Entries in the 'Group Work' Category

Getting From A Point To A Circle

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: If spirituality does not become revealed to my “I,” how can I demand something at the convention? How can I demand for the Creator to change me if in principle, “I” do not exist?

Answer: You work on your own until you unite with your friends: You participate in group life, unity, and dissemination. On the other hand, the spiritual vessel we’ll create will be a common vessel. I can only experience certainty and spiritual sensations when in adhesion with others. I can only discover the fulfillment of the vessel of bestowal together with my neighbor, only united.

It is in this way that I make individual actions to raise myself towards unity. And at the convention I don’t see anyone separately: Instead of seeing faces of my friends I want to see a single desire. Together we create something unified over us, a “spiritual vessel,” where we wish to reveal the upper force.

Question: If I experience something similar at the end of the convention, how can I be sure that I have really attained the goal?

Answer: It will manifest as a fact: Either you know that it’s so or you don’t. This is because we attain the spiritual world in actual sensations.

Spiritual attainment is a billion times higher and stronger than your current perception. Right now it’s limited by a central black point of all the worlds, in which we don’t have any spiritual traits. We don’t know the cause or its consequences; we don’t know where our sensations come from and how our desires change. Why does every moment of my life differ from the previous moments? This is unknown to me. Sensations change, thoughts jump, desires alternate, factors of influence are discovered, and I have no knowledge about this process and the outcomes of my states. I exist in a black point.

Only after I enter the spiritual level, rise above my point, and expand the circle of my perception, only then I begin to perceive the cause of all the things that happen to me. I understand how I am to act, I see and attain, I know that I exist in a state shared by everybody. So how do I strengthen it? How do I strengthen the connection between us? After all, its strength determines the strength of my perception of life, the strength of my certainty, understanding, and attainment.

It is in this way that I begin to ascend higher and higher. When I enter the notion of “we,” when I submerge myself in our common desire and sensation, our common thought, I stop perceiving the material life to the point that the death of my flesh does not seem to me as my own death. Only the body dies because it remains only in one central point of all the worlds, the blackest and darkest one, while I have already risen at least to the following circle.
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From Preparatory Lesson, The World Arvut Convention 2011

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The Return To “Us”

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: I can understand and feel what it means to give confidence to my friends. I can understand what it is for the entire group to be confident about the successful outcome of the convention. But it is written in the Shamati article No. 72 “Confidence Is the Clothing for the Light” that I myself must acquire this feeling of safety. Does this refer to the safety of the “I” that exists in all the friends?

Answer: In spirituality there is no reference to “I.” This question does not exist there at all because “I” do not exist separately.

We already know that the Creator created the general desire, the Kli (vessel). This desire has separated into a multitude of pieces during the breaking, and now every one of us, every part of this single desire, only perceives its current life. We don’t have the ability to perceive anything greater.

However, you still desire to perceive a higher degree than the life in this world, in your little piece of the general desire. For this we need to unite and return to the state of a single vessel, as it was before the breaking.

So, there is no notion of “I” in spirituality, in the sense that we imagine it. There is unity in spirituality. When everyone joins it despite his egoism, a 620 times more powerful vessel is formed. Unlike the initial state, every one of us has acquired an egoistic desire, found himself separated from the others, experienced personal hatred towards the common vessel, towards everyone else, and now is working above this egoistic inclination to reject. This is what gives us a much greater power of unity than before.

The spiritual world is perceived in the common, unified vessel, when we glue its broken pieces together again. And we together reveal fulfillment in this corrected vessel. It’s not I who feels the unity, the spiritual world, and the confidence. If this sensation exists, this is no longer “I,” but “we” together. This is the only way to manifest spiritual details of perception, both in regards to the vessels and the Lights.
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From Preparatory Lesson, The World Arvut Convention 2011

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Taking a Step Toward a Big World

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What stages should a person go through during the convention?

Answer: First of all, it’s necessary to physically include yourself in the mutual field by trying to do what all the others are doing. We should turn off our thinking, put aside all concerns and desires, and simply dive into the surrounding environment.

