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Cleave Unto His Qualities

Dr. Michael LaitmanBaal HaSulam, “Speech for the Completion of The Zohar“: We should understand what Dvekut (adhesion) with the Creator means. After all, the thought has no perception of Him whatsoever. Indeed, our sages have discussed this question before me, asking about the verse, “and to cleave unto Him: How can one cleave unto Him? After all, He is consuming fire.”

And they replied, “Cleave unto His qualities: As He is merciful, you are merciful; as he is compassionate, you are compassionate.

If we change several attributes in us by turning them from “in order to receive” to “in order to bestow,” how does that enable us to understand whom the Creator is? And, what is more, how does it help us resemble Him? How do we acquire this resemblance? How do we adhere to Him? After all, it is impossible to touch Him. So, how do inner “tricks” allow us to resemble someone who we don’t even see and with whom we cannot identify? How can we understand the principle of “from Your actions we know You?” How do the inner changes lead me to Him? How is it possible to love others if it isn’t my nature?

This is why I am not obligated to love directly, but I can correct my 611 desires, and, then, the 612th correction will be the acquisition of the attribute of Hassadim to the fullest, and the 613th correction will be “to receive in order to bestow.” So, it is impossible to obligate one to love, but it is from the corrections that precede it that we can attain it.

This is also how the resemblance to the Creator is attained. We fulfill and arrange all the necessary actions internally, and it isn’t the actions themselves that are important, but the clarifications we make regarding every detail. All the clarifications add up and accumulate and turn into spiritual vessels.

So, nothing is lacking in our work. We cannot reach the end of correction in one leap. In fact, we are already at the end of correction, but we don’t have the vessels to feel that. So, we must collect all the vessels along the way in order to finally reach this revelation.

Question: What does “to cleave unto the Creator” mean for us today?

Answer: I build His image inside me through the different discernments I make internally. It isn’t about external signs, but about an internal essence. The Creator is a spirit of bestowal that is born and fills me. It is an attitude in which I can produce to “bestow in order to bestow” or to “receive in order to bestow.” It is a reflection that I reflect from inside me, outward.
[100851]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/19/13, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar

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A Shadow That Is Adhered To The Light

Dr. Michael LaitmanLowliness is not when I don’t have the power to do something, but rather when I think that I actually do something. The lowly is not someone who cannot be a hero, but someone who thinks that he is a hero. If the ego awakens in a person, then everything he says indicates his lowliness.

After all, everything is managed by the upper Light. But a person thinks that he has his own power, feelings, and mind in his ego, and this is his lowliness. The lowliness is in the fact the he doesn’t understand, that he doesn’t feel, and doesn’t attain that his desire to receive is only a replica of the Light. It’s only a shadow of the Light and he has nothing but that shadow.

If a person feels and understands this, if he fights the lowliness that is evoked in him over and over again in order to reveal the gap between him and the Creator, then he enters another lowliness that is actually not a sign of lowliness but of adhesion. He doesn’t want to be adhered to his desire and serve it devoutly, not in the shadow, which is the opposite replica of the Light that imagines that it exists independently since it’s detached from the source. Instead he wants to devoutly serve the Light itself. Thus he reaches adhesion with the source.

Then he is filled with pride, with power, with everything that that Light has by having annulled his desire to receive before the Creator. He thanks the Creator for having created this desire to receive by which a person can feel how he can adhere to the Creator. Thus the clarification of self-lowliness constantly helps a person get closer to the truth, to the source. So where one feels His lowliness is the place where one discovers the Creator’s humbleness and His greatness.
[100817]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/18/13

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Why Do Societies Decline?

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Victor Davis Hanson, American military historian, columnist, political essayist and former classics professor): “Why do once-successful societies ossify and decline?

“Hundreds of reasons have been adduced for the fall of Rome and the end of the Old Regime in 18th-century France. Reasons run from inflation and excessive spending to resource depletion and enemy invasion, as historians attempt to understand the sudden collapse of the Mycenaeans, the Aztecs and, apparently, the modern Greeks. In literature from Catullus to Edward Gibbon, wealth and leisure — and who gets the most of both — more often than poverty and exhaustion implode civilization.

“One recurring theme seems consistent in Athenian literature on the eve of the city’s takeover by Macedon: social squabbling over slicing up a shrinking pie. Athenian speeches from that era make frequent reference to lawsuits over property and inheritance, evading taxes and fudging eligibility for the dole. After the end of the Roman Republic, reactionary Latin literature — from the likes of Juvenal, Petronius, Suetonius and Tacitus — pointed to ‘bread and circuses,’ as well as excessive wealth, corruption and top-heavy government.

“For Gibbon and later French scholars, ‘Byzantine’ became a pejorative description of a top-heavy Greek bureaucracy that could not tax enough vanishing producers to sustain a growing number of bureaucrats. In antiquity, inflating the currency by turning out cheap bronze coins was often the favored way to pay off public debts.”

