My new article on Linkedin “The One Clear Takeaway from President Biden’s First Foreign Policy Speech”

US President Joe Biden’s first foreign policy speech had a clear message for Israel. It wasn’t in what he said, but in what he didn’t say. He didn’t mention Israel. Even more interesting, in naming America’s closest friends, and Biden’s aim for “reforming the habits of cooperation and rebuilding the muscle of democratic alliances,” Israel was nowhere to be found. According to Biden, “America’s alliances are our greatest asset, and leading with diplomacy means standing shoulder-to-shoulder with our allies and key partners once again.” But if Israel is not mentioned among America’s allies, it means we are not a great asset to America, in the eyes of this administration, and it will not stand “shoulder-to-shoulder” with us.

This should come as no surprise to us. I warned that Biden would reverse Trump’s policy, and he went straight to work as soon as he took office. But is this bad for Israel? It is certainly unpleasant, but with all due respect, whether it is bad for Israel or not depends on our actions, not on Biden’s will.

As I explained in countless essays and several books, Israel depends on itself because Israel depends on its internal unity. When we are united, we dissolve the enmity of the world toward us. It is not that we are stronger in the military sense because we are united; it is that achieving unity is itself the purpose of our being a sovereign state. The world feels connected to Israel because our forefathers came from the nations of the world. At that time of the formation of our people, civilization was largely concentrated around the Fertile Crescent. Our forefathers, who came from many tribes and peoples along that area, were initially distrustful and hateful toward each other, much as we are now. Despite their suspicions, they developed such regard for unity that they managed to overcome their enmity and formed a nation.

In doing so, Israel, which contained “specimens” of all the nations of the world, became a minuscule example of world peace. Being “a light unto nations” means being that example. When we unite, we set the example that the world needs, and this dissolves its enmity toward us and turns it into favor. When we decline into the current state of inner conflicts and enmity, we violate the purpose of our nationhood, and the world sees no benefit in our existence.

For the past two millennia, we have been in a state of hatred that we haven’t managed to overcome. By doing so, we broke that sample of “world peace” and the world lost its only proof that peace is truly possible. This is the root of its contempt and hostility toward Jews. Yet, this also means that if we want to reverse the nations’ feelings toward us, we needn’t focus on pleasing them but on restoring our internal unity. This is what will truly please them as it will enable them to forge peace among themselves, as well.

For this reason, I think that the cold shoulder that the Biden administration is giving us is a golden opportunity for the people of Israel to unite, and truly be what we can and must be—a role model of unity against all odds and above all contradictions. If we rise to the challenge, we will not need to worry about who is occupying the White House.
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How will the world change after the COVID 19 pandemic?“

We are in the midst of a major transitional era where we are starting to understand the tremendous extent of our interconnectedness and interdependence.

Likewise, we also find ourselves destroying our world. This is because a key aspect of interconnected and interdependent systems is that if all of their parts act for the system’s benefit, then the system functions harmoniously and its parts experience the health and vitality of the entire system. On the contrary, if its parts prioritize self-benefit over benefiting the whole, then they bring about the system’s demise.

Since the latter egoistic tendency defines the general attitude and behavior of human society in 2021, then we can expect the world as we know it to crumble. On one hand, we will see the increasing frailty of our financial and industrial mechanisms, and on the other hand, we can expect natural disasters to shake us more and more, because nature principally reacts to us according to how we relate to each other.

We will continue heading down a negative spiral until we will wake up to our helplessness to live positive, healthy and balanced lives. At that point, we will develop a major need to revise the way we live. We will then feel an increasing need for updated explanations about how the interconnected and interdependent system we are all parts of functions, what its purpose is, what our role is within the system, what is the system’s nature and what is human nature, how we can balance between them, why and how we are dispersed in this system, and what we can do in order to become closer in our attitudes to each other. In other words, we will need to undergo an upgrade in our connections to each other, and that upgrade will not be able to happen on its own. It will require a new method capable of guiding us to positive connection, harmony and happiness in an interconnected and interdependent reality.

Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman

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My new article on Linkedin “Many Riots, One Culprit”

US President Joe Biden said during the election campaign that when it comes to the coronavirus, “An infection anywhere is an infection everywhere.” This is true not only of the coronavirus. Look at the riots that took place in America until recently; they seem to have migrated to Russia. Other riots, which began in France, have drifted to the Netherlands. In Myanmar there was a coup; governments in other countries in Europe and elsewhere are teetering; and it seems as though global instability has captured the world.

