Question: Where does faith above reason come from to us?

Answer: Everything comes from above, and the only thing that depends on a person is how much he can rise above his sensations in order to achieve understanding, clarity, unification and connection.

This awakening can take place through suffering, which is called “in due time” (Beito). But if a person receives this awakening from the group, it is called “acceleration of time” (Ahishena).

If a person awakens through blows, then he goes through all of these states again from the very beginning. But if the awakening comes from the group, it already includes the screen and Reflected Light. That’s because by becoming included in the group, he already carried out his work, made efforts, and attracted the Reflected Light to himself.

There are four phases of HaVaYaH which a person carries out himself, and therefore the path of Light and the path of suffering are two completely opposite paths, like Direct and Reflected Light.

“Acceleration of time” is when we become included in the group, which instantly begins building the right instruments or desires in us for understanding the Creator. Whereas the natural path, “in due time” merely lays the preliminary conditions in us to begin this process. There is a huge difference between the two.

After all, by receiving suffering, I have to repeat everything over and over again in order to understand where the suffering is coming from and why. This is an extremely drawn out process. I only run from one place to another as I receive the blows, but I do not advance as this does not give me understanding. And only after many blows and suffering like this do I finally begin to see their purposefulness and causality. Then I already begin to understand that apparently, they are coming to me in order to teach me.

People often come to me asking, “Why was I the one to receive this punishment from above?” This is called the path of suffering.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/12/12, Shamati #121

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Question: What do I need to do in order for the Light to hear me: scream, cry?

Answer: It doesn’t matter how your request will be expressed outwardly, whether you’ll be dancing or crying, screaming or being silent. The main thing is for the request to penetrate as deep as possible into the heart. There’s only one way to check: Is your desire directed in a more and more precise way towards connection since only through connection can you come closer to the Light?

If the Light doesn’t respond to your request, it means that you don’t yet have the desire. Desire in the heart; this is a request toward the Light. If you develop the desire within you, then the Light will begin to influence and fulfill it.

It is said that every person is constantly praying; the Light affects every desire that arises in our heart. After all, the Light is at absolute rest, it is a force that fills all of creation, the informational force field in which we’re all submerged like in an ocean of water. And the moment some desire appears in me, it affects the Light.

But the fact is that there are desires that don’t go in the same direction with Him. And the Light still works on them because it affects everything—it is an immutable law, like in physics. But because these desires don’t correspond to the Light, the Light develops them in a negative form until a person discovers that he or she feels bad. Then he begins to look for a cause and finds out that he was moving in the wrong direction and he needs to change his desires. This is called the path of suffering.

Alternatively, I can proactively use the method, which explains what one must ask in order to correspond to the Light from the very beginning. To do this I join a group, which encourages me, fueling my desire. None of us wants to unite, but when we all talk about the importance of connection, then eventually everyone will want it. After all, it is a law of nature; we are impressed by our environment.

So I choose such an environment that infuses me with the right thoughts and desires, that constantly talks about the benefits of unification and the great achievements that are possible through it. And then I see that I simply cannot do without connection to others, and I begin to desire it.

If everyone works in this correct manner relative to the others and we desire to unite together at least in some way, then the Light begins to affect us and brings us closer to connection. And when it brings us to the very first, smallest connection of our desires, then it becomes revealed in them as the Light of Nefesh. This means that we have begun to live—we were born in the spiritual world. That is, we united together even if for the time being it’s through the weakest initial connection.

Then we continue on from this achieved connection already having some sensation of our state and the ongoing process. Again we begin to ask, now for an even greater connection. The Light affects us more strongly and raises us to the level of Ruach, from the still degree to a vegetative. This means that we can move on our own, we feel some movement in our connections with each other, an ability to do something ourselves. The degree of Ruach means that we weren’t simply born in the spiritual world, but we’re acting and living within it! Ruach (wind) is a vegetative degree and it means the ability to move.

And then we advance even further and reach the animate degree, Neshama (soul). At this point a person ends his cycles of reincarnation. There’s an even higher degree at the end of correction (Gmar Tikkun) when everyone will be corrected and unite together. But for now we need to ascend along the preceding degrees, and this entire advancement only happens in a group, in unity, in order to reveal the Light that will fill the correct bond between us.

