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I was joking with a friend that if you don’t hate the friends sometimes you’re not doing it right. He said love is just love, always smooth, never mixed with hate, and that he never feels hate at all. That stopped me and made me wonder if that is really love or if it is just the will to receive playing with its own idea of others.
From what I can tell real love only shows up outside that bubble. It is not that we should go looking for hate or conflict, but love only becomes real when there is resistance, when I feel the gap between myself and others and have to rise above it. My experience has been totally different from his. I feel that friction all the time, always needing to pray to rise above it. Is it normal to feel that friction? Correct discernment? What to do about it?
Our nature is only self-love, to think about what concerns my self-benefit, for now or the future – and all that I deem as belonging to me in some way. We can only make efforts in the direction of love of others, according to the directions of Kabbalists, to draw the Reforming Light so that it will bring us from self-love to love of others. These efforts certainly are more of an effort if I feel a resistance; whereas if I don’t feel resistance, my Will to Receive probably agrees with the action, and for it to agree means it probably has found some self-benefit, according to its nature.
Contemplation is just thinking, clarifying what your desire is, what is most important. Meditation is described here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8SsQJkZNhE
Gianni, I need to ask about something that raised eyebrows in my group. I understand that procreation is encouraged in the texts, and Rav Laitman has supported this view. I understand that consideration is always given to the individual, and I don’t want to apply this as some mandate. I would just like my friends to know the root, and perhaps that will comfort them. What is the Kabbalistic meaning of procreation?
Procreation as in having kids in our world?
Of course, in the wisdom of Kabbalah there is a lot about procreation in the spiritual worlds because additional Partzufim are required to build from Above downward a system through which the Created Being can correct all his parts to being in order to bestow; and from below upwards, the created being can climb this ladder of degrees, through free choice.
As we are a reflection of Upper Laws, and all our emotions, thoughts and aspirations only reflect our matching to our upper roots, so a person in our world has a built-in desire for kids – like every animal desires to mate, and if he doesn’t have offspring, then he always somewhere is left with a deficiency as a result of not matching his upper root.
This question started as a topic in the women’s young groups and it has a lot of subtle implications, so it turned into a lot more questions. Initially it came up that in a Russian language lesson there was an instruction that women need to have children. I can’t quote the instruction to clarify, because I haven’t seen the Russian lesson. But the friend has a question that’s important to her about the specific responsibility (especially of women) to have children in corporeal life.
Another friend had a thought that the Creator might have a specific task or role in life, so there is no set instruction or advice for corporeal life because of this. In my case I am autistic and I wouldn’t be even remotely fit to parent until I was older than the biological age to do so. This seems to align with this friend’s thought. Also, some men cannot marry for different reasons.
I recall when I studied here around 2008 that the advice was very different than it is now regarding everything for men and women in corporeal life. Now that I am back here it seems like BB observes the changes in the collective and quite intentionally adjusts to it. Just like there was a rule to hide Kabbalah, and then later the rule changed, and it was only because it was time for it to change. Do you think advice about marriage and children will also evolve over time?
I am also curious regarding other ways of supporting children. The dissemination materials I am interested in making would be for children. I recall you mentioned you teach children in your work.
So, the question is, what is the responsibility of the individual man or woman to have their own children?
And also, what is the responsibility of the individual man or woman towards children collectively, including the ones they are not related to?Yes, we’re in a world where it’s hard to demand these things of people. That’s why it’s a gentle recommendation, which has always been to get married and have kids. It’s good for a person’s correction, if they can. It complicates their life, but helps their spiritual advancement. Generally, one doesn’t have a responsibility toward children collectively, except that the person is generally responsible for the whole world. But I have to do it through my own correction mainly.
In the stories of Abraham it is sometimes explained that he and his wife are too old to have children because they have already corrected all their desires and they have nothing more to do unless the Creator gives them more.
And in some other videos I have seen Rav describe food and eating and processing of foods as working with desires, similar to making bricks out of straw and dust. Everything is working with the desires.
And these two things made me think about the process of aging. The body makes fewer and fewer enzymes, antioxidants and substances for metabolizing foods. It secretes less hormones. It slows or shuts down some processes. I am wondering if this corporeal scenario is our interpretation of the process of rejecting desires we cannot work with, or giving up on them because we’ve experienced that we cannot achieve them through egoistic means?
If this were the case, would aging processes actually be a good sign that a lot of desire has been sorted, worked with, and rejected, and that the ones that are left are for things not in this world?
I’m not going to make such innovations in the Torah – but surely as one ages, one overcomes all kinds of silly pursuits, in part because he cannot receive them in any case; it’s just that now he is wise enough to know it. Sure, there’s a spiritual root for it, being the purification of the Masach [screen].
Hi Gianni,
Shamati 114 says: We must understand why a prayer is considered “mercy.” After all, there is a rule: “I found and did not labor, do not believe.” The advice is that one should promise the Creator that he will give Him the labor afterwards.
What does it mean the advice is to promise the Creator that he will give Him the labor afterwards? What is promise here? What does it mean to promise?
It’s still “do not believe”, so whatever one might think they found, it’s not what the Creator wants to give, it’s an imagination, right?
Thank you in advance!
Hi Zorica,
I don’t know that Baal HaSulam wanted to say that the ‘finding’ is imaginary, but ‘do not believe’ means that you will lose it, because you did not labor, so you’ll lack the Kli. That’s why I need to promise that I’ll give the labor afterward. To promise means to be prepared to give the labor, and to do it as soon as possible. Because there are some states in which one has no room for labor.
Hi Gianni, I read the transkription of the lesson on Shamati, and I felt it to be really helpful.
There was this one question saying… that while as we reveal more , “that a person measures his true state nearing the Creator through faith in the Creator?”
What is faith in the creator in this context?
“Faith” is bestowal, but it points to the aspect of bestowal above reception, above my understanding, without evidence and even against my evidence. And to what extent I can stay in the state forever, that is without any calculations.
Thank you for this answer:) How can I keep any sort of confidence in getting to bestowal, while all I feel is my ego trying to navigate me to a place it wants for me? Even if I focus on the friends, it seems egoistical, because behind any of my actions, unless I can annul myself for a moment, my ego makes all these calculations. And any minute I am not fully aware of what I am doing, I get distracted and absorbed with corporeal issues. And when after a while I resurface, more or less, I see the opportunities I have missed to connect, to be there for a friend. I feel I wish to be able to really feel „faith“, but is it possible to get there, and then even to remain there at one point? I can love the friends, and want for them, but it feels, even that is a calculation of my ego. So, whatever I do, it gets me back to myself. What is the right approach?
Still, through the accents and descents, we gradually build a complete desire, to finally leave the Will to Receive permanently. What does it mean that I go back to my Will to Receive’s dominion? I don’t want to leave it for good, but a little bit, I can. There’s an accumulation of these data, and eventually one decides with finality: I don’t follow my ego. Then the Upper Light makes a cut between me and my ego, and I can be above it, and it can’t drag me into the swamp. Above the Will to Receive, I give it everything it needs, but never again without a calculation. We only need to help each other reach this “never again.” The Creator will not do it until we want it.
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