Question: What are “the Creator’s gifts?”

Answer: We give presents to someone we love, and we receive presents when there is no doubt that they come from love. I may feel that someone is giving me a present to repay me as a bribe.

This means that I must distinguish between a real and unselfish present that comes from the closeness that I already feel toward the giver who wants to make us both happy by the present and a present that is meant to buy me for a price and connect to me in order to use me later for one’s own interests. It turns out that the present can be because of the interests of the giver, because of my interests, or because of our common interests.

Several types of bestowal come to us from the Creator, and we call one of them a gift. As it is written, “He who hates gifts shall live,” but it refers to gifts for our ego, for the desire to receive fulfillment for free, since this is what the ego considers a gift.

The real present is “I labored and found.” A finding is also a kind of present since it is given to me out of love although I don’t deserve it. This means that it is not a direct outcome of my work, but rather, “I labored and found.” It isn’t a payment, but a present, a finding.

It is a very slight difference that is only understood by whomever purifies his vessels of perception (his senses) more and who then discovers different attributes to which he gives different names.

You can receive a present only if it helps you in the work. As it is written, “Open for me an opening like the eye of a needle” so that I can put a thread through it and start “sewing,” start working. This is how we are ready to receive a gift from the Creator since otherwise, we will not be able to get close to Him.

Therefore, the Torah is called a present since the Light in it reforms. So, I receive this present although I don’t deserve it, but, through this gift, I can correct myself and reach adhesion with the Creator. Eventually, I return to the Creator with this present as if I have taken it as a loan from His shop and am returning it.

It turns out that one of the types of receiving and bestowal is called a present.
[102753]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/27/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Related Material:
Unexpected Gifts From The Creator
Four Stages Of Love
A Wicked Desire Is A Kind Gift

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Egoism, Inner Work, My Similarity to the Creator - No Comments →

Filed under: Inner Work, Kabbalah Study, Laitman Unplugged, Q&A - No Comments →

As one advances, a person begins to feel that everything spiritual is outside of his body, in everything that surrounds him in the still, vegetative, and animate nature, in humans. This is what the world is, the area we must learn to treat with love and care as a great treasure so that the world, which is outside of our body, will become very important to us.

The feeling of existence in the physiological body occurs only in our imagination through a combination of forces that are acting on us. That is why we feel as if we live in the material body, and, if a person has an aspiration to live outside of his body—in everything that surrounds him—this is already the need to feel the soul.

Having begun working on this, a person sees that he needs to concentrate all his work on the correct environment because only from there can he get help and support. Such an environment is the group, as a representative of the external world, which may respond to me, attract me, and help me exit myself.

Then, I view the group as my savior, who throws me a rope to pull me out as if from a well. I do not associate myself with the body and wish to get out of it, and thus I grab the rope. The group, friends who are outside of me, help me break away from my body.

Thus, working together, we take turns helping each other climb up and exit ourselves. After all, only outside of his skin, outside of his selfish interests, does a person begin to feel that the group is not a gathering of some people but the holy Shechina in which the Creator dresses.

The body consists of Klipat Noga, the part that gives me freedom of choice, and the “snake’s skin,” the most powerful egoism that pulls me back, so that in trying to get out, I am able to apply sufficient effort correctly aimed.

Due to my desire to get out of my egoism—self-love and thoughts about my own good—to break out beyond my skin and think about the group and the world, I awaken the force that comes through the group, the teacher, and the Creator, which saves me from this prison. All this is due to the mutual work in the group with the teacher and with the books, and thanks to studies and dissemination, which are all the means in which the force of the Creator dresses and helps me exit myself.
[102824]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/13/13, Shamati #36

Related Material:
Do You Like Flowers?
A Cry From The Bottom Of The Well
A Veil Over The Face Of Infinity

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Egoism, Group Work, Inner Work, My Similarity to the Creator - No Comments →

Baal HaSulam, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”: In spirituality, the time of giving and the time of receiving are separate. This is because first it was given from the Creator to the receiver; and in this giving He only gives him a chance to receive. 

