Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why do bad things always happen to me? It is as though every time I finally get over something, another bad thing happens to me.“

Indeed, we often find ourselves asking why bad things keep happening to us, especially when it does not stand to reason that we deserve all kinds of negative outcomes from our seemingly positive or even just neutral behavior.

What is the connection between our behavior and the outcomes we experience in life?

To add salt to the wounds, we can find people such as criminals living seemingly good lives, while people who worked hard to enter professions that serve society could be suffering their entire lives. And we are then left to ponder why life could be so unfair.

Our inability to make sense of this dilemma stems from our inability to understand the complexity of our interconnectedness and interdependence. We cannot grasp the rippling domino effect of our behavior in the world, and have no clear or direct perception of the responses to our actions.

Yet, every single one of our thoughts and actions influences the system we exist in, and enables a response. We simply cannot piece together why things take place the way that they do.

We commonly try to find solutions to this dilemma by looking at our past behavior, i.e. that it led to bad things happening later in our lives. However, trying to piece together this dilemma in such a way is over-simplistic, and it fails to take several variables into account.

We thus need to understand the function of negative experiences in our lives. Negative experiences serve to surface questions about their reason and cause, so that we would wish to break out of our small individualistic cells of perception, and expand our perception to encompass a much greater and fuller perception of reality. The more negative experiences we encounter, the more prepared we become to balance ourselves with the interdependent and interconnected system of nature we live in. When we start exiting our individualistic worldviews and entering more complete and integral perceptions of the system we live in, then we start understanding the extent of influence we have on our lives and our world, and what behavior can be considered positive or negative.

We currently evaluate our lives according to extremely limited parameters, and we will keep accumulating suffering until it will prod us to seek beyond our current limitations. We can be compared to unsupervised children who eat only sweets, without understanding the harm that we cause our body, which will catch up to us later on in life.

We should thus refrain from pointing our finger at someone, some group or something else that we think causes bad things in our lives. We should also refrain from digging into our past for actions that might have brought about our current negative experiences.

What, then, should we do with bad things that happen to us?

We should accept their inevitability, and use them to spark questions about their cause and purpose: that they come in order for us to exit our individualistic worldviews and enter a much greater and complete integral one. We do so by better and more actively connecting with our surrounding society. We should thus seek a society that encourages and supports us to rise above the current level of our lives, where we have no access to perceiving the complexity of the system we exist in, and enter a much greater perception and sensation of reality. We do so by positively connecting to others, where we each develop attitudes of mutual giving and concern toward one another, and by doing so, we gradually acquire a new sense through which we feel life.

Through enhancing and enriching our connections to each other, we will find our lives become more and more balanced and harmonious. Such is the way to become truly happy, confident, safe and comfortable. In other words, the cause of our life’s troubles is our incomplete perception that fails to account for our interdependence, and the solution is in realizing our interdependence with positive and altruistic connections.

By attaining newfound balance and harmony with the interdependent system we are all parts of, we then reach the perception of every single event happening in life as perfect, since we acquire a new spin on everything that happens in life: that it is a means to rise above our current narrow perception and enter into a much fuller and greater one. And a much greater and fuller perception is one where qualities of love and giving dwell in our attitudes to each other.

Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What elements of our lives do we need to consider to live a balanced lifestyle?“

We should take care of healthy nutrition, a balanced diet, physical activity, stress management, leisure time, and having balance in our free time, e.g. from sitting and listening to music through to playing with kids, playing sports, and so on. These are all elements of a healthy and balanced lifestyle.

In addition to taking care of balancing our nervous system, it is written in Kabbalah that “all shall be clarified in thought.” That is, we should inspect our inner thoughts, desires and intentions, and a correct review of them should bring us to what is known as “the middle line,” i.e. balance between life’s many forces. We then reach an optimal state of spiritual and corporeal life as one.

In the middle line, we can correctly use nature’s forces, which includes our innate powers inherited from birth as well as the achievements of the previous generations.

Based on “New Life episode 1,115: A Formula for the Right Connection” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman, Nitzah Mazoz and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: Why are the true causes of the crisis partially hushed up and partially slowly revealed?

Answer: Because it is unprofitable for those in power. The people who are in power today and profit from what they do in the world are unhappy themselves. They are like a squirrel in a wheel, spinning and spinning, more and more. Who has $100, wants $200, who has $200, wants $400, and so on.

This is a vicious cycle humanity finds itself in. It will be able to get out of this circle only when it reaches some critical point at which, on one hand people will receive a correct explanation of where they are, and on the other hand their suffering will force them to open their eyes and see where they exist.

The correct explanation and the feeling of being at a dead end makes a person stop and look for a way out. Then it will be possible to talk to them about what this way out is.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 10/19/21

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Question: Which signs of the global crisis are currently going undetected but should be paid serious attention to?

Answer: The most central point, the root of the global crisis, is in people distancing themselves from one another. We sit behind our computers and play games like children and nothing else.

We must understand that only getting closer to each other through good forces can lead us out of the general crisis. That is, it is a crisis of people distancing themselves from each other, their desire to everyone being in some kind of a cocoon, and not think or worry about anything else.

