Nothing that happens in the world is extraneous. Everything comes only from the necessity to bring us to the final, perfect state where we exist in total equivalence with the single Upper Force. Therefore, if we forget about this in the group, this force tramples upon us, bothering us and constantly bringing about all sorts of “cunning” events, and the most important thing to do is not to give in and to always remember that all of it is happening deliberately. No one ever does anything accidentally.

Unless a person is psychologically sick, then everything taking place to him in the group happens specifically in order for him to ascend above it and to relate to it the right way. This does not necessarily mean that we have to ignore the problems. But the most important thing is for us to connect them to the Creator, the Force that controls us. Everything comes from Him. He is the one who is tripping us now in order for us to learn to move above these problems and thus to ascend above egoism. However, the egoism we ascend over is not our personal one, but the one that emerges between us.

If I am enticed by certain egoistic actions, for example, I want to buy a better car, earn more, and so on, this does not belong to Kabbalah; it is my personal business. But the things happening between us in the group, the degree of my friction with others comes from the Creator and only from Him. We can cope with these problems only if we don’t forget that He influences us.

We will never be able to cope with them separately from Him even if we will constantly try to solve them with each other. Even if we understand that we have to solve them because we have to be together because that is how we unite in the group and it is not acceptable to separate, this still won’t help! We will sink into this more and more.

It is possible to solve this question cardinally, correctly, and realistically only when each of us, the group, and the Creator are together and we solve this problem together. He awakens the negative, egoistic phenomena among us in order for us to “attract” Him to us, or putting it differently, to reveal Him among us. Problems are empty space, which we want to discover as being filled by the Creator. This is the opportunity He gives us. That means the problem lies in correctly reacting to His challenge, when He awakens egoism inside each of us and friction between us.

The Creator “flirts” with us, awakening our attention to Him. The right reaction is the common prayer, when we begin turning to Him all together. That is to say, without entering any confrontations with one another, we gather together and turn to the Force, the Primary Cause from which all of this comes. This is called “the prayer of society.”

We call on the Creator, summon Him, and obligate Him to become revealed between us. He evoked the negative interactions between us and we transform them to a desire or need for His presence. We are like children who have quarreled and cannot do anything about it, and so they demand for their mother to come and stand between them. The Creator deliberately evokes problems inside us, and in response we have to realize this and call on Him to fulfill that space.
From the lesson in Moscow on 1/16/11, Writings of Rabash

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Question: Would it help our spiritual development to know exactly where we are on the scale of the inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human levels? What does our progress depend on? What instruments could help us determine where we are? And how can we change?

Answer: All of this is determined the moment a person comes to the group. He can begin evaluating himself only in relation to the environment: How much does he aspire to his friends, to the common desire of bestowal, to feel everyone as one desire?

This common desire is the Soul that was created. And if we attain it as one whole, then in it we will feel the quality of bestowal, the Creator. It was precisely in order to enable measurement, attainment, and control over our state that the common soul, creation, and desire were divided into an infinite multitude of parts. Every part of the desire, every person thereby received the opportunity to imagine the other parts as united, depending on his aspiration to this state.

If this person or part begins to work to unite with all the other parts, seeing them as perfect and receiving from them the right aspiration forward, the motivation, the importance and value of spiritual development, then he gains absolutely clear abilities to measure his state and to receive help from outside.
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From the lesson in Moscow on 1/14/11, The Zohar

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I receive the strength to reach spirituality from the environment, and it is a unique force. We arrive to the wisdom of Kabbalah with a desire for spirituality, but this desire is egoistic: to obtain both this and the future worlds.

This enormous desire pushes a person forward, but when he intends to bond with the friends, he has to annul himself and increase the importance of the friends. Thereby, he elevates his attitude to the friend at a minimal spiritual level. He annuls himself, desires to unite, and acknowledges the friend as the important one.

It is a very unpleasant, repulsive endeavor, but there is no other choice: We must unite. And if we do, I receive from the friend the importance of the goal, the strength to ascend. This strength is spiritual. After all, in order to turn to the friend, I nullified myself and raised his value. Since I related to him according to the spiritual rule, the importance of the friend, I received from him the strength to ascend despite the fact that he is just like me.

Even if I act out of hopelessness because I wish to obtain the spiritual world egoistically, I receive the true power from the friend, which raises me above myself. Acting this way with the friends, I acquire the correct approach to spirituality. Moreover, the friends may pay no attention to it nor even be unaware of what fuels me with spiritual power. I acquire it by performing an egoistic act, nullifying myself in relation to them despite the force of resentment.