Question: How can we recognize this opportunity and use it correctly?

Answer: It has several signs, and the first is when we are not left in peace. If we don’t wake up, then what kind of chance does it give us? We usually “wake up” either in a coffee shop, or bar, or during a football match on the TV. Can we really wake up for correction if our nature is simply an egoistic desire to receive pleasure? We only wake up because of purposeful, special, and qualitative troubles.

Over thousands of years of development, humanity received plenty of simple blows. If a single generation of long-lived people had experienced this, they would look incredibly pitiful. This is why we reincarnate from generation to generation—to come namely to qualitative blows.

Today, we have food, clothes, and shelter. Each of us lives better than the kings did five hundred or a thousand years ago. Refrigerators, air conditioners, microwaves, mobile telephones, cars, or if worse comes to worst, public transportation are the attributes of our modern life. The entire world is in front of us. But not that long ago, even Europe looked very differently: People lived in terrible conditions and had inconceivable social relationships.

We all are relatively well-off. So what is lacking in our lives? We lack joy, purpose in life. What do we live for? The paradox of our life is that we have everything we need, but we hardly enjoy our existence.

Previously, it was the other way around. Had a person had a loaf of bread every day, he would have wanted nothing else. Having this “bliss,” he would have stayed in bed the entire day. Whereas today, people rest on their couches because they are emptied by the abundance. This is what is called qualitative blows. Rebellious children, broken families, fears, worries, and confusion—a person does everything to avoid them, but there is no place to run.

On the other hand, the world is  being “pulled together” by a single net, and we worry because of the New York stock exchange, European crops, heavy rains in remote areas, or conflicts in other countries. We are connected with everyone and depend on everything. We constantly feel pressure and uncertainty. Thus, we are forced to take care of others.

As a result, we all experience disasters that are aimed particularly at us, and that shapes one single question in our brain: “What’s the purpose of my suffering?” Baal HaSulam formulated this question a little differently: “Who is it who enjoys what’s happening? Or even more precisely, whom do I delight?” The problem is that there are no answers to these questions.

In general, the current period of our lives represents the “opposite side” of the era of Messiah. Before anything else, we must reveal a desire. That’s why the Light comes to us through the “back entrance,” from behind. Our duty is to reverse it in such a way that it shines before us. Rabash writes about it in his article “The Matter of the Association of the Quality of Mercy with Judgment.” The upper one seems to me as something very gloomy and repulsive until I rise “above reason” and start revealing Him and getting attached to Him. I transform myself into my opposite (оr do the same with Him in my eyes), and then we turn face to face to each other.

However, He still shines to me through the “back side” and causes disasters that gradually drag me to a correct approach by building a vessel within me.

This is how we have passed all levels, all historic stages. Baal HaSulam writes that any state is preserved until it becomes unbearable. Then we destroy it and build something else instead.

However, this time we don’t have to destroy or build anything at the level of this world. Rather, we must comprehend and digest what’s going on with us, explore the situation we are in, and understand and acknowledge it. The main thing is to realize that the upper one has to perform all changes. But it’s not because we are powerless; after all, He did everything previously as well, albeit without us being aware of it. Today, we must acknowledge this fact and make sure that we accept every action that the upper one does, and that we must elicit all of His actions, ask for them and thank Him for them, and thus constantly accompany all of His steps.

This is actually the “work for the sake of the Creator”: I get to know Him, I begin merging with Him. This is the specifics of our last developmental stage: We get to know the Creator better and better, until we know Him completely. In other words, finally, we will see that everything that happens to us, including “negative” events, were prepared for us by Him solely to make us know Him better. This kind of knowing Him is impossible without our participation. This is exactly what is still concealed from us.
[100139]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/11/13, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”

Related Material:
Get The Tools And Don’t Expect Favors
About Giving And Receiving
I Feel Fine, What Else Do I Need?

