Lesson Preparation
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Lesson on the Topic “The Work Within Reason And The Work Above Reason”
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Vol. 6, Part 16, Item 88
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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Love of God and the Love of Man”, Title “Two Parts to the Torah: Between Man and God and Between Man and Man”
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Virtual Kabbalah Convention, Preparation for Lesson 5
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Virtual Kabbalah Convention, “Perceiving the Upper Reality Through Good and Evil, The Adventures of the Friends on the Path to the World of Ein Sof,” Lesson 5
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Virtual Kabbalah Convention, Preparation for Lesson 6
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Virtual Kabbalah Convention, “Perception of the Reality of the World of Ein Sof, Joy and the Perfection of Unification,” Lesson 6
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The feeling of connection of the hearts above the differences and borders, a common ground where there was no small or big group, new or veterans, participating as equals, everyone included as in one body. Barriers of distance and language disappeared to get the taste of one Kli around the world, a new degree of connection, building a mutual deficiency in our shared vessel. That is the goal achieved in our first World Virtual Kabbalah Convention this weekend where thousands of my students connected in their local groups and virtually from all around the world.
We began to feel the spiritual qualities not in each of us individually, but between us, men and women aiming at the same exalted goal of the revelation of the Creator in our time. This convention has strengthened our Kli. It has brought us one step further to grasp and implement the concepts we study during the lesson, becoming closer to one another and discovering a new reality, the renewal of our common Kli. Let’s continue this ongoing effort until we attain the purpose of creation!
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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 10/21/18
We had our first Virtual Kabbalah Convention this weekend with participants from all over the world. Here are some numbers: there were 170 physical Bnei Baruch groups connected, 27 virtual groups connected (not including beginners), a total of 3,482 men and women from the Middle East to the Far East! Thank you all for being with us.
Isra-el (those aspiring to the Creator) is an example of mankind’s organization in proper relations with each other and with Nature, the Creator. Thus the Creator, the upper governing force, will be revealed to all. Mankind will understand the purpose of life and its true form.
A critical approach is possible only against yourself, by checking whether I’ve been bribed, whether I’m dependent. It’s working with myself rather than with someone else.
Critical thinking is based on rising above one’s ego, against oneself. The “I” remains, but you exist above it.
Crisis isn’t breakage of the world, but breakage of its deceptive, shiny shell, from which new life is born like from an egg— a new world, existing not by earthly laws of a shell – Klipa, but by eternal laws of Nature, laws of bestowal and love. Crisis means birth of the new!
From Twitter, 10/21/18
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The Times of Israel published my new article “Why the World Never Gets Tired of Hating Jews“
As he did every morning, Leopold Schwartz (62) walked to the Borough Park synagogue in Brooklyn. At 7:30am, as documented by security cameras at the neighborhood junction, one of the drivers got out of his car and brutally attacked Schwartz, who was stunned and couldn’t do much to defend himself.
“I tried to protect myself, I tried to run away” says Schwartz. “I screamed: ‘What do you want from me?!’ And as Schwartz fell down, the attacker continued to beat him with all his might until a man who passed through the area came and tried to help Schwartz. Later it turned out that he, too, was attacked and wounded.
This outrageous incident is not even the first case of violence since the beginning of the week. In a shocking video, another Jew appears to run for his life in the streets of New York as he is chased by a bully who is beating him vigorously with a cane. In London, an elderly Jewish woman who protested anti-Semitism got kicked in the face. And these are just a few of the reported incidents.
Surely, these violent acts are a direct extension of ongoing anti-Semitic propaganda. Not a day passes without defamation and hatred expressed towards the Jewish people in one way or another. This flier, for example, was posted on four US college campuses just last week.
A glance at Jewish history reveals that a blaming finger was always pointed at them. It’s as though there is an unspoken consensus, transcending time and culture, that “Jews are guilty until proven otherwise.”
Numerous times the Jewish people were facing annihilation, beginning with the mass slaughter of Jews during the great revolts against the Romans and the Greeks, through the pogroms and persecutions carried out under the guidance of the Church, the blood libels throughout the Middle Ages and the modern era, and of course, the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. No other nation was threatened to be erased from reality so many times.
What we’re witnessing today is merely another expression of the recurring pattern of inherent, natural hatred that has always haunted the Jews. At every stage in history, hatred of Jews takes on a different form and has a different justification, be it economic, religious, political or what have you. Anyone can find the reason that works for them.
