Entries in the 'Inner Work' Category

We Build Spirituality Ourselves!

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: When we are raising a child, we do our best to prepare him or her for life in this world, but how can we enter the spiritual world if we don’t have any idea what it is like?

Answer: A person who, after leaving his or her parents’ home, enters adult life and wants to succeed in it can lean on the life experience of other people. It doesn’t matter what he wants to be, whether it is a thief, a priest, a scientist, or just a seller at the market place. All of these models can be found in society.

However, a person who wants to advance spiritually doesn’t have any examples or support. He must build his environment on his own. After all, the only thing that fills all of reality is the upper Light, and there are no worlds without a person.

The instant that I activate my desire for spirituality, I immediately arrange all the worlds between myself and Infinity. It is as if I erect a ladder leading to the spiritual world that exists only in the form of Reshimot, spiritual information genes.

In the article “The Matter of Spiritual Attainment” from the book Shamati, Baal HaSulam writes that all the worlds with their multiple steps exist only relative to the souls. Therefore, I cannot demand, as we do on our world, to be taught how to behave in spirituality. I must form the spiritual world, which doesn’t exist, on my own.

It is my job to visualize how the upper one relates to me and how I relate to it. If what I see in my imagination matches the actual Reshimot, then everything is wonderfully arranged that very instant, according to the law of equivalence of form. If that doesn’t happen, spiritual reality doesn’t exist for me.

After all, it exists only relative to the person who reveals, constructs, and forms it. In other words, we are the ones who must build the spiritual world, and we need to turn to the Creator with a request that would match precisely to what is set up from Above in Reshimot.

Hence, in Hebrew the Creator is regarded as Boreh (Bo is “come” and Reh is “see”) since it is you who is creating Him. You are the one who builds this form.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/18/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Above The Waves

Dr. Michael LaitmanOn the spiritual path the alternation of emptiness and fulfillment is inevitable. Otherwise creation would remain without any sensation.

However, I go through these cycles purposefully. They all bring me closer to the final state where I am included in absolute goodness.

At the end of the path I will attain that goodness, but until then in my sensations I have to go through completely opposite states. Sometimes I feel good and sometimes bad. So what should I do? Could the Creator really be rocking this pendulum, wishing to constantly throw me into heat and then cold?

No. He wants me to rise above my sensations, both the bad and the good, so I won’t depend on them. The states of my earthly, material life, the suffering or joy of my “flesh,” meaning my desires, have to be goal oriented. If I hold on to the goal, then it doesn’t matter whether I feel good or bad. The aim at the goal is always good.

This is absolute goodness. I don’t wait for the finish line to come, but continuously ascend to it, holding myself up with faith above knowledge. Then good and evil are beneficial and I am completely independent of the states that roll over me.

We don’t have to come to this at the end of the path, but initially. It’s the same as how a child goes to school every day. However, unlike the child, we ascend to the place where we can see the goal and understand that this is beneficial to us. Nothing is accidental, nature is absolute and everything in it is intended to lead the parts of creation to the final goal.

If we connect ourselves to the goal, then even when the worst possible things come our way, we won’t perceive them as evil. There is nothing bad. The next moment this sensation gets replaced with a good sensation, but then we also don’t want to be immersed in the good sensation over our heads. We want to enjoy and be happy because we keep going toward the goal – above all the bad and good things in equal measure. This is the right upbringing.

Humanity will not be able to move forward unless it receives an explanation of the common picture: We go through a specific process, and no matter what happens we have to hold on to the goal. In that case, all the waves will come at us in peace and everything will be there to help us.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/25/11 on Global Education

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Why Do I Grow?

Dr. Michael LaitmanI am in a net of forces that influence me. Their sum total is nature. So what is its goal? What does it want from me? Where is it leading me?

It’s clear to me that my development unfolds purposefully. I am convinced of this by the example of the other parts of nature. For example, a small, sour fruit grows into a large, juicy, sweet apple.

Just as the vegetative and animate levels of nature develop, so I develop, going through opposite states that are good and bad. It is impossible to advance only on one side. I alternate them, taking a step with the left and then a step with the right, again and again. I continuously reveal a lack that corresponds to the future fulfillment.

That is when I make a calculation: Where is this process leading? Where does nature direct me? Then I see that it obligates me to undergo social development. Over the course of the last several millennia humanity needed to develop society more and more, and within the society, to develop the interconnections among us.

We revealed evil, our egoism, our hatred to one another, and as a result we are starting to understand the need to unite. In the modern, global world, this is becoming clear.

What is the use of this? The use is that I will enter the next level of my development, the level of the common nature of the universe. I will attain absolute goodness and will acquire similarity to the perfect nature.

