Entries in the 'Spiritual Work' Category

Seeing The World As Paradise

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: We have created a weapon so powerful that all of us have the opportunity not only to nullify and dissolve, but also to develop, to grow for the good of the society.

We have learned to feel ourselves as a single whole. What do we need to add to feel the Creator more clearly? Where must we make an effort besides in the lesson, besides praying for the success of our friends?

Answer: Everything that I feel around me is my soul, it is all me, but, in my perception, all of the people are detached from me by my ego. If I neutralize it, I will stop feeling them as contrary and opposite to me. I will begin to wish for them what I formerly wished for myself, meaning the best. Then, I will be using myself, my ego, in the right way, to correct it.

It is not about having the right attitude toward others, not about love of others; rather, it is to correct my ego within me.

How can I correct it? It is only according to the examples that I see: This one, I don’t love for this reason and that one for other reasons. That one is distorted, this one is repulsive, evil, and so forth. My ego portrays an emotional picture for me of my relationship toward everyone. I criticize everyone, just like everyone else does, for they have something to criticize others about, as it is written, “With his own blemish he stigmatizes [others] as unfit” (Talmud Kiddushin 70a).

I criticize the world that is portrayed to me as terrible, and I see it as getting even worse because the ego is growing. We perceive the world this way, according to how the ego portrays it to us: people fighting, someone kills someone, everything possible. That is how the ego draws a picture of the world for us, not within us, but outside of us so that everything will be perceived more vividly, clearly, and juicily.

In order to correct the ego, a very good indicator has been given to me. I must bring myself to such a state where I see the world as the Garden of Eden (paradise): People love each other, they are only doing good for one another, and they merge into a single whole of mutual love.

In addition, it is the same thing in the still, vegetative, and animate nature. It depends on the internal correction of the person. The world itself doesn’t change; it is permanent. The person is the one who changes and sees the world differently. This is the entire correction.

When you are together, do you perceive a situation like this where you don’t see anything negative in the friends?

At first, one seems lazy to you, another seems dirty and disorganized, and a third is noisy. One annoys everyone with his pomposity and another through his shouting. No one knows his place. That is how you evaluate everyone at first.

Can you now say that these people are closer to you, that you don’t see any distorted faces, any harmful gazes? This is because when you live with someone, you no longer pay attention to his defects and perceive him as some kind of general image. For example, a little child doesn’t see his mother, but knows that there is someone big next to him: This is his mother.

Can you say the same thing about your relationship with the friends? Has some kind of change taken place in them, at least partially? Do you feel, even egoistically, that you can’t imagine your life without them? Do you feel that fragments of you are scattered throughout Russia, as if your body has been torn to pieces and scattered to different locales?

A person’s sensation must be precisely like this, really to such a degree that you will begin to feel each other, experiencing parallel states, and, after that, a single common state of ascent or descent. You even will begin to feel each other’s physiological states: how this one has a stomachache and that one a headache.

There was a time in ancient days when these were the requirements of a doctor. This is because medicine was not based on all kinds of devices, but on the doctor’s feeling the state of the patient because he was a divine doctor. Correction was a profession where one corrected another. So, by feeling him, he had to work together with the Light to convey it to the patient, to help him. This was a completely different medicine.

In this way, it is necessary to scrutinize what we are missing all the time so that the situation of the separate bodies will disappear and everyone will become “like one person with one heart.” They will move in sync. They will understand and feel each other where everyone must optimally be at every moment. This is not Brownian movement; it is not chaotic. Rather, it is internally coordinated because a single Light acts upon and influences everyone.

If we direct ourselves like this, we will raise our sensitivity. Then, we will begin to feel how one force is working within us and is gathering us together to the degree of our sensitivity toward it, to the required degree, by our inner yearning and constant attraction.

This is all of our common work that only can be done collectively. One person can jump, walk, make an effort, but, for him nothing will come of it. Essentially, he is doing everything right, but the proof that he is doing this for the sake of the Creator, is when he carries out these activities together with others, wanting to connect with them.

Why? It is because the ego was created specifically to separate us, and, through nullifying it, a person directs himself toward the Creator, toward resemblance and equivalence with Him. The ego is a helper that we cannot do without.
[142480]
From the Convention In Sochi 8/25/14, Lesson 2

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The Anthem Of Love

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What is the spiritual meaning of the connection between a man and a woman if it doesn’t take place at night?

Answer: The actions of unity and connection should take place at night after midnight, another part in the second half of the Sabbath, etc. These are different times that are suitable for the spiritual contact that requires the combination of several preconditions.

