The transcript has been transcribed and edited from English simultaneous interpretation, thus there may be potential semantic inaccuracies within it.
Daily Lesson (Morning) February 21, 2025.
World Kabbalah Convention. Connecting to Lishma
Lesson 3: Only the Creator Can Help Achieve Lishma.
Reader: Hello friends. We are starting our second day at the Congress. The World Kabbalah Convention, “Connecting to Lishma”. We'll begin the third lesson, whose topic is “Only the Creator Can Help Achieve Lishma”. Only the Creator Can Help Achieve Lishma. The study materials we’ll go over, you can find in the Congress site, convention.kli.org, and in the study material tab on the Arvut system. Regarding questions during the lesson, anyone who wants to ask a question should raise his hand very high, as high as he can. Keep your hand up so we will see it. Just keep your hands up, they told us to. When you get permission to speak from me or from Rav, keep your hand up so that the ushers with the microphones, with the red caps, will know who to give the microphone to. So help us in that. Those sitting in the back of the hall, please come to the questions place. Sigal, please stand up, you see that's the questions post. So, if you're in the front, raise your hand, if you're in the back, go to the questions. If you're in the Arvut system, switch on your question marks. Please ask short questions, exactly according to what Rav is speaking about in the lesson, not about something else. Another request. While Rav speaks, don't raise your hands. Only when we ask to ask questions, raise your hands. When another friend has already been given permission to speak and they're asking, please don't raise your hands. Let's all be in the same flow, like a school of fish. Rav taught us before the Congress, it's very important for us to listen to the friends' questions, to feel them in our hearts, to try to answer from within our hearts. So let's all be in one breath friends with translations, please put both earbuds in your ears, so there's no noise, and keep the volume as low as you can. Regarding connection to the internet, friends from the world Kli are here and are connecting also to the Arvut system, please use audio mode. Friends from Israel who are here, please don't connect to the Wi-Fi. If you need to, connect through your cellular internet. Let's all make sure our phones are either off or muted, without any rings or any alerts or anything like that that might distract us. If possible, please don't get up during the lesson. Don't walk around where we're sitting. If someone has to go, do it quietly and carefully. There are many cameras here. When you get up, if you have to leave, before you get up, look at the cameras, look at the screens, at the monitors, so that you don't cross into the frame. Where Rav is sitting here, in front of the stage, just don't pass through here. If you're sitting over there, go to that side, go to the far side, don't cross the stage. So, we'll ask Rav to begin. Lesson number three, the topic is, “Only the Creator Can Help Us Achieve Lishma”. Rav, please.
M. Laitman: (04:21) From all the means that we have to reach Lishma, to reach the inner core of all of reality, it's only the Creator who can help us with that. Only with His help, in connection with Him, when we use all of the means and laws that He created for us, prepared for us, only by them we can come to Lishma. And Lishma means achieving the degree of the Creator and revealing Him in a true way. Each of us and all of us together. And on this path we have to change a lot, from the bad inclination to the good inclination. And from Lo Lishma where we're willing to do all kinds of things the way we think of it as something in our benefit. So we will get to doing it because it's good in the eyes of the Creator. Therefore, we will try to absorb and receive the messages in a way that will penetrate us, speak in us, change us. And after such endeavors we will be something really different than right now. Spiritual, feeling the Creator, perceiving the Creator in all our senses. And that will be the goal of the Congress, and that is the goal of our connection. And now, what can help us in that are only two things: the support of the friends, and the Creator Himself, there's no more. And therefore, these are the only two things we need to be attentive to. So, let's read what's written for us in the Congress study material, the World Kabbalah Congress, February 2025, Lesson 3. “Only the Creator can help us reach Lishma”. Number one.
Rabash, Excerpt 1
Reading: (08:47) Now that he sees that he is far from spirituality, he begins to think, what is really required of me? What should I do? What is the purpose I should achieve? And he sees that he has no power to work, and finds himself in a state of between heaven and earth. Then, man's only strengthening is that only the Creator can help. But by himself, he is doomed. It was said about this, yet those who hope for the Lord will gain new strength. Meaning, those people who hope for the Creator, this means that they who see that there is no one else in the world who can help them, will gain strength each time.
M. Laitman: This means we need to look at the process we go through as a process of correction. That all in all, we, as written, we have to switch our strength. We have to change our strength so that we will be more and more in the force of bestowal, the force of connection between us. That force that everyone agrees with, everyone feels, everyone adheres to, more and more, from moment to moment, from lesson to lesson. Questions?
