The Convention Is For Everyone Who Is Willing To Be Included

The Constitution of the Convention in Arava: Our brother, the physical and spiritual conditions that you must observe are before you. Prior to joining us, check carefully: Are you ready, do you realize and feel the importance of the stage to which you connect; do you understand that the Torah, the Reforming Light, will change you so that you love and serve everyone? Do you want this? You should be clear that you come here not to receive, but to receive the force of bestowal.

Even while just reading the story of the Torah about the exodus from Egypt, we see that it involved people of all types: elderly, young, children, men, and women. They differed, some with a great desire to receive, others with a great desire aimed at bestowal. All of them, including Moses and Aaron, were still in the receiving desire. However, the Creator was revealed to them; we will discover what revelations they were.

This is why we open the convention in the Arava to all the men. We do not check whether they participate in all our activities. A person may arrive at the convention but he will not be able to take part in it fully if he does not study during the morning lessons, if he does not pay Maaser (tithe), if he does not participate in the meeting of friends, in their connection, and if he is not involved in dissemination. These are the four conditions according to which a person is my student and a member of Bnei Baruch, a friend for everyone.

First of all, we are talking about physical actions that are followed by deeper levels to the extent a person invests one’s heart and really wants to exert in order to reach the goal. So, there are different gradations.

However, it is never too late to start. We see that this month, more and more people study during the daily Kabbalah lessons and many began to pay maaser because they understood that these funds are dedicated to the dissemination of the method of Kabbalah in the world. In essence, this is our correction. We exist for this purpose: to perform the role of Israel for the world, to receive the method from above and pass it down.

Thus, understanding and awakening are growing in our community; finally, people take the straight path. However, we do not need to be great, we just have to realize the opportunities that we are given. This is what is important.

Many kinds of desires came out of Egypt: children, old, young, men, women, slaves, goats, and sheep. There were all levels: still, vegetative, animate and speaking, but each desire wanted to participate in this fully. A child who is completely ready to take part is also included.

Therefore, we open the convention for everyone. A man can say: “I have been watching the lessons on TV for a long time, and I will try to do the rest.” And he too can come. We turn no one away. In spirituality, only a person can check his heart before the Creator, no one can interfere in this.

However, we ask—and it is very important—that people at least try to be with us during the days of the convention with their whole heart and soul. That is why we put material terms and conditions for the inner work that must be followed.

People who enter the grounds of the Arava convention are obliged to observe the Constitution. They are given all the conditions for participation. If they do not take part in the shared effort, they harm everyone, and this will cause them a lot of damage.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/21/12, “Advice for the Arava Convention”

Sawing The Log Of My Egoism

A person should reach a state in which he feels that is the Creator’s partner: I do half the work and He does the other half.Half for me and half for Him. It is like a saw with two handles that two people hold, each one in his turn pulls to his side: One time the first person and then the other person, and so they saw the log.

A person should also feel that they act alternately: One time he acts and one time the Creator. Of course, I don’t do the work by my own powers. The power comes from Above. The Creator performs the action and the request comes from me, then again an action on His part and a request from me. Thus we complete one another each time.

The best state is when a person feels that he can perform this rotation without stopping. It means that we are actually working “face to face,” and that a “horse and his rider” are working together as one whole to such an extent that a person begins to feel more and more what the power he is about to receive will be, and what exactly he should give on his part.

After all, we raise a prayer, MAN, until the world of Ein Sof (Infinity), until the last coupling before Gmar Tikkun (the end of correction), which is the coupling of “Rav Pealim Mekabtziel” in which all the previous prayers come together. On every step of the spiritual ladder, the prayer becomes more clarified and more accurate, more detailed and clear, because a person understands and feels more. This is all the attainment.

He doesn’t feel any shame because he gives his share and so he is the Creator’s partner, in adhesion. Thus he overcomes the “judges and policemen” that reject him and seduce him, and he makes them his assistants. He already feels their actions as assistance.

