Part 2:
Baal HaSulam. The Freedom (The Necessity to Choose a Good Environment)
https://kabbalahmedia.info/sources/4AtF9tGS
Reading Header ( 00:31) The Necessity to Choose a Good Environment
1. S. (04:29) About choosing the environment in your examples you tell us how you burned all your bridges when you came to Rabash, and you change the environment drastically and we seemingly need to stay on the border within the conditions that we have we have to be in the group and also this external environment. We have to be under the danger and the threat of the influence of the external environment, work family and all that that's around us. How can you hold on to this because your example is different and we cannot do like you did?
R. I didn't have any other opportunity or choice. You need to understand me. I lived in a completely different time and spoke with completely different people, in different environments, really different environments,. Everyone around me was against Kabbalah. You cannot imagine what it was. It was like a plague, like some viral disease like that you're touching Kabbalah. This is why I had to create for myself such conditions that I wouldn't be pulled back and this is what I did. Here I couldn't go anywhere because everyone was against it, everyone thought that I went mad, that I went insane, they thought that I lost my mind in short. I had a wife and kids, and here who knows what could have been.
S. That I understand of what you're describing, the attitude that existed towards you, but you completely changed your environment when you arrived at the Rabash, you severed yourself from the outside world. We cannot do that ;we don't have the same conditions as you. We have to live in this external thing and together with that we need to try to hold on tight, so how can we protect ourselves the way you did it by severing yourself from the environment?
R. I don't know how it's possible in your conditions. I had different conditions. I just got up and walked to a different place. I haven't had an opportunity and I had money. I got up and I moved to a different place closer to the Rabash, rented an apartment and started living next to him.
S. Nevertheless this choice that you made is preferred. He stayed with a students and didn't go to another city.
R. He stayed with the students because to them he could get knowledge because he could grow amongst them and if he moved to a different place he would have known to communicate with. I moved to a different city so I had someone to communicate with that was Rabash and his students. So the question is that I don't quite understand it.
S. The question is how with our conditions together with the fact that we have the Arvut system and the world Kli, how can we protect ourselves from the tremendous external influence which exists and you're constantly on the boundary of his influence to constantly have to choose?
R. Be more connected with one another, be more connected with one another and that's it, nothing more. You will always have the support, don't worry the Creator will always send you a variety of challenges
S. Maybe I can be more precise, Baal HaSulam writes that the freedom of choice is only in choosing the environment. We have a concrete problem with a friend who does everything he can and tries to improve his situation and he doesn't ascribe it to the Creator and the Creator is inviting him to respond correctly towards the spiritual goal, rather he gets into some psychological states and gives another explanation for his states. A person who is working like that he's completely thrown out, so what to do when we see a friend like that in the ten. How can we give him the importance and this point of view that he's undergoing a spiritual process when he needs to work on what's happening? Can you give such a friend importance when he's halfway out?
R. You need to make sure that he doesn't drop off and give him perhaps a variety of tasks that are necessary for the group for him to perform to fulfill and then he will be tied.
S. If he turns to psychology and instead of books when he feels difficulty?
R. You need to understand what he's lacking and why he's finding support in psychology and in this way show him that he doesn't find any answer in it and rather he only eases himself, psychology is not even a science.
S. How do you do? if we tell him directly he'll just put up a fight in defense?
R. Gradually you need to approach it gradually, maybe attracted from people who understand psychology and are not connected to Kabbah, maybe for them to be a bigger influence on him. Other than that there is no way but psychology is easier than anything it should be. Because psychology is not a science, we don't understand the inner world of a person especially since Kabbah is dealing particularly with that. Baal HaSulam also writes about psychology and how he relates to it and why. We have to simply think about how to explain to this friend, where he is mistaken. We won't simply pull him away from his interest, we will pull him out from this silliness that he has stuck himself in. That he is stuck in.
3. S. (13:04) He says something that always bothered me, that when a person leaves the world when he dies one does not take with him silver or jewels but only Torah and good deeds. What does that mean, what does it mean good deeds, what is Torah when a person leaves the world?
R. Whatever a person did for the sake of others.
S. Many people do it for the sake of others.
R. I don't know this, what's written and I simply explained to you
S. What are good deeds?
R. What good deeds? They are what are done positively for the other.
S. That's it
R. Yes
S. The wisdom of Kabbalah?
R. I don't know about the Wisdom of Kabbalah, it's what he did good for others.
S. What does it mean "make yourself a Rav and you make yourself a friend?" I've got myself a Rav in my environment . I accepted you, so what does it mean to make yourself a Rav?
R. That you need to do. You can make anyone make a Rav out of him.
S. I didn't do anything you exist as a Rav; in what way do I make you a Rav?
R. I'm not understand you.
S. I came here to Bnei Baruch, and I accepted you as a Rav. What does it mean? To make you a Rav?
R. Make for yourself a Rav means when you take a person to you that seems to you as great and big and you raise him above your head, meaning you're getting your sustenance from him.
S. What does it mean to buy yourself a friend here?
R. Yes in a friend too, that you will have a friend in life.
S. What does it mean to buy?
R. To buy means that if you have to do, with actions. Than to buy yourself a friend you have to by meaning, you invest into the friend.
