Question: The entire modern history of the revival of Israel and settlement of the country looks irrational. There is an ambiguous attitude of religious movements to this issue: some are ready to give their lives for every piece of land and some do not even want to enter the Land of Israel until the Messiah comes. Why does one religion have such big differences?

Answer: People understand and interpret the Torah differently.

On one hand, it is said that there is no greater commandment than settling in this land in both the spiritual and physical sense. On the other hand, there are many different movements in Judaism, some of which believe that you can not arrive in the land of Israel until the Messiah comes.

We, as Kabbalists, interpret the Torah in the spiritual sense of the word. And in the physical sense, there is no difference if you live in this place on Earth or in another. The only difference is how you feel your closeness to the quality of bestowal, the quality of love. The land of Israel is called Eretz Yisrael. “Eretz,” “Ratzon,” means desire. Yisrael (Yashar Kel) is a desire pointed directly to the Creator.

If you have a desire pointed directly to the Creator, then the upper light manifests itself in this desire as a special filling, which is called the Creator. It is said that the Creator is in the land of Israel around the clock.

This is all to be understood in the spiritual sense of the word. This is how Kabbalah interprets the Torah. That is why Kabbalists have always been striving to come here.
[271757]
From KabTV’s “Systematic Analysis of the Development of the People of Israel” 11/25/19

Related Material:
To Become One Nation
Reclaiming The Spiritual Land Of Israel
The Land Of Israel: Dispersion And Assimilation, Part 7

Filed under: Israel, Nations of the World | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Question: Why, with the constant revelation of evil in me, do I feel great suffering? Is it because I am not satisfied with my advancement and with my failure to get closer to the Creator?

Answer: It is because the discrepancy between what is desired and what is in reality invokes suffering. In this case, you want to advance, but you feel inferior compared to the state you would like to be in.

But on the other hand, these are positive sufferings. They teach you to move forward correctly. It is therefore forbidden to immerse into them and to sit and cry, but you must implement them correctly.

Question: So, the revelation of evil involves suffering no matter what?

Answer: No. It depends on how you perceive it. If you do not feel the difference between what you want and what you now have as suffering, you will not advance. But this is not the path of suffering.

The path of suffering is when you are unconsciously in them and do not know how to move and what to do. All of humanity is in this state.

Only people who study the wisdom of Kabbalah are aware of the sufferings that they receive and can use them to aim themselves toward the purpose of creation. They ascend above the sufferings and even feel it as sweetness, as guidance toward the desirable goal.
[240303]
From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 11/18/18

Related Material:
Is It Possible To Advance Without Suffering?
Derech Eretz (The Middle Road) Warmed By The Sun
Derech Eretz Warmed By The Light

Filed under: Spiritual Work | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Preparation to the Lesson

Writings of Rabash, “What Are Torah and Work in the Way of the Creator?”

Lesson on the Topic of “Work With Faith Above Reason”

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Study of the Ten Sefirot, Vol. 3, Part 8″

Selected Highlights 

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download:MP3 Audio

Filed under: Audio Version of the Blog | Add Comment / Ask Question →

From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 10/22/20

The protests following the beheading of Samuel Paty are France’s Swan Song. Paty, a schoolteacher, was murdered for showing cartoons of Prophet Muhammad while teaching about free speech. According to BBC News, “Police raided some 40 homes following the attack, and the government also ordered a mosque to close for six months.” It is far too little, far too late for France. The country is well on its way to becoming a Muslim Caliphate.

The Islamization of France did not begin recently. For decades, Muslims have been coming to France in search of a better life than the ones they had back home. Until approximately 2010, immigrants came mainly from what were once France’s colonies. These countries were referred to as “protectorates,” as in the case of Tunisia and Morocco, or as part of metropolitan France, as with Algeria. Many French citizens settled in those colonies, and while the French enjoyed complete freedom, the locals were oppressed.

After France retreated from the colonies, immigrants continued to stream into France as either cheap labor or as refugees seeking shelter from hunger and war. The French, for their part, implemented a policy of assimilation and encouraged immigrants to adopt the local language, culture, and faith, namely Christianity.

