Ordinary People With Endless Possibilities

Question: After I have already annulled myself in front of my friends, what else should I do?

Answer: By nullifying oneself, one becomes as a drop of semen that enters a uterus and attaches to its lining. Then, the spiritual fetus has to grow. It starts receiving blood (desires associated with the inanimate level) that adds more material substance to it. Later, this inanimate material will to turn into a vegetative substance, then it will develop into animate and speaking levels.

All of a sudden, one feels hatred toward the upper and thus one has to work on it in order to nullify oneself again. Because of this self-annulling, one shapes oneself similar to the upper, since one becomes receptive of everything that the upper gives him. It’s said that “a fetus in its mother’s waters sees the entire world from one end to another. A candle is lit above his head (the Light of Keter) and he is taught the whole Torah.” The Light hits all of his 620 desires and corrects them by adding the intention to bestow to them.

All of the above happens as a result of self-annulling. There is nothing else we should do, nothing but this: Our advancement starts with self-annulling. Each new step of ours is just a new level of self-annihilation. One rescinds oneself and the upper starts working on him as his mother’s uterus. Same as in regular life, a fetus conforms to its mother. It’s as if it doesn’t yet exist, nor does it understand or feel a thing; All the fetus does is totally annul itself. Later, we start nullifying ourselves at higher levels, Ruach, HGT.

Then, a period of “feeding” (nourishment) begins; it’s about self-annulment that is even bigger than the previous stage. The upper demonstrates to us that He acts and that some of His actions are recognized by our egoism as incorrect and even terrible. Look at what the Creator does to the world, what affliction He causes in people! All our problems are originated by Him.

When corrupt desires wake up in us, we feel them as a manifestation of the Creator’s horrible attitude to creation. It means that real egoistic powers (Klipot) rebel in us. We have to “disregard” ourselves and accept these situations by going with faith above reason and regard them as the best circumstances that could have happened to us.

We receive energy for self-negation from our friends, from our “ten.” There is no other place for spiritual revelation; we exist only in this group. The power comes from the Creator to us only through this group of people. Before, we were all equal, but now we see our friends as very big ones. We were the ones who made them look big, whereas they in fact remain the same, but due to our self-nullification, we start receiving nourishment through them as a fetus from his mother.

We can receive the entire world of infinity through them, since as we speak we are in it, but we don’t see or feel this endless Light only because of our corrupt properties. So, if we continue working correctly, we can receive everything through our “tens” to the degree of our self-nullification. This process doesn’t depend on our friends at all. Their task is just to stay ready to do the same thing to at least some extent, this will already be enough so that through them we will achieve the state of the world of infinity.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/24/13, Writings of Rabash

Ping Pong With The Creator

Question: Could you please outline in a couple of words the scheme of our relationships with the Creator.

Answer: The Creator is a source of pleasure. He created us as pleasure-seeking entities. However, His task is to teach us not to pursue bliss per se (since in this case we just turn into thoughtless animals, robots), but rather to teach us to love Him, the One who grants us delight, instead of being attracted to pleasures directly.

What does He have to do in order to achieve this goal? He has to gradually show us, which does not give us pleasure, so that we can build our direct relationship to Him, rather than aspire to the delights that He gives us.

This is a game: more pleasure – less pleasure, and in response to our response: our attitude to the bliss that comes out of the Creator or to the Creator Himself.
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He Who Doesn’t Ask For Himself Receives Twice As Much

Spirituality begins from restriction. Restriction means that a person doesn’t ask for anything for himself. His desire is closed before his own pleasure and he uses it only in order to bestow. If he can bestow, he uses it, and if he can’t, then he doesn’t use it. It is as if there is a switch in him, a trigger that works only in one direction.

It is like a computer that can be in a state of 0 or of 1 and nothing but that. If there is no one he can bestow upon, it is a state of 0, and if there is someone he can bestow upon, it is 1. This means that I open myself, accept the deficiencies of the other, and convey them to the Creator. This is how Malchut that wants to resemble Bina works. It restricts its own desire, and locks it for using for its own sake, but thanks to that, it can feel the deficiencies of others. This is called “make your desire His desire,” but with regards to the created beings.

By acquiring the desires of others, I convey them to the Creator like a prayer, MAN, and get a response according to the rule: “The first born receives twice as much,” for himself and for the lower. I don’t need anything for myself, but I receive twice as much since my desire has changed and now I include in it the deficiency of the other. Thus I fill the two of us.