I don’t want to think about anything! For the next few days I totally disconnect myself from all my usual concerns. After all, I have the right to do so for once in my life! It’s as if I have no worries: I’m being fed, I have a place to sleep, and that’s all I need in the physical world. Everything else I want to do along with others and feel what they feel.

We can ascend only if we apply a great deal of effort and try time and time again to elevate ourselves. It’s very important to make such physical actions where we totally stop thinking of ourselves and only look at others and do what they are doing, like a small child that imitates adults and thereby grows. This is exactly what we should be doing.

All of my friends are the greatest people of the generation and exist in the world of Infinity. This is what Kabbalists teach us, and this is what I discover upon attaining spirituality. Right now I want to connect with them and not be a smart alec so that I don’t allow any criticism or doubt to enter my mind. We must all do this.

We still have time to prepare. We must all come to the opening ceremony with the feeling that we are one person. There will be more people coming, and we have to sweep them up with this thought and this intention so as to absorb them within instead of them overpowering us.

We need this large amount of people. We can’t conduct a convention in a narrow circle of 500 people. This is not enough. We have to sweep up a large number of people because the only way we’ll earn a spiritual revelation is by taking a step towards the whole world.

The people that are expected to join us are not closely connected to us and aren’t necessarily led here by the point in the heart. These people are interested in the topic and they respect and support us. So we have to be the core within this mass of people, just like the world Kli is the core in relation to all of humanity.

This is why in the days before the convention we must obtain maximum unity between us. And later we’ll simply continue to work on that unity. On the first day of the gathering we will begin to work for the public with the unity that we have prepared. Each time we’ll keep them and ourselves in a greater connection.

We are responsible for this unity and we realize this convention. The word “convention” means a gathering, a connection between all of its participants. From this you should understand what we are here to do and try to direct everything inward toward the mutual desires and thoughts.
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From Preparatory Lesson, The World Arvut Convention 2011

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Unshakeable Confidence Is One For All

Dr. Michael LaitmanShamati #72: Confidence is the clothing for the Light, called “life.” This is because there is a rule that there is no Light without a Kli (vessel). It follows that the Light, called “Light of life,” cannot clothe, but must dress in some Kli (desire). The Kli where the Light of life is clothed is usually called “confidence.” It means that he sees that he can do every difficult thing.

This means that if we don’t attain the state called confidence, we won’t be able to reveal the upper Light. That’s because the Light is attained and perceived in this vessel of confidence, meaning, we have to be sure that it is in our power to do this and it depends only on us. If this inner sensation arises in us, we will definitely be successful and reveal the Light.

The degree of life is defined by the degree of one’s confidence, and the stronger is the sensation of confidence, the more the Light becomes revealed inside of it. We are in an ocean of infinite Light even now, but due to the lack of confidence, the vessel for the Light’s revelation, we sense ourselves in this miniscule state – in a black central point, giving us the weakest possible sensation of life called “this world.”

If we want to acquire a greater sensation of life in ever-increasing spheres, until the last, infinite, unbounded sphere, this depends only on how sure we will be that we can attain it only inside of our unity.

There cannot be any doubts and lack of confidence, such as thoughts of this not being the right time to do it, that maybe we can do it tomorrow or the next day. The moment we attain this confidence all together, we will immediately break through the Machsom.

Even the sensation of our life here, in this world, also depends on the feeling of confidence. The greater the confidence, the greater the sensation of material life.

The Light and our ego are playing with one another, and we are in the middle, between them. Everything depends only on the level of our confidence: whether we will be able to rise above egoism at every moment and cleave to the Light, aspiring to be equal to it.

This war does not stop for a moment because as soon as we rise above a certain state, a greater egoistic desire is immediately revealed to give us the opportunity to rise above it to a higher level. This is why we need to be doing constant inner work: descents and ascents, alternating non-stop.

