And I have given you a land for which you did not labor, and cities which you did not build, and you have settled in them; of the vineyards and oliveyards which you did not plant, you eat.

And now fear the Lord, and serve Him in sincerity and in truth; and remove the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the river and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. (Prophets, Book of Joshua, 24:13-14)

The Creator does not reproach the children of Israel, but tells them: “What you have conquered is yours. It’s deemed to be yours. You don’t need to plant and build anything, just fight with your internal enemies. This is your work.”

The Creator gave all this to the people for one purpose, so that they serve God. They don’t have to do anything else. This is the task of the people of Israel, to be directed only at the Creator and to correct all desires that arise against Him to equivalence of form with Him.

To serve God means to correct all the egoistic desires that you are able to discover in yourself by directing them to the Creator.

Question: How can I reveal these desires in myself?

Answer: You can’t find them in yourself because the basic law is “love your neighbor as yourself.” It is only on the basis of this law in relation to others that you can reveal who you are, what you are, and what you need to correct.
[289193]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 9/6/21

Related Material:
To Walk Consciously In All His Ways
The Creator And The Creation: A Hand And A Glove
“Your Heart Grows Haughty And You Forget The Lord, Your God”

Filed under: Spiritual Work, Torah | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is education?“

Education—i.e., the correct form of education and not how education is currently about skills and knowledge acquisition—is our integration in a particular social environment that gives us a line of action and a direction toward a future state.

We need to see our next state in our social environment. Our next state urges us forward, awakening, encouraging, motivating and inspiring us to be like it. In a social environment, it is easier for us to change.

Educators should thus create a social atmosphere whereby our feelings and moods become impetus for us to adapt to our surroundings, and thus the units from which society is composed gather into a harmonious group, which becomes our next state.

A harmonious group is one in which individuals who are egoistic by nature, i.e. made up of desires to enjoy at each other’s expense, become reshaped into positive social beings, and in which they start understanding that they are in absolute and mutual cooperation with the surrounding society, where only through mutual cooperation can they provide for everything that they need in a peaceful, harmonious and convenient way.

Accordingly, by entering such an environment, we apply a certain kind of pressure on our ego. That is, we wish to succeed and hold a certain level of respect in society, so if we enter a society that principally values mutual cooperation, then we try to become more cooperative and giving in order to fit in and gain society’s respect. In other words, we feel that our egoistic goals become satisfied through altruistic actions. Then, the more we nourish such an environment and participate in it, the more we will develop to become giving, cooperative and altruistic beings, values where if regularly upheld and strengthened in society, will raise us to become truly happy and confident people. That is the essence of an optimal form of education.

Based on a lesson with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman, “The Last Generation,” on July 9, 2015. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

Filed under: Q&A, Quora | Add Comment / Ask Question →

The purpose of creation is to bring the creation to full likeness to the Creator, to merge with Him. This is the foundation of spiritual work.

The goal is achieved by building the correct intention over desire.

The right intention is called restriction (Tzimtzum) and Masach. Tzimtzum is a contraction of egoistic desire. And when the egoistic desire is slightly revealed in accordance with the altruistic intention, this is called the Masach. In fact, the screen commands the action.

The idea of ​​creation is that for all the egoistic desires that unfold, one can gradually create a contraction: first, not to use this desire at all, then acquire a Masach, the intention to bestow, and to the extent of this intention, begin to slightly open the desire and add the intention to it.

This is how we receive for the sake of bestowal. This is the meaning of correcting the primordial desire of man—to receive. This is the intention of creation that leads a person to become one with the Creator, to full likeness to Him.

And the further a person advances in mastering the method of correction, the more egoism is revealed in him and the more Masach he must put on his egoism in order to correctly compare the right and left lines and come to the correct work on himself.
[289196]
From KabTV’s “Conversation about The Book of Zohar”

Related Material:
The Vessel Of Intention
Living In Intention Instead Of Desire
What Is A Spiritual Vessel (Desire)?

Filed under: Spiritual Work | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Question: Why did countries that expelled Jews quickly decline? And vice versa, countries that admitted them prospered?

Answer: Indeed, we see that as Jews moved from Spain through the rest of Europe and were expelled from one country to another, waves of ascents and declines accompanied them.

The fact is that the method they had adopted, the point in the heart, the connection with spirituality, and the contact with the upper world gives one the ability to understand this world, how it works, what is inside it, how forces that an ordinary person lacks operate behind the scenes.

Question: It turns out that this point in the heart, the connection with the governing force, was found only among the Jews, right?

Answer: Yes. Perhaps you do not clearly feel the upper force because you are removed from this perception. But despite this, it is somehow intuitively present in you. Even if you are involved in banking, an artisan craft, science, or music, no matter what, it gives you a deeper, broader understanding of the universe that, in fact, is not found in others.