I fill my desire to bestow and not the desire to receive! When I convey a desire to bestow to another, I first convey the Light that Reforms to him, and then incorporate him in me, which means that I add him to myself like to the AHP of the upper. When he is ready to annul himself before me, I convey to him the force that allows him to build his own vessel and to receive the filling for himself.

It turns out that our work with the public is divided into many phases. First we have to work among us in order to acquire the desire to bestow upon the public. It should not be a desire to bestow for the sake of self-pleasure but truly in order to bestow. I work with my desire to receive only in order to bestow.

Thus we awaken the public, and they are impressed by the fact that they can fulfill their egoistic desires. But thanks to the connection with us and the mutual incorporation, they receive the force of correction and correct their desires. Then we can raise a double prayer, MAN, and receive a double response: for ourselves and for those we asked for, and thus we fill our collective vessels of receiving.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/21/13

Believing In The Creator’s Greatness

Question: What does it means to believe in the Creator’s greatness? Is believing an instrument like the instrument a scientists uses for an experiment following the advice of another scientist?

Answer: In our world the term “believing” has become banal: “I believe,” “I am a believer,” etc. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, the term “to believe” has a totally different meaning. Believing means feeling.

Everything the wisdom of Kabbalah speaks about is about two forces: receiving and bestowal, which means a desire and Light (its filling). What is more, the filling also shapes the desire and changes its form as we study in the four phases of the Direct Light.

Why is one of the forces called Light and not pleasure? Because the Light influences the phases according to which the vessel develops, and it isn’t always felt as pleasure. But everything is done by the Light. Therefore, there is no such term as “believing.”

What does it means that I believe in something? Does it refer to something that I don’t understand, that is tasteless and unfelt? No. We always speak from the perspective of the vessel (the desire), from the perspective of what it feels.

The main thing is feeling the greatness of the force that has created me and which manages me, feeling that it is good and that it bestows. We call this feeling believing.

We also call the attributes of bestowal and love believing, since by feeling the force that has created me, I feel the attributes of bestowal and love inside me. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to feel this force, since it is felt only to the extent that I am equal in form; to the extent that I have a certain attribute, I feel this attribute external to me, although there is no such thing as external to me and everything is always felt inside me.

We must understand that whatever we feel is because we are identical to that feeling and are actually made of that attribute. On the whole, we feel ourselves! The question is how we can change ourselves so that we will begin to feel ourselves differently, that we will feel that we are spiritual.

Believing in the Creator’s greatness means feeling the superiority and the greatness of the force that has created everything and that fills everything.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/25/13, Question and Answers with Dr. Laitman

Updating The Action Of Creation Every Day

Question: How can we hold on to the group if we get a new form, a new burdening of the heart, and it is difficult to justify the Creator?

Answer: Anyone who is included in the group, from time to time gets new forms, passes through ups and downs. And between them, he passes a breakpoint on the top of the wave crest and on the lower, the point of rupture, breaking. It is possible to stay in such conditions only if you are connected with some kind of support that will hold you. If you have nothing remaining of the old form and you have no new form, but only one Reshimo, then you are as if suspended in the air.

There are several such moments in the states of ascent and descent, when a person loses any orientation, completely breaking away from the old form. It’s like he begins his life anew, from a drop of semen, he starts from the state that he has nothing, from “nothing” (Ayin) because our material is being updated, “emerging out of nothing” (Yesh mi-Ain).

The Reshimo is a pure information gene, without any material. When the material, emerging out of nothing is updated, you seemingly go through an energy barrier. As if you come with your material to a wall, run into it, but only the Reshimo, energy, can pass through that wall. And behind the wall, the Reshimo acquires material again—up to the next wall. Only some information passes through another wall, and so you advance.

When you turn into an information gene, it is no longer you, but the very Reshimo that “emerged from nothing,” created by the Creator in the original act of creation (Maase Beresheet). Now, a part of this initial action of creation is happening to you, and the same thing with any other. It means: “Every day updating the actions of Creation.”

A new form is a new life, new heaven, new earth, everything anew. Even a person just starting out his path feels the first such change in himself, as if changing his clothes—10Sefirot. This is a new perception, a new sensation, a new attitude. Sometimes this transition takes a long time and the person gets in a vague state, as in a fog. The main thing is to understand that this development is typical for the human, unlike animals.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/2/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

It’s Hard To Be Omnipotent, But Let’s Try…

Question: According to crowd-sourcing (wisdom of the crowd) technologies, any kind of discussion is an enemy to the collective mind, since when they talk, people become cautious. It leads to a minimization of their thinking diversity. How does it go together with the integral approach? Should an integral group preserve its diversity? In what spheres should we unite and become as one?

