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

Daily Lesson (Morning) November 16, 2024.

Part 2: On the Verge of Lishma - Selected Excerpts from the Sources. #7.

Reader: We are continuing the topic On the Verge of Lishma. We ‘re going to read excerpts from Kabbalists On the Verge of Lishma, number 7, from Shamati, by Baal HaSulam.

Reading: (00:24) Excerpt 7. Baal HaSulam, Shamati, Article No. 5, "Lishma Is an Awakening from Above, and Why Do We Need an Awakening from Below?"

One must know, when exerting to attain the Lishma, to take upon himself to want to work entirely to bestow, completely, meaning only to bestow and not to receive anything. Only then does one begin to see that the organs do not agree to this view.

From this one can come to clear awareness that he has no other choice but to pour out his heart to the Creator to help him so the body will agree to enslave itself to the Creator unconditionally, as he sees that he cannot persuade his body to annul itself completely.

Re-Reading: (01:37) Excerpt 7. Baal HaSulam, Shamati, Article No. 5, "Lishma Is an Awakening from Above, and Why Do We Need an Awakening from Below?"

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (03:01) Here he's saying that we have to reach a very strong need, then he can pour his heart out to the Creator. So the question is, how do you reach this strong need? And we were saying that it's only from the friends, meaning inside me, no desire can want this.

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: Now, when we in the Ten, when we talk about it, sometimes there's a complaint, which is a right one. It's kind of like what the friend asked earlier, that none of us is really in this, nobody's really bestowing, nobody's really in Lishma. So how can I get a need from the friends? Or how will you get a need from the friends if he knows that the friends aren't in it yet? 

M. Laitman: Again.

Student: How can a friend in the Ten get a need to reach Lishma from his friends? 

M. Laitman: On condition that everyone more or less wants it, and by this, help one another reach this thing that everyone needs. 

Student: But he tells himself, he says they're not in this, they don't want it yet, they don't have this desire. I know I don't want it, I know my nature, their ego is just like me. So how can he get an example from them? How can he get an impression that they want something that he doesn't want? 

M. Laitman: So they have to continue working together, so everyone will come to the necessity for Lishma and see that they're not in it, and then in that scrutiny they will have to invert their will to receive to in order to bestow. 

Re-Reading: (05:35) Excerpt 7. Baal HaSulam, Shamati, Article No. 5, "Lishma Is an Awakening from Above, and Why Do We Need an Awakening from Below?"

Reader: (06:32) We are going to go to an active workshop. Let's share in the workshop the main things we heard in the lesson till now.

Reader: There's a question from down here. 

M. Laitman: I'm ready to take any questions. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (11:23) Baal HaSulam explains Lishma, that one of the things preventing a person of reaching Lishma is his satisfaction from the work.

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: He writes he's satisfied from the work, and in a place where there's satisfaction, a person can do anything. Without profit, a person can't work. So if he's enjoying his work of Lo Lishma, he can enjoy that state. So we can't find any sufficient…  be sufficient in the work itself. What does that mean? That I don't find what I'm doing now as sufficient? Because there's another comment by Kabbalists, that they say I should be sufficient with the least I have, and everything I can do, I have to say thank you for even getting just a bit of a part of the path and do something for the path, even in Lo Lishma, of Lo Lishma, and so on and so on. So what does a person find sufficient, and what not? 

M. Laitman: There are several states here, from carrying out several actions, but settling for them. Meaning although he doesn't reach the revelation of the Creator,  adhesion with the Creator, he thinks it'll come. This is number one. Number two, it may be that it seems to him that he's already seemingly in Lishma, in for her sake, and he doesn't understand how much it is still not the real state. This is what I would say. What can he do? Of course, he should continue on the path and scrutinize, is he in adhesion with the friends, and from them adhesion with the Creator, and that it leads him in this end to Lishma, or not. And then he needs to quit this action as quickly as possible that he is in, and search through which action he can, to some extent, be adhered to the Creator. 

Student: Can I keep going? 

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: Part of the stage, if I understand correctly, is that a person has to get used to disconnecting himself from the result but to work, to just work as much as possible, be as pure as he can in the work, but to disconnect himself from the result. So that's right? 

