Entries in the 'Daily Kabbalah Lesson' Category

We Are Facing Great Turmoil

Dr. Michael LaitmanBestowal as the general population sees it is helping others, which brings a person satisfaction, decorates one’s life and “fuels” him. A person assumes that thanks to this our world becomes a better place. Accordingly we can explain to people what the right connection is and what the benefit in it is.

For example, in Israel there is going to be some social boycott of certain food companies that raise the price of their products in the local market while selling the same products for much less abroad. So why doesn’t the workers’ union organize these protests? Why doesn’t it organize an appeal to the tycoons on behalf of society? This will lead to lowering the prices significantly and the manufacturers will still have enough “fat” left.

But apparently the Union isn’t interested in that.

Comment: The union was founded in 1927 while the state of Israel was founded in 1948.

Answer: The participation of the union in the foundation of the state is felt through this day. Of course, we don’t negate what happened. At first the movement had ideals, but it is impossible to “rest on one’s laurels” for so long.

Question: Tycoons today are trying to erase 40% – 60% of their debt, at our expense of course. Even in the Knesset (Israeli house of representatives) they are passing a law that would rule out such an option. This means that for the first time people disagree and are unwilling to accept the “stew” they are being fed. Something is going on these days. What is going on?

Answer: It isn’t about the tycoons or the poor, the unemployed or the rich. We should see the trend itself, that the Reforming Light is arranging the vessels and tying all the social classes in certain relationships. On the whole the goal is to bring a person to the recognition of the evil of the present state. A person should be “shaken” so that he will see that he cannot exist in the old lifestyle, and that he has to change his outlook of life.

I go to work in the morning, make money, produce unnecessary things, waste natural resources and energy in the process, and produce totally worthless products. In the supermarket I choose from the endless variety of cheeses. All that is because my boss, with the help of good advertising, knows how to push these products to people, thus adding a few more zeros to his bank account, which he doesn’t even use and they just sit there in the bank.

The more money the tycoons make the more it means that we are “growing” and that our economy is “flourishing.” It isn’t clear who is flourishing. I am not even sure the business owner is flourishing; after all, he doesn’t know what to do with all his wealth. Ultimately, It is about an inner feeling: an inner impression and a feeling of control over others; a certain sense of security money gives. Eventually, it is all about a feeling. And we will do anything to feel more secure; to feel control, self-respect, and self-worth.

This period is over and humanity must acknowledge that the present paradigm has ended. Therefore, we go through phases of recognition of evil, but the process is delayed; governments hide the crisis and promise to turn things around. In the meantime an explosive mixture boils ready to blow up; economists recognize this. In the coming year we will see how things develop.

On the other hand, this development must be gradual because the Light arranges everything, not anyone else. That Light is arranged so that the general population will rise above their outlook of life. There is no other choice.

It is impossible to ignore half of the seven billion people “as if” they are not developed enough. It is totally untrue! Everyone, who has a human form must participate in the life of the general vessel and together reach the end of correction, Gmar Tikkun.

Whatever you say, and no matter if it seems that a person cannot develop, understand, or feel, in spirituality he may be closer than you are. He is surely closer than you are because he has fewer barriers than you do. You have many calculations that he doesn’t. His calculations are much simpler, and he is much closer to correction.

Everyone must advance and perceive the new reality, understand that the world is round and that we too should be “round.”

It isn’t easy, it is hard to explain what “bestowal is, even to those who are willing to listen and who agree with you. They think: “Smart guy, but not so down to earth,” “He speaks so nicely, but. …” This means that they listen to you and agree with you, but in the end they applaud and go home as if they heard nothing. People aren’t ready internally yet; the Light hasn’t influenced them yet. It has to go through many actions. We can see it in ourselves: We hear it every day and it is still not easy.
[71526]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/2/12, The Zohar

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Count On The Light

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: In turning to the world, we say that the solution to all the problems is in connection. Will we ever be able to explain to people what it is so that it will be clear to a person how to connect with others?

Answer: You are asking: When will the vessels discover the right attitude towards the Reforming Light? How do we explain to people that unity is the solution?

We go through spiritual development. The Light shines upon the different stages of development and we are under the stages.

On the first stage, the vessel feels itself in the form of the inanimate, then in the form of the vegetative, the animate, and the speaking.

A person feels that a desired pleasure can only come through the group, through connection. If on the previous levels I received egoistically, here when I am connected with others (∑), I belong to a global world, to the vessel of the true filling. My life is eternal; it rises above the beastly reality of the body. You can do whatever you want with the body, especially considering new technologies, but inside me there is something that makes up my “self.”