We have to understand that all the descents are given to us to overcome them and this way to attain unlimited confidence. And the only solution here is to separate from ourselves and cleave to the group. In it I must find the great force that can swallow me and bring me to the next level, like a mother’s womb, the AHP of the upper one.

To the extent I am able to cleave to this elevator, it will continuously elevate me to higher levels. I just need to cleave to it all the time above my egoism, which will get in my way less and less.

My task is only to rise above reception in bestowal, faith above reason, and this action is only possible in the group. I will continuously try to do this, while my ego will throw me to the side, distracting me with trivial matters, and then with matters that are larger and more serious, until I finally detach from it and will even stop feeling how far I have gotten.

Our entire work comes down to this. And if at every moment I don’t experience myself deeper inside the group, the society, and the common confidence that we acquire together, then I come out of my vessel, our common desire for revealing the spiritual world, and I don’t attain anything. That is how I lose confidence.
Our entire confidence is based on a person cleaving to the group and there finding the force that lets him continuously attain greater spiritual levels.
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From the preparatory lesson to the Arvut Convention, 12/4/11

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Life-Giving Unity

Dr. Michael LaitmanConvention Preparation
The only thing that will help us is unity. You depend on others and you know it. You know that the mind and the feeling won’t get you anywhere. They will keep changing, inclining in one direction or another, but with no result. You are like a dead body in a society of friends.

This society buries your egoism in the ground and raises your soul upward. So let it do that. Believe us, you really are dead. So give us the chance to take care of you, to bring you back to life.

Here is what Chaim Vital writes in the book, The Gates of Reincarnation: My teacher (the Ari) warned me and all the friends that were with us in the group that we should take upon us the commandment of love for the neighbor as oneself, and to aspire to love for every person from Israel as to oneself. By virtue of this, one’s prayer is accepted, which is gathered from all of Israel and able to perform a correction above. In our love of friends, every person can become included in the friends like an organ in a body. Our teacher warned us about this very much.

If a person understood that he has no other way to go, that he just has to give himself over to society, he would join the friends and would benefit from it. There is no Kabbalist who did not write about this or pass this on to his students. This is the foundation of our Kli.

We are beginning the practical preparation to the Convention. This is an unusual convention. Everyone sees how special it is, what inner and outer preparatory work we have already done. So let us try to spend the last days and hours before the opening in connection, in unity, in understanding that it’s impossible without this.

I advise you to print out all of the excerpts that we used at the Convention in the Arava desert. Let the friends read them and translate them for one another, let them discuss it in their free time so we won’t have a minute free of unity. These words of Kabbalists are wondrous messages of unity and they have great power. So let them be a basis, a foundation of everything we are doing.

I summon you to understand that no one here is exempt from mutual guarantee. Every person is responsible for everyone. Whether he wants it or not, he was brought to the group, he was appointed a messenger and a responsible person. Even if he is out there, in the external world physically, instead of here, this doesn’t matter, he is responsible for everyone.

Therefore, let’s constantly hold on to the unity, in which we attain the Creator. Let’s not leave this goal for a moment. Let’s wait every moment for the upper Light to come, to illuminate our small, flawed desires and unite us. Then it will enter and fill this unity it created, and we will attain the revelation of the Creator to the creation. I am sure that this is exactly where we are headed.

And once I have acquired this above-mentioned clothing, sparks of love promptly begin to shine within me. The heart begins to long to unite with my friends, and it seems to me that my eyes see my friends, my ears hear their voices, my mouth speaks to them, the hands embrace, the feet dance in a circle, in love and joy together with them, and I transcend my corporeal boundaries. I forget the vast distance between my friends and me, and the outstretched land for many miles will not stand between us.

It is as though my friends are standing right within my heart and see all that is happening there, and I become ashamed of my petty acts against my friends. Then, I simply exit the corporeal vessels and it seems to me that there is no reality in the world except my friends and I. After that, even the “I” is cancelled and is immersed, mingled in my friends, until I stand and declare that there is no reality in the world—only the friends. (Rabash, Letter #8)
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From the lesson on 12/2/11, Shamati

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Dr. Michael LaitmanLove towards friends is necessary for achieving the similarity with the upper force. To the extent that we connect with each other, we change our state.

