The transcript has been transcribed and edited from English simultaneous interpretation, thus there may be potential semantic inaccuracies within it.

Daily Lesson (Afternoon) September 8, 2024

Part 1 Rabash. Record 268. One Learns Only Where One’s Heart Desires

Hello, we are reading from the articles of Rabash, Article 268, One Learns Only Where One’s Heart Desires. We can find the study materials on our websites Sviva Tova and Arvut. There you can also ask questions live.

Reading Article: (00:33) One Learns Only Where One’s Heart Desires

“One learns only where one’s heart desires” (Avoda Zarah 19).

We should understand why one learns specifically where one’s heart desires. According to this rule, that one learns specifically where he wants, it follows that it is impossible to teach a person ethics if he does not want this. Since a person does not want to hear words of admonition, how can one admonish one’s friend?

We also need to understand what our sages said, “One does not see one’s own faults” (Shabbat 119). Accordingly, how can one correct his practices if he never sees that they are corrupt and require correction? According to this, a person should always remain corrupted.

The thing is that it is known that man was created with a nature that he wants to delight only himself. Hence, everything he learns, he wants to learn from this how he can enjoy. For this reason, if a person wants to enjoy, he will not learn other things that his heart desires because this is his nature.

Therefore, one who wants to come closer to the Creator and be able to learn things that show ways by which to bestow upon the Creator must pray to the Creator to give him a different heart, as it is written, “A pure heart, create for me, O God.”

In other words, when there is another heart, and the desire in the heart is a desire to bestow, everything he learns will show ways of things that show only bestowal upon the Creator. However, he will never see against the heart, as was said about it, “And I will remove the stony heart from within you, and I will give you a heart of flesh.”

Also, one cannot see one’s own faults because he learns where his heart desires. And since the heart wants to enjoy, and a person does not enjoy faults, the person does not enjoy and will therefore never see his own faults.

The only advice is to pray to the Creator to give him a different heart, meaning to understand that there is nothing better than to give contentment to the Creator.

At that time, he will be able to see his faults, specifically by understanding that if he sees the fault, he will gain merit for himself because he will be able to correct, for otherwise he will remain with all the faults.

It follows that the debt is his privilege. At that time, it will be possible to examine the fault, unlike one who does not work in correction, and who will never see the faults.

Question (Women Italy): (05:37) If it is the heart of stone that prevents us from seeing our faults, how can we sincerely desire correction before we receive a heart of flesh? And how can we distinguish whether our desire to correct is genuine or still influenced by the heart of stone? 

M. Laitman: Only by requesting from the Creator to take from us the heart of stone and replace it with a heart of flesh. Only this way, take the egoistic heart, and instead of that, give us an altruistic heart that we can start taking care of the others. 

Question (Women MAK 98): (07:12) According to the article, I understood that we have to realize, does it mean that the Creator gave us evil inclination in the Torah as a spice but we are stuck in the beginning and we are not using the Torah as a spice? 

M. Laitman: Yes, and therefore we need to ask. 

Student: What does “our realization” mean? 

M. Laitman: If we try to change our heart from a bad heart, egoistic, to a better one, a good heart, then we will need the Torah that will bestow on us and our hearts will change; it will change it from egoistic to a good heart. 

Student: We are born with the debt and then we realize it, and then we correct it, right? 

M. Laitman: Yes.

Question (Women MAK 43): (08:22) Our heart changes when we are able to see the world through the desires of the friends. As much as we strive to make the desire of a friend as our own, and we reveal the evil inclination and inability to do so. At the same time, we receive the bigger revelation of the Creator. Therefore, we open two different hearts and two different worlds, those two things. Will we ever be able to connect these two hearts or will we always stay and be one against the other?

M. Laitman: If you ask the Creator to change your heart from egoistic to altruistic, that will pay off everything. 

Student: So, we will be able to reject the stony heart, and it will turn into a bestowing one? 

