Medium published my new article “COVID-19 and the Anxiety Epidemic”

Of all the scares that COVID-19 has wrought, probably the most fearful one of all is uncertainty about the future. During the lockdown, the country experienced a staggering rise in anxiety. On May 4, William Wan of The Washington Post reported that “The country is on the verge of another health crisis, with daily doses of death, isolation, and fear generating widespread psychological trauma.” The anxiety eased by about 40% a month later, as the country began to roll back lockdowns, reported the Medical Express, but now that the number of cases is rising once again and states are reissuing stay at home orders, anxiety is bound to rise again.

American authorities at all levels must draw a clear plan that will secure basic livelihood for every person, and enhance the social ties of individuals into communities.

With all that has been going on in America over the past few months, uncertainty about the future is the last thing the country needs. Since this anxiety stems from a real fear that people will have no job and no way to make a living, there is only one way to deal with it: American authorities at all levels must draw a clear plan that will secure basic livelihood for every person, and enhance the social ties of individuals into communities.

People must know what is going to happen to them, to their children, and to society as a whole. Therefore, as soon as possible, authorities must initiate open virtual sessions that explain how all the systems work. People have to know that contagion is not limited to viruses; we are an integrated society and affect one another on every level. The closing of one small business has a negative impact on many people who are seemingly unrelated to it: suppliers, delivery personnel, accountants, manufacturers, property owners, etc.

The same chain of infection that applies to COVID-19 applies to everything we do, say, or even think. If it is positive, we are transmitting positivity. If it is negative, we are transmitting negativity.

Likewise, one person’s depression affects not only that person’s kin and friends, but the friends of the friends, friends of the kin, healthcare workers, coworkers and the people they know, and so forth. The same chain of infection that applies to COVID-19 applies to everything we do, say, or even think.

If it is positive, we are transmitting positivity. If it is negative, we are transmitting negativity. Only once people internalize this, they will begin to feel responsible for one another, and that responsibility will pull them out of their down and mobilize them into constructive action.

In the near future, travel and tourism will drop sharply, as will sports and entertainment, trade in accessories, and countless other industries that thrived until a few months ago, leaving tens of millions out of work. These people will need help fast, and the only things that will help them are 1) basic sustenance, 2) grasping our mutual connectedness, and 3) enhancing their social ties and connection to the community.

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New Life 1241 – Global Community
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi

An individual is supposed to receive a sense of security from the community that cannot be bought with money. Money will not help a person protect himself against harmful agents such as the coronavirus, but community life will. The coronavirus is showing us that our egoistic relationships are opposite to the integrality of nature. Unless all of humanity becomes one community, we will not survive the 21st century. From the perspective of our egoistic human nature, each one of us wants to be the king of the world. This is the reason that we need to educate people to live in a community. We are part of a global nature. We will learn to connect to each other and to nature integrally, and then everything will be fine.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1241 – Global Community,” 5/18/20

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Question: Can I change something in myself, am I my own master? What should I do to achieve lasting changes?

Answer: If you want to, you can do it. For this, there is a method of correcting yourself as an egoist, and this method is described in our courses. Go to the archives on our site and see everything that is said about it. Choose what you want, read, get interested, find friends and a group—go ahead.

Question: I want to be in the integral connections, but I understand that I am an egoist. What can I do alone?

Answer: You are all egoists! When you get together and learn how to help each other in a way that complements one another, then you will instantly see how both you and nature will become balanced, tranquil, and benevolent. This is all very quickly corrected; you just need to start listening and wanting it.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 5/10/20

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New Life 1239 – The Coronavirus And Human Evolution
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi

Nature creates humans as good, but our egoistic desire to dominate others makes us bad. People who dominate others are strong and rich and do not have support from the integral power that is found in nature. They will not survive. In the world of tomorrow, people who know how to overcome their egos, think of others, and draw society toward unity will be considered strong. The characteristic of love is the most important for survival because we live in a global and integral world. Connection with the general power of nature depends on the bestowal of goodness to others. A person who has improved in this way, will feel like the king of the world.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1239 – The Coronavirus And Human Evolution,” 5/14/20

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Question: Is nature something living, rational, with emotions, thoughts, plans, and the possibility of a meaningful reaction to our impact?

Answer: Nature is a rigid system consisting of inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human parts. All of them are in a certain dynamic equilibrium. If we upset this balance with our selfish influence, then nature reacts to this in the opposite direction, deviating like a pendulum to the other side. This is what we experience today with the example of the coronavirus.

Now we will be hit by such blows that will force us to become integrally connected because we exist in a state of “the last generation.” The last generation means the last egoistic generation in which the ego is corrected. We must fix it.

