Entries in the 'Group Work' Category

A Game Of “Toy Cars”

Dr. Michael Laitman with StudentsQuestion: During the seminar one friend said that when he was a child he played with toy cars and that the game was reality to him. What is preventing us today from revealing that everything we are doing isn’t a game but reality?

Answer: If we truly played, we would have revealed the Creator already. The whole game is in the group. Up until today we hadn’t gotten together as needed. We were doing the preparation work, and time didn’t go to waste. We were waiting for the general state and atmosphere in the world as well as our own inner readiness. Gradually we’ve come to the point where we’re ready to realize this readiness in the group. Such groups will multiply throughout the world.

There isn’t any other way to realize this other than in a small group of ten people. If the group is large, it has to be divided into tens and then rotate. It doesn’t matter who you’re seated next to because you’re revealing your point in the heart. You don’t pay attention to the animal essence of your friend. You can dislike him for his inherent qualities—it only makes it better. It will make it easier to find contact with his point in the heart and not his corporeal part. This is how we have to work, and this is called “playing the game of toy cars.”
[73945]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/24/12, Lesson 3

Related Material:
The Circle Of Embrace
What Is Our Life? A Game!
Playing Down The Ego

Due To Women’s Desire

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: All my life I have been looking for connection with the Creator. And now I am feeling it; I understand that the Creator sends me serious disturbances. There is an internal dialog with the Creator. I need to understand what He wants from me. How can I understand this, how can I feel Him?

Answer: Everything related to the revelation of the single upper force, the Creator, also applies to women. Only women lack the ability to create a detector, a sensor, a sense of perception of the Creator.

Men cannot create this detector if they do not have women’s support. We work together. Women have to create an environment around men: to push, persuade, help, support in everything they can, but the main thing is their desire. Your desire should influence the men. Like a wife who sends her husband out of the house, let him work and bring home income because the family has to survive.

Without this, men would be playing with their “toys” all their life. It is because of women’s desire that the world develops in our world and in the spiritual world.

The woman is better suited for dissemination. If she is engaged in dissemination, this is her function: She gives birth, she expands. In doing so, she works much better than men. I believe that this realization is the most true and correct.

In addition, she must support the men’s group, take care of it as a mother does her children so that they do not argue and fight, to settle and soothe them. The women also should agree. If there is a good, correct agreement between them, the men inside will not be able to argue. Try it.

Men always feel a little bit of a mother in the woman; it remains with them for life. If you create such an even, good atmosphere, the men will feel that in this environment they have to behave differently. If you begin to further their unity, your desire will suddenly start working towards their connection, that is, their spiritual advancement. Can you imagine, what work you are doing, and what you cause!
[73962]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/24/12, Lesson 3

Related Material:
We Will Not Succeed Without Women’s Support
Women’s Support
The Women’s Desire As The Engine Of Creation

To Grow From A Capricious Request To A Valid Demand

Dr. Michael LaitmanThere is nothing but the relationships among us, relationships of receiving and bestowal. The result of these relationships should be to bring contentment to the Creator. The upper Partzufim cooperate: Abba and Ima, and ZON perform endless different actions, the Reshimot (reminiscences) change, but the main thing is the intention of the person who operates this whole system.

Before he operates it everything in it is dead, still. Then a person comes and the first thing he does is to weed out the dry thorns from the vineyard, which means that he cuts and separates the “stony heart” that cannot be corrected. Then he begins to work with all the rest. Prior to that, the whole system is quiet and a person operates it according to his exertion: He “presses the gas pedal,” he wants the system to work in order to bestow.

There is a set table in front of me and I have to gradually take everything that is on it and enjoy the refreshments in order to bring contentment to the host. So I check my vessels and see that they are vessels of receiving. I mustn’t receive even one gram of pleasure in them. First I must restrict myself. If the host is important to me, I will not enjoy for my sake, but will only want to enjoy for his sake.

But how can I bestow upon him, where can I find the power to do so? I begin to look for different methods and advice, and eventually reach the request. In order to receive such power, the Creator has to be revealed to me as the One who bestows, and then He reveals His greatness and His importance to me. But when the power of bestowal reaches a person, it doesn’t rule him, but according to a person’s request, it only rules his desires to receive.

I am made totally of this desire to receive, so how real can my request for the power of bestowal to rule me be? I can scream forever, but it will just be empty tears because I don’t know what to ask for. It’s like a baby who cries loudly, but no one gives him what he wants. We are angry that we don’t receive the spiritual revelation, just like babies.

I have to know exactly what to ask for. If I know what to ask for, how to ask, and for what reason, then my request will be effective. How can I demand the attribute of bestowal? First I have to acquire its importance. This means that I am asking for the Creator and His revelation. I am not asking to enjoy Him, but only to attain the greatness of bestowal: “Let me respect you!” This is the final request. It isn’t so that I’ll feel good and receive pleasure. I only want to respect Him without taking myself into account. We can receive and demand this necessity from the environment.

