Entries in the 'Group Work' Category

The Music Of The Light

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can we picture to ourselves an ideal state: a general vessel (desire), connection?

Answer: We are all interconnected. When the very first connection is revealed between us, it means that all of us, no matter how many of us there are—billions or millions, reveal 10 Sefirot between ourselves. Such is the structure of the system.

And then, these 10 Sefirot begin to vibrate and generate sounds, as if strings of a guitar. They are in constant movement, in harmonious relationships with one another. Not a single sound is out of tune from the general harmony.

This entire system reveals to us more and more perfect 10 Sefirot. Besides, they become increasingly clearer to us in their various kinds. These various forms that become revealed to us appear because each individual Sefira consists of its own 10 Sefirot.

And when all these inner 10 Sefirot that comprise the 10 main Sefirot also start interacting between themselves, generating the upper harmonies of the main waves, as if in music or voice, they create the entire impression, transmitting inside all information about the vessels and the Light that fulfills them.

Different Lights are essentially impressions inside all these desires, experienced from the connection of singing strings, from the emerging chords. All this music is what revelation is.

Everything is inside the vessel. The sound is felt inside our desires, organs of perception, it doesn’t exist by itself in the air. The music of the Light is always revealed as the inner filling of the letters (the matrixes of desires), existing inside other letters. The Light manifests only inside the vessel, or desire, as a result of its changes.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/24/2012, The Zohar 

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The Taste Enhancer

Dr. Michael LaitmanWhen a person comes to the point when he perceives reality as a certain force field, he begins to attach to it various properties of this world, clarifying how they should change so as to fit into this allegedly spiritual picture. Then it becomes clearer to him that he and everybody else are desires that repulse one another, but must unite.

And in order to unite, they need an additional force that would connect them together. After all, each of them possesses only an opposite force that repels others. But all of them exist in an ocean of Light that is able to perform any change since this is the force of the Creator. However, He acts only as the correct desires become revealed from the part of the created beings.

And if despite their mutual repulsion, these egoistic desires begin to show the slightest, even artificial, aspiration to unite, the force field, the upper Light, the Creator, begins to act upon them. For the meantime, it acts from afar, in accord to a great distance that separates an artificial request from the true one. Yet, it nevertheless affects them and begins to gradually bring them closer to Him.

On one side, the Light acts upon the created beings in order to draw them closer to itself. And from the other, as a result of coming closer, the created beings, in accordance to their inner properties, begin to feel an even greater contradiction with and repulsion from each other. It follows that two opposite sensations manifest here.

On one hand, the Light works and lets us feel an increasingly stronger connection. But at the same time, we feel how we ourselves do not correspond to this connection and don’t want it. However, we need to understand that all these revelations come from the Light itself, and specifically thanks to our coming closer together we now see how opposite to each other we are.

We feel two components in every state: our own egoistic broken nature and the nature of the Light, which penetrates us and holds us together.

The further we advance, the deeper we will reveal our evil nature and the good nature of the Light, until this gap between these two poles turns into a distance between the point of this world and the point of the world of Infinity. The difference between these concepts is what determines the volume of the vessel in which the creature senses the essence of the Creator relative to its opposite nature. The entire might of the Light of Infinity becomes revealed specifically in this vessel.

Until the creature discovers these differences, until the entire difference between the egoistic intention and the bestowing one becomes clarified, the upper Light remains at the first, “still” degree of Nefesh. After all, it acts only according to the desire and the program of the upper one, without the participation of the creature, and thus only the most basic Light of Nefesh de Nefesh manifests here.

When the lower one reveals its entire dissimilarity to the upper one, the revelation of the Creator, which it receives relative to its own qualities, is “620” times greater in its might.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/26/2012, Writings of Baal HaSulam 

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My New “Self”

Dr. Michael LaitmanIf the Creator is the only force that governs, maintains, and enlivens everything, then even the words that I utter, the thoughts and desires that arise in me now, all of it is also Him. Hence I need to unite with what passes through me now and comes out from me to others. All of it is all His work as well; He is carrying all of it out. I’m not here. I am only what perceives itself filled with the might, force, intention, and desire of the Creator who thereby addresses others.

