Kabbalah Moments: You Are Parts Of My Soul

Opening The Zohar – 06.27.10

The Book of Zohar – Selections, Chapter “The Night of the Bride,” Item 1
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The Reward Is The Light That Reforms

Dr. Michael LaitmanA question I received: Are the efforts I make my spiritual reward?

My Answer: The reward is the screen and the Light that Reforms. We cannot measure and evaluate our efforts. We must have the screen and the Light that Reforms. They are the only things we have to obtain. Everything else you can have in abundance, take it!

The Light that Reforms is the permit to receive. Much like a theatre ticket which allows entrance to a particular show, the Light that Reforms allows one to take a specific portion. According to the amount of this Light that appears in you, you will be filled, and merged with the Creator and the abundance that exists in the entire creation.

Take it all, but only in the measure of the Light that Reforms. Therefore, your reward is the Light that Reforms. Everything else we don’t need to earn. The Upper Abundance will fill our spiritual vessels (Kelim), the will to receive, but only when we obtain the Light that Reforms.

However, I need fulfillment not in order to receive pleasure, but in order to examine and measure how much I bestow. Even though my fulfillment gives me tremendous satisfaction, it is still measured in the Light of bestowal, the Light that Reforms.

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The Whole World Is Not A Bitter Radish

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe can remain either in the quality of reception or in the quality of bestowal and fulfill them both. Basically, only two forces govern the Universe, two forces of nature: the forces of reception and bestowal. One of them, the force of reception, is already in us because we were born with it, so we consider it to be natural.

But in reality, there is nothing more natural than the quality of bestowal. Yet, it isn’t in us; therefore, it seems un-natural to us; it seems as something artificial that has no relation to reality. Yet still, the only real existence is in the quality of bestowal because all of creation, except our world, lives in it. Only we live in this tiny, locked, imaginary space in the quality of reception.

Due to the fact that this space is closed and isolated from all the worlds and the Creator, we think that nothing exists beyond it. Like a worm who lives in a radish and believes that the entire world is just like the radish, we don’t see beyond our world. The foolish worm doesn’t understand that there is a big, luminous, sweet, and beautiful world outside of the radish. And neither do we.

This is why we must comprehend that the quality of reception in which we reside is miniscule and limited. It is given to us in order to know its opposite, the quality of bestowal.

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Infinity Is Just A Moment

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Zohar, Chapter "VaYetze (And Jacob Went Out) – Part 1," Item 129: “And they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her.” The entire seven years were to him as the upper seven years from Bina, who are ones, in one unification, and are not separated. They are all one, since they connect to one another for the love that he loved her, since she was to him like the upper unification in Bina.

How do we define infinity? Is it when time lasts infinitely or when there is no time and it equals zero? How can it be that when I love her, I spend seven years working for her, and in my perception these years fly by? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Shouldn’t this time last infinitely long because it will take seven years before we will be able to be together?

In reality, infinity is when time reduces to zero. In our world, we believe that infinity is something infinitely distant because we imagine that the end (death) is pushed beyond infinity. We perceive infinity in this way because our perception is shaped from lack rather than fulfillment.

But in spirituality, where all our actions are dictated by bestowal, it is the other way around. Infinity is when everything is in one place as if compressed into zero. Everything exists at the same moment, "at the same time, in the same place, in the same woman."

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/24/10, The Zohar

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The Torah Stories Turn Into Revelation

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Zohar, Chapter “VaYetze (And Jacob Went Out) – Part 1,” Item 127: For this reason, Leah did not appear but Rachel, to attract Jacob’s eye and heart with Rachel’s beauty, so he would set up his dwelling there. And thanks to her, Leah, too, was coupled with him and bore all these tribes. How did Jacob know who Rachel was? After all, he did not know her? The shepherds told him, as it is written, “And, behold, Rachel his daughter comes with the sheep.”

All these properties -  “well,” “water,” “Haran,” “Jacob,” “Lavan,” “Rachel,” “Leah,” “shepherds,” and “herd” -  are within us. The Torah explains how to distinguish and sort these forces within ourselves.

