In spiritual work we proceed in the right line, which is towards bestowal, approach, and unification. And everything against this that is awakened in us is what we need to correct. Only this! All the rest is done intentionally and isn’t subject to any correction. We get all kinds of disturbances so that we will choose what we need more clearly. This is so that we will begin to choose from the general providence, which isn’t subject to any correction or individual, personal attainment of the Creator. This is specifically where following our efforts, we are shown how much we are not ready to do this.

Why? So that we will require help from above.

The forces that are awakened specifically in this place of unity and push us away from each other are an expression of the shattered Kli.

Specifically, we must not miss these desires and characteristics. The moment that this snake reveals himself inside, you should immediately grab him, constantly choke him and not let go. It seems to you that you have strangled him, you breathe easily and can then embrace him. But after a moment, he wakes up again. This happens even within a second, and there is no interruption! And this is good. We must constantly make starting and stopping movements like these.

The recognition of evil is the first stage and is very difficult. On every level it will be more and more acute and will require a more precise, conscious, emotional, and analytical intention. “Why is this feeling awakened, for what purpose, or is this just rejection? Why this? What for? What does the Creator want to tell me?”

I begin to associate the recognition of evil with the Creator, “He deliberately tripped me up.”

When we give a child something to do, understandably he tries to do it because instinct is pushing him towards this. And we are led forward, not by instinct, but by feeling the environment. The group holds me, obligates and directs me. There is tension in the air all the time and a need for constant methodical work until the completion of correction.

The group must constantly push me, and we all do this for one another. After all, the group is not a team of external employees. The group is what we organize and hold and the reason why we obligate ourselves. And each one of us, when he feels pressure and resistance from within, must feel that the group is holding him and won’t let him relax or go beyond its limits. This situation must be constant.

Clearly, new outbreaks of ego, anger, rejection, and trouble will be awakened. And the group must awaken in us an increasingly sophisticated sense of responsibility and the need to work specifically on the new sensations that are awakened in us. This is so that nobody will flee or try to justify himself and say “All of this is nonsense. I don’t want it and it doesn’t interest me anymore.”

These disturbances are very sophisticated, but it is precisely through this sophistication that we begin to be aware of the Creator. It is specifically in this way that I learn about Him. Just as in life when we live with someone, we begin to understand him through all kinds of good and bad relationships in our mutual dance. It is the same thing here. We have no other way of becoming aware of the Creator.

In these states, we have to go through a particular amount of necessary mutual movements. The Creator shows me negative characteristics, I try to overcome them, He shows more, and again I overcome.

Like a gilded statue made from plaster covered with gold, so have to cover our desire for pleasure with a desire to give pleasure, meaning to use it in order to bestow. And so all kinds of egoistic, negative desires constantly come to me that are awakened regarding others, and I must cover them and transform them into characteristics of bestowal and love instead of hatred. We advance according to this principle.

After I have learned a bit and have understood how the Creator plays with me, I am ready to be closer to Him. I have passed through the first stage. I am now aware of Him, understand Him, and can somehow resist Him. I have accumulated data and experience and am no longer found on such a level where it was possible to get rid of me, to confuse me with one small blow. I already understand more, I am more self-controlled, I have gathered a group that is appropriate for me, and have surrounded myself with friends, and so forth.

Ultimately, after I have learned some of the characteristics of the Creator, I can be in a more complex interaction with Him, and He then begins to be more revealed before me.

He is revealed to me: “Here I am”, and who are you?” I am negatively and egoistically worse. But I begin to understand that all of these are expressions within me, and from this I begin to understand the opposite positive image by correcting my characteristics, which have already become shared characteristics.
[112518]
From the St. Petersburg Convention “Day One” 7/12/13, Lesson #2

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You help the group when you try to keep the feeling of belonging to the general connection. Someone may fall, but it is his own private fall, while at the same time, you can remain in the same state you attained in the convention.

For example, I don’t feel that I have left the convention. In the days after the convention I have only grown stronger, acquired the experience of the new level that was attained in the convention, and have thus discovered new discernments.

It is because such a state did not previously exist in our reality, in the process of correction, or in today’s world. We have actually begun the correction of the souls! Up until this very moment, everything previous to this time was just preparation. The sin (the shattering of first man), Babylon, the slavery in Egypt, the destruction of the Temples, and the exile were all necessary in order to prepare the desires for correction. Now we begin this correction!

