We will each indeed have to scrutinize and choose what our true destiny is. What is our true destiny?
We will eventually discover that our true destiny is not found in our narrow lives here, i.e., it is not in reaching any kind of corporeal achievement or profession. Today, we are coming to eight billion people on the planet, and there is no need for all the focus on professions as we had in the past, where people see their destinies in becoming great artists, scientists, doctors, entrepreneurs and the like.
There is a new need growing in humanity, which requires dealing with destiny on a different level.
People’s true destiny in this world is to positively connect above the human ego’s divisive drives, and to discover a new level of life in such connection. In other words, where the human ego demands fulfillment at the expense of other people and nature, our true destiny rests in rising above this nature-given tendency and discovering a new world unbounded by the ego’s dictates and limits.
The new level of life that we can discover in positive connection to each other above our egoistic drives is a spiritual life. “Spiritual” means life above our corporeal limitations and conditions, above the limits of time, space and motion. “Corporeality” is defined by the egoistic forces of reception, and “spirituality” means altruistic forces of giving and bestowal.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
The key educational principle is “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Realizing this principle leads us to the fullest realization of human potential, and the creation of a society of happy and confident people who feel completely safe and secure with one another.
Moreover, realizing a state of common love, giving, caring and positive connection in human society leads us to completely understand ourselves, nature and the fundamental laws that run our existence in this world.
It leads us to balance with nature, because nature is a quality of love and bestowal, and thus by actualizing similar attitudes and relations among each other, we fulfill our role in nature and feel ourselves as one with nature.
Currently, we feel detached from nature. We each feel ourselves as individuals with egoistic goals, self-interests and self-concerns, qualities that oppose nature’s altruistic quality.
Therefore, by implementing a method of human connection, which lets us reach a state of mutual love and care, we enter into increasing balance with nature, and thus feel positive feedback from nature: We will find how several of the problems we experience in today’s reality will simply disappear, as they are all based on thinking and acting in an egoistic opposition to the altruistic way in which nature thinks and acts.
After establishing the main principle, that the goal of education should be to reach balance with nature through “Love your neighbor as yourself,” since it is the key to our ultimate levels of happiness, confidence, safety, understanding, sensation and consciousness, then there are some other principles of education that help guide our way there.
One is constancy. That is, education to reach a state of common love and positive connection is for every person, of all age groups, from young to old, and of all genders, races and languages. It is not something that starts and ends in a certain time period, like our current primary, secondary and tertiary education systems. Rather, education is not only what takes place in classrooms, but we are educated from the messages and examples we absorb in our societies. We should thus regularly consume media of all kinds of formats, i.e., TV, radio, the Internet, mobile devices and the like, as well as occasional participation in events, which all provide us with a method for achieving positive connection in society.
Moreover, in order for this kind of education to become effective, we should ideally we registered in a system where we need to conduct and report on various exercises regularly. The exercises should aim at increasing our positive connection to each other and developing a more genuinely loving and caring attitude to others above our egoistic attitudes.
Implementation of these educational principles in society would elevate us to a new level of human consciousness where we would experience peace, love, unity and harmony from the newfound balance with nature that we would attain.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
The death of the animate body has no relevance to our true lives, which neither start nor end with its existence.
When we die, we merely start feeling ourselves in another state. We should thus not fear our deaths. It is much more beneficial if we think about how to continue our existence.
Death is also detached from the fear of death. The will to live is eternal and absolute. It is the will to connect with life’s source—the quality of love, bestowal and connection—and to exist in connection with it.
Our animate existence, which we currently know and feel as our lives, is a tiny state of existence that we are granted in order to attain the sensation of much greater, more expansive and eternal levels of existence.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
All people are egoistic. Egoism is part and parcel of human nature. That is, human nature is a desire to enjoy, and the ego is the intention to enjoy at the expense of others and nature.
Our desire to enjoy divides into individual desires for food, sex and family, in which our desire operates in order to preserve ourselves and the human species; and social desires for money, honor, control and knowledge, which is activated by our egoistic desires, where we want what others have. Our social desires bring about all kinds of individual, social and national developments. We also have a nucleus of a spiritual desire, which questions life’s meaning and purpose, and gives us the feeling that individual and social desires can no longer fulfill us. The appearance of each successive level of desire depends on the extent of our development.
It is common to think that the ego is the cause of our problems and crises, and that without the ego, our lives would be much more peaceful. However, there is a very good reason for the ego’s existence.
