friends lose the mood, the intensity.
• The gathering of friends must be moving, emotional, as much as possible to prepare us for the lectures, talks, or workshops that will follow them. This is very important. All the speeches and songs should have a clear program and in the right proportion. The gatherings may not be long, but should be heart-felt. Without this preparation, a person will not be able to be included in the overall atmosphere, to the “air” of the convention, which should be breathed in, lived. The main thing is to affect and touch everyone. We need to think seriously how to achieve this.
• We need to find a mutual feeling, a mutual heart—obtained with the help of mind. We are rationally working on the feeling to become united.

[111035]

From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/27/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Rabash writes in The Social Writings: And there can be no love of another unless one nullifies himself. For on the one hand, each and every one needs to be humble. And on the other hand, we need to be proud that the Creator gave us the opportunity to be able to enter a society where each one of us has only one goal, ‘that the Shechinah will dwell among us.’

The Shechinah is the general characteristic of bestowal, and we want this characteristic to connect and unite us and fill the entire void between us. It turns out that the ego is left behind, behind us, and in front of us, the characteristic of mutual bestowal rules, connecting us in a circle within which we feel the general field of bestowal, that is, the nature that is discovered through a higher and more interior power with the characteristic of bestowal.

And even though we have not reached the goal, nevertheless we have a desire to reach the goal. This also needs to be important to us, even though we are still found at the beginning of the way. But we hope that we will reach the higher goal.

Amazing characteristics are discovered through connection: You accept the desires of the other but only when you want to be fulfilled within them as with a person that you love, when you live within his desires. Which is to say, his desires direct my desires, stabilize them, and I receive a double desire that attracts me forward with great intensity.

And when we gather with ten friends and each is included in the desires of the others, then within this “Group of Ten” I receive the sum that each of them gathers within himself from all the nine friends and not just the desires of the nine friends. Describe to yourselves what kind of increase there is here to my desire. There are nine people here and each of them already includes all the other nine friends.

But this is a qualitative increase of desire and not a quantitative one, for his quality is changed. In Kabbalah nothing is measured according to quantity since this cannot be measured at all. The spiritual world is not measured quantitatively. And even though we measure the density of desire through the levels 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4, these are qualitative measurements and not quantitative; every time there is a leap from one height to another height, from the substance of the still to the vegetative to the animate and to the speaking.

We leap from level to level all the time, like to the next height of development, but this is a new qualitative height. It is impossible to compare between a plant and a stone through a quantitative criterion since this is an absolutely different type of existence. The feeling of life is completely different. So it is here. Therefore, the moment that we connect within a group, we immediately acquire a new qualitative feeling; we feel that the world is transparent; we see through it and feel the power of bestowal that fills it, that establishes and manages everything.

We begin to feel ourselves, our ego, hovering within an ocean of bestowal, managing, guiding, connecting, and uniting us. Very little effort is demanded of me; I must want to feel my enjoyment through the other, no more than this.

This is what I would want to say to you as an introduction. From this are derived all the laws of the group that establish how it is up to us to connect into physical and virtual groups, how to connect between us, and how to make gatherings of friends. Everything is derived only from this.

The main thing is that everything will be directed towards maintaining a condition that provides everyone with the opportunity to go out of himself and pass into the other with the “point in the heart” as quickly as possible, easily and powerfully. And to leave the ego somewhere behind us, to forget about ourselves!
[110173]
From the Convention In Krasnoyarsk 6/16/13, Lesson 5

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Question: What should I do if the majority of the friends in my group of ten are very weak and pull me downwards?

Answer: One needs to struggle and try to pull them after you. And also to turn for help so that within this tens a few strong friends will be included, like yourself. But it is forbidden to leave the weak ones. You need to strengthen them. That’s the correction.

The correction is such that everyone becomes equal and unified, and not that a few outstanding friends are chosen and the rest are discarded.

If one goes from one group of ten to another, a stronger group, and succeeds there, and the others will fall even lower without him, then that is not a correction, but corruption. We are approaching the general correction of the entire world, thus today as we enter a greater area, not just growth in height, we will attain in this way greater success.

We think that we simply need to rise up the ladder, but the rise upwards on the rungs of the ladder depends on the spread across. This ladder grew in the form of the cone, like sand hills that children build. If you want your hill to be tall, you need to make its base wider. Identically, our development upward is built like this. It can’t be any other way. It is imperative.
[109812]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/6/13, Writings of Rabash

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Question: The group in Israel has been advancing with you for much longer than the groups in North America. What can we do in North America to catch up with them?