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Inner Work, Spirituality, Suffering - No Comments →

A person’s success depends upon the environment that he manages to organize for himself. To this extent he gradually begins to change his concept: what day and night are, light and darkness. He now begins to see that what he previously considered to be the light—his success relative to others, the filling of his egoistic desires of pride—now seems like total darkness, as a terrible state from which he must escape in order to think about bestowal upon others, about the friend’s success, and about bestowal upon the Creator.

This is actually what becomes the light and day for a person now, instead of the light and day he felt previously in his own success. To the extent that he can annul and restrict himself forcefully, he encounters great resistance on the part of his body, and the more he sees the importance of the other and of the Creator, the more he advances. Eventually, he fills the measure of his exertion and receives enough Light that Reforms so that the Masach (screen) can be born in him. Then a resisting force toward the desire to receive begins to operate in him, and, thanks to the equivalence of form with the Light that he has attained, he is rewarded with the first revelation.

Our work is to find the right criteria for checking: Where is day and where is night, where is darkness and where is the Light? According to these values, I have to judge: Is it for my own benefit or for the Creator? If I begin to understand that it’s totally opposite from my previous criteria, it’s a sign that I am already on the right track. If I begin to have an inner struggle with which principle to assess the state, it’s a sign that I am already advancing.

If I pray that my scale of values, the measuring system of the light and darkness, day and night, be changed so that I will be able to see them spiritually, then it’s an even more advanced state. When I adhere to bestowal with all my might and try to see every state from this perspective, then I am ready to detach myself from the desire to receive. If I constantly ask for this to happen, and if I constantly feel that the Creator is sending me interruptions in order to strengthen my request, then I am already close to it, in order to actually work in Lishma (for its sake).

So what was previously darkness turns to light and what was light for myself turns to darkness, and I actually run from it. Everything turns to the opposite state: day and night. What had been the darkness of the night before turns into the bright light of the day.
[102664]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/12/13, Shamati #16

Related Material:
Together We Shall Turn The Night Into Day!
The Day Of The Lord And The Night Of The Lord
Day Will Follow Night

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Egoism, Inner Work, Perception - 1 Comment →

When rising to Bina, a person (Malchut) annuls himself above all the egoism that is revealed in him. Ibur (gestation) is a terrible state for the desire to receive. Imagine that you returned to the womb: There can’t a more terrible state for you; you have no air, no light, and no freedom to move. You are squeezed into a narrow confinement, like in a vise gripping all your senses, so that you can’t move internally in your consciousness or externally.

Entering the spiritual womb is a terrible feeling, spiritual claustrophobia…but you prefer this state, because if you are in it, in Bina, in the attribute of bestowal, then you don’t need anything! You accept the dark solitary confinement as the good promised land, as heaven. The condition for entering spiritual Ibur is to change your appreciation of Malchut to Bina and to begin to value the attribute of bestowal.
[102661]
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/11/13, The Study of the Ten Sefirot

Related Material:
Protected By The Mother’s Safe Shield
There Is No Safer Place Than A Mother’s Arms
Between Minus Infinity And Plus Infinity

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Egoism, Inner Work, Spirituality - No Comments →

Question: We had an exercise yesterday in which we tried to relate to everything as a “dialog with the Creator.” After all, He is the one who is sending us all these states and we have to respond to them correctly. How can we “grow stronger” in implementing this approach without settling for a couple of attempts a day? How can we deepen this insight so that it will run through our whole life?

Answer: A person cannot always evoke himself by himself. He needs an external “stimulus.” The best external stimulus is the group. This is why we speak about mutual guarantee.

In the framework of mutual guarantee it’s not enough to guard the other so that he won’t make a hole in the boat; it isn’t enough to guard the other so that he won’t have evil thoughts; in addition to that, we have to make sure that he has good thoughts. If we all keep the mutual connection and the common yearning for the goal, no one will have evil thoughts but only good thoughts.

