Why Doesn’t The Creator Hear Me?

Question: I understand that “there is none else besides Him,” I feel His presence, and understand that it is a game. But why do I feel pain and sufferings, why am I ill?

Answer: A person has to act in the state he is in. Why are you given such states? If you were healthy, beautiful, and everything was fine, you wouldn’t be here yet.

Question: Where is the manual? I want to discover it! I don’t understand the Creator’slanguage!

Answer: The Creator’s language is nature; it is everything that surrounds you. Start seeing only the Creator in everything that happens.

When your children were small you arranged different games for them; you arranged the toys and tried to keep them busy somehow in different situations, so they would be doing something and keeping busy.

This is exactly what the Creator does with us, just as you thought of what to give your children and what you wanted to bring them to, so does He relate to each of us.

Solve His riddles like a wise child solves what his parents devise: Why did mother arrange the toys this way; why did she give me these pictures, why is she playing this music, why did she turn on the TV on this particular channel, etc.? There is a subtle clue in all this about the response she expects from her child.

So look for the answer to the question: “What is the response that the Creator is expecting of me to each of the states that constantly emerge?” In the question itself, look for the answers in the actual questions. Demand that He give you the answers: “What do You want from me?”

Question: I demand, but He doesn’t listen.

Answer: He doesn’t listen?! You don’t listen, since your ear is actually egoistic, your heart is egoistic; otherwise, you would hear Him.

When you want to hear not for yourself but in order to bring Him joy, you will immediately begin to hear, all your senses will open up. Instead of the five corporeal senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch) the inner senses will open: Keter, Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin and Malchut.

But in order to do that I have to constantly worry about: “How does He feel my response? How should I respond so He will be glad? How can I do that? Does it make Him happy? Perhaps I should try it on my friends.”

You will reach the understanding that the Creator has shattered you into a billion parts on purpose, so you will be able to sharpen your senses by hate, anger, love, envy, fear, etc. towards others, and they were all created to sharpen your senses towards Him.

Start focusing yourself on working with the environment this way, in order to later turn to the Creator. But in order to do that you must first love the other: “From the love of others to the love of the Creator.” You can start working with the other, try it and see whether they hear you or not.

Thus, you will gradually attain the recognition of the importance of the group. Otherwise, you will not tune yourself like a musical instrument in order to feel the Creator.
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From the Convention In Krasnoyarsk Day One 6/14/13, Lesson 3

Two Prohibitions In Relations With Friends

Question: If I share my joy and impressions with a friend, how do I know that it does not harm him?

Answer: There are two prohibitions in relations with friends.

The first prohibition is to tell no one about your relationships with theCreator. The only person with whom you can talk about this is your wife if she is constantly with you on the path. With the friends you can talk about anything related to your relationship with the group, studies, and anything else, except your relationship with the Creator.

The second prohibition is in no way, not by word, not by gesture, not by facial expressions,to express any disdain for spiritual work. Do not decrease friends’ desires, but all the time try to awaken and develop their desire towards the goal. Do not provoke any momentary, insignificant descent in them. Be careful not to trigger it even by some gesture: watch constantly for this. In the end you will have to feel yourself in ascent all the time. Otherwise, they will take this degradation from you.
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From the Convention In Krasnoyarsk 6/14/13, Lesson 3

If You Are Eating Your Own Flesh…

If you suffer it means that you are in a state called: “a fool sitting idly eating his own flesh.” If you have a strong environment that wants to help you and you are not ashamed to nullify yourself and to be totally incorporated in it, you are very lucky. Then you don’t suffer, but will immediately discover the means to turn this whole state of suffering for the best.

If you are eating your own flesh, it means that you cannot determine for sure where the pain comes from, for what reason, from whom, and for what purpose. You have forgotten that “He is the first and He is the last!” and it is as if you attribute the pain to yourself, as if you have caused it by yourself and you are responsible for it. Thus you torture yourself and eat yourself.

