Coercion Or Realization?

The Biblical rule of “love thy friend as thyself” is not talking either about the present or the past. Even religions have abandoned this goal long ago as something unattainable and turned their attention to everyday problems: helping people in some things, protecting them from others, offering psychological support, and no more than that.

However today, we can see that nature is forcing us into that. That means that we need to explain to ourselves and to everyone that under the influence of mass media and society we can begin to change a human being, provided it will not be lies like during the Soviet regime.

The right words were said there, the correct goals were set, but they weren’t accompanied by people’s upbringing. There was only much talk about upbringing and creating a new Soviet identity. “A new individual,” “there was never anything like this in the world before,” and so on, these wonderful words corresponded perfectly to the integral methodology. But in reality all that didn’t exist. The only thing that existed was coercion, which cannot be under any circumstances! There cannot be either fear, or blows, or destruction, or horrible pressure, or anything else that was carried out by the Soviet regime.

The transformation should occur not through coercion, but through realization. The realization will come from the crisis, and there is no other way out of it.

It turns out that while during the Soviet regime this was necessary for a certain few but not everyone else, today it’s the opposite: It is essential for everyone because there is no other way to get out of our state. Otherwise, we will face world wars and mutual destruction. Where else could our egoism lead us? We all understand that it can only lead towards that.

Therefore our next social formation is either Nazism, fascism, and mutual destruction or it is a conscious movement forward, where we on our own create ourselves on a new level, that is, work on our own upbringing.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #5, 12/13/11

Hastening Time

Reading The Book of Zohar helps us hasten time. If I need to develop for 5-10 years, then reading The Zohar can bring about these changes in me in several lessons or even less.

This is the difference between the level of the animate and the level of the speaking, although the two cannot be compared. No matter how much a beast wants to, no matter how much it jumps, no matter what it does—in its entire lifetime, it will not be able to perform one action that is similar to a human or even a small child. This is the difference in the levels of development.

Therefore, if we read The Zohar and don’t think about the actions that the Light can perform on us, our development will be very slow and may even be negative because in any case, the Light performs changes in us.

But if we add the right intention, then the reforming Light develops us from self-love to love of others, to resembling and becoming equal to the Light, and we reach the opening of the eyes.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/1/12, The Zohar

Don’t Stop On The Way To Love

The purpose of creation is to reach adhesion with the Creator.We discover adhesion with the Creator with the help of the attribute of love. This is because the Creator reveals to the created being the attribute and the attitude called love, which are expressed in the form of the good and the benevolent.

It is the same in our world, when we love someone, we want to do good to them. It is an external sign of love. But if a person lacks the desire to do good, it means that he doesn’t love, but rather he calculates what is more advantageous for him: He gives in order to receive.

Love is above all the calculations. First there is love and then, as a result, comes the giving. Love in itself is what obliges a person to give because one is fulfilled from that. When I love and I cannot give, I suffer. This is because love lives by our feeling good when we give to the people we love.

So why is there a Mitzva that we reach the love of the Creator? This is unclear for two reasons. On one hand, how should I want this? On the other hand, why is this an obligation? Can someone be obliged to love? Why does this idea take on the form of a commandment, of the most important Mitzva? Even in our life we see that in this world you can oblige a person to do anything except to love. If I am obliged, it isn’t love anymore.

This brings up many questions, which we shall leave for philosophers and instead will talk about it looking at the system. The system of creation was created by the upper Light, which comes to us from the source of love, from the Creator’s love to the created being. This love is inherently absolute. In order to fulfill it, the upper Light spreads from the source in the form of the good and the benevolent and stabilizes the created being so that all the processes will be able to fully take place in him. This is done only from the love of the Creator to the created being.

First we have to understand that everything that happens to us, the worst and most terrible things, from which humanity has suffered throughout its corporeal history, and also on the levels of the spiritual worlds—all stemmed from the Creator’s absolute love for us. We have to reach the same attitude on our part.

