Entries in the 'Inner Work' Category

Attributes Of The Land And The Root Of The Soul

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Torah, “Leviticus,” 25:23: The land shall not be sold permanently, for the land belongs to Me, for you are strangers and [temporary] residents with Me.

The Creator gave us a desire (land) so that we should correct it and not use it anyway we feel like. It is as if He rents it out to us.

We don’t have anything of our own in this world, and therefore when we make a deal we have to understand that we buy the land only for temporary use, or to rent. We don’t actually buy the land. We rent the land and so we can work it for a certain period of time. Nothing is eternal and nothing belongs to us.

Comment: It turns out that the nations that settled on this planet are not its owners.

Answer: According to the root of his soul, an owner is a person who is compatible with one part or another of the land he lives on. Therefore, part of this land has to return to its owners. It refers to nations who came out of Babylon and settled all over the globe. The settlement in Israel has to be according to the Torah, and every tribe and  family has its predetermined part and it is eternal. It is because the inner attributes of the family or the tribe match the attribute of that part of the land. This is how the correction of the desire is performed.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 8/13/14

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The Daily Cleanup In The Heart

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Why is it so important to celebrate Passover and observe its conditions?

Answer: This Jewish holiday is not for commemorating a certain day in history. Rather, every single day you have to feel as if you come out of Egypt all over again.

Coming out of exile is not an ancient event that will never happen again. Every day you have to rise above your egoism that much more and unite with others through bonds of goodness.

On Passover what we celebrate is the fact that we have this opportunity. No nation besides Israel has the opportunity to rise above its egoism, to unite and start to really feel how we rise above our nature.

Question: So the holidays are a reminder of sorts?

Answer: The holidays are a program by which we need to work day in and day out. It all depends on what level a person is on. We are always moving through special inner states called Passover, Sukkoth, Shavuot, Tu BiShvat, the 9th of Av, and so on.

Question: Why is there a tradition that is passed on from one generation to the next of holding the festive Passover meal, when fathers tell their sons about the exodus from the slavery of Egypt?

Answer: It’s because we need to learn—and teach others—about the order of coming out of Egypt, or the order in which we rise above our egoism and unite with others, eventually achieving mutual guarantee and unity around Mount Sinai (the mountain of mutual hatred). The father has to teach his son the right way of uniting with others.

Both father and son (my state yesterday and my state today) are inside of me every day. Everything happens inside the person and inside the nation.

Question: What would you tell a modern person who doesn’t see anything else in this world other than himself and his cell phone? How would you tell him about the connection between people, about different types of relationships? What kind of new life can you promise him?

Answer: It’s universal harmony, a connection between people that’s similar to a perfectly coordinated football team or even the mafia, which is linked by close-knit bonds. This connection always makes a person feel confident, happy, give him a good sense of unity and mutual inclusion in the desires of others. He can reach unity of such magnitude that from within, he will know everything that others know.

Because we are all inside one system, the knowledge and sensations of the whole world can flow between us without any limitation. Scientists are revealing that our brain is a modem connecting us to the common information repository that’s in the air.

Question: Why are children today not as happy?

Answer: It’s because they have reached a level of egoism that cannot find fulfillment. In the past, if a family had a room to live in, this was enough for them to be happy. But today every person needs a separate apartment and a car to drive around in all by himself. We are always isolating ourselves and every person is closed off inside of him.

No one feels happy, and the reason for that is our isolation. Happiness can only be felt when you feel how energy, strength, and warmth flow inside of our connection with one another.

Solitude is Egyptian slavery and it’s worthwhile to come out of it.
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From Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 3/15/15

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Lending The Desire – The Land

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Torah, “Leviticus,” 25:25 – 25:27: If your brother becomes destitute and sells some of his inherited property, his redeemer who is related to him shall come forth and redeem his brother’s sale. And if a man does not have a redeemer, but he gains enough means to afford its redemption, he shall calculate the years for which the land has been sold, and return the remainder to the man to whom he sold it, and [then] he may return to his inheritance. 