In other words, if we achieve the right connection between us, then the feeling of our unity is called a sensation of Light.

Demand it in any way you can, again and again, and each time you’ll receive an impression, clarify Reshimot, and eventually it will happen. The most important thing is to continue. You need to study, participate in the entire life of the group, try to get close to everyone, and then it will come. According to what is written: “I labored and found.”

And if it hasn’t happened yet, it means that for now there’s still an insufficiency, though not of time and actions, but of your inner desire that still has to develop and become perfected. New, more advanced Reshimot still need to appear, which you will realize thanks to your work, and then it will happen.

You can scream and cry, but it won’t help. Only one thing helps: meticulously and persistently, patiently and stubbornly continuing your path.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/8/2012, Writings Of Rabash

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Some people think that the Creator can be reached through torturing oneself, making one suffer. But the Creator doesn’t need our sufferings. He doesn’t send them to us. We feel them because according to the nature of the creation, the Light and the desire are opposite to each other. And by revealing this oppositeness, a person must realize that this feeling is given only in order to rise above it. It is only a sign allowing us to feel the oppositeness and separation from the Creator.

First of all, we should be thankful for getting such a sign, and move away from this bitter feeling as soon as possible. After all, willingly or not, consciously or unconsciously, through this unpleasant sensation we blame the Creator, the source of all that is happening to us. And thus I find myself opposite to and separated from Him, and this is called a sinner.

We must strive only toward lighter feelings, toward getting closer to the Creator. A person’s search for suffering comes from pride. After all, he thinks that he is supposed to be awarded, paid, and elevated for the sufferings. This comes from a misunderstanding of the entire system of reality.

The Creator is called good that does good, and He wishes us good as well. The purpose of creation is in receiving pleasure, and the Creator created creatures in order to delight them. And if you feel something unpleasant at some moment, you should use this feeling to move forward and justify the Creator by staying in an absolutely good state.

We cannot kiss and love the stick that beats us; it is a deception and hypocrisy. If a person works correctly, he rises with the help of the environment and a new scale of values because he appreciates the quality of bestowal more and more each time. He uses every moment; when there is an opportunity to rise, he sees that he has not yet reached the full sensation of perfection; he is imprisoned in bestowal of the Creator who is absolutely good. He doesn’t calm down for a moment as his goal is to give pleasure to the father without caring about his own pleasant and unpleasant sensations. He keeps advancing by using his good and bad impressions to find out what else could be improved to reach bestowal.

So the person keeps moving, rising above the darkness and discomfort each time it occurs. After all, they point to his remoteness from and lack of adhesion with the Creator. Thus he is grateful for all of these discoveries; these are sinners that are revealed in him, which he can overcome and rise above toward adhesion with the Creator.

And then, all this revealed evil will become a blessing, a gift for him. He will welcome the darkness with gladness by preparing himself to it in a proper environment in advance. Every moment the darkness becomes revealed in his senses and mind, he will look for something that is left uncorrected.

He doesn’t look for suffering; he looks for black details in his perception in order to correct them. After all, he prepared to be corrected in advance and he doesn’t suffer in vain, which is simply silly.

Here is an entirely different calculation with respect to all the events happening to a man in the world. He sees everything as a means in order to rise above disturbances and reach merging with the Creator. It means that he is climbing the Creator’s mountain. Throughout his journey, he is wary of any unpleasant feeling lasting longer than a moment and then rises above it due to the high importance. After all, a person perceives it as a sign or a springboard for elevation, an opportunity to justify the Creator, to rise above this feeling toward bestowal. And this depends on the importance of the goal and the greatness of the Creator. Then he will highly appreciate the means, which become revealed to him in an opposite, negative form, giving him an opportunity to build himself.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/11/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Letter 8”

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Question: There are societies and public institutions: the police, army, schoolteachers, and so on. There is a deviant institution that is not recognized, but it’s there: It’s the criminal world, living by its own laws.

Does the proposed integral system mean building a new institution?

Answer: No. We propose an integral methodology as the inclusion of all these institutions as necessary elements. Let all these institutions, including the criminal, exist if it is needed in society, and through it, society will clean, protect, or, conversely, change itself. Whatever exists in society, there is a place for—everything. There are cops and robbers. One cannot be without the other.

