Entries in the 'Spiritual Work' Category

The Force Leading to the Creator

934Question: As it is said: “Torah, Israel, and the Creator are one.” It is clear there are friends with whom we unite, and there is the Creator that we want to reveal together. But what is this force between us that we must attract so that it leads us to the Creator?

Answer: It is the quality of mutual bestowal of everyone to everyone. To the extent you can realize this quality among yourselves in the ten, you advance toward the Creator and become similar to Him.

Question: What does it mean to correct ourselves with the friends into the vessel (Kli) of Adam HaRishon?

Answer: It means to discover our connection in one vessel, in one ten, and from this connection, direct our desires for rising toward getting closer to the Creator. We want to rise to His level to comply with what the Creator expects.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/3/24, Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Torah, the Creator, and Israel Are One”

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What Is Considered Luck in Spiritual Work?

938.01Question: When the ten feels that it reached success, i.e., the state of “embrace with the Creator,” how can it return pleasure to the Creator for this luck?

Answer: To do this, one must rise above oneself and perform an act of bestowal with the friends. In this way, we create a state among ourselves where we receive the upper light for the sake of the Creator.

Question: If a person is rewarded with faith above reason, can this be considered luck?

Answer: Yes, this is also luck.

Question: Nevertheless, luck largely depends on the root of the soul, and the environment cannot influence success 100%, right?

Answer: The environment can influence a person, and a person can influence the connection of their soul with the Creator.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/29/24, Writings of Baal HaSulam “Explaining the Discernment of Luck”

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Studying the Torah

528.04Question: When reading the Torah, we study the quality of bestowal and love. How can we attract this force upon ourselves while reading the article?

Answer: Studying the Torah is a multi-step process. Initially, we simply learn to read, translate, and analyze what is in our materials, replace words with spiritual elements and connections, and begin to understand what is really said. These are the conditions.

Question: What are these spiritual definitions that stand behind the words?

Answer: In Pticha (Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah) or in The Study of the Ten Sefirot, we study about them. They explain how the light coming to us from the Creator affects us, what desires it reveals, and how it connects us.

By reading the sources, it gradually becomes clear what happens to us during this process: what rises, what shifts, what descends, how we attract the light, how we open ourselves to the light, and what it does when it enters us.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/3/24, Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Torah, the Creator, and Israel Are One”

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Tears Reduce Aggression

276.01Question: Researchers from the Weizmann Institute in Israel have found that human tears contain a substance that suppresses aggression. For the study, they collected emotional tears from women. Then, men were given the opportunity to smell these tears or a physiological saline solution. It turned out that female tears induce changes in the brain that reduce male aggression by more than forty percent. What is the spiritual root of tears?

Answer: Tears are excesses of the desire to bestow. In Kabbalah, this is called Ohr Hozer, the reflected light that comes out from the source of the light and envelops it. In other words, tears are a great force.

Question: Even in a spiritual sense?

Answer: Especially in a spiritual sense.

Question: So, it overwhelms me, I want to bestow, bestow, and bestow?

Answer: When a person feels that he cannot solve the problem of bestowing, then tears manifest. I really want to bestow, but I cannot; my nature is different.

Question: It is one thing when a child cries. Another thing when an adult cries. Are tears still a form of helplessness?

Answer: Yes, it is helplessness every time.

Question: So, I have to reach a dead-end and then tears come?

Answer: And then tears appear. These tears are the reflected light in which the direct light from the Creator is dressed.

Question: Can you explain the terms reflected light and direct light more simply?

Answer: It means that a person appeals to the Creator and receives help from Him. This is called light.

Question: Is this the direct light?

Answer: Yes, and reflected light is the light that comes to a person and reflects from him in the desire to merge with the Creator.

Question: In our world we have tears of happiness, tears of sorrow, pain, hatred, and all of these are still tears. Why are they all tears?

Answer: Tears are a lack of the ability to embrace the immensity.

Question: Do I want to embrace the unattainable?

Answer: Yes, those who want to encompass the unattainable and find that they cannot do it, they cry. This can happen to a little child or an old person as well.

Question: In Kabbalah, there is a concept called “gates of tears.” They say that the gates of tears are always open. Can you explain?

