Question: In the workshops we speak a lot about love. But you often give an example of how great Kabbalists hated each other. I am afraid. Do all of us need to go through this?

Answer: In order to feel hatred, you need to love very strongly, you need to yearn for love. We talk about this a lot in our lessons. All that happens to us, including even the worst things, is all for the good. All is given to us just so that we will rise above all that happens.

If we want to advance, we must advance towards love.

Let’s suppose that now I try to approach someone with love and as a result I feel mutual hatred from him towards me. But my love is only a formal one, and his hatred is, as if, real.

I begin to ask from the upper Light to build real love within me above this hatred. It is said, “Love covers all sins,” all the hatred.

The huge inner hatred is called “Mount Sinai” (sina – hatred in Hebrew). And the love that I acquire is already real love. In this way we advance forward.

Question: How is it possible to acquire real love all at once, bypassing hatred?

Answer: My yearning is only for love and whatever happens on the way is not important. The hatred will appear only so that you will rise above it and love others even more. But due to that, your love will increase and grow, thanks to the hatred that is constantly growing underneath it. It can’t be any other way, because the upper world was created by two contradictory and opposite attributes that connect to one complete whole.
[104184]
From the European Convention in Germany 3/23/13, Lesson 5

Related Material:
The Point Between Hate And Love
There Is No Love Without Hate
Love Above All Differences

Filed under: Conventions, Group Work, Inner Work, Love - No Comments →

Question: Why do we begin to love others only if we invest in them?

Answer: It is no secret that we love only ourselves—not even the people closest to us, not anyone else, but only ourselves. When can we love something or someone outside of ourselves? It is if we invest ourselves in them.

If a mother does not take care of her child, she does not love him, and, if she is given someone else’s child, continuously takes care of him, and raises him, then he will become as her own because she invested herself in him.

It is the same with anything else such as, let’s say, an artist and the picture he has painted, and so on. If I put my work, my effort, and my desire into something, then, to the extent of my effort, this object becomes dear to me because it contains part of me. I myself am in this object.

So, if for many years, we invest in the group, it becomes close to us, dear, and we cannot just leave it (if we truly invest in it).

It is a condition that you must work for the friends all the time. Then, you will begin to feel that they are close to you, and this gives you a chance to feel their desires. After all, it is precisely those desires that you receive from the group that you turn to the upper Light and it begins to shine on you.

There is no point of turning to it with your desire; it will not work. That is why we try so much and in vain. In addition, if we take the group desires and turn them to the Light, we will succeed at once. Try! You need to invest in the group. Then, it will become dear, and we quickly will feel the upper world.
[104107]
From the European Convention in Germany 3/23/13, Lesson 5

Related Material:
How Much Does My Correction Cost?
Egoism And Love
Living In Others  

Filed under: Conventions, Group Work, Love, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: How can a person feel that he is not only part of his local group, but also part of the whole global group? What concentrated attention, efforts, and thoughts are needed for that?

Answer: Our egoistic nature doesn’t let us think about real values or to feel true reality. It doesn’t let us worry or think about those that we don’t feel naturally. Some distant group that I don’t quite even know the location of, I can’t feel it close to me and it can’t be the focus of my concerns. I don’t have the same deficiencies and needs that they have, so what can I do?

We have to work on this artificially according to the advice of Kabbalists about the work with the environment. We don’t feel any attraction to the environment either, and it’s only later that we begin to feel that we depend on it. If you don’t drown in the friends and don’t throw yourself into their arms, you will not be able to advance. All your spiritual development depends on them, and it’s only from them that you can receive spiritual bestowal. This understanding comes as a result of years of careful work with the environment.

We mustn’t wait for the feelings of all the groups to reach us on their own; we have to work on it artificially. This is why we were given this Mitzva (commandment): Go and start working, “Go and make a living from one another,” start connecting!

It is written, “Love thy friend as thyself,” a commandment. Is it possible to force someone to love? On the contrary, if you love, then it’s impossible to detach from this. Here, however, you are pushed and told, “Love!” How can that be?

It means that there are certain actions that we have to perform in order to attain the love of others. This commandment has nothing to do with your emotions; you are not obligated to love, but to perform an action by which you will attain this love. This action has to be performed against your will. If they were compatible with your will it wouldn’t be necessary to command a person to love.

Suppose, I serve you gefilte fish, which is a traditional Ashkenazi food, and I tell you “love it!” However, you are used to Sephardic food and you are disgusted by the cold tasteless fish. But if there is a commandment, then you have to start getting used to this against your will so that a habit will become second nature.

