From Depression To Creativity

Question: Suppose that parents organize a club for their childrenwhere they arrange discussions. But in this group two of the youths are troubled children who are deeply depressed that could infect the others. What should be done about that?

Answer: If the communication between the youths takes place naturally, then it’s necessary for them to relax through soulful songs around a campfire so that they will not be closed within themselves and will begin the conversation from a distance. What can be good for a person in life and what can be bad? Our nature seeks only good. But if we are locked in, eating ourselves up, are we having fun? So why don’t we escape from this?

What is this force that exists in me that puts me into a state of despair, darkness, and emptiness all the time? Could it be that this is the thing that I must struggle with somehow? And if I do struggle, I will discover such forces within me that act in opposition and that will raise me to particular heights in art, literature, science, sports and so forth. So it’s necessary to accept, with a blessing, everything that there is in a person, even the most depressed state that basically pushes a person towards the good, but only when this doesn’t lock the person inside himself like a cocoon.

On the contrary, a state of dissatisfaction pushes us forward, so it’s necessary to make it creative. And this is possible only with the help of the environment, where one person pushes forward and the other pulls backward, and between them a mutual movement appears. They check each other, inspecting the general movement between them etc. In other words, it’s necessary to support depressed children so that their condition can be creative.

Lots of famous writers, composers, and scientists experienced depression, and in order to get out of it, they engaged in creating. This was a cure for them, a salvation. They gave humanity creative gifts of classical masterpieces precisely thanks to their success at rising above their depression and using it in the right way.

How can we creatively use despair, difficulties, disappointments, and depression that are so widespread in the world today that result in neglect and disregard for everything? After all, from these states the next human, social, political, and national condition will be born.

Therefore, it’s forbidden to cast these states to the side and to consider them as something that is not good. On the contrary, it’s necessary to yearn to transform their strong, negative energy into something positive.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 12/12/13

A Good Example

Question: In society there are excessively violent, aggressive children, which even hit their parents. Will the integral circle correct them?

Answer: In these cases, it’s necessary to raise the level of educationand morality by discussing behavior like this in circles. And a good example is needed.

Let the children talk about love for parents, about softness. Can they compensate their parents for what they gave them in early childhood, remembering how their mother took care of them, how their father was concerned about them? The discussion should also include normal children, and the aggressive ones should listen to them. And then it’s necessary to try very carefully to include them in the conversation so that this will penetrate into them.

But there must be very serious integration, sympathy, and empathy. If aggressive children see that their peers as strong, serious, and healthy as they relate to their parents with love, understanding, sympathy and concern, then they will get a good example from them.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 12/12/13

A Voluntary Slave Of The Light

There isn’t a more important state than our current state, since this is where our spiritual evolution begins. It is in our situation, in our condition, that the exit to the first spiritual level is possible. It cannot be any other way. Everyone starts off this way. We are given a special opportunity and we have to use all the means that we are given in order to bring ourselves to the feeling of exile, to feeling that we are in chains and in the worst possible state under the domination of Pharaoh.

Pharaoh controls even our smallest thought, our smallest desire, wherever we turn and whatever we do. Every impulse and every move we make stem from him; every thought and every stream of consciousness, every desire and all the desires that stem from it, are all determined by the ego. No matter which way we go and how far we try to move away from evil, we remain in the ego.

A person determines that he cannot leave exile, although he really wants to exit it and makes many attempts, many great efforts, and exerts himself, but it leads to nothing. When he cries out desperately with the last powers he has left for only this last cry, a miracle takes place and he comes out of Egypt.

Now he begins to understand and to feel what it means to be under the influence of the Light. He comes out of his enslavement to his desire and voluntarily becomes enslaved to the Light, by choosing to be under the domination of the attribute of bestowal, above reason.

He knows that he is becoming a slave, that he is enslaving himself, and that he isn’t free anymore, but he is free of the desire to receive and from his beloved self, about whom he constantly worries. He is under another kind of domination and actually wants to be under this domination.

There is no neutral state on the way between egoistic Egypt and complete bestowal. A person immediately moves from one kind of domination to another, but he wants it and yearns for it even when he is still in Egypt. Besides the repulsion, the hatred, and the rejection he feels towards the state in Egypt, he also yearns for the total domination of the Light so that it will totally rule him, guide him, and manage him.

