What are the desires or the souls that were shattered? At one point, there was one screen that united us.  But then the Light came and revealed to everyone how we are all different. Although we all strive towards the Creator, each of us bestows in their own way.

It’s like a bunch of family members all trying to feed one baby. The mom gives him the porridge, the grandma wants to give him milk, while the grandpa insists that only bread will make the baby healthy. Each one wants to give something to the same baby, but in the process they all argue with each other.

The desires become shattered because the connection between them breaks, and due to this breakage, they also lose the chance to bestow to the Creator!

We have to understand exactly what is shattered.  Only then will we know what needs to be corrected. We will find that the only way to build a human being (the middle line) is by reuniting all the pieces of the soul which have lost their connection with each other and it will become clear that the only way to unite the pieces around them is centered around that very same baby that first connected them.

Imagine that the whole family starts hating each other.  The mother, father, grandmother, grandfather and everyone else all wish the baby “well” according to their own criteria, while denying the opinions of the others. So, what will bring us back together? Only the love toward the baby. Each one of us will then be willing to rise above his own egoism and lower his head for the baby’s sake.

This is why unity between us is possible only if we wish to reach the state of bestowal towards the Creator. We will then unite all together with Him into one whole.
(From Part 2 of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson, on “Preface to the Sulam Commentary”)

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

Preparation to the Lesson
The Daily Kabbalah Lesson is the best opportunity to attract the force of correction. It’s a time when a multitude of desires unite into one great aspiration.
Watch >>
Listen >>

Part 1, on Writings of Rabash
At every moment, you have to leave room for the Light to work inside your desire.
Watch >>
Listen >>

Part 2, on “Preface to the Sulam Commentary”
I am influenced by two opposite forces: the right line and the left line. My task is to build the middle line: my independent aspiration toward the Creator.
Watch >>
Listen >>

Part 3, on “Thou Hast Hemmed Me In Behind and Before”
This world is egoism. The spiritual world is bestowal.
Watch >>
Listen>>

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

We feel that we are in a world, which we separate into “me” and the people around me, and we try to use everything for our own benefit. This is how we act in accordance with our inner nature, and other people around us act the same way.

However, once a new desire awakens in a person, it cannot be filled by anything available in this world. This causes confusion, as a person wants something, but doesn’t know what it is that they want.

This small new desire haunts a person. It grows and brings him to a place that contains an answer. This is how a person discovers the wisdom of Kabbalah.

One doesn’t understand right away what it is, but an instinctive feeling keeps him holding on to these books and to a new society. He studies, like a child that is just imitating grown-ups.

This is how a person advances until, after some time, he begins to understand that the goal is to reveal another world in addition to the world he currently perceives.

In this second reality, everything is different. Both the person himself and the world are new.  The new desire that awakens in him is the beginning of his new “I.” When this desire develops, he discovers himself in a new world.

This is like changing the channel on a TV. A person is watching one channel and sees an image of the world. He changes the channel and suddenly finds himself viewing a completely different world. A person changes along with the new world that is revealed to him, and he begins to understand what is being revealed through the science of Kabbalah.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: By Changing Yourself, You Change The World
Laitman.com Post: The Most Crucial Point In All Of Reality
Laitman.com Post: Our Desire Is The Button That Can Change The Channel Of Our Reality
The Path of Kabbalah: Chapter 1.4. “The Awakening of the Point in the Heart”
The Path of Kabbalah: Chapter 1.9. “What Exists Between This World and the Next?”

Filed under: Spirituality - 1 Comment →

While I was by Rabash’s side, I was always surprised at how short and formal the burial ceremonies were. A person has to perform the ritual: come to the cemetery, say a few words over the grave, and leave. And he has to come back once a year, not more.

In the corporeal sense, this ritual is somber, but in the spiritual sense, it is joyful! We are actually holding a ritual that a person should be happy about. He should rejoice about getting rid of his “body,” about the fact that his egoistic desire has died and the desire to bestow and love, called the “soul,” has ascended to a new level. It rose from the earthly level, reception, to the “heavens” – bestowal!

