Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 09.30.09

Preparation to the Lesson
There is one, indivisible reality before us, but every person reveals it depending on his own qualities.
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Part 1, on Shamati #97
The spiritual embryo “flips over” before the birth: what used to seem like garbage, now becomes the most important thing for a person. He is now ready to ascend to the next level.
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Part 2, on “Preface to the Sulam Commentary”
You shouldn’t fight your desires; you will need them all. It’s not the desires that need to be restricted, but the way you use them.
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Part 3, on “Disclosing One Portion And Covering Two”
Kabbalists never reveal what is not necessary and what the generation is not ready to realize.
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Anything That Isn’t A Vital Necessity Is Harmful

blamingWe consist of two parts: the physical body and the soul. The body requires “the necessities,” the things needed for a reasonable subsistence. All the remaining efforts must be aimed at developing the soul, because that is the only reason for our existence.

All activities in our world that carry no vital necessity, actually bring great harm, because they divert people from their spiritual development and impede them from taking the fast track to correction. They convolute our lives with transient pleasures, and it takes us all too much effort to discard all this refuse and begin to discern what is truly important for us!

At the same time, the world is attaching greater and greater importance to this refuse, continually swelling up its value and false necessity. As a result, all of humanity is engaged in ultimately useless endeavors.

If only people would receive the proper education, even those who aren’t yet aspiring to reveal the concealed world, this education would cause them to develop correctly, and then our world would look completely different!

But the way things stand now, all our useless pursuits are only leading the world deeper into its current state of crisis.

The Only Thing Worth Being Disappointed About

disappointA question I received: Every New Year stirs new hope in me to reach the spiritual world, but at the end of the year I experience disappointment. How do I hold on to the hope?

My Answer: New hope and new disappointment are both good! You only have to connect them together and understand that no one is going to serve us the spiritual world on a silver platter.

There is no Creator outside of us. There is no world outside the person. We have nowhere to receive from! A person will reveal everything in his corrected self.

When one corrects his Kli, he reveals the Creator in it. Everything is revealed in the corrected (previously egoistic) desire (the Kli).

It is not easy to agree with this, but no one is standing in the way of us reaching the spiritual world – the quality of bestowal and love.

You exist in one reality, in one place – in your desires. By changing them, you feel that you are in a different world. By changing the desires from “for myself” to “for bestowal,” you reveal the Upper World!

Everything is inside you – this world as well as the world to come. This world is what I perceive now. If I correct my Kli, I will begin to feel the spiritual world – my world to come.

There is just one law operating you: you always feel your own qualities, and nothing else. So you have no one else to ask to change the world or to change you. You can change anything only by changing yourself through using the laws of Nature.

If a person is standing at a stoplight and it doesn’t change for five minutes, will he start cursing and flinging his boots at it? No, because the stoplight is not alive. In the past, however, instead of stoplights there were human traffic regulators, whom you could ask for something.

So, everything depends on who you imagine standing before you – a living being or a law. We think that the Creator is “alive” like us and that we can influence Him or ask Him for something. However, thousands of years of history should teach us otherwise.

Question cont’d: So what about our prayers?

My Answer: To pray means to judge yourself. Through prayer, a person changes his desires and qualities. With his plea, he sets into motion the system,in which he exists. This system affects him, and to this extent, his desire also changes.

Question cont’d: And what about the Light that Reforms?

My Answer: Revealing the Light means receiving a sensation in your corrected desire – your quality of bestowal. This sensation of your corrected state is, in fact, the Light!

When you reveal the Light within the Kli, the Kli itself reveals its corrected qualities. When the Light that Reforms shines to you, you thereby reveal your future state, which is already being illuminated to you now, in the present.

Question cont’d: But a person feels tired, disappointed…

My Answer: One should feel disappointed only by the fact that he did not make enough effort. Otherwise, he would be able to change himself and feel this change – the Upper World or State.

Precisely the effort brings me to a realization that I am incapable, I have no strength, and I will never reach the spiritual world using my own strength. I can find the strength for this only in the group. A person can sit alone and cry for a long time, but this will not help him.

One must receive forces from others, connect them together, and then he will have enough strength to change his qualities, revealing a new world in them.

Get Ready To Be Born: Flip Over “Head Down”

The Jewish Holidays Are Steps of Spiritual AscentWhen I build a Sukkah above me – a covering for my egoism, and when I hide my egoism in its shade, I conceal 99% of my desires to enjoy from the Light,  and I am then able to see 1% of the Light. I leave just one thin ray of Light (Kav Dak), and in it, I see the Creator. I then begin to gradually reveal new inner qualities that are illuminated by this ray, which are called Ushpizin – Guests. These are my corrected qualities, which have been attached to bestowal.

That is how gradually, over the course of seven days of Sukkoth, all my qualities undergo a change. I realize that besides the studies and many other activities I have to do, I was supposed to unite with other souls, but somehow I always forgot about this. It just always seemed unimportant, like the garbage or leftovers of my spiritual work.

But if I raise the importance of these “unnecessary things” above all else, above my own head or knowledge, and if I make them important by building a “ceiling” from them that will rule over me, then inside this tent, I will be like an embryo that is preparing for birth and turning upside down. By flipping over into a “head down” position, I change my values.

I am then able to enter the Sukkah – the covering for my will to enjoy. This is a covering that a person builds over his own egoism, instead of the Creator having to conceal Himself from the person.

The Sukkah, the canopy that we build on the holiday of Sukkoth, symbolizes the concealment (screen) that a person has to build over his desire at the first stage of the spiritual work. He does it by collecting all the “leftovers” and raising them above him, thus pacifying his ego. Now his ego is in concealment and he is ready to sit (to be in a state of smallness) in this Sukkah for all seven days of Sukkoth (designated HaGaT NeHY), until all his desires will come under that canopy.

