Entries in the 'Conventions' Category

Advancing By Blows

Dr. Michael LaitmanRabash describes a person’s spiritual ascent and he brings the example of a two story building: On the first floor there are the friends and on the second floor there is the Creator. We have to unite with the friends so that we will have one heart, one desire, one intention. If everyone lowers his head and annuls himself, if our internality is one collective, we create a system that is adapted to bestowal.

At the same time, we lack the actual power of bestowal, but we do our best to keep the connections among us. Even if we know that we won’t be able to fulfill this, we still do our best to keep the intensity. We mustn’t stop here, we can’t cross the finish line and sit and wait until the Light comes. On the contrary, we must constantly exert ourselves in order to reach the center, which means that everyone annuls himself with regard to the collective goal.

In the center there are all our sparks, all the desires that are aimed at mutual bestowal and mutual love. If we aim correctly at the desirable attribute in order to bestow upon the Creator by it, to give it to Him as a present, then the Reforming Light, which builds the attribute of bestowal, comes into the center, into our mutual connection, into our unity.

In other words, we reveal the Light of Hochma in the Light of Hassadim. Thus the divine attribute Elokim is connected with the structure of HaVaYaH, and it is in this connection between the created being and the Creator that the Light of Hochma can be revealed. The Creator Himself is the Light of Hassadim, and Hochma is bestowal that is aimed at the one who works for it.

Question: Can we compare our conventions to the first floor of the building Rabash talks about?

Answer: Not only with the first floor. In our general global unity, in the global vessel, we want to rise to the second floor too. If I am going to the convention in Brazil, it doesn’t mean that I am not in other places as well. We are all connected to one desire. The moment the first floor is built, the second floor is immediately created as well, and the Light from it descends and lands into the ready vessel.

And so, along with our daily work in tightening our mutual connection, we should advance towards the crucial state in which the final blow is given.

The Torah tells us how the stage of the exile ends: After many troubles and blows, we reach freedom. Therefore our blows in the conventions are the “plagues of Egypt.” Everything is in concealment and in the dark and we cannot tell them apart, but later we will discover this.

So we gather here in order to strike our ego, to neutralize, and to annul it by these blows of connection and dissemination and by being ready for redemption. I look at these actions as the last steps before we reach freedom.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/18/12, Writings of Rabash

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Absorbing The Convention Materials

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: You said that in the next few days, rather than to engage in dissemination, it is desirable for us to scrutinize the inner point so as to strengthen unity….

Answer: I believe that you should constantly, all your free time, review the materials on mutual guarantee, unity, mutuality, and integrality. Perhaps it’s better to use the processed rather than the original version because the originals are written in a special language that distracts us from experiencing this material in life directly. Maybe you should simply watch the convention one more time.

You should live by this and go through this again and again in order to form the strongest possible Reshimo, meaning memories, feelings, and work with these sensations. You will suddenly discover that we talked about the things that may have slipped your attention there, or you might have heard them in a different context, in a different perspective. You should go over what happened to you there, and do it several times.

I have witnessed many times that people hear very selectively. God help you to get something out of the information that I have put into it, not secretly inside my words, but clearly, verbally. In reality, people don’t catch more than 10-15 percent of what they hear. I personally went every day at least twice over any lesson with Rabash (any lesson! I don’t even mention our conventions), besides the fact that I attended it.

I also made a plan: Why he explains in that particular way, where the beginning and the end are, how he begins a question, how he finishes it, how he proceeds from the beginning to the end, develops a topic, gives additional questions, or sets some unclear tasks in the middle. I tried to “enter” his head, penetrate his approach. As a result, it turned out that due to this mechanical work I began to feel him, started to sense better.

It is necessary. This is what I meant by saying that for now you shouldn’t do anything else. It is you, those who experienced the convention and were inside, who now have to absorb it well.
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From KabTV’s “Foundations of the Integral Society” 2/26/12

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How Do We Develop The Suspended Ego?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: If there are two scenarios for the development of the ego: One, when the ego becomes a total war, and two, when the ego commits us to learn and to develop in a systemic manner, then couldn’t there be another scenario when the ego will make us fall into a stupor, will turn us into zombies?

