Entries in the 'Group Work' Category

In The Maelstrom Of Feelings

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can we come from knowledge to feelings at the convention?

Answer: When people get together, they lose knowledge and instantly tune into feelings because the very subject of conversations, the inclusion into each other, and mutual dependence that is manifested immediately push a person to seek mutual feelings, whether he wants this or not. If he speaks with some clichés or excerpts from various articles that he remembers, it means that he is not in connection with the others.

He should speak from himself, regardless of the words. He should express his feelings concerning mutual connection and what is manifested in it.
[84711]
From a Virtual Lesson 7/29/12

Related Material:
Convention: Unity Of Knowledge and Feelings
The Workshop Should Light The Spark Of Life
The Secrets Of The Heart

Everyone Has The End Of The Thread

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe only receive the recognition of evil from the Creator; in fact, He created only the desire to receive. The Light, the means that will help us correct our state, we must find within the environment.

The point is that the action from the side of the Creator is to give us the recognition of evil, and the action from the side of the creature is, after reaching the recognition of evil, to ask for correction. This is the work.

I don’t need anything from the Creator, only that He will disclose to me that I exist within evil. But it is only in the real evil, “the quality,” that I need to understand that I am lacking the attribute of bestowal and to feel bad because of that. All the rest will move by itself: Of course I will run to find help, I will cry, ask, and demand, until I force Him to correct me.

Thus, the task of the Creator is to reveal the evil, and my task is to demand from Him to transform the evil into good.

Question: How is it possible to increase the intensity of my request to the Creator?

Answer: The intensity depends on how bad you feel in your egoistic attributes. Everything moves only after the feeling; the intellect is useless here. Thus, I need to translate the situation to feeling: I feel bad that I exist in the desire to receive.

For example, I feel shame when people around me look at me with open disregard. I simply can only think: “How can I go on? Indeed, tomorrow, I will need to see them again.” So when I feel bad, I look for a way out.

But if you felt good and didn’t feel any shame, then you wouldn’t be able to approach correction. The ego is certainly provided for and someone’s talking out there doesn’t concern me. Words in themselves are powerless. I need to transfer them to that inner level where they will cause a response that I will really feel bad about the way they relate to me. The influence of the environment needs to control my own power of self-persuasion. In short, I need to feel shame. It brings me to “restriction,” to a request, to everything that will come later.

Question: How can one amplify this shame?

Answer: Through the power of thought.

Question: How can one amplify the thought?

Answer: By the power of persistence, by using perseverance.

Question: How can one increase the persistence?

Answer: Ask the friends to help you remember to think about it and the awareness of the importance.

Question: What if I forget to ask this from them?

Answer: Write them an email in advance so that they will support you.

Question: What if I forget to write the email?

Answer: It just cannot be that a person isn’t given an opportunity and isn’t given the end of the thread. He’s always able and needs to begin his path from something.
[84266]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/30/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

Related Material:
A Live Thread
An Unbearable Distinction From The Creator
Turning Good To Evil

A Road Covered By A Shadow Of Bestowal

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe difficulty in our work is a result of the oppositeness of the states between which we have to balance ourselves, on what is called the “middle line.” On the one hand, you should be proud that you are following this road. Otherwise you’ll fall under the influence of the world around you and will become infected by its “viruses”: you’ll start dealing with money, respect, control, knowledge and many other empty goals the world is full of.

On the other hand, the internal work requires modesty and humility towards the group and Creator so that they’ll pass on to you the right values. If a person constantly carries on such a correct clarification—as to what he should be impressed by and what he should ignore, who he should be in contact with and from whom to keep away, he thus chooses the right environment. He builds this environment since it’s not just a group he has come to and in which he exists.

He determines what is important and what is not important in every society he finds himself, and so he builds his environment, as it says, “one chooses a good environment.” The environment doesn’t exist in its ready form, each of us has to clarify this concept and build an environment for himself.

This work is perpetual, not a onetime event in which it is enough to make a decision once and leave it at that. I have to make new decisions at every moment, and I realize that this is the only opportunity I have of free will. It is the only way that I can hasten my advancement while everything else are already the outcomes, which I don’t even touch.