The connection we have attained among us is the first level of correction. It isn’t clear as yet, but we are already on this level. It is like a newborn baby who doesn’t understand but who is already living in this world. I am telling you that you are already in spirituality, but now you have to discover it in practice and actually feel it.

We need to develop our senses. When a baby is born he also doesn’t see or hear anything at first. He doesn’t feel this world, and only after a while does he begin to respond to sounds and light. We also don’t respond at the moment, but we are actually in the spiritual world and now everything depends on how much we want to grow within it.

A baby has a natural instinct to grow. We don’t have it and instead of using natural instincts, we must, on our own, establish our nature and the Creator. It is only thanks to our connection that we stabilize this body by adding more and more to it.

We are constantly being given new desires and attributes and if we don’t process them correctly and don’t attribute them to the general unity, they become a burden in the form of different problems and hardships. Therefore we should try to process them in a very quick and correct manner. Otherwise, we will have to do double the work we do today that we didn’t do yesterday. Everything that wasn’t done the day before yesterday will grow and become three times more work and much more difficult to complete. If we go on this way, we will eventually give up and surrender. Then it will be necessary to start everything anew.

We have to reach a state in which we will not have to hold conventions. We will keep on ascending higher and higher even without them. If we keep the state of connection we have attained, we will not need anything. We will develop within it more and more and begin to feel one another. The daily lesson will be enough for us and we will begin to perceive it on a different level and not through the words that are transmitted through the Internet. All this is very near.
[112526]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/17/13, Writings of Rabash

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Like A Bundle of Reeds, Why Unity and Mutual Guarantee Are Today’s Call of the Hour, Michael Laitman, Ph.D.

Chapter 2: I Want, Therefore I Am
Life as an Evolution of Desires

The Four Levels Within Us

What’s more, our sages assert, the levels of still, vegetative, animate, and speaking are not exclusive to the outside nature. They exist within each and every one of us, forming the basis of our desires and even the inner structure of each desire. Rabbi Nathan Neta Shapiro writes, “There are four forces in man—still, vegetative, animate, and speaking—and Israel have yet another, fifth part, for they are the Godly speaking.”[i]

Baal HaSulam provides a more elaborate explanation of the way these levels of desires work within us: “We distinguish four divisions in the speaking species [humans], arranged in gradations one atop the other. Those are the Masses, the Strong, the Wealthy, and the Sagacious. They are equal to the four degrees in the whole of reality, called ‘Still,’ ‘Vegetative,’ ‘Animate,’ and ‘Speaking.’

“The still … elicit the three properties, vegetative, animate, and speaking. …The smallest force among them is the vegetative. The flora operates by attracting what is beneficial to it and rejecting the harmful in much the same way as humans and animals. However, there is no individual sensation in it, but a collective force, common to all the plants in the world…

“Atop them is the animate. Each creature feels itself, attracting what is beneficial to it and rejecting the harmful. …This sensing force in the Animate is very limited in time and space, since the sensation does not operate at even the shortest distance outside its body. Also, it does not feel anything outside its own timeframe, meaning in the past or in the future, but only at the present moment.

“Atop them is the speaking, consisting of an emotional force and an intellectual force together. For this reason, its power in attracting what is good for it and rejecting what is harmful is unlimited by time and place, as it is in the animate. Because of science, which is an intellectual faculty, unlimited by time and place, one can teach others wherever they are in the whole of reality, in the past or in the future, and throughout the generations.”[ii]

[i] Rabbi Nathan Neta Shapiro, Reveals Deep Things, Parashat Shemot [Exodus].

[ii] Rav Yehuda Leib HaLevi Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), The Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot [Shining and Welcoming Face]” (Ashlag Research Institute, Israel, 2009), 134.

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Workshop

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Writings of Rabash, “Steps of the Ladder,” Item 21

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The Book of Zohar, Selected Excerpts — “Spiritual Attainment,” Item 60

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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Vol. 6, Part 15, “Histaklut Pnimit,” Item 200

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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 3

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Opinion (Gerald Celente, American trend forecaster, publisher Trends Journal, business consultant): “Today the top trends forecaster in the world spoke with King World News about why the shocking Swiss move is only the beginning of a much larger global meltdown that will lead to the panic he predicted will happen on Wall Street and around the world in 2015.

