Question: Why does the Creator first need to break the heart and then heal it?

Answer: Otherwise you will not feel that you have to gather your hearts with everyone else and then present them to the Creator.

Question: What does it mean to present hearts to the Creator?

Answer: To unite them among themselves and present them to Him so that He can fill them with Himself.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/17/23, “Rosh HaShana“

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The correct work for bestowal, without expecting reward, means to think only about the friends and through them about the Creator, to want to help them in their spiritual work.

It is necessary to keep this intention all the time, that is, to connect more and more and to try to raise this burden together for the sake of the Creator. Then we will see how each time we do it better and better despite the fact that the burden is getting heavier.

The friends are in my heart because I want to connect with them in order to receive strength from them and pass to them all the strength that I have for the sake of our main common goal of raising and elevating the Creator above us.

Here we have to make a choice in order to wish for a true spiritual reward. After all, by nature, we get a desire for egoistic fulfillment, like children dreaming of a toy car instead of a real car.

Then we get smarter, and we already begin to neglect the toy reward, but we do not grow up to the real one yet. After all, to do this you need to connect with your friends and try to build this “real car” in your mind and heart together with them. This is how spiritual work begins.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/23/23, “Concerning Bestowal”

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Question: The Creator completely controls us, but we do not permit ourselves to agree with this good governance. It is as if we are telling Him that I will fulfill everything that comes from You, but only to the extent that I agree. How can we agree here and now with the good governance of the Creator without thinking and analyzing, but going by faith above reason?

Answer: We need to gradually create a desire in us that will lead us to the recognition that the Creator is good and He leads us to absolute goodness. This will gradually work out when we overcome all our disturbances.

Question: What is this temple of holiness that we have to build? What is it built of?

Answer: It is built from our good relationship between us and the correct attitude to the Creator.

Question: Our task is to act. But if we do not have an intention yet, can the number of actions in spirituality turn into a quality, an intention?

Answer: Of course it can. We must begin with the mechanical actions of coming closer to each other. In these actions, we will gradually discover completely different sensations and will come closer together and closer to the upper force. So, keep acting.

Question: It is written that only the Kli performs the action. Why is the spreading of light not considered an action of the Creator?

Answer: Because it depends on our Kelim (Vessels): we cause the spreading of light, that is, the revelation of the Creator.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/15/23, “Rosh Hashana”

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Yom Kippur (The Day of Atonement) and the days preceding it are the time of repentance, atonement of sins, requests, and prayers. A person must make a judgment of how this year went for him, what he did this year, and how close he got to the upper force, to the form that he was supposed to take according to the Creator’s program.

Of course, here we reveal how opposite we are to what we should be. The Creator deliberately shows us this difference so that we see it and condemn ourselves, and then ask and demand our correction from Him, which will allow us to get closer to Him. This is the meaning of the month of Elul, which means “I am to my Beloved, and the Beloved to me.”

The light awakens a person from above and leads him to such calculation. A person himself would not be able to awaken and begin to judge himself in a new way. A person checks himself, how he was acting during the year, and how much he has changed during this year, how close he has come to the Creator.

During this special time, we must try to become more sensitive to our connection with the friends and the way we are directed together toward the purpose of creation, and awaken ourselves and others to draw closer to the Creator and His nature of bestowal, love, and unity, and to judge ourselves to what extent we succeeded in this. When we feel how far we are from this, then we should pray and ask the Creator for help.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/18/23, “Yom Kippur – The Day of Atonement”

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Rabbi Elazar and Rabbi Aba came down from their donkeys and kissed the donkey driver. They said, “What is all that wisdom that is under your hand, while you are driving our donkeys? Who are you?” He told them, “Ask not who I am, but I and you shall walk and engage in Torah, and each shall say words of wisdom to illuminate the way” (Zohar for All, “The Donkey Driver”).

“Donkey” (“Hamor” in Hebrew) means matter (Homer). The sages bowed to the driver and asked him to lead them down the path of attainment of the Creator.

In other words, you discover an upper force within, that seemingly drives you and leads you forward, because you still associate yourself with your donkey.

And suddenly you realize this force is kind and doing good and it leads you only to the highest attainments.
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From KabTV’s “Introduction of The Book of Zohar” 9/3/23

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Is there any proof of the need for human connection?“

Nature itself provides no proof of the need for human connection. We can identify various examples of such a need for survival purposes, but there is no proof of such a need in nature itself.

In our lives, we reach various forms of connection other than a human-to-human connection that is felt at the level of our emotions. In such a place, we need to bring ourselves to connect against our egoistic desire that constantly pulls in the opposite direction, i.e., which aims at self-benefit over benefiting others, and using any kind of connection not for the benefit of everyone, but for the benefit of an individual or a group that benefits that individual.

