Question: What should I do if I am able to cancel myself in my thoughts, but it’s very difficult for me to do this in practice?

Answer: That’s impossible! If I really cancel myself in my thoughts, then I also do it in the actions. The action reflects the intention.

But if I still haven’t reached the final decision to cancel myself, then I am unable to carry out this action and am only lying to myself by thinking that I am cancelling myself in the thoughts.

If we see that after an argument a group does not come to unity, until the next quarrel, this is a sign that its members do not cancel each other before one another and don’t have any chance of attaining spirituality.

By conducting an inner self-analysis and trying to cancel our egoism before the friends, internally and externally, we already carry out the spiritual work. The spiritual world can become revealed to us practically only on the condition that we entirely cancel our egoism according to the level of our current degree.

If you now attain the true self-annulment in relation to any person, you will be convinced that you feel yourself in the spiritual reality, in the quality of bestowal, united with the Creator to a certain extent!
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/17/11, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
A Universal Recipe For Success
Daybreak In The Depth Of Desire
Lower Your Head And Take As Much As You Want
The Reason For Every Quarrel

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work, Prayer and Intention, Q&A, Spirituality, Unity - 1 Comment →

Question: Over the last few days couples in Israel began a protest against the housing crisis. They are starting up tent cities in public places to protest against the skyrocketing housing prices. Will this lead to correction?

Answer: This is a good thing. However, what can our poor government do for them? We ascribe great capabilities to it, thinking, “They’ll decide something today and will carry it out tomorrow.” But that’s not so. Didn’t the government know about these problems? Don’t the ministers just want to get together for a conference and make a decision so that starting tomorrow, new, cheap houses will start being built?

This can’t happen because we are dealing with a great complex of interconnected social problems, and this is just one of them. We cannot correct any one of them unless we correct the connection between the people in the country. No one will be able to help: not the prime minister or the government, not the parliamentarians, and not the people who are sitting in tents on city streets.

It’s good that they are sitting there, and it’s good that the Prime Minster is concerned. It’s good that he’s afraid and they are making demands of him. Maybe this will finally push them to reach the right conclusion: that correction will not come from the Prime Minister. And even money won’t solve anything. There is a bigger problem concealed here. Even if there will be enough money in the country, the authorities won’t be able to make any useful decision.

We have to understand that in our times there are no separate, problematic situations. Now, when nature has closed us inside of an integral net, everything depends only on the connection between people. There is not one social problem, not even the smallest one, that could be solved without a social interconnection, without a connection within the nation and within the world. Without resorting to this means, you won’t be able to do anything.

The task might seem secondary or purely technical, “What’s so hard about it, really? Just give out an order, free up some land for construction, and let them start building.” But they cannot do that because they will come up against insurmountable barriers on the inside. That would be the same as demanding pure bestowal from a person when he is simply incapable of it. He just can’t do it.

So know this: Today there is just one solution to any problem: mutual guarantee. If there is no mutual guarantee, there is no solution. This is exactly what we have to bring to the people’s understanding. We can be sure that we will attain success and will overcome all the problems only by means of the force of the mutual guarantee.
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/17/11, “Arvut”

Related Material:
Talk When You Have Something To Say
Money Cannot Buy Happiness
Kabbalah Circulation In Israel

Filed under: Crisis, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Economy, Israel, Kabbalah for the Nation, Mutual Guarantee, News, Politics, Q&A, Society, Unity, World - 1 Comment →

Question: Apart from the Light as the correcting force, how do we differ from other organizations that acknowledge unification as the only way to save humanity?

Answer: We don’t. Moreover, why don’t we collaborate with these organizations? If they do indeed wish to unite people, we can get in touch with them.

If one or another group, be it a religious, secular, or an international one, takes course toward unification, even if it is only for a short term goal, and if it isn’t a distracting maneuver on their part but a true aim, we are definitely with them. Them aiming at unification is an advancement in itself.

I don’t know whether such organizations exist. Those I have seen do brisk business behind a nice facade. But if there are some, we will be happy to cooperate since unity underlies the world’s success, especially during the time of a growing crisis. There aren’t any problems in unifying our forces with those who already see what the solution is.

In his time, Baal HaSulam went to Poland in order to join proletariat who rose in aspiration to achieve unity, socialism, and communism. Thereby, he wanted to test whether there was a chance to correct, to re-direct them a bit so that their solidarity would be authentic. You don’t really think that he brought the works of the Ari with him to study them with industrial workers, do you? Obviously, not. He didn’t intend to ask them to follow the Torah and commandments at the material level either.

