Whether our prayer reaches the Creator depends not even on its strength, but on its quality, on our desire to unite together in order to be like the Creator. If we unite like one man, just like the Creator is one, then we can receive an answer from Him, feel how He reigns in us.

As if we want to catch His wave, turn the knob of the radio receiver and tune in to it so that it starts playing within us. In this way we adjust ourselves more and more until we become at least in some way similar to the Creator, and then we grasp His quality within us. First, it will be the weakest light of Nefesh, then Ruach, Neshama, Haya, and Yechida de Nefesh de Nefesh, etc., until we reach the end of correction when the Creator completely clothes Himself within our connection. Accordingly, we will begin to reveal our connection with the other tens and with the whole world.

Our likeness to the Creator, thanks to which His wave can sound within us, depends on how much we establish connections between us, as if between the parts of a radio receiver that must connect and tune in to an external wave. Then this wave will begin to sound within us. This is called the revelation of the Creator to creation.

Depending on how much we want to complement each other, to unite, we accordingly build a receiver capable of capturing the Creator. Connection with the Creator is possible only through the connection between us, as it is said: “And from love of friends one can reach love of the Creator.” Love is the highest level of connection.

And when we communicate with each other by connecting all the details of our radio receiver, we begin to reveal the voice of the Creator within us. The same principle applies to spiritual work as to technology. The only difference is that we ourselves serve as parts of this receiver that must unite and tune to the Creator’s wave, that is, to bestowal.

If we want to be in mutual bestowal and from it in bestowal to the Creator, then the Creator makes a correction by attuning us so that we can correctly unite with each other and allow Him to be revealed within our union. Then we can catch Him like a radar.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/22/21, “Pesach (Passover)”

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My new article on Linkedin “What It Takes to Make a Passover for All of Humanity”

This coming weekend, Passover begins. This holiday, which seems to be such a Jewish occasion, actually holds within it a message and a prediction for all of humanity. It is no coincidence that the story of Moses, Pharaoh, and the exodus from Egypt has inspired several epic films; the universal message of liberation from enslavement touches a soft spot in every person: the aspiration for freedom.

To make the most of the story, we need to understand what or who enslaves us, and how we can be freed. The name of the holiday, “Passover,” is no coincidence. It represents passing over from enslavement to freedom. And Pharaoh, the great oppressor, is none other than our ego.

Moses, whose name comes from the Hebrew word “moshech” [pulling], is the force that pulls us out of Pharaoh’s grip and delivers us, making us masters of our own fates. The story of Egypt is truly universal because the liberation from the ego pertains to each and every person. At some point, each of us will feel that the ego has become a ruthless master and will want to run away from it. This is when one exits Egypt by following Moses, and becomes a free person—liberated from one’s own tormenting Pharaoh—the ego.

These days, the days of Covid-19, are tough times for everyone. Although Covid has not made us feel enslaved, it certainly made us feel restrained. The mounting pressure on people’s psyche, the economic toll of lockdowns, the growing pain and grief are spoiling the party that we’d had until the arrival of the virus. Until its arrival, we were in love with Pharaoh. He, namely our ego, has given us civilization, progress, prosperity, and everything that we have achieved.

But Pharaoh does not remain the same. Like everything else in life, he changes over time. Our ego is growing and evolving, and in the process it becomes increasingly demanding. What was great yesterday becomes completely insufficient today. Gradually, we begin to feel increasingly dissatisfied. Shouldn’t it have been the opposite, that the more we have, the happier we are? Not if we consider who demands that we satisfy his wishes: our ego.

Our ego is insatiable; the more you feed it, the hungrier it grows. And the hungrier it grows, the more demanding it becomes. In the end, you find yourself locked in pursuit of satisfactions that seem rewarding only until you have them. Once you have what you want, your boss whispers “Bring me more‼! Bring me better‼!” Then, when you say “Enough!” you realize that you cannot get away; you are enslaved to your ego and the more you resist, the more it afflicts you. This is when you realize that Pharaoh was exploiting you, that he was good to you only as long as you served him. But the minute you want to quit, you uncover his true face. This is when the enslavement in Egypt begins.

