Audio Version Of The Blog – 10.31.12

Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download: MP3 Audio
[audio: http://files.kabbalahmedia.info/audio/eng_o_rav_2012-10-31_declamation_blog-rav_full.mp3 title=’31.10.12′]

Weekly Torah Portion – 10.31.12

The Book of Zohar, Weekly Torah Portion, “Ha-Shavua” Selected Excerpts

[media 1]   [media 2]

The Book of Zohar, Weekly Torah Portion, “Hayei Sarah” Selected Excerpts

[media 3]   [media 4]

Fine-Tuning To Bestowal

Dr. Michael LaitmanIf from the very beginning, albeit artificially, I “work hard” before the friends, if I bow my head before the group, at least on the physical level, I, in this way, prepare myself to discover my shame for my egoistic flaws and to stand in this sensation. I will be able to endure and “digest” it, I am not identifying with it, I will be grateful for it.

Shame sets me correctly before the Creator. Like fine-tuning, it makes it possible to catch the right wave. The greater my shame is, the more precisely I tune to the narrow range of frequency, the one that leads me to the Creator, to the properties that I want to acquire. And the picture does not become fuzzy in front of me; on the contrary, it is extremely focused.
[91650]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/28/12, Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)

Related Material:
The Truth About The Greatness Of Friends
Without Feeling Shame You Get Nowhere
If I Feel Shame, It Means That I Advance

The Truth About The Greatness Of Friends

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What do I raise in my eyes by bowing before the friends?

Answer: Nothing. Self-diminution and the realization of the greatness of the Creator are two different but complementary things. Usually in the context of a relationship with the Creator, we are talking about the group, and in the context of a relationship with the group, we are talking about ourselves because the group is between me and the Creator.

Question: What is exactly revealed to me when I raise the group in my eyes?

Answer: The corrected system of the single soul that is at the end of correction. The system, that today, I see through the prism of my flaws.

This is what the greatness of the group is, and no less, because this is the truth. And although I cannot yet accept it as a fact, in the end, I will understand it completely.
[91647]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/28/12, Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)

Related Material:
Fine-Tuning To Bestowal
Tuning Into A Wave Of Bestowal
Without Feeling Shame You Get Nowhere

Without Feeling Shame You Get Nowhere

Dr. Michael LaitmanBaal HaSulam, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah),” Item 8: This is because there is a natural law that the receiver feels shame and impatience upon receiving gifts from the giver out of compassion and pity.

From here extends a second law, that never will anyone be able to satisfy the needs of his friend to the fullest, because ultimately he will not be able to give him the nature and the form of self-possession, as only with it is the desired perfection attained.

Actually the Creator can’t cover and compensate for the feeling of shame by Himself, without our participation. We have to go through different stages independently, thus revealing our flaws and correcting them; of course, we use His force in order to perform the correction, but the cycle must be as follows:

– I discover how corrupt I am

– The problem that is revealed is not in me but in my attitude compared to the attitude of the Giver.

– I determine what is flawed with respect to it.

– I look for how to correct the flaw and how to complete it.

– I ask the Creator for the force to correct the flaw.

This means that this action is very complicated and is made of many components; it’s impossible to manage without it. A person has to actually feel it; there is no other choice. He has to feel it and to go through the different states on the way, with the Creator’s help of course, which means with the help of the upper force, the Light. But he has to participate in every stage and in every decision.

It’s impossible to receive a present from someone, to enjoy it, and to feel that it’s yours. There is always the feeling of shame before the giver. In our world the problem is solved by the concealment of the Creator, who thus allows us to reveal Him only to the extent that we can bear the feeling of shame.

The Creator is concealed and the shame is revealed only to the extent that I am ready to resemble Him, to clarify the matter of my receiving. The more I advance, the finer and more sensitive my perception becomes, and then I am ready for the revelation of shame. In some ways it is similar to what happens in our world.
[91415]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/29/12, “Matan Torah” (The Giving of the Torah)”

Related Material:
Shame As An Engine For Spiritual Advancement
For Some Reason I Don’t Feel Like Anything
The Benefit Of Spiritual Shame

Put A Prayer In Our Mouths!

Dr. Michael LaitmanIt says that the Creator puts a prayer in a person’s mouth as if filling a person with the right prayer. The Light arranges our deficiencies and then we can cry out with the revelation of the right deficiency for which we will already receive a correction and a filling. Everything comes from the Light. There is nothing that isn’t done with its help.

So when we are in front of the source of Light, which is The Book of Zohar, we have to demand, to ask, that this Light will arrange, sculpt, and format the correct prayer, the deficiency, the necessity, so that we will undoubtedly advance to the attribute of bestowal. This attribute will help us reach revelations that will be only in order to bring the Creator contentment, not for ourselves. Let the Light do its job.

So together we all yearn for one deficiency, one form of the one deficiency for the Creator. It may be that this deficiency, our appeal to the Creator, will fill us and we don’t need anything else but that. This will already be the answering of the prayer. The yearning and the deficiency can actually be the filling.
[91533]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/29/12, The Zohar

Related Material:
An Agreement With The Creator
Formula For The Light That Reforms
The Unlimited Power Of The Zohar

The Group: Homing In On The Target

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe should understand that everyone experiences the burdening of the ego and thoughts of criticism about the Rav, the group, about where we are headed, and the study as compared to other methods. This is good and right. These doubts are sent from Above. We must not annul them, but rather accept them and overcome them. We advance only by constantly clarifying our feelings with regard to the goal, the path, and by checking our deviation from it.

If a person cannot get back on the right track, correct himself with regard to the path, since his ego doesn’t let him see his true condition and his pride blinds him, then such people, without mercy, should be eliminated from the group because they are very dangerous.

