“Love Is A Pet That Feeds On Mutual Concessions”

Dr. Michael LaitmanFrom My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 8/7/20

My teacher used to say that love is a pet that feeds on mutual concessions. These days, it seems as though we’re not very fond of love precisely because it feeds on concessions. But the problem is not with love; the problem is with our perception of concessions. We think that by conceding, we are losing something, such as social status, respect, position of dominance, or control.

It’s unclear whether differing opinions create hate, or if hate creates different opinions, but one thing is clear: When there are different opinions, you need love in order to rise above the differences, but if there is no love then there is no motivation to rise above the differences.

There is only one solution to this catch: to realize that if we don’t rise above our differences and unite above our hatred, we will destroy each other, physically, there will be bloodshed. If we want to survive, we must confess that if hatred does subside, it’s going to end all of us. Afterwards, we must stop the demonization.

Once we have done that, we can take an example from nature and learn what it means to make concessions without losing face and why we should do it. When parents make concessions to each other, they don’t do it because they are weaker than the other partner; they do it for the sake of the child—their mutual creation. If the parents focus on getting their own way, they will divorce. But if they’re focused on raising a happy child, they’ll always find a solution that everyone is happy with, and their joy will be in seeing their offspring grow up in a good and happy family.

When two political schools of thought engage in power struggles, they must do the same. In their case, the child is the country. If the parties find the way to put their love for their country above their desire to see their dogma triumph, there is hope for the future. But if they entrench themselves in their positions and want only their view to exist, then catastrophe is a certainty.

Audio Version Of The Blog – 11/7/20

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The Coronavirus Teaches Mutual Guarantee

Laitman_507.03See what the Creator is doing! We thought that a person could get a new mind and new feelings only through such unconventional blows as world war, natural disasters, volcanic explosions, hurricanes, and tsunamis. But it turns out that this was not necessary. Quietly, unnoticed, some virus appears and does all the work.

It is simply mercy on the part of the Creator to restore order by such methods. The virus has already forced us to close all artificially invented businesses that do not bring any benefit and only pollute the globe. You can already see how we quit doing all sorts of stupid and unnecessary things. All systems that were built in order to boast in front of each other are collapsing, and nothing remains.

From the revelation of the slightest influence of the Creator, in 4 to 5 months we have found ourselves in a new world. We are still being stubborn and do not agree with this world and are unwilling to recognize it. But we must understand that we are entering a new reality. The old life will not return; you will have to live a new life, and the restrictions will only increase.

The world is ruled by one upper force, “there is none else besides it.” But this does not mean that we should bow down and accept such an existence out of hopelessness. We need to acquire the mind and feelings of the Creator and live on the level of His decisions and actions in order for us to agree with everything that is happening today: with the fact that unnecessary places of work are being closed and our lives are changing and with the fact that we have to take more care of each other.

After all, if I infect someone with a virus today, then tomorrow he can infect my children. We are becoming more and more connected and dependent on each other. The coronavirus shows our interdependence. Therefore, it will not work to protest and do what you want, as those who go to demonstrations and refuse to wear masks. There is no way out, I have to educate myself to become responsible for others, and they will be responsible for me, for my family, my children, and all of humanity in general.

The coronavirus teaches us from a distance, little by little, about mutual guarantee. We are already beginning to see a linked, connected world where everyone, whether he wants to or not, affects everyone, and everyone affects him. And all this happened thanks to some tiny virus.

What a mercy from the side of the Creator! We see in the virus the work of the upper force, besides which there is nothing. And what can be done against it, where to find a cure for such a virus? But we do not need a cure for the virus! We need to find a cure for our egoism, and then we will not feel any virus.

There is no other evil in the world but our egoism. If we protected each other from transmitting evil to others, the virus would disappear. The Creator wants us to acquire an intention to bestow, or at least not to harm our neighbor. Meanwhile, we are learning this law in a material form, but soon we will understand where it is in us in a spiritual form, and so we will advance toward the Creator, toward understanding Him, toward the fact that “there is none else besides Him.” We will see this in everything.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/1/20, “There is None Else Besides Him”

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“A Generational Catastrophe In Education” (Medium)

Medium published my new article “A Generational Catastrophe in Education

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that we’re experiencing a “generational catastrophe” in education because of school closures during the coronavirus pandemic. On the one hand, I understand why this is sad. On the other hand, if we look at how people turn out after spending their entire childhood and adolescence in the educational system, I’m not so sure we should regret its closure. In my opinion, it is actually the disconnection from the old system that will allow us to examine it from aside, criticize it, and build a new and better one.

The correct education system should put the emphasis on human connection, not on inculcation of information. It should teach children that people with different views are not enemies.

The violence on the streets and within homes, the crime rate, substance abuse, prostitution, depression rates, suicides, all those are results of the education we give to our children. So one can lament the closure of the education system, but judging by the results, it hasn’t been a success story.

