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Ask Haman And Do The Opposite

Dr. Michael LaitmanRabash, “And He Shall Cogitate in His Torah (Teachings)”: And so we read in the Megillah “and after all this the king raised Haman.” Literally it is hard to understand, after all, after what Mordecai did, which was good for the king, the king should raise Mordecai and not Haman, and this needs to be explained…

When a person cannot see the true face of his evil, which means the true form of Haman, then a person cannot pray to the Creator, so that He should save him from evil. Only when a person sees the greatness of Haman, who wants to kill and to destroy all the Jews, which means that Haman wanted to destroy everything that belonged to Judaism, which doesn’t let him do anything that is related to Holiness, then he can raise a true prayer. Then the verse “the Creator helps him” is fulfilled.

Only if we yearn for unity like Mordecai who evoked the yearning for unity by discovering the plot against the unity and killing it (two of the king’s courtiers who betrayed him), then Haman is evoked. The evil inclination faces the good inclination, the desire to receive rises facing the desire to bestow, and a struggle between them begins inside a person.

Only by raising and empowering the good force does the evil force grow, and then we raise the good again and evil also grows. This process continues until we reach a state in which we have to make a decision in this struggle. We cannot ask the good inclination, since it doesn’t need anything, it doesn’t want anything, but only to bestow every chance it gets. So we always ask the evil inclination, and then we do the opposite.

This is called working in faith above reason. We know how our desire to receive feels and follow faith above reason. Otherwise we have no way of imagining what the spiritual world is, what it means to be above myself, what it means to bestow. But we know that it is opposite from our egoistic desire to receive, which we know very well.

So when the desire to bestow grows, we have to raise the desire to receive and to ask it what it thinks should be done, and then do the opposite! That’s the way it works.

It is because we don’t see the image of the good; we don’t have an image by which we can resemble the Creator. The only way is to form it as an opposite image of the desire to receive. Therefore we were given an environment that should help us turn the desire to receive, which means the intention to receive into an intention to bestow. This is called “to repent,” to return to the Creator, the rising of Malchut to Bina.

We have no idea what the image of the good is but only that is it the opposite of evil.
[101340]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/25/13

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The Secrets Of Reading The Zohar

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Is it true what people say that when we look at the letters of The Book of Zohar written in Aramaic it automatically connects us to the Light although we don’t understand the language?

Answer: Nothing happens automatically. It can be compared to a baby who is born and lives in this world and who grows because he is taken care of since he annuls himself before the grownups. It is an innate attribute, and, by that, he enables the parents to take care of him. They take care of him, and he grows.

If a person annuls himself during the study while reading The Book of Zohar, he is under the influence and the caretaking of the friends, even if he doesn’t understand and doesn’t feel anything but wants to place himself under the influence of the Lights, the friends, and the major society that deals with it. However, he needs to have that intention. Even if he forgets about it, he still needs to feel that he belongs.

Question: How can we follow the text while reading The Book of Zohar and keep the right intention at the same time?

Answer: The main thing is the intention, and the text is important to the extent that a person can attribute it to the right intention. Gradually, he begins to see the right meaning of the words in it: a “child,” “sages,” Sefirot, Malchut, and Bina. He will see it. Under the influence of the Light that Reforms that operates very slowly, gradually, bit by bit, a person will begin to feel different impressions. He will feel a connection to what he reads.

Question: What should our approach be while reading The Book of Zohar or what should change in it so that the Light will influence us and change us?

Answer: We must connect. A person should feel that he is in a united group like a commando squad, like in one whole that is made of separate parts. He needs to feel it naturally. Otherwise, his intentions are not the right intentions.

So, as he feels the whole reality connected in him, he wants to belong to the Creator together with it, to connect and to adhere to Him. He understands that it happens as a result of his inner change and looks forward to it.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/21/13, The Zohar

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The First Level Of Eternity

Dr. Michael LaitmanBaal HaSulam, “The Freedom”: Therefore, they were certainly liberated from the angel of death, for death is necessarily an absence and negation of the existence of a certain object. But only while there is a spark that wishes to exist for its own pleasure is it possible to say about it that that spark does not exist because it has become absent and died.

