Audio Version Of The Blog – 09.19.17

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Newsmax: “How To Cope With The Emotional Toll Of Irma“

The largest portal Newsmax published my new article “How to Cope With the Emotional Toll of Irma

When the winds calm, power returns, and food and gas are available again, there will still be people who need help. Besides the obvious physical cost of the storm, there is another aftermath that survivors will have to handle. Many of these people will have lost everything dear to them to the wind and the water: their memories, pictures, and memorabilia of loved ones who passed away. No insurance can cover this. There is only one recompense for the emotional loss that such people have endured—new human connections. Forging companionships and solidarity of residents is crucial to restoring the vitality of every disaster ravaged community.

Today, most people are so detached from one another that when they need real friends to help them, many have no one to turn to. Despite our advanced technological means of communication, it is growing harder for us to communicate with one another.

We may think that self-absorption is the personal problem of the self-absorbed, but it is anything but! In truth, the quality of human connections has immense consequences on all of society, and ultimately on the entire planet.

Acclaimed Prof. Nicholas Christakis described human society as a type of “superorganism.” Everything we do, say, and even think, he explains, ripples through society and incites similar emotions, ideas, thoughts, and actions in other people.

We can prove this by this very simple experiment. Within our families, with a few friends, or even with just one friend, if this is all we have, dedicate one day to thinking not about what I want and what will please me, but about what the person or people with whom we are experimenting feel. They, in turn, will do the same toward us.

I can testify that the results will astound you. When everyone focuses on making everyone else happy, it makes life better all around. No one is left out.

If we conduct this type of experiment on a large scale, it will echo through the country and change the way we think about society and how we relate to other people. When masses of people focus on bonding, it makes recovery from trauma, any trauma, infinitely more rapid, effective, and lasting.

The current structure of society, where people are disconnected and mistrustful of each other, makes it much harder on them to endure traumas such as natural disasters. Even day-to-day life is far more difficult when your social life can be encapsulated into a 5-inch communication box, a.k.a. “smartphone.”

The current wave of natural disasters is not the last one, nor is it the worst. If we neglect our social ties, the next wave might prove too challenging to cope with, and who knows what social toll it will take.

Therefore, we can turn the current bane into a boon. Since tens of thousands of people are already concentrated in storm shelters, we can turn them into “connection centers.” Instead of waiting for the all-clear sound to go home, people can busy themselves forming friendships that will stay with them for the rest of their lives. The workshop that I shared in last week’s column demonstrates how easy it is to connect. All we need is to sit together in small groups and share these four things: 1) the most emotional moment for us in this event, 2) if and how Irma has shaped our attitude toward other people, 3) how we hope to express this new attitude, and 4) the benefits of sharing our experiences and thoughts in this manner.

Beyond the social benefit, there is another, more elusive prize to positive human connections: their impact on the environment. Social isolation undermines our emotional and mental stability, and drives us to look for compensation for our lack of human companionship. When this condition affects hundreds of millions of people, it affects everything, including even the environment.

The superorganism that Christakis describes is not confined to human society. Just like our own bodies consist of all levels of existence—mineral, vegetative, and animate—the superorganism of humanity is part of an even larger system that is our planet. When someone’s kidneys fail, it is the whole person who is sick, not just his or her kidneys. Likewise, when humanity is sick, it makes all of Earth unwell.

The symptoms may seem unrelated, but just as a headache doesn’t mean I have a problem with my head, Earth is showing its symptoms in ways we don’t understand. But what we do know is that we are an ailing society, and curing it will cure the entire superorganism we all live in. For this reason, if we want to abate natural disasters, we must heal our own society, or more precisely, our ill connections with one another.
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The End Of The Tower Of Babel

Laitman_115_05Question: Modern innovations and studies say that the period of the Tower of Babel has ended, meaning the lack of understanding of languages. Soon there will be headphones that will translate all languages and we will communicate easily.

What will communication like this provide?

Answer: This kind of communication will make it possible for us to feel the whole world as one global whole, without borders, not in the full sense of the word, but at least partially. This is because in spite of everything, language is a very big limiter of communication between people.

Question: When will the Babylonian division actually cease?

Answer: It will be when people will feel that they must rise to the next level of self-awareness.

Question: Are there languages there or not?

Answer: There are no longer any languages there.

Imagine that a gigantic spaceship is hovering above us surrounding the entire globe and hiding the sun from us.

How would we behave in a situation like this? Would we fight, argue in parliaments, think about who is going where? Would we begin to think about who is plotting against whom here on the face of the earth while a gigantic black machine is hovering over us, hiding the sun from us while we are found in total darkness about everything that is happening to us?

