Entries in the 'Prayer and Intention' Category

The Right Action

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: In order to leave the ego, is it necessary to want this?

Answer: The person does not want to leave the ego! I can play all the time, deceiving myself that I want to leave the ego. But in fact, I don’t want that, and every time in the next stage, this will become clearer and clearer, until the Upper Light will change me.

Question: Through involvement with integral education, we see how we advance and grow together with the external public, and here the sharpness of the goal, the intention, becomes blurred. It follows that we still are continuing to develop egoistically.

Answer: Every moment you must check yourself: “What is happening with me? What am I doing?” You need to watch all of your physical actions, every word!

This is constant internal work, “What motivates me? What for? What kind of conclusions must I draw from this? What kind of result will this bring me, spiritual or material?” In the end, it could be that we are slowing down our actions, but they will be more correct.

Question: What could the criteria for this truth be? Indeed, each one of us is found in his own truth, in scrutiny.

Answer: It is necessary to scrutinize the truth all the time. It is necessary to advance! In the end nothing just disappears, for all of the efforts will be gathered together.

So, it is not necessary to be clever. In other words, it is not necessary to draw conclusions on the basis of what you feel now, how you think. There could only be risk in this.

The main thing is to invest effort. If you cannot do this internally, then invest external effort. In the end, it will create a new level of consciousness.
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From the Sochi Convention 6/10/14, Lesson 2

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Slaves Of Love

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe dependence of the upper Partzuf within the lower Partzuf is worse than slavery. There is dependence through the force of evil, alien power. But there can also be slavery through the good life force, when the upper loves the lower.

And then it transmits to the lower because of its love, and does everything that the lower requests, of course, only if it is for the good of the lower. It will always be waiting in order to know how it can help the lower. This is slavery, as if, in an inverted form.

The upper cannot cause any damage to the lower. But until we begin to request, to raise MAN (Mayin Nukvin – female waters), to raise the upper AHP (Awzen Hotem, Peh),  the upper will not raise its AHP. It will only wait.

This is called, the Shechina’s sorrow, Malchut of Atzilut greatly longs to raise its AHP and waits for our prayer. But by itself it is not able to raise it, but only according to a request, according to the awakening by the lower ones, the sparks GE (Galgalta ve Eynaim) that are in the worlds of Beria, Yetzira, Assiya awaken the AHP of Atzilut that fell into the worlds of Beria, Yetzira, Assiya.

The upper is with us in slavery, like a parent with his beloved children. Love captivates us as slaves, just like hatred. However, love makes a slave of the upper, one who loves, and hatred turns the lower into a slave, one who hates.

If the upper hates, then the lower becomes its slave, and if the upper loves, then it is in slavery.

Question: In which situations does the upper answer the prayer of the lower?

Answer: The upper answers the prayers of the lower on the condition that they are ready to annul themselves for the sake of connection and ask the upper for the strength to connect between themselves into one Partzuf. The upper realizes their connection and creates a common Partzuf within which the Light is revealed.

This means that in order to receive help from the upper you need to want to connect with others in the common Partzuf, not your individual one but the one that belongs to everyone, which is called Malchut. This is called the prayer of many.
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From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah lesson 6/8/14

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The Challenging Work Of The Priest

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What determines our ability to absorb the deficiencies and the pain of the public and raise this prayer to the upper?

Answer: Through this work you have to identify the pain of the concealment of the Creator behind the pain of the lower, of the people. The only thing missing in this world is the power of love and bestowal, which means the revelation of the Creator.

All of the public’s corporeal deficiencies have to be processed and turned into a desire for the revelation of the Creator to the created beings, to the revelation of the force of bestowal. Thus you raise your fallen AHP (vessels of reception) from the lower level, which means from the public, when you are I impressed by their suffering. But when you raise it to your level, you process their MAN (their prayer and demand) by your vessels of bestowal into the demand for the Upper Light, which is the only force that can works on  everything.

Then you turn to the AHP of the upper with a different request. People want cheaper food, cheaper housing, etc, while you demand the Light that Reforms, the Light of love and bestowal. This is your work, the work of the priests. You receive their corporeal demands when they all cry out like babies: “Give me, give me!” but you process their deficiency into the right deficiency of the upper level, which is why you are in the middle.