I cannot change anything and if I make efforts I will only spoil my advancement. Not only will I not advance, as I don’t correct the only thing that needs to be corrected, but I also will spoil my attitude toward other things that were supposed to be the result of my good free will, as I treated them as the first main tool.

Besides, I have to clarify my attitude towards pleasure and suffering, since if the Creator is good and benevolent, why does He send me sufferings? Do I feel these sufferings because of my corruption or is it the Creator who treats me so cruelly? What can I attribute to Him, if anything?

A person clarifies these things until he comes to the conclusion that his goal is to attain the force of bestowal, the force of faith, which eventually turns into the force of love. Love is the force of connection by which a person receives the image of the Creator and becomes like Him, which is called to become Adam (human in Hebrew).

The Creator dresses in a person and gives one’s desire to receive the form of bestowal. If this is what a person demands, one reaches such a simple prayer and asks for simple mercy.

But all these actions are revealed together with great confusion and changes of different opposing states until eventually a person ends one’s clarification and it becomes clear that there is nothing but the simple upper Light.

The attribute of bestowal begins to dominate him and it determines the only reality he knows now. All the opposing, conflicting states were given to him only so that he would feel and understand in his mind and heart, having tasted pleasure and sufferings, and attaining the truth and the lie that there is nothing in this world and nothing controls it but the attribute of bestowal.

All the attributes that a person has felt along the way, which are opposite from the attribute of bestowal, were only the shadow of the attribute of bestowal that helped him learn, understand, and acquire it. So eventually he reaches simple mercy, which is the pure attribute of bestowal.
[84154]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/27/12, Shamati #113

Related Material:
From Feeling To Reason, From Pleasure To Truth
The Days And Nights Of The Spiritual Path
The Group Offers Painless Healing

Are You Awake? Don’t Lie Down!

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe hear more and more new details on the news about the general global crisis, although many things still remain unsaid. The real situation is much worse than we know. The world leaders themselves are not aware of the actual extent of the problem.

So we have to disseminate the method of correction as fast as we can. It’s our duty. We haven’t developed it enough. We have to accelerate things and “hit the gas pedal.” Then we’ll be able to prepare it and to present it to the world.

In Israel things are also going from bad to worse, and this is only “mild decrease” from Above. They are meant to make us feel pressure and to want to “sweeten” them. We have to explain to people exactly how we can sweeten the bitterness.

We hear about it, we understand what’s going on to a certain level; we have received an awakening from Above. If we don’t try as hard as we can to develop the method in order to present it to the people, we are putting ourselves in grave danger.

We’ll be the first to experience all the troubles in order to awaken us to fulfill our vocation. Baal HaSulam writes about it at the end of “The Introduction to The Book of Zohar.” He says that the Jewish people are responsible for the nations of the world and so we are also responsible for the Jewish people. If people have been awakened, if they can hear what needs to be done and they don’t do it, I won’t rejoice at their troubles, but I am telling you in advance that the troubles will undoubtedly arrive. It’s because the Creator has assigned a special role for each one and we mustn’t escape it.

Here is a passage from Baal HaSulam, Letter 18: And so there is no correction for a person, but to straighten all the present moments and all future ones so that they shall be dedicated and presented for His great name. Whoever postpones a moment before Him, since it is difficult, reveals his stupidity to everyone, since all the worlds, and all the times are worthless for him, when the Light of His face is not dressed in the changes of the times, although a person does change by them in his work.

We have no choice; we have to devote all these moments. If you don’t do that you automatically summon upon yourself the right account. Your inaction will not drown in piles of overdue paper work like in the case of public servants, and no one will pity you, since we are in a system that has clear laws.

You were awakened. By fulfilling it you feel a positive response and can go on. What’s more, you are not required to do more then you can, since this is a closed system that takes all the parameters into account. But if you don’t fully respond, you’ll feel the pressures that are put upon you accordingly.

So if you are sitting and waiting for something, it’s a great pity, the results are inevitable. I don’t understand what you are waiting for if you already have the opportunity to connect through the group and to wake up from the dream. Let’s hope we will be wiser.
[84364]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/31/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

Related Material:
Giving the world A Push Towards The Good
And what Would You Do In The King’s Palace?
What Will Let Us Pass The Rubicon?

