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Question: To reach prayer, is this the individual work of a person or the work of the entire group?
Answer: Of course this is the shared work of all of us. From where would I get the strength for it? If I don’t identify with the sorrow of the community, I wouldn’t be able to reach prayer.
Otherwise I will scream for myself, but for this won’t receive an answer from above. I must transmit to the Elyon (Higher) the request of others, the Prayer of Many. It is called this because I scream for the many, and not because many people scream.
The “many” are my own desires that are portrayed to me as strangers. I scream because I want to approach them, feel them like I feel myself, reach love of others as myself, and connect.
I don’t scream about it being bad for them and the Creator needs to help them, even though this is also prayer, as it is said, “One who prays for his friend is answered first” (Baba Kama 90b). The main thing is, when I see them as parts of myself and am connected with them, to that degree I am connected with the Creator.
After all, if I ask the Creator to be merciful to them and to solve their problems, then in this way I blame Him that He is abusing them and am thinking He is cruel and am asking Him to do something good for them. But I cannot turn to the Creator that way and I will not have equivalence of form with Him if I don’t decide that He is merciful and gracious.
So a true prayer is not a request that something good should be done for others. How can I ask the Creator to do something good if He is also good that does good? I ask Him to make such a correction in us that all of us will adhere with Him. This is the entire prayer, there is nothing more for which to ask.
If I see something bad, this is because there is a gap,; the forces of Shevira (Breakage) are discovered. And the Shevira is within me, so I see reality as being so bad. So I ask that all of us will be able to adhere to the Creator and give Him pleasure. After all, we are so despicable that we are not prepared to accept Him as He truly is: good that does good.
It means that we don’t ask Him to do good for us because in every case we are found in an optimal situation for us. We ask for correction of our distorted vision and sensation, so we don’t blame the Creator like little children who scream, “Bad Mommy!”
Question: But what is to be done with an evil inclination that constantly proclaims that everything is bad?
Answer: A person must try to rise above his evil inclination and not annihilate it. We need to rise above it and be higher than it because desires of bestowal must be above desires of reception. Yet it is forbidden to extinguish the desires of reception; for then the desires of bestowal cannot exist.
Without the Yetzer HaRa (evil inclination), what are we left with? The Yetzer HaTov (good inclination) cannot exist in us because this is the Creator, the desire to bestow. I cannot be the Yetzer HaTov; the Yetzer HaTov can exist within me only to the degree that it rides on the Yetzer HaRa.
The Yetzer HaRa assures me of detachment from the Creator, independence. And the Yetzer HaTov that controls it gives me the form of the Creator. However, I can only ask for the Yetzer HaTov to dominate over the Yetzer HaRa within me. Only the Upper Light can carry this out; I myself am not able to. This is not at my power.
I can only clarify that this is what is required from me. I get such a possibility as a result of the Shevira, which builds the connection between the desire to receive and the desire to bestow. So I get the ability to clarify, to analyze, to differentiate between one and the other. The Upper Light begins to illuminate these concepts for me and I see what is good and what is bad.
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From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/6/14
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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot,” Section 1: It is the opposite of the argument of the negligent in attaining the interior, who say to themselves: “We settle for attaining the Peshat. If we attain that, we will be content.” Their words can be compared to one who wishes to step on the fourth step without first stepping on the first three steps.
May God grant us the understanding of the simple meaning, the knowledge of which they attribute to themselves. After all, on the way to it we must pass through the way of the Sod (secret), Drush (interpretation) and Remez (hint). And as long as we haven’t completed the previous steps, what simple meaning can there be? A person attains the Peshat on the fourth level of the corrected desire; how can that happen if we haven’t yet corrected the first, second, and third levels?
When I correct the first level of the desire to receive, I discover that the entire Torah is a big secret for me. And this is already an attainment. Until now I didn’t even know this, and now I understand my lack of knowledge. As a result of this, a connection is made between me and something that is hidden from me, but for now I cannot discover this secret. And after this the Drush appears, I already penetrate into things and see the connections between them, but still don’t understand the principles by which they operate.
After this I discover the Remez; I still don’t recognize the causes and the results, don’t get the exact purpose, but I can already see how the Creator operates and I can cooperate with Him. And only on the fourth level do I gradually attain His goal, and this is already adhesion. And then the Peshat is revealed to me because between me and the Creator there is no longer any concealing clothing, no screens, or partitions.
So if a person already studies Torah, he must relate to it with great seriousness. This is because it is called Kedusha (Sanctity) and Kedusha is bestowal. Am I advancing correctly towards bestowal through learning the Torah?
By learning the wisdom of Kabbalah I gradually discover that I am immersed in darkness, I don’t understand and don’t feel that something exists that is concealed from me, inaccessible to me. This feeling is the discovery of Sod, a very important feeling in the present stage. For this desire, the deficiency that dominates in me, will help me to reach Peshat.
And yet how is it possible to remain indifferent when I see that I don’t even have a drop of understanding? This is worse than death, for the dead don’t feel anything and I feel a spiritual deficiency. I am most unfortunate. So, as a result of studying, we discover darkness….
Question: How can this be? I thought that after we discover the Sod, we solve all the problems.
Answer: In this way I solve the biggest problem; I finally understand that all of my problems are derived from my attitude towards the Creator. In other words, it is up to me to build the right relationship.
Until now I didn’t know this. It seemed to me that it was about other causes and circumstances. And now, after I attain the Sod, I see that I have no connection with the Creator and that I depend only on Him. This is already not bad, for it is the truth. Finally I am locked in, connected to something true, real.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/5/14, Writhing of Baal HaSulam
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Opinion (Vesti): “We increasingly hear about the approach of the next global financial crisis. But the truth is that this crisis has already begun. We already see declines in the global stock markets.
