Question: If everything stems from the Creator, how do Kabbalists find the strength to justify Him as the good that does good?

Answer: As long as we are in our egoism we cannot justify the Creator as the good that does good. If a person earns something egoistically and receives a certain filling, he feels good, but if he scrutinizes things correctly and sees that it is harmful, he is not able to bless the Creator and to thank Him anymore. Even when a person receives blows instead of pleasure, he cannot thank the Creator.

But if a person feels such blows as orders, as a decree to get closer to the Creator, he appreciates them in a totally different manner and reaches a state in which he thanks the Creator for them, which means that he seems to kiss the stick the Creator hits him with. It all depends on the awareness of the goal.

In other words, as long as a person identifies with his egoism, he feels the blows on himself, but the moment he ceases to feel his ego, he ceases to notice the blows he receives because he relates to his ego like to an animal by his side.

I am the human being and the animal is beside me, and it feels the blows while I don’t. We have to reach this state where I am separate from this animal, from the ego, and then the human being in me will be happy while the animal will suffer since this is what it was created for as Baal HaSulam says. A person is even happy when his animal suffers since it is actually thanks to the suffering of the ego that he ascends above it.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 1/3/16

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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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“Love thy neighbor” means connecting with your friend into one single integral system. All of us together are a single system; we are connected between us, and we are already beginning to discover our full dependence on each other.

A system of full mutual connection envelops all of humanity in intelligence and thought, in heart and desire. Within this system all of us are connected with each other, and our thoughts and emotions pass from one to the other.

But we must learn to manage this system called Adam (Man); we need to restore it from the separated and shattered fragments that are distant from each other. If we connect between us and connect these small fragments together, then we will see ourselves in an absolutely corrected state. Whether we want it or not, we must reach this state.

Question: It follows that “love thy neighbor” means giving your friend the power to advance more rapidly toward sensing this system?

Answer: Certainly, we must take the opportunity to help others participate in this also. It is up to us to help each other enter into the general system as rapidly as possible and to begin to connect it together. Then we will begin to feel not only where the contact and connection with each of the others is, but we will also feel the higher, eternal life that flows through this integral system. This must be learned, but elementarily, mainly to understand the basics. And most important is that we must realize it in the connection between us.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 12/27/15

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Question: Can a person who has begun to seriously study Kabbalah be taken from this world as a result of a disease or an accident, and so on?

Answer: Why not? Is that a bad thing?

Everyone curses our world and feels bad in this world. At the same time, everyone is afraid to leave this world. This is only because a person doesn’t know and doesn’t see what is next.

And he doesn’t need to see anything. Right now, just build your future world so that you will feel no transition between life in this body and life outside our body. In fact, our egoistic desires depict for us life in our body, but if we neutralize them, we would feel that we are in the spiritual world.

There are people who have felt spiritual phenomena as a result of great suffering because when one undergoes great pain, the body can neutralize and nullify itself.

We, on the other hand, attain it much more easily through the help of the group where we summon the effect of the Upper Light, and then we feel as if we have no body since it is incorporated in others. Instead of feeling ourselves, we begin to feel others, and this is called exiting the body.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 12/20/15

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Question: I suffer and thank the Creator for my pain and suffering. Is this the right approach?

Answer: If a person truly can thank the Creator, this is the right approach because if he thanks the Creator for awakening the suffering in him that directs him toward the goal correctly, he must feel sweetness in this suffering. According to studies by doctors and biologists, the feeling of suffering or pleasure basically gives the same result because the same process occurs in the brain.

Question: I don’t understand. How is it possible to be thankful for suffering? After all, this is masochism.

Answer: The difference is that I separate the thought and purpose of the suffering from how I am feeling it. It is just as I agree to a painful operation and simultaneously thank the doctors for freeing me from the disease. We see that in our world it is necessary to settle accounts and pay for everything through effort, energy, and suffering.

However, a Kabbalist sees the goal, why he is suffering. So, he no longer considers it to be suffering. He understands that suffering helps him become free of his egoistic nature, but as long as he is on the way toward leaving it, he suffers.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 1/3/16

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New Life 688 – Levels Of Thinking
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

The desire to enjoy is the matter of creation and it is divided into 4 levels: the still, vegetative, animate, and man. The more the desire to enjoy grows, the more power of thought it requires in order to be optimally filled. The power of thought serves the desire and it is especially evident in young children, while grownups hide their aspirations.

