Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How can one rise above themselves?“

We can rise above our egoistic selves in a group setting where we conduct various exercises that guide us on how to connect with each other until we receive a feeling that we live in a single system of nature.

By learning how to connect, we start learning what nature wants from us, and the extent to which we can realize this desire of nature. The more we learn the ways of positive connection above our egoistic selves, the closer we come to a state of living in a hate free and united world. We then start feeling the attainment of a higher world.

The feeling of rising above our egos in a group setting is different to the feeling of working on ourselves in a purely individual manner, for instance, in practices such as meditation.

In a group setting, we remove illusory concepts of rising above ourselves, and learn together with others how to invert the negative egoistic force into a positive one. In individual practices, we are closed within ourselves, and solely by the power of our imagination and inner effort, we seemingly try to not be under the ego’s control. We likewise receive no forces from above. Indeed, such practices somewhat let us detach from the ego, but we do not work with the ego in a way where we build a new system. Likewise, those engaging in individual practices such as meditation are not connected among each other. It is as if each one sits in their own personal corner. They might seemingly enter a different world, but it is detachment from the earthly corporeal ego that gives such a sensation. However, it gives us no ability to truly rise above our egoistic selves—to enter and act in the upper world with understanding and awareness.

When we aim to rise above our egoistic selves in a group setting, we reveal the extent in which we need to invert our egos. We come to see how our egoistic nature operates in opposition to others, and the more we try to positively connect, the more we discover the negative force working against our connection. Eventually, from such an interplay, we come to genuine demands and responses to rise above our egoistic selves and discover higher worlds of perception above the ego.

Based on the video “How to Rise Above Yourself” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is the spiritual process?“

The spiritual process of development means disagreeing with listening to our egoistic desires for self-benefit at the expense of others and nature, and developing a new spark that will be connected solely with the upper force of love, bestowal and connection, called “the Creator” or “nature.”

According to our efforts to develop this spiritual spark in us, our spiritual desire, we will be called “human beings” in the fullest sense of the term. That is, “human” in Hebrew (“Adam”) means being similar (“Domeh”) to the most high, the Creator (“Domeh le Elyon”).

The Creator is the force of bestowal, of giving. It is the opposite of what we are, desires to receive. The Creator exists in a small spark we have within us for giving. It is very hard to find the Creator. The biggest egoists can find the Creator faster and more accurately than smaller egoists. People who have smaller egos, who have an inclination to help and participate with others feel as if they already experience the spiritual quality of giving to a certain extent, but they do not.

While we develop spiritually, wishing to identify more and more with the spiritual spark within us—the force of love, bestowal and positive connection to others—we go through states of despair when we find ourselves continually falling into our egoism, pride and self-concern. Getting through such states and using them optimally depends on the environment that we surround ourselves with. Individually, we cannot get through such states.

We are given a certain feeling, and if we have something contrasting that feeling around us, similar to weights that alternate from side to side, then in such a way we can use the counterforce.

If we surround ourselves with people who support us in our spiritual development, then we help each other, discuss and understand each other. We also might not necessarily be focusing on the person who is currently in descent, but toward everyone.

Based on the video “What Is the Spiritual Process of Development?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is calmness?“

Calmness is a state where we feel comfortable, a state that is different for each person. For instance, some people are rampant, and if you try to calm them down, they might explode from the pressure. That is, their wildness is their calmness.

There are different types of people, such as choleric, sanguine and people who are naturally stressed or under pressure. Calmness is thus in relation to each individual. That we each feel comfortable in our current state means that we are calm. And we should understand that some people need high levels of activity in order to feel calm.

I had a friend who managed a theater. He dealt with frustration and pressure around the clock, but when there were periods when there were no requests to put on shows, he felt depressed. Therefore, definitions of calmness are completely personal. We also cannot examine such definitions by blood pressure or other physical measurements. Simply, each person feels calmness differently in their lives. But in short, when a person feels content with their life, they are calm.

A key paradox regarding calmness is that we generally regard calmness as a healthier state than stress, but life itself does not let us remain calm. This is because we shape our lives artificially, out of our ego. We wish to use other people and nature for our own personal benefit, and by doing so, we spoil each other’s lives, leading each other to anything but calmness. Therefore, realizing calmness throughout society today would require correcting the human ego en masse.

