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Glossary – BeHukotai (In My Statutes) – Weekly Torah Portion

Reward

Reward is what a person wants to have. You cannot give a person something that that person does not want. A reward is the thing that one desires. It is a good execution of the thing toward which that person would like to advance. That person cannot be elsewhere because he or she is correcting the desire. The execution itself is the reward, as it is written, “The reward of a Mitzva (commandment)—Mitzva.”[9] The reward of a Mitzva (commandment) is to know the Metzaveh (commander). To know means to connect, as it is written, “And Adam knew his wife again” (Genesis, 4:25).

Punishment

Punishment is the opposite of reward. It is what a person neither wants nor likes. It is a degree where a person understands that progress is rewarded, and the opposite of that is the punishment. The reward and punishment are not egoistic, where a person does something and receives the reward elsewhere.

Fear

Fear means being afraid of failing to correct. Everything happens due to our effort and request of the light that reforms to come and correct us. It is possible that we did not work sufficiently in order to draw it.

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From The Big Bang To Now: What Humanity Needs Most Today

Why Everything Is Literally All About Giving & Receiving

As the Wisdom of Kabbalah explains, in the ancient Mesopotamia, after studying the world around himself, Abraham discovered that reality consists of two desires. One desire is to give and the other is to receive. He found that everything that has ever existed, that exists now, and that will exist is an outcome of the interaction between these two forces. When the desires work in harmony, life flows peacefully along its course. When they collide, however, we must deal with the fallout—calamities and crises of great magnitude.

Through these discoveries, Abraham understood how the universe and life had started, and how they evolve. Our universe was born approximately fourteen billion years ago, when a massive, never-again-repeated burst of energy exploded out of a minuscule point. Astronomers call it “the Big Bang.” Just as a seed and an egg join to form an embryo at the moment of conception, the universe was “conceived” when the desire to give and the desire to receive were first joined together in the Big Bang. For this reason, all that exists in our universe is a manifestation of the joining of the two forces.

Just as a cell in an embryo begins to divide and create the flesh of the newborn immediately after conception, the desire to give and the desire to receive began to form the matter of our universe immediately after the Big Bang. Then, through a process that spanned billions of years, and that to an extent continues today, gases alternately expanded and contracted, galaxies were created, and stars were formed within them. Every expansion of gas was a consequence of the desire to give, which expands and creates, and every contraction was the result of the desire to receive, which absorbs and contracts.

Expansion and contraction form the endless ebb and flow of life, propelled at one moment by the desire to give, and at the next moment by the desire to receive. Whether it is galaxies, suns, and planets merging to form our universe, or cells, tissue, and organs combining to form a human being, this interplay of desires is at the heart of creation.

As with the stars, Planet Earth evolved by expansion and contraction through the interaction of desires. When Earth was first formed, its surface reflected the flow of expansion and the ebb of contraction. Every time the desire to give prevailed, Earth’s sweltering interior would burst into rivers of melted lava. And every time the receiving force prevailed, the lava would cool and form new swaths of land. Eventually, a strong enough crust was formed over the Earth to allow for the emergence of life as we know it.

If we search deep enough, we will find the same two forces—giving and receiving—within every being ever created, weaving their magnificent garment of life. In the weaving process, the desire to give first creates matter, as with the Big Bang or a newborn baby, and the desire to receive gives the matter shape, as with the stars and the differentiating cells in organisms.

 

Did You Know Humanity Is the Result of Billions of Years of Cooperation?

The story does not end with the creation of the universe. When a baby is born, it cannot control its hands or legs, which seem to move about erratically. However, there is tremendous importance in these seemingly erratic movements: after many repetitions, the baby gradually learns which movements get results and which do not. Unless the baby tries, it will not learn how to turn over, crawl, and eventually walk. In a baby, the life force (the desire to give) creates movement. But it is the desire to receive that gives that force direction and determines which expressions of the desire to give (movements) should stay and which should not.

The same principle can be applied to Earth’s early childhood. As the earth was cooling, particles driven by the desire to give moved randomly about. The desire to receive caused these particles to contract and form clusters, and only the most stable of these groups survived, forming atoms.

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Why the Bible’s Abraham Holds the Key to Solving Today’s Global Crisis

Why Blaming the Financial System for Today’s Global Crisis Is ‘Not Seeing the Forest for the Trees’

Today humanity find itself in a global crisis. Most of the attention is focused on the economy and the financial system. But the global crisis we are all facing did not begin with the collapse of our financial system. It was actually in existence long before—rooted deep in human nature. To understand how we can bail ourselves out of this crisis, we need to understand why our own nature puts us on a collision course with nature and with each other.

When we look at the present state of humanity, it may seem quite grim, with a doubtful prognosis for success. But just as many times when people get into trouble and then work out the solution together, helping each other, we can be positive about the future of humanity. To guarantee our success, all we need is to unite and collaborate.

In fact, unity and collaboration have always been nature’s, as well as humanity’s tools for success. When we use these tools we thrive, and when we avoid them, we break apart.

 

The Root of Today’s Global Crisis Is 1,000s of Years Old

Thousands of years ago, between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, in a vast and fertile stretch of land called “Mesopotamia,” there lived a flourishing society in a city-state called “Babel.” The city was bustling with life and action. It was the trade center of what we now call, “the cradle of civilization.”

