VIDEO: The Ego’s Grip on Our Choices

August 3, 2007 at 6:00 am · Filed under Ego, Free Will, Video

The Ego’s Grip on Our Choices 02:14
Everything we choose, everything we do is a result of one fundamental calculation.

This clip is taken from Kabbalah Revealed episode 10: “Free Will, Part 1″

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What is Ego? What is Shame?

April 29, 2007 at 5:10 am · Filed under Daily Lessons, Definitions, Ego, Q&A, Shame

From today’s daily lesson:

What is Ego?

Student: What is the ego? Can you define it?
Rav Laitman: The ego is what I feel as self-relaxation, a void, a deficiency, a desire… it’s a socket or a depression in me that’s filled. I feel the filling of that absence as pleasure.
• There’s a deficiency which is filled.
• The sensation of deficiency is called “pain.”
• The sensation of the deficiency’s filling is called “pleasure.”
There are four definitions: deficiency, fulfillment, pain/suffering, pleasure. (50:13)

What is Shame?

Rav Laitman: There is shame above the ego and shame within the ego.
“I’m ashamed. I stole, and everything was fine but now I got caught. Oh, how people will talk about me, it’ll be in the paper and all kinds of places… so I’m ashamed. Am I ashamed because I stole? No. I’m ashamed because I was caught.” –That’s shame below the Machsom (barrier).

Shame above the Machsom is from—“Am I giving? Do I love?”—and the shame is in the discovery that I’m not like this way in every way. It is shame from a lack of bestowal. (55:50)

Rav Michael Laitman, PhD in the lesson on Baal HaSulam’s article “The Revelation of Godliness (Matan Torah)” (April 29, 2007) wmv video | mp3 audio (59 min)

• What is “the Machsom” (“the barrier”)?

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