Did You Wait For Redemption, The Light Of Hassadim?

Dr. Michael LaitmanWhen reading The Zohar, we have to think about the fact that the only thing we lack is the Light of Hassadim. If I look at the same reality that we are in, but in the Light of Hassadim, which emanates from my intention to bestow, then instead of the current reality I will see the spiritual reality.

In order to start feeling the Upper World, I lack only the Light of Hassadim which emanates from me to everything around me. Usually we waste a lot of time, energy, and life itself on completely useless actions that do not depend on us. But the only thing we can do is bring ourselves to the Light of Hassadim so it will manifest inside us, being the quality of bestowal in which the Light of Hochma becomes clothed, the knowledge and attainment of the Creator.

All the actions we make besides attaining the Light of Hassadim, the attitude of bestowal to the environment, evoke only a negative reaction from Above. It corrects us, but through the lengthy path of suffering, eventually returning us to the aspiration of bestowal, albeit by the path of suffering.

Therefore, if a person constantly discerns what is necessary in order to attain this single action that can come from him, the quality of bestowal, it means that he is waiting for salvation. That is exactly what we should feel while reading The Book of Zohar.

Kabbalists have revealed this spiritual reality. So what do I lack to reveal the same thing and see what they are talking about? The only thing I lack is the Light of Hassadim.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/28/10, The Zohar

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Weep, My Soul

Dr. Michael LaitmanWritings of Rabash, Shlavei HaSulam, “What’s the Difference Between ‘The Gate of Tears’ from the Rest of the Gates”: Even if a person weeps shedding bitter tears, but he weeps for excesses, no one will respond to his cries. This person stands before the gate of tears, but the gate is closed and does not allow his prayer to enter. People do not cry over excesses. It is customary to cry only over vital necessities.

Question: What does it mean to cry in spirituality? How does a person know he is really crying? And should the group reach the state of crying?

Answer: Of course, both the group and every individual in it have to reach this state. This is the “prayer of many” where every person prays for everyone, including himself. The prayers in the prayer book are constructed upon this principle.

Crying is the state of smallness (Katnut) when I know that I cannot attain unity by myself; in fact, I cannot even desire it by myself. Even before I reach the certainty that I am unable to make a spiritual action, I have to understand that first of all I need a 100% desire. “Let it happen to me!” And this is a desire I also can’t acquire alone.

For example, I had hoped to get rid of an illness by myself, but gradually I realized that it’s impossible. Having suffered and wasted a ton of efforts, I see that I cannot do anything about it. I discover that I can only get cured by a doctor. So what’s the problem?

The problem is that I have to ask the doctor for it. I have to demand and implore him to perform the surgery. And I have to really desire this, even though I am very afraid of it. Fear stops me, but the futility of the situation pushes me to plea for help.

The same thing happens to us: To the degree we advance, we feel more and more clearly that we have to go through surgery to eliminate egoism, that very egoism that leads us through life and supports us in every way. So how can I ask or even think about coming out of it? It can only be done by means of the Upper Light.

I have to receive the desire from outside, from the group, and I do so unwillingly. It is written about it, “We go from Lo Lishma to Lishma,” meaning from the egoistic intention to the altruistic one. I aspire to that which is opposite to me today: for all of my worries to be about the neighbor, so all the money besides the “vital minimum” I need will go to my neighbor, and so everything will be for my neighbor.

Can I really desire this, as if there is nothing more important in life? Can I ask for these thoughts not to leave me for a second? Can I cry for it?

Suppose someone shows me a petition for bestowal: “I request to be provided with an altruistic desire so I will take care of others with everything I have besides what I need to survive.” Sign it! Go ahead! Want it! But how can I want it? After all, I can’t create a new desire inside myself.

That’s true, but if you agree to it in principle, and then start working in the group, the necessary desire will come to you from the friends. The environment contains a spiritual force, the force of the Creator. Nothing depends on the friends themselves, and it was arranged that way initially. If I turn to the environment, to our inner interconnection, there I find everything. There I reveal all the levels, forces, and states until the very end of correction.

Suddenly I discover that we are united and in our unity I feel all the spiritual phenomena, down to total unity. I reveal everything that the science of Kabbalah talks about there, in our interconnection.

The forces of bestowal between us is the connection between the souls. The soul is the force of bestowal in a person, a part of the Creator from Above.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/28/10, Writings of Rabash

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Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: In order to receive strength from the friends, I have to value them. But how can I value them if I’m an egoist?

