Audio Version Of The Blog – 11.07.13

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From Lowness To Greatness

Dr. Michael LaitmanAccording to the purpose of creation, we must ascend to the height of the Creator. However, our egoistic desire is not capable of it. It seemingly wants to grow up, to become great because it’s “something out of nothing.” It has a grain of “something,” meaning the Light that produced it, but by its nature, by its essence, it comes “out of nothing.”

This is the basis of the contradiction inherent in our nature: On the one hand, it aspires to greatness, and on the other hand, it cannot achieve anything. We see this in evolution, from the history of human development. In the desire to receive, it’s impossible to obtain anything in the form of permanent or growing fulfillment. In the end, the only chance for a successful application of egoism is to reveal the evil inherent in it.

Therefore, it’s so important to show one’s own lowliness. If a person acts as a researcher in a laboratory in order to reveal the property of lowliness in the desire to receive, it’s the good, true, and shortest path to reveal the Creator.

Here, we are required to work on self-denial. Within its framework, everyone must elevate the goal in his eyes and in the friend’s eyes and to receive from the group the examples of devotion, friends’ love, love for the Creator. All this is so that eventually he discloses his lowliness. It’s said that only the low will see the Creator.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/06/13, Shamati #26

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A Rocket To The World Of Infinity

Question: Is it possible to alter the force that moves us (back and forth) in such a way that we enter a steep dive, fall intentionally, and then take off like a rocket all at once to the 125th level?

Answer: You cannot immediately rise to the 125th level, not because you lack the power, but because all of the levels are the complete opposites of each other and it is up to you to become familiar with every level in order to understand its characteristic, its taste.

 

A Rocket To Olam Ein Sof

 

Suppose you broke some apparatus and you took it apart. In order to put it back together, it is up to you to learn how to connect one part to another, why this part or another is needed, and how to combine them.

That is also how it is in this circumstance. It is impossible to control creation completely without understanding the mechanism of all its parts, without connecting them correctly. A man is called Adam because he resembles the Creator; rather than the Creator, he begins to control the whole machine.

Our world, although central, is the smallest in creation; around it exists an immense system of higher worlds. And it is up to you to become familiar with the entirety of the full system. You cannot imagine how much this perception is absolute and penetrates through all the smallest parts, both vertically and horizontally!
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From the 1st Lesson of the Bulgaria Convention “Dawn Of A New World” Day One 11/01/13

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We Can’t Sit Still!

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: I think that until there is a critical mass of people who have revealed the Creator, others like me will remain sitting quietly, and after that we will live and exist with them in a wonderful way.

Answer: I understand you perfectly, but we are living according to a particular program and we are not allowed to escape from it! We are found under the control of nature and don’t know what will happen tomorrow or in another minute.

Look at all of human history, at the whole world. Who can manage it? No one, starting the greatest and most powerful people and ending with the smallest people. There is a clear axis of development for every person and for all of humanity. We are managed. In creation there are two forces: One force pushes us from behind through suffering and the other force pulls us forward through pleasure. They control each one of us completely, as if we were small insects.

In order to rise above the physical (animal) developmental axis, we were given free choice. Through our elevation, we can change material life, because we will be equal to the Creator to some degree. We can look at the entire perspective; there will be two forces in our hands. And without them we would be subject to the upper management. Unfortunately, this understanding is turned off in us and so we behave like little children.

But today we have already become wiser, and we see that the world has transformed to be more and more unmanageable and chaotic; everything slips through our fingers. We need to do something about this. We cannot sit still!
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From the 1st lesson of the Bulgaria Convention “Dawn Of A New World” Day One 11/01/13

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A Bag Of Nuts As A Gift To The Creator

Dr. Michael LaitmanA Mitzva (commandment) is the correction of our desires in order to connect them into one, in one direction and one intention. We can divide our desires into 613 parts, 620 parts or 10 parts and to other forms of division. However, the Torah and the Mitzvot are, in fact, a correction that is called the correction of the shattered desire to receive, from in order to receive to in order to bestow.

Thanks to this correction, all the desires connect to one general intention, to one source. Every part doesn’t worry about its own pleasure any more, but about delighting the one Creator. So, all the parts connect, as it is written, “For in Him doth our heart rejoice.” We connect thanks to our yearning for Him.

Unity is possible only through connecting, as “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are one,” which means that we want to delight the Creator. We cannot just connect to one another if it were not aimed at the Creator because the desires to receive cannot connect by themselves. They only can connect through their goal. If each of us wants to delight the Creator, we connect in Him!

