The Mutual Dependence Between Us

You are dependent on the group because only the group can help you reveal the Creator, to the degree that you help them in that, as all of you are one vessel. You have no strength to perform the work; you need their strength. They have no strength either, and you need to help them. This is mutual dependence. On the one hand, you all reach despair, and on the other hand, you find meaning in that you nevertheless need to attain it, otherwise what are you living for?

So you start treating it more importantly. And thus, gradually, the group is revealed as a necessary means I need in order to attain the Creator. Afterwards I start feeling that it is not a means, but that it's the actual place where the Creator is revealed. And afterwards, I see them as an inseparable part of the Creator Himself, that they are the Shechina's vessel, and the Creator is revealed only in the unity among them.

And thus "Israel, the Torah and the Creator" truly become one for me. I understand that I can't reveal myself, the group and the Creator separately, but rather everything is revealed as one. This is because I only reveal a certain part, a small fragment of the entire reality. But this part includes all of reality. We always reveal ten Sefirot, no less and no more.

--Taken from the Preparation to the Lesson

Turning To My Corrected Template

If I realize that changing the importance from using others to using myself to benefit others essentially holds the whole correction I need to do, then I acknowledge the fact that I need a group to help me with it. I have no way of overturning myself on my own. And there's no point waiting for something to come from above, because the Creator does not change the order of things. You are the one who needs to change, and whatever you reveal, will be revealed inside of you. Nothing comes from above, but only from within the person. I must want to connect with the others who seem like strangers to me. Afterwards I will discover that they are parts of me, that it is really me. And I need to reveal it with my strength, or with the group's strength, the strength of the environment. I must come to an agreement with them that they will help me convince myself that it is so, and I must also help every single one of them to be convinced about it, because we have one goal.

Moreover, later on, when I turn to the books and ask for a revelation, what force do I turn to? I turn to the force of bestowal. What do I ask of it? I ask it to let me be in bestowal. Here too I awaken this force from within myself, because it resides in my vessels. I must push myself all the time to the vessel of Ein Sof. We are praying for Malchut and not for Keter, for our more corrected vessels. The Creator is always "Come and See"* the corrected template compared to me, to whom I turn, to whom I yearn. Everything depends only on my vessels.

* Ed note: The word for Creator in Hebrew is Boreh, which stems from two combined words, Bo (Come) and Re'eh (See).

--Taken from the 1st Part of the Lesson

Casting A Shadow On The Will To Receive

We need to realize that every more progressed degree is built on the former degree's foundation. The degrees are not prepared in advance, but rather you take what you currently possess and rearrange it. This is how the new degree is built.

In the current degree, there are important and unimportant things to your desire, things you cannot enjoy, such as bestowing, caring for others, attaining the Creator, working above reason, and so on. On the other hand, there are parts of the spiritual work with which I agree, that are worthwhile for me - I want to understand more, attain more and I am willing to put efforts into that. But the problem is where exactly to exert, and what do I expect to receive in return?

We do not realize that precisely because I raise things that seem unimportant to me above my head, or in other words, increase the importance of what seems like "garbage" to me, I build a "covering" - a new spiritual vessel. Therefore my work is called "field work" - I turn the soil over, the importance of things in my eyes. And if I raise the importance of things that are not important to my will to receive, then they hide that desire, and cast a shadow on it. If I am happy to be in this shadow, and wish to build outside of it the will to bestow, I discover the Light of Mercy (Ohr de Hassadim). I may have blocked ninety nine percent of the sun, of the Light, but in this one percent, in the "line" that I built out of my vessels, I reveal the Creator.

In the past I had learned, I exerted efforts to connect with the friends' points in the heart, I made efforts to give Arvut, but it was always something I had to forcibly remind myself of. But if now I make a wreath out of it, a crown over my head, want the mutual guarantee, the mutual connection and the concealment of the ego to determine everything for me and control me, if I change the importance like a fetus that turns over with the head facing down to be born, then I enter the "booth." Instead of the Creator building the concealment, I myself conceal the will to receive and raise the importance of bestowal and concern for others.

A person who inverts the importance for himself, out of the waste, builds the next degree. Therefore all of our work is to expedite the speed in which we will invert what seems to us today as "waste" in the spiritual work, into a covering, a screen, a shadow in which we will reveal the Divinity. And precisely by our casting of a shadow on the revelation of the Creator toward our will to receive, we will discover the Light in our will to bestow.

--Taken from the 1st Part of the Lesson