In The Center Of The Entire Creation

We are found in the center of creation. And specifically we, those who are with doubts, problems, and confusion, through our small efforts carry out the most desirable work for creation, what is most pleasant for it.

That is how a small child gives pleasure to his parents with each of his unconscious acts. Everything extends from above to below. So we need to learn about the spiritual world from the physical world, and then we see what great actions we are doing.

And the very many states that are constantly changing in the world are the revelation of the Shechina (the presence of the Creator), an immense vast field that includes within it all the worlds, all the souls, all the conditions, all the Reshimot (reminiscences); everything is found within the Shechina. Above it are the first nine Sefirot, the bestowal of the Creator. Under it is its nine lower Sefirot; these are the shattered Kelim, desires. And the Shechina herself, meanwhile she is Keter of Malchut of Atzilut, and her nine lowerSefirot fell into the three worlds of BYA.

Everything that happens in our world, everything that is portrayed in front of us, is a small copy of what is found in the shattered parts of the lower nine Sefirot of Malchut. But the person’s problem is that he isn’t ready to absorb this from everything that exists.

I must prepare myself for this state,first of all, to understand that everything that happens descends from the world of Ein Sof, and each and every moment this appears before me in the best form, given to me for correction. And so I don’t get involved at all in any of the problems that exist in the world, all that happen with me, with the friends, with the families, with the people of Israel, with the whole world, no matter what.

I must accept this as a given, and think only about what I must do above all of this. I don’t need to enter and go deeper into all the events that appear before me, otherwise I will be immediately be detached from the Creator. First, I must rise to a higher level, identify with the higher supervision and management, seemingly see this situation from its perfected supervision and management, and say that I see the world in such a damaged form because I myself am not corrected.

I must correct myself to see the world as perfect instead of this world with murders and all the terrible events; all this is done and created within my Malchut, within my desires; I absorb all of this, as it is said: “All who condemn do so through their own defect” (Talmud Babyli Kiddushin 70b).

From what I see in this world, I must now correct myself so that in this place I see theMalchut of Infinity. I think only about my correction, bringing myself to a state in which I will see that everything is perfect.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/19/14, The Zohar

Everything Returns To The Beginning, But In Another Dimension

Question: What does it mean that every day and at every moment everything starts all over again?

Answer: We never begin from the same state that we already went through. Each time there is a new subject, a new feeling. But every time we start from zero, we forget what was before as if we had done nothing.

There are such states that we don’t remember anything at all; it’s as if we are found in some fog, confusion, in a state that we don’t understand and are not used to. You feel that you are lost, as if you lost your way and don’t recognize what is happening around you. Everything seems strange and unfamiliar.

That is how they bring you to a new state in which you must make a clarification, an investigation of where you are found and what you are doing. That is how you must begin each new stage, for it includes within it ten complete Sefirot in desires, lights, and situations.

After that, a person gets used to it, as if they exchanged a diskette inside of him, installed a new program, and then he begins to behave differently, reacts differently, sees the world in another form; everything is different. We must get used to needing to pass through many changes. Only someone who has not developed is not changed.

All of nature evolves: even the still, vegetative, and animate, and also ordinary human beings, meaning all of humanity. But with the Kabbalist, evolution is expressed in a different absorption of reality, in a division of reality into why and what I absorb and feel. And this happens even before we begin to go up the spiritual ladder where already a very strong change happens as well as the quality of the states. The difference between two adjacent states on the spiritual ladder is immense. They are simply different dimensions.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/26/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

The Habit Of Fearing

Question: To some extent we all feel concern and worry with regard to different aspects of our life. Why is it that a natural thing like life suddenly becomes a source of worry and concern?

Answer: I don’t agree with the idea that life is a natural process free of worries and concerns. In the animate world that we are part of worry and concern are the main things in life.

Animals constantly worry about their existence, their nest, their offspring, their pack. Their whole life is a struggle to survive. Who can even think about pleasure? We, on the other hand, think that a bird sitting on a tree chirps because it is peaceful and feels good.

We don’t understand life at all. Our ego is constantly growing and developing in us so that by using it we will attain the level of the speaking, of man who resembles the general integral nature. We, on the other hand, want to enjoy at its expense, filling it, and if possible, reducing our worries and concerns, which is totally opposite from the plan of creation.

