Entries in the 'Conventions' Category

Reason Above Desire

Laitman_633_2Question: Have I understood correctly that when disseminating to the 99% of the population, we are going from something positive to something positive, meaning from great happiness to even greater happiness?

Answer: It depends on how you accept everything.

In the Introduction to The Book of Zohar, it is said that only one state exists, and it is absolutely corrected. We are in it, but don’t perceive it with our senses. To truly feel wholeness, we must develop ourselves.

All of our work is to direct ourselves toward this wholeness. We cannot understand it because we are so broken, so damaged inside that we cannot perceive it. It seems terrible to us because this life for us is eating, sleeping, and spending some time, like in a movie, and we don’t think of anything else as living.

We just need to correct ourselves, our feelings, our senses, our understanding, and perception—only ourselves, nothing else. The intention is made in the center of the group. The more that the group grows and becomes stronger, the more rapid the intention becomes.

Question: When we sit in a circle, sometimes we go through very painful states.

Answer: In both the bad states and the good states, it is necessary to find out whether you are above them or within them. If you cannot answer this question, it is a sign that your feelings and intellect are at the same point. This is impossible. You need to be lifted above your feelings. This is reason above desire.

You have these two points that are far from each other, and you examine your feelings through the intellect. It could be that you don’t agree with the feelings, but you agree that they have a place, and you must go through them.

Suppose that I feel bad because my foot hurts. However, the doctor says, “Cut it off.” So, it must be cut off. I understand that he is doing something good for me. It will be beneficial for me. Therefore, all the bad states that you go through are only for your benefit.

Question: Do the people who belong to the 99% go through painful states in circles like these?

Answer: No, they don’t have duality and contradictions. They are within their emotions and don’t rise above this. Depending on their psychology, they are elevated slightly, but only to make the negative feeling disappear. But we don’t annihilate this negative feeling, Instead, we transform it into something positive.
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From the World Zohar Week “Integral Education Convention” Day Three 2/4/14, Workshop 5

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From State To State

laitman_233Question: Suppose that I blame a friend for not being nice to me. On the other hand, I understand that this is the Creator. These two situations—between the Creator and the form through which He sends me everything—really tear me apart. Where is the turning point, the place where the two things connect?

Answer: When some negative thought appears in me regarding a friend, this is a result of the egoism that is growing within me. Nothing has changed, except for the ego (desire). Desire is the only component that changes in all of creation. In each one of us, it grows gradually both qualitatively and quantitatively.

When desire increases, I begin to feel new feelings regarding my friends, and in general, they are negative. If I don’t do anything, they work on me, and it is absolutely possible that they will take me out of this state. Or, I do something and my situation changes that way. In both cases, the states are changed into opposite states. From above, I am let to understand how quickly everything can transform and how my opinion regarding the friends can transform from negative to positive, and later, vice versa. That is how we are taught.

From us only one thing is to be achieved:that we will create an image, a system, an example of the ideal higher state within us, and we will yearn for it, wanting to realize it among us, including it within us so that we become not “we” but “one.” This means that we won’t just become connected together. Rather, we will work as a single body so much so that the “we” disappears. There is no summation. Rather, there is “one” that includes everything within it.

We know that ten components of creation connect harmoniously between us on the lowest level. They are equal in value to one, a single component of creation on the next level. Within it, the ego grows and again creates another ten components from one point that work on themselves, integrate together, rise to the next level, and then they transform into a single unit there. This is the order of growth of the levels.
So, we always need to see this pattern until it becomes our internal state, really to the feeling that we are living within it, existing within it.

Question: When the transition from ten to one is felt to a particular degree, you also begin to understand that it could not be otherwise. This means that all the bad states are intentionally sent by the Creator to then feel His goodness and His care.

Answer: This happens because feelings grow in you like this for observations and new characteristics that you could not feel before.

Question: Sometimes I am in these states for a day, two days, a week, and sometimes move through them in seconds. How is it possible to hasten this process? How does one turn toward the Creator correctly?

Answer: Don’t ever be sorry about that state you are in. Even the best state will pass as quickly as possible and will transform into a higher state. You don’t want to delay any one of them, not even for a second. It is impossible to stop the moment. Otherwise, you come to the adversary, like Doctor Faustus.

Question: There are such states that simply fall and pile up on me, and I don’t even have enough time to clarify and understand them. What is happening to me?