It is the same when it comes to the private parts inside a person. A person is a small world that is made of 620 parts. Each of the 620 egoistic parts of my soul wants to enjoy either sweet or bitter food, listen to music, rest, or get fresh air. If I want each of these pleasures separately, I feel what I enjoy, and each of the pleasures is different from the other.

However, if I want to feel all these pleasures in order to bestow, in the Creator, all these multiple, small, private pleasures turn into one big pleasure for me. This is called the one and simple Light of Ein Sof (Infinity) that is not divided into separate Lights of NRNHY.

All our unity is fulfilled only in the Creator. There cannot be any connection between us outside the Creator since each part is wrapped in the shell of its ego and cannot connect with others. We are like a bag of nuts that cannot connect to one another. Only if we annul ourselves and want the bag to collect and bring everyone together and to be the one thing that unites them, each annuls his shell and everyone becomes incorporated in one bag.

So, “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are one” isn’t just a saying. There cannot be Israel (a person who yearns for Yashar El, straight to the Creator) and the Torah if they are not fulfilled in the Creator. This is a very important principle.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/28/13, The Zohar

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Adapting The Writings For The People

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can we revise the articles of Rabash and Baal HaSulam in a different language so that they will be understandable to the general public?

Answer: Re-tell them in your own words! Take a small article, read it, create a plan, and begin rewriting it, word by word.

This is how I rewrote The Book of Zohar, The Study of the Ten Sefirot, and the articles of Rabash. For example, I would take a certain article and replace words with different ones using vocabulary that is close to me, and then I would check every paragraph to see if it sounded correct as compared to the original, and it came out as a completely different text that seemed to be understandable and not as archaic as the original in a normal, modern, human language.

When writing through all this, you will see that there is nothing complicated there. There are special codes, but we already understand them. We need to adapt all the texts to ourselves and to the people so that, while reading them, they will feel that, let’s say, here is a little psychology and this is philosophy, and here it writes about biology, evolution, and so on. That is, they will see a healthy, normal approach to everything.
[119321]
From a Talk About Dissemination 10/17/13

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Egoism Does Not Allow Us To Distribute Food

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from Reuters): “One of every seven Americans will take a hit on Friday when a $5 billion cut in food stamps, the first across-the-board reduction in the history of the decades-old federal program, takes effect.

“But if conservative Republicans in Congress get their way, this week’s pullback may be just a taste of what’s to come for some of the almost 48 million Americans who receive benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

“SNAP, the largest U.S. anti-hunger program, is designed to help poor people – most of them children, disabled or elderly – buy food. But enrollment has doubled and the program’s cost has nearly tripled since 2004, and has remained at record levels even as the economy improves and unemployment declines.”

“For those wondering about abuse or fraud in the program, here’s a recent U.S. Department of Agriculture report (pdf) on “trafficking” in the food-stamp program. Between 2009 and 2011, about $858 million worth of food stamps, or just 1.3 percent of all benefits, were traded at a discount for cash.” Source: The Washington Post

“According to the UN, today more than a billion of people in the world suffer from starvation. Experts believe that the problem can not be solved within the current political-economic paradigm framework. …

“Lappe, Collins and Rosset in their book dispelled another myth about hunger. They have denied the widespread belief that the world produces not enough food. In reality, the main problem is the abundance, not deficit. The planet produces enough food to provide every person 3,500 calories a day, and this calculation does not include meat, vegetables, fruit, fish and other foods. Today, the world produces so much food that everyone can get about 1.7 kg of food per day – about 800 grams of products produced from grain (bread, cereal, pasta, etc.), approximately 0.5 kg of fruits and vegetables, and about 400 grams of meat, eggs, milk and so on. The problem is that people are too poor to buy themselves food.” Source: The Voice of Russia

My Comment: It is only our egoism that does not allow everyone to live with dignity, in abundance. The same situation exists with all other goods. Until we correct ourselves, change our nature from egoistic to altruistic, there will be hunger, disease, and inequality in the world. Only one force governs in us—egoism, and in order to balance it we need the second force, opposite to it—altruism.

It can be obtained only by the method of integral education (IE). Through this technique, a practical application of the wisdom of Kabbalah for the correction of the human being, can realize the biblical call to “love your neighbor as yourself.” According to the program of development of nature we must change ourselves by force or voluntarily. By force is under the pressure of great suffering. Voluntarily is through integral education and upbringing.
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Like My Ten Fingers

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How should we construct the work in the groups of ten? Can the groups of ten be formed according to participation in projects?

