Arava Congress Regulations

What This Document Is

This is a working translation of the Arava Congress regulations. It is an event document: it describes the rules not of an ordinary lesson, but of a closed group event where the participant is expected to disconnect from the outside world for several days, give up a phone and personal devices, sleep only on the grounds, keep quiet, move with the group and obey appointed “policemen.”

The document matters because it compresses Bnei Baruch’s internal discipline into one setting. Spiritual purpose is joined to physical isolation, a ban on criticism, control of speech, a guarantor system and punishment for violation. If a participant leaves the grounds, he cannot return. If a guarantor signed for a violator, the guarantor leaves with him.

The document shows how the language of “mutual guarantee” becomes a practical regime of mutual surveillance. It is therefore used in the dossier as a source for “The Path Inside: How the System Is Actually Built”.

Beloved and dear friend,

You have always waited for this moment.

Today you stand before the most important status in your life, before a moment that will not return again.

Generations of Kabbalists corrected, prepared, longed and prayed so that this moment would come to pass.

We have a real and perfect opportunity to demand that the light connect all of us into one vessel, as one man with one heart. Here we will acquire the quality of bestowal, the quality of the Creator, and begin to realize the purpose of creation. From here, there is no going back!

To realize the one-time opportunity given to us, we must prepare ourselves as the children of Israel did in the exodus from Egypt. Therefore, the material and spiritual conditions you must fulfill are strict. These are absolute spiritual laws.

You, who pass through the gate, must understand that any contempt or light-mindedness in the absolute and faithful fulfillment of these conditions will cause you, and all of us, immeasurable harm. Remember: we are guarantors for one another.

Dear friend, we long for you to be with us. At the same time, before you join us, check carefully that you are ready, aware and feel the greatness of the occasion. Do you understand that the Torah, the light that reforms, will change you so that you love and serve everyone? Do you want this? Take into account: people do not come here to receive. They come here to receive the strength to give!

Material Laws

• I commit to disconnect inwardly and outwardly from the material world throughout all the days of the congress. I do not have a phone, laptop or MP3 player on me, and I am aware that I will cause enormous harm if I enter the compound with them.
• Entry with alcohol and drugs is forbidden. If I brought alcohol, I must deposit it at the gate with the guard, for the benefit of everyone. Alcohol will be distributed in the compound only during meals. This is the only time when drinking is permitted.
• Duty service is a privilege and not a choice, and I commit to participate devotedly in every duty I am asked to perform: kitchen, sleeping area, guarding, maintenance, police and guards, and so on.
• I mingle with everyone and avoid separating into groups.
• I commit to maintaining a general state of quiet and using as few words as possible.
• I will speak with my friends only about the importance of the goal and the greatness of the society. I will not speak with them about dissemination or personal matters. Also, not even half a word of criticism will come from me.
• We are all policemen over ourselves. At the same time, I will obey completely the friends appointed to be “policemen” and to supervise the official fulfillment of the conditions.
• During the meal I commit to maintaining absolute silence and to making sure that the older men among us sit first.
• There are no differences between participants’ ages and no special treatment for family members: we are all men, equal to one another.
• I commit to being in one movement with my friends and to participating with heart and soul in all activities: lessons, friends’ meetings, meals and connection activities.
• I am aware that entry to the congress is until Thursday, 23 February 2012, at midnight, and that if I leave the congress compound I will not be able to return.
• I commit to sleeping only in the congress compound.

Inner Laws

• I commit to rising above all thoughts about myself.
• I agree to accept everything that comes, only because it comes from above.
• Everything is ready for my birth. I understand that everything depends on me, and I will do everything in my power and ability in order to be born.
• I am alert and tense toward one moment, in which all of us are connected in time, movement and place, in “Israel, the Torah and the Holy One, blessed be He, are one.”
• We are all equal. The Rav is our guide. Together, we are all one group.
• I will try at every moment to picture for myself the image we want to reach, and to live in it.
• I commit to entering all the time into a deeper inner connection, to trying without cease to reveal the lack for the lack of connection.
• I will act in thought, speech and deed only to the extent necessary and only toward the goal and the process of its realization.
• Seriousness in joy is the law of the spiritual vessel. I must try for both of them together to burst out from within us.
• I commit to being included in the friends and annulling myself before them with all my strength.
• I will serve as an example to my friends. Outwardly I will radiate only an elevated mood, devotion and adhesion to the goal.
• There is no criticism, excuses, residue from the past or negative feelings in me. Everything remains outside!
• I commit to being a policeman and guard over myself at every moment, over every desire, thought and deed; a policeman over both seriousness and joy.
• I commit to supporting the friends so that we reach the demand for correction, within which we will reveal the upper force.
• I ask the Creator that there be in me a prayer from the heart for the fulfillment of the conditions above.

