Audio Version Of The Blog – 08.16.13
Posted on August 16th, 2013
Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download: MP3 Audio
[audio:http://files.kabbalahmedia.info/audio/eng_o_rav_2013-08-16_declamation_blog-rav_full.mp3 title=’16.8.13′]
Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download: MP3 Audio
[audio:http://files.kabbalahmedia.info/audio/eng_o_rav_2013-08-16_declamation_blog-rav_full.mp3 title=’16.8.13′]
The problem is that a person is satisfied with what he has gained. He reaches a certain condition and feels that he has succeeded in something, understood and felt something. And then he wants to develop the same degree: to become smarter in it, to understand and feel more. He begins to expand in the same state as if “in width,” to seek out some quotes pertaining to that level which he has now achieved in his heart and mind.
He delves into this state and wants to stay in it. It’s as if he wants to remain a primary school teacher, grades 1-5, working on the same level all the time, but increasingly going deeper into the material and improving his skills. But is it good or is it still worthwhile to become a secondary school teacher, grade 6 and higher?
If he starts to rise there, then there are things that he needs to study, to understand. Then the problems start, headaches and pressure. This is how the egoistic force (Klipa) acts, which allows us to work: “Please, work in the state in which you are now. Just don’t go forward, don’t climb higher!”
In order to ascend higher, you need the upper force. Either it will awaken and pull you, or you will be attracted to the group. But it’s known that “He, who adds knowledge, adds suffering.” That is why it is so difficult to advance and the forces that restrain us are called the “shell” (Klipot). Klipa promises a sweet life and coaxes us: “Stay with me! I will cover you and you will feel warm, cozy, and calm.” And you relax, relying on these promises and you are finished.
That is the problem. If the Klipa had shown its true face, if you had seen how it stops you, not allowing you to gain attainment, huge fulfillment, then you would have fought against it. But the whole problem is that it calms you, and in a fraction of a moment catches you and sucks fulfillment out of you. And it works because of its sweetness that you feel by being a bit relaxed or dozing off in the classroom…This is standard work of Klipa.
[114573]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/12/13, The Book of Zohar – Introduction
Related Material:
A Shadow Over The World
Today’s Environment Is Tomorrow’s Me
Checking The Connection With The Group
The environment is designed to pull us out of the grasping hands of the impure forces (Klipot). After all, we cannot escape them by our own forces and will always remain in their sweet captivity. Only to the extent of my connection with the group that evokes me, inspires, and pushes me, can I choose to move forward with the group instead of relaxing in the warm company of my Klipot.
From where does the group take force to influence me more than the force of Klipa? The fact is that the group acts on the same egoism of mine that the Klipa does. If the group persuades me that the goal is great, that this is the dream of our life, then it’s not even important to my egoism whether the goal is spiritual or material. If everyone around me insists that it’s important, then I will have forces to fight against my laziness.
We get this great help as a result of the breaking of desires. Thanks to this, I can play with my egoism, with my stony heart, with the help of the environment. Friends can pull me anywhere, even lead me to death, and I will gladly go with them.
If the environment knows how to affect me, I will be ready for anything. But the challenge is to ensure that our environment affects us only to the extent to which I allow it, giving myself to it! I pay the group for this special influence; I become integrated with the friends. Otherwise, the group will have no effect on me.
This is no ordinary society because I can be in the group and not feel any of its effects. We see these examples when a person studies with us for 15 years and doesn’t fall under the influence of the society because he doesn’t want to bow his head before others.
But here I have freedom of choice: If I bow to the group and join it, then to that extent it will begin to affect me. Thus, in this group I get the opportunity for free development. All this ultimately happens because of me! I have cancelled myself and thus the environment influences me, and I enter the spiritual world. I myself reach the spiritual world, having used the environment of my own accord.
At the same time, entering normal society, a person falls entirely under its influence, and nothing depends on him; the environment affects him and directs everything. In a Kabbalistic group, I have to cancel myself before the environment every second.
[114567]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/12/13, The Book of Zohar – Introduction
Related Material:
Today’s Environment Is Tomorrow’s Me
A Shadow Over The World
Tell Me How You See The Group And I’ll Tell You Who You Are
Baal HaSulam, “Exile and Redemption”: As long as we (the Israeli nation) followed the path of Torah, we remained safe.
The Torah is the law of bestowal, “don’t do unto your friend what is hateful to you,” and then “love thy friend as thyself” until we reach “love thy Lord your God.” If you really yearn for the goal in all these phases, if you value your life only according to these principles and advance from the minor corrections to the general correction, if you act this way according to the laws of nature (or the laws of the Torah, as the word God and the word nature have the same numerical value), then you are in the right direction and nothing bad can happen to you on the way.
