Question: How can we use the environment in order to attain the Creator? Who can we trust in this world in order to come to the Creator?

Answer: Nobody. What does it mean to trust? What is this childish attitude? A child trusts an adult, gives his hand, and goes with him where he is told to go.

On the contrary, we train a person to constantly check, constantly analyze: Where do you exist, what for, how, and why? In no case can there be any unfounded faith in someone or in something; there is no such thing in Kabbalah!

Faith is the upper force that clothes in you and gives you the quality of bestowal. It is not like in our world when I believe something and go ahead with my eyes closed. There is no such thing!

Here you are taught to look at everything with open eyes, to check, and to trust nothing. This is a science— absolutely clearly coming from practice. Even things that are not attained experimentally in ordinary science are attained here.

Question: Let us say a person comes to the society of Kabbalists, people moving toward a goal, what should his attitude be?

He must perform constant analysis and at the same time try to trust this system. How can he not trust in this case? After all, he needs to move forward.

Answer: What is there to trust? I can only move forward through the acquired quality of bestowal, which is called faith. I work with it like with a force that exists in nature and not in my imagination, like in our world.

Question: Usually a person relies on his opinion because he has an established analysis mechanism. But this is wrong to some extent because it is egoism that creates such a box that I perceive. Is it possible to find some tools here, but not stupid faith, so that there is an analysis and you are not mistaken?

Answer: You are dealing with a clear analysis of states; you are exploring everything on yourself, and therefore there can be no mistakes here. So many repetitions on yourself, within yourself, according to the book, and with others. You see that they describe the same things that happen to you. Then you see that they are really right, that you do go through such things. This is a completely different matter.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Whom to Believe in This life?” 1/28/12

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Question: How can we determine what elements pull us away from spiritual development and oppositely, which ones help us advance?

Answer: There is only one thing that leads a person to the goal. It is his aspiration to the center of the group in order to reveal the Creator within it. Everything else is only for support, if indeed it gives any support at all.

We are talking about people who seek the revelation of the upper world, but not about those who merely live in our world, suffer, and want to improve their life. There is a different method for them. They do not wish to reveal anything above our world; they want to get fulfilled with something that exists here.

Comment: But there are different criteria for connection when people are doing something together.

My Response: We are uniting with the purpose of assembling our single enormous desire, sufferings, aspirations, uncorrected properties, and all negativity to the degree that it would express within us and we would cry out for correction.

We pile up the flaws together and say “We want to correct them. Please correct them!” And this is it. Just like kids  scream and fight, but you calm them down, in the same way we have to fight with one another, scream, and go to our mom (the upper mother Bina) so she will correct us.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Arava or How To Overcome Yourself?”1/21/12

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Preparation to the Lesson

Zohar for All “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” “On the Night of the Bride,” Item 127 

Writings of Baal HaSulam “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 66

Selected Highlights

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How can you balance emotions?“

We can balance our emotions with the help of the environment.

What I mean by “environment” is our society and its influences, that we can surround ourselves with such influences that will guide us on how to direct the emotions that awaken in us.

For instance, we know the example of peer pressure, when our friends tell us to do or not to do something, and their influence makes us follow their recommendations. Using this force of our surrounding environment, we can choose our environment—the kinds of people, media and values we surround ourselves with—and accordingly change our attitude toward certain emotions.

We can then build our intellect with our social influences. Our desires constantly grow, and we correspondingly need to build a greater and greater intellect with which we can deal with our growing desires.

Adjusting our environmental influences in order to build the intellect so that we can best deal with our growing desires is the essence of education. It is what we need to teach the younger generation, that we can balance our emotions with our intellects, and by doing so, come to see our perfect state in life.

We should thus try to find an environment that would be able to supplement our constantly-surfacing emotions in a certain direction. Our environment should act as a damper, helping us mediate our inner excitements and eruptions, bringing them to a state where we would be able to realize them—but to realize them in ways that benefit both ourselves and others.