When you return once a year to your buried desire, you check whether there is anything more you can take from it in order to correct it and ascend even higher. After all, the ascent can only take place by way of correction, by turning egoism to bestowal.

After that comes the “revival of the dead,” when we correct all our desires and nothing remains in the “grave.” The dead (desires) will then be revived and the burial rituals will no longer be performed.

Rabash was a person who acted as no Kabbalist had before. He accepted secular students into his group, which was located in the midst of the Jewish Orthodox populace in the city of Bnei Brak. And he taught these students the science of Kabbalah. In those times, this was a real revolution. He went against his family, the people close to him, and the social opinion of the entire Orthodox community.

Despite everything, he dared to do this, and he made a breakthrough. He started writing articles and giving lessons for beginners, including secular people. He did everything possible to spread the Teaching.

The most important thing he left behind is his articles and his spirit. Everything we have today, our entire foundation was laid by him. I always feel that I continue none else but his work. That is why I feel the inner forces to continue. The way we study, explain and formulate things, all comes from him. I hope to continue to transmit everything I have, including Rabash’s spirit, which I received from him, to you.

This person is essentially a bridge, an intermediate link connecting all the great Kabbalists of the past, from Abraham to Baal HaSulam, to us. Through his spirit, he passed the science of Kabbalah on to us. We are living inside his Kli, and he supports us.

We have to thank the Creator for giving us this soul, which continues to include us within and develops us even today. Any spirituality we attain is in virtue of his help, his force that acts among us. This is why we are called, “Bnei Baruch” – the Sons of Baruch. Let us hope that we truly will become the sons of Baruch Ashlag, the Rabash.
(From my talk at Rabash’s grave this morning, 09.23.2009)

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

Our world does not pertain to the spiritual world; therefore, there is no need to correct it. While living in this world, I discover a point in my heart – the embryo of a spiritual desire. I need to extract it from the other desires, expand it, and correct it in a way that will make it possible to reveal the spiritual world within it.

Our world remains the same. Until the very end of a person’s spiritual correction, he should feel this reality without trying to correct it with his own strength. Why? Because it is impossible to do so! History has taught us this through every step of our development.

With this attitude towards our world, the science of Kabbalah differs from other sciences, spiritual and corporeal methodologies, belief systems, and religions. In other system, people direct their efforts within the plane of our world, which is not where they should. Our world will only change for the worse due to those actions, since it does not become truly corrected and more time passes by.

Yet if a point in the heart awakens in a person, by following the path of Kabbalah, he begins to widen his point in the heart until it encompasses the sphere where he perceives the Upper World, the Upper Dimension. He begins his ascent from this central point, acquiring a screen and the Reflected Light, which is the force of bestowal.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Point In The Heart Is A True Miracle
Laitman.com Post: How To Develop Your Point In The Heart
Interview with the Future: “The Point in the Heart”
Soul, Screen and Delight [01:23] Play Now|Download

Filed under: Spirituality - No Comments →

Desire must be whole. Take for instance a politician whose goal is to become a prime minister. His whole life is focused on this. Having set this goal for himself, he is prepared to discard all his principles and drag himself through the mud in order to achieve his goal.

Everything besides the goal is secondary to him. The possibility of becoming a prime minister captures the whole spectrum of his interests, and reduces them all to whatever can help him achieve the goal. That is what we call a “whole” desire.

A person who aspires to draw the Light that returns him to the Source examines all the qualities of his own nature and of the world, along with all the obstacles on his path, as a means of achieving the goal.

This examination and whole desire guards me from going off track under the weight of my egoism. If  somebody gossips about me,  tries to scare me away or detains me, or if  I am confronted with health problems, family responsibilities and stress, then I accept all of this with gratitude, as assistance to me in breaking the new ground of spiritual growth.

If I am correctly and fully aimed at the goal, I suddenly discover that all the obstacles are helping me on my path. All disturbances become “help against myself” – against my egoism.

There is nothing in the world that couldn’t serve as a means to achieve the goal. After all, the Creator has created everything for man and for his mission. It’s only a matter of how we utilize the “arsenal” available to us.

If I truly aspire to the goal, everything pushes me towards it. If however, I let myself be distracted by “attendant circumstances,” if I address the disturbances themselves, instead of utilizing them as means to attain the goal, instead of being a help to me, they will simply remain disturbances.

