Entries in the 'Spiritual Work' Category

Altruism – The Basic Law Of Nature

Laitman_712_03We are inside the special system that is called “nature” or “Creator,” which is one and the same. This system is closed, perfect, and constant, and humanity receives reactions and influences from it and develops more and more.

The system works on us, trying to bring us into conformity with it, so that we would feel, attain, and become similar to nature by becoming its active integral parts consciously, according to our decision and through our work.

A person should become a master of this system—all people as one creature. In order to become as perfect as the system of nature, we must connect as one man.

Bestowal to each other, mutual connection and support, up to loving your neighbor as yourself, is the law of the single system in which we exist. This system works on us in order to bring us to its state.

Therefore, the law about loving the neighbor is a mandatory law of development that acts upon us regardless of our desire or reluctance. The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us how to fulfill this law so that the advancement will go by a good way, according to the mutual consent of the Creator and creature. Then our development will be fast and enjoyable.

Through a good or a bad way, sooner or later we still advance getting closer to the qualities of the system of nature. We see that the world is changing all the time, each time revealing more advanced states in order to finally fulfill the compulsory requirement. Altruism, a general connection above all the differences, is the basic law of nature, so it should be carried out among the people as well.

Inanimate matter, plants, and animals exist without freedom of choice, but a person must understand this law and agree with it, so much so that even if he has an opportunity to choose something else, he nevertheless prefers this altruistic law of complete connection with others.

Altruism is the final state of the evolution of nature to which we shall come. Along the way, we always pass through two states, two lines. We enter the left line, sufferings and troubles, and then we understand that it is necessary to connect and rush to the right line.

Humanity moves this way: sometimes brutal regimes arise, and other times more kind and merciful ones. Again and again evil and good replace each other, until finally, after all these sufferings, we would say, “enough!” and will be able to unite completely.

Question: Why is the reaction of the system on human behavior so nonlinear and complicated? One nation doesn’t act in an integral form, and the system hits another nation. Everything is so confusing it is difficult to advance.

Answer: Indeed, advancement is not carried out according to our understanding and feeling, but in accordance with the reason and the sense of the higher degree called “faith above reason.” After all, we advance due to the higher forces of nature. Why did it organize so we can’t see anything on this path?

The Kabbalists explain that if we had an opportunity to see everything, we would never ascend to the higher degree. We would only extend the material horizons on our degree.

However, in order to ascend to the next level, it is necessary to change our internal work program, our desires, intentions, and thoughts. This is impossible to do while staying in the same sense and reason. We need to receive strength from above and constantly improve ourselves with its help.

We can’t receive additional spiritual development with the tools we currently have. It is possible to receive material development though because it happens at the same level. There are smart and stupid people, strong and weak, successful and losers, but all of this doesn’t relate to qualitative development.

Qualitative development is the transition to the next level, like the difference between inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels, or between a fish, a beetle, a dog, and a man. It means this is a qualitative development in the perception of reality, or to be more precise, in the approximation to the upper force that controls everything.

Such a development assumes the renunciation of one’s current degree in order to be included each time more and more in the upper degree. Therefore, we can’t perform the qualitative ascent by ourselves. We can’t understand the upper degree before we rise to it because it is above us. We don’t feel it.

A stone can’t feel how a plant lives. There is a connection between the degrees, but not in the sense and reason. Precisely by annulling my sense and reason, I can receive some kind of foretaste of the next degree.

The way a stone can’t feel a plant and a plant can’t feel an animal, so too a person can’t feel the upper force. Only if we work in order to get closer to it do we cause its reaction and eventually will be in contact with it.

For the first time in history human begins to climb the ladder of nature, from our world to the upper world. The difference here is not the same as between a stone and a plant, but much more qualitative.
[201040]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/12/17, Lesson on the Topic, “Mismah Arosa,” (Arosa Document)

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The Spiritual Circulatory System

Laitman_524_01Question: Just like a mother and her developing fetus, is it possible to say that a student and teacher have a shared spiritual circulatory system?

Answer: Certainly, it is to the degree that the student is included with the teacher. But the best way to be integrated with a teacher is through a group of ten.
[200826]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/7/16

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The Transfer Of Information From Kabbalist To Student

laitman_589_01Question: Does the attainment of the Upper Light come through the egoistic characteristics of the teacher?

Answer: The egoistic characteristics of the teacher are his beastly characteristics; they have no connection to the spiritual world.

Suppose that a teacher loves to eat a particular food, to sleep in a particular way, loves certain things in the world, doesn’t love, or even hates something else, none of this has any connection to the wisdom of Kabbalah.

Kabbalists who lived 100, 200, or 2,000 years ago also had particular habits and feelings; none of that matters at all.

