Entries in the 'Daily Kabbalah Lesson' Category

“I Sat Down Under His Shadow With Great Delight…”

Dr. Michael LaitmanIt is customary to celebrate the holiday of Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles) in a temporary structure built specifically for this purpose, the Sukkah. The covering of the Sukkah (Skhakh) is the most important part of it. Some people even kiss the covering because it symbolizes the screen, the shade that you built. But you build this covering from waste material, “the waste of barn and winery,” meaning from the places where we make bread, which symbolizes the Light of Hassadim (Mercy), and wine, which symbolizes the Light of Hochma (Wisdom).

When the two are connected correctly, a person builds a screen from this waste, meaning from what he has rejected and disrespected before. Now he raises it above his head, by faith above reason, and thereby builds a shade for himself, about which it says in the Song of Songs: “I sat down under his shadow with great delight….” Thus a person acquires the vessel, into which the Light clothes: the Light of Hochma enters inside the Light of Hassadim. Then the waste is not garbage anymore but something important to him. This is how a person advances spiritually.

The symbol of the waste that turns into the most important thing is similar to the way children grow by playing games. It’s just like a little girl, who as a child loved her rag doll more than anything and didn’t want to play with a real baby,  when she grows up, as an adult, she enjoys playing with a real baby and not a doll. It is the same with us. We can’t touch a true pleasure and understand that namely it is the real thing.

Until we grew up, we needed false pleasures, in the form of a plastic or rag doll, and we couldn’t switch to something real. This is the time of childhood! Until our vessels grew, we couldn’t understand that playing with a real baby can bring us pleasure.

However, when we mature, our vessels grow. Hence, our work is to raise ourselves. In spirituality we don’t grow like in corporeal life where everything happens naturally. If a person works in order to keep himself from getting off the path despite the obstacles, if he asks for the Light and enables it to operate on him, then he gradually obtains a desire that understands what true pleasures are.

The disregard he felt for the real baby becomes his corrected vessel for receiving the right pleasure. Now he understands how naive his play with the toy cars and the rag dolls was. But it was important because he grew thanks to it.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/11/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Approaching The Light

Dr. Michael LaitmanDuring the reading of The Book of Zohar, each one needs to demand what seems to him to be most important. But one needs to understand that by reading any Kabbalistic book and especially The Zohar, we awaken the Light that Reforms. This Light works on us to the extent that we are similar to it.

Suppose a wind blows on me. If I move straight towards it, in exactly the same line as it does, it influences me to the maximum. But if I move towards it at an angle, then according to this angle, I lessen its influence on me. If I am at a 90 degree angle in relation to it, I feel the influence as if it throws me aside. If I oppose it, meaning turn my back to it by 180 degrees, then it influences me in the opposite direction.

Everything depends on my position in relation to the Light. If I connect to it, the Torah for me is the elixir of life, but if I oppose it, the Torah becomes the potion of death for me. The Light itself operates all the time.

Thus Kabbalists warn us not to open Kabbalistic books without the correct intention. It was forbidden in Kabbalah, and Kabbalists frightened people because they didn’t want to inflict any harm on them.

But now we are already in a state where it is permitted for everyone to study the wisdom of Kabbalah since we are all becoming mutually connected and different laws are operating here. But when we want to reveal the spiritual world, we must position ourselves directly towards the Light. Will it be the Light that Reforms or the opposite? Each person has to decide for himself.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/10/2011, The Zohar

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The Building Blocks Of Creation

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Book of the Zohar, Chapter “Pekudei (Accounts),” Item 157: The waters rise and fall in the chairs, illuminating from below upward and from above downward. Those who descended mine the deeps and break them. Those who rise enter through those holes in the stones, in the Masach de Peh de Rosh ZA, rising and filling for seven days, which are the seven Malchuts from Chazeh and above.

