Question: How can taking responsibility for our actions help change this world?
Answer: It depends on how much we perceive ourselves and human society as one single organism in order to become similar to the general nature instead of being opposite to it, while constantly receiving blows from it.
We already see how we are destroying our planet and can’t do anything about it. Our egoism is leading us toward destruction.
Still, we have to think about how we can change our behavior. However, this is impossible unless we change our egoistic nature. Therefore, the most important question is: how do we change it? Otherwise, the planet won’t stand us any longer. So think about what to do. [266988] From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 5/17/20
We humans are different to animals in that our dreams, visions, goals and targets motivate us to strive more than merely living in order to survive.
Getting motivated every day to realize one’s goals requires organizing for oneself an environment that consistently upholds the importance of such goals.
However, it is important to clarify the goals one exerts for, since many goals end up failing to provide lasting fulfillment and happiness.
The ultimate goal in life is achieving total balance with nature through positive human connection.
When we reach such a mode of connecting to each other, with altruistic thoughts, desires and actions in the midst of our connections, we will experience a new kind of happiness—one that does not dissipate, but which is eternal, since we would reach what Kabbalah calls “equivalence of form” with nature’s altruistic form.
Therefore, similarly to how we motivate ourselves to achieve other goals in life, achieving connection in order to balance with nature requires a supportive environment of like-minded people who share a similar desire to reach this eternal fulfillment. Also, they should regularly show encouragement and examples to each other of efforts to rise above the human egoistic nature, which separates us, and enter the altruistic nature, which connects us.
We will then start experiencing our incapability and unpreparedness for such a state, as we start detecting how our entire being is anti-altruistic, aimed solely at our personal benefit.
Therefore, our motivation to continue and make a breakthrough from our egoistic, self-centered nature to balance with the altruistic mode of nature, depends on the support, encouragement, confidence and activity that we develop in a supportive environment that aims at such a goal.
If we viewed human society a single live organism, then what would we see?
We would see that, in its current state of development, its immune system is barely working, and its cells and organs, which should be sustaining the body’s health, are deteriorating.
Personal, social, economic and ecological problems are all on the rise, including depression, stress, loneliness, emptiness, anxiety, xenophobia, drug abuse, suicide, income equality, poverty, climate change, the coronavirus pandemic, and although many people are trying to patch and treat these problems, the efforts fail to solve the problem at its overarching cause.
What is the cause of all problems in human society?
It is the human ego, i.e., the innate calculative mechanism in human nature that prioritizes self-benefit over benefiting others, which makes society’s individual “cells” each pull to themselves more than giving to others, bringing on the downfall of the entire organism of human society.
As cancer takes place when cells take more than they need at the expense of the body, so our society is currently made up of egoists each guided by an enveloping egoistic paradigm that supports the idea of success as becoming individually wealthy, famous and powerful.
That we are egoists is a nature-given situation, but the social influence and public opinion that supports egoistic goals and values is what’s wrong with society.
Nature functions oppositely to the human ego: altruistically and according to laws of interconnection and interdependence. It thus rejects our growing ego, and the more we develop today, the more we feel pressured between our growing ego that wants to detach from others, and nature’s tendency to connect us all into a single whole.
Therefore, the more we develop today, the more we enter into an increasing entanglement of complications, and it is all in order to bring us to the realization that our egoistic nature stands behind all of our problems, that it is an inherently evil quality, that we helplessly follow its demands to try and fill it with self-aimed pleasure at the expense of others time and again, and that any move to improve society requires first diagnosing the ego as the cause of all our problems.
Then, when we reach a widespread realization of this common cause to all our problems, we can start fixing it.
When we reach such an awakening, we will realize that there is no person, group of people, or political or religious orientation to blame for our problems. There is only our very egoistic nature, dwelling in each and every one of us.
How can we then correct human nature, if it is the cause of all our problems?
It is possible if we create an environment that supports the ego’s correction, so that instead of receiving for self-benefit alone at the expense of others, we would want to positively contribute and connect to others in order to benefit them, without any “What will I get out of it?” intent.
It is against human nature to give and contribute to others, but if we changed public opinion, our social and media influences, and also our education, in order that we learn the nature of humanity’s increasing interdependence today, how the human ego opposes our growing interdependence and also why this is the cause of all our problems, and that the way to resolve our myriad problems today is by correcting our connections to each other—creating an environment that supports giving and contributing to society, prioritizing values of mutual consideration and responsibility over competitive and individualistic ideas of success—then we would be on course to a monumental positive social transformation.
Question:We must constantly satisfy our desires. You said that when the quarantine ends, people will lose the need to satisfy themselves with all sorts of shopping, etc.
But we can see that now when a slight easing has begun, people have started flooding restaurants and shops to fill the accumulated void. I even know for myself that shopping therapy is a pleasant thing that is quite accessible to many. What is wrong with this and why should it end?
Answer: It’s not about whether it’s good or bad. I evaluate everything in relation to the goal that the individual and society as a whole should achieve. Therefore, I cannot say that we are acting correctly, behaving correctly.
Nature will have to correct us and precisely direct us to the final goal of development. And it is not sitting in cafes, restaurants, and bars or running around to sales, but working on ourselves, learning together how to get closer to one another internally, and creating a single system of ourselves, like all of inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature and the entire cosmos. We cannot even imagine how much they are connected in all their diversity.