The authentic wisdom of Kabbalah has an unorthodox explanation to this phenomenon. Firstly, Kabbalah views all of humanity as a single organism, or a single network. Within that network, the Jewish people is designed as a mini-model that reflects the whole of humanity, and acts as a central “hub,” responsible for the connection throughout the network.
The Book of Zohar portrays the connection between the Jewish people and the world to that of the organs within the human body: “Israel is like a heart among the organs, and as the organs of the body could not exist in the world even one moment without the heart, so all the nations cannot exist in the world without Israel.” (Pinhas, 152).
Hence the instinctive, deep-seated demand from the Jews, which can easily manifest as hatred in our world. With every accusation, persecution, rejection, or threat – the world calls upon the people of Israel to fulfill their natural duty and enable a new level of connection across the whole of humanity.
Subconsciously, the world feels that Jews carry a certain responsibility for all of the world’s problems and hold the key to its better future. Thus, the world’s pressure on the Jews is embedded in the evolution of human society. As written, “there is no calamity that comes into the world but for Israel” (Tractate Yevamot, 63).
Sooner or later, the people of Israel will have to accept their responsibility towards humanity, and usher in the next level of human development. Jews of all walks of life have to set the example of unity and connection above all differences for the sake of the entire world. Until we do that, the world will not get tired of hating Jews.
New Life 532 – Kabbalah Congress, Leaping To The Goal Of Creation
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe
Participating in a Kabbalah Convention provides a person with an opportunity to jump forward into the purpose of creation, into complete connection and mutual love. If each one comes with an open heart and makes efforts to unite with everyone else, we can discover the Creator, the ultimate force of nature. We can create a situation in which bestowal, love, giving, and wholeness exist between us and we feel like one family. We can transcend our instinctive nature and reach a common prayer when we open our hearts to love others, and through this reach love of the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 532 – Kabbalah Congress, Leaping To The Goal Of Creation” 3/1/15
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New Life #86 – Overcoming Anxiety, Part 1
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz
Summary
Anxiety and concern are essential to our existence and fulfillment. Since the foundation of all life is the desire to enjoy, we are in a constant state of anxiety regarding how we will fill ourselves. The only way to change direction and eliminate self-absorbed fear is through education regarding the importance of one’s environment. The positive influence of one’s environment can transform our egotistical and competitive worries into concern for the well-being of others. We can build a protective, balanced, and calm system around us through positive human relationships.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #86 – Overcoming Anxiety, Part 1,” 10/21/12
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I published my new article “The Secret to Freeing Yourself from the Shackles of Time” on Medium.
Why do the minutes drag when you’re in a rush, running late for an appointment, and waiting for what feels like forever for the traffic lights to turn green? How can it be that the young driver in the car ahead, who gets distracted while waiting for the same green light, is astounded that the light has turned green so fast when your impatient honks interrupt him? One minute went by, but each feels it differently according to each one’s personal perspective and circumstance.
This illustrates just how subjective time is. If our experience of time is subjective, could there be a way to become masters of time instead of feeling that time controls our existence? How could we relate differently to our past, present and future and take control over time?
The Science of Time Perception
Scientists have discovered that the perception of time involves processes linked to memory, attention and emotional states. Time flies when we are busy or doing something we consider exciting. In contrast, minutes drag when we are bored and unimpressed.
Our experience of time depends on the amount of pleasure we receive. Changes in our desire for gratification create a sensation of time passing. This is how every moment of our lives is grasped and measured. Every sensation is divided into three states: what we did, what we are doing, and what we foresee doing in the future. How we relate to this partitioning influences our entire life. It defines the way we think, our ability to sense our present, and the framework we develop for facing daily tasks and strategizing for future events.
“There is no single, uniform time, but rather multiple times which we experience. Our temporal distortions are a direct translation of the way in which our brain and body adapt to these multiple times, the times of life,” concluded French scientist Sylvie Droit-Volet, after multiple studies on the subject.
Human beings constantly dwell on the past, thinking if only they could have done things differently the outcome could have been better. How often do we drag these examinations into the present at the expense of living life to the fullest? Wouldn’t it be better to learn how to seize the moment, live here and now, enjoying life like there is no tomorrow? Also, what about that unknown territory called “the future”? Is it better to take each day as it comes or to worry about what will happen tomorrow or in the next moment?