This is how we should prepare ourselves internally. Let’s hope that we are somehow ready for that and as for all the rest —the Lord will complete the work for us.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/13/14, Writings of Rabash

Not A Calendar Holiday, But A Spiritual Leap

Question: What is the meaning of the vessels that we pick up from the Egyptians?

Answer: Without them, we are unable to reveal the Light (the Creator) because all we are able to do is modify the intention. Egypt is the intention for one’s own sake.

The land of Israel (Eretz Israel) is a desire (ratzon) directly to the Creator (Yashar-El). The same desire that exists in Egypt transforms to Israel after changing the intention.

We have only one desire. When we first reveal it, it seems like ancient Babylon because everything seems so confused. It is a huge egoism that mixes all states together. The first time we exit our ego due to Abraham’s method we strive to rise above our will to receive and detach from our prior states as much as we can.

This phenomenon is called “Abraham.” Abraham leads us out of Babylon and separates us from our usual, corporeal egoism.

In the beginning, when one comes to a group, one is taught how to work beyond one’s egoism and to connect with friends. While making attempts to achieve unity, one suddenly experiences a tremendous downfall.

This is an entrance to Egypt: a more egoistic and harsh intention. One wants to receive all the worlds. It is a more egoistic and focused intention. One even wants to use thewisdom of Kabbalah for the sake of one’s personal wellbeing. This is called the power of Pharaoh.

If we continue working, the group and the Surrounding Light influence us. We don’t sense the Light, but notice the consequences of its impact on us. We feel that we are obligated to exit our egoism, to get rid of it. We apply efforts and experience troubles and numerous problems that help us detach from our ego.

Sometimes we fall very deep into our egoism. Sometimes we detach from our ego and rise over it. We go through ups and downs. Our egoism (the Pharaoh) keeps receiving blows until we rid ourselves of it.

The first detachment from the egoistic intention is called exodus from Egypt. This is what we hope to go through all together when we unite. I anticipate that this coming Pesachwon’t be just a holiday on the calendar for us and that we will experience a spiritual leap.

What will change in us if the leap happens? First, Babylon will turn into a sensation that we are in Egypt, in slavery, still inside the will to receive. Everything depends on our perception. In Babylon, everybody acted within their egoism and it was considered normal because this is human nature.

But we do not agree with this state and want to rise above the ego. When we tried to elevate, we transitioned from Babylon to the land of Canaan, the future land of Israel. There, we suddenly sensed that we simply cannot do it the way we tried and that we have to stay inside the will to receive, otherwise we won’t advance at all. This means that we have entered Egypt.

When we acknowledge the necessity of changing intentions from egoistic to bestowing, we start working on exiting Egypt and continue our work until we manage to disconnect from our egoistic intention. Detachment from the latter is the exodus from Egypt.

Then, we are uncertain of what should be done next: We have detached ourselves from the egoism, but what now? At this point, we start acquiring the intention to bestow that we add on top of the same desire that we had when we were in Egypt. That’s why each commandment that we observe, each bestowing action, is just a recollection of our exodus from Egypt.

I use the desire that previously was called Babylon, then was Egypt, and then transformed into the Sinai Desert, and in the end it finally became the land of Israel. The desire remains the same, but the intention improves each time.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/3/14, Q&A with Rav Laitman

When Harmless Bacteria Became Flesh-Eating Monsters

In the News (from The Conversation): “Bacterial diseases cause millions of deaths every year. Most of these bacteria were benign at some point in their evolutionary past, and we don’t always understand what turned them into disease-causing pathogens. In a new study, researchers have tracked down when this switch happened in a flesh-eating bacteria. 

“‘The date we deduced coincided with numerous mentions of streptococcus epidemics in the literature,’ Musser said. Since 1983, there have been several outbreaks of streptococcus infections across the world. For example, in the UK, streptococcus infections increased in number and severity between 1983 and 1985.

“It is the same story for many other countries, with Sweden, Norway, Canada and Australia falling victim to what is now an inter-continental epidemic. The symptoms ranged from pharyngitis to the flesh-eating disease, necrotizing fasciitis.”

My Comment: Any part of our body and the environment can turn into a monster carrying death, as it is written, that the enemies of man populate his house. But the conversion into enemies depends on the relationship between people as enemies.

After all, we are at the highest stage of the development of egoism, and therefore our behavior as rational and conscious, requires that the lower levels of nature (still, vegetative, animate) establish the same relationship between themselves relative to us.

