“How To Make 2021 Our Best Year Ever” (Linkedin)

 My new article on Linkedin “How to Make 2021 Our Best Year Ever”

Each year on December 28, people celebrate the Good Riddance Day, when they toss, smash, or burn objects, pictures, or notes representing bad memories from the previous year. This year, the event, inspired by a Latin American tradition, was especially noticeable as people lined up in Times Square to smash their bad memories. After all, didn’t 2020 provide much to toss and smash?

I understand why people want to smash bad memories and why they hope they will never return. But I also know that “smashing” bad memories, that is, putting them behind us and forgetting about them, is the best way to guarantee that they will return, and likely more intensely than before.

We treat unpleasant events as misfortunes, but they are not. If there is no purpose to unpleasant events, however painful, then is there a purpose to the welcome events, those that please us and make us feel good? If something makes no sense, how can its opposite make any sense?

What has emerged in the passing year, especially in the US, is hatred, mainly between Left and Right. If they could overcome it, they would thrive in everything: health, education, economics, and in every other sense. What is destroying America is hatred between Left and Right, and between Blacks and Whites.

Revealing the hatred in itself is not bad. What’s bad is when you don’t do anything about it. Hatred among people is revealed so we will rise above it. However hard we try to stifle it, it will not work. Americans have been trying to suppress hatred between Blacks and Whites probably since the beginning of slavery. They fought a civil war over racial hatred, yet racism is as vivid and as rabid now as it has always been. Moreover, now it is destroying the entire American society.

This should teach us something: We cannot erase hatred; we can only rise above it. That is, we can only increase our desire to unite, our understanding that unity is essential to our survival, to the point that unity precisely with the one we hate is more important than to vent our aversion.

When we do that, when we make unity that important to us, we will realize that this was the whole purpose of experiencing the hatred in the first place. Had it not been for the revelation of the hatred, we would not have needed to forge such a strong union. Now, thanks to the prior animosity, we have formed unity on levels that we never knew existed.

For this reason, we should not say “good riddance” to anything that we don’t like. On the contrary, we need to look for the flaw it came to show us. And that flaw, one way or the other, will always relate to our lack of love for one another.

So for the coming year, I wish everyone a year of reckoning, a year of understanding why things happen, why we should unite, and how we can achieve it. This will give 2020 purpose and meaning, and it will make 2021 our best year ever.

“10 Insights On 2020, And Beyond” (Medium)

 Medium published my new article “10 Insights on 2020, and Beyond”

2020 was an eventful year, traumatic in many ways, revolutionary in others, and certainly unpredictable. As I see it, 2020 has ushered us into a new era, where we will view things very differently going forward. So, to conclude 2020, I’d like to offer some insights on several topics that were affected by this turbulent year, and some thoughts about our future in human society.

1. Familial relations: In 2020, we learned about the importance of family, that in the end, this is our first, most intimate, and most natural circle, the one I truly should look after. We’ve done a lot of scrutiny regarding the family and I think that in the end, it will create more solid connections.

2. Food: This year, at least in Israel, we stopped eating out, since restaurants were closed much of the time, and started cooking. In my view, this can only do us good. I hope we can eliminate the supermarkets and leave only ten percent of the things they sell, only the healthy, natural things. This is all we need. Nothing is better for us than to cook our own food. And if we crave something new, we can always visit our neighbors or they can visit us.

3. Shopping: I think shopping will change drastically. It all depends on the influence of the environment but I don’t think shopping will be as it was prior to the virus. It’s just that the social environment dictates everything. If it told us to walk around in slippers, we would. If it told us that high heels were ridiculous, no woman would dare wear them.

Instead of looking for new things to buy, we will look for new insights, new relationships with people. We will want to “buy” a new approach to everyone, more welcoming and warm. We will become ashamed when we have bad thoughts about others; we will feel as though we’re walking around naked, and everyone can see who we really are, that our thoughts are exposed. The garments will be a little more spiritual, beautifying our thoughts about others rather than the skin on our flesh.

4. Health: As I said many times before, I don’t view Covid-19 as an illness. I think it is a cure that heals our society, our relationships, and in the end, our health. I think that after the pandemic, society will feel healthier than it felt prior to the pandemic, especially if we use the crisis in order to intensify our connections and mutual responsibility.

5. School: I think we must revolutionize the education system, turn it upside down. There is more to be discussed here but it’s clear that the current system is defunct and needs to change. It is simply unsuitable for the 21st century. Schools have become a place for nothing but licentiousness, drugs, and a host of other corruptions. There is no point going back to it.

