New Life 529 – What Is Prayer?
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

We are found in a particular reality and yearn for another reality. Prayer is the means for this change.

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, the reality that we feel is portrayed by our internal characteristics. This means that everything that I see outside of me radiates from my interior.

Praying means that I direct my heart toward correcting the ego in me that separates me from everything around me. “And you shall love your friend as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18) – this is our next level of development. This is what upgrades our attitude toward reality. This upgrade includes two stages: wanting to love and receiving the power to do it where prayer is the means for doing it.

I search for a connection with the upper force in nature, the power of love and bestowal, that will help me to love. Prayer is not a means for fulfilling what we lack individually; so understandably we see that it doesn’t help. Prayer is turning toward the upper force in nature that produces and directs reality toward a particular goal. This operation is not simple. I must know how to penetrate into the “big computer” that manages the world.

Only prayers that come from love for others, from a pure heart, from a desire for things to be better for everyone, are answered. Nothing can change for the better if we don’t change ourselves and advance toward inclusive connection.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 529 – What Is Prayer?” 2/26/15

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Question: In your blog you include some Psalms of David. Would it also be worthwhile to similarly include the main prayers from the Siddur (prayer book), which are essential for our spiritual advancement?

Answer: I think that it is still too early to study the Siddur. We are talking in our lessons about prayers as the correct expression of turning toward the Creator, of His revelation to the Kabbalists.

The Kabbalists discovered the Creator, and from their practical experience in turning to Him, meaning the creation within them of desires, requests, MAN, they described the formation of prayers for us.

But we ourselves must be in connection with the Creator, at least on the level of Lo Lishma (not for Her name), so that the words of the Siddur that were created by the giant Kabbalists, the participants in the Great Assembly more than two thousand years ago, will not seem naïve and strange.
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New Life 695 – The Influence of Intention on Reality
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

The more a person directs himself, the more he prepares himself, the better results he will get. Kabbalists have other intentions; they work with a unique power, the upper force that depicts all of reality for us. In every situation they experience, whether it is internal or external, they must determine that “There is none else beside Him” (Deuteronomy 4:35) and that He is good that does good.

Kabbalah teaches us how to build intentions and to begin to identify the higher power, transcending feelings. When we recognize the force that is acting within all of reality, intentions of bestowal and love for everyone, of “And you shall love your friend as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18), that is born in us and the desire to sustain everything, disregarding nothing, and relating to everything with goodness. All of reality is created from a single force of bestowal and love; we have the ability to recognize this while we are alive. This supreme intention is called, “And you shall love your friend as yourself,” and loving means wanting to benefit, an intention which is found above a desire for pleasure and which manages it. This is an intelligent act clothed in emotion.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 695 – The Influence Of Intention On Reality,” 2/18/16

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New Life 694 – The Power of Intention
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

It is written “Last in action, first in thought” (Lecha Dodi); so people who want to realize life begin to clarify what their intention must be, what is the highest intention appropriate for me? What is the highest thing for which it is worthwhile to live? When we were young we asked ourselves questions like these and later we forgot; we flow through life on “autopilot.”

The wisdom of Kabbalah speaks about intentions and explains that we are living within intention. We are built according to a desire for pleasure and intention is clothed on that, while we have the ability to control intention and change reality. The reality that we feel at present remains and a new reality called the upper world is added to it. Higher, spiritual intentions are intentions to bestow goodness, love, and connection to others. The intention that is directed within me creates the image of this world, and intentions directed outside of me create the upper world. Most people live without thinking about their intentions and without clarifying why they are living.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 694 – The Power Of Intention,” 2/18/16

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Question: What does it mean that the AHP of the upper falls into the GE of the lower?

Answer: AHP are vessels of receiving and GE are vessels of bestowal, Hafetz Hesed, that don’t want anything, but are satisfied with what they have. Keter, Hochma, and the upper part of Bina are only bestowal with no receiving.

It is only from the middle of Bina and downward that the thought begins of how to repay the Host, Keter, for the pleasure that He has given it. This is the reason that Bina develops vessels of receiving (Zeir Anpin and Malchut) so that it can receive in them in order to bestow.

This is the reason that there is only bestowal until the middle of Bina, and below that, receiving. The fall means that we cannot work with our receiving desires without having a Masach (screen) over them in order to bestow, and so we don’t use them. Only after we receive the Light that Reforms can the AHP rise, but only on condition that we receive an answer to the prayer (MAN) from the lower.

