Growing Interdependence

Question: Let’s say the Creator draws a picture for us of someone incapable of coping with a disease or getting out of some bad state. Is it a manifestation of the group’s weakness? How do we react to these situations?

Answer: We cannot say that it is a consequence of a group’s work. We are tied to the whole world.

The group we are currently in is not a small number of people who used to study a thousand years ago when the world was “sealed” and developed egoistically. For example, the groups of ARI, Ramchal, Rabbi Shimon, or Rabbi Akiva were detached from the rest of the world.

The world, its so-called Babylonian part, has been developing egoistically, whereas Kabbalistic groups advanced independently. They used to discuss within the group only what really pertained to their group.

Today, the world advances in general; it has become global. Now, we move forward not because we deserve it or don’t deserve it, but rather, because we have to move ahead for the sake of correcting the entire world. So, we cannot say that somebody fell or was elevated as a result of the internal group work within one particular group or any other groups; we all are closely interconnected. Today, these problems cannot be resolved this way.
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From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/8/12, Lesson 4

The Purpose Of Life Is Spiritual Self-Realization

Question: By studying Kabbalah, we turn from the “nations of the world” to the “people of Israel.” If I understand correctly, in reaching spiritual attainment do we obtain greater suffering than the “nations of the world?” Or do we understand the cause and effect relationship?

Answer: I have many friends from school, university, with whom I sometimes keep in touch. They are developed, normal people, but they don’t understand me. In any case, I don’t neglect anyone of them; I appreciate and love them, but we are just different people.

So, we can’t evaluate ourselves relative to others. It’s easier for someone and more difficult for someone else; everyone has his own destiny. The only thing that a person should do is to realize himself as he is.

You shouldn’t envy anyone, saying, he is lucky, look how rich he is, and this one is a slacker, but everything is easier for him; the third one was born “with a silver spoon in his mouth.” It will not help. This suggests that you just don’t know how to realize yourself. One has to learn!

Take your truest, deepest desire, longing, and start being yourself. You will see that this is the best that can be. It’s unlikely that you will be happy if you change places with someone. Only by realizing yourself, by becoming similar to the Creator, will you be completely fulfilled.

As to moving forward, the more a person advances, the greater emptiness emerges in him. But these voids become filled with insight, a sense of eternity, perfection, eternal life, a sense of Infinity. A person sees the universe from end to end.

An average person in this world, for example, a shepherd walks with cows in the meadow, whistling, feeling good, alive and well, with no worries in his head. Can we envy him? Yes, of course. But envy what and up to what point? After all, there comes a state when he will have carried out his program.

So, don’t think about suffering. Realize yourself! Otherwise, it turns out that you curse the Creator for having created you. What could be worse than that? So, let’s be grateful!
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From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/9/12, Lesson 5

No Pay Is My Pay

If we embark on the spiritual path, we must exert effort in order to make each next step. On the other hand, the greater part of mankind will obtain the spiritual world “in a single step” so to speak, and we are the ones who will provide this step: by our sweat and hard work.

What do we get out of this? At best, satisfaction with the work done, or simply nothing. This is what it means to be a “kingdom of priests” and a “holy nation”: This is exactly what the Torah calls the ones who carry out this mission.

In other words, everything we do, we do in bestowal, which is “holiness.” We work hard seven days a week; we face ungratefulness and resistance, and in the end, everyone, all at one time, will receive, that which cost us so much, and it’s in them where the greatest Light will unfold.

Question: But how? One percent gives all their soul to it, crosses the Machsom, reforms itself to bestow, and, all of a sudden, the rest of the 99 percent, in one easy move, collects the entire revenue?

Answer: Our pleasure, above all, is to delight the Creator so that He won’t know about us. That’s what it means to really bestow without wanting a reward: I bring Him pleasure and He doesn’t know who His secret admirer is. He thinks it came from somebody else. Otherwise, if both of us, the Creator and I, know that the delight is coming from me, it’s a payment, and there is no greater payment than that.

Question: Why did the Creator handpick us to bestow from the whole of mankind?

Answer: There are souls who feel that they are supposed to become realized in the most advanced form as compared to the rest of mankind. Their progress is tied to the vital need to find the Creator, the mystery of life, the general system of all creation, the grid that links all in one. This idea, this desire, takes a hold of them and doesn’t let them go.

