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What Is The Consequence Of The Middle East Fire?

Laitman_079_01Question: How should we relate to the recent tragedy in Jerusalem—the terrorist attack at a synagogue that plunged the entire country into mourning?

Answer: We have to understand: All this is happening because we still do not complete creation.

Everywhere in the Kabbalistic books it is explained that we live in a unified system. The still, vegetative, animate, and human nature is one. And the first three levels, the still, vegetative, and animate, are engaged by nature instinctively.

People undergo the same process of development and as a result, they should become similar to the Creator, become as one man with one heart. It is written by the prophet Isaiah: “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”

The people of Israel are at the head of this process. It leads the whole world. Therefore, it is obliged to study the inner part of the Torah, as well as to make it available to all of humanity, starting with itself and then to all people. As Baal HaSulam writes in the article “Messiah’s Shofar,” before deliverance, the nations of the world have to learn about the correction, which is entrusted to the people of Israel. So, we have to disseminate the news about our work everywhere, explaining to everyone what the general system is and what we have to do.

So there is an interaction: We help nations, they help us, and all together we want to revive, to establish the broken network of our mutual connections.

Consequently, our troubles and misfortunes are a sign that we still do not have time to make the method of correction public. Hence, we need to feel a sense of our own guilt.

Indeed, everything depends on us. The “seventy nations of the world,” the seven billion people, except those fifteen million who are called “the people of Israel,” have no free will. As much as we attract the Light, as much as we broadcast the method of correction, to that extent it influences the others.

After all, every second Reshimot continue to intensify and change, even from the time of the breaking, preceding the worlds of BYA and lying in the basis of the birth of Adam HaRishon (First Man). The breaking includes all the vessels. And now we must affect the part called “the nations of the world.” It is impossible to reach correction without the people of Israel working in the current situation. This work should be shown and become clear to everyone. And we must realize it with all our efforts.

Therefore, all our groups, all the friends around the world, have to understand, as much as it is possible, they need to make their contribution, to accept our program of dissemination and implement it. If we can succeed in doing what is entrusted to us, then misfortunes will not outpace the reception of the medication. In other words, we must give people the medicine before they feel the symptoms of the disease. This is our work, and this principle is immutable.

Otherwise, there is nothing we can do about it. After all, today the situation is the same as in Poland and Germany before World War II. Then Kabbalists called the Jews to leave for the land of Israel to escape the massacre. However, no one wanted to hear them; those who stayed were killed.

At present, similar conditions are forming around the world, and Baal HaSulam writes about this possibility of a new world war, and so on. Moreover, even simple logic indicates that WWIII will break out here. If someone really wants to ignite the world, there is no hotter region: On the one hand, there are nuclear weapons, and on the other, there is a powerful external threat, leaving no room for a conventional war.

So far we have managed to stave off our enemies with conventional weapons. But in the long term, we will not be able to overcome them with conventional weapons. And then we will have no other choice, which, in fact, the whole world is awaiting. The American and European elites believe that in this way they will be able to get out of the global crisis, the fatality and mortality of which is still hidden from the eye.

So now we have to go toward the right correction, spreading the wisdom of Kabbalah in the world, so that everyone knows its message. Not everyone should study it; some are responsible for study and implementation, and others will join them. However, at least, to all the Jews in the world and to everyone who wants this, we must reveal all our materials and put them on the right path of development.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/19/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Confrontation Between Two Systems

laitman_628_1Question: I grew up in a village. We had nothing between the houses separating them from each other. Today, every new house is surrounded by a high fence. This image is very clear. How can we remove the border between us?

Answer: In the past we didn’t feel ourselves in a general integral system. When it began to be revealed, we began to pay attention to boundaries because we are loners and individualists.

And then we felt a difference between the integral system, which wants to connect us together, and the separate and solitary individuals who want to live “together” like in the cells of a beehive.

This means that each one feels himself separated in his personal cell protected by clear legal rules. In particular this was distinguished in the development of the West. In America there is nothing of greater value than protecting private property.

Now all this is breaking down. So we are beginning to feel how much, on the one hand, we depend upon each other and can cause each other pain and, on the other hand, we don’t want this dependence.

A collision is happening between the two approaches. From the side of nature, forces are pressuring us to connect together, from our side, an opposite process is occurring. Each of us wants to be alone, by himself. We hear from all sides, “What do you want from me? I am an obedient citizen, I don’t violate the rules, I am not guilty of anything.”

