A question I received: There are people, groups, and organizations that see themselves as one whole and close to nature. They say they love each other, plants and animals. Is this “love your neighbor?”

My Answer: “Love your neighbor” is a law of Nature, a condition in the world around us. This condition is suddenly being revealed to us now because we have grown into it, similar to a child that grows up to be an adult and suddenly has to abide by the laws of the society.

Imagine that all the media channels suddenly announced that everyone has to follow the law of “love your neighbor” by the end of the year, and anyone that won’t be able to do this will be executed. This is not funny at all – this is the condition Nature has set for us. However, we are unable to see it.

So, what are we going to do? We have to learn how to attain “love for your neighbor.” We must find out what this law means, what Nature wants from us. We cannot avoid this law – we must learn it. But how?

Through studying. This is the only means that will enable people to understand that there is no place to run and the only solution is to be corrected by a special force of Nature. This special force influences a person who desires to be corrected, to attain the degree of “love your neighbor.”

It is like a wave or frequency among billions of frequencies, and you will perceive it only if you desire it. Nature requires you to tune in to the frequency where you will feel that the only thing you want is to love your neighbor! Then this force of Nature will come and correct you.

All other attempts will lead us to a crisis, in order for us to find this path to the goal. Other directions are gradually dwindling all around us. This is called the “Egyptian plagues,” and they will eventually make us see that there is no other choice. When we find ourselves in total darkness, we will be willing and eager to run away and attain just one thing – “love your neighbor.” Where did the people run to from Egypt? Only to love, as evidenced by the unity that later took place by Mount Sinai.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: We Will Evolve to Acquire Power Over All of Nature
Laitman.com Post: The Creator Equals Nature
Laitman.com Post: Man Was Created to Exist In Balance With Nature
Basic Concepts in Kabbalah: Chapter 3. “The Giving of Kabbalah”

Filed under: Kabbalah Study, Love, Meaning Of Life - No Comments →

Questions I received about loving one’s neighbor:

Question: You say that it is possible to love others as you love yourself. I want this very much. Please tell me, is there someone who could pray for his friend with all his heart, so that the friend would love his friend as a mother loves her son?

My Answer: This has to be your own prayer, because your request – provided it is complete – will surely evoke the Upper Light, which will correct you and give you this quality.

Question: We know how to “love” for the purpose of receiving love in return. But what is it to “love your neighbor as yourself?” How is this love different from the egoistic “love?” We do not know this “Supreme Love.” How are we supposed to implement it in our daily life?

My Answer: The study of Kabbalah involves all the actions that attract the next, more advanced state (these actions include the studies, unification in the group, and dissemination). Otherwise we are pushed toward the same state by suffering. Our task is to aspire to this state before the suffering will push us from behind and make us aspire toward the next level just to avoid the suffering.

So, only the force that attracts us to the next state, called the Upper Light (Ohr Makif), is able to “explain” to us what is “genuine love” – love for someone other than yourself.

Question: What if my neighbor is not nice to me, and is mean? How do I rise above this and love my neighbor?

My Answer: You will do this for the sake of the Creator if He is more important to you than yourself. And this importance of the Creator has to come to you from your environment.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: What Is a True Prayer?
Laitman.com Post: Babies – Physical and Spiritual
Laitman.com Post: Overcome Yourself by Raising the Importance of the Goal
Article: Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings
The Open Book: “Freedom of Choice”

Filed under: Love, The Creator - No Comments →

A question I received: I accept the idea that giving to everyone is very good. But how can a person attain love for everyone in order to give them love? Is it enough to just pretend to love them? We play these games all the time. We always try to display ourselves in the best possible way. So what will have to change once everyone learns that our nature is global?

My Answer: We start with egoism, with making actions for our own sake, and then the study of Kabbalah corrects our intentions to bestowal and love. There is no other force of correction in our world!

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Enjoy Your Love for Others
Laitman.com Post: Love Is Providing Others With the Means to Fulfill Their Point in the Heart
Laitman.com Post: Is It Possible To Love Everyone?
A Guide to the Hidden Wisdom of Kabbalah: “Discovering the Unified Structure”

Filed under: Kabbalah Study, Lectures, Love - No Comments →

Three questions I received on love for others:

Question: One sometimes feels a sensation of connectivity, unity, and pleasure during the lessons, as if one’s spiritual issues are actually the spiritual issues of others in the Kli and that it’s these collective deficiencies you address. Is it advisable to relish this sensation, or should we strive to restrict it lest it become egoistic pleasure?