If, however, you attribute everything to the Creator and not to the caprice of blind fate, you will stop eating yourself and will immediately turn the bad feeling into a means of ascent, of connection with the Creator who has sent you this state so that you will connect to Him.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/06/13, Writings of Rabash

What We Have To Reach This Fall

We have talked and read a lot about our needing to unite.However, until recently it was a relatively quiet period and we still were not prepared to realize that the need to unite is the decisive fundamental factor and everything depends on it.

We have heard about this for years, but did not feel that everything that we expect takes place precisely in unity. The “trigger” did not function in us, there was no internal “click,” the realization that the result of everything that we study and do is only in this. But lately, it’s beginning to sink in, basically, with the introduction of integral education, which we first need to apply to ourselves.

As a result of the sequence of our congresses that will continue until the fall, we will come to the quality of “automatism,” meaning we will convince ourselves that the correction of our estrangement is in the unification of everyone together; this is our task. As for the desire for something incomprehensible, higher, for the Light, it will be manifested automatically if we achieve the correct unity. So, we have to reconcile ourselves to the fact that the upper reality, in terms of desires (Kelim), is hidden in unity. The more we automatically apply this, even if it is increasingly more difficult to master this approach, we will be able to enter the upper world.

We see this in the example of the Egyptian exile, with the group which Abraham created. Pharaoh (egoism) was asked, “Let us go!” In other words, “tear us from yourself, let us break away!” And when it was stated strongly, there came the last ten blows, the “ten plagues of Egypt.”

Actually, this is the last ten manifestations of egoism, when the egoistic thickness (Aviut) expresses itself in its last ten layers when a person has finally “matured.” Although these ten stages of egoism affect us, they also already raise us and in the end push us into the upper world.

Thus, egoism itself as it grows (and it grows only to the extent that we are ready to connect above it), it immediately helps us. It burns hotter and hotter and then we reach a new degree. I am sure that we have to start feeling these ten stages of the increasing ego to the extent of our unity. And then, we will feel that our egoistic attempts, on the one hand, give us nothing, but on the other hand, add a new level of connection.

In other words, in our unity we need to begin to feel ourselves more complex, more “intricate,” and at the same time see that this system, similar to an electronic circuit, consisting of various radio components, that still does not work. It seems that everything is in place and we try to unite; only still there is nothing. However, as we go through egoistic blows, we constantly find more and more new places where there is no contact between us at a more serious level.

That is why we should see our egoism as “help against oneself.” Appearing between us every time, it adds an opportunity for us to reach the common ego that is necessary for the first degree. This means that there is nothing “against,” it works together with the Light, and we should see in it just one single action from the part of the Creator: on one side, the Light, the right line, and on the other side, egoism, the left line.

Thus, they work constantly, alternately, like two legs, and a person moves forward in the middle line. The Creator, the general Force from Above, manages these two properties, and we need to realize them correctly from the bottom-up to become equal to the Creator. The Light and the desire have to be equal by level, and the greater they are, the closer we rise to the Creator.

Our group Bnei Baruch was created in the mid-nineties, although I have students who came from 1991. Imagine that since then and until recently we hardly spoke about unity seriously. We studied the sources, read the articles, but could not yet start doing it seriously, practically. Only now we have started to organize workshops and develop the method of integral education, but we were not engaged in this until now because it was too early.

I feel that the group and the world currently are united and depend on each other. Until now, there was no such tension, there were no such conditions so that that we could seriously, actively, and practically begin to realize our unity. So, I see the results of the last few months by the desire (Kli) that we create. The result of our previous conventions is a greater and greater feeling of the need and unity.

I should understand that spirituality is between us, only inside, only at the intersection of our desires. I need to imagine it like this automatically. Even if egoism rises to the next level, I nonetheless must find this state quickly, feel distancing, experience hatred of what separates us, and aspire to greater unity again.

Moreover, this unity will be more and more qualitative. It’s not about connection on the material level, in songs, various activities; on the contrary, it will be felt deeper and deeper, more internal. It will not be related to the parameters of our world, with distances, with characters, etc.

