Question: The more we create an empty space between us, the more the Creator is ready to fill it. Is what attracts Him the joy of our desire. Does he want to help us rise up the degrees? Is this how we become His partners?

Answer: Yes, but we must also add that it is not we who create the empty space between us, He does, and He fills it.

The Creator does everything that is necessary for us to realize the nature of this space and to understand what to do based on the feeling of emptiness. Thus, He pushes us to realize the distance between us, to what we need to correct.

Question: The Creator has two favorite games: hide and seek and playing catch. How can all this be used for the benefit of the group?

Answer: So play these games. You are right, the Creator either approaches or moves away. And you act accordingly. Learn from Him how He works, and thus act for yourself.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/9/22, “Asking the Creator to Fill the Place Between Us” Lesson 7

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Question: What is “friend,” (“Haver” – in Hebrew)? This word has a great semantic weight.

Answer: “Haver,” from the word “Chibur,” means connection. With whom I am united with toward the goal of creation, he is called “Haver,” friend.

Question: How can we learn to distinguish the good qualities of friends who are for the good of the Creator from those who are not for His good?

Answer: All the properties you can cling to your friends with are all for the good of the Creator and all these are spiritual properties. All the rest are not.

Question: Rabash’s article “Concerning Above Reason” says: “…while he sees the merits of the friends. At that time, it is relevant to say that he should learn from their actions.” What does “their actions” mean?

Answer: A person wants to learn actions from his friends and considers their actions to be spiritual. If he evaluates them in this way and tries to become like them, then he really corrects himself and becomes spiritual himself.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/7/22, “Adhering to the Friends” Lesson 3

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Question: Does being in the morning lesson mean coming to the house of the Creator?

Answer: No. It is just being in some kind of mechanical connection.

The house of the Creator is the Kli (vessel) that is assembled from various egoistic parts that want to be connected together so that the Creator reveals Himself in them. Then this Kli can be called the house of the Creator.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/8/22, “Going with Faith above Reason” Lesson 5

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When I thought I had already reached the bottom, they knocked from there (Stanislaw Jerzy Lec). 

Question: What is being said here?

Answer: A person thinks, “That’s it! What could be worse?” But in fact there is an even lower floor, and keep in mind that you have your place reserved for you there. If you continue to behave as you are now, and reach the bottom, you will find that it is not the bottom. There is one lower and one even lower than that, and indeed, there is really no limit to this.

Question: What thought do I need to be attached to in order to not reach the bottom?

Answer: Do not even try to get close to it; in no case do not agree with the bottom. You really need to somehow cling with your teeth to the place where you are and try to climb up.

Question: All the time, from the bottom up?

Answer: From the bottom up.

Question: Should I know what the bottom is?

Answer: Actually, this is an abyss; there is really no bottom. There are seven levels of hell and more. It is all so much more.

Question: What does hell mean? Is this the real bottom?

Answer: It is a burning awareness of one’s own egoism, meanness, laziness, and so on. This is the bottom.

Question: If such a terrible bottom has been revealed, such a hell, as you say, what should a person do?

Answer: He has a very good way out. He feels that it is in this state that he can cling to the Creator, otherwise not.

Question: One way or another, do you need to feel the bottom in order to cling to the Creator?

Answer: Moreover, it is such a true, true bottom when there is nothing else, only this depth, only this abyss, and from it there is only one way out: to the Creator. It is very good. This is how everything is arranged; indeed, it is arranged with amazing love.

Question: So I reach hell in practice—this burning internal combustion—and all this is from some higher love?!

Answer: Yes. And in this you begin to feel the true love of the Creator toward yourself. And you feel how your own contempt, powerlessness, cowardice, and so on burns you.

Question: Does everyone have to reach this point?

Answer: Each in his own measure. But this is not something supernatural. This is all the awareness of one’s own nature.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 12/30/21

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Preparation to the Lesson

Writings of Baal HaSulam “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 70

Selected Highlights

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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “The Connection between Society, Politics, and Greenhouse Gas Emissions”

An essay published by the University of California, Davis, describes the connection between greenhouse gas emissions, social relations, and politics. The essay argues that it is not levels of air pollution that dictate gas emissions policies, but rather politics and social relations are the key factors. Since current models take the scientific data into account and ignore the human element that impacts gas emissions, they always get it wrong. In my opinion, the human element is not only crucial, it is the only element that causes environmental damages, since humans are the only element in creation that discharges hate into our world.

