Questions about Spiritual Work—86

281.02Question: What is the difference between a desire of the  Creator and a quality of the Creator?

Answer: The Creator has only one quality—to bestow, to fulfill, to saturate. His desire is to see a person who does what He has directed him to do to receive the upper light from this and be fulfilled with it.

Question: We come to the group with a point in the heart. At what moment can we assume that we have some kind of soul?

Answer: From the moment you start thinking about it.

Question: Is there a difference between mind and knowledge?

Answer: Of course. The mind is the ability of our brain to process data, and knowledge is what we accumulate in ourselves as a result of processing data.

Question: When you feel negative about the actions of another person, suddenly the thought comes to you about what would you do if you really loved him? Is this the voice of the Creator?

Answer: That is the voice of the Creator. This is the opportunity to fulfill the commandment.

Question: Do all the commandments have to be fulfilled only within the ten or beyond it as well?

Answer: We study the commandments inside the ten, and we fulfill them both inside and outside the ten in everyday life.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/16/24, Writings of Baal HaSulam “And You Shall Keep Your Souls”

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Bring it to Life

259.02Conversely, those who do not walk on the path toward achieving Dvekut with the Creator, which is to obtain the desire to bestow, are called “wicked” in that they are not walking on a path where they will be able to do everything for the sake of the Creator, but rather for their own sake.

Yet, here, “wicked” is a different discernment, a completely different interpretation. That is, there are no righteous there in the middle, but all their actions are as wicked, meaning not for the sake of the Creator, but for their own sake.

In the work, they are called “wicked,” but to the general public, who observe Torah and Mitzvot, they are called “righteous” (Rabash, Article  9, “What Is, ‘The Smell of His Garments,’ in the Work?”).

We need to try to fulfill those laws of the Torah that lead us to unity because “love your neighbor as yourself” is the most important commandment. We must strive for it. We must examine this condition and implement it.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/12/24, Writings of Rabash “What Is, ‘The Smell of His Garments,’ in the Work?”

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Bring the World to the Good State

291It is even more so regarding the interior of the souls and the worlds, and how they came down to such dreadful ruin as today’s, where we have no security in our lives. In the coming years, we will be subject to all sorts of slaughter and death, and all admit that they have no counsel to prevent it (Baal HaSulam “The Last Generation”).

If humanity continues to develop through its own intellect, it will inevitably become involved in various unpleasant events and will subject itself to self-destruction. The only way to survive this and achieve the proper development and a good outcome is that we will develop friendship, love, and mutual agreement.

The question arises: why does development require pressure through suffering and bloodshed? It is to bring a person to the point where he voluntarily takes upon himself the opportunity to organize our world and bring it to a good state of balance. Therefore, nature is obliged to lead us to such a desperate state in a natural way. Without this, a person will not do anything, he must be forced.

Question: Do you think that we have already reached this point?

Answer: According to the science of Kabbalah, we have already reached a state where we can take control of nature into our own hands and raise ourselves to the level of the absolute, favorable world of infinity.
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From KabTV’s “Era of the Last Generation“ 2/4/24

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The Path to Bestowal through a Play

938.02Question: How can we come to a state where Malchut rises to Bina or Bina affects our common Malchut by playing at connection among ourselves in the ten?

Answer: It depends on how much we play at it because the game ends when the upper light affects us; when it shines on us, we begin to gather together into one spiritual Kli.

This happens gradually. Do you want it to happen faster? Perform your actions more intensely; get closer to each other, and try to work together in one desire collected from your private desires so that you feel it all inside yourself.

The intensity of the action depends on the great internal effort of each friend.

Everyone must constantly imagine that they are a part of the other. That is why these efforts are called rapprochement.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/18/24, Writings of Rabash “Concerning Hesed [Mercy]”

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The Right Combination

942Question: Should the desire to get closer to a friend be mutual or is my desire alone enough?

Answer: In order to connect with a friend, your desire alone is not enough. It is important to find out why you want to get closer to your friend.

There are billions of people in the world. Why do you want this particular person to be your friend? Why do you want to become his friend? What does it mean to be a friend? I am for him, and he is for me. This is a big problem.

Where will there be room for the Creator between you? That is, here you need to imagine the correct combination of both of you and the third one—the Creator.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/12/24, Writings of Baal HaSulam “Let His Friend Begin”

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 2/28/24

Preparation to the Lesson

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1st part of the Lesson — Writings of Rabash, “What Is the Work of Man, in the Work that Is Attributed to the Creator?”

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Selected Highlights

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Audio Version Of The Blog – 2/27/24

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“How Can One Justify Being Happy When There Is So Much Suffering in the World?” (Times of Israel)

Michael Laitman on the Times of Israel: “How Can One Justify Being Happy When There Is So Much Suffering in the World?”

We should strive to discover and understand the meaning of life, to see that life’s meaning is for life itself to reveal to us: what it is for, and to which destination it leads and pulls us.

Our lives, as we currently know them, from the time of our birth until our death, is actually a period that does not count as life. Why? It is because in such a state, we follow various instinctive instructions of nature. We try to survive, suffer less, and find comfort and pleasure.

