From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 5/21/22

Every moment in our lives begins with the question, “What am I living for?” We normally do not recognize it for what it is, so we manage to keep going even though we do not have an answer.

However, in the following second, the question about the purpose of our lives will show up again. And once again, we will not notice it and continue to the next second in our lives. This is the flow of life, an endless stream of questions about its meaning and purpose.

We cannot choose not to ask about it since the question exists even before our physical body comes into being. It is the first, primordial question and our bodies develop only in order to find the answer. In fact, all of life exists only to answer this first question.

Whether you are a construction worker, a college professor, a street sweeper, a police officer, or what have you, we all have the same inner drive to search for the meaning of our lives in everything we do. We may not be aware that we are driven to do what we do by this essential quest, but we are driven by it just the same.

Even people who seem calm and satisfied, who do not seem to be searching for anything and say they are content with life and do not want anything more out of it, are only convincing themselves that this is how they feel. Nevertheless, if the question did not burn within them, they would not be alive.

The quest is there to make us search for the source of life itself, the comprehensive force in nature. For now, most people search without knowing what drives them in life. Today, however, humanity is approaching the realization of the true objective of the quest.

Each day, more and more people are asking themselves about the origin of life. They are beginning to create a picture of what the force must be like, what are its qualities and how they can approach it, grasp it, and bring themselves to it.

Just as a baby wants to be near its mother and receive from her, when we are drawn ‎toward connection with the superior, original force, we begin to receive from it the answer to the question about the meaning of life. These days, humanity is finally getting closer to finding the answer to the question about the meaning of life. In the coming years, this will become humanity’s main engagement.‎

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 5/16/22

This Saturday, a man went into a Tops Friendly supermarket in Buffalo, NY, and shot ten people dead in what appears to be a racially motivated crime. This massacre, the latest in an endless stream of violence, is a reflection of our world. Brutality is engulfing not only the United States, but the entire world. There is senseless killing in Europe, senseless killing all over the Middle East, and in Africa. Even where there isn’t senseless killing, there is abundant, systemic abuse of people, from modern slavery through human trafficking to abuse of power. At the end of the day, it is only people who make other people miserable. If we could only change our ill-will toward each other, we would change the world.

How many times have our parents told us to be nice to others, to play nice, to be kind? And how many times were we actually good because they told us to? Just as children often hold on to their toys and do not share them with anyone, we are becoming increasingly child-like egoists in our behavior.

We were not always that selfish. Previously, people from the same family, and even from the same village, truly felt that they belonged to one another. There may have been struggles over social statuses, but there was no desire to humiliate for the sake of degrading others. Today, even siblings often take pleasure in humiliating one another.

The human race is constantly evolving. The more it develops, the more people are learning that they are governed by egoism, and that it is driving us all into a chasm. On the one hand, everyone wants to live in a nice neighborhood with nice and quiet people around. On the other hand, our own nature is creating an environment where we cannot trust our co-workers, our friends, or even our families.

The good news in all this negativity is that now that it is out in the open, we are realizing who we really are, and this is the first step toward correction. We have come to a state that people cannot stand the existence of people they dislike, for whatever reason, so they pick up arms and shoot them.

And what is true of people, is also true of nations—between nations and within nations. They want to control each other, oppress each other, and dominate each other.

But we are in a different time now. What worked before will not work now on any level—individual, social, national, or international. Today, only those who want to help and support others will succeed. Nations and people who oppress, bully, and violate others will fail and fall.

These days, those who want to succeed must learn that our mutual dependence requires that we become considerate of others. Even if we do not like others, the simple realization that if I am inconsiderate, it will hurt me, should be enough to change our behavior toward others. Following our actions, our hearts will change, as well, but we should not expect this from the very beginning. If not today, then tomorrow we will all learn that we need not be considerate or caring because we actually feel this way, but because we want to survive.

Once we adopt a considerate behavior, we will realize that its benefits far outweigh its flaws. When people are considerate, they create an atmosphere of consideration which reflects back on those who embed it in the society. Just as inconsideration hurts the inconsiderate, consideration rewards the considerate.

Interdependence means that whatever you inject in the system, this is what the system gives you in return, but many times over. If you inject negativity, it will destroy you because the society will “throw” your own negativity back at you, but many times stronger. If you inject positivity in the form of consideration, care, support, and mutual responsibility, these positive impacts will reflect back on you, but again, many times stronger than you injected into the society. This is how every closed system works: the feedback amplifies the input many times over.

