Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How would you change if you won a half-billion dollar lottery?“

Recently in the United States, four people collectively won a little over a billion dollars. It was the third-biggest lottery win in US history, and the prize pool keeps growing. There is a well-known phenomenon where people who suddenly win such massive amounts of money have bigger chances of bankruptcy.

These prize winners receive a rare opportunity to make an effort to relate to life in a balanced manner. Can they balance the forces working on them in order to deal with the temptation of buying extravagant and unnecessary items? We are unable to digest or fully understand such a magnitude of luck.

True luck is having the ability to be directed to a balanced state through every situation, to constantly choose the happy middle between intellect and emotion. Sometimes we are lucky in some life events and unlucky in others. It so happens in order for us to find a balance by ourselves, so that we can check to see if what we receive is truly essential in our lives.

No matter how we spin it, luck exists within the system of nature, and no matter how lucky we are, we still depend on the general calculation where we are all connected together, the state of our collective soul. In such a state, forces operate on all of us at every given moment, and we have no idea as to why, how, to whom and when certain events arise for all kinds of people.

In order to derive more luck from this system, we should want to use nature’s forces in a balanced manner, with the desire to perceive and sense the system of nature in a balanced and harmonious way at every given moment of our lives.

We become balanced when our intellect and emotions are balanced, i.e., when our human nature (the force of reception) and the general nature (the force of giving) are balanced, regardless of our myriad drives. By balancing ourselves with nature, i.e., by acquiring the giving force over our innate receptive force, then our behavior can serve as an example for how to relate beneficially to other people.

Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by dylan nolte on Unsplash.

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Why Has the Balance in Family Life Been Disrupted?

Question: What prevents a married couple from managing their egoistic nature? After all, they both want to be happy with what they create between them.

Answer: A couple doesn’t fully understand where they are, which forces influence them, and why everything in the corporeal world is divided into male and female.

In our world the relations between the created being and the Creator are somehow imprinted in the relations between the sexes, although there are masculine and feminine attributes in both males and females.

However, we cannot come to any connection with each other. Still, when we establish any connection with each other we see that to the extent that we develop egoistically from one generation to the next, we actually draw further away from each other. It seems that we can get closer to each other in the sense of gender these days and to understand each other better, but it isn’t really so.

The ego that develops awakens even greater resistance and rejection in us. Throughout human history men and women always knew what fate designated for them. A man had to provide bread for the family and a woman had to manage the home.

A home is the woman, and she is responsible for managing the household and for raising the children, and the man has to provide all their needs. A couple understood that this is how they shared their responsibilities and so they carried the burden of life. It stemmed from the nature of family life as their grandfathers and grandmothers and fathers and mothers set such an example for them.

Suddenly, about 100 years ago all this began to fall apart all over the world. It did not matter whether a country was developed or not, the breakdown was the same. It took place in all the conservative and orthodox communities, and even in fanatic Islamic communities.

The plan of creation brings us to the point that we cannot do anything. Our egoism has grown so much that we can no longer leave the woman at home so that she can bring up the children and cook while the man goes out to work. This is impossible today, and so we ask ourselves, “How do we continue to live?”

This is where the revelation of the wisdom of Kabbalah comes in, in order to explain to us what the right relationship between a man and woman is because today it is impossible to achieve it in the same way as in the past.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 3/3/19

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Comment: A writer asks, “I want to understand how I can cope with myself. I cannot help telling the truth to people. I feel bad if I hide it and, therefore, I constantly break up relations; I speak the truth. I do not know what to do.” This is such a heartfelt cry.

My Response: This is not a heartfelt cry. It is a cry of egoism because he wants to impose his opinion on others. He believes that he understands the state of others, their wrong state, their possible correct state, and he wants to impose his understanding on them. This is absolute egoism that must simply be destroyed within oneself.

Who gives you the right to impose your opinion, your feelings, and your tastes on others?! Do they expect this from you?! Even if you think that this will make you better, it still does not give you the right to approach them and start filling them with your reasoning, tastes, goals, and so on.

Comment: I must say that there are a lot of people who think so.

My Response: This is such upbringing.

Question: Is there, generally speaking, such a truth that needs to be told to a person?

Answer: Truth is only in giving a person freewill so that he chooses his truth and that’s all. This is the most important thing in raising children and in relationships between adults as well.

Question: How can we do it?

