Part 2: 5:00 - Reading of Lamentations - How Lonely Sits the City

1. R. (00:10) Okay friends, let's talk about today. We are soon going to read the Megillat, the story of the ruin that happened thousands of years ago in the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. And we have to think, what does it exactly symbolize? Why do we care that it was thousands of years ago? And why should we be concerned about it, and be sorry about it as if it happened yesterday? And to each and everyone personally. Is that clear what I am asking? So that is a problem because whoever does not mourn the Temple is not ready to see it resurrected, supposedly. We have to understand and really feel in our hearts what the destruction means? And according to that what we need to one from the correction, in which way, and what it has to bring us. We will all explain something about it. We are going to read the Megillat Eicha, the portion of Eicha from the Old Testament, that is Lamentations. We read it once a year on the day that the Temple was ruined in Jerusalem. That is why we are in sorrow and asking for forgiveness.

Reading (03:24) of Lamentations - How Lonely Sits the City

2. S. (21:08) Intuitively, we avoid feeling sorrow and mourning. We start anew every time we have this healthy, positive approach, and here there's like a different guidance to reach joy and there is something very special here and if you mourn, then you will be rewarded with joy and not in another way. So how do we adopt this attitude, this feeling, this sorrow?

R. We, in some way, use these transitions always. Let’s say in a wedding, we break the glass, or all kinds of other symbols. Or in a brit, a circumcision, we have signs that we always still connect to all of our happy events. We mention the reason for the ruin of the temple. You can't have one without the other. And we need to think about it.

S. It should be part of our work, feeling the destruction. It is not a day in the year.

R. We need to feel it every day, because otherwise we will not correct ourselves. The lack of correction that we feel it is parts of the ruin, of the destruction. So what is there to ask about?

S. Why should we look at it as a destruction, something that was ruined? It is just a situation.

R. What do you mean a state? If this is a state, so it's a state. It has nothing to do with me if it belongs to me. So, we need to understand what does it give me. This state, the state that was, and the state that will be. And then I see that I am really in the worst state, the worst state, and that I cannot correct the shattering and I can't come near it. I can't do anything. So what could be worse?

3. S. (24:10) We always say that when a person feels bad the Creator disappears. Here it is as if the Lamentations is about saying the Creator you left me and everything. It's true, we are at fault. It's our fault. But, now we are suffering. So it is like lamentations, but there is also gratitude in it. It is not just whining about how poor we are and we suffer.

R. I still don't understand what you want to say.

S. How can we keep the Creator in mind while we are still suffering?

R. The Creator created the world, created the laws, created the conditions, revealed those conditions to us and that is it. What we need is, we need to keep those conditions and we weren't successful. We couldn't do it. So we fell. That's it. Now we have to correct.

S. But it's not a fall into disconnection, it's a fall into a kind of concealment where we still attribute it to the Creator.

R. Yes.

S. So it is a relatively a good state. It is not a disconnection where I am totally disconnected and oh poor me I'm disconnected.

R. No, even when we are now disconnected from the Creator, we can ask. We can demand of Him to take his conditions for correction, to keep them, to ask Him to correct it, that he raises us. This is our work. If we learn what exactly happened to us against that we can learn what exactly we need to do in order to correct the shattering and come back to the corrected state.

S. So what should we focus on, concentrate on, on such a day?

R. It depends on the education a person got. We need to concentrate that we understand that the ruin had to take place. That there couldn't be a state without it. It was a very, very difficult period in corporeality and in spirituality, and now we need to connect between us and bring ourselves to the corrected state.

4. S. (27:05) Should we be in lamentation today or in joy? 

R. In mourning.

S. Lamentation for what?

R. That there was a state that we could ascend to Gmar Tikkun and we did not use it correctly. That is what we felt.

S. What is the cry about the past? It happened and that is it. Now we should be happy about the future.

R. No. If you don't cry so you don't know what you lost, that's why you do not cry about the past, you cry about, that you have vessels that in them you have to admit what state you are in today.

S. So we are aiming for gratitude?

R. Yes.

S. How do I bring myself to a state of sadness or lamentations if I do not have it in me?

R. No, that you don't need. Rabash used to say you want to cry, so go to the women's area there and see how they are crying.

S. Why shouldn't we be in joy on such a day when the opportunity is revealed, the situation is revealed?

R. We haven't gotten to a state where we understand what to correct, how to correct, what we need to do in order for it to be corrected. We are still not actually in the recognition of evil. That we just have to from now on to just do good.

S. So how do we use this day specifically? What is it about this day that we can use for our advancement?

R. Today we need to check what is important for us. What we need to do in order to come close to the correction? What we are left with is the connection between us. That in it we reveal the Creator and demand Him. From Him we raise MAN, that this correction will take place. We can talk a lot but actually this is short and to the point. That is what we need to do.

5. S. (30:04) Is there a difference between the ruin that happened in the Second Temple? In the fall and rise in our ascents and descents? Or is it the same but on a bigger scale?

R. When we say, when we learn from the wisdom of Kabbalah that there is a difference between the ruin, the shattering of the vessels, the shattering of the screens. That the border between in order to receive and in order to bestow disappears and according to the nature of the vessels of bestowal enter each other, and we have to bring them to correction and connection and a filling.

S. That's the state of the ruin?

R. Yes.

S. But when a person begins an ascent in a new degree he also should also feel confusion and all that.

R. When we are in ascents and descents it is for learning. It is not real actual ascents and descents. We are learning what is closer or further away from something, but not that here we are putting the things actually as they were when the vessel was filled and the vessel emptied out.

S. In ascents and descents it seems like a person still feels like he is advancing. In the ruin, it is as if there is a complete withdrawal from spirituality. It is as if we are out of it.

R. Yes, that is according to the feeling.

6. S. (32:48) What is the connection between the breaking of the vessels and faith in the Creator?

R. The shattering of the vessels and faith in the Creator. The shattering of the vessels is when the screen disappears from the will to receive and the will to receive cannot work anymore with the intention to bestow. That's when the vessel, the screen was shattered.

S. Faith in the Creator?

R. Faith in the Creator is the force that is in the will to receive that wants to hold it with the intention to bestow to the Creator.

S. The concept of the breaking of the vessels relates to the system and faith in the Creator is kind of from the perspective of working for the Creator, how do you connect them?

R. You want to connect them?

S. Yes.

R. That is only in man according to man and his place of work, the way that he is.

7. S. (34:27) Why did everyone feel such sorrow if in the end there will be correction and everything is done by the Creator?

R. When the vessels was shattered, also the connection between the created beings and the Creator shattered, and that is something horrible. That now, who knows when and how and through which actions to correct them? That is why it is really a place of sorrow.

8. S. (35:36) There is a feeling of no way out when you read this text. So the question is, when a person feels like he is losing the connection and going into the breaking. Can this influence in some way because like that people couldn't influence the situation.

R. They used to pray ‘bring us back to you as the days were’. They used to pray and they still started uplifting and moving away from the shattering in a way that obviously, the ruin exists today too until a new vessel won’t be resurrected, so the previous vessel is still in the ruin. But still, it is not the same state as it was. This is already a certain amount of recognition of evil and an advancement towards correction.

S. When you get into this stream and you feel like you’ve been carried away toward connection. Can you somehow stop it or warn it so that you don’t fall?

R. Only to hold on to the 10. Hold on to the ten and constantly be inside of it. That is it.