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A Spiritual Person

laitman_214Question: In your opinion, who can consider himself a spiritual person?

Answer: This is someone who transcends himself with the help of the method of the wisdom of Kabbalah, creating within him a new feeling called a “soul.” A person who does this, perceives spiritual substance through the characteristic of bestowal, meaning not within himself but outside of himself. In our world there are few people like these, nobody recognizes them, they are not revealed to anyone, and don’t teach anyone.

The only organization that is seriously involved with this is Kabbalah La’Am (Kabbalah for the People), which acts as an international Kabbalah Education Center, setting for itself the goal of teaching the wisdom of Kabbalah to other people because it receives this mission from above. We try to create the right conditions so that every person who wants to attain a spiritual state and feel the world outside of him can do this.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/21/16

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“Failure As A Driver Of Success”

Laitman_002In the News (Harvard Business Review): “Among the old winemakers there is a saying: ‘So that the vine will become beautiful, it must suffer’. Before you get a great wine, they subject the vine to stress, moistening the ground to the limit of the survival of the vineyard. After the vineyard goes through a ‘test’ like this, the grapes produce wines that are complex, delicate and select.

“In the Japanese and Chinese languages, the character for the term ‘catastrophe’ has the double meaning of failure and new possibilities.”

My Comment: This means the use of stress, up to disasters, develops new growth opportunities. It has been said: “Whom the Creator loves He sends hardships.”

Kabbalah explains it simply: because our egoistic nature is opposite to the Creator, the property of love, our goal in life is to change ourselves to similarity with the Creator. The Creator sends us adversity that forces us to change. Otherwise the ego would not budge. It is perfectly observed in the history of Jewish people.

Our methodology of Kabbalah quickly and correctly helps us understand the pressure of the Creator and use it for “new opportunities” of development into a likeness of the Creator.
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The Night Of The Exodus From Egypt

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How does Kabbalah explain “the night of the exodus from Egypt”?

Answer: The night of the exodus from Egypt is a result of all previous development of Jews whereby they brought themselves to the state that allowed them to become a nation and understand that inside them is the ego, Pharaoh, that rips them apart, leads to the conflicts with each other, and makes them feel distant from each other.

Look what is happening around: discords in the family, society, and government. We would do anything in order to suppress an alleged enemy. We need to start feeling our state as Egypt, as the reign of the Pharaoh, meaning our egoism that prevents us from being one nation, one family. Precisely this is called night.

This is why on the Passover night we gather together with our families and consider ourselves as one family, one nation. We want to demonstrate that we are ready to unite, to be together with the aim of rising above our egoism and coming to the freedom from it. This is the exodus from Egypt and the entrance to the land of Israel.

Between them there is a period of 40 years of passing the desert whereby we correct ourselves. By this correction we prepare ourselves for the entrance to the land of Israel as we can’t go straight away from the egoism and hatred to love. After all, love is the same egoism just in a reversed form. And 40 years long periods of preparation represent a distance from the desire to receive to the desire to bestow, from hatred to love.

Egyptian night is a pitch dark, terrible night of an absolute lack of understanding of what is happening and what will happen. People see that because of the mutual hatred, they cease to exist as a nation, as a family. They understand that this dead-end state leads them to death.

But at the same time they don’t see the way out of it because the power of egoism seems to be historically eternal and absolute. In everything the person turns to he sees his egoism, and he feels that he does everything only for his own benefit. It controls our every action: internal, external, our relationships, etc.

Everyone keeps such a distance from another where he would be able to defend himself and to receive maximum from the other. It means that the egoism all the time regulates our relationships with each other, nature, animals, the world, and life.

The terrible state of communication only in an egoistic manner is revealed to us as the darkness of Egypt. Exactly in this state, in the middle of the night a force suddenly appears in us, which leads us forward to the exit from the egoism and gives us a feeling that we can rise from it.