We can describe this as if a person and the Creator work together on the desire to receive. A person feels that he is together with the Creator above this desire, or that the desire is between them, that the person is on one side and the Creator is on the other side, and between them is the desire to receive that separates them. A person doesn’t see the desire as his own. The very first thing is to disconnect from the egoistic desire and to receive above it, to be separate from it.

Then we should already see the ego that separates us, that is between the friends and a person and the Creator, as our common obstacle. Therefore we work on it together when we connect with the Creator or the friends in order to work together against the ego that disturbs us, without trying to erase it because we cannot do without it, but I yearn to rise above it.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/21/12, Writings of Rabash

Putting The Cards On The Table

Question: In what way should our intention in the Arava convention be different from what we had before? What should we prepare ourselves for?

Answer: Our intention during this convention is to add great fear, great anxiety: What if I don’t support the general effort correctly?

Just like in a poker game, I go all-in, wager all my resources, and put all the cards on the table. I am ready to give all of myself in order to attain the Light that Reforms. I am ready to give my share and to push everyone towards the goal. At the same time, in unification with all the friends, I want to receive through them the force that will connect me not with them, but to the One above them. We must do our utmost so that love will cover all sins. We must yearn for mutual guarantee and unity.

The difference is that this time we act on our own, without the external circles, in one thought, desire, and intention. We don’t leave it, we are constantly inside. We attack not only and not so much mentally as in desire and intention.

This is what we prepare, and everything else depends on the participants. They build this state.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/20/12, “Advice for the Arava Convention”

A Chance Of A Lifetime

Question: The coming convention makes me feel fear and pressure that are way too strong. I don’t feel happiness and love, but only instructions and warnings. I don’t feel like going to the convention any more. Why have I reached this state?

Answer: It’s because you’ve never thought that a convention is not a picnic. You always came to our conventions like to a festival full of lectures, performances, dancing, and meals…. If a person awakens himself with the help of such activities, they are serious and beneficial for him. But if he doesn’t, he can simply enjoy life, without approaching what’s important.

In the past, too, people used to come to the Temple because there was always fresh meat and good wine there. While others used to come there with rather different thoughts.

Today we make people understand where they are. Everyone has to understand and agree to this; everyone should feel great fear. The Torah even describes the external signs of this state, such as ground shaking, thunders, and so on. It is really so.

At the same time, this very important situation should evoke happiness in us. You are inGevurot (strength), but the upper level is revealed to you, if you deserve it, of course. If you don’t, here will be your burial place. So you should decide whether you should come or not.

The quality of the participants is more important than the quantity. Mass dissemination of the principle of mutual guarantee is one thing, while a spiritual ascent in the desert is something else.

If a person comes there as if to a picnic, he will cause himself great harm. He will diminish our power and will disturb us with his foreign thoughts and desires, and he will be punished for that in the future. Such a person shouldn’t come. There is room here only for those who are very serious.

I will understand if people decide to stay at home. It will actually be a serious attitude: A person is afraid, not sure of himself, understands that he is still weak internally.…

Well, so perhaps in another two thousand years you will have another chance ?
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/20/12, “Advice for the Arava Convention”

On The Verge Of The First Revelation

We should yearn for the one force, the one reality that exists so that it will begin to control us. This should be the result of our exertion.

People ask me: How is it possible to check and see if we’ve actually attained something? To attain a certain result means to feel that there is no self-desire or self-thought left in any one. It is as if we’ve embarked on a spaceship and have disconnected from earth.

We rise and we begin to feel only the new collective field we are in. Just as every bird in a big flock doesn’t feel its own desire: where to turn to and what to do. There is one collective brain that operates everyone in synchrony. Even the birds that fly in the front and those that fly behind, on the right and on the left, no matter where they are, they all turn together, change speed and direction, and even turn in the opposite direction; not one bird turns too soon or too late.

A moment ago they were flying in one direction and suddenly all at once, they all turn 180 degrees, as if they were one body. This is called being one man in one heart, in general mutual guarantee. We cannot attain this attribute by ourselves, but only by the Reforming Light that ties everyone together into one system.

