New Life 1052 – Failures In Life, Part 1

New Life 1052 – Failures In Life, Part 1
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Summary

When a person has a true, personal goal for which he is living, he is happy at every moment, even through related disturbances because his goal acts like a kind of North Star and directs and protects him along the way. On the way toward the goal, failures or crises are necessary in order to clarify the process of advancement and strengthen the person for eventual success. When a sensation of failure comes, a strong feeling of bitterness is awakened in a person and he therefore requires a supportive environment. Women cope with failure like a flexible branch whereas men experience failure like rigid iron. Women, therefore, must give their men a sense of security and men must protect their wives and be faithful to them.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1052 – Failures In Life, Part 1,” 8/23/18

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Hurricane Michael

From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 10/11/18

Hurricane Michael Devastation Only Tip of the Iceberg

Powerful Hurricane Michael slammed into the Florida Panhandle with terrifying winds of 155 mph Wednesday, splintering homes and submerging neighborhoods before continuing its destructive march inland across the Southeast. It was the most powerful hurricane to hit the continental U.S. in nearly 50 years. (AP)

Nature has not gone crazy – we’ve gone crazy. Scientists have been warning us for many years but since we are not making any significant changes in our life, the situation will continue to escalate.

Former Vice President Al Gore warned that “time is running out” after the release of a U.N. special report that gives the world 12 years to head off climate calamity by radically transforming “all aspects of society.”

The conclusion from the report is simple: if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced by 2030, the Earth will be irreversibly damaged. You can also add blows from the rest of nature, such as tsunamis, floods, storms, fires, extreme cold and heat waves, melting glaciers, and more.

In order to understand the bleak situation we’re in, we need to understand the reason for what’s happening.

Earth Is a System of Forces That Must Maintain Balance

The natural system we live in is a system of forces operating at different levels of inanimate, vegetative, living and human beings. It is a closed, integral system, where even the most remote elements are completely interconnected. The relationship between the pieces is so interdependent that each part affects the entire system.

Think of our body as an example for a harmonious system. When any organ is out of balance, it throws the whole body out of balance and causes an illness. Physicians examine the balance across the systems in our body, and when they receive the test results, they diagnose the state of our body in relation to the norm. If certain parameters are too high or too low, it means that our body is not in good health.

Until the last fifty years or so, we lived in relative balance on Earth. In other words, this nice home that feeds and sustains us, was relatively “healthy.”

The illness emerged as we breached our balance with nature. We have been emitting carbon dioxide, polluting the oceans with non-biodegradable waste, fertilizing the soil with chemicals, feeding cattle and poultry with antibiotics, and the list goes on. The chemical and non-natural compounds don’t break down in the soil or the air, and ultimately we feed on them again and again. As a result, new diseases emerge within us and around us.

Why Earth Is Sick

As long as the human ego controls our actions, the situation will only get worse. Greed drives corporations to use toxic substances in agriculture and medicine, and the integrity of nature is the least of their priorities. Governments are subject to tycoons, and scientists conduct their research according to the interests of the heads of industry and commerce.

Thus, we’ve thrown the natural system out of balance, and as a result we witness “natural diseases.” Just like a person who shows symptoms that indicate he is on the way out of his health range, our planet is getting sick. The “physicians of nature,” the scientists who study the various climatic conditions, are noticing that we are facing a terrible outbreak of disease.

Even if it seems that the climate is wonderful in one region and stormy in the other, this is all temporary. The planet is round and the natural system is integral. Ultimately, just like a foot infection can gradually spread throughout the body, the diseases of nature will spread throughout the planet.

But instead of working towards balance with nature, we continue to work for the short term benefit of the rich and powerful. In turn, inequality and polarization grow within human society, and society as a whole grows increasingly out of balance with nature. As the gap continues to grow, the blows of nature will cost us a great deal of suffering, sickness and death. Just consider the amount of damage that one earthquake can cause.

The Human Ego Blocks the Healing Process

Ultimately, climate destabilization will force us to change our ways. We will have to become conscious and wary of our balance with nature, and our connection with each other inside this integral system.

In fact, this change should have happened from the middle of the twentieth century, as we began to be bound through global interdependence in commerce, industry, economics, media, and so forth. The human race should have begun to act in mutual responsibility. That is, to take care of the needs of all mankind, while maintaining balance with nature.

But the reality is that we cannot even deal with our global challenges and their rapid spread because our own ego stands in the way. The human ego doesn’t care about climate change and is ready to trample any agreement on its way to getting its hands on every single penny.