It turns out that we can use our desires to receive only in order to bestow unto others, unto friends or the public. We never will be able to use our AHP for our own sake in order to reach a state of greatness. What should we do that for? This simply cannot be! We can receive only according to the request of the lower.

This is the whole formula of “from the love of the creatures to the love of the Creator.” It is only because we want to receive a request from the created beings and want to bestow unto them that we have a chance to delight the Creator and feel love for Him. This is one action: the receiving of the prayer from them called “the love of the creatures,” and the request that is aimed upward for the fulfillment of this prayer called “the love of the Creator.” According to this formula, the action immediately is fulfilled.

The public gives us its deficiencies to bestow. Although they cry “give us bread!”, we must translate this request to spiritual deficiencies. At the same time, we must gradually teach people and bring them to spiritual needs. As it is written, “for they shall all know Me from their smallest to their greatest.” This means that we must teach the public that all of their deficiencies ultimately should be the desire to reach bestowal unto the Creator. Then, we will receive the right request from them and raise it upward. This means that “the love of the creatures” will connect through us to “the love of the Creator.”

This is the whole system. This is the only action by which we perform corrections. Three components are needed for this formula. The lower is the public, we are in the middle, and the upper is the Creator. Therefore, it is impossible to only study Kabbalah and perform correction. It is either together or death. A person is called Adam, one who resembles the Creator (in Hebrew). How can we resemble Him?

We must believe that the Creator is only a good and benevolent force, and this is also how we should relate to the entire world. We are the only ones who can help people reach the good, and therefore we must do that. This is the reason we receive their deficiencies and raise them upward.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/19/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: How can we pray and ask the Creator for anything when first, He knows everything in advance anyway? Second, His law is immutable, everything is predetermined by Him, is fixed and cannot be changed, so everything is actually already done by definition. Third, how can a tiny creature who can’t even see one hundredth of the general picture ask for anything or even more incomprehensible is how can he demand something if this demand is for bestowal?

Answer: Because the request changes you and your attitude toward the Creator and brings you closer to Him.
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Question: Sometimes when I try to pray and imagine the Creator before me, I want to disappear. How can I turn to the Creator? I feel that He is almighty and that He will always forgive me, but, at the same time, I always feel that I am defective when I turn to Him. Even if I keep trying to be nice to others and to justify them, I still feel filthy when I pray. What should I do?

Answer: The Creator has created the defects that you feel and your job is to perceive exactly what these defects are and ask to be purified of them.
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The Torah, “Leviticus”, 23:26 – 23:28: And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: But on the tenth of this seventh month, it is a day of atonement, it shall be a holy occasion for you; you shall afflict yourselves, and you shall offer up a fire offering to the Lord. You shall not perform any work on that very day, for it is a day of atonement, for you to gain atonement before the Lord, your God.

The counting of the months in the spiritual work begins in Pesach (Passover). The seventh month from Pesach correlates to Malchut, to the seventh Sefira that comes after Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet, Netzach, Hod, and Yesod. The tenth and last Sefira in Malchut (Malchut of Malchut), which symbolizes the tenth day of the month, is Yom Kippur, when a person comes to the lowest point of his nature and raises his prayer from it. This means that a person reaches a state that isn’t in his power to correct by himself, so he simply detaches himself and does whatever is in his power to raise a request for correction.

Yom Kippur is a holiday. It is a day of joy, when I have something to turn with and someone to turn to (the upper force) with this request. I can actually do that since I have reached the lowest point by my actions. In other words, I have reached the very last state through my clarifications and internal psychological searching for who I am, what I am, towards what my actions are aimed, and what am I living for. I have discovered that it is totally egoistic and that there is no connection with others within this state.

At this point I can only cry out, and this is a point of atonement and forgiveness where I feel my nature as the hateful ego and I wish to detach myself from it with all my might. I don’t want to use the ego when it comes to food, water, or in any actions, and I cannot overcome it. The only thing I can do is raise a prayer to the upper force so that He will correct me. This is the meaning of my request.

We can reach a state of atonement and forgiveness any time, regardless of the calendar date of Yom Kippur. It happens when the upper force can perform corrections on me. Only He can help me; I cannot correct myself, but I can ask Him for this correction.

Comment: Everything that happens in the spiritual world is opposite from whatever there is in the corporeal world, because for us, Yom Kippur is a day of universal grief and not a day of joy.