Answer: You value the unity of people, or in other words, of souls. Externally the only thing there can be between people is hatred, envy, and the like. However, behind the external facade, every person contains the inner him – the force of bestowal that is concealed inside him.

It’s like there are two screens in front of you: external and internal. On the external screen you see this world, whereas on the internal screen everyone is united by the forces of mutual bestowal. After all, the soul is the force of bestowal that’s concealed inside us. This is the picture you turn to, wishing to reveal it, to be included in it, and to dissolve in it. You do not deal with the external forms.

What does it mean to love your neighbor as yourself? When you turn to the inner picture, you will see that there is no breaking there, but all the friends are united with each other. This is the Shechina. It contains mutuality, unity, mutual guarantee, and in a word, everything besides you. You want to become part of it, demanding it, asking, and pleading for it.

That is the meaning of building the right environment. Otherwise you look at the friends on the outside and do not find anything there. The Creator deliberately drew this picture in front of us so that by tearing down the veil and looking deep into our unity, you will discover the exact environment that Baal HaSulam talks about in “The Freedom.”

This is the environment you have to turn to and from which you have to demand everything. There, everyone is corrected; by becoming included in the friends, you will discover the Creator among them, meaning the common, all-inclusive force of bestowal.

In Kabbalah, besides the simple sum there is a notion of all-inclusion (Koalel), which is the integral force of everyone. For example, the common force of 100 people equals 100. But inside their unity the Creator is present, being an additional force that is deeper, spiritual, and all-inclusive.

That is why the friends are capable of anything due to having rejected their egoism in order to reveal the Creator, to reveal the root and unite with Him. They do not attain the four degrees of still, vegetative, animate, and human, but the Creator. They do not attain Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama, and Haya, but the addition, the Light of Yechida that was not there previously; Keter, the point of the letter Yod.

If a person desires to work with the environment, then the environment is ready for him. Then he sees all the friends as the greatest people of the generation. And in truth, inside each of them there is a giant. After all, if they have an inner spiritual aspiration, then inside they are already united. In principle, on the inside all of humanity is united, but you have to turn to those who also externally express the spiritual desire at least slightly. Then you have an environment.

After that, to the extent you lower yourself before the environment and value it, you will receive strength from the friends until finally reaching the gate of tears. Spirituality will become the most vital thing in your life, but at the same time you won’t have any possibility of obtaining it. That is when you will cry out.

You will then be crying out to the reality that you reveal as mutual bestowal, to the common force that lies there called “mutual guarantee.” It is from there that you will receive what you need, the desire or need to become a part of the friends. Having discerned many details of unification, you will enter the inner picture.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/28/10, Writings of Rabash

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Who Are You, My Friends?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Who are these friends that The Zohar writes about all the time? How can I identify them within me?

Answer: If you identify your friends as really belonging to you and being within you, then you will see that they are parts of your soul. With their help, you are building your spiritual world now, and you reveal the Messiah in it.

It’s simple: The present picture disappears, and you feel only the internal structure of the soul. “Friend” (Haver) comes from the word “connection” (Hibur). If you are able to attach to you someone who seems a stranger to you now so as to feel him within yourself, he is called your friend.

Friends are the same attributes you used to feel outside of yourself as strangers. You’ve worked on them to attach them to you, and, of course you failed to do it alone. Then, you asked for the Light to do it for you. It influenced you and attached them to you.

It created in you such an attitude toward the friends on the same path as if they were part of you. Then, you feel them as your “assembly.” An assembly means a common desire, a union of individual desires, each of which previously existed on its own, or so it seemed to me in my pride, in my egoism.

I lowered myself from the state of “standing,” reaching the state of “sitting” (Yeshiva). Then, sitting together, everyone can connect with each other as in the verse from the song: “How wonderful and pleasant it is to sit together as brothers” (Heene Matov uManaim Shevet Achim Gam Yahad). That’s why it is called “assembly” (Yeshiva), a small state (Katnut).
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/26/10, “Introduction from The Book of Zohar,” Article “The Vision of Rabbi Hiya”

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Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Zohar, Introduction, Article “The Vision of Rabbi Hiya,” Item 57: At that time, the Messiah comes to Rabbi Shimon’s seminary crowned with high crowns from the heads of the seminaries.