First there have to be two who are under a certain impression of the Upper Light, since none of them has the Light that can correct and connect them. They don’t yearn for that by themselves but ask the Light for that, the Light that connects the first nine Sefirot (the male part) with Malchut (the female part) in such a way as to create a common attribute and an action of bestowal. First the Light of correction descends to them and creates the right combination between them, and then the Light that they receive in order to bestow.

This is their spiritual action, the anthem of love! If we look at the different activities that take place inside our body, we will be able to see the exact replica of the spiritual actions. The only thing is that in our body it is all fulfilled automatically without freewill without a search or any impressions.

Three types of connection (on Sabbath, on holidays or on weekdays) are fulfilled according to the spiritual state of the general system and the levels of a person’s soul. In our world, which is parallel to spirituality, we can also observe the dependency on the type of actions and on a person’s state.

Question: Are these three types of connection called a prayer?

Answer: A prayer precedes the correction of each of these components. There is the prayer of the lower female part to the male part and through it to the Creator. There is the prayer of the male part which includes the desire of the female part, which the male part conveys to the Creator, and there is also what is received from the Creator. These are the three levels (lower, middle and upper) and the work between the levels.

This means that the upper should always have the opportunity to convey the prayer to the uppermost, to receive an answer from it, and to convey it to the lower. These parts always change places.

If I convey the Light to someone now, I am considered a male part and the receiving part is considered a female part. If the one who receives conveys the Light in his turn to someone else, he is considered the male part and the lower part is considered the female part, and so on.

There is no fixed gender in spirituality like in our world. It changes according to who you are in contact with, either with the upper or the lower. Every part that bestows is considered male.

We are Malchut, the Shechina. Our role is to gather all the parts of Malchut, to connect them into one woman, and to receive the Light from the Creator, who is considered the male part, Zeir Anpin.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/5/14

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A Combination Of Light And Desire

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Torah, “Leviticus” (Metzora) 15:16: A man from whom there is a discharge of semen, shall immerse all his flesh in water, and he shall remain unclean until evening.

Question: What does it mean? After all, the flow of seed is meant for fertilization and birth.

Answer: In this case, a man doesn’t use his seed to fertilize a woman, which means that Zeir Anpin and Malchut don’t connect, and so the desire is used incorrectly.

A desire that is ready to be used in order to receive the Light in order to bestow is called a woman. If he and she work in order to bestow, a third element is created between them called a baby, which is their next level.

However, if she is not ready for that—if she is impure for example or if she is not intended to be a woman—it means that his seed is spilled on the ground. This means that it is a desire that is not ready at all and is, therefore, impure.

The spiritual system is very rigid. Your lower level is always below you, but when Light comes out of you to the lower level and it is not ready to be in contact with you for some reason, then it is your corruption since you haven’t defined the flaw, haven’t prepared, and haven’t discovered the flow as an upper level with regard to the lower.

Therefore, you must be purified by being bathed in the Light of Bina by connecting to the upper level. A man is Zeir Anpin, and the highest level is Bina. Zeir Anpin must be purified by the Light of Bina (the Light of Hassadim, bestowal), and he cannot work on that same day with the Light that illuminates now.

In addition, we distinguish between the different times of day and different days in the contact between a man and a woman: the weekdays, Sabbath, the beginning of a month, and so forth. It is an interesting dependency that is made of very rigid laws that determine when it is possible to work with the Light by conveying it from the top down.
[142319]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/5/14

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The Teacher Is Waiting For You At The Entrance

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe student receives all of the Light (the Light that Reforms and the Light of the filling) through the teacher. The order of the levels never changes and so the student’s role is to yearn to adhere to the teacher.

We have such an example in The Book of Zohar about Rabbi Chiya who fasted for forty days in order to see Rabbi Shimon, his teacher, who had left them. When he didn’t manage to see him, he fasted for another forty days.

This of course, doesn’t refer to a physical fast, but to spiritual actions. Rabbi Chiya ascended to the level of the upper Bina of Bina and he corrected himself to such an extent in the Light of Hassadim that he was awarded the level of connection with his teacher on a very high level. This means that he saw Rabbi Shimon sitting in the upper assembly, and it is thanks to Rabbi Chiya that he revealed the upper wisdom, the Light of Hochma, and the concealed mind, Mocha Stima’a. 

Question: How can we attain such a revelation?

Answer: We should try to yearn for what the teacher says. Of course neither you nor I are on levels like Rabbi Shimon and Rabbi Chiya, but we will undoubtedly reach these levels in the future. In that case this should serve as an example for us, not in the physical psychological connection, but in the real inner connection. Everything that we learn and receive through the external mind and the inner filling comes from the teacher.

