MONDAY PRAYER: HESED -TIKKUN CHATZOT תקון חצות – LESSON WITH RAV MICHAEL LAITMAN
READING: BETWEEN AFTER MIDNINGHT AND DAWN MONDAY
Lesson on the topic of “Conducting War Like King David”
LESSON
Morning Lesson October 28, 2023
Transcription is made from simultaneous translation, which leaves a possibility for differences in the audio
Part 2:
Conducting War Like King David – Selected Excerpts from the sources
1. R. (00:28) I can just say this, that image of King David is the one that out stands the most, he is the first king of Israel, he is a strong king of Israel; for forty years he was on the throne and he went to war those years, and forty years he was praying to the Creator and surrendering to the Creator. A very, a hero in spirituality and in corporeality, that is King David, so let’s see what Rabash writes about him.
Reading Excerpt 1. (01:32 – 03:58) A “person cannot say that he lacks innate skills…” twice
2. R. (04:05) That means that if we don’t turn to the Creator, so it’s a sign that we don’t have a desire for Him to help us, that we’re not asking from Him, we’re not coming closer to Him. If we would demand the closeness to the Creator then we would cry, turn to Him like children, that’s how we behave with Him and then He would help because the Creator understands that we can’t do anything except for the request, except for crying. And as quick as we can reach it, that understanding, that we have no forces to advance towards the purpose of creation, to the degree of the Creator, so as much as we ask, the Creator helps.
3. S. (05:26) It is said that you must do everything within your power and you come to a prayer. How do we come to a state where you seemingly do nothing like Hezekiah and you feel like you’re in a prayer as you have done everything already?
R. You have a group that you have to gather and bring them to a state that they will resemble the Creator, that they will be gathered correctly and fully, then you will be able to start working with the Creator through that group.
S. What does it mean ‘gathered correctly’?
R. That everybody will participate and yearn for that one goal, to concentrate in the center of the group ‘as one heart’.
S. How can I assemble them, you say I have to do it, what should I do, what can I do?
R. You must each one in the ten and each one must.
4. S. (06:50) What does it mean that “a strong desire is a desire that leaves no room for other desires”?
R. You have some desires that are not aimed towards attaining the purpose of creation, so they are disturbing you with attaining the purpose of creation and somehow you need to neutralize them and then you can engage in desires that are aimed towards the center of creation, towards the purpose of creation.
5. S. (07:23) War, is it a request, the struggle itself, is it a request or is there an effort to connect?
R. No matter how it takes place it is an ascent of our desires towards the Creator so we will be able to attain His degree, so we can unite and we’ll reach a platform to adhere with Him.
S. How do we adhere to Him?
R. Equivalence of form.
6. S. (08:16) What is the role and importance of King David’s Psalms in our study, how can we, what is the relationship between King David’s Psalms and the wars that he conducted against his evil inclination?
R. Look, King David is a very special personality, for forty years he was a King in Israel and for forty years he went to war until he put together the ‘Kingdom of David’, that’s it. It’s difficult to talk about it and there’s so many things and it was so long ago that it’s very special, very special. We have Psalms left of him, it’s his songs, we don’t have the melodies even though he used to play an instrument but we don’t have those melodies. And whatever we have is what he said in Psalms, it’s a lot, it’s about one hundred fifty Psalms that we use today, most of our prayers are put together from the Psalms of King David.
7. S. (10:33) King David said. “I wish I could pray all day”, and you also said in the first part that prayer is a means to shift from within reason to above reason. I’m asking, we in the ten, before I begin to pray, should I check my reason with respect to the ten and how I see them connected?
R. Well, it’s however the Creator helps you.
S. I’m asking because if I see the friends not corrected, is that a projection of my inner problem that I have to correct?
R. That, too, that, too.
S. How do I gather them that will pray together, I have to awaken them from the outside and pray and from the inside?
R. Yes, otherwise you won’t succeed.
8. S. (11:37) If I understand correctly, the degree of Hezekiah that doesn’t do anything, that’s a beginning of spiritual advancement, how can we reach it, that I don’t do anything?
