True Prayer

Baal HaSulam, Sages Fruit, Article “Wrong Time to Gather the Herd”: It’s prohibited to separate oneself from the society and ask for oneself, even for the sake of pleasing the Creator.

One should address the Creator, having the purest thoughts and ideal desires that are not for one’s own sake, but for the sake of others or for His sake. But if one prays to the Creator on one’s own, alone, the prayer won’t rise to Him. Rather, it will stay with the person who prays.

We can continue screaming for a thousand years, but it won’t help us at all. The spiritual system doesn’t hear solitary requests. A single person is unable to raise the desire to be connected with others, the desire that elicits the correction from Above. This demand has to be raised together with other similar desires, as part of a common desire to unite. Then the Light that fulfilled these desires before the shattering took place, when all desires were one whole, will automatically descend.

Praying for the entire society is the only possible type of prayer. Those who are detached from their surroundings as well as those who pray only for their own sake harm and destroy their souls. The Light won’t respond to such an appeal. It is said: The Creator says to all proud men: “We cannot dwell in the same abode you and I.”

It’s impossible to get out of one’s surroundings if one doesn’t wear the vestments of pride. One’s separation from the group automatically implies that one becomes more selfish. Detachment from the group is a result of various spiritual “moves,” not physical ones. No matter how justified one’s separation looks, it always is an outcome of one’s increased pride, wickedness, and egoism.

Praying alone makes one involuntarily abandon one’s community, thus ruining one’s soul, an aspiration towards the Creator. A sensation that one’s soul is implanted into a corrected community, in each of our friends not as a discrete part, but as an inseparable element of the whole system signifies a complete correction of the body (the general desire).

The category “we” becomes the only one that really exists. The sensation of “I-ness” vanishes since it is given to us only to make us understand that we are placed outside of the spiritual ladder.

“I-ness” exists only in this world. The lowest spiritual degree, as well as all other 125 spiritual steps, is based solely on “we” and the sensation of “we” becomes higher with each next step. The “I” disappears at the level of this world that is called the imaginary world since it exists only in our shattered desires.

Spirituality is felt only in the “we.” This notion includes me, you, him, and other friends connected together. It is quite a weak spiritual level of the world of Assiya at which clarifications and shatterings still occur. The world of Yetzira is nothing like that. There, in the world of Yetzira everything is truly connected into one whole. The world of Beria is a preparatory link for attaining a complete correction in the world of Atzilut.

This explains why we should never forget that spirituality can be felt only through the connection among us. It is said, the minimal Kli (vessel) is comprised of two. Ten people constitute an ideal structure. This is stated in The Zohar and Rabash’s articles.

For thousands of years, humanity did not have such wonderful conditions! We have to take advantage of our developmental stage and implement the transition from “I” to “we” as efficiently as possible.
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From the Convention In St. Petersburg “Day Two” 9/20/14, Lesson 4