Seize The Creator, Embrace, And Never Let Go

Question: We always try to understand that everything comes from Above, and this begs the question: To what extent do you need to accept the conditions that are given to you, and to what extent do you need to try to rise above them and adhere to the group regardless of the circumstances? In other words, when do you need to accept the conditions that you have, and when do you rise above them in connection to the group?

Answer: First and foremost, one should cling to the Source of all of these conditions. As for whether any effort needs to be exerted in this or not, it depends on the circumstances. What difference does it make? The important thing is to constantly be glued to the Source.

I might like it or I might not, this varies, although it is not important. I grab Him and shout, “You are mine!” and that is it. And then you need to separate from yourself whatever your egoism is feeling at the time, whatever I feel by addressing Him, that is, to go in faith above reason. But the most important thing is to seize Him and not let go.

Often, we are given circumstances where even if we do not wish to, we are still required to accept them with our minds. How do we act in such cases?

If my friends or certain life circumstances are telling me that everything that is happening to me right now comes from the Creator, then however unpleasant this may be for me, since I am unable to agree with it right now because it completely churns me, I nevertheless need to accept Him as the source of all that is happening. Moreover, as a good and kind source, one that is necessary for me so that I would work with it and bring myself to a state when all the time, to whatever extent possible, I remain with Him.

Do I perceive it as an obstacle? – Yes.

Is this obstacle for my own benefit? – Yes.

Is it pleasant or unpleasant? – Unpleasant.

Still, I have to gradually come to a state where this obstacle will fade away. This requires a lot of patience and a lot of work, and then everything will turn into sweetness.
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From a lesson in Russian, 2/10/2014

The Life Of The Embryo Depends On The Umbilical Cord

The main thing is not to forget the most important thing: We have to attribute all the discernments, all the questions, and all the excuses only to the connection with the group. Everything else belongs to the corporeal world. I may think of sublime things, but it makes no difference since it has nothing to do with spirituality. Only one thing belongs to spirituality: my connection with the group, which is called the form of the embryo. This is the only thing that belongs to spirituality and it’s the only thing that takes on a form of in order to bestow, and nothing but that!

Therefore, I ask, listen, and think about some of the questions in the workshop, but there should only be one discernment in my thoughts: my current connection with the group, its style, and its manner. This is called a form, and it’s the most important thing for me at the moment. The only thing I care about at any given moment is my connection with the group by which the form of my spiritual Partzuf, its height, etc. is determined.

No matter what we discuss, this is the only thing I think about. This connection is more important than anything else, like the placenta or the umbilical cord are for the embryo and nothing but it. This means being constantly part of the source, as a result of which the stabilizing force and the delaying force are valued only with regard to this one discernment with regard to my connection with the group. We mustn’t forget that since otherwise it’s as if you are hanging in the air engaging in abstract philosophy instead of with specific clarifications.
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From the Unity Workshop 2/18/2014

Why Am I Sick?

Question: Why do health problems appear with us all the time, in thefamily, etc.?

Answer: We don’t know why we are sick because we don’t see the entire system of creation. Someone does something in one place and for that someone in another place “takes it on the head” because we are a single integral system. So I cannot tell you how to act when someone is sick.

We need only to advance towards an inclusive unity. Only this alone! As Baal HaSulam writes, love of friends is ready to cover all of our problems.
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What Are You Ashamed Of?

Question: When I am in a group, I feel some kind of sense of shame and try to understand what my ego wants to tell me with this. But this is not shame with regard to the Creator, but in regard to the physical world?

Answer: Tell me, what should I be ashamed of in this world? Is it because I am a regular normal beast? Even if abnormal beastly defects exist within me, this is also not me. What is there to be ashamed of?! I want to steal? Yes. I want to sin? Yes. Yet this is no reason to be ashamed! These are normal human characteristics, and it’s not even necessary to think about them.