We are not there yet, but we are nearing it. We are already feeling bad, but we have yet to realize that Pharaoh, our ego, is the cause of our bad feeling, and not a virus or any other disaster. When we grasp this, it will mark the beginning of our exodus from Egypt, from enslavement to the ego.

For now, it is enough to examine everything that we don’t like about our lives and ask ourselves who is really suffering from them. If we start creating some space between ourselves and our egos, we might be able to see who is demanding the work, who is reaping the reward, and who is paying the price.
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My new article on Linkedin “Home Sweet (Virtual) Home”

“A new form of digital currency is apparently moving into the world of real estate,” reported Fox Business on March 21. “The result,” continued the story, “is that a homebuyer just bought a piece of property that they can never actually live in.” The virtual house, created with a new form of block-chain technology called Non-Fungible Token (NFT), cost more than 500,000 very real US dollars.

Even more uncanny is the Reuters story that “A digital artwork by humanoid robot Sophia was sold at auction … for $688,888 in … the latest sign of a frenzy in the NFT art world.” Indeed, virtual reality is taking over.

But if you think about it, everything is virtual. When you look at how people lived fifty or sixty years ago, was their entertainment not largely virtual? They would come home from work and relax on the couch with a book or watch TV. The world they drifted to was virtual, invented by the author or the scriptwriter.

If they went to the theater, the movie presented a virtual world that existed only as long as the movie played on, and even then it was real only to the extent that the people in the theater “bought” the story. Yet, the money people paid to go to the movies or buy a book was real money. So in fact, nothing has changed but the means; the illusion is the same.

While our pastime has always relied on illusion, it yielded something very real: feelings. We may never know whether what we perceive is truly as we perceive it or perhaps it is some sort of an illusion, but we can always tell what we feel, and this is really all we care about (even if we don’t admit it). Feelings govern us; they decide what we do, and we spend our lives looking for ways to feel good. If we feel good, life is good; if we feel bad, so is life.

When something makes us feel good, we don’t care if it is physical or virtual; as long as we enjoy it, we want it. If I have half a million dollars to spend on feeling good, and a virtual home will give me that good feeling, there is no reason whatsoever not to spend it.

Therefore, we shouldn’t patronize people who spend a fortune on virtual art, or spend hours in virtual games. After all, we, too, are governed by our feelings. This is the real lesson we should learn from people’s willingness to purchase a house where they will never set foot.

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My new article on Linkedin “Malignant Relationships”

Cancer has plagued humanity for millennia. Some reports of cancer date back to the seventh century BC, and ancient scrolls in Egypt talk about cancer of the chest. Over the eons, countless cures have been concocted, yet cancer is only spreading. Some scientists believe that we should tackle cancer on a case by case basis since each case and each person is unique. In my view, there is only one cause to all forms of cancer; eliminate the cause and you have eliminated cancer.

Cancer is a disruption in the intercellular relationships, where some cells begin to behave selfishly, destroy their environment, and eventually the entire organism, causing its demise. But the cells in our body aren’t inherently selfish; they are programmed to cooperate and even sacrifice themselves for the sake of the body if need be. They begin to behave contrary to their innate program when something mars their structure, as though a malware has been installed in them, making them abusive toward their neighbors.

Cancer is a disruption in the intercellular relationships, where some cells begin to behave selfishly, destroy their environment, and eventually the entire organism, causing its demise. But the cells in our body aren’t inherently selfish; they are programmed to cooperate and even sacrifice themselves for the sake of the body if need be. They begin to behave contrary to their innate program when something mars their structure, as though a malware has been installed in them, making them abusive toward their neighbors. That malware is we, humans, whose bodies the cancer afflicts. When we turn against each other, we spread malice through all other levels of nature including our own cells. As a result, they, too, turn against each other until they die, and we die along with them. In other words, if our spirit is stricken with abusiveness, so it will be with our cells.

When we are abusive toward each other, it is not necessarily the bullies who suffer. In fact, it is usually not the bullies who suffer, though in the end, everyone suffers. No one wins from abusive conduct even if the punishment to the offenders isn’t always evident. The same goes for cancer: It is not always the selfish cells that become sick; often, another organ is struck first. However, in the end, everyone suffers equally as the entire body perishes.

