Entries in the 'Spirituality' Category

Knowing The Stamp From Its Imprint

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How should a person measure his spiritual progress: by the growth of egoism or the magnitude of bestowal?

Answer: Bestowal can never be measured. It’s boundless, formless, and shapeless until it clothes into the receiving desire.

We are always submerged into our egoistic thoughts and impulses. But if we overcome them and begin to aim ourselves at the Creator above them, we impart height and form to our bestowing desire.

Its height equals that of the receiving desire, above which we want to live in bestowal. We turn to the Creator in exact correspondence with our egoistic impulse, above it.
After all, it is He who formed this egoistic desire, this foreign thought within me.

Hence, by rising above it and turning back to Him, I as though make a mask of the face, a copy, and acquire His form. The Creator copied His form onto my will to enjoy, while I make a reverse copy from this desire and return to the Creator’s initial form and begin to bestow.

In this way, I come to know, understand, and perceive the Creator: from a stamp to its imprint and back to a stamp.

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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/4/2011, “What Does It Mean That if the Good Grows Also the Evil Grows at Work”

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The Place Where The Creator Is Revealed

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can I attach the desires of others to myself in order to attain a common prayer?

Answer: You have to understand that all the corrections happen inside our common sphere, which is called a “place.”

If my thoughts are anywhere outside of this common place, it means I am outside of Malchut of the World of Atzilut, outside of Malchut of the World of Infinity, outside of the group, the “place” where the Creator is revealed (the Creator is called a “place”). This means I am outside of reality.

The place where He is revealed is called reality. This world, where the Creator is concealed, is not considered to be actually existent. All of the spiritual reality is revealed inside of our common Kli, vessel, or desire.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/8/10, Beit Shaar HaKavanot

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Don’t Get In The Way Of The Creator’s Work!

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Since I started my spiritual development, I have been experiencing various desires related to the corporeal world. I am constantly trying to shield myself from them, from the desire for power and knowledge, but it is pointless. Does it hinder my advancement?

Answer: Don’t work against your natural impulses and desires. There is no coercion in spirituality. We mustn’t annihilate our desires, violently suppressing and halting them within ourselves. Exist as you always have, as usual, but put all your effort in drawing the Light that Reforms.

Until now, you have been evolving led by your natural instincts given to you at birth as well as by what you received from your upbringing and the impact of the environment that has planted all the values and calculations in you. All this is derived from material nature.

Don’t Get In The Way Of The Creator’s Work!

However, now you are given an opportunity to receive a second nature, so let it develop. Don’t try to do something with it forcefully; it’s forbidden. Don’t interfere in the Creator’s work! Just put all your effort into helping yourself grow spiritually and touch none of your material desires and qualities. Don’t try to defeat them. The power of resistance comes from the Light which makes a restriction in you and hands you a screen.

Being a hero doesn’t mean the external suppression of desire in myself as if it doesn’t matter what is happening inside me and how I look on the outside. This is called the approach of Musar (religious ethics) which is unacceptable from Kabbalah’s perspective.

We need to let the Light that Reforms work, and all our Kabbalistic method is aimed at it. We only have to create the conditions for our point in the heart to grow the entire new world. That is what we are doing, and nothing more.

In the meantime, let us not worry about what is happening with our first nature in the corporeal world. Live, do whatever is necessary for your normal existence, and don’t fight your desires. However, all your attention should be focused on the second part of reality.

What will occur as a result of this second nature and how your first nature will change can’t be known in advance. Perhaps, at some point of your spiritual development you will feel great cruelty or stronger material urges for food, sex, family, power, and wealth.

Don’t try to correct them; just keep drawing the Light. Otherwise, you will only harm yourself. This is a very important warning. It hurts to see how many people get hurt while battling their desires.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/24/10, “Body and Soul”

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Machsom Is A Psychological Barrier

Dr. Michael LaitmanSpiritual fulfillment cannot be obtained directly, like a young child grabbing at a toy. In this form we only obtain life in our world.

At this very moment all of us are present in the World of Infinity (an unbounded reality), but because our method of existence is based on “grabbing,” that is, receiving and fulfilling ourselves egoistically, all we are able to receive from the infinite world is a tiny spark of the Light called “a thin candle” (Ner Dakik), which is limited to sensations of this world. We are incapable of perceiving more while receiving egoistically.