Therefore, we need to understand that we should also be linked to this system and not look at it from the outside as some higher creatures, the masters of life. We need to know what is happening to us, what nature wants from us.
And it wants absolute unity between us so that we are as one person with one heart and, at the same time, connected to its inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels, adding to them our level of “man.” Then everything together will be one completely closed integral system. [267092] From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era,” 4/23/20
Question: I have always thought that I manage my own life, but you are saying that everything comes from the Creator. How can we check that?
Answer: If we scrutinize our lives carefully, we will see that we don’t manage anything, and even if we think that we actually perform certain actions and do certain things, it only seems this way to us. We are constantly in doubt.
The only way we can check that the Creator is the only force that manages everyone is if we carefully implement the method of attaining the Creator. Then He is revealed.
But the system that we learn about is revealed to us in the oppositeness of the Creator, in the oppositeness of His uniqueness, His credibility. You will feel this as a revelation of the light against a background of darkness and will gradually come to the conclusion that there is indeed only one force that manages us. [257589] From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 12/1/19
In the article “The Matter of Spiritual Attainment,” (Shamati #3) Baal HaSulam says that Ein Sof is the source of everything and that it is called “Light without a vessel,” which mean the limitless light of the Creator in a certain attribute. From there the root of creation originates, the connection between the created being and the Creator, called the Creator’s desire to do good to His created beings. This pleasure begins in the world of Ein Sof and descends through all the worlds until the world of Assiya.
The upper light that wants to fill all the souls that descend from the world of Ein Sof through the worlds of Adam Kadmon, Atzilut, Beria, Yetzira, Assiya, and our world. In order to do so He needs to create a vessel for the light that the souls can be filled with because the light brings the pleasure the Creator wants to give them.
It is like a child who wants to enjoy only sweets, but his parents do not let him. This is how the Creator treats us. In order to determine the pleasure that He gives us, the Creator puts us through many different impressions.
We need to choose which fillings are correct in order to get closer to the Creator, to resemble Him, and to begin to see the world as He sees it: infinite and whole. In order to do so, we need to change our desires and our awareness. [257856] From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 12/8/19
Question: Should we be aggressive about criticism in relation to the study of Kabbalah?
Answer: Why be aggressive? I don’t do that. I often hear various accusations, insults, and slights against kabbalists and Kabbalah from people. Well, what can you do with a person if they do not understand what you are talking about?
It is necessary to explain. This attitude is given to people by nature, so that you nonetheless gradually, patiently explain the essence of things to them, and by this you correct the world. You are dealing with selfishness that the Creator created. So understand who you’re working with.
I have patience. You can’t go anywhere. So gradually the world will be transformed. That’s why it is given to us. [266271] From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 4/19/20
The Element of Freedom in the Rigid Program of Nature
Question:According to Baal HaSulam, the law of mutual guarantee is the basis for the interaction of all living organisms and is built on the balance between reception and bestowal.
Moreover, the law of reception is that each member of society tries to get everything he needs to live in the way his individual, egoistic system requires. And the law of bestowal is that each person cares about the welfare of the entire society.
If a person does not observe the law of bestowal, then he is hit by disasters and problems sent to him by nature. How can a person observe this law?
Answer: How to observe is one problem. And the fact that a person is obliged to observe this law follows from the image of nature that is revealed to us.
We see in front of us an absolutely integral picture: one single nature in which man is included with all his egoisms, scientific and anti-scientific “isms.” It turns out that we can not dodge and escape from the integral picture of nature. Whether we want it or not, we are inside this system and cannot exist outside of it.
This system is constantly evolving: from the inanimate level for hundreds of thousands of years, to the vegetative level for tens of thousands of years, to the animate level for thousands of years, and at the human level for literally decades. In other words, the higher nature is organized, the faster the stages of development occur in it.
The only question is when do we begin to discover ourselves in this system? We see that we are opposed to it for a very simple reason. We are not instinctively involved in nature because it affects us with the element of freedom.
We can agree or disagree with the way nature works on us, and to this extent, we determine our fate. It turns out that we are unhappy people. Nature is given to us, we can live in it, work, reproduce, create anything imaginable—unlike animals—on the next, conscious level. And we do not know what to do with it.
We create everything based on our natural egoistic nature, acting to the detriment of others and ostensibly for the benefit of ourselves. We do not understand that integral nature forces us to become different. For the benefit of oneself means for the benefit of others. [266700] From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era,” 4/16/20
Question: How can I explain to my grandchildren that we need to change? How can I help them get closer to nature?
Answer: Since nature is integral and leads us to complete adaptation to it, we have no choice but to get closer to nature. We are inside this system. Therefore, they must accept it as a model and be the same—integrally included in it.
Explain that only in this way can we come to a better life. We will be just fine. [266749] From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 5/10/20
Question: How is it possible to accept and love all people? After all, there are maniacs and murderers among them.
Answer: It all depends to what extent you look at the world correctly. Do not think that you are changing and the world is not.
As much as you change in your perception of the world, the world will also be changing in your perception. It turns out that in the end, you will be able to see the whole world as absolutely good, corrected, and perfect, because you have changed.
In other words, you evaluate the world either according to your correction or to your corruption. [266837] From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 5/17/20
Question: How can taking responsibility for our actions help change this world?
Michael Laitman, On Quora:
