Entries in the 'Spiritual Work' Category

Good Actions For The Benefit Of Others

Laitman_632.3Question: Are character traits included in a person’s egoism or are they separate?

Answer: No, not really. Of course, they are correlated with one’s egoism, but the system of interaction between a person’s character traits and the magnitude of their egoism do not determine one another.

Question: From the point of view of Kabbalah, is the character of a person data that cannot be changed?

Answer: In general, yes.

Question: What use of egoism is considered acceptable?

Answer: Anyone aimed at the benefit of others and nature, i.e., beyond one’s selfish desires, is called faith above reason. The property of bestowal above the property of receiving is called good.

Good is an action for the benefit of others, not oneself.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era,” 4/23/20

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Cross The Psychological Barrier

laitman_221Question: Why, in the process of studying Kabbalah, at first, I feel complete enthusiasm, everything is clear and understandable, I want to sing. Then there comes a moment when you cease to understand the material, there is doubt, discontent in everything and the thoughts:” Do I need it?”

Answer: This is true. This is exactly what happens in Kabbalah. For some, this occurs very quickly, after a year or two, and for others after five to ten years.

The fact is that there comes a period when a person approaches the revelation of the Creator, attainment of his connection with the Creator. This connection is determined by the ability to rise above one’s egoism.

This is where a stupor occurs. He pushes it away from himself. When everything was fine and with the help of his egoistic desires, he strove to attain the Creator, it seemed to him that he was ready to break through the Machsom, to do everything to reveal the Creator.

When the time comes to sacrifice yourself, your egoism, to start working with it and transform it to reveal the Creator, then a very complex, very difficult stage begins because you have to put pressure on yourself, rise above yourself, turn your egoism into altruism, i.e., to produce all kinds of anti-egoistic actions. So, people when reaching such states usually leave.

Here is the main point after which a person begins to reveal the Creator. It must be overcome. This is a psychological barrier where egoism is overcome and revelation begins.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 4/26/20

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Does The Creator Hear Us?

laitman_236.01Question: Does the Creator hear us when we ask for something or when we thank Him? Does the manner in which the Creator responds to us mean anything?

Answer: If a person wants the Creator to hear him, he must understand the system of connection with the Creator. If a person exits himself and integrates in others, he integrates in the Creator to the same extent.

Then he can ask Him, thank Him, and do anything he wants to, since he is in contact with Him. But if I don’t exit myself in my attitude to the friends, and I don’t get close to them mentally, I have no contact with the Creator.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/18/18

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Every Moment A Person Must Be New

laitman_744Comment: In Kabbalah, there is a formula for life: If you live today because you lived yesterday, then you are dead.

My Response: Not “because,” but just as I lived yesterday. If you are not changing, then you are dead. Every day a person must be new, be born, as it were, anew.

Comment: Kabbalah says that a person is created new every time.

My Response: Yes, every moment a person is new. If only he feels it.

Question: And what does it mean “every moment a person is new”?

Answer: Reshimot, its internal natural data, are updated. But does a person adapt them to his life? Does he manifest them in himself? Does he feel his inner renewal?

Question: How can he feel it?

Answer: Being more sensitive to what is happening within him. I have to feel, hear, that the Creator is changing in me every second, what He wants from me.

Question: What is changing in a person?

Answer: The attitude to the world and to the Creator.

Question: Is it getting better, worse?

Answer: Closer.

Question: And how should a person recognize it and act?

Answer: By the feeling of intimacy. The world and the Creator require the properties of bestowal and love from a person, participation. That is how a person should control himself, meaning, whether he is more and more in this property.

Question: How can an ordinary person recognize those new desires that lead him closer to the world, closer to the Creator?

Answer: Bestowal and love. He needs to learn that.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman,” 2/4/20

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Kabbalistic Terms: “Lishma”

laitman_260.01Question: The Kabbalistic term Lishma is translated as “for the sake of the Creator.” What does it mean?

Answer: It is understood that the whole of creation, which is an egoistic desire for one’s own sake, must be corrected, changed, as if turning it inside out in order to do everything not for one’s own sake but for the sake of the Creator or for the sake of others, which is basically the same thing.

It is said: “From love of self to love of friends, and then to love of the Creator.” Meaning, it is one and the same. Only love of the Creator implies universal love, beyond all differences among people. Before that, we just practice on the love of friends.

Question: So both giving and receiving should be done not for my sake but for the sake of the Creator? Why?

