After such a powerful congress, we want to measure our ascents and descents according to new values. Previously the state depended only on me, on my good or bad feeling from which I concluded that I was in ascent or descent. But now I want to connect my states to the Creator: If I yearn for Him, it means I am in an ascent, and if I do not yearn for Him no matter how well my ordinary life is arranged, I consider this to be a descent.

We then move to a new state where ascents and descents are determined according to the direction: toward the Creator or toward ourselves. This is a big advancement because I can already analyze: am I thinking of the Creator or of myself? And if I yearn for the Creator, then why—to bring contentment to Him or to myself? Here begins a calculation through an additional discernment: me or the Creator, me or the friends?

On these scales, I give increasing weight to the side opposite to me: the group or the Creator, and use it to evaluate the ascent and descent. Ascents are when I think more about the good of the ten and the Creator and descents are the other way around: when they disappear from my horizon and I do not think about them but only about myself. These are clear cause-and-effect steps that should lead me to Lishma.

The main thing is to disconnect from myself a little and to start thinking in the direction of the Creator. I want to yearn for Him and bring Him contentment. And only if I place myself in the ten, will it bring Him contentment. Therefore, the ten gains new weight for me: it is not just ten people but Shechinah (Divinity), a place for the revelation of the Creator where I can bestow to Him. Everything is already directed toward the state of bestowal, Lishma.¹

The Creator is dancing a tango with us: He comes closer, then steps back, and demands a response from me. After He illuminated me, then moved away and disappeared, I must come closer to the previous state. It is like breathing: exhaling and inhaling. So, the Creator teaches me that through actions in the group I will give Him a place where He can be revealed, where I invite Him, and demand revelation. When this place is opened, the Creator fills this place and again disappears, leaving it empty. And then I have to draw Him back again.

I need to add my passion, my aspiration, to this tango. Every time the Creator disappears, I must examine myself: What am I really yearning for? And I try to improve the quality of my aspiration for Him so that not my filling, but the one I yearn for, is important to me.²

We have nothing to give to the Creator except our connection. The Creator is perfect and needs nothing, feeling no lack. All we can offer Him is a vessel, a Kli, in which He can reveal Himself and enjoy fulfilling our desire. Therefore, each of us has the opportunity to bring contentment to the Creator by preparing the first nine Sefirot, the nine friends, for the revelation of the Creator in them.

Each of us becomes Malchut in relation to the rest and prepares them to be fulfilled by the Creator. One gives one’s desire and the Creator is revealed in the first nine Sefirot, in the friends. This is our work and this is all we can present to the Creator: a spiritual vessel.³

The desire for the Creator is developed through a long path, from our egoistic desire. I receive various blows and then I feel that they are rigged by the Creator to make me understand that everything comes from Him, both bad and good, any situation in life. Inside all life’s problems and “punishments,” the hand of the Creator is revealed.

At first, I felt only punishments, but because of that I felt pain, fear, despair, and shame. But suddenly, it turns out that the punishments come from the Creator, and this is a relief. After all, there is a justification and explanation for what is happening: this is how the Creator leads me to the final correction. It already sweetens the punishments.

I felt bad when punishments came, but from their sweetening, I feel good. It is impossible to get this pleasant feeling without prior suffering. Therefore, I agree: let there be fears, anxieties, confusion, only so that I receive mercy and sweetening. That is how we learn that the connection with the Creator justifies any condition.

This is how the yearning for the Creator is built because I see that love covers all crimes and I want to feel the Creator, to understand, to love. I feel good to be longing for Him—this is still an egoistic form. I feel good from the fact that I have thoughts about the Creator, that I strive for Him, because I know that the connection with Him gives sweetness. And not only because He sweetens the judgement I receive, but even without the threat of judgement, I want to think about Him. This is the second stage.

If I do not think about the Creator for even a moment, I feel bad. And if I do not feel bad about it, then I regret why is this so? Indeed, this means separation from the Creator. Here a person can check how terrible it feels to break away from the Creator even for a moment.

