Entries in the 'Spiritual Work' Category

Learning The Creator’s Language

laitman_528_01If a person doesn’t feel that everything that happens inside him and in all of reality comes from the Creator who is the only source of life, it is called punishment, although the feeling of detachment itself also comes from the Creator and isn’t the person’s will. There is no greater punishment than being detached from the Creator, which means to forget that everything comes from Above, from Him.

A person should continuously renew his contact with the Creator, consider his thoughts, and decide how to answer every appeal that comes from Him. What happens to me makes no difference. What’s important is that everything comes from Him: both the negative and positive thoughts. At one time I bless Him and another time I curse Him; at one time I want to remember that He is everywhere and another time I don’t want to remember that He exists, but I yearn for physical corporeal pleasures.

But He sends all that, and we should examine all these situations, which are mostly unpleasant. It is because the Creator shows me to what extent I am immersed in my shallow lowly ego, while I have to find the right answer and to understand why the Creator sends me such desires and thoughts and why I want to respond the way I do and not the way I should.

If I work that way, I begin to feel that I need support and that it is impossible to manage by myself. I can escape the group and manage by myself only in my corporeal life by hiding from the Creator and without feeling guilty in any way, but if I really want to advance, I immediately feel that I must clarify my relations with Him.

There is no one in the world I settle my accounts with but Him because He is the only source. Therefore, I feel that I have to be in a group, connected to the teacher, and that I need support.

In that case I already tighten the connection with the friends and with the teacher and begin to listen. It is because I need advice as to what to do in order to be constantly connected to the Creator and to not forget about Him, to properly see that every moment in my life comes from Him. I must remember that even my trivial thoughts and my corporeal desires come from Him. Everything comes from Him in order to push me to even greater adhesion to Him, to closeness.

This is what my response should be. It means that we speak the same language. He sends me different signals, and I respond to them: “I understand and I tune myself more and more to You.”

Thus I get closer to the Creator and perceive Him in greater and more accurate resolution. I begin to learn His language. There are many languages in the world, which don’t allow us to understand one another. Here I learn the Creator’s language: how he turns to me and how I should answer Him.

If a person and the group focus themselves that way, they succeed very quickly and attain contact with the Creator since He begins to teach us every moment in our life.

All of creation is influenced that way by the Creator and thus advances and gets closer and closer on its way back to the Creator. First, there was the spreading of the worlds from the top down and the shattering, then human history evolved and now we begin to ascend in order to return to the world of Infinity.
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From the Convention In France “One For All And All For One,” Day Two 5/10/14, Lesson #4

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First Familiarity With The Creator

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn spiritual work we proceed in the right line, which is towards bestowal, approach, and unification. And everything against this that is awakened in us is what we need to correct. Only this! All the rest is done intentionally and isn’t subject to any correction. We get all kinds of disturbances so that we will choose what we need more clearly. This is so that we will begin to choose from the general providence, which isn’t subject to any correction or individual, personal attainment of the Creator. This is specifically where following our efforts, we are shown how much we are not ready to do this.

Why? So that we will require help from above.

The forces that are awakened specifically in this place of unity and push us away from each other are an expression of the shattered Kli.

Specifically, we must not miss these desires and characteristics. The moment that this snake reveals himself inside, you should immediately grab him, constantly choke him and not let go. It seems to you that you have strangled him, you breathe easily and can then embrace him. But after a moment, he wakes up again. This happens even within a second, and there is no interruption! And this is good. We must constantly make starting and stopping movements like these.

The recognition of evil is the first stage and is very difficult. On every level it will be more and more acute and will require a more precise, conscious, emotional, and analytical intention. “Why is this feeling awakened, for what purpose, or is this just rejection? Why this? What for? What does the Creator want to tell me?”

I begin to associate the recognition of evil with the Creator, “He deliberately tripped me up.”

