Audio Version Of The Blog – 3/27/20

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“The Birth Of A New World” (Thrive Global)

Thrive Global published my new article: “The Birth of a New World

The new positive reality we can expect after the coronavirus crisis

FILE PHOTO: A trader wears a mask as he works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) as the building prepares to close indefinitely due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in New York, U.S., March 20, 2020. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo

Uncertainty, fear and anxiety are the agents of massive contagion when people face a sudden and drastic shift like the one we now experience with the coronavirus pandemic, but the outbreak is actually a prelude to a profound positive change. The word mashber (crisis) in Hebrew means “the place of birth.” This breakdown actually signals the beginning of something new.

Similarly, in the works of Hippocrates, the term “crisis” was applied to the end of an illness. Although in order to experience a new beginning, we need to overcome a transition period that might be painful and dramatic, as with labor pains. The world is coping with strong contractions set off by COVID-19 in every possible area of human society, as the planet can no longer put up with the person’s attitude toward nature.

“The crisis is helping us attain that level of awareness—where we start feeling as parts of a single system, one mechanism. Within the circular structure in which we exist, only together can we give birth to a new reality, to a higher, positive degree of humanity.”

Michael Laitman

The Purpose of Creation

Creation’s plan is to elevate humanity to a new level of existence. Thus, the blows currently affecting humanity are in fact tremendous forces from nature to protect and heal itself, showing us what we do wrong: caring only about ourselves to the detriment of others—a misdirected human ego. We will understand its message by trying to become an integral part of the ecosystem—to which we all belong—instead of misusing and sabotaging it.

What we now perceive as an unbearable situation is, in fact, an accumulation and intensification of numerous crises on multiple levels we have been amassing for a long time, not only ecologically, but also financially; between couples, families and people; in every aspect of our lives. The epidemic did not arrive by chance, it serves a purpose: to cure our disconnection and imbalanced relations that harm nature.

Rethinking Our Priorities

We have built our world in such a way that we have become modern-day slaves, working 12-hour days, commuting back and forth. Children hardly spend time with their parents. The governments have printed money and created debt, and society has created piles of unnecessary products. The virus’ appearance has forced us to scrutinize what we have in this world and ponder the question: what do we live for? Is it to make money? Or is it to have children and die? We have to go through a process of appraisal in order to find answers.

It would be naïve to think that the transition to a new reality would be light and easy, but the passage must take place. Thousands of lives are being lost while the global economy might be doomed to collapse. Thus, it is hard in these circumstances to foresee light on the horizon. Already thousands of years ago, the wisdom of Kabbalah referred to this time as a special one, a period when important changes would be revealed after we exceeded our egoistic development, a time finally leading us to a remarkable renewal. As Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) wrote: “The mind sees what it has been through, and corrects its future conducts.” (The Writings of the Last Generation)

What will be the outcome of the current crisis? It is my hope that we will grow wiser as we will see what really matters in life more clearly. Also, I hope that we will arrange a new and more balanced world in which we will feel no fulfillment in taking advantage of others for personal gain and harming the environment, because of the realization that, at the end of the day, it will have negative consequences for all. This positive transformation will require a gradual process of adaptation to this new reality, and it will demand from each of us that we actively engage in the building of a society that is entirely connected. How? By studying and replicating the attributes of nature, where everything is interdependent, existing in homeostasis and reciprocal relations, where all the parts exchange the nutrients and information needed for the well-being of the entire system.

The crisis is helping us attain that level of awareness—where we start feeling as parts of a single system, one mechanism. Within the circular structure in which we exist, only together can we give birth to a new reality, to a higher, positive degree of humanity.
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— Published on March 23, 2020

“How To Overcome Coronavirus-Related Anxiety” (Thrive Global)

Thrive Global published my new article: “How to Overcome Coronavirus-Related Anxiety

By becoming more considerate and responsible for others, we become more like nature.

If we use the coronavirus period to learn about how it fits into nature’s plan of raising humanity to complete and harmonious connection, and also how it emerged to show us the flaw of our self-centered approaches to each other, where by doing so, we can think about how we can better connect to each other, we will then have a solid foundation to overcome anxiety during this pandemic.

