New Life #1192 – Attaining Renewal Through Despair

New Life #1192 – Attaining Renewal Through Despair
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Defeat, crisis, and failure are the birthplace of spiritual renewal and development. Despair signals where one is in relation to one’s goal and can be overcome when we learn how to turn to a higher, external force for new power. Everything we have from nature is good and correct. Children can be taught how to have a correct attitude toward failure through a good example and environment. Humans are social beings and we can spiritually develop when learn how to depend on and give to others.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #1192 – Attaining Renewal Through Despair,” 12/24/19

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Becoming A Source Of Influence On The Creator

Baal HaSulam, Shamati 34, “The Advantage of a Land”: Thus, all the descents where one feels that he has come to separation are an opportunity to discern between something and its opposite. In other words, from the descents, one should learn the benefits of the ascents.

He would not be able to extract the importance that he could extract, as when one is given food without ever having felt hunger.

It turns out that the descents, which are the times of separation, create the importance of adhesion in the ascents, while the ascents make him hate the descents that the separation causes him.

How can I begin to feel the upper world, the highest state, which is not in my material desires? Only from the fact that I feel it as good or bad according to our earthly conditions, and then rising above them. In any case, we grow from the earth as plants and nothing can be done about it. We have no other definition.

The fact is that we are in states where we have to begin to determine what is good and bad not with respect to our animal body, but with respect to the absolute, as if relative to outer space, the Creator.

With respect to the Creator, good is only in rapprochement, unification into one common unified system. Then all creations will start feeling the connection between themselves and the Creator filling all these connections. Achieving this is the goal of our attainment. Almost all of us are already in this state, we only need to reveal it for ourselves in feeling and mind.

But this can be revealed only through a group. There is no other way. If we create a group in which we try to unite in order to attain the general governing force in this very unification, then we begin to explore this force, to feel it, to get closer. It becomes our tool and we can do whatever we wish with the Creator.

In fact, the Creator is not some kind of force that does whatever it wants. It is the total force of the universe that surrounds and includes everything. To the extent we make ourselves similar to it, to that extent we can reveal its emanation on us, bring it closer, move away from it, etc. A person begins to feel himself as a source of influence on the Creator.
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From Kab TV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 12/22/19

The Uniqueness Of The Force Governing Us, Part 2

The Creator’s Theater

Baal HaSulam’s article, Shamati 1, “There is None Else Besides Him”: This is deemed a correction called “the left rejects and the right pulls closer,” meaning that what the left rejects is considered a correction.

“The left rejects” means rejection, that is, hiding the Creator when we become uncertain about Him. We begin to think that there are other forces opposite of Him.

It seems to us that there is either ditheism, i.e., a bad Creator and a good one, one against the other, because we perceive the world as such, or polytheism, i.e., many forces in the world that are in opposing relationships. This is all conceived and done on purpose.

This means that there are things in the world that, to begin with, aim to divert a person from the right way, and by which he is rejected from Kedusha [holiness]. There are specifically forces, phenomena, and actions that arise which are initially placed before a person with the intention of driving a person astray, pushing one away from striving for the Creator, throwing a person from the thought that only one force, only one Creator, acts on him.

Thus, these rejections help a person because with their help one receives a need, a complete desire for the Creator to help him reveal Himself. Otherwise, he couldn’t have defined himself in any way in this world.

With that, a person wants to understand who controls it, who determines his thoughts, actions, and everything that happened in the past, that is happening in the present, and that will happen in the future. On one hand, it is clear that this is accomplished under the influence of a single force of nature.

On the other hand, this force constantly twists and lures us into various circumstances, and we attribute everything that happens to other people, events, and various authorities, as if they independently control both the world and our life.

Thus, I stray from the definition of the uniqueness of the Creator’s governance. I cannot maintain the fact that only one single force controls me like that; I see contradictions in this control all the time.

Why does the Creator do this? It is so that in all these contradictions we could discover Him by our own will, despite the fact that I suddenly fall under the power of the police, the state, relatives, family, and children. My friends influence me, and suddenly someone else also does.

In fact, I must clearly determine that I am only in the field of the Creator, and there is no one else who controls me, introduces and withdraws me from all these states, and substitutes various other sources of influence upon me.

