Audio Version Of The Blog – 12/16/22
Posted on December 16th, 2022
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Medium published my new article “Money Matters”
The text below is a summary of Dr. Laitman’s words in the show “El Mundo” (The World).
It is said that money is not everything in life. That may be true, but it can buy just about anything. Our desires are generally divided into six categories: food, sex, family, money, power, knowledge. Money, the fourth category, can acquire all other five. In other words, money is power; it is an equivalent that can be traded for anything we want or need. This is why in Hebrew, the word kesef (money) means two things: kisuf (wanting/yearning) and kisui (cover). In other words, money can cover (satisfy) all our wants.
The more civilization develops, the more it develops its monetary systems. We have become completely dependent on it because we cannot barter products the way our ancestors did, so we have to use something that is equivalent in value to the products we want to trade, something that is portable, collectible, and valued equally throughout the world. The thing that meets all these requirements is money.
The only thing that can replace money is love, since love drives us to give and receive fairly and justly. Regrettably, love does not exist in human society, except between parents and children, although today even this is not a given. In any case, as a factor in today’s society, which is based on mistrust, the only practical means of exchange is money.
However, for an increasingly growing number of people, there is something that is worth more than money, despite all that it can buy. These people are searching for something money truly cannot buy. Money can buy anything in life, but it cannot explain the meaning of life itself, life’s purpose!
Usually, when we are younger, we focus more on making money, thinking that this is what will make us happy and feel secure. As we mature and reach our late 30s or 40s, we realize that we may have made enough money to secure our living, more or less, but we do not know why we live at all. “OK, so I was born, I’ve lived thus far, and I have children who will live after me. But now I am looking at several more decades of life, where I’ll be going through the motions without understanding what it is all for.”
Think of everything we do in life; we always know what we want to get out of it. So how can we carry on with life itself without knowing why we are here? No amount of money can answer this question, which is why most people are even afraid to admit to themselves that they are asking it.
My personal take — as someone who is occupied much more with the meaning of life than with financing ephemeral satisfactions — is that money should cover our basic needs. We should have enough of it to secure health, housing, education, and food for ourselves and our families. Beyond these basic needs, I get no pleasure out of hoarding cash; I prefer to spend my time developing the higher realms of life, the ones that deal with life’s purpose, and not with securing my physical existence.
There is another point here: People who chase money and other corporeal pleasures are never truly satisfied. If they settle for what they have, it is only because they are too tired or timid to strive for more, but it is not as if they would not want more. Such people can never be satisfied because the very satisfaction of their desires causes them to grow. Because the sensation of vitality comes from satisfying our desires, once they are satisfied, we no longer feel alive because there are no desires to satisfy. As a result, new and more intense desires emerge in us.
A person who strives to know the purpose of life is always satisfied because he does not need to achieve something in order to feel happy. The search itself makes him feel alive and energetic. He, too, will want to learn more once he has learned something, but knowing is not his purpose, but the learning itself, making him constantly satisfied and deficient at the same time.
On the other hand, a person who strives to know the purpose of life is always satisfied because he does not need to achieve something in order to feel happy. The search itself makes him feel alive and energetic. He, too, will want to learn more once he has learned something, but knowing is not his purpose, but the learning itself, making him constantly satisfied and deficient at the same time.
For such people, money matters do not matter. All that matters is to learn and explore the world they live in, how it works, why it works, and how they can make it work better.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Controlling the Spreading of Lies and Disinformation”
A question I received: How do you think we could better control the spread of lies and disinformation?
By understanding that the source of all lies and disinformation is nature itself, that our brains, hearts and hands are all under the control of a higher force, and that the spread of lies and disinformation is not sourced in certain people and groups as we commonly think.
We were created in a state of complete misinformation, a system that is called “our world.” The reason we have been placed into such a system is so that we will eventually grow tired of living the way we currently do, and will strive to exit this system by all possible means.
There is a parable about this by Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), in his article “Introduction to the Book of Zohar,” where he likens us to a worm inside a radish:
A worm that is born inside a radish […] lives there and thinks that the world of the Creator is as bitter, as dark, and small as the radish it was born in. But as soon as it breaks the shell of the radish and peeps out, it claims in bewilderment: ‘I thought the whole world was the size of the radish I was born in, and now I see a grand, beautiful, and wondrous world before me!’”
The question is how can we get out of this bitter, dark and small world we are in, and see the real world?
There are special souls that have matured out of billions of souls. They can detect the call, like the worm, and move toward the exit of the radish. Moreover, this process of us exiting our small world is also managed from above, as the worm does not necessarily want to exit the radish, but wishes to be where it is warm and comfortable. Later, when we exit the small and dark world, we understand that we were completely controlled, seeing that we did not do anything at all in our lives. Everything we have done over the course of our development, our sciences, technologies, cultures, wars and whatnot, are in order for us to accumulate a certain rotting layer around us.
