The prayer must be a complete prayer, from the bottom of the heart. This means that one knows one hundred percent that there is no one in the world who can help him but the Creator Himself. (Baal HaSulam, Shamati 5, “Lishma Is an Awakening from Above, and Why Do We Need an Awakening from Below?”)

Prayer is considered real if it reaches the Creator. And it can reach Him only if the prayer comes from the depths of a person’s heart, from his most important inner desire, when he is one hundred percent sure that he can achieve what he wants only if the Creator helps him by practically doing all of it for him.

But there is one small “but” here and it is very important! The Creator responds only to a collective request.

You can shout to Him as much as you want, He will not be able to answer you. Because you have to go to Him through a common Kli (vessel)! Just as you were born and fell from the height of your spiritual level to the material one, egoistically breaking away from everyone, so now you must anti-egoistically rise again to the same place, to Him.

Therefore, the request must be collective. In no case will it help you to sit, cry, sob, and beg. It won’t do anything! Only if there are at least two people who, despite their egoism, somehow connect with each other to raise their request to the Creator, in this form it will help.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/9/22, “Asking the Creator to Fill the Place Between Us” Lesson 7

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Question: Although I do not feel I am able to sincerely ask for the friends because I only think of myself, I try to do what you teach us mechanically. Do we bring contentment to the Creator in this way?

Answer: Yes. It does not matter what level we are at, even if we try to bring contentment to the Creator at the smallest level, it is precisely because we are small that we please Him. like a baby who smiles at his mother and she is already overwhelmed with what she has received from him.

Therefore, our level does not mean anything. On the contrary: when we are small and beginners, we can bring great pleasure to the Creator by our small annulments. And when we become big, then it is much more difficult.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/9/22, “Working in Mutual Responsibility” Lesson 6

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Question: We see that interest in the science of Kabbalah is awakening and expanding all over the world. How do you see the year 2022 and its impact on dissemination? What can serve as a spiritual environment for millions of people who are beginning to awaken?

Answer: I know that you want to create a special Internet channel “Kabbalah TV.” I would like it to air in all languages and become a serious environment for all the nations of the world.

I very much welcome this and hope that all our friends will take part in creating this channel since the next stage of our advancement includes working with broader masses.

Do you see what is happening in the world? The world needs an explanation of where we are going. And we have to provide this explanation. In fact, dissemination goes along with the creation of such channels of communication with all of mankind.

Each of us can take part in this. Not just to make a donation, but to make a feasible contribution to developing the channel technically, creating content, etc.

There are many people among you, living on different continents, and speaking all languages who can do this. Then we can actually reach every person in the world and explain what the world needs today, otherwise they will plunge into ever greater darkness.

It all depends on us. We will support the creation of a global Internet channel in all languages that can become the right environment, a group for all nations of the world. I am very glad that you have taken up this task. Thank you very much.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/8/22, “Deriving the Greatness of the Goal from the Friends” Lesson 4

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Question: Can we change the form of mutual guarantee in order to get a better feel of the ten?

Answer: As you advance, you will be feeling the ten more and more. Keep advancing and then you will solve everything.

Question: Are there such categories as quality and quantity in the concept of mutual guarantee? How does a qualitative guarantee differ from a quantitative one?

Answer: You should see this in yourself.

Question: What does the complete guarantee look like?

Answer: It is a complete correction when everything I have I transfer only to bestowing for people, for society.

Question: How can I bind myself with the bonds of unquestioning guarantee in spite of all the disturbances?

Answer: You just make efforts. I cannot say anything here. We just have to work in this direction.

Question: What is the correct way to pray for friends? Can it harm a friend when we ask for a solution to the problems of the corporeal world?

Answer: No. Corporeal problems of my friends are my spiritual problems.

Question: If one of the friends in the ten is not in mutual guarantee and most of the friends see it the same way, is this a consequence of our egoistic perception or is it really so?

Answer: It does not matter. We just need to continue to act patiently and wait until our actions affect this friend.

Question: It always seems that I can do more for the group. But as soon as I do this, my corporeal life begins to crumble. What should I do? How can I increase efforts in mutual guarantee?

Answer: We must try to make sure that corporeality and spirituality do not particularly come into contact with each other. Then you will succeed.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/9/22, “Working in Mutual Responsibility” Lesson 6

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Comment: You say that a person can be corrected only by seeing from the perspective of what he is doing to his soul. That is, when committing an offense, I see what I am doing to my eternal part when I reveal the whole picture of cause-and-effect in its overall scope and not at some short period of life.

