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Preparation In Action

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Light has spread from the world of infinity, having passed many restrictions, and reached the center point of all the worlds, in which all sanctity, that is, the force of bestowal, ends. In this manner, this material world emerges, as the imprint of the 10 Sefirot of the spiritual world. We can do material actions in this material world we live in. It is in our power, and it is said, “Do all that is in your power!” And intention comes only due to the Light that Reforms.

Therefore, if we want to reach correction, we must perform the actions indicated by Kabbalists, that is, to strive to love others, which is the basis of all corrections. Everything we do to achieve this fundamental rule is counted as correct actions as if they have the correct form. It is impossible to find fault with the form because we have tried to unite, to cancel ourselves before the friends, and to feel each other’s desires.

That is, we acted correctly; we just did not have the right intention! And to the extent that we wanted to change our intentions in these actions, the Surrounding Light that Reforms acted on us. The Light is only waiting to affect us and to correct our intention to bestowal.

Therefore, a person comes to the state of Lishma, to spiritual bestowal, only after a period of preparation in which he acts in Lo Lishma. In other words, his intentions are still egoistic, but he performs all possible actions from a desire to achieve a genuine intention to bestow.

So, we need to treat our actions very seriously—hold various events, lectures, discussions, roundtables, go out to the public at every opportunity—to perform all the actions that facilitate dissemination and unity. After all, by this we attract a very strong Light that Reforms, which advance us quickly.

Therefore, I again and again warn people who have the opportunity to participate in dissemination to the general public and they do not do that. They just do not allow themselves to perform the actions that could move them toward holiness, to the spiritual world, even though they do not yet have the proper intention. It is a pity to miss this wonderful opportunity!
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/08/13, Writings of Rabash

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Advice On How To Get Up On The Right Foot

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What should I do if during the lesson I am bombarded by extraneous thoughts and feelings that distract me from the lesson?

Answer: A person goes through many different states. Sometimes he sits in the lesson totally detached and sometimes he is even asleep. It happened to me very rarely, but if I suddenly fell asleep Rabash used to hit my leg gently under the table or to pull me by the sleeve without anyone noticing, although I wasn’t actually tired but in a special state of mind. Sometimes you can sleep two hours a night and feel that you are fully awake and sometimes after sleeping seven to eight hours,  you feel that you are craving sleep; it has nothing to do with your physical state.

What should you do when you fall asleep? You should make efforts to fight it as much as you can, as much as possible, but at the same time to agree that there are states that are arranged for us from above in which there is nothing we can do. So I come to the lesson and fall asleep. I have never mock or shout at someone who sleeps during the lesson. It means that this time he cannot do anything about it but he is still here.

If extraneous thoughts go through my mind during the lesson, it is due to my preparation. It is very important to understand on which foot you got out of bed: whether on the “right foot” or on the “left foot” or even “on all fours,” which refers to the first thought you had. It depends on what thought you went to sleep with, on what you read before you went to sleep. You can watch a football game, but you must read something during the last five minutes before you go to sleep. That will shake you a little from within and push you in the right direction. And with this thought you should fall asleep, as if in prayer.

Then you will wake up and get up with positive thoughts with which you will come to the lesson. Even if later you fall asleep during the lesson, you will have a good preparation. If you listen to the lesson, then even better thoughts and intentions will come to you. Even if you have other thoughts and intentions, they will come for only a moment and you will be able to immediately recognize them and drive them away.

This is our work. But the main thing is still the action: to come, sit, and get ready for the lesson, to draw the drawings and to write down everything, which means to perform mechanical actions that help me connect to the lesson. Besides, you have to draw a circle, which means to imagine that you are in the group. You can even draw a circle on a sheet of paper, so that it will be in front of you and remind you that you are in a circle with all the others.

This form of a circle should be carved in your brain so that you will want to see the world only through it. It is as if you have special glasses in your mind and now you see that the world is round. It is because this is actually its true form and you want to see everything through the center of the group.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/07/13, The Zohar

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There Will Be No Need To Shatter Windows

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: In the spiritual system, the upper level waits until the lower level raises a prayer to it, MAN. How can I convey the requests of the public upward if I have no contact with the spiritual world?

Answer: You have contact with the spiritual world through your point in the heart. You only lack the deficiency to awaken the upper, and it is from the lower that you have to receive this deficiency.

You have Reshimot (spiritual genes) which belong to GE. The lower, the public, have no GE; they have no points in the heart. You include the deficiencies of the people in your AHP, since they want to be saved from trouble. These deficiencies and needs are ordinary corporeal matters: food, sex, family, money, honor, and knowledge, which are added to your GE, to the point in the heart. Since you have committed yourself to the public, you are under their pressure.

