Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Will there be peace between the Jews and Arabs?“

One of my students recently updated me on an amazing partnership in sports. Adam Badir is a senior physiotherapist from the Arab village of Kfar Kasem. He worked with an Israeli athlete, Artem Dolgopyat, from the Israeli city of Rishon LeZion, who recently won the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics.

Adam not only took care of Artem at the Olympics, but he also supported him like a big brother, and when Artem received the gold medal, Adam was so moved that he broke out in tears.

My student raised the question as to whether such a special relationship between an Arab and a Jew who are very close could act as an example to resolve the conflict between the two nations.

While, on one hand, partnering in our achievements brings us very close together, and on a personal level, such closeness allows two individuals such as Adam and Artem to perhaps not feel the conflict due to their friendship.

On the other hand, the particular dispute between Arabs and Jews demands a specific kind of treatment. A life of peace is possible on condition that we Jews will positively connect with each other. Our positive connection to each other will accordingly also positively influence our cousins. They will then feel a special compelling force that attracts them to love and connect with each other.

If we develop strong, internal and deep connections among each other, then we will enable such connections to expand worldwide, and our Arab cousins will also connect with us in the process. It is a law of nature, and the wisdom of Kabbalah describes how this law works in detail.

Based on the video “How Can Jews and Arabs Find Peace?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: Lyudmila writes: “How can you to learn to forgive a person who offends you and does nothing to be forgiven?”

Answer: I think that, of course, this is too high of a bar, but it begins and ends, in principle, with the fact that we do not see a person in front of us, but the action of the Creator. And therefore, theoretically, we do not need to be offended by anyone. If we correct ourselves, in this way we will correct everyone else and we will see the whole world as kind and good.

It all depends only on ourselves, on our perception of the world. We live in ideal conditions, in an ideal world, among ideal people, and everything that I see around me as vicious, it all just indicates that I need to correct myself.

Question: Can we assume that this is practical advice?

Answer: This is practical advice. True, it is very high, deep, and so on. But, in general, there is no other way out. That’s the only way.

Question: And if you want to be closer to an ordinary person?

Answer: There is no other advice, regarding someone closer or further. There is one truth, and it must be gradually put into practice from the conditions in which we are, even before the higher ones that will be revealed to us. They will be revealed and we will see truly terrible worlds, terrible relationships, terrible states, and we will also have to correct them, up to final correction.

Today the time has come to tell people about this because we have no other way out. We can’t do anything, we can’t fix it, we can’t sweeten it, nothing. We’re just dragging and dragging the time of correction. And now we need to start explaining to people that we can’t do anything, we can’t fix either others or ourselves.

Question: Not even ourselves?

Answer: But this is good. You have only one address to which you must turn, demand, and shout, and thus you will see that only this opportunity that exists in front of us is the only one and successful, and it will lead us to the goal.

Question: Then please tell me what is “to forgive a person”?

Answer: This is to forgive yourself for treating him unfairly, for believing that he is a source of evil. We have only one source of evil. This is not even my egoism, but the one who created it, and the one who supports it in this way specifically so that I would turn to Him, ask Him, realize, and thus we would get closer to the truth.

Question: Based on your words, will the ignition and increase of egoism continue, increase more and more?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Is there no chance that it will stop?

Answer: On its own? No way. The Creator’s task is to make man a Man, Adam. “Adam” is from the word “Adomeh,” similar to Him. So we must become similar to the Creator. Therefore, He does whatever He wants, only so that we will need Him.

Question: In what ways should we become similar to the Creator?

Answer: In the quality of absolute goodness, which we would want to take upon ourselves against the evil that the Creator awakens and manifests in us.

Question: What is good according to the “opinion of the Creator”?

Answer: Treat another with love.

Question: A lot of people think that they do treat someone else with love.

Answer: There are degrees here. With love, this means that I absolutely do not take my state into account, but put the best state of another at the forefront. He’s the only one I care about.

Question: Am I not important to myself at all?

Answer: No. And, in principle, it all comes down to the fact that, again, looking at all the evil in the world, I turn to the Creator so that He corrects me. And I would see good instead of evil.

The Creator seems to us to be the source of absolute evil, but in fact, this is not so. This is only for us to ask Him to change us, our nature, which He specially created in this way so that we would strive for the quality of goodness.
[291335]
From KabTV’s”News with Michael Laitman” 10/25/21

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Do I Forgive The Offender?
Learning The Wisdom Of Love

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is good? What is bad?“

Good is when we make voluntary progress toward balance with nature, i.e. balance with the universal force of love, bestowal and connection. On the contrary, we feel bad when we move involuntarily toward the same balanced state.

