Audio Version Of The Blog – 11.28.11

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Obstacles: Do They Harm Or Help?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Why do I face so many obstacles to attending the convention? Maybe I’m not ready for it yet?

Answer: Obstacles are put before you on purpose. In “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” there is an example about how we climb the mountain where the castle of the Creator stands. The higher you climb, the more roughly the guards push you away and throw you down; you have to clamber up again. This continues until you make enough effort and finally overcome the obstacles.

You will suddenly see that the obstacles did not really harm you. They merely awakened a true desire in you. This is like a flirt, when the desired distances away from you and thus fires an even greater desire. This exists at all levels of fulfillment. That is, to come into contact with the Creator, you must reach a true desire.
[61840]
From the Sunday Virtual Lesson Series 11/6/2011

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You Are Not Alone!

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can I connect with the group when I watch the lessons alone?

Answer: We see a large number of people connecting to us on the screen from all over the world. We are all together in one group. Don’t you feel it? You have to rise above the distance that lies between us because in reality, it doesn’t exist. We exist in one single field.

Our physical bodies are here on earth: They sit, walk, run, and jump. In the spiritual world there are only desires, and therefore, everything depends upon our desire. The corporeal world is completely imaginary and non-existent. It exists only in our perception, until we enter the spiritual world.

We will pass this state and forget it because it doesn’t really exist. This state exists only in our perception of reality as the lowest of all states, from which we must ascend. This perception exists only in our egoistic desire, but in reality, egoism doesn’t exist.

We were given this uncorrected altruistic state, the only one that exists in the world, deliberately so that we use it as a basis for rising to our first spiritual level. This is why our world is called the imaginary world because it gradually disappears from our perception. This world is not the reality. In reality our world doesn’t exist.

Let’s imagine our true state where all of creation exists as one collective body, one general system. In order to sense this system, we must strive towards it. It is said: “If you wish to be happy, be so.” A child can only become what he aspires to be. Life constantly forces him to want to grow, to take examples from adults, and to imitate them.

We have to do the same and take our example from Kabbalists. We must follow their advice, imitate them, and be led by their instructions instead of by our little childish minds. We must act without looking back, like a child who takes examples from the adults. Then we can be absolutely sure that we will succeed.

We have to create an example of a single global community. It makes no difference if you live in Los Angeles, Mexico, or Siberia. It makes no difference if you are alone because you are actually not alone! You are together with everyone! Try to rise above the computer screen and see and sense us. This is possible!

Let’s try to play it, and then we’ll attract an intensive influence of the Surrounding Light, the Light from a higher level where we are all already connected.
[61843]
From the Sunday Virtual Lesson Series 11/6/2011

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The Psychological Transition To A New State

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What is the psychological change that we have to go through?

Answer: The transition to feeling the upper world is merely a psychological change that a person goes through. He still feels our world, he continues to live as usual. Nothing disappears or escapes him. He remains an ordinary person: in the family, at home, at work, and everywhere. Yet in addition, he receives an “inner snap,” a change of phase that enables him to start feeling another quality existing in our world: the quality of bestowal.

This attribute is much higher than the attribute of reception on which our world is based because it is unlimited, infinite, and perfect. It is free! It is omnipotent! Thus it is called “the Creator.”

The attribute of bestowal keeps our world and nourishes it like a mother, including our egoism, our attribute of reception. Everything in our world: the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking levels of nature, all of them, are attributes of receiving. We, being the attribute of reception ourselves, perceive only these types of egoistic existence.

When we acquire the attribute of bestowal, we begin to feel totally different forces, fields, and attributes, which are much wider and more sublime than our world.

When we enter the field of bestowal and begin to feel it, then our whole world, cosmos, and the entire universe immediately shrink to a minimal dimension. Everything outside of our world begins to feel truly infinite and unlimited, like the attribute of bestowal itself. We feel that we live in it and develop along the 125 degrees that we study about in the wisdom of Kabbalah.

I hope we will reach this state in the coming convention. It all depends only on the preparation of the people who will assemble there. Even if accidental people with minimal egoistic desire or beginners who don’t really understand what they came for participate in this gathering, they will not disturb us.

