Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What do old people and teenagers have in common?“

As a part of a school project, twins from the 10th grade met with a 77-year-old woman, keeping her company. The project ended a long time ago, but the connection that became established between the twins and the 77-year-old woman grew stronger, which developed into a very close and special relationship, where they spent more and more time together, eating together, and sometimes even staying over at the elderly woman’s place. The older woman mentioned that the girls brought light into her life.

Indeed, teenagers and elderly people can very beneficially complement each other. Teenagers, who have several deficiencies and insecurities, and who seek to make their way in life, can receive answers to a lot of their questions from elderly people. Older people have a surplus of knowledge, understanding and warmth, and they no longer have children whom they can pass it on to. For instance, the elderly woman in this example received vitality through her connection to the teenagers. There is also research showing how much elderly people become enlivened when connecting to children. Unfortunately, we see nowadays that after retirement, many elderly people become lonely, stay at home, and their health deteriorates, similar to flowers that start withering away.

There needs to be a system connecting those at the beginning and the end of their lives. Neither knows how to make this connection, but when that system is operating, then we would see great benefit for both age groups. I would very much recommend creating such connections as broadly as possible in different ways, shapes, forms and for different ages.

Based on the video “How Can Teenagers and Elderly People Complement Each Other?” 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 do you manifest your thoughts into reality?“

Our every desire makes an impact.

By using our desire, we can achieve anything, but on condition that we examine and bring our desire closer to the general desire of nature, which is one of connection, mutuality and balance. In a word, love is nature’s will.

For instance, if we wish to manifest the best possible and most suitable spouse into our lives, then we need to search inside ourselves, first and foremost, for who and what we are, what we are drawn to, what we wish to achieve, and we will then know, more or less, what we are truly searching for, what we wish to see in our spouse, and what qualities in our spouse can we say that we lack in order to complement each other. Such a force of scrutiny and our inner desire will manifest that reality because we live in a system of forces, and we receive from that system if we activate it.

Based on the video “Kabbalist on Thought Manifestation: How to Manifest Thoughts into Reality” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Rebe Pascual on Unsplash

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How do you prove to your spouse that you love them?“

By conceding to them.

When one spouse concedes to the other, then the other spouse will feel that concession, and will also want to concede in return. Such mutual concessions become a place for love, as is written, “man and woman, and Divinity between them.” Love will then become a third force that is born between the spouses. Love becomes their spiritual baby.

Moreover, the emotion of love that passes from one person to the next is omnipresent outside of us, and thus the emotion that they give birth to is eternal.

Based on the video “The Recipe for Ever-Growing Love” 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: “Why is Israel politically unstable? Can we expect a clear winner this time?“

The reason for Israel’s political instability today is that we have reached a state where we hate and cannot come close to each other.

Since this flaw has become revealed, now is the time to fix it.

First of all, anyone who enters politics and becomes a government member needs to become corrected. By “correction” I mean that they should undergo a process of inverting egoism—prioritizing self-benefit over benefiting others—to its opposite—prioritizing the benefit of others over oneself. By remaining as egoists, we bring about destruction.

We need to become aware that, as it is written, “man’s inclination is evil from his youth,” and that we need to correct this evil inclination if we are to reach a better state.

How do we reach a state where we mutually understand each other, where we fight our ego instead of fighting each other? That is what we need in order to reach a harmonious and peaceful life without wars, disputes and trials.

There is a single truth, which is love. In contrast with that truth, we were given an egoistic and hateful nature. We simply need to know how to correctly work with the power of hatred in order to reach its opposite, the power of love, and we should invest primarily in learning and teaching how to undergo this transformation.

Based on the video “Why Is Israel Politically Unstable?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Laura Siegal on Unsplash.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Will severe food shortages affect the United States in coming months?“

As we develop without taking the meaning of our lives into consideration, then anything is possible. Why not? We need to understand that we cannot kid around with these things.

