Medium published my new article “Change This 1 Thing to Achieve Perfection”

The world is heading to a state of perfection. While it might seem like we are drawing ever further away from perfection, it is in order for us to feel our remoteness from a perfect state so that we would wish to pull together and advance toward it.

Perfection is a state that is good for everyone, with no problems, a sense of vitality, and where everyone cares about one another.

In order to realize perfection, we first need to erase our materialistic competitiveness, which holds us in a constant restlessness, and which also makes us view each other unfavorably.

We need to calm ourselves down from our rat race and to enact ourselves in the world because we wish to bring goodness to everyone. That is, we need to shift our motivation — that we get motivated by simply wishing to do good to everyone.

If society’s values would shift from what they are now — the reverence of successful individuals who outcompete their way to peaks of wealth, fame and power — to valuing people for the good they bring to society, then we would be driven to bestow goodness to everyone, since doing so would gain us society’s respect. It is my hope that we realize such a change sooner rather than later, as it would alleviate a lot of suffering while also letting an abundance of goodness flow into the world.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Israeli Police Resigning in Droves”

One of my students told me about a major problem with police officers in Israel, that they are resigning in droves. It used to be an honorable position in Israeli society, but today they face more workloads and responsibilities while their income remains very low, even below the average wage.

Police officers in Israel become increasingly accused of power abuses and even face several instances of legal prosecution. For instance, when an Israeli border police officer who neutralizes a terrorist has to testify as a suspect, then he naturally feels betrayed by his country, and that he would be better off getting another job that would pay him more.

It is wrong for police to be so underpaid and unprotected. They should receive protection from their country, and get paid more than any other profession because they regularly have to deal with society’s ills. When I was in Switzerland around 15 years ago, I had a conversation with a police officer who told me that their average starting salary was a relatively hefty 8,000 euros a month, because it is indeed a complicated job to acquire and to sustain. Also, Israel is no Switzerland in terms of the additional risks that police officers face here.

Therefore, police need respect from the government, acknowledging the necessity and importance of their work to society, and they should always feel that society stands up for them. We need to raise their salary, revise the rules of their use of force, and give them a little more freedom. If we recruit and strengthen a good number of police officers, then Israel would be different. They should feel that people have their back, and the people should feel how the police protect them.
Based on the video “Israeli Police Resigning in Droves – A Kabbalist’s Response” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Semion Vinokur. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Symbols of Tradition Becoming Symbols of Disobedience”

Traditional and religious holidays in Israel are usually times of national unity. These days, Israel is celebrating Hanukkah, a holiday whose essence is the triumph of the Jewish spirit of unity over the Hellenistic spirit of exalting the self. Yet, precisely now, prominent elements in Israel’s society, including the (still) incumbent prime minister, are calling for civil disobedience to protest the policy of the newly elected government before it has even been sworn in, and they are doing it by advancing displays of Christian symbols instead of, or more conspicuously than the Hanukkah Menorah. Despite being a primarily political initiative, this disobedience symbolizes the level of division spreading in the nation, and a divided Israel is a short-lived Israel.

Not only politicians and opinion leaders are pushing for prominence of Christian symbols over Hanukkah symbols in Israel. Santa Claus, elves, deer, and of course, the Christmas tree can be seen in some shopping malls in Israel, and no trace of the Menorah. Universities also place large Christmas trees at the entrance to some of the buildings, either with a small Menorah next to it, or with none at all. Even the Tel-Aviv municipality has asked visitors to its Facebook page which holiday they like better, Christmas or Hanukkah.

Having different political agendas and maintaining diversity of views are the essence of democracy. It is a precondition for the advancement and development of society. Countries that maintain diverse opinions thrive, while countries that allow only one narrative to dominate, whether from the Right or from the Left, become degenerate and sink.

In the case of Israel, diversity is not only a matter of evolution or devolution. For Israel, smothering diversity poses an existential threat.

The essence of the Israeli nation is unity above diversity. The ancient Israelites came from many nations, held different ideas about everything, and were very adamant people. When they came across Abraham’s teachings (or those of his descendants Isaac and Jacob), they learned that if they do not suppress other people’s views, but unite with them despite the differences, they form a bond that makes them stronger and wiser than any biological nation. When enough people had adopted that principle of uniting without suppressing disputes and disagreements, they became a nation, the nation of Israel.

When they were united, their differences complemented one another creating a tapestry of views that did not exist in any other nation. The unity that they had had to form in order to maintain their nationhood above such diversity had to be that much stronger than any other nation.

