Audio Version Of The Blog – 08.13.13
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Our problem is that we are “in shackles,” captured in the network that links us, closes us and determines all our values. We just have to dress in a certain way, eat certain food, work as prescribed, behave as accepted, and to adhere to the standard way of thinking.
We do not have our own tastes, but we have those habits that society “spoon-feeds” us. It gives us our beliefs and our actions; it affects us now through its channels, some of which can be neither recognized nor traced. We cannot block them by any protective mechanism that blocks the thoughts and desires of a large environment.
As a result, a person does not know who he is at all. After all, he is placed in the system, programmed and filled with messages that originally have no relationship with it. There is nothing you can do about it; you cannot eliminate or remove them from yourself. Even the desire to escape from these clutches is also implanted in us by this system. It turns out that I have accumulated thoughts and desires that are not mine, and I myself do not exist at all.
Even though I am not free and am “made” by the environment, only the point in the heart, if it emerges in me, gives me the opportunity to build in myself something that doesn’t depend on anything and anyone, something caused by another world.
In my world, I am already “finished,” “prepared.” Here, I will never reach my own feelings, reason, and independent actions. They initially cannot be mine because everything that I have, I have received from another, from the world.
Yet, this “ape” is able to take a different form – the form of the human (Adam), similar (Domeh), to the Creator. If the point has emerged in my heart, I can develop it by my own efforts in a special environment, I can build a completely different world. I create a “bubble” in the middle of our world and develop freely in it if only I realize my freedom of will.
However, I also obey—but obey on my own accord, according to my own decisions—surrendering myself before my new, unique environment with its unique values. This is the only way. I do not own anything.
Accordingly, by accepting the influence of the external environment, I am in “exile.” Conversely, placing myself under the influence of the special environment, I strive to get out of exile and ultimately get rid of the influence of the external “landlord’s” egoistic society.
It is understood from this that the exile for the people of Israel means retreat under the influence of the external wide world and the assimilation of foreign customs, external values, substituting for love of the other as oneself. On the other hand, trying to get out of exile, we build the environment that will be imbued with the values of love and bestowal. This is possible by means of the wisdom of Kabbalah or by means of integral education. Either way, there is only one means: the environment that puts unity above all.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/12/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam
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Question: When we disseminate integral education and turn to the wide public we feel that we are on a mission of the upper force that manages us in concealment. How can we convey to the group our impressions, thoughts and feelings that we experience during the dissemination so that it will become everyone’s property in order to strengthen the group?
Answer: Disseminating integral education is a very important type of work that we now do in factories, offices, schools, prisons, and in organizing various courses. First of all, this type of work brings us closer to the Creator because through it we can feel how much we need His help. This happens as a result of our practical work.
A person who only sits and studies doesn’t advance. The Torah cannot exist without practical actions. If we just sit and do nothing practical, there will be no room for the revelation.
We should understand that in previous generations it was totally different and even a person who had a friend or two he studied with could reach spiritual attainment. But it was different in the past; the desires were different and more pure and so it was possible to reveal the upper force that way.
But today when the Creator gives us such opportunities, we will not be able to reveal anything if we don’t use them. So working in disseminating integral education has become very important and accordingly our whole factory has changed. We don’t even have to think about how to change it actually. The work itself changes people and they feel that they belong to these daily activities more.
It is a very big present from above because the wisdom of Kabbalah is the method of revealing the Creator in this world. This means that the Creator is revealed in the relationships between people: We have to discover the absolute love on the Creator’s part and His good attitude towards all of us on the level of this world. When we discover this attitude, it means that we add the upper world to the picture of this world. It is an ascent up the levels of the upper worlds, the revelation of the network that connects everyone.
The Creator is in the network and He manages everyone, the whole desire, with the force of the good and the benevolent, which is the only thing there is. It is called the true reality that we reach and where we receive answers to all our questions. The world changes and we understand why we feel bodies that are born, live, and die.
There is no other reality, there is nowhere else a person goes to after he dies. When we come closer to the upper providence and bring the Creator and the connection between us into this world, when the upper force becomes clear to us and is among us, all the worlds are revealed to us, all of creation, life and death, all the direct and opposite forms that we see before us now. All this is already revealed and only our perception changes; we change and not the world around us.
So our practical work is the most efficient means in establishing the right attitude to reality. We want to find salvation here, among all the people, which means revealing the Creator to the created beings in this world. This is what we work for; this is the practical wisdom of Kabbalah, and there isn’t a more important kind of work.
