Question: According to Kabbalistic geography, does the Dead Sea symbolize Malchut?

Answer: The Dead Sea (in Hebrew, the Sea of Salt) is the lowest point on earth. It has to be salty since salt is the lowest, most essential, non-deteriorating food substance.

What do we consume in its natural form from nature? Water and salt. Water and salt are the material of the Dead Sea.

Malchut is the embodiment of all the still nature , so there is actually no life in the Dead Sea except for some bacteria. But today the world is in a state that bacteria exist in different forms and we may certainly soon find out that they have also been discovered on Mars.

But ordinary life cannot exist in salt because it is a preservative that fixes all the attributes. It doesn’t allow anything to develop. It is a pure attribute of Malchut. The water of the Dead Sea, which means the attribute of Bina, is intended only for the salt to grow and symbolizes the use of the slightest altruistic awakenings for the sake of the ego. Using the Creator for yourself, this is the addition of water to the salt.
[133744]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 11/27/13

Related Material:
The Cave Of Machpelah: The Place Of Spiritual Life
Through The Purifying Fire
The Two Attributes Of The Light

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

Preparation for the Lesson

[media 1]

[media 2]

Writings of Rabash, “Shlavei HaSulam,” “One Should Always Sell the Beams of His House”

[media 3]

[media 4]

The Book of Zohar — Selected Excerpts

[media 5]

[media 6]

Writings of  Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 36 

[media 7]

[media 8]

Talk on the Unification of the Nation 

[media 9]

[media 10]

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Zohar - No Comments →

The Book of Zohar is the key to the Segula (miraculous remedy). Any person who wants something can get it. It’s not important what exactly he wants. The desire of the person is always influential. This is because we are in the force field of a desire, and this power is influential. The stronger the desire, the more influential it is; the weaker the desire, the less influential it is.

But besides this, these desires are arranged according to a hierarchical ladder, on various levels. On every level, a stronger desire swallows a weaker desire. But qualitatively, the desires are found on various levels, and a desire on a higher level, even if it’s weak, will win over a strong desire from a lower level. This means that quality is more important than quantity, than strength.

Besides this, there is the idea of a direct desire and its opposite. It is written: (Pirkei Avot 2:4) “Make your desire like His desire.” This means that if I want The Book of Zohar to influence me in a good, direct way, I need to make my desires identical to His, meaning to reach such a state where I truly want to bestow, to give. Then this Segula that is concealed in The Book of Zohar will influence me directly: He has what I am asking for and He gives it to me.

As long as I ask to get something from the Creator—“I want this, and this and this! Give it to me! Give it to me! Give!”—then this doesn’t exist in spirituality, and then the upper Light will influence me in the opposite way. In other words, He will bring me a little more darkness and then I will gradually get wiser, and with the passing of a number of years of development, I will feel that this is not the way and will begin to be changed. As long as an inner revolution has not taken place in us where we want what the upper Light wants, we will not get the right and direct help from Him.

So when we are before The Book of Zohar, it’s worthwhile for us to understand that thousands of people have tried to get all kinds of miraculous remedies from this Book and haven’t gotten anything, and only a few have known what to ask from this Book because they have expected to get the power of bestowal, the characteristic of bestowal, from it and own it.

Everything depends on how to ask and what to ask. If we ask for the characteristic of bestowal, and everyone together, then we have adapted ourselves precisely to this miraculous remedy in the best way, and then it works on us.
[133990]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/28/14, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
What Unique Quality Are We Looking For?
A Wonder Drug Called “Zohar”
Preparation Is The Key To Success In The Study

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Spiritual Work, Zohar - No Comments →

People don’t feel the need to connect, but they understand that they should connect when they feel that they lack ordinary material things. This is the initial level of the still nature.

They want to better their lives and they understand that it’s possible to find some merit that may help them by connecting. Having connected several times, thanks to our help, they understand that there is a special power in it: a pleasant, good feeling of confidence and of joy. But this is not enough.

