Good Environment – 03.02.11

My Good Environment – Dr. Laitman’s Advice for the Week

Egoism’s Traps

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe are controlled by egoistic desires, vessels of reception, although we do not know what this is. That’s because everything is attained from comparison; the advantage of Light is attained from darkness.

Nevertheless, once we receive a little bit of Light, we begin to feel that there is another form of existence besides vegetating in egoism. There is life in bestowal.

Only the Light creates these desires or Kelim in us, and inside of them this anticipation or weak sensation emerges. Then we begin to form a certain anticipation of bestowal. However, it only surfaces on the condition that a person can correctly place himself before this picture.

Right now this egoistic desire pulls me into its bosom. That is why I have to absorb the importance of the goal from the environment by attracting Light and taking steps toward it in spite of my desire.

After that, obstacles of a different sort are placed before me: I am shown what kind of pleasure is concealed in bestowal. Then I have to be salvaged from another danger: from falling into Klipa, which says, “Let’s enjoy bestowal. Do something for the sake of bestowal. And now do some more, and then some more….” Thus, exceeding the limits of my abilities, I begin to feel egoistic pleasure from bestowal. After all, enormous Lights become revealed to me instead of the thin glow we feel in our world.

That is how I become overtaken by a state that Kabbalistic books call “impurity” or “the fire of hell.” Today our egoism is giving us only a small challenge, not allowing us to come close to bestowal. But later on we will make our way into the worlds of impurity which will have to be corrected to bestowal. There, we will discover a cunning force, a great egoistic desire that opposes the Creator. It tells us, “Bestow, do as the Creator does. There is great pleasure contained in that act.” Will we be able to keep our footing in the face of it?

Right now we are placing a “screen” (Masach) against our receiving desire, whereas later on we will build real screens against the Light, against the pleasure of bestowal rather than reception.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/2/11, Writings of Rabash

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Freedom Is Born From Love

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What is the middle third of Sefira Tifferet and why is it called free?

Answer: It’s as if it doesn’t exist by itself. As Baal HaSulam says, it exists only as the place over which Klipa and holiness fight.

This is the place where a person experiences himself and his independence. It is where he has his inner struggle and doubts: what to identify himself with, the upper or the lower? This is called the middle third of Tifferet, the place of free choice.

Question: What is this part made of? And how does freedom of choice become revealed there if this part is influenced by the upper one or the lower one, depending on whom it identifies itself with? Then where is the independence?

Answer: That is how the place of freedom is arranged for a person from Above. This is not confusion or lack of clarity the way freedom in our world refers to the absence of precise knowledge of what to identify yourself with. Rather, in the middle third of Tifferet it is absolutely clear to me what the quality of bestowal is above and what the quality of reception is below. I am in the middle, and this middle is all of me. That is to say, all of my reality is the middle part of Tifferet.

Wherever I am under the influence of the upper one or the lower one, I feel their influence, meaning I feel them and do not relate this to myself. But in the middle third of Tifferet I reveal the full HaVaYaH, myself. This part contains the full ten Sefirot, the discernments of the entire Partzuf.

If I want to attain the upper one, then I ascend to the upper part, and if I want to attain the lower one, then I descend to the lower part. But who am I? This is the middle part of Tifferet, like a thin layer between the upper and the lower. Yet, in reality it is not thin.

The middle third of Tifferet comes from the fact that in the four phases of the expansion of direct Light, Bina decided that it desires not to receive, but to become similar to the upper one, and to do that it has to attain bestowal. However, it cannot attain bestowal because its matter, the will to enjoy, does not change. In order to make it seemingly bestowing, it has to receive for the sake of bestowal. That is, it uses the Giver’s force of love.

Without the force of the Giver’s love for me, I cannot transform my reception to bestowal to Him. But if I know that He loves me and I plan to receive from Him only for that reason, then I use the force of His love. At first I have to reveal His love, and inside of it to reveal my reception, and then to receive from Him only in order to show Him my love.

From the same field where the second phase (of the four phases of the expansion of direct Light) makes the decision, that is where our notion of the middle third of Tifferet is born, in which creation feels free to make decisions.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/2/11, The Zohar

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The Biggest TV Set In The World

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What does it mean to think about unification of the world? Is it unification of spiritual desires, “the points in the hearts,” or all people in general?

Answer: “A person is a small world.” The world, everything I see and feel, is one single reality tied together. The still, vegetative, animate worlds, and the humans I see, all of this is my internal desires and attributes that I am observing within myself.

Try to delve a little bit deeper and you will begin to see how it all works within you and that it is indeed so. After all, this is your internal system. It is as if I am looking at the computer screen and simply view a demonstration, a reflection, a small manifestation of what is occurring within. This is how man is constructed as well.

Hence, we need to exit “this world,” tear away from this super TV set with an enormous, record-number-of-inches widescreen monitor and 3D/stereo display, and get inside our own system: inside the “memory” and “processor,” inside all our programs, everything we have within. And then, you will reach the spiritual, upper world from where everything descends.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/27/2011, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot

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Pictures From The Metzoke Dragot Convention

Below are pictures from the Metzoke Dragot Convention, February 23-25, 2011. The convention took place in a beautiful resort village near the Dead Sea with over 1,000 people in attendance.

