Comment: Kabbalah says that when a person prays for himself (in principle, this is natural for an ordinary person), it is a sin.

My Response: If a person thinks about himself, then he kind of separates himself from the rest and does not get closer to them. Naturally this distances him from the Creator because the Creator sees us all united in one common whole, as we were before the division into separate individuals.

Question: The Creator does not think about Himself? He does not have such thoughts?

Answer: First, He does not think about Himself. Second, He does not think about each person because He feels us as a whole.

Question: Let’s say I am looking at a person. He consists of billions of cells. I am not addressing a cell, I am addressing an image. And like this the Creator does not see us individually?

Answer: In no way! He does not make even the slightest calculation with a single person. He created us in an egoistic quality in which we feel ourselves existing separately from one another, opposite to Himself,

Question: And what should I understand from this? That the Creator does not consider me at all? He does not even know I exist?

Answer: Whether He knows or not is another matter entirely. He does not take into account your personal individual movements except for the movement toward drawing closer to Him through drawing closer to others.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 11/19/18

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Question: I know that Kabbalah engages in scrutinizing the intention, which is, from its point of view, action. How should intention and action be combined since it is not always possible through an action to determine how good the intention is?

Answer: We must educate a person so that he acts in accordance with his intentions. And then through his external actions, we will begin to understand his internal intention.

Question: Still, we must evaluate a person by his actions?

Answer: We cannot. We do not really know what his intentions are.

Rabash gives a very good example of this: a child is crying, rolling hysterically on the floor, and his father is standing nearby doing nothing. Passers-by ask: “Why do you treat the child this way?” The father replies: “My little son is asking for a pin to poke his eye. I am ready to take him to the doctor, but he does not want to go.”

In this example, we see that external understanding of an external action does not say anything.

Question: So the intention is hidden from us. We cannot determine human morality by external actions. And what is the solution?

Answer: The solution is to come to a state when we can feel the inner desires, intentions, and actions of people, not from the outside as we see them in this world, but from the inside. To do this, we need to rise to the level of the upper world, and we will see the intentions of a person and not his physical actions.

Question: Do you personally never look at the external actions of a person? Are they not important to you?

Answer: It is the external actions of a person that are important to me because we live in such a period of correction when these actions also affect everyone else and draw them in the right direction. Therefore, you need to verify to what extent they show others the right path.
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 10/9/20

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Question: Psychologists have developed a seven gratitude’s technique that helps to cope with anxiety. The secret of the technique is very simple: You need to thank. Whom to thank? Yourself, your family, the world, the universe, God, one can choose. When to thank? Preferably in the morning and before sleep. What to thank for? For the fact that you have everything. How do you like this theory?

Answer: For an ordinary, normal person, it is very good.

Question: But a person does not have a feeling that he has everything. Can he say: “Thank You that I have everything”?

Answer: “Everything You gave me is enough for me and I thank You.” Of course, it is good for the ordinary person.

Question: Does this system work if you are grateful?

Answer: Try it on yourself. “When sinners sleep, good for them and good for the world.”

Question: It is called a dream when one says: “I have everything?”

Answer: Yes. And you fall asleep peacefully if it is in the evening. And if it’s during the day, you don’t rush anywhere. Anyway, everything I need will come to me. This is good. People should not rush somewhere, it is all from the evil one.

Question: Does that mean that you like this system of gratitude?

Answer: I like lazy people, although I am not like that myself.

Question: Why do you like lazy people?

Answer: They do little harm to the world.

Question: But really, don’t  you like rebels and revolutionaries.

Answer: Inside yourself. Inside yourself, do whatever you want. Make revolutions and wars, inside yourself. And everything else, let nature live in peace, do not muddy it.

See what nature, this virus, is doing to us. Calmly drive out of town, buy yourself a house instead of your apartment in the city and live in peace. Wife, kids, what else does a person need?

Comment: But nonetheless, all prayers are based on initial gratitude and then there is some kind of request.

My Response: To reach your highest, great purpose—to become equal to the Creator!

Comment: There is no peace in this. There is constant movement.

My Response: Internal peace! Because I am absolutely sure that in this way I will still reach the goal. I give myself to the Creator and in this I go with Him. And He can do whatever He wants. I remain in absolute peace.

Question: But isn’t movement toward Him a constant anxiety, trepidation?

