Audio Version Of The Blog – 12/13/18

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My Thoughts On Twitter 12/13/18

Dr Michael Laitman Twitter

Spiritual work Avodat Hashem has no analogues in our world = the Work of the Creator, since it is performed by Him, but only at our request, in readiness to change our nature from selfishness to love of others. The path to “Love others” lies through the disclosure of hatred, ego.

Building a good connection between people over the egoistic one is а person’s life task, whether it’s forced or voluntary, up to “Love others as yourself,” Nature’s basic law. The revelation of love over hate is called the revelation of the Creator: BORE = BO/come and RE/reveal.

Nothing in the world is by chance; it’s all so that Kabbalists expose the method of the world’s correction. It’s done by way of pressure on the world, which pressures the Jews and Israel. But it must be deliberate, to force the Jews to realize their obligation to correct the world.

The Creator is an integral system in which the main law is in effect—love your neighbor as yourself. So, prayer should be for Him to teach us, help us all to acquire the quality of bestowal and love, to master the law of love for one’s neighbor as for oneself.

The creator is a system. To enter it, you need a key. The key is a prayer. The prayer must be correct for the key to go to the lock and open the door.
From Twitter, 12/13/18

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Blitz Of Kabbalah Tips – 6/24/18

laitman_281.02Question: How does a Kabbalist relate to difficult events that happen in the world? Suppose they are personal like the death of relatives or some kind of disaster? How does he accept this?

Answer: A Kabbalist, like every person, experiences all kinds of feelings. However, he perceives everything, for instance the death of others and his own, the happiness of others or his own, a bit differently. There is a softening of his perception, as there is with a spiritually developed person.

Question: Is it possible to attain the level of Baal HaSulam and higher through learning the wisdom of Kabbalah?

Answer: There are practically no limitations for anyone. Do you want to attain the level of the Creator? You are welcome.

Everything is open to everyone. Moreover, everyone must attain this level. Only then will he realize himself correctly and fully.

Question: How is it possible to use the earthly egoism for spiritual advancement?

Answer: We need corporeal egoism so that we will come to a group and act correctly within it in the fullest way. We read what Baal HaSulam and Rabash advise and we adapt everything that they recommend in their articles, and apply everything while maintaining connections in our world between our friends with clarifications about how we can unite, where egoism is found, etc. This is the realization of Kabbalah.

Question: What must we do so that we are not just sitting down and listening to you but are actively implementing advancement toward the upper world?

Answer: You need to create the conditions for maximal internal convergence, understanding, and support constantly. This is the spiritual action that we must perform, the same Kli (vessel) that we prepare for discovering the Creator.

Question: Why doesn’t the Creator perform some kind of miracle now, like in the time of Moses, to attract a greater number of people to a desire to attain it?

Answer: Because then it would then be an imposed desire, not a desire created and matured within a person.

Question: If everything around me and me, myself are the Creator, where is the evil inclination, the ego?

Answer: Don’t get confused. Everything is very simple. If we were to remove your ego and all of the disturbances and undesirable thoughts about others, then instead of all these obstacles, the Creator would be revealed. Try to perform an exercise like this among you.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 6/24/18

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Spiritual Elevator: The Ten

laitman_238.01Our entire spiritual ascent completely depends on the group. Therefore, the war is always about how to connect, unite, and reach such a state when the upper Light is revealed inside the connection, unites us, and elevates us from our level to the higher degree. However, if we do not make a sufficient effort for the upper Light, which is supposed to elevate us, then it acts from behind and brings us difficulties, troubles, problems, and wars. The Light urges us to awaken and to want its help in order to rise from our degree to the next, either through good or not so pleasant ways.

The Kabbalistic group, the ten, works like an elevator. If a person invests a certain amount of efforts into it, then this elevator starts working on him, attracting the upper Light to him, and raising him to the next floor. This is called a spiritual ascent.1

If I do not ascend in my qualities, bestowal, and attainments, it means that I am not integrated with the ten. I have to see that the ten is ready to absorb and elevate me. If I do not see that, it is only because I “judge according to my own flaws”; otherwise, I would see them in the ideal state. That is, everything depends on me.

If the Creator brought me to the group and said, “Take it, this is your good fortune,” I should annul myself completely and then I will be able to ascend. As soon as the work at this stage finishes, the next floor appears before me. I should again annul myself to the ten, which already seems to me as a different, more advanced one, and perhaps even worse than before.

Again, the same work begins: justification, connection, and annulment. By making a certain amount of efforts, I will again turn the elevator on and it will lift me up a little more. It is the same each time: I annul myself to the group in order to see it as ideal and perfect, and thus I ascend higher and higher.2

If I annul myself to the group, I reveal that they are not friends, but spiritual qualities that only seemed to me as people having various problems and flaws. In fact, they are nine angels sent to help me, lifting me up on their wings.