It is very difficult, but if I manage to overcome myself, I receive from the friends the strength to advance further. This is the essence of our work, and this is the objective of the upcoming convention.
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From the Lecture on the Unity Day 10/31/10

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Question: As we prepare for the European Convention in Berlin, we are experiencing difficulties trying to receive forces from the environment. While we make the physical actions, how can we avoid losing a connection with the inner goal?

Answer: First of all, it is good that people feel a lack of intention because without the inner component, the intention of bestowal, the external efforts cannot succeed in attaining the Creator’s revelation. So where can we get the right intention for uniting and connecting, inside of which we will act?

We have to try, the way a small child tries to be an adult, with all our might to keep the intention and not forget that we carry out all of the external actions coming from our inner effort. To what extent will we able to do it—that no longer relates to our success.

It is possible that the Creator wants to show us that we really are small and unsuccessful so we would stop being proud of ourselves and would feel that without help from Above we will not be able to keep the intention and will not be able to unite with our own powers. If we were able to do it ourselves, then we would not need the Creator and would not reach the state of “Let us go to Pharaoh.” In essence, a person never has reason to complain about the states he receives. They become revealed as a result of his advancement and therefore at every moment they are correct. The question is how to be able to build the right attitude to them with the help of the group.

In most cases we give ourselves a guilt trip about the past, thinking about how we acted incorrectly, did something bad, missed out on something, were unable to do something, and so on. This is the influence of the impure force, Klipa, which brings us back to the past. The same thing is true about being disillusioned in our qualities: What is the point of blaming ourselves if it is a known fact that we are egoists and continuously reveal just this? We have to form the right attitude above this state.

Therefore, everything depends on the effort. It is impossible for a person to be unsatisfied and to want something different, but that doesn’t matter because the sensation comes from Above. Beginners are shown how successful they are, being encouraged and supported like small children. On the other hand, those who advance are shown their flaws and mistakes not so they would correct themselves, but so theywould demand correction. And all of the reactions are for our own good.

A person’s inner work in relation to the group should be separated from the actions done to organize the studies, the conventions, and dissemination. One does not relate to the other. The inner ascents and descents should not affect the external work. There has to be a daily routine and program, according to which we act independently of desires.

In our inner work we make efforts as much as we can, but the sensation we receive—good or bad—depends on what exactly we should be feeling. If we do not feel inspired, excited, and generally supported, it means that this sensation is being sent to us to help us detach from egoism.

Disappointment with the states that come to us shows a person that the egoistic desire does not support him and thus he naturally turns away from it. Egoism itself helps us to reject it, which is called “help against you.” Our unpleasant sensation in the work is help from the opposite side, until we are able to ascend above our nature and look at it from Above together with the Creator. This is called standing against Pharaoh together with the Creator. That is how one ascends and passes the Machsom.
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From the lesson on 12/24/10, Writings of Rabash

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The Kabbalistic method is built on group work, on the connection between us, on the aspiration for all of us to gather together, to collect all the common forces, and with our mutual efforts to help every person come out of himself to others. In reality the method is very realistic and simple. In order to perceive the upper world, we have to stop paying attention to the “atoms” of our bodies and switch our attention to the emptiness in the “interatomic space.” We can do this in human society or in a small group that allows us to change ourselves.

We have to get together, mutually helping each other, and start shifting our attention from ourselves to what is between us. The work is unpleasant, unclear, and very unnatural for us. But that is why Kabbalists wrote an enormous amount of materials. By applying the Kabbalistic method to ourselves, we add to it, complete it, and materialize it. We begin to accept and feel it inside. As a whole we adapt it to us and to real time, and implement it in the present.

Therefore, we carry it out and research it, as well as develop the phase of the practical realization of all of Nature. Today the method is applied on us, those who desire to complement our sensation of the universe with an additional, external part. Moreover, this is not simply an additional part, but the most important part. We begin feeling forces, phenomena, and actions in interatomic space, meaning in 99% of reality. First and foremost this enormous volume is filled by a thought, a plan, forces, and their interactions, and everything that activates us, who are tiny, microscopic parts.

This attainment of the root leads us out of the state of time, lack of vision, and submission, in essence a state of non-being, to a state of clarity, eternity, and perfection. That is what the right realization of the science of Kabbalah gives us.

All of this is realized in the group, where we begin to feel how to come to the outside, to the perception of others. We go from the sensation of “the world inside me” to the sensation of “the world in the world.” If there are billions of people or souls instead of me, then by coming out of myself I begin perceiving the forces that act between us, and I feel all the souls as one whole, as one closed system.

