Entries in the 'Q&A' Category

“How do conspiracy theorists come up with new conspiracy theories?” (Quora)

Dr. Michael LaitmanMichael Laitman, On Quora: How do conspiracy theorists come up with new conspiracy theories?

We come up with all kinds of conspiracy theories primarily because we do not know where we live, why we are alive, where we are headed, and what is good and bad for us.

We are confused. We can think of ourselves like little children who were placed into an open store, and who then play with all kinds of objects in that store, running around and bumping into all sorts of things, but who have no clue as to why they were placed there to begin with, and what the store’s rules are in order for everyone to enjoy themselves optimally.

That is how we are in our world. Therefore, if something significant and extraordinary happens to us here, we start examining the phenomena from several different angles: Who caused it? Who benefits from it? We start looking for who to blame.

Ultimately, we cause our every misfortune, but it is not as all kinds of conspiracy theorists emphasize, that there are certain people acting in a goal-oriented manner. We can think about it similarly to a volcanic eruption, a tsunami or a hurricane: we might have caused such phenomena indirectly, but not on purpose.

No matter how rich or powerful certain people are, they cannot change humanity’s fate. It is because nature is the general collective force and it includes and sustains each particular and individual force within itself. It rules over everyone and everything, and it does not let any one person or group of people move anything even one millimeter in any direction.

If there are any individual forces that wish to break out and take control, nature simply does not let them. Every person is a small part, an individual aspect, of a general system that is governed solely by the force of nature. Therefore, the ultimate conspirator is nature itself, which governs everyone and everything according to its higher plan—”higher” because it is beyond our minds to comprehend.

Based on the video “Why Do We Conjure Up All Kinds of Conspiracy Theories?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
[316791]

When the Corrected Becomes More Precious than the New

261Question: The Japanese art of Kintsugi means golden joinery. It is the restoration of ceramic vessels using adhesive sap of the lacquer tree. Masters repair a broken jar and glue it together. Moreover, they do not just glue, but reveal cracks with gold paint, thereby showing the need for gluing.

Is it important to be able to glue things together?

Answer: In general, yes. If you know exactly their future purpose and evaluate them correctly, then gluing is a great correction.

Question: In Kabbalah we study the process of shattering and the need for correction through connection. Now we live in a society in which people practically do not fix anything: they buy something, use it, and throw it away. How important is it to be able to fix things, fix relationships, and fix lives?

Answer: I think, it is necessary. Man is a creature that doubts all the time, makes mistakes, and is willing to perform more and more new actions. Therefore, he must understand that besides the fact that good impulses are destined for us, we must be aware of them, check them, and try to correct them.

Question: Why glue at all? After all, you can find something new, some new vessel, a new occupation, a new thing.

Answer: No, there are things that are very dear to us, and we want them to be preserved. We want to deal with restored old things. Then the corrected thing becomes even more precious than something new or whole.

We see the same thing in our history, in nature, and in technology. Many things in nature break, and we glue them together, connect them, and give them new meaning, a new life. They serve us, and we love them despite the fact that they could have disappeared long ago, having served their time.
[316372]
From KabTV’s “Kabbalah in the Modern Turbulent World” 8/3/23

Related Material:
Everyone Will Be Corrected
Don’t Regret A Corrected Level!
What Exactly Must Be Corrected?

Don’t Waste Your Life on Strangers

552.03Question: Andrey writes:
Michael, you say we are egoists; such is our nature, and we need to rise above it. You say we need to annul our “self,” that is, in simple language, lower ourselves before others. My question is: if I know someone to be wrong, to be lying, should I still not object, keep quiet, lower myself, and keep listening? How do you imagine it, please explain.

P.S. Personally, I think it would not be manly.

Answer: Leave the manliness alone. Whether to stay quiet or not is all small egoism. Lower yourself or not, turn your nose up or vice versa, do as you like.

Comment: It is more comfortable for him not to lower himself.

My Response: This is what he thinks. On the contrary, stop getting into clarifications of who is the greater egoist—you or the other. What for?

Question: He had a postscript: “Personally, I think it would not be manly.” Does he have such pride? What should he do about it? Squash it?

Answer: Sure. Be wiser.

Question: Do you call this wisdom?

Answer: Yes. If you snap at everyone like that, you will waste your life on strangers.

Question: What should one do, what would be manly?

Answer: If one does not take anyone into account at all, but lives with his own goal, his own life, and does not spar with others, but calmly, bypassing everyone, builds his life.

