The Benefits Of Unity

Baal HaSulam, “Peace in the World”: Because indeed, we have already come to such a degree that the whole world is considered one collective and one society. Meaning, because each person in the world draws his life’s marrow and his livelihood from all the people in the world, he is coerced to serve and care for the well-being of the whole world.

What was clear to Baal HaSulam almost a century ago still is unclear to people today. We have reached such a state in our evolution that we all are dependent on one another in a tight way, directly.

Question: Why is it still unclear?

Answer: See for yourself: Everyone “pulls the blanket” to his side and doesn’t understand that eventually, he is causing himself even greater harm than in any other way.

The entire point is that if I invest in the well-being of the public, I don’t see any self-benefit in it. If I take something from the public, I see a real benefit from it.

However, Baal HaSulam says the opposite: The system is already “closed.” It is “tied up” in a perfect, whole way inside itself. So, if you work for the public, you get a return that is ten times greater, and if you take from the public, your loss is ten times greater. However, we just keep on going, not understanding what is going on.

Question: What conceals the truth from me?

Answer: It is my ego. There is an integral system that is being revealed today. Actually, the system of Ein Sof (Infinity) is being revealed to us, of the Shechina, the vessel of thegeneral soul in which we are all connected.

Up until now,  let’s say until 1995, everyone grew in his private desires for ages, in the root phase and phases one, two, three, and four. Now, a person discovers that having no choice, he is connected to everyone, and everyone is connected to him.

The strings of mutual connection make a great, complicated integral system, and there is even a certain scientific field that studies this. Before, each part was not connected so tightly to the others. It developed individually, and that was the general trend. However, since the 1950′s, we have begun to feel the global trend, and today, everyone has reached his personal limit and only needs to develop in mutual connection with others. There is nothing left but that. This is the trend until the end of correction.

We are still locked within our egoistic desire and want to fill it like before, but this system is not active any more. Before, I used to fill myself as my ego grew, and it took me from one level to another, from the root phase to phase four.

Today, I continue to operate like in the past, but I cannot because I cannot fill myself—my desires don’t develop in the previous direction anymore. From now on, they can develop only in the direction of togetherness (∑), of unity.

This means that even the egoistic benefits, at first sight, are possible only by connection, only by using connection. This is what is being revealed to us these days.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/11/12, “Peace in the World”

A New Year, A New Beginning

Different than our corporeal world, there is no time, place, and motion in the spiritual world, but only ascents and descents in the attributes of receiving or bestowal. This is the scale we move along all the time. Our states are measured only with regard to the spiritual “worlds,” the Partzufim and the Sefirot that continue from the top down through 125 degrees.

Except for our ascents and descents, there is also the motion of the degrees themselves that can move together with us. If I am in a certain world, for example, in a certain perception of reality and it’s suddenly “upgraded”: I feel that it becomes clearer, that it is more illuminating; I receive greater powers, understandings, and discernments. All this is not regarded as my doing, but it’s a kind of “exercise” I am put through in order to show me something.

It’s like a small child who is being picked up and suddenly feels that he is big: New horizons open up before him; he can reach things that he couldn’t reach before. Then he begins to direct the one who carries him where he wants to be carried to and which doors to open. Similar behaviors come from Above and are revealed in our world. Therefore there are different ascents:

• We either ascend the ladder by our efforts
• Or the ladder itself moves up and down.

These movements are depicted to us as special times or special states. On the whole each state is special and never repeats itself; there isn’t a moment that is similar to the next. We should say that it isn’t by chance that people divided time the way it is. Clearly the days and the nights correspond to the sundial and the month is determined by the lunar calendar. But how did people decide on the division of the day into 12 daytime hours and 12 nighttime hours? The wisdom of Kabbalah explains this cycle of 24 hours divided into minutes and seconds as the result of the mutual relations between Zeir Anpin andMalchut.