The ego is what separates us from the animal kingdom. It is the motor running behind everything we do. While it indeed brings about much harm, the ego has made us the most powerful and influential beings in the world. The problem with the ego is when we apply it incorrectly. On the contrary, when we use the ego positively, correctly and beneficially, then our lives become harmonious, balanced and peaceful.
What does it mean to use the ego positively, correctly and beneficially?
It depends first on discovering how we exist in an interconnected and interdependent nature, which is a single system of which we are its parts. When we feel ourselves as existing in a single system, then we feel ourselves as small parts of a much greater system. Feeling the magnitude of the greater system of nature outside of ourselves, we would then feel the need to think and act in ways that benefit this system. Then, similarly to how cells and organs take what they need in order to serve the whole organism of which they are parts, we would naturally start enjoying life via the calculation that we wish to benefit other people and nature through our existence here.
Our inborn sensation of life is to prioritize our personal benefit over others. We thus require a new kind of education—integral education—which guides our understanding and feeling of the interconnectedness and interdependence of nature. That is the key to creating a harmonious world of happy and confident individuals, a world free from all the problems caused by letting our egos unabatedly exploit, abuse and manipulate each other and nature.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
In order to reduce the divorce rate and ensure that married couples rise above any argument, conflict, and crisis, we need to revise the way we are educated and influenced.
As we grow up, we need to learn what it means to live as members of a happy family, how to run our family life optimally, and how to overcome any kinds of conflicts that arise.
The key principle to successfully running a family can be found in the Bible story about our creation—that one man was originally created and then divided into two. How, then, can two separate beings connect as one? The answer is in mutual concession.
Each partner should know that they can each achieve much more in life if they are positively connected, and that a solitary life would be a lot tougher.
Concession involves conceding our egos to our spouses. Our egos are our desires to personally benefit at the expense of others. Therefore, by conceding our egos, we undergo corrections of this ego, and acquire a positive form of love, bestowal and connection in its place. Our egos then become impulses that help us positively connect. That is, when we recognize our egos rejecting the tendency to connect, precisely at such points we can exercise our concessions and develop loftier qualities of love and bestowal upon our egoistic drives.
By doing so, we advance faster and more consciously to our life’s purpose: to become a human being in the fullest sense of the term, i.e., where “human” (“Adam”) comes from the phrase “similar to the most high” (“Adameh le Elyon”) in Kabbalah, or in other words, resemblance to the Creator—the quality of love, bestowal and connection that fills the entirety of reality outside of us. By acquiring such a quality, we enter into the state of eternity and perfection.
Therefore, in order for marriage to work, we should apply a higher goal to the marriage: that it serves as a kind of laboratory in order to exercise our relations of love, bestowal and positive connection above all the arguments, conflicts, and crises that surface.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
In Hebrew, the word for peace (“Shalom“) comes from the word for wholeness and perfection (“Shlemut“). This implies that if we want to achieve wholeness and perfection, we have to get there via peace.
Peace could thus include the understanding of our past and our current state, as well as truces and various agreements, but what we are most certain about is our final destination: that we would like to progress toward a perfect and whole state.
A perfect and whole state is one where various opposites complement and complete each other. As such, contrary to what is often thought about peace, it is impossible that there would be peace without war, and we should not focus on trying to bring about peace by convincing or forcing others to think like us, because it will not happen.
A state of complementary, wholeness and perfection exists in no person individually, but it comes about when we each detach from our individual selves and create a new entity in our positive connections to each other above our egos.
Peace is thus a long process involving education so that each of us can detach from our current states and reach a state where we are together, where we need to adhere to the new perfect and whole state that we build above—and disconnected from—ourselves, and where we are all connected as one.
In order to reach such a state, we need to draw the positive force of nature into our attitudes and relations to each other, in order to make peace between us so that it will start helping us operate against our egos. This process takes place without suppressing or erasing our egos. On the contrary, together with our egos, nature’s positive force will transform us into beings that have a tendency to love and bestow to one another above the divisive human ego. In other words, we draw the positive force of nature to envelop and cover our egos with its coating of love, bestowal and connection, and it will grant us the ability to behave correctly and reach a state of peace.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Image: Graph representing the metadata of thousands of archive documents, documenting the social network of hundreds of League of Nations personals. Grandjean, Martin (2014). “La connaissance est un réseau”. Les Cahiers du Numérique 10 (3): 37-54. DOI:10.3166/LCN.10.3.37-54
As a background, the study of the wisdom of Kabbalah is a research of our spiritual enlightenment all the way to full spiritual attainment. It explores our thoughts, desires and the reality we attain in our senses. Below spiritual attainment, we also undergo degrees of attainment in our world. During our spiritual preparation period in this world, we start learning and understanding the connections between spiritual objects, however such understanding is incomparable to the sensation of spiritual attainment.
