Medium published my new article “Omicron? The Worst Is Yet to Come”

It’s been a month since Omicron, the new Covid variant, first appeared. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the strain is spreading “at a rate we have not seen with any previous variant.” WHO also warns that although “Seventy-seven countries have now reported cases of omicron … the reality is that omicron is probably in most countries, even if it hasn’t been detected yet.”

Yet, the Omicron wave does not tell us anything that previous waves did not tell us. The only reason it is here is that we weren’t attentive in the previous waves, so a faster, more unruly form appeared. The more we ignore the message we are getting through the virus, the more damaging the strains will become, and other natural disasters will join them to deliver the message.

We think of creation as consisting of distinct pieces, but in truth, these pieces form a single unit, an organism whose organs operate in inseparable co-dependence. The only part of creation oblivious to this modus operandi is humankind. As a result, we behave contrary to the way all of creation operates, which puts us at odds with all of reality. This is why we feel that nature is hostile and belligerent toward us. If we behaved in sync with the rest of nature, we would feel harmony and peace in everything that happens.

The pandemics and other natural disasters are the consequence of our incongruence with nature. If we dedicate some time and scientific effort building a reciprocal society that is isolated from the rest of society, and whose members strive to build warm relationships, we might see the effects on the health of the members of the group.

Regrettably, I do not see humanity attempting this; we are simply too selfish to be able to do so. In almost every country there are protests and mistrust between citizens and authorities. Even heads of state, who urge people to follow instructions, are caught partying without masks or the required distance.

Nevertheless, the defiant spirit of the people is not necessarily negative, for it indicates profound changes. People today are no longer willing to follow orders of any kind. Drugs that were illicit just a few years ago are now permitted even for “recreational” purposes, and people are generally more pugnacious toward orders from authorities.

For all these reasons, the worst is yet to come. In my opinion, we are approaching a time when such a violent virus emerges that will force us to stay home, seal the window, filter the air we let in, wash the food we eat with soap before we touch it, and (somehow) clean our drinking water.

At the moment, a spiritual connection, where we all feel that we are part of a single mechanism seems far-fetched. However, it is what lies at the basis of nature. Hence, as nature’s blows grow more frequent and intense, it will make us turn to the connection between us as the only recue. At that point, we will agree to learn how to form solidarity and unity, and how to make room for others in our hearts.

At that point, when we have inverted our nature from receiving to giving, we will discover the beauty and joy in giving. In such a state, no pandemic will bully us. Moreover, we will learn to appreciate the ego, which, in its crooked way, has led us to reveal the good and pleasant in creation. It is as our sages said, “As the advantage of the light from within the darkness.”
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Question: What does it mean to live with the Coronavirus? It seems that our ego knows how to manage with anything.

Answer: No, there is no such thing as managing to live with COVID since it is a biological disease that operates against us. If we connect correctly in this war, it will guide us to the correction of the ego that is in the virus and then we will actually succeed.

It is very interesting to see how the Creator arranges us and affects us with an attack of a biological virus.

Humanity doesn’t understand yet how it should relate to what is happening. We need to explain that everything comes from nature and that the virus is an incredibly sublime factor that symbolizes the lack of the right connection on a biological level, on the levels of still, vegetative, and animate nature. The animate level touches the spiritual level. The spiritual level is called speaking, but we are not making this leap to spirituality yet so the virus pushes us and does its work.

Eventually we will discover that we have no choice and that only through working together, all of us, will we be able to eradicate the Corona pandemic. Moreover, we need to understand that we can cope with the virus only through mutual work; the virus will force us to be connected to each other in a nice, correct manner.
From KabTV’s “Conversation with Journalists” 11/28/21

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My new article on Linkedin “What Really Makes Life Meaningful”

We get up, start the day, prepare the kids for school, or head to work if we are single. The day passes in a flurry. Afterward, we get home exhausted and crash until the next morning so we can start over the next day. Could this be what makes life meaningful? That’s exactly what a recent global study investigated. 39% of respondents said that family was the primary source of meaning in their lives, compared to 2% who found meaning in faith and spirituality.