I need to connect and to merge with what is happening inside of me now, to feel that I’m entirely filled by Him because there is no other force besides Him. And when I try to eliminate my own “Self” within me, that everything is only Him, this is exactly when I find my new “Self,” based on “there is none else besides Him.” That is, everything that I think about, it is all Him.
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From the Vilnius Convention 3/23/2012, Workshop 2

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A Field For Inner Work

A Field For Inner WorkQuestion: What can I get from the friends’ words during the workshops, but can’t get from the lesson with the teacher?

Answer: When the teacher speaks everyone is silent, that is, they agree with what he says. There is a plus and a minus in this.

There is no internal work during this time because you are involuntarily suppressed, silenced by the knowledge, the height of the teacher as he is initially higher than you.

When you are together with the friends, you are working with someone who can be higher, lower, or at the same level with you. And here, you have a lot of work on lowering yourself, removing your “I,” canceling yourself. And in addition, you need to consider any of your friends to be the greatest. In this way, you “adjust” yourself to the Creator, prepare yourself to go by bestowal above reception, faith above reason.
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From a Lecture on Unity Day Around the World, “Preparation for the Congress” 4/22/2012    

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Women’s Questions In Preparation For The Convention

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can women create a strong common desire to maximize the ability to support the men during the convention?

Answer: To this day, we cannot explain to the women that they’re doing spiritual work just as men do, the only difference being that the style of their interconnection is somewhat different from the connection between the men.

With men, it all starts with a very simple friendship, with shared activities. They swim together in the sea, sit around, share meals, and study. With women this connection is much more complicated. But when they set a higher goal for themselves and understand that for the sake of this goal they need to unite, then they can accomplish it and achieve the goal. That is, the exalted goal becomes like a master for them, and they’re prepared to unite for its sake.

Question: Do women need to prepare for the convention in some special way? Perhaps we should do it together somehow or correspond with each other? Or should we only unite internally?

Answer: The importance of unification should be the same in women as in men; this is first. And second, they need to understand that they also need to achieve unity. Women are able to unite for the sake of a higher goal, and they need to explore and scrutinize this possibility.

The Bible tells about how Moshe’s sister Miriam united all the women together before exiting Egypt, how the women worked on themselves in Egypt, and how it was precisely that feminine part which nurtured Moses, that is, the force that then pulls us out of Egypt.

Question: What should women expect from the workshops?

Answer: The women, like the men, need to discuss all the details of unification. Let them try to do that; let them discover what is for them and what isn’t. In this manner, they will find their own path in a practical way since otherwise it won’t work.

On one hand, women ask: “Why not?” But when you offer them the work of unification, they say: “This isn’t for us!” And so a problem arises. And it’s unclear what can be done, what action to take, and how to approach this problem?

Women need to unite for a common cause, like in a huge number of existing women’s organization, where women can unite in order to achieve something not between, but outside of themselves. So let them unite in order to achieve something outside themselves as well, and for that purpose they can connect—not against anyone, but for the sake of accomplishing something. They can do it!

Question: Do women need to unite in order to achieve the goal or in order for the men to reach it?

Answer: They need to unite to attain the result together. Let them clarify this, and they will see the middle point into which they need to fit exactly to complement the men. And in no way is their work any less than the work of men; it’s actually greater.

Question: How should a woman prepare her husband for the convention?

Answer: You wash, dress, and feed him, then hand him his backpack, and let him go to school. I’m speaking absolutely seriously: Prepare him like you would a child. That is, let him know that you expect great accomplishments from him, that you hope that throughout the convention he’ll really go in the right direction with good and necessary thoughts. That’s how you get him ready. When it comes to that, a woman has what’s called the wisdom of life.