Question: Why, then, do we receive troubles and problems on the spiritual path?

Answer: You seek justice? There is such, but it is not what you think it is. Justice lies in my gratitude to the Creator for this hard work, for the chance to bring Him delight that I won’t even know about and that He won’t know comes from me. This is the true, pure bestowal.

Question: However, the other 99% eventually will overtake us on this path!

Answer: That’s true; and I thank the Creator for this special role He assigned to me. I have accomplished selflessly, and this is my reward. I reached a state where lack of payment is my pay, and this is what fulfills me, and it is called the Light of mercy, the Light of Hassadim.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/14/12, “The Peace”

Seeing The Creator Behind The Friend

Question: Why do I discover new things about the world when I correct my attitude to others and love them?

Answer: It is always about your desire. There are only the vessel and the Light—the desire and what happens in it. The whole point is how I treat you, the “outsider,” from within my desire.

In other words, there is an image of a stranger in me, and I have to correct my desire with respect to that image, to turn my desire around, and accordingly, to discover a new state.

I never exit myself. I only need to change myself, my bad attitude, my hatred, and turn it to love. Then I will discover the spiritual world in my relationship with you.

One way or the other, everything happens inside. We are facing a huge world, but everyone understands that this picture is depicted in us. Baal HaSulam writes about it in “The Introduction to The Book of Zohar.”

But where does the image in me come from? It is a result of the Creator’s action. Every level in nature—the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking—all the levels of the development of the desire from the “root” phase until “phase four,” lead me to the Creator, to attaining the upper force.

This means that everything that I feel on the outside is the Creator. Therefore Rabash says that we should see the Creator in the friend, or at least behind a friend.

So the external image in my perception is the spark, the particle of Light, the Creator. Thus, thanks to the shattering of the vessels, I suddenly discover the others, the strangers outside myself. A “dipole” is revealed in me: I and someone else. This someone fills the place of the Creator for the time being, so that I can exercise self-improvement with him; but in fact, there is nothing but a person and the Creator.

So we should understand that in our corrections in the circle of friends, we help improve the whole world. Here we can understand what Baal HaSulam says at the end of the “Introduction to The Book of Zohar“: If Israel correct themselves, the Light pours from them to the rest of reality; we don’t need anything else. It is enough for us to correct ourselves.

So my friend is not a friend but the Creator, who has inserted this image into me on the background of all the other levels of reality. On the fourth phase of the development, the created being feels shame before the Creator, and it is exactly for this reason that I hate the friend that I see before me. This is the result of that shame.

Let’s go back to what a person learns during the correction.

Without this information it is simply impossible to manage. Since how can he increase his love? Every level is made of feelings and mind—it is impossible to advance only by one of them. After all, the pleasure is only in attaining the Creator’s actions.

He wants us to discover Him as good and benevolent. In order to do that, you have to know how He does it: by what wisdom, in what way, with what concern. The wisdom is essential here, and it has to be deep wisdom, as if you are dressed in the Creator.

In our world you will not understand parents until you actually grow up and become a father. It is the same in spirituality, the adhesion is necessary, since without it you will not understand the Creator: who He is and what He is. Love comes as a result of this.

Unless you attain the Creator, you will not be able to love Him. As adults, we remember different events from our childhood, what our parents did, what they taught us, how they sacrificed themselves for us, and we begin to understand them, and to love them much more than in our childhood. It is the same with the Creator.
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From the 4^th Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/16/12, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”

The Future Society Is Born Between Us

While reading The Book of Zohar we must remember that it is only about the connection between us. It all depends on the relationship between the friends, and in this relationship spirituality is revealed. The forms of the connection between us depict the picture of reality, since now too you see these forms of connection.

In any case, you perceive the world according to your Reshimot (reminiscences), and this is where the picture of the world that you imagine stems from. There is no world outside you; there is only what you imagine inside you.

Now you are among people in this world; you were born and developed in our time, but your worldview is also built by your being connected with the whole world. A boy left in the woods who has never seen human beings perceives the world according to theReshimot in the form of a forest, animals, and other forms of nature since he doesn’t perceive his environment on the human level, but on lower levels, still, vegetative, animate nature.

You, however, perceive reality also on the level of speaking. But in the relations between all these parts of nature: the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking nature, you discover your reality.

