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Unity Convention, Day Two – 03.07.15

Unity Convention, Day Two, Lesson 2

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Unity Convention, Day Two, Lesson 3

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Unity Convention, Day Two, Lesson 4

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The Dependable Weapon Of Goodness

laitman_938_03Question: How can we explain to the public that we can feel the force that gives us the feeling of the meaning of life in the connection between us?

Answer: We feel the meaning of life in the connection between us where the upper force of nature is revealed. All of nature is bestowal and therefore this force of bestowal created all of creation.

Only the one force of bestowal operates in the universe since the Big Bang until our very day, and we are its outcome. If we learn to get along with this force, we will live a good life.

It is because we see that life is dedicated to reviving matter. If we knew how to adhere to this force, we would actually become eternal. We wouldn’t simply prolong our life as medicine allows us to do these days to live until the age of 200 since this is meaningless.

We can attain eternal existence on condition that we get closer to this force of bestowal. This is possible only according to physical laws on condition that we resemble it and become equal to it.

There is only one means we can use in order to resemble it, which is in contrast to our nature: to start uniting and connecting. This is the reason for the current crisis that forces us to unite. But we can prevent the blow by advancing and reaching unity without waiting for the evil force to come near us.

The same wonderful, pleasant warmth that we feel when we connect during the workshop isn’t just pleasant but actually has great power that can heal many problems in our life. We can feel this warmth everywhere: in our relationships with others, in stores, at work, in the family, in communicating with children.

We can bring this warmth into classrooms in schools where our children study, we can bring it to work, to the street, to the government, and to the whole world in order to direct it towards us in a friendly manner. We can work with this force by using it as a good weapon, as a general medicine, that heals all the illness of the world.

We can promise people that we will demonstrate how the force of connection heals our relationships with children the next time we meet. Anyone who has bad relations with his children will want to improve them. When we leave them we give them Reshimo Hitlabshut (reminiscences), a feeling of warmth, on the one hand, and on the other hand, Reshimo of thickness (Aviut), a bit of hunger and appetite for our next meeting.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/20/14, Writings of Rabash

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The Priest’s Gene

Laitman_167The Torah, “Leviticus,” 22:12: “And if a Cohen’s daughter is married to a non-Cohen, she may [no longer] eat of the separated holy things.”

Sons and daughters of the Cohen (priest) is the level that follows him and should connect with the other levels in a very accurate manner according to the hierarchy.

On the whole, a daughter of the Cohen (priest) is married to a son of a Cohen (priest) and thus this balance is kept. But if it is disrupted, she draws away and is separated from her parents’ home since now she is totally under her husband’s domination. Even if she was connected to her father before, she now breaks away from her father and is connected through another male part.

Question: Does the generation of priests (Cohens) continue this way in the corporeal world too?

Answer: Geneticists who study this issue arrived at amazing results: starting from Aaron, which means from the time of Egypt onwards, they observed a very interesting genetic chain. They observed the same genetic sequence in a closed circle of people during 3,000 years. It turns out that you can study a person who is 3,000 years old and he is right before you like a living person. This doesn’t exist in any of the nations of the world.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 4/28/14

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The Main Thing Is Not To Lose The End Of The Thread

Laitman_524_01Question: We can hold on to the group and the Creator up to a certain level of pain, but what should we do when the pain becomes so strong that you simply feel like a small beaten animal?

Answer: The question is whether this small animal has the end of the thread leading to its owner, which means whether it understands where the pain comes from, whether this animal is part of its herd, in a group, whether the friends remind it of the owner, or whether it is just an ordinary person who suffers.

If we are speaking of ordinary sufferings, then all of humanity has suffered for ages until our sufferings have gradually been focused on the Creator. In the transition from the levels of the still, vegetative, and animate nature along a path of terrible sufferings, we have evolved until we emerged from the bottom of the ocean and rose to the surface of the earth and have been through the age of the dinosaurs.

The desire to receive has been through all that until it has developed into a state of the basis of its connection with its source. Today we are at the peak of our evolution compared to all the previous levels, but even at our peak we reach contact with the upper force only for short moments and this contact is constantly disrupted.

The question is how can I control this contact so as not to lose touch with the upper force. I want to be in a continuous contact with the source regardless of whether I feel good or bad.

This is the reason that I need a group, an environment, some external pool that I can fill like a storehouse that I can use later. In it I will find the Creator, and the friends will help me and guide me towards the goal, to the Creator.

Without them I don’t know whom to turn to when I feel pain. If I enter the group with my pain, the friends guide me towards the Creator correctly and I begin to grow stronger quickly. Together with them I am ready to perform corporeal actions and to focus myself correctly so that the pain and the problems will disappear.

My problems disappear because I operate a bit of the Light of Hassadim by myself and not because I have been pitied from above and my situation has been changed according to the upper plan of natural evolution. I acted on my own in order to advance and participated in bestowal.

We should learn from every state how worthwhile it is to prepare yourself for it. We are never put in states in which we are doomed to fail. A new, stronger, and deeper negative Reshimo (reminiscence) is revealed each time according to the order of the levels and the relationship between the Light and the vessel under the influence of the Light with which I have to work.

I can only blame myself as to why I haven’t prepared all the means correctly so that the moment a problem arises I can immediately correct it. Ideally this is exactly what should happen.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/2/14, Writings of Rabash

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Like A Bundle Of Reeds—A Nation On A Mission, Part 4

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

Chapter 4: A Nation on a Mission
The Role of the Jewish People

Adam—The First Man, The Collective Soul

The ARI explains that in truth, we are all parts of a single soul, known to Kabbalists as Adam HaRishon (the first man), and to most other folks as Adam. The exile, says the ARI, occurred as a continuation of the correction process. In Shaar HaPsukim [Gate to the Verses], he wrote, “Adam HaRishon [Adam] included all the souls and included all the worlds. When he sinned, all those souls fell from him into the Klipot [shells, forms of egotism], which divide into seventy nations. Israel must exile there, in each and every nation, and gather the lilies of the holy souls that had scattered among those thorns, as our sages wrote in Midrash Rabah, ‘Why were Israel exiled among the nations? To add foreigners to themselves.’”[i]

In that regard, The NATZIV of Volojin wrote, “Its beginning was on Mount Ebal … but they completed this exalted matter only through exile and dispersion.”[ii]

It is with good reason that exile is necessary in order to complete the correction of the Jews, and thereafter the entire world. We previously said that when Abraham offered the correction method to his fellow Babylonians, they rejected it because they were too busy being self-indulgent and egotistical. And yet, if we are all parts of one collective soul, as the ARI pointed out, eventually all of us will have to achieve correction, by which we will discover the Creator and become like Him. This is the benefit, as described in Chapter 2, that He intended to give humankind.

Thus, Abraham’s correction was only the beginning of the process, certainly not its end. In a long and elaborate essay titled, “And They Built Store-Cities,” Baal HaSulam writes, “We must also understand what Abraham the Patriarch asked, ‘Whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it’ (Genesis 15:8)? What did the Creator reply? It is written, ‘And He said unto Abram: Know of a surety that your seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs.’”[iii] Baal HaSulam explains that with this reply, the Creator promises Abraham that all the people will achieve correction through the mingling of the corrected nation—Israel—with the uncorrected nations—in this case represented by Egypt.

Surprisingly, in reply to his question, the Creator promises Abraham exile. And not only that, writes Baal HaSulam, Abraham “…accepted it as a guarantee on the inheritance of the land.”[iv] Indeed, Abraham knew that a mingling of the desires—represented by the different nations of the world—was necessary in order to complete the correction of humanity. Considering that each of the nations represents a part of Adam’s soul, it is necessary for every part of the soul to be introduced to the correction method, and for that part of the soul to eventually adopt it. This is why Israel had to be exiled and spread throughout the world.

As part of the expansion of the correction process in humanity, Abraham went into exile in Egypt, where his tribe had grown into a nation. And when the Israeli nation exiled after the ruin of the First and Second Temples, it introduced the correction method to the entire world.

Although the method has clearly not been adopted by the rest of humanity, it has nevertheless planted the tenets we already mentioned, tenets that form a common basis upon which to begin the correction process as soon as people begin to seek it.

In “The Arvut [Mutual Guarantee],” Baal HaSulam details the process by which the Israeli nation corrects itself first, so as to convey the correction to the rest of the nations. In his words, “Rabbi Elazar, son of Rashbi (Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yochai), clarifies this concept of Arvut even further. It is not enough for him that all of Israel are responsible for one another, but the whole world is included in that Arvut. …Everyone admits that to begin with, it is enough to start with one nation for the observance of the Torah [law of bestowal] for the beginning of the correction of the world. It was impossible to begin with all the nations at once, as they said that the Creator went with the Torah to every nation and tongue, and they did not want to receive it. In other words, they were immersed in … self-love … until it was impossible to conceive in those days to even ask if they agreed to retire from self-love.

“…But the end of the correction of the world will be only by bringing all the people in the world under His work, as it is written, ‘And the Lord shall be King over all the earth; in that day shall the Lord be One, and His name one’ (Zechariah, 14:9) … ‘And all the nations shall flow on to him’ (Isaiah, 2:2).

