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Baal HaSulam “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 32: The third period is in Torah and Commandments Lishma, that is, for the sake of bestowal and not for receiving a reward. This work purifies man’s desire to receive for himself and turns it into the desire to bestow.
Everything depends on the awareness of importance. I can develop this awareness in me relative to anything. If I constantly think and take care about something, the object of my care becomes so important to me that I cannot forget about it. I am attached to it physically, emotionally, or intellectually, no matter how. The main thing is how much effort I give it.
We know how it happens: A person learns a profession or begins a fine meticulous project, and he gives it not just time but his entire heart, he invests in it so much that it becomes extremely important to him.
The same thing happens in the spiritual work: The awareness of the importance of the goal is the key to everything. I become included in the group, participate with the friends in workshops and other events, and if I exert myself fully, then suddenly, without knowing why, I begin to appreciate the property of bestowal, the ability to give. This feeling, this aspiration, is awakened in me and gains importance, in some “supernatural,” inexplicable way.
I, myself, am amazed by this inner change. Indeed, in the past, always and in everything I thought about myself and how to use others, how to arrange them so I would feel nice and comfortable, so everyone serves me. It is a natural approach.
But suddenly, I begin to care for others around me; they gain importance in my eyes, become as the people closest to me. I look for opportunities to bestow upon them, to benefit them, just as I want to bring happiness to those I love, I enjoy that they enjoy.
Then, I wonder: Why do I bring them good? For the sake of this pleasure? Or is bestowal itself so important that it motivates me to act? How can I distinguish one from the other?
In short, I suddenly embrace new phenomenon that possess me and I do not know where they come from.
This is accomplished through the incessant connection between friends. Another workshop, another lesson, another festive meal, one more effort with a bit of intention, which we are able to connect—even artificially, it does not matter—nonetheless, we thereby awaken the Light that Reforms and its influence produces in us these “supernatural” changes that lie below our nature.
I can recognize in myself only the results of this process when I discover that something strange happens to me. Then I understand how the Light that Reforms acts. Today, we have entered such stages when everyone has to “delve into himself” to detect the changes that occur in him.
Thus, we move forward through the process of “purification,” cleaning ourselves from the egoistic intention to the level of bestowal for the sake of bestowal. Then, we enter into the process of “sanctity,” purity, in reception for the sake of bestowal.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/19/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam
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The development in the group is surprising and beautiful because during a very short time I pass such states and details of perception that without friends would have required a few reincarnations in the physical life—long transformations of Reshimot. Among the wonderful friends we accelerate development.
Nothing on this path can be “passed,” “walked over,” “removed from the list.” The process of realizating Reshimot is set initially and I must go through this entire spiral. But the pace of progress depends on me and is determined by how much I integrate into the group.
Even if I sit in class emotionless “like a log,” devoid of understanding, it does not matter. Everyone goes through this.
The group is a wonderful system in which we complement, add, to each other. Some reveal new “thicknesses” of desire, others are imbued with spiritual impulse, and we interact as a whole.
The main thing is to live in the group as deeply as possible, and bow down before it with all, to bow down in any state: both when I am full of life, unity, and when I am “dead.”
Talents and abilities will not help here; it’s not the one who is wise that learns spirituality. First and foremost, I am required to surrender.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/16/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam
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When I listen to a friend who speaks during the workshop I am incorporated in his words without any doubts or criticism. I perceive what he says as the most important opinion and want to be incorporated in it, to connect so that it actually becomes my opinion. I want his words to touch my heart and to play on it like on strings.
This is how I relate to everyone who speaks. I don’t criticize what he says in any way but simply want to be incorporated in the same thought. We open up to one another and are totally candid as we speak from heart to heart. Everyone tries to totally annul his criticism so that there will be no barrier that blocks the friends’ words and so they will directly enter my heart as if I said them myself, fully confident that it is correct.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/14/14, Workshop
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In the News (Opinion, Daron Acemoglu, American economist, currently the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics at MIT): “In this paper we revisit the relationship between democracy, redistribution and inequality. We first explain the theoretical reasons why democracy is expected to increase redistribution and reduce inequality, and why this expectation may fail to be realized when democracy is captured by the richer segments of the population; when it caters to the preferences of the middle class; or when it opens up disequalizing opportunities to segments of the population previously excluded from such activities, thus exacerbating inequality among a large part of the population. We then provide new and systematic reduced-form evidence on the dynamic impact of democracy on various outcomes. Our findings indicate that there is a significant and robust effect of democracy on tax revenues as a fraction of GDP, but no robust impact on inequality. We also find that democracy is associated with an increase in secondary schooling and a more rapid structural transformation. Finally, we provide some evidence suggesting that inequality tends to increase after democratization when the economy has already undergone significant structural transformation, when land inequality is high, and when the gap between the middle class and the poor is small. All of these are broadly consistent with a view that is different from the traditional median voter model of democratic redistribution: democracy does not lead to a uniform decline in post-tax inequality, but can result in changes in fiscal redistribution and economic structure that have ambiguous effects on inequality.”
My Comment: Today, during the fall and disappearance of the middle class, the hope of the American dream, the gap between the rich and poor is widening. Consequently, the concept of democracy increasingly appears as purely theoretical. There is a growing need for a new form of society with equal distribution, rational production and consumption, and experiencing happiness in connection.
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Question: If what we need to reveal is concealed, how should we do it?
Answer: This is a good question because the feeling of the concealed comes to a man as he looks for this concealed force. This concealed force is called bestowal. If a person looks for it, he feels how distant it is and how it evades him and remains concealed. Then he begins to work in order to attain it.
If this force becomes the most important, greatest, and most respected thing for him it means that he has already acquired the greatness of the Creator. Then a person begins to feel that he doesn’t even need that the Creator be revealed to him and doesn’t even expect the concealed to become revealed. He only wants to bestow back in order to delight the concealed.
Even if he doesn’t know that it bestows, and doesn’t even know that he bestows, and the concealed doesn’t know that he bestows, it is enough for him. Thus a person also becomes concealed from himself, like the force that he wants to reveal.
Then he reaches an equivalence of form with this force and becomes internally familiar with the force called the concealed. It is not revealed, but a person knows it since he has reached the same state. This means “from Your actions we will know You.”
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/13/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam
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Today there is a huge backlog of technology in the world. However, we cannot implement up-to-date technological developments because if they are used in industry, millions of people will immediately lose their jobs; robotics can replace everything.
I visited several new farms in Israel; there are no people there. Irrigation management, crop harvesting, and produce packing in crates are all done by a computer with a clock mechanism; there is not one single person.
Question: Meaning, on the one hand, there is automation, simplification of the work, increase in production, and from this of course also profit is higher, but at the same time, there is a process of increasing unemployment. A plan for retraining or reorganization people does not exist.
Answer: There is no plan, and it’s also not required! They are released not in order to work in another factory, but in order to study how to ascend to the next level of existence. It is offered to us by nature!
Nature has a specific plan. We see that evolution is not just a series of casual events but a chain of consistent forced actions in which all the pluses and minuses, all kinds of molecules, connect and interact. We have to understand this and follow along with it! Therefore, we come to a state where a person must ascend to the next level. This is precisely what the method of integral education and upbringing is intended for.
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From KabTV’s “The Global Crisis” 9/15/13
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The evolution of man throughout the history of his development is attempts to find pleasure in our lives, fulfillment, preferably eternal and absolute. But in the end, we always reach a “dead end” because the pleasure is momentary, transient, and imperfect.
When a person begins to understand that, then he is ready for us to talk to him. Otherwise it is useless, he won’t listen to us.
Question: But the people who study Kabbalah and are familiar with its principles go through this path quite quickly. When you see the system, then you don’t have to run after the pleasures of the moment.
Answer: The people who come to the wisdom of Kabbalah have not yet solved many of their problems. It seems to them that they can solve the problems with the help of this wisdom, and then afterward are disappointed, leave, and then return in the next reincarnation, or if time allows, they return in this lifetime.
Question: But this wisdom greatly shortens the way.
Answer: No! Knowledge will never help against sensations. You can tell a person anything you want, but he will, in any case, do what he wants and not what he knows.
We were created from the desire to receive. Our brain is designed only to show us where it is possible to receive these desires the most quickly. We are like dogs searching where the pleasures are according to the sense of smell. Our desires lead us, thus there is no possibility to shorten the path.
5,000 years ago, in all Kabbalistic books, it was said that at the end of the 20th century humanity would begin to be discouraged from its egoistic development and then the discovery of the wisdom of Kabbalah would be possible. And until then, it was forbidden for the Kabbalists to talk about it, and everyone thought that it was some kind of signs, mysticism, fortune telling, magic, and miracles. Only in our days is the science of Kabbalah being discovered. Many still don’t want to understand that because they haven’t yet escaped the old ideas about it.
Until our times we had to go by the path of suffering and disappointments within egoistic development. But from our days onward when we have reached the point of complete disappointment, it is possible to advance forward. And here we have a choice: Either to continue by way of suffering, or to prefer the way of the wisdom of Kabbalah. But to go by the way of Kabbalah means to begin immediately to rise to the next, upper level. This means to create a second level, parallel to the lower level.
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From KabTV’s “Talks with Michael Laitman,” 9/27/13
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Question: All new social systems develop in an egoistic way. How will the integral society develop?
Answer: The material and our sensation of it develop in an egoistic way, whereas the spirit develops in an altruistic way.
Altruism in nature exists only between people. When we begin to develop it and aspire to complete bestowal, to complete mutual connection between us, then in our mutual bestowal, a new balance appears. It carries us forward, raises us above the material level, and then we begin to develop in it. The movement and development in it is infinite, because precisely in bestowal we begin to reveal its depth because each one of us does not work with his egoism but with the desires of all the seven billion inhabitants of planet Earth.
Infinite spaces of other people are being revealed to a person, which he can fill through himself. It turns out that when he bestows and fulfills others, he contains the entire universe in himself. Along with this, everyone begins to feel that he is one, the only one that exists, and it does not bother him. Each one has his own dimension. This is how we advance forward.
Afterwards, all our dimensions unite mutually to one new infinite reality, and then again we work for each other. Elevation of the integration level occurs. Suppose that I united with everyone, someone else united with everyone, the third one also united with everyone, and now each one of us constitutes his own universe in itself, and begins to unite between us once more and then again, and so on.
Therefore, this process is infinite, but in each place it is done only altruistically because otherwise the ego fills, restricts, and blocks us.
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From Kab TV’s “An Integral World” 11/27/13
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