Question: What does it mean to give up everything for the sake of the spiritual goal?

Answer: To give up everything for the sake of spirituality is to determine that my goal is to reach bestowal so that only this property will reign in me, to such an extent that my “self” will not be felt anymore. Just as you don’t feel the Creator now, you won’t feel yourself. No matter what happens, no matter if people scold you or what they say about you—nothing external will affect you.

Your ego will grow bigger and bigger, but you will constantly rise above it with your power of bestowal. And then you will resemble the Creator to a certain extent.

You see, we can anger Him as much as we want, and it won’t affect Him. How does He manage to do that? Does the upper force have no mind or feelings? No, it is simply the attribute of love and bestowal that is above everything. “Love will cover all sins!” And if we come to it, this means that we are ready for Rosh Hashanah (the New Year)….

These are very difficult situations, and the faster you advance, the more you fall. It is like in sports: The one who reaches the final is the one who is best prepared to reach the goal. The selection becomes more and more uncompromising, and so fewer and fewer reach the finish line. Therefore, it is no wonder that people fall along the way. It is a pity, but this is the nature of things.
[55880]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/26/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Question: I have an unpleasant feeling that even in a hundred years I will not understand the texts of The Zohar.  What should I do?

Answer: Just as man wanted to “acquire” this whole world in the past, now he wants to acquire all of spirituality. This desire by itself is fine, but the moment such a thought occurs, a person should understand that there is a paradox here: I reach spirituality when I give up everything.

How can I, with my great desire, want spirituality so much and at the same time, give everything up? This is impossible—unless I receive the second force from the environment, the force opposite to my desire to achieve spirituality without any connection to others: “What do I care about them? Who are they? Do they exist at all? I only have to deal with the Creator! And as far as I am concerned, you can all vanish.…” This is what man is like, and everyone who is greater than his friend has greater egoism.

Yet, despite all this I still reach total devotion, whereby I yield to everyone and want only to bestow, to such an extent that I will get nothing from it, and I will not even know that I bestow. This is because the mere thought of bestowal is already a reward. The environment should enable me to do so.

On one hand, there is the cruel, uncontrollable force within me: the desire to enjoy, and as much as possible. I am simply burning with the desire to attain spirituality. On the other, through the group, the Light has to influence me with the opposite attributes. This is called “Aviut (coarseness) of the desire from the bottom and the screen from Above.” And then I will have the vessel (Kli) for the spiritual revelation.
[55884]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/27/2011, The Zohar

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Question: How can a person use his inherent qualities for bestowal?

Answer: There’s no need to think about it because it happens automatically. I don’t have to work against my inherent qualities and inclinations or try to change or “correct” them. After all, I wouldn’t have a clue as to what to do with myself.

All of our work consists of including ourselves in the correct environment and having it influence us as much as possible. Surely, I must first check and determine that this is the environment I need. But after I’ve checked and entered into it, then all I want is for this environment to influence me.

I don’t know how the strength that I receive from my environment will effect my inherent qualities and inclinations. I don’t hypothesize about what will come from this connection. My only choice and clarification is in determining whether this environment measures up to my understanding and sensation of an exalted and unique society aimed towards bestowal and revelation of the Creator.

However, how it affects me and my qualities and how one influences the other is something unknown to me at the moment. This is something I will find out about later, when I’ll begin revealing spiritual levels and understanding how things really work. More so, this won’t come to me at my current level. Only after ascending to the next level and looking down to where I was, will I be able to observe and understand this process.

The whole of spiritual work is in faith above reason, it is in attaining the force of bestowal above the force of reception. Until this system is built within me, my perception will not allow me to perceive, attain, and understand what is truly happening.

Chaining our inherent qualities isn’t our goal. While one is in bestowal for the sake of bestowal, he has no ability to attain the purpose of his inherent qualities and the influence of the environment. Only when he begins connecting with other souls and receives for the sake of bestowal, only then, due to this connection, he starts learning about himself.

I will never learn anything about myself unless I begin bestowing to others. Then, in relation to them and through my attitude towards them, I’ll begin to understand myself. They will become a reference point in relation to which I can measure. After all, we always need two points in order to measure something. If I’m alone, in relation to what will I measure?