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (11:28) You said that we come to a state where we begin to hear the Creator, to see Him with our senses. And here we read that when we hope for the Lord and He helps you, so how do we receive this strength in the Creator not as a toy that you need to switch batteries on so it works, but really, so we have connection with Him, and bestowal upon Him.
M. Laitman: We have to feel ourselves as searching for connection with the Creator and that this connection we have with the Creator will be constant, so it doesn’t disappear, it doesn’t turn into something else, it always strengthens more and more. So that we always long to renew it and that all our friends along with us, everyone, together, will hold on to connection with the Creator. So much so that in every moment each one will think how can we hold the Creator stronger and by no means disconnect. Now we hear about it, but other than that, let's actually try to do it in practice. Meaning, I want to sharpen all my senses, all that exists in me so that my inner yearning will only be aimed at the Creator. So much so that nothing besides that is of interest to me. It doesn't matter to me what I do in life, in the world, work, family, home. What's important is that in every moment in my life, that moment brings me closer to the Creator. With that, we need to live.
Question (Women Petah Tikva Center): (16:08) My name is Eli, from Italy. I wanted to ask you about this you have just explained to us. If some friend has got some point of adhesion with the Creator, it's enough for him to try to keep this adhesion to help the others, or what he should do in order to help the others?
M. Laitman: We have to adhere to each other in our Ten, each one in his or her Ten. And then between the Tens, we also have systems that connect us. And that's how we get to a connection between us and the Creator. That's it.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (17:44) What does it mean to feel the Creator?
M. Laitman: What does it? What?
Student: To feel the Creator. What does it mean?
M. Laitman: To feel the Creator. To feel the Creator, it means that I feel the inner force that lies in nature and which changes, designs, orchestrates everything. And I'm tied to it. The more it perhaps changes things, I pay attention just to not let go of it. And thus, bit by bit, I reveal it as more governing, influencing, bestowing, greater and greater, and fulfilling everything.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (19:36) In Yekaterinburg, there is a mirror Congress and the friends there are asking: what can I do now so that we will achieve Lishma? Be certain that we can achieve Lishma. Each of us.
M. Laitman: For that, you have to set up such a Ten among you that will reveal to you the inner structure of the whole of creation. And then you will be able to feel how you get close to that center.
Question (Women Petah Tikva Center): (20:45) I am from WKabU12. My friends want you to know that we love you very much. But Rav, I have this pain that I can't love my friends. Sometimes it feels like I love them, and there is warmth, and happiness, and joy between us. But the same feeling later turns into ugliness inside me when I scrutinize it and see how much ego there is. So, it's not my friend's fault. It's all inside of me and I feel, like the quote said, stuck between heaven and earth. What do I need to do more to come to the place where I can really ask the Creator to teach me how to love?
M. Laitman: Yes, that is exactly what you need to do. To ask the Creator. To ask the Creator to give you contact. To give you an understanding of that connection. And how close we are to Him. And that He will guard us.
Student: This sounds like an egoistic request towards the Creator.
M. Laitman: With respect to the Creator, there isn't that much of a concept in being egoistic. Meaning that we wish to adhere to Him, that we wish for His help. Although it is certainly egoistic, of course, but it doesn't count. Because ultimately, through the Creator, we want to come to the understanding of the totality of creation.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (23:27) We're told that only the Creator can help us. And most of the time, I don't feel that. And you said we need to sharpen our senses. Can you share with us, maybe, how you sharpen your senses?
M. Laitman: It's only through the request. Prayer, request. It's that we will more, and more, and more, as we grow, go deeper and deeper into our requests, we will better and better see, and understand, that this is how the Creator works with us. Meaning, to the extent that our request is deep and broad, and intense, to that extent we will merit the Creator's help.
Question (Women Petah Tikva Center): (25:38) The Upper force is in a person's heart who believes, unconditionally believes the Creator. And when he prays, he sees that his prayer comes true, His answer. And this answer increases the faith in the Creator and strengthens him along the way?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (26:25) I'm Luxon from New York 2. I feel like I have a genuine desire to sharpen my senses and feel the Creator every moment of my life, as you stated. I feel this is true within me. I'm wondering, am I deceiving myself? And how can I sharpen this plea to the Creator? How can I deepen it so it can become true?
M. Laitman: Only through the efforts we make to get back to this again and again and ask. By the request. That's what we have to do.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (27:52) Claudio from Brazil. I'm happy to share these special moments and be with you here. My question is, how do I know that I'm in the right direction toward Lishma?