If we correct our relations to being friendly, we will become convinced in the truth of the Bible, which states that in the future the wolf will live with the lamb, and a child will play with them.
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A Remote Way Station

If a goal is unattainable, I forget about it. It is said, “A person doesn’t covet the daughter of the king,” only a prince can marry her. And if I am not a prince and I have no chance, why should I be sorry all my life about something that is unattainable? My desire to receive, which is a desire for pleasure, will not let me suffer. So there are many things in the world that I don’t see at all, they are not within my field of vision. Subconsciously I think that they are unattainable, so they don’t even come up in my mind. There are people for whom the desire to marry the king’s daughter burns because they have a chance to attain this with the help of all kinds of tricks. And if I have no chance, I am calm.

So the more we rise, the more suffering and problems we feel because we are made more worthy of attainments, greater rewards, and fulfillments. So a person is always in a dilemma: either he improves, changes, advances (and this is a long path), and pays dearly for this, or he stops being sorry about it and this disappears from his field of vision as if it didn’t exist. The choice is in his hands!

So there are people who say, “There is no choice” and they continue on the spiritual path, and there are those who say, “There is no choice” and they go back to the materialistic existence. Both of these say, “There is no choice,” but the question is to what it refers?

Question: But we have no concept of what the bestowal is! Is there some kind of indication from which we can begin?

Answer: Certainly there is, this is clarification among the friends. The Creator is not revealed in any lofty matters. He creates problems for you in your daily life so that you will learn from them, first, that you are not able to change them. You have no control over the situation. There are a thousand different factors, and they also don’t determine anything, they only serve one power that arranges the whole mess for you. This power is the opposite of connection, the opposite of love, and this is what you must clarify. And so it follows that it’s up to you to locate the connection and the love only to clarify upon what they depend. They depend on a power that exists outside of you.

You reach connection with others and you see that this is unsuccessful, and so you summon the power that can influence the connection and correct it. This is a very simple and practical method; nothing exists outside of this.

We think that it’s necessary to work and to study a lot, to build cities, to organize the world, but nothing is needed! We must only begin by organizing the relationships between us and rise.

But instead of this, we get off the train too early at some remote way station where there is nothing but stinking garbage and bandits who are roaming around. And suddenly you are left at this station forever and this is where you are buried.  This is our life instead of doing everything rapidly and rising! The main thing is to begin to do everything together and constantly connect more and more and not relax.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/4/14, Writings of Rabash

Small Twist To Happiness

Question: How does one deal with a child’s suicidal tendencies?

Answer: Suicidal tendencies in children are treated only with a good collective. Without a collective there will be more and more isolation of the child, and he will go inward since this is all psychological: Life seems unnecessary, everything collapses, and there is just hopelessness around him.

From this to a state of happiness, all that is needed is just one small twist. But who will do it? That is the problem. I am sure that it is only the collective that is able to do this. It’s very important to develop some kind of hobbies for the child. When I was a child, my parents constantly gave me all kinds of extra-curricular activities.

First, they bought me a good camera with a zoom lens and gave me money for film developers and fixers. I was very interested in this. Before that, they presented me with a bike, and with friends, I would often take cycling trips outside of the city. Afterward, there was table tennis and then athletics where I won first place. They constantly engaged me into various activities. Also, I was never alone, but was at least with one or two other friends.

I think it is necessary to do this. A child should not sit at home. Besides being at school, he needs another circle of friends. If something fails at school, then the child will succeed in another place. Let’s suppose at a dance class or at volley ball.

The best thing is some kind of group sport. When you go into competition, “one on one,” like running different distances, this isn’t so good. Tennis and other group sports are much more effective. It’s essential to involve the child in something.

You can even agree with other families to come together to organize activities for children in a circle of ten to fifteen children and hire instructors that will help with it. For a reasonable fee, you can organize a very good activity.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 12/11/13

A Free Slave

It is not difficult for the Creator to completely control the creatures. This is the power of the Elyon, about which it is said,(Isaiah 44:6) “I am the first, and I am the last,”  the only one who activates and manages everything. The problem is only how to bring the creatures to free choice, to independence. It’s up to the creatures to take it for themselves since freedom and independence cannot be given from Above.

How is this done? We don’t know what freedom and independence are. If we hide from some unpleasant sensation, we suppose that we are free of it, and when we cease being under pressure or domination by someone, we think that we have become independent. But this is not true.

