Each one believes that it is impossible to be a perfect human being, so in general, he thinks that he is complete, and when he looks at his friends he sees their faults, that they are not all right.

He, on the other hand, is fine (Rabash, “What Is, ‘Return, O Israel, Unto the Lord Your God,’ in the Work?”).

Whatever we do here is still part of the corporeal world, and there is only one path by which a person rises into spirituality: love of friends. Many articles have been written and many words have been spoken about the love of friends. What, in the current state of our group, should a person focus on now as something that will actually be beneficial?

I need only one thing. Not now and not later, but always, because even a month from now nothing will have changed compared with today. The work will be the same: recognizing the greatness of the goal, the greatness of connection with the Creator, the only thing worth living for and worth paying any price for.

On Saturday, when you made a toast at the meal, you said: “There is nothing left to give to the Creator, only my soul. I have already given everything and have seen that none of it is worth anything, that it has not even reached its destination. The only thing I have left is my soul. It is mine, and I give it.”

This is the awareness that the group must instill in me. Everything begins and ends with awareness of the importance of the Creator, because our entire path is directed toward Him. If He is not important to me, I will begin to turn in every direction—through 359 of the 360 degrees, excluding that one true direction.

Only one direction leads to Him. All the other directions are my “domain of the many,” where I turn toward fulfilling my own desires, cravings, passions, and deficiencies. Therefore, if I want to leave the central point, the “stony heart,” my point in the heart, and move toward Him and attain Him, then from the very beginning I must set the goal in my sights. And I will be able to keep it in my awareness, my attention, and my focus only if it is important to me.

How can it become important to me? It can become important only if the group tells me that it is important, tells me a thousand times over, because I do not see its importance. I will never start looking for it, because how can I search for something that I do not see, do not feel, and cannot perceive?

The group must give this to me. Here are both the beginning and the end of the work. Nothing changes: one must constantly raise the importance of the Creator through all the degrees, in this world and in the future. There is nothing besides this.
[360714]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/16/26, Rabash, “What Is, ‘Return, O Israel, Unto the Lord Your God,’ in the Work?”

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From initially saying “there is none else besides Him,” and then striving to become similar to this through “if I am not for myself, who is for me,” when I examine and see how opposite I am to the Creator, then a demand toward Him comes to me: a prayer. But prayer does not mean that I ask or give thanks. A request and gratitude merely signifies that I have reached a definition of the true state, that I have completed the analysis of my current place. Nothing more is needed.

The moment I truly discern my state may be termed a request, a prayer, or repentance; what it is called doesn’t matter. But when I reach this final sensation, then it changes, and I do not need to say anything.

Prayer is defined as the deepest sensation in the heart. After many thoughts, clarifications, and changes, I arrive at the final decision: who I am and what I am.

Kabbalists call this a prayer—the point where I affix my seal concluding the clarification and analysis.
[359701]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/17/26, Rabash, “Who Needs to Know that a Person Withstood the Test?”

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 225

What Is New About This? After All, We Already Had a Connection with the Host Before…

No. From our side, we never had a connection with the Host, nor did we feel Him as we are destined to feel Him. This is because the final correction that the Creator created is at the Creator’s expense, not at the expense of the created being. In Kabbalah, we learn that the expansion of the Light and its departure make the vessel fit for its role. In other words, only then does a deficiency arise, and from that deficiency comes the connection between the created being and the Creator. Before that, there was no connection.

The most the Creator can do is create a desire to receive, fill it, and give it a feeling of shame, so that through all these things it will restrict itself, undergo various incarnations, and spill over to the opposite end. The Creator cannot bring it closer without this process, because then the desire does not develop and we do not draw closer to the Creator. The Creator can do everything except give us the feeling that we ourselves accomplished it. Baal HaSulam illustrates this with a short story:

Two friends meet after twenty years without seeing one another. One has become wealthy and the other has become poor. The wealthy friend takes the poor friend into his home and says, “Everything I have is yours.” They spend time together, enjoy themselves, and everything is wonderful. Indeed, the wealthy friend gives his companion every good thing wholeheartedly. He makes no calculations and is completely willing to place everything before the poor man. After a week, the poor man, who understands that his friend is giving to him exactly as he would give to himself, and even more so, without any calculations, says to him: “There is a problem here. There is only one flaw: it was not I who did this; it was you. And there is nothing you can do to change that fact. There is only one thing you can do if you truly want to do me a favor: give me the opportunity to achieve what you have on my own.” That is what the Creator does for us. When we arrive, we truly arrive at an equal level with Him.