The main point is that if we, all the active members of the Bnei Baruch movement and the friends from overseas, will gather together and all those who will not be able to come will connect to us virtually, then we will easily be able to incorporate into ourselves all the new visitors and those who just happened to be there, and they will participate in this connection involuntary. We are the key, the core, and the principal part of this great connection for the attainment of the upper one.
[61710]
From the Sunday Virtual Lesson Series 11/20/2011

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The Force Of Mutual Guarantee For The Convention!

The Arava ConventionRight now we are on the threshold of great unification: the December convention. To prepare for it, we need to constantly worry about our connection, about revelation of a common desire between us. To the extent that this desire will truly be common, we will be able to feel the spiritual force in it. After all, unanimity of desires creates the condition, the so-called “vessel,” the Reflected Light, the screen, because we connect together against our ego.

The more egoistic we are in the relationships between us, the more each one puts pressure on himself in spite of his ego and requests for the Light to influence him and help him connect with others, the stronger the screen and the greater the force of overcoming is that we activate to rise above the ego that separates us and pushes us apart from each other.

This common force of overcoming, referred to as the force of mutual guarantee, becomes our common force. The Creator created the forces of rejection between us purposefully, as it is written: “I created the evil inclination,” and we feel how we repulse each other. But we try to overcome these forces of rejection through our common actions and our study so as to attract the Light that Reforms, as we wish to connect despite the forces that constantly push us away from each other like little demons between us. We must prevail over these evil forces and connect.

To the extent that we try to be together as hard as we can so as to eliminate all the differences between our desires, thoughts, and actions and to truly be like one man with one heart, to that extent we reveal that only we can help each other acquire this common aspiration for connection, as it is written: “Man will help his neighbor.”

Then in this common aspiration we discover that we are not able to connect. But we already uncover our common desire to unite, instead of individual separate desires to connect with others. This common desire is called the prayer of many, a common prayer. And then our request for the Light, the Creator, rises specifically out of this common prayer. And help from Above comes only in response to these mutual efforts, which means that it comes from within, from unity above our degree. This is called MAD, the correcting Light that creates a connection between us despite the forces of rejection.

These rejecting forces are called “Aviut” (the thickness of desire), and the forces of connection are called the “screen.” These two forces together, which we form to bestow to a higher degree, the Creator, are called the Reflected Light since we wish to be exactly like the Light that has corrected us, that is, we wish to bestow. And then we realize the condition under which the Creator, the Giver, becomes revealed in us.

We complete all these stages only with the help of the Light that Reforms. This Light may shine on us even when we do not ask anything of it, like an infant who does not know why he is screaming, but he is taken care of. Alternatively, we can begin to distinguish what exactly it is that we need, and then our prayer becomes more directed and thought over. Or we really consciously raise our request in the right direction, knowing clearly that we demand the ability to bestow to the upper degree.

But everything is done by the Light that Reforms. To tell you the truth, what could be better than constantly reading The Zohar and doing all these actions…This is the ideal state. But reality is such that man must go to work, go about his daily business, and then come for a few hours and raise his prayer. At first he collects different problems, desires, aspirations, and hopes within him, and afterwards he comes to The Zohar. And then we connect together and raise our common prayer through studying together.
[61527]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/23/2011, The Zohar

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Baby Talk From The Higher Universe

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: If our entire purpose is to become like one, then why do we see the upper system separated into an infinite number of pieces?

Answer: Everything is done to bring us to be One. After all, this system originates in One and ends in One, but to cover this interval, it must go through us, work with us to give our desire to receive pleasure the form of bestowal.

This is why the upper system branches out and separates in time, movement, and space into a variety of combinations of states so as to perform this action in the end. This entire splitting and imperfection, and all the flaws that the system clothes in exist only in relation to us. Doesn’t a mother playing with her child appear silly and unreasonable if you don’t understand for whom she is acting this way? A grown woman suddenly starts talking like a baby, what is this really?

But we understand that she does it for the child. And naturally, this is a flaw in her because it is not suitable for her age and position.

The same can be said regarding the upper system: It doesn’t act for its own sake. The upper system is the world of Infinity. In general, there are no worlds without the creature. The moment the creature appears in the precise state when it awakens in the direction of the world of Infinity, that very moment the system of concealments, of weakened connections, which always follows the degrees of corruption, forms between the creature and Infinity.

The upper one is perfect, but it must lower itself to the level of the lower one so as to take care of it. But this is not like in our world when a mother takes care of her child. The upper system only begins to take care of us from our preliminary request.