6. Monitors and screens: Although we’re spending more time than ever watching our little screens on mobile phones or PCs, we haven’t learned a thing from them. What we did learn is that the people who control the mainstream and social media are so corrupt that I haven’t enough words to describe what I think about them; it is simply terrible. I would disconnect anyone who is currently creating shows on the media, and I would send them all to an institution where they can be educated about being human, if it is still possible for them.

The media are not a means of communication; they are a means of manipulation. I think a radical change is necessary here, or we will all suffer a terrible blow because of it, and only afterwards begin to recover and do things better. Before people in the media even approach their job, they must be taught what it means to treat people decently. Only after they are reformed in that way can they be permitted to work in this field.

7. Jobs and careers: It turns out that we don’t need to work that many hours. In 2020, we learned that we can work fewer hours, settle for more basic needs, but benefit ourselves and all of nature in the process.

8. Money: For now, we still worship money. However, we are moving toward an awakening from it, and I hope that soon we will begin to feel that there is no escape from revolutionizing how we value things. We will begin to search for new rewards, benefits that have to do with improved human relations, a sense of mutual esteem, equality, and mutual responsibility. When we can buy what we need through good relationships, money will become meaningless.

9. Living conditions: We’ve learned that we can live out in the country and still remain connected. This is very important. I’m sure that this trend will expand. Today, there is no reason why I shouldn’t live where I feel most comfortable yet work at almost anything.

10. Travel: I think travel has changed significantly. People are losing the desire, the craving to see new things. There was a period when humanity chased these excursions, but we seem to have grown out of it. I think we’re entering a period where people will simply not be able to satisfy themselves simply by traveling. Looking at buildings or nature will simply not do it for us anymore.

This trend is even more potent in the younger generation. Young people are completely absorbed in their mobile phones. They may be in Amsterdam, or wherever, yet text their friends back home. What they have on the monitor is what matters, and nothing else interests them.

“2021 – A Decisive Year For Europe” (Linkedin)

 My new article on Linkedin “2021 – A Decisive Year for Europe”

2021 is going to be a decisive year for Europe. The Old Continent has become a cesspool of divisiveness among countries, factions, movements, and peoples. The UK, Germany, France, the Balkans, Italy, Spain, everything is so divided and splintered that unless Europeans start thinking of themselves as one entity very soon, they will suffer terribly. It will certainly not be easy, but a pan European identity is their only way out of anguish.

Europe is in many ways the cradle of human development. As such, the world will look at it and learn, and Europe should show the world what the future of the world can be like. It must show that despite all the many colors, races, nationalities, and their war-ridden history, they can rise above it and build themselves as one family, truly as one family. Otherwise, they will simply consume one another. If they do not unite, I see no future for them.

Besides their internal frictions, China, Russia, and the US will vie over control in Europe, and nothing will be left of “the Old Lady.” Even Africa will join the “party,” as is already happening with the migration of refugees, but in other ways, as well.

When you look at the world map, it’s interesting to see the unique role that each place has in bringing the world to a better place. The US is an example of a nation divided into myriad factions that are still one nation. Europe is an example of many nations that must function as one nation. Each must provide an example of unity above the differences that the world can follow. If either of them fails to carry out their role, they will suffer. I can’t say who will suffer more if they do not execute their required union, but both will certainly agonize.

Israel, too, has its unique role. In fact, Israel’s role is perhaps the most important in the process of unifying the world. Israel must provide the philosophy, the theory, the ideological infrastructure for unity: where it comes from, why unity is essential, and by which rules and regulations we are to arrange it.

The current European Union will not achieve these goals. In fact, I am all for dismantling it, and I’m happy that the UK left it. The current EU was not built in order to unite Europe. It was established in order to bolster banks, industrialists, and billionaires, but not to unite Europe. One could drive from one end of Europe to the other before the establishment of the EU, so there is no benefit in terms of open borders. The regular person does not gain anything from living in a so-called united Europe.

As I said in the beginning, a European union should be a union of the hearts, where they feel that they are in deep connection. And the more different they are, the more tightly they will unite, according to their efforts. The ones who are the farthest now will be the closest once they unite.

This union must be completely unrelated to the existing institutions of the EU. It must be a separate entity that functions whether or not the current EU survives the approaching upheavals. This union of hearts is the union they were searching for over the past thirty years or so since they established the EU.