It can be likened to a construction set. We have to discern our inner desires and, by referring to the picture that the Torah draws for us, position each of them in the right place. We continue doing so until we get the whole internal picture that shows the connections between all the desires and properties that the Torah describes, between – the “herd,” “well,” “water,” and so on – at their inanimate, vegetative, animate, and speaking levels, in the entire spiritual reality.

As soon as I organize this picture correctly according to the Torah instructions, I am captured in a film sequence and I move to the next frame. This is how we advance from one sequence to another one, one degree after another. At each step, the Torah tells us how to develop from one level to another through inner changes.

By changing our internal forces and properties in accordance with the Torah story, we advance along with the Torah narrations. This is when the Torah stories turn into revelation.

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/24/10, The Zohar

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 06.27.10

Rabash, Shlavei HaSulam, Article ”The Matter of Bestowal,” 1984
When each person thinks about all the others, then everyone can keep an intention and attract the force of correction. This constitutes “mutual guarantee”.
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The Book of Zohar – Selections, Chapter “VaYetze (And Jacob Went Out), Item 143
In order to receive pleasure from new things one must first acquire new desires. The desires one receives are from his environment.
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Rav Yehuda Ashlag, “Preface to the Sulam Commentary,” Item 76
Today it’s evident that the symbiosis of modern science and the human egoism is leading the world toward a catastrophe.
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Rav Yehuda Ashlag, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot,” Item 3, Lesson 2
The Upper Light acts upon us only when we feel the need to acquire the property of bestowal.
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What Is Exile?

Dr. Michael LaitmanA question I received: When is it considered that a person is in a state of Galut (exile)?

My Answer: Galut (exile, deportation) refers to the exile from the spiritual world and the property of bestowal and love. That is, one needs to wish for this property, and the measure to which one does not have it, one feels Galut, the exile from it.

For instance, in his article “A True Prayer,” Rabash says that Galut is when a person is not given an opportunity to hold the intention for his actions not to be in order to receive a reward, which is against our nature.
(רב"ש. מאמר "תפלה אמיתית": הגלות – היינו, שלא נותנים לו לכוון, שעבודתו תהיה בשלא על מנת לקבל פרס, היות שהוא נגד הטב)

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Kabbalists On The Purpose Of Creation, Part 7

Dr. Michael LaitmanDear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. I promise to answer them. Commentaries in brackets are mine.

The Attainment Of The Purpose Of Creation Rests Upon The Whole of Mankind

The purpose of creation applies to the entire human race without exception [complete similarity to the Creator, the quality of absolute bestowal, will be attained either as a result of pressure from Above, by the path of suffering, or by man’s efforts from below, by the path of Torah or the Light that Reforms].
– Baal HaSulam, Article “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings

… the purpose of Creation rests on the shoulders of humanity as one race, without any essential difference such as black, white, or yellow.
– Baal HaSulam, ArticleThe Arvut (Mutual Guarantee),” Item 23

the purpose of creation is not necessarily for a select group; rather the purpose of creation belongs to all creations without exception. It is not concerned with merely the strong and skillful… [when it comes to the correction of the soul, no corporeal abilities or talents determine the success].
– Rabash, Shlavey HaSulam (Steps of the Ladder), 1984 “Love of Friends (3)

All the nations [in the future, either against their will, through the path of suffering, or consciously, though the path of Light] will unite and be ready for the Creator’s work [mutual bestowal to the Creator whereby they receive infinite fulfillment from the Creator for His sake].
– Baal HaSulam, Letter pg. 55

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Answers To Your Questions, Part 4

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Creator Is Absolute Good
Questions on the post "Kabbalists On The Purpose Of Creation,” Part 1

Question: Will our future corrected state really make up for all the current suffering?

My Answer: Undoubtedly, as soon as you rise above your egoism and begin to feel yourself not in your body but above it, in the others, to that extent you will begin to associate yourself with the soul: the feeling of others rather than your own body. Accordingly, you will begin to feel the goodness that fills this world.

Question: You teach us that the Creator is the laws of nature, forces, like the law of gravity in our world. If so, how can the Creator be good?

My Answer: We perceive any force as either good or bad depending on how it affects us. That is, we talk not about the force itself, but how we perceive it.

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