Kabbalah Moments: Stretcher Mark

Kabbalah For Beginners, “Light and Darkness” – 06.30.10

Kabbalah TV Channel 66’s Kabbalah for Beginners, “Light and Darkness”
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About The Need To Disseminate The Science Of Kabbalah

Dr. Michael LaitmanIntroduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot, Item 5: Now you will understand what is written in The Zohar: “With this composition, the Children of Israel will be redeemed from exile.” Also, in many other books, it is written that only through the expansion of the wisdom of Kabbalah in the masses will we obtain complete redemption.

The sages also said, “The Light in it reforms him.” … Both the individual and the nation will not complete the aim for which they were created, except by attaining the internality of the Torah and its secrets. … Consequently, the expansion of the wisdom and the coming of our Messiah are interdependent.

Stated differently, it is impossible for us to achieve correction without the dissemination of the science of Kabbalah. A person is built such that he is incapable to connecting to the Upper World on his own because he is opposite to it. He can only do it “artificially.”

We exist in this world, in an egoistic desire that wants everything for one’s own sake. But within this desire it is possible for a small egoistic desire for the Upper World, the point in the heart, to awaken. In our heart, meaning the desires of this world, we feel emptiness and disillusionment. But in addition to this sensation of emptiness in our world, a point in the heart awakens within us, a vague aspiration that longs for something higher.

These two desires together, the emptiness of this world and the aspiration for the Upper World, are the preparation for perceiving the Upper World. This is the most a person can receive inside him in this world to further his spiritual advancement. He receives the rest from outside, from artificial means in this world: a Kabbalistic group, teacher, and Kabbalah books. These means have been prepared for us from Above, and this opportunity does not exist in our world.

It turns out that an embryo of the future, the point in the heart, is present inside a person. Outside of it emerges the embryo of the future environment: the group, teacher and books. Through this environment a person connects to the spiritual world.

Abraham revealed the emergence of the following in man: a point of the soul and the environment (the books, teacher, and group). This enables one to attract Light from the spiritual world, which develops the soul from the point. Once the soul develops, a person is able to ascend into spirituality.

The point and its environment constitute our smallest spiritual state which has been broken, meaning it became egoistic. By using it we are able to correct the point – the broken, egoistic embryo of the soul.

This is why the dissemination of the science of Kabbalah is absolutely necessary, since without it none of us would know what to do and how to develop the embryo of the soul, the point, with the help of the environment (the books, teacher, and group). When we develop and correct it, then inside it we perceive the spiritual world.

From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/30/10, Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot

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A Spark Of Memory About The Future

Dr. Michael LaitmanA question I received: What is the point that emerges in the heart, in the empty desire of this world?

My Answer: All of a person’s desires are called his heart. The point in the heart is the connection that the heart previously had with other hearts, and which has remained from the breaking between us. Once we were all connected through our desires and hearts together into one system of Adam. But these mutual connections among us have disappeared and only the broken shards remain.

When we were connected together, we constituted a spiritual vessel, a unified desire filled with Light. When the connection among us was severed, the Light disappeared. The Light that disappeared has to return and restore the previous connection, making us bestow to one another, “returning us to the Source.” This is why it is called “The Light that returns to the source,” to goodness. It returns us to a mutual connection which is called goodness.

This connection is the Creator. He is present in the connections among us, while the desire itself (the heart) is just the matter of creation. It does not change. It can be great or small, but regardless, our state depends on the degree of the connection among us.

For now not everyone feels this point in the heart. Our egoistic desire has to develop to a specific level in order for the point in the heart to surface in it. At first the desire feels emptiness from this world, and then it reveals an inner aspiration for a different fulfillment. This fulfillment or Light is not present in the desire, but shines upon it from afar. That is why it is called the Surrounding Light.

From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/30/10,  Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot

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An Eternal Engine Fueled By Bestowal

Dr. Michael LaitmanA question I received: How can we strive for bestowal if we don’t perceive spirituality and don’t have a clear vision of the goal, spiritual objects, and forms? How can I aim myself at them and take a step in their direction without doing it wrong?

