Entries in the 'Spiritual Work' Category

Fate

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: The word “Pur” (fate) appears in Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) and also in Purim, which symbolizes the end of correction. Why does this term appear in both words?

Answer: The word “Pur” refers to a state in which I don’t choose anything. I try, demand and ask that the Creator should choose for me. “Pur” is from the Hebrew word “fate.”

It is a state in which I don’t count on my own strength and advance blindly, relying totally on the next level, on the Light, on the Creator who guides me.

We can only ascend the spiritual levels and reach the state of Kippur, Pur, and Purim if we advance in faith above reason. This is the only way it works.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/12/14

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Alone In An Infinite World

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: We know that a group of ten friends is a spiritual Partzuf. How can I see ten Sefirot among ten “donkeys?”

Answer: The word “donkey” (Hamor) stems from the Hebrew word “matter” (Homer). Working in a group of ten, you will see that of these ten donkeys (matters), you are the lowest. Malchut and all the other nine Sefirot are higher, pure categories of bestowal. You are the only uncorrected egoist.

You will discover that the matter of all the nine donkeys is actually concentrated in you. This means that you are the greatest donkey with a huge ego and all the others before you are not people but angels, the category of love and bestowal. You will understand that no one in the world needs to be corrected but you, and that all the others are totally connected to the Creator! Only you alone are the uncorrected part of creation. You should look more closely and you will discover it.
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From the Convention In St. Petersburg 9/18/14, Preparatory Lesson 2

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The Results Of The Thousand Year Race

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: The annual cycle of the Jewish holidays symbolizes the series of states through which a person passes on his way toward connection and unification, and this is the goal of the evolution of the entire human species. Every holiday represents a particular stage on the way toward unification.

Why does this entire cycle finish in the month of Elul where we summarize the results of what we went through and attained, and judge ourselves?

Answer: Israel means Yashar-El (Straight to God), meaning a desire directed straight toward the higher force of nature. The Creator is nature, and, so, what is being spoken about here is our balance with nature. There was a time when Abraham discovered that this is precisely the goal of human evolution that we must reach. That group of students that he gathered around him in ancient Babylon and brought to the land of Canaan eventually became the people of Israel.

This was a community of people that defined the attainment of equivalence of form with the higher power as the goal. The higher power of nature is the power of bestowal and love. This is what Abraham taught those Babylonians who followed him: love of one another, bestowal, and benevolence. Benevolence is the original and primordial characteristic of Abraham.

During his investigations, Abraham discovered the goal of the existence of the human species, which is to reveal the love between all people or, at least at first, among some of them. Thanks to relationships like these, they attained similarities between them: equality and conformity to nature, to its inner power called the Creator.

Nature is based upon a single force that connects all parts of creation together, these being the parts of the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking. All of them are included in a single system that connects all of the elements together in general harmony and working together.

Just like a working cell of our body inside which there is a whole world, a countless number of mutually connected elements—like genes, bacteria, and whatever might be there—but everything is found in a general harmony. If there is no harmony, then this is a disease.

All of nature is like a cell; it is a single, closed, integral, global system, and is absolutely connected. There are no parts in it that could operate independently of the others and develop separately from them. All development is mutually connected and precisely defined.

Lately, science is discovering how much we lack free choice and that everything is determined by genes, hormones, and combinations of chemicals and various bacteria. What I will do depends only upon this—which decisions I will accept, to whom I will be attracted, and who I will avoid.

We naively think that we have free choice, yet we don’t. We only obediently carry out the commands of nature. A person is found within nature, and all of his development is determined through a combination of the internal forces within him. He also obeys and blindly follows his instincts like animals.

By what means is a person ready to influence his development? First of all, we must understand that nature has only one law, and it is general unity. This law connects together the parts of nature into a single system, except for one part, which is the human being.

Humanity, ultimately must also reach that same connection and attain balance with all the parts of nature. Yet this is as a result of blows and pressure through suffering and troubles during thousands of years of evolution. This has cost us a multitude of suffering and pain.

After all, we know how nature is ready to push us. For thousands of years, human society has advanced and lived as if in a wild jungle where one devours the other. Yet, at some stage of development, we suddenly say to ourselves, “Enough!”

This means that feelings and intelligence are discovered in us at such a level that we begin to think and wonder about the reason for our endless torment. For what are we compelled to suffer? What useful conclusions can be derived from these sufferings? Who enjoys our life? To whom can we give pleasure?

These questions pop up in our minds and hearts by themselves. From the blows and the pain, we begin to ask, “What does this mean?” We already have gone through the first and second world wars. How much more is it possible to endure? Today, the world is found on the threshold of a third world war. We already have discussed this quite openly.

