Question: What sort of annulment is required from the group of ten in the coming men’s convention?

Answer: We must attain total self-annulment with regard to the group of ten. It will not happen immediately, but rather gradually. Eventually, I must disappear, melt into the group just like a liquid that is poured into another liquid and is mixed until there is a total merger. I want to melt into everyone, to penetrate everyone. This is the self-annulment that I should reach with regard to my group of ten.

The moment I reach full disappearance in it, at the exact point that I disappear, I begin to feel the Creator. It is the hole through which I enter the spiritual world, which is called “the point of the needle.”

It is hard work, but it can become very easy if each of us supports everyone and we all help one another. Everyone should set an example for the others as to how much he annuls himself, and how he lowers himself and submits himself. You must show that, and this also will help you and awaken the others. Then, they will impress you in their turn. This is very important.

A group is a womb, and, the moment a person disappears in it, he is conceived in spirituality, like a drop of semen, and begins to grow as a spiritual formation. Only the initial spark remains of him, and around it, his new spiritual vessel is formed that is made of all his future concessions.

After the first ultimate self-annulment that turns you into a spiritual embryo, new egoistic desires are evoked in you on top of which you continue to annul yourself before the environment and the Creator. You already feel His Surrounding Light that isn’t just the Light that Reforms, but you feel the Creator in the Surrounding Light, like a pillar of smoke or a cloud.

You already begin to identify His presence to a certain extent, which means the attribute of bestowal. It is because you already have annulled yourself, and you continue to concede. You cannot see actual clear formations in the vessel that is formed by your self-annulment and your concession yet, but you already can sense them. This is why it is called a cloud or smoke.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/28/13, Writings of Rabash

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Question: When we are working to create an integral society (community), we need to play with this. Together with this, must all of our mutual activities be carried out at the level of thought?

Answer: Absolutely! Nothing more is required of us. We are entering a system where only one thought operates: the beginning of the action, the action itself, and its result. This is all thought.

Question: It is like an assembly line of thought where a lot of people each are carrying out a simple action for a total common result.

Answer: This is not an assembly line of thought. It is, rather, a closed chain of thought, let’s say, like a group composed of ten people where all are linked integrally. This is to say, they all organize a space between them like this where all of their thoughts, desires, and intentions become a shared integral space. Their different thoughts become one thought because a positive influence will be derived from each in regard to all and the goal is their shared state on an integral level.

This common general state doesn’t have to be physical at all. We already have spoken about this state that we create within us, that we describe to ourselves. Suddenly, we begin to understand that we already can realize it and that this state is completely mental. This is a system of thought that is created in which we can exist. Along with this, our physical world even can depart from our feelings and we can get rid of it. We simply pass to another state, the next level of existence, for we exist in the physical world thanks to our bodies only. After all, they belong to the level of the “beast,” whereas the integral level is truly human. The Adam is a closed system of thought and desire mutuality found on the next level, beyond our bodies.

Therefore, the still, vegetative, and animate nature that exists in our world becomes only a basis, a foundation, for us to develop our next level of existence. This is the level of a mutual connection between us, not on the corporeal level, rather on the level of thoughts and desires.
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From KabTV’s “Wisdom of Crowds” 5/14/13

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Question: If everyone in the group of ten wants to annul himself, why do they reach a feeling of hate?

Answer: If everyone annuls himself, we begin to rise, and then we are added extra ego. Suppose we are together, having achieved a certain connection, and through that, everyone receives the power to annul himself before the friends.

In the previous circle, we all were equal, and as a result of our mutual work we rise and create a new circle in which we all become greater and higher than we were before. Each of us seems to remain in the same place, but he raises the whole circle and looks at it from below. All the friends are above, and only I am left below. I don’t see myself in the upper circle, but rather down below. Thus, everyone sees the group as higher than him.

We all have annulled ourselves before the others and thus have received a great collective power. We have ascended and corrected ourselves. This means that we have attained our total self-annulment in this new state, but how can we keep on growing? Here, each of us is added an extra ego so that we can grow, like an embryo to whom is added flesh, and then this flesh must take on a certain form. The embryo receives his mother’s blood that clots and turns into flesh by which he grows.

This additional ego generates hate in us, and we feel it on every level. If we ascend and annul ourselves, we are ready to ascend to the next level, and then we receive an additional, uncorrected desire to receive from the shattering. We were on the root level of Aviut (coarseness), but in the new state, we already need the Aviut of phase one. Since we need to receive this gap between the levels, the additional ego is revealed as hate. This is actually what helps us grow.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/24/13, Writings of Rabash

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Question: Do we need to begin to prepare now to become one group of ten at the convention?

