All Roads Lead To The Convention
Posted on November 1st, 2010
Here are some pictures of new “road signs” placed on all major highways in Israel. Now all roads lead to the World Kabbalah Convention 2010!
Here are some pictures of new “road signs” placed on all major highways in Israel. Now all roads lead to the World Kabbalah Convention 2010!
Question: Three or four times a week I get up and go to the lesson, and I don’t really understand why. What’s going on here? Why do I do this?
Answer: You receive an example from Above: the Creator forces you out of sleep, and you come to the lesson. This is meant to show you that you are capable of getting up and coming to the lesson, but only three times a week, when the Creator awakens you. The rest He leaves up to you. Now let’s see what you do when you don’t get this impulse.
If you don’t understand why you are here, you should analyze the situation. It appears that you come here because if you don’t, you’ll feel bad. It follows that you come in order to escape evil.
Question cont.: So what can I do to start coming every day and on my own?
Answer: For that you need another kind of fuel. You need to come here not to escape from evil, but in order to realize the importance of the goal. You need to get up not because otherwise bad things will happen, but because a lofty goal is awaiting you.
Question cont.: How do I exalt the goal in my eyes?
Answer: You are incapable of doing this alone. The goal cannot be achieved individually. Here you need to see your true state: There is a single system of souls, similar to the Creator, within which the Inner Light of life (NRNHY) is revealed. This is the Creator. We are separated from this state by 125 “filters” which weaken the Light. I want to receive the strength to return to that state.
Looking at the system of souls I see that it unites everybody into a single whole, and thanks to this the Light fulfills them and gives them life. Consequently, in order to ascend, I must establish a stronger connection with the friends.
The Creator does not relate to any individual alone. Any step toward correction ought to be regarded as an even greater level of unification in the group.
It follows that if you were to unify with the friends ahead of time, you would receive from them the inspiration and fuel to come to the daily lesson. Whereas now you are isolated from them, and even on the corporeal level the flame burning within them does not rub off on you.
[24913]
From 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/26/10, “All of Israel Have A Part in the Next World”
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Question: Why is the term of “Sodom” associated with bad relationships between people?
Answer: If we look at this quality per se, it is seemingly meant to protect the society by establishing a strict order in it: Everyone takes care of oneself and their family without stepping out of the acceptable norms. There is something quite rational in this, and it’s not easy to achieve this state.
The rules of life in Sodom are very simple: “Mine is mine, yours is yours,” “Don’t touch me, and I won’t hurt you.” It is prohibited to lend, and it is not allowed to borrow. Everyone lives according to the effort they exert: What you earned is all yours.
We will kill the thieves, destroy the liars; anyone who helps another spoils him since charity leads to laziness and lies as a person now always wants to receive and stops working. In this sense, our world is worse than Sodom!
The property of Sodom means that I don’t envy anybody: I have what I am entitled to, and you have what you deserve. This life philosophy is unique and complex! We use this word to scold, but we haven’t even come close to it.
The attribute of Sodom is negative not per se but in relation to the Land of Israel, the desire to attain love of others, the quality of Abraham. On this path, Sodom halts a person, but in itself, this approach is quite useful for the will to receive.
If we don’t transition to the desire to bestow, then the level of Sodom represents the most favorable relations in the society: Don’t give anything to anyone and don’t receive anything from them! This is a healthy attitude to the will to receive: If you are entitled to something, live, and if not, die. After all, anything received beyond necessity harms our will to receive since through luxuries it gets accustomed to using others, which harms it.
The residents of Sodom understood that they shouldn’t indulge in the will to receive. You receive according to the exerted effort, as it is said, “The measure of suffering determines the measure of reward.” So, what is wrong with that?
Hence, it is difficult for Abraham to part with Lot, and their relationship lasts a long time. And only when Abraham sees the need to advance so as to turn Sodom (the land of Canaan) into the Land of Israel in the future, he revolts and switches the positions of the will to receive and the will to bestow in terms of their importance. This is described as an earthquake in Sodom.
It is a very serious decision of a person who feels the need to change his attitude to egoism. Having made this decision, a person truly becomes free.
[23888]
From the Lesson on Weekly Torah Portion 10/15/10
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Mutual participation is the only action we constantly perform whether we like it or not. In our world everything is based on mutual engagement: processes of consumption, absorption, and secretion that take place in an organism, as well as various chemical reactions, attraction or rejection of objects, their behavior in a magnetic or electric field, and so forth. They are all examples of mutual participation, which are based on the actions of the spiritual vessel and the Light.