Based on the video “What Is Calmness?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What does despair do to you?“

Everything we receive from nature is for our benefit. If we reach a state of despair, it means that next time it is better not to exert our efforts in that direction because we will not get what we want. Therefore, despair comes to teach us that we should not waste our time and energy in a certain direction.

Despair is a critical point of scrutiny where we can revise our direction in life. We can either see that a certain direction is not for us, and then we become willing to let it go and take a different direction in life, without regrets, or perhaps we reach a point of despair and realize that we indeed want to head in the direction that we were headed, and then we shift into a higher gear and tackle that direction at any cost with new strength.

Despair comes to show us that we have a certain goal, we have certain strengths, and we see that they do not match. Therefore, perhaps by reaching despair of our own strength, we can then discover new sources of energy to reach our goal, for example, someone to consult, a group to connect with, a trainer or a coach, and that we can receive additional strength from there. In such a situation, despair couples with a feeling of joy, because it could be that without despair, we would labor endlessly in a certain direction and settle for mediocrity.

Based on the video “What Does Despair Do to You?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Can nature really heal us?“

There is a therapeutic approach in Japan called “forest bathing,” which sends people with various medical conditions for a long stay in nature. Research shows that a long stay in nature can decrease blood pressure, stress hormones, treat anxiety, depression, and in general, help you heal from different medical conditions.

Indeed, nature has healing powers. Anybody can feel how a walk in nature, being in nature, and going out to stay in the country for a few days, has a healing effect.

Nature consists of the still, vegetative and animate that we need to connect with as opposed to the jungle of stone and bricks that we live in with their stress and tall buildings.

However, the human ego, which wishes to exploit others and nature for self-benefit, increasingly detaches us from nature, making us destroy and distance ourselves from it, and such a process will eventually lead us to at least see how wrong we are in doing so.

In the future, however, I think that everything will work out. We will reach an understanding that our ego is killing us from one moment to the next, and that we need to revise how we conduct our lives, together with understanding what will happen if we continue along the same trajectory. We will then stop letting the ego drive us to harm ourselves.

However, we do not need to go and live in the woods. The solution is among each other, that we start living in unity, with love and mutual support. Such an approach would heal us of all the different illnesses that we have. We could make a thousand-page list of illnesses, and if we develop connections of unity and love, then we would heal ourselves of them all. Reaching relations of love and mutual support among people would balance us with nature at the human level, the highest level of nature.

Based on the video “Can Nature Really Heal Us?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What do you think about quiet quitting?“

I think that employees are correct in demanding that they do exactly as their contract states, i.e. that our workplace buys a certain amount of time from us and we devote ourselves to our employers during this time, and also that our employers have no hold on us outside of that time.

In some places, people give their all at their workplace, and in other places, they say, “No, we’re not slaves. We’re willing to work for a certain amount of hours and get a certain amount of payment for it, and that’s it.” They want to feel that they live their own life, and it is a legitimate demand.

In general, I see quiet quitting as a positive development. We each need to think about the meaning and purpose of our lives, and who we live with. These are important concerns for people.

Based on the video “Quiet Quitting – A Kabbalist’s Response” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Should one try to strengthen or eliminate one’s ego?”

We first need to understand what our ego is, that it is our innate desire to enjoy at the expense of others and nature. Since it is given to us by nature, we should not eliminate it, but we should rather invert it so that instead of destroying our relations by each of us trying to step on each other, we instead learn how to enjoy by serving each other.

Our ego naturally makes us wish to suppress others, to position them in ways that we derive self-benefit from them and that we control them. We can thus also do the opposite—to use this lever in order to serve and fulfill them.

Nature gives us a key example on how we can enjoy by serving others: a mother toward her children. A mother is willing to work around the clock to serve her children in order to see them grow up happily. However, if we share no familial relations, then we have no such relationships with each other. We are not connected to others in such ways, so other people detach from our cost-benefit calculation.

We thus need to bring ourselves to a state where we feel that humanity is our family. We then have to relate to everyone similarly to how we relate to our families. In such a way, we will gradually be able to come closer to understanding why nature created an ego in us and how we should work on ourselves in order to invert it from a negative into a positive form.

