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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.
In the last morning lesson, Dr. Michael Laitman said we “solve all our problems in the connection with the friends.” How do I bring an internal deficiency to the ten—not to be understood or to gain wisdom—but purely with a desire for correction, in a way that aligns with the purpose of our work and supports the ten’s adhesion with the Creator?
I’ve heard the recurring guidance from the teachers that for worldly ailments, we apply worldly remedies—that if one has a broken leg, or a psychological disorder like OCD or depression, they should seek professional help outside the wisdom. I completely understand and respect this boundary, and it seems like a healthy distinction to maintain.
That said, I want to ask about something more complex and internal.
Take for instance someone who is paralyzed. Yes, it’s a physical condition, and yes, it’s something a doctor treats—but that person doesn’t simply “have” paralysis; they exist within it. It’s not just a diagnosis, it’s an inseparable part of how they move through the world. It becomes woven into the fabric of their experience.
In a similar way, many of us carry certain mental or emotional tendencies—not always severe enough to warrant a diagnosis, but persistent and shaping. Things like obsessive thought loops, depressive coloring of perception, or self-critical inner voices. We don’t just “have” these thoughts—we exist within them. They inform our inner world, moment by moment.
So my question is:
How should we relate to these more subtle but ever-present mental states? Should we be actively scrutinizing them as material for our spiritual work, or should we view them as noise—something external to the wisdom and best left untouched within this context?
And more broadly: Why does this question always seem to receive the same general answer? Is it because, from the perspective of spiritual attainment, these inner experiences truly hold no individual significance? Or is it that we don’t yet fully grasp how to bring these layers of inner experience into alignment with the work?
