New Life #119 – Business and the Benefits of Connection
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

How can we encourage workers to unite as one body in order to achieve the goals of the organization? It can be achieved by building a supportive environment that will draw everyone into a warm and secure connection with one another. We begin by raising the importance of connection, praising bestowal, and setting an example in working for the sake of the society. As the desire develops in this new, positive direction, whatever we do in the organization will be a breakthrough and everyone else will follow the example. Management will provide ongoing workshops for staff to learn about human nature, the development of the ego, our mutual interdependence, and the current, global crisis. Gatherings will also include songs, sharing positive impressions from the connection, and a reminder that we have come to work to enjoy being together and not to suffer. The new spirit will open the hearts and minds of staff and laziness and indifference will vanish.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #119 – Business And The Benefits Of Connection,” 12/26/12

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Medium published my new article “Millennials: Redefining the Rules of the Economy”

As a new year approaches, an atmosphere of increased consumerism envelops societies across the globe. However, there is a generational stratum that is spoiling the commercial hoopla: the millennials.

Getting a new car, a new house and a new partner are common New Year’s resolutions. None of these goals, however, impress the millennial generation born between 1981 and 1996. They have been the subject of intensive scrutiny by economists and analysts in efforts to interpret their financial priorities and mindset.

Why is this so important to economists? It is because millennials, estimated at around 80 million people in the US alone, are projected to surpass baby boomers as America’s largest generation. The millennials were expected to consume more and contribute more to the economy than the baby boomers, but it’s not happening and analysts want to know why. Are the non-capitalistic choices of this group to blame for destroying the economy? Or are their modest spending patterns the product of a merciless economy inflicted on Americans for years under the control of the elites?

A new study by the Federal Reserve Board revealed that in comparison to previous generations, at the same age, millennials have lower income and less wealth than their predecessors. Being born and raised in an era when capitalism was out of control, in which the strong preyed upon the weak, they found themselves hopelessly in debt from financing their university education, making it practically impossible to afford independent living even at a minimum level, let alone buying a new house. However, experts and leaders point blaming fingers at them for their limited spending and its “negative effects” on the economy.

Millennials were expected to consume and participate in the labor market at least as much as their parents, if not more. They were supposed to believe in the American dream, just like their parents. But they have lost hope and trust in the current economic system, while experiencing the highest levels of anxiety and depression on record.

However, instead of addressing the root of the problem, the economic establishment and the media (which is at the service of the elites) are disgruntled that they cannot extort the children, the millennials, the way they managed to extort their parents.

Tomorrow, the world will continue to try and follow the same outdated financial patterns. The elites will continue to maintain the traditional economy that encourages consumption and concentrates capital under the control of a handful of tycoons. Feeling deprived and frustrated, more and more people will demand social justice. They are likely to replace leaders, call for the limitation of salaries of elected officials, demand the lowering of VAT (value-added tax) on basic goods, and a freeze in tax increases for the lower and middle classes.

The future is not far off when the world will look quite different: an industrial-technological revolution will make giant steps toward mass automation, throwing much of the workforce out of the labor market and locking the gates behind them. When there is no work, there are no salaries, and when there are no salaries there’s no money to spend, and when there is no money to spend, non-essential products aren’t purchased, and since a major amount of what we presently consume are non-essential products, then the domino effect continues as the businesses tied to these products also fall.

Under circumstances like these, what will the unemployed masses do? Will this scenario open a valve of frustration and rage into the streets? Are the recent violent riots in France just a small taste of what’s in store? While this may not happen tomorrow, what will day after tomorrow bring?

It is both possible and necessary to prepare ourselves now for the coming future. Accordingly, we must plan to prevent undesirable future chaos by ensuring that every citizen receives a basic income sufficient to live in dignity. However, alongside fulfilling physical needs, we must also calm the spirit and fulfill the soul. In the face of these huge systematic changes in society, a newly-tailored educational system is crucial to help disoriented citizens reorganize their values and priorities. The goal of such education is to guide people to positive and balanced relationships through a clear understanding of the global integral system in which we live.

The expectation that money can provide a sense of security will disappear as the crisis worsens. Therefore, we must educate ourselves in how to build a society that provides a person with the kind of security found in a loving family. Instead of nurturing predatory competition that puts us in a constant race of survival, we will develop humane competition that drives us all to contribute as much as we can to social cohesion. Instead of engaging in jobs that exact a heavy psychological price to the benefit of corporation owners, we will turn to creative and social occupations that serve the majority in a new whole new concept of work.

Instead of judging people by how much they earn, we will measure each other according to our contributions to society. Instead of working around the clock and barely spending time with our children, our time will be spent building tight family units. Instead of an advertising industry that drives us to compulsive consumption of pointless products, we will learn to live happily and sustainably. Instead of marketing propaganda that sells well-packaged material illusions, the media will help us see that happiness lies in positive social relations.