The land should return to its original owners and one shouldn’t make an effort to attain it. It shouldn’t be taken back by force, but rather returned according to agreements that take all the details into account.

Basically, this isn’t about a piece of land, but about a person and his desire. It is hard to understand what renting out the desire means. Do I let my desire to someone and he works on it? What do I gain from that? How can he pay me?

For example, there are people who can correct my desire on the spiritual level of agricultural work, and there are those who own the land and can benefit from it by renting out their desires to others so that they will work and receive the crop.

In order to understand the meaning of renting out my desires to someone, we have to think about how people should relate to one another in order to attain correction together. How do they buy and sell? How do they connect and incorporate into one another in order to attain the jubilee?

Comment: If we say that nothing is mine, I aim at the jubilee anyway. I have one goal, which is to reach the Temple, Bina, and I ignore the fact that the road to it is dirty and that drunks are lying on the sidewalk, for example, since I am headed towards the goal.

Answer: No, you will not reach it if you don’t look to the sides, since reaching Bina means being incorporated in everyone and bringing them to correction on your back. So where is your attribute of bestowal? On what basis do you cultivate, arrange, and raise it? After all, it isn’t a walk towards Bina, but creating it inside you. It doesn’t exist externally to you.

Question: Does that mean that I can ascend only if I include everything inside me and process it?

Answer: Of course! Everything inside you should be organized in such a way that you are led to the attribute of Bina. This means that internally, you have reached a state that you have raised inside you and doesn’t exist on the outside in any form or place since the whole world is inside you. Therefore, you cannot ignore the drunks and the dirt and not correct them. It is very easy to do it mutually. The main thing is to attain mutuality.

The first level is the most difficult. Afterwards, everything becomes much easier and simpler, and at the same time much more difficult. It is because the higher the level a person is on, the greater his desire and the interruptions he encounters. On the one hand, he already has an inner guide book that helps him understands and find his way around, but at the same time, there is greater confusion and bigger problems.

Question: What is the meaning of renting out my land or selling my land?

Answer: It means to cling to others so that together with these people, who seem to be strangers, I can correct the land, since otherwise I cannot correct it by myself.

It is only by connecting to another person that I can correct the still nature part of my desire, which is the land, and then we can both become temporary owners of that land. In order to do so, we have to accept each other’s desires as common desires and thus cultivate the land (the earth). This means that everything is aimed at love of others, at connection with others, until we become one common whole. All the laws of the Torah aim towards this.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 8/13/14

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And Then You Will Hear Music

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Torah, “Leviticus 25:19:” And the land will then yield its fruit and you will eat to satiety, and live upon it securely.

If we conform to the general program of nature, we will begin to live in harmony with it. Nothing will get confused in nature: You will sow the field, the rain will fall, the time will come for harvesting the crops, the sun will come out, and everything will be normal.

We need to direct the vast organism of nature so that it will influence us positively and beneficially in health, the family, the animals, the harvest, and in everything. Before us is an immense mechanism and we can direct it so the the rain falls or the sun comes out.

Everything will sound harmonious, like a well-tuned musical instrument. It is necessary to invest only a little effort, but mostly to understand how to achieve harmony. And after we understand this, we will strum on some strings and you will hear the music.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 8/13/14

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A Clean Home And A Clean Heart

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Why is it customary to thoroughly clean one’s home before the Passover holiday?

Answer: A person’s thoughts and heart are called his home. The home—a person’s heart—needs to be cleansed of all the bad thoughts about other people. This is called the Passover cleaning.

Try thinking about this and imagining what we have to do to all our desires with regard to other people, society, relatives, neighbors, one’s spouse, and generally—with regard to our entire lives. How can we correct and improve them, or at least clean them of all the garbage?

Passover (Pesach) means a passage (Pasach) or transition from the egoistic state of love only for yourself—to love for the neighbor, where you consider others, even if just a little.