At every second, I must be directed through all supposedly earthly sources toward Him and clearly know that He is doing everything through his puppets, my family, friends, enemies, and even politicians. The whole picture that I see in front of me and call “this world” is a theater through which the Creator acts upon me. I have to connect this entire theater to Him in His every action.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 11/24/19

Spiritual Holidays, Part 5

Holiday of Sukkot and Its Symbols

Five days after the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) comes the holiday of Sukkot, which means that a person receives five upper lights of NRNHY and comes to the state when one is under the influence of the surrounding light. In order to receive the surrounding light, a person must perform an action on oneself called building a hut, Sukkah. This is a restriction that as if blocks the upper light from a person because he or she does not want to receive it for one’s own fulfillment, but wants to receive it only for self-correction. A person continues the same line: from the New Year through Yom Kippur to Sukkot.

Thus a person builds a screen (Masach) called “Schach,” “roof,” which symbolizes that only a small light can penetrate through this roof. One sits in the shade of the hut for seven days which represents a correction of all seven egoistic parts of the shattered soul: Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet, Netzach, Hod, Yesod, and Malchut.

Only then, once one is already corrected, one leaves the Sukkah and on the eighth day, Shemini Atzeret, celebrates the Giving of the Torah, i.e., one begins to receive the upper light already in the style of bestowal.

Question: Is the roof,  Schach or screen, made from waste?

Answer: Yes, out of branches of various trees and stalks of various grains.

Question: Waste symbolizes things that are unimportant to us, and we raise them to make them important. What exactly is important to us?

Answer: Things that we previously considered not important for us, we neglected bestowal, love, coming closer to other people, “loving your neighbor as yourself”—the qualities that we need to develop—now, on the contrary, we raise above our heads. That is, we want to implement them at any cost.

Question: During the holiday of Sukkot, we use the attributes of four types of plants: willow, myrtle, palm, and citron. What do they symbolize?

Answer: They represent four phases of our egoism, which we correct, connect together, and then we can attract the upper light upon ourselves.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 1/29/19

New Life #243 – Happiness And Social Ties, Part 2

New Life #243 – Happiness and Social Ties, Part 2
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

True love and lasting happiness occur when I bestow to others without aiming to get something back in return. Humanity is the only part of nature with the evil intention to exploit. If we are to be happy, we have to change our attitude toward others through work in a group of like-minded people. Proper social connections happen when we connect to others with the intent of benefiting them. Real happiness is achieved in the center of the connection between people, in the center of the circle.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #243 – Happiness and Social Ties, Part 2,” 10/17/13

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Child-Free Leaders

The leaders of the EU’s four pillars— Germany, England, France and Italy—don’t have kids. It means that a large number of people who are making decisions about Europe’s future, have no personal interest in this future. One view states that they simply struggle for power, to rule the world without doing anything for it, and that personally, they have no one to build a good future for.

What does Kabbalah say about this phenomenon of child-free leaders?

Today, we find ourselves in a world where people who rule countries do not relate to them as their home. According to the Torah, one cannot hold a governing position without a family and children. However, in our case, we deserve the situation that has appeared. The child-free leaders of Europe demonstrate to us who we are and how we treat the world. We don’t really care about what happens tomorrow. We mechanically relate to the world, inconsiderate of the consequences of our intentions and actions.

Why? It is in order for us to arrive at the recognition of evil, i.e. that the human ego that aims at self-benefit at the expense of others is behind every human thought, decision and action. Once we reach such a recognition of evil, we can then work to build good over it. The world needs such enlightenment.

Hatred Is The Lack Of Light

Question: What can we do with hatred? How can we work with this light?

Answer: Light is not hatred. Hatred is the absence of light. Therefore, we need to clearly understand how to attract light over hatred in love.

We then receive a very strong combination of light and darkness. In this state we can work.

Question: Is it still a realization that hatred is the absence of light in me, a state of darkness, which causes a correct reaction?

Answer: Of course. Both darkness and hatred are better than indifference.

Question: Isn’t it said that indifference is worse than hatred?

Answer: Of course. With indifference, you cannot connect in any way, move away, or come closer. Indifference is death in spirituality, while hatred and love are equal.
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From Kab TV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 12/29/19

The Uniqueness Of The Force That Operates Us, Part 1

The Power that Defines the Whole World

Baal HaSulam, Shamati 1, “There is None Else Besides Him”: …that there is no other force in the world that has the ability to do anything against Him. Simply said, there is none else or nothing else in the world but the Creator.

And what man sees, that there are things in the world that deny the Higher Household, the reason is that this is His will. He wants to confuse a person in thinking that there are supposedly many forces, possibilities, and root causes of everything that exists. All of these are here to confuse a person while he is finding, determining, realizing, and proving to himself that there is none else besides Him.

There is only one force in the world. It defines the whole world, acts in each of us, in every cell of both our animal body and the spiritual one, the soul. We are all in the field of this power. It surrounds us, controls us, does absolutely everything. Our whole existence boils down to revealing its uniqueness.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 11/24/19