So you force yourself to eat this fish, although you feel like throwing up. But you try again and again together with a prayer. You curse the fish but you eat; you start from totally mechanical actions. In your emotions, you curse me for having given you the fish. Clearly you have no control over your heart, but you curse me and eat the gefilte fish again and again because you are obligated to love it.

The commandment of “love thy friend,” is worse than any disgusting fish. This commandment includes all the strange and hated dishes, but after you exert yourself enough, the Light that Reforms influences you and the unbelievable happens! You suddenly begin to get used to that fish. It seems that it has a different flavor and that it’s not as disgusting as it used to be. You are not repulsed by it as you were before and you begin to accept it.

This is thanks to the performance of physical actions above reason, against your will, by following the advice of Kabbalists. By having fulfilled their orders and in general the orders of the Creator that were passed on to you by Kabbalists, you receive the Light that Reforms through them. Thus, you receive new attributes and begin to love gefilte fish, the friends, others, and the Creator.

The commandment “to love” has nothing to do with emotion but with actions. Now we have a chance to perform such actions in the form of an attack! There is always an option for such actions, but especially now, when the European convention and Passover are approaching; it’s a special time that we can attack. In the next two weeks, starting today, we all rush to this attack.
[102954]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/15/13, Shamati #38

Related Material:
Not Things But Experiences Brings Happiness
Commandment To Love
Go For Love

Filed under: Conventions, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Egoism, Free Will, Group Work, Love - No Comments →

Chyngyz Aitmatov (a Russian and Kyrgyz writer whose works were translated into more than 150 languages): “In one popular science magazine I recently read a story that exotic flowers in Paris suddenly began to die. Those flowers were once exported from Latin America. Meanwhile, there was perfect weather.

“Scientists did not find any reason that could explain what had happened. What did happen? There was extraordinary drought at the homeland of these flowers, and there, the same flowers died …

“What would be the history of humankind, our today’s life, if people, who think themselves ‘the crown of nature,’ could feel each other in the same way and respond to the suffering and joy of another person?!”

My Comment: This is an example of the universal interconnection of Nature. And the mutual sensation of other people’s feelings like one’s own is called love!
[102948]

Related Material:
Collaboration: A Property Inherent In Nature
Schooling Fish Operate On The Basis Of Mutual Guarantee
Change Of Human Nature In Our Time

Filed under: Love, Unity - 1 Comment →

Question: What does it mean to exit my body and treat the world outside me, rocks and flowers, with love?

Answer: It is about a state in which a person has already entered the spiritual world, not simply loving nature, plants, animals, and people who are close or distant to one’s self. In order to really be able to exit your ego, you were given friends, a group, and you have to use this means. If you establish the right attitude towards the group, then you will see how it can help you and take you out of yourself.

Only then will you understand who you were, what was on the outside, and why the Creator has created this world that we see as external to us. You will understand why you have a special body in this world that is meant to help you perform this exit.

Only after you begin to come out by all the external help of the good environment, will you feel that your attitude towards the still, vegetative, and animate nature is also changing. You will treat all of humanity differently since you will see everyone in the Light of bestowal and will start judging everything differently.

The ultimate goal is to reach equivalence of from with the Creator, after which you will certainly justify Him in every way; you do all that not in order to better your personal state, but because you want to bring Him contentment so that He will enjoy you.
[102819]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/13/13, Shamati #36 

Related Material:
In The Prison Of One’s Own Egoism
A Cry From The Bottom Of The Well
The Group Is The Noah’s Ark Of Salvation

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Love, Spirituality - No Comments →

Baal HaSulam: Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 8: For example, when two people love each other, you say that they are attached to one another as one body. And when they hate each other, you say that they are as far from one another as the east from the west. But there is no question of nearness or remoteness of location here. Rather, this implies the equivalence of form: when they are equal in form, and each loves what the other loves and hates what the other hates, they love each other and are attached to one another.

And if there is some disparity of form between them and one of them likes something that the other hates, then to the extent that they differ in form, they become distant and hateful of one another. And if, for example, they are opposite in form, and everything that one likes, the other hates, and everything the other hates is liked by the first, they are deemed as remote as the east from the west, meaning from one end to the other.

Question: What kind of love and hate are referred to here?

Answer: It is typical of mutual relations between different people: with a friend, with one’s wife, etc. The more you resemble one another in your desires and thoughts, or the more different you become, to that extent you love or hate one another.