Kabbalists name spiritual degrees after having attained them. If we only partially attain a degree, it is considered that we are its “son,” which is why we are called “Bnei Adam” (“the sons of Adam,” which in Hebrew is the term for “human beings”), since we are all parts of the degree called “Adam,” and our goal is to fully attain that degree—the root of our soul.
When we rise to a spiritual degree, we feel what transpires in it, attain its qualities, and perceive and sense the Creator according to that degree. With further spiritual ascent, what we perceived in the previous degrees will also change.
It is important to understand that only our perception and sensation changes in this entire process. It is not that each of the 125 spiritual degrees are each playing a different film. However, there is a simple upper light that fills reality, and by attaining certain spiritual qualities, we feel part of that light, which we call a “world.” We can also feel a tiny part of that light in our inborn egoistic qualities, and we call it “this world” or “our world.”
From the level of our world, our spiritual awakening takes place when we receive, as is written, the “posterior of the holy soul,” meaning the final and lowest degree of the soul, referred to as a “point.” This point becomes inserted into our hearts, i.e., into our desire to receive, or in other words, amid the human ego.
Without the point in the heart, we would remain as animals, i.e., our desires would not aspire outside our world. The point in the heart, i.e., the beginning of spirituality, is the initial spiritual awakening we get to potentially elevate us above the animate degree into spirituality.
The process of growing the point in the heart through which we attain spirituality is called the process of building what Kabbalah calls a spiritual Partzuf. All of our spiritual attainments take place in this Partzuf. We can identify whether we have a point in the heart if we find ourselves asking about the meaning and purpose of life, why is there suffering in the world, what is reality, where are we from, where are we now, and where are we headed, who are we, and other related existential questions. The wisdom of Kabbalah was made in order to answer these questions by providing us with a method for spiritual attainment, where we receive the answers as a clear perception and sensation of the spiritual reality in a series of stages.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
The wisdom of Kabbalah is a method that enables us to reach the perception and sensation of the highest dimension of reality, above corporeal life and death, while we are alive in this world.
By doing so, we can sense our future states, and we gain the ability to directly influence reality from its “control room.” We need only attain the connection to our life’s source, and by doing so, we assume control of our destiny.
Kabbalah was revealed for the first time 5,781 years ago by Adam, who wrote the book, Raziel HaMalach (Heb. “The Secret Angel”). It describes the concealed force (i.e., “angel” is a certain kind of spiritual force) that operates our reality, and which can be revealed by applying a certain method. After 20 generations of Kabbalists, Abraham made the next major development in the wisdom of Kabbalah by founding the first Kabbalistic group, which became known as “the people of Israel.” This was a group who gathered based on the principle of “love your neighbor as yourself.” Love of one’s fellow man became the Kabbalists’ principle ideology and constitution. They united as a single nation, which later became known as “the Jews,” from the word for unity (“Yichud”).
At a certain stage of its development, the group ended up having to show the Babylonians of the time, who did not want to follow Abraham, the need for self-transformation and correction: rising above the egoistic intention for personal benefit at other’s expense. By doing so, they formed bridges of unification and love upon the rampant hatred and division of the time.
Kabbalah’s main ideology is thus “love your neighbor as yourself,” and the method of Kabbalah is one of attaining such unification above the divisive human ego. At the peak of developing increasing ties of love and bonding above our innate divisive drives, the universe’s two ends—egoism and altruism, division and unification, receiving and giving—become combined into a single creation, namely “receiving in order to give.” By attaining such a principle in practice, we implement the formula for us all to live harmoniously, happily and in balance with nature. Moreover, we also discover the eternal and perfect reality of our soul that exists above corporeal life and death.
We currently have a single quality: reception. Even if we give, we do so with the calculation that we want to receive something in return. By adding the quality of giving over our inborn quality of receiving—i.e., pure giving with no shred of egoistic intention laced within—then we achieve a perfect connection with each other, balancing our egoism with nature’s altruistic quality, or in other words, balancing the negative pole of reality with the positive one.