Question: And why is there a custom to clean everything with bleach?

Answer: Unfortunately, there is no other cleaning agent that can clean you out from the inside other than “the Light that Reforms.” If we hear, learn, and talk about the corrections that we have to perform inside of us, about the desires that we need to get rid of, this gradually cleanses us.

The force of the Light is the only means capable of cleansing us. However, it works only inasmuch as we desire to correct ourselves. And in order to desire this, we need to read about what awaits us after we unite with everyone.

Then we get rid of all the misfortunes and problems, and rise to a level of development where there is no evil or injury, but only boundless goodness.

That is how a person feels after coming out of Egypt. This is the reason why this holiday is called Passover (Pesach—a transition), when we cross the Red Sea, going from one nature to another: from the nature of reception to the nature of bestowal.

It’s similar to completely replacing the program inside a computer. Likewise, we have to replace our inner program, which will change our outlook on the world, our entire life paradigm. We start looking at the world through completely different glasses.

This allows us to see how the right connection with other people brings us goodness, and that revelation changes us. This is the meaning of coming out of Egypt.

Question: And where are we when we come out of Egypt?

Answer: We come out into new relationships, unity, bestowal. By uniting and being together, we are saved from our enemies and come out from exile to freedom.

Question: So right now my heart is dirty, loving only itself and caring only for itself. But if I clean it and start caring for others, I will see a different world around me?

Answer: Yes, this will be a world beyond the boundaries of Egypt. It will be the world that we see through our connection with each other, the quality of bestowal, or through integral glasses. Through those glasses, we start seeing the network connecting us together.

That world is called the upper world because we reveal the force that influences everyone, the network that controls all of us. We start to understand our past, present, and future, and we actually rise above time. We also know what the result of all our actions will be.

Question: How does this affect our regular, day-to-day lives?

Answer: A person knows what is happening to him and what will happen if he acts a certain way. He starts seeing all of the causes and consequences, which is called opening his eyes. He is no longer in a state of darkness and uncertainty.

Question: And how does it affect our relationships with one another?

Answer: We find out about our own intentions and others’ intentions, so our relationships become absolutely transparent, without any hard feelings or misunderstandings.
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From Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 15.03.2015

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The Far-Reaching Implications Of Domestic Quarreling

Dr. Michael LaitmanOur good fortune depends upon establishing good relationships between us. I try to do this in every way, but suddenly there is an explosion and somebody takes me out of balance and away from the right direction. In order to maintain this intention, we must have general agreement, a system of education that is designed especially for this purpose..

This is what must be taught to children at school, so that they will not behave the way they do today. This is a nationwide problem that must be solved on a national scale, and doesn’t just depend on someone’s desire or lack of desire.

No one wants this since it is contrary to our ego and not easy to realize. So we must create a system of education that will bring us closer to one another.

Our entire salvation is only in this. Two thousand years ago the people of Israel lost their land precisely because of unfounded hatred. Today we have again found ourselves in a dangerous situation, so let’s get closer to each other.

Baal HaSulam writes: All of our hope is in recreating a national education that is designed to discover the natural love that is latent in our people so that by all means we will go back and revive the same national muscles which have not operated in us for two millennia.

From the days of our father Abraham, who left Babylon, until the destruction of the second Beit HaMikdash (Temple), that is, for about 1,500 hundred years, the people of Israel lived in complete unity.

Question: What does it mean to live in unity? Does it mean that there won’t be any quarrels with one’s wife at home?

Answer: For this, it is necessary to have education that will lead to good attitudes, including women and children.

Question: This sounds like some kind of utopia. What exactly will happen with people? Will they stop being egoists?

Answer: People will be able to control their ego. You won’t do this to become good and to not quarrel with your wife, but because through quarreling, you are destroying the lives of all people in the world. This is specifically you, and even because you quarreled with your wife.

