Question: 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.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 1/12/21

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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.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1296 – An Ambassador Of Connection,” 1/31/21

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Question: 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.
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From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #4

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Michael 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.

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Spiritual 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.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 12/22/19

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Preparation to the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic of “Prayer” 

Selected Highlights

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Envy is a very powerful and important tool in spiritual advancement. It is obvious that in our world it is impossible to advance without envy.

A person looks at others and envies not only people, but even animals. One wants to fly like a bird and swim like a fish in the sea. We must first see an example from the outside, and then our egoism will also light up to acquire the same abilities.

The more developed the egoism is in a person or in a nation, the more it is envious and capable of development.

Envy is a special quality that forces us to desire not what we really lack, but what we see in others. It helps us imagine how nice it would be if we got the same thing that our neighbor has. I’m jealous of what the other person has, and I start to miss it too. And so there is no advancement without envy.

It is very important to use envy now before the big congress because in order to increase our desire, to ignite the desire to achieve a high goal, we need to adopt each other’s desires and combine them together. This requires envy, which is peculiar only to man. Animals are almost not familiar with envy, and even more so with plants or inanimate nature. Only at a certain stage of development does the desire to enjoy begin to feel what the neighbor has. And even if I personally have no need to have the same thing that the other has, if I see how he enjoys, my egoism also lights up to get it and enjoy it.

Usually, the higher the development, the greater the ability to envy, which helps to faster development. Therefore, if we see that we do not have enough desire to advance to the goal of creation and realize our purpose in life, to correct our soul, then we need to turn to society, as it is said: “They helped every one his friend.” Everyone can show others an example to be envied and increase one’s limited desire.

Envy in Kabbalah is a good quality, not an evil one. Therefore, everyone should give others a reason for envy, due to which the desire to enjoy will grow and allow us to achieve a high goal faster. Being jealous of my friend, I do not want to belittle him in any way so that he also would not have what I do not have. I am happy to adopt from him additional desires and actions.

Envy used to lead to wars. But we need to learn how to use envy properly so that instead of fighting with each other, we can fight to rise above envy and move toward a common goal.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/15/21, “Envy”

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My new article on Linkedin “Envy – When the Engine of Growth Becomes the Agent of Destruction”

When we are little, we grow by looking at others and imitating them. We don’t want to harm them or deny their desirable traits or possessions, but rather to have what they have and do what they do. This is healthy envy; it develops us and drives us forward. When we begin to want to have more than others, control others, or deny others what they have, this is when envy, the engine of growth, becomes the agent of destruction.

Envy that is attached to a desire to destroy others is the egoism that is destroying us. Throughout history, countries have been competing with each other, driven by this ruinous force, and have wrought pain and anguish on each other out of their desire to be at the top of the world.

We cannot uproot this force; it is inherent in our nature. What we can and should do is harness it the same way children use it to develop themselves.

In order to learn how to use it constructively, we first have to realize that when we maim or harm others, we are harming ourselves. We have to come to feel the truth of our interconnectedness, that we are all parts of a single system, a mechanism whose units are perfectly intertwined and balanced. It is like a complicated machine with billions of pieces, all necessary for the smooth operation of the machine. When you maim one unit, you have maimed the entire machine, of which you yourself are a part.

Think of the human body. There are approximately 10 trillion cells in the human body. These are organized into numerous tissues, organs, and organ systems. Can you imagine what would happen if these tissues and organs turned against each other? This is exactly what we have been doing to each other every day for thousands of years. Is it a wonder that the world we live in can barely sustain us?

My teacher’s father, the great 20th century Kabbalist Baal HaSulam, wrote extensively about the need to send people back to school and reeducate them. He meant that we should learn how to work with our egos. At the moment, we use the knowledge that we have to harm others, and in so doing, we harm ourselves. The coronavirus is just the first example of the type of global blows that will become increasingly frequent until we realize that we cannot harm others since it hurts us, too. Our ruinous envy of our neighbors on the personal, social, and international levels is destroying us. We must reeducate ourselves and cater to our envy only when it motivates us to grow, but not at the expense of others. This is what Baal HaSulam meant when he wrote that we must go back to school.

