Audio Version Of The Blog – 4/24/22
Posted on April 24th, 2022
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Question: You say that the highest destiny of a person is to acquire the quality of bestowal, the quality of the Creator. Is not this striving considered to be idolatry?
Answer: No, because I strive to put the Creator above myself and direct myself to Him all the time, to define Him more and more accurately. At the same time, I must constantly improve my qualities until I bring myself into full equivalence of form with the Creator, meaning to merge with Him.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/5/22
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Question: What is idolatry from your point of view?
Answer: Each person should determine that for himself.
Question: And how do you define it for yourself?
Answer: I believe that idolatry is the belief in the power of man. If a person relies only on himself and believes that there is no other force controlling the world, by this he raises himself to some kind of pedestal and considers himself infallible. This is clear idolatry.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/5/22
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The question about the meaning of life is the next degree in human development. We must go beyond death, so that it is not an obstacle for us, and begin to perceive the world higher, bigger, wider, and beyond our material sense organs.
Question: Does only a Kabbalist possess this knowledge?
Answer: No. Kabbalah is simply a technique for expanding our senses beyond what the body feels. Then we begin to talk about what we attain, about the boundary that we remove from ourselves.
Right now this boundary is limited by the existence of my body. If I begin to move this boundary further, then I include into my range of feelings an additional existence, an additional world. I explore it, I live in it, I communicate, I treat it the same way as I treat our world.
And then the question of the meaning of life disappears from me. I begin to understand that it is in its perpetual continuation beyond the limits of the current existence in this tiny volume.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Is Frankl Right?” 8/8/10
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Comment: When one of the friends feels bad, we automatically want to support him and say, “Remember Who it comes from.” At the same time, we understand that we ourselves are not so sure that everything comes from the same source because we are not in spiritual attainment yet.
My Response: It does not matter. Our efforts should be such that we develop feelings in us that will lead to the attainment of the Creator. We need to develop sensory organs, and then we will attain Him.
The problem is that we do not have the sensory organs for feeling the Creator, because we are not in the mode of bestowal, but are only in the mode of reception. We need to switch to the mode of bestowal, and then to this extent we will begin to feel Him.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. First Aid in Descents” 2/16/14
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Medium published my new article “Achieving Individual and Group Goals”
Life is about goals and the corresponding choices to achieve them. Key elements for success are properly evaluating the conditions at our disposal before setting a goal and our teamwork capabilities.
When I define a goal for myself, I should find out if it is even within my reach. Do I possess the inclinations and skills necessary to achieve it? For instance, if I do not have an analytical mind, it’s a waste of time to set a goal of a career in software engineering. The fact that so many work in the high-tech industry does not guarantee me a path to success either.
Once I decide on a direction that appeals to me personally, I should approach an environment of people who are already working in that field and examine what their day looks like, what their lives, their families, their time for leisure, are like. It may be that the examples I discover of people who actually hold those jobs will lead me to disqualify certain development directions in advance. This will save me time, resources, and false hope.
Groups or work teams that share a common goal should also find successful examples in their field and follow them as much as possible. By and large, the most important variable for team success is the level of mutual connectedness that exists within that group.
Naturally, each individual in the group or team thinks about his or her own performance, interests, and future promotion. In this case, the degree of group togetherness is low even if one contributes and cooperates. It is worth learning to build a team correctly: keeping in mind the common interest. In such a team we will find that success is limitless.
A group, by the highest definition, means that we are all together, feeling connected and functioning like different organs in one body. Each helps the other and understands the other even without words due to the common desire to create harmony and achieve results on a completely different level. That new degree is attained through the absolute conviction that the ultimate goal could have not been achieved alone.
Group strength is created when before tackling a task we set the overarching goal of being connected to each other. Thus, a common mind, a common feeling, emerges between us, and from that, we properly address the challenge before us. Without connection, it is impossible to take a step forward.
A group is not a collection of individuals, the sum of all our abilities as individuals, but a new entity in which our collective efforts and common yearnings merge. The mind and feelings of the group will be of a higher level than those of the individual, no matter how smart and talented anyone is.
Evolution has been like that since its beginning. Nature’s formula for promoting the development of life is to always create more advanced connections between its different elements.
If we, as intelligent beings, take up this trend and learn the method of proper connection between people, we will find that this will elevate us as a human species to the next stage of evolution. In this way, we will adapt to the movement of the general force of nature and achieve the maximum possible results in any area of our lives.
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When a child asks his parents where he came from, we begin to explain it to him at the level of physiology, from mom and dad.
However, there is a clear cut between our “I” and our body, which has nothing to do with this “I.” It is just that we have not developed our “I” yet and consequently we identify it with the body. In fact, there is no connection between them! Kabbalah says that we need to break away from the material body and rise above it.