A culminating point of inversion appears and the most terrible darkness suddenly starts transforming into some hope, light: An exit exists somewhere, I have to run! And I run after this dream, after this internal power that suddenly erupts in me. And the light appears!

It is a special night, the night of exiting the egoistic slavery to altruistic eternity and perfection. This is why we celebrate it.
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From a TV Program “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/13/2016

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Responsibility For What Is Happening

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Torah, “Numbers,” 33:55, 33:56: But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then it shall come about that those whom you let remain of them will become as pricks in your eyes and as thorns in your sides, and they will trouble you in the land in which you live. And as I plan to do to them, so I will do to you.

We need to alienate from ourselves our own desires, meaning to correct them within ourselves. The desires do not disappear anywhere; it’s impossible to cut them off and to throw them away. There exists an enormous desire created by the Creator, as it is said: “I created the evil desire (evil inclination) and gave the Torah for its correction.”

The intentions for this desire can be either egoistic or altruistic. The desire itself is inert. In its original application it is an absolute zero, but it is given to us in a negative form. Therefore, we need to correct its negative application into a positive one, which can be achieved by changing the intention. This is called driving out the nations that exist within your desire.

Those whom you let remain of them [will become] pricks in your eyes and as thorns in your sides, [that is, these desires won’t let us perform any spiritual actions of bestowal, love, and mutual connection] and they will trouble you in the land in which you live. This reminds very much of our current state. After all, we do not work on ourselves!

Today the so-called nation of Israel are those who were given the opportunity to reach spiritual correction. However, we don’t do anything! Therefore we constantly receive pricks and punches, knives onto our backs and necks—what our neighbors do to us. And that’s because we don’t do our job! There is no need to blame them, only ourselves! We need to find the correct formula in order to change the state that passes only through us.

If we do not follow what Kabbalah says, we will suffer, we won’t achieve anything. We need to do something about ourselves.

We find ourselves at the epicenter of the “potential atomic explosion,” and we don’t understand what we evoke upon the entire world through ourselves. We have to acknowledge our responsibility for what is happening.

Comment: But doesn’t this concealment come from the upper degree?

Answer: Concealment is given specifically so that we can correct ourselves quickly, in connection with others, to feel the upper state and bring it upon the rest of the humanity.

This concealment is for our own benefit. If it didn’t exist, we would function automatically, following the instructions from above mindlessly, with no feeling or reason, as if we were a wound up mechanism. In that case we would be called angels. But man needs to be higher. He needs to rise to the level when he himself chooses to be similar to the Creator and brings His idea into the world.
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From a TV Program “The Secrets of the Eternal Book”

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New Life 717 – The Exodus From Egypt Within Me

New Life 717 – The Exodus From Egypt Within Me
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

Reality is a whole; therefore, it is difficult to talk about part of it without knowing the entire picture. The burning bush in the wilderness represents the internal revelation of Moses after burning his ego and matching his characteristics to Divinity, like to a similar absorption frequency; he and the Creator broadcast on the same wavelength.

Fundamentally good is not inherent in us; the evil inclination is, so we can not consider anyone but ourselves. After the forty years Moses lived with Pharaoh, he came to Jethro for forty years and learned about the quality of bestowal, Hesed (Mercy), and how to attain it above the egoism that is exposed. Then, he can return to Egypt to work on the ego.

The goal of humanity is for all of human nature, including all egoism, to resemble the wholeness of the upper force whose nature is love.

The return to Egypt symbolizes the return to the ego of Moses that still needs correction. None of us recognize the Pharaoh within ourselves. Pharaoh symbolizes the absolute dominance of the general ego in us. Moses symbolizes the small desire for the characteristic of bestowal, the discovery of truth.

The people of Israel represent the desires that can be corrected to the attribute of bestowal and love within the general ego. The ego is the entire field of reality, and Moses needs signs and wonders to show the ego that he has power. So, Moses takes the rod, whose function is to aim him in the spiritual way, to put the ego below, and go above it.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 717 – The Exodus From Egypt Within Me,” 4/19/16

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