Audio Version Of The Blog – 7/14/19

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Unity Event

Dr. Michael LaitmanFrom My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 7/14/19

Yesterday my students came from all over Israel for a special evening of connection, with great food, a live performance of Baal HaSulam melodies, along with quotes from the sources and a workshop about what it means to be united as one. Enjoy the photos!

My Thoughts On Twitter 7/14/19

Dr Michael Laitman Twitter

Suffering is the manifestation of the coercive force of nature, which expresses egoism’s evil and thus compels us to distance from it and shift to the aspiration to bestowal. Egoism itself pushes a person out of it! By being aware of this, one can aspire to it on one’s own to come out of it faster!

In every friend that the Creator has gathered in the group, there is a spark of love for the neighbor from Adam. If theses sparks are gathered, they will make a fire of love, in which all their transgressions will burn—and the Creator will be revealed in the fire of love.
It is necessary to attain this great fire…

The most important thing is unity of friends.
It brings about emancipation from all obstacles and problems.
Unity eliminates all problems, everything becomes immersed in tranquility and fortune.
True unity corrects everything!
Maor ve Shemesh, Dvarim

A prayer, a request, comes from a person, but the Creator’s help will be received by those who need it.
This is the mercy of the Creator: He helps the one who asks to correctly direct his prayer.
To ask correctly is to ask without an answer, to ask for others, to receive strength to bestow, from oneself!

Zohar: “I dwell among My people. When judgement passes over the world, man shall not separate from society. When separated, even a righteous man succumbs to judgement first. Do not separate from society for the Creator’s mercy is always upon His people, as written, ‘I am always inside My people.'”

Development of souls manifests not through personal growth,
but out of uniting with other souls
That is how spiritual desire and fulfillment grows.
And this is advancement.
The force of advancement is the common request for increasingly greater unity of everyone as one whole
…to create a place for the Creator’s revelation.

It’s not the Creator that appears and fulfills me,
but I am fulfilled by the aspiration to Him.
It’s not the Creator that manifests His image in me,
but I build His likeness inside me.

I am my spiritual progress forward. Nothing else counts. My “I” is egoistic, built against unity, and that means against the Creator. But I care only about my forceful aspiration to unite in the group with the Creator.

Kabbalah is built on the transformation of man. Not something outside of me or my environment, nor the change in people’s attitudes. Just as I do not ask to change my health, destiny, I only ask that He changes my egoism—only this …!

We need the Creator not in order for Him to make peace among us. He elicits strife so we would call on Him and force Him to be revealed between us. When we reach peace, this is an indication that the Creator has been revealed.
And if friction still exists, it means we have not sufficiently revealed Him among us.

The problem of feeling the spiritual world, in which we exist even now, is a problem of its perception.
We exist in it now too, but its nature is imperceptible to us due to its disparity of form with us.
It’s enough for egoism to wish to feel above itself, and we will feel what we did not notice before.

Problems are the empty space between us, which we strive to fill with all sorts of earthly achievements, but unknown to ourselves, we want to discover this emptiness filled by the Creator. All other actions are only in order to find this solution by way of trial and error.

The Creator causes enmity between us, by igniting in us attention to Himself. The proper way to react is to turn to Him together. Without engaging in any disagreements between us, we get together and appeal to the Force that separates us, with gratitude and a request to unify and make us equivalent to It.

The Upper Force always relates to everyone and to no one in particular.
When there are tensions in the group, it is necessary to understand that we are being “played” and if we come together, we will get advanced further.
If everyone succumbs to their own problems, we will return to animal life …

Suffering is a manifestation of the compelling force of nature, which demonstrates how evil selfishness is, and thus compels us to distance ourselves from it and to switch to striving for bestowal. Egoism pushes a person out of himself! Once you become aware of it, you can start yearning to get out of it faster!

All suffering is a demonstration of what ails us—selfishness, which we need to reform. The only problem is to be able to recognize it. And afterwards, the Upper Light takes care of i—by creating in us a yearning for good connections.
Therefore, do understand that all suffering is the symptoms of the disease—and get well!

In the measure of our growth, nature demands an increasingly sensible attitude to it and society, to the extent of “Love others as yourself.” Further on, we have to acknowledge that nature will pressure us until we agree to accept the premise on which its system exists ….
—to become one whole—completely interconnected.

Liberalism has come to an end with economic growth. It can no longer exist by virtue of capitalists’ funds, due to its sizable pressure on governments. Liberals thought they could improve the world, opening up immigration and multiculturalism.
But without correcting egoism, this leads to demise!
From Twitter, 7/14/19

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“European Anti-Semitism: More Outspoken And Widespread” (The Times Of Israel)

The Times of Israel published my new article “European Anti-Semitism: More Outspoken and Widespread

I emigrated to Israel 45 years ago. When I was young and living in Leningrad (today St. Petersburg, Russia), walking down the city street one day, I witnessed a man suddenly violently attack a Jew and instinctively intervened to protect him. The aggressor was arrested and I was taken to the police station to make a witness statement. When I asked the police officer what kind of punishment the assailant would receive, he replied: “Two weeks in jail,” explaining that such behavior would not be tolerated, and he added, “I don’t care what he was thinking or feeling, we’ve received high-level instructions to stop anti-Semites because they help the Zionists. If there’s anti-Semitism seen here, more Jews will want to leave Russia for Israel and this is not in our interest. Jews are a useful and beneficial force: workers, engineers, scientists, teachers, doctors. We want it to stay that way, so we fight for it.”

