Audio Version Of The Blog – 05.14.15

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Invisible Stepping Stones Lead Us Through The Swamp Of Egoism

Dr. Michael LaitmanI understand where the inner resistance to dissemination stems from. Our ego prefers to sit in its place and simply read and listen to the teacher telling it something interesting instead of going out to disseminate.

This is all very clear. You don’t want to disseminate and you don’t even want to connect with the group. You would rather sit, study, and live peacefully and not run about anywhere. You think that this is much more suitable for your soul.

But the teacher who tells you very wise and interesting things also has some strange ideas, since he is asking you to go out, give lectures, speak to people and perform certain actions with them. You think that all this isn’t for you and that it has nothing to do with the wisdom of Kabbalah, which has always been concealed and studied quietly and secretly.

This is where the wisdom of the crowd comes in. The wisdom of the crowd means that you don’t want to do something according your mind and heart and cannot do it, even if you understand that you have to since it makes sense, even if Baal HaSulam and Rabash write that you don’t want to do this and every cell in your body resists it!

This is where you have to clarify things: Do you recognize that this is the advice of Kabbalists, despite your reluctance and endless excuses? Kabbalists say that it is an essential condition in our days: Baal HaSulam, Rabash, and your teacher say it is so. Your faith in the wise is determined when you annul yourself and perform the actions that they direct.

You will never agree with them on one thing or another. There is no way you will agree with your teacher as to the spiritual work because he always tells you about actions that you have to perform against your ego, which naturally seem to you unreasonable and undesirable.

This will happen over and over again and even if you agree to it theoretically, you will not accept it in practice and will try to evade it anyway you can, as long as you won’t have to do it. Your body will refuse to obey you.

The spiritual teacher is a person who is one level higher than you and who shows you where to put your hand, where to put your foot, and how to move your body so that you can ascend to the next level. This is because you don’t know how to get there or where to place your hand or your foot in order to reach a higher level.

It is like being on one side of a swamp trying to get to the other side. There are stepping stones in the swamp that are hidden under the water that you can use to advance and step to the other side. But, you cannot see these stepping stones. If you take a wrong step, you are lost and the swamp will immediately swallow and drown you in your ego in this life.

The teacher tells you where you should step each time and you must believe him. Otherwise, you will not be able to cross and will drown in this swamp. This is called faith in the sages. A person who tries to advance in this manner can cross the swamp. Of course, a person has endless doubts and it’s true that he acquires faith in the sages gradually, then exits himself and operates according to a higher mind.

This is how you can cross the swamp, and whoever follows this path can cross it. You need more luck than brains here.
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From the preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/21/14

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The New Face Of The City And Family

Laitman_201_01Question: What laws should there be in the correct society and family?

Answer: The laws of equality, total participation, unity, and reciprocity. All that we want to see in our family is necessary to take and teach these laws to the whole nation.

Everyone must accept them and understand that if the entire nation cannot live according to these laws, then no family will be able to live happily, neither the richest nor the poorest.

The general and particular are equal, so if we want our family to live well, it is necessary to establish good relations in the society. And then society will maintain peace in every family. That’s the secret of a happy family.

Question: But I bring to the family in the evening all my complaints that have accumulated over the workday, all my quarrels with co-workers.

Answer: With whom can I quarrel at work if we all are one family and care for each other? I will see around myself only good examples and feel that everyone is a brother.

This will be tomorrow’s world if today we start to learn how to build it. And it is not difficult at all. A person gets up in the morning and watches a 15-minute talk on TV about correct relations. It is interesting, an enjoyable program, which he watches with pleasure because he understands that it benefits himself, the children, and the whole family.

He comes to work, and the first half an hour of the day is a workshop in the circle about correct relations between people. Only then they start to work. In the middle of the day, there is again a workshop. We come to nothing good without education for the entire nation.