If we feel bad, like we are at a dead end and have lost our bearings, then that is actually good. It is because, from such a state, we will find a good solution.

We need to think about where we exist and what kind of nature we are in. Nature is integral and global, containing everyone and everything—on inanimate, vegetative, animate, and most importantly, human levels—in a single harmony.

We human beings need to reach a positive form of mutual connection among each other. By doing so, we will experience a wonderful and good life. It might sound like a children’s fairy tale, but it is not. Everything is interconnected and interdependent, and if we upgrade our attitudes to each other in order to adapt to nature’s interconnectedness and interdependence, then we will experience a harmonious existence. It is simply a law of nature.

When we start positively connecting with each other as a single global whole, with mutual dependence, then despite our petty and narrow egoism, we will start feeling that an immensely powerful force of love dwells in nature. We will discover this great force of love in the close knit and warm connections that we build between us, and we will then start feeling that we exist in a completely different and perfect world.

Based on the video, “What Is Good? What Is Bad? – Good and Bad Defined” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Semion Vinokur. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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

Thought is the greatest force in nature. It operates above time and space.

Thought is the highest force of human nature. In kabbalistic texts, it is written that “all is clarified in thought.”

Thoughts come from the thought of creation, where we are all omnipresent, and thought is all there is in nature.

We also exist in thought. We feel that we have senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, and that we live in a universe with galaxies, stars, planets, and so on.

However, it is all thought.

There is nothing other than thought. There is no matter, only thought. Likewise, all we can control is our thoughts, and nothing else. For instance, the still, vegetative and animate levels of nature are beyond our control.

What does it mean that we can change our thoughts? It means that we can change our attitudes toward nature through other people, through everything that stimulates us. By doing so, we reach what in the wisdom of Kabbalah is called “correction,” i.e. a state of balance with nature that comes from changing the direction of our thoughts—from self-benefit to benefiting others and nature.

Based on the video, “Understanding Human Thought from a Higher Degree,” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How would you describe a divine experience?“

First of all, a divine experience is not a mystical or religious experience.

A divine experience takes place when we connect with each other and sense the general system of nature. It is an experience in which we feel the so-called “souls,” i.e. the parts that piece together the “puzzle” of this system, and which make it as one. We feel the wholeness and perfection of our connection when we connect into a single body.

By connecting with each other, we rise above our nature, above this world where we sense reality in a detached and contradicting way, and enter a different reality, the so-called “upper world” where we are all interconnected.

The divine experience of the upper world is one of eternal life because we are then no longer detached from each other, but we complement each other. The entire system then lives and breathes as a life of eternity and perfection, which is how we experience it. Accordingly, our entire life is given to us so that we transcend our limited corporeal experience, and enter the divine spiritual experience, where we sense complete fulfillment, eternity and perfection.

Based on the video, “How to Transcend the Corporeal Experience of Life,” 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 is a spiritual journey like?“

We have the ability to rise to a level where we can see the origin of our experiences and observe life from a different vantage point.

What is this new perspective we can reach?

It is one where we attribute much less importance to our corporeal experiences and relate solely to the true spiritual world.

When we attain the upper spiritual world, then our world, which we build out of various unreal experiences—where we are impressed by nonsense inflated by imaginations and delusions—no longer impresses us. The spiritual world is a sensation of a single force of love and bestowal above our corporeal sensation, and its attainment means letting our soul guide our spiritual life. When we are guided by our soul, we go through an opening to a state where we mutually complement each other in an eternal and perfect life, adhering with the upper spiritual force of love, bestowal and connection. We then become boundless, rising above the limits of our corporeal sensation of reality.

The ultimate experience we aspire to reach is spiritual revelation, which is known as “the revelation of the Creator” or “the revelation of the upper force” in the wisdom of Kabbalah. The Creator is the source of reality—the source of our experiences and fate. Through the aspiration to discover and feel such a force, we eventually reach the attainment of life’s source.

Based on the video, “Spirituality: A Journey Above Human Limits,” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “If you could change one thing in the world, what would it be?“

We live in times of great change. Today’s world has become more interconnected and interdependent than ever before, and in order for us to adapt to such changes, we need to broaden our hearts—not physically, but emotionally.