All of reality, the whole world, is what is revealed between the shattered parts of the creation. This is why we say that the perception of reality is subjective. If I don’t exist, then there is no world and there is nothing to speak about; Baal HaSulam writes about this in the “Preface to The Book of Zohar.”

So if we want to reach more advanced forms of perception, we have to evoke more advanced forms of connection between us. No wonder that this is what the wisdom of Kabbalah requires: You should develop more advanced and complex connection with others and in them you will discover a higher reality, which is more advanced and more internal. Everything depends only on the levels of the connection.

Now comes the time when all the connections between us are destroyed and we actually see that, and the world obligates us to form new connections. The world doesn’t know yet what types of connection they should be. As we have already heard about it, we have to start fulfilling them. This is what awaits us. This is what the wisdom of Kabbalah talks about: Leave all your imaginary dealings and start dealing with building the correct future society.

Then according to the connection between you, which you want to establish, you will receive help from above, from nature’s forces. The integral nature that is being revealed now will help you, it will influence you, and you will feel to what extent you are adapted to its general advancement, and you will succeed. We can say that nature is the Creator, but it doesn’t matter since it is about laws.

So where can you change anything in order to hasten your development? Now for the first time in history you can hasten the development of humanity. Before you were always dependent on forces that moved you forward. Internally new connections between people were revealed and new social structures appeared: instead of the tribe, there came along the era of slavery, and then the Middle Ages, then capitalism, and now we are advancing towards communism. These are the five social structures.

But what has advanced humanity? It was all about the changes in social structure, the new connection that appeared between people. But now, during the fifth and last era of our development, you cannot discover new connection naturally. You will discover them in a negative way, since you have to complete them. Here everything depends on your conscious advancement. You have to attain it, you have to adapt yourself to nature—this is the process we are in.

So we are actually creating a new social structure, hastening the process that all of humanity will have to go through. This is called being a “kingdom of priests” and a “holy nation,” setting an example and being the conductor. But we are building this in the group, between us, and it is all in the new connection.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/17/12, The Zohar

Feeling The Creator Inside Me

Question: Do we draw the Creator by actions that are aimed at the revelation of spirituality? In other words, do we raise the actions or do we lower the Creator?

Answer: There are no such terms as “up” or “down” in spirituality in the simple sense of the words. We can divide them according to quality: Up means a higher quality and down means a lower quality.

I want to be connected to the Creator in all my actions; I want to feel how He manages me from the inside, I want to feel that all my thoughts, feelings, and decisions stem from Him. He is inside me, as the hand wearing the glove of the puppet, the puppeteer.

No matter what I do, it is Him, but everything depends on the extent to which I discover that “there is none else besides Him.” Therefore I ask and yearn for it in order to discover Him in me.

But I can do it only when I am with the group, because it is impossible to discover the attributes of bestowal alone. I am an egoist, an individualist, which means that I have to be with a group and to adhere to it.

I am included in a group, connect to the friends, and try to be with them in one desire, one inclination. Through them I ask for all of us, because I cannot ask for myself, since it will be egoism again. I ask for all of humanity—that the Creator will be revealed in us and that we will all feel Him and feel how He operates in us. This is how I want to see what joy and contentment we are bringing Him.

This is fulfilled by the law of “the end result is in the initial thought,” since in spirituality there is no time and no sequential actions. There is a static state, and it is only with regard to us that it is revealed this way, so that we will perceive it gradually.

We must understand the whole formula of creation from the beginning to the end, since otherwise it won’t work. We have to be moderately involved in it, since even our slightest participation is made of the same ten Sefirot according to the law of “the general and the individual are equal.” So we have to feel ourselves deeply, the group, humanity, and the Creator together in one general picture and to complete it.

Question: What is the Creator’s joy?

Answer: The Creator’s joy is the state in which we are all connected, adhered inside Him, enjoying the same wholeness that is actually the Creator Himself.
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From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/9/12, Lesson 5

Looking From The Creator’s Point Of View

Question: Egoism is the engine of progress. How do I get to the essence of it?

Answer: Start relating to it properly: Egoism is assisting you; it is “help against.” It unfolds so that you transform it into its opposite, and then it will become a helping hand. If we look at things properly, life will stop feeling like tough resistance and an “unbreakable wall.” On the contrary, you always keep playing with your egoism, constantly “juggling” it. You befriend each other, and it already knows that it’s the right thing to do.

