Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why does it seem like most of the world hates Israel?“

Whether we know it or not, we in Israel are in a game—that we need to receive blows, and to be treated badly until we straighten out properly toward the upper force. Then, the evil against us will invert into good.

The upper force—a force of bestowal, love and connection that we call “the Creator” (Heb. “Boreh”), “nature” (“HaTeva”), “upper light” (“Ohr Elyon”), and several other names—currently does not like us, because we are not living up to our role in the world.

On one hand, those who are pro-Israel like to tell themselves that Israel is among the top countries in several areas such as humanitarian support, technology, medicine and science, but on the other hand, we see that despite Israel’s achievements in these areas, the general attitude from the world toward Israel continues worsening and thus it is not worthwhile convincing ourselves of our seeming righteousness.

Our many corporeal achievements fail to nail what the upper force ultimately wants from us, which is to positively connect with other Jews in the world. Positively connecting means reaching a state where the love of Israel dwells among us upon all of our differences and divisions.

While we differ on many issues, we need to override them with the upper sentence, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” regardless of who is right or wrong. Such love is due to us all belonging to a single nation that was founded on the idea of the love of Israel. Moreover, the more poignant our differences, the more we should be elevating love over them, as it is written, “Love will cover all crimes.” In other words, even though hatred dwells between us, we should nonetheless each try to develop a sense of love toward each other. We would then start understanding how the world consists of two opposite forces—positive and negative—and how to work with them.

To be good in the eyes of the upper force means showing our love to each other, helping each other develop ties of love, and by doing so, become a conduit for the upper force of love, giving and connection to spread throughout the world. If we conducted ourselves accordingly, then the hatred toward us would subside, and in its place would emerge a great love and reverence for a nation that brings an immense positive unifying force into the world. It would also help the world feel that the Jewish nation is a very special and unique part in the functioning of the general nature of the world.

Based on the video “Why Does it Seem Like Most of the World Hates Israel?” 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 can I stay calm in difficult situations?“

Talk to your friends who have also gone through difficult situations. You will see how it will calm you down and balance you out. It will give you their thoughts and then you will think not only about yourself, but you will start comparing their situations to yours, which will dilute your sorrow.

It works according to the principle, “a sorrow shared is a sorrow halved,” which means that everyone goes through difficult situations and life goes on. If you are going through a difficult situation and you hear stories about certain difficulties that your friends went through, and they describe what they did in those situations, then even though it might have been tough, they lived through it, came out of it, and perhaps also have several tips that could help you. Moreover, once you have such a conversation with a friend, you gain strength to show them that you are balanced and know how to hold yourself together.

Also, more generally, it is worthwhile understanding that calmness comes from engaging in what you understand is important. If you are engaged in what you understand is important, then you progress toward inner balance.

Based on the video “How to Stay Calm in Difficult Situations” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.in difficult situations?”

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What advice would you give a woman whose husband of twenty years left her without saying anything?”

I received the following letter from a lady who experienced such a situation: “I’m going through some very difficult times, and I need your help. I’ve been married for 20 years, and I have three beautiful children. My husband and I had a good marriage all these years, but lately his attitude toward me really changed, and a month ago, he just got up and left home without saying why. I feel that my life is in shambles. And my question is, how can a person do something like that, to leave me and our children? We have three kids. What can I do for him to come back home?”

Indeed, men go through an age where they get driven to run away from the family, to run away from home, and to do something with themselves. This is somewhere around the ages of 40 and 50.

All I can recommend is to stay in touch with him, through the kids and his relatives, so that he feels that he has a family and a home—a place to which he can return. If you do so patiently, he will come back.
Based on the video “Advice for a Woman Whose Husband Left Her” 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: “Should I stockpile food in the case of shortages?“

I think that doing so is useless. Food shortages and famines do not happen in order for us to fill our storage, barns, kitchen drawers and whatnot. We rather need to understand how we can realistically make sure that the world will be abundant with everything that everyone needs. The reality that food shortages and famines could quickly spread throughout our modern world is in order for us to reach such a conclusion.

The world is indeed at risk of a prolonged period of famine. It is written in the Torah that we will reach states where mothers will eat their babies, their own children. It could indeed become that severe, where we would be reduced to the level of animals.

