Question: How do we organize ourselves in a state of spiritual Ubar (Fetus), and the group as a uterus within which this Ubar develops?

Answer: It is up to us to build ourselves from nothing. The Creator brings me to a group and says to me that I must build my spiritual life here! Now, it is up to me to build myself as an Ubar and make a uterus out of the group. This is the only thing that is given to me.

It is up to me to build a society around myself that I will use as a uterus or an incubator, meaning that it will support me constantly and be an example for me, a standard for the higher level, the state of perfection. I will be able to exist within this environment on condition that I constantly open a connection that is directed more and more toward the higher perfect level.

It is up to me to build all of this by myself. After all, I am in a state where I have nothing. There is no Creator. There is only His essence, a force that I do not know. I must form all of this with my own hands.

Question: By what means do I build an environment for myself? Is it just by calling upon everyone to appreciate the property of bestowal?

Answer: There are many articles by Rabash that are dedicated to building the group. It is only necessary to fulfill his instructions and build it. However, I need to build myself in two forms. I build the higher level, the group, for myself, and I build the Ubar, the lower level, for the group.

The Ubar is all of us together. We lower and nullify ourselves, each of us in regard to the group, the friends. The Ubar is also our common co-creation. Through nullifying ourselves we can connect together.

The group is the higher level. It is also the commonality between us, but already in the form of bestowal. The more we love the group, elevating it, perceiving it as whole and great, the more we inflate it around us and can exist within it.

Both the Ubar and the uterus are built by the Ohr Makif (Surrounding Light), the Light that Reforms. However, our work on two opposite forms is required for this. Sometimes, it is directed downward toward nullifying the self. That is how we build the point of Malchut. Sometimes, it is directed upward for building the Keter. The Keter we build is linked to a higher level.

We are summarizing now everything that we have been learning for many years about the group. We have gone over those articles many times, but notice how many of these concepts have not succeeded in penetrating our hearts. We constantly hear about the structure of the group, but it still is difficult for us to digest these principles.

When we explain this to the general public, we must understand that they are much further away from these concepts. After all, we are very familiar with the spiritual states. There have been numerous spiritual changes that have happened within us and we still have not ascended the spiritual ladder.

The preparatory period before the first spiritual level is very long, but we are at its end. We just must understand that it is necessary to relate to the external public with love and understanding, giving them explanations drop by drop.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/12/14, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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The Zohar, “The Second Commandment,” item 198: The second Mitzva (commandment) is inseparably connected with the Mitzva of fear, and it is the Mitzva of love—for man to love his Creator with perfect love. What is perfect love? It is a great love, as it is written, “He walks before the Creator in complete sincerity and perfection” (Beresheet, 17:1).

There exists conditional love, which appears as a result of all the goodness received from the Creator (Introduction to The Study of Ten Sefirot, items 66-74), as a result of which man merges with the Creator with all his heart and soul. Yet, although he merges with the Creator in complete perfection, this love is considered imperfect.

Perfect love is the greatest, most inclusive upper commandment that Kabbalists tell us about, which is the major requirement with regard to all of creation that we must fulfill. This is the reason it is called a Mitzva.

In conditional love, the more I receive, the more I love the giver. It turns out that I don’t actually love him but the source from which all of the pleasures come. If this source of pleasure stops, I will lose the connection with this person or this force. This is called conditional love because it depends on my pleasure.

I depend on that love because I cannot differentiate myself from my pleasure, from the part in me that enjoys. I don’t split myself into two parts yet: into the donkey that enjoys and the human being who differentiates, sees, realizes, and feels that. The donkey and the human being are still connected. Therefore, if I feel good, I love the source of pleasure, and if I feel bad, I don’t love it.

This is the way we all love in this world, starting from small children who sometimes say that mommy is bad if she doesn’t do what they like. This is a natural, direct response of the ego and is natural for everyone with regard to everything in life. This kind of love is called conditional love, and therefore, it is imperfect. This is in accordance with the level of our development, and there is nothing we can do about it.

Of course, the more we develop, the more we will demand a more sublime love, not just some delicious food, some service, or some small pleasures, but more sublime and special feelings. However, this love still depends on receiving pleasure. It is with such love and from such love that we are born since we are a desire to receive; we are all like beasts, and this is where we start. This is the reason that we love what we enjoy, which means the source of the pleasure that we feel.

