Entries in the 'Prayer and Intention' Category

How To Get Through To The Creator

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What does it mean to funnel your request “through the group,” through unity?

Answer: “Through the group” means that I funnel my desire through the integral system. And if it is able to become similar to this integral system, this is a sign that my desire is similar to the Creator’s desire. It is written, “Make your desire like His.”

If I cannot do this, then I still address Him through the group and ask for the force of correction. But this does not mean that I funnel my desire through the group to the Creator so He would respond to me and fill me with His force of bestowal so I could bestow in practice.

On the contrary, I turn to the group and see how much I hate others, don’t want to be with them, am rejected by them or reject them. And then in these discernments, in the struggles and collisions with everyone, precisely all of these corrupted states are what I raise upward and ask, “Correct them! I am waiting! I want to unite with the others!” Then it’s a wonderful prayer.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/25/12, The Zohar

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The Quantization Of Light And The Intention

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Can we perform any action in order to bestow now?

Answer: It can be done at any moment if you rise to the height of that action. But we advance towards it gradually; first I am ready to bestow upon others 1%, and then 2%, and then 3% and so on until I reach 100%.

When I am ready to bestow upon them 1%, it means that I want 99% for myself! And if I want to bestow upon them 2%, it means that I want 98% for myself! And so I gradually rise towards bestowal, towards Lishma (for His sake).

This is called the time of preparation; it lasts until my intention becomes 100% for bestowal. So far, this 100% of intention extends into one gram of pleasure, one portion of Light, one quantum of Light. Then I intensify my intention so that it will be enough for two portions of Light and then three portions, until I can restrain myself from receiving all the incoming Light, which means I am building myself a Masach (screen) of Bina, to bestow in order to bestow. After attaining this level I can even receive in order to bestow, after having developed the right Masach.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/24/12, Writings of Rabash

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Cry For Salvation

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: We are not impressed by external actions any more, and internally we fail to influence each other.

Answer: You won’t succeed in that because you need to connect and demand that the Creator be among you to teach you, to reinforce you, and fulfill your desires. Or do you want to reach something by yourself? Everything is attained only by the power of prayer.

Question: That’s exactly it; we fail to unite and to turn to the Creator with the demand. This is where we fail time after time, and then we are pushed from behind. How can we hasten the process? How can I oblige myself and the friends?

Answer: It is about the internal work. We should still speak about it a bit although it is all internal. It is written: “And the children of Israel sighed because of the work.” It can’t be without it. You should despair of your own powers and only then, unite and cry out for help.

Baal HaSulam wrote about this in letter 57: “And also whoever didn’t receive the Creator’s love, everything that he worked for on purifying his soul the previous day, seems to be totally burnt the following day. And every day and every moment one should start anew, as if he did nothing his whole life. And then “and the children of Israel sighed because of the work.” Because they saw that they are forever incapable of seeing the fruit of their own work. And so their sigh and their payer were whole, and so ” they cried out” etc.,  because the Creator hears the prayer and He only waits for a whole payer.”
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Formula For Balance

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What works while reading The Zohar: my intention, the text or the combination of the text and the intention?

Answer: The text doesn’t operate here. Were you impressed by the text now? Who can tell me without looking at the book, what we read about? The text doesn’t stay in us unless we have to use it in a certain way, to write something based on it or to teach someone else. But for ourselves, it doesn’t. As for now The Book of Zohar is like the surrounding Light for us, which comes and influences us from the outside. So while reading, we can aim our desires and thoughts towards correction, hoping that it will work.

What the authors of The Zohar write is so high that I cannot be connected to the text itself, but only with the “medicine.” I don’t know how the medicine works. It contains different materials that enter my body and join its chemical processes and lead to imbalance in it. But the imbalance is aimed at the disease and so it leads to balance.

It is called “the poison that serves as a cure.” What I swallow causes shifts in my body, but they are opposite to the direction the disease moved in that put the body in imbalance. Then one imbalance and the other imbalance lead to balance. It is written: “Each medicine is poison, but not every poison is a medicine.”

This is the work in the right and left lines, between which we create the middle line. Here the imbalance from the right line and the imbalance from the left line balance the middle line. If we are afraid to be in a state of imbalance, it isn’t the Creator’s work anymore. In short, you have to be a hero. The imbalance is a good state; it is a sign of advancement. After all, even when you walk, you move from one imbalanced state to another imbalanced state: You stand on one foot while the other foot is in the air.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/24/12, The Zohar

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One Request For The Rest Of Your Life

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What should we think about while reading The Book of Zohar? Should we focus on some specific, simple thought?