R. Everything is done in the connection between the friends, everything is done in connection.
S. But what is this degree of Hezekiah?
R. I don’t know, we will learn that later, all those degrees, there are many degrees.
9. S. (12:23) The problem is felt by suffering so much before we turn to the Creator, there’s personal scrutinies and I still..?
R. Why is it my fault that you are like that, that you are not turning to Him?
S. That’s what I’m asking, how to shorten the time, what points should we grasp to turn to the Creator quicker?
R. You can shorten it only with the help of the group, when only you tell each other that we have to annul, to bow our heads and ask the Creator, only in that state do we succeed.
S. It depends on how much I get an impression from the friends. That’s how I speed up my advancement?
R. [No Translation]
Reading #2 (13:43 – 18:39) “David is called Malchut, which is the Kingdom of Heaven. Malchut of Kedusha is the desire to bestow,…” – Three times.
Reading #3 (18:41 – 20:17) “David is considered Malchut, meaning the Kingdom of Heaven. That is, the creatures should take upon themselves the burden of the Kingdom of Heaven…”
10. S. (20:36) There’s holiness and there’s the will to receive, and they both want to rule; what do they want to take control over, what is that thing they want to control?
R. Over the person’s will to receive, that substance of Malchut, the will to receive; now the question is, the will to receive, is it, does it want to control its will to receive, its Malchut, or does it wants to control it’s will to bestow, its Keter, and then the difference between Malchut and Keter, where a person wants to control, that’s it.
11. S. (22:04) He writes about the Creator’s enemies, and when we see external enemies, we get shocked by their cruelty. How can you get shocked from the enemy of the Creator that is in me more than the external enemies?
R. Ooh, ooh, if we use what our egoistic forms do to us, how much we are hurt, how much we corrupt our spiritual path, the development of our soul. We would be much more shocked from our inner enemies compared to the external enemies!
S. Why don’t we feel it?
R. Until we grow, until we whiten our will to receive so it’s not so murky, so we can feel its subtleness and then we will try to relate to it accordingly.
S. He gives advice that the enemies of the Creator will help me advance before He is sending me to kill, so the Creator will help me advance. So how can we, even if we don’t feel the cruelty of the will to receive in us, more than the external enemies, and ask the Creator to be before them and defeat them, can we do something like that?
R. Look, it all depends on many conditions but the main one is the environment. It depends on the environment. If the environment impresses a person and helps him cancel this facet or that facet of his ego, then the person can do it. But if the environment actually maintains the form of the general ego that everyone is in, a person cannot get out of it; he is buried under the environment.
12. S. (25:13) In a war there are bombs and weapons and when we recognize in our inner war with the will to receive that hate, what are the weapons that we can activate on it when they will come or it’s only prayer?
R. Only the Creator only the prayer but in spirituality there’s no weapon and there can not be one, only the upper Force, there isn’t and we don’t need one.
13. S. (25:57) How can we make sure that the mercy in our group is about the will to receive?
R. You should speak about this among yourselves and convince yourselves that you have to come to a resolution, to a determined resolution. To always go against your personal and general ego and fight against it wherever you discover it.
S. How can we recognize the mercy of the Creator, what sign does it have, how come we measure that I only want mercy for friends?
R. Concern, concern for the friends.
14. S. (26:56) Is it possible to put melodies to David songs or is it just tunes in our hearts?
R. I didn’t understand?
S. Can we, you said that…?
R. No, of course you can, there are some that we sing during the prayer, during the service because the majority of our prayers contain Psalms of David, King David, so we sing them anyway! We don’t know those melodies that were in David’s time, meaning the melodies that he composed, besides putting together the lyrics. But that’s what is customary but to some there are no melodies, as far as I understand, so we need to check, if there are, there are, if there aren’t, there aren’t but you, there’s no prohibition. You can put together each and every song in Psalms, you can compose your own melodies! Yes, good luck, by all means, over the millennia there have been many people who try to do it, you, too, can get to know it and listen to it and each generation has its own melodies.
15. S. (29:22) It turns out that a person who attained a degree, what David wrote about, a certain melody, so can we hear this melody?
R. Yes, but King David he attained everything.
16. S. (29:52) You said that we have not yet started the war with our ego, can we say that in this state that we are in the state but we should be aware of our intention, that we are supposed to be in the war but we need to be aware of the intention?
