Connected Hearts

Question: In what manner are we included in the ascents and descents of the friends?

Answer: We want to unite and be included in the feelings of the friends in that we nullify ourselves in regard to each other as much as our heart is ready for this. We want to take sandpaper and rub our heart so that it will be more sensitive to others; we want to do something with him so that he will not be so opaque. If I am linked to the heart of the friend, I acquire all that is in his heart: all his ascents and descents, everything that he did in the past, both the good things and the bad things.

In fact, it is not important if they are good or bad, for I acquire the intensity. The Creatorarranged the bad things for a friend from the start. The good things could happen to him in the way of suffering or in the way of Torah and they pass over him. I can acquire, receive, all of this experience. It was specifically for this that there was the shattering of the desires so that everyone could do his small part of the work and could we could enrich each other through mutual integration.

We don’t understand what a spiritual level is. It is not so high that it is impossible to attain, but only if we take the entire history of each from each other. Through my inclusion with a friend, I acquire all the incarnations through which he passed, the entire way through which his soul passed, in that he descended from the world of Infinity (Olam Ein Sof) and was shattered together with my soul. And after this, we underwent a multitude of incarnations together, and now we have met in order to be linked with each other.

After the shattering of the collective soul, the souls were divided and distanced from each other. They passed through a long process of change, passing through Babylon and the rest of the trials. And now that they have finally reached connection, I can receive all that the rest went through and experienced throughout all of history, and therefore I become a complete Kli that includes the whole world within it. And this is how it is for each one of us, and nobody bothers another!  This is the unification of the integral Kli.

It is completely unimportant if the friend feels this or not. If I subdue myself and connect with him, I receive his effort, his connection, all that is in him.
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From a Preparation Lesson for the Arava Convention, 1/30/14

The Two Poles Of Oneness

When I feel that I lack the right desire, I need to ask for it. This is called the “prayer before prayer”: I pray in order to awaken a request in me for the Creator, the right desire that I don’t have at the moment.

Now on the contrary, I would rather eat and take a nap, but I ask to be awakened; I want to feel the emptiness of my current thoughts and above them awaken to bestowal, to love, and to feel fulfillment from this. The request itself, the turning towards the Creator, is my “nourishment,” filling me with vitality. You see, in this way I am linked to the Creator, and I don’t need anything more. So how could I sleep now?

Question: But if I don’t want to sleep anymore, so haven’t I nullified this desire within me, and not gone above it?

Answer: Now I am in need of other fulfillment. I love the other and want to bestow to him. My previous desire doesn’t disappear; it burns within me as before, but at this moment I am involved with bestowal.

There is nothing I can do about it; in spirituality I always have two desires, two feelings. On the one hand I feel my inner emptiness that I don’t want to fill as usual, and on the other hand, I want to stay above it with a desire to bestow. I must have this emptiness as my “body,” which is what I have restrained. Without it, I would not be able to advance.

The question is how is it possible to feel these two desires simultaneously? TheTzimtzum (restriction) was designed for this: I take control over the desire, in spite of its power and above it, build a Masach with an intention to bestow and a burning aspiration for it.

This is the duality that is discovered in spirituality, and we must get used to it. One of its most prominent examples is told in the Torah: (Genesis 21:12) in Isaac shall your seed be called, the Creator says to Abraham; and after that He ordered him to sacrifice Isaac in the land of Moriah, (Genesis 22:2) and offer him there for a burnt-offering. How do we integrate these two contradictory stipulations?

Baal HaSulam writes in Letter 51: a person cannot scrutinize the body and the soul as two subjects. Rather, he is composed by the Creator as one, meaning as one subject, and therefore spiritual perception is difficult for him, really like two opposites that are impossible to clothe in one subject. And in spite of it all, we must internalize this principle, to comprehend it somewhat, otherwise we simply will not survive.

And if it’s bad for me today, if I am tired of my futile efforts, lose direction and prefer to take a nap, if emptiness dominates me, the despair, the powerlessness, and life begins to surprise me with unpleasant surprises, on the one hand I must rise above the problems that are sent to me and see them not as obstacles but as salvation. You see, without them I would not feel a need for the Creator, for the help of the Creator.

And therefore it’s necessary to hold these two points together, to be in Bina and Malchutsimultaneously, and go forward like this. The person must be “divided” into two: into a body (desire to receive) and a soul (an intention to bestow). He requires this split. However, the desire doesn’t disappear; it’s not nullified, and I will need to work above it all the time. Within it dwells emptiness, and above it shines the goal that I want to attain. So the “head of the Partzuf” makes the right calculation in spite of the “rumblings of the stomach.”

