My new article on Linkedin “Buy Nothing Day or Black Friday? Neither”

Buy Nothing Day is a day of protest against consumerism. It is held the day after Thanksgiving, concurrent to Black Friday. In my opinion, the protest accomplishes nothing because shopping fills a void that makes us briefly happy. If you asked me, I would say, “Open the stores and let people take whatever they want.” Once we realize what animals we are, we might seriously consider doing something about our nature.

On the one hand, I am glad people have so much money to spend. On the other hand, the spending seems redundant to me. If I need something, I do not wait for a shopping day to buy it. If I can wait for a shopping day to buy it, I probably do not really need it.

In other words, I think these days mostly benefit the store owners and perhaps the economy in general, but I do not think the shoppers benefit. I am sure they have no real need for most of the things they buy on Black Friday and other such days.

Shopping days may help people forget the emptiness inside, but if they really enjoyed life, they would not need it. Worse yet, buying things we do not need gives very little and very short-lived pleasure, and the void that remains after it leaves grows even deeper and darker.

If we want a lasting pleasure, a delight that grows the more we have of it, and where even its absence is enjoyable, we need a very different kind of pleasure. The only pleasure that can give us such a feeling is the pleasure from giving to people we love.

Think of a mother and her children: The more they have, the happier she is. When she wants to give them something but cannot, she does not suffer the way we do when we do not have something we want. She simply waits for the moment when she can meet them and shower them with her love.

It seems unreasonable that we should feel this way about strangers, but we feel them as strangers only because we do not realize how intertwined we all are. What if you met a complete stranger whom you didn’t like, but after some time you realized that the stranger was actually your long lost brother or sister?

Our closeness to each other is hidden from us, but it is even closer than kinship. We are literally the same body, the same organism whose organs are unaware that they are connected.

We can feel our connectedness, but we must be willing to feel it. Currently, we hide behind walls of alienation and coldness, presumably to protect ourselves from strangers. In truth, we deny ourselves the power of our connectedness and the joy it brings.

Gradually, as problems grip the world, we will learn that we are connected whether we like it or not. When we acknowledge our connectedness, we will discover that it is not a curse, but a blessing. We will discover that this is where our true strength lies and that only our ego has prevented us from seeing it. Then we will learn to enjoy giving, and Black Fridays will be but faint memories of dark times when shopping was our definition of happiness.
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In the News (BBC): “The Pandora Papers is a leak of almost 12 million documents that reveals hidden wealth, tax avoidance and, in some cases, money laundering by some of the world’s rich and powerful.”

Comment: At the same time, in their everyday political or ordinary life, these people behave as if they care for the welfare of the people. But in fact, they steal and put everything offshore.

My Response: It is natural. And it exists everywhere. Therefore, there is no use waiting for them to stop thinking about themselves.

It is not that simple. The elites have built a very serious safety belt around themselves. Therefore, no one expects that something will happen. In addition, they themselves take care of each other and inform each other if one of them gets to know something.

In fact, they are not at war with each other. Even the elites of countries hostile to each other inform each other about what can shake them anywhere, in any place possible. It can be in Israel, in the Emirates, in Iran, anywhere, and it functions above all the agreements and connections that we know about.

Question: That is, it is a kind of international elite who understand the danger of the masses getting out of control and they are trying, despite the contradictions among themselves, to preserve this pyramid? Are we getting back to the pyramid in which the main masses cannot live without the top, but the top cannot live without the main masses as well?

Answer: Yes. But shouldn’t people in different countries of the world be concerned about at least preserving what they have? If not improving, then preserving? Otherwise, the world may enter a state of such threatening imbalance that it is better for us to leave everything as it is.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations” 11/1/21

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Question: What is the difference between restriction and screen?

Answer: Contraction is when I simply reduce reception from an external source, maybe from people or from nature, it doesn’t matter what. That is, the desire remains but I cut it from use, from filling.

And the screen is no longer just a reduction in the use of one’s desires, but their conversion to bestowal, to the opposite, not to receive into oneself, but to give to others.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual State” 11/16/21

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why do some people have outbursts?“

Outbursts are not unique only to some people, but on the still, vegetative and animate levels of nature, there are several instances where tension bursts out in order to lead to a calm state.

For instance, volcanic eruptions emerge after a lot of tension accumulates under the ground, and it reaches a state where it is impossible to maintain the inner tension. The external shell can no longer hold the tension within, and we then see how volcanic lava and ash erupts out of the earth.

This is how it works on the still, vegetative and animate levels of nature, and also in human beings. People have more reasons to have outbursts than the rest of nature due to living in a complex web of social interactions. In general, we live in a closed system that constantly influences us with all kinds of problems and pains, and when the tension of our constantly growing desires meets with a certain amount of tension from our social interactions, then we encounter a growing need for an outburst, whether on personal levels in the family, or on social levels in public outbursts, and even on national levels where certain state or non-state actors unleash violence.

Instead of calming such tension, we can no longer hold onto it, and then we have outbursts similar to the example of the volcano. It is the only way that some people see the ability to decrease their inner tension. There are examples of some people simply shouting or going for a run when they are under a lot of stress in order to lower the tension, because otherwise the lack of a release could lead to other problems, such as heart disease or other health complications.