Question: How can we balance our worries and concerns in this world so that I will be able to overcome them and use them in order to advance correctly?

Answer: No created being is free of the feeling of worry and concern. Otherwise he wouldn’t be a created being. A created being is a desire to receive, a desire to be full. It cannot be that I will feel like Faust and say that I have reached the peak of my pleasure and therefore there is nothing more I need in life. Anxiety is my permanent state and it never ceases.

The question is how to give everyone in society the support so that everyone will feel balanced. This means that a person has worries and anxieties, but on a level that he controls himself, and doesn’t say that he can’t manage, thus falling into the hands of the society so that they will help him or be so indifferent that he lives on the streets like many people do these days.

A person should have enough worry to sustain himself: to have a family, to bring up his kids and to help them in life, as has always been the case in every generation. On the other hand, he should feel relatively secure, comfortable, and good, which means at a certain neutral point that sustains him.

At the moment we subconsciously fear, since we are used to it. A person is constantly thrown from one extreme point to another. He  doesn’t want to hear about society and is ready to escape to some desert island, or takes a weapon and shoots in every direction.

In the past, the events on a neighboring street didn’t concern us, but today I am concerned about what happens on the other side of the world, since it depends on me, refers to me, and affects me! This is where the root of the problems is.

The solution is in the society. A person is totally influenced by society and we should therefore organize society in a way that instead of TV programs and other artificial expressions of fear that threaten us, a person will simply live in society. It isn’t about concealing the truth from a person or cutting him off from life and not telling them anything bad. He should listen to the news, but it should be presented properly and sufficiently.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 10/21/14

The Mission Of Sages

Marks the fourth: a generation before the coming of the Messiah will decrease the number of Torah Sages, and all the people will languish in mourning and weeping. (“At the end of days. The Jewish predictions about the future of humanity.” Chapter One “The Signs Indicating the Imminent Deliverance”)

Beginning with the twentieth century and beyond, for several generations, sages, the people attaining the Creator, gradually started to disappear.

A sage isn’t someone who knows a lot but the one who sees the true state of the universe, is in contact with the Creator, understands and feels how the universe exists.

Today, such people almost ceased to exist among us. Even if there are some of them left, they don’t want to reveal themselves. They have a different mission, to nourish our world with the Upper Light, to be a conduit between spiritual world and our world, where a little bit of Light is required for the material world existence in a state of a “standby,” ready to be used as electronic equipment, which isn’t cut off but placed in a standby mode.

Question: So is it a state of tension right before the jump?

Answer: No, this state is almost dead, deeply asleep. If during the 16-17^th centuries there was an upsurge of Hasidism, in the 18^th century came relative peace. In the XIX century there were various revisionist trends, and in the XX century mankind started its fullest descent. So now, at the beginning of the XXI century, the world is plunging into darkness. The Kabbalists’ task is to bring the world out of this state to the next level.
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From KabTV’s “Would the Messiah Come?” 11/14/14

Opening The Channels Makes It Possible For The Light To Work

Spiritual work is called serving the Creator, for it is He that carries out all the work. I don’t work in the spiritual world; rather, I only invite the Light to work, activate some connections, and make it possible for the Light to pass through them and organize everything.

So it is enough for me to think about correction. Even a seemingly regular person in this world attracts the Light through his thoughts.

Only the Creator, the Light, acts and influences, whereas we only correct the connections, open the channels, and make it possible for the Light to work in all parts of the system. So dissemination is the only possibility of bringing the system to correction.

Baal HaSulam writes that nobody can carry out the work in someone else’s place. “Just as faces are not the same, so opinions and characteristics are not the same.” So we must not lose even a single person in this world. If he were to disappear, nobody could carry out this work in his place.

Through our dissemination, we bring a person out of the dung into which he delves his whole life. We attract him to real work, to the same place in the overall system where a channel of Light is opened for him.

After this, he does the same thing by activating within himself the channels that come out from him. But because he stands behind this chain, everything that he does passes through me and I enjoy all of his work. So the more the quantity and quality of the students grows, the higher the teacher rises.

Think about how the group can rise in this way. With its help we organize complete circuits that are involved with the wisdom of Kabbalah or Integral Education.