The role of the one in the middle is challenging. You are like a mother who hears her baby crying and who needs to understand exactly what he needs. She processes his cries into the right need. This is the challenging work of the middle level. On the one hand, you are made of the Creator, and on the other hand, you are made of the public by being between them. This is the role of the priests, the ministers of the Creator.
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From the preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/08/14

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Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How do you ask the Elyon (upper) for what is truly useful to you?

Answer: Ask the Elyon to let you know what it wants. This is the most certain, the most useful: “Make His desire your desire.” (Avot 2:4). But to make your desire like His desire, you must know what His desire is. So ask about this!

Question: But that doesn’t work!

Answer: I don’t know if you asked. Maybe you received, but didn’t understand that this was the answer.

Question: How do we identify the AHP de Elyon (vessels of reception of the upper)?

Answer: We begin to recognize the AHP de Elyon to the degree that we connect between us with our GE (vessels of reception). Then He gradually begins to be discerned. The AHP de Elyon doesn’t exist without the GE de Tachton (vessels of bestowal of the lower one), meaning without our connection. Only through our connection do we reach the concept of “One,” and accordingly we can create a link with the Elyon.

The Ten Sefirot on a lower level become one Sefira on a higher level. We must connect these ten into one.

Question: How do we make our GE want to connect?

Answer: Dissemination is required because this is mutual work. If you do not receive stimulation, a demand from below, then even though you have a spark, you can never awaken a connection with the Elyon.

As long as a man is not married, he still has not left childhood, he lives with his mother for pleasure, passes the time at a bar with friends or at the soccer field. But if he marries and has a child, then he has commitments, concerns, problems, and demands.

So in the same way, if we don’t go out to the Tachtonim (lower ones), to the community, and take them with us, meaning if we don’t produce spiritual children that require us to grow, then we’ll never want it. This is the order of the levels; they are all in GE and the AHP and fall to a lower level.

So if you want to connect to the Elyon, you must awaken the Tachton. Only the Tachton will compel you to connect to the Elyon; that is how this works. So The Book of Zohar was not revealed until our days, and the wisdom of Kabbalah was concealed because the time had not yet arrived for the Tachtonim to be awakened.

The moment that the Tachtonim become ready to be awakened, to the degree that we work with and awaken them, to this degree, we are required to rise to the Elyon. Otherwise there won’t be any demand on every level, only the GE, the Kelim (vessels) of bestowal.
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From the preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/08/14

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Going To The Store To Buy Milk For The Baby

Dr. Michael LaitmanWhen we go out to the public, we always need to keep a link with the Elyon (upper one) within us. Through detachment from the Elyon we cannot work with a lower level. Indeed we don’t come to people as performers or as agitators of the crowds, rather we are bringing them the higher power, a connection with the Creator.

So through connection with the friends we must attain contact with the Elyon. If we don’t have a connection like this, we cannot be considered a higher level in relation to the Tachtonim  (lower ones) and work with them.

If a girl takes care of her little brother, she doesn’t consider him as a lower level. They are on the same level as brother and sister. Whereas the mother who takes care of yhe baby is the upper one because she gave birth to him and she has the power. So we cannot go out and take care of the community without maintaining a permanent link with the Elyon.

I am only a point, the middle third of Tifferet (splendor). My entire upper half is with the Elyon; my entire lower half is with the Tachton (lower one). So I must be connected with the Elyon and the Tachton and work simultaneously with both.

When I work with the Tachtonim, the Elyon is within me, otherwise I can’t do anything. And when I turn to the Elyon, the Tachtonim are within me. Otherwise I don’t have anything with which to turn towards them. When a mother goes to the store to buy milk for her baby, it is as if she is carrying him with her.
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From the preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/08/14

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I Have Asked For Years But Have Received No Answer

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe only way to awaken the AHP (vessels of receiving) of the upper is by asking Him for the power of bestowal. Then the upper will raise His AHP and convey the Light of AB-SAG to you, which will correct your vessels so that by the corrected vessels, you will be able to bestow unto others.

How can you ask the upper for that? If you annul your vessels of receiving (your AHP) and want to connect with the vessels of bestowal (with GE), with others, it is the proof, the conclusion, which you bring to the upper and demand that He give it to you. I want to annul my AHP and I want to connect to everyone by my GE ( vessels of bestowal). Thus you influence the AHP of the upper and oblige Him to rise as much as necessary to fulfill your request.

If you manage to raise a certain part of the AHP of the upper, it means that you have raised a prayer, MAN (female waters). It is the same thing.