However, if there is no such spark in man, but all the sparks of his essence clothe in bestowal of contentment upon their Maker, then it is neither absent nor dead. For even when the body is annulled, it is only annulled with respect to self-gratification, in which the will to receive is dressed and can only exist in it.

However, when he achieves the aim of Creation and the Creator receives pleasure from him, since His will is done, man’s essence, which clothes in His contentment, is granted complete eternity, like Him. Thus, he has been rewarded with freedom from the angel of death.

The desire to receive must only get rid of the intention to receive for itself, but the desire itself is never refined and doesn’t disappear, but acquires the intention of “in order to bestow.” If a person can fulfill this condition internally on its minimal level, on the first degree, if he wants this to happen, then the Light comes to him and illuminates on him, and makes him worthy of the first level called the gathering before Mt. Sinai.

In order to do that, he must accept all the conditions, rise above all the hardening of the heart, all the worries, and all the interruptions that were sent to him in order to attribute everything to the Creator’s dominion, to “there is none else besides Him,” and to decide that He is good and benevolent—to accept all this in faith above reason and to annul everything that belongs to him in order to aspire as much as he can for the Creator.

If a person wishes to detach himself from all his affairs in this world, not because they are unpleasant or threatening as it was during the time of preparation, but rather the opposite—when he can receive all the goodness but still gives it all up and attributes himself to the Creator—then the Light comes and builds the first level of bestowal, of Lishma (for Its Name) in him. This is called the receiving of the Torah since, for the first time, he sees how the Light in it reforms.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/21/13

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Where Are You, Men?

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Mikhail Reshetnikov, Professor, Rector of the East European Institute of Psychoanalysis, St.-Petersburg): “Scientists talk about social issues – the emergence of a new type of men: a hybrid of the spoiled son and a cowboy, fighting for space under the sun. Concern is caused not by their infantilism, but a tendency to be aggressive in the desire to succeed.

“In the former USSR, the state made decisions and did everything instead of people. Since the time when the state has ceased to be the most powerful ‘parent,’ men themselves have to carry the entire burden of establishing their own life. In Western society before the crisis, everything was clear and divided as well.

“But today, upbringing by the family is lost; 50% of households are single parents; parents and educators are replaced by the TV and Internet, which promote aggressive behavior, the desire to win by force and at any cost. Young people do not have a positive image of the future. In the crisis of modern society we have lost a vision of the social ladder – a degree and knowledge do not help break through. And even a greater crisis is ahead!”

My Comment: Only education will help us support young people, to fill them with a good attitude to life and the world, to show values other than material ones, to instill a desire to receive fulfillment from communication, from the revelation of higher existence, with an equal and fair distribution in which there is no room for struggle and competition. Nature has left us opportunities only for this scenario of life. Our success depends on how much we can fit into this model.
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Payment For Being Loyal

Dr. Michael LaitmanRabash, “Revelation and Concealment”: The matter of concealment refers to the fact that a person wants to see and to understand, and does not see or understand. Then we should say that it is concealed from him, what is more, the level of concealment is measured according to his need to know, and so if a person doesn’t need to know something, there is no point in saying that he suffers from concealment.

For example, if a person has to work in a certain place for only half an hour a day and he receives his pay once a month, then he should believe that he will be paid although he has not seen anyone who has already received his pay, so he believes in the company although it is concealed from him as to whether and how the company will pay him, since no one knows the company in which he wishes to work. And if he wants to work more than half an hour, he has a greater need to know that the company pays on time, so if he hears any evil gossip about the company, he suffers more because of the concealment, and if he wants to work day and night, of course he feels greater concealment, since he has a greater need to know, whether he will receive his pay as promised.