From Feeling To Reason, From Pleasure To Truth

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe world is ruled by one force of bestowal. This force is called the Creator since He created the quality opposite to Himself, the desire to enjoy, in order to raise it to His level. In this way, this desire can bring itself to perfection.

That is why all of our work consists of reaching the quality of bestowal. However, we do not disappear into that, but we change the form of our desire, the initial material, to bestowing. It continues to act with all of its fierce strength and power with which it used to think only of itself before and is revealed as an unclean egoistic system, opposite to bestowal, but now this desire corrects itself and the form of its action. Now, instead of receiving, it desires to bestow.

Such a change happens due to the Light that Reforms. However, until such a change happens inside of the desire to enjoy, it absolutely does not understand what is being talked about here since it is completely located in egoistic qualities, meaning in thoughts and desires for oneself.

The change that it undergoes is truly a new birth, similar to how something develops from a drop of seed in which there is nothing besides internal information about a future person, and in the end, it finally turns into an independent personality which thinks, understands, feels, and answers for its deeds. Where does it all come from? Is it simply out of emptiness? However, in exactly the same way, our own spiritual birth happens.

This process is incomprehensible to us and hidden from us. Until we experience serious changes, we completely do not understand how all of that is being realized on matter, how the Light works, how it changes our qualities, and what is left for us from each of the levels from which we have ascended.

Man becomes confused and does not understand where he really is. It is said that the Creator is the first, and He is also the last. So, where is the human in this? Perhaps he is at least in the middle? There is an initial state of the world of infinity, and there is a final state, the return back to Infinity, and we are on the path somewhere in the middle between the former and the latter.

In addition, what can we add from ourselves to the Creator’s actions, with whom everything begins and ends? We only can speed up our development to show that we want to move toward being similar to the Creator and to not to be pushed from behind by suffering.

The Creator has created a desire to enjoy inside of me that feels the good and the bad in relation to itself, and, now, with the help of these good and bad feelings, He can control me! However, if I am controlled only by my pleasant and unpleasant feelings, then I am acting like an animal. If I want to move forward to that same goal through my own efforts, then I need to feel its importance, to receive the strength for development, acting against my nature.

I must rise above the egoistic perception of good and bad toward the perception of truth and falsehood, and consider them as the good and the bad. These forces must pull me forward, having replaced pleasure and suffering with themselves, by which I am being pushed from behind. This is called the level of a human, not an animal.

That is only possible to achieve by the means of an environment that instills into me such values, such an importance of truth and falsehood that provide the strength for my development. However, in order for that to happen, I must listen to the environment, meaning that all of my work on the attainment of the Creator and toward reaching the goal of creation—to rise from the natural feeling of good and bad toward reason, from the animal level toward the human level, from the perception of pleasure and suffering toward the perception of truth and falsehood—all of that is work with the environment.

My goal is to find an environment that has these goals and values, and to be impressed by it. Thanks to that, I will receive the strength to develop as a human and not as an animal since an animal moves only because it sees a sack of grain in front of it or if it receives blows from behind. However, a human considers pleasure and suffering to be the approaching or distancing of the quality of bestowal, the truth and the falsehood.
[84157]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/27/12, Shamati #13, “The Eighteenth Prayer”

Related Material:
The Days And Nights Of The Spiritual Path
A Light That Is Brought Closer By The Group’s Telescope
Reins For The Ego

Open The Gates Of Bestowal

Dr. Michael LaitmanBaal HaSulam, Letter 38: In former times, an attainment of the Creator had to be preceded by all seven external sciences and horrible self-torture. And despite all of that, a few have found favor in the eyes of the Creator. However, since we have received the teachings of the Ari and the services of Baal Shem Tov, it is truly equally available to everyone and the above mentioned preparatory stages are no longer necessary.

We don’t know how and to what extent a time of the material world corresponds to a spiritual time, the processes of descent and subsequent ascent when the vessels, the desires, begin to gather into one whole. But of course, the closer we get to completion, the more people are able to open the gates of holiness, the gates of bestowal. They resort to the help from ancestors who thoroughly explored the spiritual system, established themselves and fixed connections in it. So, step by step, going in circles one after another, generations ascend the steps of the wide staircase. Each of them goes farther, and some people make generations ascend a few steps in a row. This is a complicated process.

