Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What are some tips for boosting self esteem?“

Self-esteem is the starting point from which we shape ourselves, our image, in relation to our goals, our needs, the world, society and ourselves.

Therefore, shaping ourselves in relation to a goal that we envision to ourselves is key here, and self-esteem is an element that we can work with in the process.

In order to develop or boost our self-esteem, we need to clarify the goal that we want to reach, depict our image or form when we reach such a goal, and then we can measure ourselves accordingly and determine whether or not we are on route to its achievement.

We should thus view self-esteem as a means by which we can progress to the goal. We should not feel guilty about any traits that we were born with, but be at peace with them, understanding that we were given exactly the right qualities in order to fully realize ourselves.

Then, we should question what is our correct realization? What image, form and goal should we aspire to? Also, how can we advance toward it?

After clarifying these questions to ourselves, we should be able to discern what should we be content and discontent with about ourselves, and that it is all in order to advance us optimally toward our goal.

Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Emmanuel Bior on Unsplash.

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My new article on Linkedin “True Equality”

The demand for equality only increases from generation to generation. Solving this social discomfort seems to be the recipe for preventing discrimination and injustices so recurrent in our times. So what needs to happen in order to live with each other in peace?

Equality is a deceptive term because by nature we are all different. Everyone has his or her own needs and own characteristics, so the expectation of being treated the same way as someone else is quite problematic. After all, we usually do not know the other person’s needs and even if we have the intention of getting into someone else’s shoes, we will have a hard time achieving it since our own needs are always the priority for us.

If we want to avoid a general collapse, we will have to rise to a level where human connection will have a higher value than any private property or desire. Because this lofty goal is contrary to human nature, only a broad, long term social educational process can help us. A real cultural-perceptual revolution. The goal should be to upgrade the perception of reality of every individual in society. That means to change our self-centered perception, as if the world belongs only to us, and realize that in nature we are connected to others and dependent on them. When this change of perception happens, we will feel committed to care for others as we care for ourselves.

In such a reality where everyone is different and also self-centered, there can be no equality. This is what happens to us at every level, from the distribution of the government budget to the distribution of bonuses within a work team. No matter what area of our lives, we are in a constant battle because everyone thinks he or she deserves more than what is given to them now. Therefore, there is always a feeling of deprivation, and the feeling of inequality follows closely behind.

And in spite of everything, within us lies the desire for equality. Why? Because we can really enter such a state. But achieving equality requires ascending to another level of life in general. That is, through new relationships inverted from what we know now, by switching our narrow egotistical calculation of self-benefit to open relationships of consideration, connection, and reciprocity, to the level of love between people. Only in relationships based on love and collaboration can there be equality, because I love the other and the other will love me, and in that we will feel equal.

It is clear that at first glance this scenario seems like a fairytale that will never come true, but the problems and struggles humanity is facing cannot be solved in any other way. We live in a reality that is becoming more and more connected, at the same time the global, limited resources are becoming depleted. We try our best to get everything for ourselves, and sooner or later we will reckon that we have no other alternative but agreeing to give up a little.

In the meantime we feel unsatisfied, unsettled, deprived, and are just waiting for the first opportunity to free ourselves from the grip of those who oppress us and consider that we have taken what we deserve. So we move from struggle to struggle, from war to war. Each time it gets worse, because the ego increasingly gets stronger, so we are destroying each other in the name of discrimination and the demand for justice and equality.

If we want to avoid a general collapse, we will have to rise to a level where human connection will have a higher value than any private property or desire. Because this lofty goal is contrary to human nature, only a broad, long term social educational process can help us. A real cultural-perceptual revolution. The goal should be to upgrade the perception of reality of every individual in society. That means to change our self-centered perception, as if the world belongs only to us, and realize that in nature we are connected to others and dependent on them. When this change of perception happens, we will feel committed to care for others as we care for ourselves.

To achieve this goal requires an immense undertaking of advocacy, a great deal of work, both in scope and duration, to penetrate all levels of society around the world, so an agreement in the general public can be reached that fosters ideas like connection and reciprocity as a priority. This agreement will lead to changes in society, government and leadership, and also will gradually create a new attitude within society regarding equality.

As we strive to treat one another with love, we will begin to feel that we are all one soul, like organs in a single body. And just as in my body I sense the different organs, so will I feel each and every person around me. Such a state will give us the real perception of equality, one that can only be achieved through connection, through the commitment of being one for all and all for one.
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Question: You said that the feeling of the informational field within us can be called consciousness. What are the consciousness of the lower levels of matter: inanimate, vegetative, and animate?