All the time, we are in the state of creation and gradually reveal more and more of it, and thus advance. In essence, we return to the understanding and feeling of what it means to be similar to the Creator, and how to come from disparity to similarity. This is our path.

That is why, we never have bad states on the way, they are always in the direction of good. Every action, which we perform for connection, is aimed at the achieving of a good state, toward when we break the barriers that divide us, the walls of egoism, and inside the common circle reveal what happens there in reality.

Concealment, created by partitions, separating us from each other, is disappearing, and we connect more strongly. When these walls fall, which is called the end of correction (Gmar Tikkun), in our unity, we will reveal ourselves as one creature. Through this, we will achieve equivalence of form with the Creator, who is also One.

All the laws of the group and our corrections follow from here. All corrections are intended for the correction of these partitions, which should stop dividing us. And while we are all different, but despite these differences which we do not destroy, we rise above all the barriers, differences, and there reveal the Creator fully.

We are now in the final state, only this infinite spiritual state is concealed from us, and we see only a material group in front of us. But if we begin to connect with the group without any barriers that hinder our unity and connection, then it suddenly turns into a structure similar to the Creator.

The first time we can feel, instead of an average group a single formation, similar to the Creator, we discover His manifestation at least to a small measure. This means to rise above the Machsom to the first spiritual degree.

There are 125 degrees of ascent or the likeness with the upper force, the Creator, due to our connection with each other.

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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/30/11, “The Need for Love of Friends”

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The Spirit Of Unity Is Knocking At Our Hearts

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What does it mean to be inspired by the group?

Answer: To be inspired means to open your eyes, ears, all five of your senses, and most importantly, the inner sense—“the point in the heart” in order to feel the spirit that exists in the group.

When I come up to the roof where you are working now and preparing the equipment for the convention, I feel that there is a certain spirit, some common force that is engaged in preparing for a spiritual ascent.

The fact is that this is joint work, joint aspiration, anticipation of and preparation for a great, powerful gathering, for which there are no analogous equals in the world according to strength, power, and level of ascent. Approximately ten thousand people will go through enormous spiritual ascent over these three days; they will place themselves under the influence of the upper Light. We should try to feel that we are in the group using all the strings of our soul; we should try to be in that spirit, in that common force that is present there.

Actually, independent of us, our group already has its own, common component—an integral that includes us all. However, each of us needs to perform a slight effort and dissove in this. When a person is able to do this, he will feel this state.

For this purpose, a week ago we went to the desert and attempted to carry our our first unification there. As I felt, it was very successful. Many people who have been working on themselves, studying and implementing Kabbalah for many years, for the first time felt that there is some spiriutal component, which we can find among us, in our unity.

It has already been revealed between us, and now we need to try to find it. Now everything depends on how much we will try to constantly be in this state—in the single force of the group. Precisely by delving into it, we will feel the upper force, the Creator, and in unification with Him we will begin to feel the upper world. All this is the next stage, which is very close. In this regard, everything depends on the inner, emotional effort of a person.
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Fundamentals of Kabbalah Lesson 11/27/11

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A Thorny Path Toward The Creator’s Castle

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe must create an environment that would enable us to go from receiving for our sake to receiving for the sake of the Creator, from loving ourselves to loving Him. What does “Him” mean? Who is He? What does He give me? I do not know anyone or anything.


The Creator is concealed, and he is concealed on purpose. We are not able to establish a connection with Him as we do not yet have a screen.


Since I am still an egoist, a thief, a liar, and so on, I cannot be allowed in proper society. I am forbidden to enter a castle with a lot of riches and delicacies because I immediately would begin to consume everything there for my own sake and hide things in my pockets.

I will never become similar to the Creator this way. This is why I am not allowed near Him. We are now in darkness with a lack of understanding and are unable to perceive the upper world and the Creator. However, this fact only benefits us and contributes to our development.