Answer: No. The issue is that the development of the ego in an integral society takes into account its rise to the next level, where it becomes greater. That is, the ego continues to develop.

What we see today in society is the suspension of the ego. It doesn’t grow any further, it doesn’t want to grow. Why should I grow more if what I get are only problems? When a person has problems, he doesn’t want anything. It’s better to divert the mind through reading a book or to go to sleep so as to not feel anything. He doesn’t want anything else because he just wants to hide from the problems, not to see or know anything. Thus, if you don’t give the ego the correct answer, it will begin to extinguish and you will become a vegetable.

When you enter an integral environment and together with everyone, begin to develop not your own personal ego but the general one, you receive completely new opportunities of fulfillment, together with everyone. Our general ego, “WE,” begins to develop. Then the constant opportunities to grow, meaning to receive constant fulfillment, vitality, will appear to you.

However, currently there exist only two opportunities given to us from nature: Our ego can either subside, lower its level, which is what happens with the unemployed and with those who suffer and go into depression, or we can develop and fill it in connection with others.
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From the Vilnius Convention 3/22/12, Preliminary Lesson

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Transforming Ourselves

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What is the role of family and state in the new society? Will there be a need for them at all?

Answer: Let’s imagine the final picture that nature leads us to. Nature is leading us to a state where we have a normal family life. The family is the foundation, and at the animate level, it doesn’t change. We need to have a family, home, and children; all that is necessary. With regard to work, the main work for everyone will be mandatory integral upbringing. All of humanity will be involved with this.

The future family will be where the children will receive education through a virtual network, with no tests, with no pressure. But in order to receive integral upbringing, they will meet together in groups. Groups must exist. We don’t need the frontal education at all, where the unfortunate children sit facing the teacher, forced to listen, and he or she stands before them like a policeman and guards them. This is not right.

After all, today’s education is an inheritance from times when there was a need to turn farmers into industry workers. Thus, people were collected from the fields and were given a number of skills: a little reading and writing, a little arithmetic, so that they could work next to a machine. And from this began our school system, which has completely discredited itself today, but is very difficult to change.

The new school will be built on completely different principles. First of all, it needs to be taken into account that the parents will spend a lot of time at home with their children. The big problem has been that the woman was not able to stay at home with the children. She must know what they are learning and how to help them. She needs spare time for this since she must simultaneously learn in school, in university, in order to be a teacher for her children, and even more than that, an educator for her children and husband. She needs to educate the entire family. This is the real problem.

Perhaps my remarks sound a little scrappy, but it’s in order for you to understand what a critical change, transformation of the family we are talking about. It’s about building a huge system of completely new relations. Nature will force us to reach this in any case because through the crisis, it will throw us from our jobs, and we will find ourselves at home. And so we will be forced to change the society in order to bring it in balance with nature.

In any case, integral education and upbringing will bring about an integral education that will be realized through a virtual network, while integral upbringing will take place in the framework of group activities, where the children will gather in small groups of 10 children with a teacher (educator) who knows how to turn them into one whole. They need to learn how to interact integrally. They need to be psychologists themselves: to understand, criticize, and justify each other. Children who receive integral education feel people, understand them, know their nature, their weaknesses, and at the same time, participate with them.

This is not simple, but today we stand at the threshold of a substantial change. It’s unavoidable, otherwise we will simply destroy this world.
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From the Vilnius Convention 3/22/12, Preliminary Lesson

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The Key To Successful Work

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe must separate from all our problems in order to have success in inner work. We represent an integral community, a small group, which is the only thing that exists in the world.

Everything else that exists in the world also connects to us: both the feminine and the masculine parts. They embody the entirety of mankind, the one common soul, the one single Kli (vessel): Malchut of the World of Infinity. Imagine that we now wish to reveal ourselves inside this Kli, not at the point of our world (the lowest point), but at its highest level.

Even if we imagine the highest level, which exists 125 degrees of five worlds away from us, we still will not be able to imagine anything different than the opposite part of the next degree because our imagination does not go further.

Then what is our problem? When we study the system of the worlds, we learn that next to one Partzuf (the first state), there is a second one, an upper one (the second state).