Overcoming coronavirus-related anxiety requires facing the concerns that the virus is here to stay, that we should learn how to guard ourselves from it, that the cure will be quite complicated to find, and that by reaching a solution to the pandemic, we might even suddenly discover a new one that is more harmful, which could even be a mutation of the same virus that we were unprepared for.

How could raising these concerns possibly help us overcome coronavirus-related anxiety?

It should be no problem at all to raise such concerns. Instead of distracting ourselves from these concerns, if we emphasize the ultimate remedy above them all: that by using this period to positively connect to each other—to seek how we can change our emphasis from constantly looking for how to benefit ourselves to aiming at benefiting others—we will awaken nature’s positive force of connection, love and bestowal. And the force of nature has the power to “disinfect” everything.

Thinking about How to Contribute to Others Is the Key to Overcoming Anxiety

Think about it: if you stopped being concerned about yourself and focused on others—how to help them, contribute to them, and raise their mood—you would then have no “space” inside yourself where you could feel anxious. Moreover, you would be protected against viruses and other harmful forces in reality, since they all attach to the egoistic concern for self-benefit.

In short, by becoming more considerate and responsible for others, we become more like nature. Thus, the best possible use of our time during this pandemic would be to adjust our attitudes to each other, to turn our inner knobs from benefiting ourselves to benefiting others, and then the positive connection we will reveal as a result of our coming into balance with nature will bring about harmony, happiness and peace to our lives.

Our Main Problem Is Seeing That We’re Not in Control—Nature Is

Our main problem is that we fail to see how nature is in control, that nature is an established thought and plan, and that we are parts developing according to the process that it laid out for us to undertake. On the contrary, we believe that we are the ones with exceptional knowledge and intellect.

If we would think the contrary, that our perception is incomplete, and that nature’s is whole—that nature created, develops and raises us—then we would have no choice but to acknowledge nature’s superiority. We would then willingly observe nature’s ultimate integral law—mutual connection, consideration and responsibility among all of its parts, similar to how cells and organs function in an organism.

If we observe such a law, we will then experience a positive reaction from nature: balance, harmony, peace, love, unity and happiness.

If we fail to match nature’s integrality, we will then feel increasingly negative feedback on personal, social and ecological scales, from viruses, climate change and natural disasters through to wars, xenophobia and civil unrest, as well as increasing cases of anxiety, depression, stress, drug abuse, suicides, and many other negative phenomena.

I thus hope that we will use this coronavirus era we have entered wisely, realizing that our wisdom is limited, that nature’s wisdom is immense, and that we would do wisely to start adjusting our attitudes, bringing them closer to nature.
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Published on March 26, 2020

“Must Restore Spiritual Connections Amid Pandemic” (Newsmax)

My article in Newsmax: “Must Restore Spiritual Connections Amid Pandemic

We are not used to the coronavirus. We have no idea how we will come out of it and where we will head from here.

If anyone thinks that it will pass in a few weeks, it won’t. We are in a new state that will endure the summer and head into the winter afterward.

When will this pandemic come to an end?

It will come to an end when we will improve human connections. To understand why this is so, we require deeper awareness of how nature works.

Before the coronavirus closed in on us, we acted out of a steroid-pumped desire to profit from one another in order to each fulfill self-serving interests.

Our concern for other people and our planet was overshadowed by a concern for ourselves. As such, our self-concern made us look at nature and other people solely through a lens of how to use them in order to benefit ourselves maximally.

Nature thus needed to teach us a lesson. And it did, in a very dramatic, cunning, caring and rigorous manner.

We looked like siblings fighting over our toys, and then nature, like a strict parent, ordered us to stop our quarrels, go into our separate rooms, think about how we were misbehaving, and how we should behave toward each other when nature lets us out again.

I thus hope that we will treat the period we are in seriously, that we will use the time we now have to realize our tight interconnectedness and interdependence among each other and with nature.

The coronavirus helps us see just how equal we are. It makes no distinction between rich and poor, boss and worker, famous and unknown — we are all equal in the face of this blow.