If they begin to change their environment and their lives with this power of connection, they will really manage to see that their actions can change the world. But in order to do that, they need to do something other than just sitting and rejoicing about how good they feel together.

Now they have to actually fulfill the power of connection: to change their lives, the life in their neighborhood, the relations in the family, the attitude towards children, to demand that the government make new laws to improve education, and the connection between people.
[133760]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/27/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Related Material:
Reasonable? Reasonable!
A Million Dollars Or The Upper Light?
Unity Is The New Format Of Humanity

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

Question: How do we explain to people that an imbalance with nature causes disease?

Answer: Rationalism has existed in the world since the days of ancient Greece. The prevailing view is that a human is found above all of nature and we shouldn’t wait for mercy from heaven; rather, it is up to us to take everything into our hands. This broke us, for a materialistic philosophy developed claiming that a person is not a part of nature. In fact, he is the greatest egoist.

Nature includes the levels of the still, vegetative, and animate within which man is found. And man thinks he is outside of all of this; this is our problem.

This contradiction is particularly prominent now; I think that I am found above nature and it shows me that I am found within nature, under its control.

The difference between my world view, my desire to be above nature, and what is in fact discovered, awakens a global crisis that includes all areas of human activity. This is because I think that I control nature and I suddenly discover that nature is integral. Now we are gradually discovering that we are inside a computer, within a program that manages us, so we cannot do anything. All of our plans are destroyed and there is no way that we can succeed in activating them. We try to do something with our lives, with the children, with the nation, but everything is in vain. Why? It is because we have developed to a state where we feel ourselves above nature, but discover that it is above us and in sum we are activated by it, whether we like it or not. This lack of accommodation between our state and what happens in reality leads to all the problems.

And in the meantime, the global network of management is being discovered as more and more linked. It doesn’t make a difference what we do; in response we feel a blow, a severe reaction. Nothing will succeed, the world is falling apart, the family is breaking apart, children go away in all directions, and everything escapes from our hands. These many problems must bring us to one conclusion, we are within a cosmic, globally inclusive system, within a program that is called the purpose of creation, and we are only a small part of it.

The crisis helps us discover that we are a part of that program, and we have a free choice here that makes it possible for us to recognize the program and to carry it out from our choice. Only then can we be called “man.”

And if we don’t want to carry out the program by our free choice, then we will have to do it against our will, because we will not succeed in doing anything! More and more problems have arisen in the world precisely to show that humanity depends upon nature and its program. This is because nature is the Creator, the higher power, and if we are within it, so its program is found beyond our powers. This is the point of the crisis in the world view and integration within it.

So when we go out to the general population, it is up to us to explain to them that for all of their problems in the family, at work, in health, with children, and so forth, for all of this there is only one cause and one solution, and this is the right connection between us.
[132254]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/28/14, Question and Answers with Dr. Laitman

Related Material:
Check For Balance
Learn To Live In Balance With Nature
If You Don’t Know How, Don’t Touch

Filed under: Crisis, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Globalization, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

Question: I understand what I have to do if I want to turn to the social committee. I have their email address and their phone numbers. But how do I turn to the center of the group?

Answer: The center of the group is an inner discernment, my feeling that this is the point where we connect. We descended from above while being connected, and then reached this world where this connection was totally broken. Now we have to rise back to the same state in which we were connected and then rise even higher upward to an even stronger connection.

We enter the patterns that have already been arranged for us during our descent. All these patterns, all the 125 levels, already exist. We only have to yearn for them.

Yearning for the center of the group is yearning for our higher state that already exists. I look for it in the dark, “on my bed at night.” I try to imagine what the state is like in which we are all connected and the Creator is revealed to us. What should this connection be like? I want to attain this form. This is the state I have to look for, to picture it from the state I am in now. I have to think emotionally about what our connection looks like so that we can all merge, so that our hearts will melt, and become one. If I try to picture this state, I get closer to it.
[133689]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/20/14, Shamati #190, Shamati #59

Related Material:
The Center Of The Group Is A Place For Solving All Problems
A Center For All Investments And Hopes
Changes That Lead To Equality

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

Question: I don’t understand what I have to add in order to actually participate in my own development.