How can we ascend from the first to the second state? Only by canceling ourselves and entering the next state, without creating any disturbances in it—like an embryo.

This next state is called AHP and Galgalta ve Eynaim (GE) of the upper one.

We must simply use our desire and aspiration to pull ourselves into this upper state.

In relation to our state, the upper state is the state of absolute bestowal, when we fully rise above ourselves and leave our entire animal part below.

Aspiration upward is called “Adam” (the human part); it is our consciousness, our desire, directed toward bestowal. We wish to connect them to our aspiration. This is the state of spiritual ascent, which we evoke.

When we strive upward this way, then Light comes to us from the Galgalta ve Eynaim of the higher degree, which helps us, pulls us up, and influences us.

This is the Light that Reforms.

We are not able to do this on our own. We only have the effort, the intention, but never the actual action.

The actual action happens under the influence of the upper Light. So we only need the desire, gathered together to be annulled before each other, to be collected into one single whole, and a firm demand for ascent, for the manifestation of the Light in us, to request that the Light influence us and lift us to the quality to bestow. This is the kind of intention we must have.
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From the Vilnius Convention 3/23/12, Lesson 2

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A Man And A Woman As Traits Of Nature

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: My parents got divorced and that left its imprint in me. I know that there are many people in my generation who are affected by this as well. We are afraid of women. It is very difficult to trust them.

Answer: I don’t understand your problems because we talk about absolutely different things. We don’t talk about men and women as biological bodies, a set of chromosomes, genes, and hormones.

We talk about men and women as traits of nature (and it is very important to us!), when we as adults understand how to use our strengths and weaknesses properly in order to reach a common goal. Serious people gathered here who want to reach that and don’t care about everyday problems between men and women in our regular life. We get away from a material life and rise above it. We want to use our spiritual qualities, either masculine or feminine, in order to support each other and rise. We must go together toward the goal in order to reach it.

Each of us has his or her own mission, own role, but can’t be without others. Only our mutual combination makes our connection productive.

We learn about Aviut (desire) and Zakut (screen). It is necessary to have both as complementary and equal to each other. One cannot exist without the other. If a screen were bigger than Aviut, where would it appear from the start? A screen cannot be different because it appears only on top of a desire. If a desire is bigger than the screen, it means it is no longer aimed toward bestowal, but toward reception. Thus it is important to have a right combination of masculine and feminine qualities.

I’d like to emphasize that we talk about qualities, not about hormones or other material traits. Under the concept of “a woman” an aspiration toward spiritual is meant, and “a man” is a realization of this aspiration that absolutely doesn’t apply to this world.
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From the Vilnius Convention 3//23/12, Lesson 2

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Why The Desert?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Why was the last convention in Israel held in the desert? Is symbolism really that important to Kabbalists?

Answer: We saw that it does matter and make a difference. The first time we went there because we have a big, serious group of 40-50 people there, who are scattered throughout a number of smaller spots in the desert. They live in their small houses in the middle of the desert and farm for a living, growing tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, figs, bananas, and so on.

It virtually never rains in the desert, you have a few drops once a year at the most. Therefore, what we have witnessed was a supernatural phenomenon. Even the people who were born in that area and have lived there for 40+ years have never seen anything like it. Let alone the fact that the rain was accompanied by thunder and lightning, which is entirely unnatural for the desert. We view this as a good omen.

Why the desert? It’s not the desert in the traditional sense. There were mountains there. Essentially, it’s empty land, but not sand.

Interestingly enough, there are huge reserves of water underground: from saltwater, like in the Dead Sea, to water with salt concentrations, like in a regular sea or ocean, to plain, so-called sweet water. Depending on where you drill the earth’s crust, you can produce a different type of water. And while there’s an ocean of water underneath, above ground is the desert.

This is why the locals grow special fruits and vegetables there. Depending on the concentration of salt in the water they use to irrigate their crops, they get a particular flavor. For instance, figs are very sweet by nature, but if you irrigate them with saltwater, they grow to be several times larger and several times sweeter because they need to as if fight the saltwater.