Only by connecting above the ego can we reach a harmonious connection, as it is written, “as one man with one heart.”

However, human-to-human connection does not happen naturally and instinctively, as it does in nature’s other degrees: the still, vegetative and animate.

Specifically, connection is unique to the human level in that we resist and oppose each other according to our nature, as we can see throughout history, and that in order to truly connect, we need to rise above our egoistic nature.

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

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Preparation to the Lesson

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1st part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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2nd part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, Shamati #25, “Things that Come from the Heart”

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Selected Highlights

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It is difficult to overestimate the greatness of Baal HaSulam and Rabash because these are people who help us and do their best to raise us from the lowest degree, that is, from this world, to the spiritual degree of the upper world. Apart from them, there are no other people who would care that we rise from the level of death to the level of life, realize why we live, and thanks to what we exist.

They introduce the Creator to us and teach us how to open the door to Him and come closer to Him. Therefore, Rabash and Baal HaSulam are not even two people, but two upper, special spiritual forces that take care of us, and therefore are closer to us than all other created beings.

Reading the lines written by Rabash in honor of his holy father, Baal HaSulam, we will try to connect to them with all our heart and soul and understand that we are granted a connection with these special souls.

Kabbalists are the system of connection in the common soul of Adam HaRishon, which has already been corrected. A person who corrects himself joins this system and, together with all Kabbalists, builds a network that raises all other souls: picks them up, and helps them rise closer and closer to the Creator.

Besides the fact that Kabbalists have left us their articles, they are still all between us and participate in our work. It is said that Kabbalists have no rest either in this world or in the future world because they help us until the very end of correction. After all, all souls are connected, tied up together, and help each other. Even if we do not feel it, like babies who do not understand who cares for them and how, nonetheless this is how it happens.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/26/23, “Baal Hasulam Memorial Day”

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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “1,000s of People Open Their Hearts into One Giant Heart”
We are currently in the midst of our World Kabbalah Convention taking place with over 2,000 participants from over 30 countries in Petah Tikva, Israel, and with thousands more virtual participants all over the world.

The theme of the convention is opening our hearts. How can we open our hearts as wide as possible to everyone? To open our hearts as wide as possible to everyone, we must recognize that such a gathering as this one takes place within each of our hearts.

At the convention, we focus on directing ourselves to unite our hearts into one, and by doing so come closer to the Creator, the upper force of love and bestowal that reveals itself where our hearts unite. If our goal is to reveal the Creator, then that is the way to do it.

Therefore, those who seek to discover and attain the Creator have no alternative. Humanity, in the end, must traverse a path marked by suffering, challenges, thoughts and desires until we reach a state where the barriers within our hearts dissolve, and we unite as one heart. That is the ultimate objective.

Consequently, humanity progresses from year to year and from day to day, encountering a variety of challenges until it realizes that the only way forward is to combat the egoistic nature that constantly seeks to separate us from each other. In the wisdom of Kabbalah, we learn how the Creator maintains such a state of separation between people in order to give room for our efforts to bridge the divide, and by doing so, we can amplify our connection to the Creator and experience His presence much more profoundly.

Therefore, initially, we observe that each person is primarily focused on their egoistic desires, and there is no choice but to strive for closeness and connection among each other, uniting in a common desire. This is what we refer to as “one heart,” the goal that Kabbalist Baruch Ashlag (the Rabash) wrote to us about.

I remember that after a few years studying with Rabash, I conducted Kabbalah introductory lectures in various locations in Tel Aviv, and several new students came as a result. I invited these students to a gathering, toward which, on one of my daily walks in the park with Rabash, I had asked him, “What should we discuss with them?”

He asked for some aluminum foil from a cigarette pack I had. I gave it to him.

He then proceeded to write his very first article titled “Purpose of Society – 1” with the words: “We have gathered here to establish a society for all who wish to follow the path and method of Baal HaSulam, the way by which to climb the degrees of man and not remain as a beast…”

It has been nearly 40 years since that day, but there is no change to the topic. Although many have heard of it, the process and method of correction remain the same as elucidated by ancient Kabbalists even thousands of years ago.

Thousands of people right now are making special efforts to come together as one, to connect their individual hearts into one collective heart. That heart is made up of many different parts, and their connection creates a vessel for the revelation of the Creator, which is one for everyone. In other words, all we need in order to reveal the Creator is for everyone to open their hearts to everyone, that everyone has a place in each one’s heart, then by doing so, we open our collective heart. That is what this convention is all about.
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Based on Lesson 1 from the World Kabbalah Convention on September 30, 2023. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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