The transcript has been transcribed and edited from English simultaneous interpretation, thus there may be potential semantic inaccuracies within it.
Daily Lesson (Morning) December 3, 2024.
Part 2: A Prayer Lishma - Selected Excerpts from the Sources. #2.
Reader: We are reading selected excerpts from our sources on the topic of praying for Lishma Continuing In number 2 By Baal HaSulam and Shamati Baal HaSulam writes “Concerning Lishma”.
2. Baal HaSulam, Shamati, Article No. 20, "Lishma [for Her sake]"
Reader: (00:22) Concerning Lishma [for Her sake]. In order for a person to obtain Lishma, one needs an awakening from above, as it is an illumination from above and it is not for the human mind to understand. Rather, he who tastes, knows. It is said about this, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”
Because of this, upon assuming the burden of the kingdom of heaven, one needs it to be in utter completeness, meaning only to bestow and not at all to receive. If a person sees that the organs do not agree with this view, he has no other choice but prayer—to pour out his heart to the Creator to help him make his body consent to enslaving itself to the Creator.
M. Laitman: Yes. Questions?
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (01:45) What's the difference between the burden of the Kingdom of Heaven compared to Lishma?
M. Laitman: No difference.
Student: Because he writes, a person, when taking the burden of the Kingdom of Heaven should be in completeness, and he sees the organs don't agree, and to pray for that. Taking the burden of the Kingdom of Heaven with prayer can bring him to Lishma, there's like a gap.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: So, why does this prayer awaken,if the burden of the Kingdom of Heaven is already Lishma?
M. Laitman: No. He wants to come to receive the burden of the Kingdom of Heaven, to accept it, to assume it, and then when he has this opportunity, he accepts it.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (02:56) Two things. One, when speaking to friends in the Ten, everybody sees prayer in a different way. If we can learn what it is, that's one request. Second is tastes and secrets. The secret is general, and the taste is different in each and every one?
M. Laitman: I didn't understand.
Student: He speaks about the tastes.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: Each one is sold differently. He also mentioned a secret, so the secret comes as the same thing, the knowledge, and the tastes come differently to each and every one, different lights affect them?
M. Laitman: No.
Student: So how could it be in taste? What are the tastes of the Torah?
M. Laitman: The tastes of Torah are special lights that come to people who are worthy of them.
Student: And it's the same light that affects all of us, it's just interpreted differently in us?
M. Laitman: No. No. How do you know that the light shines for everyone equally?
Student: It's not even basic. That's the question. Isn't that what we need to do when we read in the Ten, to draw the light that reforms?
M. Laitman: Yes, but nevertheless, each one draws according to his nature.
Student: So, also if we can work on the prayer, because in the end we keep coming back for that need.
M. Laitman: No. Okay.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (05:05) He certainly has no other counsel but to pour his heart out to the Creator, to make his body consent to enslaving itself to the Creator. What is that prayer? Is it changing the intention, annulment, or everything together? What is that prayer?
M. Laitman: For wanting to be under the control of the Creator.
Student: So you can't separate it, this is annulment, that's changing the intention.
M. Laitman: No. That's the way it is. Okay. Number three, right? Please.
Reader: Rabash writes.
3. RABASH, Article No. 508, "The Ascent of Malchut to Bina" - Twice
Reading: (05:53) Before a person is rewarded with faith, he must work in Lo Lishma [not for Her sake], which comes to a person by the mixing of Malchut with Bina.
Thus, a person cannot work Lishma [for Her sake] until he has faith. For this reason, if a person wants to work Lishma, he must focus all his energy only on this point: to pray to the Creator to send him the light of faith, for only then will he be rewarded with engaging in Torah and Mitzvot Lishma.
Reading: (06:57) 3. RABASH, Article No. 508, "The Ascent of Malchut to Bina"
M. Laitman: Clear?
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (08:04) How is that expressed? Mixing Malchut with Bina? What does a person feel? I don't know what a person feels. What are you asking? I want to stabilize this picture. That the mixing of Malchut and Bina, how is that expressed in man's work?
