A Light Feather That Weighs A Hundred Tons

Question: What kind of exertion is the means for spiritual advancement, and can I help a friend exert himself or do I steal his work from him by that?

Answer: Exertion is whatever is above my human abilities. I cannot help another and complete his work, but I can set an example for him so that it will be easier for him to exert himself.

So I don’t steal his work, but rather help him. The more we help one another by setting an example so that it will be easier for a friend to exert himself even more, the more efficiently we will advance.

With this, we exchange the corporeal exertion with a spiritual exertion! Then the corporeal work seems very difficult and the spiritual work seems very easy because you add the force of the group to it. The result is that you have to move a load of a hundred tons and you move it, but you have the aid of a million people pushing the load with you.

You don’t have to feel the weight of the load that is 100 tons. These 100 tons are necessary only so that through them you will attain connection with a million people.

Therefore, there is no need for senseless sufferings; all we have to do is to understand why we suffer.

If you feel difficulty, pain, rejection, and sorrow in a certain place, it means that it isn’t the right exertion. As it says: “Thou hast not called upon Me, O Jacob.” If with great effort and sweat you carry the load that was given to you by the Creator, it means that you are not exerting yourself correctly, and this burden belongs to someone else and not the Creator.

The pleasure from work is knowing for Whom we are exerting ourselves.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/15/12, Shamati #117

It Is The Light That Gives Birth To Man

The Zohar is the Light that Reforms, and The Book of Zohar is also called “the Upper Light.” We can enjoy this Light only if we know how to draw it, when we are in equivalence of form with it.

What should we do in order to attain equivalence of form with the Light? The Light bestows, how can I bestow? If I tighten the connection with the friends, annul my ego a bit in order to connect with them, try to be a bit closer to them through different actions, events, and by dissemination, I become a bit more similar to the Light. To the extent that I get closer to it, I am rewarded by it influencing me more.

The Light is fixed in its bestowal, but by my actions I draw myself closer to it and become more like it. Thus, I am rewarded with the influence of the Light, and as a result my vessel becomes the one that bestows.

According to my internal change, when I become the one who bestows in my desires and my attributes, I begin to discover the changes that occur in me. Suddenly I discover such desires and thoughts (in the heart and mind) that are totally different from the ones I had before. Thus I feel more and more changes inside me until I acquire a new state in which I feel: “That’s it, I’ve changed!” This change reveals a new collection of attributes, desires, and thoughts in me that is called a Partzuf, man (Adam), or the Creator, which are all the same.

Since according to this new structure, the sum of the attributes, desires, and thoughts in me, I discover a new internal figure, which is a “human,” and in it, I discover its root, the reason that gave it birth, which is the Creator. Thus we discover our spiritual development.

Let’s hope that by our yearning for the level of Adam, which means that in return for the annulment of our ego, the connection with others and with the whole world, and the study of The Zohar, we will enjoy the Light that Reforms and will receive the form of a “human.”
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/15/12, The Zohar

Let There Be Fewer Penalty Laps

Question: Is it important to understand exactly what the Creator wants from me or is it most important to simply continue as best as one can?

Answer: The Creator wants only one thing from you: for you not to leave Him.

There is no thought, desire, or action in the world, which does not lead towards the revelation of the Creator, directly or indirectly. There is nothing besides this.

We would have revealed Him directly, but this is practically impossible to do. And since we are not capable of moving from point “A” to point “B” by the shortest direct path, a number of indirect reasons arise that direct us and make us move.

These events may confuse a person in many ways, placing obstacles in front of him and making him spin around them for many long years before he makes one step forward. Although it would seem that he could have moved directly without going around.

But in everything that is happening in the world and in the whole of the human history, there is nothing besides the movement towards the Creator. Why else should all events occur if everything is defined by the opposition of the Light and the vessel and the revelation of the Reshimot, (informational genes)? Everything is directed only at clarifying and correcting them. Either, we directly perform our work on them, or as a consequence of the separation, nature will make us come to the same result by the path of suffering. However, this will take a long time since the forces of egoism (Klipot) are stretching it out like rubber, turning each point into a long period, in this way depriving us of strength and confusing us.

As it is said: “The Creator created man straight, but people have thought up of numerous retributions.”
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/5/12, Shamati #25

A Test For Selflessness

Question: What is love of the Creator?