Answer: When a baby is born, it first grows only instinctively. But gradually he becomes more aware.

What is the difference between a one-year-old baby and a five-year-old? What has changed besides the child’s weight? A five-year-old can somewhat understand the future, which means the outcome of the states he is experiencing. He can assess and see the future, which means expecting the next state.

Animals do it instinctively, but not humans. A baby can fall from a high place and doesn’t understand that it’s dangerous. He can put something hot in his mouth and get burnt. An animal would not do such thing; it wouldn’t fall from a high place and would not get close to danger. A baby grows and acquires the wisdom he lacks.

A wise man is one who sees the future, which means how a state develops. This is what animals do instinctively but only in the limited sphere of their existence. A person has a much stronger ability since he develops it himself.

Baal HaSulam says that if someone was shown a newborn baby and newborn calf, he would say that the calf is a more perfect creature than the human baby because the baby is totally helpless while the calf can already walk, understand, feel, and is strong.

But because we develop the ability to see the future, we understand who is more perfect. The whole wisdom is in the ability to see the future. Therefore people consult wise men who see what ordinary people cannot see. This is what we have to acquire these days because the whole world is becoming confused and depressed. No one knows what to do and no one sees any possible outcomes. Therefore, we have to learn to see the future.

In contrast to previous generations, we can already see the future, our future, only in vessels of bestowal. It’s because the spiritual future is approaching and we cannot identify it, and so we think everything is falling apart. However, the point is that we cannot perceive and see the future and enter it in our current vessels because we don’t belong to that system. In order to become compatible with that system, to see the future and understand the changes that we have to make in order to adapt to the future, we need to be wise.

A wise man is anyone who knows the wisdom of Kabbalah. Therefore it written in the prophets that thousands all over the world will hold on to every wise man so that he will lead them.
[133657]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/14/25, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Related Material:
Rising Above Reason
From The Greatness Of The Ego To The Greatness Of Faith
Global Revolution

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Free Will, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

Question: What is the spiritual meaning of separating milk from meat?

Answer: The Torah says: “Do not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.” Meat cannot be eaten with milk since by that you cause a short circuit between the most important things, the right and left lines.

Milk symbolizes the right line, the Light of Hassadim (mercy) that stems from the desire to bestow. So on the physical level, milk is food for children. However, the left line, meat, symbolizes receiving, rigidity, egoism.

We must not bring these two lines together because they can only connect in the middle line when you receive from the left egoistic line only what the right altruistic line can include in it and make the middle line out of the two.

In order to create the middle line, we have to descend from ten to six Sefirot, from  GAR to VAK which means to bring the state of greatness of the Partzuf to smallness, because until the end of correction it’s impossible to receive in order to bestow in the whole desire, except for a small quantity.

Malchut can be used only in the ascent to Bina. The ascent of Malchut to Bina is a state of smallness or six Sefirot. Therefore it’s possible to eat dairy products six hours after eating meat.

In our world, six hours is a conditional measure, and therefore in different communities the time of separation between meat and milk differs. In certain communities the break between dairy and meat is three hours and in others it’s an hour. But on the whole, most communities keep six hours.

As for meat, it can be eaten half an hour after dairy (except for hard cheese, which is the same as meat). Although the laws that forbid the combination of milk and meat are not so convenient, they stem from the smallness of the spiritual Partzuf.

Question: Do our friends all over the world have to keep these laws?

Answer: No, we don’t dictate anything to anyone. This refers to the spiritual work and its goal to receive in order to bestow. We can try to persuade people from morning to night that it’s important to feel love towards a friend, but we cannot demand that someone actually do it.

Moreover, one can keep the tradition and another cannot. We never demand of others but only of ourselves. On the other hand, those who don’t keep the tradition shouldn’t interfere with the customs of those who do. We should respect the customs of others, no matter what they are.
[133634]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/17/14, Questions and Answers with Dr. Laitman

Related Material:
Sacrificing The Ego For The Sake Of Bestowal
Towards The Purity Of Intention
Sacrifices That Bring Us Closer To The Creator

Filed under: Commandments, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Torah - No Comments →

Question: What is the difference between a person who is controlled by Pharaoh and a person who is controlled by the Creator?