How do you know that you are not to blame? You are an egoist, you don’t participate in the general system together with everyone. How can it be that you are innocent? According to what rules have you checked that you are not guilty? Is it according to what you want? In relation to your ego, do you suppose that everything is completely okay?

So the pain that is revealed now is derived from a confrontation between two systems. Certainly we are suffering more and more. There is no choice, we must move ourselves towards accommodation with the demands of nature. For nature will surely win.

Question: And then there won’t be any pain?

Answer: Pain appears at the border where I press on you, you press on me, and nature presses on both of us. Open up and you won’t feel pain. Sometimes we fight, get angry at each other, and from the two words, someone on the side reconciles us, and we are relieved; then everything is okay between us, we can cooperate.

A “click” happens, and in one moment everything is solved, the border disappears. When this happens, there is no place for physiological, mental, or spiritual pain. Ultimately the entire problem is in this.

Question: It is said, “The suffering of many, is half the consolation.”

Answer: That is really how it feels. Pain in itself cannot be measured; you will not see its “amount” on some instrument. So when my pain is transmitted to you and other people, and I see that everyone is suffering, then psychologically the pain level is lessened, actually by half.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 10/9/14

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The Correct Livelihood

laitman_626Question: What is the “correct livelihood” according to the wisdom of Kabbalah?

Answer: The proper livelihood (business) is the manufacture and production of the means of production and consumption in an amount required to provide every member of society with a rational normal standard of living and no more than this.

For example, every animal needs only food that is useful and appropriate for its physiological functioning. A cow never drinks champagne, and a horse will never eat hamburgers. It needs oats and a cow needs grass.

Likewise, normal healthy food is required for a person not exceeding a required level of necessity. With this he will fill his body and all the rest of his needs will be fulfilled only by rising to the next spiritual levels.

Question: What would be a normal profit in business?

Answer: A business must be constructed only to give a person normal fulfillment for his living, not profit.

Together with this, between us we will do great work by mutually satisfying the greatest necessities. But work like this is already included in our spiritual ascent and will be evaluated as spiritual work.

Or all of humanity will gradually begin to be included within it by devoting one or two hours per day, or particular groups of people will work in shifts, several million today, several million tomorrow, and so on.

This means that working for the sake of business will itself quickly retreat into the past. Business circles now think only about how to change some bank notes to others to return the world to the real value of money. But in any case, its value is gone and it is impossible to change anything here.

The integral world must be like one family, and in a family everything is divided according to what each one needs.
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From KabTV’s “Short Stories” 10/23/14

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Messiah Ben Joseph and Messiah Ben David

Laitman_043Question: Why must Messiah ben Joseph be killed?

Answer: Rav Kook wrote: Messiah ben Joseph reveals the importance of Israel alone, but the goal of Israel is to unite the whole world into one family and call the Lord. Therefore, “Messiah ben Joseph is destined to be killed and Messiah ben David will rule.”

This means that we are still in a period of Messiah ben Joseph, and the need to raise the value of IsraelYashar- El (straight to the Creator) over all, and because of this, the time will come when we will unite the entire world, will work to Messiah ben David.
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From An Egoistic Connection To A Connection Of Bestowal

laitman_527_03Baal HaSulam, Shamati #19: He said that we must know that there is a matter of importance in the labor, when there is a contact between the individual and the Creator.

It means that one feels that he needs the Creator, since, in the state of labor, one sees that there is no one in the world who can save him from the state he is in but the Creator alone.

This feeling is thanks to the Light. A person feels that the main goal in life in this world is to attain contact with the Creator. Then an additional illumination helps him understand that only the Creator can help him. Then an additional illumination reveals to him that he depends on the environment and that it is the essential condition by which he can call the Creator to help him. Thus, he gradually advances thanks to a certain illumination on a new level that influences him and leads him.

We exit the state of exile and in it we also go through several phases. First a person doesn’t feel any connection with the upper force at all. He has no contact with Him, not even in the form of ordinary religion.

Then people begin to believe in religions and different faiths, miracles and mysticism. A person must go through all those phases. Each time there is a special illumination from Above that grants us with a certain connection with the upper force. This goes on until humanity reaches a stage where it loses any faith in the upper force and believes only in science and in actual facts.

