Audio Version Of The Blog – 07.04.15

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Is There A God?

Laitman_712_03Question: Is there a God?

Answer: I don’t know what people mean when they say “God.” If by God we mean a force that controls everything, then that force is nature.

As we learn more about nature, we see that everything about it is rational, balanced, and works according to its laws. We know some of these laws, others we do not, and for this reason their essence is hidden from us. We believe in various miracles and actions that supposedly can affect our course of actions, and this is all because we lack knowledge. The science of Kabbalah offers the possibility of learning these laws.

Nature can be called God if we remember that it is an absolutely rigid force, which does not abide to any of our wishes. It is not like our parents to whom we can come and cry and they will have pity on us. Our tears will not help. It is a system that acts according to its precise laws. As it is written, “I gave a law, and I do not change it.”

According to the science of Kabbalah, the numerical value (Gematria) of the words “nature” and “God/Creator” are the same. Therefore, turning to the Creator is the same as turning to nature. However, it’s best to call this force nature because we immediately understand that we are talking about rigid laws and pleading to them will not help.

A person should know how to behave and correct himself in order for these laws to become benevolent for him. And if he does not use them correctly, then naturally he will receive a negative reaction, as with any physical laws.

Therefore, there is no God whom we can mollify or somehow appease!
[161819]
From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 6/10/15

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Imaginary And True Freedom, Part 1 – Shackles In Imaginary Freedom

laitman_423_02Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Freedom,”: “Harut (carved) on the tables”; do not pronounce it Harut (carved), but rather Herut (freedom), to show that they are liberated from the angel of death. These words need to be clarified, because how is the matter of reception of the Torah related to one’s liberation from death?

Question: Generation after generation, freedom has attracted people. What does this mean?

Answer: Freedom is an amorphous concept, it is completely unrealistic, unnatural, something that eludes us, something that we picture in our imaginations. What people think and accept as freedom is derived from a lack of understanding of where they exist.

We live in a limited volume, on a small and enclosed Earth, and within this volume we try to find a state in which we feel the least pressure. In this state we apparently feel ourselves free, independent, choosing and realizing our actions, thoughts, and opinions.

But we are all particles of an immense network interconnected through billions of threads of control, and thus we don’t feel that we are in a rigid system that completely determines everything. Its concealment from us is what grants us the illusion of freedom. But in fact we have no freedom, neither in thoughts, nor in desires or actions.

Question: Does the need for this amorphous feeling, constitute a response to the subconscious feeling that we are not free?

Answer: I think that humanity doesn’t understand that it isn’t free. A person always finds ways to evade unpleasant feelings and thoughts.  After all, our main characteristic is the desire to receive and to enjoy, so I am constantly searching for the condition of maximum enjoyment or minimal suffering. This is the totality of my aspirations in every situation.

We can’t say that a person has a great need for freedom. He wants to find work, spend time with his family, to have everything defined and okay for him. On the one hand, he believes it is best to be in charge. So what kind of freedom is this?

A person puts himself into particular frameworks. He gets married, establishes a family, and therefore is obliged to work, to feed the family, to be concerned about it, to protect it—obligation, obligation, and obligation. So where is the freedom here?!

All our lives are arranged such that we need to obey some rules. Whether I want it or not, in any case I am under the authority of some dogmas, tastes, restrictions, fashions, etc. Whether I want it or not, all of this influences me.

It follows that I am not free in anything, in absolutely nothing! So no freedom is accounted for. Even if a person lives alone in a jungle, he would still be surrounded by some kind of environment that forces its limitations and principles on him.

How can I understand what freedom is? For this we need to rise above our lack of freedom and feel sharply and clearly where we are, which forces determine our condition, how nature, through individuals and through my entire environment, defines and shapes me.

To be continued….
[161823]
From KabTV’s “The Last Generation” 6/11/15

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The Ladder Of Desires

laitman_232_04Question: Our desires keep growing. How can we turn them into a ladder on which we can only go up and feel the ascension?

Answer: There are two states in creation: absolute bestowal and absolute receiving. The distance between them is called a ladder and on every step of that ladder there are increasingly greater desires. As one ascends the ladder they take on the form of an increasingly greater intention to bestow. The desire itself is a desire to receive while the ladder determines the intention of in order to bestow. In fact, we have initially been created as individuals who think only about ourselves and who use all our desires in our own interests. Being unable to give anything, we can only receive from others.

But when using the wisdom of Kabbalah, we draw the special energy of bestowal, which begins to operate on our general egoistic desire and correct it layer by layer by adding the attribute of bestowal to the attribute of receiving. When the Upper Light operates and influences the desire to receive, it divides it into 125 levels of correction, forming a ladder called “Jacob’s ladder.” This is how we correct ourselves until we reach complete bestowal, thus changing the form of our entire huge ego into the attribute of receiving in order to bestow.

When we use the two major attributes of creation, the attribute of receiving and the attribute of bestowal, we reach equality with the Creator. At the same time we don’t disappear in Him because, on the one hand, our desire to receive is kept and only acquires an external form of bestowal, but on the other hand, receiving with the intention of in order to bestow makes us similar to the Creator. This means that externally we become like Him and internally we are made of the desire to receive. This is what the whole correction comes down to.
[161780]
From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 6/10/15

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A Storm In The Soul

Laitman_514_04Question: On whom does success depend: is it the inner connection between us, the sufferings the world will go through, or our swift dissemination?

Answer: Ten years of sufferings in the whole nation will not bring the Upper Light as close as one day of dissemination and a few mornings of lessons, even ten years of suffering in the whole nation! Because sufferings that comes from the side of the vessel are not clarified, are not calculated; it’s similar to an animal that howls from pain and does not know what to do.
People don’t have conscious connection with the Creator. Therefore, this cannot be compared to the lesson that sometimes awakens a prayer, a request, a yearning. This is quite so regarding dissemination, that is realizing what is lacking, which lacks only the intention in order to bestow. Therefore, dissemination is the means to the most efficient correction; the sufferings direct us. But the question is, what is all this suffering for? What are you suffering from?

Comment: I suffer because I feel bad.

Answer: This means, you suffer from the emptiness in the most corporeal and regular desires: food, family, money, honor, and knowledge. This is still in the regular way of sufferings. The Creator sends you troubles and you cry. He puts more pressure, and you cry louder, if he puts less pressure, you cry less. If He tickles you, you begin to laugh. All that is a direct action of the upper conduct, where is your correct reaction here? You must think not about your feelings inside the desire, but above it where you build your Rosh ha Partzuf (head of the Partzuf).

The group needs to permeate us with the spiritual deficiency, the need to exit the desire to receive and move to bestowal. If friends would start telling you now about impending danger, about a storm or a fierce storm that will blow everything, that it is on its way and will turn everything to a desert, you would become frantic with fear and worry. You would be full of fear because of that; so why can’t they transfer to you at least a tiny part of this worry regarding spirituality? They should do it.

But they are lazy. So you need to pay them, to do everything that is needed in the group. This way each one will help the other. But if you just wait for the deficiency for spirituality to be awakened in you and for it to become a directed yearning, this will never happen. Through the group you exit from the egoistic beastly point and immediately rise to the net of forces that is already spiritual. Even though it is not corrected, is egoistic, not for Her sake (Lo Lishma), it is already a net, and that is the main thing.

We do not receive enough pressure from the group; this is the whole problem. Another gathering of friends (Yeshivat Haverim) and another one, it’s only mechanical and it will not help. Rabash did not allow us to have more than one Yeshivat Haverim a week. Everything depends on a deeper penetration inward inside the dominion of intentions.
[129838]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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