But since roughly the mid-1980s, France changed its policy from assimilation to integration, and the new arrivals were allowed to retain their distinctive cultures and traditions. That decision backfired. Immigrants did not merge into the French society successfully and largely remained strangers, with their own culture and their own religion, and a clash of civilizations began.

In the early years of this century, France acknowledged its mistake and reinstalled a policy of assimilation, but the wheel could not be turned back. In the second decade of the 21st century, immigration to France grew extensively, mainly from war ravaged countries such as Iraq, Syria, Libya, and others, and the French had no power to stop it.

Despite persistent warnings of the ramifications of unchecked immigration of radical Islamists, France remained hospitable to them, and they have rewarded it with death and terror. France has given up “retaking” many of its cities and neighborhoods, which have become “no go zones” for non-Muslims. French author Pascal Bruckner stated after the murder of Samuel Paty: “This is not an act of ‘separatism’; it is a declaration of war that must be dealt with accordingly.” However, the French people have no fighting spirit left in them. Even though they are by far the majority in their country, they feel powerless and helpless before their domineering “guests.”

Italian journalist Giulio Meotti, who often writes on Middle Eastern issues, recently wrote on the Gatestone Institute website, describing the current situation in France: “France’s elites… fail to understand the ideological war that the enemies of open societies have declared on them.” Another French author, Élisabeth Badinter, wrote, “[T]here is the continuity of our submission. I am convinced that if we had known how to say no, we would not be here. They all bowed their heads out of fear of appearing racist or out of patronage.”

Indeed, the French are unable to resist the takeover by Muslim fundamentalism. They have succumbed to their former subjects, but mainly to their skepticism about their way of life and principles. They no longer holler Vive la République! They want peace and quiet, but they will not get it. They will be forced to change their churches into mosques, their democracy into a caliphate, and their lives from freedom to oppression. The wheel of fate has turned on them, and the rulers are about to become subjects.

It will not happen overnight, but the process has already crossed the point of no return. We are witnessing the crumbling of one of the pillars of the Western world. And what is even more daunting is the thought that France today is Germany tomorrow, and so will be the rest of Western Europe.

Filed under: Facebook | Add Comment / Ask Question →

If I am corrected and look not from the perspective of egoism, but from the perspective of the will to bestow, then I love the creatures not for their animate qualities, but for the Creator’s light. If I see that the friends contain a part of the Creator, they all belong to one field blessed by the Creator, and they all carry the Creator inside of them.

The Creator does not want to reveal Himself to me instantly, but hides behind different images of this world. If through them, I learn to have a good attitude to others, as a result I’ll attain bestowal to the Creator. In reality the Creator isn’t behind them, but inside of them. The creatures help me attain the intention of “for the sake of bestowal” to the Creator.

Caring for others is opposite to my egoistic nature. But I can change myself by overcoming the degrees of still, vegetative, animate, and human until I start treating all of them with love. I will reveal that it wasn’t the creatures, but the Creator who was concealed from me so that I would build the right intention of bestowal.

To check the intention one must take one’s attention away from the immediate action, so it becomes unimportant, and the main thing becomes: for whose sake am I performing this action, and whom does it benefit. This determines whether I’m in the Creator’s world or in my own world, in my own shell.

The essence of an action is measured by the intention. The intention “to bestow more” brings a person closer to the Creator, and the intention “to receive more” distances him from the Creator. In the middle there is a neutral point of zero, from which a person decides where he will be: in the spiritual world or the corporeal one.

A person is cured only when he helps the friends, when he cares about curing them and not himself. Then he really can conquer any problem.