This is why when I establish a correct connection with others and study them, I also study myself.
[55513]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/23/2011, Writings of Rabash

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My Good Environment – Dr. Laitman’s Advice and Principles for the Week

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Question: People still are far from being able to understand that the environment plays a key role in influencing a person.

Answer: It’s not that they are far from it. They simply don’t have what it takes. After all, this remedy applies solely to correction, whereas people have nothing related to correction, no notion of the external system of influence thanks to which we change. They are certain that it is they who reform the world, while they should be constructing a world that would change them.

Question: How can we convey a sense of mutual responsibility to them, responsibility for the world?

Answer: This exactly is the aim of our dissemination. We need to build a system of education and create our own media. We have to build everything anew on the Internet, as well as on our television and radio channels.

If we do it all correctly, then after the first few blows, people will realize that we have a solution. It is we who are supposed to bring them a “candy” to sweeten up the first “spankings” so that they may see it right away: This offers a solution, hope, and salvation.

This work is entrusted to us; there is no one else to count on. People are unable to hear the message of spiritual ascent. They are in another realm and simply do not understand what we want. When they do begin to understand, they won’t be able to implement it. Correction will come only from us, and our job is to explain to them the necessity thereof.

Systemic corrections occur in a ready-made form from the part of Galgalta ve Eynaim, and the rest should just agree with them, accept them. In addition, we should be quite crafty at disseminating so that the masses will come to want it, so that they would accept this idea and realize that it benefits them.

People cannot change by themselves; 99% of the people are unable to do it. So, at the end of “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Baal HaSulam writes that the upper wisdom will flow through Israel (from the words “Yashar-El” or “straight to the Creator”) to the nations of the world. It will flow from the inside out. The masses will not rise to seek it. At best, they will open their hearts to its pouring stream. God willing, they will do so, and we will have something to pour for them.

It will happen if we begin working with them together in the most intense manner. In our dissemination, we can demand nothing from them but the awareness of the current situation. Even if they do not understand everything, we’ll create a connection. By way of dissemination, we, on our part, will find common ground with them.

We can’t demand anything from an infant. It is we who must provide it with milk, bottles, pacifiers, and diapers. Moreover, we don’t expect a meaningful response from him. That will come later when he has grown up a bit.
[55379]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/22/2011, “The Nation”

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My Good Environment – Dr. Laitman’s Advice and Principles for the Week

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Our collective state in which we all exist connected together is called Malchut of Infinity, Shechina. Shechina is a “place” where the upper Light becomes revealed. It is called Shochen according to its actions: He dwells and resides in her.

We are desires connected with one another by the common property of bestowal. It is according to this property that we reveal the upper Light that fills us.

Therefore, until we feel ourselves as connected together, existing in the state of the perfect and corrected Shechina, a corrected network of connection between us, we exist in the concealment of Shechina rather than its revelation. We exist in its exile. This vessel is not revealed, and therefore, it is called Shechina in exile, which means in exile, in concealment from us.
[55465]
From the 6th lesson at the Toronto Convention 9/18/11

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Question: Is there a special trick I can use so that the society will constantly direct me despite the disturbances of my ego?

Answer: It is a very interesting point. We see that throughout history, up until our time, man becomes more clever with each generation. And this wisdom gets accumulated in each generation rather than in a person himself.

For example, a person lived for seventy years and was reborn in the next generation. But why is he born without all the knowledge and experience he had acquired in his previous life? On the other hand, why does he need to die? Why can’t he carry all the accumulated wisdom from generation to generation?

Animals operate by instincts that are programmed in them. After they are born, they don’t need to learn. They already have the natural instincts required for life. But this doesn’t exist in humans. So how can I pass all my achievements, my knowledge, and the experience I have accumulated from one generation to another?

The Creator has prepared a special method for us. If we developed like animals, only on the physical level, we wouldn’t be able to pass any of the knowledge we have acquired as humans (as corporeal beings, meaning the still, vegetative, and animate levels of the human degree).

Now when we enter the fourth and last level of our human development (which is the reason for the social global crisis), we feel that we are not adapted to this globalization, that we are not connected to society on a global level, and we don’t use it in order to develop ourselves.

