Question: In Rosh HaShanah, you need to judge yourself. This is associated with self-criticism: how bad I am, how different I am from the Creator. How does this vigilante justice differ from the state when “The fool folds his hands and eats his own flesh”?

Answer: You should not eat your own flesh, curse, and judge yourself. You should only direct yourself to love others. This is “judging yourself.”

Question: How can you not judge friends?

Answer: Love them.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/16/23, “Rosh HaShanah“

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Question: When we are in the thought of building a common state, there is a feeling of unity as if the Creator lifts us in His arms.

But when we try to get closer to our friends in action, our heart turns to stone as if we were given the feeling of the true state. What should our request be here?

Answer: The request should be for the Creator to dissolve your heart so it will float in your friends.
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From the Daily Kabbalah lesson 8/24/23, “To Criticize Oneself”

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Question: What is this embrace, closeness, and warmth that we feel in connection with the Creator?

Answer: It is impossible to explain it in other words because the connection with Him really feels like an embrace, intimacy. I feel the Creator very close, I snuggle up to Him, I want to be near Him all the time, I warm up. This is what the Creator gives me. I feel that I am in contact with Him all the time and get this closeness, this warmth from Him.

Question: What can I give the Creator in return?

Answer: Recognition. Cling to the Creator like a child, and it will be enough.

Question: How can one not be dependent on the desire to be in connection with the Creator for my own sake, but dependent on the desire to bring Him contentment?

Answer: To do this, you must constantly think about it and ask for you to have such a relation toward the Creator.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/24/23, “To Criticize Oneself”

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Question: In Rabash’s article “Concerning Respecting the Father” it is written that if he is receiving a greater reward each day, then the gauge is the vessels of reception. What is the reward in this context, and what do we measure by the vessels of reception?

Answer: The extent to which I feel obliged to the Creator and the extent to which I can thank Him is called that I can bestow to Him?

Question: How can I determine that my pleasure comes from serving the Creator?

Answer: If you pass it through the friends, through the group.

Question: If my boss calls me at work, I will do everything he says, I will try diligently. But if the Creator, on whom every moment in my life depends, asks me to love my friends, I cannot do it. I want to, but I cannot. This is a horrible and terrible state, I would call it hell. What do I need to do?

Answer: Just ask the Creator for the friends, and nothing else.

Question: How does one come to the realization of who the Creator is?

Answer: It is a force that resides in your subconscious and controls you.

Question: Can a person by himself consciously move to the left line and check how he feels the importance of the Creator within reason, or is the Creator taking him there?

Answer: A person has no right to be in the left line. The Creator takes him into it.

Question: Is the importance of spirituality higher when I see others as great or when I am in a state of “bare and destitute”?

Answer: When you see others as great.

Question: What is the most important thing for new couples of men and women who are studying in Kabbalah to build the Creator between them, and how can they help each other on the spiritual path?

Answer: They should love each other and want to be together in one heart.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/24/23, “To Criticize Oneself”

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why is nature so beautiful and people are the opposite?“

A recent study published in the journal, Science Advances, discussed findings that living near plants for long enough can extend people’s life spans by 2.5 years.

Indeed, we are parts of nature that consist of the still, vegetative, animate and human levels, and their interconnection leads us to bear witness to such phenomena.

The question is whether people can soothe and calm other people’s lives similarly to how plants can do so?

We can, and even more so. Whether we feel people around us as aggravating or as calming depends on the extent to which we view them as important and close. We thus need to urge ourselves to change such that other people feel closer and closer to us.

And on this point, we indeed encounter the question: Why does nature seem so beautiful while people seem the opposite? It is because our ego, the desire to enjoy at the expense of others, rejects the egoistic nature of other people. We like plants, for instance, because they generally bring us no harm. People around us, on the other hand, can drive us crazy.

We should thus switch our attitude to other people in a way where we check ourselves in relation to them: “How will I appear in their eyes?” Why? It is in order to become a positive example to them. Then, perhaps as a result, they will also change by the example that we show them.

If we come to see nature as a force that constantly directs everything and everyone toward goodness, harmony and peace, then we can perceive beauty in nature on all of its levels—still, vegetative, animate, and especially the human level. It is because we then see the need to align ourselves with nature’s positive force, and our own aim in that direction, particularly at the level of human connections, leads us to seeing the beauty in people as well as in nature.

Based on the video “Why Nature Seems So Beautiful and People Don’t” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi.Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Robert Lukeman on Unsplash.

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Preparation to the Lesson

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1st part of the Lesson — Writings of Rabash, “The Agenda of the Assembly – 2”

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2nd part of the Lesson — Lesson on the Topic, “Subjugating the Heart”

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Selected Highlights

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A favorite flower is first of all a rejection of all other flowers. Otherwise, it will not seem to you as the most beautiful one. It is the same with the work you spend your life on (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands, Citadelle).

Question: If you find your life’s work, should you give up everything else?

Answer: If you have found such work, then you do not have to give up anything; it will just happen.

Question: You mean that from the height of what you have found you do not need anything else?

