The Whole Truth About Kabbalah – Laitman Unplugged
Posted on March 17th, 2013
In every spiritual state on the spiritual levels, there is the Inner Light and the Surrounding Light. But in our state, as long as we do not attain restriction and a Masach (screen), we can be assisted only by the Surrounding Light.
The force of the Surrounding Light depends on how much we value it, on our appreciation of the upper, of the next level, which means the Creator. But we cannot value Him. We were only given a couple of means by which we can develop an inner feeling of the greatness of the upper. The upper for us is the group, the teacher, and the books, meaning the study that tells us about the spiritual world and the Creator hidden behind all these means.
We begin to value the upper who is external to us by using all these means: the group, the teacher, the books, and the intention of attaining equivalence of form with the Creator in order to bring Him contentment. Although we don’t feel it for the time being, even if we just talk about it trying to feel it from time to time, we raise the greatness of the upper in us by that. Then at a certain point He becomes so important that He allows us to feel His presence next to us.
It’s because everything that is external to a person is the Holy Shechina, the Godly presence. But everything depends on how much we value Him. All the other rules of behavior in the group as to how we should speak, what to demand of it, and how to treat it, stem from this condition, from the need to value the upper.
Accordingly, the Surrounding Light shines upon a person. It is the real upper Light, but in the meantime it operates on the lower as the Light that Reforms, which means that it brings about changes in us by gradually bringing us closer to bestowal. Then finally it will give us the “restriction” and the Masach, which means the ability to work spiritually.
Then we will begin to understand where we are and what is happening to us, but at the same time, we have to work in faith above reason and value the upper despite all the problems the upper sends us and all the reasons for an opposite attitude. This is our work that is based on our great appreciation of the upper until we adhere to the posterior of the upper as if it were His face. Then we will see that it was never His posterior, but that He has always turned His face full of light to us. Thus we leave exile and reach redemption.
At first it was as if you were unconscious, but then you begin to feel that you are in exile, so, step by step, you begin to get closer to redemption and finally you leave exile and come into the Light. These are the levels of ascent according to your appreciation of the upper, and later your adhesion to Him.
We have all the means, all the roads are open, and everything depends on us. There is nothing else that we need. The Creator has given us every possible opportunity and everything else is up to the person. We will not be forgiven and there are no concessions from Above if we don’t do our work, since otherwise we will not build our spiritual vessels.
[102235]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/8/13
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According to the Creator’s part, you are always in a corrected state. But according to how you see it and understand things, it appears very different and this is the flaw. Absolute good comes from the Creator, but He has to hide it and reduce His bestowal upon you so that it will not seem so bad. It is because you are opposite from Him and you receive everything in an opposite manner.
So the Creator cannot pour infinite bestowal upon you since you would feel an infinite minus and would not be able to bear this horrible state. Therefore, the Creator has to diminish Himself, by reducing Himself to practically zero level, leaving only a tiny spark to sustain life, a tiny drop of Light. And even this minimal Light is perceived by you as a cruel world full of evil and pain.
Gradually, through the study and the influence of the friends and the teacher, according to your efforts, the Light comes, reforms you, and changes begin to occur in you. Then you gradually find out that you are actually in a good state and that you feel it as bad because of your uncorrected attributes. Then you begin to work in order to change yourself by using all the means you have: the group, the study, dissemination, and the teacher.
If you work correctly and make efforts in order to see yourself in a state of bestowal, love, and connection, through the teacher, the study, and by yearning for the Creator, then it operates on you. It is not immediate of course, but gradually you discover that bestowal and love, the best attitude, surround you; finally you understand, feel, and interpret this correctly.
Thus you rise to your first spiritual level. You agree with the Creator and see that all the powers you have invested were for the correction of your perception, for the correction of your vessels. You didn’t have to pay anyone, but you corrected yourself. Thus you have corrected the vessel of perception and now you feel a whole state.
You have to feel the world of Ein Sof (Infinity), the perfection in the current state without changing anything in it, except for your inner attitude. If you don’t feel that, it is a sign that you are cursing the Creator instead of thanking Him and blessing Him.