But a person’s intention here is not to reveal the innate physiological feelings and not about the simple natural connection that is based on interests, habits, and understandings. No, we are speaking about two people who work together in order to prepare the “place” for the revelation of the Creator in their connection.

We build this “place” by our general, mutual intentions. Because our desires and thoughts are different and people are different, everyone is set at his “frequency.”

In the past, long waves were used for communication. Then greater accuracy was required, greater intensity, and the ability to penetrate deeper, and so we started using higher frequencies by which it is possible to transmit more information. Before all the fine details were swallowed, but now in the high frequencies it turns out that everyone can be special and we don’t need to be like one another. A creature from another planet wouldn’t notice the differences between us: everyone has arms, legs, eyes, ears, etc. But if we penetrate deeper into a person’s character, into his essence, we discover great differences. Not only is every individual unique, but also he is constantly changing.

So how can we connect to one another?

We connect according to our intentions. I intend to bestow goodness upon you with all my attributes and you intend to bestow goodness upon me with all your attributes, desires, and abilities. Then we are equal, similar, connected. We are not connected in our actual desires but in our intentions that are aimed at mutual bestowal.

I don’t force you to listen to Mozart, although I really enjoy his music, and you don’t force me to listen to Moti Mor, for example, who is your favorite singer. No, I turn off the classical music and dress in you and check what in you matches this frequency, what you like in your analog desire. Ahh, you love Moti Mor. Although I can’t even compare him to Mozart, I still begin to value him, since by that I connect to you and attain the Creator. Thus, suddenly, Moti Mor becomes important to me and I change my desire to your desire. Mozart was a source of pleasure for me on the “animal” level, while Moti Mor becomes an opportunity for me to connect with the other and to build a spiritual vessel.

It is about this that it says, “Make your will His will.” I cannot annul my attraction to Mozart, I have only “restricted” it, “covered” it with a new cover of my attraction to Moti Mor and by that have connected to you. I do the same thing with everyone, equating my desire to the other’s desire. Eventually, I acquire deficiencies from the whole world and connect with everyone.

In fact, I don’t even need to check any further in order to do that, the Light helps me and I connect to the greatness of the other, to his understanding and feeling. This is not an effort but actually easy and wonderful.
[101946]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/4/13,”Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

Related Material:
How to Fulfill Teenage Emptiness
Relocation Into The Other
Passing The Awakening Baton

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Egoism, Love, Q&A - No Comments →

When I try to imagine what my spiritual level really has to be and whether I can rise to it by my feelings, my knowledge, and my efforts, I see that I cannot. If I come to the right conclusions, I discover that without the Creator’s help I will not manage. After all, I have to correct my intention in order to bestow upon the Creator and I can reach that only through the love of others, by connection with the friends.

Here I see to what extent I work in the opposite direction, forgetting all about the love of others, unable to constantly think about mutual guarantee, about connection and about the love of friends.

It seems that love of friends and the correction of my desires are two different things. I have to love the friends and then I will be ready to do them a favor and to get a bit closer to them. But the correction of my desires and the revelation of the Creator are intimate personal things that belong only to me. I cannot connect these two conditions, and this is our main problem.

So we have to constantly work on the connection of “Israel, the Torah and the Creator.” The Torah is revealed only by the Light that Reforms, which connects all these components. After all, the important rule of the Torah is “Love thy friend as thyself.” The Torah is all the vessels and all the Lights in which love is revealed—from such a strong connection that turns to love.

We have to imagine a common vessel called the “Torah,” which is all the desire to receive that was created and that is shattered to pieces that are very far from one another filled with mutual hate. I want all this to be covered with love; I really want this! So I need the Creator and I focus on Him through this collective desire.

In that case I really need the Creator. I summon Him not just so that He will bring me pleasure, but as a result of an unbearable pain that is caused by my inability to connect to the general love in the relations between us.

This love has to be expressed towards the group in some way, towards the friends, even if it is not openly but more internally. This already depends on a person, on time, on the height he is on. The Kabbalists of Kotzk used to express an opposite attitude externally; we follow the instructions of Rabash to display love and  concern for the friends openly.

We have to constantly worry only about the general vessel, about the general connection that draws the Light that Reforms and the Light that fills the vessel. The Creator is revealed only in that vessel, as the one who builds and sustains, heals, and fills it.

