The Basic Principle Of Spiritual Development

 

Question: Is the basic principle of spiritual development to remember the Creator each and every second, or is this not a must?

Answer: The basic principle of spiritual development is to tie everything unexceptionally to the Creator, because “there is none else besides Him,” and everything in us was created and is managed by Him.

We have direct contact only with the Creator, and this connection affects us. But in order to connect to Him we need to unite in the ten, and then from the ten we will be able to act with Him mutually and interactively.

Question: How can we measure the spiritual growth of the group?

Answer: The spiritual growth of the group is measured according to the level of mutual guarantee, mutual connection, and mutual support between the friends, and the level of their loyalty to each other. You need to understand that in the spiritual world you are one unique whole. This is how you scrutinize yourselves.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 11/25/18

“I Have Seen An Opposite World”

 

Question: What practical actions should we perform if we cannot annul the hatred when we feel repulsed by each other?

Answer: If we judge according to what our Kabbalist sages said, we see that there are only two actions we can perform.

First, the friends should not stop talking between them and should at least remain on the level of verbal connections. They should try to understand and support each other and know that all the guidance they receive stems from the Creator. We should not sink to the level to where we are thrown out from the spiritual action and believe that everything that we see is actually true and not that it is only the Creator who arranges things this way for the sake of correction.

Second, we need to work on ourselves together, as each one tries to help the friend, no matter how and by what. It is because I cannot get out of this swamp by pulling myself out by my own hair.

In principle, this is how the ten works by turning to the Creator. We need to do the same thing that Kabbalists did 2,000 years ago.

If we begin to engage in this seriously, soon we will feel how it affects us positively and we will gradually understand and feel the work of the upper light on us, not in our current feeling, but in our current understanding. Additional emotions and insights will appear in us, both integral and global. The emotions from the Creator and from the ten will dwell in us and we will begin to see the world differently.

As it says: “I have seen an opposite world,” a world that operates according to different laws and rules in which opposites support each other, a world in which hate generates love that is actually supported and sustained by hate.

Baal HaSulam tells us in his articles that it is actually thanks to the fact that we are all different, that we can attain high levels of development, yet at the same time, we must not kill or annul anything, because the greater the diversity of views in the society, the more it can attain higher levels of development.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 2/6/19

See The World From A New Perspective

 

The Book of Zohar tells us how its authors, Rabbi Shimon’s students, gathered before the lessons and each time revealed a new depth of creation and described it in this book. Before they focused on the lesson, they felt such enormous hatred between them that they were ready to kill each other. This is how big their egoism was.

We have to learn how to rebuild the connections between us, at least with the same inclination, according to the same system. This means building another floor above us, “love will cover all crimes.” The crimes and the sins remain, and a connection is built above them between us. This is how we exist in two worlds at the same time: in our world and in the spiritual world.

By trying to focus ourselves on each other in the ten, we awaken and summon the gradual impact of the surrounding light unto us, and with its help we need to build a second floor in each ten. We need to demand this from the Creator, to do everything that depends on us on our level: to pray, to cry out, to ask Him, and then we will succeed. We will begin to feel that we ascend above everything that we know and above our reason, above the perception of the world, and that we begin to see it differently, synthetically, so that despite our first egoistic floor, we can see that everything is absolutely globally connected.

Then all the problems and differences disappear, and instead, they begin to complement each other, which is the spiritual system of connection. This is actually what we need to learn. We engage in it in the tens and in our study.

This is the goal of our study,  our lives in this world, as we return to the corporeal state again and again and restore and rebuild the connection between us that covers all the discrepancies and disagreements that will remain and grow between us more and more. This is how it works.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 2/6/19

Should I Tell My Group About My Problems?

 

Question: Suppose something happens in my life that I regard as a negative impact. I come to the group and share the details of this event with them. What should the group do? How can I feel the support from the group? Should they internally turn to the Creator in order to help me?

Answer: You should not even tell the group about your problems. You should simply get the confidence from the group that everything is done by the Creator in order to tie you to the group and through the group to Him.

There is no other reason for Him to cause you this unpleasantness. The Creator does it only for one purpose: for you to feel the need for the group and for Him because in the group you work on the right attitude outside yourself toward Him so that you will later reveal Him between you.

