Audio Version Of The Blog – 5/5/20
Posted on May 5th, 2020
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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 5/5/20
Humanity is moving toward an unprecedented crisis. There have been crises before—economic and social crises, when the ego of one country collided with another, or several other countries. But now we’re moving into a completely different type of crisis. We’re moving into a state where humanity must scrutinize, question, and in most cases discard everything that it has built in its entire history.
Everything we’ve built has been based on self-extolment. Now we’re moving into an era when solidarity is the only value that society appreciates, and consideration, the only trait humanity respects.
The coronavirus has exposed our interdependency. Gradually, we will discover that this mutual dependency runs much deeper than the pandemic; it is the very fabric of reality. Soon we will come to feel that anyone who is inconsiderate toward others hurts not only those he mistreats, but everyone and everything, since he is tearing the fabric of reality.
Realizing our interconnectedness will necessarily engender mutual care and consideration. The sooner we adapt to this mode of thinking, the sooner it will become our reality. The more we exert to be considerate to others, the more pleasantly, smoothly, and quickly will we transition to this pleasant life.
Comment: The verse in one of the Kabbalistic songs goes like this: “The soul grows in a person not with time; commit to the work in the heart over and over again so that eventually it will appear in the world from the seed of love.”
Answer: Yes, this is how it grows. And there is nothing you can do but take care both of this seed (the point in the heart) and its environment. Mind you, the environment is our whole world. And then there are also spiritual worlds of impurity called Klipot (shells). They are an enormous help in the development of the soul, but it is negative help. It is written: “I will make for him a help made against him.”
Even in our world, if I want to be an athlete, a scientist, no matter what, I must exert and work against my natural laziness. This is the only way I can overcome my laziness.
But in spirituality, oddly enough, it is much easier. In spirituality, all you need is to understand that everything will be resolved with our unity. It is impossible to resolve any question if you are alone because then you hit a wall, and you hit it over and over again, and you get bumps on your head.
But if you connect with others, you discover the passage to the spiritual world together and enter it literally like a knife through butter.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 2/9/20
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Question: It is not enough just to look and see some facts from a new point of view in order to change one’s attitude to the world. A serious, significant change in the perception of the world is impossible through understanding and logical conviction.
This requires faith above reason. Such faith appears in an altered state of consciousness. Does Kabbalah have practical methods for controlling the state of consciousness?
Answer: Those changes in consciousness that we must achieve in order to feel the higher world are possible only under the influence of the upper light and cannot be replaced by any training!
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Question: There are many definitions of prayer that don’t exactly coincide with each other. But everyone understands that prayer is an appeal to the Creator, to God.
Usually, a prayer is structured as follows: first comes the praise of the Creator, second, a plea for forgiveness for some sins, and third is gratitude for everything good you’ve received from the Creator.
Is it the same in Kabbalah or somehow different?
Answer: In Kabbalah it is all a one-sided game.
I have no one to address, not because there is no upper force, but because there is no point in addressing it since a prayer, from the verb “Lehitpalel,” means to judge oneself. Nobody is judging me, and if I have to turn to someone—it is only to myself.
In fact, this is how all prayers work. With its help, through the means of addressing myself, I have to check myself: What am I doing well? Which parts am I not doing well? What can I do to improve my state, to get better at? What does it mean to become better? Compared to whom and how? And so on.
Naturally, I have to praise the Creator so that the quality of the Creator, love and bestowal, is most preferred in my eyes.
Question: Do I have to ask for forgiveness and if so from whom?
Answer: There is no one to ask for forgiveness because the Creator is the absolute. If I turn to Him asking for forgiveness, it means that, practically, I am turning to myself. And I begin to feel whether I have acted correctly, how I should have behaved, and how I should act in the future. So it is self-judgment, realizing one’s evil and how to turn it into good.
And then I thank the Creator for helping me. But again, I am addressing myself the whole time because the Creator is the absolute quality of love and bestowal, which we can awaken but only in the measure of our desire to be similar to Him.
Question: So, does the Creator answer only the right prayer?
Answer: Of course. And the right prayer is my desire to become similar to Him. Nothing else.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 4/1/19
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Question: Where does a person find the strength to reject the desire to be filled and to not receive the filling?
Answer: From the Creator. But in order to do so, one must be in a group because this force is not in us. We cannot refrain from receiving because we only consist of the desire to receive.