And as for Israel and the ideology that Israel is required to provide, the level of hatred that Europeans will harbor toward Israel depends on the level of their hatred for connection. If Israel offers a way to connect—which isn’t the current situation, but presumably—and the Europeans shun it because they do not want to connect, then they will have no choice but to take some more beating from other countries or from nature until they yield and become receptive to the notion of connection.

And speaking of antisemitism, we think it is impervious to reason, and perhaps this is so, as are all hatreds. However, antisemitism is not impervious to a model of unity coming out of Israel. Even Henry Ford, whose antisemitic ideology Hitler admired, wrote in his rabid composition The International Jew—the World’s Foremost Problem, “The emergence of the Jewish Question is a part of the culmination of destiny that has come upon us, not for harm but for good. …The justification of a discussion of the Jewish Question is the good for the Jews, and the greatest present obstacle to that good is the Jews themselves. The time is here when they shall see it.”

In other words, antisemitism is not necessarily a fact of life, but something that Israel can overcome by carrying out its role, and by the nations accepting Israel’s contribution—the ideology of unity. The future of Europe hangs in the balance; if Europeans overcome their divisions soon, they will triumph. If not, they will lose bitterly. Israel, for its part, must do its duty in the healing by providing the ideology of unity above differences and by setting an example.

“Wake Up Humanity, Before The Waves Drown Us” (Linkedin)

 My new article on Linkedin “Wake Up Humanity, Before the Waves Drown Us”

Most of the summaries of 2020 (the few who even attempted it) speak of 2020 as a tragedy, as if their lives have been stolen. In my view, this is an immature perspective. When a little boy plays outside with his friends and his mother calls him in to finish his homework, the boy thinks she is a terrible mother, but we grownups know better. We are like that boy, throwing a temper tantrum at Mother Nature’s insistence that we do what we must. Nature didn’t do anything bad to humanity; she only called us in to do our homework. And as we all know, if we don’t do our homework, we will fail the test. And when the test is about our lives, it is not one we want to fail.

While we were home, in the first lockdown that Mother Nature imposed on us, we should have started doing our homework. We should have realized that she had sent us the virus that sent us home only because we have been bad to one another, like brothers who cannot get along and fight so much that their mother has no choice but to send them to their separate rooms. She hopes that after some time alone, they will realize that they shouldn’t treat each other as they did and will resolve to find a way to get along.

After some time, the mother lets them out, since she is their mother, after all, and wants them to enjoy life. However, instead of making peace, they start fighting even worse than before. The poor mother has no choice but to punish them more severely, hoping that this time they will learn. The children know that when they are quiet, Mother is nice to them. But the brothers hate each other so fiercely that they forget what is best for them the minute they see each other, so they start bickering again.

This is where we are. Nature’s blows are like the mother’s admonition or punishment and we are the obstinate children. Instead of learning, we’re counting on the vaccines to enable us to take off our masks so we can swear at each other once again, eliminate the social distance so we can beat each other up, and hail this emotional carnage as “freedom” and “normalcy.”

Every time Nature sends another punishment, it’s like a wave that hits us and forces us to retreat. During the retreat, we are supposed to reflect on our behavior with each other. But we don’t. Finally, the water recedes and we come out of our shelters only to squabble, humiliate, and exploit each other even more than before. This makes the next wave more substantial, aiming to force us to reflect. If we don’t start reflecting soon, the waves will drown us. They might come in all sorts of ways; Nature is very creative when it comes to punishments, but there is no reason for us to experience them first hand. We can choose instead to discover her creativity in giving and in caring.

Look at the coronavirus. We haven’t even vaccinated everyone from the original strain, and we are already dealing with two new strains, from the UK and from South Africa, both of which are much more contagious, and to which we don’t know if the vaccine already approved will work. It is a sign that Nature will not let up. She will not stop until we learn.

Look at how we’re treating one another with the vaccine. Why do countries that cannot afford to buy it have to beg for it? Haven’t we learned that we are all in this together? Haven’t we seen that an infection anywhere is an infection everywhere? Dispensing the vaccine to all the countries, none excluded, is our first test in mutual responsibility. So far, we’re failing.

As I see things now, I think that we will live with the coronavirus and its mutations for many years to come. It’s come to teach us to live differently, with more care, consideration, and responsibility for one another. Until we learn, it won’t go away. The waves will come and go, but the more we stall in learning, the more poignant the waves will become. In the beginning, the virus didn’t affect children; now it does. In the beginning, it affected mainly our lungs; now it affects our brains and hearts. What more do we want it to do to us before we learn what it is trying to tell us?