When we give a child something to do, understandably he tries to do it because instinct is pushing him towards this. And we are led forward, not by instinct, but by feeling the environment. The group holds me, obligates and directs me. There is tension in the air all the time and a need for constant methodical work until the completion of correction.

The group must constantly push me, and we all do this for one another. After all, the group is not a team of external employees. The group is what we organize and hold and the reason why we obligate ourselves. And each one of us, when he feels pressure and resistance from within, must feel that the group is holding him and won’t let him relax or go beyond its limits. This situation must be constant.

Clearly, new outbreaks of ego, anger, rejection, and trouble will be awakened. And the group must awaken in us an increasingly sophisticated sense of responsibility and the need to work specifically on the new sensations that are awakened in us. This is so that nobody will flee or try to justify himself and say “All of this is nonsense. I don’t want it and it doesn’t interest me anymore.”

These disturbances are very sophisticated, but it is precisely through this sophistication that we begin to be aware of the Creator. It is specifically in this way that I learn about Him. Just as in life when we live with someone, we begin to understand him through all kinds of good and bad relationships in our mutual dance. It is the same thing here. We have no other way of becoming aware of the Creator.

In these states, we have to go through a particular amount of necessary mutual movements. The Creator shows me negative characteristics, I try to overcome them, He shows more, and again I overcome.

Like a gilded statue made from plaster covered with gold, so have to cover our desire for pleasure with a desire to give pleasure, meaning to use it in order to bestow. And so all kinds of egoistic, negative desires constantly come to me that are awakened regarding others, and I must cover them and transform them into characteristics of bestowal and love instead of hatred. We advance according to this principle.

After I have learned a bit and have understood how the Creator plays with me, I am ready to be closer to Him. I have passed through the first stage. I am now aware of Him, understand Him, and can somehow resist Him. I have accumulated data and experience and am no longer found on such a level where it was possible to get rid of me, to confuse me with one small blow. I already understand more, I am more self-controlled, I have gathered a group that is appropriate for me, and have surrounded myself with friends, and so forth.

Ultimately, after I have learned some of the characteristics of the Creator, I can be in a more complex interaction with Him, and He then begins to be more revealed before me.

He is revealed to me: “Here I am”, and who are you?” I am negatively and egoistically worse. But I begin to understand that all of these are expressions within me, and from this I begin to understand the opposite positive image by correcting my characteristics, which have already become shared characteristics.
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From the St. Petersburg Convention “Day One” 7/12/13, Lesson #2

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All This Is Very Near…

Dr. Michael LaitmanYou help the group when you try to keep the feeling of belonging to the general connection. Someone may fall, but it is his own private fall, while at the same time, you can remain in the same state you attained in the convention.

For example, I don’t feel that I have left the convention. In the days after the convention I have only grown stronger, acquired the experience of the new level that was attained in the convention, and have thus discovered new discernments.

It is because such a state did not previously exist in our reality, in the process of correction, or in today’s world. We have actually begun the correction of the souls! Up until this very moment, everything previous to this time was just preparation. The sin (the shattering of first man), Babylon, the slavery in Egypt, the destruction of the Temples, and the exile were all necessary in order to prepare the desires for correction. Now we begin this correction!

The connection we have attained among us is the first level of correction. It isn’t clear as yet, but we are already on this level. It is like a newborn baby who doesn’t understand but who is already living in this world. I am telling you that you are already in spirituality, but now you have to discover it in practice and actually feel it.

We need to develop our senses. When a baby is born he also doesn’t see or hear anything at first. He doesn’t feel this world, and only after a while does he begin to respond to sounds and light. We also don’t respond at the moment, but we are actually in the spiritual world and now everything depends on how much we want to grow within it.

A baby has a natural instinct to grow. We don’t have it and instead of using natural instincts, we must, on our own, establish our nature and the Creator. It is only thanks to our connection that we stabilize this body by adding more and more to it.

