Question: Everything depends on our desire. So how can we come out of our “standard set” of desires which are stuck in this world?

Answer: We don’t perceive the world as “round.” We are still under the illusion that it is linear and that we can be successful in it with the help of our ego. But the world now operates under a different program, and the only way to achieve success is through unity. This is a completely different algorithm of the world, but we still “don’t get it.”

For thousands of years man achieved success based on the size of his ego, but in the past 50 years this trend has run its course. We are moving ever further into an integral world, and in an integral world he who is more connected to others makes the most profit. We see that the more connections one establishes, the more countries one gets involved, the more successful one is. People feel this instinctively and gravitate toward integral solutions.

However, we still don’t realize that the solution from our sorrows necessitates our connection on the human level, above the banking system, global industry, and other global mechanisms. This situation began to materialize following the Second World War, when the United Nations, UNESCO, and other international organizations were founded. However, even they are still operating with egoistic methods, instead of adopting an integral, all-embracing approach.

In essence, all countries need equality. Why should some countries have the veto power over any decision, while others don’t? So what if someone is bigger and someone else is smaller? On the contrary, in a “round” system, the bigger ones ought to be more compromising since otherwise, they only care about themselves.

Our approach is completely twisted, and yet we are beginning to feel that the world is becoming truly “round,” integral, and interconnected.
[42770]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/11/2011, “Peace in the World”

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

Only the Light in the Torah Reforms the Person

Our sages said, “I have created the evil inclination, I have created the Torah as a spice” (Babba Batra, 16). The matter of the spice is as our sages said, “If only they left Me and kept My Torah, the Light would reform them” (Yerushalmi, Hagiga, 6b). Thus, that there is a power in the Torah to reform a person, referring to the evil within man, meaning to make the will to receive be in order to bestow.
– Rabash, The Rungs of the Ladder, “Man Is Created in the Torah”

We see that the purpose of creating the worlds and the souls was entirely with one intention: to correct everything to be in order to bestow, which is called Dvekut [adhesion], “equivalence of form.” The Creator said about the Torah, “I have created the evil inclination, I have created the spice.” In other words, after a person receives the Torah as a spice [medicine], the evil inclination [egoism] is corrected to being in order to bestow, as written in The Zohar, “The angel of death [egoism] is to become a holy angel [that of love].”
– Rabash, The Rungs of the Ladder, “What Is Torah and Work on the Path of the Creator”

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Writings of Rabash, Shlavei HaSulam, “What Is the Foundation on which Kedusha (Holiness) Is Built”
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The Book of Zohar – Selections, Chapter “Mishpatim,” Lesson 15
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Explanation of the Article, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 14, Lesson 8
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Rav Yehuda Ashlag, “The Freedom,″ Lesson 19
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My Good Environment – Dr. Laitman’s Advice and Principles for the Week

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Question: If a prayer is a plea for correction, rather than elimination of suffering, why is it written that one should pray for the latter?

Answer: It is written that one should pray to reduce suffering because in the place where I am feeling it, the flaws of my egoistic desires are revealed to me. They are what I am praying about, meaning that I may discern what is wrong in me and how I can correct that area in order turn it to bestowal.

If we are speaking about a normal person, he prays to feel good, to get to an open faucet that pours abundance from Above into his hands. His pain is material, meaning within the desire to receive pleasure. This is what he is seeking fulfillment for. Therefore, his prayer is corporeal and naive.

He doesn’t view his pain as the means to come to the Creator. He simply wishes to calm it down, subdue it, fill the internal void. This is how most people usually pray, be they secular or religious folks. All of them strive to feel good, which makes them willing to pray for it. All they do is beg: “Give me, give me, give me” because their ego is suffering, and it has to be pacified.

A true prayer is when I say: “There is none else besides Him.” He created the egoistic desire in me, “the evil inclination,” and I have to find out what it is. If my desire to enjoy is hurting, I need to use prayer as a remedy. After all, the Creator created this desire. He is responsible for the pain I am feeling and nobody else. I feel the pain in the place where I haven’t become complete by unifying with the Creator, but I must.

Let’s say I am in the first grade. They gave me homework to do, but I didn’t do it. I didn’t prepare for the exam and failed it. Now, I have to take the consequences. I suffer, but this suffering is appropriate for my age, for the first grade.

