Audio Version Of The Blog – 09.12.12

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Fanning A Spark Into A Flame

Dr. Michael LaitmanOur work lies in attaining the perfect desire. The first desire is given to a person from above, from the Creator, as it is written, “I am the first.” This is the spark called “the point in the heart,” the aspiration to something higher, a yearning or attraction. By virtue of some seemingly chance occurrence, a person receives his first desire for spirituality and begins to advance.

And then, his entire work lies in asking for this desire to be slightly increased: by a fourth, then by a third, and thus, slightly adding more and more to his advancement. He discerns what is called progress with increasing clarity until he understands that it is the aspiration to bestowal, an exit out of himself toward the neighbor, self-cancellation.

That is how he asks time after time, completely egoistically for now, without understanding exactly what to ask for. Then he begins to understand it better, but conceals it from himself, until finally, he agrees and is willing to give in a little, to bend down and unite with others, to come out of himself to the outside and begin to live inside of them.

He already has a slightly better understanding of the right request, which must come from the very bottom of the heart in order to rise above oneself and give up everything, to cleave to the upper one and be inside of Him like an embryo in the mother’s waters. That is how he senses himself within the group, all of humanity, within the Creator. This is a constant process, “From love to the creatures to love to the Creator,” until a person aims himself correctly and attains the right prayer.

The heavens do not respond to a fourth, a third or any part of a prayer, but only to a full prayer. However, a person is continuously aided in advancing toward this perfect prayer, and when he really does attain the full request, the cry, then it becomes revealed to him. And this is called, “I am the last.” The Creator begins and ends everything. In the end, through many actions, a person attains an answer to his prayer.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/12/12

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Heart Of The Group

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What is the “heart of the group?”

Answer: “The heart of the group” are common desires that are able to exist in a mutual and devoted connection to one another. Together they can use the egoism that each person has risen above and bring these desires into sacrifice. That is, they now have work in the Temple, in their common house, their common desire. It’s within this adhesion to one another they discover adhesion to the Creator.

The unity between friends is a vessel and as a result of all these connected desires the adhesion to the Creator is revealed. It is said: “Through Your actions we shall know You.” The Light is revealed within the vessel.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/12/12, The Study of the Ten Sefirot

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A System That Devours Itself

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe have to intensify dissemination. Thanks to dissemination people are already starting to understand the reason for the crisis. It’s better if they learn this today (or actually yesterday) since the process of recognition and understanding takes time. A great mass will not understand what is happening immediately; it will not see the solution immediately, since it will have to understand that the situation will not be resolved by itself, that man is actually the problem and he’s the one that should be corrected and not the world.

It’s about a change of perception: “I have to change myself? What’s wrong with me?” Talk to people on the street and try to explain this to them.

We have to reveal the truth gradually by explaining the concept of connection and unity. A person assumes that he is quite connected to those around him and we have to bring him to the minimal recognition of evil, and at the same time not turn him off. It’s because no one likes to hear such things. Therefore, we give objective explanations and seem to be somewhat distracted, bringing the examples of others and bringing a person to the initial recognition, so that he’ll start feeling, “Yes, there is indeed a problem here.”

It turns out that we have simply created a terrible world. Instead of a healthcare system, we have a source of illnesses, the education system teaches crime and prostitution, the banks steal and abuse the customers, the manufacturers impose on the consumer unnecessary products that break down quickly and have to be replaced in a year. In short, we have created systems and mechanisms that are not in our favor anymore.

It’s an unusual crisis, which happens as we “bend the stick” and upset the balance. Fifty-eighty years ago we created quality products and assumed that humanity would prosper thanks to that. But today the “American dream” is collapsing. Suddenly it turns out that the system operates on its own, just like a cancerous tumor that devours its environment. It takes place in every field: in commerce and industry, in health and education; everything is collapsing. Why? Because our ego has ended its evolution and has become “round” and closed. The time has come to repair it.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/6/12, “Messiah’s Shofar”

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The Castle In The Heart That Is Locked With A Lock

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What are the signs that you are moving to the King’s palace correctly?

Answer: The King’s palace is not somewhere out there on a mountaintop. This is not the silhouette of a castle, luring us from a distance, or the shape of magical Disneyland.

The palace of the Creator is inside in the human heart, and this is not the picture that a person would want to imagine. It is not pleasant for him to think about how to turn his heart into the palace of the Creator. It immediately requires a person to do something; it forces him to undergo unpleasant states, to take on the laws of bestowal, to change oneself in order to transform himself, his desire, into the temple of the Creator.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/10/12, Writings of Rabash 

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When Will A Prophet Walk On The Mountain Tops?