At the current stage, the thrust towards disclosure of the Creator embraces the whole masses. However, we must understand the immutability of spiritual laws. The Creator doesn’t sacrifice them, and thus, we also need to comply with the terms of ascent, albeit at a different level, according to the current state. Here comes the mutual guarantee, rejection of egoism, and striving in the right line in order to rise above the left line in unity and cohesion, thus trying to build a model of the higher world to the extent we are able to understand it. So we’ll move forward.

Baal HaSulam brings an example of a king who needs to move his treasury from one place to the other. All of his subjects are egoists; they wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation and certainly would steal any amount of money exceeding their ability to resist. Therefore, the king gives a penny to everyone, which doesn’t make sense to steal because royal prestige in their eyes is more valuable. Thus they move the treasure without losing it.

And we are the same. Though it is not the most worthy “fact of our biography,” nevertheless it is a fact. Let’s hope we will be able to bring our penny, and first of all, recognize it as a start. The majority of our work is dedicated to that—to figure out what our goal is and what it means to “find favor in the eyes of the Creator,” which means bestowing to Him, and how to come to such a request, raising it above all the others. After all, by overcoming them, we create a longing for the Creator and build His image.

All of that is done by many ministers of the King who carry pieces of His treasury through many intermediate stages like circuits, from one state to the other. In fact, it is a great way to go if we accept it as a precept of the King. After all, He enjoys every little step we take, each state, as parents enjoy seeing their children’s efforts.

It is necessary to stay on the course, but to remember about the King’s joy and to try to please Him at each stage, here and now, even in the smallest detail, on the lowest level. Indeed, there is nothing low in His eyes. He sends me all the states. And if I somehow try bringing pleasure to Him, that is enough.

That’s why people going in the right direction on the path always feel joy and ascent. We need to check ourselves: Where do descents should come from if everything is arranged from above? The Creator creates each state, and only one thing depends on me: to respond with understanding and feeling or at least with the awareness of the Creator standing behind the current circumstances. Then I can assert myself in giving to Him every second.

In fact, there are no despicable and unpleasant states in our work, if I take them internally from the hands of the Creator who teaches me. Just like the slave, from another parable by Baal HaSulam, who fought a war against the king’s minister who deliberately presented himself in different enemy disguises. Here we have the same story, and most importantly, do not forget that all our states at every moment in life come from the Creator. If we attain this level, then we will be able to perceive what is happening and react to it properly.

Let’s try to unite with the spirit of our ancestors: Ari, Rabash, Baal HaSulam, and others. Let’s not forget about that and help each other in devoting every moment to the service of the Creator.

It is possible. You are already capable of many things. You’ve made some great steps, and now the question is in something else—in pride. Of course, it comes from the Creator as well, and yet, how do we not indulge in it?
[84047]
From a Conversation During the Meal Commemorating the Death of the Ari 7/25/12

Related Material:
Ari: The Beginning Of Ascent
Servants Of The People
Passing The Correction To The World

The Group Is Not A Means, The Group Is The Creator

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can I determine that The Zohar is influencing me?

Answer: The signs appear when I begin to feel how important the group becomes for me, how essential the concern for the friends, for their existence, and the connection with them become for me—just like the goal itself, since it is by this means that we attain the goal.

This means that there is no goal that is revealed within the means as we may think now. After all, the Creator (Bore) is “Come and See” (Bo – reh). The right order of the connection between the souls, which we discover, is the Creator’s image.

This means that the group is not the means for the revelation of the Creator. The group itself becomes the Creator. It is revealed as “He and His name are one,” in adhesion with one another, where it is impossible to distinguish between them.

And there, we have no way to differentiate between “I” and the “group.” It is such unity that you melt into it and you cease to exist there. And the right order of the connection between us connects us to form a network and creates a schema of the upper worlds and turns everything into Malchut of Ein Sof (infinity). Accordingly, we ascend the levels of the revelation of the Light, the force of bestowal that flows within the system as an eternal stream of vitality and energy.

