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Question: What is the connection between “Oznei Haman” (ears of Haman) and “Kisim Haman” (pockets of Haman).

Answer: The ears of Haman symbolize the property of Bina, which works for Malchut (egoism) when we are ready to give something for the sake of our own fulfillment. This is such a sophisticated egoism: giving for the sake of receiving. I am ready to give something in order to get more.

And the pockets of Haman are already purely egoistic desires that I want to fulfill.

The property of Haman works in us very intelligently. Haman says that there are people who create many problems for us and we do not know what to do. He wants to overthrow the king, etc. That is, he uses the properties of Bina, the properties of bestowal. He supposedly wants to do good. And therefore, he believes that these people must be destroyed.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States”

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Moses personifies the property of mercy in us, the force that arises in a person and helps him realize his mandatory spiritual elevation.

And Joshua Ben Nun in us means the continuation of struggling with our egoism. But a person has already crossed to the other side and is more or less accustomed to the property of bestowal and love, agrees with it, and understands how to be connected with others.

He enters the battle, knows how to nullify egoism and use it. This is called that he develops the land of Israel. The earth (Eretz) means desire. Israel (Yashar-El) means directed toward the Creator. Therefore, Eretz Yisrael means desires directed toward the Creator.

Everything that the people of Moses have been preparing for, Joshua the conqueror is now practically teaching them.

Question: Did the formation of the soul as such take place in the land of Israel?

Answer: No, it was still in its infancy while leaving Egypt, receiving the Torah, traveling (preparing) for forty years in the desert, and now, when crossing the River Jordan.

Question: In principle, are we talking about the human soul?

Answer: Yes. These are egoistic properties that we must go through in this form, in wars with ourselves, each one of us and all of us together.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 6/11/21

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Question: In Canada, studies have been conducted to measure the happiness index. It turned out that in rich cities where people earn incomes normally and are more successful, the level of happiness is very low. And in small towns where people earn less but communicate closely with each other, they are happier.

So, it is human relationships that build what is called happiness. Why does living in a big city negatively affect a person?

Answer: City life weighs on us. When you are trapped in a box: neighbors here, neighbors there, above and below, you feel like you are in prison. We may not be aware of it, but it still affects us subconsciously.

The life of people in high-rise buildings is a vast field for research. On the outskirts of large cities, whole districts of 15 to 20-floor-high buildings are built. They are absolutely soulless, they have no features, not architectural or human. You go out of the house, and like a child who has been spun around stopped in place, you stand and do not understand where your home is.

I think there will be a rebound soon.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations” 6/9/21

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Overcoming means going against the emotional distance between me and the friends and the emotional distance between all of us together from the Creator. We need to overcome these two factors and reduce this distance to zero.

Of course, this will reveal new states (Reshimot), as if I increase the sensitivity by switching from the first level to the second one, then to the third one, and so on.

It is as if I first measure the distance in kilometers, then increase the accuracy and measure it in meters, in centimeters, in millimeters, etc. Each time, the sensitivity, the resolution, increases until I reach the goal. The distance between me and the friends and between all the friends and the Creator is increasingly reducing, and when it reaches zero, that is the final correction.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/18/21, “Advance By Overcoming”

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The spiritual path requires us to advance by overcoming. But what exactly do you need to overcome?—obstacles that the Creator positions in front of us every moment. And He does not want to obstruct us, but on the contrary, He helps like a parent helps a child who gives the child work in order to become stronger and smarter, to understand how this world works and use it for good.

So, we grow and develop like a child, and we see that everything is given to us only for the purpose of correction because this is the form of progress. With each overcoming, we advance and slightly close the huge gap that separates this world from the spiritual world.

“Love will cover all crimes.” If we attribute everything to the Creator, including our overcoming, we will move forward. Sometimes we are overwhelmed by fear and sometimes we are confused by the lack of understanding of the path and of ourselves. But we must understand that everything comes from the same source, from the Creator, and by relating everything to Him, I close the gap that separates me from Him and move forward.

The main thing is to reduce the distance between me and my friends because this is the most difficult and most genuine of all we have in this world. Therefore, by eliminating this distance, we will come to the revelation of the Creator.

Overcoming can be in everything. The main thing is to bring it to the Creator, to turn to Him for healing. I get up in the morning confused, not understanding anything, not remembering, not knowing what to do, in a complete fog. But I have already taught myself that everything comes from the Creator. It turns out that from the very morning I have been granted help from above, and with this help, I move forward.

It is said: “Each day they will be as new in your eyes,” that is, every day man is a new creation. It turns out that if today I cannot take anything from yesterday, as a new blank sheet, then this is good. I have to start all over again.