Answer: Love is an opportunity to fill someone else’s deficiency (vessel) using my own vessels. In our world we love because it gives us pleasure: delicious and familiar food, people that please us, my children to whom I am naturally attached. We call this love.

But spiritual love is not when I fill my vessels by someone or something, but when I fill the vessels of others. This is the exact opposite of what we are used to thinking about the concept of love. The spiritual world is opposite from the corporeal world. If I worry about someone else’s vessels and want to fill them the way he wants them filled, it means that I love that person.

As long as we love each other and everything is fine, we make a covenant with the Creator in order to sustain this relationship, even if everything changes because of different external reasons. No matter what happens—I want to keep the same force of love and connection between us.

The question is how can this be done if I suddenly discover that the Creator is responsible for all my troubles? My faithful and beloved partner suddenly stops looking at me and causes me all kinds of troubles and problems. He betrays me in every way and does everything against me and becomes my chief enemy. So how can I maintain the good attitude towards Him under such conditions?

But the adhesion to the Creator means that I have gone through different states and have reached a state in which I receive nothing from Him, nothing but the feeling of darkness. But above all that I build a relationship of love, bestowal, and connection despite the problems and the sufferings that He causes my ego. In such a case it can be called adhesion.

The vessels in which I attain adhesion have to be restricted and concealed. Above them there is my Masach (screen) and Returning Light, and there is adhesion in the vessels of bestowal.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/17/12, Shamati #76

A Covenant In The Returning Light

Question: How can we make a covenant among friends?

Answer: A covenant among friends is possible only if there is an upper party ensuring its preservation. A covenant can be kept only when we all connect with the upper force, which provides the union.

There is no chance that we will be able to keep this covenant by ourselves, but if we connect, we can demand this from the Creator—if we do it for Him.

The result is that “Israel,” the people who yearn for the Creator, the Light that Reforms, the Torah, and the Creator are joined together, and then the Creator keeps the covenant according to our request.

When darkness, separation, and conflicts come, this covenant is revealed and exists among us. But as long as everything is fine, it is impossible to test it. The test is only when we feel bad.

When we feel good, we don’t need any covenant; as long as there is the Light, it connects all the parts. The difficult part is to do so when the Light disappears, to keep these parts together then. This is called a covenant.

But how can you draw the Light in a time of darkness? It is impossible. But we want to reach a state in which even when we don’t feel the Light in our receiving vessels, we will feel the Light in our Masach (screen) and the Returning Light—a fulfillment in the vessels of bestowal instead of an egoistic fulfillment.

Today, I am a loyal slave of my desire to receive, and I want to serve in order to fill someone else in the same way. This will be a pleasure for me. This means that I want to make a covenant.

The covenant is tested only in the dark, when I get no fulfillment but I still want to keep the same good relations that I had before. Instead of my egoistic pleasure, I want to restrict my ego: a Masach and the Returning Light.

This is called a covenant; it is a state in which I don’t work for myself anymore but rather in order to bestow. This means that I keep the same attitude not only when I feel good, but when I feel bad too. When the good state returns, I don’t want to be confused and be enslaved by the desire to receive over and over again, and so I make a covenant for that purpose.

I want to feel pleasure in the vessels of bestowal; I want to restrict my desire to receive and work with the pleasure by building a Masach (screen) and the Returning Light above this restriction. I turn to the friend with this Returning Light and connect with him. This is called a covenant.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/17/12, Shamati #76

An Embryo: A Stranger Or One’s Own, From The Earth Or From Above?

In the News (from New Scientist): “It is one of the greatest mysteries of pregnancy: how a fetus avoids being attacked by its mother’s immune system. …

“The mammalian body usually responds to foreign cells or tissue by releasing chemicals that promote inflammation and summon immune cells called T-cells to destroy the invaders. But during pregnancy, something turns off this process. This means that despite containing genetic material from the father, the embryo can implant in its mother’s uterus and grow there safely without triggering an immune response. …

“Erlebacher’s team [Adrian Erlebacher at the New York University School of Medicine and his colleagues] found that cells of the decidua, the lining of the uterus where the embryo implants, did not produce the usual chemical signals that would trigger inflammation and summon T-cells to the site. Closer inspection of these decidual cells revealed changes to the structure of DNA around the genes that usually produce these chemical beacons, resulting in them being silenced. …

My Comment: Turning off the synthesis of the foreign body signaling protein occurs under the influence of “unnatural” forces of love and bestowal arising in the egoistic body relative to its progeny that develops in it. This is due to the penetration of the upper Light in the desire that It created in the first stage of the four stages of expansion of the Light. And the Light in the desire gives the desire Its property—to create, which is similar to the process of reproduction—gestation and birth.