What takes place there is a revolution, similar to how a baby turns head down in the mother’s womb preparing for birth, or like the earth is ploughed by turning its lower layer inside out and bringing it to the top. This means that the things that used to be important for egoism now lose their importance, while the things that were unimportant – bestowal and unity – become the most important. That is how the leftovers of the previous state are used to build the new level. In this manner, we use the Light to build one level after another out of our desires.

Using “Garbage” And “Shade” To Build Our Soul On The Holiday Of Sukkoth

now-you-can-share-perceptions-over-the-internetSukkoth is a holiday that is very symbolic of our spiritual work. It arrives after the realization of evil that happens on Yom Kippur. That is to say, on Yom Kippur, a person understands the full extent to which his will to enjoy, his egoism, his entire nature – is evil, and that he has no chance to escape it. But this realization comes as a result of great preliminary work.

On Rosh Hashanah (the New Year), a person decides to start a new life, to rise above his own nature no matter what and to ascend to the next level. On Yom Kippur, however, he reveals that he does not have the ability to attain this, because his Kelim (desires) are unfit for it. But then he comes to understand that spirituality and corporeality are inseparable, that every Upper Level is built and based upon the previous level. It’s not that there is some ready-made spiritual world waiting for you somewhere, and all you have to do is “get there” from this world. Rather, you have to take everything you have in the current state and rearrange it in a new way. That is how you will build your new level.

We have very important possessions on our current level, including all the corporeal and all the spiritual things. However, the spiritual things don’t seem important to us yet, since we still cannot enjoy them. Bestowal, care for one’s neighbor, and love for the Creator are all things that appear unneeded, like garbage.

We do agree to do spiritual work, but only if it’s for the sake of gaining more knowledge and understanding or in order to receive a reward for the work. And we don’t understand that it is precisely in virtue of the “unimportant” things, the “garbage” which we raise above us and use it to build a canopy or covering, that we create a new Kli.

That is when these things, which my desire to enjoy deems unnecessary, work to cover or conceal my egoism, to pacify it by creating a shade over it. If I am willing and happy to remain in this shade and to build the desire to bestow inside me, then the Light of the Sukkoth Holiday comes to me.

The Special Light Of The Sukkoth Holiday

needA question I received: There is a unique Upper Light revealed during every holiday. What is the Light that comes to us during the holiday of Sukkoth, and how can we best use it to advance?

My Answer: Every spiritual state corresponds to particular Lights and desires (Kelim), which unite together. The Lights influence the desire, bringing it to a corrected state according to a certain program or order. The souls of a generation must go through the corrections together.

There are two types of Upper Providence: particular and general. The general providence awakens Kelim (desires) layer by layer, according to their level. This happens from one generation to the next, and forces the desires to develop naturally, following a path called “in its time” – Beito.

And, according to this natural progression of time, a special Light is now entering this world that advances all the people together. This is deemed a holiday; it is the reflection of the spiritual root in its corporeal branch.

In addition, a person whose desire for spirituality awakens individually can also use this general awakening for his advancement. This is very efficient, since there is a tremendous mass of desires celebrating Sukkoth, at the very least, in a symbolical manner, in the way of tradition.

If we add our intentions to this general awakening, we will help one another.

The Same Law Rules The Whole Of Nature

birth

In the News (from Physorg.com): Dead Ahead: Similar Early Warning Signals of Change in Climate, Ecosystems, Financial Markets, Human Health What do abrupt changes in ocean circulation and Earth’s climate, shifts in wildlife populations and ecosystems, the global finance market and its system-wide crashes,  asthma attacks and epileptic seizures have in common?According to a paper published this week in the journal Nature, they all share generic early-warning signals that indicate a critical threshold of change dead ahead. “It’s increasingly clear that many complex systems have critical thresholds–‘tipping points’–at which these systems shift abruptly from one state to another,” write the authors.

My Comment: After all, the Law is the same for the whole of Nature including all of human civilization. This is just the first of the discoveries of the global and integral dependency of all Nature’s parts.

When it obliges us to unite into one integral system, then negative changes will stop and everything will come to harmony, even the “irreversible” changes in the Earth’s climate.

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We Cannot Change The World Until We Change Ourselves

Laitman_2009-08_2939 There is a stage in the revelation of the Upper Force when one encounters two opposites and needs to make a special discernment.

On one hand, he exists in the world with the understanding that he is that entire world. On the other hand, he is incapable of relating to this world as an integral part of himself and to connect it to himself.

It is the Upper Force, the Creator, that is preventing him from doing just that. Until one attains Him (the complete quality of bestowal), he cannot connect all the different parts of the world within himself.

An additional force is revealed, one that governs over his nature. At this point he wants to connect and change the world for the better, but is unable to do so, since he is unable to change himself!

In order to change, one needs to ascend to a higher degree. By connecting with these external parts, which he now sees as parts of himself, he can no longer remain egoistic.

It’s not the same as finding out that your long-time enemy is actually your close relative. When this happens, all that’s left is regret for the bad relationship you had prior to the discovery.

However, this kind of correction is not enough, since the hatred in him vanishes and is replaced by love. In reality this isn’t so. Instead, the hatred remains and love is built on top of it!

A person comes to this new degree with all of his prior egoism, which doesn’t vanish, and there is nothing to be done with it.

Sometimes a situation comes up when a person must have a good attitude towards someone, but cannot force himself to do so. No matter how hard he tries, he will still only feel hatred and repulsion toward another person.

So what can one do? The only option is to exert an additional effort so as to build a new relationship over the existing dislike and hatred.

This attitude is called a new intention for the sake of bestowal over the previous state of egoistic desire.

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