This is where we understand that we do not have the power to control ourselves. We begin to believe what Kabbalists say, that if you really want to attain the attribute of bestowal, there is no other way but to enter a group that engages in acquiring the attribute of bestowal because it is only through the group when a person annuls himself before it, that he can begin to acquire this attribute from the Creator.
There are not so many conditions for that, but it is very hard to absorb them in our egoistic mind.
There are many different movements that contradict each other, and it is very hard for a person to absorb them and to picture everything.
Although all one is required to do is to simply sit down, physically, like a machine and study the system, then all these actions run through him at the same time and he constantly changes. When a person changes, he feels the acquired knowledge and actions in a new way every time. When he feels it differently, he does not understand how all this takes place.
It turns out that the wisdom seems simple: there is only pleasure and desire, which must be integrated correctly in order for pleasure to be received for the desire and the desire will give for the pleasure, but this does not work out, and it is very hard to attain it. This is why there are other aids such as the group and the surrounding light.
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From Kab TV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 2/16/20
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Lesson Preparation
| [media 1] | [media 2] |
Writings of Rabash, “One Should Always Sell the Beams of His House,” (1984)
| [media 3] | [media 4] |
Lesson on the Topic “Concerning Above Reason”
| [media 5] | [media 6] |
Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 15
| [media 7] | [media 8] |
Selected Highlights
| [media 9] | [media 10] |
The Creator is the will to bestow. The created being is the will to receive.
Israel is the will to bestow, the Creator’s contituent in the will to receive—the middle ground between the Creator and the created beings. Through Israel, light passes from the Creator to the created beings. That is why everyone is always focused on #Israel: whether or not the light flows through them.
All of one’s actions occur under the influence of his ego, i.e., they’re carried out not by him, but by that which is given from nature, the Creator. And only actions against the ego, by faith above reason, constitute one’s individual actions, which merit either reward or punishment.
We must encourage forward-thinking innovations that lead toward developing our society from private consciousness to a common one, toward connection and an improved understanding of other people’s thoughts and desires.
And the more we are repelled by it, the greater the correction we can introduce with our correct participation.
The #coronavirus is exposing important flaws in the web of our interconnections, and is pushing us toward a lifestyle suitable to an interconnected system. The #pandemic demonstrates that we must change our relationships and begin perceiving all of humanity as a single integral organism.
Baal HaSulam: A person’s welfare is provided for by all of the world’s countries. A person is invariably dependent on the whole world, like a cogwheel in a mechanism. It is inconceivable to arrive at a good social structure in one country without doing the same in all the other countries of the world.
From an individualized world, in which everyone operates in isolation from others, suddenly and without realizing it, the #coronavirus helped shift us into a new, global and integral world, where everyone is interconnected via systems of #healthcare, environment, #economy #politics, society…
The Book of Zohar: “Just as the human body divides into organs in a hierarchical structure, correcting with the help of one another and together comprising a single organism, so goes for the whole world: all the creatures of the worlds are organs in a hierarchical structure. When they become fully corrected, they will truly become a single whole.”
The way that the #coronavirus spreads, it’s teaching us that precisely in the age of #globalization, each person possesses tremendous power: the ability to infect or not infect everyone around them. Only a system of correct relationships between people becomes the deciding factor of our existence.
The #coronavirus made it clear to everyone that mutual guarantee is more than just pretty words. When each can infect the other, we become unwitting guarantors for one another. All of humanity constitutes one system of mutual responsibility. The integral nature of the world is manifesting!
From Twitter, 5/4/20
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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 5/4/20
As the world returns to what we call “normalcy,” to the pre-coronavirus madness, we must look for signs that we have learned something from the ordeal. Have we become more one? Have we become more like a family? Have we realized that the ties between us are unbreakable? If we have, we will be able to find our way through the minefield more easily. The mines—the obstacles our egos place in order to trip us—are certain to explode. We must be careful to stir clear of them and warn others not to go that way, too.
We have to use our ego; it is all we’ve got, but we must use it wisely. We must use our desire for respect and praise people who contribute to society and do not wallow in self-entitlement. We must use our desire for knowledge and laud those who help others learn rather than striving to outdo their peers. We must use our desire for money and commend those who help communities make wiser economic choices.
But we can do all that only if realize that we are one humanity, and COVID-19 has shown us that we are dependent on each other, for better or worse.
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