Question: Baal HaSulam’s words sound like a utopia. Clearly, if every person works for the common good, then everyone will be well off. But do we have the means to create that kind of society?

Answer: Of course we do. There is a set of elementary means that make it possible to do this easily and willingly, while being imbued with enthusiasm and providing enormous reward for yourself. Even from the purely egoistic point of view, it’s worth it because you will get rid of all the troubles of this world, will set up good relationships with other people, and in them you will acquire a new world, full of goodness. So what more could you want?

“But how can this be done?” you ask. The answer is: by realizing your free choice through creating an environment around you that will constantly brainwash you and press on your feelings with the profit of bestowal.

So what’s the problem? Everything is very logical. And if we don’t want it, then several disasters in the near future will change our priorities. When you lose work, when your fridge goes empty, when your children will demand something that you can’t possibly do for them, when your wife starts putting pressure on you, then not finding any alternative, you will discover that there is correction for this world, after all.

In reality, you evoke Nature’s harsh attitude to you yourself. You put yourself in conflict with it by not corresponding to the demands it is presenting to you. And these demands are clear: a global, integral, equal unification for all. We have to take an example from nature. On this path we will reach success, and on any other—only suffering. That is how the law of equivalence of form is expressed which operates in physics, biology, and all other fields. Until today only human society posed an exception, but today the time has come to observe this law in society as well, and to do it by our own desire.

So go ahead—try it. If you can’t do it, then you will suffer due to violating the law until it forces you to observe it. This is what always happens in the process of natural development. Previously you also received blows of differing intensity, which pushed you forward without you even being aware of it most of the time. You experienced pressure from different sides and solved the problems that emerged. Sometimes you had to wage wars and revolutions, which are greater impulses toward appeasement, when things were simply unbearable anymore.

That is how you developed until now and that is how you will develop from now on. You will always have an opportunity to take the next step. After all, you are matter that feels, a desire for pleasure, and this desire can be turned into anything. Just press in the right place with the right force, and it already shouts, “I want!” It shouts because it does not wish to suffer. Through this escape from suffering, you can be taught greater wisdom and be brought to bestowal as the desired redemption.

We know from our own experience that we can easily change our opinion depending on the circumstances. It’s enough for the circumstances to change and we immediately make a different calculation, raising a new truth onto the pedestal.

“What kind of truth is that? You just have greater profit there.” But you object, “No, it’s the truth!” And you say this from the bottom of your heart, even though it’s the sincerity of the belly, which forced you to rethink things. That is how the desire for pleasure operates in every one of us.

Therefore, if we don’t want to advance consciously, with awareness, then Nature will force us to do it. By our disagreement with its program of development, we create the future unpleasant states ourselves. Previously evolution led us “on a short leash,” but now everything is different. It’s as if you have been transferred to “standby mode” and given the opportunity to advance independently: Try to do something, activate your free choice, start organizing an environment.

However, if we don’t do that, then some time later, negative occurrences will be expressed in society, which will force us to budge. For example, today we are discovering that people cannot begin correction yet and cannot hear us. We are also guilty of that because we haven’t yet learned to disseminate materials that are clear and that warm every person’s heart. As a result, the next state is being revealed: The world feels bad, and we feel even worse. That’s because at the end of the day, the work is our responsibility.

If we do not wish to unite in the good way and turn to the world with the force of our unity, then we will desire it from the bad way. We can’t run away from this mission, just like Jonah the prophet could not escape his predestination.
[58529]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/24/11, “Peace in the World”

Related Material:
Man Is The Only Thing In Reality That Needs Correcting
Energy That Will Save The World
We Cannot Deceive The Law Of Nature

Filed under: Crisis, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Evolution, Free Will, Q&A, Society, Suffering, Unity, World - No Comments →

Question: By our nature, every one of us tries to use others to the utmost, without taking the common good into account. So how can a regular person start taking others into consideration?

Answer: This can only happen with the help of the Light that Reforms.

You are forgetting that there is a force operating in creation which drives us. We are puppets. I cease being a puppet when I ask the Light to change me. I do not do anything on my own. The Light makes the actions in the vessels. However, I can influence it with my desire, with my request, “Change me more, accelerate my development.” This is the only thing I can ask from it.

If I attract it, then I advance by the path of acceleration, and this is my only possible personal contribution. Development unfolds one way or another. The only difference is in the extent of the troubles and suffering. I can either advance quickly, consciously, with awareness, by my own desire, or slowly, with “a lot of blood spilled.” But one way or another, I evoke the Lights that change me.

