Thousands of women from all over Israel who study the wisdom of Kabbalah and support its dissemination around the world gathered this Sunday in Bnei Baruch’s Kabbalah L’Am center for a women’s convention. Hundreds of women from all over the world (from Tokyo and Berlin to New York and Almaty) united together and joined the broadcast online.

[220137]

Filed under: Conventions - No Comments →

Question: Does a person’s psyche change when studying Kabbalah?

Answer: Of course it changes. First, he begins to understand that everything that happens to him descends from above.

Second, all this happens only in order for him to bring the Creator into his world, to try to justify Him in everything, no matter what sensations or influences he might be going through. As it is written: “You have hemmed me in behind and before,” i.e., the Creator acts in everything, either directly or indirectly, concealed or revealed.

We must strive for the Creator to always be revealed to us, so that even the worst circumstances would not shield Him from us. In reality, these are not circumstances, but our egoistic desires.

If these desires are small, on the level of zero or one, then the Creator is weakly concealed and we can be inside what is referred to as the Light of Hassadim.

There are also desires of the second, third and fourth levels: very heavy desires that take us through terrible egoistic states, yet it is in them that we can be connected with the Creator. After all, when the Creator submerges us in coarse egoism but nevertheless we do not lose connection with Him, we do not yield to any egoistic seductions, then we are in a state of receiving for the sake of bestowal.

We need to understand that before one can correct anything, we first need to be submerged in it. As it is written: “For there is not a righteous man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not,” and then, in corrected form, achieved righteousness. In other words, at first, there is immersion in egoism, a problem arises, and after that follows its correction.

Therefore, a Kabbalist is a person who goes through absolutely all states that can possibly exist in our world.

Remark: These words are not much of an advertisement.

My Comment: I am not giving any promotion here. The most important thing is for a person to know the truth. We live in a time when all of this needs to be known. We do not have time for any pretty methodologies, theories, and philosophies.

Today, we are in a state where we need to reveal absolutely everything to people, and they will figure it out since the confusion humanity is living in right now is not what it used to be. In the past, the world was calm. Today, it is experiencing serious stress. I hope that spreading Kabbalistic knowledge will help us discover the real world as quickly as possible.
[218471]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 9/3/17

Related Material:
The Way To The Revelation Of The Upper World
Only One Comes Out To The Light
An Honorable Task Of Becoming Righteous

Filed under: Spiritual Work - No Comments →

From the 1^st Part of the Lesson
Living In The Reality of “There Is None Else Besides Him”

• All problems are caused by the revelation of the next Reshimo (spiritual gene), but they manifest in various clothings, in the form of enemies, sickness, problems with loved ones, or with random people. It depends on the form of the Reshimo that a person needs to correct.
• In unpleasant situations, a person feels lost and wants to run away. But he needs to experience the full measure of the bitterness to the full depth of the Reshimo. Then he enters a new degree, as if “remembering” that all this was sent by the Creator to help him advance.
  He certainly would not have remembered the Creator on his own, but the suffering affects him, bringing him closer to the upper Light. Then, he begins to understand the reason for what is happening, to feel that it came from the Creator and to decide “There’s none else besides Him.” In this way, he conquers his fears and worries.
• Problems that frighten a person are sent in order to help him adhere to the Creator; this is their only purpose. If a person understands that the Creator desires to draw him closer through these problems, then his attention shifts to the Creator and how to get closer to Him.
  It is like a small child who constantly tries to run away from his mother. But as soon as he sees something that frightens him, he clings to her and wants to hide in her arms so that she envelopes him, as if he were in her womb.
• Frightening problems are a great correction and help sent to a person from above to distance him from his evil nature and bring him closer to the Creator. He understands good and corrects the revealed Reshimo by adhering to and justifying the Creator who sent him these problems in order to educate him.
• How can a person be saved from evil and even justify the Creator in the direst circumstances of utter despair when the world is immersed in darkness? Only through the environment that supports him during difficult times and helps him remain in constant adhesion with the Creator regardless of the ever-increasing revelation of the breakage.
• To justify the Creator means to connect everything that is happening to me with Him, rejoicing that He is distancing Himself from me so that in this new disconnected state I can adhere to Him.

From the 2^nd Part of the Lesson 
The Study of The Ten Sefirot

• The degrees of the spiritual world grow from within, clothing themselves into increasingly external manifestations, like concentric circles that spread out after a rock is thrown into the water. So a new inner core begins to grow in the Partzuf (spiritual object), while the former inner part becomes the external one.
  When it grows further, the external layer of the upper degree becomes the inner layer of the lower degree. Inner turns into outer and outer into the inner of the lower degree, and so on and so on.
• The union of upper and lower degrees is the most difficult and deepest mystery because it is the union between the Creator and creation on each level.

