Find Out What Happiness Is!

572.03The shattering is revealed within our natural egoistic desires in which we are able to see, feel, and experience. Therefore, we have at our disposal a rich vocabulary for expressing our unwillingness, suffering, misunderstandings, confusion of feelings—all negative feelings.

Many novels have been written and many movies have been made about difficult, painful, dramatic situations in which people suffer. We have many words, feelings, and expressions to describe suffering. And there is almost nothing to say about good states—we just feel good and that’s it!

Why aren’t there as many subtleties in happiness as in unhappiness? After all, doesn’t one exist against the other? And it is all because we don’t understand and aren’t able to feel happiness deeply, we don’t build good on top of evil.

If we did, we would find a lot more words to express love than we currently have. We can talk about suffering endlessly, create entire novels and movies. And the good ending is very short: they hugged, they kissed, they smiled at each other, and the movie ends.

The problem is that we don’t know what it means to be truly happy. In our world, we do not build the good against the evil so that all crimes are covered by love. If we truly want to reveal love and reveal all the facets of connection, all the shades and sensations in the connection, then we should not erase the contradictions that existed before, but only cover them with love.

Then our connection will absorb all the nuances, all the subtleties, that were in the suffering, in the shattering. Therefore, the Creator created a simple vessel, filled it with simple light, and then broke it so that we could reveal how many subtleties there are in this breaking, the many contradictions between us and the various manifestations of hatred, rejection, and withdrawal.

In our world, we only delve into our unpleasant experiences and constantly sort our relations with each other. All this is in order to then cover them with love. We do not have colorful expressions and words for love now, but we can feel it in the same rich colors as suffering, and we will thus reveal the Creator.

Otherwise, we have no feelings worthy of Him, no words to express. There is only white motionless light and nothing else. I cannot feel it, I have nothing to cling to in it. It fills the entire universe in equal measure, and I have no way to feel it.

Therefore, we must try to combine sadness and joy, evil and good. And then all the rich vocabulary that we have for expressing unpleasant feelings and actions, all the abyss of suffering and discontent, we can project and transfer to positive impressions and feelings of happiness in order to reveal the Creator according to them.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/17/21, “Love Covers All Trangressions”

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Physiology Is Not Spirituality

600.04Question: If what has come down to us from written and oral sources is perceived literally and not in the language of branches, then we perceive the masculine and feminine incorrectly, not as a component in a person, but as gender?

But we were born men and women. Does male and female egoism exist in each of us?

Answer: No, it does not exist. Any person spiritually consists of a male and a female part. There is no privilege of one over the other. It is their right combination that gives us perfection.

There are masculine and feminine qualities in every person and they must be balanced regardless of gender. Our physiology has nothing to do with spirituality.
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From KabTV’s “Ask the Kabbalist” 3/20/19

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The Most Natural Activity

546.02Comment: Sometimes a person who studies the science of Kabbalah has such a distinct feeling that such a great, grandiose, almost incomprehensible revelation awaits him that he does not believe that he is capable of it.

My Response: Correct. But the fact is that this grandeur, eternity, perfection, and worlds are in us. By changing ourselves, we understand all this, and it is revealed within us. In fact, the disclosure of one’s “I” is the most natural work of man, going back to his root, to his father’s house from where he came from, to the Creator who created you. As a result, you return to the point of your creation. This is the most perfect, the most comfortable state. And therefore, it is the most natural, direct way of development. It is very close.

Question: I know a parable of a great Kabbalist in which several people remembered where they came from. And the smartest of them remembered how his umbilical cord was cut off when he was born. Is this some kind of spiritual action?

Answer: Of course, because he is there.

In the spiritual world, a person starts from zero, actual zero. Therefore, he himself determines everything that happens to him, he agrees with it, he chooses all his states, participates in his intrauterine spiritual development, in birth, and then in everything that happens to him.
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From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #2

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 1/21/21

Preparation to the Lesson

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Lesson on the Topic of “Breaking the Barriers to Spirituality”

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Selected Excerpts from the Book, Yosher Divrei Emet

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Selected Highlights 

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The Multifaceted Work Of A Kabbalist Teacher

165Question: What does a teacher of Kabbalah do so that his students will learn to feel spirituality correctly and respond to it correctly?

Answer: It is not important for a student to know this. He sees that his teacher gives lessons every day, that he awakens the students with his questions, and tries to guide them toward the goal of creation, to build mutual connection between them so that they can carry out what Kabbalistic sources say.