Question: Why don’t people really feel that there is a crisis? Is it being underestimated? For example, I can assess the crisis in overproduction. I go to the store and see empty shelves. But the crisis in mutual relations is somehow hidden from a person. We don’t understand what is behind it or how serious it is.

Answer: People get entrapped by the “toys” they have invented. Their interest in games distracts them from their real problems. Therefore, on one hand, humanity seems to be advancing, and on the other hand, it is dying out. Everything lies in the awareness of the wickedness of this state. In the meantime, we are only filling the bottomless pockets of those who rule and control everyone.

I do not see anything good in the future. We need to explain to people what all this will lead to. It will mean realizing a very bitter, long journey during which we worked for our own enemies who thought only of how to enrich themselves at our expense only to throw everything we had accumulated and handed over to them into the sea. This is how fierce human egoism works.

It is necessary to realize the evil of our egoism and understand that this is the only evil. Then we can talk about how to get rid of it.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 10/19/21

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What does Kabbalah say about Jesus?“

He is absent from Kabbalah.

Kabbalah is the study of the forces that are perceived and examined through an additional sense that we develop and discover through the study. This additional sense is our desire to enjoy that undergoes a correction from egoism (enjoying at the expense of others and nature) to altruism (enjoying through benefiting others and nature).

Since it is a science that operates at the level of our desires and intentions, Kabbalah says nothing about various actions and rituals in our world. It rather discusses the correction of our egoistic desire by means of attracting, revealing and working with the altruistic forces dwelling in nature.

Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why do we exist?“

Many people ask about why we exist, and it leads us to change our lives in one way or another.

I have personally delved very deep into this question. At university, I studied bio-cybernetics, the human body’s systems, thinking that I could discover why we exist by doing so, but I found no answers in that field.

Only several years later did I find the answer in the wisdom of Kabbalah. I was always troubled by the question about why we exist, because without knowing its answer, I could not see why life was worth living. In our present times, I see the younger generation especially troubled by this question, even if they are not verbalizing it with those exact words. When we find no answers to why we exist, then we feel our existence here as purposeless, and as a result, we suffer in a variety of ways and intensities.

To discover why we exist, we need to discover the origin of existence, from which it all started and developed.

The origin of existence is the upper force.

The upper force—or “the Creator,” the “upper light,” “nature” and several other names for it—is essentially where we all come from, and our existential questions emerge from this force. We exist ultimately in order to discover why we exist. However, how we achieve a clear perception and sensation as to why we exist is another question.

How can we attain the origin of our existence?

“Why do we exist?” is a question that we humans specifically ask, and not other lifeforms. Moreover, not all people ask this question, and those who do, ask it in different intensities.

From one generation to the next, we feel an increasing need to answer the question as to why we exist. Especially in our generation, this question is expressed by more and more people suffering, whether in the forms of depression, stress, loneliness, anxiety, drug abuse, increasing mental illnesses, suicides, extremism, as well as several other problems.

The wisdom of Kabbalah has seen a widespread emergence in our times so that anyone who feels this question can find its answer. Kabbalah is a method that lets us undergo self and social transformation in order to feel a new sense of reality, one that is complete, interconnected and full of goodness and happiness.

We achieve why we exist when we achieve a clear perception and sensation of the force that created and develops us. Such a new perception provides us with a clear understanding of why we are here. By achieve the origin of our existence, we achieve no less than eternity and perfection while living in this world.

Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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

Depression is an outcome of unsatisfied desires.

We are composed of several desires. If these desires are fulfilled, we feel happy. If they are partially fulfilled, we feel partial dissatisfaction, a state that we live in, and which we have become accustomed to.

We try to neutralize such dissatisfaction in a variety of ways, whether by means of medicines and drugs through to all kinds of entertainments and goals in our lives, and we thus manage to stay somewhat afloat.

There are certain states of depression where we feel a deep, dark and gaping emptiness within, feeling no fulfillment in the present moment, and also see no light at the end of the tunnel in the future either, which is indeed very difficult.

We usually live with hope for the future. We plan various goals for ourselves in order to fulfill our spectrum of desires. We are usually occupied with thoughts about food, sex, family, recreation, making money, gaining respect in society, accumulating knowledge, and some people even wish to acquire particular positions of fame or power. We have developed a smorgasbord of ways in which we fulfill such desires, and they act as distractions from deeper existential questions, letting us live our lives on a certain surface level. However, when they become swallowed by darkness, we become swamped in depression, and we are then even ready to die. There is a kabbalistic saying about such a state: “My death is better than my life.”

The moment we start feeling such depressed states, we then ask ourselves the existential questions that we had previously been able to successfully cover up. At the end of the day, depression is a feeling that leads us to search outside of our usual frameworks to find an answer to questions about life’s meaning and purpose, and we need to experience a certain level of depression in order to soul search.

If we find meaning and purpose in serving our desires for food, sex, family, recreation, money, honor, control and knowledge, i.e. if we are able to enjoy ourselves by either fulfilling these desires directly or by imagining their future fulfillment, then life’s deeper existential questions remain buried beneath this pleasure pursuit. In other words, we find meaning in life’s animate level of existence. If, however, we find no satisfaction through serving such desires, we then experience depression, which is ultimately a sensation that should lead us to actively search for the meaning and purpose of life.

