Good Environment – 12.08.10

My Good Environment – Questions of the Day

Working In Two Directions

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: A person can only feel one thing at a given moment in time. How then can we experience disappointment and joy simultaneously?

Answer: Two opposites are inherent in us: Our egoistic desire and the altruistic spark, the point in the heart.

If we begin to fan the spark correctly, then it pulls us toward bestowal, the Creator, while the desire pulls us in the direction of the animate world, simply wishing to be fulfilled. If I position them one against the other, if I am ready for my desire to suffer for the sake of raising my point in the heart, then my work already unravels in two different directions.

The more my desire for pleasure is restricted, the higher the point in the heart ascends above it to bestowal. It is on their opposition that I build my Kli.

I have to give all my energy to the point in the heart in order to plant it in the group and raise it there. As for the material desire, come what may. I don’t pay much attention to it, confining myself to the vital necessities.

Therefore, we must definitely “split” into two so that eventually a screen, Masach, will emerge between these two parts. Then we will go on to doing real spiritual actions.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/8/10, The Zohar

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A Clear Criterion

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What criteria of advancement do we have? A month goes by, then a year…. How can I tell that I’m not standing in one place?

Answer: All of our work is done in relation to the group. As a result I have to be convinced and agree to see it as the place of the Creator’s revelation.

This understanding awakens in me and I can measure it. If it becomes increasingly clearer to me that only in our common, single desire will we all reveal the Light that Reforms, the Creator, unity, and the end of correction; if I feel that this is so with my whole being, that means I advance.

You can almost check it using a ruler. That’s how clear-cut everything is in this endeavor.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/8/10, The Zohar

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The Place Where The Creator Is Revealed

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can I attach the desires of others to myself in order to attain a common prayer?

Answer: You have to understand that all the corrections happen inside our common sphere, which is called a “place.”

If my thoughts are anywhere outside of this common place, it means I am outside of Malchut of the World of Atzilut, outside of Malchut of the World of Infinity, outside of the group, the “place” where the Creator is revealed (the Creator is called a “place”). This means I am outside of reality.

The place where He is revealed is called reality. This world, where the Creator is concealed, is not considered to be actually existent. All of the spiritual reality is revealed inside of our common Kli, vessel, or desire.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/8/10, Beit Shaar HaKavanot

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Kabbalah For Beginners “Light” – 12.08.10

Kabbalah TV Channel 66’s Kabbalah for Beginners, “Light”
Download: WMV Video|MP3 Audio

A Thousand Year Old Drama With A Happy Ending

Dr. Michael LaitmanWhy was all this life drama necessary: for Israel to exit Babylon by separating from the rest of humanity, ascend to the spiritual level, build the First and the Second Temples, and then break and fall into the Klipot (shells)? It was done in order to collect a little Upper Light from Above and bring it downward, to the souls, in tiny sparks.

These sparks are the result of the breaking, and this is why they can exist inside the ego according to the law of equivalence of form. And if there is a spark in the ego, it can raise MAN (prayer) through the group that will pass this request to the Creator. The Creator will send a response in the form of the Light that Reforms that will perform a correction.

In the spark itself there is nothing to correct, but the Light will correct its connection with the other souls so that the will to receive pleasure (desire) will participate in it as well. Gradually, a person bonds with all others, and the souls begin to unify into one soul again.

Hence, this entire process undergone by the group called Israel was solely in order to correct all the other souls. Otherwise, Babylon couldn’t have been reformed for it didn’t possess spiritual sparks.

Thus, some time ago humanity divided into two groups. One of them went on attaining the spiritual world and later returned: It broke apart and fell into the material world. But this group brought the sparks of the breaking with them, and for the next two thousand years, the two groups were “stewed” together and intermixed. The time was pre-set for it. Now, the time is up and what are we to do next?

Now we have to clarify the conditions of correction both on the spiritual level and on the material one. Therefore, mankind is entering a global crisis while at the same time the method to resolve it, the wisdom of Kabbalah, is being revealed.

We are able to feel all of it only because the sparks of the breaking are living within us.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/6/10, The Zohar, Introduction, Article “Who Created These”

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Giving Means Filling The Desires Of Others

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: I can understand how people give in the material world (you can help people voluntarily), but I don’t get how one can bestow in the spiritual world?

Answer: I, on the contrary, do not understand how you can give in the material world. After all, the reason behind of all of your actions is you wanting to feel good; that is not considered bestowal.

In the spiritual world, to bestow means to rise above all egoistic calculations, above one’s ego, one’s own desires. When it happens, a person acquires a new force which he lacks. Such a force makes it possible to bestow without any feedback from one’s desire.

Today, all your actions of giving are based on selfish calculation. We need to preserve peace and ecology, to help sick people because it hurts you to see their suffering or because, God forbid, if tomorrow you get sick, then you, too, can get help. But it’s not called bestowal; it’s an ordinary egoistic calculation.

Nature has made us from the material that needs “fuel,” just as an engine. If you want me to give or do something, you need to “fill me up” because otherwise I can’t make a single movement.