All the evil that you encounter is revealed to you only because you have not corrected a certain flaw that you should have corrected in the current phase. These flaws are revealed one after another from the minor to the more serious ones and if you don’t correct them they accumulate.
Since these processes are also typical to the systems in our world, minor corruptions or an illness can be corrected immediately in the initial phase, but if we neglect the problem the corruptions accumulate and bring about additional corruptions and greater problems and troubles that are hard to overcome.
So if the people of Israel observed the Torah, which means that the Light that Reforms would correct all the flaws that are revealed from the minor ones to the most serious ones, then nothing bad would happen to it. On the contrary, it would rise and grow stronger; it would feel the future corrections and the future fillings in the flaws that are revealed.
All the evil that we encounter is revealed since we neglect the necessary corrections. All our problems starting from the private ones and all the way to global disasters like world wars depend only on the corrections. Since the Israeli nation is responsible for these corrections, then clearly the moment people feel bad in this world they accuse the Jews and blame them for all the troubles in the world.
[114488]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/13/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam
Related Material:
A Valve That Blocks The Major Artery
Either Mutual Guarantee Or Self Love, There Is No Third Option
Jacob’s Secret Is Revealed In Our Days
The main thing that we lack in order to succeed in our work is focusing our attention on the inner spiritual success, which means on the revelation of the Creator, rather than on external corporeal success. The revelation of the Creator should be our only goal, and all our work, dissemination, study and efforts at any given moment should become the means for attaining this goal.
It shouldn’t be the opposite! We don’t pray to the Creator that we should succeed in our dissemination or in our life. This is how all the religions operate when they turn to the Creator so that He will help a person in his corporeal life and fix things for him. We do the opposite: All we need in life is to succeed in one thing: in the revelation of the Creator, to connect to Him, and to feel that we bring Him contentment by doing so.
In the meantime, we lack this pure intention in all our actions. Even if it is artificial and doesn’t suit our mood and our feelings, still from Lo Lishma (not for its sake) we arrive at Lishma (for its sake). So in the meantime we express this desire only externally and look for the right words to express our intentions.
Although these intentions are not real yet and don’t come from inside, we want them to come from the bottom of our heart. We operate like small children who repeat the actions of the group without understanding anything. This penetrates us gradually until it becomes second nature and then we begin to feel the meaning of the words.
We can draw the Light that Reforms that will turn from the Surrounding Light into Inner Light even with desires that are not real at the moment. The structure of the spiritual ladder and the relationships between the spiritual Partzufim enable us to do that. Everything is intentionally ready so that we can evoke the action of the Light upon ourselves although we are not in the spiritual world yet.
So let’s first of all add the right intention to the great efforts that we make in our external actions. As it says “a Mitzvah without an intention is like a body without a soul.” If we want to perform a Mitzvah, which means a commandment from the Creator to adhere to Him, then we have to turn every action that we perform into a “sacrifice” – Korban (same root as “getting closer” – mitkarev in Hebrew).
The voice of the Creator will be revealed to us between the two angels, which are the two forces, the left and the right, receiving and bestowal, we will hear Him between the angels (as Moses did). We can do that if we work with our powers correctly: focusing on the intention of revealing the Creator in order to bring Him contentment in every action that we make, like a beloved person.
[114473]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/09/13, Writings of Rabash
Related Material:
Not For The Sake Of Success In This World
Helping The World Reveal The Creator
The Joy Of Returning To The Family Home
In the News (from The Sydney Morning Herald): “Not only are false, or mistaken, memories common in normal life, but researchers have found it relatively easy to generate false memories of words and images in human subjects. …
“Now scientists at the Riken-MIT Centre for Neural Circuit Genetics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say they have created a false memory in a mouse, providing detailed clues to how such memories may form in human brains.
“Steve Ramirez, Xu Liu and other scientists, led by Susumu Tonegawa, reported on Thursday in the journal Science that they caused mice to remember being shocked in one location, when in reality the electric shock was delivered in a completely different location.
“At this level of brain activity, he said, ‘the difference between a mouse and a human is quite small.’ The part of the brain in which the memories formed is an area of the hippocampus called the dentate gyrus, which is similar in mice and humans.
“Tonegawa said that, because the mechanisms of memory formation are almost certainly similar in mice and humans, part of the importance of the research was ‘to make people realise even more than before how unreliable human memory is,’ particularly in criminal cases when so much is at stake.”
