Audio Version Of The Blog – 12/11/21

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Audio Version Of The Blog – 12/12/21

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“An Inside Warning About American Jewry’s Future”

Dr. Michael LaitmanFrom My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 12/12/21

America is deeply divided, split in half between the political left and right. It is particularly alarming when such polarization blinds American Jews to antisemitism and makes them oblivious to it if the hatred is coming from a political sphere that they concur with. That is exactly what is happening now and which may bring dangerous consequences in the future.

In a rare speech, Michael Bloomberg, the Jewish-American billionaire and former New York Mayor, recently called on U.S. Jews to refrain from partisanship and open their eyes to “antisemitic violence that is deeply unsettling,” and coming from all sides. The hatred is manifested as physical violence against Jews, damage to synagogues and subversive conspiracies on social media.

“When faced with these kinds of attacks, we like to imagine that our community will naturally put aside its differences and stand together in solidarity,” Bloomberg said. “Yet history records that the opposite is often the case. The Talmud teaches that the Second Temple was destroyed in part because of baseless hatred — one Jew against another.”

Does Bloomberg’s statement indicate that American Jews are beginning to understand what their role is and how they should act? I hope so. However, this is not the correct way we should come to the realization of our role in the world as Jews. Not being aware of it just prolongs the agonizing pressure of hatred towards the Jewish people.

But despite the great difficulty facing American Jews, they still dream of a promising future. If they do behave in any fraternity between them, it will only be like brothers in time of need, to preserve themselves and be saved from antisemitic pressure, not out of a tendency to fundamentally investigate their origins, role, and destiny. Jews have no sense of closeness to their roots. If not for the hatred towards them from all strata of American society, which points to them negatively as Jews, they would have long ago been totally divided.

Due to the reluctance of the Jews to know who they are and what they are and due to their evasion of Judaism and their role, the antisemitic pressure continues to increase and may easily reach a similar situation to that of Nazi Germany. There, too, it all began with petty and marginal things, until it deteriorated to the point where Jews were excluded from state law, and from outside societal laws in general. If this happened in Nazi Germany which was more developed and the Jews were an integral part of it, there is no reason why it should not happen in America.

History has repeatedly tried to teach us, Jews, that we will be really valued and appreciated not for leadership among other peoples, not for financial success and prosperous business. Rather, we need to get to a point where we know exactly what to engage in, what our mission is. Know it and implement it.

Our mission is related to the free hatred that was revealed between us in the Second Temple, but the mission did not end there. Quarrels and conflicts are the basis on which we must transcend, lovingly cover all crimes and thereby set an example to the whole world that is in constant war and needs a similar method of connection. This has always been our destiny. No other people can fulfill our role, and as long as we do not perform it, the world suffers and consequently hates us.

There is no expectation here from Bloomberg and American Jewry to become unconditionally pro-Israel and develop sympathy and closeness to Israel, but the aspiration is to be pro-Jewish. For now, the State of Israel is neither an example nor a “light unto nations”, nor does it have a tendency to approach our identity and our destiny. There is nothing in today’s Israeli society that can be boasted of, spread and shown as an example of unity and cordial connection.

Every Jew, in Israel and abroad – and in general anyone who can connect to the Jewish idea – should strive to direct himself to the values of the people of Israel, to the foundations of Judaism which are connection over separation, love over hatred, “and love your neighbor as yourself”—this is the whole Torah.
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Blessing

239The upper light that comes to a person in response to his efforts, which connects him and makes him suitable for spiritual action, is called a blessing. Therefore before each action, we need to come to a blessing.

Blessing means that I have reached restriction, screen, and reflected light, and therefore I can already receive direct light and work with it to the measure of my blessing. The force of bestowal I acquired within my will to receive is called a blessing.

Therefore before each action it is first of all necessary to reach a blessing: to bless the Creator for giving me the opportunity to perform an action with the intention to bestow.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/9/21, Baal HaSulam. Shamati, 121. She Is Like Merchant-Ships

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“Pearl Harbor – The Painful Blow That Saved The Free World” (Linkedin)

My new article on Linkedin “Pearl Harbor – The Painful Blow that Saved the Free World

Eighty years ago this week, and two years into World War II, the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service launched a surprise attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu. More than 2,400 American soldiers and civilians lost their lives in the attack, and nearly 1,200 were wounded. Twelve battleships were damaged or altogether submerged, and 188 airplanes were downed. The painful blow forced America to abandon its apparent neutral stance and declare war on Japan. Three days later, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy declared war on America, dragging it into the war in Europe. Were it not for this painful blow, it is more than likely that the world would have been very different from what it is today, and not for the better.

Even before America joined the war, it was providing substantial assistance to the allies. Under the Lend-Lease Act that President Roosevelt enacted in March 1941, the US provided the United Kingdom, Free France, China, and later the Soviet Union and other allied nations with food, oil, and other necessary materials between 1941 and 1945. The aid also included warships and warplanes, along with other weaponry. Despite the aid, the Allies were losing the war. Were it not for America’s intervention, who knows if the Allies would have won.

