During Rosh HaShanah there is a new revelation of the distance separating us from the Creator. Any event begins by revealing a new property that separates us from the Creator. And during the Rosh HaShanah holiday, we reach adhesion with the Creator in this property.

Therefore, Rosh HaShanah is the head of our entire development, and all the properties that are manifested in this holiday, later are revealed even more and more fully during all other holidays and special dates.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/15/23, “Rosh Hashana“

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Question: A sage was asked: “Why, when people quarrel, do they shout even though they are next to each other?” He replied: “When people quarrel, their hearts move away, and they have to shout. But when they fall in love, they speak softly because their hearts are very close. When they fall deeper in love, they whisper. And later, they understand everything without words.”

The question is this: Do we have to go through this stage from shouting to silence through talking, whispering, and silence?

Answer: This is good! If all people were silent but at the same time understood each other, it would be the most wonderful state.

Question: Please explain how it is possible to be silent and understand each other. They say: “Through the heart.” When we say it, it sounds beautiful.

Answer: Through contact, the inner contact of one with another, the contact of hearts.

Question: Do we just sit in silence and understand each other?

Answer: Yes, nothing else is needed.

Question: You said there are no words in spirituality. Is this what you meant?

Answer: Certainly, feelings

without words.

Question: Closeness such that no words are needed?

Answer: Yes, people who have lived together for many years usually understand each other this way.

Question: Can you and your wife sit like this, calmly and silently, and understand each other?

Answer: We understand each other so well that when we meet, it’s enough to look at each other and everything is clear. After all, we have been together for nearly 50 years.

Question: Tell me, please, in regard to this silence, can it be perceived as a conversation, as a prayer? Is prayer better in the heart or spoken in words?

Answer: It is better in the heart. You sit and talk inside yourself.

Question: You don’t read an already written prayer, but just say it? Is such a prayer heard?

Answer: Yes, it is heard.

Question: And with regard to others whom you may be praying for, and above?

Answer: This is exactly how it is taken.

Question: Today we see in our world, in humanity, that everyone is shouting. Even on TV programs. They sit one meter from each other screaming and shouting. What do people, and humanity in general, need to do to at least turn the screaming into a conversation?

Answer: We need the person next to me to take my hand and calmly, in a low voice, even in a whisper, convince me of what he wants.

Question: Should he want something in return from me?

Answer: Yes. He wants to convey something to me. So that his narrative would be exactly in this form, in this way, so it comes from the heart, and so I can open my heart in return, and for everything to flow from one heart to another.

Comment: You are describing a perfect setting when people sit together and want to convey warmth to each other.

My Response: And we, the audience, are watching this TV show, feeling glad the right, normal people are on it today. It is a pleasure to listen to them. Although they say very little, we understand everything.

Comment: You are talking about the ideal state, not quite of this world. I know that you don’t watch much television. But it’s enough to look…

My Response: I definitely don’t watch such programs.

Comment: Yes, there are such shows, like in boxing rings. A fight is going on. No wonder there is a kind of sport now where someone punches someone in the face. It is the same here; they punch you in the face. They probably don’t even care to start a conversation.

My Response: They don’t know how to. They weren’t taught this. They have a completely different attitude.

Question: But humanity won’t achieve anything through shouting anyway?

Answer: No, of course not.

Comment: That is, everyone will prove their case and…

My Response: They don’t prove anything; they don’t hear each other. All that matters is that when another person speaks, I speak too. That is all.

Question: In any case, here is a practical question: how can we transition to a conversation? What do we need?

Answer: Many more years will pass and time will work on us. It will tell both of them or a group of people that it is useless, that it is not worth doing. And they will gradually lose the desire to participate in such talk shows.

Then some turning point will come when they stop making such “circus acts.” Afterward a deep expression of our intentions will follow.

Question: Do you think that such fighting will fade?

Answer: It must.

Question: But how, will it come from above?

Answer: Naturally, from above. No doubt about it.

Question: Do you believe that it won’t come from us?

Answer: No. Nothing good can come from us.

Question: Silent and calm will come from above?

Answer: Yes. Let’s sit and be quiet. This will be the show.

Question: Do they grow disappointed in us? Why would this suddenly happen?

Answer: No one from above is disappointed. Who are we to be disappointed in?

Therefore we will simply come to the kind of television shows conveyed through feelings. Not words but feelings. We have to do something with ourselves.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 7/31/23

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Question: How do I come closer to the friends, where does it all start?

