The transcript has been transcribed and edited from English simultaneous interpretation, thus there may be potential semantic inaccuracies within it.
Daily Lesson (Afternoon) November 26, 2024
Part 1 Rabash. Record 359. Isaac Sowed in That Land
Hello, we are studying from the book writings of Rabash, Part 3. We are reading article number 359, Isaac Sowed in That Land. You can also find this article on our websites, Sviva Tova and the Arvut system. Isaac sowed in the land.
Reading Article: (00:28) Isaac Sowed in That Land
“And Isaac sowed in that land, and he found on that year one hundred gates, and the Lord blessed him.”
We should ask why specifically “one hundred gates.” Why not one hundred and fifty, which is more important than one hundred? Also, if the verse wants to make a gross exaggeration, why does he find only one hundred gates? We should also ask about “And the Lord blessed him.” It should have said it before “and he found one hundred,” but from here it is implied that after he was awarded one hundred gates there is also room for the blessing of the Creator. But what was he missing? To have something for which to bless.
We should also ask about the verse, “he became very great.” RASHI interpreted that it was said, “The manure and mules of Isaac, and not the silver and gold of Abimelech.” Although there are many interpretations about this, in the literal, this remains perplexing.
It is presented in the “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot,” that besides repentance from love there is also repentance from fear, at which time he is called “intermediate.” He gives there an allegory about this, of two people who made a covenant of love between them because of the delight and pleasure that they bestowed upon each other.
There are two manners about this: 1) There was always love between them. 2) At first, they had grievances against each other, but after some time, love formed between them and they made a covenant.
By this he interprets that repentance from fear, when sins become for him as mistakes, means that only once they have repented is there love between them. But before this, he had sins. Hence, repentance from fear is called “intermediate,” since there are two times here: before he repented, they did not have love. After he repented, they do have love.
But when he is rewarded with repentance from love, when sins become for him as merits, it follows that the part of the time before the repentance was also corrected, when they all became merits, see there. At that time, he is called “complete righteous,” since he no longer has any sins.
This is the meaning of “And sowed … and he found one hundred gates,” meaning one hundred percent, since there aren’t more than one hundred percent. This means that he corrected even the time before he repented, meaning the time when he had sins, which is called “manure and waste.”
Baal HaSulam interpreted that Predot [mules] means Perud [separation], that during the concealment of the face, a person feels that he is separated from the Creator and must connect and adhere to the Creator, and this, too, was corrected in Isaac.
But when he makes repentance from fear, although after the repentance he has “silver and gold,” from the words Kisufim [Kesef means longing] and Ze-Hav [Zahav means gold], that the Creator will give him love and fear because he already longs for the Creator, at that time the Creator is called Avi Melech [Abimelech, meaning “my father the king”]. However, this is a quality that is applied only after he has been rewarded with repentance.
Before he repents, there are still sins, called “manure and mules.” This is the meaning of their saying, “The manure and mules of Isaac are more important than the silver and gold of Abimelech,” since the manure and mules of Isaac, who is from repentance from love, are more important than repentance from fear, called the “silver and gold of Abimelech.”
According to what is explained in the Sulam [Ladder commentary on The Zohar], before we are rewarded with the light of Hochma, we are still not rewarded with absolution of iniquities. Isaac, who is the quality of Gevura, the quality of Hochma, called “one hundred gates,” all one hundred percent of his years were corrected. However, we still need a middle line, called “blessing,” which is regarded as Hassadim that clothe the Hochma, as explained in the Sulam.
For this reason, the Torah begins with the Bet of Beresheet [“In the beginning”], since Bet means Beracha [blessing], which is Hesed. Hence, after all this, “And the Lord blessed him,” meaning he was rewarded with inclusion in the middle line.
Question (W MAK): (07:27) What's the full measure of work of overcoming in order that the returning to the Creator would be from love, repentance from love?
M. Laitman: This means that I justify everything that the Creator is doing to me in all situations.
Student: What is this moment of overcoming that joins the common measure?
M. Laitman: That's each time more and more agreement, further agreement with the Creator, with what He is doing.
Student: So, the repentance has to be only from love, and so it happens immediately.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: So, how do we learn to correct the desires for the sake of the soul immediately?
M. Laitman: This is done upon a person. I can just follow this.
Question (W MAK 98): (08:53) Why is the first stage of correction, not do upon the other what is hated by you, a level of Hafez Hesed, called as repentance from fear?