“It’s finally beginning to dawn on people that there has been no recovery — it has all been a coverup. The quantitative easing money has flooded the globe and created a completely phony markets. The tens of trillions of dollars that were injected into global markets did nothing of any substance to improve the general economy. We see a global collapse. There’s no recovery — it’s been a coverup.”

My Comment: This author predicted the 2008 crisis. We are not able to deal with the crisis because we think it is purely an earthly manifestation, and that its causes are in our eco-political-social blunders.

But the real cause of the crisis is in our miscalculations of the program of nature. Our relationships with each other and with the environment should be developed towards a state of Adam (man), the similarity to the upper force of nature and the property of bestowal and love. It is the complete interaction of the whole of humanity, as all parts of nature on the still, vegetative and animate levels are connected with each other.
[154055]

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We have to try to keep focused on the general picture while reading the weekly section of the Torah (Parashat HaShavua) since the Torah tells us about how to reach complete comprehensive unity.

The ego is increasingly revealed time after time on the way to unity, and as it grows we discover the need for an increasingly greater connection above it.

The ego is our helper that operates against us and serves as help against us, but at the same time it reveals all the flaws, the defects, and the poisonous vapors of our states.

The ego is revealed in the consumerist attitude of people towards the still, vegetative, and animate nature, but especially in the relations between us. Envy, jealousy, domination, aspiration for fame and respect are our major problems.

Therefore, the goal of our correction is to bring a person to a state of unity and wholeness when he can harmoniously connect with everyone else in one unique system. This is the reason the Torah, the Light that corrects all the flaws, was given to us. The flaws are corrected to the extent that we define them as such, which means according to the way we see them.

By rising above the flaws to even greater connection and unity between us we ascend to the levels called holidays, weekdays, Sabbath, and Rosh Chodesh (the beginning of the month), the nations of the world, Levites, Cohanim (priests), Israelis, etc.

On these levels we see all the other supporting pillars of the spiritual ascent by being on the level of King David at one time and then on the level of King Solomon, and then the level of Moses, Aaron, Joseph, or Jacob.

As a person goes through these levels he feels that he ascends from the lowest level to the highest, being in as many states as possible.  He seems to experience all the days, holidays, weekdays, etc. He enters the states of each of these supporting pillars, connects, and unites with all of humanity. Eventually he integrates the whole world inside him and becomes a human being, Adam (stemming from the Hebrew word “Domeh” – to resemble), which means similar to the Creator.

Therefore we should perceive everything the Torah tells us about as essential levels of our development until we all reach the predetermined wholeness.

Question: Is the sequence of the holidays starting from Rosh Hashanah (the new year) onward kept in a person’s feelings and then accordingly in his feeling as Noah, Abraham, etc.?

Answer: Every person feels this in his own way.

If the general soul wasn’t shattered and was only one soul that corrects itself in a certain purposeful manner that is especially meant for that, it would go through all the levels in an accurate order.

But since we are all mutually connected and can be corrected only by the connection between us, we have to go through all these states that are mutually incorporated in us and in the figures the Torah calls Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, etc.

All these figures are spiritual levels and their inner filling, which on every level is called Adam. The levels themselves are called Sabbath, weekdays, holidays, months, and years.

It is a whole system that is made of the still, vegetative, and the animate nature; a whole world that develops in integral unity by attaining increasingly greater harmony each time.
[154023]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 4/28/14

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The amazing system called Jethro is part of the general spiritual system that includes egoistic attributes as well as several altruistic attributes that are totally the opposite.

The connection between Jethro and Moses was kept through Zipporah and the children.

Question: Why was Moses allowed to marry Zipporah, Jethro’s daughter? Is it because the nation wasn’t divided into tribes then?

Answer: We mustn’t look at that from the perspective of division. All the biblical figures throughout history took wives from hostile tribes. Jacob, for example, married Rachel and Leah who were the daughters of his greatest enemy Laban.

Jethro doesn’t support or side with Moses either, but there is a very clear connection between them as Jethro is totally immersed in Pharaoh (the ego) with one foot and, thanks to that, can be connected to Moses.

The question is about what Moses did with Jethro for forty years. Why did he need this intermediate level? Forty years is the level of Bina on every level.

Having studied forty years with Pharaoh, Moses spends the next forty years with Jethro and only then does he spend the same number of years with the nation of Israel.

Question: If Pharaoh is the higher level of study, why must he study from Jethro afterward?