This request should not be expressed in words, in a fiery speech, or a carefully composed telegram. It’s revealed in the heart, it breaks the walls of the heart and spills out. I ask not in order to enjoy the feeling that I bestow, that I am great and equal to the Creator. I want to acquire the attribute of bestowal itself and I check my intention to improve my attitude to the friends.

Then I will understand what Kabbalists write about and I will consciously be included in what is happening in Malchut of Atzilut. All these things take place in a clear and clarified manner inside me according to the process that Kabbalists describe and reveal it in small portions one after the other. We are very close to that.
[73883]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/28/12, The Study of the Ten Sefirot

Related Material:
Polishing The Request For Bestowal
Water The Field That Awaits The Rain
A Prayer, Growing Secretly In The Heart

If He Beats Me, He Loves Me

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: I feel that I’m able to hold on to the thought that everything comes from the Creator. What I can’t understand is how to accept with love the disturbances that cause me pain? I can understand that they’re good for me with my mind. But how can I add love to this? Where is this love?

Answer: You’re not completing the action, which is why you don’t feel love. You understand that the disturbances probably come from the Creator, and that, evidently, this is good. You know that you can’t escape the disturbance, so you accept it. You don’t finish it off with love. You don’t process this disturbance together with the group and invert it, thereby perceiving the disturbance as an expression of love.

It’s like when parents punish a child, he needs to understand that they’re doing it out of love for him. They’re not punishing him, but his ego. What’s more, they want to raise the child above his ego. When he divides himself in two, “this is my ego and this is me,” and realizes that disturbances arise in opposition to the ego, then his “I” draws closer to the Creator and feels love.

Imagine that you’re a clever child who understands: “My parents need to punish me to prevent me from misbehaving. They’re not punishing me, but simply giving me an opportunity to overcome my ego.”

Comment: When I was a child I had no idea that someone was relating to me with love. All I saw was punishment.

Answer: Then get smarter! You need to grow up, after all!

You need to reach a state when you perceive the greatest problems and hardships as tremendous kindness and love. I’m being very serious. Everything depends only on your perception! We exist in a field of infinitely good Light. Nothing exists in the whole world but this. Only infinite love and infinite goodness! But our perception is flawed, and as a result we feel the opposite sensation. If you reconstruct yourself and grow your understanding, instead of hatred you will feel love, instead of evil, goodness, and instead of suffering, delight.
[73948]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/24/12, Lesson 3

Related Material:
Not A Step, But Head Over Heels
We Don’t Judge According To The Feeling
Using Obstacles For Our Benefit

An Opening For The Light

Dr. Michael LaitmanFeeling the importance of our goal comes from the Light that Reforms. It doesn’t depend on a person at all. He should only let the Light be revealed in him and everything that happens with him will be done by the Light.

All this will happen to you and you will be great, if you only open up a place for the Light in you. We mustn’t think that it happens thanks to some special abilities a person has. We should only appreciate and respect the teacher, not as an actual figure but the information he conveys, because through him you receive the Light. In addition, we must appreciate the group, because without it you will not be able to perceive the Light, to feel, understand, and use it. You will have nowhere to let it in.

Question: What does it mean “to create an opening for the Light”?

Answer: The more you are adhered to the Light, to the source, and want to annul yourself, the more you are included with your Galgata ve Eynaim in the AHP of the upper one.

The AHP of the upper full of Light of Hochma is its vessel of receiving. You can be there if you annul yourself. Then you are swimming there in the waters of Bina and growing. You have everything, the whole world, “from one end to the other”; it all depends only on how much you annul yourself.

But you are already born with your independent vessels. You have to minimize yourself in relation to the state you were in in the world of Ein Sof (Infinity). This is because the upper is Infinity compared to you. Therefore, you should diminish yourself to your own measure, which should have on the outside like an embryo.

This transition is very close, these are labor pains in which you get your own “garments,” instead of staying in the upper one without any form of your own and only annulling yourself, you are acquiring your form now. We don’t see this in our world because an embryo already has a form even while he is in his mother’s womb. But in spirituality it isn’t so.
[72295]
From the Internal Convention 3/3/12, Lesson 2

Related Material:
Like An Embryo In The Mother’s Womb
The Group Is The Noah’s Ark Of Salvation
Evolving At The Speed Of Light

Choosing Another Focus

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe main article of the Kabbalistic method is “There Is None Else Besides Him.” This article is the fine-tuning of our point in the heart, our aspiration to reveal nature, its highest eternal perfect harmony, integrality, and globality, in which everything is interconnected and represents one general whole picture.