Everything that happens to us is an invitation to come closer to the Creator and thereby correct the state. First of all, it is necessary to relate everything to the Creator because there is nothing but one upper force. There can be a problem with health, in the family, in the world, no matter what, the main thing is to relate everything to the Creator, not in order to throw everything on Him and get rid of it, but because of the desire to get closer to the truth.

As it is sung in the song: “Let us get up tomorrow morning with a new song in our hearts,” with an even stronger connection between us, not just to continue from yesterday, but to examine the fact that maybe yesterday it was not so important for me, but today, I want to rise to a new degree, to a new state, to a new style of connection between us in the ten and with the Creator.

I don’t want to engage in what happened yesterday and look back like Lot’s wife who turned into a pillar of salt. I want to advance every day through overcoming.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/18/21, “Advance By Overcoming”

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My new article on Linkedin “The Vaccine Wars Show We Haven’t Learned”

While nations that had access to Covid-19 vaccines rushed to inoculate their citizens, others watched helpless as the virus wreaked havoc in their countries. In the meantime, as I said would happen (check my posts on the topic dating all the way back to the beginning of the outburst), new strains have developed and countries that thought they had already seen the worst are reemploying, or considering reemploying lockdowns and other restrictions on gatherings.

Even while countries could provide vaccines to other countries, they did not. Worse yet, some governments could provide their people with vaccines but chose not to do so for political reasons. These vaccine wars show we haven’t learned a thing and, as a result, we will have to learn another lesson, and probably a more painful one.

As I have written countless times since the beginning of the pandemic, the virus will not let up until we change our relationships. Our ill-will toward each other is its energy source. This is what keeps it going, mutating as it travels from country to country and becoming increasingly contagious, so that vaccines that provided herd immunity before no longer do so.

But instead of learning, we are behaving like children who were sent to their rooms (lockdowns) as punishment, to think about what we did wrong. Yet, instead of drawing the required conclusions and admitting that we misbehaved toward each other, we are waiting for the removal of the punishment so we can go out again, play, and fight with one another as before. We will not be allowed to do that anymore. We will be forced to rethink our lives, our values, our relationships, and the purpose of our lives as a whole.

Perhaps the best example of the foolishness of our behavior is the way we are handling the vaccination efforts. First, instead of launching a global coordinated effort to develop a vaccine, numerous companies in numerous countries launched independent researches and competed against each other. Clearly, the vaccine could have been developed for a fraction of the cost and could therefore cost a fraction of what it does. This would make it available worldwide and financing a worldwide vaccination program would not be an issue.

Second, now that some countries have vaccines, they either keep it to themselves, or sell it at a huge profit. It turns out that while all of humanity is fighting the same enemy, it is fighting it with armies that are fighting against each other while fighting the common foe. This gives the virus time to generate new strains that defy existing weapons and renders humanity’s efforts to fight it ineffective. In short, we are not losing the war against the Covid virus because it is so lethal or infectious; we are losing it because we are so divided.

This division will cost us heavily with more loss of life, more economic crises, and more disruption to our lives. The sooner we learn that Covid is not my problem, your problem, or their problem, but our problem, the problem of all of us, the sooner we will find a way to end the pandemic. And once we learn how to cooperate against Covid, we will, hopefully, learn that this is how we should operate from here on concerning all our matters, since today, in the global village, every problem is everyone’s problem.
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My new article on Linkedin “Why Happiness Is Elusive”

Many psychologists believe that lasting happiness is a fantasy, that even when we’re happy, it’s only for a moment. For example, Mandy Kloppers, a cognitive behavioral therapist from the UK, writes the following about happiness: “We’re all taught to believe that happiness is this attainable thing.” However, “This misconception is the reason why happiness is elusive. Happiness isn’t a consistent state, it’s more a fleeting feeling that comes over you. …For a special moment you realise you feel really at peace and everything feels right in your world. Sustaining this state isn’t possible though.”

Moreover, Professor of Psychology Frank McAndrew writes in the magazine Psychology Today that since the 1960s, “thousands of studies and hundreds of books have been published with the goal of increasing well-being and helping people lead more satisfying lives. So why aren’t we happier? Why have self-reported measures of happiness stayed stagnant for over 40 years? Perversely, such efforts to improve happiness could be a futile attempt to swim against the tide, as we may actually be programmed to be dissatisfied most of the time.”

In truth, we are programmed to be dissatisfied not only most of the time, but all the time. Our sages stated it thousands of years ago when they wrote in the Midrash: “One does not leave the world with half one’s wishes in one’s hand, for one who has one hundred wants two hundred; one who has two hundred wants four hundred.”

