If we place our “seed” into a good environment, it develops; but if we place even the very best seed into “bad soil” (environment), it will wither. Everything depends solely on the environment. That is, we need people around us who reveal the evil of egoism within themselves and want to correct it.

I must place myself in such an environment and strive to absorb everything possible from it to the maximum extent: moisture, minerals, warmth, everything that the soil can give to the seed.

For, as Baal HaSulam writes in the article “Freedom of Will,” at the hour of death a person will not be able to take anything from this world with him except the attained quality of bestowal, which can be acquired only in this world, and through which one feels oneself living in the upper world. It is said: “See your world in your life.”

And if nothing has been attained, then one remains only like a seed, which will later be placed again into the earth and given a new chance.
[13208]
From Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/18/10, Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”

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There are two opposite worlds in the creation: the material world, created by the desire to receive, and the spiritual world, created by the desire to bestow. The desire to receive pleasure is a central quality of the material world. Our world is given to us in the sensations of the five senses, consisting of this desire, and the human mind helps us to interchange it.

There is also another state that we can create while being in this lowest of the worlds by beginning to change its nature, its matter from the quality of reception to the quality of bestowal. And then we will see matter in a completely different form, a different appearance, a different plane, matter that works outside of itself, for bestowal.

There is no such quality in our world, because everything that I feel here, I feel because it enters my sensory organs. And the spiritual world is arranged inversely, in a state where I exit myself and feel everything outside of myself.

But it is not clear to us how it is possible to feel something outside of yourself. If I see something, it exists in the space that my sensory organ attains, includes, and feels. But how can I feel what it does not feel? In other words, a person has a threshold of limitations in attaining the world in his sensory organs.

And the spiritual world is attained and takes shape in our feelings that work according to the principle of “outside of ourselves.” For this, a new sensory organ is created that senses the other: I feel what is in him, what he feels. This can be done only when a person acquires the quality of love.

In our world, love is self–gratification from food, sex, family, children, no matter what. We love these sources of pleasure because they evoke a special arousal in us that we feel as something pleasant.

But true love implies loving not myself and in myself, but an object outside of me. And then it turns out that I can feel what he feels. If I acquire the ability to feel something outside of myself, then this is called acquiring a spiritual quality, the quality of bestowal, true love, when I can love what another loves and not what I like. This is the difference between one world and another.

It is difficult to speak about this because it constantly eludes beginners. But gradually, by overcoming all kinds of obstacles and difficulties and by carrying out our exercises, we can reach a state in which we truly begin to feel what the other person loves or does not love without any regard for ourselves at all!

But how can this be done without regard for myself? And here the science of Kabbalah says that it is necessary to make some corrections, additions, and preparation. This means that I make a restriction on myself, what is called Tzimtzum, and do not include in my feelings, in the heart, mind, and thoughts, anything that is in me.

I rise above myself and become absolutely neutral, as if I personally do not exist, and only someone else exists. I enter into him and feel him in himself the way he feels himself. It is exactly here that I have the opportunity to rise to the level of a spiritual sensor, a spiritual vessel (Kli).

This is achieved through training, which is very simple: I sit together with my friends, and engage in each trying to annul himself before the others, to get out of himself and try to enter into them.

This is a special practice that is carried out with the help of a force called the upper light. If we strive to connect with one another above our egoism, then a special upper light truly descends upon us, an altruistic force that allows us to exit ourselves. And then we create, outside of ourselves, a common field in which we exist as one unified whole.

This practice is called a workshop. With the help of such workshops, we draw the surrounding light (Ohr Makif) upon ourselves, which lifts us above our nature and gives us the opportunity to integrate into each other. It is then that we begin, through others, to feel the upper world, a new space, the quality of bestowal and love, the quality of being outside of oneself, above oneself.
[181498]
From Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/21/16

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A proper prayer must consist of two parts:

1. Gratitude—praising the Creator for bringing us into the group, uniting us, forming us into a single whole, for responding to our intermediate silly and not-silly requests and whims. Otherwise, to whom are we addressing ourselves?

2. An urgent request for one another, not for oneself. After all, if we all unite correctly, then this request for one another no longer even makes sense, because it immediately turns into a request for the Creator, i.e., we desire to turn to Him.

A mandatory condition must be the understanding that only the Creator can answer our request. He is the only One who exists, the only One who responds and acts in the entire system of creation.

Moreover, we must suffer from the fact that we have a great desire, yet we have not yet received an answer to it. And later, when I receive an answer to my request, I feel joy, delight, and fulfillment. The difference between the magnitude of suffering during the prayer (not animal suffering, not for oneself, but for the benefit of the created beings and the Creator) and my delight upon receiving the answer constitutes the amount and quality of the joy that fills me, that is, the group.

Therefore, the more effort we invest in properly shaping the desire for the light, the closer we will come to it and the faster we will pass the path of forming the correct desire to which the light will respond by entering it. Thus, we will be granted the revelation of the Creator.

And it does not matter how beautifully this desire is formulated or whether it is clothed in lofty words. Only one thing matters—the sincerity of the heart in the request for the friends, for the group, for the world, for the Creator. Then my desire will truly become a desire to bestow, to which the light will instantly respond according to the law of equivalence of form.
[187817]
From the International Kabbalah Congress, Moscow, 5/2/16, Lesson 3

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We are all puppets, deprived of free choice. People circulate in this world, in material, “animal” life.

Meanwhile, their egoistic desire grows until it reaches special states of despair that are directed toward the revelation of the embryo of the soul, the point in the heart.

And perhaps not a point in the heart, simply suffering sends a person into search, and then he joins those in whom the soul has already “broken through.”

Within the common cauldron, desire continues to simmer, and at a certain stage a part of humanity acquires the possibility of free choice. This means that people act, so to speak, independently of the Creator. They are freed from their egoistic desire, and it is entirely and completely in His hands.

I acquire freedom from my egoism and become independent of it, that is, independent of the Creator who governs it. Together with others, we turn into independent acting beings; we want to understand and realize what is happening ourselves and to take part in the process ourselves.

I do not want the Creator to govern me—I want to act exactly as He does, but of my own freewill. Through this, I come to know His work, His actions, His goals. My “profit” lies in the fact that I become similar to Him, become a human (Adam), and perform exactly the same work that He performed over me.

In the end, all the benefit here is that I give pleasure to the Creator. There is nothing else besides this.
But there are also people who do not possess a soul of this type. Their souls can only join the development to one degree or another. As they become what is called “dust under the feet of the righteous,” they receive illumination and spiritualization through this, they understand the importance of the process, and they also acquire their soul.

Likewise, in our world there are leaders, “those who lead,” and “those who are led,” those who simply live their lives without questioning them. They constitute 99.9% of the population who earn their bread and do not feel a lack of anything more. However, in unity with everyone, each will reach his or her root in the common Malchut.

Through interconnection we all feel ourselves living in one world. Of course, great scientists, philosophers, and thinkers understand it far better than a street sweeper or a market trader who knows only how to sell watermelons and watch football on television. There is no need at all to despise him, he is not guilty of anything; it is simply that his desire has such a structure and acts in such a way. Another person, however, needs to attain the world from the height of Malchut of infinity, otherwise he feels unrealized.

All the difference between them lies in the desire that the Creator created and awakens to life. Everything comes from the Creator. And therefore the thinker must understand that in his realization he is in no way higher than the trader. For the circumstances do not depend on him at all. Thus it turns out that in this sense they are completely equal, because all their accounts are signed by the Creator.
[41714]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson, 4/28/11, Baal HaSulam, “The Acting Mind”

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