If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.
(Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

My Response: Yes. This is what we are creating. We are building a group that must cross this distance—a practically endless sea—although it is called Yam Suf, that is, final sea between us and the Creator. It is finite because it is beyond egoism.

The group itself is a ship. No ship is needed except for the group. The group is this ship on which its travelers sail to the cherished goal. The ship is simply their joint efforts to stay together, join hands, and make themselves a vessel or a ship in which they can together cross the egoistic sea.

Question: And there will be no leaking? There will be no holes in the ship?

Answer: They will have to patch them all up along the way.

Question: That is, they will appear one way or another?

Answer: Of course, necessarily so. This is the essence of crossing this final sea. That is, as more egoism becomes manifest between them, the greater the connection they must build between themselves.

Question: This is so In Kabbalah. But why doesn’t it happen in the world? Charismatic leaders come with exciting ideas, start gathering people around them as if building a vessel, and still everything goes down the drain.

Answer: Because in the end everything is about money.

Comment: You didn’t even say: everything is about the ego.

My Response: No, it is even worse. Much lower. Only money.

Question: You think that all these leaders who ignite sparks, all they see is money?

Answer: Of course! They cannot think any other way.

Comment: There is a well-known fact in history: revolutionaries come, there is a romantic period when people gather around them, the struggle for ideals begins, and then it all turns to bloodshed and death.

My Response: And then all this is quietly taken over by serious people, not romantics, to make good money and gain power from it.

Question: But how do romantics sell themselves? What is happening in them?

Answer: They have no brains. They run purely on passion.

Question: And is there such a spirit to make humanity happy? Do you understand such a spirit— bringing people happiness?

Answer: These are romantics. You will not bring people any happiness. Because people do not need your romantic happiness. The masses will happily follow not the romantic but the pragmatist.
[282210]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/8/21

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Question: If I do not cultivate an altruistic intention, if I do not unite within myself, do I enter a state of war? With whom should I unite: to unite my desires within myself or to unite with other people?

Answer: You must unite with the whole nation so that no other impulses arise in you, either on the level of the Greeks or even more so on the level of the Romans. Because “Greeks” and “Romans” are two egoistic qualities that clearly arise in a person.

Question: Why is it not enough just to fight and correct your inner desires? Why should I also connect with some other people I see around me?

Answer: The goal of the development of humanity is that everyone develops individually as high as possible relative to others, and at the same time that he connects from this individuality with the rest in the bonds of love, mutual assistance, and connection.

Question: If I am engaged in my own correction, is it not enough for me to just sit and correct my desires?

Answer: To correct how? What will your correction consist of? That you will be bound to others of your own kind above your own egoism, which alienates you from them.

Question: So if I don’t do it or don’t do it enough, then another mechanism is activated and the external desires of the “Greeks” and “Romans” are manifested and start the war?

Answer: Yes, to help you overcome your laziness and still join the fight.

Question: How does this mechanism work when an external force suddenly turns on and an external war begins?

Answer: Very simply. Imagine an air conditioner or an electric stove where you set a certain temperature level and the thermostat automatically turns on. In our case, this automaton is called the “central force of nature,” which develops us, and at each moment we must reach certain contacts with each other.

Humanity develops on inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels in such a way that it creates mutual contacts between themselves: industrial, commercial, and so on. This is the material development of our civilization.

But for the development of a sensorial, internal connection, in friendship up to love, as it is said: “love your neighbor as yourself,” here it is already necessary to have a clear participation of the people themselves in mutual assistance to each other, so that they can really rise from the level of mutual hatred to the level of love. It’s very difficult.

Then an additional mechanism of nature is activated here that shows people how much they immerse in suffering if they are not engaged in creating good connections.
[282958]
From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 5/14/21

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Question: A person constantly experiences some kind of influence from the inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human levels of nature. Is there a difference at what level the interference occurs?

Answer: For us, the most important thing is the human level because this is the environment in which we constantly communicate and find it difficult to properly interact with each other.

Of course, we also have problems with the surrounding nature—inanimate, plant and animal. But every person in their personal life has very little contact with this. We hear about the ecology, earthquakes, and other problems of nature, but in principle, this is not what worries us every day.