M. Laitman: That's how it turns out, that the return to the Creator is called Hafez Hesed.
Student: So, maybe all the sins in the world are basically just our errors, and when everyone will feel it, and everyone will justify the other, we will stop hating each other, and we'll be able to love each other as ourselves.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Question (W Brasil): (10:58) In the text it is written that the Torah turns us to the middle line. During the morning lesson you said in order to draw the light you have to be present at the lesson, and whoever listens afterwards is not able to draw the light in the same measure.
Can you explain to us the importance of participation in the morning lesson together with everyone, but not just listening to it during the day. What is the difference between those two types of participation?
M. Laitman: The difference is that then a person is like the first time in the lesson, and he is lacking strength to justify the lesson. Therefore, he asks to have the strength, but even if he receives it after the request, it is not like it happens the first time.
Question (W MAK 43): (12:24) How do we understand that my work of limiting the desire and concentrating on the soul is turning to the stage of Isaac where I can raise my desire to sanctity and include it into a blessing?
M. Laitman: This will come over time.
Student: If I am afraid to try, what should I do?
M. Laitman: Be closer with the Creator, and then you will have nothing to fear.
Question (W MAK 19): (13:11) In the article it says about the fear in the middle line. Is this the fear to lose the love to the Creator, or is it His love to us?
M. Laitman: That's losing the love to the Creator.
Student: Another question. Is being present at the lessons together the action of reception for the sake of bestowal?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Question (PT 29): (13:53) It speaks here about that after he performs the repentance from fear, he already has love and fear, and he strives towards the Creator. So, does this yearning appear only after the repentance from fear?
M. Laitman: Specifically from the repentance from fear.
Question (W Heb 2): (14:27) Is this 100% crop of Abraham faith above reason that is given by the Creator by becoming the first and the last always in perception, on the level of action?
M. Laitman: Yes. We can say so, yes.
Question (W Ukraine 2): (15:00) Where do I get the love of the Creator?
M. Laitman: From between the friends. If you want to be together with them, to support them, then between them you find your love of the Creator. Otherwise, you won't find it anywhere else.
Student: What is the love of the Creator?
M. Laitman: You need to find it. In the love of the friends, you need to find the love of the Creator.
Question (W Mak 19): (16:02) Sometimes there are states when the body is resistant to perform certain corporeal work. How do I make it work?
M. Laitman: I don't know that. You need to come up with that yourself. It's your body, you know it best.
Question (W Heb 2): (16:44) What are the one-hundred gates? What does it mean, these gates?
M. Laitman: It's the Creator's attitude to him. The Creator blesses him in everything.
Student: What does everything mean? Is it like an end? The last gates that are open at the end?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: When a person tries to connect with the friends, he feels that it's hard, and he feels that he is distancing himself, and the friends are more important to him than the Creator. Is it okay?
M. Laitman: No, it cannot be; that's not normal.
Question (Turkiye 2): (17:43) What is the covenant of love?
M. Laitman: Between a person and the Creator, there is a connection, which is based on love. That's called the covenant of love.
Question (W Spain): (19:04) What does separation mean according to Baal HaSulam? What is the connection between the separation in our lives, and how do we understand this word, correction, that its height is attained inside this spiritual process of ours?
M. Laitman: According to Baal HaSulam, separation is the disturbance that no one understands each other which is why they have this separation between them.
Student: What is the connection to the separation in our life, between the separation in our life?
M. Laitman: What is the connection to separation in our life is that we have both separation and connection. We need to always yearn towards connection, and to distance ourselves from separation.
Student: How do I understand and do this correction that Isaac has attained in the process of our spiritual development?
M. Laitman: We need to find the reason for the separation between us, and to try to overcome it. and as much as we overcome it, we need to feel that we are returning to unity with the friend, let's say, and by that we reach correction.
Question (W Heb 2): (21:35) It is written in the excerpt, that during the time of the concealment of the face, a person feels that he is distant from the Creator, and you have to connect to the Creator, and it is also corrected in Isaac. So, what is this quality of Isaac that has corrected the separation from the Creator?
M. Laitman: The quality of Isaac is the revelation of this great desire to receive, which separates between us. Therefore, by correcting it, we return to the connection between us, and we correct the discernment of Isaac.
Student: It is not the quality of Isaac that is corrected, but the one that brings correction?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Question (English 1): (22:41) Can the thought of connection between the friends just be simply done just as a yearning and a lingering and a dwelling on the friends being together? I don't really know what connection is, but does it start with just those moments of genuine thought to be together, as inarticulate as that is, to commence this process?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: And the longer I spend in that way of thinking, the stronger this yearning becomes. Is that correct?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Question (W Rehovot 1): (24:07) Regarding the 100% bestowal of Abraham, and what we lack according to this article that says about Isaac. You said that it's the revelation of the biggest desire to receive between us, but do we also lack the middle line? And maybe according to this, we also lack reception?
