Audio Version Of The Blog – 04.02.13

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Weekly Torah Portion – 04.02.13

The Book of Zohar, Weekly Torah Portion, “HaShavuah” Selected Excerpts

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Drops Of Luck

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: It’s already absolutely clear to us that there is the Creator behind a friend’s spiritual desire. But that thought constantly escapes to the side. You think, “I give and give, when am I going to get something out of this?” On the other hand, the game is rigged, and all the states were prearranged: the taking of Moses out of the river, Nachshon leaping into the water, the taking of the last stone from the Tower of Babel…Apparently there is some kind of leverage that makes it possible for us to be accommodated to a state. You once said that it’s possible to learn for years and make an effort to connect, but there is luck to everything. What is “luck” in spirituality and how does one get it?

Answer: Luck comes to a person on condition that he is ready to participate in the “game.” It’s as if I go to a casino, and there on zero, on the red…I don’t give up, I believe in luck and really insist: luck must come. I involve my associates, friends, and my teacher, that they will direct us more precisely. We must include the wise Kabbalists who have brought us to this path. They already ran the game well, correctly, sensibly, and effectively. In addition, we involve the Creator: If we do everything right, then we can receive help from Him and get a “good luck sign” from Him. It be reached only in this way.

Our luck is that we were already chosen for a special role: to lead the world to correction. If we accept this “card” and are ready to play it, we already have something in our hand. On the other hand, we must also take the second “card,” meaning the group and the teacher, with whom together we arrange the general rules of the game.

And if we organize everything correctly, then we have someone to play with, with the upper force, with the Creator. And then luck comes: The upper Light “drips” on us in drops. It doesn’t flow, rather it drips, and even though these drops descend intermittently, ultimately they correct and connect us, shape us in a form such that the Creator will be revealed among us.

This is called “luck.” To be lucky means to be ready to work, receiving the drops of Light and not being desperate in the intervals between them, being in a negative and a positive state, in the dark and in the Light, and correcting ourselves so that the trickle of “luck” will become a strong current.

Here everything depends on desires, on our Kelim. “Luck” comes to person if he is ready to accept these drops without complaint and to continue on the path, while the interruptions between have not let them become “mighty waters.” Not everyone is ready to stand in this. Someone who is ready, he has “luck”…

Question: In other words, not everyone is able to nullify himself?

Answer: Indeed, not everyone. As it is written, “A thousand enter a room, and one comes out to teach.” As is understood, this is not talking about one person in a thousand. Generally, attaining the method is already a big step forward. In the words of Baal HaSulam, even if people come in contact with the method even once, their reward is very great, and they are raised and separated from the rest of humanity.

And in spite of all this, many fall on the way. Upon what does this depend? On that same “luck”…

Question: But everything that is in me is formed by the Creator. Where is the turning point, where the one who is working is not Him, rather it’s me?

Answer: The turning point is in this: The person needs to pass from his relationship to the Creator and the studies, from himself to his friends. This is the point. If he is prepared to bend himself, and not be broken, if he is ready to persist and not abandon the path while discovering true hatred, then he attains great changes.

In general people break at this point: They are ready for everything, except to nullify themselves towards the friends. Calculations begin, excuses: family, children, daily life, spiritual pride…in brief there are many problems, but this is precisely the test, the Creator can’t help here.

One way or another, the result is not known from the start, the fate of the person is not recorded from the start. Will he be ready to bend himself? It’s necessary to work to be absolutely nullified to the teacher and the group. It’s specifically here that “luck” is needed…
[103748]
From the Talk during a Festive Meal 3/27/13

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The Euro Is Doomed

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Lars Seier Christensen, co-chief executive officer of Saxo Bank): “There’s a lot of political capital invested in the euro. It is very much a political project rather than an economic project. But at the end of the day, I believe that the challenges are so great that something has to give. And unfortunately, reality has a way in the end of reinforcing itself over policies, and I think that’s exactly what’s going to happen here.”

“’… The euro’s recent rally is illusory and the shared currency is set to fail because the continent hasn’t supported it with a fiscal union.

“‘The whole thing is doomed,’ Christensen said in an interview at the bank’s Dubai office. ‘Right now we’re in one of those fake solutions where people think that the problem is contained or being addressed, which it isn’t at all’” (Source: Bloomberg).

My Comment: I don’t feel like gloating with respect to this issue, but feel only pain when just 20 years ago, on a trip to the French Atlantic coast, I saw big campaign trucks everywhere that had cards and literature about the importance and profitability of the European Union. And I was saying to my companions how impossible it all was because the economy is the CONNECTION between us, and if it is between egoists, then it would not lead to anything good. That is, a human being has to be corrected first. Today, we have come to this result.
[103518]

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Long Live Freedom!

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: As a rule, the people of Israel were hated and expelled from various countries. However it’s the contrary in Egypt, the people of Israel seemed to be pulled into it.

Answer: We were driven from country to country as long as we didn’t have the desire to exit egoism. After all, we get free only when we want to get out of it in order to unite. That’s why during the entire period of exile, we just collected, added, and accumulated misery and misfortunes.