Nature, too, consists of complementary opposites; this is what makes creation harmonious and evolving. When the people of Israel were united, they were just like the rest of nature, harmonious and evolving, and that was the secret of the success of the ancient Israeli nation.

But when the people of Israel were not united, they immediately split back into the many nations from which they came. This is why when Israel are divided, they strive to assimilate among the nations and not remain Israelis or even Jewish.

However, Israel cannot afford to lose its unity and vanish altogether. The whole purpose of the existence of the Israeli nation is to demonstrate that unity above division is possible, and that it creates a thriving society. If people do not realize that diversity must be nurtured and embraced, they will be embroiled in eternal conflicts, and humanity will destroy itself.

If Israel does not practice unity above division, it disintegrates. At that time, the world hates the Jews for advancing conflict instead of peace. However, it does not blame us because we pit countries against each other, but because the fact that we do not present an alternative to conflict forces the world to engage in the only solution it sees: eternal war. And it blames Israel for it.

Only when Israelis learn that their challengers from within are not their enemies, but their partners to the task of setting an example, they will be able to unite above their contradictions. Until then, Israel and the world can only expect strife and conflict to keep building up.*

*For more on this topic, read my books The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism, and Like a Bundle of Reeds.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Human Rights Day Misses the Most Important Right”

Every December, there is a lot of talk in the media about human rights because the Human Rights Day is observed by the international community on December 10. Human Rights Day commemorates the day in 1948 when the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The declaration sets out a broad range of fundamental rights and freedoms to which we are all entitled, such as the right to freedom, equality, dignity, personal safety, education, and work. Regrettably, there is one fundamental right to which all of us are entitled, but none of us has because we are oblivious to it. Nevertheless, without it, we will have none of the other rights.

The thing is that one, fundamental fact determines everything in our lives: We are all connected to each other and dependent on each other. Since we do not know it, or do not want to know it, we violate each other’s rights left and right, without realizing that by doing so, we are corrupting the very fabric that sustains and nourishes us. Therefore, our most basic right, which is just as much our duty, is to feel that we are each other’s lifelines.

Whether we like it or not, we are all in this together. The general law of nature is “One for all and all for one,” and it is inescapable. The sooner we realize this, the sooner we will begin to live accordingly.

We do not exploit our children or deprive them of basic needs. On the contrary, we try to provide them with everything they need, and then some, because we feel them as extensions of ourselves. Likewise, if we felt that everyone around us is also an extension of ourselves, because this is the truth, we would not exploit them.

Right now, we must fight for the used and abused around the world precisely because we feel disconnected from others. Until we solve that sense of disconnection, we will not eradicate exploitation and the struggle for human rights will be futile and useless. If anything, it will benefit only those who gain fame and fortune presenting themselves as the champions of the poor when in fact they profiteer on their tormented backs.

Because the realization of our mutual dependence is essential for mending the ills of human society, I always insist that education for connection is the single most important and urgent initiative that we must take. It must come before anything else because again, if we know that we are dependent on each other, we will not hurt each other and human rights will not be abused anywhere. Conversely, if we are unaware of our interdependence, we will always find ways to exploit one another, and even organizations that purport to fight for the poor will actually be perpetuating their misery in order to increase their own wealth and power.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “How to Conquer Fear – A Kabbalist’s Advice”

Just let the fear go. Don’t think about what will happen in the next moment.

We know nothing about what is truly going on in our lives. It is thus best for us to just let go. We hold such potential within us. Letting go of our fears requires some training, but we need it.

Fear comes from our will to control situations we find ourselves in, and when we cannot control them. When we let go of fear, we then seemingly control the situations from another end. For instance, take one of the most common fears: the fear of death. Our death is inevitable. Accepting the fact that we will certainly die, we can then imagine how the world will continue developing after we are gone, agree with that picture, and let go of any current fear we have.

There are no set steps, however, for how to let go of fear. It is different for each and every person. Some people start thinking along the lines of “What will happen to the world after I’m gone?” “How will my loved ones and my relatives continue their lives?” “What will happen with my inheritance?” and “How will my legacy unfold?” Faced by these questions, we need to make another correction—of our attitude toward life and death, which is behind our every fear.

We should transform our fears into an absolute surrender to the will of nature—the will bestow that created and sustains us—which requires us to make a certain kind of effort. We might still have to go through a lot of frightening moments until we reach the end of our earthly path, so we should try to calm ourselves down.

The laws of nature that created and sustain us, and which we are ultimately being led to discover, are in a state of absolute calmness and rest. We should thus aim to emulate nature’s calmness.

