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It is said, “A man and a woman, Divinity between them.” Who are this man and woman? In the spiritual world it all depends on a specific role: once, I bestow, another time, I receive. Indeed, in order to give, I also have to receive, and in order to receive, I must also give.
It turns out that each of us once gives to friend and once receives, that is, performs either the male or female role. Thus, it’s realized: “A man and a woman, Divinity between them.” If we are in this mutual connection, then the Creator is revealed between us. It’s within these transmission channels of reception and bestowal that we build the image of the Creator (Bore), meaning “come and see” (Bo-re).
If we build the correct relationship between us according to the law of equivalence of form, this channel of connection will be revived, will acquire vitality. We are required only to make an effort to make it happen, and within it, we will discover that it is alive.
[125637]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/16/14, Workshop
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If during the workshop I was able to connect with the friends’ hearts and spoke not external words, but directly from heart to heart, then I need to keep myself in the same state all day long until the next workshop. I have to keep the sense that our hearts are connected together and are not be separated from them. And, as well, I need to continually try to find within myself a stronger collective desire, more closely tied, more strong, in which we are united in one whole and strive to reveal this One, the Creator.We must remain in this state continuously so that the workshop never ends.
[125634]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/16/14, Workshop
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I must try to open my heart towards the friends and that all of their desires, thoughts, and expectations for spirituality will enter directly into my heart without any opposition and criticism from my side. For the right intention, we need the Creator in the center of the group all the time and to accept this state with an open heart. All of us must concentrate around this point and focus all of our efforts on it. Only in this is our free choice, which we must realize. This stance surrounding the Creator found within the group is similar to the stance around Mount Sinai. Exactly as there, Arvut (mutual guarantee) and mutual support is required of us; through them we can reach a constant intention.
In spirituality nothing is measured according to the quantity of power; rather, it’s according to the quality. A strong intention is an intention never stops. A weak intention can be stopped. But a strong intention cannot be stopped and is constant, and therefore it is said to be high. Certainly all kinds of disturbances will come, both general and particular, but in the face of all the disturbances we must be concerned about only one thing: such a strong intention that is never stopped. Precisely with this we must strengthen each other, and this is the mutual guarantee that is realized.
From a small and weak intention, we must come to a great and strong intention; that is, from regular breaks, from a loss of spiritual yearning, we must pass to one heart, to the center of the group, in which the Creator is discovered, so that all of us will connect together there in a single embrace with Him. We must help each other with mutual guarantee, that the intention will not be stopped in any of us. For with this he would be boring a hole in the hull of our common boat, in our common heart. If we approach the convention with efforts like these, then success is assured for us.
[125590]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/15/14, Workshop
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In the idea of the intention, the principle: “Each one will help his friend” is active. For “A prisoner cannot free himself from prison,” but only the friends can get him out. The support of the friends is called, “Arvut” and if it is found, then even for a moment, I will not forget about the intention and my heart will always be open in the right direction.
I am not prepared to do this by myself but only with the friends. My heart is found in the hands of the friends, and only they can direct it towards the Creator who is found in the center of the group. Therefore, I depend on them completely. How must I compensate them in exchange for work like this? I compensate them with the same coin; that is, in an identical manner I think about them, I am concerned for their intentions. Not one of them is able to do this alone either, and he also requires the help of the friends.
If together we think and are concerned that the right intention will not cease in others, that their hearts will always remain open and ready for the discovery of the Creator in the center of the group, then with this we assure ourselves of that same concern and that same treatment from others. In the end, I will discover that everyone is already in the final corrected state and I did not see this with my corrupted eyes, as it is written: “Everyone who rejects something does so with his own flaws.” And if I direct myself correctly towards work with the friends, bestowing to them, then I will discover their bestowal towards me.
This is to say that all of the work that I do on myself I do through work on the others. In the meantime I do this for egoistic reasons (Lo Lishma), in that I am directed towards correcting myself in this way. But in spite of all this, it is already being done in the right direction: from myself outwards. From Lo Lishma like this, we come to Lishma, to bestowal.
