Pharaoh: The Creator’s Faithful Slave

Dr. Michael LaitmanIf we could see the game that the Creator plays with us, we would understand that all that happens in our lives is meant to lead us to the single goal: the necessity to appeal to the Creator. And the force that gradually develops us and forces us to appeal to Him is called “Pharaoh,” the Creator’s faithful slave.

Pharaoh cunningly tricks us, gives us blows and obstacles along the path: It is all Pharaoh’s work. Our advancement depends on how we accept these blows, disappointments, and opportunities presented to us. We shouldn’t ever look at it as a chance occurrence, but see the Creator’s “guiding hand” and think of how to react to it. Clarifying these situations is what helps us advance forward.

The clarification occurs only by means of our connection because only then do we have a correct point of view that allows us to understand what the Creator wants. Ultimately, He will demand that we unite as “one man with one heart.” If we look at everything that happens to us from this point of view, we will promptly and correctly reveal what the upper force wants from us. This is very simple, but only if a person doesn’t fail to see all that’s happening to him from this correct point of view.

All the blows and concerns are leading us toward acquiring the quality of bestowal. We come for the sake of our egoism and our pride, until all of these blows and changes form a correct attitude within us that allows us to understand where we are in relation to the force of bestowal.

But the moment we change, we understand that all this was done out of love. The Creator didn’t want to assert His power and make us bow down. He wasn’t jealous of our love and commitment to Pharaoh. It was only His great love for us that forced Him to gradually teach us. And He suffered more than we did from all that was happening to us, similarly to the way parents suffer when giving a sick child shots and bitter medicine.

There never was nor could there ever be any negative treatment from the Creator. There can only be absolute love.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/20/2011, Baal HaSulam’s Letter 10

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Working In Sync With The Upper One

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe should try to recognize all the states that we anticipate seeing after we exit Egypt while we are still in Egypt, right now, when we work in the group. Despite the power of egoism, we want to reveal the spiritual world here and now. Only by exerting effort will we draw the force that will do it for us.

We need to find the place where we wish to be one and to understand how to exert effort and demand unity. We do everything we can by way of our own effort and the effort of the upper one. We beg and demand it from Him, and draw Him to help us while still remembering to provide our own contribution.

Only when we get a clear idea of the place, effort, and nature of our action will we make the right decision.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/18/2011, “This Is for Judah”

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Love Cannot Become A Habit

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Will caring for the friends ever become my nature?

Answer: No, it won’t. Only egoism that rules me can be natural. All further states lie above it and can be attained by the constant exertion of effort.

To exit into spirituality is the same as to levitate above the earth in our world. You cannot just suspend yourself in the air. This requires a force that will hold you despite the force of gravity. Gravity is the force of our egoism. It always pulls me down; hence, as soon as I forget about the goal, I immediately fall to the ground.

If I wish to unite with the others, prior to anything else, I must put forth constant effort in order to “hang in the air,” in aspiration to unity. There is no cutting slack in this case: The instant I forget, I fall.

That’s why caring for the others will never become a habit or a second nature. And we should be thankful for it since thereby, we get a chance to realize our free will every next second.

If it were habit that moved me, I would be an angel. An angel obeys its nature: the nature of bestowal. It hangs in the air because it is “lighter than air” and isn’t affected by the force of earthly egoistic gravity. But a human being is.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/18/2011, “This Is for Judah”

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Development According To The Laws Of Spiritual Physics

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe entire development happens according to the four stages of HaVaYaH that arise from the combination of two qualities, the desire to receive pleasure and the desire to bestow, which begin to connect with one another. At first, the desire to receive prevails. Then, the desire to bestow does. Afterwards, they work together, and everything culminates with the final degree of Malchut which wishes to rule over everyone with its egoistic desire.

For this reason, when the Light influences the desire, it causes it to develop according to the four stages until the stage of Dalet (Four). This is the law of spiritual physics. This results in development according to the still, vegetative, animate, and human levels. Man, himself, also develops according to the same four levels: the still, vegetative, animate, and human levels within.

This is why we need to enter a state every time, to be in it, and feel its faults. We “stew” on a certain degree of development until we understand its deficiencies and begin to search for the new degree. All of this happens according to the law of the four stages of development, according to which every current degree always contains the opposite side of the next degree which attracts us.

This is why we initially enjoy every new attained state, but then we begin to feel that this state is our “exile.” It begins to feel bad and insufficient. This way, we lack the “vegetative” life on the “still” level, the “animate” life on the vegetative level, and the “human” life on the animate level. However, what do we lack on the human level? We lack the Creator!

We go through these four stages in this way, which are referred to as the four exiles. Every time that we feel that we are in exile, we want to come out of this state. Every time that we are no longer capable of remaining in a certain state because the sensation of lack becomes intolerable, we go to a new state, and this transition is called “redemption.”

In summary, there are four exiles and four redemptions. As of today, we have been through four exiles and three redemptions over the course of the history of mankind, and we are on the threshold of the fourth and last liberation.

In our current state, we have everything except the Creator, the sensation of and connection with Him so that we can feel His quality: bestowal and love of others. When a person specifically lacks this, it means that he has reached the final fourth stage, the sensation of lack of the revelation of the Creator.

