Audio Version Of The Blog – 09.22.15

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General Intention For The New Year

Laitman_931-01The New Year in Hebrew is called Rosh Hashanah, which means the head of the year, its beginning. The year ahead of us depends on how we start it, what goals we’ll set, what intentions we have, on our plans.

This is why we have to clearly understand why we need this year, why we exist, and what we really need to achieve.

Fortunately, we live in the world that demonstrates to us its uselessness and absolute insignificance. This is why it is much easier for us to navigate in it than it was 100 or even 50 years ago.

What can we wish for ourselves for the new year? We see how throughout all of history, humanity has constantly erred. We have tried to do something and erred; again we tried and again missed, and so it has been every time.

We cannot make one correct step. In the wisdom of Kabbalah this is explained very simply: Humanity doesn’t know its past, from where it came, and towards what it is going.

The idea is that we descended below from the world of Ein Sof (Infinity) into our world, and now we must ascend upward again. But we are not conscious of the descent nor of the future ascent, and so we are found in a pitiful state.

Kabbalah tells us that if we want to be different, we need to work on the unity of our people, meaning on what Abraham did in the past in ancient Babylon, when he called to all who were interested in uniting and gathered them into a single unique group called the people of Israel.

Israel, means “Yashar-El” (Straight to the Creator) and is also “Li-Rosh” (I have a head), meaning that I am going head first. Rosh Hashanah means the same thing—head first.

It means that I begin to understand that I will always be mistaken and will receive a blow with every step forward, even with the smallest step, if I don’t know the program of creation and the way that it is leading me.

This way is concealed from the ordinary person, and if I don’t progress towards where nature is leading me but go in the opposite direction, nature will drag me back by the neck and push me in the right direction. This is the way of suffering. A correction like this is very cruel.

So it is up to us to understand the program of creation and to begin to apply it correctly; this is what the wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us.

The application is very simple; it is summed up by connection and unity. This was said to the people at the time of receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai: “Do you want to be as one people with one heart, to be found in full Arvut (Mutual Guarnatee) for this, not doing to your friend what is hateful to you and loving your friend as yourself?”

All of these Mitzvot (commandments) deal with our people, within which we need to unite correctly. And in the connection between us, we discover the Creator, the upper world, the next stage of our development. The more we unite, the more we ascend above our world and begin to feel the next level of existence, the next dimension.

In principle, this is our role. Kabbalah gives precise instructions about how to do this and teaches us according to the original Kabbalistic sources.

I hope very much that the old year that has ended will teach us how to properly treat the new year, and from this day on we will learn to direct ourselves towards clear and correct development in harmony, in the connection and union between us.

If the Jewish people will do this, then it will influence the entire world positively, will annihilate anti-Semitism, and will bring humanity to prosperity by raising it to the next level of existence. Everything depends on us; only we determine the future of the world.

Let’s do this so that this new year will be good as has been determined for us from above, so that we can bring the entire world to the new state, and as it is written in the Torah, we will become a Light to the nations, we will realize ourselves in the best way. This is our destiny. Let’s ascend in this year to level of eternity and wholeness.
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From KabTV’s “Holidays. Rosh Hashanah” 8/6/15

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A Forty Year Preparation Before Entering The Land Of Israel

laitman_747_01The Torah, “Numbers,” 14:26 – 14:31: The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, “How much longer will this evil congregation who are causing to complain against Me [exist]? The complaints of the children of Israel which they caused them to complain against Me, I have heard. Say to them, ‘As I live,’ says the Lord, ‘if not as you have spoken in My ears, so will I do to you. In this desert, your corpses shall fall; your entire number, all those from the age of twenty and up, who were counted, because you complained against Me.

You shall [not] come into the Land concerning which I raised My hand that you would settle in it, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun. As for your infants, of whom you said that they will be as spoils, I will bring them [there], and they will come to know the Land which You despised.

