MONDAY PRAYER: NETZACH-TIKKUN CHATZOT תקון חצות – LESSON WITH RAV MICHAEL LAITMAN
READING: between after midnight and sunrise of Monday
Lesson on the topic of “Following the Creator in the Desert”
Morning Lesson February 04, 2023 Transcription
Transcription is made from simultaneous translation which leaves a possibility for differences in the audio
Part 3:
Follow the Creator in the Desert – Selected Excerpt from the Sources. #7
Reading Excerpt #7. (00:25) “It is written, and it shall come to pass..”
1. R. (01:47) It happens to us in many situations in life. Let’s say we want to tell someone to do something good. So, we organize some sort of job for him, or some situation where he seemingly makes an effort and succeeds. And even more he does it without knowing that we are doing this, in preparing this for him. So this is what the Creator does, so we need to understand that there’s no chance in life, but rather everything that comes to us and by which we advance is only because the Creator prepared it in advance.
2. S. (02:39) He writes that the reason he is favored by the Creator is, how can I be favored by the Creator? I always feel that I get a slap here and a slap there. What should I do to be favored by the Creator?
R. Explain it in one, slow, good sentence.
S. How can I be favored in the eyes of the Creator?
R. Do what He expects you to do.
S. What does he expect from me?
R. To be close to the friends, to connect with them, and afterwards you will connect together to Him; return the children of Israel to the Lord your God.
S. That’s a problem that keeps coming back. You say connecting to the friends, what does it mean connecting to the friends? Do I have to give them a chair, give them a mattress, give them, give them, give them. How do I connect with the friends? I don’t understand, how do I connect to my friends? By giving them a mattress? How do I do it?
R. Why not by this, of course by this? Now you’re going to the desert, and as we read in the examples of the people of the Talmud, you have, you take, you will receive a pillow, and a mattress, and a blanket, and all kinds of things, and instead you give it to a friend so he will have two even. And you next to him will lie down on the ground.
S. That’s what I don’t understand, that I open a store for mattresses and blankets for my friend?
R. We’re not going to open a shop or sell anything. We want to give to the friend, from the bottom of our hearts, what is good for them and what I can do for them.
S. Do I have to come to a state that friends, that they don’t like and that I don’t like, and I have to do some work to overcome? Where are the states of overcoming that I have to do with the friends? Let’s say in the Congress everything’s nice, I stroke the friend and everything’s great, you give us a lecture, everybody sings. Where do I have to work in my ego before the friends? Not everything can be so nice, so what?
R. Every single moment, you check your heart; is it open to everyone?
S. How do I do it?
R. You cannot feel if your heart is open to someone or not?
S. Everybody’s nice, I like them all.
R. I’m asking you if you can check your heart?
S. How do I check my heart? I don’t understand you.
R. I don’t have anything to talk about yet, it’s like a little boy.
S. How do I check my heart, if it’s open to my friends?
R. I don’t know.
S. What do I need to do?
R. You need to open your heart.
S. What to be nice to the friends?
R. No, nice you can be nice in return for money, you can be nice to someone in return for money.
S. To annul before the friends in every state?
R. You need to find a place within your heart where you want the friend to feel that place.
S. You need a deficiency for that?
R. Think about it, otherwise it won’t happen.
S. How do you find that deficiency towards the friend? How do I find that deficiency so I […]
R. You can get closer to that deficiency through the blows in life. We have no choice, we go into wars and problems and disease and so on and so forth, God forbid. But you have no choice but to understand that if you are connected well, and connect directly to the others, you will be strong and successful and healthy and favored by the Creator and by people. This is on one hand, on the other hand, on the other side you have to do something on your own. Try to be connected to them as much as possible.
S. You’re right, it is true. If there are no problems we need a few blows in order to connect. I understand, thank you.
3. S. (08:10) When does the understanding come? How to do what the Kabbalists are telling us?
R. When it comes, we don’t know. But we have to make every effort toward it, as much as possible.
S. Can you explain how to make efforts in connection correctly?
R. No, try to do for the friend what he wants, and by this you will connect to him.
S. It is not clear to me.
R. Well, the fact that is not clear to you, we already know that. I told you something, a certain sentence, try to do what is written in the sentence.
