Part 2: Rabash. The Ruin as an Opportunity for Correction.
Reader: We're going to be reading select excerpts from our sources on the topic of The Ruin as an Opportunity for Correction. We're on excerpt number 50.
Reader:
Reading: (00:22) Excerpt number 50 from Rabash, Letter 77.
The whole foundation is that one should ask that all of one’s thoughts and desires will be only to benefit the Creator, a depiction of lowliness, called Shechina in the dust, immediately appears. Hence, we must not be impressed by the descent, since many pennies join into a great amount.
This is as we learned, “there is no absence in spirituality,” rather that it has temporarily departed in order to have room for work to advance. This is so because every moment that we scrutinize into holiness enters the domain of holiness, and a person descends only in order to sort out more sparks of holiness.
M. Laitman: Okay. Our entire work is to scrutinize, to sort more sparks of holiness and return them seemingly, to the Creator. That's why all the ascents, descents, all the states that we are going through, everything is in order to sort out these states. Up and down, down and up. Next
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (01:59) What's the meaning of not being impressed by the descents? After all, when a person's in a descent, he's fully in it.
M. Laitman: Oh, nevertheless, you have to try and be in faith above reason. Understand everything that's happening is for his own benefit, that he would receive the light of faith, and that will save him from the descents, and he can remain on top.
Student: There's always this moment in the descent that he has to be fully in it all the way, right?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: So, how not be impressed by that? How not? You've got to keep the correct proportions when you're there.
M. Laitman: Not surrender. It should not break him, drop him.
Student: There's a big circle of friends around us that were with us for years and probably didn't succeed not to be impressed by that and they're around us. They're around us. They don't hate us. Those who hate us, it's not interesting but those are truly around us. They respect and everything, but they may be afraid of falling into such descents. So maybe they're not with us anymore.
M. Laitman: There's no innovation from the study. People don't wish to scrutinize every day from what they hear, more and more points on the connection between us, connection with the Creator, the purpose of creation. We heard it all. That's the problem.
Student: So, how can you keep a connection with such people that if they come closer, they'll have more ascents and descents? If they're further away, maybe they're kind of like kept. How do you take care of that correctly?
M. Laitman: Whatever the mind doesn't do, time does. We'll see after the holidays.
Student: What on our behalf can be done?
M. Laitman: On our behalf, we need to be ready to receive them, accept them, continue with them like with everyone. With the same conditions we have here we are willing to accept everyone. If he left, he left. Now he's making a calculation. He might be coming back. Keep going.
Reader: Excerpt # 51.
Reading: (04:43) Excerpt number 51.
The Ruin of Kedusha [Holiness]
One should pray for the ruin of the Temple, that the Kedusha is ruined and in lowliness, and no one pays attention to this lowliness, that the Kedusha is placed in the earth and must be lifted from its lowliness.
In other words, each one recognizes his own benefit and knows that this is something very important and worth working for. But to bestow, this is not worthwhile. This is considered that the Kedusha is placed in the earth, unused and unwanted.
However, one must not ask the Creator to bring him closer to Him, as it is insolence on the part of man, for in what is he more important than others? However, when he prays for the collective—which is Malchut, called “assembly of Israel,” the sum of the souls—that the Shechina [Divinity] is in the dust, and he prays that she will rise, meaning that the Creator will light up her darkness, then all of Israel will rise in degree, too, including the beseeching person, who is included in the collective.
Reading: (06:43) Again, excerpt number 51 from Rabash.
The Ruin of Kedusha [Holiness]
One should pray for the ruin of the Temple, that the Kedusha is ruined and in lowliness, and no one pays attention to this lowliness, that the Kedusha is placed in the earth and must be lifted from its lowliness.
In other words, each one recognizes his own benefit and knows that this is something very important and worth working for. But to bestow, this is not worthwhile. This is considered that the Kedusha is placed in the earth, unused and unwanted.
However, one must not ask the Creator to bring him closer to Him, as it is insolence on the part of man, for in what is he more important than others? However, when he prays for the collective—which is Malchut, called “assembly of Israel,” the sum of the souls—that the Shechina [Divinity] is in the dust, and he prays that she will rise, meaning that the Creator will light up her darkness, then all of Israel will rise in degree, too, including the beseeching person, who is included in the collective.