If we have this desire, first of all we require a desire and a need for independence and freedom. And this is a problem. How can there be something free in a creature that is the product of the particular forces which produced it?

If there is no independence, then there is no creature. There is only a protein substance that exists according to clear and defined laws and is under the influence of various forces that develop and support it, bringing life and death. However within all of this, it has no independence in anything.

If you look at the lives of all people, then it seems obvious that they don’t decide anything by themselves. Where might they have an opportunity for independent desire?

This is the problem, if this is possible to say,  of the Creator when creating creation. For a creature is someone who acquires the power of independence. He separates from the Creator. But how is this possible? And if he will not separate, how will he reach independence?

Therefore it’s important for us to pass through a sensation of exile, not once, but an exile that comes and goes several times on a more and more internal level all the time. The first exile, if it can be called exile, was the Babylonian exile. The second exile is the exile of Egypt, the third is the exile of Persia, and the fourth and last is our exile.

We attain these exiles through our inner work when we reach recognition of our dependence, and then we know how to become independent. Indeed our partnership, ouradherence with the Creator, rests upon our independence. Otherwise I cannot be a partner.

Also, when it’s said that I am the servant of the Creator, this is not the same slavery I had been in at the beginning. I make myself a servant of the Creator from a completely independent state and level. The level of servant rests upon maintaining a state opposed to Him, meaning absolute freedom.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/07/14, Writings of Rabash

Giving Contentment To Others Gives Contentment To The Creator

Question: When I ask for the desires of others as my own, do I need to intend to give contentment to the Creator and not just to do good to people?

Answer: You ask for the possibility of giving them contentment, despite the fact that these desires are like your own, because with this you are giving contentment to the Creator. You cannot give contentment to the Creator directly, for He has no deficiency for anything. So you give contentment to the whole world, and the Creator receives pleasure from this.

There is a territory that is the entire world except for your point. There is a large circle which is the entire soul, and you are outside of the circle with your point and are asking for them. By bringing the Creator to this circle, He is happy that He can bestow to them all. It follows that you are bringing the Creator to bestowal and with this, you give Him contentment.

You pray that things will go well for people, and with this you intend to give contentment to the Creator. This is because the Creator is perfect and has no deficiency besides bestowal, and you make it possible for Him to do this. But the Kli is not found in Him; rather it is within His creature, within all of humanity.

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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/06/14, Writings of Rabash

Towards The Victory Of Globalization

Opinion (Stanislav V. Borzykh, Ph.D., assistant professor of philosophy at Tomsk State Architectural University, member of the Russian Philosophical Society): “Globalization is based on the principles of freedom, openness, availability, changes and equality. This, in turn, implies the existence of a certain universal platform that would satisfy all these conditions. Such a platform, or more precisely – reciprocity, is globalization itself.

“Consequently, globalization is the global process of establishing a regime of reciprocity. Globalization is the platform, on which a new world, unknown to us, will grow in the future. We can only solve one question: What will be the choice of humankind – to engage in an era of globalization or not?”

My Comment: Actually, the question is not whether to engage or not to engage because this development of civilization is programmed by nature. The question is: Should we enter this compulsory development voluntarily—by the method of integral education and upbringing, the wisdom of connection, keeping pace with the negative forces of nature that cause this development, and in this case, turning them into a positive—or by being stubborn and allowing the compelling (negative) forces of our development to direct “with the stick towards happiness?”
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When Work Is Pleasure

Question: When does a person finally realize that only the Creatorcan help him and that this help is only in adhering to the group?

Answer: This occurs at the final step before exiting exile. Only then does a true plea, a true need arise. However, this step comes in stages as well: the escape, the crossing of the Red Sea, the mountain of hatred (Sinai), the appeals, and finally, the despair. This speaks of many things.

We keep asking, “When will the work finally be done and the Creator be revealed?” This is correct. He will become revealed, but then more work will follow.Yet, a person will view it as an adventure, as enjoyment since if you love someone, to make effort for the sake of the beloved is pleasure. You enjoy the fact that you are doing something for them.

When you work for self-gratification, you exert labor to enjoy its fruit later on. If you could taste it without having to work, that would be best. But it isn’t the same when you do things out of love for another. In that case, the effort itself brings pleasure. While you are working, you are also gathering the reward.