My definition of good and evil changes. Evil is when I do not think about the Creator and good is when I do. I still evaluate through the fact that I feel pleased or displeased, but the very thought of the Creator is already becoming a reward. I no longer need preliminary punishment in this world in order to wait for the Creator as my savior. It turns out that I am already moving from this world toward the Creator and saying that thinking about Him is a reward and not thinking is a punishment.

The Kli that the Creator can fill is the ten. Good is when the Creator is revealed to the whole ten as one: He unites all and is revealed to all. Let Him work, He loves this job! But He will not do anything until we demand Him to work. We are the masters who order the work of the Creator: we identify places where we are not connected and we demand from the Creator to connect us and fill us. This is the raising of MAN, the prayer.⁴

You must work by faith above reason, ignoring your feelings, “like an ox to the burden and a donkey to the load.” Once upon a time, domestic animals, oxen and donkeys were free and lived their lives in nature, in their family, in the herd. Now their whole life is to fulfill the owner’s demand. They sold themselves for food and are ready to do all the work that the owner requires.

We also need to agree to do all the work at the Creator’s request “like an ox to the burden and a donkey to the load.” And for what reward? For none, only the bare necessities to exist. I want nothing, only to exist, and why? To fulfill the master’s desire so that He loves me as his ox or donkey.

Why do owners feed and clean their animals? Because they work. So, I want the same and nothing more. I need to lower myself to the state of pure intention.⁵
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/13/19, Hardening of the Heart – An Invitation to Build a Yearning for the Creator”

¹ Minute 4:50
² Minute 27:50
³ Minute 31:56
⁴ Minute 51:50
⁵ Minute 1:24:15

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What has shocked you the most about Trump declaring that Jews are a “nation”?“

Nothing shocked me about this declaration. It was a move to combat anti-Semitism and the rising anti-Israel movement on US college campuses. However, such actions will not stand in the way of anti-Semitism’s expansion.

I’m certain that anti-Semitism will continue becoming an increasing problem if we fail to treat it at its root, i.e., that we, the Jewish people, will wake up to what made us Jews in the first place—our inclination to unite (“love your neighbor as yourself”) above divisions (“love will cover all transgressions”) in order to spread unity to humanity (to be a “light unto the nations”).

The more torn today’s societies become, and the more people suffer from social division, the more anti-Semitism will rise.

Why? It is because we, the Jewish people, were originally founded based on a unifying ideology—a group of people who lived in ancient Babylon some 3,800 years ago, who gathered around Abraham, uniting according to the method of unification that he discovered and applied on himself.

When we reached sublime states of unity above the divisive social climate of that time, we became known as “the nation of Israel.” That is, our nationhood was never biological, as with other nations. It was ideological, based on the idea of unifying with positive connections of love and bestowal.

After Abraham’s time, we received the name “Jews” (Yehudim) from the Hebrew word for “united” (yihudi). However, since the ruin of the Second Temple, we entered a long period of exile, which continued till today. We detached from the sensation of our unification and dispersed both around the world, and in our attitudes to each other.

Today, as humanity becomes increasingly globally interconnected, technologically, economically and culturally, the time has come for our internal attitudes to become as connected as our external systems.

The more we develop today without working on upgrading our attitudes to each other, the more we will feel our tightening connection in a negative way. We can see such paradoxes in our era, where the more the population increases to numbers we have never seen before, the more people feel isolated and lonely; and the more we build vast global social networks, the more people feel depressed and stressed.

All such problems point to the need for positive connection in society. Therefore, implementing the unifying role of the Jewish people today becomes all the more necessary and urgent.

We Jews today first and foremost need to understand the need for a major transformation—to move toward unification, mutual consideration, concern, support and encouragement of one another—and that we hold the keys to pioneer such a monumental shift in society, spreading unity worldwide to a point where humanity would feel as a single nation.

