Question: What kind of gifts should we give to a friend?

Answer: Show him such signs of attention that he understands that you are doing this for the sake of advancing with him to the Creator, to rise together with him.

It can be any kind of gift, expensive or cheap, small, just some kind of token of attention, completely immaterial and insubstantial. It does not matter.

Question: What is the best gift for you?

Answer: I do not need anything material. There is nothing that I would like. The best thing is when the student understands what kind of work I want to see from him and performs it. This is all.

Question: Should he get feedback that this is exactly what you need?

Answer: Yes, I will tell him.

Question: But can you tell him the exact opposite so that the person will not be proud?

Answer: As a rule, I say that I really need it, and I am not lying or flirting. He should be next to me, feel, or even ask me when I need something, for example, to translate something, put together or correct something from the material that the world needs. Nothing else!

If a student wants to please me, he himself must succeed in his advancement, which means to be a teacher, organize groups, and engage in dissemination.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Best Gift for Laitman” 12/21/13

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How do you cope with anxiety?“

One of my students told me that when he discussed his anxieties with someone close to him, like his wife or a close friend, then he found that the moment he started opening up to them, the anxiety decreased—even before he received any advice or support.

Togetherness definitely decreases anxiety. There is a saying in the wisdom of Kabbalah that “a sorrow shared is a sorrow halved,” i.e. when we share a sensation, we divide it up, and it in turn becomes more manageable.

Since it is quite easy to see how sharing our experiences lessens our negative feelings, the question is why do we not use this ability more? Why is it so hard for us to share our anxieties with others?

We are indeed afraid of opening our hearts, letting everyone see that we have certain fears and anxieties. In addition to whatever anxieties we hold within, we usually have additional anxieties about sharing them with others, that it might cause others to perceive us as weak. Since society in general values stronger, smarter, wealthier and fitter individuals, opening up our anxieties to such a society makes us vulnerable to exploitation. We thus need to seek a social environment that would not exploit us for opening up, but would rather give us a sense of faith and confidence that it can help us cope with any negative feelings.

A social setting that can guarantee faith and confidence in its members is one that actively draws itself to the upper good and benevolent force—the force of love, bestowal and connection. It is this very same force that awakens negative feelings in us, whether they be fears, anxieties or several other painful sensations, in order for us to draw closer to that force, and we do so by drawing closer to each other.

If we wish to connect with the upper force and let its perfect quality of love, bestowal and connection fill our lives with a sensation of faith and confidence, then we need to emulate such a quality toward each other—giving others a sense of faith and confidence, and for them to do the same toward us. By wanting to positively connect with each other, we then start awakening the positive force dwelling in nature into the connections we create, and we then feel a new sense of faith and confidence wash away any anxieties that we might be holding within.
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Based on the video “How to Cope With Fear and Anxiety” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash.

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Question: You say that being physically in a group does not mean that a person is really in it. Does it mean that this is not a criterion?

Answer: Of course. The desire for connection is the criterion.

Question: How should one treat the friends in the group? I do not know if they want to connect or not? A person can sit silently and that is it.

Answer: Yes, it is difficult to understand. But there are various indications whether he is included in the work along with the rest.

By nature, we are all different: phlegmatic, choleric, etc. Is it possible to say that a choleric person is directed forward more than a phlegmatic person? This is just the way they express themselves externally. Internally, both can be with the same desire, but one will be speaking slowly and doing something, while the other will be rushing from corner to corner. So what? How can you evaluate this?

Question: But the evaluation itself is not to bring them under any category. Let’s say there are criteria: an internal group, a young group, and some other layers. Who generally makes decisions, and how is a person’s readiness established?

Answer: I do not know. It is none of my business because it is a group. They have a teacher, this is me, and together with them we analyze the sources, the articles of Rabash, who wrote a lot on this topic. They know these sources and have repeatedly gone through all the articles. Now let them implement them.