Only my distinct aspiration toward the goal will transform obstacles into distinct points of support along my path. Something that I perceive to be such a strong “headwind” I suddenly discover is acting as life support for me time and again, lending a hand and guiding me forward. By this “apparent opposition” the Creator actually helps me to advance.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: How To Build Your Ten Sefirot And Fill Them With The Creator’s Light
Laitman.com Post: The Many Layers Of Desire (Advanced)
Laitman.com Post: How To Aim At A Worthy Spiritual Target (Advanced)
Shamati #30: “The Most Important Is to Want Only to Bestow”
Kabbalah for Beginners: Chapter 4: “The Desire for Spirituality”

Filed under: Spirituality - No Comments →

It is written, “A person is like a tree in the field.” A tree can be planted in a field that is blessed by the Creator, where it will be watered by rain and warmed by the sun whenever it needs. Or the tree – the person – can be planted in infertile, dry land, where the person will not be able to grow. Or, even if he  grows, he is like a wild tree that does not bear fruit.

When it comes to spiritual development, a person determines his own place. His attitude to the books, the teacher, and the friends is able to change the soil and the sun, the moisture conditions, and all the other conditions needed for his growth.

A person starts by receiving a “point in the heart” – a spiritual seed, and he must then decide where to plant it and how to absorb the force from the environment needed to grow his seed into a tree. If he chooses the right environment, he will be able to demand from it the force of bestowal – “rain.” This force will allow him to grow from the material world upward. His intentions of bestowal will sprout“from the soil up.”

We have to care for our “tree,” which means that we must choose desires that can be corrected, and then organize them properly so they will grow and shape us into the right form – one that’s similar to the Creator. This is all of our work.

So, on one hand, it appears as if the tree grows on its own. However, starting from the time it is a seed, there are many actions that depend on us. The tree cannot grow independent of us, but only in virtue of our desire.
(From Part 3 of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson)

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

On the spiritual degrees, the difference between opposites is much less bearable than in our world. After all, everything comes from the initial state, where the Creator, who is Good and Does Good, created egoism – the desire to receive pleasure, which is opposite to Him.

The Creator is inside this desire, which he manages. The desire to receive and the desire to bestow are outcomes of a single force, the Creator. We are incapable of withstanding the manifestation of these opposite desires from a single source until we reach Final Correction.

But when we do, we will see that these two opposites can be together, because then, in that point which was created as “something from nothing,” the material from which it was created – the absence of the Creator – becomes annihilated. This point then becomes completely bestowing, like Him.

This is why the existence of opposites is the reason for all of creation’s development until its final correction.
(From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson)

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

A question I received: There are thousands of people all over the world studying together with us through television and internet. They can watch the lessons and buy Kabbalah books. But what should they do if they don’t have a physical group nearby that they can join in order to receive the necessary forces?

My Answer: What difference does it make where a person is located when he listens to the lesson – in front of a TV screen, or in the lesson hall where I teach live? A person is located wherever his desire is. That’s why I feel thousands of people and their desires next to me, but someone else could be sitting right by my side and I won’t even feel him.

It makes no difference what part of the world a person is in. The distance may even be helping him. I feel how the people who get together in different parts of the planet are contributing an enormous force by participating in the Daily Kabbalah Lesson.

This happens because every person’s individual force is multiplied by the distance and the weakness he feels due to being far away from us, due to not feeling a direct influence. This adds up to a tremendous force.

So, no matter what corner of the world our friends are located, they are truly very close to us.
(From Part 3 of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson)

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

It’s not easy to understand that there is a method of being fulfilled by bestowal instead of reception. It seems illogical, and society doesn’t support this either.

However, all of this was arranged on purpose so this opportunity to be filled by bestowal, to reach infinite fulfillment and to feel eternal life, would remain hidden from us. Otherwise, our egoistic desire would rush directly to enjoy from bestowal. (After all, the most important thing for it is to receive pleasure.) It is like a thief that runs ahead of the crowd, screaming, “Catch the thief!”
(From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson on Shamati #13)
[4978]

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →