Question: Can our thoughts develop our desire, and if so, how?

Answer: Thought influences desire and desire influences thought. We see that through our daily struggles.

If I have a very small desire for something, but I begin to think about it more and more and thus constantly develop and nurture these thoughts, as a result, my desires grow many times more. And vice versa, the desire can influence our thoughts, and if the desire changes, a certain thought can disappear.

Our desires are the main thing, whereas our thoughts were given to us in order to increase the desire, to focus, format, and fulfill them.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 2/3/19

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Preparation to the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic “The Lord Will Finish for Me”

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Study of the Ten Sefirot, Vol. 1, Part 1, ‘Histaklut Pnimit,’ Chapter 3, Item 15″

Selected Highlights

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To do something not for your own benefit, for the sake of others is an absolutely subjective calculation, thought, intention. It does not exist in the nature of our world, in what we know and what we are familiar with in our surroundings.

Question: Does it mean that a person born in our world cannot make a calculation without taking into account any of their own benefits?

Answer: Yes! One is not able to! We see this in newborns. It is clear that they are completely within themselves.

And later, while a person develops, until some period of time, he constantly wants to acquire everything. Then his desire fades, he slowly withdraws into himself, thinking only about how to protect himself, to continue to exist as much as possible. This is already when he approaches old age, and decline.

Yet, nevertheless, all intentions naturally, automatically, like in a computer, in any machine, are implanted in us in such a way that we think only about our own benefit. Even if we sacrifice ourselves, our lives, whatever it is, we do it based on our calculation, out of our benefit.

This inner inclination, motivation, and intention, in general, is concealed from a person. He partially understands that he is doing it for his own sake and partially he does not.

If you talk to psychologists, they may tell you that a person does this for his own benefit. And maybe they will say that he is able to do some actions not for his own sake, but absolutely altruistically. Nevertheless, according to the wisdom of Kabbalah, there are no absolutely altruistic actions. We do not do anything altruistically.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States”

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My new article on Linkedin “We Lost the War – in Our Spirits”

Israel has always known how to pull together when the guns roared. Not this time. It has been creeping in for several years now, but in this campaign, the malice in our midst has defeated the necessity for unity. As soon as the rockets were launched on our cities, politicians from all sides broke out in a war of words, blaming each other of incompetence, indecision, and opportunism. As the days passed and Israel’s military tactics proved successful, these same politicians scrambled to attribute the success to themselves and deny it of their rivals. And all the while, each faction of the nation sided with its own politicians and chided their dissenters on social media, news media, and anywhere they could.

Socially, we lost the war as soon as it began, and if we lost the war on our solidarity, we’ll lose the land, as well. The Talmud writes (Yoma 9b) that shortly before the ruin of the Second Temple, the people of Israel, but mainly the leaders of the country, were so spiteful toward each other that they would “eat and drink with one another, [yet] stab each other with the daggers in their tongues.” This, according to the Talmud, is among the key reasons that Nebuchadnezzar II conquered Israel and exiled its people to Babylon. We are well on our way to a similar fate.

If we are to avoid the fate of our ancestors, we mustn’t wait for our leaders to save us. They are immersed from head to toe in their power struggles. They will not listen to us, just as they do not listen to each other. When you watch them on TV, it is obvious that they are there to talk, and for no other purpose. They speak the whole time they are on the air, cut into each other’s words, and in the resulting cacophony, you cannot understand a word. I cannot watch them anymore.

Therefore, we have no one to rely on but ourselves—the unity of regular people who understand that division means destruction of the country. Only if we begin to work on our unity, above all our many differences, our so-called leaders will gradually understand that they, too, must move in this direction, too.

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Following an attack by Islamists, #Facebook is obliterating the largest pro-Israel page. This will happen in all media across the world. #Israel will find itself completely isolated.
And the guilt for this lies on the nation of #Israel itself, which does not wish to realize that the whole correction of the world depends only on it!

All the problems in the world come only because the #Jews are not united. There are 2 kinds of unity: on the level of this world, and most importantly, on the spiritual level, in the Creator. As a result, the whole world will meet in the Creator. And this is the end of all correction. Thus we have arrived at the beginning …

Every #war destroys our nation more and more. We are given the opportunity to come closer to one another internally, but we do not use it. When will we understand that peace is created only by us, between us!
#israel
From Twitter, 5/23/21

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War on the Spiritual Level

Question: It is written in The Book of Zohar that Gog will come from the north. Therefore, according to Christian tradition, it is believed that the last war between the forces of darkness and light will most likely take place in the north, near Mount Megido. From the name of this mountain came the word “Armageddon” (Har-Megido).