I only set general lines or inspire students to take some action. I cannot tell them how to do that exactly. They must do everything themselves.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. How Are People Admitted to a Group of Kabbalists?” 12/12/13

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why should adults also play every day?“

Playing is a very important means for development. When we play, we develop new relationships and connections.

While it is common knowledge that children need to play in order to develop, which is why we buy them games and put a lot of effort into working out the most suitable games for each stage of their development, it is not so clear with us adults. We do not really like to play. Our relations end up quickly deteriorating into each one of us degrading the other, which ends our playing.

As a result, we miss out on a lot of what we can get out of life. We fail to examine all of our options for development as adults, and we thus put a halt to our further development.

We have turned our daily lives into a prison of sorts. That is, we need to look, behave and talk in certain kinds of ways—and only in those certain kinds of ways—otherwise, we will not fit in with others and gain their respect. Without their respect, we get treated in ways that harm us. We suffer from living in such a prison, but it has become such an integrated part of our lives that we cannot escape from it.

The essence of our playing as adults should be that we treat each other positively even if we do not feel like it, and to teach others to do the same. Playing in such a way would emulate the higher state of positive connection that nature is developing us toward, and we would thus draw positive forces of connection that dwell in nature into our relations, and start feeling happier, more confident, and that our lives are purpose-driven.

Based on the video “Why Adults Should Play” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash.
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is more important, compassion or empathy?“

Through empathy we come to feel the pain of others, and through compassion we feel the pain of others but are able to handle it. It is because compassion comes with love, which is the key difference between the two.

According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, empathy is “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner,” and compassion means the “sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.”

With compassion, it is as if we step into the other person’s world and feel their experience. If we foster and nurture such a feeling within ourselves, we can then enter a whole other world. However, we are not involved in such a process. Generally, at the ages of thirteen and fourteen, we can fully resonate with other people’s suffering. If we would then receive further education on how to relate to such feelings, then we could bring about immense positive change in the world.

We can teach compassion in ways where people learn how to understand and nurture it more and more. By increasing compassion in society, we can share in other people’s suffering by accepting it partially upon ourselves, and then reach a state where we neutralize suffering.

Moreover, we would not burn out by seemingly taking too much suffering upon ourselves. Instead, our increased compassion and sympathizing would neutralize suffering, allocating it into smaller portions, and bringing relief to others by doing so.

Shared compassion among all people on earth would lead to a globally-blissful state, which is exactly what we need to achieve. If we fail to increase compassion in human society, then we will encounter greater and greater problems heading into the future. It is because the human ego continually grows while nature forces us to become more and more tightly interdependent. In other words, without uniting and sharing our suffering, we will be unable to tolerate our increasing connection: we will feel greater and greater pressure upon our ego until it will become unbearable.

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, compassion holds a broader definition than what is in Merriam-Webster. It divides the vast suffering that exists in reality. Reality consists of one enormous desire to receive that was created, of which we are its parts, and a great light—a force of love, bestowal and connection—needs to fill the desire completely. The more we prepare a compassionate approach upon this desire, i.e. an intention that is not self-aimed, but aimed at loving, giving to and positively connecting to others, then the more we let the light—the positive force of love, bestowal and connection—enter the desire, alleviating our suffering and bringing us to peace and harmony. In other words, the great desire to receive that bases our reality can only be completely fulfilled if our intention is aimed in the direction of benefiting others.

Therefore, by learning how to become compassionate, we can accelerate the time it takes for us to achieve balance among each other and with nature. We would then divide the difference between absolute fulfillment and emptiness among every one of us, and we would then be on course to a blissful state: feeling a contradiction, impossibility and inner cry morphing into a new kind of higher pleasure and joy. In such a state, there is no difference between pain and pleasure because they come together as one. In other words, in a higher level of reality where we are more correctly connected together, pain becomes pleasure because we balance them out.

Pain is given to us in order to invert it to pleasure. The greatest pain, as a result, becomes the greatest pleasure. If we know how to balance these opposites, we end up with a whole new kind of pleasure and sensation of reality.
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Based on the video “What Is More Important, Compassion or Empathy?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Semion Vinokur. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: You once said that in order to make a decision in life, you can even flip a coin, etc.