The Zohar only talks about the connection of the desires: how they come together, what combinations of connections are created as a result of this, and what Lights are revealed according to the equivalence of form between the connections of desires and the Light, with the Light being the attribute of bestowal they discover between them.

To the measure that you correct the general system and connect different desires and their groups together, to that measure you enliven the system. And you discover that the attribute of bestowal, the Light, vitality and life, is flowing in it. There is nothing else but this. Outside of this system, neither the Creator nor the created being exist; everything is within it. It stands before us as broken because this is the way we discover it from within our uncorrected attributes. This is in order for us to attain, though our connection, its attributes, trends, and parts, and how they work together.

We deal with live “building blocks”: You join the separate parts, they become alive. Thus, gradually, as you join more and more parts, you revive the entire system. It begins to operate, and you discover the various phenomena in it.

We have no other work. Now, at this time, we approach the practical work of uniting our desires, our thoughts. They reveal themselves before us as more and more connected from day to day. Thus it seems to us that the world is confused, but it is us who are confused. We don’t understand that the world is becoming more connected than we are. We are shown that there is a breakage between us, a crisis.

We must understand that this breakage is in our perception. We have to begin to connect, to unite our desires. Kabbalists talk to us only about this, about one only place that needs to be corrected: the ties between us.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/10/2011, The Zohar

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 10.17.11

Writings of Rabash “What Is the Pact in the Work”
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Chapter “Pekudei (Accounts),” “The Measuring Cord and the Measuring Reed,” Item 253, Lesson 11
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Talmud Eser Sefirot Part 6, Chapter 15, Question 288, Lesson 13
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Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah, Item 153, Lesson 67
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Writings of Baal HaSulam “Peace in the World,” “The Well-Being of a Certain Collective and the Well-Being of the Whole World,” Lesson 8
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Where’s The Clutch Pedal?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: People agree with the idea of mutual guarantee, but they don’t know what to do with it. People accept our explanations in good will, but what next?

Answer: This is enough. First you give a person an explanation of the situation with the integral interconnection, informing him of the fact that in our global world it is inadmissible to give in to protectionism and isolationism. “It’s none of my business” is no longer a viable excuse. We are all interconnected like cogwheels whether we want it or not and there is no clutch pedal that could separate us from one another. There is no other way to go: We simply have to take one another into consideration, to understand the essence of mutual unification and the single human system. Only by mastering its laws will we be able to decide what we should do together from here on.

In the past we were separate and I was able to take anything I wanted from you for my own needs. But now, when we are welded together, I do not take away yet another “sack” from you, but simply move it around from one place to another in the common warehouse. And eventually, this will harm me.

We still don’t realize the meaning of “a single system.” If you don’t take all of its parts into consideration, then you cannot act. The world today is demonstrating the general interconnection to us, and this is just the first, smallest, most proximate spiritual level. Without ascending to it, we won’t be able to fix anything in our lives. From one day to the next, the external pressure will grow, the screws will tighten more, and the conditions of this first level will advance clearer, more precise demands to us.

Eventually we will have to get to know the single system, understand it, include it inside ourselves, and adjust ourselves on the inside to its laws. Then we will suddenly see abundance everywhere. As soon as we attain unity, the abundance will come to light. It will become apparent that peace and order reign everywhere, and we have reached peace on the first spiritual degree.

After that the next degree becomes revealed, and we are again faced by disorder, injustice, chaos…. That is how we continually discover our non-conformity to the following level of ascent.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/16/11, “Peace in the World”

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You Won’t Achieve Peace By Waving Your Fists In The Air

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Yesterday, on October 15th, an event was held in Tel Aviv called “Uniting for change in the world.” During one of the discussions an activist said that he is sorry about how weak the protestors are, “We won’t achieve anything because we let the authorities take apart our tent cities. We have to be more aggressive to be heard….”

