A Special Situation

We are in a very special relationship with the Creator. If a person puts all his egoistic hopes in Him, just like all the people in this world, then everything is fine. Everyone believes that the Creator is good and that He sends us good things and cares about us. Although people suffer, they always find a justification for that. We see that it isn’t too difficult to hold on to a simple belief. Billions of people truly believe in the existence of an upper force and are ready to make different sacrifices and even to sacrifice their life for this belief.

It is so simple since it stems from our ego. A person praises and glorifies the Creator and is ready to exert himself and to perform different religious rituals. However, we cannot even think about Him and are skeptical as to whether or not He really exists, if He is the good and the benevolent, if everything comes from Him. It is so difficult because it doesn’t stem from the ego, but from the point in the heart, from the form that is opposite to everyone’s general attitude towards the Creator.

However, we were given an environment so that our attitude towards the Creator will not stem from the ego, but from the opposite factor. Through the environment, we can really ascribe ourselves to the Creator to the extent the society increases His importance in our eyes. The more we all consider the society to be important, the more a person can attribute greater importance to the values that are accepted in the society, including the importance of the Creator.

If a person ties the environment with his point in the heart, then the Creator is inside the society and He gradually enters a person, enters his point in the heart. This is what we should demand from our group. Without this, there is no chance that we can reveal the Creator—by only by connecting the environment with our point in the heart so that the Creator becomes revealed in their connection into one whole.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/23/13

Draw A New World Inside You

Question: Who is entitled to cut threads that connect us with this world so that we can be born in spirituality?

Answer: Only you! It has to be done voluntarily!

We need a preparation period only to disconnect from our previous step, exit the “uterus,” and then, without having solid ground under our feet, start measuring ourselves, our actions, and our further steps using a qualitatively different tool that doesn’t include such parameters as “time” (now-then, today-tomorrow, etc.), “accumulation of goods,” “superiority over others,” or “security.”

All properties that define egoism (time, space, past, future, present, fulfillment, emptiness,and so on) disappear. They simply cease to exist. We enter a different space, another matrix, an alternative dimension that carries completely different values, absolutely divergent definitions, where everything is weighed on a different type of scale. Our attitude to everything around changes dramatically.

We don’t see any parallels in this world since our observations of the still, vegetative, and animate nature only allow us to watch different levels of egoism that outline each of these layers. Animals are more egoistic than other levels of nature, and that’s why they move faster, provide nourishment, reproduce, and so on Plants have less egoism, whereas the still nature is even less egoistic. And yet all of them are constructed to consume, absorb, gain, captivate, and retain.

But here everything is directed towards the opposite. And we can’t grasp this “opposite.” This is not just the same absolute value, but a minus sign.

After all, we build the world in our sensations, in our values and definitions: This is bigger, this is smaller, this influences me better, and this affects me worse. This is how the world is reflected in my egoism, while in reality the world doesn’t exist. All these spaces, objects, visions, sensations, relations that something is closer, farther, better, or worse, all of it is formed in my egoism in particular.

If it disappears for me, I begin to define everything in relation to another property: the property of bestowal. That is, I start drawing within myself a new world out of absence.
[105767]From KabTV’s “Mysteries of the Eternal Book,” 2/18/13

Do Not Be A Prisoner Of Sleep

After a very powerful Men’s Convention, we feel great heaviness.But I think that it should be the opposite since we have ascended to a new level, have received new desires, and now have to go out and fight the narrow-minded world we have returned to. We have to fight so all the confusions and the hardening of the heart that we will feel, will not wane our feeling of awe and elation. If we won’t let things calm us down, then all the locks will become openings and the gates will open up.

If you feel heavy and indifferent, it is a sign that you are working with your primordial rawegoism. It is the way it operates in its pure form, as a feeling of a dark extinguished desire that doesn’t care about anything. Now you have been given another ten pounds or ten ounces of desire, it doesn’t really matter how much, and you you have fallen under this load.

You mustn’t refuse to receive the new desire since it is considered disrespect of the chance to advance, of the gift you are given from Above. But you should ask for two things: from the group—support, empowerment, mutual guarantee, and mutual responsibility, and from the Creator—correction, awakening, elation, and the Light.