Selected Passages About The Occasion Before Us

You are going to separate from the entire world: from your wife, from the children, from work, from everything, not for three days, but forever. You do not return from there. You reach such a feeling that you remain there, and that is it. You return already completely different. That is how you must feel. This is called “the exodus from Egypt”: you come out from there, from a good and safe place where in your will to receive you have everything, where the whole world behaves this way, everyone is used to it, and you go to a method, to a completely different dimension.

Rav Dr. Michael Laitman, daily Kabbalah lesson, 03.02.12

You need to understand only one thing: everything is ready for your birth. But if you do not take actions to be born, if you do not begin to wage war there, this Pharaoh will hold you inside and will not let you out. It is your ego that holds you.

On one side it lets you develop, and on the other side it does not want to let you out. What will happen? External pressures, great suffering, wars, troubles, just so you will want to be born. Because without your desire, you cannot be born. This is not a mechanical birth. This is a birth in which you need to open a new desire from within, and then you feel a new life. Without opening a new desire, you will not feel that you are being born; you do not pass into spirituality, to the next stage.

Therefore great pressures need to be applied to you so that you will want it. Or you yourself apply pressures to yourself through the society; then Pharaoh, who pressures you, turns into a good environment, in which the friends pressure and obligate, and you demand of them and ask them to pressure, to obligate, until you cry out, “I want to be born.”

One of the two, but everything is ready for birth. And everything depends on you.

Rav Dr. Michael Laitman, daily Kabbalah lesson, 27.01.12

“Serious” at the congress means that I do not allow myself to flee into any thought or desire that is outside the goal, and that I am in adhesion with the others, and within the adhesion with the others I reveal the Creator. On the way I see what I lack, I do not want, I do want, and then I come to all kinds of prayers, questions and clarifications, until in fact all of us need to reach the goal. This is our preparation. When we come to the congress, we need to be all the time in a lack for the light that reforms, so that it will give us adhesion.

Rav Dr. Michael Laitman, daily Kabbalah lesson, 19.02.12

We need to understand that all these things are within our reach, that we truly feel like fugitives, and the feeling of flight must exist: you come there and you have such alertness and fear, not to fail to do and not to fail to attain, to be restricted and obligated, and this resembles fleeing from Egypt.

And your commitment is before everyone, and therefore the question is how you look at everyone, whether yes or no, and where our point is, where we can attain it. We also need to be alert, alert for one moment, but that moment is all the days, all the moments that we will be there. We need to be alert for one moment, so that in time, in movement, in place, in the connection among all of us, “Israel, the Torah and the Holy One, blessed be He, are one.”

Rav Dr. Michael Laitman, daily Kabbalah lesson, 19.02.12

I am aware that if the congress management decides that I violated one of the above conditions, I will be forced to leave the congress compound immediately and to pay for my return trip myself. A friend who covers for a friend who violated one of the conditions will be sent home together with him!

The two witnesses signed below guarantee before the group and before the congress management that I have read, understood and am ready and fit to fulfill the regulations with heart and soul.

Laws For A Guarantor

• I may not sign as guarantor for someone who signed for me.
• If I am a member of a group of up to 15 friends, I must arrange for guarantors from another group to sign for me physically or virtually.
• It is possible to sign as guarantor for more than two friends.
• If a friend for whom I am guarantor is forced to leave the congress because of a violation of one of the conditions, I too will be forced to leave with him.

Dear friend, we hope you are aware that all the laws of mutual guarantee above are anchored in the sources and constitute a necessary condition for our entry into spirituality!

I commit	Guarantor 1	Guarantor 2
Full name:	Full name:	Full name:
Signature:	Signature:	Signature: