Audio Version Of The Blog – 04.05.15

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Unity Flowing Beyond Borders

laitman_944Question: What is the role of the Israeli nation? Is it to be experts in connection and to teach the nations of the world, or is it to connect first between us and thus set an example for everyone? Which is more important?

Answer: Our unity is within the borders of Israel. This is the most important thing. This is where the examples and the method of connection will reach others. Moreover, it will draw the Light that Reforms for the entire world.

Only we can do that. If we fulfill the connection between us, even without disseminating our message all over the world, it already will bring about the correction of the entire world. Accordingly, our groups disseminate in different countries so that they will be able to ascend, to connect, and allow the Creator to be revealed in them. This, of course, is done together with us.

Therefore, if all the groups in the world gathered in Israel, it would be enough for us to disseminate within these boundaries. After all, when we disseminate, we unite here, and it spreads all over the world.

Baal HaSulam says in “The Introduction to Panim Meirot uMasbirot,” “When the children of Israel are complemented with the complete knowledge, the fountains of intelligence and knowledge shall flow beyond the boundaries of Israel and water all the nations of the world…”

In addition, Rabash says in Letter 18, “The Lord will bestow the abundance unto the nations of the world by the nation of Israel who are more capable than all the nations of the world of getting close to the Lord.”

So, we cannot come to the nations of the world with any complaints, no matter how they treat us. That is something else. Don’t come to anyone with your complaints. It is you who give birth to Hitler and all our other enemies by your actions.

We are the ones who tilt the scales to one side or another, and it is a very serious matter. Therefore, our work is only in connecting. If the Jews were connected and united, there would have been no persecutions, and no one would have expelled them from Spain or from other countries, and their life could have been totally different even in exile.

Every movement a person makes in this world is like a movement of an electric charge in a force field, or of an iron rod in a magnetic field. The Light operates me, and, accordingly, I manage everything in my life.

All we need is connection and from this connection to turn to the Creator. It also works in politics, in the economy, in every area. Thanks to this we will bring order to the entire world. Then, we will begin to understand the reasons for anti-Semitism and the increasing general pressure that we feel.

The point is that it is not the PLO or Hamas, or Teheran. Everything depends on us. When we disrespect connection, we bring about such afflictions.

These forces are not a punishment but help so that we will improve our ways, unite, connect, and operate correctly. Therefore, we must justify them and use them as fast as we can, according to our goal.

When we begin to connect here, within the boundaries of Israel, we will feel how all the bad things melt away and fade like clouds that disappear from the sky.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/1/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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The Route To Bestowal

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What drives a person to advance, impurity or holiness?

Answer: A person who is still in the intention of in order to receive, which is called Egypt, is driven to advance by impurity. After all, he does not as yet, have any desires in order to bestow. He doesn’t value bestowal since it doesn’t seem attractive, and so he advances only because he sees a corporeal loss and a spiritual gain.

I can tell you how wonderful spirituality is indefinitely, but you cannot feel it because you don’t have any flavors of it. So you will agree that it sounds very tempting, but you cannot perceive it in order to understand that it is attractive according to the pleasures you are used to: food, sex, family, money, respect and knowledge, or at least part of it!

The-Route-To-Bestowal

So a person is given troubles in order to push him to spirituality, but they are intentional. Eventually it is Pharaoh who undergoes the blows, but before that, the nation of Israel suffers during the seven years of hunger. They are not give bricks, but are  forced to prepare them by themselves and work from morning till night without a rest. Everything is according to the path of suffering and everything depends on the sufferings that we choose. The spiritual sufferings are a result of my drawing away from spirituality. The more we advance, the more qualitative the sufferings become until eventually we reach the exodus, but these are still sufferings. A person cannot advance by living a comfortable life. If he feels pleasure, the pleasure immediately fills him and stops him. This happens all over the world. Give people abundance and they will live without thinking about anything, like animals.

It is only if the deficiency in them grows that they are forced to look for a way to fill it or escape the pain that they not only lack something but that it really hurts. In that case they will reach the filling. Guiding the created being by blows and sufferings is the safest way, because the nature of creation is a desire to receive and not to bestow.

We have to either increase the feeling of deficiency in the desire to receive or increase the temptation to receive. A person is a machine that feels emptiness in its belly. Instead we can prepare a table full of delicacies and thus awaken a person’s appetite, even if he isn’t really hungry.

This means that we can increase the deficiency in two ways, but they both operate from the aspect of receiving and not from the aspect of bestowal. We can draw a person by the force of bestowal only through the group. If I am incorporated in the group, I begin to understand that my progress doesn’t depend on the emptiness I feel in my belly and not on the wonderful dish before me. The progress takes place on a more sublime dimension and begins from lack of bestowal and advances towards an increasingly greater ability to bestow.

So I begin to work with the group, ignoring what I feel in my belly or the plate that is before me, and move on to a new dimension. So far I have advanced on one dimension according to the route on the low level. I escaped from the emptiness I feel in my belly towards the filling.

The gates of impurity, of receiving, are on the lower level and the gates of holiness, of bestowal, are on the upper level.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/28/14, Writings of Rabash

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Go To Your Land

laitman_750_03Baal HaSulam, “The Inheritance of the Land”: Israel will not return to their land unless they all become one bundle.

Land (Eretz) refers to desire (Ratzon). We want to acquire the “land of Israel” which is a special desire that has to be aimed at the Creator, Yashar-El (straight to the Creator). This means that we have to focus our desire on the Creator, in order to bestow, and this is expressed when we focus ourselves on love of others.

How is all that related to the geographic location of the state of Israel? Is it about branches and roots? The Jewish nation can live on their land only if they are compatible with the laws that operate between the nation and the spiritual land of Israel.

This means that when my desires are focused on delighting the Creator, it is expressed in delighting others according to the principle of all of Israel are friends and are  mutually responsible for one another; don’t do unto others what is hateful to you; love thy friend as thyself; as one man in one heart, etc.

If I am attracted to that, it means that I correct all my desires with the help of the Upper Light, and then they change from foreign desires to internal desires; they turn from a dry land to a desire to Yashar-El. Then, as I enter the spiritual land of Israel in spirituality, I am attracted to the land of Israel in corporeality.

This is the reason that the Creator sent Abraham from Babylon to the land, which was the land of Canaan at the time, so that he would correct himself there and feel the true nature of Yashar-El. It is about both the internal work and about corporeal actions. The families of Abraham’s students collected their belongings, their camels, their sheep, and goats and travelled to that place. This transition was according to their work of connection, according to what Abraham had taught them.

The people in the world don’t understand the law of compatibility between a branch and a root. But it was expressed even in Babylon, when its people scattered all over the globe. First they were as one nation, although they were many tribes and extended families. Then when the ego erupted between them and began to expand, the signs of separation appeared.

People connected to one another, drew away from another, and thus they divided into groups that eventually left Babylon and scattered all over the world. This is how the nations of the world were created. They were formed according to the egoistic desires that determined their uniqueness and who could get along with whom. Consequently, we see that today every nation has its unique mentality, customs, traditions, etc.

In addition, people from all of Babylon who had a point in the heart gathered around Abraham regardless of the tribes or the extended families to which they belonged. When they heard the message that Abraham spread they felt that they wanted to belong to that group, which headed towards Canaan according to the law of branch and root.

The rest of the people didn’t know why they were attracted to different places. It is the same today: A person doesn’t feel that it is the Creator who sends him everything in life and that He guides him in a certain direction or another. It seems that everything happens by chance, without a cause, although nothing is random in nature. The reasons are simply concealed from us.

On the other hand, Abraham’s group received a clear order: “Go to your land.” In other words, the students felt very clearly the connection between the spiritual root and the corporeal branch. They were in a state of Canaan and therefore reached the land of Canaan.

Later they connect more strongly to one another until they reached the state of the “house of Jacob,” meaning unity in smallness (Katnut). Then they discovered that they lacked an additional inner drive, resistance, or in short, an addition, material for work.

Thus, their egoistic desire began to grow, which is called the exile in Egypt. This internal process was accompanied by an external process: They went down to Egypt. There they underwent different experiences according to their internal states: seven years of satiety, seven years of hunger, the plagues of Egypt, although all this took place externally and not in complete accordance with their internal states.

We cannot discern this connection; therefore, there is no point looking for definite parallels. In the spiritual exodus from Egypt, for example, all of Egypt, which means the whole egoistic desire, fell. After all, the children of Israel broke off from the big ego. It existed between them and didn’t let them connect despite all their efforts until they had a chance to rise above it. Generally speaking, this connection was possible only above the ego and not inside it or together with it.

But something different happened in the corporeal world. Egypt didn’t fall immediately after the children of Israel left it. After all, this world exists although there is nothing spiritual about it. This is where the lack of correlation between the spiritual destruction of Egypt and the spiritual branch stems from.

We establish our reality among us on the spiritual level, and the corporeal level, which is perceived by our five senses, remains the same. There is no spiritual content in it and it doesn’t have to become desolate according to spiritual events. This is how the difference between the levels is revealed as the corporeal Egypt remains in its place although it has been destroyed in our internal states.

It says that the spiritual root has to touch the corporeal branch, but only to touch it. It isn’t dressed in it and doesn’t operate in it.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/30/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Like A Bundle Of Reeds—Living In An Integrated World, Part 2

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The “Point-in-the-Heart” Way

For some of us, the way to come by unity is relatively simple. We have already mentioned the “point in the heart,” that thirst to understand what life is about, what makes the world go around, the yearning that enabled Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and the entire nation that arose out of the pariahs from Babylon to develop a correction method that turns the evil inclination into goodness. Those who have that point can start studying the texts that Kabbalists have left for us as a means to attain the Creator, the quality of bestowal. Along the way they will learn how to unite on a profound level and will be ready to pass that unity on to others.

In our generation, the most instrumental texts for achieving those purposes are Baal HaSulam’s The Book of Zohar with the Sulam (Ladder) commentary, the writings of the ARI, preferably with Baal HaSulam’s commentaries, published in his Talmud Esser HaSephirot (The Study of the Ten Sephirot), as well as Baal HaSulam’s other writings, published in The Writings of Baal HaSulam. To make these, and other texts more accessible, we have established a free online library of authentic Kabbalistic texts, translated into dozens of languages.

In the original Hebrew, they can be found at www.kab.co.il, and translations of much of the texts—including even a version of The Book of Zohar, titled, Zohar for All, which consolidates the text of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai (Rashbi) with the commentary of Baal HaSulam—exist in English as well at www.kabbalah.info, for no cost or preconditions whatsoever.

Also available at the above-mentioned web addresses are the writings of my teacher, Rav Baruch Shalom Ashlag (the Rabash), Baal HaSulam’s firstborn son, and successor. Although fewer of his writings have been translated into English, all of his essays that teach students how to promote unity in student groups have been published in English in the book, The Social Writings of Rabash. For those who prefer hard copies of the texts, all of the above publications exist in print, and can be purchased at www.kabbalahbooks.info or on amazon.com and other online outlets.

Additionally, veteran students have established an Education Center that teaches the basics of Kabbalah and how to implement it so it becomes part of one’s daily life, complementing one’s personal growth toward obtaining one’s goals in life. For more advanced students, I teach a daily three-hour lesson broadcast live on www.kab.tv, with simultaneous interpretations into all major languages—English, Spanish, French, Russian, German, and others. In these lessons, I strive to advance students as quickly and as easily as possible while adhering to the modes of teaching I received from my venerated teacher, the Rabash.

In the last couple of years, we have also been airing shows on US TV channels such as JLTV and Shalom TV, primarily on weekends. Naturally, these shows are not “hardcore” Kabbalah studies, but they are certainly a great reference for anyone who wishes to “wet one’s feet” and see what this study is all about.

Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 04.05.15

Preparation for the Lesson

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Writings of Rabash, “Rungs of the Ladder,” “Come Unto Pharaoh-2”

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Writings of Rabash, Letter 66

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The Book of Zohar — Selected Excerpts, “Excerpt Items for Passover,” “The Exodus from Egypt,” Item 153

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Torah, “Shmot,” Verse 2, Item 23

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Writings of Baal HaSulam“The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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