This requires much work, great effort, and a gift from above in order to begin to detach from the source of pleasure and connect to one’s inner essence. We should stop depending on receiving pleasure in our donkey and should prefer the actual source of pleasure, His qualities, not bringing direct benefit to me, but are valued for their own sake, at their source. It will be a love not conditional on what I get, but which depends only on what I identify by my impression of the sublime qualities of the source, on His special exaltedness as compared to everything that I can imagine.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/10/14

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Question: How can we clarify our desire for connection with the group more and more precisely?

Answer: The desire in itself will not be clarified, except through my effort. I must constantly bow down and look under my feet, trying to find additional desires, deficiencies, and problems. This is an unpleasant, uncomfortable process because it is directed against my ego.

A person is built physiologically like this so that he egoistically yearns for comfort and fulfillment. Hormones that cause joy and happiness spread through the body while I lie on the sofa, watch some silly but enjoyable movie, and eat something sweet and tasty. In this state, there is the maximum emission of the happiness hormone.

If we seek possibilities for advancing in the way of Achishena (I will hasten it), we need to be in a completely opposite state. I cannot lie down, but must work, attain, and acquire additional deficiencies. I must clarify what else I am missing. I constantly search for deficiencies as if I am searching for unpleasant things, and this is work.

How can I make this work easier for myself and not run away from it? After all, the body will always resist it, and so I must go along with the group. If I take obligations upon myself within a group and we work together, somehow I can fight against myself and do this. Otherwise, I cannot.

So, if you want to reduce the time and make it more useful and beneficial, advancing easily and pleasantly, you need to pull and obligate your body to work hard and in an unpleasant way instead of lying on the sofa and enjoying idleness. You can do this playing to your natural feelings of shame, envy, and honor, meaning you use the incentives inherent in the human and not the animal level.

An animal lies on the sofa, but to connect with others, I require human, not beastly, motives, meaning envy, lust, and honor that cause me to leap off the sofa. We must organize in a group in such a system. And if we don’t, then we simply are wasting time for nothing, and achieving and gaining nothing.

We must be somehow connected to the life of the world group. If there is no local group, then at least contact us and get some tasks. Be connected to the departments we have here. Otherwise, you won’t even notice how your beastly body always will draw you toward something comfortable and easy. You always will be satisfied, and it will seem that everything is okay to you, but advancement will be nil.
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From the 2nd part for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/10/14, The Book of Zohar

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Where can we find spiritual deficiencies for love and bestowal? They are not found in this wide world, but only in the group and Kabbalah books, in means for spiritual advancement. Thus, I shorten the way quantitatively and qualitatively: I advance and make sure I have new vessels. This is called the path of “I shall hasten it” (Achishena) in which I build my deficiencies by myself, make sure my desire is made of the right components, and thus implement the goal.

On the other hand, by advancing in its time (Beito), I must build up a deficiency for a long time by clarifying exactly why it must be that way and by which means I can fulfill it. I must know its complete character and form while I have no yearning for it and am in a state of a descent, not feeling any attraction to spirituality. That’s the way it will be until different problems come my way from external sources that will push me forward by suffering. This is the only way that I can be motivated since I am detached from spirituality.

When I am given a state of descent and feel in spiritual darkness, I don’t lose the connection with the group, the teacher, or the source. I may not even feel the darkness, but simply operate automatically like a beast, as of yore. In this state, I can be awakened only by suffering, so I am sent some trouble related to the family, making a living, or health.

Then, I begin to run around in order to take care of the problems, and if I am not connected to the group and the teacher, I can spend my entire life in this endless struggle. However, if I prepare such a connection in advance—coming to the lessons regularly, to the meetings of friends, and participating in dissemination activities organized by the group—I gradually receive the right awakening from the Surrounding Light and understand that these are not external problems but that they come from the upper management. Everything comes from only one source: all of the confusions and all of the discomforts in life are caused only because I haven’t tightened my connection to the ultimate goal enough and have not looked for it myself.

I must organize my life so that I will behave like an old man who bent over constantly looking for something he dropped. This is how I need to move forward, looking down at my feet checking if something is lost: I can make a deeper and more complex deficiency than the desire that now lays at my base and operates me.

Every level is built on the previous level, and our perception grows and becomes ten times sharper in the sensitivity of the vessels and in clarifying them. If I perceive one hundred different discernments on one level, I discern ten times more on the next level, which means a thousand discernments, and on the next level, ten thousand discernments. It is the same desire, but it simply becomes finer and more complex. I suddenly identify details on a larger scale with greater perception in it and increasingly more discernments.

