Audio Version Of The Blog – 03.14.14

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“Marijuana Industry Job Fair Draws A Crowd In Denver”

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from Reuters): “In Colorado- the state’s first marijuana industry job fair. There were lines before the doors even opened. Fifteen marijuana-related companies are looking to fill jobs ranging from accounting to actually growing the plant.

“A job hunter says: ‘It would be nice to be a budtender, but whatever they want to throw at me, and get my foot in the door.’ The fair brought in job hunters from many different fields. …

“Luke Ramirez, marijuana dispensary owner, saying: ‘Our sales have increased 300%. Our traffic through our stores has increased by the same number. That’s why we’re here today. We need to hire more folks to help out with that traffic added revenues.” While the requirements vary from job to job, industry recruiters say all applicants must be at least 21-years-old.’”

My Comment: But how much will we have to spend on the undesirable consequences of drug use: ruined health, increased crime, broken families, etc.?
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Changing The Group Gives Pleasure To The Creator

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What does working with “faith above reason” mean?

Answer: Working with “faith above reason” means investing effort, using all kinds of strategies in order to get a vessel that is called “faith,” meaning a desire that is entirely bestowal. Faith is bestowal.

What is called bestowal is that I make a Tzimtzum, stop thinking about myself, and use all the possibilities in which I have the opportunity to make changes in the group, in the connection between us, to give contentment to the Creator through this connection.

A group is a unique device found between me and the Creator. According to how I change it, I bestow to the Creator. Therefore, I think about what kind of changes need to be made in society, in my environment, in order to bestow contentment on the Creator. I perform the action in society but I think about the pleasure that I will be making for the Creator.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/12/14

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Qualitative Development

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: If I don’t agree with the Creator, then in order to rise above my disagreement I need to overcome it with a great deal of work. What is this work?

Answer: Certainly you don’t agree with Him! After all, new egoistic desires appear in you, a bit greater than before, on a new level and in different styles!

But sometimes it seems to you that you are not such a great egoist, because from the start another characteristic is beginning to be created in you that seems small to you in the beginning. Suppose that you finished growth at the height of some cockroach and you have already become a chick, but you were a big cockroach there, and now you are a little chick. So you grow up turning from an ugly duckling into a white swan, but in spite of it all, you understand that you are sitting in cold water. And after that you become small again, but a fawn. And so on.

In other words, from growth on a previous level, you become small in the next level, meaning that it is a small state in development but it is greater in quality. But you don’t feel this yet and therefore sometimes it seems to you that you are in a descent in comparison to the previous level when you were a big spider and successfully trapped and ate all kinds of flies, and now you are a little snail.

I am saying this seriously! It seems to us that we have descended, but in fact we simply rise in quality. This is because we are consecutively passing through the developmental stages, embryo (Ibur), breastfeeding (Yenika), small (Katnut), and large (Mochin). So there are no descents, only constant changes. And that is how it is with all of humanity.
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Changing Myself And Not The World

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Must we agree internally with all the disturbances that come from the external world?

Answer: In general, the first reaction of a person to what is happening in the world is a desire to change everything, to organize the world anew, to change the borders, to make the economy healthy. This is the natural reaction of our ego, meaning ourselves, which is discovered until we suddenly begin to understand that all of this is nonsense!

Where have you seen that a change from one system to another has helped to improve the situation? On the contrary, in the end, it will get worse. At first it seems to us that everything is going well, that apparently we have achieved something and that everything is okay. But as time passes, it turns out that it will be much worse than what had been before. And this is natural because we are not advancing towards correction.

Now what is left for us is only to recognize our uncorrected relationship to the world.

Everything that happens in the world can be corrected only through our approaching the Creator, because everything is derived from Him in order to push us to become closer to Him. We are constantly moving away from the Creator. If we understood that it is necessary to yearn for Him, then we would truly begin to approach something good. But in the end, He pushes us further and further away so that we will reach a full recognition of our ego.