When we seek how to measure the quality of our actions, we must always evaluate the extent of our participation in others. In other words, it is by how well I can engage in the greatest number of souls: not in children or adults, and not in the actions of still, vegetative, animate, or speaking, but in the souls.
Souls are points in the hearts. Therefore, when I arrive at such an enormous Convention, a gathering of thousands of points in the hearts, which I intend to plug in to, then it becomes the most effective action for my spiritual advancement. This is the most powerful act that may ever occur in reality, in all the worlds.
From the TV Program Kabbalah for Beginners 10/27/10
Regardless of the fact that we exist in the unified system, the connection between us is broken. A person is given a chance to feel the initial point of his connection with all others, and this sensation is life in our world.
Thereby, I receive an opportunity to renew and enhance this connection based on the principle of bestowal in order to live a spiritual life. If I fail to do so, the spiritual spark in me expires.
Further on, I am given a new desire, a new spark. In other words, I undergo a Gilgul (reincarnation or a new life cycle) and arrive at a new reality. Here, I discover a different connection with the system of Adam HaRishon, and I feel that I am living in this world anew, at one or another point on the timeline, and within a certain framework of relations between people. This is my other chance, at another level of desire and mutual connection.
If I fail to take advantage of the setting yet again, I once more will be transferred to another degree of mutual connection. In other words, I undergo a Gilgul in order to appear in another generation, another timeline, and receive one more chance to unify.
Every time, I am shown a specific level of interconnection with the others so that I can find a way to unite with them through ties of love. In the corporeal world, I am forced into a minimal degree of connection. If I obtain some degree of connection founded on love on my own, then instead of our corporeal world, I experience a much more exalted and intense form of existence: the spiritual, eternal life.
Now, instead of the chain of Reshimot (spiritual records, genes) that create in my perception a constant revolution of life and death, I myself keep restlessly renewing the connection with others and rise above the chain of “reboots.” The connection no longer breaks; life doesn’t stop with the loss of the body.
No matter how we look at it, everything lies within the unified system, where the law of correct interaction of the parts rules. This law is the Creator or love.
[25284]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/29/10, “Klalut Adam”
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We exist in a general system. If we actualize the right connection between all its parts, we will create a web that connects our desires correctly.
It is as though we correct a “pipeline” between us, whereupon the Upper Force (the Creator) comes and begins to run the Light of life through these “pipes.” Everything depends on how we establish the connection between us, meaning the diameter of the “pipe,” to what measure is it the right kind of connection. And then the Light of Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama, Haya, and Yechida (NRNHY) flows through it.
Thus we advance along the 125 degrees of connection between us, until we reveal the entire Light of NRNHY, which means we exist in the World of Infinity.
[25298]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/29/10, The Zohar
Question: How can we become like the Creator whose property is to bestow, while having been created with the desire to receive and having forever remained with it?
Answer: If you begin to bestow to others through your desire to receive, you will only increase your bestowal.
There are two natures:
1. The Light = the Source of Light = the Creator = the Giver,
2. The desire = the receiver = the creature.
The creature always only receives, it can never give. When we read that the creature becomes like the Creator, this refers to “reception for the sake of bestowal,” meaning to receive and pass it on!
But I cannot pass the Light like an item can be passed in our world from one person to another. So how does this work? How can I give you something? I receive from the Creator and it cannot be any other way because I am the desire to receive pleasure.
The desire to receive cannot bestow; this does not exist in nature. Our nature only works to consume and absorb. This is a law of nature that cannot be broken. So how do I bestow to you, a stranger? A very special action takes place here.
The Surrounding Light comes from that same Creator, and this Light Reforms. This Light performs a correction and connects us together. And then I do not bestow to you, I receive, but I receive in your desires. This is what it means for me to bestow to you.
I connect the entire “body” of the collective soul to me, all of it becomes mine, and then I receive for it, but it is referred to as my bestowal to this “body.” This is the marvelous trick that happens here. When I perceive another person as a part of me, I receive for him, and it is like I am bestowing. You can object: What kind of bestowal is this, it is the same reception!
Let’s say that there is someone I did not want to give anything to, and, suddenly, I find out that he is my son. And then I am ready to give him everything because I perceive him as part of me. However, can we really call this bestowal? For example, if I had given to him before I knew anything about him, then surely. But now, what kind of bestowal is this when this is my own son? It is the same as giving to yourself.
