Find yourself and be yourself: Remember, there is no one else like you on Earth like you (Dale Carnegie).

Comment: But we spend our whole life fulfilling desires imposed on us from the outside. For the most part, we are not ourselves.

My Response: We, like little children, are constantly learning from others. Look at a little child. He constantly learns from adults and imitates them. You can call, let’s say, a cup by some other word, and he will repeat it after you and get used to this name.

If you teach him an action, he will try to repeat it. Then this habit will enter into his nature. He will instinctively prefer this action to others, even ones that are more reasonable and useful, because habit becomes second nature and by fulfilling its desires, he will enjoy it.

Therefore, we are all an imprint of the surrounding society and none of us is ourselves

Question: Isn’t it time for us to be ourselves? When can this happen?

Answer: Today there is already such a desire, but still in a small number of people who are beginning to ask themselves about the purpose of existence, about the seeming purposelessness of this world. Millions of people in the world are asking this question, but millions are not billions.
[295984]
From KabTV’s “Close Up. Theater of the Absurd”

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Question: Should there be a transformation in the process of learning a spiritual technique where everything transitions from words into an inner sensation?

Answer: Certainly. This must be lived. This is how any matter, property, and feelings gradually develop. If you do not do anything with some organ, it will not develop; but if you start working with it, you will begin to train and develop it.

That is all. There is nothing non-materialistic, secret, or mystical here; there is just work on yourself.

Kabbalah is the most “sporty” work; there is nothing else in it. There is a kind of rudimentary embryo that exists in you, but it is actually not rudimentary. Use it! It has been dormant in you for thousands of years. You need to start working with it.

Just like when you come to work for a blacksmith or a carpenter and they show you how to work with the material. You do not know anything yet, but you start working with this object and gradually it turns out that you have some feelings for it, sensations, and you get to know it.

This metal starts ringing in you, singing, responding to every strike, and in accordance with this, you feel what is happening to it.

With experience, certain sensations develop in you. What does experience mean? It is accumulation, it is familiarity with the object that you are working with.

It is the same here. Nothing else. Only the principle is a little different, because in addition, you have to work against your egoism. That is, you study your nature and work on it. And in this lies the secret.
[296276]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Fall First Aid in a Descent” 5/10/10

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Question: What is worse from God’s point of view: to worship animals, stones, plants, people, or ideas? Is there any gradation in this?

Answer: It depends on the person who chooses what to worship. The difference between just picking up some statue and worshiping it or worshiping some great idea or person is in our development.

Why worship a man who was born from a woman and created from biological substances, exists temporarily, and does not possess unlimited power over the world?

I can admire what he has achieved in his life, his accomplishments. But still, this is my personal, very limited worship. This is not what is meant in relation to the Creator.

Question: But is such admiration still higher than worshiping stones?

Answer: Yes, a stone is quite different.

Question: So have we, as humanity, already passed these stages?

Answer: From the way I see how many people go to Jerusalem, worship the Western Wall, kiss it, put notes there, I do not think we have passed this stage. It is still ahead of us.
[296619]
From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/5/22

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Question: Is the worship of one’s egoism idolatry?

Answer: Yes, of course.

Question: And how do we not to become an idolater?

Answer: Be engaged in your own development all the time.

Question: But you keep explaining that development happens through a group, through society, and through connection. Can this connection become an idol?

Answer: It can. It depends on how you perceive and develop it. On this basis, perhaps mistakenly, a lot of various methods, theories, as a rule, group ones, have appeared.

Question: How can we maintain a balance between attaining the Creator and uniting people?

Answer: The Creator is attained in the connection of people. The right connection of people is the identification of the Creator.
[296870]
From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/5/22

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Question: Why do you always say that Kabbalah gives a person an answer to what is the meaning of life and other methods do not?

Answer: Because it raises a person to the level of clear, explicit comprehension of both the question of the meaning of existence and the answer to it in this life. It reveals to a person the line between the present life and life after death; it pushes this border, and the person continues to see his existence beyond the border of animal death.

Question: Can this also be fantasy?

Answer: No, this is not fantasy.

This is the same fantasy as our life today. Exactly in the form in which we perceive it, we also clearly perceive what Kabbalah reveals.

Since Kabbalah reveals the upper world to us and gives us the whole perspective of the transition from this world to the spiritual one, i.e., a perspective of transformation, development, correction, and elevation, then we can talk about the next stage as reasonably, clearly, and scientifically as we can talk about our life.
[296117]
From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Is Frankl right?” 8/8/10

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Question: Kevin Strickland was 18 years old when he was convicted for shooting and killing and given a life sentence. He served 42 years and only now was it revealed that the charges were false. A witness who survived the shooting had pointed him out as one of the shooters. She had doubts, but hesitated in telling the truth because she was afraid of accusations in her direction. She later admitted that she was pressured by the police.

How does a person who has wrongly imprisoned another for 42 years feel?

Answer: It’s hard to imagine.

Question: Why is such a thing given to a person?

Answer: We don’t know what kind of punishments these are and what kind of corrections they are. Unfortunately, we don’t know what it is at all.

Question: So it was directed from above?

Answer: Of course, it is all from above. There is a purpose to this.

Question: Can an innocent man who has been in prison for so many years justify society and people?

Answer: I think he no longer has the strength to be against anything. He has already cried everything out, his hands have dropped, and he continues to simply live.

