My new article on Linkedin “The Key to Efficiency in Our Lives”

Modern life is characterized by an ongoing race to be more efficient, constantly raising the bar higher to become successful? But maximum efficiency is not always a guarantee of fulfillment. For that, we need goal management and a clear direction from the highest perspective in life.

As with a race, even before we start, it is important to choose a direction for myself and develop a plan to implement it. Otherwise, we will surely reach the end of our lives without realizing the gift that nature has given only to us, our unique potential, to each and every one of us. Therefore, striving to be someone else and do what everyone does is the sure recipe to be mediocre and stay that way.

Just because I run fast does not mean I will reach somewhere worthy faster. People usually chase after goals they have not even set for themselves. “You will not decide for me,” small children tell us to demonstrate their independence, but in our lives as adults we constantly run where we have been told to run.

We run fast, almost restlessly, constantly trying to become more efficient, to be precise. But, have we become slaves in this intent without a rational explanation of what we want to achieve?

Whoever wants to break this vicious cycle must first of all avoid following what the majority does without questioning why one is doing it. Life is not a machine with values and goals automatically activated.

What is worth living for? What do I want to do with life? Without clarifying these big questions about the essence of our existence, all efforts will be useless and meaningless. “The end of the act is already contained in the initial thought,” our sages said to emphasize that first of all it is indispensable to find out what nature created us for in order to realize what we can achieve in life.

Then, the first step in being efficient is to ask myself what I live for. After I have found an answer for myself and defined a worthy goal, the second stage should be to find out how to achieve, what means do I need to achieve it? The third step is to surround myself with people who are also interested in achieving the same goal so that they will provide a supportive environment for me.

It is important to internalize that without a supportive environment, a person cannot progress. We are social beings, and therefore we must absorb forces from our environment, similar to the seed that is in the soil and needs a suitable substrate of moisture, minerals and fertilizers in order to grow and thrive. I will be able to receive good examples from a supportive environment in which envy propels us to progress but gives us the necessary strength to move forward and overcome all obstacles on the way to realizing our potential.

A waste of time, in the broadest sense of the word, is to flow with life and follow our natural tendencies. Therefore, whenever I feel distracted, I must return to the environment again and tell myself that I need to be in closer contact with it so that the environment can position me more correctly in the direction of the great goal I’ve chosen.

By the way, this is also a very important tip for parents. Instead of trying to force your children to develop in the direction you want them to and provoking rejection in them, it would be better if you immerse them in an environment with children who are developing in the same direction you think is appropriate. Your children will get an urge to move toward the same purpose from others.

It is the importance of the goals we set in advance what will make us meet those goals. It is therefore imperative to elevate the importance of the great goal we aspire to every day, to remind each other why it is important to us and what it will give us in life.

From an evolutionary point of view, the level of effectiveness of someone in the human race is measured by the degree of their participation in changing human relationships from egoistic relationships that threaten to destroy the world to altruistic relationships that will build an integral relationship between everyone.

A person is considered efficient and beneficial to the system to the extent that he or she promotes good connections between people, and complementarity and reciprocity within society. Each of us will feel the total realization of what nature has given to us alone to the same extent, a unique gift for every person in the world.
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is one reason to live in one sentence?“

The reason to live is in order to reach “love your neighbor as yourself” through which we discover the higher, eternal and perfect existence among each other and with nature.

Based on New Life episode 401 with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman, Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum Moshe on June 12, 2016.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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My new article on Linkedin “How Many More Euro Championships?”

According to the entertainment industry news outlet Deadline, “ESPN and ABC’s coverage of the UEFA Euro 2020 soccer championships that kicked off last week has grown by 12% in viewers over the Euro 2016 tournament,” and the championship has only just begun. Perhaps it’s the return from the Covid-19 forced termination of league games and championships, or perhaps it is for other reasons, but despite all the hype, I think the tide will be short lived.

Humanity is losing interest in such games; our childhood days are coming to a close. As we grow, our wishes and aspirations change. This happens to every person, and it is also happening to all of humanity. People are beginning to look for more meaningful things to do with their time, so while watching sports games is still quite popular, it won’t remain this way for long.

But it isn’t happening only in sports. It is happening in every realm of the entertainment industry, because entertainment, in the end, leaves us feeling empty. We are approaching a phase in our development where we are beginning to ask not just how to have more fun in life, but about the meaning of life itself.