From the 3^rd Part of the Lesson
Baal HaSulam’s “Shofar HaMoshiach”

• Kabbalistic books have always been shrouded in secrecy. Other than the Kabbalists, no one understands anything that is written in them. Kabbalists speak about what is good for humanity and its progress toward correction.
  When we are teaching little children, we don’t disclose everything at once, but we reveal things gradually as they are ready for it. First, we educate them so they can use the knowledge they are receiving properly. When we are talking about spiritual degrees that are unattainable to the human intellect and feelings, special preparation is even more important.
• If the generation is not ready, the Kabbalistic books return to concealment. This is what happened with Baal HaSulam who wrote many texts that he later hid and some he even burned. The authorities forbade him to publish his newspaper. This was all to ensure these texts would be revealed in the correct way and time.
• Why is The Book of Zohar so important for our correction if it is a commentary on the Torah? The Torah contains all the information up to the end of correction, but it is not explained there.
  The Torah describes the corrections that were needed for the construction of the First and Second Temples. The Zohar, however, was written after the destruction of the Second Temple, and it tells how to come to the Third Temple following the destruction and exile.
  It was written for the last generation, when the exile ends and the construction of the Third Temple begins, which is the vessel for the revelation of the upper Light. This is the time when The Book of Zohar is needed.
  [219660]
  From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/9/18

Filed under: Spiritual Work, Zohar - No Comments →

Question: What kind of evidence would indicate that the light I see is the upper Light?

Answer: The upper Light is the quality of love and bestowal that fills our world and all n-dimensional space.

This is the Light we should aspire to and attract to us. With its help, we should correct ourselves—change ourselves inverting from receivers to givers.
[218811]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 9/3/17

Related Material:
Why Don’t I Feel The Upper Light?
What Is The Upper Light Made Of?
How Can We Draw The Upper Light?

Filed under: Spiritual Work - No Comments →

Preparation for the Lesson

Writings of Baal HaSulam, Letter 56

Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 10, “Table of Answers for Topics,” Item 149 

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 60 

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download: MP3 Audio

Filed under: Audio Version of the Blog - No Comments →

New Life #198 – Falling In Love, Part 2
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

What influences the process of falling in love? What must we learn about ourselves to communicate correctly? And how do relationships serve as a means for clarifying our need for mutual connection?

Building a true, internal connection with a partner opens up an entire world. We begin to play together with a chord of mutual complementarity. Being a part of a group that aims toward connection in general can support us in our search for the right partner.
[116713]
From KabTV’s “New Life #198 – Falling In Love,” part 2, 6/20/13

Video: Play Now | Download

Audio: Play Now | Download

Filed under: Love, New Life - No Comments →

Opening the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/24/18

In relation to the topic, “from disturbances to ascent,” the word “disturbances” is imprecise, because if we say that “there is none else besides Him,” that there is only one force, not two or three, but only one force acting in reality, then everything comes from the Creator, and He is good and benevolent.

Therefore, negative and positive influences from one extreme to the other stem from a single force, the “good that does good.” Only in the person does that influence split into two, where he feels good in some of those influences, and bad in others. This just points out the lack of a person’s correction, that he has no equivalence with the Creator, where he needs to feel everything emanating from the Creator as good, and the Creator as benevolent. If one doesn’t feel, at every moment, as being in an ocean of the good that does good, at least as an embryo in its mother’s womb, on all sides, in all discernments, where only good, mercy and love encase him, it’s a sign that he has a problem with his vessels’ correction.

Anyone could say, “Yes, I have a problem with the correction of the vessels, but what can I do about it? I don’t feel its lack. I cannot correct what I don’t lack.”

Therefore, here we need to attain the deficiency for correction. However, at least, we start by determining that we, who are in an ocean of good, benevolence, Light, bestowal and love, don’t feel it, which points out our lack of correction.

Now, how can I wake up? How can I not remain as I was before this calculation? Also, now, after this calculation, I feel a little bad and a little good, but it doesn’t concern, shake or force me to now act and exert. There is no deficiency. Intellectually, I could be saying all the right things, but it’s not enough. Emotion—deficiency—needs to shake me from my stance.

Deficiency can come from above. That is considered as being the path of suffering. Deficiency can come from a person who enters into proper connection with the environment, and through envy, lust and honor, he obligates himself to exit this world and enter the spiritual world.

If he doesn’t do that through the ploys great Kabbalists write about, then he doesn’t progress on the path of Achishena (“I will hasten it”). He is gradually brought closer on the path of Beito (“in due time”), but it is gradual, i.e., it is time dependent, and also dependent on a person’s attitude to the whole general system.