Therefore, if we want an end to such hate-filled violence as the Buffalo massacre, if we want to end senseless wars raging around the world, we must learn to act as one, interdependent society. It may not be easy to convince ourselves, but reality has its painful ways of persuasion. I think we would all prefer a more peaceful, mindful way of changing.

Photo Caption:
A man is detained following a mass shooting in the parking lot of TOPS supermarket, in a still image from a social media video in Buffalo, New York, U.S. May 14, 2022. Courtesy of BigDawg/ via REUTERS

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 5/13/22

As part of a school project on personal involvement, twin sisters in 10th grade met with a seventy-seven-year-old woman and kept her company for several meetings. The project ended long ago, but by the time it was over, the connection between the twins and the elderly woman had become so strong that they kept visiting her regularly.

As the bond grew stronger, they spent more and more time together, eating together and even staying overnight with the woman. The elderly woman said that the girls brought light into her life, and the girls evidently enjoy their connection with the woman.

There is a lot we can learn from this story. Today’s young people have many deficiencies. They feel insecure and do not know how to find their way in life, how to answer their many questions. The elderly, on the other hand, have an abundance of answers and abundance of knowledge, but often, especially the solitary ones, no one with whom they can share it. Their desire to impart knowledge, kind advice, and warmth remains untapped. This is why such a connection between young people who need advice, and older people who have no one to advise, can work so well.

Also, for the elderly woman, connecting with young women energizes her. They make her feel young again. For the girls, it not only increases their confidence and a sense of security, but sometimes fills in for a missing role of a mother or a grandmother.

I think we should learn from this that it is good for young and older people to be together and support each other, especially in families where a structure of several generations being closely connected does not exist. If older women could connect with girls who need a guiding hand, and if older men could connect with boys who need fatherly or ‎grandfatherly advice, everyone would benefit.

Here, I think there should be an organized system that connects elderly men and women on one side, and young boys and girls on the other side. It will do society a world of good. For the elderly, it will give vitality and joy. For the youngsters, it can be a life changing connection, a way out of difficulties and misunderstandings they would not be able to work out on their own.

Therefore, I would recommend that we do it on as broad a scale as possible, for everyone’s benefit.

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 5/10/22

On April 25, when Twitter announced Elon Musk’s purchase of the platform, it stated that Musk did this in order to promote free speech. “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” said Mr. Musk, according to the statement. The European Union, however, was not convinced. The next day, Euronews reported that the European Commission warned Musk that “Twitter will have to ‘adapt completely to European rules’ whatever Elon Musk’s intentions regarding freedom of speech.” Today, Musk announced his consent. As posted on AP News, “EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton told The Associated Press … that he outlined to Musk how the bloc’s online regulations aim to uphold free speech while also making sure whatever is illegal ‘will be forbidden in the digital space,’ which Musk ‘fully agreed with.’”

I agree with the stipulations posed by the EU. After all, it is the obligation of the EU to protect itself from “freedom of expression” that seeks to manipulate people and has ulterior motives.

However pure one’s intentions may be at first, in the long run, there cannot be real freedom of expression. Freedom of expression has no place in our world. As long as people see the world only through their own perspective, through their self-interest, there cannot be freedom. Even if Musk wants to protect the truth, in the end, he is only protecting his own truth. This is how every human being operates.

Even if everyone is allowed to express their opinion freely, you will end up having a platform where everyone yells their “truth,” and no one hears them. In other words, Twitter will become a platform for screaming, but nothing more. It will be a conversation of deaf people.

I think that if we really want to help humanity, we should go the opposite way: silence all the “social media.” We should all grow silent and start listening.

If we are quiet for some time, we will begin to feel ourselves: who we are, what we are, why we are here, and what we want to achieve in life. If we do this, we will discover that the only words worth saying are words that help others.

Stating your own opinion, your own truth, your own perspective, is meaningless if it does not stem from a desire to help and do good to others. When you let that desire guide you, you will have earned your right to speak, because then your speech will be contributory to others, and people will have a reason, and a desire to listen to you.