Thus a person begins to feel what is specific to the level of the “speaking.” He discovers that he is in a society, in a mutual global relationship, in a “round” world. Inside he is ready for that and the external influences bring him to the feeling of an integral world (∫) between the limits of zero and infinity. This picture includes everyone, with no exceptions.

Then a person discovers that there is no other choice, and that he must connect with others. What is more, it is worthwhile for him to connect because his life becomes safer and more successful this way and it also helps the environment.

Thus a person begins to appreciate the unity. Many in the world will die without unity. For example, inhabitants of big cities will not survive if they stop providing different services to one another. Actually all the people in the world are connected this way. This is the human level; it is revealed as a single, unified system (1).

You are asking, “When will we be able to explain to people the advantages in connection and unity?” it isn’t easy, because it is a gradual process. On the previous levels, humanity developed for about 50,000 years; before that only nature took part in the process.

From Above the Light operates on us. If we want to intensify its influence, we should prepare the vessel for it below, then changes will take place.

Our explanations today do not achieve the desired effect. We must convey to people a certain level of equivalence to the Light. For example, when we bring our ideas into the protest movements, it is good. On the whole we should form from the general population as many groups that resemble the Light, which means that they will carry our ideas to some extent. In order to do that we print pamphlets, signs, newspapers, etc.

On the whole, don’t ever calculate your actions. The question is: “What should I do so that the Light will operate?” Then you won’t go wrong. We don’t do anything by ourselves; we can only organize and place ourselves under the influence of the Light.
[71520]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/2/12, The Zohar

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 03.05.12

Preparation to the Lesson
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Shamati #54 “The Purpose of the Work”
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Chapter “Beresheet (Genesis),” Item 256, Lesson 74
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 6, “Histaklut Pnimit,” Item 17, Lesson 31
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Paint The World We Want!

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: You say that we should feel what The Study of the Ten Sefirot (TES) talks about, but to me it seems totally unrealistic. I’ve never felt what is behind these words, such as: “Partzufim,” (faces) “Sefirot,” “Bet D’Hitlabshut,” “Aviut,” (coarseness). Reading The Zohar and the essays arouses a feeling in me, but TES is like “a desert”; I have nothing to cling to. What am I doing wrong, after all I’m trying with all my strength?

Answer: What? You really don’t feel what Bet D’Hitlabshut is? It’s as if a cloud has clothed in you and released you from the burden of the ego, and suddenly you’re floating above the ground. It’s such a force that gives you the ability to detach from the ground, from your will to receive. Aviut, the coarseness, is obvious to all; it’s as if additional weights have been put on you.

Now think, what additional force you need from Above to elevate you along with all the extra burden you now have chained to your legs, and that is how you grow.

It only refers to the relationship between both desires: receiving and bestowal, two forces painting your entire reality, depending on which is greater and in what form they exist.

The same thing takes place in our world in which there are only two forces, “plus” and “minus,” stabilizing everything that exists. Whatever you feel consists of two opposite forces. And you feel them particularly as a result of their oppositeness, to the extent of which you can discern their oppositeness in all types of forms. Our entire reality is based on that, other than that we know nothing.

Actually, there are numerous additional things, but we simply aren’t capable of imagining them. The wisdom of Kabbalah explains the simple truth to us: Two forces exist and are constantly in all sorts of relationships between them.

And I stand in the middle between them and can determine the situation myself. First, I need to catch both of them and hold them. Now, I can decide how to manage them in order to paint a world for myself as I like!

At first, I need to see that no world exists. I have frozen this picture right now, as if I stopped a scene in a movie and there’s nothing else, the film doesn’t move on. And now I reveal how I can build a world like Harry Potter’s adventures by myself.

I build it myself, there I have all the means (desires), there is order to the actions, the rules. However, I learn this program and accordingly compose the reality by myself, as much as I can. The more I penetrate deeper, the more options I have until Ein Sof (Infinity), actually, from pole to pole. So, you can’t imagine anything else because you, yourself, are built in that form. Thus, you don’t feel any limitations in what you’ve been given.

In the meantime, you have been given one reality: small, beastly and temporary, so that you’ll learn to catch it, hold it and begin to build everything onward from it, whatever you wish. You have been given a single image, a frame in a movie; onward, proceed onward!

The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches you this construction. It only includes two forces and a system that you are told operates based on the relationship between both forces: Hitlabshut (clothed) and Aviut (coarseness), the force of the Light and forces of the desire. Everything changes according to their cooperation, at one time one force increases, and another time the other does. You are taught the basic rules of the work with them.

Indeed, before you matured and emerged into life in this imaginary, corporeal world, you were taught how to exist in it. It’s the same regarding the spiritual world as well. Only instead of one small image, flat and temporary in this life, the entrance inside is being revealed to you. Would you like to? Go in!

