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 →

The dissemination of Kabbalah means letting the world know the reason for its existence, what forces are causing it to develop, what its purpose and final state is, and how man can influence this process. But the revelation of Kabbalah to the world can only take place as much as the world is able to accept and realize the method.

The physical dissemination takes place through all the mass media channels. The spiritual dissemination is when we unite our points in our hearts and create a force of unity. Then, through the connection among all souls, our force of unity flows into the other souls, making them understand the need for unity and correction.
(From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson)

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

One’s development begins from the “animate” level, where a person identifies himself with his desires for things in this world. This stage of egoism’s development is called “animate” because all of one’s attention and strength is aimed at taking care of one’s body – and the body is an animal!

On this stage, it is clear what a person is doing. Everyone supports his efforts to provide for himself, his family and relatives and to have a life of maximum comfort.

But how can we convince our bodies – the desires of this world, to step aside and let us also take care of our spiritual development, to strive for bestowal instead of reception? This can only happen if the “point in the heart” awakens in a person. Once it appears, a person has to identify himself with this point. He will then look at his corporeal or animate desires from its standpoint, and will treat those desires as animate.

You have to check who manages and determines your behavior: Is it your animal body, which pulls you down, or your soul, which aspires upwards? Are you driven by the greatness of the Creator (Keter) and the realization of your own insignificance (Malchut), or by your pride and desire for power and fame? You have to observe yourself from the body’s standpoint and from the soul’s standpoint, and keep track of which is making the decisions: your egoism or your soul.
(From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson)

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - 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 →

A question I received: Why is it that when a point in the heart awakens in a person, he still has a long and difficult path to go before reaching spirituality?

My Answer: Why do you think the path is difficult? I look at the world and see so many people struggling to get money, power, fame, and knowledge, all to eventually experience a tiny pleasure. They waste their years on empty worries and false values.

When you engage in spiritual development, however, then even if you don’t move as quickly as you would like, but you still want to advance toward the goal, you will make progress. Isn’t this better than how the entire world is living?

Today, there are more and more people awakening to spirituality. It is impossible to even compare the number of students learning Kabbalah now to a mere few years ago.

When Rabash told me that the general awakening of the world would begin in 1995, I found it difficult to believe him. Who could have thought that the world would change so quickly? But suddenly, we do see that people are feeling empty and are experiencing a global crisis, including crises in nature, education, science, politics and economics.

It doesn’t matter that the media is lying and trying to hush up the crisis by assuring us that everything is alright. I am speaking of what is being revealed to us by nature.

Besides, it is understandable that people want to spruce up the situation. Everyone is instinctively trying to lessen their suffering and pain. This is why they close their eyes to the problems and tell themselves that everything is OK, that there is no crisis.

In the meantime, everything is crumbling and people continue to be laid off. But man is built in such a way that he does not want to see the truth.

The fact is that the Creator (Nature) is revealing to us that we are at a very advanced state. And this is all happening just twenty years after the general awakening has begun. Yet, you want to receive everything now, like a little child. You simply can’t understand what a huge, in fact – infinite desire we are dealing with, and how quickly it is changing.

The development of our desire dragged on gradually for thousands of years, but now it’s changing day by day. All you need is a little patience.
(From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson)

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

A question I received: Kabbalah’s method clearly defines all the stages of one’s advancement. But there’s a gap in one place – the transition from the corporeal to the spiritual. Why is this area left empty?

My Answer: I understand your desire to take the “wide road” to spirituality, to see the whole path from beginning to end, and to have road signs and names on every corner. And then to come to the place where a fully set table is waiting for you. But this would be similar to a dog that hounds the streets trying to smell out a bone.

We, however, have to ascend above the dog’s bone. We have to actually change our senses to opposite ones, which we can’t even imagine now. This is why the transition from corporeality to spirituality is so unclear to us, like a white blur on our path.

But this is precisely where you have to bring the Light – into the place where you find the white blur. And you have the instrument to do this in your hands.

You carry out work in all the areas of reality that are clear to you, but when you come across that tiny blur where you know you can’t do anything, that is where the Light helps you and builds a new sense in you, opening up the entrance to the new world.

(From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson)

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

Why do we get together at Congresses and desire to meet each other? It’s so that in addition to seeing the teacher on the computer screen every day, we will get to know one another and unite together even more. This is the practical realization of the science of Kabbalah, and without it, a person will never attain the spiritual world.

It is impossible for people to connect if they have never seen each other and haven’t spent at least a little bit of time together. We have to understand that our world isn’t cut off from the spiritual world. It was not created “just like that,” without a purpose.

Moreover, it wasn’t by chance that people have developed so many powerful, modern means of connecting. This gives us an opportunity and an obligation to meet each other even if we are located very far from each other, in order to establish an inner, spiritual connection.

Even though it may seem to some people that there is no need to meet others and there’s nothing others can do to inspire them, we still receive inspiration from others in this form, for the time being. Therefore, it is our responsibility to attend a Kabbalah Congress if we want to advance spiritually.

Many people study from home on their own, virtually, through the Internet, and they are afraid to come to a Congress because they don’t know anyone. However, if they wish to advance, it is their responsibility to carry out the advice given to them by Kabbalists, those who have already gone through this path. I can guarantee that if a person has an opportunity to come, it means that the proper circumstances are given to him from Above. And if he chooses not to come, then he simply won’t advance.

Sometimes a person really doesn’t have an opportunity to come, like some of our students from Latin America who are dreaming of being at the Congress but cannot attend because they don’t even have the money to get on a bus and leave their village. These circumstances are also contrived for them from Above, and they have to advance in their conditions. However, if you are given an opportunity from Above to come to the Congress, then you have no excuse to refuse it if you wish to advance spiritually.

