We can speak about many reasons for creation: the Creator’s desire to bring pleasure to the created beings, thanks to which He created us, and His desire to be revealed and to show His greatness. But considering all the reasons for the goal of creation, one thing is clear, that a person has to reach the feeling and the mind of the attribute of receiving and the attribute of bestowal, so that he’ll understand and feel the Creator to the fullest and become like Him according to the condition of equivalence of form—to rise up to the same height and status.

But how is it possible to reach this if a person doesn’t feel a need for it? If he were given such a need by nature, it wouldn’t be his own need. So the Creator has to create a system in which a person will be able to acquire the desire to reveal the Creator and to resemble Him by using his own powers. Then the desire will be on the person’s account.

This desire is what we call “human.” After all, everything he had up until the moment he reached wanting to resemble the Creator was not considered the “human” level, but only the “animal” level, the initial natural level. Therefore it says, “They are all like animals,” meaning until the moment they acquire a desire to resemble the Creator, a desire to bestow.

In order to do that, the desire that the Creator created was shattered. And within the shattered state a person discovers different forms, deficiencies, and corrupt desires. In the meantime, all this is part of instinctive nature and there is no independent action that a person performs.

A person starts to advance by being awakened from Above, being brought to a group, and being given the opportunity to develop through ascents and descents. Thanks to the environment, a new desire begins to grow in him when he clarifies whether he wants to be part of the environment or not, and if he wants that, then for what purpose: in order to benefit from it or to bestow upon the friends? Thus a person can clarify his desires.

He rises and descends alternately, and thereby the conditions for molding his new desire to receive are created for him. If he’s ready to be in the lowest state only in order to have a chance to bestow, then he will undoubtedly gain nothing for his own benefit. On the contrary, he’ll be happy that he’s in such a low state, since by that, he can be sure that he’s not using it egoistically, since there is nothing to enjoy.

A person is ready to feel that his desire to receive pleasure will always remain empty only in order to acquire the desire to bestow, the opportunity to perform some altruistic action. From now on, he begins to acquire a vessel, a new desire, and can thereby advance.

This means that he develops a new desire that will be his own desire without being attracted to greatness but by agreeing to remain on the same level, in a state of smallness in Galgalta ve Eynaim (GE), in desires to bestow. It’s in this desire that he discovers the force of bestowal and begins to know the Creator.
[82282]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/5/12, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
I Choose You, Brothers!
The Program Of Creation
Lift Your Head To See The Friends

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Inner Work, My Similarity to the Creator - No Comments →

The Writings of Rabash, Volume 3, “The Matter of Afflictions”: So, when a person studies the Torah and doesn’t find life in the Torah, he feels sorrow, and this is called “a life of suffering.” This means that he feels sorrow since he cannot find the Light of the Creator’s face. In any case, he doesn’t stop studying the Torah, as it is written, “by your labor in the Torah,” although you don’t find it. So, according to how much he studies the Torah and intends to find it, the afflictions soften to a certain extent called, “You have labored and found,” which is the matter of the Light of the King’s face in the Torah. So, through the afflictions, a true desire if formed in him to receive the Light of the King’s face, and this is called “pangs of love” in which there is no annulment of the Torah.

And the most important thing is that the afflictions will be pangs of love and will not annul the Torah, the Light, which means that, when a person feels that he is evil, he understands that the evil is in his ego, and if he worked above the ego, it wouldn’t happen. There are usually physical afflictions in all the religions and beliefs while according to the wisdom of Kabbalah, a person draws away from the body through afflictions that help him do that as he rises above them.
[82275]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/1/12

Related Material:
Turning Fear Into Advancement
As We Ascend, The Fear Will Defuse
Primordial Fear

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Egoism, Inner Work - No Comments →

In the News (from Healthline): “As if depression weren’t bad enough, statistics show that diagnoses are growing at an alarming rate. In addition, states with higher rates of depression also show high rates of other negative health outcomes, such as obesity, heart disease, and stroke. … Despite all of these statistics on depression, this infographic shows that many people suffer symptoms of depression without seeking care, and that undiagnosed depression costs the U.S. millions of dollars each year.”