However, both must be perceived by the receiver, as they are for the joy of the festival, continues Baal HaSulam. It is precisely between these two poles where happiness is found. Through our discussion today about the perpetual contrast between them, we build the foundation for the future Masach.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/30/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

Congress week

Dear Readers, as a result of the editor taking part in the forthcoming 8 day Congress week, the blog will resume in 8-9 days.

Upcoming Events in Israel

Arava Congress for Men/Mirror Congress for Women in Petach Tikva

January 31 – February 1, 2014

Integral Education Training

February 2 – 3, 2014

World Kabbalah Convention

February 5 – 7, 2014

Link to Congress page

Everyone Is Traveling To The Convention

I am filled with anxiety about our convention in February. We are given work from above, an opportunity, responsibility for the souls, as if they are put into our hands in order to take care of them. This is a dear and great responsibility.

The Creator wants to be discovered and places before you conditions so that you must relate to this vessel as you would relate to the Creator. For precisely the right integration between all parts of the vessel, all parts of the Divinity, constructs the form of the Creator.

All of these desires that arrive from all ends of the world are the base; they are the area in which He is revealed. They invest so much, they are with us all the time. Many groupssimply lock up their centers and come to the convention in full force.

And this imposes upon us a great responsibility. This is not talking about the organizational part, but rather, how we embrace and absorb them immediately and are absorbed within them. We are not hosting them; rather, we include them among us without any difference, in a completely new general condition that doesn’t exist in us or in them at the moment.

They are making supreme efforts, arriving from the most distant places, loaded with an unprecedented intensity, and we must reach a new state for connection, for the yearning for mutual bestowal within which the Bestower will be revealed.

Question: If we succeed in melting into one another and becoming integrated within an immense common desire, will this create a world vessel on a new level? How will we not waste the opportunity? This is the realization of everything that we have been waiting a lifetime for.

Answer: We must awaken one another, be responsible for each other. Each one is now determining his fate.

Question: It is up to us to acquire the deficiency of the friends. How do I pay for this?

Answer: By renunciation of the ego. There is no other price. It is as if we peel the shell from the heart in order to adhere to the friends until we feel their desire as our desire. We connect the desires that yearn for the discovery of the Creator. We connect and expect the arrival of the Light that Reforms, the power that will connect us and be revealed in us as the power of bestowal. And then we will flow within the characteristic of bestowal. From now on, all of our deeds are derived only from this feeling; We feel that we are in a sea of bestowal. It envelops us in warmth from all directions and obligates us with subtlety to carry out our obligations. I nullify myself and then this characteristic of bestowal works through me.

But this is only mutual integration. And after that it is up to me to grow like an embryo, to hold the characteristic of bestowal within my ego. It is like a boat set into the sea; I want to increase the activity of the general bestowal that is revealed in me on the first level, the initial stage of the Light of Nefesh de Nefesh”. Through my willing combination with this characteristic, I strengthen the action, they say 620 times in 125 spiritual levels. And all of this is the result of my participation, of my efforts in a sea of bestowal in which I discover myself like an embryo in the water’s of its mother’s womb.

In the beginning I give myself up over the growing desire to receive, nullifying it in order to dwell within the characteristic of bestowal, identifying with it. And this is active work, active nullification of myself, and is realized over an opposing ego. The “flesh” that is added to the embryo awakens opposition and it is as if it builds from itself a negative image of itself.

Question: So how do we attain all of this? How do we acquire the deficiency of the friends?

Answer: This is through faith above reason. I want the characteristic of bestowal to dominate in me above all of my intellect and feeling. I already understand that I am not the master of my own house. In every moment of my life something dominates me that is revealed against my will. But there is also free choice. I choose the dominance of the characteristic of bestowal. In the face of all the desires that are revealed in me and arouse rejection, indifference, and additional negative things in me, I want bestowal to dominate in me.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/19/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

A Life Giving Sprout From A Rotted Grain

The first Rabash article about the group starts with the words:“We have gathered here to establish a society…” since without it a man cannot reach the goal. Only through it can one implement oneself and only due to it one grows.

One’s spiritual growth has nothing in common with material development when one is nurtured by a group and thus develops. Spiritual development takes place within the group to the extent of the connection and unity among the friends, to the degree of my disappearance in the group, my dissolving in it.

Once a person understands that this is one’s spiritual growth and focuses solely on this, one can consider he is on the right track.

Before that, one represents “an unplanted seed”: it is stored somewhere, but nothing can grow out of it, and nobody knows if anything at all will ever grow out of it. This is why it is a way by which we can evaluate a person who belongs to our organization, who comes to us, studies in the Kabbalah Education Center, the Kabbalah Academy or takes any other Kabbalah course.