So there is no need to tell the group about your problems. The main thing is to try to reveal the Creator in the group and then turn to Him through the group.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 10/14/18

Love Will Cover All Crimes

Love will cover all transgressions. This means that day by day we will have to reveal new sins because without this it is impossible to advance. Selfishness is bound to develop more and more. The Creator only gave rise to creation by breaking the common soul of Adam HaRishon. From this, the evil inclination began to unfold, our great desire to receive pleasure, and we need to help this egoism open more and more so that it does not remain at the inanimate, vegetative, or animate level.

But egoism can be revealed only in the opposite form. If we want to accelerate the disclosure of egoism, we must, on the contrary, strive to achieve unity. And if yesterday we did not come to a greater awareness of evil than the day before yesterday, then we did not strive for unity.

Every day we try to unite, and as a result, rejection will open up to us, for which we will ask for the power of correction so that love will cover all transgressions. And so we will continue to advance.

It is necessary to reveal evil and attract good to it in order to cover all crimes with love. Without transgressions, there will be no union, there will be no correction of the Kli. We must open all the cracks, all the breaking, in our union, in the vessel of the common soul of Adam HaRishon. And this is possible only when we strive to unite.

First, we perform artificial actions, trying to achieve unification, but we see that the Creator does not allow us to unite. On the contrary, it reveals hatred and rejection between us. And this is the desired result, because crimes are being disclosed on top of which we can truly unite and cover them with love. But this is already with the help of a prayer to the Creator who will give us the power of unity. And so we come to correction.

This is the work: We strive for good, and the Creator reveals evil to us, but we try to cover evil with good, and we turn to the Creator for help. These are the two actions: back and forth, back and forth, corresponding to the four stages of the Kli.

You can imagine that we are sitting in a boat and rowing together, each with his own oar. Each does work in his own Kli. He is drawn to union and sees that rejection awakens in its place. And then he makes a second movement: He turns to the Creator, asks for help, and sees how the Creator makes a row of paddles for him. He does not leave the Creator until He completes the action, covering all crimes, transgressions, with love.

I do the first row with an oar: I try to connect with my friends and I see that I am not achieving what I want, but I am revealing negative qualities. And then I turn to the Creator and ask Him to correct this negative. And so we row all the time: one-two, one-two. The first one or two are mine, where nothing works for me, and the second one or two is done by the Creator and are already successful. It is said about this: “The Creator will finish this work for me.”

The first time I try to do and reveal the shortcomings, and the second time I turn to the Creator with these shortcomings and see a successful result.

A ten sits in one boat, and each holds his paddle with both hands. The Gabai sits at the stern and cheers on the rowers, while the Shaatz sits at the bow of the boat. And that’s how we all go.

The first paddle movement is to reveal a flaw. I want to connect with my friends, but I reveal that I am not capable of it. That is, the first time I try to do it myself and find out my impotence. But at the same time, I am aware of my failure, that is, I open the Kli. And in the second stroke with the paddle, I already ask the Creator to help me and finish this work for me.

This is the case every time: the first stroke is the revelation of the lack and the second stroke is the Creator’s help. As a result, we advance in our boat, first making efforts to reveal evil, and then turning to the Creator for correction and revelation of the goodness.

First of all, I must be grateful to the Creator and friends. After all, the goal of creation can be achieved only by tuning into the friends with closed eyes, if they want and can accept me. And the Creator must dissolve me in my friends, unite me with everyone without any distinction between us.

Therefore, I am grateful to the Creator and the friends for the fact that they exist and give me the opportunity to join them, lose myself, and be born again, which is called “going through the eye of a needle.” Nothing remains of me except the net desire, which I drag through the eye of a needle, and so I move from world to world.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/17/20, “Love Covers All Transgressions”

Team Building Guide, Part 6

Team Building Principles: “Buy Yourself a Friend”

Question: Fifth rule: Each member of the group should try to “buy friends.” This is an ancient principle that sages of all generations have written about a lot.

How should one buy a friend? Your attention, concessions, cancellation of personal interests? Or are there some other principles?

Answer: However you can buy him, buy him. Gifts, words, actions. Anything.

Question: That is, it is a tool. And the result? What will it give me?

Answer: You attract him to you. After all, a friend is someone who can support you, agree with you. Even based on purely selfish interests.

