Audio Version Of The Blog – 2/19/21

Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download:MP3 Audio

The World Needs Lazy People

564In the News (The Guardian): “A German university is offering ‘idleness grants’ to applicants who are seriously committed to doing sweet nothing.

“The University of Fine Arts in Hamburg advertised three €1,600 scholarship places… . The applicants … will have to convince a jury that their chosen area of ‘active inactivity’ is particularly impressive or relevant.

“The application form consists of only four questions: What do you not want to do? For how long do you not want to do it? Why is it important not to do this thing in particular? Why are you the right person not to do it? …

“The idea behind the project arose from a discussion about the seeming contradiction of a society that promotes sustainability while simultaneously valuing success, Von Borries said. ‘This scholarship programme is not a joke but an experiment with serious intentions – how can you turn a society that is structured around achievements and accomplishments on its head?’ …

“All applications will form part of an exhibition named The School of Inconsequentiality: Towards A Better Life… . It will be structured around the question: ‘What can I refrain from so that my life has fewer negative consequences on the lives of others?'”

My Comment: Being lazy is not easy. In fact, it’s not a simple task. A person who can feel free, unencumbered by any obligations is first of all a creative person.

Usually, such people tend to be creative. Where did science, art, music, and visual arts come from? From the type of people who never had to do anything in their lives, the aristocrats.

Question: They didn’t have to go to work?

Answer: No. They met, traveled, and talked. They held balls, engaged in all kinds of musical activities, and so on. This gave rise to science, art, and everything out there except physical labor.

Therefore, if we want people to have the right attitude to a person’s spiritual pursuits, the spiritual quest in this world I mean, then we must give them time to do this, provide for them so that they won’t have to work 15 hours a day like those poor programmers and many, many others do.

On the contrary, we need to make sure they have free time. So that they would travel, discuss things, sit and talk, so they can be like the aristocrats were. We don’t need to be aristocrats, with millions behind us, but we do need to feel that we have a secure income and can afford not quite to be lazy, but not to have to work. This is the only way to create special works of art, literature, and music.

This should be a person’s attitude to the world. Otherwise, nothing will come of it. See what is going on in our times!

If people relate to the world this way and organize themselves in this manner, provide for special people who can create a reasonable standard of living, we will see a great benefit from this so-called “doing nothing.”

These creative people should be like the landowners, nobles, who once had a guaranteed income.

Question: Does the world need them? The world says: “They’re idlers.”

Answer: The world can’t do without them. They give the world exactly the right attitude to life, to creation, to the Creator, to everything. They conduct themselves correctly. That is, they have time for everything. A creative person should not feel pressure from the outside, only from the inside, if it arises.

Question: And what is your attitude to laziness?

Answer: Laziness is the most useful quality in a person. It is due to the fact that one does not want to be lazy that he does a thousand different, completely unnecessary things. Therefore, it is written in the Torah, “Sit and do nothing.” It is better than running around and looking for something to do. And this is actually true.

In order to find the right attitude to life, you have to be lazy. To do nothing extraneous, nothing unnecessary. Only when you really feel: “I have to do this,” then do it. And you will feel in it how life forces you, the Creator is there inside and He demands it from you.

Comment: You have raised the word “laziness” almost to the level of the most hard-working person.

My Response: Yes, it would be better if we did it this way. Why do we need all the things that we have created? Just look at this world!

And now the Creator must use the help of all sorts of pandemics to clean up this mess, to clean out these stables.

Question: What meaning did you just put into the word “laziness”?

Answer: Stop recklessly, thoughtlessly “creating” something. Stop all this, sit down. It will pass. This is better. Let nature, let the Creator, let everything around you develop. If it is necessary, you will see that it is necessary and you will get up and do it. But only to the extent that it is really necessary, not for your inner egoism, but for the whole of human society.

It is very important. Because we live in the animal kingdom, and the animal does only what it needs. This is their instinct. And if not, then they lie, sit, walk, communicate. Actually.

And we’re running around like ants all the time. Well, I hope we’ll get better!
[277682]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 11/26/20

Related Material:
Useful Laziness
Laziness: A Wonderful Quality
The Laziness Imprinted In Our Genes

“What Do Egoistic People Have Behind Their Ego? What Do They Do If Someone Breaks Their Ego And Get Into Them?” (Quora)

Dr. Michael LaitmanMichael Laitman, On Quora: What do egoistic people have behind their ego? What do they do if someone breaks their ego and get into them?