One cannot exist without the other since all the phenomena of the Light are the same vessels that operate this way from the inside. There is no Light that appears as something foreign in the system. On the contrary, the system itself begins to illuminate, as it says: “Darkness shall illuminate as the Light.” This is called Light. Nothing comes from the outside. It is the correct actions of the vessels that illuminate. There is no Light outside the vessel.
[84249]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/30/12, The Zohar

Related Material:
The Creator Does Not Exist Outside Of Us
The Group That Has Adopted My Heart
Tell Me How You See The Group And I’ll Tell You Who You Are

A Light That Is Brought Closer By The Group’s Telescope

Dr. Michael LaitmanIt is important to clarify exactly how we can change our desire to receive under the influence of the Light so that we will not waste our powers in vain. All we can do is to hasten the pace of our development by using the environment as a magnifying glass that brings the influence of the Light closer to us. This is actually the only thing we can do and the only thing we need.

By starting to work in a group, we learn to focus this telescope: We bring together all the rays of the Light that Reforms so that they will go exactly through the center of the group and will be focused exactly on our desire to receive. Then the desire to receive will be changed by the Light that Reforms.

We want to learn how this is done: how this ray of Light that goes through the magnifying glass grows, concentrates and is intensified, and then falls on the desire to receive and puts it through four phases. Then we will see how changes begin to take place in the desire to receive and how it becomes the opposite of what it was initially. A person begins to live not inside himself, but to rise above his desire, above the restriction and the Masach (screen) towards the Returning Light, towards bestowal, instead of receiving, and thus reaches correction.

This work in hastening the development of our desire by the Light that Reforms actually provides us with the power to understand and to attain the whole system. Although it is only the hastening of a process, it is in it that we discover all the means and all the details of creation and the process of its development. It is because in every stage that we go through, we have to orient the group differently.

So the focus through this magnifying glass constantly changes and becomes the opposite of what it was before, depending on the new external and internal conditions. We are constantly changing the influence of the group on us, and we change it with regard to the Light, with regard to the Creator. Eventually we build a new system inside us, above our desire to receive. The group becomes my world. Instead of a tiny point of desire, I receive a whole world, the enormous system of the world of Ein Sof (Infinity).

It is thanks to the desire we have that we begin to attain this system called the “group,” an infinite system in its finite form, and thus receive the means that raises us above our desire to receive.

The whole level of bestowal is called “self-sacrifice.” It means that a person has totally detached himself from his desire to receive, which means that he “sacrifices himself.” Of course, the whole correction is done by the Light, and we only have to adjust and to focus its influence on us through the environment, to connect these three components like a gun sight, so that they are all arranged in one straight line.

Then we will have no more doubts that we have to get close to the Light’s nature and so we imagine the society this way and want the Light to influence us through it. Eventually all these components become one whole.

The level of love is revealed after the level of self-sacrifice. Then a person understands what the goal of creation called “to do good to His created beings” means.

We gradually rise by keeping a certain condition and thanks to this we discover a little more understanding as to the Creator’s intention regarding the creation. Thus we advance: First there is the correction of the vessels by the Light that Reforms and then we attain the thought of creation.
[84030]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/26/12, Shamati #219

Related Material:
We Will Not Let The Light Disappear!
Four Steps Towards The Light
I, My Environment, And The Light

A Mother Will Come Running When Her Son Cries

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What does it mean that I have to address all my questions to the Creator?

Answer: We’re not used to remembering and thinking about the upper force. It isn’t because we’re not religious; religious people don’t think about the Creator in the sense I am referring to. No one thinks about Him.

To think about Him means to realize that only He does everything. We can speak about it using high words and read about it a lot in books, but nothing helps.

We, meaning all of humanity, all the souls, all the desires, the general network, the system, Malchut, the Shechina (Divinity), exist within one force called the Creator. We have to discover that we are within Him. This is the only problem we have to solve: the revelation of the Creator to the created beings, and this is what the wisdom of Kabbalah deals with.

The revelation of the Creator to the created beings can either be through the path of suffering and great troubles when out of the great sorrow and hopelessness, the ego shrinks and restricts itself so as not to feel the suffering. It gives up its desire to enjoy and is ready for everything but only not to suffer.