Essentially, we disseminate the same principle in both the wisdom of Kabbalah and Integral Education: “There is none else beside Him,” and there is nothing else to disseminate. The entire wisdom of Kabbalah speaks only about this. And the integral method also speaks about the same thing, only in other words.

There is no difference between Integral Education and the wisdom of Kabbalah. Simply stated,  if a person doesn’t have a point in the heart and he doesn’t yearn to attain the upper world, we explain everything to him in the concepts of this world by speaking about the general integral system and about the world as a single global village.

This is speaking about the same thing, only the words are chosen according to the audience. But even for these people, and for others, our intent is to convey the principle of “There is none else beside Him.”
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From the Congress In Verona “Day Two” 11/22/14, Lesson 4

A Dog That Chases Its Tail

Question: Professional activity attracts a person by the opportunity to create and get renewed. How much comes from me towards this renewal and how much comes from the supporting environment that appreciates me? I want to be proud of myself, to be respected, etc. Can creativity become a trap, like a mousetrap?

Answer: I feel some renewal every time I work creatively. There is another painting, a film, a performance, and a song. I sort of die while working at it, as usually occurs among creative people. I write, make films, compose music, and there’s a certain niche, where a person is like the Creator. One creates and feels renewed with each creative piece. It is a trap.

This is the life for some people involved in creative work. At the same time, they don’t feel pleasure in anything else; they neglect everything else and are ready to write with their own blood. The most important thing for them is to create a new picture or make a new discovery, because this action fulfills their needs. Creation is inside them, and that’s why nothing else worries them.

For a person absorbed in creative works, there’s no enjoyment in food, sex, family, wealth, or power. If a person thinks about that, then he doesn’t produce creatively; he becomes no different than the others. Today people like this are harder to come by. Today creativity is being used for profit and success, becoming a kind of business.

Question: King Solomon concludes at the end of a reflection on labor and work, “And I started to hate all the work which I’ve done under the sun.” You call it a trap. Why?

Answer: Because it doesn’t lead to the goal! The artist, too, like a dog, chases its tail, only feeling pleasure sometimes during the cycles of one’s work. We do the same by changing jobs, family, even our country, and still feel the void, though at a different level.

Question: Solomon, in “Ecclesiastes,” says with a shiver that the next area is personal and family relations. Ultimately, there is no happiness there, and the modern statistics confirms this. What can be more natural than family ties? A person feels happy at one’s wedding and during a child’s birth.

Answer: This is the way nature has it so we continue the human race. The general objective of the development of mankind in the process of evolution is to have each person ask: Why do I live?

This question and its correct implementation separate us from the animals. Otherwise we are animals. I just live, work, save money for a vacation, house, and other things, take care of life’s chores, and it has no beginning and no logical end. For what?
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From the program “A New Life” 5/23/13

Waiting For The Messiah

Question: What is “the coming of the Messiah”? Have we already entered this period?

Answer: No, the coming of Messiah is the revelation of the force that will take humanity out of its old ego, those that understand and yearn to it, and also those that don’t even feel that they are in the ego.

Therefore it says that man has to be in one of the two extreme states, in the good state or in the bad state. We know this according to our daily spiritual states.

Question: Is there a middle state?

Answer: Middle states do not awaken a need for redemption. Redemption from what?

And I need to expect and yearn for this force to come to me. Such a state needs to be desired, and I, with complete power, should demand the Messiah, attract this force to me, and try to act so that it will pull me forward.

I am in expectation of when it will redeem me from the ego, when it will lift me to generallove and bestowal, and I will spread in the whole universe in such a manner that I will not feel myself but only what is outside of me.

The other state is completely opposite to the first state. It is completely egoistic, wild, and scary. But precisely being in it, I understand that I am a complete egoist. I don’t expect and don’t call, because I understand that I exist in it and feel the ego as bad.

In each degree of the spiritual development, we pass alternately between the two states. The transition from degree to degree happens in analogy with change of social formations. If society does not reject its current state completely, it can’t change itself, meaning perform a natural revolution and rise to the next degree. It must tear all the relations that connect it to this degree and rise up. In other words, in order to rise to a higher degree, a negative potential has to accumulate.