Question: He asks: “If someone is wrong, how can I lower myself before him?”

Answer: Leave him. Life will teach him.

Question: You say to stay out of it. Should you insist on your truth?

Answer: It is stupid.

Question: Is this wrong? In principle, is this the cause of all problems?

Answer: Yes, not to be argumentative, a bully, or boast with pride. All this will lead to nothing.

Comment: Then let’s take one step further. If one, for example, understands where it comes from in him, you call it egoism and so on, he understands everything perfectly.

If he understands this, then, on the contrary, he is given with working with such a person.

Answer: He is given work on himself, but not on others.

Question: What should he do if he wants to work on himself?

Answer: Calm down, about everything. It makes no sense to jump like a rooster and rattle yourself.

Question: But if I want to work on myself, I calmed down, what is my next move? I want to work on my ego.

Answer: Figure out what you were created for. Precisely the way you are. Maybe so that, by calming yourself down, you will find a completely different path in life.

Question: He writes: “You say you need to annul yourself.” How do I annul my “self”?

Answer: This is already an entire science. In the name of what? For what? Before whom? If we are discussing this, then only before the Creator. If you want to be a good rooster, then you must imagine yourself standing before the Creator.

Question: There is a man standing before me, and I imagine I am standing before the Creator?

Answer: Yes. Then you will be able to lower yourself, calm yourself down, and try to get closer to the Creator in order to talk to Him.

Question: Is this how you have to behave all the time?

Answer: All the time. We should strive to get into a dialogue with the Creator.
[316176]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 7/20/23

Related Material:
Energy Vampires
How To Become Impervious To Insults
Is It Necessary To Change Character Traits?

“Why is God angry at me?” (Quora)

Dr. Michael LaitmanMichael Laitman, On Quora: Why is God angry at me?

There is no such thing as God getting angry at you.

Some writings in the Torah could be misinterpreted that way because it speaks in the language of human beings, but the upper force has no anger. It is above human emotions. It is more accurate to think of God as a system that knows everything that is going to happen in advance.

Negative phenomena that enter our lives, such as natural disasters and pandemics, are not out of any anger on God’s behalf. Instead, they come in order to teach us how to better understand the system we exist in, and to organize ourselves in balance with that system: to become as integrally connected as the system.

How can we know for sure that not balancing ourselves with nature as an integral system is the reason for the misfortunes that befall us?

We see how nature is an interconnected and interdependent system, and the human being is the only part in this system that has free choice. Only we can push nature out of its balanced connection.

How does this work?

We humans were made with egoistic desires to enjoy ourselves at the expense of others and nature. Such an inclination is called “evil” or “bad” due to its opposition to the system’s functioning.

While starting out in this opposition to nature’s connected form, we need to balance ourselves with nature by entering into positive, kind and caring relationships with each other.

If we fail to motion toward changing ourselves from being negatively connected to each other, where we wish to benefit ourselves at each other’s expense, to a positive connection where we wish to benefit and serve others, then we invite various errors and negative responses to accumulate in the system, and the system accordingly reacts. We fill the system with more and more deviations, and then it boomerangs back to us accordingly. Its response targets the negative connections that we inserted into it, and such a response is aimed precisely at correcting us, i.e., at shifting us from negative to positive relations among each other.

It is important to emphasize that this single system of nature, God or the upper force—all of which are one and the same, i.e., a single force of love and bestowal—relates to us according to how we relate to each other, and not solely in terms of how we relate to the system on its still, vegetative and animate levels. Therefore, however you might think about this system, whether as God, the Creator, the upper force or as nature, it has the same demand toward you: that you positively connect with other people.

Based on the video “Why Is God Angry at Me?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

[316646]

In All Languages of the World

276.05Question: If I can read Hebrew a little, but I make a mistake in pronunciation, can I read Psalms and the Torah? There is an opinion that if you pronounce words in Hebrew incorrectly, it can do harm.

Answer: Neither you nor anyone else can harm themselves no matter how they read and distort the text. Feel free to open the book in Hebrew and read.

Of course, it is better to do it in Hebrew, but it is also good to read in your native language. Psalms have been translated into all languages of the world. Everyone can find a canonical translation for themselves and read it.

Question: What translation of Psalms is in the archive of the Kabbalah academy?