On the whole, it’s about a multiplicity of different influences upon the created being, which means on Malchut, from Above. This is where the ideas of a fallow year and Yovel(Jubilee, the 50th year) come from. As well there are special states called “times” or “holidays.” They are not connected to phenomena on the still level, but are controlled by a special program. The point is that there are special roots that have to be revealed and fulfilled specifically in us and not just in the world or by some customs. These states “illuminate” for us by preparing us so that in the future we will actually receive and fulfill them.

Today we receive faint illuminations from them, but in fact these are the degrees. In the spiritual world a person ascends the degrees of “Sunday,” “Monday,” “Tuesday,” “Wednesday,” “Thursday,” “Friday,” and “the Sabbath.” He must feel these states sequentially, one after another. A spiritual day can last a couple of seconds or it may linger for several weeks. It makes no difference since the corporeal time has nothing to do with the spiritual time.

Thus the “holidays” are states, “examples,” levels to which a person rises. As a whole they are in the ascent and are fulfilled by an awakening from Above by a certain illumination that adds something to a person who has a spiritual perception. Such additions are called “Rosh Hashanah,” (the new year), “Yom Kippur,” etc.

For every such ascent that is received from Above, a special kind of work is required below, by the created being of course. It’s because he wants to use this ascent in order to correct himself and fulfill the additional affluence that has reached him, on a new level. It’s the same on the Sabbath when an awakening from Above requires special work from us. It isn’t a time of rest, but rather quite a busy day in which there are more prayers and other customs. When the Upper invites the created being to ascend to an upper level, the work during the ascent obligates the lower to perform many actions.

The first holiday is Rosh Hashanah, which symbolizes a new beginning. I want to be a human being, Adam, to resemble the Creator. This is the reason for the spiritual process that I want to go through. Thus, Rosh Hashanah is called the day of the Creation of man; this is the day on which man was created.

In corporeality it’s also reflected in a special way: 5753 years ago there lived a guy called Adam and on that day he discovered spirituality; he discovered the Creator. For the first time in history one of the two-legged creatures discovered that there is a spiritual world and the upper force. He was the first to resemble the Creator and we call him the “First Man.”

In the article “The Teaching of Kabbalah and Its Essence,” Baal HaSulam says, Adam HaRishon was the first to receive a sequence of sufficient knowledge by which to understand and to successfully maximize everything he saw and attained with his eyes. And this understanding is called the “wisdom of truth.”

Since that day, when man first identified with the Creator and fulfilled his name, which was given to him “by chance” by his parents, we count our years. This means that even our calendar is initially based on the revelation of the Creator to the created being.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/14/12, Customs of Rosh Hashanah

To Correct The World Means To Correct Ourselves

Question: What effort and awakening do we lack in order to help people break the barriers?

Answer: They must know that the goal is not achieved by shouts and riots in the streets. Instead, we must learn what connection is.

Connection is not a simple thing. Enthusiastic calls will not help here. A person must examine himself, reveal, and bring out within him the forces that repel the connection and that help it.

The method of connection is actually the method for a person’s inner correction. I don’t want to connect with others because this is how I am built from within. I can talk about this, praise the unity in the world, and organize general love days, but actually, we are all egoists, and no one has the power to truly connect with others. It is not that he does not want to, but is simply incapable.

Therefore, we need to become familiar with this and begin to change ourselves. The correction of the world is correction of each one. We need to change the person. Moreover, each one needs to change himself and not the others, and to help another person means to pass on the method and support in his first steps that he is capable of actualizing. I can give him an example of the extent to which it is important for me so that he also will be imbued with this importance.

We need to act solely according to the principles of mutuality. We are different from all the rest in that we say that it is possible to reach connection and unity, that it is possible to rise above the crisis.

We are capable of this. We have the method of connection that is based on a person’s correction. The entire Torah is intended for this, as it is written, “I created the evil inclination, and I created the Torah as a spice for it because the Light in it reforms”.

