Correction Is Never Individual

Dr. Michael LaitmanBaal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 94: It is written: “Those who seek Me shall find Me.” One might think that no special effort is required here, and even a small person who isn’t ready to exert himself in any way will find the Creator as well. But the sages warn us not to believe this interpretation. On the contrary, effort is essential here, and if one “didn’t labor and found, don’t believe.”

If a person walks alone, he has absolutely no chance of correction. It is written, “Group or death.” When the nation of Israel stood at Mount Sinai, they were given a condition: Either you unite as one man with one heart, or this will be your burial place. In other words, if you don’t unite, you will never acquire spiritual life. At least some part of the vessel must be corrected.

You may think, “How can that be? This means that everybody must be corrected. Am I only expected to correct a certain part of the common vessel?”

It only appears to us that we perform individual corrections. In truth this process encompasses the whole world, only in part (99.9%) of the vessels the correction happens without them realizing it, while in the other part it happens consciously, after they raise the required plea (MAN) and perform the necessary scrutiny. As a result the entire common vessel connects to the correction process, and this is something we should know. It is also why we need to care for everybody else.

We should also understand the principle of “labored and found.” Our entire work amounts to our efforts to unite, which lead us to “finding” the Creator. Only after these efforts are exerted does the answer come in the form of the upper Light, which makes the correction. We must present to it our genuine desire for unity, and it will then influence this desire, welding and merging us all together, once again turning us into a whole vessel.

Then all the desires—everything that was revealed during the breaking—connects to this vessel with us in it as Aviut, and we acquire a vessel that’s 620 times greater than before.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/13/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot

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Laboratory Of Perfection

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: From whom or what do we ask for connection and correction during the reading of The Book of The Zohar?

Answer: The Light, although this force is concealed. It holds everything in perfection, but it is concealed from us. I am shown life through all kinds of imperfect forms, so I will ask for the perfection. But I need to imagine, on my own, what this perfection is.

Perhaps the meaning of perfection is that I will be fulfilled, great, wise, knowing, and in control? Or maybe perfection is that instead of receiving all these fulfillments, I specifically degrade them and rise above them to love and bestowal? No, that isn’t perfection. So what is?

We need to learn about perfection from Above, because It is perfect. And to just bestow, or to just love someone, that isn’t perfection either. Perfection, I must learn from the upper one.

So I ask Him to reveal to me what perfection is. And this is revealed. We see we lack perfection and from each revelation of this lack of perfection, which the Creator reveals, we learn, from blow to blow. After all, there is a gap between the blows, which is designed for our recognition, understanding, and comprehending what was bad and what could be better.

In this way, people advance, as according to Baal HaSulam: They destroy the previous state after they no longer are able to endure it, and agree with the new state, which previously they didn’t want to agree with, and now they see that it is desirable. But this is the way of suffering, the way of the evolutionary development of nature.

But if we want to advance rapidly, from within consciousness, understanding, and self-participation, then we need to search for what is called “perfection” on our own. And then we ask the Creator to reveal, to give us the appropriate mind and feelings.

For this purpose he places a condition: You want to discover Me? You want to learn the system, to advance consciously, to understand and comprehend what perfection is, what life is, what the system of reality is? Please! I also want the same. I want you to be a son and not a slave.

But for this you must execute actions, exercises, like at work, so that through them you will learn about this system. How? In the group. If you are ready to connect with the friends and to learn about unity, which means One, Unique, and Unified, and to learn what love based on hatred is, then you have a system of relationships with the friends.

I organized this system for you. I brought you to it, gave you teachers from all generations who already attained this system and described it for you. Everything is in your hands. Take it and begin to realize it. According to the measure of your advancement, I will reveal more and more means to you. And thus you will understand, will attain, and  will discover what perfection is.”
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/13/12, The Zohar

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A United Team

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Any group dynamic goes through several stages. The first mandatory stage is a security phase. Before a person opens up, he or she needs to feel that they are in a safe space where nobody will hurt or humiliate them.

Answer: More importantly, this space needs to possess the quality known as mutual guarantee.

In order to reach the goal, we need the support of everybody else, like, for example, in a good attack team or in the army, when they go on a reconnaissance mission and everyone feels confident in the fact that others will always back them up. You charge forward because for you the sensation of “I” already disappears and instead there’s a sensation of “we.” This sensation is so strong that it doesn’t even matter to you whether to live or die—the most important thing is to implement the common idea.

When people are united through a shared idea, they lose individual interests, while the common, the collective, begins to influence them in such a way that for the sake of executing their common goal, their shared idea, they no longer care in what form it’ll be attained for them personally.

If we reach such a state in unification of society, a person rises precisely onto the degree called “Adam.” That is, we need to have a goal that will always stand in front of us. It needs to be for us—not for a person that we work with and not for the group, but for us. Otherwise, if we don’t start striving towards this goal, nature will very painfully, through tremendous suffering, push us towards it with its coercive forces. One way or another, in the final state, we will have to reach this form of communication between us, this kind of unity.
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From “Lessons About the New World” #8, 12/15/12

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Civilized Cohabitation Or European “Bazaar”?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Suppose we can all decide that foreigners who came to our country to work cause harm. But how can we agree about something more positive and integral?