Until we start realizing the method of connection we have at our fingertips, the world will continue pressuring us. Even if the current US President has a favorable attitude to us for the time being, it has no effect on the global-scale correction that is upon our shoulders to initiate.

In fact, the contrary is the case. It is similar to a person with a disease who was given a painkiller. He feels fine, even though the disease continues spreading.

In the meantime, he lies in bed, talking and laughing with others around him, everyone thinking everything is okay, but he is just numb to the disease, which gradually brews under the surface toward an irreversible outbreak.

It is similar to Germany in the 1930s, where there was a period of positive relations between the Nazis and the Jews (as I elaborated here). It is a latent period where we need to digest the process unfolding, our role in the process, and act accordingly, not simply thinking that everything is business-as-usual, because nothing will heal that way. History shows us how the Nazis quickly overturned the boat on the Jews, getting rid of us with ease.

And so, history is repeating itself before our very eyes. Although we see some seemingly encouraging moves toward Jews in actions such as Trump’s executive order recognizing Jews as a nation, or for instance, the British election of Brian Johnson as opposed to Jeremy Corbyn, it is for a limited time only.

If we fail to complement this relatively calm period with motions toward becoming a positive conduit of unity toward the world, then we can expect an intensification of anti-Semitic hatred to reach a future boiling point. Trump and Johnson will eventually become replaced with new leaders, and all it takes is for them to press a few buttons and we will lose all the help we now have. It is similar to how Hitler swiftly shifted gear to the Final Solution. He also had pro-Zionist consultants close by, who later became revealed as anti-Semites.

Therefore, although we see signs of support from some world leaders for now, anti-Semitic sentiment continues growing under the surface. We still have some time to adjust our sights and prioritize unity: to implement the method of connection among each other, from which it will ripple through humanity. By doing so, we will see a new and harmonious balance of forces blossom in the world, and can prevent a future of mass suffering and bloodshed from materializing.

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In the Image and Likeness of the Soul

Question: In Kabbalah and in the sources, it is clearly said: There is a city, there are gates, and there is a Temple. What are these concepts?

Answer: It is all arranged according to the system of the upper world in the image and likeness of our soul.

Remark: Once you said that if the walls do not surround the settlement, it is not a city.

My Comment: Yes. There are only a few such cities in Israel that were once surrounded by walls. These are Acre, Jerusalem, Safed, and Tiberias. Even today in Tiberias there still are remains of ancient walls.

Question: What do the walls of cities symbolize from the point of view of Kabbalah?

Answer: The wall that surrounds the city is like a Parsa. This is what separates the city from the external forces, that is, separate upper spiritual forces from the lower ones, the quality of bestowal from the quality of reception.

There is a space outside the city that is called “70 Amah” that still relates to the city.

The city gates symbolize a special entrance into the upper world where a person must correct himself in a certain way in order to be awarded the right to enter the city that is on the spiritual level. Therefore, to enter the city gates is not a simple action.

Question: Can we say that a wall is some kind of necessary condition?

Answer: A wall is a screen that separates the city from everything there is outside of it. That is, there is a quality of bestowal in the city and there is an egoistic, evil quality of reception outside the city, and therefore, the city restricts itself with the quality of bestowal.

After all, usually, there are bandits, meaning egoists wandering outside of the city. They cannot approach the wall because it pushes them away or they themselves are pushed away from it. The wall as if forces them to be bestowing, kind, and this is completely not in their nature.

Question: So, does it mean that using the language of roots and branches, Kabbalists took familiar concepts such as “city,” “wall,” and “gates,” felt their spiritual root, and used them for an explanation?

Answer: Yes, but besides that, they understood why we in our world arrange ourselves in such a way, why we build houses, huts, tents, marquees, and temples in a certain way. They felt it as a consequence of spiritual forces.

Question: Indeed, the great Kabbalists, in particular the Ari, wrote that there is a house, a yard, a field, and a desert. Was this about some specific desires that can be used for the sake of the Creator and the ones that cannot be used?