Answer: We do not need to worry about diversity. Diversity takes place when everybody retains their own shapes of egoism, and just like people have different faces, people have dissimilar internal qualities. Obviously, this fact manifests in a purely egoistic way.

If we accept someone as part of a team and let them contribute to a group whatever their individuality is able to give, they begin thinking differently. In other words, their individual qualities show up in a more convex way and they start thinking: “How and what can I give to this team?”

In this case, our egoism “swells”; it learns to think differently, not about what we can receive, but rather about what we can give. When receiving, I have a very limited need, my personal one. When we think of what we can give (let’s say we live in some virtual space and share altruistic integral liaisons), then we make an effort to understand what other people on our team want.

Based on this, I become similar to God, although it’s extremely hard to. It means that each of us has to take care of nine other friends. We don’t mind playing this role, but what can we give to others? What would the first, the second, the third… friend want? At this point, we start unleashing our imagination. This is when our resourcefulness becomes unrestricted. We develop it instead of restraining it.

What does one need while he is still in one’s miniscule egoism? No matter how much one fantasizes, it still ends up being narrow and primitive; everybody pursues the same dreams.

However, we manage to reveal the whole world since our friends (to whom we try to bestow) aspire to a totally different level of existence. So, we do our best to become powerful and provide others with what they want.
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From Kab TV’s “Wisdom of the Crowd – 2”, 5/14/13

Sacrifices That Bring Us Closer To The Creator

The entire order of offering sacrifices is described in the Torah in detail, but really this process takes place inside a person, in one’s interior world. Preparation of sacrificial animals, offerings, and the priests’ (Cohen’s) work depends on a person and on one’s spiritual level and intentions associated with this level.

Question: What exactly happens when a person offers a sacrifice to the Creator?

Answer: One takes an egoistic desire and “cuts and eradicates” it, as it is said: “The one who wishes to live has to kill himself.” Then, one revives one’s desire to live for the sake of bestowal. This is what we call “a sacrifice.”

“Sacrifice” (קֻרְבַּן) means “convergence” (קרבה) with the Creator. A person approaches Him to the degree that he even eats food for the sake of bestowal. By offering a sacrifice, one rises from the level of Israel (a direct intention towards the Creator) to the level of Levite and Cohen. At these levels, one offers a sacrifice and receives it back, but now it has an altruistic intention, meaning that one corrects one’s receiving desires and turns them into bestowing. One “eats meat” and “drinks wine,” and by doing so one self-sacrifices for the sake of the Creator, thus getting closer to Him.

These actions are described as slaughtering animals and cooking their meat. While Cohens do this work, Levites “sing.” This is their concrete work that they perform at the three steps named “Israel,” “Cohens,” and “Levites.” While ascending, a person corrects his egoism, the “animal” in him by killing it and preparing it to receive for the sake of giving. This picture differs dramatically from its material description… as it does in all the commandments.
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Changing Direction From “Myself” To “Outside Myself”

Question: How can you love everyone? How can one subdue what is given to him?

Answer: Only the Upper Light corrects a person and nothing else. We cannot correct ourselves and attain a certain connection between us.

I am, for example, an ordinary person sitting before you and everything inside me is aimed inward. You look at me, but you don’t see my real face. I am focused totally inward—how I hear myself, how I see myself, how I feel myself. I feel this entire reality, the whole world inside me (we study this in the perception of reality).

Love is when I am in a state of turning myself inside out, but only under the influence of the Upper Light. I cannot do it on my own.

This happens when I feel whatever is on the outside as more important than what is inside me. This is called the revelation of the upper world that is external to me. A person suddenly discovers what is actually around him and sees that it is totally different from what it seemed to be. Now, he perceives everything inside him, while later, he will see the upper state. This is possible only under the influence of the Light.

Changing the vector from “myself” to “outside myself” is called integral education. This is what it exists for.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 5/24/13

The World Crisis As Preparation For The Prayer

Israel cannot grow without praying for everyone else that are in their egoistic desires and aware not even aware of this. This prayer should be only for the needs of others; it doesn’t matter what state we are in ourselves. If we have the spiritual spark, we have to work for the sake of bestowal in faith above reason.

The most important thing is the prayer, nothing more. Every action is more useful and effective the more quickly it brings us to the prayer. We need to choose the actions in our lives that will lead us in the most concise, direct, surest, and precise way to the prayer.

The prayer should be “the prayer of many” that is “double,” meaning that I ask for the lower, for “the many.” It’s called the prayer of “many” not because I ask for myself and for the other, but because for him these forces are not united around the Creator. There is no intention, no ability to connect them together.

