HESED: TIKKUN CHATZOT תקון חצות – LESSON WITH RAV MICHAEL LAITMAN

Baal HaSulam. The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee), item 22

Part 2:

Baal HaSulam. The Arvut [Mutual Guarantee]. #22

Reading (00:13) #22 “And this is what Rabbi Elazar, son of Rabbi Shimon, quotes from the writings:..”

1.R. (00:56) This means that he is completely equal.

Reading (01:05) #22 “And this is what Rabbi Elazar, son of Rabbi Shimon, quotes from the writings:..” continues

2. R. (04:44) Questions? Not one question? Nice.

3. S. (05:05) It’s said he has to perform the Mitzvot Lishma without any hope of self-love, that nothing returns to him. I want to ask if I’m going to do things without getting any reward for it. Is that what he’s saying?

R. Can you speak clearly?

S. I’m reading…

R.It’s not that you are reading from a book. It’s how you pronounce it with your mouth.

S. It’s said he has to perform the Mitzvot Lishma without any hope of self-love meaning that no light or hope returns to him? So, how can I work in such a state? I don’t feel anything? How can it say such a thing?

R. He is saying because he is letting you know the laws of nature. That this is the existence we need to reach.

S. It says there’s no hope that returns to him. So, how can a person study the Wisdom of Kabbalah without anything that is completely trite?

R. How long have you been sitting with us?

S. Almost thirty years.

R. Tell me in what business for thirty years have you been without receiving anything in return?

S. I have studied with you for twenty years but every time I feel I am advancing I keep on getting blows, here and there and I am asking myself why it is happening to me and it’s not clear that things aren’t clear either way you put it. I’m expecting to reach much more. I want to reach heights that I couldn’t even dream of but I feel that I’m falling and getting blows. Why, so many years why?

R. You need to find in these texts an answer for this. Maybe you are not performing enough of everything that is written there.

S. So that’s my question and you give me the same answer every time. Maybe I am not doing enough?

R. I don’t know? Search,search.

Reading (08:03) #22 “And this is what Rabbi Elazar, son of Rabbi Shimon, quotes from the writings:..”

Reading (12:20) #23 “With these words, we clearly understand what we said above in Item 5 about the Torah being given specifically to the Israeli nation,..”

4. S. (15:54) Rav tells me with this example of the sesame seed that I do to take it. What actions do they mean?

R. That we want to connect and unite into one whole.

S. Because of what actions? Meaning from the self-love I take away my part?

R. No, no. That we all together want to participate in our mutual work. That’s what we are talking about.

5. S. (16:46) Rav, it is written in the previous section that a person cannot overcome his petty lusts?

R. He’s stopped connecting within the conditions that the Creator is giving him, the opportunity to connect. He doesn’t take these conditions and doesn’t advance with them. As we see in our times.

S. This means in regards and relates only with spiritual work?

R. What else could it be?

6. S. (17:45) It is written that each nation gets rid of self-love and focuses only on the help and love of others. Is this a universal law or will it be realized only in our group?

R. Today it can be realized between everybody. Today it can be between everybody. For years everything has been mixed up until they can be with everyone.

S. Could be it can be between everybody for years everything has been mixed up until they can be with everyone. It could be a social platform and people will get rid of the egoistic sort of love and will focus only on helping our fellow man?

R. Yes, yes for sure.

7. S. (18:49) If I don’t add what does it mean that I’m stealing?

R. Of course because you must give to everybody and help.

S. When I think that I’m stealing from the ten it is already a very deep thing but when we are talking about the entire world how do I deal with it my hands are kind of tied?

R. Okay. So, gradually. It is not you correcting yourself, the creator is correcting you. Don’t think you are doing something on your own.

8. S. (19:40) How can a ten influence a certain nation positively or negatively?

R. They can. To what extent I cannot say, but they can affect it. Look at …well,we will talk about that later.

9. S. (20:23) He writes here about the benefits of why Israel has received the Torah and he says the purification of their ancient ancestors stood for them and I wanted to ask who are those ancestors?

R. It is not corporeal inheritance, it is spiritual inheritance. That what the forefathers have attained with their spiritual work obviously affects the circles of their sons; the next incarnations. And it supports and helps the son’s continue the path.

S. So the fathers are the previous reincarnation?

R. Yes.

10. S. (21:40) What does it mean that suffering sweetens a person?

R. It is clear that if a person receives blows it’s because he was suffering and now he looks back at all the states in a more precise manner because he doesn’t want to receive any more blows and then he becomes more sensitive to other conditions he’s been going through.

S. But how does it sweeten his sins? It’s like training a dog for example, when you hit him?

R. So the dog might not understand as a human but up when a person gets a blow he understands a dog more-supposedly. That’s why it’s written, “that he who spares the work from his son, hates his son.”

S. So he compares it here to the exile in Egypt, that it prepared them to receive the Torah?

R. Because they suffered greatly and suffer because of the ego and that’s why they decided already in the exile in Egypt that they have to run away from Egypt, from their ego, from the blows. For four-hundred years it is a period of the growing of the will to receive and the reasons why it was suffering in the complete way.