According to a recent study conducted by Pew Research Center among 19,000 adults in 17 developed countries around the world, the most important factors in a person’s life are their family, career, and financial well-being.

No wonder family is the main source of contentment. Family plays the most important and direct role in a person’s development, as it is the closest and most influential circle. The rest of the circles also influence and fill time with quality, but they are more distant, less stable, and can change from one day to the next. A person can switch jobs, friends, or a place of entertainment, but not their family. In spite of the difficulties sometimes experienced, the person is dependent on and connected to the family. This is why it is so important.

After two years of COVID-19, one might have expected that people would ask more about the meaning of life and, therefore, be more attracted to spirituality. But in the end, humanity is not particularly thoughtful or contemplative about the global epidemic. Rather, people feel oppressed for not being able to travel abroad freely, for having to wear masks and for needing extra shots to prevent the spread of the virus, as well as a number of onerous restrictions.

However, overall we have learned to live with the plague. Soon humanity will also forget about the new variant that invaded our lives. Our human nature is willing to voluntarily receive pleasure and enjoyment for ourselves and only for ourselves. Day by day this egotistical nature grows, becomes coarse and thick, so sophisticated and cunning that the person does not get impressed anymore about anything. We are constantly bombarded by information about wars, mass famine, and new virus variants, but until we experience such a reality in all our senses, we do not believe it is happening and do not take action towards change.

Nevertheless, I cannot say that the coronavirus has not had an impact on us. It revealed to us how much we depend on each other since we are a small global village. But in the network of communication between us, in our inner feelings, we remain indifferent and detached from each other. So, what will naturally happen is that the egoism will get stronger; more global blows will appear until we realize that only when we feel like one family, in mutual guarantee, will we be able to thrive.

We will perceive our lives as purposeful solely through our close human connection. If we were to shape the face of society with the pattern of an ideal family, we would have made our lives better, creating a good, warm, and friendly atmosphere for ourselves. We would have built a good environment that embraces us like a loving mother. The more we connect emotionally to each other, the more we will feel the power of connection, the supreme force of nature, an attribute of giving and loving, a good and benevolent force. If we just cling to nature’s qualities and intentions, we will discover the meaning of life, both in corporeality and spirituality for complete fulfillment.
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Is this pandemic ever going to end?“

We are in a struggle with nature.

We are discordant with the laws of nature, which are fundamentally laws of interconnection and interdependence. At the base of these laws is a single force that develops everyone and everything to increasingly connected states.

We, however, disregard nature’s tendency to connect us.

We currently see no need to unite above our differences. There are absolutely no efforts to come together and build systems that would benefit humanity collectively: systems that would guide us to positively connect upon our divisive drives, and lead us to balance with nature.

Instead, we tear nature and human society apart, living in a constant struggle between different parts of human society and nature. Accordingly, by tearing nature to shreds, we receive negative feedback from it. This negative feedback takes the forms of natural calamities of all kinds, from earthquakes and tsunamis through to pandemics.

Such outbursts are due to our imbalance with nature. Instead of applying ourselves to come together and achieve a higher sense of complementarity and cooperation, we instead become increasingly disparate from one another.

The more we head in an opposite direction to the increasing interconnection and interdependence that nature guides us to, the more we will receive negative feedback from nature. Although it might seem like punishment, it is not punishment at all. Nature’s blows are rather forces that aim to awaken us to correct our inclination: to align ourselves to better connect with each other in order to become balanced with nature, and by doing so, feel ourselves enter a whole new peaceful and harmonious world.

Instead of using these blows effectively, as reminders and impetus to better connect, to become more balanced, and to build a more supportive and encouraging society, we continue our lives in the dark, with no motion to build systems of positive connection above the growing divisive drives. Likewise, we can expect to receive more and more negative feedback from nature until we wake up to the need to correct our flawed modus operandi.

