Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 07.27.12
Posted on July 27th, 2012
Preparation to the Lesson
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Shamati #13 “The Eighteenth Prayer”
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Preparation to the Lesson
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Shamati #13 “The Eighteenth Prayer”
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Question: How does our connection become the basis for the revelation of the spiritual levels?
Answer: Every level is a world that you feel, a world that is woven by the connection among all the souls. The first connection that has come from the world of Ein Sof (Infinity) gradually diminished until it was shattered and became totally detached in our world. Now, from this point, the ascent in the same levels of connection begins, and it is the only thing you have to reveal.
The “matter” of the souls is the desire to receive and the connection among them is the system we study about. The Ten Sefirot, the spiritual Partzufim, are all the essence of different methods of mutual connection of the souls between them.
On the whole, a whole body is thus formed as we rise to Malchut of Ein Sof, and all the connections are 100% bestowal without any obstacles and deficiencies. Then all the resistance in the transition among us disappears and the connection is immediately fulfilled in infinite speed. This is the state of Ein Sof.
The adhesion indicates a simple thing: What I have at a certain moment, you have too, and vice versa. This communication is unlimited. It isn’t confined to time and the resistance of the ego. The “resistor” among us disappears and our desires cooperate freely and to their full extent.
Question: How should it be expressed in the workshops?
Answer: Our adhesion during the workshops is an effort: We want to unite so strongly, as much as we can imagine, so that each one will lose his feeling of self and we will feel one desire, one thought, one whole. By these efforts, from the point of unity, we think about a solution to the question we were given by the teacher. The solution is within the connection.
Therefore, during the workshop we yearn to find the answer through the unity. Each time we search for a solution, we want to attain it by the unity, without using our logic. After all, we are not going to logically examine the words of the Kabbalists.
Without connection, there is no point in sitting in a circle. So what do we need it for? For an intellectual conversation or a scientific debate? No, the mission is given only in order to create a new quality. Then by feeling the collective quality, you find the solution.
The workshop is only meant to create a collective vessel that belongs to an upper level. We try to reach it as hard as we can, but if there is no solution, it means that we have not succeeded.
There is no point mentioning the connection while we are in the process, it has to be the goal from the beginning. Can we come to a workshop not in order to connect, and in this connection find the next level or at least find the solution to the question that leads to it?
[83843]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/13/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam
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Question: How can you check that you really understand the lesson from the point connection with the group?
Answer: A person reaches connection out of despair, when he despairs of all his actions and sees that they will lead to nothing, and that he must do something. He thinks about himself, about his entire life, about the efforts he has made in vain, and eventually comes to the conclusion that he only can attain the goal through the group.
The group is a spiritual structure and not the faces that you see around you. It is a spiritual force that is revealed in a very realistic manner, like some safe shelter. It is like a “flying saucer” that as I enter it, I have a chance to succeed and if I am not in it, I have no chance.
A person must understand this clearly in order to keep this thought. He should know that by staying in the group, which he sees as a collection of spiritual forces, he will undoubtedly reach a good result. The group enables him to breathe, and without it, he has no access to the oxygen hose.
However, a person only can reach this decision when he feels despair from his own powers. Our discussions and workshops enable us to reach this conclusion faster. However, what I hear are people speaking about what they have read and not from their hearts.
I give a short introduction, and then I ask a question about it. The question may be a continuation of what has been said; it can be in contrast to it or somehow related to what has been said. However, it is all done intentionally. The answer shouldn’t come from the mind, but from the point of connection that should be attained within the discussion circle.
Then, the answer will be the answer to our prayer. The discussion must turn into a prayer that we all want to clarify and, together, to find the answer. During the discussion, each of the ten friends says something, and thus we complete one another. Each one annuls himself before the others by raising them and respecting their opinion. Thus, we build our self-annulment and the attribute of bestowal that is above all of us.
The group is not a physical assembly, but it acquires a spiritual value. This is because the annulment of the ego and the desire to be incorporated in the friends is already a spiritual action. The topic of the discussion spurs us on to clarify our unity, the connection, and the work. All this turns into a prayer (MAN).