At the end of the day he is taught how he should behave on the road, coming back home and how to behave at home. At home, his family members who have also received the same education are waiting for him. Everyone studies how to establish good relations with each other. After all, by this we gain a sense of higher existence, as if we found ourselves on the cloud.

It heals all our sores, strengthens the bond between parents and children, relationships with neighbors, and changes the face of our city and region. No one is afraid to let their children go to the street because every passerby will treat them as his own child. But to achieve this, everyone must be constantly learning.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 2/15/15

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How Can We Understand Kabbalah?

laitman_528_02Question: Why is it so difficult to understand Kabbalah?

Answer: If you try to understand it with the mind it is difficult, if not impossible, because to understand Kabbalah, life, and meaning you must change the brain and sense organs, and this is done by the Light due to practical efforts in the circle, in the earthly likeness to the upper property of bestowal.

Kabbalah is a practical method because it is possible to understand what it talks about only in the changed desires and mind

Conclusion: A person must surrender himself and participate in the group.
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The Calculations Of The Nation Of Israel

laitman_749_01Firstly, when Jacob’s family first went to live in Egypt, his was a family of 70 people. Everything the Torah tells us about takes place only on the spiritual levels, and all the calculations are realized in the intensity of the bestowal that is felt among people who yearn for connection. This is their only yearning, desire, and action.

Abraham took thousands of his followers from Babylon in his time, but 70 or tens of thousands are different levels of measuring. Tens of thousands refers to the number of people, while 70 refers to their spiritual intensity. Israel is a big system (Partzuf), while Jacob is a small structure that contains seven Sefirot from Malchut to Hesed. Seven Sefirot that are multiplied by ten levels in each Sefira add up to 70 parts.

Secondly, according to the Torah, 600,000 men left Egypt. These numbers indicate that the Israeli nation naturally multiplied, and Jacob’s small family became a nation of millions of souls. There is nothing unnatural about this since Egypt is the egoism. When I am in huge egoism, all the desires in me naturally grow and swell and expand as a result of the environment I am in.

When the nation of Israel first entered Egypt, it was small, but full of Light. The attribute of love and bestowal was among them, and a person was among them despite his will. During the first seven years of satiety, it was normal, but, during the seven years of hunger that followed, the Egyptians enter me and begin to trouble me internally, forcing me to yearn for their ideals. I look at them and see how attractive they are, how they begin to live inside me, how I absorb them and cannot get rid of them.

However, the struggle between the Egyptians and the Israelis in me invoke the feeling of the slavery in Egypt. Up until now, I haven’t defined my state in Egypt as slavery because I wasn’t under the spiritual domination of the Egyptians and everything was normal. Now, however, I begin to discover to what extent they affect me, and therefore I must do something about it. I reach a state in which it is better to die in the Red Sea or in the desert than to live in Egypt. Spiritual death is better than living in complete rejection of the Creator.

Question: But why do I enter Egypt with a force of 70 people and come out of there with a force of 600,000 men with 3 million women, elderly, and children behind them?

Answer: This is what I could egoistically absorb from the Egyptians. Although I resisted them, they still entered me, and I absorbed different desires, yearnings, attributes, and goals from them. Then I corrected them inside me, which means that I grew in a spiritual sense and saw that I cannot remain among the Egyptians anymore otherwise I would be buried under them. These desires want me to remain in them, so I can thus influence the world.

It is the work in Egypt that the Jews gave the world in the last two thousand years. Basically, we shouldn’t have engaged in it, and this is the reason that these actions are called exile. This isn’t the reason that we were given such talents, and no one is benefitting from them. Therefore, humanity doesn’t take our corporeal contribution to the development of the world into account. They are expecting something else from us. We must come out of Egypt, which is the embodiment of the entire world, and isolate ourselves spiritually, attain an inner unity among us, and then correct Egypt and the entire world.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 12/17/14

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What Is Our Main Problem?

