Entries in the 'pleasure' Category

Attaining The Light From Darkness

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What is the principle of attaining Light from darkness?

Answer: The attainment of the Light occurs from the darkness that arises. The Light is the quality of bestowal and darkness is realization of our egoistic nature. (Itron Ohr Mi Toch Hosheh – the Light is evaluated in relation to darkness.)

You know, there’s a joke about a modern Russian man, who shows his friend a lighter that he bought at a specialty shop for three thousand dollars. The other exclaims, “That’s nothing! I bought the same lighter around the corner for six thousand dollars!”

Pleasure is not evaluated according to the object, but according to the way you evaluate it. When you buy something at a special store or obtain it with great difficulty, you receive more pleasure. The more parents invest in their child, the more they love him. We know that the more difficult it was to achieve something in the past, the more pleasant it is to reminisce about it and the more valuable it is.

This is because we feel the desire (Kli – Vessel), rather than the Light, and we make assessments about the fulfillment based on the desire. The greater the desire and the suffering, the stronger we feel the fulfillment. Therefore, we should understand that, when enough suffering has been accumulated through our efforts, we will become worthy of feeling redemption from evil.
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125 Steps From Me To The Creator

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: In our world, people unite in order to succeed in some type of deal. How do we unite our souls?

Answer: In order to succeed in spirituality, I need to connect with the people who wish to achieve the same condition and goal. And together, we have to discern that without such a special connection between us, we won’t envision this goal. As a matter of fact, it will suddenly disappear from between us!

It isn’t somewhere “up there” as it has to be between us. Yet, due to the fact that we don’t cleave tightly together but rather walk away, this goal falls into an abyss that separates us. Indeed, the hate that divides us is infinite and unfathomable. It turns out that there are you and me, and we are separated by an abyss of infinite depth, at the bottom of which lies the spiritual goal, unification. And there is nothing we can do!

We wish to unite with you and cannot as we keep uncovering this gap, so we strive to build a bridge above it every time. Thus, we construct bridge after bridge until we cover the entire, bottomless depth. In this way we get 125 degrees of revelation of hate which is revealed because each time we uncover love over hate.

Hate is determined by the depth of both our desires, and above it, we connect by way of the screen, the Returning Light, while we are building the vessel (Kli) that belongs to us both now. The screen is the connection between us, and hate is its internal desire.

Hence, the greater the amount of Returning Light that ascends thanks to our connection, the more Upper Light we receive and experience pleasure. And by feeling this pleasure, we delight each other! Everyone is delighted by the fact that the other is feeling pleased. Otherwise, there is nothing else we can give for we bestow to each other our own individual pleasure.

As a matter of fact, all of us are created as receivers, so we can only receive. We can bestow solely in intention. And what else can I possibly give to someone other than my intention?
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/26/10, “600,000 Souls”

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The Middle Line

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What is the middle line? Is it the ability to act correctly between the two lines (left and right)?

Answer: The middle line is a marriage of the Light and desire. It is adhesion comprised of desire and intention, combined with the Source of Light, the Creator. By using the will to receive with an intention to bestow pleasure to the Creator, man uncovers the source of pleasure, the Creator. It turns out that desire and pleasure were merely a medium to find the connection between man and the Creator. These three components: desire, pleasure, and intention come together as one: I and the Creator.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/22/10, Shlavei Hasulam, Article 17, 1986

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Driven Onward By The Serpent’s Tongue

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Why do all pleasures immediately fade? I am so happy when I buy a new car, but a week later I get used to it and no longer care about it. What causes the pleasure to go away? If the Light and the vessel are all that exists, then shouldn’t the pleasure be eternal? Why does it fade?

Answer: It is because the Kli (vessel) changes. The car doesn’t disappear, but my desire becomes greater and the pleasure received from owning the car no longer fills it. The change in the desire is qualitative, not quantitative. In spirituality growth is qualitative rather than quantitative.

The car parked by my house is still beautiful and new, but it doesn’t excite me as before even though just a week has gone by. This occurs because an additional desire (the “tongue of the primordial snake“) has formed inside you, causing the human being in you to ask the question, “What did this purchase give me?” You don’t even realize that you have this question, but nonetheless it awakes in you and spoils all of your pleasure.