Answer: This is the regular egoistic approach. We acted this way throughout all of history. But who said this is fair or just? That kind of struggle won’t lead to any results because any “accomplishment” will be achieved at someone’s expense. What’s required here is general social agreement, compensation via all-enveloping consideration.

In reality, all of the disorders, all the hatred and animosity, all demands of the social protest are intended for us to reveal the upper force. If people try to establish good relationships on the social plane, they will reveal nothing but evil. In the egoistic reality, there is no hope for peace. However, while they are inside of that reality, they cannot imagine or envision anything different.

This is why people are demanding to take money away from the rich. We already know the price of pretty words about fair distribution.

Therefore, we have to remember that we are dealing with “children” who do not understand the ways of the universe, are in no way connected to the forces operating in nature, and do not see the true, final goal. It’s as if I take my disobedient child by the hand and lead him in the right direction. On the way he shouts next to every fast food stand, “I want ice cream! I want potato chips!” So what should I do? I buy him an ice-cream and lead him further since otherwise he would remain in the same place and continue going wild pointlessly.

This depends on who organizes the correction. If we give the instigators freedom to act, their “correction” will lead to disorders and bloodshed, which might have unpredictable consequences, both in separate countries and in the whole world. Besides, they won’t attain what they desire because they are going against the goal of creation. Instead of correcting the interconnection between people, only hatred will become revealed in them, more and more. That means one way or another, we will have to explain the real state of affairs to the world.

As for those who “wave their fists in the air,” their rants will end with the first blow that misses. We were all young and hot-blooded once. Everyone, including the government, understands that at this age it’s necessary to let a person “go wild.” But nothing can be achieved that way.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/16/11, “Peace in the World”

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Until The End Of Intermission

Dr. Michael LaitmanUntil any serious economic blows actually take place, we disseminate this knowledge only unassumingly, we prepare ourselves, build an organization and all its departments, and work on materials. For now we will try to act as we can through our groups and the people who join us.

But the real dissemination opportunities will open when the economy collapses, and the world will really need it. There is no point in coming out before this signal from the Creator because we will not be heard anyway.

First, the old life style must collapse so people would understand that we will not be able to survive in this egoistic system, according to the current method, with our current economic and human relations. Popular unrests and riots will be happening around the world, governments will lose control of the situation, and the World Bank will lose control over finances.  Banks, loans, credits, and everything else will stop working and will barely function to provide us with the opportunity to buy food and earn a certain minimum. There will be an economic stagnation, which will make everyone equal and push everyone below the poverty line.

And then it will be possible to speak to the people, or maybe a little before then. But without the crisis, there will be no opportunity to go out on the streets and announce the idea of mutual guarantee. We know that Baal HaSulam was trying to also do it under the conditions of an impending war and all the problems associated with it. But people were not yet feeling it in their pockets, and this is why nothing was bothering them.

The same thing is happening today: People are willing to listen only to the extent of the problems they experience in their pockets. So far the demonstrations have originated on Wall Street and several other places, but undoubtedly, they will gain their full force over the course of this year.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/2/2011, Shamati #219

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Nature Is The Most Cunning Politician

Dr. Michael LaitmanIt all began when the desire to receive that the Creator created was shattered and became egotistic, and its different parts distanced from one another. We started to feel that we exist inside our egoism, each by himself.

This is how we evolved starting from an absolute zero and passing through the still, animate, and vegetative levels of development, whereby we developed instinctively. Eventually, we reached the fourth stage of the development of desire, when we already must develop consciously. The world is entering this stage now.

This process actually started a long time ago, from the first man (Adam Ha Rishon), from ancient Babel, and then developed gradually, making a big leap at the time of the ARI. During all this time our desire connected more closely, and thanks to this connection new and more complex creatures and forms of the still, vegetative, and animate nature came into being. The plus connected with the minus, and the mutual influence among them begot creatures from amoeba to a multitude of different animals.

