Question: When I annul myself, do I begin to see the negative qualities of my friends as positive? Or do I still see them as negative, but it does not matter, I justify them nevertheless?

Answer: Negative qualities do not disappear. The Creator created them so that we could rise above them and begin to love them just like the positive ones. It is not that I agree with them; I rise above them and then connect with them. That is, here we have a lot of mutual, joint work.

Therefore, there is no need to do anything with both negative and positive qualities. We need to raise the importance of the group and the Creator in our eyes. Then all our egoistic qualities, both good and bad, will change accordingly. We will not change them, but our desire to come closer to the Creator, to the upper light, will change us.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/8/22, “Deriving the Greatness of the Goal from the Friends” Lesson 4

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Question: What role does the property of patriotism play in achieving faith above reason in order to unquestioningly implement all the instructions of Kabbalists?

Answer: Devotion to the group is the most important and necessary part of our spiritual development. Otherwise, we will not have a Kli, that is, a place, that we create to reveal the Creator.

The Creator is called a place. The most important thing we need is to create a desire (place), as it is said: “The commandments of man regarding the place.”

If from various desires that are intertwined together we weave our common desire, we get a fabric that will be called the common Kli or Shechina.

Question: Should I love my friends first and then achieve mutual guarantee, or should I try to be in mutual guarantee and then I will come to love of friends?

Answer: Try to be in mutual guarantee through which this love is achieved, i.e., such interconnection, contact, and communication where you can completely seemingly replace each other. That is when the quality called Shechina rises, the connection between us in which the Creator can be clothed in.

We make from ourselves such a foundation, such a Kli, on our loom (weaving machine) where we intertwine all our desires to help each other. This is the mutual guarantee in which the Creator is revealed.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/9/22, “Working in Mutual Responsibility” Lesson 6

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Preparation to the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic: “Faith Above Reason” 

Writings of Baal HaSulam “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 120

Selected Highlights 

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 2/3/22

In old movies and in many Disney films, there is a classic format for a love story: A beautiful young princess is in trouble, usually taken captive by a villain, a brave knight comes to her rescue, she falls madly in love with him, they marry, and live happily ever after. Alas, in reality, the princess is neither beautiful nor regal, the knight is neither brave nor noble, and the marriage is neither happy nor long. Love is not a crush; it does not just happen. Love is a relationship, a process of building a bond one step at a time. Only people who have made lifelong friendships and have been there for each other can say they love each other.

People like to remember the butterflies in their stomach when they think about falling in love, but that is not a foundation for a lasting relationship. If you feel butterflies in your stomach, it is more likely a bad stomach than real love. A superficial acquaintance is just that: superficial. It makes no sense to pick someone to share your life with just because you had a good time at a party.

You can meet anywhere, even at a party, but love is something you build. When you have been together for a long time and you have reached a point where you trust your partner to help you when you need it, and your partner trusts you to do the same, then you can begin to think of it as love.

There are two levels of love: The first is the one I just described, which is basically a strong emotional bond made of friendship and trust. The second, deeper kind is one where the lover lives to please the beloved and derives joy from that rather than from self-centered satisfactions.

Achieving this kind of love requires more than trust; it requires concessions, deeper and deeper concessions. “Love,” my teacher RABASH used to say, “is a pet that feeds on mutual concessions.” When two people constantly seek where they can make even more concessions in order to please the one they love, their love for one another will continually grow.

Therefore, the secret to a happy life is to keep feeding the love you have for each other with concessions, putting your partner first, and you second, if at all. If you live in this way, you will transcend time, your love will be infinitely stronger in the end than in the beginning, and you will never tire of each other or of life.

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Comment: The world is now shuddering from a new variant of the coronavirus. The world knows almost nothing about the new variant of the coronavirus and it is already causing irreparable damage to the well-being of people around the world.

It has deprived them of the confidence that the worst was over, and this has slowed down the exit from the economic crisis after two years of the pandemic. It has robbed the world of certainty. Even if the fear of a new variant of the coronavirus turns out to be exaggerated, the deed is done, the belief that the pandemic is over has been shaken.

In principle, everyone thought: “Okay, let’s suffer a little, and then we will start economic growth.”

My Response: No! There will be no growth! We will quietly slide down, just slip down, because the world psychologically does not need any progress. It no longer needs any economic growth. No! It’s best to have nothing at all.

Question: And what will happen then? How will the world live in this case?

Answer: It will live quietly, quietly, and even more quietly. What we have is good for us.

Question: So you think this virus shows correctly, the opposite, that there is no need for any economic progress?