Laitman_083The main problem of humanity is re-education to understand that we don’t control what is happening; we are within a system that reacts precisely to all of our thoughts, while our physical actions don’t arouse any response from the system.

A person must be presented with the fact that he influences the system of the forces of nature through his thoughts and intentions, while his future depends upon a response from the system. A person must be placed in frameworks like these, in such a network that he will always understand that only the right influence through intention and inner effort is what builds his future.

What I yearn for in the present determines my situation in the next moment. And if I accept the system of creation as unified and integral, then through my intentions I influence the state of all of humanity, I manage the state of all of humanity, and it influences me. This means that just as I relate to what is happening now, so in the next moment there will be a way for me to adjust to it. And intention is the main means for discovering the true picture; it is designed to detect my unity with the system of management that includes everything that exists. In the meantime, it is only a feeling of unity in the world. But to the degree that the circle of my field of vision expands, it will include within it all the rest of the worlds as well.

From here it becomes clear that the main problem is to put the person before the fact of his permanent influence on the natural system, on the system of management, the system of cyclical connection. Moreover, this system must be perceived by the person as “still,” and revealed within it are all of the laws about which the wisdom of Kabbalah speaks. It is “still” in the sense that it lacks change, “He hath made a decree which shall not be transgressed.” (Psalms 148:6). But when we are talking about this system, we explain its actions in “human” language, as it is said, the Torah speaks the language of the people, projecting onto it our feelings, the system can be compassionate, angry and so forth, but it is said this way because that is what a person understands, a person “humanizes” nature, creates its image and that of the Creator correspondent to him, as a system that is like him with which he has a mutual connection.

This is even though it is completely incorrect to attribute human characteristics to the Creator. This is also dangerous because this distracts a person from cooperating with the system, with the Creator, correctly. A person begins to think that the Creator can also be changed, like he. That is, a person perceives the Creator as being like himself, as someone who chooses to respond and to act, as existing in a framework of freedom of choice. But there is no freedom of choice in the higher system!

It is written, “I created everything that exists according to law. This law is called by My name, you call Him “HaVaYaH.” I created everything through it and you discover Me through it.” This is referring to the four letter name of the Creator, which are the five phases of development of the Direct Light (including the root stage), 0-1-2-3-4 (Shoresh, Aleph, Bet, Gimel, Dalet).

And we must understand, that nothing changes here. To speak about the Creator means to speak about nature, to speak about the only system that acts according to a particular law and can never be changed, changing those laws, that system of management, “He hath made a decree which shall not be transgressed.” So it is said: “The Creator is merciful,” “the Creator changes,” but to expect changes from Him is a person’s biggest mistake.

A person is given the possibility of choosing the proper way for his development, the “way of suffering” or the “way of Torah.” The choice of the right way for development doesn’t conclude by providing a distance from suffering, as we subconsciously awaken to our nature as suffering becomes only a sign that I am acting and developing incorrectly. Whereas advancement requires not “suffering,” but being directed towards “fulfillment of others, the Creator,” and it is up to me to change myself so that through these activities suffering becomes pleasure.

And where suffering is discovered in acts of bestowal is where I can ask the Creator (the Light that Reforms) to change my characteristics so that bestowal will become happiness. But even in this case I ask for happiness not because I want to feel happy but because I want to make the Creator happy, to become adjusted to the system. Then my movement and progress will be correct. And this is where the problem begins: What is more important to me: my sufferings or giving contentment to the Creator and working in a group?
Good luck!
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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 05.14.15

Writings of Rabash, Rungs of the Ladder,” “The Prayer of Many”

[media 1] [media 2]

The Book of Zohar — Selected Excerpts, “BeLaila De Kala (Night of the Bride),” Item 138

[media 3] [media 4]

Talmud Eser Sefirot, Vol. 3, Part 9, “Histaklut Pnimit,” Item 7

[media 5] [media 6]

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Giving of the Torah,” Item 17

[media 7] [media 8]