Therefore, it is the human ego that we must balance first if we are to reach any stable agreements between us. Treaties such as the “Kyoto Protocol” or the “Paris Agreement” only serve to show us the futility of any attempt to solve our problems without taking the human ego into account.

Balance with Nature Starts with Balance between Us

To change our fate on this planet, we must begin with harmonizing the connection between all human beings.

The world is a single creation, and even our psychology and our inner forces interact with nature in ways that we don’t see or understand. Our thoughts and our intentions have a lot to do with our balance with nature.

We’re at a unique point in human development, where everyone can begin to see the need for harmonious human connections on a global scale, and yet, we don’t have the power and method to make that happen.

This is why the wisdom of Kabbalah is being revealed today. Authentic Kabbalah is not a new or ancient religion, it’s not mysticism and it’s not a philosophy. Rather, it is an empirical method that teaches us how we can achieve balance with nature through activating our deep wiring for human connection.

Everything depends on the relationship between human beings. When we realize that and begin to consciously act on that, the whole system of nature will give us positive feedback. We will begin to sense that we are a global human family, and Earth is our only home.

Hurricane Michael3

Hurricane Michael2

Hurricane Michael1

Reuters images

New Life #1051 – Inner Consciousness, Part 2

New Life #1051 – Inner Consciousness, Part 2
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

The expansion of human consciousness happens through desire, a deficiency or hunger for an awareness of the entire reality. We become more conscious when we ask existential questions like, “Why am I alive?” and engage with a Kabbalistic group in order to discover the answers together. To the degree that I connect to others with attitudes of love and bestowal, I acquire the higher power that is between us. Development of consciousness means attaining a connection with the upper force; I recognize and activate it and this is how I advance and discover the truth. The higher power is bestowal and love and it is what manages our lives. To develop consciousness, we need to create a connection with this higher power.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #1051 – Inner Consciousness, Part 2,” 8/21/18

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Hoshana Rabbah—A Prayer For Salvation

Hoshana is like a plea for salvation. A person asks the Creator to save him, and in order to reach this state he must go through many stages. When a person comes to study the wisdom of Kabbalah, at first he does not know what he is looking for. Gradually, as a result of his studies, he receives new values in life and then begins to understand what to ask, whom to ask, and from what he wants to be saved. He has to go through quite a complicated internal scrutiny in order to stop asking for the resolution of his life’s problems and salvation from minor or more serious adversities.

A person does not understand to whom to turn: What is this upper force, the Creator, and another nature? He knows only his corporeal life, this world. Someone, on the contrary, imagines that the Creator punishes him for wrongdoings and asks for indulgence. It takes time for a person to understand whom to ask and for what, and only after he despairs to understand his life and destiny, and to open up the heavens with his own forces.

Sometimes a dark cloud suddenly descends on him, and then, on the contrary, everything becomes clear, transparent, understandable, pleasant, and light, and then again, an incredible weight falls on him, a dullness in the head and in the heart.

We endure many such states until we decide that we are fully controlled from above, because we are creatures that are under control of the upper governance. The general force rules over each one individually and over everybody together, doing with us everything it wants. A person despairs to change something, losing any hope of influencing the upper force.

It takes a long time before he finally believes the Kabbalists that we can change our fate. However, it is impossible to appeal to the upper force alone, because it hears only a perfect appeal, that is, a common prayer, from ten people together. Also, perhaps ten people have gathered, but everyone asks for something of his own. How do we know the hidden aspirations of someone else’s heart about which even a person himself might not know?

Yet we need one desire for all ten people, one common heart, and then the Creator will gradually perform an act of correction so that we understand what we want, what we should want and advance to the state “I am for my beloved, and my beloved is for me.”

In essence, this is our entire work, the reason we entered into the state called “this world,” into this complete concealment and imaginary reality as Kabbalists explain.

We imagine ourselves in some world, on the Earth, which is divided into different nations and exists in the massive universe. All this is an illusion. In reality, only the upper world exists. Yet where is it? After all, we do not feel it. We do not have these organs of perception, which can feel that corporeality is an illusion and spirituality does exist. We still need to come to this in order to see that our present “reality” is just a screen concealing the truth and to reveal this true world in our new sensors. This all depends on our correction.

Instead of sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste, we will reveal new organs of perception: Keter, Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin, and Malchut. Rising above our will to receive in bestowal above reception, in faith above reason, we will reveal the true reality.

We will feel ourselves existing in two worlds simultaneously: in this world, in the imaginary reality, and also in the true reality, in the spiritual world. One world is depicted in the desires to receive and the second one in the desires to bestow.