My Answer: That would be correct if speaking of externality, but spirituality is called the inner world. It requires internal evolution because it occurs solely based on our inner changes.

When I choose the environment by which to be influenced, I thereby determine what my next desires and inner transformations will be. My constant examination of progress is based on what advances me. Is it based on whether or not I have received egoistical fulfillment or satisfaction from something I did, a feeling of pride for my actions, receiving someone’s praise, gaining greater understanding, or attaining better perception? Or, am I progressing in spite of the emptiness in all of my egoistic desires? Am I willing to keep going without fulfillment, but by being fueled by another force?

What is this other force? I don’t know. I demand to be granted it. It is the force of bestowal and love. This force can’t be gained from the group; the group can only instill in me the importance of receiving it. The force itself has to come from the Creator.

I suddenly start sensing a whole laboratory within me and I don’t require any external images. I begin to see that the gradation of qualities and the examination thereof occur within me. What happens outside of me has no importance. I see the spiritual goal – to keep working fueled solely by love and bestowal – within myself as well. I wish my desires to be filled with the Reflected Light, not by the direct fulfillment. I want the sensation of bestowal, not the sensation of fulfillment by the Light.

Thus, I shun my doubts such as where is the external goal and how do I reach it. I now sense that it is within me. I examine and evaluate it by analyzing what fills my spiritual vessel and the source of its life energy and what it expects: satiated fulfillment or the fuel for bestowal. Then, I don’t feel that I am lacking some vision and external signs on the spiritual path, it is all within me.

When a person gradually transfers his attention from the external parameters to the internal ones, this transformation is the measuring device as to how close he came to the Machsom, the barrier that separates the corporeal world from the spiritual worlds or degrees.

That is when a person starts, with the help of the Creator, to control himself from the outside, through the group, in such way that he can work not for the sake of advancing according to his own egoistical criteria, but above reason. A person begins to operate on some foreign type of energy that he didn’t possess before. His body, the vehicle, starts moving on its own like an “eternal engine.” It is an indication that he has begun to receive the energy of bestowal that serves as his fuel.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/28/10, Article, “Sometimes You Call Spirituality By the Name Soul (Neshama)”

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Kabbalists On The Purpose Of Creation, Part 9

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 Lord desires the correction of the world. Therefore, our sages said (Shabbat 88 B) each and every spoken word of the Lord was divided into seventy tongues, indicative of the preparation within the Torah to complement all of the nations.
– Rav Kook, Meorot Ha’Ra’aya LeHanuka, 87

…the whole of humanity, obligated to eventually come to this immense evolvement, as it is written, “For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11, 9). “And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, know the Lord: For they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them” (Jeremiah 31, 33). “Yet thy Teacher shall not hide Himself any more, but thine eyes shall see thy Teacher” (Isaiah 30, 20).
Baal HaSulam, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah

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A Rift Signifies The Desire To Unite

Dr. Michael LaitmanPreface to the Sulam Commentary,” Item 78: And when these Mochin emerge for the first time, it causes a rift between the right and the left. This is because the left line, which carries the illumination of Hochma, wishes to cancel the right line, which carries the Light of Hassadim.

The rift occurs if the two opposite sides want to unite. If there is nothing to connect or attract them, there would be no rift. In order for the rift to happen, the two objects have to be opposite to one another in nature, but nonetheless they aspire to unite in their desire. That is, two opposite tendencies must be present. On one hand, there should be the left and the right, and on the other, they have to be joined together.

How can they join together? If there is a desire greater than theirs, a more exalted goal, then each of them can forgo their nature and unite with something opposite that is above their own nature. This is the work of the left with respect to the right and the right with respect to the left. Both are willing to concede their foundations and achieve unity above their nature.