Answer: This is not anxiety. There is not even much trepidation in this. If I am confident in Him, if I have faith that I am in His hands, then I am simply like a baby in the arms of his mother. Held and that’s all. Complete safety, peace.

But I check myself every time to be sure that I am in His arms with more vigor, I get closer to Him despite my ego. And I don’t need anything else. I am in this cocoon.

So, where to rush? Moreover, with other people to do some calculations: who is bigger, who is better, who is higher…

Question: And what about our ever growing egoism? You are constantly talking about it.

Answer: This is to give us an opportunity to be in dynamic closeness with the Creator all the time.

Question: That is, to return to the state again, in His hands?

Answer: Yes. And all is well.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 9/21/20

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The prayer is called work in the heart because the mind resists it and I have to go against it. That is, I ask the Creator for something that my whole nature resists; therefore each prayer requires special work in the heart because I want to go against my mind and reason, which prove the opposite to me.

However, I do not want to understand with my mind that it is worth working for the Creator. I want to work only with faith above reason.

It is interesting how it works because I feel that everything within me is resisting: I do not want connection, study, altruistic actions, dissemination, and connection with friends. I do not want to use any means that can bring me closer to the Creator.

This inner resistance becomes more and more explicit every day, but each time I have to act in exactly the opposite way. I see this reluctance within me and know exactly where it is in my egoism, but on the outside, I must do the exact opposite.

There is nothing that attracts me to this and obligates me, no one is forcing me, but I myself try to find the strength to do something for the sake of bestowal above my reason. This is how the transition from reason to above reason, above desire occurs. This is the transition from the corporeal world to the spiritual world. The entire spiritual world is built above reason, above my normal desire.
[274374]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/22/20, “Work With Faith Above Reason”

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is a prayer?“

We are born and raised in a self-centered perception and sensation of the world, which leads to an accumulation of problems in our lives. Our encounter with all kinds of problems is in order to give us a desire to rise above our current perception and sensation, and discover a new world, one of love, care, and positive connection among everyone.

The transformation from our inborn egoistic perception and sensation to a new altruistic one is performed via an act called “prayer.”

What is prayer?

Prayer does not mean reciting words from a book, no matter how holy the book is, nor does it mean asking a higher power to change something in the world, or to benefit oneself individually. Rather, since our entire perception of reality is self-centered, where we aim to derive fulfillment within ourselves on a moment-to-moment basis, then prayer is a sincere request to transform our self-centered approach to reality, and become beneficial to everyone and everything surrounding us.

In other words, prayer is a request for self-transformation, where instead of wishing to egoistically absorb, receive, and exploit others for personal gain, as we do by default, we instead develop a genuine will to think and desire in an opposite direction: to give, bestow, and use our own selves for the benefit of others.

The outcome of an honest prayer for self-transformation from the depth of our hearts is written by the sages in the commandment, “And you shall love your friend as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). That is, our prayer should lead us to a state where we feel others as we feel ourselves, thus inverting and correcting the intention upon our ego to one of giving.

Therefore, prayer means reaching a true desire to love others as we love ourselves, as well as a revelation of the full extent to which we actually love ourselves. If our desire is true, from the bottom of our hearts, then we become awarded with help from a higher power that corrects our ego, granting us the ability to love others to the extent of our own self-love.

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Question: How can we create a more precise request through the ten?

Answer: You can create a more precise request if together you discuss among yourselves what you want to ask for, what your essential request really is, in order to connect as one man in one heart, in one desire, to the one upper source. Then it will be a real request.

It cannot be just any request. You can express your positive attitude toward the Creator, your gratefulness that He has brought you together, that He has brought you close to Him, and that He wants to feel your desire to get closer to Him, to respond to Him. He has given you such conditions that now you can learn to speak to Him.

You are inside the system and this system is the Creator, and it is waiting to respond to you.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 11/4/18

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Question: Which questions does the spiritual system respond to quicker?

Answer: To questions that are asked correctly, sharply, qualitatively and quantitatively, which means, questions that are asked with greater force requesting for the correction of the ego.

If a great egoist, and I would even say if a “criminal,” turns to the Creator, the Creator responds to his request more quickly than to a request of a good boy. Everything depends on the severity of the request.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 11/4/18

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The point of an action is measured and evaluated only according to its intention. The intention to give more brings a person closer to the Creator, while the intention to receive more removes him from the Creator.

And in the middle between the intention to bestow and the intention to receive is a neutral, zero point from which a person decides where he is: in the spiritual or in the corporeal world.

