Entries in the 'Conventions' Category

A Well With Living Water

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Why is it much easier to rise above the repulsion from each other at the big Conventions?

Answer: 1. At the Convention a person is not in his group. He dissolves in an ocean of people with whom he did not have close contact and therefore did not reveal his evil toward them.

2. At the Conventions we do not work on revealing the evil in ourselves, but rather we awaken goodness. However, this goodness comes in spite of the evil that has already been revealed and in order for us to acquire forces for the future.

Therefore, people who do not work on themselves in the group do not feel a drive to come to the Convention. They do not see this as an opportunity to advance. “What will I do there? Jump? Sing? I can just watch it on TV or the Internet at a time that’s comfortable for me!”

In reality there is a big difference between virtual and physical participation at the Convention because in the latter case a person exerts energy, money, and great efforts to take part in it. In addition, prior to entering the sensation of the upper world, we cannot revoke the importance of material contact. Therefore, the Convention is intended for people who desire to come there with the realization of evil they have accumulated from before, as well as those who desire to receive the forces there to overcome the realization of evil in the future.

The Torah talks a lot about how in ancient times people would meet by a well to communicate and establish connections. That is how we should feel at the Convention: like people who have gathered by a life-giving well in a desert, and from that well we can receive the vital forces of Bina (water is the quality of bestowal, the quality of Bina).
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/7/11, The Zohar

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Let The Light Work!

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: To reveal the upper force, we need to come out from within ourselves, from within our egoism. But essentially, we do it for our own sake, in order to receive eternal pleasure. Isn’t this the most egoistic thing that can ever exist?

Answer: That is true! Naturally, all of our actions are purely egoistic. And no matter how much I lie to myself about wanting to connect with others, attain love for my neighbor, all of it is for my personal pleasure.

But something very special happens in the middle, something we do not even realize. When we agitate one another: “Let us unite! Let us sing and dance! Study together!” we evoke the upper force. It influences us and changes us even without our intention. This is called “Segula,” the “miraculous quality” of the upper Light.

And then I suddenly feel: “Really? I truly want to change? Why all of a sudden? What am I, crazy? To bestow? To love for real? Think of others? Then what will happen with me?”

I suddenly begin to feel that thinking of my neighbor has become more important to me. I do not yet exist in this quality, but I begin to want for this to happen. Before I rejected even the thought of this, but then gradually I come to a state when I really want to acquire the quality of bestowal and love for my neighbor.

Why all of a sudden? It’s because the Light influences me. This is called a miracle, which we refer to as: “The Light that comes reforms.” The same Light that created us to only think about ourselves changes us. And this is a miracle referred to as “the miracle of exit out of Egypt.”

When this happens, we feel something change, switch inside us. This changes all my foundations, my attitude towards the world, my view of the world and humanity, and my thoughts of everyone. I suddenly become my absolute opposite.

This is an act of creation, the Creator’s action. We see the actions of the Creator by feeling this inner revolution. And this is why this entire process that we experience is referred to as the Creator’s work. After all, we only evoke this action, and the Creator realizes it.

So do not be afraid, be honest: We really do not want anything but receiving pleasure and only thinking about ourselves, and we are all still egoists on the inside, regardless of the pretty words we use. But the Light comes and changes us due to all our actions in the studies, dissemination, and unity.

Let the Light work!
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From Lesson 1, Metzoke Dragot Congress 2/24/2011

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Pictures From The Metzoke Dragot Convention

Below are pictures from the Metzoke Dragot Convention, February 23-25, 2011. The convention took place in a beautiful resort village near the Dead Sea with over 1,000 people in attendance.

The Secret Of The Soul’s Birth

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What is the connection between the root of a person’s soul and his ability or inability to connect with others souls, the degree of his desire for unity?

Answer: Every person in the world has a root of the soul: a spiritual spark, a point in the heart. This point can develop to such an extent that the person will feel attracted to something higher, beyond this world. Then he comes to the science of Kabbalah and enters the group.

There are also people whose point in the heart has not developed yet and each of them lives his private, material life. But even if this point “burns” strongly in a person and he passionately wishes to attain spirituality—the Creator, the goal of his life, and its meaning—this is just a point and no more.

What should he do next? He has to understand that a person’s soul is formed out of the spiritual sparks that he attaches to his point of the soul from each person of the seven billion people. The soul of every person is the aggregate unity of all of these points together. Therefore, if I now unite with everyone who is here at this convention, if I attach these 600 spiritual sparks to myself, then I attain the might of unity of all 600 points together.

How is that possible? How can I unite with their desires to attain spirituality? I can only do it with the help of “love your neighbor as yourself” in order to become “as one man with one heart,” as it is written in the article, “Matan Torah.”

If I connect with them in this way, then I acquire a field of unification—a desire consisting of many sparks. It’s as if we become “as one man” and inside of that desire I can reveal spirituality.

This desire is called the vessel or Kli of my soul because I have attached all of these points to myself. If someone else, one of these points which I attached to myself, also attaches everyone else to it, this will be called his soul. Meaning, his point is the initial one and he attaches other points to it. This is his soul.

Every person attaches all the points outside of him to himself, and that is how his soul forms. But if he hasn’t attached them to him, then he has no soul. He only has a point, the root of his soul.

According to the force of unification of these points inside me, their quantity and the force of the unity among them, inside of them, I reveal Light, life, and existence. As they connect with each other, they begin to unite and to be revealed in the form of a single system, similar to a living body through which blood and lymphatic liquid circulate, nervous impulses are passed, and many different actions take place. I begin to feel life there.

