Entries in the 'Conventions' Category

Delighting The Creator

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: It says in the articles “Mutual Guarantee” (Arvut) and “The Giving of the Torah” (Matan Torah) that we have to fulfill all the needs of the nation. How should we go about caring for everyone’s needs?

Answer: Start by worrying about the circle of people you are with in this convention, with whom you work and connect. Try to think about what else they need and what is best for them.

Don’t think about any spiritual matters, but rather about how you can help them and what you can provide them with, like washing the floor for example, or something like that, but, through it, in order to please the Creator.
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From the Convention In Sochi “Day Two” 7/14/14, Lesson 6

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A World Without Suffering

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can we pass through those situations that are expected for the world in the near future without suffering?

Answer: The only method is through attracting the Upper Light. You cannot do anything else. So we are going on the way of “I will hasten it,” meaning in the way of the Light. Otherwise there will be continuous suffering or an imbalance in a ratio of 90% suffering and 10% Light.

Look at what is happening with us in Israel, which is a case in point of too little Light and much suffering. Everyone endures suffering, both Israelis and Arabs. In such a manner, we are bringing the nation into a state that is not good.

Question: The most important part of correction is the people of Israel living in the territory of this nation. All of Bnei Baruch is working for the sake of its unity. And what is our role? What must we be involved with here if the correction begins from there? What should our efforts be?

Answer: All of the groups in the world, including the groups in Israel, are connected into one system. The attraction of the Light into our world depends on our common efforts. First of all, the Light works through us downward, and after that, through the people of Israel. The whole problem is that we must consolidate it, but this is a very complicated task. After that, through the people of Israel, the Light will pass to the rest of the world.

We must try to work with these three levels, connecting together as much as possible. There are many resources here that have not been utilized, and if we realize them correctly, there won’t be suffering in the world.
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From the Convention In Sochi “Day Two” 7/14/14, lesson 6

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Losing Oneself In Friends

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe started preparing for the convention a long time ago, a few months ago. Now, we need to try to make it so that the goal of the convention is primarily right before our eyes.

The goal is simple. There is nothing in the world except the assembly of desires into one whole. This is what we need to see before us: We do this or compel the Upper Light to do this.

If we seek to experience this state so that it is truly realized between us, then it will really happen. It depends on our desire, and only on it. Then, in the whole world, there will be a feeling, spreading like waves from us.

Everyone already knows that everything depends only on him. We repeatedly studied during the lessons that our perception of the world, the feeling of the world, is the result of our internal view of the world. Baal HaSulam calls it “inner reflection.”

So, we need to direct our inner contemplation, aspiration, so as to see one whole from all of us, and it depends on everyone.

After all, each of us is a separate universe. If we imagine ourselves in this way and support each other, then, naturally, there will be a correct superimposition of one on the other, and, together, we will gather that necessary power of aspiration that will produce a clear manifestation of this state. This is what I want to wish you.

Many of our friends from different countries and regions have gathered here. It is very good because this makes a diverse Kli. This gives power to our mutual aspirations.

To be lost in this society is the real happiness. If a person aspires to this, he feels that he loses himself and that he begins to dance in the joy of connection with friends as Rabash writes in his letter. He disappeared so much that he felt nothing, but them. If we lose ourselves in this our common society, we will begin to feel, through it, the state that we wish to feel: this unity, this Malchut.

I think we can do this. I do not see any obstacles. We just must connect what exists in us.
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From the Congress in St. Petersburg, Preparatory Lesson 1

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Life Behind The Walls Of An Aquarium

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe perception of reality is a unique subject because we don’t understand it at all. If we were allowed to have several forms of perceiving reality, we could understand it by comparing them. But we live in one reality so it is difficult for us to evaluate it. What we see and feel is our only reality.

How can we discover where we truly are? Fish in an aquarium also don’t know what exists outside of it; they swim in some kind of limited space and don’t know anything more. This is how all animals and humans live in this world; how are we different from them?