We should thus use such knowledge in order to help us avoid looming food shortages and famines. We would then see that the sole cause of such terrible phenomena is our imbalance at the human level, that we are not doing what we should.

What, then, should we be doing?

We need to reach a mutual understanding among each other—to establish such connections among us that would help us reach balance. But we fail to do so. On the contrary, we regress, as if we want the boat we are on to head straight into a rock. And as a result, the world is indeed headed toward periods of shortages, famine and destruction.

The reason that today we hear about such impending doom scenarios is in order to frighten us so that we would change ourselves in order to change the world. The only reason we can reach such states and know about them in advance is to change ourselves. And the essence of the transformation we need to undergo is in our values: that we shift to prioritizing the benefit of others over self-benefit.

In terms of how this change will play out, together with the suffering, there will also be people who discuss connection and how to overcome the suffering. The change depends on listening to such people, and suffering will help people become readier to listen.

After certain periods of suffering, people will change. They will have a different attitude to life and to its values. They will understand that survival and the reason for survival is of utmost importance.

Moreover, even though humanity has undergone great suffering and famines in the past, today is different because we are ready to realize the true evil behind such suffering: the human ego that wishes to benefit itself at the expense of anything and anyone. It takes enormous suffering to sense, define, attain and draw conclusions from such evil.

However, we are coming closer to a state of recognizing that evil. Some signs that we are moving toward it is that we no longer hide behind all sorts of slogans, and we no longer believe in abstract values. Instead, we are becoming interested in what is most important: whether or not there is a meaning of life. And even if we assume that there is no meaning of life, we can still see how to live optimal lives on the animal level—by realizing the evil in our desire to benefit ourselves at the expense of others, the tremendous suffering it brings, and moving to re-prioritize the benefit of others over self-benefit.

Based on the video “Should We Stockpile Food in Case of Shortages and Famine?” 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: “Why do we have a nature that rejects what is harmful and absorbs what is beneficial?“

Human nature is the desire to receive pleasure, which wants to receive what is beneficial and push away what is harmful. Such is the essence of our nature, and everything else in our lives is built upon it. We thus instinctively first make sure to reject what harms us, and afterward, when we are certain that we somehow protect ourselves from harm, then we look into how we can enjoy, acquire and draw closer to whatever brings us pleasure.

It is how we behave and we are not in control. A smarter system decides on what gets pushed away and what we can leave. The system operates in four stages: still, vegetative, animate and human. That is, there are phenomena that we do not control, which are only parts of our bodies. Our body is built such that, if it is healthy, then it knows what is good and bad for it. Afterward, there is an emotional system, which also knows what is good and bad for it, and it functions instinctively and relatively. From the emotional system, we move to the mind, and from the mind to the intellect, and so on. That is, systems over systems interact, and they function by receiving the beneficial and rejecting the harmful.

In every single thought, desire and action in our lives, we thus operate by trying to move away from pain and move toward pleasure.

Based on the video “Why Does Our Nature Move Away from Pain and Move Toward Pleasure?” 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 can Israel have more condemnations from the UN human rights council than all other countries combined?“

It is because Israel is responsible for everything that happens in the world, everything bad and good. We determine the attitude of the upper force of nature in terms of how it relates to everyone.

The UN singles out Israel because we are indeed special. We cannot get rid of our uniqueness and be normal ordinary people that are judged by the same standard as everyone else. Why? It is because we cannot escape being Jewish. I have written and spoken extensively about the role of the Jewish people, how our nation is unique in that we share no biological foundation but an ideological one, that we attained a state of positive connection (“love your neighbor as yourself”) above division (”love will cover all crimes”) and today, the world needs such a tendency to emerge in order to transition to a harmonious and peaceful state.

Everything that unfolds in the world is a result of the relations inside of Israel and nothing will help unless we positively connect with each other. Only through our positive connection will we bring about a major shift in the world, an inversion of the myriad increases of crises and suffering to a state of calm, tranquility and love. It is indeed in our hands to do, and the disproportionate hatred toward us is in order to tell us that we have such a role, which we are not yet carrying out.