Answer: It’s impossible to achieve anything serious without preparation. If success came without preparation, then it was given from Above: You were pushed and you ran forward and did what you have been awakened to do. This success is not added to your account.

Any serious progress of the lower one takes place only due to preparation and is determined by its size. The action that took me ten seconds to complete could take ten years of my preparation. This preparation will determine the power of action.

So, we need to think about preparation. We continue to work in groups of ten to prepare ourselves for the convention: to one big group of ten. Otherwise, you will find yourself at the convention, in the crowd of a thousand, and just exit the boundaries of your group of ten. But you need to become integrated in the convention with your group of ten and see everyone as one group of ten.

You should not go beyond the circle boundaries, but at the convention, everyone is included in this circle. The whole place and all the people are the limits of our circle. Afterwards, you will work on how to connect virtually with other groups so that distance does not separate them.

Then we will work so that time does not separate us. We will begin to connect with Kabbalists who lived at all times since there is no time! We understand how it is possible that there is no distance because we can virtually connect to any point in the world. But time does not exist either. Even our world brings us closer to the border beyond which time does not exist. We need to work to make the concept of time, space, and movement disappear.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/28/13, Writings of Rabash

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Because all the good spiritual attributes fell into the egoistic desire, they begin to cultivate it and make it cunning, corrupt, and cruel. Thus a corrupt person who can correct himself in the future is made.

An animal doesn’t need correction since it has no desire to bestow in order to receive, it isn’t cunning. Therefore it is called non-cunning animal. A baby isn’t cunning either until he grows. When he grows he becomes a human being and learns to cheat. Until the age of two or three he behaves like an animal and doesn’t know how to “outsmart” others yet.

We love the animate form since it is simple and innocent, and we would like to see all the people that way. But we must understand that we were meant to be human and therefore, “he who is greater than his friend his desire is even greater than he.” We only have to correct the ego and then everything will work out.

Any negative or deceitful attribute that is typical of humans only shows us that the harmful force must be turned into the beneficial one. What can a primitive, undeveloped, naive person do? He cannot rise and reach the desired height. Great people are usually not very pleasant, until they correct themselves.

So we should love the friend in the group (in his ten) with all his corrected and uncorrected attributes. It is because he has received them from the Creator and wants to correct them, and everyone should help him do so. To criticize the friend’s attributes is to criticize the Creator who has made him that way. “Go to the craftsman who has made me,” but we have to help one another to reach correction. Baal HaSulam often says: “I am happy about the wicked that are revealed.”
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From the 3d part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/27/13, TES

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Love has turned into an emasculated concept, devoid of real meaning. Thinking about it, we turn away from its deeper essence, which is diametrically opposite to the commonplace views. In fact, we are talking about the wholeness of the entire creation, all the worlds, the entire reality, how to align all the opposite forces correctly. However, today, this word completely negates a serious attitude.

In fact, love is the power of unity. Don’t confuse it with the feelings and associations that our egoistic world triggers. Here, we “love” what pleases us, fulfills us, but true love is the essence of a partnership between the Creator and the created being, between the opposite parts, between the “plus” and the “minus” at various levels of the still, vegetative, animate, and human nature.

Love is a special force of a higher order, linking the positive with the negative. It is said that it “covers all transgressions,” i.e. the gaps between the opposites. It is the third factor that unites them into one. It is the middle line that is given to us from Above. It is the force of the Creator that belongs neither to the “plus” nor the “minus.”

It is in this light that we need to interpret the famous principle of love of others as for oneself. We and the others are opposite to each other, and that is why we need the third force that will connect us. That is when we come to love one another as ourselves.

In addition, this principle appears to us as the duty to reveal the Creator, to adhere to Him. After all, in order to overcome the hatred for others, I must appeal to the Creator for the Light that Reforms so that He becomes a partner, testifies to my connection with others, reinforces, and safeguards it.

Thus, at first, adhering to the Creator is our means to becoming united, and then we understand that all the breaks between us are intended precisely to reveal the Creator and adhere to Him.

Moreover, we adhere to Him on the basis of neither the positive, nor the negative, but on the basis of the middle between them. That is why it is necessary to seek the center of one’s group of ten, one’s group, and there and only there demand the Light that Reforms.