It is an analog system in which there is no “entry” or “exit,” there is no beginning or end, but everything happens at once simultaneously.

Modern physics is also discovering that the true reality is above time and that all over the universe different phenomena that are not related to time take place, but one process is tied to other processes that take place simultaneously. An ants’ nest operates according to the same principle in which millions of ants are operated by one brain.

We observe many such phenomena in the inanimate, vegetative, and animate worlds where each individual has no brain of his own, but all of them together seem to be receiving orders from a general brain that shows them what to do and that arranges everything.

This is the level we should reach. The difference, of course, is that when it comes to us, it has to happens in our feeling, in our understanding, in our recognition that in that “One” we attain our first spiritual degree. Then that “One” that we attain, that feeling, that brain, that life, is called the “revelation of the Creator.”

Then we are already in a different intention, in a different reality, in which one force controls the heart and the mind. We are incorporated in it, learn it, and get to know it to the extent that it can be revealed according to the thickness of our level.

Later our ego is revealed again and separates us from the “One,” so that we will attain it in greater depth, in greater, more qualitative, and clearer discernments. Thus we advance in our work: We connect, we ask for the Reforming Light, and are incorporated once more in the concept of the “One” more deeply.

This is how the Creator is revealed to the created beings in this world. I really hope that we are all on the verge of this revelation today.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/20/12, “Pri Chaham”

The Creator In The Center Of The Group

Baal HaSulam: “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar“: And while one sees how one’s environment slights His work and does not properly appreciate His greatness, one cannot overcome the environment. Thus, one cannot obtain His greatness and slights during one’s work, as do they. Now you can understand the verse, “In the multitude of people is the king’s glory,” since the measure of the greatness comes from the environment under two conditions:

1. The extent of the appreciation of the environment.
2. The size of the environment.

Everything depends on the connection with the group. From it a person draws the strength to connect, and it is there that our might grows until we reach the Creator who is in the center of the environment.

But if a person doesn’t connect with the environment, he has no one to receive the strength from, and so he doesn’t find the upper force in the center.

Many details make up our connection: positive ones and seemingly negative ones. They belong to different levels of Aviut, meaning the coarseness, “thickness” of the desire. A person cannot do anything with his Aviut by himself. He must receive stimuli from the environment, such as needs, obstacles, and problems. When he overcomes them, he turns to the friends again because it is impossible to advance without enough negativity either.

So there is a lot of work to do and it is all in the society. Only there does a person gradually acquire the thickness and the purity of the desire. Eventually, his efforts add up to the necessary measure and he discovers the Creator within the unity with the friends.

If a person doesn’t see the Creator among the friends, it is a sign that he hasn’t connected with them yet. If he doesn’t understand that the Creator is revealed specifically there, it means that he is still far from unity. A person must at least believe the sages that the Creator is revealed within our unification, in its center. On the way to it one must acquire great thickness of the desire, experience many disappointments, and at the same time overcome many obstacles and refine himself.

Both things are necessary. If a person doesn’t despair, he can very quickly discover the Creator, like in the exodus from Egypt.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/19/2012, “Advice for the Arava Convention”

With All Humanity As One

Question: What is the importance of the conventions that are intended not only for us, but mainly for the world?

Answer: The point is that we need to take advantage of each convention in two ways: to advance upward toward the Creator, to the attribute of bestowal and love, and simultaneously to move downward, towards the remaining 99%. Essentially, we need to separate the two and afterward to connect it all into a single whole. This is what we have to do.

Thus, at each convention we will talk about our advancement forward, upward, and also about our movement downward to all of humanity since one cannot exist without the other.

We received the disclosure of the wisdom of Kabbalah, the disclosure of the condition of unification, the attainment of the spiritual quality, because we need to call for the unification of and connection with all the others, to rescue humanity from the state it is in. This is why we are like this; otherwise, we wouldn’t have been given this.

We connect all of humanity: the 99% and the Creator. Under no circumstances can we forget either of them.