M. Laitman: But, what does it mean that he performs actions in order to bestow? 

Student: The efforts in connection, to act before the friends, to learn to pray, and so on, and so on, everything we do. So he does it, and doesn't know how to measure this. We keep saying that we can't measure whether you're doing it right or not, because if we scrutinize, we always see the intention is for himself in the end, and he's in this turnaround in the will to receive in order to receive, and he keeps working, and he hopes the light that reforms will correct. And in this place, it could be that he's sufficient with the work, he's satisfied, because he has no ability to measure how am I advancing. I'm working and working, and as we say, a gift from above, in Lishma, it's a gift from above. If He wants to give it great, if he doesn't, whatever, He can give it to others, and a person is in a state that the work brings them to fulfillment in this work. So how do you get out of this? How do you not get buried in this? 

M. Laitman: Only through an awakening from the whole group. The Ten should rise and say that where it is, is in the will to receive, and it doesn't agree to continue this way, but it has to invert, invert its purpose. It has to attain the intention to bestow, and only in this way, advance forward. 

Student: He writes that a person has to get used to working in order to bestow, and not look whether he feels taste in the work or not.

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: So that's when a person brings himself to a state that he feels satisfied with what he's doing. What does it mean to get used to doing things in order to bestow? How? 

M. Laitman: We're not working in order to bestow, so how can we say that we have it and we settle for it? 

Student: So he doesn't have to get used to doing it through coercion in order to bestow? 

M. Laitman: No, because he doesn't have the in order to bestow, he doesn't. How can he do it by coercion? It's impossible for him.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (18:04) Maybe from a different direction. We're speaking about the necessities on a corporeal level. Are there necessary pleasures that are spiritual? 

M. Laitman: Spiritual pleasures that are necessary? 

Student: Yes.

M. Laitman: We're not, this is not how we divide pleasures into necessary, not necessary, but only whether it's in order to bestow or not in order to bestow. Lishma or Lo Lishma. 

Student: I'm asking first of all in the work, you said that we're not in bestowal. Right now I can't do actions that are truly to bestow, but we do want, let's say in the Ten, to reach that request, to reach that prayer, to reach that demand. In order to reach the demand, I want to make sure that I'm at least working on my necessities in the pleasures, that I'm not drawn to some habit where I'm constantly going to be filled with even small spiritual pleasures from the connections between us, and I'll never reach that plea. 

M. Laitman: So don't think about corporeality, necessity, as you say. 

Student: I'm thinking about a spiritual necessity. Even the pleasures we get here in this work between us, I guess they're going straight to my will to receive. They're probably preventing me from reaching this prayer. Meaning there's an effort, there's a habit, like the friends are saying. We already know more or less what the general direction is, but to attack, to break through, it's always a result of being stuck in a corner. I don't feel that we're in such a corner, we're just flowing on the train, on the boat, and advancing. There's not really that necessary need. I want to reach a spiritual necessary need, just as if I was hungry corporally, so I'd search for a way to hunt for food. I want that to be in spirituality too. How to do it?

M. Laitman: Only through connection between you and turning to the Creator, I see no other action that can lead you to the result.

Student: So, we don't need to really be busy with the scrutiny but… 

M. Laitman: Connection between us and with the Creator. 

Student: That's what we do every meeting, that's what we do every time we gather, when we do some kind of action, that will always be what we're aiming towards. We're not concerned whether pleasure comes or not in the vessels of reception, I'm only busy with the goal. 

M. Laitman: Yes. And you're in a prayer to Him, to reach Him.

Student: And that's supposed to create the intensity? 

M. Laitman: Yes, the intensity and the deficiency. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (21:57) Yesterday, you had a talk with the friends, and we heard that you recommended that the friends press on each other to reach Lishma, to really obligate each other to reach Lishma. What does it mean to press on one another to reach Lishma in the Ten? 

M. Laitman: That each one, personally, will feel that this is standing right in front of him, and he has to attain it. 

Student: But how to create this common pressure in the Ten? How to bring this necessity? Lishma is something huge, but also supposedly far away, so how to create this necessity, this cry, this current need, not a future need? 

M. Laitman: Only through prayer. We connect in the prayer to the Creator from a state, from the state where we all are, more or less, and continue with that same prayer until we're answered. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (23:39) In the Ten when we pray, before we reach Lishma, is the prayer for us to incorporate with each other into one vessel that will be in the center of the Ten? Because once you go to Lishma, the building of the vessels is different, that's where we should aim towards. Because it's certain that in the convention, all the Tens will be affected. So that's where we aim our prayers and work? 