Back then, if someone even dared to say a word that sounded anti-Semitic, they would be sent to jail. Therefore, even if deep inside the police officer harbored anti-Semitic sentiments, he would never outwardly express them. But what I did understand from the officer’s explanation was that Jews were not necessarily loved, they were actually hated, but they were needed to advance national interests and thus were useful in the service of the nation’s pride. After all, if the Jews were expelled, who would be the chess champions or space explorers? It’s not that the Jews were so bold or dominated all the key positions, but they held respectable, solid professions. Afterward, the situation changed. At the point when Jews became the bankers or the wealthy with no other contribution to make other than being rich, they were no longer considered indispensable. Therefore, the open anti-Semitism once prohibited was gradually allowed to surface.

Those memories from my youth come flooding back today when I see the uncertain future of European Jewry, particularly from the perspective of the new generation. While they are not being formally expelled from their countries of origin, they could be forced to leave by rising anti-Semitism. Since the Jewish contribution to society seems to be overlooked and unrecognized nowadays, the associated protective shield surrounding them has also virtually been lifted. Today, four of ten young European Jews do not feel safe and have considered emigration due to rampant anti-Semitism in their countries, according to a recent survey conducted by the European Union. As troubling as it may seem, I see it as a positive report since it shines much needed light on a problem that cries to be addressed without delay. The call to action is clear: to start working to unite as Jews, to become one diverse yet monolithic body. As such, we will be safe anywhere we live.

Anti-Semitism has not resurged in Europe, it actually never left. In the current more permissive climate, it now displays itself in more open, evident and widespread ways from myriad directions: neo-Nazis, the far left and radical Islam. It is raising its head both online and in the streets of major European cities. France, for instance, experienced a 74% increase in anti-Semitic incidents just last year. Germany and the UK registered record numbers of hate crimes against Jews, with an average number of 100 cases each month per country, according to monitoring groups.

It is not surprising then that the new survey commissioned by the European Union’s Agency for Fundamental Rights revealed that more than 80% of respondents aged 16-34 perceive a rise in anti-Semitism or have experienced anti-Semitic harassment in their homeland countries. Half of them prefer not to wear or carry items that openly identify them as Jews.

The loss of safety among European Jews should not be accepted as a new norm. Also, we should not wait for the situation to worsen before we react. As it is written by our sages in the book Shem Mishmuel, “When Israel are ‘as one man with one heart,’ they are a fortified wall against the forces of evil.” This means that in order to stand firm as a single united front in face of the great challenges, the young generation of Jews face on the Old Continent and elsewhere in the world, our single goal as Jews must be to focus on our connection as a people.

Why can unity guarantee our safety? It is so because the pressure against us from the nations of the world is rooted in their instinctive feeling that Jews are failing to fulfill their role, which is to unite. By connecting above all differences, Jews provide an example to the world, a world so hungry for tranquility, peace and fulfillment. Therefore, the external demands upon the Jewish people are expressed as hatred that will not cease until we deliver the remedy revealed to us to cure an ill world.

This is the reason the good future for all depends solely on us. This is the contribution to human society we are expected to deliver. As it is written by the greatest Kabbalist of our generation, Rav Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), “It is the wisdom of faith, justice and peace which most nations learn from us, and this wisdom is ascribed to us alone.” (The Writings of the Last Generation)

When we Jews are bonded together, we succeed. When we forget who we are and fall into separation and hatred, our enemies fall upon us. Our unity is our strength, and when we finally revive our brotherly love, no enemy will be able to harm us and we will find that the road to peace is wide open and boundless.
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Grab The Lifeline—The Group

Laitman_632.3The main work of a person is to add to the ascent the lack of the greatness of the Creator that he felt previously during the descent. These states are called descents precisely because the greatness of the Creator disappears—there is no Creator between us. We want to add the lack we felt in the descents to the ascent.

It is clear to us that both ascents and descents come from above and do not depend on a person. The only thing that depends on us is how to work with both states, meaning to connect the minus, the lack of the greatness of the Creator within me, to the plus, to the greatness of the Creator, that glows upon us now during the ascent. I myself awaken the lack of the greatness of the Creator, trying to feel, evaluate, measure, and add it to the ascent, to the feeling of the greatness of the Creator that I now receive.

This is the person’s work, everything else comes from above. We need to learn this art of evaluating ascents and descents only with respect to the Creator and not with any other feeling. We need to feel with our whole being the full depth of the separation from the Creator, the absence of His control, and also how this greatness of the Creator fills us in order to work between these two poles.