All people are egoistic. Egoism is part and parcel of human nature. That is, human nature is a desire to enjoy, and the ego is the intention to enjoy at the expense of others and nature.

Our desire to enjoy divides into individual desires for food, sex and family, in which our desire operates in order to preserve ourselves and the human species; and social desires for money, honor, control and knowledge, which is activated by our egoistic desires, where we want what others have. Our social desires bring about all kinds of individual, social and national developments. We also have a nucleus of a spiritual desire, which questions life’s meaning and purpose, and gives us the feeling that individual and social desires can no longer fulfill us. The appearance of each successive level of desire depends on the extent of our development.

It is common to think that the ego is the cause of our problems and crises, and that without the ego, our lives would be much more peaceful. However, there is a very good reason for the ego’s existence.

The ego is what separates us from the animal kingdom. It is the motor running behind everything we do. While it indeed brings about much harm, the ego has made us the most powerful and influential beings in the world. The problem with the ego is when we apply it incorrectly. On the contrary, when we use the ego positively, correctly and beneficially, then our lives become harmonious, balanced and peaceful.

What does it mean to use the ego positively, correctly and beneficially?

It depends first on discovering how we exist in an interconnected and interdependent nature, which is a single system of which we are its parts. When we feel ourselves as existing in a single system, then we feel ourselves as small parts of a much greater system. Feeling the magnitude of the greater system of nature outside of ourselves, we would then feel the need to think and act in ways that benefit this system. Then, similarly to how cells and organs take what they need in order to serve the whole organism of which they are parts, we would naturally start enjoying life via the calculation that we wish to benefit other people and nature through our existence here.

Our inborn sensation of life is to prioritize our personal benefit over others. We thus require a new kind of education—integral education—which guides our understanding and feeling of the interconnectedness and interdependence of nature. That is the key to creating a harmonious world of happy and confident individuals, a world free from all the problems caused by letting our egos unabatedly exploit, abuse and manipulate each other and nature.

Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

Connection And Symbols—Brands

263Question: There is such a thing as branding. Scientists say that this reflects the state of humanity.

Six thousand years ago, our ancestors, while trying to unite people, began to develop concise symbols, a kind of branding to represent their beliefs, to define belonging to groups.

Today, there are distinctive symbols, brands, of corporations seeking to sell things to people. There is also branding that comes from society. They bring people together to encourage them to do good deeds.

Why do people need to express their union using various symbols?

Answer: How else can one create coordination between people for some purpose, in accordance with a certain direction, movement, teaching, methodology, theory, or practice? It all needs to be described somehow. After all, one needs to communicate with other people, teach them, develop them, gather communities, and create directions. Only then can you move toward a goal.

Humanity has always set some goals for itself, but, in general, they were unreasonable. Now, everything is moving toward ensuring that we understand the meaning of life, we present it in a more or less correct form, and we strive for it.

This is impossible to do here without brainstorming, learning, and connecting between us. Therefore, we need all kinds of social institutions, blocks assembled in accordance with different types of people and other parameters so that we strive for this goal.

I think that humanity will still have a lot to create and work in this direction. After all, in fact, it is an integral part of human development.

Question: Is there connection power in the brand symbols themselves?

Answer: No. It can only be in a person. But he needs to describe his aspirations, give them a complete form so that he can be in the right communication with people, languages, states, etc., until this results in the correct implementation.
[277377]
From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 1/12/21

Related Material:
Humanity Is A Single System
Unity For The Sake Of Society
Unified By Love Or Hate

New Life 1296 – An Ambassador Of Connection

New Life 1296 – An Ambassador Of Connection
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

As ambassadors of connection, we teach that if we want to achieve our goals, we must learn to connect. Even a person’s thoughts influence those around him, not to mention his actions. In a family that wishes to connect, for example, everyone acts openly and there is a mutual desire to help. We discuss how good it feels to share a meal together and we think about how we can increase the sense of connection between us. We try to learn about positive connection through the negativity that arises between us. In order to influence someone, we must first connect to him.
[277715]
From KabTV’s “New Life 1296 – An Ambassador Of Connection,” 1/31/21

icon for podpress Video: Play Now | Download
icon for podpress Audio: Play Now | Download

Sorcery One Will Pay For

175Question: If The Book of Zohar writes about witchcraft and sorcery, does it mean that there is a certain state outside of this world which is called that? Some kind of spiritual state?