M. Laitman: When a person feels that he has the will to receive, which is Malchut, and he also has the desire to bestow, which is Bina. And between them, there is some sort of a mixture.
Student: What is this mixture? What's in this bowl that tries, what does he recognize in there?
M. Laitman: That the two of them will be together, and each one will help the other.
Student: How does Malhut help Bina?
M. Laitman: Malchut helps Bina, and Bina helps Malhut. They both help each other.
Student: What does a person work with? What is the material that he wants to mix them and bring them to be one?
M. Laitman: The matter, material, is the will to receive. Now, in the will to receive, two forces are incorporated. The force of bestowal and the force of reception.
Student: How does a person feel what happens to him?
M. Laitman: What he feels, I can't explain to you because it's a matter of feeling.
Student: I don't have any other way to ask.
M. Laitman: This is why, according to what we are reading now, you can pray in order to bring that state closer to yourself. And this way, you'll attain.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (10:47) How can a person during the prayer disconnect in order to receive?
M. Laitman: First of all, I don't understand why, and second, during the prayer he disconnects the will to receive?
Student: It fills in my vessel that when I pray, the Will to Receive is stealing. I want something. I'm demanding something for myself, and I want to work Lishma. I want to do things for the Creator. So how do I not steal the prayer? How do I remain cleansed, pure?
M. Laitman: We have to think.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (12:06) Continuing this, we turn to the Creator, we ask Him to change our intention to bestow, but when we turn to Him, the intention is in order to receive. And that's Kli, because if we were bestowing, we wouldn't ask for it, because we were there. But if I ask correctly, it's a legitimate request. I'm in order to receive, but I'm asking to be in order to bestow. But my intention is still to receive when I'm asking for it.
M. Laitman: Yes. Go on.
Student: I just wanted to make sure, because it sounds like it's the opposite. The intention to receive asks for the intention to bestow.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (13:05) He writes that if a person wants to work Lishma, he needs to concentrate his forces only on that point, meaning to pray to the Creator that He will send them the light of faith. So what is that discernment, the light of faith? If I, let's say, a person receives it, what does it bring him?
M. Laitman: That now he is under the control of the light of faith, which shines for him, shines in him. And that's it.
Student: Does it give him the feeling of greatness of the Creator?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: The feeling of the greatness of the Creator, or the forces to bestow without feeling His greatness?
M. Laitman: No. It is a force that gives him the feeling of the greatness of the Creator.
Student: So, in the last articles we read, it's written, that in order to bestow to the Creator, he needs to be great in the eyes of a person that he's willing to bestow, because otherwise, here he reaches a state that he needs this greatness, and he receives it by the light of faith. So there's the action here that comes before it, that he says to concentrate all his forces only on that point, to pray to the Creator to send it to him. So this effort to pray to the Creator to send them faith, what is this?
M. Laitman: What do you mean, what is it? To pray to the Creator to send him faith.
Student: Let's say a person feels that now the Creator is great in his eyes. If He was great, He'd bestow to him, but He doesn't have greatness. He doesn't have it. So what does he do? What does it mean that he prays?
M. Laitman: He can't do anything. And he can't do anything.
Student: It's written that he needs to pray.
M. Laitman: But he doesn't have the strength for it.
Student: So how will he get the forces for it?
M. Laitman: He should pray to receive strength.
Student: We always say, I understood here that there's like an action of choice, and the light of faith comes and gives him the greatness of the Creator. We learn that the greatness comes from the greatness of the friends.
M. Laitman: So.
Student: So, this whole communication is through the group?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: Also, the person's action towards the Creator, let's say this plea, and also the answer he feels, I guess, through the group.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: So, how does it happen? The plea itself through the group, so it comes through the friend's as greatness.
M. Laitman: In this direct manner, he turns to the Creator through the group and asks of the Creator to give him the strength.