Answer: These levels also perceive the surrounding informational field even much closer than we do. Being a part of this field, they do not disturb it with their nature or their distortions. Therefore, we say that they live instinctively.

All members of the inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature include fields that direct and control them. Thus, from the part of the object, there is no participation in the upper management, they simply instinctively comply with what it dictates.

Just like small children who are at first like animals, but when they grow up, something called egoism appears in them, i.e., a conscious intention to use their qualities for their own benefit and preferably to the detriment of others.

There is nothing you can do about it. It intentionally appears in a person so that we, having independently risen above our egoistic quality, would become at least equal to Him and in this regard reach the level of the Creator. The fact is that the egoistic quality is an addition to our animate nature, which comes from the opposite side of the Creator, and we must treat it with respect.
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From KabTV’s “Meetings with Kabbalah” 3/22/19

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Question: When I feel great and have a desire for new knowledge and an interest in spirituality, I am suddenly thrown to a level of the lowest desires and I cannot understand why? Is it possible that this happens in order to awaken desires?

Answer: It is a good thing! It means that you already see that following sublime desires, dreams, and impulses, a yearning for the friends, for the group, and for the Creator, for the elation of the internal spirit that fills you; there is a sudden collapse. It is as if all the air has been taken out of your lungs and you feel that you have no desire to move forward, and that there is nothing to move forward to in any way. This is a sign that you have been given another portion of ego.

In spirituality we advance along two lines, the right line and the left line, and between them there is the middle line. The left line is the ego, the right line is bestowal, and the middle line is the Creator.

Suppose you are in phase 1, in which everything is good. Then you are given another portion of ego and you ascend to phase 2, but it is egoistic. The whole world suddenly becomes empty, dark, worthless, hopeless, stressful, and depressing. Now you need to begin to work in the group in order to ascend to a similar state on the level of the light.

The only way to do this is by your efforts to connect to the group: ∑, the summation sign.

The moment you attain a certain connection between you, you will immediately receive the light.

This is how you ascend to the state that is already your next spiritual level; you start with the left line, and then advance along the right line to the middle line. It is from this level that you will begin to receive another portion of ego, and from it you will move to a state of bestowal and once again ascend to the next spiritual level. This is how you ascend until you realize at a certain point that the Creator is revealed between you.

Then you will see that you have already taken off your shirt and thrown it into the laundry basket, which means that you have entered the spiritual level, and that your corporeal body is actually meaningless, that you are in this world for the time being in order to spread the method of Kabbalah to others, and you already feel the increasingly growing connection with the Creator on the middle line.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 1/20/19

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Question: How can we practically use this awareness that all people are parts of my soul? Should I begin to feed them, to honor, indulge, and love them? I do not feel this way and only know it because I heard about it.

Answer: You do not need to do anything with them on the corporeal level. Nothing! You just need to spread the idea that if we are all connected correctly, everything will be good. Apart from that, nothing else is needed.

Later on, we will have to learn how to do it and what it means to be connected to each other correctly, learn to receive from nature its abundance, its filling, discover new senses, and see nature as the immense upper force that is ready to fill us and to take us inside it.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 1/27/19

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Comment: The Book of Zohar says that the Ten Commandments correspond to the ten acts of creation.

My Response: The Ten Commandments are the ten main criteria by which we need to build a model of our inner image, which is called “Adam” from the word “Domeh” – “similar to the Creator.”

So we need to understand what the Ten Commandments are. Or is it “don’t steal” somewhere on the street? Or “thou shalt not kill” in a doorway? Or don’t flirt with your neighbor’s wife? Or are we talking about some special, internal changes of a person as a result of which he really becomes equal to the Creator?

A commandment is a corrected egoistic spiritual quality of a person. In other words, we must gradually discover in ourselves the opposite image of the Creator, which is called impure (Klipa), the opposite of Him, and change it to one similar to the Creator.

This change in our qualities is called the fulfillment of the commandment.

We have 613 such qualities. Therefore, we must make 613 corrections. But as long as you don’t see a single quality in the person of our world that is opposite to the Creator, there is simply nothing in him.

The 613 commandments are divided into ten. That is, they are grouped into ten groups.

As for the act of creation, it is tied to the commandment, since the Creator created man as a wax seal, imprinting Himself in the opposite form: What is convex in print has become concave.

So the Creator stamped Himself in the material of creation, making the opposite quality of Himself. There are 613 positive qualities in the Creator that are aimed at bestowal, love, and emanation. And in us, it all manifests itself in the opposite form: in receiving, satiating, despising everyone, using everyone and everything, in pride, competition, etc.

