Audio Version Of The Blog – 10/16/23
Posted on October 16th, 2023
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Unifying Israel: A Call to Action for a Better Future”
The world has again turned its attention toward the tiny Jewish state. Celebrities, journalists and world leaders are among a legion of people expressing their sympathy and standing by Israel’s side. Iconic landmarks like the Eiffel Tower in Paris are bathed in the colors of the Israeli flag.
History, however, clearly shows that support for Israel can fade in an instant.
The people of Israel are meant to shine, to be “a light unto the nations,” and set an example for other nations. It is not by chance that it is a nation renowned for its innovativeness. The pioneering spirit of the Jewish people is due to a deeper potential that they possess, the ability to create a model society where unity prevails over intense division.
Such a unified spirit formed the people of Israel to begin with, i.e., people from all walks of life in ancient Babylon who applied Abraham’s method and attained a higher unified level of consciousness—namely “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
A faint glimmer of unity now seems to surface after heavy blows. But if slander and divisive pride return, the people of Israel risk losing the world’s admiration.
In my book, The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism, I showed a historically-recurring pattern of attitudes among the Jewish people, and toward them from other nations: When the people of Israel let divisions drive them apart, they invite tragedies upon themselves; and when they unite, they prosper.
A Hamas member who participated in the terror attacks on October 7 revealed how the ongoing demonstrations in Israel encouraged Hamas during their year-long preparations for the attack. The intensely divisive atmosphere among the people of Israel throughout 2023 ended up exploding into what has already become widely known as the darkest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust.
Then, after the tragic events on October 7, the people of Israel experienced a collective heartbreak and melting, and they regrouped in a new climate of mutual concern and support.
We need to view today’s unfolding of events as another painful reminder that division does the people of Israel no good. It is not what the world wants from them, and it emboldens those who seek to harm them.
Subconsciously, the world wants a united people of Israel. As Rav Abraham Isaac Kook wrote, when the hearts of the people of Israel unite, “all the world’s civilizations will be renewed through the renewal of our spirit, all opinions will align, all life will glisten with the joy of rebirth at our emergence, all beliefs will don new clothes” (Shmoneh Kvatzim, vol. 5, 64). Abraham’s blessing to all nations will manifest strongly and openly, spearheaded by the efforts of the people of Israel. As long as the people of Israel continually add to their unity above any kinds of divisions that surface among them herein, then it is certain that the world’s support for them will also continually rise.
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Question: In order to connect, Must we be equal in order to connect; will be not be to annul unless we are equal?
Answer: No, our unity does not depend on equality, it depends on accepting each other. The fact is there will never be equality between us.
Each of us is a unique individual, a separate organism with its own nervous system, mind, and feelings. There can only be equality if we make ourselves equal. We all have the same nature, the same goal, and in this respect we are equal.
As we progress, we become both more different and more equal. Egoism develops more and more in each of us; thus, we move away from each other. But everyone strives for the same goal, so we get closer and eventually become like one man with one heart.
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From the 1st part of the Lesson of the International Kabbalistic Convention “Opening Hearts” 9/30/23, Lesson 1 “The Work Is Mainly in the Heart”
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Question: When Kabbalah speaks about the merging of two objects, does it mean integration with each friend or between each of us with the ten as the second object?
Answer: It is the adhesion of each one of us with a friend, the adhesion of each of us with the ten, the adhesion through my ten with other tens, and in general with everyone.
That is, there is multiple unification, multiplication, and combination of all our properties and desires that happen here. Then it turns out that we have a common vessel, a common desire, with common feelings where it is impossible even to understand where I am and where you are, where he is and where she is, and so on.
Everything merges together in one sphere, a sphere in which we see only one single force that created us, connected us, and brought us to it. We unite within this force without any difference between us. This is the connection of creation with the Creator.
Question: Do we connect and come to adhesion with each friend or with the ten?
Answer: You need to imagine the ten all the time and not break it down into individual friends, into individuals: this one is better or worse, this one is closer or farther from me. In no way you should do that.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/27/23, “Preparation for Opening the Heart at the Congress”
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Question: There is the force of the group. We know that if the friends do not pray for me, I will not rise. My spirit is lifted only by them thinking about me. That is how I use it. But what for?
Answer: In order to rise and pull them along with you; just like today maybe they are pulling you along with them. After all, everyone helps the other and thus we achieve the goal.