In order to feel the meaning of life, we need to exit this animal-like state. Then, as the question stipulates, by doing so, where is our happiness? Happiness comes from understanding the universe and its significance.

We can thus be happy among all the suffering presenting itself to us when we understand life’s meaning, which includes the purpose of all the suffering we experience, and the extent to which every movement on the inanimate, vegetative, animate and human nature eventually leads to the revelation of life’s mysteries.

We can then link the suffering and horrors in life to the chain of this revelation. Then, we discover that the purpose of suffering is to wake us up to question its purpose, to prod us to ultimately seek the meaning of life. Even if we feel the pain on our own flesh, then it is all the more necessary to understand that such states lead us eventually to a sense of inner meaning.

This path leads us to happiness. When we achieve happiness through understanding life’s meaning and the purpose of suffering, the pain then disappears. That is, if we know exactly what suffering is for, and why we become included in it, then there is no suffering and everything becomes meaningful.

The path to discovering life’s meaning is also full of breakdowns. We lose and find the meaning of life, losing and finding it again and again throughout our progress to its final, complete revelation. No matter how we feel while doing so, we become stronger and more advanced the entire time.

We eventually add in our discernments, understanding and feeling of life up to a point where we acquire the full attainment of nature’s laws—how and why nature operates on us and its still, vegetative and animate levels the way that it does. We learn the workings of nature as a single, supreme attitude of love and bestowal that acts to elevate us to our highest level of happiness, wholeness and connection among each other and with itself, in full identification and agreement with its laws.
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For All Kinds of Souls

259.01Question: If the Torah is intended for us to unite, why did the Kabbalists leave such a large amount of material that when studying we have the illusion that we are learning some other facet?

Why didn’t they write an article or articles about the need for connection so that we could study them over and over again and not get confused by so many explanations of seemingly different things?

Answer: The large number of articles depends on the division of souls, on the variations of connections between them. That is why we need such an abundance of material.

Question: If a group of people takes one article, for example, “There Is None Else Besides Him” and advance only according to it, will they reach their goal?

Answer: No, they will not. No article covers all souls.
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From the 1st oart of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/15/24, Writings of Rabash “What Are Torah and Work in the Way of the Creator?”

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How Can We Be Grateful for Suffering?

627.1Andrey writes:

Michael, there is a certain formula: We will never receive what we want until we are grateful for what we have. How do we give thanks for troubles, pain, and suffering? This is what I have now.

Comment:  There are a lot of letters like his.

My Response: Yes, but we must understand that, in general, all of this goes into our piggy bank. The suffering itself and what we are going through, even if we cannot be grateful for it, is still considered a positive for us.

Question: Is it possible to live with this and think that it is necessary to go through these sufferings? This is what I get, and I have to go through it. Is such annulment before the sufferings taken into account?

Answer: The fact is that it depends on the person. It depends on me whether I suffer or not, how many cases, surgeries, and health problems I have endured in my life. But this is life.

Question: Can we say that life is a chain of suffering that one feels or does not feel, but it is still a chain of suffering?

Answer: Yes, of course.

Question: If you look at the history of humanity, it is a continuous chain of suffering. You say that somehow it all falls into a general piggy bank somewhere. What do I receive from it? This is Andrey’s and everyone else’s question.

Answer: What do you get out of it? What if you do not get anything? Have you suffered in vain?

Comment: That is right! Then there really is suffering. I have to get something out of this; I have to. Someone is told: “You will have a happy life in the next world.” Someone else is told: “Never mind, you will be purified through this.”

My Response: Is it worth making such a calculation? Personally, I try not to do this so that I do not have requests and complaints to the Creator regarding what I will get from this: “Well, now let us make a calculation of how much You owe me.”

Comment: “I was suffering; now You pay me.”

My Response: Yes, there is no such thing.

Comment: Very often, when a person looks back, he says that what I went through was right, or it was not in vain. This calculation that we make afterward, does it turn out to be correct? That all the suffering I went through was not in vain.

My Response: Yes. I do not think that we are coming to a state where we still condemn the Creator.

Question: Even though it sounds here and there, do you still think that we justify Him?

Answer: Yes.

Question: How does He do everything so interestingly? He takes a person through great suffering, and then the person says: “I did not go through them in vain.” How does He show it to us?

Answer: The fact is that everyone suffers, any part of nature: inanimate, vegetative, animate, and even more so humans.

Absolutely everyone suffers! Even the pleasure they experience just covers up a little bit of the previous suffering.

Question: Is it correct to say that I want to go through this life full of suffering, but to suffer as little as possible? Is this the correct formula?

Answer: You can say that too, although you do not have to say it; it does not matter. But according to your nature, you cannot desire suffering.

Question: But is it somehow embedded in my path? You say: “The root of my soul…” Do I one way or another have to go through them?

Answer: Yes.

Question: If I live with the fact that I have to go through them, does it make my life easier? Is that right?

Answer: Yes.
[324538]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 12/18/23

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