There is also a nature reserve where special horned animals are bred. Many international organizations fund the reserve because special genetic experiments are conducted there.

In short, it’s a very interesting place. In the desert you can truly isolate yourself from outside distractions. We’ve already gone there several times, and we liked it. But this time, obviously, the convention surpassed all expectations.

I think that the convention site and the timing were chosen well. We should all be happy with what we’ve attained. We felt ourselves as a single whole, and through that we can continue to develop within us the rudiments of viewing the world in an integrated way. And from there we can reveal the Creator, as per the law of equivalence of form.
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From KabTV’s “Foundations of the Integral Society” 2/26/12

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To Understand And To Feel

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: I have understood more than I have felt at this convention. Is this normal or did I miss something?

Answer: Understanding without feeling is also good. At least you have seen the unity of people, you have seen their aspiration, you have understood that our attainment of reality is based on this specific aspiration.

Without uniting, we cannot create the sensor where we will be able to feel the upper world, the Creator. This is exactly why we are broken and exist at the very bottom: to start putting the pieces of the upper world together. And as we put it together, we will discover and feel new elements of the true, real, spiritual, world.

And we will see our world the other way around, as getting further from us, because essentially, it has nothing—it is smaller than a point. It is under the point of the straight line, under the “feet” of the Partzuf of Galgalta. There is Sium, or the end of all the Partzufim, and the point of our world is even lower, under it, meaning it is as if it doesn’t exist. And we exist in it, but it is like we are “nonexistent.”
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From KabTV’s “Foundations of the Integral Society” 2/26/12

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A Leader Is The Greatest Egoist

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Are there people who have already reached the fourth level of development, the level of Man? Could it be that these are certain leaders in the world?

Answer: Unfortunately, the leaders are very far from that because only the greatest egoist can be a leader in our world. This is because our world is egoistic, and so in order to climb to the top, you need to be the greatest egoist with a very big desire.

There are nearly two million people around the world who study the method of the integral upbringing in the framework of the ARI Institute. Many other different organizations and circles are engaged in that as well.

I hope that the year 2012 will be a special year because many changes are about to take place now, and we see that the speed of these changes is increasing, particularly in terms of understanding and adapting the integral system to humanity. So we will see great changes, and I hope they will be for the better.
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From the Vilnius Convention 3/22/12, Preliminary Lesson

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The Magical Construction Set Of The Soul

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe exist as parts of a system, similar to elements of an electronic system. Therefore, everything that happens to us conforms only to the way the entire system reaches the end of correction.

It says: “The outcast will not be turned back from Me” and “Everything will return to its root.” Everyone returns to their root, and together we all return to our general root. But we want to shorten the way, to reach the goal by hastening time (Achishena), here and now, quickly, to understand and to feel what we are doing as much as it is possible, in order to perform these actions of bestowal consciously, with understanding, and not to advance by the way of suffering (Beito, or in its time).

There are two problems. On one hand, I have to agree to perform actions of bestowal. On the other, I have to understand that I should calculate and prepare these altruistic actions. These two types of work are called “the work in the mind” and “the work in the heart,” and they are both opposite to nature.

Therefore, we do our best to organize the right system among us, as if we are connected, as if we love one another, as if we complement one another, as if we are cogwheels in a general system, and as if we connect with the Creator, in order to bring Him contentment, and with all of humanity, in order to correct them and bring them to the same action.

All this is “as if.” We do everything as if jokingly, like a little child who, having put the constructor pieces together, suddenly discovers that it is still a toy. He thought that he would build a tractor, he did his best, he assembled it, and then he discovers that it isn’t real, but made of plastic and doesn’t move at all.

But in our spiritual work, the moment we build this “demo,” this “counterfeit,” knowing that it is a game but building it correctly, according to the demands of Kabbalists, the Light that Reforms influences us immediately and makes it real.

This is the whole trick. We only need to understand that this is how it works. We try to put the parts together, in love, bestowal, unity, connection, by faith above reason—it makes no difference how we call it on our level. Clearly, everything is fake. But we try to put this construction set together, and according to our efforts the Light acts and turns it into the real picture.
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From the Arava Convention 2/25/12, Lesson 7

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