Try to do something for someone you love such as your son, for example. No matter what effort is required, you feel even better when you exert for it. If you simply bring a present to your child and see how happy you made him or her, you won’t enjoy it. When you love, it is the effort that makes it all worthwhile.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/9/2011, “What Are the Powers Which Are Needed for the Work”

Attack With A Song

Question: What am I attacking at the Convention in the Arava desert? And how can I help the friends prepare for the right attack?

Answer: I am attacking my laziness, indifference, and confusion. I try to stay constantly focused on the right idea about “us.” We are as one man with one heart, in mutual guarantee, in mutual disavowal, in unity, in order for the common vessel to be revealed.

In this vessel, everyone is included in one another to such an extent that I do not feel “myself, uniting with the friends,” but us. I have to rise above my individual self-awareness to the common feeling, which lies above us and which we have to acquire.

Question: What should the right cry be at the Convention?

Answer: I am not in favor of screaming for the sake of screaming. Rather, we need song,love, hope, confidence that reigns above a great desire. Stated differently, we need both emptiness and firm ground.

Before crossing the Red Sea, when the quality of judgment is revealed, there is room for cries, but now is not that time. I am concerned with unification among everyone so only goodness would be revealed. We need inspiration and ascent, without any left line. We are standing before the Light that must become revealed, and therefore there is no critical examination here.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/8/12, “Introduction to the Study of Ten Sefirot”

A Leap Over The Last “Impossible”

Question: I see that Pharaoh steals all the fruit of my labor and I ask myself: When will I finally reach the point of desperation regarding my own strength? I feel as if I am driving a car but somebody else is behind the steering wheel.

Answer: That’s right; you are not the one steering your car. You are only in charge of your desire to advance. As to how many times you will have to repeat one action, that can’t be known in advance. But the pace depends on you: how frequently your states will change and how quickly you will be able to pass through them. Suppose according to the root of your soul you have to pass through 8000 states until you reach the first spiritual degree where your will to receive will turn to bestowal because of the Light the Reforms.

You have to pass through these 8000 actions, but can do so in two years or you can stretch it to 20. That’s your choice since you have freewill in to what extent you will hasten your advancement. But you will certainly pass through all the necessary discernments, whether it is in this or another lifetime. It all depends on you.

You complain that the Pharaoh is stealing all the fruit of your labor, but that is why it is written that all the beautiful cities built by the sons of Israel in Egypt were inherited by the Pharaoh. It is as if Pharaoh stands behind you, stuck to your neck, and collects all the fruit of your work. This is what leads a person to the point of desperation in the work and to prayer. But you cannot give up!

Besides, every time when you move forward and exert more effort, you still gain wisdom and attain the method and new meanings. You get absorbed by darkness, disappointment, helplessness, and indifference. You get sick and tired of everything and lose faith that there will be a breakthrough any time soon—these are the worst states that can be. Each more advanced state brings even greater descent, desperation, apathy, and realization that it’s impossible to reach the desired.

It goes on like this, until reaching the very last “impossible,” which is regarded as crossing the Red Sea, when you have completely lost faith that man is capable of it and that the Creator is. You decide that it just can’t happen; you are shown that such is your nature and nothing can be done about it and all you have left is to return to the trivial life.

And then one makes up one’s mind to still leap over this impossibility, and a person is shown the condition of how to connect: what it means to become one man with one heart in reality. And if he agrees with it, he receives his first spiritual degree.

The first degree he receives only as a single point regarded as Moshe, and it pulls (mosheh) him from egoism, from exile, while in the rest of the will to receive the “golden calf” becomes revealed against it.

Afterward, a person enters the desert, where problems await him each step of the way and it’s infested with snakes. It is no longer one great serpent, one big ego, but rather, a multitude of little wasps that keep biting a person from every side, his various egoistic attributes. Yet, they help him to keep moving forth on the spiritual ladder, acquiring the property of bestowal.

Along this entire path, I see only two vital qualities guaranteeing success: nullification of oneself before the teacher and the group, and endurance, patience, and tenacity in any circumstances, no matter what may come up. These are the two attributes with which you, like a stubborn ram, keep breaking through, leaping in one direction, regardless of what is going on, despite any internal and external obstacles. And this speeds you up and makes you succeed.