Otherwise the teacher cannot do anything for us. He is in the position of a parent who can give his child only what the child asks for. If the child is full of energy and has the intelligence and desire, you can enroll him in different clubs, engage private tutors, and bring him books and educational games that can help him develop and advance to greater and higher levels. But if the child is autistic and behind in his mental development, the only thing a parent can do is worry about his physical existence, his physical needs, hoping that one day his mind will awaken.

Everything depends on the deficiency of the student and this is a one way connection in that only the deficiency of the student opens up the teacher and obliges the teacher to open up and not to close himself. This is called the sorrow of raising children, when the teacher is forced to close himself according to the distance that the students keep from him.

This happens with every student and I have been through this in a very dramatic manner myself. We have to study this state too, in order to understand that we are responsible for everything. The revelation of the teacher and then the revelation of the Creator occur according to the student’s vessels, and according to how he has prepared himself in the work with the friends.

It is only through the connection with the friends that one can yearn for the teacher and through him, for the Creator. We have to find the common passion in this connection and then we find the right direction. Otherwise we don’t and the concealment doesn’t help us.

The teacher teaches you where and how to open an opening through which you can enter the Creator. Imagine that you suddenly discover some concealment in the air somewhere, right here, and by the hints that the teacher gives you (he will never tell you directly and clearly, don’t expect that) you understand how to open a hole in the air and enter.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/29/14, Writing of Baal HaSulam

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The Wisdom Of Kabbalah And The Rest Of The Sciences

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: In what way is the wisdom of Kabbalah different from the rest of the sciences?

Answer: The wisdom of Kabbalah is involved with discovery of the Creator, the discovery of the force of bestowal in those Kelim (vessels) that are in equivalence of form with Him, in other words, Kelim of bestowal. This never can happen in other sciences because they are involved with phenomena that are discovered in receptive Kelim.

In Kelim of bestowal, I discover the higher power. These Kelim are detached from me because I must go out of myself and rise above my desire to receive. This makes it possible for me to comprehend this power objectively, investigate and study it.

In the other sciences, we only discover phenomena that happen within us. This is even though it seems to us that they are happening outside of us in the surrounding world. However, through the wisdom of Kabbalah, we develop new senses, Kelim, in which we discover the higher power that is outside of us.

So, the wisdom of Kabbalah is an objective wisdom about the Creator, about the higher power, about the only power that manages everything, including us, and this is the difference between the wisdom of Kabbalah and other sciences.

The same scientific approach is practiced in the wisdom of Kabbalah as in all the rest of the sciences. As it is written, “A judge has only what his eyes see” (Talmud, Baba Batra 131a), in other words, a factual basis, but they are received in other Kelim, in Kelim of bestowal.

Like every science, the wisdom of Kabbalah develops and discovers more and more. Only after the completion of correction and the discovery of the Light of the Mashiach (Messiah) will the wisdom of Kabbalah become an absolutely complete science.
[142353]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/27/14, Writing of Baal HaSulam

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An Opеning In The Wall

Dr. Michael LaitmanTo enter the spiritual world, a person needs to be equipped with desire, and spiritual desire is desire for oneness. Our unity is that very place where the spiritual world is located.

There is you and me. If a person feels only himself, he experiences the corporeal world and lives in its environment. But we want to cover the gap and begin establishing connection between us. I strive for your desires (1) to receive them (2) and feel them as my own. For this reason, I turn to the Light as to something external although it, too, resides between us. The Light gives me strength to unite with you, and in this unification, I suddenly discover something new.

When we become close and work together in Arvut (mutual responsibility, mutual guarantee), a deeper dimension becomes revealed to me as if in our oneness an aperture into the upper world opens .

Baal HaSulam desribes this as follows: if we feel that between us there is a wall that doesn’t’ allow us to plug into each other, if we wish to break through this wall and are asking for it, then the Light descends and makes an opening in it. Unlike a door, it opens suddenly and only then you see that it had been initially “intended” there.

As a result, you enter another’s desire and it becomes as your own. This entrance is the very exit to the higher rung: the Kli that you have attached to yourself turns out to be your newly gained world. In this way, you attach more and more new Kelim, or the souls, and by doing so, you expand your world. You keep ascending on the 125 rungs of the spiritual ladder, which means you unite with all the desires despite your egoism and hatred.

Therefore, it turns out that you acquire the Light in the desire of another when you wish to perform bestowal to him. You fulfill another’s desire, and for you, it turns out to be the Upper Light.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/22/10

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The Urgency Of Sochi And The Breakthrough Of Saint Petersburg

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Not everyone has the opportunity to come to the convention in Saint Petersburg in September. How can all the friends in the world help each other to connect to it?

