Question: What can help me ascertain where the truth is and where the lie is?

Answer: First, one should not aim for what is easy and lies nearby. This is what the evil inclination advises us.

The most important thing is to be inside the group, not afraid to fall, and not to listen to any conclusions, neither those on the left nor those on the right, but to be as much as possible directed to the Creator.

The direction toward the Creator is that you must think about the best for everyone. This is a very important difference between a correct conclusion and a wrong one.
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From the 1^st part of  the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/30/23, Writings of Rabash “It Is Forbidden to Hear a Good Thing from a Bad Person“

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Question: If a person has no Hisaron (desire, need), he or she is dead. How can one acquire this desire in such a state?

Answer: Only through friends. A person has to cling to them, receive a desire from them, and work with it.

Question: What can motivate someone to cling to friends if they have no feeling?

Answer: It doesn’t matter that they have no feelings. He needs to see how much he is unable to be like others.

Envy, honor, and passion take a person out of this world. That is, one surely watches others and envies them; this will save you.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/29/23, Writings of Rabash “What Is, ‘There Is No Blessing in That Which Is Counted,’ in the Work?”

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Don’t Fall for Egoistic Unity“

The recent tragic events of the Israel-Hamas war have made much clearer that our greatest vulnerability to terrorists is not in external threats but in our internal divisions. Our own very demonstrations, protests and vitriol that we spread among each other weakens us and emboldens those who wish to attack us. While the importance of unity is widely acknowledged, what remains less clear is that unity is merely the initial step in a more profound mission.

The story of the Tower of Babel serves as a poignant illustration of the consequences of misusing unity. The Babylonians, united in purpose, harnessed the power of unity to build a tower fueled by a group egoism. Due to their self-serving misuse of the unifying force, the tower eventually collapsed, scattered them and confused their language. Similarly, the history of communism reveals how a seemingly noble pursuit of equality and friendship, rooted in unity, can devolve into greed and oppression, resulting in the loss of millions of lives.

Unity, when constructed upon the flawed foundations of selfish motives, risks undermining its potential for positive change. It is not enough to proclaim, “together we will win.” Mere unity might ward off external foes, but it fails to address the persistent internal battle against our divisive egoistic drives that surface inside us at every moment. Without a higher guiding principle, the ego will resurface, perpetuating a cycle of conflict and drawing external threats.

What distinguishes this higher guiding principle is not a distant, cloud-dwelling grandfather figure but a positive unifying force that manifests in connections that we build above our divisive egoistic tendencies. This force is rooted in the fundamental laws of nature that reveal themselves through the intentions of those who unite in a common aspiration to project the very base qualities of nature—qualities of love, bestowal and connection—to one another and who wish for these qualities to spread to the world at large. Then, the unity that these people establish is based on the fundamental unity that exists in nature, which likewise attracts the harmony and peace that dwells in nature.

To build a society that endures, we must rise above mere unity and establish a society founded on the laws of nature. Without such an alignment, any social construct risks collapse, endangering its members. Recognizing the need to match our unity with nature’s eternal and perfect form of unity is essential for breaking the cycle of internal strife and external threats. We thus need to cultivate unity in society that is built on the benefit of all, a unity made of attitudes of its members that align with nature’s quality of love, bestowal and connection.
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Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Preparation to the Lesson

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1st part of the Lesson — Writings of Rabash, “Know Today and Reply to Your Heart”

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2nd part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Vol. 1, Part 1, “Inner Observation,” Chapter 9, Item 33

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Selected Highlights

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Question: What helps us reveal the forms of the Creator’s conduct in the ten?

Answer: Our desire for unification helps us. We must try to unite, and if we do it in a wrong way, the Creator will correct us.

Question: What will help me understand the difference between my daily aspiration in the ten for unification and the form the Creator seems to be showing me? What should I pay attention to?

Answer: You should pay attention to your friends. The Creator clothes Himself in your friends. You must feel through them what unfinished relationships you still have with them, and you will understand how to approach the Creator.

Question: How to be honest with friends and yet not to push them away?