Question: Meaning, by my attention I buy him and thereby buy his support?

Answer: Naturally.
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From KabTV’s “Management Skills” 6/18/20

When Will I Feel The Creator?

Question: I am a first year student in Kabbalah classes online. How soon can I feel the Creator in a group?

Answer: It does not depend on which course you are studying, but on how much you want to master this method. Try to get as close as possible to some group and together with your friends make such contact where you stop feeling the egoism separating you from them.

Or vice versa, you will feel it more and more, but at the same time overcome it. Thus, you will begin to move toward the revelation of the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 5/10/20

Realize Yourself Wherever You Are

Question: I study the wisdom of Kabbalah. I have a group with which I can share our common goal, but I feel that no one understands me in the group and that they are not strong enough for me. What should I do?

Answer: Still, it is worthwhile being in a group. It is better to be in a weak group than to work alone.

Question: But can freedom help me choose a different environment? Does it all depend on me?

Answer: No, an individual cannot do anything. He has to choose an environment in any case. If you think that the environment is too weak for you, move to another environment, but I don’t think this is the right choice. Fulfill yourself in the environment you are in, and you will see that what was given to you is the right thing.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 11/17/19

Merging With The Ten

Question: The Creator is between us. Do I need to ask the Creator to correct me or to correct the whole ten, the whole world ten? Does the Creator hear me wherever I am or only when I am in the ten?

Answer: The Creator feels the created being only to the extent that he resembles Him.

The Creator’s attribute is bestowal, while a person’s attribute is receiving. In this state, a person does not feel the Creator. We can see that on ourselves.

If a desire to reveal the Creator appears in a person, he can fulfill this desire only if he creates the right conditions for that, such as being in a group and working seriously on the connection with the friends.

If a person unites with the friends in the group, he will begin to feel the Creator through the ten. A person actually feels the connection with the Creator to the extent that he merges with the ten, and not in any other way.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 12/1/19

Appreciate Communication With Friends

Question: All the work in the group is in order to realize our insignificance and inability to unite. But each meeting should end in joy. What joy is there in realizing your own insignificance?

Answer: Yes. But you were together! You felt each other. You talked about a common goal that partly shone for you through the friends. If you had no attraction to the goal, then they helped you attract it a little.

Therefore, any communication is very helpful for advancing. I advise you to get out of any state only through communication with friends.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 4/26/20

Tower Floating In The Air

We need to try to build the concept of a center in every ten. Before the coronavirus, our centers were physical.

Most of them belonged to physical groups that organized a home for themselves, the center; they rented a room where they could gather and study together. Everything was clear. It was a place where there were books, communications, and where it was possible to arrange meals, lessons.

But now the Creator wants to transfer us to a more spiritual center. We sit at home with our physical bodies and must connect with hearts, desires, and aspirations to the center.

The center is a spiritual concept. These are not concrete walls, but the walls of our hearts. We need to take care of this center and see if we are united by the hearts. After all, this is not concrete that will stand even if you forget about it, and not a material center that can be changed by moving to another building.

Now we are turning into a spiritual vessel (Kli), and the Creator purposely blesses us with a coronavirus in order to oblige us to build a spiritual center in our hearts. Where is this center located?

This is a tower floating in the air; it has no place. So, we need to move forward, every day preserving the spiritual center, strengthening the walls of our hearts, in order to draw closer together, to feel and understand more, to feel mutual concern about connecting with the hearts.

Then this center will come to life and begin to act. We will feel the mechanism of ten Sefirot and the Creator filling our center. From now on, our center turns into the Temple, into the place of the Creator, where we reveal Him. Each reveals the Creator a little in the small center of his ten, and then all tens join together and support one big center, which will be called the Third Temple.

Therefore, we now need to take care, in the tens, about how to build our center, put more effort into it, discuss what everyone should do, how to build a connection between us, and how to ask the Creator to connect us. After all, only the Creator can be the glue connecting heart with heart. Each heart is selfish and only a higher power can connect them. Otherwise, the hearts will never unite because the human heart is evil from birth.

We have a special, sublime work in this construction. I hope that you acknowledge your responsibility, feel the need, and we will do it.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/19/20, Baal HaSulam, Shamati 33 “The Lots on Yom Kippurim and with Haman“

A Dynamic State

Question: How exactly is the connection in the ten felt? How constant is it?

