Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What are your thoughts on pain?“

Pain is our body’s reaction to all kinds of bodily disruptions. It warns of danger and makes us act—to move toward pleasure and away from pain, to diagnose the cause of the pain, to reach conclusions and to advance in our lives to new states.

Pain impacts our ego, the desire to enjoy at the expense of others. We can feel pain when we feel bad, or when sympathizing with others who feel bad, or when the pain of envy strikes us when we see that others are better off than us.

There is pain that prods us from behind, making us evolve, and also existential pain that ultimately pulls us forward to greater fulfillment.

We would feel nothing at all if it were not for pain. Whether it is a certain kind of conflict, contact or pressure, our every feeling is built upon a certain form of pain, and we can only feel pleasure, fulfillment and enjoyment after pain.

However, we can overcome pain. When we rise above the ego, i.e. when we ascend beyond prioritizing self-interest at the expense of others to its opposite—prioritizing the benefit of others—we can then live in complete fulfillment, without emptiness, where we relate to everything and everyone out of an ever-increasing wholeness and love.

Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
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Question: What is love?

Answer: Love is when you perceive the desires of another person above your own and strive to fulfill them.

Question: But isn’t classic love when there is a burning sensation in the heart?

Answer: I do not know about the burning in the heart. We need to ask the physiologists what can burn there. You are talking about some suffering, maybe bad feelings and experiences.

I, however, am talking about the fact that love is the desire to fulfill the desire of the other person by yourself at the expense of and above your own desires. It does not matter at all to you what will happen to you from this, because the most important thing for you is what will happen to him. This is earthly love, and not the one Kabbalah speaks about.

According to Kabbalah, love is an adhesion of two spiritual objects: the created being (man) and the Creator. Or rather, the soul and the Creator. Such adhesion is reached by the similarity of qualities when the soul and the Creator bestow to each other, fulfill each other, and therefore merge together and absolutely complete each other. This state is called love.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Love” 1/19/11

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How does God communicate with you?“

Thoughts about the meaning and purpose of our lives are the Creator’s way of inviting us into a dialog.

They are like couriers knocking on our doors to notify us about a special delivery.

We only need to open our doors, accept the packages, unpack them, and from their content recognize their sender and how we should respond to them.

Many of us hear the knocking, but we wait, staying seated on our sofas, watching our TVs, thumbing our phones, and yelling at the couriers to leave the packages by the door—that we’ll pick them up later.

Such an attitude dissolves the awakening, and who knows when we will again feel a knock on our hearts’ doors?

When we receive such invitations, we should immediately realize them. We should do everything in our power to open the packages, find the Sender’s address, work out what kind of special delivery He would most enjoy, and how we could send Him that delivery in return.

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

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Question: With the development of technology, people are increasingly immersed in Internet and social network addiction. You have said this is the same as drugs. How can it be treated?

Answer: In everything that develops we must realize the positive and negative sides. So far people are just playing at it, and they are playing, of course, with their egoism.

The whole Internet is a demonstration of who we are inside. When you enter the Internet, you see what humanity is. If there was some kind of extraterrestrial civilization, it would be enough for them to look into our Internet, see what is there, and they would immediately understand that there is no point in contacting us as there is nothing at all to talk about with the earthly civilization.

But this is the beginning. In principle I am very glad that this network is developing on its own, and then we will adapt it in the right direction. There will be several more hurricanes, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions, and there will be drought, severe cold snaps, and starvation. The future is preparing many unpleasant surprises for us.

Humanity, eventually, will begin to understand more and more that there is nothing it can do. Involuntarily the opportunity to do all sorts of stupid things will be taken away from us. When there is nothing to eat, you will not scour the Internet in search of dubious pleasures. When you have no electricity at home and the water level rises from below, or everything is burning from the heat, then you will not be up to looking for some entertainment. So there is an awareness of the need for correct development ahead.

It is very simple—get closer to each other and enter into homeostasis with nature. That is all. It is the law of equilibrium. The law of equivalence.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Internet Addiction Treatment” 11/3/12

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Question: How should we introduce a new person to the study of Kabbalah together with the whole group?