Question: So all our suffering comes from nature?

Answer: Of course. All suffering comes from the fact that you violate the integration of nature, its balance. Only from the loss of balance in nature that occurs through your fault do you get a reaction from it, which you feel as pain, trouble, and problems.

Man himself is very weak. You put a little pressure on him, and he already moans, cries, and is ready to do everything as it should be done. Thus, nature will force us to become good, mature, and most importantly, kind parts of nature toward each other.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 5/10/20

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New Life 1238 – Quality Of Life In The Coronavirus Era
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi

The most essential thing that influences our quality of life is a feeling of happiness, and this doesn’t depend on anything. The aspiration for a high standard of living is derived from the human ego since people want to have what everyone else has. The coronavirus will correct us by cleansing everything that is superfluous and making time for higher meaning, purpose, and the essence of life. We will run less and think more. We must advance to a spiritual, eternal state, above the limitations of time, movement, and space.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1238 – Quality Of Life In The Coronavirus Era,” 5/14/20

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Question: Do we bring correction to the world through our study and connection?

Answer: Yes. We bring a positive component to the world because we talk about its unification, about the fact that people should be connected through good connections.

Of course, this gives the world a certain positive direction, some kind of correction, but this is not enough. For the egoistic world, our relatively altruistic component is undoubtedly too small to correct the direction of the world’s movement.

Frankly speaking, I hope that now, when we are returning to our previous conditions and forms of governance, restore enterprises, and so on, we will still come across how limited we are and how we should behave differently.

Question: After coming out of self-isolation, will people understand that the world is different and accept it through their changes?

Answer: I think we will come to a certain inner state in which we will evaluate each state: pre- and post-coronavirus. We will compare them and think about how we could do things differently. Even if people have nothing to do with us but hear our calls, they will still perceive reality in this way.

Question: Where is this turning point of people? Do they need to accumulate suffering so that at some point there will be an inversion and the explosive growth of those who are ready to support us will begin?

Answer: Yes, on one hand, it will happen from the accumulation of suffering and dissatisfaction.

However, on the other hand, also from the fact that we will begin to understand that we need to go a different way to see a better state ahead than the previous one.

Therefore, there may be a relative absence of all kinds of blows, but instead there will be a clear vision of a good future. I think that now when we are returning to the past, we nevertheless will want to correct it.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 5/3/20

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Question: Not only is the outbreak of the virus so swift that it has covered countries and continents, it also has divided the world in a very tough, sharp way, something that was not so clearly visible before.

The world is divided into poor and rich. The rich can afford separate houses, a separate island, and the poor, who cannot afford anything, are obliged to go out, to take their children out for walks, they are afraid of everything.

The world is divided into those who have the racist views that are now flooding the Internet, and those who write on Facebook: “We are ready to come to you. Just call, we will come. Elderly people, do not leave your houses, we will bring you food, we will give you help,” etc.

That is, the world is very divided. The virus somehow showed us who we are. Did it come so that we would see what we are now?

Answer: This is the identification of interference, the identification of faults in the general system we are in. Therefore, you must look at how connected you are with others. We must be all in one system of the soul.

Comment: You say: “We must connect.” And we do not want any connection.

My Response: Therefore, this is shown to us so that we really know what state we are in.

Question: What steps are still ahead?

Answer: None! We are at the very last stage of a universal correction. If we are internally united with each other, we understand, we are striving for this, that’s all, nothing more is needed! All viruses will be for our benefit only. Everything bad turns into good.

Comment: Good, if this is so. In the meantime, we continue to suffer.

My Response: Otherwise, we egoists cannot be adjusted, only to happiness with a stick. See how people are stubborn, what they imagine today. Look at what is being done on the Internet, how much hatred spills over one another, how they poke each other, how they act. All of this we need to understand now, justify, correct, and build bridges of mutual understanding over all contradictions.

Question: How do I justify a hater? Say: “No, he does not understand, he is like a child,” as you say.

Answer: Gradually explain to him what we always explain. He’s not going anywhere. He will understand that nature forces him to do so. He is great like a small child who is swaggering in front of his mother. And when he feels he is facing nature, before fate, then there is no longer all these opportunities to puff up, and the time of truth comes.

Question: Could you explain something to such a bright, tough hater?

Answer: I have no hatred for them. They have toward me, yes, but I do not. And it annoys them. They are suddenly put in such a state: “How is it that we hate him, but he doesn’t hate us?”

But in fact, I can’t hate them, because in my understanding, they are forces of nature. Why hate nature? They simply show the negative properties of nature, which has not yet reached its perfection, mutual correction. And therefore, there is no evil in the world in my understanding. Evil manifests itself only to the extent and in the form in which I can balance it with good.