However, it’s on the condition that you build your world by yourself. The spiritual world has no form of its own; you are the one painting it. You are ready, please, go in. You are given two forces to use to build in accordance with the extent of your equivalence of form with the Creator.

You may say that you’re limited somehow because you already get a certain image upfront. Truly, that is where your ability to choose is determined, yet you also won’t need anything else. If you choose the best relationship of current conditions to the extent of your abilities each time, then you’ll always build the steps of the ladder higher up and you won’t feel any limitations in them.

In our world, you actually feel yourself limited in everything. Here there are directions, but not there. Everything is open before you.

Thus, while studying TES, we constantly try to feel more. It’s a kind of physics of the upper world, and of course, we learn very dry, technical details: The Light expands, the desires act among them. However, that’s only because we don’t live in that world and don’t reveal it in our desires; hence, we perceive them as dry. Just understand that we’re learning how to build a world for each and every one!
[68856]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/5/12, The Study of the Ten Sefirot

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The Escape From The Kingdom Of Hatred

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe don’t go through the level of the “forefathers,” and all that happened at the beginning: “First Man,” Babel, the Land of Canaan, Jacob and his twelve sons, the descent to Egypt. We begin to discover ourselves as already in Egypt. The time before that belongs to the “forefathers” and is incorporated in us in the form of Reshimot (reminiscences, informational genes), our internal attributes.

We begin to work in Egypt until we discover that we are in an egoistic desire and that we have to escape it because we receive less and less vitality from it. Years go by until we discover this in order to escape.

If at the same time we are in a group and we help one another, it says “and the Children of Israel sighed from the work,” which means everyone together. The exodus from Egypt takes place together.

The exodus from Egypt is called the exodus from detachment and separation to connection and unity. It isn’t a physical exodus from a geographic location. In Egypt we discover that we are separated by our ego. All the work in the exile of Egypt is in trying to connect with each other and our not being able to do so. We discover that it is Pharaoh who disturbs us because he stands in our way and separates us.

And then we keep working on the connection, each time discovering that it is impossible. Then Moses appears, kills the Egyptian, and escapes to the desert for 40 years. We work on the connection all the time, until Moses returns, goes to Pharaoh and demands “Let my people go,” which means, let us connect.

I want to connect with those who seem to be strangers now. It is Pharaoh who shows them to me as strangers by depicting them as being outside myself, while I am asking for a chance to connect with them. Let Pharaoh stay. I want to connect above him. In order to do that I need an even greater force, above all his great desire and ego that spins me around as he wishes.

So I have to ask my ego to restrict itself and to stop controlling me. With this demand I come to Pharaoh. Pharaoh answers: “Do you want me to come down from my height, from my throne?” He only hardens his heart, and so I need the Creator to be even stronger than Pharaoh.

This is Pharaoh’s mission, to raise the Creator in my eyes so that I am forced to increasingly appreciate the general power of bestowal prevailing in nature. Only this will give us the opportunity to connect with each other.

We have to imagine what Egypt is correctly. The Creator should constantly become more important for me; otherwise, I will never be able to connect with the friends, and that is the “exodus from Egypt,” and I will stay in exile forever.

Egypt is called separation. And where am I running to? I want to connect above this separation, above the hatred that is revealed to me, above Mount Sinai (a mountain of hatred), and so I leave Egypt. Such an act is called “exodus.”
[68253]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/5/12. Shamati #159

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It Is All A Matter Of Intention

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Today an expert has to study his whole life in order to “catch up” with the changes in his field. One way or another, science discovers accurate absolute laws. Do such laws exist for those who yearn for spirituality? For example, are there clear, unchanging formulas without which we will not attain our goal?

Answer: What are you actually studying in the lessons? We can describe our egoistic desire as a “box.” This is the material. Above it there is the intention of in order to receive, and that is the problem. The material of the desire is stable, unchanging. It is only the intention that changes by changing all of our reality.

So ignore the material, it is unchangeable. But if you change the intention, then the feeling within the material will change drastically. You will be able to do that only by evoking it to change.

Today we fill ourselves by the egoistic intention. It is among us in our mutual relations. The desire to receive is aimed at itself; it wants to receive in order to receive. As a result, we all feel reality in the form of “this world.”

There are five phases between the intention of in order to receive and the intention of in order to bestow, or 125 steps. It is only about the intention! If I learn to use it correctly, a greater desire is revealed time after time. This is how I transcend the “Machsom” (barrier), I restrict myself by keeping myself from treating others badly, then I build a good attitude towards others, and then I bestow upon them. Then it turns out that others, and in fact the whole “field of work,” is actually myself that is gradually revealed to me.