Reader: (08:38) Now we are going to answer a workshop question, all of us together in Tens.
Workshop Question: What prayer do we need to raise so that Kedushah will emerge from its lowliness and illuminate in all of Israel? What prayer do we need to raise so that Kedushah will emerge from its lowliness and shine, illuminate in all of Israel?
Reader: (13:36) We're moving to excerpt number 52, of Rabash. Article No. 39 (1990), What Is, ‘Anyone Who Mourns for Jerusalem Is Rewarded with Seeing Its Joy, in the Work?”
When one prays for the exile of the Shechina, he should not pray that it is in the dust only for him. Rather, one should pray about its lowliness in the whole world, that the whole world gives no thought to spirituality. And he prays for the whole world, as we pray, “And build Jerusalem soon in our days,” so it will be glorified in the whole world, […] But since the general public does not feel the lack, how can they pray?
However, such a person, who was rewarded with obtaining the need, who has attained the exile, he can ask for redemption. But those who do not feel that there is an exile, how can they ask that He will deliver them from exile? It follows that a person’s feeling of being in exile is already considered an ascent in degree, and he must ask for fulfillment for the general public.
M. Laitman: That's how it is, yeah.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (15:37) Rav, we did a workshop now, after these excerpts, about what we should pray.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: Every day in the Ten, we do a prayer. We also know that a prayer is what's in our hearts. And for us to just say words, it won't really help but to say the prayer in lieu of what we heard in the lesson, according to our state, the state of the world, etc. Now you said, before you went you told the friend that there's a problem that we need to renew each day and what we heard from the lesson additional points that we heard in the connection between us and with the Creator.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: There's this feeling that sometimes, we don't really find that place of what scrutiny we can do in addition between us. We exert and we sit together and there's almost nothing to say already. There's nothing to talk about. We feel like we said everything. Also, in the manner of the heart, we kind of squeezed it already. What's that work of finding an innovation each time in this work between us? How to understand that more?
M. Laitman: It's to find a new point in the connection between us, the connection between us and the world, about the world, about the Creator with us, about the world and the Creator, and so on and so forth. We need to feel where is that point of innovation. How can it be?
Student: How do you work in that?
M. Laitman: How do you work in that? Simply continue to delve into it. Go deeper into the connection.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (18:03) Yesterday, I got to speak to a friend and we were talking how we see that the whole study and all the writings aim us to a place where probably our role is to try to sort our life so that we will be as much as possible in prayer for the collective and that's what we're supposed to do in life, and throughout the years, also because we don't see the results from our prayer in practice. And also, we ourselves think that we're small. We don't really believe that we are so meaningful and great that our prayer will make a difference. It's hard to believe in that. You say, what am I? I'm a little screw, a little speck of dust in this whole reality. And that's why it's hard to persist.
M. Laitman: So, maybe we need to talk more about that and how much we actually influence the entire world. It's truly something we haven't done.
Student: Because we're also talking about it. And we're trying to strengthen it. And we're laughing at ourselves. It's like, who are we? It's because also, when we come to annul our ego, it's as if resistance. You want to lower yourself to show that your ego is small. And then you say, oh, yes, the whole world depends on my prayers.
M. Laitman: The whole world depends on our prayers because we received connection with the Creator and in using this connection correctly, the way we learn about it daily, every lesson, we can truly influence the entire world with the main purpose of bringing the world closer to the Creator. We don't need more and we're not capable of more. But to awaken at least a part of the world as much as possible toward a connection with the Creator, this is something we must do and our reward, our entire reward depends on that, on having the power, the remedy to aim the entire world at the Creator.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (20:40) First of all, as one who gets to be connected with people that are certain that they're moving the world, it's completely clear to me that no one is small here, and that we here have, or maybe we're the only ones that have the strength and the power to do something because no one does and it's completely clear. Yes, this bringing of the Creator to the world, maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me like we first have to bring it to the Ten?