There is no greater lack; this is the final lack. This is the lack we need to reach with our efforts, exercises, and mutual work. Man must verify whether this is really what he is missing. If not, he has not yet come close to liberation. However, if he has a strong environment that is entitled to come out of exile toward redemption, it is possible that they might carry him out of exile as they exit as they would carry an elder, a woman, or a child.

The first to come out are men (Gvarim), those who are able to overcome (Midgabrim). They pull everyone else along; they help and guide in some way. The others just need to be ready to join them, not to resist, to have a desire to come out even being weak and lacking the necessary strength to unite. However, they must not be against it.

In other words, we need to reach a state where we will specifically feel the lack of the quality of bestowal and love, unity, the mutual guarantee. This state precedes spiritual birth.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/18/2011, “This Is for Judah”

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In The Future State, We Are Free

Dr. Michael Laitman with StudentsBaal HaSulam, “This Is For Judah”: “‘This year—here… next year—free.’ It is written above that with the aim of this Mitzva (commandment) we can evoke the guaranteed redemption destined for us, as in the Mitzva of eating the Matza of our fathers in Egypt.

Thereby, we demonstrate our confidence that we will surely exit to freedom. We will come out of bondage, the hold by the alien power of our ego that intentionally oppresses us. When we grow eager to shake it off and become willing to rise above egoism, then we will break free from it.

Pharaoh hardens our heart as if adding weight to the barbell a person exercises with. With each new degree, we have to lift greater weight and more frequently in order to achieve a certain result. Pharaoh is regarded as “help against him.” The Creator intentionally sets the tyrant, Pharaoh, against us so we are forced to unify against him.

However, we are unable to unite despite repeatedly trying to do so. The more effort we exert, the more powerful Pharaoh becomes, loading us with additional burden. It looks like we are weakening on this path and our energy diminishing, but it is not so. On the contrary, we are getting stronger, while our work gets even harder in quality and amount.

If we don’t quit but continue on this path, then gradually, we build an environment for ourselves and get ready to exit from Egypt. It all depends on our preparation. Our strength must grow to such a degree that Pharaoh will run out of weights to harden our hearts. At that point, we will break free from Egypt.

We don’t know beforehand when this state will finally come, when the power of our unity and aspiration for it will grow to outweigh the heavy hand of Pharaoh and he will have nothing left with which to burden us. To the contrary, the further we advance, the denser the darkness becomes. We start building “cities of poverty” that bring us no satisfaction and moan under this heavy labor.

In other words, we will pass through difficult states. In the end, we will even pass through the “ten plagues” and the black Egyptian darkness on top of all kinds of other problems that we must overcome by way of establishing the interconnection among us. No matter how hard it is and how much discord we feel between us, if we unite still, we will break free from our nature.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/18/2011, “This Is for Judah”

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The Gold Mines Of Souls

Dr. Michael LaitmanBaal HaSulam, Beit Shaar HaKavanot (The Gate of Intentions), Chapter “Concerning Passover Exodus”: The first generations, the generation of Enosh and the generation of the Tower of Babel, exiled Shechina upward to the “seventh heaven.”

Israel of the generation of the Egyptian bondage were the same Keri (wasted semen) sparks that Adam HaRishon kept dropping for 130 years until he begot Seth.

The Keri sparks are the Light of Hochma (Wisdom) which intend to receive egoistically, for their own sake. If the Light of Hochma doesn’t reach the right place, which is under the screen, and doesn’t dress in the Light of Hassadim (Mercy), it is regarded as “dropping semen onto the ground” (from Hebrew, “Aretz,” land or ground, and “Ratzon,” desire or will), to “waste” it.

Every person must pass through these degrees, the generations of Enosh and the Tower of Babel, through egoistic desire that doesn’t consider anyone and wishes to receive all pleasures directly, which is regarded as “loss of semen.”

A soul is similar to gold and when it is excavated from under the “ground,” it is mixed with litter, until it is purified so that all dirt falls away and it can be named “gold.”

After the breaking of the vessels that occurred in our roots, in the spiritual world, our souls sank within the desire to receive for self-gratification and became mixed into it completely. There are very few sparks of bestowal that ended up in this egoistic desire, which are very difficult to retrieve from it.

It is similar to gold mining, digging gold from under the ground, when thousands of tons of soil have to be sifted and undergo various processes before a few grams of gold are finally extracted from it. The soil itself doesn’t come from just any location, but rather from where gold had been found before. Nevertheless, truckloads of soil must be brought in and purified, washed in water, and sieved by filters so that a few scarce grams of gold may finally emerge.

The same pertains to our souls after the breaking. Inside enormous egoistic desire, there are mere few scattered sparks that, albeit still egoistic, are able to be corrected in order to bestow. It is they that we gradually must extract, and this is the job we must complete.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/18/2011,  Beit Shaar HaKavanot

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 04.22.11

Writings of Rabash, Dargot HaSulam, “And the Creator Spoke Unto Moses”
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The Book of Zohar – Selections, Chapter “Passover, BeShalach (When Pharaoh Had Let the People Go),” “She Is Like Merchant Ships,” Item 141
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Writings of the ARI “Shaar HaKavanot
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Writings of Rabash, Shlavei HaSulam “Come Unto Pharaoh–1”
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“Ask The Kabbalist” – 16

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