Answer: When a person has a complete realization that he has done everything possible to come close to the Creator and sees that he still cannot achieve it, he then explodes from within in sobbing, thus opening the gates of tears. In other words, all gates are closed, but the gates of tears are open to a person who comes to them in this way.

Question: When you said that he has been through everything, already done everything, does that mean that all gates are closed? So, he checked all the gates?

Answer: Yes.

Question: So, one must still check all the gates?

Answer: Otherwise how will one explode in suffering and prayer?

Question: Can we say that, in principle, our life is to check all the gates? Is this our life? And all the sufferings we get along the way, are they because the gates are closed?

Answer: Yes.

Question: We come to it with age, with wisdom? What do we come to the gates of tears with?

Answer: With a plea out of helplessness. With a request that we have done everything, and besides the Creator no one can help us, and only to Him do we turn. But we are capable of it! Not just crying and screaming like a child. But when you have been through everything and your despair is greater than all the problems that came to you.

Question: Have you ever cried?

Answer: I have cried. The last time I cried was when my friend was drafted to the army. And with this I felt that childhood and youth were ending.

Question: Was it your childhood friend leaving?

Answer: Yes.

Remark: So, you had that period of happiness called childhood, and it ended.

Answer: Yes, something like that.

Question: This is an overflow of what?

Answer: It is an overflow of emotions. We were very close friends, and it was the end of it.

Question: Another question: Your teacher Rabash, did he ever cry?

Answer: No, I imagine that it could have happened, but I never saw a single tear.

Question: Even, as you said, when his wife died, when he was distraught by that blow?

Answer: No, he did not cry and did not show any emotion.

Question: Why?

Answer: He did not have it in him. He did not have anything like it. I was with him for 12 to 13 years; he passed away in my arms, and never did he cry.

Question: But when you think about him, very often tears come to your eyes?

Answer: I am not him.

Question: What do you feel at that moment?

Answer: I feel bitterness that I could not bestow to him more than I did. And sometimes, it caused him a sense of offense toward me. So… I still have to figure this out.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 12/25/23

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Is Fortune a Correction?

231.04Question: Is fortune (Mazal) itself a correction? And what does the correction consist of?

Answer: Mazal is not your success. Is it the result of our work, our efforts?—Yes.

But in principle, this is not a human action, but an action descending on us from above.

Question: The Book of Zohar speaks of the tears of the Creator falling into the sea and correcting it. How does this relate to the concept of Mazal?

Answer: This means that sparks (Nitzutzin) of reflected light fall into the sea (Malchut). Thus, Malchut gradually rises and gets corrected.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/29/24, Writings of Baal HaSulam “Explaining the Discernment of Luck”

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A Building for the Creator

508.2This is similar to one who wishes to move a big building; of course, this is impossible. So what does he do? He takes the building apart into small bricks, and he can move each piece. So it is here: Through diminishing the light, one can make a small effort (Baal HaSulam, Shamati 202, “In the Sweat of Your Face Shall You Eat Bread – 2”).

Question: What does it mean to “move a big building to another place”?

Answer: Imagine that the Creator wants to give a person some kind of reward weighing 50 kg. But he is not able to hold it and bear it.

In this case, the Creator gives him small portions that he can take and carry away, take and carry away, until he collects everything that he received from the Creator in his place.

Question: What are we building brick by brick in the world of infinity?

Answer: The house in which the Creator will dwell.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/1/24, Writings of Baal HaSulam “In the Sweat of Your Face Shall You Eat Bread – 2”

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A Single Desire

935Question: Are our little requests that are combined into a common prayer of the ten the light we return to the Creator?

Answer: No, the light is not between you; you do not return it to the Creator. You act only to create one desire between you that is capable of receiving a little of the light the Creator wants to give you. And by this action, you delight the Creator.

Question: How do we feel the light of the Creator in the ten?

Answer: Like the desire to do everything just for the sake of friends.

Question: What action attracts more light?

Answer: Just to connect even closer with each other.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/1/24, Writings of Baal HaSulam “In the Sweat of Your Face Shall You Eat Bread – 2”

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We Do Not Learn from Mistakes

766.9Comment: You said that in reality children never learn from their parents’ mistakes.