The more the separate parts connected to one another and increased the cooperation between them, the more evolution advanced. At the first stages of connection, the connection occurred instinctively, under nature’s pressure that pushed evolution forward. And so evolution reached the level of man in which the instinctive connection to certain social forms began: families, tribes, then cities, and states. Today the whole world is connected. That is, we observe a clear tendency towards connection.

Accordingly, the egoistic desire in man also became more intricate and complex. First it was composed of many different desires, but then the different desires connected more closely and penetrated one another. On top of classical science with its clear differentiation into disciplines, the synergy of different scientific areas occurs. Thus, all the laws in physics, chemistry, and biology come together and gradually form a unified picture of nature.

Our thoughts and desires become increasingly intertwined and incorporated into one another, and thanks to this we know the world more deeply. But the truth is that this world does not exist—we are in an ocean of Light! But the more complex my desire to receive becomes, the more I feel the world is revealed to me like it is. It’s like there are all these people around me, in fact, are part of my own desires. Now they only seem to me as strangers, but when we connect, we become “one man with one heart.”

The only intention of nature, be it the surrounding nature or the inner one, in man and his understanding, is directed at an increasingly tighter connection of the shattered desire to receive. We are in a constant process of connection, but today we’ve entered an era when this aspiration has to be conscious and understood by us. Nature is at the last, the fourth, level of its development, and it compels us to know its tendency and to support it. We need to justify, agree with, and follow it.

We cannot continue to develop instinctively like in the past when nature developed our desire and pushed us to perform certain actions. It sent us to discover America and encouraged us to perform many other things. We obeyed our desires, invented, and built.

But this is no longer the case. Today you have a choice: Do you want to do it or not, does it seem important to you or not? If it doesn’t seem important to you, nature begins to teach you indirectly so as not to deprive you of your free will. It’s just like a child who refuses to listen to his parents, and so they are forced to act cunningly and arrange difficulties for the child so that he will come to them by himself and ask for help. This is how nature plays with us, just like with a child, so as not to deprive us of the awareness, the understanding, and the agreement.

Nature pressures us, pushes us forward, and shows us the right direction. Yet it doesn’t compel us to advance. Nature is a very cunning politician, and we can learn a lot from it.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/10/2011, Shamati #85

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The Economic Crisis As A Gate To The New World

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Modern economy measures economic prosperity using real indicators and indexes. Will the economy of the transition period have its own standard, an “index of mutual guarantee?” How will we measure it?

Answer: It will also be measured by money. Money (Kesef in Hebrew) means covering (Kisuf), the screen.

Question: Who will determine this index?

Answer: A single regulatory body that operates according to needs and also according to the level that everyone is able to connect to it in the equivalence of form. It may very well be that it is already possible to write the formula for it now. These things are not that far-fetched.

First, we have to find the right words and to write several articles about the essence of the current economy, about its history and basis, and about the foundation the mutual connection between people is built on. After all, the economy is the expression of our connections, our egoism. But together with it, it is also related to politics and feelings, to advertising and lies of the modern world. Economics is not a precise science because it encompasses human feelings and connections between people.

If the economy didn’t include our sensations, if it only reflected revenues and expenses, we wouldn’t have faced any crisis or had any problems at all. However, as Baal HaSulam writes in the article “Peace in the World,” we cannot measure efforts, success, satisfaction, and human relations by money alone. For example, I don’t want to work with someone even if I make a thousand dollars a day, and I am ready to work with someone else for fifty dollars.

We are not machines, and so the economy is not an accurate science, but rather something in between. We measure what we can, but quite often our ego spoils the “rigid” calculations, and we can’t cope with that.

This is done on purpose. The Creator “trips us up” from the very start: We are created different, and we can’t measure each other by a yardstick. This is where our economic problems stem from.

When will we be able to build the ideal economy? When we are able to measure our desires and passions, all aspects of our inner world. This is why we see that economists are helpless without Kabbalists. Working alone, they only spoil everything.