Elon Musk arrives at the In America: An Anthology of Fashion themed Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, New York, U.S., May 2, 2022. REUTERS/Brendan Mcdermid

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 5/5/22

After many years of learning about the spiritual meaning of the Jewish holidays ‎according to the wisdom of Kabbalah, we thought it was judicious to bind together ‎selected source excerpts on the topic from the greatest kabbalists throughout the ages, ‎and primarily Rav Yehuda Leib HaLevi Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), and his firstborn son ‎and successor, my teacher, Rav Baruch Shalom HaLevi Ashlag (RABASH).‎

Landmarks: The development of the soul in the cycle of the year was compiled so as to pave the way for all our friends, Kabbalah students ‎from around the world, who aspire to be Israel—Yashar El [directly to the Creator], ‎namely to aim themselves directly to the upper force, the power of bestowal and love.‎

In Hebrew, the word Hag [holiday/festival] comes from the word Hug, meaning a circle. ‎As the hands of a clock repeatedly return to the same numbers, we, too, experience ‎spiritual states in a cyclical process. It begins with the exodus from Egypt, which we ‎celebrate on Passover, symbolizing the beginning of the process, and ends with the final ‎correction on the holiday of Purim.‎

Each holiday and festival in the cycle of the year is like a landmark symbolizing an ‎important stage in the development of the soul. Through these stages, we come to know ‎ourselves, build ourselves, and experience the spiritual process over and over again.‎

I am thankful to my devoted students who collected and translated the excerpts herein for those already ‎on the path, and for those who are yet to come. I hope that reading them will help us ‎advance the entire world toward redemption.‎

Available here:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09ZCL16WX
https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=V_9tEAAAQBAJ
https://www.kabbalahbooks.info/…/landmarks-the…

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 5/4/22

Envy has a terrible reputation. It has been blamed for so many crimes and atrocities that we have learned to dread it. When it emerges within us, it is a burning feeling that is difficult to control and difficult to contain. What’s more, it makes us want things we would never otherwise think of, let alone crave. Because of these discomforts and precarious ambitions that envy evokes within us, humanity has been seeking ways to overcome it for many centuries.

However, I do not think we should overcome it. Suppressing it or annihilating it (assuming we could) would be tantamount to saying that there are things in the world that are redundant or inherently and incorrigibly harmful, and we should get rid of them. Baal HaSulam, my teacher’s father and the greatest kabbalist of the 20th century, ridiculed this approach; he cynically referred to people who advocated it as “world reformers.”

In his essay “Peace in the World,” Baal HaSulam wrote that if we were to let world reformers have their way, “they would certainly have by now cleansed man entirely, leaving in him only what is good and useful,” in their eyes. One of the filths they would certainly cleanse would be envy, and that would be an unforgivable mistake.

Just as we do not stop using electricity although it can kill us, we should not suppress envy. Just as we have learned to utilize electricity to our benefit, we should learn to utilize envy to our benefit.

In part, we already do it. Mothers often turn their children’s attention to the success of other children in order to push them to try harder. By doing so, they use the child’s natural envy. When children see that their mother appreciates someone else, it makes them envy that other person and drives them to improve in order to gain their mother’s appreciation, too.

Envy is not a pleasant feeling, but pleasant feelings do not make us grow. Need is also not a pleasant feeling, yet need is the mother of invention. Likewise, although envy isn’t pleasant, it is the engine of development and progress. To put it bluntly, were it not for envy, we’d still be in the stone-age.

Like electricity, if used correctly, envy builds us and does not destroy others. When we use it in this way, seeing other people’s success makes us grateful to them as it is thanks to their success that we, too, are improving.

Therefore, we should develop a mature approach to envy, and thank the people whose success makes us succeed, as well. If we can achieve this, we will find that after some time, we will learn to appreciate them so much that we will begin to love them for the gift that they have given us through envy.

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 4/25/22

Last Saturday evening, the mask mandate has been lifted in Israel. Although enforcement of the mandate had been lax for the past several months, if not longer, now that it is official, people say they can breathe freely. But can we? We wish! We can bid farewell to the mask mandate, but other mandates will replace it because we have more lessons to learn.

We learned a lot over the past two years of mask mandates and vaccines. The virus engulfed all of humanity and turned us into one mass. At work, on the street, on public transportation, on planes, in public places, we have begun to feel how interdependent we are. Nothing accomplished it prior to the corona virus.