Our world is built layer upon layer. At the basis of the pyramid there is the mineral, or inanimate layer. The flora, or vegetative layer, lies on top of it, and the fauna, or animate layer, lies on top of the flora. The human level sits at the top of the pyramid, like the head in a body. For this reason, humanity determines the health and strength of all the layers underneath it.

Among all the layers, there is a carefully kept balance that maintains the thriving of all of nature’s levels. The only exception is the human layer. Humans are filled with hate for one another and seek not only to dominate one another, but to humiliate one another. To achieve their goal, they are willing to use and abuse anyone and anything. In doing so, they throw the entire planetary system off balance.

Humans are worse than anything. They are worse than methane gas, than burning fossil fuels, soiling the sea, polluting the soil, and contaminating the air. Even if we did not limit the use of all the chemicals and CO2 emissions that we pour into the planetary ecosystem, we would still not cause as much damage as we cause by simply spewing hate into the system.

Here is a study that demonstrates it: In 2015, Science magazine published a report about life in the exclusion zone around the defunct nuclear reactor near Chernobyl, which exploded in 1986. After the explosion, the human residents were hurriedly evacuated and an area of 4,200 square kilometers became humans-free. Wild animals became the landlords of the area, and scientists expected that they would either not last, or that they would suffer severe deformation due to the high level of radioactive radiation that remained throughout the area, and still does to this day. Nevertheless, the scientists, who conducted the study from 2008-2010, reported “no evidence of a negative influence of radiation on mammal abundance.”

Moreover, Jim Smith, co-author of the study, said that “When humans are removed, nature flourishes, even in the aftermath of the world’s worst nuclear accident.” Smith also added, “We’re not saying radiation is good for animals, but we’re saying human habitation is worse.”

Therefore, if we want to restore Earth’s balance, clear the air, clean the soil, and detoxicate the water, we needn’t worry about the gases we emit, but about the feelings we emit. These are the real pollutants, and these are the ones we need to clean.

Cleaning up our hearts so they do not emit hate is not easy. It is a serious educational process that we must undertake collectively, understanding that it is our only option if we wish to avoid a global cataclysm.

It is not as if there is no time. The deteriorating climate and the growing pollution are gradual processes. Yet, education, including self-education, is also a gradual process. Therefore, we must be both patient and determined to begin as soon as possible, and not stop until we fundamentally transform how we relate to one another, because only if we uproot the hatred that produces every plight and crisis in our world will we have a future on this planet.
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “In 1-2 sentences, what is Kabbalah?“

Kabbalah is a methodology for the expansion of human awareness through the connection of desires. In such expanded awareness, we start perceiving the force that created and sustains our reality, which lets us know more about the world we live in, its cause and effect relationships, and which makes us kinder, more approachable and more contributive members of society.

Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: When a situation occurs, I know that the Creator sends it for my good. I consciously react for the benefit of my friends, but there is a part of me that is hurt by this. Am I doing the right thing?

Answer: You must understand that it will always give you pain in order to make it clear where you still are. The spiritual Partzuf constantly is in contradictory properties.

There is an egoistic desire in Malchut. Due to the impact on Malchut of the upper light from the first nine Sefirot, it can divide itself into the part with which it relates to the first nine Sefirot (the properties of bestowal) and into the part that it cannot attribute to these properties. Thus, it is divided into two parts.

The part that relates itself to the properties of bestowal is the corrected part in Malchut. And the part that is under the restriction (Tzimtzum), we have no right to use. Although we would like to do this, we refuse because the use would be for its own sake. This is how we operate.

This contradiction always exists in man. It is this that gives him the opportunity to measure and understand where he is, at what stage, in what state. We cannot have the experience of only light or only darkness. This is the way out of all sensations. Either full light or full darkness is the same thing. A vessel (Kli) is a desire that can graduate, measure, and weigh itself.