M. Laitman: Everything is correct.
Question (W MAK 51): (24:48) Is repentance a process of the correction of the desire on every step?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: So then, I want to understand these two types of repentance, from love and from fear. Do they occur simultaneously? One is first, and then it turns into the other quality, or each time, on certain steps, we have repentance from fear, and certain degrees we have repentance from love. How does it happen?
M. Laitman: How does it happen with us? As a rule, it's the repentance from fear, and afterwards, the repentance from love.
Student: For the state of the middle line, when inside there is a full understanding and realization of what has happened, behind this you see good and a love of the Creator. This is where the repentance from love happens, and this moment is where you're in the middle line, correct?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: When does this happen? If you feel that this is repentance from love, this cannot be during the preparation stages. It has to be at the higher degrees. So, when you're currently justifying, and you see the causes and effects, and you experience gratitude, what kind of state is this? Is this not repentance?
M. Laitman: Yes. It's also repentance. You can say it's repentance from love. Yes.
Question (W Heb 2): (26:57) What is the repentance from fear?
M. Laitman: Repentance from fear.
Student: Repentance is a return to the Creator?
M. Laitman: To the Creator.
Student: A person is always afraid of something. He's afraid of his corporeality; he's always afraid of something. How do we deepen this fear, so that this fear would be targeted towards the spiritual fear? What are the signs of that?
M. Laitman: The sign for it is that a person rises above the fear is that he understands what he's lacking in order to reach connection.
Student: And from where does he get this understanding?
M. Laitman: He receives it from the Creator. Of course, from the Creator.
Student: I have been trying to get to the connection for many years. I don't know what I'm lacking. How do I convince the Creator to reveal it for me?
M. Laitman: You don't know what you need to do in order to reach connection with the Creator?
Student: No. I don't know how to exit the shell.
M. Laitman: When you reveal your connection to the Creator, do you discover anything else in that?
Student: Sometimes I have a feeling that I understand a little bit where the Creator is aiming me, but that’s it. It's just a moment. There's no clear path in front of me. There are no signs that I'm advancing in this regard. It's like darkness in the feeling, in my perception. Darkness, like lack of knowledge, lack of direction.
M. Laitman: Yes, that's clear, but tell me, what else do you feel at that time?
Student: What time? When I feel that the Creator is aiming me?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: I don't know. I feel as if I'm simply closed, and something is stuck inside of me and I cannot open it, uncork it.
M. Laitman: And to cry?
Student: I didn't cry for a long time, a couple of months maybe.
M. Laitman: Okay. And this means your heart is dry. And nonetheless, if you would have cried, do you think this would have helped?
Student: Yes. This would have helped.
M. Laitman: So why aren't you asking to cry?
Student: Because I'm also a little bit happy with what is going on, and I thought that I have to adhere to the Creator in joy.
M. Laitman: But you have some satisfaction from you being happy in such a form?
Student: It's connected a little bit to the beginning of the question. If I'm not afraid that I want to be in gratitude to the Creator for everything that He has given me, it’s as if I’m complaining.
M. Laitman: I understand. Meaning, nonetheless, it's a lack of satisfaction and a lack of a request.
Question (W Spain): (32:11) What does it mean to repent from fear? And how is it connected to receiving gold and silver in spiritual terms? And how do we use that in the Ten?
M. Laitman: Repentance from fear is silver and gold. From the lack from of gold and silver, it means that I don't have correct connection with the Creator, and I don't know in what shape, in what way can I adhere to Him. And except for this, it's as if I don't know what He wants from me. Not money, not silver, not gold. So how else can I measure how much do I owe Him?
Question (W Petah Tiva 33): (34:31) What does it mean when two friends sign the covenant, that the friends need to talk about it and have some kind of a mutual agreement? Or can a covenant be even without a scrutiny, but only according to what each one understands?
M. Laitman: The fact that there is a complete agreement in what relationships of theirs do they sign a covenant, make a covenant, that's the first thing.
Student: Does there need to be a certain agreement, or even without any talking between them, only according to what each one understands according to this concept of this covenant?
M. Laitman: No, there has to be a complete agreement in order to sign the covenant.
Student: How do we form that covenant between the friends?
M. Laitman: When everyone understands what the Creator demands of them and they agree with this, and they are willing to connect between themselves to connect with the Creator.
Student: And this is when the covenant is made between them.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: This requires a common scrutiny, what each one understands?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Question (W MAK 25): (36:30) What does it mean, as it's written, that for Isaac all his sins were forgiven in a hundred years? Why is it an important addition to the correction?