We can study creatures that are on a lower level than we are with our mind, but we find it difficult to study ourselves since in order to learn who I am, I have to rise to a level that is higher than me, to the level of Godliness, and I can do that by using the wisdom of Kabbalah. The power of thought that is greater than that of man is called the power of the Creator, which is the upper thought that connects everything. When a person discovers the upper thought, everything changes: his accounts, his values, and his plans, and he begins to discover that reality is actually himself, and then the desire to bring everyone to the same recognition awakens in him.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life 688 – Levels Of Thinking,” 2/9/16

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Question: How can an ordinary person become like the Creator?

Answer: According to one’s characteristics. All the properties of a person are diametrically opposed to the upper force. One must begin to transform them.

All that there is in me, I have to gradually learn to transform to the opposite, as in a mirror. This is not complicated.

It turns out that I do not even have to dig into yourself or learn anything! After all, I do not know the Creator and do not know or His properties. Therefore, I have to come to a group of people who have opinions like His, preferably no more than ten people, and begin to get closer to them according to a method that the wisdom of Kabbalah explains to us.

Getting closer happens in spite of our rejection, mistrust, and hostility, changing us and making us like the Creator.

We do not have to change themselves. This convergence will automatically transform us. We need only to start looking for a common language between us. You can not imagine how easy it works. Convergence gradually change us to complete similarity to the Creator.

Question: How do we attain the characteristics of the Creator?

Answer: Those who study the wisdom of Kabbalah attain this in the connection between them.

Comment: Group work is well known to humanity, for example, in Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, etc.

Answer: In many cases group work is a positive factor and the means for getting out of difficult situations. But in the groups of those who study Kabbalah, the intention is to acquire the unique characteristic of becoming like the upper force according to the method of study of the Kabbalists.

Question: Is it necessary for a person to have a desire to resemble the Creator from the start?

Answer: Yes, one must have the desire now, specifically while living in this world, to reveal the upper force, eternity, wholeness, the next state.

Question: And what if this desire doesn’t exist in a person?

Answer: This desire exists in everyone, but it is blurry, closed by an egoistic layer. A person rejects it; he doesn’t want to think about it. Why should he think about something that might be in the future that is not clear when, where, and how while he has needs here and now? This is how he manages to confuse himself to the end of his life and suddenly life is over and he dies.

The amazing opportunity to do something with himself disappears. Just before death, a person feels bitterness that he lived his life this way.

In contrast, working in a group of ten people according to the method of Kabbalah, one begins to clean the egoistic layer, like in an archaeological excavation. The connection between us that was formerly called a group or the world and was our common egoism changes into an altruistic connection and mutual love. This new characteristic is called the Creator. Participation in a study group like this is like flying upward, leading to the next level of development.

People who study stop feeling themselves as existing in a body; they begin to believe, see, and discover the next system of existence. All of humanity must achieve this development because we have existed on the face of the Earth throughout all the generations for this purpose.
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From KabTV’s “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Science” 1/25/16

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New Life 687 – Real Self-Criticism
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

“The fool foldeth his hands together, and eateth his own flesh” (Ecclesiastes 4:5); everything that happens is handed from above, so we must look forward. The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches how it is possible to intervene with the future and change things from a bad path to a good path. Nobody learns anything from the past, so there is no reason to dig into it. All of humanity is deteriorating, but since it is impossible to change the previous moment, there is no reason to consider it.

A person cannot change anything for the better himself, but can only attract the positive force of nature to counterbalance the negativity that is in him. If he attracts the positive force, he has nothing to fear from the future or to “eat himself up” about the past. The evil force in us is the ego that wants everything for itself, and the good force is the power of giving. From our time forward begins a new era in the development of the ego, and we require the good power in nature to survive.

This is not a fanatical religious approach, rather it is the most realistic one there is. There is a higher force that manages us, and a person is responsible for how much he attracts the force of goodness into his life. He should criticize himself only in regard to this. Our system of management is called the “soul,” through which I can measure and feel how much good and how much evil there is in me. It is up to me only to attract the good force into my life, and I don’t have to do anything about everything else.