We are calm when we are not worried about what will happen in the next moment. It is a difficult point to express because it is not simply about flowing with the currents of life. On the contrary, we need to rely on the laws of nature that operate on us at every moment, which control everything and everyone.

Since we live within fixed and determined laws of nature that are in total control over our lives, then we have nothing to worry about. Do we want to interfere with the laws that are driving everyone and everything through corrections? Of course we don’t. We then might as well calm down and move on with our lives.

That state of calmness indicates agreement. It means that we agree with the laws of nature, which is quite difficult, because we always want to hold back, check what is happening in nature’s plans, and argue that maybe things should play out a bit differently.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Net Energy Gain – Another Gift We Won’t Enjoy”

This week, the United States government announced that one of its nuclear fusion laboratories, Lawrence Livermore Lab (LLL), has achieved what US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm described as “One of the most impressive scientific feats of the 21st century.” The Financial Times even declared, “US government scientists have made a breakthrough in the pursuit of limitless, zero-carbon power.”

Nuclear fusion is a process by which two light atomic nuclei combine to form a single heavier one while releasing massive amounts of energy. This is what happens in the sun. In the experiment, the scientists succeeded in replicating the process in a lab, which released more energy than the energy invested in creating it. This is called “net energy gain,” or “ignition.” Theoretically, this process could create endless energy at almost no cost.

Despite the fanfare over the breakthrough, a commercial use of the process is at least decades away. Moreover, even if it becomes commercial, humanity will not enjoy it, but only the same few who reap the benefits of every achievement humanity has ever made.

Behind every experiment and effort that individuals and governments make lies a corrupt element that does not let any achievement benefit the general public: human nature. Therefore, first of all, I do not think that the giant corporations that make billions from fossil fuels and other means of energy production will let such a gift for humanity materialize. Second, even if this form of energy production does come through, and humanity gains access to unlimited power, it will be used for what every asset is used—against other nations or other people.

Humanity’s problem is not technological. If we wanted, we could solve the world’s crises in a week. There is no shortage of food, and there should not be hunger. Likewise, there is no shortage of energy, and no one should suffer from the cold in the winter or from the heat in the summer. No one should suffer from poor hygiene and lack of medical facilities, from inadequate education, or from any of the myriad predicaments that plague the world. The only reason we do suffer from them is that we want to inflict harm on each other. It is very simple: Because everyone is trying to make everyone else suffer, everyone suffers.

The world is full of energy. We could use it for all our needs as if it came from nowhere, and it would be completely effortless. The only thing that is required is for us to change our relation toward each other because for energy to flow, there must be connection, and the only connection that is disrupted in reality is human connection. Therefore, if we fix the connections between us, we will have limitless and effortless energy.

The energy in the universe is boundless. We do not need to split atoms or fuse nuclei in order to extract or harvest it, or to derive energy through other costly means. We do not need labs, and we do not need cutting edge science. We need to stop wanting to deny each other of everything that is good; we need to stop trying to suffocate each other. If we change our intentions toward others, we will release the chokehold we are putting on each other and the energy will flow by itself, to everyone, incessantly, abundantly, and endlessly.

Energy is energy; it can be used however we choose. If we do not obstruct its flow through our blocked connections, we will be able to satisfy our every need, from the most physical to the emotional or mental.

Admittedly, we are nowhere near releasing this endless energy. However, we must remember that only if we work toward it, we will eventually achieve a state where humanity is free of energy concerns. As long as we insist on negative connections, we will continue to struggle for energy, fight over it, and deny it from each other. As long as we are disconnected, energy will simply be another means of exploitation and manipulation of the powerful few against the powerless many.
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Medium published my new article “Medium: Elon Musk vs. Twitter”

Over the past several weeks, Elon Musk, Twitter’s new owner, has been releasing what became known as the “Twitter Files.” The “files” are dumps of internal correspondence among former execs in the company, which Musk fired as soon as he purchased the company. The dumps reveal routine blacklisting of conservative journalists and politicians, including then President Donald Trump, blocking of tweets that did not fit the company’s political agenda, and suppressing news that did not advance the liberal cause, such as the now verified story of Hunter Biden’s laptop.

I have no doubt that Musk knew what he was buying when he went forward with the deal. I am sure that not only Musk, but many other people did background checks for him, and told him what was going on in the company. This also explains why the first thing Musk did when he took over the company was to fire the top stratum of the company.

I do not think that Musk’s intention is to cleanse the world of evil or of evildoers. If that were the case, he would have already been “cleansed” by the evildoers. Nevertheless, I am very much in favor of Musk’s exposures, and the fact that he has succeeded and survived thus far must mean that either he is lucky, or that something I am not aware of is at play here.