After the breaking or the fall of the Tree of Knowledge, a point of connection with the Creator emerged in every kind of pleasure When your desire is filled, that point asks whether you have achieved eternal pleasure. It forces you to immediately search for another way to fill yourself. We have been advancing in this manner throughout all of history, and we would not have developed if not for this. This is what distinguishes a person from an animal: the birth of new desires.

A subconscious need to become similar to the Creator has continuously driven us forward from the time we came out of caves to this very day, and this is a result of the primordial sin. Our desires (Adam and Eve) would have remained as animals if the human being in us did not constantly grow. We start to feel shame regarding the Creator because we realize how different we are from Him. Shame is what causes us to ask the question, “What did I gain from this?” Subconsciously we think to ourselves, “Why do I need a car if I’m trying to reach the Creator?” Even though we aren’t aware of our connection to the Creator, this emptiness gnawing inside of us comes from Him.

From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/2/10, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot

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The Joy Of Resolving Doubts

Dr. Michael LaitmanThere is no greater joy than resolving doubts. Doubt arises from the difference between reception and bestowal, the Light and desire. If I eliminate this difference and bring them into unification or oneness, there is no greater pleasure than their adhesion. The two seemingly opposite things suddenly unite. They come to agreement and peace, and this leads to an explosion of joy. I am created in such a way that I feel pleasure from this.

Pleasure is a result of the revelation of the Light within the spiritual vessel or desire. The Light can be revealed only to the extent that the desire corresponds to it. So, what do I perceive? Is it my own desire? No, it isn’t. Or maybe it’s the Light? No, it’s not the Light either. I perceive the result of their interaction either as suffering or as pleasure.

From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/6/10, “The Teaching of the Kabbalah and Its Essence”

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Why Does This Wheel Keep Spinning?

Dr. Michael LaitmanBaal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot,” Item 20: Because of the sin with the Tree of Knowledge, the impure forces were given control over man. This is why the order of the universe is very confused. Sinners beget evil, decreasing the Light’s abundance for the people. This naturally leads to destruction and suffering. But if they increase the abundance, then the separation for the receivers increases even more, as the sages said, "If a person has one hundred coins, he wants two hundred, and if he has two hundred, then he wants four hundred."

It is man’s nature to always chase pleasure, but by doing so he only increases his desire to receive. All of life is an endless pursuit of pleasures which you can never attain. And the small bits of fulfillment that we do receive are given to us so we would keep pursuing and increasing our desires.

It seems to us that we run after pleasure, but we are running after even greater desire! We barely touch our object of desire, and the next moment we feel that we need twice as much! When we experience pleasure for a moment, we increase our desire two-fold, and thus the pleasure itself turns into desire. This continues on and on until we grow disillusioned.

From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/19/10, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot

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Boundless Love

Laitman_104A question I received: How can we maintain within ourselves the need to bestow?

My Answer: The need to bestow that stems from love never dies out. You’ll never be able to say “Enough!” On the contrary, the more you give, the greater your need to bestow will be. Otherwise it’s not love. If love is limited to a certain level beyond which you won’t go, if you feel that your love has boundaries, then it is not love.

Your wife can explain it very well to you. Women can feel these things naturally. A man tends to limit his love because his spiritual root is the force of the anti-egoistic screen that dictates to him: “Here is the limit and I am not ready to go any further.” In contrast, a woman who wants to experience a man’s love can’t understand how love can have boundaries. This is instilled in our nature.

Pleasure can never extinguish the desire to love; it only awakens an even bigger desire. When you give to your children, you don’t tell them: “Enough, I won’t give to you anymore.” Perhaps you can’t give more because of external circumstances, but you cannot voluntarily restrict giving to your own children.

Love revokes all boundaries. We don’t understand what true love is. We think that it is about filling up our own stomach, but love is fulfillment of somebody else’s desire. It’s an aspiration to satisfy another person. I sense that this is about another person (not me); I feel the distance between us. Yet, I want to fulfill this person.

We are talking here about a spiritual Kli and the science of Kabbalah rather than about hugs and kisses. All of nature acts in accordance with this principle of lack and its fulfillment; love rules over everything. Everything in nature unites, draws closer, or, on the contrary, moves further away from each other according to this principle. This single force acts in nature since the Creator is the power of love. That’s why there is nothing else besides love and hatred (that is, love with a negative sign.)