As soon as I ascend, the same work restarts: I receive a burdening of the heart and fall; I start seeing friends as even worse than before, not at all as angels. It seems to me that they do not want to and cannot unite. I absolutely do not understand what I am doing with them and seems better to search for spirituality alone.

I then totally lose interest in spirituality until time does its work, and I start working on myself thereby realizing that everything depends on me. There is no other reality but me, the ten, and the Creator. All the rest is my ego’s distorted imagination.

I try to see that everything around me is in bestowal, in the spiritual world, and that the presence of the Shechina (Divinity) manifests in the entire world. I try to connect with the group and ask for help until the efforts reach their full amount and my ten turns into a spiritual elevator that lifts me up to the next degree. This is how I move from level to level, “from cloud to cloud.”3

Do not expect that this will happen at a certain time, like in the story of Cinderella, and that the group by itself will turn from a pumpkin into a carriage. It depends only on our work.4

Although it seems to us that we are running in the same place, we are indeed advancing. The calculation is made not on kilometers, but on efforts applied.5

What we see the group is the next world that exists within this world. A group is such a room that upon entering you find yourself in the next world, as if after death. If you do not want to enter it, all that is left for you is to wait for a real death. However, you have an opportunity to receive eternal, happy life right now. You just need to slightly change your ideas about kindness and eternity from egoistic and temporary concepts of our world to truly eternal and perfect ones.

Change your mind and heart a little and begin to live according to eternal and perfect laws. Otherwise you will remain a one-day butterfly, which lives only a day and dies.6
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 12/5/18, Lesson on the Topic “Hanukkah”
1 Minute 0:20
2 Minute 8:40
3 Minute 11:25
4 Minute 20:20
5 Minute 22:10
6 Minute 58:30

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“Everything Will Be With Love, Friendship”

Laitman_524.01Rabash, “Concerning the Importance of Friends”: But with love of friends, when friends bond to create unity among them, it explicitly means that they are equal. This is called “unity.” For example, if they do business together and say that the profits will not be distributed equally, is this called “unity”? Clearly, a business of love of friends should be when all the profits and possessions that the love of friends yields will be equally controlled by them. They should not hide or conceal from one another, but everything will be with love, friendship, truthfulness, and peace.

It seems that this describes the ideal states. But it is impossible to fulfill them if the friend and I are not connected through the Creator. Only thanks to the fact that we are connected with each other in Him we can behave this way. Only this can obligate us.

Question: What kind of profit is there?

Answer: It does not matter. Profit can be material or it can be spiritual. The main thing is that only contact in the Creator can obligate us and force us to accept the conditions of mutual guarantee, unity, and other requirements.
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From KabTV’s “The Last Generation” 5/9/18

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“What Is The Authentic Source Of Happiness?” (Thrive Global)

Thrive Global published my new article: “What Is The Authentic Source Of Happiness?

Kabbalah is a method that teaches how to create a positively connected society of happy individuals, balanced with nature.

Everyone wants to be happy. There are myriad interpretations of what happiness is, how to be happy, and what the source of happiness is, and certainly, if we could identify an authentic source of happiness, then we could be confident in a goal to aspire toward.

In this examination on an authentic source of happiness, we will look into:

  • whether there is such a thing as an authentic source of happiness,
  • whether happiness is subjective and relative to each person, or whether there can be a source of happiness common to all,
  • the roles society and its values play on our happiness,
  • what stands in the way of being happy all the time,
  • the role human nature plays on our happiness,
  • defining an authentic source of happiness and the kind of transformation needed to experience it.

Is there such a thing as an authentic source of happiness?

Is happiness subjective and relative to every person, or can there be a source of happiness common to all?

In order to examine these questions, it is important to view ourselves as a social species, viewing our lives in connection with others, and that the quality of our connections influences our perspectives and sensations of happiness.

The fact that we’re a social species differentiates us from animals. We are molded and affected by our surroundings at every moment of our lives. Our birthplace, where we’re raised, our families, schools, teachers, friends, work colleagues, as well as our culture and the media we absorb and engage with, all influence our definitions of what it means to be happy, how we can achieve happiness and what we do in order to achieve it.

Many happiness studies have already concluded that a positively connected and supportive society provides the basis for its members’ happiness. A social foundation where everyone tends to each other—receiving as much as each individual needs and working for everyone’s benefit—is an optimal setup for each person’s happiness.

What interferes with our happiness?