When we begin to ask about the meaning of life, we search for its origins, what happened before I was born, what will happen after I die, is there life elsewhere in the universe, and other such questions. But in the end, we realize that the answer to the question about the meaning of life lies not in some distant planet or in the distant past or future, but right here, among us, in our human connections.

The thing about human connections is that by changing our relation to each other, we change our perception of reality, and the world we’ve always known transforms into a new creation. It’s not magic, and it’s not that reality has changed; it is simply that we are seeing a whole new layer of reality that we did not see before, which gives life, and all of existence, a whole new meaning.

People like to play with augmented reality games, such as Pokémon GO, or use this technology to change the way things look. But when you see how everything is connected, your whole existence becomes augmented, transformed, enriched, and enlivened in ways we cannot even begin to imagine with our current, very limited perception.

What is even better is that once we realize how connected we all are, we transform our relationships from negative to positive. Realizing our interdependence simply does not allow us to be mean to one another, as that would be like being mean to ourselves. Our sages knew all this thousands of years ago, and taught this to anyone who wished to learn. The Jerusalem Talmud, for example, offers this beautiful allegory about our connectedness: “If the writing warns about habitual mistreatment, vengeance and bearing a grudge should be forbidden also toward those who are not from among your nation. Also, how is it possible for one to forgive an affront? [Suppose] one is cutting meat, and the knife descends into his hand; would he consider avenging his hand and cutting his other hand for cutting the first? So is this matter … the rule is that one does not take revenge against one’s neighbor, for it is as though he is taking revenge against his own body” (Nedarim 9:4).

The Jerusalem Talmud was redacted in the 3rd century. Can we imagine what history would have looked like had we absorbed the profound love and connection radiating from this excerpt? What would human history look like if we felt the way the authors of the Talmud described? What would our planet look like? Would there be pollution? Would there be exploitation? Would there be wars, hunger, or poverty? I believe you know the answer. Therefore, the sooner we embrace our connected future, the sooner this truly augmented reality will become our reality, and our lives will be what they can be, and what we hope them to be.
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My new article on Linkedin “Reply to a Question about Jews and Arabs in Israel”

One of my students told me that since the beginning of Operation Guardian of the Walls (the most recent military campaign against Hamas in Gaza), dozens of Israeli Arabs left positive messages on my Hebrew Facebook page. They didn’t relate to the conflict, but expressed their agreement with the message of unity that I am conveying there. The student asked me if I could explain their sudden interest in the content on my page.

I think it’s easier for Arab Israelis to access my content than it is for Arabs in other countries for the simple reason that Arab Israelis speak and read Hebrew. From the content of their comments, which are also written in Hebrew, it’s clear that they agree with the message in my words, and this, I think, should be the clearest message to the Jews regarding what we need to do if we truly want peace.
First, I think it’s easier for Arab Israelis to access my content than it is for Arabs in other countries for the simple reason that Arab Israelis speak and read Hebrew. From the content of their comments, which are also written in Hebrew, it’s clear that they agree with the message in my words, and this, I think, should be the clearest message to the Jews regarding what we need to do if we truly want peace.

The message, as we know, is simple: The world has no respect for us because we have no respect for the connection between us. Our sages repeated this message in the ears of our ancestors. They wrote about it profusely, yet we refused to listen. Antisemites, too, have told us in countless ways that they despised our loathing of each other. History has repeatedly shown that the worst blows we suffered from the nations came after periods of intensified discord and infighting among us, and our most prosperous times were during strong internal unity.

Now the Arabs are telling us the same message. In my eyes, they are not enemies; they are messengers who tell us that they will appreciate us when we appreciate the connection between us. It is the same message that the nations of the world have been telling us since our inception as a nation, but now it is being told by our contemporaries. To me, the positive response of our Arab neighbors to the message of Jewish unity is a testimony to the paramount need to begin the process of reconciliation with our neighbors with reconciliation among ourselves. The sooner we start, the better it will be for everyone: for the Jews in Israel, for the Arabs in Israel, and for the rest of the world. As soon as we begin to unite, we will find that the Arabs are not our enemies, they are our partners.