Why did he go then? What did he think to find in the people so contrary to the image of a religious Jew? He wanted to explain to them a little more, to give them his strength so that their desire to unite would take the most correct form, at least to a certain degree.

His trip to Poland from Jerusalem is an example we do not yet comprehend. We view Baal HaSulam as naïve since we don’t see the spiritual aspect of it. There was an opportunity there, regardless of the fact that it didn’t get realized. But the upper force makes its own calculations in this regard. He went because there was a real chance to succeed.
[47811]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/11/2011, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”

Related Material:
Searching For Wise Allies
A Person Should See The Road Ahead!
Baal HaSulam Describes The Society Of The Future

Filed under: Crisis, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Kabbalah Dissemination, Q&A, Unity - No Comments →

By restricting myself in order to take care of the neighbor, I won’t be secretly worrying about my own well-being in the slightest. I simply won’t think about myself. This is the correction that the Light performs in me. This is the meaning of rising above the desire, performing the First Restriction, and acquiring the quality of bestowal. All of this is the results of the Light’s influence.

My care for the neighbor is in no way connected to any material details. I continue eating, drinking, and providing all of my necessities. It’s all about my desire, my inner attitude to the action.

For example, say I really want to help a sick person, I want to feed him and give him drink, but the doctors don’t permit him anything besides a little piece of bread and a cup of tea. Thus, even though I would like to give him a rich, exquisite dish and I have the opportunity to do that, I am limited.

It turns out that everything is about the intention. We do not build relationships and mutual guarantee between us on an artificial basis. And that’s why it seems to us that it is impossible to attain bestowal and unity, that it is impossible to give up concern for oneself, not worrying even about one’s vital necessities, and think only about the neighbor. They are supplied for me by others so I would simply provide for myself. By their guarantee, they take care of my material needs, as well as taking total, 100% care of my spiritual success.

All of this has to be built correctly. Who are the friends? They are receiving desires that are corrected by the Light that reforms. Nothing here is done by our own efforts. Efforts have to be made in order to attract the Light, which will come and correct us. It’s funny to think that we would act for the sake of bestowal of our own accord. Can a person really jump above his own head?

Our problem is that we do not aim at the Light in all of our actions. We think that the action itself will bring the result: that we will hug and will start loving the neighbor. But that won’t happen. We have to hug with the intention that by virtue of this, the Light will come and fuse us together in the inner embrace. Everything is carried out by means of the Light that reforms. We forget about the most important component, about the only force that operates in reality.

It seems to us that it is very difficult and unrealistic to connect mutual guarantee, unity, adhesion, the neighbor, bestowal, and vital necessity into one so they would become a single vessel for revealing absolute bestowal, meaning the revelation of the Creator to creation. And the only reason for it is that we do not evoke the Force that will build this state for us. We mistakenly expect to create it ourselves.
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/11/11, Matan Torah

Related Material:
When Everyone Is Responsible For Everyone Else
The World Where “There Is None Else Besides Him”
Like Clay In The Hands Of The Master

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Inner Work, Love, Mutual Guarantee, Prayer and Intention, Unity - 2 Comments →

Question: Egoism shrewdly and inventively depicts various pictures before me. How can I discriminate the lie in them, which appears like love for others? After all, all kinds of religions and methods also talk about love.

Answer: In our world “love for the neighbor” is a simple, primitive game of small egoists. Can you really find real, exalted love for the neighbor anywhere, which is really practiced on an ongoing basis?

True, people create separate settlements in order to live in love with one another: There is a village like that in Italy, one in India, and an entire city in Asia. But if you look a bit closer, you will see that they are still the same egoists who just decided to introduce more comfortable social customs. This is more comfortable and pleasant for them, and therefore, they have united in order to make their lives nicer.

Once upon a time kibbutzes flourished in Israel—agricultural settlements with collective property similar to a collective farm. People decided that it was worthwhile for them to live together because this brought them more benefit. “Let’s give up some of our egoism and then we will feel good.” Everything’s clear about this, but is this really altruism?

Humanity supposes that conceding to the neighbor makes a person an altruist. However, people who are slightly more informed about human nature or who study the science of Kabbalah know that any concession has to come with a profit. No matter what a person is giving up, you can find what he is gaining by that. Even if the profit is concealed, it is definitely present.

For example, I am willing to live in a kibbutz because this removes my worries about how to arrange my life. Is that not a profit? I have no worries. I simply do what I am told. But development follows its course and with time kibbutzes became outdated. As a whole, these kinds of communities have no future.

