A question I received: In one of the Shamati articles it says that when a person truly screams from the bottom of his heart, the Creator hears his prayer. What does this mean?

My Answer: The Creator created only one thing: desire. All of matter, including rocks, trees, animals, people, and stars, is all the different levels of the desire to exist.

• The inanimate level preserves its structure or qualities;
• The vegetative level, besides self-preservation, desires to develop, absorb beneficial substances, and excrete the harmful ones
• On the animate level, the desire demands to be satisfied, to advance, and to give birth to offspring;
• A human being starts out his development like an animal (and in fact, every level of desire starts developing from the first level – everything comes from the “dust” and returns to it). However, after developing as an animal, a human being starts to feel cramped in the animate state, within the bounds of this world. Then a new desire emerges that summons him to come out of its boundaries.

This new desire becomes the central point, the main desire among the others. Our task is to reveal this desire further and magnify it using the right environment. We have to find out how to fulfill this desire, pinpoint that it is precious – a point in the heart, and then aim it toward the right prayer.

To “pray” means to make this desire most important of all. Then it will influence the Upper System, the Creator, and will receive a response. All the problems of our spiritual growth come from the fact that this growth occurs only under the influence of our desire. Therefore, one has to perform an analysis of what his heart really wants, and direct the most important desire in one’s heart toward the Creator, Bina, the system of one’s spiritual growth.

However, a reaction or response comes only if my desire corresponds to the system’s desire, based on the principle, “Make your desire like His desire in order to make yourself like Him.”

True prayer comes from the bottom of one’s heart, from the most important desire. Each of us has thousands of desires, and this is our problem. We disperse and scatter our efforts on many different goals, and as a result, we do not achieve the most important thing in life. Therefore, our life goes by, but the most important element in it is missing.

We have to focus all our desires on realizing one, most important desire. Let everything else serve it, bring it into focus, and strengthen it. This will in fact be the prayer – the real desire of the heart.

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We do everything for our own good, because our nature is the will to enjoy. This is why we always ask, “Why do I need this? What kind of profit will I make from this? Is it worth it for me to make the effort?”

This is why people have to receive an explanation of what they will gain by revealing the Creator. It takes great effort to do this, but revealing the importance of the goal provides the strength for it. It all depends on how much your environment understands the importance of the goal. In a corrected world, the only work that everyone in the world will do, besides providing for the bare necessities, is providing each other with mutual support to feel the importance of correction and spiritual development.

All the billions of people in the world will work on disseminating Kabbalah to each other, on influencing each other and inspiring one another to take greater part in the correction, and revealing a greater desire for this. In order to attain the corrected state, each person will have to personally disseminate, from his place in the common soul, the knowledge, impression, and importance of unity and correction. After all, every person is a cell of the single spiritual body, the Soul.

In order to be connected to the whole body, every cell must tell everyone about how it works and how important its work is. It must be impressed by how it influences the others and how much they need it; otherwise it won’t have the right to exist.

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Our work is to rise above assessment by the principle of “sweet versus bitter” to assessment by the principle of “truth versus false.” After all, the Creator is called Truth.

The word “truth” (Emet) consists of the letters: Alef-Mem-Tav. Alef and Tav are the first and last letters of the alphabet, symbolizing desires on two different ends of the spectrum. Mem, which is in the middle, is the quality of Bina, which we can use to connect these two ends and reach correction, the Truth.

The only way to find out what is true and what is false is within a group of Kabbalists, an environment. Inside oneself, an individual doesn’t have any ability to do this, since he possesses only one parameter – the ego. In order to perform a measurement, one absolutely needs another parameter, which is outside of him.

After studying for a long time and performing many clarifications in the group, a beginner Kabbalist begins to feel that he exists in a general, global system of desires, among other “points in the heart.” In relation to this particular environment, he has an opportunity to acquire new sensuous concepts: drawing closer to or further away from it, a feeling of its global system, his inclusion in it, the need for its support, and a realization that it is the place where he will reveal the Upper World and the Creator.

However, in the meantime, the interaction of two forces – myself and the environment, is formed inside me. The environment will increase in weight in order to counteract my “I” – the ego. A new system of governance will arise, which will be outside of me, and which I will begin to consider and see as the salvation, the lever that can pull me out of my state – this world.