The process of conception, birth, breastfeeding, and upbringing is similar to the act of creation of the Creator. It occurs in stage 2, Bina that wants to be like stage 0, Keter. Thus, on the instinctive level of the desire (0 – 1 – 2 – 3), the creature, which is forced by the desire, becomes similar to the Creator. And on the fourth stage of its development, it forces itself to become like the Creator consciously, in attaining His attitude toward the creatures and in comparing oneself to Him, in the process of its correction; that is, spiritual reproduction, development of the soul: its conception, prenatal development, birth, breastfeeding, and growing up, up to the full equivalence with the Creator.
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Preparing High Level Experts

The training course for integral education teachers and educators should include, among others: the formation of the integral force as a new and unprecedented component.

If a football team, for example, gets together, it is simply the sum of all their efforts.

But here, since every individual annuls himself before the others, thereby raising all the others and wanting to be equal to them, to attain the common field, the agreement among everyone, we begin to feel that a new force is born among us: a new collective desire and a new mind. It is as if a new collective person is born (let’s call him Adam) who is created between us. And we live our collective life, in collective desires, in collective attributes, and in  collective thoughts.

This must be included in the training for teachers and educators, they must know about this. All the others will feel it instinctively; they will have the feeling that they somehow know it.

Question: Should professionals teach these courses?

Answer: I think that we should invite scientists that will add to the material that we teach or we should use films that present their ideas. This illustrative material will give the students the opportunity to, first, be sure that they are not being taught fragmented and partial material and, in addition, to understand the issues more deeply, to learn to answer questions, and to be more knowledgeable. On the whole, these are the same topics of the integral method but a bit deeper.

Actually the method is very simple. The only thing we need to attain here is integrality, to feel the new integral force.

By the way, this force appears in every integral system, both in a mechanical system and in our bodies. This is because the body constantly monitors the balance of the bodily systems.

The same thing happens in a group when people attain integrality; they begin to reach such a self-sustaining internal balance, which leads to absolute wellbeing and comfort. They don’t want to leave this since it is a good feeling. Through these comfortable states, through the new collective desire and new mind, suddenly most of the problems are solved and most of them simply disappear since the system changes from digital (operating on pulses) to integral, to a round, harmonious, analog system.

The main thing is to explain to people, after several “round” workshops, that they should perceive what is created among them and relate with greater sensitivity to the this new force by which they will solve all their problems and will begin to rise above themselves, above the ego. This force will create a society that is on a higher level than the old one.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/22/12

Faith That Shines On A Dark Night

If the Creator is revealed or at least comes a bit closer to a person according to the equivalence of form one has attained, a person mustn’t allow himself to be lightheaded and to enjoy this pleasant feeling during the ascent. On the contrary, the time of the ascent is the most suitable place for working when we are required to add maximum exertion in order to more tightly hold on to the study, the group, the books, and dissemination.

We should try to maximize this time and understand that no one guarantees that all this won’t stop the next minute. Therefore, you must now, using all the means you have, tie yourself to the state of ascent, so that even if the pleasant state changes into the exact opposite state and becomes dark and unpleasant—a state of fogginess, confusion, helplessness, and powerlessness—then even in such states which are full of despair, you will want to remain adhered to the Creator.

This closeness will not sustain the pleasant states, but although you feel bad now in your desire to receive, you wish to remain loyal and to adhere to the King. So neither the ascents nor the descents will affect you if you feel or don’t feel a filling in your vessels of receiving. On the contrary, it is when there is no filling that you can be sure that you are operating without any self-reward, in order to bestow.

In order to do that you need a “covenant.” If you yearn for bestowal, you discover that you can form such a covenant with the King, and that the Creator will keep this covenant. Thus you can be sure that when the descents come and you feel that you are totally empty and cannot hold on to bestowal, thanks to your earlier work, you will be able to remain adhered even in the “dark.”

Our whole work is actually done at “night,” where bestowal and faith are. As it says: “Say your grace in the morning and your faith at nights,” since it is at “night” that faith and bestowal are revealed.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/17/12, Shamati #76