In the end, everything is connected in one action…
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/29/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: After we have split up into groups of ten, we seem to be starting a new process. After many years of working together with the friends I have already built up quite a few inner “charges” both positive and negative….

Answer: All this has nothing to do with the real concept of a group. In a real group there is a mutual commitment since it is one. We are all in the same boat, and you have to work out the relations between you. It isn’t just an obligation, but it’s simply impossible to manage without it.

Today, you are just friends. You choose those you feel more comfortable with, but you have an obligation with regard to the real group framework. If you don’t, then it’s not a group or a group of ten yet.

We feel the group by our commitment; it’s as if I worry about a baby who needs endless caretaking. It isn’t about feeling pleasant but about the commitment that I have since I am committed to my friends. We have to develop these two aspects since otherwise everything is lost; there is no other way.

It’s a real wonder; we were shattered and each of us was given a spark that allows him to connect to other people, to connect artificially, to try to connect on the corporeal level. Without the corporeal reality all our sparks would be scattered infinitely distant from one another and we would never be able to get close to one another. But we live in corporeal bodies that enable us to be in mutual bestowal and receiving between us. The protein corporeal bodies help us establish ties and connect, although the sparks are still infinitely far from one another.

Our current ego belongs to the bodies and not to the sparks, since it isn’t the real evil inclination yet. But if we start getting closer to one another even a little despite the rejection that our bodies feel, we begin to evoke the Light that brings our sparks together.

So you should understand what a relief, what great help it is along our spiritual path. With the help of such a lowly, coarse system we can begin to connect the sparks. The Light that Reforms influences them, and in the meantime we go through the current phase which is the longest and the most difficult of all the phases. We will get through the other levels much faster, but this level is the coarsest, since here everything is done with the help of the bodies. It’s the preparation for the direct work with the Light and the desires, a wonderful stage, the Creator’s greatest benevolence. Although I hate the friend, I still connect to him; it’s an opportunity that is in contrast to nature. Nature operates according to honesty and the truth, while here there is a mechanism that is based on a lie.

So you have to yearn and to expect the moment that you will be pleased to see your friends like your own children and even more than that. Yes, yes, you will feel that the friend is more precious to you than your own baby.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/20/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Mutual Guarantee”

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Rabash, “What does the Rule of “Love Thy Friend as Thyself” Give Us?”: But because “all of Israel are responsible for one another,” through everyone, they are all kept. It is as though everyone keeps all the Mitzvot together. Hence, through the 613 Mitzvot, we can achieve the law, “Love thy friend as thyself.”

All the spiritual laws are integral laws and they exist only when there is a whole structure. There is no little bit in spirituality, and so everything begins from establishing a group of ten people, “a ten,” a Minyan, a minimal measure in which the spiritual reality can exist.

It is like the example of Rabbi Shimon’s group whose students formed the right network among them and by that reached the end of correction by attaining all the 125 degrees of the spiritual ladder. Thus, everything depends on establishing a Minyan.

All the laws of reality can be discovered in a small group, but because it is a tool meant to bring the Creator contentment, it must be expanded as much as possible, we must exit the group of ten and bestow and spread this message to the world in order to connect the rest of reality to us.

Such mutual incorporation also influences the structure of the ten and helps calibrate it, which means its inner correction that belongs to the fulfillment of 613 Mitzvot (commandments). By gathering and supporting one another, the group of ten is enough to attain all of creation (which means the fulfillment of all of the 613 Mitzvot). This is because its structure is compatible with the structure of the original Sefirot.

So, it is specifically a Minyan—a group of ten people, no more and no less—that is the right vessel of correction. However, when we speak about the fulfillment of love of others and the love of the Creator, it is fulfilled by the expansion of the vessel. This Minyan becomes one united, which operates in order to correct the world that is outside the group of ten.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/21/13

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A while ago, we began to work in groups of ten and so far there have been many questions as to why such group work has been chosen. It is quite clear that the ten Sefirot are the basis of the spiritual reality and of the corporeal world. However, I still want to explain in greater detail so we will better understand our state today.

The Torah is the eternal order. It is impossible to change it according to time and place. The spiritual laws are fixed and absolute, and our attitude toward the Light that Reforms must be according to the general system. This system doesn’t change since we advance in our ego here in this world as we become more lowly, coarse, and egoistic.