I am warning you about this so that two years down the line, people won’t complain that they’ve been studying Kabbalah for so long, yet it is still just theory for them without any attainment, perception, and revelation of the spiritual world. After all, these are the things we should expect from our studies.
(From Part 3 of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson, on Baal HaSulam’s article, “The Acting Intelligence”)

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

A question I received: The science of Kabbalah explains the law of roots and branches. Knowing the laws of this world helps us in our everyday lives. But how can knowledge of spiritual laws help us? I am referring specifically to the law of roots and branches.

My Answer: The law of roots and branches is the main and most important law in the entire science of Kabbalah. According to this law, everything that happens in our world comes down from above in a unilateral, absolute order.

It is written: “There is not a blade of grass that has not an angel above it that strikes it and tells it to grow.” Angels are forces, and any action, thought, desire, event or occurrence, from the most elemental particle to the biggest stars and entire galaxies, is managed by an Upper Force.

This force divides and within it, is included a number of forces on the various levels of the inanimate, vegetative, animate and human. These are physical and biological forces that influence all levels, with all of them coming from Above.

This is why the law of roots and branches is very important. With the science of Kabbalah, and learning the law of roots and branches, we can rise from the branches of our world toward the roots. We will begin to see our world as transparent and behind every object, we will see the force which manages it and brings it to action.

A person will begin to sense where his thoughts and desires come from and why things happen to him and to others. He will begin to see how a net of forces acts on this world and how it playfully and through various wavelike movements, organizes everything that occurs here for us. In this way, a person begins a dialogue with this Upper Force, with the root through which its own force operates everything in our world.

A person begins to understand where he can step in and have a dialogue with the Creator who is behind these forces, in order to respond, participate, change and consciously intervene. This is the only place in this entire net of forces that acts on him from the inside and out and where he can actively participate.

Although we are not conscious of it, we are inside of a picture prepared and formed for us by these forces. I have to come to understand how I can actively take part in this picture. In other words, how I can control my fate.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: A Peek Into The Backstage Of The Show Called “Life”
Laitman.com Post: How To Read The Torah
Laitman.com Post: Besides Kabbalists, Everything And Everyone Are Angels
A Guide to the Hidden Wisdom of Kabbalah: “Like Roots and Branches”
Shamati #92: “Explaining the Discernment of Luck”- Lesson

Filed under: Spirituality - 2 Comments →

Every person receives precisely the capabilities he needs in order to correct his soul. We are not created by the whim of chance. All of your desires and qualities, all the situations you have gone through, the place you were born, the upbringing you received – everything has been set up for you in the optimal way for the express purpose of developing your soul.

Therefore, there’s no use complaining that you need different conditions in this material world in order to develop spiritually, or that you lack sufficient health, money, education, intelligence, talents, abilities, or sensitivity. All your qualities and all the conditions that are provided for you come from the particular qualities of your soul, which has to go through correction. Your only job is to ask for this correction to take place.

Therefore, there is no need to correct the external world. We have to live in the world just like everyone else. This world is a level that does not become corrected until the very end of correction. You may ascend as high as the level of Rashbi, who wrote The Book of Zohar, but you will still have to take care of your physical body, your family, your job, pension, and medical service – everything a person needs.

Like all people, when you’re sick, you will still have to go to a doctor, receive medicine from him, pay him money, and take the medicine according to the doctor’s instructions. You will have to do everything the doctor told you to, but when you are healed, you will thank the Creator for it. Why?

It’s because you did everything needed of you in the conditions that the Creator has organized for you in this theater of life. You treated this theater correctly and carried out all the necessary actions – and then you felt better. You thus corrected yourself on the level of this theater, and now you thank the Producer for everything that has happened. He set up this entire world and your illness for you, and you dealt with it on the same level

However, if He gives you a point in the heart and waits for you to come closer to Him, then you have to relate to Him on the level of the point in the heart. You do not throw your qualities out the window, be it envy, passion or pride, but you use them all in order to connect with others above these qualities, for example, by envying how they are advancing in the spiritual world.

Your pride pushes you to advance at least as much as they are advancing. You thus use all your natural qualities in order to awaken the true prayer inside you. And if you properly use all the means that are given to you, then you will end up attaining all your goals.

You have to clearly differentiate between the material level, which you cannot correct, and the spiritual level. You thereby connect the two levels.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

A question I received: How is it possible that there seems to be an objective reality in this world with external objects and which we can measure?

My Answer: We are used to a life that forms an image of reality based on an inanimate desire to receive pleasure. Similarly, we think that the spiritual world exists on its own and does not depend on changes within us.

This is how we perceive our lives until we begin to sense the relativity of our perception and come to understand that this perception depends on our qualities. Gradually, humanity is moving toward the realization that everything that we see in this world depends on the qualities of the observer.

Quantum physicists speak of the fact that experimental outcomes are equally dependent on the observer. However, we do not have the means by which to measure the influence of thought over matter.

Over time, everything becomes absolutely elusive until we come to the understanding that all things are relative to a person’s qualities. It is not dependent on whether or not one observes or thinks, but rather on the qualities of the person who is doing the thinking and the observing.

At such a point, we transition to being a true researcher from the realm of regular science which is not dependent on the qualities of the scientist. A true researcher is someone who concerns himself with his own qualities first and foremost, and only then proceeds to study matter. That is a Kabbalist!

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: What Does The World Look Like To The Creator?
Laitman.com Post: Look Inside Yourself: There You Will Find Everything
Laitman.com Post: Did Modern Science Break Through Into A New Dimension, Or Reach A Dead End?
Attaining the Worlds Beyond: “Perceiving the Creator”
Video: Changing The World

Filed under: Perception - No Comments →