Unity will be increasingly discovered as a kind of spiritual substance, a gradually revealed network of forces, connection between us that exists in reality. We find only it, and all the other external attributes that we still imagine will gradually disappear. This is how our spiritual Kli will emerge. Thinking about spiritual matters, we will imagine unity more clearly in the form of this network of connections between us, inside every Partzuf, between the Partzufim, which consists of the Sefirot and sub-Sefirot, and they all come together in the system called the “world.”

These worlds are arranged linearly, hierarchically, depending on egoism and on the way that we work on it at every degree, how it’s graduated. All this is the 125 degrees of the spiritual ladder. And at the same time, the worlds are round.

This entire system will be presented to us as the only existing one, and we will seemingly dissolve into it gradually; we do not exist, there is no physical body, there is no entire physical world. This shadowy world just disappears.

We will desire common spirituality instead of an individual one, imagining it only in the form of unity that will be more and more clearly manifested as a network of forces between us. And in this network of forces, we will really feel ourselves, our inner “self” that exists united with each other.

Then, we will begin to feel what happens in this network instead of everything that happens in the material world. Our world is just some external manifestation of spirituality in the form that we can now notice it. And it’s through these external indicators that we have to try to discover the real only existing network between desires, the entire system of the universe. These attempts will begin to appear in everyone’s consciousness, and the general system will become more and more obvious, determining the only one existing.

I think this is what will become the outcome of our efforts and conventions. I hope it will happen. But it depends on everyone’s individual and all our collective efforts in the movement towards it.

As a result, we will begin to connect all our knowledge, the group work, work with humanity, and studies of the structures of spiritual worlds. All will be added. outlining a single picture and us within it.

This should be the result of our ongoing series of conventions. I would very much like that when it’s over we could very clearly, soberly, in reality imagine ourselves existing in this system and feeling that it determines our internal and external state, the state of the world, and in general of everything. One way or another, this picture is created based on many attempts.
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From the 2^nd Preparation for the Convention in Krasnoyarsk 6/13/13

Crisis: The Search For The Solution

Today, we have gradually attained awareness that our existence is harmful, and we call this a “crisis.” We still don’t think that this is a general crisis encompassing all realms of human existence. We still don’t understand and do not connect all the individual crises within the family, in education, in culture, in science, in relationships, and most importantly the crisis threatens our existence—financial,  economic, and ecological. Yet all of these crises are essentially the same crisis.

In general, the word “crisis” in its translation and in its correct meaning symbolizes birth. In ancient Hebrew and also in Aramaic, the term indicated the same thing, a place upon which a woman gives birth. In ancient times there were special birthing stones upon which a woman would give birth with the help of midwives. This place was called a “Mashber.” This concept is found to symbolize birth in many languages, translated as the “birth of something new.”

This is to say, we should not look at a crisis as it’s seen by everyone who wants to get more and more out of this world, who are meanwhile acting as egoists without any deliberation. You can see that there are many who think that in this crisis something now must be corrected and then everything will be okay as it was the day before yesterday.

But lately there are fewer and fewer people like these and we see all these things happening very rapidly. After five years of the crisis it’s already clear that it is continuing and will not just gradually go away by itself. They are already saying that this will take about twenty years to correct as if it would be possible to correct something using the old methods in spite of everything. It has become clear already that this crisis will not end in another year or the following year.

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, the crisis will continue. It will evolve and deepen. We will yet reach states, which at the present time would seem to us as impossible, when people will lose their human visage, becoming like wild animals, taking upon themselves laws, general rules, and norms of behavior that were considered inhuman, beneath the human level throughout the twentieth century. The accepted conventions will be pushed aside by our evolving ego and in general we will gradually descend to the level of the beast.

On the way, there could even be wars. We see how this is happening in the world today, when suddenly for no clear reason these break out in various regions and nations and phenomena begin to appear whose true reasons are not clear to anyone. Essentially these reasons always existed but were buried deep within and were not visibly apparent, or at least not sufficiently prominent to arouse problems, as for example in Syria or Lebanon, and so forth. This is speaking here about the social and political problems.

