Audio Version Of The Blog – 12.17.14
Posted on December 17th, 2014
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Question: The holiday of Chanukah begins, reminding us of the victory of the Maccabees in the war with the Greeks. What does their opposition mean in a deeper sense?
Answer: “The Greeks” is my desire to enjoy; my egoism that tells me: “Listen, you need to rely on logic and instinct. We have to live by the mind, and you have it. You can arrange life rationally, evaluating and weighing every opportunity. Be like everyone else.”
This is the Greek approach. It is correct and good, everyone likes it, and there is nothing to argue against. It is true that the world cannot realize it because our life is far from paradise. However, we simply have no other tools that are clear, true, logical, backed by science and psychology, based on a solid foundation, and understood by sense and reason.
But there is another approach: the “Maccabean.”
“No,” say the Maccabees, “we do not want to live in this way. We want to live by the laws that Abraham laid as the foundation of the Jewish people, the principle of love for the other as for oneself. This is what we must achieve.”
The Greek in me replies to this: “To be honest, you are one hundred percent right.”
But wait, how so? After all, he just stated the opposite. It turns out that both are right?
“Yes,” my Greek continues, “I would, of course, like to live according to love. But this is an unattainable utopia. Do you have a pill, which if swallowed, would ensure all the people of the earth will love each other? Can you impose unity, mutual help, mutual care, mutual guarantee, and equality everywhere? Are you able to make everyone friends?”
Thus, the problem of the Maccabees is that they are irrational and unrealistic. The same is said about the wisdom of Kabbalah: “Why is it needed? It is better to achieve real success in life. A slight interest in high matters might be useful, but to give them all of my life is too much. It isn’t logical.”
That’s why the Maccabees are initially small and weak. They have nothing that will convince me. A tiny Maccabee is hidden within me and a strong Greek is comfortably settled. What should I do? What war will occur between them?
But I receive an answer that tells me: “Even if you give up the external picture, internally you understand that there is no other way, we need to achieve full unity, which is love, so that then you will start to build the appropriate group. In it, you will attract the Light, which is a special force that is inherent in nature that you can use. You have only a small spark, but nature has a huge Light, and you can attract it to yourself.”
Then you will see that the whole world was just a theater of illusion. It will fade and dissolve; like in Hollywood movies, it will vanish and be gone. Indeed, the whole picture was imaginary.
However, this will happen under the condition that you join your spark, your candle, with the great Light that fills the world. And in order to feel the need for this, you must make efforts that are contrary to your own mind.
Question: How could I explain this to my family who are far from such thoughts when the Chanukah candles are being lit? How can they be introduced, even a little bit, to this understanding?
Answer: The Maccabees won the war against the invaders because they became united. They went to the people and managed to bring it to unity.
Therefore, it is not necessary for us to bring calls for unity during war, when it is already happening. No, we must unite now and then there will be no war. By this we will neutralize all the evil forces.
So, let’s unite. What harm could there be? None. We need only to apply a little effort. That is what Chanukah tells us: by uniting, we will win our greatest victory.
[149704]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/16/14, Writings of Rabash
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Once upon a time a country was ruled by a king ruled whose word was law and binding on all without exception. And so it went until the 20th century as mankind progressed blindly following a leader who stood above all and gave orders: left, right, forward, backward. A person did not have freewill; one was just driven forward by blows.
However, the time has come when we were asked to come to an agreement with the program of nature. We must understand it and, according to our free choice, go with it. In this new model of society, each person his own king.
Question: Everyone has their own egoism, and everyone pulls everybody else to their side. It is clear that it is impossible to come to a good result if everyone feels like a king. How can some stability be achieved in this super unstable structure where each is pursuing only their narrow interest, ignoring the others? When we cannot agree with the neighbors, it is not so bad. When this disorder covers the whole country and the entire world, what awaits us next?
Answer: Then we are awaiting disaster unless we provide new education to everybody teaching them about the integrated system so that people understand the world they are in today. After all, they do not know.
Politicians participate in elections while getting ready to run society, but they do not understand modern society or the modern world in which it exists. Not a single person understands this no matter which party one belongs to, from one end to the other. None of them know what kind of world we live in.
Question: How is it possible to run a society in which everyone feels like a king?
Answer: It is very possible if each person will feel responsible for everybody while feeling all high and mighty, like the father of children. A king is not a villain who sits around all day long and enjoys everything at the expense of the citizens. It is hard work to be a king.