This is possible because the Light that develops us comes from exactly the same source. It descends through the Masachim (screens), the filters, and begins to influence our smallest desire to receive, the tiny grain of egoism, the low, the murky, and the dead. Gradually the Light influences our matter on higher levels of the ladder of development and evokes this grain to start growing. The desire goes through the phases of the inanimate, vegetative, and animate, to the level of speaking in which the same cycle takes place, and so on.

All this comes from love. Then, at the end of the process, whether we like it or not, love will reside among us. But it works in two lines: the deficiency and the filling. This is how we advance.

First the Creator has to gradually create deficiencies in us, desires, from top down, together with the fulfillments on every level and in every state. The difference between these levels is qualitative: We grow wiser, acquire greater understanding and feeling, and turn from single cells in a body into human beings. Then with the point in the heart, we exit into the spiritual levels.

All this stems from the Creator’s love and so there is no doubt that we will return to it. So why are we commanded to do that? Why should there be a demand for a predetermined result? The commandment is that we shouldn’t stop on the way, and should constantly move forward. If we push ourselves forward willingly we will undoubtedly reach love.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/31/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

Asking To Love

How can I determine whether I advance towards the Creator with the intention of in order to bestow or for some other self-benefit?There are many people who are ready to “die as martyrs,” but how can you tell whether it is the greatest egoism or whether it is truly bestowal and self-sacrifice?

How can I check myself, daily, every moment, whether I am desiring to bestow upon the friends, life, myself, and the Creator or in order to somehow profit from them?

How can I test this? After all, without such examination, I don’t know where I am. It could be that I have been going along for twenty years but I actually went in the opposite direction from the goal: instead of bestowal to receiving. And I could complain that I haven’t reached revelation yet and that I am now powerless. But it could be that I went backward, as it is written, “It is better to sit and do nothing,” than to go in the wrong direction.

The examination is very sharp and simple: I have to yearn for what I hate: It is very simple. If I hate someone and want to feel bestowal towards him, then I have to love him without annulling my hate.

But if I don’t feel hate towards someone, I cannot check in what kind of a relationship we are: whether it is in order to receive or in order to bestow. If I build a relationship with someone, and I begin to think less of him than before, it is a good sign. It is a sign that I discover my ego. And I decide that I continue to reinforce our connection and turn the one I hate in to a loved friend, above my power, against my will, when I oblige myself to love him.

If I don’t succeed in that, I ask for it during the lesson and do all kinds of tricks in order to love him. This is because it is clear to me that the love must ride on top of the previous hate and that these two feelings have to coexist, as the right and left lines. I connect them and build the middle line without annulling either of them: not the right one and not the left one, as it written: “Love covers all sins.”

This means that the sins are necessary, so that above them there will be love. Then I look at our relationship differently. Hate is revealed? Never mind! It is a sign that now love will be revealed!

So I try to feel it and see that it doesn’t work out. I go through ascents and descents and different problems, and it is all in order to need help from Above. Then I cry out to the Creator: “Help!” The Creator is the middle line, Keter, from which the two lines come to me: the right line and the left line. If I am below, in the middle line (in the Sefira of Da’at), I ask and receive help from Him.

This means that these two opposing forces: the bestowal and the receiving, which come from Him, are needed only in order to stabilize me in accordance with Him and to focus me on Him. Thanks to them I feel and understand what Keter is. Actually they are what stabilize my reality.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/31/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

In The Desert There Is No One To Cry Out To – Only Heaven

Question: When is our state called self-sacrifice?

Answer: At the moment, we should simply try to do whatever is in our power according to our understanding of what self-sacrifice means. Try to find your point of the shattering, which is the opposite from the point that was created during the shattering from top down, and correct the place of the shattering in the ascent from the bottom up. This is what we call to clarify what you can give up, in order to hold on to bestowal.

Suppose I am ready to give to someone, to help him, to think about him under certain conditions, but beyond that—no. Can I do anything else above that “no?” A single step or half a step? What will I feel then?