Answer: This is not important. After that, you will clarify things. Sometimes, it is impossible to correctly grasp your state, even on the next level, rather only through a few levels. Sometimes, what you already have passed through begins to be perceived and realized after ten years have passed. Don’t worry. The main thing is the acceleration.
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From the World Zohar Week “Integral Education Convention” Day Three 2/4/14, Workshop 5

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The Best Healer

laitman_528_01Question: Nine years ago, you suggested that we don’t talk about our states. We have grown gradually, and now we are allowed to speak about them in workshops.

Answer: But I think you will talk only about what is beneficial for the group and not just spill out all of your states. After all, you have to be responsible for the group and raise it, even contrarily to what you feel at that specific time.

You can come to the group and ask your friends to sit with you, “Guys, I feel bad, but I don’t understand why.” The group is like a doctor. It can help you clarify things inside you, It must include you inside it and diagnose you and why you feel bad. There should be no secrets. No one is asking us to share intimate details. We are talking about spiritual details, and we are leaving all the corporeality aside.

When we advance neither the corporeal problems nor the spiritual ones affect our spiritual advancement. In that case, we must discuss them with the friends. We must clarify this so that we can be connected on a spiritual level.

You don’t have to tell others what is deep in your heart. You keep that only for the Creator. But you can discuss certain doubts, problems and descents in the group, and the friends will support you, cheer you up, awaken and raise you.

When the friends feel that you are not in a very good state, they must carry you in their arms like a child, rock you a little, calm you down, give you some pacifier, sit together and talk.

Your states are not yours. You must feel the state that the group is in and whether you are in it with the group. Align in this direction, according to this inclination, and don’t think about anything else. Try to worry about the group and think about it all day long. How are they getting along? Are they holding on to one another? Can I help them in any way? Should I call them? Should I do something? Try to get used to this state of worrying about the group as a mother worries about her children.

This is how you remove all the negative influences from yourself. Why should the Creator send them to you for you to uncover the ego if you are ahead of the ego looking for a way to be more connected to the friends? After all, the ego awakens in us only with regard to greater cooperation and stronger connection with the group, and you are headed toward such a connection and cooperation anyway. So, you never will feel any negative influences. You are looking for it yourself like an old man bent over who dropped something in the street.

Try to cultivate this state among you and you will see how suddenly everything goes smoothly. Turn you head away from all the other problems as much as you can and begin engaging only in this one worry, and 99% of your problems will be solved.
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From the World Zohar Week “Integral Education Convention” Day Three 2/4/14, Workshop 5

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Those Who Skip Over The Section Of Time

Dr. Michael LaitmanBaal HaSulam, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”: An exception is Rashbi and his generation, the authors of The Zohar, who were granted all 125 degrees in completeness, even though it was prior to the days of the Messiah.

Hence, we often find in The Zohar that there will be none like the generation of Rashbi until the generation of the Messiah King. This is why his composition made such a great impact in the world, since the secrets of the Torah in it occupy the level of all 125 degrees.

Hence, it is said in The Zohar that The Book of Zohar will be revealed only at the end of days, the days of the Messiah.

And since The Zohar appeared in our generation, it is a clear proof that we are already in the days of the Messiah, at the outset of that generation upon which it was said, “for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord.”

In the past we studied very little from The Book of Zohar. A person’s individual path of his spiritual development, that of the group, and the general path of the development of the world are connected to one another, because the individual and the general are equal. We couldn’t rush ahead and start studying The Book of Zohar until now because we were unable to hear it, so for many years we hardly touched The Book of Zohar in our study.

A special time had to come and our inner impulse had to ripen. About four years ago I suddenly felt that we have to do something with The Book because it is impossible to study from an authentic source in our times. There was a need to simplify The Book of Zohar so that an ordinary person would be able to understand it, and so we had to remove the many obstacles one encounters when studying this Book and also to translate it to other languages.

I felt a great elation in doing this work. I gradually went over all the writings of The Book of Zohar, day by day, volume after volume, and I greatly enjoyed it, feeling that I was drinking from the spring of life. Many other people took part in this project. We can actually say that it wasn’t work but a gift from above. Now we are glad to bring the outcome of our work to the whole world: the first complete edition in Hebrew and abridged editions in Russian and English. The Book of Zohar will gradually be published in other languages so that everyone will have a chance to study it with us.