I measure “myself versus the environment,” and as a result of my measurements, I acquire quantitative and qualitative degrees of measuring spiritual relationships and forces. I thus build a linear scale: I am on one end, and the group is on the other. Using this scale, I can already examine, measure, and depict the Upper World.

From the relationship of “myself and the group,” a spiritual cell forms in me, and I can measure all of reality above me through that cell. That is how I build a soul inside myself.

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A question I received: In the posting, “Use Each Instant Of Your Life To Move Aheadת” you wrote that a person must demand an award from the Creator for each of his deeds in order to accelerate revelation of the Upper World. But how can I develop this demand if I don’t have it?

My Answer: No one initially has the desire for the Upper World because the Upper World is opposite to us and therefore we cannot feel it. A desire develops only after we “taste” something and then lose that sensation. We then feel the need to run after it. Intensity of this aspiration for the desirable is called a desire (passion).

In Kabbalah this law of development of desire is formulated as “The expansion and disappearance of Light.” This is what creates a desire for it.

So the most important question is: How do we draw the influence of the Light upon us? The answer is: Through the environment – the teacher, the books, and the group.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Preparing Yourself To Approach The Creator
Laitman.com Post: The Creator Speaks To Us In The Language of Sensations
Laitman.com Post: Disturbances Are The Problem – The Group Provides The Solution
Laitman.com Post:We Have The Right To Make A Demand Of The Creator
Baal HaSulam Article: “Disclosing a Portion, Covering Two”
Video: What Do You Get From Kabbalistic Books? (5:24)

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The right environment can provide beginners with a new platform and a fresh outlook on life. It can help us discard our old views, concepts, attitudes, and values and instead take on a new form, as if fitting a square peg into a round hole. We have to reshape ourselves in order to fit into a new world and take on its properties. These changes take place slowly, but steadily. It takes constant work that results in new attitudes and values.

For example, if you wanted to know about a visiting alien’s home planet, you would need to show interest in learning about his home so that he would take you with him when he returned to his planet. If you did not show the willingness to learn, and did not make the effort to learn, he would not take you with him.

In order to transform your sensations, thoughts and desires, spirituality has to become infinitely important to you, while the material things must be limited to necessities, or what is required to maintain a sensible lifestyle. We have been given every opportunity to reveal the higher, eternal and perfect existence, but we aren’t using them. Thus, we are not utilizing our freedom of choice. We seem to be waiting for something, but the fact is that we have to come to this revelation ourselves. No one can do it for us.

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Only the environment can instill the importance of the goal and of spirituality in you. This is the only thing you should demand from the environment: the importance of the quality of bestowal which you wish to feel inside. When you do, you will reveal the Creator. This constitutes our work and the purpose of our existence in this world.

It seems to us that this revelation will occur somewhere far away, outside of us, but actually it occurs inside each of us. Later on you will see that everything has already occurred – all the spiritual actions that are described in books and all the worlds, starting from the World of Infinity to our world; all of this already exists within you. It is all contained in that tiny grain of desire which brought you to begin studying Kabbalah. In fact, this grain encompasses the whole world, all the degrees of the spiritual worlds’ expansion from above downwards, and all the spiritual qualities. They don’t exist anywhere else but in you; the whole revelation occurs inside of you, never outside.

However, in order to feel this, you need the right environment. You have to plant your seed in good soil and make sure that it doesn’t dry up or rot!

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A lesson is therapy for my desire, a means that allows my present desire to be changed and made equivalent to spirituality. The more therapy I receive through my attendance at Kabbalah lessons, the higher my chances of recovering and changing my nature.

However, simple visits aren’t enough. I have to understand why I make the visits and what their results will be. Thus, the main thing at the lesson is that I must have the intention to change my nature.

If I come to the lesson just to listen, with no intention to change, then nothing will help me to attain the Upper World, neither an excellent teacher, nor a strong environment. A lesson for me must be a conscious participation in the recovery of the broken soul.

The teacher gives me the correct direction and the environment supports me on my path to the goal. However, I must absorb the importance of the goal provided by the environment.