The Torah tells us about the actual levels a person climbs internally, but one doesn’t understand that it is all done by the Light and not by oneself, and one keeps forgetting that and thus cannot help being wrong.

We will make many mistakes when we try to go back. There is no other way! We must fully recognize our ego and see how big it is. We cannot do anything with this giant cyclops.

We gradually have educated ourselves on every level, on every step during the forty years of wandering in the desert so that when we are about to enter the land of Israel, we will be absolutely sure that we are totally powerless and cannot do anything by ourselves.

Neither our mind not our hearts can help us in any way. We are facing a giant cyclops, a strong army, nations that hate us that are ready to do anything so as not to let us cross their borders. The new generation also recognizes this, and things are becoming even clearer.

However, at the same time, during the forty years we gradually develop the attribute of love and bestowal between us and begin to discover the Creator in it as the source of this attribute. It turns out that we can enter the land of Israel only by faith above reason, which means with the attribute of bestowal that is external to us.

So, what is the problem? We had to be mistaken in order to discover and explain to ourselves and to the nation what is going on in the land of Israel, what great forces are there, why we cannot overcome them, and why we are so distant from each other and from the Creator.

Therefore, the sin of the spies is necessary in order to understand the extent to which we are not part of this. A person cannot leap from one level to the next without the forty- year preparation before entering the land of Israel correctly. All of the problems clarified by the spies and the revelation of the negative attitude of the nation are natural and cannot be otherwise.

There are no mistakes along the spiritual path. The calculation is realistic: what Masach (screen) do you have against your ego, whether one covers the other.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 5/6/15

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A Global Economic Crisis Is Knocking At The Door

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (gazeta.ru): “The collapse of stock indices and the fall of prices of raw materials has led to hysteria and shock. Exports and imports are falling, the stock market bubble is deflating, the next is the real estate sector.

“The era of the consumer economy has ended in Europe and the United States. Demand that has been accelerated by providing loans has ceased to grow. For the world economy there is no need for metals or the current volumes of energy carriers. The Middle Eastern nations are adding problems to the oil market by needlessly inflating the oil market only to crush the competitors from the United States producing shale oil. In the United States there is a reduction in jobs in the petroleum and gas industry, and the threat of non-repayment of loans taken for the shale oil project is only growing.”

My Comment: There is no reason to panic. This is a gradual transition to a new form of existence, from one that is egoistic, beastly, and private, to one that is altruistic, humane, and social. Everything depends on awareness and on our form of participation in this transition, each person and all of us together.

An integral global system unites and forces us, both the person and the society, to be like it. Nature abhors, not just a vacuum, but also the lack of accommodation with it. To the degree of the lack of accommodation, it influences and works on the incompatible object through forces that return it to accommodation, resemblance, and balance with the general system of nature. We call these forces that correct a person and society a crisis.

In Greek: “κρίσις” is from the verb “κρίων” that means “to establish, to define, to choose.” The meaning of the word “crisis” is a solution, a turning point, meaning the point of correction, not destruction.

In Chinese, “Crisis” (危机 wei ji)—“wei” is danger, ji” is an activating mechanism, an incentive, a creative force (of nature). In Hebrew “Rashi”—The place for the midwife is found on the birthing stones, which are also called a Mashber” (crisis) instead of “stones.”
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The Sixth Sense, The Soul

laitman_600_02Question: You say that the same soul reincarnates into our world, changing bodies. On the other hand, you say that an ordinary person has no soul and needs to build it within himself through connection with others. How can this contradiction be resolved?

Answer: None of us is born with a ready-made soul. The soul is a force that we acquire through studying the wisdom of Kabbalah. When we realize this method within ourselves, we grow a new quality of bestowal and love for one’s neighbor within which we discover the Upper Light or the feeling of the presence of the Creator, the upper force.

This additional “sixth sense,” a feeling of love and bestowal to one’s neighbor, that is acquired by the person, is called the soul. The Kabbalists write that the soul is a Kli (vessel) designed to be filled by the Upper Light. Every person must attain the root of his soul and was created only for this sake.

