Audio Version Of The Blog – 3/3/21

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“Covid – A Catalyst For Social Change” (Linkedin)

My new article on Linkedin “Covid – a Catalyst for Social Change

While everyone is rushing to get vaccinated, or, alternatively, declaring that the vaccines are a government scheme against the people, we seem to be ignoring something very important: why the virus showed up in the first place. Until we answer this question, we will not be rid of it, no matter how efficient the vaccines may proclaim to be.

The virus will not let up until we revamp all of our connections, on all levels. Until we learn how to treat one another with care and consideration, how to build communities where people feel safe and welcome, how to build societies that do not exploit the weak and vulnerable, how to embrace diversity instead of shunning anyone who thinks outside the main voice on the media, until we learn all that, Covid will not let us lead a normal life.

Even though the coronavirus seems like a regular virus, it is much more than that. The virus changes our thoughts and desires, relationships among people and countries, and it does this all over the world. Covid-19 is a multilayered illness; it should not only teach us that we must wash our hands and wear masks. Rather, its main goal is to teach us how to relate to our lives.

That is, it should teach us not only how we should relate to one another, but how we should relate to life as a whole, to the essence of life and its purpose! For this reason, Covid will not go away just like that. It will mutate and modify itself until it completely exhausts us, until we consent to changing all of our social systems, until we see the intention behind its appearance: to transform human relations.

Indeed, SARS-CoV-2, aka the “coronavirus,” will wear us down until we seek the only remedy that can truly cure it. This remedy has nothing to do with biological innovations, and everything to do with emotional transformations. The remedy for SARS-CoV-2 is to learn to love one another, but truly, genuinely so. This remedy, as bizarre as it may sound, is the cure not only for Covid-19, but to all our ailments, Covid included, and until we uproot the cause, we will not extinguish the offshoot, namely the virus.

Note how Covid first set us apart, put us in closures, and forced us to eliminate our poisonous relations at schools, workplaces, competitive sports games, the industry, and every place where we compete against each other instead of helping one another. When we tried to oppose it, reopen the economy, and renew our social ties, Covid got worse and started affecting younger and younger people, with worsening consequences as it moved from the lungs to the blood, and from the blood to the brain, all while becoming even more contagious than before. At the same time, Covid also separated family members, making the pain of separation even more excruciating so as to force us to rethink our connections with people on every level.

The virus will not let up until we revamp all of our connections, on all levels. Until we learn how to treat one another with care and consideration, how to build communities where people feel safe and welcome, how to build societies that do not exploit the weak and vulnerable, how to embrace diversity instead of shunning anyone who thinks outside the main voice on the media, until we learn all that, Covid will not let us lead a normal life.

Knowing why Covid is here and complying with its injunction is our only way out of the pandemic. As long as we keep trying to twist and turn to sneak out of its grip, the virus will only tighten its chokehold. As soon as we surrender and accept that we must care for one another, it will let go at once.
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“The Case Against Cancel Culture” (Linkedin)

My new article on Linkedin “The Case against Cancel Culture

One of the most injurious consequences of the effort to maintain political correctness is what’s become known as “cancel culture.” Basically, it means that if someone says or writes something that is not in line with the PC (political correctness) guidelines, that someone is canceled, ostracized, banned from social media, often fired, and always chastised by self-appointed censors of public discourse. Cancel culture is not only nefarious at its core; it goes against the nature of human society, against the nature of being human, and in fact, against nature.

Life is incorporation of different things that join to create more complicated and higher entities than their individual selves. If we want to develop, we must embrace incorporation for the sake of our collective evolution as human beings. If we want stagnation and death, let’s cancel each other out until none of us is left and evolution will continue in our absence.

A human being who is excluded from contact with other human beings cannot develop. Human contact is indispensable for human development, and the more diverse the people one meets, the more one develops. A child who grows up seeing only one kind of people, with the same line of thinking, the same beliefs, and the same manners, will evolve to be the exact replica of his or her parents. This is not necessarily bad, but it is also not the purpose of humankind, or of creation.