Of course, none of this will happen tomorrow morning, but today we can begin this gradual and ongoing educational process. Unlike anything we have known before, such a transformation of society cannot come through coercion and oppression. Instead, it is a process of building new values in society and upgrading public awareness so that we start balancing ourselves with the constantly fluctuating, globally interdependent conditions. As a result of this upgrade in collective consciousness, institutional changes in the concept of labor and in the economic system can develop organically and peacefully.

Moreover, when we begin to focus on building qualitative, meaningful relationships, we will discover a newfound source of satisfaction. As the emphasis shifts to how we can positively connect above all differences in society, we will become less immersed in material matters, and more involved in a fulfillment that is a lot more natural and common to all people. We will then feel a new kind of happiness, confidence and satisfaction as we, through our efforts to positively connect, begin to tap into an energy source dwelling in nature that will nourish and advance us to a higher level of consciousness.
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Question: Is there a concept of “atonement for sins” in Kabbalah? Who is to blame if the Creator controls everything and a person is completely under His management? Who can determine the length of the person’s stay in the cities of banishment for a crime?

Answer: The thing is that everything written in the Torah, The Book of Zohar and other Kabbalistic books speaks only about the upper world.

When I studied with Rabash, I would recite a passage from the Babylonian Talmud to him and he would explain what the people who wrote it meant from a spiritual perspective. It was very interesting because everything seemed completely different: they wrote in the language of the branches of our world while implying the upper roots.

For example, people who committed crimes were sent to the cities of asylum for six years. Although our world is seemingly separate from the spiritual world, the six years represent the six Sefirot of HGT NHY, which a person has to go through in order to advance from Malchut to Bina in the seventh year, and those six years are reflected in our world.

Although these are not the years of the corporeal world; nevertheless, a person has to be isolated for these six years while he works on himself, advancing through the six degrees of the spiritual world. This is called the “correction.”
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/19/18

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The subject of study of the wisdom of Kabbalah is actions of the Creator, which give us an opportunity to assemble Him from parts: from our thoughts, desires, all sorts of actions, irreconcilable differences, mistakes, and successes. The main thing is that from all this work of disassembling and assembling we come to understand Him, feel Him, and be like Him. This is the uniqueness of our work as opposed to the different endeavors of this world.

Perhaps in them there is something similar to analysis and synthesis as well, an understanding. In fact, this is how we study all inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature: we dissect, examine, understand, and register. However, in Kabbalah we are not dissecting ourselves, our animalistic body. Instead, we connect and disconnect with each other. Only through the connections between us will we be able to understand who the Creator is because He is revealed only within them.

This is special work that does not have an analog in our world. It is called the work of the Creator. After all, He entrusted it to us so that we would get to know Him and become like Him. The path to this lies only through the connection between people. Yet connection is impossible without disconnection: the achievement of unity does not happen without resistance. That is how it happens in all the actions: ascents—descents, convergence—distancing, inhaling—exhaling.

Kabbalah is the science of connection, the attainment of unity. There is no Creator outside of us. He is revealed in the connection between us. This connection does not exist in nature by itself, only if we assemble it. We learn that there was a restriction and second restriction and so the degrees were formed up to this world: the upper worlds, spiritual Partzufim and Sefirot. However, this all exists only in potential in case the created beings come and begin to attain these qualities.

We will discover the degrees descending from above downward if we want to awaken them from below. If we do not awaken them, it is as if they do not exist at all. There is nothing to talk about without the one who attains. The Creator is revealed only within our connection, which is not corporeal or forced, when we feel our dependence on one another or have special feelings for each other.

This connection happens in a completely unnatural, even anti-natural way. Only to the extent that I discover my own nature, the evil hidden in me, the unwillingness to connect with others, in the part that I managed to purify from my “I” with the reforming Light, is there a measure of bestowal revealed. It is not bestowal yet, but a readiness for it, the degree of Bina, Hanukkah.

Once I recognize my evil I begin to hate it, and then I can use my desire for the benefit of others. There can be no good without the revelation of evil and its correction. Good is revealed only above evil, and from this I begin to understand and feel what the Creator is: the force of absolute good that fills the entire universe and me as well. It helps me replace all the evil in me with the good. My work is only in this choice: to discover my evil nature and replace it with the good one, and all this through the connection with the friends.¹
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/10/18, Lesson on the Topic “Revealing The Creator In The Connection Between Us” (Preparation for the Virtual Convention 2018)
1 Minute 0.20

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New Life #118 – Creating a Common Mind in the Workplace
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