Question: How do men work correctly with women’s support during the workshops?

Answer: Men shouldn’t pay attention to it yet. Later, when we really become properly interconnected, we’ll feel the women’s influence, pressure on us.

It’s good when we can sense that; it obliges us. Let’s hope that we’ll be able to feel that too.
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From a Lecture on Unity Day Around the World, “Preparation for the Congress” 4/22/2012     

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What Should We Talk About At The Convention?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: We see plenty of faces at the convention, many new people. What should or shouldn’t we talk about?

Answer: What do you mean “plenty of faces, many new people”? Am I really interested in what a person looks like, or whether he or she is old or young?

The soul is ageless. The soul has no form. The soul is the property of bestowal. If so, I don’t look at anything else! That is why I neither notice nor remember people; I don’t recall their names because I am interested only in their internal field that they resonate around, that they emanate, but not in their looks or names. What’s the difference?

Question: In order to generate this field, what should we talk or not talk about?

Answer: You should talk only about the goal, only about the topic of the convention, only about maintaining the greatness of the goal, only about the positive, and in no way about the negative—that’s what Rabash writes in his articles.

A convention is not the place to make calculations. We do all that before the convention—take an example from me.

That’s it: The convention is starting, and we put aside all the problems; this is the past, and we should rise above it now. All our negative qualities, properties, connections, and contradictions between us, all that is left below. Now we rise above them and talk only about unification, about the necessity, about what we achieve by virtue of unity, about how impossible it is to reach it in any other way, about how we can’t reach it on our own, and hence need the upper Light.

All our work is precisely in order for us to realize that we cannot achieve anything ourselves. But this is after we perform a certain number of joint efforts and see that we aren’t able to do this. And then the upper force will be revealed in this huge frustration and huge desire, and it will perform the correction upon us, revealing the Creator within us. 

Question: What should I do if during a workshop a friend either talks too much or doesn’t talk at all? How can I relate to this correctly?

Answer: If he doesn’t talk, try to encourage him, to hug him, or to involve him in a conversation so that he participates in a discussion in some way, “breaks” a lack of contact, and makes contact somehow.

If a friend talks a lot, it is necessary to limit him because everyone should speak up, that is, the maximum number of people should speak within 2-3 minutes. He can say a couple of sentences, but they should be thought through in advance. He “shoots” them out, and the microphone is given to the next person.
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From a Lecture on Unity Day Around the World, “Preparation for the Congress” 4/22/2012    

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Responsibility For The World

Dr. Michael LaitmanEach convention is like an ascent to the next degree. In the convention you receive the rudiments of new sensations, which you have to develop. If you don’t, they die away, disappear.

You saw something at the convention, you heard or sensed something new: a new idea, a new inner movement, a new relation to others, and how others help you. Later you have to realize all of it in practice.

You have to go over, and perhaps more than once, everything that we’ve covered during the convention, to internally process, pass it through yourself, like through a meat grinder, and realize it in the group, in dissemination, and in the relationship with yourself and with the Creator. You have to put it all together into one general worldview, one picture of the world, being aware that thereby you are forming your view on everything, including yourself and the Creator. All of it has to become one unified whole within you.

How can I put everything that is happening on this sphere into one unified whole? Everything is happening only in order for me to bring this sphere into balance, harmony with the Light that exists at absolute rest, and so everything else has to come into balance with it. I’m responsible for bringing this entire system into a state of balance, harmony, and similarity to the Light.

We have to form in ourselves this view of the world and then realize it.
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From the Vilnius Convention 3/25/12, Lesson 5 

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Wake Up The Switch Operator Before It’s Too Late!

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Now as we begin to operate as one global, collective group, does the work of the local groups change?