M. Laitman: For the Ten to yearn for Him in the right measure, the right form, then the Creator will be revealed to them.
Student: Can we talk a little about that correct yearning? Is there what to talk about, or is it simply something we need to reveal?
M. Laitman: Think about it. Bring questions. Maybe find some verses. We’ll have a scrutiny on it.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (22:07) I'm hearing the friends. I'm noticing that when a person reads something, something happens. Let’s say, God forbid, in his family with his kids. Her feels like he has every right to pray, and his prayer is very meaningful. It's like a matter of importance, altogether. And also later, the scrutiny is when a person has it, and he sees that he doesn't have importance. He feels that the evil inclination is stopping him. That's what is unique to us. What unifies us. When we get to look and see the evil inclination. What’s stopping us from praying? We are very unique when it comes to that, specifically. That we can identify through all this, this whole weave. We can see what others cannot identify. We have something we can truly pray for, the lack of importance. About the evil inclination that's stopping us, about our inner ego. So I really do think we have much room for prayer. We just need to do that little scrutiny of the importance for our spiritual work.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (23:34) To continue the scrutiny of the friends. There’s a certain Ten, we can take as an example from the past, that brought the Creator between them and we can say, that's a Ten as an example. We should take an example from them?
M. Laitman: I don’t understand what you mean.
Student: We're all sitting in Tens. We’re all trying to reveal the Creator between us. We’re doing a lot of work for many years; very laborious, and if we were to have an example before our eyes where we could say, yes, we want to be like this thing. So, what is this thing we want to put before our eyes, Rav?
M. Laitman: When I'm in a Ten, a strong Ten, that is capable of grabbing me and holding me together with everyone. Capable of arranging me correctly toward the goal and each time pushes me, obligates me to advance. That's what I would have liked, would want it to be. Now, it can't be that I want this, but I'm not doing my part in it. I too need to awaken the Ten towards the friends. So it would do the same and then we'll succeed.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (25:24) To continue the friend's scrutiny and the request. We read now item 51, and he writes, one needs to pray for the ruin of the Temple’. A home we know. A house, we know is a Kli in Temple, the quality of bestowal. Meaning, each of us can look at this excerpt as his Ten. That he needs to pray for his Ten, that it's in ruin and he writes in the end, and then he prays for it to rise. That his Ten will rise, meaning that the Creator will light up her darkness. Meaning, there's darkness in it and he's asking for the Creator to light up that darkness. He continues and writes, then all of Israel will rise in degree to, including the beseeching person who is included in the collective in his Ten. So for the request of the friends, if we can talk about that. That’s the excerpt that we just read now.
M. Laitman: I'm in a Ten. In my small group, where we all think. We need to think of everyone. We need to pull everyone, each and every one. and I care about the connection, so there will be this mutual bestowal, mutual influence, mutual example to one another on how much he wants to be in his small society, and carry out whatever the Creator is demanding of him. So, first of all, to annul yourself. That's the first example, if we're talking about corrections in order to bestow. First of all, to annul in his will to receive. He needs to tell himself, I'm going to correct myself, and come to in order to bestow, and talk to himself. A person has to constantly be in conversation with himself. I can add a lot more here, but the important thing is that a person needs to talk to himself about his future, his work, his expectations. The kind of help that he needs. The goal that he aims himself towards. It's all important. It should be his internal dialogue.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (28:38) How in the whole prayer that you just described about annulment and not to forget the purpose of creation? Which is the thing in the end that after all, there's a goal, and how not to forget that goal in our prayers? Which are important? Meaning annulment in some path, and there's a goal?
M. Laitman: We learn from the prayer itself, like the way it is in the prayer book, the Siddur. There's a transition there. From man to society and to the world and we need to also make similar calculation here.
Student: Isn't that supposed to be our main calculation? Meaning, to pass this to the world, and for the Creator to be able to realize the purpose of creation?
M. Laitman: That is correct in general but specifically, there are many more points we have to carry out, realize, ask about.
Student: Meaning, there's no shortcut to this. We have to truly go through the whole path.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (30:13) How important is it for the friends, when we do these scrutinies? How important is it for the friends to open the heart and ask for help from one another? Yesterday, we did a meeting. I also said earlier and friends, we suddenly felt like friends opened their hearts and are asking for help and that feeling gives prayer that's more focused, more true.