My Response: Even within a short period of life a person can feel that everything is interconnected, can understand that he is connected to a common system, and can begin to realize that all other people are part of him, that life is short, and he will soon discover—either in this life or after—that by harming others he basically harms himself.

Moreover, this is the most direct harm that he inflicts on himself because in reality, we all represent one whole. We just do not see this system because it is revealed to us when we leave our body.

A person begins to master the properties of leaving the body either during this life or after when the body dies if you give him the opportunity to somehow feel it..

But it is possible. This is what Kabbalah deals with—a method for mastering the feeling that we are one single whole. Only in this case will a person have a different attitude toward others, as toward himself. So it is written: “Love your neighbor as yourself” because in this way we come to the only correct state that actually exists in the universe and only is hidden from us.

The secret world—the one that we do not feel—includes all of us as a single whole, as cells of one body.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Presumption of innocence” 3/10/10

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Preparation to the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic “Winning the War (Against the Evil Inclination)”

Writings of Baal HaSulam “Peace in the World”

Selected Highlights

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Medium published my new article “The War — the Spiritual War”

To the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, wars “are the necessary grounds of all coming to be,” writes Abraham Schoener of the University of Toronto. “War is not only a principle in the world of mortal affairs; it governs all things, both every being in the cosmos and the cosmos itself as a whole,” Schoener adds about the philosopher’s views. Indeed, all of nature consists of contradictory elements that join together. On the subatomic level, between light and darkness, cold and heat, attraction and rejection, everything stems from positives and negatives joining together to create balance.

On the human level, the two opposites are expressed as egoism, with all its negative expressions, and altruism, with its positive expressions. The problem is that there is very little of the latter, hardly any. On every level of nature, the negative and positive forces are in equilibrium, maintaining harmony and homeostasis. It is only at the human level that the negative force far outweighs the positive and throws the entire world off balance.

The war that is currently raging in Ukraine is therefore not a local dispute, but a clash of spiritual significance; this is why the whole world is at least emotionally involved in it, and I hope it does not become military involvement. If we want to eliminate war, we must change our spirits from predominantly negative and abusive of others to a balanced harmony between the negative and the positive, in accord with the rest of nature.

There is an old Cherokee tale about an elderly warrior who told his grandson about the battle within us. He said that within each of us there is a struggle between two wolves: one is mean, greedy, and abusive, and the other is kind, generous, and compassionate. The grandson thought about it for a while and finally asked, “Which of them wins?” to which his grandfather replied, “The one you feed.”

Humans are social beings. We think that our thoughts are independent, but in reality, we are a product of our society. The mean wolf is winning because our entire society is leaning toward meanness, violence, and exploitation. Feeding the kind wolf means elevating the value of peace and caring.

Human nature will not let us feed only the kind wolf; it is inherently evil, as it is written, “The inclination of a man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Gen. 8:21). Nevertheless, if we, as a society, place the value of peace above all else in life, then we ourselves will change.

Normally, we think of peace as absence of active fighting. In fact, there is much more to peace than that. The Hebrew word for peace is shalom, from the word hashlama, which means complementation, and shlemut, meaning wholeness. Peace, therefore, does not mean absence of egoism, but rather complementing it with altruism and creating a complete whole.

We must not deny or suppress our basic nature. If we try, we are certain to fail. Instead, we must complement it with its opposite. If we balance egoism with an equal amount of altruism, we will advance in harmony and peace, just like all of nature.

Since our egoism grows continually, we must never stop increasing the importance of peace. In this way, we will create a dynamic equilibrium, just as our body maintains it through homeostasis.

The current war, like all wars, is a call for humanity to complement our wickedness with kindness. We cannot avoid doing what we need to do on the battlefield, but if we think that winning a battle gives us peace, we will soon find ourselves embroiled in more wars, probably more devastating than the current one.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “A War Without, and a War Within”

Shortly after World War II ended with tragic explosions of nuclear bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, my teacher’s father, the great thinker and foremost kabbalist of the 20th century, Baal HaSulam, wrote what later became known as “The Writings of the Last Generation.” He did not intend to say that the end of the world was approaching, but rather that the world as we know it was dying, and a new one was being born. Yet, labor pangs can be very painful, or not so painful, and we, human beings, can determine how we go through it. Baal HaSulam called these two options “the path of light” and “the path of suffering.”

In these writings, Baal HaSulam stresses that with technology, humanity has “invented the atom and the hydrogen bombs,” and “if the total ruin that they are destined to bring upon the world is still not evident to the world, they can wait for a third world war, or a fourth one. 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 do not work for themselves more than is necessary for their sustenance, while everything else they do will be for the good of others.”