The development is due to the multiplication of qualities, rather than power. The power in the spiritual world is determined by the number of distinct pieces for each impression, sensation. This is what our advancement depends on. The main thing is to be constantly involved in practical work, studies, and actions that awaken a desire to seek spiritual properties, more sublime values. Through this approach, I turn from the path of natural development, in its time, to the path of light, the acceleration time. Then I will not need to waste my life in vain hopes and I’ll advance quickly and easily.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/10/14

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New Life 679 – Transforming Into People Of Light
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

To understand what Torah and Mitzvot (commandments) are from a spiritual aspect, we must disengage the subject from our previous knowledge. Kabbalah explains that the entire substance of creation is egoistic, the desire to receive, exist, and enjoy. The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us a unique method for developing the “speaking” level, the level of Adam (from Domeh – similar), that is similar to the upper force through using the positive force to correct the negative in us, and this is called “studying Torah.”

The desire to receive is comprised of 613 desires—248 are more refined and 365 are denser—and with correction of the desires, a person becomes a person of Light, a person of bestowal and love. Our development brings us to the understanding that the ego is destroying us, the recognition of evil, which leads to correction.

Since the intention to act for the good of others is concealed, it is impossible to know with what intent a person is acting. When we work in a group according to the method of the wisdom of Kabbalah, the 613 desires that we must correct are gradually revealed in us, and to identify these 613 desires within us and correct them, we must attract 613 Lights on us. In the beginning we identify only one egoistic desire, and after that we clarify the rest of the details.

Like a drop of semen that enters the uterus and develops into a fetus, the person also enters a special group and grows in it, and through communication with a group according to the special method, a sense develops in him that identifies the desire to bestow. The 613 Mitzvot are the 613 desires, each one of which, we must work with for the sake of others, with the intention of bestowal.
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From KabTV’s “ New Life 679 – Transforming Into People Of Light,” 1/19/16

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Question: What does it mean that “Bina went out”? Can Sefirot move around according to their will?

Answer: This refers to bestowal. I can bestow in all places without any restriction since this is the force of Bina, the Light of Hassadim (Mercy). With Hassadim, I can be in any place without any boundaries and bestow to anyone that is suitable for my bestowal. And with the Light of Hochma, there are different conditions.

The fetus enjoys the Light of Hassadim, in other words, enjoys being similar to the upper. It doesn’t perform any actions, but is similar as a result of his devotion and self-annulment. It wants to be like the mother, like the Creator. The fetus can’t express itself as the Creator in practical bestowal, but it expresses its preparedness to be like Him passively.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/13/14,The Book of Zohar

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Rabash, “The Matter of Truth and Faith”: The form of Ibur (conception), which is the level of smallness, is its real form. But because it doesn’t have only smallness, it is considered a deficiency, and wherever there is a deficiency in Holiness there is a hold of the Klipot (shells). Then the Klipot can lead to a miscarriage, which means that the spiritual embryo will fall before it has completed its phase of conception. Therefore there has to be a delaying factor which is what gives it the phase of wholeness, meaning the phase of greatness, because an embryo is its mother’s thigh (part of his mother), so the conception is not called by its own name. This is the reason that the embryo eats whatever his mother eats, which means that everything that the embryo receives is in the mother’s vessels. Therefore even if the embryo doesn’t have vessels which are fit to receive greatness, it can receive in the vessels of the upper, which is its mother, because it totally annuls itself before its mother and has no entity of its own.

This is called the phase of Ibur, when it totally annuls itself before the upper and then when it receives greatness it is in a state of wholeness, and therefore there is no hold of the Klipot. This is the reason it is called the delaying force. Therefore this is safeguarding that the embryo will not fall in spirituality like a miscarriage of an embryo in corporeality, as the corporeal mother has to maintain her embryo, so that nothing will go wrong, God forbid, and it is the same in spirituality.

It is difficult to explain the spiritual state of the embryo, since in the corporeal world we only see the external form and external phenomenon and don’t know which internal forces operate both in the mother and in the embryo. The embryo has to be in a state of wholeness; otherwise, it cannot grow. The embryo cannot grow under conditions of restriction, pressures, and deficiency. It has to receive everything the mother has.

Although there is a whole system that takes care of the embryo, it is connected to the mother’s body. This means that the embryo needs to have the power to annul itself before the greatness of the upper level. Then it will feel itself in a state of wholeness and thus will be able to grow.

The upper opens itself a bit more each time for the embryo, and the embryo has to close itself more and more and to receive from the bottom up, in rejection and at the same time also in a state of wholeness. We can see that two opposites are integrated here.