And suddenly, behind egoism the Creator appears. It turns out that He is pulling the strings, and now He becomes your partner. Try to view everything not only from below upward, but also from above downward as well, not from creation’s point of view, but from the Creator’s angle, meaning how He has to restrict Himself, what He should send to you and how.

Suppose you have received something from Him. Now you consider how to work with it from below; besides, you can take a glance from His point of view and visualize how He sends you certain conditions and how they descend downward until they form the exact situation you find yourself in.

And what am I supposed to do now? You must appeal to Him from below upward, give Him credit for everything, and patiently start studying while discerning how to arrange things so as to reinforce the awareness of two principles within:

1. There is none else besides Him.
2. Good Who does good.

This is the key. After all, no matter what the Creator is giving me, every case comes down to this, and this is what I must be aiming at all the time. As a result, each time, my response should be as follows: to carry these two principles (1, 2) from state to state, enhancing them more and more. This is the sole purpose of all that happens.

Clearly, in order to implement this, I need a guarantee, support, the Light that Reforms (Surrounding Light, Ohr Makif – O”M), and in general, the Kabbalistic method. But one way or another, everything occurs solely in order to give me a chance to come closer to revealing the Creator, as there in none else besides Him, who is Good Who does good.

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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/14/12, “The Peace”

Commandment To Love

Question: What does it mean to delight the Creator?

Answer: To delight, to bring pleasure to, the Creator, to love the Creator—these are all very beautiful words. But how can we love a force, even if it is eternal and governs everything there is? All these words are told to a person so that he can adjust himself in some way.

We come to love for the Creator only through love for others. In the article, “One Commandment,” there is an instruction: to come to love for the Creator. But how can we be ordered, obliged to love? It is possible when we work on love of another, make a common mass of our yearnings toward each other, build a common connection above our egoism, and cover it with mutual love. It is written: “Love will cover all transgressions.” When we build a collective property of common mutual connection and yearn toward everyone while cultivating love within, then in our internal egoism there arises a completely new structure: mutual adhesion, mutual inclusion.

Love means that I assume all your desires and care for them, thinking solely of how to fulfill them, while you think about mine, and so on. Love means to fulfill desires of another instead of my own, using them for this purpose. If I arrange such conditions within myself, then by doing so I grow a vessel there that works for the sake of bestowal. And this common vessel that all of us are creating together contains our collective component called “love for the Creator.”

We begin to experience not only the common vessel, our attitude towards the others, love for them, bestowing to them, but also we begin sensing what fills me along the way. This sensation is called the Creator, Boreh in Hebrew (“Bo” – come, “Reh” – see). When we create one collective spiritual vessel, the Creator is revealed there as a result.

Hence, the main Mitzva is very simple: “Love your neighbor.” Through love for another, in the vessel that you created, you will feel love for the Creator and, respectively, His love for you.

Question: What is the final goal of this work?

Answer: It is in the fact that you come to a complete likeness and adhesion with Him in our own reformed egoism. This is how you rise to the level of the Creator. This is the final goal of creation. You begin to experience a sensation that you are in total adhesion with Him, but you don’t dissolve in it, because your entire vessel stays with you.

In other words, the sensation of being opposite doesn’t get annihilated since adhesion with the Creator occurs above it; otherwise, mutual annihilation would occur. Hence, we must view our egoism as the matter with the help of which we move forth. We should treat it with respect since it is the reverse image of the Creator. Conversely, our whole world is His reverse image at our level.
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From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/8/12, Lesson 4

Question: You said that a person should turn to the Creator through the group. What does that mean? Do we have to read Shamatitogether or have a workshop: what should we do?

Answer: I think that a person should behave very simply: First to take a short course in the wisdom of Kabbalah and then to study in a group. He has to participate in our lessons as much as he can, at least in the third part of the lesson, and to participate in workshops several times a week—that’s the least he can do.

Besides, we have a huge library, an archive of lessons and talks translated to many languages. It shouldn’t be a problem to find something to do.

A person should dedicate a certain amount of time to dissemination, since by that we not only bring our message to the world, but also join the next level.

We have to bring humanity the information about the correction, the advancement, and the attainment of the next state. Otherwise how can we erase the deficiency that is now being revealed in people?

