Audio Version Of The Blog – 5/25/20
Posted on May 25th, 2020
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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 5/25/20
A few weeks after the coronavirus started to spread throughout China, South Korea, and parts of Japan, much of Europe and North America derided them for panicking over a new strain of flu. A few weeks later, South America, Russia, and much of Africa derided Europe and North America for the exact same reason. Today, no one is deriding anyone because no place is virus free. In fact, some places have already begun the second wave.
But in all this derision and pain, the best news I see is precisely that it’s everywhere. Now, at long last, we’ve got proof(!) that we are all in one boat. Now we know and feel that either we all swim out of the sea together, or we all sink.
I have no doubt that even as we return to “normalcy” and countries reopen their economies, many of the realizations we had gained during the lockdown will remain with us. Perhaps we will push them to the back of our minds, but they will nonetheless affect our thoughts, desires, engagements, occupations, and decisions going forward. When the second outbreak occurs, the experience will return to the fore, which will remind us of the realizations we had had and sink them in our hearts a little deeper. This, in turn, will take us one more step toward a life of more consideration, mutual responsibility, and connection. Eventually, the necessity to keep our distance will help us bring our hearts closer.
Question: In a social-media post, the Salt Lake City Police Department asked for “all criminal activities/nefarious behavior to cease” due to the spread of the coronavirus epidemic. The news report says: “We appreciate your anticipated cooperation in halting crime and thank you criminals in advance.”
How do you like that? What a human approach toward criminals!
Answer: It should be human. They are addressing their colleagues.
Comment: “You do your job, we do ours.”
My Response: Of course. Police officers and thieves. They know each other well, complementing and completing each other. Very good! I think that it will work.
They are showing them that they are considered equals, partners in this difficult time, difficult for everyone! Let’s cooperate in order to make the population healthier. Afterward, if you wish, you can go back to your duties, as we will return to ours.
Comment: What a wise approach! I was stunned. There is absolutely no hatred for the criminals, on the contrary: Let’s cooperate.
My Response: They have a mutual understanding. They really understand each other. It is only the layman who is clueless about either of them.
Question: This too is the doing of the virus?
Answer: Yes. See what a useful thing this virus is? I just hope it doesn’t leave, I hope it keeps us locked up longer and longer, and longer! Until we wise up.
Question: Then crime may come to an end?
Answer: Of course. The virus will clear everything up. How many times have we read Rabash’s article about that which you consider to be a punishment, feeling that the Creator is striking you, sending you suffering, actually is not so! He is sending you corrections! Sending you medicine! With its help you’ll be corrected and reach upper life! This is what is in store for us.
The main thing is to always understand and strive for it, to remain together with this thought. To be grateful to the Creator for teaching us. He will forgive the fact that we are a bit dense and don’t understand yet how this happens to us.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman,” 3/23/20
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How will the coronavirus affect modern culture?“
The coronavirus has reeled in a new time with many changes, and those changes will require a new form of culture as well.
As the coronavirus period with its social distancing and stay-at-home orders made us reexamine what is essential and nonessential in life, emphasizing how we can secure what is essential and have to put aside the nonessential aspects of life, likewise our culture will undergo a major rearrangement.
I expect a future for culture where, for instance, stars who rose to social media fame through portrayals of good looks and lavishness will lose their fame as people in general will seek more meaningful interactions.
I also see a future where leading cultural figures will be prime examples of people who contribute immensely to society and who uphold values of unity above division.
Artists, musicians, writers and media creators across the board will create items that primarily aim to enliven and inspire unity among human society.
Monetary incentives to create art, film and music will lessen, but social incentives will increase, and cultural figures will enjoy much more fruitful and happier social lives than they currently do.
In short, a new culture would ultimately fit into a new paradigm shift where we re-prioritize benefiting others over benefiting ourselves. Instead of a culture of creators who seek to primarily fulfill their personal interests, we would see a new culture blossom, which would soak everyone into a positive unifying atmosphere.
Above photo by William White on Unsplash.
Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What should be mankind’s next step after the Coronavirus debacle?“
Our future actions and dealings need to follow two main basic conditions:
We can meet those conditions if we implement a new form of education throughout society, one where we learn how to enrich our connections and shift our focus from personal benefit to how we can benefit and contribute to society at large.
The sooner we realize such a form of education, the sooner we will experience upgraded lives via improved connections to each other.
Above photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash.
Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is the spiritual lesson of the coronavirus?“
The spiritual lesson of the coronavirus is that in order to live optimal lives, we need to develop different kinds of relationships, ones based on acknowledging our tight interdependence.
When we realize how much we depend on each other, we would then also realize that our happiness, health and well-being depends on fueling our relationships with support, encouragement and care, and any problems in our lives stem from a lack of positive relations.
Moreover, the coronavirus illuminated the idea of what is essential and nonessential in our lives, and accordingly, we can seek how to provide ourselves—all human society—with life’s essentials, and invest our free time in learning about what is most important in life and developing positive connections to each other.
By doing so, we would bring ourselves closer to balance with nature, and then receive positive feedback from nature, which would include the alleviation of future pandemics and other problems.
Above photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash.
Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why must the economy be reopened?“
Indeed, many countries, including those where new cases of the coronavirus are being regularly reported, have started reopening their economies.
Why must the economy be reopened, especially considering that a cure for the virus has yet to be found?
The problem is that many people need to pay quite dearly just to live their lives with its necessities, putting food on the table and keeping a roof over their heads, and they depend on the economy moving in order to do so.
We could ask the question differently: What would we do if we would not reopen the economy?
We then would reveal a greater problem, that we neither feel, think or act as a unified society. While divided, we succumb to the interests of various people and groups who play with power and extreme wealth, none of whom prioritize the public’s benefit.
