Kabbalah Moments: Without Stopping The Wagon

Kabbalah For Beginners “What Is The Wisdom Of Kabbalah?” – 07.26.10

Kabbalah TV Channel 66’s Kabbalah for Beginners, “What is the Wisdom of Kabbalah?”
Download: WMV Video|MP3 Audio

I Am Abraham In Egypt

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Zohar, Chapter “Lech Lecha (Go Forth),” Item 117: Similarly, it is written about the exodus from Egypt, “And it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go,” by which Pharaoh gave him the Kelim of his own decision and his own will. This discernment is considered the scrutiny of the Kelim, the Mochin de VAK of the degree of the light of Haya, since he [Abraham] did not attain it through the word of the Creator but through a sin and a test.

Perception of the spiritual world is devoid of any corporeality; there is neither Egypt, nor Abraham there. We use these words to signify the spiritual forces that form these objects in our world. This means that we take the words of our world and use them to name the upper forces. We read The Zohar as if knowing nothing about our world and its history. After all, The Zohar tells us about the spiritual states that lie in wait for us.

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/23/10, The Zohar

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Book About You
Kabbalah Today Article: Kabbalah Explains the Bible
5 Minutes Of Light: “Tuning Yourself To The Zohar”

Let Correction Happen Now!

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: No one expected such a powerful breakthrough in the dissemination of the wisdom of Kabbalah as the one that suddenly took place in Israel and the whole world. What is your prediction for the year to come?

Answer: We shouldn’t make long-term predictions. We should simply work and try to do everything that is up to us. How will the world react? This is none of our concern. Leave that to the Upper Force, the Upper Program.

If I did everything possible, then the next state will be revealed. If I am thinking about bestowal, then I don’t have to make predictions about how it will be felt in my sensations. I must only look for the best way to disseminate Kabbalah, the method of correction.

Perhaps a difficult, sluggish period will come in response to our efforts. But we don’t know what is being prepared inside it, or which nations are beginning their corrections before others. Everything can change unexpectedly.

Therefore, let’s not make any predictions for the upcoming year. Let the general correction come today!

From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/26/10, Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Whole World Will Be Filled With The Knowledge Of The Creator
Kabbalah Today Article: Echoes of the Future
Kabbalah Moments: “You Can Change The Scenario”



Step Out Into The Universe!

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe experience the world within our desire to receive pleasure. Everything we are able to perceive through our five sensory organs, such as sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch, results in the picture we observe from within. This is the reality we perceive.

Is there a way out of this limited perception into a broader one, which is not restricted by the physical body and its five sensory organs? After all, our vision of the world and our self is dictated by our animate body. It all depends on perception. Perhaps, there are countless forms beyond the body, but our body filters them allowing us to feel only what it is able to process. It means that we will never be able to experience the ultimate reality. If this is the case, then maybe we will see it is the true reality after the body dies? Yet, how is this possible if our five sensory organs die with it?

Kabbalists tell us that we are unable to perceive the entire reality because it is experienced “within myself” and thereby limited to only partial perception called “this world.” However, we can shift into the “outer” perception, the one outside the body. There is a force that changes our range of perception, where it is possible to experience reality outside of myself. In other words, instead of focusing on myself, I focus on the others and put them above myself.

When we are reading about the outer reality, it influences us in such way that we gradually begin perceiving it. It is called, “labored and found.” We must exert effort in order to obtain this new perception. After a few months of such laboring we start noticing changes occurring within us, and how different our perception of others becomes.

The most effective way to advance in this process is through a group reading The Zohar, regardless of how well we understand it. What counts is our desire to be affected by it, which will gradually help us start experiencing the outer reality.

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/23/10, The Zohar

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Everything, Even The Spiritual World And The Creator, Is Inside You
Shamati #117: “You Labored and Did Not Find, Do Not Believe”
Unlocking The Zohar: “How To Change Reality”

Standing At The Borderland

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe are part of a society that is moving toward the purpose of creation, and under its influence, our values are changing. We check everything that is happening relative to our advancing toward eternity and perfection. We don’t want to be bound to transience and death. Our desire to receive pleasure wants to rise higher. It is not enough for it to merely improve current conditions; our desire strives for qualitative change.

Initially, I want change in the world around me, not within me. I need time, study, and collective efforts in order to switch my desire from that of external change, to an internal one. At first my efforts seem to bring no results, but then something suddenly clicks and my understanding and perception of the world change. Such changes may take months to occur.

Each new state consists of 10 Sefirot, which are our accumulated inner transformations that are hidden from our own awareness. Only after they are completed can we make a leap to the next spiritual degree that we perceive. Therefore, we simply need to exert effort to accelerate time. Once we build a new state consisting of the 10 Sefirot, we will experience it as a new spiritual degree.

Before this change occurs, a person feels confused, as if in a fog. This happens at every spiritual degree, even the highest. It is a sign that one is standing at the threshold of the next degree. In fact, in order to enter the next state, a person must lose the previous degree in order to receive the new one. These transitions are much more effective than going through another cycle of life and death.

