Audio Version Of The Blog – 12/15/20

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My Thoughts On Twitter 12/15/20

Dr Michael Laitman Twitter

The purpose of the virus is to wear people out, so they’ll realize their weakness and begin to seriously ponder the reason for this across-the-board treatment of all mankind from nature—and with time, we’ll be able to realize that this is nature’s reaction to our behavior, which fractures nature’s integrality.
From Twitter, 12/15/20

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“Why Did Hanukkah Start?” (Quora)

Dr. Michael LaitmanMichael Laitman, On Quora: Why did Hanukkah start?

To understand why Hanukkah started, we need to first understand that the Jewish holidays describe special stages in our spiritual development, and also, that the Torah in general only discusses our spiritual development.

As such, Hanukkah is hardly mentioned in the Torah because it is a state we reach in our spiritual development which is still void of the reception of the light of the Torah. Rather, it is a state of preparation for spiritual corrections—the application of an intention to bestow upon our desire to receive—toward the state where we receive the upper light.

In terms of spiritual development, Hanukkah is the first Jewish holiday.

It expresses our development to the first spiritual level, which is called “Bina,” or “giving for the sake of giving,” a pure intention to give and bestow above the human ego that constantly wants to receive for personal benefit alone.

Achieving this state is possible if we surround ourselves with like-minded individuals who share a common spiritual aspiration, and who support and encourage each other to prioritize spiritual qualities of love, giving, bestowal and unity above our inborn egoistic reason, which constantly calculates in the opposite direction, i.e., how we can personally benefit from others.

Hanukkah is the initial level of unification we achieve by attaining a common intention to bestow above our egoistic desires. The word “Hanukkah” comes from two words, “Hanu Koh” (“park here”). It acts as the first pit stop of achieving the spiritual quality of bestowal above our corporeal egoism on our spiritual path to the attainment of greater and greater spiritual qualities upon the ego that also constantly grows.

By achieving the spiritual quality of bestowal and unity above our egoism, we gain the awareness that this is the way to attain the full revelation of the Creator—not just by applying an intention to bestow above our egoistic desire to receive, but that our desire acquires the nature of bestowal, and our reception of pleasure equates to our giving of pleasure.

This describes a very advanced spiritual state, which is called “reception for the sake of bestowal,” the reception of the spiritual light in order to give that light, through which we reveal the Creator via our equivalence of qualities, and enter into a mutual connection and dialog.

For the time being, we can focus on a target that is closer to us: that if we have a spiritual aspiration, we should seek a society of like-minded individuals with a common goal, and then in such a society, develop a new sense of bestowal and unification—”giving for the sake of giving”—above our inborn egoism, and by doing so, we will discover the state called “Hanukkah,” the first pit stop on the spiritual path.

Therefore, Hanukkah is our initial exit from a world of darkness—living in the confines of our narrow egoistic self-aimed interests—to a world of light—a world where the spiritual quality of bestowal and unification shines between us, in our common aspiration to unite above our ego.

Hanukkah is thus named “the festival of light.” It marks the start of our discovery of our spiritual state, how our soul lives and breathes according to qualities of bestowal that unify us all. It signifies the first spiritual correction of our desire: the transformation of our egoistic intention to receive for personal benefit alone to an altruistic intention to bestow and positively connect to others. This transformation is called “the Hanukkah miracle,” because of how we rise to a state opposite our inborn egoistic nature, which is all we know in our world, and which can only be conducted with help from a spiritual force that is outside our nature.

From this initial spiritual correction, we can continue our path of spiritual corrections, and advance to a state of full similarity with the spiritual quality of bestowal.

The custom of lighting candles on Hanukkah symbolizes these spiritual corrections that we carry out in our souls on the spiritual path.

The Greeks in the Hanukkah story are the egoistic reasons that calculate “What will I get out of it?” when confronted with an environment that encourages exiting our egos in order to give, bestow and unite with others. In other words, the Greeks symbolize egoistic desires to receive that awaken when we set ourselves up to rise to the first spiritual level of bestowal and unity.

On the contrary, the Maccabees in the Hanukkah story are the intentions to bestow, which require powerful unity in order to counter the war of the Greeks, i.e., to counter the egoistic reasoning that rejects the spiritual qualities of giving and uniting. The war between the Greeks and the Maccabees thus has nothing to do with nationalities, as it is an inner war between two opposed qualities of giving and receiving, or spirituality and corporeality.