Today even on the material level something is already telling us that the world is global and integral, and everything in it is interconnected. Thus, I begin to perceive everything on the outside as myself. I thereby acquire a great desire, force, and fulfillment, which is at my disposal. All of this becomes my “self.” These are no longer people, but simply forces that exist in this form.

That is how a person starts to reveal the true volume and vision of the world.
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From the lesson in Moscow on 1/16/11, Writings of Rabash

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Question: How can we increase the demand for unity even more?

Answer: A person never does anything unless it comes from a feeling of necessity. You have to ask yourself the question and clearly have the following picture before your eyes, “Where do we reveal the upper world? When do we reveal it? In what do we reveal it? What is the Creator?”

If you answer these questions, then you will arrive at the fact that the inner connection between us is the single soul in which the Creator becomes revealed, and He is the common force of nature that is already now bringing all of us together, pushing us to unite, while we oppose it.

All the people in the world feel this way. Look at the dependency that exists, at the things happening in the world, and the unpredictable, sudden events in nature. All of this is in order to force us to think about it, to come closer to each other, and answer the question, “What do we have to do?”

More and more people in the world are asking, “Why is this happening?” And eventually this “Why?” will lead us to the right answer: that we aren’t similar to nature and are, in fact, opposite to it.

If we feel this, if we depict this clear picture to ourselves and it is constantly facing us, if we talk about it, discerning more and more of its aspects, details, and dependencies, then we will gradually become part of it and it will live inside us. We will demand for it to be realized inside us.

This is the aspiration for it to be realized inside you, for this inner connection between all of us to come true. This is the revelation of the common soul.

When a person starts to feel this necessity, his aspiration is called “MAN” and it evokes the Light that Reforms (Ohr Makif).

However, if we cannot correctly depict the system of the universe as being one, single, closed, integral scheme in which we are all small elements, like totally interconnected little wheels, if this fact is not crystal clear to you, then of course the question of unity seems purely theoretical and sounds entirely silly, like a boy-scout motto.

It has to be felt as a necessity. Otherwise we do not attain the goal. Otherwise, everything is in vain.

We simply have to see this picture in the world today because the world does not change. When we think about the upper world, we think it is detached from this world, but it is not! Rather, it is a more internal part of it, the place where we are all united together. It’s like several screens on a computer where on the first screen we are disconnected and see our world. On a more internal screen we already see our unity with each other, and so on, as we reveal increasingly internal screens.

Therefore, we must now already imagine that everything depends on how we relate to the world. If we really imagine this picture and desire to go from the first screen to the second, then we are raising MAN. This is aspiration and progress forward. This is already the movement that evokes in response an illumination from the second screen upon me that attracts and corrects me. That is how it works.
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From the talk at the meal in Moscow on 1/14/11

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Coming closer to others means bringing their desires and thoughts closer to you so you will feel them as the desires of your own children. In the same way, the whole world has to become important to me as if they are all my family.

Then I will feel this “familial” connection more and more until I start to feel that they are parts of me, and even more than that—that they are actually me! This is a purely psychological problem.

To the degree I come closer to others, I feel the force that fills the space between us. That is where the Creator becomes revealed. The more concerned I am about every person in the world, the closer I come to the Creator and the more chances I have to reveal Him.

However, if I repel others and the opportunity to come closer to them, surrounding myself with my egoistic interests, I thereby shut myself and everyone else off from the Creator, from goodness and abundance. Thus, I evoke all of the evil and suffering in the world.

If people don’t start using the science of Kabbalah, then they will start separating from each other, and that includes separate individuals as well as entire nations. Then darkness will close in on people, being much more powerful than it is now. The Creator will distance Himself from us more and more, and when He reaches the critical mark, that is when a world war will begin. Everything depends only how close or far this upper force is. Its distancing will evoke all the explosions, catastrophes, epidemics, and wars, including a world war.

For now we are simply in “exile” (the loss of the sensation of the Creator). He is pretty close to us and is deliberately coming even closer in order to reveal the world’s global connection to us. It is still not too late. We have to understand that we are responsible for bringing this knowledge to everyone, and in this regard everything depends on our desire.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/13/11, “The Quality of the Hidden Wisdom – in General”

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There is a triangle and we—all seven billion of us—are at its bottom. The closer we come to each other, the more we reveal the Creator. Everything depends on whether we match Him or not.

We can repel Him by repelling everyone else. To the degree I repel other people, I repel the Creator and then experience Him as evil and suffering. To the degree I desire to come closer to others in order for all of us to be together, I begin feeling the good that comes from Him.

