Audio Version Of The Blog – 12.24.11

Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download: MP3 Audio
[audio:http://files.kabbalahmedia.info/audio/eng_o_rav_2011-12-24_declamation_blog-rav_full_music.mp3]

An Acquaintance With The New World

Dr. Michael LaitmanWhen we are born in the world of bestowal, we first make an acquaintance with it, just like a person who starts a new job and is given some time to adjust and to get to know the new place of work. During this time he is only taught what should be done and he only learns and doesn’t produce anything.

It is also like a small child who is only required to listen and to learn, to watch and to experience things. It doesn’t matter if he makes mistakes or acts foolishly. He will be corrected. This means that in the spiritual world we are first treated like small children are treated.

But all this comes after great efforts that we make in order to transcend the Machsom (the barrier), to be born in the new world and to start living in the world of bestowal. With regards to all our previous work, the time after our birth is called “parking,” and Chanukah symbolizes this (“Chanu –kah”—parked so). A person reaches a comfortable situation. He still makes efforts, but they are of another kind—in order to know the good world.

He stubbornly works against his ego. It is similar to the wandering in the desert, about which the Torah tells us, a time that is meant for preparation and which ends upon entering the Land of Israel.

Chanukah is working with the Light of Chasadim, in the state of smallness. We have to learn to connect the desire to receive that is being revealed now to forces of bestowal.

In bestowal in order to bestow, we don’t use the full depth of this desire, but still it exists in us. It is like a baby: He already has legs, although he can’t walk yet; he has a brain although he hasn’t learned to think like a grown up. A newborn infant cannot see or hear anything, but he still has eyes and ears.

A baby has all the organs a grown up has. The only thing missing is the teeth. The teeth symbolize the power to clarify, which he hasn’t acquired yet. The “milk teeth” grow only after some time, and they are used only to clarify the Light of Chasadim (the milk symbolizes the Light of Chasadim) in the state of smallness.

When he grows up, he will have permanent teeth with which he will be able to chew and to clarify the filling for his vessel of reception, the Light of Hochma, and to feel the “flavors” of the Light.

Chanukah is the first part of our absorption into the spiritual world, the upper world, called the “world of bestowal.” This is bestowal in order to bestow in which we transfer all our desires to the level of mutual bestowal and learn how this system operates. We are incorporated in it like small children living in the big world who learn and do something together with the grown ups, playing with them.

This is called “parking,” because until now, during the time of preparation, a person worked hard against his egotistic desires. Afterwards, when he moves on from the level of “to bestow in order to bestow,” (Hafetz Chesed), to the next stage, to the level of love—the Land of Israel, he will start working with his vessels of reception again.

So Chanukah is a “spiritual” holiday and its symbols are the oil and the light.
[63970]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/22/11, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
A Miracle Is A Revolution Of Perception
The Miracle Of Light And Connection
The Reason We Kindle The Candle

The Formula For The Distribution Of Means

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: 15 years ago I took part in a personal growth training, which was divided into several stages. The last stage was realized in real life. We gathered and discussed things that were actually interesting. What was fundamentally different about that place was that it was supported with money, earned somewhere else. How can this be realized according to your program? A question arises: Where will I get the same apartment, the same bread, clothes, etc.?

Answer: Become part of this society of the future. Take 100% of the people with 100% of all the resources and distribute them based on the calculation that the society is working on providing everyone with a normal minimum necessary for existence. And the rest of the time people only spend creating an integrated connection between them.

You will see where you need to take and where you need to add something, and how many resource you will need to create this integrated connection. Naturally, the society will need to earn these resources.
[63996]
Talk on Integral Education 12/11/11

Related Material:
Moving Ahead Of The Blows
Integral Education With No Sudden Movements
Everyone Needs Integral Upbringing

Crossing Into The Spiritual World

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe know from the wisdom of Kabbalah that all the best things in our personal lives—be it our current egoism or something higher that we strive to, all the goodness in the desire to enjoy or the desire to please, whether in this world or the upper World—is only achieved through unity.

Today we discover this in fairly difficult and unpleasant forms: We encounter problems and become submerged in the crisis. All this is designed to show us that we must unite, since we simply do not have another choice. Nature is pressuring us without leaving us a free space to maneuver.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is offering us its help in these conditions. It says: “I will help you attain unity. You yourselves see that there are no other options. This is the only way to fix your lives.”

Assume we do not want this, but how else can we acquire happiness? We are drawn by eternity, perfection, fulfillment both in this and the future world; we want to rise above life and death. If we were to make a list of how we envision consummate welfare, it would not be big—ten points at most. Overall, I would refer to pleasure, regardless of whether it is in the heart or the mind. And the only way to achieve it is by uniting.