These are very high concepts, which cannot be conveyed in words. People think that it is simple: We often say that a person sacrifices himself for his work, for his family, etc., but true self-sacrifice is not in the hands of the created being at all. We can’t do it as long as we operate within our egoistic nature. There must be the influence of the Light, which raises me above my egoistic desire, and then I can work in self-sacrifice.

To sacrifice my soul means to give myself to a higher level. But if I am within my egoismnow, how can I reach the level of bestowal? And if I am on a certain level of bestowal, how do I rise to a higher level? I have to give my soul to the higher level, to enter the upper, like a fetus.

In order to become a fetus in the upper, I have to annul my feelings, my mind, my clarifications, and all my healthy logic and common sense. But I feel that I am a grown up, that I am clever, and not some insane fool. So how can I give myself to the upper?

And what does it mean to give myself: simply not to do anything and to wait until He does something with me? No, it won’t work this way. To give myself the upper means to do whatever I feel as His desire by myself, above my reason. If you can’t do that, you cry out!

In the article: “The Matter of the Association of the Quality of Mercy with Judgment,” it says that it is in the darkest state that a person tries to reach self-sacrifice. It is in the darkness that a person is given this opportunity.

It is very hard to do this alone. If a person makes great efforts, for a long time by oneself and sees that it leads nowhere, he can reach the conclusion that he needs the group’ssupport. I won’t be able to do it alone, and neither will all the others if they operate alone. So let’s help one another, as it says: “they shall help one another” and then we will have a reason to go out to the desert!

A desert is a place where we despair of our own powers and cry out. Therefore, we need to prepare the vessels for this.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/26/12, Shamati #219

All The Light? That’s Too Much, Can I Have Just A Bit?

Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Study of The Ten Sefirot“:One concealment means that he believes in the Providence of reward and punishment. Yet, because of the accumulation of the suffering, he sometimes comes to thoughts of transgression.

The egoistic desire pressures a person and the slight revelation of the Creator’s posterior isn’t enough for him. But he still restrains himself as much as he can.

This is because even though he believes that the suffering came to him as a punishment, he is still like one who sees his friend from behind, and might doubt and mistake him for another. And these sins are only mistakes, since, as a whole, he does believe in Providence of reward and punishment.

So what are these states? Suppose a person’s egoistic desire weighs 100 kg and the Light gives him only 50 kg of power of persistence. If we subtract the 100 kg of evil from the 50 kg of the power of the Light, the result will be minus 50 kg. These 50 kg of the ego operate inside a person and lower him to the level of mistakes. If all the 100kg of the ego were set loose in us, a person could find himself on the level of sins.

If I am totally under the control of my egoistic desire, it is the level of sins. Here all my vessels, the ones that receive and ones that bestow, operate with the intention of in order to receive. But if some of my vessels can restrain themselves fearlessly, then I am on the level of mistakes. It all depends on the revelation of the Creator, on the way He appears to me.

This mechanism doesn’t work in our world. Here only the threat of a blow to the ego restrains us: whether it is the feeling of shame, or whether our pride may be hurt, or even physical damage. On the other hand, in the spiritual world the punishment is the inability to bestow. The threat of the inability to bestow restrains a person.

On the whole, it all depends on how much the Light influences me, in how many of my vessels I want It to bestow. Accordingly I am on the level of a “righteous” or an “evil person.”

Do I have free will here? It depends on whether I can demand that the Light will influence me as much as possible.

For example, I have a “cruel” egoistic desire that weighs 100 kg and I am ready to correct it only by 10 kg because I simply cannot ask for a greater correction; I can’t resist all the pleasures and put them under the intention of bestowal. Even when I am incorporated in the group, I am not ready to get rid of all my egoism. At the most, I am ready to “cut the edges,” to get rid of the “excessive fat,” and not more than that; that’s all I can ask for. So what’s next? Will my request be accepted in such an egoistic manner?

Everyone should try and answer this question by himself.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/25/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”