Question: What is the Matronita that The Zohar talks about?

Answer: Matronita is Malchut. Our common desire to become similar to the Creator is called Matronita. The Creator (Kadosh Baruch Hu) is the general name of the Light of NaRaNHY that fills us.

However, we cannot feel the Light by itself. What is the Light of Nefesh? How can I say anything about it? Right now I tried something and felt a sweet taste, calling it the Light of Nefesh. Then I tried something else and felt a taste that’s sweeter, deeper, and with different inner shades, and I called it the Light of Ruach.

How can I measure them? I do it by the growth of my desires which have to reveal additional tastes in the new Light of Ruach compared to the Light of Nefesh. How many desires participate in feeling the Light of Ruach? Suppose there were five desires in order to reveal the Light of Nefesh. Now twenty more are necessary in order to reveal all the additional shades of sensation, which is called the Light of Ruach.

But how do I measure this Light? I do it according to how many more sensations I still have to enact in order to reveal it. That’s why one person can be listening to an opera, enjoying it, and experiencing an entire spectrum of feelings, while another person sitting right next to him will keep looking at his watch and impatiently waiting for it to be over.

From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/31/10, The Zohar

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Q&A, Zohar - No Comments →

Question: How do I keep the intention while being pressed by all kinds of obstacles?

Answer: To keep the intention is possible solely with the help of the environment and a strict schedule: I have to know that there is a lesson to attend, and I have to come; I have chores and duties in the group, and I have to honor them. It’s forbidden to digress from the routine schedule in anything.

Use all your free time to do more work than before. During a descent, the only thing that can help is your connection with the group where you do any work, like a diligent laborer, without the senses and intelligence of which you are incapable at the moment.

The correct realization of a descent is when you are not trying to escape from it, but use it to ascend. If you think that you can handle it with your own desire and mind, it is totally incorrect. During the descent, a person doesn’t perform any clarifications nor does he have any feelings. He is dead, as it were.

What is a descent? It is a reception of an additional, more exalted desire to feel pleasure. You are made to feel that your GE (Galgalta ve Eynaim) are being adjoined with the AHP (Awzen, Hotem, Peh) of the Upper One, and instead of your desire, you feel His.

Previously, I had my own 10 Sefirot, and the Upper One had His. However, now I attach His desire to mine, my GE and His AHP, and there are 10 Sefirot once again. Instead of my small AHP, I have the addition of the AHP of the Upper One, the enormous desires that are willing to restrict and nullify themselves. This AHP is allowed to work with me, which places an enormous burden on me.

Suppose I can lift 20 lbs, but am forced to lift 50 lbs. I can’t do it! They tied a 50 pound weight to each of my legs. Can I really take a step? Or, I was going to give somebody $10,000 and suddenly discovered that I, myself, have a debt for this very amount in my bank account. How can I now give the money to another? There are plenty of such examples in our lives.

This is regarded as the revelation of the AHP of the Upper One. What can I do if I experience it as complete darkness? Is there any way I can handle it using my intelligence and emotion? What intelligence and senses? From my point of view, is there really any logic in all this?

I was a “good child” at my rung, and out of the blue, I am loaded with the desires and duties that I cannot handle. Am I supposed to carry them all out in my present state, when I have lost my mind and senses and am completely lost and trapped in endless problems? How can one do anything alone?

Salvation lies solely in the group, and doing any available mechanical work in it by yourself. This will be the starting point of your ascension to a new state.
[24950]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/26/10, “600.000 Souls”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Preparing For A Descent
Laitman.com Post: A Descent Is A Trampoline For Ascent
Laitman.com Post: The Group Is The Salvation For Everything

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work, Q&A - 1 Comment →

Question: How do I lower myself before the friends so as to accept the opinion of the group?

Answer: Imagine that a group of mountain-climbers are making their way up to a summit. I, too, want to reach this summit, and that is why I join them. In this ascent I cannot do anything at my sole discretion. I cannot go back alone, nor do I choose when to have a rest break, who to spot, or who my spotter would be. We ascend together, bound by the same cable that’s holding up all of us.

The same applies to the group. We are too weak to move individually and only advance if we realize and feel that we are bound together with unbreakable bonds.

Initially I decide whether or not to go with the friends. I verify whether they are suited to me, whether they aspire for the same summit I do. Are they the people with whom I can make this ascent? Perhaps there are other groups out there? I am within my right to verify these things.

But after I have verified everything and joined them, there’s no going back for we have already set out. The cable already binds us, as we are ascending to the summit. Now I cannot get rid of them or take a breather somewhere to the side, while they’re climbing upward. I must keep pace with them, step in step, along the same path. We walk together on our chosen path, and I cannot get away from this daily work.