One can stay with us for a long time, but only when one starts regarding oneself not only as a part of the group, but as a seed that has to be planted into the group as it would be planted in the ground or it won’t ever grow—when one starts sensing and evaluating oneself this way, one’s spiritual preparation begins.

Seriousness and effectiveness of our preparation depend on the ability of the group to absorb new people and on the degree of the group’s ability to attract people and have them literally dissolve in it and feel that it is the place where each one can fit physically, morally, materially and spiritually.

We have to position ourselves in the group as a seed that practically disappears when growing and turns into “nothing and nobody.” We should consider ourselves to be a material that originates a qualitatively new entity: the group. This is what our spiritual growth is about.

We have to measure and evaluate ourselves relative to our spiritual growth with regard to our absorption into the group. Therefore, our rises and downfalls, all sorts of changes in our moods, sensations, understandings, and so on and so forth have to be sensed not individually but collectively.

It doesn’t matter how much one knows, whether one is able to sense spirituality, what one understands or realizes, or how deeply one knows the study material. Those are not the units of measurement, but false ideas of what spiritual growth is, because spiritual growth is measured solely by a quality and to the extent of one’s ability to unite with others.

That’s why the first thing that we have to reach is a zero level, when we become as a drop of semen or a seed that is planted in the ground and that becomes nothing.

In other words, all our egoism, our whole lives, everything that happened before, should not be taken into consideration at all. Naturally, we have to take care of our material life. At the material plane we have to continue being who we used to be previously, but the main thing for us is to turn into a drop of semen that initiates the spiritual life, the development of the fetus. That’s how we should visualize ourselves.

Only when one senses that one has almost achieved this state, continues aspiring to it, and evaluates oneself only through this prism, when this state becomes one’s goal, one’s dream, when anything one does and exerts at is aimed at achieving this result, only then one gets on the right track. The rest of one’s alleged achievements and attainments are not important to one anymore. This basic re-loading and re-evaluation of oneself is the change that is far more important than anything else. This kind of re-evaluation places a person in the very beginning of the spiritual ladder.

Then, when one turns into a zero, i.e., when the first restriction (Tzimtzum Aleph) takes place, one draws a line, and from this moment on, one’s appreciation of the group and one’s environment continues increasing. One clarifies whether one is just positioned inside the group or one represents the group’s active part that fully contributes oneself to it and is able to enter one’s friends and the entire group as an active element not out of one’s past, but out of one’s present moment, when one absorbs the desires, hopes, and goals of the entire group as one’s own, when one works for others as a mother for her children, serves them and makes everything one can for their further advancement.
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From the St Petersburg Convention 7/12/13 Lesson 4

Rendezvous At The Dump

Rabash, “Letter 29”: And the idea is that work that is usually done with trees is also done with a person in order to train him. Things are brought that are required for working with the tree, and from that, we learn about working with a person. First of all, there is manure.

The work of the person on himself begins from this. After he makes a choice and is going in the right direction by deciding that he will ascend and be involved with his soul, he serves the soul and not the body. We don’t abandon the body. We require it, but only to the degree that it helps with the work on the soul.

We fertilize, we bring manure to them. Likewise the person must bring manure into himself, meaning garbage, the despicable qualities in a person. But the person doesn’t need to bring manure from outside as he would with the tree; rather, he must bring in the manure from the hidden to the revealed; this means within his emotion, so that he will feel the degree of the contemptibility of his despicable qualities. Otherwise he is not prepared to correct his deeds.

We should not be afraid of all that “garbage” that floats up to us from within. We are talking about a person who does good deeds, who always is yearning for the good, meaning, for bestowal and connection. However, it is precisely through this that he awakens and brings up all of the garbage that is hidden inside of him that he must clarify and correct. This is the first stage of the inner work.

We don’t need to be afraid that within everyone a sack of stinking garbage is discovered. As long as you haven’t discovered it, it doesn’t stink. However, you must discover it in order to carry out your first spiritual work, which is “fertilization.” All respect is due to those people who, in spite of all the stench that they discover in their egoistic characteristics, continue to strengthen the understanding within them that this comes from the Creator. The Creator arranges this so that they always can make the right choice and advance onward.

The tree lives thanks to this manure only, so fertilize! It is amazing how, through the right use of the right garbage recognized by a person as fertilizer for growth, he is elevated through faith above reason, helping him to advance. This is not simple work, but very respected. The sorting of our internal garbage and its correct use makes it possible for us to rise to a higher and higher level all the time.

The higher we rise, the more vile garbage and filth we discover within us, and on the highest levels, such characteristics begin to be revealed in a person which shock him, “Is all this really found within me?” Yes, in every person are hidden the most disgusting characteristics, and only our connection can save us. Only the connection with the friends directs a person correctly. We hope that we will succeed in raising all of our inner garbage to holiness!

