The Dweller, Divinity, And The Group

Question: What does this mean, “I dwell among mine own people” (Kings II 4:13), and how is this connected to our work with the wider public?

Answer: “I dwell among mine own people” means that we discover the Creator in Divinity, in all the desires that are accumulated in the speaking level and want to resemble the Creator. Divinity is the collective, the community, all of humanity that gathers to itself the nature of the still, vegetative, and animate and becomes a backing, a substance for a desire, in which the Creator, the Upper Light, is revealed.

We are now working according to the following sketch: Above – the Creator, in the middle – the group, and below – the community. We go out to the wider public, absorb their deficiencies, make them into our deficiencies, and raise them up to the Creator. The answer reaches us from the Creator, MAD 1 (The Light), and now we have something to transmit to the public, MAD 2 (in the sketch).

However, after certain work we reach a stage in which the group will begin working with the Creator found within the public. The vessel, the Divinity (Schechina), this is the public; and the Light, the inner part of the public, is the dweller (Shochen), the Creator, who is found within humanity.

First of all, I correct myself with respect to the group, and then I must imagine it in its perfected form, in the world of Infinity, seeing it as Divinity. If she seems broken to me, this is only to the degree of my brokenness. So I must accept her as fixed, and constantly change myself to see the group as more and more advanced, higher, spiritual, sacred in my eyes, where the Creator is revealed more and more. And when I am in descent and look at it egoistically, I say that it is I who is determining this and they will change for my good; meaning, I won’t serve them, rather they will serve me.

And when we take care of the public and through it (within the center of the group) reach the Creator, then the public becomes precious to us. The Creator is precious to us and the public is precious. That is how we begin to clarify the relationships between Light and vessel. In the vessel it depends on what kind of Light we discover in it and how we feel that we are causing the Creator contentment.

In this Light we discover the higher identity that comes to be expressed through the nature of the world. The Creator has no other form other than what we give to Him. Now we attribute zero form to Him, so He doesn’t exist for us. And to the degree that we can give Him some kind of form of bestowal within the vessel, to that degree He is revealed.

So it is said, “I dwell among mine own people.” In the next stage the group will be like our “point in the heart,” and all of the work will be in discovering humanity as the right backing for the complete discovery of the Upper Light.

This stage will come by itself to the degree of our development, but from this it is already necessary to understand how important dissemination is today. We don’t just do something good for the community; rather, we work on our spiritual vessel for discovery of the Creator.

In our day, we require a group; one is not enough for this. There was a time when two could discover this relationship by working together. Each one worked outside of himself within the connection, and this was enough, as is written: “The minimum of many is two” (Yerushalmi Yoma 13a).

But now even a strong and advanced group of a thousand people cannot discover the higher power. The beginning of the Divinity must be here, and so the emphasis will be more and more in the direction of the public. And we will discover very quickly that the public is not just Israel, but all of humanity.

The vessel will begin to react. All of humanity will suddenly begin to react all over the world.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/26/14