You Are Old Only If That’s What You Believe

is-there-such-a-thing-as-a-happy-childhoodIn the News (from Daily Express):Remember, you’re not oldBelieving that your memory will fade as you grow older can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, a study has found. The positive flip side of this is that those who do not feel stigmatized, or those in situations where more positive views of aging are activated, exhibit significantly higher levels of memory performance.

My Comment: Everything depends on a person’s desire – one can govern the whole world with his desires (heart) and thoughts (mind). You just have to learn how to do it. This could be done with the science of Kabbalah, because it explains how human desires and thoughts could be used as tools to govern our world and the Upper Worlds!

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Does The Butterfly Effect Indicate Chaos Or Harmony?

there-are-no-creatures-on-other-planetsA question I received: Your interpretation of the Butterfly Effect is inaccurate. Scientists don’t talk about this effect to prove a system’s cohesion and unification, but to show that a system’s reaction to any interference is unpredictable. Any small interference causes large and unpredictable consequences. And in economics, the Butterfly Effect means that there cannot be any regulator.

My Answer: Everything in Nature is governed by laws. And when we do not know some laws or dependencies in Nature, we say they are unpredictable. Everything is interpreted only relative to the observer – man.

In fact, there is a regulator – the law by which any event depends on other events. And we have to find this regulator. Your approach, however, would lead us to even more problems. If you take a look at the latest scientific research, and at the body of knowledge offered by Kabbalah, instead of chaos you will discover a Higher harmony!

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Why Is It Easier To Love Sushi Than To Love Your Neighbor?

laitman_2009-03_8172A question I received: You don’t have to make any effort to love sushi or your child. So why is it that in order to love one’s neighbor, one has to go through such a difficult, intricate and lengthy process?

My Answer: When we are satisfying our egoistic desires, we act instinctively: we love ourselves and everything that is ours, and we dislike everything that is foreign, sensing that it is distant from us and does not belong to us. This feeling of the difference between “mine” and “the rest” was created in us in order for us to realize that we are opposite to the whole world and to the Creator. The revelation of this fact is called the revelation of the “shattered common soul.”

If the Creator was clearly revealed to a person, the person would be deprived of his freedom of choice, of any free desire, thought, and action. He would be completely annulled before the Creator. Therefore, in order for man to attain similarity to the Creator, who is the quality of bestowal, one must start out in a state where the Creator is concealed from the person. However, one then needs another example or model of the quality of bestowal and love, instead of the Creator.

In order to create this opportunity for us to attain similarity to the Creator while He is hidden, the single soul of Adam HaRishon broke into individual souls. As a result of this breaking, each soul now imagines itself to be outside of the others, and feels repelled from them by its egoism. And when a soul corrects its egoism – its separation from other souls, it attains the quality of bestowal and similarity to the Creator. This is the goal of creation.

Therefore, we should not seek to correct any of our actions, but only our attitudes toward others. It is written, “One goes from love for the neighbor to love for the Creator.” This is how we correct our soul, become similar to the Creator, and attain the goal of creation. Therefore, “love your neighbor as yourself” is the general law of the world (the Torah), and the other laws are particular expressions of this law.

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The New Reality Is Not A Utopia, But A Law Of Nature

contactA question I received: The world you describe sounds like a utopia. Even if a person wants to work for the benefit of others, he will still worry that he’s being exploited.

My Answer: I’m not talking about a utopia.  I’m just proposing that people begin to see that we live in a new, interconnected world.

Are you familiar with the laws of an integral world? Ask any scientist about how a closed system operates, the harmony that exists there, and the program by which all of the system’s parts should interact.

Nature does not demand that we reach perfect harmony with it and with one another immediately. Instead, Nature is now influencing us in order to awaken us from our sleep. And it is offering us an opportunity to investigate further into this matter.

Throughout a child’s first 20 years of life, the child goes through a preparation stage in order to learn how to lead a correct and conscious life in this world. Can we abandon him in this great big world if he hasn’t yet learned the laws by which the world operates? Of course not. This is why we have kindergartens, schools, universities and so forth. And all of this is just for him to understand the old world, which we all know already.

Today we are all like children. This is why it is important to start by educating mankind. Up until now, mankind has been taught how to live in a world governed by the law of profit, which states: maximum gain with minimal effort. Today, however, the old law of Nature has been replaced by a new law – the law of interconnection. This means that we exist in one system, and therefore you cannot have it better than me, and when one of us suffers, we both suffer.

This is why you must learn this system of interconnection and adopt new behavioral models. Only then will you be prepared for life in this new world. And it isn’t just you: today, the whole world must undergo this learning process.

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The Period Of Egoistic Exchange Has Ended

freeThe current crisis has reached a level where our egoistic detachment from one other is at its peak, and it does not allow us to make any collective actions. Today we are even incapable of making an exchange, where we give something and receive something in return. That is, we are not even capable of giving in order to receive.

I cannot deposit my money in the bank and get it back, I cannot work for someone and receive my salary, an owner of one business cannot sell his product to another and make a profit. This kind of mutual exchange no longer works!

This is why we will have to shift to an attitude of care for others. This is the only way that everyone will be able to get everything they need for a comfortable existence.

We used to live in a world where we could receive without consideration for others, without giving anything in return, or in other words – to steal. The entire history of our civilization over millennia is a history of exchange and interaction, as it says in the Bible, “Go and earn from each other.”

Today, however, this period of egoistic exchange has ended. You cannot receive nor give for the sake of receiving anymore. But then how can we exist? What should we do?

Humanity has not realized its new state yet. People still do not understand that the old regulators are gone, and that from now on everyone will be able to live only by being completely interconnected with the world. This is the condition of the global, integral world. This condition is called “mutual guarantee.”

People will attain prosperity only through others, depending on how kindly they will think of others, and on how much they desire to give to others. This is what today’s crisis is pushing us toward.

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When Egoism Knows No Bounds

dont-fighy-egoism-aloneA question I received: How is our growing ego connected to the things we read about in the news every day: “father rapes daughter,” “teacher molests her students” and so on?

My Answer: The news tells us of only a small portion of what actually happens. A lot of it is passed over in silence. For years people have been coming to see me about their personal problems, and every year they speak more openly about the things they could not mention before. They have revealed inner impulses, desires, thoughts, disorders and deviations that were never before revealed on such a grand scale and of such quality.

All of this is caused by our ever-growing, egoistic desire to receive pleasure. This desire will grow bigger and bigger, and there is nothing we can do about it. The only thing we can do is begin to correct it.

We are now seeing the entire “thickness” of our egoistic desire, which separates us from the Creator and weighs us down. This is called the aggravation of the exile, concealment, or separation from spirituality. And it will go on until we become such monsters that we won’t be able to stand ourselves.

This evil must be revealed either though action or through the realization of egoism. The latter can be done through upbringing or education. A person can only be corrected by revealing the evil inside himself, by feeling that his egoism is evil and detrimental to him. Only then will a person be able to correct the evil that he does onto others.

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