You have to ask. There is nothing you can do other than that! If you stop asking, then you immediately fall into a state of unconsciousness. So you must constantly ask and pray internally, focusing on the group and on the Creator, holding on to this prayer. Otherwise, you fall into a deep sleep.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/28/13, Talmud Eser Sefirot

Abraham, The Father Of The Kabbalistic Group

Question: Why does Baal HaSulam hardly mention the group in his articles?

Answer: There is hardly anything to say about the group since it is an obvious condition. If you don’t work on the connection with the group, you don’t have a spiritual vessel.

So Baal HaSulam has only several articles about the group. A Kabbalistic group is a concept known since the days of Abraham, who was the first Kabbalist who had to work in a group. Before him, there was no need for that since the idea of the connection of thesouls was not revealed. The souls were so pure until then that they didn’t need to connect to one another in order to connect to spirituality.

Although we know the history of Cain and Abel, this connection is still on the level of the roots of the evil inclination. So, Abraham was the first who needed a group although he had already attained spirituality.

He was the first link in a chain of twenty generations from Adam Ha Rishon (the First Man) until Noah, and from Noah until Abraham (ten Sefirot of the Direct Light and tenSefirot of the Reflected Light). He was the first who started to organize a group, and so he is considered the father of the nation of Israel. This nation is a Kabbalistic group.

The concept of the group was then formed, and it is impossible to reveal spirituality without it. The more we advance, the bigger the groups become. First, the groups were only a teacher and a student, as it says: “The minimum of many is two.”

There were different stories throughout the time periods in history, but the end result is they are all eventually meant to be as one. During the events before Mt Sinai, when the desire to receive of Egypt was revealed, the unity of the group of the whole Israeli nation as one group, was crucial. The conditions of the gathering before Mt Sinai were the conditions of a Kabbalistic group: to be “as one man with one heart,” “each man shall help his friend,” “don’t do unto others what is hateful to you,”  ”love thy friend as thyself,” and “all of Israel are friends,” connected in mutual guarantee.

These are the conditions for the existence of the group, since the “nation of Israel” is a Kabbalistic group.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/28/13, Shamati #25

To Be Born Beyond The Machsom

Question: Can we expect to cross the Machsom at the New Jerseyconvention on the 10^th – 12^th of May?

Answer: If you know exactly what it means to cross the Machsomand you want to do it, then you will surely succeed. To cross theMachsom means to enter into the group and to be born into the spiritual world.

In order to be born, the point in the heart, the drop of spiritual semen, has to be moved upward and turned into a “white drop,” the embryo of your soul that belongs to the Light. Through it you will feel spirituality and in it you will feel self-annulment: first, in regard to the group, next in regard to the attribute of bestowal, and then in regard to the Creator. This will be the first feeling of the spiritual world: self-annulment.

Then from this drop of spiritual semen, the embryo will begin to develop and more and more ego will be added to one’s self-annulment, which you will correct and turn into a matter for connection to the group. Then you will build your vessel, meaning the spiritual body, and will continue to move your entire ego to the other side, beyond the Machsom.[105806]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/23/13, Writings of Rabash

Egypt Has Fulfilled Its Role – It Is Time To Come Out Of It

Baal HaSulam, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”: Only when they came out of Egypt and became a complete nation, only then was there a possibility to guarantee everyone’s needs without any care and concern. … as long as the individual is troubled with concerns for himself, he is unfit to even begin to keep the commandment, “Love thy friend as thyself.”

Thus, we begin to understand the meaning of the “Egyptian exile.” After all, the fulfillment of the conditions of mutual guarantee starts from the receiving of the Torah, according to the amount of the Light that Reforms that we draw. Until then, the children of Israel were not able to accept these conditions but were in the of system of establishing mutual guarantee.

On the whole, having come out of Babylon and set off on this path, we are constantly establishing the mutual guarantee relationship between us. First, our egoistic desire is still weak and we really feel that we are one family. But later different conflicts begin, then the hate builds up between us and we find ourselves in Egypt, that is, in different egoistic accounts. Here, “Pharaoh” becomes revealed to us and we gradually discover that there is no mutual guarantee between us.