Answer: Can one really invoke a property called sorcery or witchcraft and use it to his advantage? He can! But he will pay for it.

It is like you steal and use what you have stolen. But then you have to pay it back in full.

We are always stealing somewhere or cheating someone. Each moment we want to use this property to predict something, somewhere, and not in the most straight-forward way.

The most straight-forward way is difficult because I constantly have to engage in a rigid analysis of my own qualities, attract only the reforming light upon myself, and advance with its help.
[277894]
From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #4

Related Material:
We Want To Know The Future
How Can You Foresee The Future?
Seeing The Future And Changing It

“How Can The High Divorce Rates Of USA Be Reduced?” (Quora)

Dr. Michael LaitmanMichael Laitman, On Quora: How can the high divorce rates of USA be reduced?

In order to reduce the divorce rate and ensure that married couples rise above any argument, conflict, and crisis, we need to revise the way we are educated and influenced.

As we grow up, we need to learn what it means to live as members of a happy family, how to run our family life optimally, and how to overcome any kinds of conflicts that arise.

The key principle to successfully running a family can be found in the Bible story about our creation—that one man was originally created and then divided into two. How, then, can two separate beings connect as one? The answer is in mutual concession.

Each partner should know that they can each achieve much more in life if they are positively connected, and that a solitary life would be a lot tougher.

Concession involves conceding our egos to our spouses. Our egos are our desires to personally benefit at the expense of others. Therefore, by conceding our egos, we undergo corrections of this ego, and acquire a positive form of love, bestowal and connection in its place. Our egos then become impulses that help us positively connect. That is, when we recognize our egos rejecting the tendency to connect, precisely at such points we can exercise our concessions and develop loftier qualities of love and bestowal upon our egoistic drives.

By doing so, we advance faster and more consciously to our life’s purpose: to become a human being in the fullest sense of the term, i.e., where “human” (“Adam”) comes from the phrase “similar to the most high” (“Adameh le Elyon”) in Kabbalah, or in other words, resemblance to the Creator—the quality of love, bestowal and connection that fills the entirety of reality outside of us. By acquiring such a quality, we enter into the state of eternity and perfection.

Therefore, in order for marriage to work, we should apply a higher goal to the marriage: that it serves as a kind of laboratory in order to exercise our relations of love, bestowal and positive connection above all the arguments, conflicts, and crises that surface.

Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

The Group Is A Lab For Studying The Creator

938.05Spiritual work depends on how we create a group, how we manage ourselves in it, and how we change all kinds of connections and integrations in the group. To this extent we, like in a lab, begin to feel the influence of the Creator on us, sometimes more sometimes less, sometimes closer and sometimes further away, etc.

All our groups around the world can already arrange these conditions between them so that they can study the Creator. To the extent that they get closer, expand, or feel distant from each other, they begin to feel Him.

The Creator is simply the general force, and we are the ones who can feel Him and change internally. Internally means in the group, in the connection between us, which is where the Creator is attained.

This is the reason that we always aspire to create groups and to unite in them according to the advice of our teacher, the Kabbalist Rabash. If we work this way, we will begin to feel the revelation of the Creator inside us to the extent that we get closer to each other or further away from each other, even artificially. And then we attain experience of how we can work with Him.

This is a very interesting action called spiritual work. By performing this action, we can reach the attribute in which the Creator will fill us. Once we are filled by the Creator, we will feel the next levels of creation, above our world.

Today we are also filled with the Creator, but at the lowest, animal level. Therefore, this level does not give us the feeling of eternity, perfection, knowledge. Since we are all created by the Creator in the same way, as as people who are similar to each other and somehow connected to each other, but precisely because of the Creator, we do not feel this unity and the Creator in it.

But as soon as we ourselves become more united with each other, we will immediately begin to feel Him. Therefore, the next levels, which depend on our greater unification, will manifest in us as knowledge.
[258781]
From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 12/22/19

Related Material:
Becoming A Source Of Influence On The Creator
Spiritual Practice
How The Soul Is Developed

Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 2/19/21

Preparation to the Lesson

[media 1] [media 2]

Lesson on the Topic of “Prayer” 

[media 3] [media 4]

Selected Highlights

[media 5] [media 6]