This is a life under the conditions of terror. There are terrible problems, a feeling of powerlessness. Half of the world throws surplus products in the trash, whereas the other half is dying of starvation. The humanity of today possesses such immense powers and possibilities, but look at what we do with these immense abilities and potential.

We are compelled to stop here and summarize, to judge ourselves. The month of Elul represents this repentance. Following this, we receive a kind of understanding and knowledge. We become a little wiser. The Ohr Hochma (Light of Wisdom) appears in us, saying to us, “You are suffering, but it is possible not to suffer. It is up to you only to understand from where suffering comes to you. Then you will know how to be released from it.”

All of these questions are awakened in us, and call for a search and investigation of the cause for suffering. They are awakened as a result of the unique illumination of the understanding in our heart and mind that is called Elul. The word “Elul “is an acronym for “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine,” Ani Ledodi Vedodi Li, (Song of Songs 6:3).

“My beloved” is that immense system of nature that develops us. We receive a special sign from it, experience unique feelings and mental insight that makes it possible for us to understand what the system of nature wants from us, what it is thinking about, and what it demands. The entire general system of creation is called the Creator, or nature, which is the same thing.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 9/14/14

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The Common Game Against Each One’s Private Ego

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Children in the Diaspora usually go to Jewish schools called Hebrew school. These are special schools that are open on Sunday, where children learn Hebrew, Jewish history, and Jewish customs. Let’s try to imagine a school where unity is taught. What should it look like? What will happen there?

Answer: People learn there by connection, by playing connection games and by having discussions in circles. Of course, children also engage in physical activities like games with balls, etc., but they don’t play against each other, only together.

We must develop games that are not based on competition between individuals and between teams. Instead, a person has to compete against himself in order to properly be incorporated within the common activity and to see himself as his own competitor.

This doesn’t apply only to children, because the parents also have a problem. They must be taught the principles of family life and how to impart to their children a general, integral attitude towards that world.

The relevant issues should be discussed in circles where everyone connects and then the discussion should be continued and expanded at home.

Question: Is this what will make a child Jewish?

Answer: Of course, since a Jew is someone who yearns for unity and connection with everyone. A Jew is someone who knows that his role in life is to be a Light unto the nations and to bring correction to the world through connection. This is especially true in our times, in the time of the global crisis when there is no other remedy but the connection between all the parts of reality, in perfect harmony, in one circle.

Generally speaking, it isn’t about a Jewish school, but about a social community school where the whole family comes to practice connection. When they perform these exercises, they feel that suddenly a certain power surrounds them and changes their perception of reality so that the world seems different.

Connections and relationships begin to change internally under the effect of the force of the unity that is invoked by the Light, and it raises people to a new level of understanding. They begin to see the world as they have never seen it before, as if they wearing glasses that brings into focus the fogginess and blurriness of their nearsightedness, and they become as one connected picture, stretches into the distance.

This is exactly the feeling that both children and adults will feel, starting from their very first workshop.

Question: Will this connection help overcome the gaps between them?

Answer: The connection will not only help, but will also solve all problems. The connection gives us power, not in order to overcome hardships and to win, since when we are united, there is no one to defeat. The unity between us does all the work and drives away all our enemies, all the interferences, illnesses, and problems, everything that comes from self love.

At the same time, there is no need to give up our opinions and our beliefs, but only to add our exertion in order to connect with the whole nation, with all of Israel; that’s all.

This is what the Torah and current research of connection the wisdom of the crowd tell us. The Israeli nation must be the first to connect. Otherwise the force of connection will not be able to go through it to the nations of the world.

Question: Why is it the Israeli nation that has to pave this path?

Answer: Not everyone agrees that we are special, but history proves it is so. We are special because the whole world depends on us. Although this connection is invisible for the time being, the nations of the world do feel it. There are those who believe that their lives would be much better without us, but there are others who know that we need to change and that this change will be for the benefit of the world.
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From KabTV’s “Anti-Semitism” 6/18/14

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A Small Collective Effort Can Change The World

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can we unite more closely around the events that are taking place in Israel? How can we affect and help strengthen the groups in Israel on the one hand, and at the same time, use this situation in order to advance and leap to a new level?

Answer: The point is not just about Israel, but that the Creator wants to raise the created being to a state of adhesion with Him. We have to see everything in a much more global manner and not be confused by what we see in the corporeal world.

There is a created being that includes the different levels of the desire and every desire has to reach complete compatibility with the Upper Light, with the Creator, and with the attribute of bestowal. This is what the Creator is leading us to.

The less egoistic, purest part of creation begins to yearn for the Creator and so it is called Israel, Yashar-El (straight to the Creator). Although in our world, even though this part seems the most egoistic, it isn’t so.

It fact all the nations of the world make up the whole great ego that is divided into billions of tiny pieces and so it isn’t expressed in its full intensity. The ego of Israel is concentrated in a small number of souls. How many people in the world yearn for the Creator? Let’s say a million such people and all the others number seven billion.