But one Frenchwoman named Lori came up with the following: on her Telegram channel, she conducted a survey on what to do, and now she does exactly as her admirers advise her.

She wrote: “How I act depends on you; you choose my future.” Subscribers vote, and make important life decisions for her. And she reports to them: “Thanks to you, I blocked my boyfriend whom I didn’t really like, took a helicopter tour although I’m afraid of heights, and left my internship that I didn’t like.” She writes: “I don’t regret anything, I’m terribly interested in what this experience will lead me to.”

Is it possible to trust the collective like this?

Answer: It’s good. She has something to lean on. Many of her admiring readers still give her confidence.

Question: Do you think you can rely on such group brainstorming?

Answer: No, not that whatever it says is right or wrong. But it gives her confidence! Afterward, whatever happens, happens. The main thing is that at every moment she believes that she is doing the right thing. And this feeling corrects the wrong step; that is what is interesting.

Question: So this confidence of mine makes the wrong step right?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Are our steps mostly correct or incorrect?

Answer: Any of our steps are wrong. All steps are wrong because they are egoistic!

Question: Every one of them is focused on what is comfortable for me and what is profitable for me. Is this what you call a wrong step?

Answer: Yes. When you look long-range, this is absolutely the wrong step. I can steal something somewhere in the near future or do something like that, and it will seem that I am lucky. And in general, of course, nothing good will come of it.

Question: Which step do you call the right one?

Answer: For the benefit of the majority. The absolute majority!

Question: Can the collective suggest such a step? Is it for our benefit to take such a step?

Answer: Naturally! If the collective’s thought is that you are taking a step for our benefit and a person is taking this step, then this step is more or less correct.

Question: Is there any advice you can give people on how to act so that this will be correct?

Answer: Work for the masses.

Question: And if I consider this mass to be cattle?

Answer: So what? Even more so.

Question: So I work for the masses whom I despise?

Answer: Of course. And who does not consider himself smarter than the rest?

Question: Do you think that inside, everyone considers himself smarter than everyone else? And if he who considers himself smarter than everyone else still acts for them, is this what is called a real step?

Answer: Yes. This is what I advise, and after that…

Question: But you understand that this advice is a bit… Maybe you can advise something easier to implement in life ?

Answer: I have already given you life advice. This is a credo, a life credo.

Question: I see. That is, when masses went to die for the collective and they died for other people, was it an egoistic step or not? What was it? Were these heroic deeds?

Answer: No, it was easy. They blended with the collective, and it was easy for them. When you run into battle with everyone together and you shout “Attack!” and so on, you just drown in the connection with the others; you don’t feel yourself. This is the ecstasy of a battle.

Question: And here when you say, “For others, you do it for the masses,” what do you mean?

Answer: You are doing what is for their benefit! And you don’t just do it together with them in order to merge into them and not feel like a person.

Question: What can be for their benefit?

Answer: Whatever is for their benefit, for the benefit of the majority, I do not know; each case is different. And ideally it is bestowal, love, and connection.

Question: So you’re broadcasting it there: “I live for you”?

Answer: Yes. And this is the right step.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 11/10/22

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Question: Why is it very difficult for Europeans and representatives of Western civilization in general to be absorbed in Israel?

Answer: The cultures are different. Israel is an Eastern European, not a Western culture. After all, the principle of Jewish life—collectivism, mutual responsibility, mutual empathy—has nothing to do with the European, and even more so with the American way of life.

Of course, we can live and prosper there, but to truly adapt to their society, to feel comfortable in it, we cannot. However, people who settle there, the second or third generation, find it very difficult to settle here – they must go through a period of adaptation again. Therefore, they create their own communities.

In addition, the language, local culture, and local relations are quite warped here. After all, Israel is a very peculiar country, with a huge bureaucracy, security problems, and uncorrected “collective farm” that came in large numbers from all countries and cannot unite and melt into a single whole.