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/23/10, The Zohar

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Clarifying The Secret Act of Creation
Shamati #34: "The Profit of a Land" – Lesson
5 MInutes Of Light: "A Spiritual Degree Is New Each Time"

Knocking On The Creator’s Door

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn order to reach love, we first need to achieve fear of the Creator. The first stage that we need to undergo in this process occurs on the level of a simple action, as it is written: “We shall do, and we shall hear!” (“Naase ve Nishma”).

In our world, we worry about our close ones since our well-being depends on them. However, we do not experience this natural concern in regard to the society and the Creator. Thus, we need to exert much effort in order to create the beginning of such fear in us.

We put in a great deal of effort in the group in order to unite. We read and hear a lot about the broken system of connection among us, which was purposely destroyed by the Creator so that we would aspire to recreate it. We try to behave like we love each other, like we need each other. These attempts are, in fact, practical actions despite the fact that it is a game, superficial behavior. But in the beginning we need to “do” and then we will “hear”! To “hear” is the second part that depends on the Upper Light, the Creator.

If we exert a sufficient amount of effort, the Light reveals this opportunity to us: It opens the entrance in our hearts called “the entrance for those who knock at the Creator’s door” (Petach Le Dofkim Bi Tshuva). And then we begin to sense the desire for bestowal, the opening in the heart through which we feel concern for others, like mother Bina does about her children. We become this mother Bina in relation to the whole system of souls with which we need to unite in order to give to them. I adjoin the Creator to myself in order to give to Him also. I bestow and thus become seemingly above Him.

We only lack this trepidation. Once we obtain it, we begin to understand how this attitude evolves into love.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/22/10, Article, “You Stand Today, All of You”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Fear Is The First Step Toward Love
Article : “Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”
Kabbalah Moments: “Like An Anxious Mother”

An Exercise With Pleasure

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Zohar, Chapter “Lech Lecha (Go Forth),” Item 108: The act of Egypt is extension of the light of Hochma from above downwards, like the sin of the tree of knowledge….

However, there is a degree that is close to the act of Egypt and is not the real act of Egypt. He [a person] extends illumination of Hochma from above downwards once, to strengthen and to increase the [lights of] Hassadim that are covered from Hochma…. Hence, this degree is considered close to Egypt, but not the actual land of Egypt.

If a person holds back and does not use his desires, how does he grow in his anti-egoistic screen? He needs to draw some pleasures to himself, but even receiving them, he should feel a lack of pleasure. This is the first exercise. Then, as he allows himself to gradually feel the pleasures, he should still remain in the intention above them.

For example, one could be enjoying something tasty, but using the pleasure to see how much he can rule over it and rousing the pleasure in himself only for the purpose of nevertheless feeling that he is above it. Another exercise: a person consciously brings himself closer to a source of fear or shame in order to feel whether he has power over himself and can hold himself above this feeling.

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/22/10, The Zohar

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Shameless Enjoyment
Attaining the Worlds Beyond: “The Process of Conforming to the Creator”
Kabbalah Moments: “Greater Pleasure”

Kabbalists On The Essence Of The Wisdom Of Kabbalah, Part 6

Dr. Michael LaitmanDear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. I promise to answer them. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

All the Teachings in the World Are Included in the Wisdom of Kabbalah

All the teachings in the world are included in the wisdom of Kabbalah. [Kabbalah is based on the attainment of one initial force which is the source of all the forces and qualities that flow out of it. Therefore, Kabbalah is the source of the sciences that examines these secondary forces and qualities.]
– Baal HaSulam, The Freedom

The greatest wonder about this wisdom [Kabbalah] is the integration in it: All the [separate] elements of the vast reality are incorporated in it, until they come into a single thing—the Almighty, and all of them together. [A wonderful characteristic of attainment consists of the gradual unification of all of the opposite and different objects, forces, and qualities which, to the extent of one’s own correction and attainment, rouse in the one who attains a sense of perfection and eternity.]
– Baal HaSulam, The Teaching of the Kabbalah and Its Essence

There is no other wisdom in the world [except Kabbalah] where matters are so fused and intertwined by way of cause and effect, primary and consequential, as is the wisdom of Kabbalah, connected head to toe just like a long chain [as a single and whole creation].
– Baal HaSulam, The Essence of The Wisdom of Kabbalah

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Seven Sciences That Originate From Kabbalah
Article : “Kabbalah as a Root of All Sciences”
Kabbalah Moments: “Science Of Kabbalah”

Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 07.26.10

Rabash, Shlavei HaSulam, “15th of Av”
Download: WMV Video|MP3 Audio

The Book of Zohar – Selections, Chapter “Lech-Lecha (Go Forth), Item 120
Download: WMV Video|MP3 Audio

Rav Yehuda Ashlag, Talmud Eser Sefirot, Vol. 6, Part 15, Item 1, Lesson 1
Download: WMV Video|MP3 Audio

Rav Yehuda Ashlag, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot,” Item 1, Lesson 1
Download: WMV Video|MP3 Audio