Audio Version Of The Blog – 5/12/21
Posted on May 12th, 2021
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My new article on Linkedin “Peace Begins Within”
Hundreds of rockets, fatalities, injuries, homes severely damaged, and entire cities shut down. Palestinians in the West Bank, and Israeli Arabs throughout the country, are beating and stoning Jewish civilians, attacking police officers, attempting to shoot and car-ram soldiers, and to lynch people in their cars. This is what Israel looks like today. We can complain about the biased and antisemitic reports that the press is showing, or that the Biden administration enables such things to happen and even tacitly supports them, but they aren’t the problem; they are the symptom. If at such a critical time, we allow ourselves to engage in infantile bickering and “I told you so” type arguments, then we are the ones encouraging the violence; we are the enablers.
How can we solve our security problems when we put sticks in each other’s wheels? Our own division is our haters’ fuel. If we want to be in a different place tomorrow, we have to start going there today. But when everyone points a blaming finger at others and says “Only I know the way,” then clearly no one knows the way and nothing will improve.
How can we solve our security problems when we put sticks in each other’s wheels? Our own division is our haters’ fuel. If we want to be in a different place tomorrow, we have to start going there today. But when everyone points a blaming finger at others and says “Only I know the way,” then clearly no one knows the way and nothing will improve.
The clash between Jews and Arabs is as old as our efforts to reestablish the Jewish State toward the end of the 19th century. But their level of activity against us depends on us, not on them. When we are united, they are quieter; when we are divided, they rise up with murderous intent.
If we want them to change, they need our positive influence. They need to feel that there is love within us, then they, and the whole world with them, will run to us. But when there is hatred among us, and hatred is what we project, then hatred is what we will get from them.
The book Kol Mevaser writes in this regard: “This is the mutual guarantee on which Moses worked so hard before his death: to unite the children of Israel. All of Israel are each other’s guarantors [responsible for one another], meaning that when all are together, they see only good.” Likewise, the book Binah LeItim asserts, “The foundation of the wickedness of evil Haman … is what he had begun to argue, ‘There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed,’ etc. He cast his filth saying that that nation deserves to be destroyed since separation rules among them, they are all full of strife and quarrel, and their hearts are far from one another. However, He put the healing before the blow [took preventing measures] … by hastening Israel to unite and … be one, as one man, and this is what saved them, as in the verse, ‘Go, gather together all the Jews.’”
Accordingly, when we unite, we will see the world changing its attitude toward us for the better. Moreover, we will see that our hopes for peace and for a good future are in our hands, and all we need to do is learn how to activate our secret power: internal unity. Indeed, peace begins within.
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My new article on Linkedin “The Pending Victory”
The Red Army’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War II was a great victory. The recent 76th anniversary celebration of the important historic event should be also a reminder of the atrocities of the Nazi regime which acted with visceral hatred towards entire populations and especially against the Jews. Humanity overcame the rise of this pernicious force, but there is still work to be done to defeat the underlying origin of wars and conflicts: our egoistic human nature of self-benefit that causes division and hostility.
We must remember and relearn that we, the Jewish people, have a special role among the peoples of the Earth—to defeat the evil instinct that separates us from one another, and to strive tirelessly for connection that will defeat hatred forever. In this way we will fulfill our mission in the world and claim the most important victory ever: lasting peace and prosperity.
We have not learned much from history, neither the people of Israel nor all the nations. Even today Nazi parties can be found everywhere, and somehow we come to terms with the situation that antisemitism is rising again, albeit not as it was then. We should be clear that based on the growing manifestations of hatred against Jews, that there will be no problem in establishing a government today similar to what existed in Germany before. Such a scenario would not necessarily threaten just the people of Israel in the State of Israel, but Jews everywhere in the world.
Russia’s Victory Day was a huge success against the destructive Nazi regime, against the well-oiled war machine that came out of Germany, but the ideology itself was not defeated; it is alive and kicking. On May 9, 1945, the world received a beautiful lesson, that if many peoples stand together in unity against those who break all agreements and conventions of human civility—like the actions perpetrated by the German regime—then they will succeed. However, we must recognize that we are still lacking treatment of the root of the problem that is still in our midst.