We should understand that our world is a mere springboard from which we need to leap to a higher dimension. We can discover the higher dimension of existence while we are alive in this same world, in our same body.

The process of development through which nature guides us is in order for us to ultimately seek and attain the meaning of life. States of depression appear more frequently and with more intensity the closer we come to transitioning between the discovery of meaninglessness in pursuing the fulfillment of corporeal desires, and the search for higher meaning. In other words, the growing dissatisfaction we feel in pursuing our corporeal desires’ fulfillment is already an expression of our deeper existential questions.

In the wisdom of Kabbalah—a method that was created specifically in order to answer the questions about our life’s meaning and purpose by providing a method for attaining a higher dimension, perception and fulfillment—calls our corporeal desires beyond the fulfillment of mere necessities a “help against.” It is because the emptiness that we either currently or eventually discover in these desires pushes us to seek life’s true meaning and purpose beyond our animate existence.

Based on a Kabbalah lesson with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on October 2, 2016. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Warren Wong on Unsplash.

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

Education—i.e., the correct form of education and not how education is currently about skills and knowledge acquisition—is our integration in a particular social environment that gives us a line of action and a direction toward a future state.

We need to see our next state in our social environment. Our next state urges us forward, awakening, encouraging, motivating and inspiring us to be like it. In a social environment, it is easier for us to change.

Educators should thus create a social atmosphere whereby our feelings and moods become impetus for us to adapt to our surroundings, and thus the units from which society is composed gather into a harmonious group, which becomes our next state.

A harmonious group is one in which individuals who are egoistic by nature, i.e. made up of desires to enjoy at each other’s expense, become reshaped into positive social beings, and in which they start understanding that they are in absolute and mutual cooperation with the surrounding society, where only through mutual cooperation can they provide for everything that they need in a peaceful, harmonious and convenient way.

Accordingly, by entering such an environment, we apply a certain kind of pressure on our ego. That is, we wish to succeed and hold a certain level of respect in society, so if we enter a society that principally values mutual cooperation, then we try to become more cooperative and giving in order to fit in and gain society’s respect. In other words, we feel that our egoistic goals become satisfied through altruistic actions. Then, the more we nourish such an environment and participate in it, the more we will develop to become giving, cooperative and altruistic beings, values where if regularly upheld and strengthened in society, will raise us to become truly happy and confident people. That is the essence of an optimal form of education.

Based on a lesson with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman, “The Last Generation,” on July 9, 2015. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Are humans meant for change or to remain static?“

Human nature is a desire to enjoy, and the more this desire grows, the more egoistic it becomes. That is, the desire to enjoy beyond its necessities for food, sex and family starts becoming a desire to enjoy at the expense of others: a desire for money, wealth, control, power, honor and fame.

In our era, the egoistic desire has reached a point of ripeness for change to its opposite: altruism. Without such a change, we will experience more and more suffering until we wake up to the need for making this change to our very nature.

In order to undergo this change—egoism to altruism—we need to attract a special force dwelling in nature, which we can do by entering a process of connection-enriching education.

By learning how to positively connect with one another above our divisions and differences, we enter into a certain closeness with nature’s altruistic quality, and attract it to ourselves.

Nature consists of two forces, positive and negative, giving and receiving. Today, we are controlled solely by the negative receptive force: egoism. We can attract the positive force by engaging ourselves in a culture that influences us with values of connecting positively above our differences. Then, when we live between both positive and negative forces in such a way, i.e. the positive force in the social atmosphere surrounding us and the negative force within our very desire, we then start entering into a positive connection with nature.

That is the change that humanity is being led to, and we are at a transition point where we can either enter this process of change actively—applying ourselves to connection-enriching education and entering environments that support this change—or we can continue trying to fulfill our egoistic desires, and by doing so, the steamroller of evolution will eventually catch up to us with increasing suffering until we become ready to undergo this change.

Based on a talk “Challenges of the 20th Century” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on April 24, 2019. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What helpful things should be taught to children?“

The most helpful thing that should be taught to children is an attitude and approach to life in order to make a human being out of the person.

Children have no life philosophy, no clear attitude toward life, and they have no idea how to position themselves in society, toward each other, and in short, how to be human beings. As children grow up, a lot will change, but throughout the changes, they should develop a healthy attitude toward themselves, society, their country and the world.

The central attitude that we need to develop in all people, and that it is desirable to learn from a young age, is “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

We wish to together shape ourselves and love others. It is the code for success in a person’s individual life, in the life of society, and it is relevant to all times. However, today we have reached a stage where if we fail to realize a common love among all people, then we will have no future. We have built sophisticated technologies and industries, but without relating to each other in a mutually considerate and loving way, then everything we build works to our detriment.

Thus, we should primarily focus on how to make human beings out of our children, so that they can grow up to live in a harmonious and peaceful world, and that they will know how to be happy and successful in their lives.

Based on the video “What Schools Should Teach” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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