Egoistic fulfillment available to us in this world bears the shape of a faint illumination. It is intentionally given to us so that from this moment on, from this degree and further, we begin to develop using a different method: receiving into the vessel outside of ourselves and thus becoming a willing participant, similar, suitable, and equal to the Creator!

Only a tiny part of the vessel (desire) that we sense as “this world” is being filled. To directly receive more than this is impossible! The rest of our desires can only be filled through our similarity with the Creator, through our having the intention “in order to bestow.”

This is why the Creator separated our sensations into two parts: this world and the Upper world, placing a barrier between them called “Machsom.” This barrier (Machsom) has a psychological origin since while being underneath it (in this world), we are only capable of receiving internally, for our own sake. We would get much more, but it seems to us as if “other people” are strangers or outsiders.

We could have all of this under the condition that we overcome this psychological problem of perception, which makes everything seem “foreign” to us. We have to start considering everything there is to be “our own,” get closer to it, and begin sensing that things outside us are in fact our own. In return, we will receive all the worlds: Assiya, Yetzira, Beria, Atzilut, Adam Kadmon and at the end, the World of Infinity.

The biggest problem is to start perceiving those desires that seem “not our own” as “our own.” Afterward, whatever we receive into them will comprise our spiritual world.

For that, all we have to do is to attract the Upper Light that will show us our connectedness and demonstrate that all of us constitute one body. Then, the Upper Light will work as an eye-opener, and eventually we will perceive spirituality.

We will arrive at the clarification, and there won’t be any resistance left in us since we will see everything around as our own parts that belong to us as organs of one body. We never existed apart! It only appears to us that we are split, but, in fact, only our bodies are detached.

If we look deeper, we’ll see a system of our interconnectedness. Everything is done by the Upper Light!
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From Lesson 7, World Kabbalah Convention 2010, 11/11/10

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Manual: How To Bring Joy Back

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Spirituality requires completeness and joy, but in the group we sometimes deem it as gaiety. How does it fit in?

Answer: You drop into the group after your mundane, “civil” life. There, you would enjoy food, sex, family, wealth, respect, power, and knowledge. Here, however, you are placed before a goal that you don’t achieve and people you didn’t pick.

In the outside world, you would individually decide with whom to work and spend leisure time, but here you see the faces of the friends. Look, would you invite them into your circle? You have no choice. Moreover, there is no benefit. You find neither a reason, nor place, nor ways to feel the joy you used to experience in the outside world.

Now, you need to replace all your ideas. What am I here for? Why do I need all these people? How do I find fulfillment? What is the goal? How important is it? Having gathered and arranged these questions and their answers correctly, you must simply burst with joy, and soar to the seventh heaven because you are so happy.

After all, you are in the only correct place, in the company of the right people who yearn for the same exalted goal as you do, which cannot be reached on one’s own. Look, they all came together just for you. They exist solely for you to attain perfection.

Then, looking at the friends, you start loving them. They become important, close, dear to you, and the goal isn’t that distant any more. If we all unite, we will find it among us. It isn’t in some distant galaxy, but right here behind the partitions separating us, which we must crush.

The goal is to reveal the Light in us, but it cannot flow as long as there is a gap in the net. Because of the torn wires, the spiritual current doesn’t pass through any of us. So, let it shine; close the circuit. Everything is ready for us, and, if you see the events correctly, you will definitely get filled with joy.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/5/10, Rabash “The Matter of Schechina

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At The Foot Of Mount Sinai

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What is the inner connection between the friends?

Answer: The inner connection takes place between spiritual sparks. Each of us has his own egoistic “I,” and beside it there is a spiritual spark, the “point in the heart.” One may be “blue” and the other “green,” but each has a point in the heart, and all of them are the same “red!” It is these “red” points that we must connect!

If we connect our points in the heart, the connection between them is regarded as a spiritual vessel (not the points themselves, but their connection). To the degree that everyone annuls themselves, there will be love between us, in opposition to hate. And by the difference between love and hate, we measure the exaltedness of the soul, the magnitude of the spiritual vessel.

All the work occurs within a person, when he sees in the others only their spiritual sparks and yearns to unify with them. Afterward, we begin to see on the outside how this reflects on one’s attitude to the group, to the collective achievement and caring for the others. From the internal effort, it expands outside and becomes a practical action.