Question: So, the most important thing is the animal level, meaning our body, its health?

Answer: Naturally, we are concerned about our health. But we are also slowly coping with this, as much as possible. There is no special freedom of will, it all depends on the level of medicine of the society in which we live.

Our main problem basically comes down to how we interact with each other correctly in the family, at work, at home, on the street, on the road, anywhere. In other words, this is a public relations problem.

In addition, the problems of a person with himself are important: who controls his life, what he lives for, whether he is accountable to someone. They need to be solved.
[275325]
From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 2/4/19

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Question: When I interpret all wars as my inner desires, and supposedly kill them or take them prisoner, does it mean that I do not use these desires?

Answer: Not only that. It means to change, to perform restriction your desires.

Question: The Torah says: “They came and killed all seven nations.” Moreover, they killed all the men.

You say that the nations of the world are a person’s egoistic intentions and women are desires. That is, to kill all men means to kill an egoistic intention in oneself, and then only to use women (desires)?

Answer: “Women” symbolize desires without intention. Therefore, new intentions can be attached to them, altruistic ones, and then they can be used.

Question: But still, there is a clear correspondence that the spiritual root should manifest itself in our world, therefore, there was a seizure, people were killed, and this is somehow difficult to perceive. How can the Torah, which speaks of love, give such instructions?

Answer: The Torah speaks of love as the highest state of connection between people, which is carried out precisely on the coincidence of intentions. And if these intentions are opposite, then it is not about rapprochement, connection and love, but about hatred and war.

Question: Then what should be done in the outside world?

Answer: This is what happens in the outside world. The consequence of the internal dichotomy, separation from each other, opposition in our world, leads to wars and extermination.

Comment: It turns out that the people of Israel could not correct any desires in themselves, and therefore destroyed seven nations in the outer world.

It is clear that when you are attacked, you must be the first to kill the one who came to destroy you. But it is not clear how you can take, capture, or kill in our world.

My Response: This is a consequence of the spiritual roots manifesting in our world. The Torah speaks only of spiritual roots. And what happens in the material world comes from just such a confrontation.

You cannot use some current or past or future values, assessments, and criteria to say whether it is right or not. At one time, everyone acted like that and there was nothing special or shameful about it. On the contrary, people were proud.

Comment: That is, it is better to take it all on a spiritual level and use it in relation to a person’s desires. And the fact that this happened in history, so it was accepted. It is clear that there was no liberalism, democracy, and human rights anywhere.

My Response: This is all the philosophy of our time. I understand that it is a stumbling block for many liberals and modern people. But they do not understand what modernity means, that in the past everything was completely different.

There were other people, different views, everything was treated differently. If today we saw a person not even of the 17th or 18th, but the 19th century, we would be amazed at his actions, his behavior. It would seem very strange to us, and we would not be able to perceive it.
[282869]
From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 5/14/21

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World Kabbalah Convention, Preparation to the Lesson 5

World Kabbalah Convention, “Devotion,” Lesson 5

World Kabbalah Convention, Preparation to the Lesson 6

World Kabbalah Convention, “Connecting Into a Single Ten,” Lesson 6

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Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download:MP3 Audio

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World Kabbalah Convention, Preparation to the Lesson 3

World Kabbalah Convention, “Growing Stronger in There Is None Else Besides Him,” Lesson 3

World Kabbalah Convention, Preparation to the Lesson 4

World Kabbalah Convention, “Everything Is Achieved Through the Power of Prayer,” Lesson 4

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In the Port of #Oakland, USA, under pressure from Pro-Palestinian activists, the Israeli cargo ship #Volans was not allowed to unload.
Don’t be surprised—after you voted for #Biden! Everything is still ahead!
From Twitter, 6/5/21

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Question: Where did the custom of dressing up in carnival costumes for Purim come from?

Answer: In this world we do not see the truth because everything here is deliberately camouflaged. We do not know where the truth is, where the lie is, or what is happening to us at all. The whole world is a theater. Man always puts on some kind of a mask.