We will change according to these demands and the world will look different. I can see it by how much great opportunities have opened up recently for conveying our message. Lately I can say much more. To the extent that we change, our factory will change and our whole attitude to the wisdom of Kabbalah will be more concrete. This means that we have to clarify: Where do we actually reveal the Creator, in which connections between us and in which connections between us and the world?
How can we draw the upper providence into this world? How can we correct a person? How can we overcome the crisis that surrounds us? Then we will discover the world of Ein Sof (Infinity), and discover that we are all under the domination of the good and the benevolent that is revealed, under the domination of love. Thus we implement everything that Kabbalists write about.
If we continue this way you will see that this type of work will help us reveal the upper force
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/07/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Igrot,” Letter 52
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Question: What should we do when we encounter a negative response and an outburst of hatred while disseminating?
Answer: While disseminating to the wide public we have to act as accepted in this world, which means to act as ordinary people do and to turn to the police or the courts in extreme cases. But in most cases, we don’t need to react.
We should understand that these situations were sent from above by the upper providence, but we need to respond to them in the usual way. Although we know it comes from the Creator and that there is none else besides Him, and that he arranges everything, our response should be according to the principle: “If there is no flour, there is no Torah, and if there is no Torah, there is no flour.” So we have to respond on the level of this world and also on the level of the upper world. This means that we have to strengthen the connection among us and by that we will surely neutralize all the hatred and the negative attitude towards us.
After all, we want to reveal the Creator in the connection between us so that He will dwell among us in order to bring Him contentment. Accordingly, He helps us by revealing greater and more numerous enemies to us each time. These are the uncorrected desires that have to be revealed to help us connect more tightly to the Creator.
So we have to accept all the negative responses with understanding. The group has to be prepared for that. At any given moment there are those who fall but there are also those who rise, and so the whole global group generally advances by mutual guarantee. Now we need to build stronger and more loyal relationships connections between all the groups and we will see how it will help everyone.
Analyze all the interruptions and revelations of hatred and decide what to do in each specific case. But the major correction is to remain silent as much as you can, and to connect as strongly as you can to the global group, to the Creator, as to a source of salvation.
Then we will see that all our enemies will suddenly become our fans. It is as if you knock on the door of strangers and at first they don’t want to open the door for you, don’t want to speak to you, and disrespect you. Then you see that you can improve your relations with them, and thus you learn how to relate to the whole world with the same patience.
We should see that the Creator is hiding behind every person, behind every closed door, playing with us. Relate to a person as to a representative of the Creator. The Creator wants you to show empathy now and to speak. If you come with the upper force inside you and see the person in front of you as the representative of the Creator, as help against, everything works out. This is how we will succeed all over the world.
This work is very important, since it forms us. As a result, we will be able to reach a wider public, more people in more countries. We have begun to work in Israel, and here it will be the most difficult because the Israeli nation is the most stubborn. If we learn to work with them, then later the method, the force of correction, will “pour from Israel unto all the other nations.” If we create the source of correction inside the Israeli nation, it will reach the world. We won’t even have to convince anyone; they will be drawn to it instinctively and will connect to us.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/07/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Igrot,” Letter 52
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Opinion (Chris Rhodes, professor, writer, researcher): “The world supply of crude oil isn’t going to run out any time soon, and we will be producing oil for decades to come. However, what we won’t be doing is producing crude oil – petroleum – at the present rate of around 30 billion barrels per year. For a global civilization that is based almost entirely on a plentiful supply of cheap, crude oil, this is going to present some considerable challenges. If we look over a 40 year period, from 1965 to 2005, we see that by the end of it, humanity was using two and a half times as much oil, twice as much coal and three times as much natural gas, as at the start, and overall, around three times as much energy: this for a population that had ‘only’ doubled. …
“If we can’t address the problem from the supply side we have to curb our demand. In the absence of cheap and widely accessible transport we will need to produce far more of our food and materials at the local level. Such a metamorphosis of human civilization from the global to the local, will be underpinned by building strong, resilient communities in which people share their skills and knowledge, to provide as much as possible at the local, grass-roots level. This is the underpinning philosophy of the growing network of Transition Towns. Frightening though all of this is, we may evolve into a happier and more fulfilling state of living than a perceived status quo, that in truth is all too rapidly running through our fingers.
My Comment: Nature is “approaching” us from all sides forcing us to accept its conditions, to calm down, sit down, and think about the meaning of life.
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Question: Could you please tell us about your first encounter with the Light and your experience of exiting from yourself. Please tell us what clarifications and thoughts you had on this day.