Comment: That is, you do not support this phrase, as they usually say: “So that evil disappears from the world.”

My Response: It will never disappear. It can only be corrected, compensated by good.

Question: Is this what it came for?

Answer: Yes. If there were no evil, then there would be no world, we would not exist because we are all in evil. As the Torah says: “a wild ass’s colt is born a man.”

Question: This applies to humans, does this apply to a virus that is practically not evil?

Answer: A virus is just an indicator of our uncorrected state. Is it to blame for something? This is a small biological particle. As in your computer suddenly some kind of hindrance arises, some kind of small program that bothers you in something. But it indicates to you a malfunction, and in this way you can correct the general, big program.

Question: So, the fact that the virus shows such a stratification of society is actually good for us to see and to finally become scared by it and want to prevent this from happening?

Answer: You need to be afraid because otherwise you will not shake an egoistic person. He must be shaken.

But I am for people to get to this idea very quickly in a normal, calm way, and it would work on them and make it possible to establish a mutual equilibrium system. After all, nature is built on a general balance of negative and positive properties and forces. And therefore it is impossible without viruses, impossible without hatred. But all this must be balanced. Nature wants us to live in balance, with an understanding of both good and evil.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman,” 3/23/20

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Is it possible to arrive at correction while avoiding the ten Egyptian plagues? After all, nature has already engaged us by sending us the coronavirus, and naturally, we’re in for many more challenges.

The coronavirus has already made us give up all contrived engagements. Now that the quarantine is lifted, we will see that most businesses that were not essential will not be reinstated.

The whole industry will shrink because there will no longer be the former demand for fuel and electricity. The first priority will be to provide everyone with the necessities of life, that is, food and shelter. Everything will be more modest, there will be no need to carry exotic fruits from other parts of the world since you can grow everything you need locally, in greenhouses. The world will take a new form.

Most of the people will be engaged in study and will work on connection. Working on connection will become our main focus, and everything else will be directed solely into providing all the necessities for those building that connection: food, clothing, education, channels of communication. Everything will revolve around connection.

We can already see how much a single virus has reshaped our lives. The coronavirus carries with it a tremendous amount of information about how we should organize our lives.

This will take another year or two, as in all transitional processes when at first there are sharp shifts in their amplitude, and then the fluctuations gradually diminish as the process stabilizes.

Therefore, I hope that there are no wars or big problems awaiting us. People will begin to change internally even without it. Tiny viruses that can’t even be seen have already made a major impact on us. Every day there are positive changes that occur inside a person.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah lesson 6/14/20, “The Obligation to Disseminate the Wisdom of Kabbalah to Many”

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Nature’s Experiment

Question: We see how nature forcibly pushes us to integrate. At first it was tribal, communal integration, when people united in order to survive, then came forced imperial integration, colonization, and then cultural, religious, national, and class integration. Today there is economic and informational integration.

All this developed under the influence of nature without our participation; no one specifically wanted it. And suddenly there is a virus that divides us, makes us stop all connections.

What is this leading to? Doesn’t this seem like it is against nature?

Answer: In principle, we are advancing toward gradually distancing from each other. Once we lived in communities, villages, and farms, but now everyone has their own apartment.

Today, newlyweds do not live with their parents, and once it was natural. Currently, every small child should have his own room, his own personal space. His egoism becomes so great that even though he is only 5 – 10 years old, he still requires a separate space for himself: “This is mine and don’t enter!” In other words, we see a person’s egoism growing.

And now its next level is being revealed, which nature itself shows us. If you are close to each other, then your relationships leads you to disease and death. So, you should be at a distance of two to 10 meters from each other. Who knows where this will lead?

In principle, this is quite natural. In this way we can do less harm to each other.

Question: As if nature forbids us to be in connection with each other because it was egoistic?

Answer: Here we learn something else. On the one hand, we willy-nilly stopped working and for some time found ourselves in the family circle. Therefore, there are certain problems surfacing, as man is not used to this way of life.

On the other hand, problems are manifested not only between spouses, but also between parents and children, between children themselves, etc. They are social in nature, and this is bound to have very large consequences.

Nature is putting us through a certain experiment; that is how I see it. I look at nature as a supreme intelligence that brings us to a certain state so that we understand how we should behave.

The supreme intelligence knows how we actually act, how we determine and become aware of our states, how we can find a way out of them by comparing the pleasant with the unpleasant, with development, with various movements. It sees how our habits, customs, and social problems and their solutions change.

Now all countries are simultaneously undergoing such restructuring, to different degrees, in different cultures, but it is still happening.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 4/23/20

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