Audio Version Of The Blog – 7/21/23
Posted on July 21st, 2023
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “What is ‘Modeh Ani’ in Hebrew?”
Modeh Ani is a short prayer, which is recited daily upon waking up in the morning. In this prayer, one thanks the Creator just as he opens his eyes by saying, “I offer thanks to You, living and eternal King, for You have mercifully restored my soul within me; Your faithfulness is great!” A person thanks the Creator, who fills and controls the whole world, for restoring his soul and letting him wake up to get to know Him. This prayer marks the beginning of a new day.
What is the meaning of the Modeh Ani prayer? Here it is, piece by piece.
“Modeh ani lefanecha”—I thank You. For what does one thank the Creator? “Melech chai ve kayam”—eternal living King, meaning that He fills the whole world, He controls the whole world, and no one else. “Living” means that He exists in everything that exists. Without His presence in something, it would not exist. “Melech chai ve kayam, she he chezarta bi nishmati”—”for You have mercifully restored my soul within me; Your faithfulness is great!”
The Creator takes one’s soul in the evening and returns it in the morning, upon one waking up. A person enters a dream, where he no longer controls himself, and therefore his obvious connection with the Creator is cut off. Only the Creator is the master over him during sleep, at night. And in the morning a person gets his soul back and thanks the Creator for it. “For You have mercifully restored my soul within me,” means that the Creator has decided to return the soul to the body. Meanwhile, others might not wake up at all.
According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, “God,” or “the Creator,” is the quality of complete, unconditional love and bestowal. It is a spiritual force devoid of any corporeal depiction, a force that guides and sustains reality, also called the “upper force,” and its purpose is one: to do good. To that end, the Creator created us, who are destined to reach ultimate goodness by acquiring the godly, eternal quality of absolute love and bestowal.
Prayer is an appeal to the upper force to correct one’s egoism, the desire to enjoy for self-benefit alone. The transformation from our inborn egoistic perception and sensation to a new altruistic one is performed via an act called “prayer.”
This prayer, however, has nothing to do with day and night. In Kabbalah, a day is when we are enlightened, i.e., that we can see and feel, holding a connection with the Creator. Night is when a state descends like twilight on the soul and the heart. And when the dawn comes next, and we have some connection to the Creator, we say this prayer.
We do not have to recite the exact words of this prayer. It is more important to feel them in the heart. We can tell the Creator from the heart how good it is to be connected to Him, and this is a day for me; and how bad and sad it is for me to be alone without the Creator, and that is like night. I am thankful to the Creator for waking me up and giving me the conditions to approach Him.
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All bodies, the firmament, the stars, the earth and its kingdoms, are not equal to the lowest mind; for it knows all these and itself; and these bodies do not know anything. All bodies together, and all minds together, and all their products, are not equal to the least feeling of love. This is of an order infinitely more exalted (Blaise Pascal).
Question: What kind of property is mercy? Can a person manifest this property at all, or is it not given to us?”
Answer: Mercy is a property of the Creator. And this is a property that can be generated by a man. In part, it exists both in animals, in plants, in fish, and in all living beings. But in a man it must awaken in a measure similar to the Creator.
Man is born to achieve compassion. It is necessary to learn to be compassionate.
Question: Pascal was a great scientist. Did he achieve some point of the basis of man?
Answer: Scientists of those times felt it, and that is why they entered the field. That is why they called it all philosophy.
Comment: But the former philosophy is not the philosophy of our time.
My Response: It is natural.
Question: How does a scientist who works in exact sciences come to such feelings?
Answer: He feels the world; he feels how the whole world is interconnected, and therefore he strives to study its even greater interactions.
Question: Does he reach the foundation of the world?
Answer: Yes, of course. Scientists do want to dig into that. But if they reach this point of mercy, it means that they got to the bottom of something.
Question: You once said that the world was created just from this point, the point of mercy. Did a spark of mercy appear?
Answer: Yes.
Question: If a scientist comes to this, then does the road to the Creator in principle become closer?