We shouldn’t be ashamed and hide such cases in the group. On the contrary, if we know about such cases and respond, it will be easier for us to cope with it. We will feel that we are all protected in the group and that we have one wide back. That group will be able to get advice from others and we will be enriched so that such things will not happen in other places.

We will be able to learn from such cases, to know in advance how to straighten things and get back on track and to clarify our principles. After all, a beginner doesn’t understand what valuable experience has accumulated in the group for decades. They believe that it is enough to read a page or two from the staute and to find out what to do. They don’t understand that it is all based on a person’s internal changes that are accumulated as a result of years of work.

A person who follows this path is required to bring himself to changes: not external changes but to change himself so that he will see the world of Ein Sof (Infinity) around him. “One judges according to his own flaws,” so it is precisely these flaws that we have to correct internally and not the external world. This is the only right approach.

We should be very careful not to let people who are inclined to be dominant and suppress others, who do not allow others to take different roles equally, to run the group. After all, by that they don’t let others advance and thus bury themselves.
[91513]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/28/12, “Conversation About the Group”

Related Material:
A Boomerang Always Comes Back To You
The Ego Tends To Protect “Its Territory”
The Artificial Model Of Man

If I Feel Shame, It Means That I Advance

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Why is shame necessary for our advancement? After all, it is an unpleasant feeling that burns you and seems to belong to the path of suffering?

Answer: Shame is like feeling a certain pain in the body. The pain indicates an illness that needs to be healed. Thanks to the pain, I am saved from death. It is the same with the feeling of shame; it indicates lack of correction somewhere so is it possible to ignore or to annul this feeling?

But we try to escape it. So Kabbalists tell us that we need the help of the group and the books and everything that can support me and help me bear the feeling of shame.

At the same time it isn’t only that I need to bear it, but I also need to get to know it more deeply and to perform acts of correction. The feeling of shame will continue to grow until it obligates you to cry out for help and then you will receive the Light that Reforms that will correct and heal you.

You are not healed if you cry out weakly. There must be a true outcry, a call out to get rid of it, since it isn’t just any illness; it is the correction of the desire to receive, of your nature.

Question: But we always aspire to feel good, how can I aspire to feel shame?

Answer: In order to do that you increase the importance of the goal, by placing it above your pain. You say: “Let it hurt, I don’t want to identify with what hurts and with the pain itself. I want to attain the goal, and thank you very much for the pain, since it focuses me on the goal.”

It all depends on the recognition of the greatness of the goal, the greatness of the Creator. Since the Creator is a desire to bestow, a form of bestowal and concession. To the extent that these values seem great to you, you begin to suffer from your attributes which are opposite from these values. But if you extinguish this gap, and you inject yourself with some “anesthetic,” you prevent yourself from advancing.

This is why you build an environment that will sustain you in the necessary state. As a result, you see your oppositeness from bestowal, you suffer from that, and still you continue to increase the Creator in your eyes. You adhere to Him, you want to adhere to the group, you don’t want to identify with your evil anymore, but not in order to escape it like a kind of pain, but in order to really reach bestowal, in order to really assimilate in the group.

There are many discernments here and they all lead in one direction. So try to understand how wonderfully the feeling of shame guides you if you use it correctly.
[91405]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/28/12, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”

Related Material:
Shame Of Inequality
A Priceless Sense Of Shame
Shame Worse Than Death

The Main Thing – To Strive For Unity

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What is the correct way to act during the workshops?

Answer: One should act according to Rabash’s writings about the assembly of the group: A person has to lower himself to the group and imagine himself in the assembly of completely corrected people who may not seem so to him as I see them through my egoistic filter as uncorrected to the extent of my corruption.

I have to actively participate in the discussion even if I don’t have anything to say. They will understand and support me.

The main thing is to aspire that the soul will be one whole, to the center of the group, not forgetting that these “ten” in the world, along with all of us, are all united in a spiritual body seeking to reach the first similarity with the Light, the same property, mutual bestowal!

As soon as we reach this level, we sense the fulfillment from the Light, from mutual bestowal, and from connection—we are born as a spiritual object.

Good luck!
[91426]

Related Material:
Everyone…Everyone…Everyone….
Effort and Advancement
An Agreement With The Creator

In What Way Is The Ego Good?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: In what way is the ego good and how is it possible to beneficially use it?

Answer: The ego is good because it’s the only energy that exists in us. It’s what pushes us forward, raises us. Throughout evolution, it has been constantly lifting us from the beastly level to the present level.

And today we are at a meeting point where we actually change. We begin to understand that the previous form of ego that we used has exhausted itself. We’re not able to work with it any further, thus it shows us the present crisis.

This is the crisis of the former ego, when we used it and it seemed to us that all was well, everything was normal, and it was possible to continue in this way until the end. But suddenly it was revealed that it had closed, had encompassed us into a single system, to complete interdependence.

And if we are completely dependent upon each other, how can we use our ego? Gradually we become like one family in which everyone is dependent on each other, and I need to use my ego, calculating my dependence on others. This means that in this way I need to use it differently, meaning already in an integral manner, according to the ego of others.

It turns out that we need to begin to use the general ego that is shared by us: to connect it together and rise above it so that our unity, connection, and support will be higher than our personal ego, that is, so that our ego becomes mutual, social, and collective.

This means that our group needs to have a shared goal, and we need to attain this mutual goal by each one pushing towards it with his personal ego. Then everyone will be ready for a mutual goal, a mutual connection, and in the end we’ll begin to measure our success to the extent of our connection. That is very important. Thus our ego isn’t annulled, but simply is utilized in such a way according to how it’s revealed today to humanity, meaning in an integral way.
[91296]
From a Virtual Lesson 10/21/12

Related Material:
Commonality And Self-Expression
An Essential Method
A Course On Harmonious Education