Recently there is a growing crisis around the world that needs to be viewed as preparation for the prayer. What is the relationship between me and the flood in China, the volcanic eruption in Iceland, the unrest in Egypt, and the civil war in Syria? I cannot believe that all this happens only for me to form my prayer. We lack sensitivity, comprehension, and understanding of the system to recognize that this is really so. Even with these tangible, clearly revealed events, it’s difficult for us to see their connection with ourselves.

From this we can understand why Baal HaSulam wanted to talk to Ben Gurion to explain to him why he went to Poland to the workers strike. The upper management involved the Jews in all the events so that all these states would bring them to the prayer.

When the true picture is revealed to us, we will see how everything passes through us as through a lens focusing the rays of light. The entire universe eventually becomes compressed through us like through the eye of a needle. Thus the connection between all the rays of Light and the source is established.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/22/13

All The Troubles Of The World

In fact, the Creator displays a “theatrical performance” before me in which everything, the actors and all, are puppets, except me.Therefore, trying to bring them closer to Him, I in essence correct myself. The whole world is part of my soul, broken and scattered vessels, desires that are split apart from me in different directions. And now I have to bring them closer together again.

If I were strong enough, the Creator would have let me feel their sorrows as my own. However, to ease my work, He sends me the feeling of “their” troubles so I will work on them. If, however, I neglect this work, I will feel that I am in trouble myself.

That’s why I still perceive the whole world “from the side,” so it is easier for me to work with. Indeed, if all the misery of people who are dying from hunger, wars, and other disasters would have manifested in me, if I had concentrated all my empty vessels even on the small degree of our world, I would not have sustained such pressure.

To prevent this from happening, these vessels were alienated from me and given to me to feel them as foreign so that gradually, as I become stronger, I would bring them closer to myself. Then, in the course of this approach, I find that they are not in trouble, that on the contrary, they are corrected and experiencing pleasure. Baal HaSulam writes about this in his article “The Creator’s Concealment and Revelation.”

There is no other way. I am not able to absorb all the ills of the world, although we are talking of my vessels, desires.

We just do not understand that higher mercy is truly hidden in the breaking of the vessels. In the end, due to it, I obtain a vessel capable of encompassing the entire reality, all the Light of the Creator; however, I never feel this empty vessel as it is because it is impossible to sustain this sensation.

A person can barely stand even on our small stage with his troubles. So, what can we say about the entire empty Malchut of the world of Infinity? Sometimes a person is given a drop of this state, the “illumination of Malchut,” a horrible feeling of a gaping abyss …

However, we were given the breaking of the vessels to help us, and now we are able to pass a series of states, gradually assembling them together. And when I bring any external part closer to me in the process, this bitter “fruit” becomes sweet, and as the result, I put it in my “basket” until it is filled with all the fruits of the tree of knowledge.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/23/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

The Passage Through The Worlds

It is impossible to invent something that doesn’t exist in nature.Perhaps there is no analogue in the material we build it from or on the same level, but it must exist. We take all the examples and the analogies from what already exists in nature; we cannot invent anything that is totally new.

It is fundamentally impossible. There is only one new point in all of creation—something from nothing (Yesh Mi Ayin). Everything else, except this “initial act of creation” (GenesisMaase) is a consequence of the meeting of the vessel and the properties of the Light in different connections. So we can take an example only from the existing attributes and create parallel forms.

Everything that we build in our world, which means in our egoistic feelings, is called “this world,” and there are examples for that in nature. If we want to continue our development by studying nature’s wisdom, we have to develop a new perception that is focused onbestowal. Then we can also fulfill the examples of in order to bestow by ourselves.

We cannot receive examples of the upper attributes from this material world, and so all the scientific progress ends on the border between our world and the upper worlds. Even before science has exhausted itself, our material desire to receive reaches a dead end and comes to an end. Our development ends at a certain point since we cannot find new examples we want to implement in this world.

Most importantly, we have lost the desire to look for them in order to invent new things and thus advance on the material level. We are in a point of transition, on the verge of the revelation of new spiritual desires.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/21/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Why Are There No Dinosaurs Today?

If we create a shared connection between us above our egoistic desires and nullify ourselves within it in order to bestow to theCreator and to give Him satisfaction, and we use all this for work with the public in that we want to bring them closer to us and through us to bring them closer to the Creator so the Creator will bestow to them through us, then we will discover all the higher “worlds,” the entire system. It doesn’t exist outside of humans, rather only among us.