Answer: We have to judge ourselves severely and calculate things in the clearest, most serious way. We have to learn according to the general upper Providence, the Creator’s actions in the world, to what extent the world needs correction, and how far we are still from fulfilling it by participating in it, by being ready to become the bridge, the pass-through, the adaptor, through which the correction will be made. This should wake us up and give us a real seriousness and responsibility of understanding our role.

It isn’t acceptable to take into account only ourselves and be deluded that everything is fine with us and that we can wait. The account is very serious and even alarming. It is like Baal HaSulam’s warning before the Holocaust. If the people of Israel, (everyone who is called Yashar – El, who yearns directly for the Creator), do not keep the required conditions, it causes the increased external forces and leads to their victory over the internal forces.

Then there are great troubles. The destructive, deadly, evil force, which we actually summoned, begins to rule the world. Therefore, every individual should treat the group very seriously and with great responsibility: every person in relation to the group, each group in relation to other groups to a common global group, and to the world, to the whole world.

We are already in this state, in this time which is the most critical in all of human history, and we will determine how we advance: by Light or by suffering.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/24/12, Writings of Rabash

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Workshops Are The True Realization Of Kabbalah

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Why do we organize workshops, and how helpful are they?

Answer: Kabbalah is a practical science. That is why all the millennia while we didn’t have to do practical work it was hidden from people, and only few scientists, Kabbalists, developed this method and adjusted it each time for the generation in which they lived.

But they didn’t show this method to people, simply from generation to generation along the way as they developed, they modified it until the entire humanity reached our time and found itself in the integral global crisis, that is, in an obvious egoistic Egypt, in the feeling of exile from something good, kind, natural, and normal.

We see that our nature is destroying us; we cannot get out if it ourselves and are hostages of our egoism that drives us to such dangerous actions that we may just ruin the entire civilization. We are destroying nature, the Earth, and the environment in which we live, and in general are making a terrible future for our children.

Why do we raise them? I look at children whose parents create intolerable conditions in advance. Why do they give birth? Today you love them, but what will happen to them tomorrow? You are doing things so that they will not be able to live! They will die a painful death! Don’t you feel that?! No, the human being doesn’t feel that, he is still blind.

However, he is slowly beginning to realize that. But even knowing this, he cannot change himself yet and act differently. Nonetheless, he still uses everything possible, sparing nothing, taking nothing into account; it doesn’t matter what’s left to his children. That is how we relate to nature, society, everything.

Therefore the science of Kabbalah is revealed today in order to explain that this is called slavery, it’s what is called the expulsion from spirituality; namely this is the worst state, the most opposite to spirituality. And in order to help us get out of it, to pull ourselves out of it, the science of Kabbalah is revealed. Therefore, it has been revealed today when we should practice all its advice, laws, and rules.

But to put them into practice, we first need to learn.

And we have to learn this, as usual, in groups, at school, by helping each other, by studying textbooks and conducting workshops in small groups—a prototype for future work with the whole humanity.

Therefore, workshops are necessary; they are the most important thing! They are the real true realization of Kabbalah in principle; it exists for this purpose. It’s not a theoretical science, not philosophy, but namely a practice.
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From a Lecture on Unity Day Around the World, “Preparation for the Congress” 4/22/2012

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Relating To Everyone With Warmth

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How should we relate to the newcomers during the convention?

Answer: I wouldn’t say that there is a big difference between the newcomers and veteran students. It’s because when all people incorporate into one another, the difference is always there, and in principle, in this case it’s not important how much a person knows or at what level he or she exists since this is a reflection of the entire humanity, which consists of the smallest to the greatest ones, those who already understand and maybe even partially sense the upper world. Hence most important is for everybody to incorporate into one another.

The veteran students have to help the newcomers. They have to work at full force, participate actively, and set everything into motion. We will hold preliminary talks with them on how to conduct workshops, how to talk with everybody and get them involved, and how to relate to everyone with warmth. Most important is to set an example.
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From a Lecture on Unity Day Around the World, “Preparation for the Congress” 4/22/2012

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