The pace of changes will only grow, and it demands that we adapt to it. If we don’t change our attitude toward society and embrace the closeness and mutuality that is emerging the world over, we will feel that we are swimming upstream in a river that is turning into a rapid. We have a choice—to swim downstream and enjoy the ride, or swim upstream, exhaust ourselves, be carried away by the river and eventually drown.

This is no coincidence. We thought that globalization means primarily economic and financial ties among countries, but we were wrong. The whole world is influenced by the same thoughts, the same trends, and the same mindsets. When there is trouble anywhere, there is trouble everywhere! This is the new normal.

We still think of ourselves as separate individuals, separate societies, and separate countries, but we are none of the above. We are all tied up. What one person thinks in Australia influences all other people in the world, even if they live in Alaska. We think that the internet is the means to spread ideas and incite people to riot, but it’s much deeper than that: Our most basic desires emerge from a common source, our ego, and now these desires are beginning to display their interconnections. From here on, there will be no isolated troubles, no isolated triumphs; everything will be shared by all of humanity whether we like it or not. In the coming months and years, it will become increasingly clear that we will literally all rise together or we will all fall together. All the riots and all the troubles have one culprit—our ego. That connected, common root has been exposed, and we will not be able to hide it or ignore it any longer. Therefore, today, thinking of one’s own interest is not only a luxury we can’t afford, it is disconnection from reality and outright folly.

This coalescing of desires is happening for a very serious and profound reason. Having the same desire means having the same thoughts, as we see according to people’s behavior and expressions the world over. In other words, it brings people together. If they embrace that closeness, they will be happy and society will prosper. If they reject it, they will suffer because this connection will happen anyhow and will place us in an undesirable reality.

The world provides us with much more than we need. If we think of ourselves as a single, global family, we will be able to see that there is no shortage of anything, not just on the level of staples, but in every aspect of our lives, from housing to healthcare to education, and even to entertainment and leisure.

The pace of changes will only grow, and it demands that we adapt to it. If we don’t change our attitude toward society and embrace the closeness and mutuality that is emerging the world over, we will feel that we are swimming upstream in a river that is turning into a rapid. We have a choice—to swim downstream and enjoy the ride, or swim upstream, exhaust ourselves, be carried away by the river and eventually drown.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What should I live for?“

What is the meaning of life? It is to rise to a level where we become as one with our life’s source—while we are alive.

In the wisdom of Kabbalah, that source has various names including “the Creator,” “nature,” “upper light,” “upper force,” and others. It is essentially a force of love and bestowal that emanated everything, and in Kabbalah, we study how it created everything through a process called “the four phases of direct light,” a series of causes and effects until our creation and development here in our world.

While we are in the reality we know as “our world,” i.e., a perception and sensation of reality through senses of sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste, our purpose is to return to where we came from, until we reach adhesion with our life’s source. Kabbalah calls the process of rising back to where we came from “climbing the ladder from below upward.”

When we reach our life’s final destination—adhesion with our life’s source, the Creator—we will experience newfound eternal harmony and perfection. Moreover, everything we currently experience, increasing amounts of problems, crises, suffering and lacks of fulfillment, are all necessary elements of a maturation process that is gradually preparing us to become willing and ready to climb the ladder back to our source.

Based on the lesson “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on December 16, 2018. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How has pandemic affected the education system?“

The pandemic has shown the ugly face of our education systems.

These systems should have educated our children to become independent and responsible in their learning and knowing of how to positively connect among themselves and with their teachers, as well as willful and responsible participation in their studies through various media.

Unfortunately, we instead see quite the contrary: that these systems fail to prepare children to be independent and responsible. That is why, over the course of the pandemic, we have seen multitudes of children disregard the connection among each other and with their teachers, and many relate to what they study as meaningless and useless. Such an approach has contributed to a general crumbling of the systems.

We should treat this educational crisis that the pandemic revealed in order to revise our education systems. Today, we do not need to raise children to simply fill job positions, several of which we will no longer need. Instead, our education systems should adjust their aims to raise children into happy, successful and confident human beings, in the fullest sense of those terms.

To become truly happy, successful and confident, we need to live in a society where we actively participate in constructing positive connections among each other, above our myriad divisive drives. Accordingly, we should encourage children to participate more and more in society, since social participation and contribution are quickly becoming the most important components in building a society of happy, successful and confident individuals.

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

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Comment: Very often I take a Kabbalistic book, open it at random, and read the page that I opened.

My Response: This is very good because it does not matter what you read. All Kabbalistic books carry light that changes you. Therefore, it does not matter what you read. The main thing is the intention: you want to change, you want to rise, you want to induce the influence of the upper light, which exists everywhere, on yourself.

