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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Israeli Sports Reporters Face the Harsh Reality”

The reports about soccer matches in the World Cup in Qatar, in which Team Israel is not participating, continue to captivate the many soccer fans in Israel. But other reports from Qatar are getting the attention of all the Israelis without exception: documentations of Israeli reporters facing hostile Arabs, both locals and tourists from other Arab countries. In some cases, the hostility became so intimidating that reporters felt compelled to hide their Israeli identity. In another case, a non-Israeli reporter was verbally attacked and nearly physically struck because someone in the crowd mistook him for an Israeli and announced it to his friends.

Indeed, there is an anti-Israel obsession among many Arabs. Despite the Abraham Accords that established “normalization” between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, hatred toward Israel and Jews has not subsided in the Arab world, not in the least.

Even if Israel signs a peace treaty with Saudi Arabia, the leader of the Sunni Muslim world, I believe that Israel’s position in the world in general, and in the Arab world in particular, will continue to deteriorate. To improve Israel’s status, it must earn the change. If Israel is worthy, the change will happen with or without agreements. If it is unworthy, no piece of paper will change Israel’s status, and it will remain a pariah.

Israel’s problems are not external, but internal. We cannot live with one another like fellow countryfolk. We keep trying to trip, fail, use, and abuse one another and division is gnawing on us from within. This is what I mean by “unworthy.”

The world operates according to certain laws. If we break them, we suffer the consequences. One of the pivotal laws by which the world operates says that Israel must set an example of solidarity and cohesion. Israel must display a model society. If Israel presents social cohesion, everyone will respect it and establish good relations with it.

Currently, as division and derision reign supreme here in the land that we have made unholy, Israel is setting the opposite example. This is why the world says that we have no place here. If, on the other hand, we become a beacon of unity and solidarity, the world will recognize Israel as our rightful place and appreciate the example we are giving to the world.*

—

‎*For elaborated explanations on the causes, history, and solution to antisemitism, see ‎my books The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism, and my ‎latest publication, New ‎Antisemitism: Mutation of a Long-lived Hatred.‎
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Now we shall explain the matter of the origin of the soul. It has been said that it is a part of God above. We asked, “How and in what does the form of the soul differ from His simple light until it separates it from the Whole?” (Baal HaSulam, The Study of the Ten Sefirot, Part 1, “Inner Observation,” Chapter 3, Item 15).

The soul is that part of the upper light that is in the desire of a person. The greater the desire, the more upper light can fill it, and vice versa.

The very quality of matter is called the desire. A reduction or expansion in desire is a reduction or expansion of the soul of a person.

The soul is a part of the Creator from above. That is, what fills the desire or fills the soul comes from the Creator and descends from Him to a person. But no more than that.

Question: Is soul and desire not the same thing?

Answer: The soul consists of desire and the light that fills it.

Question: Does it mean that the soul is a substance that a person does not have? Do we need to develop it?

Answer: No, the embryo of the soul is always there, otherwise a person would not be a person. Everyone who exists has some part of the soul. An inanimate, vegetative, animate, or human object has a soul.

That is, the Creator created the desire to receive and placed His part inside this desire, which is called the soul.

Question: Does it turn out that the Creator created something that does not exist in Him, and it is the desire to receive?

Answer: Yes, there is no desire to receive in the Creator. But there is the upper light emanating from the Creator in this desire.
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From KabTV’s “The Study of the Ten Sefirot (TES)” 11/20/22

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Question: What is the general law of the system that a person first needs to pay attention to? A person has a goal, let’s say it is harmony.

Answer: The system has the same goal. And the system is moving toward bringing all its elements to a state of harmonious interaction.

Question: What can a person rely on?

Answer: He needs to find out which force is prevailing, how it leads the system to a state of mutual balance, and so on.

In other words, he must determine for himself that such a force, in principle, exists. Besides, the end of the development of the system is not that it stops, freezes in all its parts, but perhaps, on the contrary, it is that its certain mutual development will be considered the best state—the state of rest.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 11/18/22

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All the forces of connection that existed in Adam HaRishon before the shattering should be revealed in our time in a negative form, in the form of separation, confrontation, hatred, and rejection. And we must gradually fix it all.

