Audio Version Of The Blog – 10.29.14

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Eliminating Disparities In A Nation

laitman_426Question: You talk about the necessity for consolidating all people into one family, but isn’t this the dream of the European far right, “We are a family, and they are not”?

Answer: The problem of the far right faction is that it places its own people in a special place above all the rest of the peoples. However, we aren’t talking about elevation above others here, but about unity among the people. So, what’s wrong with that?

Suppose that I am French and other nations don’t interest me. France is absolutely enough for me, and I don’t want those who are not considered French to live in France. Moreover, this refers to French according to culture and not nationalism.

Belgians will come and even Jews. The main thing is that we have a generally uniform culture, a shared view of things. So, France is our common nation. We agree with its constitution, with its legislation, with its customs, norms, and language.

So, if a particular sector enhances this unity, then it doesn’t matter what it is called: right, left, center, etc. This approach is good as long as it is not realized at the expense of other nations. I don’t look at the others. I simply want my nation to live in peace and quiet, to be happy and prosperous.

What is bad about that? A person cares about his nation. He wants his people to live as one family. Even though he doesn’t have a broad vision or the moral force to be concerned about the inhabitants of other nations, and even though this is called “nationalism,” it is in a good sense. He is not a chauvinist. He has no hatred towards others, toward foreigners. He is only concerned about his own people, and not at the expense of others either.

It is true that, in a case like this, the nation is not ready to enter into some kind of partnership as in the example of the present European Union, but there is no need for it either. First its people pass through the new education, strive for equality, to unity, to a common general level accepted by all. Gradually, people will absorb new values in that they, themselves, already want to attain some kind of optimal average, a basket of necessary products and services that are uniform for everyone.

Certainly, we don’t say one size fits all. Prosperity can vary by two or three times as much. However, in sum, this is a small difference, the social “play” and not a social abyss as it is today.

Question: If the extreme right will accept an approach like this, will they increase their success?

Answer: Certainly, for this it is necessary to change the legislation in the appropriate direction. In a big way, it is necessary to record what is essential. All of the inhabitants of the nation must accept its culture. They must be, let’s say, French, regardless of religious faith. The person must be loyal to the homeland to which he has come.

For example, the African-Americans in the United States don’t act against their nation. They specifically feel themselves to be Americans. Yes, they have differences of opinion with other sectors, but they live in their nation.

In accordance with this, in Europe, even if you are a Muslim, you must maintain your allegiance to the nation in which you live. Otherwise, you invalidate your right to live there.

Question: Is national unity like this a prerequisite for world unity?

Answer: No, but now we are talking about a specific region, about European nations in which the tension between sectors has grown, and in this context the European Union is not found on the agenda for the meantime. It is possible to speak about economic and military cooperation, but this is not unity. Rather, these are joint activities on a contractual basis.

On the other hand, true unity represents a transition to familial relationships. This is something that is much denser, more intimate, deep and comprehensive, when all of Europe truly becomes a common home for its inhabitants. However, they are not ready for this today because they are very distant from each other.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 9/9/14

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Networking On Correction

laitman_264_01Question: If we connect in caring for a friend’s healing, the outcome will be positive and then we will feel proud of that. It turns out that it would be an egoistic receiving of reward.

Answer: It makes no difference. We must look at things realistically since the egoistic awakening and the reward are also necessary. We need to be sure that we are a force. We are not on the level of working without feedback, yet when the mere effort or working for the Creator without a reward is the reward for us.

At the moment, we cannot even do that and don’t feel the system on a level that allows us to work in a void. I operate and all my efforts disappear, while I must feel bestowal and certain limitations. Therefore, we need feedback.

Question: How can we improve the quality of our concern for our sick friend?

Answer: First of all, the concern we feel for him should teach us to be together in one thought, on one level. At the same time, we must hope that we will learn to add our intention to this thought, that we unite thanks to our concern and use this connection on the next level in order to think about the Creator and to establish the necessary conditions for His revelation. The Creator is not revealed in each of us, but in the connection between us.

Thus, when worrying about a sick friend, each one should feel not his own personal concern for him and how we should spur each one to feel that, but how we all are mutually connected. We want to feel the network of connections among us and the revelation of our concern for a friend in it. This is the only thing we care about since our networking is working on the correction.

The main thing for us is to feel the connection since it is our only collective soul in which the Creator later will be revealed. Thus, we move on to the next level, to the system that is external to us, and begin to feel the cobweb of the actual connection, not ourselves and our egoistic desires that are in its meeting points and its connection.