My Comment: Everything repeats because our egoism has reigned in us from the day of man’s appearance on earth. But today we are talking openly about a new state of development of the individual and society: the state of “one family” that will occur 1) unwillingly through suffering or 2) easily and pleasantly by realizing the necessity.
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The Consequences Of Insight

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Michael Khazin, economist): “2012 became a critical year for the world’s financial, economic and political elite: They have realized the inevitability of the continuing crisis and that they cannot maintain the basis of social and political stability of the modern Western (liberal-democratic) society; the existing model of the state cannot be saved because the economy will be too much destroyed and the standard of living will fall too much. That is, a new model of state is needed.

“Who will the world elite entrust with the development of new concepts of state and society? They should be marginals, mentally prepared to become the leaders of the mainstream. These people should be reasonable conformists, not denying the elite and its status; no one needs revolutionaries, even if they are the most brilliant scientists. In addition to these innovators, there should be organizers and administrators who will turn ideas into schools, universities and the methods of practice.

“In this case, as soon as something interesting appears, the entire mainstream will begin to push it down, otherwise it will cease to be the mainstream; it means that cash flow will fall drastically.

“An understanding that the current state of economics should be changed already exists, but there are no active steps in this direction. In the developed countries, serious changes in personnel have begun; this means that the “special” hour is approaching…”

My Comment: You cannot build a new socio-economic system without the knowledge of the true laws of Nature and society that only a Kabbalist can know. The world will hit the wall again and an even greater, more disappointing crisis until, inevitability, our dissemination reveals to the elite the need for restructuring according to the laws of nature and not their innovators.
[100890]

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If I Want, I Punish; If I Want, I Pardon

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Why are all the thoughts of employers reduced to profit? They are not stupid people and understand that if you do useful things for people, profit will not disappear. It will still remain. Why can they not set a goal to do something for people?

Answer: Our society does not support this idea. A person, especially in Russia, is considered tougher and stronger the more he takes advantage of others, subjecting them to himself. If I brazenly earn at the expense of others and if they even know about this, then I feel even more a hero, the manager, suppressing others.

This “cult of personality” lives in every person, and, if I want, I can use it. To do this, I must show myself as a despot in spite of everything else. As written in ancient codices, “What kind of a king is he who has not executed hundreds of his subjects every year?” Otherwise, where can he get respect? Where is the sense that he decides the fate of people?

So, if I want to put my company in serious order, I have no choice but to fire a couple of employees. I introduce the policy of the carrot and the stick. One should be reprimanded, the other patted on the back. Otherwise, how can people understand me?

That is still a common practice that operates in many places. Movies, commercials, and the news show that managers still rely on this rigid hierarchy of fear and pressure.

However, if we want to keep pace with natural development, we must be engaged in education, changing the human being according to nature, that is, with those desires and properties that are developing in us today.

Development is leading us to an integral, interdependent world, to companies with a voluntary, friendly connection between people where everything is decided collectively—as they say, with the collective mind—and is based on advice, support, and so on. In other words, the general, collective mind is developing, which ultimately leads to correct decisions. Indeed, attracting an intelligent person brought up in a collective spirit to management can provide many new ideas for the structure of enterprises, and for decision making and output: for all the issues. Today, we have come to this state.

However, still, many companies and organizations are regulated by force. We will have to switch to a completely different integral method.
[100832]
From KabTV’s “Professional Secrets” 2/5/13

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A Universal Necessity

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Today business owners have already guessed that the most valuable human capital is collective knowledge and skills and they want to use it. They understand that for the mind to realize this itself, rigid hierarchical structures must give way to soft, self-regulating ones.

But in Russia for example, people are used to a very rigid hierarchy: the “tzar-father,” the breadwinner, the business owner. Is it worthwhile to switch to a new structure? Will people want self-regulation?

Answer: Whether people want or not, it doesn’t depend on them. Nature gradually changes human needs and that is why they will still have to come to this.

Now is the time to establish these values. People see that they do not know how to arrange life; there is devastation, the struggle to survive, huge bills, friction, power, and pressure. Everything which can be replaced by normal relationships is controlled by the power structures of crime or the state.

I do not blame anyone; it is just a transition period. But, in principle, the path to the future lies in choice: Either we wait for nature to mercilessly put pressure on us, forcing us to change or we will consciously match ourselves to the integral system of nature.

By the way, in this respect, Russia is not far from America. Americans are great individualists. They do not take other people into account and can openly do whatever they please. If it is profitable to do so, then I will do it; I will even use others as stepping stones just to win. And the side that loses everything understands that it is the law of harsh business, which has also taken root in Russia.