We can say that about every state, no matter how terrible it is. Nothing changes in reality, except for our attitude, which is called the correction of the vessel of perception.
[102017]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/5/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam
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Question: Do we have enough Haman (egoism) rising in us to keep the group in the heart and to act in order to bring pleasure to the Creator?
Answer: No, it is not enough. We still need to add a lot of egoism to ourselves. It will be added to the extent of how we are engaged in connection between us and in dissemination, but mostly in connection.
After all, the egoism that we need now is the egoism which we will be able to reveal between ourselves, sitting at a round table, that will act between us in such a way that we will want to reject each other. We will not want to participate in joint activities; we will disagree with each other; perhaps, we will become estranged from each other. We need precisely this egoism.
It has yet to grow. But it will increase only if we understand how to deal with it and will meet it with joy.
[101673]
From the Fundamentals Lesson 2/24/13
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Question: I have been studying Kabbalah for two years. How can I help my husband join the studies of Kabbalah if he refuses to do so?
Answer: You can help him only in one thing: Do not include him in anything and do not influence him in any way. Just let him feel that you are grateful to him for allowing you to study. Otherwise, it will be worse.
You cannot force a person by putting pressure on him. If he does not want to study, he doesn’t need to. The only thing that is required of him is that he does not prevent you from studying. This is enough to make him gradually move toward it himself. If you do not put pressure on him, you will see that he will gradually become interested in what you are studying. Give him a book that is far from Kabbalah but talks about our worldly problems so that he understands that this is not mysticism or something like that.
In general, act in a hidden manner a bit, like Queen Esther. It is not by chance that she symbolizes a special female feature, a special approach to the man from whom she cannot escape.
Men are more direct, but a woman can quietly and calmly incline him to what she desires.
[101550]
From the Virtual Lesson 2/24/13
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Rabash, “And He Shall Cogitate in His Torah (Teachings)”: And so we read in the Megillah “and after all this the king raised Haman.” Literally it is hard to understand, after all, after what Mordecai did, which was good for the king, the king should raise Mordecai and not Haman, and this needs to be explained…
When a person cannot see the true face of his evil, which means the true form of Haman, then a person cannot pray to the Creator, so that He should save him from evil. Only when a person sees the greatness of Haman, who wants to kill and to destroy all the Jews, which means that Haman wanted to destroy everything that belonged to Judaism, which doesn’t let him do anything that is related to Holiness, then he can raise a true prayer. Then the verse “the Creator helps him” is fulfilled.
Only if we yearn for unity like Mordecai who evoked the yearning for unity by discovering the plot against the unity and killing it (two of the king’s courtiers who betrayed him), then Haman is evoked. The evil inclination faces the good inclination, the desire to receive rises facing the desire to bestow, and a struggle between them begins inside a person.
Only by raising and empowering the good force does the evil force grow, and then we raise the good again and evil also grows. This process continues until we reach a state in which we have to make a decision in this struggle. We cannot ask the good inclination, since it doesn’t need anything, it doesn’t want anything, but only to bestow every chance it gets. So we always ask the evil inclination, and then we do the opposite.
This is called working in faith above reason. We know how our desire to receive feels and follow faith above reason. Otherwise we have no way of imagining what the spiritual world is, what it means to be above myself, what it means to bestow. But we know that it is opposite from our egoistic desire to receive, which we know very well.
So when the desire to bestow grows, we have to raise the desire to receive and to ask it what it thinks should be done, and then do the opposite! That’s the way it works.
It is because we don’t see the image of the good; we don’t have an image by which we can resemble the Creator. The only way is to form it as an opposite image of the desire to receive. Therefore we were given an environment that should help us turn the desire to receive, which means the intention to receive into an intention to bestow. This is called “to repent,” to return to the Creator, the rising of Malchut to Bina.
We have no idea what the image of the good is but only that is it the opposite of evil.
[101340]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/25/13
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Question: Is it true what people say that when we look at the letters of The Book of Zohar written in Aramaic it automatically connects us to the Light although we don’t understand the language?
