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Giving Yourself To Others

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can we get out from the depth of our egoism that hangs around our neck like a weight and develop awe?

Answer: There are many different thoughts. I am here so that all the friends pull me out of my egoism. I am here to help the friends get out of their egoism. I am here to make some good action in the eyes of the Creator or to achieve a state where the Creator influences me through the group.

The question is which one of these thoughts is the most effective?

The answer is very simple. The most effective thought is when you constantly wish for all your friends, at least in the group of ten, not to mention the friends around the world, to attain the spiritual world.

And you are here in order to exert yourself and thus help others. Let it be self-sacrifice because in principle, it is the property of bestowal. You want to realize yourself—to give yourself to others.
[144492]
From the Convention In St. Petersburg 9/18/14, Preparatory Lesson 2

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Variations And Spiritual Transitions

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What should our intention be when we yearn for revelation in the desire of the friends, that the Creator’s force of love should be revealed? Should it be in a person, above him, or in the friends?

Answer: It depends on what phase of unity and connection with the group a person is in. First it seems that he is separated from the friends. Then it seems that he is inside them. Afterward it seems that they are inside him and he absorbs and perceives their thoughts and desires. This means that there are different variations and transitions here: Who is in whom; who is adhered to whom; who is connected inside whom?

Question: But how should I want the revelation of the Creator inside them, or should I simply adhere to them and that’s all?

Answer: You help them with your desire in every way. You should worry about your friends just as you wish a person who is closest to you success.
[144490]
From the Convention In St. Petersburg 9/18/14, Preparatory Lesson 2

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Yearn For Bestowal

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What is a consistent order of work with the ego? Suppose that I discover evil within myself. What happens next? How do I work with this?

Answer: The first condition is to relax, for you are not ready to work with your ego. So, don’t think about “taking an axe and hacking the tail off the ego.”

Work with the ego doesn’t begin from trying to annihilate the negative characteristics within us. Instead, we attract positive characteristics to us. So, in general, the wisdom of Kabbalah doesn’t talk about work with the ego. This is the role of the Creator, the Light. Our work is to want the ego to be corrected into an opposite characteristic.

In no manner do we think about the ego. We must yearn for good, for love, for connection and unity, for a connection between us in which each one will stop feeling himself and will feel one homogeneous body (the desire). If we think about this and want this, then the Light will act and influence us according to our yearning for it because this is its characteristic: one, singular, unified, a singular desire, the characteristic of bestowal.

Together with this, I don’t think at all about the ego. I think only about what is positive, and then the Light acts on me and corrects everything necessary in me. I don’t teach it what to correct because, after all, I don’t know that. That is how this works.

Question: Suppose I have discovered that I hate and envy some friend. What must I ask for at this moment?

Answer: Ask for love. Try it, and you will be convinced that there is a difference between asking for correction of evil and the appearance of the characteristic of good. It is not the same thing.

This is because a person is found wherever his thoughts are found. Why should I be within my evil and be stimulated by it, “sucking all around it,” and exploring it? I don’t need this! On the contrary, it is better that I would be connected with the positive future and desirable characteristics that don’t exist in me in the meantime. It is better to think about them, to yearn, to dream, to imagine that I am within them.

Flee from your ego and yearn for bestowal.
[144432]
From the Convention In St. Petersburg 9/18/14, Preparatory Lesson 2

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Correction Of The Family – The Key To Correction Of The World

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe hope that all of us will discover the necessity for total unification with the general rule, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” First of all, it is truly possible to discover and understand this state.

In spite of it all, there are people who understand the reason for the great world crisis. It didn’t develop somewhere. Rather, it was specifically within the person, in his ego. So, we must be concerned about our ego that has grown. This is the true cause for all of our troubles.

The first of them is the lack of ability to create a family, the lack of a natural, mutual connection that is imperative for the continuation of life. If we adapt the keys for this problem, then we certainly will be able to correct all the rest of the manifestations of the crises which are derived from that essential cause. The recovery of the family is an indication from that center where we solve the rest of the crises by adding more and more new circles to the territory of healthy influence.

So, it follows that the main problem is a problem of the education of a person, an education that guides him to create a natural connection such as existed a few decades ago. Then, everyone understood that it is necessary to marry, to give birth to children, and to preserve the family.

However, since then, a very sharp transition happened toward the opposite state that we have today. There is no longer any commitment. People divorce easily, they don’t want to give birth to children, and, in general, they don’t require familial relationships. This is the true crisis, a polar reversal of the original nature latent in the human species.