Then we begin to look for a connection with the upper force as rational people and study the Creator as a force. This force governs us and we agree to act mutually in response to it. We only have to clarify the relationship that can connect us.

Eventually a person reached the wisdom of Kabbalah and begins to work. This raises him to a totally different level of connection with the upper force. It isn’t thanks to his faith or different rituals anymore, but thanks to the change of his internal desire.

Then he is in adhesion with the Creator, meaning that one’s entire thought is of the Creator, meaning that He will help him. Otherwise one sees that he is lost.

This is the same attitude when people were very religious and believed in the Creator ages ago. A person also felt that he was totally dependent on the Creator, on God’s will. If the Creator was merciful, a person would live, but if the Creator didn’t help him, his life would be over.

Now we have to reach the same attitude, that if the Creator helps us we will live and if the Creator doesn’t help us, it means death. We only give a different meaning to the concepts of life and death: life means adhesion with the Creator, mutual bestowal, while death means remaining in self-love.

We see how all of humanity goes through these phases, from the egoistic approach, from greedy dependence on the upper force, to an altruistic dependence of love of others, of yearning to resemble the Creator.

The Creator says about that, “My sons defeated Me.” That is, I gave you the will to receive, and you ask of Me to give you a will to bestow instead.

A person worries about being independent because otherwise he cannot bring the Creator contentment. Who else can bring the Creator contentment? Only a person who can remain independent and separate from the Creator by his ego. He keeps his desire to enjoy and only restricts it and doesn’t allow it to adhere to the Creator egoistically.

He adheres to the Creator with the desire to bestow that he develops above the restriction. Thus he remains independent and the same time reaches adhesion.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/11/14, Shamati #19

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The Main Thing Is Confidence That Everything Will Be Alright!

Laitman_514_02Shamati #72, “Confidence Is the Clothing for the Light”: However, when the Light of life leaves him, which is considered that he has descended from his previous level of vitality, then he becomes clever and inquisitive. He begins to calculate the profitability of everything, is it worthwhile to do it or not.

The Light of vitality is the Light of bestowal, life with love for others; this speaks about a person as a substance, which on one hand, the force of the desire to receive operates and influences. Because of this, he wants to get everything for himself. On the other hand, the force of the desire to bestow enters him and neutralizes the desire to receive and then he even wants to bestow.

So a person is found between two forces. As it is said about two holding a Tallit, this being the person, and each one pulls him to it. The two forces are holding the person: the evil inclination and the good inclination, the desire to receive and the desire to bestow.

And the person must see himself neutrally. This means that he is responsible for both the desire to receive and the desire to bestow, both of which speak within him.

The Torah also describes this as follows. It is as if there was an old and foolish king and a small and wise child. The old king is the desire to receive whose rule we are used to. And the little child is the desire to bestow that is born only after a person matures and only according to his request.

We are constantly found under the influence of these two forces operating in our substance. From the balance of these two forces, which of them wins depends on who I will be, how I think, and what side I want.

So this requires critical self-scrutiny, constant self-criticism, to find out what is acting in me at the present moment: Specifically why I am thinking, speaking, and doing this; in this way I discover myself in thought, speech, and action.

And everything is determined according to which force controls me now: the force of reception or the force of bestowal. This means that I imagine myself as being under a bilateral influence and now must ask what the Creator wants from me. I have already begun a spiritual dialog with Him by placing myself as a neutral observer: There is me, the Creator, and the two forces by means of which He activates me.

I scrutinize these two forces and from them try to bring myself to a neutral state, to attribute both of them to the Creator. In this form, I will begin to demand additional corrections from Him beyond these two forces. As a result of this, I will reach adhesion with the Creator by reaching equivalence of form with Him as much as it is possible in my present situation.

The main thing is to feel confident that I am ready to do and to realize this at every moment!  If a person understands that on the one hand, he is managed by the Creator, and on the other hand, he tries to use every means so that with all of his dependencies he will scrutinize and control his state, this means that he is involved in service to the Creator.

In this case, he will precisely scrutinize the actions of the Creator on him. And this is called “service of the Creator”: The Creator carries out all of the work on a person so that he will grow and know what the Creator is doing with him, will learn the actions of the Creator, and will want to behave like Him. So he wants to be like the Creator, become like Him and be called Adam (man), which means that he is similar (Domeh) to the Creator.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/7/14, Shamati #72

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