No other book has ever been written by a group of Kabbalists as a result of ten connecting. Moreover, there has never been another book that was written in such a special time when people were both on the spiritual level that was before the destruction of the Temple and after the destruction. This means that they were exactly in the center of the shattering, between the two parts of the shattering, and managed to connect the shattering, to skip over it, and to connect its two parts.

There have never been Kabbalists who managed to attain all the 125 levels, which means to attain complete connection with the Creator. This is actually the reason that The Book of Zohar is on such a high level and belongs to the end of correction. It wasn’t written by one Kabbalist, but is the product of the connection between people who attained the Creator. This is very important. So when we study this book, it takes us back to that connection, to the correction.

All the other Kabbalistic books were written by people who attained spirituality but not as a result of the connection between people in a group. This is the reason that we wanted to make this book as close to everyone as possible. If a person reads it, the Light that comes through the high souls that connected begins to operate on him.

This Light operates among us and raises our sensitivity to connection. It operates whether we want it or not. Therefore , it was so important to simplify The Book of Zohar and translate it into different languages. This book includes everything we need for our correction!
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From the World Zohar Week “World Zohar Convention,” Day One 2/5/14, Lesson 1

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Convention In Romania, “Realizing The Connection, “Day Three” – 09.06.15

Convention in Romania “Realizing the Connection,” “Day Three,” “Continuing As One Group in Arvut,” Lesson 6

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Convention In Romania “Realizing The Connection,” “Day Two” – 09.05.15

Convention in Romania “Realizing the Connection,” “Day Two,” “The Connection Between Us Is Our Spiritual Conception,” Lesson 3

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Convention in Romania “Realizing the Connection,” “Day Two,” “The Phases of Conception,” Lesson 4

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Convention in Romania “Realizing the Connection,” “Day Two,” “Dr. Laitman’s Talk 1”

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Convention in Romania “Realizing the Connection,” “Day Two,” Lesson 5

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Convention In Romania “Realizing The Connection,” “Day One” – 09.04.15

Convention in Romania “Realizing the Connection,” “Day One,” Lesson Preparation

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Convention in Romania “Realizing the Connection,” “Day One,” Workshop

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Convention in Romania “Realizing the Connection,” “Day One,” “The Need for Connection,” Lesson 1

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Convention in Romania “Realizing the Connection,” “Day One,” “What Do We Gain from the Connection,” Lesson 2

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Convention In Romania “Realizing The Convention” – 09.03.15

Convention in Romania “Realizing the Connection,” Preparatory Lesson

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Clarification Of The Letters Is Correction Of The Characteristics

laitman_744Around us everything is determined. Only we are changing, and according to our inner changes, we feel as if the outside world, which is a projection of our sensations, has changed. Around me I see people, birds, animals, but all these images and actions are within me.

I feel the changes in me as an external reflection on the background of the white Light, that according to my internal characteristics portrays an external picture for me, a contrast of all the colors, all the forms, everything that we see: the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking nature and the connections between them. All of these are reflections of our inner characteristics on the background of the white Light.

The question arises, how can we see all of our internal egoistic characteristics that project a picture of an external world that is not that pleasant, but which the good higher management establishes outside of us? Which is to say, how do we see the attitude of the Creator, His Light, and not the black color on a background of the white Light?

For this, it is up to us to change our characteristics completely from negative to positive, from the characteristic of reception to the characteristic of bestowal. If we change ourselves, then we begin to read in the opposite way, we don’t pay attention to the black letters but to the white Light, the white background between the letters. We see the forms of the Light that are created by the restrictions, which are called letters.

The letters are our Kelim (vessels), desires that have not yet been corrected. Gradually, as we correct ourselves, they are dissolved into the white Light.

The letters were created below the level of Bina. The lower part of Bina is the first nine letters. The following nine letters are Zeir Anpin. And the final four letters are Malchut. There are only twenty-two letters that symbolize the desires that Bina produces as the supreme desire (Gevurah Aylah) upper Gevurah, as the beginning, as the origin of the desires. Bina produces, Malchut and therefore the letters begin to be born from it.

The letters are reflected by the Upper Light that is found in Sefira Hochma on the background of Bina, which builds within itself the models of the letters and from there they descend into our world.

They have nothing in common with the letters in our world, because these are patterns of characteristics. Various combinations between the different characteristics produce words, and combinations of the words build sentences. These are not concepts and sentences in our world. Like a computer program, words, combinations of words, and sentences symbolize functions, characteristics, laws of how the mechanisms work; so even here, these are the laws of nature.