My Answer: You should enjoy your love for others! People can only grow out of positive emotions; after all, the purpose of creation is to delight the creatures!

Question: Last night I got a strong desire to do good to everyone without getting anything in return, and I am enjoying it. And today I woke up feeling my usual egoistic, melancholic self. Tell me please, what was it that I was feeling? Was it a higher stage that opened itself to me for a minute?

My Answer: You are studying Kabbalah and the Light is influencing you. The Light gave you this inner sensation to give you an example of what you should aspire to (this is called “awakening from Above” – Itaruta de Leela). Now you should continue in the same direction as that sensation (“awakening from below” – Itaruta de Letata), until you acquire these new qualities and sensations forever!

Question: When a person realizes the evil within him and changes to be an altruist, how can he live and survive among others who are egoists?

My Answer: By loving them! It’s because he will be corrected and his attitude toward everyone else will be equal to the Creator’s attitude.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Love Is Providing Others With the Means to Fulfill Their Point in the Heart
Laitman.com Post: A Conversation About Love
Laitman.com Post: Let There Be Light
Shamati #32: “A Lot Is an Awakening from Above”

Filed under: Kabbalah Study, Love, Q&A - 2 Comments →

In the News (from National Geographic): “Cows With Names Yield More Milk, British Study Finds”  “By giving a cow a name and treating her as an individual, farmers can increase their annual milk yield by almost 500 pints,” scientists at Newcastle University in the UK say. “Just as people respond better to the personal touch, cows also feel happier and more relaxed if they are given a bit more one-to-one attention,” explains C. Douglas, who works in the School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development at Newcastle University. “Calling a cow by her name or interacting with the animal more as it grows up, we can not only improve the animal’s welfare and her perception of humans, but also increase milk production.”

My Comment: You can achieve more through love and relaxation than through hatred and force. Maybe it’s time we tried the same approach with people?

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: On Pleasure and Suffering
Laitman.com Post: The Crisis Will Make Everyone Kind
From Chaos to Harmony: Chapter 10 – “Balance With Nature”

Filed under: Love, Science, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

News Report (from BBC News): “Is love just a chemical cocktail?” Writing in the respected scientific journal Nature, Professor Young argues that love can be explained by a series of neurochemical events in specific brain areas. … Researchers have found that oxytocin is involved in the bonding of male and the female prairie voles, which like humans, form an intense bond with each other that lasts for a very long time.

My Comment: Love, like any other feeling, brings about physio-chemical reactions in the organism. Otherwise, we wouldn’t feel it. However, these reactions are just an external manifestation, or the result, of our feelings.

Scientists are solving our problems backwards: they suggest influencing our feelings with drugs or chemicals. Science is approaching the situation from the only angle that it is able to.

On the other hand, Kabbalah explains that the foundation of all matter is the desire to enjoy. Furthermore, Kabbalah teaches us how to change our desires and control them. Then we will be able to control all other changes, which are just the results of the desires and the changes happening to them.

The division of nature into the still, vegetative, and animate levels is also nothing but a gradation of the desire to enjoy – “to preserve oneself and to develop,” or “to draw closer to what’s beneficial and move away from what’s harmful.”

Science cannot unlock the mystery of love – this cannot be solved with chemical means. Kabbalah, on the other hand, teaches us how to change our feelings, and even to ascend above them. In our transformed feelings, which will change from hatred to love for the neighbor, we will perceive “the world outside of us” – the Upper World, a state that’s eternal and independent of our bodies.

This is love, but not the corporeal type.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Quantum Physics: A Journey to Flatland
Laitman.com Post: Some Quotes by Albert Einstein
Kabbalah Today Article: Love, Deciphered
Lecture: Unconditional Love
Article: “Kabbalah as Compared with Other Sciences”

Filed under: Love, Science, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

A question I received: Please explain the meaning of the expression “Faith, hope and love” and their order in one’s spiritual work.

My Answer: First, a person must attain faith – the perception of the Creator. This perception gives him hope and confidence about his present and future, since the revelation of the Creator makes a person merge with Him like an embryo in a mother. Then, after experiencing all of the Creator’s actions and learning of their absolute goodness, a person starts to feel love for the Creator.

As you can see, everything comes from attainment, or learning things yourself. Kabbalah is the most practical science of all: it is studied inside and through oneself.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Everything Is Attained from Within
Laitman.com Post: The Wisdom of Kabbalah Isn’t Learned Through Common Sense
Chapter from the Book  Attaining the Worlds Beyond – “Faith: Believing in the Oneness of the Creator”
Baal HaSulam Article: “The Love for the Creator & Love for the Created Beings”
Baal HaSulam Article: “The Essence of One’s Work”

Filed under: Love, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

A question I received: I am questioning the practical applications of “love your neighbor as yourself” and whether this should be more than being tolerant of your neighbor.