4. S. (09:15) What’s the state that, before the Congress, there’s a lot of resistance and problems start that the friend finds hard to come to the convention. Why does it always happen like that?
R. It always seems that way to a person that’s got problems, disturbances, obstacles and he has to therefore, not go to the Congress, he has no choice. There are other things, more important things. It is all his imagination that this is how the Creator set it up for him. He really wants to advance and come closer to others. He has to not listen to those things that prevent him from coming into the connection but rather go and connect. Basically, there’s nothing more before him other than this one goal.
5. S. (10:30) I wake up every night and I curse the work but at the end of the lesson it changes to the positive. Question: if I don’t change at the end of the lesson does it mean that I failed in the work?
R. No, maybe relatively there but you are shown that is not simple.
6. S. (11:08) To implement what you just told a friend, to bring a friend to the place where she can only feel it in the heart, it takes trust, real trust to bring a person to your heart. How do we obtain this trust so it isn’t just a superficial connection?
R. By exercises, just like in sports when you exercise.
S. What exercises can give me trust in the friend?
R. Empty your own heart from everything that is there and try and fill the heart only with the friends, and that only the friends remain in your heart except for that, nothing.
S. But again, it’s as if there’s a precondition and the friends are great but they’re not my family, they’re not people that I totally trust.
R. Are you complaining that the Creator didn’t give it to you naturally? That’s what you want to explain to me so I know that too? But we must exchange that.
S. From where do I get the confidence because it seems to me that if I had this confidence to bring the friends into […]
R. From the Creator, ask Him to give you confidence. Whatever you told me, I have nothing to say to you except for some tips that you have to implement every day.
S. So, everyday I have to pray for the confidence to bring the friends into my heart?
R. Yes, but write it down because tomorrow you’re going to ask me again.
7. S. (13:31) You said to a friend that being nice to the friends is possible if I get paid and then you said try to give the friend what he wants. What is the difference between being nice to the friends and giving them what they want?
R. It is the same thing, it’s the same thing.
S. Do we have to yearn for it?
R. Of course you have to yearn to do pleasant things to the friends because by that you can come closer to them.
8. S. (14:18) He writes that the friend, he has to love the friend like himself and I give my pillow to a friend it’s not like I love him more than myself?
R. I don’t understand the question.
S. In the text it says that you have to love the friend more than yourself. But the fact that I give the pillow to my friend doesn’t make me feel like this, that I begin to love my friend more than myself.
R. Let him try and then he can see that if he does it from the bottom of the heart it means he loves the friend more than himself.
S. I’m asking in relation to do I have to love the friend like I love myself or should I love the friend as I love myself or more than myself?
R. More than myself, more.
9. S. (15:55) I hear that the friends constantly go through difficult states but I feel very light and happy generally. Is there a problem? Is there something missing in me?
R. No, nothing is missing. You just keep going and keep going and get closer to the friends, be closer to them. Enter their hearts and give place in your heart to them that they can enter in your heart.
10. S. (16:50) How can I give the friend what he wants if I don’t know what he wants? How can I know what the friend wants?
R. You search in your heart what seems to you that is good to the friend and that’s what you do.
11. S. (17:35) Our ten is located in Mexico, and the lesson is so powerful that we often cannot go to sleep afterwards. Then during the rest of the days we go through very difficult to powerful, intense states. How can we alleviate what we are receiving in this lesson in order to better divide it in the ten?
R. I don’t know. Try and try different forces in order to go to sleep after the lesson. I don’t know if you drink 20 grams of tequila. What can I say? Sometimes it helps.
S. Because it happens, sometimes that we are very excited just being in front of you and asking you, the greatest Kabbalist in our time and afterwards a person is kind of exhausted from the work but the work is so intense, so wonderful that a person finishes the lesson filled with energy and with joy.
R. Everything will be okay.
S. And the whole day is very intense, very powerful.
12. S. (19:40) What is the reason that I cannot participate in the Congress despite all my efforts and everything I do with the friends as much as I try. How can I agree with the Creator, that state that I cannot participate in the Congress?
R. What are you lacking in order to come to the Congress? First of all, the men are going to the desert, the women whether they want to come, so they have a place here. But I wouldn’t say that it’s so crucial for the women to come like the men. So, don’t be sorry that if a woman cannot come here so she can’t, she can watch it and hear everything from home or maybe they get together and sit there, that’s how it is. That’s not a problem.