I am responsible for the next moment, and not the previous moment. Advanced physics is discovering that there is no time, rather everything is relative in regard to us, and what was in the past is not our responsibility, and so we have no criticism about the past. But tomorrow is again in our hands, and the good force is the power of giving and love; it is essential for survival in the connected world of today. The power of giving and love connects us to everyone and suddenly we see that the whole world is me; it is my soul.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 687 – Real Self-Criticism,” 2/4/16

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New Life 686 – The Freedom Of Self-Criticism
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

Until today criticism has helped us develop, but nowadays there is no proper criticism. Everyone just “dumps out” bad things about others. Self-criticism, the ability to judge, requires looking at things from the side without prejudice.

Today nobody can get along with anyone; there is nobody who is able to provide useful criticism. Humanity doesn’t understand what is happening; it is advancing towards self-destruction and even the family unit is collapsing.

The self-critical system of a person who is a Kabbalist is constructed according to the higher value, “And you shall love your friend as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). With the help of the method of the wisdom of Kabbalah, a person attracts the Light that Reforms, the positive force, against the evil inclination, and this is through self-criticism if he attracts enough of this positive force upon himself to provide him with the right perspective.

The only concern of a person must be how to attract the positive power that is concealed in nature unto himself to counterbalance the evil that is in him. Until then, a person’s self-criticism will not be beneficial in any way.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 686 – The Freedom Of Self-Criticism,” 2/4/16

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“What the Concept of Suffering Is in the Work,” Rabash: What can a person do so that he doesn’t need to come to a descent, called “suffering,” when he feels that he is far from the Creator….How could there be a reality in which he doesn’t need to fall to a state of humility? The advice about this is when a person takes stock of himself and through his thought and desire he sees how he is still far from adhesion with the Creator. It means that even during a time of ascent he takes stock of himself and begins to feel his shortcomings. So then he apparently doesn’t need to fall from his state because he was given thoughts of humility until he feels as if he is in a deficient state. So even during an ascent, he already begins to seek advice about how to ascend a level.

We begin our way from below to above from a tiny shortcoming, from lacking the point in the heart. The lack in this point doesn’t give a person any direction and he has no power, for this is just a point. I continue toward something, but I don’t exactly understand toward what. But when I am brought to a group, my desire begins to take shape. I already know what to wish for and toward where. A few years pass until I finally understand that this aspiration must be directed toward connection and not just toward a higher power.

I am already aware that the higher power is not somewhere in the heavens, but that it is revealed within me: it is the power of bestowal and love that fills all of the higher reality. If I acquire the characteristic of bestowal and love, with this I feel the upper force, the higher dimension and the upper world.

Quite a while passes until this approach stabilizes in a person. And this time doesn’t just pass without a trace. Great changes happen every moment, and lots of time is required for it. Just like in our world, the period for stabilizing the still level of nature, the creation of the universe, was the longest and took billions of years. The vegetative world stabilized even more rapidly, the animate world stabilized even faster, and the human stabilized very quickly relative to the previous levels.

So we also went through thousands of years of regular physical existence, passing through a multitude of incarnations. And when we are finally granted an Itaruta de La’ila (awakening from Above) resulting in the awakening of the point in the heart in us, so this account has already been going on for years. In spite of everything, it took years.

From that moment, I am already placed facing the goal and know how to advance toward it. I come to a group, find a teacher and books. I realize that this is the purpose of human life in this world to which I have finally been brought after many incarnations in order to implement the goal and get some kind of result in my life without having to waste it in vain. I have already been given freedom of choice here, to go in the way of Torah or the path of suffering.

The path of suffering is when an unconscious desire is awakened in me and I start to figure out why I feel bad. Time passes until I find the cause of evil and clarify how to correct it and to transform it into goodness. The way of Beito (in its time) is very long and includes many stages within it. So then, in the way of Achishena (I will hasten), in the way of Light, time becomes accelerated. I must search for the shortcomings myself, the means for advancing.

I can get the stimuli for advancement from the environment. The main thing is that this push toward advancement initially stabilizes me in the right direction and I know for what I am looking. It is always necessary to search for a lack of the characteristic of bestowal and love, for connection, for oneness, for Arvut (mutual guarantee), for adhesion with the upper force, meaning love for others.

If I search for shortcomings like these, then I am no longer in some kind of point with a single desire that has no direction. Instead, I already know the goal that I must reach.
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From the preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/10/14

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