All this takes place in that state; the trouble is that we don’t imagine it correctly, but think that the Creator can be revealed inside us, will enter our individual hearts. This is how every egoist thinks, since he is used to drawing all the goodness and all the achievements to himself.

This is the whole problem. Only by mutual guarantee can we support one another in order to remain focused on the center of the group, the nation of Israel, and the whole world as one system in which everything takes place. There is nothing but that.

Otherwise we are simply not living in reality. All the other perspectives except this one are called “an imaginary reality.” It isn’t even as imaginary as our world but actually fictitious and totally egoistic.

So we have to discover the snake that stands in our way that constantly takes us back into our impure heart. In that case, it is impossible to manage without the group’s decision that this has to be our only concern, and only through the help of the friends can I remain focused correctly on the group in order to see my correction in it.

This is the reason we cannot think about the Creator’s benefit, about true bestowal; it all depends on one another, and our thoughts are aimed in the direction of receiving and not bestowal. The revelation of the Creator seems like a sweet candy.
[100392]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/13/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Related Material:
The Creator Is Hiding Among Us
Look In The Right Place And You Will Find
Part Of The Creator Is Always With You

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Love, My Similarity to the Creator, Prayer and Intention, Spirituality, Unity - 1 Comment →

In the News (from DailyMail): “Brain scans could reveal whether new couples have found long-lasting love, researchers have revealed.

“Scientists noticed patterns in the brain activity of volunteers who had recently fallen in love and found they could predict whether the couples would be together three years later.

“The findings showed even if volunteers believed they were passionately in love when their brains were scanned, by examining their neuron activity scientists could detect whether those feelings were strong enough for the relationship to last.

“Volunteers were shown photographs of their partner and were asked to think of memories of them while their brains were scanned.

“Where volunteers’ brains showed more activity in the caudate tail area – which reacts emotionally to visual beauty – but less in the medial orbitofrontal cortex – the area linked to criticism and judgment – their relationships tended to last.

“Professor Arthur Aron, a ­social psychologist at Stony Brook University in Long Island, New York, said: ‘All of those involved in the study felt very intensely in love with their partner and this was reflected in their scans, but there were some subtle indicators that showed how stable those feeling were.

“If that strong feeling was combined with signs that they could regulate emotions, to see the partner positively and deal with conflict, then it seems to be really productive in staying with the person.”

My Comment: Everything has to be balanced in nature. There are only two forces, positive and negative, giving and receiving, and they should be in harmonious balance. This is the guarantee of stability in any system: the family, the country,or the world.
[100562]

Related Material:
“Friendship Is The Key To Long-Lasting Love”
The Formula For Ideal Relationships For Couples
Don’t Patch Up Old Relationships, Build Them Anew

Filed under: Love, News - No Comments →

Baal HaSulam, Letter 11: And I am asking you to do your greatest efforts in intensifying the love of friends and to think of ways to increase the love among friends, and to annul the passion for bodily pleasures, since this is the cause of hate. And among those who bring contentment to their Creator there can be no hate but rather greater compassion and love among them, and it is very simple.

And you should listen to my words from now on, since your life depends on this.

Question: How should we correct our attitude towards the friends that arouse hatred in us?

Answer: You should love the friends that you hate now, and that’s it. You have to reach a state that they become important for you, dearest, closest and most desired. But at the same time, the hate towards them should be kept.

The hate remains below, and you have to constantly worry about correcting it and building the love above it. This is how the spiritual tension is determined. You discover spirituality in the point between hate and love, between these two forces!

There is not just love or hate. Both love and hate come from the Light that illuminates one way or another, but you find and discover yourself in adhesion to the Creator, between these two feelings.
[100006]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/3/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Related Material:
Allergic To Love
Go For Love
Taking All The Sparks Out Of The Thickness Of The Desires

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

Question: How can we stay in the feeling of the group while being involved in integral education? After all, there are different principles of self-annulment.

Answer: If I come to self-annulment as a necessary state for the first contact with the spiritual world, then there is no difference concerning to what I cancel myself. I will still be given such pictures, put before such facts, when I have to annul myself, literally “cutting my flesh.” Then, the people I hate the most will be shown to me in an uglier light and I will have to accept them as loved friends, closer than my own children.
[99955]
From the Virtual Lesson 2/3/13

Related Material:
Are Parts Of My Soul Wandering In The Streets?
A Harmonious Integration
At The Epicenter Of World Correction

Filed under: Integral Upbringing, Love, Q&A - No Comments →