Question: Is self-love pride?

Answer: Self-love is not even pride. It is simply egoism. Pride is when man extracts something from himself and believes that this elevates him above others.

Question: Can I be proud of overcoming my nature, my natural attributes? Let’s say I acquire strength thanks to my efforts in the group. So I am proud that I have the strength to raise the importance of the friends and of the goal, right?

Answer: If it is about the importance of the friend, the importance of the goal, the importance of the Creator, that is, everything that leads us to the purpose of creation, then, of course, it is positive pride. Precisely about it it was written: “And his heart was high in the ways of the Lord.”
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/22/19

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Question: You claim that we have no freewill, that we are puppets in the hands of the Creator, so how can we develop the point in the heart?

Answer: How does a baby develop even  though he does not know anything about his development and does not ask about it? He does something, breaks something, runs about, and this is how he grows.

It is the same with us. We have been placed in a room with nine friends and now let’s develop together. It does not matter whether you run around like kids from one corner of the room to another or whether you play ball or play with building blocks, actions that are seemingly unimportant.

These actions, however, are not worthless, this is how providence develops children. Imagine that we too, when we come to such a group of “kids” in the ten and engage in seemingly silly actions, we will begin to develop. But we will not under different conditions.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 11/25/18

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Question: What is Pharaoh that is constantly changing? First, he is good, then he is bad. What is this force?

Answer: In principle, he is neither good nor bad. Pharaoh is the basis of our egoistic nature. If we work for its sake, then naturally he is good, and if we work against it, then he is bad.

Pharaoh is sort of our common egoism, its core, the desire to receive, to enjoy, to use everything that is around me for my own benefit.

Question: Is this not just the will to receive?

Answer: No. Pharaoh is precisely the egoistic intention of “everything for my own sake.”
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/15/19

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At every step, we discover that correction is the work of the Creator, and we only ask for it. Our job is to raise a prayer.

Overcoming also lies in asking and presenting ourselves to the Creator as broken fragments, agreeing that He will do with us whatever He wants and has planned. We are ready for this and we hand ourselves over to Him as material in the hands of the master.

We are no longer capable of overcoming anything, we can only hold on to our devotion to the Creator and be willing to hand ourselves over to Him for correction as He sees fit. We prepare ourselves for this agreement in advance with the help of our friends and the group.

This is a lot of work, not passively waiting for action to be performed on us from above. We work to discover our shattering, shortcomings, and genuine prayer.

The Creator makes the correction by the force of the light, but we must be ready to connect, having exhausted all attempts and being certain that we cannot do it ourselves. And then we come to the Creator as a child running to his father, crying when he cannot assemble the cubes by himself and asking for help.

But we cannot ask Him in advance. This glue that connects the bricks of our house is made from our dissatisfaction, our tears, our suffering. All this we bring to the Creator with tears, complaining that the cubes do not fit together, or they do and immediately fall apart. So what is missing there?

Our tears lack the upper force. When the prayer (MAN) from our side and the answer (MAD) from the Creator combine, they turn into such a force that glues all the broken fragments together correctly and forever. This is how we reveal our integration with the Creator time after time.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/2/21, “Mingling/Inclusion”

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The entire connection between us and our connection with the Creator is in the center of the ten. The center of the ten is the point through which the Creator addresses the creation, the place where the Creator (Bo-Re), “come and see” is; it is where we reveal Him.

The center of the ten is the place where the attitude of the Creator toward the creation is manifested. Before that, the Creator is only an abstract concept we are unable to feel and understand in any way. Therefore, the center of the ten must be constantly kept as a goal toward which we strive all the time.

Everything that happens should be attributed to the center of the ten: both immersion in darkness and illumination with light. As birds that carry everything into their nest—food for the chicks, straws—we constantly add dozens of our explanations to the center, both positive and negative. We study what causes our distancing from each other (which is also beneficial since it adds desire, Aviut) and how we can draw closer above those obstacles by building a Masach on them and uniting.

And when our unity becomes strong enough, the Creator will reveal itself and it will become clear that it was Him who caused rejection between us, separation, all the levels of egoism from 0 to 4, and that He also helped us to unite over this separation, building a screen for us of the same levels from 0 to 4.

Upon this contrast between egoism and purity, we will begin to understand the Creator because we will have two forms that reveal the concept “Creator” (come and see). Two opposite poles will be there— breaking and connection, concealment and revelation—and we can determine our connection between them, covering all transgressions with love, and we will reveal the Creator on the basis of two opposites.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/29/21, “Love Covers All Transgressions”

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 Dear Michael Laitman,

I went through all the spiritual practices: I was a Buddhist, a Hare Krishna, I studied the Vedas, converted to Islam, I was baptized, and lived as a hermit for two years. If I tell my story, everyone would be stunned.