Answer: In the past, the state of Yom Kippur was understood correctly, but during the 2,000 years of exile, we have attributed it to our own feelings and have matched our feelings with this day. In fact, it is a state of joy because all the holidays are joyful.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 6/18/15

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The discovery of evil is called the sin of Adam. But, this was in fact not a sin, for the Creator Himself says that He created the evil inclination. This means that Adam did not sin, rather he only discovered the sin, his evil, egoistic nature.

From the start we were created with a nature such as this so that we would have the opportunity to rise above it, and from this evil, become aware of the good, the Creator. It is impossible to discover this without that nature, “As the advantage of Light over Darkness,” (Kohelet Rabbah 2:13).

In the New Year (Rosh Hashanah) we celebrate the opportunity to rise up and attain the upper force, the Creator, to become Adam (Man), meaning the person who resembles Him. This is within the power of everyone, for Adam was simply the first who did it. As it is said, “for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them” (Jeremiah 31:33), and “…for My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” (Isaiah 56:7). So Adam is an image that is relevant to all of humanity.

If during this holiday we make the right accounting of the past year, we clarify that we have still not attained correction and that we have not ascended with all of humanity to the peak of our existence, the spiritual world, the level of resembling the higher, eternal and perfect power. And for this we ask forgiveness, meaning we judge ourselves that we could have discovered our evil inclination and corrected it, rising above it and uniting between us, but we didn’t do it. So we ask in the beginning of the year that we be given the power that makes it possible to correct ourselves and reach the goal of creation.
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From the Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 9/6/15

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Question: To reach prayer, is this the individual work of a person or the work of the entire group?

Answer: Of course this is the shared work of all of us. From where would I get the strength for it? If I don’t identify with the sorrow of the community, I wouldn’t be able to reach prayer.

Otherwise I will scream for myself, but for this won’t receive an answer from above. I must transmit to the Elyon (Higher) the request of others, the Prayer of Many. It is called this because I scream for the many, and not because many people scream.

The “many” are my own desires that are portrayed to me as strangers. I scream because I want to approach them, feel them like I feel myself, reach love of others as myself, and connect.

I don’t scream about it being bad for them and the Creator needs to help them, even though this is also prayer, as it is said, “One who prays for his friend is answered first” (Baba Kama 90b). The main thing is, when I see them as parts of myself and am connected with them, to that degree I am connected with the Creator.

After all, if I ask the Creator to be merciful to them and to solve their problems, then in this way I blame Him that He is abusing them and am thinking He is cruel and am asking Him to do something good for them. But I cannot turn to the Creator that way and I will not have equivalence of form with Him if I don’t decide that He is merciful and gracious.

So a true prayer is not a request that something good should be done for others. How can I ask the Creator to do something good if He is also good that does good? I ask Him to make such a correction in us that all of us will adhere with Him. This is the entire prayer, there is nothing more for which to ask.

If I see something bad, this is because there is a gap,; the forces of Shevira (Breakage) are discovered. And the Shevira is within me, so I see reality as being so bad. So I ask that all of us will be able to adhere to the Creator and give Him pleasure. After all, we are so despicable that we are not prepared to accept Him as He truly is: good that does good.

It means that we don’t ask Him to do good for us because in every case we are found in an optimal situation for us. We ask for correction of our distorted vision and sensation, so we don’t blame the Creator like little children who scream, “Bad Mommy!”

Question: But what is to be done with an evil inclination that constantly proclaims that everything is bad?

Answer: A person must try to rise above his evil inclination and not annihilate it. We need to rise above it and be higher than it because desires of bestowal must be above desires of reception. Yet it is forbidden to extinguish the desires of reception; for then the desires of bestowal cannot exist.

Without the Yetzer HaRa (evil inclination), what are we left with? The Yetzer HaTov (good inclination) cannot exist in us because this is the Creator, the desire to bestow. I cannot be the Yetzer HaTov; the Yetzer HaTov can exist within me only to the degree that it rides on the Yetzer HaRa.

The Yetzer HaRa assures me of detachment from the Creator, independence. And the Yetzer HaTov that controls it gives me the form of the Creator. However, I can only ask for the Yetzer HaTov to dominate over the Yetzer HaRa within me. Only the Upper Light can carry this out; I myself am not able to. This is not at my power.

I can only clarify that this is what is required from me. I get such a possibility as a result of the Shevira, which builds the connection between the desire to receive and the desire to bestow. So I get the ability to clarify, to analyze, to differentiate between one and the other. The Upper Light begins to illuminate these concepts for me and I see what is good and what is bad.
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From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/6/14

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