In short, the more our ego—the desire to enjoy at the expense of others and nature—grows, then the more inclined we become toward outbursts, because our desires demand more and more fulfillment, and the conditions for receiving that fulfillment become tougher, and more and more people see no other way of calming themselves down but through a certain kind of outburst.

We can then see the importance of needing to tame the human ego, to give it the calm it seeks. The more our ego grows, the closer we come to a state of recognizing the evil nature of our egoistic selves, and become more willing to undergo a transition to a new altruistic nature, one that is in balance and harmony with nature.

Based on the video “How to Prevent Violent Outbursts” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Comment: Once you answered a letter to a person who wrote that he was used to speaking the truth in person and therefore ruins relations with people. You explained that by giving the truth to a person’s face, he just wants to remake him, and this should not be done.

Gulmira writes to you: “We are not a flock of sheep to be silent, with our face down. Yes, there are problems when you speak the truth, but if everyone is silent, keeping their opinion to themselves, there will be no sincerity, which means love.”

My Response: If she is a grown woman and has children, then I don’t think she delivers the truth to them all the time. She speaks to them in a language that makes them understand. So that they would be pleased. In order to gradually understand how to behave, how the world works, and how to properly tune others, yourself, that is, to be gentle with people. It is written “love your neighbor” and not “correct your neighbor.”

Question: Are you suggesting that you treat the other as your child or someone very close, take care of him?

Answer: And in this way we will be able to remake the world, and in the end we will all be fine. And if I deliver the truth to others, then I will do so with my egoism. What else? And what good will it do? None. I will turn all people against me and set a bad example for them.

Comment: By this a person is working very seriously with himself because any person wants to give out the naked truth, and here he has to think all the time.

My Response: Don’t do it, close your selfishness! Who do you want to show your truth to? Firstly, it is not true, it is your egoism, only your egoistic desire.

Question: If a person wants to naturally tell the truth to another, how should he behave, should he suddenly restrain himself? What should he do?

Answer: It is best to be silent.

Question: Is this the beginning of all good things?

Answer: Yes. And in general, if you want to talk about something, then speak about abstract topics that do not directly affect the other person, allegorically maybe or speak but not about him in plain text.

Question: The main thing is not a direct defeat of a person’s I?

Answer: No way! He must do this himself. The realization of one’s own evil lies with the person himself. This is a task that the Creator gives to a person. This is the only thing that He wants from us, for us to understand and realize the nature in which He created us, that we realize this nature as evil!

And the person who always tells the truth to another must realize that this comes from his evil, because all nature is evil, selfishness. And if I reveal it, then I reveal the evil in myself. And the other does not understand this, he hears what I say, and therefore draws very wrong conclusions from this.

Question: How does one communicate with another person if you want to tell him something?

Answer: Through your own example! Only! And the rest it’s better to be silent.

Question: Don’t you need to teach anyone?

Answer: No. Or if you teach, then only what the science of Kabbalah says about how to properly understand oneself, people, and the world, that is, the actions of the Creator. It’s true. And we don’t need the rest.

We need to make the world a good, fulfilling one. Let us change the world not by our usual methods, but through the Creator. The Creator is nature. That is, the impact on nature itself.

Question: Will we be able to rise above this selfishness after all?

Answer: We will be obliged. The whole question is, when? It already depends on us.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 10/11/21

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Preparation to the Lesson

Writings of Baal HaSulam, Shamati #86 “And They Built Arei Miskenot (Stone-Cities)”

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Peace in the World”

Selected Highlights

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The things happening in the world will obligate us to restructure #society and the #economy. Otherwise we will be obliterated. We should see the things that are happening as a challenge from the Creator, and the need to provide an answer—by changing every person

From Twitter, 12/4/21

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Question: Modern science makes discoveries related to processes in the human brain. How do you explain, in the context of egoism, that neural connections form a person’s behavioral principles?

Answer: But this is only an external manifestation of what we see. Egoism itself is a spiritual property of a person, inner forces in us. There are even more inner forces behind them, which we cannot define at all or even feel in any way. We feel ourselves only in some external manifestation.

I feel my body, warmth, movement, and so on, and that is how I perceive myself. However, I cannot attain my inner essence yet. This is how we exist. Egoism is our most inner force.

The upper force, which is absolute bestowal and love, has created within itself the property opposite to it, egoism. This is why we exist in this way.
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From Kab TV’s “Conversations” 11/1/21

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Nature is one and all its parts are in complete integration except for man who is purposefully given freewill, so that by using it he will come to integration himself. And to the extent that he is late, he will be propelled by suffering until he himself will want to take independent steps and, ahead of the stick falling on him, begins to strive for integration with nature. We are in this state today.

That’s why we get depressed and not family or this world are satisfying to us. We distract ourselves with drugs, we don’t want to have children, etc. Why? Because nature by deliberately devastating us causes us to feel the necessity to look for a special purpose that would be worthwhile to exist for. This is how nature prepares us for a new state.

We see this in all cases of life. People lose motivation and do not want anything, so a demographic crisis occurs and the world is going downhill in everything. This is purposefully laid down in the program of nature to raise a special motivation in us.

We exist in order to understand the intention of nature, its idea, what kind of provocation is presented to us and how can we come to the most beautiful state. We can become the most successful in love, family, and friendship, and in the implementation of any program, and succeed in everything.

Then we will see the world as big and global and will feel how it works and how to rebuild it and society.
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From KabTV’s “Through Time”

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