Remember the mother allegory: If we don’t stop fighting, Mother Nature will send us to our separate rooms or find other ways to punish us, which will be more and more painful.
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The Energy That Feeds Us

 

Question: A person is part of a large complex system. Naturally we need internal energy and strength to maintain systemic relations. What is the energy source that feeds us?

Answer: This is egoistic fulfillment on all levels: inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human.

If we want to get to the next level, then we need to use this energy to nourish our bodies only to the extent necessary for their existence, and we fill our “I” with the quality of bestowal and love for others. Then, we will begin to receive a new kind of fulfillment, filling with bestowal. This will be a completely different feeling of awareness of existence.

Question: So, in fact, a person can simultaneously receive two types of energy?

Answer: Yes. I get an animal filling for my body and absolutely consciously because my condition dictates this to me. The highest fulfillment is where I work in a completely different way, in the quality of bestowal and love for others.

Question: Why does a person sometimes lack energy?

Answer: He does not see its source and does not know why to receive it and how to use it correctly. Therefore, the states of powerlessness, aimlessness, detachment, and nihilism are good states that lead him to a correct re-evaluation of one’s values both within oneself and in the world, and then lead a person to the next stage.

Comment: From the point of view of the systems approach, our lack of energy is not very good for the system because a person begins to become imbalanced within it.

My Response: This pushes him forward in his search. In this search, he finds himself in new states. If he did not have that need, he would never have developed. As they say, “Love and hunger rule the world.”

Question: How can one be happy and fulfilled in any given situation?

Answer: This depends on the goal. If it approaches you even with a sense of some unpleasant qualities, feelings, and actions, this does not matter. The main thing is that, in the end, you get something more. It all depends on the value of what you are aiming for.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 12/7/20

Concealment Teaches Us How To Correct Ourselves

 

We are in a special reality that entirely hides the Creator. But if we relate to it correctly, then through all its levels: inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human, we gradually find out that the Creator wants us to reveal Him.

This concealment teaches us how to correct ourselves in order to reveal the Creator, not to remain in blind faith, but to attain the upper force explicitly and openly, to come from concealment to revelation. Therefore, we must perceive this world as an opportunity to reveal the Creator. Behind the material world, we will begin to reveal the spiritual world, its many stages, and each time rise from concealment to revelation.

Through such exercises, organized by the Creator from the beginning of creation to the end, we gain reason and sensations, learn how the Creator hides and how to reveal Him, and through concealment and revelation we understand what He wants to tell us.

It is known that “the advantage of light is perceived from darkness,” but darkness is the first attainment. Only within it do we begin to reveal the light and the Creator, learn His language, the letters—a point, a line, a circle, a triangle, a crossbar—different forms of darkness and light, revealed one against the other.

In this way, we gradually gain understanding and start to speak with the Creator in the same language, to master His program, according to which we must build ourselves in order to understand Him, feel and become His partners, sons in the entire universe, in all forms of His concealment and revelation.

In the end, all concealments only support revelation. The concealment does not disappear, but becomes a background on which we reveal the upper force and incorporate the darkness and light in ourselves and reach our end of correction.

Concealment is perceived against the background of revelation, and revelation against the background of concealment. The main thing is to be in both states and be able to move from one to the other and back on your own, and so begin to understand the Creator’s message, His language, and know what He wants to tell us.

The whole creation consists of two forces: plus and minus, light and darkness, which manifest themselves in relation to us as concealment and revelation. That is why it is so important in every state we go through, every day and every moment, not to turn away from the situation in order to see that it has the measure of concealment, and the measure of revelation in it.

The main thing is not to forget that we stand directly in front of the Creator, who always draws us a world woven of concealment and revelation. As if writing black letters on a white sheet of paper, the Creator reveals to us His attitude, His nature, so that we study Him, learn to understand, cooperate, and so achieve adhesion with Him.

All our lives, in any situation, we must remember that we are present with some concealment and some revelation of the Creator, and by combining these two forms, He draws the world and our sense of ourselves for us. Then we will know the right way to turn deeper inside to Him, to feel not ourselves in our world, but the Creator, that is, how He builds us and our world.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/29/20, “Concealment”

New Life 1290 – Motivation At Work

 

New Life 1290 – Motivation At Work
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Our nature is to lose motivation just as a person who begins to eat loses his appetite at a certain point. There should be experts in an organization who make sure that motivation, creativity, and innovation remain high by making employees into partners and giving awards to show importance, respect, and appreciation. If we want a worker to come to work enthusiastically, he needs to feel that he can express his uniqueness at work.