Sometime ago I read about the daily routine of the Queen of England; she does not have a free moment: appointments, meetings, visits to kindergartens, travel to other provinces. She does not belong to herself, but performs her duties. And it has always been this way; we should not think that kings were just entertained at balls , as depicted in novels.
Question: If the people of Israel should serve as an example for the whole world, does it mean that its leader has a very important mission?
Answer: Absolutely. The man standing at the head of the Israeli society must understand the program of creation, program of nature, and lead the people of Israel to the precise match of their place in this program.
This is how it was from the time of construction of the First Temple to the destruction of the Second Temple. At that time the people of Israel had leaders that attained the program of creation, the force acting inside the nature. They felt this higher force, understood it, and worked with it.
When such a person looks at the world, one must see the forces in it that operate the world. One needs to see the overall program under which these forces act in the future for a lot of years to come, until the end of the correction. It is the duty of the leader, and this is why the people of Israel were led by Kabbalists, people with spiritual attainment.
Question: Are there some special qualities that one must possess in order to be such leader?
Answer: Of course. A very simple quality is necessary: to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” That’s all.
Question: What does it mean to love thy neighbor?
Answer: It means that the leader must love others at least as much as oneself. One is obliged to have the property of absolute bestowal.
[149500]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” 12/9/14
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Question: Does the world need to know that the wisdom of Kabbalah speaks about the mission of the people of Israel?
Answer: Certainly. We must tell everyone that we have discovered our essential role according to which we must attain the same unity that once was among us. Only this time we don’t apply this role to ourselves but in order to become the Light for the whole world and to give it as an example.
We understand those who hate us because of our “invalid operation.” Because they feel that they depend on us for everything. And so we truly begin to organize ourselves like that, to serve them faithfully. Now we understand why we have returned to the land of Israel.
We understand what our role is: we must establish a nation here as an example that demonstrates how to live together not according to the laws of the capitalists of the West, but according to the laws of the wisdom of Kabbalah, as one person with one heart, in equality, in reciprocity, in unity and love.
This is what we must show to and tell everyone. Humanity requires this already and it is suffering from not having this method of connection and unity.
And so the world will say to our Middle Eastern neighbors: “Be quiet! Let them do what they want. After all, they are doing this for all of us.”
If we behave like this, it will cause no opposition. After all, the people have been expecting this from us throughout all of history. For thousands of years they have said to us that we are the cause of evil for the whole world, in other words, that we have not carried out our mission. We have supposedly hidden away the key for happiness or we are sitting on the faucet of the pipe of abundance and are not opening it. So it follows that the world suffers because of us.
Question: Doesn’t this seem like arrogance on our part?
Answer: They acknowledge their dependence upon us themselves. What arrogance is this talking about? Apparently, according to our nature, we wanted to “bury” ourselves as deeply as possible among the nations, “to lie down on the ground,” to disappear from view. But again and again they focus their attention on us and elevate us so that we will show them the good life, provide them with a good example, and teach them how to live.
Even before the establishment of the nation of Israel we should have proclaimed openly: “We are going to the land of Israel to build a nation here according to the laws of the wisdom of Kabbalah, according to the inner laws of nature. We are going to show everyone how a nation that lives according to the laws of mutual unity and love should look. This is so all of the nations will ultimately unite with each other.”
This is what should have been done, then we would not have encountered any resistance, not even the smallest, from any side. For the force of nature, the law of nature is acting here. If we activate it, yearn for correction, the goal of creation, there are no obstacles on the way.
Question: And what is this law?
Answer: It says that all of us must be a single whole as one person with one heart. This applies to the whole world. It is written: “…for My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples” (Isaiah 56:7), “…and all nations shall flow unto it” (Isaiah 2:2). The people of Israel must be “…a Light of the nations” (Isaiah 49:6), because in itself it is a “…kingdom of priests, and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6). This means that we must be teachers, an example.
This role has been incumbent upon us since the days of ancient Babylon and the global crisis that erupted at that time. Today we have reached its next and final round. That’s it; there will no longer be any more delays and setbacks. If we unite now and provide humanity with an example, we will solve all of the problems in the world and our own.
[149174]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” 11/25/14
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The wisdom of Kabbalah explains that the person can discover the entire system within which he exists while found in this life, in this world. In this world we can exist like all of the nature of the still, vegetative, and animate and not be different from it. We come into this world, live for a designated time, and disappear. We come and we disappear, like all animals, for we also belong to the animal kingdom.