It is possible to understand how this could unite people…nobody will plot against anyone. What do I care about the other? After all, I see that this is the end.

Question: And then languages will disappear?

Answer: Everything will disappear. We will begin to search for a way out of the situation and “aliens” will declare: “We will talk with you only when you all become a single whole. Unite; we will wait. Meanwhile we will be hovering over you.”

We will wait, but how long? “It could be another 500 years, it makes no difference. We are above you. And every year that passes with lack of unity among you, we will get closer and closer, we will arrange situations like these for you that will whip you from behind. That is how we will help you.”

Question: This scenario would happen with suffering. But what is the truth about the absence of language, the lack of division into languages?

Answer: We will be able to make better use of getting closer and closer to each other, meaning that we will truly unite so everyone will be like brothers in a single family, without language and without distance. In such a situation, communication could be arranged that erases all differences.

But I don’t think that for this we need to put headphones on our ears, we will feel each other; there will be no need for words. We will begin to talk by means of the heart.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 7/12/17

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Raise The Ideal Above The Material Level

laitman_214.01Baal HaSulam, The Last Generation: Ethics cannot rely solely on education and pubic opinion, because public opinion necessitates only what is in the public’s favor. Hence, if one comes and proves that morality is harmful to the public and vulgarity is more beneficial, they will immediately discard morality and choose vulgarity, as Hitler testifies.

This is a very simple and practical attitude. We must raise the ideal above the material level. Humanity must work not for itself and its society because we will not find truth inside society and inside ourselves. It can only be found in rising above ourselves, that is, in unity with the upper force of nature.

If we strive for the ideal in the plane of our world, then Hitler will come and everyone will follow him because in our world there is no ideal that stands above us.

Question: Is this so even if we wash society with education and ethical ideas?

Answer: There is nothing that will help. We need the upper Light for this, and its influence we can attract only through the correct connection according to the Kabbalistic method.

Question: Doesn’t Baal HaSulam completely deny education on the level of this world. He believes that it will still lead to Nazism one way or another.

Answer: Yes. We see that today everything once again turns to this. Especially in our time when egoism, while constantly working, leads us back to Nazism.
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From KabTV’s “The Last Generation” 6/26/17

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“As The Eagle Swoops Down”

3Torah, Deuteronomy 28:49 – 28:50: The Lord will bring upon you a nation from afar, from the end of the earth, as the eagle swoops down, a nation whose language you will not understand, a brazen nation, which will not respect the elderly, nor show favor to the young.

Such egoistic qualities that you never suspected begin rising within you. They enslave you with more and more new egoistic instructions, and although you resist them, you nevertheless obey. And by obeying, you become an even bigger fan of fulfilling them. And you realize all of it!

A very interesting inner problem is revealed within you. On one hand, you are burning in your aspiration to fulfil the egoistic directions, and on the other hand, you are ashamed and you cannot do it, but you do it anyway.

It is written: “As the eagle swoops down, a nation whose language you will not understand.” These are new egoistic qualities that are revealed in a person, and he does not even understand them; they control him instinctively.

Although he had some ideas about honesty, about correct relationships and obligations, nothing is left of them in regard to parents, children, or society. Egoism rules in him directly, to the full depth of his nature.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 12/19/16

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The Three Phases Of Human Evolution

laitman_608.01Question: How did Abraham attain spirituality by himself, without any help from others if we need a group, books, and a teacher in order to attain the upper forces?

Answer: During the time, from Adam until Moses, people attained everything in a totally different way.

During the first 2,000 years of human evolution, there were special greatly enlightened souls called Chabad.

During the 2,000 years that followed, the souls were coarser and are called HGT, which refers to the generation that was in Egypt and then the desert generation and the generation of the First and Second Temples.

Now, it is the end of the last 2,000 years when the lowest souls are descending into our world.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 3/12/17

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New Life 885 – Workshop, Gathering Of Friends, And A Meal In A Kabbalah Group

New Life 885 – Workshop, Gathering Of Friends, And A Meal In A Kabbalah Group
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

How is the conversation in the workshop a simulation of the corrected connection between us? What is the purpose of a gathering of friends, and what is the internal effort that a student does during a shared meal?
From KabTV’s “New Life 885 – Workshop, Gathering Of Friends, And A Meal In A Kabbalah Group,” 7/20/17

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 9/19/17

Preparation for the Lesson

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Lesson on the Topic: “Ibur (Conception)” 

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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Wisdom Of Kabbalah,” Item 112

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Shamati #26, “One’s Future Depends and Is Tied to Gratitude for the Past”

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