Entries in the 'Group Work' Category

Rising Above All Of Your Possessions

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the entire diversity of my perception I have to discern only the most important element: unity. I check myself regarding my friends in the group only to the extent that I see in them the benefit or harm to our unity. So far, I do not take anything else into consideration. I evaluate my friends “within reason” and “above reason.”

This means that I do not cancel my logic; instead, I use it to view myself through the prism of my own opinion (desire, vessels) and see how high I need to raise the group in my own eyes in order to give my friends a positive assessment. However, I know that my logic is egoistic, and it always registers my friends as “debtors.” This is why I rise above it to view my friends as “absolutely righteous.”

Is it true or is it false? There is no true or false; everything depends on my judgment. When I use my logic to judge, then naturally, there is nobody righteous in the world, but myself. I only justify myself and those who are dear to me. However, when I go above reason, I feel that all my friends are righteous, that they have attained the final correction, and I am the only sinner among them.

What does this game give me? After all, neither of the options is true, both are conventional. However, this game gives me the opportunity to constantly be in two states: above reason and within reason (above egoism and in egoism). So I practice until I gain experience and start desiring to reach the true assessment. Then, I will be ready to see the truth.

The more effort I put into it, the quicker my desires (opinions) become prepared by this process for the spiritual world. I will not be perceiving it above reason. On the contrary, I will acquire it in my new Kelim, within reason. Then, time after time, I will keep going above previously acquired reason. After all, every consequent degree is greater than the previous one according to its strength of bestowal and for this reason, it is opposite to the previous degree.

Man always needs to rise above his possessions. It would seem like everything is well and right, there are delicious treats on the table, and life is such a blessing. But not this time. I need to despise this blessing in order to rise to a higher degree of bestowal, which I see as darkness. Every time, I go above reason, above the current facts, and I acquire the property of Bina which is always opposite to them.

Bina rules over Malchut on the new degree, but then, in the Upper Light, I see how power goes over to Malchut. So, I prepare myself for the next degree, and the process repeats itself.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/10/10, “The Matter of Above Reason”

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We Lack A Drop Of Unity

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: At the Kabbalah Convention 2009 we were able to reach a special sensation that you referred to as a “drop of unity.” What did we attain then and how can we complete it at the big, upcoming convention?

Answer: At the Convention last year we felt that there was a special point in the unity between us, which did not depend on us and was above everyone. And if we were to connect between us, we would be able to depend on it, strive toward it, unite around it, and be protected by it. This “drop of unity” is a high force created by the connection between us, which protects us from all ills.

But this is not enough. In this drop, we connect our spiritual sparks into one spark. If we were to connect our desires to bestow, the mutual guarantee, to this common spark, we would begin to reveal the connection between the sparks that are glued together; that is, we would start to discover the system of connection of our souls. Every connection between the sparks is a relationship of mutual hatred and love above it.

In the first case, we connect our sparks (the points in the heart) into one big spark, and then we attain what a high state this is, meaning a state that exists by itself, a certain reality outside of us. We have created something new that was produced through the connection between us.

However, if you were to add a little bit of desire to it, then not just all these points in the heart connect into this spark, but also all the egos between them become revealed, meaning the entire hatred, and love above it. In other words, a net of connections between us becomes revealed, and we can perceive spirituality, the Creator, in this connection.

This means that you sign the mutual guarantee on the basis of the revelation of your desires, meaning that besides the point in the heart, there is the revelation of evil in them and the consent to be above it. After all, this net is built with our desires which we renounce by connecting above them and replacing hatred with love.

How will I be able to connect with others otherwise? It is not enough to simply connect into one spark; this is not a real connection because we have left the entire ego below. Meanwhile, I must rise above it, above Mount Sinai (the mount of hatred).
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/14/10, “The Teaching of the Kabbalah and Its Essence”

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Perfect Attainment

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How do we perceive the Creator: like other people outside of us or differently somehow?

Answer: The difference between perceiving the Creator and perceiving other people can be likened to perceiving the general and the particular. Due to truly beginning to feel people, I reach the perception of the general which includes everything and is called the Creator.

However, there is a difference between the particular and the general. After all, the general is the root, the initial cause of everything. It is not just a few people or many together, individuals or the entire totality. The general implies attainment of the root of creation. This is a qualitative addition.

The difference is not in drinking from a hundred separate glasses or from one big glass with all one hundred portions poured together. I attain the cause of creation, the process that includes everything and its goal. The root encompasses everything, and other people cannot provide such attainment, only the Creator can.

The goal of the Creator is to bring us precisely to this point! And prior to it, our state is still imperfect.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/14/10, “The Teaching of the Kabbalah and Its Essence”

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Life Is In The Connection Between Us

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What does it mean to feel the connection between us? How do I do that?

Answer: To feel the connection between us is to come to feel that we all exist in one system and are dependent on one another, so much so that I cannot make even a tiny movement independently. This is a rigid system created Above, which is gradually being revealed as an unbending law.  We have to feel the life that is contained within, where the connection between us will reveal itself and become more apparent. And the life that flows through this connection is called the “spiritual world.”
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/14/10, The Zohar

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Placing The Priorities In The Correct Order

Dr. Michael LaitmanOn the path toward the goal we need to concern ourselves with the order of priorities. We act according to our desires and hence have to structure them according to their importance. The desires arranged in the order of priority comprise a line by which a person advances toward the goal.

The most important desire is placed directly in front of him, and hence, when he demands correction, his prayer is directed at the revival of the Shechina from the ashes. The Shechina is the Kli, and building the Kli is our primary task at the moment. A person is unable to come into contact with the Creator until the vessel is ready.

