Everything exists inside of my desire. It is where the entire Light of the World of Infinity is revealed, as well as all the other worlds. I perceive everything that exists inside my desire. All the images of reality exist inside of me.

By discovering new layers of desire, I start sensing new worlds that were previously hidden from me. The easiest and most reliable way to uncover new desires is by means of the group, through our joint aspirations, within the connection between us, and by gathering all the desires together in order to reveal our hidden internal layers and worlds.

We exist in the World of Infinity and we have to try to unveil it within ourselves, as it is written: “I revealed and was filled by something that has existed since the dawn of time!”

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A question I received: Can I look at my friend in different ways: sometimes as a student, sometimes as a teacher, and sometimes as an equal?

My Answer: You can find all three relationships in any state.

1. If I want to unite with my friend, then I have to see him as a very important person, because only then will I have a desire to unite with him. That is why I have to see him as one of the greatest and most important people in the world, who will enable me to connect to the Creator. He has to be as important to me as the Creator. If the group gives me the strength and opportunity to attain the Upper Goal, then I will view its members as great people, on whom my fate depends. I would be willing to pay anything for them to accept me. I will be ready to lower myself in order to connect to them.
2. However, when I think about making the group stronger, then I look at them from above and think about how I can help them and inspire them. Then I see them as smaller than me. I want to influence them and give them more energy.
3. If we are talking about unity in the group, then everyone is equal. After I valued them as being higher than me, and after I was higher than them, we become equal and unite with each other. This is why we are called friends.

These are also the same relationships that I have with the Creator: He is greater than me, smaller than me, and equal to me.

1. He is great because He gives me the strength and determines all my thoughts and desires.
2. He is smaller than me because He depends on me. I can give to Him, I can make Him feel good, and in this regard He depends on me. So it turns out that He is smaller than me. This dependence is similar to how parents depend on their child.
3. He is equal to me because only equals can attain adhesion – unite with each other I order to receive from each other and bestow to each other.

Therefore, the states don’t change in one’s attitude to the group and to the Creator. The only thing that changes is the way one sees them: one can be big, small or equal, both with regard to a friend and with regard to the Creator. A person must always check how he can supplement each of these three attitudes, in order to advance even more – towards greater unity with friends and the Creator.

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All our efforts to unite our desires in a Kabbalistic group should be directed at our desires toward the Creator. All the efforts should be made only for the sake of revealing the Creator and uniting with Him. Then we will not repeat the mistakes made by the Soviet communists and Israeli Kibbutzniks, who considered the unification of “proletarians of all countries” a worthy goal, and it was to this end that they changed the society and viewed this as the necessary condition for perfection.

People don’t understand that the world, as well as ourselves, was created for the sole purpose of revealing the Creator’s qualities inside us, in order to reach His level of existence. This goal should be pursued in every action we make, both in the heart and the mind. For example, what is wrong with me simply doing something for the benefit of my friend, the environment, or the world? Although these actions seem good, the problem with it is that any action that does not initially include the final goal, the Creator, does not merit His forces. It is therefore not an action of correction, but on the contrary, it brings about our general crisis – the result of our “development.”

In order for any action to be successful, it must be done for the right purpose; it has to include the Creator as the initial cause, and the One that causes me to perceive myself, the world, and the situation at hand. It has to take into account the fact that He determines the action’s beginning, the need for the action, and its outcome, as it is written, “I am the first and I am the last!” A person is just the matter over which the actions are performed. However, he is not the master or the executor of the action.

Therefore, our only task is to clarify how to relate to what happens. Yet, by so doing, we do actually determine the extent of our desires’ correction, and hence the perception of this world and the spiritual worlds.

If we don’t accept the Creator as a partner, we will not succeed in any action. We will instead go into greater concealment and veer off the right path. When that happens, then it will take a great deal of effort and subsequent despair in order for us to begin to understand why this is happening to us. And then we will find the cause of the suffering inside the suffering.

The fact is that the Upper Force is everything! It determines every situation, creates it, participates in it, arranges everything about it, realizes it and provides the whole reward and fulfillment. Therefore, if we do not focus on the Creator, who is always present within our matter and all our actions, and if we don’t make Him the main purpose of all our efforts, then this will be a grave mistake that will prove very costly for us.

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The only thing that our world needs is the revelation of the Creator. Then, our world will become the spiritual world, and all the forces of the spiritual world point to only one thing – their Master.

Even in our world, light and darkness, as well as all their different shades and any other pictures we see – everything depends on and comes from the sun. Without the sun, there would be nothing but utter darkness.