We cannot overstate the contribution of the US to the liberation of Europe from Nazi occupation. By December 1941, when the Pearl Harbor attack took place, there were no armies fighting against the Nazis and their allies, except for the UK and the Soviet Union. The US not only fought against the Axis countries, but also sustained the populations of the few free countries in Europe and stocked their armies with arms, ammunition, and gas.

Japan, the aggressor in the Pearl Harbor cataclysm, went the opposite way from the United States. Until World War II, Japan was a powerful imperialist country. It is said that Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who conceived the attack, warned in advance that if the strike did not disable American military might, it would only awaken the sleeping giant and Japan would find itself on the losing end.

Some sources claim that following the raid, Yamamoto said, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” Whether he actually said these exact words or not, they do reflect his thoughts following the attack, as Hiroyuki Agawa’s book The Reluctant Admiral describes. As it turned out, Yamamoto was right.

However, Japan did not let the defeat go without far reaching and constructive conclusions. Following this horrible defeat, which ended with the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japanese cities, Japan resolved to cease being a belligerent military power and turn its energy toward economic growth.

The trauma of the defeat in World War II sank so deep in Japan’s collective psyche that to this day, the country maintains its non-combatant policy. The bonus for its effort is the emergence of an economic superpower that is a world leader in industry and technology, whose people enjoy a standard of living that most countries can only dream of.

A Pearl Harbor incident cannot happen today. The world has changed too much for it to repeat itself. What has not changed, however, is the willingness of countries to destroy one another.

If there is a lesson to learn from Pearl Harbor, and from World War II in general, it is that war does not pay. Every aggressor in that war suffered a defeat, and every country that fought to free the world gained power and prestige.

Japan, Germany, Austria, and Italy all transformed themselves into thriving democracies. In today’s increasing international tensions, we should remember the lesson that the Axis countries learned following their defeat, and how they gained by carrying out what they had learned.
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“Unleash The Granny Power” (Linkedin)

My new article on Linkedin “Unleash the Granny Power

A story by Rachel Nuwer published on BBC Future describes a unique, successful, and inexpensive way to tackle depression in Zimbabwe. With only twelve psychiatrists for a population of sixteen million, even the few who can afford treatment are rarely able to find a therapist within a reasonable distance.

Therefore, instead of professionals, psychiatrist Dixon Chibanda, director of the African Mental Health Research Initiative, came up with a revolutionary idea that became known as the “Friendship Bench.” Instead of looking in vain for professional help, Chibanda mused, Zimbabweans would consult with people who have warm hearts, lots of free time, a passion for heart-to-heart talks and the ability to give good advice. These people would receive some training and, thanks to their warmth and patience, Chibanda hoped, would be able to help people in distress.

Brainstorming where to find such people, Chibanda arrived at an unlikely solution: grandmothers. Chibanda and his team trained more than 400 grandmothers in talk therapy, which they now offer for free in more than 70 communities in Zimbabwe.

The idea proved to be a resounding success. “In 2017 alone,” Nuwer reports, “Friendship Bench, as the programme is called, helped over 30,000 people. The method has been empirically vetted and have [sic] been expanded to countries beyond, including the US.”

In 2016, Chibanda, in collaboration with colleagues from Zimbabwe and the United Kingdom, published the results of a randomized control trial of the program’s effectiveness in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The researchers found that after six months, the group that had seen the grandmothers had significantly fewer symptoms of depression than the group that underwent conventional treatment.

Clearly, love can go a long way in helping people. Empathy, this is all we need. More than any medicine, it heals us from within. Connecting hearts connects us to the power that sustains our world, the creative force of love. Without this power of connection, no two elements in reality would be able to connect, and life would have been impossible.

When we connect in love, we create similarity between us and the force that creates and sustains life. Just as a string on a guitar vibrates when its note is played on another string when the frequency is similar, when we create a similar feeling to the feeling that creates life—the feeling of empathy and love—we “switch on” this feeling within us.

We experience this feeling as if it came from the person next to us, but it did not. In fact, it came because the warm connection between the two of you enabled you to feel the warmth that exists around you. As long as you have not made that connection, it is as if you do not have a sensor to perceive it. But once you establish it with another person, you can feel it.

This is why loving others is so important. It is not only important to others, but even more important to the loving person. People with love in their heart are connected to the power of love and creation that exists in all of reality. No feeling is more empowering. A person who is connected to it will never feel depressed, lost, or hopeless.

“How Can I As An Individual Save Our Environment?” (Quora)

Dr. Michael LaitmanMichael Laitman, On Quora: How can I as an individual save our environment?

If we want to save our environment, then we need to change only one thing: our attitudes to each other.

Our development has reached a state where forces of separation are expanding throughout humanity. Likewise, we are coming closer to a state where we will feel that all we lack is a positive attitude to one another.

All kinds of efforts outside of changing our attitudes to each other will do nothing to save the environment. Such efforts stem from lacking a comprehensive understanding and perception of reality, and seeing the true interrelations between us and nature.