Instead of demonstrating and protesting in front of the parliament, they will protest in front of your house and smash your windows. When you see your frightened children and your upset wife, you will have no choice but to cry to the Creator for help. You have to reach this pressure in order to be ready for a prayer.

The Creator will respond only if you ask Him for power for the lower, for the people, to provide them with what they need. It is because they will receive what they need only if they “round up” and connect in a circle, in the workshops, at the roundtables, through integral education.

They will not receive filling just like that and it isn’t that everyone will receive a package by special delivery, but their lives will improve. We have to organize the public in circles for workshops and roundtable discussions. The main thing is to organize in a circle. When people organize in a circle and annul themselves before you, they can enter and be incorporated in your AHP and convey their complaints and their deficiencies to you.

There Will Be No Need To Shatter Windows
You raise these deficiencies to your point in the heart that is also in the circle, in the center of the group. By that your work is over since the center of the group is your upper and the uppermost part of the public. In the center there is mutual guarantee, bestowal, and connection, as one man in which the Creator is revealed!

This whole structure is a total of ten complete Sefirot. Only one thing is missing: receiving an urge from the public that will force you to feel scared, to fear, and to feel that you are committed to bring them the Light that Reforms from the center of the group. So going out to disseminate to the public is essential for our ascent.

People ask for food, sex, family, money, honor, and knowledge. You are asking for connection, mutual guarantee, and the revelation of the Creator. If you can keep the right deficiency for the center of the group and the Creator, by fine tuning the correct deficiencies each time so that it wouldn’t be just bestowal and connection but will take on a more accurate form that is suitable for the next spiritual level, then there will be no need to pressure you from below and to shatter your windows.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/6/13, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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The World From A New Perspective

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: You say that people who create integral groups begin feeling themselves as unique. How is this expressed?

Answer: The uniqueness is that such people begin looking at the world through different eyes. First of all, they see that connection among people is truly possible; the main thing is to adjust it correctly, to understand that all of us are different by nature. There is no coercion; on the contrary, we only rise above our initial egoistic data and connect with each other with good mutual relationships above the egoistic foundations.

We are all egoists; inside we are all rigid, coarse, and “dark.” But we rise above the ego, understand that we are like this by nature, and we want to create an altruistic platform above that.

Through its formation, we begin to feel that nature (not our personal egoistic nature, but nature in general) is created specifically according to the integral principle. We begin to see that this is where humanity’s problem is. In other words, humanity now starts feeling the difference between its egoistic nature and the higher nature that is revealed to it. This lack of balance and harmony gives us a feeling of a “multi-crisis.”
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From Kab TV’s Through Time 9/15/13

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“Rich People Just Care Less”

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Daniel Goleman, a psychologist, author of Emotional Intelligence and Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence): “A growing body of recent research shows that people with the most social power pay scant attention to those with little such power. This tuning out has been observed, for instance, with strangers in a mere five-minute get-acquainted session, where the more powerful person shows fewer signals of paying attention, like nodding or laughing. Higher-status people are also more likely to express disregard, through facial expressions, and are more likely to take over the conversation and interrupt or look past the other speaker. …

“Of course, in any society, social power is relative; any of us may be higher or lower in a given interaction, and the research shows the effect still prevails. Though the more powerful pay less attention to us than we do to them, in other situations we are relatively higher on the totem pole of status — and we, too, tend to pay less attention to those a rung or two down. …

“Mr. Keltner [a professor of psychology at Berkeley] suggests that, in general, we focus the most on those we value most. While the wealthy can hire help, those with few material assets are more likely to value their social assets: like the neighbor who will keep an eye on your child from the time she gets home from school until the time you get home from work. The financial difference ends up creating a behavioral difference. Poor people are better attuned to interpersonal relations — with those of the same strata, and the more powerful — than the rich are, because they have to be.”

My Comment: The conclusion is that the dissemination of integral education should be started with the “lower” levels of society. We have to “go to the people” to demonstrate our participation and really learn and understand the needs of the masses. Do not rely on the elite; by virtue of their position, they will not understand the people, no matter how hard we try. The crisis can be eliminated only be building authority from those who empathize with people, meaning from those who are corrected; otherwise, anyone who has reached power, will also neglect the public.
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An Apparatus For Solving The Problems Of Life

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Suppose that people are gathered around a roundtable in order to discuss business problems and we suggest that they also speak about other subjects: about relationships between couples, health, and children’s education. Is it correct to widen the range of issues?

Answer: It is desirable to begin from something distant; perhaps not business because there could be conflicting interests. I would move the conversation towards some other subject that is more general, civil, simple, collectively human, and with this, show people how it is possible to have a discussion and reach a common denominator.