In our life, such actions characterize a person as a giver, a good man with a good heart. But a spiritual test shows that we are all egoists. All I’m doing in this world with my desire to be fulfilled is simply performing actions aimed at filling myself. That’s why I feel the world and us within it in the same manner that we all feel it.

However, in the spiritual world I reveal how I can give to others, that is, to begin to feel the desires of others as my own. I work to fulfill their desires, and I feel everything that is outside of me. Right now here, in the material world, I am feeling everything that’s inside of me, but in the spiritual world, I feel everything that is beyond me, in other people’s desires. This is only possible when the Upper Light creates within me the properties of bestowal!

Therefore, the law “love thy neighbor as thyself” is a condition or a prescription for sensing everything that exists on the outside, meaning, for having spiritual sensations. The material and the spiritual worlds are just two ways of perceiving reality: either through absorption or by coming outside of oneself in bestowal.
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From Introductory Lesson Series, “Hanukkah” 11/30/10

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Don’t Be Afraid To Be Turned Upside Down

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Why is there such a big difference between spiritual objects where the lower one is always considerably worse than the upper one?

Answer: The lower Partzuf isn’t just lesser than the upper one. It is worse in absolutely everything and opposite to it because on the spiritual ladder, all degrees are opposite to one another.

The upper degree is not just a little smarter, more knowing and perceiving. It is the same as in the four phases of the Direct Light. The first phase (Behina Aleph) is totally opposite to the second one (Behina Bet) both in relation to desires (Kelim, vessels) and in relation to the Lights. Similarly, the third phase (Behina Gimel) is opposite to Behina Bet. No consecutive degrees differ from each other just a little bit; they are always completely contrary to each other.

We don’t feel this in our corporeal world. Our egoistic desire simply continues to grow, getting more and more intelligent; here everything is clear to us. However, in spirituality, the upper degree is so opposite to the previous one that they are incapable of understanding each other. It refers even to the adjacent degrees, not to mention those separated by an interval.

Therefore, when we read a text written by a Kabbalist, we can only ask for our correction, raise MAN (Mayin Nukvin, Female Water). My own explanation is also aimed solely at focusing you on it.

All of the fancy things we are studying will help us only in forming a plea to the Creator. It’s because the ascent from one degree to the next can be made on the condition that the Upper Light turns us “upside down” or “downside up,” each time making a complete revolution.

This is how ascent occurs on the spiritual degrees, like in an embryo that turns upside down when it is about to be born. This way, he is prepared to come out. And while it’s being born (while coming out), it turns upside up again, now being at the next degree. However, it covers the gap between the degrees namely by turning upside down.

It is impossible to receive the next degree having not completely freed oneself from the previous one. “Upside down” means emptying oneself of all Light at the moment of birth. It is impossible to receive the Light of Ruach without emptying oneself of the entire Light of Nefesh because they are opposite to each other.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/2/10, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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Kabbalists About Kabbalah Today, Part 9

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

An Opportunity for Redemption

Now you will understand what is written: The Zohar, “With this composition, the Children of Israel will be redeemed from exile.” Also, in many other places, only through the expansion of the wisdom of Kabbalah in the masses will we obtain complete redemption.

They also said, “The Light in it [The Zohar] reforms him.” They were intentionally meticulous about it, to show us that only the Light enclosed within it, “like apples of gold in settings of silver,” in it lies the cure that reforms a person. Both the individual and the nation will not complete the aim for which they were created, except by attaining the internality of the Torah and its secrets.
– Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot,” Item 5
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This Is All We Need!

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe most important thing that all of us and each one of us have to try to do, using all the artificial means (meaning against our desire), is to evoke a “need” to be included in the group. Each of us has to convince himself that the group, or its inner spiritual part, is in a completely corrected state, and this is the “place” where the Creator becomes revealed.

This place is already ready and waiting for you to be included in it. To the degree you do include yourself in it, you reveal the Upper World in that place.

Every person who tunes into it will receive everything: the spiritual world, eternity, perfection, and the Upper Force. All of this is there, inside it! This “place” is in the state of the final correction, Gmar Tikkun, and all the friends exist there as the greatest people of the generation, above everything. However, in order to make it easier for me to become included into that place, I ask everyone to influence me, and that is called an environment.

In other words, there is an environment and there is a place. The environment has to push me so I will get inside that corrected place. Moreover, the environment can be lying to me at all times, and that doesn’t matter. After all, they are not inside yet either, but are somewhere along the way. I am being deceived in Lo Lishma as if I aspire to bestowal and love.

However, the environment constantly makes me believe that this is necessary. As it “works on me,” I suddenly acquire the force to carry out this action and enter that “place.”

This place is already prepared ahead of time. We are already in it, in the third, final corrected state. Therefore, all we need is this:

1. Every person has to look for ways to convince himself to become included inside the group, into the “place” where he will reveal the Upper World, the Creator, the entire true reality.

2. Everyone has to “play” the corrected society for one another, which invigorates everyone and pushes them to become included in it, cancelling themselves before it.

From the 4th pat of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/8/10, “A Handmaid that is Heir to Her Mistress”

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