How, then, could we reach a decision out of what would benefit society the most?
We would have to start by raising awareness of our tight interdependence, that the thoughts and behaviors of one person affect the thoughts and behaviors of everybody else.
Acknowledging our interdependence should pave way to our becoming more responsible and caring of each other, as even if we consider solely our personal benefit, when we realize that we’re interdependent, we then realize that our happiness, health and safety is linked to the happiness, health and safety of everyone around us.
The more we recognize our interdependence and increase our mutual responsibility and consideration in society, then the more we would also recognize that capitalism and egoistic competitiveness no longer serve as positive fuel in today’s interdependent humanity.
The coronavirus has acted as a hard lesson in global interdependence. It has shown the vast extent of our dependence on each and every one of us following each of our government’s health department’s orders in order to stop the virus from spreading, and how an epidemic in China quickly expanded to become a worldwide pandemic.
While the coronavirus clearly illustrated our interdependence in terms of our health and the economy, we would be wise to see how we are interdependent in many more respects, and how we all depend on each other relating responsibly and considerately—that we will at least not do to others what we ourselves hate, and in addition, that we will seek how to positively contribute to society according to our ability.
Ultimately, to experience healthier, more balanced and harmonious lives, we will need to reach a state where every single person receives great care and support. We will continue facing more and more challenges spanning health, the economy and human relations in general until we do.
Above photo by Iwona Castiello d’Antonio on Unsplash.
Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is that one thing humanity can learn from the coronavirus (COVID-19)?“
The coronavirus has revealed humanity’s interconnectedness and interdependence. Accordingly, we would be wise to adjust to this revelation of our connectedness.
As experts alert us to future pandemics and problems at global scales, we should hear this message of our global connection that nature communicates to us, and likewise prepare a new global basis for dealing with all such problems.
Humanity can thus learn from the coronavirus that dealing with global-scale problems with local responses is like applying band-aids to the skin when there is a disease affecting the whole body.
In other words, it is insufficient.
As we head into a recovery mode from the pandemic, we would be wise to revise society’s leading values in order to make recovery truly possible and sustainable.
What values are optimal for humanity’s state today? They are none other than the need for more mutual responsibility and consideration to flow among all people, societies and nations.
We are one interconnected and interdependent system, and as the coronavirus did not distinguish between the socio-economic status of who it infected, or whether it infected someone who was good or bad to the ecology, but treated all people as equal, we too would be wise to learn this lesson about our equality from the coronavirus.
In learning this lesson from the coronavirus, we can see ourselves as little children who were fighting and arguing with each other, and then our strict mother caught us. No matter how much we try to point out that the other children started it and are to blame, our mother doesn’t care about all of our finger-pointing, and simply punishes us all equally, forcing us to stop playing, think about what we were doing, and how to improve our behavior.
Therefore, the main take away from this pandemic is that we should relate to each other equally, that all people, societies and nations share a common role in a globally interdependent world, and that in such a situation, we depend on everyone taking responsibility, and thinking and acting considerately toward each other.
If we fail to upgrade our relationships to become more responsible and considerate toward each other, then we can expect more and even harsher blows from nature to come and alert us of our interdependence and our need to upgrade our relations accordingly.
In order to undergo an upgrade in our relations, we need a revised educational system, which will use all communications means possible in order to raise a new global society of positively connected individuals, societies and nations.
The more we are influenced by and reminded about the idea that humanity is a single family, and as it works in a family, every member should care, support and encourage the other members equally, according to each one’s unique place in the family, then we will experience a much higher quality of life, more happiness, confidence and prosperity throughout society.
Nature has its own means to bring us to this conclusion—the coronavirus being one of them—but the sooner we raise our own awareness of our global interdependence and improve our relationships, then the less negative phenomena we will experience from nature, and the more we will feel at peace and balance with each other and nature.
Above photo by Macau Photo Agency on Unsplash.
For the Sake of Correcting the Feminine
In one of the articles, Rabash writes: “Who is an acceptable wife? She who fulfills her husband’s desires.”
“It is known that a person is called a woman, Nukva, when he receives light from the master. The Creator bestows pleasure to His creatures. When is a person called a pleasing wife? When he fulfills desires. that is, when for everything he enjoys, he creates an intention to fulfill the master’s desire without any desire for the sake of self.”
If an ordinary person reads this passage, he might mistake Kabbalists for medieval slave owners. But when studying Kabbalah, we begin to understand that this refers to our desire, which is called “woman.” In Kabbalah, the desire to receive is called the female desire, and the desire to give is called the male desire.
This has nothing to do with gender or gender definitions in our world. Therefore, we, by no means mean women or men, we simply want to say that the female spiritual roots are not only different from the male, but also more important. After all, everything that is being done in the world for the sake of correction is done in the name of correcting the feminine.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 3/8/20
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Question: Why is the spiritual world called “upper”?
Answer: We call it the upper because it is above our properties. Our properties are the properties of receiving, and therefore, we are very dependent on our egoistic desires and their fulfillment.
And the upper world, these are properties that consist of the desire to give, fulfill, love, and nourish others. Since they (the properties) are independent, free in their essence, they are called upper.
In addition, they are closer to the Creator in their attributes. He is absolute bestowal and love. And therefore, everything that is closer to Him, we define as above us, i.e., closer to the root cause.
Question: Speaking of the upper world, we often call it spiritual. What does the word “spiritual” mean?
Answer: The upper world is called spiritual because it is not material.
Question: Is there a difference between the terms “spiritual world” and “upper world”?
Answer: No, these are common, unspecified names.
Question: What is spiritual attainment?
Answer: The comprehension of nature in the quality of bestowal, equal to the Creator, is called spiritual attainment.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 6/17/19
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