Today we have reached such a state that we just must realize ourselves, meaning to unite. This is the action that is necessary for the ascent above egoism. Then we will come to freedom, to the land of Israel. Today, we can’t imagine the state where you don’t depend on anyone, are not afraid of anyone, nothing oppresses you, and you feel freedom in the full sense of the word.
[103823]
From KabTV’s “Kabbalists Write: The Night of Passover Seder” 3/4/13

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Let’s Change Our Life

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: There is a resemblance between Moses and the state of the Israeli nation today. Moses doesn’t feel secure with regard to the Israeli nation or to Pharaoh, although he is in contact with the Creator. The current state of the Israeli nation is also quite insecure.

Answer: It doesn’t matter. If there is a specific direction, if we understand that we have no choice, then despite the conditions that force us to escape from Egypt and to jump into the Red Sea, we do what we have to do.

Question: But you say that the modern Israeli nation doesn’t feel that it’s in Egypt. Perhaps a certain force should appear or someone who can explain things and start this process?

Answer: This is exactly what we are trying to do. Our group, our organization, wants to show the whole nation of Israel that there is a way to be saved. Let’s change our life! After all, things are constantly getting worse; the world is becoming more and more hostile, and the Israeli society is disintegrated and divided. Our security is in an increasingly growing danger.

But the blows that we feel don’t come upon the “nation of Israel,” but upon “Egypt,” upon our ego, since we don’t want to exit it. Israel in us, the desire to bestow that wants to come out of exile and to ascend, doesn’t feel the blows. When we are in the ego, it feels the pain, but the moment we leave it, we become disconnected from the “plagues.”

Question: What should we do in order to stop falling into the ego?

Answer: The only thing we should do is to unite. We have the method of connecting for the whole nation of Israel, and it’s the means to be free of all our troubles.
[103732]
From KabTV’s “Kabbalists Write: The Night of Passover Seder” 3/4/13

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On The Right Track Thanks To Pharaoh

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Is there an exodus from Egypt by force?

Answer: Of course, everything happens forcefully. Without the Creator’s “plagues” and without the pressure from Pharaoh we wouldn’t come out of Egypt. As it says, it’s actually Pharaoh who brought the children of Israel closer to the Creator, when He provided the unbearable conditions for them. Did He think that they wouldn’t run from Him, but that they would actually love Him?

If Pharaoh operated on the Creator’s side, as the Creator’s force, if the Creator didn’t force the ego to be the source of all our troubles, we wouldn’t try to break free from it. The Creator creates the difficulties for us so that we, while wanting to exit our ego, will become like Him. Therefore it says that Pharaoh brought the children of Israel closer to our Father in Heaven. The Creator always operates in concealment.

When the people of Israel escape from Egypt, Pharaoh follows them and surrounds them sending them into the sea. The chase helps the people of Israel advance in the right direction. Even when you escape the ego, you are not totally free from it unless you jump into the Red Sea. Then all of Pharaoh’s army that has been chasing you drowns in it.

Jumping into the Red Sea is the final phase in the process of the exit from exile. The name the Red Sea, Yam Suf (Suf-Sof – meaning end in Hebrew) actually indicates that that you have reached the end of Egypt. Then Pharaoh returns but in another form; it isn’t Pharaoh anymore, but Amalek and other foes.
[103730]
From KabTV’s “Kabbalists Write: The Night of Passover Seder” 3/4/13

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A World Woven From Waves Of Light

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: The world is portrayed to us as it is now through our senses. But as we advance spiritually, it gradually dissolves. How does this happen?

Answer: It’s very simple. To date many scientific articles have been written on this subject.

We feel everything within us. The upper Light constructs these feelings in us. The physical or spiritual waves (it makes no difference what they are called since they all have the same nature) perform certain actions upon us, and we sense them. It follows that everything that we feel depends upon our Kelim (vessels), our senses.

If our senses are on the most minimal level, in them we feel different ranges, objects, and events, which we call our world. But if the senses are expanded, instead of these volumes we begin to feel additional ranges that engulf the present ones. Ultimately everything dissolves, everything disappears into the waves.

Baal HaSulam presents a very simple example. If we cool water, it transforms into ice, which is to say that from a liquid state it passes to a solid state. If we heat water, it evaporates; it transforms into vapor, into a mist. But this is the same entity that was once in a liquid or solid state and now has transformed into a gaseous state. That is, everything changes relative to us.

If we had other senses, then, for example, we might feel the air as if it were concrete, like an insurmountable obstacle. It follows that it is our senses that portray the world as it is for us.

Read what scientists have written about the perception of reality. After Einstein there was Everett and other great physicists who have written that everything is perceived relative to the observer, and this has been proven experimentally.

Therefore, if our senses change, even matter becomes something else. It is only a wave of light. Whereas we need to be involved with the aspiration for the Creator, for this force, since its discovery is what makes all the changes in us.
[103811]
From the European Convention in Germany 3/23/13, Lesson 3

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 04.02.13

Preparation to the Lesson

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Writings of Rabash, “Article 15”

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The Book of ZoharSelected Excerpt, “Va’Etchanan (A Plea),” Item 87, Lesson 6

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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Vol. 3, Part 10, Lesson 23

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Writings of Rabash, “Article 13,” Lesson 1

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