My Comment: Since the entire nature is the desire to enjoy, from the desire to maintain its structure in inanimate matter to the desire to develop maximally in the animate nature, then the feeling of emptiness is the most obvious sensation in the desire, its “exposed” suffering. That is why precisely in our time is when egoism must begin its correction, it discovers emptiness, a lack of fulfillment.

This is intended to assist us in correcting egoism, rejecting it. And instead, we invent methods of satisfying it, and thus just increase and extend our suffering. If like a smart child, we had understood at once that we should do otherwise, we would have quickly come out of suffering and found a comfortable existence. But we are like the stubborn fool who wants to act in his own way, and as a result, we increase our suffering and stretch it for many years.
[82110]

Related Material:
“Culture Of We” Buffers Genetic Tendency To Depression
The Depression Cure
The Cure For Depression Is A Connection With Other People

Filed under: Crisis, Depression, Egoism, Health, News - No Comments →

In the News (from Wealth Wire): “Chris Powell, Secretary and Treasurer of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee told Bernie Lo on CNBC Asia overnight that central banks are continuing to manipulate the gold market as they are interested in supporting government bonds and the dollar and keeping interest rates low. Powell warns about ‘paper gold’ and says that we ‘try to persuade investors that if they are purchasing gold, they had better get real gold – metal.

“’They should not get ‘paper gold’ and keep it within the banking system.’ He says that ‘there is huge naked short position in gold’ and estimates that perhaps ‘75% to 80% of the gold that the world thinks it owns does not exist and is just a claim on a bullion bank that is underwritten basically by the central banks.’

“With regard to price Powell said that he does not make predictions but he wonders ‘what the value or the price of gold will be if the world ever discovers that 80% of the gold that it thinks it owns – does not exist.’

“’There may not be enough zeros in the world to put behind the gold price then.’

“Powell said that buyers should own gold in ‘your hand’ or in allocated format outside of the banking system.”

My Comment: That’s when people will die for metal! There are plenty of bubbles around us, and there is only one opportunity to blow them away: to introduce integral education and upbringing. It will create in people the correct attitude towards oneself and the world, will allow us to re-establish our relationships and our attitude to the values: personal (food, sex, and family) and social (wealth, power, and knowledge). Their correct combination in each of us will create a possibility for our unity as cogwheels in one integral mechanism, one community in which everyone will feel fulfilled and not deprived by others.
[82107]

Related Material:
Education Will Save The Economy
Smoothing Out the Imbalance
Collapse Of The Economic Pyramid

Filed under: Crisis, Economy, Education, Integral Upbringing, News, World - 1 Comment →

Question: Is my stubbornness worth anything? If everything depends on the Creator and tomorrow He can throw me off-track, where is my work here?

Answer: It doesn’t matter whether the Creator throws me off or not; I have to be stubborn. I have to make sure that even when I feel as if the Creator is throwing me, I don’t leave. I receive such support from the environment that it enables me to stay and not run away.

The more we advance, the more the Creator will reject us. I will feel greater disrespect for Him, and the relationship between us will become worse. I will not understand why the Creator repays me with such ingratitude. This is the work, and this is its reward? Is this fair?

New, corrupt, egoistic desires constantly will be revealed, and as a result, our relationships with the Creator will become worse; they will be unpleasant and illogical. The friends also will seem worse and lower, and the way will seem meaningless. I will not find the powers inside me nor the logical explanation to respect the Creator, the group, and the way.

In the meantime, we are in a state where everything seems sublime and important in our corporeal beastly mind, in our ego. We see that the corporeal world isn’t worth much compared to this great goal and that we have a foundation that is above everything else.

However, this is how we see it today, and tomorrow, if we are stronger, we will be shown a totally different picture that there is nothing to hold onto along the way. The Creator will seem as a foolish illusion that doesn’t really exist; the group will seem like a gathering of empty, useless people, and the study as a meaningless occupation that hasn’t led anyone to success so far.