Answer: It all starts with the recognition of the need, of the fact that you definitely need to come closer to them. If you do not feel a common inner connection with them, then there is no point for you to continue your movement toward the Creator. First, you must establish a heartfelt connection with your friends, that is, the connection in the depths of your heart.

In this common heart, you aim to the Creator and want to feel Him more so that He would fill you.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/22/23, “The need for the Creator’s salvation”

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Question: Why did the Creator create man in an animal body?

Answer: As we develop, we learn how much the body we are in helps us achieve the goal of creation.

Question: How do I move from animal desires within myself to human desires?

Answer: The difference between them is only in your connection in the group. You are obliged to help each other in this, otherwise you will not reach any state of connection with each other and will not come to the goal of creation.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/23/23, “The need for the Creator’s salvation”

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In science, diversity of opinions and disputes are useful and help global advancement; but in politics disagreements, on the contrary, can lead to division in society and civil war. Is it possible to have different and even opposite opinions about what the character of the country and its purpose should be and at the same time feel like one nation and one family?

Everything is possible in this life only if we look at how to strengthen the connection between us despite all the differences of opinion. If the difference breaks our bond, then we should not reveal it until we have strengthened our connection.

Each step should begin with greater unity, and only then can we discuss where our opinions don’t match. And then, despite the fact that one thinks one way and the another thinks another way, we will decide how to unite, and from this unity we will see the answer.

In fact the answer is simple: the right decision is the revelation of the Creator. When the Creator reveals Himself in us, He gives us all the right decisions.

After all, society is not a laboratory where we can conduct experiments and verify an unambiguous result. It turns out that there are not those who are right and those who are wrong because the truth is above all our disputes. The truth is that “all transgressions will be covered by love.”
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/3/23, “A Dispute For the Sake of The Creator”

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Is life a test?“

It is written in the Torah that we each go through tests in our lives through which the upper providene examines us. Indeed, our lives are a test.

It is most obvious in the story about the exodus from Egypt. “Egypt” represents our egoistic desires, and the more we prepare ourselves to exit our egos, the more we start feeling our ego working on, controlling and overcoming us, and we too constantly try to overcome it.

The increasing difficulty to overcome our ego is called “the burdening of the heart,” which brings us to feel that we are entirely under the ego’s rule, under Pharaoh, and we feel it as our enemy.

Why do we come to feel the ego dwelling inside us as our enemy? It is due to a tiny point of a desire in us called “Moses” that attracts us to the other side of our ego: a reality of positive connection among each other with attitudes of love and bestowal in our midst.

In this game with the upper force of love and bestowal called “the Creator,” as well as with Pharaoh, Moses, the people of Israel (i.e., those who share the common point of a desire to rise above the ego) and the Egyptians, we start discovering these forces operating inside us. We start seeing how we are lost under Pharaoh’s rule without the upper force of love and bestowal (the Creator) to pull us out.

If we go through life knowing that it is our Egypt and that we have to rise to a higher level and not remain in the ego, where our inner Pharaoh and Egyptians want to hold us, we will then learn how to use our lives in a way that brings us all to a state of total harmony, peace and happiness. We then come to see life as our aim to escape our egoistic nature and head out to what is called “redemption,” which is the sensation of the upper world, eternity and perfection.

Our lives are thus indeed a test and an opportunity. If we constantly try to see where and how we are being operated upon, and try to hold onto the thought that beyond our egoistic desires there is a higher force of love and bestowal that wishes for us to become mature beings by rising above our egos, then we can view our lives as a test—as our own test on ourselves.

We can then exercise what it means to live above the ego in a reality where the upper force of love and bestowal fills the connections between us. By doing so, we draw those loving and bestowing forces into our lives and accordingly rise to the eternal and whole spiritual life. If we do not apply such a test upon ourselves and continue letting our egoistic desires determine our every thought and movement, then we simply disappear when we die, and we then just reawait our next chance in the next lifecycle.
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Based on “Ask the Kabbalist” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on July 18, 2008. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Preparation to the Lesson

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1st part of the Lesson — Writings of Rabash, “What Is, ‘The Concealed Things Belong to the Lord Our God,’ in the work?”

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2nd part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, “General Preface”

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3rd part of the Lesson — Yom Kippur – The Day of Atonement

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Selected Highlights

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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “What Holidays Are Celebrated During the Month of Tishrei?”
Before overviewing the holiday cycle during the month of Tishrei, it is important to understand that the Jewish holidays are not a celebration of specific historic events that an isolated group of people experienced, which is irrelevant to humanity and its further evolutionary development.

What are the Jewish holidays? They are spiritual states, i.e., omnipresent varying levels of our equivalence of form with nature’s form of love and bestowal, which we attain through our spiritual progress toward greater and greater states of unity among each other and with nature.

