Open The Heart And Not The Mouth

Question: When our friends go out to the wider public to arrange aworkshop, what can we, those who are not with them, add to their intention, to their message?

Answer: Internally, we must gather together and think about them. This is what is called praying for their success because, as a result of this success, they will bring us “booty,” in other words, the desires of all of those people who want to feel themselves a little better, a little happier, and more successful in this life. It is not important that these desires are egoistic; we take them.

With this, we perceive them. We begin to feel a need to give people all that they want: happiness, connection between them and all the rest. Their desires begin to work in us, and this means that we have something to elevate to the Creator. Otherwise, we don’t rise to Him.

As Baal HaSulam writes in the article, “No Time to Acquire What is Given,” we cannot ask for ourselves in any way. Even if I want to ask, “Give me the possibility to bestow to you. Give me the possibility of fulfilling the others. Give me the possibility to…,” I cannot say “me” because, this way, I place myself opposite the entire system, I don’t enter into it like a gear.

I must say, “Give to them” or “to us,” but in no way to “me.” This means that, if I pray for something, I must pray for the others so that it will be good for them. Then, I am participating in this correctly.

So, if we now are thinking that our friends will succeed in going out to the public and will connect with it so that the public will feel warmth from them, that their inner desire is revealed to the friends (even if they don’t feel this obviously), that they will bring them to us, then it will become a prayer to the Creator.

So, we ask and entreat the Creator spiritually, even though the public is asking for something completely materialistic. The Upper Light comes precisely through a prayer like this.

Question: What is preferable: to read a segment, to be quiet for 30 seconds, or maybe to sing a song? What do we do so that all of us are thinking about them for at least a second? What does it mean to pray?

Answer: Prayer is your desire that the friends will succeed in doing this action, that this will give contentment to the Creator. This is prayer. We open the heart and not the mouth.

I don’t understand what you are imagining to yourselves as prayer, as a spiritual activity. Is this when you disperse clouds with your mind or light candles or fall on your knees?

A spiritual activity is when you very much desire something in common with the others, and, in this activity, besides you and the group, the Creator participates.
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From the Convention In Sochi “Day One” 7/13/14, Lesson 1