But if a person is near a Kabbalist and wants to approach him, he must be on a level in which he can relate to his habits and customs correctly.

Question: Your students also teach. Do they have to direct their students to you and recommend that they listen to your lessons?

Answer: They don’t have to direct them to me at all. Everything depends on the level the students are at. If they are ready to listen to my lessons, it is worthwhile for them to bring them here. They will be able to study along with the main group and see how things are done. But my intention is not to direct them to me. I transfer everything to my students and my students to their students, and so on.
[200756]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/7/16

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Should We Believe The Mind Or The Heart?

laitman_439Question: Should we believe the arguments of the mind or the voice of the heart, our feelings?

Answer: Neither. Can we trust our feelings? After all, on the animate level we keep making mistakes because of our feelings, and if we believe the mind, it is not clear where it is leading us. All the more so on the spiritual level, here a Kabbalist does not believe his feelings or his mind. He wants the Upper Light to manage his feelings and that his mind will only be the consequence of the impact of the Light.

A Kabbalist always focuses himself on adhesion with the upper source. To the extent that the upper source dominates him, he feels that he is on the right, good, healthy level.

Even with regard to himself, he should not count on his thoughts and heart. That’s the way it is from a Kabbalistic perspective, not from the perspective of an ordinary person who is managed only by his corporeal feelings.

An ordinary person is confident that his feelings and mind are his own. A Kabbalist sees that the desires/feelings and thoughts/mind are not his own, but are merely the result of the impact of the special Light called the Surrounding Light or the Upper Light. This is the difference between a Kabbalist and an ordinary person.

A Kabbalist’s job is to draw an increasingly greater intensity of the Light unto himself because he has nothing of his own. As created beings we have to tie ourselves to the source that created us and to try to receive the maximum bestowal from Him.

Question: Does a Kabbalist use the feelings and emotions that are revealed in him or does he totally ignore them?

Answer: Of course, he uses them. He has to find out exactly what he undergoes at a certain moment and what he should arrive at the next moment.

A Kabbalist constantly searches for feelings inside him that will enable him to adhere to the upper force in order to feel that he is under its domination and that there is no one but that force that manages him on all sides by invoking in him both negative and positive feelings in order to develop the right organs for his feelings in the fullest, quickest, and most efficient manner. This is what the goal of the development of a Kabbalist comes down to.
[200678]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/21/16

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Answers To Your Questions, Part 161

laitman_281_02Question: What is the phase that follows unity and correction? Can you guide us toward it?

Answer: The moment a person attains unity, he is guided, as it is written,”the Torah will teach you.”

Question: Should a person hope that the friends will love him or is it enough to try to show them love?

Answer: He should try to do so himself!
[200076]

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I Fill Your Souls

laitman_938_04Question: Can a teacher identify which of his students will stay or leave?

Answer: No, it is impossible to know this from the start, and it doesn’t matter because the soul is eternal and immortal.

While you are studying, I fill your souls, prepare them for independent spiritual work, and I have enough energy because as far as it seems, I am the only person in the world who is working on the immortality of the soul.

I am saying this completely seriously! My material is you, meaning your desires, which I bring closer to the state of “soul,” the characteristic of bestowal.

My labor doesn’t disappear. It gives me energy because otherwise I would be disappointed. Thousands of students have passed my way, but I am not sorry and I don’t place an obstacle in front of a student who wants to leave. As long as he is here, I influence him; after he leaves, this influence temporarily stops, but it will come back in the future to one of my students.

Question: Do you enjoy teaching? Do you expect results from the lesson?

Answer: The lesson is the result. This is the most rewarding work and the payoff is immediate.

Question: If so, could you teach 24 hours per day?

Answer: Were it not for physical limitations, I could.
[200405]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/7/16

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You Shall Set Up Judges For Yourself

laitman_571_08Torah, Deuteronomy 16:18: You shall set up judges and law enforcement officials for yourself in all your cities that the Lord, your God, is giving you, for your tribes, and they shall judge the people [with] righteous judgment.

Question: What is the role of the overseers?

Answer: The entire Torah speaks about the way to rise above our egoistic nature and to become an altruist with love of the creatures and through them with love of the Creator.

If I want to change, I need overseers, assistants, and teachers who would help me to rise above myself.

The judges, help, persuade, and pressure me; that is, they do everything they can because I have become my own enemy since egoism begins to manifest within me and I relate to it as an enemy. In order to cope with it, I need a powerful environment.

Therefore, it is written: set up judges, overseers, and helpers for yourself at all the gates through which you enter and exit, ascend to the Creator and descend from Him, by the degrees of the spiritual ladder according to the level of bestowal, love of others, and so on. You must regulate all of it and hold it in your hands.