We have absorbed all the cultures. We won’t be allowed to gather as one nation—until we wish for all the nations to gather together until we think of others, and then, precisely for this sake, we correct ourselves and thus will be able to thrive in every regard—if we care for everyone to thrive.
From Twitter, 10/22/20

Related Material:
My Thoughts On Twitter 10/19/20
My Thoughts On Twitter 10/18/20
My Thoughts On Twitter 10/14/20

Filed under: Thoughts on Twitter | Add Comment / Ask Question →

New Life 1282 – Management And Professionalism Versus Difficulties In Interpersonal Relations
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

A successful business must be integral since this is the general inclination of human development today. A self-assured, middle manager who blocks innovative ideas subsequently leads to negative outcomes for staff and the business. and may need to be fired. It could be a good idea to bring someone from the outside in who can build a positive team-spirit. The desirable outcomes would need to be examined and defined for both the manager and the workers According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, the implementation of orders received from above depends on the emotional connection between everyone. The staff group would need to similarly connect as one, spiritual, round body in mutual guarantee and love.
[271434]
From KabTV’s “New Life 1282 – Management And Professionalism Versus Difficulties In Interpersonal Relations,” 9/25/20

Video: Play Now | Download

Audio: Play Now | Download

Filed under: New Life | Add Comment / Ask Question →

My new article on Linkedin “I Think, Therefore I Am”

“I think, therefore I am,” said French philosopher René Descartes, and he was right. We are living in the world of thoughts. In fact, our entire world is a thought, and our perception of it keeps changing and evolving. As our perception changes, so does our world. We may not realize it but we can control our thoughts, and in this way determine the kind of world we want to live in.

Although our thoughts seem to come into our minds of their own accord, so to speak, they are actually a product of our environment. We absorb ideas and thoughts from people around us, social media, and every interaction we have with people, whether real or virtual. If the streams that create our thoughts projected positivity, we would become positive people.

Although our thoughts seem to come into our minds of their own accord, so to speak, they are actually a product of our environment. We absorb ideas and thoughts from people around us, social media, and every interaction we have with people, whether real or virtual. If the streams that create our thoughts projected positivity, we would become positive people. Since they currently project negativity, ill-will toward others, and promote concentration on ourselves, this is what we end up doing, and we end up thinking that the whole world is as selfish and as mean as the sources portray.

These sources tell us that this is the real world, and if we want to present a more optimistic, considerate, or caring perspective, they tell us we are unrealistic and make us feel as though we’re out of touch with reality. The truth, however, is that they simply want to keep pumping negative ideas into our minds since fear and negativity benefit them. But they don’t benefit us, and they are not the truth.

The truth is that life could not exist without balance, without equilibrium between good and bad, negative and positive. Everything in life gives and receives. Every cell in our body loves the body it lives in and gives it all it can. In return, the body sustains and nourishes the cells in our body. We wouldn’t be alive if this weren’t so.

The true reality is reciprocity and balance, but people think that ill-will rules the world, a ruthless desire to receive, to take, to plunder and abuse. In fact, people are the only species in all of reality that’s warped this way, and this makes us more miserable than any other being.

So if we change what impacts us and accept more balanced messages from the environment, we will change our thoughts. If we change our thoughts, we will change reality. This is all it takes to fix the world.
[272968]

Filed under: New Publications | Add Comment / Ask Question →

My new article on Linkedin “On the Merits of Hypocrisy”

If you make a list of the current “weapons” against Covid-19, you will be quite disheartened. All we have are the masks, social distancing, and our “weapon of mass destruction,” better known as closure. But people are sick of wearing masks, longing to close the distance between themselves and the people they love, and cannot stay indoors indefinitely, so none of these weapons really works. As a result, Covid-19 is not only spreading, but it is becoming increasingly aggressive and difficult to cure.

We can change the way we feel by changing the way we behave. All it takes is mutual determination and the understanding that we have no choice, since Covid-19 is smarter and stronger than any of us, if we stand alone, but cannot beat us if we act as one.

There are rumors about vaccines, but nothing has been approved, and no one knows if and when it will happen. So much for conventional medicine fighting a non-conventional bug.

Instead of uselessly struggling with the virus with inefficient instruments, we should remember what Einstein said, “The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.”

He’s right. We created this problem, and in fact all of our problems, with our egoistic, self-centered thinking. This is why only if we adopt an inclusive thinking, one that takes everyone into account rather than only ourselves, we will be rid of the virus and the rest of the problems plaguing the world.