In other words, we need to examine ourselves in relation to our environment, whether the environment accepts what we want to do. If we find that our desires match those of the environment, then we can continue realizing our desires. We can then determine that we can carry out what we want to do, that it will benefit both us and those around us, and that everything will turn out just fine if we go ahead and realize our desires.

This is how we can balance our emotions—by learning how to balance between our intellect and our emotions via our surrounding environment.

Based on the video “THIS Is How You Balance Your Emotions” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Writtem/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Living in a World of Gray People”

A student told me about a forty-four-year-old woman who had decided when she was younger never to have children. But now that she is older, she wonders if she made the right choice because even though she has friends and relatives, it is not the same as having her own children, so she is afraid of growing old alone.

She is not the only one, the student told me. Today, many young people do not want to have children, either because they do not want to raise them in such a terrible world, or because they feel that there are too many people in the world already, and the planet cannot support all of us.

I cannot say that these stories surprise me. When people suffer, when they see that life is tough and they are only trying to survive, it is only natural for them not to want their children to experience it. As a result, many decide not to have children.

At the same time, the phenomenon of childlessness is much rarer in third-world countries than it is in Western countries, where the standard of living is much higher. This makes no sense unless we take into consideration that the quality of life is measured not only by one’s ability to provide for one’s physical existence, but also, if not mainly by one’s sense of happiness in one’s social environment.

When people have secured their physical existence but cannot find emotional satisfaction, their lives become gray, colorless. Especially in Europe, where people have everything, they also have coldness in their hearts and grayness in their lives. Nothing is more depressing than a colorless world, especially for children, so people do not want to bring them into such a world.

When my student asked what I thought would happen to those children who are born into today’s gray world, all I could tell him was what the wisdom of Kabbalah says, as I had seen it written in the writings of Baal HaSulam and as my teacher, RABASH, the firstborn son and successor of Baal HaSulam, had told me. They say that unless we change the society we live in, humanity will plunge into another era of world wars. They predict a third, and even a fourth world war, but this time nuclear ones.

Since the end of World War II, we have had a relatively quiet period, without global conflicts. It was a time when we could harness the lessons from the two world wars we had experienced in the first half of the 20th century, but we didn’t. We kept on arguing and fighting “cold” wars and proxy wars, until the window of opportunity had closed on us, and now we are approaching the realization of the warnings of Baal HaSulam and his son, RABASH.

For all the knowledge humanity has gained, for all its power, technological, military, and industrial achievements, and for all our knowledge of history, we cannot seem to change the course of the world toward anything enlightened, toward a good future. The one thing humanity has not learned throughout time is how to make our lives safer and calmer by simply caring for each other.

Instead of using our knowledge to improve our lives, we are playing with it like toddlers holding a loaded gun. This cannot end well.

If we want to add brighter colors to our world, we have to add another field of knowledge to our learning: how to care without wanting to dominate. These brighter colors lie with the people around us: They are the new perspectives that they bring, the new ideas and attitudes that enrich human society. If we embrace these myriad colors that surround us, the differences between us will not threaten us but strengthen us.

If we want to add some blue-sky colors to our lives, we need to find new horizons, horizons that exist in the dreams of others. If we learn to care about them, they will become our dreams, as well. If we want to add some green-grass colors to our lives, we must learn to be happy when our neighbor’s lawn is greener than it was. Not that it is greener than ours, but simply that it is greener than it was, and that our neighbor feels happy and content.

If we do this, then we will add the color I like the most: orange, the color of the sun. We already know all that we need to know in order to live in a sunny world. Now all we need is to learn how to care.
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Question: There is a story that Darwin was explaining his theory of evolution to a nobleman for a long time. The man was listening, agreeing with the scientist’s impeccable logic. In the end, Darwin concluded: “Now do you agree that man descended from a monkey?” The nobleman replied, “Maybe you have, but I have not.”

A lot of people write to you: “Indeed, the world is egoistic. Selfish people, neighbors, friends, and even relatives. But I don’t feel that way. I both give and love.”

Why can’t a person break through to himself and say, “This is how I am,” and really feel it?