It might seem far fetched because most people cannot even deal with the weight of their own problems in their personal and family lives, so how are we expected to deal with the problems of the whole world? Yet the moment we start relating to humanity as to one family, we will suddenly feel ourselves gain a new strength, which will fill us with understanding and the sensation of how to conduct ourselves in ways where we will get along with each other optimally. It is as if our intellect and emotion will then suddenly work in ways that are mistake free.

Such an inversion in consciousness takes place because we invert the force that divides “mine” from “others,” and then everyone and everything appears as belonging to oneself, as a single system. Moreover, we gain a clear perception and sensation of the higher force of nature that drives the system, a form of love, bestowal and connection, and balance ourselves with the trajectory of that very force.

Based on the video “Should One Try to Strengthen or Eliminate One’s Ego?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How does ego ruin my life?“

The ego positions us in situations where we regularly want to exploit others. We look at others through our egoistic lenses of how we can use them to benefit ourselves: “How can they do something for me?” “How can I trample on them in various ways?” Eventually, the ego kills us. It corrupts students in classrooms, people at workplaces and in all kinds of relationships—it ruins our lives.

Since the ego ruins our relationships and our lives in general, the immediate follow-up question is: What should we do with the ego? We need to take the ego’s reins and control it. We should not suppress or kill it, but use it correctly, because we have to use everything created by nature in ways that benefit us all.

Our bodies function automatically on nature’s still, vegetative and animate levels, knowing what is beneficial and detrimental for their functioning. However, on the human level, which is above the still, vegetative and animate, we do not know how to correctly function.

We thus have to learn the ways of positive connection to others, because our ego makes us relate to people and nature solely out of a desire to benefit ourselves alone. In addition to simply benefiting ourselves, the ego also sometimes makes us want to enjoy by suppressing others, i.e. exploiting, manipulating and abusing others. In other words, it makes us enjoy ourselves by making us feel superior to others. That is the truly negative form of the ego that ruins our lives, and learning how to control this ego and make it acquire a positive form requires regularly learning and promoting to each other how we can positively connect.

Based on the video “How the Ego Ruins Our Lives” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What advice do you have for women to stay calm after giving birth?“

After giving birth, I think that the best would be for a woman to be among other women, like it was in the days of our grandmothers—that a woman lives among women, in an extended family.

Then, she goes through her states more naturally. She receives explanations, has a laugh here and there, and goes through the flows of life.

That is much better than staying at home alone. Loneliness is the source for all the different kinds of stress that women go through in such states.

Today, also, due to the Internet, women can find communities that suit her, to get answers, ask questions, have talks, and watch movies.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why does it seem like most of the world hates Israel?“

Whether we know it or not, we in Israel are in a game—that we need to receive blows, and to be treated badly until we straighten out properly toward the upper force. Then, the evil against us will invert into good.

The upper force—a force of bestowal, love and connection that we call “the Creator” (Heb. “Boreh”), “nature” (“HaTeva”), “upper light” (“Ohr Elyon”), and several other names—currently does not like us, because we are not living up to our role in the world.

On one hand, those who are pro-Israel like to tell themselves that Israel is among the top countries in several areas such as humanitarian support, technology, medicine and science, but on the other hand, we see that despite Israel’s achievements in these areas, the general attitude from the world toward Israel continues worsening and thus it is not worthwhile convincing ourselves of our seeming righteousness.

Our many corporeal achievements fail to nail what the upper force ultimately wants from us, which is to positively connect with other Jews in the world. Positively connecting means reaching a state where the love of Israel dwells among us upon all of our differences and divisions.

While we differ on many issues, we need to override them with the upper sentence, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” regardless of who is right or wrong. Such love is due to us all belonging to a single nation that was founded on the idea of the love of Israel. Moreover, the more poignant our differences, the more we should be elevating love over them, as it is written, “Love will cover all crimes.” In other words, even though hatred dwells between us, we should nonetheless each try to develop a sense of love toward each other. We would then start understanding how the world consists of two opposite forces—positive and negative—and how to work with them.

To be good in the eyes of the upper force means showing our love to each other, helping each other develop ties of love, and by doing so, become a conduit for the upper force of love, giving and connection to spread throughout the world. If we conducted ourselves accordingly, then the hatred toward us would subside, and in its place would emerge a great love and reverence for a nation that brings an immense positive unifying force into the world. It would also help the world feel that the Jewish nation is a very special and unique part in the functioning of the general nature of the world.

Based on the video “Why Does it Seem Like Most of the World Hates Israel?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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