The Russians are by nature a people capable of connecting in a time of need and of standing up against their haters. Hitler was a fool to try to go against them, and many advised him not to, but he thought he would succeed, that he would be the only one in history who could defeat them. He failed.
One and a half million Jews from Russia also joined the Red Army, enlisted in the struggle and fought against the Nazis. In spite of that, over the years the Russians became distinctly antisemitic. They learned from the Germans to hate Jews, and the growing hatred, together with the plethora of difficult living conditions in the former Soviet Union, built within the Jews a strong desire to leave Russia and move to Israel.
I myself was among those who immigrated—I remember well those times. It was the late 1960’s, from the Six Day War and onwards. It was already felt than that the emerging Jewish state had a solid foundation. It was felt that Israel could endure the rising challenges it faced through the determined mindset of soldiers and hard workers needed for the new nation to thrive. Many Russian Jews related to this vision and expressed a desire to join this cause and call to action. But even the establishment of the state of Israel did not help to remove the hatred that still clings within our hearts, and it continues to haunt us.
Russia’s Victory Day over Nazi Germany is a day worthy of respect for the heroes of that war who stood together and fought bravely. And at the same time, we need to ask a very important question: Why does the same hatred still stand with all its bitterness, and how do we begin to sweeten it from this day on?
We must remember and relearn that we, the Jewish people, have a special role among the peoples of the Earth—to defeat the evil instinct that separates us from one another, and to strive tirelessly for connection that will defeat hatred forever. In this way we will fulfill our mission in the world and claim the most important victory ever: lasting peace and prosperity.
My new article on Linkedin “We Made the Bed, and We Will Lie in It”
Over the past year, I repeatedly said that if the leadership changes in Jerusalem and Washington, Israel will be in trouble. To some of my social media followers, it sounded as if I was making political commentary or promoted a political agenda, but this is not the case. I gain nothing from this or that individual being the head of the State of Israel, and certainly not from the identity of the president of the US. Rather, my one and only concern is the unity of the people of Israel, as a springboard for instigating the unity of all of humanity.
The implicit, and sometimes overt support of the Biden administration for these acts of violence are the most worrying, since they are the harbinger of far more vicious storms to come. In fact, the Palestinians are the least of our problems. Now that the US administration has opened the floodgates for antisemites around the world, we can expect onslaughts from Iran, Russia, Arab countries, and basically from everywhere. We will lose on all fronts and our situation will go from bad to worse.
The end goal for humanity is to be “as one man with one heart.” It may take us decades of unbearable torment, including a nuclear world war, to get there, or it may take a few short years and a pleasant and swift ride into a society whose members care about each other and are committed to the well-being of humanity and the planet. My concerns, therefore, are spiritual and not political, and certainly not partisan.
Yet, since it is impossible to establish unity without security, before we establish unity, we must secure the persistence of the State of Israel and the security of its people. As I see it, Benjamin Netanyahu has done a far better job at keeping Israel safe than any other prime minister. Across the Atlantic, Donald Trump has done more for Israel’s security than any other American president. Because security is the most essential requirement for establishing unity, I supported both of them.
Accordingly, even before Joe Biden took office, I warned that should he win the election, Israel’s security would be jeopardized. Sadly, as soon as he entered the White House, my prediction began to transpire. The return to the Iran deal, the growing support of the Palestinians, the tacit permission his administration has given to various organizations to attack Israel, such as the International Criminal Court, the UN Human Rights Council, the UN Security Council, and countless others, all seeking to sanction, censor, weaken, and ultimately demolish the Jewish State, are only the beginning.
The riots we are seeing in Jerusalem, Haifa, and Jaffa, as well as the rockets from Jaffa on civilian population seem to stem from various reasons: The Sheikh Jarrah evictions, tensions surrounding the Temple Mount, the threats of Hamas to escalate the violence, and incitement for violence on social media, are a few of them. However, the implicit, and sometimes overt support of the Biden administration for these acts of violence are the most worrying, since they are the harbinger of far more vicious storms to come. In fact, the Palestinians are the least of our problems. Now that the US administration has opened the floodgates for antisemites around the world, we can expect onslaughts from Iran, Russia, Arab countries, and basically from everywhere. We will lose on all fronts and our situation will go from bad to worse.