M. Laitman: Rabash used to explain this to us. As it's written, I learned a lot from my teachers and more from my friends and even more from my students. From the people that are close to a person, that he understands, that he feels. He discloses his weaknesses to them and vice versa. You can speak to them more openly. From that, a person does advance. Hence, we need to try and see how each one opens up to his friends.
Student: What is the Creator actually showing us here? That we've advanced in the friends opening their hearts to one another?
M. Laitman: Additionally, we need to connect. To become one from the entire Ten as one man in one heart.
Student: How at that time that moment, where a person opens his heart and truly asks from his friends for help, help me. How do we manage to take that even higher?
M. Laitman: To connect as much as possible, more and more.
Student: To connect to his request?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (32:46) Rav answered a friend earlier about the innovations of the Torah. That it's to find a new point in the connection between us, between us and the world, upon the world. The Creator is with us, and so on. It's to feel where the innovation is. How can there be an innovation? I understand that for one who's in attainment, it's permitted to do innovations in the Torah. There's a prohibition on changing, but innovations, yes. There's a difference between changing and innovating. What's the difference between changing and innovating?
M. Laitman: Changing means that we have certain rules that came to us from Kabbalists throughout the generations, and we should not be changing those but to add something to them, to give them our own interpretation to a small extent. Of course, not to deviate from their lines, but that is something we can do.
Student: Meaning, if in the Ten from what we've learned from Rav or what we read, we understand the essence of what we kept, but we adapted it to our life, to our relevance, to our reality today, that's legitimate and permitted?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Reading Excerpt 53: (34:25) We're moving to excerpt number 53,Baal HaSulam, Letter No. 25
One who is rewarded with repentance, the Shechina [Divinity] appears to him like a soft-hearted mother who has not seen her son for many days, and they made great efforts and experienced ordeals in order to see each other, because of which they both were in great dangers. But in the end, they came to that longed-for freedom and were rewarded with seeing one another. Then the mother fell on him, kissed him, comforted him, and spoke softly to him all day and all night. She told him of the longing and the dangers on the roads she has experienced until today, how she had always been with him, and that the Shechina never moved, but suffered with him in all the places, but he could not see it.
These are the words of The Zohar: “She says to him, ‘Here we slept; here we were attacked by robbers and were saved from them; here we hid in a deep pit,’ and so forth. What fool would not understand the great love and pleasantness and delight that burst from these comforting stories?”
M. Laitman: Questions? Not that many, that's clear. What we're going through, right now, we'll all have to make a general calculation, a screen and a reflected light, and reach the source.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (36:49) What he's saying here has been revealed, the mother actually reveals in the end, when they finish this pass. So, how does this help us now to know this, it's like it's not tangible?
M. Laitman: No, it's a confirmation for doing it right, and now, he's rewarded with the revelation of the Shechina, the mother of the Shechina, here.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (37:19) We have a Ten and each of us is somewhat making efforts to exit himself, to incorporate in a greater collective called, the Ten. We also make great efforts. We had a meeting on Friday and we discussed a lot about annulment and today you also said that annulment is a very important initial aspect. The feeling is that we're only engaged in ourselves when there’s something and we’re lacking the ability to be aimed, correctly and precisely, to the goal in a sharp way. We also heard that in a Ten, and another Ten that prays a lot, but doesn't see results. I wanted to ask actually about that feeling that we're making an effort, we’re very confused and there's discomfort in seeing that the majority, or the collective of Bnei Baruch are also in the same direction. It's as if the scrutiny has moved from a personal, private scrutiny of a person, to a Ten, and to the society and we’ve moved to principles that we agree with, a certain bylaw, and we’ve realized that bylaw is actually the study material, we're learning. It's as if we don't have comfort from the work just between us, we need to receive some strengthening from the work between the Tens, that’s the feeling. Is there something in that, is there some need in such a thing?