Question: What about all the demands, the requests, and the prayers that I have been raising for years?

Answer: I don’t know if you have raised even one prayer during this whole time. What you ask for has to be compatible with what the upper is ready to hear from you. You are asking for a needle to prick your eye or for things that can harm you and so the upper certainly doesn’t answer you.

You may cry and ask, but the upper will wait for you to grow wise. All the prayers are accepted Above and are added to the work, but it still doesn’t lead to the raising of the AHP of the upper, since it isn’t MAN yet.

You cry out, but the upper doesn’t answer. But still, He performs certain actions so that you will understand that it is impossible to ask this way and for Him to give you what you are asking for. It is just the way we behave with children. In our world, time brings about changes, while in the upper world, our actions actually determine time.

If your take the deficiencies of the public and ask the upper to fill them, you are performing actions of bestowal. You want what is good for them but not for yourself, and so you are treated differently. You become the upper’s partner in taking care of the lower, and thus rise to a different level. By that you resemble the Creator and this is why this work is so beneficial for our advancement.
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From the preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/08/14

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Connection With Bestowal

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: When do we raise MAN, a prayer?

Answer: We raise MAN when we can give up our receiving Kelim (desires) and connect between us only with our Kelim of bestowal. But this doesn’t mean that we don’t take our receiving desires into account at all.

Suppose that I live in a palace and I have lots of cars and planes and you live in a regular apartment and you have one car, and he lives in a tent and only has a wagon and his horse died. So what would it mean for us to connect between us?

For this we must give up all of our property for each other, meaning that we gather everything that we have together and beyond this we connect through our GE in bestowal. Connection with the desires of bestowal (GE) also requires a relative nullification in the desires of receiving (AHP).

This doesn’t mean that one really has to give up all one’s property, but it is necessary to take into account nullifying your AHP, lowering its importance. Then the connection will be made on higher levels. This means that we cannot just connect with Nitzutzin (sparks); this will require us also to connect in the future with our AHP, as Baal HaSulam writes in the article “The Last Generation.”
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From the preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/08/14

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Shouting For The Unattainable World

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What do the four properties of mercy, charity, truth and peace mean in terms of our attitude to the group and to the world in general?

Answer: The Inner Light in the first nine Sefirot is called mercy. How can we visualize it? Our intentions to treat our neighbors humanely represent the first nine Sefirot.

When acting inside these properties, we become similar to the Creator in a certain way. Mercy is similar to bestowal, the quality of Bina. Hessed (the property of Abraham) is the first prerequisite to it.

Charity (alms) is Malchut. Let’s say, our will to receive is more or less ready to adhere to bestowal. To the degree our will to receive (Malchut) supports the first nine Sefirot and is ready to accept their illumination, it obtains the alms.

Our will to receive just cannot achieve anything on its own. As a result of buying the first nine Sefirot and influencing them, it receives the “backlight.” Malchut obtains the first nine Sefirot from her neighbors. Each one of us has egoism of his or her own; we understand what others want and we use their desires. We fill their desires with the help of our own egoism.

Let’s say, I am Malchut; your desires are my first nine Sefirot. I work with them and fulfill them. What I fill them with is called mercy.  By allowing me to act in this way, my Malchut receives illumination. This “backlight” is called charity.

Truth means that after completing any action, we clearly understand that our work is just a deception and that there is no truth in it whatsoever. We keep recognizing this fact over and over again. In other words, truth always unveils the general Light called the Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif) to the souls.

Eventually, the general light should become a part of the first nine Sefirot and Malchut. It shows the true state we are in and the extent to which we have to be corrected. When the truth illuminates, I feel very bad, even though it doesn’t shine in its final, eternal stage, but is only a bit higher than my current level as the Surrounding Light that I have to pull inside myself.

It illuminates the darkness of my corrupt desires. This explains why the truth is so tough for us in this material world. Nobody wants to admit or hear it.

Peace that shows us that we are not able of doing anything at all shows up last. We are trying to achieve completely unreal things! All our actions (charity and mercy that we exercise with others and ourselves) are nice and wonderful, but they do not allow us to merge with the Creator. They cause no peace! Only disagreements!

So, truth and peace bring us to an understanding that all we can do is shout. There is no alternative since we are asking for something that is beyond our nature. We don’t know what that is, but we have no other options except this plea. This is how we are correct ourselves.