But anyone can get it if he starts using the method of Kabbalah, develops himself like Abraham’s group once did, and obtains the sensation of the upper world. Then he will attain the three-dimensional sphere that exists beyond our world that envelops and governs us. He will see the spiritual roots and begin to intuitively feel what is happening here.

Therefore, although we do not see it in today’s Jews nor are they aware of it themselves, ever since then there have been spiritual imprints in them that become manifested in such completely worthless achievements. This happens in order to speed up the process and show the impasse of the egoistic path of development.
[288649]
From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Difference in souls” 12/11/09

Related Material:
Where Is The Upper World?
Is It Possible To Govern The Upper World?
The Upper World Is A World Of Information

Filed under: Israel, Nations of the World | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Question: Should we try to help those who suffer or should we let them live their lives fully as it was given to them?

Answer: Should we help others attain the spiritual attainment of the Creator or let them be so that they will develop according to the conditions they were given?

We must help because we are all in one vessel, in one system. To the extent that we help others, we also help ourselves. So, by helping each other, we will reach the complete correction of our vessel in which we will all reveal the Creator together.
[254287]
From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 9/15/19

Related Material:
Helping Humanity Ascend
Choosing The Way Of Acceleration
How To Reduce Suffering

Filed under: Spiritual Work | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Question: Can I reach a state in which after the final correction of all beings and the whole world I will not feel like a created being?

Answer: No. You will still be a created being but one who totally feels the Creator. To the extent that you resemble Him, you will feel all the processes occurring in Him. This means attaining the Creator.

You cannot imagine how special and wonderful these states are. Therefore, it seems to you that it is not enough.
[254505]
From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 9/15/19

Related Material:
An Intermediary Between The Creator And The Created Being
The Creator In The Eyes Of The Created Being
Anticipate The Created Being

Filed under: Kabbalah Study, Spiritual Work | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Preparation to the Lesson

Writings of Baal HaSulam, Shamati #53 “The Matter of Limitation” 

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom” 

Selected Highlights

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download:MP3 Audio

Filed under: Audio Version of the Blog | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Are humans meant for change or to remain static?“

Human nature is a desire to enjoy, and the more this desire grows, the more egoistic it becomes. That is, the desire to enjoy beyond its necessities for food, sex and family starts becoming a desire to enjoy at the expense of others: a desire for money, wealth, control, power, honor and fame.

In our era, the egoistic desire has reached a point of ripeness for change to its opposite: altruism. Without such a change, we will experience more and more suffering until we wake up to the need for making this change to our very nature.

In order to undergo this change—egoism to altruism—we need to attract a special force dwelling in nature, which we can do by entering a process of connection-enriching education.

By learning how to positively connect with one another above our divisions and differences, we enter into a certain closeness with nature’s altruistic quality, and attract it to ourselves.

Nature consists of two forces, positive and negative, giving and receiving. Today, we are controlled solely by the negative receptive force: egoism. We can attract the positive force by engaging ourselves in a culture that influences us with values of connecting positively above our differences. Then, when we live between both positive and negative forces in such a way, i.e. the positive force in the social atmosphere surrounding us and the negative force within our very desire, we then start entering into a positive connection with nature.

That is the change that humanity is being led to, and we are at a transition point where we can either enter this process of change actively—applying ourselves to connection-enriching education and entering environments that support this change—or we can continue trying to fulfill our egoistic desires, and by doing so, the steamroller of evolution will eventually catch up to us with increasing suffering until we become ready to undergo this change.

Based on a talk “Challenges of the 20th Century” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on April 24, 2019. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

Filed under: Q&A, Quora | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Question: My question is about everyday life. How can I avoid the attention of people that I do not see as a part of my environment due to their potential destructive influence on me? How can I do this without offending them and by avoiding conflict? Why does the Creator send them to me on my life path?

Answer: The point is that these are not external people, they exist in you. You must streamline your inner feelings and properties, and then you will see how they cease to affect you.

All this is deliberately aroused in you by the same upper light, which fills absolutely all space so you can turn everything negative into positive. These people evoke additional critical analysis in you, you must listen and strengthen your opinion even more.

Then you will see that these people are not outside. In fact, they are within you. All of this is an outward display of your inner personal doubts and contradictions.

So, deal with them freely, only with the intention that you are willing to attain the truth. Do not lean on anyone’s side but analyze every state. If you still cannot do it, then at least you understand that you still have such unanswered questions. Later you will figure them out. Until then, write them down and forget about them for a while.
[288993]
From KabTV’s “Videoconference”

Related Material:
The World Is Our Inner Video Image
How We Perceive The World
The World Is A Person’s Inner State

Filed under: Spiritual Work | Add Comment / Ask Question →