We are constantly being given new desires and attributes and if we don’t process them correctly and don’t attribute them to the general unity, they become a burden in the form of different problems and hardships. Therefore we should try to process them in a very quick and correct manner. Otherwise, we will have to do double the work we do today that we didn’t do yesterday. Everything that wasn’t done the day before yesterday will grow and become three times more work and much more difficult to complete. If we go on this way, we will eventually give up and surrender. Then it will be necessary to start everything anew.

We have to reach a state in which we will not have to hold conventions. We will keep on ascending higher and higher even without them. If we keep the state of connection we have attained, we will not need anything. We will develop within it more and more and begin to feel one another. The daily lesson will be enough for us and we will begin to perceive it on a different level and not through the words that are transmitted through the Internet. All this is very near.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/17/13, Writings of Rabash

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The Levels Of The Spiritual Ascent

Laitman_041_01We have to try to keep focused on the general picture while reading the weekly section of the Torah (Parashat HaShavua) since the Torah tells us about how to reach complete comprehensive unity.

The ego is increasingly revealed time after time on the way to unity, and as it grows we discover the need for an increasingly greater connection above it.

The ego is our helper that operates against us and serves as help against us, but at the same time it reveals all the flaws, the defects, and the poisonous vapors of our states.

The ego is revealed in the consumerist attitude of people towards the still, vegetative, and animate nature, but especially in the relations between us. Envy, jealousy, domination, aspiration for fame and respect are our major problems.

Therefore, the goal of our correction is to bring a person to a state of unity and wholeness when he can harmoniously connect with everyone else in one unique system. This is the reason the Torah, the Light that corrects all the flaws, was given to us. The flaws are corrected to the extent that we define them as such, which means according to the way we see them.

By rising above the flaws to even greater connection and unity between us we ascend to the levels called holidays, weekdays, Sabbath, and Rosh Chodesh (the beginning of the month), the nations of the world, Levites, Cohanim (priests), Israelis, etc.

On these levels we see all the other supporting pillars of the spiritual ascent by being on the level of King David at one time and then on the level of King Solomon, and then the level of Moses, Aaron, Joseph, or Jacob.

As a person goes through these levels he feels that he ascends from the lowest level to the highest, being in as many states as possible.  He seems to experience all the days, holidays, weekdays, etc. He enters the states of each of these supporting pillars, connects, and unites with all of humanity. Eventually he integrates the whole world inside him and becomes a human being, Adam (stemming from the Hebrew word “Domeh” – to resemble), which means similar to the Creator.

Therefore we should perceive everything the Torah tells us about as essential levels of our development until we all reach the predetermined wholeness.

Question: Is the sequence of the holidays starting from Rosh Hashanah (the new year) onward kept in a person’s feelings and then accordingly in his feeling as Noah, Abraham, etc.?

Answer: Every person feels this in his own way.

If the general soul wasn’t shattered and was only one soul that corrects itself in a certain purposeful manner that is especially meant for that, it would go through all the levels in an accurate order.

But since we are all mutually connected and can be corrected only by the connection between us, we have to go through all these states that are mutually incorporated in us and in the figures the Torah calls Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, etc.

All these figures are spiritual levels and their inner filling, which on every level is called Adam. The levels themselves are called Sabbath, weekdays, holidays, months, and years.

It is a whole system that is made of the still, vegetative, and the animate nature; a whole world that develops in integral unity by attaining increasingly greater harmony each time.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 4/28/14

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Creating The World Of Desires

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe amazing system called Jethro is part of the general spiritual system that includes egoistic attributes as well as several altruistic attributes that are totally the opposite.

The connection between Jethro and Moses was kept through Zipporah and the children.

Question: Why was Moses allowed to marry Zipporah, Jethro’s daughter? Is it because the nation wasn’t divided into tribes then?

Answer: We mustn’t look at that from the perspective of division. All the biblical figures throughout history took wives from hostile tribes. Jacob, for example, married Rachel and Leah who were the daughters of his greatest enemy Laban.

Jethro doesn’t support or side with Moses either, but there is a very clear connection between them as Jethro is totally immersed in Pharaoh (the ego) with one foot and, thanks to that, can be connected to Moses.