Without a doubt, the correction of the world must first be concentrated on and directed toward the correction of the mutual familial connection. Without a doubt, there are a multitude of reasons that can be summed up by that primordial imperative that a person requires a family and wants to continue the existence of the species.

If we could give people the right education, the ability to maintain good relationships—to maintain mutual love by raising them up to maintain clean sexual relationships on a humane level, mutual respect between the members of the couple so that they truly will support each other and be faithful to each other—then, certainly they would see that there is more benefit than harm in this. That is how we can succeed and lay a foundation for the correction of the entire world.
[144243]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” 7/22/14

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Exile: On The Verge Of The Light And Darkness, Part 1

Dr. Michael LaitmanLet’s go into more details of the period of the destruction of the First Temple. In essence, it was a descent from the level of love, the obliteration of the “Temple of Love” among people.

Previously, all twelve tribes of Israel observed the principle of “loving their neighbors as themselves.” Then, this notion collapsed. As a result, ten tribes out of twelve vanished. In other words, they were spread throughout the world.

Formerly, they existed at the level of “loving their neighbors.” After their descent to a lower level, they had nothing to do in the land of Israel since they were no longer connected with the general desires that had to be corrected for the sake of reaching other levels. The two tribes were quite enough to reach the lowest degree and stay at this level.

Let’s put it this way: all twelve tribes fell from the level of love to the lowest degree. The difference between these two steps actually comprises the ten tribes. That’s why they vanished.

Afterward, they led humanity towards the contemporary period: the ultimate dead end, the crisis that nowadays embraces the entire world.

Question: What do you mean by “they led”?

Answer: Many key historic characters came from the ten tribes. After ascertaining this fact, people will blame the Jews for “spoiling” everything. They will accuse them of purposeful guidance of innocent humanity towards the global crisis throughout history.

Question: Is it true that all leaders who directed the most significant and large-scale historical processes and influenced them come from the ten tribes?

Answer: Yes, it is true. The majority of them are simply a part of the ten tribes.

Question: Do they still run humanity to the crisis, the deadlock we are currently in?

Answer: Yes.

Question: What happened with the other two tribes?

Answer: They fell from the level of the First Temple. It was the reason why they lost the war with Babylonians, their “neighbors” who were ruled by Nebuchadnezzar. After he conquered the Jews, he took some of them into captivity and left some in the land of Israel.

Only a very small number of the Jewish people returned and re-connected with their brothers later. So, the two tribes started to build the next temple.

Question: Do they still have a spark living in them?

Answer: Not just a spark! They never hit the very bottom. They fell from the level of “loving their neighbors” to the level of a good connection among them, a so called “level of Hassadim” which in essence is about “not harming each other,” establishing good relationships and being courteous with their neighbors: “I am not against you; you are not confronting me.” This is also a spiritual level since it is built above the ego.

That’s why after the Jews returned from Babylon they built the Second Temple, which was constructed under the guidance and direct supervision of the Babylonian tsar Cyrus, Esther’s son. It’s a “twisted” story of “family” relationships…
[143808]
From KabTV’s “Babylon Yesterday and Today” 9/3/14, Part 6

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The Essential Secret Of The Jews, Part 56

From the book The Essential Secret of the Jews, M. Brushtein

The Postulates Of The Theory of Integrality

All our desires and thoughts are directed in one direction – how to use the world for own advantage.

For the time being, humans are just developed animals, only slightly ahead of the other animals.

There is no creature more opposite to Nature than the human being. Unlike other creatures, he continually hurts himself.

Human development does not stop for a minute: from generation to generation, from year to year, and from day to day. The human being is the crown of nature, but so far only in potential.
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Have The Predictions Of The Prophets Materialized?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Will the world begin to think and feel the same as we do, through external dissemination, or must there be a very deep internal unity for this? In what way will this happen?

Answer: I don’t know. You are asking me about forms that have never been clothed in the substance of our world but for which there is free choice.

Malchut de Ein Sof, through all kinds of emanations: Shevirah (breaking), descent, correction, evolves into five worlds and descends to our world. In the physical world, nature forcefully developed this shattered egoistic desire to exist until our time. But nothing in this process ever happened according to the desire of a person.