When we begin to correct ourselves somewhat, we advance into our ego like the right and left lines, and we already understand further how to act. A method of how to work with the crisis appears within us and we correct it, that is how through it we approach the Creator. Through this we correct ourselves; we remove and clear away the crisis without touching the economy, education, information, technology, or anything else. This is all nonsense because change and new organization in all of these areas will not ensure anything good in any case.

But the more tightly we approach the Creator, the further He keeps us away from Him, and through this the evil is discovered, and in this way we quickly move all of the evil towards the good. Therefore it is not necessary to aspire to change the world, society, and all areas of life.

All we need to do is to change the person as a foundation for changing the world. This is specifically what we need to learn by ourselves, to explain to humanity, and to teach others.
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Alone Among Wandering Angels

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: I always magnify and elevate the friend. For me he is a means and a help for acquiring life in spirituality. So how can I be envious of him?

Answer: We always see others through the prism of our ego. And so it seems to me that everyone is worse than I am. And if someone is better, here I begin to feel bad and need to balance this somehow, otherwise I will suffer.

In fact, only I exist. All the others are my negative characteristics that are wandering around me. If I were corrected I would not see them, instead I would see the parts of my soul that are connected together with me into one unified whole, I would see the Light. That is how I see all kinds of people. They are all my internal characteristics.

How must I relate to them? As if they are angels.

Question: But that envy that should exist isn’t in me. Am I envious of anyone? I see that everyone is as miserable as I am.

Answer: This is because you see the friends through your ego. In fact they are all perfect! For the Creator created such a perception of the environment for your sake. If you correct yourself, then you will see everyone as perfect! Nobody needs to be corrected, only you.
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A Name That Forces The Heart To Contract

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Is a “drop of unification” a state that exists on every level?

Answer: There is nothing but a “drop of unification,” the point of contact, and a person provides everything else. The Light has no measure and all the measurements are done by the vessel.

A drop of unification that comes to us from the Creator or a sea of unification is the same thing if it refers to something that comes from Above. All the measurements, the limitations, and the expansions always depend only on the one who receives. A drop of unification is renewed on every level, of course, but all the changes with regard to that drop of unification are in the vessel itself.

Question: What characterizes the first contact with the Upper?

Answer: You begin to care about hearing the word “Creator,” as if you hear the name of your little daughter, and you immediately respond and are filled with a warm feeling. This is exactly how you perceive the word “Creator.”

Before, you heard “Creator” and felt nothing, and didn’t link it to any image. Now it summons a response in you, like a name of a dear one. This response already signifies contact, some connection with your desire. You have filled your measure in doing a certain work, and then the Light already touches the flesh.

Only persistence and constant efforts will help you here. First you have to develop such sensitivity towards the friends in you . But your attitude to the friends is more general, and it only softens your heart. Your heart is a heart of stone and you begin to melt and to soften it with the help of the society. Then a new feeling towards the Creator is born inside your soft heart. The society only melts your heart and changes it from a heart of stone or wood into a soft and flexible heart, like rubber.

The heart already begins to beat: It expands and contracts and in between the contractions and the expansion there is a point where you begin to feel the Creator and that you belong to Him. You already feel that the Creator is not a stranger but that there is a point for Him in your heart, just like there is for the name of your beloved daughter.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/11/14

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A Science Of The Transition Period

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What needs to be the right use of science to correct the crisis we find ourselves in today?

Answer: The only thing you need to do is to bring humanity to the end of correction as quickly and comfortably as possible. And then this world will stop being felt with our senses, it will withdraw and transform only to provide a material level found under our primary spiritual state. We will begin to exist in a world of forces.

There is a need for science only for this transition. In principle science is a very primitive idea that studies and investigates those spiritual forces that came down and are found on the physical plane, in the material connection between them, meaning in the egoistic connection.

Since we are found on the physical plane ourselves, on this level we also discover connections. We ourselves are egoists; therefore, we identify the forces of nature as egoistic on that plane in which we ourselves exist, and this is called our “science.”

