A Covenant Full Of Love

Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot“, Item 119: This is also why the great privilege, when one is awarded sentencing himself to a scale of merit, is still not enough for one to attain whole love, meaning the fourth discernment. This is so because now he does not attain His merit as being good who does good to the good and to the bad, but only His Providence over him.

Yet, he still does not know of His Providence in this sublime and wonderful manner with the rest of the people in the world. Thus, we learned above that as long as one does not know the dealings of the loved one with others, until none of them is missing, the love is still not eternal. Hence, one must also sentence the entire world to a scale of merit, and only then does the eternal love appear to him.

On the way to complete adhesion and attaining the goal of creation, we attain all our deficiencies and all of the Creator’s actions on us during the whole process we have been through when the upper Providence was concealed. Then a person sees how in all the stages, in everything he has been through, the Creator was good and benevolent to him in absolute love.

As a result, a person feels that he loves the Creator back. But this isn’t enough, since he also has to work on the future, so that he will keep the same attitude. This means that he has to develop vessels inside himself that are called faith and confidence, so that in every stage in the future he will not lose faith in the Creator’s love for him.

Even this is not enough in order to determine that the Creator is good and benevolent, since it is all true only with regard to a person himself, and now he has to determine the same thing in regard to everyone else.

This means that at the end of correction, he attains everyone’s end of correction, and from this point he sees the whole human history and the entire path all the souls have gone through in the process of their correction.

These separate souls discover the connections between them above the sea of hatred in which they are immersed that separates them and keeps them apart. Through these connections of love, they feel how the sea of the ego separates them, and thus discover that the Creator constantly takes care of them in the best possible way, and that all the sufferings, the blows, and the problems that they have been through during all of human history and the ascent of the souls through all the worlds until the world of Ein Sof(infinity) were all out of the Creator’s great love.

When a person ascends the spiritual ladder, he becomes detached from his ego as he ascends, and then he sees that it was only in the ego that he felt the afflictions. If it weren’t for the ego and the desire to receive for himself at the expense of others, he would always feel only the love and great care of the Creator for him.

This means that he sees and understands that all the negative feelings don’t come from the Creator, but rather stem from his connection to his egoistic desires. Thus he determines that he is in contact, in a covenant with the good and the benevolent, and that this connection, this covenant, is full of love.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/18/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Why Do We Need Altruism?

Opinion: (Dmitry Leikin): “Individualism prospers in the modern world. The idea of living for yourself is so strong that you have to explain the fact that you do something for others.

“The point is that every person has a certain amount of power (energy), which he can spend on different activities.

“At the same time he has certain personal needs that he can fulfill through different activities. The need for altruism stems from the fact that a person has more energy than he needs in order to care for his own personal needs.

“This means that if we look at a person’s personal needs we will discover that they aren’t so many: he actually needs food, clothing, a home and a little bit of entertainment. All the other needs are actually collective needs, which means that you do something egoistically not for yourself but for others.

“But a modern man is left with far more altruistic powers than his ancestors. This means that modern man needs altruism more than the generations that preceded him.

“This is expressed in the form of laziness, depression and loss of motivation. This means that modern man realizes that he doesn’t know what he should do after the quick satisfaction of his personal needs. Because he has been brought up to live only for himself, he doesn’t know how to keep himself busy and eventually doesn’t do anything and complains about his loss of motivation.

“If he begins to do something for others his motivation will reappear and will turn out to be infinite since he can do something for others infinitely. This means that he can totally invest his efforts in such actions, which is actually what a person needs in order to be happy -to invest all his energy in something.

“If we look at people who do great things, we will see that all these things are always aimed at great masses of people. These people never complain about lack of motivation, but they may complain that they life isn’t long enough to fulfill everything they plan to do.

“The only way to be happy and to have the motivation to do anything is to do something not only for yourself but also for others. The reason is that you can have great motivation and self-fulfillment only in doing things for others.”

My Comment: Then egoistic psychology (motivation) gradually switches into the wisdom of Kabbalah because the egoistic motivation of working for the sake of others also becomes empty and there is a growing need for new motivation, for the Creator, because the Creator is infinite. A person who performs such actions feels that these actions are eternal and that the filling is infinite.

How Can We Establish A Better Society?

In the News: (karpochoff.com): “When a baby is born there are 100 billion neurons in his brain. Neurons are the cells responsible for the ability to think, to see, to feel and they are hardly regenerated during our life.

“Neurons can connect with one another through small regions in the brain called synapses. The neurons that are connected in the synapses build systems that are responsible for all of the brain activities. During the first eight months of our life the neurons create up to 1,000 trillion synapses. But the synapses operate according to the principle of ‘you either use it or lose it.’

“The connections between the neurons have to be maintained by daily exercises and stimuli so that they will be active for a long time. This is the reason that communication between parents and a baby is so important. Usually only half of the synapses remain. The simplest form of communication with a baby can actually determine the creation of connections in the brain.

