Audio Version Of The Blog – 09.24.12

Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download: MP3 Audio
[audio:http://files.kabbalahmedia.info/audio/eng_o_rav_2012-09-24_declamation_blog-rav_full.mp3 title=’24.9.12′]

How To Win In The Struggle With Yourself?

Dr. Michael LaitmanA person fights cruel battles on the way to achieving the goal of creation, attacks and struggles with problems. It is so hard to attain this goal and in fact, it is practically impossible since it is against our nature. We cannot transcend nature; we don’t have the powers for that.

A person can only work in the range of the opportunities he was given. The goal we are seeking, trying to discover the spiritual world and reach equivalence of form with the Creator, is above us and is opposite from our attributes, so a person simply cannot do it.

Therefore, Rabash says that a united group of people should get together, in one place, under the leadership of one man, under the influence from Above, from the teacher, the Creator, the group, and all its members. Only then will we be able to take any steps to change our nature.

It isn’t so bad that we cannot change ourselves. The problem is that despite everything, we are constantly trying to reach the goal by ourselves: we get angry, we get pressure, and operate as we are used to in this world—attacking again and again, making a collective effort. We think that we will fight and win.

But we cannot succeed and win this way. Eventually we have to reach a state in which we really want the desired goal, but we cannot attain it. This is the recognition we should come to.

We have to fight; we have to try, but the more we tell each other that we need help from Above, the less energy we will waste in vain.

Why should we fight in vain against this monster, which is our egoistic nature? We will not be able to beat the ego by our own powers since they also stem from the same ego. It is impossible to beat the ego with egoistic powers; a person is deceiving himself!

This is why we were given a group. A person begins to understand that as long as he fights alone, he will stay in the same system, in one vessel, in his own cocoon. He will spin around himself like a dog chasing his own tail and will never break out of this closed circle.

If he understands this, he begins to look for a group. It may be that he has been in the group for a long time, but isn’t aware that this is an environment that was given to him to work in. He thought that these are just friends with whom he studies and dines with as is accepted in our world. But eventually he despairs of his own powers and understands that he needs help from Above.

He doesn’t see the Creator and he doesn’t know how to turn to Him. He doesn’t know whether the Creator hears his requests or not, and whether He responds. Perhaps he is just shouting in the desert, wasting his efforts and tormenting his heart. But he doesn’t feel that it leads to any results.

When he understands that he is lost without the friends’ support, he really needs a group.

Otherwise nothing will help him and he will end his life like the animal he was born. From that moment on he begins to look at his environment differently. He understands that it was given to him for a reason, and that the Creator has brought him to his good fate and told him “take it!”
[88776]
From the Talk Dedicated to the Memorial Day of Rabash 9/20/12 

Related Material:
A Prayer For the Unattainable
From Egoism To Love Is One Stop Upward
Egoism Is The Force That Opposes Unity

A Prayer For The Unattainable

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe difference between our actions is only in whether they lead to the Creator or not. We cannot reveal the Creator if everyone is not connected first, a connection without any differences, for the general wellbeing of everyone.

I should feel that I don’t exist anymore as an individual; I only perform these actions and forget about myself. I don’t even see or know what I have done. I don’t need that, since otherwise I can start enjoying my merits and look for ways to justify myself.

This reflects what bestowal is to some extent. Of course, it is impossible to reach such attributes. When we clarify it more to ourselves, we discover that it is unattainable and gradually begin to realize that it has to come to us from somewhere on the outside.

The more we try the more we see that we cannot do that, and so it becomes clearer that only the upper force can help us, something unreal. Then we demand that it will happen. This is already a prayer.
[88767]
From a Talk before the Unity Convention 9/20/12

Related Material:
How To Win In The Struggle With Yourself
The Impersonal Life
The One Who Prays For His Friend Receives First

An Ideological Question

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: We are speaking about the end of the egoistic development, and in the meantime, I have a feeling that humanity is still very far from reaching the peak of egoism and its recognition…

Answer: Having no choice, I can remain in an unchanging state as long as it doesn’t get any worse. Under the pressure of suffering and problems, I can subdue myself and settle for mundane daily life: go to work, come home, watch TV, close myself in, and not ask for more. I am ready to live like an animal and not ask difficult sophisticated questions till I die.

It is true; this is an instinctive defensive reaction. There is no human being here, but only an animal existence, which 99.99% of the people lead.

But there is another question: How much do I suffer? You are saying that the world is not ready for correction yet. It will never be ready for correction, but will it want to get rid of the sufferings? This is actually what we are talking about. If people have nothing to do, if they have nothing to live on, if they go out to the streets and shatter windows, governments will start wars in response to the riots just to hold on to what is left, to push the problems to a lower priority and to keep the people busy. War is sure way to put everyone in his place. It is a possible future scenario.