We must understand that Mount Sinai is a mountain of garbage, and it is precisely upon this that we must go. There, at the peak, above all of our garbage, exists our encounter with the Creator, really in the middle of the central garbage dump. The main thing is not to be afraid of this garbage and not to hide it, rather to see that it is possible to correct it with the help of the friends. It is impossible to do anything in spirituality alone, not even a single step. However, thanks to the friends, you will transform this stench into a pleasant fragrance.

Everything depends only on the direction. If the direction is egoistic, then we smell a terrible stench, and if it is in order to bestow, then this smell suddenly becomes fragrant incense.
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From a Talk during the Meal 1/17/14

Poison That Heals

There is nothing besides the Torah and prayer, that is, the discovery of the shortcomings that I must clarify, sort through. I must connect with the friends in order to create the right deficiency that is imperative for the correction that will take place through our closeness, our integration with each other, the connection and adhesion of all the shattered parts.

As a result, we reach the inability to connect, and we clarify that there exists some kind of obstacle among us that disturbs us. It could be that the Creator won’t allow us to do this or it is our egoistic nature itself, which was also created by the Creator.

In other words, we discover disturbances on the way towards connection, correction, and restoration of the whole vessel, the one collective soul in which we can discover the Creator as a single power, and in this manner we realize the goal of creation, this being our personal goal as well.

If we work on all of this, then we reach our true shortcoming: our inability to attain connection. And about this it is said: “The One who makes peace on high will make peace for us,” will complete our unification, and will connect us. A prayer like this will be accepted immediately and we will merit an answer to the prayer.

The answer to the prayer arrives in the form of the Light that Reforms that connects us. This Light is called Torah. Therefore it is said, “I created the evil inclination,” the desire that separates us and doesn’t allow us to connect. At the moment that we want to connect, to be included with each other, to melt into one another, we discover the evil inclination that is awakened in us. And before that it doesn’t show itself.

It is concealed inside like a snake and we don’t feel it. But the moment that we begin to approach each other with the intention to connect, then the snake shows its head and doesn’t allow it. It secretes its poison, and then we understand, feel, and discover what that “evil inclination” is.

But against this evil inclination, the Light that Reform comes and transforms it into the good inclination. That is, without this ego we would not succeed in reaching connection; it is specifically the evil inclination that becomes the good inclination. It is like snake venom, which on the one hand is poisonous but on the other hand is used as a remedy. Every remedy is a poison, but a poison taken in a very small dose that can be used to treat the disease.

Poison is at the foundation of every remedy, but not every poison is a remedy. If we match the poison of the snake to the poison within us, then the Light of correction is revealed within. That is how we reach the Torah; that is, we already have Torah (the Light that Reforms) and prayer.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/21/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

The Ideal Woman At A Convention

Question: How should a woman ideally carry out her role at the three upcoming conventions?

Answer: The ideal woman includes all of the women of our world group within her. All of the women are connected together; they nullify their ego, their desire to gossip, to criticize, and their mutual disdain.

And it is not that they have forgiven each other’s shortcomings; rather, they truly feel that we are becoming one body. Our intellect and emotions detach us and bring us out of this common collective body by giving each one the illusion that she exists separately from the others.

We come to the convention in order to discover the truth, to see with the undistorted view that the whole world is one system. There is only matter that was created by the Creator“from nothing” in which the power of “something from something” dominates. Only love and connection dwell in the world. And that it seems to us otherwise is only because we are not like this ourselves. If I change myself in order to connect with others, then I will directly feel the upper world, here and now. Nothing else is needed other than changing our perception.

The ideal woman of Bnei Baruch feels this higher system, is included within it, and looks at the world with corrected eyes. I dream to see such women.

Question: How do we do the maximum? How do we focus on the inner work in order to attain this ideal image most rapidly?

Answer: We start from here, that all of the particular problems that exist in a group begin to be perceived and corrected as a common problem in a family. And we are even more than a family, we are one body. Even a hundred years ago Baal HaSulam wrote that the world of today is one family, one system. But we didn’t see this until now. We hope that now our Bnei Baruch group will ultimately become one united woman and one united man. And then these two halves can connect with an immense merger in which the Creator is discovered. We are already very close to this condition; so come, let’s hasten our advancement towards this.

I expect to see everyone as great as a result of the convention. And the women will play an even more important role here than the men. We know that women quietly determine the whole order of our lives. Therefore, I very much hope that the women will help us to rise over the course of the next two weeks in a meaningful way. After the convention we will already meet on the next level. I wish all of us success!
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From Kab TV’s Preparation to the Convention 1/24/14