The Aspiration To Be Above All Limitations

Dr. Michael LaitmanFrom above downwards we are sent all of the influences that govern us: forces and material resources (for example, natural resources and the forces to develop them). From below upwards, besides actions there is a reaction coming from us, which makes additional corrections on the still, vegetative, animate and human levels; for example, mechanical engineering, agriculture, animal husbandry, the food manufacturing industry, and everything else. And at the end of it all, there are the inner corrections which are made by studying Kabbalah.

All of this is our addition from below and it unites into one pyramid in order to join the intention. Man stands at the top of the pyramid with his intention. Then the whole world becomes attached to man, who created an intention.

The fact is that man desires to erase the limitations that are imposed by time, motion, and space. Therein lies the source of the driving force that makes us search for things by which to supplement this reality of ours. We have to view time, movement, space, and the existence of reality not as disturbances that bother us, but as help!

After I perform all of the actions in order to fill myself by virtue of time, motion, and space, inventing all sorts of means for this, I reach the existence of reality. That is when I have to take hold of it, and this is the reason why the need to attain the Creator arises in me, the question about the meaning of life, about life’s source.

Conclusion: Everything descends to us in the form of Direct Light (Ohr Yashar) from above. We have to dress what descends to us from the upper level (Ohr Yashar) into the Reflected Light (Ohr Makif) from below. This is our addition.

On the still, vegetative, and animate levels it is expressed in the form of all of our efforts to create a comfortable environment, in the production of artificial articles and technologies. That is why there are so many artificial processes and products that appear next to man in our world, having no direct analogues in the Upper World. On the human level, which we are reaching today, what we add to the upper influence is the screen and intention (Ohr Makif).
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/7/11, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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How To Ask

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How do I know that my request to the Creator comes from the right place? Am I really there, where it is permitted to ask?

Answer: My request is valid if I feel that it is against my desire, if I can rise above it and ask from the very depth of my heart, and if I can enjoy the action which is against my initial desire.

Coupling by striking (Zivug de Hakaa) occurs in the state when internally, I feel that I want to please myself, but above it I sense that my action opposes this desire. I enjoy my ability to resist it. Then, this pleasure isn’t for me, as if I refused to steal. What matters here is to what degree I associate myself with the friends and through them, together, with the Creator.

If I am willing to arrange such an internal action, then I am close to the act of bestowal, and this is what brings me satisfaction which, of course, isn’t directed at me.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/4/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Connecting With Friends Is Connecting With The Goal

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What do I need in order to implement the knowledge of Kabbalah in my daily life? I find a big discrepancy between what I learn and what I feel.

Answer: There is only one solution: accelerate your development. To accomplish this, it will take more study and greater connection with your friends. It doesn’t require wealth, honor, power, or some other effort, only the thought to never forget about it.

The key is our interconnection. Despite one’s unwillingness, a person wants to exert effort and maintain connection with the friends in order to have continual awareness of the importance of the goal. And when he has reached it, he “passes it on,” that is, spreads it to the others.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/4/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Side With Your Evolution

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How should I react to sensations that appear as a result of the Creator’s actions?

Answer: They are the outcome of contact with the Upper Light, with the Creator. But again, one should remember that the Creator is unchangeable and only I change, as a result of the Reshimot (informational genes) unfolding in me one after the other.

Therefore, I can only exert effort in having the Reshimot change. By doing so, I expedite their development and see it as desirable. I am not against my development; I am all for it, although I realize that it isn’t easy and requires effort, as in any development. I am willing to do it.

How do I develop then? I do it by engaging in the group. With the help of the group, I start realizing the importance of my development; they give me strength to bear it. This is what we call awareness of the goal. After all, if the goal is great in my eyes, I am ready for it despite my body’s resistance. The importance gives me strength.

If I really incorporate myself into my friends’ desire, then I have no problem accelerating my development. I don’t advance by way of suffering, when because of my disparity with the awakened Reshimo it causes me pain.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/4/2011, Writings of Rabash

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The Dawn Of Awakening

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What does the Creator want from me when He “plays” with me?