However, its work of welding us together is not over; it has just begun. I have no doubt that in the near future, we will see the sequel.

The thing is that it is time for us to fuse ourselves together, to start becoming one. If we do not do it voluntarily, reality will impel us to do it nonetheless.

Perhaps it is indeed time to take off the masks. We used to say that we should wear masks not to avoid being infected, but to avoid infecting others, especially the elderly and the physically vulnerable. But since no one minds that argument anymore, it seems as though the social benefit of masks has run its course, and we need a new whip to force us to connect.

Besides, there are many entities that want the mandate stopped. The Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education, and other government agencies want the masks off in order to gain popularity. The fact that a few months from now, we will pay for it with our health is irrelevant.

Regrettably, we are not coming out of the pandemic as we should. I had hoped that we would emerge from it united, but we are emerging from it more divided than ever. Therefore, I have no doubt that a new, more violent plague will come and mandate our unity nonetheless.

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 3/8/22

Today, March 8, is International Women’s Day 2022. I would like to take this opportunity to extend my best wishes to all the women in the world, and to express my hope that the feminine power in the world will overcome the forces of separation. Today, in these tumultuous times of aggression and violence, we desperately need the feminine power of peace and wholeness.

Women give life; they are the origin of all that exists, which puts them at the center of creation. Therefore, a woman’s prayer for peace is more effective in yielding positive results.

I hope and pray that the feminine power will bring us closer to the giving force in nature, and together, led by the women, we will rise to a more connected level of existence.

I urge you women to make an effort to transcend the divisions that separate us and pave the way to unity. I urge the men, too, to support the women in their efforts to achieve this goal, as we will all benefit from their efforts.

Together you can create a corrected world where we live in peace, harmony, and love for one another. If you can unite your hearts as one, the whole world will become united along with you.
With my best wishes for your success.
Happy Women’s Day!

Women holds international Women Days sign in the colors of the Ukrainian at the “Stand With Ukraine” rally in Times Square on March 5, 2022 in New York City. Ukrainians, Ukrainian-Americans and allies gathered to show support for Ukraine and protest against the Russian invasion. (Photo by Ron Adar / SOPA Images/Sipa USA)

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 2/27/22

Over a thousand women from my students around the world gathered for a Zoom conference to raise a common prayer for world peace. Women are naturally closer to the Upper Force.
They are sensitive and feel the suffering of the world, the pain of humanity, and are able to connect together to bring the world to perfection and calm down the animosities.

Dear women, continue to raise your common prayer. We all depend on you!

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 2/24/22

The war between Russia and Ukraine leaves me bewildered, uneasy, and mainly worried, very worried. I have many students in both countries, and I care deeply for all of them.

These two nations that have lived side by side for so long, have so much in common. They have been through a lot, but I didn’t think that they would end up in an all-out war. As unfeasible as it may seem today, the only solution is still to rise above our egos and unite, since in the end, it is only the ego that sets the tone in this conflict.

Unless we, all the people, not only those in the embroiled countries, rise above our egos, the war will spread to other countries and will have horrendous consequences. As former deputy commander-in-chief of NATO Richard Sherriff said, the situation “could turn into a catastrophic war… on a scale not seen in Europe since 1945.”

Precisely because two nations that have so much in common—religion, intermarriages, and more—are emphasizing what divides them, I see the situation as ominous to the entire world. They are building a wall between them in their hearts, which will be very difficult to break down later.

But for all the hatred that is now erupting, in the end, we will have no choice but to rise above it and unite. Despite the agony and exploding rage, the war will hasten our realization that our only chance for happiness is not through destruction of others.

Negativity has never produced positive results. This is why eventually, all the parties will succumb to exhaustion and despair, and agree to try the path of mutual consideration, and even mutual concern. I hope and pray that it will come soon and with as few casualties as possible.

When my teacher, RABASH, passed away, he left behind many notes where he wrote down his thoughts. After some years, I published them under the title Assorted Notes. Below is one that seems particularly pertinent today, and which I titled “Love of Others”: I look at one tiny dot, called “love of others,” and I think about it: What can I do to help people? As I look at the public, I see people’s suffering, illnesses, pains, and the suffering of individuals inflicted by the collective, meaning wars among nations. And besides prayer, there is nothing to give.

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