Answer: The division into groups often is useful for discussions because discussions in a large format is very difficult. Discussing means listening to someone else, joining with him, completing him, and listening to others.

A group of ten is a kind of gathering that is optimal for our internal structure, for our thoughts, our intellect, and our hearts. This is the maximum amount of people that I can include within me and can see them all as if they were like my ten fingers. And if the amount is greater, it is very difficult, practically impossible. If there are more, we automatically contract ten people and sometimes only five or even two. It depends on the development of a person.
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From a Talk About the Dissemination 10/17/13

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Don’t Be Ashamed Of Our Promises

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe have had situations where we have worked a long time on some projects, and suddenly a need for developing and implementing a new project appeared. We stopped all the work in our factory and worked on the urgent project for a month or two.

On the one hand, this was our joint decision. On the other hand, at the time that the decision was made, many things were not clear to everyone: “Why are we doing this? For what? We are dealing with some kind of common joint dissemination, and what else?” People didn’t understand how much this could consolidate them, ignite them, how much they would begin to feel each other, how much this would burn within them. They thought that they had no need for this: Why take off in all directions or conversely go into some particular area?

So, I was compelled to give instructions directly so that everyone would be involved specifically with this. After that, people understood that this had been truly imperative, although, in the beginning, many were opposed and some even thought that they needed to be involved with the wisdom of Kabbalah only.

We had a friend who studied with us for fifteen years. He, ultimately, didn’t understand that dissemination had become a necessary condition for our unification and connection, and was, therefore, compelled to leave, for if two people don’t give rise to a third component, don’t care for it as if it were their little child, and they don’t unite, this is not a family, but simply two people living together.

A family is when there is some third thing in common, and now we are going out for a project like this in which we all are involved together, this is our small child and it leads us toward unity and connection.

Besides that, this project gave us an inner sense of urgency that we need to bring to people what they are missing. We went out to the masses, we promised them everything that we could, and after that we found ourselves in a dilemma, “And what else? How will we fulfill them? How will we carry out what we promised the people?” You see that they are all found here next to us, and you cannot escape from them somewhere like a traveling circus.

In other words, we intentionally promised them many things. It follows that we intentionally took upon ourselves great ambitious missions and we promised people that we would carry them out. We put ourselves into a trap. And we have no other choice but with fear, with shame, with inner trembling, to be infused with that condition that obligates us to unite, for otherwise, nothing will emerge for us, and what are we going to do now? Where will we find that power that will fulfill everything that we promised the people?

It follows that all the promises to the wider circles of society force a person to an internal mobilization, to be connected with the others, obligating the search for a way out.  And there is only one way out: to shout to the Creator. Unite and scream to the Creator.

Otherwise, they will beat you. They will shame you. They will relate to you with contempt. All the work that we have done ultimately will become negative publicity for you. You will be like all the rest of the parties and organizations who only make promises and don’t carry anything out and cannot do anything.

Therefore, it is specifically necessary to go out to the wider circles of society and make promises, and after that to clarify how you will fulfill these promises so as not to be ashamed to go out into the street. The Creator will arrange feelings of shame like this for you that will oblige you to unite, to search for salvation, and then everything will be okay.
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From a Talk About Dissemination 10/17/13

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About Martial Arts

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Many of your students are involved with sports, they have titles and awards. And I have heard that you also continue to be involved with sports. How do you relate to sports and what are its roots in the spiritual world, especially the martial arts?

Answer: Sports in general are beneficial to some extent. I will tell you what I think about the martial arts. A real fighter who masters these skills overcomes the natural fear, which is present within every person because each one of us is an egoist. By acquiring the art of hand-to-hand combat, a person feels that he cannot be afraid of anything, and therefore he is ready to open himself, his heart, to be gracious, friendly, and sympathetic towards others since he is not afraid of anything. He protects himself, his ego. Through martial arts he acquires a shield so he has no need for a sword. This condition is called the “power of kindness.”

So when used correctly, all martial arts are noble. If our nature weren’t egoistic, then there would be no need to calm down the ego or a need for martial arts. But in spite of that, our ego is our only nature and we don’t have anything else. So by making a “screen” over our ego, by calming it down with the help of martial arts, we can be open towards others, and therefore, as strange as it may sound, the control and dignity of the martial arts leads to goodness and unity.
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