Reaching Happiness

laitman_558Opinion (Hugh Mackay, social researcher, author of twelve books, including five bestsellers): “I actually attack the concept of happiness. The idea that – I don’t mind people being happy – but the idea that everything we do is part of the pursuit of happiness seems to me a really dangerous idea and has led to a contemporary disease in Western society, which is fear of sadness. It’s a really odd thing that we’re now seeing people saying ‘write down 3 things that made you happy today before you go to sleep,’ and ‘cheer up’ and ‘happiness is our birthright’ and so on. We’re kind of teaching our kids that happiness is the default position – it’s rubbish. Wholeness is what we ought to be striving for and part of that is sadness, disappointment, frustration, failure; all of those things which make us who we are. Happiness and victory and fulfillment are nice little things that also happen to us, but they don’t teach us much. Everyone says we grow through pain and then as soon as they experience pain they say ‘Quick! Move on! Cheer up!’ I’d like just for a year to have a moratorium on the word ‘happiness’ and to replace it with the word ‘wholeness.’. Ask yourself ‘is this contributing to my wholeness?’ and if you’re having a bad day, it is.”

My Comment: Kabbalah offers relationship to the world in the middle line—to determine everything according to the benefits of achieving the goal of existence, which is on the convergence of happiness and difficulties. But it is necessary to reveal the true purpose that can be only above the life that leads to this goal, and to compare what is happening with the approach of the target.
[154908]

Related Material:
If You Want To Be Happy, Then Just Let It Be!
Find The Formula For Happiness
Instructor Of Attaining Happiness

I See You In The Next World

laitman_933Question: The friends may be great and feel the meaning of the concept of the center of the group and of one heart, but what should I do if I don’t feel that and don’t know how to work correctly?

Answer: This is clarified in the mutual work. You have to start seeing the friends through the center of the group, united as one. They may not know that they are and may not understand it, but you will see that they are actually already in spiritual connection.

You have to see their advanced states, and it depends on your desire to see them as such. I, for example, want to see how successful you all are since you are like my own children, and so I see that. But it is because of the concern and the desire that you should attain it that I see your future form.

Seeing the friends as successful means seeing them united and revealing the Creator in order to delight Him, which means seeing them in spiritual states.

We should see all of reality as one system. The corporeal world and the spiritual world don’t exist separately; they are a unified whole. It all depends only on the eyes of the beholder.

The Creator is revealed among the friends, which means that there is a force of mutual bestowal operating among them, that’s all. The Creator is revealed only in the right connection between us. This is called the Creator. It is in this connection that we turn to that force.

He isn’t found anywhere else. We mustn’t picture or imagine that He is in another reality, but only among us. The Creator has no form. There is a certain inconceivable identity that is revealed if we provide Him with the system to be revealed in. If all the components are properly connected, we discover Him.

It is as if there is a magnetic or an electrostatic field and if we build a system to detect that field, the system will begin to work: the lights will turn on, and the wheels will spin. After all, we have properly assembled the machine and now it perceives the force of the field that is around it, the black energy.

We live in the world of this energy that is revealed in it in different lower forms, such as the force of gravity and other physical forces, but we want to discover the primary force in which the upper thought and the desire are concealed and not the outcomes, not the particular fields.

These fields are revealed in matter, since matter is already arranged that way. This is the reason that we study matter. On the corporeal level we discover these outcomes on the surface of the earth and in the universe, but when we ascend to a different level of the connection of matter we discover a different field. It is called the “dweller (Shochen) who dwells in the Shechina.”
[133711]
From from 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/20/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Related Material:
A Molten Sphere
Building Divinity
How Can I See The Real World?

About Internal Beauty

laitman_543_02The Torah, “Leviticus,” 21:16 – 21:18: And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to Aaron, saying: Any man among your offspring throughout their generations who has a defect, shall not come near to offer up his God’s food. For any man who has a defect should not approach: A blind man or a lame one, or one with a sunken nose or with mismatching limbs;

From a spiritual point of view, a blemish is a flaw, an internal corruption of a person, a flaw in his spiritual yearning for connection and unity.

Question: How is a person’s inner flaw determined?

Answer: It is impossible to determine it externally since it is concealed even from the person himself until he discovers it inside him by himself. This is called the concealed wisdom or the concealed knowledge. It is only to the extent that a person can reveal the defect inside him and bear it that he can fulfill it properly.