The question is about what Moses did with Jethro for forty years. Why did he need this intermediate level? Forty years is the level of Bina on every level.

Having studied forty years with Pharaoh, Moses spends the next forty years with Jethro and only then does he spend the same number of years with the nation of Israel.

Question: If Pharaoh is the higher level of study, why must he study from Jethro afterward?

Answer: It is in order to know how to change to the attribute of bestowal. A true connection is formed between opposite attributes, just as was the case with Jacob and Laban’s daughters. What is more, Jacob had concubines and servants who also had his children. This may seem like an unclear mess, but this is how the world of desires is created, and this is how they are tightly connected.

Ruth, the mother of King David’s dynasty, belonged to Moab, which was a nation that hated the Israelis. David’s heir is the Messiah Son of David, who will bring the entire world to unity many years later at the end of time.

An ordinary person who doesn’t see the whole picture doesn’t see the beginning and the end, the entrance and the exit of this system. He doesn’t understand why it closes this way, but the integral system closes precisely in this way.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 5/21/14

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The Division Of The People Of Israel

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe High Priest is the highest point, the highest intention through which a person communicates with the Creator. In our world, he was chosen by the great assembly.

The hierarchical division of the people of Israel began from the time of Moses. After he received the Torah and brought the people into the wilderness, his father-in-law Jethro taught him how to correctly organize the hierarchy of the people.

Before then people always were in a circle, gathered around Mount Sinai and feeling that they were equals. In the Exodus from Egypt, they needed to work in three lines, correctly integrating their egoistic desires, arranged according to a hierarchy with an altruistic intent that had to be circular. This was because even though it was directed toward the Creator, it was derived from the center of the circle. How was it possible to integrate these two things? For this, Jethro gave Moses a method for correctly handling the people.

People must yearn to become round in their intention but not in their mutual compliance with movements toward the Creator. The equality can be only in intent because from the start the desires are not ours. They are given to each one of us from above.

Jethro suggested dividing the people into tens, hundreds, thousands, and so forth. Each of the twelve tribes went to its camp. All kinds of unifications and connections between them were prohibited. For example, it was not allowed for them to marry others from another tribe. Each tribe had to keep to itself, but simultaneously, they had to advance together.

The correct combination between individuals and a single unity was revealed through choosing ministers for tens, hundreds, and thousands, while the High Priest was chosen from the tribe of Levi, which was composed of Levites and Cohens only.

In this way Jethro established and arranged hierarchical work with the ego because he had been a servant of Pharaoh. However, because he precisely knew the entire system of Pharaoh he could be an intermediary between Pharaoh and Moses.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 5/21/14

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Come Quickly To The Promised Land

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Where are we today? The people of Israel left Egypt, received the Torah on Mount Sinai, understood that they had some kind of task, a mission, and what was next? What kind of task has been placed before us today?

Answer: Our actual task today is to develop the people of Israel in the land of Israel so that they will know what they must do to sustain themselves and continue to exist.

When our people will ensure their existence, they must explain why they exist, for what higher purpose. Only if we carry out this higher purpose and yearn to bring all of humanity to adhesion with the Creator do we merit being connected with Him.

This knowledge must reach the people, and we will attract the Light that must illuminate us when we go to meet it through our yearning to connect and provide an example for the entire world. However, if we don’t connect, then that same Light will illuminate us through its backside.

If we are not ready to approach this Light, it will be revealed to us in an opposite way, and as a result, we will experience terrible misfortune such as wars, disasters and another holocaust like we passed through 70 years ago.

We see from day to day how the world situation is developing and becoming worse. Everyone in the world is beginning to talk about anti-Semitism as if it were a normal phenomenon. No one is ashamed anymore, and no one considers it to be bad. England, Scandinavia, and Spain, essentially all of them, are recognized as being openly anti-Semitic, as if it were self-evident.