Answer: This convention will engage the Sochi group, that is, those friends who were doing dissemination work in Sochi this summer, and in three days, we must go through what they went through.

Clearly, not only those who are coming to Saint Petersburg will participate, but rather all our groups and students from all over the world. So, all of us together as a whole, by internally feeling all that they felt and experienced in Sochi, will absolutely acquire a new level. We are standing before this. We are waiting and expecting from them preparation for realizing the convention in Saint Petersburg.

There is no obligation at all to come physically to the convention. A trip is not at all relevant to this. Distance means nothing. I saw this in the example of our groups in South America who adhere to us without separation through integral connection and are tightly connected with the daily lessons. They simply have no feeling of detachment or of distance.

It is the same thing with the friends in Sochi who wholeheartedly let me go home after a one day visit so that the following night, I could transmit a lesson to everyone. I feel that they also have the same feeling, the same connection, the same fulfillment and satisfaction from the lessons.

So, all of us are mutually connected, and there are no problems for anyone regarding connecting to the convention. Someone who really cannot come to the convention doesn’t need to take the trouble and invest superhuman efforts beyond the limits of his ability. It is preferable to organize mirror conventions in your groups where you keep maximal contact, and I assure you the same intensity of connection and the same enthusiasm. If you are with us, then we are with you as if we are found in a single place.

In general, we want the experience in Sochi to be conveyed to everyone in sensation. Our great world community will be integrated with what they go through and their experiences, so this will be a very good level.

Our friends, men and women, attained a very good and beautiful mutual cooperation and mutual integration there, truly real dedication. We hope that we also will be integrated with them. This is why friends exist.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/26/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Partial Correction

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Torah, “Leviticus” (Metzora), 15:1-15:3: And the Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, “Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them, if any man has a discharge from his flesh, his discharge is unclean. And this shall be [the nature of] his uncleanness due to his discharge: [if] his flesh runs with his discharge, or [if] his flesh is plugged up by his discharge, that is his uncleanness.”

The fact is that before we reach the end of correction, we complete the correction of even one desire. In the integral system, there are five layers of desires that are fixed in turns: stages zero, one, two, three, and four. Each of them is incorporated into the others. That’s why it’s impossible to completely fix one desire while all others remain uncorrected.

So, how does it work? We deal with the part of a desire that correctly relates to a desire that has already been corrected. It’s a continuous “start-and-stop” pulsation. First, one part of a desire is corrected, then there comes a part of another desire. Next, there comes a second part of the first desire, and so on and so forth…

It’s an integral system, which we approach step by step. In other words, we come close to integrality by using a differential method. Otherwise, nothing at all can be corrected. We are not integral by nature. We are split into squares, cubes, etc. However, in the end we will acquire the integral shape.

Thus, it’s unfeasible to fix even the tiniest desire before the entire system is corrected. That’s why a constant return to correcting the same desires at a higher level or with a new quality, happens in conjunction with the rest of the chain.

Comment: Previously, we discussed uncorrected parts in a human body, we spoke about a house. All of a sudden we again return to a human body…

Answer: It’s because when one climbs to the next step, one discovers new problems.

There are analogies to it in this world. For example, the more medical tools we invent, the more diseases we discover, although we looked quite healthy before we started to investigate our current condition using new methods of diagnosis. It’s similar to reading a medical encyclopedia. As soon as we start flipping its pages, we immediately come to the conclusion that it would be much better to lie down and die.

This is what the Torah describes: returning to your own self, but at a higher level.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/5/14

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The Long Road Towards The Good

Dr. Michael LaitmanDuring spiritual development a person passes through a multitude of stages before reaching despair. From despair he further experiences all kinds of states until he discovers that only the Creator can help him.

If we are in a group, then as it is said, (Isaiah 41:6) “They helped every one his neighbor.” We remind each other that the Creator is the one who is giving us all kinds of exercises and that behind all of these states that happen to us we must discover Him at every moment. But we are confused by forgetting about this between these moments that all of this is coming so that we will ask Him to be revealed. By ourselves we are incapable of discovering the Creator.

About this, Baal HaSulam writes in the article, “There is None Else Beside Him”: And the benefit from the rejections is that through them a person receives a need and a complete desire for the Creator to help him, since he sees that otherwise he is lost.

So we must focus all of our attention on how to discover the Creator in everything that is happening with us. We must check what the Kabbalists recommend for us to do when we are studying, when we are in a group, and when we are disseminating so that all of these activities will be directed towards discovering the Creator in every situation that happens to each of us and with all of us together.

The Creator only helps those people who truly want to get closer to Him. It is impossible for them to stop in the middle of the way and remain in the false situation they are currently in.

