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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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

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Purim 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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Question: 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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Question: 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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Question: 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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Lesson Preparation

Lesson on the Topic “Pesach (Passover)”

Lesson on the Topic “Building The Future Society”

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

Selected Highlights

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Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download:MP3 Audio

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My student, singer and composer, Moti Mor, wrote a song about coronavirus.
#Coronavirus requires us to have a heartfelt concern for one another, the unity that we need like the air we breathe.
#COVID2019 #coronavirus #quarantine

We couldn’t put an end to the era of egoistic #globalization, so a rescuing virus has come! We wanted to abolish borders without abolishing egoism—the virus is enforcing much stricter borders on us. How much gentler is the virus compared to world war! #Corona
From Twitter, 3/26/20

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Throughout history, we have received many signs of attention from the Creator, the good that does good. But by existing in egoistic qualities that are opposite to the Creator, we have perceived these manifestations of love and care as blows and did not feel the need to change.

This is how loving parents push their child to learn while he only wants to play, does not listen to them, and thinks that his parents hate him.

This is exactly what is happening in the world—crises, wars, disasters, epidemics—the path of suffering that humanity has gone through. And this is because we have refused to accept the governance of the Creator as absolutely good and always bringing good, that is, to adjust ourselves to this governance.

We wanted to run away from the instructions of the Creator like children who do not listen to their parents and hide and argue all the time. This is why our life has been so bitter until today.

But now we are experiencing a special blow like no other. It comes to calm down the entire world, all of humanity, and to make us as one whole. Just as parents lose their patience and tell the children: “That is enough, calm down now!” And they take such a strict action that they actually calm down.

The upper governance is descending and closing in on us more and more, beginning to deal with us closely, individually, and directly.

Why did humanity take this blow so hard? Why does the coronavirus hold us in such fear? We are used to many people dying and being born each year in every country. Why are we so scared of this particular virus?

We know that within a hundred years the entire population of the world will change: everyone will die and new people will be born, but we do not make a tragedy out of it. The virus, however, is a psychological blow. A hidden pest is between us, we do not see or feel it, and we do not know where it will strike us from.

However, the virus really acts for our benefit by ordering us to distance ourselves from each other and not to leave the house. It is as if it tells me: “If you cannot treat each other nicely, stay at home! And if a little bit of goodness appears, you can come out but keep a distance of ten meters between you.”

The virus shows us our true relationships: that we are unable to stay together, and if we connect, we pass viruses to each other because we are egoists. This virus is the revelation of the upper governance.

The virus separates people from each other to the extent of their egoism. It forces them to stay at home instead of engaging in all sorts of useless, far-fetched things. It shows us a better kind of connection that we can have. And it did not come to harm and kill us but to organize our life correctly. This is the hand of the Creator educating us with mercy.

The epidemic is not punishment but the remedy. The virus cools down our relationships fueled by egoism, the desire to win, succeed, and exploit others for personal gain. It halts this entire race.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/18/20, Lesson on the Topic “Pesach (Passover)”

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