But there is also a new deficiency growing here: People are increasingly asking the “ideological” question, which may seem very far from the “animal” question. The question of “What am I living for?” It is being revealed more clearly in humanity. Although the leaders believe that they will be able to keep the masses on the “corporeal” level much longer, it isn’t so.

On the whole, when you look at the world, you see billions of people on the level of the still nature. The world will stay this way, on the level of still nature, but there are also the higher levels of the vegetative, the animate, and the speaking, which are changing. The main part is the level of the speaking, which is the most advanced. It needs to change first, thus pulling all the other levels behind it.

So don’t look at the lower levels and don’t wait for them to do something. They will never do anything but simply follow the shepherd, that’s all. A person needs a thin connecting wire in order to follow someone.

I certainly don’t disrespect them and don’t think lightly of them, since later they will accumulate into one whole and the differences will disappear. Today we can take our body as an example; it is made of different cells that are tied together in different ways and only a tiny part the size of a match head manages them. It is in this part that all the feelings and the understandings and all the plans and memories are revealed. Everything is concentrated in this grain.
[88781]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/19/12, “Introduction to the Book Panim Meirot uMasbirot

Related Material:
To Correct The World Means To Correct Ourselves
About Suffering,Great and Small
The Spiritual World, As Is, Without Any Miracles

From Egoism To Love Is One Stop Upward

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe only means for spiritual advancement is working in the group, thanks to which we clarify whether we want to connect with one another. Eventually we discover that we cannot connect and don’t even want to and totally reject the mutual connection.

Our whole nature rebels against such a connection. We are ready to put up with anything except that. There are relationships that we enjoy and we want them, but a connection with the friends, a mutual connection in which every individual serves the general—our heart will never agree to that.

Only such a mutual relationship is called “connection,” in which everyone is like a component in an electric circuit, or in an engine. So in every whole system, every component is part of the system and has to perform his job and keep his obligations to the other parts.

In order to do that, we need to annul the ego. People whose ego isn’t so developed are ready to be with others and it is easy for them to be close, to feel one another, to be friends. However, the more a person develops, the more his ego grows and the more difficult he finds it to connect with others. He doesn’t feel that he has friends at all.

Once, even several decades ago, people felt close to one another, but today everyone is by himself. We don’t even notice how everyone is closed up in his niche. We hide behind the computer screen and call it a relationship. We feel better this way, more comfortable! All of humanity is like that now.

There are different methods to make people connect, which are mainly based on Nazism, fascism, and fundamentalism. These methods are meant to evoke the feeling of solidarity in the masses. To some extent it stops their psychological development and so it is easier to manage them.

But in spiritual development on the other hand, there are two opposing approaches that are integrated. On the one hand, a person has to be very developed, a great individualist. Everyone must feel that he is totally isolated and that he doesn’t belong to anyone else. It is so prominent that it seems as if he doesn’t belong to this world.

On the other hand, we are required to connect so powerfully that everyone should totally annul himself against his desire to annul others. It is the most unrealistic demand that can possibly be in our world, and it is against the trend of human development. After all, as the ego develops people become increasingly more detached from one another. Everyone draws away from others and hides behind his computer, his cell phone, or at home.

Everyone lives in a niche he has created for himself. Suddenly he is required to do the opposite: to leave his niche and connect in his heart and soul. What is more, we have to do this not by being forced, but to want it ourselves! After all, we discover that this unity is the highest value.

There is no advantage in it, but this is where the truth lies. So it is very hard to approach the values of bestowal and love, if internally in our feelings we don’t find a justification for it.

But this is the principle according to which the spiritual world works! In order to acquire these values, which are totally opposite from our current values, we have to recruit the help of the upper force so that it will influence us and change us.

We have to ask for that during the study. After all, we study the actions that take place on a higher level—actions of bestowal, love, and connection—working on the systems of the souls. It isn’t a mechanical system that is emotionless, but a live system in which the mind and the feelings operate according to the law of mutual guarantee.

We study about the relations between our desires, which are in mutual bestowal, and we want to resemble them, which means to study them, to connect to them and to enter the same state. Thus, we draw ourselves to this state and spur the influence of the force called the Light that Reforms.

We have to think and study about these upper states, about how our egoistic desires operate loyally in mutual bestowal.
[88732]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/19/12, The Zohar

Related Material:
We Need Corrected People Instead Of Angels
How Is The Element Of Life Created?
A Thief In The Holy Brotherhood

USA Handcuffed The Economy

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from Chicago Now): “We all agree that we need to create jobs in this country. The U.S. economy has been stalled for years. While coming down from its highs of over 10 %, unemployment still hasn’t improved much, hovering between 8.1% to 8.3%, with no signs of enough job growth to stimulate our economy and get people back to work.

“So what do we do, especially in an election year? We print money!

“Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke contends that he is trying to help our economy by doing something that President Obama can’t, nor can Congress do and which Mitt Romney opposes. He is electronically creating money! The Fed says that it will ‘buy’ $40 billion a month in mortgage bonds until the high unemployment eases significantly.”