Answer: I once translated them into Russian and did the adaptation of some Psalms, the way I think they should sound. I recommend you read it. But there is a perfectly clear official version of Psalms in Hebrew.
[316447]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/3/23, “Revealing the Glory of His Kingship”

Related Material:
The Psalms Of King David
Psalms – The Spiritual Atmosphere
Appeal And Gratitude

“Is there any benefit to introspection?” (Quora)

Dr. Michael LaitmanMichael Laitman, On Quora: Is there any benefit to introspection?

If we undergo an introspection that aims at bettering our connection to each other in an integral manner, then there is indeed great benefit to introspection.

For instance, if we think to ourselves, ”When will we be able to care about all people in the world as we care about our close-knit family?” then such an introspection brings us closer to balance with nature’s integral laws.

It does not mean that we think about everyone having the exact same amounts of money and assets. We cannot make it so that each person would have, say, a thousand dollars and be done with our scrutiny. Instead, we need to account for each person’s demands, needs and states.

We need to care about the whole world similarly to how a well-functioning family discusses how to allocate its resources to each of its members according to their respective demands, needs and states. If we care for humanity in such a way, then there would be no room for all kinds of crises and disasters that we receive from nature in order to wake us up to our globally-integral connection.

It might sound like a socio-economic approach that is out of a common person’s reach. That is, how could a single person possibly affect the way each and every person receives a budget and supplies for their lives? But it is much more than that: it is an integral form of introspection that has to run constantly within the general system we live in.

We are all members of humanity, and humanity must constantly introspect about itself like we do in our families. If we expand the ongoing care we have for our families’ demands, needs and states to the level of humanity as a whole, then we will start discovering our much deeper connection “as one man with one heart,” i.e., as a common integral system. Moreover, through such an ongoing introspection that increases our care for humanity, we will draw the positive force that dwells in nature into our connections—a force that has the power to lead our lives into a state of complete harmony, balance and peace.

Our hearts, i.e., our desires, are currently very small. We are born with self-serving desires, and we grow up thinking that our egoistic mode of enjoying for our own personal benefit at the expense of others is all that we have in life.

But there is a way to expand our hearts, i.e., our desires, to include everyone within.

For the time being, we mostly feel only our own needs and those of our families, and we cannot relate to others’ needs as we do to our own. But if we create support systems to conduct an introspection of how to increase care throughout human society, which will lead us to a harmonious connection, then we will draw ourselves closer to a much more complete form of connection that is in balance with nature’s integral laws.

We will then experience nature as friendly and warm, because we would then enter into a certain level of congruence with nature, as a single interconnected, interdependent and integral system.

Based on the video “A Guide for Introspection” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Ben White on Unsplash.
[316594]

“Is there a specific way love should feel?” (Quora)

Dr. Michael LaitmanMichael Laitman, On Quora: Is there a specific way love should feel?

Mutual, reciprocal and whole among all people in the world.

It is because love is the force that binds us together in our whole and eternal state as a single soul, which we are all parts of.

How can we feel this mutual love among us as a single soul?

We can feel mutual love when we all connect, feel a common connection between us, and try to fulfill each other through such a connection.

Based on the Daily Kabbalah Lesson with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on July 28, 2023, “According to the Sorrow, So Is the Reward.” Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

If You Don’t Want Fate to Play with You

627.2Question: Ariel writes:
Dear Michael Laitman,

First, about myself. I am a loser. Failures haunt my whole life no matter what I do. And I look back, I have always been like that. A gray childhood, practically without friends, married unsuccessfully, my wife left me, graduated from college, but did not work a day in my specialty.

I went to a fortune teller, and not one, they say: “It is fate.” The last one even painted a future for me such that I do not want to live. I watch you regularly, I believe you. I want to know: if there is a concept of fate, and there is, then how to change it? Is it possible or not?

Answer: Yes. But first of all it is necessary to understand how to treat it, this fate. Perhaps he just demands something that he is not supposed to.

A person must understand what he must realize in himself. He must reveal his connection with the source of life. It is not easy, but he can do it. And he is obliged. It is in his power.

Question: And if he wants to have a lot of friends as a child, to have a good job?

Answer: “If he wants to” is not taken into account at all. Absolutely! And in general, it has already passed him, as far as I understand.

Question: So, your answer to the question: “Is it possible to change fate?”, are you saying that you need to look at your life differently?

Answer: Of course.

Question: He looked at life practically like this: I want friends, I want a wife, I want, I want, I want. And you say you need to see where I came from and why?

Answer: Yes. What is given to you and why it is given. Then you will begin to dig into the purpose of your life. Why do you exist after all? And maybe you will find the answer. This is the most important thing.