In this way we see the characteristics of the Light through the darkness. In the beginning we recognize the black letters, the outlines between the black letter and the bright background. And then, according to the correction of our characteristics, we can already move to learning not about the letters on the white background, but about the white background that is limited by the frameworks of the black letters.

This is a completely different science. It is possible to compare it to a computer program, where the negative becomes positive and vice versa, where the positive becomes negative within the program. If we do this within ourselves, then we understand that the letters are a desire for pleasure that prevents the extension of the Upper Light. And if we want to discover the characteristics of the Upper Light, to connect to it, we must rise above the letters to these characteristics.

We can ascend only if we transform the letters, the limitations, into white Light. But when this Light already drives from us, it is absolutely different from the Upper Light that filled all of reality before our particular participation in correction, because the background that supplies us with the white Light is a remnant, as the astrophysicists call it when they speak about a galaxy. In other words, this unique constant permanent radiation holds the entire universe itself.

The white background that fills the Malchut of Infinity is very weak. And we need to write our letters on it, gradually transforming all the desires into Light (ZAT de Bina, Zeir Anpin and Malchut). In other words, all the templates of the twenty-two letters are an expression of our characteristics. And so, from within the separate templates we begin to create infinite combinations of different characteristics. The recorded letters are like a computer program, they can express the characteristics of the world. Through this we install our program from the ground up.

They say that it is up to us to identify with the white Light; for the completion of our correction, the attainment of wholeness, is to be like the Light when there were no letters on it yet, meaning to be like the Light that exists on the level of GAR de Bina (Hochma, Keter), which is the GAR de Partzuf.

The letters are differentiated according to colors, sizes, and additional characteristics. So the Light in the world of Beria is red and in the world of Yetzira, green, and in the world of Assiya, black.

To be like the white Light, to become equivalent to it according to its characteristics, it is up to us to transform all twenty-two letters with all the combinations possible between them into full equivalence with the Upper Light. And then all the black, green, red, and white letters are transformed into clarity, like the Light in the world of Infinity.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/7/14

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Unity Is The Purpose Of Evolution In Nature

Laitman_101If humanity does not accept the method of connection which the wisdom of Kabbalah is offering, then it will simply collapse. In the end, we will still realize the necessity for unity, but at the cost of horrible blows.

It is like children who do not want to listen to their parents who are urging them to be friendly with each other. After many quarrels and bruises, they will nevertheless gradually understand that it is impossible to play and develop alone and they will step onto the right path.

But such a path to connection is called the path of suffering. The wisdom of Kabbalah warns us that this path encompasses nuclear world wars, enormous suffering, famine, and epidemics. The lack of our connection is evoking such changes in the climate of the planet that soon there will be another ice age. Kabbalists tell us that if humanity will not want to unite voluntarily, they will have to do it nevertheless, but only with a small handful of people who survive after all these terrible events, and they eventually come to unification.

The fact is that unity is a goal of the entire evolution of nature, not just people. All forms of nature need to connect together into one harmonious whole. In all parts of nature: in stones, plants, animals, and in people, harmony should prevail in such a way that all these levels complete and support one another. It is written in Prophets that at the end of correction of the world, a wolf will dwell peacefully with a lamb, and a small boy will lead them.

Having achieved such harmony, unity, connection, and balance, this world will transform from the multitude of different parts into one organism. And a body that senses itself as one whole begins to feel a higher level of its existence that is called the Creator, the upper force. The higher level of nature contains a program, as if it is a big computer, a brain that operates us and leads us to unity and connection, whether through a path of suffering, or due to us uniting of our own accord.

The first time that humanity began to feel the need for the method of unification was in ancient Babylon. Until then, unity was natural, since they lived as one nation sharing everything. Although there were many different communities, ethnic groups, and family clans in this ancient nation, they all lived in peace and harmony. Egoism was very small.

But then egoism suddenly grew suddenly, and at that time they began to feel how divided they were and how much they lacked unity. Thus they understood the need for a method of connection. All this happened about 3,500 years ago. Part of the Babylonians felt the need for this method, and since then the wisdom of Kabbalah, which explains how to do it, became revealed.
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From the Convention In Guadalajara “One Heart For All,” “Day One” 7/17/15, “Preparatory Lesson”

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