How is not considering the meaning of our lives connected with possible food shortages and other unfolding crises? It is because without answering the question about the meaning of life, we have no idea how to behave toward one another.

If we were aware about the meaning of our lives, then we would know how to plan our lives. For instance, why do we spend so much money on the military and other useless things? We need to understand the system of life, and how to organize it as a whole so that it can optimally encompass everything.

Food shortages are just one symptom of the deeper problem, and these symptoms emerge in order to awaken us.

The heart of our problems today is human relations. We need to understand that we each host an innate egoistic desire that prioritizes self-benefit over benefiting others and nature, and until we take care of it—learning how to redirect it to enjoy primarily from benefiting others and nature—then we are headed into an abyss.

Based on the video “Will Severe Food Shortages Soon Affect the Western World?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by John Cameron on Unsplash.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What should everybody learn?“

Everybody should learn how to become human beings, which means how to connect as a single positively-connected humanity, and by doing so, attract the positive omnipresent force dwelling in nature, which is behind our existence and our universe. In other words, we should discover nature’s positive force of connection within our connection.

When our connection adapts with the goal of doing no harm to anyone, and acting solely for everybody’s benefit, then the positive force dwelling in nature will reveal itself in such a bond.

Everybody should learn that humanity’s next evolutionary stage is to discover nature’s positive force of connection, and that the more we can adapt our connections to it, the more we will feel our lives become filled with a much greater kind of fulfillment, harmony and tranquility. We have evolved toward this major evolutionary stage for hundreds of thousands of years, and today we are positioned on a fateful transition point: either we fail to learn about how to adapt our relations to nature’s positive force of connection, and feel increasing darkness, crisis and troubles enter our lives, or we learn about how to adapt to nature’s positive force, draw that force into our lives, and experience a newfound life of fulfillment, harmony and peace.

Based on KabTV’s “I Got a Call. World Unemployment” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on September 15, 2011. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How do you resolve opinion differences?“

We need to attribute our differences in opinion to the higher force that brings us together. It leads us into conflict with one another so that we feel a need for a correction, to bring ourselves to a happy middle.

What is the happy middle? It is that above the contradicting emotions and opinions, we wish to bring ourselves to a state of complementarity and completion.

We are currently in a state where our ego, i.e. our desire to enjoy at the expense of others, is the very essence of our every quality and trait. We constantly desire, think, intend and act with an aim of benefiting our personal ego. The ego thus controls that human part in us and we are enslaved to it. There might be nothing good about this situation, but we still go through the motions because nature forces us to.

The more we wake up to the extent in which the ego is behind our actions, then the more we will discover how phony and egoistic we are, how we distort everything in the direction of benefiting ourselves alone, and not in the direction of the truth. Likewise, the more we discover how the ego is behind our every calculation and how there is no truth in whatever it determines, the readier we will become to look beyond our egos for answers, above the contradicting emotions and opinions that it brings about, and wish to bring ourselves to a state of complementarity and completion.

Based on the video “How to Resolve Differences in Opinion” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Yael Leshed-Harel. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How can I learn to better understand social interactions?“

Social interactions ultimately come to teach us that the entire world was created for the person.

We encounter different people in different situations in order to learn how to position ourselves in an optimal manner, which means becoming conduits of nature’s positive force of connection, bestowal and love into our world.

Such a force is an attitude that wishes solely, as it is written, “to do good to the good and to the bad,” i.e. to bring love and fulfillment to all. Ultimately, we need to feel as if we are the representatives of this force toward others in society, and our every interaction then becomes in order for us to know how to position ourselves so that we will become such conduits.

We should thus calibrate ourselves toward our social interactions in order to let the message that nature wants to deliver to this world pass through us undistorted. By doing so, we become nature’s helpers, servants and conduits.

Based on the video “What Do Social Interactions Ultimately Come to Teach Us?” 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: “Why do we find nature beautiful?“

Nature has no need to change. The still, vegetative and animate levels of nature that we see surrounding us are in no need of correction. Only we at the human degree need to change ourselves from living according to our inborn desire to enjoy at the expense of others and nature, to a desire to enjoy with an intention to benefit others and nature.