Or it can awaken us secretly, as if acting from behind the scenes. But Kabbalah does not study processes that happen naturally, “in its own time (Beito),” since we will develop this way anyway. The only thing that interests us is “hastening time (Achishena).” This is why we study the system that we awaken ourselves.
[61530]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/21/2011, TES

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The Most Needed Profession

Dr. Michael LaitmanOver the course of its entire history, humanity has never paid attention to the development of the personality, but only talked about it. There was a lot of talk about education in the Soviet Union, but instead of educating, they suppressed personalities.

Today practically half of humanity needs to work on the development of the personality, on shaping a human being. Not only children need to be educated. Over the course of his life, a person needs to be surrounded by an environment that will shape him, support him, and constantly guide him forward. This requires a huge army of people who understand their purpose correctly.

Everyone needs to learn about connections that benefit society and about complete mutual unity. People need to know how to create such a spirit in society, when you feel like you and others are absolutely one whole, when you dissolve in the society, stop perceiving your “I,” and only feel that there are “we.” This is highest human psychology.

According to the latest statistics, 10% of the world’s working age population are able to provide all the people in the world with everything they need. This includes construction, communication, food, delivery, distribution, clothing, services, and so on. So what will the other 90% do? 20-30% of them are children and elderly. But what about the remaining 60-70% of the population? They will all work in the area of upbringing and education, in other words, they will educate others and be educated by others.

An environment that takes care of a person’s inner spiritual development has to accompany him or her from the first till the last day of their life.
[61766]
From a TV Program “The Integral World” 10/30/2011

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Questions About The Meaning Of Corporeal Actions And Unemployment

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Why did Rabash put so much attention in building a sukkah? Don’t we learn that corporeal acts are meaningless?

Answer: He wanted to emphasize the importance of the covering, the screen.

Question: How do I find the strength to concentrate on the goal when I have lost my job? I spend sleepless nights tossing and turning, panicking about what is to become of me, and it is sapping my energy and focus. I know I need to help others, but there is a very real problem I can’t seem to correct. I know I can’t be the only BB student in this vise-grip. What is one to do when things look so bleak?

Answer: Imagine that there will be no work at all and invest all your freed-up time in the studying of the new world of mutual guarantee (Arvut). This will help you solve many problems.
[61548]

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People Know Each Other Through 4.74 Handshakes

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News: “In the 1960s, social psychologist Stanley Milgram’s ‘small world experiment’ famously tested the idea that any two people in the world are separated by only a small number of intermediate connections, arguably the first experimental study to reveal the surprising structure of social networks. (Source: Facebook.com)

“A new study shows we’re actually even closer than we thought. Italian scientists who recently sorted through Facebook’s 69 billion pairs of linked users say the actual distance between any two people in the world isn’t the long-held maxim of “six degrees of separation,” but something more like five. Well, 4.74, to be exact.

“The chain gets even shorter when looking at more confined geographic areas. In what they say is the largest study of its kind, the University of Milan researchers found users in a single country are only separated by three intermediaries. (Source: Edmonton.ctv.ca)

My Comment: Mutual connections permeate us at all levels and become tighter every day. For the sake of our good future, we must correct them by mutual guarantee because we cannot break these ties, and our future depends on their quality.
[61723]

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UK Youth Unemployment Hits 1 Million

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News: “Unemployment in the UK has risen again, with numbers of jobless youth passing the 1 million mark for the first time in the country’s history.

“A further 67,000 youth (16-24) became economically inactive, bringing the total to 1.016 million, as total numbers of UK unemployed stand at 2.62 million. The unemployment rate of 8.3% is the highest in 15 years, as businesses delay expansion due to low domestic and international confidence at the same time as faster than anticipated cuts to the public sector are resulting in widespread job losses.” (Source: Fresh Business Thinking):

“[The Deputy Prime Minister Nick] Clegg said the figures ‘cannot be ignored’ and the country cannot emerge from the economic crisis without tackling the ‘fundamental problem.’ (Source: telepraph.co.uk)

My Comment: However, it is becoming increasingly clear that more and more people will be without a job in the traditional sense of the word, and we should not think of “what we could invent for them to do and get paid.” As it turns out, the only useful activity is a person’s work on himself and society. Here, there is work for everyone and the greatest, highest, and eternal reward!
[61716]

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