It arouses a rift, a conflict between their nature and intention with the intention being beyond their nature. The rift is possible only between two opposites which have something in common that is beyond them both. This common element is exactly what brings about the rift.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/27/10, “Preface to the Sulam Commentary”

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Absolute Rest In Infinite Motion

Dr. Michael LaitmanA question I received: Why is it said that the Light is in a state of absolute rest if our entire path is accompanied by the Light entering and exiting our will to receive?

My Answer: The absolute rest of the Upper Light is its constant change at infinite frequency. The “invariability” of the Light refers to its being at rest in its permanency in reaching a single goal. The Light solely performs actions that lead to the single goal. Its absolute rest lies in the fact that it doesn’t change the purpose, but acts toward it with infinite speed.

For us, rest means not to get tangled on the path, but to strive to find thousands of methods to progress toward the goal in one direction, to be alert, and to make intensive efforts. All this is called absolute rest because I see one singular goal in front of me.

The Light enters and exits the will to receive, and it performs an infinite number of actions each moment. However, if a person is in the state of bestowal, he perceives all these various actions as absolute rest.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/27/10, “Preface to the Sulam Commentary”

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Let’s Pull All Of Mankind Through The Eye Of The Needle

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe don’t yet fully comprehend what a serious task has fallen into our hands. Billion of years of the evolution of the Universe, all of Earth’s nature, and the accumulation of human history up until our time are pressing on us so that we (with the still, vegetative, animate and human levels of nature standing behind us) establish a connection between the Creator. The whole mass of this will to receive must merge with the Creator through a tiny hole: the quality of bestowal that we must attain. The responsibility to pull all of the egoism created by the Creator through the “eye of the needle” has been laid upon us.

We sense that we are facing the wall of our egoism, but we don’t yet understand what kind of wall it is. This wall is the force of the Creator. Our ego is the force of the Creator! We think that it is an ordinary vice that we can beat or discard. That won’t work. We will have to recognize that only the Creator can change our egoistic nature. He must do it, but only at our request, our prayer.

In fact, the entire path of the descent of the spiritual worlds from the very World of Infinity, from Above downward, including all the human evolution in the corporeal world that followed, is now coming to the point of culmination, to merging with the Creator. It is our duty to draw it to the Light. Just imagine how much creation has gone through, and now we must implement this merger.

Our mission seems too grand, but the Creator has placed it on all of us. How many times in the Torah does Moses complain to the Creator that he is incapable of completing his task, but the Creator orders him to continue? Today, we are in Moses’ shoes; we have received strife to rise above our nature. We are to play his role for our generation. ("Moses" or "Moshe" comes from the verb “Mosheh,"  to pull.)

This is why we have to understand that our task is extremely delicate and subtle; it works through the eye of the needle that we can barely discern. However, if we focus the efforts of all who are studying within our system around the world, we will succeed.

We are given all that we need for this from Above; there is no doubt. We just need to have a clear vision of our goal and ask the Creator to assist us. We are that very creature that must come to adhesion with the Creator, and through that, we give all souls an opportunity to ascend to the state of perfection. Unlike the Kabbalists of the past who were only preparing the path for us, we must complete this path by realizing it on ourselves and the others.

The wall before us is the Creator Himself. He stands and waits for us to "break" Him in order to rejoice that “His sons have defeated Him.”

From the Talk during Friday’s Festive Meal 6/25/10

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 06.30.10

Rabash, Shlavei HaSulam, “You Are Now Standing All of You Today,” Lesson 1
Everything we do must lead to the general desire, “a mass prayer”. Only this prayer will receive an answer.
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The Book of Zohar – Selections, Chapter “VaYetze (And Jacob Went Out), Item 209
A person shouldn’t correct anything within himself. The only thing that needs to be corrected is his connection with others.
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Rav Yehuda Ashlag, “Preface to the Sulam Commentary,” Item 88
Uniting with each other is synonymous with pleasing the Creator. After all, by uniting we build a vessel that’s able to hold Light.
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Rav Yehuda Ashlag, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot,” Item 4, Lesson 5
Our correction will lead humanity to be in contact with the spiritual world. When we correct ourselves, we contact the future spiritual humanity.
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