Typically, in our world we cannot grasp everything in our individual egoism. We break nature in a vast array of sciences (there are 184 sciences). This does not exist in nature. We simply cannot learn everything at once. We divide nature into some “slices” and study biology, zoology, geology, astronomy, and so on, in general, a great number of sciences.

Our individuality, our egoism is very narrow, so it can absorb only something concrete, but it cannot perceive nature as a whole, holistically. And that is why we cannot feel this general picture and the integral force egoistically, through our corporeal senses. We do not feel it; it does not enter our sensory organs.

To do this we need to develop a new sensory organ that will include, of course, all the previous ones, but will also have the ability to experience absolutely everything at once and together, as a single whole. This is how we should attune ourselves. That is, instead of looking left, right, up, down, precisely according to the coordinates, directing our egoism at a specific phenomenon, we, on the contrary, remove the entire focus, the entire egoism, and try to see nature as it is. This is the essence of attunement.

A group and special methods exist for this. Tuning ourselves this way, we suddenly begin to feel that by removing the egoistic focus from the world, we start looking at it simply, openly, not wanting to grab something from it, and leaving ourselves for the world. We do not limit ourselves by our body, five senses, understanding, and limited ability of perception of everything that exists in nature. Then, we begin to feel that, indeed, we are surrounded by a great force—general, eternal, and perfect, which is called nature, or the Creator.

It has nothing to do with religions, beliefs, or mysticism. This is only a method that helps a person rise above his narrow attitude towards the world and look at it without the limitations of time, space, and movement, that is, it shows how to get beyond the area of our nature so that the body does not restrict us.

To achieve this, we try to organize into groups, where mutual help between friends gives us an opportunity to exit ourselves and start feeling something outside of our body, as if I am not in the body. And indeed, starting to feel ourselves not in the body, we get an idea of what it means to live outside the body.
[73741]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/24/12, Lesson 3

Related Material:
Feeling The Force That Controls Destiny
A New Desire
Separate Your “Self” From A Mortal Body

The Circle Of Embrace

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe special atmosphere that was created in the workshops at the convention in Lithuania should be constantly kept during the lessons. A person needs to constantly feel that. It doesn’t matter whether or not he is actually sitting in a circle and embracing the friends, or they are simply together, feeling the connection without any physical hugging, or even being very far apart.

Of course, this is more difficult, but you’ve already felt that it is possible to somewhat exit the limited physical place and not be tied to time. This connection continues to exist as if in the air.

We need to constantly keep this atmosphere: in the lessons, in all the events and activities, and even at work. It doesn’t matter where a person works: in a factory, for a boss—but through everything that happens he is in contact with the Creator, looking for Him. In every situation he should make efforts so as to reveal the upper Light, as if he is physically among the friends.

Then we will be able to feel how by all these efforts we reveal our connection with a great group of Kabbalists of all generations, who are working with us and continuing these efforts. It is all above physical limitations.

We prepared for these workshops, we sat in a certain way, but all this was a formal preparation. We should try to keep the same spirit we felt then during our studies. The main reward is the efforts themselves and not the strong feeling you expect. We should value the work itself and not the reward for the work.

Therefore, we shouldn’t wait for the moving, inspiring states to return. The key is to constantly search for them, and not in order to receive the pleasant feelings but to prepare ourselves for the revelation of the Creator, in order to bring Him contentment. This opportunity is our reward. This is already somewhat closer to the state of bestowal, Lishma.

We will try to do it. I am sorry, but as usual, children demand what that they like the most, while the parents give them what is best for them according to their mature understanding. And it isn’t always the same. Let’s make an effort to attain an even more correct form.

We should appreciate the opportunity to make an effort, and we will also have to restrict the sensation. Then the feeling of bestowal will appear.
[73813] 
From Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/27/2012  

Related Material:
The Prayer Of Equals In A Circle
Do Not Let The Door Close
Understanding The Gift We Received

The Prayer Of Equals In A Circle

The Payer Of Equals In A CircleIt doesn’t matter that you are sitting in rows behind the desks, and not embracing in a circle. Only the physical bodies are sitting on the chairs, but inside there must be the feeling of a circle: a great connection all over the world. Just like the women encircle us in a ring, so does the whole world stand further away, behind them. We should aspire to bring everyone to one point of contact.

The physical arrangement is meaningless. I don’t think that the pupils of Rabbi Shimon sat in such a symmetric circle. If it were so, the same rules would have been kept until today for the study of the Torah. A circle simply symbolizes the fact that everyone is equal—the friends connect and form a prayer of the many.

We only need to ask for the Light that Reforms. Without this, we have no chance whatsoever to exit our ego even by one millimeter—none of us. Only the Light that Reforms can help us.