Answer: Because this way your desires become infinite and you begin to feel what the Creator feels in them: eternity and perfection. It seems like you’re giving, but in reality you are receiving.

Question: Just like in a single organism where each organ takes what it needs and gives everything else to the rest of the organs, which allows the organism to sustain life for the benefit of all. Does Kabbalah say that we all have to arrive at this state?

Answer: We must come to the most perfect, best possible state of great fulfillment and knowledge. Therefore, “Kabbalah” is translated from Hebrew as the science of “receiving.”

This reception can be eternal and endless, but only if it works together with others.

Question: So this kind of interaction should be between all people?

Answer: Yes. It allows you to receive eternal and perfect fulfillment.

Question: What has to happen for it to occur?

Answer: Recognition of evil in our current state.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 6/17/19

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To Always Be Spiritually Alert

laitman_962.2Question: What five actions do you take after waking up in the morning, before the coronavirus and now?

Answer: Nothing has changed, they are the same actions. I usually wake up a few hours before the lesson. Since the lesson starts at three in the morning, I get up at midnight and study Kabbalah. Therefore, I enter the lesson on the ball, warmed up like an athlete before a competition.

I don’t know why you mention five actions. In principle, in order to teach correctly, I must be spiritually alert.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 4/19/20

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From The Initial State To Complete Wholeness

742.03Question: The Creator created us as existence from absence and we were in a perfect state. Now, in order to feel Him again, we have to bring ourselves once again to the feeling that I am no one and nobody, is that true?

Answer: No, it is nothing like that!

We were created by the Creator in a perfect state, and then we were lowered from this state downward. We have lost this perfection so that we will attain it independently now so it will be felt in us 613 times stronger than the wholeness that we were in initially when it was artificially created in us by the Creator.

If we reach this state now as a result of our efforts, we will perceive it in a totally different manner in our feelings, understanding, and thoughts. So the difference between what was and what will be is huge.

An embryo in his mother’s womb, for example, is in a state of absolute pleasure. Nothing pressures him, he feels good and comfortable, he does not think about anything, and everything is done for him by his mother’s body, but this is not a whole state.

So, when a person is born, he begins to develop by himself. We are the same. Once we were in the state of Adam, in the initial primary state of the soul. But it was felt like a very small light, the light of Nefesh, whereas now, we have to attain the state by ourselves. Then we will feel it as the highest and most sublime connection with the Creator in the form of the five lights, NaRaNHY (Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama, Chaya, Yechida), which means on the level of the Creator and not on the level of a small Ubar (embryo).

This is the whole difference between our initial feeling, which was part of us according to the thought of creation when we were as an Ubar and what we have to attain by ourselves because this will be the whole and complete state.

We ascend from the level of a small Ubar who does not feel anything by himself, because he has nothing and he knows nothing, to the level of the Creator, and then we will see, understand, and feel the whole creation.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 12/8/20

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Why Unite On The Level Of Earthly Feeling?

laitman_557Question: If we are one hundred percent connected in one system from the point of view of the upper force, which we do not feel perhaps, why do we need to unite on the level of our earthly senses? Maybe it is enough to do this only on the internal level?

Answer: We will not be united with the upper force until we unite on the earthly level. The Creator manages us only from top down and manages us in accordance with our condition.

But as soon as we begin to connect with each other, we immediately acquire equivalence with the Creator, and then we become truly equal and correctly interconnected with Him.

We must reach this state. Then we will begin to feel it as eternal and perfect, we will rise from the level of our world, in which we now exist as animals, to the level of Man (Adam). And the level of Man is already infinite eternal existence. We must reach it.

Question: Sometimes you say that people unite between themselves. And sometimes they unite with the force that connects us. What exactly is this unification?

Answer: Reaching correct, integral, equal, and friendly unification, we reach the state when we can unite with the upper force. It exists exactly in the unity between us.
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Form KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 4/12/20

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Mutual Guarantee—Now And Forever

laitman_275The life we see outside the window is a reflection of our inner connection with one another. Violent demonstrations in American cities protesting against racism and a new wave of coronavirus around the world, is all due to our inaction and our unwillingness to correct our attitudes toward each other.

The coronavirus burst into our lives and declares, “You are all in an integral connection. You are standing together in front of Mount Sinai. If you do not unite with each other and do not ask the higher power to correct you, then this will be the place of your burial.”

The coronavirus is designed to show us how much we depend on one another. This dependence is called “mutual guarantee” which means that I should not think about how to protect myself from the coronavirus, but how to protect others from illness due to my kind and correct attitude toward them.