So, today when we are discovering this out of hopelessness, Kabbalah comes to the rescue. It is not proposing to somehow go around this fixed condition, it does not promise protection; it does not take us to the spiritual world through the backdoor. This simply is impossible because this refers to a law of Nature.

Yet, Kabbalah helps realize it the good way. Yes, this condition is unpleasant, uncomfortable, bitter to taste, but bitterness can be turned into sweetness, and discomfort can be overcome through mutual efforts, music, a common flow of joyous feelings, festive ceremonies, and entertainment programs.

There is difficult work before us; we must go through an inner transformation. It is similar to the way an ill person agrees to surgery knowing that he will have a better life after it.

And the wisdom of Kabbalah helps us go through this surgery, which will cardinally change us. Our way of thought, our perception and understanding of the world, our perception of reality, all our actions, all our goals, mind and sense mechanisms – all these things must transform. We must uninstall the old program and install a new one.

Kabbalah explains that your basic qualities do not change. Your inherent qualities and acquired skills will remain as they were. You only change the program, according to which you achieve different goals in life. And then you suddenly see that all of them can be realized.

Today you are disappointed and helpless because of the wrong program. You need to update it, and you will achieve all the best things you now want.

And gradually, man takes steps along this path. Moreover, changes are not caused by the natural pressure of suffering from Above through which Nature always reveals problems and faults to us, forcing us to run. When we feel like we are held in a grip, we naturally direct ourselves towards the next state.

As Baal HaSulam says, we are unable to remain in the current state when it becomes unbearable, and then we cross into the next state having no other choice. This new state does not appeal to us; otherwise, we would have chosen it to begin with. According to our nature, we hover around as long as we can manage, and we only agree to the change when we reach our threshold of endurance.

And even then the situation is not the most pleasant—it is as if we needed to move somewhere, leave our home with all our possessions, reach the new place, and assimilate there…. These changes pose a lot of discomfort. But suffering increases so much that it forces us to make this “move.” This is how we advance through the stages of human development.

On the other hand, Kabbalah opens new horizons, shows us how good our lives will be there, ahead. After all, Nature’s objective is not to push us with blows, but it creates conditions for us to develop on our own towards goodness.

And then instead of pressure from behind, we feel drawn forward. This really helps: Before our train would be shaken by the jerks of the engine attached in the back, but now another engines pulls it in the front.

Kabbalah says that in the 21st century, our development is realized through unity. This has never happened before, before everyone developed individually, but now the time has come to unite, to become included in one another, for everyone to acquire a common vessel within. Then everyone will grow on the same level as everyone else, as it is written: “The private and the whole are equal.” Everyone will feel similar to Infinity, the upper force, perceiving and embracing the whole reality in himself.

Man must acquire a second force to realize this—the force of bestowal, unity, and mutual inclusion with others. And this is why he is brought to a group, a state of his first union, even if this union is external, it is a union with people like him who aspire towards the same goal.

As we read The Zohar, we aspire towards this force, which attracts us, and we make efforts to unite between us. We help this force; we participate in the process—and advance towards the goal instead of moving towards it under pressure of the initial force of suffering. We turn to the path of Light from the path of suffering.

The Zohar describes the things the Light does to us, and this is why when we think about unity and aspire towards the Light, the reading turns into an inner, spiritual effort. It is just like a child tries hard during a game, and an adult goes all out to achieve success. Here we are trying to implement a certain action—but this action is not physical, it is internal. And once we realize it, we feel the result—and the result is also internal.
[62232]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/30/11, The Zohar

Related Material:
Down The Trajectory Of Light
A Science Of A Successful Future
Between The Desired And The Actual

The Power Of Habit

Dr. Michael LaitmanBaal Hasulam, “The Freedom”: “Thus, he has substantially changed for the better from the tendency he had inherited from his forefathers. And sometimes one manages to completely uproot a bad tendency. This is done by habit, which has the ability to become a second nature.

A habit becomes a second nature and there is a need for prior sensitivity in realizing it. After all, we are talking about special acts that are goal oriented, that change my nature.

This is the way we also behave with children when we let them do the same task over and over again until they suddenly begin to do it by themselves. If you try to stop a child from doing something that he is already used to, you won’t succeed. For him the habit is already associated with pleasure. Before he did it under our pressure, fearing that he would be punished if he didn’t do it, but now he sees the benefit in it, the lack of punishment and even a reward.