But we can attain the higher level that controls us, manages us at every moment in our lives. Orders and decisions are born on that level that descend into this world and manage us. Suddenly we get thoughts and desires and act in different ways. We don’t know what will be born today. Suddenly we meet people, are involved in various events that we ourselves didn’t initiate. That is what happens at every moment.
Kabbalists explain that all of this was planned from the start. There are people who even feel these situations in advance. It is clear to us that we don’t plan them. But this is concealed from us so much that it seems to me that there is freedom of choice, that I am free to do whatever I want and that nothing is limiting me. And if nobody around me is limiting me, so where do the thoughts come to me from, from where are desires awakened? I don’t know. I simply want, I think, and that’s it.
All of this comes from the system in which we are found and all of us are linked together. This system constantly makes calculations about how to bring us to a higher level of development called the Creator. It is called this because it is above us and all orders, all thoughts, desires, and circumstances descend to us from there.
Throughout history there were a multitude of people who discovered this higher level and told us about what is happening. This higher level wants us to ascend to it so that we will grow from the animal level to the level of Adam (Man). A man is someone who has a head, who doesn’t get desires from above and from the environment, who feels with heart and mind, but molds them himself from an understanding of the general system.
It is up to us to reach this state. And so we enter into a state in which all of us include not only ourselves but the whole of nature, the levels of the still, vegetative, and animate. And it is up to us to take account of all of humanity in all of its generations from the past and the future and also the various states that are found beyond our short individual lives. And this short life becomes something unimportant. After all, the person who begins to rise and to be integrated into the enormous system sees that it is infinite, unlimited. This is the goal of our development that we must attain.
That is how nature is built that brings us to this development. We discover the process, and the discovery of the process is called the wisdom of Kabbalah.
The question is, how can we discover the entire system in which we exist so as not to get bad thoughts and desires that push us in various directions from it, but to discover within ourselves the good thoughts and desires that are useful for advancement so that we will develop in the best, most convenient and shortest way? What is the difference between these two forms of development?
The difference is that in the first way we receive our orders from nature; we develop through suffering, discovering all the time what we are missing and feeling dissatisfaction and suffering, and we are forced to search for the best way. It always happens that we feel a blow and after that something good, and again a blow and again the good. This is escaping from blows; this is the way of suffering.
But if we advance by way of the wisdom of Kabbalah, we ourselves look for how to advance, we shape a future state among us that is better, and we ourselves scrutinize what is good and what is bad. We don’t need to get the deficiency through blows; rather, we clarify it among ourselves and advance without prior suffering, in a rapid way. For we ourselves discover the deficiencies and the fulfillment, and that is how we advance in a wonderful and beautiful way.
[141041]
From the Convention In Colombia “Day Two” 7/26/14, Lesson 1
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Question: All of our efforts throughout the day, other than the morning lesson, are mixed because they are arranged in circles for both men and women. I have a feeling that in general the women are not felt in these circles, they become “as delicate as a dandelion”….
Answer: You don’t feel the female ego? But why should it be discovered? There is no such Mitzvah to be a big egoist. On the contrary, if what you have is already corrected, it means that you are a spiritual person. But if you don’t know what must be corrected in you, it means that you aren’t working on yourself, so the ego hasn’t been discovered in you.
Comment: An impression like this is created that among the women there is a lack of inner unity. Each one is for herself.
Answer: And who is hindering you? You are complaining that the ego hasn’t been discovered in you. But the Upper Light is what must reveal it, the same Light that influences you and from which you will feel yourself as a big egoist. This means that the ego is discovered when you invest effort.
So you must try to serve others more and more, work on unity, on helping. When you finish working on this level, they will show you that essentially you are a big egoist and have been doing all of this for your own sake.
In no way do we create negative actions or awaken negative thoughts or desires in ourselves. We advance forward and upward only, never backward and downward. We never do that. And after a person finishes work on the present level, the next level of ego always appears.
But if you don’t even feel the ego within you, then you remain on the previous level. This means that you are expending very little effort to make our group a single complete unit in your eyes.
[140696]
From the Convention In Sochi “Day Two” 7/14/14, Lesson 3
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Question: In the external public we work with, does the ego grow? Do they feel this growth or is their ego poured into us?