We speak about the fact that there is none else besides Him. So what is humanity’s problem? How can it correct itself?

We have now reached a “round” state, in which we totally depend on one another. The third phase is now being revealed and we are beginning to ascend to it from our current state, this is called a crisis.

The truth is that a “crisis” in Greek means “birth”—the birth of something new.

So we have to show humanity that we are on the border of a new world now and this new world is integrality.

The first spiritual level, the world of Assiya, is now being revealed only in its external outline, integrally, since the spiritual world is integral. We are starting to see that with our properties, we are unable to cope in this system. A network of absolute mutual connections is descending upon us, and we cannot do anything here. This is precisely how today’s crisis is expressed in education, in science, in economy, in every aspect.

So we first have to tell people about this, and second, to teach them the method of how to ascend internally to the next qualitative level, which means to change towards integrality, towards a mutual connection.
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From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/8/12, Lesson 3

Taking All The Sparks Out Of The Thickness Of The Desires

Question: What does it mean: “to connect with the friends’ sparks?”

Answer: To connect with the friends’ sparks means to connect our desires to the Creator. After all, the friends have come here since there is a spark in their great desire that yearns for spirituality, for equivalence of form and connection with the Creator. I am also here because of that desire; it is what has brought us to the group.

We have to connect in these desires, to connect only by the reasons that have brought us here. Let’s take only the ones that have brought us here out of all the thickness of our desires and discard all the rest like a bag full of liquid garbage, and connect the sparks from which our spiritual vessel will be created.

It will be only its upper part, and everything else is formed from the garbage we have discarded of when we annulled these desires. It isn’t easy to discard them, since we have to annul each of these desires one by one.

When we try to connect and want to love, hate is suddenly revealed in order to show us that there is no natural love in us. In the meantime it seems that you love everyone naturally and that you treat everyone nicely, as is accepted in our world—they don’t work on love and so they don’t discover hate.

In order to reach love, we must first discover the opposite—hate. But we don’t work on hate, we aspire for love, the more you yearn for love and really work on it, the faster you discover that you hate and that you don’t love. You are told the truth from Above.

To discover love means to see the friend as the greatest in our generation, and to look only for the positive attributes in him, to try and feel that his desires are more important than your desires, just like a mother feels towards her child.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/12/12, The Zohar 

Life Means Getting Closer To Love

Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot“: ‘The wicked, in their lives, are called “dead.”’ This is because their death is better than their lives, as the pain and suffering they endure for their sustenance is many times greater than the little pleasure they feel in this life.

If we don’t advance towards attaining the source of life, then life turns into an escape from sufferings. All our thoughts are only about how to avoid evil and unpleasantness. Therefore, we don’t imagine the good as a filling, since we cannot fill ourselves, but simply try to find some peace between the bad moments.

As a result, all the pleasures that we feel don’t last more than a short while, and so we are called “dead” even while we are alive, since we don’t receive a filling from the real source of life upon which all of reality and all of creation stand.

Of course, everyone has his own accounts, and if he sees how much pain and suffering he feels, how much he suffered and what efforts he has made compared to the few moments of pleasure that have made him happy and brought him joy, then he discovers that it wasn’t worth living. This whole life can only be justified as a preparation for the spiritual ascent. But if one examines this life as is, there is no point to it.

Now when we are awarded the Torah and Mitzvot (commandments), we are awarded with the real happy and joyful life by keeping them, as it says: “Taste and see that the Creator is good.” This is what those who have attained it feel. Then we can choose between good and evil. After we receive the Torah, the way, the spiritual principles, we begin to work with the two lines.

This is what the writings mean by: “and you shall choose life so that you and your descendants shall live.” Actually it is a repetition: “and you shall choose life so that you shall live.” But it refers to living by keeping the Torah and the Mitzvot. Then one really lives. “But life without the Torah and the Mitzvot is harder than death.”

This is how a person perceives the difference between life and death: Life means spiritual advancement, and death means lack of advancement. A person gradually understands that advancement means getting closer to love, to bestowal, to self annulment, to rising above one’s ego. Only this is called “life,” without any account of what we feel in our egoistic desires.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/11/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot” 

Four Stages Of Love

In his article, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy,” Baal HaSulam writes that love consists of four parts, meaning that when one starts to feel that he is receiving “something,” one can divide this “something” into four levels.