People who have a tendency to correct the world come to study the science of Kabbalah because a “point in the heart” awakens in them, a spark of unity. Thus they begin to learn how to fix the shattering.

This is a long and difficult job although we are already in its final stages. We will see how the aspiration for correction and connection will begin to unfold day by day and it will become clear to everyone in the world that it is urgently needed.

This realization will come at the expense of wars and all kinds of problems, the global crisis, which is now approaching in all forms. And all this is so that we understand that connection between us is a panacea for all problems.

We are in a closed circular system where everyone is connected to everyone. Therefore through our good and bad actions, corrections or damage, we cause changes in the entire system relative to each of its elements.

Therefore I must see salvation in the guarantee—personal, general, global, and in all spheres, in the economy, in health care, balance in nature, ecology—salvation through the guarantee in absolutely everything. Do not wait for more severe blows; those that exist today are enough to see that a tsunami is moving toward us which can wash us all off the face of the earth.

By the force of our connection we can stop this tsunami wave and prevent it from approaching. Only our unity can serve as a shield against all these storm waves that threaten to hit us. Nature—meaning, the upper force, the Creator—is already preparing all kinds of arguments for us to prove that it is worth bending down and accepting the force of the upper governance.

And in fact it is not that hard to accomplish. After all, the forces of connection and integral nature are the most powerful and common forces that can really save us from all problems. We just have to try to perceive nature as one force, as the only thing that works.

We see that in this world everything depends on a person. And in the spiritual worlds, everything depends on a spiritual person, which means on the ten, on a group of Kabbalists who are imbued with world problems, who absorb all the inhabitants of this world, and become that maternal womb from which they will be born already at a new spiritual degree and from which a new corrected world will be born.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/11/22, “Arvut on the Way to Lishma“

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Life in the corporeal world constantly gives us difficult problems, pushes us away from spirituality, and undermines the importance of connection with the friends. But someday we will reveal how much all this shattering contributes to correction.

All the states that we reveal are given to us only for the sake of those actions that we need to arrange, combine, and correct. By doing this, we eventually establish ourselves in the very center of creation as a force that raises prayer and leads to correction.

The higher the Kli was before the shattering, the lower it fell after it. Therefore when we correct the Kelim, we start with the lightest and end with the heaviest ones, and we return the entire creation to move in the opposite direction. What fell down, rises up. By correcting ourselves in this way, we correct the entire creation.

It turns out that we humans include within ourselves all inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature that exist in creation, and also all people. If we, the greatest egoists, correct ourselves, then through this all the rest of the people will be corrected.

People who have received the yearning to correct egoistic desire are responsible for correcting the entire world. After all, if we correct ourselves, then this desire for correction will be transmitted to everyone else. We have the key to correcting the world.

By establishing the mutual guarantee between us, we will contribute to establishing world peace. After all, our desire to connect together in our state, at our degree of the last generation, affects all of reality, the whole of humanity, the entire universe, and all galaxies. This brings the forces of nature into balance at all degrees and levels, and of course, we should see the consequences of this balance of nature.

If we connect at our own degree, it means that all the degrees below us will also connect through the same forces and the same relationships as we do.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/11/22, “Arvut on the Way to Lishma“

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Question: We have to make many decisions every day. The Romans, for example, tossed a coin. They even had a saying: either a ship or a head. In other words, all or nothing. In 1845, the coin solved the question of the name of the city of Portland, Oregon, which was originally meant to be called Boston, but the coin showed otherwise and it instead became Portland.

Scientists conducted a study. People who needed to make a vital decision were told to “toss a coin.” They tossed a coin and when they checked them after six months, they saw that people felt good about their decision about tossing a coin.

Scientists believe that this is the choice of the golden mean. How do you think we should make decisions: with a coin or in another way?

Answer: I believe that if we are talking about serious things, for example, the choice of the name of the city, then we need to conduct a general survey. If this is some kind of private problem, but you still have a family and so on, then solve it in connection with others.

Question: Does it mean that I do not make the decision myself, but I need to take into account everything and everyone?

Answer: Of course. You cannot decide everything.

Question: What if I have such a character that I make decisions myself?