All of this would be true if I were to reveal that other people are absolutely a part of me. But the problem is that hatred remains between us. This is a great asset, and we must love it. Another person still remains a stranger to me, but the Surrounding Light comes and creates a loving attitude over my hatred. Love and hatred remain as two lines: the right and the left, with me in the middle between them. This is why this is still referred to as “bestowal.”
In the right line, I perceive another as someone close to me, like a part of me, like someone who I am ready to sacrifice everything for because he may as well be me. In the left line, I hate him and am ready to destroy every last bit of him. And both of these lines exist simultaneously and unite in the middle line.
This continues until the very end of correction, Gmar Tikkun. And no one knows what will come after.
[25308]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/29/10, “The Freedom”
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Question: Does the perception of reality depend on the environment?
Answer: If I wish to see a different, more advanced reality, compared to the corporeal reality of this world, I can see it only on the screen that I build from our mutual connection. Wishing to build a different reality, I must connect with the friends’ points in the hearts and create a network between us as it was before the breaking of the collective soul. This network of communication between us is the screen on which I see the picture of the world.
[25253]
From Kabbalah for Beginners, “Perception of Reality,” 10/20/10
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We have a single free action in this world in our life, and everything else unfolds absolutely inevitably, upon the orders from Above. But it isn’t easy to find this freedom that had been left to us since we are strictly governed from Above by pain and pleasure, being tied by a thousand strings that control our desire, thought, body, words, and acts.
We are the obedient puppets that are being pulled by these strings from Above. We are complete slaves to our nature, from the moment we are an embryo’s cell developing in the mother’s womb and up to the age when we think that we are finally able to act and live independently.
Man is governed by the forces of Nature, so if everything is Nature, how can something new emerge in him? Therefore, there is no freedom of will in this world. A person always picks what pleases him most and flees from suffering as any other creature, be it vegetative or animate.
Despite this illusory freedom that man was initially bestowed with (since we think we can do whatever we want!), it is still an illusion. The true freedom lies in stepping out and rising above our nature, which means stepping out and rising above egoism.
It is written in the Torah that this is the “freedom from the angel of death.” No man can disregard such words! Freedom from death doesn’t imply that our animate body will live forever to infinitely languish in this corporeal life full of pain and so very little pleasure to enjoy.
Freedom from the angel of death replaces this life with attainment of perfect and the most comfortable existence, which is eternal and complete at the same time! And this can be achieved by what we refer to as “freedom of will.”
Such freedom becomes truly enticing and desirable since in the ordinary life, we don’t usually need any freedom, and we are the most satisfied when life is steady like a well tuned clock: home, family, and work. The less freedom, the less headache there is. But if we can attain eternal life and perfection, having freed ourselves from the angel of death, what can be better?
Moreover, it is necessary to understand that the angel of death is our own ego that is digging us into the grave. It gives us a horrible feeling that it’s impossible to become fulfilled and that life is limited and transient.
Freedom from the angel of death signifies attainment of bestowal, its infinite fulfillment and engagement in the eternal flow of life. Knowing this, let’s try to clarify from the writings of Kabbalists: How can we attain such freedom?
[23702]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/15/10, “The Freedom”
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The Creator is constant, existing, and unchanging. However, the creature cannot experience something that doesn’t change. We neither recognize nor feel permanence.
All our sensations operate by measuring contrast since “everything is attained through comparison.” We recognize something only if it changes or moves, if there are differences between occurrences in terms of time, motion, power, and thousand other measurements. But we have to have them first!
Therefore, the Creator demonstrates Himself to us and gives us an opportunity to get to know Him through multitude of modifications that do not exist either in Him or in the will to receive (desire). But He must arrange billions of changes in the relationships between Him and the desire to receive so that the latter may get to know Him.
After all these changes, we attain contentment and completeness. But in order to achieve this and know the Creator, we have to go through them. All these modifications are artificially created by the Creator.
The desire to receive and the desire to give, reception and bestowal, Klipa (shell) and sanctity, are all created for a single reason: to give us an ever lasting impression of the Creator. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to recognize anything in the simple, white Light. We wouldn’t even know that it is “white.” It is impossible to pass to the creature unwavering perfection and permanence but only through infinite number of changes.
To a certain degree, it can be observed in electronics. In order to transmit some phenomenon, we must split it, divide it into a multitude of impulses or discrete data, and pass them on at high frequencies. With the help of such partition (discretion), transmission of multiple tiny modifications, their reception and further integration (unification), we can pass information through the communication lines.
Another person can also be known only by various changes you observe in him, by you encountering him or her, and not in any other way. But after you have collected all your impressions, you may say that now you know that person.
[23921]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/17/10, The Zohar
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