Otherwise, don’t waste your time; it’s better to go enjoy life. But the majority hang in the middle between one and the other state, and sadly, they come to the finish line empty-handed.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/16/13, “The Prayer”

A Unique Opportunity

Question: What can we do if we don’t manage to bring the majority of the group to do the very least that they have to: pay maaser,disseminate, work in the group, and come to the morning lessons? Is it possible to establish mutual guarantee with friends who don’t come to the morning lessons?

Answer: Ninety-nine to one hundred percent of the groups that Kabbalists formed throughout history were unsustainable. But the conditions were different then and there was no need for general correction and dissemination, and so they disintegrated.

Today when we can go out and participate in collective events, I don’t understand why you can stay away from such relationships as we deal with other people, and through them correct ourselves and the mutual relations between us. The Creator is actually concealed in the ascent above the mutual repulsion that we feel! If you overcome the repulsion and build a bridge that connects you above it, this is the point that the Creator will be revealed.

This opportunity is before you right now. If you want to reach the revelation of the Creator, go ahead. Here is the upper world, the Creator who gave you this condition: The revelation of the mutual hatred. You don’t need anything else. You have already reached this wonderful state. Baal HaSulam said: “I am happy at the revelation of the wicked,” I am very glad at the revelation of all the problems since otherwise I would have no chance to ever attain anything.

We need a creative approach in order to deal with the negative feelings that arise: the repulsion, the hatred, the weakness, the reluctance to do anything. We should understand that this is the building from which we, as crushed stones, construct a building in which we begin to feel the upper world. We need to collect these scattered bricks of hatred by force and become the material that connects them! This is called the correction of thegeneral soul.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/28/14, Question and Answers with Dr. Laitman

The Creator’s Passion – To Do Good To His Created Beings

Question: How do our efforts to achieve the connection of the people, unity, and from them creating a whole army of trainers and educators go along with the whole process of correction?

Answer: We are in this world and first we have to be connected to the Creator. Therefore we connect and form a group between us. But now it is impossible to ascend to spirituality if we don’t do it for the liberation of all the souls that are in the ego.

We have reached a state called the final redemption. We already achieved this revolution in the past with leaving Babylon 1500 years BC until the year 2014.

Question: Where  in this world today is Abraham who left Babylon with his students?

Answer: Abraham is us, our whole group that wants to advance to bestowal and to the revelation of the Creator by itself and which pulls the whole world behind it. The mission of this group is called Abraham.

Do you think that Abraham that the Torah tells us about is a name of a person or of an idea, a mission, a school, or a movement? Do you imagine Abraham as an old man with a cane, a revolutionist who wanted to change the world?

Abraham is a name of an inclination, a movement, an idea, a philosophy, a perspective, and so he is called the father of the nation. Due to this knowledge, approach, philosophy, people can arrange life differently—not according to the desires of our corporeal bodies but according to their spirit that yearns to come out to a wider space. We are in it, but we have to discover it and live in it.

Question: Why should we turn to the people and teach them this ideology?

Answer: It is impossible to complete the correction otherwise. We need to go through the state we are all in now in our world, from anti-love and anti-bestowal to love and bestowal. We acquire vessels, deficiencies, desires, with which we can later discover a different reality.

Question: Who demanded this correction? Was it Abraham’s compulsion?

Answer: It was the Creator’s passion, He wants our correction! His desire is to do good to His created beings.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/11/14, Talk About  Dissemination: Questions & Answers with Dr. Laitman

What Is Connecting With A Friend?

Question: What is connecting with a friend?

Answer: This is when my friend and I are outside of our desires in a mutual connection that is called the vessel of mutual guarantee. My desire to support a friend and his desire to support me exist, and so we are in the middle between us.
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From the 4^th part of the  Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/8/14, Writings of Rabash

Formula For Mutual Guarantee

Question: Is a person’s work to search for the desires of others?

Answer: Certainly, you need to search for desires in order to bestow to others through them. Suppose that you decide to bestow to me and you bring me a ball or a cake. But it’s forbidden for me to eat cake because I am diabetic. I don’t want to play with the ball. So what have you done? You first need to clarify what my desire is: What can make me happy and what will I enjoy, and then behave accordingly.

If you understand that the best thing for me is not a ball and not cake but correction, then you take my desires together with your desires and as a middle Partzuf you begin to raise them higher to the Ali Elyon (above the Elyon) in order to bring me the Light of correction and the Light of fulfillment. This is called saving me from the prison from which I cannot save myself. That is how each one acts towards the other.

