Audio Version Of The Blog – 02.26.18

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My Thoughts On Twitter, 2/26/18

Dr Michael Laitman Twitter

#Purim in the month of Adar distances man from the Creator. Hence there’s room for effort to go against common sense and doubt in His governance, and claim that it all comes from the need to lead us to efforts to trust in “There is none else besides Him” until He reveals Himself.

#Regulation Won’t Solve the Internet Privacy Issue — Here’s What Can

My latest on @newsmax “One way or another, we will have to learn how to balance and guide the human ego toward the good of human society.” #privacy

Psalm_91 He who dwells in the shelter of the Highest. My refuge & fortress my #GOD, in Him I trust. He will cover you with His wing. You will see the recompense of the wicked. For GOD is my pillar. No evil will touch me, for He has loved me. He saved me for I have known His name.

From Twitter, 2/26/18

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Breaking Israel News: Israel’s Hubris Comes With a Price

The largest portal Breaking Israel News published my new article “Israel’s Hubris Comes With a Price

’I have seen these people,’ the Lord said to Moses, ‘and they are a stiff-necked people. Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.’” (Exodus 32:9-10)

You’re having a pleasant walk in a nature reserve on the weekend and all of a sudden a fighter jet goes down near you. You immediately hear sirens going off, and buzzing alerts on your phone. What do you do? Panic? Run? Check on your loved ones’ safety?

Well, if you were one of the 100,000 people in northern Israel’s nature reserves or another 25,000 people in Israel’s snowy holiday area, Mount Hermon, on the second weekend of February 2018, you would have simply carried on enjoying your walk or your skiing like nothing happened, unfazed by the Iranian drone plane that penetrated Israeli territory getting shot down, and the IDF plane soon after also getting shot down after its response attacks on targets in Syria.

For Israelis, this is simply a routine situation raising no cause for concern. Protected by one of the world’s strongest armies, and what’s been recently rated the world’s best air force, Israelis seemingly have good reasons to be complacent.

The Excessive Confidence of the Israeli People

However, such indifference in the face of such close-range danger indicates the extent of our hubris, and confidence that our technology will always be there to protect us. It is also a prime example of our stiff-necked nature.

Do we realize that this event could be a preview of the next war in Israel’s north, which could spark overnight?

Are we attentive to the future endangerment of Israel’s northern sector, or are we impervious to it, just as we were some 80 years ago when we failed to detect the risks that led to the Holocaust?

Why Are the People of Israel ‘Stiff-Necked’?

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, our imperviousness derives from an inbuilt concealment within us, of and by an upper force operating our desires, thoughts, and actions. Kabbalists throughout history have pointed to our era as the one where we, the people of Israel, would need to realize our true function in the global system we are part of: to unite, and to become an example and a conduit of positive social connection for humanity, a “light unto the nations.”

Like caring parents who know how to develop their children by giving them problems they need to solve, the upper force challenges us by adding excess ego to our social relations, a repelling force separating and distancing us from each other. Therefore, like any healthy child who tries to outsmart his or her parents, we should think about how we could respond maturely to these hints. By using the wisdom we’ve been granted as preventative medicine to increase our sensitivity to reality and our role in it, we can develop our understanding of the bigger picture surrounding every such event, and our awareness of how we can use these hints to incentivize greater unity. If we don’t use this wisdom as preventative medicine, then it will still be waiting for us later. However, later we would use it as medicine to treat wounds and pains we can expect to suffer if we fail to use it in advance of the blows.

Therefore, if we would relate to every threat against us as a hint given to us from a loving and caring higher power that wants us to enter into dialog with it, then we would start using the medicine before the blow. We would not run to spend millions of dollars creating more advanced defense systems and technologies since we would see how all such development continues exposing our very same weak point: our stiff-necked egoistic nature that desensitizes and detaches us from each other. We would work out precisely where we need to apply our intelligence and efforts: to strengthen and enrich our connection to each other above our nature that constantly operates in the opposite direction.

How an Intellectually Advanced Nation Looks Handicapped

Right now, we appear to be intellectually, creatively and technologically advanced, but in terms of the uniting attitude, behavior, and example that the world really needs from us, we look sluggish and incapacitated.

If we were attacked from all sides, then we would see how quickly we would open up to each other and unite. But why should we wait for an unfortunate, suffering-propelled scenario to unite us when we have everything at our fingertips to unite while there is relative calm and prevent the pain scenario from unfolding?