Answer: It happened when I was driving to a lesson with my teacher. It was in the pouring raining, a solid sheet of rain. Half way there, my car stalled.
It was two o’clock in the morning in a desolate place with no one around. Who would go out in this kind of weather? I stopped. There was nothing at all I could do. I got out of the car, opened the hood, but it made it even worse, the rain flooded the engine. As it turned out, my carburetor had cracked. Cursing myself and the entire world, I got back into the car and all of a sudden out of all this desperation I sensed the Creator.
Seriously! I am not kidding. It’s a true story. Of course, before and after that situation I experienced various sensations as all of you do. Why do I bring up this example? It’s because this kind of encounter usually happens at a totally unsuitable time and place and it looks like it’s not related to our internal condition.
We go through a process of accumulation that lasts for quite a long time depending on our inspiration, previous state, and numerous other conditions; then it transpires in us. As a rule, it happens without any external commotion. For that, we don’t have to meditate nor do we have to have any specific sensations.
When it’s supposed to happen, it will come. However, you should continue working systematically.
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From the St. Petersburg Convention 7.12.13, Lesson 1
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In our world, words like “bestowal” and “love” are utterly overused. Gradually, they will trigger correct sensations, the right aspirations and essential feelings in us, but at first they confuse us.
In fact, love is an internal mutual fulfillment. It can be presented as elements of a puzzle that have opposite forms, but when they are put next to each other they complement one another and match.
In other words, the desires of one (shown as a red minus) are fulfilled with the actions of the other (a black plus), thus they enter each other and constitute a common picture.
We sense the distances between them (i.e. the states of deficiency, no filling) as affliction (a big minus). And only the appropriate content from the other can fill it.
Basically, we exist in nature already pre-matched to each other, but we differ only in our protrusions and hollows, and now we need to make them fit each other. That’s why “love thy neighbor as thyself” is about filling the desires of the other. For that, we have to realize and sense what exactly the other one wants.
How can we figure that out? If we work together in the same direction and study the materials on one methodology, we begin understanding what exactly each of us needs. Then, we don’t even need to realize what forms exist in the others; we just start aspiring to the same forms and the rest of the work is done by the Light that descends to us from above. That’s why we should take into consideration one more component— the Light that comes to us impacts us and in the end completes our connection. The spiritual methodology makes it feasible to match and complement possibilities of one with possibilities of one’s neighbor by eliciting the Surrounding Light.
This mutual complement is called love or reciprocal bestowal; it’s when one opens his heart and the other fills it. Our common desires are called the heart.
Generally speaking, in nature everything is complete. We don’t have to change the desire, nor should we alter our positive properties. In other words, we naturally possess an opportunity to bestow and chances to receive.
The only thing we need is to match them together in the correct manner, then the Surrounding Light will help us. After we connect, we start demonstrating a mutual quality of receiving and bestowal that in fact is the Creator. As it is said, we make the Creator out of ourselves and our intentions. Thus, we create a Kli, vessel, a place, a correct desire through which this quality will be revealed.
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From the St Petersburg Convention 7/12/13, Lesson 1
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Baal HaSulam “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”: Rabbi Elazar, son of Rashbi (Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yochai), clarifies this concept of Arvut even further. It is not enough for him that all of Israel be responsible for one another, but the whole world is included in that Arvut (Mutual Guarantee). Indeed, there is no dispute here, for everyone admits that to begin with, it is enough to start with one nation for the observance of the Torah for the beginning of the correction of the world. It was impossible to begin with all the nations at once, as they said that the Creator went with the Torah to every nation and tongue, and they did not want to receive it. In other words, they were immersed in the filth of self-love up to their necks, some with adultery, some with robbery and murder and so on, until it was impossible to conceive, in those days, to even ask if they agreed to retire from self-love.
Therefore, the Creator did not find a nation or a tongue qualified to receive the Torah, except for the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whose ancestral merit reflected upon them, as our sages said, “The Patriarchs observed the whole Torah even before it was given.” This means that because of the exaltedness of their souls, they had the ability to attain all the ways of the Creator with respect to the spirituality of the Torah, which stems from their Dvekut, without first needing the ladder of the practical part of the Torah, which they had no possibility of observing at all, as written in “Matan Torah,” Item 16.
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One wishes to complete one’s soul and return it to its root, which is considered Israel.
Baal HaSulam, Letter 17
Following the path that leads to the Creator is called Isra-El (directly to the Creator). It means that the person’s intentions in all their actions should be aimed straight to the Creator.
Rabash, Shlavey HaSulam, Article 20, “Who Strengthened Thy Heart?”
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