Answer: The Creator doesn’t want anything. He is good and does good. Based on the plan of creation, to benefit the creature, He performed only one action: created the desire to receive. Moreover, it was created as perfect from the start. As the “Introduction to The Book of Zohar” describes, the initial and final states are in unified perfection.

However, in order to know where we are, how and why He initially created us, we gradually return to consciousness and dissolve the state we are in. After all, everything takes place relative to us, in our perception. Nothing changes except my understanding and awareness.

Therefore, the Creator doesn’t want anything from us; He simply gave us an opportunity to consciously know the state in which we were created as perfect, eternal, and similar to Him. That is what we are supposed to accomplish, having undergone several stages. First, we develop unconsciously, on the still, vegetative, and animate level of desires. And at the last stage, the speaking one, we arrive at consciousness and attain our authentic state. We are living in the time when this transition is being made.

Previously, there were people who attained spirituality as well, but only a few individuals. As for today, this process involves all souls which start to sense and realize where they really are.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/4/2011, Writings of Rabash

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The Three Levels

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn our world, all created beings can be divided into three types:

1. Some still remain indifferent; they neither understand, nor feel, nor think about whether they are receiving something from Above.

2. Others, unlike those at the animate level, believe that they receive everything from the Creator. But they, too, don’t know what to do with it. They haven’t grown up enough to realize that they are receiving the evil inclination that has to be transformed into good. Having experienced evil, a person believes that he or she received it from Above and starts crying, appealing, and praying for the Creator to send him or her abundance.

This is how religious folks act, those who assume that the Creator sends them pain either to remind them that He exists or to reward them for it in this or the future world. One way or another, a person believes that his or her prayer will change the Creator and He will have a change of heart.

3. And the rest have evolved even more and realize that the Creator doesn’t change. He is always good, always full of love, and always complete. As a person passes through a chain of internal states, he or she discovers that in the light of the perfect, unchanging, and infinite Creator, they are mutable and opposite. A person defines it as evil and arrives at the need to plea, in accordance with which his or her state is transformed into good.

As a result, a person sees that the Creator is an endless and constant Upper Light, the Infinity, and he or she is the only one who changes. The Reshimot (informational genes) unfold in a person, starting with the broken one that he becomes aware of by exerting effort in the group and studies. He discerns this Reshimo and prays for it, meaning judges it and asks to correct it, wishing for it to get reformed.

Thereby, a person receives a new desire by participating in the life of the group correctly. Then, the immutable Light transforms this corrupted, broken Reshimo into a corrected one. A Zivug (uniting, coupling) of the reformed Reshimo with the Light occurs, and a Partzuf of the soul is formed.

We divide people into the following three basic types:

1. Those who are not fit for correction yet;
2. Those who are religious and pray for the Creator to change;
3.  the Kabbalists who understand that it is they who must change.

Therefore, spiritual work is for the Kabbalists; praying without receiving an answer is for the religious believers; and life without any connection with the Creator is for the rest.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/4/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Relocation Into The Other

Dr. Michael LaitmanWith the appearance of the screen (Masach), the order of desires, actions, thoughts, and intentions completely changes. The Direct Light and the Reflected Light, everything becomes completely different; everything follows another design, another purpose, another scale of priorities.

Now, I am no longer concerned with my own “stomach” that I used to fill by consuming everything around me. I value something else: how to bestow, how much to give, and to whom I bestow. Previously, I felt fulfillment in me, and now I do so in the other. And that is what governs my actions.

Let’s take an example: I am preparing a feast for a friend who is flying from overseas. For myself, I would make something totally different, but suppose my guest is Chinese or American. So, I cook what he or she likes although it doesn’t match my tastes at all. All my desires and abilities, all that I am, I focus on my guest, with love and from the bottom of my heart.

Imagine to what extent I have to sacrifice what I like and am accustomed to so as to do it all for my friend, to please him, “insert” myself in him, and settle there. Instead of each of my taste buds, I have to acquire those of my guest’s, and instead of my habits I have to assume his. I need to transform myself into him or her.

Try to sense what a Reshimo (informational gene) which used to be my own and with which I now must work for the sake of another is. It isn’t easy at all: I need to get to know a person, study him, and come to love him so that by faith above reason, without liking his tastes, I still do it. I rise above my desire and enter his. I live in him, in his throat and stomach, everywhere where my cooking will echo in him. That’s where I settle in and verify the result of my action.