S. You're talking about a corporeal thing also not just spiritual?
R. He speaks about corporeality.
S. The friend?
R. Yes, yes, the friend, that you invest in him and he invests in you and you are included one in the other and then in this way you can come closer.
S. If a person is in trouble like in my Ten and he say listen, I find myself a bad state should I go help them economically or take him out of the muddy waters?
R. Don't ask me these questions because I don't solve them and it's not related to me.
S. Is it right to help him
R. I answered you.
S. Meaning it's up to me
4. S. (16:45) In that case we should look for the necessary conditions meaning I have to look for a place where there are friends nearby, let's say a nearby town or something?
R. You need to find friends that will be ready to walk the same road, on the same path towards the same goal that you are thinking about and then you connect with them. As much as possible. You In them and they in you.
S. Why is it hard to find more favorable conditions? We always keep having disturbances. Do we keep trying to do everything for the sake of more connection but it becomes more and more difficult?
R. This means that you're not coming out of this work and that you are unable to work in connection.
5. S. (18:25) There's a line here that says 'even if you give me all the gold and silver and all the riches of the world will only live in a place of Torah;, Rabbi was very wise and here he says he doesn't want to live in a city without disciples of Torah so the question is, the connection between the friends is that the Torah really ? it means it doesn't matter what kinds of wisdom a person has, it's that it isn't equivalent to the connection he finds in the Torah?
R. Yes
S. They talk about books here. Can a book be an environment?
R. Yes
S. If the book can be an environment, why do I need friends?
R. That already depends on a friend if he wants to move faster or realize oneself then he needs a friend and if he doesn't have friends then at least the book.
S. Can you explain what that book which is also an environment?
R. In which he finds himself and his path.
6. S. (20:25) Each time reality brings us changes just like we had about Corona and are coming out of Corona and other things that are happening in our organization. Now in those transitions we typically lose friends or friends get weaker or it is hard for them to accept the changes fast enough. How can we be like Rav and flexible and agile and there's opportunity and we go from today to tomorrow, to the next day without any calculations.
R. In what am I flexible?
S. In accepting opportunities to go full force without any calculations of yesterday.
R. I don't understand how you see it?
S. You said that if I could come here I'll be down here.
R. I have doctors who say that I'm not allowed to for now.
S. They say that's maybe it's comfortable to sit in those conditions but if I have an opportunity to sit here that I do it means if I have an opportunity I seize it.
R. I seize it because there I profit more than here
S. How can you make the swift transition when you become flexible despite any heaviness? I prefer to stay in my comfortable conditions and I go for it.
R. 'm benefiting more. I am profiting more if I'm sitting among the students on one hand. On the other hand I have a restriction on me that I am not allowed to go downstairs.
S. For someone who doesn't see the profit so clearly like you. He doesn't see that sitting here physically isn't going to be better when the opportunity opens up, how can I be more flexible to seize an opportunity that comes to him?
R. If he doesn't have such appreciation then what can I do? Tell me? My values I will bring, I will insert into his heart?
S. I will try to ask the same questions. When we look at you it's very special to see how in one moment you're ready to change everything because that's what's most correct to do, just like the example that he gave at the beginning of Corona, the virtual reality he presented it as the best thing we have now and the most perfect thing. You helped us extract 1000% out of it. It doesn't matter what's going on, you constantly take the moment and then you realize it in full. How can we also develop such an ability to be flexible, to change and to realize and full at this point?
R. I don't see you in any challenge for myself. I'm telling you if I have before me I see to paths, then I see clearly that here there is more benefit and more profit and the turn the other way maybe that I change my path so I'm changing my direction.
S. Those who cannot see the prophet we don't have that ability?
R. Let him walk and let him go after his Ten and after his group after the teacher and the books the authors.
S. What to do if it's tearing you internally to follow them?
R. Then maybe you have even more profit and you should do it?
S. When you see before you these paths, these opportunities. What allows you to toss everything aside and follow the road? How do you make that decision?
R. I don't understand what you're standing before the fork in the road? What fork in the road do you have that you're so terrified of? Explain to me I don't understand?
S. Again it's not everyone but there are friends for whom this decision is a serious decision.
R. The decision to stay in Bnei Baruch or not?
S. Not even about deciding that and going back to the center for them it's as if those friends that there's a decision. I could say that when we moved to the virtual world, I was torn inside. The ability to hold onto the virtual reality to sit in front of the computer, it was very difficult but again all the time there are such opportunities along the way, these intersections and you have to make a decision until you do it you're being torn inside how to make a decision quickly.
R. To decide is simple. Where is the truth they've got the keys and everything the truth is where the Ten is where the Rav is, where Baal HaSulam is, he explains it. That's the truth.
S. So I see them, that's what I need to do?
R. All in all what are the crucial decisions to come to the center or stay home?
S. Yes there are people for these, this is a crucial decision. It's a judgment call, it's a decision that they have to accept and as far as they're concerned, when they're sitting virtually they feel more quality because that's for the past four years that's what we've heard, we are virtual were equal
R. But the state has changed.
S. That's the question, states have changed and how do you become flexible?
R. I go according to the revealing states according to the revealing changes. I am not responsible for the Corona when it is more or when it is less. I go according to what is decided by the doctors. I have to heed their call. There's a permission for the doctors to heal. How much I respect or don't respect them. I have to hear them and I have to listen to them.