If justice were poetic, cancer would afflict only the selfish. But things don’t work this way. Just as all cells are connected and a weakness somewhere may set off a sickness elsewhere, a selfish person may set off sickness in another person. That other person may not be selfish whatsoever, but because we are all connected, the entire system suffers and somewhere along the human chain, a link will break. In the end, the entire chain suffers, as with the body, but if we wait for the end, there will be no one to see that justice was done.

Therefore, the solution to cancer is not a case by case remedy, but the same remedy for all: the correction of our relations to those that naturally exist among the cells in our body. Instead of sickening our own cells through our ill-will toward each other, we should learn from them how to function like a healthy body. When we fend for each other instead of offend one another, we will be healthy in body, mind, and spirit.

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My new article on Linkedin “And the Children of Israel Sighed from the Elections”

Since the first lockdown, I hardly ever go outside. In the rare occasions that I do venture outside, I see the mounting hatred in people’s eyes growing from one election campaign to the next. In today’s election system, the half whose view is not represented in the government remains bitter and vindictive. And because people cannot accept the situation, their hatred becomes more spiteful and malicious with each disappointment.

Relinquishing our desire for autocracy will allow us to create a space between us where connection governs, to make room for collaboration and partnership. This is the ideal that forged the Jewish people—the ideal of love of others. In our remote past, we practiced this ideology, and that was our heyday in history. Even today, it is the only solution that can lift us from the gutter of hatred where we wallow.

In a paper titled The Nation, the great 20th century kabbalist Baal HaSulam wrote in this regard, “The difficulty of the matter is that men cannot relinquish their ideals at all, since one can make concessions when it comes to one’s material life, to the extent that it is necessary for one’s physical existence, but it is not so with ideals. By nature, idealists will give all that they have for the triumph of their idea. And if they must relinquish their ideals even a little, it is not an honest concession. Rather, they stay alert and wait for a time when they can reclaim what [they believe] is theirs. Therefore, such compromises cannot be trusted.”

Indeed, reality proves that we keep failing on our way to the ballot booths. My real hope is that our failures remain merely ideological and not deteriorate into worse scenarios. If they remain this way, it will help us arrive more quickly at the realization that we are on a dead-end road. Since we cannot compromise and keep trying to win, we are certain to soon give up on the current election system.

The election system reflects a worldview, a perception of reality. It is an interpretation of our way of life and our thinking. The current system reflects a destructive approach that builds one side on the ruin of the other. For this reason, emerging from the current deadlock can happen only if we mutually give up on our aspiration for absolute control. Again, we need not concede our ideals, our “truth,” but only the desire to be the sole ruler.

Relinquishing our desire for autocracy will allow us to create a space between us where connection governs, to make room for collaboration and partnership. This is the ideal that forged the Jewish people—the ideal of love of others. In our remote past, we practiced this ideology, and that was our heyday in history. Even today, it is the only solution that can lift us from the gutter of hatred where we wallow.

To achieve this, we must engage in open discourse in order to find how we can come closer to each other despite, and above our differences. We needn’t understand each other’s views, and certainly not accept them. Nature has made us opposite, so there is nothing we can do to sway each other’s views.

Nevertheless, if we give connection preference over winning, we will find that our differing views create a stronger bond among the rivals than if we agreed, precisely because of the effort we made to establish it. Just as couples strengthen the bond between them as they overcome crises in their relationships, a nation solidifies itself as its members do not succumb to hatred and divorce from one another, but rise above it and forge bonds that are stronger than the hate. King Solomon coined the essence of this approach with his words, “Hate stirs strife, and love will cover all crimes” (Proverbs 10:12).

Today, we need this approach no less than we did in our nation’s infancy. It will keep us unique, maintain our individuality, and at the same time forge a bond among us that will be a role model that the entire world will seek to emulate.
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Question: Why does a person not understand that while reading The Book of Zohar, he is engaging with the greatest thing that exists in reality?

Answer: If a person was shown what was happening to him, he would not be able to relate to it correctly.

For example, if a child could understand why he is developing like this: running from corner to corner, touching, trying, breaking, crying, he would already be above the level he is on.