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Question (Women Hebrew 2): (09:20) In the article, in the first part, it says that a person does not enjoy; and the second part says that he enjoys. Who is he in debt for, and second, how can you derive pleasure if you feel?

M. Laitman: We don't enjoy it when we feel the debt, on one hand, on the other hand, we want to replace our heart, and with the replacement of our heart, we replace our relation, our attitude toward the friends, to the Creator, to the whole of creation. And this is called that we replace our heart of bad to good.

Student: And this is the payment for this debt and we have to create new debts each time in order to move? So, I always have to feel in debt and can never feel myself as if I don't owe anyone anything? 

M. Laitman: Until we finish all our evil inclination. 

Student:  Then still there is debt before the Creator.

M. Laitman: No, no, apart from the evil inclination, we don't need to reveal anything else or to replace, only that.

Question (Women Hebrew 2): (11:17) Rabash does not mention that, but we have the Tens. How can a Ten come into this picture, what's its role? 

M. Laitman: This is towards the friends, this is where I examine myself, if I am in the replacement of the heart to a good heart.

Student: Will it help to create the prayer in the process? 

M. Laitman: Yes, in everything.

Question: (Women Turkiye 7): (12:16) When I request to feel like my friend, how should the work I do for my friend's desires be approached? 

M. Laitman: I need to treat my friends, or a certain friend, in a good manner. I replace my heart into a heart of flesh, the good heart, and then we will see how much it helps me in my life, in all my relations with my friends, that's it. There's nothing else but that, only to ask the Creator to correct my heart, to fix me a new heart. As it is written, a new heart has been created. 

Question (Women MAK 104): (13:33) On one hand, we live in our ego, on the other hand, we learn about the ways of bestowing to the Creator. How in the group do we raise the importance of working on our own correction? 

M. Laitman: By example, a personal example – that all your friends will be impressed by your example. This is the best thing you can do for yourself and for them. 

Question (Women MAK 104): (14:18) Is it worthwhile to advertise the feeling of responsibility in the group? The feeling of responsibility automatically puts you in the correct position? 

M. Laitman: It's not supposed to be by pressure.

Question (Turkiye 2): (14:44) What is the difference between asking the Creator and praying to the Creator?

M. Laitman: Well, there is no difference but to ask is more human. When we demand, this starts to become a problem. We need to ask. 

Question (Novosibirsk): (15:26) Regarding examples, we can see that in group there are cases when a friend thinks that, maybe, others have to change and wants to make them correct themselves and change. On the other hand, a friend does not feel responsible and the Ten does not really react and does not give him any task or show him an example. 

So, it comes out that these cases do not motivate friends to go through some corrections in the Ten. And we lose some kind of trust when we do not take care of cases like this. How can we talk about these examples? We can gather and discuss, and this and this happens, or we can see that friends are in such and such state. What kind of example should we give them? Is this the kind of conversation we should have? 

M. Laitman: Yes, you need to show him how you work on your own ego, without words. That simply, he will see and feel.

Student: In the moment, sometimes a friend can hear you say, I heard that we have to do this, like you have to do, and then me. What do we have to do? We have to abruptly stop him? Or when we see an expression like this, what should we do? 

M. Laitman: Sure, then you need to treat him this way that he will understand, just like you described.

Moderator: Rav, maybe you can read the fifth paragraph that starts with the word: “Therefore, one who wants to come closer to the Creator,” maybe you could explain it. 

Rav Reading: “Therefore, one who wants to come closer to the Creator and be able to learn things that show ways by which to bestow upon the Creator must pray to the Creator to give him a different heart, as it is written, “A pure heart, create for me, O God.”” So, what is not understood? 

Student: What kind of heart is needed to come closer to the Creator? 

M. Laitman: A clean heart from the ego, and a good heart towards everyone. And that he will ask for a mighty strength for everyone, and by that, he will correct his own heart. 

Question (English 1): (19:31) Why is it so hard to see our own faults? Who or what is it that corrupts us? 