M. Laitman: That's on the condition that you have a group. On the condition that you're in a group. And along with the group, together with the group, when you are all aimed at the goal. And on the way to reaching the goal, you have to clean up the path ahead so that we move away all kinds of disturbances. And that's how you get there. Where are you from?
Student: Brazil.
M. Laitman: So we have a group maybe not so uniform, but it's big. And send my regards.
Reader: We read number one, now number two.
Rabash, Excerpt 2
M. Laitman: (29:48) In order to feel, feeling the vitality in the Torah requires great preparation to prepare his body to be able to feel the life in the Torah. This is why our sages said we must begin in Lo Lishma. And through the light of Torah he obtains while still in Lo Lishma, it will bring him to Lishma. And then he will have the ability to learn Lishmah, in the name of the Torah, which is called the Torah of life. Because he has already achieved the life in the Torah. Because the light in the Torah gives the connection to life. That he will have the ability since the light in it reforms him. Then he will be able to learn Lishma, meaning for the sake of the Torah, which is called the Torah of life, as he has already attained the life in the Torah. For the light in the Torah will give him such qualification to a person to be able to feel the life in the Torah.
Question (Women Petah Tikva Center): (31:14) How to recognize my helplessness but not lose the yearning? Seems to me like if I cancel my ego, I will lose my yearning.
M. Laitman: How to long for the Creator without diminishing the ego?
Student: I'm afraid that if I'm nothing, then my yearning will vanish as well. Should I do it gradually?
M. Laitman: It happens gradually. And along with it a person feels that some egoistic desires are not leaving him, he just advances with Him closer and closer.
Question (Women Petah Tikva Center): (33:00) Hello, Rav. Katya, Moscow 20. How to separate the inner force of the Creator from myself and truly attribute it to the Creator and not to myself in the feeling, not intellectually?
M. Laitman: What's in that? You're afraid to lose contact with the Creator?
Student: When we already understand that there is no force but the Upper force and we ask Him for the strength, then you get the strength but afterwards the ego attributes this force to itself. How not to attribute it to myself?
M. Laitman: Most important is to understand that the Creator is not in us but between us, all of us. And if I longed for Him then I can long for that desire of this great mass of the souls and there He lies. It doesn't matter to me what's going to happen as long as I want to be bonded with Him. That bond with Him, I don't want to lose it even for a moment, in whatever state I go through. Then everything will work out.
Question (Women Petah Tikva Center): (36:01) It sounds to me that all our desires have to be changed to become similar to the Creator. I pondered on the prayer, the Shema prayer, that we need to get to this point where we truly love the Lord, our God, with all our heart, might, and soul, to reach Lishma. Is that so?
M. Laitman: That's it?
Student: Yes, I want to know whether the reason why we read this prayer in the morning and in the night is for us to reach this single goal where everything is for the Creator and nothing is left.
M. Laitman: Yes, if we do that twice a day, reading the Shema, and wanting to get into dialogue with the Creator through that, then it will happen.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (38:03) What is the importance of equivalence of desires between Rav, the teacher, and the student?
M. Laitman: According to that they can more precisely understand what each one wants, what he thinks, what he's drawn to, that brings them closer.
Student: You love everyone, right? Everyone are your children.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: If I can't love everyone, then I have no equivalence of form with Rav.
Student: Yes.
Student: When you bestow upon us, what is your calculation? For example, you bestow upon someone more strongly or you bestow upon someone else not so strongly. I want to understand your calculations. What is this process within you? Do you feel what I'm trying to say?
M. Laitman: I connect to a person and give him help, not according to what he shows from himself to others, or how much he understands the wisdom of Kabbalah or not. Rather, I help him rise above the state that he lives in and then, when he is drawn to the goal, then I help him.
Student: Let's say I have a descent, a descent in my connection with my Rav. I can feel a connection with the Creator when I don't feel my Rav? Is that possible?
M. Laitman: Yes. Yes, you can feel a connection to the Creator more than your connection with Rav.
Student: Why do I need my Rav? I have a connection with the Creator?
M. Laitman: The connection with the Creator is not under your control. The connection with the Rav is seemingly under your control, meaning you can ask, you can speak, you can collect the different kinds of connections and come to a tight connection with the Rav. Whereas with the Creator, that requires some more exercises.
Student: You once said that how I speak in the lesson is not according to his degree, the student's degree with the Creator. I have my own calculation.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: If you love me even if in the eyes of the Creator, I'm a small person, but you love me and there's a person who's big, strong in the eyes of the Creator but there's resistance from your side. Is it according to how much the friend gives inspiration in the lesson? Is the calculation with regard to the lesson, a general calculation?