Yet, Twitter is only one platform. There is no doubt that the situation is no different in Facebook, or in any platform that is a hub where billions of people go and can be influenced.

In the end, the name of the game here is power and control. This is why the former Twitter executives did what they did, and why all the big tech media and internet companies manipulate data. This is also why the FBI, according to the Twitter Files, was involved in the maneuvers.

The bottom line is that whoever controls the media, controls what people know, and whoever controls what people know, controls what they think. When you control what people think, there is no limit to what you can do with them. This is the end goal of the big tech companies: power and control for the sake of power and control.

I do not know if Elon Musk is after power and control or after something else. He has been a high-tech pioneer for many years, and founded Tesla and SpaceX, but Twitter is a new thing for him. Where it will take him is anyone’s guess, and it might lead him into all kinds of entanglements with various companies and people. Either way, I am always in favor of transparency and exposure of problems because this is the only way to recognize problems and malfunctions, and subsequently mend them. Therefore, whatever motivates Musk, as long as it unveils the truth, I am all for it.
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Medium published my new article “Money Matters”

The text below is a summary of Dr. Laitman’s words in the show “El Mundo” (The World).

It is said that money is not everything in life. That may be true, but it can buy just about anything. Our desires are generally divided into six categories: food, sex, family, money, power, knowledge. Money, the fourth category, can acquire all other five. In other words, money is power; it is an equivalent that can be traded for anything we want or need. This is why in Hebrew, the word kesef (money) means two things: kisuf (wanting/yearning) and kisui (cover). In other words, money can cover (satisfy) all our wants.

The more civilization develops, the more it develops its monetary systems. We have become completely dependent on it because we cannot barter products the way our ancestors did, so we have to use something that is equivalent in value to the products we want to trade, something that is portable, collectible, and valued equally throughout the world. The thing that meets all these requirements is money.

The only thing that can replace money is love, since love drives us to give and receive fairly and justly. Regrettably, love does not exist in human society, except between parents and children, although today even this is not a given. In any case, as a factor in today’s society, which is based on mistrust, the only practical means of exchange is money.

However, for an increasingly growing number of people, there is something that is worth more than money, despite all that it can buy. These people are searching for something money truly cannot buy. Money can buy anything in life, but it cannot explain the meaning of life itself, life’s purpose!

Usually, when we are younger, we focus more on making money, thinking that this is what will make us happy and feel secure. As we mature and reach our late 30s or 40s, we realize that we may have made enough money to secure our living, more or less, but we do not know why we live at all. “OK, so I was born, I’ve lived thus far, and I have children who will live after me. But now I am looking at several more decades of life, where I’ll be going through the motions without understanding what it is all for.”

Think of everything we do in life; we always know what we want to get out of it. So how can we carry on with life itself without knowing why we are here? No amount of money can answer this question, which is why most people are even afraid to admit to themselves that they are asking it.

My personal take — as someone who is occupied much more with the meaning of life than with financing ephemeral satisfactions — is that money should cover our basic needs. We should have enough of it to secure health, housing, education, and food for ourselves and our families. Beyond these basic needs, I get no pleasure out of hoarding cash; I prefer to spend my time developing the higher realms of life, the ones that deal with life’s purpose, and not with securing my physical existence.

There is another point here: People who chase money and other corporeal pleasures are never truly satisfied. If they settle for what they have, it is only because they are too tired or timid to strive for more, but it is not as if they would not want more. Such people can never be satisfied because the very satisfaction of their desires causes them to grow. Because the sensation of vitality comes from satisfying our desires, once they are satisfied, we no longer feel alive because there are no desires to satisfy. As a result, new and more intense desires emerge in us.

A person who strives to know the purpose of life is always satisfied because he does not need to achieve something in order to feel happy. The search itself makes him feel alive and energetic. He, too, will want to learn more once he has learned something, but knowing is not his purpose, but the learning itself, making him constantly satisfied and deficient at the same time.

On the other hand, a person who strives to know the purpose of life is always satisfied because he does not need to achieve something in order to feel happy. The search itself makes him feel alive and energetic. He, too, will want to learn more once he has learned something, but knowing is not his purpose, but the learning itself, making him constantly satisfied and deficient at the same time.

For such people, money matters do not matter. All that matters is to learn and explore the world they live in, how it works, why it works, and how they can make it work better.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Controlling the Spreading of Lies and Disinformation”

A question I received: How do you think we could better control the spread of lies and disinformation?