Answer: During the whole day you must discern what you want to ask for. Suppose you have 20 requests. Choose one of them, the most important one, and check whether all the others are included in it. Don’t just choose one of the 20, leaving all the other ones behind. After all, that’s not how one comes to the King, who is able to carry out all of our requests.

There has to be one request, but it has to include all of your wishes. You have to be confident that if you address Him with this request and receive what you wish for, then you won’t need anything ever again. You come to the King once with one request, and if you receive an answer, then you are completely satisfied. Otherwise you would be belittling the King’s dignity and perfection.

But if you come with many requests, it means they don’t include a single real one and you are like a little child who came into a toy store and lost his head, not knowing what to grab because he wants everything. If you are in this state for now, then you won’t receive permission to come to the King as you don’t have a serious request. You are allowed to enter only with one request.

However, it shouldn’t be one request that temporarily emerged in you right now, but it has to be such that you probably won’t ever ask for anything else ever again. You discerned the most important thing that you need and this won’t change anymore.

This is the request you should write down and check – you have 24 hours to do so, until the next reading of The Book of Zohar tomorrow! And then check it for several days – whether it’s the correct request or not.

It’s desirable to check yourself and change this way your entire life, if necessary… Then you will see how your desires change and will learn who you are. All of the science of Kabbalah is a study of ourselves, the attainment of reality, the Creator through self-attainment.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/24/12, The Zohar

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Not For Me, But For The Other Guy

Dr. Michael LaitmanSuppose I wanted to steal something and I suffered because I didn’t know how to do it: “Why don’t I succeed? Where can I learn the art of stealing?” Then, under the influence of a good environment, I realize that my desire is bad. Thus, I find myself in a state of concealment; I don’t agree with my own attribute. My good image as a corrected “good guy” is concealed from me. “How can I be respected by others and myself, and not berate myself all the time?”

So, I progress and learn about the forms of concealment. As soon as I can see my perfect image, even though in a first approximation, my longing creates a prayer. Whether I want it to or not, the prayer emerges from my heart and I acquire the desired form. “Here it is; I don’t want to steal anymore! I don’t need anything.” And then I am fulfilled.

And it is the Light. So far, it is the Light of Hassadim, and even though it is much lower than the Light of Hochma, I prefer it now because it has another quality: I enjoy resembling the Creator.

Then comes the next phase of the correction: If I don’t need anything, can I bestow upon others? Then I get to work. It is divided into several parts. First I find out who I stole from in order to pay back the “debt.” Then I discover that I stole from everyone.

But on the whole, I begin to enjoy the fact that I am becoming equivalent to the Creator. I fill everyone with the Light of Hochma and that is the level of my resemblance to the Creator.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/19/12, “The Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Absolute Rest At The Speed Of Light

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Is the Creator waiting for the right kind of prayer from us?

Answer: You can’t call this waiting. The upper Light exists in a state of absolute rest. This is an unalterable law, like the laws of physics. Movement at a steady pace is the same as being in a state of rest.

The Light doesn’t stop, it’s either revealed or concealed, but its nature remains unchanged. Take for example the nature of physical light, which in a vacuum moves at the constant speed of 300 thousand kilometers per second. Everything depends upon the surroundings where the light is dispersed because we reveal it as a result of matter with which it comes into contact. The degree of similarity between the matter and the light determines the light’s speed because we don’t see the dispersion of light; we only see the way matter reacts to it.

If some action is constant, then in relation to us it’s considered still. That is, the upper Light’s influence is constant and no changes occur in its influence. Everything depends on the desires and how they reveal this influence. If changes occur within the desires, then that determines the speed of the Light’s influence; however, the Light itself remains totally unchanged and its influence is constant!

We say that we have to try to attract the Light. But in reality it’s the opposite of what we imagine. The Light’s influence is constant and we are the result of that influence.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/17/12, Writings of Rabash

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Wake Up At Least Half Way

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What does it mean” half of the half” with regards to the work we have to do?

Answer: A person has to prepare his “half” and the Creator completes the other half. But how can you do that, after all, even in preparing my desire I cannot manage without Him?