The quality of the interpersonal connections and the atmosphere at work greatly impact the workers’ motivation. Competition in an integral organization means each one competes with himself as well as connects to others in order to contribute to the success of the organization.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1290–Motivation At Work,” 12/13/20

Video: Play Now | Download

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Does The Concept Of “Life” Change Over Time?

 

Question: Recently, when, on one hand, the world is being hit by a pandemic and other crises and, on the other hand, there are very strong developments in technology and science, does this mean that the very concept of “life” is changing?

Answer: It is changing. Ordinary people living in this world are beginning to feel more and more that this world does not have any meaning, that none of our efforts will lead us to something special, that is, to eternal fulfillment, and, therefore, that there is really no need to live.

This is awakening, especially in the new generation. The next generations are coming who will fully feel the hopelessness and aimlessness of our existence. This will lead the masses to the question of the meaning of life. We must prepare this transition for them.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 12/7/20

The Mythological Language Of The Book Of Zohar

 

There are texts in The Book of Zohar that seem very strange to an ordinary person. Therefore, to introduce a person into them, to explain them to him, it will take, perhaps, several years.

It all depends on the qualities and states that one must experience in order to begin to feel them. Just like a small child, you cannot tell about the experiences of an adult, about his art, etc. He will not understand this.

The allegorical, mythological language of The Book of Zohar is very conventional, but accurate. After all, if I know the inner meaning of the concept “crocodile,” then through the image of an earthly crocodile, I see the forces that stand behind it, determine its general background, properties, appearance, character, absolutely everything! I see all spiritual properties in this earthly image, and I deal with them.

Thus, The Book of Zohar tells about our inner properties. Through reading it, I reveal everything in myself. The Garden of Eden is the highest level. The four rivers, the crocodile, the big sea, this is Malchut in which souls exist, and with them I must merge.

That is, this whole picture is in me. Everything exists in the person himself. Even the world that is supposedly around us, in fact, we feel what is inside ourselves. It only seems to us that it is on the outside.
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From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #1

Will We Return To This World After Death?

 

Question: Will a person return to this world after death?

Answer: If we talk only about the animal (physical) body and its life, then this state does not return.

There is no need for it and there is nothing to regret about it. We just need to try to extract the maximum eternal benefit from each state that we go through.

Question: If we do not speak from the point of view of the animal body, but from the point of view of human consciousness, what does life and death look like?

Answer: A person’s consciousness should lead him to a state where he begins to feel the general consciousness, connects to the general cloud of information and fulfillment and stays in it. He will see himself and everything that exists in a single stream of information.

Question: Can a person remember his past incarnations?

Answer: If in order to realize himself, a person needs some new or additional information, then he receives this from being included in this huge cloud, which is called the Creator, nature.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 12/07/20

Blitz Of Kabbalah Tips About Love

 

Question: What does love of life mean to you?

Answer: Love of life is an opportunity to achieve what I really strive for.

Question: What is eternal love?

Answer: Eternal love is a state of absolute fulfillment, which does not entail any opportunities to add something.

Question: What is absolute love?

Answer: The same.

Question: First love?

Answer: It is just a youthful hobby that lyricists invented.

Question: Love without borders?

Answer: Here we mean, probably, eternal, perfect love.

Question: Love for the family?

Answer: This kind of love arises because there are people I must take care of.

Question: What does love of friends mean to you?

Answer: Friends, comrades, this is the small circle of people with whom I wish to climb to the top of life.

Question: Love for the teacher?

Answer: A teacher is a guide that shows me how to develop my soul and make myself immortal.

Question: Love for your neighbor?

Answer: All people on Earth are neighbors. They are parts of our common soul—Adam.

Question: Love for yourself?

Answer: Self-love is selfish love over which one must rise as quickly as possible.

Question: Love for the Creator, what is it?

Answer: Love for the Creator is love for the entire universe, which is permeated with the property of reciprocity and convergence.
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 10/23/20

If Everyone Lived By The Rules

 

Question: Do I need to explain the norms of behavior to an adult or would this be considered interfering in someone else’s life?

Answer: There is no such thing as someone else’s life. We are all elements of the same system and we all influence each other. Therefore a person does not have absolute freedom in relation to others.