In the past, we also encountered several atrocities, but we were less developed and didn’t feel them as feedback to our actions. However, in our times, we are increasingly receiving terrible blows—on the still, vegetative, animate and human levels—that will lead to a point where they will endanger our very existence on this planet.

I thus stated at the start of the coronavirus pandemic that it would not go away. On the contrary, the pandemic will worsen and possibly evolve into greater crises until we wake up and draw the right conclusions.

Based on “Writers Meeting” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and a team of writers on November 28, 2021. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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My new article on Linkedin “Consideration – The Buzzword that Will Mark the Change”

From east to west, the world is sinking into another wave of the coronavirus. Despite the vaccines and the booster shots, the future of the world seems bleak. Until we learn the lesson that the virus has come to teach us, we will not be rid of it. We have not changed our core values, the ones that inflicted on us the virus to begin with, so there is no reason for it to go away. Only once we change our attitude to every one and every thing around us will we see a relief in the contagion.

Why are prices soaring all of a sudden? There is nothing in it but wicked greed, an intention to make me richer and others poorer.

As for us, why are we so focused on shopping? What is it that we really need? Will another gadget make us happy people? If all it took to make us happy was buying another toy, we wouldn’t see more than 100,000 Americans dying of overdose in a single year, most of whom were young. We wouldn’t see so much violence, so much depression, so much hatred and division.

If we worked on these problems rather than burying our heads in the Amazon.com quicksand, we would feel so much better, and we also wouldn’t suffer from tenacious viruses. Just as the virus has taught us, we are interdependent. You can’t have healthy and content people in one place while people elsewhere feel miserable. Today, unless everyone is well, no one will be well. This is true not only of the virus, but of air, water, wealth, and every other aspect of life.

I measure progress or regression by the changes I see in people. Since I see no changes in them, I cannot say that we have made any progress, so there is no reason for the virus to leave. We are still as abusive toward each other as we were in 2019, and we are just as ruthless toward the environment as then. To paraphrase the words of Albert Einstein, stupidity is to do the same thing over and over again yet expecting different results. We all understand this except when it comes to our own behavior. As a result, millions have died and thousands more are dying each day for no other reason but our carelessness.

The world can provide for everyone abundantly; there is no shortage of anything; there is surplus! So why are people hungry, thirsty, sick, homeless? Why are they not getting decent education and decent health care? It is because we don’t care about each other.

It does not end with the basics in life. Look at the pervasive fundamentalism that has taken over society. We regard those who disagree with us as enemies of the public. When diversity of views becomes a crime, totalitarianism takes over and any means is legal to curb free thought.

We may not see the connection between diversity and mutual consideration and the virus, but the connection exists: It is our selfishness. We exploit everyone—people, animals, and all of nature. We feel that only we matter, and everything else should serve us or become extinct.

When that feeling becomes intense enough in a critical mass of people, it tears apart the system and everything collapses—from human society through the animal kingdom to the ground we stand on. Indeed, try to find one area where there is no crisis and you will fail.

The problem is the common cause—humankind. No highbrow speeches about equity and equality will change the fact that we hate each other. Until we realize that we are different and must nonetheless allow everyone to be who they are, we will not begin to change things for the better.

The buzzword that will mark the beginning of change is consideration. Until we learn to be considerate toward others, the world will not be considerate toward us.
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My new article on Linkedin “Covid – the Career Terminator”

We are not even two years into Covid, but it is already clear that the virus is revolutionizing civilization. Things we took for granted until recently, such as work, school, and entertainment, have become debatable on many levels. The virus is not only affecting our health and our lives; it is changing how we see ourselves as human beings and as members of society.

Until the virus landed on us, we branded people, in large part, by their careers or jobs, and their lifestyles. Having a career used to be a symbol of success. There was a romantic tone to the word, and images of frequent “work” trips, company credit cards, an apartment in a high-rise with a guard in the lobby, and a social status for others to envy.

