The Sukkot holiday is about building a screen (Shach) to cover the Sukkah and creating a place for the soul. We restrict and correct our desire to enjoy, and build a screen over it. With this screen that separates us from the Creator, we create a barrier that will not allow us to receive the upper light from Him directly but only through the screen (Shach).

The roof and walls of the Sukkah and its dimensions symbolize the details of our soul, the rules of its construction.

The roof of the Sukkah hides us from the light of the Sun, which symbolizes direct light. The sun shines on everyone equally without any obstacles. In the Sukkah there are four columns and walls, but the main thing is the roof (Shach), which does not let the light of the sun pass directly to a person sitting in the Sukkah. This is the meaning of the Sukkot holiday—building a common Kli.

The roof is constructed from the waste of barn and winery. You can use branches cut from the trees in the garden. They cover the roof so that rays of the Sun cannot shine directly through it into the Sukkah. In fact, we refuse to receive direct light for our own sake.

Therefore, we build the Sukkah together with the group and sit in it together and enjoy our unity and the fact that we can connect and hide from the rays of the Sun, from the direct light, because we built a screen.

Each supports the other in order to protect them from receiving pleasure, which can come directly into the egoistic desire. Therefore, we hide under the screen and unite to help each other stand against all pleasures and temptations that confuse us at any moment, and we are thus saved from egoistic receiving.

Everyone should have a place under the roof of the Sukkah where he or she can eat during all seven days of the Sukkot holiday. But the main thing is to build an inner Sukkah in our desires, meaning, to build a common spiritual Kli and be under a common screen.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/8/22

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Question: The Creator is the good who does good, and His attitude toward me as a creature does not change. But I have to believe it, I don’t feel that way. What does this principle give me?

Answer: This principle gives you the opportunity to evaluate the attitude of the Creator toward yourself.

Question: Do I have to believe it or can I feel that it is?

Answer: Now you can’t feel it. Just believe it as if it is unfounded. But if you strive for the same actions with respect to the Creator, you will begin to feel Him.

Question: So Kabbalah says that it is possible to feel that the Creator really wants only good for us?

Answer: Yes. This is called the law of similarity of properties. By acquiring His properties, you can feel His attitude toward you.

Comment: Many people believe that the Creator is doing good. And often this belief completely satisfies a person.

My Response: It is quite possible that this is so on the one hand. But on the other hand, we want not just to see it, but to feel, explore, and know.
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From KabTV’s “The Study of the Ten Sefirot (TES)” 10/2/22

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There are three conditions in prayer:

1. Believing that He can save him. Although he has the worst conditions of all his contemporaries, still, “Will the Lord’s hand be too short to save him?” If it is not so, then “the Landlord cannot save His vessels” (Baal HaSulam, Shamati, “Three Conditions in Prayer”).

Question: What does it mean to “believe”?

Answer: A person consists of all kinds of qualities and desires. Therefore, our studies attune us to select from all our desires, qualities, and intentions the ones that will direct all of humanity to good.

To believe means to be sure that if I do this, then eventually I invite upon myself the correct influence of the upper force and gradually correct myself. Thus, the first condition is that I must be sure that the Creator can help me.

2: He no longer has any choice for he has already done all that he could but saw no cure to his plight.

It means that he did not do everything. There is no other solution but to ask. Constantly address your request to the Creator. This is a single internal force of nature, which is able to correct us all. Therefore, there is practically nothing except for a prayer or request for correction.

3: If He does not help him, he will be better off dead than alive.

We need to come to the next state in which I want to correct myself and be similar to the Creator so much that if I do not achieve this, then it is not worth living for the sake of something else.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 9/25/22

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Comment: It is very difficult to imagine that a person walks around and thinks from morning to night: “How can I love all my neighbors?! If I cannot love them, it is better not to live. I do not want to live like that!”

My Response: If we start to think about it and understand that the meaning of our life is to correct ourselves from egoism to altruism, then, in general, this is what we do.

Comment: Imagine if eight billion people would sit and think: “How can we love each other”? This would be utopia.

My Response: If they imagined themselves like that for a second, it would be a prayer of eight billion! It would be fulfilled right away.

Question: Do you believe that someday this will happen?

Answer: Yes. Gradually, all kinds of negative emotions, rejections, and disappointments are accumulating in humanity. In the end, everyone will come to this.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 9/25/22

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Question: For the last 50 years shops have been filled with books in that say a person, with the help of his own internal changes, can change the picture of the world, the world around him. This is indicated by various methods and teachers. The information stream is filled with quotes from the series “Change Yourself, Change the World.”

On the other hand, for an ordinary person, this is still a rather blurry feeling. He seems to understand it mentally and tries to change himself, but does not see any changes in the world. He just does not have the strength to do it. Only a few people out of all mankind can boast of this.

What is it—a big deception?

Answer: No. It is just that a person perceives the entire universe, the entire world, himself, and others within himself.

Therefore, by changing his qualities a little, he feels the world differently and sees everything differently. No more than that.

Question: Can he initiate his changes himself?

Answer: Yes. He is given the initial conditions in which he can change himself. This is the directly proportional correlation: I have changed something in myself and the world has changed according to some formula.