He must take his rightful part in the general system in which he was born and in which he lives. He cannot free himself from this in any way, not even through death.

Question: If everyone lived by the rules, would we all be happy?

Answer: To the fullest.
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 10/9/20

Seeing The Highest Impact In Everything

 

Question: Are all problems sent to us by the Creator?

Answer: These are not problems but impacts on me. Only I, perhaps, misunderstand them and therefore consider them to be unnecessary and harmful. I must understand that everything comes from the Creator so that I correctly tune into Him with a correct, reverse connection.

Question: Does this mean that a Kabbalist believes that any disturbance, for example, an illness, can be regarded as the positive influence of the Creator that is capable of moving him forward?

Answer: Surely. Everything that the Creator does is aimed at bringing each of us and everyone together to Him. This is so that the whole environment, including the inanimate, vegetative, animate, and people, would not be some kind of obstacle preventing me from getting closer to Him.

One should accustom oneself to seeing only an example of His highest influence in everything and to try to react to it in the same way in return. The method of how to see the one single force behind everything is the science of Kabbalah.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 2/4/19

New Life 1289 – Parents Of A Child With Special Needs

 

New Life 1289 – Parents Of A Child With Special Needs
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

There are no blows from nature that cannot be complemented including having a child with special needs. There is no point asking, “Why do I deserve this?” or comparing ourselves with a perfect way of life. Disabled people are usually happier because nature gives them a greater spirit. We can see mutual support, connection, and joy in groups of disabled children. Parents should accept their fate and learn to cope with it. They should not stop any activities and keep searching for how to complement the disability with the use of equipment and exercises. It is very important that they have a supportive environment of people in the same situation from whom they can learn how to live successfully with the disability and who will bring them examples of disabled people who have greatly succeeded in life. Society needs to help disabled people grow stronger, manage, and find their place in society.

The connection between people always helps because we are all a part of nature, which is absolutely integral. We need to build support mechanisms in society so that each one feels that the whole society covers him with care.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1289 –Parents Of A Child With Special Needs,” 11/29/20

Video: Play Now | Download

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“How Do People Discover True Love?” (Quora)

 

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How do people discover true love?“

We first need to understand that we have no idea what true love is. Until we reach true love, we interpret love in all kinds of corporeal and egoistic ways, i.e., where we primarily benefit ourselves from whatever we picture as love.

True love, however, is completely different. True love is the ability to benefit others, to sense others’ desires and to enjoy via their fulfillment. The realization of true love is by nature contrary to how we define love in corporeal terms.

True love is ultimately the unification of humanity into a single common system. We currently experience this system in its opposite form, through egoistic lenses, where we constantly try to benefit ourselves at the expense of others and nature, and by doing so, feel a certain degree of separation and distance in our attitudes to each other. By aiming to unite above this egoistic state we find ourselves in, we discover our rejection to each other, and eventually arrive at the realization that we need to rise above our differences, and forms bonds of true love. The more that we feel growing distance between us, the more we will develop a sincere desire to bridge this distance with a genuine attitude of love and care.

True love is thus the unification of opposites, when hatred and rejection become covered in a common umbrella of love. The more that we move toward unification above our inborn egoistic distance, then the more we will begin to sense a new kind of atmosphere entering our lives, giving us a much fuller feeling of fulfillment than everything else we have enjoyed to date.

The discovery of true love entering our lives is thus an opening to discover the perfection and wholeness existing in reality. Instead of feeling a narrow and detached sensation of life in our inborn egoistic qualities, we would “click” into a perception and sensation of reality similar to how cells and organs function and feel the whole organism that they are parts of. In such a state, we would feel constant fluctuations between the negative-egoistic and positive-altruistic poles of reality as we would continually cover our differences and divisions with a much greater force of unification. As such, we would feel ourselves in an eternal world where life constantly ebbs and flows.

When we transition from our inborn egoistic mode of wishing to benefit ourselves at others’ expense, to an altruistic mode of wanting to benefit others, we feel our instinctive egoistic impulses as negative forces that we rise above. By rising above the ego, we sense forces of connection, giving and love—the positive and eternal forces dwelling in nature—and complement each other in a common tendency to make that shift.

This fateful shift depends solely on the extent of our unification, where we rise above our differences and divisions and start fulfilling one another. The feeling of mutual fulfillment gives us a sense of eternal life.