Somehow, Covid dimmed the glamour. It is not that people utterly reject the idea of a career, but it is not as enviable as it was two years ago, and its appeal is only waning.

We still want money, and we always will, but we are willing to pay much less for making lots of it. We are not willing to sacrifice so much of our social lives, our other interests, our peace of mind, and our family time for a social status. In part, it is because we no longer find it so enticing, and in part, it is because others no longer find our career “titles” enviable. They see our long hours at the office, our frequent flights, and they pity us for having to work so hard instead of enjoying life.

But the pandemic has gone deeper than changing our perception of work. Bit by bit, it has reawakened in us the “big” questions, those we have suppressed for years under the pressure of survival in a hyper capitalistic world: the questions about the meaning of life.

Just as the warming climate melts the permafrost and lets out gases that change the composition of our atmosphere, the virus is dissolving the ice in our hearts and opens them to long-frozen feelings that change the atmosphere in our society. We are learning to think more socially and less individually.

The fear of infection has made us acknowledge that we are dependent on others for our health. Now, with the crisis in supply chains due to the coronavirus, it makes us realize we are dependent on each other for our food, for the price we pay for things, for our ability to buy holiday gifts, for our entertainment, our social lives, and for our schools and education.

We may not realize it but the virus teaches us to reassess our values: who we consider great and admirable, and who we despise. It teaches us to judge people not by how much they make, but by how much they contribute to society. We started by applauding health and medical workers, then moved on to acknowledging that supermarket workers are indispensable, and now we realize that these invisible people are the ones who enable us to live and worry about ourselves.

Thanks to the virus, we are finally learning that each person is unique because each person can make a special contribution to society that no one else can. In our uniqueness, we are all equal.

When the process of welcoming each person’s uniqueness is complete, we will find that the hatred in our hearts is gone. We will realize how precious each of us is, and we will be grateful for the existence of every human being on this planet. When this happens, we will be thankful to Covid – the career terminator and generator of unity and peace.

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We’re surprised that the virus in #Israel is ‘the worst’ while our methods of fighting it are “the best.” The reason is that nature (Creator) does this for our own correction, as upon our correction hinges the pandemic and the correction of the world as a whole. #COVID19

From Twitter, 9/21/21

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All over the world, the #coronavirus is destabilizing governments and societies. But everything is on the contrary: it’s necessary to change people and societies to become more #spiritual, and since they are not changing, the coronavirus appears. It’s clear how we are making the good path change to a bad one.

Only after we grow disillusioned of attempts to stop #climatechange will we understand that only by a good connection between us can we stop #climate change and restore nature’s balance, and only therein lies our salvation.
But in the meantime, #nature will afflict us with all of its resources.

From Twitter, 7/29/21

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My new article on Linkedin “The Israeli Covid Hubris”

There is a famous anecdote that once, when President Richard Nixon met with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, he confessed in a moment of candor that it was complicated governing 200 million Americans. To this, she replied, “You may have 200 million Americans to govern, but I have 6 million prime ministers to govern.” To this day, we don’t know how Nixon responded to Meir’s quip.

What we do know is that she was right. In Israel, everyone knows everything about anything.

When Covid-19 came along, the whole world panicked, and we in Israel immediately knew what to do, and we voiced our opinion to anyone who would (or would not) listen. Indeed, we are an obstinate people.

There is a reason for it. Our ancestors were fierce and strong minded individuals who left their own tribes and peoples and joined Abraham to form a new nation that united above all differences. At times, they succeeded and profound bliss had spread among them.

At other times, their adamant selves would take over and they would revert back to their old, opinionated selves. Then, fiery hatred would burst among them. However, after some time, they would remember the principle that had made them a nation—unity above divisions—and they would reaffirm their nationhood.

Today, we still have those fiery divisions, but we no longer have the times when we rise above them. Hatred has grown so intense among us that we can no longer unite above it. This is why every issue that comes along becomes an opportunity for altercation.