Kabbalists call the pleasant sensation that comes to us under the influence of the upper Light a gift. When we receive a present, we start searching for who gave it to us; we explore what this quality is that is the reason He treats us like this, with what intention and so on. In other words, we don’t get anything but the gift, but we can learn about the Giver by examining His gift and the impact that it produces on us.

If we were presented with a little box as a gift, we are unable to determine much by only looking at it, but we would obviously think that the one who sent it to us treats us well.

On the other hand, if the gift penetrates into us and produces a certain action in us, then we can figure out what the Giver expects from us and why He modifies our internal states the way He does.

We know our prior states and we feel our current, altered state, and the difference between them in certain properties and aspects. Then, we can realize what He wants of us. From the differences between the past and the present, we can tell who He is. In accordance with the changes as they change, we feel His positive qualities. He always changes us for the better, to the positive, to more. It makes us grow, and we start to realize that that is His qualities and that He wants to raise us up to Him.

Accordingly, we are able to distinguish between the four levels of attainment and the four worlds.
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From the Fundamentals of Kabbalah 12/2/12

The Group As A Spiritual Entity

Question: What is a group as a spiritual unit, spiritual entity? How can I properly interact with the group so that we derive the maximum mutual benefit for spiritual growth?

Answer: A group, as a spiritual entity, is the common desire that seeks likeness with the Creator, the property of bestowal. If people who are in the group act contrary to their egoism, then above it, over their general contradictions, they build the property of love and bestowal that they direct at the Creator.

This is called a group. Constant work should be carried out inside it. If a person joins the group, becomes included into it, dissolves in it, he loses his “I,” and he wants to disappear in the group, to give himself fully to what takes place in it; this means that he is a member of the group.

Our “I,” originally created in us, exists only as a black dot, above which I have to accept all external desires as my own. This is called “love your neighbor.”

To love means to perceive all his desires and properties as my own. I restrict my own desires, do not feel them. I exist only in order to feel everything that exists in others as my own. In reality, all our common desires are my field, my Kli, vessel. I will feel the upper world in it; I want to bestow upon the Creator through it, and in it I will reveal Him. And my dot will remain a black dot. In this way I should perceive myself in relation to the group.
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From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/8/12, Lesson 4

The Progress Of The Friend Is More Important Than My Own Progress

Question: If love towards friends means to prefer his desire more than mine, what desires are talking about?

Answer: As Baal HaSulam writes in his article, “The Last Generation,” one needs to be concerned that each person in the world will have his necessities for normal material existence met. And if the friend himself will relate to it like that, he will not need any extras.

And all the rest needs to be directed toward of the support of the friend in the spiritual path. So what does it mean that I love the friend? How can I fulfill his desires? If I worried about food for him and anything he needs for his existence, in the other things I support him spiritually: showing him my awakening and transferring to him the feeling of the greatness of the Creator and the importance in the spiritual path that awakens me and fulfills me in force. I act towards him as toward my child, that I want to attract to a beneficial action, and therefore I show him my interest, the desire, my appreciation. Exactly in the same way I must show an example to the friend. It means, that I supply him with spiritual nourishment besides the corporeal nourishment, it means, that I love him.

Precisely this attitude, we must develop in our group. To give a friend the feeling of the greatness of the goal and my personal example of the loyalty to it,  this is called to love the friend. And by that I prefer his desire above my desire. I take into consideration what he needs, the necessary corporeal means, and all the rest is toward his spiritual development. All this I must supply to him.

I must worry that he will arrange his life in a normal form, to help him to find a job, etc. And from a spiritual aspect,  I must encourage him with the greatness of the goal. And by that I prefer his desire above my desire, I am worried for his development, and not mine. If I worry for a friend, this is the best thing for my development. But all of that I do in order to reach to the love of God.

One must connect to a whole one: Israel, Oraita, and Kedosh Berach Hu (Israel, the Torah, and the Creator). Otherwise, it turns out that I simply love the friend in a natural egoistical love like for my child.

Precisely this form of work is called “the work of God.” If I relate to a friend in this form, through him I direct myself to the Creator. Love of others is necessary only in order to reach love of God. Through this man reveals the concealment that was made by the Creator, so we will practice in the love of others and reach the love of God.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/13/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”