Answer: For that, you simply need to raise the greatness of your connection with your friends higher than anything else in the world. As they say: either unification or death.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/3/23, Writings of Rabash “What Is the Preparation to Receive the Torah in the Work?-2“

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Question: It is written that profusion of movement pains man for it is an indirect extension from His essence. What does an indirect extension from the Creator’s essence mean?

Answer: The Creator has no deficiency in anything, and therefore He is in absolute rest and perfection.

If the direction of His action does not change, and it is always directed at filling us, then we call His action constant and at absolute rest.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/9/23, Writings of Baal HaSulam “Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Michael Laitman on the Times of Israel: “Antisemitism’s Global Surge: Lessons from History and a Path to Unity”

He runs through the forest, escaping a pack of predators, stumbling, getting up, continuing, accumulating scratches and bruises. He looks back to check how close those after him are, and suddenly halts as soon as he flips his head forward.

There they are, encircling him. With no escape on the horizon, he instinctively looks to the sky…

The Jewish people have run across the face of the planet fleeing groups upon groups that wanted them gone, from Nimrod and the Babylonians in ancient Mesopotamia, to Pharaoh and his soldiers in ancient Egypt, to the Greeks, the Romans, the Spaniards and the Germans.

Today, as we look back on history, we observe ebbs and flows of antisemitism that, like a haunting specter, has erupted globally since Hamas’ attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers on October 7, 2023. We once again find ourselves amid converging circumstances that urge us to think hard about what we are doing here and where we are headed.

Today’s crisis is like a global version of what we experienced nearly 4,000 years ago in ancient Babylon. Human culture, rooted in self-serving material pursuits, clashed with the vision of Abraham, the patriarch of the people of Israel. He called on us to rise above and embrace a desire to love, bestow upon and positively connect to each other, overcoming our innate self-centeredness.

Our tumultuous journey across continents, spanning thousands of years, served to prepare us for this monumental occasion. Yet, the transition from self-serving intentions to altruistic ones that lead us to positively connect is no easy feat. Surrounded by animosity today, we face the challenge of trying to bring about the best possible future amid crisis, and through much prayer and inner effort, seek unity beyond our self-aimed desires.

This pursuit of unity marks a pivotal moment in our collective history. By lifting our eyes up to see the need to unite with each other, we can rise above the predators surrounding us. The current wave of hatred against us can then serve as a catalyst for our escape from this horde, precisely by uniting and praying for our unity to strengthen above the powers that awaken to tear us apart.

When we unite in such a way, our surroundings will transform. We will no longer see a landscape fraught with enemies. Instead, we will see people around us who wish to learn and apply the art of unity above division. If we treat this kind of unity as our shared pursuit, we can then find the remedy to our common affliction and pave the way for a harmonious and peaceful future.
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Question: Why is the punishment for slander greater than the punishment for idol worshiping? Why is slander such a grave sin?

Answer: We are always in idol worshiping a little bit because we worship any idols on our way, and then we dismiss them and choose the next ones again.

And slander has no boundaries; therefore, we need to be very afraid of it. Through slander we can push a person off the right path.

Question: Does it have something to do with the greatness of the King, is He great for me or small?

Answer: There may also be such an influence. But the fact is that it changes all the time for you; you don’t even know how.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/1/23, Writings of Rabash “What Is a Great or a Small Sin in the Work?”

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Question: Where is the line where I can tell myself if I am in self-sacrifice or in the work?

Answer: Devotion of the soul (Mesirut Nefesh) is called self-sacrifice; it is when a person comes to a state where he is ready to give everything for the sake of the quality of bestowal and love.

Question: Do the stages of self-sacrifice and work transform into one another: from self-sacrifice to work and from work to self-sacrifice?

Answer: It is the same thing. This is work, only on the terms of self-sacrifice.

Question: But a person can get stuck in a state of self-sacrifice because egoism is so tricky that it will always find some kind of pleasure in this state?

Answer: But we must fight against this in order not to plug our egoism with all kinds of false gifts or handouts. We want to be only in the quality of bestowal to the Creator, and in no other way.

When we fulfill all the laws of connection between ourselves, the group and the Creator, that is, we act only in the name of bestowal, then we come to perfect work.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/31/23, Writings of Baal HaSulam “Devotion”

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