But imagine what terrible troubles and suffering one has to go through in order to give up his desire to receive. It isn’t about suicide, but about an action that is a billion times greater than our life. Yet under the pressure of the great sorrow the ego can shrink to such an extreme that it can restrict itself until it doesn’t want to exist.

We’re not talking about the tiny desire we are in at the moment, but about a desire that constantly grows and suffers so much that it restricts itself. Then the desire grows even more, the suffering becomes even greater, and the desire restricts itself again.

This is called the path of suffering. If we follow this path, then “death is better than life,” and it will be impossible to die.

But it’s possible to advance, to restrict the desire to receive and to correct it so that it will bestow by discovering the Creator that is in it by an external force called the Light that Reforms. That is, with the help of the same Creator, it’s possible to turn to Him in a special way.

This method can’t be revealed independently. We see that even when people hear the explanations, they still don’t understand what the Light that Reforms is. The uniqueness of this method is in the fact that instead of suffering as a result of the influence of the Creator who makes me feel bad as He approaches me, I ask Him to correct me.

I want to be like Him; I want to be good. I take preventive measures and the Creator helps me! But I have to ask, I have to be ready for this bestowal. After all, if I just cry from my desire to receive, nothing will help. How can the Creator influence me by the Light that Reforms if I don’t ask to be reformed and my desire to receive restricted?

I have to turn to the Creator so that He will help me restrict my desire to receive and turn it into bestowal that is like Him. It shouldn’t be at the cost of suffering but by His action.

Thus we were given the opportunity to turn to Him through the connection between us. If we arrange the connection among us, the form of this connection will be the form of bestowal we want. We build this connection like children who by playing seem to be doing something. We all know that we are egoists, that our connection is egoistic, and that everyone wants to succeed and to profit from it. But still, we are all asking the Creator together so that He will do it and change us.

This request is egoistic since it’s impossible to cry it out differently from the dark, from exile. But eventually it’s fulfilled because the upper Light, the Creator, takes the state you are calling Him from into account. He understands that you can’t turn to Him with a more spiritual, altruistic request since you are in your ego and only want to receive.

It is like a baby who cries and doesn’t understand what he wants, but the mother must understand and take care of him. We too have to cry: First we should try to do everything that we can and then cry. This is the Kabbalistic method. Don’t wait to be pitied from Above for no reason. The Creator knows no mercy since mercy is bestowal.
[83984]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/25/12, Shamati #72

Related Material:
Consumers Of The Upper Light
What To Ask For When We Are In Pain
Obligate The Creator To Help Us

You Need To Disconnect In Order To Connect

Dr. Michael LaitmanOur desire was created as existence from absence, which means that it exists only because of the force of existence in it. The force that stems from the Creator gives the desire life and builds the opposite form in it.

Question: How can these two forces stay together?

Answer: The one Force sustains the two of them so that the created being could exist, so that there will be something besides the Creator. He constantly sustains our being since without it, we simply wouldn’t exist.

Just think of how the term “existence from absence” sounds: Existence is being sustained above nonexistence, above nothing.

Question: How is this expressed in the group among individuals who are starting to unite?

Answer: They only have to take the connection between them into account. Nothing else is relevant to their force and their abilities; nothing can be changed except a prayer for the connection.

When they feel that everything depends on their mutual connection, it is already a good clarification. Then, as a result, they sign a treaty of mutual guarantee.

Question: But the ego doesn’t disappear and isn’t annulled, is it?

Answer: Yes, it grows. How can these tow forces exist without one another? How can one be measured without the other?

We think that love and hate can exist independently and that love by itself is enough. But it isn’t so;  even when you love someone very much, you suddenly discover that some “spice,” some roughness is missing so that you will have a true contact and a real connection. The feeling of connection is always composed of the negative and the positive that covers it. Otherwise there is no connection. A connection can only be between two distant opposites and and it lies namely in between them.
[83987]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/26/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar” 

Related Material:
“Plus” and “Minus” United By Mutual Work
A Prayer Is A Desire For Connection
A Point That Contains Infinity