Answer: It is in order to know how to change to the attribute of bestowal. A true connection is formed between opposite attributes, just as was the case with Jacob and Laban’s daughters. What is more, Jacob had concubines and servants who also had his children. This may seem like an unclear mess, but this is how the world of desires is created, and this is how they are tightly connected.

Ruth, the mother of King David’s dynasty, belonged to Moab, which was a nation that hated the Israelis. David’s heir is the Messiah Son of David, who will bring the entire world to unity many years later at the end of time.

An ordinary person who doesn’t see the whole picture doesn’t see the beginning and the end, the entrance and the exit of this system. He doesn’t understand why it closes this way, but the integral system closes precisely in this way.
[153901]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 5/21/14

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Like A Bundle of Reeds, Why Unity and Mutual Guarantee Are Today’s Call of the Hour, Michael Laitman, Ph.D.

Chapter 2: I Want, Therefore I Am
Life as an Evolution of Desires

In the previous chapter, we said that the name, Ysrael (Israel), combines the words Yashar (straight) and El (God). We established that the name came about when Abraham assembled people who wished to reach the Creator, to discover God, and who were named “Israel” after that desire. In this chapter we will discuss the formation of desires in general, and the formation of the desire for the Creator, namely Israel, in particular. To do that, we need to examine reality as an evolution of desires.

In 1937, Baal HaSulam published Talmud Eser HaSephirot (The Study of the Ten Sephirot), a monumental commentary on the writings of the ARI, author of Tree of Life. In the commentary, the author goes into great detail explaining that, at the foundation of reality lies the desire to give, which he calls “the will to bestow,” which then created the will to receive. This is the reason, explains Baal HaSulam, why our sages testify that “He is good and does good,”[i] and speak of “His desire to do good to His creations.”[ii]

In Part 1 of The Study of the Ten Sephirot, Baal HaSulam explains why the will to bestow necessarily created the will to receive, and why the two desires are the foundation of the whole of Creation. In his words, “As soon as He contemplated the creation in order to delight His creatures, this Light [pleasure] immediately extended and expanded from Him in the full measure and form of the pleasures He had contemplated. It is all included in that thought, which we call ‘The Thought of Creation.’ …The Ari said that in the beginning, an upper, simple Light had filled the whole of reality. This means that since the Creator contemplated delighting the creations, and the Light expanded from Him and departed Him, the desire to receive His Pleasures was immediately imprinted in this Light.”[iii]

To underscore the assertion that the will to bestow, the Creator, created the will to receive in order to give it pleasure, Baal HaSulam labels that section, “The will to bestow in the Emanator necessarily begets the will to receive in the emanated, and it [the will to receive] is the vessel in which the emanated receives His Abundance.”[iv]

Ashlag was not the first to refer to the will-to-bestow’s creation of the will to receive, albeit he did so more implicitly. Rabbi Isaiah HaLevi Horowitz (The Holy Shlah) also wrote that “Since He favored to do good to His creations, He wished to benefit them with the real benefit, as with the matter of the creation of the evil inclination [will to receive, egotism], which is in favor of the creations.”[v]

Similar to the two above-mentioned sages, Rabbi Nathan Sternhertz writes in Likutey Halachot [Assorted Rules], “The Lord magnifies His mercies and kindness, as He wished to benefit His creations in the absolute best of all the best.”[vi]

Thus, the will to bestow—the Creator—wishes to bestow upon us, His creations, and we are meant to receive that benefit, the bestowal. Yet, what is that benefit, the good we are meant to receive?

In his “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sephirot,” Baal HaSulam writes that the benefit we are meant to receive is the attainment of the Creator, just as Abraham did almost 4,000 years ago. In Ashlag’s words, “[upon attainment] one feels the wonderful benefit contained in the Thought of Creation, which is to delight His creatures with His full, good, and generous hand. Because of the abundance of benefit that one attains, wondrous love appears between a person and the Creator, incessantly pouring upon one by the very routes and channels through which natural love appears. However, all this comes to a person from the moment one attains and onwards.”[vii]

To attain the Creator, we must have similar qualities to His, or in Baal HaSulam’s terms, we must obtain “equivalence of form” with Him. In the “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot [Shining and Welcoming Face],” Ashlag writes, “Thus, how can one attain the Light … when one is separated and in complete oppositeness of form … and there is great hatred between them [Creator and person]? …Therefore, one … slowly purifies and inverts the form of reception into being in order to bestow. You find that one equalizes one’s form with the system of holiness, and the equivalence and love between them returns … Thus, one is rewarded with the Light … since he entered the presence of the Creator.”[viii]