My Comment: Everything can be modeled in a person, everything that happens in our world, except spiritual experience, because it is not recorded in the brain, mind, desire, and thoughts to “receive,” but in the property to “bestow”—in the soul.
[114154]
Related Material:
Why People Forget Why They Left The Room
The Influence Of The Environment On Decisions And Memory
Time = Motion = Place
Question: You say that we can and are ready to exit Egypt. Help us get rid of everything and take us across this narrow bridge so that we will follow you like a guide.
Answer: Every teacher of the spiritual work is like Moses (the name stems from the root limshoch – “to draw out” in Hebrew), and the whole Torah—starting from Adam until Egypt and especially from the giving of the Torah until the stage of entering the Land of Israel—describes the wanderings in the desert.
The wanderings in the desert represent a state when no one sees anything, when no one knows or understands anything, but everyone follows the leader. The leader is sure of himself, but he has problems with the Creator. Sometimes he carries out His orders and sometimes not. Sometimes he understands them correctly and sometimes not. The people also don’t always listen to their leader, and sometimes believe him and sometimes not. Sometimes they shout at Moses and sometimes at the Creator, and sometimes at both, and so we see how they carry on these interesting mutual relationships for forty years.
I must say that the leader shouldn’t be envied. What can he do? Nothing. Whatever he does, he tries to perform as loyally as he can, in bestowal, and tries to do everything in his power. Sometimes he is ready to pray for everyone and ask the Creator to have mercy on them.
However, there is nowhere to run. They must go through all the forty levels (forty years of wanderings in the desert), since forty levels is the distance from Malchut to Bina. This lasts until the entire generation that came out of Egypt dies, and only the next generation, their descendants, enter the land of Israel.
This means that all the desires that once were under the domination of the ego must die, and new desires that already are adapted to working in order to bestow must replace them. Until this happens, there is nowhere to run. Theoretically, we can go through this in two weeks, although they went through it in forty years.
I told you before the convention that you are preparing yourselves and that you are coming to the convention to continue the preparation, not to look at me. This means that everything depends on the preparation and the connection between you. I only teach you and cannot do anything—nothing!
Everything depends on the connection and the unity between you, the internal heart connection that is aimed correctly so you are also waiting for the bestowal of the Light like manna from Heaven. The Light will correct, change, and connect you to one another. That is the main thing! It is your yearning for one another and the yearning of all of you together upward.
You must exert yourselves a bit more, but it is with this intention: We, all of us together, are waiting for the Creator Who will correct us and rejoice at that.
[114343]
From the St. Petersburg Convention “Day Three” 7/14/13, Lesson 5
Related Material:
A Guide Through The Desert To The Promised Land
The Teacher’s Task
The Creator’s Loudspeaker
Question: How can a person who has despaired of life know that the wisdom of Kabbalah exists somewhere and that there are people who can help him?
Answer: The Light will bring him and arranges this opportunity for him, just as it brought you to the lesson. Each one receives such an opportunity, but then he has to make his own efforts. Only then will he continue to advance.
The difference between advancing along the path of suffering and advancing along the path of the Light is speed and comfort. When a person adheres to a group, he begins to receive much more Light than when he is by himself.
I have to go through certain states and I can go through them with the help of a great Light or with the help of a small ray of Light. The difference is that in the first case I am part of a group and so the Light that comes to the group also shines on me through it. Thus I receive the general desire, the huge vessel. My Reshimo (spiritual gene) is the general Reshimo, since I advance together with everyone else. Imagine what a speedy advancement this can be.
On the other hand, I can remain in my private desire and have nothing but one point. The Light that shines upon an individual is the Light of suffering and not the Light that helps him advance. After all, a person doesn’t yearn for connection with others, which means that he doesn’t intend to annul his ego.
I can be in either one of these states: a state in which the Light pressures me from below by sufferings or in a state in which I am drawn forward by the group to connection and I make efforts to connect. My effort is the first factor, and then as a result, the Light that I have drawn shines on me. “I awaken the dawn,” meaning that I am the first. Whereas, in the first case, the Light forced me, and so it was felt as sufferings since it operated against my will.
This is the whole difference. We either run forward by ourselves or are pushed from behind by blows. The difference is in the pace and the comfort or discomfort along the way.
[113975]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/02/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam
Related Material:
A School For Unique People
Accelerate Time
I, My Environment, And The Light
Question: There is an image in our world of “wedding preparations,” and when everything is ready, the table is set, the musicians are ready, and now we can sit cross-legged and watch the main event.