Answer: Nothing happens automatically. It can be compared to a baby who is born and lives in this world and who grows because he is taken care of since he annuls himself before the grownups. It is an innate attribute, and, by that, he enables the parents to take care of him. They take care of him, and he grows.
If a person annuls himself during the study while reading The Book of Zohar, he is under the influence and the caretaking of the friends, even if he doesn’t understand and doesn’t feel anything but wants to place himself under the influence of the Lights, the friends, and the major society that deals with it. However, he needs to have that intention. Even if he forgets about it, he still needs to feel that he belongs.
Question: How can we follow the text while reading The Book of Zohar and keep the right intention at the same time?
Answer: The main thing is the intention, and the text is important to the extent that a person can attribute it to the right intention. Gradually, he begins to see the right meaning of the words in it: a “child,” “sages,” Sefirot, Malchut, and Bina. He will see it. Under the influence of the Light that Reforms that operates very slowly, gradually, bit by bit, a person will begin to feel different impressions. He will feel a connection to what he reads.
Question: What should our approach be while reading The Book of Zohar or what should change in it so that the Light will influence us and change us?
Answer: We must connect. A person should feel that he is in a united group like a commando squad, like in one whole that is made of separate parts. He needs to feel it naturally. Otherwise, his intentions are not the right intentions.
So, as he feels the whole reality connected in him, he wants to belong to the Creator together with it, to connect and to adhere to Him. He understands that it happens as a result of his inner change and looks forward to it.
[101217]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/21/13, The Zohar
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There is a system which in our perception of reality is depicted as the current reality of this world. In it a person has books that were written by Kabbalists in the past, a teacher who is a Kabbalist, friends, the whole world, and the Creator who is concealed, meaning the attribute of bestowal that is opposite from everything a person discovers in his five senses. Except for this attribute, everything is at his disposal.
So how can we use all the means we have correctly, in order to reach the general attribute of bestowal?
It is external to a person, outside his “vessel,” and he can acquire it with the help of three components: books, the group, and the teacher. With their help he fulfills the study, dissemination, and the connection.
The combination of all these things brings a person to turn his vessels, his desires, from receiving to bestowal. He discovers increasingly more egoistic vessels that he turns to “in order to bestow,” according to his efforts and exertion.
What are these efforts and exertion?
A person holds on to the right intention during the study, connects with the friends in the group, and follows the advice of the teacher without which he doesn’t know how to work with the books and the group. On the whole, these three components are called “Torah,” which means a study, a method, a means for attaining the attribute of bestowal.
From that we choose the right actions and the right relations by combining the books the group and the teacher in them. Thus a person reaches oppositeness, by rising “above his reason” above his mind and feelings, towards the next level…
[101113]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/20/13, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”
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We are controlled by two opposite forces that have to reach the right intensity and resistance in order to enable us to be born into the new world. So a person encounters many interruptions that come from the Creator, and thus feels resentment and anger.
I see this kind of attitude in many of my students as if they are waiting for this birth to occur by itself, as if everything will happen by itself, naturally, and the time will come for everyone to enter the spiritual world. But of course, this will not happen to anyone if he doesn’t have the desires, the necessary vessels. The main thing is to prepare our vessels. How can we prepare them if not by overcoming difficulties and problems?
It’s as if some people are “doing me a favor” in coming to lessons and participating in dissemination, expecting they deserve some reward for it; they want to show me what they have done and how much work it entailed. They don’t seem to understand that they need this work in order to stabilize their spiritual vessel, their soul; but instead, they think that they are doing me or someone else a favor.
There are students who think that by their dissemination efforts they “pay” me, in a way, for the lessons I give. They don’t understand that without building the external circles they will not acquire the vessel of their soul, and they believe that they are making an effort for me.
Thinking this way is is a total lack of understanding: A person has to pay the Creator for having given him a chance to invest his powers in the right actions, which means to build the vessel of his soul. The reward is actually not what he thinks at all; our reward is that we have a chance to work, to exert ourselves and not in order to work and then receive a reward. This is a corrupt attitude that needs to be clarified.
[100939]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/19/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam
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