I cannot influence the Creator directly. He is concealed from me and I cannot reach Him, grab onto Him, bring Him to me, or force Him. The only thing I can do is make actions in my realm below. If we act together here, below, then we influence Him to the same measure. This is the entire wisdom of Kabbalah: to work with each other, coming closer together, and to the degree we succeed, we bring the Creator closer to ourselves.

The Creator is the constant force of goodness that does not change, as it is written, “I did not change my name HaVaYaH.” This is a force of nature that has an unchangeable desire and thought. It is like a constant field of memory in a computer (ROM) that we cannot change. It is attached to us and influences us automatically to the degree we influence others.

We all influence one another, and according to this the upper force influences us without changing by itself in the slightest. We can also say that He is already among us and by coming closer and uniting with each other, we make Him become revealed, as if bringing Him closer to us. And by separating from each other, we repel Him and don’t let Him be revealed.

The closer this force is to us, the better we feel because it is the force of goodness. The more we repel each other, repelling the Creator to the same degree, the worse we feel because we repel the source of goodness and prosperity. This is a very simple mechanism.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/13/11, “The Quality of the Hidden Wisdom – in General”

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Question: If we advance only by virtue of the environment, then when will our choice come from our own altruistic intention, Lishma?

Answer: We have to attain perfection, and it contains two parameters:

1. On one hand, I am independent and equal to the Creator in every way,
2. On the other hand, I am similar to Him in every way.
In that case, I am independent and perfect.

It turns out that independence and perfection have to unite and bring me to the final state. But how can independence and equivalence exist together? How can I reach perfection by elevating both of these qualities, which are opposite to each other?

To enable this, the Creator had to add a third factor to the two already existing ones (Him and me). This third factor will be the place of our meeting, the place of revelation. It is where I will reveal my independent self and the Creator opposite from me.

It is necessary to create a “territory” where we will be able to be partners, opposite but equal and united. This territory is called the sum of the souls, the Shechina, Malchut. After the breaking, we as well as the Creator are outside of the boundaries of the sum of the souls, and now we must meet there. We do this to the degree we are able to participate in this process and reveal one another.

That is why creation was broken. It broke into many disparate parts, which are the degree of creation’s independence, meaning its separation and detachment from the Creator.

We have to use this situation, which is why Baal HaSulam writes that we have to keep every person’s uniqueness. After all, it will never be duplicated in anyone else. Every person must be independent and special.

But on the other hand, we must give every person the opportunity and help him reach equivalence of form with the Creator. By means of one’s uniqueness, by having an inimitable combination of qualities and desires, a person develops them in order to direct them toward bestowal. That is how he reaches equivalence with the Creator.

This similarity is actualized by way of uniting with others. Why isn’t it done through uniting with the Creator? It is in order to preserve independence. When working before the Creator, a person nullifies himself, whereas in relation to the group, he can play the decisive role, similar to the Creator.

The place of our meeting is the territory of the group, which was artificially created and divided into parts. We come there in the middle line and unite. There we actualize the Zivug of HaVaYaH and Elokim, the unity of judgment and mercy.

However, if a person does not think about these three elements: him and the Creator, uniting in the group, then he incorrectly imagines the realization of the goal of creation which awaits him.
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/12/11, Writings of Rabash

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Question: How can we calibrate our attitude so as to aim it towards the goal?

Answer: You have to do it according to the principle, “Israel, Torah, and the Creator are one.” “The Creator” is the root to which we strive. The “Torah” is all of the means that help us along the way, including the teacher, books, group, and study. And “Israel” is the point in the heart, the initial spiritual desire.

Question: In order for me to solve this equation, what needs to be concealed and what needs to be revealed to me?

Answer: You need to imagine the corrected state where we are all connected and every person perceives the whole instead of himself. It is written: “The general and the particular are equal.”

The common force of love and bestowal reigns inside our oneness and fills everyone in equal measure. This force is called “the Creator” or “Nature.” This is what you have to see as the final goal. At the end we must arrive at this image.

This is why we are working on discerning the notion of "the group." The group is essentially the same system in which we awaken the same force. That force is already present inside the system; we just don’t perceive it yet. We must reveal this force which fills the group, strengthens it, manifests in it, and corrects it. This is the force called “the Creator” or the concealed Light that hides in our unity.

When we strive to grow in our world, we essentially reveal the same force. This is because we have the same direction, although on a corporeal level. “The Creator” is the common force that unites all the parts of creation.

Question: Still, there are too many unknowns in this equation.…

Answer: You have to keep searching and trying, over and over again. That is how you will awaken new sensations. There is no other possibility for doing it.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/11/11, Writings of Rabash

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