Audio Version Of The Blog – 11.01.14

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Convention In Los Angeles “Day Two” – 11.01.14

Convention in Los Angeles “Day Two,” Lesson 3

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Convention in Los Angeles “Day Two,” Lesson 4

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Convention in Los Angeles “Day Two,” Lesson 5

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The Joy Of Recovering From The Ego

Dr. LaitmanThe desire to fulfill the goal of our life is tantamount to observing the Torah, acquiring a soul, or implementing the wisdom of Kabbalah. It’s all the same thing. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah a human being, Adam, is anyone who resembles the Creator. The Creator is absolute love and bestowal.

When I begin to study the wisdom of Kabbalah and to work in a group I examine myself and then I discover that I only think about myself. I am built as an egoist and that is normal since the Creator created the evil inclination in man.

If I realize that, it is an achievement before the start of the new year (Rosh HaShana) because I understand that I am a complete egoist and that I am totally in the intention of in order to receive. An ordinary person would not agree with this since in order to understand that, we have to study and draw the Light that Reforms.

When I reveal my ego, I regret my actions, and that is called the period of penance (Selichot) before the new year. I discover that I am totally corrupt.

Thus I comprehend the first part of the saying, “I have created the evil inclination.” The second part is: “I have created the Torah as a spice,” and so I begin to look for a way to change myself.

My intention to change is called the beginning of the new year. Instead of Pharaoh, I crown the Creator as my king and use His power of love and bestowal in order to correct myself. The new year is the desire to correct myself and to attain a new level: to learn to love.

I have to examine and sort out all my 613 desires in order to do that. This is called the ten days of atonement between Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur. Of course, it is my attitude towards others that I examine and not my ordinary corporeal desires for food, sleep, and recreation.

I examine whether I feel a desire to benefit others in any way, and I discover that I don’t! Even if I give something to someone, it is only for my own benefit. Thus I arrive at the ten days of repentance in which I perform special actions that draw a special Light on me every day. With the help of the Light, I sort out my desires and distinguish between desires that can be corrected and those that cannot be.

It says that the answer is that the letter “Hey – ה” should return to “Vav – ו,” which means that Malchut (the fifth Sefira) should return to Zeir Anpin. Malchut is my desire to receive, and Zeir Anpin means the Creator. I examine which desires in me and to what extent I can use them in order to bestow unto others and not for my own benefit. This is called complete atonement, which means examining my heart with regard to others that indicates to what extent I resemble the Creator.

Therefore it is said, “in the place where those who repent stand, complete righteous do not stand.” After all, a complete righteous has already reached a certain level of correction, and a person who repents gradually ascends higher and higher towards the Creator.

The ten days of atonement and Yom Kippur are a search and examination of all my ten Sefirot (613 desires) after which I am ready for correction and want to resemble the Creator with all my might. I am a person who repents and now it is clear which desires I can correct and which I cannot. With this realization I reach Sukkot, the Lights that correct all the evil in me into goodness.

After Sukkot there is the holiday of Simchat Torah (rejoicing with the Torah) since the Torah is the Light that Reforms and I use it in order to reform myself. During the ten days of atonement I wanted to return the Hey to the Vav, that is, to the Creator, and in Sukkot I fulfill this by using the whole Torah and becoming like the Creator.

The eighth day of Sukkot is Shemini Atzeret, (stemming from Hebrew word “atsarti – stay”), in which I stay my correction since there is nothing more I can correct, and fully corrected, I enter the holiday of Simchat Torah.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 9/30/14

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Short Stories: The Source Of The Spiritual Practices

Dr. Michael LaitmanAncient Babylon was the cradle of different streams and spiritual methods. Before the age of Abraham, the Babylonians lived in peace, love, and friendship as Noah’s followers taught them. However, after the growth of the ego, they began to draw away from one another and broke up into many groups.

Every group began to worship another god (attribute or force) as a result of its inner inclination. It wasn’t the simple worship of stones and trees but of the forces of nature. Thus, many gods that included black and white magic, astrology and other methods appeared and exist to this very day.

Abraham experienced a real tragedy when he realized that he needed to stand apart from everyone and create a radically new school. The difference between his school and others was huge because its methodology was based on the use of negative powers to attain positive elevation. The teachings of all the other schools were built on a method to placate the negative forces of nature and live in agreement and harmony with them.

Abraham believed that there is nothing negative in the world. If something seems negative, it is only because we use it incorrectly. The moment we begin to use the negative forces correctly, by ascending above them with the help of the positive forces, we immediately begin to ascend. Thus the negative forces are actually essential since they all stem from the Creator who is good and benevolent. It is only our use of these forces that is wrong. The spiritual system obliges a person to work on himself in order to position his negative and positive attributes correctly.

By disseminating and explaining his method, Abraham encountered very serious periods of conflict with his countrymen. As a result, he had to leave ancient Babylon and totally detach from everything in the heart and mind that he knew on the previous level, i.e., to totally renounce polytheism and all kinds of spiritual practices. He knew that there is only man, the society in which man wants to resemble the Creator, and the Creator himself.
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From KabTV’s “Short Stories” 10/15/14

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The Environment Is My Guarantee For The Future

Dr. Michael LaitmanBaal HaSulam, “There is None Else Besides Him:” Then he comes to the decision that no one can help him but the Creator Himself. 

A person makes this decision after he has tried all ways to somehow connect the two planes of the material and spiritual.

On the material plane, he fights for survival and earnings, and he experiences all the hardships of life, as does every person in this world. At the same time, he is in the upper world where he does not yet feel the upper force, its nature and uniqueness, but only tries to form within himself sense organs for the revelation of the next dimension.