Comment: This contradicts material logic that you personally set up supervisors for yourself and they are not placed above you by someone else!

Answer: The fact is that this is a voluntary path where a person builds himself. Of course, he asks for help from above, turns to the Creator, the positive force of nature, because he himself is totally negative, but he does this independently.

If he understands that everything depends on the correct environment, then he needs to build the environment himself. He does it with the help of the upper force, but through his efforts, understanding, and prayer.

The gates that “the Lord, your God, is giving you” is the level of entry and exit: whether you fit the level of bestowal, love, and connection and to what extent you advance in being similar to the Creator. This is your idea, your goal, and your star. This is how you should move forward.
[199736]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 8/24/16

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One Desire, Different Intentions

Laitman_632_3Torah, Deuteronomy 19:11 – 19:13: But if a man hates his fellow, lies in wait for him, rises up against him, and strikes him mortally, and he flees to one of these cities, the elders of his city shall send and take him from there and deliver him into the hand of the avenger of the blood that he may die. And you shall not pity him, but you shall abolish [the shedding of] the blood of the innocent from Israel, and it will be good for you.

If a person’s desires are revealed on the level of intentional egoistic actions when he wants to harm and even to murder some desire, he needs a completely different correction than when he uses the anti-spiritual desire unintentionally.

We are not talking about the desire, but about the intention with which the desire is used. If any of the intentions on the desires of a person operate this way, then this intention must be killed, i.e., eradicated from the incorrect manifestation of its activities. This is its correction.

If the anti-spiritual desire was unintentional, then it had no intention. Then a person should attach a correct intention for bestowal, love, and connection to it.

If this desire is egoistic with a coarse intention for yourself, you need to kill this desire first and only then “give birth” to a new intention. It is written in the Torah that it must be done by the judges. You have no right to kill anything and anyone, neither desire, nor intention. A desire can’t be killed at all, only an intention, and it works only through the judges.

In other words, you need to create a system of judges within you and through it judge yourself and then decide which desires with the intention for your own sake should die, meaning must be eradicated, and which desires are just neutral, without anti-altruistic intention.

Desires with the neutral intention should be corrected and desires with the egoistic intention need to first be destroyed and then a correct one added. 

This is called a revival of the dead souls. Moreover, this action can happen within a person at any degree and not necessarily in what is called the end of days.

When we concentrate on the correct attitude toward everything and understand that these are just egoistic desires that should be turned into altruistic ones by changing the intention from for my own sake to for the sake of others, then we don’t have any problems at all. We just want to know how we can change the intention, and the desires remain unchanged.

They should manifest in us according to the ability to restore the correct intention on them, and therefore these desires are hidden. However, once we receive the ability to change the intention from reception to bestowal, they are revealed gradually. The question is only how we connect to the source of the force that corrects our intentions.

Question: Does it mean that the correction of the intention still comes from the Creator? Can’t I correct it myself?

Answer: No, our goal is to raise a request to become altruists so for each desire instead of the intention for my own sake, we would have the intention for the sake of others and through them for the Creator. After all, the Creator is a collection of everything that is outside of me. Such is our work.
[201440]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 9/7/16

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Why Do We Need Negative Emotions?

laitman_253Question: What is the need for emotions like rage, anger, fear, etc.?

Answer: That all will be attributed to the Creator only, the sole source of our positive and negative emotions.

Question: What is the connection between attracting the Light and attributing everything to the Creator, are these two different actions?

Answer: No its the same thing. The wisdom of Kabbalah was given to humanity to correct itself, its fate, and to attain the level of the Creator. This can be done only through independent actions. So to the degree that a person makes an effort to change himself, his efforts become empty spaces that are filled with Light.

A person must attribute everything that he experiences to the higher source. Everything comes from there. All suffering, feelings, confusion, fear, anxiety, jealousy, and the other “negative” emotions are sent to you by the Creator only so that you will transcend them, attribute them to the Creator, and demand to be changed from Him.

If a person carries out such actions, he begins to feel the positive force that intentionally stimulates negative emotions in him so that he will transcend them. This is called going above reason.
[201390]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/21/16

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How Is The Upper World Attained?

laitman_942Question: How is the upper world attained?

Answer: When ten people nullify themselves relative to each other and they do this together relative to the Creator by wanting to attract Him as Ohr Makif (Surrounding Light) to correct them, that is how they create the characteristic of the Creator among them.

Through this action they create a Kli, which is a sensory device for attaining the next level. In this single desire they feel the Creator. After that, by uniting more and more deeply, they discover the Creator more and more.
[201402]

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