In the same way, every person feels pain in the area where he didn’t pass the exam, didn’t correct himself, didn’t keep up with the Creator’s “curriculum” toward the goal, the state of correction. Therefore, he should thank the Creator, the upper Light, who instills in him this sensation of pain. It is a symptom of illness that is given to you so that you go to get the treatment for it, and then you will be well.

Hence, don’t look for ways to make the Creator ease your pain; rather, seek how to cure it. In fact, if you simply shut it down, then tomorrow, you will wake up with a much greater pain. Today, you took a painkiller, stopped feeling the pain, and are happy to be seemingly okay. But you are deceiving yourself. Tomorrow it will be worse!

In other words, there are those who treat all their pains and daily problems with any drug, any painkiller there is, just to get rid of suffering. They pray to be granted neither suffering nor a reward for it. Others pray to let there be suffering if it points out to them where they need to correct themselves in order to gradually reach the Creator’s degree. For that, they are willing to accept it and thank the Creator equally for what is bad and what is good. After all, these sensations are there to wake us up and guide us on the path.

These are two very different methods. There are those who cry: “Save me, give me my peace!” This is the way of the masses. However, those who say “No, we will use all this pain in the most efficient way” are the Creator’s workers. After all, we wish to do His work since we desire to be His partners. If He is awakening us, we are willing to wake up.
[42604]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/9/2011, Shamati No. 113

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Today humanity is trying to unite. People instinctively understand that together is better than alone. Different countries are trying to make agreements over and over again, to enter a union that will make them stronger and more successful. But do they succeed in doing this? In the end we see that this leads to conflicts and even wars. The problem remains: We do not know how to unite.

However, the urge to consolidate has naturally permeated humanity for many years already. This is the partnership that is inherent to nations and people: I guard myself and yet I still see that it’s worth it for me to unite with others. Together we will create a monopoly and become stronger than everyone else.

This drive that has not grown any weaker will eventually bring us to such enormous troubles that nature itself will show us the need to unite. It is revealing to us that we have to merge into a single, global, integral whole, to totally complete one another, to become perfect, whole, and accept the “round world” where all the parts are interconnected.

If nature puts the challenge this way, then how should we now build human society? After all, the problem of egoism is concentrated only in human society. This is the only place where egoism works against unity. As a result, we discover that we are incapable of uniting.

Why did the Creator put a stumbling block in front of us, making us different and unlike one another? If we were the same, everything would be clear: Every person gives a certain amount and receives a certain amount, and the matter is settled.

Yet we are different, and therefore we have to ascend above egoism and activate the intention for the sake of bestowal, without any connection to personal benefit. Only on this condition will man be completely able to unite with others. Then he will reach bestowal for the sake of bestowal, and then—reception for the sake of bestowal. Only if every person takes this path will perfect unity emerge among us.

This is why we were not created the same: because otherwise we would solve the problem on the material, animate level and would become tantamount to ants in an anthill.
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/12/11, “The Peace”

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Why does the unified force of nature, which we call the Creator who created us, develop us in such a peculiar way, by keeping us completely lost in our thoughts and desires? Why and for what purpose did He give us the deceitful illusion of this reality and continues to tangle us up so that we, like little children, keep running back and forth looking for pleasures, trying to grab more and more? What do we attain in all this mess?

Specifically by trying to recognize one causative force, one source, in this confusion, we make ourselves similar to this force. Out of 613 desires, 613 thoughts, and a numberless variety of predicaments, we build ourselves as one whole.

Therefore, the whole purpose of our spiritual work is to reach unity, mutual guarantee, become “as one man with one heart,” and unify into one desire, one spiritual vessel. We are doing it all in order to bring ourselves closer to adhesion with the single, unified force, the Creator, when all of us, as one whole, and the Creator merge together.

Baal HaSulam writes about it in his well-known article, “There Is None Else Besides Him:” It is written, “there is none else besides Him.” This means that there is no other force in the world that has the ability to do anything against Him. And what man sees, that there are things in the world that deny the Higher Household, the reason is that this is His will [to show Himself to us in such split condition, as if there is He and the forces against Him].

Because of this, we are given an opportunity to gain power over and recreate ourselves, while overcoming the confusion that makes us doubt the one force, the Creator, and trying to constantly find only Him in the image presented to us. This is what our work entails.
[42433]
From Lesson 8, WE! Convention 4/3/2011

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