However, and this is the most important point—I don’t see the Biden administration as the guilty party in this downward spiral. Rather, I think we brought this on ourselves. American Jewry, as well as much of the public here in Israel, wanted Biden to win. They wanted to unseat Trump and place Biden and his progressive administration in the White House. Well, we made the bed, and now we’ll lie in it.
As Jews, we do not understand the power we possess. I am not even talking about political clout and maneuvers that prominent Jews took in order to bring Biden to the White House; I am speaking only on the deeper level. With our desire, we seated Biden and unseated Trump, and all the Jews will pay, including the American Jewry.
The division among Jews is the malady of our people. It has brought upon us every evildoer since the onset of our nation. The division among us also prevents us from winning the world’s favor, since all that they expect from us is unity, and all we ever show them is division. That division causes us to want to see Israel haters in the White House, and makes us cloak our hatred for each other with sanctimonious outcries about justice. But where there is no love, there cannot be justice.
Let me reiterate: I do not speak from any political perspective, but from my spiritual perception of the world. If we want to see a peaceful world, where people are united, we must establish security and unity, in that order. And since the unity of the world begins with unity within the Israeli nation, there must be security in Israel so that Israel may establish unity.
In that regard, I’d like to quote the great Rav Kook, who, during World War I, outlined the connection between the world’s troubles and Israel’s unity. In his book Orot (Lights), he wrote, “The construction of the world, which is currently crumpled by the dreadful storms of a blood-filled sword, requires the construction of the Israeli nation. The construction of the nation and the revealing of its spirit are one and the same, and it is one with the construction of the world, which is crumbling in anticipation for a force full of unity and sublimity, and all of this is in the soul of the assembly of Israel.”
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How can I destroy my ego (self)?“
We do not need to destroy the ego.
What we should do is construct a new level of love, altruism and positive connection to others and nature above it. The inclination to create a new positive attitude above the ego is described in the wisdom of Kabbalah as covering with “love above the crimes.”
If we try to destroy the ego, we will only make it twice as bad. We should not touch the ego, neither to decrease nor to increase it. On the contrary, we should solely concentrate on constructing a positive attitude of love, altruism, kindness and caring for others above the ego.
The ego’s purpose is to lead us to the realization of its evilness, that by desiring to benefit at the expense of others and nature we harm everybody including ourselves. However, such a revelation should act as a springboard by which we leap to act in an opposite loving and caring way toward others above the ego. We will then discover how all the evil in our world, which is based on the egoistic quality within us, exists solely in order to lead us to goodness.
In order to reach happier, more balanced and harmonious lives, we need to engage in creation, not in destruction. If we shift our emphasis outside of our egoistic level entirely, and focus completely on building a new society of positively connected individuals, with threads of love, altruism and kindness dwelling in our connections, then we will invite the positive altruistic forces dwelling in nature into our connections, and start seeing how a whole new harmonious world opens up to us.
Based on KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” on February 18, 2021. Written/edited by Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Liz Dougherty on Unsplash.
Question: For the past 50 years, the topic of stress has been very relevant. In the process of self-development, people who try to improve themselves often reach stressful states of dissatisfaction and powerlessness. How does one deal with stress as effectively as possible?
Answer: Only through participation in the right communities that strive for good, mutual help, and mutual spiritual upliftment.
Only such an environment can give a person the strength to overcome any troubles and obstacles. A person should rise to this environment, invest oneself in it, and feel like a small cogwheel in it.
Question: In principle, in order to receive from this environment, one must give to others?
Answer: Exactly in the measure of bestowal a person receives.
Question: What is primary, what is secondary: first the bestowal, then the receiving, or vice versa?
Answer: It depends on the mutual relations between people. It is quite possible that a person comes into this environment as a newborn child, at first it gives him everything, and then he gradually fits into it and begins to mutually work with it. And it can be the other way around.
Question: Is there any formula for the existence of such communities?
Answer: Mutual giving without any criticism, verification, or measurement of who gives me what. The main thing is that I have the opportunity to give.
Question: Is it important to strive for this here? After all, it is difficult to imagine that people who will be able to implement this will gather.
Answer: Naturally. It is the highest management that gives us such an opportunity.
Question: So, when you have such an aspiration, can you count on help from above?