For more on this topic, refer to the books The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism, Historical facts on anti-Semitism as a reflection of Jewish social discord, and Like a Bundle of Reeds: Why unity and mutual guarantee are today’s call of the hour.
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My new article on Linkedin “A Maximum Plan and a Minimum Plan for the Government”

As we evidently see, the State of Israel is unlike any other country. We’re trying to conduct ourselves like the rest of the world, but we’re not; this is why we have been in a political limbo for the past several years. The problem is that we don’t know what we should be like, so we look for role models in the world around us. However, they are not right for us, and we are seeing the results.

Therefore, I think our government needs to conduct itself in two parallel routes, one that follows a maximum plan, and one that follows a minimum plan. The maximum plan is the nation in its ideal state of solidarity and union; the minimum plan is sustaining ourselves until we get there.

The minimum plan has two primary objectives: defense and life. Defense means securing Israel’s borders and addressing military threats to its population. Life means seeing that the economy as a whole is functioning, including the job market, industry and agriculture, and housing, and to maintain the healthcare and welfare systems. As stated, the overall objective of the minimum plan is to sustain us until we realize the maximum plan.

The maximum plan relates to the ultimate goal of the State of Israel, namely to bring the people of Israel to complete unity and solidarity, to the point of realizing the motto of the Jewish people: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” To achieve this, the government must establish an educational system that pertains to all ages—from kindergarten through school, higher education, work, and even retirement homes.

Currently, the nation is in dire need of unity. Its factions are divided and hate each other’s guts. They undermine one another and in the process, they weaken the entire country. Therefore, our survival as a sovereign state depends on our solidarity and unity. If we generate them, we will thrive and prosper. If we do not, we will be overrun by our multiple enemies from without and from within.

Moreover, the nature of our people does not permit us to acknowledge that someone else is right and we are wrong. It is with good reason that the Torah refers to the Jews as a “stiff-necked people” (Ex 32:9), and it is not about to change. Therefore, any plan to generate unity must take into consideration that it must build this accord atop existing, persisting, and even increasing discord. While this is clearly a formidable challenge, the other option is the dissolution of the State of Israel.

In light of all this, the maximum plan will detail and implement the steps toward establishing initial unity, based on the understanding that we are dependent on each other, and either we all succeed or we all fail. Subsequently, the plan will outline the stages of enhancing and solidifying that unity using instances of discord and disputes as incentives for enhancing our unity.

To succeed, the entire nation must commit to the process. If only some of us seek to establish unity, and the rest of us do not, the process will fail. In his essay “Mutual Responsibility,” the great 20th century kabbalist and thinker Yehuda Ashlag, aka Baal HaSulam, offered a poignant analogy from The Book of Zohar pertaining to our mutual responsibility: “If a part of the nation does not want to keep the mutual responsibility … they cause the rest of the nation to remain immersed in their filth and lowliness [of self-interest] without finding a way out of their filth. Therefore, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai [author of The Zohar] described mutual responsibility as two people sailing in a boat, when one of them begins to drill a hole in the boat. His friend says, ‘Why are you drilling?’ The other replies, ‘Why should you care? I am drilling under me, not under you!’ So the friend replies, ‘You fool! We will both drown together in the boat!’”

Right now, we’re sinking. We’re drilling holes in our boat out of vindictiveness, and we don’t realize, or don’t care that in the process, we are drowning ourselves, as well. Still, we haven’t sunk. If we pull together, we will cruise ashore. If we stay apart, we’ll sink for sure. This is why I believe that the government must run the maximum plan and the minimum plan concurrently, with the goal of bringing the people of Israel to the finish line of mutual responsibility and love of others as soon as it possibly can.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Will we ever have world peace?“

World peace seems like a far-fetched utopian concept when we look at today’s world.

To start with, what is peace? Is it simply the opposite of war? When we look into the word “peace” from the perspective of the wisdom of Kabbalah, we find a different definition to how the term is commonly conceived, and we also receive a method on how to achieve it.

Peace is commonly considered a state of no war. Humanity has created several peace treaties, ceasefires and armistices after tough conflicts, wars, and much suffering, and it is always a question of how long they will last until the next outburst.

The term “peace” in Hebrew (“Shalom”) equates to “completion” or “perfection” (“Shalem”). Is it enough that we have an absence of war in order to experience perfection? Of course not. If we look deeper into the word “peace,” we arrive at the common root of our nature, before we divided into different genders, races, species and diverse nations.

In today’s world, where we find ourselves among a rapidly rising global population of billions of people, we perceive ourselves as separate from each other, and often not at peace. Moreover, our lack of knowledge on how to reach peace is our main problem.