“Human babies are born imperfect compared to other mammals and they need about a year in order to start walking, whereas animals begin to walk several hours after they are born. If man babies were born with a similarly developed brain, their head would be too big and it would not be able to go through the birth canal.

“This means that the development of a baby’s brain depends directly on the environment he is born in and especially within his social environment. A human baby isn’t fully formed: he comes into the world ready for the grownups to program it. The synapses that are often used become strong while synapses that are rarely used die.

“If parents look at the baby with love and affection the baby’s brain associates the loving and affectionate look with the parents’ attention and the synapses related to this lesson become stronger. The brain is built on this basis. The frontal cortex is one of the regions responsible for feelings and this region develops the fastest from a child’s birth to the age of three.

“A less developed frontal cortex means that a person finds it hard to identify other people’s feelings. This leads to lack of empathy, which is one of the reasons for violence and that under stress a person behaves aggressively or capriciously.”

My Comment: Everything is determined by education, but who educates the parents? Who teaches them how to establish the right connections between them, with the children… see “The Wisdom of Connection (Integral Education).”
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We Are Addicted To Work… And Happy About It

In the News (Psychologies.ru): “70 years ago the beginning of the 21^st century seemed happy: we thought that machines would do all the hard work while people would only work in order to receive pleasure by realizing their talents and would spend the rest of their time vacationing and enjoying a good happy life.

“So how did we become addicted to work, working more than our fathers who dreamt about our time, and even seem genuinely pleased with this circumstance? The work week in most developed countries is 35 hours and a holiday is not more than 4 weeks long. We take pride in being addicted to work and have no time for meeting new friends, sleeping properly, going on vacations, having sex and even for having a baby.

“People who are idle feel humiliated when they see those who are busy and they become much happier when they get a chance to be part of some activity even if it is very difficult. The actual thought of a vacation or rest seems wrong.”

Answer: Nature has set limits for us (that are external to us) in our corporeal development and we inevitably have to reduce production and consumption. Nature develops more new desires in us and we lose the yearning for corporeal savings.

The new generation is a good example of that. Nothing is more threatening to society than being unemployed; it leads to the deterioration of the individual and society. The only thing we will be able to fully engage in is our re-education.

We Are All Crazy

Opinion (Umberto Eco, Italian Semiotician, Essayist, Philosopher, Literary Critic, and Novelist):  “In the last few months we have become witness to a few events that are explained only as acts of madness: The German pilot that committed suicide, an entrepreneur from Milan who shot everyone who went through the courthouse, a pilot who opened fire in his home, police who instigated a slaughter; and all of them are portrayed as having been completely normal people before these events. What kind of madness took hold of them?…

“In every person there is a little bit of madness, sometimes this takes hold of him such that aggression appears in him constructively. People like these we generally call geniuses. As far as it seems even the decapitators of ISIS at particular times of their daily lives are good husbands and loving fathers. They have a fixed salary, free food, they get up at eight in the morning, the wife prepares sandwiches for them with an omelet, and then they go and shoot a few hundred children to death. The most brutal murderer, if we hear what his mother says about him, until yesterday he was a wonderful child, in the worst case, sometimes he was a little sad.

“If so, do we need to live in constant fear, from the apprehension that at every moment the wife or the husband, the son or the daughter, the neighbor or our best friend will suddenly take an axe and crush our skull or add arsenic to our drink? In a case like this we become paranoid, constantly living on the defensive. To survive, we must at least trust and have faith in someone. All that remains is to accept the fact that absolute faith doesn’t exist.”

My Comment: As a result of our insane behavior, we will reach the conclusion that only mutual Arvut (mutual guarantee) can hold a person to a good intention regarding everyone. Only the positive influence of the right environment on each one of us can make of each one of us a faithful member of society. Otherwise, everyone will gradually go insane and in relative isolation from each other (live separately, divorce, and so forth). This will not help us refrain from behaving in an uncontrolled manner.
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Unlimited Love

The Tabernacle is the place where the Creator is revealed, which means the central point where the Earth touches Heaven. The Holy Ark (Aron Kodesh) in the Tabernacle is between two cherubs(angels).

All these terms refer to the forces that are created in a person so we shouldn’t imagine any actual figures that have a material form. These figures are formed as a result of the attribute of bestowal and are aimed externally to myself.

Thanks to our ego we can divide the attribute of love and bestowal (the level of Bina) that flows like water, as it cannot be aimed at anyone in particular since otherwise it isn’t love but something that we wish to benefit from, to serve our own interest. But if it flows widely unto everyone it is the true attribute of bestowal. For example, if a person lives alone in the forest and doesn’t need anything, not a house, family, or even clothes, he may just eat some berries and it is good, but he has no self-benefit.

How can we manage and control the attribute of bestowal if it totally lacks a desire since it is full of absolute love and bestowal unto others? It can only be done if we begin to attach it to the attribute of the ego that is subordinate to it. There are two ways we can attach it: to manage the ego with the help of bestowal, or to manage bestowal by using the ego. It is one of the two. Everything is very simple. The attribute of bestowal is love. In our world I love another person because it brings me pleasure, joy, and certain feelings. In other words, my attitude towards that person and the way he makes me feel merge. But if we divide them, it turns out that I love him because I receive pleasure from him. It is egoistic love, since if my feeling fades I will not even look at him and will feel nothing for him.