The same is true for the spiritual world. Essentially a person reveals only one thing in addition to this world – the Upper Force, “There is none else beside Him.” But this force shows us all kinds of pictures and qualities of the Upper World.

What we reveal is not the actual Upper Force, but its manifestation and governance over the network that binds all the souls. That is why we never speak of the Creator’s essence, but only of His giving quality.

However, a giver must have someone to give to; He must be in a place where His giving can be revealed. He cannot reveal Himself, but only His actions with respect to someone else. Therefore, the Creator can only be revealed where He acts and governs – in matter, the desire that He created, which is the souls that are connected to one another. And the stronger their connection, the greater is the Creator’s revelation.

He created our matter and resides within it. On our part, we are brought to a Kabbalistic group where we must reveal unity. Once we reveal that unity, within it we will reveal the Creator, the force that unites us.

There is nothing else for us to reveal. We can never attain the force in and of itself, but only its manifestations – the matter and form of bestowal that it assumes. It’s similar to how in our world we only attain matter – the desire to enjoy and the form it assumes.

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A question I received: How can someone without spiritual attainment find a true Kabbalist in order to study with him?

My Answer: How can you find a true Kabbalist? Well, what is a true Kabbalist? Baal HaSulam writes that a true Kabbalist is someone who strives only toward the Creator and toward nothing else, such as anything related to this world or himself.

The only means that makes it possible to reveal the Creator, the Upper World, and the quality of bestowal is a Kabbalistic group. The group is a connection among people’s aspirations to reveal the quality of bestowal among them. This quality is called “the Creator.”

You aren’t trying to learn a Kabbalist’s earthly habits from him. What you learn from him is how to cancel yourself, where “cancelling yourself” means to cancel your egoism in relation to the goal – the attainment of the quality of bestowal. You have to accept this goal without any resistance to it, with full trust and no criticism, as if you were a baby.

Criticism and verification have to take place before you accept the teacher as your instructor. However, if you have a point in the heart, then you have nowhere to run from an instructor who is showing you the truth.

But what is “the truth”? It is the force of bestowal, deemed the Creator, and it becomes revealed inside your love for friends and then for the whole world. If you see that the other students and the teacher are trying to accomplish this, without considering anything besides the Creator important, this means you have found the right place to study.

Yet, this still doesn’t give you any guarantee that you will attain the goal. From here on, everything depends on you; this is where your freedom of will starts. But at the very least you have found a teacher and a group, which is the place where the Creator can be revealed.

A teacher is not the flesh and blood person you see in front of you, but attainment of the Creator and experience along this path. What you should be absorbing from him is not the earthly things, but his connection with the Creator.

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A question I received: How does the lower one annul himself before the Upper?

My Answer: Initially, the next spiritual degree seems like darkness, when in fact it is a higher level of bestowal. Since I am incapable of relating to that level, it therefore causes a feeling of darkness, emptiness and depression within me.

I am able to annul my egoism (myself) only with the help of this higher degree. In order to do this, I must turn to the group and receive from it the greatness of the goal, of connecting with the Upper Level, through the quality of bestowal. Then I am ready to plead to the Upper Level, asking It to give me the greatness of the goal, for the goal’s importance to become higher than reception. In this way, I become ready to agree with the Upper Level and to annul myself before It.

In response to my plea, the Upper Level opens up to me and shows me the greatness of bestowal to such a degree that I am ready to bestow. I then become equal to It and rise to that level.I merge with the Upper Level, acquiring the new understanding from It. Then I move to the second stage and begin acting independently.

This is similar to a generally accepted method of education where a senior student gives me an example, takes my hand in his, and draws a picture. After that, I can draw the picture myself.

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It is impossible to rise to a higher degree without the help of the Upper One. This is similar to how a child can only develop with the upbringing he receives from adults who understand what he needs to receive year after year. How much he absorbs from them depends on how much he nullifies himself before them. In our world, Nature takes care of this process.

Meanwhile, using one’s brain, a person will always judge others on his level and will never leave the boundaries of his comprehension. Therefore, the group gives us an opportunity to attain  similarity to “faith above reason,” which is only revealed in spirituality. The group gives us its opinion, and this opinion begins to govern in us. So, for the time being, this is called “faith above reason.”

Besides this, there is the concept of “a piece of bread in store for the future” (Pat be Salo – bread in the knapsack). If a person knows that he has bread in his knapsack, he does not suffer from hunger as much as a person who has no bread at all. It would seem that this is purely a physiological process. What difference does it make whether we save ourselves a sandwich or not? But there is a difference! We do not feel the hunger if we have this sandwich stored away for the future.

A wealthy person that has all types of food does not feel the desire to eat it, while a person who doesn’t have anything has a huge appetite. This is called a “piece of bread in store for the future,” even though we do not feel a desire for it.