However, the feeling that everything is right in our world, as Kloppers put it, is possible, and even on a permanent basis. But to achieve this, we need to know what to look for. In fact, the only reason that we seem to be “programmed to be dissatisfied” is in order to impel us to keep looking until we find the harmonious state that will keep us happy.

The thing is that one person cannot be at peace or feel that everything is “right in our world” while the rest of the world is not feeling so. We, all of humanity, and in fact, all of reality, are one system. Can we feel good when a certain organ within us is ill? Can a machine work well when one of its parts is broken? The fact that we think we can be happy, and even expect it to last, testifies to the level of our ignorance of our connectedness. If we realized how connected we all are, we wouldn’t even dream of being happy, or even content, until every person in the world and every being in existence also felt that way. This may be a hard reckoning, but realizing this is the first step toward achieving happiness.

When you realize the level of connectedness of all pieces of reality, you realize that the purpose of life does not relate to one person, but to everyone and every thing together. The purpose of life is to bring all parts of reality into harmony. Happiness, therefore, is not a goal in itself, but the result of achieving harmony among all elements of reality.

The moments of happiness we feel today are fleeting but precious. They remind us of the sensations we can experience in life, while at the same time show us that we are not yet there. These moments are valuable not because they make us feel good, but because they remind us of our ultimate goal: harmony among all the pieces of reality, when each part gives and receives simultaneously, completely satisfied and completely satisfying at the same time.

In that state, we lose our sense of self as it melts into everything. Once we are there, we realize that we are not only parts of reality, we make it what it is; we are its masters, its servants, its benefactors, and its beneficiaries all at the same time.
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Are third-world countries destined to be poor?“

What happens to third-world countries is caused by European civilization replacing several of their local mentalities, cultures and traditions.

Foreign cultures and values were imposed on these countries, disrupting their natural development and bringing about their corruption. This is what led to their poverty and disastrous state of development.

However, if we feel that we depend on each other, on the general law of nature, love, altruism, global interconnectedness and interdependence; if we see that in essence each one of us is a cell in a living organism that depends on all cells functioning optimally; if we see that each and every one of us is extremely important because we are each cells of this living organism, and without the life of any one of us, then the world is incomplete; if we see the immensity of our interdependence—then of course we will know how to treat all nations and countries, including the third world, with love and understanding.

Peace in the world will then emerge, and there will be equality—but for each one of us according to our respective mentality, culture and all of the accompanying circumstances.

Based on a Q&A with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on September 9, 2006.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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My new article on Linkedin “Death Begins When You Retire from Work”

I am 74 years old, and thank God I work every day. I teach the wisdom of Kabbalah from three to six in the morning to my students who connect live to the lessons from time zones across the globe. Then I go out for a light walk and exercise, rest, and start the second part of the morning: meetings, interviews, TV shootings, and studies from the original Kabbalah sources.

Israel is known to be among the countries with high life expectancy; our average has already crossed the age of 80. Here, as in other countries, there is an ongoing debate about whether the retirement age for men and women should be raised. This is so not only because people run out of money or want to engage in different projects, but also because, as studies show when a person stops working, he or she becomes depressed, sinks into loneliness and begins to feel meaningless in life.

Whoever stops working and thinks that then the good life begins is wrong. Our schedule relaxes and troubles start from the moment we wake up. One wonders how to fill the time until noon and then what to do from afternoon to evening. And even then, we begin questioning why we are doing certain things automatically. What to do tomorrow? And the day after? This state is not one of prolonging life, it is death within life. Rest becomes a part of death.

Based on my own experience, I support working for at least half a day, a few hours in the morning and no more. People who retire often go through a process of deterioration and decline because we are built to function in the world until our last day, and this is felt in my body, in my own skin.

If a person has already retired, then one piece of advice from me is this: Get involved with people your age; this connection is always good. Try to stay healthy, helpful, playful, and encourage others. Don’t just sit on a bench with friends and talk; work together, clean the building where you live, wash the stairwell, cut the grass in the garden, grow vegetables and cultivate flowers. These kinds of activities might also be profitable and provide employment, but more importantly, they maintain the health of the body and the mind.

Suppose you prefer other activities than those just mentioned? Good. The main purpose is to engage in actions that contribute to the community, that are connected with taking care of the well-being of others. This advice for the golden years is a quick and rewarding way to feel filled with goodness and to pass on that feeling to others. This is the only prescription for elderly people that will fill them with the commitment to take care of themselves because they will desire more involvement and work. Being helpful to society is the way to feel young, vital, and strong.
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