Between ourselves, we must go forward, to the attribute of bestowal and love in order to become one whole. For this we need the connection with the Creator. And all of this is in order to bring humanity to the same state.

It is precisely because the ego and the crisis have manifested in the world enough that we were given the opportunity to bond between us, to work with the book, to understand the system, to discover the world, and in this way to advance it forward. This is the only reason we exist.

We represent Galgalta ve Eynaim (GE), and all of humanity is the AHP. If we advance forward, we will be able to attain only a small illumination. Our advancement needs to be as follows: We need to advance toward the Creator, and the Creator will lower us down toward humanity. Afterward we will advance a little more toward the Creator and then back to humanity.

And thus it alternates. Otherwise GE won’t have the Kelim (vessels), desires, since GEdo not have enough Aviut (coarsenss or thickness of the desire).

All of the Aviut comes from the AHP, from humanity. Thus we must, like from Egypt, take from there all the Kelim and “drag” them with us. When we bond with them and begin to transfer their Aviut, we will begin to advance forward with the help of descents and ascents. Thus we will move all the time, in a circle, until we bring the entire humanity to connection with the Creator.
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From the Lecture on Unity Day “To Acquire a Desire to Give” 1/29/2012

No More Distances

Question: I suddenly understand that we are in a convention every day. Is this the surrounding Light? How can we pass it on to the friends who are around the world?

Answer: Everyone is mutually connected and they feel it. I am in contact with many people and they tell me about very strong impressions, about great hopes, about the concern, about their intentions… and its good.

I am happy about our serious approach towards what is expected. It is unlike any previous convention. Today it takes on a totally different form. It is hard work, including the time of preparation. We have to make great serious efforts, and be aware of the special responsibility we have. The convention is becoming more a place to exert ourselves than a place for entertainment, and I am very happy about that.

Everyone feels that. Hundreds of friends are coming from abroad for the three days of the Arava convention. It isn’t about the number of days, but about the quality and the essence of the designated activity. I am very impressed and moved by this response. There is a week left, and we should use it for preparation. We have to bring all the hopes together, as clearly as we can.

Actually, it isn’t the physical participation that counts. It doesn’t matter where the friends are; they will try to perceive the general frequency and won’t have to buy plane tickets. We will still feel that we have gathered in one place, because a “place” is a desire. If it is truly one, you don’t feel the physical distance at all. You will forget about your body, just as you forget about it in rare moments of awe, when only the spirit remains.

I really hope that we will connect, and will stop depending on the kilometers that separate our bodies. In every place in the world you can dance with us in the desert and be with us in your heart and soul. It is really so. There are no distances. Everything is determined by the desire.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/15/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

A Desire For A Deficiency

In order to acquire the attribute of love and bestowal, we have to undergo a certain preparation. We have to gather together, to influence, to encourage, to spur each other to activity, that is, to do everything so that the Light will begin to awaken us according to how we awaken each other. It’s possible.

And for this we need a great deficiency for bestowal, for love. There needs to be a longing for it, meaning a desire for a deficiency. This is called “a prayer before a prayer.”

It is a little misunderstood in our world since we usually long for fulfillment, and here the fulfillment is the deficiency. This means that if I want to bestow and love, that is enough for me.

Imagine to yourselves that you love someone. What brings you fulfillment? It is your relation to your loved one, and that is enough for you, it fills you. And this is the attribute of the spiritual world, the attribute of bestowal, the attribute of love. Thus the desire to obtain a deficiency for bestowal, the desire to obtain a deficiency for love, is, in fact, our preparation for the convention.
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From the Lecture on Unity Day “To Acquire a Desire to Give” 1/29/2012

Faith Above Reason

We have a Kli (vessel or desire) and the fulfillment is above it, not within it. The Kli is composed of broken pieces that we need to glue together. These pieces are my friends, however not just their bodies but the desires to connect together. We must connect, and to the extent that we connect together we actually realize and feel our connection, and thereby attain the corrected state.