[125588]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/15/14, Workshop
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In the News (from Salon): “School is a place where children are compelled to be, and where their freedom is greatly restricted — far more restricted than most adults would tolerate in their workplaces. In recent decades, we have been compelling our children to spend ever more time in this kind of setting, and there is strong evidence (summarized in my recent book) that this is causing serious psychological damage to many of them. Moreover, the more scientists have learned about how children naturally learn, the more we have come to realize that children learn most deeply and fully, and with greatest enthusiasm, in conditions that are almost opposite to those of school. …
“Most students — whether A students, C students, or failing ones — have lost their zest for learning by the time they reach middle school or high school. In a recent research study, Mihaly Czikszentmihalyl and Jeremy Hunter fitted more than 800 sixth- through 12th-graders, from 33 different schools across the country, with special wristwatches that provided a signal at random times of day. Whenever the signal appeared, they were to fill out a questionnaire indicating where they were, what they were doing, and how happy or unhappy they were at the moment. The lowest levels of happiness, by far, occurred when they were in school and the highest levels occurred when they were out of school playing or talking with friends. In school, they were often bored, anxious or both. Other researchers have shown that, with each successive grade, students develop increasingly negative attitudes toward the subjects taught, especially math and science. …
“When schools were taken over by the state and made compulsory, and directed toward secular ends, the basic structure and methods of schooling remained unchanged. Subsequent attempts at reform have failed because, though they have tinkered some with the structure, they haven’t altered the basic blueprint. The top-down, teach-and-test method, in which learning is motivated by a system of rewards and punishments rather than by curiosity or by any real, felt desire to know, is well designed for indoctrination and obedience training but not much else. …
“As a society, we tend to shrug off such findings. We’re not surprised that learning is unpleasant. We think of it as bad-tasting medicine, tough to swallow but good for children in the long run. Some people even think that the very unpleasantness of school is good for children, so they will learn to tolerate unpleasantness, because life after school is unpleasant. Perhaps this sad view of life derives from schooling. Of course, life has its ups and downs, in adulthood and in childhood. But there are plenty of opportunities to learn to tolerate unpleasantness without adding unpleasant schooling to the mix. Research has shown that people of all ages learn best when they are self-motivated, pursuing questions that are their own real questions, and goals that are their own real-life goals. In such conditions, learning is usually joyful.
“…the natural drives and abilities of young people to learn are fully sufficient to motivate their entire education. When they want or need help from others, they ask for it. We don’t have to force people to learn; all we need to do is provide them the freedom and opportunities to do so. Of course, not everyone is going to learn the same things, in the same way, or at the same time. But that’s a good thing. Our society thrives on diversity. Our culture needs people with many different kinds of skills, interests and personalities. Most of all, we need people who are pursuing life with passion and who take responsibility for themselves throughout life. These are the common denominators of people who have taken charge of their own education.”
My Comment: School still looks like an institution established for the production of human performers that were needed in times of Charlie Chaplin. It was necessary to change schooling a long time ago, but even those who advocate a new education system have no consensus. The problem is that no one understands the structure of the new world: integrated, unified, interconnected, to which people should be adapted to integrally enter the structure of the world. A person can be changed only through the method of integral education.
[125675]
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Question: How can we reach the right prayer as quickly as possible?
Answer: Our effort, just like all the spiritual discernments, isn’t measured according to the number of actions but according to their quality. Sometimes we can see a person who tries very hard and does many things spinning like a humming fan. Everyone may admire his energy but the benefit of such actions can be minimal. As it says, “little with the right intention is better.”
The spiritual world is made of qualities: either in order to receive or in order to bestow. Everything depends on that, on how much either one weighs and not the actual number of actions. Therefore it says,” A person can attain his world in one hour!” But how is that possible if one spends a thousand hours or a million hours?! All of humanity wastes billions of hours and doesn’t reach the goal, and there are people who attain their world in one hour and reach revelation. Is this fair?
It’s possible due to the quality that is more important than the quantity. So if you want to reach the right prayer as quickly as possible, you should make an effort in quality and not in the quantity with regard to actions and intentions. Quality should come first.
A qualitative effort means constantly clarifying what receiving and bestowal mean, one with regard to the other. This is what we should look for in every aspect of life, in all our relations with others.
The qualitative effort is measured by how much my heart is involved. The heart should be the criterion and not the mind. There are very clever people and I actually used to envy them in the past when I saw how quickly they could grasp the material, understand things, and delve into details. But eventually I discovered that “it isn’t the wise who learns.” You can understand only through your feelings, and I didn’t really consider that as something serious but rather as something frivolous, some feminine sentiments.
I believed that one’s power is in the mind, but that isn’t true. First everything must go through the feelings and only then a person understands. The mind reads and perceives only what goes through the heart. So we have to try and expand our feelings as much as possible in the right direction, of course. The feelings expand only by the Light that Reforms.
[125502]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/12/14, The Zohar
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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar“, Item 23: It turns out that once dressed in a human body, it (the soul) generates needs and desires and ideas to satisfy its desire to bestow to the fullest, meaning to bestow contentment upon its Maker, according to the size of its desire.
Question: On one hand it says that we should be guided only by what we see, but on the other hand, we have to detach from the ordinary corporeal terms”body” and “soul,” so how we can integrate the two things?
Answer: I see the corporeal world in which I live now. We study about it in universities and not in Kabbalah lessons. We, on the other hand, study about something that is above that, the spiritual reality. It is not before my eyes, and I am supposed to acquire a new sight in order to see it. I don’t need corporeal eyes for that but spiritual ones.