The wisdom of Kabbalah describes how nature develops us toward a state of total world peace. Approaching peace, however, requires recognizing that nature is an interconnected and interdependent system, and that we humans are the only disrupters of the sensitive balance in nature. More specifically, the human ego, which is a desire to enjoy at the expense of others, harms us, the world and nature.

Interestingly, as far back as 1930, in his article, “Peace in the World,” Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) recognized the interconnected state of the world:

“Do not be surprised if I mix together the well-being of a particular collective with the well-being of the whole world, because indeed, we have already come to such a degree that the whole world is considered one collective and one society.”

How, then, do we achieve world peace?

Achieving world peace requires a long-term comprehensive social form of education that aims to raise us to discover a state of completion and perfection, and this is where the wisdom of Kabbalah, which describes nature’s causes, plan and functionality, can be of assistance. Kabbalah describes how we can impact self-transformation to change our egoistic nature to an altruistic one—a necessary change in order to reach a state of peace. As part of this transformation, we learn how to rise above our divisive drives that bring about separation between people and nations. Similar to a couple that makes up after an argument, uniting above division is what strengthens our connection.

Rabbi Nachman of Breslov explained, “The essence of peace is to try to make peace between two opposites” (Likutei Etzot, “Peace”). Also, it is written in Proverbs (10:12) that “Love will cover all transgressions.” Nature also contains a plethora of opposites working harmoniously as a single common system: light and darkness, heat and cold, sweet and bitter, and so on.

A process that leads to world peace thus depends on the development of an inclusion between opposites up to a point where a new feeling of the world emerges. Instead of feeling “them and us,” we come to feel a common whole in which we are all important parts.

Moreover, the wisdom of Kabbalah explains that we are all headed to a state of world peace, and Kabbalah is a method that lets us achieve this state faster, more enjoyable and with growing wisdom, knowledge and consciousness of the nature we all share.

Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman

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Love is the greatest measure of connection there can possibly be between two opposite things. We are constantly growing, each one in their egoism, and we must make corrections upon it in order to reach connection in spite of our egoism.

It turns out that within me I am becoming more and more egoistic and as if distancing myself from others. But at the same time, I must build such an attitude that brings me closer to everyone, so that all my egoism turns into bestowal.

Within me, I become an increasingly crude egoist, but on the outside, I add restriction, screen, and reflected light, and the forces of unification to such a degree of connection that I come to love. The fire of hate burns inside, and the flame of love burns outside. This is called the depth of desire—restriction, screen, and reflected light—which are leading to connection and adhesion.

This is how it inverts from the inside out. And a person feels the difference between all these states, attains from this the depth of creation, the matter of creation, and the Creator who created this entire process, this system from outside inward and in a person from within outward.

We should try to see the Creator behind every friend who is concealed behind him. After all, the Creator conceals Himself in such a way; He has no image, no opportunity to reveal Himself. This is why He builds such a special envelope and projects Himself through it, through humanity, through the universe, through all the phenomena of this world.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/15/21, “Advance By Overcoming”

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Question: In the first chapter of the Book of Joshua, it is said that the Creator says to Joshua, son of Nun: “Just be strong and very courageous to observe and do in accordance with all of the Torah that Moses My servant has commanded you. Do not stray there from right or left, in order that you succeed wherever you go.”

The people add: “Only be strong and have courage, only that the Lord your God be with you as He was with Moses.” What does this mean?

Answer: Moses led the people of Israel to the Jordan River, but he remained on the other side of the river.

Everything that is written in Kabbalistic sources must be perceived allegorically, in a spiritual form. Crossing the Jordan River means crossing the border into the land of Israel. The land of Israel is the feeling of the Creator in an explicit and brief form.

After crossing the border, the people are led forward by Joshua, not Moses. Joshua is a warrior. Moses is a teacher who spent the main period of preparation with the people.

He took the people who were in the slavery of egoism, led them through the desert, the detachment from the ego, tore them away from it, raised them above egoism, and gave them the opportunity to continue the path of exaltation further and further, higher and higher.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 6/11/21

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When we first start studying Kabbalah we feel confident, masters of our lives who know what to do. But after studying for a while, we suddenly lose this confidence. And this is given to us on purpose, not as a direct consequence of studying Kabbalah, but as a result of a new, more serious attitude of the Creator toward us.