In fact, they are right, after all, we have not transmitted the method of correction to the world. We have not carried out our obligation.

Comment: The problem is that not everyone believes that this is really our obligation, our function.

Answer: It is necessary to listen to what the sages, the Kabbalists, say. We have no other choice. We will never attain the truth as long as we have not corrected ourselves and have not attained revelation. So we cannot sit and wait until the truth becomes known to us. It will never be known to us if we don’t advance toward it.

We welcome everyone in this world to connection and a simple unity. We are not required to wait until the heavens open and we see the spiritual world. Sit in a circle with others and in 20 to 30 minutes you will see how you begin to feel this higher power. In the center of this circle, in the center of our connection, we feel the origin of a unique force.

This is possible and this must be done quickly among all of the people of Israel! The problem is that it is not for nothing that these people are called “stiff-necked.” In spite of it all, you must not despair, for the people of Israel in relation to the entire world are like the Cohens and Levites among the people of Israel.

Although we are not ready to be Cohens and Levites, the people of Israel who yearn to be Yashar El (straight to the Creator), will be required to become them, since the world will require this from us.

The moment that we begin to seriously realize this task together, and the moment we begin to carry out this unification of the people of Israel, the entire world will settle down. Everyone will look at us and say, “See what they are doing! We will wait. They have initiated something special.”

The nations of the world will feel this because within them are the roots of the shattering due to the sin of Adam HaRishon with the tree of knowledge, and if Israel begins to correct this sin, then the nations of the world will feel this, “Oh, they are making this correction! We didn’t even know that it was possible to correct this at all and come closer, whereas the Jews are doing it!”

The nations of the world will immediately change their attitude towards us. We will begin the correction and it will be known immediately to the entire world. We don’t even need to advertise anything about it. Not long ago, I published a large article in the largest American newspaper, The New York Times and, after that in the English newspaper The Telegraph and in the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera. However, in the future, there won’t be a need to advertise anything. The nations of the world will write about it themselves because they will feel it themselves.

However, if we don’t bring them this correction and don’t carry out our task, the anti-Semitism, which we are now witnessing, will continue to grow. So, come. Let’s cross the wilderness quickly and reach the land of Israel.
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From KabTV’s “The Torah Chapters with Shmuel Vilozni” 2/2/15

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Six Hundred Thousand Loyal Lovers

laitman_943Baal HaSulam, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”`: With this collective responsibility, each member of the nation was liberated from worrying about the needs of his own body and could keep the Mitzva, “Love thy friend as thyself” in the fullest measure, and give all that he had to any needy person, since he no longer cared for the existence of his own body, as he knew for certain that he was surrounded by six hundred thousand loyal lovers, who were standing ready to provide for him.”

I will succeed in attaining mutual guarantee on condition that I will feel personal security. This security comes from the environment that shows me that it is concerned about me so much that it neutralizes in me any need to think about assuring my existence. So I depend upon the environment. The main thing is to find an environment that will influence me with the power of mutual guarantee, for through this they neutralize my ego and force me to forget about myself and to love others.

This means everything is found in the hands of the society that can transform me into a lover of all people, only if I want it. It is possible to take the most cruel and unruly person, and if all of us surround him with mutual guarantee, he will be forced to reach love of others.

A person depends on the environment one hundred percent. But his work is to obligate the environment to influence him with the help of the power of mutual guarantee. To the degree that he does this, to that degree he becomes sensitive to receiving the power of mutual guarantee from others and in that way he reaches love of others.

But this is a closed circle. Even the best environment will not be able to convey the power of mutual guarantee to a person if he has no sensitivity. We recognize in ourselves how much we are insensitive to external influences. In childhood our parents tried hard to influence us, but we discounted them. So from his side, a person must influence the society, and to the degree that he does this, he becomes more and more sensitive to the influence of the society.