But humans very much want to know where they are. Also of importance is can we change reality if we know more about it? Of course not, humanity has produced a multitude of theories about the nature of our reality, but nobody knows how correct they are. We need an objective scientific approach.

After all, no matter how much we are talking about a perception of reality; it is based only on our feelings and sensations. And who knows what exists outside of them? If I change the range of my vision, hearing, tasting, smelling and touching, then reality would be different.

It is known that even a dog that lives with a person perceives the world completely differently, through scents. Other animals perceive through warmth or cold, or by hearing. It follows that reality is our impressions of the world that surrounds us. Our senses perceive some kind of information about it and convey this through a multitude of filters. They convey it to us after many restrictions and changes. That is how we perceive the world in which we live.

The wisdom of Kabbalah says that essentially we are found in an ocean of the Upper Light; outside of it there is nothing. But in each one of us there is a desire to receive, a desire to enjoy, that imprints its impressions on a background of the white Light. And this impression is what we feel.

The desire to receive has a particular range of absorption, limited to five areas— seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching—in which it absorbs the Light and conveys impressions to us. So we feel the world just like that.

But it is possible to change this perception. It is not about just extending the range of perception for every sense: wearing glasses, putting on absorptive plates, sharpening smells or tastes through some chemical or physical influences. The wisdom of Kabbalah is not involved with the development of our physical senses; rather, it brings us closer to the true form of the perception of reality.

It is possible to approach the truth if we receive impressions not through the five corporeal senses, but through constructing senses from our desire to receive that are similar to the Light. This means that they have the characteristics of Light, the characteristics of bestowal, love, that are beyond us, beyond our ego. If we can rise above the ego that is given to us, then we can create characteristics that are like the Light from ourselves.

It follows that the ego was given to us so that we would build characteristics above it that are adapted to the Light. And then we will begin to feel a reality in which the Light is in control. We will feel it in those new characteristics that are created within us.

Kabbalah is involved with developing such characteristics within a person, helping him to build a new perception of reality. And when a person acquires it, he begins to feel how much his previous perception of reality was limited, temporary, and distorted.

To the degree that he changes his perception of reality, the person is himself changed. In fact the perception of reality is what defines the person.
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From the Convention In Chile “Day One” 7/30/14, Lesson 2

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A Mature World View

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Sometimes an uncontrollable hatred against outsiders pops up in me, especially doctors. You teach that we need to look at everyone through the prism of the Creator, especially regular people. 

But the thought that the Creator is standing behind them is really erased by my ego that wants to “kill” them. How must one work with this?

Answer: This is a childish view; it is an immature, incomplete, and narrow view of the world.

When you say that “the Creator is standing behind them,” you imagine some kind of omnipotent person. You don’t perceive this in the form of a natural law, the accommodation of two natural forces.

In fact, the Creator doesn’t exist. There are two forces of nature that portray all of creation for us. We must find such a form in mutual relationships, a formula within us in which we feel mutually connected and in absolutely harmony with others. This state is called the “Creator.”

If we don’t attain the characteristic of these two forces, don’t connect them, and don’t accept harmony between them, we don’t know what the Creator is. In this case He doesn’t exist.

So it is necessary to look at the world as something that the two forces portray for us. Then the hatred will not appear within you.

Do I have hatred for our neighbors around Israel who are bombing us? On the contrary, I say that we are guilty since we have not taken advantage of the possibilities that have been given to us. But I don’t have hatred towards them. Well, who are they anyway? In principle they are performers and have no other function.

This is how it is necessary to look at doctors who deliberately destroy their patients. That is how the egoistic force is revealed in them and they have no freedom here at all here. I have seen doctors who sacrificed patients who still could have been saved, only because it was profitable to do so. It’s all egoistic manifestations.