These are not all sorts of meditations, but the exit of one’s “I” from the body to existence in a completely different attainment, in a different sense of space, in the feeling of a different life. It is not limited by our pulse, that is, by time, motion and space, which my five bodily sense organs capture, is not limited by my box of flesh.
I begin to feel everything through different sensory organs of my “I.” They are called the five organs of spiritual perception because it really is a spirit, a level above the body.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Theater of the Absurd” 7/18/10
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Is Europe on the Verge of Nuclear War?”
The current times expose Europe’s vulnerability and the risk of further escalation of war that could explode in a split second. Finland and Sweden have announced their desire to apply for NATO membership. On the other hand, Russia looks at the move as a threat and has warned of a military response including the deployment of nuclear and hypersonic weapons to the Baltic Sea area if those nations join the alliance.
Finland and Sweden claim that the war in Ukraine has prompted increasing public support for them to become part of the 30-member military alliance, based on opinion polls. Both Nordic countries have refrained from joining NATO for decades in an attempt to maintain neutrality, but it seems those calculations have changed.
Could the tensions in Europe unfold in the form of nuclear conflict? First of all, as soon as the war in Ukraine ends, the perspectives of the European countries and of the world in general about the future will change profoundly. The assessments about life before and after the conflict–if it can be called a conflict, because it is more complex than that–will determine what lies ahead for everyone. But until we understand that our innate human desire for dominance does nothing to promote a positive change in the world, it will continue to pose a global threat to us all, and the danger of nuclear war will persist in Europe and elsewhere in the world.
The risks of nuclear expansion arise for a purpose: in order to make humanity understand that threat and domination is not the correct way to solve problems between countries. Since nuclear weapons have the ability to exterminate entire populations, they force the world and every person to fear such an outcome and to consider how to change human society as a whole so that such a disastrous scenario would not materialize.
We should have learned this lesson from previous painful events throughout history, but unfortunately, humanity has learned nothing from the former blows. Therefore, we keep stumbling over the same stone again and again.
We will be able to prevent our complete annihilation only when we realize that ruling through hate and separation only paves the way toward destruction. Any hope for a better future depends on our willingness to change our narrowly egoistic viewpoint to a more comprehensive and inclusive view of relations between people and countries.
As foremost Kabbalist Baal HaSulam explains in his eye-opening composition The Writings of the Last Generation, “The bombs will do their thing, and the relics who remain after the ruin will have no other choice but to take upon themselves this work where both individuals and nations will not work for themselves more than is necessary for their sustenance, while everything else they do will be for the benefit of others.” Hopefully, we don’t have to reach a point of despair in order to react and change our course of action from self-interest to cooperation and mutual care.
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How do I get my prayers answered?“
The Creator hears every request, demand and cry—every prayer. But indeed, which ones does He answer?
Our prayers get answered to the extent in which our prayers align with the Creator’s plan and His wishes for us.
What does the Creator wish for us? He wishes for us to positively connect with each other in equivalence with His very quality of love.
No matter how conflicted, divided and hateful we might be toward each other, we will all have to mature and realize the loftiest state that has been prepared for us: one of absolute love for each other.
Love comes about when we undergo a revolutionary shift in our attitudes to each other. It is when we become supportive and encouraging of one another and when we each aim to fulfill each other. In other words, love is when we switch from thinking only about ourselves to thinking about benefiting everyone outside of us.
A prayer to reach such love gets answered. However, it needs to be from the depths of the heart, that we genuinely want only the best for others, and not that we just say words in that vein.
Based on KabTV’s “News with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman” on March 3, 2022. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Sylvain Brison on Unsplash
Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What are some characteristics of the 20th Century?“
Mid-20th Century, humanity started feeling that it was entering into a meaningless period of existence. Social and political scientists started realizing that humanity was losing the hope for a happier, better and easier future, which it once had.
Before that time, if people had no aspirations for some kind of spiritual fulfillment, then they aspired for material fulfillment. People were more interested in art and culture, and hoped for a change in the social order in order to safeguard their later years. In other words, people had a few needs from life and the world, and trusted that they would find fulfillment and happiness in the future.
Until the mid-20th Century, the human ego was undergoing constant growth, and it motivated people to regularly seek out new and different kinds of fulfillment. Humanity thus ran around like a dog chasing its tail. However, since the mid-20th Century, the hope faded. The dog no longer sees the tail it was chasing. It no longer knows where to run. It is confused. This period started becoming prominent from the mid-20th Century, and it has become a defining characteristic of humanity’s current state.
Based on KabTV’s “Close -Up. Theater of the Absurd” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Atanas Teodosiev on Unsplash
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