Nature demands that we start developing in a very interesting manner: If I am connected to the environment and develop with its help, internally I create new levels of attaining my connection with this environment. Thus, I become a “human” since I acquire the desire to bestow. Then all my work, all my knowledge, and everything that I have acquired during the seventy years of my life remain in the environment.

When I die and am born again, beginning a new life, I connect to all the knowledge that I have left, like to a treasury, and continue! This means that from now on, to the extent that we connect to the environment correctly, every level will be like building a higher level.

I don’t have to reinvent the multiplication table and all the other rules. If I connect to the environment naturally, I receive from it all the knowledge I had acquired previously and left in it. I actually stayed there because I connected with them and established a contact.

So we see how we complete all the defects, all the empty spaces that humans have compared to animals. This is a wonderful method of advancing which the Creator has prepared for us. Similarly, for several years and perhaps several reincarnations, I can ascend to the highest level without losing anything, not even the smallest things that I have learned in this corporeal world.

When a baby is born, we teach him how to be in contact with the environment since a newborn exists only in the still, vegetative, and animate levels and needs to quickly go through all of them. But after society develops to the human level in man, he will develop like babies did in the time of the Temple, when all the people of Israel were at the level of spiritual attainment, as it is said: “There was no child from Dan to Beer Sheba who did not know the laws of impurity and purity by the age of six.”

All the attainments are preserved in the environment. I connect to it during my lifetime and become part of it. This is where all my attainments are, all my spirituality. The corporeal body lives and dies over and over again for it is only the external form of who I am.

This is all very relevant today. After all we don’t know yet the height of the degree to which we are destined to ascend.
[55586]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/23/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Question: What does it mean to open oneself to the group?

Answer: On one hand, it means to want to bestow onto them, like someone who is greater than them, who fills them with everything they need, not by pressure, but according to their will. This is similar to ZAT de Bina, which acts according to the desire of the lower one. Thus, you also become greater than them.

You open yourself in order to receive all the deficiencies from them, like from children. You incorporate them into yourself to such an extent that you feel pain if they don’t receive what they want, and you are ready to fill them again and again.

On the other hand, you should have an opposite mechanism. This means that you have to sail against the wind, zigzagging to the left and to the right. You also feel that you are lower than others, you are ready to serve them and to do anything in order to receive spiritual uplifting from them, the spiritual attainment, the Creator in them, the One you want to discover in the connection between you.

This is how you advance: once on the side of the deficiencies and once on the side of the spiritual uplifting in working together with the group—until you exert to the full measure.

The main test of your work is to what extent you see the structure in which you will attain spirituality. This structure is the connection of all the friends’ and the whole world’s desires for spirituality. The Creator is revealed in your mutual yearning for spirituality. This is called Shechina, the collection of the souls that yearn for the Creator (Knesset Israel).
[55642]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/21/2011, Shamati #232

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We cannot make a beeline for the goal, but we can build an environment that will exert an influence upon us from both the positive and negative sides. With regard to the positive side, it means that the environment reveals additional desires within a person, jealousy, and the urge to reach what others have attained.

As for the negative side, the environment shows a person how much less than others he is, how unable he is to be together with them, and how against everyone he is, torturing a person with the feeling of his insignificance and anxiety about his future.

This is how the environment pushes a person both from the positive to negative sides, moving him forward in a “zigzag” path against the wind in the direction of the goal. It is how he reveals the additional urge to the original desire instilled in him from the side of creation in the informational genes (Reshimot), awakened in him by the Creator. This is how he advances.

For the most part, this work consists of building the environment that influences the person. As it turns out, he is the one building this influence, and to that extent, he opens himself up to it. If he doesn’t invest his strength into the group, he will not open up to it.

This can be seen in the example of a person who is taking care of his children or pets. The more we invest in someone, the closer and more loved they become to us. And that is why we begin to react more sensitively to his feedback, opening ourselves up for love and connection.

The same thing happens to the environment. The more we invest in it, the more valuable it becomes to us. And then we open ourselves to the influence of the environment, having built the means that moves us forward on a zigzag path against our egoism towards the purpose of creation.

With this, we complete our efforts to the full extent, about which it is said “I labored and did not find, do not believe.”
[55280]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/21/2011, Shamati #232

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