M. Laitman: How can you do that, connect with everyone, with 5,000 people? 

Student: To do this building of the vessel in the Ten, building the vessel in the Ten. Not that every friend just wants to reach Lishma but…  

M. Laitman: So what were you thinking? 

Student: To build the common vessel of the Ten, to connect and incorporate more between us, and hold each other more. To see the Ten as the Creator, to ask for forces in the Ten in order to build a prayer for our common Kli.

M. Laitman: Okay, this is what we should do. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (25:19) On one hand, I'm not allowed to demand taste that I have to work, even if I don't feel taste. On the other hand, I heard that I must demand something but not taste. So what should I demand? 

M. Laitman: You have to demand only connection with the friends in the group. Even if you are in thousands of groups, but each of you has his own group, and connection with the members of the group must nevertheless be in the present.  

Student: So if it has to exist, that means that I'm demanding to feel something from the Creator, not only that it will…  

M. Laitman: You want to feel that all of you are in a Ten, and that you are dependent on one force, which is that spirit that is between you, among you, and that's it. 

Student: So until I don't feel this result, I'm not stopping? 

M. Laitman: No.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (27:13) The person starts working in coercion against the will to receive until he gets used to the work. And as time goes by, the coercion has to be less, right? 

M. Laitman: Well, keep going.

Student: Right. So when the coercion decreases, he gets vitality and satisfaction? What to do with this satisfaction and the vitality, should he reject it or what? 

M. Laitman: I don't understand this whole picture that you're depicting. 

Student: We begin to work by coercion against the will to receive, we get used to working in coercion, and over time the coercion declines. 

M. Laitman: Well.

Student: So he begins to get satisfaction from this work because he sees the final goal, and that satisfaction he receives, is he supposed to reject it? 

M. Laitman: How does he see the final goal? I don't understand what you're saying. 

Student: The question is, the vitality and satisfaction that a person receives goes to the will to receive, so is he supposed to repel that satisfaction? What to do with the satisfaction with the work, with the permanent work, with the work in coercion that he does? He sees that he's succeeding, he sees that he's coercing the will to receive, he sees success in this. What to do with the satisfaction? 

M. Laitman: No, it's not true.

Student: So in the end a person doesn't succeed, there is no success.

M. Laitman: No, we need to go deeper in this more.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (29:26) Why is there no intermediate state between Lishma, for her sake, and not for her sake? 

M. Laitman: It doesn't exist in nature. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (29:54) There's this critical state called filling the cup that we have to come to in the transition from not for her sake to for her sake. Now, filling that cup, that quota, is it something personal or a group thing? 

M. Laitman: It's personally and also a group.

Student: So, first of all, it should be personal in me. I reach my quota, fill up my quota. So, to come to that state, is it an intellectual or an emotional state? 

M. Laitman: More emotional.

Student: So, if I think I'm doing everything in my thought, it's still not enough. There needs to be some sort of an emotional outburst, eruption? 

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: It's a feeling like I'm really doing everything and nothing is going to help me unless the Creator helps me?

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (31:16) What does the body resist? He writes that the organs resist or object. What is the thing that awakens the resistance of the body? 

M. Laitman: The body resists desires and actions that stem from in order to bestow.

Student: Every morning we begin the work anew, we wake up, and we have to position, tell ourselves that we want to reach Lishma, for her sake. Should we also be looking for the resistance, because if there's no resistance, does it mean that something is incorrect? Is this a meter, a gauge? 

M. Laitman: It could be. 

Student: Should we constantly locate, detect the resistance or not? 

M. Laitman: We should.

Student: What does this resistance consist of? Only objection to in order to bestow? 

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: And how to create that demand clearly, so when a person wakes up in the morning he immediately focuses that this is the goal. It's not that easy to keep returning to having to aim in order to bestow, that we have to reach it.

M. Laitman: Read the morning prayers, the blessings we say in the morning. 

Student: I don't find there something that has to do with bestowal, clearly. 

M. Laitman: Talk about it with the friends. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (33:14) In this article and in the article we learned yesterday, he talks about habits, that a person has to accustom himself to work in order to bestow. How in our present state do we accustom ourselves to work in order to bestow? 

M. Laitman: That we all think of actions of bestowal, and we talk about it and we help one another to depict it to ourselves more and more clearly, more correctly, make it more true, what actions of bestowal mean. 

Reader: (34:14) So now we'll move to the next part of the lesson.