The influence must be mutual. We cannot take ordinary people and surround them with the power of our mutual guarantee because they will become even greater egoists. We must educate them so that they will understand that this works only like this: Me– towards the society, and the society – towards me. But if the group influences me and brings me the power of mutual guarantee, then it changes me and directs me towards love of others.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/28/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Work Not For The Sake Of Reward

Laitman_167Baal HaSulam, Letter #16: …Therefore, before one goes out to make one’s daily bread, he should remove his thoughts from private Providence and say, “If I am not for me, who is for me?” He should do all the tactics applied in corporality to earn his living as do others.

But in the evening, when he returns home with his earnings, he must never think that he has earned this profit by his own novelties, but rather that even if he stayed all day in the basement of his home, he would still have earned his pay, for so the Creator contemplated for him in advance, and so it had to be.

So, why should a person make an effort for nothing if he would get everything anyway? The effort and the nuisance are required to correct the Shevira (breaking). In his perception and his destroyed Kelim, it seems to him that he indeed does the work and it depends upon his effort.

This is to say that the gap between the two principles of “If I am not for me, who is for me?” and “There is none else beside Him” is precisely the same Shevira. If we close and nullify the gap, then we would return to adhesion.

This is the meaning of the unification of HaVaYaH Elokim. HaVaYaH means private Providence, where the Creator is everything, and He does not need dwellers of material houses to help him. Elokim in Gematria is HaTeva [the Nature], where man behaves according to the nature that He instilled in the systems of the corporeal heaven and earth, and he keeps those rules as do the rest of the corporeal beings. And yet, he also believes in HaVaYaH, meaning in private Providence.

By that he unites them with one another, and “they became as one in his hand,” and thus he brings great contentment to his Maker, and brings illumination to all the worlds.

This is like a horse and its rider who adhere to each other with an inseparable connection so that the horse guesses in advance and moves according to the desire of the rider. That is how a person wants to feel, that all of his internal movements are directed by the higher power.

The person feels internal resistance from his desire, but is even happy for this resistance. This is because then he has the possibility of ascending above this resistance. If he returns himself to the same movements where he would be like a shadow to the Creator, happily and agreeably obeying His guidance, even though this is the opposite of his desire, then with this he corrects himself and gives contentment to the Creator.

The strength of his adherence is measured through this: How much are the actions of the person precisely adjusted? The actions of the person are accommodated to the Creator precisely in movement and in rhythm. In this way, the person attains the Creator and is aware of His providence and guidance throughout all of creation.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/15/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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What Should We Think About Before And After The Correction

laitman_624_02_0Baal HaSulam, Letter #16: “…prior to making a Mitzva [commandment], one must not consider private Providence at all. On the contrary, one should say, ‘If I am not for me, who is for me?’”
A Mitzva is the correction of a person’s desire since in the state he is in, he is detached from the Creator.

He wants to connect this state to the Creator as the one upper force, “There is none else besides Him,” “the good and the benevolent.” Thus, he restores this state to the state he was in before the shattering.

This is how he collects these states time after time, as it is written, “until many pennies accumulate into a great sum,” and he completes the correction of his soul.

We were given 613 corrupt desires to begin with, which we try to restore to adhesion. Before we perform a Mitzva—when I understand that I am in a corrupt state because I am not in adhesion, in unity, with the upper force—I mustn’t think about private providence, but, instead, we should say, “If I am not for me, who is for me?”

…But after the fact, a person must reconsider and believe that it was not by “My power and the might of my hand” that I made the Mitzva, …

This means that I perform a Mitzva, that I exert myself as much as I can and use all the means—the Rav, the group, the study, dissemination, everything—in order to please the Creator and to tie myself to “There is none else besides Him.” At the same time, I take into account only “If I am not for me, who is for me,” and that I must take all these actions by myself.
However, having succeeded in something, I must say that this success was predetermined and ready, and that the Creator has prepared this for me in advance. If I am adhered to “If I am not for me, who is for me,” and eventually to, “There is none else besides Him,” it is the complete means to reach adhesion.
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From the 1st> part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/15/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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