Four Levels of Desire Shape Reality

When examining reality from the perspective of the evolution of desires, Kabbalists discovered that the will to receive we’ve just described contains four distinct levels—still (inanimate), vegetative (flora), animate (fauna), and speaking (human). Ever since the ARI mentioned the division of reality into those four levels back in the 16^th century,[ix] numerous scholars and Kabbalists have discussed those four levels. The MALBIM (Meir Leibush ben Iehiel Michel Weiser),[x] Rabbi Pinhas HaLevi Horovitz,[xi] and the RABaD (Rabbi Abraham Ben David), who wrote, “All of the world’s creatures are still, vegetative, animate, and speaking,”[xii] are but three of numerous sages referring to reality as consisting of those four levels.

Yet, no sage or scholar is as descriptive as Baal HaSulam. His writings, which he explicitly intended for everyone to read and comprehend, systematically and elaborately detail the structure of reality the way Kabbalists and Jewish scholars have perceived it throughout the ages. In his essay, “The Freedom,” he explains the structure of the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking desires under the section, “Law of Causality.” He explains that all the elements of reality are connected and emerge from one another. In his words, “It is true that there is a general connection among all the elements of reality before us, which abide by the law of causality, by way of cause and effect, moving forward. And as the whole, so is each item for itself, meaning that each and every creature in the world from the four types—still, vegetative, animate, and speaking—abides by the law of causality by way of cause and effect.

“Moreover, each particular form of a particular behavior, which a creature follows while in this world, is pushed by ancient causes, compelling it to accept that change in that behavior and not another whatsoever. This is apparent to all who examine the ways of Nature from a pure scientific point of view and without a shred of bias. Indeed, we must analyze this matter to allow ourselves to examine it from all sides.”[xiii]

[i] Babylonian Talmud, Masechet Berachot [Treaties Blessings] p 44a; Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, “Rules of Blessings,” Chapter 8, Rule 14; Rav Moshe Cordovero (the Ramak), An Orchard of Pomegranates, Gate 23, Chapter 5; and numerous others.

[ii] Rabbi Isaiah HaLevi Horowitz (The Holy Shlah), Masechet Pesachim, Sixth Interpretation, (27); Rabbi Menachem Nachum of Chernobyl, Maor Eynaim [Bright Eyes], Lech Lecha [Go Forth], Rabbi Tzadok HaCohen of Lublin, The Thoughts of the Diligent, item 19, and many others.

[iii] Yehuda Ashlag, Talmud Eser Sefirot (The Study of the Ten Sefirot), Part 1, Histaklut Pnimit (Inner Reflection), Chapter 2, items 10-11 (Jerusalem: M. Klar, 1956), 17.

[iv] ibid.

[v] Rabbi Isaiah HaLevi Horowitz (The Holy Shlah), Masechet Pesachim, Sixth Interpretation, (27).

[vi] Rabbi Nathan Sternhertz, Likutey Halachot [Assorted Rules], “Rules of Tefilat Arvit [Evening Prayer],” Rule no. 4.

[vii] Yehuda Ashlag, Talmud Eser Sefirot (The Study of the Ten Sefirot), Part 1, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sephirot,” items 104-105 (Jerusalem: M. Klar, 1956), 31.

[viii] Rav Yehuda Leib HaLevi Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), The Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot [Shining and Welcoming Face]” (Ashlag Research Institute, Israel, 2009), 150.

[ix] Rabbi Itzhak Luria (the Holy ARI), Tree of Life, Gate 39, Article no. 3.

[x] Rabbi Meïr Leibush ben Iehiel Michel Weiser (The MALBIM), on 1Kings, 8:10, Section, “Explanation of the Matter.”

[xi] Rabbi Pinhas HaLevi Horovitz, Sefer HaMikneh [The Deed Of Purchase], Masechet Kidhushin [Treatise Betrothal], p 82a.

[xii] Rabbi Abraham Ben David, (The RABaD), The RABaD Commentary on The Book of Creation, Chapter 2, Study no. 2.

[xiii] Rav Yehuda Leib HaLevi Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), The Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom” (Israel: Ashlag Research Institute, 2009), 415.

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