Naturally, I want to use the other for my own benefit and I will never want to unite with him. Why would I? I don’t have some hidden button that can switch the egoistic desire to an altruistic one.

However, if I use the environment and the study, if I persuade myself, if I form a “desire without a desire,” “a prayer before a prayer,” then all of my requests accumulate and work, even if they are insincere, and gradually I truly do begin to deem the quality of bestowal, love, and unification important. “There’s something worthwhile there, after all. I shouldn’t let it go by. It’ll come in handy.”

Sometimes I want it and sometimes I don’t. Later the desire no longer disappears, but it is small. And eventually, from the distant states, I reach a firm, decisive desire: “I want it, and that’s all.” Why? “Because.” What will you get out of it? “I can’t explain that. You wouldn’t understand anyway.” But still? “The Light is working on me. It has changed me and now I want this. The Light changed me because I resorted to all kinds of tricks and contrivances. I did everything I could, I made efforts, and I found.”

We should never forget this principle: Everything is done by the Light, and we can awaken it. Therein lies our free choice. Don’t look for an opportunity to change yourself directly and don’t eat yourself up for being weak. To achieve inner changes, we always have to turn to the Light. And that means constantly raising our prayer to the upper one.
[58422]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/23/11, “Peace in the World”

Related Material:
Acceleration Above Reason
To Grow Is To Change
Bring Your Hatred To The Light

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Free Will, Inner Work, Prayer and Intention, Q&A, Suffering - No Comments →

The economic system of today’s world is the most obvious demonstration of our connection with one another. That’s because we are primarily connected through the economy, production, and trade. And we see that there are several thousand large corporations in the world that are interconnected, that envelop the whole world, not giving us a chance to move.

But they also can’t move! And now, to their shock, they are discovering this and don’t know what to do. They don’t have any freedom of movement in relation to one another.

This is how the common, global system of mutual guarantee is being revealed to us. But we don’t desire it, we don’t aspire to it from our end. Yet nature, the Creator, is showing us the mutual guarantee, our connection with one another. Under these conditions, how can my mind possibly help me?

The mind can only help me in one regard: to leave my animate mind and start learning, becoming familiar with this system.

However, this system is not built according to my earthly mind because my mind is personal, individual. It helps me exist in this egoistic world, showing me how to win more and do more for my own benefit, thinking that others were created to serve me.

But now, when I am revealing a system with which I am firmly connected and on which I am fully dependent, my previous mind stops working. I have to adapt to this new system! It’s as if I come to some unknown place and first of all I try to take a close look at what’s around me, to learn the customs of this place in order to adapt to them. And once I get to know it well, I can start acting in it and improving my state.

But how can we get to know this global system in which we have found ourselves if we cannot figure it out with our earthly mind? Even all of these huge corporations which seem to control the world, are in reality not in control of anything. And this is now being revealed to them. The mind of every particular person individually does not work just as the corporate mind does not.

It turns out that I now have to discard my animate mind and acquire a new mind—an integral way of thinking. This will be the creative mind, the mind of the common system, meaning the mind of the Creator.

It won’t be easy for us to acquire it. We will have to develop ourselves, turn ourselves into one, connected whole, try to feel ourselves as one person, one system. Then we will attain this single, connected system and will thereby “wrap up” our own egoistic desire and connect with one another. That is how we will gradually build our common vessel, reuniting the parts of the broken Lego.

Within the connection between us, we will reveal the upper mind, the program, its essence, and then we will understand what is happening! Only in this case will our state be corrected.
[58353]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/21/11, “The Acting Mind”

Related Material:
Earning Only By Bestowal
Wishing Everyone An Easy Correction
The Will Of The Integral System

Filed under: Collective Soul, Crisis, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Economy, Egoism, Free Will, Mutual Guarantee, My Similarity to the Creator, Unity, World - No Comments →

In Kabbalah, nature implies forces, thoughts, matter, and everything that exists. It is still, vegetative, animate, and human matter pierced with a thought, a certain plan, according to which we develop.

Looking at history, we see that there is a certain plan that was implemented in life. We might say that it was an accident. However, it would be an “accident,” if for instance, a primate could write War and Peace.

But in nature everything is determined and tied to certain laws. If we were to “blow the thinnest layer of dust” off even the smallest, most superficial part of nature, we would see how wise and interconnected everything is in it. So why do we consider ourselves to be above nature? After all, we are just its creation, its part, and not the most perfect one.