The Creator simply took all His qualities and imprinted them in us in the reverse form.
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From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #10

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Preparation to the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic “Counting of the Omer (Sefirat HaOmer“

Selected Highlights 

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Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
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New Life 1089 – Indifference Within Society
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

The indifference we find in today’s society will advance us toward a new, spiritual world. In ancient times, we required others for survival but today, children are immersed in technology of all sorts and don’t feel a need for people. Eventually, this social dryness and egoism will push us toward change and spirituality. The spiritual world is full of mutual support and connection based on the principle “You shall love your friend as yourself.” In the future, people will get fulfillment from communication with one another and everyone will be filled with a higher power.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1089 – Indifference Within Society,” 3/5/19

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My new article on Linkedin “From Startup Nation to United Nation”

Israel has always tried to appease the world and please it. We’ve gone from bragging about our achievements in high-tech to showing off pretty girls, to boasting the speed with which we vaccinated the population in Israel. The world may be very impressed, yet it doesn’t like Israel any better. If anything, Israel’s achievements only anger the world and make it more resentful. Those who do like Israel, like it because of the people of Israel’s historic vocation, which has nothing to do with high-tech or vaccinations. Those who hate Israel, hate it because of our historic vocation, too. Therefore, if we want the world to accept Israel, we must understand vocation and follow through with it.

Under Abraham, who was dubbed “the man of mercy,” they learned that kindness and caring are the most sublime values in existence, worth any effort to acquire them. Oddly enough, the Israelites’ initial strangeness worked in their favor, making their caring “untainted by partiality” due to familial affinity. The union they had achieved, therefore, came to them only through their success in becoming sympathetic individuals who truly cared for one another.

Israel’s vocation, and the reason that the world approved of establishing a Jewish state in the midst of a hostile Arab population, has to do with how we formed as a nation. We tend to forget it because if we remember how we began, it will require efforts to reestablish it. Yet, if we ignore our history, then we have neither present nor future.

Israel’s nationhood began when we committed to each other to love one another as ourselves, to care for each other “as one man with one heart.” At that time, under Mt. Sinai, we became a nation. It was indeed a miracle. We weren’t “meant” to succeed since our ancestors came from a variety of tribes and clans that inhabited the Fertile Crescent, and had nothing in common. The only thing that held them together was the fact that they had followed the same teacher, Abraham the Patriarch, whose ideology they embraced.

Under Abraham, who was dubbed “the man of mercy,” they learned that kindness and caring are the most sublime values in existence, worth any effort to acquire them. Oddly enough, the Israelites’ initial strangeness worked in their favor, making their caring “untainted by partiality” due to familial affinity. The union they had achieved, therefore, came to them only through their success in becoming sympathetic individuals who truly cared for one another.

Following Abraham’s passing, his heirs continued to develop their father’s ideology; they perfected it to the point that under Moses’ leadership, they achieved complete unity and were declared a nation. Indeed, that nation was like none other: bonded by selfless love as opposed to biological affiliation, which is inherently self-centered. And though they often fell out of love with one another, the young nation managed to overcome numerous trials and tribulations, and created a legacy of unity that transcends hatred, or as King Solomon phrased it, “Hate stirs strife, and love will cover all crimes” (Prov. 10:12).

This unique nation became a role model, an example of how the world will have to be at some point in the future. Since all nations cannot be relatives, they will have to find some other way to unite, or they will destroy one another. That other way was the way of Israel. This is why once the Israelites became a nation, they were tasked with being “a light unto nations”—to set an example that the world could follow. That was Israel’s historic vocation, and it still is. This is why the League of Nations supported establishing a Jewish home for the Jews in their historic land in November 1947, and this is still our obligation to the world.

Currently, despite all the technological innovations that Israel has provided, the medical developments, and scientific breakthroughs that have come from our small country, the world holds everything against us. This is its way of telling us that this is not what it wants from us. What it wants is that we do what we did before: unite above hatred. The world wants us to unite even though we cannot stand each other. It wants us to learn to care the way our ancestors did, and show the world how they, too, can do it.

We must not forget that our ancestors came from the nations of the world, and they, too, must unite. Yet, since they did not have Abraham, it is up to Israel to pave the way. Just as Abraham was the man of mercy, Israel must now become a nation of mercy that the world can follow.

The world does not need our kindness to strangers; they need our kindness to each other, which is, let’s face it, the hardest thing of all. But the world will not embrace us until we embrace each other above our mutual dislike. It is time to rebrand Israel, from Startup Nation to The United Nation.
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