Answer: It means that you have not received enough blows yet, from family, children, parents, surrounding people, country, from anything at all. You still have to take everyone into account.

Question: What should happen when the head of the country, the leader, makes a decision?

Answer: If he makes a decision alone, then he is not a leader. He must understand how he needs to make decisions so that they are approved by the majority of the people, and that they may speak well of him.

This suggests that he made the right decision, not in order to respect himself, but to confirm that he made the right decision.

Comment: That is, when people say: “What a blessing that we had such a leader. We really felt good under his rule.”

My Response: Yes, that is the way he has to make his decision so that people talk about him like that. Not because he wants people to talk about him like that in order to be proud and so on, but because he is pleased that he has made the decision in agreement with the people. It is very important.

Question: What does it mean to make a decision in accordance with the Creator?

Answer: It means to be among such sages who would help you understand the thought of the Creator and make a decision in accordance with it and with the Creator.

Question: What decision does a sage who is in connection with the Creator make?

Answer: How to move people to the Creator, there is nothing else.

Question: That is, when we say “fateful decisions,” for the sage are they only those which involve bringing people to the Creator?

Answer: Only in this. After all, there is nothing else in the world. Everything else is just covered with all sorts of different words, but practically it is the same desire.

Comment: That is, if for example the leaders of our world are deciding how to carry out economic reform, how to build something…

My Response: It is always the same question: “How to take a step closer to the Creator?” It can be the economy or healthcare, or whatever!

Question: They just do not feel it, right?

Answer: They do not feel it, but the sage does. The solution is always in this: to be closer to the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 8/4/22

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However, the souls, whose creation came about only because He wanted to delight them, which is the thought of creation, were necessarily imprinted with this law of wanting and yearning to receive His abundance. This is where they differ from Him, since their form has changed from His (Baal HaSulam, The Study of the Ten Sefirot, Part 1, “Inner Observation,” Chapter 3, Item 15).

The Creator created the desire to receive pleasure. This desire is in the souls, each in its own measure. The greater the desire to receive and, naturally its fulfillment, the greater is the soul. And vice versa, the smaller the desire to receive, the smaller its fulfillment and the smaller is the soul.

Comment: Here we see a very important fundamental principle that is manifested in our life. We can only receive pleasure from the presence of the Creator. Everything else is much smaller.

My Response: That is absolutely correct.

Comment: On the one hand, the Creator created the purpose of creation. We must initially receive pleasure from His presence, from the connection with Him. On the other hand, it is precisely the fact that the Creator created the desire to receive pleasure from Him in us that separates us from Him.

My Response: Yes. On the one hand, this desire determines the power of the soul, and on the other hand, it also separates us from the Creator.

Question: So what should we do?

Answer: This is why we have the wisdom of Kabbalah, a method that allows us to grow our soul and at the same time not to separate, but to come closer to the Creator.

This is a special system of reception: on one hand, to receive pleasure from the Creator and on the other hand, to be with Him in the equivalence of qualities.
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From KabTV’s “The Study of the Ten Sefirot (TES)” 11/20/22

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Preparation to the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic “Faith Above Reason”

Writings of Baal HaSulam “Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Vol. 2, Part 6, Item 6

Selected Highlights

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What should I do to change myself completely?“

First, we should define what it means to change ourselves. We are made of desires, and we can change those desires either in relation to ourselves or in relation to the still, vegetative, animate and human parts of nature, and all of those in relation to the absolute laws of nature—laws of love, bestowal and connection. That is, we choose what kind of desire we wish to use and what we wish to relate it to.

If we wish to use all of our desires with an intention that is in balance with the laws of nature, i.e. with a positive attitude toward the entirety of nature on the still, vegetative, animate and especially toward people, then we are on course to changing not only ourselves, but doing so is the only way we can truly change the world.

If we start paying attention to the laws of nature, we then feel a great force that is above our earthly forces. We can then work in tandem with that force, asking it to change us, and accordingly we start seeing how the world around us changes in accordance with the changes we invite upon ourselves.

Such a change is a complete transformation of ourselves because our inborn intention is one of reception for ourselves, and by changing our intention to one of giving, we switch our intention to its complete opposite.

Based on “Spiritual States” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Michael Sanilevich on May 21, 2021.

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