And in addition to this, there are very deep economic reasons; because the ego is revealed first and foremost in the economic area. This is because the economy reflects the connection between us, who gives to whom, how much and how they receive. Therefore the economy shows us first and foremost how much the system has become uncontrollable. We don’t understand which laws are currently governing us at all because the world is rising to another level. According to its level of development, it has already passed through the egoistic stage and has reached a particular limit. And as Baal HaSulam already hoped at the beginning of the twentieth century, from now on, more and more, we will need to reach an awareness that we must connect.

Essentially all of these conditions also existed in Russia at the time of the socialist revolution. These were all the revelations of the inner development of the human towards a new social order. But in the end, nothing came of it. As you know, Baal HaSulam hoped very much that the revolutions in Russia and Poland would transpire differently, and not just be taking the power into their own hands and establishing a new egoistic order, a new government. World War I was a “trigger,” the first “shot,” the first push toward the fact that the world must begin to change.

Therefore in the wisdom of Kabbalah it is said that if people don’t succeed in understanding that evolution must be through connection above the ego, which is presently leading us towards this connection, the world will then continue to become more and more incomprehensible. This is because the nature that had previously been discovered within each one of us and all of us together had pushed us for thousands of years in an egoistic form. In accord with our ego, we developed science, technology, commerce, and various social relationships; we changed society, we went through a change in form…

But ultimately the ego reached the end of its development and began to “circle” back on itself. Why? This was because nature had developed and exposed the entire ego, expanding it to a state of absolute mutual, global, “round” connection. Accordingly, we must also be “round,” meaning, connected into a single whole, and we are not doing this.

Revealed here is not just some kind of disorder; rather, it’s a fundamental difference between our economic, political, social, and internal mechanism, and everything that exists, that system, that program that nature brings up for us. This is because it began to be discovered not only in a more and more egoistic form, but in a form of egoistic communication. And yet within this system there are various altruistic connections between us that are beginning to be revealed by which we are becoming completely transformed.

Thus an overlap between the two systems is being formed. Nature, the internal system, is discovered more and more as being altruistic, integral or analog; whereas we came to exist within a system of egoistic mutual connection that we developed over thousands of years. And so, the nature that aroused this egoistic development in us has now changed and continues to change more and more. Essentially, the Creator, the system of integral connection, has begun to be revealed more and more within human society, within civilization.

This state of opposition between the two systems is dangerous and not at all clear to us. Therefore none of today’s leaders, scientists, technologists, political scientists, sociologists, politicians, economists, or financiers, not one of them understands how to manage this system.

This is the greatest problem. We always ruled through the developing ego; we directed it towards various goals and areas. Someone who was more of an egoist, more clever, profited. We tried to do this also in other forms, like through socialist revolution. But there was no method for connecting the people then, and so in the end the egoists rose to power and began to manage, only using socialistic and altruistic slogans but essentially with the same egoistic system. Therefore nothing came of this at all; on the contrary, everything became worse.

And it’s not clear how the world will continue to advance and develop before it is discovered that there is a method of transition from that egoistic system in which all of human civilization is found to an integral altruistic system. So it’s up to us to clarify this and to tell others.
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From the Preparation for the The Convention In Krasnoyarsk 6/12/13

Breaking Out Of The World Of Fantasy Into The World Of Truth

Question: How can I feel the others if the heart doesn’t feel that they are close yet?

Answer: You have to think that the others are part of your soul and that only by the connection with others can you build the vessel for receiving the Light, the revelation of the Creator, the revelation of the true state, which means bestowal. The world of truth is the world of bestowal. We, however, are under the domination of a lie, in some fantasy that this world seemingly exists by the force of receiving. We have to think about this as much as we can, until it’s clear that everything exists according to the force of bestowal.

Our fictitious and distorted perception that forces us to think and feel differently is only in us. So because of it we don’t see the real world, and we are like blind people walking in the dark, feeling our way by holding on to a wall. We don’t understand where we are!