…Now, however, after all those members of the seminaries have been rewarded with the degree of heads of seminaries, the Messiah was crowned with the Torah of the heads of seminaries. It follows that he is crowned with the highest crowns from the heads of the seminaries.

This passage talks about spiritual degrees within a person who discovers his inner structure. His entire inner construction is his collective desire (will to receive pleasure), divided and arranged by spiritual degrees (levels), capacities to bestow.

He has the structure of the world of Atzilut. Within this outer design, there are more internal structures according to the levels, from inside out, of Shoresh (root), Neshama (soul), Guf (body), Levush (garment), and Heichal (chamber). As in the corporeal world, there are still, vegetative, animate, and speaking (human) levels.

There is no difference between the material and spiritual design. Our material form is a mere projection of our inner properties that are painting a certain picture within us, just as we see this world before our eyes right now when, in fact, it is our inner reflection.

Getting to know my inner spiritual structure, I witness how, by way of transformations performed on me by the Light, all my properties become elevated from being “members of the seminaries” to the “heads of seminaries,” from the Messiah who has come from a certain level to the Messiah at a more exalted spiritual degree. Suddenly, I see Rabbi Shimon, the rung that hasn’t revealed within me before.

All of these are the degrees in a person’s soul, all the forefathers and their sons: Hesed, Gevurah, Tifferet, Netzah, Hod, Yesod, and Malchut. This explains how a person learns the design of his soul in more thorough details, wherein he discovers a great measure of bestowal in various forms. This is what we call getting to know the Creator.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/26/10, “Introduction from The Book of Zohar,” Article “The Vision of Rabbi Hiya”

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The Law Of Compensation: Pleasure Vs. Pain

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe world is full of problems, and try as we might to correct our situation from generation to generation, we do not succeed. The wisdom of Kabbalah explains why we are haunted by all these problems and misfortunes: They are pushing us to the correct development so we may rise above our egoism and transition to another dimension, that is, to the property of bestowal, a different force, another perception of the world, the kingdom of bestowal rather than the kingdom of egoism.

Therefore, the aim of our entire evolution is to reveal the suffering and worthlessness hidden in the egoistic desire. The more we attempt to use it, the greater disappointment it brings in order to show us that we cannot use it for pleasure and fulfillment since the receiving desire is unable to receive anything.

We don’t understand this and keep repeating our mistake, but we finally have to realize that it is impossible to fill the desire egoistically because it is against the law of existence of desire and the Light. Starting with the First Restriction (Tzimtzum Aleph) and on, I can never receive something into my egoistic desire and become filled; it can never occur in history or reality.

When we feel that we are fulfilled and are enjoying ourselves, it is due to fact that we are stretching the pleasure we felt from the moment we encountered it to the moment when it is gone. For those brief instants while it is in us and we can feel it, we will have to pay in full with the pain that comes as the newly formed emptiness unfolds within.

This emptiness is comprised of the force of pleasure and the time of its presence within the desire. For example, in our world, power equals tension multiplied by the force of an electrical current. The same occurs with enjoyment. I can receive 10 grams of pleasure and feel it for an hour. Then, 10 grams multiplied by 1 hour equals the power of enjoyment. I can feel 1 kilogram of pleasure, but only for 1 second, which will also determine the power of enjoyment.

Therefore, eventually, no matter how much pleasure we sometimes manage to experience, all of it will turn into the suffering of the empty desire. We won’t be able to become fulfilled in our egoistic desires since it is against the nature of creation and its purpose.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/26/10, “Peace in the World”

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Dr. Michael LaitmanToday’s world is designed in a way that no country can lock itself in and close its borders. If I lock myself out, there will definitely be something wrong inside the country.

We won’t understand why. We will think that we have created a society that supplies itself with all the necessities, like a huge collective farm that provides meat, dairy, fish, and vegetables. We will think that we can have a natural economy independently from everyone else, but no country will be able to accomplish this.

It is not because the country is unable to provide itself with material products like water, electricity, and other natural resources. It’s because this is how it works in nature. All our cogwheels have locked themselves in with each other, and no one can break away from the others.

You will not comprehend why you keep having problems. One time, the cows will stop producing milk, another, the hay won’t grow, or the harvest will get lost. You won’t know where such misfortunes suddenly come from, but it won’t work because, internally, the cogwheels are linked so tightly that you must be connected with the whole world. Today, we will have to explain it to everyone!