Being the most developed of nature’s levels—still, vegetative, animate and human—nature’s balance depends solely on us humans reaching a positive attitude and connection among each other. This is because every qualitatively higher level of nature has much greater power than its preceding level, and humans occupy the highest level in nature. Therefore, positively affecting the environment, the climate and nature in general can be achieved by reaching positive relations among each other on the human level. On the contrary, by letting our divisive drives tear apart human relations, we also destroy nature.

Therefore, the more we humans will be able to correct ourselves—changing our divisive attitudes to each other to positive ones of mutual support, encouragement, responsibility and concern—the more we will receive positive feedback from nature. And the more we develop without undergoing such a correction, the more we will receive negative feedback from nature, with natural disasters and pandemics among them.

It is thus very important for us to organize our thoughts, desires and qualities so that we understand that a shift to a better future, including what we perceive as saving our environment, depends solely on changing our attitudes to each other: from egoistic to altruistic.

Based on the video “The Need for an Attitude Shift” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

Do You Need To Limit Your Immediate Needs?

506.5Question: Are there any desires that do not need to have limits placed upon them?

Answer: I would say no. But in order to bring spiritual states closer to us, we can say that I can use everything that I need for bodily existence without even thinking that I am using it egotistically because my nature compels me to do this.

Question: Is there a connection between spiritual curtailment and fasting in our world?

Answer: In principle, when a person begins to reduce his egoistic desires, thoughts come to him that it may be less worthwhile to use all kinds of fillings of our world. Perhaps then he will be closer to the spiritual state? These are natural questions for beginners.

Question: In many spiritual practices and religions there are customs of fasting, meaning not eating food and even not drinking water for some time. Does it have something to do with the roots of the contraction?

Answer: Yes, it is connected, but this is not a direct consequence. I would say that these are customs.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 11/16/21

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On The Threshold Of A New Stage

115.06Question: If everything is predetermined in terms of pleasure and suffering and if we understand where man is going and how he will behave, then why did nature do it this way? Where does it want to lead us?

Answer: Nature developed from the primordial element, a desire in its purest form, which evolved through inanimate, vegetative, and animate forms until it reached the form of “man.” Likewise, a person in our world, through his development, comes to his next form.

Each phase that we go through—inanimate, vegetative, and animate—develops itself. At each stage, according to the law of negation of negation, a person starts to feel that he can no longer remain in this state, he must radically change it, rise from it, and feel it is no longer acceptable for him.

And then the previous state degenerates and the next step manifests itself. So from the inanimate, the vegetative part of desire with corresponding vegetative nature evolves, then the animate, and then man appears.

We are now at a very interesting stage. We worked out our previous stage of development, came to its denial, the rejection of it, we see that our world and our lives are finite, flawed, and temporary, and we do not know what to do next.

We do not see the next stage yet, but the current stage is practically unbearable. We can no longer stay in it because it leads to self-destruction, terror, disintegration of families, disintegration of culture, and the end of science.

That is, we have reached the final stage in everything, but we do not see the next one yet. It should begin to reveal itself. Therefore, the science of Kabbalah is now being revealed as a means of transition to a new state.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Fire Island” 1/1/10

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Become Similar To The Higher Nature

550Question: Is the restriction a one-time action or should it be done every time?

Answer: It should be done constantly, Each time is different, depending on the circumstances. Some pleasures come to the Kabbalist, and he constantly calculates whether he can use them or not since he is, at the same time, a conductor of light into our world.

Question: What is it that comes to a Kabbalist?

Answer: Let’s say you get a million dollars every day.

Comment: But this is unrealistic. If I did receive a million dollars daily, I would, of course, do the calculations.

My Response: You could if you are able not to receive it.

Question: Is a Kabbalist constantly being given such proposals from above? It turns out to be an interesting life!

Answer: What do you mean “interesting”? It turns out that his life is in constant tension, and he must behave correctly.

At the level at which you are, begin to create the conditions that enable you to fulfill your wish to correct the world. And then you will see how ever greater powers and knowledge will come to you. And then, maybe, millions of dollars as well. It all depends on how much you are able to implement them correctly.

Question: Here, of course, you need to understand the most important thing, the goal: For the sake of what am I implementing it?

Answer: It should be only for the sake of the upper force of bestowal and love in the whole world, in all of nature.

Question: How is this different from a simple calculation? I was created by nature in such a way that I have an automatic program that makes decisions, and I am in agreement with it. And here, as you say, you have to think, make some effort. For what?

Answer: If you wish by your volitional effort to become similar to the higher nature, the Creator, then you must look for how to become similar to it. And to be like this force means to do good.

Question: Yes, but in a person there must be some kind of inclination for this. Why should I become like this power? Especially if you say that this is the force of love and bestowal, and nothing will come of it for me.

Answer: You will get nothing from this and you won’t get anything for it.

Question: Then why?

Answer: To be like the Creator. Otherwise, you want to work for a fee. It won’t work.

Nature has laid forces, desires, in us and they will lead us to this. But with our thoughts, thinking about it, we can hasten this metamorphosis. And although it seems unrealistic, there is no choice. Everyone will come to this.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 11/16/21

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