So, in this respect, both these countries are similar to each other. That is why they will have to undergo a serious readjustment of values and enter into a new system. It will be very difficult, especially for America.

It will be a little easier for Europe because it has a different culture; there is a connection among people and it softens them.

Russians also have an inner connection, “We are a people, we are a community,” and that is why their transition could be easier. But still they will need integral education.

I must say that the Russian people are very open to this. They are inclined to education. The TV, the media—all this is ready to be directed from above. If the government had accepted the idea of moving towards a similarity to nature as a universal necessity and started to implement this, then the Russians would have succeeded quickly and easily; it would have been declared at the top and accepted at the bottom.
[100829]
From KabTV’s “Professional Secrets” 2/5/13

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On Whose Side Is Success?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Why do businessmen with little or no education have so much success recently? What is their strength? Why are the best results attained sometimes by leaders who have no experience or even knowledge?

Answer: This happens because the connection of the linear, egoistic connection of “you for me and I for you,” that is, the system of pure capitalism, has stopped working. The world has entered into an integral connection where everyone is connected to everyone, since through a chain of five people who know each other each person on the Earth is connected to all the rest.

In this system, the old connections don’t work anymore, and other connections are required that are based on understanding and the feeling of connection and unity between people. Thus, the first place is taken not by Stalin’s principles of rigid pressure, and not the American principles built on competitiveness, but the principles of mutual connection.

The ones who win are the ones who can build good and correct human relations and not at the expense of finance, commerce, business, etc.

Thus, success will now be on the side of those people, even though they are not great professionals. And if now I need to choose a director of the plant, I would take someone who simply knows how to work with people, and by his side would always be a specialist.

Today what is important is synergy, the connection between people and the ability to assemble a good, friendly team that will be as one whole so that everyone will feel good, including the workers’ families, their children, their wives and husbands.

If people connect between them, then they will find greater similarity to all systems and immediately will begin to succeed. This stems from nature itself, from somewhere in the roots from which comes the vital force, the nourishment, the moisture, and then a successful mutual connection grows.

If a person has the right approach to the team, to reciprocity, to the integral connection between people, then he can direct anyone. He will always be able to find an expert in each area, and if these specialists work in a cohesive friendly way with the team, then they will succeed.

Today this is the main work in a company, the main role! But basically, there is a need for many of these people who constantly hold the team together in the spirit of integration to rise above the egoistic outbursts of each one.
[100746]
From KabTV’s “Professional Secrets” 2/5/13

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The Shared Space In Which A Family Is Born

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What are the phases we have to go through in establishing the relations in the family until we reach the complete unity?

Answer: First I need the help of my wife, which is called “help against,” so I can examine myself and unite and explore one another as much as possible. I have to discover that I see the other as a distorted figure that the ego depicts for me. This is the psychology that we have to learn; this is how we have to educate everyone so that they can be mature adults who understand their own feelings and special attributes. Then a person will be able to use all his special attributes correctly in the connections with his or her partner.

First you build a relationship with your wife, drawing her picture and your picture and decide to what extent you can enter into it and to what extent she can enter yours, and where you meet. You start from the basic understanding that you are two egoists facing one another separated by an infinite distance. Now each one has to leave his starting point and start getting closer to his or her partner.

The closer I get to the other side, the further away I get from my natural basic point, and the more difficult it is for me to advance. It is also increasingly more difficult for my wife as she remains with her “self.” We have to thank one another for these efforts, and so we will be able to advance closer towards one another. All this happens thanks to our mutual concessions until we reach an inner connection.

This is the point of contact for which we are ready to give up our own base and connect. To connect means that I receive from my wife what is essential for her according to her character, so that it becomes essential for me. Thus the contact is created between us, a connection, mutual incorporation. There are protrusions and indentations in each of us by which we connect.

What is important for my wife should also be important for me, and she does the same with regard to me so that a shared space is created between us. Working in this space, thanks to our efforts to hold on to the connection in different states, helps us connect. This shared space is called a couple.

There are huge spaces besides this shared space that belong only to me or to her. It is like two intersecting circles with a common area between them in which each receives the other’s desires as if they were more important to him than his own desires.

The Shared Space In Which A Family Is Born

I see that there is no choice and that these are my wife’s needs. What should I do with the areas that are still separated from one another? We will have to work on them by clarifying them and with common efforts we do all that in our desire to create one whole from the two of us.

The Shared Space In Which A Family Is Born

If we know how to unite into one whole in the family, then we will also succeed in larger external circles, and even more external circles, until the whole world becomes one person. Then there will not be a global integral crisis. There is plenty of everything in the world, but we have developed in the wrong direction. Instead of developing everything for the good of man, we have acted to harm him. It is like a couple locked in an apartment unable get along and so they are ready to burn everything out of their mutual hate; it is the same situation and the same problem.
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From a “Talk About a New Life” 7/25/12

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