Answer: If a person feels the ten, he feels that he is connected with everyone as one single body, one single desire, one aspiration. However, this state is dynamic, it constantly changes because it is necessary to develop. That is why he constantly feels himself breaking away from his friends, seeing them differently. He is thrown out, distracted from the goal, and yet he forces himself to return to the connection with others.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 4/19/20

Faith Above Reason: Accepting The Opinion Of A Friend

Question: Is it possible to call accepting the opinion of a friend, even though it is the opposite of one’s own, “faith above reason”? If so, how do I do it without disregarding my own opinion?

Answer: Faith above reason means contrary to my opinion, I accept the opinion of a friend and follow it 100%. I am trying to make his opinion, even though it is the opposite of mine, become mine. You need to experience it yourself, and gradually you will be able to understand what it is.

Faith above reason is a system of spiritual perception, when you begin to see the spiritual world above our world or through it. It’s not easy. You need to spend a lot of time and effort until you start to perceive everything this way.

This is a completely different system of the universe, as if you have a completely different mind, feelings, and thoughts.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 6/16/20

Yearning For Connection

Question: Is it necessary to have a framework in order to attain the Creator?

Answer: Yes, a framework is vital. They refer to Tzimtzum, Masach, and different restrictions that we impose upon ourselves in order to feel the Creator because we do not feel anything that has no boundaries.

When we are in a group and we tie ourselves to the friends, we reach a state in which we can feel through which connections and ties we can attain the Creator.

Question: What is the connection and the barrier between the Creator and us made of?

Answer: This connection is made of the resistance to egoism. The forces of yearning for connection with the friends and the Creator need to be greater than the forces of yearning for personal pleasure, and they are what builds the restriction inside us so that we can feel the Creator.

Question: With which desires can we feel the connection between the Creator and us?

Answer: With a desire that is aimed at the friends. Subconsciously I reject the Creator by my negative attitude to the friends. I get closer to feeling the Creator when I want to get closer to the friends.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 12/18/19

Who Does The Commandment Of “Love Thy Friend As Thyself” Refer To?

Question: Who does the commandment of “love thy friend as thyself” refer to? Does it refer to all those around me or to the friends in the ten?

Answer: First and foremost it refers to you personally. When you work in the ten, you try to love others, which means that you try to love your friends in the ten as yourself, and the attempts to try to attain this attribute bring all of you to a state called the soul.

In other words, when ten people each reveal the spiritual attribute to connect as if they are one common body, which is not common, of course, because there is the ego between them, but they try to connect above the ego, their attempts to unite create an immense potential power.

So on the one hand, the ego is revealed between them, and on the other hand, powerful unity is revealed. These two attributes coexist one above the other, which means that it is about creating an object called a Partzuf, in which there is a great ego and above it there is the immense spiritual force of the Creator that connects it.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 12/29/19

How Can We Quickly Raise MAN For Friends?

Question: What needs to be done to raise MAN for the friends as quickly as possible?

Answer: There is no need to wait for the right moment. You can constantly feel that you are in a group even if you are not physically with us and to always think about how you can increase the connection between friends. And that’s it.

Make efforts so that this desire is constantly excited in you. It will pull you all the time, and you will feel that you need to do something until you begin to feel the network of connection between yourself and your friends as one whole.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 3/1/20

Trek Through The Desert

It must be remembered that egoism is given to us from above; the revelation of egoism comes from the Creator. And therefore it is necessary to work with it methodically every time, more and more, and not wait for  selfishness to disappear. On the contrary, the further we advance, the more egoism, stupidity, cruelty, and arrogance will be revealed and we must work with all of it.

You need to get used to it and you must not quit, despair, or turn off your computer; you must simply continue and continue, even on all fours if you have to, but crawl to the goal.

And my friends will help me; I am them and they are me. Everything is arranged so that we can always go forward if we try to complement each other. When I want to help my comrades and they want to help me then, even if none of us has strength, we will find strength within our union.

This is not a force within each of us; there can be no force inside of any of us! There are ten people and not one of them has any strength. But since we want to connect, we suddenly reveal the power between us. This power is the Creator that is between us. We use His power and not our own.