We need to use all the possible tricks to awaken an inner sense of alarm and fear in order to expose the places where the breaking occurred. It should become clear to us that we are not in a state where we can be satisfied. We study and perform dissemination work, but this is not enough to calm us down. We need to make sure that we feel more and more alarmed in regard to our correction with every passing moment.

We need to ensure that we acquire a new desire, building an image of the Upper One for ourselves and adhering to it, so this aspiration to a new, hypothetical degree will pull us higher.

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We come into this world and into the perception of this reality in order to rise from here to the true reality of the Upper World. Our whole mission in life is to gain consciousness from our unconscious state and to experience the true reality.

We must first go through a long path of development and traverse the inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels, until the point in the heart emerges in us – a desire to enter the true reality. When we finally clarify what our true state means (bestowal, the root of our soul, and the Creator), we understand that we need to tune into some system that will help us achieve this.

Until now, we have had no prerequisites for this, meaning the required and correct strength, desires, thoughts, and understanding. So, where is that adapter or intermediate step between that enables us to attain bestowal? What is the means that will allow us to advance?

It is written that there are three means by which we can advance: the teacher, the group, and the books. However, we must first lose hope so utterly that we will understand that these are the only means, and thus will begin to use them.

This is when the count of the preparation period of “three to five years” begins (see Item 23 of the “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot”). We have to check ourselves at every moment to see if we are truly in this period of “three to five years,” and if not, we have to look for changes that will lead us to bestowal.

After all, if we received an awakening and the Creator gave us this desire, we need to make sure to carry out our spiritual mission. If, on the contrary, we received such an awakening from above and we neglect it, rejecting the Creator’s invitation to come to Him, this will be the greatest shame we can possibly imagine.

Therefore, we have to put in as much effort as possible into building boundaries for ourselves and placing “guards” everywhere who will not allow us to run away during difficult times. We must be guarded when we are in a state of having no control over ourselves, such as when we experience heavy thoughts and various considerations that force us to forget about the spiritual path and the goal.

We have to define all the concepts correctly and fully: What is bestowal, what are the conditions and the means to reach it, and in response to what desire does the Light of Correction come?  We need to clearly imagine each passing state in order to understand whether we are on the path of “three to five years” or whether we’ve shifted away from it.

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A question I received: In the posting, “Use Each Instant Of Your Life To Move Aheadת” you wrote that a person must demand an award from the Creator for each of his deeds in order to accelerate revelation of the Upper World. But how can I develop this demand if I don’t have it?

My Answer: No one initially has the desire for the Upper World because the Upper World is opposite to us and therefore we cannot feel it. A desire develops only after we “taste” something and then lose that sensation. We then feel the need to run after it. Intensity of this aspiration for the desirable is called a desire (passion).

In Kabbalah this law of development of desire is formulated as “The expansion and disappearance of Light.” This is what creates a desire for it.

So the most important question is: How do we draw the influence of the Light upon us? The answer is: Through the environment – the teacher, the books, and the group.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Preparing Yourself To Approach The Creator
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Baal HaSulam Article: “Disclosing a Portion, Covering Two”
Video: What Do You Get From Kabbalistic Books? (5:24)

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A question I received: Why do we need disturbances on the way to the Creator?

My Answer: Everyone goes to school. Every day my teachers give me problems and exercises in all the different subjects. I advance due to these exercises since I do not learn anything if I don’t solve these problems. Each problem is a disturbance.

Some people do sports, and in order to excel at their sport, they need to train hard on a daily basis and keep improving their skills. This rule applies to everything, and the spiritual path is no exception. There are, however, differences.

In our world I clearly see the goal. For example, I want to become a famous scientist, doctor, musician or sportsman.  In other words, I want to be someone special. Even though I need to overcome many obstacles, I clearly see the outcome, which is fame and the respect of the entire world. In this case egoism fills me with energy. People spend their entire lives trying to attain a respectful position in society, and they develop the strengths needed to reach their goal.

But in spiritual path, I do not feel like I am advancing and I do not have the strength to advance. It is because the people around me do not value spiritual ideals, and I myself do not yet see those ideals. So the problem is not the disturbances, since we have plenty of them in our every day lives. The problem is that I do not see the goal and I do not receive the support from the social environment. That is why we absolutely need the help of others.

If I am part of a group that constantly elevates the spiritual goal in my eyes, then it becomes easy for me to attain the goal. Overcoming an obstacle is no longer difficult, because I understand that any goal demands working with my own self. The most important thing is for the group to help me.

(From the Children’s Lesson in Buffalo, NY)

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