The conditions today differ from those in the past generations. In the past one was tested rigorously before being accepted, but in today’s times of general correction we accept everybody.

And yet the might of the common soul that’s moving toward correction is made up of those souls who realize that there is no other choice. Having undertaken this task, they ascend upward, bound together by cables and following their guide, on the path where nothing can be changed anymore. A person is given time to realize what he’s facing and come to a decision. But this decision is crucial.

The spiritual world is concealed from us, and so we don’t feel the nature of the task we’ve taken on. In reality this covenant with the friends is critical. We choose the group at the foot of the mountain, and once we set out on the path, there’s no going back.

I don’t see how great, exalted, and even perilous this path is. Indeed, in the covenant I make with the friends dwells the Creator. This means I’m dealing with Him; it is He who testifies for us and affirms our covenant.
[24654]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/24/10, Beit Shaar HaKavanot

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Choosing The Good Fortune In The Group
Laitman.com Post: The Friends Are Always Higher
Laitman.com Post: The Covenant Of Friends

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: If the creature always remains in the desire to receive pleasure, how can it bestow?

Answer: In truth, there isn’t any independent desire for pleasure; there is Light that creates an opposite form from itself, and it is called the desire to enjoy! The Light acts within its opposite form, the form of reception. It is an opposite impression, a stamp of Light as if pressed in wax or in some soft material. This imprinted form, this cavity, is called a spiritual vessel.

If so, then within the will to receive pleasure there is always Light, the Creator who fully controls it! The very desire to enjoy has no independence; it is simply an impression which has nothing of its own. It becomes independent only when the desire to bestow is added to this desire to feel pleasure, and then the Light becomes revealed in the will to enjoy.

The Light imprinted itself in the desire to feel pleasure as a stamp, and this desire received from it an opposite form, within which the Light acts conversely, through the desire to receive. But we don’t feel the Light hidden within; we only feel the desire that manifests outside of us! However, as the Light approaches, joins the desire, and reveals that it is He who defines it, we begin to sense some external presence, the Host, and the game between us and the Creator begins.

And so it continues until we merge with Him completely and become as one whole with no difference between us. The Creator steps out of concealment and becomes closer and closer to us, which signifies our ascent on the rungs of the spiritual worlds, until we feel total oneness with Him.

The Light that works within cleaves to the desire to enjoy, shining and demonstrating itself as the vessel’s representative, claiming “It is I!” as it is written: “He and His name are one.” And by itself, the desire decides nothing; it is only matter.
[24544]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/22/10, Explanation of the Article, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

Related Material:
Laitman. com Post: While The Light Is Working on Us
Laitman.com Post: The Seal From Above
Laitman.com Post: The Science Of Receiving The Light

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Inner Work, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: Don’t you think that we need much wider dissemination of Kabbalah without mentioning its name, but rather explaining its ideas, the causes of the current crisis, and the necessity to unite in our world?

Answer: I totally agree with what you just said about the necessity of being more open in our external dissemination. I agree that special programs with the intent of spreading this wisdom more broadly are essential. We also have to prepare professionals in this field.

However, before acting, we have to conduct research in order not to drown in the sea of similar slogans and mottos urging “unity” that are already being spread by other people that know how to use “beautiful words.” There are so many organizations out there. The Internet is crowded with them, but no one listens to them. Why?

The reason is that nature is just a desire to receive pleasure and delight selfishly. A person can “hear” only within the radius of his own desires, but he cannot go beyond them. This is how creation was built. Screaming is useless here.

Rabash once said that while desire is not sold in the drug store, we can only address those who are “sick.” We all are indifferent to everything except ourselves. We cannot blame people for that. So what options do we have?

We can only do the following:

1. Disseminate our ideas and bring together those who already have “a point in the heart.”

2. Disseminate our ideas a little wider than only to those who already have “a point in the heart,” also to the people who are very close to getting it.

3. We know that, so far, humanity doesn’t want to acknowledge the global crisis and tries to hide it. The only thing that is impossible to cover up (and that is being felt by each of us) is the predicament in the upbringing (not education!) of our children and the critical situation at schools, in families, and in our personal lives.

If we can manage to demonstrate to others that we are able to bring up the young generation to be physically and psychologically healthy, ethical, and aware of the purpose of their existence to its very width and depth, we would definitely attract everybody’s attention. Thus, through such upbringing (a collective one, through the attraction of Ohr Makif, the Surrounding Light) we would enlighten children instead of adults, that is, we would form a new generation that will replace their parents several years from now.

