Audio Version Of The Blog – 04.20.14
Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download: MP3 Audio
[audio:http://files.kabbalahmedia.info/audio/eng_o_rav_2014-04-20_declamation_blog-rav_full.mp3 title=’20.4.14′]
Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download: MP3 Audio
[audio:http://files.kabbalahmedia.info/audio/eng_o_rav_2014-04-20_declamation_blog-rav_full.mp3 title=’20.4.14′]
In the News (from Scientific American Blog): “Childrens’ literature and movies are rife with talking mice and ducks who wear clothes (even if they’re occasionally portrayed without pants) and dogs that range from, well, dogs, to dogs that might as well be people.
“Stories are one of the main ways that our species understands the natural world. Giving human attributes to animals is by no means a recent phenomenon; ancient gods were often hybridized human-like animals (or animal-like humans). In the classic story illustrated above by Arthur Rackham, three bears sit at a table and eat porridge, like humans.
“Given how ubiquitous these anthropomorphic animal-people are in our culture, University of Toronto psychologist Patricia A. Ganea wondered how those sorts of representations influence the way that young children think about real animals.
“Young children already have a hard time distinguishing reality from fantasy, especially before they reach their fifth birthday. And while most children can distinguish reality from fantasy when it comes to visual representations of animals, that distortion can also be reflected in the content of the story itself. ‘Human consciousness, knowledge, abilities, purpose, and intentions are often attributed to animal characters (e.g., seals solve mysteries, cats build houses, and mice drive cars) and even to inanimate objects (e.g., lamps have faces and dance the tango, trains strive against all odds to achieve impossible goals),’ Ganea writes.
“Together, the findings show that language matters more than illustration when it comes to learning about animals’ biology and psychology. Even when the stories were accompanied by realistic images, if the language was anthropomorphic, the kids transferred that false knowledge to real animals.
“More importantly, it isn’t just that the kids failed to learn true facts when exposed to the anthropomorphic stories; those stories actually made it harder for them to learn, teaching them falsehoods rather than facts. They were even more likely to think of animals in human-like terms after reading the books than if they had never seen the books at all!
“Do children transfer the fantastical abilities of non-human animals in their storybooks to their real life models? If so, then those sorts of stories could seriously impede kids’ ability to learn and remember true facts about real animals, or at least to distinguish fact from fiction. That would be especially true for children in urban and suburban areas, who have few opportunities to regularly interact with actual animals, at least compared to their rural counterparts. ‘Presenting animals to children in ways that are similar to how humans act and behave is likely to be counter-productive for learning scientifically accurate information about the biological world and to influence children’s view of the biological world,’ she says.
“The problem is actually more pervasive than it sounds: human adults, at least in the US, are also highly likely to imbue non-human animals with human-like emotions and motivations. It’s a tricky line to navigate. Research is increasingly revealing the fundamental similarities between our species and the rest of the animal kingdom, but there are also aspects of human culture that are, indeed, unique to our species. Is it reasonable to suggest that an animal can feel something complex like pride or embarrassment? We are poised to attribute a similarly complex emotion, guilt, to dogs, but a deeper look reveals that while dogs indeed have a ‘guilty look,’ they probably do not actually realize that they’ve transgressed. If children are routinely exposed to these sorts of anthropomorphic representations of animals, it is no wonder that they grow up to become adults who look at non-human animals as if they are people wearing animal suits.”
My Comment: By the way, in Judaism there are no tales of human-like animals, and if the Torah speaks about a talking donkey, it happens at God’s command. Kabbalah in general looks at the texts of the Torah as secret, the meaning of which is revealed only to one who has attained love of friends.
[132966]
Related Material:
Do Children Need Competitiveness?
Learn From The Children And Not From Television Talk Shows
Hyperactive Children – the Result of Evolving Egoism
Question: What stops a person most from coming out of Egypt?
Answer: A person forgets that we acquire spirituality by connecting. So this becomes the work in Egypt. If you work alone, you are called Pharaoh’s slave.
We should always check ourselves with regard to the group because there is no other scale we can use. We were given vessels, shattered deficiencies that are scattered among all of us since everyone is incorporated in everyone else. Therefore, we don’t understand what is happening. We need to start arranging ourselves in the group and to bring it to the form of a spiritual Partzuf.
It should be a form in which the upper force, the Creator, is revealed. This is all our work: building ten Sefirot, not nine and not eleven, no more no less. All of creation is made of ten Sefirot.