Answer: Yes.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 4/12/21
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A Quiet Revolution In The Family
In the past, we could establish some contact between one another with the help of simple psychology, and thus balance our lives. There was the female part, the male part, and the common part. We had to do this in order to generate the third part.
On the whole, every family replicated this ancient model and everything was clear. Today, however, the ties have been broken and this model no longer exists. The ego has grown so much that a man does not want to work for his family and a woman does not want kids or a family, although these are basically the most natural things for her. The motherly instinct is no longer active.
For a man, the questions “Why should I work for others?” and “Why shouldn’t she go out to work?” come up. This is exactly the point at which professions and opportunities for women to work outside the home and demand equal rights like men gradually develop. There is usually a demand for women in places where men cannot work like in secretarial jobs and there are also opportunities for jobs like managing countries that open up for women.
Generally speaking, the world has changed a lot during the last century and something has happened: an unnoticed revolution has taken place quietly. Now, the question of “How should we continue from here and what should we do with ourselves and the world?” should arise in us.
We already find it hard to establish contact between one another these days and our egos control us.
We don’t want families and children anymore. We want to create a world in which each one feels comfortable. This means that I won’t need anything and that modernization will serve me. Drones will fly through my window, provide me with pizza and cola, and everything will be just fine.
Soon we will develop such technology that everyone will have an “oven” in his room, pizza will be sent directly by special pipelines, it will materialize there, and we will be able to consume it.
In short, we will do anything in order to somehow tear a person from his ordinary natural world and we cannot do anything about it since this plan is embedded in nature. But, thanks to the wisdom of Kabbalah, we can picture what will happen in the future.
Very interesting things will happen in the future. We will suddenly discover that we have attained a level of development that depresses us terribly. Everything will be seemingly fine, but we actually won’t feel any pleasure at all and will not find any satisfaction in anything.
In the past, a person was satisfied just knowing that he would come home from work, sit with his family around the dinner table, and dine together. There were kids and there was the warmth of the family and peace. This was ordinary family life for a person, but when the ego grew, a person understood that this is no longer for him.
Interestingly, family life among animals lasts a very short time. After all, animals could also be subjected to a lifelong plan, but they are not! They meet, copulate, the female is generally left on her own to raise her offspring while the male abandons them, and there is actually no family. They do not live as couples after that and do not take care of their offspring together, except for a few species.
There are very few examples in nature where the male and the female stay together for many years, whereas people live in a family for a reason.
Psychologists explain that this is necessary in order to create an increasingly greater society in the form of a state. A person is drawn to that in order to develop from a small community into a big state. In a community, everything was done together and so there were no families there. Then, the need to have his own home and his own family emerged in man, differently from animals that live in caves or in the bush and don’t need anything more than that.
Today, it is not clear which phase we are developing into by rejecting everything that used to be typical for man including a home, a family, and children. We are confused and the family institution is falling apart. Grown children live with their parents since why should they leave home if it is so good with mom and dad? Or, they may leave their homes and not have any contact with their parents. This is the state we are in today.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 3/3/19
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The Book of Zohar, VaYetse, Item 13: King Solomon established his book on seven Havalim [Hevel means “breath vapor,” as well as “vanity,” “futility”] on which the world stands. These are the pillars and ledges that form the existence of the world, and this is why they are called Havalim.
The seven Sefirot, the seven parts, the seven desires, of the soul, by turning from egoistic into altruistic, become the pillars on which the spiritual world stands.
As the body cannot exist without Hevel, the world exists only on Havalim [plural of Hevel]. There are seven of them, as it is written, “Hevel Havalim [vanity of vanities] says Kohelet; Hevel Havalim, all is Hevel [vanity],” thus seven Havalim.
Comment: But the word Hevel is repeated only five and not seven times.
My Response: No. The fact is that the word “Havalim” is plural. Each of them is two. This is what The Book of Zohar says. It is written Hevel Havalim (vanity of vanities). “Havalim” means two.
Question: It is like a mathematical riddle. Why is everything concealed so much?
Answer: No, it is not concealed; it is just that there are double parts that need to be treated this way. After all, everything that is originally written in The Book of Zohar or in the Torah is a purely mechanical and very accurate record of all our consecutive states of cause and consequence, a step-by-step movement that we must go through one after another. This is usually how a program is written.