The deterioration hasn’t started with the emergence of Covid-19. It has been going on for decades.
The educational system was built during the Industrial Revolution, and its purpose was to give farmers who had migrated into cities the required knowledge to become machine operators. Over time, we added more and more fields of knowledge to the schooling system but we didn’t change the basic principle: Memorize the material your teachers tell you and that’s all you need in order to do a good job.

Somewhere along the way, we have forgotten that schooling gives children knowledge but does not improve them as human beings. That part, the one that teaches them how to communicate with other people, how to care for one another, how to be a positive element in society, has been forgotten altogether. Parents no longer teach it since the children aren’t at home, and schools don’t teach it since they weren’t made for it in the first place, so the result is that eighteen years after they are born, the sweet children on whom we pinned our hopes have become fully grown, incorrigible savages. This is why it is just as well that the schools have closed; it is yet another benefit of Covid-19 to society.

The correct education system should put the emphasis on human connection, not on inculcation of information. It should teach children that people with different views are not enemies. On the contrary, they show us perspectives that we might have otherwise missed. Even if we disagree with other people, we would not know why we think what we think were it not for the need to articulate our views.

Moreover, in a world so full of opposites, it is easy to see that just as nothing in nature is complete without its opposite, so it is with people. When we hold different views, it may feel like we are arguing over whose opinion is correct, but in truth, we are advancing the whole world to a higher level of existence.

Similarly, when we look at our feet as we walk, it seems as though they are competing. But we, who see them from above, know that the apparent competition is really an advancement of the whole body toward the next place we want to go. Were it not for the apparent competition, we wouldn’t advance at all, we would be standing still.

But children do not learn all that at school; they only memorize. This is why I am so happy that we’ve finally come to a point where we can truly educate ourselves, become human beings, not human computers. Now, perhaps, there is hope for our species.
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“Why Does Life Punish Good People?” (Quora)

Dr. Michael LaitmanMichael Laitman, On Quora: Why does life punish good people?

In today’s distorted egoistic world, where people around the world prioritize personal benefit over society’s benefit, it is naive and incorrect to think that “good people” will have a good life, and “bad people” the opposite.

Rather, since our egoistic intentions underlie our social, political and cultural constructs, then it is natural to expect nothing positive to emerge from them.

It is especially the case today, where our egos have grown to enormous proportions, much bigger than in any other time in history.

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, humanity is in a developmental process toward a state of total unification, where we will experience perfection. Our current era marks a major transition in this process from our old egoistic world to a new unified one.

Today, we can expect major flips and turns (the coronavirus pandemic is a prime example) where, if we successfully view them from within the natural process we are in, we will then see how they emerge in order to give us conditions that guide us to realize the very high density of our interdependence and interconnectedness.

We will increasingly feel on our flesh that if we fail to align ourselves with the new and more connected conditions, then we will experience them as painful. On the contrary, if we upgrade our attitudes to each other in order to balance with our tighter interdependence, we will then experience our transition to a more connected world positively and harmoniously—as a new world of greater happiness, confidence and prosperity for all people that opens up to us.

I thus hope that the awareness of our connectedness and our place in nature will spread, so that we will be spared from a lot of suffering as we head into completely new conditions, different to anything we have experienced before.

Above photo by Simon Shim on Unsplash.

At The Stage Of Reconstruction Of The World

laitman_961.1Question: Public opinion has taught people to live according to the principles of endless consumption, saying that this is the pinnacle of civilization. How can we not make a mistake now while building new relationships in society?

Answer: The pandemic is just the beginning, the first small blow. Not even a blow, but a slight push to move us a little. But all the same, the coronavirus will reshape us in the most terrible way.

We will see a collapsed, destroyed world, which we can no longer control with our past levers. Neither factories nor airlines, nothing will work the way it should. Everything must go through a completely new stage of reconstruction, correct change, to new unfolding conditions.

The coronavirus has somewhat made the world integral. However, already proceeding from this, we understand that we are not adapted to this world. We do not even understand how we can return to the past. And you can’t go back to the past.

But in this case, two billion people will be left without work. How will they feed themselves? Or how are we going to supply them with what they need?

Today, countries are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to somehow calm things down. These dollars disappear, we will not be able to demand them back into the state treasury. Therefore, we see that the powerful of this world have only strength, but no heads. We are facing a very big problem.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 4/30/20

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We Give Birth To Ourselves In A New World

laitman_284.03We live in a world that is changing right before our eyes. Our whole life can be divided into two stages: before the coronavirus and after it.

Life flowed according to a certain routine, and the virus suddenly made a drastic change in it, bringing all of humanity to a new state, which is still perceived as a global crisis.

The crisis is growing and deepening and it is not clear where it will lead, but it is clear that it is leading us to a new world that we are not yet familiar with. This crisis is like a new birth. The very word “crisis” (Mashber) comes from the name of the stone on which women in ancient times gave birth to children. In other words, crisis is the place of new birth, and the current state, which we call a crisis, is the birth of a new world.

There have been many different crises in the history of mankind, but so far, none of them has changed the world so dramatically. There were only some changes in human society, in its form. But today’s crisis is the first real one, although it does not seem very serious yet because it is not a war, a meteorite falling, or mass destruction.

