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Comment: You once said that from a spiritual point of view, food is the light of Hochma, and intention is the light of Hassadim. When a person chews food, he seems to divide all desires into different particles.

Answer: He adds an intention to the desires.

The upper light, which is the light of Hochma, the light of pleasure and fulfillment, comes to a person only when he is prepared to receive it in accordance with the quality of the light.

The light carries the property of bestowal, love, and connection, an anti-egoistic beginning. If a person can react to his anti-egoistic desire in the same way, then this opens the way to the upper light, which can fill him, bring the feeling of the Creator, the higher nature, and expand the boundaries of our world. A person begins to feel that he is already appearing in the upper world.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 7/9/21

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Question: Why is it not simply written in the Torah, in the story of Adam and Eve, that the Creator is behind everything? Then we would immediately know that He is first in the form of the speaker: “But of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat of it for on the day that you eat thereof, you shall surely die,” and then in the form of a serpent: “You will surely not die,” then again in the form of God: “What is this that you have done?” Why isn’t it written like this?

Answer: So that you yourself, as a result of your thousand-year development, gradually begin to understand what it is. And understand not from the stories, but from the fact that you will have to change.

If it were only written in a book, you would just read: “Yes, this is what happens in nature.” It would not have done you any good. And when you yourself have to suffer and reveal everything in yourself, when this revelation comes from within you and not because you heard it from someone, then this knowledge is yours.

You yourself must reveal this story only within yourself! And not listen to it from the outside.

It is so arranged that even if it were read to you, you would not hear it. Only to the extent that you begin to change internally, to reveal the original serpent in yourself, its contradiction with the purpose of creation, with the Creator, to slowly grasp various properties in you: the property of the Creator and the property of creation, and the snake and man, and Adam and Eve, when you begin to find all these definitions in yourself, then this story will take shape in you, and not before.

Everything must be born from within.
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From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #16

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Baal HaSulam, “The Prophecy“: Take this sword in your hand and guard it with your heart and soul, for it is a token between Me and you, that all those good things will happen through you…

The Creator, in a way, gives Baal HaSulam a higher power as a pledge: “As long as you keep the sword (that is, that which can be damaged with a sword, you will correct with the help of the same power), know that I am with you, in your soul, and my strength is with you.”

The sword is the power that cuts, chops. It can chop off heads, cut off unnecessary parts from you, and leave only healthy ones. Spiritual healing boils down to several processes.

The same is true in our world: medicinal treatment and surgical treatment.

In both treatments, there are two effects on humans. Either the unnecessary, harmful part is cut out or is destroyed chemically with the help of drugs. Or vice versa, either some part is sewn, bypasses are made, shunts put in the human body, or the functioning of the body is restored with the help of drugs.

In principle, there is only one approach. Both are called treatment. One by destructing, the other by restoring. Both are necessary.

Therefore, it cannot be said that the sword does harm when it chops off heads. It has to chop them off because they are egoistic heads.

But when a period of war passes, a period of recovery is needed. That is, people need to be given a different methodology, a different paradigm of life, and they must recover.
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From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #5

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Comment: Irina wrote: “How can I explain to my husband that he has no right to leave me? We have three children. I forgive him everything, all his infidelities, his lack of love, and so on. I told him: ‘Do whatever you want, just don’t leave.’ He’s leaving. And I realize that I won’t be able to manage without him and neither will the children. What should I do? Tell me. Beg him to stay or let it be? I don’t know.”

My Response: My rule in life is that anything can happen, but if children are involved, then one is obliged to live with them and raise them. It cannot be any other way!

Comment: What should this woman do?

My Response: Well, what can you do? You understand, you can’t keep him by force. There are no such laws.

Question: What is it about us, that is just so…?

Answer: Dumb male egoism, which is spoiled by the mother’s attention. So nothing is good enough for him.

But women, too, are not brought up to make a place for a man that he wants to call his nest, his home, etc., so that he wouldn’t want to leave. Not even to go to work or anywhere away from his home. A place that would be calming and inviting. This should be taught, and it is not.

Building a family should be a subject taught in middle school—a separate, serious lesson, held a couple of times a week, when all of this is discussed from an early age by both boys and girls. It should be discussed seriously so they will gradually get used to such relationships that they will build between them in the future. This is very important! It doesn’t exist. This is real home management.

It is amazing how much we are advancing in some things, but in this, we have an absolute regression. And we can’t replace it with anything. It’s not like creating another machine or a new technology to replace another. This is simply irreplaceable!

Comment: Well, they say that a person has become freer, he has become…

My Response: One becomes freer! From the duties necessary in life. And in the end…

I think this pandemic and a few more such waves will come our way. It will force us to create a home, home sweet home, as they say, for each of us. It sounds like an outdated, repulsive word.