Dr. Michael LaitmanBaal HaSulam, “Messiah’s Shofar:” The revelation of Kabbalah to all the nations is the revelation of Eliyahu (Elijah). And this task was said about Eliyahu the prophet, since the disclosure of the secrets of the Torah is always referred to as “the disclosure of Eliyahu.” It is as they have said, “Let it rest until Elijah comes,” and also, “the Tishbi will answer the questions and problems.” For this reason, they said that three days (a known intimation) prior to the coming of the Messiah, Elijah would walk upon the hilltops and will blow in a great horn, etc.

Does that mean that we shouldn’t disseminate the wisdom of Kabbalah? Will someone come, blow some great horn, and the entire world suddenly will wake up? Could some force descend upon everyone? What if we are doing something that we shouldn’t? What if we are corrupting instead of correcting?

Actually, we have to do our best to disseminate. Its success all over the world is called the “revelation of Eliyahu.” If the wisdom of Kabbalah spreads throughout the world, even on different levels of understanding, it will be a sign that we have attained the “three days before the coming of the Messiah.”

This is actually what we should aspire for, but it depends on our unity, on how strong the connection is among us. We must convey the message to the entire world through the strings that are stretched between the souls and through the external media.

It doesn’t matter how people receive it, whether in a good way or in a bad way. The main thing is to disseminate so that people will know that the people of Israel have a special wisdom that is meant for the correction of the world. Eventually, it will be accepted.

Question: So, why do we hesitate and not go for the clear message about the only remedy that the world needs? The partial, gradual explanations only prolong time and can complicate the transition to Kabbalistic knowledge. Why should we stall when there is no time left?

Answer: True. Why shouldn’t we turn directly to the Jewish people? Friends, we belong to the nation of Israel, which means that we yearn straight to the Creator, Yashar El.

We must connect the “nations of the world” with the Creator—those who know nothing and who don’t want to know and will not find anything in a distant place. So, leave yourselves and take care of them!

However, who actually will take care of them? It is a good question since one needs to think before one acts. I want to bring contentment to the Creator by bringing the nations of the world closer to Him because He wanted to give them the method of correction first.

However, we need the power to bring them closer to Him. We are messengers; we are a link. So, how can we carry out our mission? In order to do that, we need a spiritual force, so, first, we have to connect.

We must be grateful each time that the Creator enables us to do that, to connect, in order to fulfill our mission and to bring the nations of the world closer to Him. It is through that that we bring Him contentment.

This is an oxymoron: He loves us because of our role, and He loves the nations because of their closeness. They are the true vessels for receiving the abundance. We are closer to the Creator only during the time of fulfilling our mission while, in the end of correction when everything becomes one whole, the greatest and cruelest vessels of the nations of the world will reveal the greatest Light and will attain the strongest adhesion.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/9/12, “Messiah’s Shofar”

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Love As A Gift To The Created Being

Dr. Michael LaitmanThere is nothing in the Creator but love. But because we have no idea what love is, the Creator created different means in the created being by which we can attain love.

Love is something strange which our ego doesn’t understand; it’s unnatural. How can it be that by tasting the different flavors the host has served before me, I will feel the love of the host? What does one thing have to with the other?

This is the essence of the creation, “something from nothing.” In the “nothing” there is something of the “something.” And so from the “nothing,” from the desire to receive, I can reach the “something,” which means that from the impression within the desire to receive I can reach love, an attribute that is totally detached from the created being in every aspect.

Suddenly there is a kind of miracle, when as a result of some actions and phenomena within the desire to receive it attains an attribute that belongs to the upper Godly nature.

This remains totally incomprehensible to us; how can such a miracle called “love” be born from the actions of “give and take”? It has nothing to do with the desire to receive.

Every time, on every level, we have to complete the actions and the impressions that we experience in the desire to receive so that we will be able to bring them all together and rise to the attainment of the attribute of bestowal.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/3/12, The Study of the Ten Sefirot

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In Order To Rise And Connect

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: When people interact in an integral group, they suddenly experience powerful emotions, strong feelings, sometimes positive and sometimes negative, but suppressing these emotions does not do anything.

Answer: Of course not. This is why the main thing is for people to express their creative abilities, how they build their unity. First of all, we must not fully reject our egoism, but create unity above it. We must use egoism as a starting point and foundation, instead of just soaring up in the sky. It is necessary to understand that the level of unity is based on rising above the egoism, on turning this egoism into an inverted imprint.