Answer: Carry out what I say and then we will keep pace. To do this, you should take example from and work together with Israeli groups. If the group is moving forward, I am ready to engage in their process immediately.

Question: Do you allow or recommend women’s groups of ten in the world women’s group?

Answer: I recommend being in groups of five to ten, but the main thing is to be connected daily to discuss the daily topic and to support each other.
[109646]

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Question: What type of connection should be formed in the “tens” in order to feel the inner connection with the teacher within this unity since only through him can we establish connection with the Creator?

Answer: Working in the group of ten, you do not have to think about the teacher. I say this not out of some kind of modesty, but because this is not the right approach. The teacher must be high enough in the student’s eyes and respected enough so as to become a magnifying glass through which you look at your path to the Creator and can advance. You use this lens, your teacher, as glasses, but he does not become your goal.

You look not at the glass, but at what is behind it; however, you can see this only with its help. This lens focuses your line of sight on the Creator correctly; this is the role of the teacher and the group.

I see all my students united in one circle, in one body, and I speak addressing this one person. If you try to be included in this common body and connect with them in the way I see them connected, you will receive spiritual information from me. We will meet inside this common body, and there we will really understand each other.

If you want to understand what I am saying, you can understand this in your mind or feel in your heart, but to understand truly you need to be precisely in the center of the group, as if you are walking around the room trying to hear a faint sound and suddenly you find the place where you can hear it well! And if you step a meter to one side or the other side, you will hear nothing. Try it!

It’s necessary to feel the importance of the teacher but only to the extent that is required to perform the work in the group for the sake of revelation of the Creator. The teacher is your instructor, a guide on the spiritual path but not an idol or a king replacing the Creator by Pharaoh’s example.
[109654]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/9/13, Writings of Rabash

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Question: Can a person who takes part in the work of a physical group of ten be in a virtual group of ten at the same time?

Answer: Of course, if he has the time because in principle it does not matter in what kind of group of ten you are. When I sit among my students, I do not see faces and do not remember names, I just feel people’s energy, and this is the most important thing for me.

If I were in any group of ten, these people would not matter to me, neither their appearance nor their names because what is important is only their inner spiritual potential; this is what is felt.

That is why groups of ten will gradually dissolve as a person inside it will no longer see everyone’s image. For instance, it’s similar in married life, having lived with your wife for many years you stop noticing her physical image and perceive her mainly internally.

That is what should happen to us. And then the groups of tens will lose their physical relevance. You will be able to connect, mingle, unite in groups of twenty, of hundreds, it doesn’t matter. Uniting in groups of ten is necessary at the current stage to help us exit ourselves a little, to begin to understand how to adapt to others.

That is why we tell a person: “This is your field of work, and you have to get used to it; don’t run away!” When he understands that the group of ten for him is the key to exiting himself, to feeling the upper world, then he will have no problems, he will want to unite, interact with all the other friends.

To begin to feel the exit from himself, a person has to work in his well-organized group of ten from which he cannot run away. Whether it’s good or bad, comfortable or not, he knows that it’s his and that’s all. That is why I have clearly defined the group of ten as something sacred!

It will not be like this later. But this “later” will come only after the group of ten becomes everything for everyone, and he will understand how much it is dear to him because this is the means of exiting oneself and entering the upper world. Then a person will be able to expand his circle.
[109376]
From the Virtual Lesson 6/2/13

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Question: What does it mean to use the teacher in order to connect with the upper level?

Answer: To use the teacher means to follow the teacher’s recommendations and commandments. The teacher recommends that the student should work on his connection with the friends and engage in the dissemination of this method, of integral education—this includes working on preparing the material and disseminating it—and a person’s incorporation in the group. But he should do all that thinking that by this he brings his teacher contentment.

It’s a very simple system. There is my group of ten and we have to be impressed by one another in order to connect together to a higher level, which is called a teacher, Rav (Rav stands for one who is greater, which means an upper level). We want to overcome and to fulfill the gap between our level and his, which means to ascend.

But how can I ascend if I am repulsed by the upper level? I have to see it as grace, as extremely attractive, and so I have to be impressed by the friends as for the greatness of the upper level. If I can imagine by myself that this level is great and that it contains everything that is good, then I probably don’t think about it correctly, but quite the opposite.

This is called using the teacher’s body, which provides external help which you are sure is his desire. The teacher says what and how we should do it: how to study, how to connect, how to disseminate the method, and according to which criteria we should exist.

Question: How can we check that we are already in contact with the teacher?

Answer: You can only check this when you have the recognition on the level of the teacher.
[109270]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/05/13,  Writings of  Baal HaSulam, “A Speech for the Completion of The  Zohar”

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