Answer: It’s one thing if we’re talking about a family, where people are forced to reach an agreement, that is, they have to either agree or break up. But if we’re talking about the kind of egoism that doesn’t oblige us to be together, like in the example with foreign workers, then this is a different thing entirely. Here we need to come to a sense of necessity for an integral, earthly, and civilized coexistence, which needs to be built on upbringing.

I’m often asked:

– Are you Israeli?
– Yes.
– Do you have a problem with your neighbors?
– Of course! Who doesn’t know that?
– Do you agree with opening up the country’s borders? Can you live with them in peace?
– Of course!
– Then why don’t you do it?
– I agree! But only after we educate each other.

I wouldn’t be able to live in the same apartment with my neighbor until a complete mutual understanding arises between us. But for that to occur we need to go through the process of upbringing, to mutually understand, sense, and come closer to each other. Without that you cannot open up the borders.

In Europe they opened the borders and now they want to close them again. Why? Well, it’s because during the 20 years of existence of European markets, they didn’t engage in people’s upbringing.

I would even say it was a European “bazaar,” not even a market because they didn’t pursue upbringing or people’s integration. There are an enormous number of cultures, languages, of everything. “We are Europe!” In what, exactly, are you Europe? Today it’s becoming clear that this is simply an assemblage of completely incompatible people. After all this time, has any global European nationality been created, some kind of shared culture? No. On the contrary, the contradictions are beginning to manifest externally more and more.

In other words, upbringing should precede absolutely all actions.
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From “Lessons About the New World” #6, 12/14/12

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Gradually Approaching An Instantaneous Revelation

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Is it possible that one minute I don’t understand anything and then suddenly everything is revealed to me, or is it a gradual process?

Answer: It’s a gradual process which leads to an instantaneous revelation. We see this happening to us. We try doing this and that and nothing comes of it, but then suddenly we acquire an understanding and reveal something. We don’t understand how it happens. It’s as though there is something inside of us that slowly grows, then just bursts, and we suddenly gain understanding, sensation and attainment both in the mind and in the heart. This process requires great concentration over a long period of time and many continuous stages that ultimately lead to a sudden breakthrough.
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/12/12, “Study of the Ten Sefirot

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Building Our Home

Dr. Michael LaitmanBaal HaSulam, “Preface to the Book of Zohar,” Item 26: Also, one does not execute anything during the building, but only according to the details arranged before him in the blueprint…. Thus, there is not a single, tiny item, generated in this world, that does not extend from Ein Sof, from the first state of the souls. And from Ein Sof, it extends to the world of Atzilut, meaning specifically associated to the thing actually being generated in this world. And from the world of Atzilut, the generation extends to the three worlds BYA, where the generation appears in actual fact, where it stops being Godliness and becomes a creature, and to Yetzira and Assiya, until it extends to the lower one in this world.

Only one thing was created: a desire. The created being exists in this desire and feels, thinks and understands in it. The greater one’s desire is, the more he can feel and understand. The more varied the desire, the more ways he can perceive reality.

If the created being’s desire had stayed the way it was created, it wouldn’t have felt anything. This is a result of the four phases of direct Light. Our development begins when the Light begins to influence the desire that was created as existence from absence. All along the way, the desire developed by the Light and received attributes, changes, and urges to act from it. In the Light there is the thought of creation, so when the desire was created by the Light, this thought was put into practice in it.

When the desire developed, it began to perceive different impressions from the Light that turned into receiving. It receives, feels, understands and responds. Every action of the Light initiated the mechanism of changes inside the desire: It absorbed it again and again, felt, and responded numerous times.

Actually the Light is fixed and doesn’t move. It only presents itself to the desire this way. It is in the desire that all the changes take place, until it “turns around” so many times and accumulates so many changes that make it stop and start its way back. The Light is in a state of absolute rest and it fulfills its inner plan, which is for the desire to return to the source, but so that it itself wants to return to the point where the Light gave birth to it, and to justify its creation. Thus it justifies and understands the Light.

All the way into our world and back again is by means of the Light. When the Light shines upon the desire and draws away from it, it spreads from the top down. Then the Light performs the opposite action and the created being begins to draw closer to it, but it does so consciously, wanting to return to the Light, meaning to resemble it. Then he receives the surrounding Light that helps him, and he constantly wants to acquire the inner Light instead, in other words, wants to become like Him.

According to my free will, the Light influences me and changes me. Then I acquire equivalence of form and the inner Light spreads inside me. This is the level of my bestowal. So from a distance, the desire to receive returns to the Light and is incorporated in it.

Thus we attain the Creator’s initial plan and then different general parts of the “blueprint.” The “blueprint” itself is in the world of Atzilut, and we are in the worlds of BYA, dealing with its fulfillment, in the correction of the matter of the desire. Like an architect, a person builds his home and acquires control over his vessel.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/3/12, The Zohar

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 02.14.12

Preparation to the Lesson
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Writings of Rabash Concerning Above Reason,″ (To: “It follows that when he wishes”)
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Chapter “Beresheet (Genesis),” “The Sling-Stone,” (Starting with: “This means that the extension of the Mochin“), Item 209, Lesson 62
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 6, “Histaklut Pnimit,” Item 2, Lesson 23
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Introduction to the Study of Ten Sefirot,” Item 96, Lesson 42
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