But we will be forced by this pandemic and by some other things because in the end, it will turn out that a person will have to stay at home more, and he or she will need to be looked after. A man according to his ways, and a woman according to hers. And the children as well. Nature will put us in our place, but it will take some time.

Comment: So we would tell this guy who is about to leave to think many times about the children he is leaving behind?

My Response: Certainly! If he has such a wife and children. There is no better woman than the one you live with and have lived with for a long time. You have children and you raised them together. This creates a bond, of course, that is clear.

Maybe you already have grandchildren too, or something. This is all set up by nature and there is no substitute for it.

Question: This has to enter the heart right?

Answer: Yes. Everything happens in life, even things that are too difficult and shameful to recall or mention. But there should be one taboo: the family should not be broken up. Even a bad family, no matter what it is, should not be broken!
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 6/24/21

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How does self-annulment practically take place so that we achieve the state of a spiritual embryo? Self-annulment is when I systematically, day after day, more and more, annul myself in relation to the upper force through the ten.

I try to follow all advice from Rabash regarding the work in the ten and hope that this will help me become passive toward the Creator. This means that no matter what state I am in and what I have, I want to annul myself in front of the Creator and be ready for any change.

I want only one thing: for the Creator to take care of me. I hand myself over to Him and wait for Him to start changing me and for the quality of annulment and devotion to the upper force to start growing in me.

Being inside the mother’s womb of the upper means that the upper can do whatever he wants with me from beginning to end, as it is said: “A King who puts to death and brings to life.” And I am ready for anything. This is called being a spiritual embryo, the biggest restriction of all that has ever existed.

This is the most important point that marks the entry into the spiritual world.  I completely annul myself, in spite of all the obstacles inside and around, and transfer myself to the upper above them. After all, the main thing for me is complete devotion to the upper.

The main thing is to reach such a stage of self-annulment in relation to the upper force. All the other degrees are only different forms of this self-annulment because each time I must annul my desire to receive relative to the desire to bestow of the Creator. And then the form of His bestowal will take over my desire to receive, that is, the Creator will place the form of bestowal inside the form of reception. All the degrees up to the very end of correction: embryo, nursing, and maturity are essentially the same embryo, the same point of self-annulment, only expanded more and more.

I keep reminding myself with the help of my environment and my studies that I am asking the force of bestowal to clothe me and take over me. And I remain passive and want the upper force to rule and annul my force of reception. I am waiting for the Creator to clothe on me and give me new desires and new qualities—qualities of bestowal. Sometimes I feel that I receive such qualities and sometimes I don’t. One day is different from the other, one desire comes, then another, because we are bound to go through all the states.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/4/21, “Ibur (Impregnation) and Yenika (Nursing)”

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My new article on Linkedin “Why Our Connection Can Stop the Fires”

When the world is consumed by fire, inundated in floods, and crippled by a global plague, only one remedy can really help: union. Only our solidarity, our sense of mutual responsibility, can lift us above the impairments that nature has imposed on us. We may think that we must tackle each crisis separately, but we are wrong. The crises are all linked at the root, so if we cure the common root, we will resolve the crises.

It may seem odd that nature is striking us with physical punishments and we are to respond to them with emotional remedies such as bonding and mutual responsibility. Where is the connection between floods and love, for example?

It has already been scientifically proven that nature’s systems are all connected. There are countless scientific disciplines and interdisciplinary studies that research the interconnections and interdependencies among the parts of our global ecosystem, which is planet Earth, and even our solar system, the Milky Way Galaxy where we are situated in space, and ultimately the entire universe. Everything is connected, and everything affects everything else.

When a malfunction manifests, such as this year’s summer, when climate has clearly gone awry, we must examine not only the regional weather where an extreme event has happened, but everything else related to it. Eventually, we see that even local events such as severe hail storms are connected to everything else that’s going on in the world.

To find the cause of problems, we must find which element or elements in the system are dysfunctional. If we find them and correct them, the whole system will regain its balance and the butterfly effect that leads to the creation of cataclysms will not happen.

When we look at all of nature, there is only one such element whose actions are becoming increasingly incongruent with everything else: man, or more specifically—human behavior.

Particularly in recent decades, we have allowed our egos to run amok and demand whatever they want. We have enshrined carefree, careless, and mainly thoughtless behavior and resolutely rejected the very thought of accountability. As a result, instead of being free, we have been enslaved by our egos, which have destroyed our planet, killed millions of people and extinguished entire species. Ironically, in the name of freedom, we have denied the freedom of countless others, while we, too, have not become free; we have become our ego’s servants and we have ruined our world.

