The Eighteen Degrees Of Prayer

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn order to understand what prayer is, we have to rely on our previous experience and imagine a state opposite to Holiness, in which a person feels that he is dead. This means that he feels envy, ambition, a desire to control, and the ordinary desires of the ego for food, sex, and family. He feels that he has become enslaved to these desires through which the rule of the upper force becomes apparent.

At the same time, he is aware that this state is opposite to bestowal, caring about others and about the Creator, which has to be above all the worries and the calculations regarding himself, his relatives, and everything that has nothing to do with spirituality.

The goal of creation is the revelation of the Creator to the created beings. If a person chooses this goal as his mission for which he is willing to work, as it is written, “as an ox to the burden and as a donkey to the load,” in order to become the link that conveys and connects, to be the smallest agent who receives no reward, in that case it means that he turns to the Creator with the right prayer. He doesn’t even know that he is the one who brings about the revelation, and what is more, he doesn’t want any reward for that and is satisfied with having been given the opportunity to work without a reward.

This attitude is revealed in us thanks to the influence of the Light in different states, and by that, we begin to respect and value the darkness more. The more contradictory the states revealed in a person, the sharper his clarifications, thoughts, and feelings become, from which he can form his request to the Creator to be saved.

Every prayer stems from despair, from having fallen under the control of egoistic thoughts about oneself, instead of thinking about the revelation of the Creator to the created beings, about the “good and benevolent.” If a person aims correctly, he attains a state in which all of his desire works only for the revelation of the Creator in the vessels of the created beings, of Malchut, Shechina (Divinity).

This is called the prayer of eighteen blessings: nine degrees of the Direct Light and nine degrees of the Returning Light. Thus, a person reaches a true prayer.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/10/12, Shamati #113

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