My Response: Of course. How could that be? You cannot convey your life experience to another even in our world, much less in the spiritual world.

I remember my teacher sat in front of me on long winter evenings in Tiberias, and I pestered him with the same questions. He looked at me with compassion, eyes full of pity. He had very expressive eyes.

I saw that he sympathized with me, but could not help in any way more than what he was trying to explain, guide, and suggest. Usually, after my questions, he would sigh and say: “Let us read something.” And that was it, nothing else.

I remember I felt very bad. We went with him for a walk in the Beit Shemen forest. This was at the very beginning of my study. I studied with him for about a year, and a year is nothing to study Kabbalah. He saw that I was completely torn to pieces. I prayed: “Help me with at least something!” Such requests are generally not typical for me, but I blurted out: “Help!”

He looked at me with such pain, like a father who is ready to give everything to his hopelessly ill child, but can do nothing to help. We sat on a bench; I can show this place even today. He took from his pocket the article “Thou Hast Hemmed Me In Behind and Before” (“Achor Ve Kedem Tzartani”) and began to read to me. This is an article from the book A Sage’s Fruit, which we were just preparing for publication at that time.

In principle, the title of this article can be translated as “I control you from all sides.” I cannot say that I understood anything in it. But what else can you give a beginner?

In this case, we are talking about those people who strive to penetrate the spiritual system; they feel bad because they do not know it and do not attain it, and this pain speaks inside of them! After all, nothing corporeal was pressing on me at that time. I was perfectly settled, healthy, and young. It was spirituality that I lacked!

Question: Can you now evaluate how he perceived you at that moment? You, in fact, were part of him.

Answer: Of course, I was incorporated in him. He perceived me as a small system that needed to be adjusted, and he sympathized with it and really wanted to help it, and it reacted naturally. What else can you do? You just have to keep working with it and wait for the results.

Of course, he was worried about me, but he was worried as a father for a child who was not in a hopeless state. The father has a medicine that he gives to the child every day and sees that in the end the child will recover and do what is needed.

One day I could not overcome myself and did not follow him to take him to the sea. Then he was taken there by another student, who on the way asked: “Why is it always only Michael who accompanies you?” Rabash replied: “I cannot do anything about it. He has a special soul.”

I learned this 20 years later from that friend during a chance meeting. I did not even think about it and, moreover, I was surprised that Rabash said that about me to another student.

Therefore, when you look at a student, you take into account his entire future, and it sets you up to treat him accordingly. You tolerate his antics and lead him forward, or you “hit” him more often, or maybe, on the contrary, you pull him out “by the forelock.”
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. You do not Learn from Past Mistakes” 1/15/12

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The Meaning of Luck

546.02Question: How do you distinguish between the concept of “if you did not labor and found, do not believe” and luck, which can come without effort? After all, luck is a gift from above.

Answer: In any case, we must do something to make such a phenomenon happen.
To exist means “to be loved in the eyes of the Creator.”
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/29/24, Writings of Baal HaSulam “Explaining the Discernment of Luck”

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An Instrument for Revealing the Creator

625.02Question: How do we correctly reduce the light of Hochma to be above reason and to receive luck?

Answer: We must go by faith above reason, and in this way, we will merit the revelation of all knowledge. The process of revelation, however, is a Kabbalistic secret.

First, you must develop a desire for knowledge within yourself and negate the idea that you attain the purpose of creation through knowledge, and instead you focus primarily on acquiring the same corrections applied to the desire to receive.

Then, through this refusal, called reflected light (Ohr Hozer), you will attain true knowledge and uncover all that exists in nature.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is for this purpose, which explains that you must make a restriction (Tzimtzum), a screen (Masach), reflected light (Ohr Hozer), and gradually uncover the quality you wish to reach.

Question: Suppose a certain state comes to me. Should I say, “No, I do not want to receive this; I want to connect with my friends and through the connection, bestow to the Creator regardless of what is revealed”?

Answer: No, you should not refuse. From this desire, directed toward the Creator or His action, you should simply make a suitable vessel, an instrument for revealing the Creator.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/29/24, Writings of Baal HaSulam “Explaining the Discernment of Luck”

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