M. Laitman: We spoil ourselves, a person does not want to listen; it is written, a person does not see his own faults.

Question (English 1): (20:06) Why do we not see our own faults when we have already hurt others? 

M. Laitman: We do not see our faults when we are united. If we see faults in others, then we don't see them in us, and vice versa. If a person sees a lot of faults in him, he cannot see those faults in others. Which means that I can be either busy with my own faults or with someone else's faults.

Question (Women MAK 25): (21:27) In what way can a pure heart, made of flesh, that shows only the ways of bestowal towards the Creator, in what way does it learn, does it teach us these ways of bestowal? 

M. Laitman: He shows. Do you want to try this, show a desire. You want to feel how you only want to bestow towards Him. 

Student: Is this our prayer from the Ten? 

M. Laitman: Yes, it can be like that or your own personal one.

Question (MAK 17): (22:10) It is said that a man has to ask for a pure heart to give him a different friend. So, this pure heart, I don't have to ask for me, for my qualities to change, but I have to ask, specifically for this heart to be revealed to my Ten, to my friends. Therefore, it's a common heart, and I'm asking for my Ten, for the common heart, and not for some qualities of mine?

M. Laitman: Also, on yours.

Question (Kyiv): (22:53) What is this pure heart, live heart, this new heart, that the Creator gives us? 

M. Laitman: Altruistic qualities. 

Student: All kinds of desires to bestow? 

M. Laitman: Yes, all different kinds of desires that you start to behave towards others in a good way.

Student: How does it happen, does a Kabbalist simply receive a new nature at a certain point? 

M. Laitman: He starts to understand the others. 

Question (Women Turkiye 5): (23:43) How does it affect my friend's work if I make my friend's desire my own? 

M. Laitman: It gives her the opportunity to understand the ways of the Creator, that advances her. 

Question (Women Polish): (24:19) We have to either work on our own flaws or on flaws of the friend. What brings more benefit? 

M. Laitman: More benefit? When a person is busy with himself. 

Question (Women Spain): (25:00) We know that the Creator is not with the one who is prideful. How can we help a friend if she's in the state of pride? 

M. Laitman: To talk about the pride in the group until she understands that it also talks about her. 

Question (Women Moscow 5): (25:33) If a person always feels everything inside of himself, how can we differentiate if I started to feel the friends now and not myself? What is this passover, transformation? 

M. Laitman: This is that the Creator shows you what's good in you and what's bad in you and then you can ask to change.

Student: In order to feel it, what can we do today, already, to start and differentiate if I'm feeling a friend, maybe some kind of an exercise. 

M. Laitman: Help the friends, and then you'll see where you can help and where the ego stops you from doing that.

Question (Women Kavkaz 1): (26:34) When we are trying show this attitude, so the Creator gives it and usually it breaks into two opposing feelings. So, how can a person find the strength to try and not become desperate from these efforts and just keep on trying, regardless of the fact that the reaction is negative? 

M. Laitman: This is the importance of the goal that you need to develop. When only the importance of the goal will hold you in the direction of this state. That, no matter how many uncorrected states you're going through you're still going to go forward. 

Student: Can we use some kind of an exercise where I divide a friend into two parts: In one I see the egoistical qualities in her; and then I find some kind of like a small island with which I can connect. And maybe I could relate to her this way or is it not smart? 

M. Laitman: Well, try. 

Student: When you look at us, you see all the ego of ours, right? Maybe not big but unattractive; on the other hand, your attitude towards us is fully loving. So, is this our next corrected state that you communicate with? 

M. Laitman: No, no, no. Don't try to understand that. 

Question (Women Italy): (28:20) Asking the Creator for a pure heart means attracting a force of change. How does purification happen? 

M. Laitman: It is not important. 

Question (Nikolaev-Sochi): (29:01) How is the stony heart different from heart of flesh? According to my feeling, they are both egoistic.