For example, it is possible to take the subject of relationships between couples, the education of children, relationships with parents—a subject that affects all people.

Question: In groups like these an interesting dynamic is seen. At first people discuss some question, for example a business topic, and when they solve it, then everyone relaxes and they begin to enjoy being together. But this pleasure doesn’t last. If we don’t introduce some kind of special mechanism, then people cool down rapidly. What else could stimulate the process?

Answer: We must add more “fuel to the fire,” new subjects, so they will see that the roundtable is a device for solving the problems of life.

If people connect according to the principles that we establish, where each one around the circle completes the other without opposing the others in any way, understanding that the others also have the right to a personal opinion and that they supplement each other, then it is simply necessary to show them that in a circle like this, basic human problems can be solved.
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From Kab TV’s “Through Time” 9/15/13

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Everyday Miracle

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How is it possible to restore the importance of the morning lesson if after so many years it has become routine and lost its taste?

Answer: The morning lesson is a place for the induction of the Upper Light. As if you come to a gas station to refuel. Throughout the day you need to gather all kinds of deficiencies—the need for the Light that Reforms, the need for the spiritual power, the need become similar to the Creator—to clarify and scrutinize: the true picture of the true world, my relationship to it, and its effect on me.

Throughout the entire day you need to see how much this form of reality you are spinning in, you still do not understand, is still not clear, is broken. And when you come to the morning lesson, this form needs to be clarified by the Light that Reforms in your thoughts and feelings, in all senses.

But if you have not prepared for the morning lesson, then it becomes a formal routine for you like subjects you learn in school: The Zohar, Talmud Eser Sefirot, and so forth. And then the lesson becomes empty without any benefit, a complete loss. If you don’t come to the lesson equipped with the right deficiency, then you will not receive the right fulfillment from the lesson, and then it follows that you learn wisdom and not Torah.

The Torah is called the Light that Reforms. So one of two things: either you study the Torah or wisdom, abstract theory. This is what you determine according to your intentions, the deficiency, and the need for correction that you prepared for the lesson.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/7/13, The Zohar

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Cultivate True Desire

Dr. Michael LaitmanRabash, Letter No. 8: And once I have acquired this above-mentioned clothing, sparks of love promptly begin to shine within me. The heart begins to long to unite with my friends, and it seems to me that my eyes see my friends, my ears hear their voices, my mouth speaks to them, the hands embrace, the feet dance in a circle in love and joy together with them, and I transcend my corporeal boundaries. I forget the vast distance between my friends and me, and the outstretched land for many miles will not stand between us.

It is as though my friends are standing right within my heart and see all that is happening there, and I become ashamed of my petty acts against my friends. Then, I simply exit the corporeal vessels and it seems to me that there is no reality in the world except my friends and me.  After that, even the “I” is cancelled and is immersed, mingled, in my friends, until I stand and declare that there is no reality in the world—only the friends.

Aspirations like these bring people to a state where their last desperate desire is the yearning for closeness, to build a world in which they must exist under other conditions of contact between them. When they reach a true desire of this type, the Light transforms that into a reality.

There are many people in the world to whom the power for spiritual work has not been given, even in the simplest form, even unintentionally in an egoistic form as preparation. It wasn’t given! We see this regarding billions of people in the world, and we have merited that the Creator gave us desires and thoughts that allow us, at least in part, to participate in spiritual work, even if it is the simplest degree.

If a person is prepared to appreciate this gift, then to the degree that he attributes importance to spiritual work when he builds a new world (here only the feelings between us change), to that degree, he needs to thank the Creator.

You see, the truth is that we are not prepared to appreciate the importance of the fact that sometimes we are given even the smallest spiritual action to do. So, the person feels greatness and happiness in his heart and he praises the Creator whom he serves, and thanks Him and accordingly, he rises even higher.

The person must treasure the opportunity that is given to him to serve the Creator and to realize His will.

The “will of the Creator” means that a person constructs a model of the upper world from his relationships with other people.

Just as children play as if they are adults—daughters play with dolls and sons with cars or with war—so must we also play, and then we mature.

In our world, an adult is the one who stops playing. He stops developing, growing. This happens with us automatically because first nature pushes us so that we will grow and, then when free choice appears in us, nature no longer pushes us anymore, and we stop developing.

Therefore, those people, who decide that it is up to them to continue to develop, must continue to play those childhood games but on another level, that is, to build their future lives. They simulate what they imagine in their fantasies, discuss among themselves in a group, in circles, and build it so much so that they begin to feel the world they are approaching.