Therefore, it is my hope that we will reach the understanding of how Hanukkah and the other Jewish holidays discuss spiritual corrections, our rising in unity above our inborn egoism. The more that we succeed in understanding, applying and spreading this awareness, the more we will see a positive human society blossom with harmonious connections of love and bestowal between people replacing the current egoistic and destructive ones.

“On To The Next Pain!” (Linkedin)

My new article on Linkedin “On to the Next Pain!

Great! There is a vaccine for Covid-19! It’s time to move on—to the grip of the next pain…

While it does indeed look like we’re almost through with Covid-19, it’s clear that we haven’t done anything to merit getting over it. And what we haven’t done in 2020, we’ll drag along to 2021. With the additional challenges that the next stage in our development is destined to present us, there is no doubt that next year will be harder than this year.

We have changed during the past year; we need a new kind of satisfaction, deeper and more meaningful, one that relates to relationships and not to material goods and showoff.

What haven’t we done? We haven’t learned that we are interdependent; we haven’t grasped it deeply and internalized its message: that we have to take care of each other just as much, if not more than we take care of ourselves, or else we make each other sick. We also didn’t learn that the job market has changed forever, and we haven’t prepared a new one, suitable for the new era. We haven’t grasped that the most important work today is to build solidarity and mutual responsibility. All we have done is blame one another for every wrong we could detect, while regarding ourselves as blameless. In the past year, we failed to realize that blaming someone for holding other views is not only flawed; it is self-injurious since if you destroy that other, you will destroy yourself as well. We haven’t realized that we cannot be right if we think someone else is wrong for having other views. We wouldn’t be thinking what we’re thinking unless those other people thought what they are thinking. This is the truth, and we haven’t gotten any closer this year to recognizing it.

The job market we should have built, to return to our past year’s failures, should have been one where people worked at what was necessary, while the rest of the people were occupied with cultivating solidarity, since, as just said, the most important work we can do today is connect with one another.

As for income, anyone who engaged in these pro-social occupations would receive an income that would suffice for decent living. It would replace existing benefit programs, and receiving this income would be contingent upon participating in these efforts to build solidarity in the community, the country, and the world.

While it sounds like a tall order, and not something we can achieve in a single year, we haven’t even taken step one, and this is where we failed.

Now that there is a vaccine, people will want to return to the 2019 way of life. It might boom for a while, but it will soon dwindle. We have changed during the past year; we need a new kind of satisfaction, deeper and more meaningful, one that relates to relationships and not to material goods and showoff. Employers will look for employees but they will be much harder to find, and like it or not, we will have to go in the direction that Covid-19 has pointed us: connection in the hearts rather than in the bodies.

And as before, the longer we stall in 2021, the more painful the next blow, which will come for sure, will be.

“A Peace Treaty Or A Piece Treaty?” (Linkedin)

My new article on Linkedin “A Peace Treaty or a Piece Treaty?

The new term for a peace treaty is “normalization agreement.” In recent months, Israel has signed several such “treaties,” and more are in the works. I’m all for peace, but I’m afraid that the current type really means that countries just want a piece of the pie: to benefit from each other’s economic and technological advantages. This is not real peace and will not give Israel any peace of mind.

On the surface, it seems as though Arab countries have finally realized that although Israel is a small country, it’s got a significant impact on what is happening around the world, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to disappear any time soon, as our enemies wish we would. Although Israel isn’t liked much, its influence is felt in every country and region in the world. This makes diplomatic ties with Israel instrumental to every country.

It is all part of the global process we are going through. Globalization is a train that has embarked on its way and can no longer be stopped. It is connecting us increasingly tighter, and although some of us still believe that we are in the Middle-Ages and can trample each other with horses and pierce our enemies with spears without suffering the ramifications of our misdeeds, reality proves otherwise. Nations are beginning to grasp that there are only losers in a war, and diplomacy is always more lucrative than bloodshed. Because of it, and because we are becoming increasingly connected and interdependent, even Muslim countries find it harder to slight a historic and human phenomenon such as Israel.

Yet, despite the apparent normalization in relationships and the respite in overt enmity, I don’t think that these peace treaties will benefit Israel in any meaningful way. With all due respect, I view peace differently than the press. While these normalization agreements are preferable to armed conflicts, I don’t think they are bringing us any closer to the real correction of relations that we have to make, and for Israel, this is bad news. Israel needs to sign only one peace treaty: peace within itself, among its own people.

In Hebrew, shalom (peace) comes from the word “shlemut” (completeness). It means that there can be peace only when there is completeness among all the people in the nation, when they do not try to eliminate one another but to complement one another and thereby create completeness that is greater and stronger than each of them individually, but which is built, sustained, and strengthened by all of them together.