How can one not freeze within this picture that essentially, preparation to convention has brought us great confidence? How can one feel a need to enter into the next level called “adjustment” and open a second wind?
Answer: Everything is done only with the help of the Light. All changes directed at the goal are done with the help of the Light. I have nothing else to add.
We know that all of our work is built from two opposites. On the one hand, I need to be completely sure that my efforts build the next level and everything depends only on this. On the other hand, it is up to me to understand that all efforts are designed only to awaken the Light and create a prayer within me because I, myself, produce only a desire for the Light to influence and carry out this action, which will reveal me for its sake, for the sake of the Light.
This opposition within us is relaxed only when we are connected with the Creator, and until then, it is the opposite. It grows all the time, tearing us to shreds, and we don’t understand to where we are advancing at all.
The gap between these two opposites continues to grow: We fall into one of them and then into the opposite, and when they are connected, we find ourselves in an internal state that we are not prepared to endure. This is done intentionally because ultimately the need for the Creator to be clothed in us is created, and then we feel great happiness because through this, we give Him contentment.
It is up to us to fulfill these three conditions: to be in one extreme state where everything depends on me, to be in another extreme state where everything depends on the Light, and in a third state where we hope that the Light, the Creator, will fill us and connect these two opposites into a single whole. Then we will feel happiness because this brings joy to the Creator, and until then, until everything is connected within us into a single whole, we are not yet ready since there is no complete desire yet. It is still in preparation.
I fully share your commitment and desire to finish everything immediately, because the moment that the intention is correct, then there is a realization that we may only have this moment to implement it.
We had a very deep, powerful, and dynamic convention where everything that was prepared from the start was destroyed. We made giant strides.
I hear people who were recently in connection with us, with the method, suddenly developed such internal definitions, inner clarifications, and really amazing things awakened in them! Young friends express themselves not through vague words. Rather, I see and feel where they come from, with such depth. This is absolutely a different generation.
[114257]
From the St. Petersburg Convention “Day Three” 7/14/13, Lesson 5
Related Material:
And Don’t Forget…
The Warm Embrace Of The Light
United With The Creator
It is written in Divrei Hayamim I (Chronicles 1) 28:9: Know the God of your fathers and serve Him. To know means being conscious because the Nefesh, that is, the desire in itself, cannot exist without consciousness, without a sensation that there is something clear, something definite within it. Desire must feel and define its sensations and compare them.
Together with understanding the sensations, a fulfillment appears; you see the person strives and longs for true service to the Creator. This is what is in us, this is what pushes us. Our lives are so confused, concealing from us what we are truly doing.
We are also now carrying out all that we are required to do, only the true state, the true world in which we are found, is concealed from us. We feel ourselves as a shadow of our true state, and all that we do is directed towards returning to awareness of this subconscious state. But along with this, neither our world nor the actions that we do within it will change; rather, we will see it in another form.
The person doesn’t understand that his longing, his aspiration, all that he does for the sake of egoistic development (it makes no difference how he acts in our world), all our actions are contingent on only one thing and are directed towards it: the desire to perceive the Creator. And until we perceive the Creator, the origin which illuminates us and gives us life, we will not rest and we will always feel unwell. In other words, the origin for all of our negative feelings is the concealment of the Creator, while His discovery gives us fulfillment, ecstasy, which is the goal of creation.
The person aspires to perceive the Creator in all his actions, both consciously and unconsciously. You see, it’s as if we desire and are ready to even agree to nullify our ego somehow to connect together: “Put before us all the conditions given for existence that we can fulfill, then we will be ready to discover You.”
But even though we have urges like these, not even drives, but permanent desires, this is still not enough. Even if we gather together, connect, sing, cry, dance, learn, work on connection, it makes no difference what we do and how much we strive, our efforts will not yield fruit if the Light of the Creator will not illuminate them.
Therefore our efforts should not to be either spontaneous or temporary. They must be crystallized in the right form with intensity, with direction, with character in order to attract the Light of the Creator onto us. Without the influence of the Light on us, our nature would remain the same egoistic nature, and we will “stew” within ourselves, no qualitative changes will take place within us.
[114253]
From the St. Petersburg Convention “Day Three” 7/14/13, Lesson 5
Related Material:
And Don’t Forget…
The Warm Embrace Of The Light
The Purpose Of Life Is The Revelation Of The Creator
Daily Audio Version-MP3
Get the Weekly eNewsletter
Follow on Twitter