Question: And when I dig into it: “What have I come for, where did I come from, and what am I?”—what do I have with these basic questions?

Answer: They will depart and will be resolved properly as they appear.

Question: So I should not pay attention to them?

Answer: Not at all.

Question: Should I pay attention to these big things?

Answer: Yes. Based on what you study, you will naturally be able to reveal the basic questions that arise in you.

Question: How can he do it? How can he suddenly change this thinking, so normal, everyday, human: I want happiness, I want fate not to play with me? How can he make a coup? Here he is, Ariel, listening to you, what should he do?

Answer: I think he should just open our website and start reading.

Question: So he needs to read more of our materials about the meaning of life? And will it work?

Answer: Maybe it will and maybe it will not. Maybe it is better to enroll in courses. There, he will be able to ask questions, he will be somehow directed. If he has such questions for a long time, then it is worth doing it.

Question: So, we can say that if he is beaten by failures by fate, then they beat him for some reason, to lead to something?

Answer: Of course. You can say that about all people.

Question: And everyone is being directed to look at their life a little from the outside?

Answer: Yes. In general, looking at your life from the outside is very useful.

Question: And what will he see when he looks at his life from the outside?

Answer: He will see the loser, and so on. And he will see how he can fix this person, that is, himself, in general.
[316130]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 7/20/23

Related Material:
Fate
Managing Your Fate
How Can You Affect Your Fate?

When Love Harms

963.5Question: “What is unconditional love? How and why does it harm both parents and children?”

Answer: It is because absolute love does not educate children. Children must understand that there are certain conditions for the manifestation of love. And parents should also feel some kind of reciprocity from their children: right-wrong, correct-incorrect, toward themselves-away from themselves, and so on, so that there would be some kind of correct contacts, mutual contacts between them. And not just “I love you” and that is all.

There may be such an attitude toward a baby but not between adults. Even when children are growing up there should be mutual relations built on attraction and rejection, the carrot and the stick. Children must understand that they are permitted to behave in a certain way and not allowed to behave in another way, that there is reward and punishment.

Question: So when it is said that a child was brought up in love, grew up in love, what does this mean in your opinion?

Answer: In my opinion, a child grows in love when he understands what he is rewarded for and what he is punished for. That is called in love.

Question: And if it is in absolute love?

Answer: In absolute love a child will be crippled. He will not be able to live with other people, and it will be very difficult for him to exist in the world. He will be spoiled so much that he will be good for nothing. As a result, he will have no friends and no relatives. I do not know if he will be able to have a family.

Question: Can you explain why?

Answer: He does not feel that he owes something to somebody, and he will not correctly perceive people’s attitudes toward him. After all, he must live in the world in which he is connected with other people through reception and bestowal, but he is not ready for it. Because of that, he will just be an unhappy person. He will be rejected, people will not be able to interact with him, and he will not be able to interact with others. It will be very difficult for him not to feel unique.

Question: What is proper education?

Answer: Proper education is a balanced attitude toward a child from the side of his parents that is built on two lines: reward and punishment, mercy and severity.
[315994]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 7/17/23

Related Material:
Who Should Be Educated First?
Education Of Parents – Guaranteed Benefit For Children
A School For Young Parents

Kabbalistic Calendar

740.01Question: Kabbalists of the past created a calendar for 6,000 years. How could they calculate this time?

Answer: Everything that happens in our world is performed under the influence of the upper world. Zeir Anpin of the world of Atzilut, which influences us, consists of six parts: Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet, Netzach, Hod, and Yesod. Each of them must project a thousand-year development in our world from the first attainment of the upper world to the last, final one.

The count of the calendar starts from the spiritual birth of Adam HaRishon. It is said that it happened when he was 37 years old. Basically, that does not matter. He was the first to attain the upper world and is therefore called the first man, Adam HaRishon. After him, other Kabbalists began to attain spirituality.

From the first revelation to the last final attainment, the influence of the six degrees of Zeir Anpin must pass, each of which consists of 1,000, that is, it increases a thousandfold because Zeir Anpin must ascend to the level of Arich Anpin.

As a result, all 6,000 degrees must influence our world. When this happens, each of them turns into an earthly year, and therefore 6,000 years must pass both before a person first reveals the upper state, the full volume of the universe, and before the last one when absolutely all of us reach this level.
[316166]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Kabbalistic Calendar” 9/3/11

Related Material:
The Eternal Calendar
A Goal Oriented Calendar
“Remember The Sabbath Day”