Kabbalists tell us that just like the corporeal body, there is also a spiritual body, and it is bestowal. The life in it is the Light that fills it. The spiritual body is actually the Returning Light (Ohr Hozer) and we feel the body according to its measure.
I am attracted to bestowal upon others according to the level of the Returning Light, and bestowal upon the other is my soul. This is exactly where it is, in others, and not in the flesh that lives and dies. We need the flesh only for the time in which I have to annul my desire to receive. Then the need for the corporeal body disappears. When I attain the first spiritual level, I understand that it has nothing to do with the body. I was simply given such conditions in which I can exist before the revelation. This state is essential in order to enter the spiritual world. It’s the area where I fulfill the preconditions.
It’s as if I stand in front of a door and I am told: “You can enter only if you have a ticket. Don’t you have a ticket? So go to work and buy a ticket and then you can enter.” So I work in this world in order to buy a ticket for the spiritual reality and during the lessons we speak about what happens behind the door.
Question: So in what way are we different from the philosophers who seem to say the same thing?
Answer: First, we are right in that we don’t wish, like them, to indulge into fantasies like they do; we understand that we must actually feel and see what we speak about firsthand. This is a healthy approach that protects against making mistakes and delivers a clear scientific framework.
Philosophers are mistaken in the fact that they speak about things which they don’t feel that are beyond their perception and is devoid of any factual basis. And they are comfortable with this situation: first, because they are being paid for it and second, because they want to have something to do with “spirituality.”
In principle, a person reaches for a certain “spiritual bridgehead” but without working on himself. This is the reason that Kabbalists hate philosophy. There is a philosopher in each of us because we would also like to enter spirituality without effort and we love to bring up different unfounded theories.
At the same time, we have to explain everything: “Although I sometimes feel like philosophizing, it is merely my ego.” The truth is that we cannot actually discuss the spiritual world before we attain it, it is said: “We cannot know by name or word anything that we don’t attain.”
We reject the philosophical approach and hate the philosophers in us although it’s impossible to do it without them, because everyone includes the whole world in him. So we only speak about what happens in our hearts.
[125302]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/12/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam
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Question: Why does the “raspberry ball” disappear all the time and the only way to hold onto it and grow it is to go to the outer community?
Answer: Every activity in spirituality is an innovation. Even in our world it happens this way, but we simply don’t pay attention to this. Nothing returns as it was: All the time new clarifications and corrections are happening, a new discovery of evil and its correction for the good.
In spirituality there cannot be a stop, there cannot be a static state. Every state must be renewed all the time. This is like in love, like in relationships between people, where we must constantly take care of our relationships. If we want to keep them, we must constantly develop and grow them, opening new states.
In this world, until the end of correction, we receive a gift, a favor, help in the work: We reveal broken desires specifically granted by the Creator so that we will have material for renewal. Thanks to this we can renew relationships and develop our feelings each time.
But if there had been no shattering, what would we rely on to build our innovations and changes? And when we rise from physical states to spiritual states, then we see that spirituality is constant change. Without them, the spiritual world doesn’t exist. Even in our world, according to quantum physics, the electron cannot exist without movement.
If we stop it, it disappears. The entire universe of elementary particles, which rotate around their axes at tremendous speeds and move in orbits, is in movement and change. The entire micro world works at higher frequencies that approach the speed of light.
In our lives the speed of the changes also grows, and all technical apparatus, electronics, computers, everything, works at greater and greater speed. This says something about the number of changes that we are ready to include in a unit of time, a unit of influence. Everything depends on the speed, the frequency, with which changes happen.
Every Partzuf includes ten Sefirot, and each one of them includes another ten, and so on ad infinitum. Therefore, there must be a very high frequency in every interval in order to include all these infinite changes of mutual integration of this into that and that into this, and so forth. The changes must be constant and at a very high velocity.
So when we reach the raspberry ball, we begin to feel that it’s impossible to hold. Here we begin to understand all of our psychology: If we don’t work on some kind of sensation, some kind of observation, all the time, then it disappears. It’s not revealed clearly in this life because we are becoming a unique compound of beast and human. And the beast in me exists without change, like all the rest of the beasts. And if my head is only involved with taking care of my beast, then I feel that everything is completely okay with me.
But if I begin to take care of the human in me with my mind, then I will need all the changes there. Then I constantly, incessantly,will need to decide what is more important for me, the beast in me or the human? Is the man riding the donkey or the donkey riding the man; who is carrying whom?
[125172]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/7/14, Lesson on the Topic: “Preparation for the Convention”
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| [media 1] | [media 2] |
Workshop
| [media 3] | [media 4] |
The Book of Zohar— Selected Excerpts
| [media 5] | [media 6] |
| [media 7] | [media 8] |
Writings of Baal HaSulam “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”
| [media 9] | [media 10] |
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