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Preparation to the Lesson

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1st part of the Lesson — Writings of Rabash, Article 40 “What Is, ‘Every Day They Will Be as New in Your Eyes,’ in the Work?” (1989)

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2nd part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Vol. 1, Part 2, Chapter 1, Item 4 (11/13/2007)

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Question: What should you do if a friend does not elevate you, but humiliates you? After all, there should be mutual relations in the group. It turns out that you invest effort, and he… .

Answer: Let’s suppose that the whole group is in a certain state where it does not awaken or uplift me in any way. In such a case, it is worthwhile to take several people from the group, work only with them, and together with them set an example for everyone else. But without unnecessary words—simply set an example.

If the others want to listen, then also tell them: “We are tired of sitting in the ‘assembly of the frivolous,’ and we have decided that we want to get out of this state. If you want, join us, and if not, then don’t. We can no longer continue like this.”

A person can do this alone, or take several like-minded friends with whom it will be easier. That is all. For this, there is no need to unite into groups; this can be done freely, so that everyone has the opportunity to join.

In any case, one needs somehow to look for a way to break the existing situation. And here, I think, it is not even worth giving advice. Seek advice yourselves, and that itself will be a blessed work.
[360963]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/18/26, Rabash, “What Are ‘Blessing’ and ‘Curse’ in the Work?”

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Question: If the desire to receive agrees to perform work, it expects a reward for it. How can it agree to something other than what it anticipates? For in every action—in work with the group or in study—the desire to receive imagines some payment for itself; otherwise, it would not agree to work.

Answer: What kind of reward should we imagine? We cannot choose the reward. It already exists and depends on my Kli (vessel), on the state I am currently in.

What is considered a reward in spirituality? We do not know this and cannot imagine it. You might simply speak words about desiring to receive the intention for the sake of bestowal as your reward, claiming that opportunity of  bringing pleasure to the Creator will be your reward. But how can this be?

What enjoyment will I be able to receive from this? How will I be able to feel that a Kli which is outside me is being filled? We have not the slightest idea about this. We do not know how one enjoys fusion with the Creator. We truly cannot feel such actions within ourselves. Not yet…

Question: But how can one want to change the reward?

Answer: One can want to change the reward only as a result of blows. There is no other solution. But one can pass through them more quickly only if a person is able to endure them. And one can endure them if one turns them from animal sufferings into sufferings of the soul.

For animal sufferings are stretched out over a long time, and only then can you endure them. But this takes a lot of time. If you want to shorten them, you cannot remain in the same plane of animalistic sufferings.

You must rise above it and change the quality of the blows, transfer them from the animalistic realm into the realm of the spiritual. And then one “soul” blow, that is, as it were a spiritual blow, is counted for you as a thousand animalistic blows. In this way you shorten the time. That is, the blows become qualitative, not quantitative.
[360959]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/17/26, Rabash, “What Are Commandments that a Person Tramples with His Feet”

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Question: Is a transition to a secular worldview necessary when moving from the inanimate stage (Domem) to the vegetative stage (Tzomeach)?

Answer: No, a person does not have to go from being religious at the still level of holiness (Domem de Kedusha) to being secular, to then arrive to Kabbalah. These stages are completely unrelated to one another. There are examples: the Hasidim and the Mitnagdim. In Judaism today, there is a very deep divide.

There are many people who understand that Judaism is in a deep crisis. Unlike what existed a hundred years ago, today all the values, the entire approach, have collapsed. This is clear to many people who, without being organized into groups, study and even get together in small groups to talk about it. I hear from those who call and inquire that this is indeed happening.

There is nothing you can do about it. We are talking about creation, about development, when a person suddenly begins to feel that something is missing in his books, in his way of studying. He may even study Gemara, thinking in spiritual terms, but suddenly, whether he wants it or not, he is “led away.”

He, like us, is brought to a state where he opens a book he did not want to read before—and suddenly, what opens up before him is not a book, but an entire world. I recognize this reaction in people and hope that this is how it will continue. Baal HaSulam and all the Kabbalists of various generations emerged in precisely this way.

Question: But we are talking about individuals. Shouldn’t this become a widespread phenomenon?