M. Laitman: It's a calculation of how much the friend, each and every friend is. He scatters himself among the friends across everyone where he sees himself as if he's smeared, like you take a piece of butter and you smear it on a piece of bread in a sandwich, right? That's what matters. To the extent to which each one wants to be spread out so that through him there's more connection for everyone with the Creator.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (45:08) [Václav from Czechoslovak] I have a question. What is the life in Torah?
M. Laitman: The life in the Torah is like how when a person lives in this world, he feels his family, his friends, his workplace where, how he incorporates with everyone, that's basically his life in this world? In spirituality it is similar? We live within a framework that is broader, more flexible, and we want to know it. That's it.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (46:26) I have a question: how to shift from a common feeling among the friends into a state of Lishma?
Reader: How to shift from the common feeling among the friends to a state of Lishma?
M. Laitman: If you are all connected together, all the friends and you need to rise from your place by connecting together and, from that point of connection, from that connection, you aspire to the Creator so that you don't want anything to be felt in your vessel other than each one in the group with the Creator. That's the main thing, this intention. All of us attend, let's say, we connect in a single desire, a single intention to reach the Creator.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (48:27) We had a very intense preparation for this Congress with many states, ups and downs, a lot of tension. Here, in the Congress, I'm absolutely filled with happiness when I see the friends. I'd like to hug everyone and I want to thank the Creator for it. I wanted to ask you, how important is it to thank the Creator?
M. Laitman: How important it is to thank the Creator? It's important, to the extent that you want to put your heart, the feeling of your heart into it. To that extent, your heart will feel the Creator and you'll start rising higher and higher in degrees of acquaintance of, “me for my beloved and my beloved for me”. That's how you'll continue until the revelation of the Creator.
Question (Women Petah Tikva Center): (51:33) Viola from Chile, Latin One. It's my first time at the Congress in Israel. I want to convey to you my gratitude from my Ten for you. For a long time, we've been expecting and asking for a state of Lishma. We're going through all kinds of difficulties in the Ten but we feel that something is changing, something is happening here. How can we not miss even one moment because the Creator has given us the answers? How can we maintain that situation, that feeling?
M. Laitman: We need to understand that the Creator is perceived in the Ten. It's a law and it cannot be otherwise. There are people who are confused with all kinds of calculations, considerations. They know verses by heart from bottom to top to bottom but if they don't have the right connection, then they cannot attain the upper force. It opens entirely in the Ten, in a complete Ten. Therefore, whatever Tens I saw, any kind, a successful Ten is so because there are friends in it who are constantly thinking about the connection between them, between them and then they succeed.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (55:08) [Tikun from Turkey, from the Young Group] Friends in the Young Group are sending that they love you very much and their heart is with us here together. We learn with impressions of Lo Lishma. How can a person work in Lo Lishma with the impressions received from Lishma?
M. Laitman: We really can't. There is no connection between Lo Lishma, not for her sake, and Lishma, for her sake. We ask the Creator to be the translator, the connector, between the state of Lo Lishma and the state of Lishma. This is how we approach it; we gradually learn. That's it.
Question (Women Petah Tikva Center): (56:37) What efforts should we increase now to enter Lishma?
M. Laitman: What efforts should we increase now, intensify in order to reach Lishma? Only if we are closer in our hearts, only this is missing in us. Everyone should check, examine his heart, what he really wants. What does he imagine that he wants to have? What he wants there to be and in this way, approach his friends and yearn for the common goal, for that common goal.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (58:28) My Ten is new, less than a year. This is my first congress in Israel. We are those children that are trying to rush, to hurry, to Lishma. We find ourselves here, at a congress, connecting to Lishma. What can we do to be patient and not rush into the king's palace?
M. Laitman: Again.
Reader: The friend is asking, when we are advancing towards the king's palace, how to be not like children that are in haste and just rushing in without precision but that we go into the king's palace with patience and with the right scrutiny?
M. Laitman: I think we are doing it from Congress to Congress, from holiday to holiday, from meeting to meeting. We are constantly advancing toward it. I feel on myself how much my students are more and more confident, knowing, understanding, feeling. It all depends on you. I’m trying. Tell me, what more do you want? I will also try to change things.
Question (Women Petah Tikva Center): (01:01:29) With the knowledge that, There Is None Else Besides Him, I stopped being sensitive to any kind of state or action because I understand that even if it's something that's good or something that's bad for my ego, it isn't something that I succeeded. It's still the Creator doing it.