This is the reason that people think that we are much more egoistic: we demand to reveal the Creator, the spiritual world. We have to understand that we are one vessel (the vessel of the general soul). We have to yearn to go forward, and not to help Israel. Israel also doesn’t have to help us, but we must come together. The Creator has arranged these conditions for us that we don’t chose. They stem from the incompatibility between the Lights and the vessels, from the oppositeness between them.

The Light of Ein Sof (Infinity) is in a certain level of compatibility between the vessel of the world of Ein Sof at any given moment and they must reach absolute connection. The relationship between them determines everything that happens in the world.

Therefore, we have to accept this as an essential condition and see each of these conditions as the optimal condition that was chosen by the Light and the vessel. It is the law of physics that operates here and not anyone’s desire. It says in the Torah, in the language of the Haggadah, that this what the Creator wanted.

“He gave a law that cannot be broken,” and so we have to see objectively that every state that was given to us stems from the adaptability between the Light and the vessels. Although these states are very painful and unpleasant, all the internal and external states, the general and the private, were all given to us only so that we will connect more tightly among us. This is the only way we can fulfill them correctly.

The right fulfillment of each of these states is only in the connection between us that is aiming at resembling the attribute of bestowal, the attribute of the Light, until the Light is dressed, incorporated, and felt within us. We have to yearn for that at any given moment, despite the difficult conditions that the Creator gives us. Sometimes they are very unpleasant, confusing, humiliating, complicated and disturbing, making it difficult for us to understand what is actually going on.

By the way, this is the best state, which indicates that a person has transcended from one state to another, sometimes it may be very painful and accompanied by physical problems. I saw how my teacher Rabash used to go through them. He actually didn’t understand where he was and what he was doing. I used to take him by the hand and help him sit by the table and serve him a cup of coffee and then another, and then gradually we would begin to speak and come back to himself and turn to Light. But at first, he was simply a body that could hardly move.

We should understand that since each of us includes all of the desires, starting from the still, vegetative, and animate, all the way to the human level. We will gradually go through all of them.

We have to help Israel be together with us in one connection among us. All those who yearn for the Creator are called Israel. We have to remember our descent from Babylon and reach the state that all of modern Babylon called Israel yearns for the Creator. How? We do this by working together.

I hope that the Creator won’t leave us and will not hold back our advancement. The tension in the world will not subside, but will grow. Even if we are bombed, if there are demonstrations against us, or pressure put on us, the main thing is that we continue to yearn for the Creator above all that and bless every situation, since at least in this way we can develop. But we have to try to do it differently.

On the whole, we will later discover that by making one small change in our intention, we can change everything that happens in the corporeal world from bad to good. In one day our enemies and the missiles can turn into something wonderful and that is the absolute opposite! Together we will be able to do that and we will witness all of it!
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From the Convention In Toronto “Day One” 8/4/14, 1st Meal 

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Giving Yourself To Others

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can we get out from the depth of our egoism that hangs around our neck like a weight and develop awe?

Answer: There are many different thoughts. I am here so that all the friends pull me out of my egoism. I am here to help the friends get out of their egoism. I am here to make some good action in the eyes of the Creator or to achieve a state where the Creator influences me through the group.

The question is which one of these thoughts is the most effective?

The answer is very simple. The most effective thought is when you constantly wish for all your friends, at least in the group of ten, not to mention the friends around the world, to attain the spiritual world.

And you are here in order to exert yourself and thus help others. Let it be self-sacrifice because in principle, it is the property of bestowal. You want to realize yourself—to give yourself to others.
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From the Convention In St. Petersburg 9/18/14, Preparatory Lesson 2

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Variations And Spiritual Transitions

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What should our intention be when we yearn for revelation in the desire of the friends, that the Creator’s force of love should be revealed? Should it be in a person, above him, or in the friends?

Answer: It depends on what phase of unity and connection with the group a person is in. First it seems that he is separated from the friends. Then it seems that he is inside them. Afterward it seems that they are inside him and he absorbs and perceives their thoughts and desires. This means that there are different variations and transitions here: Who is in whom; who is adhered to whom; who is connected inside whom?

Question: But how should I want the revelation of the Creator inside them, or should I simply adhere to them and that’s all?

Answer: You help them with your desire in every way. You should worry about your friends just as you wish a person who is closest to you success.
[144490]
From the Convention In St. Petersburg 9/18/14, Preparatory Lesson 2

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Yearn For Bestowal

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What is a consistent order of work with the ego? Suppose that I discover evil within myself. What happens next? How do I work with this?

Answer: The first condition is to relax, for you are not ready to work with your ego. So, don’t think about “taking an axe and hacking the tail off the ego.”