This is how a person becomes better. We use this method that enables us to attract the Light through the study of the wisdom of Kabbalah and work in the group.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/7/12, “Body and Soul”

The Joyful Tears Of Prayer

A prayer is mingled with the feeling of sadness, suffering, lack, different requirements, and the inability to justify the Creator. But the prayer itself should be gratitude. I thank the Creator for this opportunity to communicate, for the fact that He created me in such a way that I have a need to turn to Him.

That is, a prayer must come from love and not from claims. We are both happy that I have a request through which I can develop our love. A prayer must begin with our understanding of how happy we are to connect through this prayer.

A prayer combines two totally opposite poles, but the first thing in it is the point of adhesion due to the feeling that we both participate in one common action. I have to discover the empty desire that the Creator can fulfill. And I am glad that I have revealed this need in myself; otherwise, I would never have been able to express myself. Here, the two opposite parts are combined. A prayer is joy, not tears as it is accustomed to think in our world.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/11/12, The Zohar

In Unison With The World

Baal HaSulam, “Peace in the World“: Thus, peace of the world and peace of the state are interdependent. Hence, we necessarily find that even that part of the state which is currently satisfied with its life, which are the nimble and the clever, still have a lot to be concerned about for the safety of their lives, due to the tensions with those who strive to overthrow them. And if they understood the value of peace, they would be happy to adopt the conduct of living of the last generation, for “all that a man has will he give for his life.

There is a simple condition for the good life of the last generation, and that is to know that all over the earth, in all of humanity everything is connected integrally and globally and no one is free of this general account. Everyone is connected to everyone in full connections that we know of and that we don’t know of, the revealed and the concealed. There are millions of strings stretched among us through my thoughts and my desires and through all of me. If I haven’t revealed them yet, it doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. Of course they exist and they are more clearly revealed each day.

The only thing I can do is to understand that that’s the way it is, but the understanding isn’t enough—I need to come to the feeling that I was able to correctly use the situation. Let it limit me when I do something wrong and push me forward in the right initiatives, according to the general system in which we are all connected to one another.

If I don’t feel, I will miss this opportunity: I will start saying one thing and doing another thing, which is what is actually happening today.

Well, first I have to understand it myself and explain to those around me. But eventually, this system has to be revealed to us so that we will really see it in our eyes and in our insight, so that we will feel its signals coming from heart to heart, from mind to mind.

No one will be able to think and contemplate by himself. Everyone will have to connect to the whole world in his thoughts. In other words, we need one heart and one mind for everyone.

Life itself demands the unity. We are moving in this direction and will reach it anyway if not now, then later. So how can we execute this? Will some global government or some global police help us? What can do?

We need a special means that will show us the connection among everyone in an emotional and cognitive manner, so that we will not just look at in from the side, but will actually find ourselves in it.

Then I will automatically worry about others: If I think, I think about everyone; if I make a decision, I take everyone into account. I will be strongly and tightly connected to the general. Without this there is no chance we will succeed.

Question: You have described the final state, but not how to get there.

Answer: That’s right. Even now I can use my common sense and my right mind in order to depict for myself how things should be. If I already see the general system, how does it obligate me at the moment? Then other conditions will be revealed, even tougher and stranger ones.

Still I have to think objectively regarding the present: There are certain components that are connected in a certain way.

How do I connect them so that everyone feels all the others and everyone can take everyone else into account?

Everyone knows the other’s nature thoroughly and is unlimitedly connected to everyone in a variety of connections and has such a large mind that he can take everyone into account, to immediately plan projects on everyone’s behalf and carry out actual operations, assured that these operations are optimal and that in the current circumstances are the best possible.

Otherwise, if everyone continues carrying on his personal accounts under the conditions of the growing mutual connection, everything will fall apart like a car whose parts go in every direction when an accident occurs.

So we have to see the picture of our unity as compulsory: Everyone has the mind of everyone and everyone has the feelings of everyone else. How is that possible? That’s a question in itself. But even now we already see that nature is presenting us with this problem.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/13/12, “Peace in the World”