And since the Kingdom of Heaven is above reason, everyone suffers from the concealment, but those who want to work for the sake of Heaven, have the greatest concealment, since they have the greatest need to know, since the body asks over and over again “What is this work that you do.” It turns out that this question is constantly ready, according to what a person wants to be totally for the sake of Heaven, and the answer to this question is “blunt his teeth.”

We should accept the fact that we never see the payment in advance. On the contrary, as we advance, we see opposite pictures, that there is no payment and that there will not be any. All this is in order to raise us above reason.

The less we know and understand, the less sure we are, and the less proof we have, the more chances it gives to build a network of support and confidence above reason. Then this confidence is revealed not in our vessels of receiving, but only in bestowal, above reason, without any proof, since “in Him our hearts shall rejoice.” This means that not in us, not in our ego, but Above, in the Creator or in the group, in the connection in which we discover the upper force.

So no one is going to receive any actual payment. Whoever doesn’t accept this can leave right away and look for pay in the ordinary corporeal life. In the spiritual life, however, the payment is in giving it up, in the feeling of importance of whom I am working for.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/24/13

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The Last 50th Gate

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe same process repeats on every level. Symbolic of this are the holidays that repeat every year, every new cycle. All this is revealed according to the Reshimot (spiritual genes) relative to those who receive, who clarify their Lights, sparks, and vessels and so go through these phases. So a person goes through 49 “gates of impurity” and reaches the 50th gate of Bina. Then everything that seemed terrible to him changes. The upper level seemed impossible to reach and awful, but he is ready to accept it above reason in every way possible

Thus, by his efforts he goes through the 49 gates, and each time it seems that he cannot go through, but he somehow overcomes the obstacle and passes. The 50th gate stops him, he cannot go through it, and then a prayer is born in him which helps him do that.

Esther symbolizes the double concealment of both the vessels of receiving and the vessels of bestowal. The corrections that Mordecai made all seem to lead to an opposite result which is meant to be of the special Light “Mor –Dror ” (pure myrrh). Thus we reach Purim in which the worst state of helplessness is revealed, but we try to attribute it to the Creator and are ready to work in bestowal, above the worst states, in order to flip them by rising above them and by revealing the opposite state. The Light dresses in all that and then the help from Above is revealed.

We should understand that it all depends on a person, while there is no action on the part of the upper. All the upper system already exists, but we awaken it: PartzufimAbbaImaArich Anpin, by raising our prayer, MAN, to ZON of Atzilut.

And when there is an “awakening from Above,” it is only if it is its turn in the cycle of our mutual actions according to our awakening below.
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From the 1st part the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/21/13Writings of Baal HaSulam

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We Cannot Do Without Assistants

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Suppose a few friends organized a business and they had a conflict; the friendship had already fallen apart and the business interests are falling apart. At this point, how can we help them reach an agreement or can they do this themselves?

Answer: I think that people cannot agree among themselves. In order to agree, they have to rise above their nature, but they do not know how to do this.

That is why they need a kind of “referee,” a specialist who teaches them and directs them at correct integral combination.
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From KabTV’s “Professional Secrets” 2/8/13

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Educating A Business Owner

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Suppose a business owner hired a CEO to manage his company. The CEO is a qualified manager, a specialist, but the business owner constantly interferes with his work, monitors and controls him, thereby preventing him from managing. It turns out that this person is not able to perform his duties. What can he do in this situation?

Answer: It’s necessary to invite the business owner to a team meeting. “We don’t seem to be able to solve a problem and ask that you take part in today’s meeting; it’s very important to us. We need your opinion.” Thus, you pull him into the team, make him your partner in decision making so that he doesn’t command you, dictate what to do, but listens to you and joins the team.

A team has to be closely knit. Employees must create such an environment between themselves in which he will not be able to shout but will have to show himself as an agreeable, decent man, as their teammate. He literally falls under their spell: he will sit with them at the shared table, will take the same sandwiches and cup of tea, and will be simple in his communication, maintaining a conversation in the same tone like everyone else. Thus, he will be drawn into a kind warm relationship with everyone else.
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From KabTV’s “Professional Secrets” 2/8/13

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