Thus, all of humanity is wandering blindfolded in the dark. We have to make our greatest efforts in order to remove this concealment, and then we will see that all of reality exists only by the force of bestowal and love. We will see reality as some kind of an enchanted fantasy world in which everything operates by the laws of total bestowal. We wander around this enchanted city and we have the chance to constantly correct and improve ourselves, by acquiring additional power of bestowal each time.

Thus we increasingly assimilate in this city and can use everything and understand and feel more. This is called ascending the spiritual ladder.

But the moment the spiritual ladder is revealed to us, it becomes clear that all of reality is bestowal and love alone. Besides, there is a small bubble in this reality in which we sleep, like in a coma, not regaining consciousness. This sick fantasy is only in our heads like in a mind of a person who has lost consciousness and different fluid, chaotic thoughts, flow in his mind. This is what is happening to us now…

The reality of our world does not exist! It’s only a kind of fantasy, but it’s very important since only from it can we ascend to the truth.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/04/13, The Zohar

A Contrast That Reveals The True Picture Of The World

The Torah, Exodus, 20:14: “Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s.”

A house, a wife, a servant, an ox, or an ass are all a person’s major desires that gradually connect in him, starting from the external vessels to the most inner desires.

“Thou shall not covet,” means that you have to work with your desires in order to bestowand not for yourself.

If until now it was about what you have and how you should work with it, now it is about what the other has and what you cannot use.

To use means to “want.” It isn’t just “thou shall not covet” in the sense of “don’t take” but actually not to covet, so that you will not feel the slightest envy towards the other. Then you begin to understand that if you relate to him you will not even see his image.

Usually you see some good and some bad in a person and envy him a little, etc. You cannot see him as he actually is; you see him in relation to you, whether better or worse one way or the other. If you don’t look at him through the prism of envy etc., you will not see his image.

He will never be depicted to you, since our sub-base is like a compact disc that is sensitive to light, that is behind the camera lens that catches the picture, changes it into electric signals and transmits it to the control so our sub-base perceives everything only in relation to us: to what extent it seems better or worse with regards to my ego.

If I get rid of it in relation to myself, then I don’t see you, you disappear from my sight. What happens? It turns out that the world doesn’t exist. I only see an absolute vacuum.

This means that the corrected state implies lack of envy in me and all the other states with regard to other people and humanity. In that case, I begin to understand that there is no one and that everything disappears. Then I have to find a totally new attribute that will allow me to see what does exist.

It turns out that if my ego is nullified, then the whole picture of the world is nullified and the world does not exist. So what does exist? There is nothing but the attribute of bestowal. But how can I perceive it? I begin to change myself according to this attribute of bestowal and to the same extent I am not compatible with it, I begin to see the differences and vice versa; to the extent that I am compatible to it, I begin to feel this attribute since a contrast has been created. It turns out that the part of the world in which I am not compatible with the attribute of bestowal is still me for the time being and the part of the world in which I am compatible with the attribute of bestowal is the Creator. Then, I and the Creator appear and there is no one but us.

When I gradually attain full correction, it is as if I disappear and only my feeling of the one unique Creator remains. Thus, I reach the recognition that “there is none else besides Him”
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/04/13

Ascent To A Higher Orbit

Question: What is the prerequisite for a desire to unite, is it my desire to understand and to feel everything within me?

Answer: During the process of spiritual work, our desire to understand and to feel everything within us does not contract; on the contrary, it goes and grows more and more.  And it must expand because it is becoming more and more integral.  I already begin to understand how my image of reality changes and that my body, by occupying a particular volume in physical space, gives me a feeling of distance, isolation from others, even opposition and difference from others.

I need to bring myself to a state where I feel myself freed from the body.  The body doesn’t exist.  Above my body, which is to say beyond the ego, there exists connection between me and others.  And the body doesn’t exist, it is some kind of egoistic image in my imagination, in our consciousness.  This is how I need to learn to describe my future state to myself.  What interests me is only the spiritual unity between us.  There is no significance to bodies.  Later we will see how they disappear.