Thus, our state becomes more sensitive and brings us closer to the “recognition of evil,” in the corporeal sense for the time being. However, the principles described in the Torah don’t change and never will. So, anyone who feels that he is aiming straight at the Creator (Yashar El), which means anyone who belongs to Israel, will have to go through the entire process that the Torah tells us about, including the time of the flood, Babylon, the exile in Egypt, the receiving of the Torah before Mt. Sinai, and the wandering in the Sinai desert, until he reaches a desire called Yashar El, the “Land of Israel.”

We are approaching this. The Torah is independent of time in concepts of earlier or later. Everything that is described in it is fulfilled on every level since, on every level, in every spiritual structure, every small or large Partzuf always is made of ten whole Sefirot, a whole HaVaYaH. The only difference is the level, as it is in every drop of semen in reality and in every child and grown up since the individual and the general are equal.

Therefore, we always go through all the states from the beginning to the end in every situation, and the only difference is the intensity of the states that are revealed in us and what we feel in them and understand. All of reality and every state are made of ten Sefirot. So, if we actually could open a certain state, we would enter the level of all of reality.

We advance according to the levels, one HaVaYaH after another, but at the same time, we constantly discover additional subtleties in each HaVaYaH and clarify another part of it. A new, whole formation appears on every level of HaVaYaH since each time there are new clarifications that depend on the level of Aviut (coarseness) that stems from the spiritual root.

Thus, we go through different states during our evolution. You cannot expect them, of course, so the changes that I perform may seem artificial. Suddenly, I tell you that we should split up into groups of ten in our spiritual work as if this thought has come to me by chance. However, I don’t just give you random orders. It is clear that we are advancing in an accurate order, and if you don’t identify it, believe me that I do see it. So, our advancement must be in groups of ten.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/23/13, Talk About Tens

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The preparation for the general spiritual work consists of several stages that are described as fables. The spiritual work in groups of ten is described in the Torah in the section about Jethro. Jethro was the chief priest in Midian, as well as Moses’ father-in-law, the father of his wife Zipporah. Moses lived at Jethro’s home when he escaped from Pharaoh and it actually is according to his instructions that the structure of the nation of Israel was formed.

It is a wonder why some priest of Midian, one of the sages of the nations of the world, brought such knowledge to the nation of Israel and knew how to form each of its camps so that they would better understand the laws and behave correctly according the Lord’s sentence. What do these subtle concepts that have to do with the inner corrections of the nation have to do with a priest of Midian who tells them how to organize the nation?

Jethro advises Moses after he already has received the Torah! This may seem very strange, but the method of organizing the nation stems from the wisdom of the nations of the world, as it is written, “If a person tells you there is wisdom among the nations of the world, believe him.” Besides, Jethro is not a stranger. He actually connects the desire to receive to the Torah to the desire to bestow.

We advance according to the steps that the Torah dictates, and it determines how we should divide into groups of ten, and then into groups of hundreds, thousands, and thus, advance in our spiritual work. It is a natural division according to the nation that should exist in a group. A simple crown came out of Babylon, and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob began to organize them into a nation.

They did not wander from one place to another in their journeys. The group came out of the general ego, from Babylon. It had broken off from the Babylonians and settled in one place surrounded by Babylon on all sides. In this place, they went through all the stages called Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Then, they reached the stage in which they began to feel that the ego is separating them—the exile, the distance—despite their strong desire to connect as they learned from their forefathers. After this group had received the method of connection from their forefathers, they already knew the stages of advancement to the revelation of the Creator. They understood that it is all revealed only in the connection between them, in “Love thy friend as thyself,” from which one comes to the love of the Creator.

However, when they actually began to work on the connection between them by following the advice of the three upper levels of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they began to feel how hard it is to fulfill this. They understood how exhausting this work is and how powerless it leaves them. They go through 400 years of exile and totally lose hope.

We try to fill ourselves through different external actions just to find new powers. However, all these innovations are always external, even if we learn another new thing and organize another convention. It is all fine and right, but it doesn’t lead to meaningful advancement. We are still building “Pithom and Ramses,” which means that we make efforts in order to discover that there is no hope!

Then, a more intensive, efficient and focused type of work begins in the groups of ten, and we see that if we want to be incorporated in the spiritual work, we first must split up into groups of ten.

There is a stage in which we must split up. The work in groups of ten already advances according to the regulations that stem from the advice of Kabbalists and especially Rabash who formulated all the principles of working in a group based on the method of Baal HaSulam. We have all we need for this work, but we must learn the special structure of the group of ten, how to build it and how to fulfill the method of connection that is the method for the revelation of the Creator.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/23/13, Talk About Tens

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