Eventually, we reach the exact polar opposite of bestowal of the level of Bina. Instead of mutual guarantee, the force of bestowal, we acquire the force of receiving. This is the last phase before the exodus from Egypt. We discover all the evil among us in the group—and there is nothing else for us to do in Egypt.

Now, we need the Torah, the method of correction. Eventually, after the parting of the Red Sea, we receive it before the mountain of our hatred, Mt. Sinai (“Sinah” means “hatred” in Hebrew)
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/25/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Mutual Guarantee”

Practical Advice From Personal Experience

In order not to fall, not to descend in the work, I need to search for deficiencies in it myself even during an ascent. As the sages said: “An old man walks around bent over, always looking at the ground as if he is looking for something and is afraid of losing something in advance.” Further advice about this is to fill our time with the order of the day, to bind oneself to additional commitments: to do dissemination work, translate, write articles, work on texts, work in the kitchen, and so forth.

If a person is constantly involved in some kind of mandatory work, no matter what that work is, it will prevent him from falling because he will be obliged to do something related to spiritual advancement regardless of his state. Otherwise, he will be occupied with this only when he feels an ascent.

Then a descent comes, which he doesn’t feel at first even though he has already begun to descend. It is very easy to descend, and it seems to a person that he is still in ascent. It is the same in corporeal life when you come down a hill, which is always easy. You still feel that you are above, but essentially, you have started to descend. And when you are descending, you no longer have a desire to open a book, read something, hear, or learn. The state of apathy descends upon and dominates you, and then it’s very difficult to come out of it.

Therefore, it’s neccesary to come up with a precise schedule that will protect a person for sure. And any other advice is certainly correct but just about impossible to realize practically. This is the law, but in order to keep the law, we must organize a strict daily schedule for ourselves where we commit ourselves to be occupied with spiritual work all of the time. This is what I recommend to you from my experience.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/28/13

Health Is A Spiritual Necessity

Question: The great thinker and physician Rambam brought a set of postulates, one of which reads: “To live healthy is a spiritual necessity.” Could you comment on that?

Answer: Our health is one of the conditions of general equilibrium between man and nature, of the balance of the person himself and his adhesion with the Creator. That is why the balance on all the levels—mental, moral, physical, ethical, spiritual, and physiological—is one and the same system of complete equilibrium. There is no doubt that a person who in the future, together with the entire world, will reach complete correction, will receive from all the sides only positive feedback, and that overall balance will make him absolutely healthy.

We can talk about eternity, infinity, and eternal life, but all this is not for us at the moment. We do not understand all those beautiful changes that may occur in a person since according to our current notions, the material body cannot exist forever. But that’s not a point.

The fact is that this is possible only when the human being will be included in the general system, when all the people in the world will be interconnected correctly, will mutually complement and balance one another to such an extent that everyone’s health will be determined by the correct health of everyone else.

Question: When Rambam says that physical health is a spiritual necessity, what is meant by the word “spiritual”?

Answer: The world spiritual means the future spiritual state of a person, when he ascends above his animal part and begins to make his spiritual part healthier, the part at the moment is not felt by anyone but Kabbalists. Every person has it in some kind of internal latent, embryonic state, similarly to how a small child potentially incorporates his future child, that is, a person’s spiritual part is not manifested in any way.
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From KabTV’s “The Medicine of the Future” 4/7/13

The Nature Of The Good Is To Do Good

All of our work is to acquire the property of bestowal above the property of reception so at every moment I clarify that all that happens within me and around me, in all my thoughts and desires, in the entire picture of reality, comes only from the Creator.  I clarify this despite all the disturbances that come to me from the world. The world shows that allegedly, a multitude of various extraneous factors and forces work in it, establishing my state and affecting  me. But behind all of this I have to see the Creator.

It is easier to do this if the world relates to me with hostility and I try to flee from it.  But when I become strong enough, I’m being sent forces that seem good, attracting me to this world.  I have to oppose them saying that this is evil, even worse than what was before.