To have the right intention, this means to be in the right relationship with others in order to help them to attain a connection with the Creator. This is because it is precisely this that the soul of the person wants the most!

You don’t need to ask the friend about what he loves or what he wants unless we are talking about luxuries and not about food for the soul. Besides the necessities, a person only needs to discover the Creator. And he can get this solely and only if the friends care about him. And the friends will care about him only on condition that he also cares about them. This mutual relationship is called mutual guarantee.[130885]
From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/24/14

Crying Over A Heart Of Stone

Question: I am trying to clarify, what is it that my prayer needs to include?

Answer: Prayer is work with the heart. If you try to relate to reality correctly, then what happens in your heart is called “prayer.” You cannot plan to pray between 10:00 and 10:30. It’s not possible to work this way.

Everything that we experience in the depths of the heart is called prayer. We can carry out all sorts of different actions to influence the heart, but we are not able to arrange a prayer in it. We can only prepare the heart to feel, and then this sensation will be a prayer.

The Creator is within your heart in its most central part where the fourth phase (Behina Dalet) of your desire is felt. The Light acts from the depths of the heart, in the fourth phase. Arranging the prayer means carrying out a variety of activities around the desire that form an impression in it, soften it. Yet ultimately what happens with this desire will be called prayer.

We are not masters over the prayer itself. Sometimes you invest immense efforts in order to reach the heart, yet it remains dry and doesn’t want to react. You run and try, sing and cry, read emotional texts, yet the heart doesn’t react.

Maybe it only seems that way to you, for who knows what happens within the heart? We don’t feel its depths. However, the efforts that you invest bring much benefit. The strongest prayer is when you don’t feel that your heart reacts even though you do everything to change it. And it is silent and doesn’t react.

You understand your absolute powerlessness and you feel the true stony heart within yourself that is not changed at all. You can cry, run, jump, do everything, read psalms, prayers, Shamati articles, go out to look at the sky, be integrated into a group, yet the heart remains a stone. But specifically these efforts to change it to a heart of flesh are the most beneficial means. Then you will receive a response to your efforts.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/31/14, The Zohar

Why Bother With This Imaginary World?

Question: How does this fit together, that on the one hand, the world is the still and imaginary and on the other hand, it’s necessary to act within it, exerting, disseminating?

Answer: It seems to you that through going out to the wider public you are becoming included and weighed down by their desires. But these are not their problems, these are your problems, you are only hearing about them through someone else.

You are included in the parts of your soul. You will not hear anything from the world that is irrelevant to you. There cannot be something like this! They are all in you: the still, vegetative, animate, and especially human beings. They seem to you as if they are outside; you hear them, you carry out all kinds of activities with them in order to bring them back into yourself.

You will never hear something from them that is not relevant to you. They are like cells that need to return to your vessel, but  now they seem to be outside. They only seem external to you as  because of your clouded perception.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/8/14, Writings of Rabash

Critical Tension In Order To Disconnect

When desires for spirituality, for the goal of creation, for theCreator, appear in us, it means that a black point, which is part of Malchut has awoken in us. But this black point is surrounded by the desire to receive, the ego, on all sides.

If we manage to raise our black point out of the ego so that it will be above the ego and the ego will remain totally below, which means that we will be attracted to the Creator although the ego pulls us in the opposite direction, then this point will be disconnected from the ego. I don’t take my ego into account in my inclination to the Creator. This disconnection is called Tzimtzum (restriction).

If we connect all our points, a big black point is created. It is black because it feels darkness. It wants to yearn for the Creator, but it doesn’t know how to do so. All our points are above, connected to one another, and our whole big ego is left below pulling us downwards.

If we attain a critical mass of our yearning for the Creator in contrast to the ego, which means that we reach a sufficiently strong tension, then under the influence of the Surrounding Light, we disconnect from the ego and perform Tzimtzum Aleph (first restriction). This is called the Exodus from Egypt, disconnection from our desire to receive.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/11/14, Talk About Dissemination: Questions & Answers with Dr. Laitman

On The Border Of Disconnection

Question: When does a person feel that Pharaoh sucks the outcome of his work?

Answer: After several alternating ascents and descents, a person forms a certain attitude towards them. He is constantly changing and improving, and eventually he begins to appreciate the ascents and descents, not with regard to the ascents and descents of his mood, but with regard to the purity of his yearning for the goal.