M. Laitman: This is the stony heart. The heart of flesh is our stony heart.

Question (Tbilisi): (29:40) I see that all our problems are in reason – he didn't look at me that way, he didn't say this – I mean the issues with the friends. In faith above reason, these problems disappear. So, we can only receive our pure living heart in faith above reason? 

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: We have to work on all the questions, there, and correct everything, there.

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Question (Turkiye 2): (30:19) How can I enter the congress with a pure and clean heart? 

M. Laitman: Pray to the Creator because the Creator can change the heart from egoistical towards altruistic. 

Question (Women Petah Tikva 33): (30:55) How can a prayer come out when the heart does not desire? 

M. Laitman: Ask the Creator so that the heart would want.

Student: It is written: “Therefore, a person cannot see his faults because he is not in a place where his heart desires”. What is the difference between for his heart to desire? 

M. Laitman: Because his heart is directed towards some kind of a pleasure and hence he is not able to hear anything else. 

Question (Women Spain): (32:23) How can we correct our actions, if we cannot even see that our heart is spoiled.

M. Laitman: We have to gradually reveal our heart and see that it is completely incorrected. And to an extent to which we start to feel it this way, we have to start and ask the Creator to come and correct this heart of ours. That is what we should do, gradually, step by step, one after the other. 

Question (Italy): (33:06) Will the heart of stone within us be replaced by the new heart, little by little? Or should we expect a sudden change when the Creator wants? 

M. Laitman: No, it is gradually, step by step, during lots of actions, one after the other. And we do not correct our heart until we finish all of this. In this way it gradually turns from egoistical hearts into altruistic hearts, from hate to love. 

Question (Women MAK 43): (34:12) I’m a little bit confused, a clean heart is the heart of the Ten and a heart of flesh, or is it the same? 

M. Laitman: No, no, a pure heart is a heart free from egoism, even of one person. An egoistical heart is a heart that has egoistical desires, and these are two opposite states. 

Student: So, that means that a clean heart is a heart that includes all, everyone's desires, clean desires for bestowing.

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Question (Women Turkiye 1): (35:03) Can I come to the realization that everything I see is within me, when I stop judging my friend? 

M. Laitman: Try to feel it and ask the Creator to show you.

Question (Women Turkiye 5): (35:40) In the work, should I add my desire to my friend's? Or should I add the friend's desire to my own desire? Which should be the priority? 

M. Laitman: If you are asking and you have to scrutinize, what exactly do you have to ask? To stay with your desire, and for the friend to change her desire or no? Scrutinize it. 

Question (Women Russian 11): (36:43) We thought that maybe it is possible to feel that we feel more of the faults as a sign of advancement? 

M. Laitman: You simply have to do everything that can ignite love between you.

Question (Women Ukraine 2): (37:15) If I try to feel the friends as I feel myself, how can I work with their egoistic desires? 

M. Laitman: I don't have to put their egoistical desires upon myself, I simply have to distance myself from them and provide my friends with the clean desires. Let them figure it out and correct it, a person cannot correct someone else's desires.

Student: I heard once that we need to fulfill the friend's desires and to bring them near to me. Is that true? 

M. Laitman: No, it is better not to engage in all these kinds of things. 

Student: So, what should be the prayer? 

M. Laitman: To show by example to a friend what desires of hers do you accept and you love, and which you don't.

Student: It annoys the friends. 

M. Laitman: They have to see what is good in them and what is bad. 

Student: But they get very annoyed and they start to hate you. As if you are showing that they are not complete.

M. Laitman: They have to say thank you for this. 

Student: But when I show them a good example, what are they saying? Why are you making yourself a righteous? 

M. Laitman: What do you want to do? 

Student: I'm asking you what to do, I pray to correct the friend's desire but you say it's not correct.

M. Laitman: Don't pay attention to them, don't react to such examples. 

Question (Moscow 1): (39:33) We can't work in a direct manner because there is a fault in us. But in comparison to something higher, we are not in equivalence with it, we cannot go directly against it. In equivalence to what have I compare myself and I see my faults.