Answer: Yes. It will teach us everything: how to relate to each other, to nature, to society, to everything. Otherwise, everything will decline.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 12/2/21

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why are the Olympics used as a political stage?“

We have no need for the Olympic Games anymore because they have become a place where we pit man against man and country against country. They are no longer games of connection, but competition has become like war. This is evident both in the games themselves as well as in the politics surrounding the games.

It is one of the outcomes of the enormous growth of the human ego in our generation. Human development is characterized by a constant growth of desires, and the more we develop, the more egoistic we become.

When our egos were smaller, we were able to use the Olympics to set aside our disputes for a short period of time, to even put a temporary halt to wars, and engage in peaceful sports competition. We no longer approach the Olympics in such a way, nor as a means to raise the human spirit, to show the heights of what man can achieve beyond human limitations.

If we aim at overcoming our human limitations in a positive spirit, then we do not care who wins. We become mainly concerned with showing the world how great man can be.

We would thus be wise to consider how great we can truly become—the ultimate human achievement—and if we aim at it, then we would be able to enjoy positive relations in the Olympics and every area of our lives.

Internally, our peak achievement is to become like God. That is the ultimate breakthrough of our limitations, as becoming like God means becoming unlimited, eternal and perfect. As God is an all-loving and all-embracing quality, so by embracing everyone in a common love and care, then we become like God, and that is the most significant achievement we could ever achieve.

Based on the video “Sports vs. Politics” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: If in my mind I can manage to see my friends way above me, how do I pull myself up to their level? What should be in this prayer so that it is not a prayer for myself?

Answer: It can be a prayer for yourself. I am trying to correct myself, I am praying for myself. But maybe before that I have a prayer to see my friends on a higher level than myself.

And then I pray to pull myself up to them, to adhere to them. I raise my friends above myself, and then I ask the Creator to give me the opportunity to connect with them.

In this way I pull myself up by raising the group in my eyes.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/7/22, “Adhering to the Friends” Lesson 3

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Our methodology is very practical and concrete. I need to attune to the Creator. There is none else besides Him, and I must be aimed at Him. To do this, I have a device, the group.

If I attune to the group in such a way that my egoism gradually decreases and I see everything not through my egoism, but through the properties of bestowal, connection, and love, then I will be able to reach the state of revelation of the Creator. That is what we are doing. There is nothing else here.

In reality, the group is in an ideal state, it is absolutely harmonious with the Creator, in complete adhesion with Him. But in my view, it is a total zero if not a minus.

So, I must elevate this group higher and higher in my eyes each time, each friend and all of them together. And then I raise myself, my vision, my view, and my opinion to such a level that I begin to see the Creator through the eyes of the group.

Therefore, it is said: “From love for the created beings to the love for the Creator.” There is no other method. This is what we have in front of us in our world: man, society, humanity, and the Creator.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/7/22, “Adhering to the Friends” Lesson 3

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Baal HaSulam, “The Arvut [Mutual Guarantee]”: On the positive side, if they keep the Arvut to the point that each one cares and satisfies the needs of his friends, they can fully observe the Torah and Mitzvot [commandments], meaning to bring contentment to their Maker, as mentioned in “Matan Torah.” 

The Creator is what stands behind my friends. As I treat the friends, so I treat the Creator. It cannot be otherwise!

If I care for my friends so that they realize what faith above reason means and all the time imagine that we are in the property of bestowal, that we are attracted and are not repulsed by each other, that we must help each other, and I do help; if I realize faith above reason in this way; that is, I raise the quality of Bina (faith) above reason, above the quality of Malchut (reception), then by affecting my friends, I affect myself back through them.

That is why it is so important to constantly take care of your friends. In principle, this is self-care in a hidden form because I am an egoist and would not wish for myself to become an altruist. I cannot love and bestow to others! And society cannot influence me either. It may prepare me for this state, but nothing more.

And if I influence the society by propagating the values of bestowal, love, and unity, then my own efforts affect me, and I correct myself through the environment. That is how it works.

Although it seems to me that I care about something else, it really means that I care about my own correction. I must show everyone my aspiration toward faith above reason as if I really desire it very much. By this I inspire my friends, although I do not possess this property, do not yet consider it necessary and mandatory, and do not know it at all, and I am just beginning to study what faith above reason, bestowal above reception, and love above egoism means.

Moreover, my influence on others passes through the common Kli (vessel) through all the souls and it returns to me. I receive it from everyone. It cannot be said that it is in quantity, because it acts selectively, but in terms of quality, it practically comes from the Creator.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/9/22, “Working in Mutual Responsibility” Lesson 6

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