To discover this true love, we need only learn how to upgrade our connections, to mutually complement and fulfill one another, and to replace our egoistic lenses where we see flaws in others, to ones where we feel any egoistic impulse as an invitation to unite above the differences.

Based on the Daily Kabbalah Lesson with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on December 22, 2020. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

Could There Be Too Much Knowledge?

 

Question: There are people who want to learn as much as possible. Can a person gain too much knowledge?

Answer: Unfortunately, often a person fills himself with rubbish, the so-called Klipot. In general, this is unnecessary knowledge that hinders because we are very weak in perceiving and processing information and in making decisions.

Therefore, it is worth limiting ourselves to some clear area or to sensory information cloud in which we could properly develop.

Question: It is said: “He who increases knowledge increases pain.” What does it mean?

Answer: This can be considered from two points of view. One, I am trying to acquire knowledge that I absolutely do not need, and then I just get confused in it and distract myself with something unnecessary. Or I acquire knowledge that brings me pain, but this pain directs me to search for truth and happiness.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 12/7/20

Try It And See For Yourself

 

Question: A person can get closer to others only if he sees a benefit in it for himself. Of course, the spiritual gain is even greater: revealing the upper force or entering another level of existence. Can anything else motivate him?

Answer: The society can help him by directing him correctly toward the goal.

Question: Perhaps it would suffice to tell him that he would have a good life and that it would be worth it?

Answer: No one will believe that. A person can start to feel this in the right type of society. Only this way, would he be able to set himself up for a relationship based on connection and brotherhood with others, even to the point of love. Then he could truly start to feel the new level of existence.

Comment: It is puzzling that we are willing to die for some future life but not to unite with others for the sake of this future life.

My Response: Because we do not believe or feel that it is possible. No one is offering the perspective that nature has this in store for us.

Comment: Today, everyone from politicians to philosophers talks about unification and mutual guarantee.

My Response: They just talk, no one tries to prove it.

Comment: An interesting thing is that no one has proven that there is a God or that we go to heaven, but people still believe these things.

My Response: It is their business what they believe. It is pointless to try to prove anything to them since everyone goes along with their egoistic nature. One builds his own world according to it and experiences various problems. Suddenly the science of Kabbalah enters and says, “You can solve this problem by rising above the world that you created.”

Comment: But people do not buy into it.

My Response: You should not believe anything! Try it and see for yourself! That is the only way it works.

When you try it with your friends in the group, you begin to see that it works and that this is the only way we will be able to exist in nature; first in a small environment and then in larger and larger ones. You influence each other and perform actions that evoke the upper light. It changes you and you become a different person.
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 10/16/20

Love Is A Union

 

Question: What convinces a person to accept the idea of universal equality? Although we are all different, equality means that love will cover all transgressions. What information should be given to a person in order for him to understand this?

Answer: Love will cover all transgressions is the law of nature to which we must advance. The sooner we do this, the sooner we will master the upper world and the highest state; we will achieve perfection, completeness, and the true sensation of where we are.

Comment: But if this is a law of nature, then let’s work with scientists.

My Response: No, the attainment of the highest state does not pertain to scientists because it occurs within a person as he changes his nature from egoistic to altruistic. This is not what earthly science does. It doesn’t have such tools.

Comment: Everyone can understand that the rejection between us is a sin, but grasping how to build love, based on this, is completely incomprehensible.

When you are specifically asked about a certain situation, how to act in it, it is impossible to explain it. You cannot tell someone how to cover rejection with love if he has one opinion and I have another.

My Response: The fact is that you cannot transform yourself in one movement. This requires constant training with friends in a group, in a small society, where you restore and simulate the spiritual law love your neighbor as yourself.

This is a long-term, educational, upbringing-type of process after which your perception of the world changes. Then, you can come to a state in which you are able to unite above all the varieties. Love is union.
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From KabTV’s “”Communication Skills” 10/16/20

Four Hypostases Of A Single Spiritual Root

 

Question: There are four races: white—European, yellow—Asian, black—African, and red—the indigenous people of Latin America. What is the origin of human races? Does each race have a specific function?

Answer: No. The origin is in the spiritual world. They are in no way connected to our world, but they give their imprint, their effect in it.

Everything spiritual is under one single root: the four-letter name of the Creator. What does it mean? The Creator manifests itself in our world in four stages, in four hypostases. Therefore, four categories of all kinds descend from a common root into our world. For example: four seasons (winter, autumn, spring, summer), four human races, and so on.