There is a kind of “eye opening,” and it is a miracle that a person can hold onto the way and continue. It is only in the meantime that, considering our weakness, we are given such a feeling that the group is important, and the friends, the teacher, and the books are important.

However, imagine that the teacher has left you, the group has become unimportant, and the books just stand on the shelf covered with dust, and that’s it. That’s the end. So, we should prepare ourselves for the advanced states that may be very difficult.

I see that people escape minor unpleasant situations and cannot justify their exertion. Even before they are confused from above and rejected from spirituality, they already escape.

We must understand that the Creator is behind the whole picture that we perceive, and behind the way we feel ourselves and the world. The picture of this world not only is what I see before me, but everything that I feel. After having accepted this picture and trying to feel it to its full depth and in every direction in the mind and in the heart, I have to say that there is none else besides Him and that it is He who depicts this picture for me on purpose so that I will respond to it correctly.

As it is written, “From Your actions, I will know You.” His actions are me and this world. I know Him since through all this, I want to reach Him and to know Him as the force of bestowal, as the good and the benevolent.
[82207]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/3/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Related Material:
A Tuning Fork For David’s Violin
Persistence In Valuable Trifles
A Step Forward

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Egoism, Mutual Guarantee, My Similarity to the Creator - 1 Comment →

Right now, we exist in a state where egoism is no longer pushing us from behind; there is no purpose pulling us forward, and in the sphere of our existence, nature itself is warning us from all sides that we’ve exceeded all limits in exploiting it and it cannot continue like this anymore. With every day, we’re destroying ourselves more and more, and like little foolish egoists, we don’t sense that tomorrow we’ll have nothing to eat and drink, nothing to breathe; we won’t be able to provide ourselves even with the basic necessities.

We came to a new, very interesting point where we need to understand how we can rebuild ourselves and our relationship to the world and nature in order to provide mankind with a normal life for centuries to come, where on the one hand, we’ll use natural resources with great care within the boundaries of economics and reasonable consumption, and on the other hand, we’ll give people a goal and motivation to act this way.

This goal should explain to a person that life with reasonable limitations and balance is attractive, benevolent, fills him, and gives him such special feelings that all of his prior opportunities could not give him.

Where can one find such an attractive goal, such a luminous dream, that a person will wake up happy and work with joy? Moreover, in the new, rebuilt society, people will work only two to three hours a day in order to provide themselves with all necessities, and they will have a lot of free time.

And what will a modern person do the rest of the time? Will he lie on a couch, watch television, drink beer, and watch soccer?! How can he occupy himself so that all of his egoistic needs, or despair, alienation, and helplessness would suddenly become positive emotions, transformed into something bright, joyful, and fulfilling? How can this be done?

So the next state of humanity poses several challenges for us: to give a person excitement and fulfillment in his rather simple and limited conscious life.

For that we need to raise, educate, and offer them the possibility for fulfillment. With what? Here we discover a truly new opportunity where a person starts to become fulfilled with something higher than our ordinary life because he or she can no longer fulfill himself with food, sex, and family. He can no longer fill himself with money, power, honor, and knowledge since even that comes to a certain rational end. And the only thing that remains is the next, the seventh degree, his or her spiritual development that stands above the previous basic desires. This spiritual development occurs when a person begins to reveal his or her next degree of existence in unity with others.
[82120]
From a “Talk On Integral Education” 5/25/12

Related Material:
Facing A Choice
Nature’s Commandments = the Creator’s Laws
The Next Phase Of Human Development

Filed under: Education, Egoism, Integral Upbringing, Society, Unity, World - 1 Comment →

By uniting with others, a person becomes similar to nature, which is entirely unified like a single organism. And when one puts oneself in balance with nature, in union with it, that person begins to feel the inner force that maintains all of nature, to sense its program and its course.

He begins to attain the laws that are hidden in nature, which could not be discovered with our previous egoistic sciences and research capabilities, since now he becomes different: integral. He begins to feel this, and a new sensory organ of integral perception awakens in him.

Through this sensory organ, a person enters a new state that fills him completely; moreover, it gives him an opportunity for infinite fulfillment, because here he is interfacing with the common force of the entire universe, with nature.