We need to start feeling that the world is a part of us, and that we care about other people and the world as we care about ourselves. Until that happens, the world will increasingly deteriorate, and we human beings will also suffer more and more. Such a tendency could continue until only a small number of people survive, living life in a very primitive way, and they would finally decide to make that change.

The change that we need to make is entirely up to us. Unlike animals, which instinctively adapt to certain changes in the world, we need to make a decision and ask for this specific change to happen. It is because we are above nature’s still, vegetative and animate levels, which instinctively follow nature’s commands. We have room for free choice precisely in this change—to shift from self-concern to concern about others and the world—and accordingly, we need to digest the changes taking place and intentionally want to change.

Based on the video “How to Adapt to Climate Change” 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: “How do we change our perception of life to become happier?“

We first need to understand how we perceive life, which is through a lens of self-concern. We do not perceive life as is, but we have five senses of sight, smell, touch, hearing and taste, five openings through which we constantly receive information. If we transcend our five senses, then we come to sense a new and different reality.

Everything that we perceive is in our ego, i.e. in our desire to enjoy with an intention to enjoy for self-benefit alone. This ego accompanies and directs us to enjoy every moment of our lives, to gain as much as we can, and lose as little as possible. Nature has programmed us to desire, think and act out of self-concern at every moment, and our bodies do so in very sophisticated and clever ways. Our perception of life is thus very limited, in terms of what we want, what we understand and feel, what we receive, and what we own.

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, we exist in an eternal, abundant and perfect reality, and our perception greatly narrows this reality to a tiny limited point. We have no idea about the vastness of the options and opportunities that exist in the universe. It turns out that our bodies are our enemies, not our friends, as they force us to live inside them, detached from the abundant pleasure that exists outside.

Therefore, the key to change our perception of life and become happier is to exit the perception of life we receive through our five senses, and enter into a new perception of life: one above our bodies, where we open a new sense that can perceive the eternal and perfect reality. The wisdom of Kabbalah calls this new sense a “screen” (“Masach” in Hebrew), and the entire method of Kabbalah is aimed at developing this screen up to a point where we discover everything we possibly can in our perception of life. By doing so, we gain access to the source of happiness, i.e. we achieve happiness in its eternal, perfect and true form, and thus become happy in the truest sense of the term.

Based on the video “How to Perceive a Different Reality” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is up with all the violence today?“

Today’s society has become very individualistic. One phenomenon in relation to today’s society is that in the past, we had more of a sense of belonging to the family, and we were enveloped in a certain kind of calmness, we had different attitudes toward each other.

Today, we have lost that sense of calm. The world consists of nearly eight billion complete strangers. Moreover, we can even feel ourselves as strangers within the same household, with children feeling detached from their parents, and spouses also feeling detached toward each other. We have largely lost our feeling of our household, our family, our relatives, and our fellow citizens in our cities and countries.

Altogether, today we have no feeling of inner connection to other people. Perhaps this is a positive state in relation to our future, i.e. that it is a state of transition toward feeling a global humanity with no differences between people. However, in the meantime, we see that the natural ties that existed between us for thousands of years are being torn.

Another phenomenon is that we are generally under much more stress today because more and more of us cannot keep up with the pace of life. By nature, we are not built for the kinds of stressful lives that we experience in today’s world. Our nervous system cannot function normally at such a fast pace. It is like we are keeping a car engine running at high rpm’s. How long can we keep that up? Eventually, we must decrease the load and take the car for a tune-up. The increasing tendency to commit violence thus also comes as a result of our increasingly individualistic society operating at such a fast pace of life.

Based on the video, “Why Is Violence on the Rise?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Yael Leshed-Harel.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why do so many people get divorced each year?“

A very large amount of people get divorced in our times because their love eventually turns into hatred, and no one teaches them how to build a relationship that treats both love and hatred as necessary in a healthy relationship.

How are both love and hatred necessary in a healthy relationship today? It is on the condition that we can navigate these opposites so that they complement each other, thereby strengthening the love.

By learning how to navigate the complementarity of these opposites, hatred will then never shatter the relationship, making us want to break up, but will act like a spice that adds flavors to a constantly-blossoming love.

We need to discover negative aspects about our partner, and to do so precisely in our desire to strengthen our love. Then, negative phenomena in our relationships would not cause us to run away from our partners, but the resistance would only strengthen the love, and we would feel our love grow more and more.

Based on the video “The Need for Love to Cover All Crimes in Relationships” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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