Good Environment – 02.25.11 & 02.26.11

My Good Environment – Dr. Laitman’s Advice for the Week

Kabbalah Moments: Money

The Process Has Begun

Dr. Michael LaitmanBy the recent events in the world we see how the masses are being set in motion, rising up in waves. In the same way a huge flock of birds wavers in the air making synchronous movements together as if welded together by a common thought.

Thus, the masses in the world will demonstrate increasingly greater consensus, and a united force will suddenly begin surfacing in them. People won’t even understand themselves why this is happening. The fact is that they will acquire the ability to unite more than before in anticipation of the world’s correction. Exactly like birds, they will perform synchronous actions without realizing the reasons for it, doing it by nature’s inner orders.

Then we will see thousands and hundreds of thousands of people on the streets uniting and going somewhere. This will happen suddenly, seemingly without a reason, without an initial preparation of several months. Their waves will roll from one place to another in many points all over the world.

Today we already see how this is happening and how it’s being passed from one country to the next, similar to a virus. These are external signs of an inner phenomenon: These masses are rising up in order to correct themselves by way of unification and mutual actions.

Gradually, that is how the common effort will get organized and discerned. Obviously, people do not understand the essence and causes of what is happening. They attribute the desire that awakened in them to external factors, but this is just a band over their eyes so people wouldn’t see what is really happening. In the meantime, their desire for pleasures matures, going through the regular phases of its development: still, vegetative, animate, and human.

And this process is no longer happening in separate individuals, but in a great mass of people.

BIRDS eng from illuzia.net.

[36709]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/1/11, Writings of Rabash

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I Dwell Inside My Nation

Dr. Michael LaitmanWhen preparing for the lesson, I have to imagine that I am going to a meeting with the Creator in order to come closer to Him and to enter His field of vision. That’s because I come to the group, the place where the Creator becomes revealed. He will not become revealed outside of the group.

It is written about this in Scripture, “I dwell in the midst of My people.” To the extent of the group’s height and force, meaning the quantity and quality of its efforts, I will be able to enjoy the Light that I receive through it.

The group is the Shechina, Malchut of the world of Infinity. The group is my ark, my motherly womb, and my soul in the true sense. That’s because it is the collection of all the desires that I lack in order to correct them and attain correction.

Therefore I have to imagine that Israel, Torah, and the Creator are one, that I am one whole, one Kli together with the group, as one man with one heart in which mutual guarantee reigns. This Kli attains the single Light.

Whether there is one Light or several Lights depends on how closely welded together we are. If we are welded, then the Light influences us, and its might increases in accordance with our unity, which also grows stronger. Then we reach correction.

What does the correction amount to? It amounts to unity itself. As soon as we attain unity, the Light comes, correcting and filling us.
[36718]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/1/11, Writings of Rabash

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Replacing The Values

Dr. Michael LaitmanWhat in our development is up to us? We inherited certain attributes; we have been influenced by the environment since childhood. How can we decide what our development should be like from here on? What do we need to do for it?

On His part, the Creator has done what was in His hands: He laid our path through internal and external Kelim (vessels), our own nature and the environment. And now, finally, the upper force is offering us free will. Naturally, this is a very narrow area. After all, our internal development has already brought about numerous details of perception, and moreover, we exist in a specific environment.

As it is written in the article “The Freedom” and in “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot,” the Creator brings a person to a certain state, a certain group, an environment, and says: “This is for you; take it.” And a person has to strengthen himself in what he takes. And what he takes is a bond with the environment.

So it follows that if a person strengthens this bond, then with its help, he or she receives “supernatural” values. This is the only way a person can adopt principles that on his own he would never choose to respect. The environment has the power to affect him and alter the scale of his priorities to such a degree that he totally replaces his values and is willing to do things that are against his nature.

This is why, while talking about lesson preparation, we primarily speak about the environment. A person prepares himself in the right environment and, by participating in its life, discerns the true values: bestowal, love of others, adherence with the Creator, and altruistic intention Lishma (for Her Name). On the whole, in the eyes of a person, the Creator’s nature must become incomparably more exalted and profound than the nature of the created being.

A person receives awareness of this importance from the group: “It is desirable to make it so.” The group cannot provide more than that; it only elevates the importance of the goal in our eyes. How profound the goal is depends on the level of the group and to what extent a person is willing to lower himself before it.

However, it isn’t realization just yet. A person merely arranges values for himself: “If the Creator is my goal, I go for this goal, which means that I change to fit it.” But who transforms a person? Who performs these changes in him? After all, by nature, from birth, he is immersed in the desire to receive pleasure. Desire itself will always remain as is. Who will reform its intention from wanting to receive to wanting to bestow?

That is what the method of Kabbalah is intended for.
[36267]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/24/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Dress Yourself In Bestowal

Dr. Michael LaitmanA big stage on our path is the stage of acquiring the quality of faith, or in other words, the quality of bestowal. To the degree we acquire it, we ascend above our nature and dress the quality of bestowal over our quality of reception.