If I am able to connect these spiritual sparks, the bodies will begin acting differently in accordance with them. It is all up to us, and let’s hope that we will seriously realize it during the Convention.

I am certain that we will understand these principles. After all, people come to Mount Sinai with no knowledge and understanding. But first, we have to arrive at it!
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/28/10, “The Acting Mind”

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The Seal And The Stamp

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: If the creature always remains in the desire to receive pleasure, how can it bestow?

Answer: In truth, there isn’t any independent desire for pleasure; there is Light that creates an opposite form from itself, and it is called the desire to enjoy! The Light acts within its opposite form, the form of reception. It is an opposite impression, a stamp of Light as if pressed in wax or in some soft material. This imprinted form, this cavity, is called a spiritual vessel.

If so, then within the will to receive pleasure there is always Light, the Creator who fully controls it! The very desire to enjoy has no independence; it is simply an impression which has nothing of its own. It becomes independent only when the desire to bestow is added to this desire to feel pleasure, and then the Light becomes revealed in the will to enjoy.

The Light imprinted itself in the desire to feel pleasure as a stamp, and this desire received from it an opposite form, within which the Light acts conversely, through the desire to receive. But we don’t feel the Light hidden within; we only feel the desire that manifests outside of us! However, as the Light approaches, joins the desire, and reveals that it is He who defines it, we begin to sense some external presence, the Host, and the game between us and the Creator begins.

And so it continues until we merge with Him completely and become as one whole with no difference between us. The Creator steps out of concealment and becomes closer and closer to us, which signifies our ascent on the rungs of the spiritual worlds, until we feel total oneness with Him.

The Light that works within cleaves to the desire to enjoy, shining and demonstrating itself as the vessel’s representative, claiming “It is I!” as it is written: “He and His name are one.” And by itself, the desire decides nothing; it is only matter.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/22/10, Explanation of the Article, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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Spirituality Is The Measure Of My Equivalence To The Creator

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: When I enter spirituality, will I be able to visualize my more advanced states?

Answer: The problem primarily lies in the current states. In proportion to my acquiring the screen, the Light paints pictures for me. The spiritual world is an image of my equivalence to the Creator.

At present, I don’t perceive the spiritual world because I don’t possess an adequate degree of equivalence with the Creator. Between me and Him there is a screen. And on this screen, instead of my equivalence to the Creator, I see this world, my projection, an imprint of my uncorrected properties, and my inadequacy with the Creator.

As I get corrected, a new picture unfolds for me, which is called “the corrected me,” “the Creator illuminating me,” or “the world where the Creator and I are together.” They all are one and the same picture, depending on how we view it.

Spirituality is an image of the form of my equivalence to the Creator.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/20/10, “The Teaching of the Kabbalah and Its Essence”

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Don’t Paint Spirituality With Corporeal Pictures

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the process of development, having reached a comprehensive age, we have become equipped with a huge arsenal of images and concepts about the elements of this world. Hence, we are able to divide and connect various pictures and meanings in our imagination or in action. Therefore, when we hear about something, we can imagine it based on what we know about “something similar” even if we have never seen this object and have no relation to it.

As to spirituality, we have no idea about it, nor any contact with it; we have no knowledge of its elements that we could sort and divide or connect in order to imagine something “similar.” We read about spiritual phenomena, and, if we imagine something in pictures, we ought to realize that we are deceiving ourselves. In this case, we take images of the corporeal world that are familiar to us, and, from them, in our imaginations, we put together, as it were, pictures of the spiritual world.

Since this path is known to be false, we, while studying Kabbalah, try not to put anything together in our mind and feelings, but to act from what is described, as “the judge has only what his eyes see.” Adding things (intellectualizing and fantasizing) is not allowed since it signifies form that is not dressed in matter. Kabbalah is against it because we have to attain a form dressed in matter. If we start imagining forms that are not dressed in matter, they will always be false forms borrowed from our world, and we will never know the truth.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/20/10, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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Life Is In The Connection Between Us

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What does it mean to feel the connection between us? How do I do that?

Answer: To feel the connection between us is to come to feel that we all exist in one system and are dependent on one another, so much so that I cannot make even a tiny movement independently. This is a rigid system created Above, which is gradually being revealed as an unbending law.  We have to feel the life that is contained within, where the connection between us will reveal itself and become more apparent. And the life that flows through this connection is called the “spiritual world.”
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/14/10, The Zohar

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