Question: So far, our ego twists and turns, trying to find different excuses. How can we change this on our level?

Answer: We can only do one thing: evoke the Light that Reforms. We don’t have any power but for that. So we have to know how to draw this Light.

The Light is evoked only if I want to attain the next closest level to me. How can I take such a step towards the Light so that the Light will influence me, and then make another step so that the Light will influence me again? I need a group for that. To the extent that I can influence the friends and evoke them by some corporeal actions to connection, to love, to corrections and to raise their spirit, I draw the Light upon me.

I don’t need to ask anything from the Light; it will operate and influence me without any request, without any words, only in response to my actions. To that extent, I will advance. Everything happens according to exact laws according to the powers one invests, as it says, “the reward is according to one’s sorrow.”
[95856]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/18/12, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

Related Material:
Rejecting Our Present Selves
How To Draw The Light
I Want The Light!

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work, Love, Mutual Guarantee, Q&A, Unity - No Comments →

We need to understand that the more we advance, the more difficult the work becomes. Now when we don’t see a reward, it is easy for us to work. We only have to believe that we will get a reward. The friends tell us that there is a great goal ahead, the Creator’s greatness, for which we should work, and I run to it as if I see how great He is.

Actually I don’t see that; it is the environment that has persuaded me, and I receive energy and fuel from that. I need to keep only one condition in order to work for the right cause: to annul myself before the friends. This means that of all the conditions, I have to keep only one condition: to lower myself. Then the group will begin to impress me and to evoke the greatness of the goal in me, the greatness of the Creator, the reward, to motivate me. This is enough to make me run forward.

It is the easiest condition. After all, when later the Creator’s greatness is really revealed to me, how will I be able to work not for myself as if there is no reward if you know that at the end of the month you will get a million dollars? And it is for the easiest work, like opening the door for someone once a day, for example, and that’s it. How can I get rid of this thought? Now I have to work very hard, against my desire to receive.

The whole way, from one phase to another, to the extent that we advance, we discover what big and important business we are dealing with, the most profitable business. We will have to overcome this notion, as if we have nothing and to detach ourselves from our egoistic desire and hide.

It is very difficult. The first current condition that we have to keep is much easier; it is the simplest of all. So we finally have to keep it and to end this phase! I have to annul myself in order to receive from the environment the greatness of the goal, the greatness of the Creator, and the group, so that it will give me the fuel to advance. Only one condition is required, a small concession of my ego.

Then all these concessions will gradually grow and won’t be just self-annulment, but I will start working with the desire to receive. Each time I will have to agree or disagree, until I draw the Light upon me.

If I don’t manage to annul myself, I have to connect to the Light that Reforms. First I try to subdue myself by myself, but then I see that I cannot do that and that the resistance in me only increases. Then I begin to look for a way to annul myself and only then do I feel the need to draw the Light to help me. Now I already know what I have to look for during the lesson.

We have to write down the principles we will work on, so that this work will be shared by everyone. Everyone has to make efforts and to care about mutual guarantee and the collective fulfilling of the principles.
[95851]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/18/12, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

Related Material:
A Check For Selfless Devotion
The Only Gift From The Creator
The Spiritual Environment Is The Repository Of The Soul

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Egoism, Group Work, Inner Work, Mutual Guarantee, Prayer and Intention, Unity - No Comments →

Baal HaSulam, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”: Likewise, all the fixed pictures that we know and use to define materials are inconsistent and do not exist in their own right. Rather, they only dress and undress forms under the influence of conditions such as heat or cold.

During the lesson we think about the force that “draws” the material that actually doesn’t exist. If, while we are reading, we are together, we constantly think about the united group and want to discover the general force among us, then we discover a whole world and live in it in a much clearer, more emotional, and more intensive way than our current life.

This is no fantasy. Evoke these forces. Now you are looking at the friends sleepily, and they look at you in the same way. So evoke these forces together and you will understand that there are worlds between you and that everything depends on your closeness and unity in your mind and your feelings, in your yearning and your inclination, in the desire to feel your inner essence together. Suddenly you will see how the abstract force turns into something real and concrete.

Previously you only paid attention to “coarse” corporeal forces: heat, cold, pressure, etc. But there are much finer and stronger forces in a person than the ones that operate even in the micro-world, on a subatomic level. These fine forces reveal the real material to you. When you enter this field, you discover that it is the beginning and the end of everything, that all of creation is there with its plan. Here, however, there is nothing but the false, artificial, external drawing that is meant to confuse you and to focus you on the correction by false incentives without taking your freewill from you and so as not to turn you into a robot.

This realization should focus us on the main thing, on developing the forces that are between us. They are the strongest “weapon” against evil, against all our problems. Even in our imaginary world subatomic forces are much stronger than the ordinary forces of the macro world. A lot of energy is required in order to cause a collision between the particles in the collider. We, however, enter the field of our personal forces that operate between the friends. This is such great intensity that cannot be measured by using the means we have in this world.

It is a real force. We only have to reach it and to learn how to manage it, since it will not be revealed without an intention to bestow, for the good of others.

Question: Does this mean that there are forces in me that enable me to discover a new reality? How can I find them?

Answer: Start acting, exert yourself, fix the connection with the friends, annul yourself, and by that allow them to connect to you. Start evoking them so that they will impress you with the greatness of the goal. We should make such efforts every day, every moment, because the desire to receive is constantly renewed and constantly demands us to renew our relationships, the whole Ha-Va-Ya-H. This is all our work.

If you evoke and arrange the forces that connect you with the friends as correctly as possible, the force of bestowal and the force of receiving, you will discover that the relationships between you are much more important than the corporeal world.

It will come, since you study and you are expecting the Light that Reforms, and it will influence you. Suddenly you will discover that the relationships between you are the most important thing, and then you will begin to discover a new spiritual material, which is much more real and concrete than what surrounds you today. It will be so powerful, heavy, and real that the temporary, imaginary picture of this world will dissolve on its background.
[95768]
From the 4^th Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/18/12, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”

Related Material:
You And Me And The Whole World Too
The Internal Network: The Access Is Through The Desire
Not By Quantity But By Quality

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work, Kabbalah Study, Mutual Guarantee, Perception, Prayer and Intention, Q&A, Unity - No Comments →

While reading The Book of Zohar we must remember that it is only about the connection between us. It all depends on the relationship between the friends, and in this relationship spirituality is revealed. The forms of the connection between us depict the picture of reality, since now too you see these forms of connection.

In any case, you perceive the world according to your Reshimot (reminiscences), and this is where the picture of the world that you imagine stems from. There is no world outside you; there is only what you imagine inside you.

Now you are among people in this world; you were born and developed in our time, but your worldview is also built by your being connected with the whole world. A boy left in the woods who has never seen human beings perceives the world according to the Reshimot in the form of a forest, animals, and other forms of nature since he doesn’t perceive his environment on the human level, but on lower levels, still, vegetative, animate nature.

You, however, perceive reality also on the level of speaking. But in the relations between all these parts of nature: the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking nature, you discover your reality.

All of reality, the whole world, is what is revealed between the shattered parts of the creation. This is why we say that the perception of reality is subjective. If I don’t exist, then there is no world and there is nothing to speak about; Baal HaSulam writes about this in the “Preface to The Book of Zohar.”

So if we want to reach more advanced forms of perception, we have to evoke more advanced forms of connection between us. No wonder that this is what the wisdom of Kabbalah requires: You should develop more advanced and complex connection with others and in them you will discover a higher reality, which is more advanced and more internal. Everything depends only on the levels of the connection.

Now comes the time when all the connections between us are destroyed and we actually see that, and the world obligates us to form new connections. The world doesn’t know yet what types of connection they should be. As we have already heard about it, we have to start fulfilling them. This is what awaits us. This is what the wisdom of Kabbalah talks about: Leave all your imaginary dealings and start dealing with building the correct future society.

Then according to the connection between you, which you want to establish, you will receive help from above, from nature’s forces. The integral nature that is being revealed now will help you, it will influence you, and you will feel to what extent you are adapted to its general advancement, and you will succeed. We can say that nature is the Creator, but it doesn’t matter since it is about laws.

So where can you change anything in order to hasten your development? Now for the first time in history you can hasten the development of humanity. Before you were always dependent on forces that moved you forward. Internally new connections between people were revealed and new social structures appeared: instead of the tribe, there came along the era of slavery, and then the Middle Ages, then capitalism, and now we are advancing towards communism. These are the five social structures.

But what has advanced humanity? It was all about the changes in social structure, the new connection that appeared between people. But now, during the fifth and last era of our development, you cannot discover new connection naturally. You will discover them in a negative way, since you have to complete them. Here everything depends on your conscious advancement. You have to attain it, you have to adapt yourself to nature—this is the process we are in.

So we are actually creating a new social structure, hastening the process that all of humanity will have to go through. This is called being a “kingdom of priests” and a “holy nation,” setting an example and being the conductor. But we are building this in the group, between us, and it is all in the new connection.
[95677]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/17/12, The Zohar

Related Material:
The End Of An Illusion Or The Change Of A Paradigm
Between The Desired And The Actual
The World Of Our Intentions

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Perception, Society, Unity, Zohar - No Comments →

Question: Could you please explain to us why you, as a Kabbalist, leading the whole world to unity, pay special attention to the Jews and Israel? Doesn’t Kabbalah, as the method of general correction, pertain to all nations?

Answer: I can assure you that I come only from the need for universal integral correction of the world; I see the goal to unite everyone in one desire to reveal the Creator in us. Moreover, in this revelation the Creator is manifested precisely in the desires of the nations of the world. But the revelation itself occurs through those who were in it in their previous reincarnations, and these are today’s Jews, although they do not suspect this.

To correct the world, they need to be brought, to the extent possible, to study Kabbalah. Who leads them to it is everyone in whom the point in the heart is awakened, both Jews and non-Jews, all the members of the world Bnei Baruch Kabbalah group. Their studies attract Ohr Makif, the Light that corrects egoism, to them and through them as Jews to the entirety of humanity through the internal network of connection of all created beings in a unified integral system.

That is why the nations of the world subconsciously feel that the Jews have a secret (conspiracy), and that they are the cause of suffering in the world. Thus, it’s necessary to call the Jews, carrying the genes of the spiritual world (Reshimot) from the time when they were in its revelation to the fall from that level 2000 years ago, to fulfill their duty to the Creator and humanity.

See the explanation of Baal HaSulam in “The Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” p.60.
[95695]

Related Material:
Correction From An Inner Need
The Way Of The World Group
The Dance That Lasts Eternity

Filed under: Anti-Semitism, Israel, Q&A, Unity, World - No Comments →

In the News (from Science Magazine): “Periodical cicadas have such a strange life cycle that some have argued they can count, and have a particular affinity for prime numbers. That’s because their broods emerge after lengthy periods of time; in North America, they appear en masse from underground every 13 or 17 years. Now, two researchers argue that the cicadas’ cycles are timed to ‘engineer’ the numbers of a mortal enemy—predatory birds. Contrary to what one might expect, these birds’ populations drop significantly the year cicadas emerge in all their buzzing glory, the scientists report in the current issue of The American Naturalist. …

“And yet mysteries remain. ‘We still don’t have a good theory that explains how the cicadas’ resource pulse causes the birds’ populations to reach their low point exactly 13 and 17 years later,’ says Walt Koenig, a behavioral ecologist at Cornell University and the lead author of the paper. ‘We’re still scratching our heads over that.’”

My Comment: Everything is controlled by the same program in which we are all included as a whole, complementing each other in order to bring all that exists to the same goal, when the whole mass, due to the conscious work of humans to unite with their own kind, adheres to the upper governance.
[95781]

Related Material:
In Unison With The Universal Mind
In A Single Field Of Desires
Nature Does Not Tolerate Imbalance

Filed under: News, Science, Unity - No Comments →

Question: What do we need to keep in mind so that the group doesn’t turn into a bunch of mockers?

Answer: Each time, we deliberately fall under the influence of the Creator who taunts us and shakes us like babies so much He as if simply “shakes it all out” of us. Today we are so nice and “cute,” ready to love everyone and everything. But tomorrow we will once again be completely opposite. How can we forget that our path is made of ascents and descents? We can’t remember it if we forget about the Creator.