For this reason, based on the things we learn in this enormous world, we see that it was made in a very wise, consecutive manner and develops according to a certain program. This program works for us. We are part of it and participate in the process of evolution.

First, still nature appeared on Earth. Then, the vegetative, animate, and then humans appeared, who also are part of the animate world because man is a biological, protein compound, subject to further development.

However, very strange things are happening to man. Unlike the other biological species, he seems to be developing independently, as if “from within.” His development assumes the development of the mind and feelings, meaning the development of the instruments for attainment of nature.

All this comes from the development of his desires. Desires beget thoughts in him. This means that man really is nature’s special element, even though he also falls under the same program of development.
[58088]
From the Talk on Mutual Guarantee 9/25/2011

Related Material:
The Critical Point
The Decline Of Egoistic Development
Nature Does Not Tolerate Imbalance

Filed under: Egoism, Free Will - No Comments →

The Light created the point of desire, the only creature, “out of absence.” And around this point, it was necessary to build a system in which this point could reach the level of the Light that begot it: to come to it in full understanding and conscious sensation.

All this had to be provided to the point except for one thing: freedom of choice in its development. However, all other means, qualities, and preconditions had to be granted.

It follows that there has to be a bridge between the Light and the point of darkness. The bridge has to become a system by which the Light makes a path to diminishing itself down to the level of the black point that emerged out of nothing.

The dark point in itself is opposite to the Light. It needs to absorb all forms that exist on the bridge between it and the Light. When it will include all existing forms into itself in the shape of internal preparations called “informational genes” (Reshimot), it will find itself on the opposite end of the system of the worlds. Then, under the influence of its own awakenings that arise from within, it will be able to begin to climb the degrees of these worlds and will come to know the Light by itself.

All means come to it from Above: the informational genes, the Light, forces, desires, and states. All of them, but one: The creature always retains the freedom of choice and decides by itself whether to use them for the sake of ascent or not. And this is the key!

Just as with the example of the Host and the guest: The guest is not at fault that he is hungry and has a good appetite. He is not at fault that he is poor! Nor is he at fault that there is a generous and powerful Host who knows precisely what appetite, desires, and taste the guest has, and who has prepared for him a suitable fulfillment, both in terns of quality and quantity.

Nothing hurts the guest’s dignity here if he knows how to behave with self-respect and not to rush to eat. If he knows how to conduct himself well, his shortcomings turn into merits, his weaknesses transform into courage, and his worries and complaints become a blessing of sanctity.
[56692]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/6/2011, “Pticha”

Related Material:
The Focal Point Of Freedom
The Only Degree Of Your Freedom
The Law To “Take After The Collective”

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

After Baal HaSulam made his great discernments: what is the Creator’s desire, the goal of creation, and the ways to attain it, he descended to us and explained it, and all that remains for us is to tune into his method. We have to try to understand it with our mind and feel it with our heart so the Light would pass through us and fill us, allowing us to understand the inner essence of his words.

Let every word he wrote start to come alive in us like an inner mechanism, a means, a vessel that will start working in us in a way that we won’t have to think. We don’t have to plan anything. This teaching will just start to live in us and carry out actions through us, by virtue of us annulling ourselves. This is the work of Galgalta ve Eynaim, which annul themselves for the sake of AHP, absorb its desires, and on the other hand, they unite with the Light and it begins to act through us.

We are not aware of what we are doing and we do not know what we have to do. But the Light aims us and carries out everything. It is written, “I am the first and I am the last” and “There is none else beside Him.”

The whole world annuls itself in this way. But if we annul ourselves relative the Light’s actions with our own efforts instead of simply being governed by the hand that drives us from the inside, like a puppet into which a puppeteer’s hand is dressed, then this is a very big difference. By annulling ourselves out of our own free choice, we come to feel this hand, which controls the whole world through us. From this hand we learn all of its customs, the whole game, the whole program. We begin to recognize Him, the one who governs, the upper force.

The whole world annuls itself, having no other choice. But we have to annul ourselves by our own desire, and if we do so, we will be able to become similar to Baal HaSulam, who did the same, and to other Kabbalists. By virtue of that, he went from being a simple slave of the Creator to a loyal servant through whom the entire wisdom flows, allowing him to attain Malchut of the world of infinity and become included in it in order to feel the entire universe and the entire Light filling it.

