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The Gates Of Redemption

laitman_537It is very difficult for a person, that is, the desire to receive, to come to terms with the falls due to the fact that after an ascent, the success, feeling of power, nearness, and elation, he suddenly loses all knowledge and feeling, and is left lacking everything.

The desire for pleasure that expects fulfillment feels this as an unfair loss, like death, and doesn’t understand how this happened. The person begins to be angry and rebel.

This confuses him greatly; he becomes shaky and doesn’t understand what to do. Yet, it is precisely these situations that bring us to a reassessment in comparison to what was before. Previously, we measured our situations according to what we received through our desire for pleasure.

Then we began to evaluate situations according to the approach toward a goal, an idea, a spiritual message, how much we understood and felt the books of the Kabbalists were connected with a higher level—in other words, with the author of the books or the teacher.

The values gradually begin to be changed. Thanks to the ascents and descents that we go through our values are changed regarding reception and bestowal, of ourselves, and going outside of the ego. The person doesn’t know how this happens. The Light is what changes him, whereas the person only feels that the values of yesterday already seem different today because his priorities have changed.

This process of passing through the “49 Gates of Impurity” is great preparatory work that includes the Egyptian exile within it. We don’t just need to wait for it to be over quickly. Even though the person is in darkness, he constantly understands more and feels more who is managing him.

He clearly discerns more that the desire for pleasure is what dominates him, beating him all the time and is ready to do whatever it wants with him. On the other hand, he understands more and more that salvation can come only from above, and the participation of the person, himself, is only in how much he can influence this process, hasten the situations, accept them in a different way.

That life and those situations with which he agreed before this and thought were good, he now sees as the dominance of his ego. Ultimately, he decides that his situation is the Egyptian exile with all of its 49 Gates of Impurity.

Nothing more is required of us. We only need to examine the 49 Gates of Impurity quantitatively and qualitatively. The quantitative approach sounds like this: If I even fall for a second, I consider this to be slavery and the loss of everything that was dear to me.

If I am under the control of the ego even for a moment, I am under foreign control. I am no longer the master of my ego as things were during the years of abundance. Now, I begin to feel that this is what dominates me, yet I cannot do anything.

The qualitative approach means that I cannot agree with the smallest domination by the ego. Before this, I thought that being dominated by my desire to receive was not so bad, but now even one percent of that dominance that existed before, even one percent of the pressure from Pharaoh, is accepted as something terrible.

That is how I reach the 50th gate. On the border between the 49 Gates of Impurity and the 50th gate, my redemption takes place.
[132283]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/9/14, Shamati #54

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The Myth Of Automated Communism

laitman_547_05In the News (from The Guardian): “At a time when robots crowd factory lines, algorithms steer cars and smart screens litter the checkout aisles, automation is the new spectre. The robots, they say, are coming for our jobs. …

“Located on the futurist left end of the political spectrum, fully automated luxury communism (FALC) aims to embrace automation to its fullest extent.

“‘There is a tendency in capitalism to automate labor, to turn things previously done by humans into automated functions,’ says Aaron Bastani, co-founder of Novara Media. ‘In recognition of that, then the only utopian demand can be for the full automation of everything and common ownership of that which is automated.’

“Bastani and fellow luxury communists believe that this era of rapid change is an opportunity to realise a post-work society, where machines do the heavy lifting not for profit but for the people.

“‘The demand would be a 10- or 12-hour working week, a guaranteed social wage, universally guaranteed housing, education, healthcare and so on,’ he says. ‘There may be some work that will still need to be done by humans, like quality control, but it would be minimal.’ Humanity would get its cybernetic meadow, tended to by machines of loving grace. …

“The ideology springs from a tangle of well-observed trends. Generally, the rate of technological progress and labor productivity is rising, but wages are stagnating and factories are shedding jobs. Recent research indicates that 35% of jobs in the UK are ‘at risk’ of being automated.”

My Comment: Everything would have been good and even great if we, too, had been robots and not humans, created not from iron and silicon, but from egoism. And this is what will not allow us to enjoy life. We see that in everything we do: everything that is done with good intention turns into evil for us. It is said, “I have created egoism and I have given the Torah in order to correct it.”

That is, only by correcting our nature, will we be able to achieve a good state. And it should coincide with the plan of our creation. The purpose of the Torah, as it is written, is “Love your neighbor as yourself”; it is the main commandment of the Torah. So, no robots will be able to make our life easier; we destroy it every day by our unwillingness to fulfill this main condition of our creation.
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Friends For A Purpose

laitman_943Question: What is this connection between us? After all, we are not friends in the physical sense. How do we connect and unite in the right way?

Answer: Friendship, on the physical level, is characterized by people that are pleased to communicate with each other; they have similar habits, common bonds, and so forth. This is what connects and unites them.