M. Laitman: It's an important correction because it's the middle line and it covers both the left and right lines.
Student: It's like two different levels of the qualities of our work?
M. Laitman: You can say so.
Question (W Moscow 6): (37:09) How do we shorten the time in turning to the Creator? Because each time He turns to us from the inside, and each one has his own personal states, depression or materialistic problems, certain lacks, all sorts of things, and we seemingly refuse to turn to Him right away. How do we shorten the time that it takes me to turn to Him?
M. Laitman: I don't know. I think that the best thing is to agree beforehand with everything that the Creator is demanding from us. That's the main thing.
Question (W MAK 23): (38:20) What is that place for blessing the Creator?
M. Laitman: It's our heart basically.
Student: Another question. After all, there as the Creator blessed him, meaning He merited the middle line. How do we merit the middle line? What does it mean that He merited the middle line?
M. Laitman: Until He's not merited, it's not going to make any sense. The middle line is when the right and left line balance out.
Question (W Italy): (39:37) The friends of the Ten are the gates, and if so, how can we break down and overcome the boundaries?
M. Laitman: Connect with them. It's clear. Everything is solved through unity.
Question (Turkiye 7): (40:31) What does the feeling of separation from the friends and the Creator depend on although you’re among them? And how do we reach a certain measure in order to demand that connection?
M. Laitman: Through the fact that you feel the extent to which you want to connect but you do not succeed.
Question (W MAK 26): (41:09) The covenant is not clear. What is that spiritual action? How do we understand the covenant in the Ten?
M. Laitman: When all Ten participants agree to throw everything away and only work towards unity between them.
Student: That covenant, when we agree or we come to the Ten, we seem to already agree to it. By coming to the Ten we already form the covenant, or do we constantly form it?
M. Laitman: We have to keep it constantly.
Student: The Creator blesses and His blessing is also a covenant, right? Why in the article does it say that repentance is better from those when before there was this rejection and then there was love. I understand that this is better than if it was just out of love. What is the role of the covenant here? I don't seem to grasp this connection. This covenant and the Creator blesses. He gives them a middle line.
M. Laitman: I do not understand you.
Student: That's a complex topic, and I want to connect all these things that it talks about here, that it's talking about the middle line here, and the Creator's blessing; and it's talking about the covenant and that there are two paths. How do we connect this?
M. Laitman: In your heart you can connect it.
Question (W MAK 36): (43:46) Recently you told me cry. The more I cry, I understand that I'm crying about myself, but I want to cry for the sake of the Creator. How do I do it?
M. Laitman: For this you have to replace your heart, your desire. Then you will be able to cry for someone outside of you. Otherwise, all your cries are going to be only for your own sake.
Student: How do I change my heart?
M. Laitman: Replace your heart. You have to ask the Creator for this. But here you have preference, because those who wish to replace specifically their heart, the Creator listens to these people especially. That's what you have to ask for, only about this.
Question (Qazaqstan-Kyrgyzstan): (45:08) Besides prayer, is there something we can do against the ego in the Ten? I was always praying and asking the Creator for all the friends, for the world Kli, for Bnei Baruch, for you. We're always praying, but lately there's no strength. Besides prayer, is there any other means?
M. Laitman: No there is no other way.
Question (W Turkiye 7): (45:49) I heard that love is the quality that we'll experience in the upper world. Regarding my current state, when I'm repenting from love in the current state, which love do I reach?
M. Laitman: You can now reach the love of the Creator and love Him but with all your heart and your whole soul. As it is written, you have to love your Creator, your God with your heart, your soul and your whole essence. Try. You're close to that. Do not leave it.
Question (W MAK 70): (46:58) Is the fact that he has one- hundred a full measure?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: If a person carries out that full measure, does that mean he built a full vessel, and the Creator needs to bless it?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Question (W MAK 45): (47:38) Why does correction start from the quality of Abraham, Hesed, and afterwards comes Isaac. Do we not first reveal the desire to receive?
M. Laitman: No, we cannot open our desire to receive when we're lacking the quality of Hesed.
Student: How does Hesed come before Isaac?
M. Laitman: This is how it’s coming. We're asking for it. We're demanding, and the quality of Hesed is revealed.
Re-Reading Article: (49:18) Isaac Sowed in That Land
Moderator: The lesson is going to end soon. I just want to repeat a very emotional sentence I heard in the lesson. Rav said: Those that want to replace their heart, the Creator hears especially them. This is what we need to ask for and only that.
Announcements: (57:52)
Song: (58:02)