The blemish is totally unfelt and cannot be seen on the outside since no one knows what a person’s intentions are. He can perform actions that may seem absolutely stupid and even harmful, totally tasteless and egoistic, on the outside, but in fact everything is totally different because the character and the quality of the action determines the intention.

Comment: But in our world everything is opposite from the Torah, which only refers to the intentions when it speaks about a person.

Answer: These limitations do not refer to a person’s external appearance, of course. Moses, for example is described as very handsome, tall, and strongly built. Can a 120 year old person really look that way? It is only about his internal beauty and purity.

I first understood that when I studied with Rabash. He asked me to help find a match for a certain girl and I decided to introduce her to a guy who studied with us. The girl was very intelligent, really smart, and a talented painter who later gave one of her paintings as a present to Rabash. I invited the guy and the girl to lunch at my place and they spoke and then went for a walk and two hours later he came to the lesson and told me that he doesn’t like the way she looks. I passed this information to Rabash since the future of that girl was very important to him. At first he didn’t understand what happened, but when I explained it to him he wondered: “so he only looked at her externality?!” The guy couldn’t ascend above his reason, and eventually life didn’t work out for him or for the girl. He got married and had five children, but then got divorced after a while. She got married and had one child and then divorced her husband.

Rabash always said simply: “Love is a kind of animal that is built by mutual concessions.”
[154161]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 4/28/14

Related Material:
Process Of Self-Scrutiny
Opening Pandora’s Box
Correcting The Last Level

Human Nourishment

laitman_560The Torah, “Leviticus,” 23:14: You shall eat bread or [flour made from] parched grain or fresh grain, until this very day, until you bring your God’s sacrifice. [This is] an eternal statute throughout your generations in all your dwelling places.

Bread represents the characteristic of Hassadim (mercy), so the correction of a person happens precisely around this states.

In our spiritual correction before the Omer (sheaf), we are involved with everything, just not with bread. Bread is human nourishment. Those who correct the Omer within them—meaning those who harvest, gather, bind, and turn it into baked products made from flour—reach the level of full bestowal.

Pastries (baked products made from flour) refer to the attainment of egoistic desires that grow from the ground, from the lowest state, where a person can grow them and turn them into the characteristic of bestowal.

As a general rule, egoistic characteristics on the level of the still are found in each one of us, so we can correct them without any problem. But here this is talking about developing the egoistic characteristics within ourselves that transform into food for the spiritual level, Adam.

With this we create our internal self-inquiry because we know how to develop the ego within us, how to manage it, how it will grow in the left and right lines, and then we correct it by comparing and matching them, advancing forward in the middle line.

Everything that is mentioned in the Torah is intended only for our connection and unification, and teaches on what level, in which conditions, which parts of our desire, are connected and complete each other reciprocally with resemblance and equivalence with the Creator. This is all that a person needs to do in this world beyond the minimal satisfaction of his basic needs.

When we finish our spiritual correction, providing ourselves with the levels of the still, vegetative, and animate through the “fruits of the land,” then this world disappears. And we remain existing in a corrected and eternal state. We try to reach this while we are still alive in this world. The wisdom of Kabbalah was given to us for that purpose.
[154420]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 5/28/14

Related Material:
A Person’s Essential Work
Bread-Offering Gift
A Joyful Giving Of The Torah Holiday

Relatives, Relatives

laitman_232_04The Torah, “Leviticus,” 21:1 – 21:3: And the Lord said to Moses: Speak to the Cohanim (priests), the sons of Aaron, and say to them: Let none [of you] defile himself for a dead person among his people except for his relative who is close to him, his mother, his father, his son, his daughter, his brother, and for his virgin sister who is close to him, who was not [yet] with a man for her, he shall defile himself. 

In spiritual work, a person is always found as an intermediary component between higher and lower characteristics. The higher characteristics of the priest are direct to the Creator.The lower characteristics are those that hold and support a desire that is directed toward the Creator and proceed according to a hierarchy directed downward. A person is based seemingly upon these desires, each one of them is connected to him on his level when he nullifies himself and is included in his yearning for the Creator. With this, they justify their mission.

This is to say, “…his relative who is close to him…” symbolize those desires of the priest (Cohen) that are not relevant to his direct connection to the Creator, but to lower levels.

