Question: When a person receives a blow from the Creator, he or she can logically understand that it is beneficial to them. But we live by our sensations and hence should move on from mental comprehension to an authentic feeling that it is truly for our own good. How does this transition occur?

Answer: You discover that the Creator does not send you blows. It is not a blow really; it’s just that the Creator awakens you since He loves you and wishes to bring you to the most beneficial state.You find that the Creator did it intentionally so as to raise you a bit above your egoism that you are residing in and that He doesn’t have an alternative.

Suppose you are lying unconscious and need to be revived, brought back to life. Obviously, when you are waking up and returning to consciousness, you feel bad and are suffering from wounds since you lost consciousness while being in critical condition. Now you are being revived. The doctors rejoice: “The patient is back!” But what’s to be happy about? Now he is screaming, hurting, and suffering…. Wouldn’t it be best to leave him unconscious? Certainly not!

Now you understand where it hurts and why. Now you must only create the right attitude to this suffering in you: “I am hurting where I lack the correct connection with the Creator. He is waking me up, wishing for us to love each other at the first step to affinity: my first spiritual degree.

From this degree, He radiates His attitude to me, illuminates me with His Light. And I sense this first spiritual step in its various manifestations as a bad state since my ego cannot bear this state of bestowal, love of others, the connection outside of me. I experience darkness, evil, and pain. I don’t desire it!”

True! I am aware that I don’t want it, that I feel bad. Who is giving this state to me? The Creator is. Why does He? He points out to me that if now I make an effort to rise above my feelings and switch my attitude to the one desired by the Creator, which He is demonstrating to me, then we will come in touch. And this must occur!

But you seem to be refusing: “No, it hurts! Take it away from me! I don’t need suffering or reward! I don’t want anything!” Well, if you don’t, you don’t; what can one do…

What can the Creator do? At any rate, He has plans for you. He understands that you are a fool, so He goes “around” you: He gives you all kinds of suffering and problems in life outside of any connections with Him, when you don’t understand or feel that it is He who is waking you up. He pulls on and stings you from every direction and arranges troubles, misfortunes, and problems for you.

Thus He exhausts you and then gives you a wake-up call so you may remember Him: “I see… There is the Creator. Perhaps, my problems are justified. Maybe, it’s for my own benefit.”At this point you change your attitude. Sufferings soften the flesh, and you are willing to bear more.

Then He sets before you the same conditions of the first degree of adhesion with Him once more, and this time your attitude is different to it. Frankly, it isn’t very convenient and doesn’t feel that good. It’s unpleasant, but we can bear it. You start to understand now that the encounter with the Creator is above pleasant sensations inside your ego and you must rise above your pleasant animate feelings.

You already possess a certain amount of tolerance and willingness to suffer. And then you begin working with the help of the group. You no longer scream: “No!” while on the threshold. You know that you have a group, the environment; you see that the Creator still hasn’t abandoned you and that you are still bonded with Him by the covenant.

You start employing the entire environment that He has arranged for you in life as the means for you to rise above your perception and start building relationships by using the mind, based on the analysis of “truth or falsehood” instead of “bitter or sweet.”

This is a discernment of a human rather than of an animal: “How should I build my relationship with the spiritual degree so that I rise above my bad sensation and don’t perceive it as such? I can’t help it; it’s necessary for me if I wish to be connected to the Creator.”
[41869]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/1/2011, Baal HaSulam’s Letter 19

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Rabash, Shlavey HaSulam (Steps of the Ladder), Article “The Torah Is Called the Middle Line”: One must have faith that there is “None else beside Him,” meaning that only the Creator compels him to do righteous deeds. But since he has not yet merited knowing that he is compelled by the Creator, the Creator clothes in other people [who as though exist outside of a person] and carries out these deeds with their help.

We think that we are surrounded by lots of people, that they influence us in a variety of ways, and that we must react to them. But if we begin to relate to them (“them” meaning the group of people studying Kabbalah, and not the whole outside world) as the Creator’s manifestation, His presence between us, His presentation to us, then as we unite in the group, we begin to study and attain Him.

One must have faith that behind the human images stands the Creator and carries out all the deeds in people.
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From Lesson 8, WE! Convention 4/3/2011

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When we enter the spiritual space, we embrace other souls. Otherwise, I simply cannot enter the spiritual world since it isn’t some fenced area that I can walk into through a door.

Only if I unify with the others into one system and feel reality not just personally, individually, but as the integral life of the system where we are connected together, the friends and I, by having become one man with one heart, can I start perceiving more details in it, through additional organs of perception besides my own. Most importantly, I feel it through our common desire, the common spiritual vessel that we are building together and which includes us all.