The war in Ukraine is not between Russia and Ukraine; it is a clash between two halves of the world. It is reshaping international relations and alliances between East and West, between countries and nations. This war is transforming our view of creation and of life. We have not gone down to the very bottom, but when we come up from the nadir, we will find that the world has changed dramatically. It will never return to the world it was before.

Because today, everything is global, wars are global, too. Therefore, the foreboding prediction of Baal HaSulam seems very real today. In fact, on the current trajectory, I see no other result but the fulfillment of his words. The only way we can avert a nuclear world war is to take his advice and think of the good of others rather than our own, as much as we may dislike the idea.

Indeed, the war without is a reflection of the war within us. Every war, from domestic disputes to world wars, is a clash of egos. The ego wants control and superiority. Accordingly, the book Fitting In and Getting Happy: How Conformity to Societal Norms Affects cites a study by Solnick & Hemenway where more than half of the participants preferred to live in a society where they earn $50,000 per year while others earn $25,000, over a society where they earn $100,000 while others earn 200,000. The book’s author, Professor of Social Psychology at Tilburg University (Netherlands) Olga Stavrova concluded, “People do not desire to have a lot of a certain good as much as they desire to have more of this good than others.”

However painful the current situation in Ukraine may be, and it is very painful indeed, it is still a clash of egos. We need to understand that in order to solve this crisis, and every other crisis, for that matter, we must look at ourselves from aside and disconnect for a moment from our great personal pain, with which I wholly sympathize.

If we focus only on being right, then we will never end the wars. No one will ever agree and say, “I am wrong and you are right”; our egos will not let us do it. This is why looking for objective justice is inherently hopeless; it is choosing the path of suffering.

If, however, we put our grievances aside for a minute, and agree to take a break from trying to settle old scores, it will be possible to start building a positive future. In that state, we will be able to focus on nurturing mutual respect, and perhaps even mutual understanding above the numerous profound differences. If we persist with these efforts, this will be the beginning of the path of light.

At the moment, I would not expect more than that, but in the end, humanity will have no choice but to return to the words of Baal HaSulam, and agree that the best way for all of us is the path of mutual concern and mutual responsibility. If we do not want a third world war, then we must learn to care for one another. This is why the real war is within us, and the war without is only a reflection of our raging hate for others.
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Medium published my new article “Why the Great Resignation”

In the 2nd half of 2021 alone, more than 25 million Americans had quit their jobs. This wave, dubbed “The Great Resignation” or “The Big Quit,” is the largest wave of resignations since recording of data began at the turn of the century. Right now, this phenomenon is most prevalent in low-income occupations or in particularly hard and often unrewarding jobs such as healthcare workers. However, I anticipate that it will capture all the professions, and not only less popular or poorly paying jobs, and to spread not only in America, but around the world.

I can understand people who quit. What’s the point of slaving for a job that takes you an hour to get there, an hour to return, and leaves you no time for yourself or to be with your family? Besides, it is better if fewer people work; there will be less plastic waste, less air pollution, and less of everything else that is poisoning the planet.

In the past, fewer people worked, mainly because women did not work, but men also worked fewer hours and spent less time commuting. What has modernity given us besides exhaustion and poor health? We thought that this lifestyle would satisfy us, but we have found that beyond a certain point, the pursuit of a career and wealth mainly spoils our lives.

Therefore, I think it is good that we are becoming less materialistic and more indifferent and lazy. When people stop working, they find that they can get by with less money and still get the basic things they need. In return, they get freedom!

I believe we are witnessing a natural process, and not necessarily a negative one. It may be inconvenient for business owners or the government, but I do not think it is negative or that we need to “treat” it. Technology can take care of our needs, and if people find it necessary to work, they will work.

The current state of overconsumption is a distortion of society, a burden on the planet, and does not benefit anyone other than the shareholders of the corporations that sell us what we do not need, which is most everything that they produce.

Particularly now, when people are beginning to ask serious questions about life, they do not want to be burdened with material needs more than is necessary. They need the time to reflect and question life, to explore within them what they want from life and from relationships.

We are in the midst of a formidable transformation. It requires time, energy, and patience, and it takes people’s minds away from the mundane.

The more people embrace this new mindset, the better it will be for everyone. On the other end of the reflections lies a new worldview that incorporates all the people and shuns brutality and narcissism. So let people lay in the sun and think; it is better for all of us.
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