Shame can be only from this, I could approach the Creator and I belittle those possibilities that He gives to me. A feeling like this appears only with regard to a host who honors a guest and the guest begins to feel ashamed. But this happens on the highest levels. And so it is also said that shame is only for high souls. Therefore, shame must only be because I don’t utilize the opportunities that are given to me from Above.
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Ascend Above Reason

The Torah, “Exodus” (Ki Tissa), 32:2: Aaron said to them, “Remove the golden earrings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters and bring them [those earrings] to me.”

This is saying that all of the internal characteristics and senses of a person that help his advancement: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching now receive egoistic tendencies and directions. But a person doesn’t understand and doesn’t feel that he is going in an opposite direction.

In that he feels an acute requirement for support, he relies upon what he has on hand, his reason. He doesn’t have anything more than it. There exist desires and their fulfillments. Fulfillment through knowledge and reason is the highest fulfillment after food, sex, family, wealth, and control.

Fulfillment through knowledge gives us a sensation of mastery over something very significant, a feeling of control. Whereas, in spiritual work we must go forward, acquiring a new, higher reasoning that replaces material knowledge with bestowal and love, meaning to advance contrary to reason.

Ascent above reason happens when I see that according to my reasoning, my egoistic understanding, I must specifically make this step, yet I make a completely different calculation, but not against reason, for I don’t go contrary to reason, but rather above reason. It is very important to feel what “above” means. Sometimes we say “contrary to reason,” but we don’t mean nullification of reason but ascent above it.

By nullifying reason and not taking it into account at all, I seemingly nullify it. Whereas here I am found with my former reasoning and to ascend to the next higher reasoning I must do this through a method of increasing faith, increasing bestowal and love, without any egoistic basis, contrary to my internal egoistic call. In this case, for us the basis for advancement becomes the general rule, “And you shall love your friend as yourself.”
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 9/9/13

An External Ring Made Of Several Million

Question: At the beginning of the week you said that if we manage to tighten the connection between the friends who are returning to their home towns and are able to overcome all the obstacles of this world, the end of correction would come the next Sabbath. If that is so, why did we hear in yesterday’s lesson that the end of correction will not come unless a couple of million people who support us and who are in contact with us come together?

Answer: It’s a very complicated question and it depends on many conditions. How can we keep the connection between all the groups if we are not surrounded by an external ring of several million? One doesn’t nullify the other, but we will not feel the need to be so strongly connected, as if we are one next to the other although we have already dispersed each to his own continent, if these millions don’t oblige us. So it depends on that.

Question: If that’s the case, then what is our mission for this week in order to summon and to draw the force of the end of correction that is called Messiah?

Answer: We have to prepare ourselves for external dissemination actions all over the world and to strengthen the groups and the friends who engage in integral education. We have to reduce the dissemination of the wisdom of Kabbalah and totally switch to the dissemination of the integral education. I have no doubt that it’s much closer to the implementation of the end of correction and that it summons less objection. We have to establish detailed work plans of the general dissemination in all the continents, countries, cities, and groups.

We should perceive the next series of conventions in Europe, North and South America (Columbia, Chile, Peru, Mexico, the U.S., and Canada) not simply as conventions but as an internal convention that will give us a great spiritual push forward. We already need to prepare ourselves for that by using every opportunity given.

The fact that we have started talking about the formation of the spiritual embryo and the spiritual womb is a great success. It’s very meaningful progress. It isn’t so difficult and we simply need to organize ourselves because we already know where the hands and the legs of this spiritual embryo are and what we should hope for and what we should do. All the discernments are in our hands. It really fills me with great hope and joy.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/12/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

The Actual Task

Question: What is our task today?

Answer: The task today is to think about how to construct a spiritual womb and fetus at each and every moment with all the friends together, in other words, building the state of pregnancy. We need to clarify for ourselves which intentions, efforts, and types of connection between us are required to construct the womb and by means of which efforts and types of connection between us do we construct the fetus.

And likewise, it’s necessary to understand what kind of a gap there must be between the womb and the fetus. By means of what will it continue to grow all the time? For the size of this gap determines the influence of the Surrounding Light on us; to the degree that the higher seems greater to us and to the degree that I am lowlier, so the Light that Reforms acts on me more strongly.