It isn’t simply a sum of our desires, but rather a totally new property that is regarded as the property of bestowal. It is this property through which I start feeling another dimension, the upper, spiritual one.

It isn’t just certain supplementary details and peculiarities that each of us can see differently, nor is it an exchange of our personal impressions. It is one common impression, but it derives from bestowal, from the sensation of the Creator’s actions. We perform the acts of bestowal, that is, we repeat His actions!

You begin to feel what it’s like to be the Creator, and for this reason spiritual attainment is unlike material attainment. And although the system that you have built isn’t “divine” but comprised of our souls, it still has a special design, the integration of souls in love, mutual reciprocity and guarantee above their initial ego, evil nature, hate, and repulsion. And the difference between the first and the second properties is what creates the space, the new dimension inside which we start experiencing actions regarded as “bestowal.”

In other words, you have built within, inside your desires and qualities, a model of the Creator that helps you understand what He is. Previously, you simply looked at this world and saw some creation without having the slightest idea about it. But now that you are approaching it, you find the Creator inside this creation since you are assembling His image from your own parts, from all souls.

In the end, you discover such a great number of details that you reveal in this world what was previously hidden in it. You see that the Creator’s actions were concealed in it.

You keep delving deeper, to the extent that you can attach a greater number of parts (souls) to your system and link them closer together, until all individual souls, with their personal view of the world, unify as one soul, one desire, regarded as Malchut of the world of Infinity. There, in their connection with one another, in all its smallest details, the individual souls come to a personal feeling and attainment which completely matches the upper force, the root that created collective attainment from which we started on our path.

It turns out that as a great number of particulars connect, you move on to the collective attainment which is extremely detailed and extensive. Through every soul and all of them at once linked together, you attain the Creator, the spiritual world. And it is you who is constructing Him since there is no Creator without the created being! This is why He is named “the Creator” (Bo-Reh), “come and see.”

Indeed, the key here is the work of the system. From the “matter” given to us, we build the “bricks” of the souls that each of us puts into the common system, while rising above our personal hate, egoism, repulsion, and at the same time preserve all our unique characteristics. Thereby, we create a very powerful system of our personal attainment.
[41769]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/29/2011, Writings of Rabash

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We exist in a sensation of life regarded as “this world.” It is the lowest, smallest, and worst world out of all, yet it is some kind of life, and we generally understand what it is. But how do we get into the particulars, meaning the upper worlds, and begin ascending them?

It can only be done if we desire to climb the rungs of these worlds in order to exalt and glorify the Creator. We need all these worlds for a single purpose: so that through them we are able to realize our bestowal, the love of others. In this case, instead of the common, superficial outlook of man experiencing himself in “this world,” we will be permitted to get into all the details and thereby climb the 125 steps of personal spiritual attainment.

Every peculiarity you wish to experience, attain, and see in these spiritual worlds requires that your efforts have the right aim and that the revelation that you will eventually receive is solely for the benefit of the others or the Creator (which is one and the same). Otherwise, why should you dig into all these details, for your own personal gratification? It’s impossible because spiritual pleasure is pleasure from bestowal rather than from receiving for oneself!

Therefore, to move from the general to the particular attainment in this world implies great aspiration and an opportunity to fulfill oneself ever more, to see something interesting not from afar but to personally engage and participate in a certain process. Clearly, there is a big difference between being an outside observer and being at the center of events, which brings much greater gratification.

Likewise, in a personal spiritual attainment, you also have an opportunity for greater bestowal, and to the degree that you are ready for it, this personal attainment will be revealed to you. Hence, a person who desires to see not just the general picture, “this world,” but also all the particulars, first, all the smallest details of creation and the Creator’s acts must become equipped with the intention “to bestow.”
[41773]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/29/2011, Writings of Rabash

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I perceive the image of reality exclusively through the prism of my egoistic desire. It seems that there is a certain reality outside of me. As for me, I feel as being a solid body occupying a certain volume.

I am being affected by heat and cold, gravity, wind, waves, and many other factors. Thus, I feel a certain reality outside of me, albeit only when its effects manifest on my body. The source itself is out of my reach. Right next to me, there could be a doomsday going on, but if it hasn’t dropped into my field of view, I don’t perceive it. Who knows how many dimensions surround me and what grand events are taking place in them? I simply don’t have receptors for it.

I live in my reality, among multiple other realities existing parallel to each other. Similarly, two waves pass through one another without any contact since they are transmitted in different ranges. So do I, among multiple worlds, live in my world, in the part of the whole I am able to perceive.

But a moment arrives when I start feeling my world as narrow and small. I suffer living in it. And then I am brought to a group, a guide on the path, and the instructions and books so that I may experience all the other worlds which I do not yet perceive despite the fact that I am in them. All in all, this wisdom is called Kabbalah, the science of perception, sensation, and revelation.