Answer: Yes, A person inside the house is the inner part of the soul, and the house itself, the yard, the field, and the desert already are the outer parts of his soul, which he must correct.
[255928]
From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 1/28/19

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Question: How can one correctly accept endless gifts from the Creator without bending under the shame of receiving, how can one do it joyfully?

Answer: Give thanks and do the same to others.

Question: What is darkness?

Answer: This is what distinguishes you from the Creator.

Question: How can I strengthen my attitude to the Creator?

Answer: Do whatever you want, it will not help. You are a great hero until He pinches you. Then you will immediately start crying.

Question: How can the ten not run away from the revelation of corruptions?

Answer: By supporting each other and by praying to the Creator.

Question: Even if you came to the conclusion that it is impossible to change your nature to bestowal, a strong disbelief in the Creator is born. However, prayer is impossible, there is no strength to ask. You also do not see the point in it because of the lack of faith in the Creator. What should I do and how can I not leave the path?

Answer: Do not believe. Who makes you believe? Faith is the feeling of the Creator. It is not what you imagine to yourself: I just believe that He exists. This is not Kabbalah but religion.
[255085]
From Lesson 5, World Kabbalah Convention in Moldova 9/7/19, Turning to the Creator

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Question: In Kabbalah there is the concept of 70 nations of the world. Where does the number “70” come from?

Answer: It comes from the fact that spiritual roots form corresponding consequences in our world.
Zeir Anpin is composed of seven Sefirot, and each Sefira of ten, which totals 70.

Question: Kabbalists wrote that our desires, from a spiritual point of view, are divided into 70 nations. But if we begin to study historically, could it be different, not necessarily 70?

Answer: No. Josephus Flavius has confirmation of this; after all, he is considered a great historian.

He was captured by the Romans and he left with them from the subjugated, destroyed Judea. In Rome, a huge institute was created for him where hundreds of people worked under his supervision so that he could write his treatises. Therefore, we cannot say that these facts are false or in some way far-fetched.

Question: How do Kabbalists relate to his treatises?

Answer: They are not particularly relevant because he did not write about spiritual conditions. He described what happened in our world as a consequence. But still, his book begins with the words: “In the beginning the Lord created heaven and earth … “ and so on, as described in the Torah.

Question: Can you, as a Kabbalist, confirm that the consequences he described in our world clearly correspond to those spiritual laws that you know from the spiritual world?

Answer: Of course. He described everything precisely.

Question: Doesn’t it happen that historians can distort things?

Answer: He was not at that level, and the Romans too. They just had to record everything for future generations, which they did. In the eyes of the Romans, he glorified them forever. That is why such conditions were created for him, and he was able to describe it all.
[256037]
From the Kab TV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 1/28/19

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Lesson Preparation

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “A Handmaid Who Is Heir to Her Mistress” 

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 145

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Love of God and the Love of Man”

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If we yearn for the Creator, then we need to convince ourselves that He can only be reached through the ten. This requires proof and cannot be taken for granted because the path through the ten goes against our egoism. How can you want this? It is easy to unite only in a football team where it is clear that you can win the cup only as a close-knit team. But in a Kabbalistic group, egoism blocks the path and disallows us to see that only through unification can we achieve the goal. It will take a long time until we begin to agree with this, become assured, and realize that this is so.¹

What is love of friends? What should I give them? I must give them everything and dissolve in them without a trace, like sugar in water, in order to feel them instead.²

The thread connecting me to the Creator is the power of my aspiration toward Him, which comes out of my heart and stretches in His direction. I do not know who the Creator is, but I somehow imagine Him, attach myself to this concept. But if the Creator is the power of good, then how can I achieve contact with Him if there is nothing in common between us? This thread is infinite because our connection exists only on the side of the Creator, the way He created it. And from my side, I cannot contact Him.