We have to find our place in the Partzuf, the place of those who want to connect in bestowal. This matches GE, the phase of Israel, and rest are AHP that join us and help us. How can we grow? We grow by the AHP, with its help. The bigger the AHP is, the bigger our part of the GE above it can be. Thus we build Aviut (thickness) in GE too, and then the work with the real AHP begins.
[132903]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/16/14, Writings of Rabash
Related Material:
Don’t Flee From The Work But From Yourself
Poof!
Falling Upward
Question: How can we determine the exact measure of the desire needed for a prayer? Perhaps a person who asks for bread has to go hungry for two weeks first, but a person who hasn’t eaten for three days may feel that this cry is the strongest it could be.
Answer: There is no standard measure. It’s a personal feeling that I cannot remain in this state any longer. Besides, we also need a prayer before the prayer because I cannot feel real hatred towards my Egypt and I want to experience the slavery so that I can really hate it. This is also a prayer because this hatred also comes from the Light that Reforms, and every prayer is meant to draw and bring the Light closer.
All these states are carried out very quickly. The Torah tells us a lot about what happens before coming to Egypt. Then there is the story about how the children of Israel entered Egypt, about the birth of Moses, about his escape and his life with Jethro. However the actual exodus is very fast, as if it takes no time. Therefore we only need to ask.
If the Light begins to work and a person is dominated by the Light, he immediately goes through states as if above time. We are very close to this and we can force the Light to operate.
[132590]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/13/14, Writings of Rabash
Related Material:
A Voluntary Slave Of The Light
Preparation For A Prayer
Pharaoh’s Slave Or The Creator’s Servant
Question: Could it be that the outcry from the slavery in Egypt is not my own frustration but our common frustration?
Answer: Indeed, I begin to see myself as an integral man. I am not myself but my connection with others, the mutual incorporation. I make the decision that I is my connection with the group, that I am not here inside my body but there inside the group.
[132185]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/02/14, Writings of Rabash
Related Material:
Where Does The Real Me Begin?
I Am Disappearing And Growing
Where Is My True Self?
Question: What should I do if I cannot persuade people and cannot give them an example when I go out to disseminate? There are many examples in our world of the harm that the connection between people has brought them instead of any good.
Answer: If we approach people from the center of the group, we bring them the Light that Reforms. You should understand that you are performing a spiritual act by that, you are bringing a person part of the miracle that can happen in his life. You bring him the initial connection and contact with the Light, and he will complete the rest.
This action should be more spiritual. I don’t try to persuade a person like a rag merchant or other goods. I bring him the end of the pipe of the spiritual channel, and when I speak to him I think about how I can bestow upon him and how I can make this pipe a more reliable, better, more focused, and more efficient conductor of the Light.
This is my goal and my aim and I am not responsible for anything else. After all, who am I? How can I convince a person? Where would I find such skills? Only one out of a thousand salespeople knows how to persuade others, and it isn’t persuasion either but a lie. This means that he knows how to confuse people. This is how it works in our world.
But we don’t even have these skills. We have no merchandise that we can sell, and there is nothing we can give a person except the end of the pipe from which the Light will pour. This is the Surrounding Light, which we don’t see or feel but which will operate in a person.
Each of us should feel that he is performing a spiritual action. I can only be a pipe if I am connected to the center of the group from which I take its spirit and go out to disseminate. When I come in contact with someone, I focus on the spiritual action and use my mind just a bit, and most importantly with the inner feeling. A person will sense this.
This is the actual outcome you need to discover as a result of your work. People don’t need your logical philosophizing; they need a sensation. If the Light operates in the feelings, a person will be with you.
The main war in dissemination is done that way. In order to be a loyal pipe for the Light, the main thing is not to forget that I am performing a spiritual action, pouring an infusing into a person so that he will understand the reason for all evil and what the remedy for all the problems is, and that it remains in him and will keep on working.
Try to touch his heart with your heart. If you speak to him when your heart is in it, then your heart will pour into his heart. And then you will see that people will follow you.
[132672]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/13/14, Writings of Rabash
Related Material:
Like A Net, Teeming With Fish
Adjustment Towards Integral Unity
What Determines The Effectiveness Of Dissemination?
Question: What is the slavery of a person in Egypt?
Answer: He tries to connect with others and is slightly successful every time through some new test, but the fruits of this connection go to Pharaoh who sucks them out of the back of the neck. This means that the ego steals everything and keeps it inside for itself. A person feels that he has nothing. This is what happens with us.
And then, as it is said, (Job 20:15): “He swallowed up riches and vomited it out.” The power of the ego swallows the fruits of the labor and then spits in out vomits giving everything back to the person all at once.
Question: When will this finally happen?
Answer: When a sufficient amount of efforts that have been swallowed by the ego accumulate, it makes it possible for a person to rise to for the sake of bestowal. It is impossible to stockpile negative exertion, negative impressions, in any other way. You cannot work if they are all in front of you.
Even when a little is shown to you, you take account of what you have, this is bad and that is bad, and you flee immediately. And so you won’t run away but will continue to work, your disappointments disappear. This gives us the opportunity to continue by coming again and again to disappointment about our abilities.
As a result, the accumulated disappointment and consequently the need for the group must be so great that you cry out and want to leave. This doesn’t mean fleeing the work, but fleeing from your ego, from yourself!
There are several conditions that must ripen and accumulate. This is a cumulative process; nothing can be done about it. In order to help you with it, there is darkness and the absorption of your failures. And then you need to be inspired by the group, the study, and the teacher, and every day you need to get back up on your feet again.
[132687]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/14/14, Writing of Rabash
Related Material:
Apparently I Am A Slave Of Pharaoh
Dual Control Of A Single Power
In The Future State, We Are Free
Question: Why does it say: “Come to Pharaoh?” What is the meaning of a person’s participation in this act?
Answer: A person has to be ready for it. He has to be able to hold on as he encounters increasingly greater blows. Moses is our innermost point that begins to work when we can connect. It is the point of our inner connection that leads us.
The only thing we have to worry about is the point of connection, so that we can later raise it to Mt. Sinai and receive the whole revelation of Godliness in it. Then it will lead us forward from the center of the group where everyone is equal and we are all connected. We all annul ourselves with regard to this central point of the group and establish in it the vessel of the soul. This is actually the whole method.
[132682]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/14/14, Writing of Rabash
Related Material:
Apparently I Am A Slave Of Pharaoh
Moses Is The Center Of The Group
Room Of Laughter And Tears
Question: How can I advance if I need to reach a state where I don’t want the spiritual goal at all, but wish to remain in material life?
Answer: I must attain the state of the shattered Reshimo de Aviut. I understand that I don’t want anything except remaining in a place that is comfortable for me. But together with this, there is a Reshimo de Hitlabshut in me, which is something from a level above this world.
On the one hand, I determine that I want to remain a beast. But together with this, I have a spiritual goal, a higher world, and I am suffering because I do not belong to it and remain on the level of this beast, and apart from that, I don’t need anything. I know that the beast will remain as such, and there is a higher level.
I really want to attain this higher level, and at the same time, according to the desire of my Aviut (thickness), I am only attracted to convenience and comfort, to remain in this dream. That is what my heart wants.
But the point in the heart calls to me to go out and attain spirituality. It’s impossible to understand how these two conflicting opposites are in me. What do I need to do if I am torn between both of them? What will determine my choice?
[132156]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/31/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam
Related Material:
The Two Major Guiding Signs For Our Ascent
Not A Magic Trick, But Precise Spiritual Physics
The Elevator Between The Floors Of Attainment
The Torah, (Leviticus) “VaYikra,” 1:3: If his sacrifice is a burnt offering from cattle, an unblemished male he shall bring it.
“An unblemished male” is the attribute of complete bestowal because it must be true at every level of work, one must examine if the intention is really directed to bestow, if it doesn’t deviate to the direction of receiving.
After all, if we begin to receive in the intention to bestow, we will immediately find defects within ourselves and that we cannot object to the great incoming pleasure and are not able to give it.
Let’s suppose that you are poor and hungry, and you are to transport bags of gold or portions of food. How would you act? Would you be able to resist the temptation?
Of course, we understand that there are other desires and stimulations of our ego that are bigger. But it is not just food, hunger, or riches but huge envy and hatred towards the one you need to give to. Since you see that to your enemy who tortures you and to the people closest to you, you must do only good, without any kind of reward, and you must do so so that he won’t even know and will continue to hate you.
Question: It looks like the desire for the sake of bestowal with a defect is unsustainable?
Answer: It depends on which level. At every level there are requirements.
Question: Even at the corporeal level. For example, starving Africa is assisted with a large supply masses of goods, but it starves more and more.
Answer: So we provide, and they starve. Africa is the richest continent. If it had been developed, it would have been more successful than America today. There is everything there!
But in our providing it with cheap merchandise, we killed domestic production and agriculture, and transformed people into a generation of idlers, and that was it. And now we are teaching them to fight with each other.
The intention to bestow must be pure, and only then will it bring benefit.
[132711]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 11/13/13
Related Material:
Spiritual Actions In The Allegories Of The Torah
Sacrifices That Bring Us Closer To The Creator
Universal Brotherhood