M. Laitman: A certain need, yes, but not a great need, the important thing is, still, the Ten.
Student: I understood, meaning, we truly need to go above reason in that feeling that if we work according to the correct rules that were given to us, then we have to go with it all the way to the end.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: Not to search for some results on the side?
M. Laitman: But soon you will find out, soon you will find out.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (39:58) What is the concern to merit repentance?
M. Laitman: When you begin to discover, according to your questions, the answers from the Creator and it's clear to you that this is how it is, without a doubt.
Student: I didn't understand.
M. Laitman: To be rewarded with repentance, also in Hebrew the word, repentance is answer, means that you receive an answer from the Creator.
Student: I raise a question and receive an answer?
M. Laitman: Yes, what else does it mean to be in repentance?
Student: What we learn is that the Hey will return to the Vav.
M. Laitman: I don't know where is the Hey and where is the Vav, and where do they meet; I'm telling you from life.
Student: Seemingly, one who merits repentance gets something for all his deficiencies or?
M. Laitman: Not everything, maybe a part of it, but I receive.
Student: So the main thing is to raise questions?
M. Laitman: The main thing is to want to be with answers, in answers, and that depends on the deficiency.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (41:23) You answered that a person needs to talk with himself. To scrutinize things about the future, about all kinds of things, that it will be. How not to get confused in those scrutinies inside?
M. Laitman: Why confused? You have friends, you have your questions, you have the answer that you're getting? Scrutinize them one-to-one.
Student: All the scrutinies I do are from my ego, what I’m missing here, what I’m missing there, and there’s no end to it.
M. Laitman: There is an end, there is an end; nevertheless, you should be stressed up about this scrutiny. That these questions will be a principle thing, something greater than this life. That there's nothing more important in this life than this because life is aimed at this point, where the prayer comes.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (42:45) What if you turn to the Creator in a question and a prayer and you kind of never get an answer. What does that mean?
M. Laitman: I guess you didn't turn to Him properly.
Student: What is properly?
M. Laitman: You didn't reach a state where you can receive an answer.
Student: It’s something very difficult to continue that endless monologue. Where to search for the answer, where is it?
M. Laitman: In the connection with the Creator and you care about it more and more and more. These who knock in prayer, like you're knocking on a closed gate until it opens.
Student: Where is that energy from to not let go, to be relentless?
M. Laitman: That’s from the fact that you don't have an answer, for the time being. Think and raise your deficiency higher and higher, more and more, until you make it.
Reading: (44:22) Excerpt 54, RABASH, Article No. 36, Who Hears a Prayer.
“Hears a prayer.” There is a question: Why is prayer written in singular form if the Creator hears prayers, as it is written, “For you hear the prayer of every mouth of Your people Israel with mercy”?
We should interpret that we have only one prayer to pray—to raise the Shechina [Divinity] from the dust, and by this all the salvations will come.
M. Laitman: Okay? No questions here, everything is clear.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (45:23) How to feel the lacks of the friends?
M. Laitman: To be incorporated with them.
Student: What does it mean to incorporate with them?
M. Laitman: Let's say, a truck comes here and you have to unload it. So each one who participates in it feels the sorrow of the work, together with everyone, and then he's incorporated with everyone.
Student: To unload a truck together is not necessarily the example you're giving. Even from it, I don't really understand this incorporation because it's spiritual incorporation. It’s a deficiency for something that each feels differently inside him and I need to take his feeling into me in some way and it's not always clear how to take the feeling of the friend, how he feels, what happens in him, in me. That’s my question, how to incorporate into that? It's something that is, I don't know, it's without any means, or…
M. Laitman: The way you feel, as a result from this work, you should depict his feeling the same and this bases your relationship on that.
Student: Everything will simply just enter inwards, and just from that come into the lacks of the friend?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (47:05) Then, in this work, is there a difference between prayer and demand?
M. Laitman: It's possible that there's a demand in the prayer. A prayer is a plea, an appeal, an address to the Creator and it can include in it everything you want.
Reader: (47:41) Yes, we will do a summary, each in their Tens, a summary of the central points that we learned in the lesson, please.
Convention Announcements: (55:46)
Reader: (01:08:19) Announcements.
Additional Announcements: (01:09:21)