The Creator wants me to connect my whole life only with Him, that is, to go through life holding on to two forces. One force is the knowledge of this world, that is, the ability to organize your material life normally as it should be. But at the same time, I must go with the force of faith, which is spiritual.

All your attitude should be divided into two distinct parts: the attitude to spiritual life and to material life. With regard to material existence, I must try to be as calm as possible so as not to transfer the tension and dissatisfaction that I feel from my spiritual progress.

This is our work, and if a person knows how to put everything in its place correctly, he will very quickly advance in the spiritual. We need to understand that material life is given to us not only to provide for our daily bread, but as an integral addition to spiritual advancement. We are obliged to develop in the material plane as well as in the spiritual plane, and in the end try to connect the two worlds together.

You will see how well everything fits together. My teacher Rabash worked at a construction site as a reinforcement fitter, a concrete worker, then a shoemaker, and an office worker. He took any job he could get because it wasn’t easy to get a job in those days. A person must work, be married, support a family, and try to balance everything. It is with the right balance of all areas of life that a person can optimally advance.

But in any case, it will take years because being in from this lowest, worst world, we gradually build ourselves a ladder to reach the summit of all creation. And you have already climbed this ladder a little, but these steps are still unconscious, like a baby who lives, but does not understand his life, where he lives, what for, and why. To understand this, he still needs to keep growing. But one day we will definitely grow up to it.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/15/21, “Advance By Overcoming”

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What are the main reasons for increased divorce rates?“

The enveloping reason for increased divorce rates is due to natural human evolution. Our times are characterized by exiting the animal level of development and rising to the human level. In other words, nature is urging us to connect as a single global interdependent framework of humanity.

Since there is a growing need to connect as a single global system, we find our personal connections breaking more and more. Nature wants us to look beyond the family framework in order for us to later return to it on a different level, i.e. where we feel humanity as a single family.

In our individual lives, we experience a feeling of being in love, where we are overtaken by powerful emotions, excitement, inspiration, and a seeming perfection that was worth striving for in order to be together and upon which we could build a family. However, over time, we lost this feeling. Why, then, do we naturally fall in love if later that feeling dissipates?

What we need to understand is that we are in a system that nature runs. In this system, nature wants us to discover true eternal love, i.e. as love exists in nature itself. In the process, it wants us to detach from the conceptions and feelings of being in love that we experience temporarily in our current reality. We thus need to change our instinctive attraction to the other sex, which is fueled by natural passion and hormones, to a more goal-oriented connection.

We form the connections we currently know because we live for our children or our shared household. Moreover, being together is convenient because it lets us support each other as we grow older. Today, however, we need to find a new deeper kind of connection. We thus see more and more cases of divorce because we are in this transitional era where we already start feeling an increasing lack in the traditional frameworks that once held us together, that there is an additional and more sublime drive that we need in order to sustain and grow a happy family in our times.

If we can tap into this drive, which we have yet to accurately identify, we can set ourselves off on a path to discover a completely new feeling that emerges in a more goal-oriented connection to each other. We can then springboard from our increasing distaste toward our current frameworks to seek connections on a whole other level: a much stronger and warmer family-like connection among all humanity. If we enter such a sensation, then we discover a fulfillment that we have never felt before. It is as if we float freely, becoming very light and feeling an eternal thrush of life permeate us.

While we have the opportunity and the ability to determine these new goal-oriented connections through connection-enriching education, we see how these explanations go largely unnoticed. Nature thus prods us from behind by means of pain and suffering, and we find all kinds of connections that we once held shattering, with divorce being a key indicator of our broken connections in relation to the family. The purpose of this increasing feeling of detachment we feel, including the increasing divorce rates, is in order for us to get sick of our separation and develop a sincere new desire to connect on a whole other level. Eventually, we will make motions to connect in this new way, since we will find that otherwise we will be cornered. When we start connecting as nature requires us to, we will then discover the beauty in such connection.

Therefore, together with the increasing irreconcilable hatred and disagreements that break up more and more families, there surfaces a new sincere need for love. If we all understand the sublime fulfillment that true love brings, then we will want to have these feelings in our families. We will then return to the family after we learn how to love the entirety of humanity, and we will then wish to share a deeper and more uniquely personal and internal version of this connection with a spouse.

Based on New Life episode 19 on February 2, 2012 with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman, Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum Moshe.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.

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