Then, of course the evil thoughts will begin to awaken at a very rapid pace, but they will immediately fall onto the right ground: It will be clear to a person that it’s an interruption, “help against,” that is meant to evoke him and to tighten the connection with the friends and through them with the Creator. Then everyone will be able to easily process even millions of similar thoughts a day, and within a few days he will fulfill the whole level of this world.

Everyone worries about everyone else. Everyone is connected in one mission, in one common goal. I feel that I have to think about the goal for the sake of the others. I want everyone to yearn for it; I can’t leave the connection with the goal and with the Creator since if I do, I would betray my friends and would turn into a criminal, a cheat, a thief, who steals the spiritual world from others and who nullifies their exertion along the spiritual path. What’s more, I steal from the Creator; I deprive Him of pleasure since I hold the group back and don’t allow Him to give the friends what they yearn for. I am the one responsible for that.

This is what everyone should think. After all, there is no “little bit” in spirituality: If someone doesn’t work to the fullest, everyone suffers. So think carefully about what you do and about what worries you during the day.

Other than that, there are times when you admit, “Now I can’t think about the friends. I have to rest, take a nap, or be distracted by something else at least mentally.” These breaks are external to the adhesion to the group and the Creator and later you will not feel a need for them.

But in the meantime they are necessary, and so at a certain point you say to yourself, “I will take a break and rest from everyone.” You may fall into an “animal” state for half an hour or an hour, but you decide for how long; you decide not to think about what’s important for a while. Then you will feel the “foreign” thoughts about spirituality…
[102520]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/12/13, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

Related Material:
The Strongest Weapon
We Need Fuel For Our Boat
A Play Without Extras

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work, Mutual Guarantee - No Comments →

Our spiritual growth and development begins from the restriction of the desire to receive, which initially dominates us. The moment we try to restrict ourselves, we enter the state of spiritual Ibur (gestation) about which is said: “An embryo in his mother’s womb sees from one end of the world to the other. There is a lit candle above his head and he is taught the whole Torah“.

This means that he is not limited in any way since he has totally restricted himself—the small egoistic desire he has at that moment in which he feels the corporeal world. It’s because he hasn’t felt the spiritual world at all, but only this world, the fictitious reality, like a person who is unconscious and is hallucinating. But when he restricts his desire to receive, he becomes unlimited, he doesn’t need to receive anymore since the Light of Ein Sof (Infinity) illuminates for him like the Surrounding Light, which is like being in a mother’s womb. Thus he goes through the stages of Ibur.

After he is born, he already begins to work with the first Aviut (thickness) of the desire instead of the root Aviut, and then he is limited again. The Light of Ein Sof that doesn’t grow weaker in any way, doesn’t reach him since he doesn’t try to totally annul himself and adhere to the upper. He builds Masachim (screens) of his own and increases his desires in order to actually reach the Light of Ein Sof by his own work and to dress it in his vessels.

There are different limitations in his work now, and the Light illuminates only to the extent that he can receive it in order to bestow in his corrected vessels. Therefore it says that “the Creator hates the bodies,” which means the desires to receive. The desire to bestow, however, is not called a body anymore, but a soul, a Godly part from Above.

Thus, there is a state in which a person restricts himself so that the Light of Ein Sof can reach him limitlessly. But the wholeness is in allowing the Light of Ein Sof to be revealed without any restrictions on a person’s part. A person has to discover himself with the help of a Masach and to work on the level of Ein Sof by himself, in order to attain full adhesion with the Light that is not limited by any restrictions.
[102517]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/12/13, Shamati #15

Related Material:
The Embryo Of The Soul And Its Growth
Like An Embryo In The Mother’s Womb
The Decimal System Is In The Basis Of The World

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Inner Work, My Similarity to the Creator, Perception - No Comments →

Question: We have to yearn for the changes that the Creator sends us along the spiritual path. But these changes involve unpleasant feelings, how can we want them?

Answer: When a person’s ears get clogged, he has to listen more carefully, “Has anyone said anything? Did I understand correctly?” This is the inner effort to hear the one who turns to you.