Why is it said: “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are one”? Israel means “yearning for the Creator.” Hence the remedy for correction: our studies, the group, where all of this gets realized, and the Creator Himself have to be as one, in one place. There are the Creator, the group, and me.

We have to constantly link it all together into one unified whole; there can’t be any other view of the world! In order to focus and properly look at what is happening, I need these three points: the eye, the sight, and the target. Otherwise, I won’t be able to do anything.

Therefore, if we wish to keep the group in the right intention, it is our responsibility to keep in mind that our goal is adhesion with the Creator. Otherwise, what is going to motivate us, our egoism? Today I am willing; tomorrow I am not.

Here the Creator appears as the definer, the first to act, or the one who initiates our actions, who forms the group and everything that is happening to us, who gives us everything. All that we have in our hearts and mind right now, all that we hear and feel, all of it is His doing.

How should we, together, respond to it, based on the fact that we felt something coming from Him? From this moment on, our work begins. This is exactly the moment when all of us clearly felt that it was He who brought us together right now; He connects us all in one desire, one intention, and the same thought. It is He who arranged everything for us, so that we all together started to ascend to and strive for Him.

So how can we rise to Him so that we could consciously fortify among ourselves what He has created? What does it mean: “I now link myself with the group?” I link myself along with the others and the Creator into the common desire, one common goal, and common aspiration. If the effort that each of us exerts links all the others and the Creator together, this is precisely our active response. This is how we must act. If we envision that everything derives from the Creator and know how we should respond to it, then it will be very effective work, a very effective move.
[95564]
From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/8/12, Lesson 4

Related Material:
Detecting The Creator
Unification With The Group Leads Us To The Creator
The Secret Of The Group

Filed under: Conventions, Group Work, My Similarity to the Creator, Prayer and Intention, Q&A, Unity - No Comments →

Question: What does it mean that the nation of Israel needs to give the world the method of the middle line?

Answer: There are two lines in nature; one force is our ego that constantly grows. In general, it is called “Pharaoh.” And on the other side, there is the positive force through which we need to correct this ego.

Thus, there are two forces facing each other, and a person needs to bring them into balance so that the evil force will transform into a good force, “The angel of death transforms into the holy angel.” And a person does this by pulling this force towards him on his own. This means that “he learns the Torah,” the wisdom of Kabbalah, in the correct way, which is called the “Torah of Light,” since in it is found the Light that Reforms.

But the Light affects us only if we long to connect. After all, the whole of the Torah is discovered in the connection between people when they desire and long to rise above the ego that separates them. It is just as it happened in front of Mount Sinai when they were asked, “Are you ready to connect as one man in one heart?” If yes, then the Light that is called the “Torah” appears and connects us. And then the Creator is revealed, the upper force. If “no,” then here is the place of your burial.

It is specifically in this state that we actually are in now and we need to choose where we want to go, with which force?

For this, everyone is not required to study the wisdom of Kabbalah, but everyone will attain the wisdom of connection that is called integral education, through television or the Internet. It teaches us how we need to connect, meaning, through which kinds of actions. If a person would only want to imitate the example that integral education gives him and to participate in it according to his ability, passively: listening to lessons, to discussions, then in that, he is added to everyone. And in the end, everyone together strengthens the positive, internal force within the nation, and in whose surroundings it will consolidate more and more.

And from us, this force will begin to spread all over the world, to all of humanity. And then we will begin to feel how the whole world calms down, leaving its complaints about the nation of Israel. And afterward, it begins to approach us positively by asking how to help us, just to receive the Light through us.
[95072]
From the Weekly Torah Portion 12/4/12

Related Material:
Who Is Responsible For Correction?
The Method Of Evoking Love
The Nation Of Israel: Restoring The Interconnection

Filed under: Education, Egoism, Integral Upbringing, Israel, Q&A, Unity, World - No Comments →

Question: What does it mean to delight the Creator?

Answer: To delight, to bring pleasure to, the Creator, to love the Creator—these are all very beautiful words. But how can we love a force, even if it is eternal and governs everything there is? All these words are told to a person so that he can adjust himself in some way.