To prepare my half means to try and find the deficiency and the right aspiration. But I don’t have that at all. I have to look for the right deficiency instead of the black false bubble I am in where I imagine this false life that doesn’t exist at all that will later seem like a dream.

How can I want and try to wake up from this deep sleep and to feel willingness for it by myself, because this is the only thing I need! But without this willingness, I will not be able to receive the upper world that is revealed at the end of this dream because I have to develop a deficiency for it.

People with a great coarse egoism come to study Kabbalah in order to attain the upper world . It isn’t enlightened “spiritual” people for whom meditations are enough who come here . The people who come here want to receive and to gain big time, to discover the spiritual world. Here it depends on whether a person can hear what he is told and bear all the conditions.

Two natural spiritual laws operate here, which you cannot change in favor of your egoism. We are told that we have to do “half of the half,” but this doesn’t mean that there is some concession here. A person must perform his half, and then he will receive the other half from Above. The other half will change him and will turn him into something that is totally different.

When he is 100 percent ready to change, it means that he has done his half of the work. Then 100 percent of this change is performed from Above; this is the half that the Creator is responsible for.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/16/12, Writings of Rabash

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A Helping Hand Stretched Out From The Darkness

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe do not understand what it means to enjoy bestowal. The goal of creation is to bring pleasure to the creatures. And they will really enjoy: The only question is how?

We do not understand that the desire that we feel today is foreign and distant from us. To enjoy bestowal is not the pleasure of what the other enjoys. That would just be an arrangement that is beneficial for both of us.

And if I enjoy the fact that he feels good even if I feel bad, but I overcome myself, as parents do sacrificing everything for their children, this is not bestowal either. We can hardly imagine the desires that emerge in the spiritual world. It is possible only to give some approximate examples, like physical branches in relation to the roots.

Therefore, we must try to imagine as much as possible how special this concept is, separate from the familiar and requiring a psychological revolution. The entire world inverts in our consciousness, and then we discover something entirely new.

This requires internal effort and detachment from the old environment, the willingness to: escape from the current state, jump in the Red Sea (Yam Sof – the Sea of the End),  loose one’s head, abandon everything that one has, and be left totally naked and defenseless, accepting everything no matter what it is, only if it comes from Above.

We need to prepare ourselves for the convention in Arava in this way, and if we are able to hold ourselves in this state, we will achieve a breakthrough—in this darkness, to the waters of the Red Sea, and we will overcome everything no matter what is revealed.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/16/12, Writings of Rabash

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Evil Is Revealed In The Connection

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: In our dissemination, do we have to evoke the feeling of shame in people by showing them how far they are from mutual guarantee?

Answer: No. We only explain to a person that he can be saved from troubles: Under no circumstances do we tell him that he is bad.

There is nothing bad in a person. We discover the evil in us only if we connect with others and want to care about others.

I have different physical attributes: good and bad, fine and coarse, but the evil isn’t revealed in me until I reach the group, until I begin to actually connect, until I hear about mutual guarantee, and until I see how reluctant I am to have it. This lack of desire—is the evil inclination.

Everything below that is on the beastly level and has nothing to do with the correction. The correction is realized only in the mutuality among people in order to reach adhesion, connection, and mutual guarantee. Only according to this criterion can you be good or bad.

So when we bring the message of mutual guarantee to people, we don’t tell them that they are bad. In what way is a person bad? After all, he was born that way. The Creator has placed him in these conditions.

A person has to discover the evil by himself and become his own judge. No one knows how this works internally when he makes an effort to join the friends in order to form a collective vessel together with them for the revelation of the attribute of bestowal.

It is only with regard to that, that evil is measured. When a person doesn’t want to be incorporated in the general vessel, this is where his evil inclination is hidden. If the vessel corrects itself, it is filled with the attribute of bestowal, meaning the Creator.

The more a person discovers his reluctance, the evil inclination, the more he will feel the need to do something. After all, he feels bad, and this is the salvation. There is nothing better or more important. So through the evil inclination a person reaches a prayer called “raising MAN,” and then he receives the answer and is incorporated in everyone.

So there is nothing bad in anyone. Every one is given his own traits from Above. Until a person enters a group and starts to develop himself on the level of the speaking, he doesn’t exist, and so there is no one we can talk about. A person doesn’t exist on the beastly level.


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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/13/12, “The Peace”

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