Answer: The main thing is what we get. Certainly the ego of the masses also increases, but it changes its form; it becomes organized on a higher level. It could be that some of them reach a state in which the point in the heart breaks out, for there are still many people in the external world in whom the point in the heart is working internally and in the meantime hasn’t been revealed externally.
And there are also those in whom it is not revealed; they connect with us as an additional part of us and suddenly they get everything that we have gained through our continuous effort. That is how the order of development is revealed.
[140694]
From the Convention In Sochi “Day Two” 7/14/14, Lesson 3
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Question: In our ascent to the next level, we must connect its ten parts into one to advance even more; in other words, we increase this difference with another ten through the combination of additional ego. How does this happen? Is this somehow connected to our going out to the external public with the desires that we get from them?
Answer: If you are affected by the suffering of humanity, which is called “Don’t detach yourself from society,” then you will unwillingly include them within yourself and elevate efforts in the group and for the Creator.
Question: But I perceive their suffering egoistically. I look at them; things are bad for them and I think: “What if it I felt so bad?”
Answer: Continue. It’s okay. Gradually your opinion about them will change. Your thoughts will gradually move towards particular work. You will soften a bit and no longer be so egoistic.
Question: How is this connected to a group? If I am affected by the external crowd, somehow I must move this into the group and digest it?
Answer: Suppose that something hurts me. How can I deal with this in my group work? There is no way. It enters into my work and that’s all there is to it. What don’t you understand here? These are simple human characteristics.
If the suffering of the external public becomes my suffering, if I am affected by it, then it works within me. But if I am so devoid of feeling and indifferent that they don’t make an impression on me, I need to cry about this and ask for it to soften me, that the Creator will make it possible for me to feel them.
Why doesn’t He give me this opportunity? It is so that I will ask for more from Him, so that I will feel the necessity for even this kind of contact with Him.
[140691]
From the Convention In Sochi “Day Two” 7/14/14, Lesson 3
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Question: The state of Israel was founded with the great hope for a better future, but instead there is no end to the wars in this region. What is the reason that we have been in a continuous war with the Arabs for the last century?
Answer: On what basis do we claim that we have a right to this land? Is it because it used to be ours in the past? But the Jews also lived in Egypt in the past and this is also a historical fact.
We all know that people have wandered from one place to another throughout history. It is impossible to say who lived here two thousand years ago and that the people living here now are not the same people who lived here in the past. Only the Indians in America have remained in their original locations in some places.
So why do we all of the sudden demand to have the land of Israel in the 20th century and claim that it belongs to us? It is legitimate only if we have returned to this land in order to fulfill our special mission, just the way it was in ancient times.
The Jews conquered the land of Israel after the exodus from Egypt and forty years of wandering in the desert. The nations of the world can also accuse us of taking their land because seven other nations were living here. We have to prove to everyone that the Jews came to the land of Israel in order to fulfill a special mission that is important for everyone and that will save all the other nations.
Question: So what should we do in these real-world conditions when the state of Israel is surrounded by enemies that wish to destroy it? Is there hope for peace or will this resistance only keep on growing?
Answer: There is no chance of reaching peace, and the resistance will continue as long as the Israeli nation doesn’t fulfill its mission in the land of Israel. Then all the nations will understand why the Jews are here and will accept it, including our neighbors.
Question: How can we extinguish the hate in their hearts?
Answer: The Israeli nation has a special secret method. The Jewish people are the source of all the good and evil in the world. Therefore it isn’t by chance that we encounter anti-Semitism everywhere and that the whole world is either for or against Israel. There isn’t a person in this world that is indifferent or neutral with regard to Israel: He either feels love or hate.
If he is still neutral, it means that this question hasn’t awoken in him yet and the time for that hasn’t come. This means that Israel is a very important factor that affects the whole world. We can consider this effect irrational, virtual, or spiritual but it still has a very powerful influence on the world. Therefore, the world has always paid great attention to Israel and has regarded it as the source of evil.
But Israel can also be the source of goodness. All the evil and all the goodness in the world depend only on the connections between people. If we establish the right connections in the Israeli nation, we will force the whole world to establish good, warm, mutual connections between people.
Then the whole world will feel and understand that it all stems from Israel and will accept its existence, which means that it is the Jews who should live in the land of Israel and unite and create the source of the good connections for the whole world.
Thus, we fulfill our mission. It was given to us by nature not because we wanted it; it is imprinted in nature as a law, just like anti-Semitism is also a law of nature.
[140644]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” 7/17/14
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