Audio Version Of The Blog – 09.10.15
Posted on September 10th, 2015
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Question: Baal HaSulam writes in the “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”: “And we have already learned that the matter of the disclosure of the face will inevitably turn every grief and sadness that came during the concealment of the face into wondrous pleasures…”
How is grief transformed into pleasure if it happened in the past? Maybe the same movie is played for us again?
Answer: Suppose that you have an upset stomach and you cannot eat anything because you have terrible pains from the food. In front of you is wonderful and exquisite food, but you get sick just from the sight of it.
After your stomach is healed, you can enjoy all the delicacies. Before you corrected your problem, it was bad for you when you looked at the delights, and now you enjoy looking at it.
It follows that the problem was not in the filling, but in yourself, in your Kelim. The filling didn’t cause you any harm. The presence of the filling upset you, but, in itself, it wasn’t bad. Rather, the evil was found in your illness.
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From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/5/14
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Opinion (Rothschild Wealth Management): “Economic prosperity and consumption are the measure for realizing my ‘self’. The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) per capita measures the state of society, and it seems that we have created a religion of consumption which we have nourished through a system of credit.
“The financial crisis in the year 2008 halted economic growth: 50% unemployment among the youth in Europe, the impending pension crisis and other difficult problems all paint a bleak future for Europeans and Americans. This is the end of the consumer economy.
“Western youth have entered a cooperative economy, an economy of common consumption, commerce of barter, recycling. Its foundation is joint interaction, human relationships.
“When Western man was compelled to enter into connection with others while exchanging goods or services, from the connection with strangers itself, he began to feel benefit. From well-established relationships there is economic benefit, which is to say, measurable benefit.
“I am not trying to promote the collective economy, but it is useful as an allocation of new economic resources and social interaction among people which didn’t exist in the world before the crisis. This is more than a theory of group work, than all kinds of economic dividends from correct relationships between people within the framework of the existing economic system. This is speaking of social interaction (mutual influence) as a goal, as fulfillment of the person, as an independently standing product having independent economic benefit.
“If previously the self-realization of the person and the popular consumer culture were synonymous, today there is an element of social interaction which is a new component whose weight in the realization of Western man is great. The Western economy, where consumption by the middle class has been its central flywheel, is encountering changes in the orders of preference of the new generation for the first time. In that they have learned to consume less through replacing the benefit of consumption with the benefit of relationships between people, the younger generation today is making the first step towards changing the economic paradigm.”
My comment: The thoughts are correct because the right conclusions about what is happening are being made. But Lord Rothschild doesn’t see that beyond the changes of the economic paradigm of society, there is a transition from an economic component to a social component.
Long-range perspectives are more understandable only to someone who learns the wisdom of Kabbalah, the program of correction from the egoistic paradigm of society to an altruistic paradigm. Its realization is possible only through the creation of new connections between people under the guidance of Kabbalists. Lord Rothschild would have to agree with this.
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Question: Is anyone who feels love and goodness towards others a Kabbalist?
Answer: If it is true love and bestowal towards others, it means that he is a Kabbalist. The problem is if we are mistaken and only seemingly love and bestow unto one another. There is no love in our world.
Comment: Many people believe that they are good and loving.
Answer: This is a mistake. A Kabbalist develops a special attribute of true love and bestowal, which is not the disguised receiving that is only a more developed and sophisticated ego.
The attribute of love and bestowal is built above the ego, above our nature. Then we can actually feel what is external to us, which is only one force called the Creator. The revelation of His love and bestowal unto us is called the upper world. A Kabbalist is someone who fulfills the principle of “love thy friend as thyself,” which allows him to feel the upper world.
Question: What is the upper world?
Answer: The upper world is the sum of forces, influences, and actions of the upper force upon us. A Kabbalist sees forces that other people cannot see. He begins to cooperate with the upper force, with all the individual components of this one force that stems from the Creator. Thus we begin to respond to His call, to act in response to it, and become the Creator’s partners.
A Kabbalist cooperates with the upper force and thus changes reality. By constantly changing himself, he can make the world and people’s lives better.
Question: Can a Kabbalist use his superpowers to cause people harm?
Answer: This is impossible; after all, to begin with, it is the force of love and bestowal that he acquires.
Comment: But we often hear on the news that a person who engaged in the Torah was also involved in prohibited acts.
Answer: A Kabbalist cannot cause anyone harm. The wisdom of Kabbalah changes a person’s nature into an altruistic one. First and foremost he restricts his ego.
The Torah contains the Light that Reforms that can turn our egoistic inclination into the good inclination. A Kabbalist uses the Upper Light and corrects his nature from evil to good. This is the first sign. If a person causes others harm, he is not a Kabbalist.