The reality of creation on the whole is the upper force, the Creator. How do I reach it if I don’t feel it? To do so, I am told to make efforts to gradually develop my sensory organs. Otherwise, I won’t be able to work with them. I have to learn to control and manage them so that I could later explore the enormous external reality with their help.

How do we do it? Kabbalists tell us: “We discovered that it can be done by way of exercises if you practice them within the framework of your relations with the friends. They don’t sense the wide reality either, but you can start playing a game among yourselves. Begin to unite, care about each other, build up a society where everyone will motivate the others to bestow, love, and reciprocate.”

It is similar to your rising above your egoism, and even though in reality it’s all just a game and you are moved by the ego, still, the very efforts will develop new tendencies in you. Due to these new impressions, you will advance. Even if bestowal and oneness are out of reach, keep playing, act in this small world of yours.

What do we need this for? You need it in order to feel the lack, to sort out what you have and what you are missing. These new details of perception will create a certain attitude in you, and you’ll discover that you are saturated with new sensations meant specifically for the new dimension. You will suddenly realize that it’s truly possible to exist not in your world that is absorbed in receiving and consumption, but rather in the enormous outer worlds where everything is the other way around.

What does “the other way around” mean? How can I experience it? You will feel it namely by playing among yourselves. Then everyone will feel that there is a certain property outside of them, a property directed toward the others. Even if you still approach it egoistically, like children when they play their games of being race car drivers, pilots, or cowboys, which develop them, so do you advance in your life.
[41154]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/21/2011, Writings of Rabash

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

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Question: What is the correct prayer?

Answer: True, in order to be transformed, we only need to pray. The correct prayer is expressed in the words: “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are one.”

Together with the whole world, all the friends, all the others, I wish to come to a state where we are all unified and thereby bestow pleasure to the Creator. In relation to us, He is good and does good. There is none else besides Him. So are we good and do good in relation to Him. There is none else besides us.

It is said that He and His name will be one. In other words, the Light and the vessel, the Creator and we, come to oneness, adhesion.

Question: Is this the collective prayer?

Answer: Yes, since you pray for everybody. It is that very prayer, the intention, Abraham was so eager to kindle in Babylon. He yearned to cause immediate correction: “Let’s cry out, let’s do this!”

“To pray” is to judge myself: How corrupted is my state of existence and what am I lacking in order to correct it? That is, a prayer is rather an analysis of the situation than a plea to the Creator. There is no one to ask since the upper Light stays at absolute rest. It contains thought and emotion, but when you pray, it is as if you wish to impose your qualities and sensations on the Light.

That’s where the problem lies: We need to transfer the emphasis to self-analysis. A prayer means that I examine myself: What am I lacking, what do I wish the Light to illuminate in me? Where I find a flaw, that’s where it falls and works on. Hence, I need to find my flaws, my needs.

I stand before the immutable Absolute, and everything in it is for the good. If this is so, what can I possibly ask for? Even without my asking, He bestows abundance. So it follows that I have to find in myself the spots that need correction. And that’s what a prayer is about. It is totally directed at me, at the search of what I am missing in order to become similar to bestowal, to the Light.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/29/2011, “The Freedom”

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In spirituality, “reason” represents the Light of Hochma (Wisdom) clothed in a vessel. In compliance with this Light, we sense and understand the Creator. The key here is not in the actual Light of Hochma, but in the Light of Hassadim (Mercy) which receives it, meaning in the measure of bestowal of which we are capable. These two Lights conform and adjust to one another.

In our world, we receive directly into our desire a certain portion of the Light without clothing it, without being similar to the Creator. This is why we are extremely limited in our reason. Our reason doesn’t develop us because it doesn’t teach us what to do next in order to reveal the Creator.

In contrast, in the spiritual world, we receive the upper Light, the Creator’s revelation, in the vessels of bestowal. This means I reveal the Creator with complete understanding of who and what He is.

In our world, I can look at a person and see a wall. To me he’s “impenetrable”; I don’t understand his language, don’t know his qualities or his thoughts. He’s concealed from me. But in the spiritual world, our contact means unification. I generate within the quality of bestowal, which is then clothed by the Light, and thereby I understand him. That is, I understand someone other than myself. My desire assumes his form, his structure. And the same process applies to everyone.

I have this raw, formless desire to receive which pertains to Malchut of Infinity. And through love and bestowal, I build in this desire various models to assume the forms of all souls existing outside of me. I create within, a space to construct a “set” of souls, and thereby I include everyone within me.