Besides, there must be certain dissemination to the public, consent of the masses, inner tension in society, struggle between different classes, etc., that always changes the system. Meanwhile I don’t see these signs in the inner ripening of the society. Therefore we did not yet enter the period of Messiah.”
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From KabTV’s “Will the Messiah Come?” 11/14/14

Two Forces That Create A Human Being

In general, our developmental process is about expansion and consolidation (“breathing”) that combines both forces. They oppose each other and at the same time preserve mutual harmony.

The same natural mechanism can be applied to human relationships. We too feel detachment and closeness, cooling down and burning.

Thus, we go through the same developmental forms as the universe. The difference is that we are at a higher level of consciousness. It is obvious that we cannot “devote ourselves” only to one of these major forces since we won’t survive by only inhaling or only exhaling.

Life is a contrast of opposites. If everything is good and wonderful, if sweetness is not punctuated by at least a drop of spice or bitterness, we lose the sense of taste and fail to find the essence in life. It is an unbearable condition.

Only a combination of both forces (positive and negative) gives us a correct sensation and then a spark of life surfaces between them. Otherwise, everything vanishes, dissolves in monotony.

Question: How do both forces, the processes of expansion and consolidation, manifest in the history of humanity?

Answer: On one hand, we settled throughout the world, we are separate and detached from each other, we hate others, and fight with them. We go beyond the former boundaries of the previous limitations, no longer wishing to observe them, we break our agreements, contracts, unions, thus “liberating” ourselves of our responsibilities.

The force that pushes us towards this kind of behavior is egoism. The higher it is, the less we are willing to be connected with anybody or anything. Nor do we want to owe anything to anyone.

On the other hand, the force of consolidation and togetherness also impacts us, making us connect and group together, promoting a feeling that we need each other, forcing us to look for the reasons to unite, find parallels, and experience closeness.

There is a reverse opportunity: the force of expansion opens our hearts to the entire world, whereas the force of consolidation comes out of the egoism and makes us seek personal benefit in connecting with others.

Everything depends on which one of these two forces form our world outlook: bad or good.

One way or the other, it is the interaction between both forces that originates a sensation of life in us. That’s why it is very important to balance these energies out so that both of them are oriented toward the right direction.

For example, we are prone to idealizing our fantasies about a “correct” couple that resembles two “doves.” However, in the real world, families are usually based on conflicts. They need “spice” without which their marriage becomes bland; it is about “logs” that should be added to the fire of love.

So, both forces have to be fully implemented; although, both of them should lead to achieving one, unified goal. Their combination has to be based on equilibrium and provide maximal effectiveness that comes from a joint power.

Question:  How can we create and maintain the balance between the two forces?

Answer: We should settle on one goal for both of them.

In essence, they are the forces of bestowal and receiving, attraction and repulsion. It is not important, at which level or in what sphere they are implemented—whether it is mechanics, electricity, or other fields of human activities.

At this time, we are talking about the influence of both forces inside us and among us, at a sensual level. Accordingly, we should balance out the intensity of our egoism with the altruistic force of bestowal.

Initially the force of reception dominates us: We want to attract and have in our possession everything that might be beneficial for us. Moreover, we don’t want others to have anything that is good for us. This is our original, genuine state. We should find ways to balance this bad force.

Our efforts to equalize the bad force within us will lead us to a system in which we maintain an internal harmony as a healthy cell of an organism. Together, vigorous cells replenish each other and take good care of their neighbors. If this happens, we are allowed to receive so that we can further benefit others.

Thus, we are forming a general organism, all parts of which are integrally connected. We generate a new “body,” a new life at the speaking level, above the inanimate, vegetative, and animate.

In other words, the human level is not about us the way we are today. At this time, we only occupy the top of the animate level. When we build a correct system, it will be called “a Man” (Adam). To the extent it contains both forces that are balanced with each other, we’ll start sensing nature in more depth and breadth.

Question: What do we lack today to be able to create a system that is adequate for the human level?

Answer: There is a deficiency of the bestowing force. At this time only the will to receive is acting in us.

Currently, we are transitioning from the animate level to a human level. However, it is only a force of receiving that we cultivate. Any of our bestowing actions are meant only to receive more and more. If not for that, we would not be able to give away anything at all.

So, no matter what we do, everything about us is just receiving, whether it is obvious or hidden. The will to receive rules everything, whereas we don’t have the force of bestowal at all.