Of course, for Westerners who come from complete comfort, leaving huge villas, swimming pools, and everything else, European culture, which they were hooked on and which they consider to be the greatest and most advanced, it is very difficult here.

So, I understand them, but they have nowhere to go. They can go to other countries, but I do not see much of a future for them there. European Jewry has no future. This is the gradual development of Nazism, which will put more and more pressure on them.

As we know from the experience of Germany, Jews can live there until the very last moment, and then also justify their persecutors. History repeats itself. It will not be different in Europe this time.

And in America too. It is just that America is too big, too divided, and too layered. But even there mutual hatred will rise because seven to eight million Jews have settled between Latin Americans, African Americans, and Europeans and they are like a bone in their throat. The little bone in the throat still feels bigger than anything else.

Therefore, everything is going to escalate because it is through aggravation that we can solve this problem, that is, realize why such hatred arises.

In past centuries this problem also existed, but it was not recognized. First, there were religious conditions for it, then financial ones. Even though they still exist today, in principle, humanity should clarify everything for itself. This is an eternal problem that will not go away.

We, the Kabbalists, must spread our vision. As a result, sooner or later the world will know the reason for such relationships and what they lead to.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Moving to Israel” 12/7/13

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Question: When an example is given in a Kabbalistic group, you begin to understand from it that you are not completing something. Can a Kabbalistic group set an example for the world? Will people be able to feel that we have an equal relationship and be drawn to this?

Answer: They will be drawn based on two forces. One force is suffering, which pushes from behind, and the second force is good, which pulls forward.

It all depends on the strength of the environment acting on everyone. It is in the power of the collective to make it so that a person will not be able to think differently. He will not be able to because he is a single small being in the collective field. And if this field begins to act correctly on him, he will be obliged to obey.

To enter the collective or disconnect from it is a person’s free choice. And when he enters, the environment already affects him, and he rides along with everyone without any problems.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. A Living Example” 12/3/13

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Question: Is there pressure on a person in Israel because there is a stronger spiritual energy here?

Answer: Yes. I think this is not only because Israel is here, but because this is the way the land itself is. Even if there were no State of Israel here and there were no people at all, this energy would still be felt.

Even more so when there is such a hodgepodge in this territory because representatives of all nations of the world live here and each leads his own life, so naturally this complicates the situation even further.

It is hard for me to talk about this topic. I state this purely theoretically because I live in my own world, lead my own life, and I do not exist in the general atmosphere, although I connect to it when necessary.

Question: But still, by its roots, is this place closest to spirituality?

Answer: Yes, undoubtedly! Either in a negative or in a positive sense.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The Land of Israel” 12/16/13

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Question: Why should a person advance to the goal through pressure according to the Kabbalistic method?

Answer: The fact is that you have to replace your nature, either voluntarily and consciously or under harsh pressure.

Either you produce this pressure yourself and convince yourself to change your attitude toward people or nature convinces you—one of the two. This is the manifestation of all the corrections, which should be implemented right here in this world in our mutual relations.

Question: Let’s say that in principle I know and understand this method. But suddenly before some action, there is such a state that I just enter into a dissonance that presses on me?

Answer: But this is just simple egoism! It means that you lack the influence of the group and that you are not integrated with it enough. The most important thing is the environment, the group.

Comment: But this happens just before the action. Then when I already get into the action, go like a millstone and exit this state, I realize how important it is and how cool it is. But still, with the next step I feel pressure again.

My Response: True. This is how it happens: slowly and gradually until the altruistic force that is hidden inside the egoistic force is revealed to you. We need to break through to it.

Comment: Only then does the understanding come, but it is in sensations and not in the mind, and only later is it analyzed by the mind. I am going through overcoming and only in the sensations do I feel a greater breadth.

Answer: Certainly. Everything happens in sensations. Objective reality is given to us in sensations, as the Marxists used to say.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Progress Through Pressure” 12/2/13

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