Answer: These are not individuals. We are talking about tens and hundreds of people in each generation. Two or three hundred years ago, there were very large groups of people who had attained spiritual levels. Let us remember the Baal Shem Tov and Kotzk. In the time of the Baal Shem Tov, there were thousands of them. There were thousands in every generation. All these Admorim, up until the twentieth century, possessed spiritual attainment, and the books they wrote were, of course, holy books, since they were all Kabbalists.
[360431]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/12/26, Rabash, “One Should Always Sell Everything He Has and Marry a Wise Disciple’s Daughter”

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We observe a constant tendency within ourselves of attempting to bring Torah into the desire to receive. We want to achieve something, gain something, seemingly something spiritual, and we try to do it one way or another through receiving.

Since our point in the heart is still under the control of the egoistic “stony heart” (Lev Ha Even) we do not understand that spirituality and desire to receive are opposite things. Even when the point in the heart shines and shows to us some positive things about spirituality that are outside of our heart, we still do not sense that in reality this goodness is opposite to our heart and we simply want to get it as we usually do.

We do not know about the restriction (Tzimtzum) and we lack a sense the law of equivalence of form; therefore, we experience heaviness when we work to achieve what we want. We want to achieve spirituality inside the desire to receive. This is where heaviness comes from. If we understood that the basis must be the desire to bestow, it would be much easier for us.

A person constantly feels fatigue, confusion, and powerlessness. Why is this path so difficult and so unpleasant for them?

It is written in one of the articles in Shamati that even when a person understands that their annulment before the Creator is inevitable, and desires it, and even when they feel that the point in the heart is opposite to the heart, they begin to feel that the point in the heart (the desire to bestow) cannot have control over their heart without faith, without the sensation of the Creator.

This stems from the simple condition. Spirituality is defined as a situation in which “Israel” (the spiritual state the person dwells in) and the Creator are in the same point of connection, adhesion, and union. Therefore, if a person aspires to spirituality, even if it is merely a desire to bestow, yet it does not take into account to whom they want to bestow, such a state is still not perfect, it is still not spirituality.

Spirituality is the unity of the three factors: Israel, one’s state, and the Creator. Even when we reach the state where we realize that we have to be annulled, we experience heaviness because the general picture lacks the Creator.

This lack, this heaviness, comes through the reforming light that acts like a herald proclaiming that we have no other choice but to attain a sensation of the Creator, His revelation. Only in this way will we be able to somehow change the current state and emerge from it.

Then if these three points converge in my prayer where “I,” within my state, seemingly want to come to the Creator and ask Him to give me the strength to do that (strength known as the power to exit Egypt), and then He reveals Himself.
[359644]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/28/26, Rabash, “What Is the Prohibition to Teach Torah to Idol-Worshippers in the Work?”

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Question: We have been hearing about inspiration and importance for many years. If we put this into practice, rather than just talking about it, must we force our advancement?

Answer: We must engage the group in a game through a kind of forced, feigned “advertising.” Everyone here is obliged to play out the importance of the Creator and to lift their friend’s spirits. Do I really care, do I really want it? Yet I am obligated to do it, by force, artificially, and by pretending, rising above my feelings and understanding, rising above my reason.

From this moment on, everyone starts to play the game: the sensation of the Creator is important to us, knowing the Creator is important to us, the greatness of the Creator is important to us. We must not forget about Him or engage in empty chatter that lead away from the goal; this must become a burning topic for everyone. Apart from this, we have nothing in common. And we must do so forcibly, artificially, and by pretending, knowing full well that it is all a lie and a game.

If He is concealed, yet you have to perform actions stemming from the realization of His greatness, how do you go about it? You have no other way but to imagine His properties instead, to the best of your ability, and advance in that direction.

Comment: Everyone can justify such an approach.

My Response: So start playing! From this moment on, we begin to act.

Question: What if I am a bad actor?

Answer: If we all decide to do this, it means we are taking on the “burden of the kingdom of heaven” (Ol Malchut Shamayim). No one wants to, and yet we accept it. That is all.

There are descents and states of despair; this is understandable, but in general, everyone, as Rabash says, “take the leap.” Everyone is advancing, and a friend’s descent, along with my ascent and everything else, counts as a positive. And then time just races forward.
[360910]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/16/26, Rabash, “What Is, ‘Return, O Israel, Unto the Lord Your God,’ in the Work?”

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