What Exactly Should You Examine in Your Past?
When you look into the past you should have no regrets or self-blame. The way you are is how nature created you, with a desire to enjoy that controls you at every moment. If you, for instance, harmed someone in the past, it was because you were unaware that harming them meant harming yourself, since you did not feel your oneness with them.
However, the world is one complete whole. All of nature is connected and interdependent. Therefore, if we hurt someone on the way to our personal enjoyment, it will boomerang on us. Conversely, if we create connections of friendship and mutual love with everyone, we assure ourselves a good life from now until the end of our days.
Therefore, our only purpose when we evaluate the past is to recognize the evil in us, but never to regret and blame. We should then look into the future and set an intention to correct our attitude from that moment onward, to do only good to others just like we would do for ourselves.
Our Existence Above Time
We can live above time’s calculations because there actually is no time. The wisdom of Kabbalah states that time does not exist. Time is only a series of actions taking place in our desire to enjoy, the internal changes we undergo during the day and throughout life. Those different states give us the sensation of time, and we measure them according to our corporeal existence.
We have a sensation of time passing rapidly or slowly when we ponder about things that happen to us and when we reflect on consequences and emotions. However, time is not experienced according to the number of seconds that have elapsed, but instead by the changes from one state to the next. Therefore, a unit of time can last a minute, an hour, or a year, but the unit remains the same: the change from descent to ascent or vice versa. The actual calculation is over a feeling of more or less satisfaction in our desire. It turns out that everything depends on us, on our subjective perception.
Until not long ago, people thought it impossible that time is relative to subjective perception. Then Einstein’s scientific breakthrough of his Theory of General Relativity backed up this notion of time. Our sensation of time depends solely on whether we get more or less pleasure. Changes in our desire for pleasure create our sensation of time passing. Without these changing states, we would lose not only the feeling of time, but the sensation of life in general.
For instance, if we were to feel “only this moment” it would be the equivalent of dying. Why? It is because the dead are free from the perception of time’s movement and don’t feel its changes. However, this is not the kind of freedom a person looks for since it doesn’t fulfill the purpose of our lives.
Looking into the Future
If being above the sensation of time is not our goal, then what is? What should the purpose of our lives be? We need to discover the development of our personal timeline of development, and how to control the full spectrum of our lives. This means that we need to understand and learn how to manage the internal states we undergo. We need to clarify how we can manage and control the past, the present, and the future via what influences us from an external source.
What is this “external source”? It is the source that controls the whole of creation, the force of nature, which is a force of love and bestowal. If we learn about its fundamental attributes — love and bestowal — and equalize with them by changing our connections from egoistic to altruistic, we can then create a positive environment similar to the primary force of nature, one that is good and eternal, truly above time.
It turns out that all we must do is change our senses, our tools of perception. We need to replace our egoistic program, our current operating system that feels the changes of time, and begin to function differently, to run on an upgraded altruistic program. If we rise above our need to fulfill our desire for pleasure and live in the desire to fulfill others, we become masters of time, masters of our lives.
In order to make this change, we must know the entire timeline of the development of our desire: how it is created, how it changes, and what form it needs to become. We can discover all of this if we rise above our selfish desire, stop depending on it, and become completely free from it. When we do that, we stop feeling the past, present and future as a corporeal, limited life.
Every object in the world has its past, present, and future, i.e. its cause and effect. We need to learn how to always refer to the root cause in order to be able to easily investigate and see all the consequences. If we recognize the cause, then we will already know what will happen next, even though we don’t see the result as yet. The future forms of all results are already latent in their cause. As explained by my teacher, Kabbalist Baruch Ashlag (Rabash), in his article, “The Purpose of Society”: “and although we have not yet achieved this goal, we have the desire to achieve it. And this, too, should be appreciated by us, for even though we are at the beginning of the way, we do hope to achieve the exalted goal.”
In this manner, if we research the most important questions about life — “Where is life’s origin?” “Where do we come from?” “What is a person?” “Who or what created us?” “What kind of force controls us and what goal is it leading us to?” — then we could realistically hope to answer these questions. Then, knowing the entire timeline of our desires’ development, we could manage and control our lives, liberated from the shackles of time.
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