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From the Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 8/16/15
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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Section 71: The reason for their words is, as we have explained, that when all those who engage in the Torah degrade their own internality and the internality of the Torah, leaving it as though it were redundant in the world, and engage in it only at a time that is neither day nor night, and in this regard, they are like blind searching the wall, by that, they intensify their own externality, the benefit of their own bodies.
Also, they consider the externality of the Torah higher than the internality of the Torah. And with these actions they cause all the forms of externality in the world to overpower all the internal parts in the world…
In such a generation, all the destructors among the nations of the world raise their heads and wish primarily to destroy and to kill the children of Israel, as it is written (Yevamot 63), “No calamity comes to the world but for Israel.” This means, as it is written in the above corrections, that they cause poverty, ruin, robbery, killing, and destruction in the whole world.
The time has come to leave the exile, but it is still difficult for us to understand the truth, which is that we must reach “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18), which was written in the Torah 3,000 years ago. It has been difficult for us to sustain what has been written for thousands of years since the giving of the Torah.
Moreover, it is difficult for us to acknowledge that we are the complete opposite of the central principle of the Torah because there is a deep, unfounded hatred that exists between us that is not found anywhere else. There is no other nation in the world with such hatred between the various sectors as exists among the people of Israel. There are people who live in the nation and hate it even though they receive everything good from it, and there are those who feel precisely the opposite.
Where else is it possible to find an entire population that wants to annihilate its nation and enjoys the destructive actions that it causes? Where else is it possible to find people who yearn for the annihilation, bankruptcy, and eradication of their nation? Where else are there people who enjoy it when something bad happens in their nation?
It is clear that the Klipot (Shells) are active here, higher forces that are revealed in this form. So, it is difficult to justify the words of the Torah.
Question: Are we pointing the finger of blame on these people?
Answer: Of course, we don’t blame anyone. After all, this is our collective problem, the trouble of the people who are in such a wretched state and must now rise up and overcome it. I count on the secular part; it can actually approach the internal implementation of the Torah, even without “external support.” And maybe the two parts gradually will complement each other until they unite and not mixed together.
Without a doubt, the analysis of Baal HaSulam is correct, but the solution will come through the secular world and not through the ultra-Orthodox world. After thirty years of living among the ultra-Orthodox population, I understand them very well. None of them is to blame for this. After all, all of us are remnants of the exile, especially the religious Jews, and they still are imbued with that spirit.
What is to be done if a person carries out actions that bring negative results because they accustomed him from childhood that these actions are obligatory? Everyone around him absolutely supports the external implementation and doesn’t support the internal part in any manner or form. This is also true among the secular population. No one wants to implement the principle, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Basically, everything had to happen, even the destruction of the First and Second Temples, the exile that continued until this very day, and the rise to the top, but this ascent can be revealed in different ways. It can exist in the way of Beito (in its time), as the default of the purpose of creation according to the relationship between Lights and Kelim (Vessels), but here is our freedom of choice. We can insert our awakening, our personal yearning, into this relationship.
If we want to unite the two parts of the people, we can do this only with the help of the Light that Reforms, which is the Torah, and it illuminates only someone who wants to return to the source. So, if I don’t aim toward a return to bestowal and love through serving others for the Creator, nothing will help, including study and external performance of the Mitzvot (Commandments), for this is not Torah and not Mitzvot. This is not the purpose of creation.
The physical actions in themselves are not useful at all. If I am satisfied with them only, my Torah is dry and barren, and as a result of this, I cause disasters to fall upon the people of Israel and the entire world.
There is nothing to be done for this is a law of creation. There is no reason to argue about it or disagree with it. All of the Kabbalists who achieved all of the systems in the world spoke about this unanimously, and today the time has come to reveal this knowledge to everyone.
The situation has become intolerable. The separation and hatred between us is heading toward a greater disaster than existed eighty years ago in Europe, and I am saying this in all seriousness.
The question can be asked: Can we allow ourselves to remain indifferent? In the twenties of the previous century, the Kabbalists in Europe called for the Jews to leave the place. Baal HaSulam organized an entire project to move them from Poland to the land of Israel, but the leaders of the community did not allow him to carry out his plan, and much later all of them perished in the Holocaust, both those who wanted to travel and those who did not allow them to do so.
The same thing is liable to happen to us here as well if we continue to advance in the same direction. So, it is forbidden for us to inquire as to who is right and who is not.
The Creator is right, establishing strict laws of relationship between the Light and the Kli. If we work to connect one with the other, then it will be good for us, and if not, then it will be bad.
I am to blame. In other words, we who have the knowledge must disseminate it among the people of Israel with all our might; we must turn to all who are ready to hear and understand us. So, it could be that a few drops will finally penetrate even into the second sector that is strongly against this.
In my opinion, the religious nucleus must be enveloped by the secular, the people who develop the characteristic of bestowal and love within their environment, and then it even will penetrate internally.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/4/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam
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