We are friends of a different type; we are friends for a purpose. Were it not for this purpose, we would never sit together. So, we need to understand clearly that only the importance of the goal holds us together, connecting and fastening us together. This is why the group exists.

The question is how does one not forget that the group doesn’t exist on its own, that by ourselves we are not connected? We gathered here not because it is good for us to be together, but so that we would connect above all the problems that constantly pop up between us, and that is how we ascend spiritually. The group must know under what conditions we have gathered, what we are working for, and what our work is.

Every day, we must discover new problems between us, and every day we try to solve them by rising above them. This means that we are not solving problems on the physical level as is customary in this world, but by specifically rising above them and turning to the Creator with a request for correction.

We are not prepared to get along alone; this is a spiritual correction. By not doing anything but only clarifying our problems in workshops, we ask the Creator to correct and fulfill us. He is the only one who corrects the connections between us, fills them through His revelation, and is, Himself, discovered in these connections.
[132194]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/28/14, Questions and Answers

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Intersecting Circles

laitman_628_1Question: How do we choose the appropriate partner? Where do we begin?

Answer: Follow the general law of nature in which everything seeks balance. So, the more similarity there is between the partners, the more compatible they are with each other. The similarity is in the education that they received, their values, their worldview, and their behavior in various internal and external situations. It is necessary to look for compatibility, and the more that couples are like each other, the more the family has a chance to succeed.

So first, it is up to the person to examine himself to understand who he truly is, and this is done with the help of talks, joint activities, and workshops. First of all, one must know human nature, study its psychology, through which I already will begin to understand who I am, what motivates me, and how and why I react in such a way.

It is necessary to find out how many reactions various people have for the same problem, ordinary life situations, and check how similar our reactions are so that we can understand each other. Perhaps, I am in a completely different situation now, but the response of my partner is clear to me, and I would react exactly like that if I were in a similar situation.

For this, we must teach a person to go outside of himself and be “clothed” in other situations, looking at himself from the side. He must check his responses in different situations, and then he will understand how many different types of behaviors exist in him, the different reactions and different patterns from which he is composed, and now it is up to me to understand which patterns the other person is composed of.

We use an approach like this in not only searching for a partner, but generally, in understanding another person. We must clarify how many different situations there can be, how many reactions, mood swings, and changes, to the extent that I can understand him and be clothed in his image. Can I imagine myself in his place? We give each other signs that we understand each other, that we agree and accept each other.

This is a study of the person, who he is and which forms of behavior he can have. There are various types of people: hotheaded, optimistic, melancholy, and indifferent (choleric, sanguine, melancholic, and phlegmatic). Psychology has clear criteria for these standard types and is able to determine which of them are compatible with each other. In this way, it isn’t a problem to classify people according to groups. As a result of workshops, discussions, and bonds created during games, they will understand who is more compatible with them.

The learning begins with talks and lectures that are designed to help singles understand what human nature is, with what intensity egoistic inclinations are discovered, and how much we depend upon the opinion of the environment, in other words, that we are compelled to submit to our internal impulses and societal pressures. Our behavior is determined by habits that we get through previous education. We must try to see what habits we are woven from and understand that the person standing in front of you is a complex personality of countless habits, and that I cannot “turn” him according to my desire.

After all, each of us expects that our partner will react exactly like we do at every moment in life and will behave like I want, but I must understand the other person and agree that, within each of us, there are a set of different human images to which I must accommodate myself or else I will not be able to be connected with him. In this way, I begin to discover flexibility regarding the other, building something compatible to both of us at every moment within all of his and my internal patterns. That is how we learn the simplest sociology of human behavior and that of any human society.

We must act exactly this way, for all of nature seeks balance, connection, and accommodation to equivalence of form at every moment. In the general system, everything depends on how much the components and the integration of the components become compatible with each other, until a homogeneous society is attained. Each is left with his freedom, yet he knows how to accommodate himself to everyone else. The general consensus depends upon this.

That same general rule operates within the family as well. That is what we must teach everyone. It is appropriate for the person found within the larger society as well as for familial peace. The same rules apply everywhere.

To establish a family, everyone must be a psychologist. We have no choice! We are facing a situation where we cannot connect between us in any other way. Previously, this connection was a natural connection as it is with animals, but we are no longer on the animate level. We have risen to the new level of Adam (Man). So, we must learn to build seemingly artificial connections that are not derived from our nature.

Man is not an egoistic and primitive creature. He must complement his egoism so that he will not alienate others but will reach connection with them. To do this, it is up to me to constantly concede a bit of my ego to make it possible for others to intrude my space, and my partner makes it possible for me to penetrate his space. Then we establish a connection between us.

I am one circle, and my partner is another circle. We begin to bring our circles closer together so that each one of us penetrates into a common segment, even though this is still a small segment. We then examine this common territory and make sure that we constantly maintain it between us. This is only possible though negating myself.
[132409]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” 6/9/13

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