We have to be grateful to the Creator for sending us such a great soul. Baal HaSulam writes that he could not stand to watch people’s suffering any longer. But this does not mean the small egoistic suffering. After all, we are not looking for a better fulfillment for our body, like a greener meadow for our cow, but we want to know the one who governs us and makes everything move.

We want to understand, meet, and reveal Him so His mind and feelings would dress in us, to unite with Him so our heart and mind would merge with Him. Then all of creation, its goal, all the worlds that the Kabbalists tell us about, and even what is even higher than them and what we don’t even have a name for—all of this will become our real sensation and fulfillment. This is the state that this person prepared for us.

In all of our history there is no one who is dearer and more significant for us. Obviously, we are unable to measure the true height of every Kabbalist. They are all holy for us. But Baal HaSulam did for us what no person has done throughout all of history. And therefore we are proud of having a spiritual father of this stature who cares about us. We have to feel how with each passing day, as we advance further, he follows us and rejoices at every step we take, one step after another.
[56998]
From a talk at the meal devoted to Baal HaSulam’s memorial day, 10/8/11

Related Material:
Baal HaSulam’s Memorial Day
In Memory Of Baal HaSulam
Which Books Contain The Most Light?

Filed under: Free Will, Spiritual Teacher, Spirituality, Suffering - 1 Comment →

Question: It seems that suffering is inevitable and that we won’t be able to manage without it.…

Answer: However, you can replace it with the suffering of love. If those around you start “brainwashing you,” you will begin to appreciate bestowal: “Why don’t I bestow?” You will be walking around with this question from morning to night: “Why do I lack it? Where can I find it? Perhaps here? Perhaps there?” You will look for it everywhere as if hypnotized.

Then there will be no need for the blows—the internal blows will replace them. But they will come in the form of a yearning for bestowal, for the purpose of creation, and you will be connected to it directly. It all depends on those around you. They have to constantly “transmit” to you how important bestowal is, and then you will strive for it.

But here is a question: Don’t you remain at the animate level by acting according to the dictate of the environment? That’s correct. This is why people with the point in the heart are told: “You have to build the correct environment yourselves, as well as do it for those who don’t have free will in this. Their freedom is more modest; it is in joining you.”

If you fulfill your free will and build your environment, you will be able to build it for others too. The problem is in the fact that you don’t have the right environment. You haven’t built it, and so you are not influenced by it. Thus, you don’t pass it on to others. You can’t be the environment for them yet.

Don’t complain that you cannot bestow upon others. Instead, think about how you can bestow upon yourselves. There are no tricks here, only practical work. If we don’t do it, we can forget about correcting the world. Who will correct it? We as we at the moment?

We have to create such a strong environment so that we can become a system that bestows upon the whole world. It shouldn’t be only by the media, not only by TV, radio, and the Internet. This is necessary only to some extent. The main thing is that we will influence the world because we will already be in the system of souls, in the system of mutual connection between us, where everyone’s thoughts and desires flow constantly.

Now we are in this system as well, but we don’t control it because we haven’t acquired the power of bestowal. If we are equipped with the power of bestowal, we will control the general system and will convey the importance of bestowal to everyone. This is true bestowal upon the environment.

Let’s hope that we will be able to make this year a good year for the whole world.
[56542]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/2011, “Peace in the World”

Related Material:
The Alternative To Suffering
Learning For The Sake Of Daily Bread
What We Do Today Will Echo In The World Tomorrow

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Free Will, Group Work, Inner Work, Kabbalah Dissemination, Q&A - 1 Comment →

Question: Why would I suddenly want to be part of some new system?

Answer: You have no choice. We operate as slaves to our desire.

I may either have a desire to enter this system, which beckons me secretly and stirs up questions in me: “What am I living for? Why? What’s the point in my life?” Or I may ask: “What’s the point in my life?” because I don’t have enough to make ends meet. Or I may be green with envy because the neighbor’s grass is always greener.

The kind of suffering makes no difference, and whatever it is, it helps us advance. This is how we are made. If we didn’t feel these deficiencies, we wouldn’t move at all. Our free will is not to choose the desires themselves, but rather how to use them. And when we are under the rule of two forces, the force of reception and the force of bestowal, we can choose how to use them. But I don’t choose the desire itself.