By the way, the teaching of integral education is successfully carried out in prisons in the United States. Prison authorities are quite happy about this; they accept all our materials and write grateful letters. Imagine receiving a thank-you letter from the warden of a 5000-inmate prison!

Prison management sees inmates gradually become men, not beasts. Typically, people in prisons become brutalized. In a few weeks, the conditions there can make any normal person the same as everyone else there because the environment affects everyone. And here a miracle occurs: The situation suddenly becomes steady, comfortable, and easy. Violence and all kinds of problems disappear.

Therefore, we want to enter into all sectors of society. We are not interested in whether you are a thief or a police officer. We are interested that you pass a course in integral education and become different in your “institution,” in your community. Thus, all the structures from legitimate to criminal will begin to change.

We don’t tell them how to change the institutions. The whole environment will change through the changes within people. Just as human egoism created all kinds of institutions, from legal to criminal, its integral egoism will change all that.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/20/12

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Question: Let’s suppose that a person faces a confrontation between personal and social interests. In what way will he be able to cancel it?

Answer: There’s no need to cancel anything. We don’t need to break ourselves! We only need to take part in workshops where you will gradually get used to discussing everything together with everyone and reaching a common denominator. Moreover, this common denominator is very interesting.

When we gather around the round table and begin a discussion, suddenly inside, between us, a new force is created, which is not just the sum of our yearnings for agreement, but something much higher than us, a result of our efforts to integrate into one another. It’s revealed as something independent that is born from within our efforts, a new force that is one level above us in intelligence, in significance, in importance, and attractiveness. We already don’t want to leave it, to remove ourselves, or to be detached or distanced. Thus, it turns out that through this mutual force, through this feeling of unity that is created, we can solve many problems. We suddenly begin to understand in what way everything around us operates.

We weren’t wearing these integral glasses before. We didn’t see nature in this way or society and all the problems. We saw them in a purely egoistic manner, narrowly, and therefore, we didn’t find solutions because we would escape into our small ego, each one into his or her burrow, and this is all that existed.

However, when we begin to look through our integral component, all of a sudden the solution appears. Suddenly appears a state that really gives a solution to everything, and a person only needs to position himself correctly with respect to all his problems. And it turns out that they aren’t problems. They were problems when you weren’t adapted to them since you were an egoistic individual. And now you are not. Even though you remain within the ego, you are not an individual any more, and thus the problems are solved.

We need to give a person the feeling of the possibility solving everything though “we,” which reveals completely different horizons. We need to bring people to this state. We don’t need to convince them of anything; we don’t need to use force and talk about the change that will occur in them. There won’t be a change, but there will be a rise to completely new possibilities.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/20/12

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Opinion (Paul Ehrlich, Bing professor of population studies at Stanford University in California): “The optimum population of Earth – enough to guarantee the minimal physical ingredients of a decent life to everyone – was 1.5 to 2 billion people rather than the 7 billion who are alive today or the 9 billion expected in 2050, said Ehrlich in an interview with the Guardian.

“‘How many you support depends on lifestyles. We came up with 1.5 to 2 billion because you can have big active cities and wilderness. If you want a battery chicken world where everyone has minimum space and food and everyone is kept just about alive you might be able to support in the long term about 4 or 5 billion people. But you already have 7 billion. So we have to humanely and as rapidly as possible move to population shrinkage.’…

“But he agreed with the Royal Society report that said human population and consumption should not be divided. Source: Raw Story (http://s.tt/1daUI) ‘[They] multiply together. You have to be deal with them together. We have too much consumption among the rich and too little among the poor. That implies that terrible thing that we are going to have to do which is to somehow redistribute access to resources away the rich to the poor. But in the US we have been doing the opposite. The Republican party is wildly in favour of more redistribution, of taking money from the poor and giving it to the rich.’”

My Comment: The only help is to educate everyone in the spirit of unity and mutual guarantee, which will solve all the problems because people will develop a sense of social responsibility for the sake of revealing the Creator.
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The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee) Movement: “Changing Priorities” (excerpt from the brochure):

About Us: Our organization represents virtually all sectors of Israeli society: the native Israeli and immigrants, the secular and religious, professors and students, businessmen and workers, technology and humanities specialists.