The development of the creature is realized in three stages: descent from above to below, direct development, and ascent from below to above. We are now beginning to be engaged in correcting the shattered desires, which is done within the “middle line.” Only the third stage provides free choice in which I will develop myself more rapidly than nature would force me to do it.

Through the development of a yearning for correction through group, through friends, through envy, I push myself forward. The friends help me advance by developing in me a cunning and cruel egoistic feeling that they are satisfied and succeeding, and I am not, and this is what helps me advance.

This means that in our ascent from below to above, there exists the possibility of freedom of action where we don’t just hasten the time of our development, but also change its flow, its character, and the manner in which correction will be realized in a better and more rapid form or by a slow path of suffering. This depends solely on our choice. For this we gather in a group.

So when you ask me what will be, how must one act, in what form  can we embody everything in the future, I don’t know. Not even a prophet knows this. They wrote about future states and described them only in the form in which they will be forced to play out by our brutal nature.

But if we include in ourselves in this development and mollify our way, then it will be completely different. So there is nothing to read what the prophets wrote and sit and think about when their prophecy will be materialized, since it is doubtful that it will be as they predicted. We have already made many appropriate corrections.

In what manner this will truly be realized tomorrow, we still don’t know. But since we are going forward by way of bestowal, how this will happen shouldn’t concern us. We want only the one result from our path: that there will be bestowal to the Creator.

But if I ask about the future, this is a sign that I am an egoist.
[141167]
From the Convention In Sochi “Day One” 7/13/14, Lesson 2

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In His Image And In His Likeness

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What is the principle according to which the human body was created and especially the human face?

Answer: In the image and in the likeness of a spiritual object. If a person takes the two forces that exist in nature into his, the positive and the negative, the attribute of bestowal and the attribute of receiving, and starts combining them correctly on all the levels of the ego: the root level, level one, two, three, and four, the combination of these attributes will be expressed in an external form such as his body and his face.

The face is the place from where a person radiates the Light of Hochma that descend on His body. The Light descends from the free parts of his face unto the other parts. That’s first.

Second, let’s find out how these elements are formed on a simpler level: There is a sum of certain elementary particles that form much more complex elements and then bodies. Such small organs or bodies like the liver, the kidneys, the lungs, etc. gather into a physical body or certain other objects.

How is a change of growth, a change of nature in its evolution achieved? Only thanks to the mutual cooperation of two forces: bestowal and receiving. But this leads to endless variations and combinations.

Comment: All the openings for receiving information are in the head, and the openings for extracting information are below the navel.

Answer: There are reasons for that. The spiritual object is formed in an identical manner. All our body is actually formed in His image and in His likeness, which means according to the right combination between these two forces.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 2/20/14

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Isolation For The Good Of The Society

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What does the “Thirteen Parts of the Correction of the Hair” mean in relation to the ego?

Answer: This is an external manifestation of desires that are given to be corrected. We correct them like all of the usual desires, but they reveal themselves as outward and external.

This means that according to the stimulation that is revealed on the skin, which is in contact with the hair, the head, and also the chin, it is understood what must be done with this person and in what manner he must be isolated from society. This is because he is currently not useful to the society because he is in a pathological state and becomes a source of cancer. Through his egoistic desire, he only infects society.

Isolating this person from society means not just physically keeping him at a distance, but isolating him from contact with others. He doesn’t need to be associated with anyone else in society in any way until he corrects himself separately. Time will usually do this when he is alone with the Creator.

Problems like these appear on higher levels and correct a person, as in the case of Moses when he hid his hand inside, took it out, and there was leprosy on it. He put his hand in again, took it out, and it was clean. This is a manifestation of a very deep, egoistic pathology.

Question: Suppose that in a group there are people who are in descent, they are sleeping in the lessons, and they don’t want to participate in events. Their time has not yet come; it is not allowed to touch them.

But there are people who are harmful and they begin to convey their philosophy. These people must be suspended for a time, which may even be permanent. Is this a state of leprosy that begins to gnaw at everyone and can even bring down the whole group?

Answer: Certainly, for the leper is a very strong person, very advanced, but he discovers problems like these within his ego that he must somehow conquer by himself so as not to influence the group. He does this by himself, since he is on the level of a priest and can isolate himself, but cannot heal.

Moreover, he doesn’t isolate himself physically. Rather, he is working on himself all the time so that he will not affect the group. This is called “expelling him from the camp” where he is warned not to influence the group detrimentally, and so he gradually heals himself of the leprosy.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 2/20/14

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