Imagine that your relationship with your wife influences the relationships of an immense number of men with their wives, because you are a Jew.

Question: So if a Frenchman quarrels with his wife, this doesn’t influence others as strongly?

Answer: No, this doesn’t have an influence in the way that a Jewish man quarreling with his wife does. This is because Jews are the first in the general system who must realize the law of Arvut (mutual guarantee), the connection between everyone. And after that, the whole world must also be included in this law of Arvut, in the general unity. It is specifically towards general unity that nature is pushing us, towards general unity.
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From Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 3/08/15

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From One Jubilee To The Next

Dr. Michael LaitmanA new cycle of selling the land begins after the jubilee. I can sell it to someone for 10 years, to someone else for 20 years, and so on, until the year of the jubilee when the land once again becomes mine.

I cannot sell it anymore since this land cannot be someone else’s property until the jubilee year. A person feels that he is a stranger, a foreigner on the land and that the land isn’t his but  belongs to the Creator who was only renting it to him. The reason is that the land symbolizes our desire.

Question: What does that mean on a more internal level of understating? How can I sell my desire?

Answer: You can do whatever you want with it in order to get the right crop from it, but you should know that eventually you have to return the corrected desire to the Creator in the form of bestowal. The jubilee symbolizes complete compatibility with the Creator. The jubilee is common and shared by the whole nation. Everyone knows about it; you cannot cheat anyone, and there is no need to present any documents. This is the way the counting of the land has always been done: from one jubilee to the next and at which time everything goes back to the beginning.

Comment: This is felt as a very deep point and everything is very complicated. We, who exist in this dimension, find it hard to understand.

Answer: If you are connected to the Creator, the general force of nature, and you know that you are subordinate to Him, nothing is complicated or difficult.

Today, we begin to feel quite sharply that we are governed by nature and that we have no choice. We don’t control things and all our naive notions that we are the masters of nature and that we can take anything we want from it by force are gradually fading.

We are like small children who, without mom and dad, begin to realize that we have been left alone in a giant sandbox not knowing what to do next and that we have corrupted it to such an extent that playing in it is impossible. All the kids’ games are over; it is time to grow up.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 8/13/14

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Desire Is A Person’s Only Image

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Torah, “Leviticus,” 25:6 – 25:7: And [the produce of] the Sabbath of the land shall be yours to eat for you, for your male and female slaves, and for your hired worker and resident who live with you, And all of its produce may be eaten [also] by your domestic animals and by the beasts that are in your land.

Everything that belongs to a person, to his vessel, which is made of the parts of the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking levels, divided horizontally, vertically, and upwards, has to be included in his work. He has to prepare his desires so that they are ready to be filled with the Upper Light. A servant, a maid, cattle and beasts are all parts of a person.

When we reach that state, we will see that all the other parts of nature (the still, vegetative, and animate), which we feel externally to us, will be filled with the same Light and it will be clear that they are not external but all exist inside. We will discover that our external and internal world is one whole, general world. This means that my animate part and the whole animate world that surrounds me, my vegetative part and the whole vegetative world that is external to me, the part of the still nature in me and the whole universe, are actually one unique whole.

It turns out that the one, unique human figure that we create when we fully connect includes all of creation inside it, which we feel as one whole. There is no division into I and others. Humans, animals, plants, and inanimate nature all become one unique desire in which the concept of the one Creator is attained, which is the one force of nature. This is typified by the seventh millennium.

And the Creator’s attitude to this—the attainment of the thought of His creation, the plan, His actions, His main initial desire to create the created being in His form and image—is already the next three thousands: the eighth, ninth, and tenth. Then it is all locked into one unique whole that is not divided into thousands of years, and the created being enters another dimension, which we know nothing about. But he exists, since we have clues to that in the writings of great Kabbalists, but nothing more.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 8/13/14

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A Sabbath Of Solemn Rest In The Seventh Year

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What does the following refer to? Leviticus 25:3 – 25:4: You may sow your field for six years, and for six years you may prune your vineyard, and gather in its produce, But in the seventh year, the land shall have a complete rest, a Sabbath to the Lord; you shall not sow your field, nor shall you prune your vineyard.