Based on the video “Why Israel Has More Condemnations from the UN Human Rights Council Than the Other Countries Combined?” 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 are the biggest problems faced by humanity, and how do we go about solving them?“

Following a string of heatwaves, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stated at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue in Berlin that “We have a choice. Collective action or collective suicide. It is in our hands.”

The problem is that we simply cannot act together even facing such stark choices. Our egos do not let us unite. From the inside, we simply cannot act even in the face of imminent catastrophes. We host a quality that disallows our connection to others, even in a state where we could die without connection.

There is a vicious animal inside us that we are starting to recognize: our egoistic nature that wants to enjoy at the expense of others. It does not let us take others into consideration. It is a barrier that we cannot leap over.

Human beings are nature’s most ignorant creatures because in the worst possible state, we still seek how to take advantage of others.

We have to finally acknowledge how unbounded our ego really is. Such awareness is the beginning of our healing. Then, the healing will come from above. We have to acknowledge that it is in our ability to ask and pray for our connection. And then, by our connection, all of nature’s forces will reach balance.

Nature created us with the ego so we would rise above it toward the force of love, bestowal and connection. We will see how we are going to finish off our entire civilization and our lives until we understand that we have no other choice but to connect, and then we will be willing to connect.

Based on the video “Collective Action OR Collective Suicide: Is Humanity Smart Enough to Survive?” 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 advice would you give to someone who just won the lottery?“

To build something good for children and the elderly.

Children and the elderly are always in need of support, so giving the money in that direction should give the lottery winner a feeling of satisfaction that they contributed positively to people’s lives, and that they made meaningful use of the prize money.

We derive a lot more fulfillment and happiness from helping other people than from pleasing ourselves, indulging in luxuries.

Why? It is because what we give others lives on in them.

Whatever we receive for ourselves, we immediately bury in the spiritual graveyard, whereas what we give to others passes from us into the ever-expansive collective soul, the collective consciousness, which increasingly advances in a state of eternity, wholeness and perfection.

The key to happiness is to live outside one’s self-aimed desires, in the desires of others.

Based on the video “A Kabbalist’s Advice for Lottery Winners” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Will Russia’s attempt to invade Ukraine and the subsequent consequences show that war is a 20th century idea that is no longer feasible in a financially interdependent and globalised world?“

Today, we have more interdependence between people, societies, cultures, economies and countries than ever before. And the ongoing Russia and Ukraine conflict presents a very sharp and painful example of our tightening global interdependence. The fact that mass starvation and other massive supply deficits could quickly impact entire populations as a direct outcome of the war already shows how we have no lack of food or supplies; we only lack positive human connection.

Through such suffering, nature wishes to teach us about our globally-interdependent state: that we can cultivate anything we want, but if we lack positive connection, then whatever we do acts negatively upon us and will lead to suffering.

Nature thus gradually teaches us, by coupling our tightening global interdependence with increasing suffering, that we need to perform a 180-degree flip of our attitudes to each other: from our inborn egoistic attitudes where we prioritize self-benefit over benefiting others, to its opposite—a genuine desire to benefit others over self-benefit.

Impacting a shift from a path of suffering to a path of increasing understanding, fulfillment and happiness in today’s globally-interdependent world requires positively connecting with each other above our differences, and feeling ourselves as a single global body.

Based on the video “The Infeasibility of War in a Globally-Interdependent World” 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: “Will AI-powered translation bring people closer together beyond languages?“

I think that it would go the other way and bring about more harm, because we need to listen to each other’s hearts, to communicate from heart to heart rather than from mouth to ear.

Unless we correct ourselves, developing positive ties to one another, then the less we talk to each other, the better. Moreover, if we would correct our nature and relate to each other favorably, then we would not need such devices, because we would then feel other people’s hearts.

In other words, we would understand each other’s hearts without needing to understand each other’s languages. We would have no need to elevate what we feel in our hearts to our minds, converting our feelings into words and sounds in order to explain what we feel. We would rather immediately feel our common heart, existing together, as it is written, “as one man with one heart.”

Based on the video “Will AI-Powered Translation Bring People Closer Together Beyond Languages?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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