It is absolutely unimportant if I understand the studied material, the same as I don’t need to understand how the drugs prescribed to me work in order for them to work.  Doctors label illnesses and drugs with obscure names that don’t tell me anything. I just know that I feel bad and need something to help me feel better.

The same situation exists in the healing of a soul. It is enough for me to feel sick and to know that during the lesson, I will receive the remedy. There is a spiritual healing mechanism that works on my request, and I need to correctly prepare myself for the healing.

I expect the healing of the soul to occur during the lesson and therefore I prepare myself beforehand in order to be able to accept the cure.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Ascending Toward The Creator Along The Degrees Of Desire
Laitman.com Post: Spirituality, Freedom And Bestowal Are The Same
Interview with the Future: “The Law of Equivalence of Attributes”
Intention Handbook: “Intention During the Study”
Rabash Article: “The Purpose of the Association”
Video: Intention While Reading Kabbalah Books – 5 Minutes Of Light (4:48)

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The speed of one’s spiritual advancement depends on how attentively one relates to everything that happens to him in life and whether he doesn’t let a single moment go by without connecting it to spirituality. One has to be restless like a child and use every single moment. In this regard, the environment is very important. The environment speeds up a person’s development by giving him the right direction and always pushing him forward.

With the help of the environment, a person can discover that even the calmest moments have great content. It is particularly during those moments that one discovers the Creator’s passionate attitude toward him. It’s like discovering a whole world deep beneath the still surface of water.

Don’t let life pass you by. We shouldn’t miss a single moment, since each moment is an opportunity to connect to the Creator. This is called returning life to its Source. We have to understand what He wants to tell us through each circumstance He gives us. Our whole life is a conversation between us and the Creator, but because we let moments slip by, we don’t hear Him! If we only listen, we will hear the Creator’s voice at each moment.

That is how we will connect the material time with spirituality. They will unite as one and we will see the spiritual picture. If a person perceives time as a number of actions, then he is ready to view his life as a spiritual process. However, only the environment is capable of attuning us to this attitude to life.

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Our job is to begin the work of our correction, but we shouldn’t worry about its completion. This doesn’t mean we should leave the work in the middle, but rather, we must always consider the result as being the right one, because it comes from the Creator.

It only seems to us that we know how everything has to develop. But in reality, all of a sudden something opposite happens. We are influenced by the Upper Light and the environment, and therefore we are changing. That’s why we see that the work we started turns out to be completely wrong. And then we begin everything anew.

This is our work of correcting ourselves, “the correction of mistakes,” which the Creator completes for us. We always have to start from the beginning, without despair, trying to break through toward Him (toward the quality of bestowal in us).

We have to make every effort to complete the action, even though the result will be absolutely different from what we expected. This happens because the Light turns us into the opposite. That is why we go through so many changes in the process of the spiritual work.

The fact is that we don’t know what the outcome should be. We don’t know what the attribute of bestowal is, and that’s why we have no clue what will be the result of any step we take. If our efforts result in something opposite to what we thought, this may actually be a good sign that we are coming closer to the truth.

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A question I received: In our world, if I want to obtain information I need for performing an action, I can choose from a variety of TV channels, radio stations and books. Why then can’t I receive information from the spiritual world in order to know how to act? After all, I’m completely controlled from Above anyway.

My Answer: The problem exists only from your perspective and not from the perspective of the Upper Level. The entire problem is that you don’t feel how you are controlled from Above. You don’t feel the strings that are pulling you like a puppet.

It is impossible to feel the Upper Level and Its governance over you until you develop the appropriate sense with which to perceive It. The Upper Level is inside you, and that’s why you don’t feel It. You have to try to connect with your external environment as if it is you. This is why we are in a state where we have the sensation of other people, those who are alien and foreign to us. It’s in order for us to try and connect with them as if they are a part of us.

If you use the right environment (the group – see Baal HaSulam’s article, “The Freedom”) in order to create an inner quality that can perceive your neighbor as yourself (meaning, someone close to you because they have the same goal – to reach the Creator), then through that same quality, you will also feel the Upper World, the Creator as well as His governance over you and the whole world. You will be able to feel the strings that cause you to move.

The Upper Level is not somewhere high above you. The Upper Level is your next level, “you + 1.” Today this level is the Creator relative to you, but tomorrow it will be you, and then the Creator will be an even higher level.

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