13. S. (21:10) Tell us please, how can we guess the desire of the friend so we can satisfy it? We can give her a pillow but?
R. These are just excuses, you do what you need to do, that’s it. Try and do everything and whatever she needs, whatever they want to do with the opportunities let them do it.
14. S. (21:56) By wanting to make room in my heart and let the friends in, am I by this wanting to bring the Creator into my heart?
R. Of course.
S. Do I do it out of the desire to bring the Creator contentment?
R. Yes and then the action begins with a thought. That’s how you have to build inside that whole chain of commands.
S. Can I bring the friends to bring the Creator into their hearts by this?
R. Yes.
S. So by each one making this effort, we basically want everyone to be one, in the same desire and intention?
R. Yes, connect and succeed.
15. S. (22:58) Can I work in such a way that I have two goals; to discover the greatness of the Creator, and in addition to discover it for the friends. And there’s also this boundary, it is like when you fish, you want to catch the greatness of the Creator and it is only at the moment when I want to do it for the friends, can we combine it?
R. Just continue, just continue, eventually it will work.
16. S. (23:47) How can we come to the Congress with a ready heart, prepared heart?
R. Open it, that’s called prepared or ready. Open your heart.
17. S. (24:14) To scrutinize this pillow that we have to give, for me it feels like all the uncorrected desires that separates me from the friends that I thought was the truth, is that the pillow that I’m giving because every time we give a resistance I have to give it up so that the friends will come into my heart. Is that what it means when we look at the heart connection? When we need to open the hearts?
R. Yes, yes. All the women should connect into one woman, and all the men connect into one man, and then we will speak about how to connect them both.
18. S. (25:22) Is receiving love and giving love without generating an obligation of expectations, is that the stage we call Arvut?
R. Also, Arvut. Yes.
19. S. (25:50) Now we are preparing our men for the desert. The question is: what is the prayer that you advise us to raise in the ten in order to strengthen them and perhaps strengthen their faith and to participate? What can we do?
R. You can search between you and find the words in the sentences or the text, even melodies, whatever feels right, so it will answer. I can’t help you with this and anything, you must pull it out of your hearts yourselves.
20. S. (27:00) In the previous part of the lesson we talked about reaching complete faith and our thoughts etc. Now in this excerpt he talks about a state where you hear, you want to speak to the Creator, you get the deficiency and it’s actually something that comes from Him. So how do we relate to the matter of thoughts? How do we not fall into doubts? Because you feel like you have a deficiency, you pray and then here in the prayer there’s a place where you start falling into doubts. How do we maintain a real prayer in order to come to complete faith?
R. I think that what we’re studying is that we should depict to ourselves the final goal but in a way that is in our reach, that it’s not something beyond Ein Sof, beyond the galaxies. And that when we depict this final state by this we need to yearn for it, to speak between us about it and to determine how to make a mutual effort; and in such a way how we advance everyday, day after day and in this way we will reach the implementation.
S. What permission can you bring this term complete faith into something we can grip and hold onto?
R. It’s written that faith is a tendency of the gentleness of the soul. How can you explain these words? A delicate tendency from the delicacy of the Soul. Meaning it’s something that we can feel a bit every time like on the edge, the end of the thread but no more than that. You want me to just toss it on the table and start slicing it with a knife in all directions and show you what’s happening inside there? No such thing. Faith, Emuna it’s a small tendency from the delicacy of the heart. Try and know this quality each one from inside.
21. S. (30:14) I hear a lot that that on one hand we have to open our hearts and on the other hand we have to enter the friend’s heart. So what is this action of opening the heart?
R. I want to feel the state of the friend like my own state. The same closeness and the same understanding that he’ll be so close to me.
S. How do you enter a friend’s heart?
R. Through closeness, through love. How can a mother feel the heart of the embryo, the heart of her baby, of a child?
S. But that’s her life, she doesn’t have any other choice.
R. And we too have to try and reach it.
S. When I come to the desert should I already be living in the friend’s heart?
R. Try, that’s what you’re coming there for.
S. So I come in order to live in his heart or am I already living in his heart?
R. In order to live.
S. So what do I need to depict to myself?
R. That we’re all coming to the desert, we’re running away from the whole world meaning from all thoughts and desires that could disturb us from connecting, from being in one heart. We are all parts of Adam HaRishon and we want to enter this vessel called the heart of Adam HaRishon and we want to all be in there.