The path is open before us. There is no doubt that we are advancing and the Creator, all the forces of nature, lead and accompany us, organize, gather together, protect, and filter us. It is necessary to accelerate their influence on us, because Israel, that is, people seeking to reveal the Creator, have the strength to accelerate time. If we work as a transitory channel between the Creator and all of humanity, then we will merit the care of the Creator and accelerate our development.

The night Hoshana Rabbah is a common, big, perfect request with all the forces and with all the required corrections. The returning Light comes to us through the thatch of the Sukkah and corrects the will to receive that is placed under the screen (Masach). This is how we together will merit to become one union. The main thing is not to forget that the ultimate goal is to correct the world and bring it to the Creator so that He would enjoy His creatures. Let’s try and succeed. Amen.¹
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/29/18, Lesson on the topic of “Hoshana Rabbah“
1 Minute 0.50

The Purpose Of Congresses

Soon, we will have a congress. Let’s get ready to join together in a single impulse. This is a huge force! Imagine how much effort is being expended now in all countries of the world where there are at least a few of our friends! And we have friends all over the world, in almost every country.

Let us make this congress as impressive as possible, from the bottom of our hearts, so that it gives us a big push.

We have already passed so many different preliminary stages that I think we will be able to find ourselves in a network of altruistic forces, above our egoism, and will begin to feel, at least a little, the smallest spiritual qualities between us, not in each of us.

Suddenly, you will see how certain spiritual qualities, movements in relation to friends appear in you—what you desire for them, and what you feel from them. Also, between you, there appears a network of communication in which the Creator is revealed.

You can do this. This is what the congress is intended for.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 4/22/18

With Bated Breath Listening For The Creator

We need to understand, remember, and live the state that the Creator is the first, and if we turn to Him, then this appeal is also organized by Him, the desire came from Him. All of our desires are awakened by Him and we only need to feel it and listen attentively with bated breath so as not to miss any movement He made in our mind and heart, to feel how He works in our mind and heart. The Creator works in my mind and heart because He is the first.

It is necessary to increase our sensitivity such that I can constantly latch onto the fact that even before I thought or felt something, this thought came from the Creator as a result of His work. I suddenly woke up because He awakened me, and all the thoughts and desires that I feel afterward were sent by the Creator.¹
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/29/18, Lesson on the Topic “Hoshana Rabbah”
1 Minute 1:49:50

How To Check The Impact Of Light?

Question: How can a person check whether he has drawn the Light or not? I understand that Light is like radiation that cannot be felt, but you can feel its symptoms.

Answer: You should feel that when you get close to each other’s hearts, a feeling arises between you that lifts you up above your ordinary egoism.

At the same time, thoughts and other various disturbances that hinder you immediately appear. However, you must understand that all this acts in parallel. One rises while the other descends, and so you alternately dance like on waves, all the while creating these waves: rising, descending, approaching, and distancing.

Getting closer to each other is at your expense, and distancing is given to you on purpose. This is how you begin to generate a special spiritual energy that gradually causes the urges that lead to the revelation of the Creator.

In addition, I recommend reading my tweets on Twitter: old, new—no matter which ones. I put a certain feeling in each of them. It should “pick you up,” turn something inside of you. Do not skip this. Twitter and lessons—especially those that we have every day in the morning—are necessary. Try to stay with us.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 4/29/18

New Life #1050 – Inner Consciousness, Part 1

New Life #1050 – Inner Consciousness, Part 1
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us how to attain a true and complete consciousness and experience a higher reality. A person normally lives within himself, within a field of pleasure and suffering, and what he imagines about himself and about the world is completely incorrect. When the desire for pleasure becomes aware of the higher power that produced and developed it, a spiritual consciousness begins to develop. The developing consciousness is built from emotion and intellect or heart and mind since these complement and influence each other. The more desire I have, the more intelligence I will have. A child who doesn’t want anything will not develop intellectually. Research on consciousness can only be accomplished by changing desire in a positive or negative direction.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #1050 – Consciousness,” 8/21/18

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How To Reduce Suffering

Rabash, “Love of Friends” Article No. 6: The most important thing is to always remember the purpose of creation, which is known to be “to do good to His creations.” Thus, if He wants to give them delight and pleasure, why are these three above matters—faith, fear and “Love thy friend”? It means that they need only qualify their vessels to be able to receive the delight and pleasure that the Creator wishes to give to the creatures.

The material of creation is a desire to enjoy. This is how the Creator made us. All forms of desire on the inanimate, vegetative, animal, and human levels only want one thing: to fill themselves so they feel pleasure.

Pleasure is a very complex concept. What happens in the body when it is enjoying?