Answer: Gradually. After all, we are talking about wisdom that is above our nature. It talks about everything in a completely different way in different terms, qualities, and forces. You need to get used to it gradually. We are trying to adapt the Kabbalistic methodology to our world, but it is not easy.

It is impossible to bring the upper world down to ours. There is a clear hierarchy of degrees and division by qualities, that is, by understanding. I cannot feel the upper world because now I am in different qualities from it. I do not see it, do not notice it, and do not feel it because I do not have these qualities. Therefore, I do not catch it in my network of sensations and understandings; I am not adapted to it.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is built on bringing a person slowly to this and allowing him to change his qualities gradually. But this happens only in the group. If you need to create qualities of connection with others, then the group is the place where you can do it.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. How to Enter a Kabbalistic Group?” 12/12/12

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Is suffering a punishment from God?“

Punishment from God is among the many theories people have come up with for why we suffer, i.e. that God punishes us for certain actions we have (or have not) done either in our current life, or in past lives. However, aside from theories, nobody really knows why we suffer.

Especially in our current times, we can see that we are globally interdependent and interconnected. The more we develop, the more our global interdependence reveals to us.

We live in a single global system, and we each share a mutual responsibility for the well-being of the entire system.

Similarly to how our bodies work, we feel a wound in our pinky toe as a pain throughout our whole body, and if it is a major wound, then it demands our complete attention. That is how we increasingly reveal ourselves in our world today.

If we comprehended and felt the full extent of our interdependence, then we would quickly conclude that we need to fix our connections: to upgrade our attitudes to each other as to members of a single family—and even closer. If we do, then we will start sensing that we live in an absolutely perfect world, free from suffering.

Based on a Virtual Kabbalah Lesson with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on September 27, 2015. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Alexey Malakhov on Unsplash.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How should I know what humanity needs?“

Humanity needs to know that there is a next level of complete unification to which nature advances us, and the fact that nature is connecting us against our will is the reason for all forms of suffering we endure. In other words, there are forces of nature that are connecting us more and more, and by rejecting the tendency to positively connect, we experience suffering, and on the contrary, if we act in unison with the forces that connect us, we will experience life blissfully.

That is why we require a whole new kind of education today, one that teaches us about the forces of nature that operate on us, and how we can equalize with those forces by realizing our connection positively. We can then rise peacefully to the next level of a harmoniously-connected life to which nature guides us.

We see that we have become a global humanity. There is nowhere to escape from our global interdependence and interconnection. Entering into unison with nature thus means that we should upgrade our attitudes to this tightening globally interdependent and interconnected state we find ourselves in—to realize that we are all in one boat, that we are all a single family around the world—and to start relating to each other accordingly. This is the message that nature wants us to hear, and if we remain as foolish children who wish to simply chase what seems sweet and good for each one of us individually, without considering our mutual influence and dependence, then what will nature do? It will punish us until we start listening to what it wishes to communicate to us. Our incongruence with nature’s connecting tendency is the reason for our suffering today, and it is the reason we will experience more and more suffering as we head into the future.

We should thus take heed to what nature has started showing us, that we are a single globally interdependent and interconnected humanity, and that if we wish to realize our interdependence harmoniously and peacefully, we need to invert our attitudes to each other so that they are all-inclusive like nature itself.

It is quite complicated since we are born and raised solely in our egoistic nature—self-benefit at the expense of others and nature—but if we set ourselves on a path of implementing a new connection-enriching learning throughout the world, then we will be able to undergo a positive transition, alleviating the need for all kinds of turmoil to befall us.

Based on KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Medicine From all Sickness” on October 27, 2012 with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
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Question: How can you see the Creator in all obstacles?

Answer: Only a group can help you with this, which must keep you in this state all the time.

But how can you decipher what comes to you? How can you work with an obstacle? First, we study it, and then a person goes inside himself.

Why do we conduct workshops, talks, have questions and answers, and read articles? After all, they describe all our work. Of course, when a person goes through various states, he begins to understand that this is something that he has not previously imagined.