But for three months now, I have been sitting here watching your videos, unable to stop. Why is that? I don’t want to be disappointed again. What would you advise me to do? I feel like I have finally found what I have been looking for all my life.

Answer: Well, I congratulate you!

Comment: I understand his fear. He is afraid it will be yet another disappointment.

My Response: It all depends on him, not on Kabbalah, because this is the truth and is absolutely infinite, but on him. How much he is able to invest himself into it, in fulfilling the conditions for the revelation of the Creator and beginning to reveal Him. Then he will not have any more problems. But it can take a very long time.

Question: What is your advice for how he can stick to it so that he does not fall off the path?

Answer: He needs to seriously start studying, read everything that we have on our websites in the archive, and be in our lessons. As he reads it, he “flushes” himself with this material. It all gets absorbed, purifying him from the inside out, and so he advances.

Question: Is there a point of no return that he can reach past which he would not fall off the path?

Answer: No. “Do not believe in yourself until the day you die.”

Comment: Meaning, the Creator can play such a joke on him again that it will divert him altogether?

My Response: Yes. The Creator puts such obstacles before a person that he can only advance by faith above reason.

This is done so that he acquires a serious spiritual Kli, a vessel in which he can truly reveal the entire universe. This is an anti-egoistic, above-the-ego state. This is the creation of a new world inside a person, a spiritual world inside him.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 11/26/20

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Question: Can I be proud that I find the strength to do good deeds for people? Or was it the Creator who gave me the strength to do them?

Answer: You answered your own question.

In fact, the correct analysis will lead us straight to the Creator. Therefore, if I understand that I am connected with Him, that He gave me strength and mind and directed me to the right action, then I am proud that He gave it to me, that He did it through me. He is inside me and rules everything.

Question: If He does all this, then it turns out that there is nothing to be proud of at all?

Answer: There is: the fact that in your group you create conditions for a correct system so that the Creator will correct the rest through you. You are the machine, the mechanism through which He corrects everything. And you are proud that you are a worker or a servant of the Creator.

Question: So I am like a conductor and He is like electric current that passes through me?

Answer: Yes. But you must make yourself that way. From absolute egoism you must reach such a state when the Creator sculpts anything He wants from you, and you annul your “I” and be ready for anything He does to you.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/22/19

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Question: Is there any pride in the Creator?

Answer: The Creator does not have properties inherent to human beings because He has no desire to receive. He specifically created pride, envy, and hatred in us so that we could correctly realize the desire to receive. This is the correction.

Question: So, is pride a normal state?

Answer: This is a very good property, if used correctly. The most important thing is the goal, which determines the means. Pride, envy, and shame are all means. That is what it says: “His heart will be proud on the path to the Creator.”

In other words, I can be proud of the fact that the higher system chose me in order to pull others along with me.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/22/19

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Question: According to the law of mutual guarantee, it turns out that everyone can change the fate of the other, but no one can ever change their own fate. It is interesting to understand how a person can interfere in the fate of the other person? Is this a special methodology?

Answer: Yes. In fact, we are one common spiritual body and are absolutely integrated with each other. I cannot change myself, but I can influence the other, and the other can influence me. This way, in a state of mutual guarantee, we can “spoon-feed” each other.

Question: Does a person still begin with the fact that he wants to change himself?

Answer: Naturally. For this, he goes to bestow, to influence others. He has no other choice.
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From KabTV’s “Ask a Kabbalist” 12/31/18

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Dear Michael Laitman, 

Sometimes I have a feeling that I remember myself being still inside my mother like a fetus. And then I feel so good, all worries go away, all problems are resolved, you are safe, you are taken care of. Do I really remember this? Could this be? Or is it an illusion?

Answer: In general, this is an illusion although many people consider such a sensation of intrauterine development being reliable. As the saying goes: “Mom, take me back.”

But, in principle, this is not what we should strive for.

We need to strive to perceive the general force of nature, which is called mother, so that we place ourselves in it correctly and go through all the stages of spiritual development, which also are called: conception, intrauterine development, birth, nursing, and so on all the way up to our highest state.

Question: What is a spiritual embryo? Is it a feeling of being safe, in peace?

Answer: Yes. When you completely dissolve in nature, when you completely surrender yourself to it and thus progress in your development.

Question: Does a person spiritually begin to feel that he is inside nature?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Are one’s sensations very similar to the sensations of the fetus inside the mother? One only needs to move forward?

Answer: Kabbalists talk about advancing.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 11/26/2

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