As a result, we receive a full vestment on all of our desires, on all of their facets, and all the various kinds of mixtures between them. After that we continue our ascent, but already towards total faith. This means that we go from simple faith to the second stage of correction and acquire the quality of love. Then we correct our desires, filling them with the light of Hochma, pleasure, and by means of that we achieve bestowal.

Thus, the first stage is Hafetz Hesed, the level of Bina where we just correct the receiving desire by the altruistic intention, which clothes on it by the quality of faith, bestowal. That is how we attain the first three Sefirot of Bina.

Then we go on to its seven lower Sefirot, acquiring the ability to attach foreign Kelim or desires to ourselves, thereby correcting and filling them. Just like Bina, which fulfills the lower ones, we can also fulfill other Kelim.

How is this so if they are foreign for now and I cannot do this? The fact is that I fill them when I attach them to me so they are inside of me like at the stage of conception, or nursing, or the adult state (Mochin). That is my attitude to them.

This is already called perfect faith, the light of Hassadim with the fulfillment of the Light of Hochma.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/1/11, Writings of Rabash

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An Easy Way Of Correction

Dr. Michael LaitmanKabbalists have prepared for us an easy and simple way of correction.

However, we find and see in the words of the sages of the Talmud that they have made the path of Torah [correction] easier for us than the sages of the Mishnah. This is because they said, “One should always practice the Torah and Mitzvot [correction of egoism], even Lo Lishma [for one’s sake], and from Lo Lishma [for one’s sake] he will come to Lishma [for the sake of others and the Creator] because the Light in it reforms him.”

Thus, they have provided us with a new means instead of the penance presented in the above-mentioned Mishnah, Avot: the “Light in the Torah.” It bears sufficient power to reform one and bring him to practice Torah and Mitzvot [correct egoism by the way of Light] Lishma [for the sake of others].
– Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Study of Ten Sefirot,” Item 10
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To Grow Is To Change

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can we accelerate the rate of the group’s development?

Answer: An egg, for example, won’t hatch before its time. It relates to the animate nature and obeys strict laws of development. In time, people watched a hen and learned how to simulate these optimal conditions in incubators. In contrast, not only should we take example from nature, but we also can employ natural forces and accelerate our own growth, modifying its quality. In other words, it’s all about how we perceive it.

In truth, our evolution is not limited to one beaten path. It’s not just that I enhance my own properties a few times. It isn’t enough. I must change myself, transform myself into the opposite.

Hence, I need auxiliary forces that first and foremost will let me become aware of these transformations. If we were not supposed to reform ourselves in the process of spiritual growth, who would mind? Who doesn’t want to grow? Even an egg wants to become a duckling, and a duckling wants to be a duck. This is a law.

However, if we shift from the property of reception to the property of bestowal, then receiving won’t help me achieve bestowal; it will only form a negative attitude within me toward myself. In that case, I will feel evil in receiving, start hating it, and wish to transform into its opposite.

It turns out that in order to evolve, I have to build an environment for myself. I have to create conditions that will assist me in being constantly aware of my current internal state as harmful for me so that I may wish to step out of it, to change.

My development is not that I simply grow, but that I become transformed. I don’t need to become big from being small. Rather, I must become similar to the Creator, assume an opposite form to my own. That is why I learn from the Creator to have qualities that must become mine. Then, I arrange the environment that will help me view these qualities as desirable, while viewing my current attributes as undesirable, evil, and harmful. Acting thereby, I do create a “green house” that will raise me correctly.

Thus, I am working with two opposite forms of nature: the nature to receive that characterizes this world and the nature to bestow, the force of the Light that characterizes the future world. I form an environment that will help me replace my values and realize that my current values are evil as compared to the spiritual ones that I will assume tomorrow. This is the only way I can advance.

What is necessary is not just to “warm” the current condition up. It must constantly stand before me in contrast to today’s and tomorrow’s qualities, showing me the direction I need to take to change and enhancing the importance of these changes. Then I will want to become “great” not in receiving but in bestowal. Knowing that my current state is evil and harmful, I will be happy to leave it behind.

In brief, you must arrange all the necessary conditions for yourself. We must work not on ourselves, but rather on the environment, on the “green house,” the “incubator,” and it will accelerate our growth. Then, we will reach a desired state not at the end of the allotted time period of 6,000 years, having gone through suffering under Nature’s hand, but we will come to it earlier, in a nice, easy, and pleasant way and in the shortest time.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/27/2011, “Introduction of The Book of Zohar”

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Introductory Lecture “Still, Vegetative, Animate and Speaking” – 03.01.11

Kabbalah for the Nation Introductory Lecture Series, “Still, Vegetative, Animate and Speaking”
Download: WMV Video|MP3 Audio