But then, by reading the primary sources in each new state, he begins to understand what it was about. This is always later, he does not feel it in advance, and then he sees what is written in them really happens.

This is the highest psychology, a gradual, gentle transition to the next level, to the next dimension. Or do you want nature to do what it usually does? That is, a species dies out, and another appears in its place. This could be so. Today we are faced with a choice.

Question: Why do we begin to understand and realize everything later and not immediately?

Answer: If you knew in advance, you would egoistically want to go for it. How is that possible?! And now you understand with your new thoughts and mind. You used to read the same thing, but now you feel it in a new way because new properties, new sensors, new sensations, assessments, and internal dimensions were born in you. You start to study yourself from a new level.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. How to Use Obstacles” 12/1/12

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Question: Why don’t we remember how we were born? Why don’t we remember those torments? We subconsciously know that this has happened, but we cannot associate ourselves with it.

Answer: We can. We can go back and see ourselves being born in our mother’s womb. But what for?

Comment: Because in spirituality it probably gives a certain range of sensations.

My Response: There, as in our world, you feel and realize what you need at every moment and nothing more.

Question: Does a Kabbalist clearly remember the stage before the Machsom throughout all the steps?

Answer: No. Is nothing taken away from him and nothing given to him? Is he not inside a system that calls him according to a certain program? And how does he know the next step and what he should be in it? He does not know it.

Comment: I mean the past, suppose before the Machsom he remembers all this.

My Response: He may not know. It may fall out of his current sense of awareness. Just like you do not remember what happened a week ago on a certain day at a specific hour. And you can be reminded of this and, very seriously, to that extent that you will shudder.

So it is in Kabbalah. Not everything is open before you. Reshimot (informational spiritual records) rise and fall, rise into your consciousness or disappear again inside, and you do not use them.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Ideal Childbirth” 11/3/12

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What are things that can only happen to Israelis?“

It is common in Israel to disrespect people of status, such as state officials. The reason for this is that we—the people of Israel, the Jews—are a free people in our roots. We originated as a nation of members who were equal to one another.

About 4,000 years ago, when we first united as “the people of Israel,” we had gathered around Abraham. At that time, Abraham invited anybody in ancient Babylon who had a desire to reach the degree of equality, love and freedom from the limits of this world, to implement his method.

Abraham taught his group that they were a free nation in that they each needed to develop themselves to become a positive force of support, encouragement, care and love toward each other. In such a state, nobody is lesser than others and no one can tell others what to do, but we can each give each other examples of love and care. If we can sustain ourselves in that continuous motion to love and care for one another, then we experience harmony and peace, but if we cannot hold ourselves in such a positive direction, then we become like savages.

Abraham’s method is supposed to unite people as equals, without any limits, where no person is greater or smaller than the others. In other words, in our origin, we have no sense of one or is powerful and another who is weak, but rather we all complement one another in a common effort to unite above our differences.

Since Abraham once united us as equals in a connection of love among one another, then we developed a very open approach in our relations. We dwelled in a positive connection where we behaved as if everyone everywhere was in our bedrooms.

Later, when we fell from the degree of a common love for one another and immersed ourselves in opposite attitudes to each other—a state of unfounded hatred—the feeling of our equality turned into a common disrespect and disregard. In other words, disregard, rejection and alienation replaced love, mutual consideration and unification. That is what we see among us today.

We need to understand how much of a better life we could be living if we once again applied Abraham’s method to our relations. If we start uniting above our divisive drives, then we would experience a whole new harmonious and peaceful world open up to us. We would draw the force of love and connection that dwells in nature into our relations, and by doing so, we would tap into that ability that once united us as “the people of Israel.” Our unity would have immensely positive rippling effects not only for our own well-being, but people around the world would also feel a surge of a new positive force enter their lives, and the attitude to Israelis and to Jews in general around the world would become very positive: people would revere the group that brings love, peace and unity to the world.
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Based on the video “The Matter of Equality among the Israeli Nation” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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