Question: Do we draw more Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif) if we study in a group, and does everyone receive it equally or to the extent of his individual aspiration?

Answer: All of our efforts get accumulated in the group. When many people unite into a group, we create a special “space” between us where everyone exists in mutual bestowal. It is in this space that the Surrounding Light is revealed. It was there before also, but in a concealed and passive form, and now even if it still remains hidden, it already actively influences our aspirations to unite.

Initially, we are all situated in a field of Light, but we don’t feel it. We rouse the Light’s influence to the extent that we exert effort in the place where we can build a connection between us and become similar to the Light. It corrects us, and when the quality of bestowal emerges between us, it becomes clearly revealed.

Striving for mutual bestowal all together, we reveal the presence of the force of bestowal. However, each person reveals this force or the Light according to his individual qualities and to the extent that he exerts effort in the unification of the group.

For this reason, joint work is required. Alone a person will never be able to reveal the Surrounding Light. His efforts to bestow and to create the place where the Light can be revealed have to be applied in relation to someone.
[22209]
From the Hoshana Rabbah Night Lesson 9/29/10, Shamati #8

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Question: When I have a connection with someone in our world, I feel either love or hate, but what happens in a spiritual connection? What does the revelation of the Creator feel like?

Answer: Spiritual phenomena are bestowal. These relationships are reciprocal connections of bonding, love, and mutual inclusion into each other. We build a connection of unity and love between us, and then we reveal the Light that was previously concealed within this connection.

This Light corrects our connections, shapes them, and builds a “place” or a “desire to bestow” out of them. Then we reveal an even greater opportunity to bestow in this “place,” and the main force of the universe, the Creator, becomes revealed in the opportunity to bestow.

But all of this happens in the same place, within our unity, and the Creator becomes clearer each time to the extent of our new property of bestowal and love.
[22036]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/26/10, “600,000 Souls”

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Question: In our world people hate and love each other, give each other gifts or kill one another. But what happens in the world of souls?

Answer: The souls have only one objective: to unite until reaching total adhesion, similar to how separate drops of water merge into one drop. It’s impossible to differentiate between them and a new essence is formed – mutual bestowal.

The material world is the part of the broken desire which becomes corrected only at the very final correction. In the meantime, we reveal love above it.

Wherever there is love, every person loses the sensation of his self. He becomes included in others unboundedly by unifying with them completely. However, the previous hatred preserves its “negative” qualities.

It is similar to the paradox in quantum physics where one particle can be in two places simultaneously. It is not because it moves from one place to another with infinite speed, but it is actually located in two places at the same time even though it is just one particle! How can that be!?

Eventually we will reveal that there is just one particle everywhere, in the whole universe, and it is everywhere simultaneously. If we accept the fact that there is no speed and one particle can be present in two places, then we can also accept the fact that it can be at an infinite number of places.

Besides, it has no form because a particle’s form depends on where we discovered it. So it turns out that there is nothing besides just one point which the Creator created “from absence” (Yesh Mi Ein), and everything else is a derivative of it!

Therefore, the closer we come to spirituality, the more we will see that there is no way of talking about spirituality other than through the language of Kabbalistic books.
[21983]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/26/10, “600,000 Souls”

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Question: What is the middle line? Is it the ability to act correctly between the two lines (left and right)?

Answer: The middle line is a marriage of the Light and desire. It is adhesion comprised of desire and intention, combined with the Source of Light, the Creator. By using the will to receive with an intention to bestow pleasure to the Creator, man uncovers the source of pleasure, the Creator. It turns out that desire and pleasure were merely a medium to find the connection between man and the Creator. These three components: desire, pleasure, and intention come together as one: I and the Creator.
[21747]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/22/10, Shlavei Hasulam, Article 17, 1986

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Question: What is constant faith?

Answer: Faith is a force which I receive from the Creator. It illuminates me, keeping me above my desires, my nature, like a magnet that holds a piece of metal in the air, against gravity.

There are two forces: the force of gravity (the will to receive pleasure) and the force of bestowal (the power of faith, a magnet) that draws a “piece of metal” up. These two forces oppose each other. If the force of faith that the Creator radiates to me holds me up, above my desire to feel pleasure, I am “righteous.” If the Creator lets me go, I immediately fall into egoism, and then I am “wicked.”

What does constant faith mean? I reach the state when my connection with the group supplies constant aspiration toward bestowal, as if I make a covenant with the group about our mutual support, and the Creator becomes a witness to this by promising to always illuminate us, holding us in bestowal above the will to receive (faith above reason).
[21409]
From the Lesson on Rabash’s Article, 9/17/10

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After studying in a Kabbalistic group for a number of years, a person arrives at a realization that in order to advance further, he needs a “foreign” force. It takes a person several years to reach the feeling that alone he is incapable of attaining the revelation of the spiritual world, the Creator. At the beginning one wants to advance through learning the knowledge of the wisdom of Kabbalah and therefore he strives to study more. Later he wants to advance by participating in dissemination, thinking that he will attain what he desires through force and power.

A person associates his spiritual advancement with everything else except acquiring the desire to bestow. Nevertheless, he goes through a process of spiritual development while studying in the group and the Light influences him, causing questions to arise: “What will happen to me? Will I ever acquire the quality of bestowal?” Gradually bestowal gains more importance in his eyes.