How Great Is Your Creation

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Creator wishes for His palace to be filled with guests equal to Him. And this means that they have to include into themselves an enormous desire that has two sides: the good and the evil, the Creator’s nature and the nature opposite to Him.

If the created beings in their desires ascend to His exalted degree, while their nature is egoistic, aimed at their own benefit, and completely opposite to the Creator, they thereby detach from Him and take a position opposite to Him, as it were.

Later on, they correct themselves by clothing their ego, the will to receive pleasure, in an external “garment,” the intention to bestow. It is the Creator, the Light that Reforms, that helps them make this correction. Due to this, they gain the Creator’s force. As a result, the created being already contains two forces: its own internal force, the will to receive pleasure, which is enormous and equal to the Creator, and a force above it, the force of bestowal, as great and equal as the Creator’s.

This is how the creature comes into being. It is opposite to the Creator and dependent on Him by nature, while on the other hand, it is totally equal and similar to Him.

By comparing and distinguishing between these two parallel systems, the internal egoistic one and the external bestowing one, a person learns wisdom and understands creation from end to end. After all, there is nothing else besides these forces acting in all creation.

And then, possessing both these forces, the properties of reception and bestowal, as well as knowing how to employ them, that is, having wisdom, the created being can become similar to the Creator while remaining a creation nevertheless.

When this entire program begins to get actualized in practice and all these forces start participating in it, it overtakes all creation, and no force is able to object to or resist it. In truth, every force has its own role and each one contributes to perfection.

Therefore, at first the angels seemed surprised at why the Creator created such evil and egoistic man and asked: “Why on earth do you need this grief?!” But eventually, they saw that all these forces add to one another to a fully complete, perfect system, and it cannot be achieved otherwise. At that point, they agreed and said: “How great is Your Name in all the earth,” meaning in this whole desire (Earth in Hebrew, Aretz, means desire, Ratzon) created by the Creator.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/27/2011, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot

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What Can You Get From One Day Of Study

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How do we allocate our time correctly? How much time should we devote to family, circulation, and the study?

Answer: It’s impossible to determine an exact amount. Everybody allocates their time according to their possibilities and desire.

History gives us an example of a student who studied for one day. This actually was his name, Bar Bi Yoma (a student for one day). He was a peasant and worked in the fields. It took him three months to journey from his home to Jerusalem to study the Torah for one day, and then he walked back home for another three months. In honor of this person, there is a tradition to study the Torah on one special day of the year.

Everything depends on how much time a person has. Our lessons and programs are available on a TV Channel and the Internet site 24 hours a day; moreover, we have study centers all over the country.

A serious study really bears fruit. And if one has a chance, he or she can listen to our lessons during the commute or when other opportunities present themselves. However, only a course of study can arrange the principles of Kabbalah into an orderly system, and there is no substitute for it.
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From the Introductory Lecture Series 1/4/2011, “What Does the Wisdom of Kabbalah Revolve Around”

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Spiritual Endurance

Dr. Michael LaitmanEverything depends on how able we are to endure the desires that become revealed in us. On the spiritual path a person reveals bad, incorrect desires inside of him, showing how far away he is from the goal and how opposite he is to it. But if his environment acts correctly, then he immediately discovers that all of this is for his own good.

This way, my willingness to endure means that I prepare myself to accept any revelation of evil and to turn it into goodness. If, however, I am not ready for this, then every new revelation of evil trips me and I do not want to get back up, falling into despair or simply not knowing what to do. And that’s how the chance I was given gets cut off.

The influence of the environment which maintains a connection with the goal, constantly aims a person at this goal. This is the right preparation, the willingness to endure. If I have prepared this force, then the evil becomes revealed in conformity to it and I see it as the lever for ascending to goodness.
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/2/11, Writings of Rabash

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A Demand For The Light

Dr. Michael LaitmanIf a person feels a yearning to become Human and uses it correctly, he is called “Israel” which means “straight toward the Creator” (Yashar-El). He wants to aim all of his activity and all the circumstances he encounters in a way that connects them to the Creator. Then, in every situation and at every moment in life he wants to be under the influence of the Light that Reforms.

By building these things for himself the right way, a person discovers that he is standing in front of the Light, the Creator, and his entire work lies only in aspiring to the demand that is aimed at this correcting force. After all, looking at the big picture, only the two of them exist in the whole world.

In that case a person correctly builds his environment as well. The friends are parts of his soul, belonging to the same desire. To the degree he attaches them to himself, the Light comes and corrects that unity, replacing its form of reception with the form of mutual bestowal. Then all of the creatures surrounding a person become parts of him and everything fuses into one whole by means of the Light.

That is how we come to the study, to the use of the Kabbalistic method, and attain the goal of creation. By trying to take the right direction before the study and at other times, a person determines the speed of his advancement.
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/2/11, Writings of Rabash

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