In fact, we can look at the virus as a teacher who forces us to change our thinking, our relation to each other. Against our will, Covid is teaching us how to build a more just and integral society. Look at what it’s done so far: It’s forced us to give out money, to realize that some people will never have jobs but we must still look after them. It’s forced us to start thinking of the elders in our community and make sure they stay healthy and safe. It’s forced us to accept that we are all responsible for one another because anyone can spread the virus that may kill others even if we may not be affected whatsoever. In short, the virus is teaching us to think of one another. So if we think of one another, we won’t need its teaching and we’ll be virus free.

You could argue that you can’t think of others because it’s insincere. That may be true, but how sincere are you when you smile at a salesperson in a store, when you say “Sorry” if you bumped into someone on the street, or when you say “Have a good day”? We see that we agree to insincerity as long as it serves our interests, but when we have to do something that does not seem rewarding, we promptly call “sincerity” to our defense.

This “double standard” is the real insincerity. Since we are already insincere, let’s put it to good use. Let’s make the best of hypocrisy. Let’s be nice even when we don’t see the benefit of it, because if we do it together, we will change the atmosphere in our society and people will become genuinely nice. Let’s pretend that we care, fake being kind, and let’s do it all together. Chances are that in no time, everyone will be kind and caring.

We can change the way we feel by changing the way we behave. All it takes is mutual determination and the understanding that we have no choice, since Covid-19 is smarter and stronger than any of us, if we stand alone, but cannot beat us if we act as one.

Filed under: New Publications | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What are top Jewish values?“

Top Jewish values are those that originally united us as a Jewish people. They are values initially established by Abraham and his group, who became known as “the people of Israel,” around 3,800 years ago.

Abraham set the foundation for Jewish values of unification and mutual responsibility to spread among his group. Guided by such values, Abraham’s group learned how to live harmoniously as a single unified nation.

Today, such values have become less relevant in the eyes of many Jews, to a point where we are more like a cluster of separate groups—left vs. right, religious vs. secular, Ashkenazi vs. Sephardi, to name a few—in a constant struggle against one another.

To return to our united roots and reinstate ourselves as a unified Jewish people, we thus need to elevate our original values of unification and mutual responsibility to the center of our common discourse.

Then the question becomes: What would make us want to reunite as a single nation once again? Why is that even important?

Similar to how anti-Semitism once goaded many of us to establish what we now know as the State of Israel, today, as we bear witness to a sharp rise of anti-Semitic sentiment, both directly against Jews and also indirectly disguised as delegitimization of Israel, in many countries—and notably in the United States—we increasingly find ourselves cornered into a situation where we will have to elevate unification and mutual responsibility to top priority for the sake of our very survival.

Understanding unification and mutual responsibility as our leading values—based on laws of nature that we once discovered under Abraham—prepares us for our current and future challenges. With such an understanding, we can strengthen bonds that span across people, groups, factions, ages and genders, and aim to unite everyone, without exception, above all of our differences. And when we’re united above our differences, we will supply a special unifying strength to all people to unite above their differences. This is the meaning of our being called “a light unto the nations.”

By engaging in this venture to build a new harmonious society based on unification and mutual responsibility, we will be able to take big steps toward realizing our destiny that our forefathers dreamed of: to become Jewish in the fullest sense of the term (the Hebrew word for “Jew” [Yehudi] comes from the word for “united” [yihudi] [Yaarot Devash, Part 2, Drush no. 2]). Moreover, by realizing such a vision, we will serve as a model for a perfect society of happy and successful individuals who share life’s most important values of love and connection. As a result, the world will absorb the unifying atmosphere that we project, and anti-Semitism in all of its forms will subside.

Today, the means are available and becoming all the more needed in order to rise above the intensifying social division and realize a whole new positive and harmonious direction for society. In essence, the positive transformation starts with elevating the values of unification and mutual responsibility to the center of our common discourse.

Filed under: Q&A, Quora | Add Comment / Ask Question →