In order to check that my love is not for my own benefit, I can invoke a totally opposite feeling in myself. If I suddenly discover that he has done something horrible and plans to do something against me and I still continue to love him despite the repulsion I feel, this love is not for my own benefit. The question is why do I need to love him? So by this attitude to others I will resemble the Creator. This is why a third party is needed here, the Creator. Otherwise there is no room for this kind of love.

Thus love can be egoistic or altruistic, which is not related to another person but to the source for which I have to perform such actions. I dress the attribute of bestowal (Bina)on the egoism. Bina is the basis of love. It is the reviving attribute of mother’s milk; it is the attribute of water that flows abundantly all over. When we attain this attribute we discover that we can manage it only when Malchut (egoism) is below it and is revealed gradually.

Imagine that there is a large canvas below us in which we suddenly begin to identify different shocks and that this is the only way we raise and establish the attribute of bestowal, but only thanks to the fact that the ego inside it is willing and wishes to be there. When the ego is revealed in the most revolting ways it discovers the attribute of bestowal above it. But it is actually like sand, and without it the attribute of bestowal is formless; it is simply a white cloud. But when they begin to work together the whole world is revealed and together they establish its forms.

Question: Is an embryo that is formed inside its mother also covered with the attribute of bestowal?

Answer: Of course! Nature takes care of the fact that while developing in his mother’s womb he will be wrapped with the upper love. Then he turns with his head down and is born, falling from the attribute of Bina in to Malchut and begins to grow as an egoist, so that eventually he will discover the world as he felt it in the womb, but now he will contain all of the creation inside him. He builds it by himself! This means that he attains the same attribute of bestowal but on a different level.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 12/24/14

Building Jerusalem Within The Heart

Jerusalem is a spiritual concept, which means bestowal to the other. All spiritual definitions indicate different degrees of bestowal, exiting one’s egoism toward others, becoming included in the others and bringing them closer to serve them. Bestowal for the benefit of others is called the spiritual world of the human being.

Jerusalem is a special kind of bestowal. We bestow through our heart, our desires, of which there are 613. Together, they are all building our new desire for bestowal. One of its steps is called “Jerusalem,” a special relationship with others and the height of love.

Question: Why is this human quality called a city?

Answer: The human being consists of four levels, which are four degrees of bestowal: still, vegetative, animate, and human. Bestowal on the first still level is like a city, our world. Then, there are the vegetative, animate, and human levels.

The vegetative, animate, and human levels suggest changes, in contrast to the still level. But a city is a creation of human hands, and thus it also contains the vegetative, animate, and human levels within itself.

Everyone can find Jerusalem inside himself. In the Ari’s book The Tree of Life, it is written that if a person reaches the revelation of the upper force, attitudes towards others, which are love and bestowal on the degree, called the world of Yetzira, inside this state he discovers a special place that is the quality called Jerusalem.

Inside this property, he reveals subproperties: the Temple Mount, the Temple, the Holy of Holies. All of these are the properties of bestowal of a person as he exits himself towards others. Jerusalem is a person’s special attitude towards people, and therefore everyone must build this spiritual Jerusalem within his heart.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 5/7/15

Searching For The Meaning Of Life

Question: Today the study of the wisdom of Kabbalah has become fashionable. Its devotees are celebrities, like Madonna. Does this disturb or help your global goal to bring a person to a spiritual nature?

Answer: On the one hand, it draws people’s attention to the wisdom of Kabbalah since they begin to read and become interested in it. On the other hand, Madonna and others  are not actually engaged in Kabbalah. Nothing can be done about it; this is how humanity develops. When it comes to the great spiritual system, there is no immediate understanding nor perception of what this is, so people approach this question from various angles.

Even the students who come to us to study don’t understand exactly where they are for half a year or more. They can be compared to those who studied quantum physics. There too, for a year students go around half in despair from lack of understanding. A person cannot immediately enter into a new dimension, so in the wisdom of Kabbalah, there must be a period of adjustment.

Question: Do these celebrities help you?

Answer: This doesn’t depend on them; rather, it is the need, the demand, and the imperative of the person. People come to the wisdom of Kabbalah when the question about the meaning of life pokes at their soul: “What am I living for?!” If this question burns in a person, he feels a lack of meaning in his existence and he cannot be at peace with this, so ultimately he reaches us. But if the question about the meaning of life is satisfied for him through food, sex, wealth, family, knowledge, etc., then he is stuck somewhere in these levels of satisfaction. This is neither good nor bad; in the meantime, the person is simply found on this level of development.

For some time I myself searched for the meaning of life, beginning with science and after that religion, and I didn’t find it in them. And when this became completely unbearable, tI was advised to search for Kabbalists. I searched for my teacher for four years, and when I found him, I understood that this was for me.
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From the press conference 3/11/15