And also the still, vegetative, and animate nature, we discover are within us. Suddenly we discover within us the giraffes, lions, all the wild animals, every plant ,and all humans. All of this is just a copy of our properties.

We once had other properties, apparently there were dinosaurs living in the world then. And now the properties have changed and the dinosaurs have disappeared. In our times the properties in us are transforming very rapidly and we see that many species of plants and animals are becoming extinct. They say that in the world 150 species disappear daily, at such a rapid rate, our desire to receive changes, develops, and advances.

It seems to us that nothing has changed on the level of the vegetative and the animate, but essentially every day very great changes are taking place in nature because it is entirely included within a person. Nature itself is only a copy of our inner qualities.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/21/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Two Ways Of Revealing The Point In The Heart

Question: What does it mean not to place a stumbling block before a blind person?

Answer: It means that you shouldn’t tell a student what he cannot yet overcome.

It isn’t about the masses, but about students, although the general public also slowly catching up.

The difference is that individuals who have a point in the heart advance along the straight path by revealing this point individually, while the public follow their own path and discover the point in the heart among them. So our path is independent of the others and we only create the influence of a small environment around us. The public, however, advance towards the Creator (the attribute of love and bestowal) by the connection between them.

Question: Is there any illumination coming out of this point in the heart?

Answer: It depends on the connection. In case of the general population, the point in the heart is created in the center of the circle, while in our case it is in each one of us, and these points connect in the center of our circle. So in our case the movement is individual, in a group, while for them it is only in a mass, in a group and not personal. Therefore, we have to educate and serve them.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 6/24/13

Choosing The Strong In Spirit

Question: If the majority of the people suddenly told you that you were right about everything, would you regard it as a bad sign?

Answer: If the majority came to me, I would try to draw away from them and I hope I would have enough strength to do so. Never promise yourself anything until the end of correction.

The more you are criticized, the more slander people publicize against you, the safer you are and more protected along the spiritual path. This means that judgments and accusations, slander, and students who leave, only make you stronger. This is how the gradual clarification of the spiritual path takes place.

The more we advance, we grow fewer and fewer in quantity. Great circles will be created around us and they will spread in waves, but the group itself will remain small, only several hundred people. The Sanhedrin was 120 people, and one leader. I believe that this is what will also happen in the future.

In any case, there is the constant washing of the golden sand, the search for the rare individuals. The gold mines that remain, that is, those who join us.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 6/24/13

At The Base Of All The Upper Worlds

Question: Is it possible to reach the right desire for spirituality without having to encounter any problems in the corporeal world?

Answer: There are no corporeal problems. The corporeal world doesn’t exist separately from the spiritual world. Everything belongs to the spiritual world. The corporeal form that we feel now only seems corporeal since we perceive it without the right intention; this should be established by our own efforts. We were simply born this way with shattered desires.

The feeling in the shattered vessel, without any independent intention and only according to the vessel’s development plan, is called the corporeal world. This means that corporeality is what I feel without making any efforts. In order to feel spirituality, I have to focus myself in a certain manner, and only then will I be able to feel it. These actions are called corrections.

Our world is actually the base of the whole system of the spiritual world. The system of the upper worlds is revealed in the form of additional connections between all the elements of reality. This network is called the upper worlds.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/12/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Spiritual Vaccination

Our spiritual work according to the method that we receive from studying Kabbalah is similar to a medical vaccination against a disease, when a healthy body is “given” a little bit of disease: The body produces antibodies and can resist the disease.

Similarly, our desire is vaccinated against egoism: We reveal its evil in advance before its full manifestation. This is done through the group work, by drawing the upper correcting Light in which we gradually discover our egoistic properties as evil. And a person does not go by the path of suffering from egoism to health, the property of bestowal and love of other; but restricting his egoism in advance, working against it in thegroup and studying, under the influence of OM, he goes towards the goal, similarity with the Creator, i.e., the revelation of the Creator within himself, by a short path of correctionAchishena, experiencing the disease in its small manifestation within himself, voluntarily.

Humanity needs to recognize its natural egoism as a disease. Nature shows its defect on us ourselves. Long suffering is required to identify the disease and how to cure it.

Kabbalah offers a short and kind path to correction instead of this long and unkind path. But even in advance, still at the early stage of its development, we need to recognize it as evil, which we need to get rid of, to realize the need to be vaccinated, i.e., to go through it in a small dose and never get sick again, to become healthy, build a new life.

The essence of dissemination is to gradually explain to people what the cause of their troubles is, our egoistic nature, and how to heal it by means of the method of a simple “vaccination.”
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