“Love your neighbor” is not just a beautiful slogan, but rather a law of nature. To fulfill another person’s desire means to sense ourselves beyond time, motion, or space, beyond all limitations of this world. It is to enter spirituality. By doing so, we attain eternal life. If not, we live like animals and are restricted by our material body in this world.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/3/10, Article “Matan Torah”

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On The Threshold Of Realization

out.jpg The Zohar, Chapter “Chayei Sarah (The Life of Sarah),” Item 155: …But the lower ones cannot receive the illumination of the left before it is clothed in Hassadim from the right line.

This is why Esau was weary. It is written, “Behold, I am at the point of death; and what profit shall the birthright have for me?”

Esau wanted to receive the Light of Hochma into the egoistic desires (Kelim of reception) and found that he was unable to do this. Similarly, we spend our whole lives chasing after pleasures, trying to find enjoyment in life, but as soon as we feel pleasure, it immediately disappears. This cycle recurs throughout our entire lives. Repeating this unending cycle is why Esau was weary and said, “I am unable to continue like this. It is hopeless; I am tired of it. I am ready to unite with Jacob.”

Today all of humanity is standing at the threshold of this same realization. For this reason, the science of Kabbalah, Jacob’s method, is being revealed. This science is precisely about how to build the middle line, how to implement Jacob’s method.

Before humanity reached this state of despair, there was no demand for the science of Kabbalah. Now the need is apparent; from here the Torah can be revealed since the Torah is revealed from the middle line – the correction of egoism.

The Spiritual Magic

spiritual A question I received: We live our lives in hopes and never achieve pleasure. What will happen when we acquire the desire to bestow? Will we be able to feel pleasure then?

My Answer: When we transform the egoistic intention into the bestowing one, time ceases to exist. The very notion of time disappears because there is no past, present, or future in spirituality. Being in the attribute of bestowal, we don’t inquire about cause and effect. We delight in the act of bestowal that we find ourselves in, needing nothing else. Having the opportunity to bestow is our reward.

But don’t we care about the results of our actions? An opportunity to bestow is the result. For this reason, the concept of time disappears and everything is at absolute rest.

Egoism promises us the future, while in spirituality, there is no future; everything happens in the present. The future is felt only if I reveal the lack of bestowal in my current state, only if I want to bestow more and aspire to it. It’s as if I desire to go from the small World of Infinity to the big one.

This, too, is possible only through “magic,” through egoistic desires that are helping me. They reveal to me the deficiencies of my state, the impurity of my bestowal.
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When Will We Undo The Spell That Is Our Life?

world Our entire life is a spell, a great deceit. The egoistic desire constantly manipulates us, forcing us to work for it. Meanwhile, we are in love with this impure desire of ours and actually desire to be deceived by it.

It lies to us about the end of our path, promising us pleasure and Light when we get there. And along the way it seems like we do receive some kind of pleasure. Even though we don’t have anything besides empty promises, we enjoy them. We think about what we are about to gain and start to feel as if we already have it in the present. We receive sparks of pleasure and they give us hope.

However, there is no Light behind these sparks because the Light does not descend beneath the Parsa, the boundary that separates the World of Atzilut. The Light shines for us from there and awakens these sparks, making us feel hopeful that we will receive the Light. And this goes on throughout our entire lives.

Even though we are always disillusioned and never see any Light, just the sparks, we have no other choice but to keep looking for them in order to feel pleasure. We hope to enjoy ourselves by gaining a little more money, fame, power, knowledge, food, and sex. And thus, we are always on the path, with all our hopes aimed at the future. But the moment the Light is supposed to come to the spark, it does not come and everything immediately disappears.

This constitutes the work of the egoistic desire: to attract us with promises of pleasure, making us constantly desire it and always being on the path, thinking that we are enjoying ourselves. But we never reach the actual pleasure. We only reach disappointment and everything disappears.

In the material world a person’s entire life is based on hopes for the future and he supposes that this is happiness. He believes that all kinds of egoistic pleasures are waiting for him up ahead and tries not to think about the darkness and death that await him.

However, today humanity has developed to a level where it begins to understand that egoistic promises are groundless. But in that case, what are we to do? After all, we can no longer keep living just on hope! We no longer believe in socialism or a beautiful future where everyone will be happy.

As a result, depression and disillusionment are becoming very common; yet, we have to keep living somehow. As a result, people start to lie to themselves even more. They deliberately enter a drunken stupor in order to force themselves to believe. All the mass media channels work for this sake; it is a universal spell that is kept up by society.

This will continue until the lie reaches the breaking point, beyond which it will no longer be possible to keep going.