So, you simply need to grow up a bit.
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From the Convention In Sochi “Day Two” 7/14/14, lesson 6

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Convention In St. Petersburg “Day Three” – 09.21.14

Convention in St. Petersburg, “Day Three,” “From We to Unified,” Lesson 5

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Convention in St. Petersburg, “Day Three,” Workshop 5

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Convention in St. Petersburg, “Day Three,” “Summary of the Convention,” Lesson 6

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Convention in St. Petersburg, “Day Three,” Workshop 6

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Convention In St. Petersburg “Day Two” – 09.20.14

Convention in St. Petersburg, “Day Two,” “Turning and Plowing the Evil Inclination,” Lesson 3

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Convention in St. Petersburg, “Day Two,” Workshop 3

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Convention in St. Petersburg, “Day Two,” “Transition from Me to We,” Lesson 4 

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Convention in St. Petersburg, “Day Two,” Workshop 4

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Convention In St. Petersburg “Day One” – 09.19.14

Convention in St. Petersburg, “Day One,” “Conclusion of a Union”

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Convention in St. Petersburg, “Day One,” “About Thrill,” Lesson 1

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Convention in St. Petersburg, “Day One,” Workshop 1

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Convention in St. Petersburg, “Day One,” “About Circulation of Evil in Nature,” Lesson 2

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Convention in St. Petersburg, “Day One,” Workshop 2

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A Transformation Of Dominance

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe subject of the second lesson at the convention in Saint Petersburg is “The Cyclical Nature of the Evil Inclination.”

In my opinion, everything is clear here. Wherever I turn, I am immersed in my own evil inclination. Whatever I do, whomever I think about, it is only to exploit this person, to benefit myself somehow, and after that forget him, in that I remove him from my mind completely.

If I become familiar with the force of my ego, I will gradually be able to feel how disgusting and despicable the discovery of this evil within me is to me, how much I would like to be released from it and transform it into good. For in fact, it won’t leave me, I simply transform it into a yearning for others, into bestowal to others, into love for them.

That is how I value my foul and terrible evil inclination, even though strangers don’t see anything wrong with it.

First, I reach awareness that I have maintained and cultivated my ego, I have thought about how I can fill it. After that, I see that it enslaves me and I don’t enslave it. So what am I wasting my life on? Now I begin to hate it, because it connects me to it, obliges me to do everything for it. I must work for its sake all the time, because it, like Pharaoh, secretly reigns over me.

And then I reach a state where I discover this control, feel how the ego is choking me to the point I can no longer remain in it; it is killing me. As a result, I am released from its clutches.

And when I am detached from it, from its control over me, I will begin to control it. I will begin to manage it with the help of the Upper Light.
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From the Lesson on the Topic: “Preparation for the Convention, 9/9/14

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No Distances Or Viruses Can Frighten Us

Dr. Michael Laitman Question: What kind of result must we reach at the convention? With which thoughts and feelings do we disperse? And what does this line amount to in us?

Answer: We must connect internally to all the participants in the convention so that the convention will not end. We continue to go forward, upward; within us we feel what we attained from the connection all the time, and distance only compels us to increase and strengthen this feeling. In this manner we rise to the next level.

You cannot imagine what kind of tension exists today among our groups abroad, especially in North and South America. They are preparing for the convention and are doing everything possible and impossible.

We connect and separate, again connect and separate, all the time. This separation is necessary so that above it we can maintain the previous connection.

When we disperse, each person going on his separate way, we are given some opposition, and above it, we return to feeling the previous unity. And then the unity that is multiplied by the opposition will give us new intensity, a new spiritual level.

Question: You said that in the American and European groups there are very intense tensions. But there are also other places in which there is an absolutely different attitude towards the convention. Aren’t we infected by “viruses” from them?

Answer: I am not afraid of this. The same intensity that is gathered at the convention itself becomes such a shield that no viruses can frighten us and no hackers can disturb us.

But if you have information that some groups or isolated individuals are opposed to our idea, we should try to explain to them before the beginning of the convention that unity is the condition for attaining the spiritual world. They simply haven’t heard this yet. Each one of us knows that on their own. How much time must pass until we began to hear it? So don’t be afraid; everything will be okay.
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From the Lesson Topic: “Preparation for the Convention, 9/9/14

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