All elements of nature were created to evolve, to change, and rise to higher levels of existence. Humans are not excluded. Think of water, for example. Water consists of two gasses: hydrogen and oxygen. Alone, they are invisible, undetectable in any way. Even worse—they are toxic. However, if you connect them to each other, you get water—the bedrock of life, and what every creature needs for its survival.

Likewise, connect sodium, which is a type of metal, with chlorine, which is a yellow-green gas, and you’ve got table salt, which gives taste to the food we eat, and which our ancestors used as a preservative. Everything works this way: Take water and flour, and you can make bread or cakes, or pasta. All parts of reality are compounds built upon compounds that create still more complicated compounds, which eventually form the ecosystem that is Planet Earth. Planets, in turn, make up the Sun’s solar system, which form the Milky Way galaxy, and galaxies create the universe.

None of these would have happened if at any point during the making of the universe, cancel culture had been applied to any of the elements of reality. Human civilization, too, would not have evolved if at any point, only one race or one faith, or one culture had managed to take over. When cancel culture was applied, such as in Nazi Germany, it ended in disaster.

That said, opposing cancel culture does not mean that any level or manner of mingling is healthy. Just as compounds in nature do not lose the identity of their particular ingredients, each of us must retain our uniqueness as individuals. However, growth exists only when we combine our individual selves with other individual selves to create something that is new, more complicated, and indeed of a higher order than ourselves. That something will not exist without all of us, yet it is neither of us, but something new that our incorporation has created. Think of the water again: Hydrogen exists in and of itself, and so does oxygen, but only when they work together do they create water, life.

Indeed, life is incorporation of different things that join to create more complicated and higher entities than their individual selves. If we want to develop, we must embrace incorporation for the sake of our collective evolution as human beings. If we want stagnation and death, let’s cancel each other out until none of us is left and evolution will continue in our absence.

“You Shall Not Murder. You Shall Not Commit Adultery”

962.8Question: The sixth commandment:”You shall not murder”—does it mean not to use the desires of others?

Answer: “You shall not murder” means not to do anything to the detriment of another. That is, all the forces that you are receiving now and everything from before, from prior days: Hesed, Gevura, Tiferet, Netzach, and Hod, you must shape them correctly and not interfere with the effects they may have on you.

“You shall not murder” means do not use a desire for your own benefit.

If I use the connection with the Creator for my own sake, it is called “killing.” I am killing my desire. That is, my desire becomes filled with pleasure that eventually kills this desire and it disappears. It gets annihilated.

Question: The seventh commandment is: “You shall not commit adultery.” What are we talking about here?

Answer: It is the same thing but from a different angle: do not use your connections with others for your own sake.

Love is called bestowal, and adultery is an act for self benefit.

Question: That is, you have a desire to receive. If I use this desire of yours for my own pleasure—and the desire to receive is called “woman”—is this adultery?

Answer: Yes. But this refers to the attitude toward both women and men, toward any pleasure. But this action in particular is called adultery because you are using another person.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 12/26/19

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Commandments—Laws Of The Universe

631.4Comment: The Ten Commandments are the laws of interaction between people. Some of them look like that, and some of them don’t.

My Response: In principle, these are the laws of the universe. But since they are determined by the relationships between people, and our relationships are determined by all the other laws of nature, then, of course, everything comes down precisely to the relationship between us.

Question: The first commandment is, “I am the Lord your God, Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” As far as I understand, only the Creator can lead a person out of his egoism. But why did the Creator have to declare this particular commandment first?

Answer: Because this is the cornerstone commandment that there is only one force in the world that is above all. It raises man from the inanimate, vegetative,  and animate levels of nature to the level of Adam, Man.