At such a point, we realize that while we are inside the so-called “radish,” then we are led by nothing other than our petty egoistic nature, where we seek tiny pleasures and wish to continue living and growing within such a nature, thus creating a rotting layer around us.
If the higher force that is behind the creation of this system so desires, then it will guide us to exit this small dark world we were born into by leading us to a request for its help. And if we develop a genuine request, which emerges from a group of us—like a group of “worms” moving through the radish—we then get an answer to our request.
Along with all the lies and disinformation in the world, there are a lot of lies and disinformation about the Creator Himself for two reasons:
That is why we seemingly do whatever we want ad nauseam, and we will always move toward what our egoistic nature depicts to us as most enjoyable in every state. Truth itself is within the layer of rot that accumulates around us, in what we consume and excrete. The more this decaying layer gathers around us, the more it helps us go through the states we need to go through relatively quickly, and begin to distinguish the state in which there is something new, fresh and completely unexpected for us, so that we can select from all other states and thus compose a new level of existence.
Our future is in the real world that comes about when we exit our small and dark world, and we need to develop a desire to exit our small and dark world in order to enter the much broader, bright and real world.
[306595]
Based on the video “What Is the Source of All Lies and Disinformation?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Semion Vinokur. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Humanity is in such period in history when we are revealing even more clearly that our development was wrong. After all, it was dictated by evil egoistic forces, and therefore was constantly accompanied by wars, conflicts, problems, and fears. Eventually we need to join the force of good.
We have no idea how different such a life is from our current existence. This is the entire essence of the wisdom of Kabbalah; it speaks about the collection of forces available in nature, how we can reveal them, bring them closer to us, come closer to each other through them, and begin to assemble the system as it existed before the shattering of the system of the common soul Adam HaRishon.
In this system, everyone was connected together and understood each other as if they belonged to one body, one mind, and with common desire and intention as one single whole. This is the way the organs in a healthy body exist, each organ knows what it must do to maintain the life of all other organs.
Therefore, Kabbalists advise us to work in a group in order to gradually feel how mutual support helps us uncover a system called Adam, that is, similar (Domeh) to the Creator, the force of bestowal. We will really feel together as one force with one mind and one feeling in love and unity.
For this purpose we organize Kabbalistic groups through which we try to learn how to exist according to the laws of connection and climb to the second floor of reality.
Then we will reveal the universe in its true form and find out that the universe is much broader and more interconnected than we thought. We get to know the forces of nature by seeing how they permeate this world from end to end. It means, to attain the Creator, the upper force, by rising to His level.
[306483]
From the Convention in Turkey 2022, “A Prayer Lishma,” Lesson 3
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There are two opposite forces in nature and everything depends on how we use them. There is the good force and evil, the force of connection and the force of rejection.
These forces are present at all degrees of nature: inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human. We need to learn how to control these forces instead of letting them control us.
Kabbalists tell us about this, and they are the ones who have already revealed the upper degree of reality, the second floor of our existence. Humanity is already completing the first stage of its development under the control of an evil egoistic force. And then, according to the historical process and the forces controlling us, we have to go up to the second floor.
The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches how to climb from the first floor to the second. Kabbalists performed this ascent hundreds of years ago. But then there were only a few of them in each generation, such people who took on themselves the work of changing the relationship between people. Thus they revealed the second force of nature, the force of unity, and wrote us books about it.
We are obliged to move to existence on the second floor, to the realization of the good force between us in the global connection of everyone together. In this way we return to the state that was before the shattering of the system of Adam HaRishon, the first man that was shattered into many parts. There is a part of this Adam in each of us, and we need to connect all these parts back together, which is called becoming like one man with one heart.
It means to return to the existence of the system as Adam, like (Domeh) the Creator. And then we will continue to exist on the second floor of reality, on the degree of connection.
This transition can be made in a good way through the power of unity by awakening it between us. Or we will have to move forward under the influence of an evil force if we do not realize our connection in time with the help of correct, progressive development, from a smaller connection to an increasingly stronger one.
If we do not awaken the good forces of nature for our connection, then they immediately begin to act in an inverse, negative form. And then evil forces are revealed between us, which generates conflicts, wars, as well as internal and external problems in the relationship between us and for everyone individually.
Therefore, a hundred years ago, the wisdom of Kabbalah began to open up to everyone. Kabbalists explain what needs to be done to reveal our next degree, the second floor, in the fastest and best way. Baal HaSulam was the first Kabbalist who widely revealed this technique to everyone; he wrote many books about it, according to which we study.