However, if we find the way to generate a force of bestowal among us, to balance out the energy of receiving with the power of bestowal and then maintain the balance between both forces, they will turn us into a new creature called a “Man.” A new type of consciousness will grow in us. It will be built on both forces that allow us to form a system of bestowal above the receiving structure. When we manage to build both systems, we’ll sense the upper level of nature, the speaking level.

Today, we haven’t yet reached this level. We lack the second part of it, the force of bestowal. As a result, we cannot actually be connected and now we resemble a bunch of nuts in a sack that are held together only with the help of the external pressure; otherwise, they would just scatter.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 3/2/14

Responsibility, The Light, And Predictions Of The Prophets

Question: On one hand, we have to feel responsible for anti-Semitism around the world and for all bad events that happen because we are not fulfilling our role.

On the other hand, we must relate these issues only to the Creatorsince “there is none else besides Him.” For me, it is very confusing. I don’t know how to correctly relate to this situation.

Answer: From “there is none else besides Him,” we understand that all the problems come from Him. Who shapes them? The Creator. But why does He do it? It’s because He has to bring us to a state of complete correction (Gmar Tikkun). Why does He send troubles to us and make them so terrible? It’s because we haven’t yet achieved similarity of properties with Him to the degree that we can consider His acts as acts of benevolence.

Unless one attains revelation, one is unable to comprehend the whole picture. By applying efforts without realizing the essence of why exactly we are exerting, we bring even more pleasure to the Creator. We have to accept this state of affairs.

There are several aspects to be considered in this respect. By all means, the Creator organizes everything in accordance with the program that He planned beforehand and through which He wants to bring all of us to unity and make our connection similar to the Upper Light. For that, all shattered fragments of the creation must reconnect and bestow to each other, thus achieving similarity with the bestowing nature of the Light

This is the way all 600,000 fragments should reunite so that the form of mutual bestowal among them becomes similar to the Light that fills them. This kind of bestowal in fact is the Light that fulfills them. There is no other Light! There is only the property of bestowal and love.

When we correct ourselves and relate to each other with love and bestowal, the Light fills our vessel, Kli. There will never be anything besides it! We will build these kinds of relationships among us with the help of the Creator, the Returning Light.

So, it means that we receive energy from Above that lets us connect with each other to the extent of our need to connect; our unity is in fact the Light that fulfills us. We don’t need anything besides it, the overall connection that we build is the Creator. We are the ones who “make the Creator!” We are the ones who have to replenish all the states that we go through. Anything that ever happens to us is a revelation of shattering.

This explains why prophets write about things that are about to happen before the end of correction. They describe wars, massacres, and other terrible events because they saw the general vessel, desire, as completely fractured from top to bottom. At each of its layers, they foresaw what might happen. They sensed the future because they were aware of the terrible relationships among the elements of the broken vessel.

However, their predictions will come true only if we do not correct the evil that is gradually revealing in us. The evil is disclosed in accordance with our readiness to correct it. When we are ready, we’ll go through the process of revelation of evil in us with delight, as Baal HaSulam wrote: “I am happy to see emerging sinners.”
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From the 5^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/19/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

The Plague Of The Century

Question: Every person is on a search for happiness throughout his life. We look for what can bring us joy, love, elation, or peace. As a result, there is a need to turn to King Solomon’s famous book Ecclesiastes, which was written thousands of years ago.

I would like to understand why this story involves King Solomon and at a time of absolute prosperity? What is the message conveyed through this book?

Answer: What is Hevel Havalim (foolishness)? It is the bestowal and good attitude that stems from a person. The word “hevel” (“foolishness” in Hebrew) stems from the word “steam,” which is the breath that comes out of a person’s mouth, his attitude towards others, the Returning Light, by which he returns the good attitude to the world.

This is the only thing a person’s success and wellbeing depends on in this world. King Solomon teaches us how we attain happiness by this steam, which we create by our attitude towards others.

Question: I reflect on the environment and the environment reflects on me in response?

Answer: Yes. Everything depends on my attitude. The world is external to me and I don’t know it. But if my attitude towards the world is that I constantly take from it for myself, it seems dark. I constantly look for what else I can take for myself, and consequently, I remain empty. On the other hand, if I operate through what stems from me, I attain happiness.