After all attempts to bring these two worlds closer and, beyond all the material problems, not to allow himself to forget that everything comes from the sole and absolutely good upper management, he sees that he is not capable of this.

This is arranged on purpose so that a person needs the Creator, so that this upper force comes and creates within him the correct desires for its revelation.

This causes him to make a heartfelt demand that the Creator will open his eyes and heart, and truly bring him nearer to eternal adhesion with God. It thus follows, that all the rejections he had experienced had come from the Creator.

To understand this, one needs a supporting environment. Otherwise, he will forget about it every moment. A new informational record, a Reshimo, new external conditions, are revealed in every moment of our lives. Therefore, a person must provide himself with the guarantees for the future so that in the next moment he does not leave the spiritual path by suddenly finding himself a few meters or even kilometers away from his chosen path leading to the king’s palace.

Therefore, he needs to organize an environment that will support him and make him stay under its influence. In other words, he bows himself before the correct environment that in general is going by the path of the revelation of the Creator, the only force in the world.

Then during each descent a person will get help back from the environment to the extent of his contribution into it, as much as he surrendered himself to the environment. Indeed, a little one can receive from great ones by being influenced by them and inspired by their values, and, due to this, he continues his internal clarifications.

After a certain number of such actions, having gone through the vicissitudes of life, a person comes to the true cry. He already has the correct vessel of the right size and quality ready to accept the revelation of the Creator. He cries that in the conditions of concealment he is not able, to remain in the feeling that there is nothing except His good governance.

He appeals for help because he does not want to blame the Creator, and the Creator gives the person this opportunity. He cannot just be revealed because revelation is possible only in the correct desires. That is why when the person completes the required measure of efforts, the Upper Light rewards him with the property of bestowal.

Then, a person finally understands what was said in all the Kabbalistic books. As he obtains the property of bestowal, he reveals the Creator inside of this vessel.

This happens every time. A person does not ask for the revelation of the Creator in his egoistic desires like we are asking now. The Creator is revealed as the property of bestowal in the desires in which a person is able and ready to accept Him.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/29/14, Shamati #1

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The Illogical Foundation

Dr. Michael LaitmanThanks to their energy and ingenuity, the Jewish people are always found in the first ranks of social and technological development, seemingly showing the world in which direction to go. But in the meantime, the task and mission of the people of Israel is completely different. And if we knew exactly what it was, we would attain peace and happiness for everyone and bring the world to an optimal state.

One way or another we are a people of an idea, people who are teachers. Everything revolves around this, and this pushes us to move things. In the Torah it is said that we will be a nation of priests, in other words, we will serve as a transitional link such that through us the knowledge of the general system of creation will be transmitted to the world.

To this day, we feel this hidden irrationality from which there is no escape. The latent problem in this is that we are not teaching humanity the correct way to live. Within our nature, there are the buds of that inner structure required to transform humanity into one and make it a harmonious society.

Nobody else has this, only the Jews. This is because they have already gone through this once and so can return to this again. Moreover, they must return to this in view of all humanity.

This previous experience has been stamped into them forever, and as a result of this, all of humanity feels that they are strangers, aliens, and they feel that the Jews: “Have something that isn’t in us and cannot be.”

Even if they went through another 2,000 years, it would all be the same. The Jews are separate and everyone else is separate from them. No matter how much they try, they will not mix with others. This is like a suspension (a solution containing substances that cannot be mixed with each other).You can dissolve them, scatter them, shake them, do whatever you want, but this essential characteristic will not be mixed. Through the generations, in spite of it all, they will still grow in the original state in which they were created.

This is because what is latent in them is irrelevant to mundane factors. Integrate them with whomever you want on the material level, replace them all with others, this point will pop up in them again. It is illogical. It doesn’t belong to the nature of our world, to physical bodies. In every case, it will sprout in their descendants in the same form as today. Everything will come out as if nothing had happened.

Let’s make a gross calculation, solely and only for a general illustration. Before 700–800 BC, with the destruction of the First Temple, the Jewish people lost ten tribes, five times more than the remaining two tribes. Throughout all the time that passed since then and up until today, these two tribes grew, let’s say, to 15 million people.

Considering the mass extermination of Jews throughout history brings this theoretical number to 20 million. From here it follows that the descendants of the rest of the tribes, who were five times more, they would need to total 100 million. This is quite a considerable sum, right?

And so, in a particular amount of time, we will see that these 100 million will suddenly be discovered as if out of nowhere. It will be discovered that they are Jews in different nations with completely different customs and different characteristics, no matter what and where. Suddenly it will be discovered that they are here, there, and everywhere. Moreover, when they are discovered with their Jewish traits, in them that same illogical something will be found. And again, the familiar picture will be repeated: The nations will look at the Jews and see that there is something in them, but what it is, is unclear. Even though they have the form and character of local residents, it doesn’t matter.

He could be an American, an Australian, a European, but you see that this is a Jew. It is as if he arrived from outer space, settled here among the inhabitants of the earth and lives in their clothes, whereas his interior is different. Living in him is a spark that connects him with the upper world. This spark remains; it is impossible to be released from it.

Hitler tried to exterminate all the Jews, but it is impossible to exterminate this spiritual point through physical annihilation. In any case it will grow in other people without any connection to genetics or the generations who were annihilated.

I repeat: The illogical foundation that exists in these people cannot be annihilated. History itself testifies to this.

And so the stock that is composed of the ten tribes that exists somewhere among other peoples has yet be revealed.
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From KabTV’s “Babylon Yesterday and Today” 9/24/14

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