Entries in the 'Inner Work' Category

A Single Commandment

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe learn from the works of the Kabbalists that all that was prepared for us is the breaking, which we have to correct. Therefore, there is only one commandment: the correction of the breaking, meaning restoring the connection between the souls that have to unify and become one soul once again.

Since the collective soul and its parts (each soul separately) broke into a multitude of pieces, it seems to us that we are performing many different actions, yet all of them represent one and the same action: unification. First, we need to restrict our egoistic desire and rise above it in bestowal for the sake of bestowal, which is called “repentance from fear.”

After that, we must correct ourselves to receive for the sake of bestowal, which is called “repentance from love.” “Love your friend as you love yourself” is the outcome of our entire correction. As a result, all parts become unified as one whole, without any difference between them. In other words, there is essentially only one singular commandment: to connect.

We are yet to discover to what extent everything in this world is designed and prepared for this commandment to be implemented. Everything is arranged in order to give us a chance to ascend in a good and simple way, first to the revelation of the state of breaking and then to its correction. Hence, we think that we have to do many actions with ourselves, within the group, the family, society, the world, and all of mankind, but we should constantly keep in mind (in the intention) that it is all one singular act of unification.

The nature of this action, attaining unity, brings us great confusion since otherwise, we don’t understand why we undergo such varied states that feel heavy, confusing, and vague, and why so many hardships and problems come to us in life. In truth, there is one singular cause for it: a lack of connection. And the remedy for each predicament is connection yet again.

If we could see our present condition and the next desired state, from our lack of connection to unity, then all our problems would be cured, everything would become clear and filled with Light. Moreover, if we continue to hold the correct intention, we will rise above our confusion and brokenness to the action of oneness or faith above reason.

In other words, I am not going to drown in desires, feelings, lack of comprehension, and darkness, but will realize that this is all an effect of the breaking, and if I do everything which depends on me in order to attain oneness, I will be rewarded with the Light.
[22651]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/5/10, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Disassembling Teaches How To Re-Assemble
Laitman.com Post: Man Begins With Experiencing The Breaking
Laitman.com Post: Spirituality Begins With The Breaking

All Pieces Of The Puzzle

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the beginning of the spiritual journey, in accordance with one’s effort, a person gradually discerns what he needs to reach the goal. Everything changes: me, my perception of the goal, ideas about the means of reaching it, my individual capacities, and my vision of the Creator’s image.

With every change I see things differently: for what, whom, and why ask? Why did He set me up to start asking? What does He lack, what do I achieve with my request? In the end, all these questions and answers (desires and fulfillments) must form the correct desire (Kli) for revealing the Creator and becoming similar to Him.

Here, nothing can be left until “later”; a person has to complete every stroke and draw it into the general picture. Otherwise, the Kli will remain incomplete since even the tiniest flaw makes the spiritual need imperfect, and that is why the Light (Creator’s presence) will not be able to manifest in the desire (spiritual vessel, Kli).
[22520]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/10, “What is the Help that One Should Ask of the Creator”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Ascending The Rungs Of Bina
Laitman.com Post: Format Yourself For Spirituality
Laitman.com Post: The Game Of Life Contains The Thought Of The Creator

To Glow With Love

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: I understand that it’s possible to hate my egoism, but how can I suddenly start loving another?

Answer: Love is an outcome of correction, above and atop the screens. But nothing disappears. The will to receive constantly grows, forevermore. While hate and distance in relation to the others is increasing, above all that, there is love!

When we reach the world of Atzilut, we will feel infinite distance between us, and above it, total connection. Therefore, this connection we have created is regarded as “620” times (Pi Tarach) greater than the initial existing one.

As it is in an electrical supply network, in order to elicit power from it, resistance is needed. You have to exert strength in order to extract this power, and only then will it do the work and bring a positive outcome.

There has to be resistance coming from one side, and some action coming from the other. If you connect them together, you can accomplish the work having received the source of power. Then, the light bulb lights up.

It glows because there is a spiral of resistance inside it; and the greater this resistance to light, the brighter the illumination it provides. These two forces, by working together while opposing each other, heat the spiral, and it starts radiating light.

Everything is determined by resistance; it has to be preserved in all phenomena. We use it as a measure for magnitude, and this is derived from the basic will to receive that stands in opposition to the Light.
[22453]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/3/10, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: True Love Is Expressed Thorough Bestowal
Laitman.com Post: Love Above Hatred
Laitmn.com Post: Human Reality

Format Yourself For Spirituality

Dr. Michael LaitmanAs your intentions while reading The Book of Zohar get more correct, you will begin to uncover spiritual pictures within them. You won’t sense the corporeal images, but rather the entire development of events within yourself: in your desires, sensations, intentions, and attitudes.