Answer: It is the same domination, the same power. Pharaoh is revealed very slowly as a great power until he is fully revealed in the full power of the 49 gates of impurity.

The Creator is also revealed slowly and gradually in the 49 gates of Holiness and then also in the 50^th gate of Holiness, after which we transcend to receiving in order to bestow. It is the same force that operates in an opposite manner.

I have to feel the darkness and with respect to it, the Light, then the darkness again and the Light on top of it. This is the only way I discover my years of slavery in Egypt, my state in Egypt. My background is black and on it I write with the white Light. And then the background will be white on which I will write with black ink.
[133400]
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/18/14, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
Pharaoh Turns The Animal Into A Human Being
Dual Control Of A Single Power
The Last 50th Gate

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

Question: What is laziness in the work?

Answer: Laziness is heaviness in our work, a lack of motivation, a lack of vigor and fuel, meaning, a lack of importance. Rabash gives a simple example: If one’s house were on fire and one needed to escape the fire, nobody would be lazy and continue sleeping. Everyone would jump out of bed and flee.

If one’s life isn’t in danger, one can say no matter what happens, what will be, will be,  and might take a sleeping pill to sleep more deeply.  Everything depends upon the importance.

There is no laziness or excitement; there is only a sense of the importance of the goal, the next state. If we are talking about a process which is repugnant to our nature, which like all animals, egoistically is drawn to rest, to fulfillment; how can one work for the fulfillment of others? This is simply impossible.

Can a car travel without fuel? Certainly not, it needs fuel. Without this it will not move! Whereas we want to reach a state in which we can advance without fuel. So how is it possible to do this without fulfilling ourselves with a nice and tempting goal? We are not ready to do this.

And here we are confused and don’t understand how to advance, where, to what goal, how to go through this whole process? This is because we truly must begin to work without fuel for our desire for pleasure, to work without an attractive goal for the ego that says it must be filled. We must go to the perpetual motion machine, towards an engine that uses an absolutely different fuel and performs other work.

We just don’t understand how such a thing can exist in reality. This is like a machine that works by itself on some invisible fuel and gets the power of movement by acting for the sake of others, fulfilling them, and doing everything for their good.

I don’t require anything for itself. It’s a miracle, and everything works. I check, does it have fuel? There is no fuel! Is there electricity? There is no electricity! Maybe it at least enjoys benefit from what it is doing? I check, it has no benefit from this! So how can it work?! Thanks to a miracle, a wonder, the power of bestowal! Why? There is no answer.

So how must we proceed towards a state like this where we will be like that machine? This is the whole question. The process moves us towards this, and we must grasp only one thing in it all the time: Connection – connection – connection. And so we pass through the states that are called the forefathers, the entire history of their development after leaving Babylon, then the entry into Egypt, seven years of satiety, seven years of famine, the plagues of Egypt, and the exodus from there.

All this happened only thanks to some kind of higher power that is unknown to us. From the connection between us, I discover all these states called seven years of satiety and seven years of famine, the ten plagues, and the escape from the previous state.

I flee from this entire old paradigm because it cannot help me any more with anything. I see that everything that I have done until now lacks value, and I discover something new here: the possibility of understanding, feeling, and working like that perpetual motion machine that works without fuel, without self-interest, and without fulfillment.

This machine works completely on the basis of a higher power. Suddenly some kind of illumination reaches it from Above and it begins to spin by itself as long as the illumination is in it. And then it’s ready to connect with others, to perform actions, to radiate energy from itself. This is simply amazing; this is the miracle that we have been waiting for so much.
[133256]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/20/14, Writing of Rabash

Related Material:
An Engine Running On The Energy Of Bestowal
Perpetual Motion
Laziness Can Be Useful Or Detrimental Depending On How You Use It

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Spiritual Work - No Comments →