In that sense, peace has nothing to do with Israel’s ties with other countries; diplomatic ties are irrelevant here. Shaking hands with Arab leaders is great for business, but that’s all it is, business. And like all business deals, they will last only as long as they are good business. When they are not, they will disintegrate. Almost twenty years ago, our normalization agreement with Morocco disintegrated because Morocco objected to Israel’s policy in the West Bank. Now, although Israel’s policy has not changed significantly, Morocco has reinstated normalization. In other words, when it’s good for business, there is peace; when it’s bad for business, there is no peace.

As I wrote above, Israel will find peace only when its people make peace among themselves by learning to complement one another rather than compete with one another to death. When we achieve this, the rest of the nations will come and learn, just as they did in antiquity, when, according to the book Sifrey Devraim, nations would “go up to Jerusalem and see Israel … and say, ‘It is becoming to cling only to this nation.’”

The people of Israel have been given a unique method, a “trick” to overcome egoism. They learned from their forefathers that to make real peace, you must preserve the differences and simultaneously champion unity as the solution to the disputes. In this way, you create a united nation that consists of countless opposites. As long as the Jews could sustain their unity above their differences, they were undefeated; their diversity of views and emboldened unity made them insurmountable. But once they let their differing views set the tone, they disintegrated, dispersed, and became the nations’ laughing stock.

Nevertheless, the Jews still hold the method, even if they’re unaware of it. This is why wherever war breaks out, the adversaries blame it on the Jews. It is not because the rivals use Jews as easy scapegoats, as some Jews believe; it is because people really do feel that Jews are responsible for the hatred in the world. In other words, they are saying that if Jews wanted, they could bring peace to the world.

But until the Jews make peace among themselves, they will not know the paramount importance of their peace to the rest of the world. They must implement it first, and the results will come later.

Until then, we will have to settle for treaties to get pieces of the pie rather than real peace.
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We Were As Dreamers

276.02The truth is that the Creator fills the entire universe. Truth (“Emet”) is made up of the letters “Alef” – “Mem” – “Tav” (“א – מ – ת”), that is, of the three forces that exist in creation. “Aleph – א”  is the first letter of the alphabet, Keter, the Creator. “Tav – ת” is the last letter of the alphabet, Malchut. And “Mem – מ”  is in the middle, Bina that connects Keter and Malchut.

You must understand that the truth is not what it seems to us according to our opinion and feelings. As it is said: “They have eyes but they will not see; they have ears but they will not hear.” That is, we do not feel where we are as if blind and deaf, we do not feel the true world, moving in it by touch.

But this is where the correction is. The Creator purposely created this concealment so that we can achieve perfection, that is, from concealment to come to revelation, from reason to rise to faith above reason, from Malchut to Bina, from receiving to bestowing.

A person thinks that he feels the outside world, but in fact, he is locked inside himself and feels himself from within. The whole reality is within us. The entire universe, the galaxies, the stars, the planets, and the earth with everything on it, it is all “I.”

It is as if I have lost consciousness or I am dreaming. Sometimes I dream that I am walking somewhere, doing something as if for real. But then I wake up and see that the true reality is not what I dreamed.

And the same thing happens to us when spirituality is revealed. We understand that we were in a dream, and now we have woken up and see the real reality.

Faith above reason means to understand that reality is not what I currently imagine it to be. In fact, I am inside the Creator, the upper force that controls me. And the vast world that appears before me is within me, and I must attract the power of the Creator to fill my entire world and put everything in order.

Man must try his best to reveal the Creator who fills the entire universe. And this is possible only through the ten, disappearing and dissolving into your friends, absorbing in them  so much that you feel that the Creator is behind all your friends and is waiting for me to reveal Him.

This is how I begin to perceive the light of faith, that is, to feel the Creator. This is called faith above reason. Reason was my former sense of reality as seen by the eyes and heard by the ears. But now I begin to feel reality beyond physical perception and through my friends I reach the revelation of the Creator, who fills my spiritual Kli, the ten Sefirot of my soul.

So we come to the first spiritual revelation, and we continue to move further and further.
[275195]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/9/20, “Work with Faith Above Reason”

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How Can Nationalism And Racism Be Prevented?

273.02Question: There are no pure-blooded peoples in the world anymore. Since Babylon, for 4,000 years, everyone has practically mixed up. Yet, we have been unable to prevent nationalism and racism. What is the reason for this phenomenon? No matter how hard we try, nothing helps, not even mixed marriages.