And yet, we can call it a crisis precisely because a new world is being born before our eyes. Soon we will see how human society, us, our families, and our attitude to the world have changed. The inner world of a person, his perception of reality will change, and we will see a new world.

We do not see it yet, just like a baby that is inside its mother and does not see the world. But even when it is born, it does not see anything at first either. Then it will develop hearing and vision, and it will begin to respond as it grows and becomes familiar with the world.

It is exactly how we adults need to be born and change our perception and vision to see a new world. It will happen soon.

Childbirth is a huge, incomparable pain, a feeling that the whole body is ready to explode. On one hand, this is a very serious, critical, life-threatening condition. But on the other hand, we see that there is no choice: nature obliges us to go through it.

However, the birth of a child is based on the natural desire of a woman to have children. In addition, there is the public opinion that motivates a woman to give birth to a child, and not only one. Nature gave the woman a lot of strength to endure labor pains; this is a difficult and dangerous state.

The entire humanity is in this coronavirus crisis, both men and women. Women always reproached men for not knowing labor pains. Well, now women can be satisfied: men will go through real, severe labor pains. They will feel that the crisis is suffocating them, not giving them the opportunity to resist it: you are all torn from within, but you can do nothing.

We will still be able to be born through prayer and efforts to unite. But it will be a very difficult and special birth because we are giving birth to ourselves in a new world. We cross the border to the spiritual world and are born in a new form.
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From KabTV’s “Women in the New World” 7/9/20

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The Virus—The Integrator

laitman_275Remark: You say that our path is the path of integration, the feeling of universal unity.

My Comment: This is inherent in the program of nature and there is no way to get away from it. The more we resist, the more we will get hit.

Question: Who is the integrator in this situation? There must be some driving force.

Answer: The virus itself. Once it circled around the globe, it showed us that we are all actually integrated, interconnected, and represent one unified society, which it is now infecting.

But the virus is not simply infecting; it is showing us that we are one whole. And we will not get away from it anywhere. It manifests itself anywhere, even on the distant islands of Oceania. And how it gets there, no one knows.
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Form KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 5/24/20

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Laitman_715Assimilation Is Impossible

Question: In the territory of Germany, the Jews first appeared with the Romans in the 5th century AD, but the epicenter of Jewish settlements dates back to the 10th century.

As in Spain, they contributed to the development of the economy and trade. Despite the instability of the situation of the Jews, Germany became one of the most important centers of the Jewish community. Here a special type developed, the Ashkenazi community. By the 17th century, the center of the Ashkenazi community moved to Poland, Lithuania, and Prague.

This is how the German historian of Jewish origin Heinrich Graetz described the state of German Jewry, “If the laboriously constructed organism of a nation has lost vitality, the bonds connecting the individual parts are weakened, and internal dissolution has set in, even the despotic will which keeps the members in a mechanical union being wanting; in short, if death comes upon a commonalty in its corporate state, and it has been entombed, can it be resuscitated and undergo a revival?”

In addition, the mass process of conversion of Jews to Christianity, assimilation, and emancipation began. What do you see as the problem of assimilation?

Answer: The fact is that it is impossible. As soon as assimilation begins, anti-Semitism immediately rises with such a force that assimilation is suspended, and despite the fact that Jews would very much like to dissolve into the people among whom they currently live, it is impossible.

Comment: However, on the other hand, you said that the dispersion of Jews among other nations and their mutual mingling has a purpose.

My Response: The goal is not to physically mingle, but rather to bring their own ideology, culture, and monotheism to the nations of the world. We are talking about a historical movement that existed for several thousand years.

It is written in the Torah that Jews should bring light to all nations. To do this, they need to become its source. In other words, they should not be dissolved, but should be a source of light, knowledge, monotheism, and a correct attitude to the development of civilization in every nation.

For more on this topic, read my books Like a Bundle of Reeds: why unity and mutual guarantee are today’s call of the hour, and The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism, Historical facts on anti-Semitism as a reflection of Jewish social discord.

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From KabTV’s “Systematic Analysis of the Development of the People of Israel” 8/12/19

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Why Is The Opinion Of Others Important To Us?

laitman_423.03Question: The basis of conformism, first of all, is that the opinion of others is very important to us even if we do not notice it or do not recognize it.

Why do we care so much about the opinions of other people whom we neglect, and in fact do not care about at all? How can you explain this paradox?

Answer: This is indeed a paradox. On the one hand, I am deeply indifferent to others. On the other hand, it is very important to me that they approve of me. If even a small mouse, cat, or dog shows some gesture of disdain for me, I will get upset. This will hurt me very much.

It is arranged so by nature so that we would get into correct contact with the world around us. So that we will have good mutual communication. So that I will correctly influence the world and the world will influence me in global harmony.

Question: In principle, if I didn’t care about society, I would never be able to establish proper communication with it?

Answer: You would not be able to change yourself and feel the globality and integrality of general nature. This is the most important thing.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 4/30/20

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