What do we have in common? No matter how it may sound, what we share is our concern for what is happening in the world. The fact is that the world (and our country is no exception) is undergoing a historical transformation about which society, for the most part, is unaware.

Political scientists, historians, and philosophers claim that we are witnessing the birth of a new civilization. Unexpectedly, we find ourselves in a totally new reality. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that it is mainly unpredictable and the old traditional logic no longer works. We seem to be extremely unprepared for the radically, new state of the world—a global integral world.

Paul Gilding, the author of The Great Disruption, describes the new reality very accurately: “I look at the world as an integrated system, so I don’t see the protests, the debt crisis, inequality, and insane climate as unrelated problems; rather, I see the whole system going through the turmoil of breaking down.”
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Statement: 2800 B. C. – Assyria: The inscription on a clay plate reads: “Now, at the end of times, the Earth is coming to an end. There are multiple signs of imminent cataclysm. Bribery and corruption have become habitual.” And yet, in about a couple of centuries after these words were written, Assyrians created one of the most powerful states in the ancient world.

50-100 A.D. Palestine: The first followers of Jesus Christ expected the end of the world that in their opinion could have happened any moment. Jesus Christ’s prediction of forthcoming destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and prophecy of His second advent were rapidly spread by word of mouth. Obliteration by the Romans of the Temple in 70 A.D. signified that the prophecy came true. Persecution of Christians formed a specific psychological atmosphere within their then small communities. Nevertheless, quite soon Christianity became the national religion of the Roman Empire; moreover, clerical hierarchies officially announced that the apocalypse would be delayed till an indefinite time in the future.

1000 A. D. – Western Europe: In 1000, righteous Catholics were afraid to enter a new millennium, a new era in the heavenly kingdom. Continuous anticipation of the “end of times” led Europe to complete desolation. People were preparing for Judgment Day and stopped caring about corporeal problems: They didn’t plow the lands, pasture cattle, nor did they continue to trade…The new year’s eve of the year 1000 was an apotheosis of tension; thousands of people gathered in Rome in anticipation of the Pope’s blessing that they received together with his advice to go back home. It became apparent that the end of the world had been delayed once again. But mass hysteria ended only in 1033 after everybody witnessed that the promised apocalypses didn’t happen yet again at the 1000th anniversary of the crucifixion.

1492 – Russia: Orthodox countries of Russia and Greece were preparing to celebrate 7000^th anniversary of the world’s creation and face the end of times. Collapse of Constantinople 40 years prior to this event seemed to be an obvious evidence of the coming end of the world. Even though it didn’t happen in 1492, nor any time after, people in Russia were still waiting for it to happen for many decades afterwards.

1914 – USA: The prediction of the end of the world became one of the main tricks of multiple popular sects that emerged in the twentieth century starting with Russell, the founder of “Jehovah’s Witnesses,” who declared that “Judgment Day” will happen in 1914, later he moved the date to 1915; eventually he died in 1916. His successors immediately proceeded foretelling the doomsday in the nearest future up until 1975. In anticipation of the apocalypse, their victims donated their property in order to save themselves from eternal oblivion. When the “end of time” didn’t take place once again, followers of “Jehovah’s Witnesses” explained this situation by saying that they were misunderstood.

2010: Fear of the apocalypse resumed when the Large Hadron Collider was launched: It clearly demonstrated that protons’ collision triggered appearance of “black micro holes” that have the ability to “swallow” the world. As it is well known, the Earth is constantly bombarded by extremely powerful cosmic rays.

12/21/2012: The next doomsday is scheduled for the end of 2012. “Interpreters” of the ancient Maya have explained the words “The thirteenth cycle of a 400 year period will end on the 4th of Ahav, third day of the month of Kankin – the imagery of armed Bolon Okte with its great encirclement” to be a prediction of the upcoming apocalypse, although this particular excerpt delineated the coronation of a king.

My Comment: According to Kabbalah, there is no such thing as the “end of the world,” but rather there is a transition to a new, higher, integral perception of the material realm that reveals itself to the degree of correction of our properties and as a consequence of the extent of change in our organs of perception of reality. It’s already happening; the process started in 1995 and will continue.
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The whole of reality is divided into three parts: me, the spiritual spark inside of me, not letting me be at peace and wanting to discover another reality, and the world surrounding me.