I attach the points to myself gradually. By connecting to them, I begin to feel how a tiny device forms inside of me: an embryo. Then it grows, developing over the course of nine months. I feel how I attach more and more points to it, and that is how it constantly grows.

Various inner actions already take place inside of it. Some kind of life emerges. I begin to recognize various processes in it, until finally, it is born. That means it begins to live its own life. Then it breaks away from the upper force and lives by itself. This is the soul. That is how each of us builds his soul.

From the 1st lesson at the Dead Sea Convention, 2/24/11

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Metzoke Dragot Congress – 02.25.11

Metzoke Dragot Congress, Lesson 2
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Metzoke Dragot Congress, Lesson 3
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Metzoke Dragot Congress – 02.24.11

Metzoke Dragot Congress, Lesson 1
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Preferring Internality Over Externality

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe upcoming Convention at the Dead Sea is intended to give the world the method of correction, meaning the necessity to prefer internality over externality. Baal HaSulam writes that this is the lever and our principle in disseminating the science of Kabbalah

If we first and foremost disseminate the importance of the internality over the externality among us, then this will overflow to the whole world, and the whole world will also start listening and preferring internality over externality. Then we will be able to elevate the things that bring us closer to the Creator even more, unite them, and reach the correction of the world.

I think that we are close to this and are advancing well. So let’s connect the highest point, which is Bnei Baruch, with the lowest point on earth–the Dead Sea!
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From the lecture in “Kabbalah L’Am” Hall on 2/22/11

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Starting From The Lowest Point On Earth

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn preparation for the Convention at the Dead Sea:
Question: In four days a special Convention will be held at the Dead Sea. How should we prepare for it in order to attain the greatest possible advancement there for our entire group, our one big family?

Answer: Soon we will get together at this Convention at the Dead Sea and let’s hope that from this place, the lowest point on earth, we will be able to rise to the greatest height.

I am happy that we are organizing many meetings like this and hope that we will give the whole world our inner concentration and the force of our unity. Let’s stay together!
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/20/11, “Introduction to the book Panim Meirot uMasbirot”

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A Question On “Practical Kabbalah”

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What do you think about “practical Kabbalah,” a connection with the Sefirot?

Answer: I regret having to disappoint you, but none of this has anything to do with true attainment. There are no red strings, holy water, or ceremonial actions in Kabbalah.

Any person in the world with the desire to learn, regardless of their sex, religion, or nationality, can attain through the proper study and only through it. It’s as if they do not have a body. In other words, clothes, habits, and traditions do not matter. All of these things have absolutely nothing to do with Kabbalah.

Kabbalah is a science, and when we study it, we begin to perceive this world as a more connected, global world. This gives us a new perspective and a new life. We rise from a level where everything ends inside my body to a global, external level where I float outside of time.

This needs to be felt. I promise you that if you were to begin studying and enter this wisdom, you would feel that this is the way this works. A person of our world must rise to the degree of eternity.

Everything Kabbalah predicted has come true. Two thousand years ago, Kabbalists wrote that the world will enter a new phase of development when The Zohar will be revealed, and we will have to begin to work on our correction. I did not believe this when I started studying Kabbalah in the mid-seventies, but this really happened twenty years later, in the mid-nineties.
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From my lecture in Paris 2/1/2011

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Religious Resistance To Kabbalah

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Why is there such resistance to learning Kabbalah on the part of the religious, Orthodox world?

Answer: The wisdom of Kabbalah became revealed thanks to Adam (“the First Man”) 5,770 years ago. He wrote a book about it entitled Raziel HaMalach (The Angel Raziel). This teaching continued through his students, and twenty generations later, there came Abraham, a sage who lived in ancient Babylon.

Abraham worshiped stars, spirits, and trees and made idols until the wisdom of Kabbalah was revealed to him in the global form. He wrote about it in Sefer Yetzira (The Book of Creation).

Abraham led his disciples out of Babylon and into the land of Canaan. He organized a Kabbalistic group out of them, which lasted until the very fall of the Temple. All of them lived interconnected as a global, integral society, as one man with one heart. However, 2,000 years ago, at the time of the fall of the Temple, they fell from brotherly love into unfounded hatred.

This event was what is called the “fall” since they fell from the global world into our human egoism. That is how they lost the sensation of the spiritual world, the upper dimension, and started to feel just as all of us do now, meaning as existing only in our world, each one separately, egoistically.

Instead of living in the wisdom of Kabbalah and the collective, integral system, they began to experience only our world, as people still do today. At that time, Kabbalah, which is wisdom, attainment, knowledge, and spiritual science was replaced by religion and religious faith. After all, the spiritual world disappeared from their view.

This is the form we exist in to this day. Religions such as Judaism sprang up, which gave birth to Christianity, followed by Islam. All of these religions exist because the spiritual, global, and integral world is hidden from us.

However, as it unfolds, there will be no place for religions. They will become the cultural traditions of a nation. This is why there is such resistance between Kabbalah and Judaism, which has continued for the last 2,000 years.

Religious folks hate Kabbalah because it explains to them that they live in the dark and don’t understand where they are and what they are doing. However, there will come a time, and specifically in our days, when we will have to rise from the level of blind faith to the level of spiritual knowledge.
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From my lecture in Paris 2/1/2011

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