Question: But are there any internal differences?

Answer: Of course there are. But they do not matter. If we want to connect to our spiritual root, then everyone rises to it. We have a common goal, and we can help each other in this common goal.

Moreover, our differences do not prevent us from uniting and achieving the common goal in which we are so connected that the unification remains and all physical, moral, and other differences disappear.

Question: It is not even worth going into what purpose each race has: some sing better, some reveal the laws of nature better, etc.?

Answer: These are mutual complements that will gradually begin to manifest more and more, and we will all admire and enjoy our diversity.
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 10/14/20

“Setting Goals In A Rapidly Changing Reality” (Medium)

 Medium published my new article “Setting Goals in a Rapidly Changing Reality”

The world is changing at an ever increasing rate. This is a fact. But the direction in which humanity is evolving is a constant one. Many dilemmas afflict people today. A new mutation of the coronavirus suddenly arrives with new uncertainties — Will it extend the plague for an even more extended period of time? Meanwhile, we continue living from one lockdown to another. How can we set directions and goals in life in a reality that changes every moment?

The problem is that we spoil the plans for one another by wanting to impose our ways on others. The ego that grows in every person causes each to focus only on themself and to exploit others more and more to their advantage. This creates an artificial world where no one brings the other closer to balance, but rather the opposite.

Stress, loads of work, health issues, and endless concerns are some of the many aggravating factors that throw us off balance. This is modern life. So we search for a path forward that will restore calmness, a state in which we feel comfortable and enjoy the flow of life. However, by nature, everyone is built differently, and this can be seen from an early age. Some kids enjoy sitting and playing for long hours, while others are compelled to run after a ball from corner to corner.

Even in adulthood there are those who enjoy the challenge of encountering problems and improvising solutions. Without action, they fall into boredom or even depression. Others must feel in every moment a renewal in relation to achieving the goals they have set for themselves. Without change, they feel dead. Finally, of course, there are also many who are unable to tolerate change. Whichever characteristics are possessed, each one of us strives to feel enjoyment in life.

The problem is that we spoil the plans for one another by wanting to impose our ways on others. The ego that grows in every person causes each to focus only on themself and to exploit others more and more to their advantage. This creates an artificial world where no one brings the other closer to balance, but rather the opposite.

The Key to Coping Properly With Change

Feeling alone is the major source of all the stress and anxiety we experience, particularly when we are undergoing change. The solution lies in getting support from our environment.

When life summons us to confusing and difficult situations, talking to those who have been through similar situations can restore calm and balance. This provides us with new thoughts and additional perspectives that help us to build within us the best attitude to the changes we are going through. A supportive group can literally dilute the grief and pain of each and every individual.

Gradually, evolutionary forces will also turn us into components of a larger social system where each will perform integral actions towards the others out of awareness and understanding. This simply amounts to building complementary connections between us in every matter and at every level — from relationships within the family, through work and community, and to the level of the state.

Accordingly, the main capacity that will be required in the future will be skills for the arrangement of an integral lifestyle and world. This is the general direction toward which today’s reality is headed.

In the long run, professional areas, roles, and jobs will all collapse or prosper according to integral development criteria. This means that whatever leads to a mutually beneficial connection between human beings will succeed, and whatever works in the opposite direction will not survive. So already today, each of us should take this into account when setting our direction and goals.

Business owners will also have to adapt to the new demands of the times. Those businesses that will be able to direct themselves towards connection between human beings will flourish, and those that focus solely on their own technical occupation will fade away. Slowly we will see how such businesses will have no customers.

When choosing a profession, it will be important to pay attention not only to our individual preferences, but also to the relationships that prevail within the profession between people. Satisfaction and the ability to feel that one is fulfilling himself in the best way will depend on mutual help. In order to not feel lost and alone before work tasks, each one will need to feel part of a supportive team.

On the part of organizations, it will be the spirit that prevails among the employees that will determine its level of success. Therefore, it is worthwhile to seek the help of experts in creating integral relationships who know how to properly organize the workforce, giving everyone the understanding and feeling that it is through the optimal connection with others that a special atmosphere will be found that can propel the organization on a path to shared success.

Integration should reach a level where each one together with the rest will feel like one body, whose cooperation between its organs determines its level of healthy functioning. In any task wanting success, it will be clear to all that it will be worthwhile to build and keep an inclusive environment in which every opinion is valued. This is the only way to find the best possible solutions and the wisest decisions for an ideal future in our integral world.