As Samuel David Luzzatto wrote about 150 years ago, “The success of our nation depends solely on the love of one’s brothers, on our connection in a single bond as members of one family.” Today, escalating pressures amount on us, the people of Israel, to realize our deep seeded unity. In the meantime, however, we continue business as usual, numb to the hints were being offered. This is all on credit, though, and the time will come when we’ll need to pay it off. It is my hope that we’ll be able to wake up to our role sooner, through learning and wisdom, rather than later, through suffering and blows.

Kabbalah And Social Psychology

laitman_263Question: I am a psychologist and I see that Kabbalah and social psychology have much in common, for example, the rules of the workshop. Did you take them from psychology or do you have such methods in Kabbalah?

Answer: Psychology appeared a little more than 100 years ago, at the end of the 19th century.

Kabbalah appeared 5,778 years ago. So, it was not Kabbalah that took something from psychology, but psychology and especially philosophy, as Baal HaSulam wrote, borrowed a lot from Kabbalah. That is why psychologists think that Kabbalah took some methods from them.

Everything happened the other way around because Kabbalistic books were written two, three, and four thousand years ago. Moreover, if you penetrate into what Kabbalah says, which supposedly looks similar to social psychology, you will find out that it is an absolutely different system.

After all, the method of Kabbalah leads a person to correction under the influence of the upper force, the upper Light. All our exercises, studies, meals, and everything else are for this purpose.

Psychology is different. It uses the person’s ordinary, inner egoistic forces. Therefore, we see that it began to fade out as quickly as it emerged.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 10/8/17

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Passage To The Upper World

laitman_942The main law of the Torah is “Love your neighbor as yourself.” All other rules, laws, and conditions should be directed to connecting all people into one common system called “Adam.”

As a result of the so-called “Sin of the Tree of Knowledge,” this system shattered into many small parts, desires, each of which is in everyone; these desires migrate from body to body, from organism to organism.

Starting now and onward, we must gradually connect these shattered parts with each other until they are so tightly connected that they represent one single desire.

Question: It is written in the Torah that the condition for receiving it is to become as one man with one heart. The heart is a desire. What does it mean “as one man”? After all, each one is still an individual.

Answer: There is no individuality here. It should be manifested in the fact that I, from the point of view of my individuality, advance to the same goal, like everyone else. After all, we all are different, but we advance to the same goal: to unity. In the connection between us, even if it’s only ten people, we find a passage to the next world.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 10/8/17

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Multifaceted Integral System

laitman_929Question: Many scientists conduct their research through trial and error.

Will the individual who begins working with nature also do so by the method of blows and rewards, or will the warning bells begin to work, letting him know whether he is progressing correctly so he won’t need to go by the path of blows?

Answer: When we check to see whether our interactions are structured correctly, a multifaceted system appears. These interactions, even when we are not yet consciously aware of our efforts, are being corrected from above by the controlling force and we don’t even suspect it.

Even though we say that this is so, we still do not experience it consciously. We cannot determine this force in us because we do not yet have contact with it. But gradually it shapes us.

The main thing for this controlling force is to make one united desire, one united intention out of us so that those people who enter this system are as one united organism, one structure. Furthermore, individuals still remain distinct, in no way erase their individuality or lower themselves to zero. Quite the opposite, they develop egoistically even more, but in doing so, they complement each other.

This, in essence, is the strength of such activity: when opposite elements develop more and more and complement each other specifically because of their opposite natures.

In this manner, the entire system becomes powerful because it has a plus, a minus, and a tremendous amount of interesting interconnections built on a multifaceted foundation—pros, cons, all kinds of connections, and so on. Also, this system is completely integrated. That is how it appears within us.
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From KabTV’s “The Last Generation,” 8/16/17

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New Life 944 – Being Significant

New Life 944 – Being Significant
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

We feel significant when we believe there is a meaning to our existence. Our sense of significance evolves through the desires associated with sex, family, money, honor, and knowledge. Those who come to the wisdom of Kabbalah long for the realization of their souls. They learn to connect to eternity through the force of love and bestowal that fills all of creation. They develop spiritually through their desire to discover the purpose of creation.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 944 – Being Significant,” 1/9/18

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 2/26/18

Preparation for the Lesson

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Lesson on Topic: “Continuing the Convention with an Ascent,” Part 1  

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Lesson on Topic: “Continuing the Convention with an Ascent,” Part 2

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