I need to at least thank for the evil as for the good and to be grateful for the suffering more than for the temptations that attract me to this world.  Behind it all I must see the rule of one Creator, the Good who does Good.

This work is called the work of the Creator because through it I learn how the Creator relates to me, teaching me his “customs.”  I discover that the Creator surrounds me with all this virtual reality so that through this world, above this reality, I will discover the force that activates me and creates all of reality for me.

I need to always see as if this is the Creator’s finger that directs me to choose, to be in the Klipat Noga, in the middle third of Tifferet.  With this I recognize that everything comes from one source only, from Keter, from Sun. I must adhere to Him like Moon, to reflect to Sun the Light that I received from it.

But I bless the state of the new moon, which is completely dark and doesn’t shine.  It is enough for me to remain in faith above reason, in bestowal above reception. I bless this form specifically, the form to which I aspire in my work.
[106078]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/24/13, Writings of Rabash

What Depends On Us?

Question: How can we amplify the influence of the Light upon us during the study? What exactly depends on the students?

Answer: We only study about what depends on a person. What isn’t brought into effect by a person doesn’t relate to us, and we cannot understand it for the time being.

It depends on a person to come to the group, to be among his friends, to prepare for the lesson, and to connect to the lesson together with the friends so that everyone will realize that they need to feel what they study. This is the meaning of the lesson, and we can only feel it in the connection between us.

This means that the books tell us about the connection between the friends who desperately want to connect under the influence of the study, of the Light, so that in it, to attain the Creator or their general collective soul in which they will discover Him. This is the meaning of our existence, our development, the study, and of all our activities.

In order to do that, we have to study the articles of Rabash and Baal HaSulam about the connection of the friends in the group, about how the study should be conducted, and about how we should connect in our thoughts and intentions. It is actually very simple: a person, a group, and the Creator who is revealed in the group. And that’s all. Only the right general concentration can generate the desirable result.
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From the Virtual Lesson 4/21/13

We Shall Not Hear Until We Do!

Rabash, “We Shall Do and We Shall Hear (2)”: … And since a person must annul his reason and his thoughts before the Creator, he must accustom himself on the outside. This is called “doing,” which is called, “We shall do.” And all those annulments will enable him to annul his reason and thoughts before the Creator.

Thus, it turns out that one who has more knowledge has more work annulling himself before the Creator. But one who is a fool doesn’t need to annul his reason, since he has no reason. It follows that the only merit of reason is that one has something to annul, and this is the only reason why one should aspire for knowledge. And one who is not ready for that, it is better for him to have no knowledge.

This is called “His wisdom is more than his deeds.” This means that he has more knowledge than he can annul, since the annulment is considered doing and not hearing. “Hearing” means understanding, and doing is only by force, without reason. This is called, “We shall do and we shall hear.” Therefore, if he has the power of doing, he will be able to receive hearing because his basis is faith and not knowledge.

We should attain a state in which we can control at least some of our sensations and our mind. If my heart and mind will be under my authority, in my hands, I will be able to use only the part of my desires and intentions in which I can bestow and not receive for myself.

Of course, this is not easy, but we should try to achieve  this. This means that a man is riding on a donkey (Hamor), meaning that he controls and managers his material (Homer).  This means that he controls his matter and allows his thoughts and desires to work only on such a level of quality and quantity that builds the form of Adam (Man) from them, that is similar (Domeh) to the Creator. He does it so that they are all in bestowal and love of others, beyond his selfish interests.

He uses the thoughts and the desires that are aimed at his self-benefit only for basic needs and only if he intends to sanctify them eventually so they will be “in order tobestow” in the next state.

If a person doesn’t let go of this state, it is called “we shall do and we shall hear” and it means working by “faith above reason.” Of course, it is impossible to do this immediately after a person hears about it—if he hears about this type of work at all. It takes quite a while to be under the influence of the Light at the stage of preparation so that the Light will help a person sort out everything that happens in his mind and heart. Eventually, he begins to differentiate between the actions and the intentions, reception and bestowal.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/22/13, Writings of Rabash

It Is Necessary To Be “In Time”

Question: How does a student who learns Kabbalah need to relate to a world in which there are so many problems: terror (like the recent bombs in Boston), the economic crisis, and ecological imbalance? What needs to be done?