We already see that all forms of interconnection between people have to change due to the egoism that grows in them. Changes continue to take place, and this inner dynamic has to be realized in some way as there will be an explosion otherwise.

This happened over the course of history to various religions, faiths, and methods. Today they are undergoing a worldwide outburst because man has set out on a search once again. He is conducting the final revision: Can these methods offer anything real?

After this analysis these practices will fall for the last time. After all, today we are checking them in relation to the integral mechanism that nature places before us. We have never had this criterion yet. People are once again turning over the pages of all sorts of practices, confessions, and mystical teachings, trying to understand: Can they help us in the new, integral world?

This process will take a short time and will quickly come to an end with all the expectations crashing down. Everyone will see that it is pointless to wait for help from them. Any subject that is checked will persist for a few years at most after which it will reveal its inadequacy.

After all, if you don’t change man’s nature so he becomes just as integral inside of him as nature itself, then no recipes will help him. The only method that makes man global, integral, and united with others is the method of attracting the Light that reforms, the science of Kabbalah. Every person just needs to be given the opportunity to realize his evil. Then all the means and their combinations will turn out powerless, and this entire business of “spiritual” tricks will end up non-existent.

Man will not be able to calm himself down because the world has changed and the problem is no longer how to calm down, but a “conflict of interests.” No one will be able to survive in the integral system without becoming fit for it.
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/7/11, Matan Torah

Related Material:
Finishing Abraham’s Business
The Revelation Of Kabbalah To The World: For Evil Or Good?
Dressing Into Someone Else

Filed under: Crisis, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Egoism, Holidays, Israel, Kabbalah Dissemination, Love, Philosophy, Q&A, Religion, Society, Spirituality, Suffering, Unity, World - 1 Comment →

Question: Lately it’s felt that the world Kli is working in a single desire. At one time Rabash advised you to make an attack from this state. What exactly are we attacking?

Answer: Ourselves, our heart, our laziness, our pride, our past habits. I have to ascend above all of these calculations.

The most important thing is to dissolve among the friends, to intentionally push yourself into the group. I want to be there all the time. I want to lose my personal mind and feeling and to acquire the mind and feeling of all the friends. It’s as if I lose myself in them by my own desire.

This means acquiring the vessel of the mutual guarantee.
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/6/11, Matan Torah

Related Material:
My Objective Is To Desire
An Electronic Circuit Of The Collective Soul
The Simple Law Of Mutual Guarantee

Filed under: Collective Soul, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work, Mutual Guarantee, Prayer and Intention, Q&A, Spiritual Teacher, Spirituality, Unity - No Comments →

Question: Is it possible to explain the Kabbalistic method using terms of modern science?

Answer: Can you explain the mathematical Fourier transform to a cow? These are different degrees. A person who does not have a “sixth sense,” a point in the heart, cannot understand what you are talking about. He does not have a need for this, and therefore, it’s pointless to talk to him. Therefore, in our wide dissemination, we have to conform to the desires of the masses rather than of those who study Kabbalah.

Throughout all the generations, the world did not understand Kabbalists. And the world is right: From their degree people are not capable of this yet. It says in the Psalms, “You save humans and animals…”—but when? Today you cannot explain to people about the altruistic intention Lishma. It’s even difficult to talk to them about the topic of the perception of reality. This is intriguing and provocative, but they don’t understand or grasp the essence because they simply can’t.

In order for a person to really be able to hear words about the correction of his desires, he needs one more level of desire. But until then, we can only accelerate his development using external means. One way or another, as long as he doesn’t feel the sting in his heart, he won’t understand your explanations.

That is how the world is built. People are on different levels of development, and even at the end of correction the still, vegetative, animate, and human levels will remain. Yet it is written, “Everyone will know Me from the smallest of them to the greatest of them,” meaning each person according to his level.

The time will come when we will see how people will start grasping our words: some through scientific terms, others in the language of feeling, and others yet by virtue of simple actions, which are enough for a person to join the unity. Some need to attain and feel the adhesion, to actively participate in it, whereas for others this is unnecessary. Everything is determined by one’s desire.

We shouldn’t suppose that everyone will receive the same degree of desire for bestowal and the Creator’s revelation. However, every person will receive the full measure in accordance with his own vessels, and will be filled thanks to the common inter-inclusion.