Student: When you say that he turns to the Creator, this address, he needs to locate it, he needs to know it, what is that?
M. Laitman: He already has connection with the Creator.
Student: What connection? He feels it? Or is it?
M. Laitman: He already has connection with the Creator, what do you want?
Student: A person's in a group. He has connection with the friends, he works towards the friends, what does it mean that he has a connection with the Creator?
M. Laitman: He has connection with the friends, he's working in the group, and now he has some awakening to turn to the Creator.
Student: From his work in the group, there's a need for forces that he doesn't have, and then he searches for the source, he understands there has to be some upper source that will give him these forces. So that address, where is it?
M. Laitman: Now he has to turn to him.
Student: To turn to him, is it the upper one? Sometimes you say that there is an upper one and lower one, so the upper one is the more connected state of the group where we are, where we are as one.
M. Laitman: I don't know what you're saying.
Student: So what is upper and lower?
M. Laitman: Upper one is the Creator, the lower one is the created being, man.
Student: Yes, but when we interpret it in work in the group, the lower one is our connection. When we try to connect the group, for example, the connections between us, that's the lower one. Is this how I should depict it, or how?
M. Laitman: The lower one is man, the upper one is the Creator. The Creator awakens man, the person, that he will need to turn back to him, and ask from him. Right?
Student: Well, if it's personal, then yes.
M. Laitman: Yes, that's it. Turn things around a bit less. Then a person feels an awakening from above, and turns to the Creator.
Student: In this way, a person and the Creator, that's clear, he turns to him, and he receives. But if we want to implement it so it's real, we always learn that its implementation is in the group. So a person has to be incorporated in the group, and all that. Where is all that story?
M. Laitman: I don't understand why you're complicating it.
Student: Why am I complicating it? I want to implement what's written. A person turns to the Creator and receives. How do I do it?
M. Laitman: You turn to the Creator, and ask of him to implement what's written in that sentence.
Student: How should I depict this Creator that I'm turning to?
M. Laitman: The upper force.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (20:43) There are degrees in faith. The more a person increases in faith, the more the will to receive grows. And in between them, a person works all the time. How do we come to the real prayer? So it is really from work and not just from prayer.
M. Laitman: I don't know what you're saying.
Student: That a person will ask, let's say the faith came and then went, so we need to strengthen the faith again. Strengthen the faith on a higher level. How do we do it in such stages?
M. Laitman: We ask for it. We ask and we receive. We ask and we receive.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (21:50) He writes that a person should concentrate all his forces only at this point for the Creator to send him faith. How do we concentrate all the forces on this pinpointed prayer?
M. Laitman: Each one from the Ten, they only want that.
Student: Okay, now, the topic of Lishma, the prayer, Lishma, everything we learn now in this period, it's all a preparation for Congress in February, which is dealing with Lishma. How do we increase the concentration, the preparation towards this one prayer to ask for Lishma?
M. Laitman: How do we know before the Congress how we're concentrated together asking from the Creator, the forces for Lishma? What's happening to us? How can we turn to the Creator and ask?
Student: I'm asking, how do we focus our connection, the prayer, so we come to something common? How do we do this? Because we can get scattered into all kinds of directions. I want to focus on what he writes here, to concentrate all our energy on one point, to ask for the light of faith, to ask for Lishma.
M. Laitman: So? Your question isn't clear? You want to add? Well, add.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (24:10) I have the same question as the friend. How do we come to a state where we need the light of faith, where without this we see that we have no life, nothing is worthwhile? How do we come to a deficiency for the light of faith? I feel like this is what the friend is asking.
M. Laitman: Okay, was that right? The light of faith is a light that fills all of reality. All of reality. And when we ask for it, that's called that we need this light of faith, that it'll shine in us, that i,it'll fill us. And then we can open ourselves, and that light comes, fills us, us with the light of faith, in the light of faith, and then we in that same light of faith, we feel ourselves as existing in a state as the Creator.