When a person sees an example of the future world and builds the right altruistic relationships with his friends, but he doesn’t succeed, he asks and demands, then help arrives. However, this happens only when he truly yearns for this. Just screaming and crying will not help here.
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From the St. Petersburg Convention “Day Three” 7/14/13, Lesson 6

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Us And The Rest Of The World

Dr. Michael LaitmanMan is not free to choose anything in his life. He is brought to a group and led away from it. He doesn’t control this. What depends upon us is how we construct an environment that will cause each one of its members to be a useful, spiritual part.

Therefore, it is said that the only free activity that depends on us is the choice of the environment. A person’s arrival to an environment doesn’t depend upon him since he is led there. And the choice of the environment  means that at every given moment, I choose my maximal integration within it. Does the rest of humanity, people without a point in the heart, have free choice? No, they don’t.

Only for us is there relative freewill in building the right environment and in the correct organization of humanity. Therefore, we have responsibility, both for us and for them. This responsibility is very harsh. If we don’t build the right environment for all seven billion people as much as possible, then we cannot advance because we are the upper part within the spiritual structure called Galgalta ve Eynaim (GE), and humanity is the huge lower part of creation that is called AHP.

We And The Rest Of The World
The upper part, GE, is our particular part, called our group, and its lower part is our AHP. It doesn’t belong to us, but it is something that we develop, the method of integral education and information, various courses, and so on.

It is up to us to develop the subject, to act like adults, like teachers, in regard to the rest of the world, and in accord with the development of the world, it is up to us to bring the integral method and information to it with concern and attention.

All the rest of the world will need to accept it because, in spite of it all, the Light has an influence on all of us in such a form that there is nowhere to which to escape. It influences the entire world and pushes it with the help of suffering because the AHP is its opposite (the world is a big, egoistic minus), and when the Light influences it, it arouses in it even greater negative feelings, crises, and sufferings.

Ultimately, humanity searches for what to do, but it won’t find anything besides the Light that will be transmitted to them through us as a result of integral education. We need to create and construct all of this for them.

Therefore, in addition to the group work in itself, it must also take care of all the rest to the degree necessary to awaken humanity, which is awakened to a serious question, not about the meaning of life for the sake of some lofty goal, but about the meaning of life in order to be released from the sufferings, from the crises. This is enough so that we begin to take care of them.

When they discover their absolute helplessness, confusion, and inability to solve common earthly problems, and there is global awareness that they have no practical solutions, then we can confidently go out to the world and begin to look for the right ways of to whom and how to bring our method.

After all, the world already requires this unconsciously, even though it is like a child that still doesn’t understand where, what, and how. It doesn’t feel that this is the key to a different existence, to a new reality, to a new dimension, because for most of humanity there is no point in the heart and for us there is, and we feel that something must take place here. There is some kind of a solution here. We feel it only slightly, just to the degree that the Light shines on us, and the Light has no influence on them.

What does “it has no influence” mean? We are all in the field of Light, but they have no inner detector that can determine that there is some kind of illumination, that there are some kind of changes. We do have this detector; this is the so-called “sixth sense.” Therefore, everything depends only upon us.

We have a responsibility for everyone. Moreover, we have received the opportunity to advance spiritually only in order to bring the whole world to this, and if we don’t convey the Upper Light through us and don’t convey anything through us, then we feel only a minute illumination, in other words,  just a state of expectation, a neutral gear, and nothing more than this. Therefore, it is up to us to take this into account.

It could be that there are groups with a good inner preparation. Its members study seriously, come to all the lectures and lessons, but they don’t want to go outside. Ultimately, these groups will transform into a barrier for the spiritual Light, and because they are linked to us, they  burden us and damage all of us.

Therefore, we must be careful, but still compel them, encourage and cheer them gently, trying to explain and attract them to this work. After all, this is needed from a global integral system.

If this is a closed system, then you don’t have the right to abandon some part of it (even though this may not be a small part but about 99.99% of it). Even if it were only 1%,, even then you would not have the right to abandon them because if there is some uncorrected part of an integral, analog, closed system, then the whole mechanism is uncorrected. So if a need for correction is discovered in the world, you must think about all seven billion who require it and somehow activate the mechanism.

The principle of the formation of all of our groups, or of the world group, must also include all of humanity because the time has come to uncover and reveal the general link between us.

Prior to Abraham, only isolated Kabbalists had spiritual attainment. From Abraham and onward, it was groups, and from the times of Baal HaSulam and on, it is all of humanity.

Baal HaSulam wrote in the twenties of the last century that all of humanity is one family. This suggests we must consider them as part of our group. Therefore, the principles and foundations for building the group must include this component: how can we interact with the whole world.
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From the St. Petersburg Convention “Day Two” 7/13/13, Lesson 4

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