Answer: This is practically a contact with the Creator.
Question: Is it like the fate of scientists, or is it the fate of every person, to reach such an understanding of the spark of mercy?
Answer: This is the fate of every person. And we will all reach the state in which we will reveal—each for himself—that interaction, interconnection, and mutual sensory penetration into each other that is the goal of our development.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 6/12/23
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Question: You told us that once when you and Rabash were driving somewhere, your car suddenly stalled. Then Rabash read TES and the car started. This, in principle, is perceived as a miracle. Did the Kabbalist somehow influence this?
Answer: Yes he did. So what? He could in a particular form influence the engine, but not me. Then he would take away my freewill.
Question: That is, a Kabbalist can influence some kind of inanimate level?
Answer: This is not about whether he can or cannot do that! You can do your child’s homework from school instead of him. But what is the point? What will he do on the exams?
Question: But if people who are on the inanimate level behave like robots, does it mean that a Kabbalist can influence them?
Answer: What for? Man, during tens of thousands of years of his development from fossil species to our time and beyond, must develop only under the influence of nature. There should be no influence of people on him from the side; there is no coercion in spirituality.
By doing this, you are depriving him of the opportunity to grow further. If you solve a problem instead of him, you remove an obstacle before him, and that’s it, he is no longer ready to advance further. He will not be able to!
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Hidden wonders” 8/5/11
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Question: Does it harm a person to be changed, for example, from left-handed to a right-handed?
Answer: Of course, any intrusion in the natural inclinations of a person is harmful. We must give a person the right to freely develop his or her qualities and based on them participate in the general correction of all mankind and the common soul. It is then that we will be able to realize everyone correctly and achieve harmony.
Therefore, Kabbalistic education is based on the fact that in no case do we get inside a person and say what is bad in him and what is good. We only fill him with knowledge from the inside, and he will realize this knowledge as soon as he can.
Question: So it does not matter if a child is right-handed or left-handed?
Answer: It does not matter at all with what inclinations a person was born. He may be weak, clumsy, limited, not brilliant, but if he fulfills his purpose and realizes himself, he reaches his perfection.
Then, in a spiritual state, he feels absolutely like everyone else. After all, if he was created with such qualities and this is exactly what is part of him in the common soul, then he does not need anything else. He attains the same perfection as the highest righteous souls. Absolutely the same because the system is integral.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Left-handed and Right-handed” 8/11/11
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Comment: This is story from the Internet.
One evening, Winston Churchill and his wife decided to take a walk around London. When they were passing through one of the cozy courtyards, a janitor approached them. To the surprise of the Prime Minister, the janitor spoke not to him but to the First Lady.
After this conversation, Churchill asked his wife: “Why did he talk to you with such interest?” She replied that in her teenage years, he was madly in love with her. Prime Minister Churchill said, “See, if you had married him, you would now be the wife of a janitor.” Churchill’s wife replied: “No, if I had married him, he would have become Prime minister.”
Here we have this eternal question: who makes whom? As they say, there is a woman behind every successful man. Is there a spiritual root in this or not?
My Response: In most cases.
Question: Does it mean that in most cases I cannot develop by myself and my wife has to push me all the time?
Answer: It means a lot. A man without female support is like a bush or a tree in the wind.
Question: Why is this so?
Answer: Although she cannot do anything, when she puts pressure on him, she supports him.
Question: But she does not tell him: “You will be Prime Minister. I want you to become Prime Minister.” Or does she say it internally?
Answer: She can say it. But this is what he needs.
Question: So, do we need nudges all the time?
Answer: Yes. Without a strong woman next to a man, a man is powerless.
Question: Is there some spiritual root in this?
Answer: Of course! Because together they make one common whole.
This female part, the desire to receive is what forces a man to work correctly.
Question: Is the inner female thought so that women do not take offense: “You have to fulfill me”?
Answer: Yes.
Question: You can fulfill me with your power, and so on and so forth? |And she pushes him?
Answer: Of course. You see Churchill agreed.