M. Laitman: Okay.
Student: Whatever I feel in spirituality is still intellectual. I can't bring all of that down to the heart, to somehow connect and reach Lishma because only through the heart I can connect with the others. What should I do to succeed in that?
M. Laitman: What do you need to do? Strengthen the friends, strengthen them in order to unite their hearts so they will be as one heart from everyone. However many people there are here, just imagine what big heart we will have if we all connect in our hearts and the power of this heart will influence the Creator.
Student: The Creator gives me this feeling intellectually. I understand that I feel good with the friends and that they're trying and I'm trying but I just can't, just can't. It's something that's just above me. I can't bring it down to the heart.
M. Laitman: I have nothing to add. It's all in front of you.
Student: Will prayer help here?
M. Laitman: I have nothing to add. It all depends on you and it's all in front of you.
Reader: Rav, would you like me to give the right to ask?
M. Laitman: That's better.
Reader: So, the friend from Croatia please, you raised your hand.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (01:04:54) I have a question for you. The thing is that I am the lowest in the Ten. And I have the greatest Ten in the world that I respect with all my heart. The thing is, I just wanted to ask Rav, is it possible in situations when I hear from my friend his scrutinies, his feelings, his emotions, that even I, who am much lower than him, that I can recognize them. So, I would like to give him advice, but I feel so low. So, how could I even give him advice? I feel so low.
Reader: I will summarize the question. If I feel that I am the lowest in the Ten. The lowest. Then I hear from friends about their scrutinies. How can I give the friend an advice if I feel that I am lower than him?
M. Laitman: Still, we see that just like in our world, two who are not successful or don't understand, the more they connect, they have a better chance of succeeding.
Reader: By what force?
M. Laitman: By the force of connection. In other words, in the end, no one can reach the goal. No one. But when we relinquish our egos, when we unite above our egos, by this, we approach the Creator and He, too, by Himself, when we do this, He comes to us each time more and more. Okay?
Student: So, in this situation, if I take my ego aside and take the group's ego aside, we can use each other for a good purpose.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: So, your advice is that we can just nullify to each other and just continue the way we do?
M. Laitman: Put it this way.
Student: So, so, no matter the level, because even if I feel the lowest, I can be the greatest help if I do it with the right purpose, with the right intention.
M. Laitman: Very well. I agree with you.
Reader: At this point, maybe to help all of us, let's play a song?
Song: (01:09:18)
Baal HaSulam. Shamati 5, Lehamin.
Excerpt 8
Reading: (01:13:47) He should believe that the Creator accepts the work of the lower ones, regardless of how and how much is the form of their work. In everything, the Creator examines the intention, and this brings conTentment to the Creator. Everyone is rewarded with delight in the Lord. Even during the work of the Creator, he will feel delight and pleasure, since now he really does work for the Creator, because the effort he made during the coercive work qualifies him to be able to truly work for the Creator. You find that then, too, the pleasure he receives relates to the Creator, meaning specifically for the Creator.
Baal HaSulam, Excerpt 8
Re-Reading: (01:15:19) He should believe that the Creator accepts the work of the lower ones, regardless of how and how much is the form of the work. In everything, the Creator examines the inTention. And this brings conTentment to the Creator. Then one is rewarded with delight in the Lord. Even during the work of the Creator, he will feel delight and pleasure, since now he really does work for the Creator, because the effort he made during the coercive work qualifies him to be able to truly work for the Creator. You find that then, too, the pleasure he receives relates to the Creator, meaning specifically for the Creator.
Question (Women Petah Tikva Center): (01:17:00) I am Tatiana from Women MAK43. If a person no longer uses the vessels of reception and he only has the vessel of fear left, does it mean that the only source of his deficiency is the fear of losing touch with the Creator? Can we say that if he feels that he himself can't do anything, but he doesn't lose the fear, is that his only way to continue the work?
M. Laitman: How should we answer her?
Reader: Maybe we'll take that as a question for a workshop in the Ten. A strong question.Okay, I'll repeat the question, and then we'll answer it together in the Ten.The friend is asking: if a person feels that he has no strength, but he still wants to hold on to fear, how should he position himself towards the Creator? Again. I'm repeating the question for the Ten in the workshop. If a person feels that he himself has no more strength, and he still wants to hold on to fear and connection with the Creator, how does he arrange himself towards the Creator? This will be a workshop. Questions? Go ahead.