In creation, nothing was created besides desire. So, our work is to direct it toward bestowal, toward the Creator, just as He directs His action toward us, and then we attain adhesion.

A priest (Cohen) is a characteristic that is ready to raise all of the desires that stand below according to a hierarchy and direct them toward connection with the Creator.

The Levites are the executing mechanism, shaping the desires that are found under the priest. They understand the priests and know how to carry out his instructions.

Israel are even lower desires that can be subservient to the Levites and through them to the priest (Cohen), and they constitute a connection between the higher desires and the desires called the “nations of the world,” and below the desires of the nations of the world are the desires of the animate, vegetative, and still.

All of the desires must be directed together toward general unity, and when it is attained, then within it the characteristic of full mutual bestowal is discovered. Imagine for a long time you are painstakingly gathering something, and suddenly it begins to glow from within. This means that the power of the desires attains this kind of unity when it begins to shine. This is the discovery of the Creator.

In other words, this mutual unification among the characteristics of the creatures happens when the Creator is discovered. He shines through the entire pyramid according to the law of equivalence between the desire and the Light. This is the goal of our development, whereas the goal of our existence is to attain this state and to advance toward something that, in the meantime, is still not known to us.
[153664]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 4/28/14

Related Material:
The High Priest’s Qualities, Part 3
The High Priest’s Qualities, Part 2
The High Priest’s Qualities, Part 1

Like A Bundle Of Reeds—Expendable, Part 1

Like a Bundle of ReedsLike A Bundle of Reeds, Why Unity and Mutual Guarantee Are Today’s Call of the Hour, Michael Laitman, Ph.D.

Chapter 6: Expendable
Contemporary Anti-Semitism

In Chapter 1, we said that Abraham discovered that human nature’s inherent egotism is on a constant trend of expansion. The method he devised was not intended to curb that egotism because he knew this was impossible, as man was created to receive boundlessly. His only question, therefore, was how to receive that intended bounty. Abraham discovered a method where, by studying and striving to unite, people rose to a new level of perception. Here, they acquired the nature of the Creator—benevolence—and could therefore receive that boundless pleasure without becoming overindulgent and dangerous to themselves or the environment.

The exodus from Egypt and the formation of the nation of Israel marked a five-century stage of formation. During that time, Israel went from being a group made of family and students into an entire nation whose goal was to attain the Creator.

While attempting to rise to the highest spiritual level, the Hebrews never retreated from their original intention to offer their perceptions to the whole of humanity. This was to be their contribution to the nations, the “light” they were meant to give to them. Through the generations, that gift of “light” is what the nations have been trying to receive from the Jews, and the lack thereof has been the cause of our afflictions by the nations.

In the prologue to his book, A History of the Jews, Christian historian and novelist, Paul Johnson, eloquently describes the questions that drove Abraham to his discoveries, the same questions that drive humanity to this day. Johnson portrays his reverence for the Jews’ ability to discover the answers to those questions, live by their consequent laws, and their efforts to teach them to others. In his words, “The book gave me the chance to reconsider objectively, in the light of a study covering nearly 4,000 years, the most intractable of all human questions: what are we on earth for? Is history merely a series of events whose sum is meaningless? Is there no fundamental moral difference between the history of the human race and the history, say, of ants? Or is there a providential plan of which we are, however humbly, the agents? No people has ever insisted more firmly than the Jews that history has a purpose and humanity a destiny. At a very early stage in their collective existence they believed they had detected a divine scheme for the human race, of which their own society was to be a pilot. They worked out their role in immense detail. They clung to it with heroic persistence in the face of savage suffering. Many of them believe it still. Others transmuted it into Promethean endeavors to raise our condition by purely human means. The Jewish vision became the prototype for many similar grand designs for humanity, both divine and man-made. The Jews, therefore, stand right at the centre of the perennial attempt to give human life the dignity of a purpose.”[i]

[i] Paul Johnson, (Christian historian), A History of the Jews (New York, First Perennial Library, 1988), 2

World Kabbalah Convention “Day Two” – 03.12.15

World Kabbalah Convention, Day Two, Preparation for Lesson 4

[media 1] [media 2]

World Kabbalah Convention, Day Two, Lesson 4

[media 3] [media 4]

World Kabbalah Convention, Day Two, Prepartion for Lesson 5

[media 5] [media 6]

World Kabbalah Convention, Day Two, Lesson 5

[media 7] [media 8]