Answer: All six years of working the land are six years of correcting our desire when we constantly work on it. And in the seventh year the corrected desire will be filled with the Light of the Creator.

Then we don’t need to do anything since the Light fills the general desire and connects, weakens, and dominates it in such a way that the main thing for us is not to interfere.

Which is to say, all the actions that are incumbent upon us must be directed in such a way that we don’t disturb the Creator from sinking into us, filling, connecting, and placing us together as one single package in which all the characteristics of the Creator on the levels of the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking are connected by the one and only Light into a single whole.

And this is called the seventh year, which is the year of solemn rest. Therefore, this is called Shabbat (the Sabbath), the freedom and cessation from work. But actually there is very strong inner work, only it is directed in the opposite direction as I nullify myself and don’t do anything, making it possible for the Creator to act.

At the same time, I am together with Him in full accord and unity with Him. I work, but my work is summed up in synchronized action with the Creator, and this is very complicated and difficult.

So I must prepare myself for rest so that all of the density of the ego, the entire six years during which I corrected it, will bring me to the seventh year, the year of solemn rest, the year of the Shmittah (letting go).

After that will come the eighth, ninth, and tenth (millenial) years, which correspond to attaining the level of GAR, the levels of Bina, Hochma, and Keter. In them I attain the mind of the Creator, His plans, and He, Himself. This is the highest level, which is called the secrets of the Torah.

What is meant by the secrets of the Torah? After I attain the seventh millennium, all of my images, the entire apparatus of my understanding and consciousness is so transformed that only then will I be able to understand what the three upper levels symbolize: the eighth, ninth, and tenth millennia.

Question: Is it possible to say that the six years of working the land are plowing, elevating, and transforming the ego?

Answer: Yes, I transform the ego like we transform the ground when we plow it before sowing. The spiritual seeds of the person cannot grow if he doesn’t transform his desires (the ground). This is realized during the six years, and in the seventh year the fulfillment happens through the Light of what was planted.

Question: Is it only then that the sprouts appear?

Answer: No, they come out every year. It is just that during the six years (Hesed, Gevurah, Tifferet, Netzah, Hod, and Yesod) I work the ground in such a way that in the seventh year, all that I attained in the work, that I dug into my ego, is ready to be filled by the Light.

So the Light realizes this without my actions. I now finish my work through opposite actions since  I must help the Light do this from its side and not from the side of the ground.

Question: What does “fulfillment by the Light” mean?

Answer: When the desires of the person completely transform to be similar to the Light in quantity and quality, he then feels that the Light is found within him.

In fact, the Light was always in him, except now the person begins to feel it because he prepared his senses, his understanding, for this. He sees that even before then, he was in the world of the Creator, and that everything was filled with Light, “there is none else besides Him,” but now he feels it and discovers it. This is the seventh millenium.

So Shabbat is called a sacred day because it is the sum of all of the immense work that a person passes through to attain the Creator, to discover Him within himself.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 8/13/14

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What Determines The Length Of One’s Life?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What determines the length of the course of one’s life, that is, the length of one’s life?

Answer: The length of one’s life is determined by a person’s role with respect to everyone else because we are all connected in one network. I determine the length of my life and its value to the extent that I try to advance and pull all those around me towards the goal.

However, if I don’t make any such efforts, there is no point in keeping me alive. A person is given a long life to the extent that he is necessary to others and is willing to help them.

Question: Does that mean that if a person lives a long life, he has good relationships with others?

Answer: No, the calculation here is much more complicated. It is impossible to calculate it so simply. When a person sees his place in the general system, he will know how to participate in it correctly and will thus prolong his life. However, a long life doesn’t necessarily mean a meaningful life.
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From Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 2/15/15

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