And therefore, if each one of us is exhausted, if we are all full zeros, this is the best condition and you cannot turn off the screen and leave the group! Because it is in this state that we begin to reveal the power that is between us, that is, the Creator. Inside of ourselves, of course, there are no forces, but we will reveal a higher power.

Therefore, it is precisely because of despair, powerlessness, hopelessness, misunderstanding, supporting each other, and making efforts, despite the fatigue, that we are approaching the revelation of the Creator. This work is called,  trekking through the desert, from which we derive the power of bestowal. Passing through the desert, we ascend from Malchut to Bina.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/31/20, “The Approach to Studying the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

Balancing Relations With The Light

Balancing our relations with the Light means that we have to constantly relate to it the same way it relates to us. The attributes of the light are bestowal, love, and mutual connection.

So, we have to feel how we can constantly create balance with it. If we want to advance correctly in the Creator’s world, this has to be our mission.

We can gradually get closer to keeping this condition only if we are in a group. Then we will begin to create and acquire the right attitude to the light in the connection between us and understand which attributes there should be between us and what the mutual connection between these attributes is.

We need to learn how the mutual relations in different parameters, different attributes, yearnings, and desires will complement one another and will eventually all resemble the light that shines on us all the time.

The light of each ten, each Kabbalistic group, shines differently, because each one is seemingly a small part of the one big body of Adam, the one general soul.

So, when we are together in a small group, we can begin to resemble the light as a result of the relations between us. Mutual cooperation will determine our attitude to the light.

Then we will begin to feel the light and to cooperate with it in mutuality, and our relations with it will be the most important thing for us, whereas all the other things in our world will be totally unimportant to us.

We still seemingly detach ourselves from our world and use it only in order to exist, while everything else, including our energy, our study, and our feelings will be dedicated only to the connection between us, to resembling the upper light more and more each time. Then the upper light will fill us, warm us, and give us a feeling of eternity and wholeness.

We will begin to feel how the Creator, the light, is revealed in us, and then we will feel that we are in the upper world while living in our world.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 12/18/19

Billions Of People In One Ten

Question: Can work in one ten affect all of humanity?

Answer: There is no difference between a small ten and all of humanity. If we awaken a higher power through our actions in the ten, then through it we influence the whole world. Such is the peculiarity of the integral system that even a ten contains all parts of reality within itself.

If we pump the ten with higher light, then it expands and so does the size of all of humanity. Imagine that there are a billion people in each friend. There are eight billion people in the world and all of them, except the point of the Creator (Keter) and the point of Malchut, are within this ten.

As we move forward, we begin to reveal all of reality within this ten, all of humanity, all the worlds, everything is inside it, you just have to penetrate deeper into it.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/20/20, “Connecting the World in the Last Generation”

Symphony For Zeir Anpin And Malchut

It is not possible, yet, to explain where Zeir Anpin, Malchut, and the other Sefirot are in the ten. A ten still does not feel this, does not have such abilities. To work with spiritual concepts, one must already incorporate the properties of bestowal and engage in the love of friends above one’s desire to enjoy, above love for oneself. Thereby, we will acquire the properties of Zeir Anpin and will be able to grow Malchut, otherwise it is impossible.

Therefore, all our work is to attract the upper light that will affect us. We must ask the Creator to shine the returning light on us, which will give us the quality of bestowal. To the extent that the upper light affects us, we will want to love our neighbor and to bestow to him. We only need to attract the light and for this we need a common prayer.

If together, as a ten, we demand and ask for the light to come, it will come and unite us into one body called Zeir Anpin or Malchut. Then we will understand connection and what Baal HaSulam writes about in his article the “Study of the Ten Sefirot.” Right now, we do not understand this; we only read: Zeir Anpin and Malchut, but we do not have such workings in us and, therefore the text remains dead. These are simply lifeless letters to us.

But after the correction, we will be able to read and perform these actions inside, in our feelings. This text will become for us like notes for a musician who can play them or even sing a melody by ear. After all, he feels these notes.

If a person is not familiar with the notes, he does not understand how to sing and play them. He looks at musical notes and does not know what each note means. So we do not know what the structure of the upper worlds means. Until we acquire the qualities of bestowal, we will not be able to perform any of the actions described in the Kabbalistic book.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/30/20