In other words, our spiritual image—the collective image of Adam, our inner spirit that separates us from animals—is made through an imprint of our individual egoistic desires above which we rise and combine ourselves. This requires everyone’s individual work because one must turn himself into an inverted, altruistic imprint of a patrix into a matrix, of a negative into a positive, like a stamp, like its image.

Then, every one of us rises above egoism in its opposite form, the form of bestowal, the form of connection, in other words, instead of individualism, integrality, instead of only desiring to receive for yourself at the expense of others, ascent and investment into something common, whole. When we work this way, then, by rising above our egoism, we begin to understand what this new system consists of.

It is the opposite. It is like anti-matter. It consists of something that does not exist in this world. Let us become this!

This is the discussion of our special anti-image. However, it is not just opposite to each one of us, but when every one of us turns himself into the opposite of himself. At the same time, he starts combining himself with the others. He seems to lose his individuality through acquiring a common one, and, this way, he begins to perceive a single nature: its integral.

These are the kind of articles and materials that should be discussed in the groups of integral learning. They will take people to the next level when, on one hand, my individual work is necessary in order to rise, but on the other hand, my individual work together with everyone else’s work is necessary in order to connect.
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From a Talk on Integral Upbringing 3/2/12

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About Suffering, Great And Small

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Our dissemination is like a medication for a disease. But pills are usually bitter, and if a person doesn’t feel that he is ill, he won’t take them. Can we disseminate the wisdom of Kabbalah like a sweet liquid medicine?

Answer: If people don’t suffer at all, you have to give them something sweet for egoism, and this is impossible. It’s because then they will perceive your message in the religious light: “Add a little and you will earn for yourself the world to come. Everything is good with you even now, but if you exert a bit, it will simply be terrific…..” Such promises have been developed by religions and they are suitable for addressing everybody—such a pleasant, sweet additive.

However, we talk about corrections, and they are possible only out of the recognition of evil. After all, their meaning is that I’m corrupted and have to correct myself. How can we make it clear for people? Actually, we don’t realize that today only the smallest flaws are being revealed in humanity. In comparison to spirituality, they are simply meager. It’s because we are at the lowest, most filthy step of the ladder, in this world. There are 125 such steps in total, and they lead us to the world of Infinity (∞).

The particularity of our degree is that suffering here is imaginary, like the entire world. In truth, this is not suffering, but little “bites,” although they seem to us like tremendous problems that often determine our life and death. All of them are tiny in comparison to what happens in the five spiritual worlds. Big desires and great suffering lie there in particular. The negativity (-) is huge there as is pain related to it. An now we are receiving “injections,” which make up all the suffering of this world.

About Suffering, Great and Small

The aim is for us to acquire a screen and enter the spiritual world where we will be able to endure spiritual deficiencies and problems that are a million times greater than what is happening here. There we will be able to evaluate them in the Reflected Light, in the restriction, in rejection, feeling them in front of us and not inside.

The spiritual vessels and unfilled desires are hideously big, and it’s impossible to endure them. And for this reason, I hold them before me, feel them in “rejection,” evaluate them in my mind and feeling from a distance. Then I’m able to recognize the greatness of this suffering brought about by my irresponsibility, helplessness, and guilt before the entire world. And this allows me to transition from the left line to the right one.

Possibly, this will help you understand why we need the vessels of bestowal at all. The fact is that it’s simply impossible to go through such degrees, such fluctuations of negativity and positivity in the vessels of reception. It’s far beyond our ideas about life and death. This is darkness that can be managed only if I learn to distance myself from it and acquire a screen, bestowal, love. Only then will I be able to endure it and to transform it from evil into goodness.

Each of us has to feel responsibility much greater than that at home or in general, in one’s personal life. Only then will a person advance along the spiritual path. A person has to realize correctly his current state in particular. Bestowal begins now: Although in his egoistic desire, a person feels no harm to oneself, nevertheless, he must feel it in the bestowing desire. Let him work on it, let him care about it, let him implement it artificially, putting in all the effort. Whoever doesn’t do it creates a problem for themselves and also for all of us.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/2/2012, “A Handmaid that Is Heir to Her Mistress” 

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 09.12.12

Preparation to the Lesson

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Kabbalah for the StudentA Speech for the Completion of The Zohar,” (Starting with: “How one can achieve”)

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The Book of ZoharSelected Excerpt “VaYikahel (And Moses Assembled),” Item 107-157

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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Volume 1, Part 3, “Histaklut Pnimit,” Chapter 13, Item 1, Lesson 39

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Kabbalah for the Student, Peace in the World,” “Using the Nature of Singularity as a Subject of Evolution in the Collective and in the Individual”

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