Answer: Teach a person the technique of the correct revelation of life. If it were so, then we would all live perfectly, and so it will be someday.

Question: What if a person has a 100% belief that he is right and is simply obliged to pass it on to another?

Answer: Then he must shut himself up and swallow himself in order not to choke on his own truth!

What egoism he has! This egoism does not even allow him to feel it. The only thing that a person can do is to simply understand how selfish he is, that he is obliged to fill another with his opinion.

It’s horrible! This is stated very simply: “The highest limit of wisdom is in silence.”

Question: That is, you are better off keeping quiet at this moment?

Answer: Yes.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/15/21

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It is written in the act of creation: Let the waters be filled with swarming living creatures. That is, you can not kill a person who is called a being, a living being. (The Book of Zohar)

Water is the light of Hassadim. Everything came from water. Even from the ground nothing can grow without water.

Thus, the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” corresponds to the act of creation “Let the waters be filled with swarming living creatures,” i.e., the appearance of all living beings, no longer on the vegetative level but with more developed, animate qualities.

In this regard, Darwin was right in looking at the whole picture. The only thing he was wrong about was the law of natural development, that nature itself finds ways to develop. This is something that is pre-programmed and is gradually realized according to the informational data that comes from the very beginning, from the first act of creation.

Darwin did not understand this. Therefore, we are in this uncertainty. On one hand, it seems that he is right that there is a development, and on the other hand, we do not see how one thing develops from the other, where the intermediate stages are, and so on. Here people disagree and cannot find answers.

Kabbalah answers this very simply. More than two thousand years ago in the Book of Creation (Sefer Yetzirah), Abraham already wrote about these creations that everything comes from the informational data. There is nothing new. What we see before us is nothing other than the informational data in newer and newer manifestations of creation.

These creations appear as if they never existed before. However, they did exist, but only in the form of forces or information, and now they are manifested before us. So, this is nothing unusual—Darwin was right.
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From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #11

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Thus, are they the good gems that the world stands on? After all, in another place, it is written that they are the ruin of the world, as it is written, “This is Hevel [vanity], and it is an evil disease … and striving after wind.” The Book of Zohar

Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), mentioned in The Book of Zohar, was written by King Solomon (Sholomo).

Each name has its own meaning. Shlomo—from the word “Shalem.” “Shalem”—from the world-famous word “Shalom,” which means “Shlemut”—completeness, perfection.

That is, when I say to someone, “Shalom,” I want everything to be perfect for them.

Therefore, the name Solomon (Shlomo) speaks of the perfection achieved by the king as a great Kabbalist, a sage.

Everyone knows that he was a wise man. But many people think that Solomon was just a wise man. No, he was not only a sage, but a truly great Kabbalist. And his wisdom is nothing but the light of wisdom that he received from the space surrounding us.

After all, we live in a space filled with energy, information, and eternal movement. From this space, with our current sense organs, we catch only very tiny clumps of matter and perceive this energy and information in the form of the low matter of our world.

And King Solomon, this great Kabbalist, felt the energy and information that exists around us and described it in his book Kohelet.

In addition, Kohelet is one of his seven names. And Kohelet is the highest of them.

King Solomon discovered that we are in the lowest state, which can be called “stones,” the foundations of our grossest material world. Moreover, these stones are immovable, nothing can be made of them. It is a matter that cannot change.

But those stones that you turn from the most immovable and dead into the quality of bestowal and love, that is, when you begin to process, to transform, your primitive, egoistic desires, directed only to yourself, which cannot be moved into bestowal and love, into a connection with others, then they really turn into pearls, into great positive forces on which the world stands.

And then, from the seven great inanimate pillars, they turn into pillars of light directed outward from you.
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From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #13

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Question: Do we currently treat each other egoistically without even realizing it?

Answer: We do not understand that we are beating ourselves with this, and terribly so, and getting many times more damage than the momentary pleasure we are giving ourselves.

Question: Why? What is the reason for this?

Answer: Egoism closes our eyes. Therefore, we think that by humiliating and suppressing others, we rise and are better off. But, this is not so.

Suddenly, a general system is revealed to us, a common dependence on each other. If I suppress, humiliate, or deceive others, I do damage to myself many times more. This comes back to me at a much greater loss than what I supposedly earned and enjoyed when I did something bad to someone else.