The entire spiritual world operates in the intention to bestow, and as soon as we act egotistically, we immediately feel the corporeal world. How much to give and how much to receive is not so important anymore. The main thing that puts us on one or the other side of the border between spirituality and corporeality is our intention.

The main test is in what a person is yearning for, not how strong his desire is. A change of intention is like changing the car gear from forward to reverse depending on which I move forward, toward the Creator and the creatures, or backward.

The intention depends on where my heart is directed: outward toward others, toward the friends and through them to the Creator, or to myself. This determines where I go. Do I work for the Creator or for myself? Do I move toward my friends and through them toward the Creator or do I draw closer to myself? All this depends on the intention, and only after on the desire that obeys it.

To test the intention, one must distance himself from the action itself so that it becomes unimportant, and the main thing is: for whose sake am I doing this, and who will benefit from it. This determines whether I am in the Creator’s world or in my own world, in my shell.

The intention, directed outward or inward, divides my reality into two parts: a part that relates to me, meaning “I,” “mine,” and a part outside of me, meaning the friends and the Creator. If I want to exist in the Creator’s world and not in my small, animal world, then I must constantly check the direction of my thoughts.

The Book of Zohar says that people with an egoistic intention have their eyes looking inside themselves, they are completely blind and do not see the vast world around them. They cannot imagine anything but this world, and so they live in it and die.

This life is given in order to change the direction of one’s gaze from oneself outward and to reveal the world of the Creator called the upper world. And the lower world is the one that we see when we look inward at ourselves and care only for ourselves.

I must check where the vector of my thoughts and desires is directed—toward me, toward my benefit, or toward others and through them toward the Creator? That is, where is my heart reaching?
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/21/20, Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Love of God and the Love of Man”

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We must try to build as many correct relationships, correct qualities, Hassadim, between us in the group as possible and not wait. Usually the inner Klipa persuades a person: “Wait and you will receive everything. The Creator will take pity on you and help you.”

But without our request, without awakening from below, that is, without beginning to work, we will not get help from above. You must know this.

People have been standing on one spot for years waiting for the Creator to give them spirituality. But you have not started working! You must start, and when you are pleading that everything is about to collapse and an unbearable burden is about to fall upon your back, then the Creator will help you. This moment needs to be held and realized. This is the secret of the spiritual work: we start, and the Creator finishes; this is so in every action.

I must act as if everything depends on me. And if in the middle of the way I suddenly find that I can not cope on my own, then I will add a prayer to the actions. Thus, my work and prayer together create the conditions for this to be realized. Remember this, start implementing it, and you will see how it opens the path for you. Step by step, you will certainly move forward.

A person waits for many years and does not want to start the work himself, waiting for a miracle from above. Our egoism convinces us: “Wait, the Creator will take pity on you, He will come, do everything, and reveal Himself to you.” But it will not happen! Until we start working and see that we are not able to cope and then ask for help, the Creator will not come and do it.

It is said: “The Lord will finish for me.” But it is precisely: “He will finish.” It is my responsibility to start it. Therefore, anyone who complains that he has been studying for many years and has not seen success, he simply did not work correctly. He had to start the work, find out that nothing comes out of it, raise a prayer, and demand that the Creator take part in it. Then you will see that He will help.

The Creator wants to participate in your work but only together with you in the same way as we do with children. If a child starts something himself and then an adult helps him, then the child understands how it needs to be done and learns. This work is called the work of the Creator, not of a man. After all, the Creator does it! But only when the person really needs help.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/7/20, “Sukkot“

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Remark: Your haiku was posted on Instagram:

Touches of egoism multiply.
I will turn to the Creator —
Let Him control him.

The question is: “The Creator creates, but I am also a creator. Who benefits from begging?”

My Comment: Man (Adam), me. I am always striving so that I have some questions, some requests, some appeal to the Creator. All the time with a question or with an exclamation mark when I admire His actions. The truth is not often, to put it mildly.

But that there were always enough requests so that I was always begging the Creator.

Question: Why does one need to be constantly requesting?

Answer: To correct your egoism. And why did He make it? In order to correct. And He wants to fix it, but He does it only at my request.

Question: Then in what am I a creator?

Answer: I command the Creator to correct what He has done. He is called the “Creator” because he did this, and I am the creator because I ask Him to fix everything from this. And in this I am a creator.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 12/17/19

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