By understanding that the source of all lies and disinformation is nature itself, that our brains, hearts and hands are all under the control of a higher force, and that the spread of lies and disinformation is not sourced in certain people and groups as we commonly think.

We were created in a state of complete misinformation, a system that is called “our world.” The reason we have been placed into such a system is so that we will eventually grow tired of living the way we currently do, and will strive to exit this system by all possible means.

There is a parable about this by Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), in his article “Introduction to the Book of Zohar,” where he likens us to a worm inside a radish:

A worm that is born inside a radish […] lives there and thinks that the world of the Creator is as bitter, as dark, and small as the radish it was born in. But as soon as it breaks the shell of the radish and peeps out, it claims in bewilderment: ‘I thought the whole world was the size of the radish I was born in, and now I see a grand, beautiful, and wondrous world before me!’”

The question is how can we get out of this bitter, dark and small world we are in, and see the real world?

There are special souls that have matured out of billions of souls. They can detect the call, like the worm, and move toward the exit of the radish. Moreover, this process of us exiting our small world is also managed from above, as the worm does not necessarily want to exit the radish, but wishes to be where it is warm and comfortable. Later, when we exit the small and dark world, we understand that we were completely controlled, seeing that we did not do anything at all in our lives. Everything we have done over the course of our development, our sciences, technologies, cultures, wars and whatnot, are in order for us to accumulate a certain rotting layer around us.

At such a point, we realize that while we are inside the so-called “radish,” then we are led by nothing other than our petty egoistic nature, where we seek tiny pleasures and wish to continue living and growing within such a nature, thus creating a rotting layer around us.

If the higher force that is behind the creation of this system so desires, then it will guide us to exit this small dark world we were born into by leading us to a request for its help. And if we develop a genuine request, which emerges from a group of us—like a group of “worms” moving through the radish—we then get an answer to our request.

Along with all the lies and disinformation in the world, there are a lot of lies and disinformation about the Creator Himself for two reasons:

1. Because the Creator controls everything and everyone, and
2. Because we know nothing about who or what He is, or what He does.

That is why we seemingly do whatever we want ad nauseam, and we will always move toward what our egoistic nature depicts to us as most enjoyable in every state. Truth itself is within the layer of rot that accumulates around us, in what we consume and excrete. The more this decaying layer gathers around us, the more it helps us go through the states we need to go through relatively quickly, and begin to distinguish the state in which there is something new, fresh and completely unexpected for us, so that we can select from all other states and thus compose a new level of existence.

Our future is in the real world that comes about when we exit our small and dark world, and we need to develop a desire to exit our small and dark world in order to enter the much broader, bright and real world.
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Based on the video “What Is the Source of All Lies and Disinformation?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Semion Vinokur. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Turkey on the Rise”

Mutlu Meydan is a long-time student of mine. Although he was born in Turkey, he discovered the wisdom of Kabbalah and began to study with me while living in Sydney, Australia. That was more than twenty years ago. Following his heart, he moved to Israel to be with the study group I lead in Israel, and while here, he began to teach Kabbalah to people in Turkey. A few years ago, he moved back home and since then, he has devoted every spare minute to his students.

I spent all of last weekend with the students that Mutlu had introduced to Kabbalah, and I was in awe. Their questions, their understanding of the principles of the wisdom, and their willingness to connect with one another from heart to heart in order to reveal what Kabbalah teaches filled my heart with joy. I am grateful to Mutlu, and more than delighted to discover that in the spiritual sense, Turkey is a country on the rise.

The Turkish nation is an ancient one, with a glorious past and a unique present. It is a hub of cultures and faiths, and its population is diverse. On the one hand, it is a member of NATO, and on the other hand, it is a Muslim country, giving it a pivotal position in international politics.

The Turkish Kabbalah students are unique among my students around the world in that they are young, mostly under thirty. Typically, people discover the wisdom of Kabbalah not before their late 30s or early 40s, when they begin to ask about the meaning of life. But in Turkey, people as young as 18 or slightly older already ask these serious questions and are willing to exert themselves in order to find the answers.

Over the weekend, we spent hours together, conversing and learning, and the people were fully involved, attentive, and responded intelligently to my answers to their questions. But most importantly, they were affectionate toward each other, indicating that they have truly grasped the gist of the wisdom: connection and love of others.

The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches how to connect people’s hearts above chasms of culture, faith, and ethnicity. Evidently, this idea sits well with the wonderful people I have met in Turkey, and it seems to me that many more will follow. Given Turkey’s central position in the world, I believe that if more people embrace the principles of unity above differences, the country will have a significant and positive effect on the entire world.
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Michael Laitman and Mutlu Meydan

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