If we begin to work this way, we begin to affect the whole system. By reviving the cobweb of the connections between us, like the web system on the Internet, we begin to prepare it for the revelation of the Creator because the force that goes through the system that ties, revives, regulates, and manages everything is called the Creator.

When we begin to tune into this system of mutual connections, we will be able to feel the Internet web system that was created by people. Our connection will begin to affect it according to the law of equivalence of form and people all over the world suddenly will begin to wake up.

Can you imagine how everything will change? Just as a person’s thoughts constantly change, so will the mechanical, electric system of the mutual connections between people begin to change. The general egoistic human brain—the mutual connection that includes everything that is revealed today in the Internet web system—will begin to change in form thanks to the fact that we are becoming active parts in our spiritual system.

People all over the world suddenly will feel the new current that the system of the relations between them has entered: a new force, new thoughts, and a new moral state. They will feel it since the spiritual system will affect the lower web system like a root affects the branch. Therefore, we soon will discover very interesting options.

However, going back to the question about the sick friend, it is important that we understand that he is the factor that spurs us to collective bestowal unto the whole system so that we will be able to connect and bestow unto the Creator a form of bestowal that He expects of us so much.

We really want our friend to be with us constantly and to recover and return to the group. We constantly must think about it seriously together. The Creator provides us with a reason from above so that we will connect and focus all our thoughts and actions on our unity and eventually for the sake of the Creator.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/8/14, Writing of Rabash

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True Prayer

laitman_943Baal HaSulam, Sages Fruit, Article “Wrong Time to Gather the Herd”: It’s prohibited to separate oneself from the society and ask for oneself, even for the sake of pleasing the Creator.

One should address the Creator, having the purest thoughts and ideal desires that are not for one’s own sake, but for the sake of others or for His sake. But if one prays to the Creator on one’s own, alone, the prayer won’t rise to Him. Rather, it will stay with the person who prays.

We can continue screaming for a thousand years, but it won’t help us at all. The spiritual system doesn’t hear solitary requests. A single person is unable to raise the desire to be connected with others, the desire that elicits the correction from Above. This demand has to be raised together with other similar desires, as part of a common desire to unite. Then the Light that fulfilled these desires before the shattering took place, when all desires were one whole, will automatically descend.

Praying for the entire society is the only possible type of prayer. Those who are detached from their surroundings as well as those who pray only for their own sake harm and destroy their souls. The Light won’t respond to such an appeal. It is said: The Creator says to all proud men: “We cannot dwell in the same abode you and I.”

It’s impossible to get out of one’s surroundings if one doesn’t wear the vestments of pride. One’s separation from the group automatically implies that one becomes more selfish. Detachment from the group is a result of various spiritual “moves,” not physical ones. No matter how justified one’s separation looks, it always is an outcome of one’s increased pride, wickedness, and egoism.

Praying alone makes one involuntarily abandon one’s community, thus ruining one’s soul, an aspiration towards the Creator. A sensation that one’s soul is implanted into a corrected community, in each of our friends not as a discrete part, but as an inseparable element of the whole system signifies a complete correction of the body (the general desire).

The category “we” becomes the only one that really exists. The sensation of “I-ness” vanishes since it is given to us only to make us understand that we are placed outside of the spiritual ladder.

“I-ness” exists only in this world. The lowest spiritual degree, as well as all other 125 spiritual steps, is based solely on “we” and the sensation of “we” becomes higher with each next step. The “I” disappears at the level of this world that is called the imaginary world since it exists only in our shattered desires.

Spirituality is felt only in the “we.” This notion includes me, you, him, and other friends connected together. It is quite a weak spiritual level of the world of Assiya at which clarifications and shatterings still occur. The world of Yetzira is nothing like that. There, in the world of Yetzira everything is truly connected into one whole. The world of Beria is a preparatory link for attaining a complete correction in the world of Atzilut.

This explains why we should never forget that spirituality can be felt only through the connection among us. It is said, the minimal Kli (vessel) is comprised of two. Ten people constitute an ideal structure. This is stated in The Zohar and Rabash’s articles.

For thousands of years, humanity did not have such wonderful conditions! We have to take advantage of our developmental stage and implement the transition from “I” to “we” as efficiently as possible.
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From the Convention In St. Petersburg “Day Two” 9/20/14, Lesson 4

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Creating The General Vessel With Proper Connections

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Torah, “Leviticus”, 18; 22: Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind; it is abomination.

Such relations in our world are the expression of homosexuality. In the spiritual world it is the inability of the male and the female parts of the general vessel to properly connect.