The problem is that where there is society, there are social desires, i.e. desires for money, honor, respect, fame, control, power and knowledge. Our individual pursuits to fulfill these desires at others’ expense interferes with our happiness. For instance, if a person wants to become rich, powerful or famous, he must continually struggle to out-compete others, building his pursuit of such goals by disturbing or ruining the wealth, power or fame of others.

Moreover, human nature, which is a desire to enjoy, works such that when we enjoy something, our desire for that enjoyment extinguishes upon its reception, and a new desire surfaces in its place. This modus operandi of human nature makes us feel constantly unsatisfied and wanting.

This formula we live by—the pursuit of happiness at others’ expense coupled with the constant dissatisfaction embedded in human nature—is the antithesis to happiness. It can then be concluded that if our sources of happiness remain as individual quests for pleasure at others’ expense, we will never experience a lasting, blossoming form of happiness. We will be plagued by our desires becoming emptied all the time, and will endure increasing dissatisfaction until we will ultimately despair from trying to make our way in society with competitive, individualistic motives.

It is a must for every nation to be strongly united within, so all the individuals within it are attached to one another by instinctive love. Moreover, each individual should feel that the happiness of the nation is one’s own happiness, and the nation’s decadence is one’s own decadence… It means that the people of that nation, who sense that harmony, are the ones who make the nation, and the measure of happiness of the nation and sustainability are measured by their quality.

– Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag, The Nation.

Public opinion today venerates rivalry and individual achievement. In other words, if you trample upon your competition in order to succeed as an individual, you’re viewed with respect. It is an interwoven symptom of the individualistic-competitive values we are raised with, from our schools and universities, through the films, music, media, TV shows and Internet discussions we regularly engage with. Therefore, if we seek an authentic source of happiness, we need to first surmise that nothing will change if our egoistic human nature continues absorbing social influences that feed into its selfish direction at others’ expense.

Even if we define an authentic source of happiness that can satisfy everyone—a limitless form of pleasure that fills us when we engage in giving to and positively connecting with others—we still won’t experience lasting happinessif society as a whole fails to prioritize values of giving, kindness, altruism and positive connection over present-day competitive-individualistic values.

What will increase awareness of the authentic source of happiness?

The rise in misfortunes and problems in human society will play their role to raise awareness of why we fail to achieve an authentic and lasting form of happiness. In the wisdom of Kabbalah, this state is called “recognition of evil.” It means that problems and crises accumulate until we see that as much as we want to live happy and harmonious lives, we don’t, and moreover, the situation worsens. Eventually, we will realize that the solution is in a fundamental shift of our values—from competitive-individualistic-egoistic values to cooperative-connected-altruistic ones—and that the educational institutions and media permeating values into our lives need to accept major responsibility in such a transformation.

The very appearance of happiness science and positive psychology in an age where depression has risen to become the world’s most prominent disease shows a clear example of how, as our sorrows worsen, we seek to counter them with an antidote.

It is this same era that the authors of The Book of Zohar, as well as the most renowned Kabbalist of the 20th Century, Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) stated that the authentic wisdom of Kabbalah would become revealed and available to all, as a method to guide society to the kinds of positive connections that can make everyone happy.

Kabbalah is a method that teaches how to create a positively connected society of happy individuals, balanced with nature. It does this by guiding its participants through a process of experimentation in connecting with others in order to attract a force of connection dwelling in nature, which has the power to change us to make us more considerate of each other. Thus, a person will learn to aspire not only to fulfill his or her own happiness, but that of others as well. A harmonious human society will then be built to ensure the happiness of every individual.

New Life #107 – The New World Of Work, Part 2

New Life #107 – The New World of Work, Part 2
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Do you want to get up in the morning full of energy like a child going to the playground? The integral approach to business in the new world of work provides employees at all levels with an environment for development and prosperity. Engaging in challenges and hard work become enjoyable when we’re with friends. Loving human relationships can build balance, closeness, and unity in the workplace. Today, workers feel isolated and threatened, as though they were in prison. Each does his part and doesn’t want to interact with the others. Relationships between suppliers, customers, and shareholders are becoming increasingly dry. Tension, alienation, and pressure at home are affecting the level of focus of employees at work. The broken connections between people have led to global deterioration, destruction, protectionism, fascism, and terrorism. We will either attain the new approach through proactive education or through suffering, hatred, war, and the recognition of evil. The integral approach of relating well above all negativity needs to be taught through mutual example and social pressure. We need to learn how to accept one another and connect like family in order to continue to exist as a human species.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #107 – The New World of Work,” part 2, 12/5/12

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 12/13/18

Lesson Preparation

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Lesson on the Topic “Covenant Of Salt” (Preparation for the Virtual Convention 2018)

[media 3] [media 4]

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Disclosing a Portion, Covering Two”

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