Now that our ruined world can no longer support us, it is falling apart, collapsing. We, who have been cutting the branch we have been sitting on, are about to fall with it. There is only one way to save ourselves from annihilation: to rein in our excessive egoism. If we become considerate and mutually responsible for one another, we will restore the balance we have denied nature, and nature’s restored balance will calm the storms. We have pushed nature to the edge; we have unleashed the storms upon ourselves, and we can restore balance and calm the world. For this, we only need to stop thinking only of ourselves, and start taking everyone into consideration.
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why do we still believe more in nationalism than in humanity as a whole?“

The more developed we are, the broader we perceive our lives and human life in general. We become interested in an increasingly wider world. In ancient times, we were closed within our families, and afterward, in our villages, and then in our cities. Today, we are closed in our countries, but modern development and globalization show us that we are globally interconnected and interdependent.

This is why our ego today envelops the entire world. To the degree that we understand our global interdependence, we will accordingly feel the entire world as our home. There is no way out, and it appears as if we are obligated to take care of everyone. When we feel this small global village as our common home, we will then exit our national boundaries and enter into human boundaries, into a dimension that is common to everyone.

In the meantime, however, we find ourselves unable to get on with each other, and that we are closed within our ego, each one in our respective shells. This paradox, this collision, gives rise to a lot of tension and poses a threat to our existence. Accordingly, we will need to seek a solution so that the world will become less menacing. So let us have faith that we will soon ascend above our national boundaries and head into boundlessness.

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 “Behind Iran’s Power Play”

Since the rise of the Shi’ite regime in Iran, the country that used to be on good terms with Israel has been promoting an extremist ideology against the Jewish state. In recent months, the rhetoric has become so pugnacious that words have spilled into actions at sea, with attacks on merchant ships, and on land, through its proxies in Lebanon and Gaza. Now that Iran is “only around 10 weeks away from acquiring weapons-grade materials necessary for a nuclear weapon,” according to Israel’s Defense Minister Benny Gantz, we should ask ourselves where we are going with Iran and what we can do about it, if anything at all.

As I see it, the only country that is genuinely concerned about the prospect of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons is Israel. For the rest of the world, their worried statements are just that: statements. They have greater worries than Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. Its neighbors might also be somewhat concerned, but no one is really that worried about it besides Israel.

Therefore, I have no doubt that Iran is on its way to obtaining nuclear bombs and becoming a nuclear power. Their national pride requires that they do not stay behind the rest of the world; they are adamant about obtaining the bomb and they will get what they want, which is not the bomb itself but rather the world’s respect.

Yet, once Iran achieves respect, I don’t think that it will go beyond that. Their leaders’ threats may be militant, but I think that they are just that: threats, and nothing more.

We shouldn’t underestimate the astuteness of the Iranian people. They are a nation of merchants; they know what buttons to push and how tight they can pull the string without snapping it. I think that a direct confrontation is simply not their style; they’re smarter than that. They’re nature, as I said, is that of business people, and in business, power play is key, but you mustn’t go too far. Iran knows that if Israel is pushed against the wall, it’s got overt and covert ways to retaliate decisively and destructively, and Iran is smarter than to try Israel out.

Therefore, I think that our real problem is not with Iran. If we want a good future, we need to focus on ourselves, and not on what other countries are doing. If the people of Israel were united, they wouldn’t worry about other nations’ weapons.

Our unity is more powerful than anything. If we had it, it would neutralize not only other countries’ weapons, but their desire to fight against us. It would even turn their hatred toward us into love. It is just as the book Maor VaShemesh writes: “The prime defense against calamity is love and unity. When there are love, unity, and friendship between each other in Israel, no calamity can come over them. … [When] there is bonding among them, and no separation of hearts, they have peace and quiet, and no Satan or evildoer, as by this [unity], all the curses and suffering are removed.”

Our unity can do much more than protect us from harm; it can shift the world from the belligerent mindset it is in today, to a much quieter and friendlier approach. Our nation was created to be an example of unity; once we set it, the rest of the world will follow. This is why one of the most famous antisemites in American history, Henry Ford, wrote in his virulent composition, The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem, “Modern reformers, who are constructing model social systems on paper, would do well to look into the social system under which the early Jews were organized.”

The nations are looking to us for example, for leadership toward unity, while we are displaying the opposite. Nothing is more powerful than unity; it is the foundation of existence. Everything is connected and united; everything is harmonized and synchronized with everything else. When we operate like the rest of reality, we derive our strength from there, from the very root of everything. This is the vital force that everyone wants, including the Iranians. Rav Kook once wrote, “Since we were ruined by unfounded hatred, and the world was ruined with us, we will be rebuilt by unfounded love, and the world will be rebuilt with us.” Indeed, here, in mutual love, lies the key to our victory, and to the victory of all of humanity right along with us.
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