By the way, physicists and astronomers are already talking about it, since they feel this while working with the cosmic voids, laws, and motions. Just as a person who lives in the woods feels the forest and nature, similarly, many researchers begin to sense the overall force of nature. They are saying, “We feel that the entire universe is a thought, a conception, it is an inner program!” They cannot translate their sensations into the language of numbers and formulas, but they feel it.

And this program really does exist in nature since we’re developing and living within it, and it created everything around us. In other words, within nature is the force, which on the one hand, evokes all of development, and on the other, through its cause-and-effect influence on all parts of nature, it leads it towards a specific purpose, meaning that we can reveal this goal. And because now a person is no longer a passive element as it was before the present time while evolving inside nature as its still, vegetative, and animate parts, we are now entering a level of conscious development.

Thus, our whole challenge now is to discover the next level of existence. Then we will come to a completely new dimension, to a state where we’ll feel being above time and space; that is, we’ll come in accord with those forces that govern all of matter. We’ll discover them and be able to interact with them.

This is possible only through integrality, when we’ll join nature itself as its integral part, not devouring everything like a cancer, but interacting with it in balance and harmony. And because we’ll be included in nature by our own desire, deliberately, I would even say tenderly, striving to feel all of its hidden plans and forces, our mind will begin to develop now in accordance with the attainments that will be revealed to us. This is the next phase of human development.
[82117]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” 5/25/2012

Related Material:
In Anticipation Of Happiness
Facing A Choice
Nature’s Commandments = the Creator’s Laws

Filed under: Education, Integral Upbringing, Science, Unity - No Comments →

Preparation to the Lesson

Writings of Rabash “Make for Yourself a Rav and Buy Yourself a Friend – 1” (To: “And we should also interpret”) 

The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpts “Beresheet Bet (Genesis 2),” Lesson 134

Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 2, “Histaklut Pnimit,” Item 79, Lesson 24

“Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 26, Lesson 10

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Zohar - No Comments →

Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download: MP3 Audio
[audio:http://files.kabbalahmedia.info/audio/eng_o_rav_2012-07-07_declamation_blog-rav_full.mp3 title=’7.7.12′]

Filed under: Audio Version of the Blog - No Comments →

Our major work is persistence. Do not neglect any moment or the smallest opportunity in which the principle of “I have labored and I found” is based.

A person usually begins to weigh things and to make egoistic calculations, just like in everyday life: Is it worth it to get up and go to work now? And he decides that for 200 dollars he is ready to get up, but for 50 dollars there is no point in getting up and making an effort.

Perhaps from the ego’s perspective this is a right calculation, but if we speak about working in order to bestow, then we have to take into account that our profit is in how much we give, in how much we advance towards the Creator! And here, even one penny can be worth not a penny but billions of dollars. It all depends on how great the one we bestow to is.

So the account should be an account of bestowal and not an account of receiving. In the account of bestowal, the more insignificant and unimportant the work may seem, the more rewarding it can be. This is because our exertion and overcoming the disrespect makes this minor work many times more important.

What seems as minor and unimportant in my egoistic perspective becomes a great opportunity that I receive in return for a little effort, but this is if I switch it all to bestowal. After all everything will be cleared in the thought. I have to make a little effort in order to overcome my doubts; should I deal with something that seems unimportant? But if I do it and start working on what seems to my corporeal eyes as unimportant, I already perform a spiritual action.

So although on the egoistic level it seems that I did something small and unimportant, on the spiritual level it has great value. If I start thinking about to whom I bestow, I will be able to value my profit. The main thing is the Creator’s greatness. My yearning is not to attain Him, but rather His greatness. This reveals Him and allows me to attain revelation.

The difference between the concealment of the Creator and His revelation is determined by one thing only: Do we disrespect Him or do we try to feel His greatness. This is the only thing that changes our vessel and brings us to revelation.
[82139]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/3/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Related Material:
The Kind Of Persistence Needed On The Path
Your Efforts Do Not Vanish Into Thin Air
The Simple Law Of Mutual Guarantee

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Inner Work, My Similarity to the Creator - No Comments →