S. In this Congress, in the desert there will be several situations. There will be friends physically in the desert, there will be friends for whom the desert will be a virtual desert and I wanted to ask what is the common desert where we all are?
R. When we feel some virtual place where we are all together, we all feel one another, and in this way we give our inner vibrations from each one to the other; we want to come to a state that the hearts will start ticking like in connected vessels, like with the metronomes, you saw that those examples. How from working they start synchronizing and in this way we want to be connected and for this we’re coming to the desert. As much as our hearts come closer to one heart, in that one heart we will feel that one Creator and no more than that. According to our effort it will work on us.
S. What is this one heart? Because we just talked about the actions that each of us needs to do to enter the friend’s heart but what is the one heart where in the end we all want to be?
R. One heart is called that we awaken and yearn and open ourselves, each one to everybody and then we have one thought, how to be in one heart. Nothing about personal thoughts, nothing, only to be one heart. To connect the hearts into one heart, that is the purpose of the Congress.
S. When we are standing before this fateful occasion and we feel like there’s an opportunity like we’ve never had before, what should we watch out for, what should we be careful about?
R. From not being serious, we have to be careful with that. We have to understand that the Creator is giving us opportunities and we shouldn’t disregard them and if we want to be connected in such a way we’ll perform that connection and then we’ll succeed.
22. S. (36:39) Opening the heart means to feel the state of the friend as if it were my state?
R. No.
S. What does it mean, what should I feel?
R. To search how to do it so your heart will be open towards the friend and you will find how his heart is open towards you.
S. It’s not clear, what does that mean?
R. It won’t be clear, as much as you ask it won’t be clear. You need to open the heart and then you will understand.
S. What does it mean to open the heart?
R. The heart understands, I don’t know, the heart understands.
S. We just want to do it.
R. If you want to do it so you know what you want.
S. If we’re talking for example about the ten do I need to search for a way to the heart of each friend or to pray for the general connection of the ten?
R. The general connection.
S. What does it mean to bring a friend into the heart?
R. To feel what he wants.
S. So in the Congress there will be at many friends, a thousand friends, I don’t know. In every place there are several friends so what do I do? What does it mean to open my heart to the friend?
R. You want to feel the general atmosphere that is in the Congress.
23. S. (38:27) In the lessons we are reading the book of Zohar and that’s a very powerful activity. In the Congress can we also spend some time reading the Zohar in order to connect to the power of the Zohar?
R. I don’t know, we have to turn to the organizers for that.
24. S. (38:49) Living in the friend’s heart in the congress, is it living in the heart of a friend from the ten or the ten I have at the Congress or generally all the friends who are there?
R. We need to depict to ourselves that general heart that is in the whole Congress and with that general heart to try and be connected. This heart isn’t male or female it is beyond those differences, it’s not old or young, it is simply a heart that wants to be in love towards the others and is willing to do anything for it to be felt as ready to help all the others.
S. So is it some common desire among the friends?
R. Yes.
S. What does it mean that it’s not old, not young? Is it the soul of Adam HaRishon, what is it?
R. I’m not going to try to pick all kind of names that I know nothing about.
25. S. (40:40) You said that we are going to the desert in order to live in the hearts of the friends. You also said that we must follow the Creator so what is this connection that we have to create between going to the desert and being with the friends, and on the other hand following the Creator?
R. Connection, nothing else, only connection. We need to understand that our goal is to correct the sin of the tree of knowledge, that just as there was a shattering in the vessels we need to bring them towards correction, that’s it.
26. S. (41:52) How meticulously should we arrange our mind, heart and desire for the sake of the Creator from the heart of the ten for connection and correction so that we can move forward with love and unity?
R. Again this all depends on the inner work in a person’s heart. I don’t know how to get into all these scrutinies, this is what you need to understand. You are people that have been through a part of life, you know how to feel what the heart feels and aim it the way it needs to be aimed, so please, come on. A bit more in force, in pressure, consult one another. You have someone to turn to?
S. There’s always someone: in the 10, we have the board world Kli, they have their instructor, they have committees, everything is organized.
R. All the best to you all.