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.
[269577]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 12/17/19

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Question: Whom should we ask for help, the Creator or the group? And how should we do it?

Answer: Only the group, and through the group you can turn to the Creator.

It is even better if the whole group turns to the Creator together. Then you will surely be able to improve both your state and the state of the group because you will begin to feel that the negative impacts that you sense are not directed specifically at you but that they come to you through the group. If you respond to them through the group, it is the best method of correction.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 10/14/18

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Question: Who should I appeal to if I have a request?

Answer: To the Creator. The Creator is the upper light, the attribute of absolute goodness, love, and bestowal. There is nothing other than this force in the world. There is only me and Him. Everything else that seems to exist, exists between me and the Creator.

The moment I begin to correct myself, the distance between us changes accordingly, i.e., changing attributes between me and the Creator. We, as it were, begin to draw closer to the point of complete adhesion with Him.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 11/4/18

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Question: What is the right request to the Creator?

Answer: The request is to resemble the Creator. This means that nothing is more perfect than the highest attribute of bestowal and the absolute, unselfish, whole, love for everyone and everything. So resembling the Creator is our ultimate goal and all the intermediate states are only our aspirations toward Him.

Question: Does this mean that the pain stems from the fact that I am opposite from Him, and that this is only my starting point?

Answer: Yes, but this is also not easy. We need to create a model of how to become like the Creator in the group, so we need to participate in the ten, to feel my individual states in it, our mutual interdependence, and how we affect each other so that the feeling of how connected I am to the friends and how much I depend on them and they depend on me will be in each of us.

My duties and my aspirations should be so interconnected with the group that I will begin to feel that this is my soul. And this is only the beginning. Eventually the connection will be with all of humanity, with the whole world and all the souls, including the levels of the still, vegetative, and animate nature and the whole system of matter, all of creation, the entire universe. All of this is the projection of my soul outside of me, so that in this way, I will attain it better.
[239746]
From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 11/4/18

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