It is written that the soul is “the portion of God from above” (Job 31:2) through which one begins to feel the upper force.
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From the Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 9/6/15

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“We Sinned, Betrayed, Stole…United!” In Ynet

We Have Sinned, Betrayed, Stolen...UnitedIn my column in Ynet a new article was published about the month of Elul, the month of mercy and forgiveness and especially about our fate.

“We Sinned, Betrayed, Stole…United!”

We find ourselves in a state of war every other year. When this happens, we are the world champions in connecting and in mutually caring for one another, but when the last missile lands, we quickly pull out the arrows of hate. That’s the way we are, but are we meant to live that way? Is this really our fate?

The month of Elul quietly arrives at the end of every year and we put on a righteous face (after all, this is the month of mercy and forgiveness) and cannot just let it go by. So we rush to call out: We sinned, betrayed, and transgressed. Beautiful. But what?

Even a quick glance around doesn’t promise us a rose garden. Hamas continue to dig tunnels; the Iranians keep fooling everyone and continue to arm themselves; the Europeans are experiencing a first encounter with the Middle East, and the world is losing its balance. Some may say that the Jews can never benefit from a situation like this, and that the waves of anti-Semitism and different anti-Israeli organizations are on their way to us and our families in the Diaspora.

Tracking Our Roots

We have to go 4,000 years back to the days of ancient Babylon in order to understand our fate. It was then that a wise man Abraham discovered that if people’s ego grows sky high, they cease to understand one another and begin to fight each other. Remember the Tower of Babel? This is exactly what it is about.

Abraham developed a method of working with the human ego correctly so that it can help people connect more strongly to one another and rise above the hate and the fighting. Together with his wife Sarah, he established a system of disseminating the method of connection that he developed. Eventually thousands gathered around him, which eventually formed our nation.

Since then, our relations are defined by clear laws: The moment we harm the connection between us, hatred and contempt overcome us. When we grow weaker internally, there are forces that immediately rise to destroy us externally.

Introspection?

The last year should make us all realize that if we don’t start a meaningful process of connection between us, our country could fall apart. The division, the polarization, and the gap between us is growing increasingly greater from day to day. The ego is growing in each of us and no one can give it up in order to connect, and so there is no doubt that we need help. We need a method that will teach us how to channel the ego, that can explain to us what the right connection is and how we should connect.

This is exactly what the wisdom of Kabbalah that Abraham established engages in, and today we need it more than ever before. We need the uniting force that connected us then. Only if we use it will we survive and actually become invincible.

Happy New Year!
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Spiritual Diet

Laitman_524_01Question: Must I give up my physical desires to build my soul?

Answer: It is not necessary to give up any desire. The wisdom of Kabbalah doesn’t require any human limitations. Through studying the wisdom of Kabbalah, we attract the Light that Reforms, which carries out all the corrections.

The study is constructed such that we connect with each other at the time of the lessons, the group work, and joint activities, and, through our connection and unity, we attract the upper force that influences all of us. In this way we create a new nature within us, the force of bestowal, within which we begin to feel the upper world.

At the same time we are not required to give up any material pleasure. The Upper Light gradually changes us such that suddenly we feel how some desires disappear and some appear. The Light makes us like it; it renews and corrects, creating from us a Kli (vessel) that is prepared to feel and discover the upper world.

But a person doesn’t need to limit himself artificially and keep a “spiritual diet.” It is only necessary to learn and apply the method of correction.
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From the Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 8/16/15

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 09.22.15

Preparation for the Lesson

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Writings of Rabash, “Rungs of the Ladder,” Article 36

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Writings of Rabash, “Rungs of the Ladder,” Article 3

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The Book of Zohar — Selected Excerpts  “Yom HaKippurim”

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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Vol. 6, Part 16, Item 156 

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