Comment: But we usually understand the term Hevel Havalim (foolishness) as something that is hopeless.

Answer: It is because we understand it in our ego.

Question: Why did Solomon come to the conclusion that material acquisitions will never make a person happy?

Answer: Because this way we only expand our vessels of receiving, the desire to be full. When I want to buy something, to fill myself, I thus double my desire. Therefore it says that “a person dies with only half his desire in hand.”

What does it means that a person dies? That he kills his desire to receive. I wanted something and I got it. At the same time I receive the filling, my desire dies. Suppose I want to buy a house and I do it. I enjoy it for a couple of weeks, but gradually the pleasure diminishes until it disappears.

Question: I have a feeling that you are talking about people who have everything and feel emptiness, while a person who is not well off still desires something. How can the idea that a rich man buys a villa for a several million dollars and doesn’t feel any pleasure in it after a year help me?

Answer: Humanity advances along the path of its egoistic evolution, thus becoming more and more qualitative. The point isn’t that yesterday I wanted a two room apartment, today I need a four room apartment, and tomorrow a villa in an exclusive neighborhood. No. Our desire develops in a qualitative manner. The desire that develops in me today ceases to feel property as the goal of life. Humanity sees that it isn’t worth making such an effort for that.

Today the disappointment from life is much greater than looking for luxuries and prestige. I have become more indifferent and lazy. I want to be happy, but virtually. I want to feel happiness directly, and not through bricks called a villa, or a water reservoir called a swimming pool. I want to obtain an inner feeling! This is the whole problem, the plague of the century!

I have nothing to say to a person who still hopes that material acquisitions will bring him happiness. He sees his life as a process of working and in another ten years buying a house, two cars, having a family, and bringing up his kids. He considers this a good organized life. In that case he has to wait another ten years to see that it is all Hevel Havalim.
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From the program “A New Life” 5/23/13

Awakening Society

When we disseminate the integral system, we need to explain to people that the problems everyone has are solved by one method only, by one movement through connection and unity.

When we have people sit at a roundtable, after just one lesson with us they will feel that what we offer has a strong practical basis.

We can try to explain the basis and the theory and we can just leave it since it is irrelevant. A new inner force is revealed in a group that focuses itself correctly, and it nourishes and heals us of all the problems, whether personal problems, problems in the group, social, political or ecological problems. This force guides people in the connection between them and helps them solve all their problems.

We have to show them all that in a practical manner. People today don’t listen, don’t read, and don’t see anything except for what answers their small egoistic intention. Their indifference, however, is only external. We can dig a little into every person and discover what disturbs him: “What do you lack in order to feel completely happy? I am ready to give it to you.” This is the descent to the people and the fulfillment of the laws of connection and unity.

A person suffers, he cannot make ends meet, and he doesn’t feel secure personally or politically; he is ill, there are disputes in his family, and problems in his relations with his kids, which means that he has problems in all his connections.

He can, of course stay away from any discussion on the topic and not engage in it at all, since he feels that it doesn’t matter anymore, but his indifference is only external. The authorities want to suppress all that by making mild drugs legal, but it won’t work. A person will still not be able to escape his problems.

Therefore, we have to offer a person, without coercion, and without delving into his problems: “Do you want to solve your problems? All you need to do is to visit ourworkshop just once, sit in a circle, and have a cup of coffee or tea with us,” and so on. The main thing is to make him feel that there is a power in our method that can help him solve and correct whatever he wants to.

Later he will join us by himself and will stay with us, since we are dealing with dissemination to the masses, and there will be mutual bestowal that will grow like a snowball; our method will become a social movement.

Today there is no movement in society but we do have a big group that is beginning to stand out by influencing different parts of society, which thus integrate and affect one another. People will soon start thinking about unity even if no one speaks about it.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/26/14

When And Where Does One Take Time For Happiness?

Question: In the last few decades, the subject of the pursuit of happiness in human society, in Israel, and in the world has become a trend. A large number of books, courses, and workshops have appeared on this subject. In the book Ecclesiastes by King Solomon, the pursuit of happiness goes hand in hand with the pursuit of truth. What kind of truth is he talking about?

Answer: The truth is different all the time. Every generation determines general rules for itself according to which it determines what is called truth and what is called falsehood, good and evil, pleasure and suffering. A hundred or two hundred years ago, what was considered happiness was having a job, a place to live, a family and children.