The male part is the one who bestows and the female part is the one who receives. They have to connect according to certain laws. Certain actions have to be performed in their connection such as purification, exposure, etc. Only then can a general vessel can be created in the right combination between the attributes of receiving and of bestowal. What is more, this all takes place within a person.

A new level cannot be born out of two male parts since the Light of Hasadim, the Light of bestowal, is lacking in this combination,. The Torah, however, speaks only about actions that can be used in order to bestow outside oneself, since by that you correct your soul.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/19/14

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Prayer As A Manifestation Of Human Desires

laitman_239It seems to us that a prayer is a canonized appeal to a “human-like” object. However, in this world, we understand the notion of prayer incorrectly. In fact, at any given moment, whatever we do, we always pray, meaning we express our desires. The expression of our desires is called a prayer.

Kabbalah is a system of relationships with the upper force that began at the time of Adam. It is the most ancient wisdom in the world that began 5,775 years ago; a human by the name of Adam initiated the relationships with the upper level of nature that is now called the Creator because it stands for the system that created us. This explains why the most basic and correct definitions should be borrowed from the wisdom of Kabbalah.

Adam called the manifestation of human desires a prayer because our constantly changing desires modify the system we live in. The system reacts to our prayers directly since we act within its boundaries. So, we constantly pray, thus the system continuously changes, thereby impacting us.

That’s why we have to correctly direct our desires, concentrate on the system we exist in, thus shaping joint intentions and promoting our internal advancement so that we can influence the system purposefully instead of chaotically impacting it by having diverse desires. For that, we unite in groups and encourage each other, thereby approaching certain intentions and desires, and defining a vision of our future. Our focused exertions affect the system greatly; therefore, it begins reacting to our influence very sensibly.

When we interact with each other, we start feeling a great need for the property of bestowal and love, the quality of integrality and mutual aid. When we effectively and strongly influence the system, it begins influencing us. This “feedback” can dramatically modify us even if we don’t have a desire to change deep inside us.

Because we are egoists, we have only one type of desire. That’s why we are unable to demand from the system that it change our desires and intentions. No matter what, we will always bring up our egoistic incentives. However, the system is built in a way that even if our request is not sincere, it still reacts to our demands correctly. This is because the shattering, the inversion from altruism to egoism, progressed from top to bottom. That’s why when we raise our requests from the bottom up, the system corrects them.

When we are together with the group, we unite; thus, each of us receives a desire to move correctly inside the system. When we impact the system by our willingness to change and rise above our egoistic nature, it responds to us.

Most important is to remember that we are constantly under the system’s influence. Even if we are not yet a corrected element of the system but we manage to stick together in a group and continue our efforts to self-correct, then we influence the entire system in a good way. In return, the system modifies us by its reciprocal influence. By doing so, the system corrects, revives, and rectifies itself.

This explains why everything depends on our prayer, meaning on our having good aspirations even though they are still very small, weak, and primitive. Our aspirations are being calculated within the system. It is a constant cumulative process in which all sorts of reciprocal corrections take place.

It’s essential not to cool down when working in the group. We should support each other, mutually enhance our individual desires, and take advantage of our egoistic properties such as jealousy, envy, and competition. We should use these features to reach the desirable results from others, particularly from our tens, thereby multiplying our desire to improve by dozens of times.

Every friend, becoming ten times greater, will tell the others about their new increased desires. Then, each one of our friends borrows a hundred times more from others, and so on and so forth. It means that when we are in a circle, there are no limitations in strengthening our desires to change.

Moreover, when one falls, others rise. This counterbalance keeps us on a constant move to correction. In this case, we truly can raise our huge desires to the system, urge it to change us and ask it to influence us by reciprocal reaction, the so-called Ohr Makif, the Returning Light, that gradually corrects us.

A self-tuning, self-correcting spiritual system, as any other type of a search engine, constantly explores how to better react to us, absorb us, adapt us to it so that we completely correct and turn into its useful elements. This is how it is built.

The Study of the Ten Sefirot teaches us that the system of the upper worlds consists of 125 levels: five worlds each of which includes five discrete multifunctional blocks (Partzufim), and  each block in turn consisting of five sub-levels (Sefirot). It is a very flexible system that quickly adapts to our demands. When we strive to coordinate with it through our desires and become similar to it, rise to its highest levels and enter a state of absolute homeostasis, connected with it, then the system immediately reacts to our desires and corrects us in a certain way so that we turn into its active, useful, and internal components.

