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We had a friend who was struggling with some group dynamics and left for about a month. The very day he came back, several members of the ten arrived late to our ten meeting because they had just been in a private side meeting together. It also became clear that there’s a side chat among them. Not long after this, that same friend ended up leaving again.
At the retreat, Tony said: the path will hit you square in the place it hurts the most. That’s exactly how this feels. My biggest fear is that the path could turn into just a social club, and when I see these dynamics, it goes straight to that fear. Sometimes it feels like a kind of social hierarchy in the ten, a “first string” and a “second string,” like a high school sports team.
What weighs on me even more is when I see the friends just move on so quickly from this, almost as if nothing was learned. In those moments, I feel the selfishness of it, and then I realize that feeling itself is within me. The friends are like a mirror, and if I feel selfishness in them, it’s because I’m equalizing with those feelings that are also in me. That leaves me feeling selfish for even wanting things to be different. It becomes heavy, like something I can’t overcome in myself.
I haven’t brought this up in the ten, choosing instead to keep it as inner work. I’m trying to follow the guidance I’ve heard: not to let criticism pass my lips, but to judge myself, lower myself, and raise the friends above me. My focus has been: love covers all crimes, anything but leave, there is none else besides Him. And it is I who must love the friends, not the friends who must love me. It is I who must give importance to the friends, not get importance from them. I’ve been praying to bring my heart into the ten, not my mind, and to annul myself before the friends even when my perception makes it difficult.
I don’t want to blow this out of proportion or stir conflict. And I wonder: is this even appropriate to bring up here in the forum? But I also can’t deny that it weighs on me. I’m trying to use it as material for connection, and I’d welcome any feedback.
I was joking with a friend that if you don’t hate the friends sometimes you’re not doing it right. He said love is just love, always smooth, never mixed with hate, and that he never feels hate at all. That stopped me and made me wonder if that is really love or if it is just the will to receive playing with its own idea of others.
From what I can tell real love only shows up outside that bubble. It is not that we should go looking for hate or conflict, but love only becomes real when there is resistance, when I feel the gap between myself and others and have to rise above it. My experience has been totally different from his. I feel that friction all the time, always needing to pray to rise above it. Is it normal to feel that friction? Correct discernment? What to do about it?
Thank you, this is very helpful, and we read this together as a 10 today. It’s hard for me to reconcile the idea that “there can be friends that come and go on the periphery of the ten” and that we are all equal, but I sense this as a truth in practice because we do have some members on the periphery. This friend was just so dedicated that it’s jarring. We spend a lot of energy trying to make everyone equal, but I understand there are many paradoxes we need to rise above, and that’s the nature of the work.
We’ve had a friend leave the ten, and it feels like a part of us has been cut away. It’s painful. On top of that, there have been some accusations about inequality in the ten. I keep turning it over in my mind, maybe there’s truth in it, maybe not. We never had the chance to work through it with that friend, and now the “sterile lab environment” we try to maintain feels disrupted. I’m trying to sense what he was referring to and it’s influencing My perception of the friends.
How do we keep going? How do I keep going? Do we just move forward and annul ourselves to this possible, perhaps even imagined, inequality? It’s hard.
I’m trying to understand what makes a True Prayer in the work.
Baal HaSulam writes:
“There are three conditions in prayer… [One of them is that] he must believe that he is in the worst condition of all his contemporaries… and if the Creator doesn’t help him, he would rather die than live.” (Shamati 209)But if I feel that low and pray for the Creator to give me vessels of bestowal, isn’t that still egoistic, because I’m suffering and want to feel something better?
How is that not a prayer for pleasure, just hidden in a more spiritual form?
In the group and in the study, we’re constantly talking about bestowal, trying to understand it, hoping to come closer to it, trying to want it for the friends. But the teachers keep saying that bestowal is something completely beyond us, something we can’t even imagine, let alone feel or taste. It’s totally outside our reality.
So I’m struggling to understand: how do we aim toward something that we can’t grasp in any way?
In my current senses, there’s just no taste in it, it feels neutral, flat, not good or bad. I can’t perceive it as anything desirable. And that leads to this wall of, “Do anything but leave.” But without any taste, it’s like working in a vacuum.
How are we actually supposed to regard bestowal in this state? Especially when we try to want it for the friends in the ten, but we don’t even know what we’re hoping for. Are we just playing a game with words? Is that what it means that the Creator plays with us?
I realize this isn’t a single, sharp question, I’m trying to get better at that, but I wanted to give a little context to express where I’m coming from.