Question: How can we accept that there is such a punishment from the Creator? It’s not your fault, but you’ve been locked up for years. You talk about the Creator all the time. How can this be accepted?

Answer: I think that here we still need to figure out what is really happening above oneself and above this circumstance. After all, in order to understand the decision of fate, you need to be above what it did to you within the place where these questions are being decided.

Therefore, I don’t think that a person who has served so many years will just live with this organic hatred. He will still have to mature over all these years and reach the point that it’s not about people and not who decided, but it’s about some kind of upper management and a plan that needs to be understood.

Question: So it will sweeten his feeling?

Answer: No, not only sweeten, if I want to engage in scrutinizing such questions, I have to put it on the level of fate. It’s not just someone who wanted something or someone who did something.

Question: Is this already a correct step when a person begins to think: “Why is this done to me? What did the Creator do to me?” And so on?

Answer: Yes, he wants to penetrate into the plan of actions and this is already higher than a person and really the level of the Creator.

Question: I wonder if it would be justified for a person to suffer for so many years in order to come to such a thought?

Answer: Of course. Undoubtedly.

What is 40 years and in general what is human life? If he had lived it as some kind of locksmith or technologist, or no matter who and what, he would have had children or would have been imprisoned for petty theft and so on. But he would not have been able to scrutinize such questions that he may be thinking about in prison if he had his freedom.

And in freedom his life would have been like in prison, where he would live only inside himself and his egoistic thoughts. When he is in prison, then he will be free from his egoistic thoughts and maybe he will think within the framework of real freedom.

Question: If he rises to the Creator in his thoughts, will he be in dialog with Him? And do you think that even these sufferings for many years are justified?

Answer: Of course! These are all small things and are considered egoistic whining.

Question: Only to come to these thoughts?

Answer: Of course!

Question: So if he comes to these thoughts, then his whole life is justified?

Answer: Of course. Not only life, but precisely the kind of life that would have otherwise seemed to him that death is better than such imprisonment. He begins to understand that this is not imprisonment, but is in fact freedom. And where he would have felt freedom before he now feels the captivity.
[296131]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 12/6/22

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Preparation to the Lesson

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Vol. 1, Chapter 1, Item 1

Selected Highlights

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Is there something Jews can do to lower antisemitism?“

We Jews need to first understand the reason for antisemitism: that it is due to us not performing our obligatory role in humanity.

If we would reach our completion, which is a state of absolute friendship according to the rule “Love your friend as yourself,” then we would bring balance and calm to nature’s colliding forces. This is our destiny, our responsibility and our role toward the world, which is also described in the Torah. Also, it has no connection to religious belief. It is all about the attitude of “Love your friend as yourself,” which requires no rituals or ceremonies. We simply have to achieve a heart-to-heart connection from person to person, and show that to everyone.

We need to realize the immense importance of our attitudes to each other. Human connection is nature’s highest degree, and our nation was founded on realizing the principle of human connection—“Love your friend as yourself”—and by doing so, become a conduit of such connection toward humanity, which is the meaning of us becoming “a light unto the nations.” Therefore, the more divided we are, the more antisemitism rises; and the closer we are to each other, then likewise the more the world would relate positively to us.

Based on the video “An Overview of the World’s Current State – David A. Rosenthal Interviews Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.” Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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In the News (The Telegraph, “In these Covid times, it’s Dostoevsky that is resonating with readers”): “Fyodor Dostoevsky once wrote of ‘the pleasure of despair’, and book sales reveal British readers are buying into his brand of agreeable anguish.

“The Russian writer’s existentialist oeuvre is the fastest growing market for Penguin Classics, ahead of more genteel favourites like Austen and Dickens. …

“While the sudden clamour for the 19th-century author’s ‘gloom and nihilism’ remains ‘mysterious’ to publishers, experts have suggested that pessimistic modern readers have found a ‘prophet in Dostoevsky’.

“Kevin Birmingham, the author of literary biography The Sinner and The Saint, said: “I think the appeal is that Dostoevsky’s view of human nature seems more apparent now: we’re irrational, egoistic, and self-destructive.

“We spite ourselves, we crave freedom even if it leads to our detriment, and our perverse impulses are at the heart of civilisation.

“Readers of Dostoevsky’s novels wouldn’t be surprised by global affairs of the last several years. These are all Dostoevskian.

“He is currently fitting very well with the mood of readers, according to the Penguin Classics team, amid an increasing audience for angst that has seen UK sales for the author’s works increasing 177 per cent since 2016. …

“There is an abiding fear that there are no foundations, no ultimate sense of truth or justice, and this is something we’re grappling with these days.”

Question: What can we do about the fact that we live like this?

My Response: I think maybe this is why we will come to a brighter life, through such things like looking at the world through “dark glasses.”

Question: If I am wearing dark glasses, then what are my actions?

Answer: At least you have a realistic view of the world. It does not blind you.

Question: What does this reality give me?

Answer: You will want to brighten this world.

Question: Is it not that I will get depressed or something like that?

Answer: No, this is not depression. This is just a need for correction.

Question: Do you mean that because of such a view of Dostoevsky, I will want to come out into the light?

Answer: I think so, yes.

Question: Is this what you are talking about all the time: recognition of my evil, which is within me?

Answer: Precisely!
[295544]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 2/10/22

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