If a Reshimo, a desire to approach the Creator, is truly awakened in them, He helps them by placing them in even more complicated situations where it is even more difficult to comprehend, understand, and agree that everything comes from the Creator. Or He lets them relax; everything is okay, everything is wonderful: They study, they advance, they disseminate, everything is going well and they have no lack of anything.

But if the person invests effort in every circumstance and tries to gather additional desires with the help of the group and work with the external public, all of these desires acquired from the friends or from the external world become parts of his soul if he gathers all the desires from them, all of the deficiencies for fulfillment, all of their failures in life. He transforms them into a single desire, a single demand directed towards the Creator. So He organizes all of this for them. And then he cannot justify the Creator and he is so confused that he is not prepared to attribute everything to the Creator only; he thinks that all kinds of other causes and forces may exist.

And by beginning to be involved with them, the person suddenly sees that he is not linking everything to the Creator. Likewise, he cannot say that everything that is happening is for the good. So he has a reason to advance, there is an imperative to shout to the Creator to help him so that He will give him the right perception, so that He will be discovered. But this is not because the person is confused. In this case he would be asking from the side of the ego for things to be better and more pleasant for him, for everything to be okay.

On the contrary, he wants to remain confused and have claims against the Creator. By not agreeing with Him, he blames Him for what is happening in the world and cannot bring himself to a state in which he sees that all of the events that are happening in the world, even the most difficult and worst situations, all this is a higher mercy and everything is coming from the good and that does good.

And all the vile and terrible situations only pass over our ego so that we will be distanced from it, and will purify ourselves of it, and then they will all remain in the ego, whereas, we detach ourselves from it and move toward the side of the Creator.

This means that the blows only help us to distance ourselves from the ego and move to the other side. They don’t pass over us, but over our ego and are felt in us to the degree that we adhere to it. But if we rise above it, then the blows remain there, within the ego.

Likewise, through these blows we must understand that this is the Upper Light that is shining more strongly than usual, but it cannot shine within the ego, so within the ego it is felt as the opposite, as darkness. And this darkness in the density of our desire, of the still, vegetative, and animate, and speaking, brings us the feeling of a world full of suffering.

If within this desire on the speaking level we build a group, with its help we can become detached from every egoistic desire. Then we rise like a spaceship and take off towards the Creator.

That is how we detach from all the bad sensations and are very happy about this because we begin to discover that there is none else beside Him and that He is the good that does good, and now we can say that about Him and not blame Him. We see the truth and so we are happy, not that we now feel that things are good for us, but because we can say good things about the Creator.
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From the Convention In New Jersey “Day Two” 8/9/14, Lesson 4

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Temporary Postponement

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Torah, “Leviticus” (Metzora), 14:37-14:41: And he shall look at the lesion. Now, [if] the lesion in the walls of the house consists of dark green or dark red sunken looking stains, appearing as if deeper than the wall, then the Cohen shall go out of the house to the entrance of the house, and he shall quarantine the house for seven days.

Then the Cohen shall return on the seventh day and look [at the house]. Now, [if] the lesion has spread in the walls of the house, the Cohen shall order that they remove the stones upon which the lesion is [found], and they shall cast them away outside the city, to an unclean place.

We can feel and trace things described above inside our desires. The entire world is given to us through our sensations and there is nothing besides desire.

That’s why the Torah says very clearly and explicitly that we feel things at higher levels as forces or as desires that are “materialized” in various shapes, colors, scents, etc. Still, they are only desires and nothing but desires.

The Torah, “Leviticus” (Metzora), 14:42-14:43, 14:45: And they shall take other stones and bring them instead of those stones. And he shall take other [mortar] dust, and plaster the house.  And if the lesion returns and erupts in the house, after he had removed the stones, and after the house had been scraped around and after it had been plastered, then the Cohen shall come and look [at it]. Now, [if] the lesion in the house has spread, it is malignant tzara’ath in the house; it is unclean. He shall demolish the house, its stones, its wood, and all the [mortar] dust of the house, and he shall take [them] outside the city, to an unclean place.

We, humans, are the ones who produce ulcers. We even manage to incorporate new, good qualities that are given to us into our egoism and spoil them.

First, one can work with an egoistic desire that is called “a house,” but when one regards it through the Upper Light, one understands that it’s impossible to work with this desire alone. This is why one destroys (postpones) it.

This desire is not being cancelled, but rather is taken “outside of the city” and “discharged.” It means that correction of this particular desire is deferred. After working with “the house,” one corrects “the yard,” and then the entire world. That’s why one way or the other, we still return to correcting deferred desires.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/5/14

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