Answer: The truth is that the world is in a much more difficult state than we think lacking understanding and knowledge. There is a period of reaction fromnature, which is accumulating our negative influences, all the destruction that we throw at it. The main destruction exists on the human level in the relationships between us since by this we directly influence the most vulnerable place, the system itself.

There was a time when the damage we caused wasn’t that great. This was when we destroyed something in the crude, mechanical part of nature. After that we began to destroy its more subtle systems, say like the electronic or electrical mechanisms that activate the whole of nature. We have finally reached the program itself, where every small injury brings terrible, negative ramifications throughout the system.

This is the problem. Today we have developed to a state where we destroy nature exactly at that level, the level of the program of nature. We must adapt ourselves to nature on this level: We need to understand it, to discover, and be sensitive to the upper force and together with it, participate in the management of all the worlds. But we are not doing this yet. This delay accumulates and accumulates and will ultimately explode on us.

So we see so many problems in the world: terror, natural disasters, and bankruptcy of entire nations. The United States is absorbing hard blows: Just as its influence on the world is enormous so is the intensity with which it will feel the corruption of the world. To keep this from happening, our friends in the United States must make great efforts to work together with us.

In general this is something all of our groups in the world must do. The entire world is facing great blows which we can prevent. We specifically can help in this, nobody else can do anything, not even a president. Everything depends on the upper force and on our accommodation to it. The more that we correct ourselves and attain equality with it, the more we balance and heal nature.

In this way we can transform every negative influence to positive. After all, every negative influence that we discover in this world due to our lack of accommodation to nature will be regarded as the realization of evil that we can transform to good. So instead of a disaster that may come if we fail to mollify it by bringing the Light into it, we will feel the opposite: a great ascent.

The evil is still accumulating now as a result of all of our deeds. The time is tight, it is becoming critical. Everything depends on one question: Do we have enough time to attract the Light to all this negative charge accumulated by humanity, transforming it into positive or not? This is where the decision is made whether we tilt the world from the scale of guilt to the scale of justification?

Hundreds of thousands of tons have already accumulated on the side of accusation, which we can transfer to the side of merit, meaning to transform the sins into merits. The higher a person is, the greater is his ego. The main thing is to turn towards correction. I very much hope that thanks to conventions like these, we will accumulate sufficient power to attract the Light that Reforms so that instead of the accumulation of negative energy in the world, we will discover its opposite: positive energy.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/23/13, Writings of Rabash

Regarding Freedom Of Thought

Question: What is my free choice in relation to my thoughts?

Answer: All thoughts that are within me at the moment, all sensations and understandings, all data that I as if “scan” and then process, through synthesis and analysis, all these parameters are given from Above. What I feel, how I feel, what kinds of decisions I make, all this is already predetermined from Above, right up to this moment. One can ask now: What will be from this moment on? In this “from now on” there is a parameter called my free choice.

With regards to thoughts, free choice is in the external desire and the external mind that belong to the group. After the shattering I am divided into two parts. In my sensations, one part is outside of me, whereas I perceive the second part internally as myself. Thereby my inner heart and mind appear, meaning myself, as well as an external heart and mind, meaning the group. All that I need to do is to begin to connect these two parts together, into one Kli.

Here my struggle and problems begin, and this comprises the order of the work and all corrections. By trying to come to terms with the part that constantly demonstrates to me its confrontation and opposition, I feel that I need the Creator, the only one who can connect these two parts together. The stronger I need Him to reconcile these two opposing parts together, to that degree I agree with the Creator, with His nature, with His existence, and with His rule, I agree that this property would govern me.

The more that I try to annul myself before the group, the more obvious it becomes to me that I am not ready to subdue myself before the others. Ultimately, I will “beat myself black and blue” to finally clarify that I’m not ready to yield under any circumstances. I reach such hatred that it’s like Mount Sinai (“Sinah” means “hatred” in Hebrew). But because I’ve tried to annul myself so many times I realize that I must do this, and therefore I feel the need for the help of the upper force.
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From the 1^st part to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/19/13, Shamati #68