Audio Version Of The Blog – 07.16.13

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Inversion That Changes The Perception Of The World

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can we advance spiritually if we constantly have material pressure and the pressure of a consumer society?

Answer: Who gives you this? It is the upper force, the unified force of nature that controls everything and fills in all the twists and turns in our common destiny.

There are moments when you forget about this and try to blame someone else instead of the Creator. Society is not to blame. He alone is to blame. However, how can we blame Him? How can the upper force that is in a state of absolute love and bestowal be bad? The fact is that you perceive it in this way because your egoistic intention inverts it. So, you perceive the entire surrounding world as bad.

Actually, the entire world around us is infinite kindness and love. Change your intention and there will be no problems in anything.

On the other hand, we must give thanks for the problems that we have because they show you precisely what you need to change.
[112142]
From the Convention in St. Petersburg 7/11/13, “Preparatory Lesson”

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A Creation That Was Created By The Power Of Love

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe should expect the attainment of the end of correction in the convention, in order to bring the whole world contentment from the bottom of our heart and soul, in endless absolute love!

Question: But if I come to the convention with great expectations to succeed, I ignite my desire to receive and it begins to work in the opposite direction, how can I overcome that?

Answer: It’s true that our desire to receive works in the opposite direction. We want to enjoy, to receive pleasure in our desire to receive. Receiving pleasure and enjoying is the goal of creation! This is why the Creator has created the desire to receive.

If we look at creation from the side, not from this world and not from the spiritual world, we will see that there is a desire to receive in it that was created and formed in such a way that it can only enjoy love. It was made by the power of love! Therefore it cannot enjoy anything else. Even if it is one percent of love, it will enjoy that one percent at least, but not anything else.

We also perceive a bit of this desire, of this pleasure, in our world, when we grow like little animals. Our parents, our society, let us feel some of that love, and to a certain extent we are surrounded by such love.

You have to feel love and to discover it in order to enjoy it. You have to open yourself to this love. This means that in order to do that, you have to love! Love cannot be one sided. This only exists in the corporeal world. Spiritual love is mutual love, when both sides are incorporated in each other, in each other’s desires. Filling each other’s desires is called loving.

So there is no other choice but to attain the state in which you fill the other. By that you develop yourself in order to discover and to feel this love. Opening your vessel before someone means to love someone. If thanks to this love you open your vessel before someone, you receive this love inside it. It means that you are filled with the Direct Light that is dressed in the Returning Light.
[111475]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/03/13, Writings of Rabash

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The Concentration Of Intention

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What is the most important day of the convention? At what moment should our efforts be maximized?

Answer: The most important thing for me, you, and you and me is to find a common current between us so it grows into contact between everyone, so this common desire floats and begins to gather a greater concentration of desires, thoughts, and intentions, so all of this begins to live between us, not in each of us, but between us. And everyone will begin to treasure and care about it because we will start feeling our real existence in this “crimson ball.”

It depends on how you get together, strive for unity, value it, and are afraid to lose it from your senses. Then it will accompany us all the time; we’ll carry it all the time.

That is why I cannot say when it will start; I already have this feeling and am trying to pass it to you. Create, treasure, keep all this, and include all the friends in it.
[112132]
From the Convention in St. Petersburg 7/11/13, “Preparatory Lesson”

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Awakening An Appetite For The Convention

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: In our world, there are a multitude of deficiencies (desires) and we are constantly looking for how to fulfill them. And it is in the spiritual world that they are all fulfilled, but it is up to us to find the deficiency for them. So, how can I create a deficiency for the convention to get fulfillment from it?

Answer: You need to describe the fulfillment to yourself, what kind of pleasure (fulfillment) there is for which I need to design a deficiency now. This requires work.

In our world, everything is constructed so that we will advance. You get a deficiency that forces you to run after its fulfillment, but the moment that the fulfillment touches the deficiency, the deficiency immediately disappears, and this awakens a new deficiency in us. Everything is constructed this way in order to bring you to the path of suffering (Beito), the growth of the ego.

Every time, a greater and greater ego is awakened in you, making you run after its pleasure. You meet this and your deficiency disappears; so it goes, again and again. So, the ego is growing more and more; it is a natural developmental process.

There is also pleasure in the spiritual world. We are found in a sea of Light, but we cannot approach this sea of Light with our egoistic Kli (vessel), desire. This is because the moment that the egoistic Kli touches the Light, the Kli disappears. So, we require a Kli of bestowal to be in contact with the sea of Light and to be fulfilled by it. We are included in it because our desires become like the Light.