Answer: No, nothing helps because we should not just mix but should rise above our differences to the next level where these differences do not exist and we also do not exist in a material form at all.

That is, we must completely change our personal egoism that separates us from each other into altruism, bestowal, and love. We need to rise above ourselves. Then, it will happen.

Question: Is racial rejection a genetically determined phenomenon or is it just a consequence of one’s upbringing?

Answer: No, this is not just a consequence of one’s upbringing. Education is also a consequence. In our root, we are divided into four parts and therefore cannot be at peace with each other without correcting ourselves.

Question: There are several reasons for racism: the stratification of society into rich and poor, the artificial mixing of different races without prior preparation, the detachment of people, the forced isolation of people during the pandemic, as well as conflicts in different countries.

You write that racism arises from the desire to enjoy when it is bad for others. Is this the reason for it?

Answer: Of course. In this way, we raise ourselves above others. It is always in the enjoyment of feeling superior to others that we experience our highest egoistic destiny. Therefore, racism is the highest form of egoism.

Question: As our desires grow, the hatred between people constantly increases. We see that the more developed the society, the more hatred there is between people. Can you explain what could cause some more or less adequate feelings between nations and who could make this happen?

Answer: I believe it can only be a science about creation and predetermination because it would raise everyone to the same root. Only by moving toward it, can we achieve unity between ourselves.
[275145]
From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 10/14/20

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Years Not Lived In Vain

627.1Question: For people who are used to the rapid flow of life on the Internet, reality seems too boring. Do you agree with this statement?

Answer: It depends on where everything flows. Is it to inundate us with tons of new, diverse, and unnecessary data? Is it to, every day, build huge repositories of all kinds of information on the Internet that no one needs?! For what?

You could erase absolutely everything that humanity has had until now. In order to behave correctly and come to the goal of creation, we do not need any of this.

However, these are not wasted years because on their basis we have come to the conclusion that we must change ourselves.

Nevertheless, all positive changes will only arise through our true desire for the right life and the appearance of the forces that can form it from above, from within nature.
[275057]
From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 7/10/20

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The Main Moral Principle Of Humanity

228Question: Moral norms are constantly changing. For example, chauvinism and Nazism have been replaced by tolerance; a tolerant attitude toward sexual and national minorities. Or, if earlier on, divorce had been considered something shameful, today it can even be honorable since it is believed that one may gain independence and so on.

Are there any principles that should remain constant regardless of the culture of society and the passing of time?

Answer: Yes. These are principles of correct interaction between people, when they form a single community in which everyone feels like an integral part of the overall interaction. They discover their perfect, eternal state within it. They must live in this feeling. This is the goal of their development.

Question: Could you list a few principles that should not be changed regardless of human development, culture, and the passing of time?

Answer: There is only one such principle: “love your neighbor as yourself.” Nothing else. In practice, only this principle leads us to the creation and maintenance of the system of our interconnection within which we reveal eternal and perfect life.

This is why we must realize this principle among us by getting together in tens and in small groups. This is already the practice of practical Kabbalah, how to draw the special energy called the upper light that can bring us closer to each other, explain why we are opposite to each other, and help us learn how to rise above this opposition.

Initially, we all are disconnected because we have gone through the so-called split. Now, we must achieve rapprochement with each other. In the difference between connection and disconnection, we will begin to feel ourselves as existing in the eternal flow of life.

Comment: It turns out to be a paradox. If you were to go out now and ask people if they follow the principle “love your neighbor,” almost everyone would say that they do.

My Response: So, it is necessary to explain to people what we mean by the words, “love your neighbor as yourself” and why this principle is given to us in the Torah, as well as why everyone flaunts that he can fulfill it, but in fact no one observes it, etc.

Question: Do you think that all other moral principles are based upon this principle?

Answer: All of them are just a particular case of love your neighbor.

Question: Does it turn out that if I follow this principle, I will offer my seat to others on public transportation and will help people out for free?

Answer: Proceeding from this, you will always be kind toward others and will never be able to do any harm to your neighbor. After all, if you love a person, how can you harm him?
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 10/9/20

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 12/15/20

Preparation to the Lesson

[media 1] [media 2]

Lesson on the Topic of “Work with Faith Above Reason”

[media 3] [media 4]

Lesson on the Topic of “Hanukkah”  

[media 5] [media 6]

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Study of the Ten Sefirot, Vol. 1, Part 3, Chapter 2, Item 1″  

[media 7] [media 8]

Selected Highlights   

[media 9] [media 10]