Therefore, it is meaningless to ask about how you should do it. You are not doing anything, let the Light do the work! But you should be constantly aware that you need to perform all sorts of actions to draw the Light that will do everything.
[73816] 
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/27/2012, Shamati #52 

Related Material:
The Circle Of Embrace
Light For All Those Lying In The Dust
Prayer For Society

A Multidimensional System

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe have to become similar to the Creator, to take His place. We have to manage ourselves and through ourselves, all other parts of nature. We feel such discomfort in our corporeal life, which today threatens our very existence, so that we reach the level of attainment, knowledge, and awareness, so that we take upon ourselves all the governance and resemble the Creator: feel all of nature as part of ourselves.

On the whole, there is nothing except man. Everything that seems to exist on the outside: people, different physical bodies, and the cosmos, all of it exists in our consciousness, it is all inside us and perceived by us, although it is actually only parts of us.

This means that our desire is divided internally. It is separated so that part of the desire is perceived as ourselves and part of the desire we imagine to be outside of ourselves. The desire is made up of five so-called parts: Shoresh, Neshama, Guf, Levush, and Eichal, that is, our inner essence, soul, body, garments (garment is what is close to us, what touches us), and then all the rest. These five parts of the desire are actually inside us, but in our consciousness they are divided into internal and external.

When a person connects with others, he begins to perceive this illusion correctly. He feels that everything is inside him and not on the outside, and that it is all parts of him.

It seems strange, but he sees how everything interacts and is set in motion depending on him. It’s as if he becomes the part that determines everything else. Suddenly I realize that the whole world depends on my thoughts and my feelings. All other people in relation to me, according to how I relate to them, are suddenly attracted to me and are under my influence, under my will, to the extent that I treat them correctly.

What’s interesting is that this system is multidimensional and each of us sees it the same way. That is, from the starting point of his soul, everyone begins to see that he is the center that manages everything. And no one disturbs anyone, everyone has their own starting point.

When we connect all these points into one collective goal: to unite with the upper force, with nature, the multiple composition of our individualities completes the whole picture till the level called the world of Infinity. Thus our unity has great implications, and eventually it takes us to the next level, to the next dimension.
[73632]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/23/12, Lesson 1

Related Material:
The Fading Shadow Of The World Of Egoistic Desires
The End Of An Illusion Or The Change Of A Paradigm
Seven Billion Worlds

A New Level Of Unity

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe shouldn’t think only about how to gather together in order to feel the upper force between us, its plan, its goal, which has developed us throughout history.…

The spark that appeared in our world from the Big Bang developed all the matter by transferring to it all its energy, all information, and then obliged this matter to come together. At first the matter gathered from the energy and then the particles appeared. They began to connect and to create atoms, molecules, and different crystals.

On the still level, it’s simply an aspiration to cling on to one another and thus feel a greater state of connection. It is by the connection, the empowerment that the next states are reached: particular elements of nature, all its major parts.

Then the new, vegetative level (Ruach) appears, when the particles begin to move, to consume and to emit, and to pass from one to the other. Once again, everything develops only by the mutual connection. The next level, the animate one, is when the beasts have offspring and already organize themselves into families.

Then comes man who doesn’t just connect with others; he creates very complex societies, different groups, tribes, and families. He builds and develops. But once again, it is all based on unification. These unifications are egoistic, and they are essential for the next level of development.

Thus nature constantly urges us to advance in the direction of greater unity. This is what everything is based on.

Now we are on the next level of unity. We are moving in the same direction, but unification has to occur by our conscious participation: We have to participate in this and to fulfill it ourselves.

Nature pushes us towards forced development, like in the previous stages. But we cannot move on automatically to the next level. We need to want it ourselves because only by raising our consciousness can we create a sensory organ to identify and to receive the upper Light, the upper force.

Here we have to be included into each other personally and anti-egoistically, and this connection shouldn’t be based on ordinary unity like in the previous states. The current unity is built in spite of our natural tendencies because now we need to resemble the upper force and not just come together.

So in the current unification we have to think about and to include into ourselves all our friends from around the world. They are here, together with us. We have to feel all of their desires, feelings, thoughts, plans, and hopes here in this hall and between us, which is even better.

At the same time we have to think about humanity: What can we do so that they will also feel what the next level of their development is, and what level of recognition and feeling we, human beings, should rise to by turning into a unified image of man, or “Adam,”  which means “similar to the Creator.”

The most important thing is not to forget that the goal of our unity is to connect with the upper force of nature, which fills everything around us, determines everything, is the basis for everything, and which created the whole world from a spark of its energy. Through the spark that has developed to this state, we will be able to transcend to the next dimension to which our evolution is leading us today.

Therefore, we, all those who understand, who want to understand and to perceive this method, have gathered here from all over the world. We all hope that we succeed in that. It all depends only on our intentions, on our internal yearning for mutual collective unity.
[73635]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/23/12, Lesson 1

Related Material:
Stages Of Ascent Toward The Creator
“We” Is A New Sensor
The Donkey Work Of The Light