However, the G8 or G20 won’t be able to help us unite. Even if everyone agrees to it and decides to lock their hands and hold on to each other, they will cause even greater destruction. They will hold each other’s hand one instant and start a war in the next. If it isn’t for the Creator, for a spiritual purpose, their unity will lead to a world war. It will be worse than when Russia wanted to unify people in this manner.

Therefore, beside the explanations that we are all connected by nature (but not by our own desire which opposes it), we also need to reveal how we can change our desire for unity so that we, by our own will, wish to spin together with all the cogwheels in the right direction. To do this, we need the Light that Reforms and unifies us. However, this is possible solely by studying the wisdom of Kabbalah.

First, we can prepare a person by familiarizing him with all the conditions that surround the final moment, when he only needs to be handed the key contained in the wisdom of Kabbalah. Gradually, he will begin to understand that there is a common, mandatory interconnection, and he will learn what our free will implies.

In this manner, we should narrow the circle down until he has left only one unsettled, central question. This is the time when we can give him the answer, and at this point, a person will accept it.

This is how wise we have to make our dissemination so we can approach people gradually, demonstrating to them that it has nothing to do with any stereotypes, mysticism, religion, or Judaism. This is a natural science about how a person can become a harmonious part of this world.

The wisdom of Kabbalah explains to you the law of nature that governs the world and the inner law within a person. In other words, it explains who you are and how you fit in this world.

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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/26/10, “Peace in the World”

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Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What should I do when I am in a state where I have no strength, don’t feel anything affecting me, and don’t know what to do?

Answer: This is described in the weekly chapter of the Torah: “And the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage.” After a person comes to the realization that he has no power, all that he can do is beg.

Before, he thought himself big, smart, and understanding, thinking he could advance on his own, constantly gaining knowledge by adding effort and action. However, if up to this point he has performed a sufficient number of actions, he gets to see that nothing has been achieved therewith.

Why then does a person needs to perform all these actions? In order to realize that he won’t achieve anything. To reach the state of emptiness, a person has to exert a tremendous amount of effort.

I work and think that by doing so, I am building the beautiful “store-cities of Pithom and Ramses,” gaining knowledge, and that soon I will unveil, see, and feel everything. I exert more and more effort, immerse myself in the studies deeper, only to suddenly realize: “How much have I put into it, and what have I achieved? I have nothing. What do I do next? What will become of me?” I don’t know, but I am willing to fall into a deadly sleep. Just give me a sleeping pill so I may sleep and never get up.

This is how a person feels at that moment, exhausted and powerless. In fact, he begins to understand that he will achieve nothing like this. At first, he doesn’t even know it and only feels that he has no desire for anything. Then, he wakes up and still goes on. However, at some point, he begins to understand that, on his own, he will merit nothing, and he needs the Upper Force: “If the Creator doesn’t come and help me, I, myself, can do nothing.”

He starts thinking this way only after 15 to 20 times, or maybe even 30 to 40 times that he has tried to advance on his own only to face disappointment and fall into despair. This is called the years of Egyptian exile, until they have “sighed by reason of the bondage.” For my ego, I build the “store-cities, Pithom and Ramses,” but for the human in me who desires to attain spirituality, these cities are poor and miserable, empty, and can give me nothing.

I start dividing myself in two. So what if I have knowledge, intellect, can discuss the wisdom of Kabbalah beautifully, and even seem to understand everything? It serves nothing. In truth, I don’t have spirituality. I can talk about it all day and all night, but am I attaining it or just talking about it? I am just talking.

Then, a person understands that at this point, he needs only the help from Above, some upper revelation, the Upper Force, something different which is not up to him. He understands that with what he has, it is impossible to reach spirituality. Finally, he really cries out, as it is written: “And the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage.”

It is a challenging path. A person has to undergo such states many times. Only the environment can help him in this and nothing else. The environment can support and protect him as well as promote his development.

Otherwise, who knows when he will wake up again? If not with the help of the environment, it will be by way of a changing Reshimo (spiritual information record) that he will be granted mercy from Above and given a new state. However, nobody knows when that will happen.

Therefore, when a person remains in a good state, when he is illuminated by the Light and has power, he has to bond with the environment as much as possible in order to receive the strength put into it when he gets weak again. Then, he will experience a descent as if by inertia and will start ascending again since he had accelerated the speed before he fell.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/24/10, “Perfection in Life”

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