M. Laitman: In comparison to what you learn about in the articles. 

Question (Women MAK 104): (40:50) Between the soul and the body, there is rejection. How do we raise the force of the mind? 

M. Laitman: Be connected to the good friends. 

Question (Women Moscow 18): (41:14) What is the difference between a person that reads a lot, and a person that comes and studies the practical Kabbalah and is doing it in the group, but he cannot feel it in himself and starts to correct others? 

M. Laitman: We don't pay attention to how many books a person has read in their lifetime.

We only pay attention toward their striving to correct themselves, their dedication. 

Student: But it's my own correction anyhow, not the others.

M. Laitman: You don't think about it. 

Question (Petah Tikva 35): (42:16) He friend says that his mind always interrupts how to feel. How can he feel more? How can we receive more thoughts in the mind, in equivalence? 

M. Laitman: It's for him to think how can he do good to everyone, to the whole Ten, to the whole group? 

Student: How can his good deeds that he is trying to help the friends, format his heart to open more and to start to feel the friends more? 

M. Laitman: He has to pray for the Creator to open his heart. 

Student: That's the prayer that I ask from the Creator, to open my heart, and to be more giving to the friends and to become closer to the Creator's qualities?

M. Laitman: Yes.

Question (Lithuania 1): (43:43) You can't teach anyone unless a person wants it; and the ones that wants to, they have pleasure from that and they are a minority. Somehow, their desire is awakened in the prayer and that cause. And it causes the whole world to know the Creator, which means the force of bestowal, qualities of bestowal. How much is it effective to do this prayer or should we be more concrete? 

M. Laitman: It's more beneficial to communicate between yourselves, to converse, to talk in the group. You have to do it more, not with the outsiders, but with the friends in your group. Then you will obtain good words and good thoughts, and you'll be able to express them. 

Question (Women MAK 19): (45:04) By what we study, I always see that I need to ask for my own correction, that will correct my vision, all the faults I see. Now, I hear again that if we ask for ourselves, but if I ask for a friend, do we need to just nullify and say nothing? 

M. Laitman: Maybe in silence, too. 

Student: Can we be more precise: Can I depict to myself that the heart of flesh that the Creator is giving us, then we feel the Ten in a much better way. It is as if the Creator let us taste toward what we need to yearn?

M. Laitman: It's not your business, your business is to ask for the Creator to replace your stony heart with the heart of flesh. 

Student: I can ask only for myself? 

M. Laitman: It can be a mutual prayer.

Question (Women Ukraine 2): (46:23) If I, many times a day, reveal my faults, then where can I add in my prayer the friend's prayer, and what should it be? 

M. Laitman: It has to be one prayer where you have to take care of your heart and the heart of the friend. 

Question (MAK 25): (46:56) Does a corrected heart not feel the thoughts in himself? 

M. Laitman: He does not, it does not feel. 

Question (Women Turkiye 10): (47:09) When I face the reality of having a heart of stone, will the ego distance me from this study? Where can we draw the strength for the study in such a confrontation? 

M. Laitman: Yes, then you receive the forces and you can work with your heart. 

Question (Women Moscow 6): (47:44) The best example to give the friends is deficiency? Should this example be an act, or should we yearn for correction, and then they will see? 

M. Laitman: Yes, exactly like this. 

Question (Women MAK 97): (48:12) The Creator is pushing us with the surrounding light and always ready to change our heart. What should happen to a person that was born as a receiver and now is asking for bestowal? Is that the revelation of evil? 

M. Laitman: Yes, of course. 

Question (Women Spain): (48:47) Before, I asked about the pride in the Ten, and the question wasn’t about my Ten, it was about Italy. And the friends in the Ten took it personally but my question was a general question. So, why do people take it, personally? 

M. Laitman: Try to explain to them that they think about themselves; and that it's in them, this flaw. And it truly is, to think like this is a flaw. 

Question (Asia): (49:46) How come the society makes a person reach a request, to just please take the stony heart from me, just take it. 