R. Yes, we have to be connected between us and be in one desire, one intention to one Creator and all of us as one.
S. How can we be in extra awareness?
R. Only through extra connection between us, there’s no other means that can elevate us to a greater awareness, higher awareness.
17. S. (31:16) What should we do if the Creator’s giving us some opportunity to do some action for the ten to advance, but a person knows he’s going to get something for himself, there’s a struggle, so what to do?
R. What should we do? I didn’t understand the question.
S. A person is going to do an action for the ten to advance but he knows that he’s going to get some part of that for himself, so what can the person do with that, he knows he’s going to receive something for himself?
R. He incorporates himself in the ten and he wants with his own strength and he has his own plea to the Creator that the Creator raises him as much as possible to connection and bestowal.
18. S. (32:30) When I feel a bad desire against the others so I run to the center of the ten but I don’t ask the Creator to erase that desire?
R. Correct.
S. But David supposedly, the attitude is that he hates and wants to erase and he wants those bad desires to receive, will just be eradicated and never existed anymore. Should I ask such a thing from the Creator, to erase that bad attitude?
R. Read what David writes, and believe me, that it will help you, that’s it, that’s it.
19. S. (33:22) The will to receive feels like a stubborn enemy, very rude, so how to soften the heart towards the friends?
R. Through prayer to the Creator; whatever you want to happen to you as the Creator.
20. S. (33:55) Continuing the questions, what helps us file the will to receive until it becomes very thin?
R. Only the relationship between us in the group, the extent that we relate to each other in a finer, more subtle way to our friends in the group, to that extent we will have more subtle relationships with the Creator and we will succeed in getting closer.
S. What intention are we building before we read Psalms, how should we prepare for that?
R. Before we read Psalms we only get ready to get closer between us, we don’t need anything else, and with the help of Psalms we yearn to come even closer between us. And Psalms, themselves, there are already such wishes and prayers that it is certain that they will provide us with all the abundance, all the good.
21. S. (35:31) You said that King David fought for forty years and he was an image of a hero in corporeality and in spirituality. Why did they need to show us an example, why not an example of a person who only fights his ego internally, why also in corporeality?
R. I don’t get in all these things, I don’t know, it’s clear to me that he was a hero, he was mighty in his spirit, to what extent he was mighty in physical strength, in his corporeal work? I don’t know, I don’t think so, we know that if there is spirit then he is strong. I don’t take that into account, his physical work.
22. S. (36:24) Baal HaSulam says that, “you cannot erase anything from the world”, so my question is: What about organizations that their purpose is to destroy other groups of people in the World? Is that something that can be corrected or that we should eradicate from the work?
R. To obliterate it from the world, but we don’t do it with physical strength, we want to do it with our emotional strength, that if we increase the powers of connections, the power of love, then those who are against it, it will naturally disappear from the work.
23. S. (37:20) I feel that the main thing that is difficult to do is discern between our private war to the general war, where do those two things connect?
R. The general work and the personal war connect in a person’s heart, that’s it.
24. S. (37:54) You were talking about war against the ego, and in the end only the environment can help me start something, to start fighting against the ego and that’s only through prayer. So in the end it’s the environment and prayer, that the Creator will do it so why do you need me in this process?
R. So you will awaken, so you will light up this thing, so you will be the first to do it or at least with others like you. So you who will light up the fire of love which ruins the fire of war.
S. It’s the environment that pushes me into this?
R. You have to participate in it in order to add strength to it.
25. S. (39:14) I’d like to be a warrior like King David in order to expand the desire and mutual vessel of the group. I’d like to do it in this life without the need to reincarnate again. What are the qualities that I have to attain to be a warrior like King David?
R. You need to come to adhesion with the Creator, with all the general, big will to receive that was in him does he belong to Malchut, on one hand; and on the other hand, he came to be a King, meaning he reached Keter, the crown, this is why he is called David, King of Israel.
R. Beloved ones, I respect you and I love you very much. Let’s hope that we are going into a good day and we will also repeat these materials and advance to tomorrow’s lesson. A big hug to everyone and feel, each one should feel in his heart all the hearts!