And what is happening now? Now, as a genuine egoist, I say that am tired of sitting at home in quarantine, I want to go outside and have fun, go to a restaurant, cafe, park, and the seashore. I want this! And I do not think about others; there is absolutely no mutual guarantee between us. Others are not considered by me at all; I do what is best for me.

If I was sure that everyone else were healthy and that I was the only sick one, I would carelessly walk around everyone with my infection. I would know that no one would infect me and I would let others become infected; what do I care about them? And this is exactly what is happening in human society in America, in Israel, in Europe, and everywhere. Everyone thinks only of himself; there is no sense of responsibility for one another.

We will begin to take the right path only when we sit at home without sticking our noses out because we are afraid of infecting others and are not thinking about ourselves. The coronavirus will lead us to such change and will not disappear until the change happens. The virus will make us think about how not to harm our neighbor. I will be afraid to harm others and therefore will prefer to stay at home.

The coronavirus should give us the feeling that we are living in an integral world where you can be healthy only under the condition of mutual guarantee. This is not everything, but it is the very first and necessary thing to start the correction.

And then I will no longer need any restrictions like closed borders between countries, a mandatory distance of two meters, or a mask; no one will have to be obligated to do anything. After all, everyone will take care of others and try to do everything so that others would remain healthy.

We need to look deeper into the essence of this virus because it reveals to us, not the biological disease in us, but our spiritual condition: the relationships between us and the lack of guarantee for one another. And in order to maintain such a guarantee and mutual care, we need the upper light.

Therefore, the coronavirus has come to us from above and has awakened us so that we will turn our attention upward and ask for the upper light that will correct us and give us a sense of responsibility for one another, which we do not have. Then I will worry about others so as not to harm them, but rather to be useful to them.

Mutual guarantee is the most difficult of all efforts because it is our main correction. I have to think about others, get involved in their lives, take care of them, feel their desires, and understand how to help them get closer to adhering to the Creator, how to merge with the upper force.

These are very high concepts related to the correction of the broken soul of Adam HaRishon. But we are approaching them day by day in understanding and in feeling.

The health of people depends on their unity and mutual guarantee. Everyone is the guarantor of their neighbor’s health and ensures that everyone is healthy. In this way, we will get rid of the coronavirus because, by doing this, we will act toward unification, mutual guarantee, and the construction of a common integral vessel.

We will take such a step when everyone will worry, not about getting infected with the virus themselves, but about not transmitting the virus to others. That is, the direction of thought should be the other way around and the reasoning should be opposite as well.

Mutual guarantee means that I cannot think about myself because everyone else thinks about me. And I would have to think about them, about the ten. And so we will all be in mutual guarantee, gradually expanding it to the whole world, and the Creator will be between us and correct us.

The guarantee is accepted together, now and forever. A guarantee, by its nature, cannot exist if there are restrictions because it is based on love. And love is not compatible with limitations.

Our well-being depends on mutual guarantee because this is the basic law of the corrected system. In order to be healthy, a person needs to be in a body whose parts are correctly connected to one another. And the correct connection between all parts of human society is mutual guarantee in which everyone thinks about everyone and does good to everyone. And so we need to collect all of our broken parts and connect them into one healthy body.

And when a kind connection and guarantee between all the organs arises in this perfect body, we will feel life in this body, not today’s sick existence where the whole body is cut and fragmented, but real life where the upper light circulates throughout our body and fills every part of us. This means we must attain correction as well as eternal and perfect life.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 5/30/20

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Losing Your Own Alien Gainer

laitman_600.04Question: Does the disappearance of the fulfillment of desires leave us doubly devastated?

Answer: Of course. After all, the desire and fulfillment, which you wanted to achieve, should have felt pleasure, but instead, leave bitterness. Therefore, we experience double devastation from both desire and from fulfillment.

Question: There is a story about a boy who lost a coin, stands, and cries. A passerby asks him: “Why are you crying?” Hearing the answer of the boy, he gives him a coin, and he cries even more. The passerby says: “I gave you a coin. Why are you crying again?” The boy replies: ” I would have two if I had mine.”

Does it turn out that the gain is felt in our desires much less than the loss?

Answer: Yes. This is called Ibud mi keren (loss from the capital sum). If I had a dollar and I lost it, it is not the same as if I earned this dollar or won two dollars. The loss of one’s own is felt more acutely than the acquisition of another’s.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 4/23/20

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