Then we begin controlling the system due to the fact that previously we were its corrupt elements, whereas at this point we approach a state of correction. This is an extraordinary, miraculous property: If an uncorrected particle strives to self-correct, it influences the entire system much stronger than its already corrected elements.

Due to the fact that we are positioned between the system’s corrupt and corrected layers, we have a chance to sense, understand, analyze, and synthesize the properties and possibilities that are a full degree higher than the mechanistic system itself. Our egoistic “I” that we strive to alter helps us become a totally different entity and rise to a new level in the structure of the higher force that created the entire system. I rise above the system and become similar to the property of bestowal and love, to the authentic quality of everything there is, to the Creator.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/8/14, Shamati #5

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Question: It is said in Shamati #5 that the properties of Lishma (for the sake of bestowal to others and to the Creator) are awakened from Above. If this property appears in us “on its own,” without our participation, then why do we need to apply efforts, i.e., try to awaken this property from below?

Answer: The thing is that without our participation, no changes will happen to our egoistic, receiving nature. We won’t start caring for others, nor will we orient ourselves to serve them.

This mission is impossible in this material world. Any system, even a purely mechanical one, requires some energy to perform work. It always loses a certain amount of energy.

The only exceptions to this rule are low-temperature, superconducting systems in which upon certain conditions there appears a property that doesn’t allow the system to consume energy for its own sake, but makes it give the energy away. This example sheds some light on what “acting for the sake of others” means.

We are constructed in a way that we always have to gain something. Without this feeling, we cannot do anything at all. That’s why changing our nature to its opposite, bestowal, seems unfeasible and incredible to us.

We should learn how to feel other’s desires and how to fulfill them. We have to regard ourselves as a remedy to fill others. It’s not natural for this world, nor does it exist at the inanimate, vegetative, animate, or speaking levels.

That’s why Baal HaSulam raises a question about how to acquire the property for the sake of the Creator, i.e., how can we start caring for absolute strangers with whom we have nothing in common and to whom we don’t have the slightest feelings that even remotely remind us, let’s say, of the relationship between a mother and a child. This situation implies an absolutely clear understanding that we are acting without any feasible possibility to get anything in return.

Unless we acknowledge that our nature is a hundred percent egoistic, we won’t ever understand how it is possible to go through such an inversion. A human brain is incapable of comprehending how this kind of inversion can take place in this material world.

Anything that happens to us teaches us that our work that we conduct on ourselves and things that we are trying to achieve in the group is always done solely for the sake of getting a reward. It can be a “restitution” that compensates us for only 1% of our efforts; the other 99% of our activities we do for the sake of others. Still, anything we ever do is done only because of this 1%.

For example, many steam and mechanical engines have efficiency not higher than 3-5%, but they were created specifically to perform with this level of efficiency. That’s why for us 1% has a huge significance. All we do is just for this 1%. If not for this 1%, we won’t be able to give 99% to others.

The question is: Do we really work to get 1% and for this kind of reward we involuntarily give away 99%? Let’s say, I have a boss who exploits me and pays me the minimum wage, but this wage somehow supports my existence. On the contrary, the work I do for my boss equals 99%, and I get back only 1% even though I don’t approve of this state of affairs. However, I won’t be able to exist without this 1%. If I don’t understand this “plan,” I won’t be able to work for my boss at all.

If we explore ourselves deeply enough, we’ll see that in order to achieve complete bestowal without receiving anything for our own sake, we are unable to make a single move, our body just won’t let us! Therefore, it’s possible to come to a state of absolute bestowal only under a special influence from Above.

Those who are subject to this kind of impact go through the process of internal inversion and relate to themselves in a totally different way. That’s why it is said: “Try and see how beautiful the Creator is” since the property of complete bestowal “outside ourselves” is a quality of the Creator.

If it is so, then we just have to understand why we should apply all kinds of efforts, follow numerous tips, try to reach the property of complete bestowal even if we know that no advice can ever help us to re-arrange ourselves unless the upper force descends and corrects us, thus giving us a chance to work for the sake of others.

In this case, why should we keep trying? The thing is that each one of us has a responsibility to apply maximal efforts and strive to correct  ourselves using any remedies that are available to us. Exertions that we make are called “a prayer.” In other words, a prayer is a demonstration of our intentions and desires. A prayer is a manifestation of what in fact we are aspiring to.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/8/14, Shamati #5

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 10.29.14

Shamati #1 “There’s None Else Besides Him”

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Lesson on the Topic: Preparation for the Congress 

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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 61 

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