So don’t worry, go ahead. We do not need to think at all about the states we are in. The main thing for us is to quickly realize all these states, process them in ourselves, and move on from one to another. That’s all. The main thing is acceleration.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/6/22, “Approaching the Creator Through the Network of Connections Between Us” Lesson 1

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Question: People of the world of the twentieth century, the world of the past, lived based on the idea that every person can find some rational occupation and that every country needs to be developed and to produce something useful.

Then in various countries—in Syria, Libya, Iraq, and Venezuela—young majors and colonels, presidents, and fathers of the nation came to power. They built factories and roads, trained people to become engineers and doctors, created tank brigades, and tried to reach the American and German standard, and even the Soviet standard.

What happened? How did it suddenly turn out that entertaining is more profitable than producing something, that speculating in numbers is more profitable than trading goods, and that managing chaos is more profitable than managing teams? The old world went into a decline, and the leaders stopped being fathers.

How did this happen to us?

Answer: People have discovered that they do not need it all, not progress or anything else. All people need are bread and circuses.

Question: Are we so primitive?

Answer: This is our nature! This is not what is called primitivism. Primitivism is a high art.

Comment: But we are the supreme creation of nature, as they said in our youth.

My Response: In your youth you were taught that you are the supreme creation of nature. But in fact they just did not want to tell you. If you, as a prudent and wise person, want to live your life rationally, then choose a quiet job, a quiet environment, and a favorite hobby.

Comment: So at first humanity wanted something and the leaders wanted to be the fathers of the nation, to be the fathers of their people.

My Response: They just wanted to be in charge. There was nothing else in them. They were driven by nothing else except the desire to egoistically show themselves, whether for the better or for the worse, to be talked about, to have power and fame.

Question: Why did this disappear?

Answer: First, our egoism is changing. And second, they found out that nothing good comes from this, and that all of humanity is ungrateful. No matter how much you try to get it to do something, it does not want anything!

Question: Where is everything going now?

Answer: Today none of the leaders care that his country, his people, would be higher, better, cleaner, or special.

Comment: That they would live well, would live better.

My Response: His children, yes. But just his children.

Question: Have we become petty, smaller?

My Response: Egoism has become greater. Therefore it demands more from us and we, of course, cannot object to it in any way.

Question: Are you saying that there will never come a time when there will be care for people? Even an ostentatious concern, no matter what, even talked about?

Answer: No, you no longer can buy people with that. You can climb on any podium and scream. They will move past you and go on. This is it; the world has already been through all this.

Question: Then the main question is: where are we going? To which leaders? Can a sage become a leader today?

Answer: No, no one. Which sage? Who would listen to him? A sage is made by the audience, who points at him and says: “This is a sage! Look!”

Question: Do you think that it is people who choose the leader?

Answer: Of course!

Question: Can they choose a leader today like in the past?

Answer: No. It is all gone.

Question: We do not even want to choose a leader who would take care of us, right?

Answer: No. First of all, I do not believe anyone, I do not trust anyone. If I choose someone today, then tomorrow I will reject him. It turns out that there are no leaders and there are no sages; we are left lost, confused, small, and selfish. And we do not need any of this.

But we also do not know what we need.

Question: What will happen?

Answer: I think that, as usual, a war will choose great people. I cannot imagine how it is possible to influence people. After all, no one listens. No one hears.

Question: What is the purpose of nature? What is the purpose of the Creator who put us in this position?

Answer: To develop the correct egoism in us, which would understand that it is actually purposeless. It is very necessary, but it is not aimed at the right goal. And to make it wonder how to redirect itself.

Question: Does our egoism need to feel this? Do we need to feel this?

Answer: Yes, but we do not have enough inner acuity of perception for this. Therefore we do not know. We go there, we go here…”Look, Black Friday! Let’s run to the store!”

Question: Are you saying that there should be some kind of pain?

Answer: Yes. A storm! A very serious storm.

Question: So, are you expecting a storm and there cannot be any other way?

Answer: No. This storm does not have to be physical. It can be internal, inside people, but it should happen. It has to swoop in just like that. It should take us by surprise.

Question: Could it be a stark void or something else?

Answer: A person falls under its influence and begins to change.

He will finally want purpose—the real one. Not in shopping, not in recreation, not in anything. He will want purpose because he will understand that this is what can fill him, stop him, direct him, and give him meaning.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 12/20/21

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