Education seems like a slow and gradual process, but there are shortcuts we can take. Because we’re all connected, parts of one machine, when we contemplate a notion, others begin to contemplate it, too, even if they don’t hear it from us. When we convey that thought to others, we convey it far beyond the people we communicate with, as the idea begins to spread throughout the human web, throughout the system. Merely thinking about our interdependence and the need to stop our ruinous envy sends ripples through the system that generate that thought in others, too. All of a sudden, people will start talking about it, as if it is their own idea. They won’t know it, but it will have come from you. When we learn how to work with envy constructively, then our path to success is paved.
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My new article on Linkedin “The Healing Force in Physicians Hands”

When I see the tremendous pressure that medical teams are under in the COVID-19 fight, I am filled with great sympathy. I know the world of physicians closely. My parents were doctors, and I too started my studies in medicine but very quickly left because I realized it was not for me. Instead, I switched to medical bio-cybernetics, my first profession.

The fate of every patient, every health team, and all of mankind depends on the revelation of the healing force of unity between us.

So who am I to turn and speak to doctors and nurses when they need to deal with decisions that may make the difference between life and death on a daily basis? They know how to cooperate and work together as knowledgeable experts treating their patients. However, too often now, they find themselves helpless to deal with the situations they face.

The year of the coronavirus has put extreme pressure on the health care system. Morbidity is rampant, mutations erupt at an alarming rate, and the vaccination campaign is at its peak. In this demanding scenario the medical teams are on the front lines of the battle. They have had to adapt to rapidly-changing conditions and new challenges as they strive to save human lives—all of this while covered head to toe in cumbersome, hot, protective suits and learning to read facial expressions through masks. The circumstances are unparalleled.

In this unprecedented situation, there is one recommendation for overwhelmed medical teams: Connect between yourselves more, not just in a professional connection or a temporary closeness forced by the plague, but with an earnest and deep connection. This will produce great positive forces. Medical professionals will receive the much needed fuel that will motivate them to work harder in times of fatigue and to rise to the task in spite of worsening situations.

When I speak of connection, I am not referring to ordinary mechanical cooperation. I speak of a continuous warm connection characterized by interdependence, support, and mutual recognition at work.

Certainly, these emotional efforts to connect require a great deal of inner energy because they demand care and consideration for others, which are unnatural for the human ego. But it is precisely these efforts that generate the strength and vigor that will reduce stress and bring the team to a common sensation of feeling each other without words, and the ability to identify together their next joint action.

A subtle internal tendency to connect will turn the team into an integrated unit with a spirit of one for all and all for one. Each member will seek to complete the other, to fill any possible void or concern, to be a guarantor for the other, and to open up their heart.

This sensation of perfect collaboration will crystallize their desires into one finely focused will aimed toward an indivisible unity that embraces every teammate.

This deep connection will recharge team energy and draw a special power to the medical staff from the force of nature, a power which is available when people unite. This is the force that fills the entire universe. It will not only strengthen the team, but will also help patients heal physically and emotionally. Both the healers and the healed will experience great benefit and satisfaction.

And even when conflicts, disputes, and outbursts erupt in their relationships—and such situations are expected and worthwhile—they are nothing more than a call to gather and talk for a few minutes, open a fresh page, and reconnect to their common goal to warm their hearts. Such moments are the time for reminding each other that everything that happens comes from a supreme source in order to reveal the sickness of hatred and ruthless competition between us that needs curing.

Thus, every predicament and ailment should be seen as an opportunity for connection, a place to overcome our difficulties in order to acquire greater strength together. The fate of every patient, every health team, and all of mankind depends on the revelation of the healing force of unity between us.
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