Within the Surrounding Light there are Sefirot and many types of Lights that influence us and build us from all various kinds of forms. From the start, we use a material which is formless, unshaped desire. This is like our physical body that is constructed from stem cells that later begin to connect and build various body parts: hands, feet, brain, heart, liver, lungs, and so forth.

They begin to form very complex connections, receiving from the mother all kinds of functions and types of work, to be able to take care of themselves within their body. Previously, the mother supplied blood for the fetus; whereas, now its heart begins to work and after this all the body parts become included in the work, except for the lungs. The fetus begins to function as a living body. Only a few systems are left which are inactive. Afterward we will learn why they are active only after birth.

It has already been proven through research that the fetus sees the world through the tissues of the mother. They turn on a light from the outside and the fetus knows and reacts to this. Don’t you remember how you blinked your eyes when you were in the uterus of the mother?

Therefore, one should not underestimate the level of the fetus and think that this is just self-nullification. Everything depends on this, on which levels I nullify myself and accordingly add a multitude of observations. The Light of Infinity comes to me, but within me all kinds of levels of stages of desire are awakened from zero to 4 degrees. And to the degree that I nullify my desire in order to remain a fetus, I enter into cooperation with the Upper Light of Infinity in each and every part.

Besides breathing, which belongs to the level of Bina and above, all the rest of the levels begin to work even before birth. A fetus is a very wise level, this is the foundation for the entire continued development of all the levels. Everything begins from the still level, meaning from the fetus.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/12/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Labor On Writing The Letters Of The Work

All the worlds, the Partzufim, and the Sefirot are revealed in the connection between us. All this begins from a level of an embryo in which a person treats everyone as if he himself does not exist. It’s like the restriction, self-annulment. The ego is restricted as if it doesn’t exist and thus a person is incorporated in his environment like an embryo in his mother.

This doesn’t happen all at once since first a person has to go through the three days of the absorption of the semen. Self-annulment isn’t enough here since it’s only a way not to disturb the upper. However, in order to be incorporated in Him and to become an embryo who adheres to the wall of the womb, I have to go through the three days of the absorption of the semen. Although I restrict myself, I have to take the three forms of the ascent, the right line, the left line, and the middle line. I annul myself before them too and accept the domination of the upper.

The upper is the group for me. We don’t look for the upper somewhere up in Heaven but only in our environment. The environment can treat me well or badly, but it doesn’t matter. I am ready to annul myself before it with regard to everything that happens, as long as I am adhered to the group in faith above reason, and understand that this is my upper level. The Creator turns to me through the friends.

Thus the three days of the absorption of the semen go by and if I am ready to annul myself before the group, I continue to develop. This also requires self-annulment. The embryo constantly annuls itself, but by that I begin to feel the influence of the group. The friends may not feel what they give me, like the example of Rabbi Yossi Ben Kisma and his students, but I receive true spiritual discernments through the whole world, through everything that surrounds me.

After the first forty days, I reach the level of Bina. This period is called the forty days of the creation of the embryo since from that moment onward I begin to take on the form of the future human being. Bina draws the first form of the Creator for me. Thus, the period of the development of the spiritual embryo continues with all the fillings that he receives. The main thing is to constantly annul ourselves during this period. The more I annul myself on top of my ego, the more filling I receive. My filling is my inner struggle, overcoming my ego, which turns into the letters of the work.

My letters of the work, which means my filling, are added to the form of HaVaYaH. My desire begins to bend in order to accept the form of the future human being. Thus we begin our spiritual path.

I believe that the example of the mother who teaches her children to be good and to play nicely and follow the grownups’ example is a very good example. If we want to become the one who resembles the Creator, we have to follow His example. The Creator is good and benevolent, and I also have to prove that I am good to people. If I really yearn for that, I will discover an increasingly greater inner resistance on part of my nature to that, and by overcoming it, I will begin to reveal the Creator.

We learn about the Creator from our evil inclination and don’t receive any readymade form from Above. The form, the filling of the letters, is actually the letters! We build ourselves into the Creator by our desires, by our self-annulment and self-submission, and by yearning to resemble the Creator more and more above our ego, which wants the opposite.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/13/14