We perceive everything like animals: “I feel pleasure!” What is pleasure? Where does it take place? In what cells and internal systems? Do you sense a certain kind of fulfillment against some feeling of lack? Does one complete the other?

Based on this, we see that pleasure can only be whenever there is a preliminary need, and only to the extent of its fulfillment can one feel pleasure.

In principle, what should the Creator have done? Only one thing: Having wished to give delight and pleasure to the created being, He needed to create a desire for that pleasure, or a feeling of deficiency. Yet the Creator did the opposite: He created evil, a minus, so that afterward by neutralizing and filling this minus with an opposite quality, the created being would feel the plus.

This is why it is written “I created evil…” and this is bewildering to an ordinary person. Evil, however, was created only in order to then replace it with good. This means that we need to do some work here, a certain manipulation of oneself, or nature, or the Creator in order to come from the feeling of evil to the feeling of good, from hatred to love.

This raises many questions. How could I feel all the qualities that are opposite to the Creator? Why do I have to go through all the terrible sensations that are worse than death? If the Creator wants to give me eternal, perfect fulfillment, does it mean that I have to feel a state opposite to it?

The solution is as follows: I do not have to go through terrible states, emptiness that is “worse than death,” and so on. I simply need to realize that after feeling even the slightest bit of suffering, I can immediately move on to enjoyment. More precisely, I should feel the suffering from the absence of pleasure, and then I will never feel the suffering itself.

This is where the wisdom of Kabbalah is leading us. It is calling on us to strive for connection, kindness, and love, and this is when I begin to feel that I am completely opposite to that. However, at that point I will already be in the positive field, in the field of the Creator, in His half.

This is why the contrast that I will feel when I aspire to clarify what He is and who He is will also be positive, since it is an indication that I am not like Him. Precisely at that point I will be able to demand and ask without detaching from Him. While trying to adhere to the Creator’s property—bestowal and love—I will feel how my “I,” my nature, is tearing me away from Him, and at the same time I immediately hold onto Him through the group.

Thus, I do not have to go through terrible, opposing states, but only small unpleasant sensations, like a baby who is being separated from his mother. This is enough for him to cling to her and always be concerned about drawing closer to her.

Such alternating small states that we go through are called the stages of our development. Each time, while we aim for the Creator through the group and constantly think about how to urge the friends toward Him, I feel how much compared to them I am still not succeeding in this, and in this manner I come closer to the Creator, I acquire His properties.

In other words, we do not have to go through states of darkness, separation, and estrangement, which are opposite to adhesion with the Creator. By working on His side, working through the group, it is enough for us to feel literally a tiny bit of separation from Him each time in order to pull ourselves toward Him, and to carry out our work in this manner.

The Creator’s actions on us will then be felt like small prods and calibrations, the way a mother nudges a child: “This is what needs to be done, give this a try.” They will be felt only in this manner and not in their true form of the enormous black abyss that is “worse than death.”
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From KabTV’s “The Last Generation” 3/22/18

When You Feel Emptiness …

Question: What should you do when you feel deep emptiness in desires and you cannot get rid of restlessness because of that?

Answer: When I feel deep emptiness and I have nothing more at hand, I take the Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah or the Talmud Eser Sefirot that are written in a dry scientific language and begin to read, trying to understand what it says.

This brings me to a normal, serious level of perception of reality, perception of Kabbalah. From there, I slowly move to other materials, to articles by Baal HaSulam from the book Shamati (I Heard) and articles by Rabash.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 5/13/18

New Life #1047 – The Method Of Research In The Wisdom Of Kabbalah

New Life #1047 – The Method Of Research In The Wisdom Of Kabbalah
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

In order to learn the wisdom of Kabbalah, one must build a sensor and decoder out of himself and conduct experiments by changing himself. In order to calibrate himself to be able to absorb the upper force, a Kabbalist must connect with a group of like-minded students and cancel the existing barriers between them. In the common space they build between them, while simultaneously restricting the private ego, they become able to feel the upper force or root of all reality. The Kabbalistic laboratory is this group in which a relationship of bestowal and love of others is built that resembles the upper force. The Kabbalist learns how to recognize himself, the upper force, as well as what is in between them. The Creator and the creation become integrated and a pipeline of abundance is developed. The wisdom of Kabbalah can bring humanity the best of everything, including the ability to move from world to world.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #1047 – The Method Of Research In The Wisdom Of Kabbalah,” 8/14/18

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Genuine And Imaginary Governance

We see reality from within ourselves, being inside the Creator, inside the upper force, besides which there is nothing. We exist in such a reality, wrapped in the shell of our egoism, through which we see some other forms and images instead of the Creator—an imaginary reality, a vanishing, illusory world.