M. Laitman: How do we achieve this? 

Student: Today, we've been to the cemetery, and we put a stone, and my wife asked, why do we put a stone? So, I said because we have a stony heart, and we want to bury it. 

M. Laitman: Where is this graveyard? 

Student: In Australia, it was the first month of the death of my brother. 

M. Laitman: Got it.

 

Question (Hadera 1): (50:45) A person needs to ask, in order to ask to replace his stony heart, does he need to depict his new heart of flesh and this is when he prays. 

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Question (MAK 24): (51:36) I'm being a shepherd of a herd, when he's leading the herd, and I look for faults from above. Do I keep looking inside the friend, some sort of a quality of the stony heart? 

M. Laitman: Yes, you can say it is so.

Question (Women Hebrew 2): (51:55) In the Congress, we're supposed to aim that we will come out more corrected or that we will have more work in correction? Where should we put our intention? 

M. Laitman: It depends on you, afterwards, you'll tell me what you feel. 

Question (Women Italy): (52:22) When we see the ego in action, we ask the Creator for help. How can we be joyful if we always see our misery? 

M. Laitman: That's work because when we're impure, we have to purify ourselves and therefore, we have to be happy from this purification process. That we purify ourselves, we reveal evil inside of us, and we throw it away from ourselves, outwards. It's like a cleaning job.

Question (MAK 24): (53:40) When we ask to replace our heart, truly it is very hard, it's like death. Does the Creator listen to even a prayer when it's not a real prayer? 

M. Laitman: Yes, that replaces the heart but it's not mechanically. Ask, ask, ask, and gradually you will start feeling what it means to replace the heart. 

Question (Women Piter): (54:18) How can a Ten examine themselves that they reach a true desire to ask for correction? 

M. Laitman: The Ten is a complicated thing, each one separately, yes, but to connect in the fact that you want one heart for everyone? It's not easy; we'll be talking about it more.

Question (Women Turkiye 5): (54:2) I heard that in order for my heart to become pure, I must receive influence from the Ten; and in return, I must be in debt to the Ten and set a good example for my friends. What is the importance of this balance of giving and taking for the Ten? 

M. Laitman: When everyone is bestowing, everyone is receiving, this is how it is. 

Question (Women Turkiye 9): (55:30) Judgments are both a burden on one's back and there is a great pain in leaving them. Should one ask for strength to endure or should one ask for release from judgment? 

M. Laitman: Yes, to release, get released from it. 

Question (Women Petah Tikva 5): (56:09) Announcement of Event. 

I would like to also ask a question: We will come to the Yeshivat Haverot and each one of the friends went through lots of challenges. And in this meeting, this gathering, we have lots of prayers, lots of intentions and we want to come to the Congress with one heart. What should each Ten bring to the connection? 

M. Laitman: Everyone has to come with a good heart, treat friends like this, and just in general, towards the women part of our group so that they would have good relationships. And for you to connect in one burning heart of everyone and to prepare yourself to a good connection and love, you have to prepare it beforehand. 

Question (Haifa 1): (58:13) King David writes about the pure heart that, the Creator created me a pure heart. Don't throw me in front of you, and please don't take from me. Bring me back with joy. The Spirit, Creator, open my lips, and my mouth will speak your grace.

M. Laitman: Okay. 

Question (Women Kavkaz 1): (59:09) There have been arguments when we don't agree, if it's the face, we've been awarded – and if it's the posterior, we've been not awarded? 

M. Laitman: It's always a question of a person and it means to connect or not to connect. 

Question (Women Petah Tikva 33): (59:44) What is the place of work that we really need to try hard in the Ten until the Congress? 

M. Laitman: Check our hearts and the hearts of each and every one for it to be pure and filled with love towards everyone, towards everyone. So, please, check your heart and we will come to the Congress with a clean heart and free from all the dirt. Good luck. See you tomorrow.

Announcements: (1:00:30)

Song: (1:00:58)