The fact is that spiritual development does not happen in the same way as in our world where we go to university and fill our voids with knowledge while studying. Here is the development of feelings and desires that we do not possess.

Under the influence of light, we develop completely new properties in ourselves, which we initially do not have. When we reach their definite development, these properties are born in us, and we begin to feel the upper world in them.

But until they have developed, we cannot see them, feel them, or understand them because there must be some threshold to which we must grow and acquire a minimum level of sensitivity.
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From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #8

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Question: Why are we given such a property like sorrow? Apparently, the Creator does not have it but people do. How can sorrow be used beneficially for spiritual development?

Answer: Sorrow in our world arises because of lack of consciousness and lack of understanding the wholeness of the picture of creation

I would not call the emotion that you are talking about sorrow. I would rather call it compassion. It is when a person regrets that there are people who do not understand the greatness of creation and what a bliss it is to attain this greatness.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 1/20/19

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The purpose of man on earth is to attain the next, supra-egoistic level of his existence. We see that egoism has led us to a dead end.

How do you reach a new level? This is taught by the wisdom of Kabbalah, which says that we must rise above all beliefs, religions, and customs. But I think that during this time, they will also undergo serious changes.

Gradually, humanity will be convinced of the need to attain the next degree of its existence. But the question arises: “How is it easier for us to attain it, when there are many of us (billions) or few of us (millions)?”

According to Kabbalah, we have no right to regulate the human mass. We should be engaged only in the attainment of the upper force that controls us, to know it, to come into contact with it. This force is called “nature.”

The integral, global nature includes not only our world, but also other forms of it that we do not know. We cannot attain them yet because we are very limited by our egoistic worldview and feelings. The attainment of the entire universe will be the goal of the existence of humanity.

To do this, we need a lot of people to divide this huge, difficult task into the smallest parts, each of which can do its own little work, and then to put all the pieces together.

Therefore, I am in favor of not destroying anyone and not thinking about it at all, but only about how to direct people to search for the upper force and become like it—each one and all together.
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From KabTV’s “Challenges of the XXI Century,” 4/24/19

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Question: In physics and in other sciences of the corporeal world, a field is usually associated with some kind of a carrier. In the spiritual world, is there no such carrier, or is it also determined?

Answer: In our world, there are some fields that we find difficult to form in the form of corporeal ones. I do not see the difference between different influences and everything that exists. I see it only in the detector, a person who, within himself, determines the division into many different carriers, parts, and properties.

Basically, an information field is just a field. It is a power. We call it the force of bestowal. A person is the receiving power. He has the opportunity to receive perception from this field directly as he is, and then he feels himself as existing, as they say, in our world.

He also has the opportunity to rise in his sensations to higher levels of conjugation with this field. Then, in addition to our level of perception, he will feel other levels of this field—spiritual. But all the same, all these sensations are only in the person himself, and only in the degree of the similarity of his properties to the properties of the field.
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From KabTV’s “Meetings with Kabbalah” 1/3/19

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Collective perception brings a person to a different plane. It says that you have to break away from yourself and enter the team, take everything that exists in the team as your own, try to think, act, and solve issues based on someone else’s opinion, someone else’s desire, and someone else’s goals.

Get used to this image and after a while see if you can return to yourself and to what extent it will be a different “you.”

Therefore, in Kabbalah, the so-called “ten” is practiced, when ten people unite with each other and organize a common base for desire, for a goal, for thought, in order to turn themselves into one whole. To do this, everyone must nullify themselves toward everyone else, and then, as a result of such joint work—it is not easy, it takes time—they turn into one whole, as it were.

It is very interesting to observe how they begin to think, celebrate, and solve problems. Everyone has a completely different ability to see the world at the same time. This is an integral perception of reality.

They can move away from that back to themselves, do the same exercise again in new conditions, unite together and thus see what the difference is between personal perception and integral perception. This is what Kabbalah practices. It advises us to interact in such a way in order to gradually understand what actually exists in our consciousness, how it works, how we can look at it a little differently, not from itself.
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From KabTV’s “Together About Important Things” 9/2/18

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