All this is according to the stabilization of the intention. There is nothing we should worry about except the intention. The only remedy is to evoke among us a concealed internal power that will change our intention. Then, gradually, in our environment, we will discover the worlds of Assyia, Yetzira, Beria, Atzilut, Adam Kadmon, and the world of Ein Sof. We will discover them here, among us, and not somewhere in unknown distances.

I should only discover an attraction, a vector inside my desire that is aimed at changing the attitude to others, which is the intention. Let’s hope we succeed in preparing and doing that in the Arava convention in the desert.
[68250]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/3/12, The Zohar

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 03.04.12

Preparation to the Lesson
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Shamati #203 “Man’s Pride Shall Bring Him Low“
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Chapter “Beresheet (Genesis),” “Pure Marble Stones,” Item 252, Lesson 73
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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 03.02.12

Preparation to the Lesson
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Shamati #35 “Concerning the Vitality of Kedusha“
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Chapter “Beresheet (Genesis),” “Moses and Two Messiahs,” (Starting with: “The Vav of Gachon”), Item 251, Lesson 72
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The Invincible Weapon Of Light

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What does a person have to clarify in order to reach a deficiency?

Answer: A person shouldn’t think about a deficiency. A deficiency should be revealed by the clarification and not that the clarification is revealed by the deficiency. First, I clarify what the greatness of the Creator is. This is what I am attracted to. I follow the right line all the time, I don’t torture myself, I don’t criticize for no reason, I don’t look for descents and falls and empty clarifications. If I do look for that, it is as if I do it without the Light and without the Light I cannot clarify anything.

I am always drawn to the right and to the Light, to adhesion, as much as I can express it. By being drawn to it in the study, in dissemination, and in participation in the group, I begin to discover to what extent I am not part of it. It is already the revelation of evil, as the Light reveals the evil and it isn’t me who looks for it and discovers whatever I feel like.

The advancement and the clarification are done by the good, by the Light. Only with the help of the Light can I clarify things. I don’t fight evil by myself! I am not a hero like different warriors in this world. My overcoming is in turning to the Creator instead of fighting evil directly, so that He will fight my evil and clarify it. The Creator will fight for us and we only have to raise our hands to Him. This how the Creator’s war with Amalek takes place, and in general the whole struggle with the ego.

The Creator says: “Come to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart!” the Creator always goes to war Himself, “the Lord is a man of war,” and not a person. A person should be the opposite, and constantly clarify the right point to approach in order to stand between the good and the evil and to direct them correctly in this war, and not that he himself fights.

It is a very big mistake students make, and it is hard to convince them that being a hero is not in overcoming evil by themselves but in bringing the Light to fight and overcome evil. A lot of experience is needed here.
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/29/12, Writings of Rabash

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Love Beyond Infinity

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Do we need to add more love from ourselves at each spiritual degree, and if yes, how is this done?

Answer: These degrees are still far away from us, but from the beginning we receive the desires (tools) for this thanks to our rising above our ego and trying to connect with the group, the friends, and to reach mutual guarantee and adhesion.

Thereby we build the vessels that can transcend one’s private calculation. I try to perform a general calculation, attempting to feel how another person can be more important to me than myself. These are already the first steps towards love.

Through these steps, we first of all build within ourselves an ability to love, beginning with the desire to simply feel the other. Afterwards, we want to feel the other like oneself, and then to feel him more than oneself, to begin to live in him, to want to fill him. Thus we reach a state where the Light of Hassidim (Mercy) fills all of our Kli, and thus we reach love.

We begin to receive the desires of the other (AHP) and to work with them so that filling the other will become our only concern. In this way we come to total devotion and absolute love.

When we are in absolute love, we constantly look for what else can be added to it. When we reach a certain degree, the Creator reveals to us more and more empty spaces, that is, higher and higher degrees. But when we reach complete love in the world of Infinity, it seems to us that as a result of complete mutual love and the absence of deficiency, a new dimension will open for us beyond the level of the world of Infinity. This is already the transition beyond the limits of love.

Indeed, according to our understanding and reason, absolute love cannot exist. If there is only white or only black, the creature loses its sensations. This is what happens with a son who feels the absolute love of his father. He has nothing to attain, nothing to work for, there is no empty space that he has to fill if he feels that no action of his, even the worst or the best, will change his father’s attitude towards him.

This is the problem. After all, each time he has to feel some response. In this interaction of bestowal and reception he perceives himself. Otherwise he won’t feel anything. His father, from his endless love, annuls the son. Thus the Creator conceals Himself.

And how it will be in end of correction, this we cannot tell now. Evidently, a new space will be discovered, in which the creature will rise to some kind of higher existence. It will happen after adhesion to the Creator and absolute love, after having felt the Creator fully.
[69643]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/13/2012, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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