Let me explain. Since everything we see around us is a reflection of what we have inside of ourselves, then our thoughts and desires are just objects that manifest themselves “out there,” but actually they appear within ourselves.

I do not know about others, but I cannot say that I love all the thoughts and desires that arise within me. I am aware of most of them and tolerate them, but I do not really approve of all of them and I pass through them as though they are crowds of people. Is this how we should treat others? I understand the need to be aware of other people, be respectful of others and forgive them. But that does not mean I should love or approve of what others are doing, such as blowing up the Twin Towers in the United States, for example. I can forgive them for this action, but they still need to pay the price for killing thousands of innocent people.

My Answer: Correction starts with man’s recognition that anything correct and good can only come from the Upper Light. Hence the only thing he expects from studying, uniting with a group, and disseminating Kabbalah is the Light’s influence.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Soul’s Correction Is Invisible on the Corporeal Level
Laitman.com Post: The Source of All the World’s Problems
Laitman.com Post: A Spiritual Revolution Is Inevitable
Article: “Arvut (The Bond)”

Filed under: Love, Spiritual Work, Unity - No Comments →

News Report (from The Independent): In an article called “Scientists prove it really is a thin line between love and hate,” Steve Connor, The Independent’s science editor, reports: “Scientists studying the physical nature of hate have found that some of the nervous circuits in the brain responsible for it are the same as those that are used during the feeling of romantic love – although love and hate appear to be polar opposites … the ‘hate circuit’ shares something in common with the love circuit.”

My Comment: According to Kabbalah, the difference between love and hate lies only in the aim of one’s intention: “toward oneself” or “away from oneself.” Furthermore, if we begin doing systematic work to acquire the feeling of love, then we will feel that we “come out of ourselves.” There – “outside of ourselves” – we will feel a completely different flow of time, space and perception, to the point that we will cease perceiving ourselves, and replace “self” with “others.” By transferring the center of perception from “inside of us” to “outside of us,” we will feel the Upper World, the Creator. We will feel this precisely in the desires of others!

Question: What is the spiritual root of unrequited love?

My Answer: There is no such thing as unrequited love in spirituality! It exists only in our world, when one’s egoism doesn’t feel that it could be fulfilled by one’s partner. It’s because our egos distance us from one another, and everything is built upon using one another.

However, when there is a spiritual connection, then everything is built upon bestowal and complementing one another. To the degree we are corrected, this definitely happens.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Love Is Providing Others With the Means to Fulfill Their Point in the Heart
Laitman.com Post: Kabbalah Deals Only With the Actual Attainment of the Creator
Kabbalah Today Article: Love, Deciphered
Lecture: Unconditional Love

Filed under: Crisis, Egoism, Events, Group Work, Love - No Comments →

Two questions I received on love:

Question: You often say that one’s relationship with the Creator should be similar to how a groom courts a bride, how she conceals herself, and so on. In addition, you have said that in the past women were bought for money, and it was enough to meet someone just once before getting married to them. But where is passion and tension in this?

My Answer: There is no need for love on the corporeal level, because it is created later through mutual compromise and habit. However, passion and tension are necessary in one’s relationship with the Creator because these feelings are higher – contrary to egoism. For example, it can be compared to a dramatic love story where the lovers (man and the Creator) aspire toward each other (through bestowal), against the desires of the whole world (against all their egoistic desires) – and this creates passion and tension.

Question: In a TV show you were asked, “What is love?” and you said, “It is the fundamental quality of the universe, mutual bestowal that permeates all levels of nature, except man. We are left to our own devices, and we do everything in the world except this.” However, you also say that man doesn’t have freedom of action and everything is determined by the Creator.

My Answer: This is how things were initially determined by the Creator: All nature in our world is egoistic due to man’s egoistic downfall, and the correction of all of nature depends only on man. To the degree man corrects his inanimate, vegetative, and animate desires, he also corrects the external inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels of nature.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: What Does a Man Look for In a Woman?
Laitman.com Post: Man, Woman and Divinity Between Them
Laitman.com Post: Why Did the Creator Create Love Between a Man and a Woman?
The Path of Kabbalah: Chapter 2.6 – “Discovering Spiritual Properties”

Filed under: Love, Mutual Guarantee, Q&A, Spiritual Work - 1 Comment →