We have to feel the same about the Creator. Something happens every minute: someone is looking at me, someone is talking to me, something happens in the world; inside me, I have had different thoughts, I have had different desires, different problems come up… All this is the Creator’s language. He is the one who sends me these messages.

Let’s take a certain object, for example, that is being bitten on all sides by particles in the air, by atoms. I am also constantly under the influence of the Creator. I only have to increase my sensitivity, and then through my “skin” I will actually start to discover Him; I will decipher his “conversation” and understand how and what He does.

It is all about my inner sensitivity. Even if I grow tired of paying endless attention to everything that happens, I have to ask for such sensitivity. It comes thanks to the mutual exercises I do with the friends, and with their help, I discover that at any given moment I am given different opportunities to have a dialog with the Creator. If I don’t miss them, then there is no room for thoughts, everything turns into feelings, and the feelings don’t go back and forth between us, but rather become common feelings…

We have to apply simple, direct psychology here and as little “accounting” as possible: eventually it is the Creator turning to me through different “garments.”
[102482]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/11/13, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

Related Material:
The Language With Which The Creator Speaks To You
Listen To The Creator’s Hints
The Conversation Between The Creator And His Beloved Creation

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work, My Similarity to the Creator, Q&A - No Comments →

How can we be taught what bestowal is? In order to do that nature has planted a desire to enjoy in us through which we learn about bestowal by its oppositeness, by its opposite attribute.

Our desire to enjoy receives certain impressions that evoke different responses in it and imprint different holes, cracks, pits, and dimples in our desire. Thanks to that, the desire begins to feel to some extent that these impressions are different in size and character, and that there is a certain connection between them that we don’t understand.

We suddenly discover that our desire to enjoy is versatile, multi-layered, and very complex, and accordingly it receives different complex impressions. Thus we learn about our nature. The more we know about it, the more we attain the opposite attribute, the opposite nature. After all, all our study is based on the clash between two opposite attributes: receiving and bestowal.

It says, “And they shall have no other Gods before Me,” which means that by studying precisely about these “other Gods,” we study about the Creator and can form His image in us. Otherwise, He has no image and no form allowing us to somehow imagine what it is, who He is, and how to discover Him.

How can we discover that which is impossible to discover? Only by negative impressions that are perceived negatively in the desire to enjoy can we gradually build an opposite attitude so we begin to imagine what the attribute of bestowal is. We cannot attain it any other way: not by using our imagination, not by our feelings, or by any action on our part that can be directly adapted to Him.

Everything takes place only due to some special force, the Light that operates in different states and evokes different responses in us. Our work is to attribute everything to the one upper force as we determine that there is none else beside Him. This, however, encounters great resistance on the part of our desire to enjoy, which until then thought that there is none else beside itself and now has to settle for this. One annuls the other, which means that an argument begins: Who will rule?

Both of these claims nullify one another: it is either Him or me! This conflict is the basis of all our states. We shouldn’t be afraid to stand between these two opposing sides and to deal with the two insoluble dominions, to endure it, to accept, and to surrender, but to attain and justify, to understand and resemble the force of bestowal. If a person doesn’t escape this clarification, but can work under the conditions of this split, the conflicting opinions and the feelings, if he doesn’t count on his animal mind and doesn’t escape from the battlefield, he receives a new mind and feelings from Above. In that case he acquires a form that is similar to the Creator.

Until then, it is impossible to understand what bestowal is. When a person finally attains it, it is called the Creator’s help, a finding. A person who accepts all the forms of work that are given to him and who lowers his head, not following his own mind, which seems to understand everything and determine everything, then he succeeds. The main thing is, as it says not to believe in yourself until your dying day, which means the death of your ego. After that you already acquire faith.
[102425]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/11/13, Shamati #15

Related Material:
Goodness Is A Constant That Cannot Be Changed
A Violin Tuned To The Creator
Like Dough In A Baker’s Hands

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Inner Work, My Similarity to the Creator - No Comments →