If I want to feel the connection with the Creator, I have to find at least the smallest property of bestowal similar to Him. But how can I do it? I need to focus all my efforts on connecting in the ten and use it to squeeze myself as much as possible, like in a diaphragm in a camera.

If you project a ray of light onto a screen through a small hole, you can get a sharp and inverted image. The pinhole camera, camera obscura, which served as a prototype for the first cameras, worked according to this principle. The smaller the diameter of the hole, the sharper the image. This hole is the ten. Squeezing myself through the ten, instead of this world, I begin to see the outlines of the future world. We must build the same lens that focuses together all the rays of light in the ten.

I need a lens that will focus my vision because I am internally fragmented and composed of ten properties: HaVaYaH. If I streamline my properties, then I become part of the system and begin to feel what is outside of me.

With a material camera, we see the real picture and its photograph. But in spirituality, we do not see the object itself until we build a lens, that is, a group. If I have a spiritual lens, the ten into which I join as Malchut of the first nine Sefirot, then I gain knowledge and a sense of the Creator through my friends and begin to see the spiritual world.

What do I see: friends or the Creator? I see the Creator in the friends. Friends are the lens through which I will see the Creator. The Creator has no image, name, or expression except what can be felt through the ten. The ten are ten Sefirot, my native home, my life, and my soul. Canceling myself in relation to my friends, I can be sure that I have canceled myself in relation to the Creator.

The Creator has no image, no color, no smell, and no forms perceived by our senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. This force is revealed only in accordance to our ability to connect with each other. We perceive the Creator like a photograph. Therefore, we need to build a foundation on which to reveal it.

A magnetic field can be detected only in the presence of a magnetized arrow that begins to rotate, indicating the presence of a certain force. The arrow indicates in which direction the force field acts.

Since we do not know the Creator, we need a device, a compass, to reveal Him, and the compass is the ten. All detectors for detecting certain phenomena must be somewhat similar to those phenomena. To discover a magnetic field, we need a magnet, and to discover spirituality, we need a ten. If I cancel myself before the ten and serve it, I turn it like a compass arrow and reveal the connection with the Creator.

The more united the group is in the direction of the goal of creation and the Creator, the more it focuses on the Creator and lets us see and reveal Him. In fact, it does not reveal the Creator but His properties above egoism and knowledge and thus manifests the image of the Creator and becomes an instrument for His revelation.

I have to rally all of us together in the tightest circle, in a tiny hole through which I will see the Creator as through a focusing lens. I bring together all nine properties of my friends relative to myself into one, compress all nine phenomena into one concept, canceling with my desire the egoism that separates them, and in this form, I see the result: I begin to see the Creator. It turns out that I create Him.³
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/18/19, Hardening Of The Heart—An Invitation To Build A Yearning For The Creator
¹ Minute 20:20
² Minute 26:52
³ Minute 30:50

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The Times of Israel published my new article “Israel’s 3rd Elections: Fateful Wake-Up Call for the People of Israel”

A third election round has been announced in Israel for the first time in history due to our inability to form a government.

What can I say? All I can say is that we need something to shake us. I’m sorry to write such words, but it hurts when you love the people of Israel and the State of Israel. After all, it is my home.

I have lived on this land for decades and never once thought about leaving. However, I see no positive future if we continue business as usual, without a thorough scrutiny and decision to change the way we go about our lives.

It is our duty to provide every citizen with the method that initially connected us as a nation, and which would grant us an undeniable right to live in this land. It is as Kabbalist Rav Baruch Shalom HaLevi Ashlag (Rabash) opened the first of his many writings on how a society can make the shift from division to unity: that we have gathered here to establish a society in order to rise and become human, in the fullest sense of the word (the word for “human” in Hebrew, “Adam,” is also the word for the collective soul that we discover when we unite according to nature’s integral laws).

In other words, the purpose of our gathering in one place is not to merely continue living mindlessly in the currents of life here instead of in the diaspora, but to realize the method we were given: to unite and pass the force that unifies us to humanity.