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If You’re Against Collaboration, Self-Interested and Use Others for Your Own Benefit, then the Creator Has You Right Where He Wants You

The Real Reason Why People Hate to Collaborate

As we can see from multiple psychological and sociological studies, it is more rewarding to work in a group than alone. Hence, why do we not cooperate all the time? If we are made of a desire to receive and can receive more by collaborating, then why are we not collaborating? What is it about our nature that, despite the 1,200 studies that prove it is better to work together than alone, we have not thoroughly installed these methods in our education system? And why do schools (and the entire education system), media, sports, and politics still promote competitive and individualistic behavior, extolling successful individuals? Why not extol people who promote bonding and mutuality, if evidence proves that it would work to everyone’s benefit?

The reason why this is so is because in Stage Four of the development of the egoistic desire we are no longer satisfied with achieving more. Achieving more was what we wanted in Stage Three. In Stage Four, our primary desire is to achieve more than others. We want to be unique and superior, just like the Creator. Thus, we may provide hard, indisputable evidence that it is better to work together than alone, but without feeling that this is so, our egos will not succumb to the idea. In Stage Four, solutions must first satiate the ego before we can approach daily life tactics to improve our achievements.

In regard to the above paragraph, in “Peace in the World,” Baal HaSulam elaborates on our sense of uniqueness: “The nature of each and every person is to exploit the lives of all other people in the world for his own benefit. And all that he gives to another is only out of necessity; and even then there is exploitation of others in it, but it is done cunningly, so that his neighbor will not notice it and concede willingly. The reason for it,” he explains, “is that… because man’s soul extends from the Creator, who is one and Unique [referring to the single law of bestowal that creates and sustains the world]… man… feels that all the people in the world should be under his own governance and for his own private use. And this is an unbreakable law. The only difference is in people’s choices: one chooses to exploit people to satisfy lower desires, and one by obtaining government, while the third by obtaining respect. furthermore, if one could do it without much effort, he would agree to exploit the world with all three combined—wealth, government, and respect. However, he is forced to choose according to his possibilities and capabilities. This law can be called, ‘the law of singularity in man’s heart.’ No person escapes it, and each and every one takes his share in that law.”

 

You Can Either Be Unique and Creative Alone… Or With the Creator

On october 15, 2006, Sam Roberts of The New York Times published a story titled, “To Be Married Means to Be Outnumbered,” where he referred to a census. The story revealed that “Married couples, whose numbers have been declining for decades as a proportion of American households, have finally slipped into a minority… The American Community Survey, released… by the Census Bureau, …found that 49.7 percent [of] households in 2005 were made up of married couples… down from more than 52 percent five years earlier.” Moreover, revealed Roberts: “The numbers of unmarried couples are growing. Since 2000, those identifying themselves as unmarried opposite-sex couples rose by about 14 percent, male couples by 24 percent and female couples by 12 percent.”

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How to Discover Everything Hidden from You

If we want to obtain a different, opposite perception of reality, we should acquire the additional properties suitable for this: the quality of giving instead of receiving, and bestowal instead of consumption. Our constant desire is to absorb everything into “ourselves,” but this is only half of nature. The other half is bestowal, the tendency toward the outside.

People who have already received this second force of nature and, together with it, have acquired the perception of the whole of reality, are called Kabbalists. The science itself is called the science of Kabbalah, the science of reception, because a person acquires all of reality, rather than just the tiny part he is able to absorb in his current qualities. Then, as Kabbalists say, a person reaches a state where he rises above the current perception to an eternal, perfect reality. [Source: Dr. Michael Laitman, “The Path to a Perfect Reality.”]

What Is Unique about the Wisdom of Kabbalah?

Philosophy and any other of our attempts to understand reality are based not on research but solely on reason, which is really based on what is not known, as a rule, they are based on our egoism, but we do not realize it.

As a result, philosophy died a long time ago. All so-called spiritual teachings are gradually vanishing, since people rise above them and see that they are invalid. There are no substantiations or verifications concerning the seriousness of multiple spiritual teachings. They’re exclusively based upon our sensations, but as we all know, feelings can be very diverse; that’s why presently there are about 2,800 religions and belief systems, and we see them gradually disappearing.

Kabbalah is not for or against them. It stands aside them; it explores nature as physics or any other regular science does. The major principle of Kabbalah is investigating nature, becoming similar to it, and by doing so, succeeding. Kabbalah is a very concrete science; it does not discuss the soul in the way other religions do.

A soul in Kabbalah signifies an extremely serious and profound attainment and understanding of the world in which we currently live. The purpose of this kind of realization is staying afloat and protecting ourselves from a huge storm that approaches us in response to our ignorance and unwillingness to follow the laws of nature. [Source: Dr. Michael Laitman, “Kabbalah and Occult Teachings.”]

The Free Kabbalah Course provides a guided step-by-step introduction to the fundamental principles of Kabbalah, and clarifies what Kabbalah is and isn’t, the difference between Kabbalah and other teachings, how to attain the perception of the hidden reality using Kabbalah, as well as many other principles. We recommend, if you’re interested in these topics, taking the free course and starting to learn about the world around you and inside you anew. Click the banner below to sign up for the free course …

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