That is why to this day Kabbalists concealed their knowledge. But now this knowledge can be revealed, although every person will hear just an insignificant part of it. Nevertheless, as a whole the Light is already starting to operate in a big mass of the common desire. This is the revolution that is happening in the world today. The modern crisis is essentially the inter-inclusion of desires.
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/5/11, Shamati

Related Material:
When The Sun Does Not Leave The Zenith
The Revelation Of Kabbalah To The World: For Evil Or Good?
The Catalyst Of The Spiritual Desire

Filed under: Collective Soul, Crisis, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Kabbalah Dissemination, Perception, Prayer and Intention, Q&A, Science, Society, Spirituality, Unity, World - 1 Comment →

Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 1, “Table of Questions and Answers for the Meaning of the Words,” Question 43: What is separation?

Two degrees without any Hishtavut Tzura [equivalence of form] on any side are regarded as completely separated from one another.

Our desires are like two circles: They can coincide completely, superimposing on each other and thus becoming one circle. Or they can overlap and be partially one inside the other. Or they can come in contact with one another with one point, their common desire.

Total separation means that we don’t have a single common quality or desire. That is to say, the first is not similar to the second in any way and we do not attain any form of bestowal with one another that would allow us to be one inside the other.
If I don’t take a single desire from you in order to bestow to you, and you don’t take a single desire from me in order to bestow to me, then we do not touch each other and are completely separated.

If at least one desire to bestow to one another appears between us, then there is already contact between us. And if there are several desires like that, then we are already partially one inside the other: I am inside your desires and you are inside mine.

That is how we advance until you take my desires and I take all of yours, and through them we bestow to one another: I give everything to you and you – to me. This is called adhesion.

These definitions from Talmud Eser Sefirot are unusually important. Memorize them mechanically, because that is useful as well. Later, by perceiving them on the level of feelings and intellect, try to gradually unite the mind and the feeling.
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/27/11, Talmud Eser Sefirot

Related Material:
Let Everyone Into Your Heart
I Can’t Live With Or Without Them
Turning To The Creator To Get Light For The Friend

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Kabbalah Study, Kabbalistic Sources, Q&A, Unity - No Comments →

Question: What should we think about all together, the entire world group, when we hold a Unity Day? How can we unite?

Answer: Every person has to delve into himself and there to feel the chain that connects him with others, the inner net that exists between us. Moreover, a person can be in this world or he might no longer be in it because this is a network between desires, between the souls and not the physical bodies.

Baal HaSulam and all the great Kabbalists of the past millennia are here, in this connection. They are all together with us, embedded in our common net. There are millions of us today, but in reality, there are many more because all of these souls throughout all of human history are together with us, amounting to hundreds of millions of souls. And all together they are a tremendous spiritual force.

If we wish to unite together in this net, then naturally not only will we influence each other and become part of this net so every person will acquire it for his own spiritual ascent, but we will simultaneously influence all the people in the world, who are tuned into this net involuntarily, without sensing it. We will start to awaken them.

Therefore, let’s start by reaching an agreement among us that we desire to clearly feel our common connection.
From the lecture on Unity Day, 6/26/11

Filed under: Body and Soul, Collective Soul, Group Work, Inner Work, Q&A, Spirituality, Unity - No Comments →

Question: The Rambam says that the truth should be revealed gradually to those who are small. When working with children, we do not impose unification on them directly, but try to weave this message into games and studies. Can an overly direct message harm and repel a child?

Answer: As we develop we go through four levels: still, vegetative, animate, and human. As a rule, on the still level objects usually take on whatever form you give them if you have enough energy to do that. By exerting the right amount of energy, you can destroy the structure of a metal and rebuild it through heating, pressure, and other such influences.

On the vegetative level the situation is different: In order to give a plant a different form, you have to understand its nature. Say, a tree requires specific types of cultivation and care, and if you are an expert at what you do, then you will receive the necessary form by accompanying the tree in the process of its growth.

Stated differently, you have to grow to a level where you can take care of the tree, which involves bringing it inside of yourself and getting to know it. Then, based on this inner image, you can carry out work with the external form and receive a result.

In order to deal with the animate level of development, it is again necessary to learn its nature, to ascend above it, and include it inside of you. Then you can tame and train animals. Of course, it has to happen within specific boundaries, but you can train them to carry out certain forms of behavior which they are able to learn. And a children’s instructor works analogously.

These levels of development—still, vegetative, and animate—are small, “childish” states compared to an adult, and they end at the degree of “age 13.” From “age 13″ on, you are dealing with the human being in a person, and accordingly, you treat him completely differently. You accept him into your group, treat him as a friend, and raise him through examples of mutual partnership, offering him a place for work.

These are the phases of work with children’s groups.
[46759]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/27/11, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”

Related Material:
The Individual And Community
I Want To Be A Child!
Teaching Children The Perception Of Reality

Filed under: Children, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Education, Q&A, Unity - No Comments →