The Kli and the Light become included in each other. That is how you enter into the spiritual world. The entire sea transforms into Surrounding Light, and what enters into your Kli transforms into your inner Light. You are found in the same state in both the physical world and the spiritual world.

The difference is that in the physical world, your deficiency disappears immediately the moment that it contacts the Light, like in a short circuit. Because your Kli is the opposite of the Light, it is annihilated immediately when it encounters this, and in the spiritual world, your deficiency is like the Light so that you can advance and develop it.

So, in order to advance spiritually, we must describe the expected pleasure and understand what the appropriate deficiency for it is. Even in corporeality we do the same thing. We dream about the expected pleasure in the future and stimulate ourselves. From the start, we form within us a deficiency in just the same way that we would excite our appetite before going to a feast.

That is exactly what needs to be done regarding a convention. Think about what you want to get from this, what kind of fulfillment, what attainments, and what kind of effort all of us want to make there, how to be included with everyone and receive help from everyone. This complex is the confluence of a lot of pain, tension, and mighty efforts by thousands of people throughout the world.

At the time of the convention, all of our friends in the world will be gathered in order to participate together with us. Also, at the convention there is much work to be done nonstop, day and night. Everyone is looking forward to this convention with great hope that we will succeed in connecting and ultimately feeling this mutual connection and within this connection, discovering the characteristic of mutual bestowal, and in that, at least a little, we will succeed in feeling the Creator.
[111449]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/3/13, Writings of Rabash

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Go Along With Everyone Or You Will Get Another Round

Dr. Michael LaitmanA person has no right to cut himself off from society and ask only for himself, even if he has the best intention to bring contentment to the Creator. By a private prayer or by crying alone, we don’t help in any way, but only harm ourselves and others.

Now, imagine how many corruptions we have caused during exile. Everything was in order to discover our evil and understand that correction is only possible by connection. Exile was necessary in order to find out where the place of correction is and to advance from an individual prayer to the prayer of many.

Every desire in the heart is called a prayer. A prayer is the work in the heart. If every request went through society, it would be accepted. We already would be in a totally different state, in absolute rest and abundance. However, because our requests—all the desires a person feels, as well as those he doesn’t feel—don’t go through the connection between us, they harm us, and they first harm the one who makes the request.

We should understand how serious the situation is since we all are connected by one network that now is being revealed in the world as the one, connected, integral system. In this state, we clearly see that we cannot break free of this system and that we must be part of it. The time that was allocated for the recognition of evil is over. From now on, we will get to know evil by blows on different levels or by starting to act according to the network that is revealed between us.

A person should picture this very clearly and as a very serious caution, we mustn’t ask by ourselves, although we really feel like it! It is our evil inclination that is opposite from the Creator. The ego is our desire to attain the Creator but in order to rule by ourselves.

The desire, “I will rule,” is not aimed against the Creator, but against society, against the group. The evil inclination is our desire to turn to the Creator by ourselves and ask for our personal success. We all have this desire. We are ready to pray, to ask, to recognize the power of the upper, to recognize His domination over us, but the entire problem of the exile in Egypt is that each one begins to feel that he is detached from others.

This is the sin of the sons of Jacob, the reason for their hatred toward their younger brother Joseph. Joseph wanted to collect all the brothers together and connect them, but they wanted to remain separate. They didn’t understand that there must be a middle line, connection, and so they had to enter the exile in Egypt and by the path of suffering discover the need for brotherly connection.

Only after they had recognized evil, after long years of exile, were they rewarded with receiving the Torah. This was the entire purpose for the round they made in exile in Egypt.

The entire process of evolution in the upper worlds and in our world, the whole game, is only about connection. So, I am very happy that today we already can speak about that, and understand the need for it and feel this issue closely.
[111963]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/5/13, Writings of Rabash

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Tailwind Of Interruptions

Dr. Michael LaitmanA person may have a special soul that awakens him all the time and forces him to continue working despite the hardening of the heart and the confusions. But if he doesn’t have that, the only option he has to remain on the right track is the right environment that doesn’t let him escape and forces him to be equipped with the tools that will help him return to the right kind of life.

A person has no chance of advancing and has no power to respond correctly every moment to the interruptions that come along, if he doesn’t have the proper preparation, the habit of working internally, and the connection with the environment that guards the connection between a person and the sources, the teacher, and the group. And then it turns out that a person doesn’t pay attention to the interruptions at all or that he is drawn into them.