The picture must fall together within you since spirituality is all that occurs within desire. In accordance with the correct intention, the will to receive begins acquiring spiritual forms. Intention “paints pictures” within the desire, formats it so that it takes these forms. Everything The Zohar describes will be perceived in the will to receive as if it is happening directly to it.

For example, my computer has a software program that opens text files in “Word” format. But if someone sends me a “.jpg” picture or an “.xls” chart, I won’t be able to open them in “Word.” Even though they contain very important and useful information, I can’t extract it. Hence, I must first obtain a new program, download it into myself, my will to receive (my “hard drive” or “computer”), and then it will be able to receive the data transmitted to me in its format.

Essentially, this is exactly what we are doing while studying Kabbalah. After all, what is the wisdom of Kabbalah? You acquire the new program for your will to receive or your vessel of perception (Kli). Having formatted it anew, you are able to perceive new images and information.

Previously, your program was working solely for reception, and now a new program has been “downloaded” into you, the program which understands what it means to bestow. It means new values, new relations between desires, intentions, and attitudes, new meanings of ascent and descent, right and left lines; everything acquires a new value and meaning. This new program changes everything.

In this case, what is left of the old? What is left is the will to receive but the connection between all its parts is implemented now with the new formula: how much a person gives to another, not how much he receives from him.

Then, since I am programmed so that all my desires perform in mutual bestowal to each other, I understand the incoming information of bestowal in any format that it comes (“text,” “video,” or “audio”). I can open and comprehend what it is, and every message is clear to me.
[22428]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/3/10, The Zohar

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Intention Is The Thread To the Future
Laitman.com Post: "Glasses" For Reading The Zohar
Laitman.com Post: Coming Out Of The Illusion

Authentic Altruism And Humanitarian Help

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Baal HaSulam writes that love for another has to be so deep that we would be willing to give the only pillow we have. Does this mean we have to fulfill each other’s material desires as well?

Answer: I don’t have anything to fill these desires with! Where am I going to get 7 billion pillows for the whole of humanity? If everyone cares solely for bestowal, a person will have only necessities in order to sustain himself. What, then, would he be able to give to others?

A law forbids us to give up necessities without which we couldn’t survive. This concerns the survival of the animate body that mustn’t be neglected. So, it turns out that I have nothing to give away to others, and it isn’t required of me. If I have arranged myself correctly in relation to the correction process, I will have no extra food nor money to spare since I live solely for bestowal and take nothing beyond what is necessary for myself.

However, we are forgetting that we don’t have to do anything ourselves. Everything is arranged by the Light. We just have to create the connection in order for the Light to act through us. If I am thinking about another’s need, he will receive what he needs. It is I who arranged it for him. By doing so, I have become equivalent to the Creator because I have evoked the act of bestowal.

I can’t do more than motivate the Light to act. This means that I raise MAN (Mayin Nukvin, Female Waters) which is a request or prayer. My MAN, request, from Malchut works similar to how MAD (Mayin Duchrin, Male Waters), answer, from Bina. I raise to Bina all my will to receive to the magnitude of ZAT de Bina. Everything gets resolved in the thought: I provide the desire to fulfill the friend, but it is the Creator who fulfills him. I am just a connecting link between the other person and the Creator. This is how the world is created in my imagination so that I could correct myself.

I feel that I don’t need anything for myself except to bestow to another. I feel his desire above my own and, above his, I feel the desire of the Creator, an opportunity to fulfill and delight Him. If I organize my desires in this fashion, it means that I perform my actions. The Creator will carry out these acts, and we will attain oneness. I asked Him to unify us in adhesion, and He did. I only need to keep asking.

The Creator intentionally makes others lack something. It is done so that I develop a desire to ask the Creator to fulfill another’s lack, so that I desire to become one with Him, to merge and equalize myself with Him. He created all evil in the world and wishes for me to act on everyone’s behalf as their guardian and look after all of them. He fulfills the world with the Light of Infinity, and then disappears, giving me a chance to bring the Light back into this world.