But this is only possible on the condition that I allocate within my desire a place for every soul, picturing where each should go. How can I know such a thing? Simply, to the extent that I bestow, I allow others to enter inside.

The resulting picture is very similar to the logo of the upcoming Moscow convention. A circle is my whole desire, and within it I allocate a segment for every friend. Gradually the circle is filled with souls, and in so doing, I return my own soul to myself. Indeed, presently it exists as if outside of me, but everything that I perceive as existing outside is my soul.

It follows that the quality of bestowal that I generate is merely a means, a condition that allows my soul to be returned within me.
[41704]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/28/2011, “The Acting Mind”

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To the extent that you want to see the group united and whole, existing in mutual, inner guarantee, you influence the whole group and infuse them with your power, your desire, the quality of bestowal. You want to permeate the friends so that they are filled with this quality. This is the meaning of “love thy friend as thyself” since you strive to fulfill them as you would yourself; moreover, they are even more important to you.

How can this be unclear? Everyone can feel it. You want to imagine your friends unifying together and you filling them to the brim! Here you don’t think about your personal benefit or loss, but only about the friends, about Shechina (Divinity). And if you’re only thinking about them, you will not experience any personal descents or ascents, but will continue living their desires.

When you undergo a descent, the reason is that your desires are locked. Your ego doesn’t feel that it can fulfill itself in any way. There are no pleasures to chase, and so you fall into hibernation and wait until your state changes with the flow of time.

This standstill happens because there are no new desires revealing in you. If you were to feel a new desire at that time, you would immediately awaken and wish to receive the whole world! Everything depends on desire.

It follows that if a great desire is revealed in you, you are overflowing with energy; if the desire is small, you are calm; but if the desire fades altogether, you die. But this can only happen if you’re working with your own desire.

However, if you work with the desires of others, you are continually renewed. This desire will no longer depend on you, but you will always have the desires of others. Therefore, you will not undergo ascents and descents; rather, you will keep rising and rising.

That is to say, ascents and descents will be of a different nature, determined not by the desire but by the Light: What else can you give, what else can you tear away from the will to receive and use for the sake of bestowal so as to add to your bestowal to the Creator?
[41629]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/27/2011, Shamati No.1

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Baal HaSulam, Beit Shaar HaKavanot (The Gate of Intentions), Chapter “Concerning Passover Exodus”: On the Passover night, Zeir Anpin grows to the greatest state, and hence, on this night, such enormous Light is revealed that it is greater than the Light of Sabbath.

All that there is in Zeir Anpin of the world of Atzilut is passed down to the souls. If we here, below, don’t ask and don’t evoke ZA, it remains in its constant small state, VAK, whereas Malchut is just a point. When there is only the Light of VAK in ZA, Hassadim (Mercy), Malchut has nothing since she has receiving desires and cannot be filled with only the Light of Hassadim.

Therefore, this is a preparatory state that has nothing to do with any spiritual action yet. All the other states are defined by how high ZA can rise (upon our request) over the small state.

The process we undergo during the exodus from Egypt, from being enslaved by the desires located below the Parsa, is not simple and doesn’t correspond to the usual work order: six “weekdays” followed by the seventh “day,” Saturday. Saturday is arranged “in likeness to the future world,” and, according to the spiritual work performed during the six “business days,” brings us the “awakening from Above” and its result: corrected desires.

However, the exodus from Egypt is a “night,” not a day as Saturday is. It’s a sign that a very big Light of Hochma (Wisdom) is revealed that is not covered by the Light of Hassadim. Hence, it feels not as Light, but as “Egyptian night,” the enormous Light of Hochma that cannot emanate to us.

We are constantly present within an ocean of Light, and we are either unable to establish any relationship with it (and then we simply don’t feel it, as right now), or we can approach the Light and obtain exactly the same property as it has. Then, according to the law of equivalence of form, we will be able to feel it. If I am in the same bestowal as the Light, then between us, a common sensation appears that is regarded as the revelation of the Light, the Creator, to the created beings.

Alternatively, there can be an opposite state where I don’t feel that I am approaching the Light, bestowal, but on the contrary, I feel coming closer to reception, my opposition to unification. This doesn’t pertain to mere material gain, but specifically to the lack of unity of the souls that makes me feel darkness. This has a spiritual meaning.

We always deal with what lies above the animate level, meaning with the internal work that bears a “positive” or “negative” fruit, and a person senses transformations as either an unfolding Light or darkness. However, in the worst case, a person feels nothing whatsoever, which means he is not working at all. The essence of the Passover story is an unusual order (Seder) of receiving the Lights that wake us up and lead out of Egypt.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/21/2011, Beit Shaar HaKavanot

Let’s Show Our Desire To Exit Our Egypt!

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