Audio Version Of The Blog – 07.29.12

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Sacrificing Pride

Dr. Michael LaitmanAfter such a remarkable achievement when you managed to unite so much during my absence, you need to look at how to use these results, this connection. And here we must make a “sacrifice.”

Indeed, the obstacle may arise from two sides. Either we fall, despair, lose hope for the future, and feel the darkness in our desire to enjoy, or vice versa, we are glad of our strength, success, and attribute everything to ourselves. And this leads to more separation because it captivates us and veils our eyes so that people cannot see anything.

This is worse than despair. But in both situations, we need to learn how to use these extreme, polar states for advancement. A person must use two lines: the left and the right to come to the middle line.

This is a wonderful state, allowing us to feel everything “in the raw.” Self-love and pride live in everyone. And if we feel that we have achieved a new success, we must now attribute all that to the Creator. Not we, but He did this! He gave, and not we have achieved. He brought us to this feeling, and not we ourselves came to it.

The Creator acted in everything, as it is said: “I am the first, and I am the last!” If we analyze the results correctly, then we will come to greater adhesion, not disconnection. In our state today, this clarification is the most important thing.

It is good that we see and can go through this together and get valuable experience. I am glad that there was a situation that I had to leave, and you have succeeded in my absence due to the help from Above. Now, I can help you with advice from the side about how to use your inner state and to learn from it. The Creator’s help and mercy were manifested here. This is a great training and advancement.

However, we all need to beware of pride so that everything begins and ends with the Creator.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/26/12, Shamati #219

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Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What does it mean that I have to address all my questions to the Creator?

Answer: We’re not used to remembering and thinking about the upper force. It isn’t because we’re not religious; religious people don’t think about the Creator in the sense I am referring to. No one thinks about Him.

To think about Him means to realize that only He does everything. We can speak about it using high words and read about it a lot in books, but nothing helps.

We, meaning all of humanity, all the souls, all the desires, the general network, the system, Malchut, the Shechina (Divinity), exist within one force called the Creator. We have to discover that we are within Him. This is the only problem we have to solve: the revelation of the Creator to the created beings, and this is what the wisdom of Kabbalah deals with.

The revelation of the Creator to the created beings can either be through the path of suffering and great troubles when out of the great sorrow and hopelessness, the ego shrinks and restricts itself so as not to feel the suffering. It gives up its desire to enjoy and is ready for everything but only not to suffer.

But imagine what terrible troubles and suffering one has to go through in order to give up his desire to receive. It isn’t about suicide, but about an action that is a billion times greater than our life. Yet under the pressure of the great sorrow the ego can shrink to such an extreme that it can restrict itself until it doesn’t want to exist.

We’re not talking about the tiny desire we are in at the moment, but about a desire that constantly grows and suffers so much that it restricts itself. Then the desire grows even more, the suffering becomes even greater, and the desire restricts itself again.

This is called the path of suffering. If we follow this path, then “death is better than life,” and it will be impossible to die.

But it’s possible to advance, to restrict the desire to receive and to correct it so that it will bestow by discovering the Creator that is in it by an external force called the Light that Reforms. That is, with the help of the same Creator, it’s possible to turn to Him in a special way.

This method can’t be revealed independently. We see that even when people hear the explanations, they still don’t understand what the Light that Reforms is. The uniqueness of this method is in the fact that instead of suffering as a result of the influence of the Creator who makes me feel bad as He approaches me, I ask Him to correct me.

I want to be like Him; I want to be good. I take preventive measures and the Creator helps me! But I have to ask, I have to be ready for this bestowal. After all, if I just cry from my desire to receive, nothing will help. How can the Creator influence me by the Light that Reforms if I don’t ask to be reformed and my desire to receive restricted?

I have to turn to the Creator so that He will help me restrict my desire to receive and turn it into bestowal that is like Him. It shouldn’t be at the cost of suffering but by His action.

Thus we were given the opportunity to turn to Him through the connection between us. If we arrange the connection among us, the form of this connection will be the form of bestowal we want. We build this connection like children who by playing seem to be doing something. We all know that we are egoists, that our connection is egoistic, and that everyone wants to succeed and to profit from it. But still, we are all asking the Creator together so that He will do it and change us.

This request is egoistic since it’s impossible to cry it out differently from the dark, from exile. But eventually it’s fulfilled because the upper Light, the Creator, takes the state you are calling Him from into account. He understands that you can’t turn to Him with a more spiritual, altruistic request since you are in your ego and only want to receive.