Work with the ego doesn’t begin from trying to annihilate the negative characteristics within us. Instead, we attract positive characteristics to us. So, in general, the wisdom of Kabbalah doesn’t talk about work with the ego. This is the role of the Creator, the Light. Our work is to want the ego to be corrected into an opposite characteristic.

In no manner do we think about the ego. We must yearn for good, for love, for connection and unity, for a connection between us in which each one will stop feeling himself and will feel one homogeneous body (the desire). If we think about this and want this, then the Light will act and influence us according to our yearning for it because this is its characteristic: one, singular, unified, a singular desire, the characteristic of bestowal.

Together with this, I don’t think at all about the ego. I think only about what is positive, and then the Light acts on me and corrects everything necessary in me. I don’t teach it what to correct because, after all, I don’t know that. That is how this works.

Question: Suppose I have discovered that I hate and envy some friend. What must I ask for at this moment?

Answer: Ask for love. Try it, and you will be convinced that there is a difference between asking for correction of evil and the appearance of the characteristic of good. It is not the same thing.

This is because a person is found wherever his thoughts are found. Why should I be within my evil and be stimulated by it, “sucking all around it,” and exploring it? I don’t need this! On the contrary, it is better that I would be connected with the positive future and desirable characteristics that don’t exist in me in the meantime. It is better to think about them, to yearn, to dream, to imagine that I am within them.

Flee from your ego and yearn for bestowal.
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From the Convention In St. Petersburg 9/18/14, Preparatory Lesson 2

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Have The Predictions Of The Prophets Materialized?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Will the world begin to think and feel the same as we do, through external dissemination, or must there be a very deep internal unity for this? In what way will this happen?

Answer: I don’t know. You are asking me about forms that have never been clothed in the substance of our world but for which there is free choice.

Malchut de Ein Sof, through all kinds of emanations: Shevirah (breaking), descent, correction, evolves into five worlds and descends to our world. In the physical world, nature forcefully developed this shattered egoistic desire to exist until our time. But nothing in this process ever happened according to the desire of a person.

The development of the creature is realized in three stages: descent from above to below, direct development, and ascent from below to above. We are now beginning to be engaged in correcting the shattered desires, which is done within the “middle line.” Only the third stage provides free choice in which I will develop myself more rapidly than nature would force me to do it.

Through the development of a yearning for correction through group, through friends, through envy, I push myself forward. The friends help me advance by developing in me a cunning and cruel egoistic feeling that they are satisfied and succeeding, and I am not, and this is what helps me advance.

This means that in our ascent from below to above, there exists the possibility of freedom of action where we don’t just hasten the time of our development, but also change its flow, its character, and the manner in which correction will be realized in a better and more rapid form or by a slow path of suffering. This depends solely on our choice. For this we gather in a group.

So when you ask me what will be, how must one act, in what form  can we embody everything in the future, I don’t know. Not even a prophet knows this. They wrote about future states and described them only in the form in which they will be forced to play out by our brutal nature.

But if we include in ourselves in this development and mollify our way, then it will be completely different. So there is nothing to read what the prophets wrote and sit and think about when their prophecy will be materialized, since it is doubtful that it will be as they predicted. We have already made many appropriate corrections.

In what manner this will truly be realized tomorrow, we still don’t know. But since we are going forward by way of bestowal, how this will happen shouldn’t concern us. We want only the one result from our path: that there will be bestowal to the Creator.

But if I ask about the future, this is a sign that I am an egoist.
[141167]
From the Convention In Sochi “Day One” 7/13/14, Lesson 2

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In His Image And In His Likeness

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What is the principle according to which the human body was created and especially the human face?

Answer: In the image and in the likeness of a spiritual object. If a person takes the two forces that exist in nature into his, the positive and the negative, the attribute of bestowal and the attribute of receiving, and starts combining them correctly on all the levels of the ego: the root level, level one, two, three, and four, the combination of these attributes will be expressed in an external form such as his body and his face.

The face is the place from where a person radiates the Light of Hochma that descend on His body. The Light descends from the free parts of his face unto the other parts. That’s first.

Second, let’s find out how these elements are formed on a simpler level: There is a sum of certain elementary particles that form much more complex elements and then bodies. Such small organs or bodies like the liver, the kidneys, the lungs, etc. gather into a physical body or certain other objects.

How is a change of growth, a change of nature in its evolution achieved? Only thanks to the mutual cooperation of two forces: bestowal and receiving. But this leads to endless variations and combinations.

Comment: All the openings for receiving information are in the head, and the openings for extracting information are below the navel.

Answer: There are reasons for that. The spiritual object is formed in an identical manner. All our body is actually formed in His image and in His likeness, which means according to the right combination between these two forces.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 2/20/14

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