Then, even if he is in a state of descent, he doesn’t examine it according to his mood but according to how long he can stay connected to the Creator during the descent and not be detached from Him. There are such states during a descent when a person sees that he cannot hold on to the goal. Still he tries to relate himself to the goal although he fails to do so; that is, it isn’t a complete disconnection.

This is actually where he discovers Pharaoh and where he feels the inner force that belongs to something from nothing, which pulls him by his feet downward into the swamp. Pharaoh is revealed in the seam between one state and another, but it isn’t just a descent.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/08/14, Shamati #86

Reality Against Magic

Opinion (Konstantin Simonov, PhD, Director General of the Russian National Energy Security Fund): “We are accustomed to believe in the rationality of the world, that optimal solutions will be found. And our managers will eventually find the way out of the situation.

“Belief in a higher principle is not necessarily a religious worldview. We believe that the invisible hand of the market balances supply and demand, that institutions protect democracy and market economy, even if ordinary citizens do not understand this mechanism.

“It is also akin to a belief in magic: if there are good institutions, then everything must be settled. But if institutions are so powerful, why is the unemployment in Western Europe at 20 %?

“Evolution suggests that nature finds the optimal solution by filtering, putting everything in its place. But this occurs in nature and not in human society! Do we have time to wait for slow changes in ourselves and society when almost every day we are on the verge of a serious crisis?”

My Comment: Under the new conditions of the global and integrally connected world, we cannot wait and move forward unconsciously. In this final stage of the development of our civilization, we must consciously rise above it into a new dimension, to the new altruistic laws for self and society.

In leaving our development to “chance,” we have become believers, trusting that our life flows according to a higher plan. By becoming engaged in our re-education and by changing society to altruistism, we are not believers, but we really perceive the world.
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The Condition For The Revelation Of The Creator

A prayer to the Creator should always be collective. After all, what do I ask for? Feeling hatred, a gap, and the inability to connect to others, I ask the Creator to help me overcome these states. Then I can pray for everyone with everyone.

All our differences, when we can’t work together or gather and discuss something is a great state!  But the feeling of repulsion will constantly grow stronger. We know the students of Rabbi Shimon who wrote The Book of Zohar used to gather, but at the same time, were ready to burn each other to ashes, since they felt such great mutual hatred between them. These are the states we have to go through.

The revelation of hatred actually appears in groups that advance. If a person escapes from this and stops coming to the group, he simply doesn’t understand what is going on. He doesn’t understand that everything comes from the Creator, that there is none else besides Him, that all this is necessary so that he will be corrected, and that the group should rise by its correction above all the conflicts.

If we feel real hatred, it is the condition that leads us to our collective prayer. By collecting all our mutual hatred, we have to ascend above it, because this is our common problem, and then we will discover the spiritual world. Now the condition for the revelation of the Creator is right before us.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/28/14, Question and Answers with Dr. Laitman

“Make-Believe” And Serious Bestowal

Question: Is Emuna (faith) work within the desires of others?

Answer: So that the Emuna can develop in the substance of the desire to enjoy, the Kli was shattered into many fragments. This makes it possible for us to work with and to evaluate the characteristic of bestowal, to begin to play with it a bit, even when we are in an egoistic desire of one hundred percent and have no ability or chance of reaching bestowal. We are allowed to engage in make-believe, imaginary bestowal, like little children who play by imitating adults.

Certainly we are not ready to go out of ourselves from this physical state where only the ego is at work. If they take even a drop of egoistic pleasure away from us, we immediately fall. But the idea is that the Light that Reforms influences us in response to all of our efforts to reach bestowal. Even though these efforts and attempts are in order to receive, and it could be that they are detrimental to society, if they are somehow close to the right direction or even if they are opposite to it, if they are related to the right direction, then the Light has an influence.

The Light is influential either in the form of Panim (face) or in the form ofAchoraim (back). I can yearn for a goal directly and I can describe it as completely opposite and reach it from the reverse side, as if I am flying there from around the globe. But I am thinking about it, so the Light influences me nonetheless! The Light reacts and influences all of my actions, either from the front or from the back, and it could be also between this and that.

This is like a child who still hasn’t grown up and plays and breaks everything, but this is the way he learns and develops. We advance like this also. I remember in childhood I had to open and take every new toy apart to see what there was inside. In general, children love to break everything, and that is how they develop and advance. So the work of the Light is important here.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/08/14, Shamati #86