However, I must understand that this is how the world is painted by my imagination in my “matrix” or the illusion that I must live specifically for my correction. If I try to give something away, that is, try to correct the world and not myself, then I will only harm the world further in order for me to realize what a mistake I had made and to start correcting myself after all. We clearly see that any “humanitarian help” brings additional damage by  provoking terrorism, theft, and idleness.
[22555]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/10, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: About Love And Hate
Laitman.com Post: What Is Love?
Laitman.com Post: What Can I Bestow, When And To Whom?

Perfection Doesn’t Yield

Dr. Michael LaitmanEverything originates in Infinity, in the initial state, and in order for us to attain full correction, we have to meet all conditions set therein. In the state of Infinity, the will to receive is unyielding; it won’t give up one iota of adhesion, unity, or similarity to the Creator.

In Infinity, there is no end or border, nor a detail that would escape His calculation. That is why it is called Infinity. It is not related to a place (desire), quantity or quality of fulfillment, but lies in the unreserved decision of the created being to adhere to the Creator. Accordingly, spiritual degrees of ascension from our world to Infinity are the “degrees of compromise”: to what extent the created being is still refusing to perform a precise calculation for equivalence.

In the initial stage of his work, man looks at everything through the prism of his personal benefit. That is his nature; he was created this way. This period is lengthy and eventually leads to desperation. Likewise, during its entire history, humanity underwent twists and turns of hard life while it chased pleasure, until a line of disappointments has reached critical mass. Having learned from painful experiences, meaning having tasted their bitter outcome, we quit the race because we neither believe that it will bring us satisfaction nor feel it.

Thus, we begin gradually to despise egoistic fulfillment for its bitter effect. Out of despair, we make a new calculation: In altruism, we will experience fulfillment. This is how, affected by the Light, the chain of Reshimot (spiritual genes, reminiscences), which had emerged in the very beginning of our descent from Infinity, gets realized.

Two lines come into play: the direct line from Above downward and the inverse line from below upward. Now, instead of self gratification, a person makes calculations based on his involvement in bestowal. As a result, his reward changes also. It is experienced not in the receiving desires, but in the bestowing ones.

But what is the difference? After all, we are created beings and must feel fulfillment. However, in order to feel it in the same way the Creator does, we have to be equivalent to Him. That is why, from now on, we work on our capacity to receive pleasure from the action itself and not from the final outcome of bestowal.
[22517]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/10, “What is the Help that One Should Ask of the Creator”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Rising To Infinity Along The Steps Of Love
Laitman.com Post: Do Not Lose The Point Of Adhesion
Laitman.com Post: Climbing Up The Ladder Of The Creator’s Thoughts

Desire Knows No Distance

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: I live in Ecuador. How, during the lesson, can I connect with the prayer for the correction of the group?

Answer: A person has to try feeling as if he were here with us. There is no distance on the spiritual path. If one of us is sitting at the computer screen a few miles away from our center, another is somewhere in Ecuador, and still another is in our auditorium, it makes no difference.

It all depends on where a person’s heart is. All you have to do is try to remain connected with us. A person is where his desire is. That’s because there is nothing else except the desire; the outer “clothing” doesn’t count.
[22526]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/10, The Zohar

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Soul On The Computer Screen
Laitman.com Post: Desire Knows No Boundaries
Laitman.com Post: When All Boundaries Disappear

Joy Is A Result Of Good Deeds

Dr. Michael LaitmanOnce the point in the heart awakens in people, one way or the other, they come to Kabbalah. Kabbalah explains how to realize this point on the foundation of the desire to enjoy, how to build the screen and intention over the desire, and to rejoice at a new level. Joy now comes from my being able to bestow and identify myself with the primordial Upper Force that created the desire and in it planted the point with the help of which I can rise above the desire and merge with the Upper Force.

The creature, consisting of the desire and the point of yearning for the Creator, performs corrections and thereby develops this point to such an extent that it becomes the screen. Above this screen, it is able to bestow to the Creator, the Light, just as the Light and the Creator bestow to the creature, and this brings it joy.

Then, in this state, the creature sees what is more correct at a given moment: to be empty or filled in its desire. The states it experiences within its desire must always provide a true basis for examining whether it lives in bestowal or not.

If in order to detach from itself, the creature feels pain in its desire to enjoy, then it suffers, but above the pain, it exists in bestowal and thereby rejoices. And if it attains a state where it can rejoice in its desire while being filled not for its own sake (since this takes place after all the restrictions and the Light’s exit, when the creature starts filling itself in order to increase joy above the screen), then the creature rejoices in being able to fill the Creator.