Therefore, we have to show them that it is possible to create a new measuring system. First, we must write a series of articles about the economy as the reflection of our relationships, including emotional ones. This psychological rationale will enable us to smoothly bring the reader to Kabbalah.

It isn’t by chance that the economic crisis has become a kind of a “gate” to the new world. It reflects the picture of our world in the most comprehensive way, and by that we will feel what we lack in order to survive and save ourselves.

And what we lack is mutual guarantee. What is it? Mutual guarantee makes up for the human factors that the economy fails to take into account. It is impossible to measure them with money, but we can bridge this gap in advance. It isn’t clear why one person has to receive two pounds of fulfillment, the other a pound, while the third a pound and a half. Economics cannot provide an answer to that, but we compensate for its deficiencies with the help of the spiritual power. When we rise above all our desires, which are so different, we fill them with a higher calculation, which will become a defining feature of the future economy.

Thereby, we supplement the financial economy with the economy of Gematria. According to it, if a person exerts maximum according to the attributes he received from the Creator, he is in one system together with everyone else, in end of correction. Whether you like it or not, you won’t be able to calculate anything correctly in any other way. The crisis will be felt until the end of correction, until the emotional compensation based on mutual connection will compensate for all the economic differences by one hundred percent.

One of my neighbors receives more than I do, another receives less, and a third one receives something totally different. Looking at them, I have to compensate for all these differences with my attitude. Thus the material economy and the economy of the screens will complete one another. The two accounts—the corporeal and the spiritual—will become one and will totally complete one another.

This is why humanity will not be able to bear the economic crisis. And it’s not about the fact that it concerns food shortage—this is because the differences between people are revealed here. We see it as the gap between the rich and the poor, but essentially, this is the manifestation of the need to compensate, to reconcile people. We are looking for an opportunity to compensate for our inborn differences so that everyone could stand equal to others. This is what the economic crisis reveals to us.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/2/2011, Shamati #219

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We Are Educators

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: A lot of people in the world advocate cooperation and caring for others. How can we connect to them?

Answer: We don’t connect to them. There are quite a few “good-hearted ” individuals who volunteer in hospitals, help the needy, or establish different charity organizations and funds. They help people and that’s very good. According to Baal HaSulam and sociological surveys, about 10% of humanity are altruists.

Today, however, for the first time in history, we have reached a crucial point in our development, and people need to be taught the laws of the world they are entering. Our goal is not another egoistic sweetening, not help for the poor, or a cosmetic redistribution of resources in their favor.

No, humanity is about to enter a new dimension in which we have to be connected among us globally and integrally. Nature starts giving us hints, as if saying: “This is how you should be from now on—connected organically, as one man with one heart, like all my other parts. Stop developing inside me like cancer.”

No one besides us truly understands what is happening. Therefore, we have to teach people. We are an educational organization whose only goal is to teach the laws of the global world.

The mutual connection is appearing everywhere. We can’t separate, even if we wanted to. The only way to cut off our connection is by war, but that won’t help either because the inner ties between us will not disappear. The war will soon be over, and we will have to resume the connection, only under much more difficult conditions.

Today the crisis destroys all aspects of life. We have to see this situation as a springboard to the next level. The evolution of nature compels us to move on to the new stage.

What will we gain by that? We will gain the new system. By this mutual work, by mutual connection, we will discover nature’s internal force, its internal mechanisms—and will rise to a new level of existence. First we will get rid of all the daily problems, and in addition, we will reach the next dimension.

So there is no other choice: Nature compels us to reach that. This is why we don’t give out gifts for the holidays. We leave that to other organizations. We are only busy with the new, integral education. Just as kindergartens and schools prepare kids for life in our world, we now have to prepare all of humanity to life in the world that has manifested to us in which we are all globally connected.

The upper, single, integral system is coming closer to our human system destroyed by egoism. If they clash, there will be a horrible explosion.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/7/2011, “One Commandment”

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