The fact that you, as it were, accidentally open the book, you thus give the choice to the Creator. The lot will be cast by Him, not by you. This is how Rabash taught me. I want to read something, see something, get some answer to my state so I open the book at random.

This is not fortune-telling. It is just a feeling that I am walking with the Creator and not with some dark forces or launching terrible, unknown mechanisms. No. I call upon myself the upper light in union with the Creator and give Him the opportunity to guide my actions.
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From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #4

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From a Viewer: Laitman says that we don’t need to destroy evil, but what then—let the Hitlers and their like flourish? Today, there is so much evil around, all ideals are destroyed, the world is ruled by criminals, only evil is around. How should we deal with it? Let him answer!

My Response: We must correct it, not fight it.

Question: Is it not a fight to correct evil?

Answer: No, it’s not a fight. To correct doesn’t mean to destroy it.

Comment: You said that evil remains, it must remain and not be destroyed while good is built next to it.

My Response: Above it.

Question: This is not clear to a person. How so?! When there are so many murderers and all sorts of “Hitlers,” as he says.

Answer: Redo everything. Nothing in the world can be destroyed—neither good nor bad. We just have to rebuild everything.

Question: This is not clear to people. Let’s say I see evil. What are my actions? I see evil, obvious, the worst possible thing. You say: Don’t destroy it. What should I do? How should I handle it?

Answer: It comes from the Creator. There is “None else besides Him.” He is the only source of all that is happening.

How can I imagine that evil turns to good? This is a problem. But this needs to be explained. Why is there more and more evil in the world? Because we don’t correct it. We are trying to destroy it by putting people in prison and killing them to eradicate evil!

We should do nothing of the sort! In no way can this be done. Only turn it to good.

Question: But criminals are put in prison, right?

Answer: Jailing is also wrong. Isolate them, but don’t put them there to stay. As it says in the Torah. You have to create for them such cities where they would live normally and provide for themselves.

Question: Please tell me, what does their correction mean?

Answer: They should receive such a dose of education that they would eat themselves up for what they have done, realize who they are, what, why. And turn into the best correctors and educators.

Imagine, having this practical skill and this past under your belt! After going through everything correctly and absorbing the right education—how much good they could do!
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 11/30/20

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Question: At the beginning of creation, we were in an intrauterine state in which we were completely wrapped in love, but we were not aware of it. Then we found ourselves in an opposite situation where we feel only ourselves and no external force that fills us with love.

Do we develop between these two opposite states and as a result receive the revelation of the Creator in our feelings?

Answer: Yes. From these two opposite points we begin to understand what bestowal and reception mean and compare them with each other. In the analysis and synthesis between them, we feel that we simultaneously consist of both these qualities.

A person is neither the receiving part that the Creator created nor the bestowing part that is a quality of the Creator Himself. However, when he begins, like a constructor, to assemble himself from these two qualities, then he grows himself by himself, just like an embryo begins to develop in the mother’s womb from a drop of semen, except for us this growth should be conscious.
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From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #4

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Question: The Creator, being omnipotent, undoubtedly could create a person, as well as the whole world, as perfect. However, He clearly did not. In other words, we see that the creation does not correspond to the Creator at all. How is this possible?

Answer: Therefore, it is also a creation, since it is opposite to the Creator. It is thanks to this oppositeness that it can begin to feel and appreciate the Creator. Like the contrast between black and white, if there were no black, then white would not be felt either.

Therefore, on the one hand, the Creator originally created the creation opposite to Himself, so that, on the other hand, we could perceive and create His property in ourselves. And then, possessing these two properties, we can literally feel the entire creation, the entire universe, all the worlds.
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From KabTV’s “Ask a Kabbalist” 3/20/19

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Question: What pride is considered to be negative?

Answer: When I am proud without any reason. I do not bring others to the goal, I do not bring them closer to it. And what am I proud of about them? The fact that I am who I am? But it does not depend on me. That is why pride is not personal.

Comment: Let’s say I am proud that the Creator created me this way.

My Response: And why did He create you? What are you doing with it?

Comment: But I also somehow made an effort.

My Response: This is another matter. You made an effort to be a special person.

Now the question is what makes you special? By the way you behave toward other people and toward the Creator, you can evaluate yourself.

Man himself has nothing to be proud of. In the process of studying Kabbalah, he understands that all his negative and positive properties are given to him from above, and from above we are given an analysis of how to use them correctly.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/22/19

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