Before a certain desire begins to operate in us, we are like dull robots that can’t move. Without a desire I am like a lifeless doll without a battery.
[56540]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/2011, Shamati #42

Related Material:
The Upper Program Anticipates Your Input
From Illusory Freedom To The Truth
There Is No Empty Space, All Is Filled With Desires

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Free Will, Inner Work, Q&A - No Comments →

Contrary to animals, we develop with the help of science. However, this isn’t free will yet. Science only advances us a bit forward. Animals are driven by blows and their instincts, but since we hardly have any instincts, we develop by blows and science.

Scientific advances allow us to see and resolve problems in advance. For example, x-rays enable us to identify a disease and to start treating it without waiting for it to actually appear. Without x-rays, only the pain could tell us that there is a problem.

Thus science helps us suffer less, and we pay dearly for scientific knowledge. However, it is still the same beastly tendency: the desire to be free of troubles. Science doesn’t raise us to the human degree since it is part of the animate level. By using it, we compensate for our lack of instincts, that’s all.

Animals manage very well without doctors. They know how to eat right, how to give birth, and how to build their shelter. Animals do everything by instinct, while we replace instincts with science. This is actually the role of science—to serve our egoism so that we will suffer less.

So we also examine our development on the animate level. Even when people become aware of the necessity to unite and connect, they don’t know how to attain it.
[56425]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/2011, “Peace in the World”

Related Material:
The Alternative To Suffering
A Science Of A Successful Future
Why There Are So Many Sciences In The World

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

Baal HaSulam, “Peace in the World“: Four properties are provided for that purpose: mercy, truth, justice, and peace. Those attributes have been used by all world reformers thus far. It is more correct to say that it is with those four attributes that human development has advanced thus far…

It is only by these four attributes that we manage ourselves in order to bring ourselves to the end of correction. So how do we discern them? Many can speak about mercy, truth, justice, and peace for hours, but can we agree on what these attributes are?

It isn’t simple, but Baal HaSulam, knowing the spiritual nature, wrote that this is what we have to clarify in order to manage ourselves and the world. We don’t know what a corrected world is. We are all corrupt and so it seems to us that any egoistic improvement is already correction. However, for Baal HaSulam, the corrected world is a world in which all the possible deficiencies are totally filled. How is that possible? We will have to find that out.

First, we have to understand that we will never be able to fill ourselves egotistically, but only in bestowal because while there is no restriction on bestowal, there is on reception. So how can we desire to receive in such a way that receiving itself will make us understand that it is worthwhile to bestow?

We can develop in this direction by blows: Every time that I want to receive something, I receive more and more blows, until I finally come to the conclusion that it is better not to want to receive egoistically. Then I begin to hate my desire to receive, and I don’t know what to do with it anymore. “So, perhaps I will enjoy bestowal?”

And so different flaws bring me to a point where I ask for the desire to bestow, for the power to bestow, the power to connect to others. This is the road of suffering and asceticism about which it says: “Eat bread with water sparingly and sleep on the ground.” In the past people used accept this and thus advance to bestowal.

It is the same today, if people don’t accept the wisdom of Kabbalah and the explanation about the development of the world, they too will advance in the same way. They will want more and more, but will get less and less, and as a result of suffering, people will begin to feel that it is worthwhile to be together, to bestow upon each other, to connect, to restrict our ego, and even to totally erase it.

We see that in wartime, when the troubles descend upon everyone, people begin to connect. Even animals are not afraid of one another when there is a fire in a forest or an earthquake, and they all escape the danger together. The common problem unites them because the fear of death is greater than the fear of hunger. Clearly, they don’t become “righteous,” but the desire to satisfy their hunger is pushed aside by a greater desire to survive.

We are the same. Of course, we can advance towards correction by suffering. It will compel us to aspire to bestow and to destroy our ego, the source of all the evil in our world. But this is a long and painful way.

This is why we were given an alternative—the way of the Torah. Why? Why do we need this other way? It is because we don’t reach free will by suffering. We only run away from it, like animals. Out of despair, we are even ready to bestow, but it is only because we feel bad when we receive. We don’t choose bestowal by our own free will, but as a result of our suffering as we have no choice. This is the degree of a beast, not man.

In order to bring us to the human level, we need two forces: the force of bestowal and the force of reception, with free will lying between the two. This is the path of people who have the point in the heart.

People who don’t have the point in the heart will also have free will: They can choose to follow those who can lead them forward.
[56427]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/2011, “Peace in the World”

Related Material:
Science Instead Of Instincts
The Exit From The Labyrinth Of Suffering
Let’s Go With The Light!

Filed under: Crisis, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Egoism, Free Will, Inner Work - No Comments →