In the first case, he is not sensitive enough, so he lowers his sensitivity threshold in order to avoid the strong influence of the interruptions. In this case he doesn’t advance. His life becomes more peaceful and quiet and instead of encountering interruptions ten times an hour, for example, he feels interruptions several times a day and that’s all. His pace of advancement is determined accordingly, which means that he holds himself back on purpose. But if he feels the interruptions and tries to fight them, blaming himself and his environment, the teacher and the spiritual path in general, he might divert from it and leave everything; it is that serious.

It’s very hard to keep and to accept all the awakening conditions as desirable and as sent by the Creator as “there is none else but Him.” These are the best conditions for our advancement and the only question is how to respond to them correctly, to accept them correctly, and to be grateful for them in order to advance towards the goal.

We need to study intensively and patiently, and to prepare for constant transitions from one state to another. The main thing is our submission, the ability to understand that all the hardships that come along are the right interruptions along the way. Every person in the world receives such interruptions and clarifies whether he should advance by these interruptions or not and in which direction.

Some people determine a certain attitude at the beginning of the way, which is either right or wrong with regard to the group, the teacher, and the books. Others have to clarify this anew each time and can change. This is how they advance.
[111849]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/07/13, Writings of Rabash

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Why Advertising Works

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from EurekAlert!): “Researchers at Duke University who study how the brain values things – a field called neuroeconomics – have found that your feelings about something and the value you put on it are calculated similarly in a specific area of the brain. …

“Now, after a series of experiments in which subjects were asked to modify how they felt about something either positively or negatively, the Duke group is arguing that emotional and economic calculations are more closely related than brain scientists had realized.

“’This changes our frame of reference for thinking about these things,’ Huettel said. He said advertisers have long been using emotional appeals to get people to value their products, ‘but they didn’t know why it worked.’ …

“’It’s not the case that you never want to reappraise a positive emotion,’ said Huettel. But when buying a house or a car, it’s a good idea to dampen your infatuation down a bit, he added.”

My Comment: Time does its thing: Personal egoism came into conflict with the integral forces of nature, and people lose their desire to work for clothes and impress others. And others will find brands ridiculous. We will slide down against our will or rationally accept ease and convenience as style. And our desires will direct us at the invisible goal – the meaning of this life
[111938]

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Transforming Ourselves

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe are advancing on two legs: left and right. Our job is to constantly take a step with the right foot. This is what it says everywhere; according to Jewish laws, moral laws, in the Torah, everything always starts with the right side. This is why Hebrew is written from right to left.

The right line means that I try to do everything perfectly, in bestowal, above myself, in contrast to what I identify as my nature, above what I see, feel, and understand, above my reason.

The next spiritual level that I yearn to be on is not attained by the same method that is accepted in the corporeal world in which we constantly accumulate knowledge, information, power, and intelligence, in which we study and acquire academic degrees. This is how we acquire the next levels in this world that is based on the desire to receive where we must constantly add more and more.

The spiritual level, however, is built on oppositeness. We study that the Malchut of the upper becomes Keter of the lower and Keter of the lower which is its upper Sefira becomes the lowest Sefira of the upper, its Malchut. They are opposite from one another.

So our work is to become the opposite of what we are. Therefore the more we try to be above what is in our current emotions and our mind, the closer we get to the next level, the next phase.

Here we discern that the moment we try to ascend above our nature: from receiving to bestowal, from our logic to the logic of the upper, the moment we exert ourselves, we are immediately given problems and failures. It is because our corporeal egoistic emotions and mind are enlarged so that we should rise to the same height, to the same level of the upper level compared to the current level.

But because we cannot immediately leap to the next level in our corporeal emotions and mind and place a Masach (screen) and the Returning Light over it and turn it to in order to bestow, we do it gradually, bit by bit, until “many pennies add up to a big account.”
[112043]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/01/13, Shamati #72 “Confidence Is the Clothing for the Light

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Who Is The Donkey Driver?

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Book of Zohar, Introduction, “The Donkey Driver,” Paragraph 85: Rabbi Elazar and Rabbi Aba dismounted from their donkeys and kissed him. They said, “So great is your wisdom, and yet you drive donkeys behind us! Who are you, then?” He replied to them: “Do not ask me who I am, but let us go on and study the Torah. Each of us will speak his wisdom so as to illuminate our path.

The donkey driver is the “Surrounding Light,” the Light that Reforms. What is the difference between it and the Light that is discovered later? The Surrounding Light becomes “Inner Light.” When it is discovered, then it will be clear that this is, for example, the Light of Yechida, and until then we don’t know what level we are approaching, who our guide is.

The donkey driver is that Surrounding Light that takes us across the density of our desire of our “donkeys” from level to level.
[111843]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/23/13, The Zohar

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