The world around me is divided into people who are close to or distant from me, inanimate nature, vegetation, and animals. Behind all of that, there stands yet another, higher force. For now, I perceive the whole of the reality as foreign, not related to me. Yet, all of this are parts of me that I do not perceive due to the separation that occurred in my consciousness and feeling.

It is as if I had been given an injection of painkiller into my arm and as a result it completely lost feeling and I don’t feel that it is mine. It could be cut off and I would not even notice, so powerful is the anesthetic.

This is how I perceive the whole of the world as if it doesn’t belong to me. And the work is to fight against this anesthetic, against this feeling.

This is intentional because if I think that this world does not belong to me, as if it has been anesthetized, I can turn from my egoism and relate to it altruistically, bestowing, as if to someone else. I can learn to love it.

I do not need to develop love towards myself; I love myself egoistically anyway. However, now I can learn to love others who are separated from me by the means of this anesthetic, this illusion of separation. After all, love is a quality of the Creator, not the quality of creation.

By the means of this separation, the Creator gives us the opportunity to receive a quality, which is not characteristic to us by nature and does not belong to us. We don’t understand what love is at all. But when I try to learn to love those who are outside of me as I do myself, meaning, to relate to my neighbor the way I do to myself, this is called love.

I am working on it against my egoism. This is a special force inside of me that constantly resists it. Thus, there is an opposition of two forces acting in two different directions. Desire attracts pleasure towards itself, but above it is a screen (the force of my resistance), which pushes this pleasure away and is ready to give it upwards.

And then, from the interaction between these two forces, I can understand what it is to truly love someone else rather than my own child, my own little dog, or my own body.

And as I develop more, my hatred towards my neighbors constantly grows, but I develop the force of love above it. It is called love only if it rises above the hatred. As it is said: “Love covers all transgressions.” Due to the collision of the two opposite qualities, the creation is able to obtain the quality of the Creator. Otherwise, it would be impossible and we would remain inside of the nature with which we were created.

However, if we want to be creations (Nivraim), meaning, independent personalities outside (Bar) of the Creator, and at the same time, to reach His qualities and the high state, then we are obliged to build such a resisting mechanism inside of us. There will always be two opposing forces functioning inside of it: the force of the desire to enjoy and the desire to bestow that we build above our egoism by ourselves, love above hatred.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/1/12, Writings of Rabash

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In order to understand what prayer is, we have to rely on our previous experience and imagine a state opposite to Holiness, in which a person feels that he is dead. This means that he feels envy, ambition, a desire to control, and the ordinary desires of the ego for food, sex, and family. He feels that he has become enslaved to these desires through which the rule of the upper force becomes apparent.

At the same time, he is aware that this state is opposite to bestowal, caring about others and about the Creator, which has to be above all the worries and the calculations regarding himself, his relatives, and everything that has nothing to do with spirituality.

The goal of creation is the revelation of the Creator to the created beings. If a person chooses this goal as his mission for which he is willing to work, as it is written, “as an ox to the burden and as a donkey to the load,” in order to become the link that conveys and connects, to be the smallest agent who receives no reward, in that case it means that he turns to the Creator with the right prayer. He doesn’t even know that he is the one who brings about the revelation, and what is more, he doesn’t want any reward for that and is satisfied with having been given the opportunity to work without a reward.

This attitude is revealed in us thanks to the influence of the Light in different states, and by that, we begin to respect and value the darkness more. The more contradictory the states revealed in a person, the sharper his clarifications, thoughts, and feelings become, from which he can form his request to the Creator to be saved.

Every prayer stems from despair, from having fallen under the control of egoistic thoughts about oneself, instead of thinking about the revelation of the Creator to the created beings, about the “good and benevolent.” If a person aims correctly, he attains a state in which all of his desire works only for the revelation of the Creator in the vessels of the created beings, of Malchut, Shechina (Divinity).

This is called the prayer of eighteen blessings: nine degrees of the Direct Light and nine degrees of the Returning Light. Thus, a person reaches a true prayer.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/10/12, Shamati #113

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