Question: How can we extol an idea that no one actually feels in the group?

Answer: How can we praise an abstract idea that is completely unfelt, and moreover, make it the cornerstone and goal for the future? Precisely because it constantly slips away from us, it helps us advance toward it.

In this process we do not yet have the proper intellect or feelings, nor any prior experience or training, no data or accumulated sensations along the spiritual path. Therefore, every moment is new for us, and a person feels like a newborn, simply confused. One must get used to such states, because all of them are necessary.

If you grasp the idea of the Creator and His greatness, and begin to build everything else on this foundation, then you are on the right path. You are personally seeking that point within yourself that is completely connected to Him, but for now only by one percent. He stands before you as the goal, as one hundred percent. You as Israel have one percent from Him, and your goal is that He will be within you one hundred percent. This is called drawing closer to the Creator.

It is said: “Israel, the Creator, and the Torah are one.” This is our motto, our law, and the formula we advance with.

The Creator is the quality of bestowal one hundred percent; Israel represents one tenth of a percent, a millionth fraction of bestowal. The quality within me called Israel grows from a millionth part to one hundred percent. This means that within myself I pass through degrees and states until I reach the goal. Then the Creator is within me one hundred percent.

I come to this through the Torah and the commandments, through the light that reforms, through the group, and through other means. And each time we clarify what these two points are and what the means is to reach them; each time it requires effort.
[353906]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/7/26, Rabash, “What Is, ‘There Is Nothing that Has No Place,’ in the Work?”

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Question: How does the group decide what is day and what is night in spiritual work?

Answer: The group sets its own standards. What is the highest standard and the ideal indication? The quality of giving, bestowing like the Creator, is the goal, a state that I regard as the completion of the path.

Every time I partially achieve this goal—the intention for the sake of bestowal, whether I am currently immersed in it or merely aspiring to it (even though I have not yet achieved it), I must resolve that this is day. I do this not based on my subjective feelings, but based on the fact that this is the truth.

All other states that may appear sweet in my senses confuse me and constantly pull me in the direction of receiving for myself, I define as night.

I can distinguish between night and day both in relation to my inner state and in terms of the purpose of creation; that is, by comparing my own attributes with the properties of the Creator. I can apply this “day and night” criterion to absolutely everything.

The group must accept all this as fact and as a standard. After all, what is a standard? It is something I am not yet in, but from now on, I undertake the obligation of measuring myself against it until I become exactly like it. This is called an ideal indication, the example of what I should become.

The group must constantly check itself and refine its inner charter, its ideal, regarding what it aspires to be. We must cultivate a mindset where at every stage our stages of development, we can quickly transcend the feeling of “bitter versus sweet” and instead choose to prioritize the truth regardless of the subjective flavor we may perceive within it. Ultimately, we will aspire for our next state to be one in which truth itself is perceived as sweetness, because the purpose of creation is to bestow delight upon the created beings.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/11/26, Rabash, “What Are Day and Night in the Work?”

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As long as the Creator is not revealed to us, we take the group as the defining factor and use it in place of the Creator. I enter the group and resolve that its opinion will apply to me as if the Creator were revealed.

Then I receive strength from the group, the power of authority over me. Therefore, I deliberately prepare myself for connection with the group in order to dissolve within it, so that it will begin to rule over me and give me a feeling of the greatness of the Creator.

I deliberately enter the group and position it in relation to myself so that the friends will overturn all my thoughts, all my desires, effectively giving me a new mind.

But this work does not end with a single act of closing my eyes and throwing myself into the group, and that is it. It is a meticulous process that continues in every moment. In this lies its difficulty.

Here, there must be a decision that comes from my side. This is called effort. It consists of going against the desire that I have and building this in full awareness, without closing my eyes. The entire success lies in this.

If a person succeeds methodically in allowing his “brain to be washed” regarding this abstract idea that he hates, he will see that the heavens clear up, and together with the growing difficulties he will increasingly enter concealment until he comes to revelation.

Thus, the effort lies in the free choice of the group, and this feels dreadful, no one wants it, but we must choose this each and every moment and use this choice in order to place the group so that it will “wash my brain” precisely with the idea that the Creator is great and must rule over me.

This cannot be done directly with the Creator because we would simply use our will to receive and would never be able to carry this out as we do with the group. In the group, I make efforts against my desire, override my nature, and am ready to annul myself, to lose myself within it.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/7/26, Rabash, “What Is, ‘There Is Nothing that Has No Place,’ in the Work?”

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We exist in a special state, in a unique world, in which we do not understand what is happening to us. We do not know what will happen to us now or in a minute; we do not see any clear system of reward or punishment or cause and effect of our actions, thoughts, or physical deeds. We live in relative darkness, in emptiness.

Something happens, but we hardly know how and why. We only see the immediate consequences of our mechanical actions in the present moment, and we do not see above this level.

We do not know the consequences of our desires, of good or evil thoughts. Do the thoughts and desires of others affect me? Do I feel it or not? I do not know, it is unclear. In essence, we find ourselves existing in a space of near total darkness. And this darkness does not even bother us; we have grown accustomed to it.

A small child, we see does not understand what he is doing or what is happening to him. He runs, plays, and tugs at things; a child explores the world through some minimal level of contact with it.

And us? Fundamentally, we are also at a minimal level of contact with the world. Even at the physical level, we do not clearly know whether we interact with the world correctly or not. Only in our time, in this century, are we beginning to realize how our interaction with the world impacts the environment, ecology, climate, etc. But how our thoughts affect the world, the strongest measure of impact, we do not know.

In principle, if we trace the hierarchy of our physical interaction with the world from the lowest level, the human level, which follows the inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels, is, in essence, the level of thoughts, intentions, and a person’s inner attitude toward society or the world in which one exists.

And then it becomes completely unclear where reward, punishment, and consequences of our good or bad actions are to be found.

In general, this is a problem. We are like children running around a room, doing something without understanding its meaning or precise reaction. We say to the child: “Don’t do that!” but he does not understand why. We know, but he does not. And who can tell us what is allowed or not is also unclear.

Only now are we beginning to realize that there is one single higher force (call it nature, or the Creator) that governs everything because it is integrally connected to us, and we must take it into account. We see that everything in nature follows absolute laws that act upon us without asking us. And here arises a very serious system of relationships.

How can we behave toward the surrounding nature, the higher world, the upper force, if we exist within it yet remain utterly oblivious to its presence? Consequently, we, in our folly, inadvertently behave like small children; we imagine we are free to act as we please, only to find ourselves buffeted from all sides by a barrage of painful repercussions.

Yet we fail to give these consequences the attention they deserve, we do not recognize them as the outcome of our own shortcomings, nor do we perceive the direct causal link between our actions and  nature’s response. We simply do not understand the underlying formula governing the proper interaction between ourselves and the natural world.

If we were able to perceive and understand this, then our egoism, our innate desire for a comfortable existence, would unerringly steer us in the right direction. But because this system of management  remains concealed from us, we continue to behave like small children; whatever interests us at the moment, we immediately snatch to try, without paying attention to the consequences. And if there are consequences, we do not connect them with the cause. Here lies our ignorance of governance and all our life’s problems.

Of course, this is a miserable existence, but there is nothing to be done. The higher management and the clear connection between our actions and consequences is hidden from us to raise us to a level where we ourselves will perform the correct actions not by coercion, but because we will want to be in direct connection with the Creator and will want to be good and kind.

This is precisely what nature demands of us, the unreasoning beings that we are need to realize the reality we exist in and to act in accordance with this awareness.
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From a Kabbalah Lesson in Russian, 3/17/19

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