So, a Reshimo is an extremely important thing. The previous state left in me a Reshimo which is deprived of image, contours, and isn’t clothed in any particular form. And this is precisely why I can add a new direction to it, a new form that derives from me. Before, I enjoyed to please myself whereas now, in the new form, new connection and new direction, I wish to please the other person.

Everything is aligned with him, in his direction; everything is experienced within him. And the previous Reshimo is a mere basis to get to understand how I used to please myself and now I wish to please him.

This will require much multifaceted work before it can be accomplished.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/4/2011, Explanation of the Article “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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Kabbalists On The Torah And Commandments, Part 34

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

What Is a Prayer?

One who was not rewarded with His love, it is as though all that he did in his work in the purity of the soul in the previous day has been completely burnt the following day. And each day and each moment he must begin anew [despite despair from having wasted time and effort], as though he had never done anything in his life.

And then, “And the children of Israel sighed because of the work,” since they evidently saw that they would never be able to produce anything from their own labor. For this reason, their sigh and prayer was whole, as it should be, and hence, “Their cry rose,” etc., since the Creator hears a prayer, and only awaits a whole prayer. [Hence, our primary task is to gather speed in reaching the state of “And the children of Israel sighed because of the work.”]
– Baal HaSulam, Letter No. 57

The labor and toil in one’s heart during the prayer [clarification of the prayer] is the most reliable and most successful, and reaches its goal more than all other matters in reality [which are secondary, external, and exist solely to bring him to a prayer].
– Baal HaSulam, Letter No. 56
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The Path Of War Versus Good Cooperation

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe have to carry out several actions in order to ascend to a new level of existence. First of all we have to start feeling ourselves as more dependent on one another. And we really do feel that our world is becoming like that now. Besides, we have to learn the laws existing in this integral system. That is how we realize the science of Kabbalah and its advice.

On one hand, we maintain a virtual connection with one another, and sometimes we even meet physically. On the other hand, we study this new level of existence that is now being revealed to us—the global and integral world that is being revealed more and more from one day to the next as the right connection between all people and the entire human society.

Clearly, by knowing how to connect all of this together the right way, we will be able to build the family, society, all countries, and the whole world in a more corrected form. This mutual dependence between us will help us! It will work to our benefit because we will find out how to use every part for everyone’s benefit.

That is why Kabbalah remained concealed until our time—because there was no need for it. Now, however, it has become absolutely necessary to everyone and we have to disseminate it across the whole world as fast as possible in order for people to start understanding that they are already living a new reality! Our lack of correspondence to this new world is the cause of all our problems. That is why we should learn how to improve our state as quickly as we can.

In the very close future we will see the general crisis envelop the whole world. We won’t be able to make one deal or agreement between us unless we take this global law into consideration. And the problem is that we have never created such integral systems: not in technology, nor in medicine, nor in social networks, and that is because we are individualists by nature. Therefore, we will have to change all the connections that exist between us.

Let us hope that we will learn to do this quickly and will be able to realize it before nature develops to such an extent that it will show us our lack of correspondence to it. We have to forestall it rather than wait for this to become expressed in the form of problems and suffering, revolutions and wars as a result of our imbalance and disharmony with nature on the domestic, human, social, and ecological levels. This is the purpose of the science of Kabbalah.

Many results follow from this: a new perception of reality, a new world that we reveal if we don’t look at it with the personal, egoistic view, but do so through the prism of our connection with everyone else. Let us hope that we will be able to expand the circle of people who are interested in and study this science about the new world, the new dimension. It will be easier for us to reveal it together and we will do it faster, for the good of all humanity.

We hold daily studies within the framework of our open university. These studies are free and available to all and are translated to all of the main languages. Let us hope that the French group will also join these studies more closely, on one hand, and on the other hand, will join in the dissemination of the science of Kabbalah. By virtue of this we will be able to solve many problems existing in every country and every nation.

From the side of nature we can either advance by the path of problems or the path of good cooperation.
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From my lecture in Paris on 2/1/11

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