We must unite into one single system called Adam from which we all scattered by our egoism and return again to this single desire where everyone supports everyone, holds on and clings to each other, and thus unite in one heart. Then we will begin to feel only one force between us and around us—the Creator.
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From the 2nd part of the Lesson of the International Kabbalistic Convention “Opening Hearts” 9/30/23, Lesson 2 “Connecting As One Man with One Heart”
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Question: Everything that happens in the tens means that the Creator is talking to us in this way. How do we learn to understand what He wants from us? By leading us either on the left line or on the right, what is He telling us in this way?
Answer: The Creator wants us to feel mutual love for each other within which we would prepare a place for Him so that He could be revealed in us. Our relationship of love for each other will be called Shechina—a place for the revelation of the Creator.
Everything that happens comes from our qualities, and therefore, we must change them to love, connection, and reciprocity.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/28/23, Writings of Rabash “Concerning the Importance of Friends”
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Question: In spiritual understanding, is money a covering, a screen?
Answer: The screen is not a covering for your earthly properties, but the main means of getting out of yourself.
At first, you have purely egoistic desires for the spiritual world. They are called bad qualities because you want to consume and experience spirituality in the same way as this material world. Practically, this is implemented through your attitude toward the group and toward your friends.
That is, when I begin to get closer to them, I try to come out of myself into some common structure where we rise above ourselves and build some kind of external platform, a common external sensor, a mutual organ of perception, called a group (a group is not our bodies, but our common desire). We build it together outside of ourselves, then if I treat this construction as a consumer and I want to sense it the same way as I perceive this material world, then my wrong perception of our common sensor, i.e., the group, is called Yetser Ra—evil inclination.
It is specially created in me this way. It starts to manifest in me. It is not present in an ordinary person. Then, I try to change it not in my own favor, but specifically against myself.
It is not simple. I am constantly building a consumer attitude toward this common sensor, and then I am trying to overturn it into the property of bestowal, but I cannot change it.
To transform it into bestowal, I also need a special external force that is above the joint sensor that we are building. This force is called the Creator.
Therefore, this is what happens: I, the group (a common property), and the Creator are united together as the necessary three components without which it is impossible to find a way out of myself.
When you start doing this, you slowly begin to realize these mechanics. This is Kabbalah. It is the same for everyone and is ready for everyone.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Spiritual dollars” 11/29/11
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Comment: There are people who when they start to study Kabbalah first light up, stay high for a while, and then slowly cool down or even leave. They are sucked into corporeal life and the importance of spirituality fades into the background.
My Response: This is a natural phase in everyone’s life. I see how my students are sometimes asleep for months and barely come to class, which they serve as a duty. And there are those who disappear and later come back again.
A person must fully work through his system, each stage like a rocket launcher; otherwise, he will not enter the orbit.
Moreover, one goes through very complex processes and internal and external discernments. This is a difficult path and there is no need to hide it. This is a search for oneself, a path to yourself you do not know yet and are creating on your own.
You have a drop of spiritual seed in you, but making an “incubator” for it to grow is your job. The incubator is the group, the atmosphere, an environment that will give you the importance of spiritual growth and supply material for it. It is the connection with others that will manifest in you like a connection with the umbilical cord from your mother’s body, from the large environment.
Therefore, in our dissemination, we must first of all create the right environment for every person on earth who would in this way be able to connect to his “incubator,” to his “womb,” and thus grow. Otherwise, he will not be able to grow. He must see himself connected to the great desire of others like him.
By connecting to them, he will add “meat” on his drop of seed, on virtually bare information, and receive a revitalizing force from the group. They will supply him with the importance of bestowal, connection, mutual love, and mutual guarantee.
The feeling that will come to him both from the connection with others in one system and from the feeling of a mutual, massive, benevolent force moving in this system, will enable him to be at the level of man, Adam, from the word “Domeh” (similar to the Creator). He will feel that together with others he holds a system within which a force called the Creator operates.
This is the environment, the atmosphere we must create for the world. We know how to do it, but we still have a lot of work ahead.
Therefore, in the time of Abraham, a Kabbalistic group was created, which later, like all of mankind, fell into this world in order to recreate itself today according to the methodology that was stored and developed in it all along and to explain to the whole world what we should be like.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Leave Kabbalah” 9/29/11
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Preparation to the Lesson
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1st part of the Lesson — Writings of Rabash, “What Is Above Reason in the Work?”
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2nd part of the Lesson — Lesson on the Topic “Fighting the Evil Inclination”
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3rd part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Exile and Redemption”
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Selected Highlights
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