If a person could provide his family with food and a roof over their heads, then he was happy. He didn’t want anything besides this. Besides everyday clothing, if he had an additional suit, then this was wonderful! After that they came up with the wardrobe, which was small in the beginning. And now everyone has his own room in an apartment and his own closet. But even that is not enough; we need a walk-in closet for clothes!

We have reached saturation, but a person is still involved with consumption. Our lives have become a race. Where do we feel pleasure? I live in an area where the population belongs to the strong middle class. At seven in the morning, my neighbor runs to his car holding a baby in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. He puts the coffee down, sits the baby down, and drives the child to the daycare center, after which he travels to work.

He doesn’t come home before eight or nine in the evening. When does he feel happiness? Is it the one day of the week where in the evening he goes somewhere with his friends? Or is it once a year when he travels for a week’s vacation abroad? Where is the pleasure really? He looks at others and says, “Everyone is doing this, and so am I.”

Question: It follows that there is no happiness in the world?

Answer: Happiness, in “Vanity of Vanities” (Ecclesiastes 1:2) is bestowal to others! If we bestow to each other and build a life where everyone is connected in a positive manner in society, then we will fulfill each other, not with things, but with happiness. At present, I want to have the feeling of happiness through the acquisition of something that I bought and then enjoy. How much can I look at it and enjoy it?

Happiness must constantly be renewed. Happiness from a new car lasts for a month, from a house it lasts for a year. How can I arrange life such that my desire to be happy all the time will be renewed and its replenishment will be new? It is this way when I get up every day like a child with wide-open eyes!

In childhood I lived in a house with a big yard. In the yard grew trees and flowers; we had a dog. In the evening I already imagined how I would jump out of bed in the morning and run to the yard to meet friends. I want to live in a mood like this!

Question: In the book Ecclesiastes by King Solomon, the same sentence repeats all the time: “That which hath been is that which shall be, and that which hath been done is that which shall be done; and there is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). This is a very sad discovery.

Answer: If you just want to enjoy the world then you always get emptiness.

Question: Is it really necessary to reach a state of absolute lack of pleasure in order to understand the necessity of renewal? Is it impossible to get pleasure from both things and connections with people?

Answer: One doesn’t interfere with the other, but I don’t think that a person can be in two worlds. If you are split in two, then neither of the two desires will be called fulfilled. Ultimately we need to show ourselves and others where the true source of happiness is found. The renewal of relationships between us will bring us a feeling of happiness, and this will always be the same vitality that fills the sails of our boat with advancement towards better states.
[148487]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” 5/23/13

Why Is There No Answer Still?

Everything depends on the efforts exerted by a person. It’s natural that every time we discover a bigger desire. This is why a bigger effort is required of us, more desperation for which there is no answer.

Again, we make efforts, and again reveal a greater desire. So again and again until we employ the full measure of effort and frustration.

As a result of all these efforts, they remain unanswered; a realization comes to us signifying that we have nothing to depend on! Everything is in the hands of the upper force, and if only it will have mercy on us then we can start working towards bestowal.

We change and become more aware of what a true prayer is, adhesion, and dependence upon the upper force at every stage of these efforts. It becomes clear why there is no answer still: because our prayer is impure. It hides an egoistic intention for oneself.

It’s impossible to reduce the number of these unsuccessful attempts because every penny is added to the total bill. We are obliged to go through them all one by one, and it all depends on the speed of our commitment towards this sprint, it depends if we don’t apply brakes when the Light is beckoning ahead or pushing us back, or doesn’t work.

Finally, we come to a genuine prayer, knowing what we require while agreeing with this request and desiring it. It already emanates from us, because we really want to achieve bestowal, without any regard for ourselves, desiring such bestowal with all our heart and soul. We believe that there is no better state than the power of devotion to bestowal, to the Creator, and we ask only of this.

Because all of these actions, our request transforms from egoistic to altruistic, then it reforms and becomes a correct cry, which receives an answer that comes from above.

It’s impossible to get anything without a need for it. All of our work and all of the states we find ourselves in are essentially intended for us so we ask for the correct things, which previously had already been prepared for us. As soon as we ask for them, we immediately get an answer.
[148560]From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/26/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam