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Regarding Mutual Connection And Love

laitman_938_02Question: You spoke about a mutual connection between the groups of ten and all of us. What is this connection?

Answer: A connection is when I think about you and you think about me. I fulfill your desires, and you fulfill my desires because each by himself cannot carry out his own desires. In the spiritual world, we can feed each other, but each one cannot feed himself.

This is exactly as it is with love. There must be mutual cooperation, partnership, mutual connection, a mutual feeling, and how you cause joy and pleasure for others.

A feeling of mutuality and connection appears only when you know the needs of the other and you fulfill them. He knows your needs and fulfills them, and when each of you enjoys giving pleasure to the other, then a shared feeling appears called “love.”

Certainly, there is no chance of finding this in our world, but in the spiritual world, everything exists only in this form.
[144881]
From the Convention In St. Petersburg “Day One” 9/19/14, Lesson 2

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Don’t Play With The Ego; Be Involved With The Soul

Laitman_022Question: How should one work correctly with foreign desires since the more that you advance, the more they are revealed?

Which is better: to prohibit my weak points so that I won’t fall into egoistic fulfillments, or placate my “beast” when it says, “Get this for me,” thinking that I am doing this to get closer to spirituality?

Answer: You can never placate your beast! You cannot fulfill it in any form! No matter how much freedom you give it, no matter how much you fulfill it with all kinds of pleasures, it will not calm down. On the other hand, putting limits on it will not help.

Feed it, and it will want to double in size. Limit it, and it will still want twice as much. It will seem to you that there are inexhaustible possibilities for pleasure to be found.

How is it possible to overcome this? You don’t need to be involved with your beast. Don’t hit it, and don’t placate it. Be involved with the soul instead. Shut your eyes as if the beast didn’t exist, and be involved with spiritual work. Join a group to take functions and responsibilities upon yourself and drag them without deviating toward the beast because playing with the ego doesn’t bring anything good.
[144876]
From the Convention In St. Petersburg “Day One” 9/19/14, Lesson 2

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A Mother Who Is Concerned About The Entire World

Laitman_077Question: How does one transform from being a mother concerned only about her children to a mother who is concerned about the entire world?

Answer: It depends on how she feels the entire world. If she feels all of humanity as her children, then for her this is a natural state. Everything depends upon the influence of the Upper Light, how much it illuminates that circle that she accepts as hers.

Either this circle is locked only upon the family—meaning that the Light influences only the beastly state of the person, and then he feels himself as found only in this world—or the Light has a wider illumination, and, accordingly, the person begins to feel that he depends upon others and that all of the others depend upon him.

The Upper Light reveals everything. However, in principle, the whole world is a part of my soul. There is nothing that is not included in it. Ultimately, I discover it within me.

This is the condition of inclusive love. There is no person in the world that is not part of my interior. Everything is within me, and what I see outside of me, I see with my distorted vision, which on the first spiritual level is discovered as completely different, in a truly correct form.
[144873]
From the Convention In St. Petersburg “Day One” 9/19/14, Lesson 2

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The Creator Is Playing Hide And Seek With Us

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: The holidays of the Israeli nation are a continuum of phases that a person goes through when he decides to follow the path of loving others. Every holiday is a stop along this path in the process of the complete fulfillment of this goal. What is the place of Sukkot in this chain of events?

Answer: Just like any other phenomenon, it is difficult to explain what the holidays mean from a Kabbalistic perspective because it is about something that a person doesn’t yet feel and still has to develop his sensitivity to.

At the beginning of creation we were in direct, constant, and revealed contact with the upper force that created us, but in that state we didn’t understand Him and were not aware of Him yet, as if we were an embryo in his mother’s womb adhered to her and existing thanks to her.

In order to make mature created beings out of us who understand the Creator and know Him, to study His attributes, t0 become like Him, and to relate to Him like He relates to us, there was the Tzimtzum (restriction) and concealment. The created beings suddenly were detached from the Creator.

It turns out that there is a created being—a man, humanity—and in contrast, there is the Creator, the force that manages everything and operates creation. There is nothing other than the force of the Creator and man who was created by Him, whom He wants to raise to His level.

In order to allow a person to grow, the Creator places a Masach (screen) of concealment between Himself and the created being, a thick partition. I don’t see the Creator behind this partition, but I have to try to find Him, as if by playing hide and seek,  trying to see Him in everything that happens to me and inside me,.

On the whole, there is no other work in the world other than the constant representation of the Creator before me. I have to try to discover the Creator in all my thoughts, desires and feelings, and in everything that happens around me. I have to receive everything as Masachim  (screens) that conceal the Creator behind them.

I have to feel that it is only the Creator who fills the whole world and operates everything, including me, of course. All my work is to remove the concealments and return to the state of a revealed contact with the Creator when I understand, know, and feel Him to the depth of the previous concealment, by turning the whole Aviut (thickness) of the partition into an area for His revelation!

This area, which previously created the concealment, now becomes the area of revelation that is called the upper worlds and by which I begin to understand and feel the Creator. I exert myself during the concealment in order to reveal Him, and thanks to that I grow and learn to understand and be just like Him.

The Creator wanted to teach me and reveal His attributes to me and this has been successful. Now we know and understand one another. I feel everything that He wanted to teach me by the concealment. After correcting the concealment to revelation, there is mutual love and openness between us and we reach complete adhesion. We must go through this process, as this is the whole plan of creation.

There are levels in the concealment, starting from the easier ones to the increasingly more difficult ones. Eventually I find myself behind five levels of concealment called the worlds. In order to get closer to the Creator and to know Him, I have to reveal Him on every level.

The five levels of concealment are divided into five parts and each one is divided into five other parts making a total of 125 levels that separate me from the Creator. On each level, I have to turn the concealment into revelation, the lack of understanding to understanding and the lack of feeling to feeling. And thus I acquire the Creator’s attributes and change from one level to the next.

This is nothing like scientific research in this world when a physicist remains the way he was after revealing something new. The levels of spiritual revelation change the researcher himself.

After all, the attributes of the Creator are opposite from my attributes. I totally receive and He totally bestows. Therefore, I have to change the Masach that conceals Him from reception to bestowal in order to reveal Him. Because my attributes are opposite from the Creator’s, the Masach conceals Him, and by turning it to bestowal, I advance and get closer to the Creator.
[144912]
From the program “A New Life” 10/05/14

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The Days Of Spiritual Ascent

laitman_742_03Question: What is the inner meaning of the Sukkot holiday?

Answer: Sukkot is a very important holiday because it celebrates a spiritual ascent. At the end of the year, we reflect on the results of our critical self-analysis.

If we’ve worked well over the course of the year, searching for ways to correct ourselves so as to return to the Creator, then we’ve discovered our guilt in a multitude of transgressions.

And this is precisely the result of our good work, scrutiny of ourselves, and our attitude toward the friends, which showed how full we still are of the evil inclination, hatred toward others, rejection, and egoistic calculations.

After sitting in judgment over ourselves, we deliver a sentence called the start of the new year—Rosh HaShana (head of the year). We want for the Creator, the force of love and bestowal, to be our head, our king.

Rosh HaShana is the coronation of the King as the greatest of all, embodying bestowal, love, warmth, and fulfillment. We value these qualities highly, which is why we extoll this force of nature and wish to become like it, up to total adhesion with it. This is the decision to make on Rosh HaShana, to continue to follow through on it.

Hence, there are two judgments on Rosh HaShana: one severe and one gentle, which precedes the ten days of repentance. During this time we must check our work on our unification and clarify how to achieve unity. After all, the more we correct ourselves uniting as one man with one heart, the more we resemble the one and singular Creator.

With this decision we draw the Surrounding Light, a special luminescence, and see which desires in us are not subject to correction since they cannot be corrected for the sake of bestowal and used to unite with the friends. The other desires, however, can be corrected and used to bring goodness, love, connection, and unity to the friends.

The ten days of repentance separate in all my desires the part that is not yet correctable from that which can be corrected. This separation is called “His left hand over my head”—a left embrace that leaves outside those desires that cannot be embraced.

And then begins the holiday of Sukkot, when “His right hand will embrace me.” During Sukkot, a special luminescence shines on those who wish to unite with all the creatures and cleave to the Creator, to the upper qualities of bestowal and universal love.

The holiday of Sukkot lasts seven days, in accordance with the lights that we need to obtain: Hessed, Gevurah, Tifferet, Netzah, Hod, Yessod, and Malchut, or the guests that take turns visiting the daily holiday feasts: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph, and David.

It is written, “I have created the evil inclination, and the Torah whose Light returns to the source.” The Creator has made bad qualities, rather than good: the evil inclination, our ego, which prevents us from uniting, treating each other well, and bestowing to others.

Love of others is the great rule of the Torah, but we don’t want to observe it. The evil in us is everything that opposes our unification with others. This is the meaning of the excerpt, “I have created the evil inclination, and the Torah as a spice.” The Torah is not the physical book resting on the shelf, but a special method of utilizing the force of nature called “Light.” If I make use of this Light, putting myself under its influence, I convert all the evil, intentionally made by the Creator, into good.

From an egoist who rejects and detests others without any reason, I turn into someone loving, until I unify with everybody as one man with one heart.

Until Sukkot we engaged in judgment over ourselves, clarifying what can and cannot be corrected. And it turned out that we are full of evil, like a pomegranate that’s filled with seeds but is rotten through and through.

On Rosh Hashana we’ve decided that we want to become bestowing and raise the Creator, the force of love, to reign over us. Over the subsequent ten days of repentance we check the ten Sefirot of our soul, the ten parts of our desire, clarifying what can and cannot be corrected. For we contain impure desire (Klipot) that aren’t subject to correction, which we therefore simply restrict, separate, or freeze.

And the correctable desires become corrected in the days of Sukkot. This is the first correction of the desire, and it is done by virtue of the surrounding Light that shines on us. The symbol of the surrounding Light is the Sukkah, a special tabernacle or canopy.

We make a shade because we don’t want to receive the Light for ourselves, for our own benefit; rather, we desire change, connection with the Creator, the Light, for the sole reason of giving it to others. That is what a righteous person is—one who takes only what’s necessary for his sustenance, and gives away the rest. Such is the corrected reception symbolized by the Sukkah.
[144774]
From a KabTV’s “A New Life” No. 439, 9/30/2014

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