Although the embryo is totally inside the mother, it doesn’t use its desires, but annuls them and is in a state of total devotion to the mother, and thanks to this it grows.

It advances gradually from one level to the next. The upper opens up a bit more Light for it, and the embryo, on the one hand, uses its desire to receive because it grows this way.  But it uses the desire to receive from the bottom up, without receiving inside it and rejecting everything in bestowal. Each time he is with a greater force, a greater desire to adhere to the upper.

We have to try to clarify all these details in the workshop. Although it is difficult, we need to make increasingly greater efforts in order to get closer to this state and enter it as much as we can. A spiritual embryo is our next level, which we must ascend to.

In fact we have already reached it. It is actually good that we find it hard to imagine it; we feel confused and unable to understand it. This resistance will help us hold on more strongly to the small details that are close to us.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/12/14

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The Torah, Genesis 21:12: “And God said to Abraham, “Be not displeased concerning the lad and concerning your handmaid; whatever Sarah tells you, hearken to her voice, for in Isaac will be called your seed.”

Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) 1:5: “Let your home be wide open, and let the poor be members of your household. And do not engage in excessive conversation with a woman. This is said even regarding one’s own wife—how much more so regarding the wife of another.”

Question: On the one hand, it is written, “…whatever Sarah tells you, hearken to her voice,” and on the other hand, it is written, “do not engage in excessive conversation with a woman.” How can we understand this contradiction?

Answer: A person is made of different desires that are divided into two levels: a desire to receive, which means to draw everything to myself for my own egoistic filling, and a desire to bestow by which I bestow, give, and connect with others. Each of them is also correspondingly called a female desire to receive and a male desire to bestow.

Bestowal refers to a person’s attitude toward others, his effort to bestow, to give, and to connect with everyone into one unique whole, which is the correct schema of the final corrected state of humanity. Naturally there are egoistic desires among the male and female desires when the bestowal is carried out with the intention of getting something back and and gaining something, and there are desires of giving without getting something in return.

Among the female desires, there is a desire to take indiscriminately as much as possible, and there is a more essential desire to receive only in order to exist; then it as if  helps the male desire in bestowal.

Question: What does “…whatever Sarah tells you, hearken to her voice?” mean?

Answer: Sarah represents the desire that operates in order to bestow and helps her husband. For herself the basic necessities are enough, and everything else is for others. Abraham was known for his hospitality, inviting every passerby to his tent. He told his guests about the uniqueness of the Creator and offered that they could be part of a covenant he called Yashar El (Straight to the Creator), that is, straight to the goal of connection and unity among people. This covenant was based on the absolute connection between people in order to become one unique whole, and Sarah helped him in that.

However, at the same time, different sources say, “…do not engage in excessive conversation with a woman,” and it also says, “This is said even regarding one’s own wife—how much more so regarding the wife of another.” It refers to the female desire, to the desire to receive with which one should have as little contact as possible. Take from it only what can help you in the desire to bestow.

Therefore, there is no contradiction, but simply the upgrading of our desires that everyone has: both male and female. Two male desires and two female desires, only a total of four, exist in each of us. The right connection between them is the Creator’s four-letter name.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 1/19/16

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Question: After a person crosses the Machsom (barrier), does one remember everything that happened in his or her life? If the answer is yes, does one then understand the reasons for everything that happened to him?

Answer: After crossing the Machsom, a person sees everything.

Question: In my youth I experienced clinical death. I felt such love that I had never felt before, so why did God return me to this world?

Answer: The correction is to achieve clear and complete attainment of the Creator, and not just pleasant feelings.
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New Life 674 – Information Is Power
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

We need information about the world and ourselves, and further information to help us realize what know. When we know that something is bad for us, like smoking for example, we have a desire that prevents us from fulfilling it.

The wisdom of Kabbalah gives a person information about the system that manages him and the possibility of integrating in it, but this upper knowledge opens up to a person provided he learns to control his evil inclination, his heart.

All human knowledge accumulated until now has not led us to a life of happiness, but to a deadlock and collapse of the system, and everything we produce eventually turns against us. We live in constant competition and war with one another, subject to pressure and tension, until we finally ask ourselves: Am I glad? Am I happy? What am I living for anyway? We have no answers and we become depressed.

We lack vision of where we can go and how to open ourselves to this perspective for the future. Without this, we have no energy for all the trouble and pressures of life. In fact, a person wants to feel that timeless and eternal life depends on acquiring the knowledge on the operating system of the world, on opening horizons.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 674 – Information Is Power,” 1/12/16

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