Today’s divisive atmosphere in Israel is a sign that we will be unable to find peace among each other if we fail to understand and implement nature’s integral laws. It is what unified us in the first place, i.e., an inclination to unite upon the divisions of the ancient Babylonian society from which we emerged as a nation.

It is our purpose and role in the world to reach such unity, and without moving in that direction, our purposeless squandering, where we each focus on building our lives at the expense of others, brings about the opposite: social division.

Our disunity then receives a negative reaction from the nations of the world. That reaction is known as anti-Semitism, and its widespread awakening today is because we are in a developmental stage where we need to make a step toward uniting as a single nation, according to the tenet that brought us together in the first place: to unite (“love your friend as yourself”) above divisions (“love will cover all transgressions”) in order to spread this unifying tendency to the world (to be “a light unto the nations”).

According to the laws of nature—integral laws of interconnectedness and interdependence—the people of Israel have a key role: to spread positive connection among humanity. We were given a method to do so, the same method of connection that Abraham guided us with in ancient Babylon, and which has undergone upgrades over the generations to suit us in our time.

Essentially, it is a method of how to actualize connection between us to the same extent and quality as nature’s connectedness, gradually discovering the immense unifying force of nature the more we connect.

Also, our revelation of nature’s unifying force spreads among humanity’s collective consciousness, inverting our current increasing divisive tendency—where we behave like cancerous cells taking as much as we can for ourselves at society’s expense—to a unifying, peaceful and loving tendency that benefits humanity.

I will never leave Israel. I will remain here and do everything in my power for its success. However, its materialistic achievements as a startup nation is no sign of success to me. Success for the people of Israel can only be spiritual: that we realize our role to be a conduit of unity for the world.

Ever since our ancestors achieved the sublime unified state under Abraham’s guidance some 3,800 years ago, our role has remained unchanged. We have since detached from that awareness, but as explained by Kabbalists, the time has come where the need for unity is not only pressing on us within our current borders; it is also expressed worldwide as a growing divisive tendency increasingly tearing societies apart. Thus, not a day goes by where I cannot speak or write about this phenomenon, as a peaceful or painful future depends precisely on the people of Israel’s unity or lack thereof.

Once we clarify and establish our exalted, spiritual and eternal goal to ourselves, our lives will then shift in a positive direction. The shambles we find ourselves in today is due not to a few politicians who failed to form a government, but we—the entire people of Israel—are responsible for it.

Therefore, we must lift our heads out of the water, recognize that we are all one family, interconnected and interdependent, and we must all address the problem together. In the meantime, not only do we suffer, the entire world suffers as it depends on our inner spirit to rise as a united people of Israel.

I thus hope that we will start feeling the great responsibility upon us, to ourselves and to the world, and start implementing the method of connection that we have at our fingertips.

Filed under: Anti-Semitism, Israel, New Publications - No Comments →

Remark: There is a saying that Kabbalah is aerobatics, that one needs to study it only after one has studied the Torah, Talmud, and other primary sources.

My Comment: Kabbalists write that it depends only on a person. If he does not have craving for spirituality, then let him study everything in order from the Torah to the Talmud and so on, that is, to the stage where he is drawn and sees that he does not need more. If a person initially has a very strong desire for knowledge of the Creator, then he immediately comes to Kabbalah.

Question: There is no ban on this?

Answer: No.

Question: Is this the opinion of Kabbalists? Others say there is a ban.

Answer: Others can talk. What do they understand in this? The Torah is given for us to comprehend the Creator. This is its property, its strength, its goal. We need to return to the Creator—to this stage. If someone believes that he does not have the strength or desire for this, then let him simply study what everyone else is studying, nothing more. Once I brought 40 more students to my teacher and we all learned only Kabbalistic material.

Question: And he did not demand knowledge of the Torah from you?

Answer: None.
[256381]
From KabTv’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 1/29/19

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