Therefore, everything depends on our attitude to the situation: Can we, even in a state where we feel nothing—where nothing moves me, nothing matters to me, and where I simply don’t care, most of the time when I’m detached from spirituality, where I seemingly know what’s going on and I’m ready to just keep going with the flow—how can we muster all the means at our disposal in order for us to, in the group, somehow create an alarm system that will wake us up, that will impact us. Even if we all fall asleep, in any case, let there be something that pushes and pulls us to the purpose of creation.

That is considered as accelerating time. It is called “Israel sanctifying the times.” Whoever is “Yashar Kel” (“straight to God”) really shortens time, and everything depends on shortening time, because certainly Gmar Tikkun (the end of correction) is alive, even now, but do we reach it or not, now or in who knows how many events, incarnations or years?

The main thing is that our work is not through great ascents and great descents, but on indifference—it’s a war on indifference. That desert consumes us.
[220779]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson on January 24, 2018.

Related Material:
Sanctifying The Time
Make Every Instant More Exalted
New Life #352 – Controlling Time

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Kabbalah Study, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

Remark: Until the 17^th and 18^th centuries, Western civilization lived with a sense that there is some kind of cosmic order in society and in nature, that there is an upper force.

My Comment: Man in Western civilization walked, as they said , under the grace of God, a God they invented for themselves. This was useful for kings, clergy, and other controlling structures. It gave a king legitimacy that he was God’s representative on Earth.

But then everything turned upside down because egoism grew and it was no longer possible to reign over people. Various movements appeared: Calvinism, Lutheranism, and so on, which gave a powerful push for future development.

Very quickly those movements started to transform religion into new social forms because the old ones were already useless for the development of the population. In its social, economic, and political relationships, the population outgrew the framework of the old religion; it needed a different religion. So various faith-based movements appeared.

The Middle Ages were distinguished by rapid development. It only seems to us that it was somewhat slow. But serious processes were taking place that gave significant impetus for new possibilities in the development of the sciences and arts, and the birth of a new freedom. The individual started to emerge from the control of the clergy.

And then the question of how to keep the individual reined in arose. All sorts of nationalistic movements appeared, and opposing them, socialistic and communistic movements.

Question: What was the goal of leaving ordinary religion? To prepare humanity for a more enlightened perspective?

Answer: The goal of nature is giving people the opportunity to understand their own destiny and to find the means of solving the most important question of life: “Why do I exist?”

During those years, even if such a question arose, it was suppressed by the fears and opinions of society. But after the Middle Ages, it began to manifest more forcefully according to the inner development of people who no longer feared calling themselves atheist, not connected to the Creator. Theism is connection with the Creator, atheism is the absence of this connection.

Question: Didn’t the atheists also try to build a social system based on morality, but without the control of the upper force?

Answer: Yes. They tried to figure out how a government could be structured if there is no upper power, not in the form of God and not in the form of a king. This was a very serious leap forward, when the individual comes first.

But the individual is not capable of controlling himself, he cannot do anything “without the king at the head” and without God at the head. That is why all kinds of terrorist movements appeared: fascism, Nazism, etc. People were searching for how to control themselves, to hold the system in order, and saw they could not succeed. And so they went, from blow to blow.

Therefore, in the beginning of the 20^th century, after rapid development of science, culture, and self-consciousness, the science of Kabbalah began to be revealed. When the era of scientific discovery and arts ended, it became clear they did not provide an answer to the question about the meaning of life, which appeared even before the Middle Ages. Even the Age of Enlightenment did not give us this answer.

Then, Kabbalah was revealed. It began explaining that it had the solution to these problems. But since it is irrational to humanity’s way of thinking, it is as if taking the theory of relativity and trying to apply it to daily life.

In our world it is not understood, and even if it is understood, then only by a few people. So what is there to talk about with the simple person? But according to Kabbalah, everyone must be raised to a new level.

Therefore, even though Kabbalah is being revealed, it is apparent that a great deal of time is needed before people understand that society must exist on its principles and will otherwise not have the ability to sustain itself.

Humanity is gradually approaching this state, but it does not yet exist in it. Right now our Kabbalistic group is engaged with modeling these principles, analyzing them, and developing them internally, like in a laboratory. But, eventually, this will be the realization of the basic law of nature in humanity.

Kabbalists are obligated to demonstrate to humanity that their methodology is the only one that has the answers to the future structure of nature, society, humanity, family, and upbringing. And without it, the world will not be able hold itself in any kind of a framework.
[212624]
From KabTV’s “The Last Generation,” 7/3/17

Related Material:
To Change Human Nature
The Main Task Of Our Times
Kabbalah Is For The Whole World

Filed under: Dissemination, Kabbalah Study, Religion, Society - No Comments →

From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 1/23/18

Vice President Mike Pence not only recognized history but also the past and future of the Jewish people, as a nation that must reveal the Creator to the world. This is a giant step towards the discovery of the thought of creation—to unite all the nations of the world, “for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them” (Jeremiah 31, 33)

Filed under: Facebook - No Comments →