11. S. (23:31) What is this state Rav that a person sees a reality that is completely balanced and each action can determine either to the one side or the other.  What is the state that a person sees this reality in complete balance? That his action can either determine to the good or to the bad? So what is this state spiritually speaking? How do you define this?

R. That all his thoughts and his desires and actions are weighed up in the heavens as we say and according to that he gets an ability to keep advancing through all kinds of ways.

S. In this state you are in Lishma or Lo Lishma?

R. It is not important.We are speaking about where he was and where he wants to get to. Maybe he fell from Lishma to Lo Lishma. Maybe not. We are speaking in general.

12. S. (25:10) It says in the excerpt, because he could not overcome his petty lust he pushed his spirituality of the whole world before him. This we know whatever we can do is just to pray to the Creator to overcome this petty lust. So, if the Creator doesn’t help, why is it our fault that the spirituality of the whole world falls backwards?

R. Because we weren’t able to help the Creator. We couldn’t convince him to help us. We weren’t able to convince him to help us, that’s why the punishment comes.

S. How can we do this? How can we convince him to help us?

R. Through prayer that is more correct and the deeds that came before the prayer. I see that we can’t wait for a response.

13. S. (27:02) In the lesson I try to be in the intention, we all do. We try to hold each other in Arvut and at least for me there are different thoughts that break the intention. My question is how can we use the intention or these breaks, these interruptions?

R. First of all, don’t forget that comes also from the Creator and that you must collect them and raise them back to the Creator with the prayer that the Creator will correct your connection with Him and the friends above the disturbances. We’ll use that for now. Afterwards there’s more work.

14. S. (28:00) Self love is like an addiction says the texts, so how will the nations of the world learn from Israel love of others?

R. From envy, lust and honor; it affects each and every one. And also, that envy, lust and honor will help them come out of the egoistic world into the altruistic world. We just need to ask, let’s say the force of envy, is it greater than the will to receive or not? If I see people that are really enjoying receiving and I want to reach something in order to bestow, will it help me that I’m going to remain in order to receive or not? Will envy help me come out? How do I say it? So, we need to understand that envy, lust and honor as it is written, they specifically are what take a person out of the world not from our world to a worse world but from our lower world to a higher world: specifically envy, lust and honor and they are in our will to receive and they control it.

15. S. (30:52) What are the conditions to convince the Creator? What do we need to do to really convince him to help us?

R. We have to show Him that we really want to reach in order to bestow. that we really want to reach Lishma.

S. How do we show him?

R. Do such actions.

S. Actions of what? Trying as if to bestow until He gives the desire?

R. As much as you can bestow.You have to bestowal.

S. It’s very surprising how the nation of Israel then, where humanity was so very primitive, how do they succeed to reach such a spiritual degree and now the nation of Israel doesn’t even think about the whole of Israel. What did we lose on the way? 

R. We lost a bond and feeling that can help us reach an understanding and attaining the spiritual feeling. We have lost on the way, even that understanding that what you’re saying, how can it be that we are more primitive than those who were there two-thousand years ago. They weren’t primitive, you’re just saying it. Look at what they were writing to us. I understand that you never learnt this in school,in your modern school there but this is what happens. We need to read the sources and see how much they do and how much they were successful in advancing. Too bad upon you.

16. S. (33:33) it is the end of the lesson I wanted to speak about the Congress. It’s a feeling as if it’s the first time for us as a group to really reach that first-degree. So, I want to ask. We have a practice in the ten, for the past six months where we gather the intention for the week and we try to pray and be in that prayer for the group for the entire week. Yesterday we tried to get into to gather the intention for the week. It doesn’t always work because we need to be emotionally in it and a question was born. Is it possible to ask love for the group, that maybe we didn’t go through that state, maybe we’re not ready for that spiritual degree? Is it possible for me to ask for that love as a debt from the Creator for us to give back later?

R. How can you promise that you’re going to give back to Him? What would you leave as a deposit?

S. Maybe the same prayer?

R. You want to trick him as usual. Upon which basis are you asking?

S. I don’t know how much we merit it but as far as humanity needs it we are just a passage but for the world.

R. Okay. So, if you feel that the world needs connection with the Creator that’s really good for you but what to do? That you can be this mechanism that’ll be worthy of connecting the world with the Creator. I don’t know, try it. It only depends on you. Suddenly we will see that you are really successful and then everyone will come to learn from you how you do it. Meaning, not to be as some kind of passage but like a glue, something that glues the world to the Creator, that’s better.

17. S. (36:45) At the moment we have two-thousand three-hundred and forty friends registered. How can we use Arvut and the concept of Lishma in practice to raise the importance and the feeling of deficiency to register more and let it grow the registration?

R. I don’t know, I think you understand all these things way better than me and you can really convince everybody to connect and pray and reach such a connection like you’re talking about and we will do it. We still have time to the Congress. So, get it together, organize it and I am with you. I am with you. Friends we will end here today.