It is like a baby who cries and doesn’t understand what he wants, but the mother must understand and take care of him. We too have to cry: First we should try to do everything that we can and then cry. This is the Kabbalistic method. Don’t wait to be pitied from Above for no reason. The Creator knows no mercy since mercy is bestowal.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/25/12, Shamati #72

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Begin Always With The Right

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: On one hand, we say that we always have to turn to the right line, to start everything from the right line. On the other hand, they say that first you need to reveal evil. How is this possible, if evil is the left line, and the right one is joy and perfection? How is it, on the one hand, you first need to reveal, “I created the evil inclination” and then correct it? On the other hand, first of all, we must always turn to the right line.

Answer: As soon as we turn to the right line, the left line, the true evil inclination, resisting the right, is revealed to us. It is with this approach that there is a prayer, and the Light that Reforms descends, the power of the right line, from which the middle line is formed. Our entire ascent and progress occurs only in the middle line.
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The Family As The Center Of The Universe

Dr. Michael LaitmanThere isn’t a big difference between preparing a person for creating a correct marital relationship and improving relationships with the rest in general. It is only necessary to take into account that the correct system of relationships in the family is a wonderful opportunity to rise to the level of a new corrected world. We all will have to do this to succeed in everything else: in business, finance, respect, power, science, and to be able to see the world and establish connections in it, to succeed in small transactions and international trade.

The family is the smallest and is closest to a person, and it is a permanently functioning lab in which he can work, each time changing himself and observing what kind of world opens to him at that time. After all, by trying to change his relationship with his spouse, he immediately will change the conditions, like in a physical or chemical experiment, and see the results accordingly. Then, he changes the conditions and gets a new result.

This is a scientific experiment, and our relationships with each other are the parameters. The entire world was constructed originally in this form when it comes to evolution, progress, and the final form that we must achieve whether we want it or not.

Nature has a program and a final goal. And apparently, that’s why there is the division of a small family, that is, a married couple and a wider family that includes their fathers and mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers from both sides, and all the other relatives. Then, an even wider circle follows, consisting of all our friends, and then the area where we live, the city, country, nation, and then the continent.

The entire world is divided into these concentric circles, like spreading waves, and they all come out and spread from the center, which is a couple. That is why, if we construct marital relationships correctly, we will be able to build all the other kinds of relationships. This will help us greatly in life.

If I know how to change myself and establish various new forms of relationship with my wife, and she reacts accordingly as my immediate environment, then I will learn how to work with the rest of the environment, at work and in all other places, to earn a good reciprocal relationship. This will ensure a person’s success in all the spheres where he functions.

In essence, this is the most important thing in life as it determines whether a person has money, honor, power, and overall success in life and health. It determines everything from the closest to the broadest social relationships in society, as well as in international relations between countries.

If we become new people who know how to control themselves correctly and attract a good attitude from others accordingly, we will not look so foolish, like children fighting in a sandbox. After all, countries and entire continents appear like this today. Then, a completely different picture will be revealed to us.

Thus, in fact, everything depends on how a person can change himself, and the most convenient and favorable change is possible if we take care of the family. If the spouses participating in the course of integral education will begin to work on their relationships and do the exercises, then they will solve any problems.

It is clear that we cannot eliminate all the problems in the world, considering the number of couples with whom we can work, because half the world is divorced or single people. However, married couples make up a sufficiently large number and have a huge impact on everyone else.
[83894]
From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 7/18/12

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You Need To Disconnect In Order To Connect

Dr. Michael LaitmanOur desire was created as existence from absence, which means that it exists only because of the force of existence in it. The force that stems from the Creator gives the desire life and builds the opposite form in it.

Question: How can these two forces stay together?

Answer: The one Force sustains the two of them so that the created being could exist, so that there will be something besides the Creator. He constantly sustains our being since without it, we simply wouldn’t exist.

Just think of how the term “existence from absence” sounds: Existence is being sustained above nonexistence, above nothing.

Question: How is this expressed in the group among individuals who are starting to unite?

Answer: They only have to take the connection between them into account. Nothing else is relevant to their force and their abilities; nothing can be changed except a prayer for the connection.

When they feel that everything depends on their mutual connection, it is already a good clarification. Then, as a result, they sign a treaty of mutual guarantee.

Question: But the ego doesn’t disappear and isn’t annulled, is it?