I understand the complications we have in seeing all people as equal, because we have been raised to categorize and class people in certain ways, but we have no choice: Nature shows us through this virus that it considers us all as equals, and we would be wise to try and see ourselves the same as how nature does.

Even multi-billionaire elites who escaped to their private islands and underground bunkers are still unsafe from the coronavirus. The virus appeared in many places where we still have no understanding of how it could have possibly done so. Therefore, even in such getaway areas, people are prone to the virus as is everyone, because there is a completely different reason for the virus’ presence than we can currently comprehend.

Therefore, the sooner we relate to everyone as equal — caring about all people in the world as much as we care about ourselves — we will then very quickly rise above this blow nature sent us, and progress to more and more connection among each other in calmer and more peaceful conditions.
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“What We Can Learn From The Coronavirus Pandemic” (Thrive Global)

Thrive Global published my new article: “What We Can Learn From the Coronavirus Pandemic

If we continue relating to each other negatively, we will set conditions for more viruses and problems to surface.

Vendor Cedric McIver gives change back to a customer at the Farmers Public Market in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S., March 21, 2020. Picture taken March 21, 2020. REUTERS/Nick Oxford

Unlike pandemics of the past, which affected localities and regions, the coronavirus pandemic is global. It affects everyone in the world.

Today, humanity shares a common concern as the virus has spread around the planet, taking no notice of any man-made national borders or social status classifications. Moreover, experts predict that the pandemic will last at least a year until we develop the means to combat it.

The pandemic has alerted us to face some serious questions:

· What needs to happen in order for us to exit the pandemic and return to our normal lives?

· Other than following government guidelines, what is required of us during this pandemic?

· Why do such overwhelming and confusing problems emerge in the first place?

· How can we solve this and the many other problems we face in our lives?

On one hand, the pandemic highlights the vastness of our global interconnectedness and interdependence. On the other hand, our connections are egoistic, where each person lives with an emphasis of self-benefit over the benefit of others.

While we live interdependently with each one tugging toward him- or herself on the single rope that ties us all together, then we end up in such situations when the connections between us tear apart and we all fall down. That is what we now experience with the mass social distancing that emerged as part of the pandemic’s chain of events.

The current pandemic has only just begun to expose the grimness of the competitive-egoistic paradigm we lived according to. Now, while we are physically remote from each other, the wisest use of our time would be to work out how an optimal form of human connection would appear.

We will have to reach harmonious and balanced connections with each other as it is the only way to experience harmony and balance with nature.

Michael Laitman

Also, while depicting perfect connection among people to ourselves, we should think about how we can create positive and unified connections that no virus would be able to break through.

In other words, the coronavirus is nature’s way of telling us that our connection with each other is flawed: that we each prioritize self-benefit over benefiting others.

How, then, can we start repairing this flaw?

We can do so by starting to learn about the laws of nature, about how nature is a quality of love and bestowal that guides everyone toward increasingly unified states, how all of our problems stem from our imbalance with nature, how balance with nature will solve all of our problems, and also that balance with nature means caring about others no less than we care about ourselves.

Since the coronavirus is humanity’s common problem, showing us how we are all parts of a single globally interdependent system, it thus demands that humanity wake up to the need for mutual consideration and responsibility.

Therefore, in order to encourage more closeness and balance with nature, humanity would do well to at least extract the following two takeaways during the course of this pandemic:

1) The coronavirus pandemic is no coincidence. It is a part of a process through which nature guides humanity, and it thus strives to positively connect us all into a single system.

2) In this system, there are laws that nature will obligate us to accept, either willingly — through our own initiative to positively connect above our egoistic drives — or unwillingly — through problems and crises such as the coronavirus that surface in order to rattle our ego-based infrastructures, so that we start contemplating and revising the way our lives are headed, until we seek a different direction, the focus on benefiting others over benefiting ourselves.

Nature is leading us to a positive and complete form of connection. One way or another, either with our agreement to positively connect and experience its process enjoyably, or with our disagreement to positively connect and endure its blows, there is no way out of this process.

We will have to reach harmonious and balanced connections with each other as it is the only way to experience harmony and balance with nature.

If we continue relating to each other negatively, we will set conditions for more viruses and problems to surface. That is, all problems appear in places of our neglected chances to establish positive connections upon our negative ones.

Therefore, I hope that we will use this period of social distancing we have been placed in for introspection, and learn how we can ultimately become more connected and similar to nature’s perfectly connected form.
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Published on March 25, 2020

Spiritual Holidays, Part 7

laitman_293.1Purim is the Complete Correction of the Soul

There are two types of correction: the absence of receiving is to reach the level of Hanukkah, and receiving for the sake of others is to reach the next level, from Hanukkah to Purim.

Purim is the use of one’s egoistic desires not for oneself, but for the sake of others.

I can address all my arsenal, all my qualities in my heart and mind, in my feelings and thoughts, to the world, from myself outward. This is what we need to do. It is how we reach the next very high degree—the complete correction of the soul, which is called Purim.

Purim” is from the word “Pur (lot).” You as if cast a lot because at the level you have reached everything happens above reason, only in complete bestowal.

Question: Why did the events of Purim occur about 2,500 years ago and Hanukkah—in the second century BC? It would seem that it should be the other way around.

Answer: It does not matter.

Question: Are historical events related to this?

Answer: No. Moreover, it all cascades from above downward, and in our time, it ascends from below upward. This is a backward count.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 1/29/19

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Spiritual Holidays, Part 4

Touch The Upper World

Laitman_138Question: What does it mean to connect opposites?

My Answer: Basically, we all are opposite to each other. Our connection is built on the fact that, although we are completely different, we still want to connect and hold on to each other despite our differences, oppositeness, and even rejection toward each other.

After all, the spiritual vessel in which the Creator is revealed consists of ten absolutely opposite qualities. And although none of us sees any possibility of uniting with the other, yet when we push off ourselves, we connect above ourselves, against our properties. At first, it is a very unpleasant feeling.

For example, you are disgusted by something, you cannot even touch it, but you overcome yourself and touch what is so unpleasant to you. This is the feeling that the sensation of the Creator and the upper world is built on. Because these categories are absolutely opposite, reversed to us, we instinctively reject them.

We all want only to receive for ourselves and now we suddenly have to bestow. This is a feeling I cannot touch. It is like kissing a frog. And then, everything opens up, and it becomes a beautiful princess.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 1/12/20

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How To Help A Person With An Awakening Point in the Heart?

laitman_565.01Question: If I suddenly find people around me with a prominent awakening point in the heart, what is the most correct thing to do?

Answer: If the point in the heart awakens in you, it means that you are drawn to attain the system that controls everything. You must reveal what fate is, why you exist, how to understand the system that governs the world. You need to engage in your spiritual development.

And if you meet people with the same craving for spirituality, invite them to an introductory lecture or to our webinar. You must help them. This will attract you to Kabbalah even more because they will receive spiritual energy through you.

Even if you do not see them anymore, but you restore their contact with the higher source, then their connection with it will go through you, and thanks to them, you will advance. So, it is worth doing it.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 2/2/20

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What Do We Receive From The Creator?

laitman_565.01Question: All these corporeal pleasures that we usually receive: food, entertainment, sex, etc., come to us through the so-called “pleasure center” in the brain. Research in this area shows that we even receive spiritual experiences through this center.

How can we grasp which pleasures we actually receive from the Creator, from the upper worlds?

Answer: All pleasures come from the Creator, no matter what they are, good or bad, pleasures from loving someone and bestowing to him, or from taking or stealing something from someone. In each case, it all goes through the same system.

The question is what happens to us: does it distance us from the Creator or does it bring us closer to Him? That is the whole difference.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 1/26/20

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 3/27/20

Lesson Preparation

[media 1] [media 2]

Lesson on the Topic Pesach (Passover)”

[media 3] [media 4]

Lesson on the Topic “Building The Future Society”

[media 5] [media 6]

Lesson on the Topic “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

[media 7] [media 8]

Selected Highlights

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