It is possible to achieve a common mind in the workplace through workshops. We sit in a circle imagining that we are meeting on holiday or in retirement, which enables each person to feel free and reshape themselves through role playing. In order to change internally and build a common vessel, we start with relaxation and warm-up exercises. We learn to express a more positive attitude through participation in exercises involving speaking, motion, looking, and listening. We reshape ourselves through compliments, diminishing ourselves, elating the others, and raising the value of the whole team by becoming more incorporated in them. Whenever each person feels egoistic negations and criticism toward the others they learn to show the opposite, positive attitude. Each one works on himself in relation to the circle and then shares his impression of the exercises and the resulting sense of warmth, connection, mutuality, and closeness.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #118 – Creating A Common Mind In The Workplace,” 12/24/16

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Lesson Preparation

Lesson on the Topic “The Hardening of The Heart – Opportunity For Ascent”

Talmud Eser Sefirot,  Vol. 6, Part 16,  Table of Answers for the Meaning of the Words, Item 177

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Teaching of the Kabbalah and Its Essence”

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 12/20/18

The United States is withdrawing its military forces from Syria, which will surely weaken Israel. The U.S. is gradually abandoning its traditional role of maintaining world order, and focusing on securing its own future. I have been warning of this development for many months.

Israel will continue to see its global stance weakening, while the nations of the world continue to apply pressure and isolate it more and more. This will go on until Israel understands that it must generate unity and thus enable the global unity of all nations.

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Jews, Israel are responsible for the correction of the world, any damage to it, any state it is in. It isn’t by chance that the nations innately blame the people of Israel for all problems. We’re to discover that drawing on our egoism after World War II brought us to global crisis.

One can’t reveal the Creator before experiencing His concealment and its importance as revelation. It’s possible in the intention for the Creator, for He delights in one’s joy in concealment more.
Agreeing to be in darkness/Malchut of the upper, in joy, one becomes Keter of the lower.

Now it turns out that social, economic, and technological development has been detrimental to us, since it was based on our self-love, on the desire for pleasure. Therefore, it did not bring any relief to our life; it made life more complicated, turning it into an ongoing struggle.

Kabbalists, who are called “Israel,” build a spiritual union where the Creator is revealed, while the “Nations of the World” will unite in order to receive material fulfillment. But since they will receive it from us, it will reform their egoistic union into the altruistic one.

Obstacles in the revelation of the Creator are but the signs of our approaching Him. There’s no other way, since we’re His opposites. Each overcoming shortens the path. When the sensation of distance no longer impacts the movement, it enters bestowal, and the Creator is revealed.

The law of the soul is the unity of its parts connected in such a way that it is attained only from its breaking.

One seeking the Creator, bestowal, is lowered-to understand what to wish from Him, think of the goal. In ascent there’s no concern for spirituality, but a fall is a benefit. The Creator’s caring is in showing one that he has no strength and only He can help. The fall becomes a rise!

Always remember the goal of creation—to delight the created beings; if an evil inclination asks questions, work with them towards bestowal. Questions opposing the path arise not to lower it but to give room to effort to rise to the Creator. It means you are being brought closer!

When one feels exile in spiritual work, wants to escape, he must trust that the Creator is with him and gives a taste of exile so one rises to Him; hence He shows distance. With faith, one gains strengths not to run but accept the work in ascent and descent as movement to the Creator.

Experiencing a low state that you could not even imagine—understand that the Creator is now engaged in you, causing the longing, showing a spiritual form that has no taste for egoism, in order to push you to the adhesion with the Creator, so that you cannot remain in a low state.

He who makes effort feels the power of darkness; can’t overcome the ego. So the desire for help is born. Hence, seeing no progress, one must not abandon the work. The goal is to realize that you must reach the darkness, desire to bestow, and not the light that will come by itself!

Understand that one is in a low state not because he became worse, but to want to achieve bestowal; one reveals his true state, inherent, but hidden. With mercy, the Creator reveals one’s evil, so that he found the prayer, and this mercy of the Creator is in the revelation of evil!

#USA withdraws troops from #Syria. It weakens #Israel. But such will be the tendency: Israel will be weakened and increasingly pressured and isolated—until it realizes its obligation to create an internal unity of the people, in order to influence unification of all nations!

Personal egoism evolved and developed humanity. But it matured to build a single system out of itself. Yet, it has no glue to do so. Contrary to reason, it fights rather than unite to balance the world. While we direct our forces not to correct egoism, nature will show our failures.

Egoism will finish the world: contrary to reason, it makes us fight not unite—not against someone but to bring the world in balance. US economy and living standards are growing, 0% inflation, the world is crumbling around, Paris is burning, China is falling, but the Feds are fighting Trump.

Do not complain about the growing egoism that prevents you from entering the upper world, but trust that by engaging it, the Creator urges you to have a relationship with Him. The Creator delights when you ask to come closer to Him, to be similar to Him.

The Creator evokes thoughts and actions opposite to His loving governance—to draw the light on them if one wants to enter the upper world. Can’t overcome contradictions by the Creator’s greatness. He sends them so one brings upper light on them. There is no other way to reveal the Creator.
From Twitter, 12/20/18

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