It’s very important to keep in mind that all these things imply interactions between us and from these actions we reveal the spiritual vessel. the Higher world, a new reality. Now physicists acknowledge that other dimensions and cosmoses, “included and linked universes” in which we dwell in a different form exist and depend solely on the levels of the human cognition.

We explore cognitive modifications and strive to learn to reveal a new type of cognition. This is what the wisdom of Kabbalah is about. This process is not connected with our corporeal body whatsoever, nor is it linked to the inanimate, vegetative, or animate levels.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/25/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Concern About Necessities

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What does it mean to ask only for necessities?

Answer: If a person is concerned about bestowal to others, he doesn’t have to be concerned about his necessities because they will always come to fill his desires to a sufficient degree. But there are unique situations where a person must take a look at himself to clarify what is essential and where its fulfillment is found. And he sees that this degree of the necessities is found in the desires of bestowal that are directed towards the Creator.

On the level of Bina, a person doesn’t ask for necessities because that is taken care of by itself. He doesn’t have to be concerned about it. This is because the level of Bina is absolute bestowal, Hafetz Hesed, a state of Katnut (smallness) from the side of the vessels, the states of “embryo” and “nursing.”

But when a person goes through greater and higher states and begins to work with the receiving vessels, then he must become active and turn with a unique prayer for the necessities to determine what his work will be for the purpose of bestowal. This is even though he doesn’t have any need for this himself. But he determines that he is a creature, exists, and must exist in order to work to bestow and to serve the people, and therefore he asks for what is essential for himself.

This means that praying for the essentials is an effort for him. He would prefer not to do this, but he must do it as part of his work. This is like the Cohen (High Priest) who had to have special clothing, even though he didn’t need this himself. But in order to serve the people, he had to have special ceremonial priestly garments tailored for him.

This means that the request for the essentials also requires an effort from the person and is not felt as necessary. But this is a part of his work, and he asks for this through overcoming his reluctance.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/27/14, Shamati #35 “Concerning the Vitality of Kedusha”

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Connection, Connection, And More Connection!

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What is an inner voice? Is it the Creator speaking to a person?

Answer: Stop dreaming and imagining. It is said, “He has given a law that cannot be broken.” The wisdom of Kabbalah is a science like physics. If you are on the same frequency as the Creator, you hear Him. You convey your message to Him, and He responds.

However, if you don’t meet by the exact adaptability of attributes, in equivalence of form like a plug and a socket, you can cry out until you lose your voice—the Creator will not hear you.

Does He respond to people crying in this world or to our complaints about our suffering? He knows how you feel even before something happens to you since He is the one who causes this.

What can we ask of Him if He is the cause of everything? If you turn to Him, you should give Him something new of your own. Otherwise, there is no point in crying out. He pokes you a little in order to spur you, and you already cry out as if the entire world is falling apart.

Question: So, how should I respond when the Creator pokes me? What does He want to tell me by that?

Answer: The Creator wants to awaken us to work to connect with the group. Through this connection, you can make a demand to Him: “I did my part. I want to connect with the friends. Help me!” If you manage to carry this load on your back but it falls, you can cry out: “Help! Help me!” Then, the Creator helps out.

Question: Do I have to connect to the friends if the Creator sends me a certain illness?

Answer: Yes! You can turn to the Creator only with the right deficiency and the right request for correction, which means for connection. There is nothing but connection. You can feel endless troubles and problems, but they are all an outcome of the manifestation of the shattering since there is no other action.

We can say that every complaint, even without hearing it through, is:”This is the shattering, the shattering! And this is also the shattering!” So the remedy for every illness is connection, connection, connection.

Question: Is the Creator forced to arrange such a minus in the bank for me so that I will connect to the friends?

Answer: The upper Light operates on the vessel that it has to correct and evokes different deficiencies in it. It created the vessel so that we have banks, police, spouse and children, all sorts of illnesses, problems, and events, and it constantly evokes something in them. The upper Light is at absolute rest, but the Reshimot (spiritual genes) are constantly revealed. Every new Reshimo that is revealed makes you feel a new reality and thus moves you from one picture in the movie to the next.

However, if you yearn to connect with the Creator before something happens, it is called hastening time, Achishena. Then, you have no problems.

If you run ahead in order to connect with the Creator and to avoid problems, it is called Lo Lishma (not for Her sake). However, if you do it in order to delight Him, it is called Lishma (for Her sake).
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/25/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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