I remember when I started studying cybernetics, the first time I was very surprised at how programs were written. You record one movement after another as it should happen in a computer.
Thus, this is a record of the work of our soul, that is, our inner computing center, which understands only one thing: pleasure or suffering, plus or minus, and the difference between them relative to its complete saturation, the perfect state that is set ahead.
The Torah, from the word “Hora’ah” (instruction) is a program according to which we work at each degree, line by line, letter by letter. Therefore, you cannot change the letters and words in it. This is a consistent text because it tells us how we go from our world through all 125 degrees to our full, final, perfect state.
Therefore, when you start reading it, the words, their meaning, their singular or plural form, their masculine or feminine form, the letter combinations, and so on become important for you.
After all, all this has a meaning in the program. There are all sorts of elements in the letter. The order of the letters indicates the transition that you must make from your current state. Each letter is a symbol, a block, a matrix of your particular state.
Let’s say that one moment I can explain my condition with one letter and the next moment with another. If I make a word out of these letters, it tells me what kind of final inner changes I accomplish through a certain number of changes. And then I move on to the next one, and so on.
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From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #12
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Question: How can one understand from the lowest, most difficult, and most painful state that something opposite exists?
Answer: Only through suffering. Suffering can be physical or it can be moral, when you realize the hopelessness and do not know what to do with it.
Comment: But at this moment the person is kind of deafened, he wants to get rid of the pain.
My Response: I understand that he is stunned. But it is suffering that pushes him forward because our material is the desire to enjoy, this is our whole being. It turns out that we cannot escape this, we must suffer.
However, it may not be physical suffering or life experiences that drag on for years, but the realization of what I am in. If I attract the light of wisdom to me, then I will see my present state.
Question: How to get into this state?
Answer: Everything can be fine in my life, and suddenly, just sitting in a chair, I can realize that I am in the opposite state of perfection. It will hurt me, but it hurts in awareness, not physically. We must reach this state anyway.
Question: How can it be made clear to a person?
Answer: The wisdom of Kabbalah is given to us for this. Engaging in it, you attract the upper light and bring the upper stem closer to you. You seem to attract the upper world to our world and begin to understand how much more perfect it is, more harmonious, higher than you, and that somewhat you are not it.
And then, simultaneously with the disappointment in your own state, the forces of striving will arise in you. You begin to understand that this can be achieved, that is, you as if discover the disease along with the medicine.
This is what Kabbalah allows us to do. Therefore, we distribute it by any means so that we can show the world this opportunity so that the world does not enter the state of war again. After all, a very unpleasant possibility of a third world war and even a fourth one looms before us. This is what the Kabbalah says.
We must prevent this and achieve an awareness of the need for spiritual ascent not with a stick, but as it is said: the clever one sees from afar, in advance. I would like humanity to undergo its ascent in this way.
Question: It turns out that Kabbalah is a medicine that cures an internal illness. You said that illness eventually kind of cleanses us?
Answer: Any disease in itself is a purification, it is a medicine. After all, it is initially a manifestation of some kind of malfunction in the body at any level: physical or mental, moral or spiritual. And therefore, its course must be perceived as purification.
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From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #12
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Comment: You say that the perspective of the world should be corrected, but when I watch the news I see different things happening in the world which I don’t feel at all.
This worries me a little because I always think about Rabash who used to listen to the news and was very sensitive to everything that happens in the world, and cared deeply about everyone as if they were his own sons. This means that my feelings are nothing like the feelings of Rabash.
My Response: It is not such a bad thing, since you have not reached Rabash’s level yet. It is a good thing that you care, keep caring.
Rabash understood all the problems of the world, how they manifest themselves in him, and it was of course very painful for him. You don’t feel that humanity is like your children, and therefore you are indifferent. “So what if something burns, if someone was murdered, if something happened? Millions of people are killed around the world every day.”
Rabash, on the other hand, felt it as spiritual phenomena, which means that the whole world was in front of him. He could actually see how everything that happened in the world was loaded upon him like a heavy burden.
It seems to us that from a purely egoistic aspect that a Kabbalist floats on clouds like a bird, free of all the corporeal problems, forgetting our world, not caring about anything. No. Everything interests him, because he cares about the general correction of the world.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 4/18/19
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