We have to set up a chain of schools all over the world. We have to use the Internet to create an open school for everybody; virtual space should become a platform for upbringing and education, the creation of interest groups, communication networks, and whatever else is popular among youngsters. We have to raise them from the material plane to virtual space and then to spirituality.

For that, we have to launch a virtual school. Even if we happen to attract only our friends’ children worldwide, it still will bring in hundreds of thousands of kids that will achieve good results and that later on will become active and educated participants of our movement. As a child matures physically, he will grow spiritually as well.

We can implement the third item in practice and thereby push the world towards correction, as it is said in The Bible: “Return the hearts of fathers to their sons, and the hearts of their sons back to their fathers.”
[21385]
Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: A School For The Benefit Of The World
Laitman.com Post: The Purpose Of Education
Laitman.com Post: Messiah For All Humanity

Filed under: Education, Kabbalah Dissemination, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: Where is the connection between quantum physics and Kabbalah that you refer to so often?

Answer: As a result of multiple experiments, quantum physics had to include an observer into the research results to acknowledge the fact that everything that happens depends on the observer as well as his observation. It doesn’t happen autonomously, but rather depends on who is viewing it, how it is viewed, and whether or not anyone is viewing it at all.

The observer is an active and essential part of any process. We never see the world void of our own presence. The world exists only within the observer’s perception.

Kabbalah is familiar with this law and described it thousands years ago. It explains  that everything is revealed, researched, and described only in respect to the observer, and we cannot say that the world exists outside of him (see Baal HaSulam’s “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”).

Another law of the quantum world (the world of Light of our world): One particle can be in two places at the same time. It does not happen by it traveling from one place to another instantaneously, but rather by it being in two places simultaneously.

Kabbalah ascertains that a “place” does not exist; the object that we see exists only in the observer’s perception and he senses himself within the boundaries (restrictions) called time, space, and motion, which do not exist outside of us.
[21374]

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Quantum Uncertainty Of An Uncorrected Soul
Laitman.com Post: The Union Between Kabbalah And Quantum Physics
Laitman.com Post: When You Leave Yourself, You Gain Infinity

Filed under: Perception, Q&A, Science - 1 Comment →

Love is not only bestowal but also reception. After all, everyone performs bestowal in relation to me, and I must receive. Otherwise, instead of love, hate will burst out. If I reject the gift of someone who loves me, it isn’t love anymore.

Question: What do I receive and what do I give?

Answer: Your willingness and nothing more. After all, we must create a connection similar to the Creator between us. If we exist in love, then according to the law of equivalence of form, the Upper Light is revealed between us.

You must prepare the Kli, which is a type of connection, nothing more. Then, the law of similarity steps in and within this connection, the Creator is revealed. It is enough to start desiring it, for you are the desire. By doing so, you are preparing the network, a correct connection between the parts of the system, and as a result the Creator breathes life into it.
[25280]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/29/10, The Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Gravitating To Oneness
Laitman.com Post: Connection Is Life
Laitman.com Post: Love Is Ordained By Nature

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Love, My Similarity to the Creator, Q&A, Unity - No Comments →

Question: How can the group escape a state that is called “a gathering of clowns”? What should we do if we manage to fall into this state?

Answer: It is impossible not to fall and become a “gathering of clowns.” There is no achievement of goodness without the preliminary revelation of evil. Goodness is built over the evil, over its realization and correction.

“I created the evil inclination,” the Creator says. In other words, goodness does not exist in nature. And if you think that I am good, then I conceal myself and reveal only my reverse side, only evil. So don’t search for anything positive in the world; the world is evil. And as far as we are concerned, our goal and our entire work are meant to reveal the opposite of evil – goodness (to switch from the reverse side to the front side, from Ahoraim to Panim).

Therefore, we need to be ready that any goodness that we will ever become worthy of will demand that we first reveal ourselves as evil. We hide, smooth over the evil, and run away from negative sensations in life.

Our egoistic protective force constantly draws false pictures to us only so that we will feel well, compensating the real state of things in our perception and not sensing or discussing the truth. Why should egoism suffer? From the very start it tries to prevent this possibility. In the same manner, a mother sees only good things in her child and only bad things in her neighbor’s child.

One can create an objective perception, independent of one’s egoism, only by accepting the opinion of the group instead of one’s own. Through it, I will be able to relate correctly to myself, the world, and the Creator.

In this manner, I receive a “device” in my hands with which I can aim an objective view in all directions. I have formed the “sixth sense,” and it allows me to establish an attitude to everything irrespective of my nature. Before I lay unconscious under the load of my own ego, and now I am realizing something and already returning to reality.