During the day, we should try to live only according to one parameter: the greatness of the Creator, checking whether it is smaller or greater, disagreeing with its diminution. I constantly check the intensity and character of the greatness of the Creator that fills me so that it will be the only thing that directs me in life.1

My whole life should be examined only with respect to the greatness of the Creator. This is how I check all my words and actions, trying to increasingly feel the greatness of the Creator. It is my only goal; everything else is secondary. Gradually, this whole world loses its importance and I enter another world, another dimension, where I am connected with the upper one.2

The greatness of the Creator is measured by the extent to which it compels me to love my friends. It is written: “From love of the created beings to love of the Creator.” But why should I love the created beings? It is because I want to bring contentment to the Creator. The Creator is the goal; He is the first, and because of Him, I need the love for the created beings, for the friends.

The Creator is the cause, but the implementation is in the group where I must reach love of friends. Therefore, the Creator becomes the means. Once I attain love of friends, I can concentrate on love of the Creator.3

As soon as I feel that there is no longer the Creator amid all my thoughts, I immediately grab the lifeline: the group. Together we undergo ascents and descents as if floating on a raft in a rough sea. One side rises and falls, then the other side, and we maintain the balance between us. Together, we think how to maintain the general balance and try to feel the state of each of us, which is best felt in such an unstable situation. Our life depends on this.

There is a common feeling of the greatness of the Creator in the group, and therefore our ascents and descents become common. Each one invests his part in them so that we would constantly rise. Each one rises and falls rocking our raft on the waves, and so we advance.

This is our game with the Creator: we stand on one side, the Creator on the other side, and the egoism created by Him in the middle. We keep the raft in balance by trying to connect in one heart.

We try to hold onto the Creator in the center of the group so that His greatness would hold us and connect us together. The Creator is in the center of the raft and is playing with us. We are overcoming both external disturbances: the waves of life, underwater rocks, and the internal ones, constantly balancing our common feeling of the greatness of the Creator, keeping Him between us. He must be the first and the last, that is, we receive everything from the Creator and constantly come back to Him in our work.4
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/24/19, To Learn From the Descent in the State of Ascent
1 Minute 0:25
2 Minute 23:10
3 Minute 24:50
4 Minute 39:10

Related Material:
Discovering The Greatness Of The Creator
The Greatness Of The Creator
Revealing The Creator’s Greatness

Whom To Leave Billions?

laitman_600.01Remark: The ten richest people in the world are not going to leave their fortune to their children.

My Comment: The custom of leaving possessions to the next generation has become outdated. People understand that it does not give children any happiness.

That is, a child has to be given a good education, and a minimal, normal right to exist, slightly above average. But no more than that. That way the child will make efforts to achieve more. He will also learn to save himself and his family in order to protect himself from all problems. Without this, one will be all over the place and will not know what to do and where to hurry.

It corrupts people. By the way, the Torah says that a father should not tell his son about his wealth and that it will go to his son.

Question: What about the fact that rich people leave their millions to charities?

Answer:  Where else could it be left? People will donate to research and for the ecology, and little by little it will all be gone. There will be all kinds of organizations that will advise about how to divide one’s money, dissolve it in parts, and that is all.

Question: Is giving everything to charities a selfish act? Some people have earned a lot of money.

Answer: Yes, they earned the money, but now, at the end of their lives, they understand that this money cannot be taken with them, that nothing can be done, and no one is eternal. They hope that in this way they will nevertheless leave their name and themselves with humanity. This is some kind of redemption.

Remark: There is a word: “to perpetuate.”

My Comment: Perpetuate, yes. But I do not envy them. If they still hope that this will proved them with some service after they have already parted with this life, then, of course….

Question: It does not serve them? What would serve then?

Answer: I do not want to talk about this. Let them leave their money to charities.🙂

A man has nothing left! Absolutely nothing but good deeds. Good deeds are only in being able to push this world to unite. That is all, just this!

Only this can somehow really be recorded in a person’s soul. When man engages in uniting the world, he engages with his soul, with his inner property. Therefore it remains in him, and death has no power over it.

Question: What kind of action is for the unification of the world?

Answer: It is a mutual desire of people to help each other, even at the earthly level. The most important thing is uniting to reveal the higher mind, the highest property, the highest power, the Creator, the property of love and bestowal.

If they will direct people to this, then it will in fact remain with them and it will be their eternal great contribution to the development of their own souls.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman,” 3/19/19

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Tested By Wealth
And The Rich Will Weep

New Life 1118 – The Human Body As A Social Model

New Life 1118 – The Human Body As A Social Model
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Today humanity is like a human body that has broken down into its separate parts and dies as a result. All systems within the body have one purpose: to maintain balance so that the person can develop. If one part is weakened, the other parts support it. Nature works harmoniously in mutual complementarity. Humans, however, break this balance. The force of life is outside of the body and we must rise and return to the source of life.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1118 – The Human Body As A Social Model,” 6/6/19

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 7/14/19

Lesson Preparation

[media 1] [media 2]

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 85

[media 3] [media 4]

Lesson on the Topic “Preparing for Unity day” 

[media 5] [media 6]