My Comment: Since the dollar became detached from gold, the economy has ceased to be the economy and turned into a game….
[88469]

Related Material:
People Now Realize That The American Economy Was Ruined By Greed
20 Signs That The World Could Be Headed For An Economic Apocalypse In 2012
The American Dream Boomeranging Back

Harmony Between A Man And A Woman

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Every aspect of a person’s life should be examined via the dynamics of development from the levels of still, vegetative, and animate nature and the exit to a new level called “human.” How do you see this dynamics in the developed integral relations between a man and a woman?

Answer: First of all we have to understand that a couple, a man and a woman, have to participate together in studying integral education, to go over the same materials, to experience the same processes, to understand and to internalize the method of mutual incorporation. Just like couples in the animate world, a male and a female, offspring, a flock, etc. mutually understand each other instinctively, so do we have to make people understand what it means to be in harmony with nature and between them. This means between the two partners, between them and their children, between the couple and their parents and other relatives.

We put great emphasis on the fact that people have to complete one another, like in the group. On the whole, it’s a mutual group, and if each member understands his weakness and how he completes someone else, then we can see an interesting harmony in nature, which we can’t find between a man and a woman in any other way. This means that they don’t “enter” each other’s frameworks, but complete these frameworks so that eventually there is a very interesting border by which they connect with pleasure.

An amusing field is created of the “Yin and Yang” type, in which the completion is harmonious and wise. All this happens so that they can organize a small personal group of their own. Since their goal is to create a general collective harmony, they make up a stable group since all the other groups can change. We emphasize the fact that they should study together and read the same material, at least a little, 15 minutes a day, if they have the time. They shouldn’t misuse this opportunity to study together. People should have time to rest from one another and from their group. They have to process the material and to be by themselves a little.

But in order to do that, they have to go over the material together. It really brings people closer to one another. What’s more, it’s very helpful for the study and in how to relate to a child so that he will be included in the integral system. Later the division of different tasks is fulfilled when each one understands his part and there are no conflicts over it with others.

On the whole, people are trying to think about the integral society, although the entire society around them isn’t integral yet. Still, if they try to behave integrally, and to divide the tasks and the opportunities as much as they can, they actually begin to feel that something is created between them, like a child that grows from them, something that is average and collective that made up that human being who later split into Adam and Eve.
[88577]
From a Talk on Integral Upbringing 3/5/12

Related Material:
If There Is No Shadow, Then There Is No Sun
Family: From Neutrality To Complete Mutual Understanding
Whose Shoulder Should We Cry On?

Egoism Is The Force That Opposes Unity

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe consider it to be egoism only when people in the group repel one another rather than when a person is trying to achieve the most comfortable, advantageous, and winning position in an ordinary society. The latter is a regular everyday egoism.

Here we mean the societal egoism when a desirable state is set precisely in the group, when the goal is to become closer and rise above one’s natural properties and desires, when one has to rise above himself and enter into the common integral desire where a person will not be “I,” but rather “we” and his “I” will be annulled and suppressed staying somewhere at the bottom, while “we” will be cultivated. In such a state one’s inner opposition with this aspiration is called the egoism.

That is, egoism is a force that opposes the group unification.
[88381]
From a Talk on Integral Upbringing 3/4/12

Related Material:
Building Material: Our Egoism
The Beneficial Revelation Of Hatred
Purposeful Development Of Egoism

Preventing The Family From Becoming A Woman’s Prison

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can we organize the right kind of interaction within a family unit so that the family would not literally become a woman’s prison?

Answer: A woman does not feel the need to leave her house for weeks when she feels like she is in a good, proper environment.  When, besides having articles, materials, lessons, lectures, theater, and other programs already adapted to the new society, she knows that her children go to a normal educational institution and return home unhurt with no signs of violence on their bodies; when she knows that her husband works and also studies in a virtual group; when she can be present virtually at his studies and even show it to the children; when at the same time she communicates with other women regarding all the integral matters; when children also receive integral education and upbringing according to their level in school, in that case, the woman absorbs everything through this, then this is enough for her.

It also is necessary to organize picnics, outings into nature, and have meals together. However, even at these meals, men and women sit separately, but there, women have an opportunity to communicate, to feel like they belong to a large society. In other words, this way, we need to give women an opportunity to be part of the things that men do.
[88432]
From a Talk on Integral Upbringing 3/4/12

Related Material:
How To Avoid Feeling Lonely
A Revolution In The Family
Particular Characteristics Of A Woman’s Nature

Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 09.24.12

Preparation to the Lesson

[media 1]   [media 2]

Writings of Baal HaSulam “Igrot,” Letter 18

[media 3]   [media 4]

The Book of ZoharSelected Excerpt “Aharei-Mot,” Item 162, Lesson 12

[media 5]   [media 6]

Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 8

[media 7]   [media 8]

Matan Torah (Giving of the Torah),” Item 15

[media 9]   [media 10]