Question: Is it possible to see this?

Answer: Absolutely. For example, let me now fill you with some interesting things, say, anecdotes, no matter what. And you will look at the world in a different way. It is silly, of course, but in principle, it is clear that everything depends on the state of the person.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 9/23/22

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Question: If we focus on something, we plunge headlong into it and we cannot get out of it. Yet, you say that you are already in everything without sinking into it the way we do.

How do you manage to be in everything simultaneously and at the same time your head is not clogged?

Answer: It is just my whole life. During the recording of any program, the moment when I am asked a question, I am already inside this topic. To do this, I do not need to delve into anything.

When I was at university, we had a professor whom we respected very much. He would come to a lecture, pull out a small piece of paper from his breast pocket, look at what he had to say according to the plan, put it back, and speak for 15 – 20 minutes. He would finish one topic, then again pull out a piece of paper to find out the next topic, and again begin to speak.

That is, on the one hand, he had a clear plan, which is very important for students. On the other hand, we saw that he knew all the material and just needed to remember the order of the presentation. That is all.

I am the same. Only I do not have to make a plan because the students do it for me. I come to the lesson, and they say: “We want to study such and such topics.” And we study them. Then they ask questions, and it makes no difference to me which ones. They ask me about the world I live in. What trouble do I have to talk about it?

Question: It means that you have a clear approach to things, everything is structured, everything is clear, and you do not need to overshadow your mind with some tasks that a person can deal with for years.

Answer: This is called attainment. This is not the knowledge of our world when you know some facts. There is nothing in our world, including even bread, milk, and water with which we have such a connection as happens in the spiritual world.

In the spiritual world, you attain the essence of things, and therefore it is yours. When you are asked about something, you know from the inside what it is, from the moment when it originated, developed, reached its current state, and further goes into the future to its final state.

You know everything about any objects, forces, qualities, and events. Therefore, there are no problems. This is called spiritual attainment because it is above time, space, and movement. It is just common because it is integral.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. A Man in the State of Attainment” 7/21/13

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Preparation to the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic “On the Verge of Lishma“

Writings of Baal HaSulam “Gatehouse of Intentions”

Selected Highlights

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Can nature really heal us?“

There is a therapeutic approach in Japan called “forest bathing,” which sends people with various medical conditions for a long stay in nature. Research shows that a long stay in nature can decrease blood pressure, stress hormones, treat anxiety, depression, and in general, help you heal from different medical conditions.

Indeed, nature has healing powers. Anybody can feel how a walk in nature, being in nature, and going out to stay in the country for a few days, has a healing effect.

Nature consists of the still, vegetative and animate that we need to connect with as opposed to the jungle of stone and bricks that we live in with their stress and tall buildings.

However, the human ego, which wishes to exploit others and nature for self-benefit, increasingly detaches us from nature, making us destroy and distance ourselves from it, and such a process will eventually lead us to at least see how wrong we are in doing so.

In the future, however, I think that everything will work out. We will reach an understanding that our ego is killing us from one moment to the next, and that we need to revise how we conduct our lives, together with understanding what will happen if we continue along the same trajectory. We will then stop letting the ego drive us to harm ourselves.

However, we do not need to go and live in the woods. The solution is among each other, that we start living in unity, with love and mutual support. Such an approach would heal us of all the different illnesses that we have. We could make a thousand-page list of illnesses, and if we develop connections of unity and love, then we would heal ourselves of them all. Reaching relations of love and mutual support among people would balance us with nature at the human level, the highest level of nature.

Based on the video “Can Nature Really Heal Us?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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[It is explained that after the restriction] the light of Ein Sof extended a line to the worlds that were emanated and created in the place of the space that was restricted… Then, one straight line extended from the light of Ein Sof, from His circular light from above downward, and hung down into that space (Baal HaSulam, The Study of the Ten Sefirot, Part 1, “Restriction and line,” Chapter 2).

After the restriction, a ray of light was extended from the light of Ein Sof (Infinity) that was surrounding and filling creation before the restriction, from the previous state of creation to the next one. This ray contains absolutely all the qualities, parameters, and influences that light has in order to completely fill and correct desire. In this way, light comes from the Creator to creation and begins to fill it.

Question: Does this filling happen at the will of creation or does it happen unconsciously?

Answer: No, this does not happen according to the will of creation because there is not such a phase of desire that existed before the light. The light, gradually enters the desire, begins to change it, and changes it until the desire passes through four phases of its development.

Then it feels the receiving of light as absolute, as filling it, and begins to feel the light inside itself as causing something opposite to its quality, which forces the desire to restrict itself.

After the restriction, creation began to receive light in the form of a line stretching from infinity. Before that, it was receiving light in the form of a circle, in a completely unlimited form.

The difference between these two types of connection with the upper force is that receiving in the form of a circle is unlimited and independent of the qualities of creation. Receiving in the form of a line, however, is limited by the qualities of the line and represents a conformity between the desires of creation and the line that comes from the Creator in the form of a pipe. The light goes through the pipe and fills creation.

That is, both states are unconscious and are determined by the difference in the initial qualities between the Creator and creation.
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From KabTV’s “The Study of the Ten Sefirot (TES)” 10/2/22

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