Answer: He doesn’t feel it. We don’t see outside ourselves! Maybe a little, perhaps, but not everywhere or always. Sometimes I have some remorse for the past; however, it is partial. Here and there I’ll come up with maybe a dozen times in my whole life.

Question: But I won’t flagellate myself?

Answer: No way! That very ego protects us from this and does not let us see the truth.

Question: At the same time, you say the truth is when one realizes his evil, not someone else’s evil, but one’s own evil. If so, how can we approach it?

Answer: We will work on ourselves. We will attract the upper light with special actions—rapprochement between us—and then we will feel that we are truly egoistic.

You really need to break into yourself. The war is about getting into your own heart, not into the heart of another.

Question: You talk all the time about connection, getting closer to others, and so on. How does this make its way into your heart? Let’s say I am trying to connect with someone I hate or, perhaps, dislike.

Answer: Don’t start with someone you hate.

Question: Even for the sake of good connection, for general rapprochement. How does it pierce my heart?

Answer: It opens your heart and brings it closer to other hearts. These are the first steps that need to be taken.

Question: Do these steps get more complicated?

Answer: Naturally.

Question: So, what is the biggest challenge? Can you tell us what the end goal is? What is the final stage? What do we reach?

Answer: I don’t know that yet.

This is a total correction of all beings you can incorporate in your heart. It will include them and give them all a place and fill them with your love.

Question: So, do I include the whole world in myself?

Answer: Into myself. And I fill it all with love.

Question: You keep saying that the name of the Creator is love. Does it mean that I am filled with the Creator?

Answer: Yes, you are filled with the Creator. You include in yourself all desires, all qualities, of everything that exists, and fill them all with the Creator, that is, with love.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 9/22/22

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Question: What is goodness?

Answer: Goodness is an understanding of interdependence—all the way to love. And evil is vice versa.

Question: But each side in any conflict thinks that it is doing good.

Answer: We need to rise above ourselves and start thinking only about making everyone feel good, not one at the expense of the other. Otherwise, we will not get anywhere. We must learn what mutual connection, mutual dependence, mutual restriction, mutual support, and so on, mean.

That is, we must create systems that will include absolutely all of humanity. These are systems of integral development.

We must understand that we will not be able to survive otherwise. Nature will drive us out of this planet, out of this world, if we cannot establish a system that will take care of everyone.
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From KabTV’s “Blitz Questions and Answers” 1/6/23

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All the worlds in the thought of creation, called “the light of Ein Sof,” and what contains the receivers there is called Malchut of Ein Sof” (Baal HaSulam, The Study of the Ten Sefirot, Part 1, “Inner Observation,” Chapter 6).

The light of Ein Sof (Infinity) is the light that comes to us from the Creator and fills the desire without any changes in the desire. Therefore, the light itself is infinite; there are no changes in it.

When the desire created by the light becomes opposite to the light, then it is called Malchut of the world of Ein Sof (Infinity). An absolute desire to receive, to be filled, appears in it while in the light there is only a desire to bestow and fill. Therefore, light and desire are opposite to each other.

The Light of Ein Sof emanates from Atzmuto until the upcoming end of correction, which is the end of the action. In principle, it contains all the information about everything that should take place before the end of the correction of creation.
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From KabTV’s “The Study of the Ten Sefirot (TES)” 1/1/23

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Question: What does it mean to sacrifice my egoism? Let’s say I want to enjoy something in this world. Then what? Am I making a restriction on this desire?

Answer: If this action is directed at harming others or nature, then we should try to limit ourselves and not apply it. This is called offering sacrifice.

Question: But if I just enjoy without harming anyone with my pleasure, is that okay?

Answer: Yes, of course. This is why the wisdom of Kabbalah explains what sacrifice means and how it should be done.

Suppose a person has a desire to enjoy at the expense of another, and the fact that he does not allow himself to do this, he sacrifices his desire to enjoy by using someone for his own sake, meaning, he sacrifices his egoism.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 1/8/23

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