Within the connection in the group that we attain by this prayer, we must receive an answer (MAD). The answer to the prayer of many (MAD) is called the center of the group. We feel collective warmth, a collective feeling, the force that supports us to such an extent that we are scared to come out of there. I don’t want to come out of there. I want to remain inside this center and to grow there. This is the purpose of the workshop, which you have to try to attain with every 15-minute question discussion.
[83768]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/17/12, The Study of the Ten Sefirot
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Everything was created by the Light that operates within the desire to receive that was created as something from nothing. The desire grows thicker as the Light operates on it like yeast on dough.
The difference between the different phases of the desire—the root, the first, second, third and fourth phases—stems from the different levels of bestowal of the Light on the point of something from nothing that exists in the actual roots, until its attributes become totally opposite to the Light. This indicates that the Light has made it as thick as the last, fourth level.
Actually, all this thickness is created by the attributes of the Light that turn into their opposite form as it breaks inside by the point of something from nothing. The darkness is a replica of the Light. The darkness is actually the same Light, but its posterior.
This is why, in Aramaic, “night” is called “orta” (which resembles the word “ohr,” meaning light in Hebrew). At night, everything is the same as during the day. The only difference is that the basic point turns the Light, turning it into its opposite.
It is as if a magnifying glass breaks the rays and turns everything upside down. On one side, there is light, and, on the other side, there is darkness. This magnifying glass is the same point of something from nothing.
We must use everything there is in our desire to receive, but in an opposite manner, to turn it, to insert the “nothing” into it instead of the “something.” When we want to attain this oppositeness, we annul the natural ego in us and become similar to the Light once again.
All the forms of the desire come from the Light that has imprinted itself in the central point of the created being. However, these forms are opposite to it so that in this oppositeness, we will be able to attain the Creator
[83763]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/17/12, The Study of the Ten Sefirot
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpts “Beresheet Bet (Genesis 2),” Lesson 142
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“Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 30
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In the workshop, everyone must constantly check himself, and the friends should support one another and remind one another of this point so that throughout the workshop everyone will feel the fear of leaving the connection. During all our life, we must hold onto the center of the group, not only during the lesson or the workshop.
However, a lesson or a workshop is the main time to work on our collective thought, which determines everything. Here, we need each other’s support without words, and, at the same time, we have to feel the inner burning. We have to discover some collective field that constantly spurs us on and keeps us “in the air.” It is all up to us.
It is as if you were signing a contract with the friends so that they would constantly care for you and make sure that you don’t leave this field with your thoughts. Pay them so that they will take care of you. This is called “buy yourself a friend.” You have to give the friend something so that he will be motivated to constantly spur you on.
However, how can he spur you on if we are all on the same level, and he himself needs someone to spur him on? Here, the upper providence operates, about which it is written, “the Creator is within His people.”
If we decide that we are committed to spur one another on, the Creator spurs us on. He gives us this power so that at least someone in the group constantly will be in contact with spirituality and will be conscious. This means that “the Creator dwells among His people.”
If there is a connection, it is called a house of assembly for prayer (Beit-Knesset) in which the Creator is present. As it is written, “I came to the house of prayer and did not find a single person?” However, if there is a connection among us, then the Creator will come and find a “human” in it!
[83766]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/17/12, The Study of the Ten Sefirot
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In order to grasp the right picture of reality, we have to be familiar with the two points of view that there are, one which is the Creator’s perspective and one which is the created being’s, and to understand the relationship between them. Based on these two states we can determine our attitude towards the desire, so that eventually all these points will determine the relationship between the Creator and the created being according to their oppositeness and similarity to one another and will provide us with a new perception of reality.
It will no longer be the same false picture we see now that is called “the imaginary world,” which is one-sided and limited to only what goes through us, through the egoistic filter, thus providing us with the feeling of this world. With the wide and infinite reality outside us, beyond the limits of our perception, when it goes through our ego and reaches our feelings, it’s restricted to the size of a corporal picture of this world that we eventually feel. But in order to reach an unlimited perception, we need the new points of view.