We come to love for the Creator only through love for others. In the article, “One Commandment,” there is an instruction: to come to love for the Creator. But how can we be ordered, obliged to love? It is possible when we work on love of another, make a common mass of our yearnings toward each other, build a common connection above our egoism, and cover it with mutual love. It is written: “Love will cover all transgressions.” When we build a collective property of common mutual connection and yearn toward everyone while cultivating love within, then in our internal egoism there arises a completely new structure: mutual adhesion, mutual inclusion.

Love means that I assume all your desires and care for them, thinking solely of how to fulfill them, while you think about mine, and so on. Love means to fulfill desires of another instead of my own, using them for this purpose. If I arrange such conditions within myself, then by doing so I grow a vessel there that works for the sake of bestowal. And this common vessel that all of us are creating together contains our collective component called “love for the Creator.”

We begin to experience not only the common vessel, our attitude towards the others, love for them, bestowing to them, but also we begin sensing what fills me along the way. This sensation is called the Creator, Boreh in Hebrew (“Bo” – come, “Reh” – see). When we create one collective spiritual vessel, the Creator is revealed there as a result.

Hence, the main Mitzva is very simple: “Love your neighbor.” Through love for another, in the vessel that you created, you will feel love for the Creator and, respectively, His love for you.

Question: What is the final goal of this work?

Answer: It is in the fact that you come to a complete likeness and adhesion with Him in our own reformed egoism. This is how you rise to the level of the Creator. This is the final goal of creation. You begin to experience a sensation that you are in total adhesion with Him, but you don’t dissolve in it, because your entire vessel stays with you.

In other words, the sensation of being opposite doesn’t get annihilated since adhesion with the Creator occurs above it; otherwise, mutual annihilation would occur. Hence, we must view our egoism as the matter with the help of which we move forth. We should treat it with respect since it is the reverse image of the Creator. Conversely, our whole world is His reverse image at our level.
[95561]
From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/8/12, Lesson 4

Related Material:
A Warm Attitude Toward The Friend Brings Us To The Creator
Love That Opens The Heart
What Can I Give To The Creator?

Filed under: Conventions, Group Work, Love, Mutual Guarantee, My Similarity to the Creator, Q&A, Unity - No Comments →

Question: If each of us is making efforts and takes his point outside, at what moment does the adhesion of these points occur between us?

Answer: Be always prepared for duality. If I intentionally seek to measure something, to feel, then, on the one hand, I will be pushed away from this, and on the other hand, I have to build attraction in me. On one hand, I will not understand, and on the other hand, I might understand something. And all this will exist in me in equal proportion. If I work for the group, on the one hand, I have to look at it as something absolute, a unit that is in perfection, in the world of Infinity. Each of the friends is an angel who has completed all his corrections. All the friends are united. There is an ideal in front of me, and the Creator is inside of it.

This is how I should imagine everything that is outside of me. Then I will have something for which to strive, for unity with friends, to be included in them. I see them as great; I develop envy, jealousy, and the desire to integrate with them.

On the other hand, this group influences me, and I have to see and feel it as it usually happens in this world. In this case, I have to communicate with them as with equals, and perhaps sometimes as a teacher to students, and so does every one of us. I have to excite, organize, and motivate them towards the goal, make comments about shared work, about unity, etc.

Thus, there is a kind of “scissors.” On one hand, I relate to the friends as great, perfect, and connected to each other. On the other hand, I relate to them as those whom I can point out, I can cheer; I have to organize someone whom I can influence.

I must be prepared to treat the group in two ways, and it should not disturb me. In spiritual work duality always emerges. But in any case, one does not cancel the other; there is time for one and for the other. Because of this, you need to learn to bifurcate, to look at things more “slanted,” and then between these two oblique directions, you will find out how to see the higher system.
[95568]
From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/9/12, Lesson 5

Related Material:
Everybody Is Equal In Spiritual Work
In The Force Field Of Mercy
Without You, I Will Not Reach The Goal

Filed under: Conventions, Group Work, Q&A, Unity - No Comments →