It is in this manner that we receive the general desire to enjoy: We connect and receive the desire of the friend, meaning I feel them within me, am impressed by them, and grasp them as mine. In this way I "buy" friends and acquire a bigger desire. All of this I do rationally "within reason" as is said, " A judge has only what his eyes can see." This Klibecomes my work tool, like a screwdriver, pliers, or hammer.

However, the surrounding Light (the Light that reforms) is on a level higher than me. TheReshimo (reminiscence) of the dressing is always found one level above the Reshimo ofAviut (coarseness): Dalet (four)/Gimel (three), Gimel/Bet (two), and Bet/Aleph (one). This is found " above my reason" according to the extent that I give more value to the upper Light and adhere to it above my intellect, since that is, after all, another level.

This means that the Kli has greater value according to the extent that we did more within the intellect in order to build it: we connected together, adhered to each other, we glued our bowl together. Whereas in the relation to the Creator, it’s preferred that He invite more problems, questions, fears, thoughts, doubts of His providence, and I, in spite of everything, will respect Him and try to adhere to Him. To the extent that my faith above reason is greater, it’s more valuable and I am attracted more to a higher level.

The greater the gap is, the greater the delta (∆ – difference) between the Light, the Creator, and the Kli, the desire. It’s more respectable this way. We must constantly maintain this relation and to see the friends as the greatest of the generation. I must feel, understand and see them only in this way.

While in relation to the Creator, everything is the opposite. The fewer doubts I have in relation to the friends, it’s better. And the more doubts I have in relation to the Creator (yet in spite of that I am attracted to Him), the better. In relation to the Light that reforms, it doesn’t matter how high it is. I am ready to adhere to it, to be impressed by it, to be assimilated in it, above reason. This is because I see that the Light that reforms will bestow on me, will control and execute changes in me.

But with everything that belongs to the Kli, meaning everything except the Creator, I must accept it within reason, in the clearest, most comprehensible, and examined way.

And thus the Creator will be revealed to me, each time more and more clearly within theKli, and I will need to ascend and want to be higher in my relation to Him, to value Him even more than before.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/15/12, Writings of Rabash

Entries To Our Spiritual Account

Question: There are states that you cannot exit without the friends’ help and there are states that depend on a person. How can you distinguish between the two?

Answer: Receiving from the group is like receiving from the Creator because He is dressed in all my external reality. If the friends simply impress me and inspire me, it is exactly as if the Creator awakens me.

But it isn’t my spiritual vessel. My spiritual vessel is the addition I receive from them for my demand, for my efforts in “buy yourself a friend.” Here everything works according to an accurate account: The more efforts I make, the more I demand from them, and the more I receive.

What I receive is thanks to our connection, our yearning for connection, and working above reason, and the more I see myself as less than everyone, as a zero, and the others as greater than me, as 1, accordingly I am evoked, like the 1 with the addition of many zeros, 1000000; this is how my spiritual vessel is measured.

Nothing is done by itself. Everything is done according to an accurate account: My desire is taken into account, the desire of the friends or the desire of the Creator, and the force that was received from me, from them, or from the Creator. Everything is calculated accurately.

But if I am awakened by accidentally hearing friends singing or talking, it isn’t counted as a result of my work. I can be impressed by it and ignited to want spirituality, to want to connect with them, but it will all be on their account. It is registered on my account only if I develop my yearning by myself when I don’t feel any interest and would rather not get out of bed, and not move at all. Still I must worry about how to add a certain movement on my part towards them. Otherwise it won’t be my vessel.

Therefore, it may seem to a person that he has done a lot, but if he could see the actual account, he might find no “income” in it. The spiritual world exists only as a result of the acceleration in our efforts. But if I move at a constant speed, it is as if I am standing in one place. Only the addition counts, the coefficient, the acceleration.

The acceleration shouldn’t be constant either, because it may be counted as a stop. There must be a constant addition. If we could calculate this “formula,” we could see that we didn’t invest very much into our account.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/16/12, Writings of Rabash