We find nature beautiful because its mutually opposite positive and negative forces are in balance, breaching the limits of balance only where necessary for further development. We humans are the sole creatures that exceed the limits of balance, and by doing so, we bring harm to nature.

We are the sole creatures that have an ugly quality, which is the excessive ego that makes us want to enjoy at the expense of others and nature. Even if an animal devours another animal, it takes place according to nature’s laws that act within animals, i.e. according to natural instinctive desires, and not according to an intention to harm others and to enjoy from harming others. Humans are the only part of nature that relate to their surroundings with an intention to harm, use, exploit and enjoy when feeling that they are in a higher position.

Animals harm other animals not with a calculation that they enjoy harming the other animals, but solely with a calculation that they need food for their survival and the survival of their offspring. In fact, nature has prepared exactly what and how much each creature needs in order to survive, which pertains also to humans. That is, if we would sustain our balance with nature, then nature’s other levels would exist in harmony. It might seem to us as if other creatures viciously devour one another, but we need to understand that no predator consumes more than the necessary amount. Animals, plants and even still matter all receive according to their needs, and only we people wish to enjoy from receiving surplus for ourselves.

Surplus reception for ourselves is the definition of egoism. It is an additional force of desire present in us humans beyond our physical and bodily needs, and it is the only harmful desire and force that exists in our world. Also, the cause of our suffering lies in us not knowing how to correctly and beneficially use this excessive desire that we have been given. Using our surplus desire correctly means inverting its direction to one of bestowal upon others. In other words, by prioritizing the benefit of others and nature over self-benefit, we can obtain balance with nature and experience a harmonious and peaceful life.

While nature on its still, vegetative and animate levels is free from the egoistic corruption that we experience on our human level—which is what makes us see nature as beautiful, peaceful, calm and harmonious—we need to also understand that no other part of nature has such an amazing opportunity for independent behavior than the human.

We humans are free to choose the intentions of our actions—either receiving for self-benefit alone, or bestowing upon others. No other creature in nature can egoistically receive more than what it needs for its sustenance, nor can it altruistically bestow goodness upon others and nature.

If we use the surplus desire that we have been given correctly, then we can achieve balance with nature, become its autonomous part, and feel a new sublime harmony enter our lives as a result. Moreover, our failure to do so is the cause of all of our shortcomings and suffering.

Based on the Daily Kabbalah Lesson with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on June 18, 2022. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Dawid Zawiła on Unsplash.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How objective can perception be?“

Objective means having no self, national or even global interest, but that we direct ourselves solely at the purpose of the higher nature.

We should constantly calibrate ourselves to be objective, i.e. to be free of whatever we feel at a given moment, as if we are machines receiving certain impressions in the most objective ways possible. Otherwise, we receive in the direction of whether something is good or bad for us, i.e with the question “What will I get out of it?” After calibrating ourselves to be free of what we feel at any given moment, whether or not it makes us feel good or bad, we will then have correct interactions with people and other aspects of nature on the still, vegetative and animate.

We have to bring ourselves to states where we identify that in relation to ourselves, we have a self-aimed intention to receive, and that we should give it no consideration. We do not want to become judges lured by bribery because of a certain kind of pressure.

It is written that “the judge has only what his eyes can see.” The eyes are key here—not memories, impressions, prejudice or anything else. It is as if we take a picture of a certain person without any connection to emotion, to ourselves, our nation, or even our world. This is how we can be judges.

When we calibrate ourselves to be objective in such a way, then it is considered that we truly wish to be as judges. It is a very exalted place, because we have nothing of our own. In such a state, we can reach a state where we start perceiving an independent reality and how it behaves for a higher purpose.

Based on the video “How to Calibrate Yourself Toward Objective Perception” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Yael Leshed-Harel. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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