Question: Not only Churchill, we see in history what happened. Behind each one stood some fragile, even quiet woman. Did Sarah move Abraham in the same way? Or was there some different situation?
Answer: The Creator said to Abraham: “Listen to what Sarah says to you.” So, apparently, it was even tougher there.
Question: How should we men behave in this case? Surrender or resist? Or, on the contrary, am I guided by a woman? What should a family tango be like in this case if we know that this is happening?
Answer: There should be mutual support. A husband should provide for his wife financially, a wife should support her husband spiritually.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 6/12/23
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Question: How did you manage to diminish your pride in front of others?
Answer: This work continues until complete correction.
We know that even RASHBI’s disciples, who began to study the upper worlds and write The Book of Zohar from their revelation, initially felt themselves hating each other. That is, it is constant work! Knead and knead yourself all the time! And not by your own strength, because you do not have your own strength! Only if the Creator helps.
And He will help if you obligate Him, make Him! You will indicate what and how you want Him to change, prove to Him that only He can do it. Then He will. Otherwise, it will not be according to your desire!
Question: Does it mean that a person who has crossed into the spiritual world is faced with an even greater problem of pride?
Answer: Of course! Every time! How can there be an ascent up the spiritual steps if an even greater egoism is not revealed beforehand each time?
Question: How did you protect yourself so that this would not happen?
Answer: For many, many years I have constantly convinced myself that there is nothing else in the world.
And in fact, what else is there in our world? Food, sex, family, some knowledge, a little fame, a little wealth, a little power. This is all good because it gives a person some kind of sense of existence. But, in principle, this is one big lie, which, just as it came to a person and organized itself as a shell of all his desires and properties, will go away.
Who am I? The one who exists in this shell. I have to understand my root. This is the most important thing to keep in mind. Without this, I am nobody and nothing. Without this, I will not be there tomorrow, and there will really be nothing left.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Entrance Into Spirituality” 8/18/11
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How does spirituality benefit a person?“
When we attain spirituality, we attain eternity and perfection, the purpose of our lives.
Reaching such a state requires developing positive human connections. We then discover true equality, security, happiness, confidence and friendship.
When we start the spiritual journey, we can find ourselves overcoming problems such as depression, loneliness, anxiety, stress, environmental problems, and we gain the tools to solve problems in the family and society in general.
Even if we manage to live the best materialistic lives possible—making a lot of money, buying whatever we want and making ourselves as comfortable as we can—then our lives will still end within certain limits, whether in 70, 80, 90 or even 100 years, but they will end.
The spiritual journey, however, is an invitation to achieve fulfillment via the happiest, safest and most balanced way of life, through which we come to feel our next life—giving birth to the perception and sensation of a whole new reality in the process.
We are never lonely on the spiritual path. We experience how spirituality is for everyone together. While the path has its ascents and descents, we feel a kind of intoxication when we rise spiritually, and we then start attaining the next spiritual degree.
What is the next spiritual degree? It is a state where everyone feels as a single whole. It is not a feeling where we each feel our tiny worlds and individual lives.
We are each like cells in a massive organism. In our corporeal lives, detached from spirituality, we only feel the tiny life of the cell. But when we rise to the next spiritual degree, we feel like parts of a single common organism, and we feel the life of that entire organism. Such a life is eternal and perfect because it is congruent with the trajectory of bestowal and love, nature’s very own qualities.
Attaining spirituality is a process of connecting together the broken parts of the big global organism we are parts of into one great whole by inviting nature’s force of love and bestowal as an adhesive between our connections.
We then experience the life of the whole, an organism that exists forever, sustained by the eternal qualities of love and bestowal. It is called “the soul,” and there is one soul for all.
Based on KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Advertising Image of the Spiritual” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on July 16, 2011. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
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Preparation to the Lesson
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1st part of the Lesson — Writings of Rabash, Article 6, “Love of Friends – 2”
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2nd part of the Lesson — Lesson on the Topic “The Ruin as an Opportunity for Correction
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