Our limited and egoistic reality is called “animal” since it is perceived by our animal body. In order to feel the true reality, we need the two points of view: one point that is opposite from the Creator and another point that is similar to the Creator. Between these two points, from the different types of connections between them such as for and against, similar and the opposite, we build the new picture of our world. All the opposite attributes and all the similar ones will be the components of our perception.
[83694]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/13/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam
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I must understand that in my mutual relationships with others, the positive force is on the outside, and the negative force is inside me. It isn’t by chance that it is written, “Man’s heart is evil from his youth.”
It is a problem of how we perceive ourselves and the world. We naturally imagine that the world is corrupt and that we are corrected. We take care of ourselves, think about what is good for us, and look at everything from the perspective of how to use everything to our benefit. I constantly worry about one thing only: “How can I feel better?”
This indicator, this inner program that is constantly active inside us, is the ego. This program focuses all my thoughts and desires in one direction: to use the world for my own benefit.
If I imagine that my hardware, my “iron,” is the starting point, my abilities, my attributes, the potential of my thoughts and desires that are in it, then the ego is my software. This software of self-fulfillment was installed within me.
My attributes are neither good nor bad, but the egoistic software that operates me obliges me to use them for my own benefit and, at the same time, at the expense of others since this enables me to feel above those who are around me. This is our ego, the evil inclination. The inclination itself is the “iron,” and the evil is the software, the addition.
Now, I must turn this software from evil to good. The inclination stays the same, but I change the method of using it. I see that the endless chase of self-benefit only harms me in the end. The evil inclination is bad for me, but, when I begin with the help of the environment to change it to a good attitude toward others, it actually brings me good, too.
How does that happen? Why do I feel good when I treat others well, and why do I feel bad when I harm others? It is because I come closer to the truth this way and begin to feel that the others and I are the same thing.
It is like a mother who “merges” with her child. It brings us together so closely that we feel as one whole and merge into a new, inseparable system of mutual relationship by stopping to differentiate between what happens to myself or to someone else.
Thus, all of humanity becomes one family. Perhaps not right away, but it’s a start, and we already understand this approach that is totally based on psychology.
[83776]
From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 7/11/12
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 3, “Ohr Pnimi,” Item 90, Lesson 3
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“Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 46, Lesson 18
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In order to bring a person to the attainment of the true reality that is outside the limits of his perception, understanding, and ordinary feelings, the Creator puts us through a gradual process of development. So we have the opportunity, while living in this world, to prepare ourselves for the perception of the true reality. If we prepare ourselves, then according to the plan of creation that operates on us, which brings us closer and closer to this true reality, we eventually discover it, which means that we attain the revelation of the Creator to His created beings.
But if we don’t prepare ourselves correctly and don’t use our life in order to correct our perception, but try to enjoy it directly in our ego, we feel pain as the Creator gets closer to us. Wherever we operate by using our ego, we feel the general global crisis and different problems in all the areas in life.
Wherever we use our ego, which is not ready for correction and for a change, we feel a crisis: in education, in culture, in the economy, in finance, in ecology, in the break up of the family, in terrorism, and in drug abuse. If we examine the painful points in the imaginary picture of our world and try to find out where the feeling of crisis and pain stems from, meaning the bitter taste of the refreshments on the King’s table, we see that all the bitterness stems from our growing ego.
Anywhere our ego (which was supposed to be corrected but was not prepared for this) is involved, we encounter a crisis and all the problems that are being revealed in the world now. So the conclusion is that we have to prepare ourselves with the help of all the opportunities we have.
If we work in the group, in the study and in dissemination seriously, using all the means that were given to us by the Creator, we will feel a good sweet taste by getting closer to the revelation of the Creator, and not bitterness. It all depends solely on our preparation, on the work that is seemingly our free will.
You were brought to the study, to the group and were given all the explanations as to what you should do; now decide! You are free to do whatever you see fit in the King’s palace, but if you forget that you came there in order to prepare yourself for the festive meal, you will feel an awful taste when it arrives, since you are not prepared for it. So everything is in your hands and it all depends on the preparation.
[83692]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/13/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam
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