The teacher teaches the students to work with the sources and to extract questions and answers from them. He shapes the students so that they will be able to work independently. So the teacher’s work on the students is multifaceted, but this is education.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 12/2/18

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Audio Version Of The Blog – 1/20/21

Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
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“We Can Soften The Onslaught” (Medium)


Medium published my new article “We Can Soften the Onslaught”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” 2020, which Time magazine dubbed the “worst year ever,” has barely ended but it already seems like 2021 will “outperform” its former as far as misfortunes go. It seems as though nature has launched an all-out onslaught on humanity and will not let up until it kills us all or we surrender. But as is always the case with science and humanity, when we don’t understand the cause and effect relation, we call it a miracle or a coincidence. This is nonsense. If you drive against traffic, you will get hit. The accident will not be a coincidence; it will be a direct result of your stupidity, as MLK has pointed out.

Nature has a very clear direction, a very clear traffic flow that has existed since the dawn of time: Everything moves toward connection. The more evolved a creature is, the more complexity it demonstrates. This manifests on all levels of nature, from the subatomic level through the human body, to the Earth’s ecosystem, and onto the entire universe. Everything is interconnected and functions perfectly within the system. In turn, the system protects it and supports its continuous development.

Only we, humans, are driving against traffic. The more we evolve, the more we strive to be individuals, separated, alienated from everyone and everything. The more we insist on our individualism, the more blows we suffer precisely because we are moving against traffic. If we continue to insist, we will have a fatal car crash; there should be no doubt about it.

Our ignorance of nature’s stream and our stupidity in insisting not to learn about it have inflicted on us all the blows we have suffered so far, and will inflict on us the blows that we are destined to suffer down the line. It is a terrible shame since it really needn’t be this way. All we need is to recognize that we, too, must evolve toward connection rather than division and separation. This is all it takes to align us with nature’s flow of evolution. It will make the blows we are suffering now for going the opposite direction become a tailwind that will push us forward to new heights and unimaginable achievements.

Nature’s apparent “onslaught” is really our own doing. We can soften it and even reverse it into nurturing if we only open our eyes, discard our ignorance, abandon division, and embrace the connection that is nature’s most inherent quality.
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“The Superior Principles That Guarantee Life” (Medium)


Medium published my new article “The Superior Principles that Guarantee Life”

It is not only America that’s falling apart. The Dutch government resigned in its entirety, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is stepping down, the Italian government is on the brink of collapse, and the coronavirus is wreaking havoc all over the world. Vaccines have already been developed, but new and more infectious strains have already appeared spreading more rapidly and with a higher death toll than before there were vaccines. And worst of all, we are shifting into a new phase in the collapse of the old world: from lack of work to lack of food. If we don’t wake up soon, we will wake up to a plague of hunger, and people will smash everything for a piece of bread for their children.

The only way to avert the looming meltdown is to reconstruct society under new, non-egoistic principles. This does not mean that we have to become altruistic, but we must understand that if we continue to behave selfishly toward each other, we will die; it’s as simple as that.

The new principle that must be the basis of the new society is connection, or rather, mutuality. Succinctly, mutuality means that we must treat everyone, whoever they are, equally. We must make sure that every single person receives the basic necessities that allow for reasonable subsistence. This principle must override any border, view, race, gender identity, faith, or any other difference among people.

Since the problem that the world is going to face is lack of staple foods, the first and foremost expression of our connection must be the provision of sufficient nutrition to everyone. Whether people are Communists, Nazis, or any other extreme you can imagine, we must still provide everyone without exception with the basic needs of life.

As we attempt to achieve this, we will find that we need a global, overarching organization that will guarantee that everyone, in every country, gets those staples. Clearly, such an umbrella organization brings to mind the image of a global government with all the justified concerns about excessive use of power. However, without global coordination of food manufacturing and distribution, chaos will ensue everywhere.

The era of self-sufficient nation states is over. Just as the coronavirus has spread throughout the world faster than a brush fire, so will any crisis going forward. Without global collaboration that genuinely seeks the well-being of everyone, we will not survive. And nothing is more fitting to start our global cooperation than guaranteeing food supply to every single person on the planet. This will not only be our biggest test yet, but it will also be the proper basis on which to build humanity’s new establishments, which will cater to the well-being of all of humanity.