Answer: You do not need anything. Otherwise, you have not yet found it!

Question: Basically, if you rush into everything, does it mean that you have not found your life’s work?

Answer: Of course.

Question: How does a person understand this? Is it by the fact that he is already calm and does not rush in all directions?

Answer: He does not need anything else.

Question: So you do not proceed from the prohibition “you need to postpone all other matters.” Do you proceed from the fact that this is it, that you determine everything by yourself?

Answer: From good.

Question: From good. This is beautiful. Is this the exact definition of what a person has found?

Answer: Yes.

Question: What if you suddenly see that you made a mistake? And you have already put all your cards on this work. Is this a possibility? You seemingly found your life’s work and suddenly it turns out you were wrong.

Answer: Then you have to invest yourself above your head in the one and only work that you have left and in which you now feel and reveal that you made a mistake; it is not the main thing, but beside it there is nothing else! Otherwise, you will be lost.

Question: You just said a difficult thing. You said that you have already understood and now you feel that your life’s work is a mistake; therefore invest in it fully. Above reason?

Answer: Of course. But this is in case you are sure that you have nothing left; you have given everything, your whole life to this work.

Question: What will happen then? Here I am heading into this black hole.

Answer: Then the Creator will help you. Then He should help you. In principle, this is how we do it in Kabbalah.

Comment: There are all sorts of states.

My Response: There are many states, but in general we come to one.

Question: Is it the need for the Creator’s help?

Answer: It is absolute disappointment in myself, in the Creator, in this work, in the goal, in everything!

Comment: And the fact that I have invested my whole life in it.

My Response: Yes. When you reach such a disappointment, then you can let go of everything and see luck.

Question: Kabbalists write that when you have passed all the gates, only one gate remains, the “gate of tears.” Are you aiming there now when you speak?

Answer: This is already beyond tears.

Question: Have you already passed the “gate of tears”? Is your advice to keep hitting this point to the end?

Answer: If you can keep hitting, then this is not the last gate.

Question: So must you have this disappointment? Should it be?

Answer: It should be an absolute one! Because in fact, it goes against human nature, against the way the Creator created us. Therefore it must be an absolute disappointment.

Question: Then I have a question. Where is this upper mercy here?

Answer: It is behind this. When the Creator guides a person through all these trials, the person behind them reveals the upper mercy of the Creator.

Comment: One has to be a very strong person.

My Response: No. I think that no one is strong. Everyone is very weak. It is simply that the Creator will do everything.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 8/24/23

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “The Memorial Day for the passing of Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam)“

Today is the Yahrzeit, the Memorial Day for the passing of Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam). According to the custom, we need to mark the date and day of the passing of our teacher, Baal HaSulam, the great Kabbalist who paved the path for the world’s correction.

Thanks to him, we know how to act in order to not get confused and err in the path of the Creator, i.e., the path of connecting among each other in which to discover the Creator’s eternal and perfect quality of love and bestowal.

Baal HaSulam’s entire path and his teaching is based on Kabbalists who preceded him, and we are thus happy in that there is such a teacher who can guide us on a path that advances us to the purpose of creation during our lives.

Baal HaSulam left us many texts. He was the only Kabbalist in the 20th century who wrote commentaries both on The Book of Zohar and the writings of the ARI (Kabbalist Isaac Luria), and he also wrote several essays that explained Kabbalah’s basic concepts and fundamental principles so that any person could learn Kabbalah’s fundamentals and progress to the purpose of creation.

He taught a few people, and mainly it was his older son, the great Kabbalist Baruch Shalom HaLevi Ashlag (RABASH), who wrote the entire method of spiritual development for us, which is suited to us living in our times, i.e., to the souls that now descend to the world.

I invite everyone to watch today’s Daily Kabbalah Lesson where we studied the article, “The Order of the Work of Baal HaSulam” by Kabbalist Baruch Shalom HaLevi Ashlag (RABASH).

Also, if anyone is new to the wisdom of Kabbalah and to the method of Baal HaSulam, then I recommend getting started with courses that my students put together in our learning environment for beginners, KabU, in order to get a structured grounding in Kabbalah’s fundamentals (see the links in my bio).

Based on the Daily Kabbalah Lesson with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on Tuesday, September 26, 2023. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Today is a special memorial day for Baal HaSulam, Rav Yehuda Ashlag, the great Kabbalist who paved the way for us that leads to the correction of the world. Thanks to him, we know how to behave in order not to make mistakes and stray from the path of the Creator.

Baal HaSulam’s methodology is based on the achievements of Kabbalists who lived before him. That is why we are grateful that we have such a teacher and that we can be his disciples, follow him in his way, and be sure that we will achieve the goal of creation in this lifetime.

Baal HaSulam left us many Kabbalistic articles and books and also taught his students, and most importantly, his eldest son, Baruch Ashlag (Rabash), who described the entire method of spiritual work suitable for our days, our time, for the souls descending into the world today.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/26/23, Writing of Rabash “The Order of the Work, from Baal HaSulam”

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