Purim is distinct because when we put on masks, we pretend to be someone else because all of creation is concealed under a mask. We do not see the Creator or each other, we do not understand what is what. And then, everything is revealed.

From concealment we come to revelation.

Question: Is this like a mask on the will to receive? Otherwise, if we were to contact each other purely egoistically, it would be difficult, right?

Answer: That would be impossible. It is precisely because we play in masks and the entire world is wearing masks (that is why the world is called Olam, from the word “Alama,” concealment) that we are getting closer to the revelation, to Purim.
[282994]
From KabTV’s “Spiritual States”

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Question: There are five ways to survive difficult times when you feel so bad that you do not know what to do.

The first way is to train yourself to be happy. They say it is a habit to be happy. What do you think?

Answer: I think this is absolutely correct.

Question: Can you train yourself to be happy despite the fact that you receive blows from all directions?

Answer: So what? There are some circumstances, some forces that give you blows. Sing. Just sing! This is the most important thing for a person. Because he does not really know what is good and what is bad, how to treat life correctly, how to change his life, and whether what comes is for his benefit or for harm.

Therefore, he must accept all this as good and treat everything that happens as a necessary good. Then how can he relate to it? Sing!

As in the song: “Wake up and sing! Wake up and sing! Try it for once in your life…”

Comment: The second way is to understand that the bad is just as valuable as the good?

My Response: Absolutely! Nothing is either good or bad, but only relative to the person. If a person slightly changes his inner calibration, he will see the good instead of all the bad. And perhaps, the other way around.

Comment: That is, they say that there is value in the bad. It turns out that the bad is my achievement.

My Response: Of course. There cannot be any good without bad, or bad without good. We must teach ourselves to treat everything correctly. It is because beyond our comprehension and classification of bad and good, we must accept that the entire world is just absolute good!

Question: What do I achieve when something bad comes and I feel it like a bad thing?

Answer: Through that you achieve an objective view of the world. You rise above your egoistic evaluation, and therefore you think that everything is good and there is nothing in the world but only the force of good, the absolute good!

To look at the world in this way is truly a happiness and a great opportunity.

Question: Is this possible?

Answer: This is possible!

Comment: The third: it is better to give up than to bang your head against the wall.

There are some circumstances that you cannot do anything about. Nothing! But you fight all the time, you still fight and try to prove your point, to turn something around. These are ways to get through difficult times, that is, I want to get through this difficult time.

My Response: Best of all is, as Rabbi Akiva said, to lower your head under each approaching wave, and thus you will be washed ashore.

I do not call this “to give up.” I call this “to be reasonable about what is happening.”

Comment: Fourth: shift your focus from yourself to others.

My response: It is not a bad thing to pay attention to others and see that their condition, in general, is no better than mine. Why do I pay attention only to myself? Why do I criticize the attitude of nature or society toward me? What happens to the others?

If I look at society, I already perceive myself in a completely different way. That is, the suffering of society reduces my own suffering. Pay attention to what is happening to society, and then you will be able to evaluate your condition more objectively.

Question: Can I, when I feel bad and am in a difficult situation, come to have compassion for the other?

Answer: You are more capable of it. Because then you begin to understand what others have and to sympathize and come closer to them.

Question: Is this called that I exit myself a little?

Answer: Yes. But this is not to escape from your own suffering. This is in order to adjust yourself more objectively to what is happening in the world.

Question: Is the attitude to others objective?

Answer: Of course. You can already look at them in a different way.

Comment: Fifth: to love, not to fear. That is what they say. In the end, all emotions are reduced to two main ones: love and fear. Moreover, love and fear cannot exist in the soul at the same time. If you choose to love, you expel fear out of your soul.

My response: Absolutely. Love supersedes everything. Therefore, it is important to try to replace all our other feelings with it.

Question: That is, I can really be afraid, be in fear, and I can exit it into the state of love, right?

Answer: Yes. And you will not experience any negative feelings at all.

Comment: It looks like this is the main advice, actually.

My response: Yes.

Question: Is this also possible? Is it within the power of a person?

Answer: Absolutely! So we figured out how to live correctly.
[282843]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/12/21

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