Eventually the action that was previously undesirable, now becomes rewarding, and this association is recorded in his brain. Now even if I don’t follow him, he continues to brush his teeth every morning and night even if no one gives him a candy for doing so. The model of the candy is already in his brain and it works successfully.

This is the habit. It isn’t just any habit, but an association that exists in his brain that ties the action with the candy. What is more, if I don’t do what I am used to, it is as if I am punished, although apparently nothing happens.

Our habits are related to smoking, eating, the way we dress and many other different things. They are constantly active, whether we notice them or not.

This is the complex “mechanism” that refers to the desire, in which every action or every thought is tied to a memory of pleasure. This pleasure is eternal, it is recorded and it stays in me in addition to the first factor. Even if it is not revealed at present, but rather in the past, meaning not in the inner Lights, but in the surrounding Lights, I still feel it.

Thus, the habit is created from the mutual cooperation between the Light and the vessel. We either create it by ourselves or receive it from the outside: from our parents or from other people.

Many human actions are based on this schema. Using it we train animals, educate children, and make ourselves used to things…even when we make an acquaintance with someone and have some kind of attitude towards him, we act according to patterns we are used to.

Thus, a habit becomes a second nature. This is one of the lines in the picture.
[63729]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/20/11, “The Study of the Ten Sefirot

Related Material:
The New Habit
A Good Habit: Desire To Bestow
Cursory Thoughts On Shamati, “What Is The Habit Becomes A Second Nature, In The Work”

Moving Ahead Of The Blows

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Is an integrated connection when I consider the interests of all the other people in every one of my actions?

Answer: Yes. But this needs to be studied, it needs to be taught, it needs to be practiced. The entire society needs to participate in this. Absolutely everyone must become students of the new world, they must study it.

Our lack of knowledge about it is the source of all our current problems. We have entered a new system of interaction between nature and us, interactions in the human society, in the universal unity of the world, and we do not know how to act. I was pushed into some new world and I absolutely do not know any of its laws. I am like an elephant in a china shop.

First of all, we need to understand a very simple principle: Nature will get us there anyway. If you wish to attain happiness by force—be my guest. If you wish to get there fast and easily—sure. The fast and easy way is the way of independent realization and a willing consent, when we move ahead of the blows coming from behind.
[63993]
Talk on Integral Education 12/11/11

Related Material:
Integral Education With No Sudden Movements
Everyone Needs Integral Upbringing
The Method Of Integral Connection

The Living Earth Simulator Project

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from Refreshing News): “The European Union is all set to fund a 900 million-pound scheme to produce a computer system that could predict spread of diseases and impending financial meltdowns.

“The Living Earth Simulator Project (LES), which has been backed by leading scientists, aims to ‘simulate everything’ on the planet, using anything from tweets to government statistics to map out social trends and predict the next economic crisis.

“Using vast reams of data fed into the Internet, trends can be spotted by analysing information with ‘the world’s most powerful computers.’

“‘The idea is to gather live information from a huge range of sources and then analyse it using the world’s most powerful computers,’ the Daily Mail quoted Dirk Helbing, one of the leaders of the project at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich as telling the Sunday Times.

“‘Many problems we have today – including social and economic instabilities, wars, disease spreading – are related to human behaviour, but there is apparently a serious lack of understanding regarding how society and the economy work,’ he said.”

My Comment: Scientist will not understand the future of the world until they themselves become like nature, with integral thinking and love towards all their surroundings. Then they will discover the connections in nature, which were hidden from them before—the connections of bestowal, love, and mutual guarantee.

They were hidden from man because he could not discover them through his egoistic properties. We need such a detector of controlling nature, but it can exist only in a “corrected” human. The project should be called “Integral Education”; it will give everyone interested the opportunity to reveal the “secret” forces of nature.

They are “secret” due to the difference between him, egoist, and nature, altruism. But to the degree of acquiring the properties similar to nature, a person reveals nature’s global management system, and he himself can be included in this system as its active part. And to the extent of his similarity to nature, inclusion into it, he takes over all its functions and becomes the master of the world because he is in complete love towards it.
[64089]

Related Material:
Everyone Needs Integral Upbringing
There Is No Life Without Mutual Guarantee
The New World Needs A New Economy

The Book In Zohar In The The Czech Language

The Book In Zohar In The The Czech LanguageA new book, The Book of Zohar, has been published in the Czech language (translation from Russian). The book was translated by the professors at the University of Prague Nikolaj Savický and Stanislava Savická with the participation of our friends from the Prague group.

In 2011, The Book of Zohar was published in Italy as well. In Brazil, The Zohar is planned to be published for the upcoming convention in May 2012.
[63958]