The only time when we do show some level of unity is during war. All Israelis feel it, and many admit that if there is anything to be thankful for when Gaza fires rockets into Israel, it is that this is the only time when we stop fighting one another.

For now, I don’t see that this will change soon. But at some point, Israelis will realize that they must unite not only because they are being bombed, but because they have a mission: to set an example of setting divisions aside, uniting above them, and building a strong nation.

Precisely the example of a nation created from strangers is what the world needs to see today, since everyone feels estranged from everyone else. When Israelis unite, they set this example, and this is all they need to do in order to solve all their problems with their neighbors and with the entire world—unite among themselves.

For now, they prefer to unite with anyone but each other. At some point, they will have no choice and they will do it. I hope this point comes soon.

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My new article on Linkedin “Two Ways to Deal with Covid”

The State of Israel and the coronavirus have had a tumultuous relationship so far (not that it was very quiet in the rest of the world). We began on top of the world when we succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations with the first lockdown. After a few weeks, we thought we’d beat the virus so we all went out to celebrate, and the virus came roaring back. In a matter of weeks, we went from the zenith to the nadir as more people per million caught the virus in our little country than anywhere else, even more than in the United States at its worst moments.

Humiliated and reluctant, we went into another lockdown and the tsunami of contagion began to recede. As we came out, the virus struck again. Luckily, this time the vaccines came around and Israel rushed to get millions of them. It worked for a while and the number of new cases went down to nearly zero.

Then came the Delta strain and everything we thought we had achieved collapsed. Now we’re in the midst of administering the booster (third) shot hoping to curb the spread once more, but we are no longer confident and we are no longer hopeful that we will truly get rid of the virus. More than anything, Covid seems to have defeated our defiance. Many of us no longer believe that we will return to the pre-Covid days, and they are right.

Nature will not let up. From the very beginning, back in the days of the successful first lockdown, I said that this is not another virus but a new stage in our relationship with nature. You could say that we have exhausted our credit with nature, and now it demands that we will pay for what we take. If we don’t want to pay, fine, but nature will not give.

There are two ways we can learn to deal with nature: a long and painful one, or a short and pleasant one. Currently, we are treading down the long and painful one. On this route, we do not take into consideration where we are, the people who surround us, and the entire planet that sustains us. We are using and abusing all of them on our path and focus only on ourselves.

This road, the narcissistic one, sees only the needs of the self. This is why we cannot see the consequences of our actions so calamities surprise us when they happen. If we step into a busy street blindfolded, we are certain to run into other people, stumble on obstacles along our path, and even be hit by the traffic that we cannot see.

When we are looking only at our own needs, due to our egoism, we are blindfolding ourselves, denying ourselves awareness of all other things in existence. We should not be surprised that we bump into things.

When bad things happen to us, personally, socially, nationally, or globally, it is not because they are misfortunes or that bad people do them to us. They were there all along and we could have seen them, be more considerate, and avoid any friction or discomfort. Yet, we ignored them and kept walking straight. The pain we feel now is not because they hit us, but because we bumped into them. It is we who should say “sorry” and mind where we’re going, not the other way around.

This brings us to the short way. If we open our eyes to look around us, we’ll see that everything is connected and moves in synchrony with everything else. In nature, mutual consideration is a given. In us, it is nonexistent. But if we open our eyes to it, we will be able to begin to work on it, to build it among us.

By building mutual consideration, in accord with nature, we will synchronize ourselves with it. Then we will know what to do, when to do it, and how to do it so our lives will run smoothly on their paths.

Vaccines and lockdowns are necessary just as long as we cannot synchronize ourselves with nature. If we can become as considerate and harmonious as nature, we will not need any lockdowns, just as nature never goes on lockdown and never stops evolving.

The brakes nature presses on us are nature’s way to force us to stop and reroute into a more considerate path, where we see others, too, and not only ourselves. If we begin to change our mindsets toward mutual consideration rather than alienation and self-entitlement, we will be free to roam the planet, safe, healthy, and happy.

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