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From the Convention in Turkey 2022, “The Conditions for Connection in the Group,” Lesson 1
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Question: Did you demand answers for your questions from Rabash?
Answer: No. The fact is that there are times when a student cannot formulate a question; there is no corresponding requirement in him. This process is cumulative and gradual. It happens that months or even years pass until a demand arises in him through the teacher to the Creator.
In addition, he has a lot of questions that he cannot express. Sometimes there is something in us, but it cannot be expressed. These questions remain within the student, and he does not want to ask the teacher. Something holds him back.
There are many states where there are no questions to the Creator. Something seems to be hiding from us. There is some kind of protection, isolation, and distance, and there is no way to break through it. The student can be in such states for years.
In the meantime, the teacher can depart to another world. Questions remain. It depends on the student how he can present them to the Creator.
But serious daily classes prepare him to move independently and to identify these questions even after the teacher leaves.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 2/12/22
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Question: How can your students, who represent the whole world, help correct the Jews?
Answer: In a natural way. By the fact that we, a group of my students scattered all over the world, understand that the main thing is rapprochement of everyone with everyone and that this corrects the world.
As a result, we put pressure on Jews so that they begin to understand that their job is to set an example and demonstrate how people should strive to get closer to each other.
Although, it is precisely for Jews that this is the most difficult thing to do.
Comment: But this is predetermined from the very beginning. If we turn to biblical sources, to our forefathers, they were given the Torah and they were called the chosen people.
My Response: Certainly. We all must understand that the most important and greatest vices exist in nature. They manifest themselves in us in advance as in people who are the closest and at the same time opposite to each other.
[306029]
From KabTV’s “Conversations, Israel and Its Impact on the World” 11/18/21
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Question: It happens that a person does not control his advancement, but not because he does not want to. He understands that this is important, this, seemingly, is his only chance, but it seems as if someone is blocking him from above. What can you do in this state?
Answer: No one is blocking you other than your own egoism.
Question: How can you deceive it?
Answer: Together with the group, there is nothing else. Read what all Kabbalists write! They have nothing else to offer. Nothing else is needed.
This is a simple system—either the connection between everyone into one single organizational system at all levels: inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human or not an organization into one single whole, but a contradiction between all, and then we have confusion.
At some stage it seems that competition is better, but eventually it leads to its natural end because it cannot develop indefinitely. Even because human resources are limited.
What can we compete for? In sports, yes, in various intellectual games, yes, but not in serious matters.
In Kabbalah, competition is about who will bestow more, who will be more useful to society. Competition is not destroyed. This, in general, is a very healthy force and good motivation. Envy, hatred, and jealousy, everything, everything is good only for the sake of bestowal.
Question: Let’s say a person, as you say, must dissolve into a group, but his egoism grows and starts to disturb him again. How can he still give himself to the group? Or is it basically impossible? That is, will there nevertheless be such separation-integration, separation- integration phases?
Answer: Yes, but it will be with the group, it will be soft. If a person walks with a group, he has practically no ups and downs, everything is smoothed out, as in a Wheatstone Bridge Circuit.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Progress Through Pressure” 12/2/13
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Question: Do you have any fear that your adversaries may attack you?
Answer: I am not alone, I am with the Creator and my friends. I am much stronger than the rest of them! They seem like little bugs to me that purposefully show me what else I need to correct.
I am not afraid of anyone at all! What should I be afraid of?! Even if I cease my physical existence in the next moment I will still remain in the field of the Creator. Don’t we understand that we exist temporarily? In such a low world!
We are given the only opportunity, which is to rise to the world of infinity, merge with the eternal upper force, and exist the same way as this force. This force governs everything, it forms everything. What should I be afraid of except this force?
Precisely, I constantly try to get in contact with this force, to enter into the system of mutual relations up to the complete merging with the similarity of properties.
Inwardly, I am not afraid of anything. But still, I have to care about my safety, that is the paradox. If I go somewhere, I am obliged to understand if there is a risk I have to go out with security and so forth. This is the obligation from above.
A person should guard himself. He does not have the right to enter unsafe places since he is still not completely corrected. This is the degree to which he should have fear. This means that fear is something like my recognition that I am not corrected.
Comment: Sometimes there are types of fear that create inner anxiety, meaning it is not that you are simply tough and that is all.
My Response: I am not tough because I am stronger than others. I am stronger because I sense correctly where we all exist together. My strength is my knowledge, revelation, and sensation of the true world.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Turn an Enemy Into a Friend” 11/18/13
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Preparation to the Lesson
| [media 1] | [media 2] |
Lesson on the Topic “The Lord Will Finish for Me”
| [media 3] | [media 4] |
Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Freedom”
| [media 5] | [media 6] |
Selected Highlights
| [media 7] | [media 8] |
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