Building a Kli, mutual guarantee, and unity with the group means acquiring a “device,” a means that allows me to reveal true reality. I learn it according to my level, but I learn it the way it really is: I didn’t see it at all before because I was bought off, and that “backwash” of egoism glued my eyes and ears shut, distorting my whole picture of the world.
[25153]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/28/10, “According to What is Explained Concerning Love They Friend as Thyself”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Independent Sixth Sense
Laitman.com Post: A Coin That Is Worth A Lot
Laitman.com Post: Rising Above All Of Your Possessions

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Egoism, Inner Work, Q&A - No Comments →

A question that is arriving from all around the world now: How can we attain the right connection at the upcoming Convention and receive a good influence from the environment?

Answer: Every person is coming there without any obligations. There is no pressure. The most important thing is to feel as free as possible. I am coming to the Convention having left all my worries behind. When I am there, it’s as if I don’t have any problems. You should prepare as if you’re going on a picnic or on vacation, without a worry in your head.

Of course, it’s good to learn the songs and familiarize yourself with the preparation to the Convention site. But the most important thing is to come there feeling completely free. You should arrive at a place that does not pressure you in any way and promises you only pleasure and freedom. And in fact, that is exactly the state that signifies being close to the Upper Light.

In the spiritual world there is no pressure, problems, or difficult responsibilities. There’s nothing! Therefore, a person has to come to the Convention open to being happy!

Right now I am receiving many questions and letters from people who are experiencing difficult states and feeling stressed. They are unsure whether they should attend the Convention or not and whether it is the right thing for them. Some people get scared when hearing about mutual guarantee, thinking they aren’t capable of it. Some people have heard that it’s the place for receiving “Light” and they don’t know what that is.

People don’t understand that it is talking only about unity, which the whole world now has to reach! We wish to accelerate it before nature’s blows come down on us. The unity between us that we are trying to reach will enable us to reach the sensation of the Upper Light, the Upper Life. This unity will heal us of all the afflictions and problems.

Baal HaSulam writes at the end of the “Preface to the Book of Zohar” that our separation from one another is the source of all evil, suffering, diseases, and misfortunes. And vice versa, when we start to come closer to each other, we will purify ourselves of all problems on all levels, material and spiritual.

Therefore, come to the Convention freely and joyfully; no one obligates you to do anything! You don’t even have to bring a smile; we will organize that for you there. You just wait and see.
[25304]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/29/10, “The Freedom”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Our First Spiritual Level
Laitman.com Post: The Convention Holds Great Power
Laitman.com Post: Gifts From The Convention

Filed under: Conventions, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Free Will, Q&A, Unity - No Comments →

Question: What is punishment? Is it the suffering in this world, a lack of desire to unite, or just an unpleasant sensation?

Answer: This always depends on the person. We need to realize that the four levels of nature – the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking – exist by means of the Light that pours on the desire. Out of these four types of the desire, only the speaking (human) level is able to purposefully respond to the Light.

As the desire grows, the Kli (vessel) begins to feel how it does not correspond to the Light. Nature suffers on all of its levels due to a lack of adhesion and an inability to reach it, and, naturally, man suffers the most. First of all, his desire is bigger and more susceptible, but most importantly, the end of the string is in his hands. He has the ability to go towards adhesion and pull the rest of the levels after him.

The suffering of the human degree gradually brings us to the realization of choice. And once man begins to understand that the problems are caused by his inactivity, it will be possible to speak about reward and punishment. Everything that previously happened does not play a part in this because the true categories of reward and punishment always correspond to the goal: the correction.

Man begins to understand that the Upper Governance operates in the world and uses reward and punishment in order to correctly direct him towards the goal and teach him through positive and negative consequences, just like parents teach their children in our world. Then everything that happens acquires a purpose in my eyes. Punishment, just like reward, is a correction, and the way I accept it depends on me.

However, I will only be able to accept it correctly in a group, the place where the Upper Governance needs to be realized. Reward and punishment are inseparably connected to my participation in the group, the mutual guarantee. I scrutinize reward and punishment as precisely as possible and relate to them the same way: I need them both in order to keep correcting the course time after time. Essentially, they are both rewards.

At the end we discover a simple thing: There is no punishment, and every state is given for the purpose of using it to the fullest extent in order to come closer to the Light.
[24407]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/21/10, “I Am the First and I Am the Last”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Crime, Punishment, And The Light Of Correction
Laitman.com Post: Spiritual Punishment

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work, Mutual Guarantee, Q&A, Suffering - No Comments →