When will we begin to reveal this state where we can enter the Creator’s palace that is flooded with light? When will we be able to do and fulfill ourselves with anything that we want there?


When we really are able to control ourselves and behave properly in this high society, everything that is there will be revealed to us for our benefit. Then, we can rise and become like the corrected souls that are there, to become like the Creator Himself.

How is this realized? In our world, we are given an opportunity to be in touch with other people and to try to create certain conditions between us. I am able to form a small community together with them called a “group” where all of us exist in mutual bestowal and connection.

We do not owe anything to any of us. We only need our connection to reveal the world of bestowal and love, the higher dimension called the Creator, God, which is just love and bestowal.

If we really want this, then, together with our close friends whose purpose in life is the same as ours, we can reveal the states of the upper world and practice on each other. If we reach this state where we are able to unite, to annul our own interests and direct ourselves toward bestowal to others, if we begin to act this way, then we will gradually begin to climb the mountain where the Creator is.

Rising toward this, we overcome great obstacles. As in Baal HaSulam’s example, there are guards along the way to the castle who brutishly push us away, and, the higher we rise, the more brutish the guards become.

In other words, they evoke very rough relationships between us, such as envy, jealousy, hatred, and rage. This makes it harder and harder for us to connect in a group for the sake of the higher goal, for the sake of the attainment of love, reciprocity, mutual help, and mutual guarantee. I begin to feel that I do not wish to make contact with them in any way. I am ready to neglect everyone.

Many have already fallen off this mountain and rolled down to its foot where all of mankind is. Still, we continue to climb with the remaining friends. How many of us will make it? That is unknown. How many will fall? This is also unknown. Everything depends only on our mutual help and nothing else!
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From the Fundamentals of Kabbalah 11/6/11

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Why Are We So Different?

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe should all be thinking about nullifying ourselves and only caring about others because in this way we attain the Creator. Contrary to the assumption of many, we shouldn’t be concerned with caring for physical bodies. There are many methods and spiritual practices dedicated to this in our world. However, Kabbalah speaks of the type of love for one’s fellow that allows a person to rise above his egoism and obtain a connection that’s above it.

This shouldn’t be confused with “altruistic” societies that help the poor and the sick. They think that by doing so they are correcting the world that the Creator “ruined.” We see that such action only makes things worse. This is contradictory to human reasoning. But then again, we gradually begin to see that our mind doesn’t agree with anything.

We shouldn’t be concerned with fulfilling one’s egoistic desires, but think only of love toward our fellow man. It is only in this way that we’ll be able to sense the need for obtaining a new quality of love and bestowal through which we obtain love for the Creator.

It becomes clear now why we need so many different people around us that have nothing in common with one another, each one existing in his own egoistic desire and love for one’s self. All of this is given to us so that we can apply our own effort in revealing the Creator.

There is no distance between the Creator and me. This distance appears only as a result of the distance between me and another person. By erasing the distance between myself and others, I erase the distance between myself and the Creator. My first contact with a friend is my first contact with the Creator. The more that I begin to connect with others (not through the physical bodies, but only through the points in the heart which is above my egoistic desire), the more I begin to reveal the Creator and to unite with Him.
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From Lesson 2, Arvut Convention in the Arava Desert 11/18/2011

Distance Is Not An Obstacle

Dr. Michael LaitmanIt is not accidental that we are spread across the Earth and separated by great distances. We are created so purposefully. This comes from the fall of the Tower of Babel.

We need to use these elements of separation correctly so that regardless of them, we increase the connection between us. Therefore, those who are located far away from us should not feel that they are distant from us.

Unity is above the framework of our world. A person who is located somewhere far away may experience unity with everyone else even more sharply than someone who is here physically. His urge, his bitterness about the fact that he is far away from everyone, his acute desire to feel everything that we are doing, intensifies his emotions to such an extent that he is with us completely.

He can absorb absolutely everything that is happening at the convention. The most important thing is tuning our hearts to the same frequency: unity.
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From Sunday Virtual Lesson Series 11/20/2011

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