With that in mind, we can discuss the Tishrei holiday cycle as a series of spiritual states, i.e., introspections, conclusions, decisions and inner actions that we perform as we progress from the sensation of our reality locked within our egoistic desires—where we wish to enjoy ourselves for self-benefit alone—to the spiritual reality—where we wish to benefit others and nature, immensely expanding our sensation of reality.

Leading up to the Tishrei holidays is the month of Elul, which ends with the period of repentance, Selichot, where we reach the conclusion that our egoistic approach to life drives us to a state of helplessness and despair.

The introspection from the states of Selichot leads us to the first day of Tishrei, Rosh Hashanah, which means the beginning (“Rosh”) of change (“Shana” [year] from the word “Shinui” [change]). That is, we reach the decision that we want to change our egoistic attitude to life with a new attitude that does not oppose and resist nature—as we do when we remain in our inborn egoistic desires—but which is in balance with nature, i.e., in balance with an attitude of love, bestowal and connection.

After making the decision to change our egoism into altruism that characterizes Rosh Hashanah, we soon arrive at the realization that we cannot make that change on our own. This state is called “Yom Kippur” (“The Day of Atonement”).

The self-examination that takes place during the state of Yom Kippur, which reveals to us the true extent of our egoistic and altruistic intentions, brings us to a new discernment: that there is a single solution to this problem: to raise the importance of benefiting others and nature over the importance in doing so for ourselves. At such a juncture, we then proceed to activate our intention to benefit others and disengage from our egoistic desires. This shift in importance—bestowal over reception; altruism over egoism; unity over division—is the essence of Sukkot.

The Tishrei holiday cycle draws to its conclusion with Simchat Torah, the eighth and last day of Sukkot. On this holiday, we rejoice in the unified state that we acquire, which nature’s force of love and bestowal reveals to us. In other words, on Simchat Torah, we rejoice in correctly realizing the method of connection, called “Torah,” from the word “Hora’a” (“instruction”), and that we corrected our opposition to nature’s altruistic form into equivalence and balance with nature.

The attainment of equivalence of form with nature—a unified state among each other and with nature through an intention to love and bestow that is similar to the force of nature itself—is the final destination to which humanity evolves. Accordingly, the Tishrei holiday cycle represents the various states of spiritual progress from our current egoistic state, through to the opposite altruistic state of love and bestowal that is similar to nature’s force of love and bestowal, the force that created and sustains reality.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “What is a Shana Tova?”
A good year (Shana Tova) comes about first from understanding the previous year’s shortcomings.

We then go through a time of introspection. In general, human society is starting to realize that a good life is further and further out of reach. When we start seeing that our egoistic form of development—where we each try making a better life for ourselves at the expense of others and nature—leads to a growing entanglement of troubles and crises, then we reach a state called the “realization of evil.” Thanks to such a realization, we come to see that the egoistic way we live our lives is false, which is a very important step toward the truth.

We then have to find a solution. If we discern our egoistic modus operandi as the problem we need to fix, then the solution is in rising above our egoistic approach to life: that we shift from prioritizing self-benefit over benefiting others to its opposite—the benefit of others over self-benefit.

Therefore, in order to experience a good year, we should set as our goal a positive connection among each other, with mutual support, encouragement and care in our ties.

The more we develop an understanding and feeling of our true state as a single, global, interconnected and interdependent system, with us as the system’s key parts, then similar to how cells and organs function to uphold an organism’s health and well-being, we too would start thinking more and more about the benefit of others and the whole system of humanity and nature we live in.

The more we understand that our egoistic approach to each other and to nature destroys us, then the readier we become to rise above our egoistic goals, and place a higher goal of a harmonious and peaceful connection among all people and nature before us.

We will then start feeling the need for help from a power that is beyond our human powers, since our human powers are all self-aimed. We will find how we cannot “fight fire with fire,” so to speak, and that without the help from a higher power, intelligence and consciousness, we are doomed.

A good year is thus one in which we will invite the positive force dwelling in nature to come out from its concealment, due to our need and request for its help, and then feel that force fill the space between us. When we genuinely desire to reach positive connections of mutual support, encouragement and care among us together with feeling the impossibility to achieve it with the egoistic powers at our disposal, then we develop what is called a “vessel” for the reception of the positive loving and bestowing force of nature to enter into and upgrade our connections. Such an upgrade from egoistic to altruistic connections that are balanced with nature’s force of love and bestowal will then grant us access to a whole new harmonious and peaceful life.
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