When we rise to the next higher level and become spiritual people, then, instead of material investigations, we will be involved with spiritual science. Why do we need to dig through this material and draw conclusions about all of these laws? These laws will cease to exist. Completely different laws operate in the spiritual world. In the power of bestowal there is unlimited, constant energy that is independent of distance and time. In this manner we go out to another space in which the old science loses all meaning.

This science has meaning and exists only as long as we exist with egoistic characteristics, so we learn about what is happening within us, about the material lawfulness of the function of the ego. But at the moment we go out to the spiritual space, everything will be transformed precisely into its opposite: All limitations of time, movement, distance, and the potential energy of reception and bestowal will disappear. We won’t need anything of what is now in this world.

There is a value for science only during the transition period, in order to free humanity and to convince it to be involved with integral education. And for this purpose we don’t need many, a few thousand people will be enough to supply all the compulsory needs for the whole world.

If a person needs clothing, he will press a button and a printer will print what he wants, a shirt and pants. If he wants to eat, then he will press on the button in that printer and from that material a tasteless steak will come out for him, like the pants. Science will reach such advancement.

All of this will exist as long as we are on the egoistic plane. But the moment that we correct ourselves and move to the world of forces, we won’t need such things as a steak or shirt. We will live within a completely different energy.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/9/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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A Sure Cure Without Side-Effects

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Can we bring harm to the world by studying the wisdom of Kabbalah like the harm caused by the egoistic use of external science?

Answer: Through discovery of Kabbalah it’s impossible to do any harm because there is a natural filter that transfers only good influence from us to the upper world, to the system of forces that manage reality. Bad influence can never go there.

But when the time comes that you must have a good influence on that system and you don’t,  then you have a bad influence on it, not directly, but indirectly. You don’t damage the system willingly, and don’t even know it.

But this is speaking only about your lack of correction. You cannot intentionally cause destruction in the higher system. Deliberately you can only correct. You cannot add your efforts to provide a good influence, but a bad influence is impossible.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/09/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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A Loyalty Test

Dr. Michael LaitmanIf we want to come near the Creator, we have to be equivalent in form to Him. In the place where we reveal the Creator, we will reveal His humbleness, His mercy, His descent to us.

He diminishes, minimizes, annuls, and subdues Himself before us, just as we do before our children when we play with them. We have to lower ourselves before children in order to connect with them, to play with them, and to serve them, although we also maintain all the options as adults.

The point is that if we received a certain portion of feelings of a certain revelation during our convention, some new feelings, it is only thanks to the fact that the Creator descended to us, was revealed before us on lower levels.

We have had great success even thanks to this minimal contact with Him, which brought about some positive changes in us. We don’t feel them yet, but we will feel it as negative changes in the future since this is the way we advance until the full revelation, until a person feels that everything becomes worse and worse, further and further away from spirituality. Unfortunately, many are caught on this hook, feel disappointed and leave.

This is the test of our unselfishness: Why do I want to attain the upper world? Is it in order to feel good or is it in order to really help all humanity ascend and thus delight the Creator? This is why we have to accurately clarify the reason we are on this spiritual path.

When we feel certain changes internally, it means that they occur because the Creator is getting closer to us, which means that He is lowering Himself. The point where we feel His intensified feeling inside us is the place where we reveal His descent, and we only have to exert ourselves so that this descent will not seem too free to us, and that we already know and understand everything. If this nonsense comes to a person’s mind he only loses as a result.

So we mustn’t forget that we have only started to feel what real advancement is at the point that we have attained: in the unity between us and in the collective work on ourselves in order not to be separated.

We must understand that we are constantly being played with, but with a good intention. No one wants us to fail, no one wants to push us downward, even what we call “the guards that are at the top of the King’s mountain,” are not actually trying to push us so that we will roll down. They are trying to hit us qualitatively, so that we will not fall but so we will simply discover the attributes that we still lack at the current point of our ascent.

If the Creator touches us with a certain question it makes us feel that we descend and encounter different problems in life, but it is only so that we will ascend and make the next step. There are actually no descents but rather a gradual revelation of opportunities of the rest of the ascent, and the guards are the Creator’s great helpers.
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