He gradually begins to feel that bestowal is very valuable and cannot be attained through anything in this world. He sees that those who have attained bestowal have something so precious that nothing can exceed its value. And all of these realizations result from the influence of the Light. Once a person feels this, he comes to agree with all of the group’s conditions so they will become his guarantors in acquiring the quality of bestowal. That is when a person is ready to form an alliance with them.
[21450]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/17/10, “A Transgression Does Not Put Out A Mitzva”

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Question: You said that when we read The Zohar we should try to recognize the force that is behind the story. Is it correct to imagine that some force is talking to me in a language that I do not understand and I am trying to understand this language like a child that hears others talking to him and learns the language this way?

Answer: No, that is incorrect. Through my corporeal mind and feelings I will never be able to recognize the picture behind which the Creator is situated. My only task during the studies is to awaken a special influence called “the Light that Reforms,” which will then build a new quality in me enabling me to feel the picture of a different world.

Right now I lack the quality that I need in order to see the Creator through the text of The Zohar. This quality has to form in me gradually, as a result of my effort. The Light influences me and builds an additional inner sense – the quality of bestowal. Then I begin to feel the Creator through this sense. No other efforts or goals will help when studying “holy” books (meaning books about the Upper World and the Creator). Therefore, all my efforts should be directed only at awakening the Surrounding Light.

The Creator can only be revealed if I am similar to Him by having the same qualities. He is completely Giving, while I lack the quality of bestowal, which is that sense through which I will reveal Him. I can acquire this sense only through the influence of the hidden Light that Reforms, because the Light creates the quality of bestowal in me. Then I will recognize the Creator.

Therefore, as we read The Book of Zohar, each of us should strive to awaken this Light to influence him.
[21561]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/20/10, The Zohar

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On the spiritual path, souls desiring to unite must perpetually work on building a connection between them. In that case they constantly influence Malchut of the World of Atzilut (the bride) and it awakens a connection in Zeir Anpin on the level of faith rather than reception of pleasure.

Then the covenant exists because we sign a pact that we hold on to each other only because of the spiritual goal’s importance regardless of who’s paying and how much. For example, if your girlfriend is beautiful, then when you receive pleasure from her, it’s as if you sold yourself to her. If you live with a woman because she’s beautiful, then you’re a “sell out” because you receive pleasure from her beauty, which is like her payment to you.

That’s why we sign a covenant saying that we advance by faith above reason or that bestowal is more important than reception for us. That’s why we constantly look for ways to strengthen our connection through mutual bestowal.

To the degree I join the connection through mutual bestowal, I start to notice how much uglier my “bride” is (meaning the group and the spiritual world), and that my partner (the Creator) is a liar. So who did I sign a covenant with, to whom did I obligate myself!? Yet, that’s when you have the opportunity to go by faith above reason, to prefer bestowal above the calculation of reception.

From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/17/10, Shamati #52

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Spiritual work constantly begins anew. We have to understand this, accept it, and be grateful for this new beginning. A person always starts as if he has had nothing before. Everything becomes deleted.

“Nukva always returns to its virgin state.” This means that I don’t retain any life experience on my path to Him; the entire contact with the “Groom” or the Creator disappears. One should not take anything with him from the past. It’s just the opposite: He should pray to receive the ability to forget everything. It’s better if I don’t know anything.

Being in the egoistic desire, we are incapable of imagining how one can reject his experience. However, we don’t need any knowledge. We need a mind only for the purpose of starting from zero each time like from a blank piece of paper. If we are capable of doing this, then we are indeed approaching faith or bestowal.

I don’t need any mind for bestowal. All I need is a pure attitude that doesn’t tie anything to a past state which was corrupt for sure because I have not achieved Infinity and the End of Correction. Therefore, Nukva and Zeir Anpin return each time to their minimal state, a point and six Sefirot.

One needs to learn this as a necessary condition for advancement and try to accept it with understanding, love, and joy when every time he starts from ground zero.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/15/10, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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Question: We spend our entire lives chasing the “carrot,” but we never manage to grab hold of it. So what’s the difference between chasing the “carrot” and our efforts to reveal the Creator?

Answer: If a person chases anything, “carrot” or Creator, driven by his egoistic, receiving desires, then he won’t receive either. According to the law of creation, nothing can enter the will to receive except “Kista de Hayuta” – a tiny, short-lived portion of Light, which gives us the sensation of a small, short life.

If a person desires to feel a bigger life, this is possible in a different desire. For example, I catch a fish with a fishing rod, a butterfly or bird with a net, and an animal with a trap. There is a different tool for catching each kind of animal.

Likewise, our will to enjoy is unable to feel anything more than this small, short-lived life. Something greater can only be felt in a different “trap,” which we have to build. We can only feel it in the desire to bestow.

The complaint you expressed in your question is correct. In my natural desire, I don’t have the possibility of being happy. In order to be happy, I have to replace my desire “to receive” with the desire “to bestow.” After all, the most important thing isn’t the desire, but the fulfillment.

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/15/10, The Zohar

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