We must try to neutralize this obscuring screen that confuses us by representing that we see a big world within which there are movements, actions, inanimate, plant and animal life, people.

If true perception is revealed to us, then we will see true governance—one force acting in the entire universe, good that does good. Other than it, we find an external, fake management, designed to confuse us. After all, when we make efforts to try to uncover the true governance, we see various possibilities to circumvent this deception and see the truth behind it, to break through the barriers that stand in the way and find out that all this is made by the Creator, by a single good force and nothing else.

Not only does the upper force work around us, creating various images, barriers between itself and us, an entire world of its concealment. It also exists inside of us, shaping all our thoughts, desires, and even the fact that I am talking about it right now, not realizing that it is orchestrated by the Creator.

We need to imagine, discover, and begin to live in this feeling until we completely identify ourselves with the Creator. All disturbances should be perceived as help for us to see the Creator acting in reality: both inside and outside myself. “They helped every one his friend” is to find oneself inside the upper force, to try discover it at every second and realize that all our thoughts, desires, and sensations come from no other source but the Creator.

The beginning of this revelation is called a “spiritual embryo.” A person annuls himself, discovering that everything stems from a single source that he exists in, like in a mother’s womb. Nothing else exists.

As soon as we reach this state, disturbances immediately appear. By overcoming them and relating everything only to the Creator, we start advancing through the “nine months of pregnancy.” This is how we continue until the very end of correction. Throughout 6,000 years, the uncorrected desire has been awakening inside us. By correcting it, we reveal the Creator. Eventually, we reach the end of correction, establishing in all our senses that “There is none else besides Him.”¹
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/5/18, Lesson on the Topic “Perception of One Reality, One Single Force” (Preparation for the Convention)
1 Minute 5:45

Applied Scientists And Researchers

Question: The purpose of creation is to delight the created beings, to delight man. This is where the starting point of spiritual work begins. Why is it so important to remember this in order to advance?

Answer: You must understand that the group is more important to the Creator than you are, that your mission is to push them, to bring them to adhesion with the Creator. Like any researcher, you have to enter the unknown. Make the work in a group your goal and everything will appear in front of your eyes.

To an ordinary person, everything is seemingly clear. He plays with toys like a child. While nothing is clear to us, we constantly reveal greater depths, hollow spaces in us, as a result of our scrutinies, and thus try to unravel the creation, its essence, its system and forces. This is the highest level of work.

There are two kinds of scientists: applied scientists and researchers. Applied scientists know the laws and tries to apply them in various fields. They do great work that is useful to humanity, but they don’t venture into the unknown. However, this is precisely where the greatest human work lies, the utmost state a scientist can be in.

How did all the great minds like Einstein and Newton make discoveries? They did not know what they were about to discover until, as it says, “an apple falls on your head.”

When we come to such a state through our own efforts where we receive a “blow on the head,” and then everything opens up.
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From the TV program “The Last Generation,” 3/22/18

Soul – One For All And Each Has Their Own

Question: What parts is a spiritual object called “a soul” comprised of? Is it permanent or subject to change?

Answer: The soul consists of ten Sefirot. It constantly changes depending on a person’s work on himself. But there are always ten parts connected in a single integral system, and it is everything.

The soul is one for all or each one has his own, just as our world is one for all and each one has his own. But what we perceive in our egoism is called “our world,” “this world,” and what we perceive in the property of bestowal, and maybe even love, exiting our egoism, is called “spiritual world” or “soul.”

Question: Is the soul and the upper world the same?

Answer: The feeling of the upper world is called the “soul” or the “ten Sefirot.” The ten Sefirot are the skeleton of the soul.

The word “Sefira” comes from the word “luminous” (Sapir). It is a point that was egoistic and became bestowing, altruistic. Therefore, it glows.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 6/10/18

New Life #1046 – The Wisdom Of Kabbalah And Science

New Life #1046 – The Wisdom Of Kabbalah And Science
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

The wisdom of Kabbalah is the root of all sciences. It is the study of the whole world and provides us with tools to explore all of reality, independent of the viewer. Our inner structure determines what we see as reality. In normal research, a person investigates the world through the five senses and other instruments that expand the range of his egoistic perception. This type of scientific study is based on the desire to receive. The wisdom of Kabbalah, however, approaches study from a new vantage point, namely, the desire to bestow. We perceive the power of bestowal or “nature” according to the degree of our inner development of the desire to bestow. In other words, in order to explore the power of bestowal, a person has to build within himself a force of bestowal, similar to the one found in nature.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #1046 – The Wisdom Of Kabbalah And Science,” 8/14/18

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