When we attain “Simchat Torah” (Rejoicing of the Torah), it means that we know how to use the Light that Reforms in order to always remain in bestowal, in joy, meaning in “bestowal for the sake of bestowal” or even in “reception for the sake of bestowal.” Then joy comes indeed, as it is written: “Joy is a reflection of good deeds.” Good deeds are the deeds of bestowal in two gates, two parts of my soul: GE (Galgalta Eynaim) and AHP (Awzen, Hotem, Peh).
[22345]
From the
Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/29/10, Shlavei Hasulam, Article 25, 1991

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: A Paradox Of Giving
Laitman.com Post: Do Not Lose The Point Of Adhesion
Laitman.com Post: Joy Is A Sure Sign Of Bestowal

A Simple Formula Of Reality

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe reality in which we exist has no time. All of the changes of time, space, actions, and everything that happens to us including our own transformations are all based on our changeable sensations, while nothing changes outside of us. We would not feel any changes without the changes in our desires and intentions.

In reality there is nothing but the desire with intention and opposite to it, the Upper Light that remains at absolute rest. As this desire changes, it experiences different forms and shapes. Presently, we are experiencing the sensation of ourselves, and this is also the desire that perceives itself this way.

This desire goes through different states, one after another, in the order of cause and effect, from the beginning of its development to the end. This entire development is only realized in relation to the desire; there are no changes outside of it.

Therefore, the entire wisdom of Kabbalah speaks only about the way the desire perceives its reality: the location of this desire, why it is there, and who it is connected to. This is its entire life. The wisdom of Kabbalah reveals to us all of the events that happen to the desire, explains this entire process and especially the last stage of the desire’s development.

This last stage is a conscious step, when the desire develops together with its intention and they attain a state where they begin to perceive their own reality. A certain force arises in them, a special property of perception, which enables the desire to rise over it and watch itself from an external and objective point.

Then the desire establishes that it actually exists; it changes and moves towards something, existing in connection with someone unknown for now, and there is a purpose to its development. It begins to think about the future state which it does not yet see.

All of this happens because the so-called “point in the heart” develops in the desire on the last stage of its development. From this moment on, the desire begins to identify itself more and more with this point; it connects with it, values it, and moves outside of itself more.

In other words, instead of paying attention to the things that the desire has or doesn’t, to the degree to which it is filled or empty, it begins to see fulfillment or its absence as the means to identify itself more with the point above the desire referred to as the screen or intention, Creator, or unity. This is how the desire develops.
[22346]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/29/10, Shlavei Hasulam, Article 25, 1991

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Sun Never Ceases To Shine
Laitman.com Post: How To Become A King?
Laitman.com Post: A Reality Filtered By Egoism

A Cry For Help

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How does one attain the inner plea? Can one advance without it?

Answer: Naturally, there is no advancement without a cry for help. It can be attained solely with the help of the environment. Alone, a person cannot attain such desire. The plea has to be aimed at bestowal, I have to rise above my egoism, and this ascent is possible only through envy of the friends. Otherwise, what will I ascend over? How and to where will I jump out of my ego? I can’t pull myself out of the mud by the hair, or as Kabbalists said, “A prisoner cannot free himself from imprisonment.”

Only by working on unity do I lead my point in the heart from egoism in my desire to connect it with the others. I constantly increase efforts, motivated by the growing enthusiasm of the group through which I receive the Light that Reforms.

The Light expands through the spiritual system from Arich Anpin (AA) through Aba ve-Ima (AVI) and Zeir Anpin (ZA) down to Malchut (M). Malchut is the Shechina, the oneness of all souls. Since below the Parsa the souls dwell in the broken condition, there is no chance for them to receive the Light. Hence, we ascend to Shechina, the assembly of souls that yearn for unity and bestowal, and there, we receive the influence of the Upper Light. There is the place of our gathering.

Question cont.: Is the cry a group action as well?

Answer: A cry is the result of the accumulation of collective efforts of the group. A person needs external influence to reach an individual plea. A combination of both is required.

In addition, a person feels that he is crying out from unity. In fact, he is not demanding anything but unification; he is not praying to be spared from problems, but for the property of bestowal. His cry is personal, but it is aimed at unity, connection with the others and the Creator.

Such are the laws of the spiritual world, the place where we connect above egoism.
[22347]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/1/10, Shamati #38

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Prayer Of The Stony Heart
Laitman.com Post: How Can We Desire The Most Important Thing?
Laitman.com Post: Don’t Cry In the Wilderness