In the wisdom of Kabbalah we learn about the birth of the spiritual Kli, about its growth and about changes of state.  The same thing takes place with us in our world, the birth and growth of our beastly body, which in principle is that ego.  Our body is what exists in our imagination, in fact, it is formed within our ego.  After that it melts, disappears, dies, and in its place another body appears, and another, and so forth until we go out to the level of the completed correction.  We return into the bodies all the time because they are imperative for us for our independent attainment of every spiritual level.

Between every spiritual level there is a disconnect, a split.  In order to attain a particular level you need to fall from it to the level of this world.  At least for a moment you must feel that you exist only in this beastly state, and after this you will begin to attain the next higher spiritual level.  You fall to this level all the time, and then again you carry out an energetic leap to the next higher level.

And only with the completion of all the corrections when you carry out an action called (Shmuel II 23:20) “…a valiant man from Kabtziel who had done many acts” (which is to say, “I will gather together”), when you gather all of these levels and connect them integrally then the last state of the full completion of the correction appears.  And until then, we correct every value in a discrete (isolated) form, just as an electron leaps within the atom to the next levels.  But in general when it leaps it emits photons, whereas, we do the opposite because we are ascending spiritually; therefore, we apparently absorb energy from the surrounding energetic field called “Creator” or “Light,” and this obligates our ascent to a higher and higher orbit.
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From the 2^nd Preparation for the Convention in Krasnoyarsk 6/13/13

Strengthening Unity Or Hindering It?

Question: Is it more important for us to strengthen unity or leave it as it is? Or is there an alternative?

Answer: I don’t think anything can hold with efforts without increasing them, for our ego is constantly growing.

We must always think about the basis on which everything rests. We live in a world that evolved egoistically, and we ourselves evolved egoistically; therefore we cannot avoid working on this.

And it is said, “Describe to yourself… , make it in your eyes… , …which is renewed all the time”. Which is to say, we need “to see” all the time, it is impossible otherwise.

Therefore we need to understand clearly that what existed a minute ago has finished its action already; we apparently were friends, we decided to work together, and a minute later all of our good intentions evaporated, that is how quickly everything changes in us. So we need to comprehend everything in the right way, meaning to get used to this, to support this with that.

We examine all this with constant effort. Nothing exists in spirituality at constant velocity. According to Einstein’s theory, something that moves in a straight line at constant velocity is the same as something that is at rest.

The spiritual world is beyond the speed of light. Even the great Kabbalist Maimonides wrote in the 12^th century that spirituality is found beyond the speed of light.

The speed of light is a constant everywhere. So by the concept of “beyond the speed of light” we mean a change in velocity. If we have something that is growing all the time, this is spirituality. In spirituality we take into account the differential, which is to say, the change. If there is a change that is growing all the time, in spirituality this is considered to be a velocity, and not acceleration. Which is to say, everything is at a higher order of magnitude there; what is considered to be velocity in our world (for instance, movement at a velocity of 200 kilometers per second), in spirituality this would be considered to be standing still, since there is no change in this.

In other words, all of those states that don’t change in us don’t exist in spirituality. And only our positive additions, efforts above an ego that is growing for the needs of the goal, which is evolving all the time in us, only these are considered to exist spiritually.

Therefore maintaining an old state won’t work, for the ego is growing. Even in our world everything is found in constant movement: We age, go forward, something is always happening. It is only in our feelings that the ego is as if is slowing us down.

So if you don’t want to be stuck, you have one and only one possibility, that everything around you will be in an internal movement and you will be connected with it all. So how is it possible to be connected with it all? Only through establishing a covenant, when you reach an agreement that you will pull each other all the time, wake each other up, and support each other.

If you direct yourselves in this way, then you can assure yourself spiritual advancement, otherwise, not: The ego will grow and “pull” you wherever it goes. The friends must awaken you in the right way and then you can realize this precisely.

But it is impossible to remain in a single state; nature will not allow this. Then it will push you down, so that through the crisis you will be convinced that it is necessary rise up. This is the only way!

This problem exists everywhere, both in families and in groups; people suppose that they can preserve our state, and so we hold onto a position and maintain it.
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From the 2^nd Preparation for the Convention in Krasnoyarsk 6/13/13