Therefore, I do not take into account the intermediate states which I go through on the path. If I hold the goal in front of my mind’s eye and constantly think about it, then I feel good now as well. The most important thing is to “float up” above all the present sensations, both the good and the bad.
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/25/11 on Global Education

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One Soul For All

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe spiritual world is a unified soul, one for all. By unifying with the others, everyone attains the same integral soul. In the article “600,000 Souls,” Baal HaSulam writes that there is nothing else in the world but one soul.

Every person attains this collective soul in an individual manner, according to his or her program or Reshimot (spiritual genes), just as at present, we observe the surrounding world and see it in our own way. I cannot compare the taste that I obtain from a certain food with how others taste it, or my impression of a painting that we both view. Everyone has impressions that match their Reshimot.

Even if we are standing in front of the same picture in spirituality, the same worlds and Partzufim, everyone receives an individual impression of it anyway. This uniqueness doesn’t vanish.

How do I unify with the integral soul? You do it by way of desires. Suppose I am in the center of the spiritual worlds: Assiya, Yetzira, Beria, Atzilut, Adam Kadmon (AK), or the world of Infinity. By exiting myself, my ego, and unifying with the others, I attain the dimension of the integral soul. In it, I perceive the spiritual world. The more I step out of my ego, acquiring the others’ Kelim (vessels), the more exalted world I perceive thereby.

How do I do that? I “purchase” new desires since I have only a point, an embryo, of the soul. The new desires that I gain while unifying with the others are, in fact, the Kli (vessel) of my soul.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/18/2011, “Introduction of The Book of Zohar”

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Just One Step

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: All of humanity must reach the ultimate goal. Therefore, any deviation from the right path seems very frightening…

Answer: Essentially, we always correct our movement based on deviation. With every step we take we divert from the precise movement toward the goal—and examine this deviation.

The key is to check the deviation before taking another step. Only one step can be made in the wrong direction, and then a person has to immediately come back, in order to avoid making two, and especially three steps on the false path. In the latter case, a person completely loses the opportunity to examine himself or herself and will stray from the path for sure. (We study this in Talmud Eser Sefirot in the section about the exit of the Light from Partzuf and the connection with the previous states before the 3rd step.)
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/28/2011, The Book of Zohar

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A Human Territory

Dr. Michael LaitmanTwo opposing forces act in nature, but it compels them to reach mutual balance at all levels. Everything strives for balance.

The only exception is the human degree. In some odd way, nature has left us a “free territory”: the human society. As it develops, it doesn’t come to balance, but on the opposite, it gets out of hand: People only wish destruction to each other.

Today we face enormous challenges. We are welded together, depend on each other, and thus everyone can trigger a catastrophic imbalance that will befall the entire human race.

But unlike during the previous levels of development, today we can create balance ourselves. Now, “the ball is in our court” so that we can reach balance with nature on “our territory,” independently. Nature gives you the opportunity to become a free, sound, sensitive person that is independent from their innate nature. If you still want to remain subject to your innate nature, you remain a beast.

You have a choice: either be ruled by nature or work yourself and fill the void. This is precisely where a person needs to fulfill his or her predestination and create an equilibrium that will complete all other imbalances.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/28/2011, The Principles of Global Education

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Eureka! It Does Exist!

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Does the desire to bestow develop with the help of the desire to receive? Will it change and unite us back into the collective soul?

Answer: The wisdom of Kabbalah states that the entire path of our correction amounts to our uniting together and reaching the property of bestowal (the Creator) in our connection because this property brings us together.

Development occurs by virtue of unification. And when the desire to bestow enters the desire to receive, it supplies it with the force of development by facilitating various connections. And since it is the desire to bestow, it fuses various parts.

Contrary to it, the desire to receive remains there in the capacity of the still level and does not bond with anything. Hence, if we want to draw closer to the desire to bestow and develop, we need to facilitate ties between us and our mutual inclusion.

And it does not matter that we are separated by distance, differences in character, opinions, and education. We will later see that our previous development (as various distant nations that hate and disregard one another) is needed so that above it, we could start forming our mutual inter-relations. And between these connections we are destined to reveal the property of bestowal (the Creator).

It exists but is hidden inside. This is precisely what we wish to reveal at our conventions.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/18/2011, Writings of Rabash

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A Person Who Has Strayed From The Path

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: If in spirituality a person is born anew every moment and starts everything from the beginning each time, how can it be that once he strays from the path once, he then diverts from it more and more?

Answer: This is how Baal HaSulam depicted it, I’m simply repeating his diagram. If at the beginning of the path you divert from it just a little bit (say, by 1 cm), then by continuing to advance on the same way, you eventually divert from the correct path by, say, 5 cm.

It seems to you that you have made progress: received knowledge, realized and went through many things. You become increasingly confident that you are on the right track, while in reality you have already strayed from the path and are advancing beside the mark.

Nobody took away your freedom from you or the opportunity to make an adjustment. But if you do not suspect that your have veered from the path, if you do not feel it, you think you can continue like that.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/28/2011, Preparation for the WE! Convention

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