“But the role of Israel toward the rest of the world resembles the role of our Holy Fathers toward the Israeli nation. Just as the righteousness of our fathers helped us develop and cleanse to become worthy of receiving the Torah [law of bestowal] … it is upon the Israeli nation to qualify itself and all the people of the world through Torah and Mitzvot [corrections of the egotism], to develop until they take upon themselves that sublime work of love of others, which is the ladder to the purpose of Creation, being Dvekut [similarity/equivalence of form] with Him.”[v]

Likewise, in his essay, “A Handmaid that Is Heir to Her Mistress,” Baal HaSulam writes, “The people of Israel, which has been chosen as an operator of the general purpose and correction … contains the preparation required for growing and developing until it moves the nations of the worlds, too, to achieve the common goal.”[vi]

Baal HaSulam and his son, the Rabash, may have been the latest Kabbalists to state that Israel’s role in the world is to bring the correction method to the rest of the nations, but they were certainly not the first. Countless rabbis, Kabbalists, and scholars dating back almost to the ruin of the Second Temple, have stated similarly.

Thus, Midrash Rabah states that “Israel bring light to the world,”[vii] and the Babylonian Talmud added, “The Creator acted with righteousness toward Israel, having dispersed them among the nations.”[viii] Rabbi Yehuda Altar, the ADMOR of Gur wrote, “Any exile into which the children of Israel enter is only to elicit holy sparks within the nations [similar to Baal HaSulam’s above-quoted words]. The children of Israel are guarantors in that they received the Torah in order to correct the whole world, the nations, too.”[ix]

Similarly, Rabbi Hillel Tzaitlin writes, “If Israel is the one true redeemer of the entire world, it must be fit for that redemption. Israel must first redeem its own soul, the sanctity of its soul, the sanctity of its Shechina [Divinity]. …For that purpose, I wish to establish with this book the ‘unity of Israel’ … If founded, the unification of individuals will be for the purpose of internal ascension and an invocation for corrections for all the ills of the nation and the world.”[x]

I would like to conclude this chapter with a few more of Baal HaSulam’s words, who in a few paragraphs detailed the purpose of Creation, humanity’s entitlement to it, and Israel’s role in achieving it. In his words: “Why was the Torah given to the Israeli nation without the participation of all the nations of the world? In truth, the purpose of Creation applies to the entire human race, none excluded. However, because of the lowliness of the nature of Creation [being egotistical] and its power over people, it was impossible for people to understand, determine, and agree to rise above it. They did not demonstrate the desire to relinquish self-love and come to equivalence of form, which is adhesion with His attributes, as our sages said, ‘As He is merciful, be you merciful, as well.’

“Thus, because of their ancestral merit [the examples set by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob], Israel succeeded … and became qualified and sentenced themselves to a scale of merit [corrected themselves to become like the Creator]. Each and every member of the nation agreed to love his fellow man [which is how they achieved the correction].

“…However, the Israeli nation was to be a ‘transition,’ meaning that to the extent that Israel cleanse themselves by keeping the Torah [laws of bestowal], they pass their power on to the rest of the nations. And when the rest of the nations also sentence themselves to a scale of merit [correcting themselves by relinquishing egotism], the Messiah [final correction] will be revealed. This is because the role of the Messiah is not only to qualify Israel to the ultimate goal of adhesion with Him, but to teach the ways of God [bestowal] to all the nations, as it is written, ‘And all nations will flow onto Him.’”[xi]

[i] The Holy ARI, Eight Gates, Shaar HaPsukim [Gate to Verses], Parashat Shemot [Portion, Exodus].

[ii] Rabbi Naphtali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin (The NATZIV of Volojin), Haamek Davar [Delve Deep in the Matter] about Devarim [Deuteronomy], Chapter 27:5.

[iii] Rav Yehuda Leib HaLevi Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), The Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Essays of Shamati [I Heard],” essay no. 86, “And They Built Store-Cities” (Ashlag Research Institute, Israel, 2009), 591.

[iv] ibid.

[v] Rav Yehuda Leib HaLevi Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), The Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Arvut [Mutual Guarantee]” (Ashlag Research Institute: Israel, 2009), 393.

[vi] Rav Yehuda Leib HaLevi Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), The Writings of Baal HaSulam, “A Handmaid that Is Heir to Her Mistress” (Ashlag Research Institute, Israel, 2009), 454.

[vii] Midrash Rabah, “Song of Songs,” Parasha no. 4, 2nd paragraph.’

[viii] Babylonian Talmud, Masechet Pesachim, p 87b.

[ix] Yehuda Leib Arie Altar (ADMOR of Gur), Sefat Emet [Language of Truth], Parashat Yitro [Portion, Jethro], TARLAZ (1876).

[x] Hillel Tzaitlin, The Book of a Few (Jerusalem, 1979), 5.

[xi] Rav Yehuda Leib HaLevi Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), The Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Love of God and the Love of Man” (Ashlag Research Institute, Israel, 2009), 486.