Adam is the one who understands the connection with the Creator. Almost all of humanity is at the level of  animal  no matter how much it knows or how much it has developed the sciences and arts.

“Animal” is when a person thinks about himself, he is in his egoism. Therefore, the exit from this state to the level of “Man,” Adam, similar to the Creator (“Adam” from the word “Domeh,” similar to the Creator) can be accomplished only under the influence of a special higher power, called the Creator.

This power is called the Creator because it creates man.

Question: In other words, the Kabbalists discovered the law that the change of the egocentric perception of the world to the integral one can occur through the higher force of nature? Is that why it says: “…brought you out of the land of Egypt”?

Answer: Yes. This is a change in the state of a person in our world. It is about spiritual ascent, about comprehension.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 12/26/19

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For “Physicists” And “Lyricists”

138Question: There are textbooks in Kabbalah where the material is presented with diagrams and calculations that appeal to the mind, and on the other hand there are books that appeal to our feelings, for example: Attaining the Worlds Beyond. Is it better to appeal to logic or feelings? Or perhaps to study these books simultaneously?

Answer: The fact is that a person consists of thoughts and desires, heart and mind. There are people who have more developed feelings, and there are those who have more developed conceptual thinking, “physicists” and “lyricists.” Therefore, Kabbalistic books are written either with emotional or logical approaches.

Later, these two paths come together to aid us in the revelation of the world. And it turns out that the most important thing is the feeling perception, because we are still built from desires although they are controlled and directed through the mind. The right combination between the mind and the heart gives us an idea of what man is.

I came to the science of Kabbalah through logic. My first major was biomedical cybernetics. I graduated from Leningrad University. The discipline itself determined my attitude toward the world.

So I was looking for an answer as to how the world works. What is this system that moves, controls us, has its own unshakable laws that are above us? How should I interact with it and it with me, because through these laws we can find out who or what we are, where we are headed, and what is happening to us? Can we influence it? And so on.

These questions led me to Kabbalah because I could not find a serious, direct answer to it anywhere, while Kabbalah answered them in an absolutely clear, realistic, and I would say, dry way. It appealed to me. In other words, I was interested in clarity and truthfulness, not psychological, but technical.

I wrote the book Attaining the Worlds Beyond in 2 to 3 weeks. It just spilled out of me in one general emotion, which is why people perceive it that way.

In addition, we have serious books with diagrams. Kabbalah reveals the system of the universe. It is the physics of the entire world, which is revealed to our senses, and also what we will reveal in the higher senses that we should develop in the attribute of bestowal rather than in the quality of reception.
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From KabTV’s “Questions about Kabbalistic Books” 10/22/19

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“You Shall Not Make Yourself A Graven Image”

559Question: The second commandment says: “…You shall not make for yourself a graven image, nor any manner of likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”

Is this because people who have attained the spiritual world say that there is only one force, and no other?

Answer: Everything that you can imagine is a derivative of the single upper force. Therefore, if you think that there are some other secondary forces besides it, which produce, realize, or decide something in our world, then this is your mistake. That is, you should know that you are not at the highest level of attainment.

In order to keep this commandment, you must see the single force behind all objects of our world, including people. If you treat everything like that, then you are fulfilling this commandment.

Question: Is it not that I believe in some kind of monotheism?

Answer: No, it does not talk about faith at all. This is precisely about attainment.

It is said, “Do not make any image,” because this force cannot be portrayed. Of course, I can draw an arrow indicating a vector, but we cannot depict this force in the form of a picture, as we depict something in our world. It is the power of bestowal, the power of connection, the power of integration, the power of emanation.

In our world we depict even physical forces as vectors, nothing more.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 12/26/19

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 3/3/21

Preparation to the Lesson

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Lesson on the Topic of “Hitkalelut (Incorporation)” 

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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Study of the Ten Sefirot, ‘Histaklut Pnimit,’ Vol. 1, Part 4, Chapter 2, Item 16

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Selected Highlights

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