It has already been shown — and I, too, have written about it multiple times — that the seemingly endless stream of crises are all connected to our attitude toward each other and to nature. Countless scientists and scientific institutions have published studies that link our mistreatment of other people and the whole of nature to the collapse of our global ecosystem. The current global institutions are powerless; they are dummies with no real power, and perhaps it is only for the best, since they actually represent the interests of their countries and have no real concern for the well-being of humanity.

As I said in the beginning of this piece, the global institution that will oversee the food provision project need not consist of altruists. Besides, as we know, altruists are very hard to find these days. Instead, the people who will lead this project will be those who understand that it is in our egoistic interest to guarantee everyone’s well-being, or the global system will collapse. This understanding is imperative, and it is realistic to find such people.

Understandably, governments will not be happy to yield any power to such an institution, but we can trust nature to do its thing and force them to comply the hard way, at the expense of all of us. There are trying times ahead, but if we understand that our lives are at stake, and how we can save them, perhaps we will succeed.
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Collecting The Pieces Of The Common Soul

117Question: It is written in The Book of Zohar: “How good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together, as well. ” This means being friends: that at the hour when they sit together, they do not separate from one another.

At first, they seem to be people at war with each other, wanting to kill each other, then again they return to brotherly love. The Creator says about them: “How good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together, as well!” But, moreover, the Creator Himself is attentive to their speeches, and He has delight, and He rejoices for them.

How can it be that people who are ready to kill each other, nevertheless, come together and brotherly love arises between them?

Answer: This is really amazing, because we come from one single soul. This system was created as one common desire, one single organism. And then it was deliberately broken into small pieces.

This is similar to how a Lego mosaic is constructed: first, a picture is made, and then a special stamp cuts it into pieces so that children can learn to assemble a picture from its components.

Our common soul is created in a similar way. Since it is broken into the smallest pieces, we must find such a connection between each other, such juxtaposition that all our souls again gather into one big picture, into one single soul.

This one soul is called Adam, from the word “Adomeh—similar” to the Creator. To the extent that we get closer to each other to put together a big picture, we become Adam, human.

That is, the human in us is not our animal body and not our original natural animal inclinations, but it is the measure of our similarity to the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #3

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With A Machine Gun in Every Window

541Question: Sociologist Igor Eydman wrote on his Facebook page: “All mass murders in world history were fighting for the sake of ‘high ideals’: religion, ‘national interests,’ ideology. Terror and violence will cease only when the highest value for people will become not gods, leaders, ideologies and other artificially created entities, but their own individual ones: life, health, freedom, creativity, security, life comfort. And not only in Muslim, but also in Christian, Jewish, Chinese and other societies.

“An individual who acts in his own rational interests will not risk himself and destroy others for collective misconceptions. War and terror would not be possible in the world of rational individualism.
Only moving towards this goal, unfortunately, unattainable in the foreseeable future, can reduce mass violence and conflicts. This is banal, but I see no other way out of the current permanent massacre.” [in translation]

How do you like such a simple, trivial idea that if a person only cares about himself, he will not get involved in all these conflicts?

Answer: Yes, it is good, of course, to speak, but egoism will wear us out, wither us, squeeze all the juices out of us, and will not let go until we wish only one thing: to rise above it. And to exist in it in some comfortable, warm corner will not work.

Question: Will it still lead us out of this corner?

Answer: Yes. It is specially created to be constantly evolving. All the time its evil, green, poisonous juices wander around. It will not let us live in peace.

Egoism is growing in us all the time. Our natural desire is to somehow get along with it because we seem to have no other way.

And so we invent all sorts of theories of appeasement for ourselves with it, between us, and so on. “Well, can’t we? We are all human. There are republicans, there are leftists, all kinds of socialists. It doesn’t matter, we must somehow live together.” It will not work! We will arm ourselves and everyone will sit at home with machine guns in every window.

We will have to understand that only adopting the middle line of our joint coexistence will give us access to the next human level when it is neither you, nor me, but precisely because we use our mutual hatred, rejection. We are using it! We do not suppress it, we do not extinguish it, but on the contrary, we use both the left and right lines correctly in order to raise the middle line above them. And then we can build ourselves.

But this is a very serious design. A person will understand what he is building, what he is building it for, what he is doing. All in serious internal stress. And by this, he will rise above his nature. Because the two lines that exist in nature—the right and the left—are being animated in us more and more in order for us to call the middle line. The Creator is the source from which these two lines, right and left, arise in us.

We must contrapose them in such a way that we understand how to connect them together so that a middle line appears. And we will learn and see where we come from, where it all descended from in us.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 11/9/20

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