Kabbalah explains how nature divides into four levels: still, vegetative, animate and human. On the still, vegetative and animate levels, nature itself balances between giving and receiving, positive and negative. At the human level, however, i.e., at the level of our relationships and attitudes to each other, we have no connection to the altruistic side of reality. As such, the more our egoistic desires evolve over time, the more we encounter problems and crises on all scales of life.
In other words, the ultimate cause of our life’s problems is the disharmony between altruism and egoism. The wisdom of Kabbalah is a method for establishing the correct balance between these two qualities, and by doing so, bringing about balance personally, socially and globally.
It is also important to note that Kabbalah is not a religion, but a science. Where religion is based on believing in one or several higher powers, Kabbalah is instead a method by which we reach a revelation of the higher powers through research, experimentation, gathering feedback, and by doing so, “rinsing and repeating” until we can scientifically confirm our attainment of the altruistic quality above our inborn egoistic one. It does not involve performing rituals, wearing any specific clothing or ascribing any special importance to any physical objects. It rather involves study and participation in an environment that supports progress to the attainment of the higher reality. By doing so, anybody can advance to such a lofty attainment.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
We reach a balanced life when we discover the balance between forces of reception and forces of bestowal, which takes place when we disclose the general force of balance that exists in the system we are parts of. At that point, we start feeling the entire system and not only ourselves, the individual parts of the system. We then come closer together in mutual connection, bestowal and support such that we all lose our sense of our individual selves and instead sense the life in the whole system.
We then feel the whole system, which includes humanity as well as nature on all of its levels, as our own. On our current level, the closest example to this sensation, even though it is still far from the actual feeling, is a mother toward her family: She feels that she loses her sense of self in her commitment to her family, feeling her family as her own. In other words, her devotion to her family expands her sense of self to include all of her family members, and she somewhat exits her own individual self in such a sensation.
Therefore, when we realize ourselves in the direction of bestowal upon others, i.e., when we think about benefiting others over self-benefit, we exit the limited and narrow boundaries of our individual selves and open up to those whom we wish to benefit similarly to a mother toward her family. The wider the circle of society we do this for, the more of the system of nature and reality we feel.
Ultimate balance in life emerges when we care about the whole of humanity and nature. Our sensation of existence then expands to include the life of the whole of humanity and nature and not only the transient and short life of our individual selves. Moreover, by doing so, we discover our ultimate destiny in reality, that of living for the sake of the whole system we are parts of and feeling the life of that system, and we also find how nobody stands in anybody’s way, as it currently seems to us.
If we start directing ourselves in such a holistic manner, then we will also see how this system, call it “nature” or the “universe,” starts giving us positive feedback in that direction, helping us on our way.
Practically, in giving and bestowal upon others, by wanting to benefit and positively connect with everyone, we will then feel a special kind of support and vitality, that nature and life works in our favor by doing so.
In order to discover these signs, we need to surround ourselves with a supportive environment of like-minded individuals who wish to support each other toward this ultimate state of balance. By learning and seeking how to benefit others over self-benefit with these people, and finding our place in such an environment, we then progress correctly toward that final state of ultimate balance in life.
The state of balance through positive connections among each other and with nature is the discovery of the human degree in the world (the Hebrew word for “human” [“Adam”] stems from the phrase “similar to the most high” [“Adameh le Elyon”]). We need a supportive environment of like-minded individuals specifically because care for one another needs to be mutual, where we each exercise positive connections and giving to others mutually above our innate self-interests. Over time, by integrating in such a society, we eventually reach the realization of the ultimate balance in life. Moreover, the efforts of a critical mass of people who direct themselves in such a way positively influences others in the world who do not awaken to such a direction, thus also making it easier for others and future generations to reach such balance.
Ultimately, we will all develop to the realization of humanity as an interconnected and interdependent system, similar to nature in and of itself. When we reach that level of consciousness, we will all “click” into nature, integrating into and identifying with it, and adhering to it such that we all realize the destiny of every person individually and of all people in the world together.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Truth is understanding that everything is relative, that we each subjectively perceive good and bad, sweet and bitter, and truth and falseness.
What, then, is absolute in reality? It is that the quality of complete bestowal (the Creator, nature) is our ultimate root, and we, as well as everything we perceive in nature on the still, vegetative and animate levels, are its creation, made of an opposite quality of reception.
There is absoluteness solely in these two poles of reality: the quality of bestowal and the quality of reception. Everything else is relative.
Based on the program “Spiritual States” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on April 22, 2019. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How can we find or make our destiny come true?“