“Most of the declines have happened in the nations that are known as emerging markets. For most of them the economy has not developed so the world doesn’t know about them. In recent years, the developing nations have received access to cheap dollar loans. But now, when the dollar has become stronger, the borrowers are forced to borrow more and more in the local currency to serve the dollar-denominated debts. And this is even though the prices of many products that are exported by these nations are dropping.
“Exactly the same reasons caused a crisis in Latin America in the 80s and the financial crisis in Asia in the 90s. Now just about all the global stock markets will drop significantly, in comparison to the peaks of this year or the past year. But in the meantime they are all still far from collapse. In much of the developing world the situation is completely different.
“There are 23 nations in which the stock markets have collapsed: Malaysia, Brazil, Egypt, China, Indonesia, South Korea, Turkey, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Bulgaria, Greece, Poland, Serbia, Slovenia, Ukraine, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand. And this is only the beginning, for the crisis must soon move from the developing nations to the developed nations.
“The central banks have lost control over the situation, and little time remains until global collapse. In the Autumn of 2015 we can expect to see a series of shocks. The global financial crisis has already begun and in the coming months it will become clear how great its dimensions are.”
Comment: There is a means in the hands of the Kabbalists, and this is unity. Only this will take our world out to its next state. Because the world was created on top of the shattering of a single system called Adam, and only the restoration of this system, its correction, will bring our world to a stable and good state.
The wisdom of Kabbalah speaks specifically about realizing the method of the correction of our world. The problem is that there is no need to correct the world and the financial system, but the individual and society. Nobody wants this and nobody believes that the matter is possible.
We must overcome the psychological obstacle; it is possible to overcome it through the influence of the Upper Light ,which corrects, called the “light of Torah” or simply “Torah” or “The Light that Reforms.” But it is necessary to ask it to have an influence. The request appears as a result of suffering and hopelessness or as a result of the influence of the environment, which is what we ourselves create. That is how we choose either the way of suffering or the way of Torah.
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Question: What does Putin want from Israel?
Answer: It doesn’t matter what he wants. It is said: “The hearts of ministers and kings are in the Creator’s hands.” Do not think of politicians as an independent power. Not one of them understands exactly what is going on in the world, neither Putin, nor Obama, nor anybody else.
Unfortunately, the same can be said about the Israeli government. Everything is in the Creator’s hands, not Obama’s, Putin’s, or Netanyahu’s. Thank God! Otherwise, the world would have already collapsed.
The world needs to be balanced; it has to attain a state where people clearly see what the system of relations among them really looks like. Only when our relations will be revealed to us, will we learn how to correct them. Only unity can lead us to correction. Politics, economics, industry, all kinds of international trade liaisons are useless. The only thing that can really help is a new type of education that will lead humanity to global unity.
Until now, the world connected through trade, economy, military, and security,but now we see that the connecting threads are temporary; they come and go. The prior world was built on the foundation of egoism. Now, it vanishes.
Question: What kind of unity does Israel have to offer to the world?
Answer: Israel will have to offer unity among and inside the nations. It’s the kind of unity that emerges above our egos. Our selfishness will teach us to rise above it and unite.
Israel is obligated to transfer the methodology of unity to the world since there is no other force that can do it rather than us. If Israel fulfills its mission, it will be the major country in the world; it will govern over and bring benevolence to other nations. It will spread the methodology of correction, unity, and love.
Our world is egoistic since all of us are born with a selfish nature. We have to implement a special methodology, a formula, that allows us to connect beyond the egoism that burns in every individual, each country, and among nations.
The people of Israel possess the methodology. The Jewish people used it three and a half thousand years ago. They still retain “records,” the internal data of the state of unity they have been through.
At some point, the Jewish people managed to implement unity. They constituted a single unity whose major value was connectedness. The Jewish people lived in unity for about fifteen hundred years, starting with Abraham until the destruction of the Temple.
Thousands of years ago, we fell from this height, from the state of unity that connected us above our egoism. Inside every person there is an ego, but there also is a force that helps us rise above it, beyond a constantly growing and renewing personal and overall egoism.
All of us make efforts to rise above our egoism and connect with each other beyond it. Should we succeed, we will reveal a new reality called the Upper world.
The common state we are trying to build together is called Adam (Man). Inside Adam, we will disclose a new spirit called the soul, the Upper Light, or the Creator. The world advances towards the state for which it was created.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 8/6/15
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Question: Why would we start fighting with and killing each other if every country will be able to produce everything it needs and no longer needs foreign lands and workers?
Answer: Why do you fight with your wife? Usually it’s because of some silly thing that has no significance. Countries will fight with each other the same way, because our egoism, the hatred that lives within a person, will not allow us to live in peace and friendship.
A person is built with an evil and egoistic nature. Therefore, we will see that although we no longer depend on each other on one hand, we will want to destroy each other nonetheless. And the only solution is to unite above all the personality differences, so that “love covers all transgressions.”
Question: So what will happen to 2,000 nations, which the world will be divided into?
Answer: All these 2,000 nations will accept one law that will force us to unite above all national differences. And only a special education will make this possible because it will raise people above our egoism.
Question: How will a person living in one of these 2,000 countries feel?
Answer: A person will feel that there are two parts in him. One part is his natural evil inclination, the blazing egoism inside him, which he despises. And in the other part, he wishes to be above the egoism, above his instinctive egoistic tendencies, and above them to unite with others.
In this manner we will achieve a peaceful, happy, and prosperous life. We will feel that we are in the “Garden of Eden,” where an infernal fire blazes underneath the earth. One cannot be without the other.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 8/6/15
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