Answer: Yes, it grows. How can these tow forces exist without one another? How can one be measured without the other?

We think that love and hate can exist independently and that love by itself is enough. But it isn’t so;  even when you love someone very much, you suddenly discover that some “spice,” some roughness is missing so that you will have a true contact and a real connection. The feeling of connection is always composed of the negative and the positive that covers it. Otherwise there is no connection. A connection can only be between two distant opposites and and it lies namely in between them.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/26/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar” 

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Connection Is Life

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe “matter” of our desire is “dust,” and it doesn’t change. The only thing that changes is the level of connection between the particles of this “dust.” So first of all we have to perceive ourselves not just as the desire to receive. It is because this desire takes on 613 different special forms, and in each of them we want to enjoy only for ourselves.

This is quite clear: Everyone wants to enjoy something and this way separates and breaks apart the grain of their desire into 613 particles of self-enjoyment. Of course, no one can count this number and we use it as a figure of speech.

Then the work on our connection with other people begins. These “crumbs” actually remain lifeless, as it says: “From dust you came and to dust you shall return.” What counts is the special connection among the particles, which gives them life.

Scientists cannot understand them and cannot turn the still nature into life. They try to use electric discharge and other means, but a person cannot do such a thing. It isn’t alchemy; it is much more complex since the upper force has to be revealed in an actual form of life. A person can do it only if he summons the action of the Light that Reforms. In order to turn the still nature into the vegetative level, the vegetative level into the animate level, and so on, there should be a portion of the Light that Reforms each time.

Therefore, by the connection among us our murky particles discover life in this connection. They remain in the desire to receive of the still nature, but the mutual connection they create among them, the mutual guarantee, the mutual bestowal, the network they want to build with the help of the Light, turns into the vegetative level and in it flow the forces of life that stem from the source of life, from the Creator. Then from the vegetative level they change to more complex forms of the animate and the speaking levels of nature.

We should understand the basic structure, the essence of this system: The particles remain the same desires that were created as existence from absence, and the connection among them is existence from existence.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/26/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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How To Alleviate Tension In The Family

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Typically, a woman is consumed with housework and a man generally comes home in a negative and irritated mood. It seems that a woman has no strength to deal with this kind of a situation because she has no resources from which to draw the strength that is needed to deal with it. What is the solution?

Answer: The men finish their day incorrectly. They should gather together, sit in a circle, and set their intention for a proper return home. They need to rise above themselves by reminding themselves of why they are in such a state and that their stress is actually due to their advancement.

They need to feel like pioneers and elevate their state despite the fact that it is so intense. This is a special state, and they are special because they were chosen among all of humanity to actualize the method of becoming an integral human. I think that this will alleviate some of the inner tension, and they will be able to come home in a normal state.

The women should support one another and understand the men’s state. We should work with women separately and teach them how to neutralize this state.

I understand all of this because I’ve experienced it myself, only in my time, there was no integral method. I experienced very unpleasant states that were impossible to deal with. There wasn’t all this advice or special unity gatherings or psychological workshops and preparations. However, today, everything is all possible.
[83910]
From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/31/12

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Duty At The Convention Is A Push Forward

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can being on duty during the convention advance me on the spiritual path?

Answer: All those who will be on duty have to be supplied with a radio and headphones so that they will take part simultaneously with all other participants at all the events. We must try to schedule duties during lectures, questions and answers, and breaks, but not during the events such as workshops. Those on duty should rotate constantly.

Question: How important is it to be on duty?

Answer: Actually, this is the most important thing. When I do something for society, it does not even matter how much I hear or if I am physically involved in an event because here, I am doing the right job one-hundred percent.

That is why being on duty physically gives a person a huge push forward. There were many people who came to big conventions just to work, and it was during that work that they suddenly began to feel the emergence of a shared, common, and great field. This is the beginning of the feeling of the Creator.
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From the Virtual Lesson 7/15/12, “Fundamentals of Kabbalah”

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 07.29.12

Preparation to the Lesson

[media 1]   [media 2]

Shamati #2 “Divinity  in Exile”

[media 3]   [media 4]

The Book of ZoharSelected Excerpts “Beresheet Bet (Genesis 2),” Lesson 143

[media 5]   [media 6]

Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 7,” Item 1

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Writings of Rabash, “What Is, ‘Anyone Who Mourns for Jerusalem Is Rewarded with Seeing Its Joy’ in the Work”

[media 9]   [media 10]