This is why the group and the mutual guarantee are crucial for us. Without them, all the other calculations that a person makes will be incorrect. Right after the mutual guarantee, we will reveal the Kli of mutual bestowal, and we will all rise above the desire to receive pleasure to the desire to bestow, to repentance from fear. After that, we will reveal the intentional and unintentional transgressions. Once we have corrected them, we will arrive at repentance from love and reveal the Creator, the One to Whom we bestow.

But each time a person must build a line, where each point represents his desires in the order of the most important to the least important ones.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/13/10, “Hezekiah Turned His Face to the Wall”

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My Spiritual Simulator – 10.14.10

Spiritual Simulator: Questions of the Day

Why Work For The Creator

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What does it mean to act solely for the sake of the Creator? It greatly disturbs me since it feels as if I am forced to slave away for someone.

Answer: This “someone” is the absolute law of Nature, the unifying force that contains the entire creation and you in it. Beside this law, there is nothing else! And when you “bestow,” you do it not “for somebody’s sake,” but in order to establish this law over all creation so that it is revealed to all.

The Creator doesn’t need it, He doesn’t receive anything; He is the desire to bestow, which cannot receive. He Himself is not perceived within you; rather, what you perceive is your own impressions of Him. The law of bestowal is similar to a wall: It feels nothing, you may consider it to be still. This law of nature is the absolute law of bestowal, which you experience reactions to within yourself.

You don’t do Him favors! He doesn’t require that you cleave to Him and love Him; He doesn’t feel our work as we do. We can’t even discuss His essence for it is unknowable. Everything we discuss about Him is our personal impressions, our perceptions of Him in our broken or corrected desires. Therefore, I can’t say that I am working for Him. Expressions “cleave to the Creator” or “love your Creator” speak about me and my correction, after which I will attain love.

That is why we were given a group, in relation to which we have to work, instead of working with some abstract principle or a force that cannot be sensed or with the factor that everyone can turn as he pleases. Take, for instance, the science of Kabbalah. It is a program of how you should treat human society. Build your attitude to it according with this program and by doing so, you will reach your full correction.

Love for the created beings that you will experience with the help of the Light that Reforms will be your attitude to the Creator indeed. Instead of acting in relation to the Light that cannot be perceived, the soul broke apart, and its parts now interact with each other instead of interacting with the Light. Therefore, they have an opportunity to connect with each other, act, and examine things together, which they cannot accomplish if paired with the abstract force.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/7/10, “The Love of the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”

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The Zohar: A Funicular To The Creator

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: When reading The Zohar, is “to receive the force of bestowal” the correct intention?

Answer: We do not need anything but the force of bestowal. There are only two forces in the entire reality: reception and bestowal. We do not lack the force of receiving. When we correctly prepare ourselves by working in the group and studying Kabbalah, the force of reception, our evil inclination, becomes revealed to us.

However, if I have not yet begun to arrange myself with the group or the study, I do not reveal the egoism against the Creator in me as something that hurts me, as evil. At first I need to reveal my evil. If I do not see the evil in me, I have nothing to begin correction with.

But when I reveal the evil in me, I reveal it in the group, and for this reason I already have the Light to correct it. After all, it is where I reveal my rejection of friends that I find the strength to overcome this rejection.

Question: If I do not feel the need to read The Zohar, do I still need to do it?

Answer: A person beginning to study Kabbalah needs to know that it is specifically the reading of The Zohar that helps him go through the stages of the revelation of his evil and its correction. The evil will keep being revealed, while he will keep rising above it until he reveals the entire altitude of evil, the entire 125 degrees between our world and the World of Infinity.

He will rise high, above the evil being revealed, to the top of the mountain as if he were on a funicular. This is why he needs both: the mountain, the evil that is being revealed, and the funicular, the force of the Light that lifts him to the top.

This is the reason we need to study Kabbalah, which reveals the evil to us. This is called “I created the evil inclination,” and then we need the force of correction, which is called “and I gave the Torah for its correction because the Light in it Reforms,” that brings me to the top of the mountain.

This is why in the beginning the Creator told Abraham: “Your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own,” meaning that they will be under the influence of the egoism, but they will leave with great wealth (egoism), and they will need its correction: the reception of the Torah, the method of correction with the force of the Creator, the Light. Having stopped using egoism (Egypt) and having turned it into a “desert,” they will then use it for the sake of bestowal and turn it into the “Land of Israel.”

There is only one desire, but the gradual changes of the intention over this desire turns the desire into “Egypt” (in Hebrew “Mits-Raim,” “the concentration of evil”), then into the Sinai desert (in Hebrew “Sinai,” hatred), until it turns it into good, the “Land of Israel” (in Hebrew “Eretz Yisrael,” desire towards the Creator). That is, one goes through the stages of the evil inclination – “Egypt,” then “bestowal for the sake of bestowal” – “the Sinai desert,” and then “reception for the sake of bestowal” – “the land of Israel.”

The desire to receive pleasure remains the same, you only determine your attitude toward it, which becomes increasingly corrected every time.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/7/10, The Zohar

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My Spiritual Simulator – 10.13.10

Spiritual Simulator: Questions of the Day

Put All Your Eggs In One Basket!

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Am I “drilling a hole in the boat” by acting in all directions, in all 359 degrees except for one that is aimed toward the mutual guarantee?

Answer: But I signed an agreement with my friends that covers everything! My guarantee does not only apply to the tiny open gap through which I have to reach the mutual guarantee. You will not be able to concentrate one hundred percent on the mutual guarantee without taking the strengths from all the other directions and only leaving the vital necessities there.

Only when all the other directions become nothing but a necessity for you, which “is neither disapproved of nor praised” and all the strengths that remain after providing for your existence are directed towards reaching the mutual guarantee, only in this case, you are not drilling a hole in the boat.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/12/10, “The Love of the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”

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