“Har” means mountain, Megido is a place 10 kilometers from Afula. It is called the Lowlands of Israel, and for thousands of years most battles have been fought there.

Why will the power of Gog come from the north?

Answer: Because a fearsome force always comes from the north. North is that part that does not like the world, always bullies, always manifests itself as Gvurot (harsh forces).

Question: How will humanity know that the war of Gog and Magog has begun?

Answer: I think that they will not know. I hope that all this will happen on a spiritual level and no physical actions will be required. We will only see how everything calms down and returns to normal with the exception, perhaps, of a few instances that an ordinary person will not notice. I really count on that.

At least, according to Kabbalah, we strive to shift this from military actions, suffering, and death, to man resolving it within himself and with others.
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From KabTV’s”Spiritual States” 4/30/21

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My new article on Linkedin “No Ceasefire Will Put Out the Flames of Hatred Between Us”

There is never a dull moment for Israel. Even though a ceasefire is the talk of the day, the public has no confidence that the heavy barrages will come to a halt for long. Threats persist in both the south (from Hamas in Gaza) and the north of the country with rockets launched by Hezbollah from Lebanon into Israeli territory. So the question that arises again is, when will the aggression end once and for all? The ball is in our court, in the court of the Jewish nation.

The hatred towards us never stops. Israel is constantly under siege, with pressure and repeated attacks, not only from Hamas and Hezbollah, but from Iran and other hostile elements all over the world. It is said, “The heart of ministers and kings is in God’s hands,” so even when the United States and other nations put pressure on us to reach a ceasefire, the real, heavy pressure comes from a deeper source, from the depths of nature.

We live in an integral system and are organized in a network that binds together the entire human race and operates according to strict laws of nature. The main hub in all this interconnected global traffic is the people of Israel.

“The Israeli nation had been constructed as a sort of gateway by which the sparks of purity would shine upon the whole of the human race the world over,” wrote foremost Kabbalist Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag in his article “The Arvut” (Mutual Guarantee.)

In other words, the Israeli nation has a significant role to play in the lives of everyone in the world. We were given a task from the day we stood at the foot of Mount Sinai, united as one man with one heart, when we signed a mutual guarantee and agreed to be a light unto the nations. From that moment on, we received the Torah, the light, the method for uniting the world—the wisdom of Kabbalah.

Since then, the function of the Jewish people has been redefined in the inner workings of reality: as long as the people of Israel are united above their opposite views, then the power of internal connection between them ignites sparks of light, a positive force that is projected to all the nations of the world in the global network. On the other hand, if the Jewish people succumb to egoism—self benefit at the expense of others—and mutual hatred, it is as if they block the pipeline of oxygen for all of humanity, cutting off the sparks of light.

The blockage is not visible, but it is felt keenly in the hearts of people and nations. Animosity against Jews conquers and suffocates the people of the world until it breaks out as antisemitic hate speech and actions. The more the lack of light and frustration intensifies in the nations of the world, the more it obliges them to take action, to seek to annihilate the Jews wherever they are.

So it is not a matter of principle that we should be the first to publish a spectacular picture of victory, nor will it help if we increase the deterrence mechanisms or increase retaliatory actions if we do not take great care to be united from within—not “united” as we are now because outsiders pressure us to embrace each other as we huddle in the shelters, but united in a true heartfelt and lasting unity.

If we just try to obscure the pressure on us, arming ourselves with a variety of fair arguments and adorning ourselves with eloquent information for the eyes of the global media, we will not solve the problem; to date, we have failed in these tactics. We need to listen to the world’s internal and underlying demand from us: Jewish unity.

The first step to calming down the attacks upon us must begin with acknowledging and agreeing that the fire rains down on us because we are not being a cohesive people. Literally. The international pressure on us should be used to increase our awareness of our obligation: to bring into the world the method of connection, to exemplify and preach to humanity anew the great rule of the Torah, “love thy neighbor as thyself.” Only from love will peace flourish in the world.