The system of connection between us is arranged so that this comes back to me. Not immediately, not explicitly to me. Yet, if I see the whole system, I will behave correctly. Then I will not have any questions about how to make a prenuptial agreement. I will do nothing wrong even to someone who is far away, much less to someone I am going to live with.

I will clearly see the reason we met, and it is not by chance, how we need to communicate with each other, and what level of agreement we need to reach.

Question: Will there be no thoughts about using each other, not trusting each other?

Answer: How can I do this if I feel that it will immediately come back to me, affect me? Where can I hide? I will begin to see the other as a part of me even more important than myself. After all, passing through him, this signal will return to me amplified.

Therefore, the very security system that exists in me all the time will not allow me to think or do something bad.

Question: Today, this security system works in one direction. How I can isolate myself from the other. When it begins to work toward the outside will the vector change and the attitude change?

Answer: Yes. But only if we will see that we are interconnected.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Marriage Contract” 8/19/09

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Question: Usually, parents try to impose their values on their children, and children absolutely do not accept this. Today, for example, they do not accept an excessive desire for knowledge or for work. Is this fundamentally wrong?

Answer: Each generation has its own aspirations. The old generation in no way can impose their understanding of nature on the younger generation. It has outlived themselves and should give them only nourishment.

And the new generation must develop in its desires and aspirations. It is only desirable that they be correct and not as tangled and broken as they are today.

You should never impose the thoughts and values of the old generation on the new one. Educate by example only. With this example, I show that I solve all questions, needs, tasks in this way: respecting, calculating, being in balance with the environment, with myself, with my family, etc. Therefore, according to my example, they will also solve their problems at their own level, with the same attitude toward them.

We only need an example, no words. Children understand everything like monkeys. They understand us better than we think.

The main thing for us is to correct ourselves, and then we will be able to influence them in this way. In addition, our inner desires and inner corrections are associated with their souls because they come from us.

If for their sake we want to create a correct, harmonious, kind society, which takes into account each other and wants to achieve mutual public consent, then they will feel it. In them, it will begin to act in spite of and without any prodding from our side.

I really hope that this will be the catalyst, the button, that will push us and force us to start correcting ourselves.

Comment: But you say that our generation is a generation of spoiled, lost people.

My Response: Moreover, it is the spoiled people who can begin to change for the sake of their children, so that at least in them they can see a certain direction for the better.

Otherwise, can you imagine how unhappy they will be compared to us! We will see a completely disfigured, twisted, incomprehensible society, which stagnates in convulsions and does not know how to escape from suffering. We will see this in our children and grandchildren.

Question: And what to do?

Answer: Just turn to yourself. We cannot fix them. Turn to yourself, without looking at them. And suddenly we will see how they begin to take an example from us, begin to draw closer to us and participate with us in new relations to each other, in the construction of a new society.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Marriage Contract” 8/19/09

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Question: I have been studying the wisdom of Kabbalah for two years now. I constantly feel guilty for investing very little in the ten. I am forced to filter my thoughts and desires every single moment. I am not happy anymore. Is this wrong? After all, you say that Kabbalists are the greatest egoists and that they love to enjoy.

Answer: You should not restrict yourself from pleasures in any way. The goal of creation is to bring pleasure to the created beings.

A person should never be in a state of sadness. If this state comes and takes possession of him, it is not a good thing. This state should be limited in time and intensity because with your sadness you reproach the Creator for having brought you to this world and for forcing you to suffer.

What is His attribute of bestowal? It should be manifested now too. In any state, each of you and all of you together should feel absolutely happy because the Creator constantly guides you only to the good. This is why it is written that even if a sharp sword is placed on your neck, you should still believe that it is for the best and that the Creator will save you.

It is actually this force that leads you forward and saves you. You should beware of being discouraged especially in the group. If the group sits and suffers, it is a terrible spiritual crime. It should not happen under any circumstances! On the contrary, you should kindle joy and optimism.

Question: Sometimes, in a state of descent it seems that the whole world is collapsing. How should we work with our thoughts in this state?

Answer: I understand you, the world is indeed collapsing, but it is the whole world and not us. We know what this world is for and what we should do in order to bring the method of salvation to the world, which only depends on changing our intention, our consciousness, our desire, our connection.

It is actually our connection with each other and with the Creator that the salvation of the world depends on. And then we will feel ourselves in the upper world.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 2/3/19

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