If we understand the gap between our current situation and the desired situation that the system of natural laws demands of us, we will understand that we must first bring about a ceasefire in the relationships between us as Jewish people. Then, we will cause the world to treat us kindly, with friendship and sympathy, and we will be filled with joy because, as it is written: “In Israel is the secret to the unity of the world,” Rav Kook (Orot HaKodesh).
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My new article on Linkedin “The “Holier Than Thou” Mantle Won’t Help Jews”

Just recently, following the outbreak of yet another round of violence between Hamas controlled Gaza and Israel, a group of 250 odd Jewish employees of Google signed a letter urging its CEO to recognize “the harm done to Palestinians by Israeli military and gang violence.” Moreover, the signatories “object to the conflation of Israel with the Jewish people,” declare “that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism,” and demand, among other things, “the review of all Alphabet [Google’s mother company] business contracts and corporate donations and the termination of contracts with institutions that support Israeli violations of Palestinian rights, such as the Israeli Defense Forces.” But perhaps the most notable point about this letter is the fact that the signatories identify themselves as Jews and have submitted the letter as such.

We have already seen this phenomenon in the past; it never helps. In February 1953, Ilya Ehrenburg, a Jewish Soviet journalist and historian, wrote a letter to comrade Joseph Stalin. In the letter, Ehrenburg suggested various steps “to combat American and Zionist propaganda.” He stated that the solution “to the Jewish question … is complete assimilation, the merging of people of Jewish origin with the peoples among whom they live.” He also referred to Zionists as “enemies of our Motherland” (USSR). Just weeks later, Ehrenburg, along with all the Jews in the Soviet Union, would have been sent to pre-prepared concentration camps in Birobidzhan, Siberia, had Stalin not miraculously died one day before the beginning of the execution of the plan.

In 1993, applying the same appeasing attitude, then Prime Minister of Israel Shimon Peres signed the Oslo Accord with head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Yasser Arafat. The two men received the Nobel Peace Prize for their feat, but where did it lead the two sides? Has there been any peace in the region since then?

Now, the Jewish Googlers are applying the same approach, and it will bring them just as much “success.” Playing “holier than thou” over Israel will not win them the sympathy of the world. It will win them its contempt and hatred. Just as establishing the Association of German National Jews to support the rise of the Nazi party to power did not save German Jews from the gas chambers, fawning to antisemitic organizations and movements will not save American Jewry.

The only thing that will help American Jewry, Israeli Jewry, and Jews the world over is to rise above the loathing that clearly pervades the relationships among us. “The prime defense against calamity is love and unity. When there are love, unity, and friendship between each other in Israel, no calamity can come over them,” states the book Maor VaShemesh.

Currently, we are nurturing the opposite of love and unity. Each community cares for its own interests in the narrowest, most self-centered manner. We are completely indifferent to the fate of Jews in other communities. In fact, we prefer to see them gone so that the world’s attention will turn elsewhere from the Jews.

It will not help us. We are in the spotlight because we are held responsible for everything that’s happening in the world, that is, everything that’s wrong with it. It does not matter that we can prove that we are not responsible for anything because in the eyes of the world, we are, and reason does not change people’s views.

The only thing that changes people’s views is feelings. And the only feeling that can change how the world views us is unity—our own unity. If we unite, the world will change how it feels about us. In 1929, faced with growing antisemitism in Germany, Dr. Kurt Fleischer, leader of the Liberals in the Berlin Jewish Community Assembly, stated, “Anti-Semitism is the scourge that God has sent us in order to lead us together and weld us together.” How tragic that his Jewish countryfolk did not act on his insight.

Fleischer’s contemporary, but worlds apart from the Liberal Jew, Rav Kook, who later became the Chief Rabbi of the Jewish settlement in Israel, wrote, “The construction of the world, which is currently crumpled by the dreadful storms of a blood-filled sword, requires the construction of the Israeli nation. The construction of the nation and the revealing of its spirit are one and the same, and it is one with the construction of the world, which is crumbling in anticipation for a force full of unity and sublimity, and all that is in the soul of Israel.”

Indeed, this is our only way out of trouble: to reconnect and create a force full of unity. Assimilation will not help, and neither will fawning or appeasing. Our only hope is our togetherness, since “The prime defense against calamity is love and unity” in the people of Israel.
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is balance with nature?“

Balance with nature means discovering sensations of love, mutuality and support in our connections. By doing so, we connect with the inner force and foundation of nature—the quality of love and giving.

Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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